New poll finds likely voters prefer Democratic candidates over Republicans running for office by 11 percentage points; Trump campaigns in South Carolina
The Israeli military has detained about 80 US, Israeli and British volunteers helping Palestinians harvest olives near Bethlehem, including the New York Democratic congressional nominee Brad Lander, several rabbis and Israel’s former deputy attorney general.
JD Vance, the vice-president, criticized Republicans who have spoken out against a controversial campaign ad from Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. The ad features the mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, calling her daughter a liar. In a Tuesday statement, Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, said his sister is estranged from her mother, who had married a man that sexually abused Acton when she was 12. He said his mother, Donna Arthur, remained in the marriage after her husband was arrested and her children were taken away from her
Player fetched firearm after altercation with JC Latham
Tennessee released defensive tackle on Tuesday
Robert Saleh calls situation ‘lapse in judgement’
Tennessee Titans coach Robert Saleh confirmed on Wednesday that defensive tackle Jordan Elliott was released after pulling a gun in the parking lot of the team facility but said it was a “terrible lapse in judgment that I recognize as a call for help more than a criminal act”.
The Titans had announced Tuesday that Elliott was released, but said only that it came after his involvement in an unspecified incident at the team’s facility five days earlier.
A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $25 billion after a jury found Facebook liable for deceiving users about privacy during the Cambridge Analytica scandal. State Attorney General Raul Torrez called it "one of the largest, if not the single largest state verdict against a company in American history." While Meta plans to appeal the ruling, the funds that are to be collected will go toward state education spending. The Associated Press reports: Jurors in September found Meta liable for over 43 million violations of New Mexico consumer protection laws when a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, harvested Facebook user data to generate targeted political ads for the 2016 election. Forty-eight other states settled with Facebook in a nationwide case, but New Mexico chose to take the social media company to court on its own. [...] During the trial, jurors assessed whether Facebook misled users about privacy and content moderation 34 separate times. State prosecutors, though, argued Facebook's statements deceived the entire population of New Mexico and extended beyond social media users.
In the end, jurors agreed with this premise and found Facebook liable for 2.1 million violations on certain counts, bringing the total number of violations to over 43 million. Facebook's attorneys have argued in subsequent court filings that the state's consumer protection laws don't apply to people in New Mexico who weren't using the platform at the time. [...] In one of the few wins for the defense, jurors found the state didn't prove that Facebook made false claims about removing harmful content, including misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.
The state said the company favored certain accounts and allowed for violent or inaccurate content to proliferate. Attorney Randi McGinn said in her closing argument for the state that Facebook profited off harmful content, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied during his video deposition. Zuckerberg said the company has to carefully balance freedom of speech with content moderation. Attorneys for Facebook said the company has adapted its policies since the state's lawsuit was filed in 2021 and that it removes 99% of content that violates standards.
Lawler, a moderate Republican, is fending off a challenge from Democrat Cait Conley in the Hudson valley. It is among the most-watched races that could determine whether Republicans hold on to their majority in Congress.
New Mexico lawsuit claims ‘in exchange for furthering Epstein’s criminal project, his associates received generous salaries’
The attorney general of New Mexico on Wednesday filed a civil lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime attorney, Darren Indyke, and Epstein’s longtime accountant, Richard Kahn, accusing them of having “facilitated and concealed” Epstein’s crimes, and is seeking to stop them from being paid by Epstein’s estate while the litigation plays out.
The lawsuit, filed in the US district court for the district of New Mexico, names Kahn and Indyke as defendants both in their individual capacity, and in their capacity as co-executors of Epstein’s estate. The complaint also names Epstein’s estate, and the 1953 Trust, which holds the estate’s assets.
SEIU Local 1000, representing nurses and teachers, pushing for higher wages, telework and affordable healthcare
Thousands of California state workers began a sweeping one-day strike on Wednesday, with workers set to rally outside government buildings in several cities, as tensions boiled over lapsed contract negotiations with Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration.
SEIU Local 1000, a union that represents roughly 100,000 public employees, including nurses and teachers, has been pushing for higher wages, flexible telework and affordable healthcare.
Jury had found Meta misled consumers after Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign obtained user data without consent
A judge in New Mexico ordered Meta Platforms to pay $25bn on Wednesday after a jury found the company had misled consumers in a case arising from allegations that a political consulting firm involved in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign obtained data from millions of Facebook users without their consent.
“Facebook’s wrongdoing – over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public – goes to the heart of Facebook’s core business practices,” Judge Francis Mathew wrote in his order following the verdict.
At 25, Jody Ginter Mihok had a lump in her breast but plenty of reasons to believe it wasn’t cancer. Her age was one of them. image created from photo courtesy of the DBCC and DeerPark Goes Pink using AI on 10/23.
Delaware survivor Jody Ginter Mihok’s experience highlights why younger women shouldn’t dismiss breast changes — and how a Newark fundraising event this Sunday brings survivors and families together.
NEWARK, Del. — At 25, Jody Ginter Mihok had a lump in her breast but plenty of reasons to believe it wasn’t cancer. Her age was one of them.
Before undergoing a biopsy, she had been repeatedly reassured that cancer was unlikely in someone so young.
But in 2006, the diagnosis came: breast cancer.
Twenty years later, after two separate breast cancer diagnoses and becoming a mother, Mihok is sharing her experience as she prepares to participate in the 10th annual Deer Park Goes Pink 5K this Sunday, Oct. 25, in Newark.
The event begins at 9 a.m. at Deer Park Tavern, 108 W. Main St., and includes a 5K run/walk and an untimed 1-mile walk. Registration remains open, and organizers say 100% of proceeds benefit the Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition, which supports women and families affected by breast cancer.
Mihok hopes her story will encourage other women to pay attention to changes in their health and motivate Delawareans to join Sunday’s event in support of survivors and their families.
Breast cancer is rising among younger women
Although breast cancer remains far more common in older women, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that incidence among women younger than 45 increased an average of 0.7% annually between 2001 and 2022.
More than 27,000 women under 45 were diagnosed with breast cancer nationwide in 2022, according to the CDC.
For Mihok, the statistics reflect something she experienced firsthand: Being young can make breast cancer seem unlikely, even when symptoms are present.
“Being young can sometimes make people assume cancer isn’t a possibility, and that was certainly part of my experience,” she told the Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition.
Her diagnosis changed the direction of her life almost immediately.
“I went from being a 25-year-old young adult living her life to having what seemed like daily appointments, testing, surgery, and then six months of chemotherapy,” Mihok said.
Instead of concentrating on her career, relationships and plans for a family, she faced difficult questions about whether she would ever have children.
Cancer threatens plans for motherhood
For younger breast cancer patients, treatment may involve decisions extending well beyond fighting the disease.
Mihok had to consider how surgery would change her body, how cancer might affect relationships and whether chemotherapy would eliminate her chances of having children.
She consulted a fertility specialist but learned that preserving her eggs would involve out-of-pocket expenses and hormone treatments that raised concerns because of her aggressive, hormone-positive breast cancer.
“There were also things I had to think about at 25 that I never expected to face, including my fertility,” she said.
The experience illustrates another challenge facing younger patients: Cancer treatment can affect reproductive options at an age when many women have not yet decided whether to start a family.
Women facing treatment that could affect fertility are encouraged to discuss preservation options with their medical team before treatment begins.
For Mihok, motherhood eventually became a reality.
At 35, she became pregnant without fertility treatment and gave birth to her daughter, Jacey.
But two years later, cancer returned to her life.
A second diagnosis brings a different fear
Mihok was diagnosed with breast cancer again when her daughter was just 2 years old.
According to her account, the second diagnosis was not a recurrence of her original cancer but a new breast cancer.
This time, her greatest concern had changed.
At 25, she had worried that cancer might prevent her from becoming a mother. Now she feared her daughter might grow up without one.
The two diagnoses, occurring at dramatically different stages of her life, gave Mihok a personal understanding of how cancer affects patients and their families long after the initial diagnosis.
Today, her daughter is 10, and Mihok credits her husband, family and friends for providing the support she needed throughout her treatment and recovery.
Support for Delaware’s younger survivors
Mihok participates in the Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition’s Young Survivors in Action program, which addresses the concerns of women diagnosed with breast cancer at younger ages.
The program offers education, wellness activities and opportunities to connect with other survivors. Activities focus on physical recovery, emotional well-being and adjusting to life during and after treatment.
Mihok’s experience also reinforces an important distinction between routine cancer screening and evaluating an actual symptom.
The American Cancer Society recommends that women at average risk have the option of beginning annual mammograms at age 40, with annual screening recommended beginning at 45. Women at higher risk may need screening earlier.
But a new breast lump or other concerning change should be evaluated regardless of age. Being too young for routine mammograms does not mean being too young to develop breast cancer.
Turning survival into support for others
For Mihok, Sunday’s Deer Park Goes Pink event represents far more than a race.
It brings together survivors, caregivers, families and supporters while raising money for breast cancer education and survivor services in Delaware.
“I come back every year because this event means something very personal to me,” she said.
“Being surrounded by this community reminds me how many people are willing to stand beside you, whether you are currently going through treatment, a survivor, a caregiver, or someone who has lost a loved one.”
Her message to other women is rooted in the uncertainty she experienced at 25: Pay attention to changes in your health, ask questions and advocate for yourself when something does not seem right.
And while breast cancer changed her life twice, she refuses to let it become the only thing that defines her.
“Cancer became part of my story, but it did not get to define my whole story.”
TO-GO BOX | Join Deer Park Goes Pink this Sunday
10th annual Deer Park Goes Pink 5K
When: Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026, at 9 a.m.
Where: Deer Park Tavern, 108 W. Main St., Newark.
What: A 5K run/walk, untimed 1-mile walk and post-race celebration benefiting the Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition.
Registration: $35 plus fees through Saturday, Oct. 24. Registration increases to $40 plus fees on race day.
Not running? A post-race celebration pass is available for $20 plus fees. Organizers also accept donations.
Beneficiary: Organizers say 100% of event proceeds benefit the Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition.
Bru the six month old capybara inspects a pumpkin as he gets into the spooky spirit for his first Halloween at Edinburgh Zoo. (Katielee Arrowsmith via SWNS)
I want to upgrade to a better board and trying to figure out the current resale value of my Onewheel Pint X and would appreciate some honest opinions from the community.
It has 1,215 lifetime miles and has definitely been ridden, so there are cosmetic scratches, scuffs, and normal wear, all visible in the photos.
Board & installed accessories:
Onewheel Pint X Carbon Fiber Fender Pint X Rail Guards (Dijon) Charger Plug
Additional accessories included:
Original standard charger (never used) Pint Ultracharger (used) Maghandle Pro (black, purchased but never installed) Pint X Bumpers (dark grey, purchased but never installed) Onewheel stand Original Onewheel box
I’m curious what you guys think would be a fair resale value for the entire package in today’s market. Would it make more sense to sell everything together, or would I get better value selling some accessories separately?
Not looking to overprice it, just trying to understand what a realistic asking price would be. Appreciate any input!
"According to a recent report by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier (paywalled), EA has reportedly decided to shut down BioWare," the studio behind the Dragon Age and Mass Effect games, writes longtime Slashdot reader atari_kid. Quartz reports: Chief Studios Officer Cam Weber and Chief Operating Officer David Tinson wrote that "over the past several months, we've taken a hard look at our business." They said a small BioWare team had been doing early groundwork on a Mass Effect game, but EA chose to drop the effort. That decision means closing the studio and its Edmonton workspace, they wrote. "We do not take this decision lightly," Weber and Tinson said of the BioWare closure, according to Variety.
EA will keep investing in Apex Legends and is continuing work on two upcoming launches, Marvel's Iron Man and the next Star Wars Jedi game, the executives said. They added that EA's Respawn and DICE studios will join forces on an upcoming project, in addition to new Battlefield titles. Bloomberg said the project is probably a new installment of the Star Wars: Battlefront franchise.
Jack Ross was filmed allegedly discussing with an undercover reporter violent options to deal with enemies
A former Conservative election candidate has been suspended from the party after he was seemingly filmed discussing the cost of hiring contract killers and offering to “broker” the services of a far-right activist with alleged paramilitary links.
Jack Ross was filmed apparently asking an undercover reporter “What do you want done?” before listing the type of violent options that could be bought.
Relatives recount distress and loneliness their loved ones went through in pandemic as a result of isolation policy
“At the time it felt like a devil’s bargain – it was horrible, but it was what [we thought] we had to do to keep people safe,” says Amy of the “devastating” and “terrifying” restrictions that led to her maternal grandparents being locked down in separate care homes during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Eva and Eric had been married for more than 60 years when her dementia and his increased frailty meant they needed separate residential support. When the first lockdown was announced in March 2020, however, it in effect cut them off from each other and their granddaughter, to whom they had been especially close after the early death of Amy’s mother.
Vladimir Putin ordered the release of former teacher Stephen Hubbard, who had spent more than four years in Russian jails on charges of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine. This came as Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff met with the Russian president in St Petersburg for fresh talks on ending the war in Ukraine, amid increasingly close relations between Moscow and Washington.
OpenAI is bringing its models to Google Cloud's model garden and Antigravity coding tool, putting its technology on all three major U.S. cloud platforms after Microsoft's exclusive license ended earlier this year. "Google Cloud's longstanding investment in machine learning and AI has made it a destination for AI workloads and the developers and data scientists building them," OpenAI said in a blog post. It continues: [...] The integration will pair OpenAI's frontier models with Google Cloud's built-in access controls, centralized data governance, and high-performance infrastructure to support demanding enterprise workloads.
Google Cloud customers will be able to purchase OpenAI frontier models via model garden, transacted through the Google Cloud Marketplace. Enterprises with Google Cloud spend commitments will be able to draw down their GCP commitments for these purchases.
Additionally, OpenAI models will soon be available in Google Antigravity and the Gemini Agent, providing enterprise customers with model choice flexibility and the best model for each task. [...] For context, Microsoft previously held exclusive licensing rights to OpenAI's intellectual property, but that arrangement ended less than six months ago as OpenAI began expanding its partnerships with other cloud providers.
Just one day after Microsoft's exclusivity ended, Amazon announced plans to host OpenAI's models on its cloud platform in April.
US photojournalist describes ‘protective shield’, vows to return to work in West Bank and criticises Netanyahu comments on incident
The Washington Post photojournalist who was attacked and seriously injured by Israeli settlers in the West Bank on Friday has described how she was saved with the help of local Palestinians.
Heidi Levine sustained four fractured vertebrae, two broken ribs and four puncture wounds when she was knocked to the ground and repeatedly beaten by a crowd of masked settlers while she and other journalists were covering the olive harvest in the Palestinian village of Abu Falah, north of Ramallah.
Steve Witkoff lauded Vladimir Putin as "a humanitarian" as Russia freed Stephen Hubbard, an American deemed wrongfully detained by the U.S., after more than 4 years in prison.
Steve Witkoff’s flattery of the Russian leader could be just the start of a mendacious stratagem from a US president who says Moscow ‘has been fine on Ukraine’
They say the first casualty of war is truth. For the Trump administration, the road to peace with Russia now encompasses some extraordinary lies.
Steve Witkoff delivered one as he sat down with Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Wednesday, aiming to close the deal on Russia’s land grab in Ukraine with the White House’s strategy of maximum pressure on Kyiv and saccharine flattery of the Kremlin.
As prices keep rising, more of the president’s supporters are asking what happened to the economic good times he promised
It is no great revelation that Donald Trump is enriching himself as president. He raked in $2.2bn in 2025, with his position and his personal interests frequently overlapping. Yet this week’s poll finding that 34% of Republicans (and 66% of all American voters) think that he is using his position to make himself rich merits attention. Separately, voters in a Fox News poll last week put government corruption at the top of their list of concerns – just ahead of inflation and high prices.
Mr Trump pledged that people would be better off if they voted for him. Billionaires are; not the rest. He promised to lower grocery costs (they have risen) and to cut the price of gasoline to below $2 a gallon. It’s more than double that, thanks to his illegal war on Iran. Tariffs haven’t helped. Incumbents struggle when life feels unaffordable, and polling for the Guardian has shown the disenchantment of key voting groups. The gulf between his own prosperity and the lives of his base now looks less like an inspiration and more like an insult. Cash offers seem unlikely to help much.
Officials say the explosion released an airborne irritant that can cause burning of the eyes, nose, mouth and skin
Officials are investigating a tank explosion in Toledo, Ohio, that released a chemical into the air, causing a mass evacuation in the area.
One person, a first responder, was injured and taken to the hospital, but officials believe the injuries are non-life-threatening. They are also unsure about the cause of the explosion.
Experts tell CBS News geography, interceptor shortages and evolving Houthi tactics are helping the Iranian proxy menace Saudi Arabia, and global energy supplies.
No 10 declines to rule out watering down plans to extend waiting period for indefinite leave to remain as cabinet split widens
Shabana Mahmood has been urged to “read the room” on Labour opposition to her immigration policy, as No 10 declined to rule out watering down her plans to make foreign workers wait 15 years to get permanent residency.
Mahmood, the home secretary, is consulting on plans to increase the period before foreign workers can claim indefinite leave to remain from five to 15 years, backdated to apply to anyone arriving from 2021 onwards.
Decision stands in contrast to recent trans rights actions from court that often sides with Trump administration
The US supreme court went against Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday, refusing to allow the immediate enforcement of sweeping restrictions on gender-affirming care for transgender individuals held in prisons and federal facilities.
The decision marks an unusual victory for transgender rights before the nation’s highest court, which has largely sided with the administration and other opponents of transgender rights in several major cases.
Hepatitis B study in Guinea-Bissau that was to be funded by CDC and that drew global backlash ‘will not move forward’
The US-backed hepatitis B vaccine trial in African newborns that drew global backlash was halted, the lead researcher said on Wednesday.
It was “now clear” that the study “will not move forward in Guinea-Bissau”, Frederik Schaltz-Buchholzer, a Danish researcher, wrote on LinkedIn, adding, “we were not given the necessary governmental approval.”
Exclusive: Officials say Miatta Fahnbulleh minded not to give approval in victory for climate campaigners
Miatta Fahnbulleh is minded to reject the giant Rosebank oilfield, sources have told the Guardian, in what would be a blow for the North Sea energy industry and a major victory for climate campaigners.
After approving the smaller Jackdaw gasfield on Wednesday, officials say the energy secretary is leaning towards refusing approval for what would be one of the biggest oilfields in the North Sea.
U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, meeting with Vladimir Putin in Russia, voiced hope for new trilateral talks involving Ukraine, and Moscow indicated the talks could resume in November.
Andy Burnham hit the nail on the (well)head in his first fortnight as prime minister when he said: “The question isn’t whether Britain will still be using oil and gas, the question is, where does it come from?”
It was a nod towards several awkward energy facts. First, oil and gas provided 75% of the UK’s energy in 2025, government data shows. Second, even with the rollout of domestic renewables for generating electricity, about 43% of overall energy was imported last year.
Wedgewood Polls said project was designed to highlight lack of scrutiny over polling sector by mainstream media
A polling firm has admitted to using fabricated data in surveys that were picked up by national media outlets in the US, claiming the project was a “social experiment” designed to expose the lack of scrutiny over the sector.
Wedgewood Polls released a statement on Tuesday on social media, after the polling and election analysis site FiftyPlusOne reached out for comment on an investigation it had conducted into their surveys and data.
Is this bad? I started riding switch and doing high turns i started to scrape rear-left bottom to the point of metal, screw seems to be intact for now.
I want to see pics of others onewheel that are beaten up cause when i see people riding trails and skateparks it makes me wonder how long do they last?
Cameras reportedly set up near site for Trump’s proposed arch, Arlington Memorial Bridge and reflecting pool
The US Park Police are spending $343,000 to lease mobile surveillance cameras from a company that also supplies Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), federal contract records show. The deal comes as Donald Trump has insisted that vandals damaged the reflecting pool, one of Washington’s best-known landmarks – charges that have since been dismissed.
The Department of the Interior, which oversees the Park Police, awarded the lease to the Utah-based company LiveView Technologies (LVT) on 14 September, on a fully obligated government contract that runs through the end of February. The records do not say how many camera trailers are covered.
"PHP disclosed two critical vulnerabilities in their programming language and urged web site operators to immediately apply the fix," writes longtime Slashdot reader smooth wombat. "As a result, government web sites in Europe and elsewhere temporarily went dark on Wednesday as operators worked to protect their systems." The Independent reports: Dane Knecht, the chief technology officer of Web and cloud security firm Cloudflare, said that attacks were emerging and Cloudflare was updating its firewall rules as a stopgap measure. "We are seeing early attacks emerging and are updating mitigations as new vectors show up. This is a STOPGAP only. Patch as soon as PHP releases the update," he said on X.
Officials have said that all PHP versions from PHP 5 onward could be affected, although PHP has not yet disclosed which versions are vulnerable. Special thanks to Slashdot readers Alain Williams and mrspoonsi for sharing this critical PHP security release.
For more details, read the official PHP announcement and guidance on what to do next.
Jaden J Read was arrested after federal authorities say he posted threats online before president’s Wichita rally
A 24-year-old Kansas man has been arrested for allegedly threatening to shoot Donald Trump.
Authorities arrested Jaden J Read, of Clearwater, Kansas, last Saturday after he allegedly posted threats to kill the US president at his rally in the Wichita area on Monday, according to the justice department.
State lawmaker helped establish program later directed by her husband, highlighting the importance of public disclosure, accountability and financial transparency
By George D. Rotsch, Delaware LIVE
DOVER, Del. — A Delaware lawmaker’s role in helping establish a state-sponsored retirement savings program that later employed her husband raises questions about transparency in government hiring, financial oversight and the safeguards intended to maintain public confidence in state decisions.
State Rep. Krista Griffith, D-, was among the co-sponsors of House Bill 205, the legislation that created Delaware EARNS, a retirement savings program designed to help private-sector workers who lack access to employer-sponsored retirement plans.
The legislation, primarily sponsored by Rep. Larry Lambert, D-Claymont, passed with bipartisan support and was signed into law by Gov. John Carney in August 2022.
The law authorized the creation of the program, including a paid leadership position responsible for overseeing its implementation.
Griffith’s husband, Ted Griffith, subsequently became the first director of Delaware EARNS, a position within the Office of the State Treasurer.
There is no evidence presented in the research reviewed by Delaware LIVE that Rep. Griffith improperly influenced her husband’s hiring or that either violated state ethics requirements.
However, the relationship presents a legitimate public-interest question: What hiring, disclosure and oversight procedures were followed, and how can Delawareans independently verify that decisions involving public employment and taxpayer funding were handled appropriately?
A program intended to help Delaware workers
Delaware EARNS was established to address a significant gap in retirement savings opportunities.
State officials estimated that nearly 150,000 Delaware workers lacked access to retirement plans through their employers when the program was authorized.
EARNS allows eligible workers to contribute to individual retirement accounts through payroll deductions, even when their employers do not offer a traditional retirement plan.
Employers facilitate participation, while workers control their own contributions and may opt out.
State Treasurer Colleen Davis championed the legislation as a way to expand retirement security while reducing the administrative burden on small businesses.
The program has reported measurable progress. In April 2026, the Treasurer’s Office announced that EARNS participants had accumulated $10 million in retirement assets.
Those savings belong to participating workers and should not be confused with taxpayer appropriations used to establish and administer the program.
A qualified director, but questions about the process
Ted Griffith came to Delaware EARNS with significant experience in financial services.
According to his official Treasury biography, he is a certified financial planner who spent 16 years at Vanguard, including work as a financial adviser overseeing approximately $100 million in client assets.
He also held responsibilities in marketing and financial communications.
Those credentials are relevant to evaluating his qualifications for leading a retirement savings program.
The separate question is how Delaware selected him for the position.
