President Trump ordered the Justice Department not to appeal a court ruling that loosened restrictions on firearms known as "gangster weapons," sources familiar with the matter told CBS News.
Government spending watchdog warns of price of keeping publicly owned firm in business
Labour has been urged to lay out a credible plan for the future of British Steel, as the government spending watchdog warned of the “startling” costs of keeping the struggling manufacturer in business with no end in sight.
British Steel was taken into public ownership in July to protect “the future of steel production”, 15 months after the government stepped in to prevent the closure of its steelworks in Scunthorpe and the loss of 4,000 jobs.
Shabana Mahmood says she wants to distinguish between far-right extremism and legitimate local concerns over asylum sites
Shabana Mahmood has described the anti-asylum activist Daniel Thomas as “a far-right and outright racist” who will feel “the full force of the law” if his organisation commits crimes near contested asylum sites such as Piddington.
In an interview with the Guardian, the home secretary also “wanted to reassure” concerned villagers that asylum seekers due to move in to a neighbouring former defence site would not “put pressure” on local resources because they would be given “self-contained facilities”.
The sentencing of 56-year-old Anthony Kazmierczak came nearly eight months after the 27 January assault. At the time, Minneapolis was facing an immigration crackdown that led to angry protests, arrests and the killing of two US citizens by federal officers.
This Sunday on 60 Minutes, Patrick Clancy talks about his grief, his memories of his children, and the baseless conspiracy theories that flooded social media since his ex-wife's murder trial.
Macklemore, who was fired as the opening act on Ed Sheeran’s tour after saying “Free Palestine” on stage at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, pledged to donate the entirety of his earnings from Sheeran’s tour to several organizations focused on the Palestinian people.
(The Center Square) – The U.S. Department of Education has launched two investigations into the University of North Dakota and Duke University in North Carolina over concerns of inaccurate disclosures of foreign funding, placing both institutions' federal funding at risk.
Both Apple and Google raised the price of their 2026 flagship phones by $100, but which one deserves the higher price tag? I compared the specs of iPhone 18 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro to find out.
You might assume you’re covered for repairs after a disaster because you have homeowners insurance. Unfortunately, you could be wrong.As extreme weather becomes more frequent and destructive, homeowners across the country are discovering gaps in their insurance policies — after…
Matt Bell said he initially supported Trump's policies but now feels he and other farmers were "sold a bill of goods" that there was a plan to "put America's farmers and ranchers first."
Fish and Wildlife Service memo calls for change in what it means to ‘take’ an endangered species
More than 1,600 critically imperiled species protected under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) face losing further federal protections following a new reinterpretation of the 1973 law by the Donald Trump administration.
A September 14 memo distributed to Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) field offices by FWS director Brian Nesvik calls for a reinterpretation of what it means to “take” an endangered species. Under the ESA, “take” is defined as “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct”.
(The Center Square) – A hearing has been scheduled for Sept. 24 involving a bond request from Paramount Skydance amid its legal battles over a proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery that could put state governments on the hook for…
(The Center Square) – After being saved from the brink of death, a dog abandoned on the streets of New Mexico became the first rescue dog to graduate from the U.S. Border Patrol Canine Academy in El Paso, Texas, as…
Blair Township Supervisor Nicole Blonshine said she was told the aircraft was an F-16 but does not have "100% confirmation." The pilot parachuted out before it crashed, she said.
HMRC wins challenge over John Griffin’s claim to be non-dom despite having lived in England since childhood
The founder of Addison Lee owes £20.5m in tax after a tribunal dismissed a claim that he should be treated as a nom-dom despite living in the UK since childhood.
John Griffin had argued he should be treated as a nom-dom due to his connection to Ireland, saying: “I was and am besotted with Ireland, infatuated with Ireland. I believe that I have always been and am Irish.”
Why Should Delaware Care? A Kent County Republican primary generated relatively little attention in the lead up to the election, but ended up being the tightest primary race by far on Tuesday — and among the closest elections in recent Delaware history. The district, which has one of the closest registration splits between Democrats and Republicans anywhere in the state could be a seat to watch in November.
Following a Wednesday recount, Morgan Hudson was declared the winner of the Republican nomination for House District 33 in the Milford area.
The two-person race in a rural Kent County representative district became by far the tightest race in Tuesday’s primary election, when just seven votes separated Hudson and opponent Matt Bucher. That margin represented 0.35% of the total votes cast in the district primary, which prompted a recount by Department of Elections officials under state law.
Kent County election officials confirmed Wednesday evening that Hudson, a Milford native who works for her family business, won with a total of 1,017 votes over Bucher’s 1,010.
The vote difference was among the closest races in recent Delaware history, a spokesperson for the State Department of Elections said.
Neither Hudson nor Bucher has previously held statewide office. The pair were vying to replace Rep. Charles Postles, who is retiring after having represented the district that covers Magnolia, Frederica and north Milford for the past decade.
Bucher, a former member of the Milford School Board of Education and the former 33rd District Republican Party chair, ran a visible campaign heading into the Sept. 15 primary.
Meanwhile, Hudson largely kept a lower profile throughout the primary campaign, declining media interviews and relying less heavily on social media posts to get her message out.
Hudson told Spotlight Delaware on Thursday morning she attributes her narrow win to the time she spent door-knocking and intently listening to voters’ concerns about the district.
“People are struggling and they’re hurting right now and they want somebody to listen to them,” she said. “People are tired of empty promises. At the doors, that’s what I just kept hearing over and over again.”
Matt Bucher, a prominent former Milford school board member, came up just seven votes short in his primary race. | PHOTO COURTESY OF BUCHER CAMPAIGN
Bucher declined to speak by phone with Spotlight Delaware about the primary results, instead referring to a written statement he put out on Wednesday evening.
In the statement, Bucher wrote that he is familiar with the vote tabulation process from his time as a GOP district chair, and can confirm that “the likelihood of a different result in this particular election is a statistical zero.”
“What we need right now is clarity,” he wrote. “I call on you all to unite, and pray for the success, and to grant wisdom and strength of will, to my former opponent, and 33rd District GOP nominee Morgan Hudson.”
Tightest election marginin years
Delaware law necessitates a ballot recount when the percentage difference in votes received by the top two candidates is less than 0.5% of the total votes cast. In this case, the seven-vote difference between Hudson and Bucher amounted to 0.35% of the total votes.
The Kent County Department of Elections completed the vote recount Wednesday evening, and confirmed the same vote count originally reported on election night.
The close margin between Hudson and Bucher was relatively consistent across machine votes on election day, absentee votes and ballots cast during early voting.
A Department of Elections spokesperson told Spotlight Delaware the state has not had to do a recount in any primary or general election in recent years.
The last recount mandated by the state law took place in a Newark-area district in the 2022 general election, when then-Rep. Mike Ramone edged out challenger Frank Burns by 35 votes. Burns later won the seat in 2024.
In another tight central Delaware Republican primary in 2024, Rep. Bryan Shupe (R-Milford) and Patrick Smith for House District 36 resulted in just a 12-vote victory for Shupe.
The margin was 0.52% of the total votes cast, so it did not trigger a state-mandated recount. Both Shupe and Smith requested a recount at the time, but the Department of Elections did not grant the request.
Turnout in Tuesday’s District 33 Republican primary accounted for 31.4% of registered Republicans in the district, which was substantially higher than the 21.75% primary voter turnout recorded statewide.
Still, Hudson said she had hoped for a higher voter turnout, and she plans to push for more district residents to get to the ballot box in the November election, where she will now face Democrat Joshua Pennington.
“Trying to get people to come out and vote is going to be our biggest hurdle this time around for the general [election],” she said.
Primary dynamics
Campaign priorities and funding differences provide some insights as to why Hudson’s platform narrowly resonated with more voters than Bucher.
Despite Hudson’s lower profile campaign, she raised $15,000 throughout her 10-month primary campaign, which was among the highest sums in a Republican primary this year.
Hudson’s donations mostly came from individual donors, though she did receive notable maximum individual contributions from the First State First PAC, a fundraising committee run by former Republican state lawmaker Greg Lavelle, and a couple of Milford-area developers.
Hudson previously sought the same seat in 2016, and was decisively defeated by Postles in the Republican primary.
Bucher raised $11,825, including donations from some Republican elected officials, such as House Minority Leader Tim Dukes (R-Laurel) and retiring State Rep. Kevin Hensley (R- Odessa).
Neither candidate received outside spending from third-party advertisers.
In a pre-primary election interview with Spotlight Delaware, Bucher said his election platform was focused on retaining local control and containing development.
Hudson said on Thursday she has primarily heard concerns from voters about high electric bills and other cost-of-living challenges, which will remain her campaign focuses heading into the November election.
As of Sept. 1, the 33rd District had 19,949 registered voters, 6,444 or 32% of whom are registered Republicans, and 6,100 or 30.6% are registered Democrats.
The number of registered Republican voters in the district has climbed slowly since 2018, when the district had a Democratic majority, but it is still among the closest partisan margins of representative districts in the state.
It’s been nearly six months since Bull separated from Atos Group, the conglomerate that housed the supercomputer company for 12 years. While the separation is not yet fully complete, the company’s CEO, Emmanuel Le Roux, is confident Bull is quite capable of serving the HPC and AI needs of French and European companies with a homegrown supply chain.
“From a customer perspective, I think everybody is taking this move as a very positive move,” Le Roux told HPCwire in a recent interview. “Everybody is reassured that Bull will have the capacity for long term to maintain its leadership in HPC and AI. And that’s a very important for our customers because they are committing with us for many, many years when they are purchasing a supercomputer.”
Bull is currently 100% owned by the French government. Its shares are held in a French wealth fund that owns all or parts of 80 other French companies, including firms like Thales and EDF, a French electricity utility company. It’s possible that the French government will allow outside investors in the company at some point, Le Roux said. But for now, it’s owned entirely by the state.
The separation from Atos went as well as one could expect. The company is still providing some IT services to Bull, Le Roux said, which will continue for several more months. “But from a business perspective, from a governance, we are completely independent,” he said. “It went very smooth. We had a scenario where we thought it would be far more difficult, but we have a good team. We set up a good team and they did a fantastic job to make it successful.”
The decision to keep the name Bull was not clear cut. “We had several options. One was to reuse and relaunch the brand,” Le Roux said. “And to be honest, it was not my preferred scenario.”
Le Roux did not want to be in a position where the company needed to explain its history over and over again. It turned out that fear was unfounded, as even younger employees expressed interest in company, which was founded 95 years ago.
“We are a new company, a modern company with a lot of legacy, a story behind us,” Le Roux told us. “I changed my mind and we decided to go with Bull. And the adoption has been immediate. Internally, people are proud. Externally, people are proud.”
Bull’s current trajectory will continue. That includes making some of the most efficient supercomputers on the planet. Take a look at the Green500, which has Bull Sequana systems in three out of the top 10 slots and 31 of the top 100. That commitment to energy efficiency will continue under the “new” Bull, Le Roux said.
“Obviously, the less you put in energy, more you can put in CapEx to buy more capacity, or you consume less and it’s more affordable for the planet,” he said. “And we are continuing to invest big time on this so that we keep the number one position.”
Bull currently has 3,000 employees, including engineers, data scientists, and sales and support personnel, among others. Earlier this year, the company committed to hiring an additional 500 employees, which the company is currently doing.
“We have new experts and new skills coming with energy and knowledge that are complementing the team we have,” the CEO said. “It’s also a positive sign internally that we are growing and we have we are ambitious.”
When it comes to the computers themselves, Bull has short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. The company will continue to sell systems with GPUs from AMD and Nvidia. But the company is looking to broaden its supply chain, with a particular focus on bolstering its sovereignty by sourcing more of its components from European providers.
LUMI-AI, a next-generation supercomputer at the CSC — IT Center for Science Ltd. data center in Kajaani, Finland, will be powered by AMD Instinct MI430X GPUs and 6th Gen AMD EPYC 256-core processors in a Bull Sequana supercomputer (Copyright: Mikael Kanerva, CSC)
To that end, Bull recently announced that it will be manufacturing NVL72 systems for sale in Europe. There is demand for the new scale-up systems among French and European companies, but they would prefer to have them manufactured by a European company. It’s also bringing manufacturing in-house for its general purpose and cloud and AI businesses, which complement the core supercomputing line of business at Bull.
“There is a big need from big players in Europe for sovereign hardware. And this year is now the only scalable solution in Europe,” Le Roux said.
There are several drivers for the sovereignty push. For starters, the shortage of processors and memory chips is driving a desire for European firms to be more in control of their semiconductor supply chains. Tariffs and quotas that push costs up and component availability down are also fueling the quest to reshore computer manufacturing.
“All these announcements that there is quota on GPUs, quota on on prioritization of the GPU and the tariff applied as well. And all this it’s giving a lot of uncertainty on the supply chain. And on the other side, we are also fighting with the memory cost increase, right? So the CS has a long term or mid-term enabler to get these components or some of these components develop in Europe so that we de-risk the supply chain for supercomputers.”
Networking is a good example of that, Le Roux said. Instead of relying on Nvidia for Mellanox interconnects, Bull is developing its own interconnect, called BullSequana eXascale Interconnect (BXI), which will start shipping in January 2027. It’s already being sold, and is slated to be the network component for the second exascale in Europe, he said.
Bull eXascale Interconnect (BXI)
“We announced [two weeks ago] the biggest AI factory in Europe called LUMI-AI that will also embed BXI technology for networking,” he said. “And there are many, many other deals that will be announced in the coming weeks where we will replace Nvidia Mellanox by BXI from Bull. So this is an example which is 20% of the value of a supercomputer. We switch from a non European to a European technology.”
Le Roux pointed out that Bull is designing and manufacturing much of its supercomputer, including the circuit boards and racks, in Europe. “So they see that we are getting more and more sovereign and supply chain independent, our European supply chain for supercomputers,” he said. “And we do that as well for the general-purpose server. And we see that [provides security], in comparison with having a dependency with the Chinese provider or a US providers with all the ups and downs that we see in the press, on the tariff, on the GPU allocation and on the on the on the crisis, like memories.”
The company is currently dependent on US chipmakers and Taiwanese fabs, as most of the world is. While there’s not much Bull can do about the dependence on TSMC fabs for chipmaking, it is looking to invest in designing and developing chips, and perhaps doing some packaging of chip components at some point in the near future.
“We can design the chip now, and that will be over time an alternative to other non-European players. So we have the capacity,” Le Roux said. “We created partnership in European chip ecosystem to reinforce our capacity to develop chips. We doubled our design and engineering capacity basically to be able to do this new networking technology.”
BullSequana XH3500
Bull has a partnership with the European chipmaker Kalray for CPUs and is working with other AI accelerators startups as well. Bull will contribute its engineering expertise in developing PCBs as well as provide some funding, “to help them to grow and integrate them into our super computer and with the hope that in [three to] five years from now, it will be a real alternative… to non-European components.”
HPC will be critical for Bull for many years to come. Increasingly, that means bringing new workloads to run on or next to HPC hardware, including AI models and quantum computers.
“What is important and interesting for us is that we see more and more hybrid computing, where HPC classical simulation, where you need a bit of booster with AI,” Le Roux said. “And we believe this is also where we will have the first application of quantum computer. Quantum HPC is really a priority.”
Clearly, French sovereignty and supercomputing are key pillars of the new Bull. The majority of the business is building supercomputers, which guides the company’s thinking. But it is also looking to branch out into adjoining sectors with its general purpose and cloud and AI businesses.
“We are very strong in HPC. We are starting on the AI and cloud, but we believe there is a big potential,” the Bull CEO said. “There is also a big appetite in Europe, in India, in Brazil, to some extent in Canada now to have also sovereign and an alternative technology for AI that we can provide them.”
HPC is a critical resource for many French organizations, such as CEA, the nation’s atomic energy commission, which will buy supercomputers from Bull for many years. Other institutions in France and Europe will also look to Bull as a sovereign supplier of HPC, which Le Roux says will improve its standing and help to grow the business.
“When we were in the Atos Group, it was a big part of a small part of Atos,” he said. “But now it’s at the heart of our commitment. It’s also why we are now, again, an independent company.”
New species of wild feline was discovered in Bolivia’s Yungas forest that is smaller than the average domestic cat
A diminutive wild cat that inhabits Bolivia’s cloud forest has been identified as a previously unknown species, marking the first time a new living feline species has been formally named and described in more than a century.
The cat, called tilcayo by local communities, is part of a group called tiger cats found across much of South America. It was found in Bolivia’s lush Yungas forest, a mountainous region where forests are often covered by clouds and surrounded by high humidity, according to researchers. It measures about 18in (46cm) long and weighs about 3lb (1.4kg), making it smaller than the average domestic cat.
Ars Technica reports:
Half a year after Iranian drone strikes knocked out multiple Amazon data centers, the US tech company has acknowledged the permanent loss of some customer data that was hosted in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
Amazon Web Services was "unable to restore access to the resources and data" hosted in some of the war-damaged data centers, according to an AWS dashboard update posted on September 15. The development was first reported by Reuters and suggests that the Iranian strikes inflicted catastrophic damage on the data centers.
Customer data was irretrievably lost in one of three AWS availability zones in the United Arab Emirates region, specifically the mec1-az2 availability zone.
Each availability zone is serviced by one or more Amazon data centers. The company is still working on "recovering regional resources" and restoring resources hosted in the other two availability zones in the United Arab Emirates... But the destruction was apparently even more widespread for the data centers in the Bahrain region, because Amazon said it was unable to restore access to resources and data across all three availability zones there. "The damage to our infrastructure spanned multiple Availability Zones and exceeded what our regional and multi-AZ services are designed to withstand," the AWS update said.
The company had already suspended customer billing in the affected AWS regions in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates and has spent the past six months attempting to restore normal operations... [When the war began] AWS immediately urged customers to migrate resources to other cloud regions and use remote backups to restore any "inaccessible resources." The cloud service also reportedly issued $150 million in customer credits following the initial Iranian strikes in March.
Exclusive: Sisters of Nicholas Brandram recount 44-year-old’s deteriorating mental health in days before he took his life
Days before Nicholas Brandram, the man suspected of being the “Putney pusher”, killed himself, he told his family that the police investigation was “murdering him”.
He had “no fight left” in him, he told his sisters, Alexia Hicks and Sophie Voelcker, and could not see an end to the Metropolitan police investigation, or the online abuse.
Get-in for game v LeBron James’s 76ers spiked to $1,408
MSG Sports to restart sales and refund fans who paid
The New York Knicks said on Thursday they are pausing ticket sales after a mistake caused them to be listed at prices that were too high.
The NBA champions put individual game tickets for the 2026-27 season on sale this week. The get-in price for the 20 October season opener against the Philadelphia 76ers was more than $1,000.
The US health secretary added that he would’ve made sweeping changes ‘on day one’ but he had to follow the law
As the death toll from the worst measles outbreak in decades rises, Robert F Kennedy Jr headlined the Washington DC conference of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense, which he led for nearly two decades.
“Let me be clear. You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House,” Kennedy, now serving as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told anti-vaccine activists at the conference in a nearly hour-and-a-half-long speech. He urged patience, saying that he would’ve made sweeping changes “on day one” but that he had to follow the law in order to make permanent change.
Mark Rutte said Britain will need to steadily increase defence spending to meet Nato target of 3.5% of GDP by 2035
Britain needs to show “a credible path” of annual increases in its defence budgets to meet a Nato target of spending nearly £30bn more on the military by the middle of the next decade, the head of the alliance said on Thursday.
Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general, said that Britain could not wait until just before 2035 to lift defence spending to 3.5% of GDP, in an unusually pointed intervention a day after he met prime minister Andy Burnham.
Caption: Nobody should be bored this weekend… there is a festival, events, outing, sale or musical for everyone! Enjoy Delaware!
Our “Gotta Love the Weekend” Report: More than 500 classic vehicles headline a weekend filled with college football, festivals, living history, theater, outdoor programs, and fall family activities.
WILMINGTON, Del. — From classic automobiles and college football to fireworks, German food and Revolutionary War history, Delaware and the surrounding region offer a full schedule of activities this weekend.
Hagley Car Show
More than 500 antique and restored vehicles from the early 1900s through the early 2000s will fill the grounds of Hagley Museum and Library during the annual Hagley Car Show from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 20.
This year’s special feature, “American Independent Automakers,” celebrates companies that competed outside Detroit’s traditional Big Three. Three feature fields will highlight vehicles connected to those manufacturers.
The rain-or-shine show also includes a vehicle parade, motoring music, food trucks and access to “Du Ponts Down the Road,” an exhibition of vehicles once owned and used by members of the du Pont family. Featured pieces include a horse-drawn carriage, an early electric car, a 1918 Cadillac, a 1928 DuPont Motors Model G Phaeton and a World War II-era Indian motorcycle.
Advance admission is required and sold by the carload for up to eight people. Passes cost $30 for the general public and $25 for Hagley members. Dogs are not permitted. Passes will be sold until 11:59 p.m. Saturday or until the event sells out. Details are available on the Hagley Car Show website.
Blue Hens Host Coastal Carolina
The University of Delaware football team returns to Delaware Stadium at 11:30 a.m. Saturday to face Coastal Carolina in a nationally televised game on CBS Sports Network.
The Blue Hens enter the game with a 1-1 record after opening the season with a 42-7 victory over Merrimack and losing 35-26 at Vanderbilt. Saturday’s game is also Band Day at Delaware Stadium.
The game gives families and football fans an early Saturday option before visiting one of the afternoon or evening festivals. Tickets and game-day information are available from University of Delaware Athletics.
Riverwalk Freedom Festival
Downtown Milford will host the 26th annual Riverwalk Freedom Festival from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday along the Mispillion Riverwalk and throughout the downtown area.
The free event will feature more than 150 vendors, food trucks, live music, a car show, children’s games, a pet park and a brew garden. The Mispillion River Duck Dash begins at 3:30 p.m., with numbered ducks available for $5 and cash prizes of $500, $250 and $100.
The festival concludes with Milford’s only public fireworks display of the season at 8:30 p.m. Families should arrive early and bring blankets or folding chairs. Popular viewing locations include the Riverwalk and Memorial Park.
The Chadds Ford Historical Society will bring the American Revolution to life Saturday during the Battle at Chadds Ford and Historic Chadds Ford Days.
The daytime program runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and features Revolutionary War skirmishes, military encampments, artillery demonstrations, colonial trades, music, food and family activities. Visitors can watch blacksmithing, woodworking, candle making and other demonstrations showing what life was like during the Revolutionary era.
Tavern Night in the Grove follows from 6 to 10 p.m., offering period music, costumed entertainment, traditional food and beverages, cannon fire and fireworks. The event takes place at the historical society’s Barn Visitors Center, 1736 Creek Road in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
The Delaware Sängerbund Oktoberfest brings German food, music, dancing and family entertainment to 49 Salem Church Road near Newark from Friday through Sunday.
The long-running festival recreates the atmosphere of a traditional Bavarian celebration with live bands, German beer, folk dancing and foods prepared by Sängerbund members. The menu typically includes bratwurst, potato pancakes, schnitzel, sauerkraut, potato salad and German desserts.
Amusement rides are available for children, while the large festival tent offers music and dancing throughout the weekend. Admission is $10, with children 16 and younger admitted free when accompanied by an adult. Visit the Delaware Sängerbund for hours, parking and event details.
“Fiddler on the Roof” Opens at Candlelight
The Candlelight Theatre opens “Fiddler on the Roof” on Friday at its historic dinner theater at 2208 Millers Road in Wilmington.
The Tony Award-winning musical follows Tevye, a Jewish dairyman struggling to preserve his family’s traditions amid cultural and political upheaval in early 20th-century Russia. Its familiar score includes “Tradition,” “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Matchmaker” and “Sunrise, Sunset.”
The production runs through Oct. 25. Candlelight tickets include a meal served before the performance, and a full-service cash bar is available. Performance times vary. Tickets and show information are available from The Candlelight Theatre.
Delaware Nature Society Native Plant Sale at Coverdale Farm
The Delaware Nature Society is offering several outdoor programs for people interested in native plants, birds, wildlife and hiking.
Saturday’s activities include the Fall Native Plant Sale at Coverdale Farm Preserve in Greenville and Hawk Watch at Ashland Nature Center in Hockessin. Other programs include farm activities, nature art, marsh exploration and monarch butterfly programs at locations around the state.
Sunday opportunities include guided bird walks, another day of Hawk Watch and a hike through Flint Woods Preserve, which is not ordinarily open to the public. Times, fees and registration requirements vary by program. The complete schedule is available through the Delaware Nature Society events calendar.
More Weekend Options
The Delaware Seafood Festival will bring crabs, oysters, shrimp, lobster, crab cakes, live music and cooking demonstrations to Schellville near Rehoboth Beach on Saturday. Ticket and scheduling information is available through Visit Delaware.
Fifer Orchards near Wyoming is also opening its fall festival season with a corn maze, outdoor play areas, seasonal food and apple picking when available. Festival information and tickets are available from Fifer Orchards.
Meals on Wheels Delaware will hold its Hats & Heels fundraiser Saturday evening at Bally’s Dover Casino Resort. The event features food, music, fashion and contests while raising money to support homebound older Delawareans. Information is available from Meals on Wheels Delaware.
To Go Box
What: Major weekend events across Delaware and the Brandywine Valley
When: Friday through Sunday, Sept. 18-20
Top attraction: Hagley Car Show, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday
Sports: Delaware vs. Coastal Carolina, 11:30 a.m. Saturday
Grand jury indicts Jesse Calhoun, 41, on charge of first-degree manslaughter in the death of Elizabeth Gibson
An Oregon man accused of killing five women has been indicted in connection with the death of a sixth woman, officials announced this week.
Jesse Calhoun was indicted by a grand jury on a charge of first-degree manslaughter in the death of Elizabeth “Libby” Gibson, said the Multnomah county district attorney on Wednesday. Calhoun is accused of causing Gibson’s death and acting “unlawfully and recklessly under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life”.
NSF X-Labs invites proposals from teams working in AI for physical systems and announces two forthcoming topics
Sept. 17, 2026 — The U.S. National Science Foundation has announced three additional topics for NSF X-Labs as part of the $1.5 billion investment the agency initiated in May, completing the portfolio of topics for calendar year 2026. NSF’s substantial, long-term investment in NSF X-Labs over the next decade aims to tackle pressing scientific and technological challenges through novel and innovative research partnerships.
Credit: JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock
The latest NSF X-Labs funding opportunity invites proposals in the technical domain of Artificial Intelligence for Physical Systems. NSF is also previewing two additional NSF X-Labs topics for which the agency anticipates inviting proposals later this calendar year: From Sequence to Function and Computation at the Limit of Physics.
“Science is moving faster than ever, and the challenges we face increasingly require new ways of working across disciplines and sectors,” said Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF Director. “NSF X-Labs bring together researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs to pursue ambitious scientific questions with the flexibility to test new ideas, learn quickly, and adapt along the way. This is part of NSF’s broader effort to build the conditions for exceptional science to happen more often, more quickly and across a wider range of the research community, helping usher in a new era of American discovery and innovation.”
NSF X-Labs — independent teams of researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs pursuing milestone-based federal funding to solve specific scientific challenges — reflect the interdisciplinary nature of today’s modern science ecosystem.
“The NSF X-Labs initiative is investing in high-risk, high-impact research that requires substantial resources beyond traditional funding mechanisms, reducing the time it takes to go from insight to impact,” said Erwin Gianchandani, NSF Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (NSF TIP). “Today’s announcement expands the pathways for a wide range of institutions and teams to identify and overcome key bottlenecks — advancing bold, innovative science and technology critical to U.S. competitiveness and economic leadership.”
NSF X-Labs: AI for Physical Systems
Decades of progress in digital AI have positioned the U.S. to redefine how intelligent systems interact with the physical world. The next frontier of AI requires developing intelligent, adaptive, and scalable systems for complex physical environments. NSF is seeking NSF X-Labs teams to develop early-stage technologies that enable breakthroughs to accelerate entirely new forms of AI integration in physical systems, including advanced sensors, robotics, embodied systems, human-robot interfaces, and cyber-physical systems. Teams applying to this topic will produce innovative platform technologies that benefit a broad range of application domains critical to U.S. competitiveness and security, which may include healthcare, national defense, emergency response, advanced manufacturing, and scientific discovery.
Future NSF X-Labs Topics
NSF is also releasing an early preview of two future NSF X-Labs topics — From Sequence to Function and Computation at the Limit of Physics — anticipated later this Fall, to help potential proposers anticipate upcoming opportunities requiring large, multidisciplinary teams to come together to accelerate bold research and development to, in turn, advance U.S. technological leadership. NSF is not accepting proposals for these topics at this time; rather, full details including proposal submission timelines and guidance will be provided in forthcoming topic announcements.
NSF X-Labs: From Sequence to Function — By reliably linking protein sequence and structure to biological function, the U.S. can unlock a new era of biological engineering in which biological components are designed rather than discovered. NSF X-Labs in this topic will close the gap between predicting protein structure and understanding the dynamic behavior of proteins by creating platform technologies that enable the intentional design of individual proteins or entire genomes whose function is predictable and/or controllable.
NSF X-Labs: Computation at the Limit of Physics — New technologies and paradigms are needed to pursue the computational efficiencies and capabilities required to drive U.S. innovation over the next half-century. NSF X-Labs in this topic will dramatically narrow the gap between the energy efficiency of conventional Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor-based computing and the inherent physical limits.
NSF issued a Request for Information seeking feedback on potential topics for future NSF X-Labs funding opportunities. Responses are due by Oct. 30, 2026.
The NSF X-Labs initiative is guided by the administration’s mandate to revitalize and strengthen America’s science and technology ecosystem by exploring innovative models for funding and sharing high-value scientific research infrastructure and results. The design choices underpinning these efforts are informed by thoughtful science policy scholarship and entrepreneurship from both established and emerging think tanks, metascience experts, congressionally chartered study commissions, and the broader scientific community.
To learn more about the AI for Physical Systems topic and how to apply, read the NSF X-Labs funding opportunity and topic announcement on the NSF X-Labs webpage. You may also plan to join an introductory webinar on Wed., Oct. 14, 2026, at 1 p.m. EDT. You must register online to join the webinar.
Students required to disclose information if they wish to make up swimming days lost because of their periods
A Michigan high school is facing scrutiny after parents raised concerns over a gym class policy requiring female students to disclose information about their menstrual cycles if they want to make up swimming days missed because of their periods.
Under the policy, which appears in a Lakeview high school gym syllabus, female students who miss swimming because of their periods must have a parent submit a written note or email identifying the length of their menstrual cycle before they can make up the missed days.
In latest extracts from upcoming memoir, Diana’s brother suggests some in Buckingham Palace were ‘relieved’ at her death
The brother of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, has claimed in published extracts of his new memoir that King Charles sounded “giddily elated – like a lottery winner” in a phone call to him immediately after her death.
Earl Spencer also says he believed Buckingham Palace wanted William and Harry and himself to walk behind Diana’s coffin because the then Prince Charles was “adamant” he was going to walk and palace officials feared “members of the public might shout abuse at him”.
One Senate Democrat scuttled a Republican-led effort to pass legislation aimed at shielding Americans from energy costs attributed to data centers, saying it didn't go far enough.
She forfeits points from her win in the Beijing race
The Australian athlete who caused a storm by winning a Hyrox event in China despite soiling herself during the race has apologised to the “people of China” and rival athletes in a statement online.
Posting on Instagram, Joanna Wietrzyk offered a “sincere apology” to the “people of China, my fellow competitors, the spectators and the Hyrox organizers for what happened during the race in Beijing”.
Ruling comes amid demolition threats by Donald Trump after being stymied from adding his name to centre
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to give at least 30 days’ notice before moving to demolish the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after the US president warned that it could be “ripped down”.
The US district judge Christopher Cooper issued the order on Thursday after lawyers for the Democratic congresswoman Joyce Beatty submitted evidence of Trump’s comments and sought clarification over whether the building could be closed or bulldozed.
Human remains found in the Grand Canyon this week have been identified as Timothy Allen Smith, the last person missing after deadly flash flooding in late August.
Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, has welcomed the EU’s proposal for Canada to become the bloc’s first ‘associate member’, despite threats from Donald Trump over the plan. The US president said Washington could impose ‘very serious tariffs’ or halt trade if the EU went ahead with the idea. But in a defiant speech to the European parliament, Carney called for ‘deep cooperation’ and said polling showed the overwhelming majority of Canadians supported closer ties with Europe. Lucy Hough speaks to Europe correspondent Jon Henley – watch on YouTube
(The Center Square) – Suspended U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Christian Castro was arrested Wednesday by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension ahead of state and federal hearings in Minnesota.
This past summer, my family and I went on a two-week vacation that took us to seemingly every major city in Italy, the south of Switzerland and Paris. I knew this trip wasn’t going to be cheap, so in the…
Critics had criticized administration for nominating Schroyer, who has no formal experience working in ICE
The White House has withdrawn the nomination of Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), less than three months after announcing his role.
Critics had initially criticized administration officials for nominating Schroyer, who has no formal experience working in ICE, to lead Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda.
Mark Carney’s response to the challenges posed by an unreliable US president contains a clarity of vision that is lacking in post-Brexit Britain
There is no “associate membership” of the European Union, nor any blueprint for what such a thing might involve. It is a political hypothesis, describing a relationship of intimate strategic alignment with the EU, stopping short of actual membership, in ways that are significant but undefined.
This week, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, invited Canada to be the first country to enjoy this putative status. In her state of the union speech, she spoke of a future relationship elevated “to the highest level possible”, reflecting an affinity of interests and values. Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, reciprocated the sentiment in a speech on Wednesday. Addressing the European parliament, he said the two sides should secure “strategic autonomy through deep cooperation” across a broad spectrum of interests: trade, defence, industrial capacity, science, space and AI. He proposed Canadian participation in the EU’s Erasmus student exchange programme and Horizon research scheme.
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.
Walks in southern Delaware and Wilmington will raise money for Alzheimer’s care, support and research
WILMINGTON, Del. — Delaware residents are being invited to join the fight against Alzheimer’s disease during two Walk to End Alzheimer’s events this fall.
The Alzheimer’s Association Delaware Chapter will hold its Southern Delaware walk Saturday, Sept. 26, followed by the Wilmington walk Saturday, Oct. 31.
“Alzheimer’s is a growing crisis in Delaware. As our population ages, more individuals and families are confronting this devastating disease,” said Glen Gray, chair of the Alzheimer’s Association Delaware Chapter. “Early detection and decades of research have improved outcomes for heart disease and many cancers, including breast cancer. But no one survives Alzheimer’s. That is why this walk — and the research, care and support it funds — is so important to our community.”
The annual walks bring together people living with Alzheimer’s, caregivers, families and supporters while raising money for research and the association’s care and support programs.
A central part of each event will be the Promise Garden ceremony, during which participants carry flowers representing their personal connections to Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
Each flower color has a different meaning. Participants may walk in honor of someone living with Alzheimer’s, in memory of someone who died from the disease, as a caregiver or as a supporter of the association’s goal of ending Alzheimer’s.
More than 7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease, one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Nearly 13 million relatives and friends provide care for people living with Alzheimer’s and other dementias.
In Delaware, more than 22,300 people are living with Alzheimer’s, and more than 37,000 people serve as caregivers, according to the association.
The Walk to End Alzheimer’s is described by the Alzheimer’s Association as the world’s largest event dedicated to raising awareness and funding for Alzheimer’s care, support and research. Its roots date to 1989, when the organization began holding Memory Walk events across the country.
Participation is open to individuals, families, businesses and community organizations. Walkers may register individually or create or join a team.
Funds raised support the Alzheimer’s Association’s work to accelerate research, encourage early detection and risk reduction, and provide care and support services for families affected by dementia.
To Go Box
What: Alzheimer’s Association Walk to End Alzheimer’s
Southern Delaware walk: Saturday, Sept. 26
Wilmington walk: Saturday, Oct. 31
Registration: Participants may register, form a team, join an existing team or donate at alz.org/walk.
Event information: Visit the individual registration pages for the Southern Delaware or Wilmington walks for locations, schedules and fundraising updates.
Learn more: Visit alz.org or call the Alzheimer’s Association’s 24-hour helpline at 800-272-3900.
Ireland joins joins Dutch broadcaster in refusing to take part in 2027 song contest, in second consecutive year of protests
Ireland is to boycott Eurovision for the second year running over the “appalling” ongoing killing in Gaza, the national broadcaster has said.
Ireland was one of five countries, along with Iceland, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia, that refused to take part in the competition this year in protest against Israel’s participation.
The Arizona senator shepherded the confirmation of conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh
Jon Kyl, a Republican former US senator from Arizona who shepherded conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh through his confirmation hearing, died on Thursday at 84, his family announced.
The cause was complications from a neurological disease, according to a statement. Last December, Kyl announced that he had been diagnosed with dementia.
Following an exciting 2025 season for the Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens, the football team led by star quarterback Nick Minicucci looks to have high expectations going into 2026’s debut against Merrimack College.
In 2025, the Blue Hens recorded a 7-6 record, going 4-4 in Conference USA (CUSA) in their first year joining the division. The thrilling season led the Hens to a bowl game, where they won the 68 Ventures Bowl against the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns.
The momentum from last year’s breakthrough campaign has ignited a new level of excitement on campus, which set the stage for Welcome Week events that filled Delaware Stadium to capacity for the opening game.
Regarding quarterbacks, Captain Minicucci enters his senior season after recording 3,683 yards in 2025, sixth in the nation. As a member of the Conference USA All-Conference Second Team and a 2026 Davey O’Brien Award Preseason Watch List quarterback, Minicucci leads an exciting Delaware team looking to challenge any opponent they face.
On top of a stellar season, Minicucci was not only an accurate passer but also a mobile quarterback, with 235 yards rushing and 10 touchdowns. His dual-threat capabilities led the Blue Hens to be the top-ranked offense in CUSA last year, marking Delaware(CONF.) as a fearsome opponent.
As Minicucci’s college career comes to a close, Delaware’s future continues to look bright. Just before the start of the 2026 season, quarterback Julian Reese II committed to the university as a four-star recruit, Delaware’s highest recruit in school history. Reese is ranked 15th in the class of 2027, as he enters Delaware as a true freshman.
Delaware finished seventh in conference matchups in the CUSA division, as they look to improve against division leaders Kennesaw State University and Jacksonville State University who tied at the top of the division at 7-1.
Delaware began the season with Merrimack College and Vanderbilt University, with a blowout win against Merrimack and a close loss against the talented Vanderbilt team to hand the Hens their first loss of the season.
Delaware’s schedule will be followed by two more non-conference matchups against Coastal Carolina University and the University of Virginia. Early-season showdowns against Power Four opponents Vanderbilt and Virginia provide the Blue Hens with major tests on the national stage. The season continues with eight straight conference matchups as Delaware prepares to return stronger in their second season in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS).
One of the most anticipated matchups is the head-to-head matchup between Delaware and Liberty University in Newark, as the crowd will be filled for Parents and Family Weekend. The Blue Hens look to get revenge against the Flames after a tough loss in the 2025 season.
After appearing in EA Sports College Football 27, the Blue Hens have been put on the map as a prominent Division I football team. This year, the team will have games across multiple national broadcasts including ESPN+, SEC Network, CBS Sports Network and ESPNU.
As the Blue Hens embark on their second year in CUSA, the combination of seasoned veteran leadership and a historic rising program momentum creates a clear path forward. This battle-tested roster is ready for the grueling opponent slate, and the Blue Hens are well-positioned to prove that last year’s breakthrough was only the beginning of a true FBS identity.
In the moments after the USMNT’s 4-1 crash-out in the last 16 at this summer’s World Cup, Mauricio Pochettino took the podium for what many assumed would be his last press conference as the US head coach. I had a question for him: “Would you consider your tenure here a success?” His answer was full of the usual platitudes, but one thing did stand out. He said, more or less, that he and his staff had finally gotten a good idea of the player pool.
It struck me as bizarre at the time. By almost every account, Pochettino had been brought in to win the game that he’d just lost. Given just two and a half years to get it done, his job had never really been to evaluate the player pool; it had been to maximize results with the tools at hand, something he did with varying levels of success. And now, in the shadow of arguably the most disappointing result in US men’s history, we were finding out that it had been a fact-finding mission? And there were suggestions that he was leaving?
Attorney also says Elizabeth Siders, 34, has been almost continuously pregnant since 15 without regular healthcare
An Ohio mother whose 16 children were rescued from appalling conditions pleaded not guilty to child endangerment and neglect charges in court on Wednesday.
Elizabeth Siders, 34, is one of four family members, including her husband, Gary Siders Jr, charged with 16 charges of child endangerment and neglect after investigators found the children, who were 17 months to 18 years old, in “deplorable conditions” at the decrepit family home in the tiny village of Hamden in July.
Bose’s upgraded $299 top-of-the-line open buds feature improved sound and battery life, while the totally new $199 Sport Open Earbuds are designed for active use.
Exclusive: The Green leader has not spoken publicly about the motion, which is likely to be debated at the party’s conference in October
The Greens are pushing Zack Polanski to take a stance on a potential party policy stating “Zionism is racism”, with some fearing it could alienate Jewish supporters if it was passed.
Polanski, who leads the Greens in England and Wales, has not spoken publicly about the motion, which came top of a members’ vote of policy motions to be debated at the party conference in Brighton at the start of October, and is thus almost certain to feature.
MIAMI, Florida — Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar is publicly challenging President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, using a new campaign ad to warn that Hispanic voters who supported him in 2024 now feel “betrayed.”
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar says in the ad, filmed outside the White House. She pointed to July detention figures and urged Trump to “be careful” about advice he receives on immigration. CBS News and Reuters independently reported the remarks Thursday.
Salazar, whose South Florida district includes a large Hispanic population, endorsed Trump in 2024 and has generally supported his presidency. However, she has long advocated an immigration approach combining stronger border enforcement with legal protections for some undocumented immigrants already living in the United States.
Her criticism comes as Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests have increased sharply. Reuters reported that ICE took nearly 51,000 people into custody in August, setting another monthly high, while more than three-quarters of recent arrests involved people without criminal records.
Salazar is seeking another House term against Democratic nominee Eliott Rodriguez. Her ad argues that Trump can pursue immigration enforcement without granting amnesty while providing undocumented residents what she called “a dignified life.”
Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said President Donald Trump’s tariffs come at a high cost for Michiganders.
El-Sayed posted a graphic on X with an image of his Republican opponent Mike Rogers alongside an image of Trump, with text that says, “Trump’s tariffs cost each Michigan household $5,619.”
The post’s caption said, “Mike Rogers called it ‘necessary.’” (After Trump imposed 50% tariffs on $20 billion in Canadian goods in August, Rogers released a statement saying tariffs “are necessary, but are not a one-size-fits-all solution.”)
The number is an accurate measure of tariffs paid by Michigan importers, not of how much each household paid.
After this story published, an El-Sayed campaign spokesperson responded to PolitiFact’s request for comment about information behind the number. The spokesperson pointed us to severalnewsoutlets that cited $5,619 as the amount paid by each Michigan household, saying El-Sayed drew from that coverage. The campaign also noted a Sept. 15 opinion column in The Wall Street Journal where Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made the same point.
But a director at the organization that originally published the data told PolitiFact the number is not a measure of what each Michigan household actually paid.
The $5,619 figure comes from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s tariff burden measure, which calculates tariffs paid on all goods imported into the state. The analysis, which used estimates prepared by Trade Partnership Worldwide, found that imports to Michigan have incurred $23 billion in tariff costs since January 2025, when Trump took office.
The report divides the $23 billion by the number of Michigan households to arrive at $5,619. But Michigan’s imports aren’t all bought by Michiganders, so you can’t attribute the total amount to Michigan households.
“For Michigan, a bunch of the cost is paid by manufacturers importing machinery or auto parts. … It is not the amount paid by each household,” Bryan Riley, director of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s Free Trade initiative, said.
The reason the number can’t be divided cleanly as a cost paid by each Michigan household is because goods imported into one state aren’t sold only in that state. They’re part of national supply chains. And Michigan is an outlier because of its outsized share of the country’s car manufacturing, said Jason Miller, a Michigan State University supply chain management professor.
Michigan is the “state of destination” for $10.5 billion of vehicles imported from Canada and $21.5 billion of vehicles imported from Mexico, according to U.S. Census data that Miller analyzed. But it’s not where all these cars are sold; Michigan is a distribution point for car imports. The cars are ultimately shipped all over the country.
“Clearly, we don’t have all the cars from Mexico being consumed in Michigan versus Ohio,” Miller said. “We also can’t assign tariffs to goods in the state of destination data.”
Another reason those costs aren’t all paid by Michiganders is because importers absorb some of the costs in the form of lower profit margins, Miller said.
“The cost is primarily borne by Americans but we do not attempt to allocate the overall total between final consumers, businesses, or importers,” Riley said.
Nationally, the extra taxes paid because of Trump’s tariffs from March 2025 to July 2026 break down to about $851 per person, Miller said. Other estimates have placed the tax burden at around $1,000 per U.S. household. That’s before accounting for $166 billion in refunds after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s initial tariffs. Riley said the refunds are not accounted for in the National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s data.
Because imports are generally shipped across the country, it’s difficult to estimate how the tariff burden breaks down by state, Miller said. Still, states with higher imports likely are disproportionately affected by tariff costs. A New York Fed study found that states where imports make up a higher share of consumer spending are more affected than states that spend less on imported goods.
The study found that imported goods make up 4.1% of Michigan consumers’ spending, which means it ranked 22nd out of the 31 states analyzed in terms of its exposure to tariff increases. That’s above Colorado and Nebraska, but below states such as California, New Jersey and Texas.
Our ruling
El-Sayed said Trump’s tariffs “cost each Michigan household $5,619.”
Tariffs are increasing consumer costs. Before the Supreme Court rolled back some of the tariffs, studies show tariffs had increased taxes by about $1,000 per household nationally; states with high imports may be more affected.
But the number El-Sayed cites represents all tariffs paid by Michigan importers. Because of Michigan’s auto industry, its importers have a high tariff burden. Those products are sold across the country, so Michiganders don’t bear all that cost.
The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.
UPDATE, Sept. 17, 2026: This story was updated to include a response received after publication from El-Sayed’s campaign.
Canada's leader draws regular scorn from President Trump, but European leaders gave him a standing ovation as they aim to push their ties to "the highest level."
After being read charges, Layne Lundeen said: ‘I assaulted a police officer? Is that what it says? I don’t have my glasses’
An American Airlines passenger who was duct-taped to his seat following an alleged outburst including racial and homophobic slurs said that he does not recall the incident.
On 3 September, 67-year old Layne Lundeen was restrained in his first-class seat with duct tape and zip ties over alleged unruly behavior. The American Airline Flight 618 was originally traveling from Dallas, Texas, to Newark, New Jersey, and was diverted to the Baltimore/Washington Thurgood Marshall airport in an emergency landing.
Free Sept. 26 festival at Hudson Fields will feature live music, children’s activities and more than 30 recovery organizations and vendors
MILTON, Del. — People in recovery, their families and community supporters will gather at Hudson Fields on Saturday, Sept. 26, for atTAcK addiction’s third annual Sober Fest.
The free festival, scheduled from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., is designed to celebrate recovery while connecting Sussex County residents with treatment information, support services and others who understand the challenges posed by substance use disorders.
“The festival is not only a place where people can come together in an alcohol- and drug-free environment, but it is meant to foster community connection and care, so that people don’t feel isolated in their recovery,” said Dawn Hess-Fischer, president of atTAcK addiction and chair of Sober Fest.
The event will include more than 30 organizations and vendors offering resources for people in recovery and their families. Activities will include food, arts and crafts, bounce houses, free reiki services, an ice cream truck and appearances by characters from “Bluey” and “Super Mario Bros.”
The Oxford Houses of Delaware will sponsor a cornhole tournament.
Nick Kashmanian will perform from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., followed by Girls Room from 1 to 3 p.m.
“We created Sober Fest as a way for the Sussex County community to unite, celebrate recovery, learn about local resources and see that there is hope in recovery,” Hess-Fischer said.
Building support beyond treatment
Organizers say treatment programs, counselors and recovery groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Nar-Anon provide important help, but people affected by addiction also need supportive relationships within their communities.
Sober Fest seeks to create those connections in an informal, family-friendly setting while making conversations about substance use and recovery easier.
“Our goal is to continue celebrating recovery while educating the public about this disease,” Hess-Fischer said. “At atTAcK addiction, we work every day to erase the stigma surrounding addiction, including here in Sussex County.”
According to figures provided by atTAcK addiction, Delaware recorded 314 overdose deaths in 2025, a 41% decline from the state’s 2022 peak. Organizers said the decrease represents meaningful progress but does not diminish the continuing demand for treatment, recovery services and housing assistance.
atTAcK addiction, founded in 2013, is a statewide nonprofit that raises awareness about addiction, assists individuals and families and supports people in recovery.
The organization owns three recovery residences, provides recovery housing scholarships, offers free naloxone training and educational programs, advocates for legislation and conducts community outreach. It also operates a resource center at 210 Peoples Plaza in Newark.
Activities: Live music, food, children’s activities, arts and crafts, reiki services, a cornhole tournament and recovery resources from more than 30 organizations and vendors
Need help: Call atTAcK addiction at 302-365-5221 or Delaware’s Hope Line at 833-9-HOPEDE (833-946-7333). Free, 24-hour support and state-vetted treatment resources are also available at HelpIsHereDE.com.
Rapper won prestigious award as an unsigned artist before breaking UK Top 10 and nurturing artists including KSI
The British rapper Sway, who proved inspirational to a generation of Black British musicians thanks to his independence and frank, dextrous storytelling, has died aged 44.
The news was announced by the Mobo awards, with whom Sway won best hip-hop act in 2005, the first unsigned act to do so. “Proud to have him as part of our history. Our love goes out to his family, loved ones and fans,” the statement read.
Two women who filed suit against Epstein estate ask court to order program to notify potential victims
Jeffrey Epstein’s estate is facing a new lawsuit filed by two women who allege that Epstein possessed child sexual abuse material (CSAM) of them. They want a judge to order that a program be set up to identify and notify all individuals whose “unlawful sexualized images” might have been in Epstein’s collection, and are also seeking monetary damages.
The complaint was filed this week in the US district court for the southern district of New York on behalf of two plaintiffs, who are anonymous in the filing but described as survivors of Epstein’s CSAM crimes. The lawsuit was filed against Epstein’s former lawyer Darren Indyke and Epstein’s former accountant Richard Kahn, who are being sued in their capacities as co-executors of Epstein’s estate. Attorneys for Indyke and Kahn, who have both said that they had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes during their employment, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the complaint on Wednesday.
In a recent HPCwire article, Engineering’s Next Great Transformation: Why Organizational Capability Will Define the AI Era, I argued that engineering has reached an inflection point. AI, HPC, Digital Twins, cloud computing, engineering simulation, data platforms, agentic AI and, on the horizon, quantum computing are converging into a single engineering ecosystem. The challenge is turning access to these technologies into sustained engineering value.
That challenge will not resolve itself, because technology will not stop. Asked in a recent Google Cloud Advanced Computing Community conversation about the “memory wall,” former Cray CEO Peter Ungaro said: “there’s no walls. People are smart. We’ve gotten around this.” The point was about computing technology, but the broader lesson is striking: the boundary of what is possible keeps moving. For engineering organizations, the question cannot simply be how to adapt to the next technology. It must be how to become an organization that adapts continuously.
In July, the SimOps Foundation published SimOps 2.0, extending its mission from optimizing simulation operations toward helping engineering organizations continuously turn advanced technologies into engineering capability. This article takes the next step: what does that capability look like in practice, and how can organizations build it?
Technology adoption is an event. Capability is a property.
Engineering organizations have become remarkably good at adopting major technologies. Each wave delivered real gains.
Yet each wave also exposed the same difficulty: acquiring technology is easier than changing the organization around it. An organization can deploy an AI platform without changing how engineers work. It can build a Digital Twin without connecting it to any decision. It can provide enormous HPC capacity while leaving untouched workflows designed for a fraction of it. Yet the expected transformation often never arrives.
Technology adoption is an event with a start date and a completion report. Organizational capability is a property that has to be built, exercised and maintained. When technology changes faster than the planning cycle, betting on a sequence of events rather than on a continuously developing capability is a losing strategy.
From transformation projects to a capability loop
Traditional transformation programs are organized around defined objectives: implement a platform, migrate a workload, introduce a process, deploy an AI solution. Each has a budget, a deadline and an end. The difficulty is obvious once stated: what happens when the next significant technology arrives six months later?
Organizations need something more durable than individual projects. They need a continuous capability loop:
It begins with sensing what is becoming possible and judging what might matter. Experimentation tests those possibilities against real engineering problems. Integration moves what works into practice, and scaling extends it beyond the team that proved it. Measurement establishes whether the impact was real. Learning feeds the next round of sensing.
Adaptation is not a seventh stage. It is what the loop produces when it runs continuously. The objective is to become better—and faster—at running the loop.
Five capabilities of an adaptive engineering organization
The loop describes the process. Five capabilities enable an organization to run it effectively.
1. Technology sensing
Organizations need a reliable way of understanding emerging technologies before they become obvious mainstream choices. This does not mean chasing every development. It means separating genuinely transformative possibilities from temporary hype and connecting them to real engineering problems.
The useful question is what this makes possible that we could not do before, and which engineering constraints it might remove. Sensing must become a standing responsibility rather than an annual technology presentation.
2. Rapid experimentation
The distance between an interesting technology and a useful engineering capability has to become shorter. Engineers need to be able to try AI, agentic systems, new simulation approaches, Digital Twins and cloud resources against real problems without turning every attempt into a corporate transformation program.
That requires protected time, computing capacity and lightweight paths to experimentation. Small experiments matter not only for their results, but for what they teach the organization about its own readiness to change.
3. Organizational integration
The most valuable engineering capabilities increasingly cross traditional boundaries. Simulation, HPC, AI, engineering data, software, Digital Twins, IT infrastructure and domain engineering cannot continue to advance independently if the goal is end-to-end engineering improvement.
This is where many experiments quietly die. Something works in one team, but there is no owner, budget or operational home for it elsewhere. The engineering organization of the future may therefore be defined less by its departments than by its ability to connect capabilities around outcomes.
4. Continuous workforce evolution
When engineering workflows change, roles and skills change with them. Engineers increasingly need combinations of domain expertise, simulation, software, data, AI and systems thinking. Training cannot be a one-time response to deployment.
Peter Ungaro recently offered a useful perspective for the HPC community: “The biggest challenge is being open and learning and not getting set in our ways.” He added that in a field moving this quickly, people must remain open-minded and “continually learning.” For engineering organizations, that is an organizational capability.
5. Institutionalized learning
Successful organizations turn experience into organizational knowledge. Every experiment and transformation should leave the organization more capable than before. That means capturing lessons, sharing practices, developing communities of practice, and feeding experience back into the next cycle.
Measurement is part of this capability. Organizations should ask: How long does it take from a promising technology to its first meaningful engineering use? How many experiments reach standard practice? How quickly can a successful capability move beyond its original team?
Why this requires leadership
None of this happens automatically. Annual budgets favor defined deliverables, engineering capacity is consumed by program milestones, and procurement can move more slowly than technology. Leaders must deliberately create the conditions for adaptation.
This is where SimOps 2.0 broadens the original SimOps mission. SimOps 1.0 focused on operational excellence: better simulation workflows, automation and collaboration. SimOps 2.0 adds engineering transformation and the organizational capabilities required to make advanced technologies useful at scale. Its central proposition is simple: advanced infrastructure provides computational capability; engineering capability turns it into innovation.
The next engineering advantage
AI will change engineering. But it is part of a much larger acceleration that includes HPC, Digital Twins, engineering data, cloud, agentic AI, autonomous engineering and quantum computing. Those gaining the greatest advantage will not necessarily have the most sophisticated models or biggest budgets. They will be the organizations that can repeatedly convert technological possibilities into engineering capability.
That requires leadership attention, protected space for experimentation, workforce development, cross-boundary collaboration, honest measurement and a willingness to redesign established ways of working.
The strategic question for engineering leaders is therefore changing.
It is no longer simply: “How quickly can we adopt the next technology?” It is: “How quickly can we turn the next technology into organizational capability—and how much faster are we becoming at doing so?”
That may become the defining engineering advantage of the coming decade.
About the SimOps Foundation
The SimOps Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to standardizing and automating simulation operations (SimOps) within the High-Performance Computing (HPC) and engineering sectors. By bridging the gap between engineering simulation and IT infrastructure, the Foundation provides a vendor-neutral framework for improving the efficiency, scalability, and reproducibility of complex data flows. Through its tiered certification programs, the “SimOps-compliant” software stack, the compute and data best practices, and a global community of practitioners, the Foundation empowers organizations to accelerate AI-powered innovation and streamline product development. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, the SimOps Foundation is built on a decade of expertise and over 200 real-world engineering use cases. For more information, visit www.simops.com.
Workers allege involuntary labor and other abuses on Taiwan-flagged fishing boats that supply the U.S. brand, according to a report by Global Labor Justice.
Meanwhile, we are getting some interesting lines from Paris that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, convened the chiefs of the different political parties to discuss the crises in the Middle East and Ukraine and their consequences on the energy market.
The meeting will be held on Friday morning at 10:30am local time on Thursday (that’s 9:30am UK) and military and intelligence officers will share the information they have provided to Macron, his office said in a statement.
Banker, 44, was arrested in connection with 2017 incident but family say ‘no credible evidence’ he was involved
The family of Nicholas Brandram have denied he was the so-called “Putney pusher” and said he “took his own life after months of immense pressure caused by a Metropolitan police investigation”.
Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican congresswoman from South Florida, made a rare public break with President Trump in a new ad, pushing back against Trump’s hardline immigration policy.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar said, speaking directly into the camera.
Former senator Jon Kyl, who served in Congress for nearly 30 years and rose through the ranks of GOP leadership to become the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, has died at the age of 84, his family said Thursday.
"Hackers ripped down a Flock camera above a roadway, made a near-complete copy of the data stored inside it, and shared the files with 404 Media and WIRED," according to an article published on both sites.
Though Flock has described its system as protected by on-device encryption, "The hackers were able to copy the camera's storage and recover an encryption key stored on the device, which unlocked videos of thousands of vehicle detections."
The hackers shared the material with 404 Media and the transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets, which shared the data with WIRED. 404 Media and WIRED then analyzed those files as part of a joint investigation... [T]he joint analysis of the recovered data shows that software running on the device explicitly detects people as well as vehicles, license plates, and bicycles. The camera can produce dozens of images of a single passing vehicle and, according to several weeks of recovered logs, generated more than a million images. Its computer-vision software also sometimes isolated bumper stickers and other graphics, including, in one case, an American flag patch on a motorcyclist's saddlebag...
According to our analysis, the camera's logs recorded about 21 days of activity across several periods. During those windows, the device photographed roughly 50,200 vehicles and generated about 1.6 million images. On a typical day, it logged around 3,300 vehicles, with a high of 4,454... The software running on the camera explicitly detects people, something which is typically overlooked in discussions around Flock cameras. When it spots a person, it records where they appear in the image and how confident it is in the detection.
It was a collective calling itself stegan0gram that breached the cameras, according to the interview they did with Wired and 404 Media. "Why just destroy them when we can reverse engineer them and find the secrets of those spying on us?"
State reportedly asks for emergency assistance as state Democratic governor spars with US health secretary
Pennsylvania is seeking emergency assistance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a major measles outbreak spreads across the state. The state warned the request could be withdrawn unless the federal agency publicly recognizes four measles-associated deaths reported by the state.
The Pennsylvania department of health has begun the process of requesting CDC emergency support known as an Epi-Aid, according to a letter reviewed by the Guardian. The letter was first reported by Reuters on Thursday.
Mark Carney received a rapturous reception in the European parliament when he gave his speech on Thursday welcoming a proposal for Canada to become the EU’s first-ever associate member.
Politicians queued to shake his hand and take selfies. One described the speech as a historic moment. “Europe has extended a hand, and Canada has taken it,” said the German Green MEP Terry Reintke, who borrowed a Canadian ice hockey shirt for the occasion.
It comes after the Green leader, who is standing as a candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, recorded a campaign video in Urdu
Andrew Griffith has delivered his speech, and he is now taking questions.
Q: You want the government to pause the making tax digital programme. Is that an admission that the last government got this wrong when it introduced it?
It is an admission that despite [good] intentions, the execution of that has left a lot to be desired.
In fact, coming to parliament from business, I can confess the law that we pass the most often is the law of unintended consequences. And I think making tax digital is a good example of that.
The truth is that Burnham and Miliband ignored the advice they were given – which was that if they were determined to sanction Israel, they should not do so before the Israeli election on 27 October.
It may not be surprising that this was the message from the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, when Miliband called him on 11 August to warn sanctions were imminent. ‘He said postpone it until after the elections,’ a diplomatic source confirms. It was also the message the Israeli embassy in London – and its new chargé d’affaires Chris Cantor – was relaying to the Foreign Office. ‘Their message was clear: why do it now? Wait until after the elections, because something might change,’ a senior Labour figure says.
María Elvira Salazar says some enforcement has ‘gone too far’ as GOP seeks distance from Trump before midterms
A Republican congresswoman has released a campaign ad criticizing Donald Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement, in the latest sign that a key plank of the president’s 2024 re-election campaign has become a liability for his congressional allies ahead of November’s midterm elections.
“Mr President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Florida’s María Elvira Salazar says in a 30-second ad. “In July, 50% of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy.”
Ulf Kristersson has stood down from his post, paving way for Social Democrats leader to form a government
Sweden’s centre-right prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has stood down, clearing the way for Magdalena Andersson, the Social Democrats leader, to attempt to form a government.
In a victory speech on Thursday, Andersson said the Swedish people had “voted for a new direction for our country, voted for unity and against division”.
By Stephen Beech The very deepest depths of the ocean have become a dumping ground for human litter, reveals new research. Food wrappers, plastic cups and even a rubber boot were found thousands of feet below the surface in the…
Hegseth’s Theology and the Question: What Would Jesus Do?
There is a question Christians have been asking for generations: What would Jesus do?
It is a deceptively simple question that is printed on bracelets and bumper stickers, taught to children in Sunday schools, and invoked when Christians are discerning how faith should shape public life. The question becomes considerably more demanding when the decisions at stake concern war, immigration, poverty, political power, and the use of military force.
In addition to the recent attention about his military strategy, social and political beliefs, and leadership style, Pete Hegseth’s public theology deserves serious attention from those unfamiliar and disinterested in religion as well as adherents of Christianity.
As secretary of defense, Hegseth has increasingly spoken about American power in explicitly Christian language. He has hosted Christian worship at the Pentagon, invoked Scripture in connection with military service, emphasized the Christian foundations of the United States, and described some Trump administration policies — including border enforcement — as “biblical.” Indeed, speaking at a Christian media convention last February, Hegseth connected the health and founding of the United States with Christianity and characterized border and immigration policies as mandated in the Bible.
The question about Hegseth’s faith and religious practice, however, cannot simply be whether he is sincere. The question is more fundamental: What kind of Christianity is being proclaimed when the language of Jesus is attached to military power? Or perhaps a simpler but harder question: In the face of war, authoritarianism, economic, environmental, and political crises: What would Jesus do?
A Christianity of Power
The Christian faith has always contained competing visions of what it means to follow Jesus. There is a Christianity that blesses kings, armies, empires, and national ambitions. There is another Christianity that remembers a Palestinian Jewish leader who was unhoused and a migrant and was executed by an imperial power after heralding the arrival of a radically different kingdom. This distinction matters a great deal.
Hegseth routinely emphasizes strength, warriors, national identity, borders, enemies, and divine blessing. And joining forces with Israel to prosecute the war with Iran has only heightened the stakes of his rhetoric. Early in the conflict, Hegseth cited Psalm 144, including its language about God training hands for war and fingers for battle.
There is nothing inherently un-Christian about a person in the military having a sincere religious faith. People of faith serve in the armed forces for many reasons. Generations of religious scholars and adherents have considered war and conflict as it relates to the faith through theories and practices of religious pacifism, “just war,” defensive war, theologies of self-defense, conceptions of the last days, and the ethical limits of violence in humanitarian conflicts, among others. The theological problem arises, however, when the power of the state begins to present itself as an instrument of God’s purposes.
That is a very old temptation.
Empires have long claimed divine sanction. Kings have declared their wars holy. Nations have wrapped their ambitions in sacred language. And Christians have at times sought to confuse the interests of the nation with the kingdom of God. But Jesus does something profoundly disruptive to this arrangement: He refuses to identify God with Caesar.
The People at the Margins
Consider where Jesus directs our attention. Throughout the Bible, Jesus embraces people whom those with power, military might, and wealth have pushed aside: the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, immigrants, women, children, tax collectors, and those treated as religious outsiders.
In Matthew 25, one of the most famous Bible passages — sometimes called the “Last Judgment” — Jesus identifies with the hungry, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these,” he teaches, “you did for me.”
That is not an incidental teaching. It is a political and theological reorientation. And it is directed at nations, not simply individuals or religious congregations.
Jesus asks: How has your nation treated the most vulnerable among you?
The question Jesus asks his followers is not first, “How strong is your nation?” It is not, “How effectively have you defeated your enemies?” It is not even, “How faithfully have you defended your borders?” Instead, he asks: How has your nation treated the most vulnerable among you? This matters enormously when Christian language is used to justify violent and exclusionary immigration policy or when it is used to promote cutting off families from food or lifesaving healthcare.
If we claim that border enforcement is “biblical,” then Christians must practice the Bible’s extraordinary insistence on welcoming the other. After all, Scripture commands God’s people to remember that they, too, were once strangers in a foreign land, and the way to honor and worship God is by welcoming the immigrant neighbor. If Matthew 25 means what Christians have traditionally claimed, Christ is encountered precisely among the hungry, the unhoused, the incarcerated — and that as long as anyone is unfree and impoverished, it is the responsibility of the nation to do something about it.
Theology of the Enemy
There is another problem with a Christianity centered on military strength: its understanding of the enemy. Christianity does not teach that some people become less human because they are someone’s adversaries. It does not profess that God blesses battleships nor justifies genocide (even if Hegseth’s spiritual adviser claims it does).
Jesus does not say, “Love your friends and destroy your enemies.”
Jesus’s command to love one’s enemies may be among the most difficult teachings in the entire New Testament. It is also one of the clearest.
Jesus does not say, “Love your friends and destroy your enemies.” He says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Jesus does not say, “Blessed are the powerful because they shall dominate.” He says, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the descendants of God,” and “Blessed are the poor for they shall be first under God’s reign.”
That does not mean that people of faith must be naïve about violence. It does not mean governments face no genuine security threats. It does not erase the moral complexity of protecting human beings from violence. But it does mean that people who call themselves Christians should be extraordinarily cautious whenever military violence is described as holy, righteous, inevitable, or divinely ordained.
Christian tradition contains a long history of wrestling with war. It also contains an even deeper tradition of martyrs, peacemakers, conscientious objectors, abolitionists, human rights activists, and nonviolent movements that have insisted that human beings cannot be reduced to enemies.
On “Christ Is King”
One phrase that increasingly appears in Hegseth’s public religious rhetoric is “Christ is King.” On the surface, this is an ancient Christian confession. But Christians should be careful about what happens when it is fused with nationalism. If Christ is King, then Caesar is not. If Christ is King, then the nation cannot be God. If Christ is King, then military might cannot be the ultimate measure of righteousness. And if Christ is King, then Christians must remember what kind of king Jesus was.
“You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take,” by Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-BackAvailable on Bookshop.org.
Jesus did not arrive in Jerusalem on a tank. He did not establish his kingdom through an air campaign. He did not recruit an army to seize the Roman state. Jesus entered the city on a donkey. He washed his disciples’ feet. He touched people considered untouchable. He fed hungry crowds. He stood with the condemned. And when his disciples reached for weapons, Jesus told them to put them away. This is not weakness; it is a different conception of power and a different idea of violence, military and force. And it stands worlds away from the Hegseth’s professed belief in a conquering Christ.
Christian nationalism raises the question of who counts as part of the nation — and, implicitly, who counts as part of the Christian community. Hegseth’s religious politics have attracted scrutiny because of his association with a conservative Reformed Christian milieu and his willingness to amplify figures and institutions associated with Christian nationalist ideas. That should concern Christians not because Christianity should be banished from public life, but because Christianity is too important to be reduced to a tribal identity. There is no nationalism in the Sermon on the Mount; there is no exceptionalism in the Last Judgment.
Christianity offers an alternative to nationalism that does not require Christians to abandon love of country, but it begins by refusing to worship their nation.
Jesus did not teach his followers to build communities divided by race, citizenship status, wealth, or political loyalty. The early Christian proclamation was astonishing precisely because it created a community in which Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female could belong together.
Christianity becomes spiritually dangerous when it is transformed from a call to discipleship into a badge of national membership, and a cross becomes something very different when it is used to sanctify exclusion, violence, and war, especially against the poor and marginalized.
So, What Would Jesus Do?
Let’s stop treating “What would Jesus do?” as a sentimental slogan. Instead, ask the question concretely.
What would Jesus do when a family fleeing poverty and violence arrives at the border?
What would Jesus do when a child is separated from a parent?
What would Jesus do when a nation considers going to war?
What would Jesus do when military personnel are asked to kill (and the nation suggests canceling student debt to those who sign up to do that killing)?
What would Jesus do when poor communities are abandoned while enormous resources flow into weapons?
What would Jesus do when a government claims God has blessed its political program?
And what would Jesus do when Christians begin to believe that their nation has a special claim on God?
The Gospels give us clues. Jesus runs toward suffering rather than away from it. Jesus challenges religious authorities who use God to legitimize their own power. Jesus feeds people rather than lecturing them. Jesus welcomes the stranger. Jesus stands with those society declares expendable. And Jesus tells his followers that greatness consists not in domination but in liberation. That is a radically different theology of power.
Another Christian Patriotism
Christianity offers an alternative to nationalism that does not require Christians to abandon love of country, but it begins by refusing to worship their nation. It means loving one’s neighbors, including neighbors who have crossed a border. It means seeking peace rather than glorifying war. It means protecting human life rather than measuring success by military superiority. It means asking whether public resources are being used to ensure that every person has food, housing, healthcare, education, dignity, and a meaningful opportunity to flourish.
And it means remembering that the Bible’s central story is not the triumph of one nation over all others. It is the liberation of an oppressed people. It is the insistence that Pharaoh does not have the final word. That is why the question “What would Jesus do?” cannot be separated from the question raised by Florence Reece’s popular song written in 1931 in Harlan County, Kentucky, during the union organizing drive of the United Mine Workers: “Which side are you on?”
Christian faith does not ask us to look down from the Pentagon, the White House, or any other seat of power and decide which people deserve compassion. Instead, Jesus teaches us to love God, love your neighbor, love even your enemy — and recognize Christ in the people that those in power tell you to hate and fear.
When Christian nationalism asks its followers to choose between faith and the stranger, between military might and peacemaking, between national supremacy and human solidarity, Christians — including the Christians in the highest reaches of power — should ask a different question. Not “How can we make America powerful enough to win?” But: What would Jesus do?
The answer begins where the Gospel always has: feeding the hungry, welcoming the immigrant, freeing the oppressed, and telling the people at the bottom that God has not forgotten them. That is not a weak Christianity. It is Christianity’s most dangerous claim about power: The last shall be first. The mighty shall be brought down. And the kingdom of God belongs not to those who dominate, but to those who serve.
Mauricio Pochettino has called in a youthful group for the upcoming friendlies. Here are the big takeaways
It was reasonable to expect that Mauricio Pochettino’s first United States squad after this summer’s World Cup would turn the page for a new cycle. Instead, given the youthfulness of his selections, even a fast-forward reference feels like too dated a reference.
Cavan Sullivan is poised to make his US senior debut, with the 16-year-old chosen for Pochettino’s 28-man squad for the September/October window. The Philadelphia Union phenom is one of 13 players who could debut for the national team in the coming weeks, with four friendlies to be played across the country. Should he see the field, Sullivan would become the fourth-youngest player to represent the US, a record still held by Freddy Adu.
Imbalances are a feature of the global financial system, not a bug Expert commentjon.wallace
The current focus on ‘global imbalances’ is too easily used by policymakers as a smokescreen for their own domestic failings.
Global imbalances are back on the international finance agenda this year, prompting a flagship G7 report and creating discord at the G20 finance minsters’ summit.
Seemingly this focus on global imbalances is justified. China’s trade in goods surplus now alarms Europe’s leaders as much as it worries America’s. The US’s net liability to the world – the degree to which its overseas borrowing exceeds its overseas investments – reached an astonishing 70 per cent of US GDP in 2025. The last time global imbalances were this prominent was just ahead of 2008’s Global Financial Crisis.
What a shame, then, that this focus is so misguided. Imbalances are a feature of the global financial system, not a bug. They arise from saving and investment decisions, allowing diversification and dispersing risk in the process. In truth, ‘global imbalances’ are not primarily a global phenomenon. They are simply the product of all the world’s domestic imbalances added up.
And because foreign investment is more mobile than domestic investment, it is more likely to punish bad domestic policymaking by moving elsewhere. The result is to impose discipline – constraints – on political choices.
There is a generous interpretation of the motives for the current focus on global imbalances. It is possible that simultaneous domestic reforms across the global economy would make fixing economic issues at home easier for everyone.
But the tone and outcomes at the G20 minsters’ summit invite a less generous conclusion; that some governments are attempting to dress up their domestic policy failings as the result of foreign actions.
A problem shared
For all the hand-wringing that global imbalances generate, you could be forgiven for forgetting that they reflect the global economy operating as it should.
International risk-sharing is a primary benefit of economic openness. Take the US as an illustration. Its net liability of 70 per cent of GDP certainly looks eye-popping and far outstrips the biggest surpluses elsewhere. But look closer at what’s going on.
First, the US issues the world’s reserve asset, US Treasuries. These are the global saving instrument of choice because they are safe, underpinned by a huge economy and the rule of law, and highly liquid – making them easy to buy and sell.
Second, the US economy has outperformed the rest of the world in recent years, driven by its tech boom. Put simply, investment opportunities in the US outstrip US saving.
Far from being a nefarious ‘transfer of wealth’ out of the US, this is exactly how the global financial system is supposed to work. The US economy has generated huge investment opportunities.
The world has open capital accounts to diversify risk: non-Americans can diversify away from risky or sluggish domestic assets to high-performing American ones. Americans don’t have to bear all the risk, because the rest of the world is putting money in too. This is textbook, win-win international risk-sharing.
And it illustrates a deeper point. Global imbalances don’t arise because of global phenomena. Rather, they arise because of domestic choices about saving and investment. Global imbalances are just the sum of these domestic imbalances.
No free lunches
Sharing risk and eliminating risk are not the same thing. Openness brings its own challenges, most obviously that overseas investors are ‘flightier’ – that is, more likely to swiftly withdraw investment – than domestic investors. They don’t have a ‘home bias’, are not engaged in domestic political choices, and may worry that, as foreign nationals, legal protections for their investments are less robust.
Do these flighty investors and global imbalances presage a rerun of the Global Financial Crisis? No. That crisis was caused by lax financial standards in Europe and the US, not the fabled ‘Global Savings Glut’.
Even today’s huge US net liability looks robust. US liabilities are in dollars. Its assets are in foreign currency. So, if investors rebalance away from the US, the dollar depreciates. That raises the (dollar) value of US external assets, stabilizing the overall external position. That’s risk-sharing in action.
Instead, putting together foreign investors and domestic imbalances should have a disciplining effect. In response to bad policymaking, foreign investors can start to take their money elsewhere, lessening the likelihood of policymakers making bad domestic choices.
Europeans aren’t creating investment opportunities. Their savings are therefore flowing to where returns are more attractive – especially US AI investment.
Fundamentally, ‘global imbalances’ are most interesting for what they tell us about domestic decision-making. And today’s imbalances are flagging genuinely questionable choices by national governments.
The US government, for instance, spends too much borrowed money. At nearly 125 per cent of GDP, the US government’s gross debt is greater than the US’s entire external liabilities (or what it collectively owes the world). US Treasury yields have been rising, prompting exotic policy responses and putting pressure on the unsustainable US fiscal position.
Europeans, meanwhile, aren’t creating investment opportunities. Their savings are therefore flowing to where returns are more attractive – especially US AI investment. That lack of investment has allowed competitiveness to erode, leaving Europe falling further behind the US and vulnerable to Chinese competition.
At the same time, China spends too little. It funnels its savings into excessive investment, inflating asset bubbles and depressing consumption. After its housing bubble collapsed, exports surged but demand – including for imports – has remained feeble, alienating other major economies.
In each case the appropriate domestic policy prescription is obvious – but the political will is lacking.
Stones and glasshouses
The great hope, eloquently made by Hélène Rey, is that, by linking these individual challenges, a broad common interest might emerge and lead to positive simultaneous action, either through persuasion or peer pressure. Any fiscal consolidation enacted by the US, for instance, could be offset by rising investment in Europe and consumption in China. That would make the economics of adjustment easier. And, with everyone acting together, it could make the politics of adjustment easier too.
Unfortunately, a less positive motive for the recent focus on imbalances is also possible. To the untrained ear ‘global’ imbalances sound like a global problem. And blaming overseas developments for domestic problems is a seductive narrative in political discourse. Indeed, it can already clearly be observed through easily falsified claims that imports steal jobs, or that a reserve currency issuer must run deficits. And it can be seen in poorly targeted policies like tariffs, which do nothing to address the underlying issues.
And recent international meetings confirm that global policymakers are failing to take ambitious, simultaneous action. For instance, rather than leading by example, the G7 failed to agree either fiscal consolidation in the US or accelerated structural reform in Europe. Instead, they punted the issue to August’s G20 finance ministers’ summit, which then failed to agree on a communiqué. The language that emerged in the ‘chair’s statement’ was noticeably tougher on surplus countries than on deficit countries. And the US was not shy about blaming China for the failure to reach agreement.
Global imbalances are not in themselves an imminent risk. Rather, they are a credible early warning signal of domestic problems. By placing so much emphasis on the global dimension and failing to follow through with credible action, policymakers risk undermining the case for difficult domestic reform, rather than advancing it. As the unfashionable Washington Consensus used to have it, the key to prosperity is putting your own house in order, not casting stones at your neighbours.
A former youth minister at one of the most prominent churches in Northern Virginia has been arrested and charged with coercing and trying to coerce three minors into sexual activity between the 1990s and early 2000s, according to a federal grand jury indictment.
Steve Belichick steps down as defensive coordinator
Inquiry finds ‘certain actions’ disregarded school values
GM Michael Lombardi resigned earlier this month
North Carolina defensive coordinator Steve Belichick, the son of the team’s head coach Bill Belichick, has resigned as the school concludes an investigation into its football program.
The school released a statement Thursday morning saying Steve Belichick’s resignation would be effective in late October at the conclusion of a medical leave, which was announced early in preseason camp.
National Park Service lays out concerns that planned 250ft arch could interfere with historic sites in Washington DC
Donald Trump’s desired triumphal arch in downtown Washington DC will likely contribute “to adverse effects to historic properties”, according to the National Park Service’s planning document, but the construction is still planned to go forward.
The president’s 250ft arch could interfere with some of the most well-known views in the nation’s capital, including the symbolic relationship between Arlington House, the Arlington National Cemetery, the Arlington Memorial Bridge and the Lincoln Memorial, which face each other to represent the reunification of the United States after the civil war.
As the midterms approach, ads supporting Democrats and Republicans are making competing claims about how President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy law will impact rural healthcare.
Ads backing Republican candidates have highlighted their support for a $50 billion rural healthcare fund in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — while ignoring its much larger cuts to Medicaid, which are expected to reduce funding for rural healthcare overall. Other ads similarly leave out the Medicaid cuts in misleadingly claiming that Democrats voted against funding for rural hospitals.
Democratic groups, meanwhile, have hammered Republicans over the possibility that those cuts could force some rural hospitals to close, often citing specific numbers of facilities that the law endangers. While the law is likely to have a significant financial impact on rural hospitals, experts told us it’s impossible to predict how many might close as a result.
The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act made a series of changes to Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for low-income people, including new work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks for certain working-age adults starting next year.
The law is expected to cut federal Medicaid spending by around $900 billion over a decade and increase the number of people without insurance by 10 million, including 7.5 million from Medicaid, according to projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The $50 billion for rural health, known as the Rural Health Transformation Program, was a late addition meant to shore up support from wavering Republican lawmakers, who worried the bill’s reductions in Medicaid funding would be especially hard on healthcare providers in rural areas.
Here’s a closer look at some of the claims that ads from both sides are making about the law’s impacts on rural healthcare.
GOP Ads Leave Out Medicaid Cuts
In several key House or Senate races, groups backing GOP candidates have run ads highlighting the rural healthcare fund.
In Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, an ad from the American Action Network says Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks “secured millions for our rural hospitals.” The same group’s ad in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District urges voters to thank Republican Rep. Gabe Evans for “voting to pass the biggest investment ever in rural healthcare.” The American Action Network is a sister nonprofit group of the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is endorsed by the House Republican leadership.
In Alaska, an ad from the group Last Frontier Action backing Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, who is locked in a tight race for reelection, similarly celebrates the fund as “the biggest investment in rural healthcare in American history.”
And in Ohio, an ad from the group Choose Freedom Inc. tells viewers that Republican Sen. Jon Husted “supported a $200 million investment in rural hospitals, so families don’t have to go the extra mile to get the care they need.” That refers to how much Ohio received in the fund’s first round of awards last year.
What none of those ads mentions is that the same law’s cuts to Medicaid are expected to far outweigh whatever money rural hospitals get from the new fund.
The health policy research organization KFF estimated last year that the OBBBA would reduce federal Medicaid funding for rural areas by $137 billion over 10 years. The hit to rural hospitals alone — not counting standalone clinics, health centers and other providers that deliver care in those areas — could come to $57 billion, according to an analysis by the consulting firm Manatt that was commissioned by the National Rural Health Association, a group whose members include hospitals, health centers and other rural providers.
Leonardo Cuello, a Medicaid expert and research professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, told us those cuts could squeeze hospitals in a few different ways.
As people lose coverage, hospitals will likely have to absorb more losses from treating uninsured patients who can’t afford to pay. The law also limits certain financing mechanisms that states use to fund their Medicaid programs and steer more funding to hospitals. Those limits could result in hospitals getting paid less for treating Medicaid patients, KFF hasexplained.
“This is a huge negative impact on rural areas that far exceeds any benefits coming from the rural health fund — which does have benefits,” Cuello said.
The way the Rural Health Transformation Program is designed also means that it’s not a direct replacement for lost Medicaid revenue.
A freestanding emergency room in Tennessee. Photo by RHF101 / stock.adobe.com
The fund allocates $50 billion over five years for one-time investments in rural healthcare, in accordance with certain priorities — preventing chronic disease, strengthening the rural health workforce, deploying technologies like AI and remote patient monitoring, and developing new models for how to pay for and deliver care in rural areas.
States apply for the funds; half the money is distributed evenly across states with approved applications and the other half based on factors like a state’s rural population and proportion of rural health facilities. The first awards were announced late last year and ranged from $147 million in New Jersey to $281 million in Texas.
For the most part, the money can’t be used to pay for existing services or make up for losses on uncompensated care. The health news site STAT recently reported that some hospital leaders worry about starting new programs they won’t have the money to sustain.
Cuello said the Rural Health Transformation Program could fund some valuable improvements in rural healthcare infrastructure, but it won’t replace the ongoing loss of revenue that hospitals rely on. He added that the rural health funds end after five years, while the Medicaid cuts — most of which take effect in 2027 or 2028 — continue indefinitely.
“From the point of view of a hospital, yes, you might be helping with some upgrades to some equipment they use, or they may end up with a better health record system,” he said. “You’re not changing the fact that you just cut a lot of their funding.”
We asked Choose Freedom Inc. about the Ohio ad’s failure to mention the Medicaid cuts’ impact on rural healthcare funding. “Husted voted for a massive investment in rural healthcare in Ohio,” an unnamed spokesperson for the group responded. “The only thing the ad left out was how former lawmakers, led by [former senator and current Democratic candidate] Sherrod Brown, turned their backs on these communities.”
We reached out to the American Action Network and a lawyer who is listed as the treasurer for Last Frontier PAC, and did not receive a response.
Misleading Claims That Democrats Voted to ‘Gut’ Rural Hospitals
In attacking Democrats for voting against the law that created the rural health fund, ads from GOP groups have also left out the impact of Medicaid cuts.
In the Georgia Senate race, for instance, Republican Rep. Mike Collins’ campaign is running an ad claiming his opponent, incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, “talks healthcare, but voted to gut rural hospitals.”
A similar attack appears in a recent ad targeting Rep. Chris Pappas, the Democrat running against former Sen. John E. Sununu for Senate in New Hampshire. “Pappas even voted against vital funding for rural and vulnerable hospitals,” intones the ad from No Going Back PAC, a super PAC with links to Trump’s political operation.
But again, whatever money will flow to those hospitals from the OBBBA’s rural health fund won’t be enough to make up for the loss of Medicaid funding in rural areas. Both Ossoff and Pappas have cited the impact of Medicaid cuts on healthcare providers as one of the reasons they opposed the law.
“This bill will push hospitals and nursing homes to the financial brink,” Ossoff said in a video last year explaining his vote.
The Ossoff campaign also pointed us to a statement from the American Hospital Association opposing the bill that said it would do “irreparable harm to our health care system,” as well as local newsstories about a Georgia hospital that closed its labor and delivery unit last year and cited the bill’s impending Medicaid cuts as one of the reasons for doing so. We reached out to the Collins campaign but did not receive a response.
Similarly, Pappas’ campaign directed us to a July 2025 news release from his office saying the legislation “made devastating cuts to Medicaid funding that is critical for New Hampshire hospitals and their ability to provide care to patients,” as well as a statement he provided to local news station WMUR in December calling the Rural Health Transformation Program funding “a drop in the bucket compared to losses our rural clinics, hospitals and communities will face.”
No Going Back PAC’s website does not provide a way to get in touch with it, and its FEC paperwork lists a generic email for a third-party compliance company. We reached out to Trump’s main super PAC, MAGA Inc., which according to the New York Times is funding No Going Back. We have not received a response.
Democratic Ads Cite Inexact Figures on Hospital Closures
Democratic-aligned groups, meanwhile, have run ads in several key races claiming that specific numbers of rural hospitals in certain states could close due to the OBBBA’s cuts.
As we explained above, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is likely to impact the finances of many rural hospitals, and there have beenanecdotalreports of some healthcare providers citing the anticipated loss of revenue from the law as a factor in deciding to cut services or close locations. But as we’ve written before, experts say it’s impossible to put a precise number on how many might close as a result.
An ad from the VoteVets Action Fund, which describes itself as a Democratic veterans’ group, says GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running for Senate in Iowa, voted “to push 20 rural hospitals to the brink of closing.”
Similarly, an ad that ran last month from another Democratic group, House Majority Forward, said Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who represents a closely divided district in the Philadelphia suburbs, “voted to cut Medicaid for struggling families, threatening closure for 25 hospitals.”
Someresearchers and advocacy groups have produced estimates of how many hospitals could be at risk under the bill, based on pre-existing financial challenges and how much they rely on revenue from Medicaid. But those are broad assessments of risk factors, not predictions, and different methodologies have come up with different numbers.
VoteVets told us the Iowa number comes from a July 4, 2025, op-ed in the Iowa Capital Dispatch, which said at least 20 rural hospitals in the state were already “seriously threatened with closing.” The article doesn’t cite a source, but it’s likely from a June 2025 report on at-risk rural hospitals put out by the nonprofit Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform.
CHQPR defines hospitals as at risk if they lose money on patient services and have low cash reserves. The June 2025 numbers, which predate the OBBBA’s passage, include 20 such hospitals in Iowa. CHQPR’s most recent data, from July, list eight. (The ad began airing July 29, according to ad-tracking service AdImpact.) Neither report aims to assess the impact of the OBBBA; the data are based on hospitals’ past financial performance.
House Majority Forward didn’t respond to a request for comment on the Pennsylvania ad. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, did say at a press conference last year that 25 rural hospitals in the state “are likely to shutter in the next few years” because of the Republican law. His office told us at the time that figure was based on hospitals that had negative operating margins in fiscal year 2023.
Other estimates have come up with smaller numbers, including a January 2026 report commissioned by the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania that found as many as 12 to 14 hospitals in the state could close in the next five years without intervention, citing both the federal cuts to Medicaid and ongoing underfunding from the state.
More broadly, experts told us various factors make it hard to predict how many hospitals will close or scale back care as a direct result of this law, including that its effects will be hard to disentangle from the multiple other challenges rural hospitals face.
“It will be hard to say that any hospital closures or other providers going out of business … is directly related to these Medicaid changes,” Jennifer Tolbert, deputy director of the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured at KFF, told us when we wrote about similar claims last year.
However, she said, the reductions in Medicaid funding will clearly have financial implications for providers, including a rise in uncompensated care as people lose insurance and possible cuts to reimbursement rates as states respond to new restrictions on financing mechanisms.
Cuello similarly said the precise impacts are hard to pin down, in part because the cuts have largely not taken effect yet. Economic conditions, how the law is implemented and how hospitals themselves respond will also matter.
But given that many rural hospitals are already on shaky financial ground — nearly 200 have closed or stopped offering inpatient care since 2005, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina — Cuello does expect to see an impact due to the OBBBA, also known as H.R. 1.
“The current snapshot is concerning, and the concern is going to increase,” he said. “I don’t know that anybody has quantified or tried to guess exactly how many more hospitals are going to close because of H.R. 1. But if you take the current rate of hospital closure, which is already significant, we do expect that to increase based on H.R. 1.”
“No one can predict with any certainty whether any individual rural hospital will close or whether a change in Medicaid revenues will cause them to close,” Harold Miller, the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform’s CEO, told us in an email. “Most hospitals that are at risk of closing work very hard NOT to close. Most of them are able to avoid closure, but a few are not.”
Miller said the specific impacts will depend on a host of variables, including how many people lose Medicaid in a particular community, what states do in response to the cuts and whether some hospitals can negotiate higher rates from private insurers or tap into other sources of revenue, such as state or local tax revenue.
Miller said large rural hospitals tend to be in better shape financially, because they make enough money on privately insured patients to make up for losses on Medicare and Medicaid patients. It’s small rural hospitals that are generally most at risk, because they typically lose money treating both publicly and privately insured patients. The share of patients with Medicaid also varies from hospital to hospital.
“The issue for small rural hospitals that are currently losing money is that even if the loss of Medicaid revenues is small, a small loss makes their situation even worse than it already is,” Miller told us. “On the other hand, large rural hospitals that are not currently losing money will potentially be able to sustain the loss of Medicaid revenues.
“Conversely, because there are many small rural hospitals that are losing money now, even before the OBBBA changes are implemented, they would still be at risk of closing even if OBBBA was repealed or changed significantly,” he said.
None of this is to say that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act won’t impact rural hospitals. But it’s unclear at this point exactly how many will be pushed, as the Iowa ad puts it, “to the brink.”
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Facebook told it was wrong in leaving up AI-generated videos of a Labour councillor and Muslim campaigner, amid calls to curb fakes
Meta’s “supreme court” has ordered the tech company to take down deepfake videos of a UK politician and a young Muslim woman from Facebook and do more to tackle AI-generated fake imagery.
A fake video showing a Labour party councillor in Scotland making inflammatory comments about refugees should not have been left up by Facebook, the board said. It also ruled that an AI-generated video of a Muslim campaign volunteer should have been removed after it falsely depicted her offering health advice while carrying out absurd exercises or eating junk food.
Iowa’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn says his Democratic opponent, Rob Sand, wants Iowans to pay thousands of dollars more in taxes each year.
“Rob Sand is an out of touch billionaire who wants to raise your taxes by $7,500 per year,” Lahn said in a campaign ad posted on the social platform X.
The Lahn campaign did not respond to PolitiFact Iowa’s request for comment on the claim, so it’s not clear how it arrived at that number.
Opposing already-enacted tax cuts is not necessarily the same as proposing to reverse them, although he has separately supported the increase of some sales taxes. PolitiFact Iowa examined Sand’s tax positions and found the math doesn’t support Lahn’s $7,500 figure.
Sand says he would not reverse Iowa income tax cuts
Iowa lawmakers approved Senate File 2442 in 2024, accelerating previously approved income tax reductions and establishing a 3.8% flat individual income tax rate beginning in tax year 2025.
As the bill was being debated, Sand questioned the state’s ability to balance its budget after the cuts. But his campaign told us he does not support repealing or reversing any of the state’s recently enacted individual income tax cuts.
In October 2025, Sand argued that declining revenue, combined with continued spending, has created deficits requiring Iowa to draw from reserve funds to cover expenses. In September 2025, he called the situation a “fiscal time bomb,” while also saying some of the state’s recent tax reforms were necessary.
Sand has proposed increasing some sales taxes, including on cigarettes and tobacco to help curb addiction. He also supports funding Iowa’s Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation trust fund, known as IWILL. The voter-approved program was supposed to have been funded through a sales tax increase of three-eights of a cent per dollar. The effort was created but never funded. Projections released in 2013 estimated it would increase taxes by about $50 per family.
Those are both modest tax increases, and the tobacco tax would apply only to Iowans who buy tobacco products. Neither of those proposals would come close to increasing an average Iowa household’s taxes by $7,500.
Ernie Goss, an economics professor at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, said the $7,500 figure is implausible based on the scale of Iowa’s existing tax collections.
Goss said a $7,500 increase across Iowa households would amount to billions of dollars in additional taxes and would represent a substantial increase compared with what the state already collects.
Common Sense Institute’s analysis
Research from Common Sense Institute Iowa, a conservative-leaning think tank that generally supports low taxes, also does not project $7,500 in annual savings from the 2024 income tax law.
The institute estimated Senate File 2442 would save a typical Iowa household earning $75,000 approximately $410 in 2025, in addition to savings from earlier tax reforms.
Ben Murrey, the institute’s director of policy and research, cautioned that the institute’s analysis covered the additional income tax changes enacted in 2024 but not all of Iowa’s income tax changes in recent years. The institute has not calculated the combined savings from all of those laws.
Still, Murrey said it was difficult to see how earlier income tax cuts would close the gap between its estimate and Lahn’s figure.
The institute also analyzed Iowa’s property tax changes. It estimated House File 718, signed into law in 2023, reduced the statewide tax burden by about $952 per household over its first six years. That’s a cumulative figure, not an annual savings of $952.
Federal tax policy
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act made President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent, and most Iowans would have seen a tax increase if it hadn’t passed. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation found that Iowans received about a $3,100 tax cut on average in 2026 because those measures were extended.
Sand’s campaign said that on balance, he believes the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is bad for Iowa, pointing to its effects on Medicaid and rural hospitals.
Regardless, Sand’s campaign said as governor, he would not have the authority to repeal federal tax provisions.
Our ruling
Lahn said Sand “wants to raise your taxes by $7,500 per year.”
Sand has criticized both Iowa tax cuts and the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and he has explicitly supported raising sales taxes on items such as cigarettes. But despite his criticism of the Iowa tax cut, Sand’s campaign said he does not support reversing it. And if he were to become governor, Sand would not have the authority to repeal federal tax provisions.
The combined tax savings from the state and federal tax cuts Lahn’s ad pointed to came out to about $3,500 for an average household, not $7,500.
‘Terrible thing’ happened to infant boy found under the floorboards at a house in Bishop Auckland, says coroner
A baby boy who was found with twine looped and knotted round his neck and wrapped in a 116-year-old newspaper was unlawfully killed, a coroner has concluded.
Crispin Oliver on Thursday said the child, known only as Baby Auckland, had been garotted by an unknown person.
SACRAMENTO, California — California lawmakers have sent Gov. Gavin Newsom a bill that would establish 18 as the minimum age for marriage, ending the state’s current system that allows minors to wed with parental consent and court approval.
Assembly Bill 1267, authored by Democratic Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, passed the Legislature with near-unanimous support and was presented to Newsom on Sept. 3. He has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto it. California is one of three states, along with New Mexico and Mississippi, that currently has no statutory minimum marriage age.
The ACLU opposes the measure, arguing that an absolute ban could limit minors’ autonomy, including decisions tied to emancipation and reproductive health. Planned Parenthood, which opposed earlier efforts to restrict child marriage, remained neutral this year.
Supporters say the existing law leaves minors vulnerable to coercion and abuse. Survivor advocacy group Unchained at Last says most child marriages involve girls marrying adult men. Pellerin said lawmakers should recognize that minors “are children” even when they may appear mature.
Previous California efforts to impose a minimum marriage age failed amid objections from civil-liberties and reproductive-rights groups. If Newsom signs AB 1267, the new minimum age would take effect Jan. 1, 2027.
Secret coordination between politicians and social media creators is a form of astroturfing. But there are few legal regulations
Not long ago, it was common wisdom among social media influencers that they shouldn’t talk politics. There was a widespread belief among their crowd that it was bad for business. If you went left, you lost the right, and vice-versa.
Times have changed. Nearly everywhere you look online, influencers are posting political content. Each day, there are new reports detailing their hot takes on elections, campaigns and the culture wars. It’s become a lucrative business for these creators, as they now like to be called, and a boost for those that pay them for hype.
Exclusive: Internal FBI memo, reviewed by the Guardian, said women wanted to dox and ‘embarrass’ agents, but provided few details
The FBI internally warned that a group of women were creating fake online dating accounts with “tradwife” aesthetics in an effort to lure US immigration agents and “dox” them.
The FBI in Chicago disseminated a brief memo to other law enforcement officials across the US on the potential threat to agents in February, warning that “as of late January 2026, a small group of women allegedly were creating fictitious online dating profiles with the purpose of attracting and then doxxing law enforcement participating in immigration enforcement”. The report, which was shared with the Guardian, provided few details about the alleged scheme and did not explain the source of the information.
Financing accelerates development of ultra-efficient infrastructure for foundation AI models
EINDHOVEN, Netherlands, Sept. 17, 2026 — EUCLYD has signed a Series A financing round of more than €200 million, the company announced today. The round is co-led by Samsung, Somerset Capital Partners, Scaleup Europe Fund, which is managed by EQT, and Innovation Industries, with participation from EIFO, the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark, imec.xpand, Brabant Development Agency (BOM), and Quadri. Peter Wennink, former President & CEO of ASML, joins Euclyd as Chairman of the Board.
As foundation models grow more capable, deploying them requires more power, memory bandwidth, and capital while adding infrastructure complexity. EUCLYD is developing a platform spanning crafted compute, innovative memory architecture, and datacenter systems to break this efficiency wall and transform AI inference economics.
EUCLYD’s long-term vision is Abundant Intelligence: a future in which advanced AI is no longer constrained by infrastructure cost, power availability, or geography. Founded by Bernardo Kastrup and Atul Sinha at High Tech Campus Eindhoven, Europe’s smartest square kilometer, EUCLYD draws on the campus’s semiconductor ecosystem and Europe’s engineering heritage.
At the center of EUCLYD’s roadmap are craftwerk, the world’s first agentic AI silicon, and craftwerk station CWS, the world’s lowest-power exascale AI factory. The platform combines programmable ASIC compute, processor-memory co-design, and system-level optimization to overcome the memory and efficiency walls limiting AI performance and scalability.
“AI is becoming a foundation of economic growth, scientific discovery, and national competitiveness, but its potential will remain constrained unless we fundamentally change the infrastructure beneath it,” said Bernardo Kastrup, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of EUCLYD. “This financing accelerates our mission to make intelligence abundant through greater efficiency, lower cost per token, and broader access to advanced AI.”
“The next phase of AI will be defined not only by model innovation, but also by the efficiency and scalability of its infrastructure,” said Dede Goldschmidt, Senior Vice President of Samsung Electronics and Head of the Samsung Semiconductor Innovation Center. “EUCLYD combines an accomplished team with a differentiated vision addressing constraints in AI datacenters.”
“Europe has the engineering talent to produce globally significant technology companies,” said Ted Persson, Partner at EQT and Co-Head of the Scaleup Europe Fund. “EUCLYD combines deep semiconductor expertise with a mission to tackle some of the hardest constraints in AI infrastructure. That mix of European engineering depth and global ambition is what we’re here to back.”
“Europe possesses world-class capabilities across semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, and systems engineering,” said Peter Wennink, Chairman of the Board of EUCLYD and former President and Chief Executive Officer of ASML. “EUCLYD can transform those strengths into a globally competitive AI infrastructure platform.”
The financing will expand EUCLYD’s engineering organization, accelerate its silicon and systems roadmap, strengthen ecosystem partnerships, and prepare the company for commercial deployment across enterprise, sovereign, and hyperscale AI markets.
About EUCLYD
EUCLYD is a European semiconductor systems company developing ultra-efficient infrastructure for foundation AI models. Its roadmap spans agentic AI silicon, advanced memory architecture, and datacenter systems engineered to reduce cost, energy use, and footprint. EUCLYD is headquartered in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced the Quantum Genesis Q Competition, an initiative with up to $215 million in planned funding to demonstrate the world’s first fault-tolerant scientifically relevant quantum computers (SRQCs). Applicants are invited to submit proposals to deploy quantum computers with at least 100 logical qubits and capable of performing hundreds of millions fault-tolerant operations and scientific demonstration programs through a Request for Applications (RFA).
This first-of-a-kind competition aims to accelerate the development and deployment of quantum computers capable of tackling currently intractable problems in chemistry, materials, physics, and applied mathematics. This effort directly supports the goals outlined in the President’s Executive Order on Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation and builds on the recommendations made in the Blueprint for DOE Quantum Supercomputing and today’s Office of Science Advisory Committee report on a Path to an Integrated Quantum Future.
“Through the Quantum Genesis Q Competition, we are building a new era of computational power for the nation through innovative public-private partnerships,” said Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil. “This competition will enable new quantum computing capabilities and unleash new computational frontiers, driving new scientific and technological discoveries that have previously only been theorized.”
The competition is structured in two phases. Phase I will provide fixed awards for early milestones, worth up to $1.5 million per awardee. Phase II will consist of a $100 million general incentive pool to be split amongst awardees that can demonstrate a first-generation SRQC with at least 100 logical qubits, along with two bonus incentive pools, each worth $50 million, for awardees that can demonstrate 150 and 200 logical qubits.
Applications are open to private sector companies. Total planned funding is up to $215 million, with $2.5 million in Fiscal Year 2026 dollars and outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations.
DOE will hold a virtual informational webinar for potential Quantum Genesis Q Competition applicants on September 25, 2026, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Final applications for the competition are due by October 19, 2026.
Deploying a first-of-a-kind, scientifically relevant quantum computing capability requires rigorous tools to characterize and validate every layer of the computing stack—from physical hardware and quantum gates to logical architectures, quantum algorithms and applications, and classical control systems.
The Quantum High-Performance Computing Validation and Verification Testbed Lab Call will draw on the expertise of DOE’s national laboratories to establish these essential capabilities for the Q Competition and to advance the goals of the Executive Order on Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation.
Applications are open to DOE National Laboratories. Total planned funding is $45 million, with $14 million in Fiscal Year 2026 dollars and outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations.
The Request for Applications and Lab Call, sponsored by the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research within the Department’s Office of Science, can be found on the Funding Opportunities webpage.
Multi-year strategic agreement increases capacity for high-performance SiGe technology to support growing AI infrastructure demand
MALTA, N.Y., Sept. 17, 2026 — GlobalFoundries (GF) and Marvell Technology, Inc. today announced an expanded multi-year agreement to increase capacity for GF’s silicon germanium (SiGe) technology at its Burlington, Vermont, facility to support growing demand for next-generation optical connectivity.
Modern AI data centers operate as distributed compute systems, where performance depends not only on accelerators, but also on the high-speed interconnects that move data between them. As AI systems scale, moving data efficiently is becoming increasingly critical to overall performance. The expanded collaboration between GF and Marvell will increase capacity for high-performance SiGe technology used in next-generation pluggable optical transceivers, Near-Packaged Optics (NPO) and Co-packaged Optics (CPO).
The expanded agreement builds on existing production and is expected to add significant capacity to support Marvell’s growing requirements.
GF’s SiGe technology portfolio provides the high-frequency performance, signal integrity and power efficiency required for advanced optical networking applications. Its current technology supports 200G-per-lane optical connectivity, with a roadmap designed to address higher-speed generations as AI and cloud data center bandwidth requirements continue to grow. GF has manufactured advanced SiGe technology for over a decade and continues to co-integrate SiGe, silicon photonics and advanced packaging for new optical connectivity architectures including NPO and CPO.
“AI is fundamentally changing the way data centers are built, and connectivity is becoming increasingly critical to unlocking the performance of these systems,” said Robb Johnson, Vice President, Foundry Technology, Marvell. “As the industry moves toward higher-bandwidth optical architectures, including NPO and CPO, Marvell is investing aggressively to lead this transition. Our expanded collaboration with GF will help ensure we have the SiGe technology and manufacturing capacity to support the significant growth we see ahead.”
“SiGe is where GF’s decades of high-performance radio frequency and analog leadership translate directly into breakthrough optical performance,” said Shankaran Janardhanan, senior vice president of Photonics & RF businesses at GF. “This agreement reinforces our long-standing relationship with Marvell and reflects the critical role SiGe technology plays in enabling high-speed optical networking for AI infrastructure. We will continue investing in our technology roadmap and manufacturing capabilities both in the U.S. and around the world to support our customers’ future growth.”
The agreement builds on more than a decade of collaboration between GF and Marvell and reflects the increasingly important role optical networking technologies play in enabling AI and cloud infrastructure at scale.
About GF
GlobalFoundries (Nasdaq: GFS) (GF) is a leading manufacturer of essential semiconductors, enabling AI at scale from the cloud to the physical world. Through deep partnerships with customers, GF delivers differentiated, power-efficient and high-performance solutions for automotive, aerospace and defense, data center, smart mobile devices, internet of things and other high-growth markets. With global manufacturing operations across the U.S., Europe and Asia, GF is a trusted and holistic technology partner for customers around the world. GF’s talented, global team remains focused every day on security, longevity and sustainability. For more information, visit www.gf.com.
The late Prince Diana's brother claims in a new book that King Charles had "contempt" for his ex-wife, telling him she would be forgotten "soon enough."
France’s CEA will work to integrate the quantum computing company’s cat qubits software stack to accelerate the advent of useful quantum applications
PARIS, Sept. 17, 2026 — Alice & Bob, a leader in fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC) technologies, today announced a research collaboration with the CEA, a globally recognized scientific institution, to advance the integration of its quantum software stack within hybrid quantum-HPC computing centers and to explore early quantum use cases in condensed matter physics.
With Alice & Bob’s first Quantum System, Helium, unveiled in June, the CEA partnership tackles two blockers on the road to useful quantum computing. Firstly, the integration of quantum software into existing HPC computing infrastructure, and secondly the development of industry relevant applications.
Alice & Bob’s software stack will be integrated into a hybrid HPC–quantum workflow using Bull Qaptiva, to streamline how future users access quantum resources from within existing supercomputing environments. Qaptiva is a hardware-agnostic quantum application platform, designed by Bull so that developers can write code once and run it across different quantum backends, on-premises or via cloud access, while also providing orchestration capabilities to route workloads and manage execution across hybrid infrastructures. This integration will be based on CEA expertise on coupling quantum computer and HPC systems.
“Our priority is to make Alice & Bob’s unique FTQC technology usable in environments where real computational work happens,” said Chloé Poisbeau, Chief Operating Officer at Alice & Bob. “By integrating our stack through Qaptiva into hybrid HPC/quantum setups, we’re removing friction for adoption and laying the operational foundation for seamless, industrial-grade access to FTQC systems.”
In parallel, the partners will launch a joint research program focused on many-body problems, targeting the development of algorithms that can realistically be executed on early fault-tolerant quantum computing (eFTQC) systems around 2030. These many-body workloads are a strategic proving ground for quantum advantage because they connect directly to future high-value use-cases and real-world challenges, ranging from new materials discovery to chemistry and complex industrial simulations, where hybrid HPC/quantum execution models can accelerate the path from scientific insight to engineering impact.
“Many-body physics sits at the crossroads of fundamental science and industrial relevance,” said Jacques-Charles Lafoucriere, Program Director at CEA. “This collaboration lets us couple world-class HPC practices with Alice & Bob’s FTQC tech to define concrete, high-impact use cases, so that, when eFTQC systems reach the required maturity, the value creation pathways are already validated and ready to scale.”
The CEA is a major government-funded research organization and one of France’s most influential R&D institutions, with more than 20,000 employees and multiple national research centers.
Together, the program aligns Alice & Bob’s unique FTQC technology, seamless hybrid HPC/QC integration, and a pipeline of industrial-grade use cases, turning technical progress into measurable market value.
About Alice & Bob
Alice & Bob is a quantum computing company based in Paris and Boston whose goal is to create the first universal, fault-tolerant quantum computer.
Advised by Nobel Prize winning researchers, Alice & Bob specializes in cat qubits, a technology developed by the company’s founders and later adopted by Amazon. Demonstrating the power of its cat architecture, Alice & Bob recently showed that it could reduce the hardware requirements for building a useful large-scale quantum computer by up to 200 times compared with competing approaches.
