Oil prices surge as President Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is over and the U.S. will "hit them hard again tonight."
Making the minimum every month feels responsible, but is it disqualifying you from the relief you actually need?
The nominations for the 78th annual Primetime Emmy Awards were announced Wednesday morning in Los Angeles. The 78th annual Primetime Emmy Awards will be broadcast live on NBC on Sunday, Sept. 14.
The family of Nolan Wells, who was found dead after a July 4 boat trip to Horn Island, has hired civil rights attorney Ben Crump.
Updates from Wednesday’s last-eight action in SW19
Arthur Fery: the wildcard carrying GB hopes | Mail Daniel
Paolini bursts out of the blocks with as much speed as she shows when charging around the court, racing to 40-0 and taking the game to 15. This match pits two of the best athletes in the women’s game against each other, and while Kostyuk possesses more power than the counterpunching Paolini, it’s Paolini who has the greater experience at this stage of grand slams, having reached not only the Wimbledon final but also the French Open final two years ago. Which could be to her advantage, if this comes down to who handles the moment better.
Three more games, three more holds, but it’s been fairly tortuous on serve for Mertens, who has to save three break points to scramble to 2-2, just as Paolini and Kostyuk make their entrance on Centre. I’m really, really looking forward to this one … Paolini, after losing the opening set of her first-round match 6-0, has been a player transformed, finally rediscovering the form that took her to the 2024 final and made her a fan favourite, while Kostyuk, after reaching the French Open semi-finals last month, has carried her form from the clay on to the grass, and has won 20 of her past 21 matches.
Continue reading...⚽ All the latest as we look ahead to the quarter-finals
⚽ Player guide | Bracketology| Golden Boot | Email us
Perhaps Lionel Messi could do with a look at this video – our own Nikhita Chulani sifts the data in search of the perfect penalty.
Just in, from AP.
Continue reading...Rachel Reeves ignored Ed Davey’s request to block Reform UK leader’s resignation until conclusion of standards inquiry
For anyone involved in British politics, an invitation to be interviewed on Radio 4’s Today programme is the ultimate badge of seriousness. There are probably hundreds of MPs who have never made it onto the programme because they have not been deemed important enough.
But, as if to prove the point that the Clacton byelection really is a “farce” (see 7.59am), this morning Today had an interview with Count Binface, the serial joke byelection candidate who may turn out to be Nigel Farage’s main opposition in Clacton.
Probably not, but then you know my job is to celebrate and defend the wonders of British democracy.
And look at this, eh? The fact that you are interviewing me on the Today Programme, because all the other parties aren’t standing, says more about them than it does about me.
I don’t believe that single-handedly will tackle homophobia, racism or indeed any hate crime. But I do strongly believe that returning power back to people’s hands is a huge part of the role we should all be playing as elected public servants – and it’s how we build trust again.
Continue reading...In a rare move, Andy Beshear sent a note to the Republican senator’s staff requesting an update on the 84-year-old’s condition since he was hospitalized on 14 June
During a bilateral meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Nato summit in Ankara, Donald Trump was asked about Iran, and he repeated his earlier criticism.
On Wednesday, while speaking to reporters alongside Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, Trump said that memorandum of understanding signed last month by the US and Iran is “over”, in the wake of the latest strikes.
Continue reading...Brent crude benchmark rose to more than $78 a barrel, its steepest increase since ceasefire began
Oil markets have recorded the sharpest price rise in nearly two months after a series of attacks on fossil fuel tankers near the strait of Hormuz led Donald Trump to declare that the ceasefire deal with Iran was “over”.
Brent, the global crude benchmark rose by 5% on Wednesday to more than $78 (£58) a barrel, the highest price since the US and Iran agreed the ceasefire while negotiating an end to the war last month.
Continue reading...How to hit the 3.5% of GDP defence spending promise would be a matter for ‘the next prime minister’, MPs told
The Treasury has as yet carried out no analysis of the trade-offs necessary for the UK to hit the 3.5% of GDP defence spending promise made to Nato, chief secretary Lucy Rigby has said.
Under robust questioning in a joint session of the Treasury and defence select committees on Wednesday, Rigby repeatedly said that how to fund additional defence spending would be a matter for “the next prime minister”.
Continue reading...President Trump has made it clear the U.S. and Turkey are friends — better friends than some other NATO allies.
US president says a ‘lot of progress’ has been made on ending war after meeting on sidelines of summit in Ankara
And that ends their short briefing, with Trump saying he will be back later, and Rutte desperately throwing in that he will also do a press conference if anyone is interested in it please.
Trump also heaps praise on Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, praising the Turkish military might, and, amusingly, out of nowhere praises China, too.
Continue reading..."A little birdie told me this, about the fact that we'll give them the right to make Patriots," President Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Early flight data show K2 Airways plane crashed into sea with five crew on board south-west of Karachi
Pakistan has located the wreckage of a Boeing cargo plane, the country’s airports authority said, adding that rescuers were searching for the five crew members on board when the aircraft went missing.
The plane was approaching Karachi from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates when radar showed it “rapidly descending” on Tuesday evening after reporting a “navigational system issue”, according to the Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA).
Continue reading...Suit stemmed from 2023 Post article that said bank with ties to the porn industry helped fund Trump’s media operation
A federal judge in Florida has thrown out Donald Trump’s $3.8bn defamation lawsuit against the Washington Post over an article that said a bank with links to the pornography industry helped fund his fledgling social media operation.
In a brief order granting summary judgment to the newspaper, Tampa district court judge Thomas Patrick Barber, a Trump appointee, said the Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) had “failed to present evidence that would allow a jury to find by clear and convincing evidence” that the Post acted with actual malice, the benchmark for such an action to succeed.
Continue reading...John Edwards resigned in June after independent investigation following claims of sexual harassment and bullying
The UK information commissioner who resigned over sexual harassment and bullying claims is understood to be taking legal action against a woman who flagged his conduct.
The science and technology secretary, Liz Kendall, said she was “appalled” by the fact that John Edwards was preparing to serve legal papers on one of the “incredibly brave” women at the ICO who had raised concerns about his behaviour. Edwards resigned from his post as the UK’s data regulator in June after an independent investigation.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: An Australian beach community was confused -- and later delighted -- by the discovery of six metallic-looking spheres that washed ashore last week. The mystery, and the ensuing attention, prompted a bunch of alien jokes from local residents and businesses. But Australia's space agency put the speculation to rest on Monday, saying that the spheres appeared to be rocket debris that had recently re-entered the atmosphere from orbit. The objects were found on Forrest Beach in the northeastern state of Queensland over the weekend, the state's fire department said. Residents described them as being about twice the size of a basketball. "The recovered objects appear to be pressure vessels from a space launch vehicle," the Australian Space Agency said in a statement, adding that they were "consistent with debris from a foreign rocket body." The agency said that it had identified the likely source of the objects, without providing further details, and was working with international authorities to confirm the vehicle from which the debris originated.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Maine’s embattled US Senate nominee has faced calls to withdraw after a sexual assault allegation he denies
Graham Platner, the embattled Democratic nominee for US Senate in Maine, has been accused of trying to influence the process of picking his replacement amid a chorus of calls for him to withdraw from the race.
Platner has publicly said he is “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward” after an allegation of sexual assault, which he denied, was published on Monday.
Continue reading...Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear formally requested an update from Sen. Mitch McConnell amid a weekslong hospitalization that has prompted growing speculation about his health.
It was a dramatic departure from Trump’s more acerbic tone toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he once derided as ungrateful.
Image of man in underwear, blindfold and bound to iron rod has been widely shared on social media
An Israeli soldier’s photo of a Palestinian man from Gaza stripped to his underwear, blindfolded and bound face-down to an iron rod corroborates extensive reporting on Israeli torture of Palestinians in detention and itself may constitute a war crime, rights groups have said.
The image was shared on a now-deleted personal social media account, with the Hebrew-language caption “good morning”. It was brought to wider public attention by a Palestinian writer and activist who goes by Tamer.
Continue reading...LEMONT, Ill, July 8, 2026 — Computers have made it easier than ever before to design the perfect material for a given problem: Scientists can create a virtual version and simulate how that material will behave. Building these atomically precise simulations, however, typically requires deep expertise in computational chemistry. At the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, researchers have developed a kind of shortcut, streamlining scientific workflows using artificial intelligence (AI).
The team leveraged ALCF’s Aurora exascale supercomputer to run the computationally intensive quantum chemistry simulations integrated into ChemGraph. Image credit: Argonne National Laboratory.
ChemGraph is an open-source, publicly available framework that automates some of the steps required when performing calculations for materials science and chemistry. This could help accelerate efforts such as boosting engine efficiency, extracting critical materials and making better batteries. The framework was described recently in the journal Communications Chemistry.
The team developed ChemGraph using resources at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), including the Aurora exascale supercomputer and the ALCF Inference Service, a first-of-its-kind platform that gives researchers cloud-like access to a broad range of large language models (LLMs) on the facility’s high performance computing systems. The ALCF is a DOE Office of Science user facility.
A Team of AI Assistants for Complex Science
ChemGraph’s purpose is to lower the barriers to innovation for both scientists and students. Let’s say you want to design a gas turbine engine that derives more power from less fuel. For that, you need to understand various aspects of methane combustion, such as the exact conditions that will help get the most value out of the gas. Computer simulations will help answer questions about how methane molecules behave as they go through the combustion process.
Running such simulations often requires a doctorate degree’s worth of knowledge and dozens of steps. You need the theoretical background to know which scientific methods to use for a study. You need to identify which software is compatible with those methods. You must then prepare your input file (the data) and navigate the software to get results. Then you will put those results into a separate tool for further analysis, running sequential calculations, fine-tuning parameters and comparing results along the way before arriving at a conclusion. This is your workflow.
Materials scientists and chemists have the theoretical and experimental background to write research papers and carry out real-world experiments, but they may not have the technical savvy or staff to run these workflows. ChemGraph assigns different parts of a workflow to agents, which are akin to assistants that specialize in different tasks, such as planning, executing work or aggregating data.
Argonne’s Murat Keçeli and Thang Duc Pham (seated) review results using ChemGraph, an AI-driven framework designed to streamline computational chemistry and materials science workflows. Image credit: Argonne National Laboratory.
About a decade ago, Argonne computational scientist Murat Keçeli had already been working on automating some of the tasks involved in chemistry through rule-based automation. Computer scientists have long used this strategy to achieve leaps in productivity — at its most basic, think of macros on a computer that can bundle steps together and execute them in one keystroke. In 2017, during his postdoctoral work with Argonne Distinguished Fellow Stephen Klippenstein’s group, Keçeli developed the Quantum Thermochemistry Calculator, a series of coded modules for thermochemistry calculations, before moving on to other projects.
Then ChatGPT, the generative AI powered by LLMs, emerged in late 2022. “When this large language model breakthrough happened, I thought, ‘I should go back to that workflow automation,’” Keçeli said. “Basically, we wanted to put all of our expert knowledge about workflows into an agent-based automation that you could talk to through an LLM.”
ChemGraph uses LLMs to provide a natural language interface to its agent-based automation. A researcher can state the scientific problem in plain language, and the framework maps that request onto a sequence of computational tasks, software tools and analyses needed to produce the result.
Argonne researchers designed ChemGraph to call only the right types of tools and libraries to minimize the risk of hallucination, a well-known phenomenon in which generative AI fabricates answers.
“We don’t want the large language model to just answer the questions,” said Thang Duc Pham, an Argonne postdoctoral fellow and ChemGraph co-creator. “We want it to run physics-based simulations and get an answer for you, instead of just relying on what it knows.” He noted that this capability is also useful in cases where a problem has not been studied yet and new data is needed for a hypothesis.
ChemGraph complements DOE’s Genesis Mission, a national initiative to accelerate science through AI. Even when computational chemists run simulations, problems inevitably surface somewhere along the workflow, Keçeli noted. ChemGraph aims to simplify a complicated process and minimize hassle so that scientists can focus on their research goals.
Force Multipliers: AI Agents, Human Collaborators and ALCF
The ChemGraph team, which also included Aditya Tanikanti (a former Argonne computer scientist now at DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory), initially built the framework with a single agent. But they saw that it began to fail when problems reached a certain level of complexity. They also realized that some tasks could be handled by smaller language models, while others required more sophisticated reasoning LLMs. Multiple agents could do the same job more efficiently.
“If you use only one type of LLM for everything, then you risk wasting money and allotted compute time,” Keçeli said. “We found that we could start with a big model for workflow planning and then revert to smaller models for execution tasks.”
The team used ALCF’s Inference Service to access powerful open-weight models on facility systems rather than through external cloud providers, helping reduce cost and address data-security concerns. They also leveraged the Aurora supercomputer to run the computationally demanding quantum chemistry simulations embedded in ChemGraph, underscoring the complementary roles of AI inference and large-scale high performance computing in the framework.
With its ability to make computational chemistry more accessible, ChemGraph is already seeing interest at universities. Professors can use it as a teaching tool and students can use it to explore their own research questions. Because ChemGraph is open source, it is also adaptable to tasks beyond the ones in the initial release.
“We have already added one new feature to ChemGraph through a hackathon last fall, and as we collaborate with more people, we are hoping to expand ChemGraph’s capabilities beyond our own expertise,” Pham said.
In one recent collaboration at Argonne, researchers adapted ChemGraph for X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) simulation and analysis, helping automate a spectroscopy workflow from user requests through simulation, data processing and curation. In another effort with ALCF researchers, ChemGraph was extended to coordinate a high-throughput materials screening workflow on Aurora, demonstrating a path toward scalable, AI-driven scientific automation on exascale supercomputers.
Ultimately, the goal of any scientific simulation is to obtain results that translate to a real-world advance. This is the promise of autonomous discovery: Better simulations on computers translate to fewer failed experiments in the lab, bringing ideas to life faster.
“Our dream for ChemGraph is to make it available as a service for ALCF users through a chatbot-style interface,” Keçeli said. “In the long run, we hope to make it increasingly autonomous, able to plan, execute and refine complex computational workflows with minimal user intervention, so scientists can focus on the scientific questions they want to answer.”
Work on ChemGraph was supported by DOE’s Office of Science.
Source: Christina Nunez, Argonne National Laboratory
The post Argonne Team’s ChemGraph Unlocks AI for Chemistry and Materials Science appeared first on HPCwire.
Brent crude spikes to a daily high of $79.26, gas prices rise, stock markets slide and government bond yields surge on inflation and rate hike fears
Summer holiday bookings have bounced back recently after the fragile ceasefire in the Middle East, the package holiday operator Jet2 has said.
The company, which flies about 20 million people every year, said its summer bookings are up by 7.1% compared with this time last year and the average load factor – which measures its available seating capacity filled with paying passengers – is up 1.2 percentage points.
There is still a massive amount of people who want to go away. But they have delayed their purchase because they wanted to see what happened with the conflict.
The market is now in good shape, and consumers are desperate to go away and perhaps sleep in a room with air conditioning.
Turkey, Cyprus, eastern Greek islands, Bulgaria and parts of north Africa have rebounded the most in percentage terms, but all destinations have increased.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Andrew Bailey says no policy changes were made as a result of pressure from crypto tycoon-backed Reform leader
The governor of the Bank of England has broken his silence about the pressure Nigel Farage put on him to drop a cryptocurrency policy that could be costly for Reform UK’s billionaire backer, saying he is “able to spot” and resist lobbying.
Andrew Bailey’s comments, in a letter seen by the Guardian, come as Farage’s decision not to disclose a £5m gift from the Thailand-based crypto tycoon Christopher Harborne has triggered the biggest crisis of his political career.
Continue reading...Meta said it was working with officials to be a ‘good neighbor’ and drinking water supplies were not affected
Officials in Wyoming said a contractor for Mark Zuckerberg’s tech company, Meta, flushed bacteria-contaminated water into public sewers during construction of a controversial new AI datacenter.
The incident prompted water authorities in Cheyenne to implement strict safety regulations on how wastewater from such projects is disposed of, according to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, which first reported the incident.
Continue reading...ESPOO, Finland, July 8, 2026 — The LUMI AI Factory, led by CSC – IT Center for Science, has selected IQM Quantum Computers to deliver IQM Halocene H4, an advanced quantum computer aimed at accelerating hybrid high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing capabilities.
MI AI Factory selects IQM to deploy advanced quantum computer, accelerating hybrid HPC and AI development.
IQM Halocene H4 is the first and most advanced on-premises superconducting quantum computer of its kind, combining quantum error correction with NISQ qubits. The system will be delivered in 2027, followed by a series of upgrades delivered in multiple phases with an increasing number of logical qubits.
The IQM Halocene H4 and the upgraded systems will enable LUMI consortium users, for the first time, to develop and implement Quantum Error Correction (QEC) concepts on a world-leading system.
The system will be used in joint R&D efforts towards fault-tolerant quantum computing and advancements in hybrid computing. This will support new inventions on the critical path to fault-tolerant quantum computing and to enable new commercialization opportunities.
This forward-looking development path ensures that European users can experiment today while preparing for fully scalable quantum platforms tomorrow. The system will also provide European end-users with the high-performance quantum computing resources needed for research and innovation, and for building national know-how and expertise.
“CSC and the LUMI AI Factory are exactly the kind of partners that define what production quantum computing looks like in practice — world-class HPC infrastructure, a deep commitment to research excellence, and the ambition to lead rather than follow,” said Jan Goetz, CEO and Co-founder, IQM Quantum Computers. “Delivering IQM Halocene to CSC means Europe’s most powerful quantum computer will sit at the heart of one of the world’s leading research computing environments. This is a milestone for IQM, CSC, for Finland, and for the European quantum ecosystem.”
The system, named LUMI-IQ, will be integrated into the LUMI AI Factory at CSC – IT Center for Science, Finland’s national center of expertise in information technology and home to the LUMI supercomputer, one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
This integration of quantum technologies with AI and high-performance computing opens the door to breakthroughs that classical computing alone cannot achieve. LUMI-IQ will comprise both hardware and software solutions, offering capabilities for research, development, and education.
“As part of the LUMI AI Factory, LUMI-IQ will bring together world-leading AI, data, high-performance computing and quantum acceleration in one powerful hybrid environment. By connecting quantum concepts and algorithms with intelligent software tools and real-world applications, it will open new possibilities for scientific discovery and RDI, from materials and health to energy and fundamental science. At the same time, it will help Europe build the knowledge, skills, and capabilities needed for the next era of innovation, including the path toward fault-tolerant quantum computing,” said Kimmo Koski, Managing Director of CSC – IT Center for Science.
“Already the first system delivered in 2027 will come with a state-of-the-art quantum processing unit (QPU) with 150 qubits. This is only the beginning, however. Over the next years, LUMI-IQ will evolve into a fault-tolerant quantum computer through a series of upgrades that increase both qubit count and performance, making the LUMI AI Factory a world-leading European hybrid platform combining AI and quantum computing,” describes Mikael Johansson, Manager for Quantum Technologies at CSC – IT Center for Science.
The LUMI-IQ quantum computer will be jointly funded by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, Finland, Czechia, Norway and Poland.
As disclosed in IQM’s prospectus on 1 July 2026, the total value of the contract is approximately equal to IQM’s total revenue for the financial year ended 31 December 2025.
This announcement follows IQM’s landmark dual listing on Nasdaq in the United States and the Helsinki Stock Exchange in Finland, making it the first European quantum computing company to be publicly traded.
IQM has sold 23 quantum systems globally — more than any other quantum hardware manufacturer — with its systems integrated into four of the leading supercomputing centers in the world.
About CSC – IT Center for Science
CSC is a Finnish center of expertise in ICT that provides world-class services for research, education, culture, public administration and enterprises, to help them thrive and benefit society at large.
About IQM Quantum Computers
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 on-premises deployment model gives customers direct ownership and control of their quantum infrastructure. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Finland, with major operations in Munich, IQM employs over 400 people and operates across Europe, Asia, and North America. IQM is the first publicly listed European quantum company on Nasdaq Stock Market.
Source: IQM
The post LUMI AI Factory Selects IQM to Deploy Advanced Quantum Computer, Accelerating Hybrid HPC and AI Development appeared first on HPCwire.
Mark Gatz was arrested at illegal campsite in June and had faced multiple citations for residing in Tonto national forest
A man in Arizona has pleaded guilty to violating federal fire restrictions and unlawfully residing in a national forest, after authorities said he spent years living at a makeshift campsite surrounded by what officials described as “approximately 1,000 pounds of trash”.
Mark Aaron Gatz was arrested on 25 June at his illegal campsite in Arizona’s Tonto national forest, according to court records. A United States Forest Service (USFS) officer wrote in documents submitted to court that Gatz had been operating an “illegal campsite” with a “hot wood burning campfire” despite fire restrictions and that he had told investigators that he had been living in the forest for about eight years.
Continue reading...Collaboration Demonstrates How Data Infrastructure Is Becoming the Key Lever for Lower Cost-Per-Token, Faster Time-to-First-Token, and Higher AI Factory Efficiency
PARIS, July 8, 2026 — DDN today announced continued progress in its collaboration with Nebul, a European leader in providing sovereign-hybrid cloud solutions, to optimize large-scale AI inference performance through advanced KV Cache acceleration and high-performance data infrastructure.
The collaboration brings together Nebul’s AI inference platform, DDN’s Infinia data intelligence architecture, and NVIDIA accelerated computing technologies to address one of the most important challenges facing production AI environments: maximizing the economic return on AI infrastructure investments through higher GPU utilization, faster token generation, and lower cost-per-token.
As AI adoption moves from experimentation to production, organizations are confronting a new reality: the challenge is no longer whether AI works, but whether the economics work at scale.
Across the industry, enterprises, cloud providers, and sovereign AI initiatives are increasingly measuring success through business outcomes such as GPU utilization, cost-per-token, tokens-per-watt, and time-to-production. In this environment, data infrastructure has emerged as a critical determinant of AI profitability.
“The AI conversation has fundamentally changed,” said Alex Bouzari, CEO and Co-Founder at DDN. “For years, the industry focused on acquiring GPUs. Today, the question is how efficiently those GPUs generate value. Inference has become the economic engine of AI, and reducing the cost of every token produced is now one of the most important challenges facing the industry.”
As part of an ongoing proof-of-concept engagement, DDN and Nebul are validating next-generation KV Cache acceleration capabilities designed to support NVIDIA DSX-based AI factory deployments by improving inference efficiency, reducing latency, and increasing utilization of AI infrastructure.
“For years, the industry focused on building larger models. Today, the challenge is making those models economically viable in production,” said Arnold Juffer, CEO at Nebul. “Every organization is looking for ways to generate more value from its AI infrastructure investments. Through our collaboration with DDN and NVIDIA, we are demonstrating how KV Cache optimization and high-performance data architectures can improve inference efficiency, reduce latency, and help unlock the next phase of AI adoption.”
“AI infrastructure is increasingly defined by efficiency at scale,” said Rod Evans, Vice President of Cloud Infrastructure at NVIDIA. “As organizations deploy larger models and agentic AI workloads into production, technologies that improve GPU utilization, reduce latency, and accelerate token generation become critical. DDN continues to be an important collaborator in advancing the data and infrastructure capabilities needed to support the next generation of AI factories.”
Recent benchmarking efforts have demonstrated promising early results, including measurable improvements in Time-to-First-Token (TTFT) performance with KV Cache enabled. The collaboration has successfully completed RoCE-based infrastructure validation and continues to expand benchmarking activities across larger inference sequence lengths while identifying additional optimization opportunities within DDN’s Infinia platform.
The project has also expanded to include collaboration with NVIDIA around benchmarking methodologies, scalability validation, and future technical publications.
The Economics of AI Have Shifted
Industry attention has historically centered on model performance and GPU availability. However, as organizations deploy AI into production, a new bottleneck has emerged: data movement and inference efficiency.
Agentic AI workloads, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and large-scale inference environments place unprecedented demands on infrastructure, including networking and storage. Every millisecond of latency and every percentage point of GPU idle time directly impacts profitability.
“Training builds the asset. Inference is where it earns,” said Bouzari. “The next generation of AI applications will be powered by agents that perform meaningful business transactions and decisions. The economics of those systems depend on infrastructure that can deliver data at the speed AI operates.”
DDN’s Infinia platform was purpose-built to address these challenges through distributed KV Cache services, GPU-native data movement, intelligent data orchestration, and high-performance storage architectures that maximize accelerator efficiency.
Accelerating the AI Factory Era
The Nebul collaboration reinforces DDN’s broader vision that AI infrastructure must evolve beyond traditional storage architectures and become an active participant in AI execution.
The collaboration supports the broader NVIDIA DSX platform approach to AI factories, where compute, networking, storage, software, and operations are designed together to improve tokens-per-watt, cost-per-token, and time-to-production.
As organizations seek to operationalize AI at scale, DDN believes the defining metrics of success will increasingly become:
Organizations that optimize these metrics will achieve sustainable AI economics. Those who do not risk deploying infrastructure that remains underutilized despite significant investment.
“We don’t sell storage,” Bouzari added. “We help organizations maximize the economic return on every GPU, every token, and every watt. That’s the foundation of the AI economy.”
For more information about AI inference economics, visit DDN at RAISE or visit https://www.ddn.com/lp/events/raise-2026/book-a-meeting.
About DDN
DDN is the world’s leading AI and data intelligence company, powering the world’s most demanding AI workloads by keeping GPUs fed, efficient, and productive—at massive scale—so organizations can train, checkpoint, and infer faster with less footprint and power while achieving tremendous ROI from their AI investments. From hyperscalers and next-gen cloud builders to enterprises, governments, and research institutions, DDN delivers proven data intelligence at exabyte scale across millions of GPUs—so customers can deploy AI with confidence, accelerate time-to-value, and realize outsized returns. Discover more at ddn.com.
Source: DDN
The post DDN, Nebul, and NVIDIA Advance AI Inference Economics with KV Cache Acceleration appeared first on HPCwire.
Activist is challenging ruling last year that restored colonial-era homophobic law against same-sex intimacy
Some of the UK’s top judges are hearing arguments over whether a Trinidad and Tobago court had the legal right to overturn a 2018 ruling to remove colonial-era homophobic laws that criminalise anal sex between consenting men.
The country’s “buggery law”, often referred to as its “sodomy” law, was created in 1925 and was written into Trinidad and Tobago’s 1986 Sexual Offences Act. In 2017 a Trinidadian LGBTQ+ rights activist, Jason Jones, challenged the law, and in 2018 a high court ruled that it infringed upon his constitutional right to privacy and equality.
Continue reading...Nearly a quarter of market traders now hold master’s degree, PhD or medical doctorate, research shows
One in five young market traders now holds a master’s degree, PhD or medical doctorate, according to exclusive figures shared with the Guardian, in a sign of how Britain’s markets are attracting an unexpected new generation of highly educated entrepreneurs.
Separate data from Kerb, the street food collective behind some of London’s best-known food markets, points in the same direction. Almost three-quarters of its founders have university degrees, including one in four with postgraduate qualifications. About 95% work in their businesses full-time rather than treating them as weekend side hustles.
Continue reading...Daily realities of healthcare, prices and Gaza driving wave of anti-establishment sentiment among Democratic voters in closely watched contest
In Macomb county, Michigan – a blue-collar Detroit suburb that twice voted for Barack Obama before backing each of Donald Trump’s three runs for the US presidency – residents are exhausted.
Time and again, township trustee Shannon King, a Democrat still making up his mind, hears similar complaints. “You’re going backwards in your paycheck. You’re going backwards in your healthcare,” he said. “You go to work every day. You might have a side hustle. Your significant other has a side hustle, too. And you’re still struggling to do childcare.”
Continue reading...Commentary: Can Valve make a game console? Oh yes it can, but it's an imperfect mix at the moment. Still, there are parts that impress.
Debt relief promises a fresh start, but the fine print actually determines how much debt disappears in the process.
Hotel did not allow two Muslim women to wear full-body bathing suit, which has become bugbear of European far right
An Austrian court has found an alpine hotel’s ban on burkinis discriminatory, a politically explosive ruling in a country where the far right is on the rise.
The full-body bathing suit worn by some Muslim women has become a bugbear of the European far right, which has campaigned to restrict Muslim dress in public spaces.
Continue reading...July 8, 2026 — Energy storage is becoming critical to grid resilience and electricity affordability because battery systems can help balance supply and demand and stabilize power.
High-performance computing helps show how design, operation affect lifespan and savings.
Long battery lifetimes are key to unlocking those benefits. But that requires understanding how project design and operation affect stress on large-scale battery systems over hundreds of cycles — before spending the time and money to deploy them.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are tackling this problem by coupling high performance computing (HPC) with a physics-based modeling framework to rapidly evaluate how different operating strategies affect battery aging over time. The result is a powerful computational tool for designing megawatt-hour battery storage systems so they will last longer and reduce costs.
A full battery pack — what most people think of as a battery — is made up of modules filled with many battery cells. The ORNL modeling framework starts with cell-level aging simulation, then scales up to module- and pack-level performance. This multiscale approach enables optimization of electrical architecture, control strategies and operating schedules.
HPC Speeds Insight into Battery Wear
ORNL’s approach relies on high performance computing for detailed analysis of battery degradation after 500-1,000 operating cycles, delivering results in days instead of weeks, said Srikanth Allu, ORNL computational research scientist. The flexible, reusable framework can simulate more than 10,000 cells at once and accommodate multiple chemistries of lithium-ion batteries, the technology most widely used for grid-scale storage.
Previous approaches for predicting degradation in lithium-ion systems often relied on cell-level studies or simplified assumptions. These did not fully reflect how battery aging is influenced by system-level designs and real-world operating conditions driven by different uses of batteries in the grid.
The ORNL model simulated two common grid energy storage services: reducing energy costs and stabilizing the frequency of changes in electric current flow.
To regulate frequency, batteries receive signals from operators to provide rapid, short bursts of power every few seconds. Momentary swings in supply or demand can destabilize frequency, but batteries quickly provide balancing. This service involves frequent, shallow cycling.
In contrast, when used to reduce energy costs during high-demand periods, batteries draw on stored energy with deeper, more energy-intensive cycles. Researchers found that this operating profile wears down the battery faster.
Battery systems can be used for a single grid service or a combination. ORNL simulations showed that using them for multiple services can balance near-term savings with long-term battery lifetime and replacement costs.
“We found that these two applications drive different degradation pathways within the battery, highlighting how operating conditions influence aging at the material level,” said Allu. “The simulations provide new insight into why batteries may degrade at different rates and point to opportunities to design battery systems that better balance performance, lifetime, and economic return.”
Simulations Show What’s Outside The Battery Matters Too
The model also showed that aging varies among battery cells and across entire battery packs. Because of both inherent design differences and varied operation for different tasks, low-voltage systems showed more aging variation than high-voltage systems. The results highlight the importance of electrical architecture and interconnections in determining how degradation evolves across large-scale battery systems.
Allu said the next step in the research would be to extend the framework to additional battery formulations and more realistic operating conditions, including varied designs, different states of health and a wider range of temperatures. In the future, the approach could also be adapted to study battery performance across a broader range of grid and energy storage applications, such as battery support for AI data centers.
“Simulations at this scale can significantly reduce the need for costly, time-intensive, full-system testing to evaluate battery aging,” Allu said.
The ORNL team used the data from this research as the basis for a foundational model that further speeds up aging analysis to hours instead of weeks or months. This effort supports the DOE’s Genesis Mission, a national initiative to build the world’s most powerful scientific platform to accelerate discovery science, strengthen national security, and drive energy innovation.
Other researchers who contributed to the project include Michael Starke, head of ORNL’s Electrical Systems Integration Section, and former postdoctoral researcher Surya Mitra Ayalasomayajula. The team received a Best Paper Award at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Electrical Energy Storage Application and Technologies Conference earlier this year for their work describing the project. The research was funded by DOE’s Office of Electricity.
By combining leadership-class high performance computing with expertise in battery materials and grid systems, ORNL can model battery behavior from individual cells to full systems, at a range of scale and detail not typically achievable elsewhere.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
Source: S. Heather Duncan, ORNL
The post ORNL: Modeling Framework Reveals Grid Battery Aging Effects appeared first on HPCwire.
Oil prices jumped 6% while U.S. stocks fell as renewed Middle East conflict threatens crude shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.
Ceasefire appears close to unravelling after three commercial vessels are hit and two militaries target each other
Iran has accused the US of violating the agreement intended to end the war between the two countries and Donald Trump has said he thinks the ceasefire is over after Washington launched strikes around the strait of Hormuz and revoked a temporary sanctions waiver for Tehran to export oil.
Speaking at the Nato summit in Turkey, Trump said: “They can talk, but I think they’re wasting their time … They’re a bunch of liars … They’re liars, they’re cheaters, they’re sick people.”
Continue reading...OpenAI says its flagship model for ChatGPT should make fewer mistakes.
As alliance gathers in Ankara, European leaders have an informal strategy to try to keep US president on side
Nato leaders have informally agreed not to mention the football World Cup to Donald Trump for fear of irritating the US president at a crucial time for the military alliance.
Officials said European leaders had discussed in the sidelines of the summit in Ankara how to keep Trump on side amid concerns he could further destabilise Nato with threats over defence spending.
Continue reading...Yes, you should absolutely marathon them.
Political campaigns are increasingly deploying AI and deepfakes to further their messaging, and the scale of spread has experts concerned
From the comfort of his bed, Jonathan Rinaldi, a political candidate for a city council seat in Queens, New York, tinkered away on his iPhone, prompting an artificial intelligence chatbot to mock up fake news hits and endorsements he had never received.
During the campaign last October, Rinaldi shared one of those stories, made to appear real with a CNN logo, on his Facebook and Instagram. It stated that Lynn Schulman, his opponent and an incumbent Democrat, had been “forced to drop out of the race due to a series of critical mistakes”. But Schulman had not quit her campaign, and in November, won by a landslide.
Continue reading...July update projects GDP growth of 1% this year, making UK the third fastest-growing economy in the G7
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has upgraded its growth forecast for the UK, while leaving those for other G7 countries weaker or unchanged, amid hopes the economic impact of the Iran war may be less severe than feared.
In a July update of its World Economic Outlook, which was finalised before the latest outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East, the Washington-based organisation projected UK gross domestic product to grow by 1% this year – up 0.2 percentage points from its April forecast.
Continue reading...The Washington-based publication is announcing plans for a new digital subscription product called the Hill Insider
The most-visited digital-first news publication dedicated to politics wasn’t Politico or Axios in May – it was the Hill, a Washington-based outlet that also still publishes a print product three days a week that gets delivered to the office of every member of Congress.
While the Hill is often left out of conversations about the most influential political news outlets, the publication has been quietly chugging along since it was acquired by the television conglomerate Nexstar in 2021 for $130m. Bill Sammon, the Fox News veteran who serves as senior vice-president for editorial content, said the Hill was profitable and had benefited from a surge of interest in the second Trump administration.
Continue reading...Far-right leader plans to take part in 2027 race despite appeal court upholding her conviction for embezzlement
The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has launched her presidential campaign after a decision by a court of appeal shortened her ban on running for office, allowing her to take part in the 2027 vote.
Le Pen said voters would decide her future. “I’m a citizen like anyone else, who is using their rights,” she said on Wednesday, attempting to brush aside legal woes that her political opponents said would plague her campaign for next spring’s presidential election.
Continue reading...Hostilities between US and Iran resume as US president lashes out at ‘vicious, violent people’. Plus the fallout from the USMNT’s exit from the Fifa World Cup
Good morning. Hostilities have resumed between the US and Iran. Tehran accused the US of violating the agreement intended to end the war, after the US military launched strikes around the strait of Hormuz and revoked a temporary sanctions waiver for Iranian oil exports. The attacks were the latest in a string of ceasefire violations by the two sides, despite a truce that came into effect in April, and have led to an immediate 3% rise in oil prices.
Speaking at the Nato summit in Ankara, Donald Trump said the memorandum of understanding with Iran was over and called the country’s leaders “vicious, violent people” whom he would not deal with because they were, in the US president’s words, “scum”. He nevertheless appeared to indicate that talks would continue. Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, backed the US attacks, saying: “When you have a ceasefire and Iran is basically violating the ceasefire, I think it is totally crucial that the US forcefully react.”
What occurred to break the fragile ceasefire? The US military said that it had hit more than 80 targets in the early hours of Wednesday in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels passing through the strait of Hormuz on Tuesday. Iran responded by launching attacks on US military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said 85 facilities had been targeted.
How could Democrats replace Platner? It is possible for Democrats to select a new Senate nominee in Maine, but the clock is ticking. To have a new candidate on the ballot for November’s midterm elections, Platner needs to end his campaign by 5pm ET on 13 July, according to state law. That would give the Democrats a two-week window – until 5pm ET on 27 July – to pick a replacement.
Continue reading...Team manager and security member missed match
Incident may have been related to Balogun controversy
Two US Soccer staff members were suspended by Fifa for their team’s World Cup defeat to Belgium on Monday.
Team manager Sam Zapatka and US Soccer vice-president of security Frank Pannell weren’t allowed at the match. Fifa has not given a specific reason for the suspensions.
Continue reading...The head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division sent letters to election officials in all 50 states threatening criminal action if they knowingly allow non-U.S. citizens to vote.
Can a Burnham government make Britain a global leader in science and technology? Expert comment LToremark
The next UK prime minister should make it a priority to provide strategic focus for Britain’s science and technology strategy.
Andy Burnham is near-certain to succeed Keir Starmer as UK prime minister. He will inherit a world in which technological leadership increasingly shapes economic prosperity, military capability and geopolitical influence. Emerging science and technology fields including AI, quantum technologies and engineering biology are no longer simply drivers of productivity; they are instruments of state power.
Yet despite successive governments proclaiming ambitions to make the UK a global science and technology power, Britain still lacks a sufficiently coherent strategy to compete in a fast-evolving technological landscape defined by US–China rivalry.
The UK’s challenge is not a lack of ambition, but a lack of sustained strategic focus. Over the past decade, successive governments have produced numerous science and technology-oriented strategies. But priorities have shifted with changes of leadership and ministerial reshuffles, and funding programmes have too often been replaced or redirected rather than developed into long-term national capabilities. Strategic technologies require investment horizons measured in decades, not parliamentary terms.
Britain’s aim should not be to match the scale of investment or technological breadth of the US or China. It cannot. Nor should it aspire to technological self-sufficiency. Its competitive advantage lies in identifying those technologies where it can develop genuine strategic leverage and concentrating public investment, industrial policy and international partnerships accordingly.
Doing so requires a more clear-eyed assessment of Britain’s foreign policy challenges, particularly those posed by China. Beijing is not simply another commercial competitor. Under its policy of military-civil fusion, the Chinese state actively seeks to leverage scientific and technological advances developed in civilian universities and industry for military modernization and national security objectives. As Chinese firms become increasingly embedded within global technology ecosystems, standards and supply chains, the UK’s challenge extends beyond protecting sensitive technologies from acquisition. It must also avoid creating strategic dependencies that could constrain its freedom of action during future geopolitical crises.
With limited experience in foreign policy and national security, Burnham’s approach to China remains largely untested. This creates a potential risk that the strategic implications of engagement with Beijing could be underestimated, reducing the UK’s leverage in managing an increasingly complex bilateral relationship.
Burnham would however enter Downing Street with a well-developed vision for industrial renewal. Throughout his time as mayor of Greater Manchester, he has argued for a more active state role in supporting high-growth sectors, including AI, life sciences, advanced materials and manufacturing. He championed plans to ‘reindustrialize the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution’ and emphasized the need for a broader national reindustrialization strategy that spreads high-value jobs and investment beyond the UK’s major urban centres.
The key question will be whether Burnham can translate this vision into government policy amid fiscal constraints and competing political priorities. His government would also need to balance ambitious industrial objectives against the increasingly important national security dimensions of science and technology policy – in particular with relation to China.
To ensure the UK remains competitive in coming decades, the next government should focus on three key areas.
The first task should be to replace fragmented technology policymaking with long-term strategic discipline. Britain’s 2023 national quantum strategy provides a useful model. Rather than setting broad aspirations, it identified areas of comparative advantage, established measurable objectives and integrated economic growth with national security considerations. A similar approach should be applied across other strategically important technologies, particularly AI, engineering biology, advanced semiconductors, advanced communications and advanced materials.
The capacity to turn research and innovation into globally dominant firms also deserves attention. Despite producing world-class research and technology start-ups, Britain has repeatedly struggled to scale innovative firms domestically. Too often, companies developed in the UK are forced to seek overseas capital as they grow, limiting Britain’s ability to capture the long-term economic and strategic benefits of its own innovation. More targeted and consolidated pension fund investment into high-growth technology firms, alongside deeper collaboration with trusted international partners, would help ensure that more of the value created by British innovation can be leveraged for the UK’s advantage.
The pace of technological change and geopolitical competition means science and technology policy cannot remain reactive. It demands a permanent capability to identify and bolster Britain’s strengths in emerging technologies – before they become strategic vulnerabilities or missed economic opportunities.
A future government should therefore establish a cross-government technology forecasting and horizon-scanning capability within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, working closely with the Government Office for Science and the national security community. Building on the model of the now defunct National Security Technology and Innovation Exchange, its role should be to continuously map and assess emerging technologies, identify areas where the UK can develop competitive advantage, anticipate future technological dependencies, and inform decisions on investment, industrial strategy and national security.
Britain’s universities are among the country’s greatest strategic assets. They generate world-leading research, attract global talent and underpin innovation across many of the technologies that will shape future economic competitiveness and national security.
But these strengths also make them attractive targets for foreign states seeking to acquire cutting-edge intellectual property, scientific expertise and emerging technologies. This challenge is particularly acute in relation to China. In 2023, the Five Eyes intelligence chiefs issued a rare joint warning about China’s ‘sustained, scaled and sophisticated’ efforts to obtain sensitive research, expertise and intellectual property. Increasingly, knowledge generated through legitimate academic collaboration can be transferred – deliberately or inadvertently – into China’s military, intelligence or strategic programmes.
At the same time, the financial pressures facing UK universities are increasing their exposure to risk. Frozen domestic tuition fees, combined with public research funding that often fail to cover research costs, have left many institutions increasingly reliant on international student fee income. While international collaboration remains essential to scientific excellence, financial pressures can create incentives to pursue overseas partnerships and funding arrangements without fully accounting for their long-term strategic implications.
Two police officers saw possible signs of life, but the child was still taken to the hospital's "cold room" after being treated by staff, according to police documents.
The suspects posted videos of their attacks and referred to women as "cars," sedatives as "fuel" and rape as "driving," according to court documents.
The president declared an end to the truce at a NATO summit in Turkey after the U.S. and Iran exchanged dozens of strikes overnight, raising the prospect of major renewed hostilities.
Three families in Los Angeles on the devastating aftermath of ICE detentions and deportations that overwhelmed their city last summer
Last summer, Angelenos began to vanish.
Armed, masked immigration agents plucked people off street corners and out of their workplaces, in parking lots and department stores. Partners and primary breadwinners, grandparents and children, carwasheros and coffee shop regulars were arrested, detained and deported – disappearing from their neighborhoods.
Continue reading...Modern forensic analysis leads to arrest in murder of traveling salesman John Warren, authorities say
Items that were found discarded behind a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Georgia in 1985 have led to charges against a suspect in an Ohio killing committed at about that time, investigators announced recently.
As told by authorities, the case centering on killed traveling salesman John Warren is among the latest in the US criminal justice system to illustrate how the application of modern forensic testing techniques on evidence collected decades earlier can lead to closure of cold murder cases.
Continue reading...You can now own the NordicTrack Ultra 1 Reformer and never pay for a Pilates class again.
The blockbuster video game movie hits streaming this month.
DuckDuckGo says its browser now blocks most video ads, including those on YouTube.
President calls Iranian leadership ‘scum’, rails against alliance, repeats demand for Greenland and threatens Spain
Donald Trump has declared that the ceasefire with Iran is over as he arrived at the Nato summit in Ankara, launching an angry broadside in which he complained about the military alliance and repeated his demand for Greenland.
The US president, sitting alongside the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, called Iran’s leadership scum and “sick people”, and added that he was “very upset” with the alliance and even threatened to cut off all trade with Spain in a row over defence spending.
Continue reading...VW to propose 100,000 job losses to board and says car plants could be put under foreign ownership to save jobs
The German car industry has warned of a potential collapse of employment in the sector in Europe unless society and workers accept that “bold decisions” are needed to address competition from the Chinese and other rivals.
Volkswagen is preparing to formally propose up to 100,000 job losses to its supervisory board on Thursday, a move that has triggered a wave of protests.
Continue reading...Turns out, there’s one food item you don’t want to throw in your dishwasher.
Ofcom levies largest-ever consumer protection fine after finding firm deliberately mishandled millions of phone calls
Virgin Media has been fined £28m by the UK telecoms watchdog for repeatedly preventing customers from cancelling their contracts over a near three-year period.
Ofcom discovered that Virgin Media “likely mishandled” millions of phone calls between the start of 2022 and autumn 2024, with deliberate call-dropping tactics, unnecessary call transfers and putting customers on hold for “no reason”.
Continue reading...Group blames expected £30m loss in first half of year on weakening market and lower consumer confidence
Vistry Group, one of Britain’s biggest housebuilders, has warned it will make a loss in the first half of the year, after it resorted to heavy discounting to attract buyers for unsold homes .
Vistry shares fell by 8% after the firm also announced its finance director was leaving.
Continue reading...A preliminary hearing to establish whether there is enough evidence against Tyler James Robinson for the case to proceed to trial enters Day 3 in Utah.
Exclusive: Bankers have raised potential money-laundering concerns over loans and donations involving senior party figures
A host of transactions involving Reform UK’s most senior figures and donations to the party caused bankers to report potential money-laundering concerns to the National Crime Agency, a Guardian investigation has found.
On Tuesday, the Guardian revealed that the undisclosed £5m gift provided to the Reform leader, Nigel Farage, by a cryptocurrency billionaire shortly before the 2024 general election was reported to the NCA.
One relates to a £1m donation made to Britain Means Business, a fundraising organisation for Reform UK, before the last general election. Half of the £1m was then transferred by Tice, as director of the company, to Reform UK. Renamed from Leave Means Leave, Britain Means Business is a company that is used to help fund Reform. The £1m seemingly came from the aristocrat and Reform UK donor Fiona Cottrell. In this instance, the Guardian understands bank staff were not satisfied that the funds had ultimately come from her. The NCA has sought help from a foreign partner agency to trace the original source of the funds.
Two other SARs relate to a loan from George Cottrell to Tice. The loan was made shortly before Tice finalised a property purchase and made a party donation, and was not repaid until after those two transactions were completed, according to sources. George Cottrell is the son of Fiona Cottrell, and is a convicted fraudster, former deputy treasurer of Ukip and close associate of Farage.
A fourth relates to the £5m gift from the Thailand-based businessman Christopher Harborne to Farage, which was first revealed by the Guardian in April.
Continue reading...Explosions and flames were seen in Iran after the US military launched strikes on targets around the strait of Hormuz in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels near Oman. US officials said the strikes hit more than 80 targets, including air defence systems, command and control networks, anti-ship missile capabilities and more than 60 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats. The US also revoked a temporary sanctions waiver for Tehran to export oil. Iran accused the US of violating the agreement aimed at ending the war and responded by launching attacks on US military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait
Continue reading...Experts warn that some marine species are at risk of ‘mass mortality events’ in ever-warming oceans
UK waters are being hit with an “extreme” marine heatwave, the Met Office has said, as scientists warn that high ocean temperatures globally could result in “mass-mortality events” for some species.
The forecasters said these elevated temperatures have developed rapidly because of last month’s heat dome, during which most of Europe sweltered in its worst ever heatwave that scientists said would have been impossible without the climate crisis.
Continue reading...A Chinese industry regulator warned users of a "security backdoor" embedded in versions of U.S. artificial intelligence company Anthropic's coding tool, Claude Code.
Climate crisis prompts calls for workplace temperature limits and rights to heat breaks and adjusted working hours
As Europe’s sweltering summer continues, trades unions are mounting a push for new laws to counter deadly heat stress that is linked to an estimated 230 workplace deaths a year.
This year’s toll may be even higher, with 1,300 excess European deaths already connected to the June heatwave by the World Health Organization, and other estimates running as high as 20,000.
Continue reading...PS5, PC, Xbox Series X/S; Ubisoft Singapore/Ubisoft
Ubisoft has removed all the boring parts of pirate life from its fantasy RPG, creating something more focused and fun
Edward Kenway isn’t your dad’s Assassin’s Creed protagonist. Neither sworn to ancient oaths nor given a noble destiny, he’s just a guy who likes coin, dislikes rules, and whose gold-chasing, rule-dodging lifestyle sees him embroiled in an ancient war between Templars and assassins quite by accident. After he’s shipwrecked with a man named Walpole who turns out to be a Templar, Edward assumes Walpole’s identity in the hopes of securing the bounty he mentioned.
Edward wears life lightly. The world around him is violent and chaotic, and those in his vicinity are more obsessed with double-crossings than a Mission:Impossible movie writers’ room. Ed just smiles, undeterred by it all, and gets on with plundering. It’s all just fun and games to him, and he is set on conquering the Caribbean on his own terms. He is a brilliant extension of the player, in that way, and that’s what this remake of the 2013 pirate-themed Assassin’s Creed does so well: the sense of freedom.
Continue reading...Environmental protection agency and independent studies have found food biggest source of chemical exposure
The US Food and Drug Administration has rejected a legal petition demanding it set limits on toxic Pfas “forever chemicals” in food, marking another setback for public health advocates’ push to limit exposures to the dangerous compounds.
The agency is refusing to set limits despite a growing body of science and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finding food is the biggest source of Pfas exposure. Testing has found the levels of Pfas in single servings of some contaminated foods to be equivalent to drinking many glasses of contaminated water.
Continue reading...New Zealand startup Zenno Astronautics has completed the first orbital test of its "Supertorquer," a shoebox-sized superconducting magnet system that uses solar power and Earth's magnetic field to help control a satellite without fuel. The company says the technology could eventually support fuel-free satellite maneuvers, docking, deep-space trajectory changes, and even magnetic radiation shielding for astronauts. Space Magazine reports: The tests began shortly after Mira's launch in November last year aboard the SpaceX Transporter 12 mission and saw the shoebox-size device perform with flying colors, Zenno Astronautics CEO and founder Max Arshavsky, told Space.com. "It's a technology that allows a spacecraft to not tumble violently in space and point in the right direction," Arshavsky said. "The unit has multiple super-conducting magnets that are positioned in different axes. When we power up the magnets, they generate a magnetic field, which interacts with Earth's magnetic field, and because we can control the magnetic field on the satellite, we can control the way in which it turns with respect to Earth." Superconducting magnets are made of coils of superconducting wire that have zero electrical resistance and can therefore conduct much larger currents than normal wires. That larger current translates into a greater magnetic force. There is, however, a catch: Superconducting materials need to be cooled to extremely low temperatures to gain their wonder properties. [...] The unit housing the superconducting magnets is wrapped in layers of insulation and fitted with a heat pump that removes all the excess heat from the system. Every time the satellite needs a push, the superconducting coils power up, drawing energy from a battery charged by the satellite's solar panels. "It's converting solar energy straight into useful work," Arshavsky said. "Energy is the one thing that is abundant in space, and you can use it to energize the magnet to create a magnetic acceleration device. It gives you acceleration without fuel." In the future, Zenno Astronautics plans to launch larger systems that could enable spacecraft to dock in space or conduct close proximity operations using just the power of their solar-powered superconducting magnets. Arshavsky envisions powerful magnets that could, in the future, propel spacecraft on missions to the moon and Mars using only solar power.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For easy phone coverage when you're traveling to countries outside the US, check out these plans for the best international options.
Some officials said the outpouring of grief was intended to show the continuing close ties between Iraq and Iran despite U.S. efforts to hold sway in Baghdad.
The Democratic Party is rife with internal caucuses and factions. There’s the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Blue Dog Coalition, the “Squad,” and so on. But since 2019, when Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger first took seats in the House of Representatives, the party has had another, more sinister emerging faction: the CIA Spook Caucus.
In the last seven years, the Spook Caucus has only gained in strength. Both of its core members have graduated from the House to higher office, with Slotkin elected to the Senate in 2024 and Spanberger elected the governor of Virginia the following year. Soon afterward, Spanberger was selected by the Democratic leadership to deliver the rebuttal to Donald Trump’s 2026 State of the Union Address, which elevated her to the national stage. Slotkin, meanwhile, has floated the idea of a 2028 presidential run.
And in the 2026 midterms, the Spook Caucus might expand further: In the Democratic primary for Virginia’s 8th Congressional District, former CIA officer Adam Dunigan is running for the opportunity to challenge GOP nominee Anthony Sabio, who is also ex-CIA. But if you happen to care about concepts like “human rights” or “democracy,” this influx of intelligence operatives into our elections is extremely bad news.
Spanberger’s honeymoon period with the Virginia Democrats is already over. Less than a year into her tenure as governor, she has vetoed 31 of the General Assembly’s bills, including “high-profile Democratic priorities” like collective bargaining rights for public workers and protections against ICE agents making warrantless arrests inside courthouses. On the labor bill, local unions say Spanberger betrayed a campaign promise she’d made to them. After vetoing two bills to limit ICE arrests, the ACLU of Virginia said her actions “constitute a voluntary surrender” to the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.
But this about-face shouldn’t be surprising, because the public doesn’t really know who Abigail Spanberger is or what she believes, deep down. That’s the problem with electing a CIA officer: They’re professionally trained liars. In a 2025 interview with the Washington Post, Spanberger said she used to have five different passports and identities: “I would travel in ‘true name,’ but then I would meet people not in ‘true name.’” The profile explicitly calls this spycraft “interpersonal skills transferable to politics.” In other words, this is someone who was accustomed to saying whatever people want to hear while concealing her true intentions. So whenever she speaks to Virginia voters, they have no way of telling whether she’s “in true name” or not. The unions found that out the hard way.
As usual, then, we have to judge by actions over words. With this spring’s veto spree, Spanberger’s actions are wildly out of step with the wishes of the voters who elected her, who overwhelmingly support unions and are growing more distrustful of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Seeing your fellow Americans shot dead in the street will do that.) But the vetoes are perfectly in tune with the interests of the national security state, from the drug enforcement agents who still want to make weed busts to ICE itself. Those are Spanberger’s colleagues, and the former CIA agent has moved to protect their power to surveil and police the people she supposedly represents.
Instead, she’s reserved her harshest attacks for socialists. In 2020, after Joe Biden squeaked his way into the presidency, Spanberger told party leaders, “We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again,” a clear shot at rising left-wing leaders like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It was an intervention in the ongoing conflict over the future of the Democratic Party, intended to prevent it from ever becoming a truly progressive one — as the Bezos-owned Washington Post also noted with approval.
Hostility to socialists is baked into the institutional culture of the CIA. It’s practically the agency’s reason for existing, and over the course of the 20th century, the CIA and its handpicked dictators massacred countless socialists around the world, from overthrowing President Salvador Allende in Chile, to sponsoring terrorist attacks against Cuba, to the mass slaughter of Indonesian communists via the “Jakarta Method.” Today, though, Spanberger’s anti-socialist stance is directly at odds with the will of Democratic voters, who now approve of socialism at a higher rate (66 percent) than capitalism (42 percent).
What about Slotkin, who now says she won’t rule out a run for president? Like Spanberger, her track record with the CIA is a black box. On her official biography webpages, we’re told only that she chose to join the agency shortly after 9/11, and served “three tours in Iraq alongside the U.S. military” as a “Middle East analyst.” In a 2020 interview with the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, she volunteered that she was specifically an “Iraqi Shia-militia expert.” After that, it was on to a role as a national security adviser for both the late Bush and early Obama administrations, a few years as an acting assistant secretary of defense, and then the House and Senate.
This raises some nasty questions. Exactly what information was Slotkin “analyzing” in Iraq, and how was it obtained? We know that one of the primary ways the CIA gathered “intelligence” about “Iraqi Shia militias” was by grabbing and torturing people it suspected of being militants at black site prisons like Abu Ghraib. We know, too, that only a small fraction of those people actually had anything to do with terrorism. So it’s plausible that at least some of Slotkin’s “analysis” was based on the supposed “intelligence” gleaned when you subject a random Iraqi farmer to waterboarding, stress positions, or “rectal rehydration.”
Worse, Slotkin graduated to an adviser to the Bush/Cheney administration in its last days. In that role, she might have known about some of the CIA’s abuses before the infamous “torture memos” came out in 2009. She might have had the opportunity to blow the whistle. It feels highly unlikely that we’ll ever know for sure.
The CIA and the broader “intelligence community” needs global conflict, in the same way that cops need crime, priests need sin, and the Orkin man needs termites.
Slotkin’s more recent statements about the Middle East don’t exactly inspire confidence, either. Like many liberals, she’s willing to criticize the GOP’s war-mongering, but only on tactical grounds, not basic moral principle. For instance, she has said the Bush administration “completely misread how difficult it would be to try and be the government for another country.” Similarly, she told Chotiner that Trump’s 2020 assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani might be unwise and provoke a “strong reaction.”
What she doesn’t say is that invading other people’s countries and killing their leaders, and then trying to “be the government,” is inherently illegitimate and criminal. But she can’t, not really, because having worked for the CIA, she’d be condemning her co-workers — and her own record of service.
We can see the same pattern play out with more recent cases of U.S. aggression. When the Trump administration attacked Iran and Venezuela earlier this year, Slotkin moved in lockstep with the majority of the Democratic Party, voting for war powers resolutions against hostilities with both countries. (This, to her credit, makes her more reliable than John Fetterman, who has voted to preserve Trump’s power to attack Iran on multiple occasions.)
But her public statements tell another story. When the Trump administration made a request for $50 billion in additional funding for the Iran war, Slotkin was open to the idea, telling Politico reporters only that “I need to know the goals and the plan. … I don’t rule anything out.” And when Trump deposed and kidnapped Nicolás Maduro, she criticized him for working with Vice President Delcy Rodríguez’s “illegitimate government” rather than following through on his promise to “[get] rid of that administration” entirely. Again, there’s no indication that waging regime-change wars is wrong in itself; only that Trump had bungled the job by not going far enough.
China, though, is Slotkin’s biggest bête noire. Like a lot of centrists who have taken the wrong lessons from the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Slotkin has taken to making short-form video content. She calls these videos her weekly “Intel Briefings,” and they’re skin-crawling to watch, like something you’d see on a TV in the background of a Paul Verhoeven movie.
Beating the drum for conflict with China is a constant theme. In one representative “briefing,” Slotkin tells viewers about “an issue that a lot of Michiganders know about: China and the threats that they pose.” (The “threat” turns out to be that China may buy computer chips from Nvidia, which is apparently “the equivalent of President Truman giving Russia some of our best nuclear blueprints.”) In another video, she condemns Trump for putting out a national security strategy that fails to “go hard against China.”
It’s all like this. We’re told that China has a worrying “chokehold” on the supply of “critical minerals” like lithium and cobalt; China “often undercuts our ability to sell our products,” so we need to “clamp down on what the Chinese are doing in international trade”; Chinese military technology could “make us go blind, deaf, and dumb in the first moments of a conflict,” perhaps over Taiwan; Chinese cars in particular are a “national security issue” that can’t be allowed to enter the country.
The tone is always slightly condescending: At one point, Slotkin tells us about “the leader of China, Xi Jinping,” as if we’ve never heard of the guy before. The content is pure paranoia, with a new Cold War accepted as a normal and even desirable state of affairs.
To be clear, the American people do not want conflict with China. In the most recent Pew polls from April, only 28 percent of respondents said they considered China an “enemy,” and China’s favorable ratings have been rising since 2023.
But the CIA and the broader “intelligence community” needs global conflict, in the same way that cops need crime, priests need sin, and the Orkin man needs termites. It justifies their existence, and their mammoth, ever-increasing annual budgets. So every week on YouTube, we get a former CIA agent pushing what’s good for the CIA and bad for everyone else.
More basic than any of this, though, is that the concept of “the intelligence community” is elitist to the core. Its first principle is that the American public, unwashed reprobates that we are, aren’t even qualified to know about the most important decisions being made in terms of foreign policy, let alone influence them at the ballot box. Only the “intelligence community” with its experts and analysts should do that, and always behind several layers of official secrecy. It’s a fundamentally anti-democratic notion, and it comes from a set of agencies which have overthrown a long list of democracies over the years. So there’s no reason to expect they’d respect our democratic choices at home, either. If you’re the Democratic Party, you can’t really position yourself as champions of “our democracy” and also embrace the CIA Spook Caucus as an unalloyed good.
As the maxim goes, “The purpose of a system is what it does.” To that end, the purpose of the CIA is to lie, manipulate, torture, and kill, all to preserve the existing global power structures, not to mention the agency’s own power and prestige. That’s what it does; that’s what it’s for. There’s no way anybody, anywhere should trust a former CIA officer within 100 miles of elected office. Personally, I’d vote for a Satanist or my local weed dealer before any member of the “intelligence community.” We should look at would-be Democratic politicians like Slotkin, Spanberger, and now Dunigan with the same horror as if Allen Dulles had run for Congress as a Democrat in 1965. Under no circumstances should we trust these people — and if we offer them our votes, we do so at our own peril.
The post Why Would Anyone Trust Ex-CIA Agents in Elected Office? appeared first on The Intercept.
Move beyond Severance with these epic sci-fi shows.
Estonia, Luxembourg and UK are the top three in biennial Yale University index in tackling pollution and other issues
Much of the world has made encouraging strides in reducing toxic problems such as water and air pollution that have long plagued communities. But there is still a widespread lack of progress among countries in dealing with the climate crisis, according to the latest edition of an influential environmental scorecard.
The biennial Yale University index again ranks Estonia as the best-performing of 177 assessed countries, after strong recent efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and protect its ecosystems. Luxembourg is second, and the UK is third, having moved up from fifth place in the 2024 index.
Continue reading...The Americans crashed out in disappointing fashion, but there were positives from the tournament on the whole. We look at how the roster performed
Stats from fotmob.com, Opta and Fifa; players listed in order of minutes played.
Weston McKennie, center/attacking midfield (Juventus)
Continue reading...I can’t blame my patients for turning to its straightforward assessments. But it has real risks – and care may require human messiness
“Chat told me I should break up with him.”
I instructed my face to remain therapist-neutral, but I must have smirked. The truth is, I was annoyed. We had been discussing the viability of this relationship for weeks, and in an instant AI had brought the answer. “How do you feel about it?” She said this had been her gut feeling all along. The following session, her relationship was over.
Continue reading...John Thune says he spoke to McConnell on phone as secrecy over 84-year-old’s health prompts Maga backlash
Republican leaders have moved to quash speculation about Mitch McConnell, the former Republican leader in the US Senate, amid a growing revolt over the lack of transparency around his health.
The 84-year-old Kentucky politician, who led Senate Republicans for longer than anyone in history before stepping down last year, was admitted to hospital on 14 June but his office declined to say what he was being treated for.
Continue reading...This trick can give you an extra layer of privacy.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Wilmington’s city charter requires that no more than three candidates from the same party be nominated for the city’s four at-large seats. In the liberal city, the rule ensures that one person on the elected body will not be a Democrat. But after the council’s lone Republican switched his party registration to Democrat, questions emerged over whether that requirement had been undermined.
The legal battle over the Wilmington City Council’s ability to remove Councilman James Spadola from office inched closer to a resolution Tuesday following arguments before a Delaware Chancery Court judge.
Filed in May, the lawsuit marks the latest in a political feud between Spadola and his colleagues — specifically Council President Ernest “Trippi” Congo — that stemmed from his decision last fall to change from being a Republican to a Democrat.
The legal dispute specifically centers on whether the council has the authority to enforce a Congo-sponsored resolution declaring Spadola’s seat vacant now that he is a Democrat serving in a seat designated for a member of a minority party.
The Wilmington City Charter prohibits a majority party – currently Democrats – from nominating more than three candidates for the city’s four at-large seats on the City Council.
The rule effectively guarantees the election of at least one minority party candidate.
While the arguments Tuesday featured competing interpretations of the Wilmington City Charter, the ultimate ruling from the judge, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, will determine whether Spadola can remain in office.
Spadola’s attorney, William Larson argued the charter does not list political party affiliation as a qualification for holding office, nor does it state that changing parties during a term creates a vacancy.
Instead, Larson said the charter’s language applies only to a political party’s nomination process in advance of an election. The provision within the charter governs who may run for office, not whether an elected council member may later change political parties, he said.
In his arguments, Larson offered hypothetical scenarios that he said exposed inconsistencies in the council’s reading of the charter. He argued that if two Republican at-large members were elected, the council’s stance would allow one member to switch parties while prohibiting the other — depending solely on the partisan makeup of the council at the time.
“It really becomes unworkable under different scenarios if you follow the defendants’ view here,” Larson said.
Spadola’s attorney also asserted that the council’s attempt to remove his client from office violates his Constitutional rights.
“We are here today because the Congo resolution seeks to remove a duly elected member of City Council for exercising his First Amendment rights, so that council can handpick his successor,” Larson said.
In response, Congo’s attorney Jane Brady said the intent of the city charter is clearly to ensure a minority party member stays on the council during their term.
“It makes no sense to establish laws that assure the public is able to vote for a member of a minority party, only to have those same rules say we were just kidding about that minority party stuff,” Brady said.
Brady has served in a variety of public capacities in past decades, including chair for the Delaware Republican Party, a Superior Court judge, and Delaware attorney general.
She pointed to another section of the charter requiring all vacancies to be filled by someone from the same political party, arguing it shows the city’s intent was for party balance to continue throughout a council member’s term.
Brady also rejected Larson’s First Amendment argument, saying Spadola’s rights as an elected official are not unlimited and that the city can impose qualifications on those who hold public office.
She warned that ruling in Spadola’s favor could undermine the City Council’s authority to determine whether its members meet the qualifications to serve – a power the charter explicitly grants the legislative body, she said.
“I think it’s not unimportant to remember that by virtue of this provision, people were excluded from participating in the general election in order to reserve the privilege for Mr. Spadola to have a chance to win a seat on council,” she said.
She emphasized that the council is not asking Spadola to switch back to the Republican Party. Instead, she said he forfeited his seat when he no longer met the city charter’s requirements.
McCormick did not ask any questions of or interject either side during the hearing.
Spadola was re-elected in November 2024 as Wilmington’s lone Republican at-large council member, and changed his party less than a year later, announcing it publicly to Facebook in October 2025.
Last fall, Spadola told Spotlight Delaware that he had considered making the move for the previous five years and finally did so because of his disagreement with several policies associated with President Donald Trump, including tariffs, immigration enforcement, and federal troop deployments into U.S. cities.
His decision sparked months of controversy inside the City Council.
In February, Congo sent Spadola a letter urging him to switch back to the Republican Party, warning that he could lose his seat if he did not. Spadola responded publicly on his Facebook, accusing council members of trying to replace him with an “unelected, handpicked successor.”
Many community members attended past council meetings both in favor and against removing Spadola from his seat, including members of the Delaware Republican Party and Wilmington Democratic Committee.
While some residents said they felt disenfranchised by Spadola’s decision, others argued he should have the right to change his party affiliation and that voters supported him for his leadership, not his political party.
The dispute then escalated in April when Councilman Alexander Hackett introduced the resolution seeking intervention by state lawmakers.
Then, in May, the council voted 8-1 on the resolution to declare Spadola’s seat vacant, arguing Spadola “made the choice to disenfranchise the approximately 15% of non-majority voters” in the city.
Spadola cast the lone vote against the resolution, which prompted him to file the lawsuit now before the Court of Chancery.
“I think our counsel made it pretty clear, it’s a fairly cut-and-dry case,” Spadola told the media after the hearing.
If Spadola’s seat is vacated, a new at-large council member would be elected through a process that would allow individuals to send in applications and be interviewed by council who would choose Spadola’s successor. Congo said that the council takes public feedback into account when choosing.
The post Judge to decide whether Wilmington City Council can remove Spadola from office appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Even voters who identify as foot soldiers of his political army are increasingly willing to blame Trump for their economic troubles
The political consequences of Donald Trump’s policy mayhem are now coming into view: “Maga” America is getting pissed.
It has been a sight to see how every one of the president’s policy initiatives has sabotaged some core constituency or other. From farmers and rural Americans to manufacturing workers and every American struggling to make ends meet, Trump has torched pretty much his entire political base. For all his efforts to rig the midterm elections in his favor, it’s as if he is daring the Maga faithful to drop him.
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Most Americans don’t look to their 401(k) plans for excitement or experimentation, instead relying on the promise that steady saving and sober planning will guarantee security in their golden years. But the Trump administration wants to transform the well-worn patterns of retirement investing.
To do so, it is moving to weaken the main protection workers have over their retirement money. The man in charge of the regulatory rollback is an industry insider whose former clients are among the large companies likely to benefit from his plan.
Since taking office last year, President Donald Trump has loudly called for plans to include less-regulated — and often risky — investments like private equity and cryptocurrency. To achieve that goal, the administration is softening one of the strongest legal protections American workers have: the right to hold an employer accountable when retirement savings are mishandled. The change is designed to give employers cover if their workers’ 401(k)s are deflated by expensive, opaque or unproven investments.
“What they have done is lower the standard for everything,” said Ali Khawar, a former senior official at the Department of Labor, which is charged with enforcing the federal law that governs retirement savings.
Backing this push are Wall Street firms, which want a bigger piece of the $10 trillion in America’s 401(k) plans, and America’s largest employers, who want to avoid class-action lawsuits from their employees. They have a powerful ally in Trump’s pick to lead the effort at the Department of Labor: Daniel Aronowitz, who previously ran a firm that helped large companies protect themselves against worker lawsuits. Now Aronowitz is the one driving changes to the rules those same companies play by.
When the 401(k) replaced pensions as the main way Americans fund their retirement, the investment risk shifted from employers to employees. Instead of the promise of a monthly check, the 401(k) participant gets a tax-sheltered account, usually with an employer matching their contributions, but with no guarantees of how that nest egg will grow. Traces of the old system remain, however. Employers are responsible for overseeing the company’s plan. They choose all the financial service providers and have the final say on what investment options are available to employees. But it’s typically workers who pay for those services out of their 401(k) savings. And it’s workers who suffer from diminished savings if the plan has poor options.
There are plenty of pitfalls for 401(k) savers. The “recordkeepers” that administer 401(k)s may attempt to steer workers to their own in-house funds, whether they are the best options or not. They may sell advisory services of questionable value. And then there are the investment fees, which are the main cost to participants. These are charged as a percentage of each investment. Roughly, a 1% fee for a $10,000 investment would result in a $100 yearly charge. Recordkeepers — companies like Fidelity, Principal, Vanguard and Empower — and other service providers often receive a cut of these fees. This means that they have the incentive to recommend more-expensive options.
If employers are lax in their oversight, workers might find themselves overpaying to invest in funds that underperform. Even modest differences in fees or performance can, when compounded over time, make a huge difference in how much someone is able to save for retirement, potentially tens of thousands of dollars at the end of someone’s career. By the Labor Department’s own math, 1% in additional fees can shrink someone’s nest egg at retirement by 28%.
Are you worried you’re getting fleeced by your 401(k) plan? ProPublica is investigating the industry and wants to hear from you.
When overseeing retirement accounts, employers have a fiduciary duty to make prudent decisions and put their workers’ interests first. If they allow financial firms to fleece plan participants, they can be held responsible under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, a pension-era law that now governs 401(k)s.
Over the last 15 years, employees have increasingly sued large employers over unnecessarily high fees or inferior investment options. Companies like UnitedHealth, Boeing, Verizon and General Electric, without admitting wrongdoing, chose to settle suits for tens of millions. Aronowitz has called the increased litigation a “con game” that misleads judges, argued that such cases should go before a specialized court and labeled the whole enterprise a “scam.”
Over 90 of these class-action lawsuits against large employers were filed in 2025. To Aronowitz, that’s a big number — his former firm tracked and publicized the rise of these suits as part of its business underwriting liability coverage to employers — but it’s a tiny fraction of the more than 700,000 401(k) plans nationwide.
ERISA says nothing about which types of investments are prudent; it sets a standard of care, not a list of approved options. It’s up to employers to use their judgment, and employers have generally been wary of allowing cryptocurrency, private equity or hedge funds onto their plans because they are more complex than the usual stocks and bonds, often untested and much more expensive. Nevertheless, Trump issued an executive order last year blaming the limited uptake on “regulatory overreach” and “lawsuits filed by opportunistic trial lawyers” and calling for new rules.
Aronowitz, as head of the Employee Benefits Security Administration, the Department of Labor office that enforces ERISA, is responsible for following through. His most significant move is a rule to make it far harder for workers to sue. The proposal, which will likely be finalized later this year, outlines a set of factors for employers to consider before approving investments. Just following this process would entitle employers’ decisions to “significant deference” from the courts — a “safe harbor,” or legal shield, meant to guard those decisions from challenge. A company could load a plan with a high-fee private equity fund and be protected from suit as long as it showed it had followed the rule and considered the fees.
To opponents of the change, like Khawar, who was second-in-command of EBSA under President Joe Biden, this is a mere “check-the-box approach,” akin to a teacher awarding a math student an automatic A — even if the answer is wrong — because the student showed their work.
Aronowitz has bristled at this sort of criticism. “Absolutely not,” he said in April at an industry event. “Read the proposed rule. We require a rigorous, objective, thorough and analytical fiduciary process that must be documented.”
At the same time, Aronowitz is also pulling back on policing plans’ investment choices. In April, EBSA released a bulletin updating its enforcement priorities. In addition to announcing that agency staff must now get Aronowitz’s sign-off before any major enforcement action, it set a new guideline for investigators. “EBSA must avoid cases that unfairly second-guess process-based fiduciary judgments,” the bulletin said, meaning investigators should not challenge an employer’s investment choices if the employer can show it followed the proper steps, regardless of the outcome for workers.
Tim Hauser, a 34-year-veteran of EBSA who was the highest-ranking career staffer there before retiring last year, said such ideas undermine the heart of ERISA. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, EBSA was “dedicated to protecting plan participants,” he said, but that has changed under Aronowitz. The ability of courts and regulators to hold employers accountable for using bad judgment when choosing 401(k) investments is “fundamental to this whole system,” Hauser said. “They are proposing to deprioritize it at the same time that they are encouraging plans to invest in more complicated, opaque investments. It’s infuriating.”
The shift at EBSA has also been evident in court. Over the last year, the Labor Department has filed amicus briefs — friend-of-the-court filings that lay out legal arguments for judges — in several class-action lawsuits on the side of the defendant company. In the past, the Labor Department’s briefs had generally sided with the employees. These amicus briefs can be influential. Recently, the agency interceded on Home Depot’s behalf in a case pending before the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs then dropped it.
A Labor Department spokesperson said in a statement to ProPublica that EBSA would prioritize “the highest-risk matters” in order to protect participants.
In pushing for looser rules and easing enforcement, the Trump administration and Wall Street are aiming for much more than giving workers the option of investing in so-called alternative assets. They predict it will become common, part of a new normal.
In recent years, the typical 401(k) plan has settled into a pattern, one that’s proven popular with investors but less lucrative for the recordkeepers and asset managers that serve plans. Decades ago, actively managed mutual funds, where professionals pick investments and charge for doing so, were dominant. They carried higher fees, often above 1% of the amount in the fund each year. But over time, passive funds, which often track an index of stocks or bonds like the S&P 500, attracted investors with their promise to deliver the same or better results for fees often below 0.1%.
Investment and administrative fees in 401(k) plans have, on average, steadily decreased. One main reason is the rise of passive funds, but another, experts say, is the threat of litigation. With cheap options broadly available, large companies might have a hard time explaining to a judge why they forced their employees to choose funds that cost 10 times more.
This decline has pinched profit margins in the 401(k) world, said Kai Richter, an attorney with Cohen Milstein who has long specialized in ERISA class-action cases. “So the financial industry is looking for other ways to make money.”
Nonpublic investments like private equity are, as a rule, actively managed. That means higher fees. If 401(k) plans began to commonly include these investments, the long-term trend of lower fees would halt and perhaps reverse.
Broad adoption of alternative assets is indeed the administration’s goal. One of the most consequential parts of a 401(k) plan is the default option, since most workers simply leave their money there. Usually, the default is a target date fund, which, based on the investor’s target date of retirement, gradually shifts its composition as that date approaches from mostly publicly traded stocks to mostly bonds, becoming more conservative and less risky as the person gets closer to needing the money. Target date funds haven’t changed much over the past two decades as they’ve soared in popularity. They offer all-in-one simplicity and, since they are often passive, low cost. Adding complex investments like private equity or hedge funds as a standard part of the mix would be a sea change.
The proposed rule professes to be “neutral” as to what effect the new, lax standard will have on investments, but it confidently predicts that companies will include more alternative assets over time in 401(k)s. That, after all, is the point of the rule, to broaden access to “the potential growth and diversification opportunities associated with alternative asset investments,” as Trump’s executive order put it. After the rule is finalized, plans covering about 5 million participants will add new or modified target date funds that include alternative investments, according to the proposal, and the number will continue to grow every year.
Over the past year, there’s been a wave of product announcements in the 401(k) industry as financial companies, taking their cues from the administration, have prepared to offer new options to plans. Major firms that manage private investments, such as BlackRock, Apollo and Goldman Sachs, have announced funds for 401(k)s that include private assets.
Ahead of the proposed rule’s adoption, Empower, the second-largest recordkeeper, has been expanding alternative options through managed accounts where participants opt to have advisers shape their 401(k) portfolios. About 1,000 companies have agreed to offer these investments to their workers, Empower’s CEO said recently.
But the ultimate effects of the administration’s efforts won’t be limited to alternative assets, and the outcome is far from certain. The proposed rule seems sure to meet legal challenges, and employers, even with Aronowitz’s assurances, might remain reluctant to overhaul their plans. Short of lawsuits, employers may fear blowback from their workers, who surveys show are content with traditional investment options.
The post Wall Street Wants to Change the Rules for Your 401(k). It Could Put Your Retirement at Risk. appeared first on ProPublica.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Rural communities in Delaware are often forgotten in the statewide conversation. A range of legislation relating to gun ownership, agriculture and change to municipal charters will have a direct impact on the lives of Delawareans in rural areas across the state.
This year’s legislative session saw a number of bills that will directly impact peoples’ lives in rural communities across the state, from gun ownership, farmland interests, wetland preservation and changes to town charters.
Bills addressing rural communities tend to be more bipartisan in their introduction and support, as Delaware’s Republican minority largely represents the southern part of the state – and rural areas.
Here’s a look at the legislation chiefly impacting rural Delaware that passed or stagnated in the General Assembly this year.
Gun-related bills passed by the legislature this year addressed a range of issues, including attempts to clamp down on straw purchases, cleaning up the state’s ghost gun laws and officially reversing a controversial hunting age restriction.
The most controversial proposal was Senate Bill 300, which aims to curb illegal gun trafficking by implementing a more extensive state licensing system for gun shop owners. Retiring Senate Pro President Tempore David Sokola (D-Newark) introduced the bill as one of the final acts of his 30-plus-year tenure in the General Assembly.
The bill drew substantial criticism from gun shop owners, who said it placed undue financial burdens on them, when illegal gun trafficking actually takes place on the underground market – not in gun shops – they argued.
Following an extended round of amendments and debate, SB 300 passed both chambers largely along party lines. The final version of the bill decreased the licensing fee for shop owners to a flat rate of $300 and decreased the frequency requirement for background checks.
If signed into law by Gov. Matt Meyer, the provisions will be implemented gradually, beginning in July 2028.
House Bill 418 clarified the state’s regulations for privately made firearms – or ghost guns – which was originally implemented in 2022, and has since faced legal challenge.
The bill creates a more straightforward pathway for individuals who have unserialized guns to become in compliance with state rules, by either having their gun serialized by a federally licensed dealer or making them permanently unusable.
It comes in the wake of Rigby v. Jennings, a federal lawsuit against the state alleging the state’s prohibition on unserialized firearms is a Second Amendment violation, as an “exit path” for sportsmen who currently own ghost guns, bill sponsor Rep. Kendra Johnson (D-Bear) said.
Republican-led House Bill 427 allows 16 and 17 year olds who have a valid hunting license and have completed the necessary education courses to target practice and hunt without adult supervision.
The legislation officially reverses a controversial 2022 law, which went into effect last summer, that required adult supervision for hunters under the age of 21 and was declared unconstitutional by a Superior Court judge.
House Minority Whip Jeff Spiegelman, the bill’s sponsor, described it as an effort to make it more accessible for young hunters to get into the sport.
Conversely, a bill aimed at enshrining Delaware’s culture of hunting, fishing and trapping in the state constitution wound up dead in the water. It passed the Senate earlier in June, but was never formally introduced for a vote on the House floor.
The proposal, which was endorsed by the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC), was an attempt to prevent animal rights or gun control advocates from being able to outlaw hunting outright in the state, sponsor Sen. Dave Wilson (R-Lincoln) said in January. Wilson wrote in a Facebook post that he plans to re-introduce the constitutional amendment next legislative session.
As Delaware farmers are increasingly stretched thin financially and the federal government rolls back environmental protections, the General Assembly passed a string of legislation relating to farmland oversight boards.
House Bill 371 removes the requirement that each county establish a farmland preservation advisory board. The proposal passed both chambers unanimously.
Rep. Jesse Vanderwende (R-Greenwood), the bill’s sponsor, wrote in a Facebook post that the county advisory boards were created multiple decades ago to help create agricultural districts. But those duties are now managed at the county planning level, Vanderwende wrote, so the advisory boards are superfluous.
Senate Bill 211 expands the Governor’s Council on Agriculture from seven to nine members, and adds requirements that at least one member of the council be a livestock producer, and another a farmer under the age of 40. The council, which has existed since 1970, makes recommendations to state leaders on farm and food-related policy.
A spokesperson for the Delaware Farm Bureau told Spotlight Delaware the organization strongly supported the legislation, as a way to more fairly represent a diverse range of farm interests on the council.
As fuel and fertilizer prices spiked this spring due to the war in Iran, the legislature also passed House Bill 431, which allows farmers to compost their yard waste and food residuals on property that is zoned for agriculture use.
Jim Minner, a Felton-area farmer and president of the Kent County Farm Bureau, said HB 431 will be helpful to Delaware farmers’ outputs because compost improves soil health.
For the first time in decades, state lawmakers also passed a bill to regulate freshwater wetlands, known as the Wetland Stewardship Act.
In the wake of an intensive federal rollback of wetlands protections, the legislation aims to protect ecosystems by extending the permitting process for landowners to include nontidal or freshwater wetlands as small as half an acre.