Publicly available information reviewed for this story identifies Griffith as program director but does not establish the complete recruitment and selection process, including how widely the position was advertised, how many applicants were considered or who made the final hiring decision.
Those details would help determine whether the hiring followed a competitive, documented process consistent with state requirements.
Transparency would also help protect the reputation of a qualified public employee by allowing the process to be judged on facts rather than assumptions about family relationships.
Taxpayer funding adds another accountability issue
The original fiscal analysis for Delaware EARNS projected approximately $1.1 million in government implementation expenses over three fiscal years.
Those estimated costs included funding for a full-time program director as well as other administrative expenses.
Actual spending and appropriations must be distinguished from those initial projections.
The question of public funding is particularly relevant because Rep. Griffith subsequently served on the General Assembly’s Joint Finance Committee, which plays a central role in developing Delaware’s annual operating budget.
A review of legislative and budget records could establish whether Griffith participated in decisions that specifically affected EARNS staffing, compensation or administrative funding after her husband became director.
Such participation would not automatically establish an ethics violation. Legislative budget votes frequently involve departments employing relatives of lawmakers.
The more relevant questions are whether any decisions directly affected a household financial interest, whether state ethics requirements applied and whether appropriate disclosures or other safeguards were observed.
These are questions that can be resolved through legislative records, personnel documentation and applicable ethics guidance.
Outside consultants and financial oversight
The transparency questions extend beyond the hiring of the program director.
During implementation, the Treasurer’s Office selected AKF Consulting Group to help develop and administer EARNS.
According to Treasury records cited in the research report, AKF was the only qualified consultant to submit a proposal in response to the state’s request for proposals.
An evaluation committee reviewed the submission and unanimously recommended the firm.
A procurement process that attracts only one qualified bidder is not necessarily improper. However, it makes documentation of the selection process, contract costs and performance particularly important.
AKF subsequently assisted Delaware in evaluating opportunities to cooperate with other state-sponsored retirement programs.
In December 2023, Delaware joined the Partnership for a Dignified Retirement, an interstate arrangement involving Colorado and Maine.
State officials said the partnership would reduce startup costs, accelerate implementation and provide economies of scale.
The arrangement uses Vestwell, working with BNY Mellon, to provide retirement program administration and related services.
The public-interest questions are whether those projected savings have materialized, what fees Delaware and participating workers are paying, and how the state evaluates the performance of its vendors.
These questions concern the management of public programs and retirement services rather than any demonstrated wrongdoing by the program’s employees or contractors.
Who is responsible for oversight?
Delaware EARNS was initially overseen by a seven-member board responsible for implementation, vendor relationships, investment oversight and administration.
On Jan. 1, 2026, those responsibilities transferred to the Delaware Plans Management Board, which oversees other state-sponsored savings and investment programs.
The board’s publicly posted meeting materials include EARNS business reports, creating opportunities for public review of the program’s activities.
Still, important questions remain about how easily taxpayers can obtain information concerning hiring decisions, administrative expenses, consulting contracts, vendor performance and potential conflicts of interest.
The distinction matters.
Public disclosure requirements are intended not simply to identify wrongdoing after it occurs but also to help prevent conflicts, promote accountability and give residents confidence that government decisions serve the public interest.
Transparency should not require allegations of misconduct
Family relationships involving elected officials and government employees are not inherently improper.
Delaware’s relatively small political and professional community makes such relationships particularly relevant to public confidence.
The challenge for government is to ensure that hiring, contracting and funding decisions are made through established procedures, with appropriate safeguards when personal or family interests may be involved.
In the case of Delaware EARNS, records documenting the director’s selection, applicable ethics guidance and subsequent legislative funding decisions could help resolve questions without relying on speculation.
The same standards should apply regardless of political party, elected office or the perceived merits of a particular government program.
Delaware EARNS was created to provide retirement opportunities for workers who lacked them. Its reported growth offers evidence that the program is serving that purpose.
Public confidence in those accomplishments would be strengthened by clear documentation showing how the program was staffed, funded and managed.
The broader issue is not whether a legislator’s spouse should be disqualified from public employment.
It is whether Delaware’s government provides enough transparency for citizens to know that employment decisions, taxpayer expenditures and public contracts are handled fairly, independently and in the public interest.
TO GO: Delaware EARNS and government transparency
What is Delaware EARNS? A state-facilitated retirement savings program for workers whose employers do not offer qualifying retirement plans.
Who created it? House Bill 205, primarily sponsored by Rep. Larry Lambert with bipartisan support, became law in August 2022. Rep. Krista Griffith was a co-sponsor.
What raises questions? Griffith’s husband, Ted Griffith, subsequently became the program’s first director. His hiring process and any relevant legislative funding decisions warrant examination.
Has wrongdoing been established? No. The research reviewed does not establish improper hiring, unlawful conduct or an ethics violation.
What deserves greater transparency? Hiring procedures, compensation, state funding, potential conflicts of interest, vendor contracts and program performance.
World Rugby has appointed Megan Rose, an American tennis pro turned United States Tennis Association (USTA) executive, as managing director of the 2031 men’s Rugby World Cup, a key appointment as the governing body prepares to host what is by some measures the third-biggest global sporting event on American soil for the first time.
Rose said: “Rugby World Cup is one of the iconic events in global sport, defined by unforgettable moments on the pitch and the passion of fans around the world. To be entrusted with bringing Men’s Rugby World Cup to the United States for the first time is an extraordinary honour, and I’m thrilled to join this team.”
Sofia Liguori, a research engineer working at DeepMind, resigned in protest this week from Google’s pioneering artificial intelligence laboratory. Unlike a wave of other AI researchers who have quit over fears AI might someday turn against humanity, Liguori stepped down over concern about her employer’s current practices.
Disenchanted and disturbed by Google’s military contracts with the U.S. and Israel, Liguori says she could no longer stand working at a company that was going to help kill people or help build technology that “automatically makes it easier to escalate the brutality of war.”
Liguori joined DeepMind in 2023 and began working on AI systems aimed at more efficiently routing power through the electrical grid, a peacetime engineering problem. But as she learned of Google’s Project Nimbus contract, which furnishes Israel’s military and top weapons manufacturers with a suite of advanced artificial intelligence tools, she began to question her role in the company, and the company’s role in the world. The day after Google announced its classified military AI contract with the Pentagon in April, Liguori staged a personal sick-out, using a combination of sick leave and holiday time off to cease her work.
In a letter she sent internally informing DeepMind and her colleagues of her resignation, Liguori urged them to “stay human” in the face of military work. “I no longer believe that our technology will have a net positive impact on society. I think there’s a fantasy world where AI can help decarbonize grids, cut waste, protect ecosystems, and benefit humanity,” she wrote. “But it’s not this world, and it’s not this type of general purpose AI we are racing to develop. Racing to deploy agentic AI in this society and historical moment is a terrible idea, and will definitely be a net evil.”
The Intercept spoke to Liguori, an Italian national living in London, where DeepMind is headquartered, about how she came to view her employer as dangerously powerful. During a series of interviews by phone and via text, which have been edited and condensed for length and clarity, she explained her moral opposition to military work, the role of unionization in dissent, and what hope engineers and scientists might have for influencing their companies.
What was it about DeepMind that made you want to work there?
I had a high opinion of DeepMind; it was a dream company. It had this aura of being a research-oriented place where you could sit close not just to computer scientists, but real scientists and researchers and people with backgrounds in biology, in physics, in mathematics, in ecology, in anthropology.
You joined in 2023, by which point the company had already been involved in Project Nimbus. Were you aware of that project at the time?
Not really. The first year when I joined, I was very new and very isolated in my team. Google DeepMind is a huge company and if you’re not in the right channels, you end up being very siloed. I didn’t know about Project Nimbus, but when the Gaza war escalated, I discovered it. I immediately looked for some internal resistance movement to join, but I didn’t find anything.
I discovered [Google employee advocacy group] No Tech for Apartheid, but I thought it was mainly a U.S. organization. I didn’t know how to connect with colleagues that share concerns, so the only thing that I did was buy a Palestine hoodie and go to the office with that.
In the summer of 2024, I went on maternity leave because my daughter was born, and during maternity leave I was watching news from Gaza every day. I was really suffering experiencing maternity and watching a livestreamed genocide, and every time I was thinking of my company’s complicity in that. I thought about not coming back to work at all.
When I was due to come back, I met a colleague that had basically taken my role in my team before maternity leave, and they were actually leaving for ethical reasons. They put me in contact with the union movement and No Tech for Apartheid. And so I found other colleagues fighting against this.
How and when did you learn of the company’s contracts with the U.S. military?
By the time they started engaging with the U.S. Department of War, [Editor’s note: July 2025] I was already involved in activism. By this winter we saw the GenAI.mil contract materializing, and for me, this was a very clear indication of the company’s intentions. At the same time Google ramped up the security level authorization for Cloud: IL6, which is the level required to handle classified workloads.
The combination of the two — signing this non-classified deal with the Department of War, and ramping up security level — really meant that we wanted to use AI for war, on the battlefield. Even if the internal narrative was, “No, don’t worry, it’s just for administrative purposes, just to process documents.”
What was happening internally?
Internally there was a lot of conversation in specific channels where people were complaining, but leadership never really answered anything. I had some of my posts deleted.
What had you written, and did you ever get any sort of answer as to why this stuff was deleted?
I had several posts deleted because they contained the word “genocide,” and I was told that genocide is an intrinsically violent word, and so I was violating internal policies. Even when my posts weren’t deleted, I often had conversations with my manager and HR telling me that my tone was not appropriate because I was too aggressive and that I should raise my concerns in different ways.
“I was told that genocide is an intrinsically violent word.”
They basically wanted us to send [internal HR] tickets to raise our concerns. The problem is that when you do that, you receive semi-automated answers with absolutely no content, nobody is engaged on the concern you have raised. There’s no discussion at all, you don’t even interact with a human. It’s a lot of administrative and bureaucratic steps you have to follow to raise concerns. What I wanted was discussion and what I wanted was very clear answers from leadership.
They tell you this is not the place to raise concerns, try to go through this other channel. This is the common technique. They always tell you to do something else, try to make you tired, and you will never get an answer.
[Editor’s note: The Intercept asked Google about Liguori’s criticism of both the contract and how discussion is handled internally. Spokesperson Tom Hewett responded: “We work with public sector organisations worldwide and follow a consistent process for reviewing and entering these contracts, including compliance with our acceptable use policies and AI principles. We also have dedicated channels for employees to safely raise any concerns – ranging from business ethics to misconduct – and have strict workplace policies in place to prevent retaliation of any kind.”]
I think the reason why you would be opposed to Project Nimbus is pretty straightforward: genocide. What were your specific concerns about or opposition to the Department of War contract?
I’m against the use of AI for targeting and in warfare in general, not only for autonomous weapons. I’m against AI for war, and I don’t think a commercial company like Google should have anything to do with that.
“AI for targeting is very dangerous; it creates a system where it’s easier to escalate the brutality of war.”
AI for targeting is very dangerous; it creates a system where it’s easier to escalate the brutality of war. The first problem is the opacity introduced in the definition of targets and the dehumanization that follows. In principle, if you have to define targets, if you want to define Hamas combatants, you have to think what it actually means and come up with a definition.
But with these systems, you can bypass the definition. The system itself comes out with a definition. You don’t even question it, you just blindly rely on the definition as the ultimate truth. The person just becomes a set of aggregated data points. All individuality is lost, all humanity is lost in in this process.
It becomes a system that dehumanizes people. It becomes a rubber stamp because the human brain cannot process all this information. You keep a person that formally approves it, but they don’t, they cannot, meaningfully evaluate the output. This links to the accountability gap: Everyone in the kill chain can plausibly say that they didn’t decide.
What did you do to protest the Department of War contract internally?
Mainly messaging on corporate channels to inform colleagues, and speaking with them in person. I tried to channel the widespread dissatisfaction and indignation over the contract into the collective movement we are building, into our union effort. [Editor’s note: DeepMind employees voted to unionize in May.] Many people still don’t know there are other colleagues organizing against these contracts and for a more ethical Google DeepMind.
When you are alone and you lose faith in your company, and you stop believing your work makes a positive difference, you can only become disillusioned and frustrated, and you ultimately end in acceptance and cynicism, or you leave. Finding you are not alone, and joining a collective movement, gives a much better option. It gave me the strength to stay, at least for a year.
I also co-organized a demonstration in February in front of the office. The scope was broader than just the Department of War, but the December GenAI.mil launch had given me a deep sense of urgency, and that’s why I organized the demonstration. I knew something like the classified deal was coming, and I knew this meant legitimizing Nimbus-style collaborations to become the standard. The demonstration was for Gaza and for any use of AI in war. We had banners with “No AI in the kill chain” and “No Gemini for Genocide.”
Has your work as a research engineer contributed to your concerns about this technology being used to kill? How has your technical knowledge informed your opposition?
Understanding how these systems work makes it easier to see where the problem is. Understanding statistical aggregation, and how easy it is to just delegate responsibility, delegate decision-making, makes a difference. But I think it’s more important to do some philosophical reasoning here.
Do you have concerns about the reliability of the technology?
I am concerned about unreliability. But I don’t think you should ever look at unreliability separate from a discussion of why AI in warfare is wrong by itself.
A lot of the time what I hear is a focus on error, for example, the Minab school attack. If we focus only on the error, we are basically saying that if there was no error, these systems for automated targeting are OK.
Were there people within Deep Mind who were supportive of this contract or military work generally?
Yes, it was actually a very debated topic. I think there is broad consensus on the Anthropic red lines, which are fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.
But on whether to use AI for military purposes, this is a much more debated topic, and a lot of people buy the narrative of us-versus-them: That we need to defend ourselves against Russia, against China, and so on.
What was your thought process on deciding to leave the company over this?
It was a very challenging year. I came back as a new mom with a full-time job, a baby to handle, I had some health issues, and I was committing to activism basically on the side. Many people told me, you can slow down, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stay in the company and just go on with business as usual. I really felt we needed to stop the Department of War contract because I perceive that contract as normalizing what happened in Gaza — the kind of tech-powered, AI-powered, brutal war that was tested in Gaza was getting approved to become the standard of war.
“The kind of tech-powered, AI-powered, brutal war that was tested in Gaza was getting approved to become the standard of war.”
I don’t think petitions have a great effect in general. The [DeepMind] petition summarized my disillusionment from us not having done more during the year to prevent this from happening. For me, really, we should have gone on strike this year. We should have stopped working.
In the U.S., there is a lot of defense of these contracts on the basis that it’s important for national security. That might be persuasive if you’re American. But Americans are a pretty small minority on the planet. I’m curious what your perspective is on that kind of rationale as someone who lives in another country, who is a citizen of another country.
There’s been discussion about that as well. A lot of Europeans were actually scared of that, because the current Trump administration is not very friendly even to Europeans. What feels like national security for U.S., people feels like a threat for Europeans.
Are you aware of other colleagues at DeepMind who are going to follow what you’re doing and quit?
Some have quit already, some publicly and some silently. There have been many people leaving because of ethical reasons. Not all of them publicized it.
Do you think it’s possible for workers to change something like the Pentagon contract? What is the worker movement inside Google/DeepMind missing that would allow for that kind of change?
I think it’s possible, but it requires a real commitment and readiness to take some risk. Ultimately, I think we need a workforce ready to strike to oppose these contracts. Currently, many people are too scared to even express an opinion publicly. The company was very effective at creating a pervasive sense of fear, which induces self-censorship.
“The company was very effective at creating a pervasive sense of fear, which induces self-censorship.”
What I tried to show my colleagues this year was exactly that the boundaries we perceive and we retreat behind are not the real boundaries — that we can speak out and keep our jobs. Most of the times the reaction is intimidation in meetings, mentions of policy violations, but nothing else follows. Obviously, there are some boundaries, but they are much farther then the perceived ones.
I also took a day off and demonstrated in front of the office in February, together with University College London BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement] staff and a few other colleagues. I faced literally no consequences for that because it’s a trade union activity in my spare time, and in the U.K., we are protected for such an action. This can be a form of soft strike.
As I write in my letter, if we fail to challenge these restrictions, we internalize them and become diminished versions of ourselves. And I think that in an era of increasing surveillance and authoritarianism, that’s something to reflect on. I have felt much freer since I found the courage to speak out and take some risks. It’s empowering. Fighting this fear is a big part of our task in the union movement we are trying to create in Google DeepMind.
The next step would be a real strike. I always tell my union friends that if I see any Google workers strike, I can die happy.
Person named ‘K’ from China paid five defendants to injure Huang Yi-hao, New Taipei prosecutors say
Taiwanese prosecutors have charged five men over a plot to ram a car into a comedian who made fun of the Chinese Communist party and Xi Jinping.
Taiwan has repeatedly accused China of transnational repression to silence critics on the self-governed island, which Beijing claims as its territory and has vowed to take by force if necessary.
Alyssa Wilson, 17, was driving to a party at city zoo when prosecutors say Willie Herndon fired a gun at her car
A Texas husband and wife are facing criminal charges following the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old girl who was driving to a Halloween celebration at the St Louis zoo when gunfire struck her vehicle on a Missouri highway.
St Louis county prosecutor Melissa Price Smith announced on Monday that Willie Herndon, 43, has been charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in connection with the death of Alyssa Wilson. His wife, 45-year-old Taiya Herndon, is also facing a charge of hindering prosecution.
Leaders criticised for spreading misleading information as France prepares for further protests this weekend
Emmanuel Macron has accused Donald Trump and other foreign leaders of making “stupid comments” about France’s street unrest for political gain, as the country prepared for more protests this weekend.
Speaking during a visit to Qatar, the French president did not name names but said “manipulation of information” after Saturday’s riots had led to “comments that are as unacceptable as they are stupid, from many people, including foreign leaders”.
In an unsigned order, the Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal seeking to revive a policy ending certain medical treatments for transgender inmates.
After special envoy Steve Witkoff told Putin he was a "humanitarian" for releasing a U.S. citizen deemed to have been wrongfully detained, GOP Sen. John Cornyn responded, "No. Putin is a stone cold killer."
Washington, DC — The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration’s emergency request to immediately enforce restrictions on medical care for transgender people in federal prisons, leaving a lower-court injunction in place while litigation continues.
The policy, issued by the Bureau of Prisons in February, would halt hormone therapy, surgeries and certain accommodations intended to align an inmate’s appearance with their gender identity. Federal prisons have provided hormone treatment for gender dysphoria since at least 1992.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth blocked the restrictions in June, finding the Bureau of Prisons likely acted unlawfully by disregarding its own prior evidence and experience. He wrote that officials appeared to have “reverse engineered” the policy to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting federal recognition of transgender identity.
The Supreme Court gave no explanation for denying the administration’s request, which is common in emergency cases. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito publicly dissented.
The lawsuit was brought by three transgender prisoners and is proceeding as a class action. Reuters reported that the ruling affects roughly 1,000 inmates covered by the litigation.
The decision is a notable setback for Trump’s broader effort to restrict transgender rights. The court has previously allowed his transgender military ban to take effect and upheld several state-level restrictions affecting transgender people.
Exclusive: Supernatural is relaunching in early access and could expand beyond Meta Quest headsets. Meanwhile, Meta VR Glasses could shape what comes next for fitness.
Democrat Amy Acton's estranged mother calls her a liar in a new Ramaswamy campaign ad. Acton's brother says the ad marks a "despicable low" and says their stepfather sexually abused Acton when she was a child.
Jason Arasheben has designed championship rings for plenty of teams. When he was tapped to create one for the Knicks, he knew it needed to represent New York in a special way.
Zia Yusuf claims undercover investigation broke the law as broadcaster stands by its journalism
Here is an explainer by Jill Ambrose about the Jackdaw decision.
But environmental groups have condemned the decision. Ami McCarthy, head of politics for Greenpeace UK, said:
Approving Jackdaw shows the toxic grip fossil fuel lobbyists still hold over our energy policy. Andy Burnham promised pragmatism [see 8.40am], but there is nothing pragmatic about rubber-stamping a project that won’t lower energy bills, won’t boost energy security and will create just 27 full-time jobs …
True pragmatism means severing our reliance on expensive oil and gas that leaves British households broke, supercharges extreme weather, and leaves our energy security at the mercy of petrostates.
Is the prime minister living in a parallel universe? One where we haven’t just endured our hottest summer on record, with droughts, wildfires and, in all likelihood, the most heat-related deaths on record? And where the UN hasn’t warned that we’re on the brink of breaching the all-important 1.5 degree warming limit?
Shell will be cheering this decision but it won’t knock a penny off our energy bills, which is what’s keeping people up at night, or make a meaningful difference to our gas supply.
Jackdaw will provide around just 2% of our gas demand for roughly ten years. It has been oversold and won’t stop the decline in North Sea jobs, as it will be largely unmanned and operated remotely.
Cannabis samples in the process of testing at Kaycha Labs in Denver Stephen Swofford/The Denver Gazette
The agency charged with regulating Colorado’s first-in-the-nation legal recreational marijuana market potentially put consumers at risk of using contaminated products, a new state audit found.
The report pointed to inconsistent oversight by the Marijuana Enforcement Division and loose state rules around testing marijuana products or contaminants. As a result, it found, nearly 75% of marijuana processed for eventual sale from 2023 through 2025 evaded testing for pesticides.
The audit, released Monday, identified a host of issues, including regulators’ failure to meet regular inspection schedules or to conduct sufficient random checks at dispensaries for contaminated products. It also found that delayed agency warnings to the public allowed potentially contaminated products to remain on shelves for months, sometimes years.
In one case highlighted by the newsrooms, it took 15 months for a manufacturer to discontinue production of a marijuana sleep aid pill despite consumers warning regulators that the product was harming their livers. The pills had herbal extracts that researchers say can cause liver damage.
Auditors said they did not identify evidence of “widespread health and safety issues” but did find that deficient regulations still left consumers vulnerable.
The audit found that unsafe products had remained on the market for as long as three years before the Marijuana Enforcement Division issued a public warning. The auditor’s review of the agency’s health and safety advisories found that, on average, from 2023 through 2025, contaminated products that were the subject of an advisory remained on shelves for more than seven months. That’s the same number of months the news organizations found contaminated products stayed on shelves before warnings were issued.
The audit also found that it took the agency three and a half months, on average, in 2025 to issue an advisory once it launched an investigation into potential contamination. Even after investigators determined an advisory was needed, it still took the agency a month on average to issue one.
“These issues limit MED’s ability to meet its core objective to identify product safety risks and to help ensure that licensed marijuana businesses meet product safety requirements,” the audit stated. “As a result, there is an increased risk that marijuana products sold in Colorado may have contaminants or that the potency listed on the labels is inaccurate.”
Colorado allows marijuana businesses to test far less frequently than required by state guidelines if they can show consistent compliance with testing rules. The reduced testing program results “in a significant portion of the marijuana product being sold in Colorado not undergoing testing to ensure it is safe,” the audit stated. Manufacturers also can rely on other testing exemptions, such as for certain marijuana-derived skin and body products, but there is “limited MED oversight” of how manufacturers determine they qualify for an exemption.
Auditors reported that a survey of MED investigators found that more than half said there are or may be widespread marijuana product safety issues in Colorado’s regulated market.
In a statement released Monday night, the Marijuana Enforcement Division emphasized that state auditors found no evidence “to support claims of widespread health and safety issues” with marijuana products for sale in Colorado, but the agency agreed the audit identified areas for improvement. It said that among other things, it would be assessing exemptions to tests currently allowed under state laws and regulations.
The state auditor’s review “allows us to take a critical look at how we can continue to carry out our work, consistent with our commitment to integrity, safety, and continuous operational improvement,” Dominique Mendiola, senior director of the MED, said in a statement.
The auditor’s report highlighted a criticism her agency has repeatedly sidestepped: the absence of independent collection of samples for safety testing. The Denver Gazette and ProPublica found that more than half of states with regulated marijuana markets rely on private labs or an independent third party to collect samples. Colorado marijuana businesses are free to collect their own samples submitted for testing.