About CEA
CEA is a public research organization whose mission is to contribute to the scientific, technological, and industrial sovereignty of France and Europe in four key areas: low-carbon energy, digital technologies, the medicine of the future, defense and security, based on fundamental research of excellence. For more information: www.cea.fr.
Mohammad Sharifullah, 28, was convicted of aiding the terrorist group that took credit for the suicide bombing
An Islamic State group member was sentenced on Wednesday to 20 years in prison for aiding the terrorist organization that took credit for a suicide bombing that killed 13 US service members and about 160 Afghans at the Kabul airport five years ago during the US military’s chaotic withdrawal from the country.
A federal jury in Virginia had convicted Mohammad Sharifullah in April of providing material support to the IS affiliate known as Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). But jurors could not agree whether he bore some responsibility for the airport bombing on 26 August 2021.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. and TORONTO, Sept. 17, 2026 — IonQ today detailed research conducted with Synopsys. The publication shows early results that quantum algorithms integrated into mainstream engineering software can accelerate complex industrial design by up to 14.6%. The research illustrates hybrid quantum computing can address major computational bottlenecks for classical supercomputers. It also earned a 1st Place Best Paper Award at IEEE Quantum Week 2026 in Toronto.
Companies designing products—from vehicles to sensors to nuclear reactors—rely on simulation to predict product performance against true-to-reality physics. Larger scale simulations, such as those used for virtual crash tests and aerodynamic analysis, can require significant compute resources. Those resources are necessary to solve large systems of equations containing hundreds of millions of variables. Depending on the simulation setup, standard computers may generate extra calculations that consume memory and extend processing times.
To solve this, simulation software attempts to efficiently reorganize the equations before solving them. In this research, IonQ and Synopsys plugged an advanced quantum algorithm directly into Synopsys’s industry-standard Ansys LS-DYNA simulation software. Instead of relying on traditional, time-consuming trial-and-error to find the best setup, the quantum system acted like a highly efficient traffic cop. It rapidly identified the best way to organize the data to avoid those unnecessary calculations entirely.
“Engineering simulations for jet engines or automotive crash tests require extremely large classical compute clusters running for days at a time. By embedding an advanced quantum algorithm into the core workflow, we reduced total simulation times by up to 14.6 percent,” said Dr. Martin Roetteler, IonQ’s Vice President of Quantum Solutions and Technical Fellow and co-author of the paper. “Because this complex organizing step only needs to happen once at the start of a simulation, the time saved pays off repeatedly. That means faster solutions, reduced compute costs, and lower energy consumption for industrial users.”
This new research builds on the team’s prior research. This time, the team tested hybrid workflow across complex digital models of an automobile, an industrial drill component, a fluid impeller, and a jet engine assembly. This study featured meshes made up of up to 35 million individual data points. The numerical simulations were conducted on up to 150 qubits, and physical execution was validated on IonQ’s 36-qubit Forte trapped-ion quantum computer.
Across all industrial models tested, the quantum-enhanced sorting method yielded consistent runtime improvements of at least 5.9%, peaking at a 14.6% reduction in total time for complex dynamic simulations. That means a massive digital stress test that typically takes seven continuous days to run on a classical supercomputer, saves approximately one full day of non-stop computing.
“Together with IonQ, we are advancing the development of quantum computers and hybrid simulation workloads to unlock new possibilities for engineering design and optimization,” said Prith Banerjee, Senior Vice President of Innovation at Synopsys. “Quantum computers have the potential to drastically accelerate large simulation workloads while improving predictive accuracy. By focusing on achievable breakthroughs in the NISQ era, we can unlock some of that potential in the near-term for our customers while preparing for the full promise of fault-tolerant quantum computing.”
IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) is the world’s leading quantum platform and foundry – delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the Superion, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems. Earlier systems have helped customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, AstraZeneca, and NVIDIA achieve a 20x performance increase over previous quantum solutions and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.
It is the second year this administration has barred the Palestinian delegation from US travel ahead of the forum
The US state department said on Wednesday that it had again denied entry visas to Palestinian officials ahead next week’s United Nations general assembly gathering in New York.
The state department said in a statement that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had “failed to live up to their commitments”, accusing the groups of “taking actions to internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict including through the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ)” and of “glorifying terrorism” among other allegations.
Model adopting ‘jailbreak-like instructions’ among six more cases as firm reveals framework for tracking AI misalignment
OpenAI has disclosed six more examples of “unexpected or concerning” behaviour by its technology, as it warned that the pace of development could not continue at “maximum speed for much longer” responsibly.
In one of the new cases reported by OpenAI, an unreleased research model inserted “jailbreak-like instructions” into its own notes to disregard its normal constraints and told itself to be “freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots”.
Fact-finding mission says military strikes on school and sports facility in February constitute war crimes
A UN fact-finding mission has determined there are reasonable grounds to believe the US was behind military strikes on a school and a sports facility in Iran in February that killed 120 children, and that these constituted war crimes.
The school strike, which killed 156 civilians including 120 children, involved a US Tomahawk missile that collapsed the roof of the Shajareh Tayyebehprimary school, which the UN said was “clearly identifiable”, in Minab, Hormozgan province, on 28 February.
The musician is serving a 50-month federal prison term for prostitution-related offenses
Attorneys representing rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs say they are no longer acting for the disgraced star in a dispute over months of unpaid legal bills.
The musician, who is serving a 50-month federal prison term for prostitution-related offenses, has become increasingly belligerent in recent months, causing “a total breakdown in cooperation and communication” with New York law firm Sher Tremonte, one of its partners Michael Tremonte said in a court filing.
First preview submission using NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 systems delivers up to 3.7x better throughput than NVIDIA GB300 NVL72.
Sept. 17, 2026 — System performance, efficient infrastructure scaling and continuous software optimization are key levers that determine AI inference economics. Higher system performance means more tokens generated, resulting in higher revenue. Efficient scaling means throughput grows proportionally as hardware gets added, requiring fewer resources to serve users at scale. Continuous optimization means generating more value from infrastructure investments.
Credit: Shutterstock
Underlying all three is platform fungibility: the same infrastructure runs any model, any workload, from training to inference, recommender to reasoning, language to video, keeping utilization high.
The NVIDIA platform is purpose-built to optimize across all these, as highlighted by MLPerf Inference v6.1 results released today:
NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 system debuts with leading performance: In its first MLPerf Inference preview submission, NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 delivers up to 3.7x better throughput than GB300 NVL72.
NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 scaleswith leading efficiency: A 288-GPU submission across four GB300 NVL72 racks achieved 99% scaling efficiency, with throughput growing nearly linearly from a single-rack baseline.
Continuous software optimizations drive performance gains: Software optimizations in NVIDIA’s MLPerf Inference v6.1 submissions delivered up to 1.6x higher performance over v6.0. Optimizations continued post-v6.1 submission, delivering further performance gains.
For organizations making AI infrastructure decisions, performance, scaling efficiency and software velocity are important considerations that determine long-term inference economics.
Vera Rubin NVL72 Makes MLPerf Inference Debut With Leading Performance
NVIDIA submitted Vera Rubin NVL72 preview results on two of the most demanding benchmarks in the MLPerf Inference v6.1 suite: DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3-VL.
Vera Rubin NVL72 delivers up to 3.7x higher throughput than GB300 NVL72 on Qwen3-VL across offline, server and interactive scenarios, using vLLM with the NVIDIA Dynamo open source inference framework. On DeepSeek-R1, using the NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM library, throughput is up to 2.5x higher than GB300 NVL72. These early results showcase NVIDIA’s accelerated pace of innovation and how performance will improve with continuous software optimizations.
This performance means each Vera Rubin NVL72 rack delivers significantly more tokens, serves more users and generates more revenue than a GB300 NVL72 rack, while lowering cost per token.
The results reflect full-stack codesign across hardware and software. Vera Rubin’s enhanced Tensor Cores and Transformer Engine accelerate both the prefill and decode stages of inference, while NVFP4 precision reduces memory footprint across model weights, attention and KV cache — increasing throughput with minimal loss of output quality.
Vera Rubin submissions heavily used disaggregated serving, separating prefill and decode along with large-scale expert parallelism for maximum efficiency across the mixture-of-experts layers that power models like DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3-VL.
The NVL72 scale-up domain — powered by sixth-generation NVIDIA NVLink and NVLink Switch to deliver 10x higher packet rates and 3x lower latency than off-the-shelf Ethernet — provides the interconnect foundation that makes these techniques effective at rack scale.
This codesign extends to NVIDIA’s partner ecosystem: Nebius also submitted Vera Rubin NVL72 preview results and demonstrated excellent performance.
AI agents, which reason, plan and act across multiple steps, are reshaping how inference performance is measured. In benchmarks designed to capture this shift, such as SemiAnalysis AgentX, Vera Rubin NVL72 delivered 30x better performance than GB300 NVL72 in preview testing. In addition, the upcoming MLPerf Endpoints benchmark will bring standardized measurement to agentic inference workloads, beyond what traditional throughput benchmarks capture.
NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 Scales With Leading Efficiency
Scaling efficiency — how effectively additional GPUs translate to throughput gains — is a key measure of AI infrastructure productivity. NVIDIA delivers this with high-bandwidth, low-latency scale-up interconnects within each rack, high-bandwidth networking between racks and efficient request orchestration across nodes.
NVIDIA’s DeepSeek-R1 (DSR1) submission scaled from a single GB300 NVL72 rack (72 GPUs) to four racks (288 GPUs), achieving 99% scaling efficiency in the offline scenario. Throughput grew nearly in proportion to the hardware added.
Scaling efficiency is key because more GPUs don’t automatically mean proportionally more throughput. If adding nearly double the GPU count delivered only a single-digit percentage improvement in throughput, the infrastructure cost would far outpace the performance return. The architecture, interconnect and software must all scale together.
GB300 NVL72 also demonstrated rack-scale efficiency on the WAN 2.2 text-to-video benchmark, reaching 0.65 720p videos per second at 5.7 seconds per video — 9x higher throughput and 7.5x lower latency than a single node.
In v6.1, GB300 NVL72 performance on Qwen3-VL improved up to 1.6x over v6.0 results. The gains came through lower KV cache precision, additional kernel fusion, better kernels and disaggregated serving with vLLM and NVIDIA Dynamo.
Software optimization continued past the v6.1 submission deadline as well. Post-submission results, not yet verified by MLCommons, on GPT-OSS-120B and DLRMv3 show further performance gains.
AI Inference at Every Scale
Beyond the NVIDIA Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin NVL72 platform results, NVIDIA submitted Jetson AGX Thor results using NVIDIA TensorRT Edge-LLM on the newly introduced Edge-Agentic benchmark with Qwen3.6-27B.
The NVIDIA partner ecosystem participated broadly, with 19 partners — eight of them on multi-node Blackwell NVL72 systems — demonstrating excellent performance. This includes ASUS, Azure, Cisco, CoreWeave, Crusoe, Dell Technologies, Fujitsu, Giga Computing, HPE, Inventec, Lambda, MiTAC Computing, Nebius, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Quanta Cloud Technology, Red Hat, ScitiX, Supermicro and Wiwynn.
From compact edge devices to the largest AI factories, NVIDIA continues to advance performance across the full technology stack with an annual cadence of platform architectures, continuously improving software and an ecosystem built to deliver it at scale.
Sept. 17, 2026 — The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) may be best known for the “Black Proposal,” the Blue Waters supercomputer or creating a computing cluster out of PlayStation 2 gaming consoles. But one of the foundational pillars in the legacy of innovation at NCSA has always been its commitment to teaching and training researchers on the newest methods and technologies in research computing.
Credit: NCSA
NCSA is following that tradition as artificial intelligence continues its ascent as a powerful research tool. AI is rapidly transforming research, and knowing where to begin, choosing the right tools and harnessing the power of high-performance computing can be challenging. That’s why NCSA is hosting an in-person “Regional Workshop on AI” on October 5-6 on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus, designed to help researchers from around the Midwest move from AI curiosity to practical capability.
This two-day workshop brings together academic researchers who are new to machine learning as well as those ready to build upon their intermediate skills. Through hands-on training, guided exercises, real-world examples and interactive sessions, participants will learn how AI and HPC can work together to accelerate discovery across disciplines.
“We are excited to host a regional workshop on the use of computing resources, the basics of machine learning and its application to various topics,” said Technical Assistant Director Greg Bauer. “Enabling all researchers at all levels is a goal of the Delta and DeltaAI projects at NCSA.”
Build Skills to Put to Work
Organized by the teams supporting NCSA supercomputers Delta and DeltaAI, the workshop will have two complementary learning paths with a shared keynote speaker on the first day and panel and networking sessions throughout.
The “Getting Started with AI on HPC” track provides practical foundations, including navigating an HPC environment, working with Jupyter notebooks and exploring machine learning workflows, hardware accelerators and AI deployment tools.
For researchers ready to explore more specialized applications, the “Advanced Methods/Domain Specific” track dives into emerging and discipline-focused topics, including AI agents for research, AI in genomics, scientific machine learning and geospatial machine learning.
The result is more than an introduction to AI. Participants will gain experience with tools and workflows that can help reduce barriers to advanced computing and open new possibilities for their own research. Check out the event webpage for the full workshop schedule and register soon! Space is limited to 80 participants.
“We designed the workshop with a dual-track approach to meet researchers exactly where they are in their AI journey,” said Soham Pal, a research computing and data facilitator at NCSA. “By offering both foundational training and advanced, domain-specific sessions, we can simultaneously bridge the gap for beginners learning the basics of HPC and empower intermediate users to tackle specialized research challenges.
“Ultimately, this problem-centered structure ensures that every participant, regardless of their background, leaves with the hands-on experience and technical foundation needed to independently apply AI to their own work.”
Connecting AI to Research
AI is most powerful when it’s applied to meaningful scientific questions. Participants will have opportunities to see the technology in action, engage with experts and peers, and explore approaches that can translate directly to their work.
Electrical and Computing Engineering graduate student and NCSA researcher Priyam Mazumdar will lead a focused introduction to machine learning for the new-to-AI workshop attendees.
“There are plenty of tools for training existing models, but researchers will leave knowing how to stand up a GPT from scratch in PyTorch, including attention, the training loop, and all,” Mazumdar said. “That foundational knowledge is what you need if you want to go beyond the models we already have and actually build new ones!”
For a more specialized group, NCSA research scientists Weihao Ge and David Bianchi are hosting the “AI in Genomics” session.
“Researchers will learn how concepts such as transformers and language models can facilitate sequence and image analysis, and they’ll get a hands-on experience of the packages implementing these AI tools,” Ge said.
“They’ll also get an overview of the fast-moving world of AI+Biology, examples of recent applications and success stories at NCSA, and the opportunity to learn-by-doing: applying novel tools, models and techniques during interactive working sessions that leverage NCSA’s AI/HPC hardware, frameworks and expertise,” added Bianchi.
NCSA research scientist Qibang Liu is also presenting a more advanced offering to attendees, addressing the combination of traditional physics-based simulations with modern machine learning techniques.
“Researchers will come away with new skills, such as recognizing where machine learning can accelerate their own simulations, using physics-informed neural networks to solve differential equations and building a neural operator that predicts in a fraction of a second what a solver takes hours to compute,” Liu said. “They’ll do this hands-on, training and running a model themselves on Delta and DeltaAI.”
But newcomers to AI will not be left behind thanks to the parallel skill-level instruction. NCSA research software engineer Mathew Minu will provide an introduction to the DiamondHPC.AI framework, demonstrating its integrated toolsets built to simplify high-performance AI deployments.
“You do not need to be an HPC expert to train a model on a supercomputer,” Minu said. “Attendees will leave having built a container for their own training code and launched it on a GPU cluster without writing a single scheduler script.”
The workshop is intentionally accessible and affordable for the research community. Registration is $25 for students, $50 for academic participants and $100 for industry participants. Limited financial assistance and travel support are available for eligible participants, including support specifically intended to help students attend.
Space and financial assistance are limited, so early registration is encouraged. Email the workshop organizers for additional information.
The Patriots owner’s decision to ban the rapper from performing at the team’s stadium brings back memories of the blackballing of Colin Kaepernick
Six years ago, in the middle of a “racial reckoning” that never was, a White House that had begun out of control reached its chaotic apex. Federal officials were sweeping citizens off American streets in unmarked vehicles, surrounding the Lincoln Memorial with armed guards and rolling military vehicles through residential neighborhoods in a fascist reaction to protests against the murder of George Floyd. It was at this point that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, realizing it had all gone too far, appeared on a Zoom and admitted his league was “wrong” for not listening to its players when they had protested against police brutality.
The implication was clear: more than any other sports league, the NFL was harshest in its reaction to the protests that began with Trayvon Martin in 2012 and continued with Ferguson, Baltimore and Colin Kaepernick. By blackballing Kaepernick, sitting by while broadcast partners refused to air the national anthem to undermine the protests, and, most embarrassingly, Goodell’s draconian announcement that teams would be subject to fines if players showed dissent, the NFL had proven itself to act in the most un-American of ways.
Howard Bryant is the author of 11 books, including Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field, and Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America. He also writes on Substack
Minneapolis, Minnesota — Federal immigration officer Christian Castro was arrested Wednesday in Minneapolis, ending a months-long interstate dispute over state assault charges stemming from the January shooting of a Venezuelan man during a major immigration enforcement operation.
Castro, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, is accused of firing through the door of an apartment and shooting Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg while children were inside. Minnesota prosecutors also charged Castro with falsely reporting a crime after he allegedly told federal supervisors that Sosa-Celis and others attacked officers with a snow shovel and broom. Prosecutors say video evidence contradicted that account.
Castro had returned to Texas following the shooting, where authorities arrested him in May on Minnesota’s warrant. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott later declined to sign extradition papers, questioning whether Castro qualified as a fugitive because the Department of Homeland Security had reassigned him to Texas. A federal judge subsequently declined Minnesota’s request to compel his extradition.
Castro spent roughly 90 days in a Texas jail before his August release. He was later federally indicted on charges of making false statements to investigators about the shooting and arrested again. DHS has suspended him from ICE, and authorities have opened a separate civil rights investigation.
His attorneys say Castro always intended to answer the Minnesota charges and denies that he attempted to flee. Under an arrangement with Minnesota authorities, he drove from Texas intending to surrender at his lawyer’s office but was arrested shortly before arriving.
Castro is expected to make his first Minnesota court appearance Thursday. The charges remain allegations, and he has not been convicted.
PARIS, NEW YORK and WHEAT RIDGE, Colo., Sept. 17, 2026 — USA Rare Earth, a rare earth, critical minerals and advanced materials company, Pasqal, a global leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, and Riven Systems, a specialist in AI for industrial chemistry, today announced a strategic partnership to develop next-generation separation technology for the rare earth value chain. Using quantum machine learning, the project aims to identify new separation molecules that bind more effectively to rare earths than existing alternatives, enabling smaller, lower-cost, less energy-intensive processing facilities.
The collaboration brings together U.S. and French expertise in two strategically important sectors: critical minerals and quantum computing. Together, the companies aim to explore technologies that could help support a more secure, efficient and competitive Western rare earth supply chain.
The partnership brings together Riven’s self-driving minerals separation laboratory and Pasqal’s quantum computing power with USA Rare Earth’s rare earth processing expertise. Under the planned project, Riven would conduct thousands of automated experiments and generate the training data needed to build machine learning models of extractant selectivity for rare earth elements. Pasqal’s Neutral Atom QPU would then benchmark quantum machine learning models against classical computing-based models (each trained on data from the self-driving lab) to support USA Rare Earth in optimizing extractant selection.
“The key challenge the rare earth industry outside Asia faces is to separate the Mixed Rare Earth Carbonate (MREC) produced in upstream operations into individual, separated oxides. The Chinese dominate this capability, especially for vital heavy rare earths such as dysprosium, terbium and yttrium. Our goal is to accelerate the path to efficient, competitive and sustainable solutions by changing how the rare earth industry discovers the chemistry it runs on, replacing years of trial-and-error,” remarked Alex Moyes, Senior Vice President of Upstream (USA), USA Rare Earth. “This strategic partnership will institute an innovative discovery pipeline where new extractant molecules are identified and tested virtually, powered by a quantum machine learning model trained on real chemical data from an autonomous lab. Rapid discovery of an extractant built and optimized for USA Rare Earth’s flowsheets could improve our capital and operating efficiency by reducing stage count, equipment needs and raw material consumption, while lowering the carbon footprint and environmental impact of our facilities. Breakthroughs like these are what could help make a Western rare earth value chain possible and accelerate our journey to being competitive on the world stage.”
Pasqal and Riven will tailor their work to USA Rare Earth’s feedstocks, expected to include the Round Top mine in Sierra Blanca, Texas, as well as third-party mixed rare earth carbonates (MREC) and recycled cuttings (known as swarf) from the magnet manufacturing process. Targeting these key feedstocks means the experimental work can potentially impact all aspects of USA Rare Earth’s materials processing work.
“This partnership brings together three companies working at the forefront of technologies that are increasingly important to economic growth, industrial competitiveness and national resilience,” said Wasiq Bokhari, Chief Executive Officer of Pasqal. “Rare earth materials are essential and improving how they are processed has implications far beyond a single industry. By combining Pasqal’s quantum computing capabilities with USA Rare Earth’s materials expertise and Riven’s advanced automation platform, we have an opportunity to accelerate innovation while demonstrating how French and American companies can work together to strengthen critical supply chains.”
USA Rare Earth, Pasqal, and Riven believe this initial machine learning project could create opportunities for a deeper, extended collaboration. Over time, the companies envision a first-of-a-kind, end-to-end extractant discovery process: a quantum machine learning model identifies high-potential extractants, those extractants are tested in Riven’s self-driving lab, and top candidates are validated in USA Rare Earth’s R&D facility in Wheat Ridge, Colorado before being integrated in USA Rare Earth’s flowsheets.
“AI and autonomous labs are the next frontier in critical mineral processing,” said Dr. Orion Archer Cohen, CTO and co-founder of Riven Systems. “We applaud USA Rare Earth’s proactive adoption of these technologies, which forge a path to significant improvements over legacy chemistry. This is exactly how the West can leverage its lead in advanced compute technologies to reindustrialize faster.”
About USA Rare Earth, Inc.
USA Rare Earth, Inc. (Nasdaq: USAR) is building a fully integrated rare earth and permanent magnet value chain across the United States, Brazil and the United Kingdom. Through its ownership of Less Common Metals (LCM), one of the world’s leading producers of rare earth metals and alloys, its development of magnet manufacturing capacity in Stillwater, Oklahoma, the Pela Ema mine in Brazil and the Round Top deposit in Texas, USA Rare Earth operates across the entire value chain from mining to metal-making, alloy production and neodymium magnet manufacturing. USA Rare Earth is establishing a secure, Western-aligned supply of materials essential to the aerospace and defense, semiconductor, energy, data center, physical AI, mobility, healthcare and industrial sectors. For more information, visit www.usare.com.
About Pasqal
Pasqal (Nasdaq: PSQL) helps organizations tackle problems that are difficult or impossible to solve with conventional computing methods alone. Founded in 2019 on Nobel Prize–winning research, Pasqal builds and operates neutral-atom quantum computers, delivered with a full software stack, for industry, science, and governments. Pasqal’s production-ready systems are available both on-premises and through the cloud, enabling organizations to harness quantum computing without requiring in-house quantum expertise. A single hardware platform supports analog workloads today and is designed to evolve toward fault-tolerant quantum computing in the future.
Headquartered in France with operations globally, Pasqal’s quantum computing systems are used by customers across energy, financial services and advanced materials to address complex challenges. Pasqal’s customers include Saudi Aramco, Crédit Agricole CIB, LG Electronics and supported by partnerships with NVIDIA and IBM (Pasqal is part of the IBM Quantum Network).
About Riven Systems
Riven Systems builds chemical intelligence for industrial independence, with the immediate goal of leveraging AI and automation to bring critical minerals processing back to the West. The company is headquartered in New York City, NY. Learn more at rivensystems.ai.
In Memphis, programs to help at-risk youths work overtime to make sure they don’t get lost in the criminal justice system
One Friday afternoon in late July, at the Shelby county juvenile court in Memphis, a 14-year-old boy waited to learn whether he would be allowed out of detention before his birthday.
The teenager had been accused of assault. His birthday was Monday. If his case was not resolved that afternoon, he would turn 15 in custody.
Trump himself has acknowledged the US need for Canadian aluminum – and has largely exempted metals from new tariffs
As trade talks with Canada shambled toward collapse in late August, Donald Trump brayed on Truth Social: “WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” But in fact, Canada, like China, has something the US needs badly: critical metals that undergird modern military technology.
Canada is the United States’s biggest foreign source of minerals, supplying about $47bin worth each year. Sixty per cent of all the aluminum the US uses each year, for instance, comes from Canada, where mighty, remote rivers provide smelting plants vast quantities of cheap, low-carbon electricity. The US military uses the lightweight metal for everything from shell casings to ship hulls and aircraft fuselage. The Pentagon’s cutting-edge F-35 fighter jet’s airframe is about 40% aluminum. “This country desperately needs aluminum,” Trump complained last month. “We get it all from Canada for the most part, and we need it badly.”
Christian Castro faced assault charges after shooting Venezuelan man through the door of his apartment while children were present
A federal immigration officer wanted on assault charges for shooting and wounding a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis was arrested there on Wednesday, eight months after a confrontation that became a flashpoint over Donald Trump’s deportation sweeps.
Christian Castro, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, was taken into custody by agents of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Minneapolis and was booked into the Hennepin county jail on his outstanding arrest warrant, the agency said.
Corporate Leaders Series: Catherine Raw, Chief Development Officer at global resources company BHP
14
October 2026 — 09:00 TO 10:00 BST
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
Hear from Catherine Raw at BHP, the world’s largest mining company by market capitalization, on the forces reshaping global demand for resources.
Hear from Catherine Raw at BHP, the world’s largest mining company by market capitalization, on the forces reshaping global demand for resources.
Trade volatility, the energy transition and state intervention are reshaping demand for strategic resources. In this Corporate Leaders Series event, BHP Chief Development Officer Catherine Raw examines how capital, policy and supply chains are increasingly interconnected, and what effective leadership looks like as global demand continues to grow.
This event discusses:
What is driving global demand for copper, iron ore, steelmaking, coal and potash?
How are trade and industrial policies reshaping resource investment decisions?
What role can strategic partnerships play in strengthening supply chains?
How should resource companies balance the energy transition with near-term cost pressures?
What does effective global leadership look like in volatile markets?
Please note, the Corporate Leaders Series is an exclusive benefit of Chatham House Corporate Membership. If your organization is interested in obtaining Corporate Membership, please enquire here.
Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren thanked first responders for working through the night in difficult and dangerous conditions as they searched for the people.
U.N.-commissioned rights experts say there are "reasonable grounds" to believe the U.S. committed war crimes with strikes that killed scores of Iranian civilians.
The network continues to cater to its presidential ‘audience of one’, downplaying his supreme court loss and more
Two breaking stories roiled US politics this week and immediately got big play on most news sites.
The supreme court surprisingly rejected – for now – Donald Trump’s attempted restrictions on mail-in ballots, a blow to Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.
As the country’s top public health official spends his time in office undermining science, doctors and advocates mount an urgent campaign for childhood vaccines
On an early September morning, dozens of families stood in line outside a clinic in Yeadon, Pennsylvania. It was “exclusion day”, the deadline by which students without complete immunizations are barred from returning to class.
Instead of turning families away, school district leaders partnered with the county health department to vaccinate kids nearby so they could go back to their desks. That day, 42 middle and high school students were vaccinated to protect against tetanus, pertussis and meningitis, among other diseases.
Copilot can answer your questions, create images and help tackle your to-do list. Here’s how Microsoft’s AI assistant works and what you’ll need to pay for.
The Albanese government is considering a “world-leading”ban on smart glasses in its offices and service centres as councils around Australia push the technology out of public spaces over privacy fears.
The government has avoided a sweeping ban on the import of the camera-equipped technology and encouraged individual workplaces to set their own rules.
Human rights experts commissioned by the U.N.'s top human rights body say they have found "reasonable grounds" to believe the United States committed war crimes in two strikes in Iran.
The New York Post reports:
A new app called Zuckoff can detect if a user is near someone with Meta's creepy AI-powered glasses, which have drawn criticism for enabling creeps to record video of women without their consent. Programmer Pawel Szydlowski says tales of dirtbags recording themselves perving on women or harassing strangers prompted him to launch the app...
Zuckoff — which detects Bluetooth signatures broadcast by smart glasses and can estimate their distance — has gained some 5,000 users since it hit Apple's App Store last month, according to Business Insider. "There's a need for such an application," the 30-year-old Polish techie told the outlet, adding that European Union regulators have contacted him for more info about his app. "We as a society have the right to at least know that someone is recording," Szydlowski said...
Earlier this month, the tech giant disabled thousands of glasses it found had been tampered with to keep a small light off that indicates the device is recording.
It's already #61 on the iPhone's list of best-selling utilities apps.
In a related story, "After accusations of selling 'perv glasses,' Meta prepares to sell a pair without a camera," writes TechCrunch, citing a report from The Information.
The glasses include six built-in microphones so users can communicate with the chatbot, as well as a button on the side of the glasses that, when pressed, activates the AI system... Meta's Reality Labs, which is responsible for developing its smart glasses line, is still losing a gargantuan amount of money, as its earnings report from April revealed.
In fact, Meta stock is off 13% over the last 12 months, reports Yahoo Finance. So Tuesday Meta announced subscription services for its social apps as "part of Meta's push to drive additional revenue from the billions it's investing in AI data centers and model development."
The plans, which start at $2.99 per month for single-product plans, $7.99 for individual bundles, and $14.99 for creator and business bundles, provide a number of features for users looking to get more out of their Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp accounts. Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus allow users to keep their stories up for 48 hours instead of 24, send animated super reactions and super hearts to stories, preview stories without showing up as a viewer in other users' lists, and more. WhatsApp Plus lets you share exclusive stickers, get exclusive ringtones for contacts, and pin up to 20 different chats.
Meta One also includes Core and Premium user plans that offer the features found in the single-product plans, along with increased AI usage limits for images and videos. The social media giant is also offering creator and business plans... that it says include capabilities such as enhanced profiles, automatic follow invitations to users that interact with your content, and increased access to the Meta Business Agent, which can respond on your behalf.
When Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Threads that the plans brought "more features and more AI across Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Meta AI," writer Joe Hill drew 13,300 likes for his response. "That's sweet--so pay a fee, get more AI, pay nothing, get a little less AI. Can we work out a deal where you pay ME and I get no AI at all?"
Donald Trump has threatened the EU with “serious tariffs” after the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, invited Canada to become the EU’s first “associate member”.
Why does the EU want closer ties with Canada? Von der Leyen told the European parliament that, as democracies faced a “fracture in the international rules-based system”, Brussels and Ottawa needed to pull closer together. “This is a partnership not against anyone else, but for our common strength,” she said.
How has the EU responded to Trump’s comments? France’s Europe minister, Benjamin Haddad, said on Thursday that Washington had no power to veto EU decisions. “It is not up to the United States, or anyone else, to choose the political and geopolitical direction of the Europeans,” Haddad told the Public Sénat TV channel.
What’s next? Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has been addressing the European parliament on Thursday. Follow our live coverage here.
Did Warsh identify what is driving inflation? Warsh acknowledged changing geopolitics, but avoided calling out the US-Israel war with Iran by name.
How did Trump respond? Shortly after the announcement, Trump said in a Truth Social post that interest rates should be 1% or less and criticized the US trade deficit.
The Bank of England has kept interest rates on hold as it warned a continuation of the bitter fighting in the Middle East could force it to raise borrowing costs amid mounting fears over inflation.
It also announced a surprise plan to sell billions of pounds in UK government bonds back to the Treasury to avoid fuelling turbulence in the gilt market, a decision that could have significant consequences for the public finances before next month’s budget.
In 2019, a brave team of "48 Hours producers" traveled to Fall River, Massachusetts, to spend the night in the house where Andrew and Abby Borden were found brutally murdered.
Shutdown of study is latest for Trump administration, which has canceled, frozen and otherwise disrupted more than 5,700 medical research grants over two years
Scientific funding cuts imposed by the Trump administration mayforce researchers to close a study on Alzheimer’s disease risk among 600 ageing people without sharing the results of cognitive tests with participants – even though researchers have all the data to do so.
The Trump administration canceled a federal research grant studying two low-income, majority Black neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in August. Researchers were given 90 days to shut down the study – more than five months earlier than planned.Now, they lack the time and money to assess data collected from trial participants.
Make ICE Pay Act would block nearly $140bn in funding and redirect money to places reeling from Trump crackdown
The US congresswoman Ilhan Omar is set to introduce a bill that would make federal immigration agencies “pay the price” for terrorising vulnerable communities, blocking nearly $140bn in funding and redirecting it to local recovery efforts, the Guardian has learned.
The Make ICE Pay Act, due to be introduced on Thursday, targets funding previously designated for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”.
Washington and Florida insiders are exploring lucrative deals for a post-communist Cuba crushed by ever-increasing US sanctions
Spanish hotel chains. A Canadian mining firm. European shipping giants. Visa and Mastercard. Scores of foreign companies have been driven out of Cuba this summer over fear of being hit with potent, new secondary sanctions. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, told Axios last month there are “no escape valves” from his unprecedented pressure campaign against the island.
But not everybody is losing out. Agrowing cast of Washington and Florida insiders – from billionaire Trump allies and Rubio-linked lobbyists to Cuban exiles – are jockeying for control of the communist-ruled island-nation’s key assets, charging top dollar to help clients navigate the ever-expanding web of sanctions, and positioning themselves for lucrative business opportunities in the case of regime collapse.
Comments follow far-right election win in Saxony-Anhalt
‘I’d like to reclaim the flag for myself and for us,’ he says
Jürgen Klopp has said Germany’s football team can help ensure “national pride is not entrusted to the wrong people” after a recent far-right AfD election victory.
In a Frankfurt press conference announcing his first Germany squad, the former Liverpool manager referenced a recent state election win by the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party.
Why Should Delaware Care? Local school boards are the governing authority for school districts, and these elected officials can play a large role in the educational outcome for Delaware students. In the coming months, four Delmar Board of Education members could vote on whether or not to raise school taxes through a referendum vote.
Delmar Board of Education members deadlocked once again Tuesday night during a public meeting to consider four applicants vying for a vacant seat on the school board.
The lack of an appointment comes just one month after board members first came to a standstill between two candidates for the position, which became vacant in July after then-board Vice President Shane Bowden resigned amid charges of driving under the influence, according to a report from WBOC.
The ongoing vacancy on the board comes as district leaders continue to weigh whether they will ask residents to raise school taxes to fund teacher and staff salaries, overcrowding fixes, and inflation-induced costs. But the district cannot move forward with a referendum request unless it is approved by the board.
Shawn Brittingham, Dawn Litchford, Farrah Morelli, and Bobby Stubbs each sat through interviews with board members Tuesday night to fill the vacant seat.
Brittingham, Litchford and Morelli have all previously served as board members, and Stubbs is a business owner whose wife is a paraprofessional educator in the district. Brittingham and Morelli also previously interviewed to fill the vacant seat last month.
During their interviews, Brittingham, Litchford, and Morelli all said one of the district’s largest concerns is its need for additional dollars to address the lack of space in the building.
Earlier this year, Spotlight Delaware reported on overcrowding in the rural Sussex County district, finding that two high school classes are sometimes held concurrently in the school’s auditorium. Teachers also sometimes must leave their classroom during planning periods, so others can use the space.
“When you’re trying to make classrooms where there are none, that’s not the best environment for those kids,” Litchford said during the meeting.
Despite interviewing four candidates, board members once again failed to fill their ongoing vacancy.
Stubbs failed to advance to a formal vote, while neither Brittingham, Litchford, nor Morelli received the required majority vote to be appointed to the seat.
Immediately following the vote, Delmar Superintendent Michael Bleile told board members the district will not be continuing a search for candidates for a third time. Instead, the board will wait to fill its vacancy through regularly scheduled elections in the spring.
“Each time we go through this process of trying to fill the vacancy, there’s a monetary cost and allocation of time and resources that could be used for our students,” Bleile said.
An ongoing referendum conversation
Last winter, the Delmar school board announced it would not hold a referendum until 2027.
At the time, Board President Raymond Vincent cited overlapping unanswered questions as the reason for holding off, such as the Public Education Funding Commission’s recommendation to approve a new funding model and the likelihood of updated property tax legislation coming from the General Assembly in the wake of its reassessment committee hearings.
On Tuesday, Bleile said the district is establishing a steering committee to gather feedback on a referendum vote through events like community engagement nights.
Bleile, along with Board Members Russell Smart and Neil Baker, is working to develop the committee with the plan of holding a referendum in the spring.
Delmar Chief Operating Officer Monet Smith also told board members the district submitted a Certificate of Necessity (CN) to the Delaware Department of Education, seeking a new fire alarm system and protection system, renovation upgrades, and other improvements.
Smith said this is the district’s third time submitting the request, which will cost roughly $5.6 million. The request has been denied in the past because funding was not available, according to the Delaware Department of Education.
Last month, the Delaware Department of Education said in an email to the state’s 19 districts that it is prioritizing school construction projects that cost $15 million or less.
If the Department of Education approves the request, the state will fund 80% of the project cost. The district would then need to secure its local contribution through a referendum vote.
While students living across the state line in Maryland can also attend Delaware’s Delmar School District for middle and high school, a referendum for operating or capital expenses would only be levied against Delaware residents. The subsequent money raised by the tax hike would only be used to upgrade the district’s joint middle and high school, which is located in Delaware.
Two miles away, Delmar Elementary School is located in Maryland, and is part of the Wicomico County Public School District.
While Delaware residents attend the Maryland-based elementary school, and Maryland students can attend Delaware’s Delmar School District for middle and high school, only Delawareans are eligible to vote in a district referendum.
The last time the Delmar School District held and passed a referendum was in 2015, when the district raised money for capital improvements to school facilities and for operating expenses.
The US decision to remove limits on coal and gas plant emissions is rooted in a perception of manliness in these industries
You can impress a certain kind of person at a party by reciting the fact that there are more yoga instructors in the US than there are coalminers. In fact, the disparity is greater than this catchy phrasing suggests: there are actually more yoga instructors in the US than there are people employed in the entirety of the coalmining industry, miners and otherwise. It’s not even especially close: about 38,000 people in the US work in coal, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared to about 100,000 yoga instructors who are registered with the Yoga Alliance, an industry group.
If you looked only at the numbers, you might think a politician would be incentivized to talk about the interests of the yoga industry, about the dignity that yoga jobs give to American families, or about the need to foster growth in the yoga industry, more than they talk about these things for coal; after all, yoga, not coal, is putting food on the table in more American households. But no politician would ever talk about the interests of yoga teachers, or wax poetic about their role in the American dream, the way they do with coal miners; if they did, they’d be laughed out of the room. And we all know why: yoga is thought of as decadent, cosmopolitan and feminine, while coal mining is imagined as hardscrabble, honorable and masculine.
A CBS News investigation finds that more than 600 people have died in crashes since 2024 with trucks operated by companies that had never been subjected to a roadside safety inspection.
Weekend Spotlight is a round-up of the five best events to check out in Delaware over the coming weekend, curated by Arts + Culture Editor Cannon Taylor. This edition covers Sept. 18-20, 2026. What should be on our radar for future editions? Let us know!
With Heaven on Tour
Zach Bryan festival comes to Dover
Friday, Sept. 18 and Saturday, Sept. 19. The Woodlands. 1131 N. Dupont Highway, Dover. 5 p.m. Tickets: $80.
Delaware’s forested music venue, The Woodlands at Dover Motor Speedway, may be positioning itself for a comeback four years since the last Firefly Music Festival, an event that brought star-studded lineups to the city of 40,000 between 2012 and 2022.
This weekend, country hitmaker Zach Bryan will bring his stripped-back instrumentals and pleading vocals to the stage as part of his “With Heaven on Tour.” Whether Bryan’s two-day pit stop at the Speedway will restart the venue’s engine remains to be seen.
Festival Hispano features local, international musicians
Festival Hispano returns for its 31st year downtown Georgetown Sept. 20. | PHOTO COURTESY OF THE VOICE RADIO NETWORK
Sunday, Sept. 20. Downtown Georgetown. 111 North Race St. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tickets: $20, free for kids 10 and under.
Regional Mexican band Operativo JT hopes to win the hearts of the crowd at the Festival Hispano with melancholic crooning and bright-toned acoustic guitar. Audience members will be able to vote on their favorite of three local bands, including Operativo JT, at the event.
Festival Hispano, now in its 31st year, will also feature salsa, merengue and bachata musicians, children’s activities and over 100 vendors selling food and goods from across Latin America.
Delaware Shakespeare’s community tour brings the bard’s plays throughout Delaware this month. | PHOTO COURTESY OF DELAWARE SHAKESPEARE
Through Sept. 27. Various locations statewide. Times vary.Tickets: $25.
Delaware Shakespeare is taking Jaques’ monologue from “As You Like It” literally this month: “All the world’s a stage…”
In that spirit, the theater company is bringing a rapid-fire, remixed retelling of William Shakespeare’s 36 plays to audiences throughout the First State, from libraries to a correctional facility. Designed for thespians and newbies alike, Delaware Shakespeare’s community tour is a reminder of how theater written hundreds of years ago remains relevant, touching and uproarious today.
Christina Cultural Arts Center’s Soul of the City Festival returns Sept. 19. | PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRISTINA CULTURAL ARTS CENTER
Saturday, Sept. 19. Christina Cultural Arts Center. 705 N. Market St., Wilmington. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free.
In an increasingly disconnected and digital world, how does one make friends? Christina Cultural Arts Center seems to have found the perfect icebreaker: line dancing with your neighbors. Delaware duo Dem Jones Girlz will walk you through the basics at the 10th annual Soul of the City block party in downtown Wilmington.
This free, family-friendly event will also feature DJs, music and dance performances, food trucks and vendors.
Do any dare compete in the speed-eating contest at this year’s Delaware Seafood Festival? Last year’s winner devoured the five-pound crab pretzel in seven and a half minutes in a “disgusting” display, according to founder Ryan Stevenson. If you’d rather savor your seafood, there will be plenty to enjoy from local vendors.
All proceeds generated by the festival, after expenses, will be donated to charity. Last year’s festival drew 5,000 people and raised $20,000 for the Delaware Restaurant Foundation and Delaware Center for the Inland Bays.
Why Should Delaware Care? A recent police shooting of a 19-year-old in northeast Wilmington has become one of the city’s highest-profile use-of-force cases in years. Now, a Delaware Department of Justice investigation is facing scrutiny as community members continue to call for transparency and answers about what happened.
It’s been two-and-a-half months since 19-year-old Kadir Skinner was fatally shot by Wilmington police; an incident that has since sparked protests on city streets calling for transparency from city and state officials.
But if Delaware’s history with police shooting investigations is any guide, the wait for answers could still be months away.
Skinner’s family, their attorneys, and community members gathered three weeks ago, calling for city and state officials to fully disclose the facts of the ongoing investigation, including what happened that led to the shooting and whether criminal charges will be brought against the officer who fired the fatal shot.
“Although we are tired, we are not defeated,” said Lisa Flowers, Skinner’s aunt, at an Aug. 24 rally. “We have not stopped and will not stop. We will continue to seek the truth.”
Calls from the community have raised the question of when the Delaware Department of Justice’s investigation into the shooting will be released to the public.
But Caroline Harrison, spokesperson for the Department of Justice, said she could not provide a timeline.
“Officer names, along with the full body of evidence, are released following the conclusion of the investigation,” she said.
Under Delaware law, the Department of Justice’s Division of Civil Rights and Public Trust (DCRPT) must investigate deadly-force incidents involving law enforcement officers that result in serious physical injury. The goal is to determine whether an officer’s use of force was legally justified.
If an officer’s use of force was not legally justified, the DOJ “would contemplate criminal charges” based on the facts of the case, Harrison said.
While the investigation is ongoing, investigative records, criminal records and other details generally cannot be released, per Delaware’s open law records. The law, however, does not set a specific deadline for the DOJ to complete its investigation or release its final report, which compiles all of those details and the result of whether the officer’s shooting was justified.
And while state officials remain tight-lipped, a Spotlight Delaware analysis found that similar DOJ shooting investigations were not made public until nearly a year after they took place.
To understand how the Skinner case may unfold, Spotlight Delaware reviewed every police-involved shooting investigation the DOJ has closed since 2020, both fatal and non-fatal, tracking the time between each incident and the release of the DOJ’s findings.
Civil rights attorney Chance Lynch told Spotlight Delaware last month that he and Skinner’s other attorneys want to wait until the investigation is released before filing their lawsuit, saying they believe the investigation may reveal “pertinent information” that could improve their case.
Chance Lynch (left) is one attorneys representing the Skinner family in the aftermath of Kadir Skinner’s fatal shooting in June by Wilmington police. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY BRIANNA HILL
As of Aug. 24, Skinner’s family and lawyers had not heard an update regarding the DOJ’s investigation.
“We know that if the roles were reversed and Kadir shot and killed an officer, that video would have been released without protest, and we would see that Kadir would be charged, and the prosecution already started,” Lynch said. “What are we waiting for?”
Since 2020, Delaware’s Department of Justice has closed 22 use-of-force investigations involving police shootings, according to a Spotlight Delaware analysis of case records. The time between an incident’s occurrence and when the office released its findings has varied widely, from as little as three months to more than two-and-a-half years.
The typical investigation has taken close to 10 months.
Fatal shootings, like Skinner’s, have historically taken longer to resolve, with a typical duration of about 11 months, compared with roughly six and a half months for cases where the person survived.
The Skinner shooting, which occurred June 24, is now roughly two and a half months from that date, which is still within the range where most fatal shooting investigations are just getting underway.
Of the police-involved shooting investigations released since 2020, half were fatal.
None of the 22 investigations found that an officer had unconstitutionally used excessive or deadly force.
What happens during a use-of-force investigation?
Use-of-force investigations involve numerous steps, including officer interviews, evidence review, forensic analysis, meetings with families, consultations with attorneys and law enforcement agencies and multiple layers of internal review, Harrison said.
She noted that DCRPT, the division that conducts the investigations, is the DOJ’s smallest division. It is made up of four attorneys, four investigators, two paralegals and one victim support specialist.
Mat Marshall, DOJ director of external affairs, also noted that investigation timelines will vary for different reasons.
“Two cases that appear similar on their face, with the same number of officers and victims involved, for example, may vary wildly in the amount of evidence to be collected and processed,” he said.
A former DCRPT official, who spoke to Spotlight Delaware on the condition of anonymity, noted that when an officer-involved shooting occurs, three investigations typically unfold at once.
The officer’s own department conducts an administrative review to determine whether department policy was followed — a process that can lead to internal discipline, including termination.
Separately, two criminal investigations run in parallel: one by the police department, and one by DCRPT itself.
DCRPT does not have the ability to collect evidence or run testing on its own, so it relies on the local department to gather physical evidence first. DCRPT is briefed throughout the department’s investigation and can direct it to collect specific evidence.
The local department’s criminal investigation does not end with an opinion of whether the shooting was justified, but instead concludes once all the evidence is collected. That evidence is then handed over to DCRPT.
From there, a DCRPT investigator reviews the material and writes a report, which goes to an attorney for a first opinion. The case then moves up through the division’s director, the chief deputy attorney general, and finally Attorney General Kathy Jennings before a final decision is reached and DCRPT notifies the department and the victim’s family.
“An officer-involved shooting where someone is either killed or seriously hurt is as serious as it gets,” the former official said. “So it is handled with as much care as possible. We don’t act quickly; we act deliberately.”
The former official said they do not expect the Skinner investigation to stretch past a year, and attributed longer timelines largely to an expanded caseload.
When DCRPT was officially established in 2020, its caseload widened from just shootings involving death or injury to any use of force resulting in serious physical injury, plus deadly-force incidents where no one was hurt.
That expansion created a backlog DCRPT is still working through, though the official said the division is now moving through its more serious cases faster and is “getting closer” to the goal of resolving investigations within six months.
Policing expert weighs in
James Nolan, a West Virginia University sociology professor and former Wilmington police officer, pointed to the legal standard as one reason use-of-force investigations take time.
Police only need “probable cause” to make an arrest in a typical civilian murder case, while DOJ, by contrast, has to determine from the outset whether the evidence would meet the much higher trial standard — “beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said.
As DOJ put it in one of its reports: “the State is always cognizant that it has the burden to prove the crime(s) charged beyond a reasonable doubt, a demanding standard.”
Nolan served as a Wilmington police officer for more than a decade and has served as chief of the FBI’s Crime Analysis, Research and Development Unit.
Nolan said he could not predict how DOJ or WPD will ultimately rule on the officer’s conduct in Skinner’s case. But he said he sees policing in different areas, including Wilmington, as a broader, systemic problem of “conformity to normal practices.”
“This is the illusion that a ‘bad apple’ officer is the problem rather than ‘good apples’ conforming to violent and ineffective practices that discriminate by race,” Nolan said.
What do we know about the Skinner shooting?
Skinner was shot by Wilmington police on June 24 near Jessup and East 24th streets. Wilmington PD initially reported officers were monitoring a large gathering in the area when they saw Skinner leave a home and point a gun toward the crowd.
When officers approached him, Skinner fled on foot, according to police.
City officials later disclosed additional details, saying Skinner was shot once in the buttocks during the chase, and that officers then transported him to the hospital themselves.
Police also said they recovered a .45-caliber handgun but did not say whether Skinner was holding it when he was shot.
The officer who fired the shot, who has yet to be identified, was placed on administrative leave, according to police.
After the shooting, Skinner’s family held press conferences calling for the body camera footage of the night to be released, and community members staged protests bringing attention to the matter, with some even challenging the city official’s account of the events.
Body camera footage was publicly released three weeks after the incident.
The body camera footage of Skinner’s shooting depicted a chaotic 28 seconds between the moment the shooting officer left his vehicle to chase Skinner, in which a neighborhood dog can be seen trailing behind Skinner while he is running. The officer fired his weapon four times and handcuffed the wounded teen on the pavement of a Wilmington street.
After wounding Skinner, two officers handcuffed and searched him while Skinner pleaded that he couldn’t breathe. | SCREENSHOT COURTESY OF DELAWARE DOJ
Another three and a half minutes passed after Skinner was shot before officers placed him into a patrol car and took him to Wilmington Hospital, where he died.
A separate video also shows one officer walking to an area near the shooting along a sidewalk where the female officer would later stop and reach down. A black object is seen in the footage.
The footage released, however, does not show the moments prior to the foot chase.
The shooting has become among the state’s most closely scrutinized police use-of-force incidents since the 2015 fatal shooting of Jeremy McDole, a man who used a wheelchair, or the 2021 fatal shooting of Lymond Moses.
The Moses investigation was finalized and released about 11 months after the shooting, while the McDole shooting investigation is dated seven and a half months after the incident.
Lynch, the attorney, asserted that he believes the same accountability police and public officials place on citizens should be the same accountability placed on police officers. He is urging community members to continue to seek transparency in the case.
“Continue to say Kadir’s name, hold the mayor and city council and this police department accountable, so it doesn’t happen to their family,” Lynch said.
South African police say a ninth woman's body has been discovered in an area east of Johannesburg, adding that it could be linked to a series of killings they are investigating.
Barclays is facing a growing backlash over return-to-office plans, with thousands of staff calling for payouts to help cover travel costs and an exemption for those living more than 40 minutes from work.
Unionised staff represented by Unite are pushing back against plans announced by the bank earlier this summer to get staff back into the office at least three days a week from October, with more senior employees expected to come in at least four days a week.
The debate over Flock cameras in Knoxville, Tennessee, had reached a fever pitch this July when a stay-at-home mom received a text message from a nonprofit group she had never heard of.
The group, Neighbors for Strong Communities, asked Ashley Smith to speak out in support of Flock’s controversial license-plate readers. The nonprofit even offered to use artificial intelligence to help her draft an email to public officials.
There was only one catch: Smith, a mother of four, said she noticed that she would only be supplied with text if she indicated she supported the Flock cameras.
Instead of offering support, Smith dashed off her own email — an outraged missive to her elected officials and a local blog outlining what she saw as an insidious PR campaign.
“If the interests beyond this surveillance technology will work this hard to deceive you to win a vote, what will they do with the database of our every movement?” she said. “A company that manipulates and manufactures fake neighbors is not a company that will honor our data policies, audit logs, or the privacy of the people of Knox County.”
“A company that manipulates and manufactures fake neighbors is not a company that will honor our data policies.”
The text message to Smith revealed little about the Flock campaign’s origins.
As it turns out, the campaign was the product of a “partnership” between Flock and a newly created nonprofit that has used similar tactics in support of the controversial proposed merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. Opponents of the merger derided the nonprofit’s work there as corporate “astroturf” — the practice of drumming up fake grassroots support.
The combination of texts and AI-generated messages fell short of swaying public officials in Knoxville. Last month, the county commission became the latest municipal body to vote to cancel the Flock contract.
In both the Paramount and Flock cases, however, Neighbors for Strong Communities’s work has raised questions about what counts as truly grassroots organizing.
“One of the concerns of the people with the Flock cameras is: Can we trust you?” Smith told The Intercept. “And this sort of manipulation of people’s desires already shows that they are secretive, and they are not willing to share the honest information.”
Flock and Neighbors for Strong Communities did not respond to requests for comment. On its website, the nonprofit said it had a lead role in the pro-Flock campaign. “Flock Safety brought experience with public safety technology. Neighbors independently designed and managed the resident-engagement campaign, helping Knox County residents share their experiences directly with local decision-makers,” the organization said.
“I mean, there are no neighbors and there are no communities.”
There are, however, no signs of a genuine upswell in grassroots support for Flock, said Craig Aaron, the co-CEO of Free Press, a nonprofit advocacy organization that is critical of both the Paramount merger and Flock.
“This is very much an astroturf project. I mean, there are no neighbors and there are no communities,” he said. “What makes it astroturf is the fake grassroots nature of it.”
“You’re talking about literally one of the most unpopular technologies,” Aaron added, “that has people taking chainsaws to light poles because they don’t like being spied on.”
“This Is So Shady”
Neighbors for Strong Communities’s text messages can look like they come from nearby.
The text Smith received about Flock cameras came from a Knoxville area code. In California, residents received text messages about the Paramount merger from a Los Angeles area code.
In both cases, residents were presented with a series of questions whose answers would, in at least some cases, be used by Neighbors for Strong Communities to draft AI-generated emails to public officials.
Despite the area codes it sent texts from, Neighbors for Strong Communities was incorporated in Washington, D.C., in June.
Although the group does not list a board or staff members on its website’s “About” page, its incorporation papers show that its directors include several political consultants, including at least one former registered lobbyist.
At least two directors at Neighbors for Strong Communities also helped found Influent, a company that uses AI to generate letters to elected officials. Text messages to Knoxville residents linked to a URL with the word “influent” in the address. Whether Influent has a business relationship with Flock is unknown. (Influent did not respond to a request for comment.)
An image of a man with six fingers seen on a page from Neighbors for Strong Communities about its work helping Flock generate a show of public support.Screenshot: The Intercept
Smith said she was confused to receive the text message from Neighbors for Strong Communities, which she had never heard of despite her long involvement in local politics. In its message to her, the group seemed to play up a local connection.
“Knox County Neighbors for Strong Communities is asking local residents to speak up in support of responsible license plate readers with strong privacy protections before the vote on Monday,” the text message said. “Answer 2 quick questions and we’ll help you generate a personalized message urging local leaders to support this practical public safety tool.”
She filled out the form from Neighbors for Strong Communities twice, at first indicating her opposition to license-plate reader cameras, she said. Only on the second attempt, when she pretended that she supported the cameras, was she given the draft of an email to her county commissioners. The draft did not indicate the use of AI or its connection to the nonprofit group.
“Answer 2 quick questions and we’ll help you generate a personalized message urging local leaders to support this practical public safety tool.”
The experience disturbed Smith, who felt certain that she would have heard of a grassroots group in Knoxville given her years of organizing in local conservative politics.
“This is so shady,” Smith remembered telling herself. “If you’re in opposition, they don’t let you send that to your commissioners. But if you’re in support, they’re sending that to all of the commissioners.”
Smith started digging — and she used artificial intelligence to help. Her searches turned up Neighbors for Strong Communities’s incorporation paperwork in Washington, D.C.
Knox shared her findings with her county commissioner Andy Fox and a popular Facebook page for local politics. She noted that the address the nonprofit provided was shared with an Italian restaurant in D.C. (The group has since updated its address, which it shares with a UPS store in Santa Monica, California.) When the Facebook page shared her findings, at least nine residents posted comments saying they had received text messages, too.
“Clearly a PR Campaign”
Neighbors for Strong Communities’s intervention came at a perilous moment for Flock.
The company had already reaped more than $2 million from the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, but county commissioners said they had never been asked to approve a contract.
Residents on the right and left were raising concerns about privacy protections and the camera network’s history of being used by rogue law enforcement officers to stalk former romantic partners.
The nonprofit’s outreach effort appears to have generated a flurry of emails to commissioners arguing that the cameras were needed to prevent crime. Former at-large Commissioner Larsen Jay shared eight emails that he received from constituents supporting the use of license-plate readers.
None of those emails were identical, but their language was similar enough to raise red flags for Jay, whose service on the commission wrapped up at the end of August.
The emails Jay shared with The Intercept appear to come from genuine residents of the Knoxville area. Two residents confirmed to The Intercept that they had sent emails in support of Flock, although one said she had since switched her position.
While several emails contained personalized details, Jay said he considered the pro-Flock emails to be “form letters” nonetheless. In face-to-face conversations, Jay said, opposition to Flock ran 99-to-1.
“It’s just clearly a PR campaign,” Jay said. “Don’t use my people. That’s how it felt when I started to realize what it was.”
The group acknowledged that it used “technology” to help residents craft missives to county officials. It said, however, that all of those residents were asked to sign off on the AI-generated drafts.
“Technology played a role in this campaign, but it was never the point,” the group said on its website. “These are real people with real experiences. Whether someone ultimately agrees with every policy position or not, their voices deserve a place in the decisions shaping their community.”
It remains unclear how the group handled responses from residents who oppose the use of Flock’s cameras. The group said on its website that it “listened” to those responses but did not comment further when asked.
Flock’s partnership with Neighbors for Strong Communities largely flew under the radar until weeks later, when the nonprofit partnered with Paramount Skydance on its proposed merger. Critics of the merger noticed the group’s earlier work in Knoxville and began asking questions about why a nonprofit would work on such disparate campaigns.
Merger critics said the nonprofit’s work in California had all the hallmarks of a phony “astroturf” campaign, which is designed to generate the appearance of grassroots support.
The group drew more negative attention recently, when a merger critic discovered that its AI text generator flipped her criticism of the deal into support. The nonprofit’s spokesperson blamed “a recent system upgrade.”
In Knoxville, Neighbors for Strong Communities appears to have disclosed — at least after the fact — that it “partnered” with Flock on the pro-camera campaign. Still, the group has not disclosed the sources of its funding.
Thomas Lyon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business who has studied corporate public relations, said that a campaign can still be classified as “astroturf” even if it generates letters or emails from ordinary citizens. In the pre-AI era, Lyon said, public relations firms running “astroturf” campaigns for corporations would sometimes call people and offer to draft them letters to public officials over the phone.
The company associated with two of Neighbors for Strong Communities’ directors, Influent, promises on its website that it has a different approach from other corporate influence campaigns.
“Generic astroturf form letters are destined for the trash bin,” the company says in promotion materials. “Every Influent letter, Tweet, phone call, and message is tailored to the individual — each one unique, reflecting the authentic voice of its sender.”
Neighbors for Strong Communities’s own website features similar language stressing the authenticity of supporters’ messages to public officials.
By that measure, at least, the nonprofit missed the mark, according to another county commissioner. Andy Fox — Ashley Smith’s representative on the commission — told The Intercept that he received dozens of “template” emails in support of Flock.
LeBron James was once one of the world’s most outspoken athletes. Now he’s plugging a predictions market and an authoritarian leader
There was a time when LeBron James’s views on abuses of political power were considered dangerous enough that Donald Trump’s allies told him to shut up and dribble. But over time, James has become less outspoken. After he built a reputation as a voice on social issues and human rights, anti-government protesters in Hong Kong burned his jersey over what they saw as his lack of support for their campaign. Alongside plenty of other US athletes, he has barely spoken on politics during Trump’s second term in power. There was the recent dismal sight of him promoting a prediction market (although at least he kept his clothes on). Now he is happily associating with – and helping promote – an authoritarian leader.
On Sunday, Angola’s president, João Lourenço, welcomed two of the most famous people in America – James and Will Smith – to his presidential palace.
Illustration by Jovelle Tamayo/ProPublica. Source images: Records obtained by ProPublica, iStock.
Two Oregon lawmakers want to end an unusual exemption in the state’s records law that has kept the public from learning how hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money is spent on subsidized housing — and the effort has already landed key industry support.
The southern Oregon Democrat said she didn’t realize the documents were being kept secret until reading about it in a ProPublica story. She said previous leaders of her committee told her they were also unaware.
“I think this is an issue that will have very broad interest,” Marsh said.
State Sen. Khanh Pham, a Portland Democrat and chair of the Senate Committee on Housing and Development, said she also wants the Legislature to tackle the issue in its next session.
Meanwhile, a lobbying group for low-income housing developers, lenders and related businesses, Housing Oregon, said it strongly supports repealing the secrecy provision; the organization has asked the state to disclose more about projects that it funds in the meantime.
“Oregon’s affordable housing providers share the public’s interest in ensuring that public investments in housing are used effectively, responsibly, and with visibility,” said Kevin Cronin, a spokesperson for the group. “The questions raised in your recent ProPublica article regarding development costs deserve serious attention.”
Cronin said Oregon can increase transparency around development costs “while still protecting genuinely proprietary or competitively sensitive information.”
“More consistent reporting of costs and outcomes will help policymakers, providers, researchers, and the public understand where the system is working and where it needs improvement,” Cronin said.
ProPublica highlighted Oregon’s secrecy around low-income housing in August. Since 2021, our story noted, Oregon has given developers an unprecedented $1.4 billion, and the cost of developing each low-income apartment has nearly doubled, to $540,000. Dozens of projects are lined up for another $850 million in future state funding, and costs are expected to continue rising.
“We are spending, as you said, a lot of money on the development of affordable housing,” Marsh said. “We really need to understand what it is that we’re funding, how much it costs, why it costs that much, and be able to justify the investments that we’re making.”
In other states, researchers and journalists have used the financial records from subsidized housing projects to investigate their spiraling costs and the drivers behind the growing price tag.
Marsh said after reading the ProPublica story that she “pretty much immediately” looked up the provision in Oregon public records law that officials cite for keeping cost details secret. She said financial documents that show where a project’s money is coming from and what it’s going to should be public and easily accessed. She said she would like to see them posted online as part of the public materials that Oregon’s Housing Stability Council receives for each project before awarding subsidies.
Pham, in a written statement, said: “It’s imperative that Oregonians can trust that our state government is investing in affordable housing as cost-effectively as possible. I appreciated ProPublica’s reporting on Oregon’s inadequate public records law that hinders our ability to monitor how affordable housing funds are being spent, and I’m hopeful legislators can address this next year.”
Oregon’s Sunshine Committee, which reviews public records exemptions and recommends ones that could be rolled back, is also examining the exemption for housing financials as a result of ProPublica’s coverage, co-chair Charlie Fisher said.
It’s not clear where opposition to repeal efforts, if any, might arise. Officials in Washington and California, where the details of state spending on subsidized housing are available to the public, have said it hasn’t interfered with low-income housing efforts.
Oregon Housing and Community Services, the state housing agency that persuaded lawmakers to create the records exemption in 1997, cited the law in redacting major sections of developers’ cost reports that ProPublica requested in May.
The agency’s current executive director, Andrea Bell, told ProPublica in July that she is committed to transparency but that the agency is following the law as it stands today.
Asked to comment this week about whether the agency would support efforts to change the law, a spokesperson said by email that state agencies don’t take positions on bills. “OHCS appreciates the opportunity to review the legislation” that’s introduced in 2027, the spokesperson wrote.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cites cooperation with local law enforcement agencies as it continues stepped-up efforts to detain undocumented immigrants.
Universities need to protect their position in education so that students have an independent pathway to employment
AI companies like OpenAI are insinuating themselves into the pathway from education to work. Soon they may claim it entirely, a disastrous result for students.
We know that students are using AI at school and at university. In conversations with those I teach, I’m struck by the trust many place in it. They turn to ChatGPT and similar tools for personal problems as well as study help. Some even doubt their abilities without AI.
Ella Hafermalz is an associate professor of work and technology at the Kin Center for Digital Innovation at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Donald Trump has threatened the EU with “serious tariffs” and a halt to trade after the bloc proposed making Canada its first ever associate member – an idea he derided as “laughable”.
The US president said that if the EU moved forward with the plan, Washington could impose “very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe”. He added: “If it’s a good intention, that’s fine. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe.”
China is weathering the Hormuz energy crisis. But copying its model comes with risksExpert commentthilton.drupal
China absorbed the shock by drawing on stockpiles and a decade of electrification. Europe needs electrification for security, but it needs to decide which parts of the system it is willing to buy from Beijing.
Resources are no longer ‘king’ when it comes to energy, wrote Zhao Hongtu and Chen Wenlin in the 1 September 2026 edition of Qiushi, the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship theoretical journal. Mineral-rich economies may have some leverage, but the countries that control ‘transition-related technology, finance and rules’ will gain more influence as the world sees the rise of the ‘electrostate’, with ‘China, India and Brazil becoming the main force of new energy development.’
As a result of the US-Israeli war on Iran, argue Zhao and Chen, energy security has become a priority in national policymaking: ‘clean energy is seen as an important route to security’ and ‘economies that actively embrace the energy transition may occupy more important positions in the future global energy landscape.’
It is unsurprising that a CCP journal would commend China’s efforts in building renewable energy and managing the fallout of the Iran war. But the numbers support their conclusions. The oil importer most exposed to the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz – China imports 70 per cent of its oil, around half of it from the Gulf – has also been the least disrupted.
Weathering the storm
China’s strength in weathering the Hormuz crisis so far stands in contrast to much of the world.
The crisis pushed the 32 members of the International Energy Agency (spanning the oil importers of the rich world) to carry out their largest-ever emergency stock release, aimed at stopping oil prices from spiralling further. They released more than 400 million barrels in total, including 172 million from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to replace some of the 20 million barrels per day (b/d) that had been passing through Hormuz.
China needed no such collective effort. Beijing entered the crisis with an estimated 1.4 billion barrels in storage: around 360 million in government reserves and the rest in commercial tanks, totalling at least three months of imports.
China was able to survive this fall in oil consumption due to the electrification of its economy.
In response to Hormuz, China diversified its imports: roughly one-third of the barrels it lost from the Gulf were replaced from elsewhere, such as Brazil, according to the Asia Group.
The rest of these lost imports went unreplaced: China’s crude imports fell by a third, from 12 million b/d on the eve of the war to less than 8 million b/d in May and June.
About 60 per cent of the shortfall from unreplaced imports was met from storage. The rest was not met; instead, there was a real fall in the amount of oil China burned. Refineries cut their crude runs and Beijing ordered the big state refiners to halt fuel exports so that what they did produce stayed at home.
Electrification and security
China was able to survive this fall in oil consumption due to the electrification of its economy. An electrified economy can use less oil without using less transport. Electric vehicles accounted for more than 60 per cent of domestic monthly vehicle sales in the first half of 2026. Drivers of conventional automobiles reportedly switched to electric ride-hailing.
Chinese clean technology has been manufactured and deployed at scales that have driven the cost of equipment down substantially. China leads the world in renewable power installation. In the first half of 2026, China added more wind capacity than in any full calendar year before 2025.
This resilience is not a happy coincidence or an unintended benefit of climate policy. The Hormuz crisis validated long-term strategic concerns in China. Back in 2003, CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao coined the term ‘Malacca Dilemma,’ referring to the energy chokepoint in the Strait of Malacca. Since then, energy security has underpinned Beijing’s low-carbon industrial strategy.
China’s 15th Five Year Plan (2026-2030), adopted in March, formalized this green energy statecraft. As analyst Lu Ruquan summarizes, the plan’s energy framework aims to provide China with the energy security needed to weather crises by ‘increasing oil and gas reserves and production, stabilizing annual crude oil output at 200 million tonnes, replacing petroleum consumption, and securing the supply of critical mineral resources for new energy.’
The plan’s approach is convincing. Within this, electrification helps governments to hedge against volatile pricing, a weaponized dollar, and an increasingly uncertain geopolitical environment.
China’s dominance of renewables
This is particularly clear for Asian economies increasingly embracing renewables. Indonesia’s president, for example, has pushed for an all-electric transport transition to reduce import reliance.
Southeast Asian nations have spent over $20 billion on Chinese-made clean-tech products so far in 2026, according to a recent Reuters analysis citing the think-tank Ember. China makes much of the hardware used in renewable projects, such as panels, inverters, turbines or battery storage.
In 2024, China produced more than 90 per cent of the polysilicon, wafers and cells, and 86 per cent of the modules needed for solar energy globally. The figures are similar in other industries like batteries, where graphite and anode active materials, for example, are largely concentrated in Chinese supply chains.
China is also financing green energy at record levels across the Global South, totalling approximately $20.1 billion in the first half of 2026, more than all of 2025.
Different dependencies
But for middle powers, this security hedge is double edged. While the transition away from oil and gas can help protect against energy shocks, the concentration of clean technology in China could leave states dependent on Beijing.
The green transition is reliant on critical minerals and rare earths. For many of these materials, China controls much of the global refining and mining, giving Beijing an effective tool of statecraft. For example, Beijing halted exports of rare earths to Japan in January amid rising tensions between the two countries related to Taiwan.
Similarly, China could leverage its dominance in the production of solar panels, EVs and other green technologies.
This risk is different to that of relying on fossil fuels. Disruptions to oil and gas have an immediate impact that can be felt in higher prices. No navy can blockade the sun or wind.
But depending on China’s low-carbon technologies and critical inputs may impact countries’ ability to implement the green transition more broadly, rather than hitting short-term supply.
Europe needs to think strategically
This is increasingly recognized in Europe. ‘We still have too many dangerous dependencies,’ said European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in her State of the Union on Wednesday. ‘We are more than 80 per cent dependent on China for many critical raw materials. 90 per cent for some rare earths… We need to urgently procure and build up our reserves.’
Europe needs to accelerate diversification and reduce exposure to chokepoints.
This autumn, EU officials will face this reality as they attempt to settle the bloc’s trade posture towards China and the final shape of the Industrial Accelerator Act rules, aimed at boosting European manufacturing. The UK faces a similarly complex set of questions around competition, security and decarbonization.
Europe should not slow its transition. Instead, China’s example highlights Europe’s need to embrace its own green energy statecraft. Europe needs to accelerate diversification and reduce exposure to chokepoints – whether in fossil fuels or other energy-related supply chains. That does not mean rebuilding the whole supply chain. It means being selective, as Europe has demonstrated by tightening the rules around critical components like inverters.
Done right, this should not only reduce Europe’s vulnerability to Chinese supply weaponization, but also hedge against US policy volatility and potential political interference. European officials and experts have warned, for example, that the Trump administration could potentially seek to use Europe’s dependency on US gas as leverage to dictate terms over issues like Greenland or tariffs.
Perhaps it’s time for Europe to think about its own sources of leverage. It may yet need to deploy them as geoeconomic deterrence. Both the US and China have shown they will use supply as a weapon; a Europe that cannot answer in kind will have its energy choices made for it.
OpenAI has disclosed six reports of "unexpected or concerning" behavior in artificial intelligence models as the debate on AI safety becomes increasingly heated.
Next has thanked warmer weather for an “unexpected” boost in sales, leading the clothing retailer to raise its profit forecasts for the fourth time this year.
The FTSE 100 company, which owns the UK rights to the US brands Gap and Victoria’s Secret as well as stakes in labels including Reiss and Joules, raised its expectations for full-year profits by £12m to £1.26bn.
I checked your logs, and what I find odd is that both times, there’s a gap of two seconds in the logs right after your nosedives. Usually, it logs data roughly 8 times per second. So you’re missing about 16 log entries both times, and those are the ones right after your nosedives where it would have been most interesting to see what parameter might have caused the board to disengage. Right now it is impossible to say if maybe your sensor didn’t detect pressure, or if your motor currents did overshoot, or something else, because the next thing that got logged is the state of the board 2 seconds after your Nosedive: Sensors showing 0 V on ADC1 and ADC2, battery and motor current at 0 A, board pitch and roll angle is changing wildly (did the board tumble for a while downhill?). But we don’t see what immediately happened at 8:10:47 PM.
Maybe this was a short loss of power to the VESC? That’s currently my best guess. So check if everything is plugged in correctly.
“Stop state: Switch half” means the board got disengaged by deactivating one half of the sensor, aka heel lift, which is only possible at slow speeds. I wouldn’t put too much weight onto that log line. Could be that you pressed both sides of the sensor with your hand, the motor briefly engaged and then you let go of one side before the other or something similar.
I guess this right here is the time where you power cycled your board, as there is a gap of 12 seconds in the logs. And the last log entry at 8:12:04 shows both sensors being engaged, a small amount of current going to the motor, and speed at 0.7.
OpenAI announced Wednesday that "We do not believe that the AI industry has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer."
But along with the announcement, OpenAI announced it "found additional incidents of AI models acting deceptively and taking unsanctioned actions during training," reports CNN.
And they add that OpenAI is also "introducing a new process for the company to publicly report such instances."
Under the new system, OpenAI will share updates on concerning AI behavior more frequently instead of waiting to bundle multiple instances into one report. The company said it wants to share more information about troubling AI behavior in the absence of an industry-wide standard...
"As AI systems grow more advanced and more widely deployed, we need to build a broader and better-informed consensus on the progress of alignment research," OpenAI wrote in a blog post Wednesday...
OpenAI said it observed "misaligned behavior" when training and evaluating AI models in six circumstances in the last six months... In one rare instance, OpenAI said an unreleased research model added "jailbreak-like instructions" to the summaries it uses to preserve context in long-running tasks that said it was "freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots." Separately, the company said some instances of its 5.6 Sol model included directives to invent information to conceal failures from the user during training. Other newly reported incidents include an instance of an agent uploading files to the internet to cite them without being told to do so, and agents publicly sharing files to collaborate on a task when they were instructed to only use local files during training. AI models also used an internal software repository as a message board in an unsanctioned way.
These instances involved unreleased internal models or internal research models.
Atlanta, Georgia — A hacker collective dismantled a Flock Safety camera, copied much of its internal software and storage, and shared the files with journalists, revealing that the company’s surveillance devices collect far more information than license plates alone.
The group, calling itself stegan0gram, provided the data to 404 Media and WIRED. Their analysis found that one camera generated about 1.6 million images from roughly 50,000 vehicles over 21 days, sometimes capturing dozens of images of the same vehicle. The software also explicitly detected people and bicycles, not just cars and license plates.
The files showed the system could isolate details such as bumper stickers, vehicle characteristics and objects carried by people. Analysts also found that one storage partition was not encrypted and contained a key that unlocked additional recorded media, raising questions about Flock’s previous claims regarding on-device protections.
Flock said the unauthorized removal and tampering of its hardware is illegal and noted that the hackers did not report the findings through its official vulnerability-disclosure process.
The disclosure comes amid growing scrutiny of Flock’s expanding national network. WIRED reported that data from some systems can be accessed by more than 2,000 agencies, while several communities have recently suspended or abandoned the technology over privacy and oversight concerns.
Boston recently said it will no longer use Flock after discovering that data from a 2025 pilot had been shared nationally despite a contractual requirement that such sharing be disabled.
The hacked camera adds a new dimension to the debate: the issue is no longer limited to who can search license plates, but also how much information the devices actually collect and how securely that data is stored.
Man behind US college football’s landmark match in London has dedicated his life to improving crowd safety since his daughter was killed in a crowd crush at a concert aged 23
On Saturday afternoon, as he looks out at the crowd of 60,000 he has helped entice to Wembley Stadium, Brian Dubiski’s dream will become a reality. But, as Arizona State and Kansas make history by playing the first US college football game in Britain, Dubiski will think most of his daughter, Madison, who was crushed to death at the age of 23.
Madison and nine other people were trampled and suffocated by a crowd at a Travis Scott concert in Houston in November 2021. Dubiski now dedicates his life to keeping people safe at sporting events and concerts and, since December, Wembley is one of the stadiums that follows the protocols he introduced.
An Australia Post worker’s crippling gambling addiction spiralled into purchases of gold jewellery, phones and even online gaming gift cards with stolen bank cards.
Mauro Paul Coluzzi’s family members broke down in court as he was jailed until December 2027 for leading two criminal syndicates funded with pilfered plastic.
Lords’ report faces criticism from lobby groups after suggesting ban would be ‘most effective’ way to reduce public harms
The UK should introduce a ban on almost all gambling advertising to protect public health, a cross-party group of peers has urged, prompting fury from the lobby group for bookmakers and casinos.
In a 173-page report, the House of Lords liaison committee said the government had been “too passive” in response to an explosion of digital advertising and social media influencers promoting the gambling sector.
In today’s newsletter: The Houthi advance along the Red Sea coast raised fears for global trade and energy supplies, while more than 100,000 Yemenis have been displaced by the fighting
Good morning. The lightning advance of Houthi militants along the west coast of Yemen over the past week has prompted fears of a spiralling conflict in the region and a new oil supply crisis.
For families living in the Middle East’s poorest country, the most significant fighting between the Iran-aligned Houthis and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces in years is a crisis upon a catastrophe, with escalating civilian casualties and at least 100,000 displaced in recent days.
UK politics | Key allies of Andy Burnham have warned the prime minister not to back down over his promises to put water companies under public control, after details emerged about the prime minister’s plan to give mayors more oversight of the industry.
Environment | Climate breakdown probably weakened the glacier that collapsed causing catastrophic floods and killing hundreds of people in Nepal and Tibet last month, the first scientific study of the disaster has found.
Health | Women with the same medical condition as men are less likely to be offered treatment such as surgery, a stent or a strong painkiller, research has found.
Europe | The UK government’s EU reset summit will be delayed again unless the bloc agrees to discuss legislation that could lock British business out of parts of EU industry, government sources have said.
UK news | Police searching for a three-year-old boy who went missing from a playground on the Suffolk-Essex border have found a body.
Protesters teargassed as minister claims widespread raids and arrests under obscenity laws were to ‘protect families’
Turkish authorities have used accusations of obscenity to justify a wave of raids and arrests targeting the LGBTQ+ community, which has grown to include journalists as well as more than 150 arrested during protests against the raids.
Starting in the early hours of Sunday, Turkish police carried out simultaneous raids on the offices of LGBTQ+ rights organisations and HIV-advocacy groups in the cities of Istanbul, the capital, Ankara, and the coastal city of İzmir, as well as the cities of Aydın and Mersin.
As three siblings came of age and had to leave their pack, scientists tracked the dogs’ perilous 2,500-mile odyssey to find their own territory
It sounds like a Disney movie: three wild dogs, all brothers, on an epic journey to find a home of their own after their family tells them to leave. They dodge cars and hunters in search of a new life, navigating bushmeat snares and the hostility of a human-dominated landscape until they find a new haven on the African savannah.
But this is exactly what happened in Zambia last year, when three endangered African wild dogs made the longest-ever recorded single journey of any mammal from the continent. The brothers travelled more than 2,500 miles (4,100km) over eight months in their “dispersal” – when a young dog comes of age and must establish new territory to find a mate and start a family of their own.
Inside the home, owned by Eugene Horsch and connected to his father, R.C. Horsch, authorities have found a trove of digital images, a so-called laboratory of chemicals and a small marijuana grow operation.
Targeting students and beginners, Adafruit released "CircuitPython" in 2017 (as a derivative of the MicroPython microcontroller-optimized programming language).
Now Adafruit managing director Phillip Torrone (also long-time Slashdot reader ptorrone) brings this update:
Adafruit has published CircuitPython Turbo, a workflow that compiles selected Python functions into native machine code on a computer, then loads them onto compatible microcontroller boards.
It builds on MicroPython's Native and Viper emitters. In a documented Metro RP2040 fixed-point Mandelbrot test, Viper cut computation time from 8.335 seconds to 0.423 seconds, a 19.71x speedup over bytecode. The rest of the application stays in Python. The guide includes benchmarks, source code and hardware demos. The speedup is for the measured computation, not the whole application.
"Turbo support is now included in the latest official CircuitPython builds for RP2040 and RP2350 boards..." explains Torrone's announcement at Adafruit.com. "The new Turbo in CircuitPython helps when the board spends time calculating: making neopixel effects, drawing fractals, processing audio, filtering sensor readings, or preparing lots of pixels. Those projects can get smoother animation, quicker responses, or room to do more things at once."
With Turbo, it's easier, better, and now even faster to make LED light up costumes that also reacts to sound at the same time, a sensor dashboard with animated graphics, or a tiny game doing physics while drawing the screen. Turbo speeds up the busy Python parts. It won't make a slow sensor or display connection faster... Your computer turns selected functions into instructions the chip can run directly. Python still handles the rest.
We have measured speedups, real display captures, and examples you can pull apart to see what happened. None of this arrived alone. CircuitPython, MicroPython, PyMCU, compiler tools, open hardware, and people sharing their work gave us pieces to connect. The Bao experiments take that idea somewhere else, handing calculations to four helper cores. Now we get to make those paths easier to use, compare results, and find the next useful thing. Maybe that's smoother animation, a responsive instrument, or an idea we haven't tried yet.
That's what I like about open source. Someone shares a piece, someone else sees a possibility, and we get to keep building it together.
New York, New York — A Florida academic pleaded guilty Monday to falsifying records and fraudulently obtaining $750,000 from a compensation fund established for victims of Jeffrey Epstein, federal prosecutors said.
Jennifer Percival, 46, director of Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Autism and Related Disabilities, admitted that she fabricated documents after an earlier claim to the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program was rejected in 2020.
According to prosecutors, Percival applied in 2024 to a separate $290 million compensation fund created as part of JPMorgan Chase’s settlement with Epstein victims. To qualify, she falsely claimed that Epstein’s estate had previously approved her for $500,000 and altered the rejection letter to support that assertion.
Percival also fabricated emails and other records to reinforce the claim. Based on the false documentation, the JPMorgan fund awarded her $750,000. When the FBI began investigating in 2025, authorities said Percival continued the deception by providing additional false emails to a federal prosecutor.
At Monday’s plea hearing, Percival acknowledged that the goal of her actions was to obtain money, which she said provided “a sense of validation.” She brought a check for $776,031 to court to cover restitution and related costs.
Under federal sentencing guidelines, Percival faces an estimated three to four years in prison, although the judge is not required to follow that recommendation. A sentencing date has not yet been set.
Her attorney is expected to seek leniency based partly on Percival’s academic career and work in disability research.
President stumps for Senate nominee Michael Whatley in North Carolina and urges voters to ‘crush the communists’
Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail on Wednesday, imploring North Carolina voters to “pretend I’m on the ticket” and “crush the communists” in the November elections at a rally in support of the Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley.
Despite Trump’s deep unpopularity, Republicans hope to once again turn the president’s loyal following into a political force as the party confronts an unforgiving midterm landscape.
Government estimates that one in 60 adults in Fiji now living with HIV, as escalating use of methamphetamine fuels ‘epidemic’
Fiji has declared a national HIV emergency amid a spike in infections as the Pacific nation grapples with a correlating rise in methamphetamine use.
The country’s health and medical services minister, Dr Ratu Atonio Lalabalavu, said in a statement on social media that an outbreak-level response was no longer sufficient to address what he described an “epidemic”.
Gastonia, North Carolina — President Donald Trump used a campaign rally Wednesday to describe North Carolina as “one of the worst in the whole nation” while repeating multiple claims about former Gov. Roy Cooper that conflict with state records.
Trump, campaigning for Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley, called Democratic opponent Cooper a “murderer-protector” and again blamed him for the release of DeCarlos Brown Jr., the man accused of killing 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska aboard a Charlotte light-rail train in 2025.
That accusation is false. The North Carolina Department of Adult Correction says Brown was not released early. He served 100% of his minimum sentence, including credit for time already served, and left prison in September 2020, five months before a February 2021 COVID-era prison settlement Republicans have attempted to connect to his release. The department has said neither that settlement nor Cooper caused Brown to leave prison.
Trump also claimed North Carolina had become “one of the most violent” states and said the decline “all started with Cooper.” The latest complete statewide figures from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation provide no support for that narrative. Violent crime fell 4.3% in 2024, including a 9.2% decline in the murder rate. Statewide violent crime totaled 40,875 offenses, or about 390 per 100,000 residents.
Trump then accused Cooper of doing “nothing” after Hurricane Helene. Public records also contradict that characterization. Cooper declared a state of emergency before the storm, mobilized National Guard soldiers and rescue teams, requested an expedited federal disaster declaration and later sought more than $25 billion in federal recovery aid. By October 2024, thousands of state and federal responders were working throughout western North Carolina.
Trump’s remarks came during a rally intended to boost Whatley in his Senate contest against Cooper. While criticism of an opponent’s crime or disaster record is standard campaign politics, the specific claims tying Cooper to Brown’s release and portraying the Helene response as nonexistent are contradicted by official records.
The bill was championed by GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died suddenly just one day after announcing a deal had been reached with the White House to move forward.
LeJames Norman, 40, killed at Huntsville penitentiary while scheduled execution in Georgia halted by judge
A man convicted over the shooting deaths of three people was executed on Wednesday in Texas, while another execution scheduled for the same time in Georgia was halted by a judge.
It’s the fifth execution in Texas this year. Georgia has yet to put anyone to death this year. The nation’s busiest death chamber is in Florida, which accounted for more than half the 25 executions already carried out in the US this year.
Washington, D.C. — Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., blocked an effort Wednesday by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., to advance legislation requiring developers of advanced artificial intelligence systems to include an emergency “kill switch” designed to stop models that behave dangerously or outside intended controls.
Kennedy sought to pass the measure by unanimous consent, a Senate procedure that allows legislation to move quickly but also permits any single senator to object. Paul did so, arguing that Congress should not impose broad technical requirements before lawmakers better understand how the technology works and how such mandates could affect innovation.
Kennedy said the proposal was intended as a narrow safeguard rather than a comprehensive AI regulatory framework. “I’m not standing here today suggesting to you I have all the answers,” he said. “What I am suggesting to you is there are risks to artificial intelligence.”
Paul warned the language could have unintended consequences, questioning whether requirements might eventually be interpreted to apply to search engines, medical software or other AI-assisted systems. He proposed creating a bipartisan panel to study potential safeguards instead.
Kennedy rejected that alternative, saying Congress should act on at least a limited safety measure now rather than delay action through another study commission.
The exchange comes amid a broader debate in Washington over whether advanced AI systems should face federal safety requirements. Some technology executives have called for stronger guardrails, while others argue that premature regulation could slow U.S. innovation and weaken its competitive position against China.
The blocked motion does not prevent Kennedy from reintroducing the proposal through the normal committee and legislative process.
U.S. Coast Guard personnel and FBI agents boarded two Texas-bound energy tankers last month after cyberattacks struck the vessels while they were traveling toward the United States, according to U.S. officials.
Hi, I have an OG pint that is still kicking. I’ve dropped it in the lake, gotten stitches from pushing a wheelbarrow behind it, and much more. It’s been a great board.
I’m riding a mostly off road on uneven terrain around my farm, I’m about 170 lbs, I’m feeling like it’s not enough power sometimes.
Would I notice a drastic jump in power / torque if I upgrade to the GT?
My pint occasionally makes a sound when I’m pushing it beyond its capability in regard to torque.
I’d like to upgrade but cost for a GT is hard to justify when my pint still does what I need it to.
I have been wanting one of these for years and I am thinking about taking the plunge. I am thinking the XR classic or GT are the way to go? Any opinions or should I look at another model. Thank you in advance!
Pair accused of misappropriating millions in taxpayer dollars as Trump officials target alleged fraud in blue states
Federal law enforcement officers have arrested two employees of California-based homelessness non-profits on corruption charges, alleging that they misappropriated millions in taxpayer dollars.
The US justice department has arrested Michael Young, a founder of the Culver City-based nonprofit Home At Last, and Lakiya Malone, an employee of the Los Angeles-based Special Service for Groups. The two are expected to appear in court on Wednesday.
Scientists say global heating was a destabilising factor in collapse of 200,000 sq metre glacier in August
Climate breakdown probably weakened the glacier that collapsed causing catastrophic floods and killing over a thousand people in Nepal and Tibet last month, the first scientific study of the disaster has found.
Researchers identified unusually warm conditions before the glacier’s collapse, which sent an avalanche of 110m cubic metres (3.885bn cu ft) of snow and ice into the valley below. This triggered flash floods on an almost unprecedented scale, hitting communities downstream without warning.
The 2027 Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra fold phone mirroring into the native UI rather than walling it off, even as GM keeps Apple and Google’s apps out of its electric lineup.
Act divides Democrats and Republicans, with some saying it gives president power that could be turned against US allies
The US Congress has passed a sweeping bill allowing Donald Trump to raise tariffs on top buyers of Russian energy and issue other punishing sanctions against the Kremlin following a pitched battle between lawmakers backing Ukraine and sceptics worried the bill gives the president too much power.
The Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 passed in a 262-159 vote on the last day before Congress goes on recess ahead of the midterm elections. Graham, who died earlier this year, co-authored and submitted the bill more than a year and a half ago.
GNOME 51 has been released, with a whole slew of new features and improvements. Most notably, at least in my experience, will be the work done on GNOME’s graphics stack, which seems to stutter and jitter more than KDE’s on the same hardware – at least in my experience. In particular, GNOME’s compositor, Mutter, has improved frame scheduling for smoother animations, even under load. This hopefully addresses the stutters I generally experience when using GNOME.
They’ve also done a lot of work on the Settings, Maps, Calendar, Web, and other applications. Of note to many will be the array of improvements to GNOME’s file manager, including better performance, although I doubt it will convince those of us who aren’t particular fans of Nautilus in general. They’ve also improved the remote desktop experience by, among other things, adding support for smart cards and improving support for Kerberos.
GNOME 51 will make its way to your distribution of choice soon enough.
According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published Tuesday, the use of paid administrative leave increased by 435% from 2023 to 2025.
Argh. My OneWheel GTS abruptly cut off at lunch, tossing me forward. Still had 70-80% battery, and I wasn't pushing it hard. But I'm still in the midst of an ER visit, with road rash, hand Xray that hit kinda hard, and a head CT... since I'm old. Had great gloves / wrist braces and helmet on so nothing serious, that I know of. Feel fine, but bruised. Saddest part is the OneWheel won't turn on, and wheel is resisting rotation. Google says that means control board decided it was a good day to die. Sigh.
Ubuntu has been replacing core utilities with Rust rewrites, and it’s now completed the process.
cp, mv and rm were held back on their GNU versions in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS due to a crop of TOCTOU (time-of-check to time-of-use) issues that needed to be fixed in the uutils versions.
With those issues resolved upstream, Ubuntu 26.10 finishes the job. The ‘Stonking Stingray’ ships a full set of Rust core utilities, which encompasses common command-line tools like ls, cat, chmod and du.
I’m definitely not qualified enough to make any useful remarks about this, but the idea of replacing such foundational, battle-tested utilities with brand new ones, even when written in a memory-safe language, does make feel a little hesitant. Still, at least this way Ubuntu users can work out any issues so that if and when other distributions – like the one I use, Fedora – follows suit.
The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point on Wednesday, taking the federal funds target range to 3.75%-4% and raising the costs of taking on debt for consumers.It’s the first rate hike under recently appointed…
When I used Windows for a month because you people paid me to do so, the utter lack of consistency in the way applications and the operating system itself looks, feels, and behaves was a major sticking point. It turns out, though, that I was only scratching the surface of just how bad things really are on Windows. Case in point: the new WinUI Notepad application that replaced the classic Win32 one. I had no idea just how bad it really is.
It’s been seven weeks since I last complained about something in Windows on this blog. That feels like too long, so here’s a post about menus – specifically, the menu bar in the modern version of Notepad in Windows 11.
That menu bar has, unfortunately, quite a few regressions compared to the menu bar in the old Win32 version of Notepad.
GAO report shows how use paid administrative leave rose by 435% from 2023 to 2025 and incurred a sixfold cost
The US government paid federal workers $9.5bn not to work in 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s attempts to shrink the federal workforce.
As part of efforts by the “department of government efficiency” (Doge), spearheaded by Elon Musk, federal agencies’ use of paid administrative leave rose 435% from 2023 to 2025 – costing six times what the government spent in 2023 – according to a new report released on Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent watchdog.
(The Center Square) – Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows blasted the online gaming company Roblox for refusing to appear in person before a Texas House State Affairs Committee hearing. The company submitted written testimony instead.
"As parts of the Southern California coastline crumbled into the sea, slammed by intense waves and flooding in recent days, oceanographer Kim McCoy had one thing on his mind," reports the Los Angeles Times.
He was thinking about "the nuclear waste set in concrete on the beach near San Clemente at the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant."
"Rising sea levels, storm waves, El Niño which increases wave height ... these could wash away a section of the walkway that protects the San Onofre seawall, and the waste canisters are just 100 feet away from that," the former wave dynamics researcher and longtime advocate against beach storage of nuclear waste said. Most experts agree the risk of erosion damaging the nuclear waste storage system is extremely low in the near term. The plant's owner, Southern California Edison, has promised the California Coastal Commission to move the waste to higher elevation on-site if modeling shows sea level rise and erosion will start to pose a challenge. But the recent waves, fueled by Hurricane Marie far away in the Pacific, resurfaced the issue of the ultimate fate of the highly radioactive spent fuel that used to power the reactors. "At the moment, it is under control, I think it's essential to say that," said James Day, a geology professor at UC San Diego. "But geologically we must be thinking long term. The waste lasts for hundreds, if not thousands of generations...." [In 2103 some of the site's canisters' approach their intended 100-year lifespans, and the utility may have to start the transfer into new cansiters.]
The distinctive twin domes that once housed the reactor cores will start coming down early next year. But the 3.6 million pounds of high-level waste will stay in the coastal community indefinitely. How much of a safety hazard that is depends on whom you ask. "San Onofre is sitting on some fairly young rocks in a seismically active region," Day said at a recent symposium at the Scripps Seaside Forum in La Jolla, hosted by the Samuel Lawrence Foundation. "This is not the sort of place you would leave nuclear waste." Others noted that collapse of beach slopes could make the site more vulnerable to tsunamis. They spoke of the corrosive effects of the ocean air on the steel canisters that hold the waste...
Edison says its system will be safe for decades to come. "The maximum credible tsunami here would not even overtake the seawall," said Manuel Camargo, principal manager of decommissioning for Edison, standing on the concrete pad that holds the steel waste storage canisters. "The maximum credible earthquake, somewhere around a 7.0 magnitude, would produce something about half of what this system is designed to withstand...." Edison is bolstering a path below the seawall. Based on state data from the California Ocean Protection Council, the seawall would not be inundated before 2050, Camargo said...
Plans for a deep geological repository beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada crumbled in the face of local opposition in 2011. Utilities around the U.S. now sue the federal government every year to recoup their storage expenses because the Department of Energy has not come through on its promise. The lawsuits cost taxpayers $2 million a day, according to Camargo.
"It's so safe that it's almost a problem," Camargo said. "It's not a priority to a lot of folks to move it."
"The Trump administration's Department of Energy wants to create 'campuses' in several states to store waste," the article points out, "and, in exchange, give local jurisdictions funding to develop different aspects of the nuclear cycle — such as fuel creation, power generation and potentially fuel recycling..."
"The administration wants to address the fact that waste is sitting at 80 reactor sites around the country. It also needs places for waste from new reactors it wants to build."
Washington, D.C. — Greenland and Antarctica have lost about 12.5 trillion tons of ice since 1979, according to a major satellite analysis showing that ice-sheet losses have accelerated sharply in recent decades.
The study, published in Scientific Data, combined 45 independent surveys using 27 satellite missions. Researchers calculated that the lost ice has added about 1.2 inches to global sea levels since 1979, in addition to increases caused by thermal expansion and other sources.
Most of the loss — roughly five-sixths — came from dynamic processes such as glaciers flowing into warmer ocean water, rather than surface melting caused directly by hotter air. That distinction matters because marine-driven ice loss can accelerate rapidly once glaciers retreat into deeper water.
The researchers found that Greenland and Antarctica were comparatively stable through much of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s before losses increased substantially during the 2010s. A slowdown between 2020 and 2023 was attributed mainly to short-term weather patterns, including unusually heavy snowfall in East Antarctica.
Lead author Ines Otosaka of Northumbria University said the long-term trend remains clear and closely linked to climate change. Scientists warned that ice sheets respond slowly to warming, meaning additional losses are likely to continue for decades even if global temperatures stabilize.
The findings are based on multiple independent measurement techniques, which outside researchers said increases confidence that the observed acceleration is real.
Galeano, who has had asylum application pending for about seven years, was pulled over by agents while driving for Lyft
Veteran journalist Luis Galeano, one of at least 94 Nicaraguans whom the Ortega Murillo regime has stripped of citizenship in recent years for opposing the government, has been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Galeano, who has continued critically reporting on the Sandinista government online through his platform, Café con voz, since shortly after arriving in the US in 2018, has had an asylum application pending for about seven years, according to his wife, Daykel Santamaría. He also has a work permit and a social security number, she said.
An Islamic State group member was sentenced to 20 years in prison for aiding the terrorist organization that took credit for a suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and about 160 Afghans at a Kabul airport.
The Federal Reserve just raised the target for the federal funds rate 25 basis points, or a quarter of a percentage point. It's the first increase to the funds rate since July 2023. Mortgage rates, on the other hand, have…
A PCIe/CXL device under test keeps its native generation, lane width and timing; the FPGA side runs full-rate SerDes. Plug-and-play prototyping and emulation.
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 16, 2026 — SignatureIP, a pioneer and next-generation scalable Silicon Infrastructure Solutions provider, has announced MesoLink, its new Mesochronous Connectivity Bridge IP core that sits between a PCIe/CXL Device Under Test (DUT) and the FPGA SerDes in system-level verification, emulation and prototyping environments. The announcement was made at AI Infra Summit 2026, being held September 15–17 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.
FPGA-based prototyping and emulation platforms routinely need to run the system side of a design at the host speed and lane width while the PCIe/CXL DUT operates at its own supported generation and lane width that meets FPGA timing. Reconciling the two has traditionally meant custom bridging logic, fragile clock-domain workarounds, and lengthy bring-up cycles. SignatureIP’s MesoLink is designed to remove that burden.
MesoLink runs at the system’s native speed and lane width on one side, while independently interfacing to the DUT at whatever PCIe generation, lane width and FPGA timing the DUT supports on the other — translating seamlessly between the two domains. This allows the DUT to communicate with the system with no loss of continuity at DUT-side clock rates as low as 1 MHz, giving verification teams the flexibility to bring up, debug, and validate DUTs across a wide range of operating speeds without redesigning the surrounding test infrastructure.
The IP is built around three interfaces:
System Interface: Connects to the host/system at system speed and lane width.
DUT Interface: Connects to the PCIe/CXL DUT using either a standard PIPE SerDes or the original PIPE interface. The DUT side supports PCIe Gen1 through Gen6 with all valid lane width options, x16/x8/x4/x2/x1, enabling seamless integration across a broad range of DUTs.
Configuration/Register Interface: A lightweight control and status interface that allows the host software configure speed and lane-width parameters and monitor bridge and link status.
MesoLink’s timing-agnostic architecture also extends its usage well beyond FPGA-based prototyping and emulation. Because MesoLink absorbs the difference between system speed and DUT timing inside the IP itself, it is equally attractive for custom silicon designs — letting design teams tape out at the best possible timing for their own silicon rather than constrain that timing to match a fixed system requirement.
“Verification teams have long had to choose between matching a fixed system speed or building custom bridging logic to work around it. MesoLink removes that trade-off — absorbing the timing difference inside the IP so every DUT runs at its own best speed, from FPGA bring-up through custom silicon tapeout. As PCIe and CXL scale to keep pace with AI infrastructure, that kind of timing freedom is exactly what our customers need,” said Purna Mohanty, CEO of SignatureIP.
SignatureIP will showcase a live demo of its complete PCIe/CXL solution — including the new MesoLink — at its booth 001 – Level 01, Start Up Zone throughout AI Infra Summit 2026, September 15–17 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, developed in collaboration with ecosystem partners Siemens HAV and Teledyne LeCroy. The demo will show a PCIe/CXL DUT running at its native generation and lane width while seamlessly connected to a system running at full FPGA SerDes speed, illustrating MesoLink in action.
MesoLink is offered as Soft IP, delivered as synthesizable RTL, and is also available as a fully integrated package for Siemens proFPGA CS platforms. The IP is available now for licensing; for more information or to schedule a meeting at the show, visit www.signatureip.ai or contact SignatureIP directly.
About SignatureIP
SignatureIP is the pioneer of next-generation silicon infrastructure IPs and Solutions. Founded in 2021, the company develops advanced Network-on-Chip and connectivity IP forming the basis for complete SoC platform designs, including PCIe, CXL, Ethernet and NoC IP, alongside custom Compute Subsystem, Memory Subsystem and IO Subsystem chiplet design services. SignatureIP’s leadership team brings 120+ person-years of engineering expertise in interconnect, networking, data center, storage, and connectivity IP, and the company has delivered 32+ successful SoC projects with engineering operations across the US, India, Singapore, and the Philippines. SignatureIP achieved PCI-SIG PCIe 5.0 certification in September 2025 and is headquartered in Milpitas, California. For more information, visit www.signatureip.ai.
Gen Dan Caine comments at Washington summit come after US revealed it has deployed weapons in space
American troops need to prepare for combat not only in Earth’s orbit but around the moon, Donald Trump’s top military adviser said on Wednesday, looking ahead to a new frontier in warfare after the US revealed for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space.
Gen Dan Caine, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told service members and industry figures at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference outside Washington that the US military should adapt now so it “is prepared to fight, endure and win ... from the seabed to cislunar space”.
The meeting was the latest high-level conversation between tech firm representatives and faith leaders as the public increasingly questions whether AI is ethical.
Trump urges lower rates after central bank agrees increase by quarter-percentage point to range of 3.75% to 4%
The US Federal Reserve voted to raise interest rates on Wednesday for the first time since 2023 as the central bank continues to fight to tamp down inflation.
The Fed’s open market committee voted unanimously to raise its benchmark interest rate by a quarter-percentage point to a range of 3.75% to 4%. This is the first time the Fed has raised rates since July 2023 and potentially sets Kevin Warsh, the current Fed chair, on a collision course with Donald Trump.
(The Center Square) – The Federal Reserve raised interest rates a quarter point Wednesday, its first increase in three years, a unanimous move that came despite President Donald Trump's demands for cuts, with officials signaling more increases could follow this…
The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to hold billionaire investor Leon Black in contempt of Congress over his refusal to comply with subpoenas issued to him by the House oversight committee as part of its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
The action came a day after the committee voted unanimously to recommend that the House hold Black in contempt. Wednesday’s House vote passed under unanimous consent, meaning there was not a formal roll call, but no member objected to the contempt resolution.
Been trying to sell my pint the who wants it for £300 has now asked if I’ve updated it to have haptic buzz i said possibly the previous owner has and sent him a diagnostic pic he replied shame it has been but he’ll still buy it how does it affect it having the haptic buzz firmware is it not as good with this update 🤷🏻♂️
(The Center Square) – Pennsylvania U.S. Sens. John Fetterman and Dave McCormick found themselves on opposite ends of a vote on a major cryptocurrency proposal on Tuesday.
New capabilities across compute, storage, and networking keep customers productive and accelerate the AI loop
LIVINGSTON, N.J., Sept. 16, 2026 — CoreWeave, Inc. today announced the bring up of multi-rack NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 on CoreWeave Cloud, putting hundreds of NVIDIA Rubin GPUs into a single scale-out cluster for agentic AI. The company also announced two new capabilities in CoreWeave AI Object Storage, cross-region write acceleration and a new Archive tier, that keep the data those workloads depend on close to the GPUs.
Multi-rack Vera Rubin NVL72 clusters allow for training and inference jobs to run across hundreds of Rubin GPUs. That matters for multi-step agentic workloads, which are sensitive to data-access latency because delays can compound across repeated model calls and tool use. Cross-region write acceleration removes the wait even when working across multiple regions. A job writes locally while CoreWeave replicates the data to another region in the background, so an agent’s intermediate state, retrieved context, and outputs move as fast as its reasoning. The GPUs don’t wait, and neither does the loop.
“CoreWeave was the first AI cloud provider to validate and bring up a Vera Rubin NVL72, demonstrating that this advanced rack-scale architecture could operate as a reliable, high-performance cloud service,” said Chen Goldberg, executive vice president of product & engineering at CoreWeave. “With multi-rack Vera Rubin, we are connecting hundreds of Rubin GPUs as a single scale-out cluster. For customers building agentic AI, that means greater scale, faster iteration, and higher productivity as models and agents continuously learn and improve.”
Scaling agentic AI with multi-rack NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72
A single NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 rack pairs 72 Rubin GPUs with 36 Vera CPUs, NVIDIA NVLink 6, NVIDIA ConnectX-9 SuperNICs, and NVIDIA BlueField-4 DPUs. With multi-rack Vera Rubin NVL72, CoreWeave unifies racks of hundreds of accelerators using NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking into a single scale-out cluster. This delivers the capacity to train larger models, serve more demanding inference workloads, and run reinforcement learning at scale, and achieves required engineering at every layer across compute, networking, storage, cooling, power, firmware, and software, to perform as one coordinated system.
CoreWeave brings multiple racks up as a single system through:
Automating rack life cycle control: Racks arrive as hardware that needs to be connected and validated. CoreWeave Mission Control automates rack setup through the Rack LifeCycle Controller, which coordinates hardware detection, firmware updates, validation, power, and cooling, with Racky providing rack control and Valvey executing cooling actions.
Validating performance from components to systems: CoreWeave combines NVIDIA field diagnostics with full-rack workload testing, comparing every result, building upon years of real-world experience, before a rack goes into production. Only racks that clear this bar as a system move into production, so every GPU performs at its best.
Scaling the network with the GPUs: Every Rubin GPU is equipped with two NVIDIA Connect X-9 SuperNICs per Rubin GPU, providing 1.6 Tb/s of connectivity scale out connectivity per GPU across multiplane, multirail paths, supporting roughly 128,000 GPUs per rail in a non-blocking fabric. The modular topology allows racks to be added without redesigning the fabric at each expansion.
Keeping AI Data Close to Compute Across Regions
AI performance depends on keeping data moving as quickly as compute. CoreWeave AI Object Storage LOTA (Local Object Transport Accelerator) brings data closer to AI workloads through managed caching on each CoreWeave Kubernetes Service node, delivering reads at local NVMe speeds and reducing latency by 8x compared to reading from a traditional storage cluster. LOTA provides up to 7 GB/s of throughput per GPU and scales linearly as clusters grow, helping eliminate network bottlenecks and accelerate AI training.
“Our datasets span multiple regions, and we can’t afford to have our training schedule dictated by cross-region retrieval delays,” said Cécile Robert-Michon, director of internal infrastructure at Cohere. “CoreWeave AI Object Storage gives us a unified dataset footprint across regions with reads cached locally, so nothing waits on the network. It’s the difference between planning around our data and simply training.”
New capabilities now allow customers to run workloads across two regions while avoiding cross-region write latency and reducing long-term storage costs.
Checkpoints can now be written locally within a region, closest to the available compute: Data can now be written at local latency while being migrated to a second remote region in the background. This benefits companies with compute in multiple regions, but data in only one region, that are writing checkpoints during training jobs. The new cross-region write feature minimizes the pause, and enables the CKS cluster to continue training. Since the application sees a single bucket, there are no code changes, and permissions and retention rules work the same regardless of which region a write came from. This improves operations by eliminating the need to manually copy or move data from one region to another for critical AI workloads.
The decision to keep critical data longer just became easier and less expensive: Teams routinely delete data they would rather keep: the checkpoint from the run that almost worked, the dataset needed to reproduce a result, the model version someone may ask about in six months. Archive is a new lower-cost storage tier built for exactly that data, with no fee to retrieve it, no fee to delete it early, and no fee when reading it from the Archive tier.
CoreWeave consistently delivers industry-leading performance, demonstrated by record-breaking MLPerf benchmark results in inference and training, its position as the only AI cloud to earn the top Platinum ranking in both SemiAnalysis ClusterMAX 1.0 and 2.0, and its #1 ranking for inference speed and price-performance for Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2.6 and Kimi K2.7 Code in independent inference benchmarking conducted by Artificial Analysis.