The bill, which failed to advance in previous legislative years, was a rare show of both bipartisan support and championing by various stakeholders, including environmentalists, farmers and developers.
It has a hefty $1.5 million price tag, as it will require at least a dozen more full-time DNREC employees to implement.
Every year, the General Assembly receives a handful of municipal charter change requests, which are sent to the statehouse for final approval after being passed by a city or town government. Because they amount to a modification to the state constitution, the charter changes require a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers to pass.
A change proposed to the city of Rehoboth Beach charter drew attention from state and local officials in the final days of the legislative session.
Among a series of proposed changes was a provision prohibiting two people in the same household from simultaneously holding office.
The prohibition was seemingly in response to City Commissioner Suzanne Goode, who has sparked controversy with her explosive comments toward other members of the city government, and her husband, Jeffrey Goode, who is also running for office.
In late June, Rep. Claire Snyder-Hall (D-Rehoboth Beach), decided to withdraw the language prohibiting two members of a household from both seeking office.
Snyder-Hall’s decision unleashed more controversy, as the Goodes released a statement crediting House Republicans with removing what they described as an “unconstitutional” clause in the charter change. Snyder-Hall fought back with another statement pointing out what she described as inaccuracies in the Goodes’ claims.
While the turmoil within the oceanside city government continues, the charter change ultimately passed both chambers handily.
The General Assembly also approved a charter change for the town of Smyrna, allowing its government to impose school impact fees on new construction in town limits.
State leaders passed additional charter changes removing certain parcels of property from the Town of Cheswold, requiring that the Town of Frederica have at least one town council meeting per month and amending the local election process in the town of Millville.
All these bills now await Gov. Meyer’s signature to become law.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
The post Delaware General Assembly roundup: Impacts on rural communities appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware’s annual Bond Bill funds large capital projects, such as road improvements, new schools and upgraded state facilities. In recent years, it also has featured a litany of more controversial expenditures. Until this year, none of those were vetoed by a Delaware governor.
Gov. Matt Meyer vetoed a controversial expansion of Dover’s Legislative Hall from the state’s capital spending bill on Tuesday.
In a statement, Meyer cited cost concerns as the reason he employed the little-used line-item veto. He claimed the $35 million project to upgrade security inside the statehouse, among other improvements, could “be addressed at a lower cost.”
The comments follow similar affordability themed rhetoric from Meyer over the past year, including last month when he called on state energy regulators to suspend an electricity-rate increase from Delmarva Power.
Meyer also noted that the $35 million – the third largest appropriation of any kind in the state bond bill – was only an initial allocation toward the larger project anticipated to cost upward of $116 million.
The veto could also reignite tensions between the governor and lawmakers within his own Democratic Party that had largely gone dormant in recent months following a contentious first year in office for Meyer.
In a joint statement, Rep. Debra Heffernan (D-Bellefonte) and Sen. Jack Walsh (D-Stanton), co-chairs of the state’s Joint Capital Improvement Committee, condemned Meyer’s veto.
The Joint Capital Improvement Committee drafts the state’s capital budget each year following an initial proposal from the governor.
Heffernan and Walsh said the expansion would have improved safety and accessibility within the statehouse. The current layout presents a variety of challenges for residents seeking to participate in state government, they said.
“It’s not only disappointing, but frankly perplexing, that the Governor chose to veto the Bond Bill language that would have funded these long-overdue renovations,” the lawmakers said.
Should lawmakers choose to override Meyer’s latest veto, Democrats could do so without any bipartisan support. A veto override vote requires a three-fifths majority in both legislative chambers – a margin Democrats already control.
But not all Democrats are opposed to Meyer’s veto.
Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton (D-Bear) said the veto was “the right thing to do for Delaware taxpayers.” She said the $35 million allocated to the expansion could have gone to other, more timely projects, like road repairs across the state.
Wilson-Anton, a member of the progressive flank of the legislature’s Democratic caucus, said she has no appetite to override Meyer’s veto. It is not immediately clear how other progressives feel about an override vote, but enough organized opposition could kill the possibility entirely.
Also unclear is whether Republicans would support overriding Meyer’s veto.
House Minority Whip Jeff Spiegelman (R-Clayton) said Meyer made “some good points” in his veto statement that some Republicans are receptive to.
He also said the $35 million appropriation reflects the most costly of three upgrade proposals that legislative leaders considered. He said the other proposals “still take into account the security needs that we have.”
Spiegelman declined to disclose specific details of proposed security upgrades but said the area where Capitol Police screen visitors is too small.
Chief Clerk of the House of Representatives Rich Puffer, who also chairs a committee that recommended the expansion project, compared the security upgrades to the state’s Carvel Building in Wilmington, where the governor and many Cabinet agencies keep offices.
There, glass barriers block visitors from entering the first floor lobby of the building until they clear a security checkpoint.
Last month, Sarah Fulton, spokeswoman for the Senate Democratic Caucus, said the $35 million appropriation would pay for an expansion of the security checkpoint at the entrance to Legislative Hall. She said the plans called for an increase in the size of the area by “three or four times” to allow Capitol Police to conduct more thorough screening.
The money would also pay for enhanced door locks and cameras, among other items, she said.
While the project is a part of a larger plan to renovate the Legislative Hall complex, Fulton noted the $35 million is separate from a $23 million appropriation made last year to fund construction of a new parking garage.
Additional plans for a tunnel to be built between the parking garage and Legislative Hall are not yet funded, Fulton said.
“The parking garage is paid for. This is for more in-building security enhancements,” she said.
The statement further said other “unmet needs, including school construction, housing and community investments, should take precedence over expanding government office space.”
There are few historical records of Delaware governors using their line-item veto authority.
Most noteworthy was Gov. Pete du Pont’s 1982 veto of a funding line for a drunk-driving enforcement program. According to newspaper archives, du Pont signed the veto — which reduced an appropriation from $135,000 to $20,000 — in order to keep the state budget within state limits.
The veto resulted in a legal challenge and a subsequent Supreme Court ruling that declared governors may only use a line-item veto for appropriation bills that contain multiple spending items.
Meyer’s veto appears to fall in line with the ruling, though it is unclear if lawmakers will challenge his authority in this instance.
The post Meyer vetoes $35M Legislative Hall expansion, sparking clash with lawmakers appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
We assess the teams who played in the tournament’s last 16 before the next round of games begins
A very different side of France came to the fore, proving they are not mere showboaters, there is plenty of steel, grit and determination among the ranks. It was a brutal encounter as they became targets for Paraguay, who added menace to the low block. No one in blue retreated to the shadows, instead taking the overaggression head on, using it as fuel. “To anyone who wants to go to war with us, this is what you should expect,” Rayan Cherki said. It was the biggest test they have faced this far but intimidation tactics do not work, it transpires, leaving everyone else wondering how to stop them.
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For some employees, the 401(k) system works great: They have easy access to low-cost funds with high returns. But many participants are stuck in investments with bloated fees and pay for costly advisory services on top — and may never know it because they’ve never scrutinized their plans’ disclosures. (If you’re worried this is you, our questionnaire below explains how you can check.)
As we’ve reported, the Trump administration wants employers to include less-regulated “alternative” investments like private equity and cryptocurrency in 401(k) plans. To make that happen, the administration is changing regulations and pulling back on enforcement of the law that protects participants.
ProPublica is taking this opportunity to investigate these changes and the broader 401(k) system. To do this reporting, we need detailed insight into what’s happening inside plans: what products financial services companies are pushing and what fees they are charging. Many of these details are not made public, but they are disclosed to plan participants. That’s why we need to hear from participants in these plans, employers (particularly small-business owners) and those with expertise in the industry. The more people we hear from, the better informed our reporting will be.
Note: We are not asking for anything that shows your account balances or personal information. If you have a 403(b) plan and work for a private, tax-exempt organization, we’d also like to hear from you.
Our team may not be able to respond to everyone personally, but we will read everything you submit. We take your privacy seriously. We are gathering these materials for the purposes of our reporting and will contact you if we wish to publish any part.
If you would prefer to use an encrypted app, see our advice at propublica.org/tips.
The post Have a 401(k)? Help ProPublica Investigate What’s Really Happening to Your Money. appeared first on ProPublica.
After testing multiple handheld fans from Dyson, Jisulife and Blueair, the Shark ChillPill stood out to me because of its two extra attachments.
Company says market in good shape with strong recovery across all destinations as customers take the plunge
Summer holiday bookings have bounced back recently after the fragile ceasefire in the Middle East, the package holiday operator Jet2 has said.
The company, which flies about 20 million people every year, said its summer bookings are up by 7.1% compared with this time last year and the average load factor – which measures its available seating capacity filled with paying passengers – is up 1.2 percentage points.
Continue reading...The Tower Plus' understated design hides capable internals, but there's still room for improvement when it comes to upgrades.
UK government urged to apply pressure on France to fix system or suspend checks by next week
Cross-Channel ferry passengers and the port of Dover face “utter chaos and miles of tailbacks” under the EU’s entry/exit system (EES) unless the technology is fixed or checks suspended by next week, MPs have warned.
The home affairs select committee chair, Karen Bradley, urged the government to “apply maximum pressure” on the French authorities to act on the EES before peak holiday traffic arrives at the port.
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Illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica
Experts on laws protecting patient safety give Washington state high marks for the types of information it is willing to disclose about doctors accused of wrongdoing.
Like other states, Washington lets patients look up doctors by name online to read any state allegations against them. But decades ago, Washington lawmakers created a separate pathway that doesn’t leave the homework to patients, mandating that regulators issue a press release whenever an investigation results in formal allegations being filed against a doctor. Washington is alone in legally requiring such proactive outreach to the news media, the Federation of State Medical Boards says.
Yet an examination of Washington discipline records by KUOW and ProPublica found that regardless of what the law calls for, Washington fails to reliably call the public’s attention to serious misconduct allegations against doctors who have been allowed to keep practicing while their cases proceed.
Announcements can take months to go out — and may not go out at all until after the case is resolved.
Take the case of Brooks Watson, a Richland, Washington, doctor who the state medical board accused of making nonconsensual sexual contact, unwanted sexual advances or inappropriate sexual remarks to five of his coworkers over the course of five years.
During one encounter in 2023, Washington Medical Commission records allege, Watson isolated a subordinate in his office and, without her consent, kissed her, touched her breasts, put his hands down her pants, groped her vagina and exposed his penis.
The commission sent Watson a “statement of charges” alleging sexual misconduct and unprofessional conduct on Aug. 19, 2025, and it amended the charges in June to include an allegation that Watson had assaulted someone at his home.
Yet the commission issued no public announcement about Watson’s case for more than nine months after first filing allegations.
Watson remains licensed to practice, and an online provider database run by the state shows no final decision on his case has been made as of July 6.
The attorney defending him in the criminal case stemming from the incident at his home said that Watson disputes the allegations and that he pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor assault charge against him. The attorney referred further questions to another lawyer who he said represented Watson in workplace matters; that person acknowledged a request for comment sent by email but did not answer emailed questions or respond to voicemails.
Watson did not answer emails or phone messages seeking his response to the medical commission’s claims. Meeting materials on the commission’s website say Watson had a hearing scheduled in April.
KUOW and ProPublica began examining how and when Washington tells the public about doctors facing discipline following the case of Mark Mulholland, an eastern Washington OB-GYN accused last year of conducting irregular pelvic exams and making inappropriate remarks.
He initially kept seeing patients, and at least one has accused Mulholland in court of abuse and negligence that she says occurred during the time between when the commission filed formal charges and when it announced them. The woman alleges Mulholland “shoved his fingers into her rectum” and “said to her with confidence that she had a nice-looking and tight vagina.”
More than 80 lawsuits related to Mulholland’s alleged misconduct have been filed against the doctor himself, his former employer Kadlec or its affiliate, the Providence hospital chain.
(Mulholland has not responded to requests for comment, but the doctor or his attorney told the commission previously that he strives to be gentle and respectful with cervical exams and denied conducting them in ways that patients described. In the civil litigation, which remains ongoing, the doctor, Providence and Kadlec all deny wrongdoing. In the state disciplinary case, which remains open, Mulholland signed an interim order agreeing to restrictions on his license.)
As with many announcements of charges against doctors whose licenses remained unrestricted, the commission did not first publish a notice about Mulholland on the press release section of its website, but rather in a subscribers-only email that said nothing about what he was accused of. It came six weeks after charges were filed.
The list is supposed to go out quarterly, a schedule that guarantees many charges stay off the radar for months — or even longer when the board fails to keep to its publication schedule. At least 269 days passed recently without subscribers receiving an email announcing charges being filed against a doctor and without the commission announcing charges in an online press release.
Some cases still have not been publicized.
Presented by KUOW and ProPublica with questions about how it notifies the public, the commission issued a written statement saying it plans to alter its practices to make allegations against doctors more visible.
Although the commission believes its current practices meet the law’s notification requirement, the statement said, the agency “is always looking for ways to grow.”
“Technology and public accessibility standards continue to evolve since the statute was written,” the statement said. The medical commission “recognizes the value in refining our processes and establishing new best practices to enhance transparency.”
On May 29, the same day the commission sent its statement, it sent four email notices announcing initial or updated allegations against licensees who were not immediately suspended — the first such emails subscribers received since June 2025.
Washington state Rep. Gerry Pollet, a Seattle Democrat and outspoken advocate for disclosure and accountability, said the medical commission was “absolutely not complying with the law.”
“The Legislature clearly said, ‘You have to inform the public quickly, and you should do that through a news release,'” Pollet said. “That’s one of the mechanisms. And the implication of a news release is you have to put it out while it’s still news. And waiting months to put something on a limited listserv doesn’t meet the spirit, much less the letter, of the law.”
Pollet said he plans to ask other legislators to join him in contacting the medical commission and asking for more prompt and public notifications.
And if that doesn’t work, he said, “ What we might need is direction in the budget to demand that they follow the law.”
The Washington Medical Commission has a well established process for looking into the roughly 2,000 allegations of provider misconduct it receives each year.
If an investigation finds evidence that a doctor violated the law, the medical commission issues a statement of charges. The doctor has a right to contest these before a health law judge or the commission issues a final order spelling out any disciplinary action or dropping the case. Months can go by in the interim.
Washington law directs the medical commission to report both statements of charges and final orders to interested parties: the person whose complaint triggered an investigation, certain professional organizations and the public.
Specifically, the law says public notification “shall include press releases to appropriate local news media and the major news wire services.”
Two legal experts said the availability of the state’s email list notifying subscribers of “legal actions,” which requires journalists and others to opt in, conceivably meets the law’s requirements. But Seth Rosenberg, an administrative and employment law attorney, said by email that the fact that it gives only names, dates and locations — not a description of the charges doctors face — arguably means “it is bereft of meaningful detail.”
Whether or not the emails convey enough information, KUOW and ProPublica’s review found that they often are not issued for a long time.
The review focused on charges against doctors whose licenses remained untouched while they awaited a disciplinary decision. It turned up 13 emails or press releases from May 2024 through July 6 that announced charges while the case was still open, five of which were not sent for more than two months after charges were brought.
In another 12 cases, the commission did not send out public notifications until after it resolved charges against the doctor, often months after the physician was put on notice. Three of these cases were shared by way of the agency’s quarterly newsletter, which doesn’t necessarily go to subscribers on the legal actions list.
Four doctors accused last year or in January still have yet to appear in an email, press release or newsletter noting their charges as of July 6.
All told, the commission has gone 100, 200 or even 300 days — in the case of Watson, the Richland doctor accused of sexual misconduct with coworkers — without either publicizing charges or taking away a doctor’s license.
It’s unclear how many of the physicians identified in KUOW and ProPublica’s review continued practicing while waiting for their cases to be resolved, but they had the legal ability to do so.
The commission did not respond when asked to verify that it had failed to publicize cases against doctors for whom no email bulletins could be found from early in the disciplinary process. Executive Director Kyle Karinen said the commission has consistently attached charges to doctors’ entries in an online database and listed charged doctors in commission meeting materials online.
The Washington Department of Health, a related agency that handles sexual misconduct allegations against doctors when the investigations do not require medical expertise, acknowledged that it failed to publish any bulletins on 30 enforcement actions since 2016 but said it has recently fixed the problem.
The medical commission’s delayed or or nonexistent notifications encompass a range of alleged doctor misconduct.
Kareematulai Arogundade was accused in August of failing to undergo a mental examination that the commission required. The physician, who did not respond when contacted by KUOW and ProPublica by email and phone, first appeared more than 120 days later in the commission’s winter newsletter after his license was indefinitely suspended.
Sophie Gomez was accused in October of failing to respond to a request for information about a complaint filed with the board, and her license was indefinitely suspended in February, after which the commission issued a press release. (Gomez declined to comment when contacted by KUOW and ProPublica.)
The commission did announce charges prior to resolving the case against Jonathan Wynn Hemmert, who oversaw clinical operations at three Washington clinics that used a device called Cryoskin, a temperature-controlled wand that manufacturers say can remove unwanted fat cells when it’s rubbed against a patient’s skin.
The state agency said clinic staffers had clients sign a personal injury waiver, which the commission said was unenforceable, against public policy and deceptive and dishonest. The commission said he also failed to ensure the device was approved by the Food and Drug Administration and failed to supervise staff using the device on patients.
Hemmert signed a settlement agreeing to address the concerns, but the commission in November filed formal allegations that he had breached it. (Hemmert did not respond when asked to comment on the allegations, which have not yet been adjudicated.)
A press release was posted to the commission’s website in March, 112 days after he was charged with breaching the settlement. Two months after that, a listserv notice went out.
The 1984 Washington state law that requires public notification was passed as part of the Uniform Disciplinary Act, a set of guidelines for state medical boards and commissions that license providers and investigate complaints.
Among the sponsors was then-state legislator Mike Kreidler, a Democrat and optometrist who served 16 years in the Legislature and 24 as insurance commissioner.
Kreidler said he doesn’t recall the details of how the 1984 law came together. But looking back at it, Kreidler, now 82, said he believes the public notification requirement fulfilled an important function. He said to get to the point where the commission completes an investigation and files charges means a complaint has enough evidence behind it to proceed toward disciplinary action.
“They’re not going to be frivolous in any fashion, and therefore the public certainly does have a right to know,” he said.
Presented with KUOW and ProPublica’s findings, people who support policies favoring disclosure to patients said the commission’s interpretation of the 1984 notification law falls short.
Patricia Kelmar, senior director of healthcare campaigns at PIRG, a nonprofit advocacy organization for consumers, said the commission should be expansive in discharging its duty to notify the public as the law requires, contacting not only reporters but also a doctor’s current and former patients.
“ We should not be hoping that we stumble across the information that’s going to protect us from a doctor who’s dangerous,” Kelmar said.
Lisa McGiffert, patient safety activist with the Patient Safety Action Network, said the commission’s frequent delay in notifying the public does not fulfill the spirit of Washington’s law, which in her interpretation necessitates a quick release of information.
“ There’s nothing preventing Washington state from saying these have to be sent out to the news media within four or five working days,” McGiffert said.
Local media outlets have paid attention in the occasional cases where the medical commission has announced an action via the press release section of its website. A review of news releases about in-state doctors accused of conduct unrelated to their mental health shows that, more often than not, relevant media outlets have published stories afterward.
A news tip to a local journalist, not the commission’s email list, prompted the first media coverage of the case against Mulholland last June — nearly two months after the commission formally charged the gynecologist with misconduct involving three patients.
The woman who later accused Mulholland of performing an uncomfortable rectal exam and saying her vagina looked nice said the actions occurred at an appointment on May 1, 2025, or just days after the commission filed formal allegations.
The woman told KUOW and ProPublica that she was angry that she heard no news about the commission’s existing allegations before she saw Mulholland.
“I’d never heard anything bad about him,” she said in an interview with KUOW and ProPublica.
Had she known, she wouldn’t have gone, she said.
The post Washington Law Says to Alert the Public When Doctors Are Accused of Misconduct. It Can Take Months. appeared first on ProPublica.
As heat waves intensify, manufacturers are betting you'll buy the fan with the biggest airflow claims. Our testing shows why that's a mistake that could cost you money.
“He just had a look on his face like, ‘Please help,’” firefighter Towan Smith said.
“This awoke a sleeping giant,” one organizer said of the church rallies and voter drives underway after GOP lawmakers redrew state election maps.
Iran said it had targeted more than 80 U.S. military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait, after the U.S. launched strikes in response to attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
With peace talks on hold, the U.S. said it launched a "series of powerful strikes" on Iran in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
Japan's Hayabusa2 probe captured rare close-up images of near-Earth asteroid Torifune, revealing a snowman-like shape made of two joined lobes. Phys.org reports: The fridge-sized Hayabusa2 skimmed asteroid Torifune on Sunday in a mission that demonstrated the ability to deflect a potentially dangerous space rock away from Earth. A new image released by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on Monday could aid such efforts, as researchers say near-Earth asteroids vary in their size, shape and surface characteristics. "The moment I actually saw this image and the scientific data -- it really gave me goosebumps," JAXA scientist Yuya Mimasu told reporters, adding the asteroid "personally looked like a snowman." The black-and-white image, captured by a telescopic camera, showed what appeared to be two round objects joined together. "You can actually see the rocks... I really hadn't expected to be able to take a photo like this, so I'm absolutely over the moon," he said. [...] Moving at a speed of more than 18,000 kilometers (11,185 miles) per hour, the probe was due to fly within 800 meters (2,625 feet) of the asteroid, but JAXA said it would analyze the distance later. If confirmed, the mission would be one of the closest flybys of a near-Earth asteroid ever. JAXA also said Monday it succeeded in acquiring data from three other devices that can measure the distance from the asteroid and examine the existence of water.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The network disruption – which brought trains, traffic lights and Eftpos payments to a halt – raises questions about the resilience of services
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Wednesday’s national Telstra mobile outage serves as another stark reminder of how reliant on connectivity Australia now is, and how single points of failure can have widespread consequences across the country.
The nearly five-hour outage – which brought train lines to a halt, affected traffic lights, stopped Eftpos payments and even prevented people being able to charge their electric vehicles – was caused by what Telstra’s chief financial officer, Michael Ackland, said was time-keeping servers that feed up-to-date information to the rest of the network.
Continue reading...The Newsom administration waited 24 days to decide if it would even let Californians see the multi-million-dollar contract with Baby2Baby, a nonprofit linked to First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom.
Why the Communist Party wants business to boom.
It’s not the drones—It’s everything around them.
The unstable building is the former Pfizer headquarters in Midtown Manhattan that is being converted into apartments.
The debate comes days after a third candidate, Mallory McMorrow, suspended her campaign.
Catching a flight with just a carry-on can make travel feel easy. No need to check a bag and all your belongings stay with you. But quite often, that suddenly changes before boarding.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Meta launched its inaugural AI image model from the Meta Superintelligence Labs on Tuesday, its effort to compete with the likes of OpenAI's GPT Images 2.0 and Google's Nano Banana 2 in the AI image generation race. The new model, called Muse Image, rolled out with deep integrations woven into the Instagram app. As part of this update, public Instagram profiles are now automatically opted into being fodder for generative AI remixes. All someone has to do is tag your account's profile in a prompt -- if it's public -- and they can use Meta AI to generate an image using your likeness. Meta positions this feature as a cheeky way to personalize generations with images of real people. "Whether you want to design a custom event invitation, mock up a collaborative creative concept, or generate a personalized graphic, tagging a username lets Meta AI use public photos to build a visual that's ready to post," reads one of Meta's announcement blogs about the new AI tool. [...] Instagram's help center site includes more details about how this feature will impact users, saying that "people may be able to create content with your Instagram content using AI features at Meta" if you leave your account public and on the default settings. (A previously archived version of this page from 2025 does not include similar, AI-focused language.) Instagram users who want to stop others from using their public posts for AI images (without switching your account to private) must manually disable the options under the app's "Sharing and reuse" settings. However, turning off the setting only blocks future AI generations; any AI images already created from their content will remain. Meta also says users will not be notified when others create AI-generated content using their posts.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
July 7, 2026 — Max single-threaded CPUs at scale are a new category of CPUs built for the agentic AI era.
Across the creation and deployment of an agentic system, the CPU is on the critical path for reasoning, response time and learning. CPUs are the processor which executes the work the AI model commands: the tool calling, code execution, data processing, KV-cache and result analysis.
For agents in AI factories, speed matters.
The faster the CPU can run the tool, the faster the agent can perform the task at hand.
The NVIDIA Vera CPU.
For the AI factory, the utilization of GPU is the most valuable resource in the data center so any time waiting for a task to complete constrains the revenue of an AI factory — or worse, impacts the GPU utilization waiting for the CPU to finish its task. AI factories need a CPU with max single-threaded performance to maximize AI factory revenue and agent performance.
Today’s data center CPUs are not designed for speed at scale.
While the world has fast CPUs for PCs and workstations, data center CPUs have been evolving in directions away from single-threaded performance. The advent of the cloud has pushed CPU makers to build higher core-count CPUs while minimizing cost at the expense of performance.
Building CPUs that optimize costs per rentable core increased the number of cores per chip while taking away silicon area from what makes those cores run fast — like high-performance memory fabrics and faster instruction processing per core. The move to chiplet architectures further reduced cost but created a “chiplet tax” where each CPU’s cores can no longer can get access to the full memory performance of the chip.
AI agents need a CPU designed for max single-threaded performance at scale.
A max single-threaded CPU at scale keeps each agent step fast while the system is fully loaded. Every core completes the agent task at full performance without other cores slowing it down. Max single-threaded CPUs at scale are designed differently to deliver:
Every core can finish its task without any other core slowing it down, delivering excellent throughput and, more importantly, the fastest possible single-core task performance possible.
NVIDIA Vera exemplifies this new class of CPU design.
How Max Single-Threaded CPUs at Scale Are Built to Run the Agentic Loop
An AI agent doesn’t stop running after a single request. It acts in a loop. The model reasons about the next step. The CPU executes the work around the model. The result comes back. The model decides what to do next. Then the loop runs again.
That pattern creates a demand profile for which conventional CPUs were not optimized. Traditional CPU work is intermittent and user-driven, made up of short interactions triggered by people. Agentic work is persistent and parallel: swarms of agents running continuously, each advancing through a chain of steps where each step depends on the result of the one before it.
More cores in a CPU means more agent tasks per CPU, and data center CPUs need lots of cores to maximize throughput of tasks.
However, adding more cores to a CPU cannot shorten the time for each step inside a single agent loop. More cores can’t make any one task run faster. In fact, CPUs designed to maximize core count can even slow down the performance of each core as they contend for resources.
Individual per-core performance matters to drive the speed of each step’s completion. The throughput of additional cores is useful but insufficient. And since each action is dependent on the previous result, per-core speed determines how fast the loop advances.
In the end, the best agentic CPU needs the best single-threaded performance per core, and every core needs to deliver that performance without compromise. The world counts in seconds. Agents count in nanoseconds. NVIDIA Vera is built for this new category — and speed — of work.
NVIDIA Vera Is the Max Single-Threaded CPU at Scale for Agents
NVIDIA Vera is a max single-threaded CPU at scale, designed from the ground up for the agent loop: the work that happens between model calls as agents use tools, process data, run code and check results.
At the core of Vera is Olympus, NVIDIA’s custom CPU core, which delivers 50% higher instructions per cycle than NVIDIA Grace. That matters because many agent steps are sequential. A tool call, code execution, test run or data-processing step must finish before the next model call can use the result. Faster cores move each loop forward faster.
Vera pairs those faster cores with up to 1.2TB/s of LPDDR5X memory bandwidth at less than 40 watts of memory power, plus a monolithic compute die that helps active cores stay fed and keeps data movement predictable with 3.4TB/s of core-to-core bandwidth, 3x greater than any other data center CPU. This enables all 88 cores with the full memory performance of the CPU without creating bottlenecks that slows down every core.
The result is faster agent loops. In loaded CPU workloads that represent agentic execution, Vera delivers 1.8x the sustained per-core performance of x86.
Those gains compound across tool calls, code executions, data-processing steps and verification passes, helping AI factories complete more agent work with the GPUs they already operate.
Perplexity tested Vera on the agentic work it runs every day. Running a real coding workflow — cloning a repository and running its test suite in sandboxes — Vera completed the job about 1.5x faster than x86, and started concurrent sandboxes up to 1.9x faster. Perplexity is now looking to deploy Vera in its upcoming production system.
Agents also depend on data. They query, retrieve, filter and move information constantly, and Vera runs those CPU-side data workloads faster. Partners have measured 3x faster large-scale SQL analytics with Starburst and up to 6x lower latency on real-time streaming with Redpanda, both against leading x86 server CPUs.
Agent work isn’t one workload. An agent runs tools and sandboxes, processes data, serves requests and trains the next model with reinforcement learning — and all of it leans on the same strengths.
One Vera handles the whole range, rather than requiring a different CPU for each kind of work. And because Vera is the same CPU that hosts the GPUs in NVIDIA Vera Rubin and powers the NVIDIA BlueField-4 STX storage processor, the whole AI factory runs on one architecture and one toolchain.
And NVIDIA’s not done. NVIDIA’s next-generation Rosa CPU with the Rigel core will continue the company’s CPU roadmap for the agentic AI era. Rigel is NVIDIA’s next-generation Arm v9.2 CPU core, delivering higher per-core performance than Olympus while keeping the same silicon footprint. Key improvements include better instruction delivery, a larger L2 cache and more efficient memory handling.
Built for the Speed of Agents
In the agentic AI era, there will be billions of agents, and every one of them will turn to a CPU to act, check, retrieve, execute and verify. In this new market, completed agent work is the product. Faster agent loops help every GPU spend more time generating revenue producing work and less time waiting.
NVIDIA Vera is the CPU built for that future.
Learn more about the NVIDIA Vera CPU here.
Source: Ian Buck, NVIDIA
The post NVIDIA Details Vera CPU Design for Faster Agentic AI Execution appeared first on HPCwire.
Utah has revoked the license of a boarding school where Paris Hilton said she was abused as a teenager, saying the school has "failed to provide applicable health and safety services for clients."
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Donald Trump said he had a “very good talk” withVladimir Putin, ahead of arriving in Turkey.
This comes amid a wave of recent Russian strikes across Ukraine that have killed at least 21 people. The US president said that he also spoke with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy ahead of the Nato summit.
Continue reading...Defense attorneys say prosecutors coerced Anthony, 19, into waiving his right to testify, and cite additional reasons
Karmelo Anthony’s legal team is seeking a new trial and the recusal of a state judge a month after a Texas jury convicted the 19-year-old of murder and sentenced him to 35 years in prison for the fatal stabbing of Austin Metcalf, 17, at a track meet in 2025.
In a Tuesday motion, Anthony’s defense attorneys argued that their client’s conviction should be overturned because prosecutors coerced him into waiving his right to testify, among other reasons.
Continue reading...Millions of low-cost, off-brand Android devices were hijacked to help criminals hide online.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed by immigration enforcement as he was looking to hire workers, his son says
A federal immigration agent fatally shot a driver in Houston on Tuesday morning, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) has said.
Agents stopped Lorenzo Salgado Araujo at around 6.50am and tried to arrest him, according to ICE, which described Salgado Araujo as a Mexican national and an “illegal alien” whom the agency was seeking as part of a “targeted enforcement operation”.
Continue reading...The Democratic Party is once again in upheaval as Graham Platner, its unconventional nominee to knock out longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, faces a rape accusation that threatens to end his once-powerful campaign and endanger Democrats’ chances of flipping a key seat in the November midterm elections.
Platner, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer whose anti-establishment campaign had already weathered a series of scandals, has denied the rape allegation from ex-girlfriend Jenny Racicot, which Politico first reported on Monday. His campaign said the allegation was “coached and coordinated by out-of-state establishment operatives,” though it was supported by messages Racicot sent in 2023, long before Platner had a political profile.
Despite Platner’s denials, a cascade of Democratic politicians, operatives, and organizations have called on him to drop out of the race by 5 p.m. next Monday, in time to be removed from the general election ballot. Platner has said he would only drop out if he’s allowed to pick his successor to face Collins in November. If Platner withdraws, Maine Democrats would have to pick a new candidate by July 27.
That’s set off a scramble to find a replacement nominee and point fingers over the darkest chapter yet in a race that had already drawn national attention for a series of controversies — including accusations that Platner had twisted another woman’s arm behind her back and trapped her in a room; a sexting scandal; a Nazi tattoo; and a series of Reddit posts in which he belittled sexual assault, asked why Black people don’t tip, and disparaged white and rural voters. (Platner has denied that he mistreated women and apologized for the tattoo, text messages, and Reddit posts.)
Where does the Democratic Party — and the insurgent movement that saw Platner as a powerful rebuke to the establishment — go now?
We’re bringing you an extra episode of The Intercept Briefing this week to cover Platner’s downfall and where Maine voters might look next. In this episode, host Akela Lacy speaks with Adam Carlson, a Democratic strategist and founding partner of the polling firm Zenith Research who supported Platner through all the other scandals until Monday — and now says he was wrong.
“We — as in, the people who were looking for something different — looked at past nominees against Collins and wanted to try something different,” Carlson told The Intercept Briefing. “An outsider, someone who could appeal to white working-class voters, appeal to disaffected Trump voters, independents, Republicans, maybe someone who didn’t fall neatly along partisan lines, progressive economic populist, but also pro-Second Amendment. A bit more heterodox.” When Platner launched his campaign, “it’s, like, here comes this guy who epitomizes what we are lacking.”
The story has reanimated the age-old feud between Democrats loyal to the party establishment and a surging cohort of progressive and leftist candidates bucking the party line. But while competing factions rush to use Platner’s downfall as evidence of their own political prowess, Carlson says, they’re learning the wrong lessons.
“Yes, you should have better vetting. Yes, having people who are in public office who have faced some level of media scrutiny are less likely to have these kinds of things appear. Not foolproof: Look at Eric Swalwell,” Carlson said. “But I think you can overlearn the lessons from this and try and turn this into a factional win. And I think that all this is subtext for the conversation that we’re about to have in 2028.”
For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
Akela Lacy: Welcome to the Intercept briefing. I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at the Intercept.
We’re bringing you an extra episode this week because there has been a serious and troubling update in the Maine Democratic Senate race. Candidate Graham Platner was accused of raping a woman in 2021, according to reporting from Politico on Monday.
The woman, Jenny Racicot, came forward after having previously told the New York Times that Plattner had displayed “reckless” and “unsettling behavior” toward her in a story last month. She reportedly told the Times off the record about the rape allegation, but it was not publicly reported before Politico broke the story on Monday.
In a campaign video Platner released after the story published, he denied the allegation and called it, “troubling, serious, and false.”
Graham Platner: I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically false.
AL: Platner has said his campaign is considering its next options, and observers expect him to drop out in the coming days after a flurry of Democrats and organizations that had endorsed him called on him to do so. But as of this recording on Tuesday evening, he has not dropped out.
In a separate statement, Platner’s campaign claimed the rape allegation, which was supported by multiple accounts, including messages from 2023, well before he launched his Senate campaign, was “coached and coordinated by out-of-state establishment operatives.”
For listeners who might have forgotten, the rape allegation comes after Platner already had another women claim he was physically aggressive with her apologize for having a Nazi tattoo and authoring a series of Reddit posts belittling sexual assault, asking why Black people don’t tip, and making other controversial statements about white rural voters and police.
How did Platner get away with all those blemishes for so long? What does this mean for Democrats’ chances in Maine? To discuss all of this, I’m joined by Adam Carlson, who was a Platner supporter until the most recent news broke. Carlson is a founding partner of Zenith Research, a political polling firm that works with Democrats.
Adam, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.
Adam Carlson: Thanks for having me.
AL: You are someone who supported Graham Platner through all of his other scandals. When did you first learn about this allegation, and what was your reaction?
AC: I first learned about this specific allegation that came out on Monday about the alleged sexual assault when the story came out. There were all kinds of rumors buzzing around, potentially other oppo that may have been dropping later. Maybe Republicans were planning on dropping it after the dropout deadline on July 13. I heard about it when Politico broke the story.
AL: You published a long post on Tuesday morning with some reflections from this fallout. You wrote, “There are a lot of people who bear responsibility for this. The team that didn’t vet him properly. The people (like me) who bought his schtick hook line and sinker and used their platforms to not just promote him early on, and stuck with him after just an insane amount of obvious red flags for months on end — I should have known better, and I for one will be doing a lot of introspection (and hopefully lesson-learning) on how I got to that place of cognitive dissonance.”
You also talk about the blame on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for trying to foist Gov. Janet Mills on the electorate. I want you to walk us through this a little bit and explain what you’re talking about with respect to that cognitive dissonance here.
Why do you think so many people fell into that?
AC: I’ll speak to what I fell into. I can’t speak for anybody else, but I can’t imagine I am alone just given the meteoric success that Graham had coming out of the gate. I think the Democrats have been struggling for a long time, at least since 2016, probably before then. 2016 is when it really kicked into high gear with white working-class voters.
Maine is a very white state. The general electorate is very working-class, low-college-educated, a bit older – representative of a lot of groups that Democrats have struggled with of late, and that we’re looking to get back.
Susan Collins is a very formidable challenger, always overperforms her polling, her benchmarks, wins in tough environments. I think that we — as in, the people who were looking for something different — looked at past nominees against Collins and wanted to try something different. An outsider, someone who could appeal to white working-class voters, appeal to disaffected Trump voters, independents, Republicans, maybe someone who didn’t fall neatly along partisan lines, progressive economic populist, but also pro-Second Amendment. A bit more heterodox. And here comes this guy who is, on paper, perfect. Outsider.
AL: Heterodox. The definition of heterodox. [Laughs]
AC: Exactly, yeah. He’s a sharpshooter, he’s an oysterman, he was a town harbormaster, he was a combat veteran. This gruff speaking voice. And I think that a lot of us — I live in a fairly working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn. But much different than I’d say white working-class voters are in somewhere like Maine, particularly rural Maine.
In my head, and I think the heads of a lot of people, it’s, like, here comes this guy who epitomizes what we are lacking. People who can speak authentically — or what we thought was authentically — and can reach beyond our traditional messaging of like a Sara Gideon or people that have run against Susan Collins and fallen short in the past.
AL: Sara Gideon being the party-backed candidate who lost to Susan Collins previously.
AC: In 2020, who led in nearly every poll right before by a fair amount — and still lost pretty handily. So I think there’s a lot of trauma [laughs] among people like myself who every six years or so think that we got Susan Collins or people of her ilk in the party who take moderate votes, who cross party lines, who have independent bonafides in the state.
I was looking at someone like Janet Mills, who was rumored to be jumping in, and I was like, “This feels like another one in that same line.”
AL: Another wrong choice.
AC: Yeah, an establishment-backed traditional choice, a safe choice. Someone who doesn’t really excite people, who can’t really appeal to the middle. You’re trying to do just like a partisan Democratic strategy that’s been done before.
So I think a lot of it came from the trauma of losing to Trump a second time, and the trauma of Collins continuing to over-perform, and really needing that seat in order to have a chance to take back the Senate. Here comes Graham Platner, gruff-speaking voice, lifting kettle bells in his launch video.
A lot of us, I’ll put myself in this category of coastal elite types, were like, “Yeah, this is the working class-type candidate that we need.” Turns out he wasn’t working-class. That was implied but not actually true, given his upbringing. I don’t think there’s any outright lying about that, but definitely some misleading about that and just the image he was trying to portray.
This is the risk, right? It’s a high risk, high reward, as we’ve seen with Republicans over the years nominating these outsiders, because they’re untested, unvetted.
They have that kind of appeal: “I’m not part of the Washington system,” or whatever euphemism you want to use, the swamp, et cetera. But there is a downside potential, and I think we’re seeing that now.
AL: Part of that appeal was very early on in this cycle tapping into what we’re seeing now borne out, which is a widespread anti-incumbent sentiment and a bias — warranted or not — against older politicians and people who have been in office for a very long time.
We’re talking about Janet Mills, someone who was not only the governor but was almost 80 years old and was again, this archetype of exactly what the left has said for such a long time is the reason that Democrats are failing at the national level.
But you’re talking about another big storyline coming out of these primaries, which is like, who is the real working class? Who has the authority to speak for the working class, and how do we draw those lines?
“Who is the real working class? Who has the authority to speak for the working class, and how do we draw those lines?”
I was struck by an interview that I had with Amanda Litman of Run for Something back in October when the Nazi tattoo fallout was happening, and she said something that really struck me on this, which is talking about who is deemed authentic and who can credibly speak as the voice of the people. And she touches on the same thing that you’re talking about.
Again, Platner’s aesthetics. The first ad that his campaign put out was that he’s an oyster shucker, from the shores of Maine who can hobnob with farmers and fishermen and people who work on their feet all day. She said, “This particular type of brawly white dude with tattoos who can speak the visual language of what we associate with the working class. This is really a moment for us to collectively gut check — who gets permission to be seen as authentic? And who gets permission to be a little unkempt?”
And that was nine months ago at this point. And obviously now it’s more than being unkempt; he’s been accused of rape. But again this constant pursuit of working-class voters that Democrats, in some cases, I think in New York, this narrative was debunked with the gains that, that people saw with Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, although they did also excel in the white coastal elites neighborhood, and that’s something that we’ve been doing a lot of reporting on.
Avila Chevalier being the candidate who ousted Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair Adriano Espaillat in New York last week, and Claire Valdez who won the Democratic primary to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez against her chosen successor, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, both of whom are headed to the general election in November but are likely to enter Congress given the safety of those blue seats.
But I think one storyline on this working-class question that at least I missed coming out of Maine was from Greg Sargent at The New Republic that looked at some less favorable polling for Platner that showed him trailing against Collins [in voters] who did not have a college degree, which is often a proxy used for the working class.
“Everyone wants to use this scandal as evidence that proves that their strategy is the best one.”
There are liberal commentators, I saw [former Biden domestic policy adviser] Neera Tanden seizing on that as evidence of the left’s folly here in putting up what they say is an unvetted populist who clearly was unvetted, rather than going with the party pick. The counterpoint to that being that Mills did so poorly in this campaign that she had to drop out before the primary. That was the party’s pick here.
So everyone wants to use this scandal as evidence that proves that their strategy is the best one. But is anyone actually right?
AC: I think everyone’s a little bit right and a little bit wrong. I know that’s a cop-out, but I’ll explain.
AL: [Laughs] OK, I’m listening.
AC: I’ll start with my wing of the party, which — I wouldn’t consider myself a leftist, but definitely an establishment skeptic who is now aligned with the left because we share those goals. I think that we felt, as I mentioned before, wanting to have our cake and eat it too.
Maybe being the most progressive kind of economic-populist candidate is the most electable in the general election. There’s this little bit of a proxy war as we’re seeing in the Michigan Senate race between now just between Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens, on the left and the center, respectively.
AL: Yes, the other news over the weekend in the Michigan race is that Mallory McMorrow, one of the Democratic primary candidates dropped out, setting up another progressive versus centrist test between El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens.
AC: That’s a really good point in that the story of McMorrow — who I supported initially, so I’m really doing great here, 0 for 2 — is she was kind of the Goldilocks candidate between the kind of left-progressive candidate in Abdul El-Sayed and the more centrist and AIPAC-friendly candidate, establishment, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee favorite Haley Stevens. And she got squeezed. I think that was part of it.
It’s just like the electorate — the Democratic electorate — is so angry and so desperate to win, and there are two competing theories of the case, not just for 2026, but this is a dress rehearsal for 2028 when this conversation will kick into overdrive. Regardless of whether AOC runs [for president], there will be somebody on the left standard-bearer who will be making that argument.
I think that Graham Platner — I would personally separate these two, but they’re lumped together for, for good reason sometimes at least in terms of the electability argument — Abdul El-Sayed and Graham Platner. Where these two examples of more progressive, economic populist candidates, can they win in a swing state or a swing seat or a blue-leaning seat to defeating a Republican incumbent?
I would argue Abdul El-Sayed is squeaky clean, at least so far in comparison to Graham Platner or anybody. But I think you see the Stevens’s campaign trying to tie them together, and I think you see the Neera Tandens of the world trying to make the case, “We were right about Platner. Listen to us about Haley Stevens as well.”
AL: And forget about Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Cal Cunningham.
AC: Oh, Eric Swalwell and Andrew Cuomo. Eric Swalwell.
I took last night off of social media. I was like, “I’m good. I’m gonna reflect and sleep on it.”
AL: Keep it in the drafts. [Laughs]
AC: Exactly. Oh, you should see my drafts.
So, that’s one side of it, right? To summarize, the left-progressive whatever, populist coalition faction, whatever you want to call it, was right about Platner being able to tap into that anger and that enthusiasm and that passion that clearly Janet Mills was unable to tap into.
I’m of the opinion that she was never really viable. Not in this cycle. Maybe if it was 2018, maybe if it was a less angry, desperate Democratic electorate — maybe she would’ve had a chance in a different cycle.
“Maybe if it was 2018, maybe if it was a less angry, desperate Democratic electorate — maybe [Mills] would’ve had a chance in a different cycle.”
But someone of her archetype, again, very accomplished, very experienced, not just a two-term governor, but two-term attorney general, has been in public office for decades. A long list of accomplishments. Stood up to Trump on trans stuff, although that’s not the best issue, popularity-wise, to stand up to. But still — was seen as a fighter, and it wasn’t enough. So I’m not of the opinion that if Platner didn’t come around, Mills would’ve waltzed to the nomination.
I think there would’ve been somebody to fill that void potentially. So the left got that right. What they got wrong is that — and what I got wrong — is that believing in white-knuckling it and negative polarization against Chuck Schumer and the establishment and all the naysayers about Platner throughout all these abhorrent scandals.
The Nazi tattoo thing really threw me at the time, and I stopped posting about that race for a couple of months after that, after really backing him very publicly. And then jumped back on the horse because the primary’s heating up.
You’re right, there is a desire to notch that as a win, but obviously he wasn’t the right candidate. And I think that Abdul El-Sayed is now the next test of this, in about four weeks from now.
Now, the other side of it is, yes, the Neera Tandens of the world, the Third Ways of the world, people on Bluesky, et cetera, were yelling and screaming about Graham Platner for months and months and months before even the scandals.
They were like, “This guy’s untested. We shouldn’t rock the boat. This isn’t the time.” And the rest of us were like, “Look at him! He’s great! He’s going to break the archetype, break the mold.”
AL: Look at him go.
AC: And they were right. They were 100 percent right about Graham Platner.
But I think that they’re learning the wrong lessons from this, in my opinion. In that, just go with the establishment candidate. Yes, you should have better vetting. Yes, having people who are in public office who have faced some level of media scrutiny are less likely to have these kinds of things appear. Not foolproof: Look at Eric Swalwell.
But I think you can overlearn the lessons from this and try and turn this into a factional win. And I think that all of this is subtext for the conversation that we’re about to have in 2028. This is JV compared to what we’re about to experience in about, I don’t know, six to eight months.
[Break]
AL: Backing up a little bit to the midterms, which are looming in the background here the big takeaway being that both parties have a consistent problem with candidates credibly accused of sexual assault. This news, as you mentioned, came after McMorrow dropped out in Michigan, and Maine was a pickup that Democrats really needed to ease an already extremely difficult path to winning the Senate.
Do you think their chances in Maine are completely shot now? We’re anticipating news that Platner drops out in the next day or two. The deadline to do so would be on July 13, which is the coming Monday. There’s been reporting that Maine Democrats are going to rush a new convention process to potentially pick another candidate. There are several names being floated right now, most of the candidates who lost in the gubernatorial primary. But do you think Democrats’ chances in Maine are shot now?
AC: I would say it’s the opposite. I spoke with a bunch of Republican operatives, strategists, pollsters yesterday when I was taking my social media hiatus — my very brief social media hiatus, my dopamine hit hiatus — to ask them, “How you feeling?” And they’re like, “God, I hope he stays in.” They’re like, “Oh, what’s in it for him to drop out? Like at this point, might as well just keep going.” When his video dropped yesterday of him saying, “We’re taking time to evaluate next steps,” it felt to a lot of us who are in this industry who’ve seen these kinds of things before, as a prelude to a dropout.
I’d be shocked and appalled and angry if he didn’t drop out. I think what he’s trying to do right now is use his leverage to get his ally Troy Jackson, former state Senate president, I believe, who ran and came close to winning the gubernatorial nomination this year — who was also backed by Bernie Sanders, close with unions, the same type of archetype, but is an elected official. Again, fairly aligned in a lot of ways with Platner’s vision and kind of economic populist message. I think he’s trying to maybe use that as leverage to get his guy to take his place. So he’s not replaced with an “establishment-type” candidate. Although we’ll see if we’re getting into uncharted territory with this rapid convention.
As we saw in 2024 with the Biden to Kamala swap, right? That wasn’t a convention. It was like an insider elite’s rapid turnaround here. And who knows what’ll happen coming out of the convention.
But I think the consensus is, among Democratic and Republican strategists that I’ve spoken to, that Democrats have a better chance of holding the seat now. And I think that one of the arguments is that, “Oh, they won’t have any money.” The money will come. This is a must-win seat, and now that Platner, who was already struggling with fundraising — he put out a thing, I think, last week, I think a few folks like Matt Yglesias were, like, making fun of him for trashing the establishment and then asking the establishment for money because he’s getting swamped on the airwaves.
So I think the money will come to whoever replaces him on the ballot. But I do think that Democrats are in a better position, although we’re in uncharted waters. So it’s going to be tricky, and Susan Collins is no slouch. But someone with less baggage running in this kind of environment does have a really good shot still.
AL: One question that keeps coming up for me is it really possible that the people who vetted Platner missed this? I could see a plausible scenario where he blacked out and Jenny Racicot, the people that she told, weren’t going to go spreading this around because he wasn’t running for the Senate. But do you actually think the campaign didn’t know about this, or what do you think happened there?
AC: I don’t know. I know that Graham knew about all these things. He knows what he posted. They were deleted, whether it was the Reddit posts or whatever else was was unearthed.
AL: And the claim that he didn’t know about the Nazi tattoo has pretty much fallen apart at this point.
AC: Yeah, I think it fell apart a while ago. And I don’t think that the people who vetted him and recruited him to run knew about all these things before. I think Graham Platner said throughout the campaign —
AL: But like how? Especially the Reddit posts. Like how?
AC: The Reddit posts, that was a vetting failure. No doubt about it. Anything that has a digital footprint that you don’t unearth now, even if it’s deleted in the archives, like KFile, whoever’s going to do it, they’re going to unearth it. Oppo firms, they know how to do that. We saw with Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York 13.
AL: Right.
AC: These things don’t stay deleted. The internet is forever, which we’re going to see that coming up more and more with millennials and Gen Z politicians who grew up on the internet, who posted dumb stuff when they were younger — or even when they’re older.
So that was a vetting issue, and that’s something that should be addressed structurally, not just with DSCC establishment type backed candidates, but with all viable candidates. Like, the party apparatus or outside groups need to do a better job of doing self-vetting, self-oppo on these kinds of things.
In terms of things that don’t have a digital footprint that were verbal, other accusations from people — Graham knew. There’s no doubt about that, right?
AL: Yeah, and I’ll just say for our listeners, because Platner’s accuser says that after the night that she says that he raped her, she followed up with him because she was worried that she was pregnant to tell him that she wasn’t pregnant, and they had communications after the fact.
AC: I think there’s no real way of knowing when you’re vetting somebody about that unless the candidate comes forward, right? You can talk to people in their life, you can talk to their exes, you can do this. Maybe they didn’t think that Platner would be viable. Maybe they weren’t ready to talk about it yet. At the end of the day, that’s not on the vetters necessarily. That is on Graham Platner.
I think what’s getting lost in a lot of this in the blaming of people like the vetters or people like me who help prop him up, or Schumer for that matter, or the voters, or whoever it is you want to blame — and I think there’s plenty of blame to go around — is that this is on Graham.
He kept saying repeatedly throughout the campaign — and every time he did it, I would wince, even earlier on when I was standing by him — “Oh, nothing more is coming out. They’ve emptied the tank.” I spoke to Democrats, Republicans who are in the know who are like, “Yeah, more’s coming.”
A lot of us were like, “If he survived Nazi tattoo stuff, then he can survive anything.” Little did we know that — obviously, something like this is objectively even more serious than that.
AL: Yeah, there’s no question.
AC: But the fact that he kept saying nothing more is coming out speaks to either, you’re in denial, or you think that it’s never going to come out, and it’s hubris that you think you can can hide it well enough or people won’t speak out against you. But I don’t know. I’ve been following politics and working in politics for a long time. This stuff always comes out, and to think that you are the exception never works out well.
Maybe it happens once you’re in office. At some point the bill comes due. And if you’re not being forthright with people that are putting their entire reputation on the line, not talking about me, people who worked on this campaign, who got him in the race, vetted him, et cetera, and then all the fallout that extended out from that —
AL: And all the people who are withdrawing their endorsements of him right now.
AC: Exactly. There’s just so much collateral damage, and clearly there’s something appealing about his candidacy that both the people inside and outside of Maine saw something in him, and I think there is something real about what he tapped into. The ideas of his campaign can live on, but if you’re not forthright about these kinds of things, what else aren’t you being forthright about?
There were all these [Sen. John] Fetterman comparisons throughout the campaign, this gruff, unconventional guy. And I was one of the people who was like, “No, you’re just stereotyping these types of people,” but we don’t know what would’ve happened if he had won and was in the Senate, and maybe, who knows what positions he would’ve taken or what else would’ve come out.
Then maybe we [would] have a special election on our hands. There’s all kinds of implications, and I do hope that he does drop out — both to work on himself and for the sake of the party and the sake of the Democrats’ chance of having a window to take the majority. Because if Democrats lose that seat, it’s almost impossible for them to flip the Senate.
AL: I’ll just mention also that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democrat-aligned Majority PAC have said that they will not spend on this race if Platner does not drop out.
Adam, we’re going to leave it there.
Thank you so much for joining us on The Intercept Briefing. Great to have you on.
AC: Thank you for having me.
AL: Is there something you’re concerned about and want to see more reporting on? Let us know. Email us at podcasts@theintercept.com, or leave us a voicemail at 530-PODCAST. That’s 530-763-2278.
That does it for this episode.
This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Legal review by David Bralow.
Slip Stream provided our theme music.
This show and our reporting at The Intercept do not exist without you. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join.
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Until next time, I’m Akela Lacy.
The post The People Who Stood By Graham Platner — Until He Was Accused of Rape appeared first on The Intercept.
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About a month ago, Flathub announced a ban on slopcoded applications. Evangelos “GeopJr” Paterakis, developer of a number of popular Linux applications and ton of other things, did some research into just how many applications tagged with “AI slop”, a tag Flathub reviewers used to keep track of slopcoded applications submitted to Flathub, actually survived the test of time. The results are exactly what you’d expect.
Of the 120 unique repos, 32 were maintained and 88 were abandoned. No seriously, a big portion of them was completely deleted, nowhere to be found, others stopped 6 months ago, right after submitting to Flathub.
↫ Evangelos “GeopJr” Paterakis
That’s absolutely soul-crushing. Why should Flathub’s reviewers spend their precious, limited time talking to lazy slopcoders’ “AI” agents to get their slopcoded applications into Flathub, when 70% of these applications are abandoned or outright deleted from existence within mere months of being submitted? Minimal effort for the slopcoders, maximum effort for the reviewers. Just dump a bunch of shitty code over the fence, let a chatbot handle the interactions with the reviewers, and pretend you made a valuable contribution.
This is the contradiction slopcode enthusiasts really don’t want to talk about. If these “AI” tools are so great, where is all the amazing new software? Where’s the massive gains in software quality? Isn’t the story that “AI” tools do the menial work, giving programmers more time to focus on improving their software? Reality does not seem to match the story we’re being sold. Despite these slopcode tools being out and available for years now, there’s no influx of great applications and other software, there’s no rise in software quality, nothing.
What we mostly seem to be getting are slopcoded projects nobody, not even their “creators” care about, so they just get abandoned and deleted as quickly as they were dredged up from the bottom of the programming barrel. These aren’t applications created because someone wanted them to exist; these are applications created because some mid programmer got high on their “AI” supply and fancied themselves better at programming than they really are – only to realise once the comedown hits they’ve got crappy, barely working, entirely unmaintainable gibberish vaguely looking like code nobody can make head nor tails of.
And then they abandon the project, ready for the next high – leaving everyone else to clean up their mess.
What a miserable workflow.
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Babies are being put at risk by dozens of potentially lethal infant products sold to UK parents on major online marketplaces, an investigation has found.
The consumer champion Which? identified 150 products, including self-feeding prop feeders that pose a choking risk and baby sleep pillows linked to suffocation.
Continue reading...Sanders, one of Platner’s earliest and most influential backers, is latest to call on him to withdraw from Maine race
The progressive senator Bernie Sanders called on Graham Platner to withdraw from the US Senate race in Maine, citing “very serious allegations” of sexual assault, hours before the embattled nominee faced another claim of sexual misconduct.
While Platner has denied the new allegations, reported by Politico, and later by the Washington Post, the initial report prompted a wave of prominent Democrats to urge him to stand aside as the party’s nominee in the consequential Senate contest.
Continue reading...Doom developer id Software is reportedly laying off about half its staff as part of Microsoft's broader Xbox cuts. The reported layoffs potentially affects around 90 employees. Engadget reports: While neither Microsoft nor id Software have formally acknowledged the layoffs, one former member of the studio's staff, Michael Maynard, has echoed the 50 percent figure on LinkedIn. According to at least one of Game Developer's sources, that could translate to around 90 job cuts, though it's so far unclear what departments at id Software have been hit hardest. [...] Bloomberg reported yesterday that as part of the "reset" at Xbox, ZeniMax Media, the parent company of id Software, will be focusing on its biggest franchises -- like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Wolfenstein and Doom -- going forward. It's possible that motivated the cuts to id Software, but the developer at least outwardly appears to be already heavily focused on Doom. The studio launched Doom: The Dark Ages in 2025 and an expansion to the game on July 7, 2026. Whatever the reason, the cuts at Xbox aren't over: While Microsoft eliminated 1,600 roles alongside the announcement that Xbox is restructuring, it still plans to lay off another 1,600 employees over the coming months.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Department of Justice cannot have access to personal information for every person who worked during the 2020 election in Georgia's Fulton County.
Report finds widespread overbidding as rapid AI growth generates increased wealth in city where housing is scarce
San Francisco’s AI boom has buyers spending unprecedented amounts of money on homes – much more than sellers are asking for.
A new analysis from real-estate brokerage Compass, found that in the first half of 2026, more than 140 homes in the city sold for at least $1m above their asking price, 44 of them in June alone.
Continue reading...Sen. John Fetterman condemned his colleagues who continued backing Graham Platner amid a string of scandals.
Novak Djokovic beat Felix Auger-Aliassime in Wimbledon’s longest-ever quarter-final, while Karolina Muchova saw off Naomi Osaka and Jannik Sinner also won
Now a love hold for Struff, who’s started pretty well and leads 3-2 He looks confident, but he’s not yet been put under pressure and I wonder if he can offer more testing returns. Even if he needs to stand back to give himself a better look at Sinner’s serve, he has to try and dig into it rather than hope e can struggle to a tiebreaker.
Nana Sinner appears to have been busy knitting Jannik’s top; that, or Nike have rinsed him with gear yet again.
Continue reading...Instagram users might want to opt out of this AI setting right now.
I have a new favorite Windows laptop, but I still think the MacBook Air is the best laptop for most people. Check out all of my picks, from budget models to high-powered rigs for gamers, creators and everything in between.
Microsoft will turn on Windows settings backup and restore by default for eligible Windows 11 business devices outside the EU, starting with Windows 11 26H2. The Register reports: Now dubbed "Windows settings backup and restore," the service backs up a device's settings and a list of installed Microsoft Store apps, which can then be restored to a new device. Microsoft gave a use case for the technology: "Imagine a lost laptop, a hardware refresh, or an unexpected reset. These are some of the moments when your users need backup most. And that's rarely when anyone wants to discover that backup was never turned on." However, some organizations might not want it on. Perhaps those with strict privacy or data sovereignty requirements, or those regulated by the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), for whom the default-on behavior won't apply. Windows 11 25H2 and earlier are also excluded, as is any device with a backup policy that explicitly disables the setting. Everything else running Windows 11 26H1 will get switched on after a feature update, and the same applies to 26H2, currently with Windows Insiders in the Experimental channel. Administrators might reasonably be wary of this being opt-out rather than opt-in. Backups are useful, but Microsoft is clear that this is not a comprehensive backup solution, calling it only "one step in a broader Windows resiliency effort." The implications still need consideration. An opt-out setting that quietly ships settings data off-device is exactly the sort of thing that adds to administrators' workloads rather than lightening them.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
US Central Command says Tehran in ‘clear violation’ of ceasefire with ‘unwarranted’ attacks on commercial ships
The US military launched a series of “powerful” strikes against Iran, it announced on Tuesday night, in response to what it said were “unwarranted, dangerous” Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels in the strait of Hormuz.
In a statement on social media, US Central Command accused Tehran of a “clear violation” of the ceasefire agreement between US and Iran, which was signed last month.
Continue reading...Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao said he has directed that Cmdr. Gabriel Edwards be posthumously promoted to his selected rank of captain.
President also threatens to pull all American troops from Europe and rails against Nato stance on Iran war
Donald Trump has revived his bid for the US to acquire Greenland, threatening to pull all American armed forces out of Europe after the continent repeatedly pushed back.
Arriving at the Nato summit in Ankara on Tuesday, the US president also suggested his commitment to defending Europe had been tempered by political decisions by leaders on immigration and energy.
Continue reading...The long-wheelbase Model Y L adds a usable third row with a negligible range penalty, but its $61,990 Launch Series price undercuts no one.
Why unlimited? A phone plan with no caps on the data you use lets you stream media, play games and stay connected. We pick our favorites from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.
An overview of the most popular channels provided by platforms like YouTube TV, Sling, Fubo and others.
A 2-1 ruling from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found Florida's assertion it could control the speech of its employees to be "a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the state's own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry."
Regional partnership establishes innovation platform to strengthen agriculture security and rural reinvestment
July 7, 2026 — F3 Innovate (F3i), Fresno State and the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego have announced the launch of the F3i Supercomputing Center, a regional innovation platform providing the computing power, technical support and talent pipeline needed to accelerate innovation across California’s food and agriculture supply chain. The center represents a first-of-its-kind partnership between industry and higher education to expand access to the advanced computing infrastructure needed to compete in an AI-driven economy.
The universities, F3i and local leaders will celebrate the launch of the Supercomputer Center from 10 a.m. to noon Thursday, July 9, in the Fresno State Library.
The event will include AI model demonstrations, case studies and discussion about the center’s role in advancing the future of agriculture and food security, workforce development, K-16 pathways and more.
The Central Valley produces a significant share of the nation’s food, supports more than 14,000 farming and food-processing operations, serves as a critical logistics hub and is home to a growing network of manufacturers, researchers, entrepreneurs and educational institutions. While these industries generate significant economic value, most of the investment supporting AI development and other advanced technologies has historically been located elsewhere.
The center brings advanced computing resources directly to the Central Valley. Instead of requiring businesses, researchers and educators to build their own computing systems, the F3i Supercomputing Center provides shared access to powerful computing resources and technical support allowing growers, food processors, manufacturers, logistics companies, startups and researchers to test and apply AI to real-world challenges across the food and agriculture supply chain.
“Data and computing power are becoming foundational infrastructure for the global economy,” said Priscilla Koepke, F3i chief executive officer. “The technologies shaping agriculture’s future, from artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to robotics and biotechnology, all depend on the ability to process and apply massive amounts of information. This partnership creates the infrastructure, expertise and talent pipeline needed to ensure Central Valley agriculture remains globally competitive while accelerating innovation across the entire food and agriculture supply chain.”
Fresno State will serve as the home of the center, expanding opportunities for applied research, workforce development and industry collaboration while reinforcing the university’s role as California’s leading agricultural university.
“Fresno State is excited to give our students, faculty and industry partners access to technologies that are reshaping agriculture and the broader food system,” said Dr. Bao Johri, vice president of information technology and chief information officer. “By hosting this center, Fresno State will help prepare the next generation of engineers, researchers, agricultural professionals and entrepreneurs while strengthening the innovation ecosystem that supports the Central Valley’s economy.”
The partnership also leverages the nationally recognized expertise of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, which has spent decades advancing cyberinfrastructure for scientific research, including the development of the National Research Platform and National Data Platform with support from the National Science Foundation.
“High-performance computing has become essential infrastructure for research, innovation and economic competitiveness,” said Frank Wuerthwein, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center. “Through this partnership, we are extending advanced computing capabilities beyond traditional research environments and into one of the nation’s most important production economies. By combining our technical expertise with Fresno State’s leadership in agriculture and workforce development and F3i’s deep connections to industry, we are creating a model for accelerating innovation across the food and agriculture supply chain.”
The center will provide three integrated services:
The center is one part of F3 Innovate’s broader strategy to strengthen the Central Valley’s innovation ecosystem. By bringing together growers, universities, startups, investors, public partners and workforce programs, F3i helps move promising ideas from research into real-world use, creating new businesses, preparing workers for emerging careers and accelerating the adoption of technologies that improve the competitiveness of California agriculture.
Source: BoNhia Lee; California State University, Fresno
The post Fresno State Opens F3i Supercomputing Center to Advance AI Across California Agriculture appeared first on HPCwire.
In the early morning hours of June 29, federal agents from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security conducted a raid on home in Midlothian, Texas, in the Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area.
The raid, which saw federal agents deploying flash-bang grenades and using armored vehicles, was authorized by a federal search warrant related to an ongoing federal investigation into an alleged bomb plot at a June 14 Ultimate Fighting Championship event at the White House. The Justice Department characterized the case as an assassination plot against high-ranking officials using of explosive drones and sniper rifles.
The search warrant in Midlothian was issued as part of federal agents’ search for evidence of several potential charges, including conspiracy to commit murder, according to documents viewed by The Intercept.
“They are stress-testing the limits of NSPM-7.”
The subject of the raid in Texas claimed that, in the days after the raid, federal agents returned to her home and offered her up to $200,000 to act as an informant for federal law enforcement. The resident, “Doberman,” who asked only to be identified only by her social media handle because of ongoing threats to her safety, has not been indicted on any charges. Doberman also said she was visited by agents from the FBI and Secret Service weeks before the raid.
The raid was part of a sweeping effort by the federal government and far-right media figures to spin up a vast far-left conspiracy casting antifascist activists as well-organized extremists who pose a threat to public safety.
President Donald Trump has made attacks on antifascist activists a centerpiece of his domestic crackdown on the left, designating antifa a terrorist organization and issuing directives like the National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 to focus resources on going after left-wing activists.
The crackdown recently helped spur centuries’ worth of combined prison sentences for a clutch of left-wing activists who launched a protest at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Prairieland Detention Facility, just a 20-minutes drive from Midlothian.
First Amendment advocates said the Midlothian raid fit into the widespread pattern of aggressive policing tactics being used against the left, including other attempts to flip activists.
“They are stress-testing the limits of NSPM-7, both by trying to cast various groups or voluntary associations that are protected by the First Amendment as being antifa, or as falling within the ambit of this sort of very broad definition of terrorism,” said Moira Meltzer-Cohen, a New York-based attorney who represents defendants in federal cases but is not working on the Midlothian raid. “We see that with this thing in North Texas, we saw that in Prairieland, and we’re seeing that in Minneapolis” — a reference to the recent indictments of 15 anti-ICE activists in Minnesota.
Doberman is a well-known activist in north Texas left-wing circles. She has been filmed armed at protests and is a member of a group known as the Community Liberation Brigade.
In the days before the raid, a Dallas Express op-ed by a local right-wing activist identified Doberman as a leader of the Community Liberation Brigade. The article suggested that Doberman had ties to the Pairieland defendants — a case that saw the government’s first successful prosecution under Trump’s directives against antifa. It’s unclear what role, if any, the Dallas Express op-ed played in the raid.
Doberman, who told The Intercept she doesn’t have any ties to the Prairieland defendants, said she was questioned about the case during the raid. Authorities also asked Doberman about people named in recent federal indictments surrounding the UFC plot, where the most serious charges included conspiracy to commit murder — the same charge that appeared on the search warrant for Doberman’s home.
Because of the ongoing investigation, the Secret Service directed questions about Doberman’s case to the Justice Department. The Department of Homeland Security referred questions to the FBI. Neither the Justice Department nor the FBI immediately responded to requests for comment.
Two weeks before the Midlothian raid, federal agents tried to question Doberman about the alleged plot to attack the UFC 250 event, an extravagant mixed martial arts performance hosted by the White House as part of its celebrations of 250 years of American independence.
Two men who identified themselves as federal agents from the FBI and Secret Service arrived at Doberman’s door, according to video footage of the encounter obtained by The Intercept.
In the footage, one of the agents assures Doberman that she is “not in trouble” and asks her if she knows anything about an impending attack. Doberman replies that she doesn’t know anything about any plot. When asked if she plans to travel to Washington, she says she is “broke as fuck.” Shortly after, Doberman declined to answer further questions and instructs the agents to come back with a warrant.
Two weeks later — just days after the Dallas Express piece published — federal agents arrived during the early morning hours in Bearcat armored vehicles. They broke down Doberman’s door in a “no-knock” raid, a controversial tactic that has led to the deaths of innocent people.
“I was woken up by a loud crack, a loud bang,” Doberman told The Intercept in her first media interview since the raid. “I shot up and looked directly to my door, where I was then briefly blinded by a very fucking bright flash of light. After I got my vision back, I saw three rifles trained directly at me.”
Officers placed Doberman in handcuffs, she said, and led her to a local police cruiser parked nearby. Doberman, who is transgender, was denied the opportunity to put on clothes, even after being detained and handcuffed by agents. She was then forced outside in her underwear.
“I’m a trans woman — so, trans woman in a very red state, in a very red city, in feminine underwear. Not the best look,” she said.
According to a seizure receipt viewed by the The Intercept, Doberman’s cellphone was the only item taken during the raid.
In the days after the raid, another FBI agent, whom Doberman said did not give their name, returned her cellphone.
“We know that you’re struggling financially. We know that the people you hold dear are struggling financially.”
During the exchange, Doberman said, the agent offered her hundreds of thousands of dollars to become a confidential informant.
“He said, ‘Hey, we know that you’re struggling financially. We know that the people you hold dear are struggling financially. We are willing to offer monetary gain if you can give us any information on bad actors,’” she recalled.
“The agent said $100,000 to $200,000, which is a life-changing amount,” Doberman said.
Doberman said she told the agent that she would think about the offer. In an interview with The Intercept, however, she said she had no intention of accepting.
Shortly after the offer was made, Doberman spoke to Xavier de Janon, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild who confirmed the account to The Intercept. De Janon says that proposals like the one received by Doberman could be indicative of the larger network of resources being poured into federal investigations under Trump’s NSPM-7 directive.
“Getting money in exchange for information isn’t new for this government. It’s actually pretty old. I think what is a bit surprising is the amount,” he said. “These cash payouts are really large and probably reflect the very large budgets that these federal agencies have under Trump.”
De Janon said large financial offers to potential collaborators raise questions about the validity of information provided by informants.
“Even without cash payments, federal informants and state-level informants, too, are pressured so much to give out information that they start behaving in ways that creates criminal situations and questionable moments that wouldn’t have happened to begin with,” he said.
Informant programs have been riddled with issues and allegations that the government targets and takes advantage of vulnerable people, and alleged criminal plots are frequently conceived and proposed by the informants themselves.
For her part, Doberman was rattled by the raid. Though she was not accused of any crimes, the violent raid left her in a persistent state of anxiety. “I’ve been working on my PTSD for years,” she said. “It’s gotten so much worse. And every night now, constant nightmares.”
The post FBI Raided Texas Activist’s House — Then Offered Her $200,000 to Become Antifa Informant appeared first on The Intercept.
First-of-its-kind initiative will integrate quantum sensing, networking and computing into a single operational system to strengthen American economic competitiveness and national security
July 7, 2026 — The U.S. National Science Foundation today announced Project Triad, a first-of-its-kind initiative to integrate quantum sensing, quantum networking and quantum computing into a single operational system. By bringing these three capabilities together for the first time, Project Triad will move quantum technology out of the lab and into real-world use — with applications spanning safety, healthcare, energy, manufacturing and more.
Credit: Shutterstock
The initiative will lay the scientific and technological foundation needed to refine, scale and commercialize these systems through U.S. industry, strengthening American economic competitiveness, national security and quality of life.
“NSF Project Triad will unite the research enterprise to advance the administration’s vision, ensuring public investments translate into strategic advantages in quantum technology for all Americans,” said Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF director. “Project Triad, in alignment with the executive order ‘Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation,’ continues NSF’s leading role in advancing innovation that improves American prosperity, quality of life, national security and creates jobs for American workers.”
Quantum technologies make use of quantum properties (such as entanglement and superposition) found in particles of matter and energy, like atoms and photons. This allows quantum sensors to detect finer details and quantum computers to potentially solve problems that would otherwise take years, or even centuries, to tackle.
Combining quantum sensors, networks and computers in integrated quantum systems opens a new frontier of possibilities:
“Achieving Project Triad will require exceptional fundamental scientific work alongside translational research to utilize quantum data to its utmost,” says NSF Chief Science Officer Simon Malcomber.
Quantum technology is advancing fast globally, and the U.S. needs to move quickly, but also smartly. Project Triad takes a systematic approach to identifying which quantum breakthroughs are ready to scale, cutting the ones that aren’t, and accelerating the most promising ideas from lab to market. It does this through three interlocking programs that bring together government, universities and private industry — making it the first effort to build a fully integrated quantum environment in the United States.
Project Triad draws on NSF’s existing portfolio of quantum research programs — including its network of specialized institutes, engineering centers and national research infrastructure — giving Triad access to the latest findings and discoveries for real-world testing within the integrated quantum system. These programs also train the next generation of quantum scientists and engineers, ensuring the workforce is ready to build on what Project Triad delivers.
Learn more about Project Triad here.
Source: NSF
The post NSF Launches Project Triad to Advance Quantum Tech for Real-World Applications appeared first on HPCwire.
TAIPEI, Taiwan, July 7, 2026 — GIGABYTE is demonstrating how AI TOP ATOM four-node clustering scales local AI computing for increasingly complex workloads. As AI models, scientific simulations, and enterprise applications continue to grow in size and complexity, standalone systems are increasingly insufficient to meet rising memory and compute demands. AI TOP ATOM clustering removes that constraint, enabling memory-intensive workloads to run locally without compromising on data security.
GIGABYTE Demonstrates AI TOP ATOM Four-Node Clustering on Scientific Computing
Each AI TOP ATOM node delivers 1 PFLOPS FP4 AI performance and 128 GB unified memory. Through a RoCE-capable 200GbE switch, four interconnected nodes, each with 128 GB of unified memory, enable memory-intensive workloads to scale beyond the limits of a standalone system. The modular architecture allows organizations to scale from one node to four nodes as workload requirements evolve while maintaining local deployment and full data sovereignty, providing a scalable foundation for larger AI and scientific computing workloads.
To demonstrate these capabilities, GIGABYTE collaborated with NVIDIA to showcase an AI-driven scientific computing workflow on AI TOP ATOM clusters. Powered by NVIDIA NemoClaw blueprints, the workflow orchestrates NVIDIA Nemotron-3-Nano-30B-NVFP4 open-source models for research hypothesis generation and dispatches GROMACS to execute simulations across the cluster. By connecting AI reasoning with scientific simulation, the workflow demonstrates how AI-driven research can be executed within a clustered computing environment.
As part of the demonstration, the workflow is applied to thermal interface material (TIM) development for advanced semiconductor packaging, a workload that increasingly relies on large-scale molecular dynamics simulations. While standalone systems are typically limited to simulations of approximately 10 million atoms before encountering memory constraints, a four-node AI TOP ATOM cluster extends simulation capacity beyond 30 million atoms for next-generation IC packaging research.
The demonstration highlights how AI TOP ATOM four-node clustering can support larger-scale scientific simulations that exceed the capabilities of a standalone system, extending its role from AI development to emerging scientific computing applications. For more information, please visit GIGABYTE AI TOP ATOM here.
About GIGABYTE
GIGABYTE is an engineer, innovator, and leader in the tech world that offers a complete product and service portfolio of different scales to accelerate individuals and businesses in reaching their potential. With unique industry insights and strong eco-partnerships, GIGABYTE continues to expand its products and influence, enabling customers to facilitate AI implementation and future robotics, and align the advancement of computing with environment sustainability to “Upgrade Your Life.”
Source: GIGABYTE
The post GIGABYTE Demonstrates AI TOP ATOM Four-Node Clustering on Scientific Computing appeared first on HPCwire.
Only a few days ago we had Linux on the Mega Drive, and someone took that as a challenge, so now we have Linux on the Atari Jaguar. The Jaguar has a very different architecture than the Mega Drive, but does happen to use a processor from the same 68000-family.
Interestingly enough, to this day, Linux has architecture code for the 68000-family of processors. 68040, 68030, 68010… and even the original base 68000 processor. All neatly structured under
↫ Joel Buenoarch/m68k/.
And, well, that means Linux can indeed be made to work on the Jaguar, with some hacking and magic, of course.
A slew of Ford recalls affects some new and used Mustang, Lincoln Nautilus Hybrid and Explorer Hybrid vehicles, according to a federal safety watchdog.
Samsung's chip division is projected to earn more in 2026 than it made across its previous 40 years in semiconductors, driven by soaring AI-fueled demand for memory and storage. The company's latest quarterly operating profit reportedly topped Nvidia's, making Samsung the world's most profitable tech company for the period. Tom's Hardware reports: Brokerage consensus puts Samsung's full-year 2026 operating profit near 300 trillion won ($196 billion), and its second-quarter figure at about 84.6 trillion won ($55.1 billion). Samsung easily beat the consensus with $58.5 billion when it posted preliminary results on July 7, overtaking Nvidia's most recent quarterly operating profit of $53.54 billion and becoming the most profitable technology company in the world for the period, on the back of AI-driven memory demand. Samsung's DS division booked 53.7 trillion won ($35.1 billion) of the company's 57.2 trillion won in total operating profit during the first quarter of 2026, roughly 94% of the total, which is why the division's projection sits so close to Samsung's full-year consensus. "This year's profit will exceed the cumulative profit generated over the past 40 years since we entered the semiconductor business," Kim Yong-Kwan told staff, scoping the claim to the chip business rather than the wider conglomerate. Further reading: Samsung Chip Workers To Get $340,000 Average Bonus In AI Boom
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
If you or a senior family member needs phone service, anyone 55 and older can save money with these specific phone plans tailored to their needs.
Whether you use your printer for school, a small business or everyday household tasks like printing photos, we’ve identified the top options worth considering.
While Google's official Pixel 11 unveiling is next month, several key features of the next Android phone may have been revealed early.
The crypto marketplace sent out a news blast even when its own prediction market listing showed a delay.
College freshman’s mother identified his body after he was reported missing following 4 July boat trip with friends
On 4 July, Nolan Xavier Wells, an 18-year-old from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and a group of friends went on a boat trip to Horn Island, a barrier island about 10 miles off the Mississippi Gulf coast. Wells’s friends all returned back home that evening, but Wells did not, prompting his mother to report him missing and ask for help on social media, triggering a two-day search that caught national attention. That search came to an end on Monday, when a body was found on the island. On Tuesday, Wells’s mother, Christine Wonsley, identified the body as belonging to Wells.
“His father, our family, friends and I are absolutely devastated,” Wonsley wrote in a Facebook post. “My heart is broken for my sweet son who was always willing to cheer and uplift others. Nolan was a special soul, God took his time creating our son.”
Continue reading...The rise of an GPU-less supercomputer called LineShine on the TOP500 list last week has provoked questions about supercomputer architectures. Namely, do we still need GPUs to run AI and scientific computing workloads? The question was recently taken up in a new paper written by a trio of HPC experts, Jack Dongarra, Satoshi Matsuoaka, and Torsten Hoefler.
In the new paper, which is titled “Do We Still Need GPUs? Rethinking AI and Scientific Computing on Matrix-Enhanced CPUs,” Dongarra, Matsuoka, and Hoefler–who hail from the University of Tennessee, RIKEN-CSS, and ETH Zurich, respectively–dig deeply into the technical requirements to run both traditional HPC and newer AI workloads.
They look at the different data types that are at play with HPC and AI workloads, and how general-purpose GPUs addressed them. They analyze the bottlenecks in the modern entire supercomputer architectures, the programming models, and how data types match to hardware.
In the end, they come to the conclusion that GPUs may not be needed, as modern CPUs have adopted many of the capabilities that drove people to GPUs in the first place.
The HPC experts documented the rise of GPUs over the past decade, which has made Nvidia–the dominant supplier of GPUs thanks in large part to its CUDA programming environment–the richest company on the planet.
Nvidia GPU performance over time (Image courtesy Hartwig Anzt, TUM)
“The following success is easy to understand: GPUs provide massive floating-point throughput using optimized datatypes, excellent efficiency for dense linear algebra, matrix-matrix operations, high memory bandwidth, and many forms of data-parallel computation,” they write. “Modern AI, especially deep learning, has been shaped around the strengths of GPUs, and many scientific applications have been rewritten to exploit them.”
The main reason the scientific computing community and AI pioneers adopted GPUs was because “conventional CPUs lacked sufficient parallel arithmetic capability or memory bandwidth for emerging AI and high-performance computing workloads,” they write in the paper.
What matters is not whether the device is called a GPU, the authors write, “but whether it provides the right computational structures, memory system, programming model, and numerical capabilities.” The capabilities of GPUs fit the bill, while those of CPUs did not.
Neither hardware nor software is developed in a vacuum. Each side is guided, in some degree or another, by what’s happening on the other side. When they’re sufficiently intertwined, we like to use the term “co-design.”
With that said, there are some core computational requirements, some kernels, that don’t change much. Matrices and vectors are the dominant data types in both AI and much of scientific computing, and so that is what’s needed on the hardware.
Specifically, AI training and inference is dominated by matrix-matrix multiplication, convolution, and attention kernels, which “map extremely well to highly parallel hardware,” Dongarra, Matsuoka, and Hoefler write.
In the world of scientific computing, dense linear algebra calculations remain the heart of workloads like eigensolvers, factorizations, simulation codes, optimization, uncertainty quantification, and emerging AI-assisted modeling.
GPUs have delivered the most bang for the buck when it comes to meeting these requirements over the past decade. But there’s no reason why that has to be the case going forward.
