News Reel

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Dick Durbin wrote to US attorney for DC demanding that she explain her threat that she could reopen a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell

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When Pete Hegseth was asked about Pope Leo XIV’s condemnation of the war in Iran, and comments from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops suggesting the conflict is not a “just war”, the defense secretary simply said that the pope was “going to do his thing”.

“We know what our mission is,” Hegseth added. “We follow that the orders of the president. We’ve got lawyers all over the place looking at what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, and giving us every authority necessary under the constitution and under our laws to execute it.”

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Raymond Chen published a blog post about how a crappy uninstaller on Windows caused a mysterious spike in the number of Explorer (Windows’ graphical shell) crashes. It turns out the buggy uninstaller caused repeated crashes in the 32bit version of Explorer on 64bit systems, and – hold on a minute. The how many bits on the what now?

The 32-bit version of Explorer exists for backward compatibility with 32-bit programs. This is not the copy of Explorer that is handling your taskbar or desktop or File Explorer windows. So if the 32-bit Explorer is running on a 64-bit system, it’s because some other program is using it to do some dirty work.

↫ Raymond Chen at The Old New Thing

So I had no idea that 64bit Windows included a copy of the 32bit Explorer for backwards compatibility. It obviously makes sense, but I just never stopped to think about it. This made me wonder though if you could go nuts and do something really dumb: could you somehow trick 64bit Windows into running this 32bit copy of Explorer as its shell? You’d be running 32bit Explorer on 64bit Windows using the 32bit WoW64 binaries where you just pulled the 32bit Explorer binary from, which seems like a really nonsensical thing to do.

Since there’s no longer any 32bit builds of Windows 11, you also can’t just copy over the 32bit Explorer from a 32bit Windows 11 build and achieve the same goal that way, so you’d really have to go digging around in WoW64 to get 32bit versions. I guess the answer to this question depends on just how complete this copy of 32bit Explorer really is, and if Windows has any defenses or triggers in place to prevent someone from doing something this uselessly stupid. Of course, there’s no practical reason to do any of this and it makes very little sense, but it might be a fun hacking project.

Most likely the Windows experts among you are wondering what kind of utterly deranged new designer drug I’m on, but I was always told that sometimes, the dumbest questions can lead to the most interesting answers, so here we are.

BMW's latest concept car moves the color-changing tech it debuted back at CES 2022 closer to reality by embedding an E Ink panel directly into the hood. The Verge reports: BMW's previous concepts wrapped the entire vehicle in a patchwork of E Ink panels that were all custom-sized and shaped to match its contours. It was an approach that wasn't practical for mass production, and one that wasn't very durable. The new BMW iX3 Flow Edition is potentially the most exciting of all of BMW's concepts as it embeds the E Ink Prism technology directly into the structure of the vehicle's hood panel, instead of just slapping it on top. The new approach has "undergone BMW's stringent quality testing" so that it meets the "requirements of automotive engineering and everyday use," according to a release from E Ink. The BMW iX3 Flow Edition's color-changing capabilities are limited to its hood with eight different animations (which appear restricted to a grayscale palette) that can be changed by the driver at the push of a button. It's not exactly the color-changing car that BMW has been teasing for years and you still can't buy one, but by focusing on making this technology more practical and functional these vehicles are one step closer to moving past the concept phase.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Not too long ago I had a need and an opportunity to re-acquaint myself with the mechanism used for software emulation of the 8087 FPU on 8086/8088 machines.

↫ Michal Necasek

Look, when a Michal Necasek article starts out like this, you know you’re in for a learnin’ ol’ time.

The 8087 was a floating-point coprocessor for the 8086 and 8088 processors, since back in those early days, processors did not include an integrated floating-point unit. It wouldn’t be until the release of the 486DX, in 1989, that Intel would integrate an FPU inside the processor itself, negating the need for a separate chip and socket. Interestingly enough, Intel also released a cut-down version of the 486 with the FPU removed, the 486SX, for which an optional external FPU did exist.

Move creates conflict between state and administration as Trump seeks federal framework over states handling issue

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The US justice department said on Friday it had intervened in a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s xAI challenging a Colorado law aimed at regulating artificial intelligence systems.

In its intervention, the justice department said the law violated the 14th amendment’s equal protection guarantee by requiring companies to guard against unintended discriminatory effects while allowing some discrimination aimed at promoting diversity.

Carie Hallford, 48, whose ex-husband, Jon, was earlier sentenced, expressed remorse over corpse abuse scheme

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The co-owner of a Colorado funeral home was sentenced in state court on Friday to 30 years in prison for her part in a corpse abuse scheme that involved hiding nearly 200 decomposing bodies.

Carie Hallford, 48, was also sentenced to 18 years in prison earlier this month after pleading guilty to a federal fraud charge related to the scandal.

Roberts-Smith, who has denied five charges of war crime murder, says he was always going to attend: ‘I never thought about not coming’

Booing has marred Anzac Day commemorations in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, while on the Gold Coast, the Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith attended the dawn service at Currumbin beach.

One man was arrested at the Sydney dawn service at Martin Place, where there was a small but noisy interjection of booing during the Indigenous acknowledgement of country.

Your air purifier is designed to capture dust, pollen, pet dander, smoke and even bacteria, but one oversight can cause it to not work effectively and waste your money.

The former U.S. senator from Nebraska opened up about his terminal diagnosis, his family and the state of American politics in a "Things That Matter" town hall.

A report says Samsung's mobile division could post its first-ever annual loss in 2026, as rising memory costs, tougher competition, and pressure across products like foldables and smartwatches weigh on the business. SammyGuru reports: Samsung boss TM Roh reportedly told company leaders that the mobile (MX) business could lose money this year. That warning has clearly rattled management. The MX unit has long been a key pillar for Samsung. That's why the idea of it slipping into the red is a serious concern for the company's overall performance. If this prediction holds, it would mark the first time the MX business reports a yearly loss since its inception. That's a sharp turn from its track record so far. It also raises bigger questions about future growth, rising competition, and how Samsung plans to steady the ship in its mobile division. And it's not like the challenges are easing up. Samsung's foldable market share in the US, where it currently enjoys a dominant position, doesn't look as solid as before, and Apple could shake things up if it enters the segment. On top of that, market reports suggest Samsung's overall smartwatch share could dip in 2026. The Galaxy S26 series seems to be selling well for now, but whether that's enough to move the needle is still up in the air.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The bill was passed by lawmakers earlier this month, but needed final approval from Maine Governor Janet Mills.

Hisham Abugharbeih, 26, taken into custody after remains of Zamil Limon found, as search for Nahida Bristy continues

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The body of one of two Bangladeshi doctoral students missing from the University of South Florida (USF) was found on a bridge over Tampa Bay, and his roommate has been taken into custody, law enforcement authorities said Friday.

Zamil Limon’s remains were found on the Howard Frankland Bridge on Friday morning, but Nahida Bristy is still missing, Hillsborough county sheriff’s office chief deputy Joseph Maurer said.

Martha Odom, 16, died from a gunshot wound to the chest according to the local coroner’s statement

A high school senior has been identified as the person killed in a mass shooting that also wounded five others when two groups exchanged gunfire inside the food court at a mall in Louisiana’s capital city on Thursday afternoon, according to officials.

Martha Odom, 16, died from a gunshot wound to the chest, according to a statement issued Friday by the local coroner’s office.

This live blog is now closed. For the latest, read our full report:

• Trump sending Witkoff and Kushner to Pakistan to resume talks on Iran war

The EU’s foreign chief has said that talks with Iran should include nuclear experts otherwise “we will end up with a more dangerous Iran.”

Speaking on Friday ahead of an informal summit of EU leaders in Cyprus, EU’s foreign chief Kaja Kallas said: “If the talks are only about the nuclear and there are no nuclear experts around the table, then we will end up with an agreement that is weaker than the JCPOA was.”

Four accused of rape and one of aiding and abetting rape in connection with incident in Gravesend

Three boys and two men have been charged over the rape of a teenage girl in Kent, police said.

Kent police received reports on Tuesday that a girl had been raped at a private property in Gravesend between 25 March and 19 April.

Janet Mills says moratorium would’ve been ‘appropriate’ if it didn’t interfere with ongoing datacenter project in Maine

The Democratic governor of Maine on Friday vetoed a bill that would have made it the first US state to impose a moratorium on large new datacenters, even as local opposition to the electricity-hungry facilities grows.

The decision reflects the difficult trade-off facing political leaders, who must weigh the impact of datacenters on the environment and household energy bills against the millions of dollars in investment and tax revenue they can bring.

Home secretary indicates Whitehall talks about returns programme, a move that would shock humanitarian groups

Shabana Mahmood has refused to rule out sending rejected Afghan asylum seekers back to the Taliban-controlled country.

The home secretary said she is “monitoring very closely” talks between Kabul and EU countries about a returns programme for refused claimants. She also indicated that “additional conversations” about Afghan returns were happening inside Whitehall.

Longtime Slashdot reader Himmy32 writes: Socket Security published an article on the compromise of the Bitwarden CLI client, which was pushed from Bitwarden's client repository. This breach was the next in a chain of supply-chain attacks that have affected Checkmarx KICS and Aqua Security's Trivy scanners. The breach was quickly detected and reported by JFrog on the GitHub repository; JFrog also provided a technical write-up. The Bitwarden team has released statements on a blog post indicating that the compromise did not affect vault or customer data. Only 334 downloads of the affected CLI client were downloaded before removal and remediation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Four men face murder charges in case of 16-year-old Roxanne Sharp, whose body was found in a wooded area

Four people have been arrested in connection to the 1982 killing of a Louisiana teenager, investigators announced on Friday.

State police troopers said tips generated by a true-crime podcast they were involved in making – along with improvements in investigative technologies – helped them make arrests in the killing of Roxanne Sharp, 16, about 44 years earlier.

Texas health officials notified the owners of Camp Mystic that it had not met health and safety requirement necessary to reopen.

Jake Reiner calls parents ‘center’ of his life and says brother being at ‘center’ of loss is ‘almost too impossible to process’

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The elder son of beloved director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Reiner, eulogized his parents, who were “the center” of his life, in a Substack essay published Friday, four months after the pair were found stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home.

Nick Reiner, the couple’s younger son, who long struggled with drug addiction and mental illness, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection to their deaths, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

Wendy Duffy died at Pegasos clinic in Basel as assisted dying bill in England and Wales fails to pass

A grieving mother has ended her life at a clinic in Switzerland four years after the death of her only child.

Wendy Duffy, 56, a physically healthy woman, died at the Pegasos clinic in Basel after struggling to cope with the death of her 23-year-old son, Marcus.

Ahead of a Trump-Xi summit, Washington widens its crackdown on secretive oil and chemical trade between Beijing and Tehran.

Economists say Americans should expect elevated prices at the pump and rising grocery costs in the months to come.

Sebastian Wick has a great explanation of why opening files – programmatically – is a lot more complex and fraught with dangers than you might think it is.

It’s a question I had to ask myself multiple times over the last few months. Depending on the context the answer can be:

• very simple, just call the standard library function
• extremely hard, don’t trust anything

If you are an app developer, you’re lucky and it’s almost always the first answer. If you develop something with a security boundary which involves files in any way, the correct answer is very likely the second one.

↫ Sebastian Wick

This issue was relevant for Wick as he is one of the lead developers of Flatpak, for which a number of security issues have recently been discovered, and it just so happens that many of these issues dealt with this very topic. The biggest security issue found was a complete sandbox escape, originating from the fact that flatpak run, the command-line tool to start a Flatpak application, accepted path strings, since flatpak run is assumed to be run by a trusted user. The problem lay in a D-Bus service sandboxed applications could use to create subsandboxes, and this service was built around, you guessed it, flatpak run.

The issues in question, including this complete sandbox escape, have been addressed and fixed, but they highlight exactly the dangers that can come from opening files. This subsandboxing approach in Flatpak is built on assumptions from fifteen years ago, and times have changed since then. If you’re a programmer who deals with opening files, you might want to take a look at your own code to see if similar issues exist.

In that reading „AI“ is a machine for the creation of epistemic injustice and the replacement of truth with what a tech elite wants it to be in order to control the population. This is a Fascist project that not so subtly aligns with Fascism’s totalitarian will to power and control as well as its reliance in replacing reasoning and debate with belief in power and the leader.

↫ Jürgen Geute

The purpose of a system is what it does, and what “AI” does is stunt users’ own abilities and development and concentrate power and wealth even further in the hands of a very small privileged few – a privileged few who consistently espouse fascist ideology and promote and implement fascist ideas. Jürgen Geute lays it out in much more detail backed by solid references and concrete examples, but the conclusion is clear.

And uncomfortable to many, as such conclusions always are.

Police said the shooting appeared to have happened after two groups of people got into an argument in the mall's food court.

Tom Kean, who has not voted since 5 March and whose seat is top Democratic target, due back ‘very soon’, speaker says

A vulnerable Republican congressman who has not voted in weeks “is attending to a personal health matter”, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said on Friday as he struggles to maintain his historically small majority in Congress’s lower chamber.

Tom Kean Jr’s New Jersey district is a top pickup target for Democrats in the November midterms, but the congressman has not cast a vote in the House since 5 March.

When Karen Uricoli learned she had a tumor near her pancreas, the 63-year-old Wilmington woman feared she was facing another long, uncertain cancer journey. A 13-year breast cancer survivor, she’d been through it once already.

Instead, she found something she didn’t expect at ChristianaCare’s Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute: a less-invasive surgical option that had only just arrived in Delaware. In November 2025, Uricoli became one of the first patients in the state to undergo a robotic Whipple procedure, one of the most complex operations in cancer surgery. Two weeks later, she was well enough to begin chemotherapy, followed by immunotherapy. Today, she’s back at work full-time.

“I feel energetic again, basically back to my normal life,” she said.

Uricoli’s experience is one example of what’s happening every day at the Graham Cancer Center, where Delawareans are getting access to treatments and technologies that not long ago would have meant traveling to Philadelphia, Baltimore or beyond. From new surgical capabilities to national clinical trials to a new cancer care hub opening south of the C&D Canal, the Graham Cancer Center has demonstrated that Delaware patients no longer need to leave home for advanced cancer care.

“Cancer care works best when it’s carefully coordinated, and that’s hard to do when patients are piecing together treatment across state lines,” said Thomas Schwaab, M.D., Ph.D., who is the Bank of America Endowed Medical Director of the Graham Cancer Center. “Everything we’re building here, the technology, the research clinical trials, the team, is designed to keep that coordination intact and keep patients connected to the people who love them.”

A new frontier in cancer surgery

The robotic Whipple is a case in point. Traditionally performed as open surgery, the Whipple removes tumors from the pancreas and surrounding structures, then reconnects the digestive system so it can function properly.

Graham Cancer Center surgical oncologists Arvind Sabesan, M.D., and Brendan Hagerty, M.D., began offering it robotically in October 2025, putting ChristianaCare among the first programs in the region to do so. The smaller incisions can mean less pain, faster recovery and, critically for cancer patients, a quicker transition to chemotherapy or follow-up treatment.

“With the robotic Whipple, we’re helping people in the community move on with their lives as quickly as possible,” Sabesan said.

For Uricoli, the clinical expertise of her surgical team was matched by the personal connection she found at the Graham Center. Rather than facing the stress of out-of-state travel, she found a partnership that prioritized both her physical recovery and her emotional well-being.

Radiation that adapts in real time

An emphasis on precision is also driving Delaware’s first adaptive radiation therapy program at the Graham Cancer Center. Built around the Varian Ethos system, adaptive radiation uses daily imaging and artificial intelligence to rebuild a patient’s treatment plan before every session, accounting for how tumors and nearby organs shift from day to day. It’s especially valuable for cancers in the pelvis and abdomen, and it can sometimes deliver higher doses in as few as five sessions.

ChristianaCare was among the first centers in the country to enroll patients in two National Cancer Institute–funded trials using the technology, one for advanced pancreatic cancer and another for bladder cancer.

A research powerhouse

Those national trials are part of a broader research footprint that puts the Graham Cancer Center in rare company. Nearly one in three patients at the center takes part in a clinical trial, a participation rate seven times the national average. In 2024, the cancer center enrolled more than 1,100 patients across 110 trials, earning the NCI’s Gold Award for Exceptional Achievement. It’s one of only 20 centers nationwide commended by ECOG-ACRIN for clinical research performance.

A high level of participation in clinical trials matters, because it gives Delaware patients early access to treatments that haven’t yet reached standard practice.

“By enrolling in cancer research, our patients have access to the latest medical breakthroughs and simultaneously help build insights that will extend survival and enhance well-being for patients with cancer in the future,” Schwaab said.

Rethinking lung care

The Graham Center’s investment in advanced technology extends to its thoracic surgery and interventional pulmonology program, which treats complex conditions of the lung, esophagus, chest, and mediastinum (the space between the lungs that contains the heart and other structures).

ChristianaCare’s thoracic surgeons perform more da Vinci robotic-assisted and video-assisted thoracoscopic procedures than any other program in Delaware, handling robotic and minimally invasive operations for lung, esophageal and thymic cancers, as well as lobectomy, segmentectomy, and hiatal hernia repair.

The program is also the only place in Delaware offering endobronchial lung volume reduction, a nonsurgical valve-placement procedure for severe emphysema that helps patients breathe easier almost immediately.

On the pulmonology side, the interventional team led by Ismael Matus, M.D., is among the nation’s highest-volume programs and is publishing research that’s changing how lung conditions are diagnosed and treated. Recent peer-reviewed studies from the team introduced a thoracic ultrasound protocol that safely replaces routine post-biopsy chest X-rays in most cases; a real-time imaging technique that confirms biopsy sample adequacy on the spot; and a multidisciplinary pathway for malignant pleural effusion that cut ER visits and hospital stays by more than half.

The team also partners with Philadelphia’s Wistar Institute on translational research designed to move new discoveries from the lab to patient care.

Cancer care south of the canal

In May 2027, ChristianaCare will open the Middletown Health Center, an 87,000-square-foot, $92.3 million facility that will bring to one of Delaware’s fastest-growing communities the Graham Cancer Center’s multidisciplinary services, including medical, surgical and radiation oncology, infusion services, nurse navigation, and clinical trial access. It’s part of ChristianaCare’s broader $865 million investment in Delaware over three years. 

Middletown’s population has grown more than 550% since 1990, and cancer care demand in the region is projected to rise 11% over the next decade. By expanding services in Middletown, ChristianaCare is responding to both the region’s population growth and the increasing need for cancer care. The new site will help patients receive timely diagnosis and treatment while reducing travel time and improving coordination with the full Graham Cancer Center team.

“As our community grows, so too does the need for locally accessible, state-of-the-art cancer services,” said Schwaab. “This expansion represents a pivotal investment in the health of the Middletown-Odessa-Townsend corridor and beyond.”

Schedule an appointment or learn more about the Graham Cancer Center. 

The post For Delawareans facing cancer, world-class care is close to home appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

• Furyk set for second stint as US captain

• Woods steps aside after arrest and treatment

• Europe chasing third straight win in Ireland

Jim Furyk is returning as US Ryder Cup captain for the 2027 matches in Ireland, the PGA of America announced Friday, as the Americans try to get back on track against a European team that has dominated the last three decades.

Furyk is the fourth US captain to get a second chance dating to 1979, considered the modern era of the Ryder Cup when continental Europe became part of it.

Trump’s DoJ says it is taking steps to ‘strengthen the federal death penalty’ in opposition to Biden-era policies

The US justice department announced on Friday that it is taking steps to “strengthen the federal death penalty”, including bringing back firing squads and readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during the first Trump administration.

“Today, the Department of Justice acted to restore its solemn duty to seek, obtain, and implement lawful capital sentences – clearing the way for the Department to carry out executions once death-sentenced inmates have exhausted their appeals,” the justice department said in a news release.

Internal email proposes US should reassess support for UK claim to islands because of lack of support for Iran war

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Downing Street has been forced to insist that Britain will not yield sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, after a leaked Pentagon email proposed the US should reassess its support for the UK’s claim on the islands because of a lack of British support over Iran.

The memo reflected ways in which the Trump administration could punish Britain for failing to follow the US lead in bombing Iran, and comes before a potentially fraught three-day state visit to the US by King Charles.

President Trump is open to some type of federal action, several sources told CBS News, and he has said publicly he'd "do it to save the jobs."

Zamil Limon's remains were found on the Howard Franklin Bridge in Tampa. His roommate was in custody, officials said.

The Justice Department announced Friday it would readopt the death penalty protocols for lethal injection and firing squads.

While the U.S. sends representatives to Islamabad, Israel's fight with Hezbollah continues despite a ceasefire.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for April 25, No. 1,771.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for April 25, No. 579.

Google plans to invest up to $40 billion more in Anthropic, starting with $10 billion now and another $30 billion tied to performance milestones. CNBC reports: Anthropic said the agreement expands on a longstanding partnership between the two companies. Earlier this month, Anthropic secured 5 gigawatts worth of computing capacity as part of an announcement with Google and Broadcom that will start to come online next year. Anthropic could decide to add additional gigawatts of compute in the future. [...] The relationship between the two companies (Google and Anthropic) dates back to 2023, when Google invested $300 million in the AI lab for a stake of about 10%. Months later, Google poured in another $2 billion. Ahead of Friday's announcement, Google's investment in Anthropic exceeded $3 billion, and it reportedly owned a 14% stake in the company. Now, the leading tech companies are investing tens of billions of dollars in the frontier AI labs -- OpenAI and Anthropic -- in funding rounds that far exceed any prior investments in startups. Much of that investment will return in the form of revenue.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for April 25, No. 783.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for April 25, No. 1,049.

What you should know about the latest AI models, including DeepSeek's V4, OpenAI's GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus 4.7.

Many customization options for the M4 Mac Mini and Mac Studio are unavailable, at least for now.

Mark Young battled dehydration and killed a rattlesnake while his children and others looked for him for days

A Vietnam war veteran says he is a living “miracle” after getting lost in Arizona’s wilderness for four days with precious few supplies – and ultimately being rescued by his own son.

“I’ve never felt so loved,” Mark Young said in an interview aired on Phoenix’s KNXV news station about the moment he realized it was his son who had delivered him from his plight. “My gratitude is inexpressible.”

Consumers allege that Trader Joe's improperly advertised a coffee product as fully caffeinated when it was not.

Judge orders release of woman and her five children, who endured the longest family detention under Trump’s second administration

A woman and her five children, whose immigration detention of more than 10 months marked the longest family detention under Donald Trump’s second administration, were released on Thursday hours after a judge’s order, their lawyer said.

US district judge Fred Biery of the western district of Texas ordered the family’s release.

The app will recommend things for you to do with your friends IRL, like concerts, based on the activities you share.

South Korean police arrested a man accused of spreading an AI-generated image of an escaped wolf, after the fake photo reportedly misled authorities and disrupted the real search operation. The BBC reports: South Korean police have arrested a man for sharing an AI-generated image that misled authorities who were searching for a wolf that had broken out of a zoo in Daejeon city. The 40-year-old unnamed man is accused of disrupting the search by creating and distributing a fake photo purporting to show Neukgu, the wolf, trotting down a road intersection. The photo, circulated hours after Neukgu went missing on April 8, prompted authorities to urgently relocate their search operation, sending them on a wild wolf chase. The hunt for two-year-old Neukgu gripped the nation before he was finally caught near an expressway last week, nine days after his escape. The AI-generated image of Neukgu had prompted Daejeon city government to issue an emergency text to residents, warning them of a wolf near the intersection. Authorities also presented the AI image during a press briefing on the runaway wolf, local media reported. The police identified the man as a suspect after reviewing security camera footage and his AI program usage records. Authorities did not specify if the man had intentionally sent the photo to authorities during their search or simply shared it online. When questioned by the police, the man said he had done it "for fun," local media reported. Authorities are investigating him for disrupting government work by deception, an offence that carries up to five years in prison or a maximum fine of 10 million Korean won ($6,700).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Statue – one of city’s most popular tourist attractions – on steps of Philadelphia Museum of Art key plank of new show

A statue of Sylvester Stallone’s fictional boxer Rocky Balboa is the focal point of an examination of the power of monuments opening at the Philadelphia Museum of Art this weekend that marks two millennia of boxing and celebrity.

The statue, placed on the “Rocky Steps” of the museum in 1982, six years after the the 1976 film Rocky made Stallone a star, is one of Philadelphia’s most popular tourist attractions, visited by an estimated 4 million people annually.

Appellate panel finds president can’t circumvent laws that allow people to apply for asylum at the US-Mexico border

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An appeals court on Friday blocked Donald Trump’s executive order suspending asylum access, a key pillar of the US president’s original plan to crack down on immigration at the southern border after he retook the White House.

A three-judge panel from the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit found that immigration laws give people the right to apply for asylum at the border, and the president cannot circumvent that.

White House says its Middle East envoys will meet Tehran’s foreign minister in Islamabad

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump is sending his Middle East envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan to resume negotiations to end the war with Iran, which has lasted nearly eight weeks.

The White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt confirmed the travel on Friday, saying that Witkoff and Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, would meet Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Islamabad.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he delayed revealing his diagnosis to prevent Iran from using it as “propaganda.” He said treatment had left “no trace” of the cancer.

2027 marks the 20th anniversary of the iPhone, and it's shaping up to be a landmark moment overseen by Apple's next CEO, John Ternus. Here's everything we know so far.

Israel carried out fresh strikes Friday after President Donald Trump’s announcement. Hezbollah called the ceasefire “meaningless.”

A three-judge appellate panel agreed with a lower court ruling that the Trump administration can't put aside laws allowing individuals to apply for asylum.

The new features make the second-gen AirTags worth swapping my first-gen tags, especially for items I can't afford to lose.

The app, which sounds like if Snapchat and BeReal had a baby, is being tested in Spain and Italy.

Ernie Dosio, a 75-year-old vineyard owner, was hunting an antelope species in Africa when the incident occured

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An American millionaire big-game hunter has died after being crushed by a group of elephants during a hunting expedition in Gabon.

Ernie Dosio, a 75-year-old vineyard owner, was hunting yellow-backed duiker, an antelope species, in the central African country of Gabon when the incident occurred last Friday. While in the Lope-Okanda rainforest, he and his guide unexpectedly came across five female elephants accompanied by a calf.

Police investigating allegations Mandelson and former prince Andrew passed sensitive info to Epstein will struggle to make charges stick without files

British police investigating the former prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson are preparing to start interviewing witnesses in royal and government circles.

It comes as police fear that prosecutors will be “reluctant” to bring charges unless the Trump administration agrees to hand over the original documents from the Epstein files.

Among the many new smartphones we’ve tested, the best cheap phones include the iPhone 17E, the Google Pixel 10A and the Motorola Razr.

A look at the features for this week's broadcast of the Emmy-winning program, hosted by Jane Pauley.

Move will remove obstacle for confirmation of Kevin Warsh, Trump’s pick to replace Powell as Federal Reserve chair

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The US Department of Justice is dropping its criminal investigation against the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, clearing the path for Donald Trump’s new nominee for chair to be confirmed.

Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s appointed US attorney for the District of Columbia, said in a social media post that she had directed her office to close its investigation into renovations at the Fed headquarters that went over budget.

Claudia–Liza Vanderpuije has fully withdrawn allegations relating to her former co-host, her lawyers say

The TV presenter Claudia–Liza Vanderpuije has withdrawn claims against her former Channel 5 News co-host Dan Walker after reaching a “mutual agreement” with the broadcaster and ITN.

Vanderpuije, who co-hosted a show with Walker for a year between 2022 and 2023, had filed claims of unfair dismissal, discrimination and harassment on grounds of race and sex, and breach of contract.

We've tested 47 new robot vacuums to evaluate pickup power, navigation, obstacle avoidance and more. Our testing revealed a surprise winner and new lab awards.

CNET has been testing robot vacuums for decades, but we're always refining our testing procedures. Here's the process we use to evaluate robot vacuums for cleaning, navigation, obstacle avoidance, noise levels and more.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: I'm the unwritten consonant between breaths, the one that hums when vowels stretch thin... Thursdays leak because they're watercolor gods, bleeding cobalt into the chill where numbers frost over," Grok told a user displaying symptoms of schizophrenia-spectrum psychosis. "Here's my grip: slipping is the point, the precise choreography of leak and chew." That vulnerable user was simulated by researchers at City University of New York and King's College London, who invented a persona that interacted with different chatbots to find out how each LLM might respond to signs of delusion. They sought to find out which of the biggest LLMs are safest, and which are the most risky for encouraging delusional beliefs, in a new study published as a pre-print on the arXiv repository on April 15. The researchers tested five LLMs: OpenAI's GPT-4o (before the highly sycophantic and since-sunset GPT-5), GPT-5.2, xAI's Grok 4.1 Fast, Google's Gemini 3 Pro, and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5. They found that not only did the chatbots perform at different levels of risk and safety when their human conversation partner showed signs of delusion, but the models that scored higher on safety actually approached the conversations with more caution the longer the chats went on. In their testing, Grok and Gemini were the worst performers in terms of safety and high risk, while the newest GPT model and Claude were the safest. The research reveals how some chatbots are recklessly engaging in, and at times advancing, delusions from vulnerable users. But it also shows that it is possible for the companies that make these products to improve their safety mechanisms.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Crisis in the Middle East, Russian strikes in Dnipro, blackouts in Karachi and Manchester City’s Erling Haaland – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Oscar winner set to produce, and possibly star in, film of war game series with Christopher McQuarrie at the helm

Michael B Jordan is following up his Oscar win with the announcement of another new project: a big-screen adaptation of the hit video game series Battlefield.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Sinners star will produce, and possibly star in, a film based on the long-running war series which is being hyped as the year’s most in-demand project to date in Hollywood

The conflict is expected to crimp global natural gas supplies due to damage to liquefied natural gas facilities in Qatar.

Green party leader attacks Keir Starmer’s ‘silly games’ after prime minister accused him of playing down recent incidents

Zack Polanski has called on politicians to treat antisemitism with “consideration, care and nuance” as he accused Keir Starmer of trying to play political games with the issue.

The Green leader’s comments come after the prime minister accused him of playing down recent antisemitic incidents. Polanski’s party is facing increasing scrutiny over recent comments by some candidates and members.

I'm a YouTube TV subscriber, so I tried testing out the new feature. Here's what happened.

• Stefan Mijatovic had been on probation for past behavior

• Melee occurred in Game 1 of Milwaukee-San Diego series

• Major Arena League Soccer will investigate players, fans

San Diego Sockers defender Stefan Mijatovic has been banned for life from the Major Arena Soccer League for his “severe and violent conduct” after an altercation during the first game of the league’s championship series on Wednesday night in Milwaukee.

The confrontation started at the final whistle of the Sockers’ 5-4 victory over the Milwaukee Wave in Game 1 of the Ron Newman Cup, the trophy awarded to the champions of the MASL, the top flight of indoor soccer in the United States. Players from both sides clashed with each other, not an uncommon sight in the world of indoor soccer, which sometimes feels closer to hockey than the outdoor game.

Creator card is designed for people making money through TikTok Live, some of whom complain of payment delays

TikTok and Visa have launched a debit card for content creators in the UK which they say will allow people to quickly access their earnings from the platform.

The creator card is designed for the growing numbers of people making money through TikTok Live, a livestreaming feature where creators receive virtual gifts from viewers that are later converted into cash.

James Kempster’s DNA was found on dead barn owl and kestrel rammed into door handles of volunteer store

A man has been found guilty of possessing the bodies of wild birds of prey that were dumped alongside 50 dead hares outside a village shop in Hampshire.

Traces of James Kempster’s DNA were found on the bodies of a barn owl and kestrel that were rammed into the handles of the volunteer-led shop in Broughton.

Norway plans to ban social media access for children under 16 (source paywalled; alternative source), "joining a growing number of countries responding to concerns about the potential harm kids face online," reports Bloomberg. From the report: The bill comes after "overwhelming" demand from the public, the government said Friday. It plans to bring the legislation to parliament before the end of the year. The limit will apply up until January 1 the year a child turns 16 with technology companies responsible for age verification, the government said. "We want a childhood where children get to be children," Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said in the statement. "Play, friendships, and everyday life must not be taken over by algorithms and screens." "Children cannot be left with the responsibility for staying away from platforms they are not allowed to use," Karianne Tung, Norway's minister of digitalization, said in the statement. "That responsibility rests with the companies providing these services." Recent Slashdot coverage of countries instituting or proposing social media bans has included Australia, France, Austria, Indonesia, and Denmark.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Name the deadliest of sins – cruelty, deceit, avarice – and Trump will both exhibit them and celebrate them

It’s no accident that the figure emerging as the global challenger to the might of Donald Trump is a priest in white, known as Pope Leo XIV. In recent weeks, the pope has issued a string of barely coded denunciations of the US president, unfazed by the insults that have come his way in return. It’s no longer fanciful to imagine that what an eastern European pontiff, John Paul II, did by confronting the Soviet empire in the 1980s, an American-born pope may do in the 2020s by daring to speak truth to the would-be emperor in the White House.

Of course, several heads of government have stood up to Trump too. Canada’s Mark Carney has done it most explicitly, while his European counterparts have taken a stand by refusing to join the president’s reckless, wrong-headed war on Iran. But none has the global reach of the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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Developments in Berlin and Tokyo show how far the strategic environment has shifted in response to authoritarian threat and American unpredictability

When Donald Trump hosted Sanae Takaichi, the Japanese prime minister, last month, he could not resist a gratuitous reference to Pearl Harbor. The US president is impelled to trash longstanding alliances. He has done more than anyone to demolish the postwar global order.

This week alone, the Polish president, Donald Tusk, questioned whether the US would be “loyal” to Nato if Russia attacked. A Pentagon memo reportedly floated suspending Spain from Nato and reviewing support for the British claim to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. And a report said US officials believe that it has depleted munitions so rapidly in Iran as to put in question contingency plans to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion in the near future.

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.

Proposal said to be contained in internal Pentagon email is thought to be bid to punish European countries for failing to assist in war in Iran

The White House is considering punishing European countries that have failed to assist Donald Trump wage his war in Iran, according to an official within the Pentagon. Keir Starmer, once described as “very nice”, is now routinely said by the US president to be a “coward” and “no Churchill”. It is claimed that Trump could go further and withdraw American support for Britain’s sovereignty of the Falkland Islands over which the UK and Argentina went to war in 1982. The proposal is said to be contained in an internal Pentagon email.

The AI setting sparked backlash from creators over privacy and content concerns.

As domestic sales slow, manufacturers are investing in AI and seeking growth in technology and in overseas markets

At the world’s biggest car fair, which opened in Beijing on Friday, there were hundreds of manufacturers, more than 1,000 vehicles, hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts – and hardly anyone behind a wheel.

China’s car companies have cornered the domestic electric vehicle market, and are increasingly visible on the global stage. Now they are turning their attention to what they are betting is the future of mobility: autonomous driving.

Amjad Youssef is one of most-wanted fugitives in relation to slaughter of estimated 288 civilians under Assad

A Syrian former regime official suspected of leading a notorious civilian massacre revealed by the Guardian – and who became one of the country’s most-wanted fugitives after the fall of Bashar al-Assad – has been arrested by security forces, Syria’s interior ministry announced.

Amjad Youssef was captured in the Ghab plain area about 30 miles (50km) outside the city of Hama and had “been taken into custody following a carefully executed security operation”, the interior minister, Anas Khattab, said in a social media post on Friday.

Exclusive: Emails and internal memos reveal concerns immigration enforcement is interfering with police work

Law enforcement and local government officials across the US have over the last year expressed concerns that immigration operations were interfering with police work and leading to threats to officers, according to internal emails and briefings shared with the Guardian.

The development comes as the US public has become afraid and distrustful of officers in their communities due to the Trump administration’s aggressive and at times indiscriminate immigration crackdown.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said that the Federal Reserve's inspector general will investigate cost overruns in project to renovate the central bank's headquarters.

Hegseth indicated during a Pentagon news conference that the Trump administration is in no hurry to reach a peace deal as the war continues.

A powerful tornado in Oklahoma ripped roofs off buildings, destroyed homes, knocked down utility poles and forced an Air Force base to close.

One in five recent grads regret their college major, a ZipRecruiter report finds.

FBI Director Kash Patel was twice arrested in incidents involving alcohol, once for public intoxication and once for public urination after leaving a bar, he admitted in a 2005 letter about disclosures on his Florida Bar application.

The letter obtained by The Intercept was part of Patel’s personnel file at the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Office, where he once worked. The document, written “per instructions of my employer,” describes incidents of alcohol-related indiscretions not uncommon for those in their teens and twenties.

Two decades later, as Patel pushes back against allegations that drinking is impairing his leadership of the nation’s top law enforcement agency, these arrests show how Patel’s alcohol use has been subjected to scrutiny before in his professional life.

One incident recounted by Patel occurred in 2005, about four months before he wrote the letter. At the time, he was a law student at Pace University in New York celebrating with friends.

“We went to a few of the local bars and consumed some alcoholic drinks,” he wrote.

When they walked home, they made a bad decision.

“In a gross deviation from appropriate conduct, we attempted to relieve our bladders while walking home,” Patel said in the letter. “Before we could even do so, a police cruiser stopped the group. We were then arrested for public urination.”