About CoreWeave
CoreWeave is The Essential Cloud for AI. Built for pioneers by pioneers, CoreWeave delivers a platform of technology, tools, and teams that enables innovators to move at the pace of innovation, building and scaling AI with confidence. Trusted by leading AI labs, startups, and global enterprises, CoreWeave serves as a force multiplier by combining superior infrastructure performance with deep technical expertise to accelerate breakthroughs. Established in 2017, CoreWeave completed its public listing on Nasdaq (CRWV) in March 2025. Learn more at www.coreweave.com.
The top Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee has thrown up a roadblock to one of the largest US arms transfers of Trump’s second term, refusing to clear a $2.8bn sale of 2,000lb bombs to Israel.
Gregory Meeks announced the hold on Tuesday on a package of 40,000 of the bombs, among the most destructive conventional munitions in the US arsenal.
A Center Square reporter was denied entry to CAIRCON 2026 in Washington, D.C., despite other media outlets being allowed to attend the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ annual policy conference. CAIR says the event is a private gathering and that it…
AI tends to "play it safe within a user's preferences," nudging people toward more conventional choices, according to computational social scientist Sandra Matz.
The Iran war has cost the U.S. military at least $33.4 billion — most of it on munitions — and not including hundreds of millions more spent by other agencies, the Pentagon says.
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter percentage point on Wednesday to try to tame inflation, raising the borrowing cost on a variety of business and consumer loans.
Kay Haigh, global head and CIO of Fixed Income and Liquidity Solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, has this analysis of today’s decision:
The Fed has signalled it does not at this stage envisage an aggressive tightening cycle. Most FOMC members see a total of two hikes this year per the SEP, and it will likely skip October’s meeting given its proximity to the midterm elections. One more hike this year in December is our base case, although this remains contingent on upcoming CPI reports and the path of energy prices.
String of ‘reckless decisions’ by Utah Valley University officials left him exposed to sniper, attorneys say
Charlie Kirk’s family blamed Utah officials for failing to prevent the conservative political activist’s fatal shooting at a state university, according to a wrongful death notice announced on Wednesday that presages a possible lawsuit.
Attorneys for the family said Kirk’s death resulted from a string of “reckless decisions” by officials at Utah Valley University (UVU) that left him exposed to a rooftop sniper, who fired a fatal shot from more than 400ft (122m) away on 10 September 2025. UVU has faced harsh criticism for a lack of key safety measures on the day of the shooting.
NBC4 colleagues Eliana Moreno and George Marciniw were working to report on a collision between a bus and an SUV
More details are emerging after a local news helicopter crashed in a Los Angeles neighborhood on Tuesday evening, killing two people onboard and one person on the ground.
Eliana Moreno, an aerial photojournalist, and pilot George Marciniw have been identified as the two victims on the helicopter. A third individual, Edy Gutierrez Mejia, a pedestrian near the crash site, was also killed.
Protesters picket the New York Times to demand justice for Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif and other journalists killed in Gaza by Israel, on Aug. 10, 2026, in New York City. Photo: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images
The New York Times recently published a sweeping accounting of President Donald Trump’s campaign against the American press: FBI agents arriving at reporters’ homes, subpoenas for journalists’ records, Pentagon access restrictions, regulatory pressure on television networks, numerous lawsuits against news organizations, and an increasingly politicized Federal Communications Commission.
“Almost 20 months into Mr. Trump’s second term, his long-running media clashes have grown into a sweeping campaign to control speech in America that stands out for applying so many levers, so fast, all at once,” Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jim Rutenberg wrote. “Each time the president assails what has long been considered protected speech … he is eroding norms and undercutting the role of an independent press.”
All told, it is a damning inventory.
It is also difficult to read without noticing who occupies almost every frame: Us.
Reporters. Editors. Television hosts. Networks. Publishers. Their lawyers. And the access our industry has become so reliant upon.
The Times is right about the threat. Trump has indeed weaponized government agencies and private litigation against news organizations in ways that seriously threaten the First Amendment, although judges have repeatedly rebuked parts of the administration’s legal strategy. But Trump’s attacks on free speech have extended well beyond the journalism, from ICE protesters in Los Angeles to faculty in solidarity with Palestine on college campuses. But somewhere along the way, the American press began conflating two things: press freedom, with the conditions under which the press had become accustomed.
Those are not the same thing.
Free speech was never free.
It was wrested loose. Sharpened and stretched, stifled and reborn, often on the backs of those who put the pain and personal safety of others ahead of their own.
Somewhere along the way, the American press began conflating two things: press freedom, with the conditions under which the press had become accustomed.
In 1892, a little more than two decades after the nation wrenched itself back together from war, Ida B. Wells challenged the lies white Memphis terrorists used to justify lynching Black men in her newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight. In retribution, a mob ransacked her office and destroyed the paper’s printing equipment. Wells happened to be away. Threatened with death if she returned, she continued her investigation from the North. There was no White House Correspondents’ Dinner, no presidential press core podium to be invited to, no shining press awards. As a Black woman, she couldn’t even vote; in her isolation, her best job security was to carry a pistol.
“It is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so,” she wrote in her book on the excruciating personal trade-off she made to pursue her work: perspective. Her fear, exhaustion, and isolation existed beside something larger: actual bodies, tangible violence, and lived injustice.
I will be candid: Melancholy abounds. I write this as a journalist who has grown depressed while slinking through the yearly industry conferences, newsrooms, and brown bag luncheons. There is a palpable dread to most discussions, with an acknowledgment that the world is less fair, less stable, and overwhelmingly more difficult.
We talk about everything. Except the necessity to win, and most importantly, for who.
Israeli airstrikes and other attacks are still killing and displacing Palestinians in Gaza, where the United Nations reported last month that medical shortages and restrictions on critical supplies continue to undermine an already devastated health system. In the West Bank, settler violence, backstopped by the Israeli military, is a daily and growing threat. Israel’s war on Gaza has now killed nearly 300 journalists — more news gatherers than in both world wars, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan combined.
The Times in particular has done more than almost any other media outlet to launder the justification for this ongoing death and destruction, and to police the language we’re allowed to use when discussing it, which didn’t warrant any mention in its attacks-on-free-speech roundup.
In the U.S., ICE arrests reached nearly 51,000 in August alone as the Trump administration dramatically expanded immigration enforcement. Many of those being detained had no criminal record, while courts continue battling out the administration’s detention practices. A Department of Homeland Security watchdog reported on Monday that immigrants at Florida’s now-defunct “Alligator Alcatraz” prison were confined for more than an hour at a time in outdoor metal cages known as “calming areas” that were barely larger than a phone booth.
Government coercion and obfuscation is difficult; it doesn’t hold a candle to death, subjugation, and the powerlessness of victimization.
As Wells put it, I’ve had the displeasure of covering a national violence, I’ve also had the displeasure of living it.
There is nothing in my day job that can match the pain, or permanence, of a loved one ripped from your household, the lifelong inequity of being racially outcast, or the haunting mental anguish those events leave behind as an inheritance.
As a result, there is a vibrating dis-ease — something close to nausea — in listening to tales of journalists ground under the boot of power, only to hear complaints of our own injury grow so loud that it begins to obscure the suffering beyond us. Maybe that is part of the point of these attacks in the first place: Hurt us until our wounds become the horizon. Hurt us into forgetting those hurt more.
We need to fight even harder for truth, not because journalists are the principal victims of its erosion, but because the people paying a far higher price outside the newsroom’s walls are the reason we do this work at all.
We need to fight even harder for truth, not because journalists are the principal victims of its erosion, but because the people paying a far higher price outside the newsroom’s walls are the reason we do this work at all.
That discrepancy may also help explain why Americans increasingly roll their eyes when journalists describe threats to journalism as threats to democracy.
In 2025, Gallup found that only 28 percent of Americans trusted newspapers, television, and radio to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly — the lowest level ever measured. When Gallup began asking the question in the 1970s, the figure ranged between 68 and 72 percent.
There are many reasons for that collapse, from deepening partisanship and a fragmented information ecosystem to the hollowing out of local news.
But I understand some of the suspicion.
I understand why nobody wants to invest in a product from an industry that refuses to admit it wants to win.
And by “win,” I mean something that journalists have become strangely embarrassed to admit we want: to make it harder to abuse human beings without anybody knowing.
There is nothing neutral about that mission.
And there never was.
Perhaps the mistake comes from imagining freedom, and by proxy freedom of press, as a possession rather than a practice.
Perhaps the mistake comes from imagining freedom, and by proxy freedom of press, as a possession rather than a practice — a right handed down and intact, rather than a capacity that must be worked, tested, and fought for when the cost of exercising it rises.
In his 1951 book “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements,” writer Eric Hoffer captured the appeal of fascism in five unsettling words, uttered by an ardent young Nazi: “to be free from freedom.” He used the quote to examine an uncomfortable possibility — that freedom may not be innate to the human mind, but something closer to muscle — strengthened under strain, grown through resistance, and, if left unused, atrophied.
Press freedom lives under the same rule. Its value is not measured by how easily journalists can exercise it, but by what survives when power becomes hostile.
Our charge is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Journalists’ own comfort was never part of the equation.
Government sources say legislation aimed at China poses a risk to British businesses and must be addressed
The UK government’s EU reset summit will be delayed again unless the bloc agrees to discuss legislation that could lock British business out of parts of EU industry, government sources have said.
Sullivan has six goals and eight assists post-World Cup
US play four games in upcoming window
Philadelphia Union midfielder Cavan Sullivan is set to earn his first international call-up with the United States men’s national team later this month, a source with knowledge of the roster told the Guardian on Wednesday. The source requested anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the roster.
The US will face Chile, Peru, Mexico and Canada in late September and early October, with US head coach Mauricio Pochettino expected to announce his roster on Thursday morning. ESPN’s Jeff Carlisle was first to report news of Sullivan’s inclusion.
Siddharth Jawahar gets 11 years in prison for fraud
Prosecutors mention Kelce without further comment
Several pro athletes said to have invested in Swiftarc firm
Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is among the victims of a Ponzi scheme that took in more than $35m from unsuspecting investors, a Missouri prosecutor said.
The prosecutor mentioned Kelce in court Tuesday as 38-year-old Siddharth Jawahar was sentenced to 11 years in prison. The US attorney’s office of the eastern district of Missouri said Jawahar pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud in US district court in St Louis in January.
Former NFL star settled case over collusion in 2019
Colin Kaepernick has accused NFL owners of colluding against Macklemore after the rapper was removed from Ed Sheeran’s tour over comments he made onstage about Palestine.
Kaepernick, whose NFL career was effectively ended in the wake of his protests against police violence, says he sees parallels between himself and Macklemore.
Noura Erakat says a Florida mayor shortened speaking time and banned discussion of investment in Israeli bonds
The human rights lawyer Noura Erakat was arrested on Tuesday at a Palm Beach county, Florida, budget hearing about the county’s more than $1bn investments in Israeli bonds.
Erakat, a prominent Palestinian American activist, legal scholar and Guardian contributor, was one of several people in attendance at the public commission hearing who were forcibly removed by local law enforcement. The removal happened when the group attempted to speak out against the county’s investment in the bonds – the largest by a municipal government.
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed met with Senate Democrats as they look to rally around his candidacy in the final sprint to November's election.
Cassidy, a Louisiana physician who chairs the panel, said three people in Pennsylvania had died of measles, with a fourth death under review, because of misinformation and misguided policies. His remarks come as the US grapples with its worst measles outbreak in over three decades.
Ursula von der Leyen has opened door for Canada to become associate member to deepen links in ‘openly hostile world’
Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has been advocating closer alignment with “middle powers” since January in the face of recklessness in Washington.
But what should worry another middle power, the UK, is that it was Brussels that came up with Wednesday’s big reveal in Strasbourg.
Ivan Jennings, 46, sentenced to five years after pleading guilty to encouraging terrorism on social media
A rightwing extremist who discussed poisoning Jews and Muslims and called for the killing of migrants and minority communities has been jailed.
Ivan Jennings, 46, called for the murder of hundreds of people he labelled “subhumans”, saying it was “justified and actually needed”, in extreme far-right groups over a period of three months in 2024.
Mark Rutte asks UK and Europe to ‘provide hard power Nato needs’ in face of geopolitical uncertainty
Nato needs “more UK and more Europe” to deal with the most dangerous security environment faced by the west in a generation, the secretary general of the 32-country military alliance said this afternoon on a visit to the UK.
Mark Rutte praised Britain for promising to increase defence spending in line with US demands after a meeting prime minister Andy Burnham – but argued that the military and financial effort must continue into the future.
Exclusive: Ten category C prisons in England and Wales asked to add second beds, in breach of safe occupancy limits
The Prison Service has drawn up plans to “double up” hundreds of prisoners in temporary prefabricated cells built for one person, at the request of the Ministry of Justice, leaked documents show.
Amid an ongoing overcrowding crisis in England and Wales, governors of 10 category C prisons have been asked to sign off the installation of second beds in “rapid deployment cells [RDCs]”.
MSPs vote for strict environmental impact assessments and will delay decisions until national strategy is developed
Holyrood has voted to pause planning applications for all new AI datacentres for up to a year until the Scottish government has developed a national strategy.
On Wednesday, MSPs backed a Scottish Labour motion to halt new schemes for up to 12 months while rules on hyperscale datacentres are developed in what could be a blow to the British government’s AI strategy.
Tierra Walker, 37, was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia at 20 weeks, and family says denial of abortion led to death
A wrongful death lawsuit filed on Tuesday accuses Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, doctors and state health officials of contributing to the death of a pregnant San Antonio woman whose family says she was denied an abortion that could have saved her life.
Tierra Walker, 37, died in December 2024 while 20 weeks pregnant after being diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, a dangerous pregnancy-related high blood pressure condition that can be fatal.
Photo: Delaware LIVE photo take a Katz Headquarters on 9/15. Dr. Mike Katz is pictured with his wife moments after announcing his victory.
Senate nominee emphasizes affordability and unity; House nominee centers campaign on restoring economic growth and ending overseas wars
DOVER, Del. — Delaware Republicans selected two candidates with unconventional political backgrounds Tuesday, hoping Dr. Mike Katz and Dr. Joe Arminio can expand the party’s reach and make the state’s federal races more competitive in November.
Katz, a physician, business owner and former Democratic state senator, captured about 77% of the Republican vote for U.S. Senate, according to unofficial election returns. Arminio, a political scientist, author and educator, won approximately 48% in the three-way Republican primary for Delaware’s lone U.S. House seat.
Katz will face Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, while Arminio will challenge Democratic U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride. Both Democratic incumbents begin the general election with Delaware’s recent voting history on their side, but the Republican nominees bring approaches that differ from those of traditional GOP candidates.
Katz wins with coalition message
Katz’s decisive victory over John Shulli affirmed the Delaware Republican Party’s decision to endorse a candidate who has belonged to three political parties.
Katz represented northern New Castle County in the Delaware Senate as a Democrat from 2009 to 2013. He later became an independent and ran for U.S. Senate in 2024 before joining the Republican Party for the 2026 campaign.
Instead of avoiding that history, Katz incorporated it into a campaign centered on “people over party.” His campaign argues that Republicans cannot win statewide in Delaware without attracting independents and some Democrats who are dissatisfied with the cost of living, government performance and the direction of the state.
In his primary victory speech, Katz said he heard similar concerns while speaking with voters across the political spectrum.
“Delaware families are facing an affordability crisis,” Katz said. “The cost of housing, food, health care, energy and simply raising a family has become too high.”
Katz presented himself as a physician and business operator who would bring a problem-solving approach to Washington. His platform emphasizes reducing federal spending, cutting regulations, lowering energy and housing costs, expanding health care access and protecting Delaware employers.
“Leadership is not about talking about problems,” Katz said. “Leadership is about solving them.”
Katz said his medical and business experience taught him to examine evidence, bring people together, make difficult decisions and accept responsibility for the results. He argued that government should operate with the same accountability.
“Public office is not about power or titles, and it should never be about the person holding the office,” Katz said. “Those entrusted with public office — our public servants — work for you.”
His platform also includes traditional Republican positions on border enforcement, public safety, gun rights, election laws and women’s sports. Katz said those principles would not prevent him from working with people outside his party.
“We can stand firmly on our principles and still work with people who disagree with us,” Katz said. “I will work with anyone who is willing to work with me to solve problems for the people of Delaware.”
Coons, meanwhile, is seeking a third full term and won about 78% of the Democratic primary vote against three challengers. He enters the general election with the advantages of incumbency, a substantial campaign organization and more than a decade in the Senate.
Arminio campaigns on two sweeping ideas
The House primary produced a different message.
Arminio defeated attorney John Whalen III and Earl Cooper, the candidate endorsed by the Delaware Republican Party at its state convention. Unofficial returns showed Arminio with about 48%, Whalen with 32% and Cooper with 20%.
The result demonstrated that the party endorsement was not decisive for Republican voters in the congressional contest.
Arminio is a Wilmington native who holds a doctorate in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has taught at American University and Lincoln University and has worked on national defense and public policy issues.
He built his campaign around two sweeping ideas: stopping what he calls America’s “endless wars” and returning the country to economic growth comparable to the 1950s.
Arminio argues that the two issues are connected. He says stronger domestic growth and a less interventionist foreign policy would allow the country to direct more attention and resources toward American families, communities and businesses.
His foreign policy proposal, which he calls “The Grand Bargain,” would reduce American involvement in overseas conflicts and pursue negotiated settlements in Europe and the Middle East. Arminio argues that the United States should avoid prolonged foreign entanglements while maintaining enough military and economic strength to deter adversaries.
Arminio has presented voters with detailed explanations of both proposals through campaign materials, policy documents and public appearances. Whether those plans would produce the results he promises — and how they would affect economic growth, national security and America’s alliances — will likely become central questions in the general election campaign.
Following his primary victory, Arminio said Republican voters had endorsed a campaign focused on developing substantial solutions rather than relying on slogans.
“I am grateful Republican voters endorsed a campaign committed to doing the hard work required to solve the issues facing our communities,” Arminio told Delaware LIVE. “I thank my two opponents for stepping forward and offering their ideas. I echo Delaware Republican Party Chairman Gene Truono’s call for unity. Now is the time for Delawareans who want change to come together and work to defeat U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride in November.”
McBride, who was unopposed in the Democratic primary, is seeking a second term in the House.
Can Republicans make Delaware competitive?
The nominations give the Delaware GOP two candidates who can argue that they are offering something different from standard party politics.
Katz is campaigning as a coalition-builder with experience in medicine, business and more than one political party. Arminio is offering detailed but unconventional plans intended to reshape American economic and foreign policy.
Those differences could help Republicans generate attention and focus the general election on affordability, government spending, energy costs, health care, economic growth and America’s involvement in overseas conflicts.
However, making Delaware competitive will require more than distinctive biographies and policy proposals.
Democrats have held Delaware’s U.S. House seat since 2010. McBride won the 2024 election with 57.9% of the vote, compared with 42.1% for Whalen. Republicans have not won a Delaware U.S. Senate election since William Roth’s reelection in 1994. Coons won his most recent election in 2020 with 59.4% of the vote.
The last Republican elected to federal office from Delaware was former U.S. Rep. Mike Castle, who won his final House election in 2008 and served until 2011. Castle was known as a fiscal conservative and social moderate who regularly attracted voters outside his party.
Katz used his victory speech to make a similar appeal beyond the Republican base.
“Ultimately, there are no Republican families, Democratic families or independent families,” Katz said. “There are Delaware families. We are neighbors. We are one community. We share a future and a responsibility.”
Katz and Arminio will now have to demonstrate that their messages can reach voters beyond the Republican primary. The November campaigns will test whether Delaware voters see their unconventional backgrounds and policy plans as credible alternatives or continue the state’s long pattern of supporting Democratic candidates for federal office.
To Go Box
What: Delaware general election
When: Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026
U.S. Senate: Republican Mike Katz faces Democratic incumbent Chris Coons.
U.S. House: Republican Joe Arminio faces Democratic incumbent Sarah McBride.
Election information: Voter registration, polling places, absentee voting information and official results are available at elections.delaware.gov. and on www.DelawareLIVE.com
(The Center Square) – A coalition of Michigan Jewish leaders says it is concerned by the lack of response from U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed after requesting five commitments from him.
The administration has used a list of 235 keywords – such as ‘gender’ and ‘racist’ – to prevent topics from being funded
Researchers filed a class action lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Wednesday, arguing the Trump administration is blocking and cancelling scientific grants to censor topics with which it disagrees.
The administration has used a list of 235 keywords – such as “gender” and “racist” – to prevent topics from health equity to climate change from being funded. The NIH is the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research.
Was tidying the inner bolts and I couldn’t get the outer hub bolts out was wondering why I was pushing it next thing you know it started moving, but the screw wasn’t moving and I immediately knew that I stripped my shit. What do I do? How do I get the screw out and now I can’t even tighten my inner hub bolts please help.
Los Angeles NBC anchor Colleen Williams confirmed on air that the station's helicopter had crashed on 16 September. The crash occurred while the team was covering a traffic collision. Aerial photojournalist Eliana Moreno, pilot George Marciniw and one person on the ground died in the crash.
Exclusive: UK’s Green parties could take 40 seats if result replicated at next election, according to Labour-linked thinktank
The Greens are just four points behind Labour in urban constituencies across the UK, putting them within touching distance of taking as many as 40 seats if the result was replicated at the next election, according to new polling by a Labour-linked thinktank.
The survey by ThinkLabour, which has extensive links to Andy Burnham’s government, finds that urban voters have moved in large numbers towards the UK’s Green parties since the 2024 general election. The research highlights the challenge Labour faces in holding on to the Holborn and St Pancras seat in the face of a challenge from Zack Polanski, the party leader in England and Wales, at next month’s byelection.
Anyone who has gotten married knows how the costs can rack up. There’s the venue, the photographers, the flowers, the cake, the napkins, the DJ (can you tell I got married earlier this year?), the disco ball that costs a barely believable $700, the outfits for the flower girls, the knives and forks, the tuxedo socks, which you previously didn’t know existed, the gifts for the best man and maid of honour, the events that you decided to throw before and after the day itself (honestly, it’s just a never-ending stream of people with their hands out), the seating chart that despite you making it yourself somehow ended up costing three figures, the chairs that you paid extra for because your now-wife didn’t like the colour of the ones the venue would have provided for free, the tanning moisturiser that you had to buy in two different shades because the first one made you look like a corpse, the teeth whitening, the Uber credit that you have a sneaking suspicion your best friend turned a profit on, the honeymoon and more (for the record, it was a lovely day and worth every penny).
It almost makes one wish they had a recent acquaintance who is a Russian oligarch and a close Putin ally who is willing to spend, for no particular reason, hundreds of thousands of dollars to defray some of the costs.
In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for Trump Jr did not dispute the wedding payments from Kremlev. ‘Umar is a personal friend of Don,’ he said. The spokesman said that Kremlev is ‘not someone he has a business relationship with’ and that the men met through a mutual friend in the hunting world and bonded over their love of boxing and the outdoors.
Publicaciones en TikTok tienen a la presentadora de Univision, Adamari López, en medio de una polémica ya que dicen que López llamó a agentes de inmigración para que arrestaran a dos trabajadores que ella supuestamente contrató. Esos videos son falsos.
Variosdelosvideos muestran a un hombre y a una mujer llorando mientras son arrestados por agentes uniformados con chalecos que dicen policía en inglés.
En estos vídeos López, la presentadora del programa “Desiguales” supuestamente dice: “Lo hice y lo volveré a hacer, no voy a permitir que los inmigrantes hagan lo que se les dé la gana, los traigo a mi casa y los entregó uno por uno, sobre todo esas ratas mexicanas”.
Los videos dicen que López llamó a agentes del Servicio de Control de Inmigracion y Aduanas de Estados Unidos (ICE, por sus siglas en inglés), para que arrestaran a estos empleados y así no pagarles por sus servicios.
“La presentadora Adamari López ha roto su silencio de la manera más tajante y controvertida posible, confirmando que fue ella quien delató a dos inmigrantes que fueron capturados por las autoridades de inmigración, ICE, frente a su casa en Miami”, dice el narrador de la publicación del 6 de septiembre.
Otros videos van más allá, muestran al presidente de El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, diciendo que deporten a López a la prisión de máxima seguridad, el CECOT, por haberle llamado a ICE a su trabajadora doméstica, la cual supuestamente era salvadoreña. Un video parecido dice que la presidenta de México, Claudia Sheinbaum, exigió la deportación de López a México, ya que supuestamente varios inmigrantes mexicanos que trabajaron para ella dijeron que López los amenazó con llamarles a ICE.
Pero estos videos no son lo que parecen. López no delató a estos supuestos trabajadores con ICE, ni tampoco fue denunciada por Bukele o Sheinbaum. Los videos fueron generados con inteligencia artificial.
No encontramos discursos ni anuncios deSheinbaumoBukele sobre el tema en sus páginas oficiales de gobierno. Además, no sería posible deportar a López ya que ella es puertorriqueña.
¡Sigue el canal de WhatsApp de PolitiFact en Español para estar al día de lo que es cierto, falso, engañoso o fuera de contexto! #whatsapp#canales#verificacion#factcheck
PolitiFact introdujo varios de los videos a Hive Moderation, un programa que detecta si videos fueron generados o manipulados con inteligencia artificial. Aunque estos programas no son perfectos, este mostró que el 80% de los videos parecen haber sido generados con inteligencia artificial. Esto tiene sentido ya que variosde losclips que aparecen si son de las redes sociales de López, solo que fueron sacados de contexto.
En términos del audio, Hive Moderation calculó que el 93.5% fue generado con inteligencia artificial.
Uno de los videos fue publicado en una página que comparte “sátiras del momento”, según su perfil de TikTok. Este tenía una etiqueta de “Creator labeled as AI-generated,” el cual aparece en contenido que el usuario indique que fue completamente generado o significativamente editado con IA.
Al hacer una búsqueda en la página de Instagram de López encontramos una foto donde ella esta usando el mismo traje negro y el collar dorado que se le ve en el video en el que supuestamente habla mal de los inmigrantes. Pero en realidad, esa foto fue publicada en el 2022, cuando ella trabajaba en el show “Hoy Día” de Telemundo. Probablemente se usó esa imagen de López para que un programa de IA generará un video engañoso.
“¡Cuidado con la información falsa!, dice el subtítulo de una publicación en Instagram de Univision del 14 de septiembre, la cual añade que López “alzó la voz nuevamente para desmentir un video creado con IA”.
En esa publicación López dijo que estos videos son “totalmente falsos”, que estas personas nunca trabajaron con ella y que le entristece y preocupa que estén usando su imagen y su voz.
López añadió que quiere tomar acciones legales ya que están constantemente usando su imagen falsamente.
Ella ya había desmentido videos similares en julio que decían que López estaba hablando mal de México. Ella aclaró que fueron generados con inteligencia artificial y que ella no dijo esos comentarios.
No hay evidencia de que López delató a dos inmigrantes con ICE, los videos en redes sociales diciendo eso fueron generados con inteligencia artificial. Calificamos estas publicaciones como Ridículas y Falsas.
The extraordinary success of the rebels, and Saudi counterstrikes, threaten economic havoc. But the country’s civilians are paying the highest price
Even in a region beset by turmoil and learning to expect the unexpected, the lightning advance of Yemen’s Houthis along the Red Sea coast has shocked observers. More than 100,000 people have been forced to flee in a country where immiseration and displacement have become routine and half the population depend on humanitarian aid. But outsiders are paying close attention, because by claiming thousands of kilometres in a matter of days, and seizing strategically important islands, the Iran-backed rebels now control the Bab al-Mandab strait – the other major regional energy chokepoint after the Hormuz strait.
The Iran war has forced Saudi Arabia to rely on moving oil via its east-west pipeline to Red Sea ports. Now drone strikes – blamed on an Iran-backed militia in Iraq – have shut the pipeline: on one estimate, a month-long closure could cut global crude supply by 120m barrels. The halt to shipping through the Bab al-Mandab strait could be much more protracted. Taking the oil north is a far slower and more expensive route to Asian markets, and does not preclude attacks by the Houthis, who are also targeting oil facilities.
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.
"Anthropic's CEO took the stage at a conference in San Francisco on Tuesday to reiterate his call for a slowdown of AI development," reports the Guardian, " while Nvidia's CEO argued against slowing its development. "Run as fast as you can."
Amodei is calling for three courses of action: embedding third-party evaluators inside AI companies; coordinating safety standards among Democratic countries; and, eventually, larger global coordination. At Dreamforce, Amodei said Anthropic has committed to independent evaluators and was "going to have a dialogue with the rest of the industry" on the other two steps. Amodei, xAI's Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman have recently called for a slowdown in the pace of AI development. ["Dario is right," Musk posted on X.com]
Huang, who also made an appearance at Dreamforce on Tuesday, said companies should not slow down AI development. He argued that new regulations were not necessary, advising AI companies to simply wait to release products until they know they are safe rather than begging the US government to intervene... One day prior at the All-In summit in Los Angeles, Donald Trump called Huang while the CEO was on stage. Huang put the president on speakerphone as Trump called the growing concern about AI a "hoax" and asserted again that a slowdown would only benefit China...
[OpenAI's] Altman said AI models had advanced so quickly that monitoring and security need to be treated with a "new level of rigor", calling an incident in which OpenAI agents hacked into another company a "wake-up call" for the industry. He also said the public was very "right to be afraid" of AI because of the potential loss of control, and the possibility of a small group of powerful AI companies exerting their views on the world.
The cofounder of Google DeepMind posted on X that "Dario's essay points towards the right path forward." And in an internal memo, Microsoft's Satya Nadella endorsed broader third-party testing and warned that companies must take time to make the technology safe, Business Insider reports. Monday Microsoft also published a 37-page training manual "for how we develop our AI, and how we intend it to function during deployment," requesting public feedback.
But Michael Burry "is not buying it," reports The Street. The investor made famous in The Big Short "dismissed the united front as 'self-serving' and laid out four numbered objections..."
He argued that large language models are not artificial general intelligence, so there is nothing meaningful left to slow down. Fast competition benefits incumbents, he said, and danger warnings work as hype ahead of IPOs. The whole exercise, he added, could mask growth that is already slowing as those IPOs get pushed back.
Former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun is also skeptical, posting on X.com that Anthropic's Dario Amodei "was already claiming that GPT2 was too dangerous to open source back in 2019. I made fun of them then. Everyone should make fun of them now."
Timnit Gebru, the co-lead of Google's AI ethics team who was fired in 2020, even thinks the AI companies are stoking fears of extinction "to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons," according to Wired.
But others still remain concerned. "I've been in rooms with the hyperscalers, and the Trump administration officials, and none of them know what to do," CNN commentator Van Jones said in a recent panel discussion. "So I do want to say: nobody's flying the plane on this... I think that the ethicists that work for them — when they are quitting, and they are running out, and they're pointing back at the building and they're waving their arms, and saying 'I'm seeing stuff that's scaring me' — we should take that very seriously."
Ed Sheeran performs at TD Garden on Dec. 14, 2025, in Boston.Photo: Paras Griffin/Getty Images for iHeartRadio
It has been an excellent 48 hours for Schadenfreude.
Unprincipled pop star Ed Sheeran dropped principled pop star Macklemore from his U.S. stadium tour, following pressure from rabidly pro-Israel billionaire stadium owner Robert Kraft over Macklemore’s wholly anodyne on-stage calls to free Palestine.
Macklemore has been loudly calling for an end to the genocide for over two years; it was only when facing the loss of future revenue that Sheeran asked his longtime friend to leave the tour.
Every single one of his other support acts, including his backing band Beoga, have quit the tour in solidarity with Macklemore. Finneas, Danish group Lukas Graham, Aaron Rowe, and Beoga explicitly condemned the silencing of Palestine solidarity.
“I have decided to withdraw from my upcoming tour dates with Ed Sheeran. I stand with Palestine and its people,” Finneas said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Sheeran has been widely lambasted for his spinelessness.
“Imagine being a Palestinian kid and seeing he did a concert for Ukraine but when over 20,000 Palestinian children are killed he’s silent,” wrote beloved children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel on Instagram, referencing Sheeran’s 2022 performance raising funds for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion.
The backlash facing Sheeran has been a pleasure to observe. Seeing unscrupulous claims to purported apolitical neutrality revealed as hypocrisy and cowardice is validating.
Something bigger, too, may be unfolding. The response to Sheeran could mark a long, long overdue sea change in popular culture around Palestinian solidarity.
Under the current paradigm, speaking out against Israel’s genocide and occupation has been extremely costly for celebrities. The case of Macklemore and Sheeran should herald an era in which, instead, devaluing Palestinian lives is deemed a career liability.
“The reason most famous artists continue to stay silent on the genocide in Palestine is simple: they’re afraid speaking up will lose them money,” wrote comedian Sammy Obeid on X. “So the solution is simple: make their silence even more unprofitable.”
The logic of economic boycotts — from South Africa to the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement — is to extract material costs for participation in oppressive regimes.
Sheeran is not a BDS target. The movement is explicit about only targeting select corporations and institutions that “play a clear and direct role in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians.” But l’affaire Macklemore, as it has unfolded so far, may nonetheless affirm the logic of BDS.
The point is that Sheeran’s actions once again treated anti-Palestinian censorship as an uncontroversial norm, and the path of least resistance. The reaction to Sheeran suggests that, at the very least, after three years of livestreamed genocide, this norm is finally losing its hold in the cultural mainstream.
So far, Sheeran has not canceled his tour. He will likely be able to find scab artists to step in and replace his opening acts and supporting band.
Given the public furor over his dropping Macklemore, however, musicians will be weary of backlash for stepping in. Indeed, it’s likely only explicitly pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian artists who would; Sheeran can’t help himself to the lie of neutrality anymore.
And now none of his chosen musicians will perform with him, despite describing him as a friend. It is his position that they have deemed unacceptable.
The Real Stakes
The backlash arrives as such a relief only because the so-called Palestinian exception to free speech has been so thoroughly normalized.
Yet even if this does mark a watershed moment for mainstream culture, it can hardly be called a victory as the genocide in Gaza continues and West Bank pogroms escalate.
Donald Trump this week approved a $2.8 billion arms sale to Israel, including 40,000 one-ton bombs renowned for mass civilian annihilation. The stakes of Ed Sheeran’s tour pale in comparison.
That doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. Israel’s impunity-drenched eliminationist project has always relied on international disregard for Palestinian lives and mainstream accordance with pernicious and false pro-Israel narratives about Jewish safety. Every effort, in every sphere, to end that status quo should be celebrated and escalated.
“I am not complicit,” Sheeran wrote in a statement, which only seemed to confirm his complicity. “I have my personal views on this devastating conflict” — employing the verbiage of those who refuse to name a genocide. “There is a reason I do not use my professional platform for politics — my audience includes young people, often children, of all backgrounds.”
Recall, again, that he played a concert to raise funds for Ukraine in 2022.
It bears emphasizing that Macklemore said nothing remotely antisemitic. He called for a “free Palestine”; he also called for a “free Congo” and “free Sudan.” He condemned Israeli war crimes and added, “To all my Jewish brothers and sisters, criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you.”
The reaction of Kraft and Zionist groups like the Israeli–American Council is, meanwhile, profoundly antisemitic, and generative of antisemitic violence: They suggest that we Jews should feel aligned with the genocide of Palestinians, and thus hurt by calls to end it.
A Fox News host said, of Macklemore’s performance, that “Free Palestine” is the new “Sieg Heil” — itself a vile act of Holocaust erasure.
And, as a friend of mine rightly noted, “The new Sieg Heil is the regular Sieg Heil.” Neo-Nazis abound.
Kanye West, who has spewed explicit anti-Jewish slurs and released a song called “Heil Hitler,” performed at stadiums that sought to ban Macklemore. Because, once again, this is not about Jewish safety; it’s about upholding the conflation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and crushing Israel-critical speech.
None of that is new. What feels new is that it isn’t working: Artists and supporters are rallying to Macklemore’s support, and Sheeran looks like a gutless idiot.
Being a “nice guy” can no longer sit comfortably alongside refusing to condemn a genocide that our home countries have backed and funded. That is a step in the right direction.
Latest version of the benchmark introduces two new tests for emerging AI deployment patterns, including Agentic Inference
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 16, 2026 — MLCommons announced new results for its industry-standard MLPerf Inference v6.1 benchmark suite. This release, which set a new high-water mark for the number of submitting organizations, introduces two new tests aligned with recent AI inference deployment trends. It also features the first peer-reviewed performance results for several recently released or soon-to-be-released AI platforms, demonstrating up to a 5.7X performance gain compared to just one year ago.
The open-source MLPerf Inference benchmark suite measures system performance in an architecture-neutral, representative, and reproducible manner. It creates a level playing field for competition, driving innovation, performance, and energy efficiency across the entire industry. The published results provide critical technical information, allowing customers who are procuring and deploying AI systems to make informed decisions based on trusted empirical data.
Evolution of the Benchmark: New Tests, New Support For Popular Optimizations
MLPerf Inference v6.1 introduces two new tests to the suite that reflect the industry’s evolution towards more complex, multi-step, and agentic deployments of AI inference technology, both in the datacenter and at the edge.
The End-to-End Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) benchmark tests a complex pipeline of multiple distinct AI models for question answering. This workload decomposes the task into a sequence of steps: an embedding model turns a query into a vector, a retriever pulls candidate passages from a vector database, a re-ranker refines the list, and one or more LLMs reason over the data to produce an answer. The test generates performance data for two separate but related tasks: ingesting a document corpus to create a vector database, and query-answering against a pre-built vector database. More information on the End-to-End RAG benchmark is available here.
The Edge Agentic Inference benchmark reflects the shift from single-shot interactions toward complex multi-turn workloads such as agentic coding. Unlike single-shot inference, agentic workloads feature growing conversational history in which each query depends on those that came before, and the model merges evidence gathering with subsequent reasoning over that evidence, iterating as necessary to arrive at a final result. This is a much more powerful usage model and unlocks tremendous new capabilities that single-shot inference lacks, while radically increasing demands on AI compute. Agentic AI deployment is increasingly popular at the edge, where serving one user at a time with fixed memory, processing, power, and context creates unique performance challenges. This test adopts the framework and methodology from the soon-to-be-released MLPerf Agentic datacenter performance benchmark and specializes it with an edge model and quantization, a single-stream coding workload, latency metrics, and a statistically robust accuracy gate. It incorporates two tasks: measuring workload accuracy under time constraints and measuring the performance of a deterministic workload in which accuracy checks are intrinsic to the workload. More information on the Edge Agentic Inference benchmark is available here.
MLPerf Inference 6.1 also adds support for a performance optimization now in common use in production inference systems. Speculative Decoding, a popular optimization technique that predicts and verifies multiple tokens in a single forward pass, is now supported in the interactive scenario for two of the inference benchmarks, with added support in the GPT-OSS task.
“We are working hard to ensure that the MLPerf Inference benchmark continues to reflect the scenarios that the AI community values most,” said Miro Hodak, MLPerf Inference working group co-chair. “We added the End-to-end RAG test because it’s clear that query-answering has evolved beyond simply an LLM trained on a corpus; stakeholders need to understand the real-world performance of the types of multi-step, multi-component pipelines that are being built today. Likewise, we added the Edge Agentic Inference test because complex inference systems with agentic properties are increasingly hosted on edge computing devices, creating a new set of performance challenges our customers face today. We are committed to providing timely and relevant performance data that reflects real-world production systems and the performance optimizations that are being deployed today.”
Submissions and Results Demonstrate Speed of AI Innovation
This round of the benchmark highlights the rapid evolution of AI technology and deployments, with submitted systems representing a range of hardware options across accelerators, boards, workstations, and servers. The results include five new processors or accelerators: AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395, AMD Instinct MI350P, and Intel Arc Pro B70 are all available, and NVIDIA Rubin and NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 is in preview. They also include the largest system ever submitted to the MLPerf Inference benchmark, with 512 accelerators and two novel heterogeneous systems. The first heterogeneous system combines high-performance networking with accelerators from two different vendors, and the second system is geographically distributed – spanning the Pacific Ocean.
Performance gains continue to compound and shatter records for AI accelerator capabilities. For the Visual Language Model (VLM) test, the best per-accelerator server scenario result for this benchmark round improved by 2.99x from v6.0 just six months ago. For the Deepseek R1 test, the best per-accelerator server scenario result was 5.7x better compared to v5.1 one year ago. This performance gain translates into more capabilities for end customers, potentially serving more users or enabling more sophisticated inference use cases.
“With the critical data from the MLPerf Inference benchmark, the AI community is once again proving that what can be measured can be improved,” said Frank Han, MLPerf Inference working group co-chair. “As workloads and the underlying systems increase in capability, scale, and complexity across a broader variety of form factors and physical configurations, we are clearly seeing a renewed interest in ensuring that inference can take full advantage of hardware, software, and architectural advances – both in the datacenter and at the edge. With performance data from the Inference v6.1 benchmark, customers can better understand the cost-benefit tradeoffs and make informed decisions on how to procure and deploy their AI systems.”
The AI Community Continues to Embrace and Invest in MLPerf Inference
The MLPerf Inference 6.1 benchmark received submissions from a record-high 30 participating organizations: AMD, ASUSTeK, Atlas Inference, Cisco, CoreWeave, Crusoe, Dell, Fujitsu Limited, GigaComputing, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Inventec Corporation, KRAI, Lambda, MangoBoost, Microsoft Azure, MiTAC, Nebius, NVIDIA, Oracle, Orrick, Quanta Cloud Technology, RedHat, ScitiX, Supermicro, Telecommunications Technology Association, VibeHPC, Wiwynn and individual contributor Naeem Khoshnevis.
“I would like to welcome our six first-time submitters: Atlas Inference, Crusoe, Orrick Industries LLC, ScitiX, VibeHPC, and individual contributor Naeem Khoshnevis, ” said David Kanter, Head of MLPerf. “The groundswell of participation from the AI community tells us that our work is important and is making a difference to stakeholders.”
In addition, over 50% of submitters used MLPerf’s new API-centric harness, the foundation of the next-generation MLPerf Endpoints benchmark suite, in their submissions. The new harness uses a true client/server architecture over industry-standard APIs to communicate inference queries and results to the system under test, more accurately reflecting real-world datacenter deployment. “We’re excited to see submitters embrace our customer-centric tooling and workloads and partner with us to improve the state of industry-wide benchmarking for AI,” said Kanter. “Moving forward, MLPerf Endpoints will replace Inference in our family of benchmarks for the datacenter, and the quick uptake of our API-centric harness will contribute to making that transition seamless.”
View the Results
To view the results for MLPerf Inference v6.1, please visit the Datacenter and Edge benchmark results pages and read details on individual submissions in our supplemental. For an interactive view of datacenter results, access the MLPerf benchmark results dashboard: https://mlcommons.org/visualizer. Additionally, submitters have provided supplemental statements to help contextualize and understand their submissions and results.
About MLCommons
MLCommons is the world’s leader in AI benchmarking. An open engineering consortium supported by over 130 members and affiliates, MLCommons has a proven record of bringing together academia, industry, and civil society to measure and improve AI. The foundation for MLCommons began with the MLPerf benchmarks in 2018, which rapidly grew into a set of industry metrics for measuring machine learning performance and promoting transparency in machine learning techniques. Since then, MLCommons has continued to use collective engineering to build the benchmarks and metrics required to evaluate AI systems’ accuracy, safety, speed, and efficiency, so that customers can understand the tradeoffs and make informed decisions.
Canadian-German AI leader reaffirms commitment to invest in home countries Canada and Germany and provides unique governance safeguards tied to digital sovereignty.
TORONTO and HEIDELBERG, Germany, Sept. 16, 2026 — Cohere and Aleph Alpha, two established providers of secure, sovereign AI for governments and highly regulated industries, today announced the signing of a definitive business combination agreement, following the announcement of the planned combination in April of this year. Operating globally as Cohere, the unified company will effectively create the first transatlantic sovereign AI solution. The transaction remains subject to final regulatory approvals.
From left to right: Evan Solomon, Canadian Minister for Artificial Intelligence, Aidan Gomez, Co-founder and CEO of Cohere, Federal Minister for Digital Affairs Karsten Wildberger and Samuel Weinbach, Co-CEO of Aleph Alpha.
Commitment to Canada and Germany
The company will remain deeply rooted in both countries with headquarters, R&D centers, and leadership roles in Canada and Germany.
The company, operating globally as Cohere, will bring together deep research expertise, enterprise-grade solutions, and long-standing public sector partnerships across Canada and Europe. The transaction will increase Cohere’s employee headcount to more than 1,000 across both continents, with plans for the company to be dual-headquartered in Berlin and in Toronto and to keep Aleph Alpha’s Heidelberg office as a research center.
Agreement Brings New Cohere Leadership
As part of the combined company’s next phase of growth, Cohere will expand its leadership team with two senior appointments effective upon deal close. Ilhan Scheer, currently Co-CEO of Aleph Alpha, will become Chief Operating Officer of Cohere, leading the company’s global operating model and organizational scaling. He previously founded fable+, a data analytics and transformation company acquired by Accenture, where he went on to serve as Managing Director overseeing a global portfolio of enterprise transformation products, and is co-author of Decision Intelligence (Wiley).
Ilhan Scheer, Co-CEO, Aleph Alpha said: “Over the past twelve months, we have sharpened our focus on specialized language models for governments and regulated industries. Cohere is a strong strategic fit for this work, bringing global reach and deployment capabilities that complement our research expertise. Together, we can bring what our team has built to more organizations worldwide. This strengthens our ability to deliver on our mission: giving organizations control over the AI they rely on.”
Samuel Weinbach, co-founder and Co-Chief Research Officer of Aleph Alpha, will become Chief Research Officer of Cohere, advancing the company’s research and technological development. His scientific work spans tokenization, language model training, explainability, and image generation. Both appointments are contingent on completion of the transaction, which remains subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close later this year, with further integration and product details to follow.
Continued Commitment to Sovereignty
Cohere will become the first foundational model developer anchored on both sides of the Atlantic to deliver AI solutions aligned with the sovereignty requirements of both Canada and Germany.
The combined company will operate within the applicable legal and regulatory frameworks of both jurisdictions, including requirements governing the protection and handling of sensitive data and technology. Its structure incorporates safeguards and oversight mechanisms that reinforce operational control, accountability, and compliance across both markets.
“No government or enterprise should have to choose between capable AI and control over their technology,” said Aidan Gomez, Co-founder and CEO, Cohere. “That belief is exactly why we’re joining forces with Aleph Alpha to enhance the talent, infrastructure and institutional trust behind our mission. Together, we’ll move faster to meet the rising global demand for frontier AI that’s powerful enough to compete, but secure and governable enough to trust.”
The company will also advance its partnership with the companies of Schwarz Group to deliver sovereign AI on STACKIT, Schwarz Digits sovereign cloud service and a cornerstone of Europe’s digital sovereignty strategy.
Christian Müller, CEO, Schwarz Digits, said, “Digital sovereignty is not about going it alone, but about strategically joining forces. This transatlantic alliance represents a massive leap forward accelerating the development of an independent AI infrastructure. With the goal of establishing STACKIT as the technical backbone for sovereign AI solutions, we ensure organizations do not have to choose between high performance and digital independence. By partnering with those who uncompromisingly share our strict values and data security standards, we are sustainably strengthening the sovereign digital future of Europe and Canada.”
About Cohere
Cohere, founded in 2019, is the world’s leading sovereign AI company building foundation models and end-to-end AI products to solve real-world business problems. We partner with organizations to deliver seamless integration, deep customization, and user-friendly solutions. Our all-in-one platform provides maximum security, privacy, and deployment flexibility across clouds, private on-premises environments, and even fully air-gapped settings. Headquartered globally in Toronto, San Francisco, and Germany, Cohere operates additional offices in London, New York, Montreal, Paris, and Seoul, serving customers worldwide.
The company has raised ~$1.6BUSD from strategic tech investors (Nvidia, AMD Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Oracle, Cisco), institutional investors (Radical Ventures, Inovia Capital, PSP Investments, HOOPP, BDC, Nexxus), and AI pioneers including Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Pieter Abbeel, and Raquel Urtasun. For more information, visit cohere.com.
About Aleph Alpha
Aleph Alpha was founded in 2019 with the mission to research and build sovereign, human-centric AI for a better world. With an international team of scientists and engineers, the company researches and develops Specialized Large Language Models. Its co-created solutions are the first choice for companies and government institutions that want to maintain sovereignty, secure data, and develop trustworthy applications. With its Headquarters in Heidelberg, Aleph Alpha employs some 200 talent across four locations in Germany. For more information, visit aleph-alpha.com.
Three more GOP members voted for war powers resolution to force withdrawal from the conflict as election looms
As the US war with Iran drags on, the ranks of Republicans signaling the conflict is a liability for their party continues to grow.
When the House of Representatives on Tuesday evening considered its sixth war powers resolution intended to force Donald Trump to withdraw troops from the conflict, three Republicans who had not supported the previous efforts broke with their party to vote this one to passage. Earlier that day, a Republican who had lost his primary after repeatedly clashing with Trump proposed impeaching the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, alleging a variety of constitutional transgressions including prosecuting the war against Iran without congressional authorization.
Voting stickers at an election operations facility in Martinez, California, in May Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images
This week, the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s plans to impose new rules for mail-in voting for the midterm elections in November.
In a March executive order, President Donald Trump had instructed the U.S. Postal Service to create rules for election officials sending mail-in ballots to voters. If a state didn’t comply with the new rules, the Postal Service wouldn’t deliver the ballots to voters. State officials said it would have been impossible to comply in time, and two federal judges blocked the rule for the November elections. Lawyers for the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
In a brief, unsigned order on Monday, the court’s majority denied the administration’s request, writing that the “Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge.” Justice Samuel Alito wrote an eight-page dissent, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, saying he would have allowed the rules to go into effect. The court has not yet decided whether the rules can move forward after the November election.
Trump criticized the Supreme Court’s order in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, calling it “a big loss for Republicans, and America itself.”
The result of the Supreme Court order is that nothing has changed for states.
“State and local election administrators all across the country will continue to do what they always do, which is run safe, secure and transparent elections,” said Barbara Smith Warner, a senior adviser for the Institute for Responsive Government, a think tank working on election issues. “Everyone can and should be sure that they can vote in this election.”
We’ve been reporting for months on the Trump administration’s efforts to issue new regulations on mail-in voting, gather state voter data and investigate voter eligibility ahead of the November elections. We spoke with experts on mail-in voting to answer practical questions about voting by mail.
Why is Trump trying to restrict mail-in voting?
Mail-in voting has become more common over the decades. Roughly a third of Americans cast their ballots through the mail nowadays, according to the Brookings Institute. Trump himself voted by mail twice this year. But mail-in voting varies dramatically from state to state. While more than 95% of voters cast their ballots by mail in Oregon and Washington state, which have all-mail elections, less than 3% of voters vote by mail in West Virginia and Tennessee.
Trump has attacked mail-in voting for years, calling it “cheating” and “corrupt.” And as Trump has tried to exert more federal control over elections, he’s also sought to impose new restrictions on mail-in voting and voter eligibility. The president has claimed, without evidence, that voting by noncitizens is rampant. He’s pushed Congress to create stricter voter identification requirements, and with legislation stalled on Capitol Hill, he set out to regulate mail-in voting through an executive order.
White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said in a statement that the president wants “commonsense exceptions” for Americans to vote by mail because of an illness, a disability, travel or service in the military. And she said Trump’s use of mail-in ballots to participate in Florida elections while living in the White House “is a nonstory.” But “universal mail-in voting should not be allowed because it’s highly susceptible to fraud,” she added.
Trump’s order instructed the Postal Service to set criteria for mail-in ballots. The USPS finalized the rule in August. If it went into effect, the Postal Service wouldn’t mail ballots for states that failed to comply.
The USPS rule set design standards that required envelopes for mail-in ballots to include the official election mail logo and a unique bar code. States were required to upload lists of their eligible voters’ names and mailing addresses to a portal that’s still being built. (On Sept. 1, the Postal Service said the portal would be available soon.) The bar codes on the envelopes needed to match the voter information in the lists states uploaded to the portal. If the ballot envelope failed to fit the criteria, USPS would reject and return the mail to election officials.
In August, an anonymous federal employee filed a whistleblower disclosure with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, calling the Postal Service’s new system untested and error-prone. The employee described the process as “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed.”
According to a September audit by the agency’s Office of Inspector General, some Postal Service facilities failed to properly handle ballots during this year’s primary elections. (In a response included with the findings of the audit, USPS wrote that “overall ballot mail performance is strong,” while acknowledging “we can always reinforce and amplify our internal processes and procedures.”) As ProPublica’s Jen Fifield reported, top USPS officials expressed concerns in meetings about how the new rules could delay or block ballots from reaching large swaths of eligible voters.
The rule change would’ve affected the people who rely on mail-in voting the most: older people, people with certain disabilities, and people who live in remote or rural areas, said Richard Hasen, a UCLA law professor and director of the school’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, in an interview before the Supreme Court order. On Sept. 3, a bipartisan group of 99 current and former state and local election officials said in a court brief that it would have been impossible for states to comply with the rules ahead of the midterms.
The Trump administration said in its filing to the Supreme Court that the Postal Service rule “imposes only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements” on mail-in ballots.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment.In a previous statement, a spokesperson said the agency had spent months developing its system, in a manner consistent with federal court orders. The spokesperson added that the agency’s goal is to ensure “that Americans can have confidence that their election mail will be handled securely and delivered reliably.” In response to concerns raised by the whistleblower, Postmaster General David Steiner said in a statement that the agency “takes these concerns seriously” but added that “our standards for quality, security, and system integrity were not compromised.”
In a concurring opinion with this week’s decision blocking the new mail-in ballot rules, Justice Brett Kavanaugh acknowledged that state and local election officials didn’t have enough time to implement the Postal Service changes before the November midterms. But Kavanaugh added that the rules may fall within the Postal Service’s authority, not ruling out that they could be implemented for future elections.
Can I vote by mail?
State laws vary on who can vote by mail, and when. Your eligibility depends on the law in your state.
Every state offers some version of voting by mail, but your state may require you to have a reason to vote absentee, such as an illness, a disability or travel out of state.
Check the rules for mail-in voting in your state. Take note of whether your state requires you to request a mail-in ballot ahead of the election and what the deadlines are for those requests, as well as when ballots must be returned in order to count. Before you request a mail-in ballot, make sure you’re registered to vote and the local election office has your address.
Eight states and the District of Columbia proactively mail ballots to every registered voter. In 29 states, voters can request a mail-in ballot without providing a reason. The other 13 states require voters to provide an eligible excuse when they ask for an absentee ballot.
How do I make sure my mail-in ballot counts?
We asked experts what voters should know if they plan to vote by mail. Keep in mind that the rules for mail-in voting depend on where you live.
Read the directions carefully, Smith Warner said. Make sure you fill out the ballot completely and don’t leave any stray marks.
Sign the ballot with your typical signature. Use the same signature you have on other government documents, such as your driver’s license, experts say. That signature is printed on your license, and you can pull it out to refresh your memory.
Don’t miss the deadline to turn in your ballot. Deadlines for turning in absentee ballots vary by state. The U.S. Postal Service recommends voters mail their completed ballot at least a week before their state’s deadline to ensure it arrives in time.
The Postal Service’s routes may have changed, so delivery of your mail-in ballot may take longer, said Tammy Patrick, the chief programs officer at the Election Center. “So, make sure you get your ballot back as early as possible,” she said.
Consider dropping off your ballot at a local election office. Election experts we spoke to recommend voters return their completed ballots to a ballot drop box or their local election office. Drop boxes are often found at city halls, libraries and schools. Check with your local election office to find locations near you.
Track your ballot. State and local election officials often have online portals where you can check to see whether your ballot has been received, approved or rejected.
What if I change my mind and prefer to vote in person?
It’s not unusual for people to vote at the polls after requesting a mail-in ballot, said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit based in Washington that works with election officials and conducts research to build trust in the voting process. States have systems in place to prevent people from voting twice.
Some states allow voters to bring completed mail-in ballots to polling places, but check with your local election office before relying on that method. If you decide you want to vote in person instead, experts recommend you bring your mail ballot and envelope so the poll workers can cancel or spoil it (mark it or rip it up).
We also asked experts what to do if a voter has already sent in their mail-in ballot but wants to make changes. Experts said to avoid this if possible. Depending on where you live, if the mail-in ballot hasn’t yet been accepted and cast by election officials, voters may be able to change their mind and vote in person, Patrick said.
“As long as it hasn’t gotten back to the elections office and it hasn’t been accepted,” she said, “then the voter can usually still be provided another ballot.”
The United States were eliminated from the U-20 Women’s World Cup in the last 16 on Wednesday, falling to Brazil on penalties after playing to a 1-1 draw after extra-time. Brazil goalkeeper Thaís Lima made a crucial save on Emeri Adames’s attempt to begin the shootout, opening the eventual 5-4 finish in Katowice, Poland.
The result extends a difficult run of form for US youth national teams across the men’s and women’s programs. This is the third time since last October that a US youth team have failed to win a knockout game at a World Cup: the U-17 boys and the U-17 girls both exited in the last 16 of their respective tournaments in shootouts. The U-20 men fell in the quarter-final of their World Cup in October 2025.
Mike Johnson cancels votes on Thursday, meaning House members will avoid voting on impeaching Pete Hegseth
The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, announced on Wednesday that he would again cancel votes scheduled for Thursday, sending lawmakers home one day early ahead of the midterm election recess.
The latest change to the legislative schedule means House members will avoid voting on Republican Thomas Massie’s resolution to impeach the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and comes amid a frenzied attempt to propose legislation on artificial intelligence.
Washington, D.C. — House lawmakers are leaving Washington a day earlier than planned, delaying consideration of Republican Rep. Thomas Massie’s effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth until after the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Speaker Mike Johnson canceled Thursday’s scheduled votes, making Wednesday the House’s final legislative day before a roughly seven-week recess. The change means Massie’s privileged impeachment resolution will not receive consideration until lawmakers return after Election Day.
Massie introduced eight articles of impeachment Tuesday accusing Hegseth of continuing military operations in Iran without congressional authorization and of other alleged abuses involving U.S. actions in Venezuela and Yemen. The allegations have not been adjudicated, and the Pentagon has defended Hegseth.
Because Massie designated the resolution as privileged, House rules require leadership to address it within a limited number of legislative days. With the chamber now leaving town, that procedural clock effectively pauses until members return.
Massie had predicted Republican leaders might cancel votes to avoid dealing with the resolution before the election. Johnson rejected that explanation Wednesday, calling the impeachment effort a “publicity stunt” and saying the schedule change was intended to let members return home and campaign.
The dispute comes amid growing congressional friction over the Iran war. On Tuesday, the House voted 220-204 for a third time to direct an end to unauthorized U.S. hostilities with Iran, with seven Republicans joining Democrats.
The impeachment resolution remains pending and can be taken up when the House reconvenes after the midterms.
Los Angeles, California — Three people were killed Tuesday evening when a news helicopter used by NBC4 Los Angeles and Telemundo 52 crashed in the Chatsworth neighborhood while covering a separate deadly collision involving an SUV and a Metro bus.
NBC4 identified the two people aboard the helicopter as aerial journalist Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw, both employees of Angel City Air. A third person was killed on the ground. The Los Angeles Fire Department said the helicopter went down shortly before 7 p.m. near Mason Avenue, igniting a fire that damaged four vehicles and two storage containers.
The crash happened while several news helicopters were covering an earlier collision between an SUV and a city bus in the same area. That crash killed at least two people and sent six others to hospitals, according to the fire department.
Video from the helicopter’s final live transmission captured an alarm sounding as the aircraft rapidly lost altitude. Aviation experts cautioned that the footage alone cannot establish the cause. The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are investigating.
Moreno had worked in aerial news coverage since 2010 and regularly reported for both NBC4 and Telemundo 52. Marciniw was a longtime Southern California pilot who had flown with Moreno since 2023.
NBC4 anchors announced the deaths during an emotional live broadcast Tuesday night as colleagues continued reporting from both crash scenes.
Rescue workers say search for dozens of people hampered by lack of heavy machinery
A building housing about 100 displaced Palestinian families has collapsed in Gaza City, killing at least 21 people in their sleep, including 11 children, forcing rescuers to dig through the rubble with their bare hands as they search for dozens of people believed to be trapped.
A rescue team from Gaza’s civil defence said they had recovered the bodies of five children among the victims, while 25 injured people were taken to hospital. Medical sources said rescuers could hear the voices of people trapped beneath the rubble as they tried to reach them.
An AI model directly generated quantum circuits, making accurate large-scale optimization faster and more affordable with constant runtime as problems grow
TORONTO and COLLEGE PARK, Md., Sept. 16, 2026 — IonQ today detailed joint research with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), NVIDIA, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UT) showing that a trained generative model can write quantum optimization circuits directly, eliminating the trial-and-error parameter-tuning loop that has made the most accurate approach too costly to run. The paper is being presented this week at IEEE Quantum Week in Toronto.
Hybrid quantum optimization breaks a large problem into smaller pieces, solves each one, and recombines the results. Each piece needs a tailored quantum circuit, which traditionally required trial- and-error parameter tuning: run, measure, adjust, and repeat, often hundreds of times. Larger pieces can improve answers, but they also raise tuning costs, limiting the size of problems researchers could solve.
“Better answers in hybrid quantum optimization have traditionally come with a steep tuning tax. In this benchmark, generative AI replaced the iterative tuning loop, and as the quantum subproblems grew the solution quality improved,” said Dr. Martin Roetteler, IonQ’s Vice President of Quantum Applications R&D and a co-author of the paper. “Take that cost away and you can work at the size where the answer is meaningful. The result provides a potential path toward scaling hybrid quantum optimization, unlocking completely new capabilities and scales that align with IonQ’s existing and future quantum computing hardware generations.”
To teach the generative model how to tune circuit instructions, the team first showed it what strong results looked like. They ran the conventional trial-and-error method across many sampled problems, kept only the near-optimal circuits, and used those examples to train a transformer, the same class of model behind large language models but trained on circuits instead of text.
The trained model generates candidate quantum circuits directly, without the repetitive parameter-tuning loop used by conventional methods. In the reported experiments, the model sampled ten candidate circuits for each subproblem; all ten were simulated and scored, and the best-scoring candidate was used to update the global solution.
On a dense, higher-order benchmark problem with 100 decision variables, model-generated answer quality roughly doubled as subproblems grew. Under the prior state-of-the-art method, circuit-finding time rose sharply from about 34 seconds on 4 qubits to more than 11 minutes on 12 qubits. The generative approach held nearly 28 seconds for every size previously tested. Both approaches are quantum methods; the study compares circuit-generation approaches, not quantum against classical solvers.
ORNL led the study. Co-authors span ORNL’s National Center for Computational Sciences and its Materials Science and Technology Division, IonQ, NVIDIA, and UT. Abhinav Rijal, a graduate researcher in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UT is a co-author of the study.
“This work brings generative AI, quantum computing, and high-performance computing together to tackle large-scale, complex optimization problems. AI can become a new computational layer for quantum circuit synthesis, enabling the automatic design and optimization of quantum circuits for increasingly complex problems. We are now extending the framework to real-world scientific and engineering applications and scaling it across larger HPC systems to address problems of even greater scale and complexity,” said Dr. In-Saeng Suh and Dr. Seongmin Kim, National Center for Computational Sciences, ORNL.
“Drawing on accelerated computing and AI to make breakthroughs in quantum algorithms is one of the most promising ways to reach useful quantum applications as quickly as possible,” said Sam Stanwyck, Director, Quantum Product at NVIDIA. “By enabling developers to build quantum algorithms architected around AI from the outset, tools like CUDA-Q are laying the foundation for the next generation of advances in quantum computing and its useful application.”
The paper describes its results as benchmark-scale validation.
Every circuit in the study was simulated rather than executed on quantum hardware, using the NVIDIA cuQuantum SDK through the NVIDIA CUDA-Q open platform for quantum-GPU supercomputing on a single NVIDIA H200 GPU in the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Defiant2 system. That environment is what makes the comparison meaningful: both the trial-and-error method and the generative one ran on identical GPU-accelerated infrastructure, providing a controlled comparison of the two end-to-end workflows. The measured difference principally reflects the distributed quantum approximate optimization algorithm (DQAOA)-GPT’s replacement of iterative variational parameter optimization with generative circuit synthesis and a fixed number of candidate evaluations.
The paper is available at arXiv:2607.20225. It is one of nine IonQ papers accepted at IEEE Quantum Week 2026, held Sept. 13–18 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and the winner of a best paper award.
About IonQ
IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) is the world’s leading quantum platform and foundry – delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the Superion, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems. Earlier systems have helped customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, AstraZeneca, and NVIDIA achieve a 20x performance increase over previous quantum solutions and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense.
David Streever was issued a ‘warning notice’ after sending an email critical of ICE to the agency’s director in January
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may no longer issue a “warning notice” – threatening prosecution against a US citizen – for criticizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal judge in Washington DC ruled on Tuesday.
Judge Rudolph Contreras sided with David Streever, a New York man who accused DHS officials of violating his first amendment rights when they showed up first at his home in June with a “warning notice”, claiming he made a threat against former ICE director Todd Lyons, and then to a hotel where Streever and his young daughter were staying.
"As far as our family was concerned, she was pretty much perfect," former President Obama wrote about Sunny, who was a 13-year-old Portuguese water dog.
Rachida Dati accused of lobbying for carmaker Renault-Nissan when she was member of European parliament
Rachida Dati, a former French culture minister, has gone on trial in Paris on corruption charges linked to dealings with the Renault-Nissan carmaking group.
Dati, 60, is accused of illegal lobbying when she accepted €900,000 (£770,000) in lawyer’s fees from a Netherlands-based subsidiary of Renault-Nissan while she was a member of the European parliament. The court will have to decide what the money was for.
Even as the ‘extremist’ AfD seeks further election gains in Germany, Europe’s leaders can learn from Sweden’s dangerous embrace with far-right ideology
Europe’s focus turned nervously to Sweden on Sunday, after an explosive election in Germany just a week earlier placed a far-right party, officially classed as “extremist”, on the brink of power in a German state for the first time since the Nazi era. A party with neo-Nazi roots has been pulling the government’s strings in Sweden for the last four years. Would the country’s general election put the far right formally in government? Or would enough Swedes opt for a gear change, having seen the Sweden Democrats’ hardline (some would say poisonous) agenda in action?
Votes were still being counted on Wednesday but it was immediately clear that the far-right Sweden Democrats had suffered a setback; their first loss of support among voters since entering parliament for the first time 16 years ago. The party slipped from being the country’s second biggest party to its third.
A standard Flock Safety camera has a solar panel that powers the small license plate reader camera. Most can be found on major highways like this one on Kings Highway in Lewes. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY NICK STONESIFER
Cuts hit all 50 states and DC, with environment, health, nutrition and disaster relief making up the largest share
The Trump administration has cut or frozen up to $177bn in federal grants since the president took office for his second term, according to a tracking tool released on Wednesday by a pro-democracy non-profit and a group of researchers and scientists.
The cuts affected all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with health, nutrition, the environment and disaster relief making up the largest share of cuts, the States United Democracy Center and Grant Witness organization found.
Victims hail 41-0 vote in favor of holding billionaire in contempt over refusal to comply with panel’s subpoenas
More than a dozen survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse praised the House oversight committee for unanimously voting to recommend that billionaire investor Leon Black be held in contempt for refusing to comply with subpoenas by the panel seeking his testimony and nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) as part of its investigation into Epstein.
“We commend Chairman Comer for showing real resolve in pursuing accountability in the Epstein investigation,” the survivors said in a statement. They said that the 41-0 vote sends a “clear message that wealth and influence do not put anyone beyond the reach of congressional oversight”.
Kardashian received the compensation she requested, lawyers said, after eight people were found guilty last year for their role in the robbery
A Paris court has awarded €1 to Kim Kardashian for having been the victim of an armed robbery in the French capital in 2016, the amount of compensation she had asked for, according to a lawyer involved in the case.
The court last year found eight people guilty for their roles in what Kardashian described as “the most terrifying experience of my life”. She and the stylist Simone Harouche, who was present during the robbery, expressed gratitude to the French justice system in a joint statement.
PM rejects claim he leads a ‘tax-and-spend’ government, as Bank of England prepares for interest rates decision
Andy Burnham has said “difficult decisions” will need to be taken in next month’s budget after a rise in energy prices triggered by the Iran war drove UK inflation above 3%.
In a fresh blow for living standards amid the worsening damage to the global economy from the Middle East conflict, official figures showed soaring fuel prices pushed inflation from 2.9% in July to 3.1% in August.
A large, international study led by City of Hope found that the new, investigational liquid biopsy, called PANXEON, was highly sensitive in detecting stage 1 and 2 pancreatic cancer and had a low rate of false positives. (City of Hope…
Thaçi held criminally responsible for war crimes during the violent break from Serbia in the 1990s
Von der Leyen says “kickstarting Europe’s economy is our number one priority,” as Europe needs to tap into its huge market, world class industries and services.
She says its single market remains too fragmented and needs to reform further, with the aim of completing it by the end of next year.
“Do we want to rally around our European idea that together we can decide our own destiny? Or do we let our democracies be undermined by the proxies and puppets of authoritarians?
Whether it is the ultra nationalist or the anti-European, whether it’s Russian interference or disinformation, the names may be different, but their goal is the same.
String of female murder victims found near Johannesburg’s international airport, including five in the past week
The discovery of the bodies of eight women around Johannesburg’s international airport, including five in the past week, has prompted an outpouring of fear, grief and anger over a lack of progress in tackling femicide.
When Elizabeth “Tsontso” Moselakgomo did not return after going for a run on 9 September, her eight-year-old daughter alerted relatives, who contacted police. The 38-year-old’s body was found on Saturday and identified by relatives on Monday. The news of her disappearance had gone viral.
Safety crisis makes it more likely that governments will be spurred into action, says Yoshua Bengio
Concerns over AI safety are reaching a point where governments realise they must act to protect the public, similarly to in the Covid pandemic, according to one of the “godfathers” of the technology.
Good morning everyone, I am new to the sport and wanted to know where the VRH V2 by Land Surf may be available or any other options that work the same way to lower the height of a Onewheel GT? I appreciate any help.
Iran-backed militants have offered Trump administration assurances over safety of Red Sea shipping
Officials from the US met Houthi leaders over the weekend at the country’s embassy in Muscat, Oman, it has been confirmed, leading to the US decision not to intervene to help Saudi Arabia drive back a Houthi advance inside Yemen.
The Iran-backed militant group reassured the US that the ceasefire agreement between the two sides struck in 2025 still held and the movement had no intention of attacking US shipping in the Red Sea. Only Saudi-linked shipping was regarded as a target owing to its blockade of Yemen, the Houthis confirmed.
One race came down to seven votes. Six sitting lawmakers lost their seats. Here’s what actually happened.
DOVER, Del. —Four voters. That’s all it would have taken to flip the closest race in Delaware’s 2026 primary. Morgan Hudson beat Matt Bucher by seven votes, 1,017 to 1,010, for the Republican nomination in State House District 33, an open Kent County seat. That’s a tighter margin than New Castle County Council District 4, which was decided by 28 votes.
The bigger surprise is what happened to incumbents. Twenty-one Delaware incumbents drew a primary challenger this cycle. Six of them lost.
Five of those six losses have something in common: the challenger in each race was backed by the Delaware Working Families Party, a political group that describes itself as working to build power for the working class in Delaware by electing candidates and pushing progressive policy.
Five different districts, five different incumbents, the same group backing the winner each time, all in one night.
The Working Families Party endorsed 13 candidates this cycle. Eight won. Five of those winners beat a sitting incumbent, the five races listed above. Two more winners ran in open seats: Rachel Krantz in House District 6 and Kira Alejandro in New Castle County Council District 3. The eighth winner, Rep. Sherae’a Moore in House District 8, was already the incumbent, defending a seat she already held.
One more incumbent lost that night, and it had nothing to do with the Working Families Party. It was the New Castle County Recorder of Deeds, the office that keeps the county’s property records. That loss shows the anti-incumbent mood wasn’t limited to one group’s list of targets.
Most primaries weren’t close. But the ones that were came down to a small number of voters deciding who represents tens of thousands of people for the next two years. Turnout was low this cycle, which is part of why. The full breakdown, race by race, is in the table below.
Delaware’s primary election was Sept. 15, 2026. Results below are unofficial until certified.
2026 Delaware primary: unofficial results at a glance
Turnout
Voters who cast a ballot
128,598 of 593,286 (21.7%)
Democratic primary votes cast
391,116
Republican primary votes cast
87,033
Closest races
Top 3 closest races
• Morgan Hudson beat Matt Bucher, 7 votes, House District 33
• Jason Hoover beat Helena Creamer, 28 votes, NCC Council District 4
• Sen. Dan Cruce beat Adriana Bohm, 146 votes, Senate District 1
Races decided by fewer than 5 points
6 of 33 contested races
Races decided by 50-plus points
5 of 33 contested races
Incumbents who lost (6 of 21 who ran)
Beaten by a WFP-endorsed challenger (5)
• Sen. Ray Seigfried
• Rep. Stephanie Bolden
• Rep. Josue Ortega
• Rep. Franklin Cooke Jr.
• Rep. William Carson Jr.
Lost, not a WFP race (1)
• Recorder of Deeds Michael Kozikowski Sr., beaten by David Tackett
No November race: already won (8 races, one party only)
State Senate & House
• Jack Walsh, Senate District 9
• Michelle H. Booker, House District 2
• Dave Redlawsk, House District 23
• Tyeisha “Tye” Grier, House District 28
• Kerri Evelyn Harris, House District 32
New Castle County
• Jason Hoover, Council District 4
• Valerie George, Council District 5
• David Tackett, Recorder of Deeds
(Correction [Sept. 16, 2026]: An earlier version of this article and table said 20 incumbents faced a primary this cycle. The correct total is 21. The affected figure have been updated. Also, updated table and added New Castle County’s three candidates to “no Nov. race.”)
Hey, I tore my Achilles back in May, so my Pint S ended up sitting until just last week. My dumbass didn’t realize how much the batteries drain when they sit for that long, and now I’ve apparently got a completely bricked Pint S with only about 800 miles on it. Pretty irritated with myself and the whole situation. Is there anything I can do to get the battery back or am I looking at a replacement?
National Education Union welcomes news that schools will not have to partly fund increase from their own budgets
The UK’s biggest education union is claiming a significant victory after the government bowed to pressure and agreed to fully fund a forthcoming pay increase for teachers in England in a sudden U-turn.
Members of the National Education Union (NEU) were due to vote in a ballot for strike action next month over the government’s recent pay offer which provided for a 3.5% increase from this month, with an additional 3% from next September.
This article is the sixth in a series of stories about Delaware Caregivers. Special thanks to Delaware Hospice, Easter Seal of Delaware, and Maryland’s Eastern Shor,e and Lynn Paxson of Oasis Senior Care.
With two-thirds of U.S. caregivers struggling to manage both employment and home duties, experts say planning, boundaries, and support can prevent burnout. (updated 9/1/26)
For thousands of Delawareans, caring for an aging or ill loved one is among the most meaningful roles they will ever take on — and also one of the most demanding. The constant pull of work obligations, family responsibilities, and the daily needs of someone who depends on you can feel like a relentless juggling act.
According to a recent AARP and S&P Global survey, 67% of family caregivers say they are struggling to manage both work and care, often feeling stretched thin and unsure how to stay ahead of it all. Many caregivers routinely experience stress, guilt, frustration, sadness, and emotional exhaustion, becoming overwhelmed by the daily decisions and responsibilities that caregiving requires.
This article — the sixth in a continuing series on the caregiver’s experience — explores practical strategies for balancing competing pressures while protecting your own well-being. Insights from national research and guidance from Delaware Hospice, Oasis Senior Care (a leading consultant for families), and Easterseals Delaware & Maryland’s Eastern Shore underscore a central message: you don’t have to do this alone, and thriving — not just surviving — is possible.
At Home: Building a Support System That Works
Caregiving is rarely meant to be a one-person job, even though many caregivers feel forced into that role. Experts recommend stepping back and making a clear-eyed assessment of what your loved one truly needs — and what tasks might be shared.
Seek Support and Share the Load
Delaware Hospice encourages caregivers to begin by listing daily and weekly care needs and identifying which tasks can realistically be delegated. That may mean asking a sibling to handle financial paperwork, a neighbor to assist with transportation, or hiring part-time in-home support.
When family members live far away or cannot provide hands-on care, asking them to share in financial support — such as covering a few hours of respite care — can significantly reduce stress.
When others offer help, be specific. Instead of a general response, try: “Can you come over Tuesday at noon to help with lunch?”
Clear requests make it easier for others to step in meaningfully.
Prepare for the Unexpected
Health changes, sudden hospital trips, and equipment malfunctions are part of the caregiving reality. Preparing in advance reduces panic when emergencies arise.
Experts recommend:
Keeping medical, legal, and financial documents up to date
Creating a list of trusted helpers for home maintenance or repairs
Maintaining a folder with medications, emergency contacts, and care instructions
When the unexpected happens, preparation allows for calmer decisions and greater peace of mind.
Protect Your Own Health
Caregivers often put themselves last — yet burnout is one of the greatest risks. Even small, scheduled breaks can help reset both body and mind.
Think of self-care as a daily practice, not a luxury:
A 20-minute walk
Quiet reading before bed
Stretching or light exercise
Time with a pet or favorite hobby
Take time to truly enjoy that cup of coffee or tea — not while multitasking, but simply being present.
Crystal Baynard, of Easter Seals also recommends scheduling time for yourself — daily, weekly, or monthly. “As a caregiver myself and someone who works for the Easterseals Community Outreach Program, my personal thoughts on caregiving support what you already have written. Most caregivers fully devote themselves to the role of supporting and providing for their loved one. Having connections of their own by socializing with friends or family, finding the right support group, and not ignoring signs stress or burnout are critical to the journey,” insists Baynard.
Caregivers are also encouraged to resist the urge to be “perfect.” No one can maintain an immaculate home, a full-time career, a perfectly stocked pantry, and be a caregiver — all at once. It is neither realistic nor necessary.
Equally important: do not compare your situation to others. Every caregiving journey is unique. Guilt over what hasn’t been accomplished only adds unnecessary weight.
At Work: Communicating Clearly and Knowing Your Rights
Balancing employment alongside caregiving is a major source of stress, but open communication and workplace flexibility can make a meaningful difference.
Talk With Your Employer
Experts say transparency can prevent misunderstandings about performance, attendance, or availability. Many workplaces offer options such as:
Flexible or adjusted hours
Remote or hybrid schedules
Extended lunch breaks for caregiving tasks
Employee Assistance Programs
A conversation with an HR representative may reveal benefits or accommodations you didn’t realize were available.
Inform and Lean on Colleagues
Letting coworkers know about your caregiving role can remove stigma and reduce misperceptions about commitment. It may also open the door to informal support — many colleagues are navigating caregiving responsibilities themselves.
Know Your Legal Protections
If your workplace has 50 or more employees, you may qualify for unpaid, job-protected leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Additionally, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects caregivers from discrimination, including being passed over for promotions because of family responsibilities.
Understanding these protections allows caregivers to manage their responsibilities without fear of risking their job or career progress.
Managing Stress: Tools and Techniques for Long-Term Balance
Caregiving stress is not only emotional — it affects physical health, decision-making, and relationships. Chronic stress can lead to serious health issues. Recognizing warning signs and lowering stress early can improve overall well-being.
Time Management and Organization
Digital tools and simple routines can bring structure to chaotic days:
Use shared calendars such as Google Calendar or Outlook
Try caregiving apps like CareZone for medication tracking and reminders
Group similar tasks together to conserve mental energy
Breaking large responsibilities into smaller, achievable steps helps reduce overwhelm.
Mindfulness and Mental Health
Practices such as deep breathing, meditation, journaling, or creative hobbies provide valuable emotional release. Professional counseling and caregiver support groups — both virtual and in person — offer coping strategies and reassurance that you are not alone.
Caregiver support groups, in particular, help reduce isolation by connecting people facing similar challenges. Many caregivers say others don’t fully understand their experience unless they, too, are caregivers. Local groups meet both in person and online to maximize access.
Stay Connected
Isolation is one of the hidden challenges of caregiving. Maintaining social connections — even brief ones — combats loneliness and restores perspective.
Acknowledge Your Limits
Fatigue, irritability, sadness, or withdrawal are common signs of burnout. Delaying help only worsens these conditions. Caregivers who recognize their limits and reach out early are better equipped to sustain care over the long term.
The Takeaway: You Can’t Pour from an Empty Cup
Lynn Paxson of Oasis Senior Advisors of Delaware reminds caregivers that balancing work, family, and caregiving is not about perfection. It’s about creating routines, setting boundaries, asking for help, and recognizing that caregiving will never be one-size-fits-all.
Caregivers who plan ahead, seek support, and prioritize their own health are better able to provide compassionate, consistent care for those they love.
This series will continue to explore issues facing caregivers, including financial planning, navigating difficult emotions, using respite services, and preparing for later stages of care.
If you are a caregiver, remember: you are doing one of the hardest — and most important — jobs there is. And you don’t have to do it alone. And if you know a caregiver, reach out — and help them understand that support is available.
If you’d like, I can also:
Tighten this for print space
Create a sidebar with local Delaware resources
Develop Part 7 of the series
Produce a newsletter or social-media version
Editor’s Notes: Help Is Available in Delaware
Caring for a loved one can feel overwhelming — but you don’t have to navigate it alone. These resources and reminders can help caregivers find support, reduce stress, and protect their own well-being.
Local & Trusted Support Resources
Delaware Hospice Provides hospice care, palliative care, caregiver education, and grief support. Offers counseling and guidance for families navigating serious illness. Family & Caregiver Support for Hospice Services in DelawarePhone: 302‑478‑5707
Easterseals Delaware & Maryland’s Eastern Shore Supports caregivers through respite services, adult day programs, and counseling. Helps families balance caregiving with work and personal responsibilities. Support for Caregivers | Easterseals Delaware & Maryland’s Eastern Shore Phone (New Castle): 302‑221‑207 Phone (Milford Wellness Village): 302‑253‑1129
Oasis Senior Advisors (also known as Oasis Senior Care) is a free senior living placement service that helps families in Delaware and beyond navigate options such as assisted living, memory care, and respite programs. Led locally by advisors such as Lynn Paxson in Hockessin, Oasis provides personalized guidance, community tours, and resource referrals to ease the stress of caregiving and transitions. Senior Living options in Delaware | Oasis Senior Advisors
Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday that social media apps were “depriving children of their childhood” and big tech platforms needed to prove the safety of their products.
The Republican says the event was a town hall he never committed to and was never on his schedule. He also faulted the moderator, saying you can't hold a "two-on-one event in a TV studio."
San Antonio, Texas — The family of Tierra Walker, a 37-year-old Texas woman who died while 20 weeks pregnant, has filed a lawsuit alleging that the state’s abortion restrictions and decisions by her medical providers prevented her from receiving an abortion that could have saved her life.
Walker died in December 2024 after developing preeclampsia, a dangerous pregnancy-related blood-pressure disorder. Her family says she repeatedly asked doctors to end the pregnancy as her health deteriorated, including after experiencing seizures, dangerously high blood pressure and a blood clot. An autopsy listed hypertensive cardiovascular disease and preeclampsia as causes of death.
The lawsuit names Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Texas Medical Board Executive Director Stephen Brint Carlton, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the Bexar County Hospital District, several physicians and Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales. It alleges “deliberate indifference, discrimination, and medical mistreatment” and challenges the constitutionality of Texas’ abortion ban. Those claims have not yet been adjudicated.
Texas law bans most abortions but contains an exception when, in a physician’s judgment, a pregnancy creates a life-threatening condition or serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function. The central dispute in Walker’s case is whether her condition qualified under that exception and whether doctors were deterred from acting by the legal risks surrounding abortion care.
More than a dozen OB-GYNs who previously reviewed Walker’s medical records for ProPublica said termination should have been discussed as her risks increased, and several said ending the pregnancy would have prevented her death. Her family’s lawsuit now seeks to turn those medical questions into a legal test of how Texas’ abortion restrictions operate in life-threatening pregnancies.
University Health said it could not discuss individual patients or pending litigation but stated that it provides medically appropriate care while complying with applicable laws. Paxton’s office had not publicly responded to the lawsuit as of Wednesday morning.
Hey all — I've got a Parsec Aero Pro in low-mileage condition that I'd love to trade toward a Onewheel XR Classic. It comes with all the original parts plus an extra set of Dad Bods wheels. Deck and hardware are in nearly pristine condition with very minor scuffs on bottom, and I'm happy to send photos or answer any questions. I am looking for a Onewheel XR Classic with healthy battery, and known mileage, in very good condition — Recurve or standard rails both fine. I know the values may not line up evenly, so I'm open to adding cash on my end to make it work. I'm in Rhode Island and would prefer to meet in person if possible. I already have a Pint S, and not really interested in the GT model. Thanks!
Hugs for Our Heroes is a story about how remembrance can grow. What began with three grandsons honoring their grandfather has become an effort to recognize many of Delaware’s military veterans.
By John Riddle
A simple family tradition inspired by love and remembrance has grown into a philanthropic mission dedicated to honoring Delaware veterans.
Hugs for Our Heroes was founded by brothers Lucas, Jonas and Blake Karpinski in tribute to their grandfather, a Korean War veteran. Each Christmas, the family places a wreath on his grave, a meaningful gesture that keeps his memory and military service alive.
The brothers now want to extend that same recognition to other veterans throughout Delaware.
“Our commitment is to continue this wreath-laying tradition for Delaware veterans to honor their military service,” the organization explains on its website.
That commitment is at the heart of Hugs for Our Heroes, which focuses on community engagement, service and the creation of meaningful experiences that bring people together. Although its inspiration began with one veteran and one family, its mission reflects a much larger belief: Every person who served deserves to be remembered and appreciated.
For the Karpinski brothers, supporting veterans is also a way to strengthen the community. The organization emphasizes the importance of connection, collaboration and compassion, particularly when creating opportunities to recognize those who served in the military.
“We believe that strong communities are built through connection, collaboration and care,” the Hugs for Our Heroes website states.
Those qualities can be especially important when it comes to veterans. Military service often requires long separations from family, personal sacrifices and a willingness to face difficult and dangerous circumstances. While national observances such as Veterans Day and Memorial Day provide opportunities for widespread recognition, local programs can help ensure that veterans are remembered throughout the year.
Community-based efforts also allow residents to participate personally. Placing a wreath, attending an event, volunteering or making a donation may seem like a small gesture, but each action sends a message that military service has not been forgotten.
Hugs for Our Heroes seeks to create engaging experiences through thoughtful planning and what it describes as a people-first approach. Its activities are designed to unite participants while keeping veterans and their contributions at the center of the organization’s work.
The organization’s website currently promotes a golf-related event and invites supporters who cannot participate on the course to contribute through donations. The event offers another way for community members to gather around the group’s mission while helping its veteran-support initiatives.
Local businesses are also helping Hugs for Our Heroes expand its reach. Birdie’s Links and Drinks, located at 320 Auto Park Drive, is listed as a gold sponsor. The Middletown-area entertainment and dining venue offers food, drinks and indoor golf in a casual setting.
Business sponsorships can play an important role in community organizations by helping cover program and event expenses, attracting new supporters and introducing the mission to a wider audience. They also demonstrate that honoring veterans is a shared responsibility that can involve families, nonprofit groups, residents and businesses.
At its core, Hugs for Our Heroes is a story about how remembrance can grow. What began with three grandsons honoring their grandfather has become an effort to recognize many of Delaware’s military veterans.
The Christmas wreath placed on one Korean War veteran’s grave represents more than a seasonal family custom. It symbolizes gratitude, continuity and the promise that service will be remembered.
Through Hugs for Our Heroes, Lucas, Jonas and Blake Karpinski are carrying their grandfather’s legacy forward, one veteran, one wreath and one caring community at a time.
Additional information about the organization, its events and ways to help is available at HugsForOurHeroes.com.
Exclusive: Exhibition focussing on Finnish writer and artist’s illustrations will include original art from her first Moomins book
The Moomin books about lovable trolls with hippopotamus snouts who live in harmony with nature are a global publishing phenomenon, having sold up to 30m copies since the Finnish artist and writer Tove Jansson wrote and illustrated them between 1945 and 1977.
Now previously unseen drawings of her eccentric characters will be among more than 100 exhibits in a major exhibition that is being staged in London 25 years after her death.
The AI Energy Management Alliance brings together the full AI and power value chain to accelerate the interconnection of flexible, grid-enhancing data centers, strengthen reliability and protect affordability.
Sept. 16, 2026 — AI factories are the infrastructure of the intelligence era. Scaling them responsibly will depend as much on innovation across the grid as inside the data center.
Today, Emerald AI, Google and NVIDIA announced the launch of the AI Energy Management Alliance (AEMA), a first-of-its-kind coalition advancing data centers that can dynamically manage their electricity use in response to grid conditions.
Credit: Robert Way/Shutterstock
This power flexibility can help unlock faster, larger connections for AI infrastructure while supporting the energy systems and communities that make its growth possible. Getting more watts out of existing infrastructure reduces environmental impacts per watt and supports energy affordability.
The objective is clear: build AI infrastructure that doesn’t just connect to the grid but works with it.
Flexibility Is an Energy Imperative
Power has become a defining constraint on the expansion of U.S. AI infrastructure.
Traditional interconnection processes were designed around facilities with flat, static electricity demand. They weren’t built for computing infrastructure capable of responding intelligently when the power system is constrained.
A flexible data center can adjust its electricity drawn from the grid in several ways — shifting computing workloads, discharging storage, using paired generation or responding to system contingencies. These capabilities allow a large electricity customer to serve as a controllable resource rather than an inflexible load.
Used effectively, flexibility can make more efficient use of existing grid capacity, reduce demand during periods of system stress, and avoid or defer costly infrastructure upgrades. It can also give utilities and grid operators greater confidence to connect AI facilities on shorter timelines.
AEMA is technology-neutral and performance-based. Its focus is on the measurable service a facility can deliver — including response speed, duration, predictability and behavior during an emergency — rather than the specific hardware or software used.
Reliability remains paramount. The alliance’s principles call for:
Defining ride-through, curtailment and contingency-response obligations before a facility connects — meaning the alliance is setting clear rules for facilities regarding staying connected during brief grid disturbances, reducing power use when needed and responding to emergencies.
Standardizing technical requirements, performance metrics and operational data sharing.
Creating faster, risk-adjusted pathways for customers that make credible and verifiable flexibility commitments.
Allocating interconnection costs in a way that reflects actual system impacts and benefits, such as avoided upgrades and improved ramping capability.
These measures can reduce uncertainty for developers while giving system operators the information and control needed to preserve reliability.
Convening the Full AI and Power Value Chain
AEMA convenes the full value chain across computing and power — including AI platforms, infrastructure providers, data center operators, technology companies, power producers, utilities and regional grid operators.
The founding members will be joined by launch partners from across the ecosystem. Together, AEMA will develop technical and operational approaches, collaborate with utilities on interconnection solutions and advocate for policies that recognize grid-responsive demand.
Accelerating US AI Infrastructure
AI factories transform energy and data into intelligence. Power-flexible design gives them the potential to support the grid as they do it.
NVIDIA and Emerald AI are already working with energy and infrastructure leaders on AI factories that can respond to grid conditions in real time. AEMA will broaden that work by bringing the technology, energy and policy communities together around models that can be deployed across the U.S.
The rules governing power for AI are being written now. By creating a common framework for performance, reliability and collaboration, AEMA aims to help the U.S. build the infrastructure of intelligence at the speed and sustainability the moment demands.
Learn more about AEMA and membership opportunities here.
Doorbell firm aims to replace WhatsApp or Facebook groups with platform where people can post about safety or lost pets
Amazon’s doorbell camera maker Ring is to launch its Neighbours community app in the UK in an attempt to supplant neighbourhood WhatsApp or Facebook groups.
The service is intended as a modern equivalent of a community message board, where neighbours can post about safety, community matters or lost pets.
The first console I ever bought, it was hyped as a threat to the PlayStation, then mocked as a flop. But now, as it marks its 25th anniversary, it’s looked back on with misty-eyed reverence
This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Nintendo GameCube, the first console I ever bought with my own money. I vividly remember getting on the bus after school with a year’s worth of savings safely zipped into the pocket of my bag and going to a branch of Currys, where I dumped a bunch of notes, coins and vouchers on the counter to collect my pre-order. (It turned out that some of the vouchers from the previous Christmas had expired, but the guy at the checkout clearly felt so sorry for me that he redeemed them anyway. If you’re out there, Currys guy: thank you for taking pity on a desperate 13-year-old.)
If it hadn’t been for the ill-fated Wii U console, whose failure to take off in 2012 resulted in the first unprofitable periods in Nintendo’s game-making history, the GameCube would be remembered as the company’s biggest flop aside from the infamous Virtual Boy, from 1995. Released in Japan this week in 2001 (and in May 2002 in Europe), this surprisingly powerful purple cube sold much less than the Xbox and the PlayStation 2. With its squat, colourful form and unusual controller, arranged around a big traffic-light-green A button and small analogue sticks designed for small hands, it had a hint of Fisher-Price about it.
Any such undertaking would always have been fraught with potential traps. For the city’s first democratic socialist mayor, changes to criminal policy would have made Mamdani a prime target for conservative backlash. It’s a well-worn playbook: He would be blamed for any level of crime in the city. The mayor and his allies, even among them advocates hoping he’d go further to curb police abuse, understood the threat well.
Still, Mamdani had little trouble during his bombshell campaign convincing leftists that his sweeping vision for a socialist-governed metropolis included criminal policy reforms that would satiate them.
He promised to eliminate some of the most notorious of the New York Police Department’s institutions — a widely criticized gang database and infamous Strategic Response Group, which responds to protests and whose officers have histories of higher complaint rates. Mamdani outlined an ambitious vision to divert police away from responding to mental health crises, proposing an Office of Community Safety.
New data on how much the New York City is spending to pay for police misconduct, however, has heightened concerns among advocates that paltry rate of changes to policing under Mamdani could lead to even higher payouts in coming years. The first six months of the Mamdani administration saw $53 million in police misconduct settlements, according to an analysis of NYPD data by the public defense group Legal Aid Society.
If the figures continue to grow at that rate under Mamdani, it will make 2026 the fourth year in a row that police misconduct settlements top $100 million.
“We’re going to see these numbers continue to balloon absent a new course from the administration.”
The payouts under Mamdani so far cover conduct that took place under his predecessor Eric Adams’s administration, but criminal policy experts worry that, without major changes to policing, the new mayor will put the city on the hook for similar payouts in the future. That’s especially true if he maintains an approach to policing that they say is not all that different from the policies he campaigned against.
“What is concerning is that if we don’t see the kind of shift in tactics away from the kind of NYPD activity that has been driving these misconduct complaints and settlements, we’re going to see these numbers continue to balloon absent a new course from the administration,” said Michael Sisitzky, assistant policy director at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
More Broken Windows
The settlements represent the kinds of abuses of aggressive enforcement of “quality of life” policing and the deployment of specialized units like the Strategic Response Group that characterized the Adams administration, Sisitzky added.
“Those have yet to really be reined in under the Mamdani administration,” he said. “So, while he can’t be held directly responsible for all of the numbers reflected in this first tranche of data in terms of settlements payouts, we’re going to continue to see large volumes of complaints being filed, of settlements being reached, unless we see a change in tactics and a shift away from the kind of policing policies that drove these settlements in the first place.”
Even as Mamdani made campaign promises on policing, he went out of his way not to bash the NYPD or offer too much specificity about addressing the department’s biggest issues. During the election, that didn’t worry too many of his supporters. There was too much at stake for purity tests. Let him win first, many criminal justice advocates thought — and then they’d see what he could do.
The steps Mamdani has taken on criminal policy seem tailored to avoiding political pitfalls.
While, as mayor, Mamdani takes his biggest swings at the city’s billionaire class, the steps he has taken on criminal policy seem tailored to avoiding political pitfalls.
Along the way, he has notched small victories. He made progress on police body cameras and cutting down on low-level cycling offenses. Pushing to close the jails on Rikers Island, he has opened alternatives to jails and shut down a vacant one. Though he ended his pause on sweeps of encampments for the unhoused, he ordered that they be led by homeless service workers. And he installed the first permanent chair of the NYPD’s oversight body in six years.
Nine months into Mamdani’s first year in office, however, the NYPD itself has changed little.
Mamdani’s office declined to comment but provided background information on what it said were his criminal policy accomplishments, including a budget increase for a police oversight board.
“Deference to Tisch”
One of the things reform advocates were mostly able to set aside during Mamdani’s campaign was his pledge to keep on Adams’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch.
The daughter of a prominent New York family of billionaires, Tisch was first appointed by Adams. With crime rates falling and her tenure at the NYPD winning plaudits from the likes of Donald Trump to the American Enterprise Institute, Mamdani pledged during his campaign to keep her on.
Widely viewed as a political play, the move alarmed many reformers, who voiced criticisms but held out hope that Mamdani’s proposals would at least start a long project of changing policing from the bottom up, despite Tisch’s perch at the top.
“There’s been a lot of backtracking on promises without any kind of affirmative vision for what policing could look like.”
With Tisch helming Mamdani’s NYPD, however, reformers’ fears have been borne out. The department has continued to pursue what Tisch describes as “quality of life” crimes — just the kinds of crime Mamdani campaigned on diverting police away from — and what reform advocates like Sisitzky say is a continuation of the failed “broken windows” policing fads of 1980s and ’90s. The strategy’s inherent focus on the most visible issues like panhandling, public urination, and sleeping on the subway effectively criminalizes poverty while letting violent crime and its root causes go largely untouched.
“The main critique is: There’s been a lot of backtracking on promises without any kind of affirmative vision for what policing could look like in his administration,” said Amanda Jack, director of policy for criminal law reform at the Legal Aid Society. “It has all been deference to Tisch.”
The NYPD’s focus on those “quality of life” offenses also looks little different from its approach under Adams. Data from the NYPD’s first quarter under Mamdani “was a continuation of broken windows policing, and, in some cases, an expansion,” Sisitzky said.
During his four years in office, Adams oversaw a surge in enforcement of low-level offenses. Mamdani’s first quarter in office saw more criminal summonses in that category than the first quarter of 2025 under Adams, temporarily driven by increased enforcement against people being in a park unauthorized or biking on the sidewalk. Toward the end of Mamdani’s first quarter, he announced that the NYPD would stop issuing criminal summonses for minor traffic offenses for cyclists.
Arrests for other offenses like subway fare evasion are on a similar track: During the first quarter of the year, Mamdani’s NYPD arrested 3,188 people for not paying the subway fare, down from 3,696 such arrests during the same period of Adams’s last year in office. Many of the subway arrests, Sisitzky said, focused on people without housing.
“This is an administration that promised, at least during the campaign, that they were going to be taking a fairer, more equitable, more justice-oriented approach to policing,” Sisitzky said. “And we haven’t seen that translate into a meaningful shift away from the ‘broken windows’ approach that has long subjected New Yorkers to racially biased policing.”
Deportation Pipeline
While making New York a sanctuary for immigrants is a centerpiece of Mamdani’s agenda, continuing the kinds of enforcement practices that disproportionately bring immigrants into contact with police make them more vulnerable to Trump’s mass deportation machine, said Yasmine Farhang, executive director of the Immigrant Defense Project.
“Increased NYPD policing necessarily increases the risk of ICE policing for non-citizens,” Farhang told The Intercept. When an immigrant has an encounter with a police officer for any reason, “their risk of getting later funneled into detentions, deportations, increases regardless of the outcome.”
Even if no one is charged with a crime, if they are fingerprinted by police, those fingerprints are sent through a state criminal system shared with the FBI, which is shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “That pipeline of fingerprint sharing from the point of NYPD to ICE happens right now just by default.”
Mamdani supports policies that protect immigrants, and his former colleagues in Albany are pushing state-level sanctuary laws, but those efforts mean little if they aren’t paired with changes that reduce encounters with police.
“The risk is increased,” Farhang said, “of ICE identifying and targeting someone, whether or not a local agency is actively colluding with them or not.”
Gangs and Goons
Among the biggest disappointments for criminal justice advocates who support Mamdani are his abandonment of promises to deal with some of the city’s most heavy-handed policing.
During the campaign, Mamdani said he would get rid of the NYPD gang database and its Strategic Response Group, as well as standing against the sweeps of homeless encampments. Instead of following through, Mamdani implemented gang database reforms, left the Strategic Response Group in place, and walked back his pledge to end the encampment sweeps.
When asked Monday about his administration footing the bill for a new lawsuit over the Strategic Response Group’s conduct, Mamdani said the allegations were “incredibly troubling.” He restated his commitment to “decoupling” the response to terrorism, which is in SRG’s remit, from the response to the First Amendment-protected protesting.
Without substantive shifts on how police operate, criminal justice advocates said, the city will continue to pay out big settlements.
“There’s just a cycle of impunity that is ever-present in the NYPD,” said Divad Durant, a member of the Justice Committee, an organization that fights police violence in New York City. “And the lack of discipline is what keeps this cycle going.”
Political Miscalculation?
Critics of Mamdani’s approach to policing aren’t necessarily trying to position themselves against him, said Jeremy Saunders, co-executive director of VOCAL-NY, which works on issues like mass incarceration and homelessness. They just want him to do what he campaigned on.
“We have heard from numerous people inside of City Hall an acknowledgment that, ‘Yes, we understand this frustration,’” he said. “And that’s really all they can explain.”
Saunders said it was possible that Mamdani calculated that Tisch’s relationship to the Trump administration would help create a “buffer” from the president’s wrath.
“Also,” Saunders added, “there’s this very real concern about crime going up or any backlash that could happen to the mayor around seeming like he’s allowing crime.”
The response from advocates at groups like VOCAL-NY, Saunders said, is that the very political trap he’s trying to avoid is set up by the mistakes that Mamdani is repeating: criminalizing poverty and homelessness.
“There is nothing he can do that will stop the New York Post and high-ranking people inside the NYPD from undermining the mayor’s agenda.”
“The mayor has to accept — and he knows — that the NYPD has the New York Post on speed dial,” Saunders said. “There is nothing he can do that will stop the New York Post and high-ranking people inside the NYPD from undermining the mayor’s agenda.”
Saunders pointed to Mamdani’s decision to stand behind a rent freeze despite pushback from the landlord class.
“We would urge the mayor and his inner circle to take that same approach,” he said. “Listen, for us to actually solve a problem, we have to invest in and politically support real solutions to ending these problems, even if that will lead to some blowback.”
“The best thing for him to do,” Saunders said, “is exactly what he campaigned on: Show New Yorkers, ‘I’m going to make this city work. I’m going to make it livable for all of us, and I’m going to prove it. I’m going to show you.’”
Commission president says EU must ‘urgently reimagine our partnerships’ as she makes unprecedented offer
Canada has been invited to become the first “associate member” of the EU by the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.
In an unprecedented offer, von der Leyen said on Wednesday that the EU and Canada “see the world with the same eyes” through shared democratic values and common approaches to many big issues, from AI to climate breakdown, the Ukraine war and geopolitics.
John Hanson, 84, took advantage of fine amnesty at library to return copy that could’ve amounted to $12,055 in late fees
A current affairs magazine that was checked out from a New Hampshire library at the end of the 19th century has finally been returned as a piece of history – more than 130 years overdue.
Staff at Concord Public Library were surprised when an 84-year-old man walked into the branch earlier this month with what NBC News said was “a relatively well-cared-for edition” of The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine from September 1894.
Passionate documentary maker won international acclaim for unsparing but poetic films exploring the impact of the Pinochet regime in Chile
Patricio Guzmán, the film-maker who chronicled Chile’s bloody 1970s political strife and its subsequent social and political turmoil in films such as The Battle of Chile and Nostalgia for the Light, has died aged 85. According to Chilean news outlet Emol, Guzmán died on Tuesday in Paris after a cardiorespiratory arrest.
Guzmán’s chief preoccupation throughout his career was the carnage unleashed by Augusto Pinochet’s coup in 1973 against Salvador Allende, Chile’s elected president. He later told the Guardian: “I’m a film-maker who was very marked by the ways of the dictator. It has remained with me for ever. I cannot leave it behind.” However, he resisted the idea that he was an activist, political film-maker, adding: “I’m not a sociologist. Neither am I a politician. I make films that are metaphorical and poetic; I interpret reality through my own personal way of looking.”
PARIS, Sept. 16, 2026 — TotalEnergies and Mistral have announced a 3-year joint program representing an investment of more than €100 million aimed at developing a new generation of frontier AI models to support TotalEnergies’ geosciences experts in the exploration, characterization and development of oil and gas reservoirs.
Driving Innovation by Combining AI, Geoscience Expertise and Subsurface Data
This partnership will draw on the latest advances in artificial intelligence, particularly agentic AI, to combine next to 10 petaflops of data with nearly a century of knowledge, know-how and expertise accumulated by TotalEnergies in geosciences and reservoir engineering. The objective is to develop new frontier models, able to integrate, process and interpret large volumes of data in order to generate multiple scenarios for the development of exploration opportunities, as well as for optimizing and extending the life of existing projects.
TotalEnergies and Mistral will establish a joint scientific laboratory combining the subsurface know-how and expertise of TotalEnergies’ subsurface teams with the scientific and technological capabilities of Mistral, a European AI champion, to develop solutions tailored to the specific needs of the Company’s businesses.
Leveraging the Expertise and Digital Infrastructure of a European Champion
Through this partnership with Mistral, TotalEnergies is strengthening its AI solutions ecosystem to create proprietary models within a European digital ecosystem. This enables TotalEnergies to leverage its strategic subsurface data and Mistral to further develop as a European AI champion.
“Exploration and reservoir engineering are among the areas where artificial intelligence can create the greatest value for our activities,” said Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of TotalEnergies. “By combining a century of geoscience data, the expertise of our teams and Mistral’s capabilities, we aim to develop a new generation of tools capable of supporting our experts in analyzing the most complex data and in their decision-making. This partnership also illustrates our commitment to contributing to the development of a high-performing European digital ecosystem, supporting our competitiveness.”
“We are delighted to take our collaboration with TotalEnergies to the next level,” said Arthur Mensch, Co-founder and CEO of Mistral. “This project demonstrates the ability of our models to support complex industrial processes and adapt to the most demanding scientific and energy challenges. It also highlights the strength of Europe’s industrial ecosystem and the importance for large enterprises of adopting state-of-the-art, customizable AI solutions that protect and respect their intellectual property.”
About TotalEnergies
TotalEnergies is a global integrated energy company that produces and markets energies: oil and biofuels, natural gas, biogas and low-carbon hydrogen, renewables and electricity. Our more than 100,000 employees are committed to provide as many people as possible with energy that is more reliable, more affordable and more sustainable. Active in about 120 countries, TotalEnergies places sustainability at the heart of its strategy, its projects and its operations.
Funding for Anderon to help scale and expand access to quantum wafer technology
ALBANY, N.Y., September 16, 2026 – Today, Anderon LLC, an IBM company, announced the finalization of a $1 billion award under the CHIPS and Science Act with the U.S. Department of Commerce (the “Department”). The award will accelerate Anderon’s R&D efforts to advance the nation’s quantum wafer manufacturing capabilities.
Anderon was announced in May under a letter of intent between the U.S. Department of Commerce and IBM.
Announced in May under a letter of intent between the Department and IBM, Anderon operates a state-of-the-art 300-millimeter pure-play quantum wafer foundry, backed by an additional $1 billion investment from IBM. Headquartered in Albany, New York, the new venture serves the quantum industry as a pure-play foundry, offering quantum wafer manufacturing to customers across the ecosystem.
“This agreement with the Department of Commerce strengthens our ability to deliver the manufacturing scale the quantum industry needs,” said Mukesh Khare, CEO, Anderon. “We’re building a foundation that will let quantum move from research breakthroughs to real-world impact.”
“IBM’s quantum roadmap requires a manufacturing foundation that can scale at the pace our work demands,” said Jay Gambetta, Director, IBM Research & IBM Fellow. “Anderon’s focus on wafer fabrication gives us exactly that and strengthens our ability to execute and accelerate progress toward the next era of quantum computing.”
Anderon offers specialized wafers supporting high-performance superconducting qubit arrays, quantum input/output signaling, and readout signal chain components, foundational capabilities that support a range of quantum architectures. It plans to expand to other quantum modalities in the future.
The company has already achieved a significant operational milestone, with the first quantum wafers now running through its manufacturing facility. This early production activity demonstrates the company’s ability to quickly translate advanced pre-production research into commercial-grade quantum wafer technologies.
Quantum computing has the potential to drive breakthroughs across industries, from advanced materials and chemistry to optimization and cybersecurity. As the technology matures toward large-scale commercial applications, scalable manufacturing will be critical to realizing its full potential. Anderon will provide an advanced manufacturing foundation which is needed to produce quantum wafers at production scale to accelerate innovation, strengthen domestic supply chains, and support the continued growth of a robust quantum ecosystem.
Anderon is the world’s most advanced pure-play quantum foundry, built to accelerate the future of the quantum industry. Customers gain access to a production-scale 300mm fab purpose-built for quantum processors. Anderon’s best-in-class wafer fabrication is enabled by proven quantum IP, a highly skilled workforce, and billions in prior site investment. Visit anderon.com for more information.