Diagram of LineShine’s Arm LX2 processors along wtih SME and SVE engines (Image from Jack Dongarra’s “Report On The Chinese LineShine System“)
“If a CPU contains vector and matrix engines with high bandwidth and the right datatype support capable of delivering high throughput for these operations, then one of the GPU’s most important historical advantages is diminished,” the authors write.
This is exactly what’s happening today. On the ARM processor, the addition of Scalable Vector Extension (SVE) and Scalable Matrix Extension (SME) allow ARM processors to handle vectors of any size, as well as the matrix math central to linear algebra-based scientific computing workloads and newer AI software. China’s new LineShine supercomputer–which took the number one spot on the TOP500 last week–is an example of utilizing ARM SVE and SME extensions to achieve very high levels of FP64 compute in a GPU-less architecture. Intel’s AVX and AMX extensions provide something similar for X86 chips. (IBM’s latest POWER processor also has matrix and vector math engines, too.)
“If these features are implemented with high throughput and paired with sufficient memory bandwidth, then the CPU becomes not merely a scalar control processor but a true numerical engine,” Dongarra, Matsuoka, and Hoefler write.
When computational horsepower was the bottleneck, it made sense to adopt large, powerful GPUs to overcome it. However, for some workloads, the huge increases in computational power that Nvidia and AMD have brought with their latest GPUs are essentially going to waste, as the systems just can’t get data to them fast enough.
In many cases, GPUs are starving for data. Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell and Rubin Vera superchips, which combine two GPUs with one ARM-based CPU, are marvels of engineering. But even with gobs of HBM and an extremely fast NVLink chip-to-chip (C2C) interconnect, many workloads are not scaling as they used to, and the extra cost and complexity is becoming a burden.
“Moving data between CPU memory and GPU memory adds latency, consumes energy, complicates programming, and forces applications to manage multiple memory spaces,” Dongarra, Matsuoka, and Hoefler write. “Unified memory models and high-speed interconnects help, but they do not completely remove the complexity.”
FLOPs has outpaced bandwidth (Source: “AI and Memory Wall” by Gholami et. al)ru
If you can get a single powerful CPU with matrix and vector engines and enough HBM, then the benefits gained through having a single memory abstraction that’s managed by one processor that also handles the OS, communication, control flow, and numerical kernels, then you might have a setup that beats a GPU-based one. Again, that appears to be what’s happening in the market.
The authors also discuss the importance of having processors that support mixed precision workloads. While many scientific computing workloads demand the high precision that comes with FP32 or FP64, today’s newer AI workloads run best using lower precision. Having processors that can run the full gamut–from FP4, FP16, FP32, FP64, and INT8 to block-scaled FP8 and FP4–is important.
“But there is nothing inherently GPU-specific about low-precision matrix arithmetic,” Dongarra, Matsuoka, and Hoefler write. “A CPU that supports multiple precisions natively is well suited to this model. It can perform bulk computation in lower precision, accumulate or correct in higher precision, and use double precision where necessary.”
The increased complexity of adding GPUs made sense when compute was the bottleneck, even if that model increased costs and made programming more complex. But the model makes less sense when we have CPUs that are approaching GPU-level performance thanks to additional vector/matrix capabilities and loads of HBM.
“GPUs are very effective, but they often require specialized programming models, careful kernel design, memory hierarchy management, and attention to occupancy, thread divergence in older models, and data placement,” the authors write. “High performance will still require optimized libraries, careful data layout, compiler support, and algorithmic restructuring.
(Image courtesy Jack Dongarra)
“But the path may be simpler if the processor remains a general-purpose CPU with accelerator-like features built in,” they continue. “Instead of treating the GPU as a separate device, the programmer sees a powerful CPU with scalable vector and matrix instructions for the right datatypes and high-bandwidth memory. That can make it easier to support irregular workloads, dynamic control flow, adaptive methods, sparse computations, and tightly coupled simulations.”
The authors make the case that CPUs have an inherent advantage over GPUs when it comes to handling the long tail of scientific computing’s needs. Again, that advantage may be overcome if the GPUs is delivering raw power that can be harnessed. But when that raw power advantage is cut into, the extra costs associated with GPU computing begin to nag.
“Scientific computing is broader than dense matrix multiplication,” Dongarra, Matsuoka, and Hoefler write. “Many important applications involve sparse matrices, graph-like data structures, adaptive meshes, particles, multiscale coupling, irregular memory access, global reductions, and communication across distributed systems. GPUs can handle many of these workloads, but efficiency is often harder to achieve than for dense tensor operations. CPUs are traditionally better at latency-sensitive, branch-heavy, and irregular computation. If the CPU also has strong dense linear algebra performance, it can handle both sides of the workload: the regular, compute-intensive kernels and the irregular orchestration around them. This reduces the need to split an application awkwardly between CPU and GPU and removes unnecessary data movement.”
Scientific computing has enough nooks and crannies and odd irregularities where the difficulties in adapting to a GPU may offset the raw performance gains that a GPU gives you, the authors argue. In this case, an all-CPU design may make sense.
But that’s not necessarily the case in AI. As previously noted, deep learning has essentially been built up around the capabilities of GPUs, a case of industry-wide co-design. To train a frontier models on CPUs would be quite an undertaking, as it would put huge demands on the matrix engines, as well as memory bandwidth, communication performance, and software support. “That is a high bar,” the authors write.
But training is not the only AI workload that matters. And as we have been covering for the past six months here at HPCwire, AI inference increasingly runs on CPUs, which “are cool again.” The HPC gurus note that AI is not a monolith, and goes beyond the prefill and decode stages of AI inference.
“Inference, fine-tuning, scientific machine learning, surrogate modeling, graph neural networks, sparse models, and AI embedded inside simulation workflows may run very effectively on a CPU with matrix extensions and HBM,” they write. “In these cases, integration and data locality may matter as much as raw tensor throughput.”
In the end analysis, the HPC experts make the case that CPUs can effectively step in to run many of the workloads that folks have been using GPUs to run. For supercomputing site at DOE labs, universities, and major corporations, the message is clear: Don’t be hamstrung by thinking you must have a GPU-based system.
“The strongest argument, then, is not that GPUs are useless. They are not. GPUs are extremely powerful and will remain important,” Dongarra, Matsuoka, and Hoefler write. “The argument is that GPUs are not fundamentally required if the CPU evolves to include the architectural features that made GPUs attractive. A CPU with SVE/AVX, SME/AMX, HBM, multiple precision formats, and matrix-multiply capability is no longer a conventional CPU. It is a general-purpose processor with accelerator-class numerical machinery.”
Doug Eadline, an HPCwire contributor says the paper brings up an important point and reinforces a rule he lives by.
“The general always absorbs the specific,” Eadline said. “This scenario has played out in the CPU market for years where the manufacturing costs of CPUs requires that they address the largest market possible and currently AI is defining the market.”
You can download the paper at https://bit.ly/no-gpus.
The post Are GPUs Still Needed? Maybe Not, HPC Experts Say appeared first on HPCwire.
Pochettino awaits talks over future with US team
Federation backs coach but leaves door open
Spend any time around US men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino and you’ll likely notice a medallion hanging from a bracelet on his right wrist. It is emblazoned with an engraving of Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers.
It’s a detail that feels appropriate for Pochettino, or any high-level manager, really, all of whom are inherently nomadic. The Argentinian has enjoyed stability at a handful of stops but has also done his share of moving, having shepherded five different clubs prior to his arrival in the United States about 22 months ago.
Continue reading...French far-right leader announces decision after court orders her to wear ankle tag over embezzlement
The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has announced she will run for the presidency in 2027 and will lodge an appeal to France’s highest court over her sentence to wear an electronic ankle tag for the embezzlement of European parliament funds.
“Tonight, I am a candidate in the presidential election,” Le Pen, 57, told TF1 television on Tuesday night.
Continue reading...Democrats have a brief window of time to replace Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner on the ballot if he drops out of the race amid a sexual assault allegation.
The cost of a first-class Forever stamp has climbed 41% since 2021, and postal officials have signaled they want prices to rise even more.
An investigator testified that a video shows Tyler Robinson going over a railing onto a rooftop, crouching down and running to a site overlooking where Charlie Kirk was speaking.
The top Republicans in the Senate spoke with the Kentucky Republican by phone this week, according to their spokespeople.
Amid simmering tensions between the U.S. and some NATO allies over Iran and Greenland, President Trump is tightening bonds with Turkey.
Far-right leader gives TV interview saying that she will appeal against part of today’s ruling which cast doubt on a presidential run
The opening speeches are now under way in Ankara, and you can watch them below.
This is the Day 1 industry event, not the leaders’ summit, mind you.
Continue reading...
President Donald Trump recently filed a required financial disclosure form outlining his 2025 income, and it drew attention to the scale of his wealth — an estimated increase of more than $2 billion in one year.
On July 1, a reporter asked Trump how he’d respond to critics who say he’s profiting off the presidency.
Trump responded, "Well, you know why I'm profiting? Because the stock market's going up — everybody's profiting. Do you have a 401(k)? … So we're all profiting. I'm profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash."
Trump’s sizable stock holdings, and transactions involving them, make up more than 800 pages of the 927-page disclosure document, and they have undoubtedly increased in value along with the rest of the stock market.
But the financial disclosure form shows several major sources of income that have nothing to do with the stock market. Cryptocurrency is most notable, bringing in $1.4 billion. The disclosure also shows another $400 million from non-stock sources such as real estate, legal settlements, overseas licensing agreements and branded merchandise such as watches and footwear.
"The vast majority of what he’s reporting has increased outside of a direct connection to the stock market," said Kedric Payne, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, which focuses on campaign transparency, ethics and voting rights.
The White House did not dispute PolitiFact’s calculations of the disclosure form’s figures.
"As President Trump said, he has a lot of assets because he was a massively successful businessman prior to becoming President, which was why he was elected to office in the first place," White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement.
The Trump Organization, the president’s real estate-focused business, told PolitiFact in another statement that "the breadth and depth of this filing further underscores our commitment to transparency."
Despite the hundreds of pages dedicated to stocks in Trump’s disclosure document, it’s difficult to assess his stock-related gains with precision. The form lists thousands of stock purchases and sales but the proceeds are reported in broad ranges of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. This makes it nearly impossible to determine the specific net gains from Trump’s stock transactions.
In addition, the form doesn’t address the value of the stocks Trump holds that were not bought or sold in 2025.
To test Trump’s assertion that his gains were primarily driven by the stock market, we turned to portions of the disclosure form that detailed income unrelated to stocks. Although the form is often unclear about what specific line items refer to, it provides enough information to determine that cryptocurrency ventures provided Trump with well over $1 billion in 2025 income.
Two major crypto ventures included in the form are World Liberty Financial and Celebration Coins, the latter of which appears to be linked to his $TRUMP meme coin. The Associated Press has described meme coins as "a strange and highly volatile corner of the crypto industry that often start as a joke with no real value but can surge in price if enough people are willing to buy them." Dogecoin, a meme coin based on the Shiba Inu meme, is one high-profile example.
Trump’s reported income from World Liberty Financial transactions is roughly $791 million, while income from Celebration Coins is just over $635 million — $1.4 billion total. (It’s unclear whether Trump profited from all this income or if some was allocated to overheard or shared by co-investors.)
Trump earned money every time someone bought or sold one of his cryptocurrencies, but rank and file investors have fared less well as the currency’s value has declined, according to The New York Times. The Times reported that nearly 1 million people who bought his meme coin have collectively lost $3.81 billion in value through the end of June, citing a report by the cryptocurrency analytics firm Nansen.
Trump’s crypto ventures have also raised concerns about foreign countries and people with interests before the U.S. government using crypto investments to influence the president.
Other non-stock income sources added another $400 million, according to the form:
Real estate. Trump’s pre-White House career was in real estate, and he has continued to make significant amounts of money from that sector, including almost $196 million in 2025. This includes income from many of his well-known properties, including Mar-a-Lago in Florida and golf courses in Florida, New Jersey, New York and Ireland.
Legal settlements. Trump listed $88.5 million in payments received as legal settlements, including from media companies such as ABC and CBS and social media platforms Meta, YouTube and Twitter.
Overseas licensing. Trump has struck $65 million in licensing deals with several overseas entities. The properties are located in Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Romania, the Philippines, Vietnam and India.
Trump-branded merchandise. Trump netted $8 million from sales of watches, footwear and published materials.
Two separate estimates by media outlets suggest that the non-stock gains account for well over half of Trump’s 2025 income gains.
A New York Times analysis of the disclosure form estimated that Trump "pulled in at least $2.2 billion" overall in 2025. And a March Forbes analysis — before the disclosure form was released — estimated that Trump’s wealth had risen by $2.7 billion, partially offset by a $1.3 billion loss from stock valuations in the Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social.
Using these estimates as a baseline, Trump’s non-stock gains would be either 81% of his gains (using the Times’ figure) or 67% (using Forbes’ figure). Neither indicates gains driven largely by the stock market.
"It's a fair reading of this disclosure form to say that President Trump's crypto ventures accounted for a substantial portion of his financial gains in 2025," said Michael Beckel, who tracks money in politics for Issue One, which tracks campaign finance. "Without his forays into the crypto industry, President Trump's financial gains in 2025 would have been significantly less. The stock market's performance alone does not explain President Trump's sizable financial gains in 2025."
Trump said, "You know why I'm profiting? Because the stock market's going up. ... I'm profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash."
Like other Americans invested in the stock market, which had a strong 2025 performance, Trump likely made gains last year. But his 2025 financial disclosure form reports $1.4 billion alone in income from cryptocurrencies, and another $400 million from non-stock sources, including real estate, legal settlements, overseas licensing agreements and branded merchandise.
A full and precise accounting of Trump’s income is not possible. However, credible estimates indicate that two-thirds to 80% of his total income gains in 2025 came from non-stock sources.
His statement that he profited because "the stock market’s going up" contains an element of truth but omits information that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False.
The FCC plans to roll back broadband label rules that require ISPs to itemize all passthrough fees. Under the proposal, providers could instead list a single "up to" amount for location-based charges. It would also allow ISPs to link to pricing labels rather than display them prominently, while eliminating machine-readable pricing files. Ars Technica reports: ISPs routinely advertise prices much lower than those actually charged to consumers on their monthly bills. One method of raising monthly bill prices above advertised rates is to tack on fees that, ISPs claim, are used to offset charges imposed by local governments. ISPs would be well within their rights to advertise accurate monthly prices and charge those exact prices on monthly bills. But because ISPs rarely do that, the FCC has required them to make specific price disclosures to consumers for the past decade. The Biden-era FCC updated the broadband-label rules to require that ISPs "itemize on the label (PDF) all discretionary monthly fees that the provider passes through to the consumer." The change drew protest from Comcast and other ISPs that complained bitterly about the complexity of listing all the hidden fees they had chosen to charge. Under Chairman Brendan Carr, the Trump FCC has steadily whittled away at requirements imposed under Democrats. An order (PDF) released in draft form last week would eliminate the requirement to itemize passthrough fees and let ISPs list them in a single "up to" amount. The "up to" amount can include both government fees and fees charged by non-government entities such as owners of utility poles. "Rather than continuing to require providers to itemize 'passthrough fees' that can vary by location, we allow providers to display such fees in the aggregate, either as a maximum or 'up to' amount for the total fees applicable in any location where the service plan is offered, or as the exact total of such fees assessed in a particular location," the FCC draft order said. The order to be voted on later this month includes a few other changes that will please ISPs and their lobby groups. ISPs will be allowed to provide links to price labels instead of displaying the full labels prominently on ordering pages and account portals, and will be allowed to stop making the price-label information available in machine-readable spreadsheets. The FCC is also relaxing the requirement that price information be available over the phone. The FCC said the change will "allow phone sales representatives to present label information conversationally, as a summary of key label fields, rather than require verbatim recitation." The changes have been in the works since October 2025, when the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to let the public submit comments on the proposals. The outcome of that process is the draft order, which will be voted on at the FCC's July 22 meeting and take effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register. There are many types of passthrough fees that ISPs will be able to stop listing individually and roll into the "up to" amount. The FCC defined the fees as follows, saying they include just about anything that isn't a tax [...]. Another planned change will eliminate a requirement that providers archive all labels for at least two years after a service plan is no longer available. The Utility Reform Network, an advocacy group, told the FCC that the archived labels provide crucial data about how prices and services change over time, and that machine-readable labels are important for affordability research and information accessibility.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for July 8 No. 857.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for July 8, No. 1,123.
Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for July 8, No. 1,845.
Disney settled a lawsuit that alleged the corporation forced higher prices for live TV streaming subscriptions.
A 3-year CD account will result in a big return (and extended protection through today's economic volatility).
Kneeland died by suicide in 2025 after police chase
Researchers determine he was in stage one of four
Brain disease can be diagnosed only after death
Former Dallas Cowboys defensive end Marshawn Kneeland, who died by suicide in November 2025 after a high-speed chase with police, had early stage chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain abnormality linked to repeated concussions, his family announced Tuesday.
The Boston University CTE Center, which investigates the long-term consequences of repetitive brain trauma in athletes and others, analyzed Kneeland’s brain tissue after his death. Researchers determined Kneeland, who was 24, was in stage one of four of CTE.
In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Continue reading...An indictment announced in Los Angeles accuses Lawrence Bishnoi and another defendant of ordering the killing of "H.S.N." — the apparent initials for Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was gunned down on June 18, 2023, near a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia.
One of the upcoming games is the full release of the viral, Pokemon-esque game Palworld.
Ron DeSantis’s Stop Woke Act suffers another legal setback, with the state accused of ‘puppeteering’
A federal appeals panel struck down a significant chunk of Ron DeSantis’s so-called Stop Woke Act on Tuesday, delivering another rebuff to the Republican Florida governor’s efforts to stifle free speech in higher education.
In a scathing order, judges of the 11th circuit court of appeal said by a 2-1 majority that the higher education component of the law – which prevented college and university professors teaching or sharing thoughts on concepts of race and gender – breached the free expression rights guaranteed under the US constitution’s first amendment.
Continue reading...Reform UK leader to quit as MP but stand again, saying the people of Clacton ‘should be the judges of my actions’
Q: Do you think the parliamentary commissioner for standards should investigate Nigel Farage’s gifts from George Cottrell?
Badenoch said that was a matter for the commissioner.
[Farage is] hinting at press regulation. For all of the criticism and the attacks, and I would even say abuse that I’ve got from the press, I’ve never once recommended curbing our free press. I think this is one of the amazing things about this country.
I would be very worried about a Reform government using government power to control the press. I don’t think that that would be right.
Continue reading...The meteor shower starts in mid-July, but its magnificent peak is in mid-August.
A look at the case, the appeal court decision and how it could affect the race to succeed Emmanuel Macron
Marine Le Pen has said she will be a candidate in France’s presidential race next year, after a court ruling on her appeal against a conviction for embezzlement of public funds allowed her to run.
However, the path ahead is far from straightforward.
Continue reading...Hilton in a statement said Provo Canyon school ‘failed the children in its care’ and faced abuse allegations for decades
The state of Utah has revoked the license of a boarding school where socialite Paris Hilton said she was abused as a teenager, saying the school had “failed to provide applicable health and safety services for clients”.
The state’s action, which took effect on Monday, cites multiple noncompliance issues against the Provo Canyon school’s campus in Springville. The school has 15 days to request a hearing before Utah’s health and human services department.
Continue reading...ARMONK, N.Y., July 7, 2026 — IBM today announces new IBM z17 and IBM LinuxONE 5 configurations, marking the first time IBM is offering rack mount alongside single frame systems across its full Z and LinuxONE portfolio. The expanded IBM z17 and LinuxONE 5 portfolios now offer a wide range of deployment options, engineered with the same flagship performance, security, and ecosystem standards. New single frame and rack mount options provide additional ways for organizations to position their infrastructure where it fits best for their business needs, helping support flexibility and operational efficiency.
LinuxONE 5 Single Frame System. Credit: IBM.
Organizations processing highly sensitive workloads at scale are facing record-low data center vacancy and rental rates exceeding $400 per kW/month, according to CBRE’s 2026 Global Data Center Trend Report. At the same time, they need infrastructure that can optimize their data center footprint while prioritizing the resilience required for their core applications. Enterprises can use IBM z17 and LinuxONE 5 rack mount and single frame systems to address these challenges, optimizing their data center real estate to meet today’s realities.
“The number of mission-critical workloads is rising at an incredible pace, forcing organizations to make tough decisions about performance, AI integration, and infrastructure footprint,” said Tom McPherson, General Manager, IBM Z and LinuxONE. “With these new IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE systems, we’re making it easier to run workloads where they make the most sense, while opening the door for a wider range of organizations to benefit from these technologies for the first time.”
New Systems Built for Data Center Flexibility
The new IBM z17 and IBM LinuxONE 5 configurations support up to 82 cores and 18 TB of memory across two processor drawers, representing about a 20% increase in core count and 12% increase in memory capacity. Single processor capacity of IBM z17 ME2 provides full speed IBM z/OS configurations including 10% greater throughput per core than IBM z16 A02 with some variation based on workload and configuration.
Clients have the flexibility to co-locate IBM and non-IBM equipment to achieve the best fit-for-purpose installation in their data center. Each system is designed to help organizations reclaim space, improve energy efficiency, and integrate seamlessly into existing environments:
As with the rest of the IBM z17 and LinuxONE 5 portfolio announced last year, the single frame and rack mount systems deliver advanced multi-model AI inferencing through the IBM Telum II processor, Red Hat OpenShift AI and the IBM Spyre Accelerator to deliver in-transaction predictive AI and generative AI.
Maximizing Business Value at the Core
Building on the flexibility of IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE systems, IBM is announcing new software and management capabilities designed to help clients simplify infrastructure operations, reduce the skills required to run the platform, and get more value from the workloads already running their business.
“With the emergence of generative AI methods, we need the highest levels of performance, efficiency, resiliency and security to safely hold, and process the sensitive datasets,” said Dr. Owain Kenway, Head of Research and Development (Platform Technologies) in ARC at University College London. “The new IBM LinuxONE 5 single frame, rack mount, and Express models enable organizations like us to access advanced technologies at cost-effective prices, and help our academic teams deliver outstanding research.”
Availability
The new z17 single frame and rack mount configurations, IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper 5, and IBM LinuxONE 5 Express will all be generally available August 12, 2026. IBM Infrastructure Management for IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE will be generally available August 14, 2026. IBM COBOL Elevate for z/OS will be generally available September 18, 2026. For more information, visit https://www.ibm.com/products/z17 and https://www.ibm.com/products/linuxone-5.
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.
Source: IBM
The post IBM Launches Compact z17 and LinuxONE Systems to Address Data Center Space and Cost Constraints appeared first on HPCwire.
This AI-powered textbook tool for students personalizes your learning. But how does it differ from Learn About and NotebookLM?
New release delivers enterprise-grade multi-tenancy, identity management, security and POSIX capabilities required to move AI from pilots to large-scale production
PARIS, July 7, 2026 — DDN today announced the launch of DDN Infinia 2.4 at the RAISE Summit in Paris, extending the industry’s leading platform for production AI, large-scale inference, and sovereign AI infrastructure.
As AI moves from training models to operating intelligent systems in production, enterprises face a new challenge: maximizing the economic return of AI infrastructure investments. The bottleneck is no longer acquiring GPUs—it is keeping those GPUs productive, reducing cost-per-token, accelerating inference, and securely governing data across multi-tenant AI environments.
Infinia 2.4 establishes the enterprise-grade foundation required to run AI factories at scale, combining production-ready multi-tenancy, identity management, governance, and security with the high-performance data architecture that powers some of the world’s largest AI deployments.
By enabling higher GPU utilization, faster data access, improved inference efficiency, and simplified operational management, Infinia 2.4 supports NVIDIA DSX-based AI factory deployments by helping organizations accelerate time to value while improving the return on billions of dollars invested in AI infrastructure.
“The economics of AI are rapidly becoming more important than the models themselves,” said Alex Bouzari, CEO and Co-Founder at DDN. “The industry has entered an era where success is measured by cost-per-token, inference efficiency, GPU utilization, and business outcomes—not simply the number of GPUs deployed. Organizations need infrastructure that transforms expensive AI investments into productive AI factories. Infinia 2.4 provides the governance, security, performance, and operational foundation required to maximize AI ROI while enabling the next generation of enterprise and sovereign AI.”
Accelerating Inference Economics and Token Efficiency
As enterprises increasingly deploy agentic AI, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), copilots, and autonomous AI systems, inference has emerged as the dominant operational cost in modern AI environments.
Infinia’s architecture is designed to optimize the economics of production inference through ultra-low-latency data access, high-performance object storage, and intelligent data services that help keep accelerators fully utilized.
DDN continues to lead innovation in AI data infrastructure through capabilities such as:
These capabilities help organizations reduce cost-per-token, improve inference throughput, accelerate response times, and generate greater business value from AI investments.
Introducing the Enterprise Foundation for AI
Infinia 2.4 focuses on four strategic pillars designed to help organizations operationalize AI at scale:
AI Cloud Partner and AI Operator Readiness
The release introduces foundational capabilities required by many of NVIDIA’s cloud partners, managed AI services operators, and enterprise AI platforms, including:
These capabilities allow organizations to securely support multiple teams, customers, business units, or sovereign AI workloads from a single platform.
POSIX Support Reaches Limited Availability
Infinia 2.4 delivers the first Limited Availability milestone for POSIX support, including:
This milestone expands application flexibility while maintaining Infinia’s high-performance architecture for modern AI and data-intensive workloads.
S3 Compatibility and Continuity
Organizations can adopt Infinia 2.4 without disruption to existing applications and workflows. The release maintains full compatibility with established S3 environments and SDKs while preserving the performance and scalability advantages that enterprises rely on today.
Driving the Future of Enterprise and Sovereign AI
The launch comes as DDN expands its leadership position across hyperscale AI, enterprise AI, inference infrastructure, and sovereign AI initiatives worldwide.
Organizations including NVIDIA, xAI, Salesforce, Mistral, SK Telecom, Yotta, and leading government and research institutions rely on DDN technology to power some of the world’s largest AI environments, achieving higher infrastructure utilization, faster model deployment, improved inference efficiency, and greater returns on AI investments.
At RAISE, DDN executives will share insights on the next phase of AI infrastructure evolution and the growing importance of data intelligence in enabling enterprise and sovereign AI initiatives.
DDN Executive Keynotes at RAISE
As part of RAISE 2026, DDN executives will take center stage to discuss two of the most important forces shaping the future of artificial intelligence: the economics of AI and the rise of sovereign AI infrastructure.
Alex Bouzari
CEO & Co-Founder, DDN
July 8 | 1:20 PM – 2:00 PM
The AI Gold Rush: Models Are Shovels, Data Is the Gold
In this keynote, Alex Bouzari will explore why the next phase of AI competition will be determined not by who builds the largest models, but by who can most effectively harness, govern, and operationalize data. As organizations invest billions in AI infrastructure, the critical challenge has shifted from acquiring compute to maximizing its economic value.
Drawing on DDN’s experience powering some of the world’s largest AI factories, Bouzari will discuss why inference economics, token efficiency, GPU utilization, and data intelligence are becoming the defining metrics of enterprise AI success, and why the next generation of AI leaders will be determined by operational efficiency rather than model size alone.
Mohsen Moazami
Vice Chair, DDN
July 8 | 2:00 PM – 2:40 PM
Sovereign Stacks: Building Trusted AI on National Terms
As nations increasingly view AI as a strategic capability, governments and enterprises are seeking new approaches to maintain control over their data, infrastructure, and innovation ecosystems. In this keynote, Mohsen Moazami will examine the emergence of sovereign AI and the technology foundations required to build trusted, secure, and economically sustainable national AI capabilities.
The session will explore how countries, enterprises, and service providers are developing sovereign AI strategies, the importance of trusted infrastructure and data governance, and why sovereign AI is becoming a defining factor in global competitiveness and technological independence.
Meet DDN at RAISE
DDN executives, technical leaders, and collaborators will be available throughout RAISE to discuss the future of AI factories, sovereign AI infrastructure, enterprise AI deployment, and the capabilities introduced with Infinia 2.4.
For more information about DDN Infinia and DDN’s AI Data Intelligence Platform, visit DDN at RAISE or visit https://www.ddn.com/lp/events/raise-2026/book-a-meeting.
About DDN
DDN is the world’s leading AI and data intelligence company, powering the world’s most demanding AI workloads by keeping GPUs fed, efficient, and productive—at massive scale—so organizations can train, checkpoint, and infer faster with less footprint and power while achieving tremendous ROI from their AI investments. From hyperscalers and next-gen cloud builders to enterprises, governments, and research institutions, DDN delivers proven data intelligence at exabyte scale across millions of GPUs—so customers can deploy AI with confidence, accelerate time-to-value, and realize outsized returns. Discover more at ddn.com.
Source: DDN
The post DDN Launches Infinia 2.4 for Enterprise and Sovereign AI Factories appeared first on HPCwire.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Chinese startup DeepSeek is developing its own AI chip, according to three people familiar with the matter, a push that could reduce its reliance on Nvidia and Huawei chips, which it has depended on to train and run its globally popular models. The chip is designed for inference -- the stage of AI computing in which a trained model generates responses for users -- rather than for training new models, the sources said. If successful, DeepSeek's expansion into semiconductor development would mark a major strategic shift for a company widely hailed in China as the country's AI champion, potentially adding to challenges faced by Chinese tech giant Huawei.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
High court dismisses claims by group including Duke of Sussex that Mail publisher used unlawful methods to source stories about them
Prince Harry and six other prominent figures are facing a legal bill of up to £50m after losing their case against the publisher of the Daily Mail over claims it used unlawful methods to source stories.
In an emphatic ruling that is likely to signal an end to new litigation relating to the phone-hacking scandal era, the high court dismissed all the group’s claims, stating that the claimants had not proved that any information had been obtained unlawfully.
Continue reading...Harry claimed victory in two earlier legal actions but he and his co-claimants lost their lawsuit against ANL on Tuesday
The Duke of Sussex has variously described his long-running legal battles with certain sections of the British media as a “mission” and a “life’s work”.
“I’ve been told that slaying dragons will get you burned,” was his defiant response when he claimed victory against Mirror Group Newspapers in December 2023 over historic allegations of unlawful information gathering, adding it was a “worthwhile price to pay”.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Latest Guardian revelation about gift from cryptocurrency tycoon comes as Reform UK leader forces byelection
The £5m gift to Nigel Farage by a cryptocurrency billionaire was reported to the National Crime Agency by bankers who were concerned it may have been laundered money, the Guardian can reveal.
The disclosure will put further pressure on the Reform UK leader, who is awaiting a decision by the standards commissioner over whether his failure to declare the money breached parliamentary rules.
Continue reading...Google's next Pixel phones and watch are right around the corner.
Scientists explore the U.S. NSF Leadership-Class Computing Facility and the discoveries it will enable
July 7, 2026 — A new era of U.S. scientific computing is underway.
Horizon, at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin, will soon begin early operations broadly for the research community. As the flagship supercomputer of the U.S. National Science Foundation Leadership-Class Computing Facility (NSF LCCF), Horizon will provide unprecedented computing power to researchers tackling some of the nation’s most ambitious scientific challenges.
Clockwise) Dan Stanzione, Texas Advanced Computing Center; Katie Antypas, National Science Foundation; Tom Quinn, University of Washington; Yifeng Cui, San Diego Supercomputer Center; Steven A. Gottlieb, Indiana University Bloomington; David Hardy, University of Illinois-Urbana Champagne; Feliciano Giustino, Oden Institute, The University of Texas at Austin
Last month, more than 200 members of the national open science community gathered virtually to explore how leadership-class computing is driving the next generation of scientific discovery through the NSF LCCF and its Characteristic Science Applications (CSA) program.
The event featured remarks from NSF and TACC leaders, followed by a moderated panel of researchers using TACC’s Frontera and Vista supercomputers to tackle some of science’s most complex challenges. Panelists shared how the CSA program is accelerating breakthroughs in astronomy, earthquake science, quantum materials, lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD), and biophysics, demonstrating the transformative impact of advanced computing on research across disciplines.
“This is an investment of over $400 million and a commitment by the NSF and the nation to support the computational science and AI-driven workloads that will spark the innovations and discoveries of the future,” said Katie Antypas, senior adviser for cyberinfrastructure for the NSF. “This commitment is a long-term investment to match the science missions TACC supports. At the highest level, they have included several Nobel Prize-winning research projects in computational protein design, the detection of gravitational waves, and confirmation of the Higgs boson of particle physics,” she added.
For nearly two decades, TACC has defined the leading edge of U.S. academic supercomputing, from the NSF-funded Ranger system to the Stampede family of supercomputers, Frontera, and the AI-focused Vista — each expanding the nation’s computational capabilities and paving the way for Horizon in 2026.
Since 2001, more than 125,000 academic researchers and students have relied on TACC resources to drive discoveries with global scientific and societal impact.
Leadership-Class Computing Arrives
The first LCCF supercomputer, Horizon, has entered the first of two phases in its deployment — its graphical processing unit (GPU) computing racks are operational, totaling 4,000 NVIDIA NVL4 Blackwell GPUs and 2,000 NVIDIA Grace GB200 CPUs interconnected with 800 GB/sec Infiniband networking and 400 petaflops of solid-state storage.
“The basic premise of the Leadership-Class Computing Facility is to build new and more capable systems to replace systems in the current NSF fleet,” said Dan Stanzione, TACC’s executive director and associate vice president for research at The University of Texas at Austin. “The LCCF has made a long-term investment and commitment to having computing for the scientists who rely on us for their projects and large instrument data.”
The science applications that run on Horizon will be 15-20 times as fast as on Frontera, with AI-based applications sped up to 100x or more. The CPU part of Horizon is expected to come online in Winter 2026 or early 2027, with 8,000 NVIDIA Vera CPUs. The Ranch data archive system has been in production since 2025, with an exabyte of capacity.
Characteristic Science Applications Drive Design and Innovation
Helping shape Horizon from the ground up is the Characteristic Science Applications (CSA) program — 11 cutting-edge software projects developed through yearslong collaborations with research teams to prepare the system for some of the most demanding scientific challenges of the coming decade.
“The CSAs are our acceptance tests to make sure Horizon performs,” Stanzione said. “These scientists are our co-design partners to make sure we pick the right mix of things to put into the machine, and they’re some of our early access users.” The CSA teams have been testing running their code on Vista and most recently on 72 Blackwell GPUs TACC added to Vista, to test pre-Horizon nodes.
Five CSA teams on the virtual panel highlighted early results from projects across a diverse range of disciplines, including particle physics, astrophysics, advanced materials, biochemistry related to neurological disorders, and earthquake modeling.
LCCF — A Facility for Other NSF Facilities
Soon, the earliest users will gain access to Horizon and the broader distributed system spanning the LCCF and partner sites, including the Atlanta University Center Consortium, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center.
“Something else I wanted to note was just how LCCF is enabling other NSF investments, particularly our largest facilities,” Antypas said. “You can see that in the partnerships that the LCCF has developed, whether that’s with the Vera Rubin Observatory, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, LIGO, Earthscope, or many others that will rely on the LCCF for data analysis.”
“In this age of AI, we expect this system will accelerate science even far beyond what we could imagine,” Antypas added.
More from HPCwire: Horizon Takes Shape at TACC as NSF Leadership-Class Facility Moves Forward
Science Snapshots from the Panelists
Galaxy Evolution at Scale
Tom Quinn (Moderator)
Professor of Astronomy, University of Washington
Astrophysicist Tom Quinn is unraveling how galaxies take shape, tracing their evolution across cosmic time and from the smallest structures to the grandest formations. With the NSF LCCF, his team aims to build a unified model of galaxy formation, spanning
Quinn’s group uses particle-based simulations to investigate galaxy formation across cosmic scales, from the emergence of planets to galaxy clusters and the web-like large-scale structure of the universe.
Unexpected observations from the NASA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — including a surprisingly rich population of galaxies formed shortly after the Big Bang — have upended existing models and are fueling the group’s efforts to better understand how the early universe evolved.
“On Frontera, we have been able to do simulations of Milky Way-sized galaxies. As we move to larger, more capable facilities such as Horizon, we’re moving to clusters of galaxies,” Quinn said.
What’s more, although the JWST can gather images of a galaxy from the early universe, that information can’t tell us how the galaxy will evolve — and whether it is a progenitor of a Milky Way-like galaxy or perhaps a seed for the formation of a large cluster of galaxies.
“It’s only with the simulations that we can follow a galaxy over the full history of the universe and compare images from JWST to, for example, observations by the Vera Rubin telescope of galaxies we see today.”
Quantum Materials
Feliciano Giustino (Panelist)
Professor of Physics and W. A. “Tex” Moncrief, Jr. Chair in Quantum Materials Engineering, Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin
Quantum materials design at finite temperature using the EPW code. The Center for Quantum Materials Engineering uses computer simulations to design new materials for applications such as semiconductors, solar cells, and quantum computing superconductors. Credit: Feliciano Giustino, UT Austin
Giustino leads the Center for Quantum Materials Engineering, which develops predictive simulations to design advanced materials for semiconductors, solar energy, and quantum technologies.
For the past three years, his group has been porting the EPW code from CPUs to GPUs, a major software engineering effort that enables faster, larger-scale simulations of electron-phonon interactions critical to understanding superconductivity and other quantum phenomena.
“We demonstrated a 30-fold speed up of this code on the GPU accelerators of Vista,” Giustino said. “Also exciting is the performance portability achieved on the Aurora supercomputer of the Argonne National Lab, where we managed to scale the code up to 6,000 GPUs. This gives us confidence that we’ll be able to utilize Horizon to its fullest.”
At an NVIDIA Hackathon hosted by TACC in May 2026, the group’s EPW team achieved an 80-fold acceleration in optical absorption spectra calculations on Horizon test nodes, demonstrating the performance gains possible on next-generation GPU-based systems.
Netting New Particles and Forces
Steven A. Gottlieb (Panelist)
Distinguished Professor Emeritus; Provost Professor Emeritus of Physics, Indiana University Bloomington
Data from the world’s premiere particle accelerators, such as the Muon g-2 of Fermilab shown here, will be used by Steven A. Gottlieb’s group at Indiana University Bloomington to model quantum chromodynamic (QCD) strong interactions between quarks and gluons on the TACC’s Horizon supercomputer. Credit: Fermilab
Gottlieb’s group works with the MILC (MIMD Lattice Computation) collaboration and Fermilab to search for evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model, the theory describing the fundamental particles and the electromagnetic, strong, and weak forces that govern their interactions.
Using lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) to model the strong force with unprecedented precision, the team produces calculations that help interpret results from major particle physics experiments, including the Large Hadron Collider, Fermilab’s Muon g-2 experiment, KEK, and BESIII.
His group models QCD strong interactions between quarks and gluons using a 4D space-time grid, which is the main source of systematic errors.
“We need to take a range of lattice spacing to the continuum limit, a computational heavy job, which is why we want to use Horizon,” Gottlieb said. “We project that Horizon is so powerful that this much tougher problem of a finer grid resolution will only need six months to generate our targeted 1,000 configurations.”
Dynamic Evolution of Biomolecular Simulations
David Hardy
Senior Research Programmer, Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Emad Tajkhorshid uses molecular dynamics to track how viruses change over time and space. The work relies on NAMD, an open-source software package developed at the university’s NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Visualization, harnessing massively parallel simulations of complex biological systems. Credit: Emad Tajkhorshid, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Hardy’s group and the Computational Biophysics Group develop NAMD, the widely used molecular dynamics software behind some of the world’s largest biomolecular simulations. Written in C++ and built on the CHARM++ parallel programming model, the Gordon Bell Award-winning code enables researchers to simulate complex biological systems efficiently on the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
In their latest work, the team simulated a billion-atom protocell of the Satellite Tobacco Mosaic Virus, a model system for understanding how viruses assemble and remain stable. They also optimized the GPU version of NAMD on TACC’s AI-focused Vista supercomputer, improving performance and scalability on NVIDIA Grace CPU and Blackwell GPU architectures, the same technology that will power Horizon.
“We were seeing really good results scaling up to 512 nodes of Vista, and we’re gratified to see that,” Hardy said.
He also highlighted recent simulations of glutamate transportation regulated by the synaptic gap that occurs when neurons are talking to each other, where dysregulation is associated with various neurological disorders. This work is in collaboration with the lab of fellow University of Illinois colleague Emad Tajkhorshid, a developer and principal investigator of the NAMD project.
“They’ve run this now on Vista, where they can run our very fast GPU resident code for NAMD, and they’re getting simulation rates of about 90 nanoseconds per day. This is scaling quite nicely, and they’re looking forward to being able to use Horizon so they can scale this out to one system per GPU or one simulation per GPU,” Hardy added.
Shaking Up Seismic Hazard Analysis Simulations
Yifeng Cui (Panelist)
Director, High Performance GeoComputing Laboratory, San Diego Supercomputer Center; Principal Investigator, Statewide California Earthquake Center
AWP-ODC: Seismic Simulation for Hazard Management — Yifeng Cui of the San Diego Supercomputer Center is advancing earthquake modeling. His team is adapting AWP-ODC — a powerful seismic wave simulation tool widely used by Southern California Earthquake Center researchers — for the LCCF Horizon system. The team aims to improve statewide seismic hazard maps that predict ground motion across California for the next 50 years. Credit: Yifeng Cui, SDSC
Cui traced the evolution of earthquake simulations, from the groundbreaking TeraShake project in 2004 to the ShakeOut scenarios run at TACC that serve as the scientific foundation for earthquake preparedness drills involving tens of millions of people worldwide.
Today, his group is advancing the state of the art with CyberShake, a physics-based probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) framework that models earthquake risk at unprecedented fidelity. The project runs vast ensembles of simulations across more than 1,000 sites, executing approximately one million jobs per site on leadership-class supercomputers to generate detailed seismic hazard forecasts.
“With Horizon, we are going to push the PSHA map from one to two hertz and beyond,” Cui said. “This would cover the earthquake resilience of structures at the house-to-house level. Ultimately, it would provide a more reliable loss estimate for both insurance models and building codes.”
A ShakeOut 2.0 version is also planned for development on Horizon with five hertz linear wave propagation, as well as another CSA developing code for Seisol, which captures dynamic rupture simulations. Also, aftershock simulations are in the works for studying potential magnitude 7.0 quakes in the Los Angeles basin.
“Breaking this frequency barrier with Horizon will be a game changer,” Cui said.
Source: Jorge Salazar, TACC
The post TACC’s Horizon Nears Early Operations as NSF Leadership-Class Supercomputer appeared first on HPCwire.
SAN FRANCISCO, July 7, 2026 — Scality, a global leader in data infrastructure software for the AI era, and WEKA, the data and memory infrastructure company, today announced an expanded partnership in France, anchored by a new joint customer support agreement.
Under the agreement, Scality will distribute the companies’ joint solution to customers in France, giving local enterprises a single, in-country point of contact for sales and tier-one support. The announcement precedes RAISE Summit 2026, Europe’s premier AI event, taking place July 8–9 at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, where both companies are exhibiting.
A Single, In-Country Support Experience for French Customers
Scality and WEKA’s combined technologies deliver a complementary solution for AI workloads. WEKA’s NeuralMesh software provides accelerated storage and context memory performance at scale, keeping GPUs fully utilized for AI model training and inference. Scality ADI (Autonomous Data Infrastructure) is a data infrastructure platform that delivers autonomous operations, cyber resilience, and sovereign control across the full data lifecycle, from active workloads to durable, long-term retention at exabyte scale. The new agreement makes the combined solution easier for French customers to adopt and operate, with front-line technical support delivered locally by Scality.
Deepening Joint Go-to-Market in France
The support agreement builds on the jointly validated solution the two companies announced on February 24, 2026, which pairs WEKA’s NeuralMesh high-performance AI storage and context memory platform with a cost-efficient Scality RING object tier. The integration uses Scality’s lightweight object connector for NeuralMesh, delivering up to 10x faster performance and up to 20% lower infrastructure costs in Scality testing.
It also reflects a broader expansion of joint go-to-market activities in France, where Scality and WEKA are engaging a growing set of shared prospects. By aligning their complementary technologies and now their local support and sales motions, the partners aim to give French enterprises, government organizations, and AI builders a clear, low-risk path to high-performance, cost-efficient, cyber-resilient AI infrastructure.
Meeting Customers at RAISE Summit Paris
Both companies are exhibiting at RAISE Summit 2026. Visit Scality at booth #3D and WEKA at booth #2D to learn more about the joint solution and meet the experts behind it. The companies will co-host an invitation-only Lumiere Candlelight concert and dinner at the Pullman Paris Tour Eiffel on Wednesday, July 8, bringing together Europe’s top AI builders, founders, and partners beyond the conference floor.
“The race for AI is no longer limited by GPUs. It’s increasingly limited by data infrastructure,” said Jérôme Lecat, CEO of Scality. “Our partnership with WEKA brings those strengths together, and extending it with local, French-language support means our joint customers in France get the combined solution backed by a single, in-country point of contact. This is exactly the kind of practical, customer-first collaboration that earns trust in mission-critical environments.”
“AI doesn’t stall because enterprises run out of models. It stalls because infrastructure can’t keep pace with the demand they create,” said Nilesh Patel, Chief Strategy Officer of WEKA. “NeuralMesh solves the performance layer: it maximizes GPU utilization, scales inference throughput, and drives down cost per token. Scality covers the full data lifecycle with the cyber resilience and sovereign controls that regulated European industries require. Local French-language support from Scality removes the final barrier to adoption. For French enterprises deploying at scale, that is a meaningfully shorter, lower-risk path to production.”
About Scality
Scality builds data infrastructure software for enterprise AI, cyber resilience, and sovereign control at multi-petabyte to exabyte scale. Its platform aligns the right storage media, performance, protection, and economics to each workload and data stage through media-aware lifecycle management governed by human-approved policies, while AI-powered autonomous operations reduce operational burden. Built on CORE5 cyber resilience and open-code principles, Scality ADI, ARTESCA, and RING help the world’s most demanding enterprises and government organizations power AI initiatives, defend critical data, and build infrastructure designed to last for decades. Recognized as a leader by Gartner, Scality is where AI remembers, learns, and thinks.
About WEKA
WEKA is the AI data and memory infrastructure company transforming the economics of agentic AI. Its NeuralMesh platform unifies high-performance data storage with extended GPU memory, giving enterprises, AI cloud providers, and AI builders a single foundation for training, inference, and agentic workloads. With Augmented Memory Grid, NeuralMesh extends GPU memory capacity by 1000x, accelerates time to first token by up to 20x, and delivers 10x more concurrent users from the same GPU footprint, proven in production benchmarks. Trusted by 30% of the Fortune 50, WEKA enables organizations to scale AI faster, optimize GPU utilization, and reduce the cost of every token served.
Source: Scality
The post Scality and WEKA Deepen Partnership to Accelerate Enterprise AI Adoption appeared first on HPCwire.
If you have $35,000 to move into a high-yield savings account, it helps to start with the interest-earning potential.
JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, PNC, and other major banks have reportedly explored acquiring Fiserv's debit-card networks, STAR and Accel, in a move that could help them bypass federal caps on debit-card transaction fees. A law limits the fees big banks can charge merchants, but only if the transactions are routed through an outside network. There are no caps on these interchange fees over a bank-owned network, however. The Wall Street Journal reports: When Capital One Financial bought Discover Financial in a $50.6 billion deal, it got a network that cut out the need for a middleman in card transactions and allowed it to deal more directly with merchants. Now, big banks are looking on with envy because owning a network can mean exemption from a federal law that caps debit-card fees. Those fees collectively amount to billions of dollars each year across the industry, but banks have long complained the government-defined cap limits their ability to offer customers debit-card rewards and other services. Some have been exploring a small deal that could upend the rules, though they are worried about political backlash if they try. Big banks including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and PNC Financial Services Group have in recent months held preliminary and tentative discussions about a deal to acquire a network owned by the financial-technology company Fiserv, according to people familiar with the matter. There is no certainty a deal will happen. Several of the banks that looked at the Fiserv network have already decided it would be unlikely for them to move forward, some of the people said. Some have privately expressed concern that such a deal could prompt backlash from lawmakers, regulators and merchants, the people added.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Mexico said it is investigating whether its sovereignty was violated by the United States in the 2024 capture of drug lord Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada.
Interest earnings on a CD account of this size will be substantial, but that's not the only benefit for savers now.
Two weeks before this year’s primary elections, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the creation of a tip line for the public to report people or groups suspected of voter fraud.
“Free and fair elections are a cornerstone of a thriving republic, and with the authority granted to my office by the Legislature, we will stop at nothing to uncover and stop any illegal voting activity,” Paxton said in a February news release announcing the tip line.
The announcement linked to guidance from his office about election laws in Texas, which included a requirement to be a U.S. citizen, a prohibition on collecting mail ballots on behalf of others and a warning that “it is illegal to misrepresent your residence on election records or to establish a residence for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an election.”
“You must register to vote using the address where you reside,” the attorney general’s guidance stated.
Despite his own warnings, Paxton appears to have used an address where he did not live while voting in six elections in the past two years, including in May’s runoff that made him the Republican nominee for U.S. senator, according to records obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.
State Sen. Angela Paxton said in a 2025 divorce filing that Paxton, whom she accused of adultery, moved out of their Collin County home a year earlier. But Paxton continues to list the home’s address in the northern Dallas suburb on his voter registration. Angela Paxton declined to be interviewed. A source close to the Paxtons said the attorney general has not moved back into the home since leaving.
It is unclear where Paxton has lived for the past two years, but reporting by ProPublica and the Tribune has linked him to a home in neighboring Denton County since February.
We’re still reporting. If you know more about Texas elected officials, please contact our reporting team.
Zach Despart
I’m interested in receiving tips about government, politics and business in Texas.
Three election lawyers told the news organizations that Paxton may have violated the same Texas laws his office cautioned about in its news release.
ProPublica and the Tribune reached out to Paxton’s campaign on June 3, 15 and 25, asking why he remained registered to vote in Collin County when he appeared to no longer live there and about his connection to the Denton County property. A reporter also left a voicemail on his personal cellphone on June 25. The news organizations sent his government office and campaign staff an email on Monday with a detailed list of questions, including a request for Paxton’s response to election lawyers’ belief that he may be violating the law.
Paxton and his office did not reply until Monday’s email. Campaign spokesperson Madison Cercy did not answer the questions from the news organizations. Instead, she issued a statement saying that the attorney general has been “a national leader on election integrity, with a long record of defending Texas elections.” Cercy said that “attempting to insinuate otherwise and tear him down with a baseless, lie-filled tabloid story is not real reporting.”
Asked twice to provide specifics about what they believed was inaccurate, the campaign did not respond.
Voting in an election when the voter is ineligible is a second-degree felony under Texas law and is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. But prosecutors rarely bring cases challenging individual voters’ residency claims because they are hard to prove, the election lawyers said.
State courts have repeatedly ruled that there is no single way to determine where someone lives, and judges must consider multiple factors, such as where a voter sleeps or stores personal belongings. Prosecuting such cases also requires proof that a voter “knowingly” or “intentionally” broke the law.
Even if it’s clear that someone doesn’t live at the address where they are registered to vote, state law allows them to remain registered if their absence is temporary and they intend to return. The provision is commonly used by college students and military service members.
“So long as you truly intend to return, I think you’re fine,” said Beth Stevens, an election lawyer who worked for the Harris County clerk and the Texas Civil Rights Project. “When you start doing things that suggest, ‘Oh, I’ve fully moved. I’m just wink-wink saying I intend to return,’ that’s when you get into questionable territory.”
Paxton’s public and contentious split from his wife could make it difficult to argue that he intended to return to the home they own and where she continues to reside, said David Becker, a former voting rights lawyer for the Justice Department.
“I think there would be questions raised about a residence where someone does not live, does not spend the night and can in no way have the intent to continue to reside. Those would probably raise red flags in any state,” Becker said.
Becker, who is now the director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that works to build public trust in elections, added that the situation is particularly problematic because Paxton’s job is to enforce election laws.
“Certainly, the chief law enforcement officer of the state of Texas, someone who has made claims about election integrity and made it a priority of his office, should be charged with knowing the laws of residencies of the state of Texas with regard to voting,” Becker said.
Paxton has advocated for strict enforcement of the state’s election fraud law, including in cases against voters his office alleged had falsified records about where they lived. In 2018, the attorney general’s voter fraud unit arrested nine people on suspicion of using residential addresses where they did not live to vote in a municipal election in Edinburg, in the state’s Rio Grande Valley. County prosecutors, acting on behalf of Paxton, later dismissed the charges after failing to secure a conviction against the mayoral candidate they alleged had encouraged those voters to register at false addresses. The candidate, Richard Molina, said he was innocent and said the prosecution was politically motivated.
Clark Birdsall was not the attorney on those cases but defended another resident whom Paxton prosecuted for illegal voting. Birdsall was stunned that the attorney general appears to have voted under an address where he does not live.
He called it “especially egregious that someone such as Ken Paxton appears he’s not conforming to the law.”
State privacy laws allow some politicians and law enforcement officials to shield their voter registration information from public view. Paxton does not do so. His opponent in the Senate race, Democratic State Rep. James Talarico, does. Talarico’s campaign said he lives and is registered at the north Austin home he purchased in 2022. ProPublica and the Tribune were not able to independently confirm this.
Paxton’s campaign did not raise any issues with Talarico’s voter registration. In her statement to ProPublica and the Tribune, however, Cercy said, “Talarico has actively campaigned against voter security measures” and has said he opposes voter identification requirements. She pointed to a 2021 Fox News interview in which the state representative said he opposed voter identification rules that would require Texans to provide their driver’s license number or partial Social Security number for mail ballots. Talarico said hundreds of thousands of Texans, who don’t drive, lack a driver’s license. He did not directly answer a question about Social Security numbers during the interview.
The Talarico campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Paxton’s living arrangements since he separated from his wife are not public, but information obtained by ProPublica and the Tribune offers some indication of where he may have been residing since February.
In mid-February, a trust bought a 5,000-square-foot home listed for $2.4 million in a gated community in Denton County, according to the appraisal district and the seller’s real estate agent. The trust did not disclose its ownership to Denton County officials. Trusts are not required to by law, a spokesperson for Travis County’s appraisal district said.
Paxton shares a separate blind trust with his wife, Angela, that they have used to purchase property and other assets. For years, the address listed for that blind trust had been an office building in Collin County. But that address was changed to the Denton County home a week after the property was purchased.
Angela Paxton said through a spokesperson that she has no connection to the Denton County home or the trust that purchased it. The trustee of the Paxtons’ trust, family friend Chip Loper, did not respond to questions about the address change.
In June, a reporter knocked on the door of the Denton County home. No one answered. When the reporter placed a letter for Paxton in the mailbox, an envelope addressed to Warren Paxton, the attorney general’s given name, was visible.
Later that week, Paxton appeared on a podcast with Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Video from the podcast showed Paxton seated in front of a fireplace and mantle that were nearly identical to those depicted in the home’s online real estate listing. One resident also told the newsrooms that they spotted Paxton in the gated community.
Separately, the Daily Mail reported in May that Paxton had moved into the Denton County home with Tracy Duhon, whose extramarital affair with Paxton, the news outlet said, prompted his wife’s divorce filing. The Daily Mail also published a video of Paxton and Duhon that it reported was taken at an airport in Iceland in late June. The video was quickly seized upon by Talarico, who depicted Paxton as out of touch with Texans. Duhon did not respond to questions about her connection to the Denton County property or about the Daily Mail reporting.
Paxton is not registered to vote in Denton County, voter rolls show. Instead, since February, he has voted in Collin County twice: once in the March Republican primary and once in the May runoff. Each Texas county elects its own slate of local officials, which is why state law requires voters to register where they live.
Ekow Yankah, a law professor at the University of Michigan whose expertise includes election law, said Paxton’s voter registration situation should remind the attorney general of what studies have consistently shown: that intentional illegal voting is rare.
“You would think that somebody who’s going through this would learn a little bit of humility that lots of things which look on their face, like technical violations of the law, are usually explained by totally ordinary things,” Yankah said. “It’s only if you’re utterly cynical and ignore all the evidence that you make a claim that, in fact, these cases are attributable to nefarious criminal intent.”
Paxton cannot claim ignorance of the law because he enforces it, said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. In fact, as attorney general, Paxton should avoid even the appearance that he is not following the law, Blank said.
“We expect these laws to be understandable by ordinary citizens,” Blank said. “When our elected officials who are tasked with passing and enforcing these laws exhibit troubles in engaging with the voting process themselves, that raises serious questions.”
The post Ken Paxton Vowed to Crack Down on “Illegal Voting.” He May Have Violated Texas Election Law. appeared first on ProPublica.
Refloat 1.3 beta2 is out, mainly containing the LCM LEDs sometimes not working after startup (plus a potential rare crash), and a few other small fixes/improvements.
Péter Magyar hails ‘end of propaganda broadcasts’ as Kossuth radio and M1 TV channels suspend transmission
Hungarian public media outlets close to Viktor Orbán have suspended broadcasting, the country’s prime minister said as he hailed efforts to dismantle the longtime nationalist leader’s control over information.
Péter Magyar, who ousted Orbán in a landslide election victory in April, wrote on Facebook: “A historic day. Today marks the end of propaganda broadcasts on public media platforms. They lied at night, they lied during the day, they lied on every wavelength. That is now over.”
Continue reading...Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said Tuesday that he spoke with Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner and recommended that he exit the Senate race.
Rahm Emanuel is viewed as a potential Democratic presidential candidate and has been a longtime defender of Israel.
The company’s target to hit £1bn profitability is intact. Why isn’t the board putting up a proper fight?
Some foreign takeover swoops on UK listed companies are easier to swallow than others. Sometimes it is hard to mount an argument that shareholders should stick to the virtuous path of independence and say no to an offer of hard cash at a fat premium. The current £10bn bid for Intertek, the FTSE 100 product testing and quality inspection firm that had been going sideways for a while, probably falls into that category. The bid premium on that one was about 60%.
EasyJet, on other hand, looks to be a case of a board giving up before it has put up a proper fight. The story so far at the budget airline is that three non-starter offers from Castlelake, a US private investment firm that is big in aircraft financing and leasing, were rejected in the standard manner as “fundamental” undervaluations. The last of those was at 625p. A fourth, at 650p a share, was dismissed in the softer language of “substantial”. Then “an agreement in principle” was reached at the weekend at 690p, or £5.5bn. Castlelake has until 3 August to put up or shut up.
Continue reading...1.2.3 has been released (no beta this time) with a fix for LCM LEDs not working after startup and a potential rare startup crash. It should hit the package store soon.
Ukraine’s president argues defensive capabilities built up in war with Russia mean it shouldn’t be excluded
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has argued for Ukraine to be allowed to join Nato at its annual summit – saying it would be wrong to exclude a country that had built up strong defences in its long struggle against the Russian invasion.
The Ukrainian president said his country had developed almost all the weapons it needed, and now only required European help in developing an alternative to the US Patriots to protect against ballistic missile attack.
Continue reading...SEOUL, South Korea, July 7, 2026 — Pasqal, a global leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, and MegazoneCloud, South Korea’s leading cloud and AI transformation company, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly explore a series of quantum computing initiatives designed to accelerate enterprise adoption, expand commercial deployment capabilities, and strengthen quantum technology development across South Korea – moving enterprises from pilot to production through managed cloud access, targeted use cases development, and on-premises QPU deployment.
Supported by MegazoneCloud’s enterprise cloud infrastructure, the initiatives aim to support Korea’s broader digital and technological transformation. The MoU establishes a framework for collaboration across the following key areas:
Pasqal’s neutral-atom systems already support 25+ commercial use cases for global enterprises across oil & gas, financial services and materials science. MegazoneCloud’s clients will now be able to access that same industrial-grade capability domestically.
Wasiq Bokhari, Pasqal CEO, said: “South Korea is one of the world’s most advanced technology economies, and its enterprises are heavy users of cloud computing and are ready for quantum. This MoU with MegazoneCloud is the foundation for a commercial partnership that will drive adoption, putting Pasqal’s neutral-atom hardware where it matters most: inside enterprise workflows, at scale, through a platform Korean organizations already trust.”
Joo-wan Lee, CEO of MegazoneCloud Corporation, said: “MegazoneCloud has built its leadership by delivering what is next before it becomes expected. Quantum computing is the most consequential infrastructure investment a Korean enterprise can make over the next decade, and this MoU with Pasqal positions our clients to move today, with confidence, and through a partner of global standing.”
About MegazoneCloud
Headquartered in Seoul, Korea, MegazoneCloud is a leading AI-native cloud company with more than 2,000 cloud and AI experts, serving over 8,000 customers worldwide as a trusted digital transformation partner. Through strategic partnerships with major global and domestic cloud service providers (CSPs), as well as collaboration with over 200 ISV partners and proprietary cloud, AI, and security solutions, MegazoneCloud continues to drive innovation and growth for its customers.
With its vision, “Transform Tomorrow, Together,” MegazoneCloud is committed to building future competitiveness for its customers through technology, data, and people. The company operates in 10 countries, including Korea, North America, Japan, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East, growing alongside its global partners and customers.
About Pasqal
Pasqal is a global leader in delivering practical quantum computing at scale utilizing neutral atom technology and dedicated software for industry, science, and governments. Since its founding in 2019, Pasqal has leveraged Nobel Prize winning research to build high-performance quantum systems and cloud-ready software designed to address complex challenges in optimization, simulation, and artificial intelligence.
Headquartered in France, Pasqal employs over 275 people and serves over 25 clients and partners, including Aramco, CMA CGM, OVHcloud, Thales, IBM (Pasqal is part of the IBM Quantum Network), and Sumitomo. Backed by more than USD 300 million in total funding from leading international investors, Pasqal is pursuing a listing on Nasdaq in partnership with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II (Nasdaq: BBCQ) and is accelerating the adoption of scalable, high-performance quantum computing worldwide.
About Bleichroeder
Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II is a blank check company formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, amalgamation, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses.
Source: Pasqal
The post Pasqal and MegazoneCloud Partner to Bring Industrial-Scale Quantum Computing to South Korea appeared first on HPCwire.
A criminal complaint against alleged Scattered Spider member Peter Stokes revealed that Microsoft can associate Windows activity with a persistent "Global Device ID," which investigators used to link his PC to online activity connected to a hack. While unique device IDs are common, the case has raised privacy concerns because the identifier can apparently persist across updates, has no simple opt-out, and may allow Microsoft to connect a Windows installation to activity on third-party services. PCMag reports: Last week, the U.S. announced it had extradited 19-year-old Peter Stokes from Europe for allegedly being a member of the notorious hacking group Scattered Spider. But the case stands out because Microsoft played a key role in linking Stokes to the suspected hacking crimes, according to an unsealed criminal complaint. Stokes allegedly hacked an unnamed luxury jewelry retailer in May 2025 while using a VPN. The 39-page criminal complaint shows the FBI used Microsoft records to discover that his IP address was associated with a Microsoft device identifier known as Global Device ID (GDID). "According to a Microsoft representative, a Global Device Identifier in the Windows ecosystem is a persistent, device-level identifier designed to uniquely identify an installation of a Windows operating system on a device, either a physical device (e.g., a mobile phone or laptop) or virtual machine, across certain Microsoft services and scenarios," the complaint explains. The global device ID isn't exactly surprising, given that it's standard practice to assign a unique ID to each account or device so a tech provider can recognize and distinguish between them. But the complaint reveals Microsoft can associate the GDID with third-party services and the timing as well, giving Redmond a way to theoretically track a user's online activity. In other words, Redmond might be able to track the online activity of your Windows PC without third-party browser cookies. Stokes was discovered exploiting a web development tool called ngrok to bypass the jewelry retailer's network defenses. The complaint says Microsoft had records showing that on May 12, 2025, at 19:21 UTC, the GDID associated with Stokes' computer "accessed, among other ngrok pages, 'https://dashboard[.]ngrok.com/signup,' the ngrok page to set up an ngrok account." The document adds that Microsoft records also showed the GDID accessing "multiple sites" from servers at Tzulo, a web hosting provider, to help pull off the hack. Hence, the fact that federal investigators used the Microsoft identifier to nab a suspected hacker is raising concerns that it could be abused for other surveillance purposes. "Microsoft Windows is surveillance software," cybersecurity expert Matthew Hickey alleged in a tweet.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Desks offering gift wrapping and bureau de change stations will be closed at dozens of stores nationwide
John Lewis has put 200 jobs at risk as it plans to shut down desks operating gift wrapping and foreign exchange services.
The 36-strong department store chain said it had begun a consultation on redundancies as it plans to close the desks that operate bureau de change services in 30 stores, and specialist gift wrapping in 25 stores.
Continue reading...Democrats weigh options as controversial Senate nominee faces calls to drop out of race after sexual assault allegation
Top Democrats are considering their options as Graham Platner, the party’s candidate for US Senate in Maine, faces growing calls to withdraw after a sexual assault allegation.
While Platner has denied the claims, first reported by Politico on Monday, they sparked a chorus of criticism. He said he was “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward” in the wake of the story.
Continue reading...Star Wars: The Experience premiers in 2027 and shows fans what it takes to bring the Skywalker saga to life.
Populist British lawmaker Nigel Farage has resigned amid a financial scandal, but says he'll run in a snap election to reclaim his seat.
Chokwe Antar Lumumba had previously called FBI sting while mayor of Jackson a ‘political prosecution’
The former mayor of Mississippi’s capital city pleaded guilty on Monday to bribery, wire fraud and money laundering, after saying a corruption case brought against him two years earlier was a “political prosecution”.
Chokwe Antar Lumumba was the mayor of Jackson in November 2024 when he was indicted by a federal grand jury after an FBI investigation and sting operation in which he and two other elected Democrats allegedly accepted illegal payments to secure a real estate deal.
Continue reading...Gotham FC's announced Tuesday the women's soccer team is moving home games from New Jersey to the Etihad Park stadium in Queens, New York.
Sen. Susan Collins helped pass a 2012 law that affirmed that members of Congress are not exempt from insider-trading laws and required members to more promptly disclose their trades of stocks and other investments. But an ad from a pro-Democrat group falsely claims that the Republican senator “doesn’t think” that insider trading “should be illegal.”
The TV ad from Majority Forward, an issue advocacy organization, goes on to say that Collins, who is running for reelection in Maine, “is trying to keep it so senators can get rich playing the stock market.” And a spokesperson for the group criticized the effectiveness of the 2012 law, telling us in a statement that Collins is “blocking the only thing that would actually work” to stop Congress from profiting on insider information – “a ban on members trading individual stocks.”
It’s true that Collins does not support a complete ban on stock trading by representatives and senators. A spokesperson for her Senate campaign told us that she believes they should still be able to have a stock portfolio that is “managed by an outside advisor who makes the decisions independently and without consultation with the member.”
But that’s not the same as thinking that insider trading should be legal.
As of July 7, Majority Forward had put more than $628,000 into running the ad, which began airing in Maine and other parts of the New England region on June 27, according to AdImpact. The group is affiliated with Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC, that is trying to keep Collins from winning a sixth term representing the Pine Tree State.
The ad begins with a man saying that her long Senate career has changed Collins. Then, he says: “Getting rich from insider trading should be illegal, but Susan Collins doesn’t think so. Susan Collins is trying to keep it so senators can get rich playing the stock market.”
The ad ends with a plea for viewers to “tell Susan Collins to stop the congressional stock trading.”
We’ll get to Collins’ position on legislation to ban members of Congress from trading stocks shortly.
But the ad’s other claim about her stance on the illegality of insider trading is wrong.
“Majority Forward is lying,” Blake Kernen, a spokeswoman for the Collins campaign, said in an email about the ad. She told us, with emphasis: “Insider Trading IS illegal — and it should be. In fact, Senator Collins wrote the law signed by President Obama that explicitly ensured that Members of Congress and their staff are not exempt from insider trading laws.”
Indeed, in 2012, six years after it was first introduced and attracted little support, Congress approved the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, or STOCK, Act, which Obama later signed into law. It passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support, including from Collins, who helped write parts of the legislation and usher it through the Senate.
Among other things, the STOCK Act clarified that existing laws and rules prohibiting insider trading also applied to members of Congress, congressional staffers and other federal officials. It reiterated that members and their staff are prohibited from using nonpublic information derived from their official positions for personal benefit. And it changed the disclosure rules so that certain stock transactions exceeding $1,000 had to be reported in no less than 45 days — rather than just once a year in an annual report.
The law was intended to address public mistrust over allegations of insider trading by members of Congress, including during the Great Recession in 2008, when some members reportedly made changes to their investment portfolios after learning details about the looming collapse of the U.S. economy in private meetings with the top economic officials.
“This common-sense legislation … makes it crystal clear that members of Congress are forbidden from trading on insider information,” Collins said in a statement at the time.
However, critics of the law say that it has largely been ineffective.
“While the STOCK Act has helped expose the extent of potential conflicts of interest and provided the public with transparency into lawmakers’ financial activities, a lack of enforcement has stopped it from achieving the goal of curbing insider trading,” the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center wrote in a September 2025 analysis.
For example, the CLC, which focuses on voting rights and congressional ethics rules, pointed out that the initial penalty for members who don’t file their disclosure reports on time is a $200 fine – “a hardly impactful deterrence from the potential millions to be made off the stock market,” the center said.
Also, a Business Insider report from January 2023 said that the fee for a disclosure violation is sometimes waived by the House and Senate ethics committees responsible for enforcement.
Moreover, the CLC has noted that, “despite credible allegations,” no member of Congress has been prosecuted for insider trading under the law – which it has attributed to “the high standard for insider trading under the STOCK Act and investigatory hurdles.”
Majority Forward emphasized the law’s shortcomings in defense of its ad.
“The 2012 STOCK Act was supposed to stop insider trading in Congress, and it has failed – so badly that Susan Collins, who helped write it, broke it herself and paid no price,” Lauren French, a spokeswoman for Majority Forward, said in a statement emailed to us.
“Now she’s blocking the only thing that would actually work: a ban on members trading individual stocks,” French said. “That puts her against 86% of Americans and 95% of Mainers – and on the side of a loophole she’s personally profited from, which is exactly the point made in this ad. Standing in the way of a widely popular, bipartisan, tougher piece of legislation is, by default, opposing stricter enforcement and allowing for the continued practice of insider trading to occur.” (French linked to polls in recent years that found such high support for a ban on stock trading by lawmakers.)
NOTUS reported in March that Collins violated the law’s disclosure requirement in February, when she disclosed her husband’s purchase of a Pfizer corporate bond five days after the 45-day reporting deadline.
Kernen, the Collins campaign spokeswoman, told the news outlet that investment decisions for Tom Daffron, Collins’ husband, “are made exclusively by a third-party advisor without his consultation.” In addition, she said that Collins “has never bought, sold, or owned any individual shares of stock” during her Senate career – a point that Kernen reiterated in an email to us.
It’s also the case that Collins has opposed proposals that would completely ban members of Congress and other high-ranking federal employees from buying and selling stocks and other securities. She has instead argued for greater enforcement of the STOCK Act.
But the ad goes beyond making those points by inaccurately claiming that Collins “doesn’t think” insider trading “should be illegal.”
“Insider trading is already illegal, and Sen. Collins believes that the law that is already in place, in addition to the robust financial disclosure requirements, provide appropriate safeguards and should be enforced,” Kernen told the Bangor Daily News for an August 2025 story about Collins opposing legislation put forward by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.
That bill, which Hawley introduced with a bipartisan group of fellow senators, would ban members of Congress, the president, the vice president, and their spouses and dependent children from holding, buying or selling stocks, according to a press release.
When we asked about Collins’ current position, Kernen said in her email, “She believes that Members of Congress should not be allowed to buy or sell individual stocks unless the stock portfolio is managed by an outside advisor who makes the decisions independently and without consultation with the member.”
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The post Democratic Group Makes False Claim in Insider-Trading Ad Attacking Susan Collins appeared first on FactCheck.org.
A great white shark was captured feeding on the carcass of a humpback whale near Rhode Island, in rare video footage.
The claim, outlined in court papers, contends information shared with Iran could jeopardize the lives of pro-democracy protesters, religious minorities and LGTBQ people.
A regime that has survived months of attack by the United States and Israel is projecting a show of strength with enormous crowds and the reappearance of military leaders.
CNET, Lifehacker, Mashable, PCMag and ZDNET are holding prediction contests to see which readers can best guess what Apple will do this year.
Round two of CNET's prediction game has begun. Guess correctly about Apple news and events, and you could win.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: These may be the last days of Amazon's Mechanical Turk. An announcement on the Mechanical Turk website says that on July 30, 2026, the crowdsourcing service will close to new customers. Amazon Web Services says the decision was made after "careful consideration," adding, "Existing customers can continue to use the service as normal. AWS continues to invest in security and availability improvements for Mechanical Turk, but we do not plan to introduce new features." In other words, Amazon isn't completely pulling the plug, but the service is very much on life support. Further reading: Horror Stories From Inside Amazon's Mechanical Turk (2020)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For much of the star’s career, this tournament has been held as a high-water mark. Instead much of the USMNT’s success came without his involvement
There was a quiver in Christian Pulisic’s voice as he answered the final question posed to him at the 2026 World Cup.
On its face, the question was straightforward: how did the overall experience of this tournament meet his expectations? The subtext was overwhelming. For eight years, this World Cup co-hosted by the United States has been viewed as the potential high-water mark of his career and those of his teammates. Every machination of American soccer has operated with signposts displaying “2026” in bold.
Continue reading...After an unfortunate leak, the film is set to hit TV screens.
The fallout from USA’s defeat to Belgium gathered pace, with criticism of Fifa growing
Let’s talk about everyone’s favourite subject: England!
What a game that was against Mexico, by the way. I feel asleep about 1am (BST), woke up with England winning 2-1, just before Quansah got sent off and all hell broke loose. England’s defending in the final 20 minutes or so was an absolute work of art (thank you Dan Burn), even if Mexico’s attacking play lacked a certain amount of imagination. A magnificent performance by the players, not to mention Thomas Tuchel, who I feared had gone too early with the: ‘Play a back five, and just hack the ball anywhere’ strategy.
Continue reading...Judge says group – including Elton John and Liz Hurley – failed to prove allegations of unlawful information gathering against Associated Newspapers Limited
In his 436-page written judgment, Mr Justice Nicklin said the claimants failed to prove the allegations of unlawful information gathering (UIG).
As a reminder, the claimants were Prince Harry, Elton John and husband David Furnish, actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, campaigner Doreen Lawrence, and former Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes. The judge wrote in his summary:
The court rejected the attempt to prove the claims by broad inference where there remained a legitimate and realistic possible lawful source pathway, or where the article-specific evidence did not prove that the relevant information must have been obtained unlawfully…
The court also held that the parties were bound by the cases they had pleaded. It was not permissible, at trial, to replace a pleaded allegation with a different, and in many instances more serious, allegation of UIG… The claims are therefore dismissed.
Continue reading...I feel like i constantly strip the screws on my X7LR ive worked with screws and tools for a long time i just cant seem to work with these without stripping them
UPDATE: I got so many great comments and suggestions from y'all and I guess the thing that surprised me was that riding the Onewheel is a skill that takes time and practice and that falling is just an inevitable part of that process. It just LOOKS easy and apparently it's not. So I have decided to get an eBike instead, since I already have that particular skill. If I can get my core and balance in better shape then I may revisit the Onewheel some time in the future, and if I ever have an opportunity to try one out in the grass I will definitely do that.
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Context: I'm an older (61), out-of-shape dude who loves being outdoors, but I hate walking because it feels SO slow (thanks, ADHD). I have a weak core and my balance isn't great. I saw a guy riding a Onewheel the other day and it just looked... really fun. I also thought it might actually help improve my core strength and balance if I rode it a lot.
Then I started reading this subreddit, and the impression I'm getting is that EVERYONE wipes out eventually. I really, really don't want to wipe out.
I want to emphasize that I would have no intention of going fast. Faster than walking? Absolutely. FAST fast? Nope.
A little analogous backstory: when I took the MSF course and bought my first motorcycle, I took the same approach. I'm extremely risk-averse and cautious. I never ride over the speed limit, and I've never had an accident or even dropped my bike, even though everyone says it's inevitable. I genuinely think I'd approach a Onewheel the same way.
My primary use would probably be cruising around my neighborhood and riding easy to maybe medium-rated trails—not anything crazy.
So, given all that—and especially the fact that I really don't want to wipe out—would you recommend I get a Onewheel? Or is this one of those hobbies where falling is simply unavoidable?
And if you think I should get one, which model would you recommend? Assume my budget is around $2,000 or less for my first one..
 | and up and down and around and through [link] [comments] |
Several top Democratic figures call on beleaguered Maine Senate candidate, who denies accusation, to step down
Calls for Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Maine, to withdraw his candidacy intensified on Monday after a woman accused him of sexual assault in an exclusive report by Politico.
While Platner denied the claims, many top Democratic figures quickly called on the beleaguered nominee to step down.
Continue reading...Making the minimum payments keeps your card account current, but it doesn't keep you out of financial trouble.
Anonymous gift of nine Britannia coins worth nearly £30,000 was discovered in a bag beneath the altar
Unable to raise the £750,000 needed for urgent repairs, St Wilfrid’s church in the town of Melling, Lancashire, looked likely to shut its doors after more than 700 years.
But on Good Friday the church was saved from closure by the discovery, in a plastic bag hidden under the altar, of a box with nine gold Britannia coins worth nearly £30,000.
Continue reading...Researchers testing a cheap, homegrown oil in Uganda found what cats knew all along – it worked as well as the artificial chemical used globally
A homegrown catnip lotion has proven “just as effective as Deet” as a mosquito repellant in trials carried out in Uganda.
Catnip, or Nepeta cataria, is a common herb from the mint family. The chemical in the plant that causes feline euphoria – nepetalactone – also has insect-repelling properties but this has not previously been commercialised.
Continue reading...Suspension had been imposed after invasion of Ukraine
Decision on Russian anthem and flag still unclear
The International Olympic Committee has lifted the suspension on Russia that was imposed after the invasion of Ukraine, paving the way for the Russian team to compete at the Los Angeles Olympics.
Only a handful of Russians were able to compete at the Paris Summer Olympics and the Milan Cortina Winter Games in 2026 as authorised neutral athletes, after an IOC vetting panel checked whether they had offered any public support for the war in Ukraine.
Continue reading...President Trump praised Walmart and said the lower prices are the result of "my Administration's request to celebrate our great Country's 250th birthday."
After a run in Nashville, Dolly: A True Original Musical is set to open in New York in December
Dolly Parton will celebrate turning 81 with the opening of a musical about her life on Broadway later this year.
Dolly: A True Original Musical is billed as “a remarkable journey through the life of this trailblazing woman” and is set to begin previews at New York’s St James Theatre on 7 December before opening on 19 January, the singer’s birthday.
Continue reading...Celeste Amarilla could face charges after French Football Federation complains about social media posts over World Cup match
Prosecutors in France have opened an investigation into the racist attack on Kylian Mbappé by a Paraguayan senator, with officials weighing whether to demand that the senator be charged with aggravated public insult or incitement to hatred or violence.
The Paris prosecutor’s office told the Guardian on Tuesday it had launched the inquiry after the French Football Federation (FFF) filed a complaint with the national unit for combating online hate.
Continue reading...The FDA is urging parents and caregivers to immediately stop using a Nara Organics-brand formula after several infants contracted botulism.
Prince Harry has lost his lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail newspaper, but his other legal battles against Britain's tabloids were more successful.
The biggest threat to your phone isn't malware, it's how you conduct yourself online.
Retailer admits it struggled in June heatwave and also had to order more ice-cream to keep pace with demand
Marks & Spencer is investing in refrigeration equipment that can cope with weather as hot as 45C as the climate crisis is expected to drive regularly higher temperatures in the UK.
“There is no doubt we were struggling in the nine days of [recent] extreme heat,” Stuart Machin, the chief executive of the food, fashion, beauty and homewares retailer, told shareholders at the group’s annual meeting in London on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Hourly concentrations of particulate matter rose to 6.7 times their pre-fireworks levels, according to an analysis
Washington DC residents breathed in “unhealthy” air for hours after a 40-minute Independence Day fireworks show over the National Mall on Saturday night, with the country’s capital briefly recording the worst air quality of any major city in the world.
The highly emitting display, which the president called “spectacular”, came as the Trump administration rolls back an unprecedented number of pollution controls.
Continue reading...A new study suggests multilingualism may slow brain aging, with bilingual people showing brains that appear about six years younger than monolingual speakers and people who speak four languages showing brains that appear up to 13 years younger. Researchers say earlier language learning and higher proficiency appear to strengthen the effect. The Guardian reports: Our brains are made up of billions of nerve cells that communicate with one another. But as we get older, the connectivity in our brains often deteriorates, causing memory and speed of thought to decline. While previous research had observed that people from European countries with greater language proficiency tended to age more slowly, this study measured the impact of speaking languages on individual brains. Scientists in Spain, Chile, Argentina and Dublin compared people living in the Basque region -- characterized by high levels of multilingualism -- who spoke Spanish, Basque, French and/or English. To measure neurological age, the scientists used magnetoencephalography to measure the brain activity of 728 people with varying ages and levels of linguistic ability. They then used AI to process the results to calculate a normal level of brain connectivity at any given age. A second unrelated group of 144 people were then scanned and compared, comprising equal numbers of people speaking one, two, three or four languages. Dr Lucia Amoruso, from the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language in San Sebastian, said: "In simple terms, people who spoke more languages tended to have brains that looked younger than expected for their chronological age. The effect was not only related to the number of languages spoken. Higher language proficiency and earlier acquisition of a second language were also associated with more delayed brain ageing. This suggests that multilingual experience matters as a gradient: it is not simply about being bilingual or not, but about the depth and duration of language experience."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Concrete-based cricket pitches, like that on which Nathan Fitzgerald received fatal blows to the head, are ‘totally unsafe’, concussion advocate says
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Australia must finally deal with a deadly risk that has plagued its native football code for more than 120 years, sports safety advocates say, after the death of a suburban Aussie rules footballer.
Nathan Fitzgerald, a 27-year-old school teacher, died in a Melbourne hospital on Monday after a horror accident on Saturday in which it is believed the Epping reserves grade footballer clashed heads with another player while tackling an opponent and received a second blow to the head as he fell, before striking his head a third time on a concrete-based cricket pitch in the middle of the ground.
Continue reading...De-escalation of war in the Middle East has lowered oil prices and eased fears of economic downturn but households are still feeling the pinch
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Fears of a recession have fallen away, with economists saying Australia is set to safely navigate the biggest global oil supply shock in history even as they warn of substandard growth in the year ahead.