The enforcement division’s own investigators told auditors that, as a result, Colorado relies largely on an honor code to ensure the safety of marijuana sold in the state’s dispensaries.
Auditors said that allowing businesses to select their own samples “increases the risk that businesses do not pick samples that are representative of the overall quality of their marijuana product.”
MED regulators at the start of the year said they planned to pursue an overhaul that would have required private lab personnel to collect samples, but they abandoned that effort after manufacturers said it would increase their costs. On Monday, Kyle Lambert, the enforcement division’s deputy senior director, told legislators that the agency opted against an overhaul this year, chiefly because he said it would be a geographic challenge to do away with self-sampling for rural businesses.
“It was decided now wasn’t the right time to propose that as a policy change,” Lambert said, adding that the agency still might revisit the issue.
State Sen. Byron Pelton, a Republican from Sterling, pushed back, saying it was a loophole he thinks the agency should consider closing.
“If I’m a shady character, I know which products I’m going to go sampling and which ones I’m not,” he said. “That’s a pretty gray area to me.”
The audit also questioned the agency’s reliance on businesses voluntarily recalling contaminated marijuana products, saying that “some of these recalls did not succeed at stopping the businesses from selling potentially unsafe product.”
Just last month, The Denver Gazette and ProPublica reported that a Colorado manufacturer voluntarily flagged 49 of its popular marijuana vapes for recall, nearly six weeks after a third-party lab notified the company and regulators that it detected methylene chloride, a chemical the Environmental Protection Agency has sought to ban for most uses because it can cause cancer. The MED issued a health and safety advisory a day after the publications first reported the manufacturer had warned dispensaries to stop selling the vapes, which consumers had been purchasing for over a year.
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Neil Bush, a son of former president George HW Bush and a lifelong Republican, announced on Tuesday that he crossed party lines to vote for James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Texas.
In a Facebook post, Neil Bush said he chose to vote early for Talarico over Ken Paxton, the Republican candidate and current Texas attorney general, because he was “deeply troubled” by Paxton’s conduct and was “enormously impressed” by Talarico’s principles.
Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka spent a week in jail after defying restrictions on protests in Delhi amid government crackdown
An Indian court has ordered the release of two leaders of India’s Cockroach movement who were jailed last week amid a mounting state crackdown on youth-led protests.
The two leaders of the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) movement, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, had spent a week in Delhi’s Tihar jail after being arrested by Delhi police last week.
Vladimir Putin ordered the release of an American man from a Russian jail as he met Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on Wednesday for fresh talks on ending the war in Ukraine, amid increasingly close relations between Moscow and Washington.
Trump had previously asked Putin to free Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old former teacher who had spent more than four years in Russian jails on charges of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine.
Students, teachers and civil servants have shown up in Athens, with demonstrations also in Thessaloniki and other cities
Meanwhile, back to Witkoff’s meeting with Putin in St Petersburg, the US president, Donald Trump, has just welcomed the release of Stephen Hubbard, a US citizen held by Moscow on allegations of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine (11:24).
“Stephen Hubbard, taken four years ago by Russia during the Biden Administration, was just released from prison, at the request of President Donald J. Trump, made directly to President Vladimir Putin in a telephone conversation last week.
Stephen is on his way back home and will soon be with his family. The United States, out of respect for President Trump, was not required to give anything in return - an unprecedented situation for Russia. There was no “swap” necessary for this release.
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Department drops efforts to return Tony Hall to Barbados, a country he left at 12 and where he has no living relatives
The Home Office has lifted a deportation order handed to a 62-year-old man who has lived in Britain for 50 years after criticism of the department’s attempts to remove him to Barbados, a country he left as a child.
The Home Office wrote to Tony Hall on Tuesday to inform him that his deportation order had been revoked. His case had been highlighted in the Guardian a day earlier.
With You Can See Everything, Holmes joins other such high-profile subjects as Lance Armstrong, Imelda Marcos and Anthony Weiner to allow film-makers to document their lives. But do they ever come out well?
In You Can See Everything, convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes invites film-makers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim into her home in a supposed act of “radical transparency”. Holmes is filmed, along with her partner, Billy Evans, and their two young children, in the weeks before starting a prison sentence for defrauding Theranos investors. “The best way for people to see who she is,” Evans says, “is to give as much access as possible into our daily lives”. It may also be the best way to market “Theranos 2.0”, which the couple are working on during filming. But the documentary questions whether Holmes is presenting her authentic self or a manufactured persona. Fielder speaks for the audience when he asks Holmes in a tense exchange whether she’s “being real” with him. “I’m always being real,” she says.
That question of authenticity is at the heart of documentary film-making. You Can See Everything is as much about the ambiguous relationship between film-maker and subject as it is about Holmes herself. There is often a power struggle over narrative control in documentaries, with both sides of the dynamic wanting different outcomes from the final film. Watching You Can See Everything inevitably prompts the question: why would Holmes, days before she heads to jail, invite the scrutiny of a film crew?
"My vote was motivated by two things: deep concern about Ken Paxton's record and genuine admiration for the character and principles I see in James Talarico," Neil Bush posted on Facebook.
Measures would remove some penalties for those helping women access abortion but are ‘small-scale step’, say campaigners
Poland’s lower house of parliament has approved two bills aimed at loosening a near-total ban on abortions, in what campaigners have described as a “small-scale step” ahead of protests calling on the government to fulfil its promises to overhaul the country’s laws.
The new measures, which are likely to be vetoed by Poland’s nationalist president, would remove some of the criminal penalties for those who help women to access abortion care and allow terminations in cases of foetal abnormalities.
European Commission calls accommodation website’s approach to fraudulent listings and phishing scams as ‘absolutely substandard’
EU regulators have opened an investigation into Booking.com, alleging that the accommodation website has not done enough to protect consumers from fake listings and scams.
The European Commission, which regulates the world’s biggest tech companies operating in the EU, said Booking.com may have breached the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) with its “absolutely substandard” approach to tackling fraudulent listings and phishing scams, where criminals impersonate a third party to trick people to hand over money.
(The Center Square) – With Election Day now less than two weeks away, some voters in certain parts of Wisconsin got a chance to see their candidates for Congress.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Website admins, brace yourselves. Fixes for what are believed to be uncommonly severe vulnerabilities are scheduled to drop in a little more than 12 hours for PHP, a programming language that powers websites and Web applications everywhere. PHP maintainers said Monday that they planned to release patches for two vulnerabilities, both with severity ratings of 9.2 out of a possible 10.
"All PHP users are encouraged to prepare now so they can upgrade as soon as the release is available," the advisory stated. "We reserve the right to release earlier should details of either vulnerability become public, or should evidence of active exploitation appear in the wild." The maintainers published the advisory following the leaking of purported details, which have yet to be confirmed. The report showed a video of an exploit tool dubbed PHP2Shell executing code on webservers running WordPress 7.1.3, MediaWiki 1.46.2, phpBB 3.3.17, Magento 2.4.9, Joomla 6.2.0, Laravel 13.36.0, Laravel 8.83.29, Symphony 8.1.9, Drupal 11.4.10, and WHMCS 9.0.9, all of which use PHP. A video depicting the tool has been reposted here.
Attempts to locate the unconfirmed report were unsuccessful, but security firm watchTowr said it claimed to affect every PHP version from PHP 5, released in 2004, onward. The security firm went on to say it has confirmed that the vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, are real. Researchers from separate security firm Sansec said they "expect mass attacks to start within 15 minutes of the release." A third security firm, Webfence, also urged admins to prepare now. Huntress has also issued an advisory.
After months of controversy over the possible use of AI by winners of prestigious awards, the Prix Pascal de Littérature IA is rewarding fiction written with the help of LLMs
A prize for AI-written books has launched this week.
The Prix Pascal de Littérature IA invites submissions of manuscripts co-written with AI tools, with the winner promised publication.
Former art teacher, who cared for her disabled son, ‘received almost no support’, said her local MP Manuela Perteghella
Andy Burnham has backed mandatory suicide prevention training for social workers after the “devastating” death of Matilda Davis, a parent-carer who killed herself minutes after meeting professionals.
The Guardian revealed in August how the “absolutely inspirational” 36-year-old had taken her life after feeling “completely exhausted” and failed by England’s social care system.
So far, under President Donald Trump’s second term:
Job growth became sluggish, with only 776,000 jobs created. The unemployment rate edged up to 4.2%, still historically low.
Inflation worsened. Consumer prices are up 5.4%. Gasoline is up 38%.
Wages just barely rose faster than inflation, as measured since Trump was sworn in. But they’ve decreased this year.
The economy grew 2.2% in the second quarter, continuing a steady rate of growth.
Consumer sentiment remains low.
Home prices increased 6.2%.
The trade deficit for the most recent 12 months is down 10.4% compared with 2024, but it has risen substantially in the last two months on record.
The number of apprehensions at the U.S. border with Mexico decreased about 91%. The number of refugee admissions dropped by nearly the same percentage.
The percentage of the population lacking health insurance was statistically unchanged in 2025, according to two government reports.
The number of people receiving federal food assistance decreased by 6 million.
Median household income rose in 2025, while the official poverty rate declined. An alternative measure of poverty that factors in government assistance showed no meaningful change.
Corporate profits continued to rise; 2025 was the 10th consecutive year that profits increased.
The S&P 500 went up 28.6%.
The violent crime and murder rates in 2025 continued to decline, dropping by the largest percentages since the FBI began collecting nationwide data in 1936.
The publicly held debt is up about 12.8%.
Analysis
Ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, Trump hasimplored his supporters in rallies across the country to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” In our latest quarterly update for this series, we provide the best available data on how the U.S. has fared under Trump’s second term as voters head to the polls.
This report includes new information on household income and poverty, statistics released by the Census Bureau last month. And our section on crime focuses on the FBI’s annual report for 2025, published in August.
We’ll continue to post quarterly updates for the remainder of Trump’s presidency, as we’ve done for past presidents since we launched this series in 2012. (All of our articles on Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, as well as Trump’s first and second terms are available on our website.)
We make no judgment on how much credit or blame the president should receive for these metrics. And we leave it to readers to form their own opinions on whether the indicators are positive, negative or neither.
Jobs and Unemployment
Job growth slowed markedly and unemployment crept up during Trump’s second term. Manufacturing jobs declined at first but bounced back a bit this year.
Employment — Employment growth became sluggish during Trump’s first 20 months in office.
The most recent figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show an increase of only 776,000 in total nonfarm employment between January 2025 and September 2026.
The total went up nearly three times faster before, rising by 2,613,000 during the final 20 months of President Joe Biden’s administration, even after the BLS revised Biden’s figures downward in February as a result of its annual “benchmarking” study.
Some of the sluggishness under Trump is due to the president’s deliberate slashing of the federal workforce. Federal government employment has fallen by 328,000, or 10.9%, since he took office.
Looking only at the private sector — excluding federal, state and local government workers — 1,006,000 jobs were added during Trump’s term so far. But even that is far less than the 1,778,000 private-sector jobs added in the preceding 20 months.
In August 2025, after the BLS reported only 73,000 jobs had been gained the prior month, Trump called the figures “rigged” and “phony” and fired the BLS commissioner. But the numbers, on average, have been even worse since then. The average monthly gain in jobs during Trump’s second term so far has been only 39,000.
Manufacturing Jobs — Last year, Trump said that “jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country,” as he announced sweeping new tariffs on what he called “Liberation Day,” April 2, 2025.
But that hasn’t happened, at least not yet. The economy continued to shed manufacturing jobs for months after Trump’s tariff announcement, losing another 82,000 by December 2025, when the drain ended.
This year the economy has added 72,000 manufacturing jobs — up 0.6% from the bottom. That brings the tally during Trump’s first 20 months to a net loss of 21,000. If the current upward trend continues, we may be reporting a small net gain in our next quarterly report.
Labor Force Participation — The labor force participation rate declined in Trump’s second term, dropping from 62.6% in January 2025 to 61.8% as of September.
That’s well below the rate when Trump attacked the Biden administration in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. “The labor force participation is the worst in many, many decades,” he said then. “That’s the number that you have to look at.” That was August 2022, when the rate was 62.3%.
The rate is the portion of the population over age 16 that is working or seeking work. It generally has been in a long decline as the population ages and workers retire.
Unemployment — The unemployment rate has ticked up slightly under Trump but remains historically low.
It was 4.0% in January 2025 and most recently was 4.2% in September. Both figures are well below the median rate for all months since 1948, which is 5.5%.
Job Openings — The number of unfilled job openings has declined by 352,000, or 4.7% under Trump, as of the last day of August.
Meanwhile, the number of people officially listed as unemployed and seeking work rose by 244,000, or 3.6%, as of September.
So there are now 7.11 million unemployed job-seekers and 7.08 million job openings.
Wages and Inflation
Inflation worsened during Trump’s tenure. Lately prices have been rising faster than weekly paychecks.
CPI — Trump hasn’t yet delivered on his campaign promise to reduce inflation.
In the 12 months before Trump took office, the Consumer Price Index, the most commonly cited measure of inflation, rose 3.0%. And in the most recent BLS report, the 12-month increase was 3.7%.
Over Trump’s entire first 20 months in office, the CPI went up 5.4%, pushed up most recently by his war on Iran, which sent fuel prices soaring.
Before the war the price of gasoline had been a bright spot for the president. In January the national average price for regular gasoline at the pump was down to $2.78 a gallon, from $3.11 the week he was sworn in for his second term.
The average has remained over $4 nearly every week since. It was $4.28 the week ending Oct. 19. That’s 38% higher than it was when Trump took office.
Highway diesel prices hit a record high of $6.53 per gallon the week ending Sept. 21. More recently they edged down to $6.28 the week ending Oct. 19, but that was still 69% higher than the week Trump took office.
Overall inflation is much higher than the Federal Reserve would like, prompting the central bank to raise interest rates Sept. 16 rather than lowering them as the president had been demanding.
Wages — During Trump’s second term workers’ pay rose even faster than prices, but just barely. And lately the opposite has been true.
The average weekly earnings of all private-sector workers, adjusted for inflation, rose 0.94% during Trump’s first 20 months. That’s not much better than in the preceding 20 months, when inflation-adjusted paychecks rose 0.86%.
However, all the gains under Trump happened in 2025, and nearly half have slipped away this year. During Trump’s first 12 months inflation-adjusted wages rose 1.83%, but since then real weekly earnings have gone down 0.87%.
Economic Growth
The U.S. economy continues to grow at a steady rate – despite a negative public perception of Trump’s economic policies.
The nation’s real gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 2.2% in the second quarter of 2026, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported last month. At the same time, the BEA announced it had revised its first quarter estimate upward to 2.5%.
In an Oct. 2 commentary after the release of the latest GDP estimates, U.S. Bank described the economy as exhibiting “solid momentum” this year. “Consumer spending and business investment remain the main sources of growth,” U.S. Bank said.
As of Oct. 20, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow model was projecting growth of 3.5% for the third quarter. The BEA’s first estimate for the third quarter, known as the Advance Estimate, will be released Oct. 29.
The growth comes despite what Philip N. Jefferson, a vice chair of the Federal Reserve, called “a cascade of shocks” buffeting the economy, “including an energy shock, a massive AI infrastructure buildout, and significant changes in trade policy.”
The U.S. war with Iran has increased the cost of energy, most visibly in the gasoline prices paid by Americans at the pump.
In an Oct. 1 speech, Jefferson said he expects the economy will show “continued resilience,” but he warned that “inflation is too high” and poses a risk to economic growth. (See more about inflation rates in our “Wages and Inflation” section above.)
On the same day that it raised its benchmark interest rate to help tame inflation, the Federal Open Market Committee – the Federal Reserve’s policymaking arm – released its latest economic projections. The Fed said it expects real GDP to remain steady over the next four years, including a 2.3% increase for the full year in 2026 and 2.4% in 2027.
Consumer Sentiment
Consumer sentiment — as measured by the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers — remains stubbornly low.
After reaching a record low in May at 44.8, the university’s Index of Consumer Sentiment for October was largely unchanged at 46.3, according to the preliminary figure.
“Frustration over cost-of-living continues to mount, as consumers across the political spectrum believe that the trajectory of the economy has weakened since the beginning of the year,” Joanne W. Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers, said when releasing the preliminary October data on Oct. 9.
As of Oct. 9, consumer sentiment is 25.4 points lower than it was in January 2025, when it was 71.7 as Trump took office for a second time.
Consumer sentiment in October is also far below its lowest point during Trump’s first term – which occurred in April 2020, during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, it was 71.8.
The university will release the final October data on Oct. 23.
In its most recent Consumer Confidence Survey, the Conference Board — a research organization with more than 2,000 member companies — reported that consumer confidence “deteriorated notably in September, following two prior months of softening.”
The Conference Board will issue its October report on Oct. 27.
Home Prices
Home prices have slightly increased under Trump.
But lately home sales have slowed and mortgage rates have gone up, “giving buyers improved negotiating power,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, said when releasing September’s home sales and prices.
“It is a great time to be a buyer,” Yun said.
The preliminary national median price of an existing, single-family home sold in September was $422,700, according to the National Association of Realtors.
That’s 6.2% higher than it was in January 2025, when Biden left office, and just 1.2% higher than a year ago.
Yun said August and September “marked the two slowest months for home sales this year” and higher mortgage rates are “making things tougher” for sellers.
The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate on Sept. 16, and it may do so again. That has resulted in higher mortgage rates.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.40% as of Oct. 15, according to Freddie Mac. That’s up nearly 1% from our last report, when the mortgage rate was 6.55% as of July 16.
“Naturally, there will be fewer buyers who can qualify for a mortgage at a higher interest rate,” Yun said.
Mortgage rates are now higher than they were when Trump took office. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 7.04% as of Jan. 16, 2025 — days before Trump returned to the White House for a second term.
“Home sellers need to be realistic about local market conditions, which could require price discounts and other incentives to attract buyers,” Yun said.
Existing home sales and prices for October are scheduled to be released Nov. 12.
Trade Deficit
The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2026 is on track for a decrease from last year. But it’s still unclear if the annual figure will end up being lower than the trade deficit the year before Trump took office.
During the most recent 12 months ending in August, the trade deficit was $793.8 billion, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s 10.4% lower than the annual trade deficit of $885.5 billion in 2024. But the deficit has been rising in recent months.
Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in an Oct. 6 X post that “the deficit is on a train ride straight up right now,” referring to the trade figures for July and August. For the first time since early 2025, the trade deficit topped $100 billion in August. The BEA noted an increase that month in imported oil, gold and semiconductors/computers.
Setser said that “the US needs the world’s imports to meet its firms desire to invest in AI while its consumers consume a high level of current income.”
&&
In the first year of Trump’s second term, the trade deficit went up, despite his policy of imposing tariffs in an effort to reduce the deficit. The annual deficit in 2025 was nearly $932 billion, partly because of historically large monthly deficits in the first three months of that year, as importers bought more goods to avoid Trump’s planned tariffs on imported products. The deficit exceeded $100 billion in each of those three months.
The number of immigrants attempting to illegally cross the southern border has dramatically decreased since Trump took office. The number of immigrants apprehended crossing the border over the last 12 months ending in August was down nearly 91% compared with the last 12 months under President Joe Biden.
“We inherited the worst border in American history by far, and we turned it into the strongest and most secure border in the history of our country,” Trump said at a political rally in Kentucky on Oct. 17. “And in the past, a number just came out a couple of days ago, in the past 17 months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted into the United States through our southern [border].”
The U.S. experienced historically high illegal immigration in the first three years under Biden, before he initiated some emergency policies to curb illegal border crossings. Over the entirety of the Biden administration, Border Patrol agents encountered more than 7 million people (7,383,107) attempting to cross the border illegally (though about a quarter of them in FY 2020 and 2021 were repeat offenders). That’s nearly 265% higher than during the four previous years under Trump (2,025,350).
And while the monthly numbers of migrant encounters at the border is not the lowest in history, they are lower in Trump’s second term than at any time over the last 50 years, according to the Pew Research Center.
In an Oct. 16 press release, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported — as Trump claimed — that there have been no releases at the border in 17 consecutive months, meaning no one caught crossing the border illegally was temporarily released into the U.S., for example, to apply for asylum. On his first day in office, Trump enacted a policy effectively barring asylum applications.
In the past, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have sometimestwisted that statistic to claim that no one at all has come illegally into the country. Because it’s hard to know exactly how many people successfully sneak into the country illegally, we have used apprehension figures as a proxy to measure illegal border crossings. In August, CBP reported that 8,870 migrants were apprehended at the border. Those are the ones apprehended. As we wrote in September, CBP keeps, but does not often publicly release, figures on so-called gotaways, immigrants who are detected via electronic surveillance crossing the border but evade apprehension.
Rosario “Pete” Vasquez, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, reported on social media that there were 2,123 gotaways in May 2025 and 986 in June 2025. Data obtained by the Cato Institute via a Freedom of Information Act request indicated another 6,815 gotaways in the following three months. So the numbers are relatively low, but they are not zero.
The Trump administration has also increased interior enforcement and deportations. According to publicly available Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, the average daily population of those detained by ICE during the last three months ending in July is up 272% compared with the last three months under Biden.
Although Trump continues to say that “we’re still getting rid of the worst of the worst,” as he did at the Oct. 17 rally, ICE is arresting a greater percentage of people who have neither criminal convictions nor pending criminal charges. In the last three months of the Biden administration, 6% of those arrested had neither criminal convictions nor pending charges. By contrast, over the three months ending in July, the latest data available, that figure climbed to 34%.
Refugees
Refugees who flee their countries because of conflict, violence or persecution have found little or no refuge in the United States under Trump.
In fiscal year 2026, which ended Sept. 30, the U.S. admitted only 16,292 refugees, according to the State Department’s monthly refugee admissions reports. That’s the lowest number since fiscal year 2021, which started under Trump and ended after Biden won the November 2020 election.
&&
Overall, the U.S. admitted only 16,798 refugees in Trump’s first full 20 months in office, beginning Feb. 1, 2025, and ending Sept. 30, 2026, according to the State Department data. That’s just 840 refugees per month under Trump.
By contrast, in its last full 20 months in office, from May 1, 2023, through Dec. 31, 2024, the Biden administration admitted 162,536 refugees — a monthly average of 8,127, State Department data show. That’s a decline of nearly 90% under Trump.
The steep dropoff stems from Trump’s Day One executive order that indefinitely suspended all refugee admissions. The Trump administration also changed its mission statement for the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.
Under Biden and even in Trump’s first term, the bureau’s mission was to promote “U.S. interests by providing protection, easing suffering, and resolving the plight of persecuted and forcibly displaced people around the world.” The bureau’s mission now is to conduct “diplomacy aimed at ending mass and illegal migration.”
South Africa’s white minority Afrikaners are a notable exception to Trump’s stringent refugee policy.
Less than two weeks after suspending refugee admissions, Trump carved out an exemption for Afrikaners — who, he wrongly claimed, have been victims of “a genocide” in their homeland.
Nearly 99% of all refugees admitted in Trump’s first full 20 months in office were from South Africa, State Department data show.
For fiscal year 2027, which began Oct. 1, Trump capped refugee admissions at 17,500. The Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2027, which Trump issued on Sept. 25, states: “The admissions shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa.”
Health Insurance
The share of people without health insurance in 2025 was statistically unchanged from 2024, according to the latest government estimates.
As we wrote in our last “Trump’s Numbers” update, in 2025, 28 million people were uninsured, representing 8.3% of the U.S. population, according to early release estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, which measures insurance status at the time people are interviewed. That was up just 0.1 percentage points from 2024, which was not a statistically significant difference.