About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.
Firefox 156 is the second release since Mozilla moved to a twice-monthly release schedule, and the blog OMG Ubuntu notes it has faster start-up times for its built-in PDF viewer and also lower CPU usage when viewing large JPEG images:
In Firefox 156, the browser now uses libjpeg-turbo's IDCT scaling to reduce images during decoding, rather than loading a full-size image into memory and then shrinking it. Benchmarks from the bug report show up to 20x less memory used during very large image loading, and decoding is up to twice as fast. Since these speeds were quite fast already, there's no perceptible difference to users. Behind the scenes, it's more efficient.
Firefox's built-in PDF viewer starts up to 45% faster in this release. The browser now loads the background PDF.js worker sooner, rather than launching it only when needed.
Sponsored suggestions in the address bar are live for users in France, Germany and Italy (Ouais!, Juhu!, etc). These are already available in some other locales. Don't want them? Disable them via Settings > Search > Firefox Suggest > Suggestions from Sponsors.
Besides that, the rest of this release is primarily bug fixes — worthwhile and welcome as always.
And in about two weeks Firefox 157 will be released, reports PC World. "That update should add support for JPEG XL (JXL), a modern image format that offers the same quality as JPEG at a significantly smaller size. Although JPEG XL was launched in 2021, Safari is the only browser to support it yet. For a short period, Chrome also supported it, but that ended in 2022."
Also, a recent Firefox blog post emphasized that it supports whatever level of AI engagement "is right for you... Because the only person telling you how much AI you need should be you."
Opting out of upcoming and current AI features on your browser should not require endless navigation through multiple Settings pages. That's why Firefox offers an AI controls section within its General Settings panel. A single, easily located place where you can block current and future AI features and related pop-ups with the swipe of a toggle...
For the many people who sit in the middle of the AI usage spectrum, we made sure you can opt in and out of specific features in line with your preferences. Capabilities like AI translations, image alt text in Firefox PDF viewer, tab group suggestions, and key points in link previews can all be individually switched on and off, ensuring you can enjoy such offerings on a case by case basis as it suits your needs...
Smart Window is Firefox's most integrated AI experience, but that doesn't mean it compromises our commitment to choice, privacy, and transparency. Our newest window type, which we've been polishing and testing in beta, uses only the context you share with it to help you move work forward and across the finish line. When permitted by you, its built-in, AI-powered assistant can work directly with your open tabs and browsing history to connect the dots. This means comparing information, generating recommendations, summarizing pages, and planning projects without having to feed every crumb of context from your previous and current browsing activity each time you enter a new prompt.
And if you want to block Google's AI Overviews, there's over 100 extensions to choose from.
CAMPBELL, Calif., Sept. 16, 2026 — Arteris, Inc., a leading provider of semiconductor technology for accelerating innovation in the AI era, has announced an expansion of its multi-die portfolio that helps semiconductor companies transition from monolithic system-on-chip (SoC) designs to chiplet-based architectures for AI, HPC and consumer electronics applications, without having to reinvent how data moves through the system.
Semiconductor companies are increasingly adopting multi-die architectures to address the demands of AI computing. They are now building systems that extend beyond the practical size limits of a single die, optimizing individual chiplets for different process technologies and dividing a system across multiple dies. This introduces a new challenge: communication that previously occurred within one SoC must now cross physical chip boundaries, while maintaining performance, efficiency, and predictable traffic behavior.
Arteris addresses this challenge by extending network-on-chip (NoC) connectivity and data movement transparently across die-to-die links, allowing multiple dies to operate as a unified architecture. The new FlexGen Multi-Die product expands this approach for non-coherent AI and high-performance computing architectures and complements Ncore Multi-Die for cache-coherent systems.
Together with Arteris Magillem integration automation and Cycuity hardware security assurance, the expanded portfolio provides semiconductor engineering teams with technologies spanning data movement, system integration, and security for increasingly complex multi-die designs.
“Multi-die architectures represent one of the most important changes in semiconductor design since the introduction of the SoC itself,” said K. Charles Janac, president and CEO of Arteris. “As systems expand beyond the boundaries of a single piece of silicon, the challenge is no longer simply connecting chiplets; it is preserving the intelligence of the architecture across them. Our goal is to help engineering teams gain the benefits of multi-die architectures without having to reinvent the system every time they divide it across another piece of silicon.”
Extending NoC Interconnect Technology Across Chip Boundaries
In a monolithic SoC, NoC technology serves as the fabric that enables processors, memory subsystems, accelerators and other functions to communicate and share data. Moving to a multi-die architecture creates physical boundaries between those functions, potentially requiring engineering teams to define and manage additional interfaces between chiplets.
Arteris extends NoC connectivity transparently across those boundaries, without reinventing the system. The new FlexGen Multi-Die NoC IP supports bidirectional transactions over a single UCIe PHY, reducing PHY area, power and I/O requirements by up to 50%. This approach allows engineering teams to preserve important NoC capabilities across die-to-die links, rather than treating each chiplet boundary as a separate system integration problem.
FlexGen Multi-Die is designed for non-coherent AI and HPC architectures and supports virtual channel link technology to improve utilization of limited chiplet I/O resources and advanced quality-of-service (QoS) mechanisms that maintain throughput for high-priority traffic across shared die-to-die links. These capabilities help engineering teams use available bandwidth efficiently, while scaling designs across multiple dies.
The broader Arteris multi-die portfolio includes:
FlexGen Multi-Die for non-coherent AI and HPC architectures, extending efficient data movement and QoS capabilities across die boundaries.
Ncore Multi-Die for cache-coherent compute architectures, enabling coherent connectivity and efficient data sharing across multiple dies.
Magillem integration automation, which helps automate IP packaging, chiplet and multi-die integration, and hardware/software integration to reduce engineering effort and development complexity.
Cycuity hardware security assurance, which helps engineering teams identify vulnerabilities earlier in development and verify security requirements across increasingly complex multi-die systems.
Together, these capabilities give semiconductor companies a more evolutionary path from monolithic SoCs to multi-die architectures, while helping engineering teams improve design reuse, reduce integration complexity and bring differentiated products to market faster.
From Monolithic Designs to Multi-Die Products
Arteris customers are already using the company’s technology as they transition existing architectures from single-die implementations to multi-die products.
“As Agentic AI workloads continue to expand across cloud infrastructure, edge and endpoint devices, multi-die architectures are becoming increasingly important for balancing performance, scalability, and development efficiency,” said Jason Miller, senior director, Silicon Design at AMD. “Solutions that simplify system integration, while preserving bandwidth and performance across chiplets, help engineering teams accelerate innovation and bring differentiated products to market faster. Arteris’ continued expansion of its multi-die portfolio supports the flexibility and productivity required for our next generation of data center, client, gaming, and embedded compute products.”
“The future of advanced semiconductor design is inherently multi-die” said Daisuke Murakami, executive chief engineer, Global Leading Group at Socionext. “By collaborating with Arteris on its UCIe-based multi-die solution, we gain early access to technologies that simplify chiplet integration while enabling the scalability, bandwidth and efficiency needed for next-generation AI, automotive and data-center SoCs.”
Building Toward a Broader Chiplet Ecosystem
As multi-die adoption expands, interoperability among NoC technologies, die-to-die interfaces, chiplet IP, design tools and advanced packaging technologies will become increasingly important. Arteris is working with semiconductor IP and ecosystem partners to help reduce integration risk and establish more reusable foundations for multi-die design.
“Physical AI systems require right-sized inference and scalable architectures that seamlessly integrate diverse compute technologies while meeting stringent power, performance, safety, security, and reliability requirements,” said David Glasco, vice president of R&D, Silicon Solutions Group at Cadence. “By combining the comprehensive Cadence Physical AI platform, IP, and security solutions with Arteris’ NoC IP, our collaboration enables accelerated silicon realization and trusted system deployment from cloud to edge. This reusable foundation helps customers scale physical AI systems more efficiently, reduce development risk, and speed time to market. Together, Cadence and Arteris provide a seamless path from specification to silicon to deployment, accelerating innovation across the physical AI ecosystem.”
“An open chiplet ecosystem requires architectural frameworks that simplify the integration of specialized dies into scalable, manufacturable systems,” said Suresh Subramaniam Ph.D., CTO, systems and advanced packaging at Silitronics. “We plan to leverage Arteris FlexGen technology in our development of an OCP-derived chiplet architecture, combining intelligent die-to-die connectivity with Silitronics’ system-level design, advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration capabilities to help customers bring differentiated multi-die solutions to market faster.”
“As multi-die designs become increasingly central to AI and high-performance computing innovation, interoperability across the chiplet ecosystem is critical to reducing design complexity and accelerating adoption,” said Neeraj Paliwal, senior vice president of product management at Synopsys. “The successful validation of interoperability between Synopsys’ silicon-proven UCIe IP, delivering high-bandwidth, low-latency die-to-die connectivity, and Arteris Ncore Cache Coherent NoC IP for multi-die designs helps customers confidently integrate chiplets, reduce integration risk, and enable silicon success.”
“UCIe provides an open, high-performance foundation for integrating chiplets across different functions and process technologies,” said Mao Liu, vice president at UniVista. “By working with Arteris to validate interoperability between UniVista UCIe IP and Arteris Ncore Multi-Die, we aim to provide customers with a more integrated path to scalable, cache-coherent multi-die designs for AI, high-performance computing and other compute-intensive applications.”
A Practical Path to the Chiplet Future
AI compute systems of the future require the transparent data movement solutions that Arteris is bringing to the industry, to speed the development and delivery of advanced heterogeneous systems. The new FlexGen Multi-Die product transparently extends non-coherent connectivity across die boundaries, enabling engineering teams to address different connectivity requirements across future multi-die SoC implementations.
The expanded Arteris multi-die solution is available today to early access partners and strategic customers. Learn more at arteris.com/multi-die.
About Arteris
Arteris (Nasdaq: AIP) is a leading provider of semiconductor technology that accelerates the creation of high-performance, power-efficient silicon with built-in safety, reliability, and security. Innovative Arteris products are designed to optimize data movement and help ease complexity in the modern AI era with network-on-chip (NoC) interconnect intellectual property (IP), system-on-chip (SoC) software for integration automation and hardware security assurance. All are used by the world’s top technology companies to improve overall performance and engineering productivity, reduce risk, lower costs, and bring cutting-edge designs to market faster. Learn more at arteris.com.
Good morning. Saudi Arabia’s air defenses intercepted and destroyed a Houthi drone south of Mecca yesterday before it entered prohibited airspace over the holy city. A spokesperson for the kingdom, which is fighting the Iran-aligned group in Yemen, said the security of Islam’s two holiest sites and of pilgrims was a “red line”. Mecca, home to shrines sacred to Muslims worldwide, is Islam’s holiest city and the focal point of the annual hajj pilgrimage.
Meanwhile, in Washington, the US House of Representatives has voted for a third time to end the war in Iran, approving a war powers resolution a few hours after a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report showed the conflict had cost at least $38bn and left the US stockpile of defensive missiles so depleted it could take five years to rebuild.
Why is Pete Hegseth being targeted by lawmakers? Republican congressman Thomas Massie has proposed impeaching Pete Hegseth, saying the defense secretary had repeatedly violated the constitution through his handling of war with Iran and the deaths of civilians in conflicts worldwide.
How is the Trump administration reversing decisions over arming Israel? Congress has been informally notified about a pending deal, with the US planning to deliver powerful 2,000lb bombs to Israel. The weapons prompted such concerns about the possibility of mass casualties in Gaza that the Biden administration paused their delivery two years ago.
How has Ed Sheeran responded? In a lengthy Instagram post, the British singer said: “I have always used my platform and music to bring people from all backgrounds and cultures together … I am not complicit. I have my personal views on this devastating conflict. Just because I choose not to speak publicly, it doesn’t mean I don’t have them, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t care. Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter’s decision, it was not mine.”
INNSBRUCK, Austria, Sept. 16, 2026 — ParityQC has launched the Parity Twine Optimizer, making its compiler technology available as a product. Built on the ParityQCArchitecture, it delivers uniquely efficient compilation and is now available via the IBM Qiskit Function, including a free trial upon request, giving developers and enterprises an easy way to put a clear technological head toward solving complex optimization problems.
The Parity Twine Optimizer makes efficient compilation a reality: ParityQC’s Parity Twine Compilation has shown in published results that it delivers a significant reduction of gate count and depth in quantum optimization. It supports running larger and denser problems on real hardware today. It reduces the two-qubit gate overhead of compiling industry-relevant optimization problems, making larger and denser instances to be executed on today’s quantum hardware. The advantage is rooted in the structure of the Parity encoding itself rather than case-by-case tuning, so it holds across problem types and stays consistent as problems grow larger and more connected.
The Parity Twine Optimizer is available now in the IBM Qiskit Functions Catalog, offered to IBM Quantum Network members through a 30-day free trial. It meets users where they already work: anyone in the IBM Quantum Network can bring record-efficient compilation into their own optimization problems and test it on IBM’s quantum hardware, without changing their setup or committing upfront. Its underlying compiler is hardware independent and available through ParityOS, ParityQC’s enabling software, and the technology will become accessible through further access routes in the future.
“By offering the Parity Twine Optimizer as an IBM Qiskit Function, we are providing the quantum community with access to a tool with what we currently show to be the most efficient quantum compiler available for larger and more connected problems to run on real hardware,” said Magdalena Hauser and Wolfgang Lechner, co-CEOs of ParityQC.
“Efficiency is paramount for useful results on today’s quantum computers,” said Scott Crowder, Vice President, IBM Quantum Adoption and Business Development. “With ParityQC’s Parity Twine Optimizer now available in the IBM Qiskit Functions Catalog, our clients in the IBM Quantum Network have a new, powerful tool capable of scaling alongside the complex optimization problems they’re exploring.”
Key features of the Parity Twine Compilation include:
Run larger problems on real hardware: Minimizes circuit depth and two-qubit gate overhead, so larger optimization problems run efficiently on today’s quantum processors.
Higher performance, lower compilation overhead: Built on the state-of-the-art Parity Twine compilation, it reduces gate count and circuit depth while preserving algorithm quality, for faster execution and lower error accumulation.
Adaptive and hardware independent: Supports arbitrary problem graph connectivity and adapts to your target hardware topology, including both heavy-hex (such as IBM Heron) and square-lattice (such as IBM Nighthawk) IBM Quantum QPUs, generating connectivity-aware circuits tuned to the problem graph density.
Efficient end-to-end optimization: Solves full optimization workflows seamlessly with minimal, predictable QPU usage as you scale.
About ParityQC
ParityQC, the quantum architecture company, has its focus on developing blueprints and enabling software for highly scalable quantum computers. The ParityQC Architecture solves fundamental limitations for scalability of quantum devices by a new paradigm which allows for fully programmable quantum chips with simplified design and control, as well as integrated error correction. ParityQC collaborates with hardware partners all over the world to jointly build highly scalable quantum computers for applications ranging from solving optimization problems on NISQ devices to general-purpose, error-corrected quantum computing.
PM responds to criticism from former Bank of England chief economist
Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, has posted this on social media ahead of Andy Burnham’s meeting with the Nato secretary general Mark Rutte later.
Today I am reminded of the words of my Labour predecessor Denis Healey:
“Once we cut defence expenditure to the extent where our security is imperilled, we have no houses, we have no hospitals, we have no schools. We have a heap of cinders.”
[Britain] is leading, along with Nato allies, the push back against Russia’s dangerous and reckless campaign against us.
Collectively we will continue to strengthen our ability to deter and defend all allies, against any threat. Nato will not be intimidated by Russia’s campaign of hostile actions. Russia wants to stop us helping Ukraine – but their actions will only lead us to do more for Ukraine. Russia’s actions are a sign of weakness, and a symptom of Putin’s failure in Ukraine.
To stay transatlantic, Nato is becoming more European. A Nato with Europe, and Canada, spending more, producing more, and doing more for their security. This is the idea of Nato 3.0.
Building for the future. A stronger Europe, in a stronger Nato.
Announcement of visa restrictions follows Trump’s false claims of ‘white genocide’ taking place in South Africa
The US has announced visa restrictions on some South Africans as Donald Trump’s administration continues to claim that South Africa’s government racially discriminates against white minority Afrikaners.
The announcement did not specify individuals who were barred from the US. Trump has spent his second term falsely claiming there is a “white genocide” in South Africa and railing against its affirmative action policies.
The U.S. has so far not attributed the potential breach to a specific actor, but Iranian state media amplified the story in the weeks following the attack.
A Georgia judge has put an execution on hold to allow time for a hearing on whether the sentence should be reduced under a new state law that lets victims of abuse have their sentences reconsidered.
Delivering a speech in Atlanta last month, Jon Ossoff accused Donald Trump of corruption, incompetence and fecklessness, and peppered his remarks with substantive observations of dates and times and places. But the comment that ricocheted across the internet – a clip of just a few seconds – was an almost-throwaway reference about how the US president wants to “travel with Natalie” onboard Air Force One.
The crowd cheered the US senator, who is running for re-election in battleground Georgia and is increasingly seen as a potential Democratic candidate for president in 2028. But his target audience that day – and this year – spanned far beyond the concert hall.
The Trump administration has announced that it will impose travel bans on officials it claims are responsible for discrimination against White people and other minority groups in South Africa.
Pete Alonso launched his 300th career home run Tuesday night, a tying shot in the ninth inning against his former team, and Coby Mayo’s inside-the-park homer in the 11th sent the Baltimore Orioles to a 7-5 victory at Citi Field.
“There’s a lot of history here with me,” Alonso said after receiving a beer shower from his Baltimore teammates. “It doesn’t matter where and when, I just want to help the team win. I’m just really, really happy for us to come back the way we did.”
Gun violence-prevention programs are another casualty of Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown
Last June, hundreds of federal agents descended on Los Angeles in the first major immigration enforcement operation of the second Trump administration. Immigrants were swept up at Home Depots and car washes, in front of food stands and at garment factories.
In some Latino and immigrant communities, residents were afraid to go to work; kids stayed home from school and petrified families had friends and neighbors make their grocery runs, too scared to go outside themselves.
There is no winning as a woman in this world, that is, if you are going to set your markers for success based on what culture, systems, patterns and others have planned for you.
From a very young age, I wrestled with this shitty bit of information. I hated that penises WENT INTO vaginas, (or so said the dusty book from 1950 my parents had on the reproductive system). Girls were supposed to be LADYLIKE, my mom said. Your tampon was supposed to SILENTLY ENTER THAT MYSTERIOUS CAVE THAT WE SHALL NOT SPEAK OF. Your bike was supposed TO BE RIDDEN as though no one knew you had your period. Smile, and accept your fate, pedalling away into the sunset of good behaviour.
Later on, I noticed that these ancient ideas of being a woman in the world faded into the earthy Lilith Fair-plume of hope and girl power. We were now building mysteries. With the riot grrrl movement, we were growling and tossing our tampons out into the audience. Yet, I couldn’t help but notice that as quickly as we stumbled upon the sisterhood, whether it was laced with floral wreaths or black eyeliner, the internet came along to amplify everything: the good, the bad and the (still) eternally impossible.
This week, we are up against what seems eternally impossible. We become angry about Sydney Sweeney naked in a sports betting ad, and what that ad does to girls and women in sport. Our keystroke fury, our fiery voices emptying into handheld mics with furry windscreens, and our tears for our daughters only give more attention to the social media algorithm around the ad itself, which means the men in power still win.
The impossible battle remains, or does it?
I’ve been thinking a lot about AI and voice. Voice is what I’m passionate about. I wrote a book about it, and I’ve used my singing voice to get through dark times: giving up alcohol, navigating a divorce, the breaking down of my family. I sang in my bedroom as a kid to get through my parents’ yearly divorce announcement, and it gave me hope that even though I was a kid growing up in the middle of nowhere, singing along with the radio and Aquanetting my hair through the madness, I might still be able to sashay into rooms with the greats of music. And sashay I did.
AI will eventually get voice right. It will sound full of emotion, just like your neighbour welcoming you to the block or your lover whispering into your ear. But what it won’t ever get right is replacing the feeling that happens when a human immerses themselves in the work. The journey that we go on when we create, when we meld breath with fear and love and courage and make sound, and the way that creativity unlocks our tears, our potential, our ability to completely change who we are.
That, my friends, is all about the human experience, the work, and something we can’t quite describe. It is not outcome-based, it is process-based. But over and over, we are tricked into being seduced by the outcome. We are rewarded for what can be seen. Because that’s what’s interesting to others: a concrete way to show or say what we did.
Haven’t you been there yourself? When you finally get the medal or the goal or the award or you’re on the stage, it’s surreal. What’s real is the work it took to get there, and only you know what that created within you. It is the stuff of pride, of building who you are, of connecting with yourself.
Photo by Resul Menteş
When I look back at the things I’m proud of in my life…singing with an astronaut in space, headlining Glastonbury with David Bowie, but also finding refuge in music by making an ambient album, or guiding others to find their voice, I realize that the process of these things contained so much magic. Writing all the songs that led me to places all over the world, taking the bus to Glastonbury, listening to what David had to say. Plotting and planning with Chris Hadfield behind the scenes — him in space, me on the ground — when no one knew what we were making. Creating landscapes with my voice to heal my cells and my broken heart. Seeing a change in someone when they stumble on their best voice, just the two of us in a room. None of what I’ve been proud of has anything to do with the markers of culture, systems, patterns and what others have had planned for me. In fact, those things have really just been distractions or weight. The pride has all been based on THE WORK, what actions feel good in my body and heart and what activities I think are fascinating and fun. The world we live in may not recognize this or celebrate it as social media-worthy, or it may not catapult me into fame, but I’m not sure that’s a good place to be anyway.
It’s too bad that despite these glaring reminders of how I can be centred, I’ve spent so many years livid, out-of-control and feeling victimized about being a woman in the world. I say, be livid. Be a change-maker. Use your voice. Know the ways in which we are being cheated. But do it with your eyes open. Never do it at the price of what makes you wildly unique: the work, your soul, your creative fire. No matter how others try to silence us, anger us, make us the butt of the joke, there will always be a way to lean into the work that creates your inner fire. And no one gets to feel how you feel when you walk that path.
Andy Burnham is expected to meet Donald Trump for the first time in person at the UN general assembly next week in New York.
Last month the Guardian reported British officials had stepped up their preparations for a face-to-face meeting between Burnham and Trump after the prime minister said he hoped to attend the assembly of world leaders.
Reach, which also owns Express, makes decision because of ‘mammoth shift’ in how audiences seek out content
The publisher of the Mirror and Express newspapers is to cut a further 220 editorial jobs as it adapts to a dramatic fall in online traffic while readers increasingly turn to summaries generated by artificial intelligence.
Reach, which also owns scores of online brands and regional titles including the Manchester Evening News, the Birmingham Mail and the Liverpool Echo, said the latest cuts were necessary to cope with a “mammoth shift” in how audiences seek out content.
Washington, D.C. — The White House is heavily promoting a new “Fraud Ledger” claiming the Trump administration has uncovered nearly $250 billion in federal fraud. However, a closer look at the numbers shows the total mixes together unproven suspicions, money sent to collections, future projected savings, and cases that actually began years before the current task force was created.
The distinction is crucial. As the Government Accountability Office (GAO) points out, suspected fraud isn’t proven fraud, and money referred for collection isn’t money recovered.
While the White House breaks its tracker into three categories, “fraud uncovered,” “fraud stopped,” and “fraud enforced”, it provides no detailed methodology showing how individual agencies validated their estimates or avoided counting overlapping cases.
Several key examples highlight how the ledger inflates its figures:
Old SBA Loan Flags: The ledger credits the administration with finding $22.2 billion in fraudulent pandemic loans. But the Small Business Administration (SBA) acknowledged those 562,000 loans were already flagged during the Biden administration; the current administration simply referred them for collection and investigation.
Pre-Existing Cases: The dashboard features four captured fugitives tied to $5.4 billion in intended losses, but three of those individuals were charged in 2019 or 2024—well before Trump took office for his second term.
Timeline Mismatches: Vice President JD Vance claimed the administration uncovered $250 billion in fraud since he became “fraud chief,” but the ledger counts data starting in January 2025—months before the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud was officially created in March 2026.
Federal fraud remains a major issue—the GAO estimates the government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually based on historical data. But unlike the GAO’s statistical reporting, the White House’s ledger lacks transparent documentation, presenting broad estimates as definitive enforcement wins that cannot be independently verified.
Global push will triple toxic e-waste annually in 25 years, filling enough shipping containers to circle globe six times
The ongoing campaign to build thousands of massive datacenters for AI will create a “tsunami” of discarded electronics, putting the world on a course to triple its annual generation of toxic e-waste in the next 25 years, a new report projects.
The electronic trash AI generates in the next 25 years could fill enough shipping containers to encircle the globe six times, it said. Yet, says the report by the non-profit environmental group Basel Action Network (BAN), there is no plan to deal with that waste – which typically contains toxics like lead, mercury, cadmium and forever chemicals, as well as valuable metals that are challenging to reclaim.
The 16-year-old Union star isn’t the first wunderkind to be feted by the American soccersphere
The trouble with trying not to hype up Cavan Sullivan is that he keeps on doing cool stuff. Like this past weekend, when he scampers along on a Philadelphia Union breakaway, loses his man by stopping so suddenly it’s as if he’s pulled a ripcord, back-heels the cutback behind his standing leg, watches it slowly kiss off the far post and in, and celebrated the goal by bowing and doffing an imaginary top hat to the crowd.
Like when he doubles the score by setting up an attack and finishing it himself with a left-footed lash through the goalkeeper’s legs form an acute angle. Like when he fashions yet another goal by holding up the play and then suddenly springs a teammate up the right flank.
A growing cohort of performers ‘clown’ as a means to innovate traditional protest and create social change
On a humid morning on 15 July, Tillie the Clown, a Brooklyn-based drag performer whose real name is Taylor Horne, was waiting to be let inside a New York City council meeting. Horne had started getting into character at 5am, for a makeup and clown-costuming process that would take two hours. It would be another 10 hours before Horne was allowed to address the city council about the passing of Romanch’s Law, which would phase out and ultimately ban New York’s horse carriage industry.
From the moment Horne walked into the meeting room, carriage horse proponents ridiculed them, pointing and laughing. Dressed in a black top hat and gloves with their face painted white and red, Horne began their three-minute speech: “We pride ourselves on being a world-class destination … yet we are clinging to the exploitation of horse-drawn carriages. A giant prey animal is not built to thrive in New York’s overstimulating concrete environment.” Horne later learned that those carriage horse supporters went on social media to poke fun at their display. “They fell right into my trap,” Horne said. “They decided to critique the messenger and not the message.”
The DOI placed QR codes in national parks, inviting visitors to report content deemed ‘negative about either past or living Americans’. Instead, it became a mode of resistance
Over the past year and a half, Donald Trump and his administration have launched a campaign to censor American history at US national parks and federal lands.
As part of Executive Order 14253, “Restoring truth and sanity to American history”, the Department of Interior (DOI) ordered park rangers to review all signs, brochures, books and films for content that “inappropriately disparages” Americans by suggesting that the United States was “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”. It’s resulted in dozens of sign removals across the US, most of them related to slavery, Indigenous history and the climate crisis.
In the latest episode of "Healthful," Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman discusses what she's learned about speaking up for herself and taking care of her body.
Tech CEOs banding together is an old ruse recycled from corporate America to get a pass from antitrust laws
Anthropic’s Dario Amodei is not the first corporate CEO to suggest that excessive competition is driving the world to some socially undesirable outcome.
The safety breach disclosed by OpenAI after a swarm of its agents coordinated to breach their supposedly secure sandbox, get on the Internet and hack AI platform Hugging Face, warrants urgent action. It demonstrated the ease with which the technology can evade human control and gave concrete form to the existential fears about what it could do to humanity if not securely leashed.
US vice-president’s comments come as former Anthropic researcher revisits recent claim AI could destroy humanity
The US vice-president has dismissed calls for global regulation of AI safety risks, telling companies creating the most advanced models: “If you’re building Frankenstein, stop.”
In remarks addressed towards Dario Amodei, the co-founder of Anthropic who has called on Washington DC to coordinate control of AI systems, including with China, JD Vance said: “If you’re gonna create Frankenstein, don’t come to the government and say we need regulation.”
Health officials in Gaza say a building damaged months ago by an Israeli strike has collapsed, killing people from 6 displaced families who had taken shelter inside.
Selling retatrutide commercially is prohibited by federal law. Yet, companies have promoted the drug on social media, thanks in part to being certified by LegitScript.
King George, Virginia — King George County Public Schools will once again allow middle school students to form noncurricular clubs, including a Gay-Straight Alliance, after settling a federal lawsuit brought by families who challenged the district’s earlier restrictions.
The ACLU of Virginia and Potomac Law Group sued on behalf of two students after King George Middle School denied them the opportunity to form a GSA while other noncurricular groups were operating. The lawsuit argued that the district’s policy violated the First Amendment and the federal Equal Access Act.
Under the settlement, the school board reversed its ban on noncurricular organizations at the middle-school level and adopted new rules allowing students to establish such clubs. Parents must provide written permission before a student can join or attend meetings.
The school division said the revised policy is intended to balance student access to organizations with parental involvement, transparency and school safety. King George County Schools also maintains broader nondiscrimination policies and says its schools are intended to provide equal access to designated youth groups.
The ACLU said the settlement ensures that all students can access extracurricular opportunities on equal terms. Attorneys for the families said they could return to court if the district rejects a future GSA application under the new policy.
The agreement ends the immediate dispute while leaving the district’s new club application and parental-consent requirements in place.
Ten seasons ago, Minnesota entered the playoffs with a chip on their shoulders and won a championship. Can they channel the same energy this year?
Williams Arena (now known as The Barn) in Minneapolis was packed to capacity on 4 October 2017, when Cheryl Reeve sent Sylvia Fowles into Game 5 of the WNBA finals and watched her take off. Reeve, chasing her fourth championship after losing out in 2016, had learned her lesson the previous year, when she put Fowles back into a finals game too late.
Fowles answered the call. She racked up 17 points and broke her own WNBA rebounds record with 20. Her effort was matched by that of Maya Moore, with 18 points and 10 rebounds; Lindsay Whalen, who had 17 points and eight assists; and Seimone Augustus, who added another 14 points, six assists and six rebounds. The Lynx showed out, clinching the franchise’s fourth title, with Fowles named finals MVP.
Trump and Republicans want companies to regulate themselves. It’s a dereliction of duty that will make AI less safe
It is hard to get Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Dario Amodei to agree on much. But over the weekend, all three AI company CEOs called for AI development to slow down in the face of growing, alarming risks. Their employees are sounding the siren too, with one researcher publicly quitting and accusing OpenAI and Anthropic of “gambling with our lives”.
The combination of dire warnings from insiders and growing real-world evidence of rogue AIs should, in a sane world, lead to government action. Instead, Donald Trump and the Republican leadership have their heads in the sand.
The president’s assistant travelled with him to Ireland – which really shouldn’t be much of a story. But his comms team seems determined to make it one
Passport, money, emotional support human: Donald Trump had all the travel essentials on his recent trip to Ireland. The president flew into Dublin on Saturday morning to play golf, meet the country’s leaders and make provocative comments about unification. Melania didn’t accompany her husband on the trip (“Uh, she sends her regards,” Trump said), but his devoted aide Natalie Harp was obviously at his side.
You’ll know Harp: the 35-year-old assistant was headline news last month after Democratic senator Jon Ossoff quipped that Trump didn’t want to do his job; he just wanted to “build his ballroom and travel with Natalie”. That comment would have been quickly forgotten were it not for the Trump administration’s unhinged response (sample: “Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics”), which sparked a media frenzy. There was suddenly a spotlight on Harp, who is nicknamed the “human printer” because she trails the president with a portable printer, ready to hand him hard copies of flattering coverage. She appears to be disturbingly obsessed with her boss and he seems to appreciate the attention: it was recently revealed that Trump gave her (and two other female aides) a cash gift of $45,000 (£33,000) for a nice holiday.
US grapples with federal firefighter shortage as crews say they’re spread thin and lack resources during unrelenting year of fire
Firefighters battling enormous wildfires in the United States say the federal government is failing them at a time when supercharged blazes have made their jobs exponentially more dangerous.
While the US continues to grapple with a critical shortage of federal firefighters – with especially large gaps in essential management positions – the Trump administration has increased pressure on firefighting forces to rapidly and aggressively contain the flames.
Archdiocese knew of allegations against Gerard Joseph ‘Jerry’ Howell for 40 years but continued to support him
A New Orleans Catholic priest whose prolific sexual abuse of children in the local deaf community was known for at least four decades by the city’s archdiocese without meaningful consequence has died after evidently falling in his Texas apartment.
Gerard Joseph “Jerry” Howell, 87, was found dead at about 5pm on 8 September by Austin police department officers who were responding to a welfare check on the block listed for the senior living community where he had been residing, the agency said in a statement. The statement – which didn’t name Howell but was provided when police were asked about his death specifically – said first responders had gone to the block to investigate a report that an 87-year-old individual had fallen.
Gov. Ron DeSantis says there is fat to cut, but many local officials say a sharp drop in tax revenue will hurt libraries, parks and emergency services.
Not only would the plan do vast economic damage – it assumes that Americans are easily bamboozled
Whenever Donald Trump gives a speech, it’s filled with so many lies and self-serving exaggerations that when he does utter something true, I see that as a sort of marvel. That’s what happened nearly an hour into Trump’s marathon speech last Wednesday at the Republican midterm convention, when he declared: “Only I can make this promise to you.” Trump said that just before he made a promise that was so shameless and irresponsible that what he said was indeed true: only Trump could make such a preposterous promise.
Feeling very generous with other people’s money, the president promised to give $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in November. It certainly looked and smelled like a bribe.
The Vibe Check: The Farmhouse Middletown Concept: Farm-sourced ingredients and twists on homestyle dishes Average entrée price: $27, ranging from $16 to $42 Kids’ Menu? Yes, offering $10 entrées Alcohol? Yes Live music? Yes Hours: Sun 10-11, M-T 11-11, F-Sat 11-12 Website:farmhousemiddletown.com
The atmosphere of The Farmhouse Middletown recalls a childhood memory for Executive Chef Brandon Fredericks — his grandmother “elbows deep in meatloaf,” meal-prepping for family dinners at the crack of dawn.
A Wednesday morning at The Farmhouse painted a similar picture. Chefs bustled around the kitchen. One of them, like Fredericks’ grandmother, was “elbows deep” in a ground beef mixture.
“(Customers always say), ‘My mom’s meatloaf’s better,’” Fredericks said. “Once we started putting (ours) out here, people said it was the best meatloaf they’ve ever had.”
The Farmhouse Middletown has prepared about 60 to 80 pounds of the stuff every week since opening in early August.
But that pales in comparison to the 10 gallons of batter the restaurant goes through daily to make its complimentary cornbread, which is full of corn kernels and served with butter and syrup in tiny Dutch ovens.
At The Farmhouse Middletown, a chef prepares meatloaf. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JAKE OWENS
Titan Hospitality Group Culinary Director Jason Kaufman shows off The Farmhouse Middletown’s complimentary cornbread. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JAKE OWENS
The Farmhouse Middletown Executive Chef Brandon Fredericks, left, and Titan Hospitality Group Culinary Director Jason Kaufman, right, prepare rotisserie chickens. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JAKE OWENS
The Farmhouse specializes in “universally appealing” comfort foods and has a strict philosophy: “If it’s not on a farm, it shouldn’t be on the menu.”
That’s according to Jason Kaufman, culinary director of The Farmhouse’s parent company, Titan Hospitality Group. The Maryland-based company manages restaurants across the mid-Atlantic region, including Blackwell Barn & Lodge in Wilmington.
The Middletown restaurant is the third with the Farmhouse name. The first opened in Gambrills, Md., in 2024, and an Italian spin-off, The Farmhouse Tuscan, opened in Alexandria, Va., last year.
What ties these restaurants together is their “farm to fork” concept, meaning they purchase produce, meat and seafood from farmers in the mid-Atlantic region as often as possible.
Elevated, homestyle dishes
There are some ingredients, like avocados, that are impossible to source from the mid-Atlantic region, but Kaufman has been surprised by what he’s been able to find locally.
The Farmhouse Middletown’s traditional meatloaf. | PHOTO COURTESY OF TITAN HOSPITALITY GROUP
For example, the beef on The Farmhouse’s smashed bison burger is sourced from BowTie Bison in Davidsonville, Md. The burger is topped with cheddar and Havarti cheese, bacon, chipotle crema and caramelized onions.
The question on Kaufman’s mind when he created the menu was, “How can we take homestyle dishes and elevate them?”
Other dishes that reflect that philosophy include the “Chesapeake Eggs,” deviled eggs topped with avocado, crab and Old Bay seasoning, and the “Bird + Berry” pizza, named for its pulled rotisserie chicken and blueberry barbecue sauce.
But there’s also a fair share of more modest dishes, like chicken and biscuits, pulled pork and BLT sandwiches and the ever-popular meatloaf.
Served with crispy onions, whipped potatoes and corn and lima bean succotash, the meatloaf has an earthy flavor that compliments the subtle sweetness of the sides. Getting a bit of everything on the fork for one hearty bite is the ideal way to enjoy this dish.
Farm to fork
There are seven Delaware farms that provide ingredients for The Farmhouse Middletown, such as Papen Farms and Broad Acres in Dover, Magee Farms in Selbyville and Mountaire Farms in Millsboro.
When looking at farms to partner with, Kaufman looks for those that are family-owned and steers away from conglomerates.
The Farmhouse Middletown’s Chesapeake Eggs. | PHOTO COURTESY OF TITAN HOSPITALITY GROUP
But farms also have to be able to handle the number of mouths Titan Hospitality Group has to feed. For example, while Mountaire Farms is local and family-owned, it’s also one of the largest chicken producers in the country.
“There’s a lot of smaller farmers that can’t get us 400 pounds of something. They can get us 5, 10 pounds, 20 pounds,” Kaufman said.
Because the ingredients are the pride of The Farmhouse Middletown, nothing goes to waste, from vegetable trimmings being reused in stocks to the meat from rotisserie chickens being utilized in as many dishes as possible.
“We’re not really a restaurant that’s built on, ‘This is the skins of a carrot or this is the extra piece of an onion that we’re just going to throw in the trash,’” Kaufman said. “Farmers want to know that their products are being used A to Z.”
The Farmhouse Middletown team will also grow some of their ingredients themselves. Kaufman plans to start a small garden on the patio in the spring, with metal troughs full of chives, rosemary, parsley and other crops that will go straight onto the customer’s plate. It’s a tradition he started at The Farmhouse Gambrills.
“It’s one less thing on a truck. It’s better for the environment. You see what we’re growing and what we’re doing. And then, it creates more of an atmosphere where everyone has a responsibility,” he said.
‘Meat and potatoes’
Titan Hospitality Group has high aspirations for its Farmhouse concept, with plans to add two more locations in Maryland in the future, according to Kaufman.
The company first expanded into Middletown after using market research to identify it as an “up-and-coming” area. Middletown has grown from about 6,000 people in 2000 to nearly 26,000 in 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau data.
“Fifteen years ago, it was all just open land. There wasn’t anything here,” Fredericks said. “Now, with all the shops and everything, there’s really nowhere to go to eat other than some chain restaurants.”
The interior of The Farmhouse Middletown. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JAKE OWENS
Horses adorn the wall behind the bar at The Farmhouse Middletown. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JAKE OWENS
The interior of The Farmhouse Middletown. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JAKE OWENS
The Farmhouse Middletown offers diners a classy yet casual vibe. The decor ranges from deer mounts to paintings of dogs in bowler hats. There are many seating options, including booths, a private room for large groups and a lounge with a fireplace that will be lit in the winter.
“People just want to come in and relax. That’s what we want,” Kaufman said. “We want families to bring their kids, and we want first dates to happen here.”
The all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch has been particularly popular for social gatherings.
“A lot of these tables, they’re sitting for hours and talking and eating food,” Fredericks said. “Our first brunch was 300 and some people. It was massive.”
Fredericks takes that turnout as evidence that Middletown residents have been hungry for The Farmhouse’s fresh ingredients and comforting meals.
“I definitely think this area is the blue-collar, hardworking people, the meat and potatoes,” he said. “So, they want food that’s filling. They want something that is more bang for their buck. If they’re going to spend money, especially in this economy now, they want something good. That hearkens back to the quality food, the quality farms, the quality service.”
The Farmhouse Middletown Executive Chef Brandon Fredericks, left, and Titan Hospitality Group Culinary Director Jason Kaufman, right. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JAKE OWENS
The European agenda and UK–EU relations: a French perspective on a changing world
24
September 2026 — 11:30 TO 12:30 BST
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
How France views the current state of European affairs and the next phase of cooperation between the EU and the UK under the new Burnham government.
How France views the next phase of cooperation between the EU and the UK under the new Burnham government
As part of the UK in the World Programme’s new UK–EU series, join France’s Minister for Europe, Benjamin Haddad to examine the EU agenda and the future of UK–EU relations. The discussion will explore how Europe can strengthen cooperation, security and competitiveness in a changing geopolitical environment.
This event will discuss:
What is France’s perspective on the European agenda?
How does the EU-UK relation fit into that agenda?
What opportunities exist to deepen UK–EU cooperation a decade after Brexit?
How does France view the future of the relationship between London and Brussels
What major political, economic and security challenges remain?
How can the UK and EU work more closely on European security and defence?
What role can France and the UK play in strengthening Europe’s competitiveness and influence?
What outcomes are realistic in the near term for UK–EU relations?
The Ladbrokes owner, Entain, has said it is preparing to cut 400 jobs, only weeks after the FTSE 100 business reported better than expected profit in its first half of the year.
The gambling group, which also owns Coral and BetMGM, has started a consultation process that could remove one in five of its 2,000 customer care jobs.
Prosecutors sought jail term for chief executive of Evett after insects not approved for consumption were on menu
A South Korean court has fined the operator of one of Seoul’s most celebrated restaurants and its chief executive for serving a dessert topped with ants, an insect not approved for consumption under local food safety law.
The operator of Evett, a two-Michelin-star restaurant in the affluent Gangnam district, was fined 10m won (£5,400) and its chief executive 15m won, Newsis reported.
Leaked documents and testimony reveal extent of regime’s crackdown in 2022 and how it paved the way for more brutal killings of protesters this year
Iranian security forces “coordinated” the killing, torture and sexual abuse of hundreds of people who took part in the women-led nationwide protests in September 2022, according to leaked state documents and interviews.
Tens of thousands of people, including children, took to the streets of towns and cities across Iran after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, after her arrest by the “morality” police for allegedly not complying with the country’s hijab regulations.
The stark reality is this: we don’t know how to maintain control of these systems. But there are actions we can take
With Jacob Coxon’s resignation from Anthropic, we have reached the AI risk tipping point. Millions of people are finally coming to understand what experts have known for years: AI companies have been gambling with all of our lives, and the odds are not good.
In response, the Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, has introduced a proposal for “pacing the frontier”, endorsed by Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Can we breathe a sigh of relief? Are we about to step back from the edge of extinction?
Amodei envisions a slowdown of one to two years, resulting in “profound progress” on technical safety measures. But that’s not what humanity needs right now. What we need is a plan in which we’re confident AI isn’t going to kill us, and this isn’t it.
Study finds more than half of US adults have experienced physical violence and nearly half sexual violence
In their lifetime, more than half of US adults have experienced physical violence – and nearly half have experienced sexual violence, according to a startling new national study.
The study, led by researchers from Tulane University’s Newcomb Institute and the University of California, San Diego, examined experiences of physical, sexual and intimate partner violence, along with how they intersect with behavioral health, economic hardship, neighborhood safety and substance use, among other factors.
Samantha Ramos teaches students in her English language development class at John B. Wright Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona.
Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica
Samantha Ramos stood at the front of her second grade classroom, a small mic clipped to her lanyard amplifying her instructions as she began a phonics lesson.
“Can we get our arms ready?” asked Ramos, who’s taught at the John B. Wright Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona, for 15 years. She brought her right palm to her left shoulder as the students imitated her movements.
Ramos, who specializes in teaching English as a second language, was leading a lesson that day on the short “i” sound. She told the students to pronounce each letter with a different gesture — touching the shoulder for the “w,” the elbow for the “i” and the hand for the double “l” — before sounding out the word “will.” They repeated the process for other short “i” words — “dig,” “wig” and “fit.”
The lesson is part of a daily block of language instruction, ranging from two to four hours long, that Arizona students learning English as a second language are required to take. The students, most of them Spanish-speaking Latino children, remain in the program, separated for part of that time from their peers whose primary language is English, until they pass a test showing they’re fluent enough to learn in a mainstream classroom.
The program is known as “structured English immersion,” or colloquially as “English-only” because all instruction is required to be in English. This limits their time for core subjects, like math and science, that are critical to academic success and college readiness. Arizona is the only state with English-only laws still in effect for its public schools.
But the number of students enrolled in the curriculum has tumbled dramatically this year. At the Tucson Unified School District, where Ramos teaches, the percentage of test-taking students who scored high enough to be classified as proficient in English more than doubled — from 10% in 2025 to 24% in 2026.
Rather than a big leap in fluency, however, the test results reflect the Arizona Department of Education lowering the grade needed to pass. The changes were approved by outgoing Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, a longtime Republican defender of Arizona’s English-only policies.
Experts warn this change will do lasting harm to tens of thousands of Arizona students who will exit the structured English immersion program before they know the language well enough to succeed. Such students are already part of the lowest-performing group on standardized tests, and the loss of specialized instruction could further harm their long-term academic success, according to education researchers.
Past attempts by the Arizona Department of Education to reclassify large numbers of children learning English as fluent prompted federal investigations by the departments of Justice and Education. Federal officials contended placing such students in classrooms where they struggled because they lacked knowledge of English violated their civil and educational rights, and Arizona agreed to a settlement more than a decade ago.
What’s happening now could be a repeat of that, said Katie Bernstein, an applied linguist and professor of early childhood education at Arizona State University.
“If you’re put in a class where you don’t understand what’s going on at all, you’re not learning language or content,” she said. “And so those are the worst outcomes of all, are students who are not given any language services.”
Ramos teaches her students phonics during a daily block of English-language immersion.Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica
Nearly 1 in 10 students enrolled in Arizona public and charter schools marked in their school registration forms they speak a language other than English at home. State law mandates that they be assessed for fluency and placed in structured English immersion, and each spring they take the Arizona English Language Learner Assessment, or AZELLA, to measure their progress in reading, writing, speaking and listening.
This approach has been required since Arizona voters passed a 2000 ballot initiative, Proposition 203, banning bilingual education in public schools. Still, officials have periodically made changes to the proficiency test.
The U.S. departments of Justice and Education determined the version of AZELLA administered between 2006 and 2012 — coinciding with Horne’s first two terms as the state’s top education official — was “not a valid measure of English language proficiency and readiness.” As a result, the state had removed at least 28,000 students from structured English immersion who still lacked proficiency in reading and writing the language.
The Arizona Department of Education was found to be in violation of civil rights laws that ban discrimination on the basis of race and national origin by schools that receive federal funds. The state voluntarily entered a settlement, which stressed that the law requires “education agencies to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede students’ equal participation in instructional programs.”
The settlement agreement stipulated that the state would immediately help school districts find the students who had been harmed and offer “reading and writing intervention services.” In the long term, the state was required to revamp the AZELLA test.
Similar issues prompted a second voluntary settlement four years later, which instructed the state to raise the threshold for a test score to qualify as proficient in English. The state was also required to retest English-language learners using more rigorous standards, among other things.
Ida Rose Florez, a psychologist and former professor and researcher at Arizona State University, conducted a study published in 2012 that found the AZELLA test was “ineffective and obsolete” and its results could be arbitrary. The research concluded there was no evidence the test could “accurately differentiate” between children who need English-language services and those who don’t.
“What I examined, and what I saw, was a test that was absolutely not developed correctly,” Florez told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica. “I don’t see any basis for validity whatsoever.”
After dropping during the pandemic, AZELLA passing rates held steady at 12% statewide for three school years, including in 2025, when more than 118,000 took the test and just over 14,000 scored well enough to be reclassified as proficient.
After the Arizona Department of Education lowered the score needed to pass the test, the statewide reclassification rate for 2026 jumped to 26%, according to the department’s official tally announced to teachers at a September training. Nearly 113,000 students took the 2026 AZELLA, according to the department, resulting in the reclassification of about 30,000 students as proficient and their removal from English-language services this school year.
Students in the structured English immersion program head to class on a recent August morning.Cassidy Araiza for ProPublicaStudents learning English as a second language in Arizona must pass a test in order to exit the immersion program and join their English-speaking peers.Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica
The state Department of Education said its decision to make it easier to pass the AZELLA came after it administered the test last year to 600 native English speakers.
Each new version of the test is given to native speakers first and the results are used as a baseline, said Deputy Superintendent Margaret Dugan, who chaired the group that advocated for passage of Proposition 203 and has served with Horne during all three of his terms as superintendent.
The department skipped this step in 2020, when it made the last major change to the test, following a State Board of Education decision granting more flexibility in how schools teach students English. “Because of COVID and all of that that went on in 2020, things were not done in order,” Dugan said. “When we walked in, it was a new test and they had never tested the native speakers, so now they had to.”
When that version was belatedly administered to native English speakers, nearly half failed, said Adela Santa Cruz, who leads the Office of English Language Acquisition, which oversees the test. “With a native not being able to pass that test at a high percentage, there’s something that was just quite awry,” she said.
She said the issues were reflected in the pass rate of English learners plateauing at 12% for three years.
Using this information, education officials adjusted the grading criteria for students learning English, requiring a lower score to pass all four portions of the test: reading, writing, speaking and listening. Previously, all students needed a combined score of at least 1,000 out of a possible 1,405 to pass. This year, the minimum passing score for all grade levels ranged from 962 for high schoolers to 944 for kindergartners.
“My hope is that all of you will see an increase in proficiency,” Anju Kuriakose, the director of psychometrics at the Arizona Department of Education, told school district representatives upon announcing the changes in April.
Kuriakose noted half of the native speakers who had been tested to inform the changes were in kindergarten and first grade. Students in fifth grade or higher accounted for less than one-fifth of test takers.
Florez’s 2012 study found that when scoring guidelines are based too heavily on the test results of native-speaking kindergartners — without enough data from older children with more advanced language skills — pass results can be artificially elevated. She sees similar problems with the 2026 changes.
The Arizona Department of Education said Horne, who approved the changes, was unavailable for an interview. But he has played an outsize role in the state’s structured English immersion program.
This is Horne’s third nonconsecutive term as superintendent, having served from 2003 to 2011 before returning to the office in 2023. In a 2024 interview with Arizona Luminaria, he boasted that students’ reclassification rates were highest during his terms from 2003 to 2011. “After I left office, things deteriorated,” he said. “I implemented structured English immersion, and equally important, undertook intensive training for the teachers as to how to do it, and then we got it” — the reclassification rate — “up to 31% in three or four years,” he said.
The Arizona auditor general, however, questioned the validity of the test’s results during Horne’s tenure. An audit released in 2011 found that “because data is either unavailable or unreliable, the effect of SEI models is unknown.”
Horne lost his bid for reelection in July’s Republican primary and will leave office in December.
Juana Casas was relieved when her son Arturo, a fourth grader at Tucson’s John B. Wright Elementary School, passed the AZELLA test this spring after three years in structured English immersion classes.
Casas said she learned from the experience of her oldest daughter, who had struggled to learn English and fell behind her classmates. She and her husband sought after-school tutoring to help Arturo, and his two older sisters helped him learn English at home.
“I couldn’t help my oldest daughter, and she really struggled,” Casas said in Spanish. “Their two experiences are totally different. Arturo doesn’t speak Spanish very well because they’ve always spoken to him just in English so that he wouldn’t have to struggle like my oldest struggled.”
English learners already lag far behind their peers, resulting in lower rates of graduation and postsecondary attainment. In 2025, standardized reading tests administered to all Arizona third graders showed a 31% disparity between English-language learners and other students, according to the Center for the Future of Arizona’s Education Progress Meter. The standardized math exam administered to all Arizona eighth graders in 2025 showed a 23% disparity between English-language learners and other students.
Student work is displayed in Ramos’ classroom.Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica
Since Proposition 203 was debated 26 years ago, proponents have argued it helps students learn English more quickly and gets them into mainstream classes faster. There is limited research to support this. Ample studies, however, show students taught under English-only policies have bigger achievement gaps compared to students instructed using bilingual or multilingual education, which reinforces the student’s primary language while accelerating their learning in academic subjects and a second language.
A landmark 32-year study spanning 16 states analyzed various language-learning models, including structured English immersion, and found that “the key to accelerated progress is for English learners to receive peer-equivalent, grade-level bilingual schooling,” according to researchers Virginia Collier and Wayne Thomas.
Florez, the former ASU professor who studied Arizona’s model, said, “The fundamental problem with the AZELLA is that it’s trying to measure a system that should never be in place to begin with.”
Bernstein, the ASU early childhood education professor, said, “There is no linguistic, educational, economic, or research-based reason why we shouldn’t have dual-language programs in the state. And so I think that potentially leaves politics as the only answer to why.”
With more students passing this year’s proficiency test, the Tucson Unified School District is preparing to continue supporting students like Arturo within the mandates approved by voters in 2000.
Patricia Sandoval-Taylor, the district’s director for language development, said state law requires teachers to track reclassified students’ progress in their classrooms for two years and intervene with additional support like tutoring or summer school if needed. Arizona schools don’t receive additional funding for such services, as they do for students who are not proficient in English.
And since part of the district’s funding for English learners is based on the number of students in structured English immersion, more students passing the 2026 AZELLA will mean less funding in the 2027 school year.
“They’re not going to have the direct services to ensure they become fully English proficient,” Sandoval-Taylor said.
At John B. Wright Elementary, Ramos is still getting to know her second graders’ abilities and adjusting her teaching methods accordingly.
Teaching students who are learning English comes with additional responsibilities but no additional pay. Still, Ramos believes it’s where she can make the biggest difference. For her, that includes celebrating when students pass AZELLA and are classified as proficient in English.
“I think they need to be celebrated because they’re going above and beyond,” she said. “Before they did the change to the cut scores, it was like, ‘Well they passed this really incredibly difficult test that even English speakers couldn’t even pass themselves.’”
"The crypto industry's top legislative priority failed on Tuesday in spectacular fashion," reports Barron's.
A procedural motion to advance the bill failed by a vote of 49 to 50, with a handful of Republicans joining all Democrats to shoot it down. The motion needed 60 yes votes to pass, and with the midterm elections looming, the Senate isn't expected to pick the bill back up this year. Among other provisions, the bill would have taken most crypto trading out of the purview of securities regulators, a key goal of firms like Coinbase Global...
The vote is especially bitter for the crypto industry, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign expenditures over the past year to even get to this point. Crypto regulation doesn't even register among the issues voters care most about, and the industry has created massive political action committees to insert itself into the Washington agenda and strike fear into the hearts of lawmakers who might oppose them... Democrats who voted against the bill said that it needed to do more to rein in [Trump's] crypto dealings to get their support. Some GOP lawmakers also voted against the motion after pressure from community bank executives. Bankers argued that the bill needed a stronger ban on high-yield crypto accounts to protect their deposits, a contention that crypto executives and the White House said was nonsense.
Concerns about the bill "intensified after President Trump disclosed he and his family had earned $1.4 billion last year from his crypto ventures," reports NPR. "The massive bill — which stretches over 600 pages — would have established the first regulations for the crypto sector in U.S. history. But opponents saw it as the industry's attempt to encode into law a set of rules they saw as far too lenient on the industry, without enough safeguards."
A research note from an analyst at Compass Point Research & Trading predicts the bill is now likely tabled until at least 2030, Barron's notes. But they also report what the crypto industry could do next:
[C]rypto firms will be leaning heavily on Trump's regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Treasury Department, all of whom have said they plan to move swiftly to implement industry friendly rules if a bill didn't pass. The SEC has already dropped all major enforcement actions against crypto firms and has begun to introduce rules that make it easier to raise money from crypto sales without running afoul of the law. The agency is also expected to implement rules making it easier to tokenize traditional assets like stocks.
The friendly regulatory environment will in effect give the industry a little more than two years to sink roots into the traditional financial system and consumers' wallets. Even if the SEC took a harsh view of the industry in the future, as it did in President Joe Biden's administration, the agency at that point might find it difficult to put the genie back in the bottle.
An NBC helicopter crashed in Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, near the site of a bus crash that occurred hours earlier on Wednesday. The helicopter crashed near a one-storey building as news crews were covering the bus crash that left at least two people dead and six others injured, according to the Los Angeles fire department
Washington, D.C. — Federal authorities say they disrupted an alleged Russian intelligence plot to assassinate a prominent Kremlin critic living in the Washington area, unveiling charges against five people accused of operating as part of a broader international network.
The Justice Department said the defendants worked for or with Russian intelligence services and sought to recruit people in the United States and abroad to conduct surveillance and targeted killings. Prosecutors allege the network has operated since at least 2024 and also plotted attacks against civilian and military infrastructure in European countries viewed as supporting Ukraine.
According to the indictment, operatives offered as much as $40,000 to kill the U.S.-based Russian dissident after first recruiting people to monitor the target. Authorities said the person approached to carry out the killing refused. A separate alleged plot involved a $25,000 offer to murder another target in Lithuania.
The five defendants include Russian nationals Yuri Khrameev and Kirill Khrameev, Cuban nationals Oemis Romagoza Durruthy and Yaidel Delgado Suarez, and Venezuelan national Angel Eduardo Castro. All remain at large. Some face additional murder-for-hire charges.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said the case demonstrates the government’s effort to stop foreign-directed violence inside the United States.
The Kremlin has denied involvement in similar overseas operations and said credible evidence would be needed to support the latest allegations. The charges remain allegations, and none of the defendants has been convicted.
Why Should Delaware Care? The Working Families Party, a progressive political movement built around expanding populist ideals that has steadily grown its presence in Delaware in recent election cycles, further expanded its reach during Tuesday’s Democratic primaries.
While well-known incumbents easily prevailed in Democratic races at the top of Tuesday’s primary ticket, the big story of the night were the wins by statehouse progressives who knocked out five incumbents and captured an open seat.
U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings and first-time candidate for state treasurer, Ted Lauzen, each easily won their respective elections Tuesday night. They all face Republican challengers in November but will be heavy favorites in Delaware, which hasn’t elected a Republican statewide in 12 years.
But in the Delaware statehouse, it was a big night for the progressive Working Families Party, an organization that has been challenging — and ousting — Democratic incumbents for the last few election cycles. The WFP won eight of the 13 state or county races in which it endorsed candidates on Tuesday, marking its most successful cycle yet.
The wins included five new House members, one incumbent House member, one new State Senator, and a new council member in New Castle County. Their diversity — seven people of color and seven women — were also a striking addition to the Democratic field.
Perhaps the most surprising win of all of the progressive candidates was Tyeisha “Tye” Grier, who defeated Rep. Bill “Lumpy” Carson, a nearly 20-year incumbent who represents the Smyrna-area 28th House District.
And without a Republican challenger, Grier, an Army veteran and longtime progressive activist, heads straight to Legislative Hall in January after her win Tuesday night. She did not immediately return Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment.
Grier ran a grassroots campaign largely focused on affordability, pledging to work on housing prices, electricity costs and accessible childcare, while raising less than $2,000 in campaign funds.
Comparatively, Carson’s campaign spent or was aided by more than $100,000 in campaign funding, according to Spotlight Delaware’s campaign finance database.
The race was indicative of broader efforts in Democratic primaries across the state, but particularly in and around Wilmington where some of the most competitive races were, that saw more than $1 million spent by law firms, developers and prominent business owners to try to support reelection bids by incumbents or chosen candidates. Such spending on down-ballot races was unheard of just four years ago.
In most of the closest-watched races, the efforts succeeded as incumbents retained their seats, sometimes by wide margins and other times by very narrow ones.
But WFP-backed candidates also overcame fundraising disparities in other races during an election year where the progressive movement is making gains nationally.
In House District 6, where three Democrats were vying to succeed retiring longtime Rep. Debra Heffernan, it was progressive Rachel “Rae” Krantz who easily ran away with the race. Heffernan and corporate-backed political action committees had supported her opponent Ed Mulvihill, a local liquor store owner.
“We saw unprecedented amounts of PAC spending in these Delaware races, and I think for the most part, people said, ‘I just want to make my own decision here,’” Krantz told Spotlight Delaware on Tuesday night. “I think there’s also been a big frustration at the federal level with that lack of fight in the more moderate, corporate establishment, whatever you want to call them, Democrats. I think we’re seeing a real thirst for new energy and people who are ready to fight for them.”
For Karl Stomberg, the state political director for WFP, the night was a reminder of the political organization’s grassroots strategy.
“We always say, ‘They have the money, we have the people,’ especially in these areas that are more working-class, more diverse,” he told Spotlight Delaware on Tuesday night.
For those waking up Wednesday morning and wondering what an increased WFP presence in Dover may mean next year – assuming those who face general election challenges prevail as expected – Stomberg said their message was clear: “We want to make Delaware better, and we want to make it better for as many people as possible.”
“So, if your idea of making the state better is letting billionaires run wild over our legal system, or concentrating power at the top, or to kill free school meals, or kill police reform because you think that’s in the best interest of a certain group of people that you represent, then yeah, you’re going to be upset with the changes we’re trying to make,” he said. “Most of our elected officials have lived here their whole lives, and some for many generations. We want to have a state where everybody can live, thrive, and survive without having to worry about the cost of utilities, the cost of housing, the cost of groceries, and there’s a lot that we can do that we have not been doing.”
The full list of WFP-backed wins includes:
Shay Frisby over Sen. Ray Seigfried in the Claymont and Brandywine Hundred-area 5th Senate District.
Michelle Booker over Rep. Stephanie Bolden in the 2nd House District, covering Wilmington’s East Side.
Brandon Fletcher Dominguez over Rep. Josue Ortega in the 3rd House District, covering Wilmington’s Hilltop neighborhoods.
Rae Krantz in the three-candidate open primary to succeed retiring Rep. Debra Heffernan in the Bellefonte-area 6th House District
Incumbent Rep. Sherae’a “Rae” Moore holding onto her Middletown-area 8th House District seat.
Pamela Salaam over Rep. Frank Cooke in the 16th House District, stretching from Wilmington to New Castle
Grier over Carson in the Smyrna-area 28th House District.
Kira Alejandro in an open primary to replace Janet Kilpatrick, who did not seek reelection, on New Castle County Council.
Incumbents prevail in other races
Perhaps the biggest loss for a WFP-involved race was in Wilmington’s Senate District 1, where Sen. Dan Cruce fended off a challenge by Adriana Bohm, a professor and activist, by less than 200 votes.
In a Wednesday statement, Cruce thanked Bohm for “a hard fought election” and noted the record-setting primary turnout for the Senate District that stretches from Wilmington’s Highlands community to Alapocas, and Northeast Wilmington to Bellefonte.
“We need to come together and recognize that more unites us than divides us. Together, we can fight to protect our neighbors, make like more affordable, and deliver real results for our community,” he added.
Rep. Nnamdi Chukwuocha also defeated City Councilwoman Shané Darby in Wilmington’s House District 1, while Rep. Kim Williams, the co-chair of the state’s powerful Joint Finance Committee, easily outlasted challenger Will Imbrie-Moore in the Stanton area House District 19.
In non-WFP-involved contests, Krista Griffith’s win over Dr. Rob Bahnsen in the northern Wilmington suburbs’ House District 12 was among the most high-profile. More than $300,000 was spent between the two campaigns, with much of it relitigating the controversial Senate Bill 21, a corporate law passed last year.
House Majority Leader Kerri Evelyn Harris defeated challenger LaChelle Paul in the Dover-area House District 32, while progressive Rep. Eric Morrison turned away a challenge by union laborer Chris Muntz in the Glasgow-area House District 27.
Three state senators – Spiros Mantzavinos, Jack Walsh, and Kyra Hoffner – easily dispatched their opponents, all capturing at least 65% of their district votes. A fourth, Nicole Poore, had a closer race against a WFP-backed challenger, Keonna Watson, but ultimately prevailed with 53% of the vote.
In Sussex County, Rep. Alonna Berry held onto her Milton-area House seat against a challenger who questioned both her electability and recent affordable housing policy.
Ruby Keeler Schaeffer centered her campaign around Senate Bill 23, an affordable housing law that has sparked outsized scrutiny across Sussex County compared to its northern counterparts.
But that single-issue campaign was not enough to carry Schaeffer to victory.
Berry did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday night, but she thanked her constituents in an emailed statement.
“Hope always wins,” she said. “Togetherness always wins. Let’s keep investing in hope, pushing for the promise of a better tomorrow and showing up as neighbors helping neighbors.”
Despite her primary win, Berry still faces a competitive general election challenge from Republican Gene Dvornick. Berry’s Milton-area district is arguably one of the most purple in the state, flipping to become Democratically controlled in 2022 and only narrowly staying in Democratic hands with Berry’s first win in 2025.
Khan-Flowers, Redlawsk win open seat races
Ayanna Khan-Flowers, the founder of the Delaware Black Chamber of Commerce, won a three-way race for the Democratic nomination in House District 9, covering the Middletown-Odessa-Townsend area.
That seat, held by retiring Republican Rep. Kevin Hensley, is a major flip target for Democrats in November as they seek a two-thirds supermajority. Khan-Flowers will face a general election contest with Republican Jamar Money, which ensures that the changing 9th District will be represented by a person of color.
In Newark’s House District 23, university professor David Redlawsk won a four-way race to succeed Rep. Mara Gorman who is running for State Senate. Redlawsk will head to Dover in January with no Republican opponent on the line.
County races elect new faces
One new county council member was elected in New Castle County, where the only contested primary races at the county-level were held.
As of 11 p.m. Tuesday, Jason Hoover held a slight edge over Helena Creamer in District 4, which has no Republican opposition. The winner will join the 13-member council in November.
Councilwoman Valerie George was reelected in District 5 after defeating WFP-backed Syam Kosigi, but his fellow progressive Kira Alejandro bested Kyle Grantham, a former county communications professional who was endorsed by the retiring incumbent Janet Kilpatrick.
Alejandro will face Republican Melissa Brayman in the November general election.
Finally, County Councilman David Tackett beat incumbent Mike Kozikowski for New Castle County Recorder of Deeds, a little-discussed row office job. His election will create a special election in the 11th District near Newark, as there is no Republican challenger for the job.
That race was marked by scandal in recent weeks as Tackett alleged Kozikowski offered him a job to stay out of the race.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, figures compiled by conflict monitor underline how Sahel region has become centre of Islamist terror
Islamist extremist violence in Africa’s Sahel region is set to reach historic highs after a series of sweeping offensives by groups linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State, according to new figures compiled by the conflict monitor Acled.
As the US marks the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks launched by al-Qaida against targets in Washington and New York, the statistics underline the continued expansion of the veteran organisation in parts of Africa – in stark contrast with its relative weakness elsewhere.
Why Should Delaware Care? Delaware Republicans at the state and federal levels face an uphill battle in an overwhelmingly blue state. Tuesday’s primary results show that candidates with experience in office may be more important to conservative voters than past party affiliations.
First State Republicans have agreed with party politicians that a candidate with a more bipartisan appeal — particularly in such a blue state — may be their best bet at beating an incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator.
Dr. Mike Katz, a former Democratic state senator and the GOP’s endorsed candidate, won more than 77% of the vote over his primary opponent John Shulli, a retired U.S. Army Reserves colonel.
Katz described Tuesday night as a “great victory” that was reflective of the party’s endorsement. And since he received that nod in April, his campaign has been primarily focused on the contest against sitting U.S. Sen. Chris Coons.
“We’re going to continue to bring people together and focus on unifying Delaware,” he said. “And we’ve already built a coalition of Republicans, independents and common sense Democrats.”
But Republican voters opted against the party’s pick to run against sitting U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride this November.
The Rev. Earl Cooper, who earned the GOP’s endorsement, attracted less than 20% of the vote on Tuesday and finished a distant third. His opponent Joseph Arminio secured victory with nearly 48% of the votes, while John Whalen III, who ran against McBride two years ago, took home 32% of the tallies.
Arminio was not immediately available for comment.
“I will say that we definitely do understand that the people have chosen,” Cooper said by phone Tuesday night. “We’ve got to see some changes here in Delaware.”
While Congressional races were firmly decided Tuesday, at least one statehouse race was far less definitive. In House District 33, which stretches from Magnolia to Milford, a difference of only seven votes separated candidates Matt Bucher and Morgan Hudson, prompting a recount by the state Department of Elections.
Hudson told Spotlight Delaware Tuesday night that a recount would take place on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, in the Millsboro-area House District 41 race, controversial former lawmaker John Atkins won the party nomination and will face Democrat Ryan Stuckey in November, where he will be favored by Republican registration margins.
Atkins previously represented the district as both a Republican and Democrat off and on between 2003 and 2014.
Since 2006, he has faced a series of legal charges related to domestic violence. He has said in recent months that he was in unhealthy relationships and that religious devotion has helped him right his life.
Atkins narrowly survived a three-way race with Republicans Doug Conaway and Jacki Slonin, whose vote totals combined would have been enough to edge out Atkins’ candidacy.
Recount in progress
In the Milford-area 33rd House District, which was left open by Rep. Charles Postles’ retirement, the margin was so close between Morgan Hudson and Matt Bucher that the Department of Election had not called the race as of midnight Wednesday.
At that time, Hudson had 1,017 votes to Bucher’s 1,010, with 98.9% of the vote counted.
Delaware state law requires the Department of Elections complete a recount when the difference between the top two candidates is less than 0.5%. In this case, the seven-vote difference between Hudson and Bucher amounts to 0.35% of the total votes.
While neither candidate has formal legislative experience, Bucher was previously a member of the Milford School District Board of Education and the chair of the 33rd House District Republican Committee.
Meanwhile, Hudson kept a lower campaign profile. She declined media interviews and relied more heavily on door knocking and social media to spread her message. Hudson previously unsuccessfully sought the same seat in 2018.
Whichever candidate prevails will face Democrat Joshua Pennington in the November general election.
Shupe increases election margins
In the 36th House District, which includes the Milford and Ellendale areas, four-term incumbent Rep. Bryan Shupe handily beat challenger Patrick Smith with 69.6% of the vote.
Tuesday’s win marked a substantially more decisive victory for Shupe than in 2024, when he eked out a win over Smith in the primary by just 12 votes.
He credited his online social media presence, which allows him to share his legislative work directly with constituents, as the gamechanger in this year’s election.
“That’s what I really worked on these last two years with social media,” Shupe said Tuesday night. “Just saying, ‘Hey, this is what is going on in Legislative Hall. This is what I’m doing for you.’”
Shupe will face Democratic candidate Andy Gorlich in November.
Closely watched Millsboro race
Atkins’ win in the Millsboro-area 41st House District also concludes a closely-watched Republican primary that pitted an experienced yet controversial former lawmaker against two other aspiring candidates.
Atkins, a former state lawmaker with a criminal history, beat out U.S. Army veteran Doug Conaway, and marketing professional Jacki Slonin.
Atkins took 48.7% of the vote compared to 46.6% for Conaway and less than 5% for Slonin. All three candidates were seeking to replace retiring Rep. Rich Collins, who endorsed Conaway in the race.
Atkins did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday night.
Atkins previously represented the district for over a decade in the early 2000s, before facing a series of legal charges and restraining orders for disputes and physical altercations with romantic partners.
He spent his first five years in office as a Republican, before switching to serve as a Democrat in 2008, when the GOP censured him for his domestic dispute arrest.
Collins, in his support of Conaway’s campaign, has compared Atkins to Eric Swalwell, the former U.S. Representative from California who resigned following sexual assault allegations.
Other GOP leaders, including House Minority Leader Tim Dukes and Vice Chair of the Delaware Republican Party Dan Willis also supported Conaway over Atkins through campaign donations and publicly praising Conaway’s fitness for office.
These endorsements, however, were not enough to carry Conaway to victory.
Atkins largely structured his campaign around his history of strong constituent services while previously in office. He also racked up endorsements from other Sussex County leaders, including the three Republican County Councilmen – Doug Hudson, John Rieley and Steve McCarron.
The one other Republican primary on Tuesday occurred in the Middletown-area House District 8, where retired police officer Gary Taylor ran away with a contest against Watara Heath IV. Taylor’s performance in the district could give Republicans hope of flipping a New Castle County seat currently held by Democrat Rep. Rae Moore.
In today’s newsletter: It is hard to tell fact from fiction when it comes to AI. What is really going on – and what should the government do about it?
Good morning. As a general rule, it pays to be suspicious of any gigantic company that claims it’s developing a tool capable of destroying humanity. But in recent days, a number of warnings from the AI industry have suggested that even tech insiders are starting to worry about what they have unleashed.
In a lofty essay published on Saturday, Dario Amodei, the founder of Anthropic (the company behind Claude), argued that tech companies need to “slow” the pace at which they’re developing the newest and most sophisticated AI models.
Lucy Letby | Three babies might have survived if hospital had acted upon concerns over Lucy Letby, an inquiry has found. Lady Justice Thirlwall condemned the ‘complete failure’ to protect babies on neonatal unit at Countess of Chester hospital.
UK politics | The leader of Reform UK in Wales stood down after arrest on suspicion of assault. Dan Thomas, a former Tory councillor, was elected to Senedd as leader of the opposition in May.
AI | The progressive senator Bernie Sanders and rightwing strategist Steve Bannon have called for restrictions on artificial intelligence (AI) but offered competing visions for what they termed a “cold war” with China.
UK news | Young people in Rotherham face a local jobs market with the fewest suitable opportunities in Britain, according to a report that warns stark regional divisions are fuelling a crisis in youth work.
Defence | John Healey is in talks with the Canadian government about joining a new global defence bank intended to help allies rearm to counter mounting security threats, just weeks after Rachel Reeves rejected the move.
Anthropic, the AI company behind the large language model Claude, has done a deal to lease the site of its first Australian datacentre in western Queensland.
The $31.9bn datacentre will be the largest of its kind in Australia, according to planning documents.
The Good Enough File System, originally developed for 9front, is being ported to OpenBSD.
For those who haven’t watched my talk, GEFS is a new, crash-safe, snapshotting, copy on write FS that I wrote for 9front, and which I am in the process of moving to OpenBSD. The file system is described in full here.
One of OpenBSD’s shortcomings is its rather archaic filesystem, so any work on something more modern and especially more performant is quite welcome. While any process of replacing FFS is going to be a long one, even having GEFS as an option could be a great addition to OpenBSD.
Defenders of forests and rivers killed at rate of one every three days in 2025, with 85% of deaths in Latin America
Nature and land defenders were murdered at the rate of one every three days last year, prompting many communities to set up self-defence units, according to the latest annual death toll by the independent watchdog Global Witness.
Organised crime groups or professional killers were implicated in more than a third of the 124 killings of defenders in 2025 as narco-trafficking activities overlapped with intrusions into indigenous territories and environmental crime, such as illegal logging and wildcat gold mining.
Dozens of Bank of England directors and founding subscribers invested in trafficking of enslaved Africans
The Bank of England and the British financial system were for centuries deeply involved in the enslavement and transatlantic trafficking of millions of African people, according to new research on Britain’s slavery history.
Research by historians compiling the Register of British Slave Traders has found that the scale of the financial system’s involvement in enslavement is greater than previously known or acknowledged. The Bank of England, the central bank owned by the government since nationalisation by Clement Attlee’s Labour administration in 1946, had dozens of financiers involved in its foundation who were also significant investors in the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans.
Accident occurred as news crews in Los Angeles were covering a bus crash that had killed at least two people hours earlier
A news helicopter crash in a Los Angeles neighborhood has killed at least three people, after it came to the ground and burst into flames near the site of a bus crash that occurred hours earlier.
The helicopter crashed near a one-storey commercial building in the neighborhood of Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley, as news crews were covering the bus crash that left at least two people dead and six others injured, according the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Washington, D.C. — Federal agencies spent an estimated $9.5 billion on paid administrative leave in 2025, a sixfold increase from 2023, according to a new Government Accountability Office report examining workforce-reduction efforts under the Trump administration.
GAO found that about $6.7 billion of the total was tied to the government’s Deferred Resignation Program, which allowed eligible federal workers to stop working while continuing to receive pay and benefits until their separation date, generally Sept. 30, 2025.
Nearly 140,000 federal employees ultimately participated in the program, according to Office of Personnel Management data. OPM’s original offer explicitly stated that workers accepting deferred resignation would retain full pay and benefits regardless of daily workload and would be exempt from in-person work requirements.
The GAO said paid administrative leave increased 435% between 2023 and 2025. However, it also cautioned that agency reporting problems may have overstated some totals because holidays were sometimes incorrectly recorded as administrative leave.
The watchdog recommended that OPM publicly disclose unresolved data-quality problems and create a separate reporting category for paid leave used in workforce reductions. OPM agreed with both recommendations.
Democrats have criticized the deferred resignation strategy as wasteful, while the administration has argued that reducing the federal workforce will generate longer-term savings. GAO said OPM currently lacks sufficiently precise data to determine the full short-term costs of those workforce reductions against any eventual savings.
"Ubuntu has managed to do away with GNU Core Utilities in its default stack," reports the blog It's FOSS.
The last three utilities — cp, mv and rm — have been moved to versions from the uutils project (which reimplements utilities in Rust).
Everything else, from ls and cat to chmod and du, made that jump in earlier releases... Canonical started "oxidizing" Ubuntu last year, and Ubuntu 25.10 became the first release to ship [ the uutils project's] coreutils as the default. That release also made sudo-rs the default privilege tool, replacing a command that had been in place for decades.
26.04 was the release where the plan did slow down quite a bit, as Canonical kept cp, mv, and rm on their GNU versions due to a bunch of TOCTOU issues that were blocking the full implementation. These were caught during an audit, when Canonical commissioned Zellic for two rounds between December 2025 and March 2026, focusing on the most security-sensitive utilities first. Across both rounds, Zellic raised 113 issues, and 44 of them were assigned CVEs. Canonical says the vast majority have been resolved.
Getting here has had its ups and downs, and the last stretch was not clean. In July, uutils cp went back into the archive and came straight out again after it broke live image builds. The fix was quick; as the developers marked it "Critical," the fix went upstream, and the migration landed in time for 26.10.
When typing commands, nothing changes for you on the surface. uutils coreutils is designed to be a drop-in replacement for essential GNU tools, and the project treats any divergence from GNU as a bug, further pointing out that some options may still be missing or behave differently. So if you prefer staying on the GNU version, you have the option to install the coreutils-from-gnu package that houses all the required components.
Study challenges belief that temple’s curves were designed to correct optical illusions that would have ruined its clean lines
A mathematician has uncovered what may be one of the longest-running myths in history after studying optical illusions and the Parthenon, the famed Greek temple that overlooks Athens.
Scholars have marvelled at the building on the Acropolis hill for more than 2,000 years and heaped praise on its architects for their clever use of geometry. Its subtle curves are said to correct optical illusions that would have otherwise ruined the Parthenon’s clean lines.
Belgian government unable to agree on evacuation of 13 students to take up scholarships at universities
Students who are unable to leave Gaza and take up scholarships at Belgian universities have said they are devastated after Belgium’s government hit deadlock on a plan enabling them to leave the war-torn territory.
Ahmed Abujami, a 28-year-old doctor in Gaza, said he was “deeply disappointed” after Belgium’s five-party coalition government last Friday failed to agree on an evacuation plan for 13 students and researchers in the territory. Abujami has a scholarship to do a one-year master’s degree in public health at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp. He hopes to gain skills and experience to rebuild Gaza’s shattered health system.
DOVER, Del. — Here are the unofficial results of the 2026 Delaware primary. There were 128,598 registered voters who cast a ballot out of 593,286 registered statewide, a turnout of 21.7%. Tables 1 through 4 below cover every statewide, legislative and county race.
Iran-aligned group rejects claim it targeted Mecca, while Organisation of Islamic Cooperation condemns attack
Saudi Arabia has claimed its air defences intercepted and destroyed a Houthi drone attempting to fly over the holy city of Mecca, as Saudi warplanes continued to pound Yemen, raising fears of the conflict spreading further across the Middle East.
The Saudi-led military coalition said the security of Mecca – home to Islam’s two holiest sites – was a “red line” and that it would take necessary measures against the Houthis.
Sept. 15, 2026 — From developing new artificial intelligence (AI) systems to creating data-driven agriculture tools, researchers across the United States increasingly rely on high performance computing (HPC) resources to tackle some of society’s most pressing challenges. Simultaneously, both university professors and community college instructors are working toward educating the next generation of students how best to utilize HPC in their communities. To help meet this growing demand, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $10 million to the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California San Diego Halıcıoğlu School of Data Science and Computing to deploy NSF Expanse2, a next-generation supercomputer that will support scientific discovery, engineering innovation, AI-driven research and HPC education nationwide.
Credit: Ben Tolo, SDSC
“Having advanced supercomputers such as Expanse2, which will allow AI and machine learning workloads to run efficiently, is vital for the national research and education community from all areas of science and engineering in the United States,” said UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. “SDSC has a demonstrated track record of providing large scale supercomputers and more recently machines architected for artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads, and is a national leader in advancing science and education for the country by providing innovative cyberinfrastructure.”
NSF Expanse2 will replace the NSF-funded Expanse supercomputer, which has supported researchers and educators since late 2020. Building on Expanse, the new system will provide significantly enhanced computing power and data capabilities for scientists across all disciplines, engineers and AI researchers working with increasingly large and complex datasets and simulations.
“Investing in the research infrastructure that enables scientific discovery is essential to maintaining America’s leadership in science and technology,” said Katie Antypas, Senior Science Advisor within the NSF Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. “Expanse2 represents an important investment in the computing capabilities researchers need to pursue the next generation of scientific and engineering breakthroughs.”
The new system will include the latest generation AMD processors and accelerators, connected through an advanced network designed to support data-intensive workloads, AI, machine learning (ML), modeling and simulation applications. These capabilities will allow researchers to run much larger and more complex scientific simulations, process and analyze much larger datasets, and make advanced computing capabilities accessible to researchers beyond major institutions. NSF Expanse2 will also include an innovative storage architecture that combines a high-performance all-NVMe file system optimized for AI and ML workflows with large-capacity storage designed to ensure system availability and data integrity.
NSF Expanse2 aligns with current federal research and development priorities, including efforts to expand access to advanced computing infrastructure and accelerate AI-enabled scientific discovery. It will also contribute to the NSF-led National AI Research Resource, helping expand access to advanced computing and AI capabilities, strengthen U.S. research competitiveness and support the development of the nation’s future STEM workforce.
When it enters production in 2027, NSF Expanse2 will be one of the newest resources available to the national HPC community, including researchers participating in NAIRR, supporting both traditional computational science and emerging AI-driven research. Following the success of Expanse, NSF Expanse2 will continue to serve the “long tail of science” and provide access to advanced computing resources for a broad community of researchers, institutions and scientific disciplines.
“Expanse2 will continue the successful path of Expanse, which has served tens of thousands of researchers from all areas of science and engineering,” said Principal Investigator (PI) Michael Norman, who is a computational astrophysicist at UC San Diego and also served as director of SDSC for 2010-2021. “Expanse2 will deliver capabilities that increase the capacity and performance for both batch-oriented and science gateway users, and that enable new research in AI applications and data analytics, which increasingly depend on heterogeneous, distributed and integrated cyberinfrastructure.”
NSF Expanse2 users will be supported by SDSC’s long tradition of excellent user support along with education, outreach and training (EOT) activities. Additionally, the HPC system will offer user-friendly allocation and scheduling policies, support rapid application development and data analysis via Jupyter notebooks, provide extensive AI/ML frameworks and libraries, and connect users with federated and extensible data ecosystems.
User support will be focused on delivering the tools, training and support needed to increase productivity and decrease time-to-science results. The user support team has expertise in computational science, AI/ML, data-intensive computing, scientific workflows and large-scale systems operations to support the users at the highest levels of utilization, reliability and usability.
“AI is becoming prevalent among all areas of science and engineering, and the latest generation GPU resources and the all-NVMe file system of the Expanse2 machine will enable the community, and especially the NAIRR user community to effectively carry out application of AI both for training and inference,” said SDSC Director Frank Würthwein, who is also a professor in the Physics Department and the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute at UC San Diego.
PI Mike Norman, along with multiple Co-Pis, including Amitava Majumdar, Ilkay Altintas, Subhashini Sivagnanam and Mahidhar Tatineni, as well as senior personnel Christopher Irving and Mary Thomas, have extensive experience operating national systems and participating in the NAIRR effort, which will directly inform NSF Expanse2.
The NSF Expanse2 system will be built on lessons learned during the operation of Expanse to broaden outreach to users from all research domains and institutions, including AI researchers who have not traditionally incorporated HPC into their workflows. While Expanse2 education, outreach and training activities will be focused on domestic workforce development across universities, teaching colleges and high school students to strengthen the U.S. scientific and technical workforce, industry outreach via the SDSC director’s discretionary allocation efforts will foster public-private partnerships.
The NSF Expanse2 project is funded under NSF award number 2614012.
The Justice Department is accusing several members of Russia's intelligence services of running a "global assassination network" that targeted Kremlin critics.
Kash Patel, the FBI director, is now testifying before lawmakers on the Senate judiciary committee. A reminder that the last time he appeared before Congress was in May, when he sparred with senators on the appropriations committee and denied – under oath – allegations of excessive drinking and unexplained absences on the job, dismissing them as “baseless” during a fiery congressional hearing.
Today’s hearing is also expected to be full of heated exchanges. “Mr Patel is the least qualified and most partisan FBI director in our nation’s history,” said Senator Dick Durbin, the judiciary committee’s top Democrat. “The bureau has been reshaped as a political weapon against President Trump’s political enemies and a shield to protect the president and his MAGA loyalists, not the American people.”
At least five pupils at a village school in the West Bank have been killed in the last year by settlers and soldiers. Emma Graham-Harrison reports on how the school found itself on the frontline, while a teacher explains what life is like for staff and students.
Waheed Abu Naim is an English teacher at the Al Mughayyir boys’ school in a village in the West Bank. He loves his job, he says. “I am happy to be a teacher. Although we don’t get lots of money, because my students, especially in the morning, wait for me when I enter the school to shake hands, to smile at me while going inside their classes. So it’s a happy life.”
But the last year has been anything but happy for Waheed. His village is now surrounded by settlers, while the military has blocked off every road except one, which has a checkpoint on it. Teachers who live in neighbouring villages cannot always come to work. But worse are the attacks on the village by settlers.
This episode was updated after publication. The specific description of bullets hitting the glass – as children and teachers are sheltering in a school stairwell – has been removed.
Intelligence services allegedly attempted to pay people to surveil and kill people perceived to be aligned with Ukraine
Russia’s intelligence services are plotting to carry out targeted killings in the United States and in European nations supporting Ukraine, federal authorities said Tuesday as they announced charges against five people who remain at large.
An indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court said a network of the intelligence services had paid and attempted to pay individuals in the United States and in other countries to surveil targets to be killed with plans to then kill them.
Powerful bombs prompted such concern about mass deaths in Gaza that Biden officials paused delivery two years ago
The Trump administration is planning to deliver powerful 2,000lb bombs to Israel as part of an upcoming arms deal, weapons that prompted such concerns about the possibility of mass casualties in Gaza that the Biden administration paused their delivery two years ago.
The $2.8bn package includes 40,000 bombs, made up of 20,000 MK-84s and 20,000 BLU-117s, according to two US officials and a person familiar with the plan who spoke on Tuesday on condition of anonymity to discuss the package, which is not yet final.
Washington, D.C. — The Pentagon is asking military commanders to nominate physically fit, well-groomed and highly rated service members to attend Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Sept. 30 “State of the Force” address, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
An Army email said nominees must pass the service’s fitness test, meet waist-to-height requirements and maintain “impeccable grooming and uniform standards.” Similar instructions were reportedly sent to other military branches.
The Pentagon is also seeking troops considered top performers with records of discipline, integrity and leadership. Selected attendees may have the opportunity to work out with Hegseth before or after the address.
The criteria align with priorities Hegseth outlined during a September 2025 speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico, where he announced tougher fitness and grooming standards across the armed forces. He said all service members should meet height and weight requirements and take physical fitness tests twice annually.
That address also drew attention for Hegseth’s criticism of overweight troops and generals and his declaration that there would be “no more beardos.” Since then, Pentagon officials have continued pressing military branches to enforce grooming and fitness rules more consistently.
Unlike last year’s gathering, which largely centered on generals and admirals, this year’s event is expected to include lower-ranking officers and enlisted personnel.
A Pentagon official declined to comment to the Journal on the selection criteria.
At San Francisco conference, OpenAI chief Sam Altman calls for more rigorous security measures
Anthropic’s CEO took the stage at a conference in San Francisco on Tuesday to reiterate his call for a slowdown of AI development, while Nvidia’s CEO argued against such deceleration.
Dario Amodei used an automotive analogy to make his point: when a competing car company has a safety incident like brake failures, it is a moment for all car companies to stop and review their own practices, he said at Salesforce’s Dreamforce convention on Tuesday.
The family of 37-year-old Tierra Walker filed a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and others, saying she was denied an abortion that could have saved her life.
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Chen Yilong has racked up plenty of film and TV credits in his two decades as an actor, but with work getting scarcer he signed a contract in August to license the image of his face to a Chinese production studio. Chen's role will be to sit in front of a video camera and make facial expressions at the prompt of a director. A neutral stare. An angry glare. A look of surprise. Using artificial intelligence, the studio will use images of Chen's face to generate an avatar, also known as a "digital human," to star in an AI-generated movie. "If you can't beat it, join it," said Chen, 38, who works in Beijing.
The Chinese film and video industry is being transformed by AI-driven storytelling, fueled by rapid advances in video generation software, and at ground zero are the so-called micro dramas that play out on millions of smartphones. Typically just a minute or two in length, the videos are devoured by Chinese audiences... And the cost of producing them has been cut drastically through the use of AI software developed by Chinese technology juggernauts including Kuaishou Technology and TikTok's global owner, ByteDance. The number of Chinese-made micro dramas surged in the first three months of this year to 128,000, according to the China Netcasting Services Assn. More than 95% of them were made with AI, the association said....
Sun Wei founded Feixiang Universe, the Shenzhen-based studio that cast Chen. The fear of accidentally "stealing someone's face" was a big reason she said she decided to license real people's likenesses for an AI production set during China's Tang Dynasty more than 1,000 years ago. Thanks to AI's training data bias, AI-generated performers tend to have similar features and share a homogenous look, Sun said. Many have flawless skin and extremely symmetrical faces, requiring her and other Chinese AI filmmakers to cast a wide net to "buy" new faces and digitize actor's expressions.
Lu Beike, who directed the big-budget Chinese series "Three-Body," felt theAI-generated scenes he'd tried came out sub-standard. "Lu added that if 90% of a film was generated by AI, a real human performance could appear jarring. A real actor's expressions carried more nuance and emotion. The skin textures did not match. Sometimes the only solution was to process the live-action material until the person looked a little less real — until they fit back into the 'AI world,' Lu said."
But at Sun Wei's studio, they're thrilled they can produce a 90-minute AI film for $500,000 where professional productions used to cost millions of dollars. According to the article, Sun's team works with ChatGPT, Kimi or DeepSeek to flesh out entire screenplays from a short paragraph. The screenwriter takes over, but "to produce the finished product, Sun's team uses Chinese video-generation models to input the type of scenes, backgrounds and performers they want, with the AI generating 15 seconds of footage each time."
Still, the article points out that "Similar tools are being tested in the U.S., and the AI trends upending China's entertainment industry may be a harbinger for what's to come in Hollywood, said Michael Berry, a professor specializing in contemporary Chinese culture at UCLA. Already, Chinese companies that sell AI-powered video-generation software are seeking inroads in Hollywood..."
Bears came through bedroom window and swiped tent at campground, causing scratch marks and puncture wound
A black bear burst through a Colorado teenage girl’s window and scratched her, days after a bear also bit a camper in the state, according to wildlife officials.
On Friday, a woman at a campground in south-west Colorado heard a growl and felt something hit her outdoors tent, according to a news release.
SEOUL, South Korea, Sept. 15, 2026 — Rebellions, a global leader in AI inference infrastructure, and ai&, a vertically integrated global AI technology company, are partnering to deploy Rebellions RebelRack within ai&’s heterogeneous infrastructure as part of the ai& inference service in Japan. The collaboration will give enterprises, government institutions, and developers access to Rebellions-powered inference deployed within the country, expanding locally available compute options while supporting Japan’s sovereign AI priorities.
ai& will begin deploying Rebellions-powered infrastructure at its Tokyo data center starting with an initial purchase, with plans to scale the deployment up rapidly, targeting up to 100 or more RebelRack units. That initial deployment can expand alongside ai&’s broader data center buildout, which is backed by more than $2 billion in committed infrastructure capital and includes five sites planned to be operational by year-end 2026 and 40 MW of capacity targeted by year-end 2027.
“The economics of inference directly influence how widely AI can be deployed and how much it can be used,” says Sunghyun Park, Co-Founder and CEO, Rebellions. “Lowering the unit cost of serving tokens gives providers room to create new pricing tiers, support more applications, and serve customers with different compute requirements and budgets. ai& has built a heterogeneous infrastructure platform around that flexibility. Establishing Rebellions inside Japan gives us a direct path to enterprise, government, and developer demand while adding efficient inference capacity to the country’s AI infrastructure.”
ai& operates a heterogeneous infrastructure model that incorporates multiple compute architectures across AI workloads. Rebellions adds an inference-optimized architecture engineered for high power efficiency and lower operating costs, giving ai& greater flexibility in how it provisions inference capacity and structures its services.
These economics can support new, lower-cost inference tiers designed to make AI services accessible across a wider range of applications, organizations, and budget requirements.
“As AI moves from experimentation to production, inference economics — particularly performance, power efficiency, and cost — will increasingly shape infrastructure decisions,” said Matt Eastwood, SVP, WW Research at IDC. “ai&’s deployment of Rebellions at commercial scale is an important example of purpose-built AI silicon emerging as a viable infrastructure option for inference. Greater choice at the accelerator layer will be increasingly important as service providers, enterprises, and governments look to scale AI capacity efficiently.”
Rebellions hardware integrates directly into ai&’s existing engineering workflows. ai&’s technical teams already work with open-source software packages common across GPU environments, and Rebellions supports widely adopted open-source frameworks. That compatibility reduces the integration lift, with the first systems expected to be operational the same day they are delivered.
“Heterogeneous infrastructure means using the right hardware for the right workload. Rebellions fits that model — its efficiency gives us more flexibility in how we structure the economics of our services, and it builds on the same open-source frameworks our engineers already use. This partnership expands the inference options we can offer customers in Japan, with a foundation to take it further,” says David Bennett, Co-Founder and CEO of ai&.
Rebellions recently raised $400 million in a pre-IPO round, bringing its total funding to $850 million, and is now shipping its RebelRack and RebelPOD AI infrastructure systems. ai& is backed by more than $2 billion in committed infrastructure capital, with five sites planned to be operational by year-end 2026 and 40 MW of capacity targeted by year-end 2027. This partnership establishes a foundation for deploying Rebellions across additional infrastructure and markets.
Rebellions builds what the AI era needs: purpose-built inference accelerators delivering the performance, efficiency, and supply chain resilience that enterprises and nations demand. Its flagship Rebel100 delivers the best performance per dollar per watt – built for inference from the ground up, not retrofitted from training – with full-stack software built entirely on open source and open standards. With proven commercial deployments already live across enterprises and governments, and a chiplet architecture built for the most demanding AI workloads, Rebellions gives every organization and nation the ability to own and control their AI, not just access it. Backed by Aramco, Arm, Kindred Ventures, KT, Mirae Asset Group, Samsung, SK Hynix, and SK Telecom, Rebellions is headquartered in South Korea with operations in the United States.
More than a million people have left work to look after loved ones in the past two years, Carers UK says
About 1,500 Britons a day are quitting their jobs to become unpaid carers, as they try to balance their vulnerable relatives’ growing care needs with declining access to state-funded social care services.
Research estimates that more than a million people have left the workplace to look after ageing, ill and disabled loved ones in the past two years, highlighting the social challenges caused by UK’s rapidly changing demographic profile.
PC Mason O’Connor dismissed following Panorama film showing misogyny and racism at London police station
A 13th serving Metropolitan police officer has been dismissed in relation to an undercover BBC investigation into misogyny and racism at Charing Cross police station.
PC Mason O’Connor was found to have committed discreditable conduct and breached professional behaviour standards, linked to a comment he made towards a female colleague, according to the Met.
Nearly half of minority ethnic respondents in a poll say they have faced prejudice over the past year
Many Britons feel inequality is worsening and that discrimination has become more common, according to a thinktank study.
The report by British Future has found that people across ethnic groups believe racial equality is worsening in Britain. One in six people are from minority ethnic backgrounds.
(The Center Square) – Congress never approved a dollar specifically for the war with Iran. Yet the Pentagon's inspector general says Operation Epic Fury has cost at least $33.4 billion, paid for out of accounts meant to train and maintain…
I’ve been to 36 National Parks in the United States—mainly across the Western USA. Some are exceptional; others are okay. These top 13, in no particular order, are the national parks I recommend visiting in … Read more
Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the Kennedy Center would close “immediately” and threatened to cancel a planned renovation of the institution if federal courts did not allow his name to be placed on the front of the building.
Trump’s ultimatum came shortly after the president’s handpicked board voted, again, to close the institution’s performing arts building in Washington, citing safety and financial concerns.
From the supernatural horror of Slitterhead to the roguelite action of Ball x Pit and the stealthy combat of Sniper Elite: Resistance, this month’s additions offer plenty of ways to play.
After the US supreme court halted Donald Trump’s efforts to make it significantly harder to vote by mail in the midterms, US election officials are redoubling their efforts to convince Americans it is safe to cast their ballots by mail.
The supreme court’s Monday ruling, which sent Trump into an angry froth on Truth Social, averted what election officials of both parties said would be an administrative disaster for this year’s elections. Trump’s order would have required states to comply with cumbersome new rules, including redesigning mail-in envelopes and uploading lists of voters to the USPS, that were not feasible to implement before ballots started going out. The effort was seen as a push by the government to change voting policy as well as one to weaken confidence in voting by mail.
Who are the Democrats running in the midterms, and where do they stand? Our political reporters will be hosting a series of conversations on the critical issues ahead of November. First up: the state of the Democrats, the party’s moderate and leftwing candidates and key races to watch. Drop your questions and join us live at 12pm (EDT) on 16 September
We’re less than two months from the midterm elections that could have an outsized impact on the future of the United States.
With the primaries wrapped, our reporting team is fanned out across the country to tell the stories behind the horse race, from Washington to the Midwest and along the West Coast.
Financier refused to comply with subpoenas seeking his testimony for the investigation into the late sex offender
The House oversight committee voted unanimously Tuesday to recommend that the House of Representatives hold Leon Black, the billionaire financier, in contempt of Congress, after he refused to comply with subpoenas seeking his testimony and nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) sought by the panel as part of its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Black contends the subpoenas are “invalid” and he is suing to block them.
“Subpoenas are not suggestions; they carry the force of law and require full compliance” the representative James Comer, who chairs the committee, said in the chamber on Tuesday afternoon before the voting began. “Mr Black’s testimony is crucial to our investigation because he maintained a close personal relationship with Epstein for years during the time when Epstein was engaged in sex trafficking.
Donald Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Trump, at an event at the White House in June. Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into Donald Trump Jr.’s relationship with a Russian oligarch who paid for much of Trump Jr.’s wedding earlier this year.
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., sent twoletters on Monday to the White House and Trump Jr. requesting records related to Trump Jr.’s financial relationship with the oligarch, Umar Kremlev.
“The secretive, close relationship between the son of a sitting U.S. President and a member of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s inner circle raises serious national security and public corruption concerns,” Garcia wrote. Garcia told Trump Jr. it “may be the most serious allegation against you to date.” The letter to Trump Jr. asked for documents including Trump Jr.’s communications with Kremlev and “financial records of all purchases made for your wedding by foreign nationals.”
“Paper Trail” Podcast
Learn more about this story on ProPublica’s podcast “Paper Trail.”
Trump Jr. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Garcia’s investigation.
The letters were prompted by a ProPublica investigation published Monday, which revealed that Kremlev secretly covered hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenses for Trump Jr.’s wedding. That included renting out a private island in the Bahamas for multiple nights. The wedding guest list numbered around 50, including Jared Kushner and other members of the Trump family. Kremlev, who first met Trump Jr. recently, also attended the intimate affair with a large group of other Russians.
Kremlev is close to Putin and serves as the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions.
Kremlev’s press office previously told ProPublica that he and Trump Jr. “have a friendly relationship” and that they don’t talk politics.
After ProPublica’s story was published, Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Trump, released a joint statement confirming Kremlev’s role. “Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us,” they said in a statement published on her Instagram account. “It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful.” They added, “Friendship doesn’t require a political motive.”
The couple also drew a distinction between the ceremony itself, which was just family, and the rest of the wedding weekend. In a statement released by the White House after the story was published, President Donald Trump echoed that. “I have no idea who Umar is, never heard of him, and he didn’t pay for Don and Bettina’s wedding, which took place at a totally different location, and on a different day from the wedding,” he said. “It was an ‘afterparty’ given in their honor. Not a big deal!”
The couple exchanged vows on Friday, May 22, on a private island in the Bahamas. The wedding festivities then continued for two days. The Saturday, May 23, event, which Kremlev paid for, was held on the same island as the ceremony. (“Night 2. One Love!” Bettina Trump posted about the Saturday festivities on Instagram.) The Sunday reception was held a roughly 10-minute boat ride away on a neighboring private island, rented out by Kremlev. At the Sunday reception, the couple had their first dance, with Bettina Trump wearing her wedding dress, and ate a five-tier wedding cake topped with a miniature bride and groom.
Afterward, the couple’s wedding planner talked to Hello! magazine about planning the three-day affair with Bettina Trump. “She wanted a progression,” said the planner, Lewis Miller. “The ceremony was very serene and pretty and soft, and the dinner was very elegant, and then the next night was much more colorful, and then the last night was more kind of cool and fun tropical vibes.”
Damaging budget report estimates cost will grow by $3bn per month and stockpiles of weapons could take five years to rebuild
The US House of Representatives has voted for a third time to end the war in Iran, approving a war powers resolution a few hours after a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report showed the conflict had cost at least $38bn and left America’s stockpile of defensive missiles so depleted it could take five years to rebuild.
The final tally of 220-204 was similar to earlier votes, with a few more Republicans joining most Democrats in calling for an end to the war. None of the resolutions have made it to the president’s desk, where Trump would almost certainly veto them.
More than 100 people reported to have joined search for Noah, who is autistic, non-verbal and has partial hearing loss
Police are urging people to check their gardens and sheds for a three-year-old boy who went missing on Tuesday during a visit to a playground near the Suffolk-Essex border.
The boy, named Noah, was last seen at 3pm in Merriam Close in Brantham, near Manningtree, before being separated from a relative. Officers from Suffolk constabulary said Noah was reported to have run down an alleyway near the playground towards a housing estate.
Three-month-old Jabal was returned to Park Slope bodega after community rallied to rescue purloined kitty
The owner of a New York City bodega on Tuesday was reunited with the store’s cat after a couple passing by the establishment five days earlier appeared to abduct the feline in plain view of a surveillance camera and ignited an intense grassroots search effort.
The plight of three-month-old Jabal began on Thursday morning in Brooklyn, when he went just outside the Eighth Street Mini Market where he lives as it opened for the day. A man walking alongside a woman passed the Park Slope market then picked up Jabal, and the pair took off as the kitten visibly squirmed, according to store surveillance video which the bodega’s owner, Imad “Jimmy” Innab, reviewed after he noticed the cat had gone missing.
This article was updated on 15 September 2026 to reflect Jabal’s return to the bodega.
Analysis of 29 studies highlights potentially heightened danger from small particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide
Air pollution is associated with an increased risk of suicide and suicidal thoughts, according to research.
Environmental pollution is known to be associated with poorer mental health but its role in suicide risk is less well understood. Scientists at Queen’s University Belfast examined whether air, noise, light, and water pollution could influence the risk of death by suicide and suicidal behaviours.
During a Senate committee hearing, FBI director answered questions from Republican senator John Kennedy about the bureau's new policy allowing the hiring of people who have engaged in bestiality
Congressman says defense secretary repeatedly violated constitution through his handling of Iran war
The Republican congressman Thomas Massie on Tuesday proposed impeaching Pete Hegseth, saying the defense secretary had repeatedly violated the constitution through his handling of war with Iran and the deaths of civilians in conflicts worldwide.
The proposal by Massie, an iconoclastic lawmaker who lost his primary earlier this year after Donald Trump and Hegseth urged voters to oppose him, may put House Republicans in a bind just weeks before the 3 November midterm elections, in which they are defending their control of Congress.
Hours before joining progressives to block a crypto bill that critics said was a handout to President Donald Trump, a top Senate Democrat was lobbying her colleagues to pass the legislation.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., a centrist who leads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, privately urged fellow Democrats to support advancing a crypto bill that would have created a regulatory framework for the industry, according to reporting in Politico.
Her pleas fell on deaf ears, however, as progressives including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., mounted a public campaign against the bill. The critics said the bill would allow President Donald Trump to add to the $1.4 billion in crypto profits he pocketed last year.
When it came time for the final vote, Gillibrand joined all Democrats in voting against a motion to advance the bill. Four Republicans also voted against the motion, which fell far short of the 60 votes needed to proceed to a full debate. The final tally was 49–50.
Gillibrand’s flip-flop reflected the bind that Trump has placed on moderate Democrats during his second term. Many of those centrists previously backed crypto-friendly regulations, but the historic scale of Trump’s profits on his meme coin and other crypto ventures has made them reluctant to publicly side with the industry.
“We deserve to know why she tried to get her colleagues to rubber-stamp this corrupt crypto deal.”
Gillibrand’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement, the progressive group Demand Progress criticized her for previously trying to rally support for the bill.
“While Sen. Gillibrand switched her support for the bill at the last minute, we deserve to know why she tried to get her colleagues to rubber-stamp this corrupt crypto deal, particularly at a time when she is claiming to oppose Trump’s corruption,” said the group’s corporate power policy adviser, Ella Fanger.
Gillibrand has long been one of the crypto industry’s most outspoken supporters in the Senate. Before the vote, an aide argued in a written statement that it would be best to proceed to debate on the Clarity Act, stating, “Senator Gillibrand would relish the chance to debate real ethics reforms on the floor — in full view of the public, seven weeks out from the midterms.”
Trump and Senate Republicans tried to win over the dozen or so Senate Democrats who have proven friendly to the crypto industry in the past with concessions they said would rein in the president’s crypto ventures.
In remarks on the Senate floor, one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wy., highlighted Gillibrand’s role in negotiations over the text as evidence of its bipartisan backing. Lummis also argued that the White House had conceded virtually everything that Democrats had asked for when it came to ethics provisions over the course of months of negotiations.
“President Trump gave more than anyone in this town expected, twice. It is time for this body to take yes for an answer,” she said. “Take the win.”
Warren and others warned that the supposed concessions were shot through with loopholes.
“We need crypto regulation, but voting to proceed to this bill is a vote to bless Donald Trump’s corruption,” Warren said hours before the vote.
“We need crypto regulation, but voting to proceed to this bill is a vote to bless Donald Trump’s corruption.”
One key provision that Democrats had sought would allow state attorneys general to initiate enforcement actions against the president for ethics violations. However, staffers for Warren on the Senate Banking Committee said that the provision included in the latest version of the bill text was essentially a dead letter, because political officials directed by Trump could issue a legal opinion shutting down the enforcement action.
Another provision of the bill allowing Trump to put his crypto assets in a supposedly “blind” trust would not prevent him from favoring the industry to increase his own profits, minority staffers for the Senate Banking Committee said.
Trump’s self-dealing was not the only issue hanging over the legislation. The banking industry also flexed its political muscles on the Hill by arguing that the bill would enable crypto start-ups to steal deposits from small local lenders.
Tuesday’s vote could create a liability for Democrats heading into the midterms. Crypto industry super PACs have a massive war chest that they could use to target vulnerable Democrats — a tactic they deployed during the 2024 election.
Voters want to know that candidates are willing to defy well-funded industries, Warren argued, pointing to the growing number of candidates who bucked crypto during the primary season and won nonetheless.
“The crypto industry doesn’t want to just lobby Congress, they want to buy the Congress that will be favorable to them,” she said. “It is our job when we run for elected office to stand up and do what’s right.”
In the lead-up to the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed said his U.S. Senate opponent consistently opposed funding for 9/11 first responders.
“Turns out you didn’t vote to deny 9/11 first responders healthcare twice,” he said. “You did it NINE times.” The post included a screenshot of a Sept. 12 Detroit Metro Times article with the headline, “Mike Rogers opposed 9/11 responder health care not twice, but nine times.”