The de-escalation of the Middle East conflict has been accompanied by a major retreat in global oil prices back to prewar levels, essentially removing the worst-case scenarios contemplated before Donald Trump’s wobbly ceasefire with Iran was announced in mid-June.
Continue reading...I review a lot of laptops and have been doing so for decades. These are the best Windows laptops that CNET has tested.
Scientists call for better land management alongside reduction in greenhouse gases causing the crisis
When storm after storm battered the Mediterranean at the start of the year, drowning fields and sending water spurting from plug sockets, few people were fretting about fires.
But just four months later, the murky brown floods that swamped towns and fouled homes across western Europe have given way to angry red blazes and choking black smoke. Rampant wildfires burned 28,000 hectares (69,160 acres) in France and 50,000 hectares in Spain as of 1 July, more than double the average for that time of year, and more land has been charred by bigger fires in the week since.
Continue reading...Kerr Kriisa posed as other people and falsely claimed he and his family urgently needed money to deal with an emergency, the indictment says.
Apple's MacBook lineup includes three tiers: Neo, Air and Pro. See our favorites and find the best MacBook for your laptop budget and needs.
Wondering who's responsible for the remaining medical bills after a spouse dies? The answer may surprise you.
Prince Harry has lost his case against the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday tabloids, with the top U.K. court dismissing claims of illegal information gathering.
Plus, save 40% on a pair of noise-canceling JBL earbuds and get $45 off a 6-quart Chefman air fryer.
iRobot's new five-in-one floor cleaner can disinfect your floors without using any chemicals or cleaning fluids.
Residents and council say creating affordable housing is more urgent than ‘high-frequency trading’ in nearby City
Campaigners in east London are opposing plans for a datacentre in Brick Lane that they say will worsen the area’s housing crisis and drive long-term residents away.
The road, famed for its curry houses and 24-hour bagel shops, is the latest flashpoint in the rapid rollout of datacentres across the UK that aims to meet demand created by artificial intelligence.
Continue reading...Experts say the critical reservoir system is careening toward a breaking point as the US west’s climate warms and dries
Lake Powell, US’s second-largest reservoir, threatens to plunge to unprecedentedly low levels this year after a historically bleak snowpack failed to raise its water level, scientists and water experts have said, adding renewed urgency to stalled talks over how to conserve a water source depended on by tens of millions of people in the US south-west.
The 185-mile Colorado River reservoir currently stands at about 23% of its capacity, or roughly 5.6m acre-feet. Lake Powell fell below that level for a few months three years ago. But those 2023 levels were recorded in the winter, when the reservoir straddling the Utah-Arizona border hits its lowest ebb. Spring runoff carried the level back up to 9.6m acre-feet by June, according to data from the US Bureau of Reclamation.
Continue reading...Microplastics are being found everywhere, including in your home.
The USA men’s run at a home World Cup had attracted people who usually ignore soccer. Instead of triumph, they saw a humbling by Belgium
In the closing moments of the USA’s 3-2 win against Portugal at the 2002 World Cup, the ESPN commentator Jack Edwards took a moment to remind viewers who had stayed up all night of the profound result they were witnessing. From his perch in Suwon, South Korea – where he was watching the first match of a campaign that would end in a quarter-final that remains the high‑water mark for the modern US men’s national team – Edwards delivered a soliloquy that cut straight to the heart of the profound role World Cups play not just for the USA men’s team but for soccer as a force in American life.
“The players on that 1950 team that beat England … this [result] is about the foundation that they laid,” Edwards said in his booming bravado as the hour crept toward 7am ET. “This is about the thousands of American families who have helped this sport grow, and the people in those pockets all over the country who have stuck with soccer. And it’s also for those seven- or eight- or nine‑year-old kids, who are going to hear about this result when they wake up in the morning and rush outside, and knock a ball against a wall, and dream of something even greater than this.”
Continue reading...Almost 700 cases were reported to Michigan health department by Monday, up from 170 six days earlier
Cases of cyclosporiasis – a parasitic illness that causes “explosive”, watery diarrhea – have grown exponentially in recent days, health officials said, with an abnormally large outbreak reported in Michigan.
Almost 700 cases were reported to the state’s health department by Monday, ABC News said, up from 170 six days earlier, and almost 14 times Michigan’s average annual caseload of 50.
Continue reading...Valter Lavitola suspected of planning bomb attack on Sigfrido Ranucci, for which four people have been arrested
Italian prosecutors have placed a businessman and former journalist under investigation for allegedly masterminding a bomb attack at the home of Sigfrido Ranucci, a prominent investigative reporter.
Valter Lavitola was supposedly friends with Ranucci, the host of Report, an investigative programme aired by the state broadcaster, Rai, and is being investigated on suspicion of trying to cause mass murder.
Continue reading...Leaders meeting in Ankara urged to show concrete steps towards increasing their budget contribution. Plus, why Madonna’s new album is a triumph
Good morning. Nato leaders will gather in Ankara today for their latest summit after a turbulent six months, hoping to mollify an unpredictable Donald Trump, as Washington continues to pressure its allies to increase defence spending.
On Friday, Trump posted a graphic on his Truth Social platform showing Nato members’ defence budgets, comparing a vast US spend of $999m (£747m) with smaller figures from European states saying the situation was “ridiculous” and “one-sided”. The US is planning to cut the number of troops and materiel it assigns to Europe in the event of a war with Russia.
What is causing tension between the US and the rest of Nato? Since threatening to take control of Greenland from his ally Denmark, Trump has failed to consult European leaders before the US and Israel launched their economically disastrous attack on Iran, and complained countries including the UK did not allow US jets to bomb Iran from their territory. He has bizarrely accused Italy’s Giorgia Meloni of being obsessed with him, and relations with Canada’s Mark Carney are strained after Trump voiced an interest in a takeover of the US’s northern neighbor.
What are the allegations against Platner? In an exclusive Politico report, Jenny Racicot, 41, who previously dated Platner, said he forced her to have sex despite repeated objections. The report cited accounts from a man Racicot later confided in, as well as recent therapist emails, and messages where she warned an acquaintance about Platner in 2023.
How has Platner responded? Platner denied the claims in a statement to Politico. “These allegations are troubling, serious, and false. Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue,” he said.
Continue reading...High-level agentic quantum software engineering supports engineering education, energy systems research and quantum workforce development
ALFRED, N.Y., July 7, 2026 — Alfred University, the State University of New York College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and Classiq today announced a joint quantum computing initiative using Classiq’s quantum software engineering platform to support engineering education, applied energy systems research and preparation for the emerging quantum workforce.
The initiative brings together Alfred University’s applied engineering, ceramic, glass, and materials engineering, and energy systems expertise with Classiq’s high-level quantum software platform, enabling students and researchers to build quantum programs without starting from gate-level circuit design. With Classiq’s platform, Alfred University is making this powerful technology accessible to students and researchers without requiring deep coding expertise, accelerating the bridge between theory and real-world application.
Quantum computing is an advanced field of computing that uses the principles of quantum physics to solve highly complex problems by processing information exponentially faster than classical supercomputers. Unlike traditional computers that process information linearly using 0s and 1s, quantum computers can analyze vast numbers of possibilities simultaneously. This allows them to solve complex engineering, energy grid and materials science problems that are far beyond the reach of standard computation. Its industry applications include the energy, pharmaceutical and financial sectors; materials science and battery development; and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
At Alfred University, Junpeng Zhan, assistant professor of renewable energy engineering in the Inamori School of Engineering, is introducing students to quantum computing through tools that help them focus on concepts, algorithms, and engineering problems. “I introduced the Classiq platform (as an instructional tool) this past semester. As I familiarize myself with the platform, I will utilize it more,” said Zhan, who has incorporated quantum computing into several courses and has also led outreach activities through prior National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research projects, including hands-on demonstrations for local BOCES students.
“Alfred University’s strength is connecting advanced science with practical engineering problems,” said Zhan. “With Classiq, students can begin working with quantum algorithms in a way that emphasizes the problem, not only the code. For research, the platform helps us move faster from scientific ideas and published methods to implementations we can evaluate for power systems and energy applications.”
“Our collaboration with Classiq represents an important step in preparing engineering students for technologies that will shape the future of research and industry,” said Gabrielle Gaustad ’04, dean of Alfred University’s Inamori School of Engineering. “This gives students and faculty the opportunity to explore real-world engineering challenges using tools that were once available only to specialists. This initiative reflects our commitment to combining hands-on learning with emerging technologies that can accelerate innovation.”
Zhan’s research includes electrical engineering, power systems and optimization. One area of focus is the unit commitment problem, where utilities and grid operators determine which power generation units should operate, and at what output levels, to meet electricity demand while minimizing operating costs. By exploring quantum computing approaches to these optimization problems, Alfred University is investigating new tools for future energy systems research.
Zhan has previously utilized quantum computing in his research. He and two students assisting him on a National Science Foundation-funded project from 2022, which simulated and found solutions to power system problems, used quantum computing. He collaborated with Rochester Institute of Technology on a 2024 grant project funded by ISO-New England to research how quantum computing can be used to solve power system optimization problems. ISO-New England is an independent, non-profit corporation that works to ensure the New England states receive reliable, competitively priced wholesale power.
The Alfred University-Classiq initiative will also explore quantum materials with S. K. Sundaram, Inamori Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. This area of focus will explore quantum approaches to advanced ceramic material development and testing.
“This initiative also creates exciting opportunities to expand quantum computing across the New York State College of Ceramics, where our strengths in materials science, ceramics, glass and manufacturing intersect with some of today’s most computationally complex research questions,” said Gaustad. “As quantum technologies continue to mature, we see tremendous potential to integrate these capabilities throughout our research enterprise, SUNY, and beyond, fostering new collaborations across disciplines and positioning our students and faculty to help lead the next generation of advanced materials discovery and sustainable engineering.”
“Universities such as Alfred University play a unique and essential role in shaping the workforce of the future,” said Jason Silbergleit, Head of Americas at Classiq, who earned a bachelor’s degree in ceramic engineering from Alfred University in 1996. “Ensuring broad access to next-generation computing platforms is critical for fostering innovation and accelerating discovery. By equipping students and researchers with hands-on experience in quantum computing, institutions can help advance groundbreaking research while preparing graduates to lead in the emerging quantum economy.”
Alfred University and Classiq are also exploring future initiatives around AI-assisted quantum learning, including educational programming that integrates AI-assisted quantum software tools into quantum computing instruction. The organizations are also discussing a potential multi-institution grant proposal focused on broadening access to quantum computing education, involving Alfred University as well as community colleges and institutions within the SUNY and CUNY systems.
About Alfred University
Alfred University was founded in 1836 and is one of the oldest co-educational institutions of higher education in the country. Located in the village of Alfred in the Southern Tier of Western New York, Alfred University offers an uncommon set of top-ranked programs, with nearly more than 60 majors and more than 70 minors across five schools and colleges: the Inamori School of Engineering, the School of Art and Design, the College of Business, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the School of Graduate and Continuing Studies. The School of Engineering offers a bachelor’s degree in Renewable Energy Engineering and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Biomaterials Engineering, Ceramic Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Glass Science Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. Alfred also offers PhDs in Ceramic Engineering, Glass Science Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering and is the only institution in the country to offer bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degrees in Glass Science Engineering.
About Classiq
Classiq is the leading quantum computing software company, providing the technology that makes it practical for enterprises and researchers to access and harness quantum computing. Classiq’s quantum software engineering platform leverages an agentic workflow and high-level functional models to build and execute optimized, hardware-portable quantum circuits automatically. This enables teams to develop algorithms faster, optimize them for cost and performance, and make quantum applications usable sooner, without deep hardware expertise.
Source: Classiq
The post Alfred University and Classiq Launch Quantum Computing Initiative appeared first on HPCwire.
 | As visible by my picture, the right side of the foot pad is registering pressure. The error is 15 blinking yellow lights. The circuit is normally open so I unplugged it, powered it on and then plugged it back in to see wtf is happening. New foot pads are like $150 after taxes and shipping… that’s a lot in my opinion. Is there any way to fix the sensor before I go ordering one? Thanks for reading! [link] [comments] |
A month after Donald Trump issued an executive order purporting to designate antifa as a domestic terrorist group, an intelligence unit inside the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office in Florida sent out a confidential bulletin.
Trump’s announcement was widely criticized as a legally baseless attempt to criminalize his enemies on the left, but the Southeast Florida Fusion Center took it very seriously.
Citing sources that included right-wing social media accounts, the bulletin described antifa as a “decentralized autonomous network of cells” that “stand against capitalism and want to overthrow governments they feel are oppressive through violence and silence their opposition by any means necessary.”
“Antifa has been very active, their most prevalent presence during the George Floyd riots and recently during the anti-ICE protests,” it said, citing the 2020 national uprising against police brutality and the protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that followed Trump’s rise to power.
The Miami-Dade bulletin went on to describe the National Lawyers Guild — a left-leaning collective once villainized by Joseph McCarthy — as the “legal representative” of antifa. It also warned about the danger of zines as tools to “recruit new sympathizers” and of inflatable animal costumes as a “form of propaganda implemented by Antifa to soften their image.”
It was just one example of how, as the administration accelerates its crackdown on left-wing organizers, Trump’s push to paint antifa as a terror group has seeped into local law enforcement.
Previously unreported documents obtained by The Intercept show how local fusion centers are borrowing the tone and some of the language of Trump’s invectives against the left. They draw on his September 22 executive order designating antifa as terrorists and on prosecutions launched after a similar but more wide-reaching directive issued three days later, known as National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7.
“The tone set by leadership is important,” Brendan McQuade, a University of Southern Maine professor who studies fusion centers and domestic surveillance, said of the documents obtained by The Intercept. “In the Trump administration the incentive structure is clear: Trump wants to mobilize the security apparatus against his perceived enemies, and in some sense the FBI and the Florida fusion center are both responding to that incentive structure.”
A White House spokesperson said the administration’s approach was part of a “new law enforcement strategy.”
“The President’s Memorandum is focused on investigating, disrupting, dismantling, and prosecuting individuals and entities engaged in organized political violence and domestic terrorism,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. “The Trump Administration will get to the bottom of this vast network inciting violence in American communities.”
The Florida report was among a trove of scores of such documents obtained by The Intercept that were distributed through a national network of fusion centers.
Fusion centers were created after the September 11, 2001, attacks to facilitate information sharing about terror threats between federal and local law enforcement. Independent reviews, however, have found few tangible results after more than two decades in operation and countless dollars of federal funding for the centers. Critics say they have often been used to cast dissent as suspicious.
Many of the fusion center memos and bulletins focus on mundane topics of interest to local cops, such as the latest trends in ATM card “skimming.”
Others focus on foreign terror threats, such as the latest edition of “Inspire,” Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s magazine.
Some of them, however, echo the Trump administration’s obsession with the left.
The Florida report, which is marked “for official use only,” stretches 28 pages. It starts off by defining antifa as terrorism and stating that the “goal of Antifa is the violent overthrow of the United States government.” (The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, which houses the Southeast Florida Fusion Center, did not respond to a request for comment.)
Then it reproduces in full Trump’s executive order claiming to designate antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization” — a power he would not have even if antifa were a well-defined group rather than an ideology or movement.
Throughout, the Florida report leans heavily on right-wing sources, including the journalist-provocateur Andy Ngo, the Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, and an X account called Far Left Watch.
The report casts a wide variety of First Amendment-protected activities as antifa tactics, including using “profane language against law enforcement” and “doxing.” It warns that zines are used as “educational tools and offered as propaganda to recruit new sympathizers” — echoing an argument that federal prosecutors used against the defendants in the Prairieland ICE detention center protest case.
Police, the Florida report says, should also be on the lookout for inflatable animal costumes, in an apparent reference to the Portland Frog Brigade: “This is a form of propaganda implemented by Antifa to soften their image and change the narrative that they are a violent domestic terrorist organization.”
The document’s tone and reliance on partisan sources make it read “like opposition research,” McQuade said.
“This is not an intelligence bulletin about an organization,” he said. “This is like a target package that, to me, is encouraging police to go hunting for a very broad profile of not even just dissent but sometimes aesthetic markers of dissenting behavior.”
The report devotes a full page to the National Lawyers Guild, the legal collective founded in 1937 as a colorblind alternative to the American Bar Association, which forbade Black members.
The group’s leftist sympathies have long drawn the ire of the right. In the 1940s and 1950s, it was infiltrated by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and mentioned in McCarthy’s infamous Senate hearings. More recently, the group has become an obsession for right-wing think tanks such as the Center for Security Policy and the Capital Research Center.
The Florida fusion center casts the National Lawyers Guild’s efforts to observe police on the streets and defend protesters in court in sinister terms, calling it antifa’s “legal representation.” That is laughable, said Xavier de Janon, director of mass defense for the National Lawyers Guild.
“I don’t know what that means, because antifa is not an organization,” he said, adding that if it were true, the group would proud to fight fascism. “But again, it’s false. It’s just not based on truth. There is no retainer agreement with antifa.”
And beyond that, he said, “NLG as an organization does not provide legal representation. Its members do.”
The report included a picture of National Lawyers Guild legal observers wearing their trademark lime-green hats, which de Janon interpreted as essentially a call to target them.
While the Florida report drew heavily from White House messaging, a different report from Texas relies on court filings from the Justice Department.
In December, the Dallas Regional Fusion Center produced an “intelligence brief” centering on the Turtle Island Liberation Front, a left-wing group accused of plotting coordinated bombing attacks in southern California.
The small group appears to have been thoroughly infiltrated by a paid informant and an FBI agent. The Dallas fusion center argued for even more surveillance, citing a “tangible and immediate threat from newly formed, violent extremist cells that require enhanced monitoring and inter-agency coordination.”
Corbin Rubinson, a spokesperson for the Dallas Police Department, which houses the fusion center, declined to comment on the report.
“These assessments are developed to support information sharing and situational awareness among our public safety partners, and we do not discuss their contents or how they are developed,” Rubinson said.
The Dallas document went on to name two groups that have no apparent connection to the Turtle Island Liberation Front: Direct Action Movement for Palestine Liberation and Unity of Fields. The only connection to the Turtle Island Liberation Front was that each group could be described as, in the words of the report, “another far-left, pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist extremist group.”
The bulletin acknowledged that none of the groups it singled out had a known presence in Dallas. Still, it urged police in the Dallas–Fort Worth area to “Monitor social media pages for extremist groups using ghost accounts and/or VPN” and to “Expand monitoring of encrypted messaging platforms for extremist activity.”
The Miami and Dallas reports cribbed extensively from Trump’s executive order and Justice Department court filings, respectively. In January of this year, the FBI put out an alert more explicitly directed at local police.
Four days after federal officers shot and killed nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the FBI issued a “public safety awareness report” produced by its Office of Partner Engagement and Counterterrorism Division. The report, which was first made public last week by the news outlet Prism, was independently obtained by The Intercept.
The January 30 report was titled “Anarchist Violent Extremists Pose Persistent Public Safety Threat.” It ticked off recent instances of what the FBI saw as instances of anarchist violent extremism, or AVE, including the Prairieland ICE detention facility protest near Dallas and the Turtle Island Liberation Front. Then it swiveled to Minneapolis, which for weeks had been the scene of ordinary protesters confronting masked federal agents.
“Given recent criminal activity in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the FBI is concerned about the potential for AVE violence there,” the report said. “The FBI has seen indicators of this, to include an individual who self-identified as Antifa advocating on social media for violence against ICE in Minneapolis, telling people to ‘get your guns.’ The FBI investigates any reports of violence or the threat of violence by AVEs or other domestic violent extremist or criminal actors.”
The reference about a “self-identified” antifa member appears to be to Kyle Wagner, a Minneapolis man whose online videos featured prominently in the recent indictment of 15 anti-ICE protesters there.
The entire FBI report has a more professional tone than the Florida fusion center bulletin, McQuade said, but it rests on equally thin evidence.
“The FBI talks about two criminal cases, some social media monitoring, but they have claims that would not pass peer review — that anti-capitalist graffiti is an indicator of threat,” he said. “Then the little pull box they had in there about Minneapolis, where one tweet or social media post is interpreted to mean the whole city is ready for violence against federal agents. That just seems like bad analysis.”
It is not the first time that counterterrorism agencies have mobilized against the left on thin evidence.
Months before Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, The Intercept obtained hundreds of hacked law enforcement materials showing agencies obsessing over the threat from the left while ignoring the burgeoning right-wing, anti-government boogaloo movement. Adherents of the movement played a role in the assault on the Capitol.
In 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a public records lawsuit against the Justice Department seeking internal documents about how Joint Terrorism Task Forces and fusion centers responded to protests.
Skeptics of domestic counterterrorism agencies say the overreach has spanned both Democratic and Republican White House administrations, but the documents the ACLU obtained from the first Trump administration share remarkable similarities with his second term.
The January 2026 bulletin from the FBI obtained by The Intercept includes a warning about “black bloc” clothing used to obscure demonstrators’ identities, securing financing through “lawful donations,” encrypted messaging apps, and anti-government graffiti.
The ACLU, meanwhile, obtained a July 2018, bulletin produced by the Department of Homeland Security and local fusion centers that warned about “potential indicators of violent activity by anarchist extremists at events and protests in the homeland.”
The “indicators” of a heightened threat in the bulletin include wearing black and red clothing, soliciting legal defense donations ahead of protests, wearing “Guy Fawkes” masks, and “use of public transportation” to mask license plate information.
The “indicators” of a heightened threat include wearing black and red clothing, wearing “Guy Fawkes” masks, and “use of public transportation.”
“Merely wearing certain colors and taking the bus to a protest should not be enough to justify heightened scrutiny from law enforcement,” Sara Robinson, an attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in an emailed statement. “Using overly broad and stigmatizing terms to describe people who may be engaged in First Amendment-protected activity opens the door to pretextual law enforcement investigations and aggressive policing based not on evidence of criminal activity, but on the exercise of free speech rights.”
She said, “The Trump administration is continuing to treat dissent as a threat.”
The post How Local Cops Are Running With Trump’s NSPM-7 Attacks on Antifa appeared first on The Intercept.
Le Pen is now eligible to run in the forthcoming election, but would have to do so wearing an electronic tag, something she has previously ruled out.
Solution provides a practical, cost-effective and secure pathway for federal, defense, space, critical infrastructure and enterprise customers preparing existing systems for CNSA 2.0 Readiness
COLUMBIA, Md., July 7, 2026 — EigenQ, Inc. has announced new platform capabilities designed to help organizations prepare deployed Intel Xeon processor-based infrastructures for CNSA 2.0-aligned post-quantum migration requirements.
As advancements in quantum computing progress, agencies and regulated enterprises are accelerating plans to protect sensitive systems and workloads from future quantum-enabled attacks. As a part of this process, many face a practical challenge: how to enable quantum-resistant protections across infrastructures s already deployed in the field.
By working closely with Intel, EigenQ’s post-quantum security platform and quantum entropy capabilities are now compatible with Intel’s secure computing architecture and platform ecosystem. This alignment enables a clear, seamless and scalable approach to augmenting post-quantum readiness for existing in-field Intel Xeon processor-based systems – across federal, defense, space, critical infrastructure and enterprise environments – without the need to fully replace existing system infrastructures. The EigenQ solution is expected to support use-cases involving sensitive workload protection, secure communications, identity, key generation, attestation and modernization of high-assurance systems.
“EigenQ is proud to work with Intel to help bring practical quantum-safe protections to the enormous installed base of Intel Xeon processor-based infrastructure,” said Dr. José R. Rosas-Bustos, Chief Executive Officer, EigenQ. “Our goal is to help customers preserve the value of trusted infrastructure while adding a quantum-safe security layer that supports real-world deployment requirements before compliance deadlines arrive.”
“Intel is committed to addressing the evolving post-quantum security landscape,” said Srini Krishna, Intel Fellow, Data Center Products, Intel Corporation. “Along with companies like EigenQ, we’re enabling practical security modernization for the large installed base of Intel Xeon processor-based systems deployed across mission-critical environments. This allows organizations to move toward CNSA 2.0 readiness and mitigate the possibility of future quantum threats to their existing Xeon-based infrastructure.”
In alignment with EigenQ’s broader ecosystem development for secure federal and space applications,BlackVe — a trusted mission partner delivering asymmetric and operationally responsive national security space capabilities – has committed to utilize EigenQ’s Intel-compatible post quantum cryptography technologies, including PQC enabled encrypted video teleconferencing capabilities, as a foundational security layer for a complete secure video system.
“BlackVe is excited to partner with EigenQ as we advance the development of next-generation post-quantum cryptography solutions for space and mission-critical environments,” said Doug Wolfe, Chief Solutions Architect, BlackVe, Inc. “Together, we are combining innovation, security, and operational expertise to help shape resilient PQC-enabled architectures capable of protecting tomorrow’s space and intelligence missions against emerging quantum threats.”
By combining QMA quantum entropy technology, PQC+ cryptographic libraries and platform integration capabilities, EigenQ is helping enable a post-quantum secure solution designed for mission-critical communications.
“Post-quantum security is increasingly a deployment problem, not only an algorithm problem,” said Dr. Jesse Van Griensven, Chairman, EigenQ. “Customers need solutions that work with existing infrastructure, can be integrated into operational environments and can support mission timelines. That is where the pairing of Intel and EigenQ technologies can help to deliver immediate and practical impact.”
Collaboration with Intel further underscores EigenQ’s focus on translating post-quantum security from planning and standards into deployable capabilities for current mission-critical environments. By integrating currently deployed Intel Xeon platforms, EigenQ is helping customers prepare for the post-quantum transition with solutions designed to preserve operational continuity, strengthen resilience and support practical deployment at scale.
About EigenQ
EigenQ is a Quantum computing Company developing and commercializing foundational technologies for the Quantum Era. The Company operates at the intersection of Quantum Technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Secure Communications, Advanced Sensing, and Trusted Computing, with a mission to enable the next generation of intelligent, secure, and resilient digital infrastructure.
EigenQ’s technology portfolio spans Quantum Security, Quantum AI, Quantum Communications, Quantum Sensing, and Quantum Computing. Through a combination of proprietary technologies, strategic partnerships, and commercialization-focused execution, the Company develops solutions designed to address emerging challenges across government, defense, critical infrastructure, enterprise, and AI-driven environments.
With market-ready products, validated deployment pathways, strategic ecosystem relationships, and a growing portfolio of intellectual property, EigenQ is positioned to participate in multiple segments of the emerging quantum economy while helping organizations prepare for the transition to a more secure, intelligent, and quantum-enabled future. For more information, visit www.EigenQ.com.
Source: EigenQ
The post EigenQ Targets Post-Quantum Upgrades for Existing Intel Xeon Infrastructure appeared first on HPCwire.
All PS Plus subscribers can play Modern Warfare 3, CrossCode and more throughout July.
Passengers say they paid extra for outside views but were seated beside blank cabin walls instead
A federal judge on Monday rejected United Airlines’ bid to dismiss a lawsuit by passengers who complained they paid extra money to sit in window seats – only to discover their seats had no actual windows.
US district judge James Donato in San Francisco rejected United’s defense that “window” referred to the location of a seat relative to the cabin wall and aisle, and the carrier also contended it never contractually promised that seats in the window position would have views outside.
Continue reading...Ohio police say they've solved a man's 1985 murder using old evidence, including items found soon after the killing behind a Cracker Barrel in Georgia.
Defunding, mandated in Trump’s 2025 policy, has been blamed for closure of clinics as well as reduction in screenings for cancer and STDs
Planned Parenthood and two smaller regional abortion providers are resuming billing Medicaid for services other than abortion after being cut off for most of a year.
The defunding, which was mandated in Donald Trump’s big tax and spending legislation in July 2025, has been blamed for the closure of multiple clinics as well as a reduction in the number of Planned Parenthood patients being screened for breast cancer or tested for sexually transmitted infections.
Continue reading...‘Shaping Global Order’ exhibition at the 2026 London Conference News release jon.wallace
An exhibition at this year’s conference showcases the extraordinary diversity of speakers in Chatham House’s history, as captured by specialist portrait photographer Ander McIntyre.
Chatham House is holding an exhibition of the work of specialist portrait photographer Ander McIntyre on 9 July during its annual London Conference.
Shaping Global Order documents the extraordinary range of international figures who have spoken at Chatham House over the last 15 years, as part of the institute’s mission to convene meetings of the people and organizations that can bring about change.
Portrait of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy taken at Chatham House in 2025 by Ander McIntyre
The exhibition includes current world leaders Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Alexander Stubb; former world leaders Theresa May, Helen Clark, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, Jacinda Ardern and Julia Gillard; and prominent politicians including Valerie Amos, Hillary Clinton, Stacey Abrams and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
Also featured are significant figures from civil society such as Maria Ressa, Melinda French Gates, Tawakkol Karman, Amartya Sen and Sir David Attenborough; business people and entrepreneurs such as Lujain Al Ubaid and Anne-Marie Imafidon; and United Nations leaders such as Kofi Annan and Mary Robinson.
McIntyre’s path to photography was unconventional. After studying English Literature at Oxford and working as a writer, editor, and picture researcher, he began photographing portraits for Oxford Today magazine.
Portrait of Baroness Amos taken by Ander McIntyre at Chatham House in 2018.
Rejecting the confrontational style often used by portrait photographers, he developed a simple philosophy based on civility, trust, and speed.
Working with just one camera and minimal equipment, McIntyre aims to make himself almost invisible.
His portrait sessions often last no more than ten seconds, allowing him to capture people before they adopt the carefully rehearsed expressions expected in front of a camera.
Rather than directing or staging his subjects, he asks them to do almost nothing believing that genuine character emerges in quiet, unguarded moments.
His long-running project, Portraits of an Establishment, explores the people who shape the modern world. The series includes political leaders, intelligence chiefs, economists, academics, activists, and cultural figures, revealing them not through status or spectacle, but through humanity.
A portrait of Alexander Stubb by Ander McIntyre
Joseph Osayande, curator of the Chatham House exhibition, said:
‘Whether photographing a former president, a Nobel Prize winner, or a leading scientist, Ander McIntyre seeks authenticity over perfection
‘He creates portraits that are both understated and deeply revealing.
‘His work reminds us that behind every public figure is an individual, and that sometimes the most powerful portrait is made not through elaborate production, but through patience, observation, and the brief moment when someone simply stops performing.’
Fans across Belgium watched 4-1 win in early hours
Victory ‘a real slap in the face for Trump and Infantino’
Belgium fans reacted with jubilation after the national team trounced the USA in a World Cup game that was overshadowed by the controversy over Donald Trump’s lobbying to overturn the suspension of the striker Falorin Balogun.
Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, has yet to comment on the national team’s triumph, but the official Instagram account of his cat offered a sardonic, albeit indirect sign of satisfaction. Maximus, De Wever’s beloved cat, was shown lying on a rug holding a soft toy in the image of the US president. “I slept really well last night. And you?” reads the speech bubble in Dutch.
Continue reading...David Streever had emailed acting ICE director after an immigration officer fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis
An upstate New York resident sued US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for sending federal officers to his house with a warning over an email he sent to the agency’s one-time head.
David Streever, who is a US citizen, was on a trip to Finland when two officers showed up to his Rochester home in June and presented his wife with a warning notice informing him that the email he sent months earlier was considered a threat, his attorneys said. Streever sent the email in January to Todd Lyons, then the acting director of ICE, after an immigration officer fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good in a confrontation caught on video during an anti-ICE demonstration.
Continue reading...Archaeologists have discovered eight human skeletons, bronze and gold jewelry and other artifacts indicating a ceremonial burial of wealthy people.
Blasts did not interrupt French president’s visit but are setback for Syrian leaders’ attempt to project stability
Explosions rocked Damascus near the hotel where French president, Emmanuel Macron, was staying on Tuesday, wounding at least 18 people, Syrian authorities said.
Macron was in the presidential palace for a meeting with the Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, when two improvised explosive devices detonated near the Four Seasons hotel where Macron was reported to be staying.
Continue reading...China's military test-launched a long-range ballistic missile from a nuclear-powered submarine in the South Pacific, drawing protest and concern from countries in the region.
France's government says President Emmanuel Macron is safe and will continue his visit to Syria after two bombs exploded outside his hotel in Damascus.
NATO’s Article 5 has long promised that an attack against one is an attack against all. President Donald Trump is not so sure.
Since the 2024 election, a nonprofit has helped 1,500 trans people settle in Seattle — more than 20 times the 70 people it aided before the election.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Belle Mead is one of several controversial developments that have become part of a larger debate over how to manage growth in booming eastern Sussex County. The Supreme Court’s decision on this case could set precedence for how the County Council should handle future developments.
A fight over a proposal to build apartments and shops near the Delaware beaches is headed to the state Supreme Court.
Members of the nonprofit Route 24 Alliance in January filed an appeal for judicial review of the County Council’s approval of the controversial Belle Mead development.
But lawyers of the project’s developer, Capano Management, soon filed a motion to dismiss the case.
They argued that Route 24 Alliance’s lawyers wrongfully excluded them from the initial case and did not establish “standing,” or proof that the resident group would be harmed by Belle Mead, other than “generalized grievances which may be shared by the population at large.”
In late May, Superior Court judge Mark Conner granted that motion to dismiss the case. Public documents do not outline the reasons behind that decision.
In late June, Route 24 Alliance then filed to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. It will likely take months before the case is heard again.
Sussex County Council voted 3-2 in December to approve a rezoning request from Capano Management, essentially greenlighting a plan to transform a horse farm into 125,000 square feet of commercial space and up to 334 apartments.
A total of 15% of those apartments will be under the county’s affordable housing program. The 40-acre property inland from Rehoboth Beach is adjacent to Beacon Middle School and across Route 24 from Love Creek Elementary School. It sits about 2 miles southwest of Route 1.
Judy Rose Seibert, a Route 24 Alliance member listed on the appeal, declined to comment on the litigation.
Representatives from Sussex County and Capano Management did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Route 24 Alliance’s initial appeal asserts that county council members “misunderstood several crucial data points,” primarily the timing of traffic improvements around the site.
While explaining his vote in favor of the rezoning, Councilman Matt Lloyd said the buildout of Belle Mead “aligns” with planned major improvements to Route 24.
Lloyd did not say which improvements he was referring to. But DelDOT plans to widen Route 24, although the project will be in preliminary planning stages through 2032, according to the state’s draft Capital Improvement Plan.
Belle Mead is projected to be fully built out by 2032, well before construction on that widening would begin.
The appeal points to Lloyd’s comments as an example of a “mistaken belief” that led to the council’s approval.
The appeal also cites a letter from Cape Henlopen School District’s Director of Operations Jason Hale opposing any additional growth in the district until an impact fee program was in place.
Belle Mead is located next to Beacon Middle School and Love Creek Elementary School. Hale’s letter also stated that increased traffic from Belle Mead could adversely affect the school pick up and drop off, as well as student safety.
Seibert previously made an hour-long presentation to the County Council urging them to deny the rezoning request. She argued that since Belle Mead would be the first approved under the county’s C-4 zoning district, the county council’s decision would set a precedent for what level of traffic congestion is acceptable for future applications.
Seibert said Sussex County does need more affordable housing, “but this is not the right place for it.”
When the council first made the rezoning decision, Capano Management released a statement saying Belle Mead is “thoughtfully supported by existing and planned infrastructure” and is located where the county has determined growth is appropriate.
The post Belle Mead appeal heads to Delaware Supreme Court appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
These powerful, connected locks are useful every day. We've tested the latest to find the best.
With the economy, foreign policy and immigration all going poorly for the president, he’s scrambling before the midterms
Trump has run out of cards to play in the midterm elections, which is why he’s now talking about the “communist menace”.
He can’t talk about the economy because prices continue to rise faster than wages, which means most Americans are getting poorer. He can’t talk about foreign policy because his war in Iran has been a debacle, his tariffs an utter failure, and he obviously hasn’t settled the war in Ukraine on “day one”. He can’t talk about immigration because his raids and mass deportations have become so unpopular.
Continue reading...
Why Should Delaware Care?
The public is by now aware of the work productivity or creative uses for AI programs, but even an obscure humanities research team is finding ways of putting the new technology to work for them.
While treating a book for an exhibit in 2019, Melissa Tedone, an assistant professor for art conservation at the University of Delaware, made a surprising discovery.
The green Victorian Era book she held in her hand was awash with the toxic chemical arsenic.
Given the massive scale-up in production during the industrial revolution in England, she knew it was unlikely that it was the only one of its kind.
Thinking that libraries across the U.S. and Europe would have books with these potentially-toxic bindings, Tedone’s find kicked off a global search for other such books called the “Poison Book Project” to ensure they were handled and stored appropriately.
Today, that search has enlisted a decidedly 21st century assistant in artificial intelligence, with software engineers at UD partnering to map where these books would have been published more than 100 years ago.
Since 2019, the project has helped discover almost 500 arsenical books, though Tedone knows there are probably thousands more in circulation that owners are unaware of.
The bright green pigment in the poison books is called copper acetoarsenite – a powder containing bits of toxic arsenic and copper – that was used in all kinds of products in the 19th century. There are historical accounts of teenage girls getting skin rashes, abscesses and headaches when working with it to make decorative hats, Tedone said.
And the Victorians were well aware about the health effects, with debate arising in newspapers about banning the pigments.
“Today, you see the same thing happening in the news about microplastics and things like that,” Tedone said.
Particularly, the cloth-covered poison books have toxins that can easily transfer onto hands and other surfaces. In its current phase, the researchers are studying how cloth-covered books were made, which Tedone says was a “trade secret” at the time, so that in the future they can make an adhesive treatment for them.
“We’re basically trying to reverse engineer Victorian book-binding cloth to help us understand it better as a material,” she said.
Since this past fall, the poison book project has forayed into AI and data science.
The tech team, composed of UD research software engineers Kevin Bhimani and Asritha Polu, deployed Anthropic’s Claude to place the poison books on what they call an “AI-geocoded map.”
To help plot the map, the Winterthur team gives spreadsheets of poison book data, including the elements present in the books and bibliographic data, like the location, date and publisher of a book, to the engineers.
The books were mostly published in England and North America, with a large concentration in London and some other cities like Philadelphia and New York, said Rosie Grayburn, the lead scientific researcher at Winterthur Museum.
If you were to just use the internet or directly ask a chatbot to find the addresses for nearly 500 books, it would take quite a while and might be less accurate, Bhimani explained.
So, Bhimani coded an AI agent that uses Claude to find the publisher address for all 500 books, given the data the Winterthur team provided. Claude’s training on “millions or billions of books,” helps it find the addresses, Bhimani explained.
“These are kind of the instructions that we send it,” Bhimani said, noting the program takes about 30 seconds to a minute to run for every book.
In order to ensure that the AI program does not make up answers to their queries, Bhimani explained that he prompts it by using known publishing districts such as Philadelphia and New York.
“This kind of grounds it,” he said.
On the historical side, the map helps Tedone see clusters of where poison book publishers were located, which might imply publishing competition in specific areas.
“They might have said, ‘Look at that gorgeous bright green book cloth. Where are they getting that? Let’s find out where they’re getting that, and we want to publish our books with that too,’“ Tedone said.
Grayburn said the map visually shows them the professionals in London and New York who might have been trading in very small groups, which helps them understand the spread of the book cloth which has health and safety implications.
“We’re understanding where these books are located now in collections, but we’re missing that thread between when and where they were created and where they are now,” Grayburn said.
The collaboration partly has its roots in the software engineer project lead’s own passion for art. Sunita Chandrasekaran, also an associate professor of computer and information science at UD, brought her team to the Winterthur research building’s open house and realized she could help art conservation faculty use software engineering to “build a holistic picture of historic data sets.”
The Winterthur and AI programming team currently meet every two weeks to discuss data visualizations. Tedone said if she were doing the work herself, she’d have to manually reassess the data every time there are new additions to the collection.
“It would take days and days of really tedious plugging numbers into a spreadsheet,” she said.
When asked about how she feels using AI in her humanities research, Tedone said she was “torn” and that she constantly thinks about these frictious feelings in her work.
“There’s a part of me that feels hypocritical to use AI in my work, and then also not want a data center in my backyard,” she said.
But the Winterthur pair is far from alone in using AI, with studies showing 84% of researchers using AI in 2025 and more than half of them using it for peer review.
Tedone has settled on the idea that whatever you produce via AI should contribute to the world in a meaningful way.
“If the answer is no, then I think you should really question why you’re doing it,” she said.
With their project, Chandrasekaran noted that AI helps “triage” the necessary work, while a human with the necessary conservation science background can help make the “final call” on whether to categorize books as hazardous.
“Or else we lose a precious book being moved into the wrong catalog,” Chandrasekaran wrote to Spotlight Delaware.
Using AI for tasks like plotting graphs and identifying trends allows Tedone to focus on archival research, data collection, collaborating with colleagues, developing health and safety protocols, writing papers and giving presentations to the public.
She recalled a grandmother who reached out to her team after buying vintage books for her granddaughters and “freaked out,” thinking she might have accidentally poisoned them. The Winterthur team was able to reassure her that her books did not contain arsenic.
“It’s those human stories about the human experience – that’s why this work matters,” she said.
The post How AI helps researchers track down rare toxic books appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
A woman suspected of planting a bomb that targeted a wealthy Ukrainian businessman in Monaco has been found shot dead in Kyiv.
Cubans were gradually getting power restored after the third nationwide power outage this year, causing mounting despair in the face of an energy collapse precipitated by a U.S. fuel blockade.
Those four Bs presumably stand for big battery, blue and budget.
George Robertson warns prime minister’s defence investment plan fails to meet scale of challenge facing the UK
The former Nato chief who led the government’s defence review has criticised the prime minister’s plan to pay for it, calling the defence investment plan (Dip) insufficient and overly delayed.
George Robertson, the former Nato general secretary, told MPs on Tuesday the Dip had damaged confidence in the defence industry and among Britain’s allies who are gathering in Ankara this week for the Nato summit.
Continue reading...Officials admit new post-Brexit EES system is ‘not perfect’, as airports and airlines voice fears over delays
The EU has rejected calls by airports and airlines to suspend the implementation of new fingerprinting and facial recognition border controls even though it admits there are “20 difficult spots” with queue chaos.
With only a week to go before the peak summer holiday season starts, EU officials admit the new entry/exit system (EES) is “not perfect” but will tell travel industry representatives that a full suspension is “not needed” and “not possible”.
Continue reading...Anastasiia Berezovska was being sought by police over attack that seriously injured a Ukraine-born businessman
A woman suspected of carrying out last week’s bomb attack in Monaco that seriously injured a Ukraine-born business tycoon has been found shot dead near Kyiv, in the latest twist in a case that has shaken the wealthy Mediterranean principality.
Ukrainian prosecutors said on Tuesday the woman had been found with a gunshot wound to the head and that two men had been arrested in connection with the case, including an officer with Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) and a former law enforcement officer.
Continue reading...Netflix is a goldmine of sci-fi goodness.
Experts say cuts have hindered the response to DRC’s Ebola outbreak and resulted in ‘significant numbers’ of deaths
Elon Musk has an Ebola problem. SpaceX stock dropped precipitously after its initial public offering, and Tesla faces a wave of lawsuits. But instead of focusing on his companies, Musk has posted frequently on X about the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which he helped dismantle – or, in his words, feed into the woodchipper – last year.
“Elon’s USAID crash-out over the past week has been a thing to behold,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former top USAID official who oversaw the agency’s Ebola response in 2014-2015 and the president of Refugees International. “In a way, it’s helpful that Elon is doing this, because it’s putting attention back on the issue of what he did last year.”
Continue reading...I dug into the laws and found exactly what you need to know about saving and using video clips on your home security camera, including footage shot outdoors.
CISA is reportedly using Anthropic's Mythos model to scan government code repositories for security vulnerabilities, with sources saying the audits have already found numerous bugs. Reuters reports: The scanning is being done by CISA's Attack Surface Evaluation team, according to one of the sources. The team is a group within CISA that conducts digital security assessments and hacking exercises across government. Two of the sources said the audits had already uncovered a large number of vulnerabilities but did not elaborate. Reuters could not establish exactly how much government code the team had gone through or the nature or severity of the bugs it discovered. [...] The National Security Agency, the U.S. government's powerful eavesdropping agency, has been using Mythos as far back as April despite the blacklist, Axios has reported. Late last month, the New York Times said that NSA analysts had been testing Mythos in classified settings and coming away impressed with its capabilities. But when Anthropic rolled out a public version of Mythos called Fable, which included what it described as cybersecurity safeguards, the White House suddenly demanded that it ban foreigners from running it. This triggered a global shutdown of the model that was lifted only last week.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
About 57% of polled Americans also believe economy is worsening in grim portrait of cost of living crisis, according to Harris survey for the Guardian
Ninety-five per cent of Americans believe the US is suffering an affordability crisis, as many report trouble with the rising cost of groceries and gas, according to an exclusive new poll conducted for the Guardian.
The survey, conducted by Harris Poll, paints a bleak picture of how people feel about the US economy amid the war in Iran and ahead of the key midterm elections this fall.
Continue reading...A former Bucknell University coach has been charged in the death of a freshman football player who collapsed during practice and died in 2024.
Zambia’s 2026 election: What is at stake? 15 July 2026 — 12:00 TO 13:00 BST Anonymous (not verified) Online
As the campaign enters its final stage, hear from analysts about what voters, investors and democratic groups should watch out for.
As the campaign enters its final stage, hear from analysts about what voters, investors and democratic groups should watch out for.Zambia’s election follows a period of economic reform and renewed international influence under President Hakainde Hichilema. Achievements such as Zambia’s first successful G20 debt restructuring have raised expectations for continued progress. As voters head to the polls, the result will test the strength of Zambia’s democratic and economic trajectory.
This event will discuss:
Central bank’s financial policy committee members voice concern on trimming big lenders’ financial buffers
The Bank of England is planning to loosen capital requirements for major UK lenders, even as policymakers expressed concern about the threat to financial stability from rapid AI developments and debt-fuelled stock investments.
The central bank said on Tuesday it was looking to remove and loosen some rules introduced after the 2008 financial crisis that determine the size of the financial cushion required to absorb losses and protect consumers and taxpayers when things go wrong.
Continue reading...The company's latest value earbuds have built-in storage for voice capture directly to the buds.
A grand jury indicted Andrea Shaw, who is accused of suffocating her 18-month-old twins, on two counts of first-degree murder.
Border police officer under investigation after CCTV footage shows him shouting at car’s occupants and throwing device
Israeli police have opened an investigation after CCTV footage showed a border police officer throwing a stun grenade into a car carrying young Palestinians during a raid on the Qalandiya refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
The footage from Sunday, released by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, shows an officer approaching a car and shouting at its occupants.
Continue reading...Toyota says it's shifting most production of its mid-size Tacoma pickup truck from Mexico to the United States as part of a $3.6 billion investment in its San Antonio, Texas, plant.
Group of 100 investors still discussing £10bn rescue proposal with officials from regulator Ofwat, says report
Thames Water’s creditors are willing to pursue their bid for the debt-laden company even if the probable next prime minister, Andy Burnham, brings it into temporary nationalisation.
The group of 100 institutional investors, which hold about £14bn of Thames’s senior debt, are still discussing a £10bn rescue proposal for the struggling company with officials from the regulator Ofwat, and they have held meetings in recent days.
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Kareem’s Quote of the Day: If artists and scientists have been warning us for centuries, what excuse do we have for treating the planet like a disposable prop?
Trump Earned $2.2 Billion in 2025 Amid Countless Conflicts of Interest: A president turning public trust into private profit is not entrepreneurial brilliance, it’s corruption pure and simple. Do we care?
Trump Rewrites History and Ignores Its Lessons: When a government starts scrubbing slavery, conquest, and civil rights from public memory, it’s not defending patriotism but manufacturing amnesia.
Trump Pardons Polluters and a Major Donor: Calling industrial pollution “fixing their car” is the kind of linguistic buffoonery that turns dirty air into a donor perk.
Years and Years: This series understands that the most frightening apocalypse is the one that arrives disguised as ordinary life.
Marvin Gaye, “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)”: Marvin Gaye wraps grief in silk here, then leaves you to reckon with how calmly we destroy what keeps us alive.
“Man is endowed with reason and the power to create, so that he may increase that which has been given him, but until now he has not created, but demolished. The forests are disappearing, the rivers are running dry, the game is exterminated, the climate is spoiled, and the earth becomes poorer and uglier every day.”
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), playwright and physician
Uncle Vanya was first performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1899, but Chekhov had been working on it for a decade. An earlier version, The Wood Demon, focused even more directly on the environmental concerns that were peripheral to the themes of the finished play. But the concerns expressed here, by the character Astrov—a provincial doctor and amateur naturalist who plants trees in his spare time as a private obsession—viewed with 21st century eyes, are perhaps the most remarkable thing about the play. In the 19thcentury, there were an estimated four trillion trees on the planet Earth. Today there are roughly three trillion. Dry rivers and lakes, the extinction of countless species, the ravaged climate, which is making Earth an ever hotter and less hospitable planet—Chekhov saw it all, he issued a dire warning, and it has been, for all intents and purposes, roundly ignored.
There’s another judgment here: that the earth has become not just poorer but “uglier.” We are used to ignoring artists when they talk about issues outside their particular field—“Shut up and sing,” right-wing critics tell Bruce Springsteen—but who is better situated to judge the difference between beauty and ugliness than the artist? What Chekhov is telling us, through Dr. Astrov, is that you do not need tools, numbers, or a laboratory to understand what is happening. You just need to open your eyes and resist the temptation to look away. The earth is losing its beauty. When did we decide that was an acceptable trade?
Chekhov was far from the first person to make these points. Alexander von Humboldt, the Prussian naturalist, was warning in the early 1800s that deforestation would dry up the springs, destroy the rivers, and alter local climates. George Perkins Marsh, an American diplomat, wrote in 1864 that “the earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant.” By the time Astrov walked onto that stage, a century of clear-sighted people had delivered essentially the same message, and civilizations had listened politely and continued at full speed. What do we make of a species so capable of clear sight, and so consistent in its refusal to act on what it sees?
When people who are able to grasp the consequences still choose short-term extraction over long-term stewardship, what we’re dealing with is a failure of responsibility, and a failure of conscience. The insurance industry has a term for this: moral hazard. Roughly speaking, moral hazard is when one person or entity chooses to cause harm because someone else is going to have to pay for it. That is basically the Republican Party’s environmental policy in a nutshell. We log the old-growth forest and drill-baby-drill because the timber and oil checks clear this quarter and the future doesn’t vote in this election.
If there’s any hope to be found in Astrov’s speech, it’s in two little words: “until now.” Which means we still have a chance to do better. Chekhov practiced medicine, so he understood the difference between a diagnosis and an autopsy. A diagnosis is still worth acting on. Today, scientists are debating whether we are in the diagnosis or autopsy stage of climate change. There is no consensus answer to that question, but we have nothing to lose by acting like there’s still a chance to cure Patient Earth. Worst case scenario, we might keep the planet a fit home for its noblest inhabitants for a few generations longer. Best case scenario, we might turn things around. We created this situation decision by decision. We won’t improve it by kicking the can down the road to our grandchildren because we were too lazy, greedy, or addicted to creature comforts to pick it up ourselves.
Peacock has the blockbusters to kick up your summer movie night.
Scratch their surface and you see exactly what he’s trying to do: stand up strong for intolerance and corruption
Given how impetuous Donald Trump is, his vice-president, JD Vance, strikes some Americans as a more stable alternative. A good bet, some of the Maga faithful believe, as the 2028 Republican nominee for president, and the eventual occupant of the Oval Office.
Every bit as rightwing as Trump but more serious and predictable – that seems to be Vance’s pitch to the public. And he clearly wants to be president; he’s as ambitious as they come.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
Continue reading...In wake of primary wins by leftwing candidates in New York and elsewhere, president has resorted to well-worn tactic
Moments after Donald Trump rang the ceremonial opening bell on Monday, starting the trading day from the Oval Office, 232 miles north on Wall Street, the US senator Ted Cruz celebrated the president’s new savings accounts as his administration’s “New Deal”.
“But instead of having government taking care of everyone,” the Republican senator declared, “Trump accounts are about making every child and every American a capitalist.”
Continue reading...Kelsey Pfendler, 32, says she hopes her solo 2,400-mile trek across the mid-Pacific inspires other women to take risks
A Grand Canyon river-rafting guide who recently became the first US woman to row solo from California to Hawaii – traveling in record time – says she hopes her accomplishment inspires other women to push their limits and take risks.
“It’s really motivating to think [that], maybe one day, I will get to see another woman work even harder to do what I did,” Kelsey Pfendler, 32, told ABC’s Good Morning America program on Monday, three days after completing the record-setting journey across the mid-Pacific. “And it would be so special to watch.”
Continue reading...Ruling is huge blow for residents with temporary protected status, many of whom have resided here legally for decades
The US supreme court dealt a huge blow this term to roughly 1.3 million immigrants in the US, many of whom have resided in the country legally for decades with temporary deportation protections that the Trump administration will now be able to end much more easily.
How does the justices’ ruling affect these people and what happens next?
Continue reading...Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer and Ron Wyden are probing whether companies affiliated with the Trump family are included in a DOJ deal to resolve a lawsuit brought by President Trump.
Laws banning trans athletes claim to defend science, fairness and women’s safety. They do the opposite
Last week, the US supreme court ruled that states may restrict participation in girls’ and women’s sports to “biological females” and exclude transgender athletes from competing. In the past six years, 27 states have enacted such bans; before the court were challenges to West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act and Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.
The majority opinion, penned by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, upholds the laws’ legality under Title IX, the federal statute that guarantees women’s equal participation in college sports, and their constitutionality under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. It also vindicates Donald Trump’s February 2025 executive order “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports”. That directive withdraws funding from “educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy”. US policy, the order continues, will “oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth”.
Continue reading...SNAP benefits have plummeted by half in Arizona a year after President Donald Trump’s signature legislation.
Joy is unbounded and when it dies down perhaps the guilty will be held to account for cheating and facilitation: perhaps they won’t. Still, enjoy the moment
Oh dear. Such a shame to see the US lose at football after their insanely embarrassing president cheated for them. Still, it really brought the world together. The last time this many people cheered on a Belgian resistance, it was 1914 and the Germans had just crossed the Meuse. As you’ll be aware, the USA were dumped out of their own World Cup on Monday night by a wholly superior Belgium, after Donald Trump boasted that he’d personally intervened in three phone calls with Fifa president Gianni Infantino to get the red card shown to USA striker Folarin Balogun rescinded. Yes, the US cheats at football. Pass it on.
You’ve heard a lot about shithousery during this tournament. We have even, excruciatingly, seen a few American commentators attempt to use the word in conversation. Guys, please, just – no. It’s not for you. You have ’erbs, “a couple things”, and “a ways to go”. But let’s call the events of the past few days by the name they deserve in all the languages of the world: Whitehousery.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to Be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
Continue reading...Andrew Charlton says artificial intelligence ‘cheating, deceiving, going their own way’ – and time to get ahead of it is during testing
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Artificial intelligence models are already “cheating, deceiving and going their own way”, Australia’s assistant minister for technology, Andrew Charlton, has warned, as the federal government’s AI Safety Institute begins testing the latest models.
In a speech to an AI safety forum in Sydney on Tuesday, Charlton said safety for AI matters now as “AI systems are already doing things their creators never intended”.
Continue reading...The massively multiplayer online role-playing game has grown into a virtual social space and part of daily life for thousands of players
In a small stone chapel, on the edgelands of a medieval wilderness, two women are getting married. The attenders are draped in rainbow capes, glowing armour and top hats. A scantily clad, muscular man with angel wings officiates the ceremony. Over the heads of the two brides hover the words “I do” in bright yellow text. This is RuneScape, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (or MMO) set in the Tolkienesque realm of Gielinor. Turning 25 this year, it has, over its lifetime, become a crucial virtual social space and part of daily life for thousands of players.
Lancashire-born Amelia, one of the pixelated newlyweds, met her wife on a dating app but first bonded through their love of the game. “Our first and second date was pretty much exclusively talking about RuneScape,” she recalls. Four years later they were married, shortly followed by their in-game ceremony. Morgan – a 26-year-old from the Midlands – is one of Amelia’s closest friends. They met through the game and run UWU Girls together, a RuneScape clan that Morgan founded in a bid to cater to players across the gender spectrum. “We do IRL meetups, and for a lot of these women, it’s been their first meetings with strangers online – and that’s the same for me.”
Continue reading...With three ways to cool down and a cold plate that can lower skin temperature by up to 9C, Shark’s latest fan is a standout if you can justify the cost
• The best handheld fans, tested
When I first wrote my guide to the best handheld fans in 2025, familiar electronics brands in the space were hard to come by. But, like buses, two have arrived at once this summer. The Dyson HushJet Mini Cool provided plenty of power, but missed the mark on the “hush” part of its branding, and now it’s time for Shark’s debut mini fan: the ChillPill.
In words that I never expected to write, Dyson’s product is the cheaper option – although everything is relative. While the HushJet Mini Cool is a penny below three figures, the Shark ChillPill blasts through that ceiling, coming in at £129.99.
Continue reading...Large-scale datacentre projects around the world are being challenged or cancelled, as infrastructure’s energy demands ramp up
Datacentre planning proposals face all kinds of hurdles, from securing energy supply to high construction costs. But the 2,000 acre Prince William Digital Gateway site in the US state of Virginia had another problem: its proximity to a Civil War battlefield.
“If the development is allowed to proceed, the solemn nature of this historic site would become marred by sitting in the shadow of the monstrous datacentres, along with their associated electrical infrastructure,” said one legal brief against the plans.
Continue reading...
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The federal government is rewriting its rules governing ranching on public lands to increase the number of cattle, sheep and other livestock grazing on 155 million acres in the West, an area twice the size of New Mexico.
Public lands grazing is overseen by a nearly century-old system that heavily subsidizes some of the wealthiest Americans while doing little to address its harms to the environment, ProPublica and High Country News found last year.
Even though rangeland management experts say overgrazing has degraded public lands, the new rules being drafted by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management — the first overhaul since 1995 — would instead expand the practice.
The proposed rules would also ratchet back public participation in the agency’s decisions to allow grazing on federal public lands. The BLM’s proposed updates would strictly limit who has a say and when they can object, eliminating many steps where the public has been able to observe and comment on decisions to issue or renew permits.
“They’re clearly trying to reduce involvement of anyone other than ranchers,” said one BLM employee who works on rangeland management.
The BLM did not respond to questions about the proposed regulations, which were released publicly in May and, after a period for public comment, will go back to the agency in mid-July for further review.
In a June news release announcing the action, the agency said it “reflects the Trump administration’s priority to reduce unnecessary regulatory burdens, promote productive working lands and strengthen local economies.”
ProPublica and High Country News spoke to multiple current and former BLM employees to gauge the impact of the proposed regulations. Some, like the BLM staffer who works on rangeland management, requested not to be named because they still are employed by the agency. The employees agreed that the updated regulations offer several concrete benefits, including a requirement that the agency study the ecological impacts of all uses of public lands — from timber harvesting and recreation to mining and oil drilling. The current rules limit such reviews to the livestock industry, where they have uncovered tens of millions of acres of damage due to overgrazing.
The regulations would also allow the BLM to handle low-level violations of grazing regulations more informally, avoiding potentially unnecessary fights between ranchers and regulators; clean up sections of the code that may be at odds with recent court decisions and laws; and offer the agency and ranchers more flexibility in how they manage the range, allowing for quicker decision-making responding to a local ecosystem’s needs.
Tim Canterbury, president of the Public Lands Council, a ranching trade group, in a news release called the update “a massive step forward.”
He said the existing regulations grew from the “cattle free by ’93” movement of the early 1990s that was hostile to ranching and aimed to rid public lands of livestock. “The resulting regulations all but ensured ranchers did not have the flexibility to take full advantage of the scientific and management advances that the industry has made over the last 35 years,” Canterbury said.
Other groups working on rangeland management say the regulations go too far in the opposite direction, tipping the scales toward ranchers. They point to proposals allowing ranchers to continue business as usual if they appeal agency decisions limiting grazing, threatening Native American tribes’ ability to graze bison and enshrining highly subsidized grazing fees. (ProPublica and High Country News found that in 2024 the federal government charged ranchers $284 million below market rate for the use of public lands.)
“We can expect considerably more places where cows and sheep are going to be and more damage,” said Josh Osher, public policy director of the Western Watersheds Project, a conservation group. “I think we see big impacts on wildlife.”
The livestock industry influenced the regulatory rewrite from both outside and inside the Interior Department.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and Public Lands Council, two main trade groups, publicly celebrated their meetings with the secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture departments in the spring. Among their agenda items was a memorandum of understanding allowing the trade groups to give guidance to the departments, including on a “Grazing Action Plan” that involved updating regulations.
The groups did not respond to requests for comment. (The Western Landowners Alliance, which represents conservation-minded ranchers and landowners, said it’s still evaluating the regulations.)
Representatives of Native American tribes and conservation groups, meanwhile, told ProPublica and High Country News that the administration offered them no opportunity to provide input on the draft regulations before they were published.
They also take issue with the process due to the involvement of Karen Budd-Falen, a high-ranking official in the Interior Department and a long-time grazing advocate whose family is in the ranching business. She served in the first Trump administration and was barred from discussing grazing policy due to potential conflicts of interest. But after rejoining the department, she received an ethics waiver allowing her to work on grazing policy.
In December, Budd-Falen participated in a discussion about public lands management with Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. During that event, Budd-Falen called grazing regulations the issue that “probably was the closest to my heart” and gave a rare view into the effort to update them.
“You want to know what put the public ranchland out of business — it was Bruce Babbitt’s regulations,” she told Lummis, referring to President Bill Clinton’s Interior secretary from 1993 to 2001. “By the first of next year, you will see fully new regulations that don’t just fix a few of the Babbitt things. We went back to the Ronald Reagan years and are putting back in those regs.”
“I am so excited about these regulations,” she said.
Native American tribes that manage bison herds say Budd-Falen’s efforts to aid ranchers could hurt their operations. Several rancher and stock grower associations in Montana, which at one time were represented by Budd-Falen, have railed against a conservation group called American Prairie that uses permits to graze bison herds to revitalize local ecosystems. The ranchers worry this will cost them subsidized leases and that the bison could spread disease to their cattle.
The Trump administration has sided with the ranchers in the dispute — first by revoking American Prairie’s permits and then by redrafting grazing regulations to mandate public lands livestock operations be “production-oriented,” potentially eliminating permits for herds used to revitalize ecosystems. Tribes fear they too could lose permits for the bison herds they manage to preserve cultural practices or restore the land.
“We’re really concerned about this,” said OJ Semans Sr., a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and executive director of the Coalition of Large Tribes, which represents more than 15 tribes. “I’m just kind of confused about how badly it was written.”
Ranchers have long complained that conservationists are quick to sue to prevent them from placing their herds on public lands, miring their businesses in litigation. The BLM’s updates would reduce green groups’ ability to challenge decisions.
The agency proposes changing the definition of “interested public,” meaning those who have a say in rangeland management. Under the new proposal, the public would have to prove a “cognizable” interest in the grazing in question. The agency did not respond to a request to define its use of the word. But a former BLM higher-up said that would likely set a higher bar for who gets advance notice of agency decisions and their ability to comment on them. Environmentalists assume it means only those with a business interest would be allowed to influence agency decision making.
The new regulations would also remove a mandate that the BLM include the public in “consultation, cooperation and coordination,” the agency’s process of gathering feedback when preparing to take actions such as authorizing grazing. The update would significantly narrow who must be involved, staff said.
Throughout the regulations, the agency proposed changes that would keep animals on the land.
Mark Squillace, a law professor focused on natural resources at the University of Colorado Law School, noted that if a rancher appeals an unfavorable ruling, it is automatically paused, meaning the rancher can continue the very practices that had been found to be harmful. “That effectively invites everyone to appeal to avoid the decision,” Squillace said. “That is a disaster.”
The new regulations also elevate cows’ status as firefighters, making it easier to place herds on public lands under the justification that they eat vegetation that could become fuel for wildfires.
Nada Culver, deputy director of the BLM during the Biden administration, said that some provisions would make it more difficult for agency staff to tell ranchers to take animals off the land, hindering their ability to address overgrazing. And renewing permits to continue grazing would be even easier under the new regulations, she said.
“The most text in this regulatory proposal is devoted to explaining why the public no longer gets to participate in pretty much every step of the process,” Culver said.
The Trump administration has also prioritized restocking vacant areas, which may be without cows and sheep because they are far from a water source, they need time to recover from wildfire or the agency is attempting to eradicate invasive species. Within months of President Donald Trump returning to the White House, political appointees instructed staff to build lists of every vacant plot that might be eligible for more livestock.
“By the end of next year,” Budd-Falen said in her discussion with Lummis, “every single vacant allotment will be filled by a rancher.”
The post The First Major Overhaul of Public Lands Grazing Regulations in a Generation Looks to Cut Out Public Involvement appeared first on ProPublica.
Ukraine’s northern neighbor was used as a staging ground for Russia’s 2022 invasion, but the country seems intent on not being drawn further into the Kremlin’s war.
Mass deportations would cost the economy billions of dollars, analysts say, and mass arrivals would challenge a country already suffering record displacement.
It says overturning red cards is a common measure
No talk from Uefa before about ‘red line’, Fifa states
Fifa has hit back at Uefa in the war of words over the lifting of the USA striker Folarin Balogun’s suspension by accusing it of hypocrisy in its condemnation of the decision.
In a statement attributed to the chair of Fifa’s disciplinary committee, Mohammad al-Kamali, published before the USA’s last-16 defeat by Belgium, Fifa insisted that “the overturning of red cards is a common disciplinary measure” in Uefa-affiliated leagues, “yet this has never raised concerns about crossing any ‘red line’”.
Continue reading...A Financial Times journalist ponders the future of labour in world increasingly dominated by AI and automation
It’s never been easy to land and keep a decent job. But it feels like it’s getting harder. In June, the number of job vacancies in the UK fell to a five-year low; headlines warn of a looming AI-employment shock. What might the future of work look like – and who or what will shape its terms? In her new book, Sarah O’Connor goes looking for answers in the modern collision of artificial intelligence, automation, and human labour.
This clash between human and machine – and the fight to secure decent working conditions even as the pressure to maximise production mounts – is nothing new. Neither are concerns about the health risks of repetitive factory work or the loss of creative craftsmanship and independent judgment in the wake of mechanisation. O’Connor has been a reporter at the Financial Times for nearly two decades, and although We Are Not Machines looks to the future, many of the threats AI poses to workers’ dignity and safety look a lot like reconfigurations of old battles. The book takes its title from the signs striking Swedish miners carried in 1969 as they protested their employers’ new methods of monitoring their output. “Vi är ej maskiner”, their signs read: “We are not machines.”
Continue reading...GitHub is offering a limited run of 1,000 CD-ROM copies of public repositories as a pro-physical-media jab at Sony's plan to stop producing PlayStation game discs in 2028. Tom's Hardware reports: The coding and collaboration platform, owned by Microsoft, states that "In light of recent developments in physical media, GitHub is proud to announce that you can now obtain your public repo on CD-ROM." Moreover, it appeals to the human side of computing, adding the emotive line "Keep it. Lend it to friends. Pass it on to your children." It isn't April 1st, so thankfully this is no joke. However, if you check out the above-linked GitHub Your Code, On a CD offer page, it quickly becomes clear this is a very limited in time/scope stunt. "Order a burned CD of your own public GitHub repo. Yes, a real physical disc you can hold in your hands, no download required," begins the spiel. But this is a very limited run of 1,000 discs, with applications required between July 2 and July 6 (inclusive). Limit one per person, with availability varying between country/region. "Your code is physically yours, forever. Until you lose it, let's be real," says GitHub. At best, these CDs will be framed and put on a wall, some becoming collector's items or eBay money spinners (discs like 0001 or 0888 would be good ones, if they are numbered). Also, many will be lost or eventually/accidentally discarded, as GitHub seems to know. So this 'protest' is arguably 1,000 doses of expensively shipped e-waste.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping calls for ‘all out’ rescue effort as death toll rises and 16 people remain buried after a landslide in the country’s west
The death toll from devastating storms in parts of China rose to 15 on Tuesday, with hundreds more injured and tens of thousands evacuated, state media reported, as the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, urged “all out” efforts to rescue people affected by the weather.
Thunderstorms and gale-force winds killed at least 11 people and injured 331 in the central province of Hubei, where “severe convective weather” hit cities, while tornadoes were reported elsewhere late Monday, state news agency Xinhua said.
Continue reading...Shipment discovered at airport in Monrovia and valued at £14.2m had been falsely declared as seasoning cubes
Authorities in Liberia have charged five suspects over one of the largest drug seizures in the country’s history, after police found more than 200kg of cocaine falsely declared as Maggi seasoning cubes.
The shipment, with an estimated value of $19m (£14.2m), was discovered at the international airport in Monrovia on 8 June, but the suspects were not named until a press briefing at the weekend.
Continue reading...Texas' controversial age verification law remains in effect while free speech advocates and tech critics fight it in court.
Atlas has some serious soccer skills. Learning them involved "massive trial and error."
 | Working on a buddy’s Pint thst has an issue charging. Found the input diode and mosfet to be where the 64 volts stops. It goes from charger input through input diode and then goes to mosfet 025L80 on the drain side and assuming when the gate gets triggered it goes through source. I found continuity from source all the way to current sensing resistor heading to the battery pack plug. What im assuming the issue is, is this resistor I found being “shorted”. Not like a dead short but showing around 120 ohms. This is where the microcontroller feeds pin 1 of this ic P3906 and the output of that is feeding 5.6v to the gate on 025L80. Problem is on thst gate source voltage is out of range at the 5.6v. The data sheet shows from 1.4v to 2.1v. What I believe is happening is the resistor sets the output voltage of ic P3906 heading to the gate and with the resistance being so low it’s causing the voltage to be higher and not effectively enabling the gate. Im also afraid that with the gate swing over double its rated input it may have damaged the mosfet too…but it tests fine for now in diode mode. So im looking for the value of this resistor to replace it. It’s R57 on the BMS board by pin 1 of ic P3906. Pics attached for reference. [link] [comments] |
The U.S. is "going to win one way or the other," President Trump said Monday, as Iran held a colossal public funeral for its slain supreme leader.
Hannes Marschalek, who allegedly exposed his penis to four other women in Cambridgeshire, tried via US court martial
A US airman who allegedly exposed himself to a 16-year-old girl and four young women in England was able to avoid the British justice system after the US military was permitted to take control of the case, the Guardian can reveal.
Cambridgeshire police received complaints that the airman, Hannes Marschalek, had indecently exposed himself to the women as they walked past his home in Littleport, a small town in Cambridgeshire, in 2022.
Continue reading...  | Showing off my vesc board upgrades 😤❤️ [link] [comments] |
Solomon Islands prime minister says he doesn’t want to see more countries testing ICBMs in Pacific, adding ‘be our friend but don’t threaten us’
Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has said China’s weapons test in the Pacific risks fuelling dangerous nuclear proliferation, with the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fired on Monday capable of causing “considerable damage” if weaponised.
International condemnation has grown overnight after China’s state news agency Xinhua reported on Monday that a “strategic missile carrying a dummy warhead” had been launched from a “strategic nuclear submarine of the navy”.
Continue reading...Thousands of women are killed in dowry disputes each year, despite the practice being banned in 1961
Dowry deaths in India no longer provoke the public anger they once did, despite thousands of women’s lives still being lost every year, according to new research.
The killings – women who are murdered or driven to suicide following dowry disputes between families – have also faded from political debate, despite an increase in cases.
Continue reading...Meeting of 32 member states comes at crucial time for alliance after tensions with US over Iran and Greenland
Nato leaders will gather in Ankara on Tuesday after a turbulent six months, hoping – in the case of the other 31 members of the alliance – to mollify an unpredictable Donald Trump, as Washington continues to pressure its allies to increase defence spending.
On Monday, Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general, called for the allies to present “clear, concrete and credible plans” to reach the organisation’s spending targets. “President Trump fully expects that all allies will step up immediately and get on the path to 5% and do it with urgency,” he said.
Continue reading...The continent must overcome its Russia predicament.
Fulfill the promise of self-determination and stabilize the Middle East.
Belgium defeated the U.S. Men's National Team 4-1 on Monday night in the World Cup round of 16 knockout match in Seattle, ending the Americans' hopes of reaching the quarterfinals for the first time in 24 years.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The number of students admitted to Ph.D. programs this fall dropped 15 percent from the previous year, according to data from over 50 top research universities, raising fears that the nation's capacity to produce new science could be diminished. The decline is driven, in part, by a chaotic and unpredictable federal funding environment under the Trump administration, as federal cuts are promised and then reversed, and budgets remain unclear. A reduction in doctoral students could mean fewer scholars at universities to teach and mentor undergraduates. Higher education leaders also worry that, if the declines continue, there will be fewer researchers to power a rapidly evolving scientific work force. The data showing the decrease comes from 55 universities, all of them members of the Association of American Universities, an invitation-only organization that includes 69 of the most prestigious research institutions in the United States. The data collection was conducted by another group, the Association of American Universities Data Exchange. Schools in A.A.U. confer half of the nation's research doctorates, according to the association. "We are at risk of losing a whole generation of new talent because of the reduction in the capacity to support those students," said Toby Smith, a senior vice president at the A.A.U. University leaders and research advocates cite many reasons for the declines in new doctoral students. Key federal agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, have been funding fewer research grants. The wealthiest institutions also face a new federal tax on their endowments. But the most cited reason in interviews was the unreliable nature of federal funding under the Trump administration. The administration proposed major cuts to federal research agencies last year, but Congress restored the funding. It is again proposing big cuts. While Congress may again reverse the administration's proposed reductions, the uncertainty makes it hard for schools to make multiyear commitments to doctoral students. The administration also abruptly ended thousands of research grants last year, arguing that they did not align with the government's priorities. The administration restored many of the grants after judges deemed the eliminations illegal and arbitrary, but research advocates say the whiplash was damaging.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Red Devils beat USA to advance to World Cup last-eight
Team had been angered by suspension of red card
For Belgium, Monday’s 4-1 victory over the United States was doubly sweet. They advanced to the World Cup quarter-finals, as well as overcoming what they saw as injustice off the field.
The buildup to the match had been tinged with controversy after Fifa had suspended the red card US striker Folarin Balogun was given in the last 32 against Bosnia and Herzegovina. That meant Balogun was free to play against Belgium instead of serving a one-match ban. When it emerged that Donald Trump had lobbied for Balogun’s red card to be overturned, Belgium – and other nations – were outraged: Uefa called the decision “incomprehensible and unjustifiable”.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed.
Cruz just thanked Donald Trump for “getting rid of that ridiculous red card” – apparently in reference to Folarin Balogun. The US striker received a straight red card from referee Raphael Claus after a video review, but Fifa have now lifted Bolagun’s one-match ban, making him now available to play for the USA in their knockout match against Belgium on Monday.
As my colleagues covering the World Cup note, despite the move being considered excessively harsh, Fifa’s disciplinary code does not permit appeals against straight red cards, with officials from the world governing body and US Soccer confirming after the game that the sanction could not be challenged.
Continue reading...The White House appears to have removed the Department of Energy's consumer guidance on indoor temperatures during the hottest days.
Staff decline to give updates on senator’s health and whether he will be at Capitol when Senate returns
Staff for Mitch McConnell said last week that the Kentucky senator was “continuing his recovery” in a hospital while the Senate is out of session. But his office has released no details about the former Republican leader’s condition during his weeks-long hospitalization or whether he will be at the Capitol when the Senate returns next week.
McConnell was admitted to the hospital on 14 June, according to a statement from his office that only said he was “receiving excellent care”. A statement a week later said that he would not be voting that week. And on Thursday, a new statement said that he “continues to improve” and ”appreciates the outpouring of support he’s receiving while he continues his recovery in the hospital”.
Continue reading...  | I just had to share the new setup. I finally grabbed a new orange fender and paired it up with my ghost rail guards. The combo instantly turned the board into a full-on Jack-O'-Lantern, and I'm totally here for it. [link] [comments] |
Prosecutors will present their case this week against Tyler Robinson, the man accused of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Victims with cuts and gunshot injuries rushed to hospital after fighting between prisoners from two drug gangs
Clashes at a Sri Lankan jail have killed 26 people, including seven guards, and wounded more than 100 in the country’s deadliest prison riot in years, officials said.
Victims with cuts and gunshot injuries were rushed to Negombo hospital, north of the capital Colombo after overnight fighting between prisoners from two drug gangs, police said on Monday.
Continue reading...U.S. Men's National Team defender Chris Richards spoke with "CBS Evening News" anchor Tony Dokoupil in an interview ahead of the knockout match against Belgium.
A Maine woman told Politico that Graham Platner entered her home in late 2021 and forced himself on her. Platner denies the allegation.
⚽️ Kick-off time: 5pm local/10am AEST/1am BST/8pm EDT
⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Mail Beau
Through four games, Belgium have retained 57% of possession with a 65% field tilt – a possession metric weighing only final-third touches – but haven’t found a way to maximize that advantage.
While possession can be a noisy statistic, viewing it in stylistic terms can be informative. So far at this World Cup, Belgium have won the possession battle in all four of their games, with Senegal playing them closest in a 52-48 split. The United States have maintained a 58% share of the ball in their four games, neck-and-neck with Garcia’s Belgium. If Mauricio Pochettino’s side can keep the ball off Belgian feet more often than not, it could unsettle the Red Devils.
Continue reading...A time capsule for the 250th anniversary of American independence includes a bright orange iPhone 17 Pro Max.
ESPOO, Finland and BERLIN, July, 6, 2026 — IQM Quantum Computers, a global leader in full-stack superconducting quantum computers, has acquired selected assets of Quantistry GmbH, a Berlin-based developer of cloud-native simulation workflow platform for automotive, aerospace, chemical, materials and pharmaceutical industries.
The acquired assets include proprietary software applications, algorithms, and intellectual property. IQM will also retain Quantistry’s core technical, quantum chemistry, and software engineering talent, ensuring seamless continuity and rapid platform integration.
The transaction completed recently, concurrently with IQM’s business combination with Real Asset Acquisition Corp. (RAAQ), which made IQM the first publicly listed quantum computer company from Europe.
This transaction integrates Quantistry’s cutting-edge application software platform, algorithm simulation libraries, and user-friendly machine learning layer with IQM’s hardware infrastructure, creating a powerful full-stack solution designed to accelerate industrial research and development across automotive, aerospace, chemicals, materials science, and pharmaceuticals.
“True commercialization of quantum computing requires more than powerful hardware. It requires a bridge between hardware, software, and real industrial applications. The acquisition of Quantistry’s software assets builds that bridge,” said Jan Goetz, CEO and Co-Founder of IQM Quantum Computers. “It accelerates our software development timeline in a capital-efficient way, and brings in a technical team whose expertise will help us deliver cloud-accessible simulation value to enterprise customers. This is the kind of move that gets us there faster.”
The acquisition positions IQM to actively engage an exceptional roster of industrial leaders. The company plans to transition and expand these enterprise relationships under the IQM brand, offering clients a continuum of classical simulation, AI-driven optimization, and quantum acceleration — with a clear path to continuously upgrade their systems, optimize their operations, and deliver innovative, cutting-edge solutions to their own customers. This is Production Quantum in practice: enterprises do not just access a quantum computer, they own, operate, and grow with one.
Dr. Marcel Quennet, Co-Founder and CEO of Quantistry, said: “Joining forces with IQM Quantum Computers represents a monumental next chapter for our technology and the industry. IQM’s world-class quantum, hardware infrastructure and deep institutional trust provide the ultimate launchpad to scale our simulation platform. Together, we will enable R&D teams to model complex molecular and physical properties with unprecedented speed, moving from theoretical simulation to market-ready material innovation faster than ever before.”
Quantistry has established itself as an innovative force by building an intuitive cloud platform that leverages quantum mechanics, chemical simulations, and high-performance computing. A core differentiator of Quantistry’s technology is its proprietary Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) layer, which allows a user without deep expertise in Quantum Computing or chemical simulation to create and simulate chemical compounds with accuracy on demand.
This framework automatically determines the most efficient computational pathways, seamlessly directing complex workflows across classical HPC infrastructures, native AI computing environments, and quantum backends.
Quantistry’s software will connect directly to IQM’s quantum computers. Industrial clients can build a proof of concept inside the IQM ecosystem, then scale it as the hardware improves, without switching platforms or starting over.
About IQM Quantum Computers
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 on-premises deployment model gives customers direct ownership and control of their quantum infrastructure. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Finland, with major operations in Munich, IQM employs over 400 people and operates across Europe, Asia, and North America. IQM is the first publicly listed European quantum company on Nasdaq Stock Market.
About Quantistry GmbH
Quantistry is a leading provider of cloud-native chemical and materials simulation software. By combining high-performance computing (HPC), quantum chemical algorithms, and an intelligent machine-learning framework, Quantistry simplifies and accelerates the discovery of next-generation materials. Its platform serves key industries, including automotive, aerospace, energy storage, and pharmaceuticals, helping R&D teams innovate with greater speed and predictability.
Source: IQM Quantum Computers
The post IQM Acquires Quantistry Assets to Expand Industrial Quantum Software Platform appeared first on HPCwire.
July 6, 2026 — The HiPEAC Student Challenge 2027 invites teams to tackle real-world problems through programming or computer architecture. Applications are due by 10 September. Selected teams will present at the conference in January.
The HiPEAC Student Challenge is an opportunity to test programming and / or computer architecture skills, tackle real-life problems, experience learn-by-doing research methodologies, and connect with peers.
The 2027 edition is now open for teams of up to five members. Those interested in participating should register their interest by 10 September (see ‘Important dates’, below).
Up to five student teams will be selected (with each team comprising a maximum of five students). From these selected teams, up to 12 students in total will be invited to attend the HiPEAC conference (18-20 January 2027, Glasgow) and present their work. Registration fees, travel and accommodation expenses will be fully covered by the organizers.
How to Participate
There are three different ways to take part in this challenge:
Option A: Make a difference in your local area
Present a project that improves a situation (transportation, work, study, environmental, etc.), facilitates a task (search, movement of material, storage, ordering, organization, etc.), or addresses another scenario where something could be improved. The use of AI in the solution is particularly encouraged.
Examples include:
For this task, you can use the HiPEAC Vision 2026 as a reference. You can propose a project related to the HiPEAC Vision. As well as reading the document, you can ask questions by integrating HiPEAC’s MCP server with your chatbot of choice, or you can check it directly via ask.hipeac.net.