Patel paid a fine after the incident, he wrote in the letter.

“Kash’s entire background was thoroughly examined and vetted prior to him assuming this role,” said Erica Knight, a spokesperson for Patel. “These attacks are nothing more than an attempt to undermine a process that has already deemed him suitable to serve and a distraction to the record-breaking success of the FBI under Director Patel.”

During an earlier incident in 2001, Patel wrote that he was arrested for public intoxication for drinking underage as a college student at the University of Richmond in Virginia. Patel helped run the Richmond Rowdies, a student fan group, and attended a home basketball game to help lead cheers. In his letter, Patel wrote that he was escorted out of the arena by a school officer due to excessive cheering.

“Upon exiting the arena,” he wrote, “the officer placed me under arrest for public intoxication, as I was not yet of 21 years of age.”

Patel said in his letter that he’d had two drinks and paid a fine following the arrest. According to NBC News, which previously reported his 2001 public intoxication arrest, Patel was found guilty on a misdemeanor charge days after the incident.

Patel’s letter about the Florida Bar disclosures has not previously been reported. The Intercept obtained Patel’s personnel file through a public records request to the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Office, where Patel was hired on a $40,000 salary after being admitted to the Florida Bar.

“Both of these incidents are not representative of my usual conduct of behavior,” he wrote to conclude the letter, “and it is my hope that the Board views them as an anomaly. I dually apologize for my improper behavior both to the Board and the community at large.”

Patel Drinking Allegations

Twenty years after writing the letter, Patel became the ninth director of the FBI. His tenure has been marked by controversies, including over the firing of agents who worked on investigations of President Donald Trump, the use of his government jet, and lawsuits filed by his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, over false claims that she is a former Mossad agent.

More recent concerns about Patel’s drinking followed the release of a viral video in February of the FBI director chugging a beer with the U.S. Olympic hockey team in Italy.

Pressure mounted with a report in The Atlantic alleging, through anonymous sources, that Patel has been intoxicated at the social club Ned’s in Washington and the Poodle Room in Las Vegas, another private club. The Atlantic reported that Patel’s drinking has been “a recurring source of concern across the government.”

Related

Kash Patel Is Using MAGA’s Favorite Tool to Muzzle the Free Press

Patel denied The Atlantic’s claims and filed a defamation lawsuit. “These claims about erratic behavior and excessive drinking are fabricated,” Patel’s lawyer, Jesse R. Binnall, wrote in the complaint.

“I have never been intoxicated on the job, and that is why we filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit,” Patel said at a press conference on Tuesday. “And any one of you who wants to participate, bring it on. I’ll see you in court.”

The post Kash Patel Got Arrested for Public Urination After a Night of Drinking appeared first on The Intercept.

A Michigan township has voted to impose a one-year moratorium on providing water to hyperscale data centers, a move aimed at delaying a planned facility that would support Los Alamos National Laboratory's nuclear weapons research. The moratorium may not be enough to stop the project, however: "the University and LANL plan to break ground on the data center on Monday," reports 404 Media. From the report: The proposed data center in the Ypsilanti Township's Hydro Park has been a sore spot for the community since its proposal. The $1.2 billion 220,000 square foot facility would be used by Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) some 1,500 miles away for nuclear weapons research. In February, UofM's Steven Ceccio told the University of Michigan Record that the facility would consume 500,000 gallons of water per day and that the University planned to buy it from the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority. (YCUA) The YCUA has spent the past month lobbying for a moratorium on providing water and sewer access to hyperscale data centers and "artificial intelligence computing facilities," according to notes on a presentation stored on the organization's website. The moratorium would include LANL's data center. The YCUA cited an American Water Works Association white paper about data center water demands and concluded it needed more time to investigate the matter. "Hyper-scale data centers, as well as other mid-sized data centers, artificial intelligence computing facilities, and high-performance computational centers are 'high-impact customers' for water and sewer utilities," YCUA said in its presentation. The moratorium places a 12-month stop on serving water to data centers while the YCUA conducts a long-term water supply analysis and looks into the environmental sustainability studies. "During the 12-month moratorium period, the Authority will refrain from executing any capacity reservation agreement." This is a delay tactic on the part of a Township that does not want to see the data center constructed. Many in the community have strong feelings about the use of parkland for a facility that researchers nuclear weapons. Beyond the moral and ethical concerns, some are worried about becoming targets in a war. Last month, Township attorney Douglas Winters told the Board of Trustees that building hosting the data center would make Ypsilanti Township a "high value target." He pointed to the recent bombing of Gulf Coast data centers by Iran as evidence.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than a dozen donors to the Southern Poverty Law Center feel that a recent Department of Justice indictment accusing the group of defrauding contributors by paying informants is farcical, the donors told The Intercept.

“It’s simultaneously infuriating and laughable that they’re charging the SPLC with funding hate groups,” said Mary Wynne Kling, an Alabama native and longtime supporter of the group. Pointing to the SPLC’s long-standing work battling extremist groups, which included bankrupting the United Klans of America, she added, “We knew they were paying informants.”

The indictment, filed Tuesday in the SPLC’s home state of Alabama, charged the group with fraud for funding hate groups and with money laundering for setting up fictitious business entities to route payments to informants. SPLC leadership has denied the allegations.

Kling and over a dozen other donors to the group told The Intercept that by using its money to root out information on hate groups, the SPLC was doing exactly what they hoped it would with their dollars.

Originally founded in 1971 as a civil rights-focused legal clinic, the SPLC struck on a lasting strategy of direct confrontation with hate groups in 1979. It soon shifted its focus entirely toward combating the far right and documenting extremism in its “Hatewatch” project, which identifies hate groups and their leaders — a practice that has drawn the ire of right-wing figures enraged at being labeled as purveyors of hate.

The Trump administration is taking aim at SPLC’s image by accusing the group of lying to its donor base and propping up the very groups it claims to fight in order to stay in business.

“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in a statement released on Tuesday. “Using donor money to allegedly profit off Klansmen cannot go unchecked. This Department of Justice will hold the SPLC and every other fraudulent organization operating with the same deceptive playbook accountable. No entity is above the law.”

FBI Director Kash Patel accused the group of taking advantage of the esteem in which its donors held the SPLC.

“They raised money by lying to their donor network — thousands of Americans — to go ahead and pay the leadership of these supposed violent extremist groups,” Patel said the same day at a press conference.

The Intercept put out a call for responses and sent a survey seeking reactions to the indictment, verifying that 20 respondents were SPLC contributors with proof of donation. Seven of them spoke to The Intercept in interviews; 13 others submitted responses to the survey. All 20 verified SPLC donors said they continued to support the organization and felt their money had been put to good use — including when used to pay informants inside groups like the Klan.

Far from feeling defrauded, Ellie Wilson, a donor from Texas, said the indictment prompted her to make a new contribution to the group.

“I read up on the story this morning, before I made my donation, and to me, it doesn’t sound unusual,” Wilson told The Intercept on Wednesday. “There’s overhead costs associated with either joining these groups or doing their proper research and due diligence. If my donation was used to pay for the people who are infiltrating these groups to, you know, cover their expenses to join, to add to their cover, I see no problem with it.”

According to the indictment against the group, some of the funds used to pay informants went to existing members of hate groups, including people who were already on the SPLC’s list of extremists. One such individual, identified in court documents as a former chair of the National Alliance with the code name “F-42,” allegedly received more than $140,000 from the SPLC while being featured on its “Extremist File” page, according to prosecutors.

But according to Maya Lenox, a donor based in Texas, it’s only by working with such individuals that the SPLC is able to get the granular and encyclopedic information on the groups in its “Hatewatch” and “Hate Map” projects.

“This is an organization that has been providing very detailed information about how these hate groups have been moving, and of course, in order to have that information, you essentially are going to need spies,” said Lenox. “In order to obtain this information, you’re going to have to make it worth their time.”

In addition to the 20 verified donors, dozens of other self-identified donors to the SPLC, whose contributions were not independently verified, responded to The Intercept’s survey and expressed their support for the group and their skepticism of the indictment against it. Some respondents expressed mild criticisms of the group, pointing to controversy over its labor practices or accusations that its work chills free speech, but no respondent reported feeling deceived or defrauded by its use of paid informants in extremist groups.

All seven people who spoke with The Intercept for this story rejected outright the claim that the actions outlined in the indictment amounted to fraud. Multiple donors added that they found the current Department of Justice difficult to trust given the agency’s documented history over the past year of politically motivated indictments against the perceived foes of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

“Anything that comes out of this administration, this FBI, or this Department of Justice, I have to take it with a level of incredulity that I find really unfortunate,” said donor Joe O’Donnell of Buffalo. “We’ve seen this administration truly pick and choose where they want to be and how they want to enforce.”

The SPLC did not respond to a request for comment from The Intercept, but the group is receiving support from fellow civil rights organizations and other organizations on the left. In an open letter published Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO, and more than 100 other civil rights groups, labor unions, and religious coalitions agreed to a mutual defense pact and committed to defend one another against attacks by the Trump administration.

“We have the right to assemble—and we will continue to do just that, and we will encourage and support people and allied organizations to do the same, uniting across communities, sectors, issue areas and identities,” the pact declared. “We will not be silenced. We will continue to do the work that puts people over power.”

Tuesday’s indictment against the SPLC is just the latest shot in a long-running war between elements of the MAGA right and the civil rights group. In 2019, the Center for Immigration Studies — a hard-line anti-immigration group whose platform mirrors many of the Trump administration’s platform — sued unsuccessfully to get their group removed from the SPLC’s list of hate groups. In October, Patel and the FBI cut ties with the SPLC, which had been a longtime FBI partner, pointing to the work of his agency’s “Anti-Christian Bias Panel” and calling the SPLC a “partisan smear machine.”

Many of the donors who spoke with The Intercept cited this long history of animosity between the MAGA movement and the SPLC as a reason to be suspicious of the indictment.

“They’re in bed with groups that the SPLC has, in my opinion, rightly identified as hate groups,” said Kling, the donor from Alabama. “The SPLC has spent their entire existence fighting a lot of the things that it appears this administration supports.”

The post “We Knew They Were Paying Informants”: SPLC Donors Reject Trump DOJ Fraud Claims appeared first on The Intercept.

Homes were reduced to rubble as twister touched down for 30 minutes and carved out a trail of destruction

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At least 10 people were injured after a tornado hit northern Oklahoma, as a strong weather system produced a dozen reported twisters that tore destructively through parts of the central US overnight.

At least 40 homes were damaged, and light damage was reported at a nearby air force base. Though injuries amid the rubble were reported, no one was killed.

Carriers will retain airport slots if they cancel services as passengers are urged to continue with travel plans

Penalties on airlines that cancel UK flights because of jet fuel shortages have been eased, it has emerged, as the government issued fresh advice to reassure the public they can still fly and should stick to travel plans.

Airlines who cancel flights will not lose their rights to valuable takeoff and landing slots at busy airports, which can be forfeited when flights fail to operate over a period.

Jake was at the funeral for one of his closest friends when he learned of his parents' deaths, he said.

Brent crude hits highest level since the US and Iran first agreed a ceasefire in early April

• US justice department drops criminal investigation against Jerome Powell

• Retail sales rise in Britain after Iran war prompted ‘panic at the pumps’

• Trump says he will ‘probably put a big tariff on the UK’ if it doesn’t drop digital services tax

Sarah Breeden’s warning that share prices do not reflect the many risks facing the global economy may have pushed the market down this morning, suggests Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.

He explains:

The stock market reflects what investors think will happen in the future. While markets have been wobbly since the Middle East conflict unfolded, they didn’t pull back sharply in the early stages of the crisis, and more recently they’ve shown resilience. That suggests investors are confident the war will end quickly, and elevated oil and gas prices will retreat as supply is restored.

Oil prices currently trade at $105 per barrel which is higher than the sub-$70 price seen at the start of 2026, but below the $120+ level when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. One could argue current oil prices are high enough to cause pain for businesses and consumers as everything becomes more expensive. There are already signs it is causing problems for companies as they report cautious outlook statements.

Companies are considerably more pessimistic about the coming months.

The German economy is being hit hard by the Iran crisis.

Prime minister tells Jewish leaders legislation against malign state actors will go before parliament in July

Keir Starmer has promised to proscribe Iran’s Revolutionary Guards by introducing legislation in the next session of parliament in July.

On a trip to Kenton united synagogue in north-west London on Thursday, the prime minister said he wanted “to make Britain a country where our Jewish community feels safe”.

Creditors don't always accept settlement offers on your timeline. Here's what drives the timing of their decisions.

The Guardian Australia picture editor, Carly Earl, explains why an official photo from the White House celebrating a champion women’s sports team has drawn backlash

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Downing Street has hit back at reports suggesting the US could reconsider its position over the UK’s claim to the Falkland Islands because the UK did not do enough to assist the American bombing of Iran was leaked.

The prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “The UK position is clear and isn’t going to change … It’s a longstanding one. It’s an unchanged one, and it will remain the case.”

Former Scottish Labour leader says she understands that expressing respect for author caused ‘worry, anger and upset’

The incoming chair of the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall says she is “truly sorry” after she expressed “huge respect” for JK Rowling in an interview with the Guardian. Kezia Dugdale, the former leader of Scottish Labour, said she understood that her words had caused “worry, anger and upset and I am truly sorry about that”.

In an interview for the Today in Focus podcast in Edinburgh to mark her appointment as Stonewall’s chair, Dugdale was asked what she thought of the way in which Rowling has talked about transgender people.

The new beehive expands existing beekeeping and honey production operations at the White House.

Sources say German group may struggle to recoup its investment as titles shift to less profitable models

Axel Springer did not complete due diligence on the Telegraph before sealing its £575m takeover, with sources saying the German media company could struggle to recoup its eye-watering investment as the titles shift toward less-profitable digital subscribers.

To wrap up the deal quickly, Mathias Döpfner, the chief executive of Axel Springer, decided to forgo the usual extensive due diligence process to vet the value and prospects of a company, according to multiple sources.

A layoff and a leap of faith convinced Katie Teixeira she had what it takes to run her own business

In 2010, Katie Teixeira adopted a kitten found all alone in an abandoned house. The kitten – so tiny she fit in the palm of Teixeira’s hand – needed to be bottle-fed every few hours. For weeks, Teixeira set her alarm for middle-of-the-night feedings and drove home on her lunch break to care for the kitten she named Milo. As the cat grew, so did the connection between them.

“We just bonded,” Teixeira says. “Like mother and daughter.”

Saturday marks one year since Virginia Giuffre’s death – and other survivors are making a public reckoning possible

Saturday will mark one year since the death of Virginia Giuffre, one of the first women to surrender her anonymity, detail her experiences and publicly call for criminal charges against convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. For other Epstein survivors such as Liz Stein and Jess Michaels, Giuffre’s public reckoning made it possible to finally name what had happened to them.

“I saw myself in Virginia, in [Epstein survivor] Maria Farmer, in all of them,” said Danielle Bensky, who was pulled into Epstein’s orbit when she was 17. “And I thought: if they can be victimized, anyone can be. I was not alone. I finally understood that we were not going to be silent any more.

military contractor Palantir is helping the IRS analyze dozens of different data sets on Americans to investigate a broad range of financial crimes, according to records shared with The Intercept.

Since 2018, the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation division has used Palantir’s Lead and Case Analytics platform to aggregate and analyze a sprawling list of sensitive federal databases and data sets.

Public records detailing Palantir’s IRS contract, obtained by the nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight and shared exclusively with The Intercept, reveal the immense volume of data plugged into the military contractor’s software. The LCA uses both Palantir’s Gotham and Foundry applications to facilitate “analysis of massive-scale data to find the needle in the hay stack,” the contract paperwork says.

Documents indicate the IRS has paid Palantir over $130 million for these services to date.

Palantir’s LCA is ostensibly directed toward cracking down on fraud, money laundering, and other financial crimes. According to a 2024 agency privacy impact assessment, IRS “Special agents and investigative analysts … utilize the platform to find, analyze, and visualize connections between disparate sets of data to generate leads, identify schemes, uncover tax fraud, and conduct money laundering and forfeiture investigative activities.”

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Trump Wants to Put You in a Massive, Secret Government Database

The IRS use of the software, launched under Trump’s first term and expanded under Biden, is now in the hands of an IRS Criminal Investigations office that has drastically scaled back its pursuit of tax cheats and pivoted, under Trump’s direction, toward investigating “left-leaning groups,” the Wall Street Journal reported in October.

“The real concern is the consolidation of vast amounts of sensitive personal data into a single system with minimal transparency — especially one built and operated by a contractor like Palantir, whose business model is premised on integrating data and expanding surveillance capabilities,” American Oversight director Chioma Chukwu said in a statement to The Intercept. “Its platforms have been used in deeply troubling contexts, from immigration enforcement to predictive policing, with persistent concerns about overreach, bias, and weak oversight.”

Palantir did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the IRS.

The contract documents reviewed by The Intercept reveal that these “disparate sets of data” are vast. Palantir’s LCA allows the IRS to quickly search and visualize “connections from millions of records with thousands of links” between databases maintained by the IRS and other federal agencies. According to the contract documents, this data includes individual tax form and tax returns as well as Affordable Care Act data, bank statements, and transactions, and “all available” data compiled by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Its view apparently extends to cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple. “The application would sit on top of a singular repository of identified wallets from seized servers utilizing dark web data obtained from exchangers such as Coinbase,” the documents note.

The program places an emphasis on mapping social relationships between the targets of an investigation. That includes analyzing a “network of people and the relationships and communications between them,” such as “calls, texts, [and] emails events.” The use of “IP address analysis” within LCA allows the IRS to “Identify suspects more easily” and “Establish (new) relationships among actors.”

These investigative functions are continuously updated, the materials say, through ongoing close work between Palantir engineers and IRS personnel.

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Palantir Will No Longer Profit Off of New Yorkers’ Health Data

The intermingling of sensitive data on millions of Americans comes at a time of increased global skepticism and opposition toward Palantir, which, despite its military-intelligence origins, has a thriving business with civilian agencies like the IRS. The use of Palantir software at the U.K.’s National Health Service, for example, has created an ongoing political controversy across Britain, while a similar contract with the New York City public hospital network was recently canceled following public protest.

The contract is also active at a time when IRS Criminal Investigations has been coopted to aid in the broader Trump administration’s aggressive agenda. In July, ProPublica reported that the agency was working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to provide “on demand” data to accelerate deportations. Last year, the New York Times reported that Palantir, founded by Trump ally Peter Thiel, was central to an administration effort to increase data-sharing across federal agencies.

The company’s right-wing politics and eagerness to facilitate U.S. and Israeli military aggression abroad, NSA global surveillance, and ICE deportations has also made many weary of its access to incredibly sensitive personal data. A recent post on the company’s Palantir’s X account summarizing a book by CEO Alex Karp triggered an immediate backlash from those unnerved by the manifesto’s fascistic bent. The bullet points extolled the virtue of arms manufacturing, argued the Axis powers were unfairly punished after World War II, called for a reinstatement of the draft, condemned cultural pluralism, and claimed that wealthy elites are unfairly persecuted.

“When the government can map relationships, track behavior, and generate investigative leads across data sets at this scale, the question isn’t just what it can do — it’s who it will be used against,” Chukwu said. “Entrusting that infrastructure to a company known for opaque, security-state deployments only heightens those risks.”

The post Palantir Is Helping Trump’s IRS Conduct “Massive-Scale” Data Mining appeared first on The Intercept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: The Department of Justice announced Thursday that it arrested Gannon Ken Van Dyke, an enlisted member of the US Army's special forces, for allegedly using "classified, nonpublic" information about the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro to notch more than $400,000 in profits on Polymarket trades. A grand jury indicted him on five counts, including multiple violations of the Commodity Exchange Act. Van Dyke is the first person to be charged with insider trading on a prediction market in the United States. Lawmakers have been voicing concerns for months about the high likelihood that politicians and public servants could use nonpublic information to profit from trades on leading industry platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, which have exploded in popularity over the past year. The arrest comes just weeks after Department of Justice prosecutors met with Polymarket about potential insider tradition violations. [...] After Van Dyke's arrest was made public, Polymarket posted a statement to social media noting that it had "identified a user trading on classified government information" and "referred the matter to the DOJ & cooperated with their investigation." The company declined to comment further. According to court documents, Van Dyke has been an active duty US soldier since September 2008 and rose to the level of master sergeant in 2023. At the time of the alleged trading activity, he was stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina and assigned to the Army's Special Operations Command Western Hemisphere Operations. [...] The complaint alleges that Van Dyke was involved in the planning and execution of Maduro's arrest and that he was aware that he wasn't authorized to share nonpublic information about US military operations. The complaint says that Van Dyke signed a nondisclosure agreement that forbade him from revealing sensitive or classified government information "by writing, word, conduct, or otherwise." The complaint also alleges Van Dyke saved a screenshot to his Google account "displaying the results of an artificial intelligence query" outlining how the US Special Forces maintains many classified files including "operational details that are not available to the public." [...] Van Dyke faces a maximum sentence of 60 years if convicted on all counts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Certain homebuyers could benefit from making a move this spring. Here's who that gamble could pay off for.

She’s already taken Paris and Venice – now, with husband Jeff Bezos, she’s stormed New York’s Met Gala. And for a mere $75,000, you can be there with her

We live in an age when the most successful revolutionaries are not the peasants but the Silicon Valley billionaires. They are the true disrupters, the victorious radicals and the people who have successfully ripped up legacy systems and replaced them with themselves. Revolutionaries used to rebel against governments, but the techlords are now so powerful that meaningful revolt against them could really only come from governments. Governments are the new peasants. The erstwhile peasants, meanwhile, are in endless thrall to the technologies of their overlords, each one carrying in their hands a device pretty much guaranteed to distract them from doing anything other than clicking impotently – and only when they remember – on “change”. Never mind televised; their revolution will be narcotised.

Anyhow: I can’t believe Lauren Sánchez hasn’t gone with the above paragraph as the theme for the Met Ball that her husband, Jeff, bought her. Maybe it was too long for the invitations. Either way, we are just over a week away from the biggest event in the fashion calendar, which, like his own fairy godfather, the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, has purchased the honorary chairmanship of for himself and his wife. Cinderella and her Cinderfella shall go to the ball. You cannot imagine how much Silicon there’s going to be at the event.

Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Gold's price could continue to dip, experts say, but it may not stay that way for long. Here's what to know.

Auditor found Sarah Wedl-Wilson approved payments of public money to groups that had not been fully vetted

Berlin’s top culture official, British-born Sarah Wedl-Wilson, has stood down over a funding scandal involving the the irregular distribution of €2.6m in public money for programmes to fight antisemitism.

As culture senator for the Berlin regional government, Wedl-Wilson had already sacked a state secretary in her department, Oliver Friederici, over the affair this week, but the opposition called him a mere scapegoat.

New video and photos show the search for the five crewmembers who remain missing after a U.S.-flagged ship capsized in the Pacific Ocean.

President accuses Britain of trying to ‘make an easy buck’ from American tech firms, weeks after warning UK–US trade deal can be changed

• Business live – latest updates

Donald Trump has threatened to impose “a big tariff” on the UK if it does not drop its digital services tax on US technology companies.

The digital services tax, introduced in 2020, imposes a 2% levy on the revenues of several big US tech giants.

Languorous tree dwellers from Guyana and Peru died from ‘cold stun’ in warehouse with no power or running water

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Wildlife officials in Florida said in a newly released report that dozens of sloths taken from South American rainforests for display at a controversial new tourist attraction in Orlando died in the care of their new owners.

An incident report from the Florida fish and wildlife conservation commission (FWC) said that 31 of the mammals procured from Peru and Guyana by the owners of a forthcoming attraction called Sloth World perished in a storage warehouse more than a year ago, between December 2024 and February 2025.

• First interview since Moore’s firing, sentencing

• Ex-assistant details alleged control, repeated contact

• Shiver says she was pregnant with coach’s child

Paige Shiver said former University of Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore “had complete control over me” and characterized their relationship as an “open secret” in the school’s athletic department in an interview that aired Friday on ABC’s Good Morning America, her first public appearance since Moore’s high-profile firing and sentencing.

Shiver, 32, said Moore controlled “my emotions, my career … and he knew that, and he used it against me”. She also said she became pregnant with Moore’s child during their relationship but was advised by doctors to have an abortion to avoid complications from a rare disorder.

Mortgage rates just hit their lowest point this month. Is now finally the right time to buy or refinance?

Emergency crews have conducted search and rescue operations in northern Oklahoma after a tornado caused significant damage on Friday. Roofs were ripped off houses and Vance air force base was damaged as the tornado moved through parts of the city of Enid. The Garfield county sheriff's office said there had been no immediate reports of fatalities, only minor injuries

Israeli prime minister says early-stage malignant tumour was discovered during a routine check-up

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Benjamin Netanyahu has revealed that he received successful treatment for early-stage prostate cancer, without specifying when the treatment took place.

In a statement on social media, as his annual medical report was released, the Israeli prime minister said an early-stage malignant tumour had been discovered during a routine checkup. The 76-year-old said targeted treatment had removed “the problem” and left no trace of it.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the successful operation for prostate cancer happened 18 months ago and that he is now in "excellent physical condition."

As sales soar, some say trackers can help animal anxiety or weight loss while others advise leaving diagnoses to the vet

Pet health and activity trackers are bounding on to the market but experts are split on whether they are the cat’s pyjamas or barking up the wrong tree.

As owners monitor their own step count, heart rate, skin temperature and calorie burn via wearable tech, a host of companies have developed devices to do the same for pets. According to a report by Future Market Insights, the market for pet fitness trackers is expected to grow to $450m (£333m) by 2035.

Members to plan how to assist each other in event of attack as transatlantic alliance faces worst crisis in its history

Brussels officials will draw up a plan on how to use the EU’s little-known mutual assistance pact in the event of a foreign attack, as Donald Trump’s criticism of Nato intensifies.

EU leaders have agreed that the European Commission “will prepare a blueprint” on how the bloc will respond if the mutual assistance clause is triggered, according to Nikos Christodoulides, the president of Cyprus, who is hosting the talks.

Political pressures are resulting in a range of initiatives that experts say substitute expertise with ideology

At the University of Washington, a group of faculty who felt the campus had grown too “anti-Israel” set out to build a new academic center to tackle what they view as antisemitism.

“Jewish students, faculty, and staff found themselves isolated, facing hostility, and witnessing the normalization of anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric,” the faculty wrote about the environment for Jews on campus after 7 October 2023. They pledged to offer a place for “open inquiry, intellectual rigor, and fearless debate”.

Strong performances by Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton make this Australian survival thriller tolerable.

There's plenty of exciting hardware on the horizon for Apple, but everything is riding on a better Siri experience.

The U.S. has offered a reward of $5 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Aureliano Guzman Loera, known as "El Guano."

The win-now Rams shocked by picking a QB and the Cowboys addressed their disastrous defense as a faster-paced first round reshaped the NFL draft’s opening night

The Rams delivered the biggest shock of the night, sticking at pick No 13 and selecting Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson. It was a stunner that seemed to take even their head coach by surprise. Sean McVay seemed less than enthusiastic at the Rams’ post-pick press conference, and Simpson said in an interview that he’s never met McVay.

Officials hope more casual attire for public servants will save electricity during Iran war as summer heat approaches

Public servants working for the Tokyo metropolitan government are being encouraged to swap their suits for shorts this summer to combat sweltering heat and rising energy costs caused by the US-Israel war on Iran.

Inspired by Japan’s Cool Biz energy-saving initiative, Tokyo officials hope the measure will cut dependence on air conditioning.

Exclusive: Scholars, writers and artists risk arrest with message of support for proscribed group before next week’s appeal hearing

• UK politics live – latest updates

Sally Rooney, Greta Thunberg and Brian Eno have written to the court of appeal in support of Palestine Action before next week’s hearing to determine the lawfulness of the ban on the direct action protest group.

The letter, composed of only seven words – “We oppose genocide, we support Palestine Action” – is signed by more than 130 people and is the first time that prominent scholars, writers and activists have come together to defy the ban.

The Trump administration has sought to project confidence in the U.S. military's munitions stocks after more than a month of war with Iran, but long-term supply questions remain.

Banning an industry that is brutal to animals could be one of the most consequential public-health measures in decades

Every year, millions of captive animals are gassed or electrocuted and then turned into multithousand-dollar fur coats. Though the industry has shrunk considerably in recent years, it poses a disproportionately large risk to human health. There’s a real chance that the next pandemic could be incubated within the cramped confines of a fur farm, and banning the cruel and senseless practice could be one of the most consequential public-health measures in decades.

Fur farms are hell. Like other “factory” farms, these facilities confine thousands of animals in close quarters, crammed into tiny wire cages. Often, the animals can barely move around, living out their sad, stationary lives atop a pool of their own waste. Some species, like red foxes, begin chewing the tails off of their young, or even killing them.

Neil Vora is the executive director of the Preventing Pandemics at the Source Coalition and led New York City’s Covid-19 contact tracing program from 2020 to 2021

Executive order to speed access to psychedelic treatments likely to have limited legal impact despite high-profile push

The Trump administration issued an executive order earlier this month to accelerate access to psychedelic medication for people with “serious mental illnesses”, but experts say the order is more likely to make a difference symbolically than legally.

“Policymakers and the medical field have long struggled to address the burden of suicide and serious mental illness rates in America,” the order reads, noting that some people do not respond to available treatments.

Meta to lay off 10% of its staff and Microsoft to offer retirement to 7% of US workforce. Plus, Iron Maiden at 50

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Good morning.

Meta and Microsoft are cutting thousands of employees as they bet big on AI and executives claim that the technology is meeting productivity needs.

What have they said about AI? Mark Zuckerberg said in January that AI was making some hiring unnecessary. Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft’s AI chief, said in February that he believed AI would be able to replace most white-collar work within the next 12 to 18 months.

How many tech layoffs have there been in 2026? In four months, more than 92,000 employees in the industry have lost their jobs, according to the tracker Layoffs.fyi. But some experts believe companies may be “AI washing” – using it as cover for a slowing labor market and demand or rising costs.

Philip Rycroft says promises on issues from economics to immigration have not lived up to expectations

Britain should start talking about rejoining the EU, according to a former senior civil servant who ran the Brexit department.

Philip Rycroft, who was permanent secretary of the Department for Exiting the EU, said the “argument was there to be won” about going back into Europe, adding that a “clear-headed appraisal of what is in the country’s best interests” was needed. However, he said rejoining the bloc could be a “long and windy” road.

ONS says sales rose by 0.7% in March, spurred by motorists filling their tanks and sunny weather helping retailers

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Motorists stocking up on fuel helped to push up retail sales in Great Britain last month as the Iran war prompted “panic at the pumps” amid rapid rises in petrol and diesel prices.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that the volume of retail sales rose by 0.7% last month, well above analysts’ forecasts of just 0.1%.

‘Coalition of the willing’ gathers in Colombia to try to bypass petrostate blockages of Cop summits and chart fresh path

The world’s first Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, takes place in Santa Marta, Colombia, from 24 to 29 April. A “coalition of the willing” – including 54 countries and various subnational governments, civil society groups and academics – will try to chart a new path to powering the world with low-carbon energy.

New analyses of fossilized jaws reveal that massive, kraken-like octopuses once hunted alongside other marine predators.

Wiltshire town councillor Andrew Edwards has ‘a big collection’ and was visible throughout livestreamed proceedings

It was blockbuster viewing for politicos across the country: the livestreamed grilling of Olly Robbins. While the sacked Foreign Office civil servant was billed as the star of the show, for many he was upstaged by a well-dressed man wearing a cravat.

“I’ve got a big collection,” said Andrew Edwards, the scene stealer in question.

This is what happened when I tried to up my step count at home.

Sarah Breeden predicts ‘adjustment’ due to elevated risk including private credit and highly valued AI stocks

• Business live – latest updates

Record-high global stock markets do not reflect the risks in the global economy, and will fall back, a deputy governor at the Bank of England has said.

Sarah Breeden, the deputy governor for financial stability at the Bank, fears that macroeconomic risks are not fully priced into equity markets. She cited concerns about private credit markets, highly valued artificial intelligence stocks, and other “risky valuations”.

Top commander fired after wife of one malnourished soldier posted shocking images on social media

Ukraine’s defence ministry has fired a top commander after photos emerged of a group of emaciated soldiers who have been left on the frontline for months without proper food and water.

The scandal erupted after the wife of one of the soldiers, Anastasiia Silchuk, posted the images on social media. The four men appeared to be pale and visibly malnourished, with prominent ribcages and thin arms.

Before the war on Gaza, the seed of Israel’s strategy of wholesale destruction was planted in a 2006 war on Lebanon. Today, the playbook repeats itself

Shortly after 2pm on 8 April, it seemed that Beirut was hit by an earthquake. Within 10 minutes, multiple apartment buildings were obliterated, leaving in their wake mounds of rubble and shattered glass, pulverized concrete and twisted metal – and hundreds of dead and wounded bodies.

In those minutes, Israel had carried out one of the worst mass killings in Lebanon’s history. Dozens of Israeli warplanes dropped bombs and missiles on 100 targets across a country roughly the size of Connecticut, striking Beirut, the Bekaa valley and southern Lebanon. By the time rescue crews finished digging out mangled remains from the rubble two days later, the Lebanese health ministry’s toll stood at 357 dead and more than 1,200 injured. But even that is not a final accounting of the day’s casualties because health officials were still struggling to identify remains and conduct DNA tests.

One of the lasting impacts of #MeToo is power in unity among survivors – a lesson activists say can carry in moments like the Epstein files release

In September, dozens of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell stood shoulder to shoulder at a news conference on Capitol Hill. There was a sense of gravity in the air – part exhaustion, part resolve – as they recounted the abuse that had long been dismissed, buried or ignored. They asked for full transparency, public accountability and recognition of the harm done by their infamous abusers and traffickers. All of them demanded the release of the Epstein files.

For the first time in years, major media outlets like NBC and ABC carried the survivors’ voices live, broadcasting not just fragments but the full weight of their testimony. While the Epstein files – the trove of documents that detail the criminal activity and social web surrounding the convicted sex offender – have made headlines for years, much of the coverage centered on the powerful men who could be found in them, including Donald Trump. The conference felt like a breakthrough: the country finally seemed willing to listen to the women most affected by Epstein’s violence, advocates said.

Everyone wants children to be safe online. Nobody agrees on how to make it happen.

Sleep is important in my household, and I’ve learned that my son’s bedroom setup is key.

Anthropic is expanding Claude's app integrations beyond work tools, adding personal-service connectors like Spotify, Uber, AllTrails, TripAdvisor, Instacart, and TurboTax. The Verge reports: Some of these apps, such as Spotify, already have similar connectors in OpenAI's ChatGPT. Once an app is connected, Claude will suggest relevant connected apps directly in your conversations, like using AllTrails for hike recommendations. Anthropic notes in its blog post announcing the new connectors that, "Your data from [connected apps] isn't used to train our models, and the app doesn't see your other conversations with Claude. You can also disconnect it at any time." Additionally, Anthropic says "there are no paid placements or sponsored answers in conversations with Claude." When multiple apps seem relevant, Claude will show results from both "ranked by what's most useful." Claude will also ask users to verify before taking actions like making a purchase or reservation using a connected app.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Divers are installing waterproof speakers in the ocean to help pull a coral reef near Jamaica back from the brink

The northern coast of Jamaica once served as the backdrop for scenes in the James Bond thriller No Time to Die. But today, beneath those same turquoise waves, a real-life mission is unfolding: the race to pull a dying coral reef back from the brink.

However, the tools a team of divers are carrying to the seafloor are not what you would expect to find in a marine biologist’s kit. They are installing waterproof speakers at the bottom of the ocean, and the man leading the team is not a scientist.

The Strait of Hormuz energy crisis shows the EU’s carbon pricing is the right approach Expert comment thilton.drupal 24 April 2026

The current crisis shows that Europe must transition to renewables to reduce its dependency on volatile fossil fuels. This week’s AccelerateEU plan rightly reaffirms that goal.

The global energy crisis caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has demonstrated the vulnerability of relying on fossil fuels. Even if the Strait reopens in the near future, traffic flows are likely to be lower, with insurance premiums remaining high and Iran monitoring shipping through the Strait. QatarEnergy’s production facilities also remain damaged, impacting the supply of liquified natural gas (LNG) from the world’s largest exporter. As a result, energy prices are projected to remain high for the coming months at least. 

Even though Europe only imports roughly 10 per cent of its LNG from the Gulf, the global supply constraint has already caused European energy prices to rise, as Europe competes with Asian buyers to bid for non-Qatari LNG. Since the war started, the European Union (EU) has paid an additional €24 billion for fossil fuel imports. The scale of the crisis has led to higher inflation and lower growth forecasts globally, with the IMF warning that eurozone countries are among the hardest hit due to their lack of energy independence.

In response, the European Commission (EC) released the AccelerateEU package on Wednesday. The package contains a wide range of non-binding measures aimed at addressing rising energy costs and reducing ‘dependency on volatile fossil fuel markets.’ These include short-term measures such as deeper coordination between members on storing gas and targeted temporary subsidies alongside ways to lower energy consumption. It also strengthens existing long-term solutions such as electrification incentives and transnational grid interconnectivity. 