The NHIS is conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In September, the Census Bureau published its annual report on health insurance coverage, which measures people who were uninsured for the entire calendar year. It similarly found that the percentage of people without insurance in 2025 was “not statistically different from 2024.” The report estimated that 26.7 million people, or 7.9% of the U.S. population, lacked insurance in 2025, down from 8% in 2024.
The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act is expected to increase the number of people who are uninsured by 10 million over 10 years, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. But CBO anticipated those effects wouldn’t begin until after 2025. CBO projected the law would lead to an additional 1.3 million people being uninsured in 2026 and an additional 5.2 million in 2027.
Enrollment in Affordable Care Act marketplace plans fell from 22.1 million in 2025 to 19.2 million in February 2026, according to federal data released in June, though it’s unclear how many of those people have gained other coverage. Experts attribute the drop largely to the expiration of more generous subsidies at the end of 2025.
Food Stamps
The number of people receiving benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, continues to fall.
According to preliminary data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 36.4 million people were participating in SNAP as of June. That’s down by more than 6 million, or 14.3%, from the 42.4 million who were enrolled in January 2025. (USDA notes the data may include people receiving disaster assistance.)
While SNAP enrollment has been trending downward since late 2024, the decrease has accelerated since Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025. The law’s changes to SNAP eligibility, which include extending work requirements to adults aged 55 to 64, are expected to lower enrollment and reduce federal spending on the program.
Income and Poverty
Household income — Median household income rose 2.6% from 2024 to 2025, according to the most recent estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The median household income was $87,460 in 2025, up $2,250 from the median income of $85,210 in 2024. (Those figures are in 2025 dollars, so they take inflation into account.) The Census Bureau says median household income in 2025 was the highest on record going back to 1967.
The median is the midpoint of the income distribution, meaning half of households earned more and half earned less.
Poverty — The share of people under the federal poverty line declined during Trump’s first year of his second term. The official poverty rate was 10.2% in 2025, down from 10.7% in 2024, according to estimates the Census Bureau released in September.
In raw numbers, 34.5 million people were living in poverty in 2025, compared with 36 million in 2024.
The official poverty rate for children, meanwhile, dropped to a “historic low” of 13.4% in 2025, the Census Bureau said. The child poverty rate was 14.4% in 2024.
The official poverty rate is based on pretax income and family size. A different measure of poverty, called the supplemental poverty measure, showed no real change in 2025.
The SPM factors in government assistance programs that help low-income households, such as food and housing assistance. It also accounts for a wider range of necessary expenses and geographic variation in the cost of living. By that measure, 13.1% of the U.S. population was living in poverty in 2025, which the Census Bureau said was “not statistically different from 2024.”
Corporate Profits
Corporate profits continue to climb to new heights under Trump.
After-tax corporate profits were $4.28 trillion at an annualized rate in the second quarter of this year – up $331.6 billion, or 8.4%, from the previous quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. (See line 45.)
The second quarter figure is nearly 25% higher than the full year in 2024, the year before Trump took office, and about 27% higher from a year ago.
A Wall Street Journal article in August on “booming” corporate profits chalked up “the good times” this year “to a confluence of fortunate events: red-hot artificial-intelligence spending, federal spending and the windfall companies are getting in the form of refunds of some of their past tariff payments.”
The Supreme Court in February ruled Trump’s tariffs that he imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act exceeded his constitutional authority. As of Oct. 2, $126 billion has been refunded to U.S. companies, according to a U.S. Court of International Trade filing this month. That’s “more than 75% of the $166 billion of unlawfully collected IEEPA duties,” the court filing said.
But after-tax corporate profits have been trending upward for years. Last year marked the 10th consecutive year that profits increased year over year, dating to 2016 under President Barack Obama.
The BEA estimate for this year’s third quarter profits is scheduled to be released Nov. 25.
Stock Market
Although polling shows Americans are unhappy with the direction of the overall economy, all three major U.S. stock indexes have made significant gains under Trump and set new records.
The S&P closed on Oct. 20 at 7,712.57 — 28.6% higher than it was on Jan. 17, 2025, three days before Trump took office. The Nasdaq was up 34.6% during that time.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average – which tracks 30 of the nation’s largest companies – has seen smaller gains than the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. As of the Oct. 20 close, the Dow had increased 20.7% under Trump. The Dow last set a record on Aug. 5, when the market closed at 54,349.12.
Crime
The FBI released its annual report on nationwide crime for 2025 in August, showing historic one-year drops in the violent crime and murder rates. Those declines come after both rates have been trending down since 2023, after increasing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The FBI found that the violent crime rate declined by 9.7% and the murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate dropped by 18.5% from 2024 to 2025, the largest one-year declines since the FBI began releasing the nationwide crime estimates in 1936.
The data are estimates based on figures submitted by more than 17,000 local law enforcement agencies covering about 96% of the U.S. population. The violent crime rate went from 362.9 offenses per 100,000 population in 2024 to 327.6 per 100,000 population last year. The murder rate dropped from 5.1 per 100,000 to 4.1.
That 4.1 murder rate is at a historic low. The FBI said it’s tied with the bureau’s 1955 and 1956 figures, while a report by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonprofit think tank, determined it was the lowest since 1900 (that report used public health data for the years before 1960).
For the 2006 to 2025 FBI data, see Table 1 after downloading the FBI’s 2025 estimations for crime in the U.S.
“Overall, it was the largest percentage point drop in murder, violent crime and property crime ever recorded,” Jeff Asher, a co-founder of AH Datalytics, a consulting firm that compiles crime data, wrote on Substack of the one-year crime decline. He noted that this followed historic drops in the two years prior. “With murder you have to go all the way back to 2024 to find the previous largest one-year drop in murder and before that the previous largest one-year drop was in 2023.”
AH Datalytics, CCJ and the Major Cities Chiefs Association, an organization representing police executives in large cities, publish more current data than the FBI from a subset of law enforcement agencies, and those statistics all show that violent crime and murder have continued to drop in 2026. AH Datalytics found a 5.9% decline in the number of violent crimes and a 16.6% decrease in the number of murders when comparing January to August with the same period in 2025. That’s based on figures from law enforcement agencies that cover about a third of the U.S. population.
Trump has taken credit for the drop in crime in 2025, saying in August that this happened “because of what the federal government’s doing.” But criminology experts said there are many plausible factors, as we’ve written.
In September, CCJ convened 48 experts to explore why homicide has experienced a historic decrease from 2022 to 2026. “No single factor was viewed as the dominant explanation for the decline,” the group said in a summary of its report on the summit. “Easing pandemic-related social and economic disruption was the only factor rated as a major contributor by a majority of respondents, at 57%.”
Several other factors were viewed as “leading contributors” to the decline, “including expanded community violence intervention (CVI), … increased use of focused deterrence, increased local government capacity, an increase in public safety and support resources relative to demand, and an increase in proactive policing enforcement.”
There was little support among the experts for more than half of the possible factors, including actions taken by the Trump administration, such as deploying the National Guard to some U.S. cities and increasing enforcement of immigration laws.
Adam Gelb, the president and CEO of CCJ, told us in August that many factors were potentially affecting changes in crime. “You know the movie ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’?” he asked. “That’s what we’ve got here. And when you have so many, so many things happening at once, it can be extremely hard to disentangle.”
Oil Production and Imports
Crude oil production in the U.S. averaged more than 13.8 million barrels per day during Trump’s most recent 12 months in office through July, according to the most recent Energy Information Administration data. That was about 4.1% higher than the daily average of nearly 13.3 million barrels in 2024.
Average production over the last 12 months is also above the output of close to 13.7 million barrels per day in 2025, the current annual record, based on EIA data going back to the 1860s. Production of crude has increased each year since 2022, after declining during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
The EIA said more production in the Permian region in Texas, New Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico — as result of higher oil prices — has contributed to the increase in 2026.
However, crude oil imports from other countries, which averaged more than 6.2 million barrels per day over the last 12 months, are down about 5.5% from the daily average of nearly 6.6 million barrels daily in 2024.
Carbon Emissions
After declining in Biden’s last two years in office, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have increased.
In the most recent 12 months ending in June, there were nearly 4.9 billion metric tons of emissions from the use of coal, natural gas and petroleum-based products. Emissions in that period were up 1.5% from 2024, according to EIA data.
But in its Short-Term Energy Outlook for October, the EIA forecast that CO2 emissions at the end of 2026 will still be lower than the 4.9 billion metric tons emitted in 2025. “In 2026, decreases in CO2 emissions primarily reflect expected declines in coal consumption and, to a lesser extent, declines in consumption of various petroleum products,most notably motor gasoline and distillate fuel oil,” the EIA said.
Federal Debt and Deficits
Debt — Since our last update, the federal debt held by the public increased by more than $610 billion, according to Treasury Department data as of Oct. 19. The publicly held debt, which excludes money the government owes itself, is now more than $32.5 trillion. That’s up nearly 12.8% from when Trump began his second term.
Deficit — The debt continues to increase because of constant annual budget deficits. The latest Treasury data show the deficit increased to nearly $2 trillion in fiscal year 2026, as the government spent a record of almost $7.4 trillion but only received about $5.4 trillion in revenue.
The FY 2026 deficit was the largest since FY 2021 — which was exacerbated by emergency pandemic spending — and it was about $217 billion more than the FY 2025 deficit, which had decreased slightly from the deficit for FY 2024. (The last budget surplus was in FY 2001.)
Federal revenue in FY 2026 was lower than it would have been because the Trump administration had to issue $145 billion in tariff refunds, according to Treasury figures. Corporate income tax revenue was also down by more than $43 billion compared with the prior year.
Judiciary Appointments
Supreme Court — There still have been no vacancies on the high court during Trump’s second term. At this point of his presidency, Biden had won confirmation for one justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Court of Appeals — Ten of Trump’s nominees for U.S. circuit courts have been approved. At the same point in Biden’s term, 25 had been confirmed.
District Court — As for District Court judges, 46 of Trump’s nominees have been confirmed, while 58 judges had been confirmed at this point under Biden.
One judge for the Court of International Trade has been confirmed under Trump; none were confirmed at this point under Biden.
No judges have been confirmed under Trump for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, while two judgeswere confirmed at the same point in Biden’s presidency.
As of Oct. 20, there were no vacancies for Court of Appeals judges and 28 for District Court judges with 11 nominees pending.
Sources
We provide links to the sources for these statistics throughout the article.
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Voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of economy and cost of living, says poll in new low recorded by NY Times/Siena
Donald Trump’s approval rating sank to 36% just two weeks before the midterm elections, the lowest recorded in a poll by the New York Times/Siena College, with most respondents expressing frustration over his handling of the US economy, cost of living and Iran war.
In an October survey of approximately 3,494 likely voters, 59% said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of his job, and 52% said they planned to vote for the Democratic candidate in the upcoming election.
Water and fresh food running out in Taiz as fighting intensifies and Houthi advance cuts off most supply routes
The humanitarian crisis in the besieged Yemeni city of Taiz is becoming unmanageable as the city runs out of water, fuel and fresh food, Oxfam aid workers in the country have warned.
Iran-allied Houthi forces have largely encircled the city of more than 900,000 people, cutting it off from most supply routes. This week, heavy fighting has raged around the city’s old airport, causing extensive damage in a densely populated residential area.
Outside allies of President Trump have recently pushed the idea of moving the White House press corps to another building, including former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, one source said.
About 80 US, Israeli and British volunteers held near Nahalin in West Bank and taken to police station
The Israeli military has detained about 80 US, Israeli and British volunteers helping Palestinians harvest olives near Bethlehem, including the New York Democratic congressional nominee Brad Lander, several rabbis and Israel’s former deputy attorney general.
“I’ve been detained by the IDF, along with a group of rabbis and volunteers,” Lander posted from a bus taking him to a police station. “We were simply harvesting olives in a grove near Nahalin in the West Bank. The occupation is a crime under international law. Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know.”
Miami, FL — Families and immigration advocates say severely ill detainees held at two Florida ICE facilities are being prepared for deportation to African countries where they have no ties, despite serious medical conditions that have already complicated efforts to remove them elsewhere.
Among them is 41-year-old Cuban national Noslén Sendra, who suffers from uncontrolled diabetes and acute pancreatitis and has reportedly lost more than 50 pounds while detained. His wife says Mexico refused to accept him because of his medical needs, after which immigration officials told him he could instead be sent to Africa.
Advocates say deportation flights to the Central African Republic and Burundi could leave as early as this week. They warn that detainees with diabetes, heart conditions and other illnesses face heightened risks during flights lasting up to 24 hours, particularly if access to medication, food or medical treatment is limited.
Conditions at Miami’s Krome North Processing Center have already drawn federal scrutiny. An unannounced government inspection found 1,102 detainees packed into a facility designed for 882, along with insufficient toilets, showers and sinks.
The Trump administration has increasingly deported migrants to third countries when their home nations will not accept them. Human Rights Watch recently documented cases in which people transferred to African nations subsequently faced arbitrary detention, persecution or abuse.
DHS did not provide a substantive response about Sendra’s case.
In these strange, subdued weeks before the much-anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto VI, there have still been some welcome surprises. Onimusha: Way of the Sword revived a half-forgotten samurai action series with much aplomb, while Silent Hill: Townfall transported all of the franchise’s bloody, dread-filled psychological horror to … the picturesque Scottish coast. Even more shocking to games writers, though, is the fact that the forthcoming Modern Warfare 4 has one of the best Call of Duty campaign modes for at least six years – and might even be up there with the original Modern Warfare trilogy.
The setting is an invasion of South Korea by its northern neighbour – a setup that could have fuelled a hundred instantly forgettable Netflix films, but has proved controversial in a video game. The authoritarian regime has a new (fictitious) ruler and a powerful experimental weapon, which it’s not afraid to use as the opening gambit in an explosive attack. You take on the role of Park Hyun Jun, a conscripted South Korean soldier who, along with his small unit of similarly inexperienced grunts, gets caught in the firestorm as cities burn and enemy paratroopers fill the skies.
From that fresh paperback smell to the wrinkles in the spine, nothing beats a real book. But if you’re sick of the space they take up in your home, or the weight they steal from your holiday luggage allowance, it might be worth considering an Amazon Kindle. It can fit thousands of weighty reads into as little as 158g, and as tech goes, it’s almost immune to the sort of pathological time-wasting features that come with modern phones and tablets.
Amazon Kindles have been available in the UK for more than 15 years, so they’re an old-school gadget at this point. But in 2024, the biggest update yet arrived: colour, which added an important extra option to the existing Kindle lineup, alongside readers for children, for note-taking and for tighter budgets.
PHP versions prior to 8.5.12 and 8.3.36 are affected by CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, which allow for remote code execution.
For any system publicly exposing a PHP application with the help of a prior version of PHP, we urge users to upgrade those systems to the latest available version of PHP (php ≥ 8.5.12 and php-legacy ≥ 8.3.36) immediately.
Edit: For further details and instructions, please refer to the Arch Linux Security Advisories ASA-202610-1 and ASA-202610-2.
Elena Kagan criticized rulings made by the US supreme court’s conservative majority this week, arguing that its recent decisions on redistricting and campaign finance had undermined America’s democracy.
“The court has kind of blinded itself to the very deleterious effects of their rulings on how the political system works,” said Kagan, one of the court’s three liberal justices, during a discussion at Catholic University’s law school in Washington DC on Tuesday, according to multiple reports.
The compromised certificates have been removed/invalidated with ca-certificates-mozilla ≥ 3.131.1-1.
Without an update to this central certificate bundle, systems are susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks.
As such, we urge everyone to upgrade their systems immediately.
Hearn's lawyers complain the inspector general has referred the case to the Office of Professional Responsibility, a unit that was largely gutted and lacks independence.
Delaware quarterback Nick Minicucci dives into the endzone for his lone rushing touchdown against Missouri State. Photo credit: Dave Reeder
Senior quarterback, Nick Minicucci, returned from a two game absence to lead the Fightin’ Blue Hens (3-4, 1-2 CUSA) to a 61-38 win over the Missouri State Bears (2-5, 1-2 CUSA) at home on October 20.
NEWARK, DE — Senior quarterback Nick Minicucci stood behind center Steven Demboski along the numbers near the Blue Hen sideline. Minicucci practiced receiving the snap from the Blue Hens’ starting center while the offense waited for the media timeout to end. A typical pre-drive exercise for a quarterback getting ready to take the field. Minicucci was set to return.
Minicucci led the offense out to the field for their first drive and officially returned after a two game absence. The Blue Hens’ explosive offense returned with him.
The University of Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens defeated the Missouri State Bears, 61-38, Tuesday night, earning their first Conference USA (CUSA) win of the season in dominant fashion against their fellow sophomore CUSA member.
“Personally, I was not going to let anyone tell me I couldn’t play, so I was going to do anything possible to get back,” Minicucci said. “I mean I was waking up at 3:30 in the morning to go head over to Star Campus for an hour every morning … I lived in the training room.”
UD’s signal caller had a slow start in his first on-field reps since leaving Delaware’s final non-conference game against Virginia in the second quarter.
Minicucci attempted only two passes on the Blue Hens’ first drive and threw a pick-six on the Blue Hens’ second that resulted in a touchdown for Bears safety J.J. O’Neal. Missouri State led 14-7 after the interception late in the first quarter, but Minicucci was spectacular from then on.
Minicucci and the Delaware offense bounced back from the turnover to score on their next drive via a six-yard touchdown pass to Bryson Graves. UD’s defense forced a three and out on Missouri State’s ensuing possession — the only three and out of the half — and returned possession back to the Delaware offense. Minicucci connected with sophomore tight end Scott Moore for a 26-yard score over the middle of the field putting UD ahead in the middle of the second quarter.
“After the first drive, I think Nick really settled in and it was, you know, one of his better games to be honest,” head coach Ryan Carty said postgame.
The Bears tied the score on a 11-yard pitch and catch between starting quarterback Henry Belin IV and CUSA’s leading receiver, Isaiah Myers, but lost the lead on UD’s next offensive possession which ended in a 33-yard field goal by Tucker Smack.
Missouri State regained possession with a little over two minutes left in the first half and drove 78 yards down the field in eight plays to score before halftime. Belin and Myers connected once more for the go-ahead score, this time on a six-yard throw and catch.
The Bears led, 28-24, at halftime and Myers finished the first half with 148 receiving yards on nine catches. Myers finished the game with 11 catches and an FBS season high 242 receiving yards.
The game seemed poised to continue its back-and-forth nature after both teams scored on their opening possession of the second half. Minicucci found tight end Elijah Sessoms in the back of the endzone for a go-ahead score on UD’s second offensive drive and it seemed as though Missouri State would answer after driving into Delaware territory on the following possession.
Belin took the snap on second down and dropped back to pass. The fifth-year quarterback had little time to survey the field before he realized Delaware linebacker Jawarren Corbin was bearing down on him and, while trying to escape the sack, Belin fumbled the football. Sophomore defensive end Brandon Gorham scooped the ball up and returned it to the Bears’ four yard line before being tackled.
“[Defensive Coordinator Manny Rojas] knew they [were] gonna cut, and the A-gap would be wide open so we called an A-gap blitz and my luck, it came wide open,” Corbin said about the game changing play.
Minicucci ran the ball in for the score and UD earned its first double-digit lead of the night, 45-35, in the final five minutes of the third quarter.
Corbin’s play swung the momentum to the Blue Hen sideline and broke the shootout game flow both teams settled into. George Mullins continued the momentum shift with an interception on the Bears’ next drive which led to a Jo Silver three-yard touchdown run.
Sophomore safety George Mullins celebrates after earning his third interception of the season. Photo credit: Dave Reeder
Corbin earned an interception of his own on the Bears next drive wrapping up a career best day. Corbin finished the game with his first career interception, first career sack, first career forced fumble and a career high six tackles. Corbin started in place of the injured Colin Gallagher.
“It felt great,” Corbin said about his performance. “You never know when your name’s gonna get called and when my name got called, I just prayed that I’ll make the best of the opportunity.”
Corbin’s interception led to Minicucci’s fifth passing touchdown — a three-yard pass to senior Donovan Lewis — and completed Minicucci’s return to play. Freshman Tyler Bell relieved Minicucci with nine minutes remaining in the game and Delaware ahead, 58-35.
Minicucci finished the game with 225 passing yards, five passing touchdowns and a 69 percent completion percentage. Minicucci’s five passing touchdowns tied the program’s single game high — the last to throw five passing touchdowns in a game was Nolan Henderson in 2022 — and tied his personal career high with six total scores.
Minicucci also etched his name in the Blue Hen history books passing Rich Gannon on the program’s career passing yards list for sixth place all-time and moved into third place all-time in career passing touchdowns.
In addition to Minicucci’s prowess through the air, Delaware finished with a season high 232 rushing yards. Fifth year runner Jo Silver led the team with 101 rushing yards followed by 58 from fellow fifth year, Kaderris Roberts. Both players scored a touchdown in the game and helped take some of the pressure off Minicucci in his return.
“We have to be able to run the ball when we need to,” Carty said. “We’ve got to be able to set up those plays that we can get big ones on later on, and then we got to take some heat off of Nick, in particular when, you know, he’s coming back from injury. … And so it was really great to lean on those guys, and you know coach Rogers does a great job with those guys. The O-line, you know, blocked their butts off today and really worked together in unison.”
Fifth year running back Kaderris Roberts runs into the endzone scoring Delaware’s first touchdown of the game. Photo credit: Dave Reeder
UD finished the game with 482 total yards of offense and generated 13 explosive plays (passes of more than 15 yards and runs of more than ten) in CUSA’s highest scoring game since 2017.
“Really proud of the execution that we had today. We were so much more disciplined, so much more detail oriented. We were intent. Our sideline was better. Our passion was better. We played more connected. We believed in each other so much better than we did in the past couple weeks, and I think that’s hopefully the start of something that can give us some confidence going into next week,” Carty said.
The Blue Hens’ will play their next two conference games on the road starting with a game against Western Kentucky on Tuesday, October 27. They’ll follow that with a trip to Kennesaw, Georgia, to take on Kennesaw State before returning home on November 14, to play the FIU Panthers.
UD is two games behind Liberty for first place in the CUSA standings and have five conference games remaining. Delaware needs three more wins to be eligible for a bowl game.
Relatives of gravely ill detainees at two Floridaimmigration jails say authorities are about to deport their loved ones to unknown countries in Africa despite worsening medical conditions.
Flights are scheduled as early as Wednesday, according to the families and the immigration advocacy group the Workers Circle, which has been monitoring conditions and speaking with detainees inside two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in south Florida.
The all-male, traveling activist group gathered at the corners of South College and Delaware Avenue as crowds of students attempted to pass through the intersection to get to class. They came out with towering signs, posters, bagpipe players and each member donned a red sash on top of their suits to catch the attention of passersby.
Although the gathering took place on campus, TFP is not exclusive to Delaware. While based in Pennsylvania, TFP travels across the entire country, with this particular trip focusing on nearby universities, including the University of Notre Dame, Loyola University, the George Washington University and Johns Hopkins University.
With each protest, supporters kept their message consistent.
“Today we are here at the University of Delaware, defending the truth, standing up for the right to life and opposing the sin of abortion,” John Ritchie, a member of TFP, said.
This stance stems from the organization’s primary motivation for this protest: Catholicism. Many aspects of the group’s presentation that afternoon were designed to represent their commitment to their religious beliefs.
“We have a large red banner with a rampant lion,” Ritchie said. “And the lion symbolizes the line of the tribe of Judah, our Lord Jesus Christ. With the words, with the motto, tradition, family and property. Those are the basic pillars of Christian civilization.”
The rampant lion also held a place on the left side of each member’s chest in the form of a pin.
With these distinct looks and expansive signs reading, “Pray and act to end the sin of abortion,” they quickly attracted students to engage in conversation and debate.
Yelling over the skirl of bagpipes, students questioned the legitimacy of TFP’s arguments as outlined in the pamphlets they were handing out. The short pamphlet listed the 10 reasons that they fight “In Defense of the Unborn.” They used these arguments to defend opposition to their agenda.