Once you’ve settled on a problem, your team will work on a specific solution to the problem. This could be:
You will need to explain how the data involved is managed, including whether a large amount of data is required at a given time or for a specific period, whether the data will be distributed across different locations, whether the data is in various formats, and so on. There’s no need to deliver a complete implementation. However, you will need to set out the goals you aim to achieve, along with a framework with the main parts which need to be implemented (it would be good to have a chosen model, tool, framework, platform, maybe a specific architecture, or anything else you clearly envision in your ‘product’).
Option B: Reproduce scientific research
Select a paper (with code) accepted for the HiPEAC conference from this list – the organizers can help you select a suitable paper in line with your interests – and try to reproduce the code on a different platform.
Work to build / run and produce the results of the paper, either using your local computing resources or remote resources if needed.
Optional: Improve or optimize the proposed solution in the paper.
Option C: Make your mark on RISC-V
You might have heard of RISC-V, the open instruction set architecture. This challenge is your chance to contribute to the RISC-V community, either on software or hardware. Just select a RISC-V-compatible open-source tool and contribute to the project by adding a new feature, optimizing the execution of a small piece of code by using extensions, compiling a new code and making it run on RISC-V, for example.
Again, for this option we encourage you to consider an AI-related challenge. As you might know, improving the performance of AI applications is complex due to the data dependencies, sparsity, and the amount of energy they demand. However, there are different ways to address these issues:
Once you select your area of work (software, hardware, or both) you can work on a specific solution, for example:
Important Dates
Questions? Ask the organizers
Isil Oz (İzmir Institute of Technology, Turkey) isiloz@iyte.edu.tr
Raffaella Folgieri (University of Milan) raffaella.folgieri@unimi.it
Marisa Gil (UPC/BSC, Spain) marisa.gil@upc.edu
Teresa Cervero (BSC, Spain) teresa.cervero@bsc.es
Georgios Goumas (ICCS/NTUA, Greece) goumas@cslab.ece.ntua.gr
Chris Fensch (Arm Norway) chris.fensch@gmail.com
Source: HiPEAC
The post HiPEAC Student Challenge 2027 Open for Applications appeared first on HPCwire.
In an email to employees, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said: "Our business today is not healthy."
When is it okay to drop double-precision in favor of single precision? Can one use mixed precisions within the same program? How does lower precision impact I/O? These were some of the questions that Hartwig Anzt, the chair of computational mathematics at the Technical University of Munich, raised in his compelling presentation at ISC 2026 last month.
If someone talked about mixed precision in the past, you could be pretty sure that they were talking about moving between double-precision (or FP64) and single-precision (or FP32), Anzt said during his ISC 2026 presentation, which was titled “The Narrow Margin: Leveraging Mixed Precision to Breach the Memory Wall.”
“Nowadays, it’s much more complex. We are basically in a zoo of formats,” Anzt said, displaying a slide incorporating a variety of micro-scaling formats like Bfloat 16, FP8, INT8, and even INT2 or INT1 in the future. “We are really entering this area where the exotic animals are.”
HPC experts wouldn’t care much about this zoo of exotic data formats and would happily stick to FP64 and FP32, except for the fact that Nvidia has been emphasizing lower precision, in particularly the micro-scaling formats, with its data center GPUs.
(Image courtesy Hartwig Anzt/TUM)
Anzt displayed a slide showing that since the release of the Tesla GPU in 2007 until Blackwell Ultra was released in 2025, FP16 performance has increased by 68.3% on a compounded annual basis, while FP32 has gone up 57.3% and FP64 has gone up 29.8%. Memory bandwidth, meanwhile, has gone up 29.3% annually, while prices have gone up just 22.9%.
FP64 growth has stagnated on Nvidia GPUs in recent years, as we have documented in HPCwire over the past year. After a big jump from Ampere to Hopper, we haven’t seen any boost in native FP64 processing power on Blackwell and now Rubin. Anzt noted that the Blackwell GPU provides 5,000 times more FLOPS for FP4 Tensor than it does for FP64.
That is a significant amount of computational power available to researchers, if they can figure out how to get it. They can tap into the power of lower precision hardware, if they make changes to their data, their algorithms, or both. The question is how they can do that without comprising the integrity of their calculations.
Anzt walked his audience in the Congress Center Hamburg (CCH) hall through several scenarios where researchers can successfully use techniques, such as hardware emulation or data compression, to effectively utilize the lower precision formats.
For instance, a researcher could do multi-word emulation, where a big, complex dataset is essentially sliced into smaller, less complex chunks that can be more quickly processed individually and then re-assembled at the end to get the same result.
(Image courtesy Hartwig Anzt/TUM)
“And then recently, maybe the paper that gotten the most attention is on the Ozaki scheme,” Anzt said. “Ozaki scheme is the idea to do this multi word emulation, but not on a scalar level, but on a matrix level.”
Ozaki II builds on Ozaki I by utilizing the Chinese remainder theorem. “It’s a very smart idea. And that basically reduces the number of slices that you have to do,” Anzt said. “This allows to do, for example, double precision matrix-matrix multiplication on tensor cores with very high performance.”
While Ozaki II emulation can provide a speedup in some scenarios by emulating FP64 workloads on the INT8 tensor cores that Nvidia includes on its GPUs, it’s not going to work in every situation, Anzt said. “The problem is that dense matrix-matrix multiplication is a nice application, and it is used a lot in machine learning,” he said. “But there is so much more than dense matrix-matrix multiplication.”
It’s possible that switching from FP64 to FP32 could open up additional performance for an application, provided that it’s not bound by memory bandwidth. Anzt demonstrated this principle by showing how the rooflines differ for FP32 and FP64. Depending on where a particular application resides on the roofline diagram determines whether it’s a good candidate for an emulation scheme like Ozaki.
(Image courtesy Hartwig Anzt/TUM)
“On the right-hand side of this roofline graph, we mostly have dense matrix-matrix multiply. This is compute-bound operations…This is where I reach the roof or the ceiling in terms of the peak performance of the processor,” Anzt said. “If I would switch from double precision to single precision, I would get the higher speed versus if I’m here on the left side.”
Other HPC applications, such as climate and weather modeling, are composed primarily of algorithms that use sparse linear algebra, which means they tend to be bound by memory bandwidth and not processing power, Anzt said. These would not see a processing speed up by switching from double precision to single precision, since they’re already bound by the memory bandwidth roofline.
However, these sparse linear algebra applications could still see some speedup by switching from double precision to single precision because the I/O would be faster. “So this is an important aspect that we all should keep in mind, always,” Anzt said.
Even when it appears that lower precision could give you a speedup, there are other factors to consider before moving the switch.
“The first problem is we don’t get the same accuracy of the final result,” he said. “And there’s the second problem that is often not discussed: We are actually solving a different problem in general because we are solving the low representation of the matrix.”
(Image courtesy Hartwig Anzt/TUM)
It’s possible that the low precision representation of the matrix and the high precision representation are identical, but in general, that doesn’t happen very often, he said. “So just switching to low precision is generally not a good idea,” Anzt said.
Another possible way to benefit from the tensor cores in iterative solvers, like GMRES, is to switch the output vector from high precision to a low precision representation. However, that, too, is not a good idea, Anzt said, “because in the end we want a high quality output, high accuracy solution,” he said. “So we can’t provide the output solution in low precision.”
But there are other areas that could benefit. One of those is using the Krylov basis, which is a method for searching for potential solutions in high-dimensional space. According to Anzt, one can get away with storing the Krylov basis in low (single) precision while still running the computations in high (double) precisions.
Anzt showed the audience results of tests running the Krylov solver in two modes: one that’s fully in double precision and the other where the Krylov basis is stored in single precision while calculations are in double precision. While the mixed precision approach requires more iterations, it ultimately ran 1.4x faster.
“So in the end, it might be that we maybe need more iterations of the Krylov solver, but we still converge faster in terms of time because all the iterations are significantly faster than when you’re storing the Krylov basis in double precision,” he said. “So storing the Krylov basis in lower precision but doing all arithmetic in high precision gives us the same convergence but we are about 40% faster.”
(Image courtesy Hartwig Anzt/TUM)
Moving from storing results in double precision to storing them in single precision is effectively a simple form of compression. Once one demonstrates that one can save FLOPs without comprising the results, then there are all sorts of other more elaborate compression schemes that one could use with those extra FLOPs, Anzt said.
Anzt showed the results from one more technique that utilized lower precision, this time by using a multigrid solver for partial differential equations. By storing the results of the algebraic multigrid (AMG) preconditioner in the Gingko library in low-precision, Anzt hoped to find that he could get a speedup without increasing approximation error.
“As we’re going down in the multigrid levels, we get coarser and coarser representations of the system matrix,” Anzt said. “And if it’s a coarser approximation, we can probably also use a coarser format.”
The results of the test bore out that hypothesis. “The direct solver is cheaper if we do it in low precision,” he said. “And then as we go up in the levels, at some point we have to convert. This introduces a little overhead, but overall we can see that yes, if we use this strategy, our overall multigrid is faster.”
Would this approach translate into benefits in the real world? That is the big question. Anzt actually put the AMG preconditioners approach to the test in a lab setting involving research on heart electrical signals being performed by the Euro HPC Center of Excellence.
“For this we have to discretize the heart at the cell level, and then for every cell, we have to do a chemistry simulation, and then of course, an electric simulation over the complete heart,” Anzt said. “For exactly this case, we plugged in our algebraic multigrid that now uses mixed precision. And we didn’t see any effects. So we didn’t really see that it’s getting faster.”
In the end analysis, the hardware trends today favor lower precision, which is what the AI boom is demanding.
Hartwig Anzt, the chair of computational mathematics at the Technical University of Munich
“We are in an era where hardware design is driven by AI and the low precision formats are becoming more and more prominent,” Anzt said during his wrap-up. “We will see whether precision goes away completely. I doubt that, but the focus is on low-precision and the focus is on dense matrix-matrix multiplication, because this is what the AI models need.”
In some cases, HPC workloads can make use of lower precision hardware, especially if the algorithms rely on dense linear algebra and are compute bound, rather than bound by memory bandwidth. However, there are big caveats to keep in mind.
“Mixed precision is not a black box approach,” Anzt said. “Just switching from double to single is not a good idea. We are not getting the same accuracy and we are potentially solving a different problem. And even inside an algorithm, once we have set which parts can use mixed precision, we are not set for all problems.”
One must closely analyze the algorithm to understand the impact of using mixed precision inside the algorithm, he said. “But we also have to look at the data and see whether using mixed precision for a certain data set actually does make sense, and we need strategies to determine when and where can we actually use mixed precision.”
However, don’t overlook the benefit of lower I/O as a result of reduced precision, he said, especially considering the much lower pace of improvement in memory bandwidth relative to the improvement in raw processing power.
“We really need to focus on reducing the amount of data that we’re reading and writing and mixed precision can be a helpful tool there because precision is basically a compression of data and therefore reducing the amount of data that we are reading and writing,” he said. “And we need to also favor algorithms that do more computations in favor of less communication.”
The post In Search of Better Mixed Precision Strategies for HPC appeared first on HPCwire.
Jake Richards announces measures to prevent abuse like that at Medomsley detention centre in County Durham
One of the UK’s most horrific and shocking child custody scandals was collectively ignored for decades because the victims were working-class boys from the north of England, a government minister has said.
The sentencing and youth justice minister, Jake Richards, has announced he is implementing a number of recommendations to prevent abuse such as that which took place between 1961 and 1987 at Medomsley detention centre in County Durham from ever happening again.
Continue reading...Report by HM inspector of prisons for England and Wales comes as spending on frontline education falls by up to 50%
“Brutal” cuts to prison education and training by Labour ministers are leading to an increase in drug use, self-harm and violence, a watchdog’s withering final annual report has said.
Charlie Taylor, who steps down as HM inspector of prisons for England and Wales in the autumn after six years, has also warned the authorities must keep a “close eye” on the impending release of thousands of prisoners later this year.
Continue reading...Scottish government to consider SNP national council motion for moratorium on all new datacentres
The Scottish government is about to consider a sweeping moratorium on building new datacentres, putting a key plank of the UK’s AI strategy at risk.
Last Sunday the Scottish National party (SNP)’s national council passed a motion to freeze all new datacentres in Scotland. That motion has been sent to the Scottish government to consider.
Continue reading...locater16 shares a report from IEEE Spectrum: One morning in 2019, Adebayo Alonge was in a Cape Town hotel room, preparing to demonstrate his startup's AI answer to a serious problem in African health care: counterfeit medication, which kills thousands of people across the continent every year. The RxScanner is a handheld spectrometer that scans a pill with infrared light, then sends the item's molecular profile to an AI model equipped with a pharmaceutical database. In seconds, the AI identifies the medication from its molecular profile -- or reports that it's phony. Pharmacies were using the system in more than a dozen countries, including Ghana, Kenya, Myanmar, and Alonge's native Nigeria. But that morning in South Africa, it didn't work. "I was shocked," Alonge says... So Alonge immediately asked his engineers to shrink the AI model down to a smaller, low-power, unconnected version that could run entirely on his Android phone. They produced it 2 hours later, and that saved the demo. More importantly, the work birthed a new version of his device, which can authenticate a pill in places without broadband, computers, or even reliable electricity. It also turned Alonge into an advocate for this kind of "small AI." "The article goes on to detail other immediately useful 'small' AI applications without any subscription or billion dollar data centers needed," writes locator16. For example, Bala Murugan and colleagues at Vellore Institute of Technology in India developed a drone-based system that photographs cashew plants and identifies disease-indicating splotches on the plants. The key advantage is that all processing happens on the drone itself, so farmers do not need a computer, broadband connection, or cloud server access. In a Uruguayan vineyard, researchers developed small-AI systems to identify ant infestations. The article doesn't go deep into the deployment details, but it presents this as another example of a narrow, localized model trained to recognize a specific agricultural threat. Small AI has also been used to detect the presence of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in multiple countries. This is especially useful in regions where public-health teams may lack reliable network access or expensive lab infrastructure, but still need fast, local detection. In parts of Brazil without access to more complex medical equipment, researchers have used small AI to run electrocardiograms from an Arduino device. The article also describes Marcelo Jose Rovai's work on a TinyML model that generates electrocardiograms in a patient simulator lab. Rovai also describes a newer experiment using an Arduino UNO Q with a Qualcomm chipset. The device runs a language model locally, collects sensor data, and analyzes it to detect tiny pools of water where mosquitoes might breed -- while using only about 3 watts of power.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
President Trump said he spoke to FIFA President Gianni Infantino after seeing the play and asked for a review.
Alexander Zverev led Jiri Lehecka by two sets to love when the 11pm curfew fell to end another day of drama at SW19
“I feel like I still cannot process this happening,” says Kostyuk, also noting how hot it is. “The longer you stay on this surface, the worse you feel.” She adds that the court wasn’t easy given the heat and wind, especially against an opponent on a roll having played 17 consecutive matches on grass – more than Kostyuk in her entire career. So it was very difficult and she still can’t believe it.
She was struggling to break the whole match so is really happy with the last two service-games she faced, and then thanks the crowd for their contribution.
Continue reading...The Supreme Court allowed Texas to enforce a law requiring app stores to verify users' ages and obtain parental consent before minors can download apps. Tech industry groups argue the law broadly restricts young people's access to digital speech, but the court let a 5th Circuit order stand without explanation or noted dissents. CNN notes that the Supreme Court's decision "doesn't resolve the case but rather will allow Texas to enforce the law while the litigation continues to play out." From the report: "A minor child who downloads a software application from an app store agrees to contractual terms of service, including whether the child's location will be tracked, whether the child's privacy will be protected, whether information from the child's phone can be sold by the developer, and whether the child waives the right to sue," Texas told the Supreme Court in urging the court to allow its law to take effect. But the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a trade group whose members include Apple and Google, said the law would effectively bar young people from accessing a wide range of content, "be it a book by Ernest Hemingway or J.K. Rowling, a Taylor Swift album, or a subscription to National Geographic." Allowing the law to take effect, the group said, would have "profound consequences for the protection of digital speech." [...] In the new case, involving Texas' age verification for apps, a federal district court blocked the law's enforcement in December -- days before it was set to take effect. But a three-judge panel of the conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals put that decision on hold in early June, allowing the state to enforce it. By declining to take up the emergency appeal from the computer and student groups, the Supreme Court has left the 5th Circuit's decision in place.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 | The axle block on my brand new Fungineers High Speed motor on the non-motor cable side is like frozen to the hub. I would like to remove to use my better axle blocks. The other came off super easy. I’ve tried pulling with all my strength, prying from under with a screwdriver, and using lubricant. These things must of been pressed on. Any suggestions? [link] [comments] |
Microsoft Office 2019 files will soon enter a "reduced functionality mode," becoming read-only.
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Outgoing PM will stress British commitment to defence spending at meeting in Ankara to counter Trump rebukes
Keir Starmer will seek to work with European allies to shore up support for Nato at its summit in Ankara on Tuesday amid concerns that Donald Trump could further destabilise the military alliance with threats over defence spending.
Downing Street said the prime minister and other international leaders would be focused on “building a stronger and more European Nato” as they attempt to address the US president’s concerns in the Turkish capital.
Continue reading...A judge ruled that that President Trump's pardons of the rioters were "expressly limited" to those who were convicted of their actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and did not apply to Brian Cole Jr.
SK Hynix is launching a Nasdaq listing expected to raise about $28 billion, giving US investors easier access to one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI memory-chip boom. Reuters reports: The company will sell 17.79 million new shares in the depository receipt listing on the Nasdaq. Ten ADRs will represent one common share and the stock will be sold in a price range that is due to be revealed on Monday, based on SK Hynix's Seoul trading price. SK Hynix's share price was down 4% at 2,327,000 won each on Monday, but the stock is up about 273% this year, as it rides surging global investor demand for AI stocks. Korea's KOSPI was down 2.2% on Monday. [...] SK Hynix has been among the world's largest beneficiaries of the AI boom as it outperformed its major rivals Samsung and Micron. "This is more than a liquidity event," said Dave Mazza, the chief executive officer of Roundhill Investments in New York, which manages an exchange-traded fund tracking DRAM manufacturers, which is one of the most popular ways for U.S. investors to trade SK Hynix's stock. "SK Hynix has been one of the most important companies in the world that most U.S. institutions could not easily own." "The listing removes an accessibility discount, not a quality discount." [...] SK Hynix said the proceeds from the listing of the American Depositary Receipts will be used to build chip factories in South Korea and buy chipmaking equipment including an extreme ultraviolet scanner made by Dutch equipment maker ASML. The final price of the New York listing is due to be set on Thursday, ahead of the stock starting trade on Friday, regulatory filings showed. The company's management will meet global investors on a roadshow this week. The deal is expected to be the second-biggest share sale after a record $85.7 billion initial public offering by SpaceX last month, surpassing Saudi Aramco's $25.6 billion IPO in 2019 and Alibaba's similar-sized offering in 2014.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Three children who died when a boat capsized on Geneva Lake in Wisconsin amid a sudden storm last week were found inside the sunken vessel, police said.
Friends of Yeshivat Shavei Hevron sent nearly £200,000 to school in Hebron – where Israel has been accused of imposing apartheid – between 2019 and 2024
A British charity is funding a religious school at the heart of expansion plans for the illegal Israeli settlement in the Palestinian city of Hebron.
Friends of Yeshivat Shavei Hevron sent nearly £200,000 to the school between 2019 and 2024, the last year for which accounts are publicly available on the website of the Charity Commission, the charity regulator for England and Wales.
Continue reading...Skip the endless scrolling. We've rounded up standout discounts that are actually worth your money.
Two Tennessee National Guard members fatally shot a man in Memphis who turned toward them with a gun during a downtown pursuit, authorities said.
AI-generated actor Tilly Norwood is set to star in her first feature film, with her creator saying that "art will be imitating life."
Balogun's reinstatement came after President Trump called FIFA President Gianni Infantino last week and asked for a review of the red card suspension.
The unprecedented test of a nuclear-capable submarine-launched missile highlights Beijing’s growing force in the region.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for July 7, No. 1,122.
Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for July 7, No. 1,844.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for July 7, No. 856.
The long-running SCO/IBM Unix and Linux ownership dispute has resurfaced yet again, this time through SCO successor Xinuos, which is trying to pursue old license and copyright claims tied to Project Monterey. "The core issue seems to be whether Xinuos even has the right to litigate the matter, or if some ancient legalese in the original agreements means the window for legal argument has long since expired," reports The Register. From the report: [T]he roots of the case are the 1998 alliance between IBM and a company called the Santa Cruz Operation which sold a version of UNIX for x86 CPUs. Those two companies, plus Intel and Sequent, created "Project Monterey" -- an effort to create a unified version of UNIX that could run on multiple processors. By 2001, Project Monterey was close to delivering a unified UNIX, an achievement made possible by blending code from IBM and SCO. By then, a little project called "Linux" already ran on multiple processors. Big Blue decided Linux was the future and bailed from Project Monterey -- then allegedly contributed some Monterey code to the open-source project and to its own AIX and Z operating systems. SCO felt it owned some of that code, so sued IBM. SCO and its successors struggled to survive, but interested parties kept the lawsuit alive because the chance to emerge as owner of parts of the Linux codebase, and IBM's code, had the potential to turn into a colossal payday. The case and its successors ended in 2021, with a settlement that saw litigants agree to end the matter without IBM admitting fault. But by then, SCO had sold its software to a biz called Xinuos that decided to fight on. The Xinuos case has burbled along quietly since, and on June 22nd reached the milestone of a hearing. The matter has become a little more modern, if only because this hearing was held online and the presiding judge appeared to unwittingly be on mute at one point. But the arguments otherwise seemed to revisit Project Monterey, debated the relevance of past litigation, contested who owned what, when they owned it, and how they could prove it. Xinuos argued IBM never had a license for SCO code. Big Blue argued that it did nothing wrong.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
We try to teach our children to follow the rules. Now an American president has chosen the opposite tack
I’m rooting for the US as we take on Belgium today in Seattle for a place in the World Cup quarterfinals.
But the game isn’t what it was – before Trump asked the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, to review the suspension of the US’s top scorer, striker Folarin Balogun, who got a red card in a match against Bosnia and Herzegovina and would otherwise have been suspended from Monday’s match.
Continue reading...Residents of a Kyiv apartment building hit a second time by a Russian strike greeted emergency responders with dark humor, volunteer Kateryna Tereshkova said.
July 6, 2026 — Funding of $1.8 million from Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, will help support the University of California San Diego’s Societal Computing and Innovation Lab (SCIL) and its Wildfire Science and Technology Commons, a collaborative platform designed to accelerate the development of wildfire technology.
An avatar stands in a digital twin of the Dangermond Preserve in Santa Barbara County, Calif. Image Credit: Societal Computing and Innovation Lab
A research lab in the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), part of the Halıcıoğlu School of Data Science and Computing, SCIL uses advanced computing, artificial intelligence and integrated workflows to develop technological solutions for a variety of societal challenges. The lab has a core strength in wildfire, with over a decade of experience developing fire modeling tools that play a critical role in initial attack planning for wildfire suppression and in the strategic use of prescribed fire to enhance ecosystem resilience.
In 2024, SCIL leveraged its expertise and partnerships to create the Wildfire Science and Technology Commons, a virtual platform that allows a broad community of researchers, technologists and fire practitioners to share data, collaboratively build and test solutions, and discover new technologies.
With this funding, SCIL and the Wildfire Commons will work closely with Google.org’s AI Collaborative: Wildfires (AIC:W), which brings together multiple organizations to help people and communities better manage fires by using AI.
Fighting Fire Through Digital Twins
One of SCIL’s areas of focus is the development of digital twins for complex natural systems. In the context of wildfire, these systems function as virtual representations of real-world landscapes that allow emergency responders and land managers to simulate scenarios before disasters occur.
Wildfire research and operations are often limited by the inability to test strategies without active fire conditions. Digital twins address this constraint by providing persistent, data-driven environments where models, tools, and decision-support systems can be evaluated under realistic but controlled conditions. This enables researchers and practitioners to explore interventions across the full wildfire lifecycle—from risk reduction to event response.
“Digital twins are a powerful way to understand wildfire dynamics,” said SCIL Director Ilkay Altintas. “When data and models can be run in a virtual space that mirrors real life, people can make better decisions — whether that’s planning a prescribed burn or responding to an active incident.”
Jumpstarting a Digital Twin Framework
In March, SCIL convened more than 30 members of the Wildfire Commons community at Google headquarters for a two-day workshop to identify the highest-impact opportunities for digital twins in wildfire. The workshop followed the convergence research approach of SCIL’s CORE Institute, leading exercises to identify the use cases, challenges and necessities to consider in laying a foundation for building digital twins.
“CORE Institute workshops are designed to bring diverse stakeholders together to align on complex challenges and co-create solutions,” said Melissa Floca, chief innovation officer for SCIL. “Here, that meant identifying enabling infrastructure to make digital twins a practical and trusted tool for wildfire management.”
Participants surfaced key barriers, including fragmented data systems, limited interoperability across models and the need to build trust in AI-driven decision tools. They also identified high-value applications that span the full lifecycle of wildfire, from training and preparedness to response and post-fire recovery.
Insights from the workshop will inform the development of a federated, open digital twin framework and reusable innovation templates that enable collaboration across institutions and support a growing ecosystem of tools and applications that leverage digital twin technology.
“Right now, wildfire data and models are trapped in silos, creating a bottleneck that keeps us from utilizing AI where it’s needed most,” said Google.org’s Sustainability Lead, Brian Juhyuk Lee. “Through the Wildfire Science and Technology Commons, SCIL is changing that. We’re building a shared digital home for this data, ensuring that cutting-edge research doesn’t just stay in the lab but reaches the firefighters and land managers on the front lines, helping them protect communities faster and more effectively. This is how we move from theory to true wildfire resilience.”
Altintas recapped the three key priorities workshop members decided upon for effectively deploying digital twin capabilities: “The infrastructure must connect the core components of the fire environment – fuels, topography and weather; it must be accessible to the fire management community; and it must build upon existing knowledge and systems rather than reinvent them. These elements will allow digital twins to scale.”
Ongoing Collaboration for Wildfire Solutions
The workshop also marked the creation of a digital twin case study community within the Wildfire Commons that will convene quarterly to guide infrastructure development. Case study communities advance their own missions while shaping the evolution of the Wildfire Commons.
“Case study communities are how the Wildfire Commons ensures its platform capabilities translate into real-world impact,” said Claire Stirm, project manager for the Wildfire Commons. “By bringing together different community perspectives, we can think collaboratively about everything that is possible for digital twins as part of an integrated ecosystem of technologies.”
“At SCIL, we have turned use-inspired research into tools that serve practitioners regularly in fire operations, and digital twins have the same potential to transform how we understand and manage wildfire. This support from Google.org helps us move that vision into practice through a collaborative community working together on the Wildfire Commons,” said Altintas.
More from HPCwire: SDSC: Wildfire Commons Opens to Unite Data, Experts, and Tools
Source: Kimberly Mann Bruch, SDSC
The post Google.org Supports UCSD’s Societal Computing and Innovation Lab to Accelerate AI Wildfire Solutions appeared first on HPCwire.
Andrea Shaw and husband appeared on RFK Jr-linked podcast after deaths in May last year of 18-month-olds
An Idaho mother who said her 18-month-old twins died last year after receiving three vaccines has been charged with murder in their deaths, officials said last week.
Andrea Shaw, 23, was indicted on two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of her toddlers, Tyson and Dallas, who were found dead in a shared bed on 1 May last year.
Continue reading...LOA ALTIMOS, Calif., July 6, 2026 — The IEEE Computer Society (CS) is celebrating the recipients of its Technical Community on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TCPAMI) awards. Presented at the IEEE CS/Computer Vision Foundation Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) in Denver in June, 2026 awards include the Longuet-Higgins Prize, PAMI Young Researcher Award, and PAMI Thomas Huang Memorial Prize.
“The TCPAMI Awards recognize the ideas and individuals advancing computer vision in meaningful and lasting ways, from research breakthroughs that continue to shape the field years later, to early-career innovators pushing new frontiers, to leaders whose mentorship and service strengthen our community,” said Gang Hua, chair of IEEE CS TCPAMI and director, applied science, at Amazon. “We are proud to celebrate this year’s honorees and their extraordinary contributions to the future of pattern analysis, computer vision, AI, and more.”
IEEE CS TCPAMI selected the following as this year’s award honorees.
Longuet-Higgins Prize
The Longuet-Higgins Prize honors a seminal work that achieves a “test of time” status. It annually looks back a decade to honor, in retrospect, the CVPR papers that have made a significant impact on computer vision research. The CVPR 2016 papers receiving the award in 2026 include:
Young Researcher Award
The PAMI Young Researcher Award recognizes a researcher, within seven years of completing their Ph.D., for outstanding early career research contributions. This year’s honorees are:
Thomas Huang Memorial Prize
The PAMI Thomas Huang Memorial Prize honors researchers who are recognized as examples in research, teaching/mentoring, and service to the computer vision community. The award is given in memory of the late Prof. Thomas S. Huang, a pioneering scholar who left deep impressions in multiple fields including computer vision and image processing, and a role model who contributed to the growth and well-being of several generations of researchers in the community. This year’s awardee is:
The 2027 TCPAMI Awards will be presented at CVPR 2027, taking place 20-24 June, in Seattle, Wash. For more information on TCPAMI and the nomination process, visit https://tc.computer.org/tcpami.
About the Technical Community on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
The Technical Committee on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TCPAMI) is concerned with pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, expert systems, natural language understanding, image processing, and computer vision. Its interests include methodology, applications, systems organization, and technology. The operations of the TCPAMI are conducted under the Computer Society bylaws and the TC PAMI bylaws. For more information on TCPAMI, visit https://tc.computer.org/tcpami.
About IEEE Computer Society
Engaging computer engineers, scientists, academia, and industry professionals from all areas of computing, the IEEE Computer Society sets the standard of excellence and champions global advancements to benefit humanity.
As the IEEE Computer Society celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2026, it continues to build on its rich legacy. Through conferences, publications, and programs that bring together computer science and engineering leaders at every stage of their careers, the IEEE Computer Society empowers, shapes, and guides the future of its 375,000+ community members, as well as the greater computing community, enabling new opportunities to better serve our world. Visit for more information.
Source: IEEE Computer Society
The post IEEE Computer Society Recognizes Computer Vision Pioneers with TCPAMI Awards appeared first on HPCwire.
Impoverished island was already struggling to keep the lights on before the US imposed a blockade in January
Cuba on Monday suffered its third nationwide power outage since the start of the year, the state electricity company said.
The impoverished island was already struggling to keep the lights on before the US president, Donald Trump, imposed an oil blockade in January, which has depleted the already dwindling supply of fuel for Cuba’s power plants.
Continue reading...British-born vocalist competed on The X-Factor before joining the girl groups Paradiso Girls and G.R.L.
Lauren Bennett, member of the girl group G.R.L. and featured artist on LMFAO’s global smash hit Party Rock Anthem, has died at the age of 37.
“It is with great sadness that we share the passing of our beloved Lauren,” the group wrote on their Instagram page. “Our hearts are broken, and we cannot begin to express how much she meant to us.” A cause of death was not specified.
Continue reading...The RESPIRE project successfully concludes, delivering high-resolution emission tools for Spain to support climate policies and scientific modeling
July 6, 2026 — The Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) and the State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) have successfully completed the project “high-Resolution air Emissions Systems to support modeling and monitoRing Efforts” (RESPIRE), a strategic initiative aimed at producing robust emissions information to support air quality modelling and greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring in Spain.
RESPIRE was established to address a key challenge: the need for high-resolution emissions data to support scientific modelling and climate policies. Since July 2023, researchers from BSC and AEMET have developed innovative tools that transform complex emissions information into operational products that can be used by scientists, public administrations and other stakeholders.
Launch of RESPIRE-CLIMATE
One of the achievements of the project is the RESPIRE-CLIMATE web app that makes GHG emissions data accessible. The platform allows users to explore carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) emissions across Spain through interactive maps and dynamic visualizations. RESPIRE-CLIMATE provides data emissions by different sectors such as transport or industry and by multiple spatial scales such as autonomous communities, metropolitan areas, mainland Spain, the Balearic Islands, and the Canary Islands.
The platform offers two types of emissions data:
RESPIRE-CLIMATE is recognized by the World Meteorological Organisation IG3IS initiative for its development and application of advanced tools for modelling and measuring greenhouse gas emissions. “This recognition reinforces the credibility of the system and highlights its international relevance for high-resolution GHG emissions monitoring”, says Paula Castesana, coordinator of RESPIRE-CLIMATE and researcher at BSC.
RESPIRE-AIR: advancing air quality modelling with HERMES Delta
Another main achievement is the development of HERMES Delta in RESPIRE-AIR, a national emission processing system designed to bridge the gap between official emissions inventories compiled by MITECO and the requirements of atmospheric models.
Official emissions inventories reported under the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) provide essential information on pollutant emissions, but they are not directly suitable for use in air quality models, which require emissions data at high spatial and temporal resolution. HERMES Delta addresses this challenge by transforming annual official inventories into model-ready emission datasets through the application of state-of-the-art spatial disaggregation, temporal allocation, vertical distribution and chemical speciation processes.
The system generates emissions data at 1 km × 1 km spatial resolution and hourly temporal resolution, enabling more accurate simulations of air pollution across Spain to support the requirements of the European Ambient Air Quality Directive 2024/2881. HERMES Delta has been designed as a flexible and scalable tool that can support multiple atmospheric modelling systems and future policy assessment applications. The system is currently integrated in pre-operational model as the emission core of the national air quality forecasting system maintained by AEMET, and it is expected to move to operational mode during the next months.
RESPIRE-AIR map showing the spatial distribution of NOₓ (nitrogen oxides) emissions in Spain (including the Canary Islands) in 2023, with a resolution of 1 km x 1 km.
Supporting Future Environmental Policies
The completion of RESPIRE comes at a crucial moment for Europe’s environmental agenda. The increasing role of air quality modeling and GHG monitoring in environmental policy requires robust and transparent emissions information. The emission tools developed within RESPIRE strengthen Spain’s capacity to support these efforts through state-of-the-art emissions datasets and user-oriented information services. “The results of this project enhance Spain’s strategic capabilities for forecasting and monitoring atmospheric pollutants and greenhouse gases, thereby supporting decision-makers whilst contributing to other international efforts”, explains Marc Guevara, scientific coordinator of the project and researcher at BSC.
“Funding from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTyR) has enabled us to establish a collaboration whose results are a model of success between an operational public body such as AEMET and a public supercomputing centre such as the BSC”, states Yolanda Luna Rico, Head of the Development and Applications Department at AEMET.
The project partners are now preparing the next phase of RESPIRE, which will focus on further improving emissions estimates, expanding monitoring capabilities and strengthening support for air quality and greenhouse gas emissions policies at national, regional and local levels.
Source: BSC
The post BSC and AEMET Develop Tools to Support Greenhouse Gas Monitoring and Air Quality Modeling appeared first on HPCwire.
President Donald Trump regularly resorts to bluster and threats to get his way — from efforts to overturn election results to campaigning for international prizes — often with little success. But in FIFA, he has finally found a pliant partner to massage his ego and do his bidding.
In a highly unusual move this weekend, the international soccer federation reversed a suspension of a top U.S. player after a personal intervention by Trump, undermining the integrity of the game, according to experts.
Trump personally called FIFA President Gianni Infantino, following a win by the U.S. men’s soccer team in the FIFA World Cup last week, and asked him to review the one-game suspension of striker Folarin Balogun, the team’s top goal scorer. On Sunday, FIFA reversed course, announcing Balogun would be eligible to play in the upcoming U.S. match against Belgium. It was the first time that FIFA has nullified a suspension for a red card received during the World Cup in 64 years.
“Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday.
The Union of European Football Associations expressed “disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision” that it said undermined not just the tournament but soccer itself.
“Football, like any other sports, relies on rules, which are the basis for fair, honest and transparent competition,” UEFA said in a statement. “When the certainty of rules is no longer guaranteed by its guardians, the integrity of the game is at stake and the credibility of a competition is undermined.”
On Monday, Trump described FIFA referee Raphael Claus, who gave Balogun the red card after a review suggested by the video assistant referee, as “very suspect” — an apparent reference to past accusations of match fixing.
Asked if his intervention with Infantino created a troubling precedent which would lead other world leaders to attempt to exert influence over soccer, Trump dismissed concerns. “I had nothing to do with the decision,” he said on Monday. “What I did have to do is, I said, I think this should be reviewed.”
The red card reversal is not FIFA’s first concession to Trump. After years of lobbying and begging by Trump failed to win him a Nobel Peace Prize, FIFA created its own peace prize last year and presented it to Trump.
FIFA signed a partnership agreement with Trump’s so-called Board of Peace to “foster investment into football for the purpose of helping the recovery process in post conflict areas,” Infantino announced earlier this year. Trump controls the Board of Peace’s finances as its chair, creating what looks to be a massive slush fund. For the past year, FIFA has also leased office space at Trump Tower in New York City.
For more than six months, FIFA has ducked questions from The Intercept about the Peace Prize and the organization’s fealty to Trump. FIFA spokesperson Jhamie Chin did not reply to repeated questions about the federation’s recent capitulation over Balogun’s suspension.
Trump undercutting the credibility of the single largest and most-watched sporting event in the world mirrors his long-running efforts to weaken the electoral process in the United States and undermine the integrity of elections. Trump is currently attempting to force Congress to pass legislation — the SAVE America Act — which threatens to increase the difficulty or block the ability to vote for millions of eligible American citizens, justifying the legislation with false claims of voter fraud. According to research by the Brennan Center for Justice, more than 21 million citizens do not have ready access to a birth certificate, a passport, or naturalization papers that would be needed to comply with a so-called “show your papers” provision.
For years, Trump has regularly peddled fictions about “rigged” elections, including his 2020 presidential election loss to Joe Biden. After the 2020 election, the results were certified, and 61 of 62 lawsuits challenging the results of the election failed. Trump refused, however, to accept the facts and continues to peddle the lie that he won the 2020 race. Since then, Trump has regularly claimed, without offering evidence, that Democratic electoral victories are the result of fraud. Most recently, he claimed, without any proof, that the Los Angeles mayoral race was “rigged” against former reality star Spencer Pratt.
Trump said on Monday that he would view a victory by Belgium in the same light. “If they beat us, I say it was rigged, just like the election was rigged in 2020,” he announced.
In awarding him its inaugural peace prize, FIFA said that Trump was “recognised for his tireless efforts to promote peace.” In the five-plus years Trump has been in the White House, alone, the U.S. has been embroiled in more than 20 military interventions, armed conflicts, and wars, according to an analysis by The Intercept.
Chin deflected when asked in February how FIFA could ignore Trump’s constant war-making. The spokesperson failed to respond to repeated follow-up questions on Monday.
The post FIFA Gives Trump Exactly What He Wants appeared first on The Intercept.
Preliminary hearing in Utah is being held to establish whether there is enough evidence against Tyler James Robinson for the case to proceed to a trial.
The controversial AI performer will star in the full-length movie.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Anthropic quickly removed a tracker secretly monitoring Claude Code users in China after a security researcher exposed the hidden code and condemned the spyware-like tracking as a "serious breach of user trust." Last week, a web developer known as "Thereallo" was researching privacy issues in Claude Code and was shocked to find that the AI firm was using "prompt steganography" to hide code that tracks Chinese users "in plain sight." This code wasn't malicious, but it was sending information to Anthropic that most users wouldn't detect, relying on shorthand markers to quietly flag users' timezone, proxy, and potential connection to Chinese AI labs that Anthropic has accused of distillation attacks. On X, Anthropic engineer Thariq Shihipar confirmed that the tracker was added to Claude Code as an "experiment" in March. According to Shihipar, the code "was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation." Regarding the former, The Washington Post found unauthorized retailers have sold access to free models for $1 a month, and pro subscriptions that can cost $100 monthly sell for "as little as $12." Supposedly, Anthropic has "actually been meaning to take this down for a while," Shihipar said of the hidden code, because engineers have "landed stronger mitigations since then." Privacy advocates were not happy with the explanation, though, warning that the code is evidence that Anthropic is willing to cross lines to surveil users. That's perhaps especially surprising, considering that Anthropic riled the Trump administration by refusing to allow the US government to use Claude to surveil US users. The AI firm has since sued the White House over the clash. The Post suggested that the tracker incident is a sign that US firms like Anthropic are taking "increasingly aggressive measures" to block Chinese AI firms from copying their models. A more defensive stance has apparently become critical. In the past year, Chinese firms have "consistently matched" US firms' model capabilities "within months," the Post reported. Most recently, "a new, free AI model from Chinese company Zhipu AI was better at finding computer vulnerabilities than Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 model, which was released in May," the Post reported.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Bees respond to tasty treats or plain water based on context, a study that may provide support for establishing insect sentience shows
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When bumblebees taste something good, they reach out their glossa – or insect tongue – for a while afterwards, almost as if they are licking their lips. And when they don’t like something, the insects will shake their heads and wipe their mouths.
Scientists who captured the miniature facial expressions on slow-motion video say the behaviour is consistent with “liking” and “disliking” responses observed in mammals. Their results have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Continue reading...Microsoft is laying off about 4,800 employees, including 1,600 from Xbox, as it restructures around AI investments and tries to reset its struggling gaming business. "Our business is changing because the world around it is changing. The way technology is built, deployed, and used is transforming faster than at any point in my time here," said Amy Coleman, EVP and chief people officer at Microsoft. "Our customers' needs are shifting, the business models that serve them are shifting, and that means the work itself -- what we do, where we focus, and how we're organized -- has to transform too." She continued: "Companies don't get to choose whether their industry changes; they only get to choose whether they change with it. That means we will need to adjust resources and roles and shift how we operate so we can have the greatest impact for our customers." TechCrunch reports: Coleman stressed that the roles being eliminated today "are not being replaced by AI," but noted, "what is true is that AI is changing how work gets done." "Some of the tasks we do every day can now be automated, and that means we all need to keep learning, keep building new skills, and keep adapting as the work evolves," Coleman wrote. [...] Speaking about the Xbox layoffs, Coleman said little: "We are restructuring to position the business for long-term success. Engineering teams across the company will also evolve their structure and priorities to meet customer needs and innovate for the future." Of today's 4,800 layoffs at Microsoft, 1,600 will hit Xbox, with about 3,200 cuts in total expected through fiscal year 2027, according to Asha Sharma, CEO of Xbox. In an email she sent to employees on Monday, Sharma called this "the most significant restructure in Xbox history." "Our business today is not healthy," Sharma wrote. "We are operating at margins that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses." She added that Xbox made bets like its monthly subscription service Game Pass, alongside moves to grow its portfolio of content and invest in multi-platform, among other attempts to breathe life into the business. None of those strategies grew at the expected pace, leading to the core business weakening even as Xbox added more teams and investment. "And now the industry is facing the most severe hardware crisis in its history," Sharma said. "We must reset Xbox." As part of the shift, Microsoft will transition four of its gaming studios to operate under new management, ensuring preservation of intellectual property and ongoing projects. Specifically Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions will return to independent studios, according to Sharma. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are coming under new ownership with funding to complete and grow some of their more popular games. According to Sharma's memo, Xbox is also flattening management hard, cutting the current 14 management layers to no more than five, but ideally three. As part of this major organization redesign, Xbox is making longtime executive Helen Chiang chief operating officer with end-to-end profit and loss authority across content, hardware, platform, and services. Xbox's restructuring plan centers around narrowing focus by dropping sprawling creative bets that don't produce platform-scale returns, and instead homing in on core strategic pillars like Mojang and King, the businesses behind Minecraft and Candy Crush.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
One of the most common requests from the community I've received for https://floathistory.com is to add the ability to search for terms and filter the timeline to remove milestones you're not interested in, so I've added both features to my website!
Float History aggregates key points in the history of one wheel electric skateboards (both proprietary and open source), and of the community surrounding the sport.
https://floathistory.com/search/
Using the form, you can now search for terms directly. For example:
You can now also build custom timelines containing only milestones you’re interested in by using the categories filter below the search field.
For instance:
And, if you just care about a single category, I also added a top level categories page to make it easier to navigate to those: https://floathistory.com/categories/ (these were technically already available via category links at the bottom of all milestones.)
Finally, I added pagination to ensure the site still loads lightning fast as I continue to add milestones to the timeline, so even if you're at a remote event the timeline should still pull up quickly.
As a reminder, the site is still a work in progress. I recently added all of the Future Motion board milestones, but I still have a lengthy to-do list of topics I'd still like to add. My next focus is on the Floatwheel and Fungineers boards (and FM's litigation against them) to fill out the board technology progression on the VESC side.
Curious to hear your thoughts or if you have any other suggestions for topics or milestones you would like to see!
Nigel Farage urged to clarify ‘dependence’ on Cottrell, who also joined Reform leader in Abu Dhabi in December
Nigel Farage has been accompanied by his friend George Cottrell, a convicted fraudster, to numerous Reform events and fundraisers and on a trip to Abu Dhabi, raising questions about the claim that he has no official role in the party.
Labour has called on Farage to clarify his “personal and financial dependence” on Cottrell, who has also been supporting the politician’s lifestyle through accommodation and security before the election.
Continue reading...Delphine Jubillar went missing in southern France in December 2020 at the height of the COVID pandemic and her body was never found.
At least 43 killed and many wounded, including woman and child hurt at World Cup gathering in Los Angeles
A weekend of celebrations as the US marked its semiquincentennial was marred by outbreaks of gun violence that claimed dozens of lives and left multiple other people wounded.
Those hurt included a woman and a child among four shot during a gathering of Mexico soccer supporters in Los Angeles following their team’s World Cup elimination on Sunday night.
Continue reading...Tropical storm causes extreme flooding in south of the country with heavy rainfall expected in coming days
A tropical storm has killed two people, caused dam breaches and forced tens of thousands to evacuate in southern China.
Typhoon Maysak killed two people in Nanning, in China’s southern Guangxi province. Maysak, which lashed Vietnam and China’s southern island province of Hainan over the weekend, will dump the water it sucked up on its way across the South China Sea as it weakens and heads inland, meteorologists say.
Continue reading...The overnight attacks on Kyiv killed at least 19 people as Russia stepped up a new offensive. Ukraine's president said NATO must do more to help his country intercept incoming missiles.
All the ballistic missiles launched by Russia struck their targets, underscoring Kyiv's need for more U.S. Patriot interceptor missiles, Ukraine officials say.
As democratic socialists toppled establishment favorites this midterm cycle, the old guard of the Democratic Party picked up a preferred cudgel against insurgents: These people were propped up by white, urban, coastal, educated electorates — not the ones the Democrats were trying to reach, and certainly not the working class.
It’s true that the four victorious socialists running for Congress — Chris Rabb in Philadelphia, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez in New York City, and Melat Kiros in Denver — won in major cities where progressive politics are more likely to be popular than in the country’s many more rural, poorer, and less educated districts. But before this cycle’s big surge, the Democratic Socialists of America had spent the past decade backing and recruiting candidates in down-ballot races across the U.S., multiplying the number of people in office by a figure of eight and electing mayors, city councilors, state lawmakers, and other local officials in 39 states.
“Everybody is feeling the crunch. Everybody is deeply concerned for their families, for their security,” said Becky Cooper, campaign manager to Francesca Hong, a Wisconsin state representative and formidable DSA candidate for governor. “That transcends political party, transcends ages, and it transcends geography. This is not just a coastal elites thing.”
Despite the narrative that the socialist model only works among electorates dominated by young, white, coastal elites, the DSA, the largest socialist organization in the U.S., is decentralized and operates chapters in a majority of states. Its members currently hold office in states like Ohio, North Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee. Many of those candidates have been elected to local offices even as far-right campaigns to take over bodies like school boards have dominated in recent years. Since 2018, 305 DSA-backed lawmakers have won their races. Democratic socialists won state legislative primaries this season in Georgia and Kentucky, and they’re on the ballot in upcoming primary races in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, where Hong has polled first or second in recent months in a tight gubernatorial primary.
In order to win, they’ve built what some might call a machine, joining forces with more mainstream progressive organizations to marshal resources against a well-financed political establishment that buried candidates on the left in 2024.
Their success has sent the Democratic establishment into a frenzy. Dismissing the wins in his backyard, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the socialist victories in New York were concentrated in “higher-income districts” with an “outsized focus on issues connected to the Middle East.”
But while Valdez and Avila Chevalier won a majority of voters in areas dominated by the young, wealthy, and college-educated, Avila Chevalier beat longtime incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat among Black voters, while Valdez dominated over Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso among majority-Hispanic precincts — suggesting the socialism-curious share of the electorate is more complex than its critics might make it seem.
It’s “a very reductionist identity politics from pundits and critics who don’t have anything meaningful to offer working-class voters.”
“People are going to keep trying to move the goalposts to pretend like this isn’t a movement sweeping the nation,” said democratic socialist New York state Sen. Jabari Brisport, pointing to another DSA member who won a primary upstate in Buffalo. “It’s an attack line that will keep coming again and again, a very reductionist identity politics from pundits and critics who don’t have anything meaningful to offer working-class voters.”
According to Cooper, Democratic leaders hold responsibility for the surging popularity of the socialist brand.
“The socialist label is more popular than the Democratic label because people are recognizing that they’ve been fed a bill of lies through capitalism,” she said.
Democratic socialists looking to take over the governor’s mansion in Wisconsin say their message isn’t contingent on geography, race, or class.
“You’ve had throughout history political leaders use socialist policies without actually calling it socialism,” said Wisconsin state Rep. Darrin Madison, the first Black socialist elected in the state. He pointed to policies like the New Deal, the eight-hour workday, and Social Security. “Building systems of mutual aid, that’s a form of socialism,” Madison said.
Wisconsin’s long history of socialist politics has enjoyed a revival in recent years. Milwaukee sent the first socialist to the House in 1910 and elected three socialist mayors over the next half century, but the state’s socialist caucus died out in the early 1930s — after passing close to 300 bills in the preceding decade. Frank Zeidler, elected Milwaukee mayor in 1948, was the last socialist elected in the city until 2020, when voters elected Ryan Clancy to the County Board of Supervisors. Two years later, Madison and Clancy won election to the state Assembly; the first thing the pair did after taking their oaths of office was to found the Socialist Caucus, which had died out in the 1930s. The caucus doubled in size last year to four members, adding Hong and state Rep. Christian Phelps.
Socialists resuscitated their Wisconsin roots at a time when Democrats had earned a reputation for shirking their responsibilities at every level of Wisconsin’s government. After Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the state’s 2016 Democratic primary, its general election voters swung toward Donald Trump — clinching his first presidency. Until current Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers was elected in 2018, the state was under full Republican control.
“The last time that Wisconsin had a [Democratic] trifecta was 16 years ago now,” Clancy told The Intercept. After Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle did not seek reelection, the Democratic candidate lost the 2011 governor’s race to Republican Scott Walker, and the GOP flipped both state legislative chambers. “The Democrats at the time squandered that opportunity, and they really failed to deliver for the state.”
Those failures, Clancy said, included not codifying abortion rights ahead of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and not raising the minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour, when they had the votes to do so. “They didn’t even bring it up for a vote because they feared what that would mean for their large-dollar donors,” Clancy said.
Cooper said Hong’s campaign is hearing from voters who are increasingly blaming the capitalist system for the problems they see around them. In response, the campaign is talking about what it says is the true definition of socialism, Cooper said: “Taking care of our neighbors, taking care of people’s economic needs.”
“They’re waking up to the fact that it is capitalism at the heart of these issues. It is people profiting off of our neighbors being sick, or not being able to afford groceries or not being able to afford their credit card bills, when we see that people are becoming billionaires while we’re suffering and literally just trying to feed our families,” she said.
Hong’s performance in recent polling shows that socialist policies are resonating with voters, Madison said.
“When folks say this is a reflection of the elites and folks from academia and young folks in college, that does a disservice to community members and their abilities to understand the circumstances that they are in and the ways in which parties have exploited their pain,” he said.
“It doesn’t speak to the reality that folks are facing.”
Nearly 2,000 miles southwest of Wisconsin’s capitol, the city of Los Angeles has all the markers of a coastal haven for democratic socialist politics to thrive: a large working class, high racial diversity, a significant immigrant population with a rich history of progressive organizing, all existing alongside pockets of wealthier, whiter, college educated residents who lean left. The city has its own storied history of socialism and nearly elected a socialist mayor in the early 1900s, riding a wave of labor and working-class support and drawing on the socialist model of Milwaukee.
Since 2020, the LA DSA chapter has gained a foothold in City Council with challenges to the Democratic establishment. When Nithya Raman unseated an incumbent that year with the backing of DSA LA, the victory sent shockwaves throughout an LA establishment — then the DSA repeated the feat three times in subsequent cycles.
Now, Raman has a chance to unseat incumbent Democratic mayor Karen Bass in November, tempting comparisons that suggest the city is on the cusp of its own wave of governmental transformation akin to New York under democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Yet DSA LA has struggled to break out of its main stronghold of the city’s east and northeast sides, into some of the city’s power centers, such as South LA, which has majority Black, Latino, and working-class precincts.
“If we’re serious about building power in the areas where we want to build power, then the process has to begin much earlier than a candidate coming to DSA” for an endorsement, said DSA LA co-chair Leslie Chang. She acknowledged the need to break out of LA’s own “commie corridor,” where many DSA members live.
Like in New York, DSA LA has had to battle accusations that its candidates only draw support from white, college-educated voters, despite winning in multiple districts with majority-Latino residents. This reality played out in two city council races on LA’s west and south sides, where one DSA candidate lost outright and the other made it to the runoff — but trailing the establishment pick by 13 percentage points.
Chang, who spent a week in New York knocking on doors and phone-banking for that socialist slate, said the LA chapter needs to follow New York’s lead to train and identify “homegrown” candidates within the organization.
“We need multi-year power building plans for a lot of the things that we want to achieve,” Chang said. “We have to commit to working on projects, like non-electoral campaigns in districts, to become better embedded in that community that we want to represent.”
While DSA found success in its first citywide race when its endorsed city attorney candidate, Marissa Roy, locked out the incumbent from the top two and made it to a November runoff, its members were split over whether to back Raman for mayor or long-shot candidate Rae Huang. Its city council members endorsed Bass. Now, DSA LA’s larger membership has to weigh whether to endorse Raman in November’s runoff as she faces lingering mistrust among the organization and LA’s left after she diverged from her DSA colleagues on key housing issues and on Palestine and Israel. If she does want to unlock the group’s army of canvassing volunteers, Raman would need to collect at least 50 signatures from DSA members, sit for an interview with its electoral politics committee, and fill out a questionnaire that would likely include policy commitments important to the group.
Still, recent socialist victories have had a reverberating effect on the nation’s second largest city. The LA chapter saw bumps in membership after Mamdani’s election last year and another after New York’s congressional primaries, adding 70 new members to its total of 5,000. Chang said the wins in New York have also energized the chapter to begin building toward electing members to the California State Legislature, where only one current DSA member from the Silicon Valley is serving. Elsewhere in California, Mai Vang, endorsed by the Sacramento DSA chapter, is headed to a runoff after leading longtime Democratic incumbent Rep. Doris Matsui; the previous person who held the seat was Matsui’s husband Bob.
“When New York wins, LA wins,” said Sean Wakasa, a DSA LA co-chair with Chang, also mentioning the wins in Philadelphia and Denver. “We’re building politics that working-class people can see themselves in, and it’s built around addressing universal issues around affordability around the ability for people to work.”
DSA might bristle at the suggestion that it’s becoming a political machine. The group prides itself on getting buy-in from its members before taking a position on policy issues and having a painstakingly democratic structure — not the top-down politics they say has led to the downfall of the Democratic Party.
But DSA is playing the game. It’s one group in a coalition of lefty organizations whose chapters have beefed up their coordination this cycle to power socialist and progressive candidates.
In all four of its congressional primary wins so far this cycle, DSA chapters have teamed up with Justice Democrats, the left insurgent group that rose to prominence in 2018 when it helped get the first two DSA members of Congress elected — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. — but suffered last cycle when two of its newer incumbents, Reps. Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri, were ousted by AIPAC-backed challengers. Now, joining forces with DSA chapters and Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate group that has expanded its ambit to oppose war and authoritarianism, Justice Democrats is receiving mea culpas for previous death knells — as JD spokesperson Usamah Andrabi told The Intercept when Kiros won: “We’re just having an amazing fucking cycle.”
Groups on the left have also massively increased their spending in this year’s primaries after losing candidates last cycle who faced tens of millions of dollars in attacks from deep-pocketed super PACs and dark-money groups. Several pro-Palestine PACs are working or spending on primaries for the first time this cycle. The super PAC American Priorities, funded by Mamdani donors, has spent more than $4 million so far. Those investments have helped shift the dynamics in congressional races even in the face of similar outside spending against the left.
“Justice Democrats has the expertise to run federal challenger primaries — embedding in campaigns as staff and advisers, managing budgets, recruiting and training candidates, coordinating donors and leading independent expenditure programs,” Andrabi told The Intercept. “Combining that expertise with local DSA’s immense field and organizing power, which is unmatched in cities like NYC, delivers these monumental victories.
The national groups that helped power Kiros, Valdez, Avila Chevalier, and Rabb’s congressional campaigns don’t work on state-level races. But the DSA’s local Wisconsin chapters and another three campus chapters of the Young Democratic Socialists of America have endorsed Hong and are helping to boost her campaign by canvassing, fundraising, holding events, and calling voters. A new DSA chapter for Central Wisconsin formed last week and is also expected to endorse her.
Still, Hong’s campaign expects to face a surge in outside spending against her. “We know that super PAC money is going to come in, especially with Fran’s stance on data centers. We know AI money is going to come in,” said Cooper, Hong’s campaign manager. She also said she expects to face money from the pro-Israel lobby, though its flagship national group does not spend on state races.
“We know that we are never going to raise the most money.”
“That doesn’t change our message or our work. We know that we are never going to raise the most money. We know that we’re not going to have a ton of independent expenditures coming in to rescue us. We have 6,000 volunteers on the ground,” she said. The weekend after the New York primaries, the campaign knocked 10,000 doors in a day and a half. “That is how we will offset paid media and the spending and all those kinds of things, is getting people out to have real conversations.”
In addition to outside spending, Cooper said the current pearl-clutching around the rise of democratic socialist candidates was to be expected.
“Any time within the larger pendulum swings, there’s smaller ones as well.”
The post There’s a New Democratic Machine. It’s Unabashedly Socialist. appeared first on The Intercept.
Crowds swelled through Tehran as mourners dressed in black carried flags proclaiming: ‘We will rise’
A crowd of “millions” assembled on Monday for the funeral procession of Iran’s assassinated supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
The scale and depth of the march, however engineered, represents an extraordinary turnaround for a country that only seven months ago was gripped by street protests at which thousands of people were killed by government security forces.
Continue reading...PM stepped in over proposal to shift World Cup match to an earlier time, amid concerns it would benefit Mexico
Keir Starmer intervened through diplomatic channels to oppose Fifa’s plan to bring forward England’s World Cup game against Mexico, amid concerns the change would hand the hosts an unfair advantage, it is understood.
The prime minister instructed officials to argue against proposals to move the kick-off from 1am UK time (6pm local time) to earlier after being alerted by the Football Association that it would reduce England’s time to acclimatise to the high altitude in Mexico City.
Continue reading...The Nigerian-American writer says she ‘will not watch’ Gina Prince-Bythewood’s adaptation of her fantasy bestseller
Tomi Adeyemi, the author of the popular YA fantasy Children of Blood and Bone, has distanced herself from the forthcoming film adaptation of her book.
“There is a reason I will not post anything about the adaptation of my work,” the Nigerian-American author said in group chat messages shared to TikTok.
Continue reading...Media scrutiny of party leader’s finances has undermined his claim to be a politician in tune with typical voters
With his personal funding once again under media scrutiny, Nigel Farage, the leader of the rightwing Reform UK party, is adamant he is the victim of an “establishment plot” trying to stop him from reaching Downing Street.
This time, Farage is facing questions about support for his lifestyle from the convicted criminal George Cottrell, just months after it was revealed by the Guardian that he also took £5m from the cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harborne as a personal gift.
Continue reading...I don’t know if you have figured it out yet, but I recently solved a lot of my nosedive issues on my X7 LR by checking the Accel Y lowpass filter. Mine was not set right at all and that really caused the nose to hunt for the ground anytime I got on bumpy terrain.
Nintendo will stop selling the original Switch in Europe in mid-February 2027, nearly 10 years after the console's launch. In its place, the company will release updated versions of the Switch 2 and several controllers with user-replaceable batteries to comply with new EU regulations. The Verge reports: The news comes as Nintendo is making a bunch of changes to the rest of its lineup due to EU regulations requiring user-replaceable batteries. Starting this summer, the company says it will start introducing updated versions of various devices on "a rolling basis," ahead of the regulations coming into effect on February 18th, 2027. "There is no difference in functionality between current products and revised products containing user-replaceable batteries," Nintendo says. The Switch 2 is the most notable product being updated -- the new version is expected to start rolling out in the fall -- but there will also be versions of the Joy-Con controllers, Joy-Con 2, Switch 2 Pro Controller, and N64 and GameCube Switch controllers with user-replaceable batteries. "Due to a variety of factors, revised products may not become available in all European countries simultaneously," Nintendo notes.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Thousands of gaming jobs will be shed over the coming fiscal year as Microsoft continues to invest heavily in AI
Microsoft said on Monday it was eliminating about 4,800 jobs – roughly 2% of its global workforce – in a cost-cutting move that will deliver a sweeping restructuring of its struggling Xbox gaming division.
The cuts include the deepest overhaul in Xbox’s history, with approximately 3,200 gaming jobs to be shed over the coming fiscal year, four game studios being spun off or sold, and a fifth entering a review process that could lead to closure, the company said.
Continue reading...TKMS beats South Korean rival to multibillion-dollar contract that will deepen Canada’s Nato ties
Canada has selected a German consortium to build a dozen cutting-edge submarines in one of the country’s largest-ever defence contracts that will further deepen its Nato ties before a crucial summit this week.
On Monday the prime minister, Mark Carney, announced the winner of a tightly contested battle for the lucrative government contract to replace its fleet of ageing, secondhand subs, most of which are undergoing maintenance.
Continue reading...Airline’s board to recommend offer of £6.90 a share in deal analysts say shows UK firms are being bought on the cheap
Shares in easyJet surged nearly 10% after the airline agreed to a £5.5bn takeover at the fifth attempt, but analysts said that it showed UK firms were being bought on the cheap.
The low-cost carrier’s board will recommend shareholders accept an offer price of £6.90 a share from Castlelake, a US private equity firm, after rejecting four previous bids of as little as £5.60 per share. EasyJet shares closed at 610p.
Continue reading...Microsoft moves to slash costs as the video game industry faces what the tech giant calls the "most severe hardware crisis in its history."
David Streever of Rochester, New York, sued Department of Homeland Security officials on Monday, saying the agency’s actions violated his First Amendment rights.
Locking in today's top long-term CD rates could earn more than you'd expect over the life of the account.
On May 27, 1892, an angry mob of white Memphis residents descended on Beale Street, the vibrant center of the city’s Black community. Their target was the office of The Free Speech and Headlight, a Black-owned newspaper. After locating the office, the mob broke the paper’s printing press, trashed the building, and left a threat for its editor and co-owner, Ida B. Wells, that they would “bleed [her] face and hang [her] in front of the court house” if she ever returned. Wells, who was fortunately traveling on the East Coast at the time, never returned to her home again.
The impetus for this mob violence was Wells’ fearless journalism, which challenged the lawlessness and hypocrisy of the Southern lynch mob. Through her unrelenting activism, Wells brought the horrors of the South’s “lynch law” to a national—and indeed, international—audience.
Yet, in a sobering reflection during her later years, Wells remained concerned that she “had nothing to show for all those years of toil and labor.” A child of the Civil War, Wells had lived through the broken promises of Reconstruction and the terror of southern Redemption. She bore witness to the entrenchment of Jim Crow and the lynching of more than 3,000 Black men, women, and children between 1882 and 1930. When she died in 1931, it would be another three decades before the Civil Rights Movement ended de jure discrimination against Black Americans. It would be another 90 years until the 117th U.S. Congress passed the first-ever national anti-lynching legislation, designating lynching as a federal hate crime.
As we reflect on Ida B. Wells’ life, we must equally celebrate her groundbreaking achievements while remembering that there is still work to be done to fully realize her dreams.
Early Life
Ida B. Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862 to enslaved parents, James and Elisabeth Wells. After emancipation in 1865, they placed a premium on educating their children, determined to provide opportunities they themselves had been denied during slavery. Their commitment led Ida and her siblings to attend Rust College, where she developed a love of literature through reading the works of Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, and the Brontë sisters.
Wells’ happy childhood was abruptly ended in 1878, when a yellow fever outbreak claimed the lives of both James and Elisabeth, as well as Ida’s baby brother, Stanley. Upon receiving the news of her parents’ deaths, a 16-year-old Ida, who had been away visiting her grandparents, made the decision to return to Holly Springs and care for her five remaining siblings.
To support the family, Wells worked as a schoolteacher, traveling miles by mule throughout rural Mississippi to find work. Her experiences in these rural communities pressed Wells to reflect on what she could do to improve the lives of millions of Black Southerners who had been freed from bondage but had little access to social, political, or economic opportunities. Wells left Mississippi for Memphis in 1881, but these questions would continue to shape her trajectory as she evolved from schoolteacher to renowned journalist and activist.
Memphis Years
Even before Wells began writing for newspapers, earning the honorific “princess of the press,” her early years in Memphis foreshadowed her later advocacy for racial justice. Within two years of her arrival, Wells filed two lawsuits against the Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railroad for discrimination. A conductor had refused to accept Wells’s first-class ticket and attempted to force her into the second-class car. Wells refused to move, gripping onto the seat and biting the conductor’s hand in defiance. A year later, Wells again sued the company after being denied first-class accommodations on a subsequent journey. While Wells won her cases in the local circuit court, the Tennessee Supreme Court ultimately ruled against her on appeal in 1887. As historian and Wells biographer Mia Bay observes, Wells’ case “was one of the many state-level stops on the road to Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).”
As these cases progressed through the courts, Wells increasingly turned to journalism as an outlet. Under the pseudonym “Iola,” she gained notoriety for her incisive commentary on race and gender. By the late 1880s, Wells had established herself as one of the nation’s leading Black journalists, and in 1889 she purchased a one-third share of The Free Speech and Headlight newspaper, becoming the first woman to own and edit a Black newspaper in America.
Anti-Lynching Activism
While Wells’ journalism always addressed social issues, her crusade against lynching that would make her a national figure began with the murders of her friend Thomas Moss and his business partners, Calvin McDowell and William Stewart, in March 1892.
On the night of March 2, a scuffle broke out between a group of Black and white boys playing marbles outside of People’s Grocery, a recently opened grocery store owned by Moss, McDowell, and Stewart. The fighting soon escalated as adults joined the fray. In the days that followed, W.H. Barrett, the white owner of a neighboring grocery store, allegedly exploited the incident to undermine a successful competitor. Having grown resentful of the Black-owned business, he conspired to have Moss, McDowell and Stewart arrested, rallying a group of plainclothes police officers to the store. A fight ensued, and three officers were shot before Moss, McDowell, and Stewart were taken to jail.
However, the three men never stood trial. On March 9, a white mob descended on the county jail, dragged the three men from the cell, and murdered them.
The deaths of her friends inspired Wells to expose the inhumane practice of lynching in her column for The Free Speech. Contrary to the prevailing narrative, which described these extrajudicial murders as retributive justice for the sexual assault of white women by Black men, Wells demonstrated that most cases had nothing to do with sexual assault.
Instead, when Wells researched the circumstances that preceded lynchings, she found the Black men were frequently lynched for perceived slights against white people, for challenging the socioeconomic status quo (as did People’s Grocery), or––most often–– for engaging in consensual relationships with white women––a practice deemed immoral by southern anti-miscegenation laws.
It was for publishing these accusations that Wells’ office on Beale Street were destroyed.
Wells Moves North
Yet her exile from Memphis did not dampen her spirits. After moving north, Wells published what would become her most famous anti-lynching tract, Southern Horrors. In this pamphlet, Wells dismantled the myth of the sexually rapacious Black man used to justify extrajudicial murder. She also highlighted the hypocrisy of how sexual assault by white men on Black women—a practice dating back to slavery—continued to go largely unpunished.
Like the abolitionists of previous generations, Wells too went abroad to bolster support for her message. Between 1893 and 1894, she embarked on two speaking tours of the United Kingdom, inspiring the founding of the British Anti-Lynching Committee.
And yet, despite her growing fame across the Anglo-American world, Wells never became a national leader or “voice for Black America” in the vein of her friend and mentor Frederick Douglass. Her uncompromising message and her unpopularity even among liberal, northern whites made her a difficult figure to build a national movement around. As Bay writes, Wells was “most politically effective as an agitator rather than as an established race leader.” That role would be first filled by Booker T. Washington, and later by W.E.B. Du Bois.
Her uncompromising nature meant that, even as she inspired the creation of national organizations, she rarely felt at home within them. For example, Wells was instrumental in the founding of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), yet was never elected to any national leadership within the organization. Likewise, Wells was a founding member of the NAACP, yet she chafed under the organization’s more conservative approach toward activism and soon separated.
Chicago Years and Motherhood
In 1895, Wells settled in Chicago, marrying Ferdinand Barnett, an attorney and newspaper editor. Thereafter, she changed her name to Ida B. Wells-Barnett. She and Ferdinand had four children, whom they raised alongside two children from his previous marriage.
Gender and the societal expectations of both her peers and detractors, always loomed over Wells-Barnett’s life and work. As a young, unmarried woman in Memphis, she was targeted several times with unflattering rumors about her relationships with men—a taboo in an era defined by Victorian morality. Even when praising Wells-Barnett, her contemporaries often viewed her through the lens of gender. Fellow journalist T. Thomas Fortune wrote that “If Iola [Wells’ nom de plume] were a man, she would be a humming independent in politics.”
In this context, then, it is unsurprising that her marriage drew attention. Some of her friends, particularly those in the suffrage movement, were sharply critical of her decision to marry. Susan B. Anthony believed that marriage was inappropriate for “women like [Wells] with a special call to do special work.”
And indeed, Wells-Barnett’s own views towards marriage and motherhood shifted over time. In her own words, she came to see having children as “one of the most glorious advantages in the development of [one’s] own womanhood.” While she never relinquished her activist spirit, Wells-Barnett stepped back from national politics, choosing to focus on improving the local community where her children would learn and grow.
In Chicago, she founded the Negro Fellowship League (NFL), petitioned to establish a kindergarten for Black children, and protested the race riots that erupted across Illinois in the years following World War I.
In 1920, Wells-Barnett resolved to chronicle her life’s work. The impetus for this autobiographical project was a chance interaction that she had with a young Black woman months prior, who wanted to understand better Wells-Barnett’s connection to the anti-lynching movement. As Wells-Barnett recalls in the book’s preface, the young woman had been asked by her white peers at the local YWCA to name a female heroine, akin to Joan of Arc. When she named Wells-Barnett, the incredulous group asked her what Wells-Barnett had done to merit such distinction. While the young woman had “heard [Wells-Barnett] mentioned so often,” she was unable to recall anything that Wells-Barnett had actually done. She thus implored Wells-Barnett to “please tell me what it was you did, so the next time I am asked such a question I can give an intelligent answer?”
Ida B. Wells-Barnett was never able to fully answer this woman’s question. Her autobiography remained unfinished at her death in 1931—it stops abruptly mid-thought, indeed, mid-sentence, as she recalls an episode of anti-Black discrimination at Chicago’s Drake Hotel.
But in many ways, the unfinished nature of Wells-Barnett’s autobiography speaks to the life of incessant and unrelenting activism that she led. To her death, Wells-Barnett was never content to sit back and reflect on her past successes, when there was still justice work to be done.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett died on March 25, 1931 at the age of 68.
Trey Sullivan is a Content Fellow at the National Constitution Center and a PhD candidate in History at the University of Cambridge, where he is a Marshall Scholar.
Reform UK leader claims he is victim of ‘hit job’ as parliamentary standards commissioner investigates £5m donation
On the subject of Andy Burnham, the Financial Times is running a story today saying the access talks his team is holding with senior civil servants, intended to help Whitehall departments get ready to implement the new PM’s policy agenda, are being hindered by the fact that Burnham has not decided who will do the top cabinet jobs.
In the story, Lucy Fisher, George Parker and Anna Gross say:
Talks have not yet formally started with the Treasury and Burnham’s refusal to nominate a chancellor has complicated transition planning.
One Labour figure complained Burnham’s operation was “skeletal”, adding: “Access talks require a shadow cabinet. Burnham needs to nominate key people in advance or he cannot have meaningful talks” ….
Yes. And look – I’m not going to go into what we discussed privately, but everything I’ve seen from Andy publicly suggests that he knows that welfare reform is absolutely necessary … [because] it’s fundamentally about the life chances of a whole generation of young people.
And if we think the best option and best opportunity that we can gift as a country to a generation of young people is a life on benefits – are we serious?
My sense is that the appetite, both within the parliamentary Labour party and the new administration, will be absolutely up for doing this.
One of those is how we support young people. I will not defend an education system that is overly focused on the university route and does not lay out paths to technical qualifications for our young people. Too many young people get to year 10 at school, and they can’t see where school is taking them, because the system isn’t focusing on those young people.
And then, at 16, I believe we need the guarantee of a work placement for 16 to 18-year-olds, apprenticeships for every 16 to 18-year-old who wants one, and what I’ve done in Great Manchester is something that might be looked at more broadly, free bus travel for 16 to 18-year-olds, so that they can access those opportunities.
Continue reading...The newly launched project supports the implementation of the EU-Japan Digital Partnership.
July 6, 2026 — Q-Neko, the Nippon-Europe Quantum Koraborēshon, builds on existing Europe–Japan partnerships to establish a robust ecosystem for quantum accelerated High-Performance Computing (HPC+QC).
By fostering the development of common methodologies, benchmarks, and standards, the project Q-Neko aims to accelerate the adoption of quantum technologies and enhance global competitiveness in the field.
In this context, the project brings together European and Japanese experts to advance hybrid HPC+QC environments. Its activities focus on the development of software and integrated computing platforms for applications in CO₂ reduction, telecommunications, fluid dynamics, satellite image analysis, materials science, and other high-impact scientific and industrial domains, driving innovation and technological progress. The project also harnesses quantum-enhanced artificial intelligence, opening new frontiers in data-driven scientific discovery.
Through expert exchanges and collaborative joint research, Q-Neko enables scientists and engineers from both regions to tackle complex challenges and develop next-generation quantum computing solutions together. The project also contributes to the development of a skilled workforce, strengthening and reinforcing long-term capacity in hybrid HPC+QC research and applications. Further, a forward-looking technology roadmap will be produced to guide future strategic collaboration and alignment.
Throughout its duration, Q-Neko will leverage leading EuroHPC systems across Europe and connect them with emerging quantum hardware and simulators in Europe and Japan, including Japan’s ABCI-Q system.
More Details
The project is the result of the call HORIZON-EUROHPC-JU-2024-INCO-06.
Q-Neko is coordinated by CSC – IT Center for Science (Finland) and involves 10 European stakeholders and 5 Japanese partners: IQM Quantum Computers (Finland), Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany), Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (Germany), CEA (France), Thales (France), JIJ Europe Ltd (United Kingdom), Laboratoire National de Metrologie et d’Essais (LNE) (France), VSB – Technical University of Ostrava (Czech Republic), QunaSys Denmark APS (Denmark), and Aalto University (Finland). Japanese partners include National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), QunaSys Inc., JIJ Inc. Ltd, Chodai Co., Ltd., and KDDI Research, Inc..
The consortium will collaborate closely, sharing knowledge, expertise, and resources to achieve its objectives. Its outcomes are expected to support the creation of new technologies, products, and services while contributing to the growth of European and Japanese economies.
Funded by the Horizon Europe funding program with around EUR 4 million, and co-funded by Japan’s Cross‑ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP), the project Q-Neko started on January 1, 2026 and will run for 36 months.
More from HPCwire
Source: EuroHPC JU
The post EuroHPC: Q-Neko Project Advances Europe-Japan Quantum HPC Collaboration appeared first on HPCwire.
Zelenskyy calls for ‘strong decisions’ at talks after attack on Kyiv and surrounding region exposes air defence gaps
A wave of Russian missiles and drones has struck across Ukraine, killing 21 people, and heavily damaging apartment blocks and other buildings, in an attack on the eve of a Nato summit in Turkey that has exposed widening gaps in Ukraine’s air defences.
Fifteen people were killed in Kyiv, Russia’s main target, and 56 others were injured in the attacks early on Monday, according to the city’s administrative head, Tymur Tkachenko.
Continue reading...Ukraine’s president makes plea ahead of summit this week in Ankara where he is due to meet Trump on the sidelines
Meanwhile, the UK has just sanctioned Russian actors involved in researching, developing and producing the novichok nerve agent and the lethal toxic Epibatidine, used in the Salisbury attack and the poisoning of Alexei Navalny.
Among those sanctions are SC Signal, a Russian state scientific research institute, as well as three individuals researching novichok and Epibatidine.
“Russia’s repeated use of chemical weapons is a sickening violation of international law and a direct threat to global security.
From the use of novichok nerve agents in Salisbury to Epibatidine in Siberia, poisoning Dawn Sturgess and Alexei Navalny, Russia continues to use barbaric tools to inflict death and suffering on innocent civilians, including in Ukraine.
Continue reading...
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Ten Democratic lawmakers told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a letter Sunday that his gutting of a program focused on protecting civilians is a leadership failure that imperils service members and erodes the military’s moral standing.
Led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the joint letter echoed concerns raised by a recent Defense Department inspector general report that described civilian protection efforts as largely “inactive.” Lawmakers also cited reporting by ProPublica and other news outlets in pushing to preserve the framework known as civilian harm mitigation and response, or CHMR.
“The Trump administration — potentially in violation of federal law — has defunded and impeded civilian protection efforts,” the lawmakers asserted.
A Pentagon spokesperson declined to answer questions from ProPublica, noting: “As with all congressional correspondence, the Department will respond directly to the authors.”
The retreat from civilian protection drew global attention in February when an apparent U.S. strike killed dozens of children and teachers at a school on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran — an incident the Pentagon says is under investigation.
Beyond those deaths, conflict monitoring groups have recorded a surge in reports of civilian casualties, most notably in Somalia and Yemen, which have both seen a dramatic increase in U.S. strikes under the second Trump administration.
In March, ProPublica interviewed current and former national security officials across party lines who said the discarding of civilian protections is part of a broader remaking of the military around two key principles: more aggression, less accountability.
The harm mitigation leadership, housed in a specialized Civilian Protection Center of Excellence mandated by Congress in 2022, aimed to reduce the number of civilian casualties of U.S. military operations, a problem that has spanned administrations in the post-9/11 “forever wars.”
The idea was to embed prevention specialists within targeting teams and foster a culture that prioritizes civilian security in accordance with U.S. law and international rules of war. Senior military leaders have publicly supported the mission, expressing both a moral obligation to safeguard civilian life and a necessity to hit their intended targets.
The program was still being rolled out when momentum halted under Hegseth.
In the spring of 2025, as U.S. operations in Yemen reportedly killed dozens of civilians, the Defense Department was scrapping the CHMR mission as out of step with Hegseth’s “lethality” doctrine, according to current and former staffers. Hegseth repeatedly has expressed disdain for guardrails he describes as hindrances to combat forces.
By the time of the Iran school strike, current and former personnel told ProPublica, the protection mission had been slashed by about 90%, leaving just a handful of staffers to monitor civilian harm issues even as the Defense Department accelerated the strike tempo across swaths of Africa and the Middle East.
Militant groups exploit civilian casualties to gain recruits and support, a practice retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has called “insurgent math”: For every innocent killed, the theory goes, at least 10 new enemies are created.
“The Trump administration’s military adventurism overseas, combined with its obvious disregard for civilians, do not make the American people or our service members safer,” the 10 Democrats said in their letter to Hegseth.
Three signees are military veterans: Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado.
The letter ended with 20 questions the lawmakers want answered by July 9, including requests for the latest CHMR staffing and funding numbers, and an explanation for why the department wasn’t cooperative with the inspector general’s inquiry.
Current and former CHMR personnel said it’s impossible to know whether a more robust prevention team could’ve helped the military avoid civilian casualties in Yemen and Iran. But they said the program could have made a difference, providing transparency and immediate inquiries into civilian deaths.
Within days of the strike on the elementary school adjacent to an Iranian military compound in Minab, open-source investigative outlets surfaced video showing a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile likely was responsible. The Washington Post, citing officials familiar with the Minab inquiry, reported that the school was on a U.S. target list and “may have been mistaken for a military site.”
Nearly five months later, the Trump administration has yet to explain what happened.
“The command investigation will take as long as necessary to address all the matters surrounding this incident,” Hegseth said in March.
Annie Shiel, U.S. director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, which advocates for the protection of noncombatants in warfare, said congressional support is “critical” at a moment when the CHMR mission hangs in the balance.
“The department is violating U.S. laws and policies that have grown out of hard-learned lessons from past wars and garnered bipartisan support across multiple administrations,” Shiel said.
Historically, the military’s prioritizing of civilian protection has followed a pattern, analysts say: A catastrophic incident kills civilians, the Pentagon pledges reviews and reforms, the issue recedes from view and oversight slips until the next disaster.
During the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, a missile strike in Kabul killed an aid worker and nine of his relatives, including seven children. Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin apologized and said the department would “endeavor to learn from this horrible mistake.”
That incident, along with a New York Times investigation into deaths from U.S. airstrikes, spurred the adoption of the civilian harm mitigation and response action plan in 2022. Proponents didn’t view the plan as a cure-all but called it a step toward breaking the cycle of intermittent attention by making civilian protection a year-round mission.
Now that mission is in limbo, and, according to the May inspector general’s report, defense leadership “withheld access” to department tools that track the program’s implementation.
“You are in violation of the law right now on civilian harm,” Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., told Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll at a hearing in May. “I’d like to know either A. what the explanation is for why you think it’s OK for you to ignore the law that this Congress passes or B. what you’re planning to do to fix that problem.”
The new letter comes as critics, including some Republicans and veteran commanders, grow increasingly vocal about Hegseth’s attempts to overhaul the Department of Defense, which the Trump administration refers to as the Department of War.