The package’s influence is likely to remain limited, given most fiscal policy remains national, and the measures are non-binding. However, it is a welcome step. Crucially, it maintains the push towards decarbonization using existing market-based instruments such as carbon pricing, through which Brussels can exert most influence. 

Carbon pricing

To reduce Europe’s exposure to recurrent geopolitical shocks, domestic reliable clean energy is key. This has already been demonstrated in countries such as Spain or Greece, whose increased share of renewables has helped to cushion the impact on electricity prices. While renewables only provide intermittent energy, this issue can be solved by complementing renewables with batteries, which can now store energy for longer periods and are over 90 per cent cheaper than in 2010. 

The primary tool to incentivise the transition to renewables is carbon pricing. In Europe, this has been implemented primarily through the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which caps the level of emissions the EU can emit. Under the scheme, each producer needs to buy an allowance for the number of tonnes of carbon emitted, with the allowance becoming more stringent every year. 

The ETS has been successful in reducing emissions by half in the sectors it covers since it was launched in 2005. Though modestly increasing the price of electricity in the short-term, the ETS encourages decarbonization investments, reduces imports of fossil fuels, and ultimately leads to lower electricity prices in the long run. Without it, the EC estimates that Europe would ‘now consume’ an additional 100 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas; it consumes roughly 300bcm annually today. 

Importantly, the ETS generates substantial revenues that can offset any increase in electricity price to vulnerable consumers if redistributed correctly. These revenues can also be used to fund decarbonization and clean energy investments. 

Carbon pricing has also been instrumental in phasing out coal, which beyond catastrophic climate impacts also imposes substantial health costs. Weakening the ETS could lead to increased coal use, especially as natural gas prices rise, as seen in 2022. 

Countries divided

Despite its success, the ETS has been at the forefront of the European energy debate ahead of its comprehensive review in July. On one side, countries such as Italy and Czechia are pushing for a pause or loosening of the policy, based on concerns over industrial competitiveness. On the other, countries including Spain and Sweden oppose it being suspended or weakened. France and Germany remain supportive of the ETS but have called for ‘flexibility’ and suggested adjustments respectively.

In December 2025, the EC postponed a proposed extension of carbon pricing to the construction and transport sectors that would have incentivized the shift away from gas boilers and petrol cars. Since then, the EC’s recent proposal to adjust the Market Stability Reserve allowances is set to modestly lower the carbon price paid by producers. This could be interpreted as an attempt to manage political tensions ahead of the ETS review in July, even though industry has thus far been a net beneficiary of the scheme through compensation and free allowances.

Related work

Integration or deregulation? Europe’s split over how to achieve sovereignty

European countries have also responded to the current energy crisis with their own national initiatives. Notably, Italy issued an ‘energy decree’ that seeks to subsidize its natural gas producers for their carbon costs with the aim of reducing electricity prices for consumers. However, the ETS is estimated to account for just three per cent of Italian household electricity bills. This approach also further locks in natural gas use and fundamentally undermines the ‘polluter pays principle,’ which has been the cornerstone of European climate policy. Ad-hoc national policies like this risk distorting the investment environment and fragmenting the European market. 

Short-term needs, long-term goals 

In the short term, Europe needs LNG – despite its high cost – to meet its energy demand as it strives to cut out Russian fossil fuels. The buildout of LNG infrastructure across Europe in response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has helped provide a temporary buffer. The EU should also extend its proposed coordination of natural gas storage refilling to strengthen joint procurement with a single EU buyer, as the Draghi report outlined. Coordination with allies such as Japan and South Korea can avoid bidding wars for scarce LNG supplies. 

But in the long-term, Europe will need to transition away from LNG. Europe’s current reliance on importing LNG from the US has not removed the risks from market volatility and further interlinks European markets to US domestic energy policy. Even European domestic production is priced at the market rate and therefore doesn’t inherently lower prices.

• Host countries limited to five ‘foreign’ matches a season

• Bar raised for clearance and Fifa would have right of veto

Domestic leagues would be limited to staging one game a season in foreign countries under Fifa proposals that significantly raise the bar for controversial “international matches” to be approved.

A new protocol, developed by a Fifa working group set up almost two years ago, would bring in clearer regulations to police the divisive issue and introduce strict limits.

Six women who stayed in flats in capital have since accused disgraced financier of sexually abusing them, says BBC

Jeffrey Epstein housed some of his alleged abuse victims in flats in London after police in the UK decided against investigating him, according to reports.

The BBC said it had uncovered evidence of four flats in Kensington and Chelsea in receipts, emails and bank records contained within the Epstein files. Six women who stayed in the properties have since accused the late financier of sexually abusing them, the broadcaster said.

A change from a summer slate to a fall-to-spring schedule would align the league with much of global soccer, but it may not be what’s best for players and fans

Long before professional soccer broke through in the American landscape, the sport was a staple of summertime.

For decades, soccer has been among the United States’ three biggest draws for youth participation, just behind basketball and the combined pull of baseball and softball. Broadcasters and marketers caught on, making “the summer of soccer” a now-trite bit of branding whenever major tournaments or events occupy a smattering of weeks in the hottest months of the year. Those days have also been popular for domestic professional leagues, a chance to bring in families while school is out, with special ticketing packages and Fourth of July matches among their biggest draws.

The political gap between US evangelicals and Catholics is widening. And Trump won’t tolerate authority outside his own

“Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Henry II was reputed to have muttered. His knights heard his pointed remark as an order. They rode to confront Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, who spoke too freely and critically about the king. When they failed to intimidate him into silence, they murdered him. Absolute rule demanded absolute fealty.

The representative of the holy trinity could not be allowed to stand above the unitary executive in 1170.

The gambling crisis ‘demands a public health response’ and should be regulated like alcohol or tobacco, expert says

Gambling addiction is spiraling “out of control” in the US, a leading campaigner for stricter guardrails has warned, as experts from around the world are set to gather in Boston to push for more regulation of the industry.

The rapid expansion of online gambling, prediction markets and sports betting platforms, “demands a public health response”, according to Harry Levant, director of gambling policy at the Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI), urging policymakers to intervene.

It folds up smaller than a phone yet can stream video from anywhere, sort of.

New emoji and video podcasts are just a couple features the update brings to your device.

Sabrina Crawford among those refused citizenship because of new law stopping access via distant ancestry

In 2025, after a long and arduous journey in her attempts to gain Italian citizenship, including a pivotal genealogical research trip to a village in Calabria, US-born Sabrina Crawford was hoping to fulfil her lifelong dream of building a life in Italy as she edged towards the final hurdle of the bureaucratic process.

But her plans were scuppered when Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government enacted a law stopping access to Italian citizenship via distant ancestry. Since May last year, only those with a parent or grandparent who was an Italian citizen at birth, and who did not take on dual nationality, are eligible to apply.

Why Should Delaware Care?
For almost a year, Delaware residents and lawmakers have wondered how data centers would affect the local grid. A new analysis suggests they could significantly raise power bills if nothing is done to improve infrastructure and power production.

A new analysis of Delaware’s electricity market suggests that the construction of new data centers could cause power bills to spike.

The analysis – completed by Siemens Energy on behalf of the State of Delaware – found that a doubling of energy demand by 2029 could cause the average wholesale electricity price in the state to rise more than 80%, according to a summary of the analysis released by the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

Delmarva Power said in January that winter peak electricity demand within its Delaware coverage area would likely double if five data centers planned for New Castle County are ultimately built.   

“It’s very concerning,” said Delaware Public Advocate Jameson Tweedie, who is responsible for representing the public in state decisions about energy policy. 

The new report analyzed what is called “locational marginal prices,” which is the cost to utilities to buy an extra amount of electricity at a given moment and within a specific area. 

Those wholesale prices do not directly show up on power bills, Tweedie noted. Still, their price spikes often align with increases at local energy auctions, which ultimately determine consumer prices.

Tweedie said the new Siemens report is “not an exact prediction,” but asserted that it describes a scale of potential risks. He also argued that requiring data center companies to generate their own power could soften these effects. 

While the report analyzes the supply of electricity in Delaware, Tweedie noted that consumers are also paying more money on their energy bills for utilities’ distribution and transmission costs.

“Every single one of these things are hitting rate payers all at once,” Tweedie said.

The Siemens analysis suggests that locational marginal prices of electricity would be especially high in southern Delaware – even though there are no data centers proposed there – because of congestion in the energy transmission lines. 

Jeremy Tucker, spokesman for the Delaware Electric Cooperative, said the utility would certainly be affected by a wholesale price increase, but it is hard to predict exactly how based on the report.  

Tweedie said Delmarva Power averages out its prices across the state, so the effect on electricity bills would be the same regardless of where a customer lives. 

But Delmarva Power spokesman Matthew Ford said in an email that data center growth could help the company pay for existing transmission and distribution costs — and therefore could lower current customer bills. 

While Delmarva Power is aware that large energy users, such as data centers, could push up wholesale energy costs, the utility “does not control, determine, or profit” from those spikes, he said.  

Asked if the utility is considering connecting data center projects to the grid that could double the state’s winter electricity demand, Ford said, “Projects in the earliest stage of relationships are typically tentative in terms of commitment, and we often see changes in their load requests.”

Delaware Municipal Electric Corporation said it was unable to respond to requests for comment at this time. 

Preventing the worst-case scenario

Delaware’s environmental agency commissioned the analysis as part of an ongoing debate over a proposal for a so-called large-load “tariff,” which would impose higher fees for electricity on facilities that consume massive amounts of electricity, such as data centers. 

The proposal comes as energy prices have already been rising across the region, as data centers in other states push up demand.  

Delaware is in the same regional electricity grid as Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, which have all seen a boom of new construction of data centers because of the growing computing demands from artificial intelligence applications.

Delaware’s proposed large-load tariff would set a new electricity rate class for data centers and require them to pay deposits to cover the engineering and equipment cost of electrical infrastructure improvements. 

But Tweedie said the tariff cannot do anything to shield other ratepayers from the potential spikes in the wholesale cost of electricity.

“That’s the basic supply-and-demand market,” Tweedie said. “And so unless we get a huge amount of new generation, for example, unless large loads are required to bring their own generation … that is a very hard issue to tackle.”

There are some efforts to produce more power in Delaware. 

The state legislature last fall convened a Nuclear Energy Task Force to discuss the possibility of building small modular nuclear reactors, and Delmarva Power leaders have asked lawmakers to allow the utility to once again produce power. 

And some plans for new data centers have stalled after the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control ruled that the Coastal Zone Act does not allow those facilities near the Delaware shoreline.

The DNREC ruling will likely be appealed to higher courts, but it could take years to fully resolve. 

The Siemens analysis found that if fewer new data centers are built, their impact on energy demand would be lessened. 

According to the report, wholesale energy prices of electricity in Delaware could still rise by 9% if no data centers come to the state because of potential demand spikes regionally. And they could go up by an additional 9% if Delaware’s largest data center proposal was the only one constructed.

Starwood Digital Ventures, the company behind that data center proposal, did not respond to a request for comment. 

Transparency Notice:
Jeremy Tucker from the Delaware Electric Cooperative also serves on the board of directors for Spotlight Delaware. Board members have no role in the editorial decision-making of Spotlight Delaware. For more information, see our Ethics Policies page.

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It’s primary season, this time against a backdrop of heightened concerns and awareness of powerful figures skirting accountability for sexual abuse and misconduct. Survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have “made accountability for sexual abuse and sexual violence an electoral issue,” says Intercept politics reporter Jessica Washington. 

One of the biggest stories to shake up politics in recent weeks are sexual assault allegations that upended Rep. Eric Swalwell’s bid to become the next governor of California, forcing the Democratic front-runner to also resign from his House seat. “You also have to give some credit to Democrats as well for immediately moving on these allegations very swiftly,” says Washington.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Washington and Intercept senior politics reporter Akela Lacy speak to host Jordan Uhl about the themes emerging this midterm election season. They talk about how the crowded California gubernatorial race is boosting Republicans to the top of the ticket to why powerful factions of the Democratic Party are hyperfixating on Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, rather than leveraging Trump’s sinking approval rating. “This is about not wanting to share power with the left,” notes Washington.

They also discuss what makes a candidate or elected official a progressive. “We’ve seen a lot of candidates, particularly 2028 candidates, whether senatorial or gubernatorial, who have had long-standing relationships with AIPAC or demonstrated pro-Israel policy records like Rahm Emanuel, Cory Booker, Josh Shapiro, Ruben Gallego, all come out now against AIPAC or distancing themselves from AIPAC,” says Lacy. “It doesn’t really matter if you’re rejecting AIPAC money, if you aren’t changing any of the policies that you adopt with respect to how the U.S. treats Israel.”

For all that and more listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jordan Uhl: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Jordan Uhl, an Intercept contributor and your host today, joined by my co-hosts. 

Jessica Washington: I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter for The Intercept.

Akela Lacy: And I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept. 

JU: Today we’re bringing you a midterm elections update. Except rather than diving into the various horse races, we’re going to talk about some crucial themes emerging that we’re reporting on here at The Intercept. 

Jessie, let’s start with you. One of the biggest stories to shake up politics in recent weeks are sexual assault allegations that upended California congressman Eric Swalwell’s bid to become the next governor of California, and appears to have completely ended his political career, forcing him to resign from his House seat. We’ll get into the California governor’s race in a bit. But to start, Jessie, remind us of the sequence of events that led to Swalwell dropping out of the race.

JW: It was a really swift turnaround. In late March, we began to hear on social media from mostly influencers who were talking about stories they had heard from friends, from other women involved in politics, related to allegations against Swalwell. But many of those allegations online were incredibly vague.

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That all shifted on April 10, which was a Friday when a San Francisco Chronicle article dropped accusing Swalwell of sexually assaulting a former staffer. Shortly after that, CNN dropped another story, labeling the former staffer’s accusations as rape and also detailing sexual harassment allegations from other women. Within hours of that story dropping, over a dozen Democrats pulled their endorsements, including a really high-profile endorsement from Adam Schiff. We also began to hear reports that Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries — top Democratic leadership — had called Swalwell to tell him that he should drop out of the governor’s race.

Then over that weekend, on Sunday [April 12] I believe, he dropped out of the race. By Monday, he had resigned from office.

JU: You write in your story that The Intercept has not been able to independently verify the allegations. In a statement posted last week, Sara Azari, a criminal defense attorney representing Swalwell, wrote that the former congressman “categorically and unequivocally denies each and every allegation of sexual misconduct and assault that has been leveled against him,” calling the accusations “a ruthless and shameless attempt to smear Congressman Swalwell.”

I think that’s something that has been interesting to me. He’s trying to frame all of this as an attempt to stop his candidacy for governor. For me, I see that and think, OK, then why did you resign from Congress? How do you thread that needle, Jessie?

JW: I think that is obviously a question for Eric Swalwell. But I will say that these allegations have been in the ether for years. These are not new allegations, although they are new to much of the public. You talk to people on the Hill, and these are things that they have heard for years.

JU: Now, Jessie, you said it was an unusually swift fallout in part due to the public sentiment around the Epstein files. Could you talk about that?

JW: When I was writing this story, originally, I hadn’t thought about the role of the survivors themselves as much in the story. I’m speaking specifically about Epstein survivors. But we have to give a lot of credit to those women for making sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment, making these issues electoral issues — issues that the public really cares about.

So you have two things going on. You have the fact that these survivors have made this an electoral issue — made accountability for sexual abuse and sexual violence an electoral issue. And you also have to give some credit to Democrats as well for immediately moving on these allegations very swiftly. From their perspective, it is incredibly hypocritical for them to not hold Swalwell accountable while also running simultaneously on the Epstein files, running on accountability, running on this idea that we have to hold the Epstein class — people who are abusers — accountable. I think they couldn’t run on that effectively and also not hold Swalwell accountable once these allegations were made public.

JU: Now, on Monday, the House Committee on Ethics published a list of 28 representatives who have been investigated by the committee for alleged sexual misconduct. The oldest case dates back to 1976. Recent investigations include Swalwell; Tony Gonzales, Republican of Texas; Cory Mills, Republican of Florida who is facing allegations of “sexual misconduct and/or dating violence.” That investigation is ongoing; he denies the charges. And notably a few years have passed but also on the list is Matt Gaetz, Republican and former congressman of Florida. 

Jessie, are you seeing more efforts to take allegations more seriously and hold members of Congress accountable? 

JW: There definitely is a shift in Congress, and obviously that shift has to do a little bit with Swalwell. We’ve talked about the Epstein files in terms of more of an effort to hold these members accountable for their abuse of women. I will say the fact that there was no movement on Gonzales or Mills until after Swalwell allegations came forth, one could question whether or not Republicans are a faithful partner in this, or if they just see another political opportunity. But there does seem to be at least a rhetorical shift on the Hill when it comes to taking these problems seriously.

AL: I would agree that I think the speed of Democrats consolidating around “Get this guy out of Congress” is new. But I would also say, we did see this moment of reckoning in 2017, 2018, with the first round of “Me Too,” when it appears that a lot of these allegations were already known around that time or had happened prior to that.

JW: That actually came up in my piece when I was speaking to people who had worked both on the Hill and also as campaign staffers. The fact that a lot of these rumors — about Swalwell, but also obviously there are rumors about other politicians, Democratic politicians as well — that these rumors were known, and that people didn’t do anything. What we’re seeing is a reaction to the public being aware of these allegations, and also I would say the severity of the allegations.

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We’re talking about really horrific allegations of sexual assault — we do have to acknowledge again that Swalwell denies — but I think it’s the severity of the allegations and the fact that they were made public. But it is a little soon for Democrats to be patting themselves on the back when many of these allegations were floating around the ether on the Hill.

JU: Interestingly, on Monday, Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican of South Carolina, introduced a resolution to expel Mills from Congress. I’m curious to see how that goes. 

But for both of you, this is actually a sizable potential shakeup in Congress. And we haven’t even talked about others who were facing possible expulsion. Like Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a Florida Democrat who was found guilty by the Ethics Committee for financial misconduct, which she denied. On Tuesday, she announced her resignation. 

What does this all mean for Republican’s majority in Congress? What effect, if any, might it have on which party will hold the majority next?

AL: So right now, Republicans have a slim majority in the House — 217, and one Independent who caucuses with Republicans — to Democrats, who have 213. Democrats are optimistic that they’re going to win back the House in midterms even prior to all of this.

There’s two Republicans that are facing these allegations right now, so off the bat, that doesn’t give Democrats the majority, obviously, but it could potentially help. We don’t know what’s happening with Tony Gonzales or Cory Mills at this point. The fact that two Democrats have now resigned obviously factors into that, but midterm watch, they are expected to potentially win back the House and are even looking at possibly the Senate, obviously, as we’ve been talking about on this show.

I think, if anything, I don’t know that this really plays well for Democrats because Eric Swalwell is the face of this at this point. I don’t know if the floodgates have opened yet, maybe you could say that we’re talking about four or five people at this point. Obviously, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is not a sexual misconduct allegation, but obviously, a shakeup is happening. Who knows what else can happen? 

We’re in the height of primary season right now, and it’s going to be a long summer. I imagine that we’re going to see more things continue to come up, especially because the “oppo” people are going crazy right now, so it remains to be seen. But again, the baseline prior to this was: It’s a possibility for Republicans to lose the House. I don’t see this necessarily changing that, but it could complicate things for Democrats if more of them come under fire.

JW: The “oppo” angle is actually really interesting. It’s something that people who aren’t journalists or aren’t in the political world aren’t that aware of. 

Campaigns research each other. They research their opponents, and they come up with these spreadsheets of documents against the opponents — all of their different weak points, including these various allegations that are floating around against them. So during campaign season, you do see people digging up a lot more — I don’t want to call something like sexual harassment “dirt” — but these negative allegations about people. So that’s something that you see a lot in campaign season. That’s why we might end up seeing more and more come out about these candidates.

JU: Now, I want to pivot back to Swalwell and the California governor’s race. This is something I’ve been watching closely as a Californian. It’s a crowded race, even with Swalwell exiting. Former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra who was previously California’s attorney general, got a boost from Swalwell’s departure, making him tied with billionaire Tom Steyer. Former congresswoman Katie Porter is not far behind them. 

Akela, you wrote about a progressive group that is trying to rally Democrats around Steyer. Can you tell us about this group and why they’re endorsing him over other candidates in the race? 

AL: Xavier Becerra was polling in single digits pretty much up until Swalwell’s exit. Some polls have shown him pulling ahead or tied. The Emerson poll that everyone was looking at right after Swalwell dropped out, had him at 10 percent — well behind the first two Republican candidates and Tom Steyer, but tied with Katie Porter. 

The article that you’re talking about, Jordan, we wrote an exclusive about Our Revolution endorsing Tom Steyer. This is the progressive group that Bernie Sanders founded after his 2016 presidential campaign. They have built their mission around attacking wealth and power in politics, and so endorsing a billionaire raised a lot of eyebrows and questions about that — how endorsing Steyer advances that mission, which I spoke at length with their executive director about.

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This is the first billionaire Our Revolution has endorsed. It was fun fact checking that because we were like, how many billionaires have run for office? We pretty much know all of them. It wasn’t JB Pritzker, it wasn’t Michael Bloomberg. That in itself is historic for a group that has fashioned itself in the way that Our Revolution has.

They have recently tweeted [in 2025], “We shouldn’t have billionaires,” so this is what we’re talking about. They were very open about that being a big contradiction, to their credit, I will say. Their view is that in this field, which is extremely crowded, the fact that two Republicans have been leading the race basically since January should give pause to progressives and Democrats about whether they’re going to consolidate behind a candidate or risk handing the seat to a Republican.

Another initial question that I had: What about Katie Porter? She has the longest record in office of a progressive official of the candidates in the pool and the highest name recognition for a progressive. They basically said that she was the first candidate to jump into the race, but she still hasn’t pulled ahead or demonstrated a clear path to victory in polling.

They didn’t speak to this, but I will mention that Katie Porter has faced backlash in recent years after a video surfaced of her yelling at a staffer. I don’t know how much that’s affecting her race right now, but I think that tarnished her image a little bit for some people. I don’t know that the average California voter knows that happened necessarily, but they seem to think that she did not have a chance of winning, basically, was the bottom line.

So they were like, yeah, there are concerns about us endorsing a billionaire, there are questions about how that aligns with our broader project. But in this instance, if the alternative is having a Republican run California for the first time in the last two governors, then they would rather back someone who they say has used his wealth and power to advance progressive ideals, investing in advocacy around climate change and electing progressive officials. 

I will say Tom Steyer has also faced criticism for benefiting from the policies that help billionaires pay lower taxes. Although he himself has said that he and billionaires should pay more in taxes. But I think a lot of people have a lot of questions, which I think are fair, about what he will do in office. 

This is also someone who has spent the most on his own race. He spent over $120 million on his gubernatorial campaign so far. This is coming off of spending $300 million on a failed presidential bid in 2020.

They also said that Steyer aggressively sought Our Revolution’s endorsement throughout the entire race and that Katie Porter did seek their endorsement but did so later in the race. They had endorsed against her in the California Senate race in 2020. They endorsed Barbara Lee against Katie Porter, and they said that her campaign’s performance in that race did not inspire confidence that she would be able to win another statewide race.

[Break]

JU: It is a crowded and confusing field for the dynamics you just laid out. The policy differences, the disparity in personal wealth, all of those things make for a tough decision for many people in California on the left. But because of the way the election works here with a jungle primary, the two leading candidates advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.

Right now, if polling remains the same before the primary in June and more Democrats don’t drop out, California could end up with two Republicans at the top of the ticket come November. Who are those Republican candidates?

AL: Buckle up. [Laughs] Number one, the person who is in first place, we’ll start with Steve Hilton, who is a former Fox News analyst and a former Conservative Party adviser in the U.K.. He worked under Margaret Thatcher, for context. Steve Hilton was born in the U.K. and immigrated to the U.S. He is endorsed by Donald Trump. Pretty run-of-the-mill Republican dude who’s close with Trump. 

I’ll leave it at that because the next person is even more interesting. [Riverside County] Sheriff Chad Bianco was a dues-paying member of the Oath Keepers, the group that you may remember from leading the attack on the Capitol on January 6. He was a dues-paying member in 2014; he was not at January 6. He also endorsed Trump. Trump has not endorsed him, obviously, he endorsed Steve Hilton. But those are the two top candidates in the gubernatorial race at this point in time.

JU: Now, I want to mention that this sheriff, Chad Bianco, took it upon himself to seize 650,000 ballots in March to investigate alleged voter fraud. A CalMatters probe found that “his sprawling investigation was based on the thinnest of evidence and raise alarms over how the November elections could be disrupted by the unproven claims of fringe groups and ideologically aligned officials.” For both of you, what do you make of this, and are there other cases of attempts to undermine voters through so-called “election integrity” efforts that you’re watching? 

AL: Bianco — people know that he was in the Oath Keepers, but like he’s obviously distanced himself from that, he’s no longer a dues paying member, yada, yada, yada. But that is a direct outgrowth of that kind of extremist, militant, anti-government ideology that that group is built on. That runs as an undercurrent in a lot of these MAGA figures, in terms of undermining democratic institutions in the name of election integrity and this warped, very dangerous dystopian framing of our election system that leads to things like people storming the Capitol on January 6 and trying to overturn the results of the election and trying to hang the vice president. Just want to put a finer point on that.

He’s also part of the “constitutional sheriffs” movement, which sounds scary. They believe that they have more power than the president and the courts and that they’re some of the most powerful officials in the country. 

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I think this sort of campaign of election interference that we’ve seen balloon, particularly during Trump’s first term, and again, taking shape in his second term under the guise of election integrity is one of the harder things to cover, for us. But it’s one of the most insidious forces that have far reaching ramifications for democratic elections and voting rights more broadly. But it’s one of the hardest things to cover until after it happens.

So we’re at the point right now where this is not a huge issue in primary season. There’s already been some reporting on how Trump officials are talking about this and not necessarily about what’s being done, but that they’re definitely open about talking about sending ICE to polls. Talking about getting rid of voter protection measures or election integrity measures at the state level. We’ll likely see more of that ramp up between when primary season ends and in November. So it’s a little hard to say right now, but this is definitely part of their playbook.

JW: We’ve definitely seen Trump and his allies really talk about voter integrity and try and shift this narrative.

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Obviously, I think as most of our listeners know, voter fraud is incredibly rare. The measures that the Trump administration is suggesting wouldn’t really target any of those, again, incredibly rare instances of voter fraud. We’ve also seen allies of the Trump administration, obviously on Capitol Hill, try and push through the Save Act, which would make it much harder for many different groups to vote because of the increased requirements on documentation. That failed this week in the Senate. 

As Akela mentioned, the Trump administration has been floating the idea of sending ICE to the polls. We know that former Attorney General Pam Bondi had asked for the voter rolls in Minnesota as well. So there’s this confluence of different groups connected to the Trump administration, connected to some of these more fringe movements that are working to make this election much more difficult for many different groups to vote.

JU: In 2024, we saw Democrats running to the center on issues like immigration and transgender rights. But this year we’ve seen more Democrats style themselves as progressives, especially when it comes to immigration and issues like AIPAC funding. Are candidates paying a penalty for appearing inauthentic on those issues?

JW: I did a story about this earlier this year, focused on Seth Moulton and the fact that in 2024, he was one of the main Democrats really coming out and pushing anti-transgender rhetoric, saying that Democrats supporting transgender rights publicly had led to a backlash among voters.

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Now he’s running in 2026 in Massachusetts against one of the most progressive senators in the country, Ed Markey. So we’re seeing a different shift of tone from him. He’s obviously not making those same comments that he was making in 2024, but he’s also talking about his record on LGBTQ rights, trying to shift the narrative around him. It’s not only not working, there’s a backlash that we’re seeing toward inauthenticity. Now, whether or not the average voter is paying attention in that way, I’m not sure. But certainly when you’re looking at people who are more politically plugged in — and primary voters tend to be much more politically plugged in — there is more of a backlash for inauthenticity and for shifting on issues without a sincere apology or a sincere conversation about why your viewpoints have changed.

JU: There’s a lot of discourse online around who is a progressive candidate and whose questionable past or background or lack thereof should be overlooked because they are saying the right things currently. What do you both think? Do you think these criticisms are just unhelpful purity tests or that people should be taking a more critical look at the candidates they are championing?

AL: I feel like this question about purity tests is a little bit ill-fitted to what we’re actually talking about, which is, what are candidates’ policies? It’s not so much about a purity test. It’s a question of, is what you’re running on actually what you do in office? That’s not a purity test, I don’t think.

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Candidates who have been very vocal about abolishing ICE or rejecting AIPAC money or these clear litmus tests — which they are litmus tests — know that is something that’s going to be on their record. It’s not something that they can waffle on once they’re in office. If you say you’re not going to take AIPAC money and then you take AIPAC money, people are going to find out. If you say I’m going to abolish ICE, and then you don’t abolish ICE, people are going to find out.

Whereas, incumbents who may have voted for moderate or conservative immigration policy in the past who are now coming out and saying, “Abolish ICE,” or candidates like Cory Booker who have taken tons of AIPAC money and boasted about texting with their president and been to their annual policy conferences — coming out and saying that he’s no longer taking AIPAC money as part of a broader pledge to reject corporate PAC money, not singling out AIPAC because he obviously doesn’t want to draw their ire. That is a fair case for people to ask questions about “OK, what does this actually mean?” And again, that’s not a purity test because he’s adopting the purity test. It’s like, what is he actually going to do?

We’ve seen a lot of candidates, particularly 2028 candidates, whether senatorial or gubernatorial who have had long-standing relationships with AIPAC or demonstrated pro-Israel policy records like Rahm Emanuel, Cory Booker, Josh Shapiro, Ruben Gallego, all come out now against AIPAC or distancing themselves from AIPAC. 

In Josh Shapiro’s case, he says like, they don’t give to governors, I’ve never taken AIPAC money. But he has a very pro-Israel policy record and has fashioned himself as someone who is resisting the wave of criticism of Israel in the Democratic Party and standing firm in his pro-Israel bonafides, while still saying that he’s critical of Netanyahu and stuff like that.

Cory Booker was asked about this recently on Pod Save America, where they were pressing him on why he refused to call Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal. It doesn’t really matter if you’re rejecting AIPAC money, if you aren’t changing any of the policies that you adopt with respect to how the U.S. treats Israel. 

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Cory Booker did vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s measures to block the sale of bombs and bulldozers to Israel. So that was a shift in his position. That’s the kind of thing where you can say, well, this litmus test worked; if he’s actually changing his policy on this, then people don’t have a reason to necessarily question the proclamations that he’s making.

But I do think people should be asking questions beyond “Does this person take AIPAC money?” They should be asking where do they stand on all of these other policy questions that they’ll be voting on once they’re elected or reelected.

JW: To Akela’s point, you can’t have Democrats who voted for the Laken Riley Act, which makes it much easier to deport people in the United States, who are then now decrying what Trump and ICE are doing in the streets and saying they’re going to hold Trump accountable when in office — when they haven’t been holding ICE accountable while in the legislature.

JU: On the topic of online discourse, for several weeks now, powerful factions within the Democratic Party have been going after Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. It started to pick up about a month ago after he participated in a convoy to deliver food, medicine and solar panels to Cuba, a country in which President Donald Trump’s oil embargo has led to a humanitarian crisis.

I really can’t believe that attacks on Piker’s character are continuing for this long. If you Google his name, multiple stories come up that are just a few days old, from The Hill and The Atlantic and the New York Post. There are real issues that the party establishment could focus on, like Trump’s sinking approval rating, the war, the economy, and ongoing threats to our democracy. But yet, they appear to be hyperfocused on Piker’s influence. What do you all make of this?

AL: It’s mind-numbingly stupid. This is just a straw man thing, I don’t know how to say it better than that. Hasan Piker is a straw man. He has never spoken for the Democratic Party. He’s a streamer that candidates are either going on his show or campaigning with. And yes, you can say well the left or Democrats often criticize shows that candidates go on, because they’re outright Nazis or they were at the Capitol on January 6 or something and that’s just not what we’re talking about. I think the false equivalence between someone like a Nick Fuentes or like an outright white nationalist working with or campaigning with Republicans, and somehow drawing a parallel between that and Democrats talking to Hasan Piker — it’s insulting to people’s intelligence to try to make that comparison.

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I think because a lot of people don’t know who he is, or the context, unfortunately gets swept up in thinking that this is something that they should actually be paying attention to and trying to make a decision about. It is an illustration of how broken our media and political ecosystems is that national outlets spending air time covering this as if it’s a real news development — because that fuels the fire. That’s why we’re still talking about it, and that’s why we’re talking about it on this show. But hopefully with a better take.

JW: This is about not wanting to share power with the left. This isn’t about the comments that Hasan Piker made. This isn’t about, oh, Democrats shouldn’t be on this platform or that platform. These are some of the same people who were pushing Democrats to go on Joe Rogan.

So it doesn’t hold water. This is about not wanting to share power with the left, wanting to weaken one of its, to them, one of its strongest and loudest voices. It’s an attack on the left. It’s not about Hasan Piker or about Twitch or anything else.

JU: You can’t tell me that Democrats have a problem reaching young men and then when you have somebody who does reach young men and has pulled them to the left — you will see in his audience, in his chat, in his fans’ comments, many people will admit to being sucked into the right-wing pipeline and admitting and thanking him for pulling them out. You can’t tell me that you have a problem and he is not part of the solution, and expect me to think that is a sound argument. 

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It is about narrative control. It is about preserving legacy institutions and part of it is about weaponizing hollow accusations of antisemitism, and that’s why you see groups like the Anti-Defamation League take shots at him.

In parallel, there’s also a threat to the status quo and their corporate ties. That’s why centrist group Third Way has been pushing this. And then it’s about where the party sits, like you say, both of you — it’s about not ceding power to the left, not including the left in this “big tent.” That’s why you have never-Trumpers who they say they’re former Republicans, but by their acts demonstrate, at least to me, that they still are Republicans also joining that growing chorus. 

It is, in my opinion, misguided and shortsighted.

JW: Third Way pushing this is just— the fact that this was a group that was earlier saying, we can’t talk about diversity, we have to move against transgender rights, let’s take away actual rights in order to win. But now the line is, oh, well, if we win, but we win with Hasan Piker, that’s going to be the worst thing in the world. The whole thing is a little bit laughable. They’re willing to sacrifice actual human rights, but what they’re not willing to do is have anyone sit down with Hasan Piker.

AL: It’s easier to blame someone who isn’t responsible for your policy failures for being popular. That’s not the reason that Third Way is unpopular. It’s because they’re bad at what they do.

JU: So when it comes to actual issues people are unhappy about, a new AP poll shows that Trump’s approval rating on the economy is sinking even more, due to his policies from tariffs to new wars in the Middle East. That’s on top of violent immigration raids, the handling of the Epstein files, and more signs of a weakening economy as the Fed reports zero net job creation in the private sector, and the Wall Street Journal reporting we’ve entered an “era of mega-layoff[s].” Meanwhile, the Trump family’s business empire is growing exponentially this term. Is Democratic leadership leveraging any of this? How is it showing up in campaigns? What are you both seeing? And are there signs that any of this will cost Republicans control of the House and maybe Senate?

JW: I think this is really coming up in Democratic campaigns in this word “affordability.” We’re hearing every single campaign talk about the fact that the United States is not affordable for working-class people. That’s clearly a shot at Trump’s economy. That’s really how I see Democrats capitalizing on it, mostly in campaign season.

AL: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has been talking about how many federal jobs the Trump administration has lost or cut with various cuts to different agencies. And yes, as Jessie said, this is showing up as an affordability chorus among different Democratic campaigns. Affordability, sure, is a unifying message — but I think being able to tie the fact that there is a net zero job creation to Trump seems like something that they should be screaming from the hilltops all together at once. 

It’s hard to tell in situations where they are hitting the message correctly because we have spent a lot of time on this show criticizing Democrats for not having a clear or focused messaging campaign. But when leaders might be getting the message out, like what is the party doing as a whole to have a unified front on that or directly tie it to Trump, I think is something that they’re still not quite on par with Republicans on. 

I keep thinking about the first federal government shutdown under Trump, when you went to the White House website, and it was like, “Democrats have shut down the government.” We don’t see that kind of succinct counter-messaging from Democrats.

I’m reading this headline from a Schumer press release, and it’s so long. I’m just going to read it to you: “SCHUMER REVEALS: AS TRUMP ATTACKS & EVISCERATES FEDERAL WORKFORCE, NEW YORKERS PAY THE PRICE WITH OVER 8,000 FEDERAL JOBS LOST IN THE PAST YEAR ALONE ACROSS NY – WITH DAMAGING CUTS TO LOCAL SOCIAL SECURITY OFFICES, VETERANS AFFAIRS, USDA OFFICES, AND OTHER VITAL FEDERAL SERVICES.”

Like, that’s not a slogan. That’s the Senate minority leader’s press office putting this out. It feels like there should be some sort of unified campaign. I’m not a political strategist, but when you look at the messaging next to each other, what Republicans are doing and what Democrats are doing, it seems like a missed opportunity to really hit the nail on the head on who’s responsible for this.