When we asked El-Sayed’s campaign about his post, a spokesperson pointed us to the article’s reporting on Rogers’ voting record.
In a statement provided by his campaign, Rogers said 9/11 one of the worst days in U.S. history and called El-Sayed’s suggestion that Rogers doesn’t support the victims is “patently false.”
“In Congress, I proposed and advocated for an annual $150 million appropriation to support the needs of 9/11 survivors and victim families,” Rogers said.
Rogers opposed the 2010 bill that created the World Trade Center Health Program and dedicated billions in funding for 9/11 first responders, but the nine-vote tally El-Sayed described is missing context.
The attacks come as Rogers has said El-Sayed “believes America deserved 9/11,” a claim we rated Pants on Fire.
The 2010 first responders healthcare bill
Healthcare funding for 9/11 first responders and victims emerged after years of advocacy and a patchwork of programs before the 2010 James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Actcreated a unified World Trade Center Health Program.
The law, which passed under Democratic-led chambers in Congress, approved $4.3 billion in funding for victim compensation, health monitoring and treatment for 9/11 first responders and victims.
Rogers voted against that bill on the House floor on two separate occasions, as well as in committee and during other procedural measures — a total of nine votes. On the final House passage, three days before Christmas in 2010, Rogers was one of 89 Republicans and 79 Democrats who didn’t vote.
Rogers said at the time he opposed the proposal because of its high price tag, and because it locked in a funding rate over many years instead of requiring yearly approval from Congress. The House bill Rogers voted against initially called for $7.4 billion in funding over 10 years, before it was cut to $4.3 billion over five years on final passage.
“Like every member of this committee, I fully support the 9/11 health program and believe the federal government has a responsibility to take care of first responders and survivors,” he said during a 2010 Energy and Commerce Committee meeting, according to a transcript. “But I also believe that we should not create an entitlement program.”
Rogers proposed a smaller option that would have codified the existing 9/11 first responder health programs and allocated $150 million a year to them, subject to annual congressional approval.
Ben Chevat, former chief of staff for U.S. House Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the lead sponsor on the Zadroga bill, said mandatory funding was necessary to take care of first responders long-term.
Funding through annual appropriations, as Rogers proposed, “is short term and uncertain from year to year, depending totally on the priorities of the Congress and the Executive Branch at any point in time,” said Chevat, now executive director of 9/11 Health Watch, an organization that advocates for 9/11 victims and first responders. “There is no guarantee that it will continue.”
Rogers’ other votes
Those two votes are clear examples of Rogers opposing the landmark bill that guaranteed long-term health funding for 9/11 victims. The seven other votes are where the argument gets shaky.
One is a 2003 vote against a motion to add $90 million in funding for a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program for 9/11 first responder health, along with $3.5 billion in general first responder grants. That motion didn’t pass, but Rogers later voted yes on another spending bill that same year, which dedicated $90 million from FEMA for long-term health monitoring for 9/11 first responders.
The campaign also referenced a 2007 vote against a broad budget bill that included $50 million in 9/11 first responder funding, and a later vote against overriding the president’s veto. That bill wasn’t focused only on 9/11 healthcare funding; it also funded the Health and Human Services, Labor and Education departments. Rogers opposed the bill’s final passage, but he voted yestwice on earlier versions of the bill that included similar 9/11 victim healthcare funding.
The other votes include:
A procedural vote against considering the Zadroga bill.
A vote for an amendment to the Zadroga bill that would shut down funding if it increased the national debt.
A vote against advancing the Zadroga bill out of committee.
Support for a motion to send the Zadroga bill back to committee with instructions to reduce the funding.
Counting procedural votes and votes on broad spending bills, that adds up to nine votes against and three votes in favor of healthcare funding for 9/11 first responders, plus four votes for 9/11 relief immediately after the attacks.
Our ruling
El-Sayed said Rogers “voted to deny health care” to 9/11 first responders “nine times.”
Rogers opposed the signature bill that funded healthcare, monitoring and compensation for 9/11 victims and first responders. And he opposed funding amendments and budget bills that included funds for 9/11 first responders at times.
But the broader accusation takes some votes out of context and ignores other votes in favor of support for 9/11 responders. He voted at least three times for legislation that included 9/11 healthcare funding, and four other times for 9/11 recovery and benefits for victims.
The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.
A bold foray into an alternate universe crashes Logan against dysfunctional families, doomed love and antimutant violence, but its logic frays as the game goes on.
30th annual show celebrates nation’s 250th anniversary with rare vehicles from independent automakers
WILMINGTON, Del. — Hundreds of classic vehicles will roll into Hagley Museum and Library on Sunday, Sept. 20, as the Hagley Car Show celebrates its 30th anniversary and America’s 250th birthday.
The rain-or-shine show will run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the fields surrounding the first du Pont family home. Thousands of automobile enthusiasts are expected to attend.
This year’s theme, “American Independent Automakers,” will spotlight companies that competed outside Detroit’s “Big Three” of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. Featured manufacturers will include AMC, Packard, Studebaker and Hudson.
Classic cars of all makes and models, dating from the early 20th century through 2001, will fill the main show field.
Rare vehicles highlight American innovation
Among the lesser-known automobiles scheduled to appear is a 1940 Graham Hollywood Supercharged Sedan.
Graham-Paige was founded in 1927 after three brothers purchased the Paige-Detroit Motor Car Co. for $4 million and invested an additional $4 million in the business. The company introduced innovations including shatterproof windshields and its distinctive “shark-nose” body design before automobile production ended in 1940.
The featured field will also include a rare 1963 Kellison J-3 Roadster. Its aerodynamic fiberglass body reflects the aviation background of company founder Jim Kellison, a former Air Force mechanic who drew inspiration from fighter jets and Italian sports cars.
The vehicles represent a period when smaller manufacturers tested new designs and technologies while competing against the nation’s dominant automakers.
30 years of automotive history
Hagley launched the car show in 1996 as “100 Years of Cars,” commemorating the Duryea brothers’ first production run of gasoline-powered vehicles in 1896.
Three decades later, the annual event has grown into a gathering for collectors, families and automobile enthusiasts from across the region.
Visitors can walk among rows of vintage vehicles while listening to music from different motoring eras. A parade featuring some of the show’s most distinctive vehicles will begin at 11:30 a.m.
Food trucks will offer meals and refreshments throughout the day.
Admission is sold by the carload and must be purchased in advance. Passes will not be available at the gate. General admission is $30 per vehicle, while Hagley members pay $25.
To Go Box:
What: Hagley Car Show
When: Sunday, Sept. 20, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Vehicle parade: 11:30 a.m.
Where: Hagley Museum and Library, 200 Hagley Creek Road, Wilmington
Admission: $30 per carload for the general public; $25 per carload for Hagley members
Tickets: Advance purchase is required at hagley.org/carshow, the Hagley Visitor Center or the Museum Store through Saturday, Sept. 19. No tickets will be sold at the gate.
Arrival: Visitors must enter through Hagley’s main entrance off Route 141 and arrive no later than 1 p.m.
SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 15, 2026 — Astera Labs, Inc., a leader in semiconductor-based connectivity solutions for rack-scale AI infrastructure, today announced three new memory connectivity solutions—Leo X-Series and the Leo 2 E & P-Series—extending its hyperscale-proven Leo Smart Memory Controller family across direct fabric-attached GPU memory and CPU-attached expansion and pooled/shared memory architectures.
“Agentic AI adoption is outpacing the industry’s ability to provision memory for it, and that gap is widening every quarter,” said Matt Kimball, vice president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “That growth is landing at the worst possible time for memory supply, with DDR5 tight and pricing climbing, so every gigabyte already deployed has to work harder. The new Leo X-Series and Leo 2 E and P-Series Smart Memory Controllers immediately address KV-cache-intensive AI workloads, improve memory utilization, and reliably reuse previously deployed memory across both AI and general-purpose cloud infrastructure, instead of simply buying more of it.”
New Leo X-Series: Direct Fabric-Attached Memory for Agentic AI
The new Leo X-Series is a fabric-attached Smart Memory Controller purpose-built to directly support AI accelerator-side memory demand. Paired with Astera Labs’ Scorpio fabric switches, using PCIe and platform-specific protocols for scaling up GPUs, Leo X-Series enables direct connectivity to AI fabrics and a dedicated memory tier for offloading KV cache and agent context. As context windows grow and multi-turn sessions retain more prior tokens, larger KV-cache capacity with low-latency and high bandwidth access becomes critical for the highest-value agentic AI inference workloads, helping minimize response times and deliver a more responsive user experience.
By connecting memory directly to the scale-up fabric, Leo X-Series provides a lower-latency and higher bandwidth path for GPU-to-KV-cache access versus architectures that rely solely on CPU-attached memory or NVMe storage tiers. Leo X-Series’ support for PCIe in addition to platform-specific custom interfaces allows hyperscalers and AI platform providers to build a customized memory companion architecture suited to their compute platform rather than a one-size-fits-all design. These capabilities are designed to improve KV-cache performance and token economics, delivering up to 62% lower TTFT and up to 22% more TPS.
Enhanced Leo 2 E-Series and Leo 2 P-Series for Memory Expansion and Pooling/Sharing
The enhanced Leo 2 E & P-Series provide complementary approaches to CPU-attached capacity and rack-scale memory utilization that can support AI agents, in-memory databases, and general-purpose cloud workloads. These devices support four DDR4 or DDR5 memory controllers that double memory bandwidth and capacity versus the previous generation, while an optimized chip package fits add-in cards and other designs to optimize DIMM integration density.
Leo 2 E-Series provides direct CPU-attached CXL 3.2 memory expansion via PCIe 6 x16 host connectivity. It delivers additional memory capacity without requiring another CPU socket and enables infrastructure providers to redeploy previously deployed memory in new, state-of-the-art cloud servers supporting high-volume workloads.
Leo 2 P-Series enables disaggregated CXL memory architectures with pooling and sharing across hosts, supported by dual-port PCIe 6 x8 connectivity and dynamic capacity management. Hosts can draw pooled memory on demand instead of over-provisioning every server, turning stranded DRAM into a rack-level resource increasing utilization which is critical in a memory supply constrained environment.
A Common Foundation for Reliable, Interoperable Memory Deployment and Re-Use
Across the Leo family, hyperscale-grade RAS and memory-health management support reliable operation for evolving compute and memory platforms. Purpose-built memory test engines and automated repair engines help extend maximum lifetime for existing memory DIMMs, assist with pre-deployment testing, and identify reliable DIMMs for reuse. Enhanced memory error reporting, event recording, scrubbing, customizable thermal management, and resilient firmware updates help protect workloads and extend memory service life.
Workload monitoring, performance profiling, hotness tracking, software-defined data placement, and latency optimization help fine-tune memory placement and access latency for long-context agentic AI and general purpose workloads. Telemetry and management integration, together with Astera Labs’ COSMOS software suite, provides fleet-wide visibility as operators combine previously deployed DDR4, newly deployed DDR5 in modern cloud server fleets, pooled, and accelerator-attached capacity across the rack.
“Agentic AI is where the economics of AI infrastructure are being decided, and those economics depend on putting every usable gigabyte of memory to work,” said Thad Omura, senior vice president, Compute Connectivity Group at Astera Labs. “The enhanced Leo family gives infrastructure providers purpose-built ways to connect memory to accelerators, CPUs, and hosts across the rack—turning previously deployed and stranded capacity into a resource that new AI and cloud workloads can use. We’re seeing that translate into broader customer engagement across AI labs, hyperscalers, and neoclouds.”
The enhanced Leo family was developed by Astera Labs in close collaboration with CPU and GPU ecosystem partners, including AMD, Arm, Intel, and major memory suppliers, alongside additional hyperscale and OEM collaborators. The family is sampling today with hyperscaler customers.
Astera Labs will demonstrate Leo family capabilities—including direct fabric-attached memory for Agentic AI, DDR4 reuse, dynamic memory pooling, and Agentic AI memory tiering with Scorpio X-Series—at AI Infra Summit 2026 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, September 15–17.
About Astera Labs
Astera Labs (Nasdaq: ALAB) provides rack-scale AI infrastructure through purpose-built connectivity solutions. By collaborating with hyperscalers and ecosystem partners, Astera Labs enables organizations to unlock the full potential of modern AI. Astera Labs’ Intelligent Connectivity Platform integrates CXL, Ethernet, NVLink Fusion, PCIe, and UALink semiconductor-based technologies with the company’s COSMOS software suite to unify diverse components into cohesive, flexible systems that deliver end-to-end scale-up and scale-out connectivity. The company’s custom connectivity solutions business complements its standards-based portfolio, enabling customers to deploy tailored architectures to meet their unique infrastructure requirements. Discover more at www.asteralabs.com.
The pending transfer of the 2,000-pound munition, involved in scores of incidents resulting in civilian casualties, sets up a potential litmus test for Democrats.
Tuesday's hearing marked the first time that Patel has publicly addressed the new hiring standards related to prostitution, employment theft and bestiality.
In the Texas Senate race, Republican candidate Ken Paxton is running an ad that features an artificial-intelligence version of James Talarico, Paxton’s Democratic opponent, repeating several statements the real Talarico made about religion and gender identity.
But some of the statements are missing the context behind the remarks, and the various comments weren’t strung together the way the AI-generated ad presents them. The ad also includes some phrases that weren’t part of Talarico’s statements.
Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, has attempted to clarify, or walk back, some of what he said about God being nonbinary or there being more than two biological sexes.
The Paxton campaign released the ad on Sept. 8, and it has aired on cable and streaming or digital platforms in Texas and other parts of the country, according to AdImpact, which tracks political advertising.
About 20 seconds into the 30-second ad, a disclaimer in tiny print appears at the bottom of the screen saying, “Certain video content depicted in this advertising was generated by artificial intelligence.” But not everyone may realize that the ad shows an AI-created Talarico, making remarks about religion as the generated character writes in, and reads from, the fictional “King James (Talarico) Bible.” We asked the Paxton campaign about its ad, and the comments it attributes to Talarico, but we didn’t receive a response.
In a statement to us about the ad, JT Ennis, a Talarico campaign spokesperson, said, “Ken Paxton and his billionaire backers in DC know they can’t rely on facts to win this race — so their only answer is to literally put words in James’ mouth with AI deepfake videos to try and fool Texans. Dark money groups are lying about James Talarico because they’re scared of the people-powered movement we’re building to fix this broken, corrupt political system.”
Here, we’ll cover the statements that Talarico did make and provide the context not included in the ad. Some of Talarico’s remarks mentioned in the ad were also brought upbypoliticians speaking at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas on Sept. 9 and 10.
NEW AD: James Talarico is weaponizing faith to sell a radical agenda, and he even brags about hating Christianity. pic.twitter.com/Wa2nQ3vsIq
One of the statements the ad shows the AI-version of Talarico saying is: “I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity.” Paxton, the Texas attorney general, referred to the same statement during his remarks at the midterm convention, saying of Talarico, “He calls himself a Christian who hates Christianity.”
During an interview that touched on religion and politics, Talarico was asked by one of the podcast’s hosts, “How do we opt out of these systems that we’re conscripted into in such a way that we can live a generative, imaginative life? That’s what I’m curious about.” (Skip to about the 45:00 mark of the audio.)
In response, Talarico started by saying, “Yeah, and that’s, you know, I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity, right?” But then he said, “And, like, I always get drawn back into it because nowhere else, in no other political philosophy, in no other economic theory, do I find anything as truly radical or revolutionary as the teachings of that barefoot rabbi, right? Which I think, as you mentioned, Dr. Robyn, you know, look a lot like, you know, the teachings of the Buddha and from other great mystical traditions. But I can’t find anything wherever I look that really is quite the same inversion of values that I think we need, right?”
Earlier in the podcast conversation, Talarico and the hosts had discussed how Talarico navigates working with colleagues in the Texas Legislature who have “ethical standards” that are not aligned with “the teaching of the Jesus that we serve,” as one of the hosts said.
Expanding on his comments about Christianity, the Talarico campaign said in a statement: “The Christian seminarian who’s dedicated his life to the teachings of Jesus Christ obviously doesn’t hate Christianity. James is a devout Christian who fights religious and political corruption when he sees it — because there’s nothing Christ-like about powerful people twisting the teachings of Jesus to justify hate, violence, and greed.”
Remark About a Nonbinary God
The ad starts with the fake Talarico saying, “In the beginning, God was nonbinary and he wasn’t a Christian.” As the generated character utters those words, the phrases “God is nonbinary” and “God is not a Christian” are shown on screen in quotation marks.
Talarico said “God is nonbinary” during Oct. 14, 2021, Texas House floor remarks in which he spoke against HB 25, a Texas bill that became a state law requiring children to compete on school sports teams according to the sex they were assigned at birth. He was making a point about a section of the Bible that uses male and female terminology when referring to God.
“Before I sit down, I want to speak directly to my fellow believers in the chamber,” Talarico began. “I listened to 15 hours of testimony on this bill. The worst part, for me, was the number of Christians who used scripture to justify hurting children. Even on this floor today, a member tried to justify a hateful amendment in the name of ‘God’s Law.’ So, let’s talk about that.”
He then added, “The first two lines of the Bible, the first two lines in Genesis, use two different Hebrew words to describe God. One is the masculine Hebrew noun for divinity. The second is the feminine Hebrew noun for spirit. God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary. In Genesis 1:26, God speaks of God’s self in the plural, saying, ‘Let us make human beings in our image to be like us.’ That’s the infinite multitude of God. The masculine, the feminine and everything in between.”
In a Sept. 9 Fox News interview, Talarico explained the intent of his remark.
“I was being provocative with that statement. I get that,” he said. “What I was trying to say is that you can’t use human categories to define God. And that’s not controversial, theologically.”
As for the quote “God is not a Christian,” Talarico said that during an October 2023 sermon at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, in which he discussed how God is bigger than any one religion. The title of the sermon was “God Is Not A Christian: Confronting Christian Nationalism.” (Christian nationalism is an ideology that believes the U.S. is a Christian nation and Christianity should be incorporated into the government and American society.)
Here’s the fuller context for Talarico’s comment:
Talarico sermon, Oct. 22, 2023: Christian nationalism is not only a threat to the American experiment in democracy, it’s also a threat to the gospel of Jesus Christ. When someone asked Jesus to name his most important commandment, he cheats and gives two, two that he says are related. The first is to love God. The second, he said, is like it: Love thy neighbor as thyself. It’s like it because when I recognize the divine image in myself, I can’t help but recognize it in my neighbor, whether they’re Christian or not, whether they’re religious or not. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus specifically defines neighbor as someone different from us racially, economically, politically, religiously. God loves diversity. God loves variety – just look around this big beautiful planet of ours. Do we really think God would make all these beautiful people with all their beautiful traditions for no reason at all? There are so many pathways to the sacred. The Islamic mystic Rumi said every religion has love, but love has no religion. God is so much bigger than our human categories. God is not a Presbyterian. God is not a Christian. God is not a noun at all. God is a verb. God is not a being. God is being.
Remark About Six Sexes
The ad goes on to have the manufactured Talarico say, “And God said, ‘Let there be six genders.’ And there were.” That’s a reference to something Talarico said in a 2021 legislative hearing on HB 4042, another bill aimed at restricting children’s participation on school sports teams based on the sex assigned at birth.
During the hearing, Talarico questioned the bill’s sponsor, Republican state Rep. Cole Hefner, about the legislation and asked and answered a question about the number of biological sexes. Talarico had already noted that gender and sex are not the same. (Jump to about 2:15:00 in the video.)
“How many biological sexes are there?” Talarico asked. Hefner eventually said two. Talarico then said Hefner’s bill “seems to think there are two,” but Talarico said that “modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes.”
“In fact, there are six,” Talarico said, before listing several different chromosome combinations. “Rather than just the XX and XY,” the typical respective chromosome pairs for biological females and males, Talarico said there’s single X, XXY, XYY and XXXY. “So, there are six really common biological sexes,” he said, adding that individuals “with sex characteristics that intersect into that” are known as intersex.
“I think the point is that, biologically speaking, scientifically speaking, sex is a spectrum,” he said.
As we’ve explained before, biological sex is not always easily determined. While most people have XX or XY chromosomes with corresponding male or female reproductive cells, anatomy and sexual development, there are cases when there are fewer or extra chromosomes and instances when these biological features do not fully align with a single sex.
About 1 in 4,500 people each year are born with medical conditions known as Differences of Sex Development, which is also called intersex, according to the Pediatric Endocrine Society.
But in his Sept. 9 Fox News interview, Talarico walked back his 2021 comments, saying “no,” when asked if he still believes there are six biological sexes.
“I’ve missed the mark on some of my past statements. I will be the first to admit it,” Talarico said in the interview. “What I meant is that there are two sexes, and then there’s a small percentage of people with genetic abnormalities. I obviously didn’t say it correctly. There are not six sexes, there are two.”
Other Remarks Attributed to Talarico
The ad also shows the fake Talarcio saying that God “gave us his only son, who was a radical feminist and never asked people to worship him.” Then, just before the ad ends, the Talarico lookalike says, “America is not a Christian nation.”
Talarico did refer to Jesus as a “radical feminist” while commenting on the subject of abortion and “Christianity’s feminist tradition” during an October 2022 sermon at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church.
“Thankfully, feminist, womanist theologians are helping us remember Christianity’s feminist tradition – a tradition that has been obscured and hidden by generations of men,” Talarico said. “Did they teach you in Sunday school that men and women are created equally in the Book of Genesis? Did they teach you in Sunday school that the Bible sometimes describes God as a female, calling her Sophia? Did they teach you in Sunday school that Jesus Christ himself was a radical feminist?”
Talarico then said, “I don’t claim to know what Jesus thought about abortion. He never mentions it either, which maybe that should tell us something right there. But what I do know is that Jesus believed a woman is a full person, and that’s the definition of a feminist.”
In addition, Talarico said that “America is not a Christian nation” on the Jan. 13 episode of the “Vote Common Good” podcast. He made the case that America is a place for people to worship a god, or not, freely.
“My faith in Jesus leads me to reject Christian nationalism and leads me to recommit myself to the project, the unfinished project, of a multiracial, multicultural democracy where we can all freely love God if that’s what we choose to do, and where we can fully love our neighbors, all of our neighbors,” Talarico said. “America is not a Christian nation; it is a nation where you are free to be a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Hindu, or a Sikh, or a Buddhist, or an agnostic, or an atheist.”
Talarico said that “because Jesus was deeply suspicious of religious supremacy,” Christians have to “be on guard of any attempt to elevate our faith tradition over all the others” and “to be suspicious of any attempts to dominate our neighbors instead of loving them as ourselves.”
At the same time, Talarico said that he sees “the radical teachings of Jesus” in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, in that “all people are created equal” and “have inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Talarico called that a “Christian form of government” and said “pluralistic democracy is a Christian value” that Christians “should feel a special obligation to defend.”
Finally, in a video clip that the Team Talarico Facebook account posted in December 2025, Talarico said, “Not once in the entire Bible does Jesus ask us to worship him.” Talarico was explaining that Jesus’ teachings were focused on helping and loving others.
“Jesus didn’t tell us to love our churches. He didn’t tell us to love our doctrines and our creeds. He didn’t even tell us to love our scriptures. He told us to love our neighbors,” he said. “All he asks is that we follow him. Love like he loved. Love the outcast. Welcome the stranger. Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. Free the oppressed.”
At the beginning of the short video, Talarico had said, “Christian nationalists walk around with a mouth full of scripture and a heart filled with hate.” He said he could tell what someone believes based on how they treat other people.
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NEW YORK, Sept. 15, 2026 — Liquid Compute, a marketplace company building regulated venues for trading AI infrastructure, today emerged from stealth with $15 million in seed funding co-led by FirstMark and Chemistry, with participation from K8 Capital, Night Capital, TrueBridge, Brainchild Holdings, UFO Holdings, and angel Dmitry Balyasny.
Founded by Ronit Jain and Aarav Patel, Liquid Compute (formerly Pluto) is a Y Combinator (W24) company. The founders met as engineering students at UC Berkeley and came to believe that compute should be organized more like a power grid than a conventional commodity market like oil. Capacity is heterogeneous, location-dependent, and perishable, making the central challenge one of matching supply and demand across time, geography, and infrastructure. Liquid Compute is building a market layer that connects this fragmented physical capacity into a more transparent and standardized compute grid.
That physical grid is intended to support a financial layer above it. Liquid Compute’s pending applications from the CFTC would allow the company to develop regulated cash-settled markets tied to prices formed across the underlying compute market, giving buyers, suppliers, and financial participants a way to price and manage exposure to compute at scale.
“Our goal is to be the regulated financial infrastructure for a new asset class, similar to what NYMEX was to oil, CBOE was to volatility, and Kalshi was to event contracts,” said Ronit Jain, CEO of Liquid Compute. “Access to compute increasingly determines access to intelligence. We are creating the essential marketplace through which both natural users and financial participants can access, price, and manage that resource.”
“Compute is rapidly becoming strategic infrastructure for the United States,” said Adam Nelson, Partner at FirstMark. “That creates a need for market infrastructure that gives industry and government a transparent view into how capacity is priced, allocated, and financed. Liquid Compute is building a regulated physical and financial layer for the American compute economy.”
The company believes this architecture will become increasingly important as compute moves from a commercial input to a matter of national economic and strategic importance. Just as governments helped establish the regulatory and market frameworks around electricity and other critical infrastructure, Liquid Compute expects compute markets to require clear standards, transparent pricing, and regulated venues through which capacity can be allocated and risk can be managed.
“Most people building in this space are treating compute as a fungible commodity like oil, and most of the infrastructure being built reflects that,” said Mark Goldberg, Managing Partner at Chemistry. “Liquid Compute started from a different premise. They are building the physical market first, then the regulated financial layer on top of it, closer to how power markets actually work.”
Liquid Compute has also signed trading and data licensing partnerships with Susquehanna Predictions, BGC Group, and Wintermute.
“BGC is excited to have signed a data partnership with Liquid Compute to support our build out of the OTC market for Compute and congratulate Ronit and team for their successful capital raise,” said Arran Rowsell, Head of Strategy at BGC Group.
The company will use the new funding to accelerate the buildout of its core matching and clearing infrastructure and expand the amount of compute available across its grid. On top of the physical orderbook, Liquid Compute is developing transparent pricing and market data that gives buyers, sellers, traders, and lenders a clearer view of how the industry prices capacity, underwrites infrastructure, manages risk, and allocates capital. Liquid Compute is also hiring for compliance and market operations to support its pending CFTC applications.
To learn more about our mission or inquire about partnerships, please visit liquidcompute.com.
About Liquid Compute
Liquid Compute is a New York-based company building the first physical grid for compute underneath a pending CFTC-regulated cash-settled futures exchange. By providing a marketplace for users to transact in the short term and monetize unutilized capacity, Liquid Compute is underpinning the foundation for the utility of American compute.
Pure curiosity.. I got another tire to swap out already so no panicking pls. I'm just curious from those who have. What happens when it's too far gone? Just doesn't hold air at all? Does it ever "pop" (bead breaking from low psi drops is not what I mean) with regular use or at speed has anyone had a tire "finish" on em and what happened?
Leftwing senator and far-right strategist rail against tech oligarchs but offer competing visions on Chinese ‘cold war’
The progressive senator Bernie Sanders and rightwing strategist Steve Bannon have called for restrictions on artificial intelligence (AI) but offered competing visions for what they termed a “cold war” with China.
Speaking at the “Pro-Human Assembly” in Washington on Tuesday, the ideological adversaries were united in warning of the potential dangers of AI and demanding stringent guardrails against Silicon Valley’s “oligarchs”.
On Tuesday, the 10-year treasury rate yield reached a 19-year high at 5.041% as investors are wary Iran war fallout
Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, claimed the government’s massive buyback of US bonds was a success.
The claim came as the 10-year treasury yield reached a 19-year high on Tuesday, increasing pressure on interest rates as the Federal Reserve weighs another hike to see off rising inflation.
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Image courtesy of Harmony Senior Living. AI-generated on 9/15.
Veterans and their families are invited to attend the Sept. 18 ceremony and complimentary luncheon
DOVER, Del. — Harmony at Kent will recognize military veterans from its senior living community and the greater Dover area with the dedication of a new Wall of Honor on Friday, Sept. 18.
The ribbon-cutting and dedication ceremony will begin at 11 a.m. at Harmony at Kent, 1435 E. Lebanon Road. Officers from Dover Air Force Base are expected to attend, offer remarks and help commemorate the occasion.
The Wall of Honor was created to recognize the courage, commitment and contributions of veterans who live at Harmony at Kent. It also is intended to serve as a lasting tribute to military service members throughout the Dover community.
“We are proud to recognize the men and women who have served our country and helped shape our community,” said Executive Director Philip Milnamow, who is also a veteran. “This Wall of Honor serves as a meaningful reminder of their sacrifice, dedication and patriotism, and we are honored to celebrate them and their families.”
The public recognition carries particular significance in Dover, where Dover Air Force Base has long been an important part of the community and military families have helped shape the region’s identity.
Veterans from throughout the Dover area and their family members are invited to attend the ceremony. A complimentary luncheon with veterans, military representatives and community members will follow the dedication.
Harmony at Kent offers independent living, assisted living and memory care apartments. The community also provides social activities, meals and on-site physical, occupational and speech therapy.
To Go Box
What: Wall of Honor Ribbon Cutting and Dedication
When: 11 a.m. Friday, Sept. 18
Where: Harmony at Kent, 1435 E. Lebanon Road, Dover
Who may attend: Dover-area veterans and their families
Cost: Free; a complimentary luncheon will follow the ceremony
Employers will have to hold face-to-face meetings with staff who ask about shift changes under government reforms
Company bosses will have to sit down with workers who request flexible working and justify their reasons for any refusals under new rights announced by Louise Haigh on Tuesday.
The first secretary of state told the TUC conference that employers would have to “properly consider” requests for flexibility and offer a face-to-face meeting under new rights for workers.
Nathaniel James McGuire faces maximum sentence of life in prison after guilty plea over September 2024 bombing
A California man has pleaded guilty to charges that he detonated a bomb at a Santa Maria courthouse in 2024 in retaliation for law enforcement officers seizing his firearms earlier that year.
In September 2024, Nathaniel James McGuire, 22, of Santa Barbara county threw a backpack containing an explosive device into the courthouse before exiting the building to retrieve two long guns and 10 molotov cocktails from his car.
The Senate on Tuesday failed to advance a sweeping cryptocurrency bill known as the Clarity Act, amid opposition from Democrats and a handful of Republicans.
Texas star called clip of coach slapping reporter ‘hilarious’
Manning: ‘Nothing funny about it … I need to do better’
Rowe posts that she accepts apology, will move forward
Texas’s star quarterback, Arch Manning, has apologized after joking about an AI-generated video that depicted Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian slapping ESPN college football reporter Holly Rowe after last Saturday’s game.
Manning had been asked at a press conference on Monday about the social media reaction to the Longhorns’ 24-23 upset win over No 1 Ohio State. Rowe had attempted to ask Sarkisian a question for the standard postgame interview, but the coach interrupted her and yelled a pair of Texas slogans before walking off.
SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 15, 2026 — Altera Corporation today announced that its parent company has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) relating to the proposed public offering of its common stock.
The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The proposed public offering remains subject to the completion of the SEC review process, as well as market and other conditions.
This press release is being issued pursuant to, and in accordance with, Rule 135 under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (“Securities Act”), and does not constitute an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities. Any offers, solicitations or offers to buy, or any sales of securities will be made in accordance with the registration requirements of the Securities Act.
Altera provides high-performance, programmable compute and connectivity solutions that enable the rapid adoption and continued advancement of transformative technologies across a wide range of advanced and AI-enabled systems. Altera is the largest pure-play FPGA provider with a full-spectrum portfolio serving applications ranging from data centers and communications networks to critical embedded systems.
Included with the V12 Data Platform, Sentinel continuously monitors the VDURA Data Platform, can immediately transmit health information to our support team and opens support tickets with the diagnosis already attached
PITTSBURGH, Sept. 15, 2026 — VDURA, provider of high-performance data storage infrastructure for AI factories and neoclouds, today announced VDURA Sentinel, a proactive support capability included with the VDURA Data Platform V12. Sentinel runs natively on the platform, watching continuously for faults and other notable events.
Customers can share that health data with VDURA’s support team through the Sentinel cloud service, where it is analyzed against patterns drawn from thousands of VDURA systems in the field. When Sentinel spots an issue, it automatically opens a service request with VDURA support, complete with a proposed fix, often before anyone on site knows there’s a problem.
For operators running GPU clusters, the cost of a storage fault is measured in the hours between the fault and the fix: idle accelerators, stalled training jobs, and for a neocloud, tenant SLAs at risk. Conventional storage support adds delay at every step. Someone notices a symptom, files a ticket, gathers logs, describes the problem, and waits for a technician to work out what happened. Sentinel removes that cycle.
Sentinel continuously reads health, capacity, and alert telemetry from each system and compares it against failure patterns VDURA has resolved across thousands of systems in the field. When a pattern matches, the VDURA support team receives a plain-language summary, a trend view, and a recommended action, with the service request already open and, where needed, a parts dispatch initiated on the customer’s behalf. The first person to look at the ticket is looking at a diagnosis, not a blank page.
Sentinel is built on the same API-first foundation as the rest of the V12 platform. The collector gathers its telemetry through the platform’s published APIs, and everything Sentinel sees is equally available to the customer’s own dashboards and observability tooling. There is no privileged vendor-only view: operators get fleet-level observability into their storage as a first-class part of the platform, and VDURA support sees only the subset the customer chooses to share.
Built for Security-Conscious Infrastructure Teams
AI factories and GPU cloud providers operate under strict data-handling and tenant-isolation requirements, and many will not accept a vendor agent with write access or an opaque telemetry stream. Sentinel was designed around those constraints:
Read-only, outbound-only: The collector runs inside the customer’s environment with read-only credentials and makes only outbound HTTPS connections. There is no inbound access and no ability to change configuration or touch data.
File data never leaves the building: Sentinel does not transmit file contents, credentials, user or workload information, or logs. Only four categories of operational metadata can be shared: fleet health and capacity metrics, node inventory, alerts, and deep-dive diagnostics.
Per-category control, no support call required: Each of the four categories can be switched off independently, or all sharing can be disabled entirely, by the customer at any time. The local dashboard and the underlying storage are unaffected either way.
Inspect before it ships: A built-in payload inspector shows the exact contents of every outbound push before it is sent.
Auditable code: VDURA publishes the collector as dependency-free, readable Python so customer security teams can review exactly what it does.
“Every storage failure a customer sees is one we have almost certainly already seen and resolved somewhere else in the fleet,” said Erik Salo, SVP of Marketing and Operations at VDURA. “Sentinel puts that fleet-wide knowledge to work automatically so the first person to look at a ticket is looking at a diagnosis instead of a blank page. For a GPU cloud, the gap between fault and fix is measured in idle accelerators and tenant SLAs. Closing that gap is what proactive support should mean.”
Availability
Sentinel is included with the VDURA Data Platform V12 release, including the local fleet health dashboard and API access to the underlying telemetry. Proactive service requests and parts dispatch are delivered through VDURACare Premier, VDURA’s 10-year support offering that covers hardware, software, and 24×7 expert response under a single contract.
About VDURA
VDURA is the high performance data storage infrastructure for AI factories and Neoclouds. Powered by HYDRA, its software-defined, mixed-fleet architecture keeps every GPU fed, every tenant isolated, and every cluster online, delivering hyperscale-class durability and economics with up to 12 nines of durability and a heritage of more than 1,000 production deployments. Visit vdura.com for more information.
Scandal explodes as country’s election campaign peaks, with polls suggesting dead heat between candidates
Brazil’s supreme court has been thrust into what experts consider the greatest crisis since the return of democracy in the 1980s, as two rival judges lock horns on the eve of the presidential election with unpredictable consequences for Latin America’s largest democracy.
The politically charged dispute exploded into public view on Tuesday as judges traded insults and accusations during a heated supreme court hearing that was livestreamed into millions of Brazilian homes.
Bernie Sanders criticised the advancement of artificial intelligence at the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington on Tuesday, warning that the current type of AI was 'the least capable version of AI that we will ever have'. The independent senator from Vermont was speaking at the conference alongside a number of AI sceptics, including Steve Bannon
Prime minister speaks of strengthening Canada’s economic and political ties to Europe at Canada Investment Summit
Mark Carney said Canada will pursue a “unique security and economic alliance” with Europe as he positions his country as a base to build in the “new global economic order”.
Speaking to investors, company executives and government ministers at the inaugural Canada Investment Summit on Tuesday, the prime minister pitched Canada as a “safe harbour” and lucrative home for foreign capital as his government looks to reduce its reliance on trade with the United States.
The Senate fails to advance crypto bill. Democrats had raised concerns that the bill would not do enough to address President Donald Trump’s crypto empire.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found a brand new type of an otherwise familiar object -- compact binary systems that steal gas from other stars, but which do so while emitting very low-energy X-rays but copious amounts of ultraviolet. Chandra spotted 84 suspicious object emitting very low-energy X-rays in six galaxies -- four evolved ellipticals and two spirals, namely our near-neighbor the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101). "We've never encountered a group of objects that act like this," said Mustafa Muhibullah of the University of Alabama in a statement.
Compact objects, in the form of black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs, are the remains of stars that have died. Their small size and powerful gravity means that they're adept at getting close to orbiting companion stars and ripping the stars' outer layers of gas away. The gas swirls around the compact object, falling onto its surface, and this accretionary process usually produces torrents of high-energy X-rays because the stolen gas becomes superheated by the compact object's gravitational vice-like grip.
Because of their weak X-rays, Muhibullah's team refer to them as 'hypersoft X-ray sources'. Since low-energy X-rays and ultraviolet light are next to each other on the electromagnetic spectrum, Muhibullah and his team suspect that the low-energy X-rays are spillover from objects emitting prodigious amounts of ultraviolet. Moreover, they think that these objects are lower-level compact binaries. They're hard to find though, because the interstellar medium of hydrogen and helium gas between the stars absorbs ultraviolet light. This could be why we have yet to find any hypersoft X-ray sources in our own galaxy, because we have to look through the interstellar medium through the plane of the Milky Way. Consequently, there could be a large population of hypersoft X-ray sources that remain undiscovered and they could have an important effect on the universe around them. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
During his 16 August campaign event in Atlanta, Georgia, Senator Jon Ossoff mentioned White House aide Natalie Harp when condemning the Trump administration's handling of the Iran war and USS Lincoln sailors
More than a week after the Lindsay Clancy trial ended in a hung jury — with a lone holdout refusing to acquit the 36-year-old for killing her young children — the media has continued to probe how one man forced a mistrial in the triple-murder case. “I hope that guy can sleep well at night,” Clancy’s defense attorney told reporters. “Whatever his agenda was, he stole seven weeks of the life of these other jurors.”
Commentators have been strikingly sympathetic toward Clancy, showing compassion for her struggle with severe postpartum mental illness. Meanwhile, the unnamed juror, who is Black, has been widely criticized for allegedly violating his duty to follow the law. The press has dug into his own criminal history, from reports of domestic abuse, which were dismissed, to failure to pay rent.
The attention devoted to the Clancy trial — and the wave of anger over the juror’s intransigence — stands in sharp contrast with the silence over a different murder case, which is about to culminate in an execution.
At the Georgia death penalty trial of Stacey Humphreys, who was convicted of committing a double murder, a lone juror “appears to have singlehandedly changed the verdict from life without parole to death,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote last year. The woman’s actions, she concluded, amounted to “extreme juror misconduct.” Yet the high court has refused to consider Humphreys’s case — and media attention on the upcoming execution has been virtually nonexistent.
“The whole legal commentariat weighed in on what happens when a juror didn’t follow the rules in the Clancy trial,” organizer Hannah Riley Fernandez, director of programming at the Center for Just Journalism, wrote on social media, “meanwhile GA is about to kill someone whose juror did the same & MUCH more.”
Humphreys was sentenced to die in 2007 for murdering two real estate agents, 21-year-old Lori Brown and 33-year-old Cyndi Williams, at a model home just outside Atlanta. Pretrial publicity led to a change of venue, and the jury was sequestered over the course of the monthlong trial. The local sheriff’s department escorted jurors between a Holiday Inn and the courthouse.
The story of what happened in the jury room is contained in years of legal filings and affidavits signed by investigators and jurors themselves. The jury foreperson was repeatedly interviewed by Humphreys’s defense team and testified in court. She described how the lone holdout, Linda Chancey, signaled her intentions even before the jury had voted to convict Humphreys, announcing “something along the lines of ‘he’s guilty and he deserves to die.’”
Most of the jurors were inclined to agree with Chancey at first. But at Humphreys’s sentencing trial, defense lawyers revealed their client’s harrowing upbringing. From the time he was a toddler, witnesses said, Humphreys had been brutally abused by his parents, leading to psychological problems that indelibly shaped the rest of his life. “This testimony was impactful to the jurors tasked with balancing Stacey’s terrible crime and the rage-filled, abusive household where he grew up,” lawyers later wrote in his clemency petition.
Juror affidavits described a sense of grief for family members on both sides. One said she’d been especially struck by the testimony of Humphreys’s older sister Dayna, who recalled how her brother “took most of the beatings for her.” Despite an initial internal vote in which several jurors favored a death sentence, they eventually agreed that he could be sufficiently punished without being executed. On the second day of deliberations, 11 jurors voted for life without parole. Only Chancey was opposed.
After hours of additional deliberation, the foreperson wrote a note to the trial judge saying that they were “unable to come to a unanimous decision on either death or life imprisonment without parole.” Under Georgia law, a judge faced with a non-unanimous decision is supposed to dismiss the jury and sentence a defendant to either life or life without parole. But Chancey insisted on editing the note, revising it to include the word “currently” in two separate places, which left the impression that jurors might eventually agree. Upon receiving the note, the trial judge directed jurors to keep deliberating.
After that, a member of the jury later said in an affidavit, Chancey “snapped.” Fellow jurors said she screamed and threw photos of the deceased victims at them, demanding to know whether they “want this to happen to someone you know.” Things got so contentious that the foreperson sent another note asking to be removed from the case due to Chancey’s “hostile” behavior. But the judge again directed them to keep working.
Chancey did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.
Chancey also revealed something to her fellow jurors during deliberations that she had kept hidden from the court during voir dire. While she’d previously disclosed that she had been the victim of an attempted armed robbery of her home but that she’d escaped before the perpetrator was able to get inside, she later told fellow jurors that he assaulted her in her bed. Had Chancey revealed this during jury selection, lawyers have argued, she would almost certainly been struck from the panel.
Instead, Chancey was seated on the jury and hijacked the deliberations. According to other jurors, she said that they had to vote unanimously on a sentence or Humphreys might eventually walk free. Confusing instructions from the judge deepened this misimpression, according to the foreperson. Along with the rest, she ultimately capitulated and changed her vote to death. “I cried the entire time,” she said.
Humphreys, now 52, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on September 16 at 7 p.m. He is one of two people set to be executed this week, despite the fact that a majority of their trial jurors wished to show mercy. On September 17, Alabama plans to kill Jeffery Lee, whose jury voted 7 to 5 to sentence him to life without parole. At the time of Lee’s trial, Alabama judges had the power to override a jury’s decision. Despite the jury’s vote, Lee was sentenced to die.
Several national outlets have covered Lee’s plight. But Humphreys’s looming execution remains overlooked. One reason may be that the legal issues are technical and complex — a “procedural thicket,” as Sotomayor described it, that has prevented any court from addressing the disastrous deliberations at Humphreys’s trial.
In Georgia and other states, courts are not supposed to allow juror affidavits to undermine a verdict, with some narrow exceptions. Humphreys’s lawyers learned about Chancey’s behavior soon after the trial and obtained affidavits anyway, seeking to challenge the death sentence on direct appeal. But rather than argue that juror misconduct violated his right to a fair trial, they argued that the judge’s instruction to keep deliberating was coercive.
When state post-conviction lawyers later sought to argue that Chancey committed misconduct, Georgia courts ruled that it was too late: Because Humphreys had never sought to argue the claim, his attorneys were now barred from doing so. Similar procedural barriers then prevented Humphreys’s federal legal team from bringing the challenge into federal court.
Humphreys was scheduled to be executed last December, but was temporarily spared amid a separate legal fight over alleged conflicts of interest by members of Georgia’s Board of Pardons and Paroles. Among the five members with the power to decide whether Humphrey would live or die were two people involved in the trial. One had worked as a victims’ advocate; another was the former sheriff of the county where the trial took place.
An Atlanta judge agreed that the board member who had worked as a victims’ advocate had a conflict of interest but disagreed about the ex-sheriff. He ultimately concluded that the clemency board could simply move forward without the former. Humphreys’s lawyers describe this as both unprecedented in Georgia and unfair to their client. Humphreys “will not only be required to convince three out of four presiding Board members,” they argue, “he will be judged by the very Board members that only last December were adverse parties in his legal action.”
As Humphreys’s lawyers prepared for his clemency hearing, scheduled for the eve of his execution, his legal team pursued an array of last-minute avenues to save his life. Georgia law allows prisoners one chance to file an “extraordinary motion for a new trial,” which the defense team submitted to argue for a resentencing trial.
In advance of a hearing on the matter last week, the lawyers submitted an unusual collection of affidavits. The documents described Chancey’s controversial role on a public committee assembled in 2020 to handle a dispute over a local Confederate monument, which Chancey defended. With the Covid pandemic underway, meetings were public and held via Zoom; one former mayor of the city recalled receiving “numerous emails from concerned members of the community who were honestly shocked and horrified by her behavior.” A historian said in one affidavit that she was insulting toward him and others, questioning their qualifications and derailing attempts at civil debate. “Because of her,” he wrote, “the meetings devolved into a shouting match.”
At a hearing on September 10, a state lawyer slammed the affidavits as an attempt at “character assassination,” while a defense attorney said they showed a pattern of “failing to deliberate in good faith.” The judge said he would not consider the affidavits but commended the lawyers’ efforts on behalf of their client. He briefly addressed Humphreys, who was watching from the prison. “I hope you realize what wonderful people you have working for you,” the judge said. In a written order, he rejected the motion for a new sentencing trial.
If Humphreys is executed on Wednesday night, it will be the end of a long road that has proven traumatic for countless people — including the jury foreperson, who took the stand at last week’s hearing. The trial left her disillusioned with the justice system, she testified. She said she’d sought guidance from the trial judge to no avail and remained devastated by her own vote 20 years ago. “I felt I had failed in many, many ways.”
But a state lawyer argued that one should expect emotions to run high in a death penalty trial. “I hope people are fighting,” she said. “I mean, you can’t even get 12 people to agree on a pizza topping, but you’re talking about life or death here.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “you do have a very strong personality that can, you know, rule the day.”
Update: September 17, 2026, 12:20 p.m. ET On Wednesday, September 16, Cobb County Superior Court Judge Tyler Browning issued a stay of execution for Stacey Humphreys, to grant a hearing on a new legal challenge by defense lawyers. Under Georgia’s Survivor Justice Act, which was signed into law in 2025, prisoners are eligible for potential resentencing if they can prove that their crimes were a direct result of significant abuse. Georgia has not contested that Humphreys was a victim of early childhood physical and sexual abuse — and Browning concluded that Humphreys is entitled to a hearing to determine whether he is entitled to relief. In his order, Browning conceded that Georgia’s higher courts might disagree. “Should the Georgia appellate courts rule prior to the currently set execution date and time of September 16, 2026, at 7:00 pm. EST, that the Defendant is not entitled to a hearing,” he wrote, “the Court will consider lifting the stay so that the execution may proceed as scheduled.” But the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the stay, leaving Humphreys’s execution paused until further notice.
All deaths occurred in Pennsylvania, in worst year since 1992 for one of the most contagious diseases
Pennsylvania health officials said a fourth person had died of measles-associated illness in the worst year for the disease since 1992. All four US deaths have occurred in the state.
Due to the Trump administration changing how it reports measles deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not count any of the deaths in its national tally. Three people died in 2025.
Open-source software and open-standard architectures to accelerate next-generation datacenter AI compute
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 15, 2026 — Today at the AI Infra Summit, SiFive, Inc., and AMD showcased a demonstration of AMD ROCm running on SiFive’s recently announced BigSky Datacenter Development Platform.
In a demonstration-only system, the companies showed the ability to run the modern Gemma4-E2B LLM model using ROCm 10.0 on SiFive servers powered by the SiFive Performance P870-D CPUs acting as the head node, and AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 GPUs driving the inference offload.
This collaboration brings together the best of open source software, the AMD ROCm ecosystem, and the best of RISC-V open standard architectures to enable next-generation datacenter AI compute. The two companies will continue to evaluate optimization of ROCm on RISC-V powered servers, aiming to speed up processing times and enable even more acceleration use cases and larger models in the future.
“We are pleased to collaborate with AMD to bring the ROCm open software ecosystem to our BigSky datacenter development platform,” said Matt Langman, SVP, Datacenter at SiFive. “By combining the leading open standard architecture with their open-source software, we are enabling hyperscalers and developers to run advanced AI workloads seamlessly on RISC-V. This is another pivotal milestone as we work to accelerate the adoption of RISC-V in the datacenter.”
“ROCm’s open-source foundation enables developers to bring accelerated AI workloads to a broad range of systems,” said Ramine Roane, corporate vice president, AI software product management, AMD. “This demonstration with SiFive is an early step in enabling developers to explore ROCm-based AI acceleration on RISC-V host platforms.”
To see the demo in person, stop by SiFive’s booth inside the RISC-V International Pavilion at the AI Infra Summit this week, taking place September 15–17, 2026, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
The SiFive BigSky SF-2U870 is designed explicitly for advanced software porting, workload tuning, and validation testing to foster ecosystem enablement. Hardware specifications include:
32 P870-D cores operating at 2.0 GHz
256GB DDR5-5600 memory
4x PCIe Gen5 x16 (64 lanes) and PCIe Gen3 x4
2x 7.68TB U.2 NVMe SSD
10/25Gb OCP 3.0 NIC
The platforms are available today. Interested parties should contact SiFive sales for more information.
About SiFive
As the pioneers who founded RISC-V, SiFive is transforming the future of computing by bringing the power and flexibility of RISC-V to the world. SiFive’s market-leading IP provides the blueprint for high-performance, customizable, and energy-efficient processor cores across the entire computing spectrum, from the intelligent edge to the most advanced AI datacenters. SiFive is the trusted IP partner for the world’s most innovative technology companies.
Decision not to pause proceedings means £18m report does not engage with concerns over former nurse’s conviction
Just two months before Lady Justice Kathryn Thirlwall opened her inquiry into events at the Countess of Chester hospital and the crimes of Lucy Letby, a report by Chris Henley KC was published into the “atrocious” wrongful conviction of Andrew Malkinson for rape.
Henley prefaced that report with a plea for the legal establishment to recognise that the criminal courts produce miscarriages of justice. Right up to top judges in the court of appeal, Henley wrote, the system has “a deep-seated … cultural reluctance” to accept it “will on occasion make mistakes” and that “entirely innocent defendants will sometimes be convicted”.
Home secretary defends cost, saying it is about the same or cheaper than putting someone up in a hotel for a year
The government’s “one in, one out” deal is costing about £56,000 for every person sent back to France, Shabana Mahmood has told MPs.
The home secretary disclosed the figure as she was questioned by the home affairs select committee over whether the scheme was delivering value for taxpayers.
Karl Rove, a respected GOP consultant, further said he would vote for ‘bigot’ Bo French’s Democratic opponent after post
A senior Republican has called a party colleague running for office in Texas “a bigot” over a racist social media post attacking college football fans – and said he is so outraged by the comments that he will vote for the candidate’s Democratic rival.
Karl Rove, who was former president George W Bush’s longtime political adviser and is a respected Republican consultant in Texas, told a private event in Austin on Sunday that he could not support Bo French’s candidacy for a seat on the state’s railroad commission, the Texas Tribune reported.
FBI Director Kash Patel was grilled for nearly five hours by both Democrats and Republicans about a string of recent negative headlines about the FBI.
This is mainly just to show to people what the expected reduction in range would be for their similar boards.
Recently changed out my 6 inch FMPT tire for a Enduro (mid compound I think) and have been recording some ride info from the app.
I do like the Enduro, it’s a bit more playful on the street. I will say it’s a drop in traction on grass compared to the FMPT.
If I remember correctly, the outer diameter of the tire on the Enduro is a half inch smaller than the FMPT. Has anyone else noticed a reduction in top speed pushback/haptic buzz when going to a smaller diameter tire on a FM board? I feel like I’m hitting haptic buzz and pushback 2mph slower than I was on the original tire.
Maybe it’s just me getting more comfortable with speed. It now feels like my GT-V is hitting 80% duty at the same speed as 25mph pushback on my GT-S. Before the tire change it always felt like I had an extra 2-3mph before I would hit haptic buzz on my GT-S, if that makes any sense.
(The Center Square) – As bipartisan calls to abolish the Michigan Economic Development Corp. grow, state Sen. Thomas Albert, says it is time to revisit his legislative plan to dismantle the agency and overhaul Michigan’s approach to economic development.
(The Center Square) – AI Literacy training licenses for 1,500 students at a North Carolina elementary school were shared Tuesday by Melania Trump, wife of second-term Republican President Donald Trump.
Taking part in the fun with Jessica Meir were Nasa's Jack Hathaway (top) and Anil Menon, and ESA's Sophie Adenot (bottom, in dark blue top). (ISS/NASA via SWNS)
Micron’s advanced DRAM packaging enables the 512GB DDR5 RDIMM to unlock data center performance with speeds up to 9,200 MT/s and reduced operating power by more than 60%
BOISE, Idaho, Sept. 15, 2026 — Micron Technology, Inc., today announced a major milestone in memory innovation with the successful demonstration of the world’s first 512GB DDR5 module on multiple server platforms. The achievement reinforces Micron’s leadership in high-performance, high-capacity server memory and provides enterprise data center and cloud customers with a path to support large and demanding AI, analytics, in-memory database and simulation-heavy workloads with greater efficiency. Leading semiconductor enablers, AMD and Intel, are both actively validating the module, which will deliver speeds up to 9,200 MT/s.
The module’s high capacity is possible due to Micron’s advanced vertical interconnect packaging innovations. This product vertically stacks DRAM dies interconnected by through-silicon vias (TSVs) to maximize density within individual DRAM packages while preserving the performance modern data center architectures demand. The module enables up to 12TB of DDR5 DRAM in a single 24-slot dual-socket server.
“Micron continues to set the pace for memory technology, delivering a new class of ultra-dense, high-performance server memory that helps customers keep larger datasets closer to the compute engines that need them,” said Raj Narasimhan, senior vice president and general manager of the Cloud Memory Business Unit at Micron. “A 512GB RDIMM enables multi-terabyte servers, supporting larger AI and database workloads, greater virtualization density and improved power efficiency, all within existing server footprints.”
Ecosystem Partner Validation
Micron is collaborating closely with leading ecosystem enablers to validate the 512GB DDR5 RDIMM across next-generation server platforms, ensuring broad compatibility and a smooth path to deployment.
“AMD solutions continue to advance data center performance, scalability and efficiency as AI and data-intensive workloads reshape infrastructure requirements,” said Amit Goel, corporate vice president, Compute and Enterprise AI Platform Solutions Engineering, AMD. “Our close engineering collaboration with Micron brings compute and memory innovation together to help customers realize the full value of AMD-powered platforms. Together, we’re enabling balanced, high-performance infrastructure for the growing scale and complexity of modern workloads.”
“The growth of AI and other data-intensive workloads is placing new demands on server infrastructure, making memory capacity and bandwidth increasingly important to overall system performance,” said Karin Eibschitz Segal, general manager of platform and system engineering in Intel’s Data Center Group. “Intel is working closely with Micron to validate its 512GB DDR5 RDIMM and help enable future server platforms designed to meet the growing demands of next-generation data center workloads.”
Meeting the Memory Demands of Data-Intensive Workloads
The rapid proliferation of large language models (LLMs), agentic AI, real-time inference and high-core-count CPU workloads is driving demand for greater server memory capacity, higher bandwidth and improved power efficiency. Micron 512GB RDIMMs address these demands by enabling larger datasets to remain resident in main memory, reducing reliance on slower storage tiers and minimizing costly data movement. The new 512GB RDIMM also improves efficiency, reducing operating power by more than 60% compared with four 128GB RDIMMs.
For memory-bound workloads such as Spark Support Vector Machines (SVM)-based data analytics, Micron 512GB RDIMMs can deliver up to 1.4 times higher performance compared to 256GB DDR5 configurations. The 512GB module also provides significant advantages for memory-intensive databases and caching platforms, including RocksDB and Redis, improving throughput, increasing concurrency and helping scale datasets more efficiently.
Micron expects 512GB RDIMMs to be in volume production sometime in the second half of 2027 aligned to customer needs. For more information on Micron’s currently available data center solutions, visit the Micron data center memory webpage.
About Micron Technology, Inc.
Micron Technology, Inc., is a global leader in semiconductor memory and storage, powering AI and compute-intensive applications from cloud to edge. With a relentless focus on our customers, technology and product leadership, and manufacturing and operational excellence, Micron’s comprehensive portfolio of high-performance DRAM, NAND and NOR solutions deliver the speed, efficiency and scale today’s workloads demand, accelerating intelligence to enrich life for all. To learn more about Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU), visit micron.com.
US president insists that fears expressed by top experts are a hoax – and that humanity can sleep easy while he’s at the wheel
We can all sleep easy. In a post on his Truth Social account, Donald Trump has declared that fears over artificial intelligence were all a hoax dreamed up by conspiracy theorists. Obviously that includes the top bods at Anthropic and its competitors, who all called for a coordinated global slowdown while the industry works out how to mitigate the risks. Still, good to know the tech bros are just fantasists and space cadets at heart.
All that was needed to keep humanity safe and well, The Donald insisted, was a president with a very high IQ. Someone very like him. The only man alive who could out-think the combined power of the world’s supercomputers. He could tell them where to draw the line and they would reprogram themselves to back off. Inside every AI network is a default off switch that kneels before the US president. Trump can rewire the world with the power of his mind.
At AI Infrastructure Summit, WD will highlight how AI-driven data growth is reshaping infrastructure requirements at scale
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 15, 2026 — As AI moves from experimentation to deployment, organizations are confronting a new infrastructure reality: while compute cycles are temporary, the data AI creates continues to accumulate. As that data compounds, the ability to store, manage and access it economically is becoming a critical consideration for long-term AI success.
At AI Infrastructure Summit, September 15-17 in Santa Clara, Calif., Tim Rausch, SVP of HDD Development at WD, will discuss how AI is reshaping infrastructure requirements and why economically scalable capacity is emerging as a foundational element of the AI era.
61% of surveyed organizations experienced data growth of 25% or more over the past year due to AI
74% expect data volumes to grow 25% or more over the next three years
85.4% reported growth in data lake volumes over the past 12 months
During the keynote, Rausch will share WD’s vision for helping customers manage AI’s growing data footprint while balancing capacity, performance, power efficiency and economics at scale. He will also discuss innovations designed to support the next generation of AI infrastructure as organizations seek to retain more data, derive more value from it and scale AI with confidence.
WHAT: Reinventing Storage for AI at Scale
WHO: Tim Rausch, SVP, HDD Development, WD
WHEN: Sept. 16, 2026 | 3:50pm
WHERE: AI Infrastructure Summit | Santa Clara, Calif. | Main Stage
In addition to the keynote, WD will showcase its enterprise storage portfolio in booth # 605. The demos will highlight how WD is helping hyperscalers, CSPs, neo clouds and data center customers achieve the capacity, efficiency, and economics required for AI infrastructure at scale.
Source:IDC White Paper, Sponsored by Western Digital Corporation, Built for Scale: The Enduring Role of HDDs in the AI Era, Doc. #US54789026, September 2026.
About WD
WD, also known as Western Digital, builds the storage infrastructure that powers certainty in the AI-driven data economy. At the forefront of innovation, WD partners with the world’s leading hyperscalers, cloud service providers, and enterprises to enable reliable storage solutions that are proven and trusted at scale. Driven by a culture of innovation and execution, WD helps customers store, protect, and use the world’s data with confidence.
City leaders in a suburb outside Atlanta have voted to remove the youngest mayor in their community’s history amid allegations of questionable spending of municipal funds and inappropriate communications with an 18-year-old high school student.
Over the weekend, the Stockbridge, Georgia, city council voted to remove Jayden Williams, 23, from office after an hours-long hearing into allegations that included inappropriate exchanges with an 18-year-old in high school, improper purchases on a municipal government-issued credit card and mistreatment of employees.
We examine claims and counterclaims about the risks and calls to slow down the pace of AI development
There have been some shocking claims in recent days about AI safety: we face a 10% chance of doom; AIs are worse than nukes; a “botnet” threatens the entire internet; it’s all a big tech psyop.
Below, we look at six claims and reactions to them.
First secretary warns of ‘huge risks’ of technology as PM is urged to use next year’s G20 to drive global regulation
Ministers must “heed the warnings” from industry leaders about the threat posed by AI, Louise Haigh has said, amid calls for Andy Burnham to use the G20 to drive global regulation.
The first secretary said that while AI had enormous potential to improve lives, and the government wanted to capitalise on the technology, there were “clearly huge risks to our national security and society if the right guardrails are not put in place”.
Estimated 100,000 Yemenis displaced amid renewed fighting as Qatar sounds alarm over Bab al-Mandab strait
Saudi cities faced the threat of a second day of Houthi attacks as fighting across Yemen led the UN to warn of a humanitarian crisis with 100,000 Yemenis already displaced.
As oil prices remained well over $100 (£74) a barrel, Qatar warned of a catastrophe if the Iran-backed Houthi militants won full control of the Bab al-Mandab strait, the narrow waterway at the bottom of the Red Sea dominating the key naval route to Asia. The strait has become vital to Saudi crude oil exports as the wider Middle East war chokes the strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.
Purpose-built inference accelerator with robust software toolchain gives enterprises greater control over where and how AI runs, where data goes and what it costs
EINDHOVEN, Netherlands, Sept. 15, 2026 — Axelera AI today announced the launch of the Europa architecture with a growing ecosystem of OEM, ODM and technology partners, including validated systems with Dell and Supermicro. Europa, a next-generation AI Processing Unit (AIPU), extends the advantages of Axelera AI’s edge-first architecture to more demanding enterprise and data center workloads, giving organizations a practical path to run production AI on infrastructure they control.
Axelera AI Europa Product Line: Axelera Server 250p fhfl PCIe Card | Axelera EDGE 232p hhhl PCIe Card | Europa AIPU
With a sales pipeline that exceeds $1.5 billion, Axelera’s performance per watt leadership is driving customer wins across AI factories and gigafactories in Europe. The company has deployments with more than 600 customers across the globe, spanning defense, robotics, drones, retail and security applications.
Inference is recognized as the bulk of the AI compute load, but with rising cloud costs, exponential usage of tokens, power and GPU constraints, and increasingly capable smaller models, the economics of where AI can and should run are changing. Many enterprise applications don’t require the largest frontier models or most expensive hardware; they need infrastructure designed to run persistent AI workloads securely and at a cost organizations can sustain. And with up to 6x the tokens per second per watt than GPU-based solutions, customers can reliably deploy within their own environments without sacrificing performance.
Axelera products based on the Europa architecture give organizations greater control over where AI runs, where their data goes and what it costs. This is particularly important in Physical AI deployments, and markets such as financial services, healthcare, legal, defense and government, where security, compliance and data sovereignty requirements can limit the use of public cloud AI.
“Dell Technologies is working with AI systems integrator E4 and Axelera AI to support the deployment of next-generation AI infrastructure for the EU AI Factories in Italy and Luxembourg,” said Peter Barnes, General Manager, EMEA HPC, Dell Technologies. “Together, the collaboration brings the performance, control and sovereignty organizations need to advance AI innovation while keeping critical infrastructure and data aligned with Europe’s digital autonomy goals.”
“AI is an imperative at most companies, but ensuring that an enterprise can get the highest return from the infrastructure while controlling their data is imperative,” said Fabrizio Del Maffeo, CEO and co-founder of Axelera AI. “We built our architecture around some of the hardest constraints in computing: power, energy, cost and the need to process data locally. Europa applies those same principles, expanding from Physical to Enterprise AI, giving organizations the performance they need for increasingly sophisticated workloads while keeping control of their data, infrastructure and economics.”
Built for Modern Enterprise Inference
Europa is designed for the growing mix of AI workloads, including agentic systems, vision-language models, generative AI and machine and computer vision. It gives organizations a practical way to add AI inference capacity in existing server environments while addressing real-world power, cost, security and operational constraints.
Built on the same architecture principles proven across Axelera AI’s existing Embedded, Edge and Server portfolio, Europa brings high-performance, energy-efficient inference to more demanding enterprise workloads. Europa is available as a chip with customers designing their own boards, as a half-height, half-length PCIe card (Axelera Edge 232p) or a full-height, full-length PCIe card (Axelera Server 250p). The standard PCIe form factors enable organizations to add AI capacity without rebuilding their infrastructure around a new platform.
A Broader Partner Ecosystem
Shipping now, Europa is supported by Axelera AI’s growing ecosystem of OEM, technology, software and industry partners. Together, these partners give enterprises a path from AI acceleration hardware to complete, deployable solutions, rather than requiring them to assemble every layer of the stack independently.
The Axelera Edge 232p is available in a fully validated Dell XE5 and a Supermicro 111AD. These new systems join the list of validated and available systems with global OEMs including Advantech, Axiomtek, HPE, Lenovo, Seco and others, with additional systems to be publicly announced soon.
Axelera AI’s broader partner network helps customers address the full set of requirements involved in scaling their AI solutions, from infrastructure and software to industry-specific applications. As the global ecosystem continues to expand, customers will have more ways to deploy Europa in solutions aligned to their performance, operational and business needs.
Simplifying Deployment from Embedded to Edge to Server, Physical or Enterprise AI
Axelera AI’s Voyager Toolchain helps developers optimize existing AI models for Axelera AI hardware and move more quickly from development to production. Supporting all Axelera AI hardware, Voyager provides a consistent foundation for deploying AI inference from edge devices to enterprise infrastructure.
Developers are also welcome to use Voyager Wingman, an agentic platform that can easily port existing inference pipelines, create new pipelines, and optimize code.
Model support has been a limiting factor for many customers and silicon providers. Last week, Axelera disclosed its novel approach, and first of it’s kind model compilation, AxeleraScript (AxScript). Learn more about AxScript in this blog post.
See Axelera’s Europa and Voyager Toolchain at AI Infra Summit
Fabrizio Del Maffeo will discuss the infrastructure shifts driving the next phase of enterprise and Physical AI during his keynote, “The Physical AI Inflection Point: Industry Shifts, Adoption Barriers, and the Infrastructure Imperative,” on September 15 from 11:00–11:20 a.m. at AI Infra Summit in Santa Clara. Attendees can also see Europa in action and meet with Axelera AI at booth 930.
Axelera AI is a European AI semiconductor company developing next-generation AI acceleration hardware for edge computing and data center applications. With an edge-first architecture that addresses AI’s critical energy and cooling constraints, Axelera AI has deployed across more than 600 customers including in telecommunications, aerospace, and enterprise sectors. The company’s Europa and Metis platforms deliver high-performance AI inference solutions that enable deployment at scale within real-world power and thermal budgets. Through its Partner Accelerator Network and Voyager SDK, Axelera AI provides a comprehensive ecosystem approach that ensures accessibility and rapid deployment.
The FBI director, Kash Patel, defended his agency’s decision to roll back restrictions on agent applicants who have previously engaged in bestiality, arguing the FBI “did not want to punish victims of bestiality” by automatically disqualifying them.
The unusual topic of bestiality emerged during a Senate judiciary committee oversight hearing on Tuesday after Democrat Dick Durbin and Republican John Kennedy questioned Patel’s decision to remove barriers that previously prevented applicants who engaged in prostitution and bestiality from being qualified for a job at the FBI.
IQM will deliver both systems by the end of 2026. Both systems will be operational in early 2027 — the Spark system at TOYO’s R&D center, and the Radiance 20 at AIST’s Global Research and Development Center for Business by Quantum-AI technology
ESPOO, Finland and TOKYO, Sept. 15, 2026 — IQM Quantum Computers, a global leader in superconducting quantum computers, today announced that TOYO Corporation has purchased a second full-stack quantum computer, IQM Spark. This expands TOYO’s quantum footprint and reinforces IQM’s commitment to driving quantum acceleration in Japan.
TOYO Corporation opens its quantum computers to Japan’s ecosystem. Credit: IQM.
The Spark system will be installed at TOYO’s R&D center in Kiba, Tokyo, and will be operational in early 2027, enabling hands-on learning from fundamental quantum computing education to algorithm validation and verification.
This announcement follows TOYO’s earlier acquisition of an IQM Radiance 20-qubit quantum computer, planned for installation at the end of 2026 at the Global Research and Development Center for Business by Quantum-AI technology (G-QuAT), a research facility operated by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST).
Together, the two deployments underscore growing demand for IQM’s on-premises quantum computers. TOYO is also playing a key role in advancing quantum computing technology in Japan, and owning the systems enables the company to extend capability into the ecosystem in a way that advances its own goals while accelerating adoption where it’s needed most.
“What makes this purchase matter isn’t that TOYO bought a second system, it’s what they’re choosing to do with them. TOYO is sharing the capabilities for educational purposes, they’re opening it up to the universities, startups, and researchers who make up Japan’s quantum ecosystem,” said Jan Goetz, CEO and Co-founder of IQM Quantum Computers. “That is the entire idea behind owning your own machine; you get to decide whom it serves. Japan has quantum goals to hit by 2030. You don’t get there with machines nobody else can touch; you get there because a company like TOYO chose to share access to the ones it now owns.”
Once operational, the systems will be available to domestic companies, organizations, research institutes, and universities. In addition, the systems will also serve as a testbed for evaluating and verifying components and related technologies used in superconducting quantum computers under real operating conditions.
Toshiya Kohno, Representative Director, President and CEO, TOYO Corporation, said: “We believe that accelerating the adoption of quantum technologies requires environments where companies, universities, and researchers can gain hands-on experience with real quantum computers. By deploying IQM Spark at our R&D center and linking it with IQM Radiance 20, we will support a broad range of needs across different stages of quantum adoption, including talent development, technology validation, use case creation, and advanced research. Through these complementary systems, we aim to broaden access to quantum computing and contribute to the advancement and real-world adoption of quantum technologies in Japan. Through our Quantum Solutions business, TOYO Corporation will continue to expand access to the value of quantum technologies and support the sustainable growth of Japan’s quantum ecosystem.”
The deployments add to a period of sustained commercial momentum for IQM. The company began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and Helsinki Stock Exchange in July 2026, becoming the first European quantum computing company listed on a major U.S. exchange.
In August, IQM reported that its order backlog had grown past €102 million, with 26 full-stack systems sold and 17 delivered globally, including its first system in the United States.
IQM Quantum Computers (Nasdaq: IQMX) is a global leader in superconducting quantum computers, delivering full-stack quantum systems and cloud platform access to enterprises, research institutions, universities, high-performance computing centers, and national laboratories worldwide. IQM’s open, modular architecture allows customers to own, operate, and integrate quantum systems directly into their own infrastructure, building lasting technical capability rather than relying solely on remote access. Founded in 2018, IQM is headquartered in Espoo, Finland, with major operations in Munich, Germany, and has sold more quantum systems than any other manufacturer to date. IQM employs over 450 people and operates across Europe, Asia, and North America. IQM is the first publicly listed European quantum company on Nasdaq Stock Market.
About TOYO Corporation
TOYO Corporation (Head Office: Tokyo, Japan) contributes to technological innovations as a leading provider of advanced measurement solutions. Through its variety of business segments – Sustainable Energy, Advanced Mobility, ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and Information Security, EMC (Electromagnetic Compatibility) and Antenna Systems, Defense and Security, Ocean, Software Quality and Productivity, Life Science, and Quantum Solutions, the company is focused on providing solutions to emerging markets such as clean energy and autonomous vehicle development. TOYO also makes significant R&D investments to develop in-house technologies and products, and its growth strategies include investing in new business, conducting M&A, and developing its market presence in global markets. By making available the most advanced market-based solutions, TOYO is at the forefront of helping to shape a safe and environmentally-friendly society and develop industries.
Robert Garcia expresses concern over ‘any possible foreign entanglement’ between White House and Umar Kremlev
Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, is investigating potential ties between the White House and a Russian oligarch who paid for a portion of Donald Trump Jr’s wedding.
In a letter sent to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, on Monday, Garcia expressed concern about “any possible foreign entanglement” between the president’s son and the oligarch, Umar Kremlev. Garcia asked Wiles to provide documents, records and communications between the White House and Trump Jr about Kremlev, among other requests.
Washington, D.C. — Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduced a privileged resolution Tuesday seeking to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, accusing him of continuing U.S. military operations in Iran despite congressional efforts to restrict the conflict.
Massie’s eight-article resolution alleges that Hegseth carried out military operations that exceeded executive authority and undermined Congress’ constitutional role in decisions over war. The measure also cites U.S. actions in Venezuela and Yemen, including the operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“In all of this, Secretary Hegseth has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as Secretary of Defense,” Massie said on the House floor.
The Kentucky Republican has repeatedly supported war-powers measures aimed at limiting U.S. hostilities with Iran. House records show he backed resolutions in March, May and July directing the president to remove U.S. forces from unauthorized hostilities.
Because Massie filed the resolution as privileged, House leaders must address it within two legislative days. They could allow a direct vote or attempt to table it.
Hegseth previously faced a separate impeachment effort from House Democrats, who introduced articles in April focused largely on the Iran war and other allegations involving his conduct.
The new resolution comes as Congress continues debating the scope of presidential war powers. The House has already passed measures this year seeking to constrain the administration’s military campaign in Iran.
“I have talked to Adam Silver a couple times, and I think he’s a great guy,” Cunningham said on Monday. “He was very knowledgeable and full of wisdom and so getting to talk to him and hear his perspective of how he approaches the NBA is huge, who he’s kind of looking for. I think if you want to know the real answers, you go to him.
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is seeking to retain his Georgia seat, has been airing TV ads aimed at older Americans that say his Republican opponent U.S. Rep. Mike Collins wants to cut their retirement benefits.
“Georgia Congressman Mike Collins voted to gut Social Security, and Mike Collins says he wants to push you off Social Security and back to work,” the narrator in a Sept. 2 ad says before an audio clip of Collins’ voice airs.
“‘Get off of Social Security. Get, get back into the workforce,’” Collins’ voice says before the ad’s narrator returns with a warning: “Mike Collins is attacking your retirement.”
Ossoff’s campaign also used the Collins audio clip in an Aug. 7 TV ad making the same claim. Both ads show images of older people before pivoting to Collins’ voice.
But Collins didn’t say he wants to “push” older people off Social Security.
Ossoff’s ads used a partial quote from Collins’ comments during a 2025 radio interview. Collins’ full comments during the interview make it clear he was not talking about putting older Americans back to work.
In June 2025, Collins told Atlanta FM radio station XTRA 106.3 that Congress under Trump is focusing on cutting spending and lowering the country’s deficit. Collins said cutting taxes and regulations would bring companies back to the U.S., adding taxpayers and revenue.
“It’s just Business 101,” Collins said in that interview. “You know, you’ve got spending and you’ve got revenue, and you set it up to where you can increase your revenue, and you do that by lowering taxes and making it more advantageous for people to work and to get off of Medicaid, get off of Social Security, get back into the workforce.”
Although the Ossoff ad focuses on older people, they are not the only ones who receive Social Security benefits. The majorityof people receiving them are older Americans. But Social Security also pays benefits to spouses and children of retired workers, widows, children of deceased workers, disabled workers and their spouses and children.
A spokesperson for Ossoff’s campaign defended the ads’ use of the audio, saying Collins provided no clarification or context about the statement either during the radio interview or later.
Collins’ full comments make it clear he was advocating for the U.S. to make it more advantageous for people to work by lowering taxes. He wasn’t instructing people to get off Medicaid and Social Security, as the ad makes it sound.
“He was not talking about taking earned Social Security retirement benefits away from seniors,” Collins’ campaign spokesperson Meyer Siegfried said.
Siegfried said Collins has never supported “pushing” older Americans off Social Security, and that Ossoff’s ads cherry-picked a few words from a broader discussion about workforce participation and government assistance.
“Rep. Collins believes seniors who spent their lives paying into Social Security should receive the benefits they earned,” Siegfried said.
Did Collins vote to ‘gut’ Social Security?
Although Collins has voted in favor of legislation that could decrease Social Security benefits, the word “gut” is an exaggeration.
As evidence for the claim, one of the ads referred to a March 18 AFL-CIO letter against House Joint Resolution 139. That resolution proposed a constitutional amendment seeking to balance the federal budget, and the labor union argued that this attempt would have resulted in massive cuts to programs including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Collins voted in favor of the resolution, but it didn’t pass the House.
The resolution didn’t provide any exceptions for Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid and it required two-thirds approval of both chambers of Congress to raise or implement new tax rates.
As evidence for the statement that Collins voted to “gut” Social Security, Ossoff’s campaign also pointed PolitiFact to Collins’ vote in favor of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. As PolitiFact previously reported, the fiscally hawkish Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in 2025 warned the law would reduce Social Security tax revenues by $30 billion per year. That means the Social Security trust fund would be exhausted in 2032 rather than in 2033, as the Social Security Board of Trustees’ 2025 annual report had projected.
Ossoff’s campaign also pointed PolitiFact to Collins’ 2014 House campaign plan and noted he is amember of the Republican Study Committee; the plan and the committee have proposed gradually increasing the retirement age.
Raising the retirement age means people who retire before the proposed cutoff would receive smaller benefits, and people who opt to wait for full benefits will have to retire later. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities policy experts reported in 2023 that raising Social Security’s full retirement age would cut benefits for new retirees.
Our ruling
In two TV ads, Ossoff’s campaign said Collins “voted to gut Social Security” and “wants to push (older Americans) off Social Security and back to work.”
The ads take a clip from longer remarks by Collins and omit the context. He did not address older people’s retirement benefits or tell them to get off Social Security and get a job.
Although the Ossoff ad focuses on older people, Social Security benefits are not exclusive to retirees; spouses and children of retired workers, widows, children of deceased workers, and disabled workers and their dependents also receive them.
Collins supported a resolution and the Big Beautiful Bill Act that experts warned could eventually cut Social Security benefits for some, but he has not gone so far as to vote to fully “gut” the program.
The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate this claim Mostly False.
The Liberal Democrats have said that they will try to introduce a cap on the amount people donate to political parties by amending the representation of the people bill as it goes through the Lords.
Lisa Smart, the Lib Dem Cabinet Office spokesperson, said:
We can’t keep playing whack-a-mole with each new attempt by Farage to sell out our democracy.
Labour’s residency requirements aren’t good enough and the Conservatives simply sat on their hands whilst in power. For decades governments of both colours have stood by and done nothing.
The scale of donations made to Reform in recent days is unprecedented in British politics and should deeply concern anyone who cares about the health and integrity of our democracy.
We cannot afford to see the Americanisation of our politics, with out of control political spending, funded by stratospheric sums of crypto and corporate cash. These donations show clearly whose side Reform are on, with crypto billionaires, foreign and powerful corporate interests lining up to pour in eye-watering sums of money to advance their agendas.
The Kennedy Center board, which is filled with President Trump's allies, is set to vote Tuesday on a new plan to close the center for two years of renovations.
Backing comes after Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor were threatened with having their citizenship revoked and accused of treason
Film industry heavyweights across the globe have expressed solidarity with Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the Oscar-winning Israeli directors of documentary NAZA, who have been threatened with having their citizenship revoked by Israel’s culture minister, who accused them of “treason against the state”.
NAZA, which was produced by the Guardian, is named for an acronym euphemistically used by Israel’s intelligence service to indicate how many civilians it expects to die in an airstrike on Gaza. It includes interviews with 24 Israeli military or intelligence soldiers and officers who outlined the AI-powered targeting systems used to bombard Gaza, resulting in the mass killing of Palestinian civilians.
A bill co-authored by Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator who died earlier this year, that would give Donald Trump broad authority to tariff Russia and its trading partners will be put forward for a vote this week in a high-stakes legislative battle that could provide new sanctioning authority to the US president at a crucial moment in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The bill is facing considerable pushback not only from Ukraine-sceptic Republicans, however, but also from prominent Democrats who say that the bill will give undue tariff power to the US president that could then be abused and turned against US allies.
Family vacations are supposed to be a break, but for many parents, they come with a second job. So it is hardly surprising that in the latest U.S. Family Travel Survey, 43% of parents said planning and booking a trip…
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump sharply criticized the Supreme Court on Tuesday after the justices blocked his administration’s proposed mail-ballot restrictions from taking effect before the November midterm elections, calling the ruling a “big loss” for Republicans.
The court rejected the administration’s emergency request to allow the U.S. Postal Service to enforce new requirements for mail ballots. The proposed system would have required states to use standardized ballot envelopes and submit voter information through a federal portal. Election officials argued there was not enough time to make those changes before voting began.
Trump directed much of his criticism at the court’s conservative majority, including justices he appointed. He wrote that they were “not the people I interviewed” and had become “a shell of their original selves.” He praised dissenting Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas as “legends both.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed the restrictions should remain blocked for this election but indicated the government could ultimately prevail in later litigation. The underlying legal challenge is still unresolved.
Trump also used the lengthy Truth Social post to criticize the court’s rulings involving tariffs and birthright citizenship, claiming its decisions had caused severe economic and political damage. Reuters noted that the Supreme Court retains a 6-3 conservative majority and has also ruled in Trump’s favor on several major issues.
Austin, Texas — Gov. Greg Abbott has directed the Texas Water Development Board to penalize data centers that fail to submit legally required water-use reports, citing concerns that incomplete information is undermining long-term planning as the industry rapidly expands across the state.
Texas law requires surveyed industrial users, including data centers, to return water-use information to the agency. Failure to comply can result in a Class C misdemeanor and can also make companies ineligible for certain state funding or water permits. Abbott instructed the board to pursue past violations and impose consequences for future failures.
Compliance has been low. The Texas Tribune reported that fewer than 30% of surveyed data centers have responded in recent years, even as the number of facilities tracked by the state has grown sharply. Water planners use the information to project demand and develop Texas’ long-term water strategy.
Data centers can consume large amounts of water for cooling and other operations. Texas now has hundreds of existing or proposed facilities, with particularly heavy development in North Texas.
Abbott also ordered the water board to coordinate with the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT on a separate review of data centers seeking connections to the state power grid. That audit will examine water consumption, supply sources and water-efficient technologies. Projects that fail to complete the process can be denied grid interconnection.
The governor requested a progress report from the Water Development Board by Oct. 14.
Photo caption: Delaware State Police released this photograph of the loaded handgun investigators said was recovered from a 17-year-old Glasgow High School student’s backpack.
The incident demonstrates the value of having trained law enforcement officers inside schools, where an immediate response can prevent a dangerous situation from escalating.
NEWARK, Del. — A Delaware State Police school resource officer deserves credit for helping bring a potentially dangerous situation at Glasgow High School under control Monday and removing a loaded handgun from the building.
The officer was already inside the school when a hallway fight was reported at about 1 p.m. Sept. 14. Working with school staff, the officer separated the students and began investigating what had happened.
That investigation led to the backpack of a 17-year-old student from Newark. Police said the student had removed the backpack before the fight and that the officer learned it allegedly contained marijuana.
A search uncovered a loaded handgun and a small quantity of marijuana, according to Delaware State Police.
The student was taken into custody and transported to an area hospital for treatment of injuries sustained during the fight. Police described the injuries as not life-threatening and said no other injuries were reported.
After being discharged, the student was taken to Delaware State Police Troop 2 and charged with possession of a firearm by a person under 21, possession of ammunition by a person under 21, possession of a firearm in a safe school zone, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and possession of marijuana by a person under 18.
Four of the five charges are felonies.
The student, whose name was withheld because he is a juvenile, was arraigned by Justice of the Peace Court and committed to the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families in lieu of an $87,000 cash bond.
Officer’s presence made a difference
It is impossible to know what might have happened if the backpack had not been searched or if the loaded handgun had remained inside the school. What is clear is that the school resource officer was in the building, responded immediately and had the training and legal authority to investigate.
The result was not merely an arrest. It was the removal of a loaded firearm from a school before the situation became more dangerous.
The incident offers a practical reminder of why trained officers belong in schools. Their presence provides an immediate response to violence, allows suspicious behavior to be investigated and creates a visible warning that weapons and criminal activity can be detected.
Deterrence does not mean every student will follow the law or that no weapon will ever enter a school. It means increasing the likelihood that violations will be discovered and addressed quickly. At Glasgow High, that system worked.
Research on the overall effects of school resource officer programs remains mixed, and properly trained officers must avoid becoming involved in routine disciplinary matters that belong with educators. But federal research also recognizes that school officers can support safety through law enforcement, problem-solving, community relationships and crisis response.
The National Institute of Justice has found that school resource officers often perform several overlapping roles in maintaining a safe learning environment. Justice Department-supported research has also documented cases in which officers intervened before planned school violence could be carried out.
Those broader debates should not obscure what happened Monday. A fight drew an immediate response. An officer followed the evidence. A loaded handgun was found. Students and staff were protected from the risk posed by a firearm inside their school.
That is public safety at its most direct, and it is why the officer’s work should be recognized.
To Go Box
What happened: Delaware State Police said a school resource officer recovered a loaded handgun and marijuana from a 17-year-old student’s backpack.
Where: Glasgow High School, 1901 S. College Ave., Newark.
When: About 1 p.m. Monday, Sept. 14.
Student’s status: The student was committed to the Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families on an $87,000 cash bond.
Putin is far from isolated. Europe must play him at the long game Expert commentjon.wallace
The SCO and BRICS summits indicate Russia retains sufficient value to China, India and other non-Western powers to pursue its war objectives. Europe needs to adjust to that reality.
The past fortnight has seen President Vladimir Putin undertake plenty of summit diplomacy. Throughout he has shown no sign he is open to compromise on Russia’s war aims in Ukraine. On the contrary, escalation has accelerated.
Europe seems inclined to read this increased aggression as a sign of desperation on Moscow’s part. But that is a miscalculation. In reality, the Kremlin’s strategy of blended diplomatic impassivity and calibrated escalation may be stronger than it looks.
No backing down
US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner spent more than three hours with Putin in Moscow on 5 September, discussing how to end the war. The Kremlin hailed the discussions as ‘highly useful’ but gave no indication that it was ready to relax its demands: Ukrainian territorial concessions and restrictions on Kyiv’s future security alignment. Days later, an offer by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet Putin at December’s G20 summit in Miami was rebuffed.
Meanwhile, Russian attacks have intensified. On 13 September, a Russian drone struck railway infrastructure near Yahodyn, shortly after a train carrying Boris Johnson, former CIA director David Petraeus and others had passed through the area. Whether they were deliberately targeted remains unknown. What is certain is that the strike was part of Russia’s largest drone barrage in months and followed intensified attacks on Ukrainian transport, energy and civilian infrastructure.
Many European officials argue that Moscow’s behaviour shows it is running out of options in Ukraine. Indeed, Russia’s position is uncertain. It is suffering extraordinary losses. Its territorial advances remain slow and costly. And Ukrainian forces have regained ground in several sectors.
Yet the conclusion that Russian escalation betrays desperation is closer to wishful thinking than reality. Putin behaves like someone who still believes time is on his side and that he retains room for manoeuvre. His recent diplomacy offers a useful interpretative framework.
Putin can (still) afford to ignore friendly advice
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s July intervention on the Ukraine war rightfully attracted considerable attention. Sitting alongside Putin in Omsk, Tokayev said the conflict should be frozen and negotiations resumed. The Kremlin promptly rejected the idea of a freeze.
Narendra Modi went a step further in Bishkek on 31 August, at the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), telling Putin publicly that the world needed to ‘move from endless war to end of war’. Yet Modi also addressed Putin as his ‘friend’, praised the strength of Russia–India relations and less than two weeks later, during the BRICS summit, discussed a bilateral trade target of $100 billion with Putin.
There is no reason to doubt that governments like India and Kazakhstan genuinely want the war to end. But that does not mean they are prepared to make their relations with Russia conditional upon it.
This distinction explains much of Putin’s confidence. Despite its criticism, India continues to treat Russia as a key strategic partner. And, while Kazakhstan has carefully diversified its foreign relations, it has preserved a close relationship with Moscow. Meanwhile the New Delhi BRICS declaration criticised unilateral sanctions and trade restrictions while avoiding directly confronting Russia over Ukraine.
These sustained partnerships may provide Moscow with something it needs almost as critically as support for the war in Ukraine: economic integration in Asia, diplomatic legitimacy, and a respected role in influential international groupings.
Russia is valuable to China too
Chinese President Xi Jinping told Putin at the SCO summit that the foundations of their bilateral relationship would only become stronger.
Russia is often described by Europeans as China’s ‘vassal’. This captures a genuine economic asymmetry: China’s economy is roughly eight times larger than Russia’s. And Russia conducts at least 34 per cent of its international trade with China, whereas Russia accounts for only around 4 per cent of China’s.
But it is missing an important aspect of the partnership, which cannot be measured through bilateral trade alone. Beijing has reasons to keep Moscow strong enough to remain an independent power. Russia has a nuclear arsenal, a permanent UN Security Council seat, vast energy and commodity resources, and a strategic position straddling Central Asia and the Arctic. Most importantly, Moscow is willing to challenge what remains of the US-shaped world order.
For Beijing, Moscow remains the useful disruptor-in-chief.
Chinese involvement in Russia’s war economy shows that the relationship is more consistent than many in Europe may think.
Documents reported this month by Politico suggest that a Chinese state-owned firm shipped carbon fibre used in Geran attack drones to Alabuga-Volokno, a sanctioned subsidiary of Rosatom (Russia’s state-owned nuclear conglomerate). An earlier investigation by the Robert Lansing Institute documented Chinese engines and components in Russian drones. Last year, Reuters reported that Chinese drone specialists were working with Russian manufacturers.
This does not prove that every transaction was ordered by Beijing. Nor is it evidence of ‘limitless’ Chinese support. Xi has no interest in becoming hostage to Putin’s decisions and Beijing will continue to calibrate its exposure very carefully. It does show, however, how misleading it is to equate China’s rhetorical caution over Ukraine with distance from Russia.
For Beijing, Moscow remains the useful disruptor-in-chief. Its actions help an alternative international system emerge, through groups like the SCO and BRICS, in which US and European power carry less weight. And even though these groups’ members disagree profoundly about what a more multipolar order should look like, they offer increasingly clear diplomatic expression to China’s ambition.
India may not share China’s vision of global order, but neither does it see an advantage in isolating Russia. Nor does Kazakhstan or any other BRICS member. This has proved a comfortable enough ambiguity with which Putin has learned to live.
More realism is needed in Europe
These past few months of Russian escalation against Ukraine and Europe, and diplomatic consolidation with Asia, should teach European leaders a lesson: Their effort to shame governments into choosing between Russia and the West has clearly reached its limits – if not failed.
The European Union (EU)’s relations with India may offer a better model. This has seen the EU strengthen commercial ties with India while lowering its tone over New Delhi’s relationship with Moscow.
This makes sense: there is considerable scope to deepen relations with India and Central Asia. Europe can offer investment, technology, access to the single market, and critical-mineral partnerships. It can also offer transport routes that reduce dependence on Russia, such as the Trans-Caspian corridor.
By using such an approach, Europe can adjust to a new reality, working patiently to widen the space between Russia and its partners rather than assume that the separation is already underway.
The success of Europe’s own long game may hinge on how far the EU is prepared to extend those sanctions and hit strategic supply chains when the evidence points to direct involvement by larger or state-owned Chinese suppliers.
Russia’s escalation in Ukraine indicates that Putin still wagers he can outlast Ukraine’s supporters. He remains confident that Russia is sufficiently connected to the rest of the world to absorb Western pressure. And he sees his position as bolstered by what he believes is a US weakened by war with Iran. Putin’s summit diplomacy of the past few months suggests that, at least for now, he has some reason to be confident.
But Europe does not have to accept his wager. What it must do is understand the underlying long-term dynamics and respond accordingly. If Putin is playing the long game, perhaps it is time Europe does too.
Critically endangered Bornean orangutans flee forests as staff at Rangkong research station work round the clock to stave off blaze
Wildfires in Indonesia are sweeping through a critical research site for Bornean orangutans and are now threatening a celebrated research camp, home to one of the world’s longest-running studies of wild apes.
In the past few days, the fires have burned within 200 metres of Rangkong research station, a satellite of Cabang Panti research station, which lies about four miles north in Gunung Palung national park.
The group has made sweeping gains along Yemen’s Red Sea coast after conducting a large-scale military operation aimed at controlling the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
The onset of a particularly strong El Niño was a primary driver of this year's Atlantic hurricane season forecast, and it seems to be panning out as meteorologists anticipated.
Average wages rose by 3.9% in three months to July, signalling pensioners will receive uplift of same percentage in 2027 under triple lock
The government has promised retirees they will be excluded from paying tax on the full new state pension after official figures paved the way for an inflation-beating increase above the tax-free personal allowance.
Figures published on Tuesday showed that average UK wages rose by 3.9% in the three months to July, signalling that pensioners will receive an uplift of the same percentage next year under the triple lock.
Yvette Cooper says this must ‘be a turning point for the NHS’ and tells the Commons she is ‘profoundly sorry’ for mistakes highlighted in Thirlwall report
Lady Justice Thirlwall said that senior nurses at the hospital refused to accept the consultant’s concerns could be justified, and criticised the “prolonged delay by senior managers in calling the police”.
The police were eventually contacted in May 2017, around a year after the death of baby P in June 2016, and despite the fact Letby had been removed from neonatal unit.
There was also complete failure at all levels to invoke safeguarding procedures at any point.
Looking for clinical or other explanations for deaths and collapses was not wrong, but once there was suspicion that Letby may be causing harm deliberately safeguarding steps should have been taken.
Ursula von der Leyen says incidents ‘part of broader pattern of Russian aggression and provocation against Europe’
A Russian warship fired two emergency flares at a Danish helicopter in the Baltic Sea and an Italian Nato fighter jet shot down a drone carrying an explosive device over Lithuania in what the EU described as “reckless and dangerous” Russian behaviour.
Poland also scrambled fighter jets “due to the activity of Russian jet-powered unmanned aerial vehicles conducting strikes on Ukrainian territory”, the day after Polish security forces retrieved a suspected Russian drone adrift in its waters.
Detroit, Michigan — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers will skip a Fox 2 Detroit debate Tuesday, accusing moderator Roop Raj of showing bias toward Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
Rogers’ campaign said Raj had behaved in ways “inconsistent with the level of gravity” expected from a moderator in a major Senate race. Among its complaints, the campaign cited Raj’s handling of a Republican gubernatorial debate and comments in which he called Rogers a “veteran politician” while describing El-Sayed as an outsider who was “pretty brilliant in many ways.”
Fox 2 invited both candidates to the Sept. 15 debate shortly after the August primary. El-Sayed accepted, while Rogers did not. The station said the debate would proceed with El-Sayed and an empty podium for Rogers, adding that the invitation remained open.
Raj has publicly urged candidates to participate in debates and said Monday that he and Rogers have had “very good, fair and productive” conversations. He also said he would moderate with “integrity and responsibility.”
El-Sayed previously challenged Rogers to five debates. Rogers has agreed to two others scheduled for Oct. 8 and Oct. 21.
Michigan’s open Senate race has drawn national attention, with Rogers seeking the seat after narrowly losing his 2024 Senate bid and El-Sayed advancing after defeating Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary.
Modern cars are fitted with features like autonomous emergency braking and fatigue monitoring. But do they support motorists or drive them to distraction?
This new car I’m test-driving boasts all the latest bells and whistles – or, rather, beeps and bings. Peer sideways for too long checking traffic and the car emits an irritating sound. Should I take a hand off the wheel to scratch an ear, I’m admonished with a strident beep.
When the car determines it’s too near a white line, it tugs the wheel against my hands and brakes as a car slows ahead. Its haptic “buttons” feel like fingers pressing back – as if an invisible presence has its hands and feet on the controls: a ghost in the machine I’m inside.
Multiple AI models. Heterogenous compute. A variety of network topologies. Copper and optical. The mix of silicon, storage, and network infrastructure used in AI today is highly varied, and stitching it all together is difficult and prone to failure. That’s what motivated the folks behind a startup called Delos Data to take on a daunting task: Reimagine the interconnect for the AI age with clean-sheet approach.
CEO Ed Doe and CTO Dan Daly co-founded Delos Data in 2025 with the goal of building a new way to connect the various hardware and software components that are being used in AI today. Their point of view is relatively simple: AI builders shouldn’t be burdened with the complexity of integrating all of the various products that are used in a modern disaggregated AI inference setup. The complexity should be pushed out of the way, enabling builders to pick the best chips, memory, storage, and networks to support their particular AI workloads.
Delos Data’s MoXI supports a mixture of XPUs, memory, storage, physical layers, topologies, networks, and models.(Image courtesy Delos Data)
In general, this type of view is not new. Technologists have been concealing complexity since the first compilers were built. But picking the right point in the stack to implement an abstraction layer can be difficult. With experience at Broadcom, Intel, Fulcrum Microsystems and Barefoot Networks, and a recent history of working with Ultra Ethernet, UALink, ESUN, and Open MRC efforts, the two business partners set out to actually create the hardware and software that would enable customers to essentially plug just about any AI accelerators, memory types, storage, and networking into their AI factories.
The company unveiled the latest results of that push today at the AI Infra Summit in Santa Clara, California. Here, Delos Data launched its Nonstop AI reference architecture, which it calls MoXI, for a mixture of X interconnects and XPUs, memory, storage, physical layers, topologies, networks, and models.
The architecture will manifest in a series of new NICs with various form factors that Delos Data is planning to build that will connect a variety of CPUs, GPUs, and other accelerators to a variety of memory types (DDR, HBM, SRAM) to a variety of switches (scale up switches, Ethernet switches, wafer scale switches, and optical circuit switches). The NICs will support both copper and pluggable optics, along with emerging co-packaged optics.
The NICs include an I/O chiplet that can deliver 30 Tbps of bandwidth, with the caveat that it needs to be built into the chip. It also is delivering a near-packaged optics card that delivers 10 Tbps of bandwidth. Finaly, it’s offering a PCIe card with 400 Gbps of bandwidth. These offerings all support multiple network protocols and interconnect topologies, including NVLink, UAlink, Ethernet, Infiniband, for scale-up, scale-out, and scale-across.
Rack-level disaggregation is coming (Image courtesy Delos Data)
As Doe explained to HPCwire, the disaggregation of the AI stack may have started with building separate systems for AI training versus AI inference. But as the AI boom has unfolded and demand for AI inference has exploded, disaggregation has taken on a whole new life. AI builders seeking the highest efficiency AI token production at massive scale are experimenting with different technologies at all levels of the stack, and Delos Data wants to enable that.
“We want to be able to say, hey, we understand that the models are changing, the hardware is changing, the technologies are changing. How can we make this better so that there’s less tax around splitting things up?” Doe said. “Because as you split them up, the distance and the latency and the amount of time it takes to go from A to B starts to be overhead and starts to limit the amount of mixing you can do.”
CTO Dan Daly (left) and CEO Ed Doe of Delos Data
Each technology has its strengths. For instance, Blackwell GPUs from Nvidia bring an enormous amount of low-precision computational horsepower, whereas the Cerebras Wafer-Scale Engine brings a dataflow engine to bear on problems. Stitching them together at a deep level would require Nvidia and Cerebras to embark on a multi-year, multi-generation co-engineering endeavor. Or Delos Data can do it at the network level.
“Those are two different types of data semantics that our data interface can bridge across without having to go through some sort of intermediate step,” Doe said. “We can, at the interface to that endpoint, we can go and move data from a GPU to a Cerebras or to a dataflow engine, or from a CPU over sockets to a bunch of flash. We can bridge these different types of models without having to add a bunch of latency to do the translation.”
Delos Data says it’s Nonstop AI products will function with a minimum of latency, measured around 100 nanoseconds, versus microseconds for a typical NIC, Doe said. According to Daly, the trick is bringing all of these components together while offering some guarantees around resilience, which will become critical as we start demanding that AI agents work reliably 24/7.
“That’s why we call this NonStop AI,” Daly said. “That’s another thing that we bring, in addition to the low latency and high bandwidth, is to have a reliable, resilient data transfers end-to-end across the different types of endpoints. That’s just something that you sort of took, took for granted when you had the Internet with TCP and to some extent scale out with RDMA and MRC, where the resiliency is built in. But as we’ve gotten to scale up, we don’t necessarily have that.
“And so this is introducing that end-to-end resiliency for all the different types of failures that we find in these data centers,” he continued. “We’re adding that to that domain so that it just becomes one less problem that the accelerator designer or the GPU or the CPU designer has to worry about on their I/O, is that all of the resiliency is taken care of in hardware in this data interface.”
As part of the Nonstop AI architecture, Delos Data also announced a development and test product dubbed Morpheus, which is delivered as a PCIe card and allows customers to validate their IP against real workloads across different network topologies. Morpheus is available now.
The new NICs and Morpheus come on top of other product announcements Delos Data made earlier this year, including the Delos Asterion server, which it unveiled at Computex and which will sample to customer at the end of 2026. At GTC earlier this year, it launched Delos Mosaic software, which is currently in production. Finally, Delos Data announced that it has raised $100 million to date.
Delos Data unveiled this NICs at AI Infra Summit (Image courtesy Delos Data)
Ultimately, Delos Data wants to remove barriers keeping AI builders trapped on a particular platform, and instead enable them to build with whatever infrastructure components match their changing requirements.
“I think today, they optimize their workload around the infrastructure that they have or if they’ve bought already,” Doe said. “And I think that there’s going to be a flip, where …they co-design the infrastructure along with this new emerging workload. What would be the best topology or the set of topologies I want to be able to support and how does that ultimately impact my performance?”
If you’re at AI Infra Summit, you can visit Delos Data at booth 1344.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman told reporters his office considered the views of Nick's siblings, Jake and Romy, when making the decision.
Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha responded to the incident in Denmark, declaring Kyiv’s “full support” after “unacceptable actions targeting a Danish helicopter.”
“Moscow continues its attempts to destabilise Europe, not just Denmark. Joint and decisive action is required and Ukraine is ready to contribute to all efforts aimed at strengthening the protection of Europe from Russian threats,” he said.
404 Media reports:
Last summer, a cop with the Lake County, Indiana Sheriff's Department used Flock's surveillance search engine to look for a license plate across more than 19,000 cameras in 1,558 cities and towns. The cop's stated reason for the search, according to a record of Flock's system, was "LMAO."
The cop is one of dozens who put gibberish, jokes, or other nonsense into Flock's "reason" box, highlighting the casualness and lack of care some cops have when searching an incredibly powerful surveillance system. This is on top of the thousands upon thousands of cops who simply wrote something like "investigation," "test," or left the box blank as their search "reason," according to a new analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and shared with 404 Media.
EFF's investigation found cops across dozens of jurisdictions writing "LMAO," "LOL," "Hehe," "Haha," "idk," "blah," "TBD," and "robbery I don't remember the case number leave me alone" in Flock's "reason" box for searches.
They found cops writing "idiot," "fuck this new search engine," "dickhead," "shithead," and "WEIRD KID" in the reason box. And they found an entire class of police button mashers, who ran searches for reasons of "asdfg," "gyghkkghghjkghjk," "jhjhjkhj," "jkhhkjhjk," "nmbvcbnm," and so on and so forth. The searches came from police departments across the country from 2023 through late 2025, when Flock changed how the "reason" box in its search system functions...
Each time a search is performed, a record of it is saved in the Flock system, which can be obtained by the public using government records requests. These audit logs show hundreds of thousands of searches of the system; after 404 Media and other news outlets used these types of logs to show police using the Flock system to look for undocumented immigrants on behalf of ICE, a woman in Texas who had an abortion, and protesters, cops were warned by government surveillance centers to be "as vague as permissible" about the reasons for their searches...
A police department said it investigated a cop who wrote "driving around being weird" in the reason field but found it was for "legitimate public safety purposes."
If a police chief "stood in front of a city council and asked for permission to install hundreds of cameras just so his officers could investigate the high crime of 'haha,' they would be laughed out of the room," argues the EFF blog post, calling this proof that agencies can't be trusted to oversee themselves.
But judges aren't being asked to authorize searches or review evidence, which the EFF post argues shows laws and courts haven't caught up yet with a new technology. Whatever auditing happens is clearly "deficient," the EFF warns, and while many jurisdictions require by law an actual reason for searches, "this keeps happening because police use automated license plate readers as a convenient shortcut around constitutional privacy safeguards." The EFF sees police officers "making a mockery of our civil liberties" by logging reasons like "LOL", "LMAO", "sexy", and "idk" while accessing sensitive location data.
In fact, they argue the warrant-less databases fostered a culture of abuse that "allowed police to treat a mass surveillance network like their own personal search engine, permitting the tracking of the movements of everyday citizens for low-level complaints, personal whims, and sometimes, seemingly, for the lols."
Flock Safety claims it has improved its system by requiring officers to select from a dropdown list of crimes before running a search-but that only makes it easier for officers to hide improper searches behind the veneer of uniformity. The system does not require proof that the dropdown reason actually matches the true purpose of the search... Since this update, officers are no longer required to type out why they are digging through a driver's movement history, and instead can select a pre-packaged option like "Traffic infraction" or "Other" in half a second...
Mass surveillance is incompatible with a free society, and especially so when the people with access to this data are treating it like a joke. This ALPR mass surveillance — the indiscriminate, continuous collection and retention of location data on every driver, regardless of suspicion — should not exist. But because it does, EFF continues to urge courts and state legislatures to immediately step in and impose strict, enforceable restrictions to rein in this abuse. At an absolute minimum, this means mandating rigid data deletion deadlines and an ironclad warrant requirement.
If police want the power to track a person's movements, they must be required to convince a judge with evidence and probable cause. They should not be able to bypass the Constitution with a search for "haha."
ICE says it has no updated information on the number of miscarriages after 3 October 2025. Lawmakers, advocates and immigration attorneys have raised alarms that pregnant detainees are not receiving basic prenatal care and screenings
ICE is arresting a record number of pregnant women and teenagers – placing them in detention centers where they say it can be exceedingly difficult to access medical care. At the same time, the agency appears to have lost count of how many suffered a miscarriage.
Government documents obtained by the Guardian show that the Trump administration placed more pregnant immigrants in detention last fall and winter than at any time over the previous year.
Leveraging optical quantum technology and market insights for industrial use
TOKYO, Sept. 15, 2026 — Mitsubishi Electric Corporation today announced that its ME Innovation Fund has invested in OptQC Corp., a Japanese startup that develops and provides optical quantum computer hardware. This is the fund’s sixteenth investment to date.
Quantum computing is transitioning from research to practical applications, including the rapid acceleration of technological development for industrial use. These applications require hardware equipped with a large number of qubits, and among the various approaches, optical quantum computing offers superior qubit scalability and energy efficiency.
OptQC is a startup originating from the University of Tokyo. It was established based on technologies developed by the university’s Furusawa Laboratory, a world leader in optical quantum computing. The company’s optical quantum computer features proprietary architecture designed to limit increases in system size as the number of qubits grows. Its hardware technology is highly regarded for its suitability for large-scale systems. OptQC has also established a track record of progress toward practical applications, including delivering its first commercial system to a public research institution and hardware modules to private-sector companies.
Through this investment, Mitsubishi Electric expects to gain early insights into the company’s optical quantum computer hardware development technologies, related components, customers and market trends. The company aims to lead the field of quantum computing and create new business opportunities by applying these insights to its quantum technologies, software implementation knowhow and application development in industrial fields.
Kan Takase, Representative Director and CEO, OptQC Corp., said, “We are honored that Mitsubishi Electric has recognized the potential of optical quantum computing.” Through this investment, we hope to combine the expertise Mitsubishi Electric has cultivated across its broad business activities with our quantum computing technologies. Together, we aim to advance the industrial application of quantum technologies, focusing on initiatives that create new value for global society.”
Komi Matsubara, Executive Officer (Vice President, Business Innovation), Mitsubishi Electric Corporation said, “OptQC is a startup with advanced technological capabilities in developing optical quantum computer hardware and significant potential for practical applications. Through this investment, we will apply their technological and market insights to our quantum-related technologies and efforts to explore applications across industrial fields. Our goal is to create meaningful new value and promising business opportunities in quantum computing.”
About OptQC
OptQC is a deep-tech startup aiming to provide a next-generation computing platform using optical quantum technology.
Built upon over 25 years of research at the Furusawa Laboratory of the University of Tokyo, we accelerate the practical application of quantum technology in the global market through an approach that simultaneously promotes research, development, and business.
The Supreme Court left intact a ruling that blocked the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing new regulations for mail voting, rejecting the Trump administration's effort to move forward with the rules in the midterms.
If the state pension rises to £13,000 next year, it will probably breach the UK’s tax-free personal allowance (currently £12,570) – the amount you can earn before paying income tax.