Not only were these arguments used by the TFP, but they were also employed as talking points for those who wished to debate. Manav Patel, a sophomore chemical engineering major, engaged in conversation with TFP regarding their 10 arguments.
“They kind of look like they don’t have life behind their eyes, especially when they’re talking about like abortion,” Patel said.
Clara Robinson, a freshman majoring in art, who also approached the group to discuss her perspective, reported a similar rigidity in their responses.
“I told him that it’s my body, my choice and that women deserve to have the right to their autonomy,” Robinson said. “And he looked at me and said, it’s not your body.”
The member of TFP who spoke to her, Rafael Ramos, provided his perspective in an interview with The Review.
“But they say that the value of the life of the mother should be given precedence over the value of the life of the baby, which is wrong, because we all have, you know, the same dignity, right?” Ramos said. “The same right to like, right and value to life.”
It was these arguments that pushed students like Robinson to form a counter-protest in response. Quickly creating posters, students rallied one another to object to the anti-abortion messaging on campus.
Posters with phrases like, “Men off women’s bodies,” “Our bodies, our choice” and “No hate like Christian love,” countered those of the TFP members.
As tensions escalated between the two groups, officers from the Newark Police Department arrived at the intersection. Officers stood in front of the main group of TFP attendees to keep them separated.
As a result, both groups dispersed, and members of TFP packed up their red garb to commute to the next university on their tour.
Inflation surged to 3.5% last month while the government deficit was a worse-than-forecast £24.5bn, in a double dose of bad news for John Healey before next week’s budget.
The Office for National Statistics said annual inflation rose from 3.1% in August, overshooting City forecasts of a rise in the consumer prices index (CPI) to 3.4%, as a result of the surging cost of fuel.
Yield on 10-year government bonds passes 5% amid failure to pass budget and fallout from violent street protests
France’s borrowing costs have climbed above 5% for the first time in 24 years as political concerns and the government’s failure to agree a much-delayed budget spook the financial markets.
With some civic buildings still smouldering from recent riots, a fresh bout of selling pushed up the yield – or interest rate – on bonds issued by the second largest economy in the eurozone.
On Monday, the Supreme Court granted a petition to settle a dispute over the federal government’s power to ban the production of home-produced distilled spirits.
The question before the Court in McNutt is “whether the prohibition on the production of distilled spirits in particular locations, including ‘in any dwelling house’ or ‘in any shed, yard, or inclosure connected with any dwelling house’ … is necessary and proper for carrying into execution Congress’s enumerated power to lay and collect taxes.”
The petition to the Court in Ream also asked the justices to settle the taxing question and to reconsider its precedent in Gonzales v. Raich (2005). In Raich, a divided Court said Congress had broad power to prohibit marijuana use in the states, including those states that had legalized its use for medical purposes.
The justices did not add the challenge to Raich as a question to be considered by the Court in the McNutt case when it accepted the challenge for argument.
Two petitions sought to settle a dispute over the ability of Congress to ban the home production of distilled spirits, while allowing people to make their own beer, wine, cider, and lower alcohol-content drinks and beverages for their own consumption.
The home-distilling ban is based on federal tax laws from 1866 and 1868 that amended an existing excise tax on distilled spirits to prohibit their production “in any dwelling-house” or areas located on the same home property like sheds. Since then, Congress has enacted other laws to regulate the location of all distillate plants, including large operations.
The Two Petitions to the Court
The McNutt case comes from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Four members of the Hobby Distillers Association, including Scott McNutt, sued in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas over the ban. The Fifth Circuit held that Congress’s power under the Constitution’s Necessary and Proper Clause didn’t extend to the home distillers such as McNutt.
The Constitution’s Necessary and Proper Clause in Article 1, Section 8, empowers Congress “[t]o make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers [in Article I, Section 8], and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”
The Justice Department in McNutt asked the Supreme Court to limit the question before it to just the Necessary and Proper Clause. The department cited the landmark case, McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), and other precedents as supporting its argument. The Supreme Court accepted the question presented from the department, without comment or additional questions.
In the Ream appeal, petitioner John Ream of Ohio wished to make whiskey at home to sample, and he agreed to pay any federal taxes on it. A federal district court initially ruled against Ream. On April 21, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit also ruled in favor of the government.
In his appeal to the Court, Ream’s attorneys disagreed with the Justice Department’s interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause as permitting the home distilling ban. But they also wanted the justices to reconsider Gonzales v. Raich.
In its most-recent petition to the Court, Ream argued the Justice Department’s true goal was “to keep this Court away from Gonzales v. Raich, the precedent the government invoked at every stage below and now declines even to mention in its own defense.”
“The importance of reconsidering Raich can hardly be overstated. The decision deforms federalism, invading powers reserved to the states and the people,” the petitioned claimed. “Ultimately, it countenances no limiting principle on the reach of federal power.”
In a reply brief in the Ream case, the Justice Department dismissed the impact of Raich in this instance. “That question was not addressed by either lower court in this case, and it does not warrant this Court’s consideration.”
And in its reply brief in McNutt, the Justice Department also argued that “resolving the taxing-power question presented in this case will thus resolve the merits of all arguments the government is advancing in defense of the statute at issue in both cases.”
“Of course, that in no way forestalls this Court’s ability to reconsider Gonzales v. Raich if it wishes in an appropriate case—namely, in a Controlled Substances Act case where the government is actually defending the statute’s constitutionality based on the commerce power.”
At private conference on October 16, at least four justices voted to limit the appeal to the Necessary and Proper Clause. Arguments will be held in 2027 with a decision likely by late June.
Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.
Las Vegas, NV — A new analysis of Nevada elections offers a stark reality check to years of claims from President Donald Trump and other Republicans that widespread voter fraud threatens American elections.
Researchers at UNLV’s Brookings Mountain West and Lincy Institute found just 11 documented election-fraud cases in Nevada between 2012 and 2021, a period covering 14 elections and approximately 8.5 million votes.
That works out to roughly one documented case for every 773,000 votes cast.
Ten of the 11 cases resulted in criminal convictions, demonstrating that isolated fraud does occur and can be prosecuted. But the numbers bear little resemblance to claims of systemic or election-changing fraud.
The findings are especially notable because researchers relied on data compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has spent years documenting election-fraud cases nationwide.
Only two Nevada cases over nearly three decades involved noncitizens. Four involved duplicate voting and five involved false registrations.
One of the most striking cases involved Donald Kirk Hartle, whose claim that someone had voted in his deceased wife’s name was promoted by Nevada Republicans after the 2020 election. Investigators ultimately determined Hartle himself had cast the ballot using his wife’s identity. He later pleaded guilty.
A separate Brookings analysis of Heritage’s nationwide database similarly found only tiny numbers of fraudulent votes across hundreds of millions of ballots, with none changing an election outcome.
Lebanese officials were furious, claiming the city erased Gibran’s identity. Yet there was a time when Arab immigrants in the US thought ‘we were all Syrians’
On the morning of 30 April, in the shadow of the financial district’s skyscrapers, a gold cloth slid off a bright yellow sculpture of painted stainless steel, 7ft (2 metres) tall, that spells an Arabic word: “al Qalam”, the pen.
The monument, Al Qalam: Poets in the Park, stands in Elizabeth H Berger Plaza and honors the writers of the vanished neighborhood that New Yorkers once called Little Syria: an Arabic-speaking immigrant community that ran along Washington Street, blocks from where the World Trade Center would later rise. The monument was the first commemorative artwork unveiled under Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Little Syria produced one of the most famous poets ever to live in New York: Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet, a book of poetic prose that has never gone out of print. The monument honors the Pen League, the circle of writers Gibran led in Little Syria in the early 20th century.
A Washington referendum has drawn broad opposition from adults who work with queer and trans teens
For Kelsey Gellner, a Seattle-based pediatric nurse, a statewide proposal to bar trans girls from sports participation feels like a violation of her duty as a medical professional. The ballot initiative includes a requirement she calls “invasive and extreme”: all students who wish to compete on girls’ teams would have to undergo genital exams.
“I tell my kids and patients that my No 1 job is to keep them safe,” said Gellner, who is also a board member of the Washington State Nurses Association. “I can say with confidence that girls do not want to have an unnecessary exam that creates an unsafe barrier.”
A decision by Elon Musk led to restrictions on Ukraine's use of SpaceX's satellite communications network, people familiar with the matter told CBS News.
Armed and in uniform, agents from the Department of Homeland Security have been knocking on doors to ask residents about their immigration status whether they're registered to vote.
Bukang-i successfully guided out after month in which it drew 1.6m visitors and was watched over by YouTubers
In South Korea, they call them jagyeongdan, a word whose meaning sits somewhere between vigilante group and neighbourhood watch. Each night they put on hi-vis vests, picked up their selfie sticks and gathered around the harbour in Busan to keep watch over an unlikely charge: a stranded shark affectionately known as Bukang-i.
On Wednesday, after more than a month in the canal and at the third attempt, the shark was successfully guided out, South Korea’s oceans ministry said. Officials expect her to move into open water in time.
Customers are randomly awarded an in-game code for either a Domino’s skin, cape or cheesy cube pet. The pizza will come in one of six Minecraft-themed boxes.
Elon Musk says a merger between Tesla and SpaceX is under active consideration, with special committees at both companies evaluating a deal that could combine businesses valued at roughly $3.5 trillion. "Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes," Musk said during a call with financial analysts over the quarterly business results of SpaceX on Tuesday. The BBC reports: While Musk noted the certainty of such a merger should not be assumed, and it would need shareholders' support, he said special committees within both companies have been formed to examine the move. "The special committees have not reached agreement on terms of any transaction and there's no guarantee that they will," Musk added. "But I do think there is a lot of merit to merging and a lot to be gained."
[...] The company, which builds space rockets and Starlink internet satellites, is now expanding into offering cloud compute capacity for other tech companies, like Anthropic and Google. That line of business has become the most profitable part of SpaceX, bringing in $7.5bn according to the latest quarterly results (PDF). Starlink also tallied revenue of $5.2bn. SpaceX as a whole, however, is not profitable and has lost $1.1bn so far this year.
[...] Musk said on Tuesday a full merger between the two companies would make sense for the work each is doing around chips, artificial intelligence, software and more. He described himself as a "conflicted party" as the chief executive of Tesla and of SpaceX. Even commenting on the possibility of a merger between the two companies, Musk compared to "tap dancing through a minefield." He added a merger would ultimately be decided by shareholders. At least 50% of Tesla's shareholders would need to approve the merger, which Musk described as "quite a high hurdle to achieve."
Stratford International train station in east London will receive funding in next week’s budget, according to reports, putting it on track to live up to its name and become a hub for cross-Channel services.
London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, has been making a case to ministers for funding to upgrade the station to allow it to start running international rail services.
At 3pm BST / 4pm CEST Friday 23 Oct, Guardian Europe columnists Rokhaya Diallo and Alexander Hurst will be live taking questions from our readers about the riots and protests in France. Send your questions by email now to conversations@theguardian.com, or join the discussion on Friday
After weeks of protests and a weekend of riots in which a town hall was set ablaze, 2,000-plus shops were looted, 2,300 people were arrested and 1,000 police injured, the repercussions for France – for its society and its economy – continue. Allegations of police brutality surfaced, and the violent protests unnerved investors, resulting in a debt sell-off, with borrowing costs rising higher than for Greece. All of this ahead of a hotly contested presidential election that’s now just six months away.
The French government’s escalating financial problems were covered by the Guardian’s Europe correspondent Jon Henley who wrote: “France’s national debt, at 119% of GDP, is at its highest level since 1946. Its budget deficit, at 5.1%, is also among the highest in the EU. There is just no money in the bank to ease the cost of living squeeze that brought 550,000 people on to the streets on Saturday.”
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is spending $80m to help Democratic candidates, while Trump has promised Republicans $400m. Plus a vital investigation into justice in Louisiana
Good morning. Vast sums of money are being ploughed into November’s midterms, with the billionaire Michael Bloomberg spending $80m to help Democratic candidates, and Donald Trump announcing he intends to spend $400m to aid Republican candidates, with $300m already disbursed.
Bloomberg made the contributions in September and October, particularly focused on Democrats running to flip the US House of Representatives. Democrats believe they are favored to take back the House, though they’ve acknowledged trailing Republicans in fundraising. Republicans are also being aided by the president’s ally Elon Musk, who has spent $366m so far.
What are the main issues for voters in the midterms? In this explainer, Robert Tait looks at six key issues swaying how people might vote – the economy, Iran, immigration, Trump’s use of power, AI and datacenters and the state of democracy and voter rights in the US.
What is happening between the DoJ and California over voter rolls? The justice department’s list of suspected noncitizens in California includes a “high percentage” of people born in the US, Los Angeles election officials said. The statement, made in court papers, raises further questions about the reliability of the list of 20,000 people the DoJ is demanding be investigated.
What was strange about how the ADL reminded people about an antisemitic slur? The Anti-Defamation League ADL has denounced the use of the term “shylock” as antisemitic, without explaining that the slur had been used a day earlier by Trump in a speech in Kansas.
United Utilities, Environment Agency and local campaigners say 12-mile tunnel could take sewage away from England’s largest lake
Plans are under way for a new giant tunnel to transport sewage away from Windermere, England’s largest lake.
Windermere, in the Lake District, has suffered from widespread raw sewage and bacterial pollution driven by discharges from United Utilities. Campaigners say this pollution has caused more frequent toxic blue-green algal blooms, with the public advised to avoid swimming in the lake.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that companies building massive data centers should provide financial “dividends” to surrounding communities as opposition grows over the projects’ electricity use, water consumption and potential impact on utility bills.
Trump said on Truth Social that companies have discovered financial payments can turn unpopular projects into locally supported developments. His administration has aggressively promoted new data center construction as part of its effort to expand U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure and compete with China.
The president also said new facilities should generate their own electricity and either sell or provide excess power to local grids, an effort aimed at preventing households from absorbing the massive new energy demand created by AI computing.
Data centers have increasingly encountered bipartisan resistance in communities concerned that taxpayers and utility customers could subsidize infrastructure benefiting some of the world’s wealthiest technology companies.
Congress has responded as well. The House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act 417-3 in September, which would require regulators to consider whether large electricity users should bear the costs of new generation and transmission infrastructure. A subsequent Senate vote received 57 votes but failed to reach the 60 needed to advance.
The debate is likely to intensify as Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and other companies spend billions expanding AI-related infrastructure nationwide.
From Roman-era political potboilers to stories of Catholic priests struggling to impose their authority, what could the reading list of vice-president JD Vance’s wife be trying to tell us?
Usha Vance, a very clever woman with dubious taste in men, likes to keep herself busy. While lesser mortals (me) waste their one wild and precious life watching Love Is Blind, the second lady has various self-improvement projects on the go. She’s brushing up on her German! She’s hosting a literacy podcast! She’s rereading the classics! And, of course, she’s juggling four young children and the demands of being the vice-president’s spouse.
How does she do it all? With the help of taxpayer dollars, I suspect. Easier to get some reading done when you’re being helicoptered everywhere and, as JD Vance has boasted: “People go to the grocery store for me.”
At a gathering in Texas, near where floods killed 136 people last year, survivors are united on the need for urgent action
It may be a club none of its members actually want to be in, but the growing number of people in the US affected by extreme weather disasters are starting to organize into a political force.
Severe wildfires, floods storms and other calamities now touch the lives of huge numbers of Americans – about half of all people in the US by one estimate – as the climate crisis supercharges extreme events. Some survivors are now coalescing to push for improved disaster response and even action on the politically contentious issue of global heating.
Against a backdrop of rising Islamophobia, Michigan Senate hopeful has challenged premise of repeated questions on Muslim Brotherhood, Israel and faith
As a candidate positioned at the center of what researchers say are the worst Islamophobic attacks seen since the aftermath of 9/11, many would expect Abdul El-Sayed to simply defend himself and move on.
Instead, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Michigan has repeatedly demanded those who question his positions on Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood and his faith, explain the premise of their inquiry. Rather than let others put his loyalties on trial, he has tried to put their assumptions on trial.
Reese Drive, crossing the Rio Ruidoso in New Mexico, lies near where the body of a child, Sebastian Trotter, was found. He and his sister, Charlotte, were swept away by a July 2025 flood.
Peak tourist season had arrived in Ruidoso, New Mexico, and Mayor Lynn Crawford was campaigning to convince the public that the village was safe. A Republican with white hair and a Texas drawl, Crawford said he was frustrated with residents who were sharing warnings of flooding on social media. “They spout stuff off,” he said in a radio address on June 30, 2025. “And I don’t know why they’re so afraid. I do not understand it.”
The community had experienced severe flooding the previous summer, after two wildfires burned 25,000 acres above town, in the Sacramento Mountains. The fires and floods had destroyed about 1,000 homes. Together, the Village of Ruidoso and its smaller neighbor, Ruidoso Downs, are home to some 10,000 residents, but that number more than doubles during the summer.
Since then, residents had been on edge. A new monsoon season had arrived, bringing sporadic flooding that jeopardized the town’s economic engine of horse racing. At stake were big crowds to celebrate the Fourth of July, watch quarter horse racing and enjoy cool weather that’d lured Texans here for generations.
“We have flooding temporarily,” Crawford had told a Texas news anchor in an interview. “And just almost as fast as it came to town, and went through town, it’s gone.” Crawford, who is 64, managed an exclusive club at the Ruidoso Downs Race Track & Casino and once called that his “real job.” He made less than $26,000 as mayor.
But if the town’s economy was precarious, so was its geography. The South Fork and Salt fires charred the landscape, leaving soils that didn’t easily absorb water. Imagine spilling hot wax on a carpet, letting it cool and repeatedly pouring water over it. Now place the wax on steep hills above a river lined with log homes, tourist shops selling wooden bears and an iconic racetrack.
Officials were aware of the threat but clung to Ruidoso’s animating idea: that nature could be subdued for the enjoyment of tourists and profit of the community. Nowhere was this more apparent than at the track, where the Rio Ruidoso, channeled through culverts, crossed the infield. After the 2024 flooding damaged the track, the culverts had been rebuilt with a $16 million public investment authorized by New Mexico’s Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham.
The track had only recently reopened, and flooding was again threatening to derail the racing season. On June 26, internal records show, Ruidoso’s emergency management department was at a heightened threat awareness level. Flooding had destroyed a bridge upstream of the town, and the forecast called for more rain.
But publicly, the village maintained it was prepared and the community was safe. The next day, the emergency manager reduced the threat level a notch, and the communications department chided residents for sharing warnings of catastrophic flooding on social media, noting that some posts featured old videos. “Protect our community from fear-based falsehoods,” the village implored in a public service announcement.
Village of Ruidoso Mayor Lynn Crawford, shown in his office, was presiding at a council meeting when the flood hit.
On July 4, and one state over, violent flooding killed more than 130 people in central Texas. But multiple tourists who were arriving in Ruidoso said they had no idea the town was in danger. At the racetrack, the horses ran, and Crawford hosted members at the Ruidoso Jockey Club, where private tables cost as much as six figures.
That weekend, Sebastian Trotter and his family traveled to Ruidoso from El Paso, Texas. Trotter was an Army helicopter pilot stationed at Fort Bliss; his wife, Stephanie, was a nursing student. They thought the place looked family friendly; they saw no warnings online. They brought their two children and three dogs. On Sunday, July 6, they parked their trailer in a desirable spot on the water’s edge at the Riverview RV Park. In online photos, the river appeared gentle. “You could go put your toes in,” said Sebastian.
That day, the Rio Ruidoso — “noisy river,” in Spanish — briefly flooded and firefighters rescued at least four people. The Trotters saw the water rise, but the campground host said it was a regular occurrence. Then the river receded.
In the park, the Trotters’ children, Sebastian Rowan, 7, and Charlotte, 4, biked under the tall pines. The boy was a soccer player who was enchanted by the idea of camping in the woods; Charlotte was bright and cheery, sometimes applying glitter to her father’s mustache. Later, the family walked through the village, where elk and wild horses occasionally graze near tourists.
On Tuesday, July 8, the Trotters were visiting a lake when they saw clouds form. They decided to head into town, ordering pizza before allowing the children to pick out souvenirs. The younger Sebastian selected a rainbow gemstone, Charlotte a bracelet and a ring. Then they returned to the RV park, where they relaxed by the river.
At 1 p.m., Crawford presided over a council meeting at Village Hall. He began by recognizing the Texas flood victims and nodding to Ruidoso’s relative success. “We want to keep all of central Texas in our thoughts and prayers and see how bad it was and how fortunate we’ve been,” he said. “The goal of the village is to protect the village.” That meant balancing public safety with tourism, he said.
At almost the same moment, storm clouds gathered in the mountains. Even short periods of moderate rain on severe burn scars can unleash post-fire floods. By 1:30 p.m., radar indicated storms might douse both scars simultaneously. A little before 2 p.m., firefighters texted images of the radar to one another. “It could be interesting,” wrote one. Only about a third of the department was on duty at the time and the chief, Cade Hall, had for weeks declined to preposition additional flood specialists near low-lying areas.
Hall disputed ProPublica’s reporting about the emergency response but declined to comment with specifics.
Less than an hour later, another flood arrived, carrying debris that backed up behind bridges. The water kept coming, fanning onto roads until the normal course of the river disappeared. What the wall of brown water carried told residents it was time to panic.
Jason Fulcher, an owner of the Riverview RV Park, saw a tree-size log in the waterway. Two miles downstream, a maintenance worker at a mobile home park saw a car float past and lodge against a bridge.
Farther downstream, the track’s executives did not need physical signs of danger; they knew what was coming because they’d been alerted.
But the Trotters were caught unprepared. Around 3 p.m., they retreated to their trailer to escape the rain. Then the flood tore through a wall and took their children.
The July 2025 flood left Riverview RV Park, where the Trotter family and others were staying, littered with debris.
The wildfire crisis engulfing the West presents a secondary threat that has received less attention: Entire neighborhoods could wash away in debris flows and floods that often follow.
Scientists say there’s a direct correlation between fire intensity and flood risk. Research shows that if more than 20% of the ground burns at moderate to high severity, especially on steep slopes, there’s an increased danger of debris flows and post-fire flooding during storms. The fires that burned above the Rio Ruidoso watershed far exceeded that threshold.
Before the 2025 tourist season, local and state officials had an opportunity to safeguard Ruidoso and adapt to the realities of a warming climate that is exacerbating wildfires and flooding. The state and village each commissioned experts to model flooding scenarios. The engineers’ reports predicted serious flooding. “They told us exactly where it was going to come and what it was going to do,” said Hall, the fire chief. Federal emergency officials suggested that significant parts of the town should relocate away from the river.
Instead, leaders from the mayor to the governor recommitted to tourism and the racetrack.
Ruidoso Is Surrounded on Three Sides by Thousands of Acres of Burn Scars
The South Fork and Salt fires burned in 2024. The McBride Fire was in 2022.Lucas Waldron/ProPublica
Since the July 8, 2025, flood, officials have insisted they performed admirably against a historic disaster. Michael Martinez, the village’s former deputy manager, who helped direct the response, said, “We’re lucky we didn’t have a Texas.”
But according to five first responders, the tragedy could have been avoided. All of the first responders spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Their accounts are supported by public records, including emails, internal reports and hydrologic assessments. Before July 8, Crawford, Hall and others made decisions that left residents and tourists vulnerable, even though they knew a damaging flood was likely, first responders and officials say.
Some of those choices, such as the village’s promotion of tourism to visitors largely unaware of the threat, appeared to be financially motivated, according to current and former officials who worked on flood response. “Money was the driver,” said Thora Walsh Padilla, the former president of the Mescalero Apache Tribe, which is based south and west of town. “You’re taking a chance with people who aren’t even from this area and don’t know how to get around enough.” She added, “You’re putting them in jeopardy.”