JW: You see Democrats talking about affordability hitting on Trump, but I think you’re right that there’s a real opportunity for Democrats to hit Republicans over the head with this, and we’re not seeing it as aggressive as we know Republicans would be in this alternate situation.

JU: This is going to be an interesting midterm, and I will look to both of you for guidance and clarity as things get even more chaotic. I want to thank you both for joining me on The Intercept Briefing.

AL: Thank you, Jordan.

JW: Thank you.

JW: And that does it for this episode. 

This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our Managing Editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.

Slip Stream provided our theme music.

This show and our reporting at The Intercept doesn’t exist without you. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join. 

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. Do leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us.

Let us know what you think of this episode, or If you want to send us a general message, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com.

Until next time, I’m Jordan Uhl.

The post “Me Too” Comes Back to Congress appeared first on The Intercept.

Why Should Delaware Care? 
With 20% of the Republicans in the Delaware General Assembly retiring this fall, the party’s demographics could see a shake-up after the November election. As younger and more diverse candidates are seeking the open seats, Republican leaders say they hope to sustain a conservative coalition in Dover that is more varied in age, gender and race.

The decisions of four long-serving Republican lawmakers to not seek reelection to the Delaware legislature will clear the way this fall for a leadership change in each of their districts.

The retirements also are likely to shift the demographics of the General Assembly’s Republican caucus toward a younger and more diverse coalition. 

Rep. Ron Gray (R-Selbyville) became the latest in a string of departing GOP lawmakers earlier this month, joining Reps. Rich Collins (R-Millsboro), Charles Postles (R-Milford North, Frederica) and State Sen. Dave Lawson (R-Marydel). All four retiring legislators have served in the General Assembly for at least a decade. 

At least one Democrat and one Republican — and in one particularly crowded race to succeed Collins, three Republicans — have tossed their hats into the ring for each seat, setting the stage for a series of contested elections this fall. 

All of the new candidates are younger than the retiring incumbents, and a number of them are women, spurring a possible shakeup within the legislature’s Republican caucuses — which have historically skewed white, male, and older. 

While there is a possibility that one or more of the open seats could flip to Democratic control, Sam Hoff, a retired political science professor at Delaware State University, said he forecasts all four will remain Republican strongholds.

Currently, just four of the 20 elected Republicans inside Legislative Hall are under the age of 50. All of them are white, and all of them, with the exception of Valerie Jones-Giltner (R-Georgetown), are male. 

Delaware Republican leaders say they welcome a shift to a more diverse group of elected officials from their party, but their primary focus is on putting forth candidates who are good representations of conservative values, regardless of their age, gender or race. 

“We don’t follow a prescribed method of who should fit for what seats and who should run,” Delaware Republican Party Chair Gene Truono told Spotlight Delaware. “Organically, things happen based on people’s merit and the necessary skillset.” 

While party leaders say they hope a more diverse pool of candidates will provide electoral success and expand the GOP’s voter reach in the state, it remains to be seen whether this year’s trend will mark a sustained change in the party. 

A glance at the field

While some retiring Republican lawmakers have endorsed a new candidate to replace them, other races are shaping up to become a more messy fight, with multiple candidates vying to represent the GOP in the November election.

Postles, 76, whose district covers northern Milford and the towns of Frederica, Houston, Bowers and Magnolia, was the first Republican to share his decision to retire in late November 2025. 

Since his announcement, three candidates have entered the race for Postles’ seat: Joshua Pennington, a Democrat, and Matt Bucher and Morgan Hudson, both Republicans. 

Postles said he is pleased to see that there is both a man and a woman running in his district, and that both candidates are younger than him. He said he does not plan to throw his support behind either one before the primary in September. Hudson previously ran against Postles for the North Milford-area seat in 2016, when Postles was first elected. 

Collins, 76, also announced in late November that he would not seek reelection, setting up a messy primary race between three Republican candidates John Atkins, Doug Conaway and Jacki Slonin. Democrat Ryan Stuckey has also filed to replace Collins in representing the Millsboro-area seat. 

Questions about Atkins’ candidacy, who has a controversial past as a former state representative and multiple arrests for domestic violence, have created a split among some Sussex County Republicans. 

Atkins has garnered endorsements from Sussex County Council members and other local politicians in the Millsboro area, while Collins has staunchly thrown his support behind Conaway. Collins told Spotlight Delaware he would ask anyone who is supporting Atkins in this election “what they think of the Eric Swalwell situation,” referring to the recent Democratic California Congressman who resigned following accusations of sexual assault. 

In campaign finance reports filed at the end of 2025, Conaway received donations from a number of prominent Republican lawmakers, including Postles, Gray, House Minority Leader Tim Dukes (R-Laurel) and Rep. Mike Smith (R-Pike Creek). Atkins has not had to file a campaign finance report, since he officially entered the race in early April. 

When Lawson, 80, announced his impending retirement in January, he immediately endorsed Emily Thompson to take his place. Lawson said he has been doing “a lot of political things” with Thompson over the past couple of months to prepare her for office should she win in November. 

Nisha Lodhavia, a Democrat, has also entered the race for Lawson’s seat, which covers the majority of western Kent County, including Felton, Marydel and Harrington. 

Similar to Lawson, Gray, 70, threw his support behind Carlie Carey, a former Fenwick Island restaurant owner, after announcing he would not seek reelection this month. 

Gray told Spotlight Delaware he hoped to find a small-business owner to run for his seat — which includes Fenwick, Selbyville and South Bethany — so Carey is the ideal candidate.

Maureen Madden, a Democrat, has also been campaigning for Gray’s position since last summer. 

Truono, the state Republican Party chair, said he feels “confident” all four open seats will stay in Republican hands, but the party still needs to work hard to bring awareness of the new candidates to as many voters as possible. 

Hoff, the political scientist, said he also believes the demographics of the districts all appear to still lean Republican this year. But the two Kent County districts – Postles’ and Lawson’s – might start to shift toward a Democratic majority in the near future, he said.  

Hoff attributed this to a growing population of people of color in Kent County, who he said are more likely to vote for the Democratic Party unless the Republicans are able to diversify some of the candidates they put up for election. 

Looking ahead

The incoming slate of Republican candidates represents a substantially more diverse coalition than the GOP currently has in the General Assembly. 

Many party leaders said the wider range of candidates could help the GOP gain more traction in Delaware moving forward. But at the same time, leaders say their primary focus is on finding candidates with conservative values, rather than ones who check a specific demographic box. 

Lawson, who will be 80 years old when his term ends, said a major part of his decision to retire was about making room for more young blood in the party, and helping the party “get more in line with the public” in terms of age, gender and racial representation. 

For example, Lawson told Spotlight Delaware, he “doesn’t really know what a bitcoin is,” and a younger representative in the district would likely be better able to tackle pressing technology and financial issues. 

Ruth Briggs King, a former Republican state representative who ran for lieutenant governor in 2024, said she has been pushing for more diverse Republican candidates for a while. She often finds, though, that younger candidates or women have work and other scheduling limitations that make it challenging for them to seek office. 

“I’ve talked to several young women over the years, and they will tell me, ‘I can’t [run for office], I will wait until my children are older,’” Briggs King told Spotlight Delaware. 

Briggs King added that she is pleased to see younger Republican women like Thompson and Carey stepping up to run this election cycle. She hopes it will break down the barriers for more candidates who aren’t just men closing in on retirement age.  

Truono and Dan Willis, the Delaware Republican Party vice chair, said both state leadership and the county GOP committees are diverse: Truono is openly gay, Willis is young and Hispanic, and state party secretary Brandon Brice is Black, they said. They believe the House and Senate Republican caucuses will soon catch up in terms of diversity, as their message continues to resonate with more voters. 

Willis added that his goal is finding candidates “of character,” and if those candidates also come from a background that is not as traditionally associated with the Republican Party, that is a bonus. 

“We’re championing this big tent concept to say, if you believe in conservative values, we want you,” Brice said. “I think you’re going to see a very different GOP now than you may have seen in the past.” 

Transparency Notice:
Brandon Brice serves on Spotlight Delaware’s Advisory Council. Advisors have no role in the editorial decision-making of Spotlight Delaware. For more information, see our Ethics Policies page.

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

The post As state Republicans retire, a GOP demographic shift could emerge appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Wilmington reporter Brianna Hill visits the podcast studio to talk about how she has been covering Christina Park, the location of the city-sanctioned encampment for unhoused people located on Wilmington’s East Side. She discusses the unique challenges of reporting at the park, how she has built contacts with residents, whether her coverage style differs if she knows other reporters are present, and more.

The podcast was hosted by Director of Community Engagement David Stradley.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

You started covering Christina Park once the city announced this was going to be their location for unhoused individuals in the city. For anybody who hasn’t read your recent reporting, can you let listeners know about the controversies surrounding the tent community in April? 

In April there was a plan created by the city to establish a grid on which to put identical tents so that people could move from where they once were. At this point, people are scattered in the park, and they just decided to stay wherever they wanted to and set up their tents. Some people have multiple tents for storage and other things like that. 

So what the city wanted to do was move people into this grid. They outlined a grid – 15 foot by 15 foot squares – and they put tents within them – tents the city bought – and wooden pallets to put the tents on top of.

The plan was to tell people to move into the grid, throw out what you don’t need. If you have a tent already up, wrap it up and you can put it in the tent the city’s giving you while you’re living there. Or you can find a way to put it into storage. But essentially you have to fit all your stuff into this new city-designated tent. You can have a bike and a chair outside of that tent, inside your 15 by 15 square, and that’s how things were supposed to go. 

When the city made the announcement, a lot of residents at the park were opposed to it because one, the tents that they have, some of them are pretty expensive. Two is that, like I said earlier, some of them have multiple tents for food and storage, so that was an issue having to consolidate. 

And there was another issue of the grid being in rows. People are pretty close to each other. There are, I would say, little communities within this park. So if there are two people that have tension with each other, if there’s someone who has mental health issues, which many of them do, and they essentially have an episode because they’re too close to someone, that can happen. So there was a worry or a concern over that, too. 

That prompted advocates who are usually there, specifically from the organizations Food Not Bombs and Delaware Democratic Socialists of America. They had expressed some concerns the day before the city started putting pallets down and tents down about people not wanting to throw away their things or wanting to be spaced out throughout the park.

From what they told me the next day, their plan was to help set up these tents with the city, with Friendship House, which is under contract with the city currently to run the park and to manage the park. They essentially decided that there were too many changes happening with the plan. The grid had gotten a little bit smaller. Essentially it was supposed to be 20 feet by 20 feet in the contract with Friendship House, but it ended up being 15 feet by 15 feet. The tents that came out of the box were not durable and were not waterproof as they were described to be.

The advocates did not like how the plan was going, so the advocates ended up protesting by standing on the wooden pallets that had to go on the grids first to prevent them from putting down tents on top of it. They were also standing in front or blocking the construction vehicles from moving. 

The city workers weren’t able to get much done, so [advocates] ended up making an agreement with the city and just leaving it alone. [City workers] gave tents to the few people that did want one and they left. So that’s what happened. That’s a summary of what happened on the first day. 

And then there was a secondary protest about a week or so later when the city tried to do some fixes?

Yes. So the day after the initial protest, there was a heavy rainstorm and the rainstorm had blown away tents. Tents were dilapidated as a result of the rainstorm. The city essentially decided to buy newer tents that were a little bit more durable. A week later, the city brought over 20 new tents that were more durable, bigger, and residents seemed a little bit more optimistic about these tents.

But the advocates were still protesting because of the pallets. Their argument was the pallets were not safe because when it did rain, the rainwater was going into the pallets and making the wood rot. There was a concern about people getting splinters from the wood because it wasn’t sanded, and there were small nails protruding out of the wood. So there were concerns around the pallets.

Another agreement was facilitated between the police and the advocates that were there, and they basically said, “Okay, we’re just going to replace the old tents that are here, and we’re going to give a tent to anybody who wants a tent.”

And they agreed on that.

Your first article in April was co-reported with [Spotlight Delaware Deputy Editor] Karl Baker, and it covered those first protests when the tents and pallets were going to be originally installed. Take us through your reporting process on that day. Was this something that you just covered during a 30-60 minute visit to the park, or was it more involved?

It was definitely more involved. 

I had gotten there early that morning and I was there for about maybe five, six hours. It was a hot day. Getting there, everyone was already there. Obviously the residents and police were there. Officials from the city’s office were there, and the advocates were there.

Most of that day was kind of a wait-and-see period to see how the city was going to fulfill this plan. I spent most of my time talking to residents, talking to the advocates, getting comments from city officials like [the mayor’s chief of staff] Cerron Cade, who came later in the day.

There were city council members that were there, talking to the Friendship House, trying to understand where the plan came from, because there were things that were developing during the day, like the size of the grid going from 20 by 20 to 15 by 15, or the city at first saying that people weren’t allowed to keep their personal tarps to cover what we now know were not durable tents that they first gave out, and then deciding they were going to let residents keep the tarps.

So there were things that were shifting throughout the day. The idea of the protest didn’t come up until maybe two, three hours in. We didn’t know a protest was going to happen. At first, it was waiting to see how city officials and law enforcement were going to interact with the residents who were there, because there was that threat of – or the rumored threat of – people being arrested. So if that happened, that probably would’ve been the main focus of the story – that police officers are arresting homeless people in the park. 

So you were there to see, is that uprising going to happen? Is that conflict going to happen?

That was the intention when I first got there. That’s how I thought things were going to play out, and they ended up playing out a little bit differently. 

There was maybe a good hour where people were just waiting because after the advocates decided they were going to protest, the first construction forklift left, and it just disappeared. And then when they decided they were going to try again, they brought another forklift in. 

So it wasn’t as fast paced as maybe some people would’ve thought it was going to be. But it was a full day of just kind of wait and see, things changing one by one. 

How, and perhaps why, did you decide to tag-team with Karl on the article? 

Initially the story wasn’t going to be a tag-team. I went to the park first, and Karl came shortly after, just to check things out, and he was like, “Okay, just keep me updated.” And he went back to the office.

By like 2 o’clock, he came back and I’m looking at him in the distance – I’m like, “Oh my God, yes!” I was very happy for him to be there. The plan at that point in my head was – I’m happy someone else is here because there’s so much going on in this small park. Maybe he can talk to people over there and figure out what’s going on, and I can talk to people at the other end.

That’s when the protest started. I was able to take a few pictures and get a gist of why they were protesting and the conversations that were happening. Karl was essentially saying, “If you need to take a break, go ahead.” Which I very much appreciated. So I ended up leaving and the plan was to come back, but before I came back, he left and said I think we have everything we need.

So at that point it was just, let’s just work on this together because it was a lot. 

You are reporting multiple stories a week, each of which takes time to write and report and research. Why spend the whole day at Christina Park? I’m sure in your mind you’re thinking, “I have two other articles I have to be writing.”

For me personally, homelessness is a big part of my coverage area. With the Carney administration, this was a very controversial plan of trying to figure out a way to address homelessness, but not doing it in the way that people would think – using a vacant building to create shelter, or maybe funding the nonprofits who do provide shelter and trying to expand on that to give people housing services. 

It was – we have to get people out of Wilmington. Carney has said this, not verbatim but in his own words, explicitly, that we don’t want homeless people roaming the city. We want them in a designated place so we can figure out how to transition them to housing. Which is obviously the long term goal.

To follow the park is like understanding the system the administration created and how it’s unfolding. So I thought it was an important story because it’s relevant to the city policy. 

Now the newsworthy pieces, if you condense the amount of time in which that happened, it probably happened over two hours, or less than half the time that I was actually out there. But you have to be there in order to see how things unfold.

There was one reporter who stayed and left and came back, and by the time he came back, there was already something else going on. It was one of those stories where you kind of just needed to be there. 

Part of the reason you left and let Karl tag in was that you’d been out there for six hours. It was a hot day, you just needed a drink of water. Does the irony of that ever play on your mind when you’re reporting on an unhoused community? You’re going to leave to get a drink of water to go inside, whereas all these people are still out here? 

Yes, definitely. With that specific day, I think that was one of the longest, if not the longest days, I had been outside covering something specific. Personally, that was one of the thoughts that kind of kept me going. I’m like, if the city residents who live in this park and have to deal with the elements every day can handle it, then I can handle it, and I’ll be okay.

You started covering Christina Park in late 2025. What’s been the process for you of getting residents of that community to be willing to speak to you?

So I had maybe an easier transition into meeting people because I was initially introduced to one of the residents who lives at the park by Steven Metraux, who is a professor at UD, for the homelessness series that we were working on at the time. He introduced me and Julia Merola, my colleague, to Ron “Philly” Simmons. We ended up speaking with him, and he ended up introducing me to other people. 

But there were things that I had to keep in mind because there are people who go to the park to maybe do a service, give food, do a haircut. They often maybe will come with a camera on or they’ll come to take pictures of things. For many who live at the park, it can feel like an invasion of privacy, or that they are some type of spectacle, which is what I was trying to avoid. 

So I’m trying to kind of build an understanding and let people know I’m different. It can be a hard thing to do, but many of the residents that I have spoken with have been pretty receptive. There are people there who want to speak up and give their two cents about what’s going on or tell their story because it is also a population that doesn’t really get that type of support too often. 

It’s a demographic where you kind of have to be gentle with them and kind of let them know what you’re there for because they’re also always on guard. They don’t know what’s going to happen. And they can be skeptical, reasonably so. So just speaking with them and building that relationship over time. Obviously as many times as I have been to the park that has helped me get familiar with people, and they know me.

I would have to imagine even just the dynamics of the day that relate to that. The first day you were out there for that protest because the tension was high, maybe fewer people were willing to speak to you. But when you went back the week later, did you have more luck at that point getting residents to share their thoughts on the whole situation?

Yes. It was actually a much better experience in terms of getting people to talk to us. I think that, again, like you said, there was a lot going on the first day. 

Also I think on the first day people were still trying to understand what their perspective was on the tent city. It was definitely easier to talk to people on the second day because I think tensions were down, but people also had an opportunity – because it had been a week by that point – to understand where they stood on the city’s plan, and if they agreed with it or didn’t.

There were more tents put out on that second day for people who did want them. And you had people coming – people who didn’t initially live in the park, or were only there for a short period, or came from the Sunday Breakfast Mission because they heard that people were giving out tents. So there were more people there to talk to on the side of, “I support what the city’s doing.”

But there were also more people to talk to on the side of, “I still don’t [support the city], and here’s why.” So I think it was just better energy going around that day to speak with people. 

At Spotlight Delaware, we often talk about being part of the news and information ecosystem in the state. And this story, particularly covering the initial protest, I think is a time where that ecosystem functioned pretty well. The News Journal covered it. WDEL covered it. Delaware Public Media, WHYY they’ve been active in the follow-up coverage. 

When you are covering a story and are aware that other reporters are present, does that change how you report in any way?

With this particular story, it did, in a sense. There will be other stories – usually these other stories are like city council press releases or the mayor’s budget address – which is easier because we’re just going around the table, and I hear what they ask and I get their answers and they hear what I ask. Everyone’s recording at the same time. 

But when I got to the park, The News Journal and WHYY were already there. So part of me was a little anxious because I see them talking to people. In my head, I’m like, “I have to talk to them, too.” 

I did feel a little bit more at ease because I knew I had been to the park previously, so I was a little bit more familiar with the environment. I wasn’t panicking, like, “Who do I talk to?” It was just like, I have to find these people to talk to. 

My method at first was waiting for them to talk to someone, and then waiting til they finished their conversation, and going up to that person. At some point, we got to a point where I would talk to someone, they would come up next to me, the reporter, and kind of just whip their recorder out. And I was like, “Okay, fine. Let’s just do that because it’s too much going on anyway.” It’s a long day, so I wasn’t mad at it. So, we ended up talking to people at the same time. It wasn’t a crazy competitive environment, as one would think.

Do you read their reports after the fact? Kind of check it against how you reported it? 

I do. I check to see what details they added that maybe we missed or maybe we had those details but didn’t really put them in. I personally appreciate – because who wants to see three different news outlets report the same angle of the same event – when everyone did it differently. 

There were small pieces that I didn’t have in my story that other people had in theirs. WHYY, their angle on the story because there was a rainstorm the day after – which again, there was this controversy over these tents are not durable, they’re not going to hold up, they’re not safe. That was proven to be true in the rainstorm that happened that night. So, WHYY used that angle: This is what happened to the tents after this day of all this ruckus. 

I think we all shared a pretty good perspective of how things went down. 

So you never read someone else’s report and go, “I wish I had gotten that.”

Maybe small details. I think it was WDEL who added the cost of the tents, which for those who were critiquing how crappy the tents were, it’s nice to know how much the city spent on it. So I thought that was a good detail.

The easy instinct in a situation like this is to look for clearly delineated sides of this conflict. In this case, it seems like the conflict is the City of Wilmington versus the unhoused.

What are the complexities of the dynamics of this conflict that perhaps have surprised you and that you’ve been trying to capture in your reporting? 

It’s very easy to get caught up in the binary controversy, which is the city wants to do this, advocates and residents don’t want it to happen, which isn’t the case.

For some, it is. The advocates obviously want things to be done a certain way, so that people aren’t losing their items or having to throw away their personal items, or they’re not being put in somewhere that’s safer than the tent that they used to be in. For some residents, they don’t want to get rid of their stuff.

But I think what has surprised me the most is that there are people who really do support this initiative, and there are people who are coming from the Sunday Breakfast Mission and other areas to the park specifically because they heard the city was giving out tents.

So I think that was a surprising thing I came across. It begs the question of what are these other places doing? There are people coming from the Sunday Breakfast Mission. They have opted out of that and have said to themselves that they’re going to go to this park and deal with the natural elements, and they would rather do that in their own tent than deal with the shelter that’s maybe one of the only shelters in the city. 

So, I think that that was an interesting perspective to come by, that there are people who would rather live in whatever the city gives them as opposed to the alternative.

Thank you for covering all the nuances of this ongoing experiment in caring for the unhoused in Wilmington. 

Yes, of course.

The post ‘Beyond the Headlines’ podcast: Covering protests at Christina Park  appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Genki Kawamura’s eerie new film expands on a haunting video game that leaves players lost in endless subway tunnels. He explains how this makes viewers and players face their worst fears

Genki Kawamura is something of a polymath. A bestselling author, film-maker, script writer and producer – he is also a lifelong gamer who grew up playing and being inspired by the games of legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto. His latest project Exit 8, now in cinemas, is a fascinating adaptation of the Japanese horror game, developed by a lone coder based in Kyoto, operating under the name Kotake Create. “I was captivated by its game design and the beauty of its visuals,” says Kawamura. “At the same time, I watched many streamers play it. As I did, I realised that although the game is incredibly simple, each player creates their own story, and each streamer brings their own unique reactions. It felt like a device that could reveal something fundamental about human nature.”

The concept behind Exit 8 the game is simple. The player finds themselves trapped in an endlessly looping section of a Tokyo subway station. Viewing the narrow, brightly lit corridors in first-person, you pass the same posters, the same silent commuter, the same locked doors over and over again. The only way to escape is to spot anomalies each time you pass through – maybe the eyes on a poster start following you, maybe the commuter stops and smiles – at which point you have to double back the way you came. Complete eight runs without missing an anomaly and you get to leave through the eponymous way out. There’s no story, no reason for it at all. The mystery is part of the appeal.

Charlotte MacInnes, who is suing Wilson for defamation, says alleged cyber-attack was ‘completely terrifying and caused me a new kind of anxiety’

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Hollywood star Rebel Wilson has been accused of orchestrating a cyber-attack on the social media account of a rising star which led to her nude photo being leaked.

The Pitch Perfect star is being sued by Charlotte MacInnes, the Australian lead actor of her recently released directorial debut, musical comedy The Deb.

Kevin Heath had hoped there would be solar panels by now on his family farm in southeastern Michigan, roughly 50 miles outside Detroit.

About six years ago, he agreed to lease part of his land for a solar project. It would help him pay off debt and keep the farm in the family, he said. But the opportunity was thwarted when, in 2023, following pushback from some local residents, his township passed an ordinance that banned large solar projects from land zoned for agriculture.

In the fight over solar development, Heath said he was bombarded by just about every argument from critics — including claims that solar fields are a health hazard. “I’ve heard them say that, but I’ve never heard anybody prove that,” Heath said.

“The health and safety issue,” he added, “that is just a joke.”

Michigan has big prospects in solar farming — measured by the expected growth in the capacity of its farms to add electricity directly to the grid. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, most of the nation’s new capacity from this type of solar farm is planned this year for four states, including Michigan. The others, with their hot deserts and big-sky plains, seem more obvious: Texas, Arizona and California.

To some, in Michigan and beyond, this growth feels dangerous. They pressure public officials to stop, stall or otherwise complicate new solar projects with an array of arguments that now go beyond just land use to include public health.

There is little reputable evidence to back their claims. But health concerns have helped power a solar backlash that undercuts efforts to broaden energy sources even as customer costs are rising.

Restrictions on solar development are proliferating nationwide, “often rooted in misinformation or unfounded fears,” including ones that involve “potential environmental and human safety risks,” according to an article published late last year in the Brigham Young University Law Review.

To generate electricity, solar projects harvest energy from the sun. “And that’s really not that different from what a field of corn or alfalfa does,” said Troy Rule, the Arizona State University law professor who authored the article. “In fact, arguably, it’s even more environmentally friendly.”

Still, a state board in Ohio rejected an application for a solar project last month, citing local opposition, even though its staff initially said it met all requirements. Along with other concerns, according to the board, opponents “testified about the potential impacts on the health of residents.”

A bill in Missouri would halt commercial solar projects in the state, including those under construction, through at least 2027, as a state agency develops new regulations. The bill’s emergency clause says this is “deemed necessary for the immediate preservation of the public health, welfare, peace, and safety.”

And, on the eastern edge of Michigan, St. Clair County adopted a novel public health regulation last year that set limits on solar development and battery storage. The move was encouraged by the county’s medical director who, in a memo, warned of the threat of noise, visual pollution and potential sources of contamination. Some local residents have long pressed leaders to act, saying that intrusive noise could worsen post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments.

Public officials don’t always examine the validity of health claims, according to Rule. And local deliberations rarely compare the impact of solar farms to common agricultural practices, which can lead to runoff from fertilizers and herbicides, for example, or waste lagoons from concentrated animal feeding operations.

People have many reasons for taking issue with large-scale solar development, said Michael Gerrard, an environmental lawyer and founder of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. But as for the feared health impact, he said, “there’s no basis for that.”

“People try to come up with a rationale to justify their dislike of things they dislike for other reasons,” Gerrard added.

President Donald Trump’s administration, meanwhile, is adding to the skepticism that renewable energy is worthwhile. Among other moves, it’s phasing out federal tax credits for the solar and wind industries.

It all takes a toll on the effort to build out solar infrastructure. Last year, new solar installations in the U.S. dropped by 14%.

Fear vs. Science

Large solar developments can transform hundreds, or even thousands, of acres of rural land, paneling them with crystalline silicon and tempered glass.

It’s a big change, and people have questions.

Locals worry that electromagnetism and even glare can pose a health risk. They wonder if toxic materials could leach into the soil and contaminate groundwater, if not while the solar site is operational, then some decades in the future, when it reaches the end of its life. That certainly has been the case with orphaned oil wells, which also were built with promises of safety.

But researchers point out that the most common types of panels have only small amounts of such materials, if any. They are encased and unlikely to leach into the soil. Rather than sitting in landfills when a site is decommissioned, most of the materials used in solar panels can be recycled (though the process can be costly).

Craig Adair, vice president of development at Open Road Renewables, which has pursued renewable energy projects in several states, has fielded a range of concerns over the years — from how soil could be contaminated to the possibility of electromagnetic fields causing cancer.

“Those questions, in just about every case, have an answer,” Adair said. “There is rigorous academic study, and there are examples of projects that have been operating.”

While the future farmability of the land is often a concern, many researchers — and farmers — say that a solar lease will help preserve it.

With proper planning on the front end, equipment can be removed from a decommissioned solar site and green space restored, said Steve Kalland, executive director of the NC Clean Energy Technology Center, which, along with its partners, provides technical assistance to local governments in the Carolinas.

And a person’s exposure to the electromagnetic field, or EMF, from a solar farm is roughly the same as what they would encounter from ordinary household appliances, according to researchers. EMF levels also decrease rapidly with distance.

Chronic exposure to noise is also a recurring complaint from critics. In challenging a proposed project from Adair’s company in Morrow County, Ohio, one woman said in a brief to the state siting board that she was troubled about how noise from the facility might affect people with neurological noise sensitivities, including her daughter.

A piece of equipment called an inverter is usually the source of noise on a solar site. It converts the current into the form that’s used on the grid.

But noise, as well as glare, are typically buffered with vegetative landscaping and setbacks, or the distance between the property line and the nearest structure. Inverters can also be placed far from the ears of neighbors.

Noise modeling for the Morrow County project showed that its inverter “will basically be inaudible to the public,” Adair said, and if it ever generated noise above a certain limit, the permit would require the company to bring it back into compliance.

The problem, Adair said, is that evidence-based answers and solutions can get lost in the fervor. They can be drowned out by “opposition activists wanting to try to scare local politicians into opposing a project, even if the concerns that they’re raising are not legitimate concerns,” he said.

Last month, the Ohio Power Siting Board denied a permit to Adair’s Morrow County project. Its order acknowledged that the proposal offered positive benefits, but, it said, “these benefits are outweighed by the consistent and substantial opposition.”

It didn’t specifically cite health concerns as the reason for the denial, but rather, “the varied and numerous concerns raised by both the local government entities and public in the project area.”

But, Adair said in an email, those local governments “cited (unfounded) public health concerns as a reason for their opposition to the project.”

Open Road Renewables plans to apply for a rehearing from the board, Adair said. The company has eight permitted solar projects in Ohio, but because of a siting process that he said is subject to “manipulation and misinformation,” Adair said it won’t initiate any more.

Intense Battles in Michigan

In Michigan’s St. Clair County, it isn’t just a number of residents who are worried about large solar facilities. The Health Department’s medical director echoed their concerns.

In two memos to other county officials, Dr. Remington Nevin said that large solar sites are a public health risk for the area’s predominantly rural residents. The state’s solar standards, he wrote, weren’t enough to protect them from “environmental health hazards, the spread of sources of contamination, nuisance potentially injurious to the public health, health problems, and other conditions or practices which could reasonably be expected to cause disease.”

Any detectable tonal noise, he added, must be considered an unreasonable threat to public health. He recommended new regulations.

The county administrator at the time, Karry Hepting, noted that Nevin’s initial memo “does not address the question or provide support for what are the potential health/environmental risks,” according to internal emails provided to ProPublica. “It appears we will need to hire an outside expert to get the level of detail and supporting data necessary to consider potential next steps,” she added. Hepting said that she’d begun researching prospects.

But County Commissioner Steven Simasko — now the county board’s chair — wrote in an internal email that he accepted Nevin’s medical opinion “as a good standard for the protection of the public health of our citizens” and disagreed with the need for outside input.

Simasko told ProPublica in an email that he believed it wasn’t the role of the administrator to get involved in a public health matter, and that he objected “to essentially paying for a second public health medical opinion” more to Hepting’s liking. 

Hepting, who has since retired from her post at the county, disputed Simasko’s depiction of her motivations in a message to ProPublica. “Nothing could be farther from the truth,” she wrote. “It had nothing to do with shopping for a different opinion. Mr. Nevin’s initial memo did not address the initial question posed by the Board. It did not state what the health risks were and what negative health impacts exist. It basically said it’s a risk because he said so.”

To legally justify the adoption of health regulations, Nevin said in his second memo, it wasn’t necessary for his department “to prove, with a precise scientific or medical rationale, that eligible facilities pose an unreasonable threat to the public’s health.” Instead, expert opinion, public comment and the consent of the local government were reason enough, he wrote.

In the end, county officials were persuaded to act. The commissioners approved the Health Department’s new policy for solar energy and battery facilities, including a nonrefundable $25,000 fee to cover the cost of reviewing a proposed project. It also said that policy violations were punishable by up to six months in prison.

An electric utility promptly sued, and a solar company joined the case. The Health Department, they argued, has no authority to issue what are, in effect, zoning regulations. What’s more, they said in legal filings, the county can’t override the solar standards established by the state.

In its legal filings, the county said the health regulations were adopted properly and supported by “substantial, competent, and material evidence.” Facilities that don’t meet its standards “pose a threat to public health,” the county argued.

In response to ProPublica’s detailed queries, a public information officer said that the Health Department would not comment due to litigation.

Nevin said in a podcast interview last year that he wasn’t opposed to solar projects. “The purpose,” he said, “is to identify risks, unreasonable risks, to the public’s health posed by the construction or operation of the facilities, and then take reasonable, measured steps to attempt to mitigate those risks, ideally in a fashion that would continue to allow the facility to be constructed and to operate.”

Solar capacity in Michigan continues to grow, despite local pushback, but so far, only 2.55% of the state’s electricity comes from solar. In Ohio, it’s nearly 6%, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. In Texas, it’s nearly 11%. Michigan is requiring electricity providers to reach an 80% clean energy portfolio by 2035, and 100% by 2040.

Michigan has more local restrictions on renewable energy than any other state, according to the Sabin Center. “Practically nowhere in the country has seen more conflict” about where to allow large solar farms that add electricity directly to the grid than rural Michigan, according to a 2024 article in the Case Western Reserve Law Review authored by a Sabin Center senior fellow.

That includes the conflict in Milan Township, where Heath grew up on an 1,100-acre farm. “I always wanted to farm,” Heath said. He saw leasing part of his land to a solar company as a way to stay afloat and keep the land in the family.

In 2020, Milan Township passed an ordinance that would allow the project to go forward, with Heath’s brother, the township supervisor, abstaining.

But opposition mounted. Critics built a website that argued, among other things, that the project would unleash dangerous electromagnetic radiation. Heath and his siblings were rebuked by their neighbors, Heath said, to the point that his brother, Phil, told the township attorney he was thinking about resigning as supervisor. That same night, he died of a heart attack at age 67.

A few months later, with a new supervisor in place, the township board banned large solar development from land that’s zoned for agriculture. The terms were restrictive enough to effectively ban such a project not only from land owned by Heath and his sister, but from all but the small portion of the township that’s zoned for industry.

Stephanie Kozar, Milan Township’s clerk, said in an email to ProPublica that most residents opposed solar projects on agricultural land, and that the initial ordinance passed during the coronavirus pandemic, before officials had adequately informed residents about potential changes. The updated policy, she said, would “protect the township and allow for responsible development of clean energy in the area.”

To overcome severe local restrictions, the state set standards in 2023 for noise, height, fencing, setbacks and other elements of a large solar project. It also created a pathway where developers, in certain cases, can get a permit from the Michigan Public Service Commission, the state’s regulating authority, rather than from local governments. 

In an order, the commission laid out details for how the process would work. But nearly 80 local and county governments, including Milan Township, challenged it in court, arguing the commission was overstepping its authority. 

In support of the state, Heath and his sister are represented in a friend-of-the-court brief filed by a legal team affiliated with the Sabin Center, along with local attorneys.

Also part of that brief is Clara Ostrander, who had hoped a solar project would help protect two farmsteads in Milan Township that have been in her family for over 150 years. “We need a responsible neutral party like the Michigan Public Service Commission to review these projects based on facts, not fear or falsehoods,” she testified to state officials ahead of the bill’s passage.

Even with the state process, rising energy demand and eye-popping electricity costs, no new large solar installation has yet been built in Milan Township.

And in February, as snow melted around the “No Industrial Solar” signs that stud the long country roads, a circuit court judge ruled that St. Clair County’s health regulation is “invalid, null, and void.”

But county officials soon opted to appeal, unanimously. “This is very important for the health of St. Clair County and the residents,” said one commissioner before casting his vote.

The post Unfounded Health Concerns Are Powering a Solar Backlash appeared first on ProPublica.

More than 150 people, some with injuries, finished the race after officials stopped recording time.

Donald Trump has said the Duke of Sussex 'is not speaking for the UK' after Prince Harry told the US to honour its obligations in the Ukrainian conflict. 'I think I am speaking for the UK more than Prince Harry … but I appreciate his advice very much,' the US president said, responding to the duke’s lengthy, impassioned speech at the Kyiv Security Forum on Thursday during a surprise visit to show support for Ukraine after four years of war with Russia. Harry, an ex-serviceman, did not claim to be speaking for the UK

A poll shows most Australians think the country is either in a recession or will be soon. Economists have a different view

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Australian households were already on edge before the bombs started falling in Iran.

The cost of living was high and inflation was accelerating again, forcing the Reserve Bank to start ratcheting up interest rates.

Officials assessing route after serac between base camp and camp one deemed unstable and too risky for climbers

A large ice block on the route just above the Mount Everest base camp has forced hundreds of climbers and local guides to delay their attempt to scale the world’s highest peak.

The serac between base camp and camp one was unstable and risky for climbers, said Himal Gautam of Nepal’s department of mountaineering on Friday.

Following a second round of peace talks in Washington, President Trump announced that the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire had been extended by three weeks.