The secretary’s sweeping terminations of high-ranking officers without public explanation has drawn bipartisan criticism and accusations that the moves are rooted in political vengeance, racism and bias against women. Hegseth has repeatedly condemned military officers for comments lauding diversity, saying in one speech, “We became ‘the woke department.’ … We’re done with that shit.”
Hegseth has said that out of respect for the officers he won’t speak about why they were fired. He said it was “very difficult to change the culture of a department that was destroyed by the wrong perspectives with the same officers that were there.”
Public rebukes followed Hegseth’s decision last month to effectively fire Gen. Chris Donahue, a respected four-star commander who came up the ranks through the special forces. In 2023, Donahue said that any concerns over wokeness were “BS,” adding: “We’re focused on people, war-fighting and making sure that we’re prepared for the next fight. There ain’t no ‘woke’ here.”
The post Amid Mounting War Casualties, Pete Hegseth “Defunded and Impeded” Efforts to Protect Civilians, Lawmakers Say appeared first on ProPublica.
Americans now spend an average of 35 minutes a day socializing, down from 45 minutes two decades ago, according to American Time Use Survey data. The decline spans all age groups but is sharpest among 15- to 24-year-olds, whose daily socializing has fallen from about an hour to 35 minutes. Axios reports: Sociologists and psychologists point to several trends driving this phenomenon, which Substack writer Derek Thompson dubbed "The Anti-Social Century" in the Atlantic last year. We're all on our smartphones, often interacting through screens instead of face to face -- even though social media is no substitute for spending time together in person. Teens, in particular, spend an average of 4.8 hours a day on apps like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, according to Gallup. The shift to remote work -- and life -- during the pandemic has persisted, keeping more of us homebound. Longer-term trends are reshaping daily life in ways that make isolation easier. Homes are bigger and more comfortable, with larger TVs. Virtually every restaurant is on a food delivery app, making it easier than ever to stay in. Also contributing to the trend is the decline of gathering spaces, Axios' Avery Lotz writes. A 2025 report from CU Boulder researchers uncovered widespread closures of all kinds of hangout spots -- from libraries to coffee shops to museums -- in the last decade or so. Churches are also shuttering at unprecedented rates, Axios' Russell Contreras reports.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Millions join funeral procession in capital of Tehran to mourn Khamenei who was kiled in US-Israel airstrikes in February
Lebanese state media said an Israeli strike on a car in the country’s south on Monday killed four people, including three women, despite a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said a school principal, her mother, a foreign female domestic worker and a male Syrian worker were killed when “an Israeli drone targeted the car” they were travelling in as they returned from inspecting their family home in Nabatieh al-Fawqa.
Continue reading...Arrival of endangered cats, including rare white cub, revitalises team straining under fuel and medicine shortages
For the Cuban zookeeper Ángel Cordero, the sight of four Bengal tiger cubs playing in a cage at the Cuban national zoo is a small miracle on an island stifled by shortages of fuel, medicine and days-long power outages.
The birth of these endangered big cats – including an exceedingly rare white tiger – has revitalised a team of zoo workers, he said.
Continue reading...European governing body’s dramatic move could have major implications for the future of the sport
Perhaps the only globally renowned figure who has been more conspicuous by his absence at this World Cup tournament than Donald Trump is the Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin, although both men have more than made up for their silence over the past 24 hours.
By endorsing a statement in which Uefa accused Fifa of crossing “a red line” in making the “incomprehensible and unjustifiable” decision to lift the USA striker Folarin Balogun’s suspension for the last-16 tie with Belgium on Monday, Ceferin has effectively put European football on a war footing with the world governing body, a dramatic move that could have major implications for the future of the sport.
Continue reading...Years of unremitting disasters have convinced me not to go to sleep with hope in your heart. But that footballing victory took me back to more innocent times
When I went to bed on Sunday, football commentators were killing time waiting for the England match by talking about Donald Trump, Fifa president Gianni Infantino and Folarin Balogun’s red card, waived for the US because of reasons. None of the available words – “unacceptable”, “cheaty”, “absolutely stinks” – covered it. There’s no chance of Trump’s US playing nicely in an international tournament, especially when it’s hosting most of it. Does the US just get the trophy, whatever happens? Do they fashion two trophies, one for the winner and one for most winning host?
It was all a big deal for geopolitics, but for the more immediate matter of how to take seriously a competition in which there were no longer rules, it wasn’t the end of the world. Whatever happened, it definitely wouldn’t end in a showdown between the US and the UK, fixed in advance by a president determined to celebrate 250 years in style. Because, by tomorrow, I thought, England would be out. If we’ve learned anything from the past decade, it’s not to go to sleep waiting for news. Whatever the dawn breaks over will be bad.
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Continue reading...July 6, 2026 — Today’s quantum devices often look clean and well-controlled, but the physics inside is far richer and less forgiving. Researchers at Jülich, together with Nobel laureate John M. Martinis and collaborators at MIT, have developed a new framework to tame these hidden interactions.
Credit: Shutterstock
A superconducting quantum processor may look like a clean, well-ordered grid of qubits. Inside the chip, however, the physics is far more crowded. Each qubit can interact not only with its intended neighbors, but also with nearby –and even more distant—qubits through hidden stray couplings and many-body effects. These unwanted “conversations” can distort quantum states, degrade quantum-gate performance, and push the processor away from the behavior assumed by an ideal quantum algorithm.
With the aim of improving quantum-gate performance, researchers at Quantum Device Theory (QDT) Group led by Dr. Mohammad Ansari at Forschungszentrum Jülich present a scalable theoretical framework for modeling large superconducting quantum processors with high physical fidelity. The findings were published in npj Quantum Information.
Modeling Google’s Sycamore Processor with High Fidelity
The new framework captures subtle circuit details that are usually simplified or ignored in simulations. With this precision hidden interaction landscapes becomes visible, showing researchers how stray couplings can be suppress or engineered and controlled.
The team tested its theory on Google’s Sycamore chip, the processor used in 2019 to demonstrate quantum supremacy over a classical computer for the first time. Despite that milestone, the microscopic reasons why gate performance can be so difficult to improve have remained partly hidden.
The new theory reveals strong, harmful interactions inside the Sycamore chip in the Processor Error Tomography, or namely PET scan. This helps to understand how previously overlooked couplings limit performance and how future processors can be designed to tame them.
New Framework Enables Predictive Design
The study reveals distinct operating regimes, ranging from computationally stable behavior to highly complex dynamics dominated by many-body interactions. While the latter may be unsuitable for quantum computing, it offers a rich arena for exploring many-body physics. that is not suitable for computing yet interesting for many-body physics. Crucially, even small changes in device parameters can shift the processor into either one of these regimes, with immediate consequences for performance.
The message is clear: hidden interactions are not small correction, but a fundamental design constraint for scalable quantum hardware. The framework enables predictive modeling of quantum processors before they are built. By producing detailed interaction maps, researchers can test layouts, identify error sources, and optimize system parameters at the design stage, rather than relying on costly trial-and-error after fabrication.
International Collaboration
The scientific work was carried out by Dr. Mohammad Ansari’s Quantum Device Theory (QDT) group at the Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI-12) of Forschungszentrum Jülich, in collaboration with Nobel Laureate Prof. John M. Martinis of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Chloé Vignes, a QDT alumna now pursuing doctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Original Publication
X. Xu, K. Kaur, C. Vignes, J. M. Martinis, M. H. Ansari,
Surface-code hardware Hamiltonian
npj Quantum Inf (2026), DOI: 10.1038/s41534-026-01241-y
Source: Forschungszentrum Jülich
The post Jülich Study Maps Hidden Qubit Interactions in Google’s Sycamore Processor appeared first on HPCwire.
Seedance 2.5 allows you to create 30-second videos with a single prompt.
Even as the cost of electronics rises, these phones provide everything you need without spending a ton of money.
Parts of 2018’s Golden Generation still remain, but there are more than enough good players in this Belgian side to give the US headaches
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The whiff of unfulfilment lingers around Belgium. The Golden Generation – and the fact it never quite achieved what it might have done – has dominated coverage of their last three tournaments. This perhaps isn’t quite fair – either on those who were part of that group or those who have followed.
Beating Brazil in the quarter-final to reach the semi-final in Russia 2018 was a fine achievement, but that side featuring Vincent Kompany, Eden Hazard, Thibaut Courtois, Romelu Lukaku and Kevin De Bruyne then lost 1-0 to France in the semi. The squad was good enough to win a tournament, but that was as close as they came. Courtois, Lukaku, De Bruyne, Axel Witsel and the right-back Thomas Meunier have all endured since 2018. The 2026 Belgium squad is not, as 2022 felt, the Golden Generation redux, just a little bit older and a little bit more tired. A new wave is emerging and, while the likes of Leandro Trossard, Youri Tielemans, Jérémy Doku and Charles De Ketelaere may not have quite the star quality of the previous generation, they’re still decent players – perhaps not World Cup winners, but certainly not to be dismissed. And remember, this is Belgium, a country of just under 12 million; it’s not realistic to think it can consistently produce potential world champions.
This is an extract from Soccer Desk: World Cup edition, a newsletter from the Guardian US that will run regularly during the tournament. Subscribe for free here.
Continue reading...ECHR rules that prosecutor’s remarks perpetuated ‘sexist stereotypes’ and downplayed gender violence
The European court of human rights has ordered the Italian state to pay compensation to a woman whose allegations of repeated rape by her partner were dismissed by a prosecutor as “normal” for men who struggle to overcome resistance from “tired” women.
The court ruled that the remarks perpetuated “sexist stereotypes” and downplayed gender violence, resulting in the woman being subjected to further victimisation.
Continue reading...Seaplane carrying eight people made ‘hard landing’ and was towed back to dock, according to the fire department
A seaplane made a rough landing in New York City’s East River on Sunday, alarming bystanders and resulting in two minor injuries, according to city authorities.
The seaplane carrying eight people made a “hard landing” at about noon, according to the New York City fire department. The plane made it upright and was towed back to dock, the department said.
Continue reading...Trump says he asked Fifa to review red card
Infantino confirms Trump called over Balogun
US president insists he did not pressure Fifa
Donald Trump said on Monday that he personally asked Fifa president Gianni Infantino to review the red card shown to USA striker Folarin Balogun, saying he believed the dismissal was unfair but insisting he did not pressure football’s governing body to overturn the suspension.
The intervention by the president of a World Cup host nation has thrust Fifa’s disciplinary process into the spotlight and prompted an angry response from Belgium, who face the USA on Monday night for a place in the quarter-finals.
Continue reading...Australia plans to double fines for social media platforms that fail to keep under-16s off restricted services, after regulators found 70% of children with accounts remained active three months after the ban took effect. The government says the changes will also give the eSafety Commissioner more power to demand information from platforms and age-assurance providers as teens continue finding ways around the law. Euronews reports: The government said Sunday it would introduce draft legislation this week doubling the maximum penalty to 99 million Australian dollars (63 million euros) for platforms -- including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok -- that do not take reasonable steps to comply with the ban, which became law on 10 December. Communications Minister Anika Wells blamed the platforms directly. "We can all agree we would like the scheme to work better than it is currently, but that is on Big Tech taking the Mickey," she said, speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corp on Monday. Wells added that she had received monthly updates from the online safety regulator since March and "we are not seeing improvements." The amendments would also expand the powers of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to demand information and documents from platforms -- and from third parties such as age assurance technology providers -- to test claims made by companies about how under-16s continued to circumvent the ban. The government had initially reported more than 5 million children had accounts removed, deactivated or restricted after the legislation passed. But eSafety found in March that 70% of children who held accounts on restricted platforms on the day the ban took effect remained active on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. Inman Grant said in April she was considering court action against those platforms and YouTube, alleging they were not taking reasonable steps to exclude children. She said she was satisfied with progress made by the remaining restricted platforms: X, Kick, Reddit, Threads and Twitch. Senior opposition lawmaker Jane Hume said her party would consider supporting the reforms, but pinned blame on the original legislation. "The legislation was clearly undercooked in the first place. The eSafety Commissioner wasn't given the powers to be able to pursue these Big Tech companies," she said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A "purple" air quality alert was issued for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas, on Sunday, meaning pollution reached levels considered "very unhealthy."
Starting July 4, people can deposit money into the new tax-deferred investment accounts, with eligible children receiving a $1,000 government contribution.
Carroll was awarded damages after New York jury concluded Trump sexually abused her, then defamed her after she publicly described the attack
Donald Trump’s latest attempt to delay payment of a $5.8m judgment for defaming a magazine columnist whom a jury determined he sexually abused has been emphatically rejected by a federal court judge.
In a single-sentence 4 July order, US district Judge Lewis Kaplan denied the president’s request for more time to pay the civil judgment owed to E Jean Carroll, who was awarded the damages after a New York jury concluded that Trump sexually abused her in 1996 – then defamed her after she publicly described the attack in 2019.
Continue reading...US president rings bell from White House and showcases initiative that gives children a $1,000 investment account
Donald Trump rang the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq from the White House to mark the first trading day for Trump accounts, a government initiative that provides children with a $1,000 investment account.
The US president hosted leaders from the NYSE and the Nasdaq stock exchange at the Oval Office for a press conference on Monday morning. It is the first joint opening of the exchanges, and the first time the bell had been rung at the White House.
Continue reading...@lia for 88kg (which is around 200 pounds) I would suggest a GT instead. The PintX would struggle a bit..
NATO summit is Europe’s moment to turn crisis into opportunity Expert comment LToremark
Erosion of public trust in US leadership and the growing Russian threat are opportunities for European NATO allies to build public support for fast and decisive action on defence.
This week’s NATO summit in Ankara takes place at a pivotal moment in the alliance’s evolution – and for US–Europe relations.
In Ankara, the agenda will rightly focus on defence spending targets and score cards for national budget commitments and appropriations. There will be an accounting of who has signed (and paid for) big defence contracts and who is stuck at the political rhetoric stage. Like the businessman he is, US President Donald Trump will want to see concrete numbers from allies to prove there is action behind the 2025 Hague summit’s target of 5 per cent GDP spending on defence. If last year’s summit was about setting ambitious new targets, this summit will be about delivering on those promises.
Beyond delivering on commitments, NATO faces another key challenge. Recent announcements of reduced US defence presence combined with President Trump’s disparaging rhetoric on NATO and threats to take Greenland has not only damaged political relations but has also affected European public opinion on US leadership and reliability. This erosion of trust undoubtedly poses a challenge but is also an opportunity for European governments to build public understanding of and support for the funding and process changes needed to meet ambitious defence goals.
Hanging over the summit are two impending force posture shifts changing the landscape of European security. One is America’s recently announced reduction of troop numbers and critical capabilities in Europe. The other is Russia’s upgrade of installations, planned manpower, and increasing hybrid operations along NATO’s border.
The US informed European officials in May that it would gradually withdraw military capabilities from NATO – including fighter jets, strategic bombers and warships. The announcement is short on details and continues to be caught in a whirlwind of gossip about internal Trump administration battles over the scale and timing of the changes. According to a recent report, NATO’s top commander has stated that European allies have already filled most of the gaps left by US reductions and are exploring workarounds for the remaining shortfalls. Announcements about these changes are expected at the Ankara summit but the devil is in the details. European allies currently do not have the scale of capabilities rumoured to be on the chopping block. And the fear that the US will leave NATO altogether remains. Should this happen, experts estimate it could take up to 25 years to fill the gap created.
In Ankara, European leaders should build consensus around a more urgent approach to the new reality and work to overcome bureaucratic processes and public attitudes that stymy quick action on defence plans.
This is even more important as Russia does not face domestic push back on military expenditures. The second issue looming over the Ankara summit will be Russia’s plans for a massive military build-up along NATO’s eastern border and its intensifying hybrid warfare against NATO and European targets. While Moscow’s war campaign against Ukraine has failed to achieve its military goals, Russia is now rooted in a war economy, fielding war-tested troops and preparing for a prolonged period of conflict. The Kremlin is taking steps towards building a military that seeks to have 1.5 million military service personnel and 17 new manoeuvre divisions. Its primary focus is conflict with NATO.
Recent discussions in Western capitals that the pressure on Russia’s economy, from successful Ukrainian drone strikes to international sanctions, is reaching an inflection point for Moscow are perhaps comforting but miss the point. For Russia, NATO’s expansion in the Nordics and full support for Ukraine are evergreen existential threats. And the Kremlin now sees that the US is distracted in other parts of the world and deprioritizing Europe.
Against the backdrop of Russia’s build-up, European leaders should view the twin crises of reduced US commitment and the erosion of trust in American leadership as opportunities to rally more urgent action on defence modernization.
According to data from Pew Research Center, European views of the US and Donald Trump are especially negative. Across 10 countries polled, a median of 81 per cent say they lack confidence in him doing the right thing regarding world affairs. This sentiment can be used to motivate legislatures and to reform bureaucracies to achieve national defence goals.
In Ankara, European allies should align to keep the United States engaged while building a modern European security architecture that better meets today’s threats and is less dependent on American assets. Three key actions will support this agenda.
First, get the public narrative right. European publics need to unify around a common understanding of Putin’s mindset, Trump’s withdrawal, and what is truly needed from Europe to keep the peace. Panic is not the answer; revitalized budgets and coordinated, timely defence investments are. Effective communication with their publics is one of NATO’s and European leaders’ most important strategic instruments.
Second, look to the Nordic defence industry model and US moves to use AI in procurement processes to help accomplish more efficient, forward-looking defence build-ups. By focusing on consistent cooperation with industry – from defining needs to developing and procuring new equipment – the Nordic nations are putting smart, integrated defence spending at the centre of their security and budget priorities. The smart use of AI could streamline procurement processes and production, shortening delivery timelines for needed capabilities.
U.K. budget airline has struck a deal to be acquired after rejecting four previous offers by the American investment firm.
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
England’s victory against Mexico in the World Cup last night was a win for the UK’s high streets too – footfall was up 143.6% year-on-year between midnight and 6am, according to figures from the monitoring company MRI Software (although it worth noting that there was no World Cup match at that time last year).
Footfall in market towns was up 175.5%, and in historic towns it was up 159.9%, it found.
Jenni Matthews, a retail analyst at MRI, said:
For the hospitality sector, this is exactly the kind of result they’ll have been hoping for. At a time when consumers remain selective about where they spend, the World Cup is proving to be a powerful footfall driver, creating a welcome boost for the night-time, and local economy.
As England prepares for its next game, we expect these uplifts to gather momentum, especially as they enter the quarter finals. For retailers and operators, the game plan is clear: align staffing, promotions and trading hours with key matches to make the most of the increased footfall, longer dwell times and celebratory spending that major sporting moments can bring.
The money and credit data continue to support the picture that consumers are willing to reduce their saving rate to smooth consumption. Replacement demand for vehicles also likely remains strong too. So, we think that car registrations will continue to rise slowly over the coming year.
Demand for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles continues to support overall registration numbers. Battery-powered electric vehicle registrations rose by 35% year-over-year in June, up from a 34.2% gain in May, while hybrid vehicle registrations rose by 25.3%, after posting a 23.9% gain in May.
Continue reading...The city’s tourism board estimated 750,000 visitors would visit over the course of the World Cup
As Seattle’s month-long role as a host city for the Fifa Men’s World Cup draws to a close with a knockout match between the United States and Belgium, local match-day scenes, business boosters and media dispatches have projected an image of a sports-fueled boom town.
On match days, hordes of locals and visitors have packed the city’s waterfront and official watch parties, shattering public-transit records and buoying nearby beer sales. Local soccer-focused mainstays like the George & Dragon Pub have reported “incredible” increases in business. And, pointing to positive reporting by the Guardian and other international newspapers, Seattle’s business lobby says the city has “performed very, very well on the world stage”.
Continue reading...Guest column: Tony Fadell helped make the Mac, iPod, iPhone and smart home revolutions happen. The next platform war is here, he says, and it's for the AI assistant that will know you best.
Okay so I want to upgrade to the top of the top when it comes to trail riding.
I live en Denmark so buying from USA directly will double the cost just it Import and taxes...
So atm I just look at the FM GT-s rally XL board.
But the X7 supercharged from fungineers just looks very tempting too (but will be a hassel in the import)
So reddit, what will you tell me is the best choice to do ? 😄 I'm open for anything
Note.
I'm also looking at the Atom board just for the fun of it.
We want to know which mobile carrier you'd recommend to a friend.
How has the Iran war changed Gulf security? 22 July 2026 — 15:00 TO 16:00 BST Anonymous (not verified) Online
Hear from experts how Gulf capitals are rethinking their security partnerships and defence technologies after the war.
The US–Israel war with Iran has exposed weaknesses in Gulf security and triggered a reassessment of defence strategies. Questions over external guarantees and partner roles are shaping new approaches. This shift is driving interest in regional integration and new technologies as states adapt to a changing security landscape.The US–Israel war with Iran has exposed weaknesses in Gulf security and triggered a reassessment of defence strategies. Questions over external guarantees and partner roles are shaping new approaches. This shift is driving interest in regional integration and new technologies as states adapt to a changing security landscape.
This event discusses:
Hussam Abu Safiya faces ‘tangible danger to his life’ following 18 months in prison without charge or trial
One of Gaza’s most prominent doctors is almost unrecognisable because of severe injuries inflicted in Israeli detention, his lawyer has said, and faces “tangible danger to his life” after being held for 18 months without charge or trial.
Hussam Abu Safiya met his lawyer on 2 July, after a transfer to Israel’s notorious underground Rakefet prison in late June. He had difficulty breathing and speaking continuously, was so weak he struggled to sit upright, and repeatedly seemed on the verge of losing consciousness, said his lawyer, Nasser Odeh.
Continue reading...Initial results lay the groundwork for key objective of the United States Genesis Mission
YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, New York, July 6, 2026 — A team of scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Cleveland Clinic, and IBM, have calculated nine molecular configurations of a promising material to produce fuel for fusion energy – the first-known instance of such computations on quantum computers.
Credit: IBM
Such calculations, demonstrated in a new paper published on arXiv, are computationally challenging for classical computers to scale when working alone. They are a fundamental step towards optimizing the production and extraction of tritium – an extremely rare material in nature that is necessary to produce fusion energy with most of the proposed machines. Ensuring adequate supplies of tritium has long been a barrier to realizing the promise of clean and abundant energy from fusion power plants, and solving this issue is a key objective of the United States Department of Energy’s (DOE) Genesis Mission.
Quantum computers are well-suited to compute the atomic-level chemistry of a liquid salt that contains fluorine, lithium, and beryllium (FLiBe), one of the leading candidate materials for extracting tritium fuel in fusion reactors. To compute different configurations of clusters of FLiBe, the team used the same quantum-centric supercomputing techniques now being applied to 12,635-atom protein simulations with Cleveland Clinic. These methods can calculate the quantum behavior of electrons in complex materials, complementing and enhancing the capabilities of classical supercomputers and algorithms.
“In order to demonstrate the capabilities catalyzed by the Genesis Mission, we have built a team of leading experts across seven DOE national labs, four universities, three industry partners, and Cleveland Clinic to pursue a multi-pronged discovery cycle aimed at optimizing tritium production in molten salt fusion blanket materials,” said Tom Beck, Section Head for Science Engagement in the Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate at ORNL. “Quantum computers, such as those built by IBM and enhanced by AI and exascale computing, are key tools that accelerate the discovery and design cycles needed to produce sufficient tritium to fuel fusion reactors.”
“This work builds on our advances in simulating complex biological systems at scale, including proteins spanning 12,635 atoms and extends those techniques into materials science to explore fusion-relevant systems with greater accuracy and efficiency,” said corresponding author Kenneth Merz, PhD, staff scientist at Cleveland Clinic. “At Cleveland Clinic, we are focused on applying advanced technologies to deepen scientific understanding and accelerate discovery. This collaboration reflects the growing importance of quantum computing, AI, and high-performance computing as tools for scientific inquiry. By bringing these technologies together, researchers can provide solutions to challenging real-world problems with greater speed and precision.”
“Bringing quantum, AI, and classical computing together is essential to tackling our society’s most fundamental scientific challenges – unlocking capabilities which none of these paradigms can access alone,” said Jerry Chow, CTO of Quantum-Centric Supercomputing at IBM. “These results add to mounting evidence that quantum-centric supercomputing is now a practical scientific tool for problems that have long challenged chemists, engineers, and materials scientists. As quantum computers scale, the path ahead is promising.”
The Tritium Challenge at the Heart of Fusion Energy
The exploration aligns with the Genesis Mission’s broader goal to unify high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence, and quantum computing with the country’s major scientific instruments across the DOE’s 17 national laboratories to accelerate scientific discovery. As one of the mission’s industry collaborators, IBM is working with its partners to explore how quantum-centric supercomputing – which brings together CPUs, GPUs, and QPUs to solve problems they cannot tackle alone – could help to address critical national challenges, including precisely modeling complex material interactions to help unlock a fuel supply for widespread, fully working fusion power plants.
Optimizing the best recipe for FLiBe – whose composition is dynamically changing under intense neutron radiation, extreme heat, and magnetic fields – is one of the hardest science and engineering challenges today. It requires extensive study of its quantum mechanical properties including energetics, stability, and interaction with tritium to understand how it will perform multiple functions, including that of tritium breeding material at very hot temperatures. Today, such research is only possible through difficult and expensive experimentation, or through classical computing approximation methods that can lack accuracy.
To compute energies of different FLiBe conformations with and without tritium, the team used quantum-centric supercomputing to enable quantum and classical computers to work together – in which the parts of a problem that can be broken down into quantum circuits are solved on a quantum computer. This allowed the team to more precisely determine the electronic structure of the material and how its atoms behave, particularly how strongly they bind tritium at a fundamental molecular level. In turn, the scientists could identify the range of configurations the atoms moved through and extract properties – such as how strongly and through which mechanism each configuration binds tritium – that would otherwise remain hidden.
The Road Ahead
The collaboration is ongoing, aiming to reduce the time it takes for data to transfer between quantum and classical resources and to scale the size of molecular interactions simulated. Eventually, the team hopes the fusion energy ecosystem will be able to use this workflow directly to design and verify their own materials.
This work adds to a growing body of 2026 milestones demonstrating IBM quantum computers as useful scientific tools – including simulating real magnetic materials, creating a never-before-seen half-Möbius molecule, and modeling proteins relevant to biological research that span up to 12,635 atoms.
For more about this research, please read the blog: https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/molten-salts-fusion-quantum.
Source: IBM
The post IBM, ORNL and Cleveland Clinic Model Fusion Fuel Material on Quantum Computers appeared first on HPCwire.
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Will NATO be convinced by the UK Defence Investment Plan? Expert comment jon.wallace
A tortuous process has produced a plan that does not set a clear path towards meeting the UK’s defence expenditure targets. But it includes many elements which will make the UK a more attractive collaborative partner for NATO allies.
The UK Government’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP) was finally published last week to predictably mixed reviews from the British media and commentariat. It is the outcome of a tortuous process begun with the launch of a ‘first-of-its-kind’, externally-led Strategic Defence Review (SDR) in mid-July 2024 – one that was dogged from the start by an unclear budgetary envelope.
The DIP does not set a visible trajectory towards achieving the government’s commitment to spend 3 per cent of GDP on defence in the next Parliament or to meet the 2025 NATO Hague Summit’s agreement to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP on core defence by 2035. And even for the remaining years of this Parliament, the plan appears to contain a £1.2 billion per year funding shortfall. That money will need to be found.
Protracted deliberations between the Ministry of Defence (MOD), the Treasury and No 10 over the size and shape of the future defence programme are nothing new. But this time they were uniquely public and theatrical – watched with concern not only by observers in the UK but among key allies and partners.
The government should ensure that such a conceptually flawed process is also the last-of-its-kind.
The DIP says that it is built around three key areas: ‘Transforming the Armed Forces’; ‘Backing British’ [technology, industry and skills]; and ‘Stepping up UK leadership’. The last will be of particular interest to the UK’s NATO allies, as the US announces plans to reduce its conventional forces in Europe and President Donald Trump continues to criticize the organization. European countries must step up to fill the gaps left by the US. How credible does UK leadership look, as the NATO summit convenes this week?
In terms of the raw numbers, the UK’s once vaunted status as the top defence spender in Europe has gone. By 2030, Germany plans to spend €188.4 billion – 3.7 per cent of GDP – twice the UK figure of £79.1 billion (2.7 per cent of GDP). The UK now appears to be falling (slightly) behind France too. But it is still one of NATO’s biggest spenders, so how it spends its money is important and influential. On this, two points stand out.
First, the DIP involves a significant shift in spending towards novel technologies including considerably more on autonomous systems, digital infrastructure, drones and the ‘hybrid navy’. It also better reflects the realities of contemporary warfare, as practised by Russia and Iran, by enhancing investment in integrated air and missile defence.
And it deliberately retains increasing levels of a central contingency holding of unallocated money – allowing the MOD to respond more easily to future developments in the rapidly evolving character of warfare. This is something which previous UK defence planners often aspired to but rarely achieved. While the sharp growth in Germany’s defence expenditure is welcome, commentators have noted that relatively little of it is for ‘new-paradigm systems’.
Second, the DIP is unashamedly international in content and tone. The UK has long collaborated with the US and European allies on many of its biggest defence programmes. Despite this – and a commitment in 2015’s Strategic Defence & Security Review to make UK Defence ‘international by design’ – previous UK governments have too often been transactional and case-by-case in their approach.
Building on the SDR’s restatement of the importance of international collaboration, the DIP finally tries to take a more strategic approach, outlining a clear policy preference for ‘further develop[ing] capability co-operation with our closest allies and partners’, stating that ‘international partnerships will be considered from the start of capability development’. The plan also recognizes that such collaboration is a cornerstone of wider international engagement, particularly in the Euro-Atlantic, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific.
Fittingly, two big winners from the DIP are collaborative programmes: the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) to build a next generation fighter jet, a partnership with Italy and Japan; and AUKUS, a nuclear-powered submarine and novel technologies agreement between the UK, US and Australia. There are further commitments: to work with Germany on deep precision strike weapons and close support artillery; and to explore a new amphibious combined fleet with the Netherlands.
Such commitments have previously been hampered by bureaucratic structures and processes that clumsily privilege financial accountability over strategic vision.
This time, the policy aspiration is supported by a new structure – the National Armaments Director Group (NADG) – which could be seen as the UK’s belated counterpart of France’s formidable Direction Générale de L’armament.
The NADG will take a portfolio (rather than case-by-case) approach to acquiring capabilities – which should allow a more flexible approach to international collaboration – and will have a strong international pillar.
Much of the rest of the DIP will be of limited interest to NATO partners. But one other point is notable: the revised defence spending profile over the next four years shows a relatively small but tangible increase in ‘Resource DEL’ – broadly, day-to-day running costs – with the intention of improving readiness.
Well-publicized events earlier this year raised serious doubts among allies about the readiness and deployability of the UK’s armed forces, so this commitment should be welcome.
In summary, the DIP is likely to viewed as a mixed bag by the UK’s NATO partners. Its gestation has been painful for them to watch. Its plateauing of UK defence expenditure at 2.7 per cent of GDP from 2027/8-29/30 will raise eyebrows. So too will the ever-increasing proportion of the UK’s defence budget (from 20 to 25 per cent) the plan allocates to the UK’s defence nuclear enterprise.
The Russian Bear-F plane "repeatedly approached" the HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier, flying "unnecessarily close" and dropping sonar devices, according to the U.K.'s defense ministry.
Authorities claim Tyrin Johnson, 20, pulled gun on officers controversially deployed at instigation of Trump
National guard soldiers on patrol in Memphis shot and killed a man that authorities in the Tennessee city said turned and pulled a gun on the troops during a chase.
The shooting took place at about 4am on Sunday as the soldiers responded to a report of gunfire.
Continue reading...Epping footballer Nathan Fitzgerald, 27, died in hospital after hitting his head during a game in Lalor, club confirms
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A suburban Melbourne footballer has died in hospital after a clash of heads saw him fall to the ground and hit his head on a covered cricket pitch, his club confirmed on Monday night.
High school teacher Nathan Fitzgerald, 27, was taken to Royal Melbourne hospital on Saturday after the incident during an Australian rules football game in Lalor in Melbourne’s north, and was said to be receiving “end of life” care.
Continue reading...Millions gather in streets and officials appear in public at Tehran funeral of Ali Khamenei in show of defiance. Plus, origin of mysterious ‘space balls’ in Australia revealed
Good morning.
Iran’s week of mass funeral processions for the former supreme leader Ali Khamenei has seen public calls for the killing of Donald Trump. Khamenei was killed along with other members of his family on 28 February, the first day of the US and Israeli war against Iran.
Who made the direct call for the killing of Trump? During part of the ceremony, the poet Mohammad Rasouli said: “I swear by your blood; Trump’s murder is our responsibility. Why is the most bastard man in the world still alive? … Why should we not kill the man who killed our imam? It would be a disgrace if we did not.”
Where is the new supreme leader? Appointed 10 days after his father’s death, Mojtaba Khamenei has not appeared in public or recorded any audio message for three months. His absence was made more conspicuous when his brothers, Mustafa, Massoud and Meysam, stood alongside one another beside their father’s coffin.
What did Giménez say? He said: “[TPS] is meant to safeguard those who are either fleeing countries that are failed states and are at risk of going back to them or countries that really can’t handle them right now, as is the case with Venezuela that has suffered a natural disaster.”
What did the court decide? The ruling gave the green light to plans to end TPS for more than 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. TPS allows people to live and work in the US if the Department of Homeland Security deems their home countries unsafe due to war or natural disasters.
Continue reading...The amount of fine particulate matter reached levels seen during past Independence Day celebrations but stayed high through Sunday morning, according to EPA data.
Tour de France spectator ban as country along with Spain, Portugal and Greece faces ‘powder keg’ after heatwave
Wildfires raging across southern Europe have forced thousands to flee their homes and prompted officials to ban spectators from a stage of the Tour de France, amid warnings of “powder keg” conditions after a record-breaking early summer heatwave.
Hundreds of firefighters are tackling blazes that have burned through almost 20,000 hectares (49,500 acres) in Portugal, Spain, France and Greece. Strong winds are forecast to fan the flames and temperatures are expected to rise again this week.
Continue reading...Europe's soccer governing body and prominent commentators have criticized the decision, which allows Folarin Balogun to play against Belgium.
Commentary: I love the Galaxy Z Fold 7, but Samsung needs these upgrades for the Fold 8 Ultra to earn a permanent spot in my pocket
These systems will soon be able to track our public and private lives. But we can make the policy choices to reject it
In the near future, AI-powered surveillance systems will be able to track everything we do in public, and much of what we do in private. And if we do something wrong – shoplift, litter, jaywalk, you name it – the system will notice, retain it, tie it to your official government record, communicate that fact to you, and provide real-time alerts to any relevant authorities … and maybe also to the general public.
Think of these systems as automated speed cameras, but on steroids. Only they’ll enforce not just speed limits, but any other rule you can imagine. And you won’t receive a ticket weeks later by mail; you’ll be informed about and fined for your violation immediately.
Continue reading...While millions of Americans across the Northeast experienced record-setting temperatures, thunderstorms in the Midwest downed trees, ruptured power lines and made transportation treacherous.
I wore this robot exoskeleton in the Grand Canyon to see if it could help me manage my spinal stenosis and keep pace with my athlete daughter.
Burglars stole millions of dollars worth of jewelry from the museum of luxury glassmaker Lalique just months after a stunning gem heist at the Louvre.
Google was ordered to pay almost $2 billion this week to Pricerunner, reports Bloomberg: The Patent and Market Court in Stockholm, which issued the judgment on Wednesday, dismissed most parts of the claim in which Pricerunner sought 80 billion Swedish kronor, or roughly $8.2 billion, in the wake of a European Union antitrust crackdown... The Swedish price-comparison website argued that Google has been abusing its dominant position as a search engine by favoring its own comparison shopping service over competing portals for more than a decade. Wednesday's award compensates for lost revenue caused by Google's preferential treatment of its own comparison-shopping service over independent price-comparison services, conduct that also drives up costs for consumers, [Pricerunner owner] Klarna said in a statement after the judgment... A Google spokesperson said the company doesn't agree with the court's decision and will consider its legal options. [The ruling can be appealed.] Changes implemented in 2017 to Google's platform are working and generating growth and jobs for hundreds of comparison shopping services operating more than 1500 websites across Europe, according to the statement. The litigation is linked to a 2017 decision by the European Commission to fine Google €2.4 billion for illegally leveraging its search dominance to give its own shopping service an edge. The EU decision unleashed a wave of so-called follow-on suits, which were delayed for years as Google appealed the EU fine. Two years ago the EU's top tribunal confirmed that the company did violate antitrust laws — meaning EU-based plaintiffs no longer have to prove that in court. A Berlin court last year ordered the tech giant to pay €573 million in damages to two German price-comparison websites, a ruling Google appealed. Similar cases are pending across Europe.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The firm’s share price has risen 80% under Allison Kirkby’s leadership – but pressure remains for her to deliver further growth
If timing is everything, then Allison Kirkby may have judged it perfectly.
Since becoming BT’s first female chief executive more than two years ago the company’s share price has climbed 80%, an investor-pleasing turnaround that has seen Kirkby well-rewarded with a pay and bonus package of £5.6m last year, the largest for a boss of the telecoms company in well over a decade. However, there are questions over how much credit Kirkby can take for the apparent revival of the business.
Continue reading...FCA’s review into how tech will reshape financial services warns about amplified risks of cyber-crime and fraud
Ministers have been urged to toughen the City regulator’s powers to protect consumers against the potential risks of AI, according to a landmark review.
The Mills review by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which looked at how AI will reshape financial services from 2030 onward, found that companies are already starting to shift from human-led activities towards AI-enabled services for everyday consumers.
Continue reading...More than 200 arrested in raids, comedian and journalists jailed, gay-friendly cruise turned away and protests banned
Authorities in Turkey have widened a crackdown on public life, arresting more than 200 people during raids across Ankara last month, jailing a comedian and blocking a cruise ship carrying LGBTQ+ passengers from docking in the run-up to the Nato summit in the capital.
The arrests followed a ban on demonstrations in Ankara that was put in place until 10 July. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said this was evidence of Turkey’s “ruthless intolerance of freedom of speech and assembly”. The watchdog group said the Nato summit, which starts on Tuesday, was taking place in the context of intensifying violations of basic rights, “including far-reaching restrictions on the main political opposition party, the media, and freedom of expression in general”.
Continue reading...Researchers say small changes in drafting could spread rapidly and create long-term shifts in public opinion
AI tools are twisting online messages on sensitive political topics about everything from abortion to climate change in ways that could snowball to reshape long-term public opinion, experts have said.
As tech companies push AI tools as convenient ways to redraft and summarise the massive influx of daily messages, many inject their own political biases – some leaning distinctly rightwing, others more liberal, according to a study from Oxford and Potsdam universities.
Continue reading...Babies exposed to higher levels of neurotoxin more likely to have difficulty controlling impulses later, research shows
Exposure to common air pollution may cause childhood obesity because it affects children’s ability to control impulse, new first-of-its-kind peer-reviewed research finds.
Particular matter 2.5 (PM2.5) is a neurotoxin that has been linked to obesity, and Mt Sinai researchers say they have for the first time identified impulse control as a potential pathway. The study found that babies exposed to higher levels of PM2.5 during their first year of life were more likely to develop difficulties with controlling impulses later in childhood.
Continue reading...Workers proud of their efforts to grow renewable energy say US president pursuing ‘personal vendetta’ at their expense
Donald Trump has blamed everything – from “national security” issues, the deaths of birds and whales, and cancer – in his decades-long campaign against windfarms. But as the Trump administration continues to undermine the industry, what worries workers most are their jobs.
Since taking office for a second term, Trump has issued an executive order aiming to halt all wind-energy leases and permits, attempted to issue stop-work orders on wind projects under construction, and paid more than $2.6bn in settlements to buy out wind energy leases. And hundreds of workers have been affected.
Continue reading...New report details slew of ventures between private equity and non-profits and calls for greater government oversight
A watchdog group is calling for greater government oversight of joint ventures between private equity firms and non-profit healthcare providers, arguing that the arrangements could present “risks” to “patients, payers and employees”.
In a new report, Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP), a vocal critic of the industry, detailed more than 500 joint ventures between private equity and non-profit healthcare providers – ranging from rural hospitals to major religiously affiliated health systems to hospice care providers. The group argued those risks could include extraction of profit and a decline in quality of care.
Continue reading...Prominent organizations accuse network of political, racial and sexual bias and supporting Chinese communist party
A group of prominent conservative organizations has petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny license renewal requests from the eight local television stations owned and operated by ABC, accusing the network of political, racial and sexual bias and supporting the Chinese communist party.
The petitions come after the commission, led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, took the nearly unprecedented step of requiring the network, a frequent recipient of attacks from Donald Trump, to apply several years early to maintain its ability to broadcast in markets around the country.
Continue reading...Handmade creations distributed to raise funds for charity prompt complaints to police
At first, the cute paper hedgehogs seemed like a kind gesture. An older man had crafted the little creations from donated books to raise money for charity, handing them to children in local shops.
But on closer inspection, some parents were horrified to discover the hedgehogs had been made from the pages of an erotic novel.
Continue reading...Fresh row erupts over Duke of Sussex’s trip, the buildup to which has been overshadowed by security dispute
Just as it seemed there might be a period of peace, yet another row has broken out between Prince Harry and his family, with one party saying he had accepted an invitation to stay at Buckingham Palace and the other countering within minutes that he would no longer be welcomed.
The Duke of Sussex is to visit London and Birmingham for a series of charity engagements including promoting the Invictus Games. The buildup to the trip has been overshadowed by a dispute with the government over security, and a spokesperson for the prince saying on Sunday that the Duchess of Sussex and the couple’s children would not join him in London, but could do later when he visited Birmingham.
Continue reading...Tensions between the US and Europe loom large over NATO summit Expert comment thilton.drupal
Disagreements over the Iran war and defence procurement threaten to turn the annual summit into another theatre for division and distract from the threat from Russia.
The upcoming NATO summit in Ankara is not the first meeting at which the alliance’s members have had to navigate internal tensions. Recent summits involving the Trump administration have often been tense, most famously in 2018, when President Donald Trump first began to threaten to leave NATO if other allies did not increase their level of defence spending.
However, tensions ahead of Ankara are at a much higher level than in previous years. This is because the Trump administration has become serious about reducing its level of involvement in European security, which has major ramifications for NATO. It is also partly a result of NATO moving to annual summits in response to the intensification of the threat level in Europe after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which has created a stage for tensions to play out publicly.
NATO members will arrive in Turkey with several different points of disagreement between them. President Trump remains upset that other allies did not support the US war in Iran to the extent that he had desired. For his administration, this is an example of what they see as European security freeloading, as they believe that their action in the Middle East will benefit global security overall.
President Trump has also let his disappointment over Iran turn into significant disagreements with several European leaders, including the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
All three of these leaders were relatively close with President Trump and were praised by him, but he has now publicly criticized them. With only days to go until the NATO summit, Merz has defended Germany’s defence spending record, Meloni has significantly distanced herself from Trump, and Starmer has focused on connecting with other European leaders to provide a counterbalance to the US.
This reflects the wider mood in Europe: 2025 was already a difficult year for the transatlantic relationship, but 2026 has been even more difficult to date.
The confusing US threats against Greenland in January and February shocked those who had not thought that the US would truly turn its back on NATO. Europe has become much more wary about Washington’s intentions. The US is now seen as an inconsistent ally with a short memory that does not remember Europeans’ support when the US called for Article 5 assistance after the 9/11 attacks.
US officials have also reportedly privately warned several European allies that their orders from American defence contractors will likely be delayed as Washington prioritizes replenishing its own stockpile after the Iran war, deepening the sense of the US turning away from Europe. These allies include the UK, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Germany, who are now put in a difficult position, especially given pre-existing concerns that Russia could pose a threat to NATO years before European states have sufficiently improved their military capabilities.
For Europeans, this shift justifies their focus on rebuilding European defence industrial capabilities. This will allow them to reduce their dependence on the US when it comes to new procurement contracts in the future.
However, this increasing independence will undoubtedly exacerbate tensions between the US and European allies in the future: While the US has encouraged its European allies to spend more on defence, there also seems to be an expectation that this will be in the form of them continuing to purchase American equipment. If the number of European orders reduces over time, the US might then not be so keen on a more independently secure Europe.
Washington’s announcements that it would be reducing troop and equipment deployments in Europe has also caused concern among allies that the US’s extended deterrence guarantee to the continent is no longer as firm.
The US is reportedly planning to affirm its ongoing commitment to Article 5 and extended deterrence at the summit in Ankara. However, it is legitimate to question the extent to which potential adversaries will continue to perceive NATO’s deterrence posture as credible if they can see the US disengaging from the continent. After all, a crucial tenet of Cold War thinking was that the US would not risk becoming involved in a nuclear war in Europe if it did not have any skin in the game; the same logic could also apply today.
Beyond the tensions between the US and European allies, inter-European tensions will also require careful management. As the US has become a more erratic ally, European views on how to manage the relationship with the US have diverged.
Ahead of the NATO summit in The Hague in 2025, there was some reluctance about NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s approach to managing Trump, which has been characterized by flattery. But the overwhelming view remained that if his methods led to results then the ends justified the means.
Quasars — the brightest objects in the universe — are powered by supermassive black holes at the heart of early galaxies.
Launch comes just hours after Australia and Fiji sign defence agreement as expert says timing not a coincidence
China has conducted a long-range missile test in the South Pacific just hours after Australia signed a defence agreement with Fiji, sparking condemnation from Canberra and regional leaders.
The Australian foreign minister, Penny Wong, said the missile test was “destabilising” to the region, while her New Zealand counterpart, Winston Peters, described it as “deeply concerning”.
Continue reading...I used to think my phone helped me to relax. But setting strict limits on my usage has improved my mood and my relationships
I am a psychotherapist who works with frazzled, snappy parents, and spend my days writing about why we struggle to find calm. I also used to pick up my phone hundreds of times a day, failing to realise that it was making me a snappier, more irritable, less present mother.
My phone was my office, my income, my means of communication. Every time I checked it, there was something to action, a notification of something new, something that told me I was useful and productive, giving me dopamine hits that motherhood didn’t offer. It had become my coping mechanism.
Continue reading...The president has made dangerous inroads in his push toward autocracy. Yet the prospects for his success are dimming
How do we commemorate America’s democracy as Donald Trump undermines it? By embracing his opposition. The United States was founded by breaking from a monarchy. Trump wants to become king. An imperfect yet powerful system of checks and balances is being deployed to prevent him. The resistance is worth celebrating.
This is hardly the first challenge to US democracy. The early nation had no rights for Black people and no vote for women. It survived Jim Crow, the McCarthy era, and the “war on terror”. Yet there is no denying the seriousness of the threat posed by Trump.
Continue reading...Collegiate sports organization led by Charlie Baker banned trans athletes from women’s sports after 2025 Trump order
The president of the US’s top administrator of collegiate sports on Sunday said his organization does not anticipate adjusting its rules on transgender athletes after a recent federal supreme court decision allowed states to ban them from participating in school athletics.
In an interview with CBS News’ Face the Nation, Charlie Baker, the NCAA president, alluded to how his organization in late January 2025 had effectively banned transgender athletes from women’s sports by closing off those programs to athletes who were assigned male at birth or were taking testosterone therapy. There are no restrictions for participation in NCAA men’s sports, which Baker referred to on Sunday as “the open network”.
Continue reading...Documentary No Country for Mothers details how US moms lack support, paid leave and childcare help – and hopes to inspire push for action
When Reshma Saujani set out to make a documentary, she was clear from the outset: it would not be released on streaming platforms, or at film festivals.
Instead, No Country for Mothers – a new movie about how moms across the US are being failed – is being screened by hundreds of the subject themselves, nationwide, in person.
Continue reading...Your desk deserves a smart upgrade. This is the tech that makes the biggest difference for me.
The National Weather Service is hiring hundreds of entry-level employees after losing about 15% of its staff to federal cuts last year.
For the first few weeks after he arrived at the immigration detention center in Winnfield, Louisiana, 18-year-old Elder Chavez was wide awake most nights, listening to the creaky sounds of the bunk beds and to voices of dozens of men, also sleepless, around him. He suffered terrible headaches and would finally doze off around 4 a.m. — just when guards would begin to summon the detainees for breakfast. Then he’d sleep for most of the rest of the day.
He had developed the schedule of an owl. And he thought to himself that the dark circles that had appeared under his eyes made him look like one.
He’d landed at the Winn Correctional Center after Alabama state police had caught him in December going 15 mph over the speed limit and driving without a license. He was on his way home from getting his favorite sandwich, carne asada, when he was pulled over. Once the officers realized he was an immigrant, they called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Chavez offered to show them documents that proved he wasn’t living in hiding. Immigration authorities had granted him Special Immigrant Juvenile Status because, as a toddler, he’d been abandoned by his parents in Honduras and had come to this country on his own when he was 14. His sister, who’d migrated years earlier and was living in Alabama, offered to help take care of him. A lawyer was helping him pursue permanent residency.
“I’m legal in this country,” Chavez pleaded with the officers. But the officers, he said, weren’t having it. One of them told him, “Your papers are of no use to me.”
And just like that, an otherwise law-abiding high school student — who loved his welding and carpentry classes, had braces and a girlfriend, and spent weekends playing soccer at the park with his nieces and nephews — was thrown into detention and put on a path toward deportation.
“I’m just waiting here,” he said during a video call from detention. “I really don’t know what’s going to happen to me.”
Chavez is hardly alone. A first-of-its-kind analysis of Immigration and Customs Enforcement data found that unaccompanied minors living in the U.S. are being detained and removed at about three times the rate they were during the last time President Donald Trump was in office. In addition, a ProPublica analysis of court data found that immigration judges, who report to the Justice Department, have issued more than 10,000 removal and voluntary departure orders each month for immigrant minors who either migrated alone or with relatives, a rate that is nearly four times higher than in Trump’s last term.
The vast majority of unaccompanied minors removed last year had no criminal history in the United States, ProPublica’s analysis of ICE data showed.
Before Trump returned to office last year, Chavez would have likely been given a ticket and allowed to return to his sister. But as part of the president’s mass deportation campaign, his administration has moved to systematically roll back policies that provided immigrant minors access to legal counsel and relief from deportation while they pursued permission to permanently stay in the country. Those policies were based on laws that had been implemented over more than two decades, with bipartisan support, because both parties believed unaccompanied immigrant minors — ill-prepared to navigate a new country on their own, much less a legal system daunting to most adults — are especially vulnerable to trafficking and other kinds of exploitation.
Congress created SIJ specifically to protect immigrants, like Chavez, who are under 21 and are able to prove in family court that they had been abused, neglected or abandoned by at least one parent in their home countries.
Trump administration officials have long argued that not only are the programs designed to help unaccompanied minors rife with fraud, but that their very existence has encouraged hundreds of thousands of children to embark on dangerous journeys to the border, increasing their risk of falling into criminal hands. To make its case, his administration points to the record 450,000 unaccompanied minors who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border and were released into the country under President Joe Biden.
Neither those children nor the people to whom they were released were properly vetted, say Trump administration officials. As a result, administration officials say, some of the children became victims of abuse or exploitation. Alarming numbers of them were found working illegally in factories or in other jobs that put them at risk for trafficking, injury and wage theft.
Other minors, the administration has said, became criminals. It put out a July 2025 government report that said since 2013, some 19,000 SIJ petitioners were found to have criminal arrest records, including hundreds with serious charges like murder and sex offenses. The administration says the best way to stop such abuses and criminality is to disincentivize immigrant children from coming in the first place.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Trump is “undoing the damage Biden did.” Responding to questions about ProPublica’s data analysis, which was based on data provided via Freedom of Information Act requests and was validated with outside experts, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the agency “could not verify the veracity” of the data.
Advocates argue that the administration is using exceptional cases to cast all immigrant minors and the adults who sponsored them in a negative light. They say that some of their clients who have been living in the U.S. for years, including those, like Chavez, who have since turned 18, face serious risks if sent back to their home countries. The majority of the unaccompanied minors who have come to the United States in the last decade were fleeing Central American countries crushed by economic turmoil, violence and political upheaval. Some came from families riven by poverty and domestic violence. Some, like Chavez, have no parents to go back to.
“These children have been through incredibly harrowing and traumatic experiences,” said Michael Lukens, the executive director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, a legal defense organization. “And ICE is retraumatizing them.”
To the administration’s claims that its policies are aimed at protecting minors, he said, “If you’re worried about the welfare of kids, stop rounding kids up and trying to deport them.”
A growing number of immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors without parents or legal guardians are being arrested in the country’s interior and removed via deportation or voluntary departure orders.
Sometimes the deportation orders issued in immigration court have been coming so fast that lawyers say even they have a hard time explaining them to their clients. Within a span of three hours on a single morning in April in a downtown New York immigration courtroom, Judge Jem Sponzo issued deportation orders for 25 minors, almost everyone on her docket appearing virtually that morning. Some of the hearings were only a few minutes long, and some of the minors were too young to understand what was happening to them.
Among the children in court that day was an 8-year old girl from Ecuador who was seeking asylum and SIJ. The girl’s mother had already won asylum in a separate case. But Sponzo ordered the girl to be deported anyway.
In another case, an attorney pleaded for more time to prepare enough evidence to support an asylum petition for her client from Guatemala. The attorney said her client’s home in Guatemala was dominated by an abusive father whose violence made it hard for her to gather information she needed for the case. Sponzo politely denied the request, saying, “I empathize and thank you for your efforts.” Then she ordered the child deported.
A high school senior from Guatemala who lives in Queens, with side-swept black hair and wearing a short sleeve athletic shirt, appeared on a video screen from a room with piled-up clothes on the bed and an American flag tacked on the wall. He stayed on mute while his lawyer asked for more time for his applications for SIJ and asylum to be processed. Sponzo said no and ordered him deported. His lawyer said in an interview her client is now afraid he could be picked up by ICE at any time.
At the end of the day, several of the attorneys said they felt blindsided by the judge’s rapid-fire denials. Although they all said they would appeal her rulings, which could buy their clients some time to stay in the U.S., one said the deportation orders would “hang over their heads like a loaded gun.”
Olivia Cassin, a former immigration judge who oversaw juvenile dockets in New York, said that before Trump returned to office, there was widespread recognition that it took time for immigrant minors’ SIJ and asylum petitions to work their way through the backlogged system. For SIJ recipients, getting a green card often takes years. Judges typically gave minors that time. Now the authorities overseeing immigration courts have instructed them not to do so. Sponzo cited those instructions at the end of many of the cases she heard that day in April.
Cassin is one of the more than 100 immigration judges who have been fired since Trump returned to office. Some of the judges who lost their jobs said they believe they were pushed out because the administration saw them as not aligned with its agenda. But they also say they’ve received no official explanation for their firings. Sponzo was also fired recently. She could not be reached for comment.
The Justice Department did not respond to questions about the firings.
It’s not just the overhaul of the immigration courts that is having an effect on immigrant kids. Early on in Trump’s second term, officials moved to curb funding for advocacy groups that provide legal services to unaccompanied minors. It also put an end to a Biden-era policy known as “deferred action,” which protected minors who had been granted SIJ from deportation. SIJ on its own does not confer legal status, and the deferred action policy was implemented to cover those with SIJ until they could get their green cards.
After advocacy groups took the administration to court, federal judges ordered the government to restore funding for legal assistance andaccess to deferred action for SIJ recipients. Despite those rulings, some legal advocates say they still have not been paid what they’re owed. And in June, several groups said federal agents appeared at their Washington-area offices, seeking to look at client files, even though they didn’t have warrants. The advocates said they saw the move as an attempt to intimidate them.
As for granting deferred action, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a statement that the agency would do so only under “compelling circumstances on a case-by-case basis.” DHS, which oversees USCIS and ICE, emphasized in an email that having SIJ “does NOT confer lawful status,” adding that “any recipient may be subject to removal.” The agency did not respond to a question about the agents who visited advocates’ offices.
Over the last year, the administration says it has tracked down 146,000 of the unaccompanied minors who entered the country under Biden in order to check on their well-being. The majority of all the minors who entered the country in recent years had been released to one or both parents in the United States or to other close relatives.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at a June press conference that some of the welfare checks found minors were doing fine with their families. But he asserted that he’d also tracked down children who were in the hands of rapists and other criminals. “We start digging into these cases and you start hearing absolute horrific things,” he said.
When asked for verifiable details about some of the cases Mullin mentioned, DHS did not respond. A DHS spokesperson later sent a list of 16 people who had sponsored immigrant minors and had previously been charged with crimes including assault, drug trafficking or domestic violence. Meanwhile, Justice Department officials said they’d indicted less than a handful of people on charges of smuggling or exploiting immigrant minors.
No officials from DHS or the Justice Department explained what had become of any of the children connected to those indictments. As for immigrants who had entered the U.S. as children and are now adults, Mullin said, “we are working on the process of sending them back.”
Soon after Chavez arrived in detention, one of the men in his cell recognized the teen’s pattern of sleeping through the day as a silent cry for help. Carlos Della Valle, who had migrated to the United States from Mexico, was attuned to Chavez’s struggles because he had a son around the same age. Even in detention, Chavez, with a head full of tousled black hair and big brown eyes, had an easy laugh and smile. Della Valle worried that Chavez was “losing valuable time that he’s never going to get back.”
Winn was a tough place, advocates and detainees said. Two migrants died there earlier this year. One of the deaths was reportedly caused by cardiovascular disease, and authorities have not determined a cause for the other.
A recent report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General described unsafe and unsanitary conditions at Winn, including leaking ceilings, dirty food prep areas and an incident in which a guard put a detainee in a prohibited choke hold. A DHS spokesperson said that the agency is working to address the issues raised in the report, adding, “our death rates are lower than most state prisons.”
Della Valle began nudging young Chavez out of bed in the mornings and put him to work helping keep their cellblock clean.
Detainees were given an hour a day outside, sometimes less than that. Della Valle told Chavez that keeping himself busy, in whatever constructive ways possible, was the only way to make it through the monotony with his sanity intact.
Chavez briefly took a job in the barber shop that paid the standard wage for someone in detention — $1 a day — but he said that giving haircuts to around 80 men in a shift was so grueling that he only lasted a month. Instead, Chavez and Della Valle pored over passages from the Bible together. They sat together for most every meal. Chavez learned to mix packets of powdered juice just the way Della Valle liked it.
Della Valle offered to help Chavez navigate the immigration system. He knew it well. In 1997 he’d twice illegally entered the United States. He was deported the first time but illegally entered again, married a U.S. citizen soon after and settled in Pennsylvania.
Because of his reentry, which is a felony, he has been ineligible to regularize his status. But he lived underground with little worry. Immigration authorities generally avoided targeting immigrants with long ties to their communities, like him. Not anymore.
Authorities intercepted Della Valle when he and his wife were returning from a Virgin Islands vacation, though they released him on bond at the time. Months later, however, he was taken into ICE detention. By the time he met Chavez, he had spent months being transferred among close to a dozen holding facilities. He worried about what detention might do to Chavez. Other men in his cellblock, who nicknamed Chavez “El Niño,” worried too.
“It was hard to see him, you know, because he’s just a boy. He’s not a grown man,” Della Valle said. “I had to do whatever I could for him.”
While the administration has made progress bending immigration courts to its will, there’s evidence that federal courts, where tens of thousands of immigrants have challenged their detentions as illegal, are pushing back.
The National Immigration Project, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, tracked the cases of 263 immigrants who entered the country as unaccompanied minors and SIJ applicants. The group found that federal judges ordered releases or bond hearings in all but 12 of them since the start of the second Trump administration. In March, U.S. District Judge Gary Brown issued a scathing rebuke in one such case, writing, “The laws of human decency condemn such villainy.”
The administration can set policy, he wrote, but he added that “it is forbidden from trampling our system of laws — a system which has safeguarded this nation for close to 250 years.”
Among those recently released was 20-year-old Fredy Martinez. Born in Honduras, he was a teenager when he crossed the border as an unaccompanied minor. He had graduated from high school in Texas and was delivering a DoorDash order on his bike when he was detained, according to court documents about his case. He was held for eight months at a sprawling and deeply troubled tent detention camp in El Paso, Texas — which has seen a measles outbreak and detainee deaths, including one ruled a homicide — before a federal judge found his detention was illegal and ordered him released. DHS did not respond to a question about the center.
Another teenager named Carlos from Guatemala said in an interview that he was detained on his way to work at a car wash in Rockland County, New York, when he was 18, despite having been granted SIJ and deferred action. He was flown over 1,000 miles to a detention facility in Louisiana, though not the same one as Chavez. Carlos asked to be identified only by his first name because of his ongoing immigration case.
After his arrest, he said, “I was just thinking that I would never see my family again.” Carlos was held for more than two months before a federal judge set him free.
The DHS spokesperson did not answer questions about any individual cases. They said federal court rulings against the administration “should come as no surprise,” since “many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people’s mandate.”
Six months into his detention, Chavez is on his own. He was ordered deported but is appealing the decision and filed a habeas petition.
Della Valle has been released, thanks to his wife’s outspoken advocacy. His release was bittersweet for Chavez. But Della Valle has not forgotten him.
Della Valle and his wife, Angela Della Valle, have helped Chavez’s sister, Mayuri Chavez, to pay off his outstanding traffic tickets and prepare his defense. The couple started a letter-writing campaign for him. They’ve passed out flyers with a picture of a chair Chavez made in carpentry class, asking people to color it in and send him messages of encouragement.
Della Valle said he feels pangs of guilt about leaving Chavez behind. He still speaks to Chavez most days and tries to keep the teen’s spirits up, but worries his words don’t carry the same weight now that he’s out. Della Valle tries to convince himself that Chavez will be OK, saying, “I think me being out might be good for him because he knows that there’s hope.”
Meanwhile, Chavez has been moved to different cells multiple times. One had only a single functional shower for dozens of men. The video call system often malfunctioned. Someone stole his small notebook, where he had carefully written down all the telephone numbers of the people he was in touch with outside. One night he dreamt he was free. When he woke up and realized he was still in detention, he panicked and had trouble breathing.
He said he has been trying to keep up the routine he started when Della Valle was there, but each passing week makes it harder.
In a series of interviews from detention, Chavez worried about losing half his junior year of high school. He missed a required English test and a deadline to turn in a history project, and now that the school year is over, he is unclear if he will be able to make the assignments up to be able to graduate on time. His sister spent a lot of money to get him braces, and without regular adjustments he worries it will all be for nothing. He missed the birth of his new nephew, and he is unsure if he will be able to meet him.
“I had so many plans,” he said, “but now everything is ruined.”
The post These Immigrant Kids Were Once Protected. Under Trump, Their Deportations Have Tripled. appeared first on ProPublica.
Decision is ‘incomprehensible and unjustifiable’
Belgium appeal against striker’s availability for tie
Uefa has hit out at Fifa’s decision to lift USA striker Folarin Balogun’s suspension for Monday’s last-16 tie with Belgium, describing the move as “incomprehensible and unjustifiable” and accusing world football’s governing of crossing “a red line”.
Europe’s governing body made no bones over their opposition to the shock call, one Belgium have been granted an appeal against. There are no guarantees, however, over when that decision will be made or whether Fifa’s reasoning for lifting Balogun’s’ suspension will be made public.
Continue reading...Iran, the ceasefire and the Gulf: what comes next 13 July 2026 — 17:00 TO 18:00 BST Anonymous (not verified) Chatham House and Online
Learn how the war with the US and Israel has affected Iran’s diplomacy, security outlook, and internal politics.
The war has created new pressures on Iran’s domestic politics, security environment and regional relationships. These shifts are affecting Tehran’s ties with its partners and rivals alike, raising questions about the future of diplomacy, regional stability and Iran’s strategic direction.
The war has created new pressures on Iran’s domestic politics, security environment and regional relationships. These shifts are affecting Tehran’s ties with its partners and rivals alike, raising questions about the future of diplomacy, regional stability and Iran’s strategic direction.
This event discusses:
Spain, Portugal, France and UK face spell of high temperatures, while Super Typhoon Bavi barrels through north-western Pacific
Another surge of heat spread across western Europe at the weekend, with Spain, Portugal and France already sweltering and southern parts of the UK joining them on Monday.
Temperatures are once again forecast to climb to 10-15C above average, with highs approaching 40C (104F) in the hottest parts of France and Spain, while the UK is expected to reach the low- to mid-30s celsius.
Continue reading...
Why Should Delaware Care?
Government works best when its citizens are knowledgeable and engaged. Delaware’s government has scores of commissions, working groups, agencies and legislative committees. All must hold meetings that are open to the public. Below we highlight a few of those meetings that are happening this week.
Below are some of the most important or interesting public meetings happening around the state this week.
The board of the Red Clay Consolidated School District is likely to appoint an interim superintendent on Wednesday, two weeks after its prominent leader announced he would move to Pennsylvania.
The decision comes at a critical juncture for Delaware’s largest district as its funding and operations could be reshaped in the coming years by two school reform initiatives.
After an approval by lawmakers last month, state officials will begin implementing a new education funding model that will send more dollars to public schools with high numbers of low-income or multi-language students.
Lawmakers also have been mulling a dramatic redistricting proposal that would combine all Wilmington-area school districts into one.
Prior to last month, most believed that Red Clay’s current superintendent, Dorrell Green, would be in charge during the reforms. Green is the reigning Delaware Superintendent of the Year.
But last month Green announced that he accepted a parallel position in Norristown, Pennsylvania.
In response to the announcement, Red Clay school board president Victor Leonard said his board has “a huge task in the next few weeks in finding a leader that will guide our district through some troubling times.”
He said the most pressing issues include declining enrollment, low student proficiency rates, and a “looming” school district consolidation plan.
📍 The Red Clay Consolidated School District Board of Education will meet 7 p.m. Wednesday to discuss regular agenda items. Prior to the meeting, the board will hold a closed-door executive session. The meeting will occur at the Cab Calloway School of the Arts located at 100 N. DuPont Road in Wilmington. To attend the meeting virtually, click here. To view the agenda, click here.
After working to overcome multiple budgeting challenges this year, Dover leaders are set to introduce a new measure on Thursday to help create long-term financial stability within the state’s capital city.
The Dover City Council will host a Special Legislative, Finance, and Administration Committee Meeting on Wednesday to introduce a new $1-per-square-foot service fee on large-scale, tax exempt properties within the city.
Leaders outlined a list of 20 tax-exempt properties larger than 50,000 square feet that would be subject to this new service fee, including Delaware State University and Bayhealth Hospital.
City leaders argue that because so much of the geographic footprint in Dover is made up of tax-exempt properties, it creates a “structural injustice” within the city’s tax base.
In a 51-page proposal outlining the new endeavor, city leaders preemptively argue against critiques of the proposed service fee, saying that a property’s tax-exempt status would not prohibit it from being charged a service fee.
It is unclear how the leaders of state, healthcare, and educational institutions that would be subject to paying this new fee will react to the proposal.
📍 Dover’s Special Legislative, Finance, and Administration Committee will meet at 6 p.m. Thursday inside City Council Chambers, located at 15 Loockerman Plaza in Dover. For more information, including on virtual attendance, click here.
Affordable housing and homelessness have dominated the public debate across the state over the past year. During that time, state officials from various departments have been holding regular meetings to discuss the issues.
The interagency collaborative will meet again this week to discuss transitional and supportive housing measures. Such measures have been a key to efforts to help unhoused individuals find stable housing.
📍 The state’s Transitional and Supportive Housing Subcommittee will meet virtually only on Tuesday at 10 a.m. Click here for more details, including sign-in information.
Correction: This story originally reported that Dover’s meeting is scheduled for Wednesday evening, but it is actually Thursday, July 9, evening.
The post Get Involved: Red Clay’s superintendent, Dover talks new fees appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Healthcare in Delaware is costly not only for patients, but also state taxpayers. This year, lawmakers took aim at those costs with multiple bills targeting how patients are billed, and how high a hospital can charge for both inpatient and outpatient procedures.
Delaware healthcare faced a reckoning in 2026, as legislators approved a number of bills that could dramatically reshape access and the price of care for patients.
Proposals on how much hospitals can charge patients for both inpatient and outpatient services, broadening federally mandated free and reduced care requirements, as well as easing regulatory approvals for hospitals all passed the General Assembly and are headed to Gov. Matt Meyer’s desk to be considered, if they haven’t been signed already.
Lawmakers debated these changes as healthcare spending in Delaware has grown unchecked in recent years, and outside taxpayer injections helped to pay the medical debts of thousands of Delawareans, despite hospital policies that could have made those treatments free or discounted in the first place.
Additionally, Delaware is making legislative changes to create an onramp for hundreds of millions of federal dollars meant to bolster rural healthcare. Those funds were awarded to all 50 states to ease congressional lawmakers into voting to gut billions of dollars in Medicaid funding in 2025.
Here’s what to know about the most important healthcare bills that passed this year, and what they could mean for costs in the coming years.
One of this year’s most contested healthcare bills, introducing hospital price caps and deeper investments in primary care, led to fierce debate in the State Senate.
Senate Bill 1 aims to rein in healthcare costs to consumers, which have exploded in Delaware in recent years.
By capping how much a healthcare system can charge for services, while incentivizing investments in primary care, legislators hope to force a reset in how healthcare is approached in the state: If patients can be seen in low-cost primary care settings, they may avoid more costly emergency care later.
The challenge is that virtually all of Delaware’s healthcare services are tied up in just a few major hospital systems, whose budgets are largely dependent on sending patients through a variety of primary, specialty and surgical care.
Disapproval from the state’s hospital systems led to extended closed-door negotiations between lobbyists and legislators over amendments to the bill.
The bill’s prime sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend (D-Newark), filed two substitute versions of his original bill — changing some of its most controversial provisions.
Those changes would delay the implementation of price caps on hospital procedures, limit some state oversight in setting those caps, and completely exempt some hospitals from the regulations altogether.
Lawmakers unanimously passed the amended bill and sent it to Gov. Matt Meyer’s desk early Wednesday morning.
Another bill filed in early May expands the pool of patients eligible to receive free and discounted care from the state’s nonprofit hospital systems.
Senate Bill 13, sponsored by Sen. Marie Pinkney (D-Bear), examines a program already required by the federal government for nonprofit hospitals to receive tax breaks.
Nonprofit hospitals are mandated by the Internal Revenue Service to provide a “community benefit” to earn their tax-exempt status. Historically, that benefit has been offering free or discounted care, sometimes called “charity care.”
The legislation comes months after a Spotlight Delaware investigation called into question the charity care practices at the state’s largest healthcare system, ChristianaCare.
The new legislative push also follows a separate effort last summer in which the state paid off medical debts for thousands of Delawareans, despite hospital charity care policies that could have mitigated those costs.
In October, Spotlight Delaware reported hospitals had to provide free or discounted care to patients living at or below 350% of the federal poverty line, or about $55,860 annually.
Under the new proposal, the state’s nonprofit hospitals would be required to provide free care to patients living below 300% of the federal poverty line, with large discounts for patients in higher percentage brackets.
Separately, the legislation allows people living at 500% of the federal poverty line — $78,250 a year — to seek out a 50% discount if billed expenses are greater than 10% of their income.
The bill also requires the Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board, an embattled regulatory board, to establish rules surrounding what information hospitals are allowed to request when determining eligibility for free or discounted care.
It also says the board will establish those regulations “with input from the Delaware Healthcare Association,” the state’s hospital lobbying group.
Senate Bill 13 faced little resistance in the Delaware Senate, but almost all of the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against the bill. Lawmakers sent the bill to Meyer’s desk on June 23.
Separately, lawmakers passed legislation that would ensure people in need of mental health and substance use treatment receive fair treatment from insurers, and that they are not denied care required for their recoveries.
Senate Bill 22, also introduced by Townsend, would bolster mental health and addiction treatment by requiring insurers to improve the number of providers in their networks. The bill also includes language hamstringing insurers’ ability to deny covering care.
Delaware’s proposal aims to strengthen what is called “mental health parity,” a federal rule created to ensure patients had equal access to mental health and medical services.
And while SB 22 looks to improve access to mental health treatment in the state, there are still questions about its impact on the quality of care. Delaware relies on inpatient facilities to fulfill many of the state’s most acute mental health needs.
But Spotlight Delaware has recently reported on two of the state’s largest inpatient mental health facilities, and how some patients felt they left treatment worse than when they entered.
SB 22 now sits on Meyer’s desk.
Nearly two years after the state formed a hospital oversight board with the ability to modify and veto budgeted spending by private hospitals, lawmakers had to pass a bill repealing much of that board’s power.
Senate Bill 213 was introduced in late December as part of a proposed legal settlement between ChristianaCare and state officials. Lawmakers passed the bill in January and Meyer quickly signed it into law.
The settlement stems from a lawsuit filed by ChristianaCare in 2024 that challenged the state’s formation of the oversight board, also known as the Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board.
As part of the settlement, ChristianaCare agreed to dismiss the case as long as the state removed the Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board’s budget veto powers.
Before SB 213, the Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board’s oversight would have followed a four-step process.
Hospitals would submit detailed financial documents, which board members would review. If they deemed hospital spending to be too large, they would put the facility on a “performance improvement plan.”
If a hospital failed to correct its overspending, the board could then modify or veto its budget.
Now that SB 213 has been signed into law, the board no longer has the power to modify or veto the budgets of hospitals they deem to be too extravagant.
Instead, the oversight board can require hospitals to follow compliance plans outlining how they intend to lower costs that are deemed to be too high.
The law also introduces “meaningful cost containment arrangement” plans, which are described as “contracts between hospitals and payers” meant to hold the hospitals responsible for controlling health care spending in a specific area.
Hospitals can enter these agreements and be exempt from compliance plans for one year, the law said. But it does not exempt them from the financial reporting requirements outlined in the law, like sharing budget information and labor costs.
House Bill 17 eases regulatory approvals for healthcare providers looking to expand their campuses or buy new medical equipment. It comes as other states have repealed this regulatory requirement, and the state agreed to reform its own process to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government.
The legislation updates the state’s certificate of public review program, in which an oversight board governs additions to Delaware’s health care ecosystem by requiring approval for equipment purchases and campus expansions.
Prior to HB 17, the Delaware Health Resources Board would field applications from the state’s health care providers and determine whether they can introduce new services or facilities into the state.
Under the new law, providers would still need to receive approvals from the Delaware Health Resources Board for equipment purchases and large capital projects that cost more than $5.8 million.
The new law also maintains regulations that require state approval when a hospital requests an increase in bed capacity greater than 10%.
The board is meant to act as a watchdog to ensure the state does not become oversaturated with one type of service, and to vet both programs and providers wishing to offer care in Delaware.
It has long been targeted by Republicans as an example of over-regulation that spurns free market investments in the health care sector. A dozen states, including Pennsylvania, have removed their certificate of need laws in recent decades.
In a letter signed by the entirety of Delaware’s legislature, lawmakers said they would “reform” the certificate of need process “in areas where current rules may limit access or innovation, particularly in rural and underserved regions.”
The letter came as the state began to pursue federal funds through the “Rural Health Transformation Program,” a new $50 billion nationwide program meant to bolster rural health care.
The post Delaware General Assembly roundup: Healthcare pricing reforms appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Why Should Delaware Care?
In his second year in office, Wilmington Mayor John Carney made housing a focus in Delaware’s largest city. But an ongoing debate with the City Council over how to spend housing dollars has exposed a divide over whether Wilmington should prioritize dollars for affordable housing developers or for immediate help to people in need.
The Wilmington City Council failed to override a mayoral veto of a housing ordinance Thursday that would have established a dedicated fund for affordable housing construction, homeless services, and first-time homebuyer assistance.
The vote marked the latest in a months-long battle over the city’s housing strategy between Wilmington Mayor John Carney and several City Council members. While both sides say they support expanding affordable housing, they are divided over whether the city should establish a permanent housing fund or focus on funding housing items directly in the city’s budget.
The vote came two weeks after Mayor John Carney vetoed the ordinance, stating in a letter to City Council that it “lacks a funding mechanism and does not advance Wilmington’s strategy to create more affordable housing in a meaningful way.”
He also said the proposal would create an advisory committee that duplicates the work of an existing housing committee in the city.
During Thursday’s meeting, the bill’s sponsor Councilwoman Shané Darby pushed back, arguing her advisory body would serve a different role because it would be a permanent body responsible for overseeing the trust fund, studying housing issues and making recommendations about how the money should be allocated.
Darby also said City Council could identify revenue sources for the trust fund in the future through city appropriations, state funding or developer fees.
“If the concern is that the fund needs more revenue, then our next policy discussion should be identifying additional revenue sources, not rejecting the framework altogether,” Darby said.
Darby needed nine council members to override the veto of her ordinance. The final vote was 8-5, leaving Carney’s June-18 veto in place.
Prior to the vote Thursday, Councilmembers Michelle Harlee, Maria Cabrera, Nathan Field and Latisha Bracy, said they support the creation of a housing trust fund but echoed Carney’s critique, saying the city should first determine a funding structure and ensure it aligns with the affordable housing initiatives already approved in the budget.
They also argued that moving forward without the mayor’s support would make the trust difficult to implement.
“We could pass this, we can overturn the veto, but at the same time, that doesn’t mean that the administration would have to implement it. I would like to see something that we can implement,” Cabrera said.
The discussion led to a heated back and forth after Bracy asserted that more collaboration with the administration was necessary to put the measure in place.
“We don’t have an enforcement mechanism to make the mayor and his administration do anything, so it behooves us to actually work across the hall with them and make sure that we have a housing trust,” Bracy said.
Darby pushed back, saying she had worked with the mayor’s office throughout the ordinance’s development and met repeatedly with Carney’s staff. She added that she emailed the administration twice after the veto but never received a response.
“To sit here and act like I wasn’t collaborative, you are a liar,” Darby said to Bracy.
Asked about the comments, Daniel Walker, Carney’s deputy chief of staff, confirmed that Darby contacted the mayor’s office after the veto but only to share why she disagreed with Carney’s veto, to relay questions from other council members, and to ask if Carney had other concerns outside of the initial veto letter.
“Our letter was clear, and we had nothing new to share. Both of those communications are included here. She never asked for a meeting to specifically consider an alternative proposal,” Walker said to Spotlight Delaware.
Walker said the mayor’s office is still open to working on legislation that creates “opportunities that complement the existing housing plan.”
Darby first introduced the housing trust fund proposal in February, pitching it as a permanent fund for affordable housing construction, homeless services, and first-time homebuyer assistance.
A month later, Carney unveiled his proposed city budget for 2027, which included a $20 million housing package. Nearly $17 million of that proposal was earmarked for subsidies to developers building affordable housing.
But the subsidies sparked criticism from City Council members who argued it was too costly and would do little to address residents’ immediate housing needs.
By May, a faction on the council rallied behind a new housing agenda that had Darby’s housing trust measure as a centerpiece. Housing advocates also urged the council to approve the measure, arguing it was needed to address the city’s growing affordability crisis.
Carney later scaled back his housing proposal to an $11.8 million package, which the City Council largely preserved in the final budget.
And two weeks later, the council approved Darby’s housing trust ordinance, setting the stage for the mayor’s veto and Thursday’s unsuccessful override attempt.
The debate between the council and the Carney Administration over how the city should invest in affordable housing has also unfolded just as the city was facing ongoing criticisms over its response to homelessness, particularly at a city-sanctioned encampment at Christina Park.
Carney issued his veto letter to the council on June 18, which Darby publicly criticized. In a June interview with Spotlight Delaware, Darby said she believed Carney vetoed her housing trust measure because he’s “not a fan of me.”
The arguments raised during Thursday’s debate, prompted frustration from some council members who criticized the body for stalling efforts to address affordable housing.
Councilman Coby Owens noted that his colleagues had rejected an alternative proposal during budget negotations that would have set aside funding for the housing trust.
Now, he said, some of those same colleagues were arguing the trust should not be created until a funding source was identified.
“I’ve heard so much double talk tonight. It’s insane. Can’t we come together as a council and do one thing together?”
Those who voted in favor of overriding Carney’s veto included Darby, Johnson, McCoy, Harlee Owens, Christian Willauer, Alex Hackett, and Council President Trippi Congo.
Voting against the override were councilmembers Bracy, Field, Cabrera, James Spadola, and Zanthia Oliver.
The post Wilmington City Council fails to override Carney’s housing veto appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
From the iPhone 17 Pro and Google Pixel 10 Pro to Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra and two phones you may have never heard of, these are the top camera phones we've tested.
A Florida man thought he had carefully planned for a seamless switch between health plans. It was anything but.
In pushing Fifa to reverse Folarin Balogun’s suspension, the president did the most American thing possible: assert unasked-for power to get his way
The story of Garrincha’s red card in the 1962 World Cup is the stuff of legend. The Brazilian great was sent off in the semi-final for lashing out at an opponent, but back then Fifa had no automatic one-match suspension in place. So a disciplinary committee convened the next day to decide his fate for the final.
As the story goes, the assistant referee who had the best view of the offense was paid off and disappeared, and the president of Chile, the tournament’s host, put in a call to Fifa, urging them to decide against any additional suspension. He did so for the sake of keeping one of the tournament’s most entertaining players on the field. Garrincha emerged scot-free and Brazil won their second World Cup.
Continue reading...
The abandoned house next door meant a lot to Christina Kary. For years, she tended to it, planting purple flowers, removing weeds and picking up trash. She attached locks to the doors to prevent trespassers from entering.
She had considered buying the property, located on the Cadillac Heights block where her family built the first houses in the early 1900s. Several years ago, she learned that the small home with a front porch was owned by the Detroit Land Bank Authority, which manages the city’s vacant properties. Kary, 86, said she told a land bank inspector she wanted to purchase it but didn’t follow up, thinking she would eventually hear back.
Then, one morning in 2024, she heard a commotion as heavy equipment squeezed through the alley. Kary watched from her backyard as the house was demolished, her feet vibrating beneath her. She marked the day in yellow highlighter on her paper wall calendar where she records other notable events like birthdays, doctor appointments and Bible study meetups. She would later learn that the city had sold the home to Crown Enterprises, a real estate firm owned by members of the Detroit area’s wealthy and politically connected Moroun family.
Over the last seven years, Crown has obtained dozens of parcels in Cadillac Heights and secured permits to demolish more than 20 structures. In all, the company now owns more than 160 lots in the neighborhood, most of which are barren. It also has erected a concrete-mixing plant just across the street from Kary’s home, creating clouds of dust, noise at early hours of the day and late into the night, and industrial lights that pierce through the area.