Other missteps were caused by inaction: the failure to relocate vulnerable residents and to replace infrastructure damaged during previous flooding, even as the governor drove the state’s $16 million investment in the track. And just before the flood arrived, at least one of the RV park’s owners received emergency alerts but did not evacuate campers.
Village officials including Crawford did not respond to more than 70 questions from ProPublica, including about whether they had emphasized tourism at the track over public safety. But in an interview last year, Crawford said: “Who’s to blame? I didn’t start the fire.”
Reached by phone, Kerry Gladden, the village’s public information officer, referred questions to an attorney, who did not answer them. Village officials have said that their emergency department sent text-message warnings before the flood through a system that the public had to sign up for.
A spokesperson for Lujan Grisham said the state’s investments in the track were necessary to protect life and safety. The track’s general manager, Rick Baugh, did not respond to multiple inquiries about ProPublica’s reporting, and one of the racing operation’s owners didn’t answer questions sent by email.
The lapses and missed opportunities in Ruidoso offer challenging lessons about the harsh reality facing communities throughout the American West. This summer, post-fire flooding and debris flows killed one person and prompted more than a dozen rescues in Colorado. In August, flash floods in the Grand Canyon killed three; some of those floodwaters had coursed over burned areas. And in Utah, Gov. Spencer Cox declared a state of emergency following post-fire flooding in three counties.
The West is not yet prepared for the spreading threat. While federal scientists have created a national model to assess the likelihood of post-fire debris flows, communities don’t have an easily accessible tool to gauge their risk of post-fire flooding.
Ruidoso still looks like a tourist hub, but it survives on disaster aid from the state and federal governments. Since 2024, the state and federal governments have spent over half a billion dollars on disasters in Ruidoso — nine times the village’s annual budget.
Even as funding pours in, first responders say the village remains inadequately prepared to protect residents and tourists.
Ruidoso’s bustling downtown on a Friday afternoon this past summer. The village and its smaller neighbor, Ruidoso Downs, are home to some 10,000 residents, but that number more than doubles during the summer.
Ruidoso is not a glitzy escape of vast alpine vistas. Homes are close together, built into riverbanks and overhung with trees. Cabins abut RV parks. Located in Lincoln County, it has long been an escape for working families from Texas and soldiers stationed at Fort Bliss, 130 miles to the south. “Our kids deserved this small trip,” Stephanie Trotter wrote on social media after the July 8 flood.
The place they booked sat across from a 19th-century mill that’s recognized as the village’s birthplace. One of the RV park’s owners, Fulcher, said that if you looked hard enough, you might find bullet holes in the trees from old Western battles.
The village’s colonial founders were unwise to set their community on the river. The Mescalero Apache traditionally lived on hills above the creeks and wetlands to avoid rising water and mosquitoes, Walsh Padilla said. Over and over, the river flooded, including in 2008 and 2022. Randall Camp, the former Lincoln County manager and public works director for Ruidoso, said, “The river can’t be trusted.”
Many new residents did not understand the danger. Fulcher and his wife, Lindsey, moved to Ruidoso from the Houston area in 2022, seeking a quiet life near family. Jason was leaving a high-income, high-stress career in gas sales. The 1.5 acre property they purchased sat just below confluences of the Rio Ruidoso and two tributaries. Lindsey’s sister and brother-in-law had their own RV park upriver.
The Fulchers arrived as the threat reached a new extreme. A decade ago, researchers from Northern Arizona University studied tree rings on the Mescalero Apache reservation, finding that fires had occurred regularly — every six to 18 years, in many cases — until the turn of the 20th century. Then they declined in frequency as the government started suppressing fires. With fewer fires, the forests grew thick. The shade drew tourists. But, Walsh Padilla said: “This isn’t natural. It’s not natural anymore.”
The Forest Service’s policy of quickly extinguishing fires was symbolically tied to Lincoln County, where in 1950, firefighters found a singed bear cub in the mountains northeast of Ruidoso. The injured cub was named Smokey and flown to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., where it became the living icon for the agency’s ongoing messaging campaign.
As the climate warmed, the government’s policy of putting out fires fundamentally altered the landscape. Between 1950 and 2010, wildfires in the Rio Ruidoso watershed burned just under 11,000 acres, according to a ProPublica analysis of data from the National Interagency Fire Center. Since then, nearly 54,000 acres have burned — an area nearly five times larger than in the previous 60 years. And scientists say those fires are hotter than ever, as heavy fuels like Douglas firs and ponderosa pines lose moisture in the warming climate.
In June 2024, two major fires ignited, and monsoon rains soon followed. A 16-foot flood tore through town on July 20, 2024.
Three massive wildfires have charred the mountains above Ruidoso since 2022.
The Fulchers’ house, which was located in their park, sustained minor damage, but their relatives’ property, a couple hundred yards upstream, was destroyed. The Federal Emergency Management Agency deemed Chelsey Jarvis and Darrel McKay’s house uninhabitable and prohibited them from building even temporary housing on the land. The couple closed the park for the season. “I wasn’t going to put people in harm’s way because I wanted their money,” Jarvis said during an October 2024 village meeting, as she begged the council to buy their property. “It’s just going to be Groundhog Day. Next year it’s going to wash away.”
Jarvis proposed they turn the park into a retention pond to slow floodwaters and protect downstream businesses. Officials were considering such drastic measures. The Natural Resources Conservation Service, a subagency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, had raised the idea of a large-scale buyout. It had recently committed $106 million to move more than 600 homes following 2022 flooding in Kentucky.
The project in Ruidoso would be even more costly. Martinez, the village’s former deputy manager, and Camp, who was then the county manager, estimated they needed $650 million to move about 1,000 properties. But the NRCS would only pay if a local partner provided a 25% match, meaning the county, village or state would have to raise vast sums. While Jarvis and McKay immediately said they wanted a buyout, Jason Fulcher was torn. He loved his property. But he and his wife worried that the village’s infrastructure didn’t adequately protect their home. In December 2024, they submitted a form saying they wanted to be relocated.
During New Mexico’s 2025 legislative session, no lawmaker proposed funding a buyout for Ruidoso. By spring, with the opportunity fading for a mass relocation of homes and businesses, optimism crept back into public discourse.
According to Jarvis and McKay, Crawford encouraged them to reopen their park, saying the village needed affordable rentals. (Neither Crawford nor the village answered a question about the interaction.) As tourist season approached, the families adopted different strategies. Jarvis said she was never comfortable with reopening, but McKay felt the family had little choice given how much they’d invested. They resolved to keep their property open but only to book half the camp sites.
Fulcher, on the other hand, wanted a full park from June to September, when the most tourists arrived and so did the monsoons. He said he’d withdrawn all his retirement savings to cover the down payment and improvements on the $645,000 property, and he was so attached to the place that he’d rebuffed multiple potential buyers. The park needed to be fully operational, he said, “because at 50% operational, we’re losing money every month.”
On March 31, 2025, the village released a new map of the floodplain online, which allowed viewers to zoom in on their properties. The map was based on flood models created by a company called Cobb, Fendley & Associates, which had months earlier outlined a dire scenario to village officials.
The Trotter Family’s Campsite Sat on the Edge of the River
The Village of Ruidoso’s floodplain and floodway maps show that most of the RV park was at risk prior to the July 2025 flood.
The floodway is the river channel where fast-moving water flows during a flood. A floodplain is the area expected to flood during a 100-year storm. Sources: Satellite image via NAIP. 2025 floodplain and floodway data were obtained from the Village of Ruidoso.Lucas Waldron/ProPublica
The company had been hired to model what might happen in a 100-year storm — a term that reflects the anticipated depth and intensity of rainfall. In January 2025, a Cobb Fendley engineer sent an email to the village saying that the company thought a 100-year storm would bring six times the volume of the July 2024 flood that destroyed Jarvis and McKay’s home. In a separate report, Cobb Fendley identified more than 200 at-risk addresses. The list included their property, as well as the Fulchers’ RV park.
But the village didn’t make clear the threat to existing properties. When officials discussed the map, they often focused on its impact on development and building permits. “There was never a time where we specifically said, ‘Someone can die,’” Martinez, the village’s former deputy manager, said in an interview. “Never have I ever stated those words. Everything I’ve ever shared with somebody has been: ‘This is the floodplain. This is what was adopted. These are the new high-water marks. If we ever get a flood that is a 100-year flood, the waters will get this high.’”
Both RV parks were in the floodplain. But both Fulcher and McKay said they’d internalized the government’s optimism. “The leadership dang sure makes you feel like it’s gonna be OK,” said McKay. “All they kept saying was build back better. We’re stronger.”
Members of the New Mexico National Guard provided sandbags in order to help local residents protect against flooding last summer.The destroyed Ruidoso Downs racetrack on July 31, 2025. Continued flooding left it caked in mud and debris.
On May 25, 2025, Lujan Grisham celebrated the reopening of the track, aided by the funds she secured. “Ruidoso Downs has reopened for its first races since those disasters in record time,” read a post on the governor’s official Instagram page. “Ruidoso Strong!”
New Mexico’s constitution prohibits the use of public funds on private businesses in most cases, but there are exceptions for certain public and economic development projects. Records show that starting in September 2024, New Mexico’s then-transportation secretary, Ricky Serna, directed a team of engineers to prioritize work at the track, even as his subordinates raised concerns that FEMA might not reimburse the costs because the project hadn’t yet met the agency’s standards.
Crews excavated an 8-acre basin in the infield to serve as a holding pond, while contractors rebuilt the culverts under the track and reinforced the road leading into it. These efforts were designed to slow floodwater, but the project also allowed the track to reopen.
The track was best known for hosting the world’s richest quarter horse race, the All American Futurity, which awarded $3 million annually, with half going to the contest’s winner.
Horses at the track were cared for by grooms, many of whom were immigrants. The grooms worked for horse trainers rather than the track itself. But the track provided space for them to sleep in barns and storage rooms, in what one executive called industry-standard conditions. Baugh, the general manager, did not answer questions about living conditions at the track. Izzy Trejo, executive director of the New Mexico Racing Commission, said in an email that the commission had no authority over the matter. “The living conditions for the grooms is the responsibility of each individual trainer,” said Trejo.
But there was little scrutiny of such issues at “our beloved racetrack,” as Crawford has called it. In addition to the mayor, the village’s public information officer previously handled publicity for the track and the mayor of Ruidoso Downs previously oversaw its security.
The racetrack’s various businesses and their owners, Jana and Johnny Trotter — they are not related to Sebastian and Stephanie — contributed more than $35,000 to Lujan Grisham’s gubernatorial campaigns. Michael Coleman, a spokesperson for the governor, said in an email, “The infrastructure improvement projects at Ruidoso Downs and the surrounding area were undertaken because of the life-safety risk the site posed to the surrounding community.” Coleman said the project was “not solely for economic development reasons.”
But the track framed the project differently. “The clock’s ticking,” said Tim Keithley, the track’s former marketing director, in a February report by KRQE, a New Mexico outlet. “We need to race so that the community can have tourism and bring those Texans over to spend some money with us.”
As work at the track progressed, one urgent mitigation project upriver lagged. Officials were concerned about old and damaged bridges and culverts on the Rio Ruidoso. During floods they could act like dams, forcing rising water onto roads and increasing the threat downstream. “If you have a bunch of debris that comes in and clogs bridges, at some point that’s going to release,” said Eric Queller, Ruidoso’s emergency manager.
In the year leading up to the 2025 tourist season, bridge repairs and replacements once again fell by the wayside as village and state officials argued over who was responsible for them. The work at the track, meanwhile, was completed by Memorial Day.
On Sunday, July 6, when firefighters made at least four flooding rescues, the Ruidoso News posted a video about the track repair on its Facebook page. In the video, which was produced by the newspaper’s general manager, Eugene Heathman, Crawford said the infrastructure was holding.
The next day, an executive at the paper’s parent company, El Rito Media, told Heathman his journalism, which had included footage of severe flood damage, was bad for business. The executive has since left the company and told ProPublica he was acting on the orders of El Rito’s publisher, Richard Connor. In a statement, Connor denied attempting to influence coverage. “We have dug, investigated, and sought out all angles in our flood and racetrack coverage,” he said.
Heathman soon resigned. The video of Crawford at the track has disappeared from the internet, and Heathman’s footage showing flood damage has been removed from the Ruidoso News’ Facebook account.
The Rio Ruidoso near downtown Ruidoso rose quickly during a flash flood on July 30, 2025, after rain hit burn scar on the surrounding mountains.
Just before 2 p.m. on July 8, a fierce rain began to fall near the headwaters of one of the Rio Ruidoso’s upper forks. Within 10 minutes, nearly three-quarters of an inch of rain pelted the charred ground. At 2:12 p.m., the National Weather Service sent out a flash flood warning, which it upgraded to an emergency 35 minutes later, after debris slid down steep slopes and into the river.
At Village Hall, Crawford adjourned the council meeting just before 3:10 p.m., saying: “We’ve had a wall of water come over. It’s predicted this is the big one.” Shortly after, he called the track’s general manager, Rick Baugh.
Josh Gibson, a track executive, was with Baugh when the call arrived. He said Crawford “told him he had 45 minutes or so before the water got there.” (Baugh did not respond to repeated inquiries, and Crawford and Gladden, the public information officer, did not answer a question about the call.)
The advance notice allowed Baugh and his colleagues to alert dozens of grooms living in the barns to evacuate before the flood reached them.
Three miles upstream, at the Riverview RV Park, Jason Fulcher, the Trotters and other campers stood by the river. They talked about the weather. They talked about which trailers they preferred. They talked about whether there were any reports of ghosts in the area. The Trotters’ children played in the shade.
Multiple people who were in the park received text alerts warning of flooding. But all of them, including one of the park’s owners, said the alerts seemed routine. “We received watch and warning alerts daily, sometimes multiple times in the same day,” Fulcher said in an email. He also told ProPublica in an interview that he’d followed the village’s advice: “Just be vigilant. Watch the skies, stay out of low-lying areas, watch the river.” But he didn’t stay out of low-lying areas, because his property sat in one.
The Trotters said that although their phones were on, they didn’t receive any alerts from the National Weather Service. They did not know about the village’s alerts. “There was nothing,” Sebastian said.
Residents had “alert fatigue.” So officials wanted first responders to drive into threatened areas on dangerous flood days to ensure that people evacuated. In parts of the community, including much of Ruidoso Downs, first responders showed up with loudspeakers, telling people to seek high ground just before the flood arrived.
But at the Riverview RV Park, no one came, even though the park sat just about a third of a mile from the fire department’s headquarters.
After receiving the alerts, Fulcher began his monsoon season routine: He went to the riverbank to ask guests to move back. Fulcher said the Trotters were among those he asked to step slightly away from the river; the Trotters dispute this.
When it started to rain, the children retreated to their trailer, which had an extending compartment known as a slide-out. The river rose, carrying branches and rocks. The Trotters joined the kids, preparing to drive to higher ground. Then they heard a noise that Sebastian likened to television static through noise canceling headphones.
According to the Trotters, the trailer door was open and blocked by debris. Sebastian stuck his leg out and was temporarily caught, but he managed to get back inside. He was reaching for a mattress when the flood ripped off the slide-out. Stephanie, holding both children, was sucked into the water. “Once I was in the water, I only had Charlotte in my arms,” she said. Sebastian dove in after his son.
Fulcher had steered out of the park in a truck. At the road he was met by brown, sediment-laden floodwaters carrying vehicles and a dumpster. The flood was remarkable for both its scale — a river gauge showed twice the volume of the July 2024 flood — and its bulk. One survivor said it felt like liquid cement. Fulcher left his truck and sprinted to a high point from which he could see his house. His two children were trapped inside. He stepped onto a building, planning to swim to them, but the structure collapsed. Fulcher climbed a wall and tried to swim but was pushed back. In the house, his children clung to a ceiling fan as rising water pushed their mattress toward the ceiling.
Muddy handprints were left on the ceiling in the house of Jason and Lindsey Fulcher, owners of the Riverview RV Park.Obtained by ProPublica
The campground host, Jere Stark, had made his way to a pavilion, where he used a post to shield his body from the water. Stark, who is 71, was trying to help another camper, Benjamin Timothy Feagin, from the bed of a truck. The flood pulled them in.
Near their camp site, the younger Sebastian held onto a tree. His father repeatedly tried to reach him but struggled to move in the water. He was hit by a boulder and a floating truck, he said. The boy could not hold on any longer and lost his grip.
By about 3:30 p.m., there were at least eight firefighters at Riverview, including two swiftwater technicians in a vehicle capable of navigating floodwaters. Across the waterway, they saw a man 20 feet up a tree. The elder Sebastian Trotter was in the water below him, grabbing a tree trunk, wounded and barely able to speak.
The two swiftwater technicians waded to the Fulchers’ house and retrieved the Fulcher children, who were huddled together on the mattress.
There were still more children to rescue, but not all the first responders knew that.
The Trotters had been separated. Firefighters found the older Sebastian alone. A few hundred yards downstream, first responders helped rescue Stephanie Trotter and Stark. Stephanie said she’d been with her daughter, but the girl was now gone.
Later, when the water receded, Fulcher and McKay pried open the Trotters’ crumpled trailer. Inside, they found the Trotters’ surviving dog.
The first body was found under a bridge around 5:20 p.m. It was Feagin, who had been in the pavilion with Stark.
Firefighters split up to scour the riverside for the children. One group walked downstream. It passed Paradise Canyon, where Stephanie Trotter had been rescued, searching the corners of the floodplain where waters had receded.
Another group moved upriver. The light faded, trees casting long shadows. “Couldn’t see much,” said a firefighter. “Everything’s different and washed out, and all you could see was really the little spotlight on your flashlight.” He came to a softball field full of scattered furniture. He passed a bridge and paused. “I looked back. Something told me, ‘Look back.’”
He saw the shape of a child’s body. It was Sebastian Rowan Trotter. Charlotte’s body had been found not far away.
The body of Benjamin Timothy Feagin was found under a bridge on Friedenbloom Drive.
In their private correspondence on July 8 and 9, state officials said they were worried about the racetrack. While firefighters were searching for the Trotters’ children, a senior disaster recovery official named Jeremy Klass sent a message asking if horses needed evacuation. They didn’t.
The next morning, an official notified Klass and other colleagues about the racetrack. “Village is concerned,” he wrote.
“This should be a priority,” responded Heath Dobrovolny, the state floodplain coordinator.
Dobrovolny said he didn’t recall the text exchange, but he was likely focused on preventing casualties downstream from the track. He also disputed that, as state floodplain coordinator, he had favored the track over the village. Regina Chacon, the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management’s deputy cabinet secretary, said in an email that the agency was concerned that debris buildup “would apply pressure on the dam between the infield” and a downstream community.
At a news conference on the morning of July 9, Crawford repeatedly noted how high the water had crested: “This is historic.” Since then, officials have said they did everything in their power to protect the village.
“We pretty much did everything we possibly could and everything worked out, I guess, as best it could for the situation that we had,” Hall, Ruidoso’s fire chief, said. “I don’t know that I would have done anything differently.”
“Will I tell you it’s successful when we lost three lives? No,” said Ali Rye, the state homeland security director. But, she said, “We put out every bit of messaging we possibly could. I don’t know, from the state’s perspective, what more we could have done.”
Heath Dobrovolny, the state floodplain coordinator at the time of the flood last year, now serves as Ruidoso’s deputy village manager.
And a month after the flood, in a video interview published by a horse racing website, Lujan Grisham said, “No governor, no state, no president, no one at the federal level can sort of predict what happens with the weather and emergencies.”
In truth, the disaster had been all but predicted in the reports created for the state and village. “Unfortunately, it’s stuff that was modeled,” said Joseph Loverich, a civil engineer with the firm JE Fuller, which in 2024 created multiple flood models for the state. And Cobb Fendley’s model had told the village that even worse flooding could be coming. The July 8 flood carried a third of the volume the company anticipated for a 100-year flood. (Cobb Fendley did not respond to detailed questions about how it arrived at its conclusions.)
On Oct. 8, three months after the flood, Lincoln County held another meeting about a potential buyout for property owners at risk. Martinez, Ruidoso’s deputy village manager, said: “That wasn’t even a big one. I mean, that was half of what we expected, of the max.” July 8 had been a 50-year flood, he said. “It could be twice as much. That’s the honest-to-God truth.”
“So you guys knew?” interjected Fulcher.
“We had campers,” said Jarvis.
Lincoln County’s new manager, Jason Burns, cut her off: “Hold on. Listen to us. That’s not what he’s saying.”
Within weeks, Martinez adjusted his language. In an interview on Oct. 21, he said: “Did I do enough? I ask myself that question every day, and I come to the same realization every day: I don’t know what more I could have done. I honestly don’t.”
Months later, he left Ruidoso for a job in El Paso. He was soon replaced by Dobrovolny, the former state floodplain coordinator who had helped direct work at the track. In July, Dobrovolny emailed village employees, emphasizing a policy prohibiting them from talking to journalists. A video of the contentious October meeting originally posted by the county has been removed from the internet. In an email, Burns said the video’s disappearance was “not intentional.”
Stephanie and Sebastian Trotter live in El Paso, Texas, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Ruidoso, near a park the city named after their children.
The Trotters held a celebration of life for their children on Aug. 15. Sebastian was still recovering from a broken bone in a foot, nerve damage in his legs, and wounds on his legs and arms. Tattoos on his forearms had been partially removed due to the injuries.
A few weeks later, the All American Futurity was held in Albuquerque for a second consecutive season. In Ruidoso, Crawford arranged a viewing party at the Jockey Club. When a bank of televisions showed horses bursting through the starting gate, feet stomped on the club’s carpet. The track outside was empty and quiet. Still, multiple people in the club said they anticipated racing would return. A woman from Texas named Dusty Milanes said the dangers in Ruidoso were being overblown. “There’s parts of the community that are totally normal,” said Milanes, who wore pink cowboy boots. Asked where that was, she said, “High ground.”
The Jockey Club was surviving on restaurant sales and catering contracts, and Crawford had to lay off most of his employees. In private, state officials discussed distancing themselves from their $16 million rehabilitation effort at the track. “We have to keep in mind and project to the public NMDOT had minimal involvement in this,” a district engineer for the Department of Transportation wrote in an email in August 2025.
New growth covers sections of burn scar above Ruidoso this summer.
By spring, green shoots sprouted on the hills above the Rio Ruidoso. New growth on burn scars can slow the worst effects of flooding, but scientists say it’s important to not become complacent. “This is not a one-and-done kind of thing,” said Belize Lane, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Utah State University. “There is still an opportunity for many, many more events that may not look like that, but may still be hugely destructive.”
But in Ruidoso, people started to say that the worst had passed. “Everybody always goes back to sleep,” said Camp, the former county manager.
In July, the Ruidoso News published a story about the village government’s performance during the flooding, which largely relied on the mayor’s analysis. “The legacy is one of resilience, not giving up, fortitude, rugged individualism, the ability for you to be all you can be and not give up,” said Crawford.
The track was closed, and weeds soon grew 6 feet high in the holding pond. The All American Futurity was moved to Texas. Still, the Jockey Club continued to collect dues from members and Crawford promised that hooves would again thunder in Ruidoso. “The track deal isn’t over yet,” he said during a council meeting.
The Fulchers mostly avoided their old RV park. The state had finally secured $249 million for a buyout program, with more than three-quarters of the funds coming from the federal government. But the Fulchers, who now run a mountain-man themed store, selling antlers and rifles, hadn’t yet received an appraisal for their property.
They had settled a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the Trotters and Feagin’s family, with an insurance company paying an undisclosed amount. “Accountability is at the forefront of my mind,” Sebastian said during a March television interview. He said he would not “just let us be forgotten — let our kids be forgotten.” An attorney for the Trotters also sent the village a letter notifying officials that they intended to sue.