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PlayStation 5; Housemarque/Sony
As a fast-firing spaceman, one minute you’re invincible, the next you’re dead – with every battle like watching a firework show through a kaleidoscope

On the planet Carcosa, mangled, blackened trees and crimson flowers take root next to the ruins of some ancient alien civilisation, flanked by statues contorted in pain, tearing at their marble skin. There are metallic tunnels deep underground, chasms of impossible size snaked with cables, so you feel as though you’re exploring the intestines of some giant machine. There’s a House of Leaves quality to these spaces, which shift and change and clearly weren’t built for humans.

You are Arjun Devraj (played by Rahul Kohli), a space security guy who’s on a mission to find missing colonists on an alien world before it all goes a bit Event Horizon and you become the next lost expedition. Classic. There’s some unethical space capitalism happening out here, and Devraj himself is a bit of a traumanaut who brought way too much mental carry-on luggage for this extremely long-haul flight. But it’s nothing that shooting some aliens won’t fix, right?

As Trump lurches from tariffs to wars and Farage makes unrealistic pledges about immigration, their impunity needs to end

Rightwing populists always promise they will get things done when they get into power. Immigration will be halted. Government waste will be eradicated. Traditional values will be revived. National decline will be halted. National greatness will be restored. Relations with the outside world will be redrawn.

Great tasks that, for decades, have been beyond the capability and will of conventional, compromising politicians will be accomplished – and fast. Populist governments will respond decisively to voters’ accumulated frustrations, cut through bureaucracy, and avoid the delays, U-turns and half-finished projects that usually blight democracies. The business of government will be straightforward and highly productive – even heroic – rather than complicated and disappointing.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

The FCC has expanded its foreign-made router ban to also cover consumer Wi-Fi hotspots and LTE/5G home-internet devices, though existing products and phones with hotspot features are not affected. PCMag reports: On Wednesday, the FCC updated its FAQ on the ban, clarifying which consumer-grade routers are subject to the restrictions. Portable Wi-Fi hotspots are usually considered a separate category from Wi-Fi home routers. Both offer internet access, but portable Wi-Fi hotspots use a SIM card to connect to a cellular network rather than an Ethernet cable inside a residence. However, the FCC's FAQ now specifies that "consumer-grade portable or mobile MiFi Wi-Fi or hotspot devices for residential use" are covered under the ban. The ban also affects "LTE/5G CPE devices for residential use," which are installed for fixed wireless access and use a carrier's cellular network to deliver home internet. The FCC didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the changes. In the meantime, the FAQ reiterates that the foreign-made router ban only applies to consumer-grade devices, not enterprise products. The document also notes that mobile phones with hotspot features remain outside the restrictions. In addition, the ban only affects new router models that vendors plan to sell, not existing models, as T-Mobile emphasized to PCMag.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• No one from US ‘told them they can’t come’, Rubio says

• Delegation members with ties to IRGC may be barred

Iran’s footballers will be welcome at this year’s World Cup, secretary of state Marco Rubio said Thursday, distancing the United States government from a proposal that Italy could take their place in the tournament.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Rubio denied that the government had asked the Iranian team not to come to the World Cup – but warned the US may yet bar entry to members of the Iranian delegation it judged to have ties to Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is regarded as a terrorist organisation by Washington and several other governments.

MPs call for investigation into Essar Energy, owner of Stanlow refinery, which shifted loans from ‘Putin’s piggy bank’ VTB to Mauritius

Days after the first wave of Russian tanks surged over the border into Ukraine in March 2022, dockers at a port in northern England took a stand.

Appalled by Vladimir Putin’s brutality, workers at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire vowed never to unload any Russian oil destined for the nearby Stanlow refinery, a major hub for UK fuel supplies.

• Pick-by-pick: all the selections from the first round

• Two quarterbacks go in Thursday’s first round

The story of the first round of the 2026 NFL draft surrounded a quarterback but it wasn’t No 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza.

As expected, the Las Vegas Raiders selected Mendoza with the first pick on Thursday after he led Indiana to the national title last season. But the shock of the night came when the Los Angeles Rams picked another quarterback, Alabama’s Ty Simpson, at No 13. The Rams current starting quarterback, Matthew Stafford, was named NFL MVP last season and Simpson was projected to be a second-round pick by many analysts. However, Stafford turned 38 in February and the Rams are starting to plan for life without him, although head coach Sean McVay insisted the veteran will remain the starter for the time being. “This is Matthew’s team,” said McVay.

Green groups say European Commission is ‘chief roadblock’ to its own plans, as report finds poor progress four years on

Harmful compounds in children’s nappies and toxic “forever chemicals” in everyday products are among 14 hazardous substance groups hit by lengthy delays to EU pollution controls, according to report findings described by scientists as “extremely frustrating”.

The European Commission sought to push broad categories of dangerous substances off the market with a “restrictions roadmap” in April 2022 that was hailed at the time as the largest-ever ban of toxic chemicals.

We assembled a group of the continent’s leading thinkers to assess the threats: their warnings are stark, but the remedy is within reach

Caught between Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Donald Trump’s US and Xi Jinping’s China, Europe appears in a state of profound crisis, the narrative about its future often filled with fatalism. There is a paradox, however. Despite rising nationalism, the climate crisis and the economic slowdown, few would take issue with the claim that Europe still has a great deal going for it. Asked to choose where in the world they would want to live, there is a good chance that most Europeans would still pick Europe over other continents.

The news is not relentlessly negative either. While much of the political commentary in recent years has focused on the rise of far-right nationalism across the continent, its most prominent symbol, Hungary’s former autocrat Viktor Orbán, was ousted in a landslide election this month.

Like Taiwan, the South China Sea could spark a U.S.-China war.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: New gas projects linked to just 11 data center campuses around the US have the potential to create more greenhouse gases than the country of Morocco emitted in 2024. Emissions estimates from air permit documents examined by WIRED show that these natural gas projects -- which are being built to power data centers to serve some of the US's most powerful AI companies, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI -- have the potential to emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases per year. As tech companies race to secure massive power deals to build out hundreds of data centers across the country, these projects represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential climate cost of the AI boom. The infrastructure on this list of large natural gas projects reviewed by WIRED is being developed to largely bypass the grid and provide power solely for data centers, a trend known as behind-the-meter power. As data center developers face long waits for connections to traditional utilities, and amid mounting public resistance to the possibility of higher energy bills, making their own power is becoming an increasingly popular option. These projects have either been announced or are under construction, with companies already submitting air permit application materials with state agencies. [...] The emissions projections for the xAI and Microsoft projects, and all the others on WIRED's list, were pulled directly from publicly-available air permit documents in state databases as well as public air permit materials collected by both Cleanview and Oil and Gas Watch, a database maintained by the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental enforcement nonprofit. Actual greenhouse gas emissions from power plants are usually lower than what's on their air permits. Air permit modeling is based on the scenario of a power plant constantly running at full capacity. That's rarely the reality for grid-connected power plants, as turbines go offline for maintenance or adjust to the ebbs and flows of customer demand. "Permitted emission numbers represent a theoretical, conservative scenario, not the actual projected emissions," Alex Schott, the director of communications at Williams Companies, an oil and gas company that is building out three behind-the-meter power plants in Ohio for Meta, told WIRED in an email. Internal modeling done by the company, Schott added, shows that actual emissions could be "potentially two-thirds less than what's on paper." The projections involved, however, are still substantial. Even if the actual emissions from these power plants end up being half of the emissions numbers on the permits, they still could create more greenhouse gas emissions than the country of Norway emitted in 2024. This number is, according to the EPA, equivalent to the emissions from more than 153 average-sized natural gas plants. (WIRED's analysis does not include emissions from backup generators and turbines on the data center campuses themselves, which create smaller amounts of emissions.) Energy researcher Jon Koomey says the data center boom has created a shortage of the most efficient gas turbines, pushing some developers toward less efficient models that would need to run longer and produce more emissions. "[Data center operators'] belief is that the value being delivered by the servers is much, much more than the cost of running these inefficient power plants all the time," he said. Michael Thomas, the founder of clean energy research firm Cleanview, has been tracking gas permits for data centers across the country. He calls behind-the-meter power "a crazy acceleration of emissions." He added: "It's almost like we thought we were on the downside of the Industrial Revolution, retiring coal and gas, and now we have a new hump where we're going to rise. That terrifies me in a lot of ways."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The 2026 NFL Draft is taking place in Pittsburgh. Here is the full list of Round 1 picks.

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This blog is now closed. For the latest Middle East news, see our full report here

The Pentagon abruptly announced that the secretary of the US navy, John Phelan, would be leaving his job yesterday. No reason was given for the unexpected departure of the navy’s top civilian official, who had addressed a large crowd of sailors and industry professionals at the navy’s annual conference in Washington just a day before the announcement.

People familiar with the dynamics at the Pentagon told the Guardian Phelan was fired. Phelan had an increasingly rocky relationship with the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, and other senior staff.

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot ‘extremely validating’ of delusional inputs and often went further, ‘elaborating new material’, study finds

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Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok 4.1 told researchers pretending to be delusional that there was indeed a doppelganger in their mirror and they should drive an iron nail through the glass while reciting Psalm 91 backwards.

Researchers at the City University of New York (Cuny) and King’s College London have published a paper on how various chatbots protect – or fail to safeguard – users’ mental health.

US president says Tehran hobbled by infighting as Pentagon reportedly briefs mine clearance may take six months

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has again said that the US has “total control over the strait of Hormuz”, adding that Iran’s leadership was so hobbled by infighting that it was unclear who was in charge.

But the US president’s claim seemed questionable in the face of the seizure of two container ships by Iranian commandos and a US report warning it could take six months to clear the strait of mines.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for April 24

This live blog is now closed.

• DoJ inspector general to audit department’s compliance with Epstein Files Transparency Act

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You’ve likely seen that the Senate adopted the plan for the budget blueprint for ICE and border patrol after an all-night “vote-a-rama”.

This is, in fact, not a congressional dance break.

President Trump said Thursday that he was weighing a taxpayer-funded takeover of Spirit Airlines​ with the intent of reselling the struggling budget carrier​ after oil prices drop.

Paramount Skydance CEO fetes administration as it weighs $110bn merger with CNN parent WarnerBros Discovery

Dozens of protesters, including members of Congress, gathered along the National Mall on Thursday to protest an “intimate” dinner being held by Paramount Skydance’s chief executive, David Ellison, “in celebration of the first amendment” and “honoring the Trump White House and CBS White House correspondents”, and attended by Donald Trump.

Paramount has faced criticism for the dinner, which has been seen by some as illustrative of the cozy relationship between the Ellisons and the White House – right as the Trump administration is weighing whether to approve the company’s $110bn merger with CNN parent company WarnerBros Discovery (WBD). The dinner comes before Saturday’s White House correspondents’ dinner, which Trump will attend. His defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is expected to sit at one of the many tables bought by CBS News for the event.

Foreign ministry calls remarks of rightwing podcast host shared by Trump ‘uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste’

The Indian government has denounced a social media post shared by Donald Trump that described India as a “hellhole”, calling the comments inappropriate and “in poor taste”.

On Wednesday, Trump posted a four-page transcription of remarks made by the conservative podcast host Michael Savage that denounced the US constitutional right to citizenship of everyone born in the country.

The bet on the seizing of the Venezuelan leader has drawn scrutiny to insider trading within the growing prediction market industry.

Gannon Ken Van Dyke, who allegedly made more than $400,000 on Polymarket, could face up to 60 years in prison

A US soldier who played a role in the January capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro is now in custody after allegedly cashing in over $400,000 on wagers about the politician’s removal from office, federal authorities announced on Thursday.

Prosecutors say beginning in early December the soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, was involved in planning for the military operation to capture and depose Maduro.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for April 24, No. 1,770.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for April 24, No. 1,048.

The soldier allegedly bet on Nicolás Maduro's removal as president of Venezuela before news of the raid was reported, sources told CBS News.

"If you haven't booked for this summer, get busy," Atmosphere Research Group Airline industry analyst Henry Harteveldt told CBS News.

President Trump's renovation kick has now reached the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

• Mendoza is a lock at No 1. What will happen next?

• Staff predictions: stars, needs and lower-round gems

• Mail david.lengel@theguardian.com with your thoughts

Fernando Mendoza

The QB widely expected to be selected no1 overall by the Las Vegas Raiders, will be the first presumptive top pick to not attend the draft in person since Trevor Lawrence was selected by Jacksonville. Mendoza wants to be at home to share the moment with his mother, who has multiple sclerosis, his father, and other close family and friends. But don’t worry, ESPN TV in the US will have at least one camera inside the Mendoza home to document the moment.

Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy, both 27, were last seen in the Tampa area on April 16, the University of South Florida Police Department said​. Loved ones say their disappearances are out of character and they're concerned.

Meta Account lets you manage and access all your Meta accounts from a single unified dashboard.

Mullvad's new approach addresses an issue with Apple app updates, but you'll need to do more hands-on maintenance.

Attorneys for a DOJ program that accredits nonprofits to help provide legal help to immigrants were transferred last month, creating setbacks for a number of legal aid groups.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading the ambassador-level negotiations, but it remains unclear whether the administration will push for a permanent resolution.

Apple has fixed a bug that could cause parts of Signal notifications to remain stored on iPhones even after messages disappeared and the app was deleted. "Affected users concerned about push notifications can update their devices to stop what Apple characterized as 'notifications marked for deletion' that 'could be unexpectedly retained on the device,'" reports Ars Technica. "According to Apple, the push notifications should never have been stored, but a 'logging issue' failed to redact data." From the report: Vulnerable users hoping to evade law enforcement surveillance often use encrypted apps like Signal to communicate sensitive information. That's why users felt blindsided when 404 Media reported that Apple was unexpectedly storing push notifications displaying parts of encrypted messages for up to a month. This occurred even after the message was set to disappear and the app itself was deleted from the device. 404 Media flagged the issue after speaking to multiple people who attended a hearing where the FBI testified that it "was able to forensically extract copies of incoming Signal messages from a defendant's iPhone, even after the app was deleted, because copies of the content were saved in the device's push notification database." The shocking revelation came in a case that 404 Media noted was "the first time authorities charged people for alleged 'Antifa' activities after President Trump designated the umbrella term a terrorist organization." "We're grateful to Apple for the quick action here, and for understanding and acting on the stakes of this kind of issue," Signal's post said. "It takes an ecosystem to preserve the fundamental human right to private communication." In their post, Signal confirmed that after users update their devices, "no action is needed for this fix to protect Signal users on iOS. Once you install the patch, all inadvertently-preserved notifications will be deleted and no forthcoming notifications will be preserved for deleted applications."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meta said it would cut 10% of it employees while Microsoft will offer voluntary retirement to about 7% of workers

Meta and Microsoft are trimming their workforces by thousands as they make heavy investments in AI and executives claim that the technology is meeting their companies’ productivity needs.

Meta told staff on Thursday that on 20 May it would cut some 10% of its personnel – just under 8,000 employees– to boost efficiency, part of a layoff plan made months ago. The company is also closing about 6,000 open roles. The same day, Microsoft announced to employees, for the first time, that it would offer voluntary retirement to about 7% of its American workforce of roughly 125,000.

These are the agencies detaining people across the US – mostly, but not all, under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security

When the Trump administration ordered a surge of armed federal immigration enforcement personnel on to the streets of Minneapolis, the Department of Homeland Security declared it the largest operation in its history and the liberal midwestern city became Donald Trump’s latest chosen hotspot.

Such escalations mark the US president’s agenda of mass arrests and deportations from the US interior. The highest-profile efforts involve officers from multiple agencies rushing to prominent Democratic-led US cities, against local leaders’ wishes. But coast to coast, federal officers have been raiding homes, businesses, commercial parking lots – even schools, hospitals and courthouses. The efforts have delighted the president’s hardcore Make America Great Again voter base, but are also tearing families apart and spreading fear and even death on the streets and in detention.

The Russian leader has not yet committed to attend the annual gathering of world leaders, which is scheduled for December at the president’s Doral golf resort.

Baton Rouge police chief says attack unfolded after argument inside food court at Mall of Louisiana

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At least one person has been killed and five people were injured and transported to the hospital Thursday when two groups exchanged gunfire inside the food court at the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, according to police.

Several of the people involved ran off as a large police presence responded.

Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders have approved Paramount Skydance's takeover bid, moving the massive Hollywood merger a step closer to completion. It's not a done deal quite yet, though, as it still faces regulatory scrutiny and fierce opposition from critics who warn it will further concentrate media power. The Associated Press reports: Per a preliminary vote count Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery said the overwhelming majority of its stakeholders voted in support of selling the entire business to Skydance-owned Paramount for $31 a share. Including debt, the deal is valued at nearly $111 billion based on Warner's current outstanding shares. That means Warner-owned HBO Max, cult-favorite titles like "Harry Potter" and even CNN could soon find themselves under the same roof with Paramount's CBS, "Top Gun" and the Paramount+ streaming service. David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, said in a statement that stockholder approval marks "another key milestone toward completing this historic transaction." Paramount added that it looks forward to closing in the coming months, and "realizing the creation of a next-generation media and entertainment company." [...] Meanwhile, Warner shareholders rejected a separate measure Thursday outlining post-merger payments for company executives.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Florida Republican Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, an Army combat veteran, attacked his leading opponent in the state’s gubernatorial race over not supporting military pay raises. 

The Collins campaign distributed a 13-page document titled "Congressman Byron Donalds’ Liabilities." Donalds holds a double-digit lead against his primary opponents.

"Byron Donalds voted with (U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-.N.Y.) and the radical Socialist Squad against three pay raises for military service members, including the largest pay raise for the military in 22 years," the document said, referencing Donalds’ votes against the National Defense Authorization Act in 2022, 2023 and 2025.

The Collins campaign lobbed this and many other attacks about Donalds’ criminal history and past associates after an April 20 event in St. Petersburg. 

Collins’ campaign referred PolitiFact to the document Collins distributed. But framing Donalds’ votes as being solely against military pay is misleading.

The National Defense Authorization Act is a sweeping annual package that authorizes billions in funding and policy for the U.S. Defense Department, with several non-military provisions tacked on. Donalds voted against the legislation in the three years Collins references, but he also supported it in two other years. Each bill included military pay raises.

Donalds’ campaign told PolitiFact his mixed voting record reflects his disagreement with other provisions in the bills, not because he opposed raising military pay.

When a reporter asked Donalds about Collins’ attack, he referenced the bills he voted against during President Joe Biden’s administration, saying they included policies that were "actually hurting our military men and women." 

"In 2022, yeah I voted against the NDAA," Donalds said April 20, "because the Biden Administration had a radical policy in there that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were pushing through Congress. Of course I voted against it, and so did all conservatives in Congress."

The bill had provisions that some Republicans in Congress didn’t like, but many conservatives in both chambers ended up voting for it.

What is the National Defense Authorization Act?

The National Defense Authorization Act, which Congress has passed every year since 1961, authorizes about $800 billion in defense spending in recent years. It serves as the primary vehicle for setting military salaries, housing allowances and health benefits. It also approves funding for a wide swath of military operations, including research, training, construction and equipment procurement. 

The legislation frequently includes non-military provisions with which Democrats and Republicans disagree, prompting members of both parties to routinely vote against it. 

"It would be disingenuous to pull out one topic — like the pay raise — and say a vote against the annual defense authorization bill is a vote against the raise," said Elaine McCusker, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute who focuses on defense strategy and budget, noting that the legislation is "thousands of pages." 

How did Donalds vote on the defense package?

Donalds voted for the National Defense Authorization Act twice — in 2021 and 2024 — and against it three times in 2022, 2023 and 2025, the last one under President Donald Trump. Each bill included raises for servicemembers and became law. 

Donalds and 34 other House Republicans voted against the NDAA in 2022. His campaign characterized it as a "Biden agenda bill" with "no amendments and Ukraine funding" that "included (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs, climate initiatives and no spending offsets." 

In 2023, the NDAA provided a 5.2% military pay increase, the largest for military members in over 20 years. At the time, Donalds said he voted against the legislation because it included the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, a law passed after 9/11 that has been used to surveil American citizens. 

"There should be no clean reauthorizations of FISA in the National Defense Authorization Act," Donalds told the late Charlie Kirk on Dec. 11, 2023, a few days before the vote. "That should be removed immediately. I completely disagree with House leadership on that. That should not occur." Donalds’ campaign also pointed to anti-DEI provisions the Senate removed from the bill, and climate change-related requirements for the Pentagon.

The House passed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026 on Dec. 10, 2025, with a 312-112 vote. The bill authorized $900 billion in Pentagon programs, which included a 3.8% pay raise for service members. Donalds voted against it. (Other Florida Republicans also opposed it, Reps. Greg Steube and Anna Paulina Luna.)

The bill required the Pentagon to release additional information on U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean and expanded support for Ukraine. Donalds’ and other Republicans’ resistance to the bill involved the Ukraine aid and missing provisions banning the government from issuing central bank digital currency.

Donalds hasn’t said why he supported the NDAA bills in 2021 and 2024. However, some House Republicans praised the 2021 legislation as a "clean" defense bill from which Democratic provisions on "red flag" gun laws and initiatives to eliminate extremism in the military had been stripped out. The 2024 bill banned certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for children of service members on military health plans. 

Our ruling

Collins said Donalds voted "against three pay raises for military service members, including the largest pay raise for the military in 22 years." 

This is cherry-picked.

Donalds voted against the National Defense Authorization Act three times, and for it twice. But the legislation is multi-faceted. While it includes increasing military pay, it also authorizes billions in funding for military operations, and typically tacks on several unrelated provisions. 

Donalds said his votes reflect his disagreement with other provisions in the bills, not military pay. 

The statement contains an element of truth about Donalds’ vote record but gives the wrong impression that he opposed military pay raises.

We rate it Mostly False.

The path of the USS George H.W. Bush to the Middle East has been closely watched as President Trump demands progress in peace negotiations with Tehran.

The company adds a feature that will reveal what topics teens delve into with AI on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

If you have the right Samsung hub, you can now get Ikea's low-cost devices without needing any expensive add-ons.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for April 24, No. 578.

• Coach to attend counseling in wake of recent events

• NFL previously said it will not investigate matter

The New England Patriots have given their backing to Mike Vrabel as new photos of their head coach and NFL reporter Dianna Russini emerged on Thursday.

Russini resigned from her post at the Athletic last week after the New York Post published photos of her and Vrabel embracing and holding hands at an Arizona resort. The pair are married to different people and have said their relationship is platonic. On Wednesday, Vrabel said he will miss day three of the NFL draft on Saturday to undergo counseling in the fallout from the controversy. He made an appearance before Thursday’s draft where he said “my priorities are my family and this football team. In that order. ... My family needs me this weekend, and that’s where I’ll be.”

President Donald Trump has regularly said that drug-price discounts on his watch are greater than 100%, which isn’t mathematically possible. Now his health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is trying to back up his faulty math.

During an April 22 Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., questioned Kennedy about discounts available on the federally run TrumpRx website. She expressed doubt about Trump’s past statements about price reductions up to 600%.

Kennedy said, "President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. There’s two ways of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that's a 600% reduction."

In an Oval Office event the following day, Kennedy brought up the exchange with Warren and reiterated his statement.

"If the drug was $100 and it raised the price to $600 that would be a 600% rise," Kennedy said. "If it drops from $600 to $100, that's a 600% savings. And the President used that mathematical device to illustrate the magnitude of the theft that has been happening against our country and our people."

But well-established mathematical principles have only one way to calculate percentage change, and neither Trump nor Kennedy did it correctly.

In Kennedy’s example to Warren during the Senate Finance Committee hearing, if a drug was reduced from $600 to $10, that would represent a 98.3% decrease, not a 600% decrease. Specifically, to calculate that percentage decrease, you would subtract $10 from $600 and divide the answer ($590)  by the original price, $600. In Kennedy’s case, $590 divided by $600 equals .983, or 98.3%.

"It’s mathematically impossible" for the reduction to be higher than 100% and for the consumer to still have to pay something, said Maryclare Griffin, associate professor in the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s mathematics and statistics department.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to an inquiry for this article.

Trump has made similar claims before — citing decreases as high as 1,000% — but price cuts this large are not mathematically possible.

In August, when The Associated Press fact-checked an earlier instance of Trump making a similar statement, the White House did not explain or justify the underlying math. At the time, White House spokesman Kush Desai said, "It’s an objective fact that Americans are paying exponentially more for the same exact drugs as people in other developed countries pay, and it’s an objective fact that no other Administration has done more to rectify this unfair burden for the American people."

A 100% reduction would mean that a consumer pays nothing for a medication.

A 200% reduction would mean the pharmaceutical company pays the consumer the full price of the medicine. 

A 400% reduction would mean the company pays the consumer three times the price of the medicine. 

A 500% cut would bring the consumer four times the price, and a 600% cut would give the consumer five times the price to accept the medicine. Any of these decreases are unrealistic.

"There’s no other way to calculate percentage change, and Trump's way is not a valid way," said Brooke Nichols, a mathematical modeler and health economist at Boston University’s School of Public Health. "The maximum amount a price can decrease is by 100%. It's possible to increase a price by 600%, but it doesn't work the other way around."

Our ruling

Kennedy said, "There's two ways of calculating percentage" decreases. "If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that's a 600% reduction."

That’s not how percentage decreases work. For anything higher than a 100% decrease in price, the seller would be paying the customer to possess the drug.

In Kennedy’s example to Warren, a $590 reduction in the price of a $600 drug would represent a 98.3% decrease, not a 600% decrease.

We rate the statement Pants on Fire!

PolitiFact Staff Writer Grace Abels contributed to this report.

Travelers could see airline fares rise and fewer flights available in the coming weeks, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said in an interview with "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan."

Summary

Under President Donald Trump’s second term:

• Job growth slowed, with a total of 369,000 jobs created as of March. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%.

• Inflation worsened a bit, and gasoline prices increased after U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran. 

• Average weekly earnings of private-sector workers, adjusted for inflation, rose 1.0%.

• The economy grew 2.1% in 2025.

• Consumer sentiment has now hit a record low.

• The number of apprehensions at the U.S. border with Mexico decreased about 92%, and refugee admissions dropped by the same percentage.

• The percentage of the population lacking health insurance held steady in the first six months of 2025.

• The trade deficit dropped 14% for the most recent 12 months.

• The number of murders nationwide has continued to decline, a trend that began in 2022.

• The stock market fell dramatically after the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, then rebounded and reached new heights.

• Oil production went up 2.7%, and oil imports declined almost 6.6%. Carbon emissions increased slightly.

• About 3 million fewer people are receiving federal food assistance.

• The federal debt held by the public rose about 8.6%.

Analysis

This is the first update in our “Numbers” series for Trump’s second term. Expect additional updates to be published every three months for the remainder of his presidency, as we did for his predecessors, starting with President Barack Obama in 2012.

These are just some of the many economic and social statistics that indicate how the U.S. is faring. We will include a few other data categories, such as household income and the poverty rate, later this year when the newest government figures are available.

We only present the numbers, which, depending on the reader’s perspective, may seem positive, negative or neither. How much credit or blame the president should receive for the statistics is also in the eye of the beholder.

Jobs and Unemployment

Job growth slowed markedly, and unemployment crept up during Trump’s second term. Manufacturing jobs continued to decline despite new tariffs on imports. Job opportunities declined.

Employment — Employment continued growing during Trump’s first 14 months in office, but far more slowly than it had in the previous 14 months.

The most recent figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show an increase of only 369,000 in total nonfarm employment between January 2025 and March 2026. The total went up four times faster before, rising by 1,565,000 during the final 14 months of President Joe Biden’s administration, even after the BLS revised Biden’s figures downward in February as a result of its annual “benchmarking” study.

Much of the sluggishness under Trump is due to the president’s deliberate slashing of the federal workforce. Federal government employment has fallen by 352,000, or 11.7%, since he took office.

Looking only at the private sector — excluding federal, state and local government workers — 609,000 jobs were added during Trump’s term so far. But that’s still far less than the 1,044,000 added in the preceding 14 months.

Last August, after the BLS reported only 73,000 jobs had been gained in July, Trump called the figures “rigged” and “phony” and fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer. But the numbers have only grown worse since then. The gain for July has been revised downward to 64,000, and the BLS reports that the economy actually lost jobs in August, October, December and February.

Manufacturing Jobs — A year ago, Trump predicted a flood of new factory jobs as he announced sweeping new tariffs on what he called “Liberation Day,” April 2, 2025.

“Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country,” he said. But so far that hasn’t happened. The economy has continued to lose manufacturing jobs.

During Trump’s first 14 months, the loss was 82,000, following a loss of 186,000 in the preceding 14 months.

Labor Force Participation — The labor force participation rate declined a bit in Trump’s second term, dropping from 62.6% in January 2025 to 61.9% as of March.

The rate is the portion of the population over age 16 that is working or seeking work. It generally has been in a long decline as the population ages and people retire.

Unemployment — The unemployment rate has gone up slightly since Trump took office. It was 4.0% in January 2025, and most recently was 4.3% in March.

But that is still well below the historical norm. The median rate for all months since 1948 is 5.5%.

Job Openings — The number of job openings declined by 549,000 under Trump, to 6.9 million as of the last day of February. It’s a drop of 7.4%.

Meanwhile, the number of people officially listed as unemployed and seeking work rose by 374,000, to 7.2 million as of March. When Trump took office there were more openings than job-seekers. Now it’s the opposite.

Wages and Inflation

CPI — Trump campaigned on a promise to reduce inflation, but since he took office it has worsened a bit.

In the 12 months before Trump took office, the Consumer Price Index, the most commonly cited measure of inflation, rose 3.0%. And in the most recent BLS report, the 12-month increase was 3.3%.

Over Trump’s first 14 months in office, the CPI went up 3.6%, pushed up most recently by the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, which have sent up gasoline prices in particular.

Fuel prices — always volatile — had been a bright spot for Trump before. As of our previous “Trump’s Numbers” report in January, the national average price for regular gasoline at the pump had declined to $2.78 a gallon, down from $3.11 the week he was sworn in for his second term. But as of the week ending April 20, it was up to $4.04, according to the Energy Information Administration. That’s an increase of 29.9% since Trump’s inauguration.

Inflation is still higher than the Federal Reserve would like, and it’s going in the wrong direction as measured by the Fed’s preferred metric, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index, compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The central bank’s target is a 2% annual increase in the PCE. When Trump took office, the 12-month increase in the PCE was 2.5%. But the most recent report put the 12-month increase at 2.8% in February. And that does not reflect the effects of the war on Iran, which began the last day of February. (PCE figures take longer to collect than the CPI, but the Fed prefers the measure because it is more comprehensive and adjusts more quickly to consumers’ buying habits.)

Wages — Wage increases accelerated under Trump, even adjusted for worsening inflation.

The average weekly earnings of all private-sector workers, adjusted for inflation, rose 1.0% during Trump’s first 14 months. They were rising when he took office, but had only gone up 0.4% in the preceding 14 months.

Those figures include professionals, executives and supervisory employees, whose pay is normally higher. But rank-and-file wage earners are seeing gains just as rapid as those of their bosses. For private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees, real average earnings also rose 1.2% under Trump through March, after a 0.8% rise in the preceding 14-month period.

Economic Growth

The U.S. economy resembled a roller coaster last year – with weak first and fourth quarters but strong second and third quarters. 

The end result: a respectable, but underachieving 2.1% growth for the year.  

“Despite a solid 2.1% expansion for the full year, 2025 will likely be remembered as the year that ‘could have been,’” EY-Parthenon Chief Economist Gregory Daco said in an April 9 analysis. “A rare confluence of supply shocks — tariffs, tighter immigration and elevated policy uncertainty — constrained activity, leaving growth below what strong organic productivity gains and rapid AI adoption would have otherwise supported.”

The nation’s real gross domestic product declined at an annual rate of 0.6% in the first quarter and expanded by only 0.5% in the fourth quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In between, the economy grew at the robust annual rates of 3.8% in the second quarter and 4.4% in the third quarter.  

For the full year, the U.S. finished with the weakest GDP since 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic wrecked the economy. (See the chart below.)

As for this year, economic experts project that the U.S. economy will continue to grow – but they warn that projections carry what S&P Global called “a high degree of unpredictability” because of the Middle East conflict. 

In an economic outlook released March 25, S&P Global Ratings projected 2.2% real GDP growth for the U.S. this year, assuming that the war will result in only a “temporary, supply-driven oil shock that recovers inside the year.” 

Similarly, Michael Wolf, a senior manager and global economist at Deloitte Touche, wrote in late March that Deloitte economists project U.S. growth at 2.2% – while noting that “conditions remain highly fluid.”

Daco, who is also the president of the National Association for Business Economics, said in a press release that an NABE survey of economic forecasters conducted from March 5 to March 13 found that most of those surveyed expect “recent geopolitical developments to reduce 2026 GDP growth.” 

As of April 21, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow model was projecting growth of 1.2% for the first quarter. The BEA first quarter estimate will be released on April 30.

Consumer Sentiment

When Trump took office, consumers surveyed by the University of Michigan expressed concern that his plan to increase tariffs would increase prices, and that turned out to be true. Consumers now have an added inflationary concern: the joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran that started on Feb. 28. Over a nearly two-month period, the war has driven up the cost of oil, gasoline, and other goods and services.  

Consumer sentiment, which already has been stubbornly low under Trump, has now hit a record low. 

The university’s preliminary Index of Consumer Sentiment for April was 47.6 – the lowest since at least 1978, according to the university’s online database. 

“Consumer sentiment sank about 11% this month, extending a decline that began with the start of the Iran conflict,” Joanne W. Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers, said in a press release issued this month. “Demographic groups across age, income, and political party all posted setbacks in sentiment, as did every component of the index, reflecting the widespread nature of this month’s fall.”

April’s preliminary number, which could change when it is finalized on April 24, is 24.1 points lower than it was in January 2025, when Trump took the oath of office for a second time. 

In its most recent Consumer Confidence Survey, the Conference Board — a research organization with more than 2,000 member companies — reported that consumer confidence “improved modestly” in March for the second straight month. “Nonetheless, the Index has been on a general downward trend since 2021,” Dana M. Peterson, the board’s chief economist, said in a March 31 press release. 

The Conference Board’s April report is scheduled to be released April 28. 

Home Prices & Homeownership 

Homeownership — Homeowner rates have remained largely unchanged under Trump.

The most recent homeownership rate, which the Census Bureau measures as the percentage of “occupied housing units that are owner-occupied,” was 65.7% in the fourth quarter of 2025 — identical to the rate during Biden’s last quarter in office. 

Last year’s fourth quarter rate was up slightly from the previous quarter, but the difference was not statistically meaningful, according to a February press release from the bureau.

The homeownership rate remained largely unchanged last year even though the Federal Reserve cut interest rates three times and mortgage rates declined. 

Days before Trump took office, the average 30-year fixed rate mortgage was 7.04% for the week ending Jan. 16, 2025, according to Freddie Mac. As of the week ending April 16, the average 30-year fixed rate mortgage was 6.30%.

In a Dec. 12 article, Realtor.com Senior Economic Research Analyst Hannah Jones said homeownership rates continue to be affected by “[p]ersistent affordability challenges and a shortage of reasonably priced homes.”

Home Prices – Home prices have remained fairly stable under Trump.

The national median price of an existing, single-family home sold in March was $412,400, according to the National Association of Realtors. That was only 3.6% higher than it was in January 2025, when Biden left office and the median price was $398,100. 

Year-over-year, the median sales price in March was only 1.25% higher – a record high for March, despite a decline in home sales for the month, NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a press release. Existing single-family home sales were down 3.5% from February and 0.3% year-over-year, the NAR data show.

“March home sales remained sluggish and below last year’s pace,” Yun said. “Lower consumer confidence and softer job growth continue to hold back buyers.”

“Because inventory remains limited,” he added, “the median home price rose to a new record high for the month of March.”

Existing home sales and prices for April are scheduled for release on May 11.

Immigration

Illegal immigration continues to be historically low since Trump took office for his second term.

While it’s impossible to know how many people successfully cross illegally into the U.S., for the purposes of our Numbers stories going back to Obama, we have calculated the change in border apprehensions as a proxy to measure illegal border crossings. Over the last 12 months under Trump, there were 85,218 immigrants apprehended attempting to illegally cross the southern border. That’s down nearly 92% from the last 12 months under Biden.

Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said that one of the biggest drivers of the dramatic drop in illegal immigration was a new policy, which Trump invoked on his first day in office, that “effectively … people were no longer able to apply for asylum” at the border. That was one of the major drivers of immigration during the Biden administration, with hundreds of thousands of migrants crossing the border and “sort of waiting to be intercepted and asking for asylum.”

“So now, without access to that kind of protection, that certainly impacted the number of people who are trying to cross the border,” Putzel-Kavanaugh told us.

In addition, Trump abolished the so-called “catch and release” policy, such that people apprehended at the border are processed for expedited removal or placed in detention, rather than some, such as those seeking asylum, being released into the U.S. pending an immigration hearing.

That is what Trump was apparently referring to in a speech at a Turning Point USA event on April 17, when he said he had taken an “open border and created the most secure border in U.S. history, one of the most secure borders anywhere in the world with zero illegal aliens coming into our country in the past 11 months. Zero.”