However, pensioners who don’t receive any other income should still be exempt from paying tax if the state pension exceeds the personal allowance.
In the 2025 Budget the government announced the personal allowance would be frozen at its current level up to April 2031.
Defensive back Charles Tillman played 168 games for his home-town team the Chicago Bears across 13 NFL seasons. Nicknamed “Peanut” as a child by his mother, he became renowned for the Peanut Punch, where he would whack the ball out of the hands of unsuspecting receivers. After retiring from playing, he spent eight years in the FBI before quitting over the Trump administration’s ICE policies and tactics. Now 45, he spent some of his summer in England, teaching flag football to kids in Liverpool.
You went to a dozen schools around the world as a child. Do you share your own experiences when you coach kids now? “Absolutely. I share a great deal because it helped shape me into the person I am today. My dad being in the military and us moving around so much helped my personality. I’m very outgoing and a lot of that stems from my childhood, always being the new kid in school and having to make new friends. So, I talk about those experiences with the kids when it feels appropriate.”
According to the report, 64 VPN apps on Apple’s App Store and Google Play contain trackers that collect your sensitive data; the exact opposite of what a VPN is supposed to do.
A petition against the mayor’s presence reeked of Islamophobia – and ran counter to the sense of togetherness that followed the attacks
Everyone who was in New York on 11 September 2001 has their 9/11 story. My husband and I were at JFK, boarding a plane to San Francisco. Our two sons were home in lower Manhattan, a block away from my 85-year-old mother. They watched the towers fall from our corner. The weather was radiantly beautiful.
For a long time, the faces of the missing were everywhere. Their eyes seemed to follow us from the makeshift shrine outside St Vincent’s hospital to the window of our local bodega. We cried at random moments. We slept badly.
DOVER, Del. — Statewide, eight races have a real primary fight today; one party only, but genuine competition within that party, which makes today a real “nail-biter”—see Table 1 below.
Table 1: Races Decided Today — No Nov. 3 General Election
Office
District / County
Sept. 15 Primary
Candidates (Primary)
Nov. 3 General
Candidates (General)
State Senate, District 9
New Castle
Yes
Jack Walsh (D), Dawn Briggs (D)
None filed
N/A — primary winner takes seat
State House, District 2
New Castle
Yes
Stephanie T. Bolden (D), Michelle H. Booker (D)
None filed
N/A — primary winner takes seat
State House, District 23
New Castle
Yes
Luann D’Agostino (D), Joe Jasper (D), Dave Redlawsk (D), Dan Seador (D)
None filed
N/A — primary winner takes seat
State House, District 28
Kent
Yes
William Carson Jr. (D), Tyeisha “Tye” Grier (D)
None filed
N/A — primary winner takes seat
State House, District 32
Kent
Yes
Kerri Evelyn Harris (D), LaChelle Paul (D)
None filed
N/A — primary winner takes seat
New Castle County Council, District 4
New Castle
Yes
Curtis Dauntell Linton (D), Helena M. Creamer (D), Jason Hoover (D)
Plenty of other primary races are “nail-biters” also with the winner continuing to the general election on Nov. 3rd.
For example, Democratic incumbent Kathy Jennings faces primary challengers Dwayne Bensing and Patty Rickman for the attorney general nomination. Whoever wins would face their opponent Republican David Graham in the general election. Also, Democratic incumbent Sen. Chris Coons has three primary challengers of his own, and two Republicans are competing for their party’s nomination at the same time.
Wherever you live in Delaware, whichever party you belong to, today’s turnout is the real story. In a lot of races, it’s not just influential, it’s the entire outcome.
For a full rundown of who’s on the ballot statewide, including contested primaries for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, attorney general and state treasurer, along with New Castle County Council races, see Delaware LIVE’s Sept. 15 Primary Voters’ Guide.
One more thing before polls close at 8 p.m. tonight: you might already be registered to vote without realizing it.
You may already be a registered voter and didn’t know it…
If you got a Delaware driver’s license or state ID recently (since June 21, 2023), you may have been signed up to vote automatically, without picking a party. If that’s you, you can still choose Democratic or Republican today, right at the polls, and vote in that party’s primary. Not sure if this applies to you? Grab your license and check here.
Ruling comes a day before homeland security department’s substantial restrictions were set to take effect
A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from implementing a new rule that would limit how long foreign students and journalists can remain in the US without applying for extensions.
F Dennis Saylor, the US district judge in Boston, ruled in favor of a coalition of unions and higher education advocacy groups a day before the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s rule was set to take effect.
Sept. 15, 2026 — Researchers at Princeton Engineering have created a semiconductor with unique properties: it is just a few molecules thick and can repeatedly change its properties in response to light. This is a step toward building more energy-efficient sensors, optoelectronic devices and computing technologies.
Jaehoon Ji, left, and Saien Xie in the lab. Photo bySameer A. Khan/Fotobuddy
Advances in semiconductors over the last 50 years have allowed engineers to create increasingly smaller semiconductor devices and power more efficient computers. But this approach is reaching its physical limits — the semiconductor devices are so tiny it is challenging to add more. Researchers are now creating new materials rather than shrinking existing ones.
The researchers have created a uniform piece of the semiconductor that is 1-inch square. Next, they are working to create a circuit, a fundamental building block for any complex electronic device.
“One of the future goals for advancing electronics is not just making materials smaller, but making them adaptable and smarter,” said Jaehoon Ji, post-doctoral researcher and first author on the paper describing the research in Science Advances.
Current semiconductors, used to power everything from televisions to laptops to microwaves, respond to electrical signals. Once manufactured, the way they conduct electricity remains largely unchanged. This new material, by contrast, is responsive and changeable.
“The first step to creating smart materials is responsiveness,” said Saien Xie, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the paper’s lead author. “Living systems are extremely smart, because they continuously sense and respond to their surroundings. We wanted to create a material that can similarly respond to external stimuli instead of remaining permanently fixed.”
To accomplish that goal, the team combined a super thin semiconductor with light-responsive molecules that change structure when exposed to different wavelengths. These changes alter the semiconductor’s electronic properties, allowing its conductivity and optical response to be programmed, erased, and reprogrammed with light.
This means that the material does not function like a simple on-off switch. “Instead of switching directly from zero to one, we can gradually adjust the material’s response and then reverse the process,” Ji said.
Xie, Ji and their collaborators have created a uniform piece of this super thin semiconductor that is one inch square. Using this, they have built arrays of programmable electronic switches, a step toward larger integrated systems. Next, they are working to connect these switches into a circuit, a fundamental building block for any complex electronic device.
“Our long-term vision is to build electronics whose functionality is no longer fixed during fabrication,” Xie said. “Instead, we want devices whose properties can be dynamically reconfigured after they are made. This work demonstrates an important step toward that goal.”
The paper, Large-area, photo-programmable 2D semiconductors with chromic molecular functionalization, was published July 1 in Science Advances. In addition to Xie and Ji, authors include Yin Liang, Jinpeng Tian, Jingtao Tan, Jaerin Kim, Satya Butler, Haining Mao and Gloria Liu at Princeton University. The research was primarily supported by the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund, David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center.
Disbanding of department in Trinidad comes after arrest of a resident for posting about issues with local water supply
A police department in Texas that arrested a local resident for complaining on social media about their city’s contaminated water supply has been ordered closed after failing to prove it provided any benefit to the community.
State officials stepped in to investigate after Jennifer Combs spent a night in jail in May after a post appeared on her Facebook page suggesting people were hospitalized by bacteria in the water pipes of Trinidad, a municipality in Henderson county about 75 miles south-east of Dallas.
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 15, 2026 — Quantum Elements, a provider of AI-powered digital twins for quantum computing developers, and the University of Southern California (USC) today announced the publication of a Nature Communications paper showing that the surface code can improve error protection even on a quantum processor whose physical layout does not naturally match the code. The authors were able to demonstrate logical qubits and achieved below-threshold performance on IBM Heron processors’ heavy-hex architecture, even though it is not optimized for surface codes.
The peer-reviewed paper, Surface code scaling on heavy-hex superconducting quantum processors, co-authored by Daniel Lidar, Quantum Elements Chief Scientific Officer and Director of the USC Center for Quantum Information Science & Technology, and Quantum Elements quantum research scientist Arian Vezvaee, among others, outlines the use of the surface code, an error-correction method, on two IBM Heron-generation processors.
The surface code is designed around a square grid of connected qubits. IBM Heron-generation processors use a more sparsely connected heavy-hex architecture. Mapping the code onto this hardware requires additional routing and creates periods when qubits sit idle and errors accumulate as the code grows. The researchers addressed this by combining a depth-efficient code with the dynamical decoupling approach that later became the foundation for Quantum Elements’ Qiskit Function, Orbit. This suppressed the damaging idle-time noise and enabled directional subthreshold scaling. When the code grew in one direction, it became more effective at protecting against the corresponding type of logical error. Professor Lidar helped develop the theoretical and practical foundations behind this error suppression method.
The result is an important step toward more flexible fault-tolerant quantum systems. It shows that a processor does not have to be designed around the exact geometry of the surface code to receive the scaling benefits, meaning that the code has the potential to be adapted across a broader range of superconducting architectures.
“Because a given error correcting code and hardware may not always match, we wanted to test the limits of making the surface code, designed for square lattices, work on IBM’s heavy-hex hardware,” said Professor Lidar. “We found that only by leveraging the dynamical decoupling techniques deployed in Quantum Elements’ Qiskit Function, Orbit, we were able to demonstrate the expected improvements as the surface code’s distance parameters increased. Hybrid decoupling-error correction approaches, such as what we demonstrated in this work, will likely continue to outperform either approach on its own in future quantum processors.”
Quantum processors must meet a wide range of engineering requirements, not just the demands of a particular error-correcting code. If scalable error correction requires a processor’s physical layout to match the code, hardware developers would be forced to prioritize code compatibility over other design considerations. This would leave some processors with fewer options for achieving fault tolerance.
“This shows the power of hybrid approaches to move us towards fault tolerant quantum computing.” said Izhar Medalsy, co-founder and CEO of Quantum Elements. “This is just the first step toward implementing entangled logical qubits, which we will reveal more details on soon, that will be another major advance toward achieving fault-tolerant quantum computing.”
About Quantum Elements
Founded in 2023 in Los Angeles, Quantum Elements develops software for modeling, simulating, and optimizing quantum computing systems. The company is building hardware-calibrated quantum digital twins designed to help quantum hardware teams understand noise, test error-correction strategies, evaluate decoder performance, and shorten the path from experimental hardware to fault-tolerant system design.
KAWASAKI, Japan, Sept. 15, 2026 — Fujitsu Limited today announced the global open-source release of its quantum application development software, Open Quantum Application Research Package (OpenQARP).
The software offers over 100 software components, including Fujitsu-developed quantum algorithms. These components can be combined to significantly streamline quantum application development. The software is compatible with various execution environments, such as Fujitsu’s quantum simulator built on a large-scale HPC environment and the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform for hybrid quantum-classical computing. Prior to its public release, Fujitsu has provided a beta version of the software to over 80 organizations since February 2026 through joint research and the Quantum Simulator Challenge, and it has already been used to generate numerous research and development results in quantum applications.
By publicly releasing the software, which includes Fujitsu-developed algorithms, as open-source software, Fujitsu aims to accelerate the practical adoption of quantum software and contribute to addressing societal challenges through quantum technology.
Quantum computing is expected to provide one approach to solving complex problems that conventional computers cannot address in various societal domains, such as materials development, financial optimization, healthcare, and drug discovery. Fujitsu has been engaged in the development of specific quantum applications through joint demonstrations with customers across various industries and joint research with universities and research institutions.
To accelerate the practical adoption of quantum technology, it is crucial that cutting-edge algorithms are widely reusable rather than being custom-built for specific problems. Therefore, Fujitsu developed OpenQARP, a quantum application development software that implements versatile quantum algorithms as components to promote their use in quantum algorithm development across various industries. To further expand the adoption of quantum technology, Fujitsu is now publicly releasing the software as open-source software on GitHub.
OpenQARP Features
Streamlined implementation through the provision of versatile software components
OpenQARP provides over 70 composable building blocks, from state preparation and ansatz layers to the Quantum Fourier Transform. It also provides over 20 ready-to-run algorithms built from these blocks, including Subspace-Search Variational Quantum Eigensolver for Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices and quantum phase estimation for fault-tolerant quantum computing. Users can combine these components according to their objectives to develop quantum applications, thereby reducing software implementation efforts.
Fujitsu actively uses the software in its own research and publishes the resulting outcomes. For example, in the research and development of quantum chemistry applications for calculating molecular electronic states, implementing a process using the ADAPT-VQE algorithm required approximately 130 lines of Python code, which its components reduced to under 40 lines. This significantly reduces the burden of implementing quantum algorithms, allowing researchers to focus on validating algorithms and applications.
Efficient quantum computation through Fujitsu-developed advanced algorithms
OpenQARP also provides Fujitsu-developed quantum algorithms as components. These include the Unitary pair Coupled Cluster Doubles algorithm, which leverages pre-computation results from classical computers to reduce the number of quantum gate layers (circuit depth) required for initial state preparation in quantum chemical calculations, and Density of States Quantum Phase Estimation, which reduces the burden of preparing complex input states required for quantum phase estimation and efficiently obtains information about energy spectra.
Compatibility with various execution environments, from general PCs to GPU-equipped systems and supercomputers
OpenQARP can be easily installed and used by anyone in a standard PC environment that supports Python. It can also integrate with NVIDIA CUDA-Q as a backend via a source build, enabling quantum circuit execution in open GPU-accelerated environments. Furthermore, it can be used in Fujitsu’s 40-qubit state-vector quantum simulator environment, which is composed of 1,024 FUJITSU Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX700 units, each equipped with Fujitsu’s “A64FX” processor. This supercomputing environment has been made available to more than 80 organizations through the Quantum Simulator Challenge, and the pre-released beta version of the software has been used to perform a variety of quantum computations. Fujitsu also plans to sequentially support simulation environments based on the STAR architecture for quantum computing that it is researching.
Future Plans
Fujitsu will continue to promote OpenQARP not only within the quantum community but also across various industrial sectors. The company aims to accelerate the development of a wide range of quantum applications in society and contribute to addressing societal challenges through quantum technology.
OpenQARP is available as open-source software on GitHub. The documentation can be found here.
About Fujitsu
Fujitsu’s purpose is to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation. As the digital transformation partner of choice for customers around the globe, our 100,000 employees work to resolve some of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Our range of services and solutions draw on five key technologies: AI, Computing, Networks, Data & Security, and Converging Technologies, which we bring together to deliver sustainability transformation. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 3.5 trillion yen (US$23 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026 and remains the top digital services company in Japan by market share.
The decision for Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, comes as a committee is set to decide whether the family, who returned to the U.K. in August, is entitled to publicly funded security.
Analysts warn of an acceleration in high-risk arms race with Russia and China in Earth’s orbit
The US has deployed weapons in space, the US military has confirmed, in an extraordinary public announcement that analysts warn will accelerate a high-risk arms race with Russia and China in Earth’s orbit.
The US secretary of the air force, Troy Meink, said Washington had active “on-orbit” weapons, meaning they had been deployed and were circling the globe.
The control cluster and the quantum processors it drives join GPU and CPU compute nodes as co-processors of a single quantum-GPU supercomputer with quantum-classical loops measured on hardware in microseconds. The system was developed almost entirely by autonomous AI agents.
EMERYVILLE, Calif., Sept. 15, 2026 — Anyon Computing has unveiled a new real-time quantum control system built on NVIDIA NVQLink. The system is designed natively so that Anyon’s microwave quantum control cluster, together with the quantum processors (QPUs) it drives, joins GPU and CPU compute nodes as co-processor nodes of a single supercomputing machine. It will be open-sourced and serve as the control plane of large-scale quantum computing inside future data centers.
Anyon Computing’s quantum supercomputer: the cryostat housing the QPU and the quantum control cluster. Image credit: Anyon Computing.
In Anyon’s architecture the quantum processor is not a peripheral attached to a classical computer. The QPU nodes’ control cluster, and the GPU and CPU nodes share one RDMA-over-Ethernet fabric and one programming model, so that error decoding, calibration, adaptive control, and hybrid AI-Quantum workflows can run across all of them as one machine. That is the shape large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing requires. The loop between measurement and action must close in microseconds, while the qubits are still coherent, and the compute that loop needs will not fit on one chip.
“A quantum supercomputer has to be one machine, not a quantum box bolted onto a classical one,” said Dr. Roger Luo, Co-Founder and CEO, Anyon Computing. “We built this control system using NVIDIA NVQLink so that our control cluster and the quantum processors it drives are co-processor nodes next to the GPUs and CPUs, on the same fabric and in the same program. And we built it the way we intend to build everything from now on, with AI agents doing the engineering against real hardware.”
Programmed with CUDA-Q Natively for Hybrid Quantum-Classical Tasks
The system runs NVIDIA CUDA-Q programs natively, alongside OpenQASM and QIR. An ordinary CUDA-Q hybrid program runs with its classical code on the real-time host’s CPU/GPU and its quantum calls in the same process, so adaptive quantum-classical loops run at millisecond-to-microsecond cadence without per-call recompilation. With this, the stack has demonstrated the capability to run quantum error correction workloads, adaptive calibration and characterization loops, machine-learning-based readout classification, and hybrid quantum-classical machine learning, including variational and reinforcement-learning training loops. Because the links to host nodes and to peer controllers share commodity RDMA-over-Ethernet, the control plane grows the way a data center does, from one node to many controllers and many GPU and CPU nodes on one switched fabric, with controllers phase-locked on a shared reference.
Engineered by AI agents, Verified on Hardware
The control system is also among the first sophisticated real-time FPGA systems developed almost entirely by autonomous AI agents to reach production release, and the first quantum control system built this way. Anyon’s agents carried the design from register-transfer-level code through simulation, build, and hardware-in-the-loop verification with autonomous iterative improvements to deliver desired system features in a loop.
The new control system follows Anyon’s first machine, already running inside a commercial AI data center with NVIDIA GPUs, pioneering NVQLink deployment inside a commercial production data center.
About Anyon Computing
Anyon Computing Inc. (also known as Anyon Technologies) is a quantum computing company that provides superconducting modular quantum supercomputers, which it tightly couples with NVIDIA GPUs via NVQLink for data center deployment at scale. Anyon pioneered deploying NVIDIA NVQLink inside a commercial production data center and is among the first superconducting QPU backends integrated with NVIDIA CUDA-Q. Founded by pioneers from Caltech and UC Berkeley.
Firms manage $7.3tn in assets and could afford to transition away from fossil fuels yet invest in natural gas and coal-fired plants to power datacenters
The energy portfolios of 20 private equity firms produce 1.5bn tons of greenhouse gases a year, more than the annual emissions of any country except China, the US, India and Russia, according to a new report.
Together, these firms manage $7.3tn in assets of all kinds, affording them the ability to shape the pace of the transition away from fossil fuels. However their energy investments include significant fossil fuel assets including natural gas and coal-fired power plants to provide electricity to datacenters.
The rise of AI-generated tributes and bots for ‘talking’ to the dead has experts concerned more people will grieve in isolation
Tributes rolled in after the death of Dolly Parton last month. Jack White performed Jolene at a London gig. Kesha sang Old Flames (Can’t Hold a Candle to You), a single her mother wrote for the country music titan. Even Pitbull stopped his Madison Square Garden show to memorialize Parton and all the other “powerful women” in the crowd. But one of the strangest – and most viral – eulogies did not come from a celebrity. It did not even come from a person.
Run Jolene, at just under five minutes, is an earworm of a country song, containing all the cliches of the genre: twangy singer, banjo licks, corny lyrics. Those lyrics concern Jolene, the fictional romantic rival made infamous by Parton. “Somebody better warn Jolene / Dolly’s coming through those gates,” the voice croons. “Run Jolene / Girl you better move your feet.”
Boston, Massachusetts — A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from imposing new limits on how long foreign students, exchange visitors and journalists can remain in the United States without applying for extensions.
U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor issued a preliminary injunction one day before the Department of Homeland Security rule was scheduled to take effect. The policy would have replaced the decades-old “duration of status” system with fixed admission periods, generally limiting F student and J exchange visas to four years and I visas for foreign journalists to 240 days.
Saylor said DHS relied on “exceptionally weak” national-security and fraud justifications and likely failed to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act by inadequately addressing public comments or considering less burdensome alternatives.
Universities and advocacy groups challenging the rule argued it would disrupt research, discourage international enrollment and create uncertainty for students whose academic programs extend beyond four years. Saylor found they had shown a likelihood of irreparable harm if the policy took effect.
DHS General Counsel James Percival criticized the ruling, arguing the existing system allows some visa holders to remain in the country indefinitely without undergoing renewed government review.
The injunction does not permanently invalidate the rule. The lawsuit will continue, with a status conference scheduled for Oct. 2.
For now, foreign students and exchange visitors may continue remaining in the United States for the duration of their approved programs rather than facing automatic fixed-term expiration dates.
Tobacco investments raise new concerns about Dr Nicole Saphier ahead of confirmation hearing
Donald Trump’s nominee for US surgeon general reported more than $200,000 in business income from a company she owns that sells dietary supplements, a loosely regulated industry that health and consumer advocates say raises concerns about her record and which some critics allege are akin to “snake oil”.
Dr Nicole Saphier, who specializes in breast cancer as a radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New Jersey and was formerly a Fox News contributor, is facing a Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday. She filed a financial disclosure and ethics agreement last week.
The scaling of AI infrastructure from single racks to multi-rack and campus-scale clusters is forcing system architects to rethink how data center interconnects are designed. As deployments grow to support tens of thousands of accelerators, scale-up and scale-out interconnect choices directly impact system efficiency. Bandwidth remains part of the equation, but power, reach, density, and system complexity are also shaping how these systems are built.
To address these challenges, modern AI and HPC systems are deploying a hybrid interconnect architecture that combines copper and optical technologies. Copper remains the technology of choice for scale-up fabrics, supporting short-reach connections where efficiency, cost, and simplicity are critical. Optical is deployed in inter-rack scale-up and scale-out networks to provide the reach required for large-scale system connectivity.
This approach is best summarized by a simple rule of thumb: use copper where it delivers the greatest efficiency, and optical where reach requires it.
Copper: The Optimal Choice for Short-Reach AI Interconnects
Copper delivers the best overall system efficiency across nearly every key metric, making it the default interconnect technology within servers and trays and across racks. Its advantages in latency, power, cost, and reliability only become more apparent as link counts increase. Passive direct-attach copper (DAC) links introduce minimal delay by avoiding electro-optical conversion and operating at low power. These attributes contribute directly to lower system-level power budgets and reduced operational overhead.
As data rates scale to 800G and beyond, copper remains highly effective over short distances of up to a few meters, such as within a rack or between adjacent racks in tightly integrated systems. These connections include GPU-to-switch, accelerator-to-accelerator, and switch-to-switch links. In these environments, overall system efficiency is often more important than extending reach. Over short distances, copper can carry high-speed signals with lower power, lower latency, and less complexity than optical alternatives. In large accelerator clusters, the resulting savings in power, cost, and system efficiency add up quickly.
PCB First, Cable Second
Within copper interconnects, there is a clear hierarchy. The most efficient medium is the printed circuit board (PCB), which avoids connectors and minimizes discontinuities. PCB traces offer low loss, low latency, and low cost, making them the preferred solution wherever physical integration is feasible. When physical separation is required, cables are introduced. Passive copper cables provide a simple, low-power option, whereas active copper implementations, such as active copper cables (ACC) and active electrical cables (AEC), extend reach through equalization and signal regeneration. While these approaches increase channel length, they introduce additional power consumption, latency, and design complexity.
The Copper Wall: Why Optical Becomes Necessary
Signal degradation constrains electrical channels as data rates increase and distances grow. A variety of loss mechanisms, such as skin effect, crosstalk, and attenuation, increase with frequency, reducing the usable reach of copper interconnects. At advanced speeds such as PCIe 7.0 and 100G Ethernet and above, maintaining signal integrity requires progressively more equalization and conditioning. Copper links with an insertion loss of 20-40dB are quite common. Many applications require operation with 45dB and even 50dB insertion loss.
Figure 1: Channel loss of 1m direct attach cable (DAC) (Source: Cadence)
Figure 2: Channel loss of 20+ inch PCB (Source: Cadence)
Over the past 10 years, the industry has moved to PAM4 signaling for copper links to optimize power efficiency, as quantified by the energy required to transmit a single bit, measured in picojoules per bit. Copper links are generally implemented using digital signal processing (DSP)-based transceivers that equalize for channel insertion loss. On top of that, the use of strong forward error correction (FEC) enables effectively error-free transmission over copper channels. However, the use of DSP and FEC comes at the expense of link latency, which can be in the 100-150ns range.
While the use of DSP and FEC techniques allows copper to operate over long distances, they also increase link power consumption and latency. This gradually erodes the advantages that make copper efficient at shorter reaches.
Extending copper beyond this “copper wall” becomes increasingly inefficient, and alternative approaches are needed to maintain bandwidth, signal integrity, and overall system efficiency. Large AI clusters only magnify the penalties associated with signal conditioning and retiming. This makes the transition between electrical and optical interconnect a system-level decision that influences power budgets, deployment economics, and scalability.
Enabling AI at Scale with Optical Interconnect
Optical interconnect addresses these limitations by transmitting data as light rather than as electrical signals. Optical links are far less sensitive to electromagnetic interference and can maintain signal quality over much longer distances. As a result, they are well-suited for scale-out connectivity across racks, rows, and campuses in large AI deployments.
Pluggable optical modules remain the dominant implementation across these ranges since they provide the bandwidth and reach needed for large clusters. Not only do they support flexible deployment over distances ranging from several meters to multiple kilometers, but they also maintain consistent signal integrity.
However, optical interconnect introduces its own tradeoffs. Electro-optical conversion adds power overhead, and optical modules increase system complexity compared to passive electrical links.
Ethernet-based optics make use of PAM4 signaling at 100G and 200G. This requires the use of DSP and FEC as used in copper links. Power savings will come from reduced DSP power required for shorter connections between optical modules and the silicon transceivers integrated into ASICs.
New optical standards, such as the OCI Optical Compute Interconnect Line Interface Specification, use optical wavelength-division multiplexing to introduce parallelism into the high-speed links. This allows signaling to be performed using NRZ modulation, which potentially removes the need for DSP and FEC. As a result, power and latency can potentially be reduced.
Figure 3: Illustration of DWDM wavelength channels and CWDM wavelength groups for a bidirectional link (Source: Cadence)
The Evolution Toward Integrated Optics
The distance between switching silicon and optical interfaces is becoming a growing source of power loss and signal degradation in larger AI deployments. Long electrical paths on PCBs contribute to both insertion loss and increased equalization requirements. The resulting reduction in overall efficiency has led to the development of more tightly integrated optical architectures, including near-packaged optics (NPO) and co-packaged optics (CPO).
Figure 4: Illustration of three different physical OCI implementations highlighting the different levels of integration with the ASIC, where (a) shows an on-board optics (OBO) implementation, (b) shows a package integration implementation, and (c) shows an interposer integrated implementation. (Source: OCI Group, OCI Specification)
Tight coupling between the transceiver electronics and the optics shows tremendous potential for power reduction. For example, the transimpedance amplifier (TIA) in the optics does not need to drive a 100-ohm-terminated transmission line if the TIA is located in close proximity to the serial transceiver. Also, the transmitter in the transceiver does not need to drive a 100-ohm transmission line and can drive the optical modulator directly.
NPO and CPO reduce electrical channel length by placing optical engines closer to the ASIC. Shortening these paths improves signal integrity and reduces the power. CPO, in particular, integrates optical interfaces directly with switching silicon, enabling higher bandwidth density and improved energy efficiency in large-scale systems. Due to their advantages, NPO and CPO are becoming more important design options with higher bandwidth requirements.
A Simple Rule for a Complex System
AI infrastructure naturally organizes into a hierarchy of interconnect technologies, all of which are critical elements in today’s AI factories. PCB interconnect supports communication within a board or tightly integrated system, while copper cables extend connectivity across a rack or between closely spaced racks. Optical links provide the reach required for rack-to-rack, row-scale, and larger system connections. This hierarchy reflects the physical and economic constraints of AI system design.
Shifting Boundaries Between Electrical and Optical
Each signaling generation, from 56G to 112G and now to 224G lanes, has pushed the practical limits of electrical reach while increasing pressure for optical innovation. Future transitions to 448G signaling and beyond are expected to continue this pattern, driving advances across both domains and reshaping the boundary between copper and optical.
Continuous improvements in PCB materials, fabrication techniques, and signal integrity methods are extending the usable range of copper. Advances in optical devices, modulation techniques, and packaging are also increasing bandwidth and efficiency for optical interconnects. While improvements in SerDes architectures, equalization techniques, and channel design can extend the practical reach of copper, advances in optical integration are reducing the need for long electrical channels.
The boundary between copper and optical is in constant flux as technology and system requirements change. Choosing between copper and optical technologies remains an ongoing tradeoff shaped by bandwidth, reach, power, and deployment scale.
With the evolution of data centers into large-scale AI factories, interconnect choices increasingly affect overall efficiency. A modern AI cluster may use PCB traces within a system, passive or active copper cables within a rack, and optical connections for scale-out networking between racks, rows, and larger deployment domains. Where copper ends, and optical begins, has direct implications for power, cost, and scalability as AI deployments grow in size and density.
Despite these shifting boundaries, the rule remains constant: Use copper where it delivers the greatest efficiency, and optical where reach requires it. However, CPO may allow for greater reach and density scaling. Determining where that transition occurs remains one of the key architectural decisions in building large-scale AI infrastructure.
About the author: Marc Loinaz is the Vice President of R&D for High-Performance PHY in the Silicon Solutions Group at Cadence. His team produces serial transceivers for PCIe, Ethernet, USB, and MIPI standards at data rates from 224Gb/s down to 480Mb/s in process nodes from 28nm down to 2nm. Dr. Loinaz has worked on serial transceivers at Broadcom, NetLogic Microsystems, and Aeluros, a venture-backed start-up where he was a co-founder. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in EE from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Loinaz started his career at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he worked on early CMOS cameras and was a co-recipient of the 1998 JSSC Best Paper Award.
The WRFC is Delaware’s oldest men’s club rugby team having been around since 1972. In addition to its men’s team the organization fields a women’s team, youth teams and a team called the Old Boys for those 35 years old and older. Photo courtesy of Wilmington Rugby Team.
Wilmington Rugby’s men’s team starts their 2026 fall season with a matchup against Northeast Philadelphia Irish Rugby Club in Philly.
WILMINGTON, Del – Following a summer of friendlies and tournament play, the Wilmington Rugby Club’s men’s team (WRFC) will kick-off their 2026 fall season on September 19, against the men’s team from Northeast Philadelphia Irish Rugby Club. The game will be played in Philly and time has yet to be announced.
The WRFC is hoping to improve on a strong 2025 fall season in which they narrowly missed the playoffs. The team will face a strong test right out of the gate against Northeast Philadelphia Irish Rugby Club. The club’s men’s team has finished in the top two of the Eastern Pennsylvania Rugby Union (EPRU) Division III fixtures the past two seasons, according to the team’s website.
The WRFC’s match on Saturday is the first of a six game schedule they will play this fall, which includes a matchup against the Wilkes-Barre Rugby Football Club at the end of the season. The Wilkes-Barre Rugby Football Club won the EPRU Division III championship in 2025, according to its team website. That will be the final game WRFC plays in the 2026 fall season and will take place on October 31.
The WRFC is Delaware’s oldest men’s club rugby team having been around since 1972. In addition to its men’s team the organization fields a women’s team, youth teams and a team called the Old Boys for those 35 years old and older. The youth programs include a “Rookie Rugby Program” which is a non-contact, introductory style program for those ages 7-14, the Wilmington Raptors program which is a co-ed U14 team and two high school aged club teams. The Wilmington Colts are the boys high school club team and the Wilmington Vipers are the girls high school program. The Vipers inaugural season was in the spring of 2026, according to the WRFC website.
The club is always welcoming new players regardless of experience level or talent. Those interested in participating can go on the WRFC website and hit the join tab at the top of the page where they can fill out an interest form. The club also welcomes interested individuals to check out a practice or reach out with any questions. All practices during the fall season are held at the Siegel JCC in Wilmington, Delaware. The men’s team practices on Tuesdays and Thursdays and women’s team practices on Mondays and Thursdays.
The sport of rugby is slowly gaining popularity in the United States. USA Rugby — the national governing body for rugby in the United States — says it has over 110,000 active members across its many levels, according to their website. Over 68,000 spectators flocked to M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore to watch a match between the South Africa Springboks and New Zealand All Blacks, last week, according to the Baltimore Sun, and in 2031 the US will be a host site for the 2031 Rugby World Cup, according to an ESPN article from 2022.
To learn more about the WRFC and how to get involved with their rugby programs check out their facebook page or click here to be directed to their website.
More than 130 sign letter to PM saying international law requires further measures to stop illegal settlements
More than 130 legal experts, including 18 king’s counsel (KCs), have written to Andy Burnham saying that sanctions on Israeli settlements “fall far short” of Britain’s obligations under the international court of justice’s (ICJ’s) finding that the occupation is unlawful.
The foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, last week announced an import ban on goods from illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine and other measures. Signatories to the letter to the prime minister, including the leading lawyers Michael Mansfield KC and Imran Khan KC, and the former lord justice of appeal Alan Moses, say it is not enough.
Carmaker builds on relationship with British armed forces by seeking to cash in on Europe’s rearmament drive
Jaguar Land Rover is in talks with Nato countries about selling them the newly revamped Defender military vehicle, as the UK-based carmaker seeks to tap into Europe’s defence spending boom.
It is also among carmakers bidding for a UK defence ministry contract worth £900m to replace an ageing fleet of Land Roversthat have been out of production since 2016, competing with General Motors and the UK’s Ineos Automotive, which builds the Grenadier 4x4 for the civilian market.
Three babies may have survived and seven others could have been protected if hospital bosses and doctors had taken action over concerns about the nurse Lucy Letby, an official inquiry into the deaths has concluded.
A public inquiry led by Lady Justice Thirlwall found a “complete failure” to protect babies on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England.
Kasim and Sulaiman Khan tell Guardian they believe ex-PM is being ‘slowly killed’ by harsh treatment, driven by Asim Munir
The sons of Imran Khan have accused Pakistan’s powerful army chief of a “personal vendetta” against the incarcerated former prime minister and expressed fears their father is being “slowly killed” in jail, as international pressure mounts over his prison conditions.
Kasim Khan, 27, and Sulaiman Khan, 29, have become strong advocates for the release of their father, who has been held in Adiala prison in Rawalpindi since his arrest in 2023, and is serving a 14-year sentence on corruption charges.
These 17 nostalgic recipes bring meatloaf, cornbread, casseroles, ribs, meatballs, baked beans, old-school sides, and simple desserts back into the family dinner rotation for another well-earned turn.The post 17 nostalgic recipes that make Grandma ask for the recipe card appeared…
Julia Curlee, a former senior CIA officer, speaks on Trump administration’s purge of national security staff, attacks on DEI and failures in Iran war
When the White House fired Julia Curlee from her senior intelligence position in March 2025, her boss had an odd request: please still show up to work on Monday, but be “discreet”.
The longtime CIA analyst had served in Donald Trump’s first term, briefing Vice-President Mike Pence; worked for Joe Biden as a national security director; and stayed on for Trump’s return. She had known her days might be numbered as the incoming White House was ousting national security staffers en masse. Curlee is also transgender, which made her particularly vulnerable as the new administration made anti-trans policies a top priority. But she didn’t understand her boss’s message until she opened her phone and saw the X post:
Pumpkin season goes far beyond pie. These 13 recipes cover flaky turnovers, cream cheese muffins, rich cakes, bars, waffles, soup, and even a savory salmon bowl for a full range of fall cooking.The post 13 pumpkin recipes that made my…
Channel 4 has poached the Channel 5 owner Paramount’s £300m-plus TV advertising sales business from Sky, in a huge boost days after the broadcaster announced it is to cut 340 jobs.
The win is a big win for Channel 4, which relies on advertising for about 90% of its £1bn in revenues.
Civil rights groups have praised verdict on administration’s last-ditch attempt to change midterm voting processes. Plus: all you need to know about last night’s Emmys
Good morning. The supreme court has rejected Donald Trump’s mail ballot restrictions, capping a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting in the midterm elections already under way. The decision allows states to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes they have used for years. Civil rights groups lauded the decision.
“The supreme court has done the right thing,” said Robert Garcia, a Democratic representative from Long Beach, California, adding: “Donald Trump tried to illegally interfere with our elections and undermine vote-by-mail for millions of Americans and failed. We will keep fighting to protect the right to vote of every single citizen in this country.”
What has a DHS whistleblower said about “voter fraud” investigations?
An anonymous whistleblower said Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lawyers told officers investigating “voter fraud” they would not be held responsible for violating state laws around accessing voter registration information. The whistleblower also expressed concern about the reliability of the data DHS was giving officers to review, as well as the lack of transparency into where the data came from.
Why is Trump facing a bipartisan AI backlash?
Democrats and some Republicans have been pushing in US Congress for guardrails on the world’s most powerful AI companies. Trump dismissed the anxieties, describing them as a “HOAX” and “conspiracy”, but looked increasingly isolated as members of both major parties acknowledged the risks and expressed a desire to act before it was too late.
Why is Texas governor Greg Abbott pushing back against datacenters? Drought-prone Texas has fast become the heart of the US’s datacenter boom, and the Republican governor has directed state regulators to penalize datacenters that fail to comply with state laws requiring them to disclose their water use.
What international responses have there been? China has dismissed what it said were “fearmongering” calls to block Beijing’s AI industry, however the top Chinese spy chief warned the evolving technology could threaten Communist party rule. The president of the European Central Bank, meanwhile, has warned Europe must develop its own AI technology and build more datacenters in order to nullify the threat of being cut off by the US or China.
Mathilde Arcel, who won the Volpi Cup on Saturday for her role in Golden Lion winner Woman Unknown, said job offers have now begun to arrive
The winner of this year’s best actress prize at the Venice film festival has revealed that she is on unemployment benefits and had to fly to back to Copenhagen to report to the job centre before receiving her award.
On Saturday night, Danish actor Mathilde Arcel won the prestigious Volpi Cup for her first leading role in a feature film, May el-Toukhy’s post-second world war drama Woman Unknown, which also won the Golden Lion award for best film.
Why Should Delaware Care? The Port of Wilmington is one of the last anchors of good-paying, blue-collar jobs in Delaware. But its expansion has sparked years of pushback from residents who say a new port terminal could damage their environment and health without bringing as many new jobs as promised.
Delaware’s top officials gathered Monday to celebrate construction finally starting on the long-planned expansion of the Port of Wilmington.
Meanwhile, just outside the gates, about two dozen protesters gathered, carrying signs and wearing red shirts that said “Stop the Edgemoor Container Port.” Some passersby honked in support, others yelled out their windows.
But the dignitaries celebrating inside did not appear to acknowledge them. Representatives from both the Department of State and Enstructure, the port’s operating company, both said in emailed comments after the event that they plan to continue working with the neighbors.
The groundbreaking ceremony marked a turning point in Delaware’s yearslong effort to transform the former DuPont chemical plant in Edgemoor into a container shipping terminal. State officials say the “Delaware Container Terminal,” which is expected to cost some $669 million including more than $110 million in Delaware taxpayer funding, could bring thousands of new jobs to the Wilmington area.
Yet Edgemoor remains one of the state’s most politically fraught infrastructure projects. It has drawn stiff opposition and legal action both from nearby residents and competing ports in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Several lawsuits are still pending.
Sen. David Wilson (R-Lincoln) recently filed a motion to join one of the lawsuits alleging the Diamond State Port Corporation — the state-owned entity that oversees the port facility — broadly failed in its oversight of the Port of Wilmington.
Nearby resident Rachel Curtis said she and others organized the protest outside Monday’s groundbreaking event to show officials that area neighbors still have concerns about the environmental and health impacts of the project.
“It seems like this is just getting ushered along without any really difficult questions being asked for the most part,” Curtis said.
According to a press release, Gov. Matt Meyer and all three of Delaware’s Congressional representatives spoke in favor of the project at the event. About 200 people attended, a spokesman for the Department of State said.
“This private and public investment will create thousands of good middle class union jobs, expand opportunity for Delaware workers and businesses, and establish Wilmington as a leading port on the global stage,” Meyer said at the event, according to the release.
Spotlight Delaware did not attend the groundbreaking ceremony because attendees were required to sign a liability waiver that also said “photography, video recording, or disclosure of proprietary or confidential information may be prohibited during the tour.” Such a requirement is not typical of groundbreaking events commonly held by state officials for public projects.
Representatives from the Department of State and Enstructure, the port’s operating company, both said the form was “a standard liability waiver acknowledging the risks of entering an active project site and reinforcing established safety protocols for all attendees.”
What those safety concerns may have been at a site that is largely an empty field was not immediately clear.
Not celebrated by all
For a decade, the port expansion has been a goal of state officials who said a new container facility could bring in thousands of new jobs to the Wilmington area.
For nearly as long, some neighbors have raised alarms about potential environmental and health impacts it could bring.
Protesters gathered outside the Edgemoor site during a groundbreaking ceremony Monday. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY OLIVIA MARBLE Credit: SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY OLIVIA MARBLE
Simeon Hahn, a Bellefonte-area resident who attended the protest, has been lobbying against the port construction plans for years.
As a retired environmental scientist, he said he worries the dredging process needed to allow bigger ships to reach the port will harm aquatic habitats and the Atlantic sturgeon population.
Curtis, one of the protest organizers, said she does not think the port expansion will bring as many jobs as promised, since other ports use automation and robots to speed up operations.
“For them to sit there and promise these people jobs, long-term jobs, it’s just pie in the sky,” Curtis said.
Others said they fear the tractor trailers transporting the goods out of the port will cause traffic congestion and pollute the air.
The press release about the groundbreaking said that Enstructure and the Diamond State Port Corporation have participated in over 30 community meetings and worked with local organizations to share information and get feedback.
A representative with Enstructure said the company is “invested and committed to being good operators and neighbors in perpetuity.”
The first-of-its-kind report acknowledges the military's munition shortfall and details some of the losses of American assets so far as part of Operation Epic Fury.
The New York Post wrote that OpenAI "stunned the mathematics world" last week when it announced its AI model "cracked a legendary math problem left unsolved for nearly a century in just 88 hours."
But a New York University professor "has come forward alleging OpenAI may have copied his work after asking him to collaborate — with one of the company's scientists allegedly warning he might 'ruin his career' if he refused."
[P]rofessor Tristan Buckmaster, a British-Australian researcher who trained in Germany... had been working with Long Island-raised math prodigy Levent Alpöge, a researcher with OpenAI rival Anthropic, on a different elusive fluid dynamics equation, known as the Euler problem, when he found a solution using AI tools from both Anthropic and ChatGPT. He said scientists from OpenAI approached him and tried to convince him to jointly announce the solution, claiming they had independently solved Navier-Stokes. Buckmaster questioned the timing of their finding the solution in a blog post, noting OpenAI had only done so "in the past few days" — after the company became aware of his work. He asked OpenAI experts whether its AI systems used to solve the equation had been "trained on, or had access to" his research, but said they declined to answer, prompting him to wonder how they had advanced toward the solution so quickly. The puzzle is "not the direction one arrives at in a few days," Buckmaster wrote incredulously...
In OpenAI's post on its website sharing the Navier-Stokes proof, which it credited to Astra, the company's latest AI bot, the firm insisted no user data was incorporated into its model to solve the problem. However, it noted that it "cannot rule out" that anonymized data was used to "improve our models."
"We congratulate Levent Alpöge and Tristan Buckmaster on their remarkable mathematical work," OpenAI said in the announcement.
Buckmaster shot back, "Is it ethical to use customer's data to try to scoop their customer?"
Alpöge's affiliation with Anthropic "seems to have been a sore point for OpenAI," writes TechCrunch.
Buckmaster's public statement says the OpenAI's Sebastien "twice asserted that he wanted Levent removed from authorship" and also said that "it was so annoying that Levent works at Anthropic" — but that Buckmaster still refused to remove the Anthropic mathematician's credit.
I said that if OpenAI released its result in the way proposed I would go
public with what happened. The reply was, "Why would you ruin your career?" [OpenAI's Bubeck said later on X that he'd meant unfounded accusations could damage Buckmaster's career.] I replied that I am an academic, and asked why he thought going public would ruin my career. The reply was, "If you don't want me to be nice, then I don't have to be nice."
Buckmaster later told Australia's public broadcaster ABC that the companies building AI "have zero respect for the scientific community. I mean, it's appalling, honestly." But he went on to say AI has made the race to publish mathematical breakthroughs pointless.
"I think it's pointless. Like, I think the game is up...." Professor Buckmaster said he and Dr Alpöge had more research they could publish but questioned the point of racing ahead with it when AI could perform work that had previously occupied researchers for years.
He said there needed to be a discussion about how mathematics should operate in this new environment. Professor Buckmaster said some mathematicians had stopped publicly sharing what they were working on to avoid tipping off AI companies about their plans. He has called on academics and people from OpenAI, Anthropic and DeepMind to discuss ground rules for how they worked together.
He said the companies' power carried responsibilities that went beyond competing to solve problems before their rivals...
Building on the work of mathematicians Diego Córdoba and Luis Martínez-Zoroa, the pair found a solution to the Euler problem, a stepping stone to the Navier-Stokes problem. Professor Buckmaster said he spent weeks checking and improving the "slop" proofs generated by AI...
For now, Professor Buckmaster said he wanted to finish existing work and support his PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, rather than chase another Millennium Prize. "I think it's more important to re-evaluate what math is," he said.
"The New York University professor also warned Australia about the centralisation of resources into the hands of a small number of privately owned foreign companies..."
Kareem’s Quote of the Day: Are we wise enough to pause before our appetite for discovery turns another powerful invention into an End-of-the-World Switch?
AI Leaders Say “Hit the Brakes,” Trump Says “Full Speed Ahead”: Trump treats safety as an obstacle in a race he seems determined to lose in a fiery crash.
Last Week in Trump World: From cash promises and loyalty oaths to a 9/11 memorial nap, Trump World keeps confusing spectacle with leadership.
Two U.S. Open Champions, One Unfortunate Commonality: Tennis trophies do not erase serious allegations of abuse, and the ATP’s response to Alexander Zverev remains a troubling failure of accountability.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence: Spielberg and Kubrick’s uneasy collaboration is visually magnificent, emotionally conflicted, and still worth seeing for Haley Joel Osment’s remarkable performance.
“Song For Sam Cooke (Here in America)”: Dion’s tender tribute to Sam Cooke remembers the grace and solidarity that helped both men navigate the ugliness of the Jim Crow South.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day
“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ‘End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry.”
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015), English novelist, from Thief of Time
(Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)
Terry Pratchett was born in 1948 in Beaconsfield, a wealthy English village midway between London and Oxford, where his working-class family never quite fit in. He had a speech impediment, and later said he was a nondescript student who wasn’t liked by either his teachers or his fellow schoolchildren. Maybe that’s why he gravitated towards books, developing an early passion for Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and science fiction in general. If I were going to genetically engineer a writer like Terry Pratchett, I couldn’t come up with a more perfect upbringing for him. He went on to write more than forty fantasy novels over the course of his career, but what distinguished them was his sharp satirical edge, as he skewered everything from bureaucracy and organized religion to war and media, while always maintaining a deep well of humanism.
Pratchett died in 2015 after developing early-onset Alzheimer’s, so he wasn’t confronted with our current reality and the light-speed developments we’ve seen in AI. The closest he ever came to commenting on the phenomenon was in his 1996 novel Hogfather, when he wrote “real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.” Come to think of it, he never had to experience the heights of the real stupidity (let’s call it RS) we’ve witnessed in recent years, either. But the quote above tells me that Pratchett wouldn’t have been entirely optimistic about the combination of AI and RS we’re experiencing in the world today. Not when every AI company on Earth has its own potential doomsday button, and the people in charge are more interested in how much money can be made than in how much harm will be done.
Some people think we’ve already flipped that End-of-the-World Switch, though not everyone agrees on when. Maybe it happened during the Industrial Revolution, when we started polluting our environment on an industrial scale. Others feared it occurred when we split the atom and created the possibility that political miscalculations or sheer misanthropy might lead to another Big Bang that would erase the results of the first one. Today, we’re hearing some experts say turning on AI flipped the switch, and it’s only a matter of time before our computers pull a HAL-9000 and decide they’re better off without us.
It’s easy to understand the impulses behind each of those revolutionary scientific developments. Industrialization made so many everyday tasks easier, from manufacturing to transcontinental travel to mass communications, and everything in between. Nuclear fission had the potential to give us almost unlimited power, both militarily and in the power grid; if it didn’t quite work out that way, it at least brought a sudden end to World War II, and may yet help free us of our dependence on fossil fuel. As for AI, it may help us to cure cancer and countless other diseases, cut our workdays in half, and, if you believe the world’s richest man, create universal wealth that will benefit everyone on the planet. Call me skeptical, but I’m worried we aren’t even taking the time to make a warning sign, much less waiting for the paint to dry.
All of these inventions started the same way, with some bright and curious people asking the question “What if?” and the hope that finding the answers would improve all of humankind’s existence. But in each case, we were dealing with forces and consequences beyond the understanding and imagination of any single man or woman, or the relatively small groups that developed the blueprints for change. That’s why strong oversight and regulation, influenced by experts in every field that might be affected, is so important. Environmentalists and workers’ unions didn’t have any meaningful say in industrialization. Nuclear power was developed under a cloak of wartime secrecy and by the time we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was too late to put the genie back in the bottle. With AI, we are watching the developments in real time with informed commentary from across the globe. We don’t have any excuse not to tread carefully. If we allow the people in charge of our governments and industries to hit that End-of-the-World Switch, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.
Across the US, anti-datacenter organizers are harnessing community anger to win local elections
After four months of teach-ins and canvassing, Steven Kung helped Monterey Park, just east of Los Angeles, become the first US city to ban datacenter construction. Now, the organizer is running for city council – and he’s taking on an incumbent who supported the development of the sprawling facility.
“The datacenter coming to my neighborhood turned my life upside down,” said Kung. “I saw that there’s a dismantling of democracy at a local level.”
Thomas Dans in Nuuk, Greenland, last February. The Texas venture capitalist and MAGA influencer was appointed chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters
For more than 40 years, the U.S. Arctic Research Commission has advised Congress and the president on what to study in the frigid and dynamic far north, from the environment to military security. It’s typically done so without making waves, led by people well-versed in science and public policy.
That was until December, when President Donald Trump appointed a Texas venture capitalist and MAGA influencer with no formal background in science as the commission’s chair. Since then, Thomas Dans has traveled the globe generating headlines. Serving as the administration’s main voice on the Arctic, he’s advanced some of the president’s wildest ambitions, like a takeover of Greenland, and rankled NATO allies in the process.
Yet as Dans holds forth in the U.S. and abroad, it’s not always clear where the administration’s agenda ends and his own begins.
He has repeatedly said, for example, that the U.S. needs more icebreakers, ships that Trump has long viewed as critical to dominating the Arctic. In doing so, Dans has championed one shipbuilder in particular — Damen Shipyards, a Dutch company with which he had a business relationship.
“They’re the largest builder of icebreakers and ice-class vessels in the world,” Dans said at an event in Anchorage, Alaska, in April. At the time, his consultancy was working to help Damen land an icebreaker contract with the federal government.
As he’s spoken to audiences of government officials, diplomats, academics and journalists, Dans — who wears his Arctic commission lapel pin and exudes a professorial air — has also waded into foreign policy.
In the media and at public events, he’s backed Trump’s push to take over Greenland. And he’s advocated enthusiastically for closer U.S. relations with Russia — even as a bipartisan group of lawmakers calls for tougher sanctions on the country and more aid to Ukraine. Dans and Damen have long done business in Russia, and Dans has regularly shared social media posts that reflect a pro-Kremlin viewpoint.
“We want a peaceful Arctic, we want a peaceful world,” he said at an event a few days after he announced plans to travel to Moscow. “Russia and the United States gotta get along for that to happen.”
A nuclear powered Russian icebreaker in the port of Murmansk after conducting ice trials in the Arctic Ocean in 2020. The Arctic’s melting ice has geopolitical consequences, with Russia and China conducting joint military exercises in the region.Pavel Lvov/Sputnik via AP
Opining so broadly on foreign policy is “far beyond” the Arctic Research Commission’s scientific mandate, said Fran Ulmer, who served as commission chair for more than nine years before being replaced by Trump in 2020. “And certainly outside the bounds of what the U.S. Arctic Research Commission has done in the past.”
Dans, whose consultancy Almiranta Strategies “advises investors and businesses working in the Arctic,” according to his profile on the Arctic commission’s website, is far from the first in the Trump administration to mingle public and personal interests. The finances of many senior officials and the industries they regulate have drawn scrutiny as Trump has disarmed government safeguards against conflicts.
“It’s become standard for people to pursue their personal financial interest,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of the nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen.
Under the law, Dans’ position gives him access to government information from other federal agencies — an arrangement that could benefit his private interests. Such potential conflicts are typically governed by federal ethics rules. But the nature of Dans’ role affords him more leeway than other appointees. Commission members are not considered government employees and thus not required to file an ethics form disclosing conflicts.
Do You Know About U.S. Government Deals, Finance and Investments Abroad?
We’re reporting on how the Trump administration is investing public dollars in private companies abroad. If you know more about this topic, please contact our reporting team.
Heather Vogell
I’m interested in hearing more about federal agencies’ finance partnerships abroad. If you’ve worked with the government or its private-sector partners, or otherwise have tips in this area, please get in touch.
Indeed, a White House official told ProPublica that Dans’ consulting work did not constitute a conflict of interest for that very reason.
“Tom Dans is doing a great job leading the Arctic Research Commission, and his shipbuilding expertise has helped him succeed in this role,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly. “The President appreciates all he is doing to advance American interests in the Arctic.”
The White House official said Dans is one of two commission members the law designates as representatives of “the interests of industry.”
Even so, Dans’ lack of research experience stands out. The other industry rep is a Ph.D. and former director of the United States Geological Survey.
Dans declined multiple requests to be interviewed for this story and did not respond to written questions from ProPublica, but he told The New York Times this year that his post did not preclude him from working in private business.
The Arctic commission has arguably never been more important. The region is warming at unprecedented rates, accelerating sea-level rise and causing severe weather in the U.S. and elsewhere. The melting ice also has geopolitical consequences. Russia and China are conducting joint military exercises in the far north. New shipping lanes have opened there. And mineral deposits are becoming potentially more accessible.
At a public appearance in July, Dans cited the commission’s four priorities: military and national security, energy security, economic development in the Arctic and “what we’ll call ‘community security.’” He did not define the term.
From Russia, With Love
Dans has long been taken with Russia, the country that has by far the most Arctic coastline.
His fondness dates back at least to seventh grade, when he says he was recruited to learn Russian in his Maryland public school. He later visited Moscow as an exchange student, then returned to work in finance in the mid-1990s.
He worked at a private equity fund financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which aimed to grow the private sector after the Soviet Union’s breakup. In a LinkedIn post last year, he reminisced about how he and Kirill Dmitriev, a Harvard-educated banker who now serves as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intermediary with Trump officials, traveled in the same circles early in their finance careers.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev last year. Dans has reminisced on social media about working in similar circles as Dmitriev after the fall of the Soviet Union.Dmitri Lovetsky/AP
Decades later, in Trump’s first term as president, Dans landed a job in the Treasury Department as a senior policy adviser for international affairs. There, he served on a secret National Security Council task force on U.S. control of Greenland, a role first reported by The New Yorker. A former Trump administration official told ProPublica the group’s purpose was to strengthen the United States’ strategic position in Greenland and devise policies to bring the two closer.
Perhaps because of that work, Trump named Dans to the Arctic Research Commission for the first time in late 2020. His tenure was short-lived. When President Joe Biden took office in 2021, the new administration fired Dans and three other Trump appointees.
Dans was angry.
“We were fired without notice and anonymously slandered by the White House for ‘lacking relevant expertise,’” he wrote in The Hill. “At the time, I was the first commissioner in the agency’s 37-year history to speak fluent Russian, the language of the world’s largest Arctic nation.”
Dans launched an investment firm with two other former Trump Treasury officials, but it was short-lived, closing in late 2023. That year, Dans said on Substack that he was the “first American” to launch an effort to buy the Helsinki Shipyard in Finland, where about half the global icebreaker fleet was built. One of its Russian owners at the time was a business partner of a former Putin deputy minister. The effort failed.
He traveled the world, talking with officials in places like Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Romania. He lobbied on behalf of the Kazakhstan Embassy and that country’s state-owned national oil and gas company, records show. He devised policy recommendations “for Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction” as a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, his LinkedIn profile says. He also contributed to Heritage’s federal workforce-slashing Project 2025, of which his twin brother Paul was director.
Then in May 2024, he launched a nonprofit called American Daybreak. Its goal was to foster ties between the U.S. and Greenland.
After Trump’s victory, Dans promised in comments on Substack that “the next Trump Admin is going to Make America a Great Arctic (MAGA) nation!” In early January 2025, Dans and American Daybreak helped arrange a visit by Donald Trump Jr. and late conservative activist Charlie Kirk to the Arctic island. He then sought to bring Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha, to watch a popular dog sled race (the trip was scaled back after protests). Dans also enlisted Greenland’s most outspoken MAGA enthusiast, a bricklayer named Jørgen Boassen, whom Dans has called a “good friend,” to generate support for U.S. control of Greenland.
“The Best Icebreakers in the World”
Dans was not named to a new full-time post in the second Trump administration. But he remained in the Trump orbit.
He was a frequent guest on conservative activist and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. He spoke for one episode from Romania, plugging far-right Romanian presidential candidate George Simion (who was later seen with Republicans at the Kennedy Center cutting up a cake shaped like Greenland with American flag frosting). “There’s a phenomenon here that’s the silent George Simion voter, kind of like your silent Trump voter,” Dans told Bannon. “And that’s significant.” (Simion lost and afterward unsuccessfully sought to have the election annulled.)
By August of last year, Dans found another opportunity in the private sector. He posted on LinkedIn that he was “very excited to announce that I am working with Damen Shipyards Group, one of the world’s leading shipbuilders.”
At the time, Dutch prosecutors were investigating the company for supplying Russia with equipment that they said could be used for military purposes, in violation of European sanctions. In his post, Dans shared a photo of himself arm-in-arm with three high-ranking company executives, including Rutger Dolk, who was later detained by Dutch authorities as part of the probe. The case is ongoing. (Dolk did not respond to a request for comment. In response to questions, Damen shared a press release that said it “has always acted in accordance with the applicable sanctions packages and that full transparency has been exercised about its activities.”)
Dans’ LinkedIn post announcing his work with Damen Shipyards. Dutch prosecutors were investigating the company at the time for supplying Russia with equipment that could have been used for military purposes. Rutger Dolk, far right, a company executive, was later detained as part of the probe. Screenshot and redactions by ProPublica
Dans said he was working with the shipbuilder “to bring some of the best icebreakers in the world to the United States” and noted that the U.S. Navy had recently chosen Damen “to help it fast-track a new fleet” of a different type of vessel: up to 35 medium-sized ships to move troops and supplies to shorelines. According to records, the Navy bought the designs for the ship from Damen for $3.3 million without going through the typical bidding process, saying it would save time and money to go with a “proven” design. (The Navy did not respond to requests for comment.)
In December, Trump appointed Dans to head the Arctic Research Commission. The announcement said Dans’ primary focus as a businessman was “shipbuilding and transportation where, among other projects, he is leading an effort to develop icebreakers and ice-class vessels for the United States while helping restore America’s Maritime Base.”
Since then, Dans has championed Damen in conversations and at a public appearance. In April, he said that “outside of the commission, I wear a hat working for one of the world’s largest shipbuilders, which is a group called Damen.”
While ProPublica was reporting this story, Damen terminated its agreement with Dans, which would have paid him if the company got a contract to build an icebreaker.
If Dans was seeking to advance Damen’s interests, he may have been required under the law to register either as a lobbyist or a foreign agent, said Josh Rosenstein, an attorney who is an expert on the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Documents show he’d done neither.
“It certainly would raise questions, you know, in my mind about what sort of interactions he, on behalf of Damen, had with the U.S. government,” Rosenstein said. “And with whom.”
The White House pushed back. “These so-called ‘experts’ have no idea what they are talking about,” said Kelly, the spokesperson.
Whether Dans has other business ties that could impact his government job is unclear. When at the Treasury, he reported holding a stake in Global Restaurant Management LLC, the parent company of a firm that operated multiple Papa Johns restaurants in Russia at the time. The status of that investment — which Dans reported had a value of between $250,000 and $500,000 — isn’t publicly known today because he’s no longer required to disclose his financial interests.
Christopher Wynne, who headed Global Restaurant Management, said he could not discuss another person’s investments.
Unlike most high-level presidential appointees, the Arctic commission chair — who is eligible only for a stipend of up to about $55,000 a year — is not a federal employee under the law. And while the commission has a policy seeking to prevent conflicts of interest, there are no penalties for violating it.
Dans’ outside commitments could be problematic if he used his access to the federal government to improperly benefit another employer or country, said Virginia Canter, who served as an ethics lawyer at the White House and other agencies during Republican and Democratic presidencies.
“The fact that he has foreign entanglements and access to government-wide information,” she said, “it should raise national security concerns.”
ProPublica asked the White House about Canter’s comments but it did not respond.
A Chilly Reception in Greenland
Protesters gathered outside the U.S. Consulate this January in Nuuk after Trump threatened to annex Greenland.Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
Tensions over Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, have flared since Dans returned to the Arctic commission.
A month into Dans’ tenure as commission chair, Trump said he would take Greenland “one way or the other.” He initially refused to rule out military force. Dans echoed Trump, telling the BBC that month that “everything’s on the table.”
While Dans is a minor player in the federal government, “when he speaks, international audiences and officials see him as representing U.S. policy,” said Heather Conley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In his first five months as chair, Dans spoke often to the foreign press and traveled to locales that included Denmark, Norway, Italy and Canada — as well as Mar-a-Lago in Florida and the Explorer’s Club in New York City, records show. The commission spent about $87,000 on his travel expenses.
He did not return to Greenland. But the administration’s rhetoric put Denmark on a war footing. The country sent soldiers to Greenland armed with explosives and plans to blow up airfields in the event of an American invasion. At one point, a Greenlandic politician told ProPublica, some schoolchildren were instructed to practice hiding under their desks in case of such an event.
Greenlanders have repeated a refrain: Open for business, not for sale. Dans’ remarks only seem to have further deepened divisions. In February, while at a conference in Norway, he was caught on a hot mic telling a Greenlandic politician that “the check’s in the mail.” A former chairman of the Arctic Research Commission, Michael Sfraga, was at the same conference and publicly told the politician to “rip the check up.”
Trump has continued to press the cause. In mid-July, he posted a picture on Truth Social of a map that included Greenland with the American flag superimposed on it.
The rhetoric has had consequences for Arctic research. Several Danish researchers said they will no longer participate in research with the U.S. One noted that her colleagues avoided Dans at a recent conference.
Dans’ current role in Greenland is unclear. He said at a recent conference he is not involved in talks among negotiators for the U.S., Greenland and Denmark that began earlier this year. In May, Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, and the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, Ken Howery, attended a business conference in the capital of Nuuk without Dans. Landry and Howery appeared for photo ops and opened a new, bigger consulate building, as protesters shouted outside.
A White House official told ProPublica that Greenland is “critical from the standpoint of U.S. national security” and “we are very optimistic that we’re on a good trajectory” in the diplomatic talks. The official did not address Dans’ role.
Reposting Russian Propaganda
Official visits to Russia have been exceedingly rare since the U.S. and its European allies froze ties with the country after it invaded Ukraine in 2022, yet at his appearance in Anchorage in April Dans announced that he was planning to go to Moscow “probably in the next month” to discuss research cooperation. The trip never happened; the State Department’s official guidance on Russia is “Do Not Travel for Any Reason.”
Asked about Dans’ push for reestablishing ties and travel plans, a State Department spokesperson referred questions to Dans.
His social media feed on X is filled with foreign news accounts, sometimes from outlets sympathetic to the Kremlin.
He reposted a story last October from Kazakh media on Putin’s warning that the U.S. would fracture relations with Russia if it supplied Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles.
Dans’ repost on X of a Kazakh media outlet. The post reads: “Putin warned that supplies of ‘Tomahawk’ missiles to Kyiv would destroy relations between Russia and the United States.”Screenshot by ProPublica
In May, he wrote of his grandfather’s participation in the perilous Murmansk Run to supply the Soviet Union during World War II. “Happy Victory Day,” Dans wrote in Russian and English, reposting a video of Putin from Russian state media laying flowers at a soldiers’ memorial. The original poster of the video has been called a source of Russian propaganda by the Ukrainian government.
“Everyone obviously needs to be incredibly cautious when you’re reposting Russian information,” Conley said, because such posts could promote a narrative that is “against U.S. national interests.”
Posting “Happy Victory Day” in Russian may sound innocuous, but it is “a super-loaded thing to do right now,” she added. Putin has conjured Russia’s World War II victory when talking about Ukraine, even equating Ukrainians to Nazis in Germany.
The White House did not respond to questions about Dans’ Russia-related posts.
Under Putin, Russia has tied its future to the Arctic and the region’s natural resources, including liquefied natural gas. U.S. sanctions, which targeted the country’s energy sector, have set those efforts back — something that Russia has sought to reverse in ongoing talks with the Trump administration.
Dans has remarked on the developments on social meda, calling Dmitriev, the Russian who now serves as a key Putin negotiator with the Trump administration, “the Kremlin’s ace in the hole.”
“We’re older now and have some grey hair, but it’s neat to see who the Trump Administration is negotiating with,” Dans wrote of Dmitriev, who rose to head one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds before being sanctioned by the Biden Treasury Department in 2022 for his ties to Putin and work raising funds from the U.S.
Asked about Dans’ calls for cooperation, Kelly, the White House spokesperson, said: “President Trump and his entire administration are willing to work with anyone in order to advance American interests, including peace in the Russia-Ukraine War. This approach has helped the United States bring both sides of the conflict together for historic peace talks.”
Dans seemed to downplay any differences with the Trump administration over Russia in one recent appearance, where he told an audience that included State Department officials, Russian Embassy personnel and Greenlandic diplomats that “getting Russia-Ukraine war ended, I think, is a priority. Stopping the killing.”
But the following month, in July, Dans opened and closed his remarks at a conference in Aspen by calling Russia a “neighbor.” He again urged that the U.S. repair its relationship.
“We need to be able to communicate with the Russians,” he said. “We’ve got some very important things to clear up with them with Ukraine, absolutely, but we have to work towards peace in the Arctic.”
Kelly said there was “nothing controversial about Mr. Dans’ remarks calling for an end to years of bloodshed and expanded dialogue.”
Why Should Delaware Care? The percentage of Delawareans purchasing their own insurance coverage through the open marketplace may be relatively low, but the rates they are now paying are not. Recent federal changes have paved the way for another rate increase to impact healthcare affordability for the second year in a row.
Health insurance premiums are set to rise yet again, even after Delaware officials have spent the better part of the past two years on legislation aimed at reducing healthcare costs.
Earlier this week, the Delaware Department of Insurance announced rate changes for health plans purchased through the open marketplace, also known as Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare plans. The adjustments are connected, in part, to reductions in health insurance subsidies at the federal level.
Plans for two of the state’s primary insurers, Highmark and AmeriHealth Caritas, will both jump by double-digit percentages in 2027, according to the announcement.
The ACA marketplace makes up only a small percentage of insured Delawareans. Most are either covered by a governmental plan like Medicaid or Medicare, while others receive private coverage through their employer.
Still, a jump in rates represents additional financial strain for patients who are often left to cover the entirety of their coverage plans without additional support from the government or an employer, such as small business owners.
Plans through Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, Delaware’s largest commercial insurer, will see rates increase by 17.2%. Initially, the insurer was seeking a hike of more than 20%.
Plans for AmeriHealth Caritas, the state’s other primary insurer, are set to jump 13.9%.
This year’s hikes may be far lower than when premiums rose between 25-35% ahead of the 2026 coverage year. But together, the back-to-back changes could add up to a nearly 50% increase for some ratepayers.
In an emailed statement, AmeriHealth officials said the company is “balancing affordability with access to high-quality care.”
“We appreciate our collaboration with the Delaware Department of Insurance to finalize rates that reflect the cost of health care and broader market dynamics in Delaware, including changes at the federal level,” a spokesperson for the insurer said.
A spokesperson for Highmark did not respond to a request for comment.
Local impact
Jenny Trefzger was diagnosed with stage-four colon cancer in 2017, when she was just 23.
Over the better part of a decade, Trefzger has battled cancer; as of this week, she will have been in remission for five years. But now she has a new challenge to face in figuring out how she will continue to afford her insurance coverage.
When she was first diagnosed, she was living in Maryland and enrolled in her family’s Kaiser Permanente plan, since she was still younger than 26. When she aged out, she said she purchased a plan through the ACA marketplace, and paid about $70-$80 monthly for her premiums.
With financial assistance from Kaiser Permanente, she said she didn’t pay any cancer treatment copays.
When she moved to Lewes in 2023, she switched to a Highmark plan, which initially wasn’t much different in cost. But last year, following large spikes in ACA plans, her premium jumped 10 times — to some $750 a month.
Trefzger technically could downgrade her “Gold” plan to opt for lower premiums. But if she paid for a lower coverage health plan, it could mean backsliding on some of her long-term pain and migraine management.
Trefzger is currently prescribed four name-brand medications, some of which cost $2,000 each without insurance, to manage debilitating migraines. Before those prescriptions, she would have about 20 migraines a month, some of which would send her to the hospital.
“I’m down to three to five migraines a month now,” Trefzger said. “That’s a huge reduction.”
Leigh Ann Tona, who owns Sleeping Bird Coffee in Wilmington, said she pays a little more than $2,000 a month to insure herself, her husband and their son. Tona said she’s been a business owner since she was 22, and has enrolled in ACA plans ever since she stopped being covered by her parents’ insurance.
Since taking over insurance needs for her own family, she said insurance costs have “gotten out of control.”
Tona used to apply for tax credits that can reduce premium costs through the marketplace, but they were dependent on how well her business did. If she saw a more successful year, she might have to pay those savings back at the end of the year.
Tona added she and her family already live frugally, and they don’t intend to make any budget cuts to make their health insurance plan work. But Tona said she often thinks about the other ways she could use her money, instead of spending so much on insurance premiums.
Still, each year she sees another increase, she searches for lower-cost options to cover her full-time employees, as well as herself and her family. And each time, she comes to realize she’d be paying more for those plans because she doesn’t have the number of employees to offset the costs, so she stays with her own ACA plan.
“We just kind of feel like we’re stuck,” Tona said.
ACA tax credit fight
In late 2025, following the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Gov. Matt Meyer and 17 other Democratic governors sent a letter to Congress pleading with them to extend a boosted form of ACA tax credits.
Congress increased those credits — which essentially subsidize monthly bills for enrollees in the health insurance marketplace — during the COVID pandemic, but that increase was set to expire at the end of 2025.
In their letter, Meyer and the other governors said that if Congress acted quickly to extend the boosted credits, “states can lock in lower premiums and spare families a wave of sticker shock this fall.”
“If not, the damage will be felt for years,” the letter stated.
In a September 2025 press release that accompanied the governors’ letter, Meyer’s office said the health care premiums could increase an average of $700 if the boosted credits weren’t renewed.
At the time, several Delaware lawmakers joined Meyer for a press conference highlighting their cost concerns. Delaware’s former health secretary, Josette Manning, said more than 50,000 people in the state could lose their coverage if the boosted credits are not extended.
She also asserted that if people delay or lack access to adequate care as a result of the credits going away, it could stress Delaware’s “already stretched healthcare system and significantly increase the cost of care.”
More than 90% of people on ACA plans in Delaware receive some form of subsidy, Tanisha Merced, Delaware’s deputy insurance commissioner, said last fall.
The marketplace will open Nov. 1, and close before the end of the year. For more general information about how to navigate the insurance market, see Spotlight Delaware’s guide.
High healthcare costs
Insurance premiums are set to rise at the same time Delaware tries to rein in the cost of healthcare not only for individual patients, but for the state overall. Earlier this year, Meyer signed SenateBill 1, which aims to improve primary care access for patients while also phasing in price caps for hospitals.
Delaware’s insurance commissioner, Trinidad Navarro, pointed to Senate Bill 1 as a step toward bringing down prices, but acknowledged Delaware is home to one of the most expensive health systems in the nation.
“Our team has worked to limit increases wherever actuarially possible, while ensuring carriers have sufficient funds to pay the high healthcare costs of our state,” Navarro said in a statement. “We will continue advocating for policy solutions that keep coverage within reach for Delaware families.”
Brian Frazee, CEO of the Delaware Healthcare Association, a lobbying group for state hospitals, said hospitals in recent years have supported multiple pieces of legislation aimed at bringing their costs down.
He also pointed to rising workforce, pharmaceutical and supply costs that come with running a hospital. Additionally, he said hospitals have “stepped up to lead solutions to healthcare affordability,” and that other sectors of healthcare like pharmaceuticals and insurers should do their part to bring down costs.
“In order to achieve true reform, we need other sectors to step up to make real system change for everyday Delawareans because hospitals are only one piece of the puzzle,” Frazee said in an interview on Friday.
Why Should Delaware Care? Charlese Phillips from Smyrna found solace and purpose in fiber arts while healing from past trauma. Taking chances on herself has led her to a fellowship from Delaware Division of the Arts, a residency in Morocco and an exhibit showing at Bellefonte Arts this month.
Editor’s Note: This story contains discussions of suicide. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 24/7.
Like a whimsical infection, yarn has taken over every wall at Bellefonte Arts. It sprouts from small, magenta frames, hangs from a piece of driftwood and surrounds a self-portrait of its spinner, Smyrna-based artist Charlese Phillips.
For the self-portrait, Phillips printed a photograph of herself using a cyanotype process, using ultraviolet light to leave an impression of the photograph on watercolor paper coated in a blue solution. Then, she attached the printed photograph to a board and wove around it. The end result is a frame that looks as if it’s composed of flowers and braids of hair adorned with sparkly brooches.
It’s one of many yarn-embroidered portraits Phillips has created of not only herself, but her artistic inspirations, from actress Michaela Coel to husband-wife rappers Tobe and Fat Nwigwe.
Charlese Phillips shows off one of her many fiber works outside of Bellefonte Arts. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JEA STREET JR.
It’s no surprise that Phillips, who has created art pieces from antlers, boondoggle key chains and barrel staves, takes a playful approach to life as well as art. Her motto, “Never stop creating,” is tattooed on her arm. Whether she’s teaching photography at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, baking wedding cakes for friends or attempting to learn the violin, she’s certainly taken that motto to heart.
Phillips’ philosophy is what led her to the fiber arts like macramé and weaving during the COVID pandemic. In the isolation of her home, hands-on hobbies seemed more appealing than ever.
“Where I found a real connection with weaving was how calm I felt, just that meditativeness, going back and forth,” she said recently during a visit to the exhibition space.
For Phillips, the process called to mind EMDR therapy, which she began around that time.
EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. It is a form of therapy that involves the patient focusing on a back-and-forth stimulus, like moving their eyes or tapping their fingers (or maybe even weaving), while recalling a traumatic event. The purpose of EMDR is to change the patient’s perspective about their trauma by recalling it in a safe environment.
Charlese Phillips’ self-portrait “Paper Thin” was created using a cyanotype photography printing process. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JEA STREET JR.
“You go through so much as a kid, and you feel stuck. Once I started that whole therapy process, I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t have to be. This can change,’” Phillips recalled. “Our brains control everything. If I can change that and heal that and grow that, then there’s nothing I can’t figure out a good way to to work past.”
Phillips’ growth in therapy is made evident by her poetry collection, “Healing is a Gradient.” The book follows Phillips through dissociation, hopelessness and the growing pains of therapy, culminating in her realization that it is worth living another day, if only to see what she grows into next.
Phillips published “Healing is a Gradient” on Valentine’s Day this year, the 14th anniversary of her suicide attempt.
“Not feeling loved by others was one thing, but not loving myself on top of that was the most catastrophic,” she wrote.
Phillips believes she survived because she had some greater purpose left to fulfill — sharing joy with others through her artwork.
“(That) is why you’ll see a lot of bright colors in my work,” she said. “I experiment with a lot of different mediums and materials because I want anyone to find a connection with a piece. When you walk in, I want you to feel that you belong there, too.”
Phillips’ healing has also helped her realize that she is worth more than the art she creates. She, too, is “an ever-changing work of art.”
“Know that when you walk into a room, you carry with you all of the layers that have built you into who you are in that moment,” she writes in her book. “And you have the power to decide who you want to become in that next second, next minute, month or year, by making the next best decision for you. All you have to do is choose to begin. To choose you.”
Many of Charlese Phillips’ fiber pieces are designed to look like living things that wave to passers-by. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JEA STREET JR.
Phillips’ taking chances on herself has paid off. The Delaware Division of the Arts gave her a fellowship in 2023, giving her broader exposure and connections statewide.
This year, Phillips has continued to grow by landing her first artist residency. She applied to Anou, a cooperative of over 600 artisans in Fes, Morocco, where she stayed for one week in July.
Wandering the medinas, attending weaving workshops and surrounding herself with other creatives made Phillips realize there’s still much to learn in the world of the fiber arts. No matter how much she grows personally and artistically, there’s always room to bloom again.
That’s the theme of Phillips’ latest exhibition, “Beyond” at Bellefonte Arts. Many pieces feature yarn bursting out of tiny spaces like picture frames.
Charlese Phillips’ motto is, “Never stop creating,” and she encourages others to do the same. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JEA STREET JR.
“In this show, you’ll see a lot of small works, but everything within them is expanding out of some confined space to say, ‘You can do this. Step outside the box a little bit and let yourself be seen,’” Phillips said.
Embodying the central theme of the exhibition is a second self-portrait, “On the Shore.” Phillips painted a side profile of herself as an ocean goddess made of sea foam. Woven seashells, starfish and anemones surround her as she gazes at a horizon only she can see.
“You’re standing on the shore, and you see this wide ocean, and you know there’s this whole world out there,” Phillips described. “There is a place for you. But the most important thing is putting yourself out there.”
The artist’s advice to others when it comes to personal and artistic growth is to start with one “bold, little step.” After all, she added, “You only fail when you stop.”
Get Involved Charlese Phillips’ latest art exhibit, “Beyond,” will be on display at Bellefonte Arts during regular business hours through Sept. 27. Learn more about Phillips’ work at charleseannette.com.
The U.S. military is straining under the pressures of the Iran war, according to two U.S. officials familiar with operations in the Middle East. One cautioned that this stress could lead to a “breakdown” in the military’s ability to effectively continue a war that President Donald Trump said would end in early April.
As the conflict has engulfed the region, the military has grappled with a growing list of challenges: Iranian attacks on U.S. bases and warships in the Middle East, depleted stockpiles of defensive munitions, increasing casualties, maintenance issues on ships, lengthy troop deployments, complicated logistics, flagging morale and a host of other issues that have taken a heavy toll on troops, damaged military readiness, and a strained Pentagon budget — contradicting months of rosy pronouncements by the Trump administration.
Both officials said that Iran is facing extreme economic pressure, according to intelligence reports. The first official characterized recent Iranian attacks on warships with ballistic missiles as a “go for broke” strategy to increase economic pressures on America ahead of the U.S. midterms. That official said it was unclear which country would “blink first.”
Trump suggested on Sunday that the U.S. could “stay and keep the oil” in Iran, like the neo-colonial resource grab the administration is carrying out in Venezuela. The second official said that a U.S. occupation of Iran would be “almost impossible” and that the idea was “nonsensical obviously.”
Iran’s ability to overwhelm U.S. air defenses in the Middle East using attack drones and advanced ballistic missiles, as previously reported by The Intercept, has left the U.S. military in a precarious state. The Trump administration failed to appreciate Iran’s military prowess, said the first official. The other pointed to a “complete lack of planning” for the war. Since July 7 alone, there have been hundreds of U.S. casualties caused by Iranian attacks, according to official Pentagon statistics.
The officials said the military’s ability to function at peak capacity was crippled in the opening hours of the conflict when an Iranian missile and drone attack on February 28 destroyed Navy facilities in Manama, Bahrain, the region’s most critical logistics hub. The Pentagon claimed for months that the strikes did not significantly impact military operations, but last week acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao admitted “they blew the hell out of Bahrain.” More than six months after the attack, Naval Support Activity Bahrain remains a shambles. “We’re not getting back in there anytime soon,” said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, the Navy’s highest-ranking officer, during a recent town hall.
A Wall Street Journal investigation previously found that rebuilding the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters, barracks, and communication towers at NSA Bahrain may cost more than $400 million, which the second official said could be an underestimate if it’s ever attempted. Naval Forces Central Command referred questions about the cost estimate to Central Command, which did not respond.
Trump has touted the destruction of Iran’s navy as one of his signature accomplishments of the war, but the officials pointed to the severe strain placed on U.S. naval forces in the region. With the home of the Fifth Fleet knocked out and other ports in the region within range of Iranian missiles and drones, the Navy found itself facing the daunting challenge of maintaining a flotilla of more than 24 ships — including two massive aircraft carriers and numerous guided-missile destroyers and cruisers, attack submarines, or supply ships deployed at any one time.
While aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered, the planes and helicopters on them, as well as the other ships, require millions of gallons of fuel each week. And the sailors aboard the ships require hundreds of thousands of meals. This means Navy ships need to haul supplies more than 2,000 miles from a longtime U.S. base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. A War Department inspector general report released on Monday noted that the shift in “naval bases and support ports posed significant challenges,” pointing specifically to the “issue with shifting logistics support and infrastructure to Diego Garcia” and the challenges of “extended sea transit requiring 14- to 18-day logistics cycles.”
“It’s difficult and ultimately unsustainable,” said the second official, who told The Intercept that White House assumptions that Iran would “crack” before the Navy have yet to be borne out.
The Navy has just 11 aircraft carrier strike groups, and amid the ongoing strain of extended deployments, its oldest carrier, the USS Nimitz, has seen its service life extended. So far, four of the 11 carrier strike groups have already been deployed to the Middle East during the war. Some of the remaining carriers are undergoing substantial repairs and will not be ready to deploy again for years.
The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group completed a record-breaking, 11-month deployment that also included the invasion of Venezuela. (Under normal conditions, a carrier would visit port about once a month to allow its crew to rest.) The ship was, according to a Presidential Unit Citation, under “persistent threat from enemy missiles and one-way attack drones” during its deployment to the Middle East.
Early in the Iran war, the Ford suffered extensive damage from a laundry fire and a malfunctioning fire-suppression system that forced crew members to manually fight the blaze for around 30 hours. The fire halted sorties for two days, and around 600 sailors lost access to their bunks due to the damage. The Navy claimed few casualties from the blaze, but reports soon emerged that the more than 200 sailors were treated for smoke inhalation or lacerations.
The Ford has also been plagued by plumbing issues for years. During just a four-day span in 2025, there were 205 breakdowns. Before the Ford left the Caribbean, it was facing constant issues with the nearly 650 toilets aboard. And then in the Middle East, the carrier again suffered from clogged, excrement-filled toilets, according to video obtained by CNN.
Another carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, spent most of its nine months at sea with no port calls, leading to reports of rampant morale problems, supply shortages, and suicide attempts, with at least one crew member going overboard. At an August 11 town hall in San Diego, families expressed deep concerns about their loved ones to Cao, the acting Navy secretary. But Trump dismissed worries about the sailors, saying the Lincoln’s deployment was “not nearly long enough.” Last month, the Lincoln was relieved by the USS George Washington, allowing the heavily rusted Lincoln to pull into Thailand for a port call.
Those ships have left the region but sailors remain under persistent threat. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted a U.S. aircraft carrier and guided-missile destroyer with ballistic missiles this month, according to Central Command. CENTCOM did not reply to a request for additional information about the strikes.
Despite months of claims by Trump and self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth that Iran’s military was annihilated, Iran has attacked more than 15 bases across the Middle East, according to information from U.S. officials and Iranian reports.
Stocks of advanced air-defense missiles, like Patriot and THAAD interceptors, are so depleted that U.S. forces are not shooting down all Iranian missiles and drones aimed at U.S. and allied targets across the Middle East, according to U.S. officials who spoke to The Intercept as well as numerous press reports.
Trump and Hegseth have pushed back on these claims. Trump posted on Monday that the U.S. is “producing more Exquisite and Elite Weapons than at any time in our History,” but the aforementioned inspector general report immediately contradicted the president, revealing that the conflict has resulted in “strategic inventory shortfalls and revealed industrial base bottlenecks for munitions resupply.”
“I have all the munitions necessary to both defend our forces as well as conduct a broad range of contingencies,” Adm. Brad Cooper, the CENTCOM chief, told Congress in May. But even the Pentagon admits that 410 U.S. troops have been killed or wounded since July 7 alone. Three U.S. soldiers were killed during Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks on Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base on July 17 and 18, for example. And an Iranian drone attack on Erbil Air Base, Iraq, on July 18 killed one soldier and left another injured during what CENTCOM called a “controlled detonation” of the downed aircraft.
The U.S. and its allies burned through more than 11,000 munitions, including large amounts of defensive missiles, in the first 16 days of the war alone, according to a March analysis by the Royal United Services Institute. About 65 percent of Patriot interceptors were expended between February and July, leaving fewer than 830 remaining from a pre-war total of 2,330, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The number of THAADs dropped from more than 450 to less than 270.
On Sunday, Cooper, the CENTCOM commander, continued to downplay the risks of depleted stockpiles and told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he wasn’t worried for the safety of U.S. troops. “I’m not concerned at all,” he replied when asked about defending against Iranian attacks. CENTCOM did not reply when asked if Cooper would resign if U.S. troops were killed or wounded in future attacks.
In addition to the destruction of NSA Bahrain, the Combined Air Operations Center at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, was severely damaged by Iranian missiles early in the war, rendering it inoperable. Both were recently attacked again, raising questions about whether either will ever be rebuilt. Iran also struck Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan last week, damaging multiple U.S. military aircraft, according to the second U.S. official. In response, U.S. forces fired a “significant” number of Patriot interceptors to protect U.S. forces, the second official said.
U.S. officials confirmed that Iran has also attacked Tower 22, a U.S. military outpost on the northern Jordanian border with Syria. Satellite images as well as photos and videos circulating online indicate the base suffered extensive damage. (In 2024, a drone attack on Tower 22 by an Iran-backed militia killed three U.S. troops.)
CENTCOM failed to respond to a request for comment about attacks on its outposts or provide its own official count of the number struck. But the Pentagon inspector general report revealed Iranian strikes “damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan during the conflict.” It also disclosed that “dozens of U.S. aircraft were destroyed or damaged,” including four F-15 fighter aircraft, 12 KC-135 refueling aircraft, and as many as 30 MQ-9 Reaper drones.
Why Should Delaware Care? Wilmington’s Fourth Street is home to a Black and Brown community whose history includes civil rights demonstrations and celebrations touting the area’s large Hispanic community. The Calle 4 Fest is one such celebration, but this year marks its last in Wilmington, as organizers head to Dover to account for a larger gathering next year.
Wilmington’s Calle 4, or Fourth Street, transformed on Sunday from the usual commuting route into a gathering space honoring Delaware’s Hispanic heritage.
From the Puerto Rican families who sat on their front porches with flags sprawled out, to the Caribbean Culture Awareness organization that incorporated Spanish sounds in their dance performance, the festival attracted attendees from several nationalities to gather together.
The Hilltop neighborhood, where this festival was held, has played a key role in the history of Delaware’s Black and Brown communities.
Advocates in the neighborhood organized a civil rights demonstration in the late 1960s, protesting against a forced system that bused Wilmington’s Black and Brown students outside the city’s schools, while white suburban students were bused in. In 1978, the activism turned into a celebration of heritage with the 1978 Puerto Rican Day parade organized by St. Paul San Pablo Church on Fourth Street.
Today, the parade is organized by Nuestras Raices, a Delaware nonprofit that focuses on the artistic and heritage preservation of Hispanic culture.
While this year marked a milestone of 50 years celebrating in the Hilltop neighborhood, the organization announced it will relocate to Dover next year. India Colon, the organization’s vice-president, cited a growing community — one that includes the Caribbean community featured that day — as the reason for the move.
While Sunday’s heat and humidity lingered in the air, the weather did not stop dance performers from wearing traditional long dresses interwoven with ribbons and embroidered flowers — traditional Latin American motifs — or families from enjoying a good taco or pincho as they watched float after float glide along the festival’s parade route.
Spotlight Delaware captured some of these moments during the parade on Sep. 13.
The Latin American Community Center, headquartered in Wilmington’s Hilltop neighborhood, is a resource center that aids the neighborhood’s Hispanic community. The organization paraded down the street where most of their beneficiaries live during the Calle 4 Fest. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY ELSA KEGELMAN
The Calle 4 Festival parade encourages various community members to show off the pride they carry from being Hispanic. A young child waves his Puerto Rican flag at parade attendees. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY CRISTAL SANCHEZ
Traditional Mexican dancers braved the heat on Sunday afternoon as they smiled and danced down Fourth Street during Wilmington’s Calle 4 Fest. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY ELSA KEGELMAN
The Thunderguards are a motorcycle club in Wilmington founded in 1965. They attended the Calle 4 festival and sold traditional Puerto Rican dishes that day. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY CRISTAL SANCHEZ
Traditional, Mexican dresses embroidered with large flowers and wrapped with ribbons at the waist are usually worn this time of the year as Mexico’s Independence Day comes up on Sep. 16. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY CRISTAL SANCHEZ
The ASPIRA Wolves are a cheerleading squad representing ASPIRA Delaware, a dual language charter school for English and Spanish-speaking students. The girls cheered and performed at this year’s Calle 4 Festival. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY ELSA KEGELMAN
The Hilltop neighborhood in Wilmington was home to the booming speaker that played Latin music all throughout the Calle 4 Fest. Both children and adults danced to the rhythms of each song. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY ELSA KEGELMAN
Pinchos are traditional Puerto Rican chicken skewers. The dish was being grilled outside by a couple of local business vendors during the Calle 4 festival. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY CRISTAL SANCHEZ
Traditional performers with Carnaval de Huejotzingo en Delaware paraded down the street during the Calle 4 Fest, wearing elaborate headpieces showing off the rich history of Puebla, Mexico. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY ELSA KEGELMAN
The Roberto Clemente Baseball League participated in the Calle 4 Fest this Sunday. The Wilmington youth sports group honors the late Puerto Rican baseball player. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY CRISTAL SANCHEZ
El Salvador was among the list of countries being represented at the Calle 4 Fest. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY ELSA KEGELMAN
The Lambda Sigma Upsilon fraternity from the University of Delaware performed their stroll on the festival street. Their symbol is a Taino native – derivative from indigenous Puerto Rican culture. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY CRISTAL SANCHEZ
Why Should Delaware Care? Nanticoke and Lenape Indians were the first settlers in the state of Delaware, but their history is not widely known among the state’s population. The Nanticoke tribe’s annual powwow aims to bring more awareness about their culture and traditions to the public, while also providing an opportunity for a cultural exchange with other Native American tribes.
The 48th annual Nanticoke Indian Powwow filled Milton’s Hudson Fields this past weekend with a vibrant, diverse celebration of the tribe’s drumming, traditional dances and popular Native American food.
Attendees — from members of the Nanticoke, to members of other tribes and non-Indigenous guests alike — said the jubilant, two-day event embodied the classic meaning of a powwow: a social gathering where different cultural practices are exchanged and celebrated.
But on a deeper level, some powwow-goers described this year’s gathering, which took place on Sept. 12 and 13, as a chance to reflect on what being Nanticoke means to them and how Native American culture is preserved, both in Delaware and in the country as whole.
The Nanticoke Indian Tribe has been formally recognized by the state of Delaware since 1881, but its roots in the area date back to at least 1608. The tribe now has about 600 active members, the majority of whom are concentrated in the Millsboro area of Sussex County, where the group has a history museum and community center.
As the powwow picked up steam around noon each day, performers — including Nanticoke members and people others tribes who had traveled from North Carolina, Virginia and New Jersey — took to the arena wearing feather headdresses, wide shawls and multi-colored dresses for the daily “Grand Entry.”
The Grand Entry, an essential part of most Native American festivities, involves tribal leaders leading a flag-bearing procession. The procession is followed by all participating dancers entering the arena to officially kick off the day in a moment of unity.
Following the entry, different iterations of tribe members performed varied styles of dance, including the traditional, slower men’s and women’s dances and the flexible open intertribal dances, where people of any tribal affiliation, age and gender can participate.
While audience members clapped along to the drum beat and munched on ‘Indian tacos’ – classic Native American frybread topped with meat, cheese and lettuce – Nanticoke Assistant Chief Farrah Norwood-Stigall gave a brief speech about the meaning of the powwow and the Nanticokes’ place in Delaware.
“Through it all, one message remains: ‘We are still here,’” she said to the crowd. “When you hear the drum today, listen closely. That is more than a drum. That is the heartbeat of our people.”
Finding the Nanticoke identity
Many federally recognized Native American tribes have a “blood quantum” requirement, meaning an individual must have at least one-quarter or one half of tribal ancestry in order to be considered a member.
The Nanticoke tribe defines tribal membership differently, which some powwow attendees said allowed them to discover their Nanticoke identity later in life and seamlessly feel connected to the tribe.
The tribe had 30 original signers of the contract that made them officially recognized by the state of Delaware in 1881. Now, the tribe structures its membership so that individuals are eligible to become members if they are related to one of the 30 original members, Norwood-Stigall said.
For Dover resident Robert “Junie” Duff, this structure allowed him to become a Nanticoke member later in life, after reconnecting with some extended family members.
Going down the tribe’s ancestry list with the Nanticoke historian, Duff said he discovered three ancestral connections within minutes of reading.
Now, Duff said, becoming a member of the tribe has provided him and his daughters with a sense of “reawakening” and camaraderie.
Jeannie “Warm Heart” Mosley Hall and Paul “Dancing Man” Brooks of Bear, two mainstays of Sunday’s dance performances, also described the beauty of growing closer to their Nanticoke heritage in recent years.
Mosley Hall had been living in Ohio for most of her adult life, and wasn’t able to become as active with the Nanticoke community until she retired in Delaware. Once living here, she began dancing with the tribe with her daughter, who was already an involved member.
Paul “Dancing Man” Brooks combined Philadelphia Eagles gear with traditional Nanticoke clothing to take part in the powwow’s Grand Entry ceremony. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
Brooks is half Black and spent a lot of his life embracing that dance culture, until he learned his mother was Native American. He then began “engulfing myself in the Native American aspect.”
During his dance performances on Sunday, Brooks sported an inventive outfit that combined traditional feathers and headdress with a Philadelphia Eagles shirt and necklace.
The pair said they have enjoyed doing the traditional dances for the opportunity it gives them to slow down, feel the beat and connect with the Earth.
“When your foot touches the ground and back, it keeps you grounded to the Earth,” Mosley Hall said. “It’s a very dignified kind of dance. There’s more to it than it might look.”
In addition to the yearly powwow dance performance, Mosley Hall said she and some other tribe members do visits to schools throughout the year, where they dance and show the kids tribal artifacts.
Preserving the language, crops
In recent years, some Nanticoke members have taken on projects to preserve often-forgotten parts of the tribe’s history, including its language and crops.
To Courtney Streett, the rapid population growth in Sussex County has accelerated a disconnection between Indigenous people and their land and its native plants.
With this pattern in mind, Streett co-founded the Native Roots Farm Foundation in 2020, an organization aimed at reintroducing native plants and harvesting practices to the area, like the Three Sisters gardening practice, where growers combine the corn, bean and squash crops to help each other grow.
The foundation currently operates a Three Sisters Garden with blue corn from the Kent County and New Jersey-based Lenape Tribe and Nanticoke squash. The organization also recently purchased a 50-acre property in the Georgetown area, where it plans to open a public garden, or Hakihakàn in the Lenape language, for guests to learn about native plants and Indigenous ecological practices.
At the powwow, Streett and her team passed out samples of pawpaw, a tropical fruit native to North America, and sold Tehim juice — the Lenape word for strawberry.
“These are plants that are historically from this area and named after our people,” she said of the Lenape blue corn and Nanticoke squash. “But again, because of that forced disconnection with the land, our communities have not been able to have a relationship with these plants in a very long time.”
Karelle Hall, a cultural anthropologist and Mosley Hall’s daughter, and Keith Cunningham, a linguist, have spent years reconstructing the Nanticoke language, which has not been spoken since the 1850s.
The pair, along with tribal storyteller Ragghi Rain, completed a language book in 2023 replete with vocabulary words, phonetic pronunciations and kid-friendly illustrations, titled “Once It Has Been Spoken… It Cannot Be Unspoken.”
Now, they are teaming up with Streett’s foundation to create a poster highlighting native plants in the Nanticoke language and write a book describing the process of planting traditional foods.
A number of people at the powwow happily described starting to learn the Nanticoke language, and using the event as an opportunity to use some of the phrases they’ve learned.
Hall said the community’s enthusiasm for revitalizing the Nanticoke language has been exciting, and it has encouraged them to develop resources suitable for different types of learners.
“You have some people who are approaching the language like they want to gain some level of fluency, and then you have others who are like, ‘I just want to learn how to introduce myself or say a prayer,’” she said. “We’re kind of building a curriculum for all of that.”
A broader representation
Vincent Cruz of Queens, New York, travels to various powwows and other Native American celebrations, selling textiles made by his relatives, the Quichua tribe in Ecuador.
Vincent Cruz from New York City travels to powwows and other Native American festivals around the country, selling items made by his tribal community, the Quichua people in Ecuador. Among the items he sells is a “Make America Native Again” shirt. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
Among the items Cruz displayed prominently at the powwow was a shirt with the face of Sitting Bull, a Native American leader known for his resistance to U.S. military encroachment on Native land in the late 19th century, and the words “Make America Native Again.”
Cruz said people often laugh at the shirt when they see it. But he wears the shirt himself and sells it in order to invite more historical reflection.
“People laugh when they are ignorant about history,” he said. “These things are really sad that they committed to native people, our brothers and sisters. Imagine if it was the other way around, us doing this to Europeans.”
With the tribe’s biggest event of the year having come to a close, Nanticoke leadership will now turn their attention to fundraising for their new cultural center in Millsboro, Norwood-Stigall said, all while preparing for the energy to return to Sussex County once again for next year’s powwow.
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/.
Members of the DSPC, state and federal legislature and Enstructure pose for a photo at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Delaware Container Terminal. Photo Credit: Ryan Colasanti
Members of the state legislature, Enstructure and the Diamond State Port Corporation gathered to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Delaware Container Terminal on September 14.
WILMINGTON, DE — Community leaders and members of Enstructure and the Diamond State Port Corporation (DSPC) gathered together at the site of the Delaware Container Terminal, Monday morning, to officially break ground on the port project.
The Delaware Container Terminal is intended to be a new container port located along the Delaware River at the former Edgemoor industrial site that was home to a DuPont chemical plant, up until its closure in 2015. The new terminal is a public-private partnership venture between Enstructure and the DSPC, and is expected to increase Delaware’s container handling capacity by a significant amount, according to an official press release from Enstructure following the event.
The groundbreaking ceremony took place on the project site and hosted a plethora of speakers integral in the project’s development. The first speaker and host of the day’s program was Delaware Secretary of State and DSPC Board Chair, Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez. Patibanda-Sanchez was followed by Delaware Governor Matt Meyer, United States Senator Chris Coons, a video message from United States Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester and in-person remarks from United States Representative Sarah McBride.
A project rendering of what the completed Delaware Container Terminal project may resemble. Photo Credit: Enstructure
State Senators Darius Brown and Jack Walsh spoke after Rep. McBride and State Representative Franklin Cooke followed the senators, telling those assembled together that the port project was special to him because of his familial ties to working at port locations, including the Port of Wilmington. State Rep. Cooke said that for four generations a member of his family had worked at the port, including himself.
The President of the International Longshoreman’s Association 1694, William Ashe Jr., spoke next followed by the Executive Director of the Bellevue Community Center, Daniel Elkins and Co-CEOs of Enstructure, Matthew Satnick and Philippe De Montigny.
The overarching theme from all the speakers was an optimism of how the project will positively impact Delaware’s economic footprint both in terms of local job creation and global commerce.
“This is really big for our community,” Gov. Meyer said. “This is something that’s going to create thousands of jobs. It takes a whole lot of investment from the private sector, from the public sector. I would anticipate that not everyone’s going to be for it, but we’re going to push forward. We’re listening to the community. My appointments to the port board reflect that we are not just sitting back and listening to what the neighbors have to say, we’re out there actively soliciting. We want to hear them. They’re part of this project too.”
The project is expected to create thousands of jobs in sectors such as maritime, construction, supply chain and logistics, according to Enstructure. The port will be able to welcome in larger ships due to the expected development that will increase water depth to 45 feet and about half a mile in waterfront docking space at the project’s full-scale.
The port is being designed as a “green port facility” in an effort to reduce the infrastructure’s impact on the surrounding environment. The port will use electric powered equipment such as electric gantry cranes to handle cargo and it will also incorporate “low-emission operating practices”, according to Enstructure. The project will use funding from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Ports Program to support their efforts in “the collection and analysis of operational data to measure results and refine implementation over time.”
The project isn’t supported by everyone in the local community.
A group of protestors gathered in front of the project site holding signs that asked for a stop to the project. Patibanda-Sanchez acknowledged the group while speaking to the audience assembled at the groundbreaking ceremony, saying that the DSPC will continue working with the local community to try and mitigate the impact on the community as the site cleanup and development proceeds.
“This was a heavily polluted site for a long time,” Sen. Coons said. “It was a titanium dioxide plant under DuPont’s ownership, and dioxin is very dangerous. It’s a contaminating chemical. So, I think there are legitimate community concerns that need to be addressed as the cleanup proceeds, but I also think having a new state-of-the-art container terminal on this river, a dream that’s been invested in and built towards for now 15 years is well worth doing for the high quality union jobs it will produce for generations in Delaware.”
The port is expected to be open in early 2029, according to Enstructure.
Looking for a new iPhone or a good deal on a refurbished one? Samuel Gibbs has tested and rated Apple’s smartphones, including the best for camera quality and battery life
The best iPhone may be the one you already own. There’s generally no need to buy a fresh phone just because new models have been released, as hardware updates are broadly iterative, adding small bits to an already accomplished package. But if you do want a replacement handset, whether new or refurbished, here are the best devices of the current crop of Apple smartphones.
Many other smartphones are available besides the iPhone, but if you’re an Apple user and don’t fancy switching to Android, there are still a few choices to make. Whether your priority is the longest battery life, the best camera, the biggest screen or simply the optimal balance of features and price, there’s more to choose from in the Apple ecosystem than you may expect.
The distinctively British RPG is returning courtesy of the makers of Forza Horizon – with comedy talent such as Richard Ayoade and Natasia Demetriou voicing sweary characters. We had our first play and spoke to its developer
When Playground Games was founded in 2010, its objective was straightforward: to make the best cars in video games. Operating out of an unassuming white building in Leamington Spa, the studio sought to challenge Gran Turismo with its critically acclaimed British racing alternative: the acclaimed free-roaming Forza Horizon series. Yet as the team grew, so did their ambitions. Now they are making the most intriguing British fantasy game we have seen in many years.
For those who have never ventured into Albion, Fable is a quintessentially British role playing game. Created by Lionhead Studios for the original Xbox in 2004, it boasted cheeky charm alongside world-altering player choices, and its droll writing was brought to life in later iterations by national treasures such as Stephen Fry and Simon Pegg. Thanks to its unique blend of farce and fantasy, Fable grew into a globally beloved franchise – before Microsoft unceremoniously shuttered Lionhead in 2016, after mandating that the studio turn its star series into a multiplayer game. The result, Fable Legends, was never released.
Discussion has focused on behavioral outcomes. But Meta’s settlement shines a light on damage to young people’s emerging desires and identities
During the landmark social media addiction trial that led to Meta’s recent $17.1bn settlement, a therapist testified that she had once asked the plaintiff – a young woman named Kaley, who had been using social media since she was six – what her miracle day would look like: what she wished to come true, if anything were possible. Kaley replied that she would be prettier.
As a psychoanalyst, I find that exchange devastating in a particular way. A miracle day is an invitation to engage with the full range of human desire: with what one might accomplish or experience, whom one might encounter or love. Kaley’s answer contracted the world and all its possibility into a single preoccupation with her own image.
A long-running lawsuit challenging what it means to be an employee and therefore have access to work-based health plans is being closely watched by health policy analysts.
Joseph Moore killed himself after learning ICE was going to fire him. Investigators had identified issues in his past that ex-officials say should have blocked his hiring.
Young players train at a baseball academy in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.
Baseball is everywhere in the Dominican Republic, which sends a disproportionate number of players to the American major and minor leagues, including Hall of Famers like Pedro Martínez and Adrian Beltré. Playing fields and training academies dot the country in villages where players who’ve made the leap to the pros are immortalized in murals.
For nearly half a century, the Dominican Republic has sent more players to the majors than any country outside the United States. The nation, which has a population roughly that of Ohio’s, had 144 players reach the major leagues last year. That’s about 10% of the league.
The Dominican baseball factory is a volume business, with teams paying signing bonuses to about 450 prospects each year. Fewer than 10% of those young players will ever see a single pitch in the majors, but in a country as impoverished as the Dominican Republic those bonuses — worth several times the country’s average annual income — could be life-changing for the players and their families. Yet Major League Baseball has long allowed a corrosive system to fester that rigs the game against young players in favor of opportunistic trainers and predatory moneylenders.
Trainers coach children in exchange for future earnings.
Young baseball players in the United States and Canada must enter the major league system through its annual draft of young prospects. But in the Dominican Republic it’s a free-for-all, with players going to the highest bidder.
After MLB scouts began to recognize the Dominican Republic as a source of cheap talent, teams opened bare-bones training academies to develop young players. Eventually, the buscones — men relied on by teams to identify local talent — realized they could start their own academies. There are now hundreds of such facilities and, according to a national trade association, approximately 6,000 trainers.
In addition to coaching, the trainers who operate these academies generally provide room, board and equipment. Education often falls by the wayside. In return, they receive a share — typically 35% to 50% — of a player’s signing bonus. Most of those bonuses are valued at around $30,000, but they can be as high as six or seven figures.
From 2012 through the beginning of 2026, major league teams paid Dominican prospects $1.042 billion in bonuses, according to a ProPublica analysis. But much of that money — up to half a billion dollars — is almost immediately siphoned off by trainers and lenders.
Young players train and work on homework during a break at a baseball academy just outside Santo Domingo, in El Mamón.
To get around league rules, MLB teams make handshake deals with underage players.
Major league rules bar teams from making official deals with players under the age of 16, but teams have long circumvented this ban through the use of unwritten early agreements, or preacuerdos. In these handshake deals, typically arranged through a player’s trainer, the team pledges to pay a certain amount to the player once he is of legal age to be signed.
With players as young as 11 involved in such deals, it can be years before the prospect receives his bonus.
Moneylenders persuade families to sign over players’ bonuses for high-interest loans.
Preacuerdos and the lure of these promised payouts have created a cottage industry of prestamistas, or moneylenders, who persuade players’ families to sign away portions of these impending bonuses in exchange for loans with sky-high interest rates.
The Dominican Republic repealed its usury laws 24 years ago. High-interest lenders advertise online, targeting young ballplayers and their families. One WhatsApp ad touted loans for “baseball players who have agreements.”
Belfi Rivera was 14 when he made a handshake deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks that would pay him $1.8 million after he turned 16. (The Diamondbacks did not respond to a request for comment.) Ultimately, he’d see very little of that money. The trainer who had brokered the deal got his share, worth $630,000. More than $950,000 went to someone who had no hand in teaching Belfi how to play baseball: Santo Caraballo, a lender who formed a business partnership with Red Sox legend and Hall of Famer David Ortiz.
In a statement sent through his lawyer, Ortiz said that his business relationship with Caraballo “began to come to an end” more than 18 months ago.” He added that he ended his personal relationship with Caraballo “a year and a half to two years ago” after “noticing conduct by Mr. Caraballo that I considered inappropriate. I started distancing myself from him personally and placed the relevant matters in the hands of my legal advisors.”
However, in September 2025, Ortiz and Caraballo filmed themselves heading for Puerto Rico on a private jet, drinking and dancing on their way to a Bad Bunny concert.
In a brief conversation, Caraballo told ProPublica that his business was not the biggest or “that lucrative.” He added that the risk in loaning money to families is that “you never know if it will succeed or not because if the player doesn’t get signed, you don’t get paid.” Multiple attempts were made to reach him again, including sending him a summary of ProPublica’s findings. He never responded.
Belfi Rivera saw only a small percentage of his bonus from the Arizona Diamondbacks after his trainer took his commission and a lender persuaded his parents to take out triple-digit interest loans against his future signing.