Crawford said that he anticipated the Trotters would sue but declined to discuss potential litigation.
A small memorial for the three lives lost in the flood now hangs at the Riverview RV Park.
The park now sat empty and taped off. The roof of the Fulchers’ house sagged, and a child’s handprints were still visible on the ceiling.
Out front, on a towering tree, there was a white cross and, beneath it, a plaque.
In loving memory of Benjamin “Tim” Feagin, Sebastian Rowan Trotter, Charlotte Emery Trotter, And their two dogs Zeus & Ellie.
The Fulchers put the memorial up on the anniversary of the flood. A firefighter who had helped find one of the Trotters’ children attended. “We carry a lot of guilt for things that we weren’t able to do,” he said. “We feel like we could have done more.”
The village continued to advertise tourism in West Texas. During the summer, a digital billboard near the Trotters’ house flashed a Ruidoso promotion. Sebastian saw it when he filled up on gas.
Just upstream of the closed race track, a mobile home park was mostly full. Children played in the street, and occupied trailers sat above the river. The park’s managers said they were following local rules. “I don’t think it’ll ever flood again like that,” said one. The Rio Ruidoso babbled. It looked welcoming. On a summer day, you could go put your toes in.
The Trump administration is waging a multi-pronged war on Somali people, painting them as criminals, murderers, and terrorists and using multiple federal agencies to target them at home and abroad. The campaign includes military attacks in Somalia, as well as arrests, deportations, and the weaponization of federal law enforcement agencies against immigrants and the Somali American community in the United States, including the recent use of Homeland Security agents as a goon squad to target Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
In his second term, President Donald Trump has routinely cast Somalia as lawless and Somalis as violent. Meanwhile, his administration has, largely without public knowledge, killed hundreds of people in Somalia, claiming they belong to terror groups. Trump personally ordered the death of a Somali man within days of regaining the White House, according to his counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka. The administration claimed, without offering any evidence, that the man was connected with the Islamic State terror group. Trump has sought to do the same with Omar.
Homeland Security agents raided Omar’s Washington, D.C., home last Monday, three weeks before the midterms, in which she is seeking reelection. The Trump administration reportedly launched the investigation to build a case to strip Omar of her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her. (Omar fled war in Somalia with her family when she was 8 years old, later immigrated to the U.S. as a refugee, and became a citizen in 2000.) The administration has also issued more than a dozen subpoenas, including to some of Omar’s relatives. On Monday, conservative media outlets reported that federal prosecutors obtained Omar’s DNA as part of their investigation.
“This is what happens in a dictatorship. The leader identifies his political, ethnic and religious enemies, and his agents scramble to do his bidding and make him happy,” Zaynab Mohamed, a Somali immigrant who represents Minneapolis in Minnesota’s state Senate, told The Intercept. “Representative Omar is the latest subject where Trump identifies the target and his minions go looking for a crime. The cases always fall apart, and this one will, too.”
Trump claimed not to have ordered the raid, but throughout his second term, his Justice Department has repeatedly targeted his political enemies — from New York’s attorney general, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve. “I think she’s a terrible person, but that’s really up to the DOJ,” Trump said to reporters. “I have nothing to do with it.”
Omar called it “an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.” She added: “For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation.” Omar’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Intercept.
With the Somali community, Trump found a target that he could attack with Islamophobic, racist, and xenophobic rhetoric, without incurring much mainstream backlash, said Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“As immigrants, Muslims, and — most importantly — Black people, it’s the trifecta,” he told The Intercept. “None of us expected the scale and level of the vitriol. But despite this, it’s at the point that the traditional media almost ignore the attacks on the Somali-American community because it’s not a large constituency. Trump says these things, and people just move on.”
Trump’s War on Somalia
Over the last decade, Trump has overseen the killing of as many as 1,500 Somalis in more than 400 attacks, according to a count by New America, a D.C.-based think tank. During his second term alone, the Trump administration has conducted more than 200 airstrikes in Somalia, including close to 90 this year, claiming to target terrorists.
The U.S. military has been at war in Somalia for almost a quarter-century, conducting air attacks and commando raids aimed at the terrorist group al-Shabab as well as the Islamic State group, while the CIA and special operators created local proxy forces to conduct low-profile operations on behalf of America. At the same time, the U.S. has provided Somalia with billions of dollars in counterterrorism assistance.
U.S. attacks in Somalia have skyrocketed during Trump’s terms in office. From 2007 to 2017, under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. military carried out 59 declared airstrikes in Somalia. The Biden administration conducted 51 declared strikes over four years. During Trump’s six years in office, the U.S. has launched more than 400 attacks against purported militants.
The U.S. rarely offers any evidence that those killed are members of terrorist groups, much less leaders. A New America analysis found militant leaders comprised just 1.7 percent of those killed. Africa Command refused to provide requested evidence that any of those killed in airstrikes in Somalia this year were militants. “All U.S. strikes in Somalia are conducted in close coordination partners [sic] against designated terror groups,” an AFRICOM spokesperson told The Intercept by email.
“Trump has conducted more drone strikes in Somalia than Bush, Obama, and Biden combined. And so many civilians have died,” historian Elizabeth Schmidt, the author of “Foreign Intervention in Africa After the Cold War: Sovereignty, Responsibility, and the War on Terror,” told The Intercept. “They were often just young men living in an area where it was easy to label them jihadis. And it turns out they had nothing to do with terrorism.”
The U.S. claims that it has only killed six civilians over almost two decades of war in Somalia. A count by the airstrike monitoring group Airwars put the number at as much as 2,600 percent higher. A 2023 investigation by The Intercept determined, for example, that a drone attack in Somalia during Trump’s first term killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter Mariam Shilow Muse. At the time of the attack, the U.S. announced it had killed “five terrorists”and that “no civilians were killed in this airstrike.”
Trump calls Somalia a “third-world” or “fourth-world nation,” says that it “stinks,” and disparaged Somalis who come to the U.S., saying “we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”
His most xenophobic consigliere also claims Somalia is responsible for violence that has caused people to flee the country. “The entire Somali refugee program is predicated on a lie,” wrote Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, late last year. “Destroying your own country does not give you the right to become a citizen in ours.” But this faux history disregards America’s decadeslong role in fomenting violence in Somalia and destabilizing the country.
“The presence of Somalis in the U.S. has a lot to do with U.S. wars in Somalia.”
A casualty of the Cold War geopolitics that led to widespread conflict, political repression, and millions of deaths across the developing world, Somalia has experienced persistent political instability and strife since the late 1960s. In recent decades, the country has suffered civil war, famine, droughts, a longtime al-Shabab insurgency, and persistent humanitarian crises.
Over the last quarter century, the U.S. has intensified conflict in Somalia through direct attacks; training, funding, and running proxy forces; and funneling in weapons and other military assistance to one side of a civil war. As early as 2007, the Pentagon was aware that there were fundamental flaws with U.S. military operations in the Horn of Africa, and Somalia devolved into another forever war stalemate. This has continued, despite the record number of airstrikes in Somalia under Trump.
Before Trump took office, in 2016, Islamist militants in Somalia killed 4,281 people, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. By August, this year’s total hit 6,731 deaths, a 57 percent increase. An analysis by the Costs of War project at Brown University found that instead of eliminating militant groups, the U.S. counterterrorism campaign in Somalia was “ensuring that the conflict continues in perpetuity.” An AFRICOM spokesperson said the command’s “operational focus remains on working with partners to degrade terrorist organizations to create the space required for Somali-led governance and stability.” But Trump claims Somalia has no government, no military, and is “not even a country.”
“ They weren’t coming because they wanted a better job. It’s because they feared for their lives and their children’s lives.”
The Intercept interviewed people displaced by the forever war in a camp on the outskirts of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, in 2023. “We had to leave because of the drought and the conflict,” a mother of seven told this reporter. She was one of more than a dozen women from the Lower Shabelle region of southwest Somalia who spoke to The Intercept after fleeing the front lines of an offensive by the U.S.-backed Somali government against al-Shabab. Since Trump first took office, the number of Somalis forced from their homes has almost doubled from 2.4 million to 4.4 million.
“I don’t think most Americans realize that the presence of Somalis in the U.S. has a lot to do with U.S. wars in Somalia. U.S. military intervention made a bad situation worse. This led to a surge of refugees and asylum-seekers to the U.S.,” said Schmidt. “They weren’t coming because they wanted a better job. It’s because they feared for their lives and their children’s lives.”
During Trump’s first term, his administration acknowledged “the ongoing armed conflict” as a reason to extend temporary protected status — which grants legal status, work authorization, and protection from deportation — to Somalis in the U.S., noting the security situation was “fragile and volatile, with ongoing armed conflict among government forces, clan militias, African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) troops, and al-Shabaab.”
Bringing the War Home
Despite the increase in violence, according to Pentagon statistics, the administration terminated Somalia’s TPS designation earlier this year. More than 1,000 Somali asylum-seekers have been ordered deported since February; more than half the deportation orders involve Somalis living in Minnesota, a nearly tenfold increase from 2025, according to a Minnesota Star Tribune investigation.
About 84,000 of the 260,000 people of Somali descent in the U.S. live in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area, according to the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. The overwhelming majority are American citizens. Almost 58 percent were born in the U.S. and 87 percent of foreign-born Somalis are naturalized citizens.
During Metro Surge, federal agents shot and killed protesters Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. They, like Omar and hundreds of drone strike victims in Somalia, were labeled as terrorists by the administration without providing evidence.
“If the president can threaten to denaturalize and deport a member of Congress, no one is safe.”
During Trump’s second term, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have also arrested hundreds of Somali people, with reports of assault and mistreatment at the hands of federal agents.
Trump recently seemed to call for vigilante violence and threatened to back it with federal force. “The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants,” Trump posted on Truth Social earlier this month. “The Somalians should not be allowed to get away with what they are doing. They view you as weak and stupid people. Fight back Minnesota, fight back! If you need, the Federal Government will come to your rescue.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Hussein, of CAIR-MN, said Trump’s rhetoric was endangering the Somali community. “Every few weeks, he’s literally going on a tirade. And I don’t think he’s ever spoken about other people the same way. He literally put out the message saying, ‘go fight them. I’ll come and help’ on social media,” he told The Intercept. “We’ve seen bullying. We’ve dealt with harassment. We’ve have some assaults.”
Trump has routinely demonized Somalis by tying the broader community to a high-profile fraud case: the alleged theft of $250 million from a pandemic-era program that provided food for children. The former leader of Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit at the center of the case, is white, although most of the defendants in the related cases are of Somali descent. “The Somalians, they’re crooked as hell,” Trump ranted at a Cabinet meeting in May, with the administration offering escalating and unverified claims, including reference to a “$19 billion Somali fraud scandal.”
The Trump administration’s effort to denaturalize and deport Omar is part of a broader push to strip naturalized Americans of their citizenship, with those of Somali descent specifically singled out. “I would do it in a heartbeat if they were dishonest,” Trump said in an Oval Office interview earlier this year. “I think that many of the people that came in from Somalia, they hate our country.”
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said on Saturday that he had been “told they have a strong case” against Omar. “Of course, if you lie during the naturalization process, there is a process to denaturalize somebody. We’ve done it before,” he told Fox News. The rarely used denaturalization statute has been most famously employed to strip citizenship from Nazi war criminals, like John Demjanjuk, a former death camp guard and retired U.S. autoworker convicted on 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder.
Mohamed, who in 2022 became the first Somali woman elected to the Minnesota Senate, called out Trump’s push to expel Omar as a grave threat to the country. “If the president can threaten to denaturalize and deport a member of Congress, no one is safe,” she told The Intercept. “This is a test of our democracy, and even Republicans should be speaking out about it. If we don’t defend the rights of Ilhan Omar, Somali-Americans, immigrants, and Trump’s political targets, we lose everything.”
Why Should Delaware Care? A federal agent was seen at a Delaware middle school campus Tuesday before apprehending a man in front of the school. The action followed a surge of immigration arrests nationally over the summer that highlighted the political divide between President Donald Trump and his supporters and many leaders in Delaware.
A federal immigration agent entered the campus at Stanton Middle School on Tuesday morning, then left after school security approached, according to school officials. An agent or agents then arrested a person just off the school grounds.
The incident appears to be the first time an agent with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement entered a Delaware school campus — a “sensitive place” where state officials have sought to restrict their actions.
It also comes just weeks after the Trump administration announced increased immigration enforcement efforts ahead of the November midterm election, including other public arrests around Delaware.
A video circulating on social media shows agents placing a man into a vehicle near the school, as school buses and other vehicles drove past.
A spokesperson for the Red Clay Consolidated School District said the apparent enforcement activity took place off of school grounds after the school’s administration and security personnel approached the agent on campus.
The spokesperson said no students were taken into custody and none were removed from the school.
“We recognize that situations like this can create concern and uncertainty for our school community, and we remain committed to providing a safe, supportive, and compassionate learning environment for all students,” the spokesperson said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not comment on the incident when reached by Spotlight Delaware. Instead, it requested the name of the detainee in question, the location the incident took place, and photos and videos from the arrest.
What happened?
Stanton Middle School parent Sade Garnica told Spotlight Delaware she received a call Tuesday morning from her sister, who said she witnessed an ICE agent detaining a father who had previously dropped off his daughter at school.
The sister had also just finished dropping off Garnica’s own daughter at the school.
Fearing ICE could return, Garnica picked up her daughter from school later that morning. She said school officials reassured her that federal agents would not enter the school. Still, she was fearful and pushed administrators to tell her the school’s protocol for suspicious cars.
“They were on school grounds,” Garnica said.
Garnica’s sister told her that the agent’s car was in the drop-off line with other parents before the arrest occurred across the street.
Images shared with Spotlight Delaware of the suspected-ICE vehicle show no visible identifiers. The license plate on the car was also tinted to obscure it from plain view.
Garnica said Tuesday she still plans to drop her child off at school the next morning. But she remains scared, noting her husband is a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient — the immigration program for people brought into the country as children.
“These are just parents. They are trying to just get to work,” Garnica said. “Listen, they don’t know if it’s their turn or not. Or you know, like how do I know I’m not gonna get picked up?”
Can ICE agents go onto school grounds?
Last month, Gov. Matt Meyer signed House Bill 94 into law, which prohibits state and local law enforcement from directly participating in ICE arrests at sensitive locations such as schools, medical facilities, and places of worship unless there is a valid court order.
But because ICE agents are federal police, the new law does not restrict their actions.
Still, Meyer expressed defiance when asked about the incident Tuesday. In an emailed statement he said, “ICE, leave Delaware alone. Our schools are not hunting grounds.”
“Parents of every ethnicity and any nationality must be able to drop their kids off at school without worrying that federal agents are watching, waiting, and tearing families apart,” Meyer said in the statement.
As of Tuesday evening, seven school districts told Spotlight Delaware that there have not been federal agents on their schools’ campuses before the Stanton incident.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was a house framer before he was killed by ICE agents. Countless other Latino builders in Texas live in fear of a similar fate
Every morning long before dawn, while America sleeps, legions of Texas construction workers grab their fluorescent vests and hard hats, sling ladders and tools into their trucks, and head down the highway for another day of grueling labour under the blistering sun.
Elsewhere, before the first flush of daylight settles over Texas’s concrete sprawl, a separate army gets on the move in a fleet of shiny unmarked SUVs. They hover at gas stations, prowl around bodegas, pounce on the highways.
The Vibe Check: Rare Steak & Seafood Concept: Classic steaks and seafood in an intimate setting with a neighborhood feel. Average entrée price: $49, ranging from $23 to $78 Kids’ Menu? No, but servers will offer options, including chicken tenders and burgers. Alcohol? Yes Vegetarian-Friendly: One entrée (rigatoni) and some starters, soups and salads Gluten-Friendly? Yes Live music? No Hours: Sun.-Thurs. 4-9 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 4-10 p.m. Address: 17252 North Village Main Blvd., Lewes, DE, 19958 Website:https://raredining.com/
When you think of a restaurant where “everybody knows your name,” you probably picture a neighborhood bar or longtime family eatery. A steakhouse likely wouldn’t top the list.
But at Rare Steak & Seafood in Lewes, the welcome is as much a part of dinner as the beef.
On a recent Friday evening, at least five tables had six or more customers, including one table with two small children, their parents and a grandparent.
Owners Tamara Tattersall and Alex Piatrou often greeted customers by name, and Tattersall, who is originally from Chile, chatted with the grandmother in Spanish.
Similarly, servers seemed to know many guests. They stopped to chat even with guests seated outside their sections.
The welcoming atmosphere extends to the pineapple — a traditional symbol of hospitality in American décor — in the logo, on the wine glasses and artwork on the walls. There’s even a large, wooden pineapple on the host stand. The carved piece is a relic from 1776 Steakhouse, where Tattersall and Piatrou worked before starting their own business.
Tattersall spent nearly 20 years at 1776; Piatrou put in more than 10 years. But when longtime owner Tom Holmes decided to sell the Midway Shopping Center restaurant to Regan Derrickson, founder of Nalu Hospitality Group, the co-workers decided to go it alone.
Tamara Tattersall and Alex Pitatrou, center, pose in their restaurant, Rare Steak & Seafood. They’re pictured here with investors Jeff Gosnear, president of Grotto Pizza, and Lily Gosnear, who handled the décor. | PHOTO COURTESY OF RARE STEAK & SEAFOOD
Rare is in a strip mall in the Villages of Five Points, close to downtown Lewes and Coastal Highway. Given the business partners’ combined years in the industry, along with Rare’s proximity to 1776, it’s not surprising that there are familiar faces in the dining room.
“During our first month, we could call 90% of our guests by name. They were part of our original 1776 family, and their support gave us the courage to make this dream a reality,” Tattersall said.
While tourists also make up the customer base, the majority are year-round residents, she added.
“One couple has dined with us over 30 times; several couples over 20 times; and more than a dozen parties have visited over 10 times,” she said.
The décor by Lily Gosnear of Bee and Butterfly Design adds to the sense of ease. Gosnear worked closely with Tattersall and Piatrou before turning the old Ocean Grill Diner into Rare. Deep green walls, wood trim and groupings of artwork give the dining room an approachable yet elegant feel.
“We wanted to create a space that felt sophisticated yet approachable — comfortable and welcoming to everyone, but still elevated,” Gosnear said.
In addition to barstools, Rare’s bar area features high-top tables. | PHOTO COURTESY OF RARE STEAK & SEAFOOD
To the right of the entrance is an intimate lounge with a 10-seat L-shaped bar and high-top tables. To the left is the narrow dining room, which splits toward the back to accommodate a private room for overflow or events.
“We designed intimate private dining spaces where you feel as though you’re at home with your favorite people,” said Gosnear.
She and her husband, Jeff, the president of Grotto Pizza, are investors. The Gosnears knew Tattersall and Piatrou from years of dining at 1776.
Tattersall calls the couple “a secret weapon.” Lily provided the design; Jeff offers business guidance.
For Piatrou and Tattersall, ownership follows years of working their way up the hospitality ladder.
Piatrou came from Belarus on a J-1 exchange visitor visa. When his first job with a cleaning service offered too few hours, he went door to door looking for work and landed at a pizza restaurant.
Other restaurant jobs followed, including serving breakfast at Crystal Restaurant. Eventually, he joined 1776.
Rare Steak & Seafood’s shrimp cocktail comes with or without crabmeat. | PHOTO COURTESY OF RARE STEAK & SEAFOOD
Tattersall arrived from Chile with her mother, a traveling nurse. At Victoria’s Restaurant in Rehoboth Beach, she cleared tables, ran food and learned kitchen work.
She later met Tom Holmes at Rehoboth Beach Country Club. When Holmes and Bob Mitchell took over 1776 in 2007, Holmes recruited her to help assemble the kitchen staff. She worked in the kitchen before moving into dining room service.
At Rare, Tattersall again helps oversee what leaves the kitchen.
That includes meat, of course, which is supplied by George L. Wells Meat Co., the Philadelphia company that once delivered to 1776.
Rare has some creative takes on the menu.
For instance, the Rare Velvet is an 8-ounce, center-cut filet mignon stuffed with brie, wrapped in bacon and finished with raspberry demi-glace, served over mashed potatoes with asparagus. The inclusion of a starch and vegetable is a welcome change from many steakhouses, which serve sides à la carte.
The Founder Trio, a bestseller, features three 3-ounce filets, each with a different finish: crab-and-cream reduction, a blue cheese crust, and raspberry demi-glace.
Crab cakes, a beach town staple, receive high praise, Piatrou said.
The seafood offerings go beyond the expected crab cakes and lobster tail. A new dish, Chef’s Scallops, features three blackened scallops served over a creamy sweet corn sauce with sautéed red bell peppers and onions.
The oyster appetizer includes three Rockefeller-style and three casino-style. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY PAM GEORGE
The pineapple, a symbol of hospitality, appears in the logo at Rare Steak & Seafood in Lewes. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY PAM GEORGE
Rare Steak & Seafood serves steaks from George L. Wells Meat Co. in Philadelphia. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY PAM GEORGE
Starters and salads include escargot and an iceberg wedge with blue cheese, both steakhouse stalwarts. However, you’ll also find the Rare Oyster Duo — three baked oysters Rockefeller and three oysters casino — and ceviche.
Comparisons to 1776 are inevitable. Since Derrickson bought that restaurant, he changed the décor and enhanced the menu. Although steak is the star at both establishments, they take different approaches.
“What distinguishes Rare Steak and Seafood is that we took the foundation and wisdom built with Tom Holmes and paired it with our own vision and personal touches,” Tattersall said.
In fact, you may spot Holmes sitting at Rare’s bar.
For years, Tattersall and Piatrou helped make someone else’s restaurant a place where people felt at home. Now, when familiar customers walk through the door, they’re welcoming them into their own.
Why Should Delaware Care? Hospitals outspend other sectors of the healthcare industry by wide margins. In recent years, Delaware lawmakers have passed legislation meant to lower the impacts of those costs on the state and on patients. One of those new laws targets how hospitals administer what is called “charity care,” and who is eligible.
A state oversight board responsible for guiding how nonprofit hospitals will dole out free and discounted care met on Tuesday to review how Delaware will hold providers accountable in the coming years.
Delaware’s pursuit of these regulations comes months after lawmakers passed Senate Bill 13, a bill that greatly expanded the pool of patients able to receive that free or discounted care, sometimes called “charity care.”
Tuesday’s meeting of the Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board was another step in what has been a monthslong process to draft and implement regulations guiding how hospitals give away charity care.
The embattled board, which was formed in recent years to bring down hospital spending that has long burdened the state budget, will also hear a more detailed presentation from the state’s six hospital systems next month where they will likely discuss the pending regulations.
What happened during the meeting?
Tuesday’s meeting was more of a recap of the work the board, alongside an outside consulting group, have already done since it was tasked with forming the charity care regulations. Still, leaders discussed how the rules may impact not only Delaware’s hospitals, but also the patients they aim to protect.
One board member and former state Secretary of Finance, Rick Geisenberger, pointed to one of the proposed rules which would guide how hospitals screen patients for eligibility.
He homed in on a section that says hospitals would have to screen both insured and uninsured patients with balances over $500.
This, Geisenberger said, could encompass a majority of patients receiving care in a hospital. And depending on how a hospital screens its patients, whether internally or through an outside vendor, that per-patient cost could add further administrative costs to hospitals.
“I think our goal is not to increase healthcare costs,” Geisenberger said.
Hospital leaders had also expressed their concerns earlier this month about what and how much information they would be able to request from patients to determine their eligibility to receive charity care.
Additionally, the board discussed its role in enforcing the new regulations and how it would handle complaints of hospital noncompliance.
The board agreed it would be the first to receive any complaints, passing off credible complaints of charity care violations to the Delaware Division of Health Care Quality (DHCQ), which is responsible for examining any licensure violations.