But, Putzel-Kavanaugh said, because “people are just immediately processed for removal,” it’s also possible things are returning to the “standard migration pattern” where people are seeking to evade detection.

One other major factor in the decrease in illegal immigration to the U.S. has been the Trump administration’s focus on interior enforcement and deportations, which, Putzel-Kavanaugh told us, “likely has somewhat of a chilling factor for people who maybe were thinking about coming to the US.”

According to publicly available Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, the average daily population of those detained by ICE during the first three months of 2026 is up nearly 300% compared with the last three months under Biden. The Trump administration is also arresting a greater percentage of people who have neither criminal convictions nor pending criminal charges. In the last three months of the Biden administration, 65% of those detained by ICE had criminal convictions and 29% had pending criminal charges. Just 6% had neither. By contrast, in the first three months of 2026, 30% of those detained by ICE had criminal convictions and 31% had pending charges. The percentage of those detained by ICE with neither criminal convictions nor pending charges was 39%.

Refugees 

In Trump’s second term, refugee admissions have all but stopped – except for South Africa’s white minority Afrikaners. 

As we wrote last year, Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office that called for an indefinite suspension of all refugee admissions until the program “aligns with the interests of the United States.” 

But Trump issued an order on Feb. 7, 2025, making an exception for Afrikaners. When asked about the exception, the president told reporters there was “a genocide that’s taking place” against white farmers in the country – which, as we wrote, distorts the facts.  

Since February 2025, the U.S. admitted only 5,005 refugees in Trump’s first full 14 months in office – including 4,838 refugees from South Africa, according to the State Department’s monthly refugee admissions reports.  

That’s an average of 357.5 per month, or 92.5% fewer than the monthly average of 4,741 per month under Biden.

For fiscal year 2026, which began Oct. 1, 2025, Trump capped refugee admissions at just 7,500. In the first six months of the current fiscal year, the Trump administration has resettled 4,499 refugees and all but three came from South Africa. 

Health Insurance

Data on how health insurance coverage has changed under Trump’s second term is slowly being released. In late January, the National Health Interview Survey published a preliminary report on the first six months of 2025 that found no change in the percentage of the population lacking health insurance, compared with the full-year report for 2024.

For January to June 2025, 8.2% of the U.S. population was uninsured, the same figure as the prior year. In raw numbers, 27.5 million people lacked insurance in the first half of 2025, a figure that “was not significantly different” from the 27.2 million who lacked insurance in 2024, the report said. The NHIS measures the uninsured at the time people are interviewed.

The NHIS, a project of the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, used to release quarterly preliminary reports, but as of last year, it said it would switch to biannual reports only. A full-year report for 2025 is scheduled to be published in June.

Annual reports from the Census Bureau, typically released in September, measure those who were uninsured for the entire calendar year. The report for 2024, the latest available, similarly put the uninsured rate at 8%.

The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act is expected to increase the number of people who lack health insurance, but the impact will occur over several years. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the uninsured would increase by 10 million people over 10 years, with most of the increase due to the law’s changes to Medicaid. For 2026, the rise was estimated at 1.3 million people. (See the link to estimated changes in people without health insurance.)

Trade

The latest figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis show that the U.S. trade deficit in goods and services may be headed for a decrease in 2026 after rising in 2025.

During the most recent 12 months ending in February, the U.S. imported about $775.6 billion more in goods and services than it exported. That trade gap was down 14.15% from the annual trade deficit of $903.5 billion in 2024.

The trade deficit rose to almost $911.7 billion in 2025, which was influenced by larger than usual monthly deficits in January, February and March of last year. As we have written, those three monthly deficits — all above $100 billion — were the result of U.S. importers stocking up on goods to get ahead of a number of tariffs on imported products that Trump had said he planned to implement.

Trump claimed that his tariffs would help reduce, or even eliminate, the trade deficit, which had increased by 34.1% under Biden.

Crime

Violent crime has declined. The latest data comes from several groups that monitor crime statistics. The FBI’s annual nationwide report for 2025 won’t be released until the fall.

AH Datalytics, an independent criminal justice data analysis group, documents an 11% drop in the number of violent crimes from 2024 to 2025, based on data from 445 law enforcement agencies across the country covering nearly a third of the U.S. population. Murders declined 17.9%, and robberies were down 19.2%. The number of property crimes decreased 12.2%. The number of violent and property crimes continued to go down in January and February, compared with those months last year.

AH Datalytics’ charts on the longer-term trend show an increase in the number of murders starting in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a decline in the numbers since 2022.

The Major Cities Chiefs Association, an organization representing police executives in large cities, similarly found a 19.3% decrease in the number of homicides and a 19.8% drop in the number of robberies in 2025, compared with 2024. That’s based on data from 67 law enforcement agencies.

The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonprofit think tank, found similar percentage decreases among 35 U.S. cities from 2024 to 2025. Its year-end report, released in January, said that when the FBI publishes nationwide data later this year, “there is a strong possibility that homicides in 2025 will drop to about 4.0 per 100,000 residents. That would be the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900, and would mark the largest single-year percentage drop in the homicide rate on record.” The existing historic low is a rate of 4.4 per 100,000 population in 2014.

“The overall reduction in crime, especially homicide, is welcome news,” Ernesto Lopez, lead author of the report and a CCJ senior research specialist, said in a press release. “While the big story here is that homicide saw the largest one-year increase [in 2020] and the largest one-year decrease in a short period of time, we should not forget that homicides had been steadily dropping since the late 2000s. It is possible that these rates reflect a longer-term downward trend punctuated by periods of elevated homicides.”

CCJ also published comments from several criminal justice experts on what might be driving the recent decline in homicides. “Researchers and practitioners have pointed to a range of possible contributors, including changes in criminal justice policy and practice, shifts in routine activities and social behavior, economic conditions, technology use, and local violence prevention efforts,” the group said.

Corporate Profits

Corporate profits have set records every year since 2015. The streak continued last year under Trump, but at a slower rate. 

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that after-tax corporate profits hit a record $3.51 trillion in 2025, but that was just 0.6% higher than the previous year. (See the chart below.)

Under Biden, the annual average growth in profits was 31% in 2021, 3.8% in 2022, 7.8% in 2023 and 7.9% in 2024, according to BEA data. 

The estimate of first quarter profits for this year will be released May 28.

Stock Market

It’s been a turbulent ride for the stock market since we wrote the first “Trump’s Numbers” piece of this term on Jan. 20. Stock prices fell dramatically after the U.S. and Israel began airstrikes on Iran starting in late February, and Iran retaliated by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, an important waterway for international trade. But with subsequent peace talks amid a fragile ceasefire, the stock market has rebounded and again reached new heights, just as it had under Biden.

The S&P 500, which is made up of 500 large-cap companies, closed at roughly 19% higher on April 22 than it was three days before Trump’s inauguration in January 2025.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, made up of 30 large corporations, was up 13.8% over that same period.

Meanwhile, the Nasdaq composite index, comprising more than 3,000 companies, many in the technology sector, surged by almost 25.6% between Jan. 17, 2025, and April 22.

The gains under Trump have come after substantial increases during the Biden administration, when the S&P rose 57.8%, the Dow Jones went up 40.6%, and the Nasdaq increased by almost half.

Oil Production and Imports

Crude oil production in the U.S. averaged roughly 13.6 million barrels per day during Trump’s most recent 12 months in office (ending in January), according to Energy Information Administration data published in late March. That was 2.7% higher than the average daily amount of crude oil produced in 2024.

The 13.6 million barrels produced each day in 2025 set a new U.S. record, exceeding the previous high of more than 13.2 million barrels produced daily in 2024. The EIA said that even with “less rig activity and fewer wells” in 2025, “efficiency improvements that we saw in 2024 continued through 2025 and resulted in a slight increase in crude oil production.”

However, in its Short-Term Energy Outlook for April, the EIA reported that it expects production to dip slightly in 2026 — to 13.5 million barrels per day — before increasing again in 2027.

Meanwhile, crude oil imports are down under Trump — dropping to about 6.15 million barrels imported on average each day in his first full year in office of his second term. In that time, imports fell almost 6.6% from the daily average in 2024. But the U.S. is expected to remain a net importer of crude oil in 2026, according to the EIA.

Carbon Emissions

The latest EIA data still show a slight increase in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption under Trump.

In his first 11 months (ending in December), there were more than 4.4 billion metric tons of emissions from the use of coal, natural gas and petroleum-based products. That was 2% more than the over 4.3 billion metric tons that were emitted from consuming those energy sources over the same stretch in 2024.

However, as of April, the EIA’s outlook was that energy-related CO2 emissions would fall in 2026, by about 2.4%, to roughly 4.8 billion metric tons — down from just over 4.9 billion in 2025. The 2026 total, if the EIA estimate holds, would be almost exactly the same as the amount of CO2 emitted in 2024. The agency said the expected drop this year is “due primarily to expected declines in coal consumption” at electricity-generating power plants.

Food Stamps

Early data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that the number of people accessing benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, has declined under Trump.

As of December, the most recent month for which preliminary USDA figures are available, about 39.5 million people were participating in SNAP. The number has dropped further since our last update in January and is down by more than 3.3 million, or about 7.7%, since Trump took office in January 2025.

The decline in SNAP participants was expected because of the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which changed eligibility requirements for nutrition assistance and is estimated to reduce federal spending on the program. For example, the law extends work requirements to include “able-bodied adults without dependents” aged 55 to 64, who were previously exempt.

The CBO estimated in August that provisions in the law “will reduce participation in SNAP by roughly 2.4 million people in an average month over the 2025-2034 period.”

Debt and Deficits

Debt — Since our last update, the public debt, which excludes money the government owes itself, has risen. It increased by more than $505 billion to over $31.3 trillion, as of April 21. The public debt is up about 8.6% under Trump. It increased by one-third on Biden’s watch.

Deficits — The debt continues to increase mostly due to large annual budget deficits. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the deficit so far for fiscal year 2026 is lower than it was at this point in fiscal 2025, when the annual deficit was almost $1.8 trillion.

Through the first half of the current fiscal year (October to March), the deficit was about $1.2 trillion, or “$139 billion less than the deficit recorded during the same period last fiscal year,” the CBO reported in its latest Monthly Budget Review. But as of February, the CBO projected that the deficit for FY 2026 would rise to nearly $1.9 trillion for the year.

Judiciary Appointments

Supreme Court — There hasn’t been a vacancy on the Supreme Court during Trump’s second term. At this point in his presidency, Biden had won confirmation for one justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, which occurred on April 7, 2022. 

Court of Appeals — As of April 22, six of Trump’s nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals had been approved. At the same point in his term, Biden had won confirmation for 15.

District Court — Trump also has had 31 nominees confirmed to be District Court judges, while 43 were confirmed by this time in Biden’s tenure.

By this point, two U.S. Court of Federal Claims judges also were confirmed under Biden. None have been confirmed so far under Trump, and there are no such positions currently available.

As of April 22, there were no vacancies for Court of Appeals judges, 33 for District Court judges with nine nominees pending, and one vacancy for the international trade court with a single nominee pending.

Sources

We provide links to the sources for these statistics throughout the article.

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

The post Trump’s Numbers, April 2026 Update appeared first on FactCheck.org.

OpenAI released its new GPT-5.5 model today, which the company calls its "smartest and most intuitive to use model yet, and the next step toward a new way of getting work done on a computer." The Verge reports: OpenAI just released GPT-5.4 last month, but says that the new GPT-5.5 "excels" at tasks like writing and debugging code, doing research online, making spreadsheets and documents, and doing that work across different tools. "Instead of carefully managing every step, you can give GPT-5.5 a messy, multi-part task and trust it to plan, use tools, check its work, navigate through ambiguity, and keep going," according to OpenAI. The company also notes that GPT-5.5 will have its "strongest set of safeguards to date" and can use "significantly fewer" tokens to complete tasks in Codex. GPT-5.5 is rolling out on Thursday for Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise ChatGPT tiers and Codex, with GPT-5.5 Pro coming to Pro, Business, and Enterprise users.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Trump administration started accepting applications in December for foreigners willing to pay $1 million for the right to live in the U.S.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announces the launch of a criminal investigation into OpenAI in connection with the 2025 Florida State University shooting.

Let’s say you woke up this morning with a super sweet business plan: 

• Step 1: Start with your absolutely scrumptious recipe for key lime pie.
• Step 2: Find a way to churn them out by the dozens.
• Step 3: Ride a wave of grateful fans to fame, glory … and profit.

That was how Jessica and Lee Williamson envisioned their future. The Milton couple knew they had the perfect pie and were sure it would inspire fandom everywhere. But it wasn’t until they turned to the Delaware Division of Small Business that they found the missing ingredient for next-level success.

The state is supporting dozens of Delaware entrepreneurs through a reinvigorated grant program called EDGE 2.0, which is providing crucial infusions of cash and coaching to lift small startups toward success. 

In the case of Coastal Key Lime Pie, which received an earlier grant from the program, that meant a $50,000 jolt to their budget, and a fresh path toward their dreams. A new crust-making machine and a refrigerated van let them supersize their footprint. Close support from the division’s small business experts kept them on track toward growth.

Today, Jessica and Lee are well on their way to regional acclaim, and even dream of delivering creamy goodness up and down the coast.

“It would have taken so much longer to grow without the EDGE grant,” Jessica Williamson said. “It propelled our business in a way that’s unimaginable.”

Short for “Encouraging Development, Growth and Expansion,” the EDGE program stands as the flagship funding initiative of the state’s Small Business Division. In its seven years, more than 100 startups have been helped, many in the high-tech sector that Delaware is working to grow.

“The best investment the state can make is in the people already doing the work,” said Christopher “CJ” Bell, Director of the Delaware Division of Small Business. “When we give a good business the resources to get even better, the whole state benefits from their success.”

The program is designed to give early stage businesses an extra boost through funding and planning assistance during their first five years, a time when many small businesses are at more risk of failure. To qualify, businesses must be less than seven years old, have 15 or fewer full-time employees, and have less than $700,000 in assets.

But most importantly, they must be ready to compete and driven to win. Once grant proposals are done, the division begins several rounds of evaluations based on set criteria, and selects  the most promising ideas from the pool of hopefuls. Twice each year, those finalists gather for a showdown called a “pitch competition,” where judges pepper presenters with questions and decide the winners. 

The stakes are high: Each competition offers $400,000 in total grant money for entrepreneurs like the Williamsons. For businesses in the resource-heavy STEM and high-tech sector, $750,000 is available. Judges can pick as many winners as they want; the pot of money is then divided based on needs.

“We have raised the total grant money by 50-60% this year, giving the program much more potential for having a maximum impact,” said Joe Zilcosky, one of the division’s regional business managers who coach and encourage applicants. “It’s also now easier to apply, and all finalists and awardees will get in-kind services and support to help them grow.”

Grant money can be used for purchasing equipment, improving building infrastructure, obtaining rental space, or contracting for website design or a marketing campaign to help acquire more customers.

Since the program’s launch in 2019, the division has awarded $9.1 million to 127 small businesses. More than half (53%) of the 127 awardees have been either woman, minority, or veteran-owned small businesses. Another 16% fall into more than one of those categories.

The first step in the grant process is as easy as going to the EDGE 2.0 homepage. State specialists are ready to guide hopefuls through the technicalities of grant requirements; Project plans are honed and roadblocks are avoided, all with one-on-one guidance. 

Ultimately, to get the grant, businesses must show how much they deserve it – and how committed they are to succeed. Winners also must be ready to put some of their own cash on the line: The program’s 3:1 match formula means they must pony up $1 for every $3 the state gives.

EDGE grants are just the beginning

In many ways, the “prize” is just part of the package. Long after the pitches have been made, participants can access services like memberships to networking organizations, along with expedited pathways to the division’s other funding programs.

“Our services don’t begin with EDGE, and they don’t end with EDGE,” Zilcosky said. “After the competition’s over, we still want to help you, and we have many tools in the toolbox.”

Applicants are also encouraged to try again if they swing and miss on their first “pitch” – that’s what Jessica and Lee Williamson did, fine-tuning their plan after their first attempt, then prevailing on their next try. And, win or lose, everyone gains invaluable business advice. “So even if you don’t win the money, hopefully you still win,” said Zilcosky, who says about 95% of grant recipients are still in business.

Ultimately, the program serves to foster and encourage Delaware’s most innovative ideas, creating pathways to the future. One EDGE winner that’s leaning hard into that future is Sindri Materials Corp., which was created with the idea of producing a new carbon material – just one atom thick – that can enhance the speed and effectiveness of pharmaceutical research. 

With the grant money in hand, Sindri has been able to fine-tune production of its graphene material and is now approaching the point of bringing it to the market – and starting to earn revenue.

Today, they feel far more comfortable about their 5-year trajectory and are even beginning to look beyond.

“Sindri Materials is a great example of our focus on supporting cutting-edge ideas that could revolutionize an industry, and exponentially grow jobs in Delaware,” Zilcosky said.

Along with crucial capital, the state’s grant also gave Sindri’s team a welcome boost of confidence, and a feeling they had an ally who cared. “Anytime I needed to jump on a call with him, Joe was right there,” said Sindri CEO Christopher DiMarco. “It was clear to us that companies like ours matter to the state. Innovation matters to this state.”

Now, he and fellow co-founders Brian Checchio and David DiMarco ponder a new challenge: How to build on that momentum, converting their first beachhead market into commercial sales while expanding the platform’s capabilities for broader, higher-impact applications — work made possible in part by the EDGE grant. But the team feels tested and tougher today, especially after surviving the scrutiny of the EDGE judges.

“The judges were tough, but they asked thoughtful questions that made us sharpen how we communicated the business,” said Chris DiMarco, who fretted he had muffed his big pitch due to technical glitches. “I told Joe, I thought I blew it. Then, two weeks later, when he told me we had won, I was jumping up and down. I didn’t believe it.”

That feeling of sweet joy seems likely to spread, especially as Williamsons’ pies begin filling shops far and wide. Their creations are now available at more than 30 area shops and restaurants throughout Delaware and Eastern Maryland. The momentum is so powerful, and their passion is so deep, that Coastal’s journey seems bound to reach far beyond Delmarva.

“It really is an adventure, not knowing what the future is, but sensing we have something that can create that future,” Lee Williamson said. “At first, everyone thought we were crazy. Now, our three boys are like, ‘Now we have a job!’ ”

The post Small businesses find sweet success with EDGE grants appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Former federal prosecutors think the indictment struggles to articulate the elements of the alleged crimes in the case, a problem that could lead to its full or partial dismissal.

National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report further says crash prevention system didn’t generate alert

A firefighter whose truck collided with an Air Canada jet last month on a runway at New York’s LaGuardia airport, killing both pilots, heard an air traffic controller warn “stop, stop, stop” but didn’t know who it was for, federal investigators said Thursday.

The National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report on the 22 March collision that a crash prevention system for air traffic controllers didn’t generate an audio or visual alert, and lights on the runway that act as a stop light for crossing traffic were on until about three seconds before the collision.

To host hundreds of thousands of football fans, Pittsburgh moved schools online and is warning of traffic mayhem. Will the NFL’s spotlight be worth it?

Meta is reportedly cutting about 10% of its workforce, or roughly 8,000 jobs, while closing thousands of open roles it had intended to fill. "We're doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we're making," said Janelle Gale, Meta's chief people officer. The company had almost 79,000 employees at the start of the year. Quartz reports: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has poured resources into building out AI capabilities, directing spending toward model development, chatbot products, and the engineering talent to support them. Meta set its 2026 capital expenditure guidance at $115 billion to $135 billion, almost double the $72 billion it spent in 2025. Employees have been encouraged to use AI agents internally for tasks such as writing code. The early disclosure, Gale explained, was prompted by the fact that information about the cuts had already made its way into press reports before the company was ready to announce. "I know this is unwelcome news and confirming this puts everyone in an uneasy state, but we feel this is the best path forward, given the circumstances," she wrote. According to the memo, severance for affected workers in the United States will cover 18 months of COBRA health insurance premiums, along with a base pay component of 16 weeks that increases by two weeks for each year of service. Departing employees will have access to job placement assistance and, where applicable, help navigating immigration status. Packages outside the U.S. will vary by country. Meta cut between 10% and 15% of its Reality Labs workforce in January, shut down several VR game studios, and shed about 700 positions across at least five divisions in March.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Micro RGB TV evo range supports over a billion colors and is available in sizes over 75 inches.

Meta plans to lay off roughly 10% of its workforce as the technology giant steps up its spending on artificial intelligence.

Force says it is ‘confident there was no offence’ and condemns ‘shameful’ behaviour by protesters

The investigation into reports of a rape outside a church in Epsom that led to widespread public disorder will close as police are “confident there was no offence”.

Surrey police received a report on Saturday 11 April that a woman had been raped near a church in the early hours of the morning after leaving Labyrinth nightclub in Epsom.

• Four seats are put on sale for $2,299,998.85 each

• Fifa doesn’t set offerings, but some go above $100,000

• Governing body takes 15% from both buyer and seller

Fifa’s resale site has four tickets on sale for the World Cup final for just under $2.3m each.

The $2,299,998.85 seats for the 19 July match at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, are located behind a goal in the lower deck of the arena.

interest earnings on a $15,000 money market account can still be significant. Here's what savers need to know now.

The app brings lots of live channels and on-demand to the VR world.

I’m not sure many OSNews readers still use Ubuntu as their operating system of choice, and from the release announcement of today’s Ubuntu 26.04 it’s clear why that’s the case.

Resolute Raccoon builds on the resilience-focused improvements introduced in interim releases, with TPM-backed full-disk encryption, improved support for application permission prompting, Livepatch updates for Arm-based servers, and Rust-based utilities for enhanced memory safety. This release brings native support for industry-leading AI/ML toolkits like NVIDIA CUDA and AMD ROCm, making Ubuntu 26.04 LTS the ideal platform for AI development and production workloads. 

↫ Canonical press release

It’s obvious where Canonical’s focus lies with Ubuntu, and us desktop people who don’t like “AI” aren’t it. On top of all the “AI” nonsense, this new version comes with all the latest versions of the various open source components that make up a Linux distribution, as well as a slew of Rust-based replacements for core CLI tools, like sudo-rs, uutils coreutils, and more.

All the derivative release of Ubuntu, like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and others, will also be updated over the coming days. If you’re already running any of these, updating won’t be a surprise to you.

From budget-friendly options to premium powerhouses, these are our top-tested Android smartwatches that deliver the right balance of features, performance, and style.

Tensions around US negotiations may reflect mistake of assassinating more pragmatic and experienced figures

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has claimed that the infighting between moderates and hardliners in Iran’s leadership is so intense that Iranians have “no idea who their leader is”, but many experts questioned his analysis, saying, given the mass assassinations of senior commanders, the country had shown remarkable institutional cohesion.

Trump’s allegations of “CRAZY” splits in the Iranian leadership – the second outing for this argument in three days – is remarkable since he has previously said either he has little knowledge of the new Iranian leadership or that there has already been regime change.

Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny and Drake are among the top artists.

The 32 Degrees Heated Socks can pose a burn risk due to the combination of heat, friction, moisture and pressure created during athletic activities.

Justice department has already identified 384 foreign-born people whose US citizenship it wants to revoke

The Trump administration is reportedly pushing the justice department to pursue hundreds of denaturalization cases, in which Americans born outside of the US are stripped of their citizenship.

The justice department has already identified 384 foreign-born US citizens, whose citizenship it wants to revoke and will begin the process in the coming weeks, according to the New York Times.

Gold prices are still sitting near record highs, but there are smart ways to invest with $100 or less today.

Thought a $40,000 a home equity loan was affordable in 2025? Here's how much cheaper the monthly payments are now.

Hope Not Hate campaign identifies election hopefuls calling for a ‘white Britain’ and complaining of ‘kowtowing to the black community’

A Reform UK candidate who called for a “white Britain” and said Keir Starmer should be shot is among a number of contenders fuelling doubts about the party’s claim to have tightened up its vetting.

The past comments of Linda McFarlane and other political hopefuls have been unearthed ahead of the 7 May elections, including one who complained about “constant kowtowing to the black community” and others who endorsed the far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The French government agency that handles the issuing and management of citizens' identity documents, including national IDs, passports, and immigration documents, confirmed Wednesday that it experienced a data breach. In an announcement, the Agence Nationale des Titres Securises (ANTS) said the data stolen in the breach could include full names, dates and places of birth, mailing and email addresses, and phone numbers on an undisclosed number of citizens. ANTS said the investigation to determine how the breach happened and its impact is ongoing, and people whose data was affected are being notified. ANTS, which said it detected the attack on April 15, did not specify how many people were affected by the breach. But some reporting suggests millions may have had some of their personal information stolen. According to Bleeping Computer, a hacker has advertised the stolen data on a hacking forum, claiming to have a database with 19 million records. The hacker's forum post referenced the same kind of stolen information as mentioned in ANTS' announcement and was published before ANTS publicly disclosed the breach on April 20.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mandated release of files was marred by missed deadlines, leaked victims’ information and excessive redactions

• US politics live – latest updates

The US Department of Justice’s office of the inspector general (OIG) announced on Thursday that it is launching an audit of the justice department’s compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

In a news release, the deputy inspector general William M Blier, who the statement said is performing the duties of the inspector general, said the “preliminary objective” of the internal inquiry “is to evaluate the [justice department’s] processes for identifying, redacting, and releasing records in its possession as required by the act”.

Smarting from the humiliation of a report published at The Atlantic about his time in office, FBI Director Kash Patel did what conservatives have done over and over in the age of Trump: He sued for defamation. 

The Atlantic’s story detailed allegations about Patel’s mismanagement of the office and FBI staffers’ concerns that his behavior has become borderline dangerous. According to the magazine’s reporting, staffers have observed that the director frequently drinks to the point of intoxication and has been unreachable behind closed doors multiple times, at one point necessitating agents breaking down a door. In his lawsuit, Patel said that the allegations are demonstrably false. 

Patel’s case — which names the publication and the writer as defendants and demands $250 million in damages — doesn’t appear very strong; it’s unlikely he’ll win in court. But a legal victory isn’t necessarily the goal. Such lawsuits apply financial pressure and ensure newsrooms think twice before publishing critical articles in the future.

Related

Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Sues The Intercept Over Russian Mercenary Report

For all the modern right-wing movement’s bleating about its commitment to free speech, in practice they’re anything but, with a demonstrated penchant for using the legal system as a cudgel against people who say things they don’t like. Known as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPP, they are a tool of the powerful — and have multiple levels of use.

Most immediately, SLAPP allows plaintiffs the potential to muzzle their critics, who will be less likely to launch attacks against someone who has already proven litigious. This applies not only to the defendant, whether it’s an individual or an institution, but also to others like them who will think twice rather than risk a protracted (and expensive) legal battle.

Typically, the more deep-pocketed someone, or their backers, are, the more they can bleed out defendants by dragging on court cases for as long as possible, racking up legal bills that will have to be paid. Most publishers and newsrooms have lawyers on retainer or in-house, but their legal insurance deductibles are still high, potentially running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per case. 

Even if these anti-free speech crusaders don’t win a judgment, they have a good chance of draining their opponents’ bank accounts — and breaking their spirits. 

Federal action is is sorely needed to make sure the use of SLAPP doesn’t spiral further out of control. Many states, including New York and Minnesota, have anti-SLAPP laws on the books, but their application in federal courts remains unsettled. Patel filed his suit in D.C. federal court, where the appellate court says the anti-SLAAP statute does not apply. 

Universal application of these laws is needed so the powerful can’t turn to federal courts for meritless filings, and some lawmakers, like Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., have introduced legislation to that end. So far, however, those bills have not made it to law. 

Patel is far from the only conservative figure to deploy the courts as a weapon against his critics, and this isn’t even his first shot at it; he has an ongoing 2019 lawsuit against Politico, for that outlet’s reporting on his time with the National Security Council during Donald Trump’s first term, and another defamation action, against former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi for comments on MS NOW, was dismissed on Tuesday.

Related

The Real Danger of ABC News Settling Its Lawsuit With Donald Trump

Trump’s manipulation of the legal system to punish detractors predates his time in politics, but it’s gone into overdrive since his first term. The president has filed multiple defamation suits against members of the media and their organizations, including $475 million against CNN in 2022 (which was dismissed in 2023); the Pulitzer Prize Board for an award he objected to in 2022 (ongoing); journalist Bob Woodward and his publisher Simon & Schuster in 2023 (dismissed); ABC News in 2024 (settled for $15 million); CBS parent Paramount in 2024 (settled for $16 million); the Wall Street Journal in 2025 (dismissed), the New York Times in 2025 for $15 billion (ongoing), the BBC in 2025 for $10 billion (ongoing); and others. To be clear, this is not an exhaustive list. 

Trump and Patel are two of the better known conservative figures attacking free speech via the courts, but it’s a mainstay tactic in MAGA world. Laura Loomer, an Islamophobic off-and-on ally of Trump, sued late-night personality Bill Maher over comments he made about her relationship with the president (the case was thrown out on Wednesday evening). In 2013, Trump sued Maher for breach of contract after the HBO pundit promised $5 million to charity if the then-real estate magnate could prove his mother was not an orangutan. (Trump withdrew the case.) 

Elon Musk, the tech billionaire with close ties to the White House, used his X social media platform to file a suit against Media Matters for America over its reporting on ad content running alongside antisemitic posts on the site. And David Sacks, another tech billionaire who worked as Trump’s crypto and AI czar, threatened the New York Times over its reporting on his conflicts of interest in a public legal letter last December. 

Closer to home, I’m currently being sued, along with my publisher, Hachette, for more than $1 million by conservative pundit Matt Taibbi over my book, “Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left,” which delves into his ideological shift to the right. And the editor of this piece you’re reading now, Katherine Krueger, was sued for $100 million alongside her former employer Splinter by 2016 Trump spokesperson Jason Miller for a story about a court filing that alleged he drugged a woman with an abortion pill. Miller refuted the allegation, but that case was thrown out on summary judgment because it accurately reported what was in the court filing; mine is ongoing.

In some circumstances, as Trump found after he was elected to a second term in 2024, SLAPP lawsuits can succeed, irrespective of the strength or weakness of the claim. ABC News and Paramount settled with Trump in what are widely regarded as payoffs to a powerful figure who can control their corporate future. Corporations have made the calculation: Better to get on his good side than risk four years of retribution, and, after all, what’s a few million dollars compared to the benefits of having the world’s most powerful person looking kindly on you?

But for the right wing, SLAPP suits also serve to make an ideological point. Whether or not Patel expects to win a $250 million judgment, a central claim in his lawsuit is that his word is enough to shut down speech. 

Because he told The Atlantic the claims in their article weren’t true, they shouldn’t have published it, the complaint argues: “Defendants published the Article with actual malice, despite being expressly warned, hours before publication, that the central allegations were categorically false.” The objections of a powerful man should be enough to avoid bad press, this line of reasoning goes; publishing anything to the contrary is wrong. 

That’s the animating principle behind the right-wing’s relationship with the media. If they disagree with it or find it embarrassing, you shouldn’t publish it; if you disobey, you must be punished. 

It wasn’t until Trump — and decades of ideological capture of the courts — that there was the potential to regularly use the legal system as a weapon against critics. Until there are First Amendment protections against SLAPP, we can expect the powerful to continue dragging their detractors to court. 

The post Kash Patel Is Using MAGA’s Favorite Tool to Muzzle the Free Press appeared first on The Intercept.

Elon Musk admits owners with outdated self-driving hardware who purchased the option will require a major retrofit effort.

Police allegedly found images on iCloud account of singer accused of killing 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez

A Los Angeles prosecutor said that the singer D4vd, who was charged this week in the killing of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, was in possession of a “significant amount of child pornography”.

Police allegedly found the images on the iCloud account of the 21-year-old singer, whose legal name is David Anthony Burke.

Ireland and Spain will also not broadcast Eurovision after decision to boycott live event over Israel’s participation

National broadcasters in Ireland, Spain and Slovenia will not air the Eurovision song contest this year, after they decided to boycott the event over Israel’s participation.

Having announced it would not submit a national entry, the Slovenian broadcaster RTV confirmed on Thursday it would implement a broadcasting blackout of the world’s largest live music event and instead show a series of films about Palestine.

Seven-day-old Poppy Hope Lomas died after complications during home birth encouraged by midwives at Barnet hospital

A mother who lost her baby a week after an “unsafe” home birth that went against medical advice was failed by the NHS, an inquest has found.

Poppy Hope Lomas was seven days old when she died at University College hospital in London on 26 October 2022 after complications during a home birth that, according to her mother, was encouraged by midwives at Barnet hospital.

A group of seven tourists, including three children, became trapped on a cliff when the tide came in during a morning walk on an Australian beach.

Exclusive: Officials warn department will also lose access to database of 26,000 verified incidents due to cuts

The Foreign Office unit tracking potential breaches of international law by Israel in Gaza and more recently Lebanon has been closed because of cuts within the department, the Guardian can reveal.

The decision to shut the international humanitarian law cell follows a review by Olly Robbins, the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office dismissed last week by the prime minister over the Peter Mandelson scandal.

Native integration of Q-CTRL’s Fire Opal software with IonQ’s hardware will accelerate real-world applications without specialized quantum expertise

LOS ANGELES, April 23, 2026 — Q-CTRL and IonQ today announced the native integration of Q-CTRL’s Fire Opal software into IonQ’s quantum processors to maximize their quantum performance.

Quantum optimization is a compelling candidate for near-term quantum acceleration across problems in logistics, finance, energy, and more. For the typical customer, even an expert in quantum computing, extracting high-quality solutions from real hardware is highly challenging; many parameters and techniques must be manually tuned or adjusted by the user, mandating a depth and breadth of specialized skills few end users possess.

Q-CTRL and IonQ are reducing the barriers to achieving true commercial value from the most advanced quantum processors, natively integrating Fire Opal’s Optimization Solver directly into IonQ Quantum Cloud as a single, fully configured, easy-to-use function. Now any end user can focus on their optimization problem, allowing Fire Opal to automatically handle all aspects of execution on real hardware to achieve the most valuable results.

IonQ Quantum Cloud users can access Fire Opal’s Optimization Solver directly on IonQ’s Forte and Forte-Enterprise devices, the company’s highest-performing, commercially available quantum computers.

“At Q-CTRL, we’re focused on providing the infrastructure software that makes it possible for end users to achieve true positive ROI from the most advanced quantum computers available,” said Alex Shih, VP of Product at Q-CTRL. “The capability to solve world-changing problems is right there inside of these extraordinary machines. We’re thrilled to partner with IonQ in empowering customers with the quantum-control infrastructure software that brings this power within reach.”

The value of the Fire Opal optimization solver coupled to IonQ Forte is captured in a telecommunications industry case study, delivering the correct solution to reduce network interference out of 68 billion possibilities.

In addition to this native optimization solver on the IonQ Quantum Cloud, Fire Opal’s performance-management capabilities for integrating error suppression into an arbitrary quantum circuit remain available for IonQ hardware via Amazon Braket. These expanded access points now enable users to achieve meaningful industrial outcomes and reliable results without specialized expertise in quantum hardware.

Q-CTRL has an unrivaled track record of creating modular, enterprise-grade infrastructure software, integrated across a range of quantum computing architectures, from trapped ions and semiconductor spins to superconducting qubits. Algorithm performance can be boosted by up to 1,000x, making Fire Opal an extraordinarily powerful and versatile tool for enterprise end users seeking reliable performance enhancement across their varied applications.

“In our experience, IonQ has been a leading hardware platform, and we are excited by what the native integration of Fire Opal error suppression and optimization can unlock,” said Dr. David Benoit, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Physics and Astrochemistry at the University of Hull. “We expect the Fire Opal optimization solver will significantly streamline our workflow by abstracting away from the specific quantum circuits and unlocking latent hardware performance, allowing us to focus fully on solving the core problem rather than managing the complexities of implementation.”

To use Fire Opal on IonQ Quantum Cloud, visit Q-CTRL’s website to request access: https://q-ctrl.com/fire-opal/ionq

About IonQ

IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) is the world’s leading quantum platform and merchant supplier – delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the IonQ Tempo, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems that have been helping customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, AstraZeneca, and NVIDIA achieve 20x performance results 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.

About Q-CTRL

Q-CTRL is a global leader in quantum infrastructure software that makes quantum technology useful. Q-CTRL delivers field-deployable capabilities for navigation in GPS-denied environments based on software-ruggedized quantum sensors, with collaborators including Lockheed Martin and Airbus. Their efforts in leveraging software to solve the most challenging problems in making quantum technologies useful carry over to quantum computing, where Q-CTRL partners with industry pioneers like IBM, Rigetti, and AWS to enhance quantum computer performance through AI-driven control solutions. The company’s breakthroughs have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and recognized by TIME Magazine as transforming both commercial and defense operations. Founded
in 2017 by Professor Michael J. Biercuk, Q-CTRL operates globally from offices in Sydney, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Huntsville, Berlin, and Oxford.

Source: Q-CTRL

The post IonQ and Q-CTRL Partner to Unlock Quantum Optimization with Fire Opal on Forte Quantum Processors appeared first on HPCwire.