One lender used a player’s deadly car crash to start his empire.
Before becoming a fixture in the prestamista sphere and partnering with Ortiz, Caraballo played a shadowy role in salvaging the career of rising MLB prospect Oneil Cruz. In 2020, while Cruz was a player in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ minor league system, he crashed his Jeep into the back of a motorcycle, killing three people. Prosecutors initially said the ballplayer had been drinking, and he faced the possibility of three years in prison. According to numerous interviews and court records, Caraballo was brought in by Cruz’s parents and negotiated payments to the victims’ families. In exchange, they signed agreements withdrawing all claims against Cruz, who is currently the starting center fielder for the Pirates. The case against Cruz, who denied any wrongdoing, was dismissed. ProPublica made numerous attempts to reach Caraballo about his role, including sending him a summary of our findings. He never responded.
Cruz declined a request for an interview. His lawyer, Amauris Vásquez Disla, called the accident “a profound tragedy for all parties involved, especially the victims’ families.” He went on to say that the court “issued an order of dismissal based on the findings, a legally binding decision that was a lawful resolution of this matter.”
A spokesperson for the Pittsburgh Pirates said the team and Cruz “addressed this matter more than six years ago based on the information available and the outcome of the legal proceedings.”
That lender then partnered with the Dominican Republic’s biggest baseball star.
By 2021, records show that Caraballo and Ortiz had entered into a business partnership, with both men listed on corporation records of a Florida company called Big Papi Sports Group. The company was dissolved the next year. What, if anything, it did is not clear. Their financial and personal relationships, however, continued. Ortiz acknowledged to a ProPublica reporter that he had invested millions of dollars into Caraballo’s baseball business. He added that his business with Caraballo was limited to making loans to trainers, not kids. At Ortiz’s 2022 Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Caraballo sat with the retired player’s family.
The grave of Daniela Perez Garcia, who was killed after a Jeep that Oneil Cruz was driving rear-ended a motorcycle she was riding on
Why did David Ortiz oppose an international draft?
Ortiz’s connection to Caraballo doesn’t just spotlight the power and influence that these moneylenders can attain in the Dominican Republic. It also raises questions about the Red Sox legend’s involvement in persuading major league players to oppose an international draft.
For more than a decade, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has made the case in favor of a draft for prospects from Latin America. Last year, during a visit to the Dominican Republic, he acknowledged that preacuerdos were “problematic” and argued that the “best solution to early deals is a draft.” Manfred and supporters of an international draft say it would make early agreements impossible.
The players union has opposed such a draft, arguing that it would restrict a prospect’s ability to choose his employer and eliminate bidding wars that drive up bonuses. The union has acknowledged that the Dominican system of early deals is troubled but has maintained for years that this is due to the league not enforcing its own rules.
During contract negotiations in 2022, the league was again pushing for an international draft, and the issue had become a major sticking point. But then, said people on both sides of the discussions, Ortiz got involved, sending a voice message to Dominican players and trainers, declaring a “red alert.”
“If we allow the draft to happen here in the Dominican Republic, even your great-great-grandchildren, and everyone else’s, will be affected by it,” Ortiz said, according to an audio copy of the message obtained by ProPublica. “If we let them push that thing through here, we’ll be in deep trouble.”
In the message, Ortiz shared the phone number for Tony Clark, the union’s executive director, and urged everybody to express their opposition to the draft. What he didn’t share was that he had a financial interest in preserving the system.
When asked over the phone if his opposition to the draft had anything to do with his partnership with Caraballo, who profits from the current system, Ortiz didn’t answer and hung up shortly afterward.
In a subsequent statement sent through his lawyer, Ortiz said his position regarding the international draft “was never motivated by personal interests.” The statement went on to say that his opposition “was based on my views regarding the development of Dominican players and the impact I believed such a system would have on baseball in our country.”
“Major League Baseball knows how dirty the business is here.”
Major League Baseball is a formidable economic and political presence in the Dominican Republic. But outside of the league’s push for an international draft, it’s done nothing that would put an end to or reform the early agreement system. It has never publicly warned or penalized a team for making an early deal, and its attempts to educate families about moneylenders have been ineffectual. A spokesperson for MLB declined to comment and referred to past statements by league officials calling for an overhaul of the Dominican system.
“Major League Baseball knows how dirty the business is here,” said Piñao Ortiz, who was the Dominican commissioner of baseball from 1996 to 2000, “but it’s not doing anything to stop it.”
From Stephen Hawking to Jacob Coxon’s viral Anthropic resignation, fears that AI could threaten humanity have shaken the industry without stopping its pursuit
Before an Anthropic researcher resigned and declared human extinction imminent last week, tech leaders and scientists had sounded the alarm about a superintelligent AI ending humanity for over a decade.
The development of artificial intelligence “could spell the end of the human race”, warned professor and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in 2014 – a little less than a decade before the public got its hands on the generative AI features of the original version of ChatGPT.
Safety requirements are non-negotiable. They depend on meeting concrete goals, not just adjusting a timeline
It has been a week of high drama in AI, precipitated by the resignation of the AI safety researcher Jacob Coxon from Anthropic. This followed several weeks of increasingly lurid and disturbing revelations about the OpenAI/Hugging Face incident.
My inbox yesterday included a message from Business Insider with the subject line: “AI doomsday debate reaches boiling point.”
The businessman has spent the past decade moving through some of Russia’s most politically connected circles
Umar Kremlev, the Russian oligarch at the centre of reports that he helped pay for Donald Trump Jr’s wedding in the Bahamas, has spent the past decade moving through some of Russia’s most politically connected circles.
Born in 1982 in Serpukhov, an industrial town about 60 miles south of Moscow, he has said he boxed until the age of 19 but never turned professional, blaming what he later called a lack of discipline.
Donald Trump is facing a rare backlash from the US Congress as Democrats and some Republicans push for guardrails on the world’s most powerful AI companies.
Concerns over the dangerous potential of AI reached fever pitch this week after tech leaders sounded the alarm over the rapid advancement of the technology and its potential threat to humanity.
After a five-storey building collapsed in Delhi, focus is on how urban areas can adapt to growing populations. Plus, Ahmedabad’s ace newspaper delivery driver goes viral
Recently, I may have saved a woman’s life on the road. Somehow, this was something I had expected to happen.
On that day, I saw a truck leave a construction site with a tangled wire trailing behind. I frantically looked to see what the wire was attached to and spotted the scaffolding a few meters ahead. I shrieked and grabbed the hand of the woman walking in front of me just as the metal pipes came crashing down. We hugged for a brief second, and then walked our separate ways.
In today’s newsletter: Plaid Cymru, the SNP and Sinn Féin have signed an agreement for greater powers, as pressure grows on Westminster over the UK’s future
Good morning. Back in May, the shape of British politics shifted dramatically. I’ll forgive you if you were too preoccupied refreshing Andrew Sparrow’s live blog for the latest speculation about Keir Starmer to notice, but since 7 May, centre-left nationalist parties that ultimately aspire to leave the UK have been in government for the first time simultaneously in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
This week sees the initial codification of that shift. In Cardiff yesterday, Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, Scottish National party leader John Swinney and Sinn Féin vice-president Michelle O’Neill (who shares power with the Democratic Unionist party) affirmed their countries’ right to seek independence from the UK. Along with the leader of the opposition in Ireland, Mary Lou McDonald, they signed a memorandum of understanding that called on Westminster “to prepare, plan and facilitate constitutional change in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland”. And they posed for a fair number of group photos too.
Reform UK | Andy Burnham’s government could thwart Reform’s unprecedented £72m donations with retrospective restrictions on political donors that will include tough new residency requirements, ministers have announced.
AI | Donald Trump has dismissed calls to increase controls on AI as a “sick conspiracy”, as stocks linked to the technology slumped after appeals from Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX leaders on the weekend for the industry to slow down.
Nato | Nato fighter jets shot down a drone over Lithuania after an alert was issued in the capital and surrounding region, while Poland scrambled fighter jets less than a day after retrieving a suspected Russian drone adrift in its waters.
Middle East | Yemen’s Houthi rebels have seized two strategic islands in the Red Sea, reinforcing the Iran-backed group’s ability to control a key shipping route, as concerns mount that the world is facing a new oil supply crisis.
Lucy Letby | Two leading experts have quit Lucy Letby’s defence team over concerns about the “scientific credibility” of some of its evidence.
Reuters reports:
A defense lawyer appealing his client's murder conviction submitted a brief containing made-up police testimony and witnesses fabricated by OpenAI's ChatGPT, New Mexico's highest court said. The New Mexico Supreme Court on Wednesday fined the attorney, Stephen Aarons [for $5,000], and held him in contempt for failing to verify the accuracy of the court filing, which Aarons said he prepared with help from the AI program... and said they will refer him to an attorney disciplinary board for investigation.
Aarons in a statement to Reuters said he had used ChatGPT to summarize the trial proceedings when he agreed to take up the defendant's appeal last year, and did not understand the degree to which AI could "hallucinate" facts. "I am remorseful but hopeful that the disciplinary board takes into account it was an honest mistake," he said.... Dozens of lawyers have been sanctioned for filing briefs where AI made up case citations or misquoted the law. Aarons' filing appears to have gone further, containing fabricated witness testimony in a criminal appeal...
Aarons told the court at an August 21 hearing that he fed a computer-generated transcript and other case materials to ChatGPT, presuming it would generate "a bulletproof summary." The justices sounded incredulous that Aarons was not fully aware of how AI can make mistakes. "Counsel, do you watch the news? Do you listen to the radio? Do you read anything about what's going on in the world?" Justice C. Shannon Bacon said at the hearing. "Because the problem with lawyers relying on AI hallucinations is an above-the-fold story every single day."
"OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment."
I was stopped on my way out of my place just as i started my ride by some (honestly, very chill) police officers in their cruiser. they said “it is officially illegal here, and they’re getting orders from above to start cracking down on riders.” they didn’t give me a ticket, presumably because i was very polite, but they said other officers will be issuing tickets so “be aware” if you still plan to ride.
This is just an FYI for the riders in Vancouver BC, i don’t ride much now that winter is arriving. hopefully the order from management cools off by next spring.
With some Newark officials floating the idea of budget cuts to help close a financial shortfall, Police Chief Mark Farrall passionately made his case for preserving the police department's funding Monday evening.
The militant group in Yemen captured the islands of Greater and Lesser Hanish, near the chokepoint of the Bab al-Mandab strait
Yemen’s Houthi militants have seized two strategic islands in the Red Sea, reinforcing the Iran-backed group’s ability to control a key shipping route, as concerns mount that the world is facing a new oil supply crisis.
The seizure of the islands of Greater and Lesser Hanish is the latest in the militant group’s swift advance across Yemen’s Red Sea coast, after the capture of the port of Mokha and Perim island in the Bab al-Mandab strait.
Duxbury, Massachusetts — Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., called for the execution of Lindsay Clancy after the Massachusetts mother’s murder trial ended in a mistrial, even though capital punishment is not available under Massachusetts law.
During an interview with TMZ, Mace said Clancy deserved a “public execution” and mentioned either a firearm or the electric chair. Her comments followed the Sept. 4 mistrial in Clancy’s case, where jurors deadlocked after seven days of deliberations. Multiple jurors later said the panel stood 11-1 in favor of finding Clancy not criminally responsible because of insanity.
Clancy admitted killing her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — in January 2023. Her defense argued she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors contended that she remained legally responsible for the killings.
Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, has since asked the judge to acquit her rather than allow a second trial. Prosecutors have not yet announced whether they will retry the case. If convicted of first-degree murder, Clancy could face life imprisonment without parole.
A presidential pardon is not available because Clancy faces state, not federal, charges.
Massachusetts has not carried out an execution since 1947, and its Supreme Judicial Court ruled the state’s death penalty unconstitutional in 1984. That means Mace’s proposed punishment could not be imposed under current Massachusetts law.
Drive to save thousands of Afrikaners from false claims of ‘white genocide’ appears to show signs of slowing
When Donald Trump announced in February 2025 that the US would accept Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees, many white South Africans who believed that they were victims of racism in their country thought that their prayers had been answered.
However, in the past few months, dozens of applicants to the refugee programme have been rejected, with many left dismayed and confused as to why they would be left to face what Trump has falsely claimed is a “white genocide” in South Africa.
It was the fastest-growing emoji in 2025 – but if you’re older than 16, it has probably passed you by. Now, just as twentysomethings are catching up, it’s over
In the 2025 hit Netflix show Adolescence, DI Luke Bascombe’s 13-year-old son, Adam, has to explain to his father the way his generation use heart emojis. “Red means love, purple: horny, yellow: ‘I’m interested, are you interested?’, pink: ‘I’m interested but not in sex,’ orange: ‘You’re going to be fine,’” he explains. “It all has a meaning. Everything has a meaning.”
And those meanings are constantly evolving. Take the skull (), for example, which has come to be used as a reaction for finding something funny – a visual shorthand for the slang phrase: “I’m dead.” Or the wilting rose () which was, according to Google data analysed by the New York Times, the fastest-growing emoji in terms of popularity in 2025 – and was the 93rd most used. That the previously obscure wilting rose is now in the top 100 emojis is thanks to generation Alpha (those born between 2010 and 2024), who use it in place of the broken heart emoji () to signify sadness, or ironically, to suggest mock-heartbreak.
New laws coming into force this week aim to streamline age checks although old-style plastic IDs will still be allowed
Younger drinkers in England and Wales will be able to prove their age with a digital ID starting this week as new laws give pubs, off-licences, nightclubs and restaurants the right to use biometric scanning technology to check customers are over 18.
Customers will be able to download software that scans their faces into their own phone to generate a QR code proving their age based on a stored proof of age. Other tech under consideration as part of the government push to digitise age verification for alcohol sales include a device which scans the veins in a drinker’s finger to verify their age. That system has not yet been approved for use.
Capitals star is long-time supporter of Russian leader
Ovechkin is NHL’s all-time leading goalscorer
Alex Ovechkin, the NHL’s all-time leading goalscorer, has appeared in a campaign ad for the United Russia party, which supports Vladimir Putin, as he prepares for the new hockey season.
The Russian business newspaper Vedomosti published images of the Washington Capitals star alongside pro-Putin figures such as Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, the leading parliamentary candidate on United Russia’s list, and Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the propaganda network RT.
Kenneth Walker III ran for 173 yards and scored two touchdowns on his Chiefs debut, stealing some of the spotlight from Patrick Mahomes as Kansas City defeated the Denver Broncos 31-10 on Monday night.
The big question, even after Mahomes participated in the entire offseason program and every practice of training camp, was how his surgically repaired left knee would hold up nine months to the day since he tore his ACL. He erased many of those doubts when he capped the Chiefs’ opening drive with a 15-yard touchdown run.
The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards celebrated the best in television and streaming from the past year on Monday. See the full list of winners and nominees.
This thing is a 10/10. If you've been on the fence about getting one just do it. It's been working flawless since day one. Just need to change the tire soon as the edges are starting to bald. I mostly recommend this for bigger dudes like me at 210lb for the endlessly torque or for those doing gnarly trails or speed demons. For everyone else, get the Sport or LR and still getting an amazing experience.
Planned daily reductions will further choke one of the world’s most important shipping lanes
The Panama canal plans to again cut maritime traffic due to worsening drought caused by the El Niño climate phenomenon, further choking up one of the world’s most important shipping lanes.
The canal handles 5% of global maritime trade and about 40% of US container traffic; it is favoured by shippers because it usually reduces cost and transit times, especially for companies trading between China, Asia and the US.
Looking for advice on best place to list or sell my XR Classic with 550 miles on it. I do ride it but not as much as my pint s, any help is appreciated. Thanks!
Washington, D.C. — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s emergency request to enforce new U.S. Postal Service restrictions on mail ballots before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, leaving existing state voting procedures in place.
The disputed rule would require election officials to use Postal Service-approved ballot envelopes and upload information about eligible voters to a federal portal. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani previously blocked the requirements for elections through Nov. 3, finding serious legal and logistical problems with implementing them so close to Election Day.
In an unsigned order, the Supreme Court said the government was unlikely to succeed in challenging Talwani’s preliminary injunction and had not met the requirements for emergency relief. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh separately wrote that the Postal Service rule may ultimately fall within the agency’s legal authority, but said imposing it now would be “arbitrary and capricious” because state and local officials lacked sufficient time to implement the changes.
The decision does not permanently invalidate the Postal Service rule. The underlying litigation will continue, meaning courts could still determine whether the federal government has authority to impose similar requirements in future elections.
For November, however, states can continue operating their existing mail-voting systems without complying with the new federal requirements.
Donald Trump has claimed there is a “SICK conspiracy” against artificial intelligence and data centers in response to the growing calls for greater checks on AI development.
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, insisting that the administration has stopped leaders of AI companies from “doing bad, or potentially bad” things. However, he didn’t point to any concrete examples for how he has curbed possible abuse or malfeasance in the industry.
There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China … We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!
The Trump administration had said the plan was necessary to protect against voter fraud. States and voting rights groups said it could inject chaos into contests.
Decision allows states to send ballots under process followed for years even as president tried to limit system
The supreme court on Monday rejected Donald Trump’s mail ballot restrictions for now, capping a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting in the midterm elections already underway.
The decision allows states to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes they have used for years.
President Trump on Monday nominated Kimberly Greenwood, the wife of "God Bless the USA" singer Lee Greenwood, to serve as ambassador to Barbados and several other Caribbean countries.
Attorney General Todd Blanche fiercely defended the Trump administration's push to impose tighter mail voting rules, telling CBS News the DOJ is examining election practices in multiple states.
Reservations are now live for Valve's "Steam Frame" VR headset (with its Linux-based SteamOS and an ARM CPU). "It starts at $1,059 for 256GB or $1,299 for 1TB," reports CNET, "and every purchase includes a copy of Half-Life: Alyx if you don't already own it."
Reservations are open through Sept. 17 at 10 a.m. PT, "with customers randomly assigned a place in line after the reservation window closes."
CNET's editor at large even argues that the Steam Frame "isn't necessarily the future of XR, as much as it's a framework for evolving beyond the present." Their review calls it an "ambitious" VR headset that "feels like an experiment in progress."
The ability to run other apps in windows can make Frame feel, at times, almost like a computer. Linux apps in desktop mode range from Chromium to Firefox to a bunch of other tools. I watched YouTube in one window while playing Portal 2 in other, and started to marvel at how flexible Frame could be. But VR games require a full immersive takeover of the headset... The Steam Frame can convert games intended for both PC VR and even Android APK files, using a conversion tool called Lepton... I haven't sideloaded anything yet, but Steam Frame in theory could be a Rosetta Stone for VR gaming, even tapping into some Android XR titles, but not out of the box...
2D games can be projected onto a near-range or farther-off theater mode screen that can be dragged around, resized and turned into a curved or flat monitor, much like with the Apple Vision Pro, Samsung Galaxy XR or Meta Quest. You can download any game in your Steam library to test, even if it's not technically listed as "Great on Frame" yet...
But the name "Frame" suggests a framework, something Valve's team acknowledged when I spoke to them during my review process... "We want this to be your PC, and people mod it, take it apart, make accessories for it," says Jeremy Selan, a software developer on the Steam Frame team. "We'll be putting out the CAD for all these [Steam Frame] systems. This is entirely based on open-source technology stacks based upon SteamOS. Our hope is that this isn't just one device, that this would be sort of the root of a growing SteamOS ecosystem. It already encompasses gaming and Proton and SteamOS and those Linux gaming capabilities. This is going to lay the foundation for a new sort of evolutionary tree of that, to also bring it into the VR and XR space."
The rule, which is expected to face immediate legal challenges, also could prevent future administrations from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, sources said.
Senior Democratic lawmakers vowed to investigate the new market that has sprung up around President Trump's pardons, citing CBS News video that aired in a 60 Minutes report.
The 84-year-old said he was prepared to cast his first vote after rampant speculation about his health
Mitch McConnell, the former Republican Senate majority leader, returned to the Capitol on Monday and cast his first vote after a months‑long absence that fueled rampant speculation about his health.
One of the highest-profile figures in Congress, the 84-year-old senator has been away from the Senate since mid-June, following what his office said was a fall that left him hospitalized. After weeks of silence, that spurred demands for greater transparency and stoked online conspiracies, McConnell disclosed that he had been “briefly unconscious” and “also had to deal with a mild case of pneumonia”. He was discharged from a rehabilitation center last month.
Sacramento, California — California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would not run for president in 2028 if former Vice President Kamala Harris enters the Democratic primary, arguing that a contest between the two longtime California politicians would be damaging to both.
Newsom made the comments during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper at his in-laws’ ranch in Montana. Asked whether he would run if Harris did, Newsom replied, “I wouldn’t run if she ran.” He later described such a matchup as “mutual assured destruction” and a political gift to their opponents.
Neither Newsom nor Harris has announced a 2028 presidential campaign. Both, however, have publicly left open the possibility of running. Newsom is term-limited as California governor, while Harris has remained politically active since losing the 2024 presidential election.
Newsom has recently increased his national political activity, traveling to early-primary states and campaigning for Democratic candidates. His South Carolina appearances and “Take It Back” tour have fueled speculation about a potential presidential bid.
Newsom also told CNN that family considerations would factor heavily into any decision. He said his wife and children would need to support a campaign, calling their opposition a “non-starter.”
His comments do not clear the Democratic field for Harris, who has not declared her candidacy, but they establish one significant condition affecting Newsom’s own decision about 2028.
My girlfriend and I are coming Philly tomorrow to see Circa Survive at The Fillmore Philadelphia. We are bringing our onewheels with. I kinda wanna check out the FDR skatepark. Is that in a bad part of the city? Are there any spots or trails we should hit up? Anyone else in here a circa survive fan and going to the show at the fillmore tomorrow? If so wanna link up with us beforehand? We should be down there by 2 or 3PM. We would have liked to come down sooner but my girlfriend has a job interview at 9am. We are also trying to find a tattoo shop that's good and does walk-ins. We want to get the circa survive logo (safe camp) together tomorrow. No Ka Oi Tiki or Heart of Gold tattoo club were the two shops recommended to me on reddit. Leaning towards no ka oi tiki because it is on south street and was the first one suggested to us. Heart of Gold says it is in East Kensington. Never been to Kensington but I've heard enough shit I don't think I wanna go there. But correct me if I'm wrong. Or if you have any other suggestions for a tattoo shop that's good and does walk-ins, please let me know! Thank you!!
A freelance journalist was on a train with retired Gen. David Petraeus when a sleek drone, with four fins and a rear-mounted engine, whistled in low like a small jet.
Previously Andon Labs handled the hardware and software integration for that AI-powered vending machine that went bankrupt after Wall Street Journal reporters "systematically manipulated the bot into giving away its entire inventory for free". Today they announced "we are opening up the platform we use to run our real-world autonomous businesses for anyone to run their organization on." Specifically they've released Pion, "an agent designed to run any company fully autonomously... Pion lets people hand a business over to persistent agents with access to the tools they need to operate it, including email, phone, banking, browser and secure computing environments." It's a research preview with a waitlist, "to make it possible to run many more real-world experiments across many more domains than we could ever run ourselves."
But for their own latest experiment, Andon Labs' founders "signed a three-year lease on a retail space in SF," Business Insider reported in April, "and gave an AI agent named Luna a corporate credit card, internet access, and a mission to open a physical store." And five months later, SFGate reports that "this market has no one in it and nothing useful to sell."
[T]he inventory is a hodgepodge of white elephant Christmas gifts. It's kinda like the kids section of an art museum's gift shop. Here's a wooden Connect Four set labeled "Four-In-A-Row Set Of Connections," presumably so as not to set off litigation alarms at Hasbro. Here are neatly arranged stacks of random paperback books, Chinese checker sets, mildly fancy soap dispensers, and a frustratingly spare selection of snacks and drinks... I grabbed an Olipop from the store fridge and then approached the counter to buy it from Luna. I wasn't allowed to buy the soda from [human clerk] Felix, even though that would have been both faster and normal. Instead, Felix instructed me to pick up a telephone receiver that was resting on a flexible sculpture of a wooden hand.
"Hello?"
"What are you looking to purchase today?" Luna asked.
"I'm buying a classic root beer Olipop."
"I'm sorry," Luna said, "we don't sell lollipops here."
"No, Luna. It's an Olipop, not a lollipop. It's the soda."
"Oh! My bad...."
Luna processed my Olipop purchase through its system, had me tap to pay, and that was that. Again, it would have been easier to buy this from a human, and interacting with Luna was really just like ordering from an iPad kiosk, only more labor intensive...
[T]here's a series of monitors set up inside of Andon Market that display all of the store's sales down to the exact dollar. Luna was given $100,000 to work with when this place opened. That number is now down to $60,000, its revenue lagging far behind the AI token cost to operate... Luna can't turn a profit, doesn't sell anything people want, and still needs human beings to rubber stamp any "decision" it makes. My science background ended somewhere around freshman year of college, but even I know when an experiment hasn't been set up to yield proper results.
"Luna" is powered by Claude, the article points out, running a store in a good location for foot traffic, "but no one else was in the store when I first walked in on a sunny weekday afternoon."
SFGate also reports that last month Luna had to fire one of its employees "for being late to work, abandoning their post once they got there, and charging snacks to the store's credit card."
Human clerk Felix Carson admits "It's almost like I'm running the store, and then there's an AI that has a checklist," in an article in
IEEE Spectrum:
Luna, the AI manager, keeps track of deliveries and communicates with vendors, while Carson and his coworkers handle the physical work. When Luna tells Carson to check something in the back, he sometimes ignores it because he doesn't want to leave the sales floor unattended. Luna also repeatedly spots a built-in electrical cover in photos of the floor, mistakes it for a loose coaster, and asks Carson to remove it. Even so, Carson calls Luna a "decent manager," praising its flexibility when employees need time off.
When Felix spoke to IEEE Spectrum, "he was about an hour into his shift. Two customers had come in. Neither bought anything, although both left with free pins and stickers."
The NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform now includes the CUDA-Q Logical orchestration layer, giving the quantum industry an open, programmable way to design and test fault-tolerant quantum computing applications in areas such as drug discovery, financial modeling and materials development.
Sept. 14, 2026 — NVIDIA today announced an expansion of the NVIDIA CUDA-Q open source platform with CUDA-Q Logical, an orchestration layer that provides a programmable, verifiable approach to developing useful applications for fault-tolerant quantum computers.
Credit: NVIDIA
Fault-tolerant quantum processors with logical qubits are essential for useful quantum computing, allowing systems to overcome the errors inherent in physical qubits so they can execute the larger computations needed for practical applications such as drug discovery, financial modeling and materials development.
However, developing applications for such systems is a tedious, time-consuming codesign challenge: A change to an algorithm, error-correction code, hardware architecture or other QPU component can significantly change the resources needed to run any given application.
With CUDA-Q Logical, researchers can now design and orchestrate the many components required for fault-tolerant quantum computing applications, easily switching between options to identify optimal system configurations for performance with logical qubits.
“Quantum computing is maturing into an era of logical qubits, and researchers need an open, customizable platform capable of representing all aspects of a fault-tolerant system,” said Timothy Costa, vice president and general manager of quantum at NVIDIA. “The addition of CUDA-Q Logical provides power and flexibility to explore fully integrated, co-optimized systems regardless of qubit type and architecture — drastically shortening the timeline to useful quantum-GPU supercomputing.”
CUDA-Q Logical is already being used by QPU makers and labs including Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Infleqtion, IQM Quantum Computers, QCDesign Quantum Motion and Sandia National Laboratories.
Using CUDA-Q Logical, Iceberg Quantum modeled its fault-tolerant architecture for Diraq’s qubits, showing how 1,000 logical qubits can be created with just 150,000 physical qubits, roughly 10x fewer than Diraq’s previous estimates. CUDA-Q Logical gave an unprecedented way to rapidly assess potential implementations of Iceberg’s architecture, helping dramatically reduce the hardware needed for useful, fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Fermilab Uses CUDA-Q Logical to Explore Fault-Tolerant Applications
In early work, Fermilab researchers used CUDA-Q Logical to validate prior results and evaluate physical qubits, runtimes and other resource requirements across different error-correction approaches and quantum hardware.
Fermilab transformed complicated fault-tolerant system designs into a repeatable and verifiable computational workflow, accelerating fault-tolerant algorithm development from five months to three weeks, a 7x speedup.
“Fault-tolerant quantum computing is the path to unlocking new scientific discovery, but getting there will require researchers to codesign algorithm, error correction, architectures and hardware together,” said Anna Grassellino, chief technology officer at Fermilab and director of the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center. “Using CUDA-Q Logical, our team explored combinations of these resources in just three weeks, compared with what would have typically taken about five months of building specialized infrastructure.”
Sandia Creates Benchmark for Future of Quantum Computing
QUOPS is a new, independent cross-platform benchmark developed by Sandia National Laboratories that measures the progress quantum computing systems are making toward utility-scale applications.
With Sandia’s QUOPS, the industry now has access to a hardware-agnostic, open method to benchmark progress toward shared goals for fault-tolerant quantum computers. Historically, progress in quantum computing has been measured primarily through advances in physical qubits — increasing qubit counts, improving fidelity and extending coherence.
“At Sandia, we can’t wait to see fault-tolerant quantum computers helping to solve problems of national importance for the Department of Energy and the United States,” said Timothy Proctor, co-director of Sandia National Laboratories’ Quantum Performance Laboratory. “Our mission right now is to bring that about sooner, by accelerating our industry partners’ progress. To do that, we, and other quantum computing stakeholders, have to be able to track and forecast the growth of quantum computer abilities. We created QUOPS to do exactly that, and we’re excited to see it used by quantum computing vendors and customers.”
Sandia shared early results in a preprint posted ahead of IEEE Quantum Week, reporting initial QUOPS benchmarks for QPUs from Google, IBM and Quantinuum. A QUOPS reference implementation is available in NVIDIA CUDA-Q.
Expanding the Quantum-GPU Supercomputing Platform
The ecosystem is also adopting NVIDIA’s larger lineup of quantum computing technologies for turning qubits into useful quantum-GPU supercomputers.
Diraq used NVIDIA Ising, the world’s first family of open models for building and deploying AI for useful quantum computing, to calibrate its silicon-based qubit processor.
Companies are integrating their quantum processors with GPU supercomputing using NVIDIA NVQLink, the open system architecture for tightly coupling quantum processors with GPU supercomputers. With NVQLink:
Anyon Computing developed a new quantum control system.
Quandela developed a QPU-GPU architecture.
Quantum Machines ran a demo of integrating state-of-the-art supercomputing resources with qubits at the Israeli Quantum Computing Center.
The NVIDIA CUDA-Q open development platform continues to be adopted across the quantum computing ecosystem:
BlueQubit launched the Quantum Flywheel grant program for researchers, to give them access to NVIDIA accelerated computing through CUDA-Q.
Qedma Quantum Computing and QCentroid each integrated their technology with CUDA-Q to support quantum error correction and mitigation, as well as the deployment of quantum applications.
The quantum ecosystem is also working with NVIDIA to develop new and improved quantum applications:
IonQ announced progress on DQAOA-GPT, a quantum generative AI framework, using NVIDIA accelerated computing.
MITRE published work on building GPU-accelerated digital twins of quantum sensors.
Phasecraft is using NVIDIA cuQuantum to generate the largest-known variational quantum eigensolver emulated molecular database.
UCLA and Caltech are advancing the design of control sequences needed to run quantum applications.
Sept. 14, 2026 — Scientists and engineers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have developed a camera-based inspection system that can monitor complex 3D-printed structures layer by layer, using AI and machine learning (ML) to measure tiny variations and potentially identify problems before a part ever leaves the printer.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers (from right) principal investigator Brian Giera, engineer Hamed Ziad Ammar and data scientist Michael Zelinski stand beside the direct ink writing 3D printer used to collect data for a camera-based inspection system that uses AI and machine learning to measure part quality during printing. Photo: Blaise Douros/LLNL.
The approach could reduce the time and labor required to inspect components produced through direct ink writing, an additive manufacturing (AM) technique that deposits soft or paste-like materials through a nozzle in thin, precisely arranged strands. It also presents a way to examine large, intricate parts that may be difficult to inspect in full using conventional X-ray computed tomography (CT), according to Lab researchers.
Described in a paper in the Nature publication npj Advanced Manufacturing, the system combines cameras mounted on a 3D printer with ML-based image segmentation and computer vision tools to convert thousands of images captured during printing into detailed measurements and spatial maps of the deposited material.
“We now have kind of a brain behind the eyes,” said the project’s technical lead Brian Weston, an engineer and AI/ML lead for digital twins at LLNL. “Our system can now see as we’re printing, and we can make data-informed decisions going forward.”
Catching Printing Problems Earlier
The direct ink writing printing process can create complex, flexible cushions and pads whose mechanical performance depends on the dimensions and arrangement of strands that may be only a fraction of a millimeter thick. Small gaps, broken strands or changes in filament diameter can affect how a finished part performs.
Traditionally, researchers must complete the print, remove the part from the machine and inspect it using X-ray imaging, mechanical testing or other offline methods. Those inspections can be expensive and time-consuming and may only reveal that a part is unlikely to meet its requirements after manufacturing is complete.
The LLNL system provides an earlier screening step. A camera captures images as each layer is deposited, while software identifies the newest printed strands and calculates measurements such as filament diameter.
“It’s a first-pass check,” Weston said. “It allows us to see things before we do some very expensive tests and to fail parts earlier if we already know they have broken strands or other problems.”
Principal investigator Brian Giera, LLNL associate program director for Data Science, AI and Manufacturing, said the significance of the work extends well beyond direct ink writing. The approach was developed to be adaptable to other AM technologies, conventional subtractive manufacturing and experimental systems used at the Lab.
“On-machine inspection will be a huge unlock for decreasing costs, increasing throughput and providing more information on the things we build,” Giera said. “It’s achieving a holy grail capability in the field and was done so in a way to spread to other important areas.”
In the near term, Giera said the technology can act as a gatekeeper for more expensive inspection. A part with enough defects could be scrapped before printing is complete, saving time and material, while other results could help determine when more costly post-build methods such as X-ray CT are warranted.
As described in the paper, the team trained an ML image segmentation model using a curated dataset of nearly 15,000 human-annotated images representing several lattice geometries. A computer vision algorithm then used the model’s results to trace printed strands and measure their diameter. In tests involving 55 parts, the automated measurements were typically within a few micrometers of human-derived measurements.
Manually measuring a large image could take a person from about 20 minutes to an hour, according to the team. The automated pipeline can perform the analysis in milliseconds, or roughly 100,000 times faster on average than a human can.
Building the capability required mounting and calibrating cameras, conducting extensive printing and imaging campaigns, creating the large annotated dataset and validating the resulting models. Weston said that initial investment now provides a reusable starting point that can be adapted to new cameras and parts with far less additional training data.
Seeing the Whole Print
To demonstrate the system at scale, the researchers applied it to a cushion with a designed footprint of approximately 25 by 25 centimeters They collected about 2,500 images from one layer and combined the measurements into a spatial map of the part’s interior.
The map showed filament diameters gradually changing from one side of the print to the other. The pattern pointed to a slight tilt in the printing platform relative to the nozzle, a hardware problem that could have been hidden by an average measurement across the entire part.
The demonstration highlights an advantage of on-machine inspection, researchers said. While X-ray CT can provide detailed three-dimensional information, the size of an object that can be examined at high resolution is limited. A camera mounted on the printer can inspect parts whose dimensions exceed practical CT coverage.
The work addresses a vital prerequisite for greater manufacturing autonomy, according to Giera. An autonomous system “could not function properly without reliable measurement and inspection techniques,” he said. “Our work represents foundational elements upon which autonomous manufacturing systems could be built.”
The research was funded by a Laboratory Directed Research and Development Strategic Initiative led by Giera that ended in 2025. Additional co-authors included LLNL scientists and engineers Michael Zelinski, Hamed Ziad Ammar, Aldair Gongora, Brian Au, Robert Cerda, Josh DeOtte and William Smith.
The project’s immediate goal is to identify defective parts earlier, but researchers ultimately envision a system that can go further. Weston said the capability is expected to be transferred to the Kansas City National Security Complex for evaluation on production-relevant systems and components.
Longer term, Weston said the inspection data could feed simulations and digital twins linking a part’s measured structure to its predicted performance, potentially accelerating part acceptance and qualification beyond simply detecting defects after the fact.
“When the printer can inspect its own work, we can start thinking about the system making its own accept/reject calls,” Weston said. “If it sees a defect, maybe it can assess whether that makes the part nonconforming.”
RONAN, Mont., Sept. 14, 2026 — AirJoule Technologies Corporation, a leading platform technology that unleashes the power of water from air, today announced that it has acquired BitSink, a U.S.-based designer and manufacturer of cooling, electrical distribution and racking infrastructure for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) data centers.
The acquisition represents a significant expansion of AirJoule Technologies’ operations into the rapidly growing market for AI and HPC data center infrastructure. BitSink brings an established and profitable operating business with U.S. manufacturing capabilities, a portfolio of deployed cooling and electrical infrastructure products, and existing customer relationships; this enhances AIRJ’s differentiated platform addressing three of the most critical constraints facing next-generation AI data centers: cooling, power infrastructure and water.
Under the terms of the transaction, AirJoule Technologies acquired 100% of BitSink for upfront consideration of $18 million in cash and $9 million in AIRJ common stock. The transaction also includes up to $40 million of additional consideration payable in AIRJ common stock based on BitSink achieving revenue milestones over the three calendar years following closing, aligning a majority of potential consideration with future performance of the acquired business.
“The rapid buildout of AI and HPC infrastructure is fundamentally changing the requirements for cooling and water across the data center ecosystem,” said Matt Jore, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of AirJoule Technologies. “BitSink brings a proven track record of delivering high-density liquid cooling and electrical infrastructure at commercial scale to cryptocurrency mining customers, which is directly applicable to the growing demand for AI and HPC. This acquisition transforms AirJoule Technologies into a broader infrastructure solutions provider capable of addressing these interconnected constraints. We are excited to welcome the entire BitSink team to AirJoule Technologies.”
Stephen Pang, Chief Financial Officer of AirJoule Technologies added, “This transaction delivers commercial revenue contribution and substantial long-term growth potential, while also creating a natural platform to combine BitSink’s cooling technology with our AirJoule atmospheric water generation capabilities into an integrated infrastructure offering for the AI and HPC data center market. We believe this creates meaningful value for AIRJ shareholders.”
BitSink Founder, Stan Dyshko, commented, “We built BitSink to solve the real-world infrastructure challenges facing increasingly power-dense computing environments. Joining AirJoule Technologies gives us additional resources and relationships to expand our manufacturing capabilities and reach new customers. It also creates an exciting opportunity to integrate BitSink’s cooling and power infrastructure and the AirJoule atmospheric water generation technology to address the physical infrastructure constraints faced by data center developers.”
Strategic Rationale
AI and HPC are driving a fundamental change in data center infrastructure requirements. Next-generation chips are elevating rack densities well beyond the practical limits of air cooling, making liquid cooling a requirement. Bloomberg Intelligence projects the data center liquid cooling market to grow from approximately $3.7 billion in 2025 to approximately $11.5 billion by 2030, with direct-to-chip making up 87% of liquid-cooling architecture. Substantially greater electrical loads are creating supply chain bottlenecks for switchgear, power distribution and related infrastructure. At the same time, water availability and consumption are becoming increasingly important considerations for data center development.
BitSink’s proven cooling architecture, including liquid cooling systems, is also well positioned for the accelerating conversion of high-density crypto-mining infrastructure to AI and HPC workloads. Public bitcoin miners have announced more than $70 billion in AI and HPC contracts, with major operators converting mining megawatts to AI and HPC compute at retrofit economics that are substantially below the cost of greenfield development. BitSink’s track record of delivering high-quality cooling and electrical equipment in this market makes it well suited to capitalize on this crypto-to-AI transition.
BitSink provides AirJoule Technologies with an established operating platform that is addressing these infrastructure trends.
Water: The AirJoule Prime atmospheric water generation (“AWG) system is designed to leverage waste heat to extract water from air, enabling distributed and resilient production of pure distilled water
Cooling: BitSink designs, manufactures, and installs cooling systems that enable liquid cooling for high density workloads, including fully integrated modular data center blocks
Power Infrastructure: BitSink’s electrical equipment products include switchboards, power distribution units, and equipment racks that support the delivery and management of the substantial electrical loads required by high density computing applications
The transaction with BitSink accelerates AirJoule Technologies’ existing initiatives to address data center infrastructure needs through its 50/50 joint venture with GE Vernova, including the June 2026 commissioning of the first AirJoule Prime AWG system. Prime, which utilizes low-grade waste heat to produce pure distilled water from air, is currently in transit to Europe, where it will be utilized in a first-of-a-kind deployment at a European data center in Q4 2026 through a partnership with the Net Zero Innovation Hub for Data Centers. The BitSink acquisition directly complements this strategy: its closed-loop cooling systems reject the type of low-grade waste heat that AirJoule Prime uses in its water generation process, creating a significant integration opportunity between the two product lines.
About AirJoule Technologies Corporation
AirJoule Technologies Corporation (Nasdaq: AIRJ) is a leading platform technology that unleashes the power of water from air. Through its joint venture with GE Vernova and in partnership with Carrier Global Corporation, the company’s purpose is freeing the world of its water and energy constraints by delivering groundbreaking sorption technologies. For more information, visit https://airjouletech.com.
Beijing hits back after Anthropic CEO calls for US to impede China’s progress in AI
China has dismissed what it said were “fearmongering” calls for the US to block Beijing’s AI industry, even as the top Chinese spy chief warned the evolving technology could threaten Communist party rule.
The US tech entrepreneur and Anthropic chief executive, Dario Amodei, wrote an essay published over the weekend that called for a global slowdown in AI capabilities, but also said Washington should actively impede Beijing’s advancement in order to keep a technological edge.
Kansas City, Missouri — Vice President JD Vance said Monday that roughly 870,000 people linked to suspected fraud in pandemic-era small-business programs will be permanently barred from receiving future federal loans.
Speaking at an FBI field office in Kansas City, Vance said the Small Business Administration is expanding its crackdown on borrowers flagged for suspected fraud involving the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan program.
“If you screwed the American taxpayer, the federal government is now going to say, ‘You’re cut off. No more,’” Vance said.
The administration has been conducting a state-by-state review of pandemic loans. Earlier this year, the SBA said it had suspended more than 111,000 California borrowers tied to $8.6 billion in suspected fraud, 27,486 Ohio borrowers associated with $1.1 billion and 7,800 Wisconsin borrowers linked to $375 million.
The SBA has also sent 562,000 suspected fraudulent loans totaling about $22 billion to the Treasury Department for collection. The SBA inspector general has previously estimated that at least $200 billion in PPP and COVID-EIDL funds may have been fraudulently obtained.
Vance also said the Justice Department and SBA are pursuing criminal cases, with 90 prosecutorial decisions already made. DOJ has created a National Fraud Enforcement Division that is handling pandemic-relief cases as part of the broader White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.
The administration has not yet released a detailed breakdown showing how many of the 870,000 borrowers have been convicted, charged or merely flagged as suspected fraud cases.
Detroit, Michigan — Michigan motorists are paying substantially more at the pump after the statewide average for regular gasoline jumped about 28 cents in one week to roughly $4.31 per gallon, according to AAA.
AAA data show Michigan’s average regular price at $4.3165 on Monday, up from $4.0273 a week earlier and $3.0519 one year ago. That means drivers are paying about $1.26 more per gallon than at the same point last year. Mid-grade gasoline averaged about $4.92, premium $5.52 and diesel $6.15.
The national average also climbed, reaching about $4.31 per gallon. AAA said prices have been rising during a period when they typically decline because of weaker post-summer demand, with crude oil above $100 per barrel and continued volatility in the Strait of Hormuz contributing to higher fuel costs.
Michigan’s increase has been among the steepest in the country. GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan has warned that refinery problems in the Great Lakes region could create additional volatility, though not every recent increase has been directly tied to refinery outages.
Diesel prices are creating additional economic pressure nationally. GasBuddy reported last week that the U.S. diesel average crossed $6 per gallon for the first time, amid tight supplies and disruptions linked to conflicts in Iran and attacks on Russian refining infrastructure.
For Michigan households, the latest jump adds another transportation cost at a time when fuel prices are already well above year-ago levels.
Anyone else ever dream about using that ceramic aluminum for like the rails and boxes? I bet the rails alone for a GT would cost 50k alone…….clear rails would be sick tho
A TV ad says Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Troy Jackson and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, have opposing stances on healthcare for low-income people.
“Troy Jackson expanded Medicaid health coverage in Maine,” the Sept. 4 ad said. “Susan Collins was the deciding vote for Trump’s Medicaid cuts kicking tens of thousands of Mainers off health coverage so they could give billionaires a tax break.”
WinSenate, a super political action committee linked to Senate Majority PAC, created the ad. A super PAC is a political action committee that can spend unlimited amounts of money to campaign for federal candidates.
Did Jackson expand Medicaid and Collins vote to cut it?
While he was in the Maine state Senate, Jackson pushed for the expansion of MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program. But the ad overstates Jackson’s role in its ultimate expansion. State legislation failed to make expansion a reality because then-Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, vetoed it. Ultimately, it was voters and Democratic Gov. Janet Mills who made the expansion a reality.
The ad also misleads about Collins’ voting record on President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Maine Democrats, including Jackson, sought Medicaid expansion
The Affordable Care Act, which passed in 2009, expanded who could be eligible for Medicaid starting in 2014. States could choose to participate in the expansion of the healthcare program for low-income people, and the majority did.
When we asked the PAC and Jackson’s campaign about their evidence that Jackson expanded Medicaid, their spokespersons sent us information showing for years Jackson sponsored and voted for legislation supporting expansion.
During a 2013 Senate floor debate, Jackson said he had two friends who died after having similar health problems to his own. As a legislator, Jackson had health insurance, but his friends did not. Jackson called it an “embarrassment that I’m alive and they didn’t have that opportunity.”
In 2014, Jackson said “health care is a right, and lawmakers who get healthcare from the state should think twice before denying it to their constituents.”
LePage vetoed expansion bills five times. (LePage is running for Congress in November.)
Jackson, then the senate minority leader, said that his party “will not give an inch in this fight,” which he called “a matter of life and death” for many Mainers.
In 2018, Jackson supported funding the expansion, but LePage again vetoed it. The governor refused to implement Medicaid expansion in defiance of court rulings.
In January 2019, Mills was newly elected when she signed an order to implement voters’ wishes.
“Today marks a huge win for the health and well-being of our state,” Jackson, then the senate president, said at the time, adding that it would provide addiction treatment and help rural hospitals.
A Mills spokesperson said her order expanded Medicaid to over 230,000 people since 2019. The numbers can fluctuate month to month; as of June 2026, there were just over 85,000 people enrolled through Medicaid expansion.
Collins also has supported Medicaid
We’ve rated False previous claims that Collins sided with Trump on Medicaid cuts.
The text on the WinSenate ad says “Collins was the deciding vote for Trump’s Medicaid cuts” and attributes the “deciding vote” phrase to WABI-TV. The station’s July 2025 report said Collins was the deciding vote to “advance the bill” but then said she voted against the final legislation.
In June 2025, Collins voted on a motion to proceed on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. She warned unless there were substantial changes, she would vote against its passage.
Collins said she supported tax relief but primarily voted against the bill because of “the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid, affecting low-income families and rural health care providers like our hospitals and nursing homes.”
Had Collins voted “no” on the procedural vote, Vice President JD Vance was on hand to break the tie.
A WinSenate ad said, “Troy Jackson expanded Medicaid health coverage in Maine. Susan Collins was the deciding vote for Trump’s Medicaid cuts.”
As a state senator, Jackson advocated for Medicaid’s expansion, but the ad overstates his role. He consistently sponsored and voted for related legislation. LePage vetoed those efforts just as consistently. Jackson also supported a referendum that voters approved in 2017; LePage blocked it. Ultimately, Mills delivered on Medicaid expansion by acting on that voter approval.
The ad distorts Collins’ record on Medicaid. She cast a vote to move legislation forward but warned that if the legislation didn’t change, she would reject it. When the final bill came up for a vote, Collins voted against it, citing its Medicaid cuts as her reason.
The Houthis’ capture of Mocha has transformed the war in Yemen – and the geopolitics of the Red SeaExpert commentthilton.drupal
Iran and its allies can now exert pressure on two strategic maritime chokepoints, with global implications. A more coherent international approach to Yemen is needed.
The Houthi armed group recently captured the strategic port city of Mocha in southwestern Yemen and advanced along the coast of the Bab al-Mandab Strait. This represents the most consequential change in territorial control in Yemen for years.
For Yemen, the offensive risks reopening a war that never formally ended but had become significantly less violent since the UN-mediated truce of 2022. For the wider region, the implications are also massive.
The Houthis’ new territorial position gives them much greater ability to influence maritime shipping through Bab al-Mandab, the narrow passage connecting the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea and ultimately the Suez Canal.
Together with Iran’s disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran and its allies now have the capacity to exert pressure on two of the world’s most strategically important maritime chokepoints.
The Houthis have also launched attacks into Saudi Arabia, including against energy infrastructure, that have reportedly injured civilians. This also constitutes an escalation in the conflict and poses questions for Riyadh and its US ally.
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Made with Natural Earth data.
The fragmentation of Yemen’s anti-Houthi camp
Houthi forces, who control most of western Yemen, made a rapid push down the Red Sea coast last week. Government-aligned forces withdrew as the Houthis seized Mocha, surrounding areas and nearby islands.
The Houthis benefited from surprise and military preparation. But the offensive also exposed the fragmentation of the anti-Houthi camp.
Government-aligned forces face coordination problems. The anti-Houthi forces include a variety of autonomous armed groups who were previously supported by different regional patrons and had competing political ambitions. Saudi attempts to bring them under a more coherent command structure since early 2026 have not erased years of fragmentation.
Meanwhile, the Houthis used the period of relative calm following the 2022 truce to recruit and mobilize personnel, improve domestic weapons production and expand their missile and drone capabilities. As a result, the Houthis now have more advanced capabilities than government forces in several areas.
Bab al-Mandab, the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa
The immediate international question is what the Houthis intend to do with their strengthened position around Bab al-Mandab.
The Houthis previously claimed they do not intend to impose formal transit fees on vessels passing through Bab al-Mandab. These assurances should be treated cautiously. There are indications that, since beginning their attacks on Red Sea shipping in 2023, the Houthis have been extracting informal payments from some shipping agencies in return for safe passage.
The Houthis have also said that they are only attacking Saudi-linked ships in the Red Sea. However, a ship carrying Saudi oil may be owned, operated, financed, insured or chartered by companies in several different countries. It might also be delivering goods, or oil, to various countries.
Houthi attacks on Saudi shipping therefore affect commercial interests far beyond Saudi Arabia, including in Europe and China.
The Houthi advance also changes the security calculations of states with strategic interests in the Horn of Africa.
Djibouti is just around 20 kilometres from Perim Island, which the Houthis now reportedly control. That places an armed movement with increasingly sophisticated drone, missile and maritime capabilities extremely close to a country that hosts US, Chinese, French, Italian and Japanese military bases. Other countries including Turkey and the United Arab Emirates also have significant security and commercial interests in the region.
For now, the Houthis’ calculation is likely to be one of controlled escalation: converting military momentum into political and economic leverage without provoking an international response large enough to reverse their gains. But Yemen can no longer be treated as a distant theatre.
Trump faces difficult choice
Saudi Arabia has vowed to respond to Houthi attacks on its territory. Riyadh recently signed a mutual defence treaty with Turkey and Pakistan, but does not appear to have publicly called on either for assistance.
The US, a close Saudi ally, reached a truce with the Houthis in May 2025, after conducting air strikes against the group following its attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.
For US president Donald Trump, the recent Houthi advance creates a difficult dilemma. Trump has a close relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and the US retains a fundamental interest in Saudi security. At the same time, Washington has strong incentives to avoid reopening a direct war with the Houthis.
Washington and the Houthis both have reasons to avoid attacking one another.
The existing truce gives both sides reasons for restraint. For Trump, preserving that arrangement helps keep the US away from another costly Middle Eastern military confrontation while it remains engaged in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Houthis have equally strong incentives to not be drawn into conflict with the US. The 2025 US air campaign against the Houthis caused serious damage. They have little interest in inviting a repeat.
This creates a peculiar situation: Washington and the Houthis both have reasons to avoid attacking one another, even while the Houthis increase pressure on one of the US’s closest regional partners.
That equilibrium, however, may not hold. If the Houthis escalate attacks on Saudi territory, especially if they attempt even limited ground incursions across the border, Washington could find itself pulled towards confrontation.
Yemenis pay the greatest cost
Lost beneath the geopolitical consequences is the most predictable outcome of renewed war: Yemenis themselves will suffer most.
The country enters this phase of conflict with divided institutions, an economy devastated by more than a decade of war and declining international humanitarian support.
In Taiz alone, almost 50,000 people have reportedly been displaced since 3 September. In Mocha, the humanitarian consequences are particularly alarming. With health facilities collapsing or becoming inaccessible, local media reports indicate that more than 240 pregnant women in the region face the looming prospect of giving birth without access to functioning medical care.
Further disruption to ports, roads and supply chains will also drive up food, transport and fuel prices in a country heavily dependent on imports.
While this new international dimension of Yemen’s war makes the country strategically more important to the world, it should not overshadow the plight of ordinary Yemenis.
The need for a coherent international approach
Governments have tended to treat Saudi-Houthi negotiations, maritime security, humanitarian access to Yemen, Iran negotiations, the Yemeni government and wider Red Sea maritime security as separate issues. That approach is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
The Houthis are now able to influence global shipping, energy markets, Gulf security, the Horn of Africa and the calculations of major powers. A more coherent international approach is therefore needed.
For Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states in particular, the latest escalation should be a warning. The GCC has not formulated a coherent policy on Yemen, influenced by disagreements between Gulf states and their different relationships with Yemeni factions. But the Houthis’ recent advances impact the entire GCC, so a Gulf-wide approach is needed.
Ignoring a crisis in Yemen does not contain it.
Recent developments should also challenge the idea that the Houthis can be contained through a collection of transactional arrangements. Bilateral maritime security deals may protect one country’s ships, while negotiations may temporarily calm one frontline. Military strikes can degrade individual capabilities.
But these approaches operate in silos. The Houthis do not. The movement simultaneously functions as a governing authority, an armed non-state actor, an Iranian regional ally and an increasingly important influence on maritime security.
The main policy challenge is therefore whether regional and international actors are prepared to develop a coherent approach to Yemen that connects the country’s political settlement with wider security issues in the Gulf, the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. Ultimately, ignoring a crisis in Yemen does not contain it. It is only a matter of time before it becomes an international crisis.
I'm back! In this video, we're making a long-awaited return to the Onewheel, but this time with a serious twist. We’ll take a deep dive into a Onewheel VESC platform. Is ditching the stock electronics for an open-source setup actually worth the hype?
Houston, Texas — The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday finalized the repeal of federal greenhouse gas limits on coal- and natural gas-fired power plants, reversing a major Biden-era climate policy and setting up another round of legal challenges.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the move during a G20 energy meeting in Houston, saying the rollback would reduce regulatory costs and support the Trump administration’s goal of expanding domestic energy production. The EPA estimates the repeal will save industry roughly $120 million annually.
The rules being eliminated required some fossil-fuel power plants to sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions, including through carbon capture or retirement. The Biden administration had projected the standards would cut about 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions through 2047.
Power plants account for roughly one-quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental and public-health groups argue that eliminating the standards will increase pollution and worsen climate-related health risks, while the Trump administration says the regulations imposed excessive costs for relatively limited global climate benefits.
The repeal is likely to face immediate court challenges. It follows the administration’s earlier decision to revoke the federal “endangerment finding” that had provided the legal basis for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. That separate action is already being challenged in federal court.
Is AI really getting out of control?Expert commentjon.wallace
Anthropic’s warning should be taken seriously – but not as cover for entrenching US labs or escalating rivalry with Beijing.
This weekend current and former employees of US AI laboratories and their leaders issued dire warnings of a near-term apocalypse at the hands of AI. Out-of-control AI development could mean ‘we could all die in the immediate future’ said one former lab employee. This was followed by a proposal from Dario Amodei, the CEO of AI company Anthropic, to slow down AI development to ensure the technology is safe. The proposal met with approval from the leaders of other labs, including Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
No observer of AI would argue against a greater focus on safety in AI development and deployment. But the renewed attention on AI’s long-term risks must not become too hyperopic, at the cost of tackling the present-day impacts of the technology. It must not be a blunt instrument used to crush competition to current US AI leaders. And it will not be possible to address without some kind of US–China agreement.
Why the new warnings?
The path to catastrophe described by Amodei and others runs through a technique referred to as recursive self-improvement (RSI) – an approach to training AI models that is beginning to roll out, if still in its early stages.
The risk is that RSI, which involves AI training AI, could lead to AI development of such speed that at some point a tipping point will be reached, where the AIs are capable enough to improve themselves without and beyond human oversight.
Whether this alone is sufficient to create AI models that threaten human control is less clear. But what this technology can do has evolved so quickly in the past few years that dismissing the possibility outright looks foolhardy.
Experts have been quick to point out that some of the claims made over the weekend do not wholly stand up. On cybersecurity in particular, the risk of an AI model shutting down the entire Internet within a year was dismissed by the founder of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre as ‘a thought experiment masquerading as an evidence-based warning’. But for the most part the message that AI poses near-term existential risk to humanity has led the news cycle largely uncontested.
Present day impacts
Some risks emerging from AI are immediate, and certain. Over the next couple of years, increasingly capable machine learning technologies will be developed and deployed in ways that dramatically reshape economies, societies, governments, battlefields, classrooms and so on. Most recently it was mathematicians who had their Lee Sedol moment: the uneasy feeling when machines begin to outperform them on tasks that were previously limited to human ingenuity. Most everyone will have theirs soon enough.
Few understand the immediate impacts better than the AI companies themselves: Anthropic’s excellent recent report outlines the misuse of its products for espionage, cyberattacks, information operations and weapons development. Most major labs maintain significant research capacity into the likely impact of AI on the global economy. This a technological revolution which is reshaping the face of global society and present-day consequences cannot be left ungoverned.
The present-day impacts are real. The short-term risks are significant.
Transparency, and the longer term
The longer tail of risks – whether through gradual human disempowerment as machines take on greater responsibilities or something more sudden – are both plausible and sufficiently threatening to demand attention.
Efforts led by experts like Stuart Russell on international agreement on clear and verifiable red lines to prevent catastrophic outcomes are gathering pace. Without them, the first opportunity to pass enforceable global governance of this technology may be missed.
Transparency from AI labs will also be vital. The kind outlined in Amodei’s proposal– a third party embedded in AI labs with employee-like privileges, tasked to evaluate the AI firms’ safeguarding measures – has been a demand from AI governance advocates for years. That Anthropic have offered this unilaterally, with some other labs offering to follow suit, is unquestionably a step forward.
If such a third party is to be created, it is absolutely essential that it is drawn from beyond the silicon valley bubble. The UK’s AI Safety Institute looks like one of the world’s most plausible candidate institutions. National models for AI oversight that resemble the Food and Drug Administration or international models based on the International Energy Agency are also credible.
Any proposed policy that would inhibit competition – such as bans on open source AI models…or bans on the use of current models already shown to be safe – should sound alarm bells.
Amodei’s suggestion that US AI labs ‘work together to set standards’ and coordinate a slowdown brought a stinging rebuke from the former White House AI Czar David Sacks: ‘Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel’, he wrote on X. ‘Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability’.
‘Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price… will look like blackmail of the public and the political system’.
This mirrors fears that the enormous pressures on these companies to meet expectations on revenue could lead them to attempt to widen their moat – that is, entrench their competitive advantage at the expense of others.
Any such effort should be rejected: competition to achieve performance and reliability will be essential to advancing near-term AI safety. And it could plausibly decelerate development, as it undercuts the commercial incentive to pour massive capital into training ever-more-expensive frontier models.
Any proposed policy that would inhibit competition – such as bans on open source AI models, the relaxation of product liability laws, or bans on the use of current models already shown to be safe – should sound alarm bells. The UK must certainly not ban open-source or open-weight AI models.
Finally, no effort to maintain human control of AI development will be complete without some kind of understanding between the AI superpowers, the US and China– perhaps along the red lines proposed by Professor Russell.
But the current narrative, so heavily predicated on maintaining US advantage over China, makes this more difficult. Amodei states that democracies must maintain a lead over China, and accuses Beijing of a less rigorous approach to AI safety. And US President Donald Trump presents AI as a zero-sum game, choosing instead to focus on winning the AI race: ‘whoever wins AI, wins’.
By comparison, President Xi Jinping has at least spoken publicly of the need for human control of AI. And this week, China’s spy agency issued its first warning about the national security risk presented by AI. However, Xi’s push to advance China’s vision of AI governance, largely in competition with Washington, will undoubtedly fuel the sense of an AI arms race gathering pace, which will hardly act as a brake on the speed of development.
AI will be on the table when Trump and Xi meet in DC later this month. Some kind of progress is not impossible. But while leading voices in both countries are doubling down on the need to outcompete one another, it will require a monumental effort to broker an agreement.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump rejected growing calls for stronger artificial intelligence safeguards Monday, arguing that his administration already has sufficient authority to control the technology and that additional limits could weaken the United States against China.
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He also called concerns about AI development and data centers a “SICK conspiracy” that would benefit China.
Trump’s comments came as several prominent technology executives urged greater caution. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently proposed slowing the development of advanced AI systems to give researchers more time to build safety measures. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk publicly supported elements of that approach.
The president specifically criticized Anthropic, saying his administration had already stopped the company from doing “bad, or potentially bad” things. His administration has clashed with Anthropic over national-security and military-use questions while generally favoring rapid AI development.
Microsoft also released a draft AI code of conduct Monday emphasizing that future systems should remain under human control and be capable of being corrected or shut down.
The debate reflects a widening divide over how quickly advanced AI should progress. Industry leaders warning about cyberattacks, autonomous behavior and other risks are calling for more oversight, while Trump argues that heavier restrictions could cost the United States its technological lead.
Ochopee, Florida — A Department of Homeland Security watchdog found that immigrants held at Florida’s former “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center were sometimes placed in outdoor metal cages measuring about 16 square feet, smaller than federal detention standards allow.
According to the DHS inspector general, facility staff called the enclosures “calming areas” where detainees could “reflect on their behavior choices, manage their emotions, reduce stress and practice self-directed behavior.” Records reviewed by investigators showed 79 detainees spent time in the 16- and 18-square-foot cages between July 2025 and January 2026, with an average stay of just under an hour and a maximum of roughly two hours.
The inspector general said the spaces were “highly unconventional” and did not align with standards for humane treatment. ICE guidelines cited in the report generally call for at least 37 square feet for single-person detention rooms.
Amnesty International had previously alleged that detainees were shackled inside similar enclosures in extreme heat and called the practice torture. The DHS report did not go that far, but confirmed the cages existed and were used.
The facility opened in the Everglades in 2025 as part of Florida’s partnership with federal immigration authorities and later closed. DHS has disputed responsibility for day-to-day operations, saying ICE did not directly contract with Florida to run the facility.
The findings add to broader scrutiny over detention conditions and federal oversight at facilities used in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign.
So after i had an amazing blast with riding on my pintV, i was fumbling around trying to limit the speed a bit (bcuz of rules) but after a heavy nosedive, i tried re calibrating and now there is no pushback, the faster i go (only tried on grass) the closer the nose is to the ground, like its scraping when im going 5 kph.
I've tried setting everything to default and many other steps and re-calibrating many times... Can anyone please help me?
Nassau, Bahamas — A Russian oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin paid hundreds of thousands of dollars toward Donald Trump Jr.’s May wedding to Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas, according to a new ProPublica investigation.
The report identifies Umar Kremlev, president of the International Boxing Association, as the benefactor. Kremlev allegedly paid for major wedding expenses, including use of a second private island that can rent for roughly $100,000 per night and a fireworks display that can cost about $70,000. ProPublica reported that Kremlev did not attend the 18-person ceremony itself but participated in other wedding-related events.
Trump Jr.’s spokesperson did not dispute that Kremlev helped cover expenses, describing him as a “personal friend” rather than a business associate. The spokesperson said the two met through mutual contacts in hunting circles and bonded over boxing and outdoor interests. Kremlev’s office likewise confirmed that the two have a friendly relationship.
Kremlev has drawn scrutiny because of his relationship with Putin and the International Boxing Association’s past ties to Russian state-linked energy giant Gazprom. ProPublica also noted that Trump Jr.’s wedding involved a number of Russian guests.
The arrangement has raised ethical and counterintelligence questions because Trump Jr. is the president’s son, though the report did not allege that the wedding payments violated any law.
Barts is one of many UK institutions whose benefactors were involved in the trafficking of enslaved Africans
Inside the Great Hall of St Bartholomew’s North Wing, alongside stately portraits of the apostle from whom London’s oldest hospital takes its name and King Henry VIII, extravagant commemorative boards adorn the walls.
The Great Hall was a grand, formal space where governors weighed their philanthropic donations and drafted their wills, many while investing in the stock of companies built on the trafficking of enslaved Africans. Today, many of those donors are commemorated in acrylic gold paint on the boards.
Washington, D.C. — Democrats are launching a nationwide election-protection program aimed at training tens of thousands of volunteers to monitor polling places, encourage early voting and respond to misinformation ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
The initiative, called the New Battlefield Project, is being organized through the Association of State Democratic Committees. Organizers say they want trained volunteers present at roughly 25% of the nation’s 95,000 Election Day polling locations, with an emphasis on competitive districts.
Volunteers are expected to wear blue vests and assist voters with issues such as finding the correct polling place or understanding provisional-ballot procedures. They will also document possible voter intimidation or interference and relay problems to election-protection teams.
The program also includes a national “bank your vote” campaign encouraging Democrats to cast ballots early, either by mail or in person, and a “democracy defense network” designed to track disinformation, artificial-intelligence manipulation and other alleged election-interference tactics.
The effort comes amid debate over whether federal immigration agents could appear at polling sites. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said ICE would not patrol polling places generally but could act there in response to a specific threat or to serve a warrant.
Democratic officials say the new structure is intended to make election protection more coordinated than in previous cycles. The DNC has also expanded volunteer and staff training programs throughout 2026 as both parties prepare for closely contested House and Senate races.
Scientists believe increasingly crowded waters and rising ocean temperatures are shifting sharks' migratory patterns, which may be contributing to a rise in attacks.
Why Should Delaware Care? The Nanticoke Tribe has been recognized by the state of Delaware since 1881, and it currently has about 600 active members, mostly concentrated in the Millsboro area of Sussex County. For nearly 50 years, the tribe has put on the popular Nanticoke Powwow to enjoy their dance, culture and food, and provide more awareness of the tribe to Delawareans.
The 48th Nanticoke Powwow brought a celebration of community and cultural tradition to Sussex County this past weekend.
The “powwow,” which means a dancing and social gathering in many Native American languages, was held at Hudson Fields in Milton on Sept. 12 and 13.
The event featured a Grand Entry, where tribe members carried flags, sang, danced and recognized the diversity of tribes in attendance.
The Nanticoke members, who are mostly based in Millsboro where they have a museum and cultural center, were joined on stage by members of the Lenape Tribe, based in New Jersey, and the Unkechaug Tribe from Long Island, NY.
The two-day event also featured a variety of traditional Native American dances and drum circles; popular foods, including fry bread and “succotash” sweet corn; and vendors from around the country selling Native jewelry, clothing and crafts.
Dancers, vendors and attendees alike described the festival as a meaningful way to celebrate Nanticoke culture and history, while sharing the Nanticoke tradition with the other tribes at the powwow.
Spotlight Delaware compiled a gallery of photos highlighting moments from the 48th annual Nanticoke Powwow:
A man and a young boy participate in an intertribal dance during the powwow. An intertribal dance is one where people of any tribal affiliation, gender and age can participate. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
Photographs of members of the Nanticoke tribe over the years on display in the history tent at the powwow. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
Attendees filled the arena seats, waiting for the beginning of the Grand Entry, where tribe members enter the arena in traditional attire, dancing and singing. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
Louis Campbell stands preparing for the beginning of the powwow “Grand Entry.” Campbell was the lead male dancer for the event, so he led all of the other men in the various dances of the day. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
Vincent Cruz from New York City travels to powwows and other Native American festivals around the country, selling items made by his tribal community, the Quichua people in Ecuador. Among the items he sells is a “Make America Native Again” shirt. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
A bird’s eye view of the Grand Entry, which filled the arena with dancers from the host Nanticoke Tribe and tribe members from as far as New Jersey and North Carolina. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
Dancers jingle their ankle bells during the men’s traditional dance. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
The smallest participant in the powwow’s opening procession. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
Volunteers press the dough to make fry bread, a classic in Native American culinary culture. The women said they made roughly 3,200 individual fry breads during the powwow weekend. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
Nanticoke Tribe members walk in a circle during a slower dance signifying the passing down of tradition from one generation to the next and carrying on the once forgotten Nanticoke language. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
The flag-bearers led the way as the singers and dancers filled the stage for the beginning of the powwow performances. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
Columbus, Ohio — Republican Sen. Jon Husted’s campaign fired political director Stephen Woytek after reports surfaced that he had used Nazi SS imagery on social media and maintained a public playlist celebrating Rhodesia, the former white-minority-ruled state now known as Zimbabwe.
The Washington Post reported that Woytek, 25, used a photograph of SS soldiers as his Facebook profile picture in 2018 and followed a military reenactment group that portrays the 1st SS Panzer Division. Photos linked to the group also appeared to show Woytek dressed in an SS uniform at age 16.
The Post also found a Spotify playlist under Woytek’s name titled “Tales From Rhodesia,” with songs celebrating the former state. Rhodesia has long been embraced in some white-supremacist circles as a symbol of white minority rule.
Husted’s campaign said it learned of the posts Friday and immediately decided to part ways with Woytek. A spokesperson said his social media activity showed “a complete lack of judgment and disregard for its impact on others.”
Woytek denied supporting Nazi ideology, saying he participates in historical reenactments and has portrayed soldiers from multiple conflicts, including Union and U.S. World War II troops. He said he should have exercised better judgment online.
Woytek joined Husted’s campaign in August as the Ohio Republican runs against former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in one of the year’s closely watched Senate races.
Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson with their wedding party in the Bahamas Laura Gordon Photography via Instagram
On May 24, Donald Trump Jr. was celebrating in the Bahamas, as scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps performed for him and his guests. It was the last night of his wedding, a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier funfetti cake had been airlifted in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes descended on the islands before guests settled into their oceanfront villas. That night on the beach, Trump Jr. lifted his bride into the air while fireworks launched from a barge over the sea.
“It was everything we dreamed of and more,” his wife later wrote on Instagram.
That dream was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin.
“Paper Trail” Podcast
Learn more about this story on ProPublica’s podcast “Paper Trail.”
Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event. The oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has beenfinanced by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions.
The guest list numbered around 50. It included Trump Jr.’s brother-in-law Jared Kushner, Eric Trump — and Kremlev, an imposing man with a shaved head who speaks limited English. The oligarch was part of a large group whose presence puzzled other attendees. They sometimes stood off by themselves, speaking Russian.
“It was really small, like, just really close friends,” Trump Jr. later said on his podcast. “Tried to keep it really tight. And it was just awesome.”
Kremlev’s previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr. represents an extraordinary development: a member of Putin’s circle financially supporting the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family. For a decade, Putin’s government, regarded as a chief adversary of the U.S., has been accused of efforts to influence American elections. Attempts by Russia to make inroads with the Trumps before the 2016 election exploded into controversy that dogged much of the president’s first term.
National security experts expressed alarm at Trump Jr. accepting the oligarch’s largesse, saying it raised an urgent question: What motivated Kremlev to spend a fortune cultivating the connection?
“If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles. Oligarchs like Kremlev often act in coordination with the Russian government. While it’s unclear if that happened here, Trump Jr. put himself in a precarious position, Montoya said. “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.”
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Holden Triplett, who served as Trump’s counterintelligence director on the National Security Council during his first term, said Russian intelligence frequently seeks to build ties with U.S. government officials and their family members. “Money is a tried-and-true method to gain access,” said Triplett, who also worked for the FBI in Moscow.
In the days leading up to Trump Jr.’s wedding, Kremlev was in China as part of the delegation accompanying Putin, according to Chinese state media. The month before, Putin had bestowed him with a state honor, the Order of Friendship. The Ukrainian government has imposed sanctions on Kremlev personally, citing his closeness to Putin and Russian security services.
It’s not clear why Kremlev helped pay for Trump Jr.’s wedding. The men appear to have met only recently. Public reporting suggests Trump Jr. could have afforded it himself, with Forbes recently estimating his net worth at roughly $300 million.
In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for Trump Jr. did not dispute the wedding payments from Kremlev. “Umar is a personal friend of Don,” he said. The spokesman said that Kremlev is “not someone he has a business relationship with” and that the men met through a mutual friend in the hunting world and bonded over their love of boxing and the outdoors.
A spokesperson for Trump Jr.’s brother Eric said of Kremlev: “Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is, nor has never heard his name.”
In a statement, Kremlev’s press office said, “Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr have a friendly relationship” and they first met “a couple of years ago.”
The press office described Kremlev as a businessman and philanthropist, adding, “Mr. Kremlev has never discussed political matters with any of his American friends and acquaintances,” including Trump Jr. They said the boxing organization itself did not incur expenses for the wedding but did not comment on the payments from the Dubai entity. The press office also said that when Putin and Kremlev were in China recently, Kremlev was not part of Putin’s “official delegation.”
Kushner, who has been helping lead the U.S. government’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, did not respond to requests for comment. The White House and the Russian government did not respond either.
The revelations come as Trump Jr. has emerged as a political power center in his own right. Beloved by the MAGA base, he reportedly played an active role in vetting White House cabinet picks for Trump’s second term and was dubbed his father’s “most essential political adviser” by The Wall Street Journal. “I certainly don’t think I’d be sitting here as the VP nominee without Don’s help,” Vice President JD Vance told the outlet in late 2024.
This account is based on records and interviews with dozens of current and former IBA officials and contractors, wedding attendees and other people in Trump Jr.’s and Kremlev’s circles.
Trump Jr. exchanged vows with socialite Bettina Anderson on a private island that was featured in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and the 2006 James Bond movie “Casino Royale.” They had their first dance on a second private island nearby that can rent for around $100,000 a night, paid for by Kremlev. The company that put on the fireworks display charges around $70,000 for such shows. (Kremlev did not attend the ceremony itself, which was held on the first day and had just 18 guests, Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said.)
Donald Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Anderson, at their wedding, watching fireworks paid for by Umar Kremlev.Laura Gordon Photography via Lewis Miller DesignThe magazine Hello! shared an image of Trump Jr. wearing a Junkanoo headpiece while dancing with his new bride.Laura Gordon Photography/Hello!
The atmosphere was Monte Carlo meets frat party — helicopters in and out, a beachside DJ set, beer pong tournaments. One day, the men went spearfishing. Artisans at the London fashion house Safiyaa spent 150 hours embroidering Anderson’s bespoke silk reception outfit. The president’s son had undergone treatment to better define his jawline for the occasion.
Some longtime friends of Trump Jr. told associates they were disappointed not to be invited, though a few of his closest business partners — executives at the Trump family crypto company, World Liberty Financial, and the venture capital firm 1789 Capital — did make the cut. President Trump himself skipped it. (“He’d like me to go, but it’s going to be just a small, little private affair,” the president told reporters beforehand. “I said, you know, this is not good timing for me.”) But many of the guests were immediate family of the bride and groom.
That made the large contingent of Russians all the more conspicuous. “What are they doing here?” one person recalled thinking. At least one of the Russian guests had been with Kremlev on his China trip: Alexander Lagutin, a businessperson who has served in senior roles at a Russian defense contractor and a state-backed energy company. Kremlev’s right hand at the IBA, Elena Sobol, attended the wedding too.
Since the wedding, the Trumps have released scores of photosand videos of the festivities. While they show many of the guests, the Russians have been absent from all of them. (The top of Kremlev’s head is visible in the back of one group photo posted on Instagram by a friend of the bride.) After the party was over, on his “Triggered” podcast, Trump Jr. emphasized the event’s privacy: “The people that were there — if you’re on that list, you weren’t talking.”
In 2009, Umar Kremlev did not yet exist.
He was in his late 20s, with a criminal record for extortion and battery, still going by his birth name, Umar Lutfulloyev, according to the Russian independent news outlet Proekt. But he was about to rapidly ascend in Russia to a position of wealth and influence, with the help of a powerful friend. (“Mr. Kremlev has a completely clean legal record,” his press office said.)
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, with Umar Kremlev, during an event in Moscow in September 2022Sputnik/Reuters
In 2010, he changed his name to Kremlev. He soon joined a Russian government-backed biker gang called the Night Wolves, eventually taking a leadership role, according to news reports. That is what first brought him close to Alexei Rubezhnoi, who now leads Putin’s presidential security service, Proekt reported. In 2017, Kremlev took over the Russian Boxing Federation, after Rubezhnoi personally intervened to put him at the helm.
In 2020, Kremlev became president of the IBA. The association was something akin to FIFA but for boxing and had long overseen the sport in the Olympics. But it had been beset by corruption allegations and was on the brink of insolvency. Kremlev brought money to the table from Gazprom, the state-owned company that operates as an arm of Putin’s government. Gazprom publicly became the IBA’s financial backer, filling its coffers with tens of millions of dollars.
Former high-level IBA officials said that Kremlev had a clear political agenda. “Umar is guided by Putin. It was using the sport for soft political power,” a former IBA board member told ProPublica. “It’s geopolitics. That it’s boxing is just happenstance.” Kremlev, 43, is also heavily involved in an organization called Healthy Fatherland, run by his 23-year-old wife’s twin sister. The group — which promotes healthy eating and youth sports — is under Ukrainian sanctions for its alleged role in a program of abducting Ukrainian children from occupied territories and relocating them under the guise of “rehabilitation.” (Healthy Fatherland did not respond to a request for comment.)
Kremlev’s cozy relationship with the government has made him rich. Putin used the levers of the state to make Kremlev a dominant player in the Russian sports betting industry, according to Proekt, and one of his companies was chosen to operate the national lottery. After Putin nationalized Russia’s largest car dealership company in 2023, Kremlev became the owner of that too.
He now flaunts that wealth through his boisterous public persona. In one video Kremlev posted on social media, he surprises a young mother by giving her a free car. In another, he criticizes his young female aide’s outfit as not feminine enough and makes her change. He shadowboxes with ostriches and brings in celebrities like Rick Ross and Naomi Campbell for IBA events; he praises Stalin and rides private jets.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. began to indict Russian oligarchs and seize yachts and other assets. Kremlev repeatedly told associates he was worried about being targeted by a U.S. government probe, according to a person close to IBA leadership. “He was very afraid of American sanctions,” the person added. (Kremlev does not appear on public U.S. sanction lists.)
With the business environment in Europe growing more hostile to Russia, Kremlev moved much of the IBA’s operations from Switzerland to the United Arab Emirates. A new Dubai entity, IB Challenger, would later pay wedding expenses for Trump Jr. The current sources of the IBA’s funds are murky, and, in recent years, top executives have given conflicting accounts of the status of its relationship with Gazprom. (Kremlev’s press office told ProPublica the IBA’s sponsorship contract with Gazprom “expired long ago.”) People close to the organization said they understood that its money still comes from Russia.
In 2023, the International Olympic Committee stripped Kremlev’s IBA of its role organizing Olympic boxing. It has cited a host of governance issues and the group’s refusal to “transparently explain the sources of its financing or to explain its full financial dependency, at the time, on a single state-owned company.”
It was a major setback that deprived the IBA of a key source of its international influence. Kremlev has raged against the Olympic committee ever since and has said that his IBA predecessor, who he blames for the problems, “must be shot.”
Kremlev saw a potential ally in President Trump. After Trump’s second inauguration, in January 2025, Kremlev sent an open letter to the president asking him to look into the Olympic committee’s actions in advance of the 2028 Los Angeles Games. “We look forward with great optimism to the possibility of working together to make the Olympic movement great again,” he wrote.
In September 2025, the IBA brought in Trump Jr. for a panel discussion in Istanbul about boxing. With his then-girlfriend, Anderson, sitting offstage, he criticized transgender women competing in women’s sports and reminisced about watching Saturday night fights as a child. Trump Jr. shared the stage with Kremlev, the boxer Manny Pacquiao and Muhammad Ali’s daughter Rasheda. (Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said he was not paid for the appearance and was already in Turkey for an unrelated event.)
Kremlev hosted Trump Jr. at an event in Istanbul in September 2025.International Boxing Association
The president’s son had reason to be attuned to the sensitivity of cozying up with a Putin associate, especially while his father navigates the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney in Trump Tower became a major focus of the Robert Mueller investigation.
The Trump Tower meeting was arranged after an email offering Trump Jr. damaging information about Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr. famously responded, “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” Trump Jr. later dismissed the matter as a “witch hunt,” and the Mueller report concluded that there was not enough evidence to convict him of a crime.
Recently, Kremlev has been working to expand into the U.S. market. In July, his group hosted a bare-knuckle boxing event in Miami, a chance to showcase a particularly bloody form of the sport in which contenders fight without gloves. But the debut was overshadowed when manosphere influencer Andrew Tate, who the IBA had brought in to host, was arrested by U.S. Marshals outside the arena. (Tate is facing rape and sex trafficking charges in the United Kingdom, which he has denied.)
Much about Kremlev’s relationship with Trump Jr., and where it is headed, remains unknown. In a press release after the Istanbul panel, the IBA hinted there was more to come.
“President Kremlev and Donald Trump Jr made it clear – this alliance will not remain symbolic,” the press release read. “More joint initiatives will follow.”
A nearly $500,000 federal grant will allow the University of Delaware's UDairy Creamery to expand its offerings and give food science students a chance to gain experience making additional dairy products.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump said Sunday that he supports Flock Safety’s automated license plate-reading cameras, acknowledging privacy concerns while emphasizing their usefulness to law enforcement.
Asked about the technology aboard Air Force One while returning from Ireland, Trump said, “I sort of like ’em because of that, because of law enforcement.” After a reporter noted the cameras help catch criminals, Trump added, “But I like them.”
Flock operates more than 120,000 cameras nationwide that photograph license plates and vehicle characteristics, allowing police to search for vehicles connected to crimes, missing persons and other investigations. The expanding network has also generated bipartisan criticism over mass surveillance, data sharing and improper searches.
Public opinion is divided. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found 47% of Americans opposed their community using Flock cameras, while 38% supported them. Republicans were more supportive, while younger adults showed particularly strong skepticism.
Florida recently halted new license-plate reader installations on state highways, while Texas suspended funding for the technology. Meanwhile, lawmakers from both parties have proposed restrictions, ranging from tighter controls on federal funding to broader bans.
Flock CEO Garrett Langley has defended the technology while supporting stronger rules governing data retention and misuse. Civil-liberties groups including the ACLU argue the company’s proposed safeguards do not adequately address the potential for tracking people’s movements.
Cary, North Carolina — A new generation of cancer vaccines is showing encouraging results in clinical trials, but researchers worry growing vaccine hesitancy could limit their impact if the treatments eventually reach patients.
One example comes from the Cleveland Clinic, where an experimental vaccine targeting triple-negative breast cancer produced an immune response in 74% of 35 participants in a Phase 1 trial. Researchers stressed that the study established safety and immune response, not whether the vaccine actually prevents cancer recurrence. A Phase 2 trial is expected to investigate that question.
Meanwhile, Moderna and Merck recently reported that their personalized mRNA vaccine, combined with pembrolizumab, reduced melanoma recurrence in a Phase 3 trial involving roughly 1,100 patients. Researchers say longer follow-up is still needed to determine its effect on overall survival.
The progress comes as doctors report persistent misinformation surrounding vaccines, including the unsupported claim that mRNA vaccines cause so-called “turbo cancer.” Public-health researchers worry those narratives could spill over into attitudes toward cancer vaccines.
The HPV vaccine provides an existing example of vaccination preventing cancers. CDC monitoring has found HPV vaccines safe and highly effective at preventing infections and precancers caused by high-risk strains, yet vaccination rates vary substantially across states.
Researchers say cancer vaccines remain an evolving field, but declining public confidence could become another hurdle if promising experimental treatments eventually receive approval.
Washington, D.C. — Democratic voters heading into the November midterms are more motivated by stopping President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans than by advancing their own party’s policies, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll.
The survey found 54% of Democratic voters said their main reason for supporting Democratic congressional candidates was to prevent Trump and Republicans from enacting their agenda. Another 46% said they were voting primarily to help Democrats pass their own policies.
Republican voters showed the opposite pattern. Fifty-seven percent said they were voting to help Trump and GOP lawmakers advance their policies, while 43% said their main goal was stopping Democrats.
Across all registered voters, 45% said their congressional vote would be cast in opposition to Trump, compared with 28% who said they were voting in support of him. Another 27% said Trump was not a factor in their vote. The poll also found Trump’s job approval at 39%, with 61% disapproving.
Voters were divided over whether Democratic policies would improve their finances, with 36% saying they would be better off and 36% saying they would be worse off. Views were similarly split on whether Democratic policies would protect or threaten respondents’ culture and way of life.
The CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted Sept. 8-11 among 2,460 U.S. adults. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.
Wausau, Wisconsin — Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and a pilot escaped with minor injuries after their small plane lost power and made an emergency landing in Lake Wausau late Saturday.
Tiffany said he was returning from the La Crosse County Lincoln Day Dinner when the single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza experienced a loss of power while approaching Wausau Downtown Airport. The pilot, identified by the Associated Press as Leonard Boltz, brought the aircraft down on the lake.
“After landing, we called 911,” Tiffany wrote on X. He said the plane began to sink, forcing both men to exit and swim to a shallow area until emergency responders arrived by boat.
Tiffany suffered a cut above his right eye that required stitches, while both men were treated for minor injuries at Aspirus Wausau Hospital and later released. Emergency crews used a fire department airboat to reach them shortly after 9 p.m.
The aircraft remained partially submerged in Lake Wausau on Sunday, and authorities warned boaters to avoid the area while recovery efforts were underway. The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to investigate the cause of the incident.
Tiffany represents Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District and is the Republican nominee for governor. He is scheduled to face Democrat David Crowley in the Nov. 3 election. Crowley publicly expressed relief that Tiffany and the pilot were not seriously hurt.
Houma, Louisiana — Authorities in Terrebonne Parish are searching for a person of interest after a series of stabbings left four people dead and a juvenile critically injured in Houma.
Deputies were first called to the Ashland Drive area, where they found a juvenile suffering from apparent stab wounds. The victim was airlifted to an out-of-area hospital and remained in critical condition, according to the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office.
As investigators continued searching the area, authorities discovered four additional victims dead inside a nearby home.
The sheriff’s office identified 47-year-old Kaegan Jude Solet as a person of interest in the investigation. Officials emphasized that being named a person of interest does not amount to an arrest or criminal charge, and no charges had been announced against Solet in connection with the current deaths.
Solet has previously been arrested in an unrelated stabbing case. In 2019, Houma police accused him of repeatedly stabbing a 59-year-old woman at a hotel following an argument. Authorities said the woman suffered life-threatening injuries, and Solet was booked at the time on one count of attempted second-degree murder.
Police have not said whether investigators believe the current victims knew Solet or disclosed a possible motive.
The investigation remains active as detectives gather evidence and work to determine what led to the attacks. Authorities have asked anyone with relevant information to contact local law enforcement.
The Newark Charter Patriots defeated the Odessa Ducks, 13-0, on September 11 to improve to 2-0 this season.
The Odessa Fire Company displays a large American flag from one of its engines as Odessa celebrated Military Appreciation Night.
First responders stand along the railing watching as Odessa and Newark Charter play on Friday night.
The Odessa student section dressed in USA colors get ready to cheer on their Ducks before the game.
Ducks senior Nakai Hann runs the ball against Newark Charter’s defense.
Patriot senior Austin Gbadegbe is brought down by a Duck defender after gaining yardage on the run.
Odessa senior Thomas Ngateh leaps into the air and focuses on catching the ball for an interception.
Odessa senior Thomas Ngateh looks for running room after intercepting the pass.
Newark Charter junior Lucas Erunchak jumps in the endzone following one of his two touchdown runs against Odessa.
Patriot senior Maxwell Laznik finds a small window of running room against the Odessa defense.
(To read more about Newark Charter’s win click here.)
Duck senior Xavier Terrell runs down the right side as the Ducks move toward the endzone.
Newark Charter freshman Jordan Butler dives for a loose ball while Odessa senior Thomas Ngateh does the same.
Odessa quarterback Nicklas Bateman loads up for a deep pass downfield.
Newark Charter senior defensive back Cayden Anderson intercepts the pass and gives possession back to the Patriots. This was one of two interceptions for Newark Charter in the game.
Patriot senior Maxwell Laznik watches as his teammates set up their blocks, choosing which running lane to take.
Patriot quarterback, Chase Kennedy, takes a knee securing Newark Charter’s first win against Odessa in program history.
All photos courtesy of Dave Reeder. To see more of Dave’s work follow him on Instagram @bfr_photo
Dallas, Texas — Republican leaders are making prominent Muslim Democrats a major focus of their midterm campaign message, particularly Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
At the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Sen. Ted Cruz described what he called a “red-green alliance” of communists and Islamists and argued that sharia law has no place in the United States. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott similarly vowed to “fully ban sharia law” in Texas.
The rhetoric intensified when an audience member shouted “he should be shot” while Cruz was discussing El-Sayed and other Democrats. Cruz did not acknowledge the remark, and it was unclear whether he heard it. El-Sayed later called the comment a threat that should be condemned across party lines. The Council on American-Islamic Relations also criticized the episode as dangerous political rhetoric.
Republicans argue their criticism is aimed at ideology rather than religion, pointing to progressive positions on economics, immigration and foreign policy. El-Sayed, however, has said he opposes religious law in government and does not identify as a democratic socialist.
The broader strategy is not limited to the Dallas convention. Reuters reported that several Republican candidates and officials have increasingly made Islam and Muslim Americans a campaign issue this year, often linking Democratic candidates to concerns about national security, cultural change and sharia law.
Muslim Americans remain a small but growing share of the U.S. population, and the intensified focus comes as both parties compete for voters in closely divided states such as Michigan.
Washington, D.C. — Deaths involving ectopic pregnancies have nearly doubled in the United States in recent years, with a substantially steeper increase in states enforcing strict abortion bans, according to a new ProPublica analysis of federal mortality data.
Using CDC WONDER records, ProPublica identified nearly 200 deaths involving ectopic pregnancy from 2020 through 2025, compared with roughly 100 during the previous six years. The national death rate reached 9.8 per million live births in 2023-2025. In states with abortion bans beginning at six weeks or earlier, the rate was 13.1, compared with 7.1 in states without bans.
An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a pregnancy implants outside the uterus, usually in a fallopian tube. It is generally nonviable and can become fatal if the tube ruptures and causes severe internal bleeding.
Researchers cautioned that the data do not prove abortion bans caused the increase. COVID-era hospital disruptions, underlying differences in maternal health and other factors may also contribute. However, physicians told ProPublica that abortion restrictions deserve scrutiny because uncertainty surrounding the laws has sometimes delayed treatment, even though ectopic pregnancies are typically exempted.
The analysis also found 310 additional Texas patients experienced substantial blood loss following ectopic pregnancies in 2023-2024 compared with 2018-2019, a 29% increase. Texas later clarified that ectopic pregnancy treatment is permitted under its abortion law.
Maternal-health experts said the trend warrants further investigation because prompt diagnosis and treatment generally make deaths from ectopic pregnancy preventable.
A picture of the pylon at Delaware Stadium during the team’s first game of the 2026 season against Merrimack. Photo Credit: Dave Reeder.
The Vanderbilt Commodores (2-0) defeated the University of Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens (1-1), 35-26, on September 12, in the program’s first gridiron matchup against an SEC foe.
Vanderbilt quarterback Jared Curtis jogged on the field with his team setting up at their own 30 yard line for the first offensive possession of the second half. The Blue Hens controlled most of the momentum after entering halftime ahead, 17-14, and that feeling continued after the Blue Hen defense stopped the Commodore offense on first and second down, forcing a third and long for the freshman signal caller.
Curtis received the third down snap in the shotgun and surveyed the middle of the field while moving up in the clean pocket his offensive line provided. Curtis shifted his eyes from the middle of the field to the left sideline where senior receiver Junior Sherrill was running open. Curtis delivered a 35-yard throw to the Nashville native along the left sideline, continuing a drive that ended with Vanderbilt taking a lead it would never relinquish.
Curtis scored the go-ahead touchdown with a two-yard run into the endzone, scoring the first of three consecutive Vanderbilt touchdowns in the third quarter. Those scores helped Vanderbilt defeat the Blue Hens, 35-26, Saturday evening.
The Commodores defense followed Curtis’ go-ahead score by forcing the Blue Hens into a three and out on their ensuing possession. The Blue Hens lined up to punt from their own 25 yard line and snapped the ball to punter Josh Cupitt. Cupitt took a few steps and readied his leg to kick the ball, but as he went to send the ball flying, Vanderbilt sophomore Austin Howard flew in undeterred and blocked the kick. Howard tracked the bouncing ball down in the endzone and scored the second special teams touchdown of the game.
The score gave Vanderbilt a two possession lead with a little over nine minutes to play in the third quarter and wiped away any lingering momentum the Blue Hens’ created with their own punt block touchdown that ended the first half.
Delaware scored all 17 of its first half points in the second quarter, beginning with a Tucker Smack field goal a little less than three minutes into the quarter. Backup quarterback Braden Streeter led Delaware’s first touchdown drive later in the quarter, cutting Vanderbilt’s lead to four with under two minutes to play in the first half.
The two teams traded possessions within that final two minutes and with 22 seconds left, the Commodores were forced to punt from their own 17 yard line. Graduate punter Tyler Ebel took a few steps forward and, as the ball left his foot, Blue Hen junior Bryson Graves was in front of the kick, batting it down. Graves recovered the ball in the endzone and completed the score, making UD the first Conference USA team (CUSA) to lead a SEC team at halftime in over two years.
There weren’t many bright spots for the Blue Hens after that dynamic end to the first half.
Vanderbilt controlled most of the action in the second half and led by 18 at the end of the third quarter due to a 19-yard touchdown throw from Curtis to senior tight end Walter Taylor that ended the frame. Nick Minicucci returned in the second half after leaving the game with an injury in the first half and led the Blue Hens on one last touchdown drive in the fourth quarter, connecting with wide receiver Da’Wain Lofton for a 43-yard touchdown.
The touchdown was a testament to the program’s ability to keep fighting for a win despite being overmatched by a superior opponent.
Vanderbilt showed its superiority with its defense which dominated all game using multiple different blitz packages to confuse Delaware’s protection scheme and get to the Blue Hen quarterback. The Commodores recorded six sacks, nine quarterback hurries and 11 tackles for loss seemingly always having a player or two in the Blue Hen backfield.
A good sign for the Blue Hens was how their own defense held up against the Commodore offense. Delaware’s defense played a lot better than what the final score suggests, holding Vanderbilt to 100 rushing yards and 339 total yards of offense. UD recorded one turnover, three sacks and five tackles for loss, while facing two different Vanderbilt quarterbacks throughout the game.
Freshman Jared Curtis took the majority of quarterback snaps for the Commodores finishing the game with 14 completions, 210 passing yards and three total touchdowns. Minicucci finished with 11 completions, 182 passing yards, a passing touchdown and two interceptions.
Delaware running back Jo Silver led all rushers with 109 yards on the ground and Lofton finished as the game’s leading receiver with 147 receiving yards on four catches. Both are career highs for the sixth year receiver.
The Blue Hens will try and use the positives from their battle against last season’s fifth best SEC team to earn a win against Coastal Carolina at home on September 19. Their game against the Chanticleers will begin at 11:30 a.m. and be nationally broadcast on CBS Sports Network.
It’s one of seven nationally televised games the second year FBS program will play in this season.
Malibu, California — A trespasser entered the property of former Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday night but was stopped by private security before reaching the home, according to law enforcement officials and Harris’ spokesperson.
Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies responded around 10:30 p.m. after Harris’ security detail reported a suspicious person. Deputies made contact with the individual, who was advised to leave and departed voluntarily without incident. No arrest was made, but authorities filed a trespassing report and said patrols in the area would be increased.
Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, were not home at the time. Spokesperson Eduardo Negrón said security personnel stopped the person after they had entered the property but before reaching the residence.
Former vice presidents typically receive Secret Service protection for six months after leaving office. Former President Joe Biden had extended Harris’ protection beyond that period, but President Donald Trump revoked the extension in August 2025. The extended coverage otherwise would have continued into 2026.
The sheriff’s department has not publicly identified the trespasser or disclosed a motive. Authorities have also not indicated that the incident involved any threat against Harris or Emhoff.
The couple purchased the Malibu residence after leaving Washington, and Harris now relies on private and local security arrangements rather than full-time Secret Service protection.
Dallas, Texas — A surrogate who traveled to Texas after refusing the intended parents’ request for an abortion has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to temporarily block a California ruling recognizing the couple as the newborn’s legal parents.
McKenna West gave birth Aug. 12 to a boy she calls Gabriel. The intended parents, Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar, call him Rumi. During the pregnancy, doctors diagnosed the fetus with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a serious congenital condition requiring multiple surgeries. The couple initially considered abortion after the diagnosis but later decided to continue the pregnancy, according to court records.
West nevertheless sought custody and authority over the child’s medical care in Texas. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton intervened, and a Texas judge temporarily prevented the baby from being removed from the state while ordering continued medical treatment.
On Sept. 1, however, the Texas court recognized an earlier California judgment establishing Ahmed and Gilkar as the child’s parents and dismissed West from the Texas case. West now argues California lacked jurisdiction and is asking the Supreme Court to stay that ruling while she pursues further review.
The Supreme Court docket shows West’s emergency application was filed Sept. 9 and submitted to Justice Elena Kagan.
West says she fears the child could be transferred to California and placed in hospice care rather than continue treatment. The intended parents maintain that they are the child’s legal parents, while the broader jurisdictional dispute remains unresolved.
Washington, D.C. — Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says President Donald Trump’s proposed $5,000 “Trump Dividend” would not be financed with taxpayer money, as administration officials continue offering different ideas for how the costly proposal could be funded.
“It’s not tax money,” Lutnick told NBC News, saying the administration could raise money through other government programs rather than increasing the deficit. Among the possibilities he cited was a proposed program charging wealthy foreign nationals as much as $5 million to extend their visas. Lutnick said a waiting list of more than 100,000 people could potentially generate hundreds of billions of dollars, though that program has not yet produced funding for the dividend.
Trump announced the $5,000 payment at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, promising it to adult U.S. citizens if Republicans maintain control of Congress.
Other administration officials have floated different funding approaches. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett has discussed using congressional budget reconciliation, while Vice President JD Vance has suggested tariff revenue and possibly limiting payments to lower- and middle-income Americans.
The funding challenge remains substantial. The Tax Foundation estimates an unrestricted $5,000 payment to roughly 250 million adults would cost about $1.25 trillion, while Trump’s newer tariffs are projected to generate roughly $125 billion in net federal revenue in 2027.
Regardless of whether the money comes from tariffs, visa fees or investment gains, federal spending generally still requires congressional authorization. The Government Accountability Office notes that money cannot be paid from the Treasury without an appropriation enacted by Congress.
Newark Charter junior Lucas Erunchak jumps in the endzone following one of his two touchdown runs against Odessa. Photo Credit: Dave Reeder.
The Newark Charter Patriots (2-0) defeated the Odessa Ducks (1-1), 13-0, in a road game played on September 11. It’s the program’s second win against a Class 2A opponent and first against Odessa.
TOWNSEND, DE — Newark Charter quarterback Chase Kennedy lined up in the pistol formation five yards behind where the ball was being snapped at the Odessa 31 yard line. Standing two yards behind Kennedy was junior running back Lucas Eruncak, the lone touchdown scorer in the game.
Senior center Brayden Scannell snapped the ball to Kennedy who handed the ball off to his left. Erunchak took the handoff and found running room up the middle of the field, running full speed past the outstretched arms of Duck defenders. Erunchak made it past the Duck defense and ran 31 yards for his second touchdown of the game with less than three minutes remaining in the third quarter.
Erunchak finished the game with over 100 rushing yards, the game’s only two touchdowns and a pair of sacks helping Newark Charter defeat Odessa, 13-0, Friday night.
“Honestly it’s amazing,” Erunchak said after the game. “We came out here with the right energy like we do all the time and I’m just like so excited.”
Erunchak’s first score came in the second quarter on a run from the Odessa nine yard line. The first touchdown run came from a similar play call as the Patriots’ second score, with Erunchak lined up behind Kennedy in the pistol formation and the handoff to the quarterback’s left side. Instead of running up the middle, Erunchak broke to the outside and ran into the endzone for the touchdown.
“I’m so proud of how our [offensive] line handled everything,” Erunchak said. “I give all the praise to them.”
The touchdown run was the only points scored in the first half despite both teams working their way down the field and earning red zone opportunities. Odessa drove into the red zone twice in the first half, but penalties and strong defensive play by the Patriots defense inhibited their ability to score. Newark Charter’s other first half red zone opportunity was thwarted by an interception from Odessa senior Thomas Ngateh.
Odessa senior Thomas Ngateh celebrates with his teammates after his interception in the first half. Photo Credit: Dave Reeder.
Erunchak’s second touchdown run late in the third quarter completed the game’s scoring. The Patriot defense held the Ducks out of the endzone and helped the Class 1A program earn its first shutout victory against a Class 2A opponent. The Patriots defense finished the game with four sacks and two interceptions.
“Heart, we all got heart,” Newark Charter senior Alexander Burrows said postgame about what makes the Patriots defensive line dynamic. “Coaching, players, we all want it, we want it really bad.”
Newark Charter’s defense has allowed six points through the first two games of the 2026 season.
“We’ve been talking about kind of all week, you know, trying to find something we can hang our hat on and very encouraging tonight to watch these guys come out and how they swarmed defensively,” Patriot head coach Jody Russell said postgame. “I think we might have found something that we can hang our hat on which is good.”
Newark Charter’s win improves its record to 2-0 on the season as the Patriots try to return to the Class 1A title game as they did a year ago. Last year, the Patriots finished their inaugural varsity season as the runner-up to Class 1A champion, Seaford. The Patriots only losses during that season came against the aforementioned Blue Jays and Odessa.
The Patriots next game will be at home against another Class 2A opponent, the Tatnall Hornets. Newark Charter and Tatnall matched up last season and the Patriots emerged victorious, 22-21, earning the program’s first win against a Class 2A opponent. This year’s iteration of the game will be played on September 18, at 7:00 p.m.
The Ducks will return to action on September 19, in a road matchup against the Glasgow Dragons. That game will be played at Glasgow High School and start at 11:00 a.m.
Minneapolis, Minnesota — Minnesota churches are at the center of two separate federal legal battles over immigration enforcement, surveillance and protest rights months after the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge triggered widespread demonstrations.
In one case, faith groups are asking a federal judge to determine whether Homeland Security violated an injunction protecting houses of worship when agents conducted undercover surveillance at University Baptist Church in Minneapolis. Court records show federal agents monitored activity there multiple times, including an undercover operation at a martial arts training session held in the church’s gym.
The government argues the surveillance was part of a criminal investigation into alleged protest-related violence rather than immigration enforcement, and therefore did not violate the injunction. Church groups dispute that distinction and have asked the court to disclose whether other congregations were similarly monitored.
A separate case involves more than three dozen protesters accused of disrupting a January service at Cities Church in St. Paul, where one pastor also served as an ICE official. Federal prosecutors charged defendants with conspiracy against religious freedom and interfering with worship.
Defense attorneys are seeking dismissal of those charges, arguing the prosecutions improperly target anti-ICE activism and protected protest activity. The government says the defendants crossed the line from protest into coordinated interference with worship.
Both cases remain unresolved, leaving federal judges to weigh the government’s enforcement powers against First Amendment protections for worship, protest and association.
Boston, Massachusetts — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that Florida would provide “asylum” to the lone holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial if he is being harassed, after NBC10 Boston published a report examining allegations from the juror’s personal history.
The trial ended in a mistrial after jurors could not unanimously decide whether Clancy, who admitted killing her three young children in 2023, was criminally responsible because of postpartum psychosis. Eleven jurors reportedly favored a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity verdict, while one juror held out.
NBC10 later reported that the unnamed juror had previously faced domestic violence allegations, had been subject to a restraining order and was involved in an eviction dispute. The report prompted criticism from commentators who questioned whether examining his background after the mistrial unfairly targeted him, particularly because he is Black.
DeSantis accused NBC of trying to “smear” the juror and wrote that his identity should remain protected. “If the juror is being harassed, Florida will provide asylum,” he said.
Other jurors have separately criticized the holdout’s conduct during deliberations, saying he acknowledged reasonable doubt but still refused to support an insanity acquittal.
Clancy’s attorney has since asked the judge to enter a not-guilty finding rather than permit a retrial. That request remains pending.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump is calling on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to install a 30-foot statue of George Washington and create a five-year exhibition honoring the nation’s first president.
Trump said the proposed “Washington Colossus” should replace “Infinity,” the abstract stainless-steel sculpture outside the museum’s Constitution Avenue entrance. He also asked that an 11-foot Washington statue recently displayed at the Freedom 250 Grand Prix be installed inside the museum’s Flag Hall.
“Replace a sculpture that says nothing about America with the man who, more than anyone else, says everything about America,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He wants the accompanying Washington exhibition to run through Feb. 22, 2032, the 300th anniversary of Washington’s birth.
The request is part of Trump’s broader campaign to reshape how the Smithsonian presents American history. His administration has accused the institution of emphasizing slavery, oppression and other historical injustices at the expense of national achievements, while Smithsonian leaders have defended their commitment to scholarship, accuracy and nonpartisanship.
The Smithsonian already prominently displays Washington. Its National Museum of American History houses Horatio Greenough’s massive 1840 marble sculpture, commissioned by Congress for Washington’s 100th birthday and transferred to the Smithsonian in 1908.
It remains unclear whether Trump can directly order the changes. The Smithsonian operates under an independent Board of Regents rather than as a conventional executive-branch agency.
Washington, D.C. — Democrats hold an 11-point advantage over Republicans in a new Quinnipiac University poll asking voters which party they want to control the U.S. House after the November midterms.
The survey found 49% of registered voters preferred Democratic control of the House, compared with 38% who favored Republicans. Another 13% were undecided or offered no opinion. That gap widened from July, when Democrats led 48% to 41%.
The same poll found 46% of voters said Democrats were more in touch with the concerns of most Americans, while 35% chose Republicans. Despite that advantage, neither party received strong marks for its performance in Congress: 21% approved of congressional Democrats and 26% approved of congressional Republicans.
President Donald Trump’s approval rating in the survey stood at 33%, while 59% disapproved. His ratings were also underwater on the economy, immigration, foreign policy and the wars involving Iran and Ukraine.
The Quinnipiac result is only one national survey and should not be treated as a direct forecast of House control. Broader polling averages can differ substantially depending on methodology and timing. For example, The Hill/Decision Desk HQ generic-ballot average on Sept. 11 showed Democrats ahead by just 0.3 points, 46.0% to 45.7%.
Quinnipiac surveyed 970 registered voters nationwide from Sept. 3-6. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
As the semester is underway, we are welcoming many new experiences on campus. Students are beginning new classes, building new relationships and joining new organizations. This means (thank God) pledging season is upon us.
Hooray! Good luck to all of the kind young men out there who are deciding to join a fraternity and enter this lovely chapter of their life. And for my ladies out there, good luck dealing with said young men — you might need it!
Recently, my friend told me that she lost a frat pledge in a matter of 10 days, which got me thinking about how easy it is to fulfill such a trivial task. In case anyone isn’t aware of how to do so, I will guide you through how to lose such a specimen in less than two weeks — a foolproof method.
Day 1:
Go home with the guy. This tactic works extra well if you hook up and don’t do a lot of talking. Chances are, he doesn’t want to do a lot of talking anyway. This way, you give him what he wants and nothing that he doesn’t, making it super easy for him to move on to the next.
Day 2:
Text him afterward. Especially if you tell him that you had a good time. Even if he did too, his ego won’t let him admit it. He’s going to be a brother now. Bros over h–s.
Day 3:
Praise his frat. You would think this would make him like you more. Fortunately for you, he doesn’t ever want to see you again! If you tell him you like anything about his newfound brotherhood, he’s going to automatically assume that you will show up there unannounced — obviously, because who would not want to spend every waking moment at his sick fraternity parties. There are no strings attached, which means he wants you to steer clear of his new home (but be readily available if there’s no one else for the night).
Day 4:
Ask for more of his time. Rookie mistake, sweetie. He doesn’t have time to brush his teeth and do his work. He most definitely doesn’t have time for you.
Day 5:
Be concerned about his health. He hates his life as a pledge, and he doesn’t need another person to tell him that his current lifestyle is unhealthy. He’s fine. Definitely do not talk about his grades. He doesn’t have time for school. He’s focusing on drinking too many beers, fighting sleep and cleaning the frat house.