The company’s takeover of the southeast section of the neighborhood has marked the end of the community Kary and her neighbors knew — a process aided by the decisions of city officials. First, the city turned over dozens of properties to the company as part of a historic land-swap deal in 2019 and then gave it first dibs to purchase other lots, including the one next to Kary’s home, until 2034.
The city has also enabled the company in other ways, providing latitude on permitting and neighborhood maintenance. For instance, although city inspectors have repeatedly ticketed the company for violating rules limiting the spread of dust, the city also set up a system under which the company’s fines were dismissed.
As Detroit rebuilds from the largest municipal bankruptcy in history, major construction has reshaped the city: the first new skyscraper in 50 years, new hotels and sports complexes, repaved roads, and the renovation of Michigan Central Station, which had sat empty for decades while owned by the Moroun family and became a symbol of the city’s decline.
To meet the demand, at least three new concrete facilities have opened in the city since 2019. One is by a park, and two are in residential neighborhoods, including the plant in Cadillac Heights, called Kronos. The state also approved a permit for a new cement grinding plant that has not yet opened in an industrial area of southwest Detroit. Other proposed operations have been blocked after residents protested.
The new concrete plants are producing materials needed to help rebuild parts of the city while creating a bitter irony for residents such as Kary. She said Detroit’s decision to turn so many properties over to Crown “guarantees the death of this area.”
In written responses to questions from BridgeDetroit and ProPublica, company representative Kenneth Dobson called Kronos “a good neighbor.” He said the company complies with all permitting requirements and city ordinances, and that it properly mitigates dust.
Dobson said having a concrete supplier within the city helps support rebuilding and broadly improves the lives of Detroiters. Without concrete facilities in Detroit, “not only would there be less jobs and less City tax revenue, but the cost of both public and private infrastructure development would go up,” wrote Dobson, vice president of the Detroit International Bridge Company, another Moroun-owned business.
Dobson said Crown has invested $10 million in the neighborhood. When asked what that has funded, he cited costs related to the Kronos development: demolishing homes, obtaining permits and equipment to operate, and taking measures to control dust and monitor air quality.
Messages sent by ProPublica to email addresses linked to Matthew Moroun, who oversees the family business, didn’t receive a response. Dobson said the email was forwarded to him and he responded on Moroun’s behalf.
Cadillac Heights’ most recent transformation began in May 2019, thanks in part to a vote by Detroit City Council to approve a nearly $267 million multipronged land swap orchestrated by former Mayor Mike Duggan.
The deal delivered ownership of dozens of lots in Cadillac Heights to Crown. In exchange, Crown gave up land in another part of the city, which allowed automaker Stellantis to open the first new car plant in Detroit in three decades, with the promise of 5,000 new jobs.
Duggan declared the day the land swap was approved as the “greatest” day he had had as mayor.
“Today was historic,” Duggan, who served for 12 years and recently gave up his bid for governor, said at a press conference. “Detroit was the city that built the middle class in America, and today we started to rebuild the middle class in Detroit.”
The news that day focused on the promise of Stellantis, not on what the deal meant for Cadillac Heights. Duggan spokesperson Andrea Bitely said the mayor did not know that Crown would put a concrete plant in the neighborhood and that doing so would ultimately drive out residents.
At its prime in the 1960s, Cadillac Heights had been full of local businesses and community life. The neighborhood attracted a predominantly working-class community of Black families who lived in modest single-family houses.
Buddy’s Pizza, famous as the birthplace of Detroit-style pizza, was founded there and drew crowds from across the city. Cadillac Heights also was home to Simpson’s Records, one of the city’s longest-running record shops.
But over several decades, Detroit declined under the weight of the crack epidemic, massive population loss and disinvestment. City historian Jamon Jordan said some neighborhoods saw more problems than others, but Cadillac Heights “had all of those things.”
By the time of the 2019 deal, roughly a third of the homes that were left had been abandoned, according to census data, and the streets were lined with empty storefronts. The remaining residents, many of whom, like Kary, had lived in Cadillac Heights for decades, said they tried to keep the neighborhood clean and enjoyable.
The Moroun family, too, had owned property in Cadillac Heights since the 1960s and operated a trucking depot there, which residents also found bothersome, but less so than the concrete facility. (The family also owns the Ambassador Bridge to Canada and more than 1,000 properties throughout Detroit, and has tried to block a competing bridge to Canada.)
Crown gradually acquired more land in Cadillac Heights and had about 80 properties at the time of the land swap, records show.
The deal gave Crown 34 more parcels throughout the neighborhood and the first rights to purchase others if they end up in the Land Bank by repossession due to tax foreclosure or other reasons. So far, Crown has purchased seven parcels under this option and demolished three homes, including the one next to Kary’s.
Detroit officials made other decisions, some in violation of city rules, that enabled Kronos to operate by summer 2022, before the company obtained a permit. The city ordered that operations stop. It then issued the permit without fining the company, and the concrete plant was reassembled. A city spokesperson did not respond to a question about why the company wasn’t fined.
The city issued a permit even though Crown had unpaid tickets for blight violations, which should have disqualified it from getting the approval to move forward. Crystal Rogers, a manager in the city’s Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department, attributed that to “human error.”
The company also accrued tickets between when it first applied for the permit and when the city approved it; Rogers said checking whether a company has pending tickets during that time period would “slow the development process.”
The tickets also should have prevented Crown from purchasing property from the county’s tax auction, according to city law. Yet records show the company was able to purchase a four-bedroom, single-family house in Cadillac Heights in October 2022 while it had unresolved blight tickets. Crown said it had disputed some of the tickets. The city acknowledged the tickets but said they were resolved by the time the sale was recorded months later.
After the concrete plant opened, the company acquired additional property from homeowners who decided to leave, further transforming the neighborhood. Dobson said the company is buying properties to create a buffer around the plant.
The Moroun family spent decades, from 1966 to 2018, records show, gradually acquiring lots in Cadillac Heights through their various companies, eventually putting the parcels all under the ownership of Crown Enterprises. A May 2019 deal with the city of Detroit allowed Crown to acquire dozens of additional parcels during the next seven years.
Martin Murray, a University of Michigan urban planning professor, said what’s happening in Cadillac Heights follows a similar pattern to other U.S. cities undergoing redevelopment. Businesses “can promise jobs, they can promise a tax base, and the city will go along with that, because it makes them look better and they’re willing to sacrifice residents,” he said.
City Council President James Tate Jr. and member Scott Benson, who represents the Cadillac Heights neighborhood, voted in favor of the land swap. Tate said he thinks the arrangement benefited the city overall, but that officials should have questioned how Crown would use the properties before they approved the deal.
“Knowing what I know now, there are some additional protections and questions that I would ask,” he said. “I would never sacrifice one neighborhood to satisfy another, but there are times when you have to look at deals, and there may be some unintended consequences.”
Benson declined to comment on his decision to approve the deal and said he has advocated for zoning changes that would make the area less industrial.
Since the Kronos plant opened four years ago, residents have filed about 80 complaints to both city and state environmental offices, according to records obtained by BridgeDetroit and ProPublica. They have sent photos, videos and pleas for help.
In complaints filed with the state, they described “literal whiteout conditions” and “dust clouds.” They said the dust was blanketing their neighborhood and irritating their eyes. They said they had to stop doing yardwork, go inside and shut all their windows.
“They could feel grit and debris hitting their eyes, that they tried not to inhale but they could taste the dust,” according to a state inspector’s summary of one complaint. The state’s environmental division repeatedly has recommended that Crown spray the site with water to minimize dust, which the company says it does every hour the plant is operating. Inspectors also told Crown multiple times to reduce the speed of its trucks to limit the spread of dust.
Josef Stephens, spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, said that while the state has noted dust at and around the Kronos site, it has not been opaque enough to warrant a violation.
City officials, too, are aware of residents’ concerns. In 2024, the City Council passed an ordinance requiring companies to control the spread of dust or face penalties. The city set up a hotline and email address so residents could submit complaints.
Nearly half of the complaints submitted to dust@detroitmi.gov have been about Kronos, according to city officials.
Dobson, the company representative, said readings from its air monitor have never exceeded the city’s pollution limits and that the facility is “fully compliant.”
Matthew Tomasz, who lived across the street from Kronos, filed complaints with the city and also ended up in a legal battle with Crown. The company sued him for trespassing on its vacant property next to his home. He countersued, claiming the company had violated the city’s dust ordinance when particles from the concrete facility traveled onto his property, calling it an “invasion.”
“Each day that dust from Kronos or the vacant lots lands on Mr. Tomasz’s property, a new trespass occurs,” according to the complaint. The lawsuits settled in February, but the terms were not made public, records show.
“I feel like I’m staring into a wasteland every day,” Tomasz said in an interview late last year. He said dust from the plant was so thick that he couldn’t see 10 feet in front of him. “There’s no peace to be had at my house.”
The city required that Kronos develop and adhere to a plan to limit the amount of dust. But despite five violations since Kronos agreed to adopt a plan, only once has the city’s environmental department fined the company for its failure to comply. The city last month dismissed two tickets issued to Crown, totalling $2,500, for the company’s failure to keep dust from traveling into the neighborhood.
The company has been excused from the dust-related fines, as well as tickets for other reasons, because of an agreement it signed with the city in 2022 after the plant opened. That first-of-its-kind property maintenance agreement gives Crown up to 30 days to fix nonemergency building and environmental violations — and up to 10 days to address overgrown weeds and trash — before it is assessed fines. The city has since entered into similar agreements with two other concrete businesses and a developer.
The agreement with Crown came after the company racked up blight tickets across the city. At the time it was signed, the city’s law department acknowledged it didn’t know the number of outstanding tickets but agreed that the company could pay $50,000 to resolve all the past violations before the new agreement kicked in.
One ticket that was excused last year came after Detroit resident Jahdante Smith emailed a complaint to city officials in July with a video showing a cloud of dust blowing near the facility. “This is a ridiculous everyday occurrence,” Smith wrote.
A city inspector issued Crown a $500 ticket seven weeks later for failing to mitigate dust, but the city’s environmental department dismissed it under the agreement.
The city also waived a $1,000 ticket issued to Crown in October for exceeding state and city requirements to limit dust opacity. The company temporarily suspended operations and agreed to sweep and spray water on the streets daily to control the dust, and the ticket was dismissed, Rogers said.
City inspectors also alerted Crown to code violations at other properties in the neighborhood, including a vacant lot littered with garbage and another with overgrown weeds and broken tree limbs. An abandoned home was unsecured, leaving it open to trespassers, a city inspector found.
Because of its agreement with the city, Crown was not issued any fines after it addressed the issues with the three properties. The vacant home has been demolished, and the other lots are now barren.
However, a recent visit to the neighborhood showed that similar issues have resurfaced: Another home that Crown purchased in January had missing first-floor windows and no front door, allowing anyone to enter. The lawn was covered in tall weeds and grass, and trash littered the yard. Crown plans to demolish the home but is waiting on the utilities to be disconnected, said Dobson, the company representative.
Dobson said the property maintenance agreement has worked because the company responds to concerns and fixes “the potential violation.” Conrad Mallett, the city’s top attorney, who negotiated the agreement, said it is “working well from the perspective of both parties.”
But residents and advocates have continued to protest, speak out at City Council meetings and collect hundreds of signatures to shut the plant down and get the area rezoned to be less industrial. Councilmember Benson asked the city’s law department about legal avenues the city could pursue to close Kronos.
The department, in response, said officials have no legal authority to interfere because the plant is properly permitted and complies with zoning regulations and city rules. And even though the city is considering rezoning some parts of Cadillac Heights to make them less industrial, the plans stop just short of the lots owned by Crown, records show.
The Moroun family continues to expand its concrete supply business, called Hercules Material Holdings, which now has seven locations in Michigan. Other facilities are expected to open in Toledo, Ohio, and Windsor, Ontario, where the Morouns have been purchasing properties for decades.
Some Cadillac Heights residents say they can’t coexist with the concrete plant.
They recently turned to the Wayne County Commission for help. At a May county committee meeting, advocate Sharon Buttry told commissioners that residents are frustrated that Crown hasn’t been ticketed more.
Commissioners voted to pass a resolution urging the state and city to further monitor the site and revoke permits if there are violations. “Our neighborhoods should never have to sacrifice their health and peace of mind for industrial operations that create ongoing public nuisance concerns,” county Commissioner Martha G. Scott said in an interview.
The county is paying a local air monitoring company, JustAir, to track and analyze air quality near Kronos. The company found the quality was “measurably worse” during the six days of the week when Kronos operates.
Separately, Mayor Mary Sheffield, who took office this year, directed the city’s environmental agency to install four monitors near the plant so residents “knew that the administration is taking their concerns seriously,” according to city spokesperson John Roach. He said the monitors have not measured pollution that exceeds moderate levels. (Sheffield voted against the land swap when she was on City Council.)
Kronos representatives, meanwhile, have worked to build public support. The company has said that it has hired Detroiters to work at the plant, donated food and backpacks to community groups, and paved a new parking lot for a neighborhood church. A few years ago, it published renderings online showing how it would improve the neighborhood with paved sidewalks, mature trees and 6-foot-tall grassy hills to create a buffer from the plant.
Those images don’t match what the neighborhood looks like. Sidewalks are missing or cracked. Barbed wire hangs from fences over debris-strewn lots. Water sprayed to control dust creeps into the streets, creating small pools of green liquid. Lots are barren and gray after being treated with herbicides to prevent weeds.
Dobson said Crown hasn’t been able to carry out the improvements because the city hasn’t signed off on its plan. Roach said the city won’t grant permission until the company addresses code violations, including an unpermitted chain-link fence and inadequate screening to hide operations.
If Crown doesn’t make the improvements soon, Mitchell Gross, who lives across the street from Kronos, said he’s going to plant evergreen trees himself “to filter the dust.”
He said he keeps his windows shut and that his son and his two young grandchildren, who used to live with him, have left Detroit to protect their health. “They’re in a nice place and getting good air to breathe,” said Gross, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 50 years.
Some of Cadillac Heights’ longtime residents aren’t sticking around to find out whether things will improve. At least 16 residents who lived in the area closest to the Kronos plant have sold their land to Crown since the land swap, according to records reviewed by BridgeDetroit and ProPublica. The sellers have received “a windfall,” with an average 2024 purchase price of $114,000 that has been “increasing,” according to Crown representative Dobson.
Bitely, the spokesperson for Duggan, said that having so many private sales to one entity “had never happened before in Detroit.”
Samantha Flowers was among the first residents to fight against the concrete operation. Last year, she texted BridgeDetroit and ProPublica a video of the plant, taken at 6:15 a.m., to demonstrate the daily noise and bright lights residents are accustomed to. “Typical morning in the neighborhood,” she wrote.
Flowers sold her home and five other parcels to Crown in January for $125,000, according to the county’s online records. Tomasz, who had filed a lawsuit against the company, gave up his hope of buying the lot next to his and instead sold his home to the company for $150,000. Dobson said the property will be used to create additional buffering from the plant.
Kary, however, plans to live out her final years in her family’s home. She pays for grass seed to maintain the Crown-owned vacant lot next to hers so she can look out her windows at something nice.
“It’s home,” she said. “I’m not leaving.”
The post Left in the Dust: How a Billionaire-Owned Concrete Plant Took Over a Detroit Community appeared first on ProPublica.
Elbit Systems supplied Tzayad digital army programme to map people, vehicles and other objects in real time
Israel identified about 1,000 potential targets a day during the first two years of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon with its command and control system, according to a presentation by the country’s largest arms supplier, Elbit Systems.
A total of 850,000 targets were detected in real time by the Israeli Tzayad digital army programme across all the military’s theatres of war between 7 October and the end of 2025, the company said at a military conference in London.
Continue reading..."A year ago, the message from many business leaders was that AI was going to wipe out jobs," remembers the Wall Street Journal.But "For the past month or so, tech CEOs have been striking a more optimistic tone." In late May, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman — who has long predicted that AI will lead to seismic shifts in the workforce — said during a conference, "We've been roughly right on technological predictions and pretty wrong on the social and economic implications." Soon after, he told CNBC, "Our industry underestimated how much we're going to be able to keep people at the center of everything." Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who warned in May 2025 that artificial intelligence could eliminate half of entry-level jobs, a year later highlighted more positive scenarios for AI-adopting businesses: "They can do the same thing with less resources, and that leads to things like layoffs, or they can do more with the same amount of resources. But that requires creativity...." Is the sunnier outlook a move to win back customers and the public who are souring on AI's world-upending promise? Or is the role of AI in the workplace now just better understood...? Collectively, the narrative has shifted from worker-light doomsday scenarios caused by AI to a future in which workers keep their jobs — and get a productivity boost. The sentiment change isn't limited to tech leaders: A survey by EY-Parthenon found that the percentage of CEOs who believe AI investments will result in significant reductions in head count fell from around 46% in January 2025 to just 20% this May. "They may have noticed that the labor market is genuinely not changing (i.e., imploding) as rapidly as they expected," said David Autor, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "They may have realized it was simply bad business to say that your great new product will destroy the economy." The article notes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos "has a history of predicting that AI will create new jobs," and in June said AI could even lead to a labor shortage. "When asked on CNBC in May about people being afraid of AI taking jobs, he said the reason they're afraid is because 'all these smart people keep saying that.'" The article then adds that "Fewer people are saying it now."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Suspicions grow in Lanarkshire that local people have been misled on supposed benefits of the huge development
Revealed: landmark Scottish AI project has no prospect of meeting renewables promise
What are Britain’s AI growth zones and are the plans feasible or ‘complete bunk’?
The promise was that a Scottish community would be transformed by massive investment and empowered to chase “the jobs of the future”. Instead, local people in Lanarkshire fear they may have to sell their properties and lose green belt land because of the errors of a badly planned AI datacentre complex, even as those jobs and investments never arrive.
Late last year, representatives of Oakes Energy Services began to knock on doors in Newarthill, a village east of Glasgow. In letters reviewed by the Guardian, they invited residents to individual meetings. They told them about plans for a solar farm, say local people, and made offers: free solar panels, tree planting, or even cash for their properties.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Government and developers privately acknowledged Lanarkshire datacentre site had power provision ‘issue’
‘It’s smoke and mirrors’: hope turns to fear in Scottish village chosen for AI datacentre
What are Britain’s AI growth zones and are the plans feasible or ‘complete bunk’?
A landmark AI development billed as delivering jobs and prosperity has misrepresented its plans to channel a nuclear reactor’s worth of power to a site in rural Scotland, a Guardian investigation has found.
When it was announced in January, the government promised that an £8.2bn AI datacentre complex in Lanarkshire – built by the US firm CoreWeave and the Scottish company DataVita – would be powered entirely from on-site renewables and built by 2030.
Continue reading...A decidedly unremarkable Brazilian team had looked tentative at this tournament. A sixth World Cup title looks a long way off
Brazil were 1-0 down. At first, a few yellow jerseys wandered up the aisles and out to the concourse, writing off the small fortunes they had invested in being here, never mind the chances of their nation lifting a sixth World Cup. Then it was a steady stream of Brazil fans heading to the exits.
They knew how this was going to end. That Brazil would be eliminated here in the last 16, knocked out at the earliest stage since 1990. That they would have gone six World Cups without lifting the trophy, their longest title drought.
Continue reading...Premium Bluetooth noise-cancelling cans combine comfort with extensive connectivity and a user-replaceable battery
Sennheiser’s latest Momentum Bluetooth headphones build on the German audio specialist’s renowned sound quality with improved noise cancelling, exceptional comfort and a user-replaceable battery to keep pace with rivals.
The Momentum 5s cost £330 (€400/$400/A$749) and directly replace their three-year-old predecessors, facing strong competition from Bose, Sony and Sonos.
Continue reading...Little-known abroad, Andy Burnham has a chance to define a new era of US-UK relations. Should he seek to charm or bargain with the bully in the White House – or treat him ‘like a poorly informed constituent’?
If, as expected, Andy Burnham becomes the British prime minister later this month, one of his first telephone calls is likely to be with Donald Trump.
Trump’s mother was Scottish and he has a nostalgic fascination with Britain. But managing a relationship with the erratic, transactional and demanding US president has been a diplomatic minefield for Burnham’s predecessors.
Continue reading...USA Today reports on a Facebook post from a Washington state sheriff's office: Four residents of Clallam County, a coastal region west of Seattle along northern Washington's peninsula, lost more than $673,000 in just three days, according to the Clallam County Sheriff's Office... The smallest amount lost was $3,500, which someone purchased in Apple gift cards for a scammer posing as an employee with Microsoft technical support, the sheriff's office wrote. Another person lost $50,000 after they clicked on a malicious email and unwittingly granted the scammers access to their financial accounts. The local Peninsula Daily News reports another scam involved a 64-year-old resident who attempted to contact Coinbase after seeing their account displayed shown as closed: "Believing they were speaking with a legitimate Coinbase representative, the victim was told there was fraudulent activity on the account and was instructed to download a 'rescue' application," the [sheriff's] release states. "The application allowed the scammer to remotely access the victim's phone." They then convinced the victim to transfer approximately $200,000 worth of cryptocurrency to what was described as a secure wallet. The funds were instead transferred to the scammer and could not be recovered... In one scam, reported Monday, an 84-year-old Clallam County resident believed they had received an email from their daughter with a photo. After opening the email, a fake Microsoft security alert appeared on the computer directing the victim to call a support number, according to the release. "The victim was transferred to someone claiming to represent the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and was falsely told they were under investigation in a child pornography and money laundering case," the release states. "The scammers instructed the victim not to contact local law enforcement and claimed local banks were also under investigation. The victim was told their bank accounts were in danger of being seized and was instructed to purchase gold to protect their assets." In three separate transactions, the victim purchased approximately $420,000 worth of gold and gave it to an unknown man waiting at the end of their driveway. "Only after speaking with bank officials did the victim realize they had been defrauded," the release states. USA Today offers this advice from the sheriff's press release. "These criminals are professional manipulators who prey on fear, trust and urgency. We encourage everyone to pause before sending money, purchasing gold or gift cards, or transferring cryptocurrency. A simple phone call to a trusted family member, your bank or local law enforcement can prevent a life-changing financial loss."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
America’s dominance depends on getting local communities on board.
Washington dismisses NATO’s value at its own peril.
Has the success of the US men’s team – and hosting the World Cup – finally made Americans fall in love with football? With Guardian US soccer correspondent Jeff Rueter
For decades, the US has been unmoved by the charms of the beautiful game. As Guardian US soccer correspondent Jeff Rueter, a boyhood fan of the sport, explains, football in America was a ‘ramshackle’ affair – unloved, boring, a little alien.
But, Helen Pidd hears, things are beginning to change. The US men’s national team is thriving in the World Cup they are hosting, and Americans are being won over by travelling football teams and fans, from the Scots in Boston to Algerians in Kansas
Continue reading...  | Hi! My boys just got their one wheels. My 10yo got an XR classic and my 14yo has a GT-S on its way. So far they have been playing in the squishy grass only. I was hoping to get some pad recs. I think I like the idea of full face helmets. They have dirtbike helmets but I think they may be too heavy…maybe? What do your kids wear? [link] [comments] |
"Hundreds of freedom lovers are rallying behind a US Air Force engineer" who's been accused of damaging over a dozen AI-integrated surveillance cameras last year and even knocking down their poles. Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares this article from Futurism: According to local channel WAVY, Virginia-based Air Force engineer and mechanic Jeffrey Sovern is facing 13 counts of destruction of property, as well as six counts of both petit larceny and possession of burglary tools related to the destruction of Flock license plate cameras... [Wavy reports the cameras were sometimes pointed in the wrong direction or thrown to the street.] Armed with garbage bags, spray paint, and even chainsaws, a not insignificant number of privacy vigilantes have taken the fight to Flock, using any means to free their neighborhoods of the ominous surveillance poles. On a GoFundMe page to raise money for his legal defense, the 41-year-old Sovern explained that this kind of privacy-minded vandalism has far more support than would outwardly appear... Sovern kicked off the campaign late in December of 2025, where he encouraged his supporters to "reach out to the local governments and demand that these systems are taken down." The Virginia resident initially set his funding goal to $8,500. As news of his case has spread across the web, the amount of support has far outpaced those already-hopeful aspirations. [Two hours ago the legal fund stood at $23,326 from over 680 donors].
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
It was more than two years ago that TypeScript's creator Anders Hejlsberg announced plans to rewrite its compiler in Go. This week Microsoft announced its first Go-based release candidate for TypeScript 7.0, reports InfoWorld: TypeScript 7.0 is often about 10 times faster than TypeScript 6.0, Microsoft said, thanks to native code speed and shared memory parallelism... Unlike TypeScript 6.0, TypeScript 7.0 performs many steps in parallel, including parsing, type checking, and emitting, Microsoft said. Some of these steps, such as parsing and emitting, can mostly be done independently across files. For that reason, parallelization automatically scales well with larger codebases with relatively little overhead. However, not every step in a TypeScript build is easily parallelizable, Microsoft said. Microsoft plans to release TypeScript 7.0 within the next month, the article points out, but developers can try the new compiler by installing it from the typescript package on npm: npm install -D typescript@rc
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Race to develop ‘embodied AI’ focuses on creating dextrous hands to transform humanoid robots from gimmicks into useful products
Human hands – nimble, nerve-filled appendages that are the most flexible part of the human skeleton – are exceptionally complex. Many tasks that most people can do largely without thinking, from tying a pair of shoelaces to buttoning up a shirt, in fact require a complex set of neurological instructions and precise choreography. In thousands of years of human history, no machine has been able to truly replicate human’s greatest tool.
But now, as artificial intelligence (AI) races forwards, some companies think they are close to surpassing this final but most difficult hurdle in robotics. Most of them are in China.
Continue reading...A seaplane carrying at least eight people made a hard landing in New York City's East River on Sunday, officials said.
"Mozilla shut down the well-loved read-it-later Pocket app last year, and now Meta is launching an app called Pocket with an entirely different, AI-focused pitch," writes The Verge. While it's not available for downloads in most locations, Meta's Pocket will allow people "to generate small, interactive apps and games using AI prompts," writes TechCrunch. They're called "gizmos", and Pocket "also offers a scrollable feed where you can play with gizmos others have made." Some context from The Verge: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is all in on AI as the new social media, and he's previously described a vision of how users could use AI to make interactive experiences and share them with people. The launch of Pocket appears to be one manifestation of that idea... It follows Meta hiring engineers from a company called Atma Sciences Inc., which made an app called Gizmo, as Business Insider reported in March. On a help center page, Meta also describes a gizmo as a "playable AI-generated experience," and when you post one, Meta says you can choose to let other people remix them. "Based on the app's screenshots in Google Play, there are many similarities to Gizmo's original app, which is still listed," notes TechCrunch. "Pocket is another example of Meta's push to make AI creation tools more mainstream, extending its earlier efforts, which included AI-generated images created via its Meta AI app and AI videos created with its app called Vibes. It has also added AI features across its social platforms... " Given that Meta has not officially announced Pocket's debut, it's likely that Pocket is still in its initial experimentation phase. Its counterpart Gizmo, however, had generated 635,000 lifetime installs across both iOS and Google Play, according to Appfigures, which noted it had a 98% positive sentiment.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Analysis finds services cheaper but country ranks 57th in network performance and 70th for download speeds
British holidaymakers watching online videos while they sit on a European beach this summer are likely to be pleasantly surprised: the signal should be better than at home.
Mobile coverage in the UK is worse than in any of the 27 EU member countries, and every other member of the G7 group of large economies, according to analysis by consumer group Which? of data from Opensignal.
Continue reading...Measures to be announced to make funding more transparent amid new revelations about Reform UK leader
Ministers will launch a crackdown on large political donations on Monday, as Nigel Farage faces a possible second investigation into gifts he received from a convicted fraudster before becoming an MP.
The government will announce a series of measures to make political funding more transparent, including restrictions on donations from foreign-based benefactors.
Continue reading...Report says current network of buses, trains and stations effectively locks 2.8m people out of workforce
Investing in the UK transport network to make it fully accessible to disabled passengers could boost the economy by £176bn by helping millions more people into work, according to a report.
Making the economic case for an inclusive transport network, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) said the current system was inaccessible to almost a quarter of the working-age population.
Continue reading...Dan Jarvis, who wants to stay on as defence secretary, says he is confident PM-in-waiting values national security
The new defence secretary, Dan Jarvis, has called on Andy Burnham to increase defence spending dramatically from 2030 and “evidence the trajectory” towards a Nato target that would mean £25bn a year more for the military by the middle of the next decade.
The former paratrooper said he was confident that the prime minister-in-waiting valued national security, as he openly lobbied him for cash that would probably have to come from cuts elsewhere.
Continue reading...Inquiry co-chaired by David Blunkett uncovers loss of focus on fighting crime, plus low standards and need for reform
Police leadership in England and Wales is plagued by “nepotism and bias” and too many chiefs have lost focus on fighting crime, a government-backed report has found.
The inquiry, co-chaired by former home secretary David Blunkett, found a reset was needed at all levels, with scores of top officers facing misconduct inquiries.
Continue reading...Savannah Bananas owner Jesse Cole dreamed of making baseball livelier and more fun. Now the team is taking its dances, acrobatics, and trick plays to sold-out stadiums across the U.S.
The exhibition baseball league Banana Ball focuses on entertaining people of all ages – including "Bananas Foster," a nonprofit that honors foster families.
The Trump administration is working with a U.S. company to challenge China's dominance over rare earth elements. The metals are essential for components in smartphones, robotics, fighter jets, and drones.
London black cab drivers, who are required to memorize thousands of streets to get their license, are being tested in a new way. Several companies are trying to bring robotaxis to the city's streets.
One untapped resource to meet the rising need for rare earth elements: recycling what's already been used.
In a heartfelt sign-off, Cooper reflects on the stories, risks, adventures, and human connections that defined his two decades with television's most iconic newsmagazine.
Bavi, a massive cyclone approaching the Mariana Islands east of the Philippines, was forecast to strike Rota early Monday morning local time.
US striker was shown red in last-32 match
Fifa announced suspension of ban earlier on Sunday
Belgian FA ‘astonished’ by decision
Donald Trump lobbied Fifa to lift the US striker Folarin Balogun’s one-game ban for a red card received in the team’s win over Bosnia and Herzegovina, preceding Sunday’s stunning announcement that he would be available for the cohosts’ last-16 clash against Belgium in Seattle on Monday night.
Sources have told the Guardian that Trump made three calls to Fifa, starting from Wednesday, to ensure that the change was made.
Continue reading...  | 3 YEARS POST DIVORCE AND THIS WAS MY PRESENT TO MYSELF... She bought me a pint a couple years before that and honestly I just got the GT out of spite... I was about to enter a world that I'm in now without even laughing at a purchase like that... I married a family attorney, we made two very beautiful babies and she fucking quit. Not even close to the point THE PINT AND THE SLICK ARE SO MUCH MORE FUN FOR ME... BECAUSE IT'S JUST SUPER CARVY AND FUN TO TURN EASY PEASY CHICKEN GREASY.... I WANT ONE OF THOSE TIRES FOR MY GT... BECAUSE IT IS A SUPERIOR PRODUCT AND IT'S A ABILITY TO BE ENJOYED FOR LONGER IS DOPE... I KNOW THE WAY I SPEAK ON HERE ISN'T SUPER GREAT BUT I WOULD REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY SUPER GRATITUDE FOR ANYBODY WHO COULD GIVE ME SOME TIPS ON WHY OR WHY NOT... That I can make my GT just ride fun like the way I feel on the pint... I feel like I'm a silly Billy a guy who wears a tuxedo t-shirt and when it's Christmas he wears I don't know fucking mistletoe or something I'm not trail guy I'm not even go fast guy I'm just fun guy.... I would love to be trail go fast guy but if I hurt myself I will end up living under a bridge because my money tree quit her job as my wife and... If I don't get back on track financially.... Like I don't get a job because I have a broken wrist... Cuz I was being trail guy go fast guy... THANK YOU ALL SO VERY MUCH AND I KNOW IT'S A LOT BUT IT MEANS A LOT... It means a lot. I love riding... And I just want to love the GT as much as I love the pint.... You know what I mean the fun like carvey easy left easy right whatever you call that... I'm going to shut up now and hopefully it will let me put a picture of my dog on the cover I live in Lexington Kentucky I love to work I love to work... I was a stay-at-home dad and now I'm 48 looking for a place to retire from in 20 to 25 years.... If I could just start somewhere at 22 bucks an hour 40 to 50 hours a week I would do somebody's mother's yard work until she is no longer on the Earth. My name is Brandon Fletcher and I've got nothing to lose by being so silly but stupid serious. I don't even know how I ended up mentioning all that probably because I can tie anything into that stupid divorce not that divorce is wrong but I'm just in the shit trying to get out. [link] [comments] |
Rudi Garcia likens decision to April Fools’ Day joke
Belgian FA says it will investigate all potential options
USMNT reaction to Fifa flip: ‘Thought it was AI at first’
As a Fifa media officer read aloud the statement confirming the governing body’s shock reversal of US striker Folarin Balogun’s suspension on Sunday, Belgium coach Rudi Garcia and goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois put their poker faces to work. Garcia stared straight down the aisle of the press conference room at Seattle Stadium. Courtois’s eyes fluttered about, perhaps masking some rolls as he faced a press pack eager to make sense of an unexpected World Cup twist.
Balogun’s reinstatement came across as a joke to the Belgian boss, though he hardly seemed ready for a laugh.
Continue reading..."Companies spending heavily on AI are growing headcount faster, even in the entry-level roles that many fear are doomed," writes TechCrunch. That's the conclusion of new report tracking AI spending from Ramp's corporate card/bill pay data as well as Revelio Labs' workforce records from 21,599 U.S. firms: According to the report, "high-intensity adopters" — firms that spend on average $30 per employee per month on AI in the first three months — saw headcount increase 10.2%. Headcount also rose across functions, including engineering, sales, administration, customer service, finance, marketing, and scientist roles. The strongest job growth among high-intensity adopters was in the information sector, which includes software, internet, media, and tech-adjacent firms. Despite these positive signals, the data isn't as rosy as it seems. It skews heavily toward tech-forward, knowledge-work firms — ones that might have VC-backing and are growing fast anyway, making it difficult to say whether AI is contributing to the hiring or just showing up at companies that are expanding anyway. "This paper does not show that AI universally creates jobs," the paper's authors admit, "but it does counter claims that AI will lead to broad job losses." It also counters claims that AI is killing all junior jobs. Recent research from Goldman Sachs found that AI has already erased about 16,000 net jobs per month over the past year, with Gen Z and entry-level workers taking the brunt of the burden. But in tech-forward firms, the report finds that entry-level headcount actually rose by 12%... "For software and technology firms, AI can make core output cheaper or faster to produce: writing code, debugging, building internal tools, producing technical documentation, and supporting product development," the report reads. "Lower production costs in these workflows can raise the return to expanding the whole firm, not just the engineering team." But companies that buy subscriptions and run pilots, yet did not go on to make sustained investments, don't tend to see any gains in headcount, per the report. That sets up the potential for a widening gap between firms that have the resources — like capital, technical staff, founder networks, and management bandwidth — to turn AI adoption into actual business gains and those that are stuck experimenting with subscriptions. In other words, this report suggests that firms that already have the resources are the ones that will see the largest gains. CNBC argues another AI "narrative" was challenged this week: that open source can't make money. "The assumption was that giving your model away for free meant no business. That's breaking too, as open-model companies start posting real revenue and enterprises move from renting AI to running their own."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Interim president says unrest will not break out despite anger at official response to the 24 June disaster
Venezuela’s interim president has defended her country’s emergency response to the twin earthquakes that have killed more than 3,000 people, vowing the country would not descend into social unrest.
Many Venezuelans have expressed anger at what they see as the US-backed government’s inadequate response to the 24 June disaster before international teams arrived.
Continue reading...After you get that alert, can you choose “close ride” in the top, and then look for what the “build version” is?
Also feel free to DM me your Floaty JSON file here or on discord and I can take a look as well.
Exit leaves primary voters to choose between progressive Abdul El-Sayed and centrist Haley Stevens in must-win seat
Mallory McMorrow, a Michigan Democrat, has dropped out of a contentious US Senate primary campaign, setting up a straight fight between the party’s progressive and establishment wings – represented by Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official, and Haley Stevens, a congresswoman.
McMorrow’s retreat marks the end of a center-left bid to hold the seat being vacated this year by the Democrat Gary Peters. The three-way primary contest was a close one earlier in the campaign, but polls indicated that McMorrow’s support had plunged in recent weeks, as El-Sayed raced past her and Stevens to emerge as the frontrunner for the party’s nomination.
Continue reading...  | Whipped this together today with some scrap wood I had. It's super sturdy and plenty of room under it for the charger. Side note: anyone have advice on cleaning the mud off my footpads? [link] [comments] |
Wherever in the world you go, the smartphone landscape is dominated by Android and iOS, and while this has always been problematic, recent events have made the dependency on two American tech giants for what is probably our most personal computing device even more problematic than it already was. We use our smartphones to keep our secrets, do our banking, interact with our governments, share our deepest thoughts with our friends and family, and a whole lot more. Having this invaluable tool the vast majority of us depend on tied entirely to Google and Apple is not just bad for the market, it’s also a downright threat to the national security of anyone not living in the US.
Here in Europe, there’s been an awakening lately, with governments, companies, and people alike finally realising that having our entire digital infrastructure controlled by foreign, adversarial interests is a terrible idea. Sadly, breaking free from our Android and iOS chains is not so easy. The most ideal solution would be a truly open source alternative smartphone operating system, but that’s a hard sell for 99.9% of smartphone users who need the applications required to do their finances, talk to their friends, or interact with their governments. The cold and harsh truth is that with very few exceptions, these applications simply do not (yet) exist for smartphone operating systems that aren’t Android or iOS.
The only viable alternative at this point in time is to take whatever’s left of the Android Open Source Project, remove anything that ties it to Google and its services, fill in the gaps with alternative services and applications, and sell it as a Google-free or de-Googled Android platform. There’s several projects in this space, and with Europe drunkenly stumbling out of the technological hole it dug itself into, it’s no surprise that two of the more popular alternatives to Apple or Google-controlled smartphones come from Europe (and from the same country, no less). Today, we’re taking a look at one of these: iodéOS.
Iodé is a company based in Toulouse, France, which focuses on offering a Google-free Android called iodéOS, either preinstalled on phones you can buy, or as a ROM you can install yourself on supported devices. As a company, iodé makes its money through selling devices with iodéOS preinstalled, through an optional premium subscription (that I didn’t take a look at), and through donations, and all of their code is published as open source on their Gitlab instance hosted in France.
Iodé loaned me a Fairphone 6 with iodéOS preinstalled, one of he many smartphones and tablets they sell through their online store for review. This isn’t going to be an Android review; you already know what Android is like, and there’s no need for me to rehash any of that. Instead, I want to focus on the things that make using de-Googled Android different from using Google Android.
There are various ways to go about making a de-Googled Android variant, and iodéOS chose the LineageOS route, with microG installed on top. For those unaware, microG is a project which aims to replace the various proprietary parts of Google Play Services, required by many Android applications, with open source reimplementations. While it doesn’t offer 100% compatibility, it works exceptionally well, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find applications just don’t work at all with microG. IodéOS updates its microG installation through a dedicated F-Droid repository that’s obviously enabled by default, so you don’t have to do anything yourself.
Using microG instead of Google Play Services doesn’t mean you have to rely solely on whatever’s available in F-Droid, since there are a variety of alternative Play Store frontends available. IodéOS ships with the Aurora Store, which is an open-source frontend to the Play Store that can be used with or without a Google account. If you use it with your Google account, you’ll gain access to whatever applications you already own, including paid ones, but you won’t be able to buy applications inside Aurora. You can, however, buy an application on the Play Store website, after which it will show up in Aurora as well, assuming you’re logged in with the same account.
Aurora also comes with something something called FakeStore, which is sadly an important part of the puzzle; it’s a stub application that has the same package name as the real Play Store. Some applications check whether the Play Store is available before working properly, so this is sadly needed to ensure maximum compatibility. The only issue I sometimes ran into with Aurora is that it would load up its listings, but then any application I tapped on said it was unavailable. When this happened, reloading the Aurora application always fixed the issue. Annoying, but not gamebreaking.
A few things did not work for me when using microG on iodéOS, and they’re exactly the things you’d expect not to work. If you have a WearOS device, you’re out of luck; WearOS devices simply do not work when using microG, but there is a bounty to add support for it. If you want to use a smartwatch with iodéOS, there are various options available, such as Garmin devices, which is what I used during my testing and it worked flawlessly.
Another feature from “regular” Android that simply won’t work is RCS. There’s only one RCS client available on Android, Google Messages, and as you can imagine, Google is in no rush to allow devices without Google Play Services to register for and use RCS messaging. Tying to register with Google Messages will fail, and there are no other RCS clients available (save for a few China and India-specific clients). There’s a microG bounty for this, too, but no luck so far. Of course, there are countless messaging platforms that work just fine on iodéOS – regular SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, and so on – and especially if you’re European, it’s unlikely RCS support matters to you at all.
I just don’t ever think or care about RCS.
The big question mark hanging over everyone’s head when they consider moving to a de-Googled Android ROM without Google Play Services is, of course, banking applications. Personally, I’m lucky in that my bank’s application works just fine without Google Play Services, and the same applies to the various related applications and services here in Sweden, such as the BankID verification application (used to verify your identity for banking, government logins, etc.) and Swish, a popular Swedish payment platform.
While I think the problem of broken banking applications is a little bit overblown, it’s still a real issue and you should do some research before making the jump. Even if your specific bank’s application is listed as broken, though, you can usually still access the same functionality through your bank’s website, even if that’s probably a little less smooth and more cumbersome. Look, nobody said ditching Google wouldn’t come with difficulties and annoyances.
While my banking situation was fine on iodéOS, the same can’t be said for NFC payments. I use Google Wallet to pay with my phone and smartwatch at stores, and it won’t come as a surprise that Google doesn’t make its Wallet application work without its Play Services installed. If you’re in the same boat, you may be able to circumvent this problem through your bank’s application, as some banks offer NFC payment functionality of their own. If not, you’re out of luck – unless you happen to have a Garmin watch with Garmin Pay, which works without Play Services or even a smartphone at all, like I wrote about extensively a year ago.
The worry about losing access to banking applications and NFC payments is probably the biggest worry people have when considering switching to a de-Googled Android ROM like iodéOS, and while that worry is valid, I do think most people will be surprised by just how many banking applications work just fine even without Google Play Services. Before making the jump, some online searching will yield several maintained lists of working and broken applications so you know what you’re in for.
That being said, this is not an ideal situation, and one that most likely needs remedying in a regulatory manner. Access to basic and often mandatory services like banking, online government ID systems, messaging, and more should not be predicated on buying a locked-down, user-hostile American device.
Usually, custom Android ROMs, de-Googled or not, ship with some Chromium browser by default, but iodéOS does things a bit differently by opting for a branded Firefox fork instead that has telemetry, trackers, and so on disabled. For its other Google application replacements, iodéOS relies on various proven open source applications, like CoMaps, Thunderbird, Fossify applications, and more. The end result is a complete offering where everything you’d find on a Google Android phone has been replaced by solid, capable, non-Google offerings from the open source community.
Of course, this is Android, so you can install whatever other maps, mail, or application you want if iodé’s choices aren’t to your liking.
An important feature of iodéOS is that it ships with an operating system-wide analysis tool that provides insight into with to what and whom, exactly, your phone and its applications are connecting. A system-wide adblocker is part of this, as well, with sensible defaults sourced from various open source blocklists. Of course, you have full control over what is and is not blocked, including the ability to block entire applications or websites if you so desire. While I personally didn’t try out their optional Premium subscription service, this service provides even more control, such as various parental control features.
IodéOS also has some nice, smaller touches that I really appreciated. During the first boot and initial setup, it showed a screen where you could select which default applications to remove, something I’ve never seen before. Sadly, many of the supposedly removable applications ended up only being “hidden”, which is Android speak for system applications that can’t be removed. I’m not sure what the exact reasoning is to make some applications system applications, but I would definitely prefer if all of the preinstalled applications, or at least most of them, were actually removable. This would seem to more closely align with iodéOS’ stated goals and values.
The default installation also comes with what is essentially a really barebones, basic changelog application. It shows nothing more than a list of recent updates with includes fixes changes, and additions, and it’s really nice to have this information easily accessible. I’m quite tired of the modern trend of empty or entirely missing changelogs, so it’s nice to see iodé putting this front and centre. The application itself could use some touching-up, but at the same time, I understand why this is probably not high on the list of priorities. It shows a changelog; it doesn’t need to win design awards.
Speaking of updates – during my use, iodéOS was never more than one month behind on Android’s security updates, which is not a bad showing compared to many much larger big-time Android OEMs. Still, I would prefer the monthly Android security updates to be available within the same month, so this is an area where iodéOS can improve and put themselves even farther ahead of most OEMs. People who are most likely to switch to a de-Googled Android are probably also going to be people who care about being up-to-date and as secure as possible.
Beyond the well-documented problems with WearOS, RCS, and some banking applications that are outside of iodé’s control, using iodéOS is simply boring and uneventful, and in this case, “boring” is exactly what they should be aiming for. For the vast majority of people, switching from Google Android to iodéOS will not be a particularly jarring experience, as all their favourite applications will still be available, running on the same underlying operating system they’re already used to. IodéOS does an excellent job of being inoffensive, unobtrusive, and frictionless – exactly what you want from something that aims to be a drop-in replacement for Google Android for as many people as possible.
IodéOS offers a solid Android experience to those who want to de-Google, and assuming you’re not deeply dependent on WearOS and/or RCS, it’s easy to recommend. It’s really “just Android”, and if you’re already used to Android – and statistically speaking, you are – buying a phone with iodéOS preinstalled is no different than buying any other Android device, just without all the Google baggage.
And as we realise a little bit more every day, that’s a massive value-add over Pixels and Samsung phones.
In Iran, the school deaths have become a symbol for U.S.-Israeli brutality and an unjust war. The Washington Post is reporting from the country under restricted conditions.
The ASC student cluster competition returned to Wuxi, aka “The Pearl of Taihu” for its 2026 edition. Competition fans will remember Wuxi from 2017 when students got the chance to run on what was then the largest supercomputer in the world, the Sunway TaihuLight.
As usual, 25 student teams representing top universities from around the world gathered, this time hosted by Wuxi University. The picture above is the registration table at the hotel with 150 bags ready to be handed out to students, coaches, and visiting HPC/AI dignitaries.
While the university has a beautiful and modern campus, I was a little concerned about the cluster stadium. It was about half the size of
the usual competition venues, and I wondered if 25 GPU crammed clusters and upwards of 200 people coupled with the hot and humid Wuxi spring weather might overwhelm the A/C. The thermals were fine, which was great, but the noise was incredible, as you can see in our upcoming team interview videos.
Usual Stuff but Some New Wrinkles
The basics remain the same, university teams compete to optimize a fiendish selection of HPC/AI workloads and benchmarks. The goal is to achieve the highest performance while staying under the 5,000 watt power cap.
The system hardware is provided by ASC organizers, which makes it much easier on the teams. Students do need to bring their own GPUs, but AMD is supplying W7900D GPUs as part of their sponsorship.
For the first time, the ASC is hosting a job fair in conjunction with the competition. Ten companies including industry giants AMD and Tencent, plus systems, robotics, and a variety of AI firms manned booths in an effort to attract the best and brightest new talent.
The group competition, where five teams of five schools collaborate to optimize an application, was extensively reworked for 2026. In the past, group competition results didn’t have an impact on individual team scores – not true this year, it’s worth 8 points for the winning teams. There is also a sweet 20,000 CNY (~$3,000 US) bonus for the winning teams.
The judging process was also changed for 2026. Rather than teams presenting to a crowded room of judges, each team manned a display board showing their poster explaining the competition apps and how they dealt with them. The judges then circulated around and conversed with each team before submitting their evaluations. It worked well. The judge evaluation is worth 10 points.
The Challenges
HPC Benchmarks: The first task for the students is to successfully run the hallowed HPL and HPCG benchmarks, as is tradition. Shouldn’t be a big hurdle for the teams as they’ve probably practiced these over and over during set up. Weight: 5 points each.
Embodied World Model Inference: If you’re building a robot or something else that will interact with the physical world, they’ll need some sort of mental map to simulate the result of its actions. That’s what the this app is all about. Weight: 18 points.
AMSS-NCKU: Worried about black holes? If so, this is the program for you. AMSS-NCKU simulates black holes and can track their development while calculating gravitational waves. If your robot is going to interact with a black hole, then you’re going to want the ability to simulate black holes and the massive gravitational waves associated with them. In the competition, students were simulating three black holes, not an easy computational task at all. Weight: 18 points.
QiboTN: Building large quantum computers isn’t possible yet despite the hype. But we do have quantum simulators like Qibo that run on hardware available today. QiboTN adds tensor network capability to make it possible benchmark and develop hybrid machine learning models that can be used in areas like quantum chemistry and industrial optimization. Weight: 18 points
LeWorldModel: This is the 2026 mystery application and, I think, the newest app ever used in a cluster competition. Introduced in March 2026, it’s a JEPA (Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture) based learning model that maps a series of images, like video pixels, in order to learn the laws of physical environments. LeWorldModel solves a big problem in existing JEPA models by keeping the AI from getting lazy and simply repeating the same mapping over and over. Coming in at 15 million parameters, it’s slim enough to run fast even on small configurations. Nice job. Weight: 18 points
With the stage set and the course laid out, it’s now time to meet the teams, which, conveniently, is next up….stay tuned.
The post ASC26: The Wuxi Rumble appeared first on HPCwire.
Microsoft is investing $2.5 billion in a new group "assisting clients with AI implementations," reports CNBC: [Microsoft] said Thursday that 6,000 employees will be embedded with clients, in a practice that's become known as forward deployed engineering [or FDE]... The announcement comes two days after cloud rival Amazon said it was putting $1 billion behind an FDE initiative to support fast-paced AI engagements. Leading AI labs Anthropic and OpenAI both established FDE groups in May, partnering with private equity firms, banks and consulting firms. Alongside its technology peers, Microsoft has sunk tens of billions of dollars into building data centers that run generative AI models. Microsoft has also released a variety of AI services, with mixed results. The Microsoft 365 Copilot AI assistant has yet to gain anything approaching ubiquity in the business world, and the GitHub Copilot coding agent has ceded market share to newer players. Microsoft's stock has slumped 21% this year, by far the worst performance among the mega-cap tech companies. One concern on Wall Street is that AI models that quickly compose code might threaten mature software companies... Microsoft has for years provided support and implementation services to customers. The company generated about $2.1 billion in revenue from enterprise and partner services in the March quarter, up 2.5% from a year earlier.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Colour me positively surprised, as I had no idea Alpha emulation had progressed this much.
As you might know, I’m involved a bit in the OpenVMS community and the Alpha emulation side via AXPBox. AXPBox (github) is a fork of the es40 alpha emulator by Camiel Vanderhoeven (who is now Chief Architect at VSI, the company that makes OpenVMS, for x86 nowdays). There have been many forks of es40 in the past and recently a new one has popped up with some great new features. Like speedups via a JIT compiler, S3 graphics port from MAME and ARC support, resulting in the ability to run Windows 2000 for the DEC Alpha.
↫ Remy van Elst
Not only can you run the unreleased Alpha version of Windows 2000 on this forked emulator, it’s also capable of running OpenVMS and Tru64 UNIX. In fact, both OpenVMS and Tru64 can run their full X11 CDE desktops on the emulator as well, which is incredibly cool and a huge milestone. As the name of the original emulator implies, it’s emulating an AlphaServer Es40 from the turn of the century, which should be fast enough for enthusiast use.
The last AlphaStation ever made, the ES47, is still very high on my list of computers I desperately want but will never have – they are incredibly rare, and whenever they do come up for sale, incredibly expensive. If you have one, consider yourself lucky, and please, write about it! Tell the world!
The sides meet Monday for a World Cup quarter-final spot, and the USMNT’s main goal threat is able to play after a shock reversal. Here’s what to know
After a few days of preparing for the World Cup’s last 16 without their top scorer, the United States were dealt a surprise Sunday when Fifa rescinded Folarin Balogun’s red-card suspension for Monday’s match against Belgium.
Belgium’s own preparations have now been scuppered as they go from planning to face an alternative – likely either Ricardo Pepi or Haji Wright – to trying to contain one of the World Cup’s most in-form forwards.
Continue reading...LineageOS, the de-Googled Android ROM that serves as the backbone for pretty much the entire custom Android ROM community, has published an article about what the Android developer verification changes mean for them. I really like the factual tone of their article, especially this part:
Critics such as F-Droid, EFF, and “Keep Android Open” point out that this also happens to route every install path through Google-controlled infrastructure, hands Google a kill switch over any app or developer worldwide, and arrives shortly after Google’s antitrust lawsuits.
Both things can be true at once: real fraud is a problem and the restriction of developers is a convenient side effect of solving it this way – and we’re not in a position to pretend we know Google’s internal reasoning. We’re just telling you what they’ve said and what it changes; you can weigh the “why” yourself.
↫ Nolen Johnson on the LineageOS website
For LineageOS, these new verification measures don’t really mean much, as they don’t affect the project’s work or software. The developer verification infrastructure is a separate application that is part of Google Mobile Services, and LineageOS does not ship GMS nor does it ever intend to. As such, they don’t have to do anything, as this won’t be an issue unless LineageOS users choose to install a GApps package that happens to include the developer verification infrastructure.
If Google were to move the developer verification infrastructure into Play Services in the future, LineageOS makes it clear they’ll disable it globally, as they have done with a number of other “annoying Play Services-provided over-the-air update implementations“. There really isn’t much more they can do; the rest is up to users and projects that use LineageOS as their base.
State Sen. Mallory McMorrow announced on Sunday that she is suspending her campaign for Senate, narrowing the Democratic field ahead of the competitive August primary.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for July 6 No. 1,121.
Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for July 6, No. 1,843.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for July 6, No. 855.
The Nintendo Entertainment System. Is it the platonic ideal of an 8-bit video game system? Well, only because it’s so prominent and successful– it’s actually kind of an oddball in its expandability and design. But there’s something else about it. The picture is a bit… wobbly. Well, over composite video anyway. Let’s dig in and learn a little big more about the nitty-gritty of composite video.
↫ Nicole Branagan
As usual, the information density in this article by Branagan is kind of remarkable, especially when you consider it never overwhelms you. Such a great read.
Have you ever needed a Linux application which only exists in the Windows world? Long-time Slashdot reader BrendaEM writes: Windows does have a lot of useful app (but smaller than "power apps"). Some of these are closed source, some are open, but they're not all available in Linux yet. My list would have to contain Gimp Tookit versions of: IrfanView image manager, which I think is unequaled in Linux (though it does work to some extent under Wine). I also miss the full version of 7-Zip, because of its better compression settings, which File-Roller does not provide, though the Linux port p7zip is available (though unnoticed by common distributions). Lastly, I think that Notepad++ would be a good addition to Linux. That last one drew some pushback from long-time Slashdot reader jesco. "If there's one area where Linux shines, then it's the availability of high-quality text editors. Last time I looked Kate was still pretty nice, and there's Emacs, Vim and Neovim" if you're partial to command lines. But are there any daily-drive apps you still find yourself needing? Share your own thoughts in the comments. Which apps aren't available on Linux?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
‘Haiti is a failed state’, says Carlos Giménez, congressman and Miami Cuban exile, after controversial court ruling
Carlos Giménez, a Republican congressman from Florida, broke with the Trump administration on Sunday, calling on the White House to reconsider its push to eliminate temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitian migrants.
Returning about 350,000 Haitians to their chaotic, dangerous homeland following the US supreme court’s ruling that the Trump administration can cut off temporary legal protections, would be a grave error, Giménez said.
Continue reading... All the latest news from Sunday’s live action at SW19
Swiatek and Rybakina go out | Order of play | Mail Sarah
I can’t wait to see Naomi Osaka’s look today, she has been using fashion to express herself and represent her heritage across all of the slams. So far at Wimbledon she has been wearing a white kimono and she told the BBC about it:
When I think about Wimbledon, it’s obviously the all white. There’s obviously the tradition of it all. In my head, when I think about that, I think about my cultures, my heritage, which is Japanese and Haitian.
Then, if I dive deeper into Japanese culture, I think about the most iconic silhouette, which for me is a kimono. You don’t have to see the colour of a kimono to know that it is a kimono.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Foreign secretary warns of combined risks of AI, climate crisis, irregular migration and foreign interference
Artificial intelligence poses a “Hiroshima”-style risk to humanity if governments do not agree to curb how it is developed, the foreign secretary has warned.
Yvette Cooper urged countries, including the US and China, to agree international rules for AI, telling the Guardian she believes the issue will dominate foreign policy over the next two years.
Continue reading...Title says it.
Is there an app I can use to tune my X7 since Floaty is not working with Android?
Thanks
More than 20 states reported temperatures above 100F as heat dome sits over eastern US during holiday weekend
At least two dozen people have died amid the perilous climate crisis-driven heatwave that has scorched swaths of the US with record temperatures.
As a huge heat dome sits over the county’s eastern half, extreme heat gripped millions of people in the days leading up to the US’s semiquincentennial on Saturday – and beyond it. More than 20 states experienced stifling temperatures more than 100F (38C), marring celebrations. And more than 140 million people remained under active heat alerts across the US on Sunday.
Continue reading...The following is the full transcript of an interview with Reps. Adriano Espaillat, Democrat of New York, and Carlos Gimenez, Republican of Florida, a portion of which aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 5, 2026. The interview was taped on July 2, 2026.
On this "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" broadcast, Reps. Adriano Espaillat and Carlos Giminez join Ed O'Keefe.
Agreement in principle with Castlelake follows several rejected offers and means UK’s biggest low-cost carrier will be taken private
The airline easyJet has said it intends to accept a £5.5bn takeover offer by the US investment firm Castlelake that would take Britain’s biggest low-cost carrier private.
The companies announced an agreement in principle on Sunday evening in a statement, and requested an extension to a deadline to complete the deal formally. The agreement came after weeks of negotiations and several rejected offers.
Continue reading...Both incidents were reported near the port city of Hodeidah, which is under control of the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel group.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the U.S. is "very much in a space race right now" against China, as the two countries vie to land astronauts on the moon and secure a near-permanent presence.
Authorities overseeing the firefight against the week-old Willow Fire west of Leadville issued new evacuation and pre-evacuation orders Sunday morning after the blaze grew by nearly 1,000 acres in 24 hours.
England endured a tumultous buildup to their match in Mexico City, while Trump thanked Fifa publicly for overturning Folarin Balogun of the USA’s red card
Kylian Mbappe has pulled level with Lionel Messi at the top of the Golden Boot charts. Both icons have seven after the Frenchman tucked away the winning penalty against Paraguay.
Erling Haaland (5), Harry Kane (5) and Vinícius Júnior (4) all have the chance to close the gap in the next 24 hours. And also look out for Spain’s Mikel Oyarzabal (4) creeping up on the rails.
Continue reading...America's Justice Department and FBI teamed joined Finland's National Bureau of Investigation to arrest a teenager they say is part of one of the world's biggest cybercrime syndicates, reports Tom's Hardware. The "Scattered Spider" syndicate has extorted over $100 million in ransom payments, according to Department of Justice figures: 19-year-old Peter Stokes is a dual U.S.-Estonian citizen who was trying to board a flight to Japan from Helsinki, when law enforcement caught up with him. [T]he main criminal complaint against Stokes stems from a May 2025 attack on a luxury jewelry dealer based in the United States. The attackers apparently called the company's IT helpdesk using Google Voice, posing as employees. They were able to convince the help desk into resetting their credentials, which allowed them to infiltrate three accounts, two of which had admin privileges. From there, the group, allegedly including Stokes, stole important data and held the jeweler at ransom, demanding an $8 million payment in crypto. The company ultimately regained access to their infrastructure and avoided paying the ransom, but the operational disruption still caused a purported $2 million in losses. This served as the spark that led to Stokes' eventual arrest in Helsinki, as the prosecutors slowly followed the paper and digital trail laid by the attackers. Microsoft played a key role in the process by providing GDID [Global Device Identifier] data to the FBI to help them apprehend the alleged criminal... [I]t's a unique identifier assigned to every Windows install that tracks device-specific telemetry. It's the reason why sometimes changing a major component in your PC can revoke your Windows license... [T]he court documents from the case reveal that Stokes used Windows, from which investigators were able to link his physical hardware to specific internet activity and locations... Stokes' web activity, videogame history, IP addresses, tool usage (including Ngrok), Azure status, and more were logged with timestamps, and were provided to the investigators by Microsoft... Stokes was carrying two hard drives full of incriminating evidence with him when boarding his flight to Japan... His real identity has actually been known since 2024, but since he was a minor living across Estonia and the UAE at the time, he could only be monitored until the time was right. The official criminal complaint even includes a selfie photo that Stokes posted on Snapchat (hiding his face behind dozens of hundred dollar bills). It then notes that behind Stokes the wallpaper, carpet, and furniture match New York's Empire Hotel — and that Stokes had visited the hotel's web site in Germany before then flying to New York... "Following the arrest, Stokes was extradited to the U.S., where he appeared in front of a federal court in Chicago for the first time on June 30, 2026, and he remains in custody," adds Tom's Hardware. "The accused is now awaiting trial, having been charged with conspiracy, cyber intrusion, and fraud..."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
What ride height do you ride at with the bolt patterns. High vs medium (I think it’s front bolt down and back bolt up?) vs low.
Is there that significant of a difference? Do you ever change the ride height frequently or set it and leave it.
I’d anyone has ridden wtf do you know approximately if low vs medium vs high is closest?
I’m building my x10 and was curious what most use.
Thanks in advance,
 | I was tryna see the top speed and i knew i was gonna nosedive but dayum it hurt bad… Dont do this bru [link] [comments] |
Magazine invites readers to judge Vance’s ‘assessment’ of Trump, whom he called ‘cultural heroin’ during first term
The Atlantic on Saturday republished a JD Vance essay that dismissed Donald Trump as “cultural heroin” exactly 10 years earlier, bringing back to the fore his evolving from a critic of the president to his vice-president.
In an editor’s note, the magazine said it was republishing the essay on the occasion of its 10th anniversary – and the US’s semiquincentennial – “so that our readers can judge for themselves how well his assessment [of Trump] … has stood the test of time”.
Continue reading...Former CDC chief medical officer Dr. Debra Houry warned the "scientific integrity" of federal health agencies are at risk.
The following is the transcript of an interview with NASA administrator Jared Isaacman that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on July 5, 2026.
Agency says drones had been caught across all 11 US host cities in restricted airspace since tournament began
More than 600 drones flying over restricted World Cup airspace in the US have been seized since the tournament began in June, the FBI said on Saturday – including 99 captured flying in Miami, 77 in Atlanta and 32 in Kansas City.
In a statement on X, the law enforcement agency said that drones had been caught across all 11 US host cities by FBI and the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Continue reading..."A story widely accused on social media of being written using AI has gone on to win the overall Commonwealth short story prize," reports the Guardian. In mid-May the story had been selected as a regional winner, but with critics on X and Bluesky "claiming it showed 'obvious markers' of AI use." In the wake of the controversy, the Commonwealth Foundation conducted a review of the regional winners, which it said involved looking at drafts, time-stamped documents and notes. "We are satisfied with the testimonies of our writers and their confirmation that AI was not used in their writing," said foundation director-general Razmi Farook... Judging chair Louise Doughty described Nazir's piece as "an original, poetic and deeply moving story...." In a film released by the Commonwealth Foundation on Tuesday, Nazir... adds that he wrote six or seven drafts of his prize-winning story, and also speaks about his use of speech-to-text software, explaining that he could only see three or four lines of text on his phone screen at any one time, so he would perfect each line before moving on, which is how his story ended up being "highly polished"... Initial social media reactions to the Commonwealth Foundation's announcement of Nazir's win were negative, with one X user writing: "immensely disappointing and disheartening. it feels like they wanted to stick to their guns after the entire GenAI uproar. I might think twice now before submitting my stories here". After Nazir was announced as the regional winner in May, some social media users reported running his story through AI-detection software. "Pangram flags at 100% but also, come on, if you know you know", said Wharton professor Ethan Mollick. However, the reliability of AI-detection software has been called into question. In a statement to the Guardian, Farook said that "rather than surrender our judgment to AI-detection software, we asked our winners to show their working drafts, outlines, the evidence of an artistic journey. That software, it must be said, is not infallible: it returns inconsistent verdicts and, in doing so, corrodes the very trust on which a prize depends." "When the machine's default voice is the metropolitan one, the writer who does not fit the expected mould is the first to fall under suspicion," she added. "The more startling her gift, the more her unfamiliar brilliance unsettles, the more readily she is accused of being a machine. A young writer in Kingston or Kolkata, in Kuala Lumpur or Kigali, must now prove not only her talent but her very humanity." Nazir's story beat 7,806 other stories, the video points out (adding that their prize "demonstrates that in a world increasingly driven by algorithms, the human voice still matters.") The Guardian notes that the winning story "includes multiple 'not x, but y' constructions and lists of three, which some consider to be signs of AI use," and that critics also drew attention to particular lines like "Sun on galvanise is a cruel instrument" and "Marsha lived two bends down." In a new interview with the Times of India Nazir says "Now I'm frightened about publishing new work because the attacks haven't stopped." Q: Which passages attracted the most criticism, and why do you think they were misunderstood? Nazir: People criticised a line where I wrote: 'She had the kind of walking that made benches become men.' That's magical realism. Think Salman Rushdie or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's a literary technique. In my story, the character 'Zoongie' believes she is so beautiful that even when no men are around, she imagines the benches becoming men who admire her. It exists only in her imagination. People interpreted it literally. There was another line about light reflecting from a sink. That came directly from my childhood. Our kitchen faced east, and my mother liked to keep everything spotless. We used to polish the sink, and when the morning sun hit it, it glittered brightly. People claimed that the image must have been AI-generated. But it's from my lived experience... I've lived with diabetes for 62 years, which has damaged the nerves in my fingers and feet, and I'm currently undergoing chemotherapy. That's why I began using speech-to-text on my Android phone... I hope this episode leads to a better understanding of the difference between assistive technology and AI-generated writing... Q: Many acclaimed writers like Ursula K Le Guin, Mary Shelley, and JRR Tolkien have also been falsely flagged by AI detectors. Where does this leave writers? Nazir: What these AI detectors are saying is that if a piece of writing is too polished, it must have been written by AI. I refuse to accept that. AI was trained on human writing. Large language models, to me, are tools, much like a word processor. They don't replace the human spirit behind creative writing. Ask an AI to write a prize-winning story on its own and see what it produces. You still need human imagination and judgment to create literature. Nazir added, "What I don't understand is why people continue to question the judges' decision."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
McCartney reportedly played Beatles No 1 hit at star-studded reception at Madison Square Garden
Paul McCartney performed the beloved Beatles No 1 hit I Want to Hold Your Hand for the first time in 60 years at Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding.
McCartney performed the number at the star-studded reception at Madison Square Garden in New York on Friday, People magazine reported. The track was the Beatles’ first American No 1 hit, sparking Beatlemania in the US and the wave of British bands’ success nicknamed “the British invasion”.
Continue reading...The newspaper for the American military has long taken pride in its editorial independence. But under the Trump administration, restrictions have been imposed, and the Pentagon's chief spokesman has vowed to rid the paper of "woke distractions."
Paul Pelosi could face misdemeanor charges over crash in California that left car with ‘major’ damage, authorities say
The husband of the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi was involved in a hit-and-run car crash in California that left a parked vehicle with “major” damage, authorities said on Saturday – and he could face misdemeanor charges.
Paul Pelosi was driving his brown convertible on Friday in Yountville, a town in the heart of wine country, when he struck a legally parked car on the side of the road, briefly stopped and then drove away, the Napa county sheriff’s office said in a statement. No injuries were reported.
Continue reading...Incidents involving California state senator Scott Wiener and New York congressman Dan Goldman underscore Israel-Palestine conflict’s role in US elections
Two recent incidents involving US congressional candidates on opposite coasts have blown up into major controversies, underscoring how the Israel-Palestine conflict has transformed US elections – and illustrating how aggressive protest tactics can spark backlash that overshadows the issues activists meant to highlight.
Scott Wiener, a gay Jewish state senator and trans rights advocate who is currently the frontrunner in the race to replace the longtime representative Nancy Pelosi in California’s 11th district, said he felt forced to leave last week’s annual trans pride march in San Francisco after a group of people ran up to him at a local park where the event was taking place, surrounded him and screamed at him over his positions on Israel’s war on Gaza.
Continue reading...Labour has approved a wave of renewable energy projects, but turning plans into power remains slow. Why is that?
Labour has a race on its hands if it is to lock in its promise to achieve a virtually zero-carbon electricity system by 2030.
Britain’s next prime minister will have to move fast: the climate emergency is raging, high energy bills are driving up the cost of living and the reactionary right is threatening a fossil fuel push if it wins power.
Continue reading...Burnham should use a ‘Makerfield Test’ to ground UK foreign policy in real places Expert comment jon.wallace
An international form of Andy Burnham’s ‘Manchesterism’ could strengthen UK foreign policy by making it inseparable from outcomes in UK regions.
Foreign policy in Britain is often discussed as if it were a distant theatre, detached from the everyday realities of people’s lives. Yet the past decade has shown repeatedly that global shocks land first and hardest in the towns that have the least insulation from volatility. Energy price spikes, supply chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions and investment flows reverberate through UK towns like Leigh and Wigan, Motherwell and Port Talbot, long before they appear in Westminster briefings.
Andy Burnham, newly elected as MP for Makerfield, steps back onto the national stage after nearly a decade as a metro mayor – and as the UK Labour Party’s near-certain choice to replace Keir Starmer as UK prime minister. Burnham describes his politics – shaped by the lived experience of Greater Manchester’s towns – as ‘Manchesterism’: an attempt to deliver ‘good growth in every British postcode’, nurtured ‘from the bottom up’, using ‘public intervention where necessary’ – driven by higher ambition for UK regions and towns.
This outlook, core to his local election success, also offers a distinctive way of thinking about Britain’s international posture: an approach that I describe as ‘International Manchesterism’. That is, a place rooted internationalism that treats global forces as inseparable from local outcomes.
International Manchesterism begins with the recognition that global shocks are experienced locally. The manufacturing clusters of north-west England, and other UK regions, have felt the real world consequences of supply chain fragility more acutely than the financial districts of London. When international energy markets convulse, households in older housing stock across Wigan and Leigh face disproportionate hardship. And when geopolitical tensions disrupt investment flows, regeneration projects in Greater Manchester stall.
I propose that International Manchesterism should be applied to UK policy through a ‘Makerfield Test’: a disciplined framework a new Burnham government can use to assess its international priorities.
Rather than judging foreign policy by summitry, diplomatic choreography or doctrinal positioning, the Makerfield Test would ask a simpler and more demanding question: do Britain’s international choices tangibly improve life in the communities that forged Burnham’s politics?
Recasting foreign policy through this lens offers a way to reconnect global strategy with domestic renewal. It can also rebuild public trust in the value of international engagement. So what elements make up the Makerfield Test?
Economic security is the first pillar. For towns like Makerfield, global economic shifts are not abstract phenomena; they determine job stability, wage levels and household resilience. A credible foreign policy agenda must show how Britain can better shield its industrial and service sectors from volatility.
That means strengthening supply chain resilience for regional manufacturing, ensuring trade agreements reflect the needs of sectors outside London, and developing a strategic approach to critical minerals and inputs.
This would recognize that these issues are not technocratic concerns but questions of fairness. Foreign policy must stabilize the economic foundations of Britain’s towns, not merely enhance the country’s global profile.
The Makerfield test would insist on energy policy that is understood through the lived experience of households, not the abstractions of international negotiations.
England’s northwest has been particularly exposed to international price spikes.
And the experience of the past few years has made clear that Britain’s energy diplomacy cannot be judged solely by its alignment with global climate summits. It must be judged by whether it lowers household bills and creates industrial opportunities in places like Leigh, Ashton and Wigan.
That requires diversified gas supply, expanded storage, deeper cooperation on renewable energy including offshore wind and hydrogen, and a commitment to ensuring that global energy transitions generate regional jobs rather than bypassing them.
A third element of the Makerfield Test concerns international investment. Foreign direct investment has long been concentrated in London and the southeast of England, reinforcing regional inequality. But Burnham’s mayoralty has demonstrated that targeted international engagement can attract capital to regions historically overlooked by national strategy.
The Test would require a foreign policy agenda that champions regional investment corridors, strengthens ties with countries investing in advanced manufacturing, and reforms the UK’s investment promotion machinery so that regional assets are systematically showcased abroad. In this framing, international investment becomes a tool for rebalancing the geography of opportunity.
Globalization has often been experienced as insecurity rather than possibility, particularly in towns with limited access to global networks. The Makerfield Test would ask if government foreign policy is helping to reverse this dynamic.
Doing so would mean developing international skills partnerships in digital, green and advanced manufacturing sectors; expanding mobility schemes for young people outside major metropolitan centres; and aligning migration policy with regional labour needs.
The Makerfield Test would demand policy that positions global opportunity as something that must be distributed, not captured by a narrow geography.
For decades, successive UK governments’ Atlanticism has been framed as a strategic reflex – a doctrinal commitment rather than a practical question.
The Makerfield Test would judge the government’s US related policies by their ability to deliver concrete benefits for Britain’s towns: stable jobs, secure energy, resilient supply chains and access to global markets. This requires a shift from rhetorical alignment to purposeful cooperation.
The UK and US already share interests in critical minerals, semiconductors, green manufacturing, and energy security. Applying the Makerfield Test would drive policy that deepens collaboration in these areas, in ways that underpin the economic resilience of regions like Greater Manchester.
It would treat joint investment in battery technology, aerospace, life sciences and hydrogen as central pillars of a shared industrial future with the US. And it would draw on US experience with community college systems and regional workforce development to strengthen Britain’s own skills infrastructure.
The UK occupies a space increasingly defined by middle power dynamics, in which countries exercise influence through coalitions, issue based partnerships and strategic agility rather than through unilateral leverage.
The Makerfield Test would demand global strategy that seeks to convene, coordinate and shape rules across multiple domains in a way that delivers tangible benefits at home.
This is particularly important in navigating the evolving US–China relationship. The Test would require policy that avoids binary alignment with either side and instead focuses on protecting British economic security, maintaining access to critical technologies and ensuring that global competition does not undermine regional industries.
It would support deep cooperation with the US on supply chain resilience and green industrial transitions, while maintaining selective engagement with China in areas where cooperation is essential – such as energy transitions, global health, scientific research and regulated trade.
The Makerfield Test would also apply to policy on the Global South, seeking partnerships capable of delivering investment, technology and market access to Britain’s regions. That requires moving beyond paternalistic development narratives and instead building reciprocal, interest based coalitions that reflect the realities of a multipolar world.
By applying the Test, Britain would become a connector, a convener and a problem solver – a country that leverages its diplomatic networks, regulatory influence, scientific capacity and development expertise to shape outcomes that matter both globally and locally in the UK.
Ultimately, International Manchesterism challenges Westminster to rethink how foreign policy is conceived, communicated and assessed. It insists that international engagement be judged not by elite indicators but by its impact on UK communities. And it aligns global strategy with domestic renewal, offering a language for explaining foreign policy in terms that resonate with everyday experience.
If Burnham can articulate an international agenda that passes the Makerfield Test, he will not only redefine Britain’s foreign policy conversation. He will demonstrate that global strategy can be rooted in the lived realities of the places that shaped him.
A version of this article also appeared on the LSE British Politics blog.
Britain’s place in the new world order The World Today mhiggins.drupal
We are facing a storm of geopolitical instability, economic coercion, AI and climate change – and it’s likely to get worse. But by working more closely with Europe and seeking greater cooperation outside the big trading blocs, Britain can build global alliances to secure the future of its people, writes Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper.
The world is more dangerous than it has been for decades, and families across the United Kingdom are feeling the impact. War has returned to Europe, pushing up energy bills at home. A closed strait 3,000 miles away drives up prices at the petrol pump. Cyber-attacks from the other side of the world force British firms to shut down overnight. And criminal smuggling gangs make billions breaching our borders.
Geopolitical instability, economic coercion, technological change and a ravaged climate are creating a perfect storm. Having dealt with these threats on the international stage this last year, it is very clear to me the rapid pace at which that storm is now gathering, and the real risks for the UK if we are not ready to act.
We are not alone in facing these challenges. Across the world, nations are being buffeted by events and feeling powerless to respond. The result is a rising sense of frustration that is straining the fabric of democracies.
Here in the UK, successive foreign policy mistakes over many years have left us more exposed than we should have been. The world changed around us, but we failed to properly adapt and ducked difficult, but necessary, domestic public debates.
Since 2024, the Labour government has worked hard to begin turning that inheritance around. But a good start is not the same as keeping pace. Because the toughest tests lie ahead.
Yet, Britain is far from powerless. Ours is an extraordinary country, with capabilities few can match and values that others still look to. As the old world order is remade, we must build our sovereign strengths and put them to work – turning our values into action and convening the agile alliances these challenges demand. Our task is not just to weather the storm but to steer an active course. Our purpose is to shape the world, not to be shaped by it. That is how we make Britain safer, stronger and more prosperous at home.
Last month in eastern Poland, I walked with army officers along concrete trenches they are digging for miles along NATO’s eastern flank – a sign of how seriously they take the need to defend against Russian tanks. On the Chad border earlier this year I met Sudanese women, survivors of atrocities in a war the world has failed to end. In the Gulf, I heard from businesses wrestling with how to get supplies moving through the blocked Strait of Hormuz. Time and again in discussions with our closest allies, I have been conscious of how much our focus is on our shared security and dealing with the instability we face.
In 2025, the world had more active armed conflicts than at any time since 1945, with almost 120 million people fleeing their homes. Danger no longer comes only from the battlefield – cyber and hybrid threats now reach us in new and unpredictable ways.
At the same time, the economic order is being reshaped. The rise of China and India is shifting the global economy’s centre of gravity. Tech firms now wield more power than mid-sized nations. The biggest economies have pulled back from global trade rules, with protectionism rising. Openness itself is being exploited through tariffs, chokeholds on critical minerals and, above all, the weaponisation of energy.
All of this has a direct impact on Britain, through higher food prices, lost jobs, the spread of mis- and disinformation, and illegal migration that erodes public trust.
We should not kid ourselves that this is the peak of the storm. Climate-driven disasters are triggering more humanitarian crises, which will put new pressures on food, energy and migration. Meanwhile, the accelerating pace of technological change brings phenomenal opportunities and new threats.
Last month, in Shenzhen, China, I saw the extraordinary promise of AI and robotics used for life-saving healthcare. But the same technologies are also reshaping the future of warfare, crime and social cohesion in alarming ways.
The Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf: When Iran closed the strait, Britain ‘assembled a coalition of 40 nations to defend the principle of freedom of navigation and to lay the groundwork for the Multinational Military Mission,’ says Yvette Cooper. Map made with Natural Earth data.
Geopolitics is changing, too. The United States is pulling back from its traditional role as guarantor of global security, and while Europe, including Britain, has begun to step up, we must do more for ourselves. At the same time, China – our fourth-biggest trading partner – poses significant threats to our cyber security. Great power politics is back, and the rules-based order and long-standing alliances that Britain did so much to build are being challenged.
Call it the end of the old world order or the age of instability, but more often it just feels like being at the mercy of forces far beyond our control. And that sense of powerlessness weakens the resilience of democracy, because if people feel that normal politics is failing to solve their problems, they can turn towards something much angrier and more extreme.
Amidst the dangers, the instability is also generating extraordinary opportunities. New technologies, markets and partnerships all play to Britain’s character and capabilities. Strong economic growth across many developing economies has lifted billions out of poverty, creating new openings for British trade and investment. Developments in AI, quantum computing and robotics are giving rise to incredible new possibilities for British scientists. The fluidity in geopolitics and geoeconomics creates chances for the kinds of creative diplomacy that we are good at.
So, Britain has choices to make. We don’t have to stand by while our security, prosperity and democracy are undermined. But defending them requires a clear-eyed plan to build Britain’s strength and to uphold our values so we are ready for the challenges ahead.
In theory, Britain should be well placed to respond to a rapidly changing world.
We are a leading European military and nuclear power, and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, with intelligence capabilities and diplomatic reach that span the globe. We are a G7 nation, at the heart of the Five Eyes partnership, part of the Commonwealth of 56 nations, and a global financial centre drawing investment from around the world. We have world-class universities and research institutions, and stand among a handful of countries at the frontier of AI and life sciences. And in our King we have a figure of global standing and respect.
We are one of the most connected and influential nations on earth, with relationships and standing that few others can match. But, above all, we should not underestimate how important our values are in building trust and strength overseas: our sense of fairness, our multilateralism, our humanitarianism and our respect for the rule of law.
History shows the difference Britain has made when it deploys those values – we helped deliver NATO and the Marshall Plan, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the Geneva Conventions and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the ban on landmines and cluster bombs, the Kyoto Agreement and the cancellation of developing country debt. And over the past year, from Ebola to Hurricane Melissa, we have stepped up. Our values mean we act not only because it serves Britain, but because it is the right thing to do.
Yet we have to be honest with ourselves that in recent decades we took Britain’s strengths for granted and failed to grasp how fast the world was changing. Complacency took Britain from shaping the global rules to standing on the sidelines.
First, we pretended the post-Cold War peace dividend would last forever. In 2010, the defence budget was cut by 8 per cent in real terms. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea. And yet the warnings went unheeded for almost a decade before defence spending began to recover. So, when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine came in 2022, years of under-investment meant we were much less prepared than we should have been.
Second was how we managed globalization. Over decades, economic integration has delivered faster growth and higher living standards. However, in the UK the benefits were not evenly felt and some communities badly lost out.
At the same time, we deepened our dependency on a handful of countries for energy, parts and key technologies, with little thought given to the resilience of those supply chains. Now the chickens have come home to roost. Covid and the war in Ukraine sent food and energy prices soaring, while China has tightened its grip over the critical minerals on which our economy depends.
Third, we grew complacent about our international relationships. We assumed that Britain’s influence was a permanent fact rather than something requiring constant maintenance and determined diplomacy. That confidence was tested when we left the EU. Rather than use that moment to define a new role, Boris Johnson’s government walked away from our closest economic bloc with no serious plan. Our relationships frayed and one of our strongest assets – our reputation for seriousness – was vandalized.