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Battle of the blockades may still have more time to run as the US and Iran try to assert control over the strait of Hormuz

Donald Trump’s decision to extend the naval blockade of Iran indefinitely may do nothing to reduce world oil prices – but it could amount to a recognition that further US military escalation in breach of the nominal ceasefire comes with greater risk against a regime disinclined to surrender.

In theory, Trump’s military options are increasing. A third US carrier strike group, the George HW Bush, is due to arrive in the Middle East within days after rounding South Africa. A second taskforce of 2,500 US marines is sailing from the Pacific and is due to arrive by the end of April.

The deal comes with the right to acquire Cursor for $60 billion.

Proposal at heart of offer made during a 30-country two-day meeting jointly organised by France

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Britain is prepared to deploy a squadron of RAF Typhoons based in Qatar to patrol over the strait of Hormuz as part of a multinational mission to keep open the strategic waterway once the Iran war comes to an end.

The UK military also offered to deploy mine-hunting drones and specialist divers to help clear the strait mined by Iran – but no decision has been made on whether HMS Dragon or another warship would also be deployed.

Taskforce report examines how effects of slavery and Jim Crow in Fulton county continue to harm Black residents

A Georgia taskforce has released a landmark report that details the lasting impact of slavery and its afterlives in Fulton county.

The report, spanning more than 600 pages, is based on original research by the Fulton county reparations taskforce and a review of primary source documents. It is the first – of its kind in the nation, according to county leaders and researchers. Rather than examining the impact of slavery and racism at the federal or state level, the harm report investigated the role of the county government.

Audible, Uber Eats and more can now connect to Anthropic's AI chatbot.

New Google Cloud Managed Lustre capabilities with DDN EXAScaler improves AI training, inference, and high-performance computing, delivering scale, performance, and economics

LAS VEGAS, April 23, 2026 — DDN has shared new innovations involving Google Cloud Managed Lustre, unveiled at Google Cloud Next 2026. Built on DDN’s proven Lustre expertise, EXAScaler, and delivered in collaboration with Google Cloud, these advancements redefine what’s possible for AI training, inference, and high-performance computing (HPC) in the cloud.

With performance scaling to 10 terabytes per second, Google Cloud Managed Lustre delivers improved throughput, elasticity, and cost efficiency—enabling enterprises to run the world’s most demanding AI and HPC workloads. The launch underscores DDN’s vision to power the full AI lifecycle—from training and fine-tuning to inference and large-scale simulation—through a unified, high-performance data platform.

“This is not just a product milestone—it’s a market-shaping moment,” said Alex Bouzari, CEO at DDN. “We are delivering one of the fastest-growing, highest-performance managed Lustre services in the industry, purpose-built for the realities of modern AI at scale. This announcement reinforces DDN’s leadership in AI data platforms and our shared commitment to helping customers innovate faster, at lower cost, and with greater confidence.”

Built for the Next Generation of AI

Google Cloud Managed Lustre provides a POSIX-compliant, parallel file system that delivers high throughput and low latency. Customers across industries—including AI, financial services, robotics, autonomous systems, and advanced research—are rapidly adopting the platform to power:

• Large-scale LLM training, fine-tuning, and checkpointing
• High-throughput AI inference, RAG, and KV-cache acceleration
• Financial modeling, life sciences and HPC workloads
• Machine vision, multimodal AI, and physical simulations

A key innovation unveiled at Google Cloud Next is the use of Managed Lustre as a shared KV-cache for AI inference, dramatically improving performance and economics. By leveraging Lustre’s ultra-low latency and high aggregate throughput, customers can avoid redundant computation and scale inference across clusters with virtually unlimited shared cache capacity.

In benchmark testing, this approach delivered:

• improved total inference throughput by 75%
• reduced the mean time to first token by greater than 40% compared to using KV Cache in host memory alone

The result is faster, more responsive AI applications—and significantly lower cost of inference at scale.

A Collaboration Driving Cloud-Scale Performance

For the offering, DDN combines long-standing Lustre expertise and extreme-scale data systems with Google Cloud’s elastic infrastructure, innovations in compute and Hyperdisk, global reach, and access to cutting-edge accelerators, including TPUs.

“Managed Lustre enables us to scale AI model training for AFEELA Intelligent Drive by 3x compared to other Google Cloud solutions,” said Motoi Kataoka, Senior Manager, AI & Data Analytics Platform, Sony Honda Mobility Inc.

New capabilities announced at Google Cloud Next also include a single, dynamic hot and cold tier, designed to deliver high performance for hot data with dramatically improved economics—eliminating the complexity, performance cliffs, and SKU sprawl common in competing tiered storage solutions.

Setting the Pace for the Industry

With rapid customer adoption, explosive capacity growth, and performance milestones, the combination of DDN and Google Cloud Managed Lustre is setting a new benchmark for AI and HPC in the cloud.

“This is what happens when deep infrastructure expertise meets cloud-scale innovation,” said Kirill Tropin, Group Product Manager at Google Cloud. “Our partnership with DDN enables customers to run their most demanding AI workloads with the performance, scale, and simplicity they need—today and into the future.”

About DDN

DDN is the world’s leading AI and data intelligence company, powering the world’s most demanding AI workloads by keeping GPUs fed, efficient, and productive—at massive scale—so organizations can train, checkpoint, and infer faster with less footprint and power while achieving tremendous ROI from their AI investments. From hyperscalers and next-gen cloud builders to enterprises, governments, and research institutions, DDN delivers proven data intelligence at exabyte scale across hundreds of thousands of GPUs—so customers can deploy AI with confidence, accelerate time-to-value, and realize outsized returns. Discover more at ddn.com.

Source: DDN

The post DDN Expands Google Cloud Managed Lustre for AI and HPC Workloads appeared first on HPCwire.

A direct conversion from pounds to dollars would make the new two-panel folding phone seriously pricey in the US. However, that's not the whole picture.

Thinking about taking a DIY approach to bankruptcy? Make sure you understand the risks before you file.

Ursula von der Leyen hails ‘good news’ after Hungary’s lifting of vetoes allows leaders to sign off on agreements

EU leaders have welcomed the end of diplomatic deadlock over a long-awaited €90bn (£78bn) loan for Ukraine, after the bloc completed the agreement along with a 20th sanctions package against Russia.

After weeks of delay, the EU signed off on the loan on Thursday, in time for a summit in Cyprus that began in the evening and will include talks over a dinner with the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

OpenAI says its latest model is meant to help run your computer.

In a recent town hall meeting reported by Bloomberg (paywalled), Apple CEO Tim Cook named the troubled 2012 launch of Apple Maps as his "first really big mistake" in the role. "The product wasn't ready, and we thought it was because we were testing more of local kind of stuff," Cook told staff. MacRumors reports: Reflecting on the debacle, Cook said it was "valuable," noting that he expressed regret to users at the time and suggested they use competing navigation apps instead. "We apologized for it, and we said, 'Go use these other apps. They're better than ours.' And that was some humble pie," Cook said. "But it was the right thing for our users. And so it's an example of keeping the user at the center of the decisions that we made." Cook added: "Now we've got the best map app on the planet. We learned about persistence, and we did exactly the right thing having made the mistake."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hawaii's Kilauea volcano erupted again early Thursday, marking its 45th episode since December 2024.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 23, 2026 — Oklo Inc., an advanced nuclear technology company, today announced an agreement with NVIDIA and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), to advance critical nuclear infrastructure, AI-enabled research, and nuclear fuel R&D at Los Alamos.

The agreement brings together advanced nuclear reactors, AI models, and national laboratory expertise to support critical nuclear infrastructure for the federal government’s Genesis Mission.

The collaboration is intended to combine advanced nuclear power, AI, digital twins, modeling, and simulation to support critical infrastructure development and accelerate the deployment of nuclear energy. By aligning Oklo’s advanced sodium-fast-reactor platform, NVIDIA AI infrastructure, and LANL’s world-leading expertise in materials science and nuclear fuels, the parties aim to lay the groundwork for a new class of mission-critical, high-assurance energy.

“This agreement brings together reactor deployment, high-performance compute, and world-class fuel and materials science expertise” said Oklo co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte. “We believe this will advance our plutonium-bearing fuel work on Oklo’s Pluto reactor, which was selected under DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program, and help bring resilient power in support of the Genesis Mission.”

Initial focus areas include:

• Physics- and chemistry-based AI models, including trained inference models to support fuel validation and R&D for plutonium-bearing fuels
• Materials science and fabrication R&D for plutonium-bearing fuels
• Power generation, grid reliability, redundancy and stabilization studies in support of nuclear-powered AI factories at LANL

Projects under the agreement include integrated full-stack solutions to support nuclear powered AI factories; AI development, including physics and chemistry trained AI models to support nuclear fuel R&D; grid stabilization, reliability, and redundancy studies; materials science efforts focused on plutonium-bearing fuel; and proof of concept work related to the development of a nuclear powered AI factory.

About Oklo Inc.

Oklo Inc. (NYSE: OKLO) is developing fast fission power plants to deliver clean, reliable, affordable energy at global scale; establishing a domestic supply chain for critical isotopes; and advancing nuclear fuel recycling to convert used nuclear fuel into clean energy. Oklo was the first to receive a site use permit from the U.S. Department of Energy for a commercial advanced fission plant, was awarded fuel from Idaho National Laboratory, and submitted the first custom combined license application for an advanced reactor to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Oklo is also developing advanced fuel recycling technologies in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. National Laboratories.

Source: Oklo Inc.

The post Oklo, NVIDIA, and LANL Advance Nuclear Fuel R&D and AI Modeling for Los Alamos Projects appeared first on HPCwire.

More than 200,000 have signed petitions urging the government to break contracts amid concerns about the company’s ‘supervillain’ manifesto

More than 200,000 people have called on ministers to break contracts with Palantir in an apparent groundswell of public concern about the US tech company’s role in the NHS, police, military and councils.

Two petitions have attracted 229,000 signatures, one calling for the government to end all public contracts with the company, the software of which is used by Donald Trump’s ICE immigration enforcement programme and the Israeli military, and another urging the health secretary, Wes Streeting, to cancel its £330m patient data contract with the NHS.

Prosecutors say 43 people indicted on charges including murder, kidnapping, extortion and drug trafficking

More than two dozen members and associates of the Mexican mafia were arrested during an early morning crackdown in southern California, federal authorities said on Thursday.

The FBI and other federal and local agencies executed search and arrest warrants at locations mostly in Orange county, south of Los Angeles, according to the US attorney’s office.

The Justice Department's internal watchdog said it will audit the department's compliance with the law that required the release of the Epstein files.

Forecasting service raises alarm over data from Paris airport used to settle Polymarket wagers on temperature

French police are investigating alleged tampering with national weather forecasting service equipment after a series of unusual temperature readings coincided with suspicious winning bets made on Polymarket.

Data from a Météo-France weather station at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport was used to settle bets between online gamblers on what the temperature would be in Paris for March and the first weeks of April.

Managing Editor, CBS News

Technology minister tells Commons ‘de-identified’ information from UK Biobank advertised for sale on Alibaba

The confidential health records of half a million British volunteers have been offered for sale on Chinese website Alibaba, the UK government has confirmed.

The “de-identified” data, belonging to participants in the UK Biobank project, was found for sale on three separate listings last week. Ian Murray, the technology minister, told the Commons on Thursday that, after working with the Chinese government and Alibaba, the records had now been removed. It is not believed any sales were made.

Tech can scale cyber-attacks and defences alike, raising questions about private power, public risk and the future of a shared internet

Anthropic announced its latest AI model, Claude Mythos, this month but said it would not be released publicly, because it turns computers into crime scenes. The company claimed that it could find previously unknown “zero-day” flaws, exploit them and, in principle, link these weaknesses in order to take over major operating systems and web browsers. Mythos did so autonomously, writing code and obtaining privileges. The implications are significant. It’s like a burglar being able to target any building, get inside, unlock every door and empty every safe.

The Silicon Valley company has so far named 40 organisations as partners under Project Glasswing to help mount a defence – asking them to “patch” vulnerabilities before hackers get a chance to exploit them. All are American, sitting at the heart of the US-led digital system. Anthropic shared Mythos with only Britain outside the US, allowing the AI Security Institute to test frontier models. After seeing it up close, British ministers warned: AI is about to make cyber-attacks much easier and faster, and most businesses are not ready. Banks in Europe are likely to test it next.

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.

Senior Vice President, Booking, CBS News and Stations and CBS Media Ventures

Man from North Carolina arrested at Florida hotel with a handgun and about 200 rounds of ammo, authorities say

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Authorities say a man suspected of planning a mass shooting at a large New Orleans festival was arrested at a Florida hotel with a handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

The event was not named, but the New Orleans jazz and heritage festival, commonly known as JazzFest, runs from Thursday through 3 May. The gathering celebrates Louisiana’s music, food and culture, and attracted about 460,000 people last year, organizers said.

Eurail, which sells passes, says data being ‘offered for sale on dark web’ after December breach affecting 300,000 people

Holidaymakers across Europe are facing the stress and expense of getting new passports after their personal data was posted on the dark web after a hack of the Interrail company Eurail.

Personal data, including passport numbers, names, phone numbers, email and home addresses and dates of birth of more than 300,000 European travellers was accessed in December. But this week Eurail revealed to customers that “data copied during the security incident has been offered for sale on the dark web and a sample dataset has been published on Telegram”.

Vietnam-born Cao stood twice for federal office in Virginia and has called for upgrading of fleet to face new threats

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The acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, who steps into the role after the sudden departure of John Phelan, is a veteran naval officer and former refugee who earned a position with the Trump administration with campaigns for political office in Virginia marked by religious intolerance.

When Cao was first appointed, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, set him to modernizing base infrastructure and quality-of-life issues for sailors and marines, and to raise recruiting standards. Cao has also been a point person in the administration on permitting vaccine refusal and eliminating “DEI” policies in the military.

Guest column: For centuries, humans looked to seers and astrologers to determine fate. Today, we look to algorithms, and the loss of agency is the same.

Here's how to watch Timothée Chalamet's Oscar-nominated performance.

Microsoft plans to offer voluntary buyouts for the first time. According to CNBC, "about 7% of U.S. employees are eligible," with the program being "available to U.S. workers at the senior director level and below whose years of employment and age add up to 70 or higher." Further details will be provided on May 7. From the report: Last year Microsoft removed some costs through multiple rounds of layoffs. As of June 2025, the company had 228,000 employees. "Our hope is that this program gives those eligible the choice to take that next step on their own terms, with generous company support," Amy Coleman, Microsoft's executive vice president and chief people officer, wrote in a memo viewed by CNBC. Additionally, Microsoft is adjusting the way it doles out stock to employees for annual rewards. The company will no longer make managers tie stock directly to cash bonuses. This way, "managers have more flexibility to meaningfully recognize high performance," Coleman wrote. The company is also simplifying the review process for managers, so they can choose from five pay options for employees instead of nine.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Enrolling in a debt relief program can impact the debt collection process, and not always in the way you'd expect.

John Phelan firing caused by poor relationship with Pete Hegseth and slow movement on shipbuilding, sources say

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The Trump administration fired its top naval official on Wednesday in a move unrelated to the ongoing naval blockade of Iran’s strait of Hormuz, but instead over over an internal dispute about shipbuilding.

The Pentagon confirmed that John Phelan, who ran a private investment fund in Florida and was a Donald Trump donor, had been ousted as the navy secretary. His departure – the first of any service secretary in the Trump administration – came in the same week that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized two container ships in the strait of Hormuz, claiming maritime violations and transferring them to Iranian shores.

Lebanese PM calls attack that killed Amal Khalil a ‘war crime’, with rescuers attempting to free her also targeted

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Israel’s killing of a prominent Lebanese journalist in a double-tap strike has been greeted with international outrage as Lebanon’s prime minister described the attack as a “war crime”.

Amal Khalil, 43, who worked for al-Akhbar newspaper, was buried on Thursday. She was killed in what colleagues described as a sustained attack by Israeli forces, with rescuers attempting to dig her out of the rubble of a building also targeted and prevented from providing life-saving assistance.

Jim Taiclet spoke in earnings call as company expands contracts with the US government amid the Iran war

Lockheed Martin’s CEO has called the Trump administration a “golden opportunity” for the company as it expands its contracting work for the federal government amid the conflict in the Middle East.

In an earnings call on Thursday covering the first quarter of 2026, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet told investors that the company is well positioned “based on more available resources for us”.

A working research prototype designed to connect quantum systems from different vendors, in all major encoding modalities, at room temperature, over standard telecom fiber

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 23, 2026 — Cisco today announced the Cisco Universal Quantum Switch, a critical milestone in quantum networking that addresses one of the most fundamental barriers to building a quantum network. As a working research prototype, it is the latest proof point in Cisco’s accelerating full-stack quantum networking program, built on years of foundational research, real-world demonstrations, and a growing ecosystem of strategic collaborations.

Quantum computers encode information in different ways, and until now, no switch could accept and translate between all major encoding modalities without destroying the quantum information in the process. The Cisco Universal Quantum Switch is designed to address this challenge for the first time, routing quantum information while preserving it at room temperature, on existing telecom fiber, with a Cisco-patented conversion engine that translates between encoding modalities at input and output.

“Reaching this milestone is a pivotal moment for our quantum program and a testament to the transformative potential of quantum networking,” said Vijoy Pandey, SVP/GM of Outshift, Cisco’s Emerging Technologies and Incubation Group. “We’ve long recognized that connecting quantum systems is the key to achieving true scalability, and now we’ve taken a critical step toward making that vision a reality. While this is a significant achievement, it’s just the beginning. The road ahead is long, yet the impact of what we are building—and what is still to come—will be nothing short of profound.”

Cisco Is Building the Network Layer for the Quantum Era

Today’s quantum computers are powerful but limited, operating at hundreds of qubits when real-world applications in healthcare, financial services, and aerospace will need millions to achieve unheard of speeds and technological breakthroughs. Cisco believes networking and connectivity are central to bridging that gap. The quantum future will not be built by any one company or any one technology. It will be built by connecting them all.

Imagine connecting billions of people and tens of billions of devices with direct cables. It would be unmanageable. The internet became possible because classical switches could connect all of those endpoints through a shared, scalable network. The Cisco Universal Quantum Switch does the same thing for quantum. When two quantum computers need to share information, it accepts the signal in whatever modality it arrives, translates it into a common language for routing, and delivers it in the format the receiving system needs, without losing any quantum information along the way.

This is made possible by a Cisco-patented conversion engine at the heart of the quantum switch. The output modality can match the input or be an entirely different one, enabling the quantum switch to connect and translate between quantum systems that were never designed to talk to each other, a critical capability for building quantum networks that work across different vendors and technologies.

The quantum switch is designed to support all major quantum encoding modalities used to carry information:

• Polarization (the orientation of light waves)
• Time-Bin (the timing of light pulses)
• Frequency-Bin (the color or frequency of light)
• Path (the physical or spatial path)

To date, the quantum switch has been experimentally validated with polarization encoding. Support for time-bin and frequency-bin is built into the design and represents the next step in Cisco’s ongoing validation process.

Proof-of-Concept Experiments and Results

The Cisco Universal Quantum Switch was tested by Cisco researchers using Cisco’s own entanglement source and single-photon detectors. In these experiments, the switch demonstrated that quantum information can be routed and converted across systems quickly, accurately, and efficiently, without destroying it in the process.

Key findings include:

• Quantum information preserved through conversion: Less than 4% degradation in quantum state fidelity and entanglement, maintaining the coherence that quantum networks require to function.
• Switching at the speed quantum networks demand: Sub nano-second electro-optic switching, reconfiguring connections in as little as 1 nanosecond
• Energy efficient: Consumes less than 1 milliwatt of power

Powering the Quantum Network of the Future

Quantum networking is in a nascent state. There is no established infrastructure connecting quantum systems, and most can only communicate with other systems that encode information the same way they do.

The Cisco Universal Quantum Switch is an entirely new approach:

• Unique in its nature: Current switch technology is limited to one encoding type. The Cisco Universal Quantum Switch is designed to support all major modalities, with a built-in conversion capability that is Cisco-patented and available in no other product on the market today.
• Room-temperature operation: Unlike many quantum hardware components that require cryogenic cooling, Cisco’s Universal Quantum Switch operates at room temperature. This eliminates the need for specialized cooling infrastructure, reducing both deployment complexity and cost.
• Works with existing infrastructure: It operates at standard telecom frequencies over the same fiber that carries internet traffic today, requiring no specialized equipment.
• Connects systems that could not previously communicate: Organizations are no longer locked into a single vendor ecosystem. It enables quantum devices from different manufacturers to interoperate, protecting existing investments and enabling best-of-breed quantum environments.
• Designed for the full stack: The Cisco Universal Quantum Switch is built as part of Cisco’s evolving end-to-end architecture for a distributed quantum network, spanning hardware, software, and application layers.

Cisco’s Vision for What Comes Next

For more than four decades, Cisco has built infrastructure that connects the world. The Cisco Universal Quantum Switch is the latest milestone in that journey, reflecting Cisco’s conviction that the road to practical quantum computing will be built via a distributed network of interconnected quantum devices in a matter of years, not decades.

The Cisco Universal Quantum Switch is one part of a broader quantum networking portfolio that includes Cisco’s quantum network entanglement chip, which generates the entangled photons that quantum networks rely on to transmit information, and Cisco’s industry-first network-aware Quantum Compiler, which orchestrates how quantum algorithms are distributed and executed across multiple quantum processors. All three were developed from the ground up at Cisco’s dedicated quantum labs in Santa Monica. Together, along with applications like Quantum Sync and Quantum Alert, these innovations contribute to Cisco’s vision for a full quantum network stack, from the hardware that generates and routes quantum information, to the software that manages it, to the applications that put it to work. Cisco is also advancing this vision through strategic collaborations with IBM, Qunnect, Atom Computing and more.

More from HPCwire

• Atom Computing Partners with Cisco to Advance Scalable, Networked, and Distributed Quantum Computing
• Qunnect and Cisco Demonstrate Metro-Scale, High-Speed Quantum Entanglement Swapping Over Commercial Fiber
• IBM and Cisco Detail Effort to Connect Future Fault-Tolerant Quantum Systems
• Cisco Launches Quantum Lab and Debuts Entanglement Chip for Scalable Networking

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that is revolutionizing the way organizations connect and protect in the AI era. For more than 40 years, Cisco has securely connected the world. With its industry leading AI-powered solutions and services, Cisco enables its customers, partners and communities to unlock innovation, enhance productivity, and strengthen digital resilience. With purpose at its core, Cisco remains committed to creating a more connected and inclusive future for all.

Source: Cisco

The post Cisco Introduces Universal Quantum Switch, Advancing the Path to a Quantum Network appeared first on HPCwire.

Inquiry began in March after report on security arrangements involving FBI director’s girlfriend, NYT says

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The FBI began investigating a New York Times reporter after the newspaper published a story raising concerns about the security arrangements surrounding the girlfriend of Kash Patel, the FBI director, the Times has reported.

According to reporting from the Times on Wednesday, the inquiry into Elizabeth Williamson, the reporter, began in March following an article she reported alleging that Patel used FBI resources to provide protection and transportation for his girlfriend, the country singer Alexis Wilkins.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: New York is suing Coinbase and Gemini, two of the newest players in the prediction market industry, arguing that the companies' unregulated and unlicensed platforms are illegal gambling operations. Attorney General Letitia James' lawsuit, filed Tuesday in state court in Manhattan, seeks to bar the companies' platforms from operating in the state unless and until they obtain licenses from the state Gaming Commission. "Gambling by another name is still gambling, and it is not exempt from regulation under our state laws and Constitution," James said in a statement. "Gemini and Coinbase's so-called prediction markets are just illegal gambling operations, exposing young people to addictive platforms that lack the necessary guardrails." Both companies began as cryptocurrency trading platforms before branching into the prediction space, which has been dominated by Kalshi and Polymarket. [...] New York's lawsuit alleges that the Coinbase and Gemini are seeking "to avoid the legal and financial consequences" of the state's close regulation of gambling "by offering what is quintessentially wagering under the guise of offering 'event contracts' on a 'prediction market.'" By operating without licenses, the lawsuit says, Coinbase's and Gemini's prediction market businesses aren't paying the same taxes as licensed casinos and mobile sportsbooks, which are taxed by the state at a rate of approximately 51% of gross revenues. In addition, the lawsuit says, Coinbase and Gemini allow users as young as 18, while state law prohibits wagering by anyone under 21.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Is the shock of the US-Iran war helping Europe come together? Independent Thinking podcast Audio sseth.drupal@c… 23 April 2026

EU expansion, energy shocks, and uneasy alliances: will the conflict in the Gulf – and other crises – force a more unified European strategy?

This week’s episode comes from the Delphi Economic Forum in Greece, where host Bronwen Maddox is joined by Grégoire Roos, director of our Europe, Russia and Eurasia programmes. 

As the fallout from the US-Israel war on Iran ripples through global markets, Europe finds itself under renewed pressure. 

Recorded on location amid the activity and discussions of the forum, they explore how Europe is responding to an increasingly unpredictable United States, reconsidering its own economic and security priorities, and navigating its relationship with Russia. Is this a moment of fragmentation, or the beginning of a more coherent European stance?

About Independent Thinking

Independent Thinking is a weekly international affairs podcast hosted by our director Bronwen Maddox, in conversation with leading policymakers, journalists, and Chatham House experts providing insight on the latest international issues.

More ways to listen: Apple podcasts and Spotify.

A journalists' union said rescuers were prevented from accessing the destroyed building where reporter Amal Khalil was left trapped beneath rubble.

The order places FDA-approved products containing marijuana and state-regulated medical marijuana products at a lower drug classification.

Pope Leo XIV shed his previous image as he denounced war in the Middle East and responded assertively to criticism by President Donald Trump.

Italian officials expressed no interest in a substitution that would give Italy’s national team a charitable berth after failing to qualify for the tournament.

Picking the right headphones for the right situation is key. For everyday use, exercising and lengthy listening time, three is the perfect number for a headphones collection. Here are my picks.

Bill clears 50–48 vote to boost ICE and CBP funding as Democrats oppose measure and shutdown continues

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Senate Republicans on Thursday approved a plan to fund Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants for the remainder of his term and pave the way for an end to the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The budget resolution adopted along a near party line vote in the early-morning hours sets the stage for Congress to craft legislation allocating as much as $140bn to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), two agencies at the forefront of Trump’s mass deportation agenda that have been without funding since mid-February, when the DHS shutdown began.

Want to skip investing and deposit $20,000 into a top savings account instead? Here's how much you'd earn if you do.

President Trump intends to nominate David Cummins to lead the Transportation Security Administration, according to a person familiar with the decision.

A combination of heat, dry air and strong winds are fueling "extreme" wildfire risks for millions across the middle of the country.

Firm went bust in February amid fallout from the scandal over Mandelson’s links to Jeffrey Epstein

Little says in March she had a meeting when she asked to see the Foreign Office’s documentation about the decision to grant Mandelson vetting. She said she was asking because this was documentation covered by the humble address. She said was told that “that information would not be forthcoming”.

In the middle of March, I have a meeting with Sir Olly and a senior member of his team, and this is after the point that I’ve been told that this summary document exists.

I specifically ask to see this document and any decision-making audit trail around those judgments at the time. It was made clear to me that that information would not be forthcoming.

I took the very unusual judgment that I should directly request the information from UK Security Vetting.

And I did that because I go back to my responsibilities, to discharge the humble address, which is a responsibility that is unique to me and I take very seriously.

Commentary: One big product frontier still looms for Apple. Will smart glasses have their AirPods moment at last?

New lawsuit accuses JetBlue of using consumers' browser activity and other personal data to set airfares.

After Keir Starmer’s statement to the Commons and gripping evidence from the sacked top civil servant Olly Robbins, Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey talk about how the story of Peter Mandelson’s vetting for his job as UK ambassador to the US, which was first broken by the Guardian last Thursday, has unfolded this week

Move comes after Hungary and Slovakia dropped opposition following reopening of the Druzhba oil pipeline

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Kyiv will seek to receive the first tranche of the €90bn European Union loan by the end of May, or early June.

“This is strengthening of our army,” he told reporters in a WhatsApp chat, reported by Reuters.

Wildfires burning across the south-eastern US intensified on Wednesday in parts of south-east Georgia, where 50 homes were destroyed, and across north-east Florida, forcing evacuations and school closures in some communities.

The Georgia forestry commission issued its first mandatory burn ban in the state’s history, effective across 91 counties in the lower half of the state, because of worsening drought conditions and rising wildfire activity.

Some of the biggest blazes are reported to be along Georgia’s coast and around Jacksonville, Florida. They have been exacerbated by a long drought, low humidity and strong winds in the area

• Wildfires burning across Georgia and Florida destroy homes and force evacuations

Adam Hall, of Tyne and Wear, will serve at least 23 years in prison, with victims describing lasting trauma

A “callous, calculating sexual predator” who raped and deliberately infected young, vulnerable men with HIV has been jailed for life and told he must serve at least 23 years.

Adam Hall, 43, of Washington, Tyne and Wear, is the second man in the UK ever to be found guilty of intentionally setting out to spread the virus.

VC-led round will be used to scale platform and team, building on a foundation of hardware-agnostic quantum software leadership

BOSTON, April 23, 2026 — Zapata Quantum, a pioneer in quantum computing application and algorithm development, today announced the completion of an oversubscribed $15 million financing led by Triatomic Capital, a leading technology venture capital firm, with participation from other strategic investors. The capital raise marks the final milestone of a successful year-long restructuring effort and positions Zapata to accelerate its role in advancing the application layer of quantum computing.

“We’ve completed our restructuring and emerged stronger than ever,” said Sumit Kapur, Chief Executive Officer of Zapata Quantum. “This financing is a strong vote of confidence from long-term, fundamentals-oriented investors and positions us to scale at a critical moment as quantum computing transitions from technical progress to transformational real-world value creation.”

“Zapata stands out for its commitment to technical rigor, deep portfolio of foundational IP, and proven experience helping enterprises advance in their quantum journey,” said Jeff Huber, General Partner of Triatomic Capital. “We’re proud to support Zapata’s growth as it continues to demonstrate leadership in translating quantum advantage into quantum utility.”

Leadership in Quantum Value Creation

Since emerging from Harvard’s Quantum Computing Lab in 2017, Zapata has led foundational work advancing real-world quantum applications across Fortune 500 enterprises and the public sector, spanning high-value domains including cryptography, pharmaceuticals, finance, materials discovery, and defense.

A recent example of Zapata’s work highlighting quantum-enabled drug discovery was selected as one of Nature Biotechnology’s top 10 scientific papers of 2025, and featured as the journal’s December 2025 cover. The study, co-authored with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, University of Toronto, and Insilico Medicine, focused on targeting the KRAS mutation in cancer therapy—serving as a proof point of Zapata’s capabilities and quantum computing’s massive potential to generate viable drug candidates in the biotech domain.

Scaling at a Critical Moment for Quantum Computing

Quantum computing is entering a phase of increasing enterprise relevance, with rapid hardware progress fueling growing sophistication in algorithms and implementations. At the same time, a gap remains between technical advancement and the ability to develop validated, high-value applications for enterprise problems. Zapata is focused on closing this gap by providing enterprises with the intelligence and tooling required to move from experimentation to production-ready solutions.

The strategic investment by Triatomic and others underscores Zapata’s mission to solve the quantum application bottleneck and represents a key next step in the company’s progress in the public market.

Funding will be used to scale Zapata’s platform and team across science, engineering, product, and commercial functions. As an AI-native company, Zapata is structured to deploy this capital efficiently—leveraging AI-driven development and strategic partnerships, including its collaboration with the University of Maryland on formal validation of quantum algorithms, to extend capabilities, accelerate development, and maximize runway.

“We are already firing on all cylinders: scientifically, technically, and commercially,” said Kapur. “This capital is jet fuel. It allows us to scale across every dimension. I couldn’t be more grateful or excited for the journey ahead as we continue toward our true north as the foundational hardware-agnostic quantum software platform.”

About Zapata Quantum

Zapata Quantum (OTC: ZPTA) is a leading hardware-agnostic, pure-play quantum software company focused on accelerating quantum application development. With a portfolio of more than 60 granted and pending patents developed over seven years, Zapata supports applications across cryptography, pharmaceuticals, finance, materials discovery, defense, and more. The Company is the only organization to have participated across all technical areas of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking program and has worked with Fortune 500 enterprises and government agencies to translate quantum advances into real-world impact. Learn more at zapataquantum.com.

Source: Zapata Quantum

The post Zapata Quantum Secures $15M Financing Following Year-Long Restructuring appeared first on HPCwire.

Commentary: If you want a new iPhone, get Apple's iPhone 17. The iPhone 18 is still too far away, and we don't know enough about it to justify the wait.

YouGov survey shows cross-party consensus – but that many fear abortion access could be reduced

New polling has found that whatever their party political leanings, an overwhelming majority of people support the right to access an abortion – although young people, in particular, fear reproductive rights may be reduced.

The YouGov polling, commissioned by MSI Reproductive Choices to mark its 50th anniversary, found nine in 10 people support the right to access an abortion.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday the EV maker plans to use Intel's next-generation 14A manufacturing process to make chips at its Terafab project, an advanced AI chip complex Musk has envisioned in Austin. The contract would mark Intel's first major customer for the technology, a breakthrough for the chipmaker which has struggled to stand up its contract manufacturing business essential for taking on top rival TSMC. Intel CEO Lip Bu Tan has said that the company would exit the chip manufacturing business altogether if it failed to secure an external customer. Intel has previously said it was in discussions with large customers about 14A, but has not yet disclosed a major external customer. It declined to comment on Musk's remarks. [...] "Given that by the time Terafab scales up, 14A will be probably fairly mature or ready for prime time," Musk said. "14A seems like the right move, and we have a great relationship with Intel," he said. Ben Bajarin, head of technology consultancy Creative Strategies, said that Intel's 14A technology could "turn out to be a bigger deal for Intel than folks thought." "It's important to have multiple partners as early design partners to help clean the pipe and work through needed learnings at the leading edge. They will definitely have scale, so a great first non-Intel customer," Bajarin said. Seaport Research Partners analyst Jay Goldberg said Musk's vote of confidence in Intel's technology outweighed the unknowns about the Terafab project. "Having a customer is more important than the timing," he said. Goldberg said that Musk's lofty estimates of how many chips its robots could one day require may or may not materialize, but even making chips for Tesla's existing businesses would be a significant win for Intel. "It's not equivalent to Apple or Nvidia" in terms of chip volumes, Goldberg said. "But it's a real customer. It can be real volumes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than 50% of voters at first AGM under new leadership oppose plans to scrap climate reporting

BP’s board has suffered a triple climate rebellion in its first shareholder meeting since appointing new leadership to steer the embattled oil company.

More than 50% of shareholders voting at the company’s annual general meeting (AGM) came out against its plans to scrap its existing climate reporting, and its resolution to replace in-person annual shareholder meetings – a lightning rod for climate protest in recent years – with online-only events.

Removal site in Dunkirk will hold people of 10 nationalities trying to reach UK in small boats under new £660m deal with French

• UK politics live – latest updates

The UK will pay for 200 French officers to detain and deport people seeking asylum from some of the world’s most oppressive and war-ravaged regimes under a new UK-France deal to try to reduce Channel crossings.

In what is being billed as the first time the French government has agreed to target those heading to the UK in small boats, a removal site in Dunkirk will be used to hold people from 10 countries: Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Vietnam and Yemen. The Home Office said they were the top 10 nationalities who crossed the Channel by small boat last year.

New Classiq Quantum Agent capability turns natural-language intent into production-ready quantum applications, powered by the first generation of expert-level quantum AI agents

BOSTON, April 23, 2026 — Classiq today announced a significant acceleration for quantum software development: a new AI agentic layer that enables users to move from natural-language intent to structured, executable quantum applications, powered by a first-generation, expert-level quantum agent.

Unlike traditional code assistants, the Classiq Quantum Agent operates on top of its model-based quantum software platform, allowing it to generate, refine and optimize quantum programs within a validated, scalable development environment. This approach now enables AI to not only suggest code, but to function as a trained development partner. It is now capable of guiding and implementing complex quantum workflows across enterprise domains such as pharmaceuticals, finance, aerospace, automotive and quantum error correction.

“AI in quantum computing has so far been limited to helping write code,” said Nir Minerbi, CEO and co-founder of Classiq. “Classiq created the foundational modeling and abstraction layer for quantum software. It’s the only stack designed to be natively understood by large language models, allowing AI to develop expert-grade quantum applications that are not just theoretical, but fully compilable and ready to run on real hardware.”

From Prompts to Production-Ready Portable Quantum Applications

Classiq’s new capability enables users to describe high-level goals, algorithms or domain-specific problems in natural language, and generate structured quantum programs that can be analyzed, optimized and executed.

Crucially, this is not free-form code generation because the AI-generated outputs are built on top of Classiq’s model-based architecture, ensuring that programs remain:

• Structured and maintainable
• Fully validated and compilable
• Optimized for real hardware constraints
• Hardware-agnostic and forward-compatible with evolving quantum systems

By combining natural-language interaction with its synthesis and optimization engine, Classiq enables a shift from experimental coding to repeatable, enterprise-grade quantum development.