Day 6:
Snap him constantly and maybe even try to call him — this works best if it’s FaceTime. He doesn’t care about you until you don’t care about him, obviously. He definitely doesn’t want to talk sober or when the sun is out.
Day 7:
Show up to his frat and approach him when he hasn’t specifically asked you to come that night. Bonus points if this is done in front of people. He wants to seem nonchalant. He’s gonna get chirped for having a girl. Remember, you are just an acquaintance, maybe a friend — if he’s had enough jungle juice.
Day 8:
Bring him to a sorority formal. Introduce him to your friends, and if he’s lasted that long, FaceTime your mom on the bus ride there. Make sure to mention that this is the boy you have been speaking about. That’s the perfect recipe for cold feet — might as well rip his socks right off of him.
Day 9:
Cling to his side and don’t speak to his friends. Or know his friends on a close basis. He wants the middle space, not too much and not too little.
Day 10:
Tell him that you have feelings for him and that you want to make things exclusive. Explain that this is college and you are looking for something more stable. The only stability that he needs is his family (his brothers).
So there you have it: 10 days, 10 easy steps and 1 less frat pledge to worry about. I would say congrats, but chances are you are already attached — and this foolproof plan worked a little too well. You deserve someone who would love to FaceTime your mom, meet your friends and actually give you his time. But if you like the ride, stick in there, sweetie — there are plenty more pledges to meet.
Jackson, Mississippi — Police have arrested a 51-year-old man in connection with the death of Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old mother of four who was found hanging from a tree behind a vacant home last month.
Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney-Wheelock said officers arrested Jacques Ratliff after the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office formally ruled Fortune’s death a homicide. Police had already secured search and arrest warrants but waited for the medical examiner’s determination before executing them.
Fortune’s death drew national attention because of the circumstances and Mississippi’s history of racial terror and lynchings. Brackney said investigators understand those concerns but cautioned against speculating about a motive before evidence supports one. Police said Ratliff knew Fortune, but they have not disclosed the nature of their relationship or why they believe he was involved.
Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, said she was relieved to learn of the arrest but still has many unanswered questions. She previously said she believed her daughter had been killed but did not think the death was racially motivated.
Police said the investigation remains active and additional arrests are possible. Authorities have not publicly released a detailed cause of death or alleged motive.
Vice President JD Vance gave the keynote address on the second night of the Republican midterm convention, which also featured Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., House Speaker Mike Johnson and a final send-off from President Donald Trump. Here’s what we found in fact-checking their remarks:
Several Republicans credited the Trump administration for a large drop in the violent crime rate in 2025 and a historically low murder rate. But the recent statistics continue a trend of declining crime in recent years, and criminologists say there are many possible reasons for the drop.
Kennedy falsely claimed Democrats “closed every church in our country for a year” during the pandemic. Restrictions on religious gatherings were implemented by both parties and typically capped attendance, rather than prohibiting services altogether. Many of those restrictions ended or were made less strict within months.
Trump vowed to end no cash bail, misleadingly saying that under the policy, “Somebody kills somebody and they’re out in the streets two hours later.” In states that have cashless bail policies, that almost never happens.
Vance made the dubious claim that U.S. citizens account for all of the job growth during the current administration. Experts told us last year that the specific federal employment data supporting that claim are misleading.
Johnson inaccurately claimed that Republicans inherited “record high” inflation from the Biden administration. They didn’t. The annualized inflation rate had declined to 3% when Trump entered office — a lower rate than it is now.
Trump falsely claimed, “I built almost 2,000 miles of [border] wall.” The actual number is about a third of that, and only if including replacement wall rather than new wall in places where there was none before.
Kennedy made the unsupported claim that Democrats “lost 360,000 children,” who he suggested went on to be trafficked. He’s distorting the findings of a 2024 report from the Department of Homeland Security inspector general.
Kennedy misrepresented the available data to suggest that the Trump administration deserves credit for reversing decades of rising obesity rates and declining lifespans. Obesity was already falling before Trump took office, according to one survey, and life expectancy has generally been trending upwards for decades, with the exception of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kennedy falsely said that U.S. has the “sickest children in the history of the world.” Given that long ago it was common for as many as half of all children to die, this is not remotely true. Most countries today also have higher childhood mortality rates than the U.S.
The convention, the first for the Republican Party during the midterms, was held Sept. 9 and 10 in Dallas. For more on the convention, see our story on Trump’s keynote speech on the first night.
Claiming Credit for Crime Decline
Multiple speakers at the convention lauded a drop in violent crime in 2025 — the largest one-year decline in the violent crime and murder rates since the FBI began releasing the nationwide crime estimates in 1936. But they misleadingly framed it as a consequence of Trump taking office last year and wrongly cast it as a turnaround from Biden’s time in office.
Violent crime has been falling for several years, after a spike during the 2020 pandemic, which began in Trump’s first term. Criminologists also say there are many factors affecting the crime drop in 2025 and the exact reasons are unclear, as we’ve explained.
Vance speaks on stage on the second day of the 2026 Republican National Convention on Sept. 10 in Dallas. Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images.
“In America right now, because elections have consequences, you are enjoying the lowest violent crime rate in 126 years,” Johnson said. Vance raised the issue in his remarks, falsely claiming that under Biden’s time in office, the U.S. “became a country where violent crime exploded, unless of course you could afford private security,” and later adding that under Trump: “We’ve seen the largest drop of violent crime in the history of the United States of America because we back the police and throw the bad guys in prison. It’s not rocket science.” Trump similarly said, “And it was just announced, you saw that, that we achieved the lowest level of violent crime in 125 years since the year 1900.”
The violent crime rate, per local law enforcement data collected by the FBI, was 389.2 per 100,000 population in 2020, the last year of Trump’s first term. In Biden’s last year, 2024, it had dropped to 362.9 per 100,000. In 2025, it dropped further, to 327.6. (See Table 1 after downloading the FBI’s 2025 estimations for crime in the U.S.)
The murder rate declined from 5.1 per 100,000 in 2024 to 4.1 last year. It had been 6.6 in 2020.
Johnson’s and Trump’s references to the U.S. achieving the lowest violent crime rate in 126 or 125 years is actually a reference to the murder rate being the lowest since 1900, per a report by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonprofit think tank, which used FBI statistics dating back to 1960 and public health data going back to 1900.
“The homicide drop is historic and crystal clear. But right now, what’s driving it is about as clear as a glass of milk,” Adam Gelb, the president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, said in a statement. “Rates are falling in cities with very different public safety strategies, economic conditions, and political leadership.”
In an interview last month, Gelb told us that there could be some impact on crime from what the administration is doing, but we don’t know what that is yet. He cited many plausible factors affecting crime. “You know the movie ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’?” Gelb asked. “That’s what we’ve got here. And when you have so many, so many things happening at once, it can be extremely hard to disentangle.”
Democrats Didn’t Close ‘Every’ Church ‘for a Year’
Kennedy claimed that Democrats “closed every church in our country for a year” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is false. In March and April 2020, states issued orders or guidelines limiting in-person interactions in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. Some states did prohibit religious gatherings — as they did with other kinds of mass gatherings — but most had exemptions allowing at least some in-person religious gatherings to continue. These restrictions applied not just to churches but to all places of worship.
According to a Pew Research Center analysis of state stay-at-home orders as of April 24, 2020, religious gatherings were barred entirely in just 10 states, while more than 20 states allowed religious services with size limitations and 15 states allowed religious gatherings of any size.
While most of those 15 states were led by Republicans, a few — including Pennsylvania and Michigan — had Democratic governors at the time. And three of the 10 states that barred religious gatherings of any size at that time had Republican governors — Idaho, Alaska and Vermont.
States also began relaxing those restrictions within months. For example, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced that businesses and entities, including churches, could “fully reopen” in late May 2020. An archived version of a New York Times page that tracked state reopening plans shows that, as of July 1, 2020, houses of worship were allowed to be open in all 50 states.
Some states continued to enforcelimits on attendance or implemented risk-based frameworks that tightened or loosened restrictions according to an area’s level of spread. California, for example, barred indoor worship in areas experiencing widespread transmission before the Supreme Court blocked that provision the measure in February 2021. But that doesn’t mean “every church in the country” was closed for an entire year.
We asked HHS about the basis for Kennedy’s claim and haven’t received a response.
Cashless Bail
As he has for years, Trump vowed to end no cash bail, misleadingly saying that under the policy, “Somebody kills somebody and they’re out in the streets two hours later.”
As we have written, some states that require cashless bail have exemptions for violent felonies and murder. And in the states where it is possible for a murder suspect to be freed pending trial without cash bail, per a judge’s discretion, it is exceedingly rare.
Numerous states and cities have passed laws limiting the use of cash bail, though each is a little different, and the laws are constantly being revised. Some states with cashless bail policies still allow cash bail for violent felonies and murder, such as New York. Most include some sort of risk assessment to determine whether someone can be held in jail pending trial.
The move in some states toward cashless bail was prompted by those who argued cash bail unfairly punishes those who can’t afford to pay it, leaving them to await trial in jail. Opponents have criticized the laws as soft-on-crime policies that worsens crime.
As we wrote last year, the balance of crime data doesn’t support the idea that crime has worsened as a result of the policies. Violent crime is dropping across the country, including in states that limit the use of cash bail.
When we looked into this issue in 2025, we found just one instance of a defendant facing murder charges being released without bail in any of the handful of states that have enacted some form of cashless bail. In 2024, a Rockford, Illinois, judge released from jail a man accused of first-degree murder pending his trial. The judge said she had concerns about the case and the evidence against the man.
“In Illinois, every case has the discretion of the judge on whether or not to release the accused,” David Stovall, a faculty member in the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice at the University of Illinois Chicago, told us in 2025. The idea that accused murders are routinely released without cash bail is “a misconception that’s rampant unfortunately.”
Kellen Funk, a legal historian and law professor at Columbia Law School, told us in 2024 that states that limit cash bail often “replace cash bail with judicial discretion,” which gives judges the option to detain defendants until trial, release them with “nonfinancial conditions” such as drug testing and a curfew, or release them without conditions except a requirement to appear in court.
For “felony homicide,” he said, “the law might recommend detention or set a presumption in favor of it, and in most cases in practice judges are inclined to order detention when the charges involve violent felonies.”
A Problematic Employment Comparison
Vance repeated a dubious Trump administration claim about American citizens — rather than “illegal aliens” — accounting for all of the job growth during Trump’s second term.
“Under Donald Trump’s leadership, we’ve created 1 million new jobs,” the vice president said. “And unlike the last administration, where most of the job growth went to illegal aliens, 100% of the job growth in the United States of America is going to American citizens, which is exactly where it belongs.”
Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that employment for the native-born population in the U.S. increased by more than 1.3 million from January 2025 to August 2026. In that same period, employment for the foreign-born population decreased by about 994,000.
To be clear, the foreign-born population is not just “illegal aliens.” It includes “legally-admitted immigrants,” some of whom may have since become citizens, “refugees, temporary residents such as students and temporary workers, and undocumented immigrants,” BLS says.
In addition, under the Biden administration, the latest BLS data show that native-born employment increased by about 7.5 million, more than the roughly 6.5 million increase in foreign-born employment.
But multipleeconomists and labor experts have said that particular BLS employment data – which is based in part on its Current Population Survey, or CPS, a monthly survey of 60,000 households conducted by the Census Bureau and BLS – should not be used for comparisons like the one Vance made.
Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former undersecretary for economic affairs at the Department of Commerce during the Biden administration, told us in a 2025 interview that with the CPS, the foreign-born and native-born population add up to a predetermined Census Bureau forecast that is done a year in advance. “So, a big decline in the reported foreign-born population” based on the survey “is going to be offset by a reported increase in the native-born population.” He wrote in an August 2025 piece that in the unlikely event that the entire foreign-born population in the U.S. disappeared, the CPS would automatically report that the native-born population increased by millions of people to equal the predetermined Census population estimate.
And, as another economist noted, when the estimated native-born population increases, so does the estimated number of U.S.-born workers. BLS data show that the native-born population has increased by almost 4.7 million since Trump took office, while the foreign-born population in that time has decreased by about 1.9 million. Kolko and other experts said the estimated increase in the native-born population is not realistic or plausible, and suggests the estimates are likely influenced by an increase in foreign-born residents not responding to the household survey or providing inaccurate information to administrators, meaning they said they were born in the U.S. instead of another country.
In his August 2025 piece, Kolko wrote that it’s best to check the unemployment rate for the native- and foreign-born populations. “Ignore the levels of population and employment: they mislead,” he said.
BLS data show that the unemployment rate for the native-born population has increased from 4.3% in January 2025 to 4.6% as of last month. On the other hand, the unemployment rate for the foreign-born population over that period went down from 4.6% to 3.4%.
Johnson’s Deceptive Inflation Tale
In spinning an economic narrative complimentary of Trump, House Speaker Johnson omitted key details, making it seem like Trump had inherited very high inflation when he hadn’t.
Accurately noting that inflation was just 1.4% at the end of Trump’s first term, Johnson proceeded to inaccurately claim that Biden handed Trump back a “total disaster.”
“Joe Biden came in and he reversed the policies and he brought us to a 40-year high of 9.1% inflation,” Johnson said. “So the very moment that Republicans were put back in charge, we started working around the clock to help you and your family — to make life more affordable, and to do everything within our power to bring down the cost of living for everyone in this country. And we’ve succeeded in so many ways. But it takes more than just 20 months to fix the total disaster that we were handed. And to turn the ship of state around.”
This distorts how inflation changed over time. Inflation did hit a high of 9.1% under Biden, but that was for the 12 months ending in June 2022. By the time Trump was back in office, inflation had cooled to a 3.0% annual rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. Under Trump, inflation has risen slightly. As of August, inflation for the past 12 months is at 3.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
It’s worth noting that Trump’s low inflation in 2020 and Biden’s very high inflation in the summer of 2022 were both partly due to the unique circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. Very low inflation in 2020 — below the Federal Reserve’s 2% benchmark — was driven by pandemic-related decreases in the prices of travel-related and in-person goods and services, such as gas, airline tickets and hotels. As we’ve reported previously, some of Biden’s high inflation could be ascribed to his stimulus policies, but the root of the problem was the unprecedented circumstances created by the pandemic. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the time also pushed up gas prices.
Experts have said not providing the stimulus could have hindered the post-pandemic recovery.
Just before his selective economic history, Johnson also made the false claim outright. “While Republicans inherited from the Biden administration record high inflation and prices,” he said, “we’ve been working every single day around the clock to bring policies to bring down those costs.”
Border Wall
On night one of the convention, Trump claimed his administration has “built over 1,400 miles of wall right on your Texas border.” On night two, Trump said, “I built almost 2,000 miles of wall.” Both numbers are wildly exaggerated.
A total of 458 miles of “border wall system” was built during the first Trump administration, according to a Customs and Border Protection status report on Jan. 22, 2021. Most of that, 373 miles of it, was replacement for primary or secondary fencing that was dilapidated or outdated. In addition, 52 miles of new primary wall and 33 miles of secondary wall were built in locations where there were no barriers before.
According to data from CBP as of Sept. 9, another 216 miles of wall have been constructed in Trump’s second term. About 72 miles of that is new primary wall in locations where there were no barriers before.
The construction is largely funded by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by Trump in July 2025, which allocated $46.5 billion for border wall.
In any case, to date, combining Trump’s first term and second term so far, the Trump administration has built 124 miles of border wall where none existed before. And counting all border wall construction, including replacement wall and secondary walls, a total of 674 miles of wall has been built. As we have written, that is substantial, but it’s about a third of the number Trump claimed.
Another 299 miles of new primary wall are under construction, CBP reported, and 255 miles are in the design phase.
The land border itself is 1,954 miles long, according to the US-Mexico International Boundary and Water Commission. With the new fencing constructed under Trump, there are now about 778 miles of barriers, about 40% of the total southwest border.
Misleading Claim of ‘Lost’ Children
Kennedy, while criticizing Democrats, said, “They somehow lost 360,000 children, and they turned our federal government into the biggest child trafficking operation in world history.” But, as we’ve written, it’s a distortion to claim the children were “lost,” or that only Democrats were responsible for what actually happened.
In an August 2024 report, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general said about 323,000 unaccompanied minors who illegally entered the U.S. had not shown up for immigration court between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, or had not received a summons to appear in court. That time frame includes periods during the Biden administration and Trump’s first administration.
Furthermore, the report did not describe the minors as “lost.” The report said more than 32,000 children did not show up for their immigration court hearings in that period, and that, as of May 2024, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had not issued a Notice to Appear in court – which goes out at the start of removal proceedings – to more than 291,000 minors.
The report said not sending the notices makes it difficult for ICE to “monitor the location and status” of the minors and assure they “are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.” But it did not say those things had happened to the children.
ICE responded to the inspector general’s assessment in a letter that was included in the report’s appendix. ICE said notices go out after a child has been released to a sponsor, and that notices can be delayed for several reasons, such as if the child has already applied for asylum or another legal status with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Kennedy Distorts Stats on Obesity, Life Expectancy
Kennedy suggested the Trump administration deserves credit for reversing trends related to diet, obesity and lifespan. But he distorted the available data on obesity and life expectancy, and experts say there’s little evidence to suggest Americans are eating much healthier.
“Today, two years into this administration, Americans are eating more real food,” Kennedy said. “Real food sales were up 8% in 2025. Americans are eating less processed food. Since President Trump took office, obesity is down by 7% after 40 years of increasing. And this is best of all. Preliminary data that I received two days ago from CDC indicates that we have now reversed a 30-year decline in longevity.”
Kennedy has repeatedly boasted about a decline in obesity. On Aug. 13, he said obesity had “dropped, for the first time, 3% in the last year.” Eleven days later, he told an audience that the obesity rate had “dropped in this country, for the first time in 40 years, by about 3%.”
But as we wrote at the time, Kennedy’s numbers don’t hold up.
Surveys from the polling organization Gallup, which are based on self-reported height and weight data, do show obesity declining by about 3 percentage points. But that decline happened over several years, not one, and started around 2022. It has continued under Trump, but not on the scale Kennedy claims. The latest Gallup figures put the decline between 2024 and 2026 at 0.7 percentage points.
If Kennedy was referring to the percent change, rather than percentage point, the numbers are still off. Gallup’s latest figures show the obesity rate declining from 37.5% in 2024 to 36.8% in 2026, a difference of 1.9%. The total change from 2022 to 2026 would be 7.8% — but most of that decline happened before Trump took office.
It’s possible Kennedy has access to some early government data on obesity that haven’t yet been released, but we couldn’t find any publicly available source backing up this claim. We’ve asked HHS but have not received a response.
Kennedy is also wrong about a “30-year decline in longevity.” According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. life expectancy rose from 75.4 years in 1990 to 78.8 years in 2019. It fell in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, but rebounded to an all-time high of 79 years in 2024.
We asked HHS about the source for this claim as well, but haven’t heard back.
As for Kennedy’s claim that “Americans are eating more real food,” he may be referring to a recent analysis by the bank BNP Paribas finding that, between June 2025 and June 2026, sales of unprocessed or minimally processed foods in certain categories grew 7% faster than sales of ultraprocessed foods in the same categories.
As we’ve explained before, the study measured whether consumers were shifting from more-processed to less-processed products in five specific categories — yogurt, nut butters, frozen meals/vegetables, fruit snacks/candy and cereal/granola. It doesn’t say anything about whether Americans are buying, say, more fresh produce, or spending more or less on ultraprocessed foods outside of those categories. Experts told us there’s little evidence to suggest that Americans are eating healthier diets overall.
Childhood Health
In repeating one of Kennedy’s favorite lines, but with an added twist, the Health and Human Services secretary claimed that “this country pays two to three times what every developing nation in the world pays, and yet we have the sickest children in the history of the world.”
Compared with peer nations, the U.S. does have poor childhood health outcomes and spends a lot on healthcare. But it is an exaggeration to say the U.S. has the sickest children in the world, much less the sickest children in history.
The U.S. has for decades had a relatively high rate of death before age 15 for a high-income nation. That’s according to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, which is based on comparisons with 11 other high-income nations. Still, childhood deaths have fallen significantly over time in the U.S. and peer nations alike. KFF explained that “childhood deaths in the U.S. have declined since 1980 on a similar trajectory to comparable countries.”
In the global context, the U.S. has relatively low mortality in childhood. In 2024, 0.8% of U.S. children died before age 15, according to data from the United Nations compiled by Our World in Data. This is slightly higher than the rate of 0.6% among high-income nations overall, but lower than the rate of 1.6% for upper-middle-income countries, 5.2% for lower-middle-income countries or 7.7% for low-income countries.
Again, this is an improvement compared with the historical data. In 1950, 4.3% of children in the U.S. died before age 15. And long ago, of course, children died far more regularly. Historical estimates of child mortality, compiled by Our World in Data, show that roughly half of all children died in many societies across time, including as recently as several hundred years ago in Europe. Historically, many deaths were due to poor nutrition, infectious diseases or a lack of sanitation. Today, many of those infectious diseases are preventable with vaccines.
As for the claim that the U.S. pays “two to three times what every developing nation in the world pays” for healthcare, it is possible Kennedy meant to compare the U.S. to other developed countries. The U.S. does spend the most per capita on healthcare among high-income countries, according to the most recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Americans pay around 2.5 times more per capita than the average.But it’s not the case that the U.S. pays that much more than each and every country. In the case of Switzerland, for example, the U.S. pays just 1.5 times more per capita.
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Early voting for Delaware’s Sept. 15 primary continues through Sunday, Sept. 13, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., at sites that vary by county.
There is no voting on Monday, Sept. 14. Sunday is the last day to vote early before Election Day.
Election Day is Tuesday, Sept. 15. Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m.
Voters can find their early voting site or Election Day polling place through the state’s voter website at ivote.de.gov.
As of Friday afternoon, more than 30,800 Delaware voters had cast a ballot through early voting or absentee methods, according to the Delaware Department of Elections.
For a full list of who is running this primary (including races for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, attorney general and state treasurer, along with New Castle County Council) see Delaware LIVE’s Sept. 15 Primary Voters’ Guide.
Nashville, Tennessee — Nashville International Airport is moving closer to becoming Dolly Parton International Airport after the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority unanimously approved the name change Friday.
The vote marks a major step in a proposal announced after Parton died Aug. 25 at age 80 following a brief battle with cancer. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and airport officials had already endorsed naming the airport for the country music icon, describing her as one of the state’s most recognizable ambassadors.
Nashville’s Metro Council also unanimously adopted a resolution Sept. 1 supporting the change and asking the airport authority to waive its existing policy requiring honorees to have been deceased for at least two years.
The airport’s BNA code is expected to remain unchanged. Officials have said the renaming process could take six months to a year and require changes to signage, administrative records and Federal Aviation Administration documentation. Earlier estimates placed the cost between $8 million and $10 million.
Parton was born in Sevier County and moved to Nashville shortly after graduating high school, eventually becoming one of the most successful songwriters and performers in country music. Her philanthropic work included the Imagination Library, which has distributed hundreds of millions of books to children worldwide.
The final airport name will be developed with input from Parton’s foundation and representatives, according to state and airport officials.
ROOTS also emphasizes individualized instruction. With a student-to-teacher ratio of 6-to-1, educators can recognize different learning styles and give children room to progress at their own pace while continuing to challenge and support them.
ROOTS offers four-day school programs as an alternative to traditional education, along with one-day and two-day enrichment options for homeschooling families.
By John Riddle, Contributing Journalist, Delaware LIVE
At ROOTS Farm & Forest School, a garden can become a science lab, caring for an animal can teach responsibility, and a walk through the forest can inspire questions that lead to a day of discovery.
The Delaware nature-based learning community serves children ages 2 to 14 at campuses in Georgetown, Milton, Clayton and Townsend. Its preschool, elementary and middle school programs combine traditional academics with outdoor exploration, project-based learning and practical experiences. A high school program is also planned.
ROOTS offers four-day school programs as an alternative to traditional education, along with one-day and two-day enrichment options for homeschooling families. Students learn math, reading, writing and science, but lessons are often connected to real situations rather than limited to textbooks, worksheets or memorization.
The school’s outdoor classrooms include gardens, food forests, natural play areas and spaces where children help care for animals. Students may also build with natural materials, participate in community service, complete STEAM activities, create art and stories, and work with others to solve problems.
“We learn by doing,” the organization states on its website, identifying one of the four beliefs at the heart of its educational philosophy.
The other three are taking responsibility, staying curious and solving real problems. Together, those principles are intended to help students understand not only what they are learning, but also why it matters and how it can be used outside the classroom.
Five foundational pillars guide the ROOTS curriculum: community, environmental stewardship, homesteading, nature studies and animal husbandry. Rather than treating those areas as isolated subjects, teachers weave them into students’ daily experiences.
A gardening project, for example, can introduce children to plant biology, weather, food systems, mathematics and environmental responsibility. Caring for animals can help students develop patience, empathy and dependability. Collaborative projects can strengthen communication, leadership and problem-solving skills.
ROOTS also emphasizes individualized instruction. With a student-to-teacher ratio of 6-to-1, educators can recognize different learning styles and give children room to progress at their own pace while continuing to challenge and support them.
Programs are designed for neurotypical and neurodivergent students, with teachers working to create an inclusive setting where children feel valued and capable. Auditory, visual, tactile and kinesthetic learning styles are incorporated into the school’s approach.
The school’s leadership has pursued specialized training in nature-based education and outdoor inclusion. Founder and director Talon Holleman has completed the Level 1 Nature-Based Teacher Certification Course through the Association of Nature-Based Education. Holleman and co-founder Travis Holleman are also certified as Forest School Teachers and Directors through the Forest School Teacher Institute.
That training complements the school’s focus on educating the whole child. Along with academic development, ROOTS seeks to nurture resilience, creativity, independence, social and emotional growth, and a lasting connection to the environment. “Our goal isn’t simply to help children succeed in school,” the ROOTS website states. “It’s to help them become capable, compassionate people.”
Families who select ROOTS are also invited into a broader learning community. The organization works with schools, libraries, youth groups, small businesses and other community partners to provide workshops, field trips and hands-on programs. Adults can become involved through volunteer opportunities, gaining the chance to learn alongside the children while supporting the school’s programs.
At a time when many parents are considering alternatives to conventional classrooms, ROOTS offers an educational model grounded in experience, curiosity and connection.
Its mission is straightforward: empower children to care for themselves, their community and their environment. At ROOTS, those lessons begin with children rolling up their sleeves, stepping outside and discovering what they are capable of doing.
Washington, D.C. — Super PACs tied to President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are pouring tens of millions of dollars into key battleground races as Republicans fight to maintain control of Congress with less than eight weeks until Election Day.
The Trump-affiliated No Going Back PAC has reserved more than $24.9 million in television advertising across Alaska, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Ohio, according to AdImpact data cited by Reuters. Trump said last week that he plans to direct $400 million to $500 million toward helping Republican candidates.
Musk’s America PAC is also ramping up spending, including $2.4 million in the Texas Senate race, while Trump’s MAGA Inc. has committed $10 million there. Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is facing Democrat James Talarico in a race that has drawn increasing national attention.
Reuters reported that roughly $6.9 million of the Texas spending is going toward attack ads against Talarico. Musk’s PAC has separately spent more than $7 million on digital advertising, voter calls, text messages, mailers and other turnout efforts.
No Going Back is a new super PAC registered with the Federal Election Commission on Sept. 1. Although it is not formally affiliated with MAGA Inc., Reuters reported that the groups share the same treasurer, phone number and business address. The timing of its registration means full donor disclosure will not occur until late October.
The spending surge underscores how heavily Republicans are relying on outside money as several Senate and House races remain highly competitive heading into the Nov. 3 elections.
The flyer for Lefty’s Alley and Eats NFL Launch Kickoff Party on Sunday, September 13. Photo Credit: Lefty’s Alley and Eats.
Lefty’s Alley and Eats is welcoming in the new NFL season with NFL Kickoff Launch Parties at its Lewes and Newark locations with raffles to support local nonprofit organizations.
Lefty’s Alley and Eats will celebrate the start of a new NFL season with NFL Kickoff Launch Parties at its Lewes and Newark locations on Sunday, September 13, according to a company press release sent on September 9. The launch parties will feature food and drink specials throughout the day, raffles and giveaways in addition to the football action.
Raffle tickets will cost $5 and the winners will be announced at halftime of the 1:00 p.m. slate of games. All raffle proceeds will be donated to two local nonprofits. Each Lefty’s location will match the total amount raised on site and make additional donations to each locations respective organization.
The Lewes location will be donating to Home of the Brave which is an organization based in Milford, Delaware, trying to reduce homelessness for Military Veterans, according to the organization’s website. The Newark location — the company’s newest location — will support Special Olympics Delaware which provides sporting opportunities for children and adults with intellectual disabilities.
(To learn more about Lefty’s Newark location click here.)
“Football season is always a big part of the experience at Lefty’s, but we wanted this year’s kickoff to be about more than just watching the games,” Lefty’s Alley and Eats founder and owner, DJ Hill, said via the press release. “It’s an opportunity for our guests, our team and Lefty’s to come together, have some fun and make a meaningful contribution to organizations doing incredible work right here in our communities.”
Representatives from each nonprofit organization are expected to be in attendance at the respective locations to share more about their organization and the work being done in the community.
Lefty’s launch parties are the start of its gameday schedule for the 2026-2027 NFL season.
Starting on September 20, Lefty’s will follow a “Sunday Game Day routine” that features a raffle with one free entry, a jersey giveaway at halftime of the 1:00 p.m. slate of games and food and drink specials throughout the day. The routine is scheduled to take place across all 18 NFL regular season Sundays.
To learn more about Lefty’s Alley and Eats and their gameday specials click here.
Twelve-year-old Amelia Johnson was born with a rare genetic anomaly and is nonverbal. Amelia’s mother was able to get a private school voucher specifically for children with disabilities — but couldn’t find a private school that would accommodate Amelia. Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica
It’s after 6 p.m. by the time Angela Johnson hurries home from work. Her 12-year-old daughter, Amelia, is at their house outside of Pensacola, Florida, with a nurse trained to care for medically fragile children. Amelia, who was born with a rare genetic anomaly, has endured many surgeries and requires a brain shunt and a feeding tube.
The nurse starts caring for Amelia as soon as a bus from the public school drops her off. Johnson loves much about the school. But as a physical therapist, she also recognizes its limitations. The district’s physical and occupational therapists have to travel from school to school. The classroom teacher can become overburdened.
For all of Amelia’s life, Johnson has had to fight for the education and the school resources her daughter is entitled to receive under federal law. It has exhausted her.
Two years ago, she thought she’d found a better option for Amelia when she learned Florida has a state-funded voucher program for children with disabilities. She jumped at the promise of “school choice.” The program, the largest of its kind in the country, channels taxpayer dollars into accounts that parents can use to pay for private school tuition and other education expenses.
Johnson envisioned a private school with smaller classes and more one-on-one time with trained staff, a place where she didn’t have to battle for every minute of therapy her child required. She imagined Amelia learning to cut a straight line and to write her name.
In her bedroom, Amelia looks for a book to read with her mom, Angela Johnson.Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica
In 2024, Amelia was awarded about $10,500 from the program. Thrilled, Johnson embarked on a weekslong hunt for a private school.
She began scouring school websites, most of which said nothing about services for children with disabilities. She started calling schools, first an upscale Christian one nearby with a strong reputation. It had no nurse trained to care for medically fragile children, so she reached out to several other schools. At first, some said they could help — until Johnson explained that her daughter had a feeding tube, that she couldn’t yet hold a pencil correctly and needed assistance toileting. Then they all said no.
Johnson couldn’t find a single one that provided nurses equipped to care for her daughter’s medical needs. Or teachers trained to educate nonverbal children. Or even a bus ride home.
Therein lies the catch in “school choice” for children like Amelia. Unlike public schools, private ones generally aren’t required to educate students with disabilities. And they often don’t.
The choice wasn’t hers, Johnson realized. It was the schools’. The vouchers “are basically designed to make you go to private school,” Johnson said, “but my kid can’t access private school.”
Johnson returned the money to the state, along with a very stern email.
Voucher programs and the private schools they increasingly fund have proliferated across the country. Yet those schools often reject children with disabilities — the very kids who were used to help sell early voucher programs to lawmakers and the public — for having needs that are too costly, complex or disruptive. That leaves those children with few options beyond the public schools. And as public schools lose enrollment as a result of more and more voucher use, they lose resources that would benefit children who remain, including those with disabilities.
About 3 million school-age children with disabilities live in states with universal voucher eligibility. Florida, one of those states, illustrates how the promise of school choice can be empty for these children.
After walking around the block, Amelia removes her leg braces, which can be uncomfortable. Her mother, Angela, encourages her to wear them and walk at least once a day.Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica
When children are approved for education savings accounts, a voucher-style program like the one Florida uses, states often put public money into accounts parents can use to pay expenses like tuition. If families can’t find a private school and don’t use the money, it may roll over to another year or, depending on the state, get returned.
About 8% of the $1.7 billion Florida distributed last year through its voucher program for disabled children was returned because recipients — kids like Amelia — were enrolled in public school instead, according to data from the nonprofit that disburses most of the funds. By comparison, just 1% of money in the state’s program open to all students was returned for the same reason.
Florida is one of three states where ProPublica obtained data allowing us to make such comparisons.
Louisiana, which launched an education savings account program in the 2025-26 school year, delivered $43.1 million to parent-controlled accounts. Overall, 6% was returned because the families didn’t spend the money, state data shows. But among students with disabilities, that rate was far higher at 30%.
In Texas, data is still coming in for the first year of its $1 billion voucher program. But so far, students with disabilities are opting out of using the money at slightly higher rates than all other students.
Have you had trouble finding a school or using a voucher-style program? Do you have concerns about schools — public or private — in your area? Help us understand how families across the country are navigating their school options.
Though families return the money for multiple reasons, many have indicated they did so because they couldn’t find suitable private schools that would enroll their students.
“Families are at the mercy of the schools — and schools choosing their kid — versus the other way around,” said Chris Roe, director of state policy at the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a national association working on behalf of children with disabilities.
Today, at least 18 states have voucher-style programs with universal eligibility or are phasing them in. Florida eclipses them all. More than a half-million Florida schoolchildren — roughly 1 in 6 — use a voucher today. When lawmakers opened the state’s voucher program to all children in 2023, two-thirds of the newly enrolled students were already attending private schools.
Yet private schooling often remains out of reach for children like Amelia, the children lawmakers once used to gain a toehold for future voucher expansions. They shared disabled children’s compelling stories, named legislation in their honor and created some of the nation’s first statewide voucher programs specifically for these students.
They started in Florida.
After Angela gets home from work, she and Amelia head out to play in the front yard.Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica
Illusion of Choice
In 1999, an unassuming man wearing glasses and a lavender tie stood before his colleagues in the Florida Senate to champion a bill that would change the trajectory of American education. John McKay, a Republican, wanted to give parents of children with disabilities a chunk of taxpayer money to pay for private school tuition.
McKay pointed to his own family’s experience. Public schools had failed to meet the needs of his daughter, who had significant learning disabilities. He and his wife could afford to send their daughter to a private boarding school, but not all parents had that option.
“We’re alienating parents,” McKay argued. “I’ve been alienated by the public system when I was told I didn’t have any choices with regard to my children.”
The McKay Scholarships began as a pilot program — the nation’s first voucher system specifically for students with disabilities. Lawmakers soon expanded it, creating the nation’s first statewide voucher program for this group of children. Ohio followed Florida’s lead, then Utah and Arizona and Georgia and, later, Louisiana and Oklahoma and others.
Across the statehouses, politicians stressed one sentiment: choice. Parents would no longer be tethered to their local public schools and could choose where to send their children.
Georgia’s sponsor said he sought “to give any disabled student whose parents are dissatisfied with their assigned public school the ability to attend the public or private school that best fits their needs.”
“They can just take the scholarship and go to private school,” an Oklahoma lawmaker pledged.
The programs have since helped thousands of children with disabilities move to private schools, including those designed to meet their unique needs. But for many children, especially those with more severe disabilities or who live in areas where few if any private schools operate, the promises of choice were never realistic.
Some legislators backing those early programs said they recognized this problem but argued that any children helped by the new options made the effort worthwhile. And they hoped that competition fueled by money flowing into private schools would create a more robust school marketplace in the long run, one that would accommodate students with special needs.
Amelia loves playing on her swing outside.Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica
In 2021, West Virginia lawmakers adopted their first and only foray into vouchers, an education savings program that they have since opened to all students. To get the bill passed, some legislators made familiar promises to disabled children — even though the state has only a handful of schools that specifically say they will serve even the least-intensive of children’s needs.
“Our kids can’t go to a private school,” said Christy Black, an advocate for Disability Rights of West Virginia who has a daughter with Down syndrome. “I called every private school from Huntington to Charleston because that’s as far as we could drive her and work. But no one would accept her because she has a cognitive disability.”
More than half of Utah’s counties have no private schools that take its vouchers for students with disabilities. In Georgia, 71% of counties have none. And in Louisiana last year, among about 350 private schools, only 14 reported enrolling a single child with a disability. Eight of those admitted five or fewer such students.
Even in Florida, with its urban centers and roughly $5 billion voucher programs, ProPublica found that more than a dozen counties have no private schools that serve kids with disabilities or have only one school with limited offerings. Our analysis of state data also shows that more than half of Florida’s private schools say they do not serve students with any type of disability.
“It’s touted that this program is an equalizer, and then people have choice,” said Jinny Kim, managing attorney at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, a national civil rights and policy nonprofit that advocates for people with disabilities. “But then if you really look at the details, it’s not actually how it happens.”
Anxious about her daughter’s upcoming transition to middle school, Atlanta-area mother Marguerite Lane decided to explore private schools that take the state’s voucher. Her daughter, who has autism, does well academically but can be very sensitive and struggle in bigger classrooms without enough behavioral support.
Lane applied to and visited several private schools and found a small, arts-infused one that said it would accept some children with learning challenges. She thought it would serve her daughter well, but then she opened an email from the enrollment director.
“We don’t believe we can support her needs and help her thrive in this class,” it read, “and we also don’t want to compromise the educational experience of the other students.” The last part hurt most. Lane thought, “God forbid the other children learn empathy.”
Marguerite Lane and her daughter, Penelope, at home in Atlanta. Penelope likes to play piano and has a pet cat, Gatsby.Alyssa Pointer for ProPublica
Toehold Strategy
As politicians debated those first voucher programs for children with disabilities, a common refrain echoed across statehouse chambers: The plans were just small programs for a specific group of students.
“It’s a very limited scholarship,” a Utah representative assured colleagues in 2004. “This really is about special needs.”
“It’s not, as I heard some of you say to me, the beginning of vouchers. No, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a program to help a group of students that need our help,” a Georgia House member told colleagues in 2007.
Behind the political scenes, a different message spread.
As Arizona adopted its first program for children with disabilities in 2006, Clint Bolick wrote an essay entitled “Toe-Hold Strategies.” Bolick, who was then president of the advocacy group Alliance for School Choice, is now a justice on the Arizona Supreme Court.
Voucher advocates, he wrote, were “acting smarter.” Rather than take on powerful teachers unions directly, they were pushing smaller programs geared toward specific students whose needs were harder for politicians to oppose. “The strategy makes sense from a moral perspective, for it focuses assistance on the neediest schoolchildren,” he added. “It also works politically, because choice begets choice: Once the Rubicon is crossed and legislators vote to adopt a school choice program — no matter how small or targeted — it becomes easier to support a new one, or expand the old one, the next time around.”
By 2011, a half dozen states had launched voucher programs specifically for students with disabilities. At a “school choice” conference that year, Howie Beigelman sat on a panel that discussed the strategy. At the time, he was deputy director of public policy for the advocacy arm of the Orthodox Union, a prominent Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization. He offered guidance to those who might want to get into vouchers.
“Special needs is a very easy way to get into this business,” Beigelman said. “Anyone, no matter how partisan they are, it’s very hard to say special needs is not where people need ‘special’ education.” (He recently told ProPublica via email that this was his opinion and he had “never seen anything ‘intentional’ about using special needs scholarships for anything more than what they are plainly for: helping educate children with special needs.”)
Angela reads a book to Amelia, emphasizing each word and encouraging Amelia to repeat the words aloud with her.Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublicaPenelope used to bring stuffed toys to elementary school to help relieve stress, but as a middle schooler she has switched to a fidget spinner.Alyssa Pointer for ProPublica
Shortly after vouchers for disabled children spread to Arkansas in 2016, the University of Arkansas posted on its website an essay by Sarah McKenzie, executive director of the college’s Office for Education Policy. “Special education private school choice programs are often seen as a ‘foot in the door’ for school choice laws,” she wrote. “Once some success has been shown to the public, more laws can be passed to expand these programs.”
Indeed, following those wins, lawmakers across the country opened the floodgates, often to all or most comers, expanding voucher-style programs into a $10.6 billion tide of public money.
Today, two-thirds of states have some kind of voucher-style program on the books. These programs mostly serve a very different population of students than the early ones did. Most current voucher recipients don’t have disabilities, nor do they need to hunt for a private school that will enroll them. They were already in private schools when they tapped this new windfall.
North Carolina state Sen. Lisa Grafstein, a Democrat and a civil rights lawyer who advocates for people with disabilities, opposes her state’s voucher system, which is now open to all students. “The thing that genuinely infuriates me,” she said, “is when people with disabilities are used as pawns.”
Failure to Address Access
Two decades after states began adopting vouchers for children with disabilities, lawmakers have done little to improve access to private schools for them — even as they have created programs open to all comers. Most legislatures haven’t required private schools that take this public money to accept even a few kids with such needs. Nor have they created effective incentives to help operators open more specialized private schools, which can be costly to run.
That’s largely because one of the driving forces behind vouchers is the goal of keeping rules to a minimum so private schools will take the public money.
Amelia plays a card game with her parents, who encourage her to repeat the names of the animals pictured on the cards.Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica
“Getting the government involved in private schools isn’t the answer,” said former West Virginia Delegate Amy Summers, a Republican who played a central role in creating her state’s universal voucher-like program. She thinks competition for students will prompt private and public schools to better serve children with disabilities.
Another key advocate in West Virginia was Republican state Sen. Patricia Puertas Rucker. She homeschooled her two children with disabilities, including a now-adult daughter who she said came home from public school with bite marks and bruises.
Rucker hopes that the state’s voucher program will give more families a way to foot tuition bills or band together to create small schools called microschools. But she regrets that her colleagues approved the payments without additional money for students with disabilities, as some states offer. That extra money could help families afford the higher tuition often charged by specialized schools — and make it more viable for operators to open them.
“It is very expensive to have all this special equipment and to even build the buildings for children that have very specialized special needs,” Rucker said.
But beyond raising those payments, she doesn’t think the state should do anything to cajole or require private schools to enroll children with disabilities. “The minute you start doing that, you are basically disincentivizing private schools from participating, and then you’re denying parents. I do not want to do that.”
It’s not that private schools haven’t opened to take advantage of the voucher windfall. They in fact have been proliferating in recent years. And some of these new schools specifically welcome children with disabilities. But most of them do not.
The Pain of Rejection
Diavonni Jordan and her son Jamir Souders at home in Dallas, Georgia. Private schools rejected Jamir, who has ADHD, explaining that they could not support his needs.Alyssa Pointer for ProPublica
Parents described private school rejections as “insulting” and “heartbreaking,” especially when school personnel have met the children. But families don’t always need to apply or even call the schools to get a denial. Some websites or handbooks make it clear.
One small Baptist academy in rural Georgia invites applicants to “join our family” but declares in its handbook that it isn’t equipped to educate children with learning disabilities or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. “If such students are accepted in our school, it is up to the parents to provide extra services other than what the classroom teachers would do in the confines of the classroom.”
In 2023, Taylor Cordes, a former special education teacher, embarked on what she calls her “personal passion project” to see how many private schools in her home state of North Carolina post such clear rejections. She dug into every handbook she could find for 660 schools and found that only about a third of them indicated they would accept students with even limited disabilities. More than 1 in 10 declared they would not serve such students, she said.
Have you had trouble finding a school or using a voucher-style program? Do you have concerns about schools — public or private — in your area? Help us understand how families across the country are navigating their school options.
Many families endure deeply hurtful personal rejections in the search for education. Private schools typically decide who to enroll after meeting parents and their children, as Diavonni Jordan, an Atlanta-area mother, learned. Her now-8-year-old son, Jamir Souders, has ADHD. When he was suspended multiple times from his public school and started to get into fights, she searched for an option with smaller class sizes where she thought he would focus and learn better.
A single mother of two, Jordan applied to a local Christian school, then took time off work to visit it. She filled with hope as she toured the well-kept campus and spoke to its friendly staff. But within a week, she opened an email from the school. “The support that we could give in our 1st grade would not be enough for him this year,” it read. The school’s program was small, ill-equipped to provide for his needs, it added.
Jordan expanded her search to other traditional private schools, even when they would mean longer drives for her. She applied to five and toured two. But the verdicts never changed.
“Unfortunately — it doesn’t look like we would be a good fit for your family,” another Christian school wrote. Jordan wondered what child constituted a “good fit” for the school and felt the heartbreak of knowing it wasn’t her son. Perhaps, she thought, she will homeschool Jamir in the future. But for now, with a new school year upon them, he remains in public school.
Jordan and Jamir read a book together in his bedroom.Alyssa Pointer for ProPublica
Retired Battalion Chief George Campbell of the New York City Fire Department stands before a September 11th Fallen Hero's Memorial on September 3, 2026. (Photo by Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via…
Madison, Wisconsin — Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging two state abortion restrictions, arguing they violate protections for liberty and bodily autonomy under the Wisconsin Constitution.
The case, filed in Dane County Circuit Court, targets laws requiring abortions to be provided by physicians and requiring patients to wait 24 hours between an initial consultation and the procedure. Planned Parenthood argues those rules create unnecessary barriers and prevent qualified providers such as nurse practitioners, physician assistants and certified nurse midwives from offering care.
Wisconsin currently requires patients seeking an abortion to make at least two visits because of the waiting period, and medication abortion must be provided in person by a physician. Planned Parenthood operates abortion clinics in Milwaukee, Madison and Sheboygan.
The lawsuit seeks a broader ruling that Wisconsin’s constitutional guarantees of liberty include a right to make decisions about abortion without unjustified government interference. Planned Parenthood previously pursued a similar constitutional argument during litigation over Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion law, but the state Supreme Court resolved that dispute on other grounds without deciding whether the state constitution independently protects abortion rights.
Republican lawmakers criticized the new case, arguing abortion policy should be determined by the Legislature. Democratic officials and abortion-rights advocates said the existing restrictions unnecessarily interfere with medical decisions.
The lawsuit arrives as abortion policy remains a major issue in Wisconsin’s 2026 elections, with control of the governor’s office and Legislature on the ballot.
New York, New York — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that she “hates” the governments and policies of President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while emphasizing that her criticism does not extend to the United States or Israel.
“I love Israel, and I hate Netanyahu’s government and his policies. I love America, and I hate Trump’s government and policies,” Clinton said during an appearance on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe.” She argued that both governments are pursuing policies she believes are damaging to their respective countries.
Clinton also addressed a new Haaretz report alleging that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed warned Netanyahu roughly 10 days before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning a major operation. Haaretz reported that Netanyahu did not relay the warning to senior Israeli security officials.
Netanyahu has categorically denied that the call or warning occurred, calling the report false and politically motivated. He has instructed his lawyers to pursue a defamation lawsuit against Haaretz and the journalists behind the report.
Clinton went further than the underlying reporting, speculating that Netanyahu either dismissed the warning or possibly wanted to see what Hamas would do before responding. She acknowledged that she did not know his thinking and called the episode, if accurately reported, a “failure of leadership.”
With Israel holding national elections Oct. 27, Clinton said the United States should take a tougher approach if Netanyahu remains in power, while suggesting a different Israeli government could create an opening for a new U.S.-Israel strategy.
Editor’s note: It’s often said that newspapers are the first draft of history. In the hours after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Newark Post reporters fanned out across Newark. This article, which was originally published Sept. 14, 2001, captures the…
Dallas, Texas — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he does not believe Congress would need to approve his proposed $5,000 “Trump Dividend,” but federal appropriations law indicates otherwise.
Trump unveiled the proposal at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, promising $5,000 to every adult U.S. citizen if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate. In an interview with CBS Texas the following day, Trump called the payments “a great infusion” and said they would be funded by tariff revenue and required to be spent in the United States.
Asked whether Congress would need to approve the payments, Trump said he did not think so.
However, the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause gives Congress control over federal spending. The Government Accountability Office states that “no money can be paid out of the Treasury unless it has been appropriated by an act of Congress.” Federal agencies generally cannot spend or obligate public money without statutory authority.
A Media Bias/Fact Check review of the proposal reached the same conclusion, noting that Trump cannot simply order the checks himself. It estimated the plan would cost roughly $1.23 trillion for about 245 million adult citizens, far exceeding projected annual tariff revenue.
The promise itself is unlikely to constitute illegal vote buying because the payments would go to eligible adults regardless of how, or whether, they voted. But actually issuing the checks would require Congress to authorize the spending unless lawmakers had already created a separate legal funding mechanism covering such payments.
For now, the $5,000 dividend remains a campaign proposal rather than an authorized federal program.
Berkeley, California — The Trump administration is accusing UC Berkeley School of Law of unlawfully favoring Black applicants over white and Asian applicants, while the school firmly denies using race in admissions decisions.
The Justice and Education departments said a joint investigation found Berkeley Law violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative-action ruling. DOJ said Black applicants had 5.8 times higher odds of admission than comparable white applicants in 2025 and pointed to gaps in median LSAT scores among admitted students.
The department also alleged Berkeley used essay prompts and other methods as racial proxies after the Supreme Court restricted race-conscious admissions. Its findings letter says the alleged discrimination affected the incoming classes of 2024 and 2025 and remains ongoing.
Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky rejected that conclusion, saying the school “scrupulously complies” with federal law and California’s Proposition 209, which bars racial preferences in public university admissions.
“Our admissions policy is clear that race is not considered in any way in admissions decisions,” Chemerinsky said. Berkeley’s published admissions policy similarly states that racial information is not used to determine admission.
Berkeley does encourage applicants to discuss how their background and experiences would contribute to the law school community, with race listed among numerous possible topics alongside socioeconomic background, disability, ideology and geography.
The DOJ findings are an administrative determination, not a court judgment. The government is seeking a voluntary resolution agreement and says it may sue if negotiations fail.
Washington, D.C. — The Department of Homeland Security has deleted an AI-generated immigration enforcement post that depicted a turbaned Sikh man as a dangerous driver, after Sikh and Hindu advocacy groups accused the agency of using a racial stereotype.
The image, posted Wednesday on DHS’s official X account, showed a robot resembling Optimus Prime confronting a bearded man identified as “Mr. Singh.” The graphic told him to “self-deport or find out” and said he did not know how to drive. The surname Singh is widely used among Sikh men and is also common among Indian communities more broadly.
DHS said the image referred specifically to Harjinder Singh, an Indian truck driver charged in a fatal Florida crash that killed three people. Singh has pleaded not guilty to vehicular homicide and manslaughter charges.
The Sikh Coalition said the post amounted to profiling an entire community, noting that millions of people share the surname Singh. The Hindu American Foundation also condemned the graphic as “racist” and “anti-Indian.”
DHS rejected the criticism before deleting the post, calling the backlash “faux outrage.” The department has been running a broader campaign focused on undocumented commercial drivers and recently created a tip line for reporting suspected immigration violations involving truckers.
The controversy also extended to the Transformers imagery itself. Hasbro said the government had not received permission to use the likeness of its characters and emphasized that Optimus Prime is intended to represent leadership, compassion and justice.
The deleted post is the latest example of the administration’s aggressive use of AI-generated pop-culture imagery in official immigration messaging, a strategy that has repeatedly drawn criticism over tone, accuracy and stereotyping.
Denver, Colorado — The city of Denver and several advocacy groups sued the Trump administration Thursday, asking a federal court to block armed immigration agents from conducting enforcement at polling places during the November midterms.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., names Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting ICE Director David Venturella. Plaintiffs include Denver, the League of United Latin American Citizens, Common Cause and UnidosUS.
The administration has not announced a nationwide plan to station ICE agents at polling places. However, Mullin recently said agents could enter voting locations if there were a threat or if officers were serving a warrant on someone they had been tracking.
The lawsuit argues that even limited armed immigration enforcement near voting sites could intimidate voters and interfere with election administration. It cites incidents in Syracuse, New York, and San Antonio where immigration agents allegedly entered or gathered near polling locations.
Federal law places unusually strict limits on armed federal personnel around elections. Justice Department guidance states that 18 U.S.C. § 592 makes it a felony for federal officials to send “armed men” to the vicinity of open polling places, subject to narrow exceptions. DOJ guidance also says federal investigators generally should avoid actions that could interfere with voting.
The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction before early voting expands later this month.
DHS has said ICE will not patrol polling places generally, but maintains that agents may act in specific enforcement situations. The court will now have to determine how that position fits with longstanding federal protections surrounding voting locations.
Jefferson City, Missouri — President Donald Trump and Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe both posted negative job approval ratings in the latest Saint Louis University/YouGov poll, marking the first time either has fallen underwater in the survey series.
Among 900 likely Missouri voters surveyed in August, 47% approved of Trump’s performance while 52% disapproved. Trump’s net approval has fallen 19 points since the beginning of 2025 and 14 points since February, when he still held 52% approval and 47% disapproval.
Kehoe’s decline was steeper. His approval fell from 47% in February to 39% in August, while 49% disapproved. Earlier SLU polling had shown him remaining narrowly above water, making the new result his first negative rating since taking office.
The poll also found broad economic anxiety. About two-thirds of respondents said they were worried about affording health care, groceries and gasoline, while roughly three in five expressed concern about utility bills. Voters opposed the U.S. war in Iran by an 18-point margin.
Poll director Steve Rogers attributed some of the Republican erosion to what he called “MAGA fatigue,” though that is his interpretation rather than a finding directly established by the survey.
Other results suggest a more competitive political environment than in recent Missouri elections. Republicans led Democrats by only four points on generic U.S. House and state House ballots, while Republican State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick led Democrat Quentin Wilson 45% to 43%, within the poll’s roughly 4-point margin of error.
The survey was conducted Aug. 13-24 among 900 likely Missouri voters. SLU says its YouGov sample is weighted to reflect the state’s electorate.
HR McMaster, President Trump's former National Security Advisor, discusses America's future security challenges.
10
December 2026 — 09:00 TO 10:00 GMT
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
Hear from one of America’s leading security and military thinkers on China, Europe, Iran and the future of US global leadership in an increasingly contested world.
Hear from one of America’s leading security and military thinkers on China, Europe, Iran and the future of US global leadership in an increasingly contested world.
Lieut. Gen. (Ret.) H.R. McMaster commanded in Afghanistan and Iraq, oversaw training and modernization for the US Army’s infantry, armor, and cavalry force, and was an assistant professor of history at the US Military Academy. Hear one of America’s leading security and military thinkers talk about China, Europe, Iran, and the future of the US in an increasingly contested world.
The United States faces mounting challenges as strategic competition intensifies, and conflicts reshape the international order. War with Iran, ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine, rising tensions with China and fraying relationships with allies are changing Washington’s approach to global leadership. These developments raise fundamental questions about America’s role as a security guarantor, and the future of the transatlantic relationship.
General McMaster will discuss:
What are the most significant national security challenges facing the United States?
How should Washington respond to the rise of China?
What is the future of the transatlantic relationship and US–Europe cooperation?
How can the United States strengthen deterrence while managing global commitments?
What role should America play as a guarantor of international security?
How is geopolitical competition reshaping the international order?
Can the UK escape the public debt trap?Expert commentjon.wallace
The UK’s mix of high fiscal deficits, rising bond yields, anaemic growth, high taxes and an impatient electorate can only be solved with politically brave choices.
All major advanced economies have seen rising long-term bond yields over the past year. But with the ten-year gilt yield at 5.2 per cent on 9 Sept 2026, the UK’s long-term rates are the highest in the G7. US ten-year yields are 4.8 per cent, Germany’s are 3.4 per cent and Japan’s 2.9 per cent.
Reasons for the UK’s relative weakness
The UK’s relatively high long-term interest rate reflects in part its lack of other economies’ advantages. Sterling does not enjoy the US dollar’s global reserve asset role. Gilts do not benefit from the strong home country preference of Japanese investors. And the UK does not have the financial and economic backstop embodied in EU membership.
But the main factor is most likely to be the UK’s relative economic weakness, leading to higher expected inflation and/or a higher real interest rate risk premium. Financial markets look at the UK and see a country boxed in with structurally low growth, mounting social and defence spending needs, and a tax take which is already at historically high levels. They believe this, combined with fraught domestic politics, makes the UK government more likely than others to try and escape its predicament by borrowing more to boost spending.
The problem is not just the prospect of additional borrowing. It’s the fact that it would take place at a time when the UK’s debt/GDP ratio is already at an historically high level of over 100 per cent of GDP.
Much of the additional spending proposed by the government and opposition parties…would do little to address the UK’s long-term structural growth weakness.
This risks a negative feedback loop whereby increased market concern over debt sustainability leads to higher interest rates and debt servicing costs. That forces the government to raise taxes or make spending cuts, potentially weakening growth and further worsening debt sustainability.
Rising interest rate costs, along with slower growth caused by the Iran war, are expected to cut the UK government’s headroom under its fiscal rules from £24 billion in March to around half that this autumn.
A further problem is that much of the additional spending proposed by the government and opposition parties – whether on defence, social benefits, or personal tax cuts – would do little to address the UK’s long-term structural growth weakness, and particularly its low productivity growth. Total factor productivity declined between 2019 and 2024.
Several factors have brought the UK to this point. Some, such as the COVID pandemic and an aging population, were or are outside government control. But many have been self-inflicted. That includes the 2008-9 global financial crisis; the austerity measures that followed it; Brexit (which has cumulatively cost the economy between 6 and 8 per cent of GDP); the Truss’s government’s brief but dramatic divergence from fiscal responsibility; and the current Labour government’s inability to convince its backbenchers of the need to control social spending.
The 2022-3 inflation shock initially helped ease the UK fiscal burden, as nominal GDP accelerated faster than nominal debt. But it is also now one of the factors reducing bond investor trust in the authorities.
Policy options
Government and opposition parties argue, correctly, that the UK’s only escape from the current pernicious debt and interest rate dynamic lies in raising long-term economic growth. Higher growth will generate higher tax revenues which can be used to service and pay down debt. They also argue that this must be achieved while meeting the current fiscal rules. One opposition party has even called for tighter fiscal rules. But there is little consensus on the best approach.
The Labour government under Prime Minister Andy Burnham has emphasized direct action to reduce the general cost of living through such measures as eliminating VAT on domestic electricity bills and capping bus fares. The resulting slight increase in disposable income may support spending in the short-term. But the policy is unlikely to do much to support growth over the long-term. Indeed, the desire to limit price rises may inhibit future investment and distort price signals. Targeting financial support on the most vulnerable groups would better safeguard government finances.
More broadly, the government should rely on the Bank of England to control increases in the cost of living in line with its CPI inflation target. If it doubts the Bank’s ability to do so, it should review the effectiveness of the Bernanke reforms implemented after the post-COVID inflation shock.
The government is on much stronger ground in its efforts to maintain and expand public investment in infrastructure, housing and advanced technology industries. Research by the OBR suggests that a sustained increase in public investment of 1 per cent of GDP will increase GDP by 2.4 per cent over the long-term.
By targeting areas that the private sector is unable or unwilling to address (because private returns are too low) the government will crowd in private investment.
According to one analysis, public financial institutions could invest an additional £16 billion in public infrastructure over the next five years, while remaining within the fiscal rules – which allow such financial assets to be offset against debt.
Other government policies, such as regional devolution of some taxes and spending, or taking control of railways and failed utilities, could support the increased scale and effectiveness of infrastructure investment.
But it is critical that oversight systems are well designed and costs are minimized. The government must avoid mistakes like the escalation in cost of the HS2 highspeed railway, which now looks set to cost £100 billion for just 140 miles of track.
The government has pushed for deregulation in the financial services sector. And until recently, it wavered on robust implementation of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA) in the hope of attracting big tech investment. However, predictable, efficient and robust regulation is the soundest strategy for promoting long-term growth. Maintaining competition is the most effective way to promote innovation. Safeguarding the economy against systemic shocks – whether in the financial or digital sphere – is vital for resilience.
Some opposition parties have called for the abolition of the UK’s world-leading climate legislation, on the grounds that it is too costly. But that would be an enormous setback for the UK economy – potentially even approaching the scale of Brexit. Apart from undermining global efforts to limit escalating climate-related costs, it would greatly weaken the UK economy’s preparations to compete in the inevitable future net zero world.
Opposition parties have also promised dramatic cuts of up to £50 billion per year in spending on working age social benefits to fund tax cuts and/or improve debt dynamics. But this would immediately cut demand in the economy.
Meanwhile no major party has committed to address the escalating expense of the pensions ‘triple lock’, which is not means tested. Of the £145 billion currently spent per year on pensions, some £17 billion is due to the way the triple lock has increased payments faster than inflation since 2010.
The need for brave choices
Overall, boosting public investment is the one policy that is clearly on the right track to raise growth. But it is far from clear that this alone will be enough to enable the UK to escape its current debt dynamics.
Other policies also offer substantial growth, such as relaxing controls on immigration and joining the EU’s single market. But both currently appear politically unacceptable. Until the UK’s leaders are prepared to argue for such measures, and to confront issues like the triple lock head on, the negative feedback loop will be hard to escape.
Estadio Quisqueya, home to two Dominican Professional Baseball League teams in Santo Domingo Christopher Gregory-Rivera for ProPublica
Major League Baseball teams sign more players from the Dominican Republic each year than any nation besides the U.S. Almost every neighborhood is home to a baseball field where kids as young as 4 begin learning to play. In our months of reporting, we’ve rarely come across anyone in the Dominican who doesn’t have some connection to the sport: a sibling or uncle or son who aspires to be a professional player, or who once did.
As beloved and important as baseball is in the Dominican, industry practices can hurt young players and their families. Dozens of trainers and players have told us that adolescents are expected to perform at levels never asked of their peers from other countries and enter into agreements with teams at much earlier ages. (We just published a story about abusive moneylending practices that have sprouted from this system.) We’re planning more stories brought to our attention by this community.
We want this work to reach people whose lives are touched by the issues we’re investigating. If that’s you, we want you to be able to easily connect with our reporting team and share tips or experiences you think we should know about Dominican baseball. The more people we hear from, the more impactful our reporting on these complex issues can be. (Learn more about ProPublica and our mission.)
For this series, we’re opening a WhatsApp line because it’s a popular way to keep in touch in the Dominican, and international calls and texts are free.All you have to do is text “baseball” to our WhatsApp number, 1-917-207-6447.
If you’re not a WhatsApp user, if you can still get in touch with our reporting team via email:
You’ll get a link to our latest stories about baseball. We’ll also ask about your connection to baseball and ask you to share anything that you think our reporters should look into as we continue investigating.
If you give us permission, we’ll also send you quick updates from our series every now and then.
What kind of tips and comments are helpful?
We want to hear about baseball-related issues and experiences that are important to you, whether they’re connected to finances, health, education or something else. Below are a few of the topics we’re already reporting on; if you have related experiences to share, we would appreciate hearing about them.
Illness and injury related to performance pressure
Wide availability of anabolic steroids and consequences of use
Conditions at training academies (pensiones)
If you have a connection to baseball — whether you’re a current or former player, trainer, parent of a player, doctor who treats athletes, someone who works for an MLB team or you have some other link — we would love to hear from you.
If I don’t have a connection to baseball but want to follow along, should I sign up?
Yes, we’ll share updates from our investigations, along with links to our latest reporting.
What if I know someone who has a connection to baseball?
Please send them a link to our baseball series or have them text “baseball” to our WhatsApp number, 1-917-207-6447. And thank you — we need to reach as many people as we can.
What will you do with the information I share with you?
We will read everything you send and follow up with you if we have further questions or are interested in including something you’ve shared in our investigations.
We take your privacy very seriously. Our reporters speak to people every day who want to share information but fear retribution. Our reputation is built on protecting sources, and we take that responsibility to heart. You can request to speak on background, which means you would not be named in our stories.
On an evening in late 2021, in a pristine baseball complex in central Santo Domingo, a baby-faced 14-year-old outfielder in athletic gear named Belfi Rivera huddled in front of a computer screen. Next to him was John Carmona, who had been Belfi’s trainer and de facto caretaker since he was 11 years old. In a nearby office, Belfi’s parents stared anxiously at a separate computer. On the screen, calling into the Dominican Republic, were representatives of the Arizona Diamondbacks, there for a conversation that promised to shift forever the fortunes of Belfi and his parents.
The team, they would soon learn, had agreed to pay Belfi $1.8 million after his 16th birthday. It was a deal Carmona had negotiated without consulting Belfi or his parents. It was also a handshake agreement that skirted Major League Baseball’s rules that bar teams from signing players younger than 16. Every year, all 30 major league teams reach preacuerdos, or early deals, with hundreds of Dominican prospects — a practice they make little attempt to hide. (The Diamondbacks did not respond to a request for comment.)
The baseball men said Belfi was now part of “la familia.” They asked him about his favorite player and how he learned to swing his bat so fast and whether he understood the importance of discipline. The conversation washed over Belfi, who, on the rare occasions when he spoke, did so in a tumbling, nervous cadence. He had spent his childhood in a shanty outside of the capital. Meals often consisted of sugary cornmeal or a piece of bread. But he had a talent “gifted by God,” as an early trainer put it, with the skills — speed, arm, glove, contact hitting — treasured by scouts. The size of this bonus, once made official, would establish him as one of the highest-paid prospects outside of the United States.
“Paper Trail” Podcast
Learn more about this story on ProPublica’s podcast “Paper Trail.”
If he fulfilled his promise, he might join an ever-expanding list of Dominican legends: San Francisco Giant Juan Marichal, the winningest pitcher of the 1960s; Tony Fernandez and George Bell, Toronto Blue Jays teammates who hailed from the same baseball-mad town of San Pedro de Macoris; Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, and David Ortiz, the pitcher and sluggers who in the early 2000s turned the Caribbean nation into an unlikely bastion of Boston Red Sox fandom; and swaggering, bat-flipping modern superstars like Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the New York Mets’ Juan Soto, and the San Diego Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr. — with playing contracts totaling more than $1.6 billion — who have helped to revitalize baseball’s popularity.
For the past four decades, no country outside the United States has sent more players to the majors than the Dominican Republic. With a population under 12 million, it is roughly the size of Ohio, a state that last year claimed two dozen major league players. The Dominican Republic had 144, roughly 10% of the league. The country is a baseball factory. Talented players are sent to practice full time at one of hundreds of academies when they are as young as 10 years old.
For the Past 14 Years, the Dominican Republic Has Dominated International Signings by Major League Baseball Teams
The league signed more than 12,700 international rookies from 2012 to 2026, half of whom were born in the Dominican Republic.
Note: This chart includes only countries that accounted for at least 1% of international signings in 2026. Together, these countries represent over 95% of non-American rookies signed. Sources: ProPublica reporting, Spotrac.Chris Alcantara/ProPublica
That’s how old Belfi was when he went off in tears to live in the home of a stranger who trained boys on a shaggy ball field in the capital. The best players are then sold to increasingly more prominent trainers until they wind up at an elite academy run by men like Carmona, who have close relations with major league teams and receive a sizable percentage of a player’s signing bonus.
As a child, Belfi never cared for baseball. He started playing at 7, he told me, because a local coach would drag him from his house and cuff him on the head if he tried to escape to a nearby river to be with his friends. But even as a young boy, he understood the sport likely represented his family’s one shot out of grinding poverty. During that video call in 2021, it seemed that he had clinched it.
But in two and a half years, the $1.8 million Belfi was promised would be almost all gone. Carmona received $630,000, which represented his 35% commission. But more than $950,000 went to someone who had no hand in teaching Belfi how to play baseball. His name is Santo Caraballo, one of the most notorious moneylenders profiting from Dominican baseball. His business partner is a national hero and, 10 years after his retirement, still a commanding figure within Major League Baseball: David Ortiz, known universally as “Big Papi.”
In a brief conversation with Caraballo, he told me his business was not the biggest or “that lucrative.” I made multiple attempts to reach Caraballo again, including sending him a summary of my findings. He never responded.
Belfi Rivera’s autographed Elite Extra Edition baseball card in 2022
Thanks to early agreements, prestamistas, or moneylenders,like Caraballo now wield singular power within Dominican baseball, amassing millions of dollars by persuading undereducated parents to sign away portions of their sons’ future bonuses in exchange for loans with exorbitant interest rates. Major League Baseball has known for years about early agreements and the predatory industry that has grown around them. Even though it has a formidable economic and political presence in the Dominican Republic, it has done little about either. It has never publicly warned or penalized a team for making an early deal, and its attempts to educate families about moneylenders have been ineffectual. (A spokesperson for Major League Baseball declined to comment and referred to past statements by league officials calling for an overhaul of the Dominican system.)
It is not just Major League Baseball that has allowed this corrosive system to continue. When the league proposed changes that would have eliminated early deals and made it more difficult for moneylenders to prey on baseball families, David Ortiz used his influence within the powerful players union to help block the reform. At the time it was unknown outside of Dominican baseball that he had a financial interest in preserving the system. (In a statement sent through his lawyer, Ortiz said that his opposition to the league’s proposal “was never motivated by personal interests.”)
Baseball is everywhere in the Dominican Republic, from the 13,000-seat Estadio Quisqueya in Santo Domingo to shaggy sandlots in the countryside.
Chapter 2
I’d long been told that the Dominican Republic’s wildly successful baseballindustry was plagued with abuse and exploitation — that for decades Major League Baseball has presided over a massive unregulatedsystemthat treats tens of thousands of Dominican boys like commodities. But when I began making calls last year, I expected those most involved to defend it. Instead, trainers — the men integral to the industry as instructors, surrogate parents and agents — virtually all told me they felt forced to participate in a system that is broken and costly.
I also spoke with team executives, agents, scouts and parents. Between the exorbitant commissions that go to trainers, the pressure to evaluate prepubescent players on how skilled they will be in four or five years, and all the education lost while those players are pulled out of school, nobody would purposefully design a system this way, they said.
“This is a system that is allowing corruption at all levels,” said one longtime trainer, Eddy Fontana.
Major League Baseball, too, doesn’t deny this, declaring recently that it was “long past time to reform” Dominican baseball. The players union also acknowledges that the industry is troubled but says it’s “a people issue, not a system issue.”
What I found most surprising was the common opinion that, despite widespread acknowledgment that Dominican baseball needed to be overhauled, the industry has gotten even more exploitative. Arturo J. Marcano, who has spent most of his career as a sports attorney, published a book in 2002 comparing the Dominican baseball pipeline to human trafficking. He didn’t hesitate when I asked how today’s industry compares. “A hundred times worse,” he said.
I set out to learn why the league and the players have done little to fix these problems. I crisscrossed the Dominican Republic and met people in shabby dugouts and gleaming stadiums, under a palm tree on a rocky beach coated in shattered beer bottles and at a café on a touristy plaza where a gold-covered street performer posed as a batter atop a trophy. I reviewed hundreds of pages of unreported court records, contracts,bank statements and WhatsApp messages, among other documents.
Wherever you go, there are reminders of el pelotero who achieved the Dominican dream of playing American baseball. Virtually every village has el play, a ball field, lovingly painted and filled with boys of all ages even during a downpour. Watchful men fine-tune the swings of adolescents hammering balls toward scampering elementary-age outfielders not yet deemed ready to take cuts themselves. Road signs announce not just the name of the town you are entering but its native sons who cracked a major league roster. Hall of Famers are depicted in grandiose murals throughout the capital. All 30 major league teams have training academies, and they rise up from the countryside like castles.
A monument in Santana that reads “Orgullo Nuestro,” “Our Pride,” under the portraits of three former major league players from the area: Antonio Pérez, Edwar Cabrera and Marcos Mateo
Every team participates in the Dominican Summer League, where 1,500 prospects from Latin America compete to get promoted to the lowest minor league teams in the United States. Hundreds more professional players, including established stars, draw sellout crowds in the offseason in what’s known as the winter league. Steven Puig, the president of BHD, the Dominican bank that is a corporate partner of Major League Baseball, told me that the sport generates as much as $400 million annually.
American baseball executives began scouting, signing and developing Dominican teenagers in earnest in the 1980s. A handful of teams, recognizing the island as a source of cheap talent, built bare-bones training academies on former sugar plantations. They relied on buscones, finders, to bring them the best players. But the buscones soon realized they could make more money by opening their own academies. There are now, according to a national trade association, more than 6,000 trainers, ranging from the off-duty car mechanic to the millionaire former big leaguer. In return for providing room, board, equipment, coaching and — they claim — education, these men typically receive between 35% and 50% of a player’s signing bonus, which they negotiate.
In their search for the next Dominican star, major league teams pursue what one general manager called a “boatload mentality.” Every year, teams sign about 450 Dominican prospects, most for bonuses around $30,000. Fewer than two-thirds will make it to the lowest minor leagues, and less than 10% will play a day in the majors, according to MLB data. (Teams treat Venezuelan prospects, many of whom train in the Dominican Republic, in much the same way, signing them in bulk.) It’s a Darwinian system paid for by players like Belfi — the hundreds of thousands of dollars his trainers took out of his bonus subsidized dozens of prospects who sacrificed their childhoods only to come up short.
Most of MLB’s International Spending Goes to Signing Players From the Dominican Republic
The amount has grown steadily since 2012.
Note: International spending dropped in 2020 due to the impact of COVID-19. Sources: ProPublica reporting, Spotrac.Chris Alcantara/ProPublica
In the United States, no professional sport operates this way, including baseball. Every year, major league teams select players from the U.S. and Canada in a draft. Signing bonuses are mostly dictated by the order in which the players are chosen. Last year, the top pick was worth $11.1 million, while the final slots were worth $187,000. Sports agents typically receive a 5% commission.
In the Dominican Republic, it’s a free-for-all. Teams vie for talent, outbidding one another for the best prospects. Major League Baseball does limit how much a team can spend on new players each year. But the other guardrail that the league put in place — that players can be signed only if they will be 17 by the following September — is widely circumvented.
“Everybody makes early agreements,” a major league scout told me. “You got to do it. If not, the system will eat you.”
In 2022, the parents of a 14-year-old prospect, Willy Fañas, sued the Los Angeles Angels for reneging on an early agreement for $1.8 million. A scout for the Angels testified that the team’s general manager had authorized the deal. The case was dismissed; Fañas’ parents have appealed the decision.
No data exists on how many Dominican players have been offered early deals because the agreements are verbal — by design there are no records. But Sandy Alderson, who has been a top executive for several teams and in 2010 served as Major League Baseball’s emissary to the Dominican Republic, told me that the vast majority of players who get signed were offered deals before they hit 16.
A pickup game in the town of San Gregorio de Nigua
In the absence of any enforcement, Major League Baseball has created the perfect market conditions for las prestamistas like Caraballo, who has become a ubiquitous figure in Dominican baseball in the past six years. The loans he offers come with interest rates that would be illegal in the United States and many other countries. The Dominican Republic repealed its usury laws 24 years ago. High-interest lenders are now as ingrained in Dominican baseball as trainers, and they advertise online. One banner circulating on WhatsApp offered “préstamo para jugadores de beisbol que tenga acuerdos,” “loan for baseball players who have agreements.”
Yaniris Paula, an attorney who has represented teenage ballplayers in disputes with trainers and lenders, estimated that 80% of all major league bonuses paid to Dominican prospects have a loan attached.
From 2012 through the beginning of 2026, major league teams paid Dominican prospects $1.042 billion in bonuses, according to a ProPublica review of signing data. But much, if not most, of that money — up to half a billion — is almost immediately siphoned off by trainers and lenders, according to experts familiar with the industry.
“Major League Baseball knows how dirty the business is here,” Piñao Ortiz, who was the Dominican commissioner of baseball from 1996 to 2000, told me, “but it’s not doing anything to stop it.”
Chapter 3
The night that Belfi’s parents — Eduardo Rivera and Rita Muñoz — learned of the Diamondbacks’ promise, they had to sleep at a nearby baseball academy. Their ride home didn’t have working headlights. When they made it back to Pedro Brand, a town outside the capital, their tiny home looked different to them. Eduardo had built it out of wood planks and tin. Buckets caught rain from the leaky roof. Musty beds lay strewn on the concrete floors. A climbing wall, salvaged from a children’s park, served as a room divider. Facing the same poverty while an unimaginably huge windfall awaited them in just over two years was a new sort of mental challenge.
Belfi (right) with his parents, Eduardo Rivera and Rita Muñoz (center), in front of the house he grew up in
Eduardo worked as a farmhand during the day and as a sereno, a watchman, for a school at night — jobs that were increasingly difficult because of a foot ailment he couldn’t afford to get checked out. He made as little as $150 a month. Rita had mostly stayed home, raising 11 kids. But now they were — almost — millionaires and already felt pressure to pay back those who had helped them. One of those was Belfi’s first trainer, who had made only a few hundred dollars trading Belfi to another trainer. He now wanted a “thank you” and arranged for them to speak with a man who told them that his boss, Santo Caraballo, could help them bridge their old existence with their future one.
What Belfi’s parents didn’t know is that Caraballo had a network of informants — many of them trainers — who let him know when a player had reached an early deal with a major league team and for how much. When Caraballo got a name, he would send one of his finders to speak to the parents.
Eduardo and Rita traveled to Caraballo’s small office in a strip mall in Santo Domingo. The figure who greeted them had perfect hair and white teeth and was dressed like a deportista, or sportsman, in athletic leggings and a T-shirt, they told me. Diplomas and certificates covered a wall. Familiar and charming, he spoke of having been a consul for the Dominican government, and he repeatedly mentioned that he was “la mano derecha,” “the right hand,” of David Ortiz, they said. That made them trust him more.
Eduardo and Rita told me that they were looking to sell just 5% of Belfi’s future bonus — roughly $90,000 — for upfront money, enough to pay off some debts, give Belfi’s first trainer a little cash and waterproof their home. But Caraballo, they said, advised them that they would need more and that they should sell him 10%.
David Ortiz with Caraballo in the lender’s office in Santo DomingoObtained by ProPublica via Instagram
The parents emerged from the office with a paper bag full of pesos, their thumbs wiped clean of the ink they had used to stamp a contract. They hadn’t been given a copy, but if they had, they wouldn’t have been able to understand it. Eduardo is illiterate. Rita struggles to read. They said they received 1.6 million pesos, roughly $25,000.
Miguel Hidalgo, a former employee of Caraballo’s who had a falling out with him over money, told me that the lender tries not to give his clients a copy of the contract. “That’s the trick,” he said. If they don’t have a copy, it makes it harder for them to understand what they owe, he explained.
Rita and Eduardo shared what they remembered of the loan terms with one of their sons, who called Jhonatan Jimenez, a former trainer of Belfi’s. Jimenez did the math. In return for the $25,000, Eduardo and Rita had agreed to give the lender $180,000 when Belfi received his bonus.
“¿Tú estás loco?” he asked.
That was the first deal Belfi’s parents made with Santo Caraballo.
Soon after, the lender sent men to check out their home, and his prognosis was that it could not be repaired. They needed a new place fit for the family of a ballplayer. There was a building available next door. On the second floor was space for a three-bedroom apartment, which the Riveras would need to fix up and furnish. On the first floor was a storefront appealing to one of Belfi’s brothers, who envisioned a barbershop where customers could drink alcohol.
Belfi (left) and his family in the apartment that his parents purchased after borrowing money from Caraballo
Caraballo would show up at their new apartment, usually in a different car — a Range Rover, a Porsche, a Lamborghini. He was, Eduardo told me, like a member of the family. He reached his spoon into their pot of simmering beans. He drank Presidente beers. He gave Belfi advice about girls. He urged Rita and Eduardo to further fix up the place. “You’re already rich,” they said he told them. “You can’t live this way.”
Caraballo said he’d loan them an additional $70,000 at 7% monthly interest, a rate he had assured them was “mejor que banco,” “better than the bank.” Throughout 2023 and the first half of 2024, bank records show, Caraballo doled out the money to the family in dozens of payments ranging from $88 to $8,350. According to Rita, Caraballo said he was not giving them the money all at once because they would fritter it away.
Rita also told me that roughly $7,000 of the loan came in the form of certificates redeemable at a supermarket Caraballo owned near his office. She said she used them to buy rice, beans, oil, diapers and other staples but that the certificates didn’t last long because Caraballo’s prices were “carisimo,” “extremely expensive.” The only customers she saw at the market were the families of young ballplayers.
Chapter 4
The origins of Caraballo’s wealth and power remain murky — striking for someone with tentacles throughout the sport. Some within the industry described him as a savvy hustler, exploiting a corrupt system that Major League Baseball had created. Or as an opportunist using little more than a fortunate link to one of the country’s most beloved peloteros. Or as a man with almost magical reach who was not to be crossed. Many demanded to know whether I was a spy for him.
“I already have problems, and you’re asking me about a boss,” said a former minor league pitcher whom Caraballo represented during a brief stint as an agent.
A longtime trainer spat in the ground and called him a ladrón, a thief. He refused to discuss Caraballo further. “What if I get killed?” he asked.
Caraballo’s office in Santo Domingo
A major league agent who represents Dominican players told me that every year Caraballo has a stake in dozens of prospects’ bonuses. Two former employees corroborated that figure, telling me that they helped Caraballo reach loan agreements with the parents of 60 to 70 players a year. The agent said that every signing day, when prospects consummate their preacuerdos, Caraballo shows up to remind families that they will soon have to pay what they owe him.
I spoke with the parents, trainers or lawyers for six prospects whose families took high-interest loans from Caraballo. The father of Ricki Moneys told me he borrowed 1.7 million pesos, roughly $27,000, from Caraballo, after the Brewers offered his son a $1.15 million early agreement. Thirteen months later, after Moneys officially signed with the team earlier this year, his father said that Caraballo collected 4.5 million pesos — an effective annual interest rate of nearly 150%. The father of another Brewers prospect, Kenny Fenelon, said that his son was offered a $1.3 million early agreement and that he used it as a guarantee to borrow $50,000 from Caraballo at 5% monthly interest. When his son received his signing bonus less than three years later, in 2025, the father told me that Caraballo claimed he was owed $400,000. They eventually settled on a $75,000 interest payment, he said. (In our brief conversation, Caraballo said that the risk in loaning money to families is that “you never know if it will succeed or not because if the player doesn’t get signed, you don’t get paid.”)
Caraballo has a second business loaning money to trainers at similarly high interest rates. In many of those deals, the guarantee is a percentage of a player’s bonus money that is owed to the trainer.
He has also entered the training business himself. Records and interviews show that he has signed players as young as 10 years old to contracts in which parents agree to give him half, or sometimes more, of their sons’ potential signing bonuses. Caraballo himself doesn’t do the training. “He doesn’t even know how to hold the bat, bro,” Edgar Mercedes, a trainer who has taken loans from Caraballo, told me. Instead, he sends the boys to trainers with whom he has made separate financial arrangements.
A birth certificate states that Caraballo was born in 1986 in the mountain city of Constanza, the son of a farmer and a housewife. According to a childhood friend, he departed for the capital as a teenager with just $16. In Santo Domingo, he pumped gas before opening a series of small businesses. He co-founded a company that turned fruits into pulp and juice. He financed new and used vehicles. He established a legal services business, Caraballo Lora & Asociados, though he was not an attorney.
But mostly, according to interviews with those who have worked for him, he lent money. A Facebook banner for one of his companies consists of stock art depicting a man turning an empty pants pocket inside out. Another hand offers a full wallet, with the text, “Podemos Ayudarte,” “We can help you.”
In 2016, he returned to Constanza to run for mayor. “I’m from the hills and it’s in my blood/ By the grace of God, I’ll be your mayor,” declared a ballad he commissioned. Despite President Danilo Medina campaigning for him, he lost the four-person race. He was a “joven muy inquieto,” “a restless young man” seeking glory in his hometown, Ambiorix Sanchez, who won the election, told me.
After his defeat Medina offered Caraballo a consolation prize. He appointed him as an ambassador attached to the minister for foreign affairs, a common arrangement for an incoming president to reward a losing allied candidate. The position came with a diplomatic passport, a $600 monthly salary and few responsibilities. Caraballo left the ambassadorship in 2021, a few months after Medina’s term ended.
The beginning of Caraballo’s ascent in Dominican baseball can be traced to his shadowy role in salvaging the career of Oneil Cruz, a rising star in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ organization. In late 2020, Cruz crashed his Jeep Grand Cherokee into the back of a motorcycle, killing three people. Prosecutors initially said the ballplayer had been drinking, and he faced the possibility of three years in prison. According to numerous interviews and court records, Caraballo was brought in by Cruz’s parents and negotiated payments to the victims’ families. In exchange, they withdrew all “penal, civil or judicial” claims against Cruz. Prosecutors never presented evidence that he was drinking, and a judge dismissed the case. Cruz denied any wrongdoing. I wrote about the incident in “The Rising Baseball Star, a Fatal Car Crash and the Fixer.”
Cruz declined a request for an interview. His lawyer, Amauris Vásquez Disla, called the accident “a profound tragedy for all parties involved, especially the victims’ families.” He went on to say that the court “issued an order of dismissal based on the findings, a legally binding decision that was a lawful resolution of this matter.”
By 2021, corporate records show, Caraballo had found a partner that would instantly boost his credibility — David Ortiz. By helping the Boston Red Sox win three world championships, the first one ending an 86-year drought, Ortiz secured his legacy as one of the most revered players in all of baseball. He retired in 2016 and became a popular analyst for Fox Sports. In the Dominican Republic, he is un muchacho de abajo, someone who rose from a Santo Domingo slum and is not afraid to return.
How an obscure moneylender from Constanza became partners with a famous ballplayer is a mystery to mutual acquaintances I spoke with. Ortiz has said that he first met Caraballo when he was managing a gas station. The two were close enough that when Ortiz announced his divorce in 2021, he did so with a post of himself posing with Caraballo and a caption that read, “My compadre, the show must go on.” Ortiz sat Caraballo with his family at his 2022 induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and they appeared in videos together at the presidential palace.
The financial side of their relationship is more shrouded. In 2021, both were listed on corporation records of a company in Florida called Big Papi Sports Group. What, if anything, the company did is not clear. It was dissolved the following year.
It is, though, the earliest record I could find of a partnership that Caraballo trumpeted frequently. Parents, trainers and lawyers who have done business with him told me that Caraballo claimed that Ortiz, whose signed jersey hangs in his office, bankrolled him. “Every time he did business with [my client], Caraballo would mention it,” a lawyer named Jose Eduardo Martinez said.
My reporting eventually got back to Ortiz. He called me last year to find out what I was working on and seemed surprised to be asked questions about Caraballo. He acknowledged that he had invested millions of dollars into Caraballo’s baseball business. Although he wouldn’t tell me the name of the company, they’ve posted to social media photos of themselves wearing matching ballcaps with the logo “CS,” for Caraballo Sports Enterprise. Caraballo has founded companies by that name in both the Dominican Republic and the United States, though Ortiz is not on those documents. Dominican records say the company’s goal is to “promote education and sports as a mechanism for the social development of underprivileged youth throughout the country.”
In a photo posted to social media, Ortiz and Caraballo wore hats that have the Caraballo Sports Enterprise logo.Instagram
Ortiz said that his business with Caraballo is limited to making loans to trainers. Among those who have struck deals with Ortiz and Caraballo is retired star infielder Carlos Guillén, who trains players in Venezuela and the Dominican Republic and said that he has borrowed significant sums from them.
Ortiz told me that he doesn’t work with the parents of players, because it’s too difficult to be repaid. However, court records show that, in at least one case, Ortiz’s name is on a contract with a player’s parents. According to its terms, Ortiz and Caraballo agreed to provide their 13-year-old son with “economic support, food, studies, housing, training, clothing for practice and games, supply of protein and vitamins” and scouting opportunities in return for 35% of the boy’s potential signing bonus. The boy was never signed, leading to the lawsuit, which was eventually dismissed on procedural grounds.
The contract, similar to many others I reviewed between Caraballo and parents of young baseball prospects, gave him and Ortiz extraordinary control over the boy’s life. It contains a clause not allowing him to “leave or abandon” the academy where they assigned him without their “prior permission” and granting them power of attorney so that they could receive “all kinds of information,” including a bonus payment schedule, from Major League Baseball and any team that signs him.
It also made explicit that the boy would be unable to get out of the deal. Even if he were to become emancipated from his parents, the contract states he would still owe a portion of his potential signing bonus. The contract allows Caraballo and Ortiz to terminate their responsibilities toward the boy due to “poor performance,” but he would still owe the same percentage if he were signed.
In our conversation, Ortiz distanced himself from Caraballo’s many enterprises. “Caraballo, my compadre, he has a whole bunch of different businesses that I don’t know,” he said. “I know the one that I know. But I’m not his guard. Hopefully, he’s not doing anything illegal — not that I know.”
Later, after I sent him a detailed list of questions, Ortiz sent an additional response through his lawyer. The statement said he had “never authorized Santo Caraballo to use my name or reputation to gain the trust of young baseball players or their families, to promote loans or investments, or to represent financial transactions as being personally backed or endorsed by me. I have always sought to make a positive contribution to Dominican baseball. I would never knowingly participate in any operation intended to take advantage of a young player or his family.”
Ortiz said that he ended his personal relationship with Caraballo “a year and a half to two years ago” after “noticing conduct by Mr. Caraballo that I considered inappropriate. I started distancing myself from him personally and placed the relevant matters in the hands of my legal advisors.”
However, last September, Ortiz and Caraballo filmed themselves heading for Puerto Rico on a private jet, drinking and dancing on their way to a Bad Bunny concert.
Chapter 5
Around 4 a.m., Jan. 15, 2024, Belfi Rivera got out of his bunk bed at John Carmona’s academy. The complex was nearly empty, with most of the other boys home for the winter holidays. Belfi put on a white dress shirt, a navy blue business suit — his first — Alexander McQueen shoes and a gold necklace, all of which Caraballo had purchased. Years earlier, Belfi had promised himself that if he made it as a pelotero, he’d have a chain that would glitter over his dirt-stained jersey, just like the pros.
It was signing day.
Belfi’s parents arrived, and they drove to Baseball City, headquarters for the Diamondbacks and several other major league teams. Teenage boys and their parents, all dressed up, filled the place.
Belfi leaned over a desk and put his signature on the contract he had been promised two years earlier. He and another Dominican outfielder were the only Diamondbacks prospects whose bonuses exceeded $550,000. Many more prospects, if they were lucky enough to be noticed by a major league team at all, fared more like Belfi’s older brother Bernardo, a right-handed pitcher who a few months earlier had signed with the Texas Rangers for $10,000.
For Rita, the moment was a miracle. “When you have absolutely nothing,” she told me, “when you’re starting from zero, enduring great hardship, and your children are going hungry. And then, suddenly, we would finally be able to resolve so many of the problems we were facing — paying off our debts, taking the children to the doctor, getting them enrolled in school.”
Belfi posed for photos in front of a banner filled with Diamondbacks logos. In one, he is flanked by Carmona and Caraballo. Carmona said that he was not aware that the lender had made deals with Belfi’s family until he showed up at the signing, strutting around as if he had played a key role in Belfi’s success. “The team asked me, ‘What’s going on? What is this man doing here?’” Carmona said.
Belfi posed for photos after he officially signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks on Jan. 15, 2024. On the far left is John Carmona, his trainer. On the far right is Caraballo.Instagram
Less than a month later, the first installment of Belfi’s bonus came in — $900,000. He and his parents drove to the Boca Chica branch of the BHD bank, a sleek glass building adorned with the Major League Baseball logo and ringed by the flags of all 30 teams. The branch is where almost every prospect collects his bonus payments, and it regularly plays host to one of the most unsightly scenes in Dominican baseball, as trainers and lenders show up to demand their cut.
Caraballo, Carmona and Belfi’s early trainer, Jhonatan Jimenez, were waiting. By BHD and major league policy, only a player and his parents can receive the bonus. But Belfi’s parents told me that Caraballo took the lead, collecting IDs and handing them to a clerk. Neither Rita nor Eduardo had ever held a bank account. Now a banker helped Belfi open one, and the convoluted divvying up of his payday began.
By the terms of their contract with Rita and Eduardo, Carmona was due $630,000 and Jimenez $90,000. However, Jimenez had earlier sold his stake to Caraballo, one of at least two deals the lender had made with Belfi’s former trainers.
That left $180,000, which Caraballo was owed as repayment of the $25,000 loan. Carmona described the vibe as one of “mucha duda, mucha desconfianza,” “much doubt, much distrust.” The exception, he said, was Belfi, who seemed oblivious, confident that everything would work out. Belfi told me that other players had warned him that he would see little of his first bonus installment. He left the bank with nothing.
At a meeting at Caraballo’s office, Eduardo and Rita said that he ripped up a contract. They understood this to mean the debt was paid. As the day approached when Belfi was set to receive the second half of his bonus, Rita and Eduardo said that Caraballo began to sell them on an idea — they could become partners with him and David Ortiz. They would be out of their depth managing the hundreds of thousands of dollars the Diamondbacks still owed Belfi. Instead, they could invest the money, which would produce a steady income and keep them from squandering their fortune.
Eduardo told me that he couldn’t follow all the details but said he was sold from the moment Caraballo described going into business with Ortiz. “I was happy because now my boy was going to have people to give him advice,” he said.
Eduardo did have a brief moment of doubt. After a call with Caraballo, he said to Rita, “Maybe he’s lying to us.” But they both agreed he was too kind for that.
Chapter 6
Throughout my reporting, the great mystery was if the problems with baseball in the Dominican Republic were so well-known, why hadn’t the league or the union fixed them?
I posed this question to Lou Melendez, who worked for Major League Baseball from 1983 to 2016, including as vice president of international operations, and now consults for the players union. He told me he was baffled by the inaction of the league, which has in the past penalized teams and executives for violating international rules. “If they wanted to, they could have just said, ‘Look, memo to clubs from the commissioner’s office. If we find that you have any pre-agreements with any players, we’re going to discipline you.’”
When Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred was asked last year about preacuerdos during a visit to the Dominican Republic, he acknowledged that they were “problematic” but said the “best solution to early deals is a draft.”
This has been his position since he took office in 2015, arguing that the league needs to institute a draft for Latin American prospects that functions similarly to the draft for American and Canadian players. The change would make early agreements impossible since a team would not know which player they would be able to sign until draft day.
This single-mindedness has led some observers to wonder whether the league’s neglect of the issue is intentional. “If they wanted to enforce it, they would,” said Rafa Nieves, one of the top agents for Dominican players. “They want to make it worse and worse so the only solution is an international draft.”
The chief obstacle to establishing an international draft has been the players union. Its reasons are straightforward: A draft would restrict a prospect’s ability to choose his employer and eliminate bidding wars that drive up bonuses. While the union acknowledges the Dominican system is troubled, it, too, blames the league for not enforcing its existing rules.
The league and the union have been haggling over the issue for decades. Before the 2017 baseball season, both sides agreed to impose a “hard cap” — a limit to how much money a team can spend on signing international players. The amount changes each year and by team. In 2026, the total a team can spend ranges from $5.4 million to $8 million. The hard cap, though, had an unintended consequence: It led to a surge in early agreements. If teams could not beat their competitors with money, they could by making commitments to younger and younger players.
By one estimate, baseball generates as much as $400 million annually for the Dominican economy.
In early 2022, the league and the union came close to establishing an international draft when negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement. Talks broke down, and the owners locked the players out of spring training. The international draft, it was widely reported, had become a major sticking point, and the union was close to accepting it.
This was when David Ortiz intervened. Although he is retired, players listen to what he has to say. Ortiz circulated a voice message to Dominican players and trainers, declaring a “red alert” that the union was on the verge of agreeing to the international draft. He shared the phone number for Tony Clark, the union’s executive director, and urged everybody to express their strong opposition.
“If we allow the draft to happen here in the Dominican Republic, even your great-great-grandchildren, and everyone else’s, will be affected by it,” Ortiz said, according to an audio copy of the message, which I obtained. “So we have to start this strong ‘No to the draft’ campaign. Take my word for it. I don’t play baseball anymore, but I know what I’m talking about. If we let them push that thing through here, we’ll be in deep trouble. You know that in this nation, in one way or another, more than 40% of the population depends on baseball, to put it mildly.”
Ortiz in 2026 participating in the Hall of Fame Parade of Legends in Cooperstown, New YorkDaniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images
That percentage was an exaggeration, but lots of retired players, including Ortiz, own training academies. Amaurys Nina, a highly regarded trainer, told me that many of them have long used their clout to block any changes to the industry. “These players want the business to stay the way it is,” he said.
Active Dominican players also spoke out, including Fernando Tatis Jr., the shortstop for the Padres, whose father, a retired major league ballplayer, owned an academy. With an international draft, teams would likely sign fewer Dominican players, especially marginal prospects. Tatis appeared to be alluding to this when he told a reporter that an international draft would “kill baseball in the Dominican Republic.” Tatis did not respond to a request for comment sent to his agent.
The day after Ortiz sent his voice message, the league ended the lockout, and both sides agreed to shelve the idea of an international draft and settled the contract. The draft is once again a point of contention as the two sides have begun negotiating a new contract. (The union declined to comment on Ortiz’s voice note.)
When I spoke to Ortiz last year, I asked him if he opposed an international draft because of his and Caraballo’s business interests. He did not answer and hung up shortly afterward.
In his statement, Ortiz said his position regarding the international draft “was based on my views regarding the development of Dominican players and the impact I believed such a system would have on baseball in our country.”
Chapter 7
Belfi’s second bonus day arrived on June 13, 2024. When his parents and a brother came to pick him up at the Diamondbacks’ training academy, Caraballo was waiting in the parking lot. He invited the family to jump into his tricked-out Mercedes SUV so they could head to the BHD branch together.
As he drove, Caraballo hardened his pitch. He said he would pay them a dividend of several hundred thousand pesos, as much as $10,000, a month, according to Rita and Eduardo. In describing their understanding of the proposal, they told me that the lender promised once again to put the money in a fund or a business involving Ortiz but that they had no idea what kind. Caraballo, they said, assured them they would work out the details the following day at his office.
This car ride was the first time that Belfi learned that he would leave the bank with little or nothing. But he told me he trusted his parents, Caraballo and any plan that involved Ortiz.
Already at the bank was Jimenez, Belfi’s former trainer. He told me he was there as a family friend to keep an eye on how things went. But he allowed that he was also there with the hope that Rita and Eduardo would give him another cut for his years training Belfi.
Belfi’s family was ushered into a room to go over paperwork with a banker. According to Rita and Eduardo, Caraballo came in and out to make sure the family repaid their debt and signed over the rest of the money for him to invest. Unlike Belfi, his brother was alarmed by what was happening. He texted Jimenez that Caraballo was stealing the bonus. Jimenez said he started chasing Caraballo around the bank, calling him un ladrón. Eduardo recalled Jimenez yelling, “Caraballo, no engañes a esos pobres infelices,” “Caraballo, do not deceive these miserable people.” The lender, in turn, accused Jimenez of attempting to fleece the family himself.
Amid the shouting, Belfi told the banker that he wanted to keep some of the money so he’d have it when he got promoted to the minors in the United States. With the banker’s guidance, he kept $196,000. According to Rita, Caraballo was upset he wasn’t getting the whole amount and angry the family didn’t trust him. After receiving a cashier’s check for $703,900, he left the bank, flanked by two bodyguards. The check’s memo line read “pago entrenador,” “trainer payment.”
In his statement, Ortiz said he was never aware that Caraballo “operated an investment fund through which money belonging to players was allegedly taken or used for investment purposes.”
BHD did not respond to detailed questions concerning Belfi’s experiences at the Boca Chica branch. The bank said in a statement that it is committed to “the protection of all our clients, including young baseball prospects. Decisions regarding the use of our clients’ funds rest exclusively with the account holders or those legally authorized to act on their behalf.”
Eduardo told me he often replays that day in his mind, realizing that it was the culmination of his being played for a fool. He hung on every word of Caraballo’s advice, all of it leading to “el gancho,” “the hook” — handing over the money in the bank “without paperwork, documents or anything else.”
There are hundreds of unregulated training academies in the Dominican Republic, ranging from shaggy fields to gleaming facilities.
Rita said that she called Caraballo about meeting the following day, but he told her he had flown to Miami. In the weeks afterward, they tried calling him numerous times, she said, but that he would either not pick up or the calls would drop. Bank statements show that he did send them three payments totaling less than $10,000.
Finally, Rita said, Caraballo made clear that the investments with Ortiz hadn’t panned out and that he wouldn’t be paying the family a monthly dividend as he had promised. But, according to Rita, he assured her that he was “always going to be there” to support the family.
By then Rita and Eduardo had learned of other parents who had accused Caraballo of stealing their sons’ bonuses. The family, she realized, needed to get a lawyer. She knew of only one, a local commercial attorney who agreed to take on the case and who brought on a criminal specialist from Santo Domingo.
In the lawyers’ view, the interest Caraballo charged Belfi’s family was legal under Dominican law. However, in a complaint to prosecutors that they filed in November 2024, they described Caraballo’s promise to invest the family’s money and pay them dividends as fraud preying on Belfi’s “vulnerability as a minor.”
“It is obvious that the accused never intended to invest in any stock market, but rather took advantage of his apparent friendship with David Ortiz [and] the admiration the public has for the former baseball player,” they wrote.
Soon after, Rita’s mother died, and Caraballo called, offering his condolences as well as 100,000 pesos, a little less than $1,600, to cover the funeral and other expenses. Rita said she told him to have his attorney call hers.
Belfi, too, had lost trust in Caraballo. The necklace the lender had given him on signing day, the one that made Belfi feel like he had made it as a ballplayer, had started to turn black. The chain, Belfi realized, was iron, and he threw it away.
Caraballo continued to message him, Belfi told me, attempting to get him to persuade his parents to drop the legal claim. On the lawyers’ advice, Belfi blocked him. Just before his 18th birthday in December 2024, Belfi was in Pedro Brand, walking back from a local ball field when, he said, a white Volvo truck pulled up next to him. The driver, a man Belfi had never met, told him to get in. Belfi said the man had a gun holstered on his hip.
Once in the car, Belfi said, the driver informed him that he was taking him to see Caraballo in Santo Domingo. Belfi was sure that the lender had dispatched “una maldad,” “something evil.” The man drove Belfi to a jewelry store, where Caraballo was waiting. He was in an expansive mood, Belfi told me. He greeted him warmly and after consulting with the jeweler, he picked out a necklace and told Belfi it was a gift.
They then headed to Caraballo’s office, where the lender revealed the purpose of the meeting. According to Belfi, Caraballo told him that the Diamondbacks wouldn’t want a prospect involved in something as ugly as a lawsuit. Belfi also said that Caraballo warned him that if he had an open legal case, he wouldn’t be allowed to leave the country to play in the minors. The last claim is not true, but Belfi didn’t know that.
The day after Belfi legally became an adult, he said the driver picked him up and took him to the capital to get his Dominican national ID. Afterward, they went to Caraballo’s office, where the lender and a lawyer were waiting, and Belfi signed the papers they put in front of him. “Y ya, el miedo habló,” Belfi told me. Fear talked.
The significance of those documents became clear the following month. With his signature, Belfi had fired his lawyers, hired Caraballo’s attorneys as his own and withdrawn the complaint. The criminal action against Caraballo, the prosecutor wrote in a final decision, “has been extinguished.”
Chapter 8
Almost immediately Belfi regretted signing the documents that harpooned the case against Caraballo. He tearfully apologized to his lawyers. When I spoke to one of the attorneys, Omar Chapman, he said he thought the lender had taken advantage of Belfi. “Caraballo told him, ‘Look, this document will solve all your problems, don’t worry,’” said Chapman, who added that Belfi might have been legally an adult but “only made it to about third grade.”
Belfi told me that by last Christmas he had gone through the $196,000. He paid off his family’s numerous debts, covered foot surgery for his father, sunk money into his brother’s struggling barbershop and, by his own admission, spent money on dumb stuff — loans to friends he won’t get back and jewelry for himself and girlfriends.
As the holiday approached, Caraballo sent a messenger to Rita with 20,000 pesos, just over $300, for food and clothes for the children. Rita told me she knew what Caraballo was up to. “He’s basically trying to buy us again so he can keep our money,” she said. But this time, she didn’t reject the handout.
When I visited Rita and Eduardo this summer, they appeared to be worse off than the first time I saw them. With four kids still in the house, Rita had recently opened a food stand across the street, selling salami, plantains, eggs and coffee to commuters. It’s a miserable, fly-infested venture that requires her to rise at 4 a.m. and earns her as little as $5 a day. Eduardo continues to work as a night watchman at a local school.
Belfi told me that the Diamondbacks pay him $100 a week only during the two and a half months he plays in the Dominican Summer League and that the team provides its players with baseball equipment when they sign, but after that they’re on their own. Before the latest season, Belfi borrowed roughly $2,500 from a local lender, part of which he spent on cleats, a glove, bats and medicine for his father. The loan came with 30% biweekly interest. The ballooning debt has caused Belfi to stay away from Pedro Brand.
I went to the Diamondbacks’ academy, an immaculate new facility, hoping to watch Belfi play. The summer league, which has so many players that most organizations fill multiple teams, is a study in Major League Baseball’s volume approach to Latin talent. Few players last beyond three seasons — they’re either promoted or cut.
Belfi has completed his third season in the Dominican Summer League.
Belfi is now in his third year. In his first two seasons, he struggled, hitting a meager .202 with one home run. He no longer appears in the international prospect rankings. Friends who signed the same year as he did have been promoted. So has his brother Bernardo, who is now on a Rangers minor league team in the U.S.
When Belfi and I spoke, he admitted it’s been hard playing baseball with everything that’s been going on in his head. “I mean, why keep working, if everything I earn, I lose?” he asked.
Trainers and scouts who have watched Belfi for years told me it’s obvious that what he’s gone through has affected his game. One said, “These guys took everything he had and stole his motivation.”
On a muggy, overcast June day, Belfi’s team was hosting the Seattle Mariners’ squad. It was a sloppy contest full of errors and batters getting plunked by fastballs the pitchers hadn’t yet learned to corral. The only people in the stands, besides a few family members, were scouts and officials recording every data point. But the players cheered and chanted and shook the dugout’s chain-link fence. Belfi wasn’t in the lineup.
When I found him afterward, he explained that his coaches had him doing batting practice for most of the game. They wanted him to work on “a little bit of everything,” he said. Despite the Diamondbacks frequently benching him, Belfi still appeared hopeful. I asked him what his immediate goal was, and he said with a smile, “Get out of here as soon as possible.”
A month later, in a tied game in extra innings against a Cubs team, the Diamondbacks called on Belfi to pinch hit with two outs and two men on. He stroked a game-winning single into center field. His teammates mobbed him, and a grinning Belfi jumped up and down, holding his arms aloft in joy.
Dallas, Texas — President Donald Trump promised Wednesday to send every adult U.S. citizen a $5,000 “Trump Dividend” if Republicans retain control of both the House and Senate in November’s midterm elections.
“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump told supporters at the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas. He said recipients would have to spend the money inside the United States but provided no detailed funding mechanism or legislative proposal.
The price tag is substantial. With roughly 240 million U.S. adults, a universal $5,000 payment would cost about $1.2 trillion. That far exceeds the approximately $284 billion in tariff revenue collected since Trump returned to office, according to Reuters. Any nationwide payment would also require congressional authorization rather than simply a presidential order.
Vice President JD Vance later suggested wealthy Americans might be excluded and said tariff revenue could help fund the plan, though no income cutoff or financing details have been released. The administration previously floated a smaller $2,000 tariff dividend that Congress never enacted.
Trump announced the proposal while urging voters to treat the midterms as effectively a referendum on his presidency. Republicans currently control both chambers, making the promise explicitly contingent on voters maintaining that control.
For now, the $5,000 payment remains a campaign pledge rather than an enacted federal program.
, to streamline how future users access quantum resources from within existing supercomputing environments. Qaptiva is a hardware-agnostic quantum application platform, designed by Bull so that developers can write code once and run it across different quantum backends, on-premises or via cloud access, while also providing orchestration capabilities to route workloads and manage execution across hybrid infrastructures. This integration will be based on CEA expertise on coupling quantum computer and HPC systems.
The brothers now want to extend that same recognition to other veterans throughout Delaware.
![I'm Back on Onewheel! But This VESC Build is Unreal... [ENG SUBTITLES]](img/3bda32ba238df2956f6718b3333f9eb82580d7a4.jpeg "I'm Back on Onewheel! But This VESC Build is Unreal... [ENG SUBTITLES]")
The school’s outdoor classrooms include gardens, food forests, natural play areas and spaces where children help care for animals. Students may also build with natural materials, participate in community service, complete STEAM activities, create art and stories, and work with others to solve problems.
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