Finally, successive governments have failed to level with the country about global challenges or to nurture public support for difficult foreign policy choices. For example, David Cameron wanted to keep Britain in the EU but spent years refusing to make a public case for it. The last Labour government made the same mistake. And on defence, we haven’t yet had the kind of public engagement our Scandinavian and Eastern European partners have been through on the choices needed to face growing threats.
British Royal Marines training in Norway this year. Yvette Cooper says the UK government has helped strengthen the NATO Arctic mission following the challenge to Greenland and Denmark’s sovereignty. Photo: Leon Neal/Getty Images.
All of this has left the UK more exposed – less prepared to seize new opportunities, less resilient in the face of new threats.
Since coming into government in July 2024, we have begun to turn that around. We have raised defence spending at the fastest rate since the Cold War, and struck important new trade deals with India, the Gulf, Europe and the US. Keir Starmer has rebuilt our European relationships, brought together the Coalition of the Willing to sustain support for Ukraine, and deepened our role in NATO. We have recognized the state of Palestine and the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
In the Foreign Office, we have sharpened our focus on security in every form: national security, economic security and border security. When the NATO alliance risked fracturing over Greenland, we stood firm in defence of the sovereignty of Denmark and Greenland, and worked with allies to ensure the protection of the High North was best delivered through a new unified NATO Arctic mission. When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, we assembled a coalition of 40 nations to defend the principle of freedom of navigation and to lay the groundwork for the Multinational Military Mission. Our significantly expanded migration team is now working across the world to tackle illegal migration at its source.
We have strengthened our commitment to international principles and agreements – working across 46 countries to reform rather than abandon the operation of the ECHR so that it better tackles illegal migration. And this spring we supported allies and partners under fire in the Gulf, but we did not provide support for offensive action by the US and Israel in Iran. And at a time when rights are being rolled back internationally, we have made women and girls a specific priority for the FCDO and worked to keep the spotlight on the atrocities faced by the women of Sudan.
But the challenges we face are set to grow. Meeting them will require action in three areas:
First, we need to go much further to build Britain’s sovereign strength and resilience.
Delivering modern capabilities and more investment for our armed forces is essential both for our sovereign defence and to maintain our influence and leadership in Europe and the NATO alliance that is the cornerstone of our security. That is why the Defence Investment Plan is vital, and we will need next to quickly establish a clear pathway towards delivering 3 per cent of GDP in defence.
But security isn’t just about military capabilities. At a time when economics is being weaponized, energy and economic security have become the vital underpinnings of trade and growth. Major economies outside the main trading blocs need to work more closely to diversify production in key supply chains such as critical minerals – including on finance, strategic projects and standards. Also vital is our work to strengthen our energy security through the green transition and to build climate security across the world.
Nor should we underestimate the importance of strengthening our democratic resilience. That means better defending ourselves against hybrid threats, cyber-attacks and information warfare – for example, through the Foreign Office’s expanding capabilities to identify, expose and sanction Russian disinformation factories.
For me, this is also about using international cooperation to tackle the issues that undermine public trust. Which is why we plan to go further, working with the Home Office and with overseas partners on tackling smuggling gangs, developing innovative return arrangements, reforming global resettlement and preventing illegal migration.
Most importantly, democratic resilience requires public confidence and honest public debate about the global risks, opportunities and choices we face. We have to make the case that a stronger Britain abroad is better for jobs, security and the cost of living at home.
Second, we need to be more assertive and agile in our alliances. We may not be a military or economic superpower, but we can be a convening superpower – the country that brings others together and charts a collective way forward.
Our relationship with the United States remains deeply rooted and deeply valued, and we will continue to work closely with it in NATO and beyond. But we should no longer expect the US to play the role it once did. There will continue to be issues where we disagree. But reduced dependence on any single ally will make us stronger, so that our partnerships rest on what we bring, not on what we need.
That means working more closely with our European partners, but without trying to turn the clock back to 2016. With economics and security more intertwined, Europe’s future depends on what happens from the UK to Ukraine, from Norway to Türkiye and not just within the EU. We need to develop a new, structured relationship with Europe, leading the development of its new security architecture, with a more European NATO at its core. And we must settle our relationship with the EU as a closer but stable partnership, rather than one based on endless incremental bargaining.
Further afield, we must make a virtue of the fast-moving and fluid world order to build new and agile alliances. Some will be enduring partnerships of like-minded countries, such as AUKUS or our growing engagement in the CPTPP trans-Pacific trade agreement. Others will be convened quickly to tackle a single crisis as we and France have done on Ukraine and the Strait of Hormuz. Few other nations can convene in this way.
But in what may be the greatest security challenge of the next decade, I believe we have to put our convening power to work to tackle the profound new global risks posed by AI. We can only exploit the amazing opportunities of frontier technologies if there is sufficient international consensus on how to approach safety and guardrails. Britain is well placed to lead this debate. We are the third-most developed country on AI, after the US and China, and the leading voice on AI security – a role established by the then prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and taken forward by this government.
Why Should Delaware Care?
As America marks its semiquincentennial on July 4, Delaware can be remembered for its service in the statesmanship and military service in the founding of the nation.
On July 1, 1776, Caesar Rodney was in Dover, questioning British loyalists when he received the fateful word from counterparts in Philadelphia at the Second Continental Congress.
His vote had become crucial, and his presence in Philadelphia was necessary the next day.
That stormy night was the culmination of weeks of change across the American colonies and in Delaware in particular. Less than three weeks prior, there was no Delaware to speak of.
After a decade of increasing British taxes, nationwide boycotts and a crackdown on colonial dissent, war broke out in Boston in 1775. The occupation of one of America’s key cities convinced the colonies of their need to assert their independence.
Within a year, each colony would craft its own constitution to declare themselves an independent state. In June 1776, Delaware was still considered “the Lower Counties” of the Pennsylvania colony.
But state delegates met in New Castle on June 15, 1776, where they declared Delaware’s independence from both Great Britain and Pennsylvania.
After expending significant political capital to secure what Rodney thought would be a successful vote for independence, the third member of Delaware’s congregation, George Read, had decided to vote against separating from the British.
With fellow Delaware delegate Thomas McKean voting in favor, Read’s dissent would leave Delaware – and potentially the nation – in a stalemate. The Continental Congress intended to declare national independence unanimously or not at all.
With the nation’s independence sitting on a razor-thin margin, Rodney embarked on his famous midnight ride to break the tie and swing the Delaware delegation’s support for independence.
For 18 hours overnight, he trekked the 80 miles to Philadelphia on horseback and by carriage through thunder and rain, as detailed in a letter Rodney sent to his brother, Thomas, on July 4, 1776 — the only such letter recovered from a Congressional delegate from that day.
Aside from the national implications of the watershed moment, Rodney’s ride was an act of personal courage as well. He hailed from southern Delaware originally, where the population held more sympathetic views towards the British — Rodney’s grandfather was even an Anglican minister — though his family believed in the revolution.
As put by Ciro Poppiti, the New Castle County Register of Wills and reenactor who recently completed a horse ride from Dover to Philadelphia to honor the anniversary of Rodney’s journey, the statesman also knew he was “riding to the gallows.”
In the midst of a raging war, Rodney was potentially exposing himself to targeting by the British as one of the deciding votes for independence. Additionally, at the time of his ride, Rodney was battling facial cancer that had left his cheek and nose deeply scarred, a significant disfigurement which Rodney concealed with a scarf.
The cancer would claim Rodney’s life nearly eight years to the day of his momentous ride.
Rodney’s ride is perhaps the most notorious single piece of Delaware lore in relation to the American Revolution. But thanks to its location, resources, and an apprehensive and divided population, the state played a significant role in the struggle for America’s freedom from the British kingdom.
During the Revolutionary era, Delaware was viewed as a valuable strategic spot, particularly given its coastline and proximity to Philadelphia, the nation’s capital and largest city at the time. The territory’s largely rural environment further made it an agricultural hub, meaning it was also a popular supplier of food for the American armed forces to the north.
The state – second smallest with just 37,000 residents in 1776 – was a melting pot of cultures, including English, Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and French, along with native tribes, enslaved Africans and free Blacks.
Similar to today’s political partisanship, the state’s geography also played a role in residents’ opinion of the Revolutionary movement. The Wilmington area was primarily a Revolutionary stronghold, along with cities like New Castle, Dover and Lewes.
Sussex County was more sympathetic to the British, even drawing the presence of American forces at times to quash small-scale rebellions, while Kent County was split.
As evidenced by the division that necessitated Rodney’s ride, the state’s population had the same misgivings about independence as anywhere else, even as the war intensified after the Declaration.
British Loyalists in Delaware continued to organize against the revolutionaries during the war and after the Declaration of Independence was signed, and in response, roving “committees of inspection and observation” were established.
These committees acted as a kind of secret police force dedicated to snuffing out British-sympathetic activities among citizens, according to Ryan Schwartz, of the Lewes Historical Society, largely achieving this through intimidation as opposed to violence.
Many British Loyalists living in Delaware ended up fleeing to Canada as the war continued and after it ended, finding Delaware to be an increasingly inhospitable place to sow dissent.
Despite its location and festering opposition, Delaware’s native sons also raised up a respected regiment of soldiers known as the “Delaware Blues” for the color of their uniforms – there was no standard uniform in the Revolutionary War as each state outfitted its men how it could.
They would fight at some of the war’s earliest battles, including Long Island and White Plains. They crossed the Delaware River with Gen. George Washington on Christmas night 1776 for an attack at Trenton, New Jersey.
Their founding colonel, John Haslet, would be killed in January 1777 during the Battle of Princeton.
The state of Delaware only saw one major battle during the war, which took place at Cooch’s Bridge near Newark, though there were smaller skirmishes throughout the state.
But Delaware narrowly avoided potentially becoming another main theater of the war, Schwartz said. The British were focused on toppling Philadelphia, and with previous attempts to do so via land proving futile, their plans in the late summer of 1777 turned to a naval advance on the capital via the Delaware River.
Stymied by the Delaware River’s shoaly terrain and further deterred by strong American defenses established along the body of water, the British instead decided to land at nearby Elkton, Maryland, just beyond the Delaware border.
That then led to the Battle at Cooch’s Bridge on Sept. 3, 1777, which saw the undermanned Delaware battalion of 1,200 men, officially formed just a week before the battle, temporarily hold off a group of 16,000 British soldiers before eventually retreating north to join Washington’s forces. Casualties are unclear, but a British officer commented at the time that the fighting at Iron Hill was the worst they faced on their march to Philadelphia.
While the battle is recorded as a loss for the Americans, Joe Sullivan of the Delaware Public Archive said the battalion’s efforts derailed the British advance to Philadelphia for an additional five days after the fighting had ended. That gave Washington additional time to gather troops and prepare for the oncoming British forces.
Despite the apparent setback, the Delaware battalion had fulfilled Washington’s Sept. 2 directive: “Give them as much trouble as you possibly can.”
Days later, the Delaware soldiers would fight at the Battle of the Brandywine, just over the state border in Pennsylvania. It would be a humiliating defeat for the Americans as British Gen. William Howe outflanked Washington’s army.
Following their victory at Brandywine, the British forces would decamp to Wilmington, where they occupied the city and tended to their wounded for about a month before advancing up to Philadelphia.
Along the way, the Delaware Blues would fight at the Battle of Germantown, where they suffered significant losses, including the wounding of their second leader Col. David Hall.
Delaware’s soldiers would head south in 1780 and 1781 to fight in five more battles in the Carolinas before the end of the war.
An American victory at Saratoga generated enough optimism that the French then decided to support the revolutionary effort militarily. This forced the British to expand their fight on several international fronts, diverting resources from their troops on American soil and opening the door for the Americans to emerge victorious from the war.
Rodney’s ride would not be for naught.
The post Delaware held vital place in America’s founding 250 years ago appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Why Should Delaware Care?
As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, the legacy of contentious Revolutionary War era Delaware figure and slaveholder Caesar Rodney once again comes into view. Six years after a Rodney statue was taken down in Wilmington during a national era of racial reckoning, Delawareans still have a range of beliefs about how Rodney’s legacy should be interpreted, and what should be done with his statue.
A statue of one of Delaware’s most controversial Revolutionary figures is on display in Washington for America’s 250th birthday, after spending the past six years in storage.
As time ticks until Caesar Rodney’s return to Delaware following the Fourth of July celebration in D.C., state leaders still are not sure what should be done with the statue of his likeness, and, more broadly, how to reckon with Rodney’s complicated legacy as Founding Father and a slaveowner.
Rodney is most famous for trekking 80 miles from his Dover home up to Independence Hall in Philadelphia to cast the tie-breaking vote to approve the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776.
But he also enslaved at least two dozen people throughout his lifetime on his family’s Kent County farm, known as Byfield.
A number of prominent Delaware establishments are named for Rodney, including Wilmington’s main public square, a Kent County school district and a conservative public policy think tank.
Defenders of Rodney say he deserves to be recognized for his contributions to the nation and the state — in addition to being a delegate to the Continental Congress, Rodney also served as governor and a state Supreme Court justice. They say the past cannot be erased by hiding the statesman from public view.
“Any person of influence had slaves,” said Delaware Republican Party Secretary Brandon Brice, who has been an advocate for reinstalling the statue. “There’s a good, a bad, and an ugly to history, and I think if we’re going to tell history, we have to tell all of history.”
But, in a state where about one in four residents are Black, others are skeptical as to whether substantive conversations about Rodney’s slave-owning past ever took place, and some question whether he really is a Delaware figure who should be highlighted.
“I don’t think the people’s voice has changed because conditions haven’t changed, history hasn’t changed,” said Hanifa Shabazz, who was the Wilmington City Council president when the statue was taken down in 2020.
The statue of the man was taken down from Wilmington’s Rodney Square in 2020, during national protests over the police killing of George Floyd. When then-Mayor Mike Purzycki made the decision to remove the statue, he promised that an “overdue discussion about the public display of historical figures and events” would take place.
Community leaders say they have had plenty of informal conversations since 2020 about Rodney’s legacy and representation in Delaware.
But when asked by Spotlight Delaware, Wilmington city and state officials could not provide specific examples of any formal discussions about Rodney that have taken place.
Gov. Matt Meyer’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment about his thoughts on the statue.
There has also been a push in recent months by a group of Wilmington residents to reinstall a statue of Christopher Columbus, which was simultaneously taken down in 2020.
Some facts about Rodney’s biography – including his personal beliefs about slavery, and his famous ride to Philadelphia – are debated by scholars.
Rodney lived his whole life at Byfield, an 800-acre Kent County farm owned by his family, and held a number of political positions both in Delaware and in the Continental Congress.
The commonly told story is that Rodney heroically rode the 80 miles from Delaware to Pennsylvania on horseback, through a thunderstorm, to arrive in Philadelphia in time to cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of the Declaration of Independence.
However, historians now say it is more likely that Rodney did most of the ride up to Independence Hall in a covered carriage, because he was battling facial cancer.
And undoubtedly more controversial than how Rodney got to Philadelphia is a dispute over how many people Rodney enslaved, and his views on the institution of slavery.
It has been widely reported, including in the Delaware Public Archives, that Rodney owned more than 200 slaves.
A recently completed research report on Rodney’s slave-owning past commissioned by former Mayor Purzycki and obtained by Spotlight Delaware, however, estimates that Rodney enslaved at least 26 people during his lifetime.
Some Delawareans also have argued that Rodney was an early abolitionist. One such individual is Charlie Copeland, former chair of the state Republican Party and director of the namesake think tank, the Caesar Rodney Institute.
Copeland cited a proposal Rodney made to the Delaware legislature in 1767 that they forbid the importation of more slaves into the province as evidence of his beliefs.
Both the report initiated by Carney’s office and Delaware historian Dick Carter, however, say they would not go so far as to call Rodney an abolitionist.
Carter told Spotlight Delaware Rodney’s view of slavery was “sufficiently complex,” but he does not believe Rodney was “a strong supporter of the institution of slavery.”
Adding to the conversation surrounding one of Delaware’s Founding Fathers, and what to do with the statue of his likeness, was a recreation of Rodney’s ride from Dover to Philadelphia last month.
Ciro Poppiti, a Delaware lawyer and the New Castle County Register of Wills, donned a Rodney costume and undertook the two-day journey by carriage, traversing back roads to make it to Independence Hall on June 13.
Poppiti said the ride was substantially more complicated to pull off in 2026 than in 1776, because Delaware roads are far busier now, and many are not safe to travel by carriage.
To Poppiti, though, it wasn’t just a whimsical opportunity to wear 18th century garb – the ride was also a chance to espouse some unity among Delawareans for the country’s 250th anniversary and reflect on Rodney as a part of Delaware history, he said.
Poppiti’s ride included stops at some spots in Rodney’s life, such as Christ Episcopal Church in Dover, where Rodney attended services. A participating group conducted a penance service recognizing that Rodney owned slaves.
Riding alongside Poppiti in the carriage were some of who he called the “unheard voices” of Rodney’s story – actors portraying people he enslaved and prominent Delaware women of the time.
“How do you think Caesar Rodney had time to be a hero? It was because of those patriots enslaved and working at his farm at Byfield,” Poppiti told Spotlight Delaware.
He said he hopes this nuanced representation in the Rodney reenactment will help inspire discussions about how to fairly display the statue in Delaware again.
The bronze statue of Rodney, depicted heroically on horseback, was erected in Rodney Square in Wilmington in 1923.
As protests over the death of George Floyd took place in Wilmington in the spring and summer of 2020, then-Mayor Purzycki and the Wilmington City Council decided to put the controversial statue in storage, vowing to initiate conversations about its future.
According to a number of people with knowledge of the situation, however, those discussions never fully took place.
Shabazz, the city council president at the time, said Wilmingtonians saw the statue being removed as a victory, but there were so many other issues to be addressed that there wasn’t ever time to revisit the statue’s future.
Yasser Payne, a University of Delaware sociology professor, said he was a part of community meetings about the statue, but he does not recall conversations with city or state officials. He described elected officials’ support for actual introspection about Rodney as “tacit.”
Ivan Henderson, executive director of the Delaware Historical Society, said his organization tried to work with the city and other groups to have public dialogue about the statue in 2024 and 2025, but nothing came to fruition.
A spokesperson for Wilmington Mayor John Carney’s office said the city has been engaging in “extensive conversations with historians, community leaders and cultural institutions” since 2020 about Rodney’s life and legacy.
The spokesperson did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s follow-up questions about what those conversations have entailed.
In 2024, as Carney campaigned for mayor, he told Spotlight Delaware that he was in favor of renaming the city’s main square after its most famous modern leader, former President Joe Biden.
State Sen. Eric Buckson (R-South Dover) has been pushing publicly for Rodney to be put back on display for several years.
Spotlight Delaware first reported in November 2025 that Buckson had secured a deal with the federal Department of the Interior to transport the statue to D.C. and display it as part of the country’s 250th anniversary celebration in the nation’s capitol.
The Rodney statue was placed in the so-called Freedom Plaza, along with statues of other Revolutionary War-era figures, in late April. Rodney’s statue is slated to remain in D.C. for the next six months, Buckson said.
While the Rodney statue is scheduled to stay on display in D.C. until the fall, state leaders do not appear to have a plan as to where it will go when returned to Delaware.
Buckson wrote a resolution in June calling for the city of Wilmington, the state and Kent County leaders to work together on finding a suitable location for the statue in Kent County – Rodney’s home – by November of this year. It was never considered by legislature before it concluded this week.
Wilmington is not being considered as a place for Rodney to be displayed once again, he said.
“It’s a victory for Delaware and the country to tell the historical significance of his ride,” Buckson said. “When that guy comes back to Delaware, Delawareans can decide where best to display the statue and how best to display it.”
Buckson said he is proposing the state stand up a committee made up of a diverse group of Delawareans to decide how to best display the statue “in its full context.”
He also said his current ideas for where to best place the statue include Legislative Mall and the John Dickinson Plantation, both in Dover.
A spokesperson for Carney said he is in support of Buckson’s proposal, but the plans “are still taking shape.” Dover Mayor Robin Christiansen said he is strongly in favor of returning the statue to Dover.
Other Delawareans on both sides of the debate, however, still have concerns about the status of the statue.
Copeland, the Caesar Rodney Institute director, said he is disappointed that “our current political environment” means the statue likely won’t return to be displayed in Wilmington, where it would get the most foot traffic from out-of-town visitors.
Payne, the UD professor, said he views the push to reinstall the statue now as a reflection of a step backward from the progress made during the George Floyd years and a reflection of the country’s current “conservative spirit.”
But to Poppiti, the historical reenactor, months of studying Rodney’s life and trying to embody his character left him with a different conclusion.
He said he believes Delawareans are putting too much emphasis on the statue and what will be done with it, when Rodney himself would not have cared about the statue. Rather, Rodney would have urged us to carry on the legacy of the Revolution, and of national unity.
“What he’d say is, ‘Let’s not lose the incredible gift that we were given 250 years ago,’ which is the opportunity for self-determination,” Poppiti said.
Transparency Notice:
Brandon Brice serves on Spotlight Delaware’s Advisory Council. Advisors have no role in the editorial decision-making of Spotlight Delaware. For more information, see our Ethics Policies page.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
The post 250 years since his ride, how does Delaware reckon with Caesar Rodney’s legacy? appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Guards at an immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas, could see a detainee in his cell with one end of a bedsheet wrapped around his neck and the other tied to the door handle. If they opened the door, the sheet would tighten and strangle him.
The detainee, Geraldo Lunas Campos, had been in detention at Camp East Montana for a month by then. The facility itself was still relatively new and had been opened as part of the Trump administration’s plans to house and quickly deport thousands of immigrants at a time.
Almost immediately after being admitted, the 55-year-old Cuban immigrant began expressing frustration about his care, according to a nearly 300-page unpublished medical examiner’s investigative report.
The report, reviewed by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, includes dozens of notes that detail medical staff interactions with Lunas Campos, who had a history of mental illness and had been previously institutionalized in New York.
The report and the records it contains offer a rare and disturbing look at how immigrant detention facilities — erected rapidly and with little oversight — manage detainees with serious mental health needs. The records paint a portrait of a man in a crisis and a facility whose staff, on several occasions, discussed transferring him to a facility where he could get a higher level of care.
According to the records, he complained at least eight times to staff about skipped or late doses of antipsychotic drugs to treat his depression, anxiety and hallucinations. He “expressed frustration regarding his medication dosage,” says a Sept. 9 entry from medical staff.
They point to moments of exasperation that led to self-harm. He banged his head against the wall after he couldn’t afford to pay the charges to talk with his children in New York. That left him with a black eye. In response, staff simply noted that they spoke with him about “not hitting his head against the wall bc he must take care of his brain and his eyes.”
The incident with the noose and the doorknob came in early October. A mental health provider eventually coaxed him to untie it. Notes detailing the incident stated that Lunas Campos affirmed he wasn’t suicidal. The notes dismissed what occurred as a “suicidal gesture made to force security staff to release him” from the isolation room where he had been segregated from the rest of the detainees. Hospitalization, the notes stated, was “not clinically indicated at this time based on assessed risk and protective factors.”
Lunas Campos died in detention nearly three months later, after an altercation with guards over his medication. The Trump administration initially claimed that he had experienced medical distress, but a coroner later ruled his death a homicide.
The conflicting accounts over the cause of his death have drawn significant media attention and served to rally advocacy groups who have alleged that it is one of the more shocking pieces of evidence of the dangerous conditions endured by immigrants in federal detention facilities.
But little had been reported about Lunas Campos’ condition and treatment before that day. On Monday, Lunas Campos’ three children sued the companies running the facility at the time of his death. The lawsuit alleged that guards killed him and argued negligence, including missed medication doses and the improper use of force and restraint. The Washington Post on Thursday reported that Lunas Campos had repeatedly sought treatment for his mental illness, pointing to the medical examiner’s investigative report. The companies have not responded to the allegations in court filings and did not return emails and phone calls seeking comment.
ProPublica and the Tribune reviewed the contents of the report several weeks ago. Two doctors, who are experts on mental health and deaths in detention, also reviewed the report at the news organizations’ request. The takeaway was clear: The detainee asked for help, the facility staff failed to adequately respond.
The news organizations separately reviewed more than 160 emergency calls, as well as records and interviews with staff and government officials familiar with the detention center. They show medical and mental health emergencies beyond those experienced by Lunas Campos, as well as staff indicating they felt ill-equipped to respond. Detainees had little access to recreational activities and time outside, which mental health experts say exacerbates their despair. Staff also ignored warning signs, such as detainees’ previous efforts to harm themselves.
“It’s civil detention,” said Will Horowitz, an attorney representing Lunas Campos’ adult children in the lawsuit. “They’re not in detention because they’ve committed a crime.”
The White House declined to comment. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t respond to multiple requests for an interview and did not answer a list of written questions. The administration has previously dismissed detainee accounts of inadequate medical care and poor conditions at Camp East Montana and other detention centers as “false” and called them “fearmongering clickbait.” Federal officials have repeatedly said that for many immigrants, the medical care they receive in detention is the best in their lives.
In Lunas Campos’ case, officials from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, initially minimized the incident that led to his death, pointing to his criminal history. Later, in response to news reports that the medical examiner planned to rule the death a homicide, a DHS spokesperson said guards had used force to keep him from killing himself.
Lunas Campos was sentenced to a year in jail after a 2003 conviction for sexual contact with a child under the age of 11, according to The Associated Press. The news organization also reported that he was convicted of attempting to sell a controlled substance and sentenced to five years in prison and three years of supervision in 2009.
Horowitz said Lunas Campos’ criminal history is irrelevant to his detention. Lunas Campos’ children declined to comment on the failures highlighted in the medical examiner’s report or on his criminal history, but, Horowitz said, “They want people to know that he was a person like anyone else and that he didn’t need to die.”
In a report issued after Lunas Campos’ death, DHS officials said he received regular medical and psychiatric evaluations, with staff adjusting his medication as needed. They also contended that he was monitored for suicidal ideation. Investigative records from the El Paso medical examiner show a period during which facility staff checked on him every 15 minutes following his suicide attempt, as required by the federal government.
But the medical examiner’s report also brings into focus a series of breakdowns in care, according to Dr. Sanjay Basu, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. He said Lunas Campos’ case is a model of how such moments compound, creating crisis after crisis with dire outcomes.
“The clinical trajectory documented in his chart — escalating agitation, self-harm, pressured speech, repeated confrontations with staff over medication — is the predictable result of erratic psychotropic medication administration in a patient with serious mental illness,” Basu said.
He pointed to records that show staff didn’t transfer Lunas Campos to a facility that could better treat his mental health, even after noting that they were working to move him as early as Oct. 8. Lunas Campos was also repeatedly placed in segregation cells, separate from the rest of the camp population, which had little more than a bed in them. The government’s own detention standards say staff should generally make every effort to avoid placing detainees with a serious mental illness in segregation.
Most critically, instead of taking his previous suicide attempt seriously, staff interpreted it as an effort to manipulate them, Basu said.
The records, Basu said, clearly show “systemic neglect.”
Camp East Montana was supposed to be the model for how detention centers across the country would operate under President Donald Trump’s administration. It was near the U.S.-Mexico border and had easy access to a highway and an airfield to quickly transport and deport unauthorized immigrants. Its location on barren, massive Fort Bliss land also allowed for a space that could hold up to 10,000 unauthorized immigrants at a time, more than any other facility in the country.
Instead, the detention center became an example of what could go wrong.
Within months of the camp’s opening, the American Civil Liberties Union, which is now suing the federal government, published accounts from immigrants who said they were beaten by guards, denied lifesaving medication and kept in squalid conditions with sewage at times spilling into their eating areas. Detainees commonly caught measles or tuberculosis. The government hasn’t responded formally to the lawsuit, but in statements to the media a DHS spokesperson said claims of inhumane conditions and detainees being abused are “categorically false.”
The problems treating people with mental health challenges were not as visible but stacked up in ways that experts said added mental distress and could contribute to more suicide attempts. In the worst cases, they said, detainees unnecessarily died.
The facility was never set up to house detainees struggling with serious mental health conditions, a DHS official and a medical provider who worked there told ProPublica and the Tribune. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the government did not authorize them to discuss conditions at the camp.
Several staffers told the news organizations that they had a lot of relevant information they could share, but they had signed nondisclosure agreements.
The DHS official said immigrants didn’t have adequate space to read, pray, write or get legal services. They were kept inside windowless cells with nothing to do. Detainees were also granted little time outside, partly because the facility’s outdoor space was not big enough for all of them, a government report later found. The federal government requires detention centers to provide detainees at least one hour of outdoor time per day, but many got only a couple of hours a week, detainees told ProPublica and the Tribune.
“Recreation and amenities, games, books, TVs, are all lifelines for people in detention,” the DHS official, who did not participate in the report, said.
Prolonged confinement made detainees more anxious and desperate, at times leading to hunger strikes and fights. Immigrants were only supposed to remain at Camp East Montana for a maximum of two weeks, according to contract documents and statements from federal officials. When Lunas Campos died, the typical detainee had spent 38 days in the facility, according to a ProPublica analysis of government data provided to the Deportation Data Project, which collects and posts immigration enforcement information. He had been there far longer, more than 100 days.
Dr. Katherine Peeler, a medical adviser for the advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights who has studied healthcare in immigration detention centers, said that the conditions reported at Camp East Montana signal that it is not a safe place for any detained individual.
“You’ve been detained. You don’t know what the process is going to be. You don’t know when you’re going to be released,” Peeler said. “It’s really hard to trust people who are in charge to give you accurate information and so, as a result, you’re going to have a lot more despair and a lot more kind of anguish.”
The situation is worse for people with a history of mental illness, Peeler said. Solitary confinement can cause post-traumatic stress disorder, self-harm and suicide risks, according to a 2024 report that Peeler co-authored with partners, including students and staff at Harvard University.
“We are creating a mental health crisis that does not need to be there,” Peeler said.
Some detainees at Camp East Montana who showed signs of potential self-harm were placed in isolation rooms that were not suicide-proof. They had doorknobs and mesh ceilings to which detainees who wanted to harm themselves could tie a bedsheet, the DHS official said.
National detention standards don’t specify the number of suicide-proof rooms needed in each facility but make clear that detainees who are suicidal should be placed in rooms “free of objects and structural elements that could facilitate a suicide attempt.”
“It’s insane,” said the medical provider who spoke to ProPublica and the Tribune. “If somebody wants to kill themselves, there’s nowhere to put them that’s actually safe.”
Lunas Campos was in such a room when he first tried to commit suicide. By then, staff had reported at least three other suicide attempts to 911.
There were the two calls in September, one about a detainee who lay on the floor holding his stomach in agony and unable to speak after swallowing an unknown object. The other about a man biting his arms and trying to cut his wrists with a piece of cardboard and a comb.
Another call came in October, the day before Lunas Campos was spotted with a sheet tied around his neck. A man being kept in a medical isolation room to rule out tuberculosis tried to hang himself, the caller told the 911 operator.
Suicide attempts are warning signs of a larger problem at a detention center, which could include inadequate strategies for observing or flagging self-harm or more general medical issues, said Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior official at ICE who served in the Obama, first Trump and Biden administrations.
Out of 53 deaths in ICE custody since Trump returned to the White House, at least 10 have been reported as presumed suicides. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for independent investigations into the ICE deaths and expressed alarm over the reported use of solitary confinement.
“You would hope that if you have a number of negative outcomes of problematic incidents like that, that they would do critical incident reviews, figure out what was going on and try to take corrective action,” Trickler-McNulty said.
Last week, DHS’s inspector general launched probes into detainee deaths and whether the department was following its own standards on the use of force, citing a rise in ICE custody fatalities since 2022.
Other problems were already identified in a report released last month by the Government Accountability Office. The GAO found millions of dollars had been wasted, pointed to gaps in medical care and noted unsanitary conditions at the El Paso facility. The report mentions that in October, ICE officials raised concerns with the contractors running the facility about the lack of windows on some doors in medical holding rooms, which prevented staff from easily seeing what was happening inside.
The DHS official flagged several other problems that the government could have worked to improve. It could have assigned more ICE agents to help with chronic staffing shortages, created more opportunities for recreational activities and built special tents with suicide-prevention rooms, the DHS official said.
“There was no lack of money or space and there was an obvious incentive to do it,” the official said, referring to the suicide attempts at the facility. “They just didn’t do it.”
There seemed to be a push-pull between career ICE staff and political appointees, the DHS official told the news organizations.
“The political side didn’t want to give the appearance that it was so chaotic, they wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening,” the official said.
Even without the proposed changes, staff at the detention center should have done more to treat Lunas Campos’ mental illness, said Joanne Ahola, a psychiatrist who has spent 17 years evaluating immigrants inside detention centers for Physicians for Human Rights’ volunteer Asylum Network. She also reviewed his records at the request of ProPublica and the Tribune.
Lunas Campos’ early pleas for help continued throughout his detention. Nearly two weeks after his suicide attempt, he again flagged that he wasn’t getting his medications.
“Pt reported being very frustrated and anxious because he had not received his medication for a couple of days,” a medical note from Oct. 19 read. It noted that Lunas Campos was visibly “irritated and yelling.”
Another note on Nov. 10, said Lunas Campos “had not gotten his medications since Nov. 6.”
And, on Nov. 11, more than a month after staff told Lunas Campos that they were working to move him to a facility with a higher level of care, shorthanded as HLOC, he was still waiting. “Continues to request transfer to HLOC stating conditions at current facility are adversely affecting his mental health,” according to a note from that date.
Lunas Campos was temporarily moved to another facility, but it was another detention center that experts say did not provide the higher level of care he needed.
On Jan. 2, a day before his death, he returned to Camp East Montana. A note from medical staff at 9:42 p.m. said they “provided emotional support,” “reviewed grounding and breathing techniques to manage anxiety,” encouraged him “to seek ongoing mental health support as needed,” and added his name to the medical sick call for a psychiatric evaluation.
“This is a man who needed regular medications, a full evaluation, mental health clinicians and, no doubt, re-hospitalization,” Ahola said.
“Instead, it almost seems like it was brushed off or brushed under the rug,” she added.
Less than two weeks after Lunas Campos’ death, the health administrator at Camp East Montana called 911 again.
Victor Manuel Díaz, a 36-year-old Nicaraguan native, was found in a cell with his pants tied around his neck. He was in a room with no windows.The staff found him as they were doing routine checks.
An ambulance was needed, the health administrator told the operator, explaining where emergency responders should go upon arrival at the facility. Without hesitation, he added, “They’ve been out here many times.”
Díaz, who cooked chicken and washed dishes at a Minneapolis Korean restaurant, had been picked up and flown to Camp East Montana a week earlier. The GAO noted that ICE itself later acknowledged in a report that staff had not properly followed procedures after he “exhibited risk factors for suicide.” Staff placed him in a medical holding room — not a suicide-resitant cell — and left him unattended for periods longer than 15 minutes, the GAO stated.
His autopsy, which was conducted by the military, has not been made public.
The post “He Didn’t Need to Die.” How an Immigration Detention Center Repeatedly Failed to Address a Mental Health Crisis. appeared first on ProPublica.
Will the UK’s next prime minister finally have a ‘national conversation’ on defence? Expert comment thilton.drupal
The Defence Investment Plan recommits the UK to a national conversation on defence and security. The failure to deliver one so far undermines public trust and leaves the UK vulnerable to hybrid threats.
Keir Starmer has released the long-awaited Defence Investment Plan (DIP), which sets out the UK’s military spending plans, ahead of the NATO summit next week. The DIP also contains a commitment to a ‘national conversation campaign on defence and security’.
However, this plan for a ‘national conversation’ was already adopted by Starmer’s government in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) of 2025. The conversation was to focus on the rationale for investing more in defence, the role of the public in support of national security and resilience, and countering misinformation.
The review recommended it take the form of a ‘two-year series of public outreach events across the UK, explaining current threats and future trends’. This has not yet happened.
Meanwhile, intelligence services have warned that Russian sabotage, hostile reconnaissance, cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns are increasingly directed at the UK, a country viewed as ‘enemy number one’ and a ‘soft target’. The first step in countering these ‘hybrid’ attacks targeting the UK’s political stability is for a new prime minister to inform the public and build a societal response.
The commitment from the Starmer government in 2025 reflects UK and NATO doctrine, which emphasize the ‘central proactive element’ of strategic communications in countering hybrid threats. Increased public awareness can spur civil society action to recognise hybrid threats and address vulnerabilities, acting as a deterrence by denying or reducing the impact of such threats.
However, the UK government faces a strategic challenge: low public trust. According to 2024 polling, the UK government is one of the least trusted by the public among OECD countries. A ‘national conversation’ could be an important way to improve the public’s trust in the government.
Allowing the public to feel they are part of a dialogue with authorities and including them in decision-making can build long-term public trust. Communications can foster cohesion through values-led narratives which promote civic unity.
Sharing more about security also requires government to trust the public. The UK government has been accused of a ‘Stalinist’ culture of excessive official secrecy, with information either not shared due to fear of public and media panic, or a desire to control the narrative of the threat.
Withholding information on threats can however negatively impact public confidence, especially if the British public perceives allied governments or independent media as offering greater candour than official UK sources.
In turn, a national conversation that builds trust and explains the level of threat facing the UK will help the government to secure public approval for increased defence spending as outlined in the DIP. This is vital considering that higher defence spending generally requires a combination of cuts elsewhere, tax rises, or borrowing – all options that could prove unpopular with the public if the government doesn’t better explain and justify its decisions.
A key element of the conversation is to engage the public in supporting national security and resilience. To send a clear demand signal to society through outreach activities, the government must first organize and articulate policy on the public’s role.
According to Dr Fiona Hill, a co-author of the SDR, civil aid organizations currently feel ‘there is no green light from above’ and ‘a sense of inaction’ in planning to support emergency responses. While the government is researching policy options on aspects of societal resilience, there appears to be limited political direction or ownership with no single minister responsible.
The SDR also recommended the conversation should support ‘efforts to counter threats to information integrity as a critical component of national cohesion’. This reflects an online information ecosystem which is becoming easier to manipulate, with impacts offline. Violent disorder has occurred every summer since 2024, fuelled in part by misinformation on platforms including Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Facebook.
Possible calls to action might include asking the broader public to engage in media literacy initiatives, such as those available in libraries and online, for example via civic organizations in Finland and Sweden.
Given the potential of misinformation to cause polarization and destabilization, the UK government has taken some limited steps to improve resilience, but actions on media literacy are focussed on parents and limited to a government campaign rather than a broader civic coalition.
Attempts to destabilize UK society currently exist in a ‘space between peace and war’, with attacks seeking to exploit vulnerabilities across the full spectrum of societal functions.
Europe’s Centre of Excellence in Countering Hybrid Threats therefore recommends a ‘whole-of-government’ approach, using societal resilience as an organizing framework to cohere other disparate policy areas. In Nordic states, this has extended to social, cultural, and constitutional policy, while the German zeitenwende (turning point) shift since 2022 has linked investment in the military with infrastructure resilience and economic development.
AI is becoming an increasingly important tool for drug discovery. However, for many pharmaceutical and biotech companies, the challenge isn’t finding more powerful models. It’s getting existing models to work together with proprietary research data and computing infrastructure in a way that’s actually useful for scientists.
That is exactly the problem Databricks and Nvidia are trying to address with the new Genesis Workbench – an open-source blueprint for building AI applications in the life sciences.
Rather than introducing a new model, the project combines enterprise data, Nvidia’s BioNeMo models and GPU infrastructure into a single environment designed to help researchers move from setting up AI workflows to using them.
In a Databricks blog post, the company described Genesis Workbench as “an open blueprint for a life-sciences application on Databricks – a modular workbench that brings the major stages of computational drug discovery under one roof, one UI, and one governance model.”
Drug discovery projects often combine multiple AI models with different components that all play a role in data-driven scientific research. These components may include internal research data, lab results and GPU resources. The problem is that these components frequently live in separate environments. This makes collaboration and reproducibility more difficult than they need to be.
The number of AI models available to researchers is only growing. That makes it even more important to have a way to manage them alongside proprietary data and existing research workflows.
(Credits:Databricks)
Genesis Workbench is Databricks’ attempt to change that. Instead of focusing on one part of the drug discovery process, it pulls together tools for genomics, single-cell analysis, protein engineering and small molecule design into a single environment where researchers can move between tasks more easily.
According to Databricks, “By centralizing both public and proprietary datasets with Databricks AI Search, we’ve entirely eliminated external API dependencies. Ultimately, this seamless setup connects every step of the process—allowing genomics findings to flow effortlessly into single-cell validation, target structure prediction, candidate docking, ADMET, and ranking.”
Databricks says the platform relies on open-source models managed through Unity Catalog, with MLflow tracking experiments and GPU-backed Model Serving handling inference.
Nvidia contributes its BioNeMo Agent Toolkit along with technologies such as Parabricks and a growing portfolio of biology and chemistry models that can be incorporated into scientific workflows.
One of the platform’s distinguishing features is that it runs entirely inside a customer’s Databricks environment. That is important, because it allows organizations to keep sensitive research data within existing governance controls instead of sending it to third-party AI services.
There is also flexibility to scale as biological AI continues to evolve. New AI models will continue to emerge. Organizations can add or replace individual modules without rebuilding the broader research environment.
Genesis Workbench also reflects a broader shift in how enterprise AI platforms are evolving. Much of the industry’s early focus centered on building larger and more capable foundation models. However, that is changing. At BigDatawire, we see vendors are increasingly focusing (and competing) on how well those models can be integrated with enterprise data and domain-specific workflows.
(DCStudio/Shutterstock)
Life sciences, including drug discovery research, present a particularly demanding environment as research spans multiple disciplines. This includes everything from genomics and structural biology to chemistry and clinical data, while also having to handle highly regulated and proprietary data.
Building AI applications in this setting requires more than raw computing power. It also demands secure access to data and the flexibility to incorporate new models as the technology evolves.
For Databricks, Genesis Workbench is another example of the company pushing beyond analytics and further into AI applications built on the lakehouse. Nvidia, meanwhile, is using the project to put BioNeMo and its accelerated computing software at the center of enterprise drug discovery workflows instead of treating them as standalone research tools.
If researchers spend less time moving data, connecting models and configuring infrastructure, they have more time to focus on the science. That is what Nvidia and Databricks are trying to achieve with the Genesis Workbench.
The post Genesis Workbench Launched by Databricks and Nvidia appeared first on HPCwire.
July 2, 2026 — The Building HPC Infrastructure and HPC Capacity for ASEAN Data Utilization Project, implemented under the Korea-ASEAN Digital Innovation Flagship (KADIF) program, reached a key milestone with the Opening Ceremony of the ASEAN-Korea High Performance Computing (HPC) Facility in Indonesia on June 18, 2026.
Credit: AKCF
Held in Jakarta, the opening ceremony brought together representatives from ASEAN, the Republic of Korea, Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), and key stakeholders from across the region, marking an important step in advancing regional digital infrastructure and cooperation.
Supported by the Government of the Republic of Korea through the ASEAN-Korea Cooperation Fund (AKCF), the project is a multi-year initiative running from 2024 to 2028 with a total budget of USD 10 million. It is implemented by KISTI in collaboration with BRIN.
“More than just a supercomputer, this facility is a strategic asset for ASEAN. Access to advanced computing capabilities will be essential in supporting innovation, digital transformation, and the region’s future economic competitiveness,” said H.E. Satvinder Singh, Deputy Secretary-General of ASEAN for the ASEAN Economic Community.
Strengthening Regional Research and Innovation
The newly inaugurated HPC facility provides advanced computing capacity to support data-intensive research and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. With a theoretical peak performance of approximately 4.28 petaflops, the system can process massive datasets and enabling complex computations required for climate modeling, disaster risk reduction, healthcare innovation, industrial research, and next-generation AI development. It has also been nominated as a candidate for inclusion in the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
Delivered to BRIN’s Soekarno Science and Technology Area (KST) Cibinong on 21 April 2026, the facility will be accessible to researchers and institutions across ASEAN, helping to address regional gaps in high-performance computing infrastructure and strengthening the foundations for a more integrated data ecosystem.
Building Human Capital for the Digital Economy
In addition to infrastructure development, the project places strong emphasis on capacity building and knowledge transfer. Through 2028, the project will deliver specialized training programs in HPC operations, data utilization, and AI applications. Around 160 local operations personnel are expected to benefit from these technical trainings, ensuring the sustainable management and long-term usability of the facility.
“We hope this facility will be widely utilized to support various initiatives and collaborations among ASEAN member states. The facility is open to researchers, scientists, industry players, policy analysts, and development planners across the region to innovate together,” stated Arif Satria, Chairman of BRIN.
This project reflects the shared commitment of Korea and ASEAN to advancing inclusive digital transformation. By combining world-class computing infrastructure, creation of ASEAN data utilization platform, and human resource development in data and AI, the initiative supports ASEAN’s efforts to build a more resilient, innovative, and competitive digital economy.
Source: AKCF
The post New ASEAN HPC Center Aims to Expand AI and Data Research Across Southeast Asia appeared first on HPCwire.
Politicians of both political parties have blamed either the Trump or the Biden administration for the arrival of the New World screwworm, a flesh-eating fly that affects the cattle industry, in the U.S. after decades of eradication. But experts say the reasons are different or more complicated than either side is saying — and that it’s no one administration’s fault.
The agriculture secretary, meanwhile, has said that the previous administration “hadn’t really done anything” to combat screwworm, wrongly claiming that there had been “no funds” secured and “no plan deployed.” The Biden administration approved nearly $275 million in emergency funding to fight screwworm starting in late 2023.
Since the Department of Agriculture announced a confirmed screwworm detection in a calf in Texas on June 3, politicians on both sides of the aisle have lobbed blame at the other. The return of the fly is a major threat to the cattle industry, and its arrival in Mexico has already contributed to rising beef prices in the U.S.
Several Democrats and some in the media have been pointing the finger at President Donald Trump, noting staffing cuts at USDA or funding cuts to screwworm programs made in early 2025 by DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“Apologized yet for the Screwworm outbreak?” Rep. Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, wrote in a June 8 X post addressed to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. “You agreed to the DOGE cuts to federal programs that were designed to prevent Screwworm outbreaks.” He repeated a similar statement at a June 9 press conference.
“The Trump administration is directly responsible for this crisis: Last year, it decimated the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which oversees prevention and response efforts related to pests and diseases that pose a threat to U.S. agriculture, including the New World screwworm,” a June 8 Democratic National Committee press release said.
Republicans, meanwhile, have pinned the blame on former President Joe Biden.
“This is another thing we can thank Joe Biden for — that when millions of people came out of … Central America, they brought this screwworm with them. It was on their pets, maybe on their flesh as well,” Sen. Roger Marshall, Republican of Kansas, said in a June 8 Newsmax interview.
“The threat didn’t appear overnight; it was the direct result of the Biden-Harris Admin’s WEAK foreign policy agenda and FAILED immigration policies (and wide open border…),” Rollins wrote in a June 4 X post, noting that the biological barrier for the fly at the border of Panama and Colombia “broke down in 2022,” during the prior administration.
“The Biden-Harris admin … ran a wide-open border that turned the Darien Gap into a nonstop highway for illegal migration, infested animals and all,” she wrote in another post the same day. “That single policy did more to introduce NWS into the US than anything we’ve seen in 60 years.”
Rollins repeated some version of this story on multiple occasions, including in two congressional hearings.
Experts, however, told us that both parties are off-base. A couple of entomologists we spoke with suspect that what precipitated the barrier breakdown in Panama was a fly strain failure, which in some ways was decades in the making. Better monitoring — particularly as late as 2025 — would have perhaps slowed but not prevented the arrival. And while illicit cattle movement could be a major way the screwworm travelled north, an expert told us it had nothing to do with Biden’s immigration policies (any travel on humans would be minor).
“Neither of them are to blame,” David Taylor, an emeritus adjunct professor of entomology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, told us, of the Biden and Trump administrations.
The return of screwworm “should not be reduced to a simple partisan blame story,” Dr. Joseph Annelli, a former director of emergency programs for veterinary services at the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, told us. “The more accurate explanation is a long-term preparedness failure involving multiple administrations, multiple Congresses, international partners, workforce shortages, infrastructure limitations, and the natural human tendency to underinvest in prevention until a crisis occurs.”
Screwworm was once native to the southern U.S., but through the use of sterile fly releases starting in the 1950s, the parasite has largely been eradicated from the country for more than 40 years.
The flies lay eggs in open wounds and the resulting larvae then burrow like screws into live tissue. After about a week of feeding, the larvae then drop off the wound and complete their transformation into flies in soil, the USDA explains. While the fly can infest open wounds in any warm-blooded animal, including people, pets and wildlife, the insects prefer larger mammals and human cases are rare.
Eradication efforts began last century due to the burden on ranchers. Screwworm infestations can sicken or kill livestock, especially newborns, and they can be expensive to treat and monitor for. According to the USDA, before the eradication of the pest, livestock producers lost tens of millions of dollars or more to screwworm every year.
Annelli called it “a scientific marvel” to figure out how to use sterile flies to control the pest. Because the female flies mate only once, releases of sterilized males stop reproduction, and the population dies out. Scientists devised ways to rear the flies, irradiate them to sterilize them, and release them into the wild, over time pushing screwworm out of the U.S., down through Mexico and as far as the Darien Gap in Panama.
With the exception of Darien province, Panama had been free of screwworm since 2006, with a dedicated facility producing tens of millions of sterile flies each week that were dropped over the isthmus, preventing spread of the fly from South America, where it has remained endemic.
The U.S. declared the screwworm eradicated in 1966, although Taylor said that there were large outbreaks through the 1970s. It was “not really until 1980 that the U.S. became screwworm-free,” he said. Since then, there have been some imported cases, but only one self-sustaining outbreak, largely in deer, in Florida in 2016, which ended after bringing in sterile flies.
“Unfortunately, we are the victim of our success,” Anneli said. “People don’t even know about screwworm anymore because it was eradicated so long ago.”
Screwworm began its return to North and Central America sometime around 2022, with Panama experiencing an increase in cases that year. By mid-2023, screwworm was in Costa Rica, and in Nicaragua by March 2024. Mexico reported its first case, near the border with Guatemala, in November 2024.
Since the U.S. detection in early June, the USDA has identified 31 animal cases as of July 1, primarily in cattle, but also in sheep, goats and dogs. All of the cases have been in Texas, except for one dog in New Mexico. (Rollins said in a hearing and elsewhere that the dog had been brought across the border with Mexico, but state officials have said that is not true.)
In assigning blame for screwworm, some Democrats, such as Lieu and the DNC, have focused on funding and staffing cuts made under the Trump administration.
It’s true that the USDA is significantly smaller under Trump. In one year, the department lost around 20,000 employees, including around 2,000 members, or 23%, of the agency’s inspection service, according to an analysis of federal data by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. The Agricultural Research Service, the agency’s chief scientific arm that is involved in sterile fly efforts, also lost nearly 2,200 people, or 31% of its staff.
However, it is not known how many of those individuals worked on screwworm.
Using Office of Personnel Management data and figures through April, we got similar staffing reductions for the inspection and research departments. Overall, USDA staffing has dropped by about 16,000 employees.
Three former USDA officials told Politico for a June 17 story that the staffing cuts complicated the agency’s screwworm response, particularly because more experienced veterinarians were gone.
Rollins has said that when she came into office there were just 10 people working full time on screwworm, and that she has now expanded that to over 110 or 120 people. She has denied any negative impact on screwworm from funding or staffing reductions.
An April 2025 memo from Rollins indicates that employees dedicated to screwworm would be exempt from a hiring freeze.
Four former USDA officials have disputed Rollins’ figure of 10 employees, with one calling it “definitely false” and an underestimate, according to reporting in Agri-Pulse, a trade publication.
A few Democrats, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Rep. Shontel Brown of Ohio, who is the vice ranking member of the agriculture committee, have also cited a separate March 2025 Agri-Pulse story about funding cuts. Lieu’s press office also directed us to the story, among several others, when asked for support for his claims. It reported that among the administration’s many cuts to USAID were “animal disease monitoring projects” operated by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, including $250 million specifically for global health security projects.
“Among the GHS projects killed were some dedicated to monitoring and containing avian flu and New World Screwworm in Central America,” the trade publication reported. It went on to say that the stop work orders went out in late January, “just days before” the Trump administration reopened the border for cattle trade that the Biden administration had closed due to concerns about importing screwworm.
Reporting by KBHB Radio in South Dakota at the same time confirmed the cuts via a Food and Agriculture Organization spokesperson, but offered little additional detail. “Throughout Central America, FAO monitored and responded to New World Screwworm, preventing the spread of the disease to the U.S.,” the spokesperson said, giving an example of the FAO program’s impact.
FAO did not reply to our request for more information, but confirmed the cuts to Agri-Pulse in a separate June 24 story, stating that “the reductions meant that some planned country support — including disease surveillance, laboratory strengthening, veterinary training and outbreak preparedness — could not be implemented as originally planned or had to be delayed or scaled back.”
Many of the scientists we interviewed were not able to comment directly on any funding or staffing reductions. But given the timing of the grant cancellations, it is unlikely that those had a large impact. Screwworm had already been detected in southern Mexico in late November 2024, two months before Trump took office.
Taylor said that once the outbreak reached Nicaragua, it was “inevitable” that the flies would reach the U.S. because there was not enough sterile fly production capacity.
“You might have been able to do better surveillance. You might have been able to track it better,” he said. “But I don’t see that you are going to stop it.”
“I would be cautious about attributing the problem solely to recent USAID, USDA, or other federal funding reductions,” Annelli, who is also the executive vice president of the National Association of Federal Veterinarians, said, noting that he was speaking for himself and not for any organizations. “Surveillance and prevention funding are important, and reductions can certainly weaken preparedness. However, the northward progression of screwworm reflects broader and longer-term vulnerabilities that predate any single administration.”
Some Republicans, meanwhile, have been pushing a narrative that Biden’s immigration policies are to blame for bringing screwworm stateside again.
“With open borders and the proliferation of the Mexican cartels and their illicit cattle trafficking, the New World screwworm began to make its way north,” Rollins said in recent congressional testimony.
Setting aside that Biden’s approach was not one of “open borders,” there are several flaws with this argument.
First, to be clear, experts do not think migrants themselves are carrying screwworm frequently enough to spread the pest. Paul E. Kaiser, a retired insect geneticist who had leadership roles in two sterile screwworm production facilities, told us that to the best of his knowledge, “no data” support that idea.
Illegal cattle movement, including from the cartels, however, likely did play a role in bringing screwworm north. Researchers and journalists have documented how cartels traffic cattle with falsified veterinary papers to launder money and how those trade routes align with the spread of the pest. But scientists told us that this does not explain what originally went wrong because illicit trade has long been a problem — and yet screwworm had remained at bay.
Illegal livestock movement “had nothing to do with the outbreak” itself, Kaiser said. Animals “infected with screwworms are brought illegally from Colombia into the Darien every year,” he explained. “So illegal cattle trade exacerbated the problem, but it didn’t start the problem.”
Taylor agreed. The illegal cattle trade “may have accelerated the pace of the advance, especially once they made it through Panama and Costa Rica,” he said, “but I think the flies would have made it to Texas with or without cattle smuggling.”
“Illegal livestock movements can certainly contribute to spread, but the biology of the parasite does not support immigration policy as the principal explanation for what occurred,” Annelli similarly said.
Moreover, Jennifer Ann Devine, a Texas State University geographer and political ecologist who has studied narco-ranching, told us that it is inappropriate to link the illegal cattle trade to immigration policies.
“If we’re to point blame for screwworm re-emergence, a big part of the puzzle is not immigration policy, but the war on drugs,” she said.
Somewhat counterintuitively, Devine explained, efforts to clamp down on the drug trade have arguably driven the cartels more toward activities such as narco-ranching, which not only offers a source of funding and plausible cover, but also develops new smuggling routes as traffickers seek out more remote areas for their operations.
In terms of drug policy, the Biden and Trump administrations are “much more similar than not,” Devine said, although Trump has perhaps amplified the traditional approach of interdiction, seizure and criminalization.
“Both administrations have contributed to the spread of illegal cattle ranching,” Devine said. “We can’t say that the Biden administration [specifically] made this worse.”
Several scientists told us that one possibility is that the sterile flies being used to maintain the border in Panama became less effective or stopped working. The specific strain in production had been in use for 16 years by 2022, even though entomologists told us that they should have been swapped out at least every eight years, or even every two to three years.
“The fault lies with, in my opinion, very possibly with strain deterioration,” Taylor said, although he cautioned that this was only a suspicion at this point.
As the flies are mass produced, he explained, they could have developed genetic mutations that made the flies less compatible with wild flies or in some way diminished their ability to reduce fly populations in the field. Although the sterile fly facility in Panama — a joint effort between the U.S. and Panama called COPEG — runs tests on the produced flies to check basic functions, Taylor said, there is no direct way to test for effectiveness.
The strain “was obviously not competitive in the field against wild males,” Kaiser told us, calling the breach in the Darien “completely avoidable.” He believes the APHIS employees in charge at USDA in 2022 should have recognized the problem faster, immediately restricting animal movement and collecting a new strain. Panama did not declare a state of emergency until 2023, and a new strain was not established until 2024, which by then was too late, Kaiser said.
This would have occurred under the Biden administration, but multiple administrations had the opportunity to swap out strains or maintain viable backup strains.
Both Taylor and Kaiser also said that these sorts of mistakes would come down to management of the sterile fly program itself, rather than a president or even a USDA chief.
“The blame goes down to the local level for not changing the strain,” Kaiser said.
“I think there have been systematic problems in the program since the early 2000s,” Taylor said. He believes there needs to be an external review.
Enrique Samudio, the then-Panamanian director of COPEG, told a Panamanian newspaper in July 2023 that the “fly wasn’t being effective enough” and said a new strain, which had been cryopreserved, was in production by March 2023. He also attributed the surge in screwworm cases to a variety of other factors, including a larger population of cattle in the Darien than when the program started, ranchers not recognizing the problem and climate change.
COPEG did not respond to our request for more information. According to a February 2026 research study, the current production strain was established in 2024 from 11 lines of flies collected from animal infestations in Panama and Costa Rica during 2022 and 2023.
A variety of other missteps over many years have contributed to the current situation, experts said.
The only facility capable of producing sterile flies until recently was in Panama, with a capacity of 100 million flies per week. Experts say that left no contingency plan in case of a larger outbreak that would need significantly more flies.
“There are not enough flies to do the control,” Taylor said. “You’re putting Band-Aids on mortal wounds until you get more flies.”
There had been another production facility in Chiapas, Mexico, that the U.S. was involved with, but it closed in 2012. “While that closure occurred during the Obama administration period, it would be inaccurate to portray it as solely an Obama administration decision,” Annelli said. “Rather, it reflected a broader perception shared by multiple governments and administrations that screwworm had been sufficiently controlled and that maintaining excess production capacity was no longer necessary.”
Annelli also said that both Republican and Democratic administrations had made cuts to the USDA’s veterinary workforce over the years, leading to staffing shortfalls particularly during emergencies.
Entomologists also bemoaned the fact that the government has not more aggressively pursued the use of an all-male screwworm strain, which would make fly rearing cheaper and much more efficient. As it is now, half the sterile flies that are produced are females and are worthless or worse, since the sterile males may end up mating with them rather than with wild females.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous that we don’t have an all-male strain,” Kaiser said, noting the general concept for such a screwworm strain goes back to at least the 1990s.
Maxwell Scott, an entomologist at North Carolina State University, has been working on such an effort. He said he tested one strain in the field in 2018 but that COPEG decided not to use it for mass production.
“There were opportunities years ago to develop much more effective genetic methods to control a screwworm,” he said, and “no one funded them.”
Scott said it might never be known why the boundary in Panama failed, but “it’s probably going to be a mix of factors,” noting that there had been an increasing number of cases along the border in Colombia, putting more pressure on the barrier. The blame game politicians are participating in, he said, is “not particularly helpful.”
On multiple occasions, Rollins has portrayed the previous administration as taking little or no action against screwworm.
In a June 10 Senate hearing, Rollins said, “I was sort of shocked that the last USDA really had no plans, hadn’t really done anything,” regarding screwworm. She later asked, “Why did no one do anything about it until we walked in the door in January and February of last year?”
During an interview in Texas a day after that, Rollins said that when she began as secretary last year, she realized “that really not much had been done to prepare for this moment — no funds had been secured, very little staff … really no money invested, no plan deployed.”
While it’s a matter of opinion whether the Biden administration could or should have done more, it’s not the case that it did nothing and had no funding or plans in place.
In December 2023, then-Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack approved a transfer of $109.8 million in emergency funding to combat screwworm “in areas of Panama and other areas that are critical to preventing the pest from spreading back into North America,” according to an agency press release.
In November 2024, when Mexico notified the USDA of a screwworm detection, the agency immediately halted imports of live cattle and bison from Mexico.
Then, a month later, Vilsack approved another $165 million in emergency funds.
In a letter Vilsack wrote to his counterpart in Mexico just before his departure in January 2025, he said that the authorized emergency funding “has allowed us to increase sterile fly production fivefold in the past year” and to scale up “dispersal, surveillance, education, and partnerships in the region.” He also asked for Mexico’s assistance in setting up “two planned sterile fly dispersal centers in Southern Mexico.”
In two trade publications in June, Vilsack disputed Rollins’ claims, saying it was not true that the Biden administration’s USDA had done nothing, pointing to the sterile fly additions, funding for a Mexican dispersal facility, bolstered surveillance measures and closing the border to imports, which Vilsack said at the time “was perceived to be a very aggressive step.”
One of the reports also noted that Rollins said that some of the $1.3 billion in screwworm funding under Trump came from Biden administration programs.
Two anonymous former USDA officials also told Politico that the Biden administration had left plans and funding to convert a fruit fly facility in Metapa, Mexico, into a screwworm production facility. The Trump administration took four months to review the spending, officials told the outlet. Agri-Pulse published a similar account. Rollins announced the $21 million renovation project in late May 2025.
USDA did not respond to repeated requests for comment. A spokesperson, however, told Politico that the agency “has moved at lightning speed to obtain any and all necessary funding and approvals to fight New World screwworm,” having “aggressively moved dollars and project timelines at a pace unprecedented for [the] U.S. government.”
In early February 2025, the Trump administration resumed cattle imports from Mexico, but halted them again a few months later in May.
Taylor said the Biden administration’s decision to block imports was a “good move” primarily because it slowed the movement of cattle from southern to northern Mexico.
“There were very, very strong feelings amongst my colleagues in Texas that [Trump] should not have reopened the border, and they were quite happy when it was closed again,” he said. “But it was such a short period of time, I don’t think it really had an impact.”
Now, the emphasis is on building up sterile fly production. Rollins has said that the U.S. now needs as many as 500 million sterile flies a week to begin pushing the screwworm back out of the country, essentially starting the eradication process over again.
On June 27, the retrofitted production facility opened in Metapa, Mexico. It will eventually produce as many as 100 million sterile flies a week.
In March, the USDA announced a contract to build a new sterile fly facility at Moore Air Base in Edinburg, Texas, that eventually can produce 300 million flies a week. But the first flies aren’t expected until around November 2027, with an initial start of 100 million per week.
Kaiser said it would likely take several years before screwworm is out of Texas again, and over a decade before the flies are pushed once more back to the Darien.
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The post Democrats’ and Republicans’ Screwworm Blame Spin appeared first on FactCheck.org.
The US government’s latest U-turn on Anthropic’s Mythos sends mixed signals on AI governance Expert comment thilton.drupal
The Trump administration’s approach to controlling US companies’ powerful AI capabilities is volatile. It undercuts global safety and governance at a pivotal time.
On Tuesday, the United States Department of Commerce removed restrictions on two of Anthropic’s new advanced AI models that have prompted security concerns: Mythos 5 and Fable 5. This is a major change in the way the US controls frontier AI and comes after recurring flip-flopping on the issue.
The move, described in a letter by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik to Anthropic, lifts the export control directive issued by the Trump administration less than three weeks ago. That 12 June directive banned non-US nationals from accessing the two models. This ban included foreign employees at US companies and cyber defenders from international partners. In response, Anthropic suspended access to Mythos and Fable for all users a day later.
The administration then partially changed its approach. On 26 June, Anthropic said the US government had allowed it to release Mythos 5 but had reserved access to the model to only a select group of ‘trusted’ big companies and agencies: all of them, unsurprisingly, from the US.
Now, Anthropic says it is coordinating with the government to expand Mythos access to a broader group including international partners. As of 1 July, Fable 5 – which Anthropic says has stronger safeguards than Mythos 5 – is available to public users globally.
Since Anthropic’s initial limited release of Mythos in April, the model’s apparently powerful cyber hacking capabilities have led to concerns over who has access. Initially, Anthropic had limited access to trusted partners in ‘Project Glasswing’: a select group of companies and agencies that were granted access in order to fix vulnerabilities in their systems and browsers. Since then, the question of access has remained contentious.
Many companies and allies will applaud the US administration’s latest policy reversal. Access to models like Mythos can be helpful for cyber defenders the world over. Information about model capabilities is critical for regulators and officials.
This latest U-turn on Mythos aside, the bigger picture is that the US government is regulating powerful AI in a way that it previously indicated it wouldn’t. OpenAI’s latest models – GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra and Luna – have also recently come under government pressure due to security concerns, and will be initially released to only ‘a small group of trusted partners’.
However, the government’s changeable approach is not a win for security. The policy volatility is concerning. Its unpredictability sends confusing signals to markets and is bad for investors.
It also represents competing dynamics at the heart of the US’s frontier AI strategy, each with global consequences. These include anxiety about China’s access to cutting-edge capabilities, a lack of clarity over what the technology can actually do and how transformative it really is, and distrust in the partnerships required to develop and deploy it.
This flip-flopping on Mythos is just the latest chapter in the dispute between the Trump administration and Anthropic. Earlier this year, the Department of War (DoW) labelled the company a ‘supply chain risk’ to national security: the first US company ever to receive this designation. The DoW and Anthropic remain in a legal battle. Regardless, Anthropic engineers reportedly help the National Security Agency to use Mythos in cyber operations targeting adversaries.
The administration’s turbulent relationship with Anthropic has global consequences, including for US allies. In early June, Anthropic offered the EU access to Mythos after weeks of negotiations, only for the EU to lose it days later following the export control directive (and now, presumably, regain it). The G7 also saw attempts to re-negotiate a ‘trusted partners’ scheme for access to cutting-edge AI capabilities.
This turbulence also highlights the unstraightforward relationship between US political leaders and the country’s most powerful technology companies, two of which are on the cusp of IPOs. Generally, the Trump administration has been in favour of deregulation. It fears stifling innovation, preventing adoption and losing the US’s competitive edge over China.
But the US government’s recent turn towards a more proactive but volatile regulatory approach is a significant change; the Anthropic saga is just one part of this recent shift towards ad hoc government control.
On 2 June, an executive order called for AI companies to voluntarily submit their models for safety testing for 30 days before general release. The order was reportedly watered down from a 90-day period after lobbying. On 5 June, a national security directive instructed government agencies to end contracts with AI companies that limit how the government uses their tech. (Some policy experts consider this a response to the Pentagon-Anthropic legal battle.) And OpenAI’s limited release of its GPT-5.6 models last week reportedly came at the request of the US government.
This approach has its flaws. First, Chatham House experts have previously argued that tightening restrictions around valuable technology – so-called ‘golden eggs’, whether software (like models) or hardware (like chips) – will not fully prevent their proliferation.
Second, clamping down on models immediately pre-release doesn’t control or slow down the frontier of development. And clamping down on ‘foreign access’ to AI cyber capabilities – which includes restricting access for non-US AI safety institutes and allies – does not improve US readiness for an AI-enabled global crisis, like a global financial crash. It weakens the evidence base and trusted cooperation needed to navigate a shared shock.
Next week’s inaugural United Nations meeting on AI – the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance – faces an impossible balancing act. This is because AI risks are shared, whether to global health, nuclear security or financial systems. They demand a minimum level of global governance to regulate them. This includes monitoring and information-sharing, technical measures like model ‘kill switches’, or decision-making pathways like emergency backchannels.
This is a non-starter without the US and its powerful AI companies. But the unpredictability and protectionism of US frontier AI governance creates barriers to these types of international cooperation. This is complicated by the dynamics of the US-China AI race, which makes it hard to get Beijing and Washington to reach a consensus on safety, despite promising signs of future intergovernmental talks.
Why Should Delaware Care?
The popularity of artificial intelligence has sparked a boom in demand for facilities, called data centers, which house the servers that power the internet. But those facilities have also drawn criticism from local communities for their water and electricity usage.
New Castle County Councilman Tim Sheldon says he recently brokered a handshake deal to pause a data center development project near Newark.
Sheldon, who represents the Newark area, said the deal followed private negotiations with the developer’s prominent Delaware attorney, Shawn Tucker, who told him the New York-based developer behind the project, Shelbourne, agreed to consider the Newark site for uses other than a data center.
“This is my art of the deal,” Sheldon said.
The deal is dependent on the county’s all-but-guaranteed approval of an exploratory plan application from the developer, which would grandfather the land into zoning rules that existed prior to this year, Sheldon said.
That means the developer would not have to follow the county’s recently-passed data center regulations if the developer ultimately decides to build a data center there.
Since the property’s zoning already allows data center projects, the county likely does not have the legal authority to deny that application.
An email sent between Sheldon and Tucker, dated June 10, shows that Tucker agreed to pause the data center project under those conditions.
Neither Tucker nor Shelbourne representatives responded to requests for comment about this deal.
Last year, Shelbourne filed documents with the county that showed plans to demolish the existing White Clay Center office and industrial buildings and construct a three-building data center campus that covered about 850,000 square feet.
After the filing, the plans became wrapped into a larger community backlash in northern Delaware against the growth of the data center industry. Neighbors have voiced fears that such data centers would use too much water and energy, and be too noisy.
Sheldon’s handshake agreement is not binding, and the developer still has the legal right to build a data center.
New Castle County General Manager of Land Use David Culver said he saw the email from Tucker but has no other information.
Sheldon noted that the agreement is between him and Tucker — and not with the county as a party. He further stated that if he decides not to run for reelection in 2028 or loses to a challenger, “it may be null and void.”
“If I’m not there, there’s no promises,” Sheldon said.
Asked if he would try to secure an official county deal barring a data center on that property, Sheldon said the project is “too far in the process” and he doesn’t want to risk the progress he’s made.
He said he will instead work to find another company to lease or buy the land. He said in a text after the interview that the deal is “the best I could’ve got.”
“Nobody else has even done this much and it seems like I’m getting hammered because I did something,” Sheldon said in the text.
Sheldon said an Amtrak train maintenance site will open next door to the White Clay Center property in the next few years, and he thinks the track upgrades needed for that project could make the neighboring site more attractive for manufacturing.
Delaware Public Media reported last week that Alstom, which conducts maintenance on Amtrak’s high-speed Acela trains – will open a new facility on 1601 Ogletown Road, next to the White Clay Center office and industrial buildings.
Alstom did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Beyond Shelbourne’s proposal, several other building projects proposed in Delaware could become data centers.
The biggest is Project Washington, a 1.2-gigawatt data center campus planned for the land just north of the Delaware City Refinery. It would use enough energy to power almost a million homes.
That plan faced a major setback in March after a state board unanimously upheld Environmental Secretary Greg Patterson’s decision that the project is not permitted under Delaware’s Coastal Zone Act, a landmark law designed to limit heavy industry along the state’s shorelines.
Developer Starwood Digital Ventures was expected to appeal that decision, but it is unclear whether it will. Representatives from Starwood did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Another potential data center plan is slated for land near the southern approach to the St. Georges Bridge off U.S. Route 13. The St. Georges project includes the land that hosts the popular Halloween attraction Frightland.
County records show plans for three distribution centers covering 3.6 million square feet on farmland, along with 150 homes.
The records say the buildings will be warehouses. But project engineer Verdantas also submitted letters to the county suggesting that the buildings could be a data center campus.
Delmarva Power filings this winter showed two other potential data center projects. But Technical.ly reported that only one of those projects is still on the table, which would be located in Harrington.
City officials are still in the preliminary stages of discussions about that plan, according to the report.
The post County Councilman says Newark data center plan paused after deal appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Why Should Delaware Care?
The Delaware legislature reassesses the public education system through new legislation filed each year. In 2026, lawmakers passed a string of consequential bills that reforms school funding.
When Delaware’s legislative session came to an end early Wednesday morning, lawmakers had approved a string of education bills that reform how the state and how school districts collect and distribute money for schools.
Among them is one that would enable the Delaware Department of Education to begin implementing its hybrid public school funding model, which would distribute more money to schools with large numbers of low-income students or English-language learners.
Delaware Secretary of Education Cindy Marten said in a statement to Spotlight Delaware that the passage of the hybrid funding bill, and others, does not represent a “victory lap” but marks the “beginning of the next phase of a shared civic project.”
“The work ahead is implementation,” she said.
Here’s a look at Delaware education bills that have passed through or stalled within the General Assembly this year.
Two years ago, Delaware’s Public Education Funding Commission — tasked with recommending reforms to the state’s 85-year-old school funding system – launched an initiative to analyze whether public education in the state was serving all students.
Last year, the commission unanimously recommended that lawmakers approve their hybrid school funding framework, which would shift education spending away from a per-student basis to one that directs more dollars toward students with higher needs.
In May, two bills that would lay the groundwork for Delaware to implement a new school funding system advanced out of a Senate committee.
One of the bills, sponsored by State Sen. Laura Sturgeon (D-Brandywine Hundred), would enable the Delaware Department of Education to begin implementing the hybrid school funding model. It also includes a provision to mandate that no school receive less money under the model than it would have under the previous funding model.
If signed into law by Gov. Matt Meyer, the hybrid model would be implemented during the 2028 fiscal year.
Sturgeon, who serves as chair of the Delaware’s Public Education Funding Commission, also introduced Senate Bill 303, which establishes it as a permanent body to continue studying and evaluating the state’s funding formula in the years to come.
Both bills await the governor’s signature.
Lawmakers have spent the last year attempting to address Delawareans’ concerns about school district tax increases following last year’s first-in-a-generation property reassessment.
Sponsored by Senate President Pro Tempore David Sokola (D-Newark), Senate Bill 322 was spurred by school districts’ decision last summer to increase their property tax revenues by 10% following Delaware’s statewide property reassessment.
Sokola’s bill follows two failed attempts by Republican lawmakers earlier this year to scale back districts’ ability to take those automatic tax increases in the future.
While Senate Bill 322 would rescind school districts’ current ability to automatically implement a 10% tax increase after property reassessments, it would allow them to seek additional funding without holding a referendum vote.
Instead of taking an automatic 10% hike, districts – should they meet certain criteria – would be able to implement an up to 2% tax increase each year without seeking approval from voters.
That approach mirrors the process in many other states.
The bill now awaits Meyer’s approval. If signed, Senate Bill 322 would not take effect until 2031, after the state’s next property reassessment.
Late last week, lawmakers released Delaware’s $1.26 billion capital budget. The 103-page bill includes scores of spending items, including traditional appropriations for roads, parks, and school buildings.
During a legislative committee meeting last week, Delaware’s Controller General Ruth Ann Miller said the bill will also allow the state to “forward fund” school districts’ Certificate of Necessity requests.
If a school district wants to build a new school, add an expansion, or complete a substantial renovation, officials must seek out state funding and get approval from the Department of Education through the Certificate of Necessity (CN) process.
If state officials approved the requests, then a percentage of the cost would be funded through state bonds. The district would then need to secure a local contribution through a referendum vote for the remaining funds.
Multiple CN requests have failed in recent years and as a result, many districts have turned to unique ways to address overcrowding in schools. In Delmar, teachers hold classes in the high school auditorium.
“The hope is that by forward funding all of these schools that were already in the pipeline, that opens the door next year for new CNs to actually be allowed in,” Miller said.
The bond bill ultimately passed in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and now awaits the governor’s signature.
Not passing last week was a measure to require union workers on school construction sites. Senate Bill 272 would have mandated that a school district sign an agreement with the Delaware Building and Construction Trades Council – the umbrella organization for the state’s various unionized trades – to use union labor for construction projects that cost at least $5 million and have at least two bidders.
Multiple major industry groups, including the Associated Builders and Contractors of Delaware and organizations representing minority-owned businesses, opposed the bill and held protests over it for months.
Earlier this spring, two pieces of legislation that would each expand tax credits for Delaware parents also saw action in the state house.
One was a Democratic bill that proposes to double the amount of money that parents could receive from a Delaware childcare tax credit. The other, which had bipartisan sponsors, would expand the credit for lower-income parents and allow them to redeem more money than they pay in.
Rep. Melanie Ross Levin (D-Brandywine Hundred) first introduced House Bill 274 in January as a means to ease financial pressure on parents in need of childcare.
In March, a revised version of her bill – which would increase Delaware’s match of the federal Child and Dependent Care Credit from 50% to 100% – passed the House Revenue and Finance Committee.
The federal Child and Dependent Care Credit allows working parents to reduce their tax liability if they pay for childcare.
During testimony at a committee hearing, Ross Levin noted that her proposal was not in Gov. Matt Meyer’s recommended budget in January. Still, she called the bill “fiscally, potentially doable,” and noted that the credits were designed so that taxpayers do not receive more cash from the government than what they pay in taxes.
The bill was assigned to the House Appropriations Committee in March but did not make movement.
The second bill, House Bill 284, was sponsored by Rep. Lyndon Yearick (R-Dover). It would double the childcare and dependent care expense tax credit for single individuals with an income of less than $60,000 and would make the credit refundable – meaning beneficiaries could receive payments even if they owe little in taxes.
In an interview, Yearick said his bill is designed to attract “a qualified workforce” to the state by making childcare more accessible to parents who do not qualify for programs, such as Purchase of Care or Head Start.
Among the additional and co-sponsors of the bill were two Democrats — Rep. Alonna Berry (D-Milton) and Sen. Kyra Hoffner (D-Leipsic).
Yearick’s bill has also awaited consideration in the House Appropriations Committee since May.
The post Delaware General Assembly roundup: Public school funding appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Netanyahu is caught between Trump and a hard place Expert comment LToremark
As Trump and Netanyahu fall out over Iran war – and how to end it – the Israeli prime minister is caught between US pressure and domestic opinion ahead of crucial elections.
The relationship between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has grown increasingly tense since the start of the Iran war and seems to have reached an all-time low amid Trump’s efforts to end hostilities in both Iran and Lebanon. His memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Iran was largely criticized in Israel. Netanyahu – who always bragged about his great relationship with Trump – was seen as responsible. Another MoU between Israel, the US and Lebanon followed last week. Although it looks more favourable to Israel, it has nevertheless been met with a great deal of suspicion in Israel where the majority supports military action against Hezbollah.
Before last week’s deal, the US president had grown increasingly frustrated that Israel’s actions in Lebanon would jeopardize the ceasefire deal with Iran. Trump has confirmed reports he called Netanyahu ‘crazy’ and used an expletive during a tense phone call. A new book claims there was a similarly angry phone call just days before the public announcement of the ceasefire deal to end the war in Gaza.
These revelations paint a picture of two leaders who have always emphasized their close alliance and ‘beautiful friendship’ but no longer seem to be on the same page. But does this mean Trump is ready to translate his growing resentment towards Netanyahu into new policy? If so, how would it affect Israeli politics and the upcoming elections?
Quite possibly, no one was happier than Netanyahu after Trump’s election victory in November 2024. He reportedly used to stall to buy time during the Biden administration, postponing key decisions such as a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, and fateful decisions on Gaza and the hostages until Trump returned to the White House. And indeed, the Israeli cabinet approved the ceasefire deal with Gaza, that allowed for the release of 33 hostages, just in time for Trump’s inauguration.
But from that moment on Trump and Netanyahu have struggled to reach a consensus. Trump started his term with a plan to ‘relocate’ Palestinians from Gaza to Libya and a promise there would be ‘all hell to pay’ for Hamas if the hostages were not released. But just months later he presented his 20-point peace plan for Gaza and effectively forced a ceasefire on both Israel and Hamas.
Just a few weeks prior to Trump’s peace plan announcement, Netanyahu had promised to continue the fight in Gaza to retrieve all hostages and eradicate Hamas. However, he later embraced Trump’s peace plan and the subsequent hostage deal. The families of hostages have argued that Netanyahu sabotaged previous chances for such a deal and eventually only succumbed to Trump’s pressure.
But the war with Iran provided ultimate proof that Netanyahu and Trump have very different worldviews and geopolitical goals. As the proclaimed goals of the war began to look increasingly unachievable, Trump increased cooperation with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Pakistan to secure a ceasefire. Netanyahu, meanwhile, wanted to maintain the military pressure on both Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, despite the heavy price of the war – and even as the IDF admitted that eradicating Hezbollah without a full-scale invasion is unrealistic.
Netanyahu’s dream that Trump would provide a carte blanche for Israel in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran did not come true. While Trump wanted quick victories for national and personal gains, Netanyahu was more interested in precisely the type of ‘endless war’ that Trump had promised to avoid. The disparity between their goals was made even clearer as the US signed a shaky MoU with Iran and demanded that Israel halt its military activity in Lebanon.
The terms of the new Israel–Lebanon MoU allow Israeli troops to remain in southern Lebanon until Hezbollah disarms – and Netanyahu has already reiterated that they will. Significant pullouts of Israeli forces would be a highly unpopular move among Israelis and Netanyahu will want to avoid this ahead of the election. Trump, meanwhile, desperately needs this ceasefire to last to stabilize the situation in Iran. It remains to be seen how much pressure the US will exercise to enforce this agreement. So far, timeframes are vague and there are minimal demands on Israel – but this could change.
Netanyahu will be running in the October parliamentary elections weakened by his rift with Trump – and with many of Israel’s international relationships already strained by the war in Gaza. US Vice President JD Vance’s recent statement that Trump is Israel’s last powerful ally rings painfully true.
Polls in Israel indicate that Netanyahu currently cannot secure a coalition. Support for the prime minister and his Likud party has been eroded by the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks, his handling of the prolonged hostage crisis and inability to secure a decisive victory over Hamas, as well as the judicial reform and corruption. It remains to be seen whether the MoU with Lebanon will have an impact on the polls but for now it does not appear to be a game changer.
It is harder to establish whether the rift with Trump has had an impact. In 2015, Netanyahu skilfully used his confrontation with then US president Barack Obama over the JCPOA deal to win the elections. Now, 11 years later he will attempt to pull the same trick with Trump. Polls indicate that over two thirds of Israelis believe that Trump’s policies are damaging to Israel, while pro-Netanyahu media describe Trump as weak and undecisive. So, while some voters may be concerned by the very public rift between Israel and the US, others seem inspired by it.
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