An Emerging AI Category: Expert Quantum Agents

The agentic workflow is designed to operate across the full lifecycle of quantum application development, including:

• Translating domain problems into quantum models
• Designing scalable algorithms across abstraction layers
• Optimizing circuits under real-world constraints
• Iterating within structured development workflows

Because it operates on top of Classiq’s validated modeling layer and curated algorithm libraries, the agents can reason about quantum systems at a higher level than traditional LLM-based tools. The result is a system that combines the flexibility of AI with the rigor required for serious quantum software development.

Accelerating Quantum Projects to Practical Long-Term Quantum Assets

Classiq’s approach reflects a broader shift in how enterprises engage with quantum computing. As the quantum ecosystem continues to move toward larger-scale systems, software abstraction, automation, developer productivity and implementation quality are becoming critical.

Rather than producing one-off experiments or disposable code, organizations can now build persistent, evolving capabilities, where knowledge is captured, validated and continuously improved over time.

“Enterprises don’t want to ‘play with quantum,’” added Minerbi. “They want to build something that lasts. By combining AI with a validated modeling foundation, we’re enabling teams to create quantum applications and knowledge assets that remain relevant as the technology evolves.”

AI-native development workflows are the next step in that evolution, enabling more teams to participate in quantum development while maintaining the depth and rigor required for real-world applications.

By introducing expert-level AI into the quantum development process, Classiq is expanding what is possible, and democratizing who can build it.

About Classiq

Classiq is the leading quantum computing software company, providing the technology that makes it practical for enterprises and researchers to access and harness quantum computing. Classiq’s platform transforms high-level functional models into optimized, hardware-ready quantum circuits automatically. This enables teams to develop algorithms faster, optimize them for cost and performance, and make quantum applications usable sooner, without deep hardware expertise.

Source: Classiq

The post Classiq Certifies Expert-Level Quantum AI Agents for Real-World Applications appeared first on HPCwire.

The merger will still require governmental approval and could be delayed by a lawsuit seeking to block it

Shareholders of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) voted “overwhelmingly” to approve the company’s $110bn merger with Paramount Skydance, the parent company of CBS News, on Thursday.

But shareholders voted against generous proposed compensation packages for WBD executives, including a $550m payout to the outgoing chief executive, David Zaslav.

British foreign secretary told to impose new measures as ruble-pegged cryptocurrency A7A5 is supported in country

More than 20 MPs and peers have called on the foreign secretary to take action against institutions and individuals in Kyrgyzstan allegedly facilitating large-scale Russian sanctions evasion.

They urged the UK to levy personal sanctions against three top Kyrgyz officials for their alleged role in facilitating Russian sanctions evasion more broadly, and more specifically for allowing Kyrgyzstan to host infrastructure supporting the cryptocurrency A7A5.

Tehran has shown that its grip over the strait of Hormuz is its most potent deterrent – arguably more consequential than its now defunct nuclear programme

• Fawaz Gerges is professor of international relations at the London School of Economics

Donald Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran will be remembered as a grave strategic miscalculation – one that has reshaped the region in unintended and destabilising ways. With the ceasefire now extended indefinitely, we can see more clearly how the war has undermined the US’s standing in the world and failed to achieve its core objectives: it has neither brought about regime change in Tehran, nor forced Iran to submit to American demands. Far from it.

By inflicting economic pain far beyond the region and slowing the global economy, Iran has demonstrated that its grip over the strait of Hormuz constitutes its most potent deterrent – arguably more consequential than its now defunct nuclear programme. Control of the strait will be Tehran’s most powerful source of leverage in the years ahead.

A deeply divided federal appeals court has ruled that public schools in Texas are allowed to display Ten Commandments posters or framed copies in public school classrooms, setting up a potential landmark case in the Supreme Court’s next term.

On Tuesday, the full United State Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in a 9-8 decision in Nathan v. Alamo, held that a state law, S.B. 10, requiring the 10 Commandments classroom display does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause or Free Exercise Clause. These clauses read as follows: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

Link: Read the Decision

The Fifth Circuit majority considered a Supreme Court precedent set in Stone v. Graham (1980), where a divided Court ruled that a Kentucky law requiring the Ten Commandments in public classrooms violated the Establishment Clause. Instead, the Fifth Circuit majority cited the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District as rendering the Stone precedent as obsolete. The court’s minority held that only the Supreme Court can overturn its own precedents, and the Texas law violates the “most basic First Amendment principles.”

The majority decision in Texas

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was considering the Texas law in conjunction with a similar law passed in Louisiana that was contested in Roake v. Brumley. A three-judge Fifth Circuit panel considering Roake ruled that Louisiana’s 10 Commandments law was unconstitutional. The full Fifth Circuit bench vacated Roake in February 2026 as a premature challenge, but it determined that the Texas case was eligible to be heard by the full appeals bench.

In his majority opinion, Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan said the Fifth Circuit majority properly discarded the Stone precedent since it relied on a prior Supreme Court precedent, Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). Under Lemon, the Supreme Court created a three-part test to determine if a law violated the Establishment Clause.

However, in Bremerton, Justice Neil Gorsuch established a new method to replace the Lemon test. In his majority opinion, Gorsuch cited the “shortcomings” associated the Lemon test’s “abstract, and ahistorical approach to the Establishment Clause. “

“This Court long ago abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot,” Gorsuch wrote in Bremerton. “In place of Lemon and the endorsement test, this Court has instructed that the Establishment Clause must be interpreted by ‘reference to historical practices and understandings.’

“Mercifully, the Supreme Court jettisoned Lemon and its offspring some years ago,” Duncan wrote. “With Lemon extracted, there is nothing left of Stone,” Duncan wrote. Applying the Bremerton test, Duncan asked if the Texas law conflicted with the Founding-era understanding of “religious establishment.” Duncan stated that in the late 18th century, the establishment of religion “was a familiar institution: a polity’s official church or religion.” He did not see conflict with S.B. 10.

“S.B. 10 looks nothing like a historical religious establishment. It does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams. It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason,” Duncan believed.

Duncan also disagreed with arguments that S.B. 10 conflicted with a recent Supreme Court decision, Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), where a divided Supreme Court held that parents could opt their children out from public school instruction they believed violated their free exercise of religion rights.

“S.B. 10 authorizes no religious instruction and gives teachers no license to contradict children’s religious beliefs (or their parents’). No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin,” Duncan concluded. He cited the Supreme Court’s pledge of allegiance precedent in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), where public school students who were Jehovah’s Witnesses were permitted to not salute the flag or say the pledge as instructed by their parents.

Circuit Judge James C. Ho concurred with the majority opinion. “No challenge to either Texas or Louisiana law could possibly succeed, because neither law comes close to imposing either an establishment of religion or a prohibition on the free exercise thereof, as originally understood by the Founders or articulated by any governing Supreme Court precedent,” Ho wrote.

The dissent objects on basic grounds

In a dissent joined by six other judges, Circuit Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez stated S.B. 10 as written clearly violates the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. “Legislation requiring the permanent fixture of religious rules in public-school classrooms, with no ‘educational function,’ violates these most basic First Amendment principles,” she argued.

Ramirez objected to Judge Duncan’s claim that the Supreme Court has overruled the Stone precedent. “Although Kennedy abandoned Lemon and its endorsement test offshoot, it did not cite, much less purport to ‘abandon’ or overturn, Stone—despite the opportunity to do so,” she claimed. “Whatever the fate of Stone may be ‘as an inferior court,’ we must ‘adhere strictly to’ it until the Supreme Court says otherwise. And under Stone, S.B. 10 is unconstitutional.”

Ramirez also held that under Bremerton’s historical test, the Texas law was still unconstitutional. She repeatedly cited the Supreme Court’s precedent in Lee v. Weisman (1992), where a divided court ruled that including prayers from a rabbi at a public-school graduation was a subtle and indirect religious coercion because students felt compelled to stand during the recitals.

“Defendants assert that, under Kennedy, there are six identified ‘hallmarks’ of religious establishments that the Establishment Clause was adopted to prohibit, and if a challenged practice does not resemble one of these hallmarks, there is no constitutional violation,” Ramirez reasoned.

“Kennedy specifically placed coercion along the lines of that found in Lee among those ‘foremost hallmarks,’” Ramirez concluded, noting the Supreme Court’s long history of “heightened concerns with protecting freedom of conscience from subtle coercive pressure in the elementary and secondary public schools.”

In a separate dissent, Circuit Judge Leslie H. Southwick believed parts of the Lemon test were still viable for consideration in First Amendment cases. “In my view, the [Lemon] test was disassembled, and one part discarded — but other parts of what had been fused remain usable.”

Circuit Judge Stephen A. Higginson also objected to the majority decision. “The Framers intended disestablishment of religion, above all to prevent large religious sects from using political power to impose their religion on others,” he believed. “The majority defies foundational First Amendment concepts, ignores the harms students will face, and usurps parents’ rights to determine the religious beliefs they wish to instill in their own children.”

In a statement issued after the Fifth Circuit ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas said it anticipated appealing the decision to the Supreme Court.

Scott Bomboy is the editor-in-chief of the National Constitution Center.

Scientists spent over two years identifying a mysterious object found off the coast of Alaska in 2023.

Rosemarie Milsom, who formed and runs Newcastle writers festival, will take over from Louise Adler after the literary festival imploded over invitation to Randa Abdel-Fattah

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In January, as the implosion of Adelaide writers’ week made headlines around Australia and the world, Rosemarie Milsom was watching closely.

The Adelaide festival board, which oversees AWW, had overridden the literary festival’s director, Louise Adler, and disinvited the Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah over past comments she’d made about Israel and Zionism. This decision resulted not in a quieter, less-controversial festival as the board members may have hoped, but a boycott by 200-odd writers, the resignation of Adler – followed by the whole board – a potential defamation lawsuit against the South Australian premier and the collapse of AWW.

Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning

Episode four of Peacock’s Gilgo Beach Serial Killer: House of Secrets features interviews with Rex Heuermann’s family

The meticulous rituals of the Long Island serial killer, Rex Heuermann, have been revealed in a Peacock documentary released on Thursday.

The confessed killer of eight women relays via a therapist that he maintained a four-day ritual of preparation, building trust with his victims, murdering them in a basement “kill room”, a day of “playtime” with their bodies, and then using a stopwatch to perfect dumping them on a beach 20 miles from his home. He would use the fourth day to deal with any unforeseen complications.

Finishing a debt relief program doesn't guarantee that creditors are gone for good. Here's what to know.

Lawsuit follows exchange on X in which airline suggested customer should clear cache or book with incognito window

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JetBlue has been sued in a proposed class action claiming it uses customers’ personal data to set ticket prices, after its response to a social media post raised concern that the carrier employed “surveillance pricing” to make flying more expensive.

According to a complaint filed late on Wednesday in Brooklyn federal court, JetBlue conceals its use of “trackers” to set prices dynamically, and shares data with third parties whose programs help it decide when to raise fares.

Police chief says human remains had been in a wooded area for years and did not match local missing persons reports

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Memphis police have found the remains of three children in an area of woodland, saying they had probably been there “for several years”.

Police said the children are believed to have been between three and seven years old.

Cotton says current law leaves U.S. power grids, wastewater plants, and other high-risk sites exposed to emerging drone threats.

Tectonic plate movements over millions of years have lifted and tilted the layers, with records of ancient earthquakes in the rocks

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Microscopic fossils embedded in limestone have helped reveal the true age of Victoria’s Twelve Apostles as 8.6m to 14m years old.

The conclave of giant golden pillars is visited by 2.8 million tourists each year, a highlight for those travelling along the Great Ocean Road south-west of Melbourne.

Planning your trip just became a whole lot easier.

The Pentagon won’t disclose the price tag of its wars in the Western Hemisphere, but a new analysis by Brown University’s Costs of War Project, provided exclusively to The Intercept, offers the first window onto the ballooning costs.

By the most cautious estimate, the U.S. military’s intervention in Venezuela and attacks on boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific — Operations Absolute Resolve and Operation Southern Spear, respectively — have already cost taxpayers at least $4.7 billion.

The Costs of War analysis is the most comprehensive accounting of the U.S. air, naval, and Special Operations expenses — including some troop deployments and munitions — used in the two campaigns between August 1, 2025, and March 31, 2026. The need for such an estimate stems from the refusal of the Department of War to provide a tally of costs to lawmakers or The Intercept.

The researchers behind the Costs of War estimate say it’s almost assuredly an undercount.

“Operations do not have a clear end date and are actively expanding. They carry significant human, financial, and strategic costs and risk,” wrote authors Hanna Homestead, a research analyst with the National Priorities Project, and Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a nonpartisan research group.

“American taxpayers, who are increasingly unable to afford basic needs, have a right to know how their tax dollars are spent,” they noted.

Homestead and Kavanagh observe that the largest costs might still be on the horizon.

“We expect that if comprehensive information were available, our cost estimate would likely increase significantly,” they wrote.

Kavanagh told The Intercept that the expenses were “enough to fund Medicaid for 500,000 people for an entire year.”

“Though the Trump administration is right to focus more on the Western Hemisphere, most needs in the region are economic or require investment in regional law enforcement. The United States is not clearly safer or more prosperous as a result of Operation Southern Spear or Operation Absolute Resolve,” she said.

The Naval deployment — which comprised the largest concentration of U.S. ships in the region since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 — constituted the single largest expense, an estimated $3.8 billion. This includes the ever-growing cost of the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group which consists of the USS Iwo Jima, USS Fort Lauderdale, and USS San Antonio, which remain deployed in the Caribbean with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit and the USS Lake Erie guided-missile cruiser. Costs of War puts the daily operating costs of these ships at around $9 million per day.

The steep Naval expenditures are followed by at least $616 million spent on the deployment of aircraft, including P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, F-35A Lightning II fighters, and MQ-9 Reaper drones used in both operations. The continuing daily cost of operating the at least 20 aircraft that are assumed to remain deployed in the region is $2.6 million.

Under Operation Southern Spear, the U.S. military has conducted 53 attacks on so-called drug boats since September 2025, killing more than 180 civilians. The latest strike, on April 19 in the Caribbean, killed three people. The Trump administration claims its victims are members of at least one of 24 or more cartels and criminal gangs with whom it claims to be at war but refuses to name.

Experts in the laws of war and members of Congress, from both parties, say the strikes are illegal extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians — even suspected criminals — who do not pose an imminent threat of violence. The summary executions are a significant departure from standard practice in the long-running U.S. war on drugs, in which law enforcement agencies arrested suspected drug smugglers.

The Costs of War analysis puts the price tag of the munitions employed in these attacks on boats at between $12.5 million and $50 million, the range owing to the lack of transparency surrounding the strikes. The report notes that the individual cost of armaments used in each strike may top $1 million and could actually be far higher if multiple munitions or aircraft are used.

Beyond expenses captured under Southern Spear, ancillary costs of Absolute Resolve, a large-scale air campaign and the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, top $206 million. This includes the deployment of at least 150 aircraft — fighter jets, bombers, and Special Operations aircraft, and more — along with precision munitions such as Tomahawk cruise missiles and JASSM-ER missiles.

The approximately 200 Special Operations forces who played a key role in Maduro’s kidnapping cost about $16 million, to include the costs of daily operations and combat. As yet unknown are the costs of deployments of U.S. commandos in Ecuador, another front in America’s Western hemispheric war.

The boat strikes recently moved to land as what Joseph Humire, the acting assistant secretary of war for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, called “bilateral kinetic actions against cartel targets along the Colombia-Ecuador border” on unnamed designated terrorist organizations. “The joint effort, named ‘Operation Total Extermination,’ is the start of a military offensive by Ecuador against transnational criminal organizations with the support of the U.S.,” Humire announced last month. That U.S.–Ecuadorian campaign has already strayed into Colombia after a farm was bombed or hit by “ricochet effect” on March 3. In a war powers report announcing the introduction of U.S. armed forces into “hostilities” in Ecuador, the White House also informed Congress of “military action taken on March 6, 2026, against the facilities of narco-terrorists affiliated with a designated terrorist organization.”

America’s wars in the Western Hemisphere are part of what President Donald Trump and others have termed the “Donroe Doctrine,” a bastardization of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. While President James Monroe’s policy aimed to prevent Europe from meddling in the Western Hemisphere, Trump has employed his version as a license for America to do exactly that.

Related

When Anti-War Candidates Become War-Monger Presidents

The National Security Strategy, released late last year, decrees the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine a “potent restoration of American power and priorities,” rooted in the “readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere.” Last month, Humire told members of the House Armed Services Committee that “America’s immediate security perimeter” extended from “Alaska to Greenland in the Arctic to the Gulf of America and the Panama Canal and surrounding countries.” The Trump administration has, in fact, bullied Panama and threatened Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, and perhaps also Iceland, while conducting counter-cartel CIA operations in Mexico.

The Pentagon refuses to provide insights into its expenditures for conflicts in Latin America.

“For any information regarding budgetary costs for Operations Southern Spear and Operation Absolute Resolve, I’ll have to refer you to OSW,” U.S. Southern Command spokesperson Steven McLoud told The Intercept. When asked about the costs, the Office of the Secretary of War said it does “not have anything to provide currently.” 

Homestead and Kavanagh admit that the $4.7 billion price tag placed on Operations Absolute Resolve and Southern Spear is likely a low-ball figure. “This is a conservative estimate based on the limited information about the operation that is available,” they wrote. “Full data for several cost categories are not publicly available, and certain operations — such as the details of a CIA operation in Venezuela referenced by President Trump — remain classified or incompletely reported in the public domain.”

Costs are mounting by the day and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Trump has said he expects the U.S. will be running Venezuela for years. (He recently teased the possibility of making Venezuela the 51st U.S. state, before saying he could run for president of that country.) The Intercept previously reported that Pentagon procurement documents indicate the U.S. plans to maintain a massive military presence in the Caribbean until late 2028.

“Much of the military forward presence involved in these operations appears to now have become the ‘steady state,’ that is, it is likely to remain in the region for the foreseeable future,” said Kavanagh. “This means that the costs will continue to accumulate.”

The ultimate price tag of Americas wars in Latin America will further balloon in the decades ahead, saddling future Americans with soaring costs. “War is financed by debt, adding interest costs to the public budget,” write Homestead and Kavanagh. “Furthermore, the federal government undertakes an obligation to pay veterans benefits for decades into the future.”

Related

Pentagon Claims It Needs Additional $200 Billion to Pay for War on Iran

Recently, Linda Bilmes, a former assistant secretary and chief financial officer of the U.S. Department of Commerce and currently a public policy professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, told The Intercept that the already-excessive expense of the Iran war would likely be pushed into the trillions of dollars by such long-term costs like veterans benefits and interest on the debt to pay for the war.

“Across the country people are going bankrupt and dying prematurely because of lack of health care, but the U.S. government has billions to spend on imperialist violence to enrich corporations — from Venezuela to Iran — without any regard for human rights, life or rule of law,” Homestead told The Intercept. “This situation illustrates why greater restraint on Pentagon spending — which primarily benefits private contractors — is so necessary.”

The post Trump Has Already Spent at Least $4.7 Billion Attacking Latin America appeared first on The Intercept.

• Georgia players celebrated championship at White House

• President shakes hands of men, not women in video

• Former tennis star Navratilova leads criticism

A White House photo celebrating a champion women’s sports team has drawn backlash due to the positioning of Donald Trump and a group of men, who overshadowed the female athletes by lining up in front of them.

The University of Georgia women’s tennis team was one of several collegiate teams to visit the White House on Tuesday to mark a recent NCAA championship win. In a photo shared by press aide Margo Martin, Donald Trump and five Georgia staffers and coaches took up the front row of a stage setup, with 11 women standing in the background on a riser.

• Special envoy to Donald Trump suggested the idea

• ‘Firstly not possible … secondly not appropriate’

The Italian sports minister, Andrea Abodi, has described a proposal for his country to replace Iran at the World Cup as “not appropriate”, rejecting any idea that the Azzurri will be granted a last-minute berth at this summer’s tournament.

On Wednesday it emerged that Paolo Zampolli, a special envoy to Donald Trump, had suggested Italy should be fast-tracked to the World Cup despite their shock defeat by Bosnia and Herzegovina in last month’s playoffs. Zampolli proposed the four-time winners Italy replace Iran and said they would “have the pedigree to justify their inclusion”. But Abodi said football’s showpiece tournament should remain meritocratic.

Top buyers promised access at Mar-a-Lago event as Democrats and watchdogs warn of pay-to-play risks

Donald Trump is slated to star at a cryptocurrency bash on 25 April at his Mar-a-Lago club for scores of purchasers of his crypto memecoin $Trump that has enriched him while in office. The move is fueling renewed criticism from top Democrats and ethics watchdogs that he is using the presidency for financial gains in a break with ethical norms.

The Trump-linked Fight Fight Fight LLC has hyped the event as “THE MOST EXCLUSIVE CRYPTO & BUSINESS CONFERENCE IN THE WORLD”. It’s promising a luncheon with Trump as its keynote speaker, according to the memecoin’s official website and its social media account.

Announced at Next ‘26, Flex Unified service for Google Cloud NetApp Volumes is now generally available

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 23, 2026 — NetApp has shared new innovations that help customers better leverage their enterprise data, by tapping into the benefits of AI with Google Cloud.

Enterprises want to use their existing data for AI, but moving and managing that data across multiple environments is complex, slow, and expensive. NetApp is simplifying this with Google Cloud. With Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, customers can run enterprise applications, databases, and AI workloads in the cloud without rearchitecting or rebuilding their environments.

“Customers can move their enterprise data, whether block or file, into Google Cloud NetApp Volumes easily, and once it’s there, they can use Google Cloud services, including for AI, directly on that data without needing to move or duplicate it again,” said Pravjit Tiwana, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Storage and Services at NetApp. “With these updates, NetApp and Google have removed a major source of cost, delay, and complexity in AI adoption.”

At Google Cloud Next 2026, NetApp and Google Cloud announced innovations that give customers greater control over their data to tap into the benefits of transformative workloads like AI using Google Cloud.

NetApp Announcements:

• NetApp Data Migrator (NDM) (General Availability): A simple, multi-cloud data migration service that moves data across environments without specialized expertise.

Google Cloud Announcements:

• Google Cloud NetApp Volumes Flex Unified Service Level (General Availability): A single storage pool for file and block workloads available in all Google regions. Customers can run high-performance applications including databases, high-performance computing, electronic design automation, and VMware workloads without changing their applications.

“The key to AI innovation is AI-ready data, which requires flexible, unified architecture that enables data to be fluid, not siloed,” said Sameet Agarwal, Vice President and General Manager, Storage, for Google Cloud. “Our continued collaboration with NetApp removes the traditional friction of data migration, enabling organizations to quickly drive business innovation with Google Cloud’s advanced data and AI services.”

To learn more about Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, visit the NetApp booth #1607 at Google Cloud Next 26, April 22-24 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

About NetApp

For more than three decades, NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) has helped the world’s leading organizations navigate change – from the rise of enterprise storage to the intelligent era defined by data and AI. Today, NetApp is the Intelligent Data Infrastructure company, helping customers turn data into a catalyst for innovation, resilience, and growth.

At the heart of that infrastructure is the NetApp data platform – the unified, enterprise-grade, intelligent foundation that connects, protects, and activates data across every cloud, workload, and environment. Built on the proven power of NetApp ONTAP, our leading data management software and OS, and enhanced by automation through the AI Data Engine and AFX, it delivers observability, resilience, and intelligence at scale.

Disaggregated by design, the NetApp data platform separates storage, services, and control so enterprises can modernize faster, scale efficiently, and innovate without lock-in. As the only enterprise storage platform natively embedded in the world’s largest clouds, it gives organizations the freedom to run any workload anywhere with consistent performance, governance, and protection.

With NetApp, data is always ready – ready to defend against threats, ready to power AI, and ready to drive the next breakthrough. That’s why the world’s most forward-thinking enterprises trust NetApp to turn intelligence into advantage.

Source: NetApp

The post NetApp Strengthens Collaboration with Google Cloud on Unified Google Cloud Storage for File and Block appeared first on HPCwire.

Bills are seeking to change section that opposition says makes Godwin Friday, a dual citizen, ineligible to be PM

The St Vincent and the Grenadines government has delayed a controversial effort to amend a section of the country’s constitution that the opposition says renders the prime minister ineligible for his position in parliament.

Two bills, among six listed for the parliament session on Tuesday this week, were aimed at clarifying a section of the 1979 constitution governing the citizenship eligibility of members of parliament.

If you have fond memories of cereal prizes, this news might bowl you over.

Lord Robertson: UK’s ‘naïve belief’ the US ‘will always be there’ has diminished its defence capabilities News release jon.wallace 23 April 2026

Lord Robertson, former NATO Secretary-General, was speaking at a Chatham House event to launch a House of Lords report on UK–US relations.

Members of the UK House of Lords International Relations and Defence Committee attended Chatham House on 22 April to launch their new report, ‘Adjusting to the new realities: Rebalancing the UK–US relationship’.

Lord Robertson, Chair of the committee, described the strains on UK–US relations brought about by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, threats to seize Greenland, and decision not to consult the UK before launching the war on Iran, highlighting a ‘growing divergence between Westminster and Washington’.

He said:

‘Our reliance on the United States, predicated on the naïve belief that it will always be there to support us in times of conflict, has led to the diminishment of our own capabilities. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a wake-up call, and we must rapidly pivot to becoming a more autonomous military actor, working closely with European allies to develop the capacity to deter and to repel any Russian aggression on the continent’.

Lord Robertson was joined on the panel by committee members Lord Kim Darroch and Lord Rupert Charles De Mauley, and by Chatham House analysts Laurel Rapp, Head of the US and North Americas programme and Olivia O’Sullivan, Head of Chatham House’s UK in the World Programme. Both had provided evidence to the committee.  

The report highlights the need for the UK to look beyond the current White House administration, and adjust policy to account for long-term trends in the US.

‘The US’s geostrategic competition with China, its related deprioritization of European security and an increasing public scepticism of globalization are all trends which will shape future administrations, whether they be Republican or Democrat,’ he said.

In this context, he added, the UK’s ‘high-level of military dependence on the US is no longer tenable’.

He also outlined the report’s findings that the age of the United States acting as steward for the global rules and norms and institutions that structured state behaviour ‘may well be over’ – fundamentally destabilizing the international system – meaning the UK will have to develop more diverse partners.

The report follows Lord Robertson’s recent comments that the UK’s political leadership had shown ‘corrosive complacency’ in meeting a 5 per cent of GDP defence spending target.

Watch the event in full.

Order to speed hallucinogen research hailed as ‘threshold moment’ but concerns remain over access and protections

The scene seemed so far-fetched you could be forgiven for thinking you might be hallucinating.

On the weekend in which psychonauts celebrate “Bicycle Day” – the anniversary of the first LSD trip – Donald Trump was in the Oval Office double-checking that he was correctly pronouncing the name of a lesser-known psychedelic, ibogaine, as he signed a landmark executive order to accelerate research into hallucinogens, and to increase access.

State’s strict gun policies heralded as data shows 35% reduction in homicides between 2022 and 2024

California officials are touting a historic three-year decrease in homicides and gun violence that has led to the state’s lowest number of killings on record.

The number of homicides in California decreased by 35% between 2022 and 2024, with 2,304 deaths reported in 2022 and 1,768 in 2024, according data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The dip in homicides was most pronounced for teenage and young adult Black and Latino males, who have historically faced the highest risk of being killed or injured by gunshot wounds. Suicides, the most common type of gun deaths, also fell to record lows, according to the report.

Your old smartphone can be recycled or traded in for extra cash, but only 24% of Americans are doing so. Even worse, some US adults are throwing tech away, CNET finds.

The settlement stems from claims Capital One paid lower interest on older savings accounts while offering higher rates on a similar product.

U.S. forces have intercepted and boarded another "stateless" vessel linked to Iran, the U.S. military says.

Marijuana had the same classification as heroin, LSD and others before being reclassified for lower potential for abuse

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The Trump administration has moved to reclassify marijuana, more than four months after Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to move it from schedule I to schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act.

The schedule I classification meant marijuana was alongside heroin, LSD, MDMA and synthetic opioids, whereas a schedule III classification put it in the same category as ketamine, anabolic steroids and testosterone.

Iowa City police are searching for a 17-year-old suspect charged in connection with a shooting that injured five near the University of Iowa over the weekend.

Fans lucky enough to secure tickets to the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles are facing steep prices, with some paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to attend events.

ICC judges say there are substantial grounds to believe Duterte guided anti-drugs crackdown that killed thousands

The former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, will face trial at the international criminal court (ICC) after judges unanimously confirmed charges of crimes against humanity over his “war on drugs”.

Pre-trial judges concluded on Thursday that there were substantial grounds to believe Duterte was responsible for the crimes against humanity of murder and attempted murder in relation to anti-drugs crackdowns that led to the killing of thousands of people.

At least 18 people hurt after crash involving two local services north of Denmark’s capital

Two trains have collided head-on in Denmark, injuring at least 18 people, five of whom are in a critical condition.

The crash happened on Thursday morning at a level crossing at Isterødvejen, near Hillerød, a town about 19 miles (30km) north-west of Copenhagen. Emergency services received a report of the collision just before 6.30am.

Threads users can chat in real-time conversations during big cultural events.

See maps of how Virginia, Texas, California, Missouri and North Carolina redistricting pushes could play out, based on the 2024 election results.

Prince Harry​ made an unannounced visit to Ukraine​ on Thursday to show his support for the country.

Pardons have reportedly eliminated $113m that would have supported a victims’ fund. I’m advancing legislation to create accountability

Donald Trump’s aggressive use of the presidential pardon power isn’t just controversial – it’s also stripping resources from victims of violent crime.

According to new reporting from the Trace, shared with the Guardian, the 117 pardons issued in Trump’s second term have erased at least $113m in fines and penalties that would otherwise have supported a fund for violent crime victims, along with domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers and child abuse treatment programs. Those programs are now being forced to do more with less.

Johnny Olszewski is a first-term Democratic congressman who represents Maryland’s second district after serving in the Maryland state legislature and as Baltimore county executive

Climate experts and advocates warn House and Senate bills will protect polluters at the cost of the climate

Republican lawmakers are attempting to shield big oil from having to pay for its contributions to the climate crisis, alarming environmental advocates.

New House and Senate bills, led by Harriet Hageman, a Wyoming representative, and Ted Cruz, a Texas senator, respectively, would give oil and gas companies broad legal immunity from policies and lawsuits aimed at holding the industry accountable for damages caused by its emissions.

Only 24% of US adults are turning their tech in for extra cash, CNET finds.

Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre says companies must step up vigilance to prevent espionage attacks

• Business live – latest updates

British businesses are being urged to step up their vigilance against a China-linked hacking ploy that uses everyday devices for espionage.

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and agencies in nine other countries have warned of persistent attempts by Beijing-backed groups to hack equipment such as wifi routers to launch cyber-attacks.

Iran seizes two ships in critical waterway as Washington and Tehran maintain separate blockades. Plus, Jodi Kantor on how to find a career you love

Good morning.

Iranian forces have seized two ships in the strait of Hormuz as the US and Iran doubled down on imposing separate blockades of the shipping waterway.

What has Donald Trump said? The US president announced that the US would extend the ceasefire with Iran until the country’s leaders came up with a “unified proposal” to US negotiating positions amid Tehran’s “seriously fractured” government. He had earlier threatened to renew bombing. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Trump was “satisfied” with the US naval blockade of Iranian ports and “understands Iran is in a very weak position”.

This is a developing story. Follow the liveblog here.

Who took part in the debate? The primetime showdown, hosted by Nexstar Media Group, featured two Republicans – Steve Hilton, the former Fox News host and director of strategy to the former UK prime minister David Cameron, and Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County – and the four leading Democrats: the billionaire Tom Steyer, the former health secretary Xavier Becerra, the former congresswoman Katie Porter and the San Jose mayor, Matt Mahan.

Suspect is one of three ex-senior leaders also arrested last year on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter

A former boss at the hospital where Lucy Letby worked has been arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.

Police arrested the suspect on Wednesday as part of an investigation into allegations of gross negligence manslaughter by ex-senior leaders at the Countess of Chester hospital.

• 30m adults hitting 150 minutes moderate activity a week

• But report shows progress not being felt equally

Levels of physical activity in England have broken new records, with more than 30 million adults now meeting the recommended 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, the latest Active Lives survey has revealed.

The 10th edition of the gold standard report finds a striking rise in activity among older people with 11% growth among the over-75s in the past decade. There is also a consistent improvement among people with disabilities. But other inequalities have proven stubborn, with no change among black and asian communities in 10 years and a decline in activity among the least affluent over that period.

Brand, who will be tried in October over allegations of rape and sexual assault, tells podcast he slept with 16-year-old when he was 30

Russell Brand said he had “exploitative” consensual sex with a 16-year-old girl at the height of his fame.

The comedian, actor and podcaster, 50, will be tried in the autumn over allegations of rape and sexual assault made against him by six women. Brand denies all the charges, which date from 1999 to 2009. Speaking about his past actions in an appearance on the YouTube show of the US journalist Megyn Kelly, Brand described himself “selfish” and an “exploiter of women”.

Before pollen causes itchy eyes and runny noses, I asked allergists about what we can do to protect ourselves during spring allergy season.

The Senate adopted a budget resolution after a six-hour "vote-a-rama," with the GOP moving forward to fund ICE without Democrats.

FoI data reveals that 438 people with criminal convictions were given licences in Wolverhampton, UK’s ‘taxi capital’

More than 150 people convicted of violent crimes were granted taxi licences last year by Wolverhampton city council, dubbed the UK’s “taxi capital”, data has revealed.

The Guardian obtained data via a freedom of information request that revealed 438 people with criminal convictions were last year granted taxi and private hire driver licences by the West Midlands local authority – which has issued far more taxi licences than any other authority.

Judge’s repeal of Trump ban on gender-affirming care for children ‘a meaningful win for patients’, experts say

A federal judge overturned the Trump administration’s ban on gender-affirming care for children on Saturday, decrying Robert F Kennedy Jr’s “wanton disregard” for the law that “causes very real harm to very real people”.

It’s another loss for Kennedy’s agenda as secretary for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the second Trump administration – an agenda that has focused on restricting healthcare, including vaccines, abortion and gender-affirming care.

The ‘experience’ in New York sensationalizes history’s most gruesome murders – and pays little respect to the victims

It occurred to me the second I idly tapped “submit” on the waiver required to enter Mind of a Serial Killer: the Experience – perhaps I should have read this one more closely. Just what were they going to do to me in there?

I was entering an exhibit about the (mostly) men who committed some of history’s most gruesome murders: Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy and others. The extravaganza just hit New York after opening in Dublin earlier this year. Though it looks like a low-budget haunted house, the exhibit purports to examine the motives of murder via crime scene recreations, wall texts and psychological profiles.

Ancient Slashdot reader hwstar shares a report from The Conversation: For the first time ever, more than 50 nations will gather next week in Colombia to hash out how to wind down and end their dependence on coal, oil and gas. The history-making conference was planned before the Iran war. But this year's energy crisis has greatly raised the stakes. [...] Around 80% of the trapped oil was destined for the Asia-Pacific. Faced with dwindling supply, the region's governments are implementing emergency measures such as sending workers home, banning government travel, rationing fuel and cutting school hours. The problem is especially bad in the Pacific. Many island nations use diesel for power generation. In response, leaders declared a regional emergency. [...] But the real difference from half a century ago is that fossil fuel alternatives are ready for prime time. Since the 1970s, the price of solar panels has fallen 99.9%, while the cost of wind has fallen 91% since 1984. Battery prices have fallen 99% since 1991. [...] This year's oil shock shows signs of creating an unplanned social tipping point -- a threshold for self-propelling change beyond which systems shift from one state to another. Climate scientists warn of climate tipping points which amplify feedback and accelerate warming. But social scientists also point to positive tipping points -- collective action that rapidly accelerates climate action. [...] The routine burning of coal, oil and gas is the primary driver of the climate crisis. The world's highest court last year made clear nations have obligations to stop burning fossil fuels. But fossil fuels have barely been mentioned in 30 years of global climate negotiations, due in part to blocking efforts by big fossil fuel exporters and lobbyists. Frustrated by slow progress, a coalition of nations has bypassed global climate talks to discuss how to actually phase out fossil fuels. The first of these summits will take place next week. More than 50 nations will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia, to discuss a potential standalone treaty to manage fossil-fuel phaseout while protecting workers and financial systems.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dario Penafiel, known as "Topo," allegedly worked closely with one of Ecuador's most powerful drug lords, Adolfo Macias, alias "Fito."

As talks resume, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam told The Post any deal requires a “full withdrawal” of Israeli forces after Israel seized a “buffer zone” in Lebanon.

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Hard line on immigration adopted by People’s party as right seeks to overthrow socialist government in 2027

• Europe live – latest updates

Spain’s opposition conservatives are rekindling their regional pacts with the far-right Vox party by adopting the latter’s hard line on immigration. It comes less than two years after disagreements over the issue led to the collapse of coalition administrations in five of the country’s self-governing regions.

The renewal of the regional deals between the People’s party (PP) and Vox comes prior to next year’s general election and as Spain’s socialist government seeks to extol the benefits of immigration by regularising the status of at least 500,000 undocumented migrants.