Separately, the board would also have the power to do a “periodic outside audit” to see if hospital trends suggest it has unusually high denial rates or determination times for eligibility.
What is Senate Bill 13?
The impending charity care regulations were spurred by Senate Bill 13, which was signed into law earlier this summer. The new state law greatly expands the pool of Delaware patients eligible to seek financial relief on their medical bills.
It also followed a separate effort last summer in which the state paid off medical debts for thousands of Delawareans, despite existing hospital charity care policies that could have made that treatment free.
The legislation was also introduced months after a Spotlight Delaware investigation called into question the charity care practices at the state’s largest healthcare system, ChristianaCare.
Under the new law, all of 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.
Below 300% of the FPL (currently $47,880 a year) – Full discount
300-350% of the FPL (currently $47,880 to $55,860 a year) – 75% discount
350-400% of the FPL (currently $55,860 to $63,840 a year) – 50% discount
Separately, the legislation allows people living at 500% of the Federal Poverty Line — currently $79,800 a year — to seek out a 50% discount if the billed expenses are greater than 10% of their income.
The legislation also charged the Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board to implement and hold hospitals accountable to the new regulations. The law said regulators were required to draft regulations “with input” from the state’s hospital lobby.
At a meeting in early October, the hospital lobby’s CEO, Brian Frazee, said hospitals have had to contend with a rapid series of regulatory changes in recent years. He pointed to the formation of the board, which was established to rein in the growing cost of hospital spending on the state’s budget.
He also said changes at the federal level like reductions to Medicaid and Medicare would add strain on hospitals. Still, he said his group and the state’s hospitals were glad to be a part of attempts to bring down the cost of care in the state.
“I think it’s important to understand just how much change is happening at one time,” Frazee said. “That being said, we are more than happy, and we’re proud, frankly, to be leaders in terms of that.”
Get Involved The Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board is set to next meet at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 17, at the Herman M. Holloway Sr. Campus Main Administrative Building, located at 1901 N. Dupont Highway in New Castle. More information, including about virtual attendance, can be found here.
A Ruidoso Fire Department station less than a half mile from the Riverview RV Park. The fire chief had for weeks declined requests from off-duty swiftwater technicians who wanted to be stationed in flood-prone areas, including one close to the RV park, before the waters hit.
The man was nearly to his waist in a flooded river and couldn’t get out. A firefighter and a police officer didn’t have enough rope or manpower to lift him onto the temporary flood barrier that separated them from the debris-strewn water. The man, Jere Stark, had just been carried a quarter mile by a torrential flood and was covered in mud and extremely cold.
It was around 3:30 p.m. on July 8, 2025, and a flood in Ruidoso, New Mexico, had unleashed chaos at Paradise Canyon Drive, just a couple hundred yards from the headquarters of the village fire department.
Not far from Stark, a woman huddled on the ground, shielded from the floodwaters by the temporary barrier. It was Stephanie Trotter, a tourist from El Paso, Texas, who had been washed away with her young daughter. A civilian tended to her while a second firefighter hauled in a rope he had used to rescue her. “Is somebody coming for her?” asked the civilian.
By that time, at least eight other firefighters were trying to save people upstream at the Riverview RV Park, where Trotter and Stark had been staying. But at the barrier where Stark was waiting for help, the two firefighters and one police officer were the only first responders. One of the firefighters wasn’t even wearing a personal flotation device — a basic safety measure for flood rescues.
They soon got help from civilians, including a property owner in shorts and flip-flops and a second passerby who both helped one of the firefighters haul Stark from the water with another rope.
Body-camera footage from a Ruidoso Police Department officer shows the moment that a civilian, Corey Sexton, and others pulled Jere Stark from the flood.Obtained by ProPublica
Trotter and two civilians told the police officer, Jimmy Hernandez, that her family was missing. Lost in the flood were her 4-year-old daughter, her 7-year-old son and her husband.
Hearing this, Hernandez radioed, “We need swiftwater rescue here.” But no additional swiftwater teams arrived for at least 25 minutes. Both children died, along with an adult man. Trotter’s husband, Sebastian, survived.
The shortage of firefighters at Paradise Canyon Drive illustrates larger problems with Ruidoso’s emergency response that day. Five rescuers involved in the effort said the village’s leadership had not given them enough training or dispatched enough of them in advance of the flooding to protect the community. Because of the flood’s strength, rescuers said, the best chance to save the Trotters’ children was before the water arrived, when they could have evacuated the area where the family was camping.
But they said the fire chief, Cade Hall, had for weeks resisted calls to station additional flood experts in low-lying areas when there was a threat of storms. Doing so would have required paying firefighters overtime. “The village’s mentality is, ‘We’ll have to pay for that, and what if nothing happens?’” said one rescuer in an interview earlier this year.
ProPublica reported that village leaders knew dangerous floods were likely because two intense 2024 wildfires had scarred the hillsides above town. Even moderate rain on severe burn scars can trigger post-fire floods and debris flows. But leaders seeking to encourage tourism scolded residents who warned of the danger on social media. We also examined what went wrong with the rescue itself, consulting with seven experts outside Ruidoso who have experience in emergency response including floods.
The Village of Ruidoso did not respond to detailed written questions about its emergency response, and it has not publicly released a report on rescue efforts during the flood. Reached by phone, Hall disputed ProPublica’s reporting but declined to provide specifics. Mayor Lynn Crawford has said protecting the village includes balancing public safety with tourism, the lifeblood of its economy.
The fire department employed nine swiftwater technicians trained to perform rescues in floodwater. But when forecasters issued a flash flood warning due to heavy rain, only a handful were working, along with four New Mexico National Guard technicians in vehicles capable of navigating floods. According to a spokesperson for the Guard, its members helped rescue nine people from the flood.
Two additional swiftwater teams had recently been in Ruidoso. But when the weather forecast for the area showed a slightly decreased chance of flash flooding in late June, the state’s Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management issued an order to send home the team from Las Cruces. One member of that team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their employment, said, “We didn’t understand why we were being sent home.” The other swiftwater team, which was from Texas, left after deadly flooding hit Kerr County and surrounding regions in its home state.
A former incident commander for Cal Fire, California’s fire agency, said that the state shared responsibility for the inadequate emergency response on July 8 because of its decision to send home the Las Cruces team. “This should be a clarion call as to reevaluating their resource availability.”
Asked about the decision, a DHSEM spokesperson said in an email, “New Mexico was experiencing multiple flooding threats,” adding that the team needed to be available to respond elsewhere. According to the spokesperson, there are only about eight swiftwater teams in the state.
But the Las Cruces team was not deployed to another flood. Rather, it went home. “I could understand if we were sent somewhere else,” said the frustrated swiftwater technician.
This left Ruidoso’s firefighters to lead rescue operations in the village. But Hall had for weeks declined requests from off-duty swiftwater technicians who wanted to be stationed in flood-prone areas before the waters hit. One of those areas was close to the Riverview RV Park, where Stark and the Trotter family were staying.
Stephanie and Sebastian Trotter’s trailer was destroyed during the flooding at the Riverview RV Park.
Forty-five minutes before the downpour started, Crawford had stated in a council meeting that whenever the village was alerted to flooding, firefighters and public works employees would be at the ready: “Everybody is in position.”
Over the coming two hours, these words would prove false.
At 2:12 p.m. the National Weather Service sent out a flash flood warning. About 20 minutes later, Hall summoned all off-duty swiftwater technicians. At 2:38 p.m., a weather service hydrologist wrote in a message to emergency managers, “Water is Out of the Banks in the Rio Ruidoso at the County Line.” At 2:47 p.m., the warning was upgraded to a flash flood emergency. Still, internal fire department records show that Hall didn’t call in his full department until 3:10 p.m., 45 minutes after Ruidoso dispatchers recorded the first call for rescue related to the flood. It was too late for some: Before any firefighters could access the Riverview RV Park, Stephanie Trotter and her daughter were swept downstream.
Trotter and her husband, Sebastian, said they had no idea the town was in danger and didn’t receive the automated alerts sent by the National Weather Service. (They said they had not known about, or signed up for, text-message alerts created by the village.) During the hour before the flood reached them, first responders with loudspeakers drove through other parts of the community, telling people to seek high ground. But no officials with loudspeakers went to the Riverview RV Park, even though the area was known to flood and even though it sat just down the road from the primary fire station.
The village had another warning tool it did not use that day: sirens. During the 2024 fires, Ruidoso’s emergency manager, Eric Queller, had overseen the evacuation of thousands using the siren system. Since the flood, the village has claimed that using it could have put people in harm’s way by sending them onto roads covered with water.
The village had long planned to install additional sirens, including three that could instruct people to seek high ground during flooding, allowing a more orderly evacuation. But the new sirens were not yet operational by July 8. In an interview last year, Queller said that the disasters the community faced since 2024 had delayed the project.
Eric Queller, Ruidoso’s emergency manager, helped coordinate the area’s fire and flood response.
According to firefighters, the department’s flood response was also limited by an antiquated dispatch system. Fire departments typically use computer-aided dispatch systems. Ruidoso’s department didn’t have one. Firefighters say this shortfall preceded Hall, and that he had been in favor of acquiring a computer-aided dispatch system.
Experts say that without computer-aided dispatch, chiefs often rely on memory or notes. Radio channels can become clogged, adding to confusion. According to Ruidoso firefighters, the effect was acutely felt during chaotic situations.
Following Stark’s rescue, the first responders at Paradise Canyon Drive were overwhelmed, according to two civilians who were present and Hernandez’s body-camera footage. Trotter told Hernandez that her daughter was in the water, and that they had been in an RV. According to the property owner, Corey Sexton, he saw a child float past and alerted first responders. Hernandez told crews downstream to look for a child, but he also radioed that he thought the children were in an upstream trailer. (Hernandez and the police department did not respond to emailed questions. Reached by phone, the department’s deputy chief did not answer questions about the response.)
The two firefighters, listening to their radios, hustled to the upstream bridge, prepared rope and watched the water. Minutes later, a call came on the radio: two children were trapped in a house at the upstream RV park. Swiftwater technicians at the park waded in and saved them.
Swiftwater technicians at the Riverview RV Park saved two children trapped in this house.
During the crucial minutes immediately after the Trotters’ children were swept downstream, no one had clear information. According to multiple firefighters, the department briefly thought it had found all the missing children. Experts told ProPublica that such chaos and misinformation is common during disaster response. But the experts also said it can be mitigated by having good dispatch systems and adequate staffing.
Records show that Ruidoso firefighters fielded 34 emergency calls on July 8 once flooding started, and the department has stated it made more than 60 rescues.
Despite the deaths, first responders say the village’s leadership has not learned needed lessons and has continued to prioritize tourism at the expense of public safety.
By this summer the village had finally installed its voice-activated sirens and reversed its position on the standard ones: The village would now use them during floods.
Hall had planned for all firefighters to be trained as swiftwater technicians. But in February, the firefighters, many of whom worked second jobs to make ends meet, unionized. The department’s plans changed, with Hall sending firefighters to get a lower-level certification that limited their ability to perform rescues in rushing water.
In April, senior Ruidoso Fire Department officers held a meeting during which they discussed Hall’s leadership. ProPublica reviewed a recording of the gathering. An officer said Hall, who did not attend the meeting, still wouldn’t pre-position extra firefighters. “How many people are going to die?” the officer wondered aloud during the meeting.
Hall declined to respond to questions about the meeting and the allegation that he hadn’t pre-positioned enough firefighters to avoid paying overtime.
Once monsoons arrived this year, multiple rescuers say, Hall rarely stationed off-duty firefighters in vulnerable areas. Sometimes in the afternoons, when it was most likely to rain, multiple firefighters weren’t in town. To promote tourism, Ruidoso had signed a contract with Contour Airlines to provide flights between Denver and the village. During takeoffs and landings emergency medical workers had to be present at the airport, 17 miles from where Trotter and Stark were rescued.
Stephanie Trotter holds a bracelet on her husband’s wrist displaying their children’s initials. Their 4-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son died in the flooding.
Why Should Delaware Care? Early voting locations will be open 10 days before Election Day, giving Delawareans a chance to make their voice heard in the 2026 midterm election. The early voting period gives voters a chance to skip potential lines on Election Day and eases the process.
While Delaware still is 13 days out from the 2026 midterm election on Nov. 3, voters can cast their ballot as early as Thursday.
Up for grabs in the consequential election are seats up and down the Delaware ballot, including for U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, Delaware attorney general and treasurer, and dozens of statehouse positions.
All registered Delaware voters can vote early in their county of residence. To do so, they must present at the polling station one of the following: a state-issued photo ID, a utility bill, or a government document with the voter’s name and address
To be eligible, voters must be a U.S. citizen, a Delaware resident and 18 years old or older by Election Day.
Early voting locations will be open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. from Oct. 22 through Oct. 27 – except on Sunday, Oct. 25, when they will close.
From Oct. 28 through Nov. 1, they will be open between 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Where can I vote early?
Not all polling locations in the state will be open for early voting. Instead, there will be six designated locations in New Castle County, four in Kent County, and nine in Sussex County.
Delawareans can vote at any early voting location within their county.
The polling locations are as follows:
New Castle County
Appoquinimink State Service Center, 122 Silver Lake Road, Middletown, DE 19709
Claymont Community Center, 3301 Green St., Claymont, DE 19703
The Delaware Contemporary, 200 S. Madison St., Wilmington, DE 19801
Department of Elections Warehouse – New Castle, 220 Lisa Drive, New Castle, DE 19720
Hudson State Service Center, 501 Ogletown Road, Newark, DE 19711
Police Athletic League (PAL), 3707 N. Market St., Wilmington, DE 19802
Kent County
BPOE #1903 Elks Lodge, 200 S Saulsbury Road, Dover, DE 19904
Frederica Senior Center, 216 Market St., Frederica, DE 19946
Harrington Parks & Recreation, 114 E. Liberty St., Harrington, DE 19952
Wyoming United Methodist Church, 216 Wyoming Mill Rd., Dover, DE 19904
Sussex County
Department of Elections Warehouse – Georgetown, 542 S. Bedford St., Georgetown DE 19947
Department of Elections Warehouse – Seaford, 200 Allen St., Seaford, DE 19973
Ellendale Fire Hall, 302 Main St., Ellendale, DE 19941
Indian River Fire Company, 25375 Banks Rd., Millsboro, DE 19966
Laurel Fire Hall, 205 W. 10th St., Laurel, DE 19956
Margaret H. Rollins Community Center, 101 Adams Ave., Lewes, DE 19958
Millville Community Center, 32517 Dukes Drive, Millville, DE 19967
Nassau Valley Vineyard, 32130 Winery Rd., Lewes, DE 19958
Roxana Fire Hall, 35943 Zion Church Rd., Frankford, DE 19945
Can I request an absentee ballot?
If you can’t vote at a polling location – whether early or on Election Day – you can vote by absentee ballot if you have a reason permitted by the state. Those include being sick or disabled, being a caregiver who can’t leave their home, or being stationed abroad in the armed services. More information on whether you qualify can be found here.
To request an absentee ballot, visit Delaware iVote portal, then download and return the absentee ballot request form, found here.
Absentee ballots must be received by the Department of Elections at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 3, in order to count.
What if I have a question or an issue at the poll?
If you need help or need to speak with an elections official about your registration or voting options, contact the Delaware Department of Elections in your relevant county. Click here to find phone numbers and emails for those offices.
If you notice an issue at the polls and want to bring it to Spotlight Delaware’s attention, email tips@spotlightdelaware.org. Include as much detail as you can, including where, when, and what you observed. Please include contact info, even if you wish to remain anonymous in our reporting, so that we can follow up and learn more about the situation.
Columbus, OH — Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is doubling down on a deeply personal attack against Democrat Amy Acton, spending $4 million to air an advertisement featuring her estranged mother despite widespread criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.
The ad features Donna Arthur calling her daughter a “liar” and disputing Acton’s longstanding account of a childhood marked by instability, homelessness and sexual abuse.
Acton has said she was sexually abused by her stepfather when she was around 12 and that her mother failed to protect her. Her brother, Philip Stearns, said their mother remained married to the man accused of abusing Acton even after the children were removed from the home.
Ramaswamy initially did not identify his campaign as the source of the viral video, but later acknowledged producing it. His campaign told Axios that internal testing showed the ad performing well with “persuadable” voters and is moving ahead with the multimillion-dollar buy despite the backlash.
Even conservative commentators have condemned the tactic. Mary Katharine Ham questioned how the campaign could expect the ad not to backfire, while Meghan McCain and other Republicans criticized the use of an estranged parent against a candidate.
A mid-October Marist poll showed Acton leading Ramaswamy 50% to 43% among likely Ohio voters.
In France, it was the piles of wheelie bins stacked up against school entrances that first hinted at the scale of student anger over crumbling classrooms and teacher shortages. In Spain, it was a tent camp that steadily grew in the heart of the capital as residents railed against soaring housing costs.
Similar scenes have since sprung up in Belgium, Italy and Portugal, and clashes have convulsed Albania’s capital of Tirana, hinting at an autumn of protests across Europe.
The start of the tween years, nine years old, is a sweet spot between curiosity and growing independence, making it a fun, though sometimes tricky, age to buy for.
Kids at this age are up for a challenge, whether that means trying a trickier craft set, playing a more complex game or stepping up their sporting interests. Pitch a gift right and you’ll not only get the whoop of joy when they first receive it, but something that will hold their interest and help them develop their skills, interests and hobbies over time.
As women’s sprinting enters a golden era in the run-up to LA 2028, controversy surrounding a top coach threatens to overshadow the sport’s biggest stars
When Olympic 200m champion Gabby Thomas came second at the recent track and field World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest, she tried her best to be diplomatic: “I am an equal-opportunity doping hater,” she said. “If you are actively doping in sport, I do take issue with that. I’m not saying any names, no names are mentioned. But if you look at yourself and you think that’s what you’re doing, then so be it.”
Thomas then went out of her way to congratulate her compatriot Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, who finished ahead of her that day, aware of the territory into which she was straying.
The duo have carved out lucrative and successful careers as TV audiences elsewhere are falling. It seems they won’t be together for much longer
Troy Aikman knew when it was time to go. His aching body made the decision for him when he ended his NFL career in 2001. A quarter of a century later, with one of the top quarterbacks of the 1990s established as half of the pre-eminent broadcasting duo in American sports, his potential exit from the booth is not so clearcut.
Aikman clearly feels his voice remains in fine working order, but his bosses at ESPN may not agree. The color commentator’s Monday Night Football play-by-play partner, Joe Buck, is reported to have agreed a new deal with the network worth $108m over six seasons (his previous deal was for five years at $15m a season), yet Aikman has claimed ESPN does not want to renew his contract.
Philip Sullivan, who sought to rebuild his life after gambling addiction, convicted of stealing from real-estate employer
A Florida man who stole more than $1m from his employer to bankroll a gambling problem – before becoming the director of his state’s gambling addiction helpline in trying to make amends – was recently sentenced to nearly a decade in prison.
Bay county, Florida, authorities charged Philip Sullivan in March 2024 with stealing $1.4m from the Panama City Beach real-estate company for which he was the chief financial officer, Royal American, as local news outlets WMBB and WJHG had previously reported.
Unorthodox campaign is challenging the ruling party’s 14-year reign with a bold democratic experiment
On a cool autumn evening, a team of Serbian student volunteers went canvassing in the housing estates of Krnjača, a Belgrade suburb. They were equipped with lanyards emblazoned with the word “victory”, a stock list of questions and a mobile app that mapped visited homes and the level of support in each.
The volunteers were part of a mass student movement, Student List, that has rocked Serbia with two years of constant protests. On Sunday, the group will represent the most serious challenge Aleksandar Vučić has faced in his 12 increasingly authoritarian years in power, by putting forward their own candidates in parliamentary elections.
Dmitry Adamsky, an expert on Russian security and Russian nuclear deterrence strategy at Harvard and Reichman Universities, examines a large-scale shift in Russia’s strategic thinking over the past year, centered around the view that Europe, rather than the United States, is now Russia’s primary geopolitical rival and adversary, and looking at the consequences of this shift for US efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from TWZ: A Russian satellite, Kosmos 2612, may have passed within approximately 85 feet (26 meters) of a U.S.-registered satellite belonging to commercial imagery provider ICEYE. This would be an extraordinarily close and potentially dangerous pass-by for two objects in space traveling at thousands of miles per hour. For weeks beforehand, ICEYE-X36, which would be of special interest to Russia, had already found itself in increasingly close orbital alignment with its pursuer. The two satellites now look to be drifting further and further apart, but the episode has been a clear sign of what is to come as the potential for conflict in space only continues to grow.
Publicly available space tracking data from the satellitemap.space and orbitalradar.com websites show that Kosmos 2612 (also written sometimes Cosmos 2612 and abbreviated K2612) and ICEYE X36 had their especially close encounter at approximately 16:07 UTC today. Private space services company LeoLabs also told TWZ today that it could not "confirm or contradict what other data sources have stated publicly," but that it has "high-confidence that the objects came within approximately [emphasis in the original] 500 meters [1,640 feet] of each other." Kosmos 2612 had been making progressively closer passes by ICEYE X36 in recent days. "This is the most advanced and potentially dangerous uncooperative RPO we've observed," Adam Marsh, LeoLabs vice president for technical solutions, separately told Breaking Defense.
"It's important to note that 'red' on 'blue' engagements, such as this, are relatively uncommon in Low Earth Orbit (LEO)," LeoLabs' report points out. At the same time, "this was not a routine conjunction or 'fly by.' The sequence included a controlled approach, changes in relative position, close-proximity loitering, additional small maneuvers, and a controlled departure. The behavior is consistent with sophisticated rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO)."
"We can only speculate about the operation's goal, but it could have been anything from simply intimidation to outright destruction or sabotage of a U.S.-registered satellite," CSIS' Clayton Swope told TWZ. "Perhaps the operation is on hold. There are, however, several other satellites that shadowed ICEYE X36 back in May that could be brought in[to] action too."
In this episode of Guardian Australia’s US politics podcast, co-hosts Jonathan Yerushalmy and Reged Ahmad look at how Katie Zacharia broke the record for shortest tenure as White House press secretary. They then examine the pattern of how women in the Trump administration are treated when they’re perceived to have made mistakes – versus how men seem to survive their missteps.
They also look at how the US might be changing course on Russia’s war on Ukraine. Are relations between Donald Trump and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy at their lowest point ever? And what happens if the US decides to take Vladimir Putin’s side in the war?
Despite US-Israeli airstrikes and Tehran’s attacks on shipping, the waterway still has to provide a lifeline for those that live and work there
Capt Farouq turns the wheel as he watches the ferry terminal of Bandar Abbas grow smaller, its bright lights flickering in the distance.
In front of him, the navigation radar beeps periodically, its green and pink lights glowing in the darkness. The ferry, today at about half capacity with roughly 100 passengers, turns and heads into the darkness of the strait of Hormuz.
Volunteers and new recruits come together for ‘wikithon’ to put more detail about industry into public domain
“Anyone can edit Wikipedia,” the adage goes. But, it turns out, a relatively small number actually do.
What is worthy of a digital page in the world’s largest and most-read encyclopedia is decided by roughly 270,000 active volunteers, enthusiasts who populate the online resource with information on anything from 19th-century medicine to TikTok trends. Inevitably, some subjects are sidelined – the global south, notable women – but a new batch of Wikipedian recruits are waging war on one neglected topic: the arms industry.
Last week, in a classroom in central London, two dozen volunteers huddled around laptops and free servings of vegan Ethiopian food for what is known as a “wikithon”, an event of collective and in-person Wikipedia editing. Some were veteran editors in their 70s, others young students who had never registered an account before. But their targets include subjects such as Palantir, Project Maven and Nitro-Chem.
Adriana Retyte took her own life after viewing ‘high-risk’ material on the video-sharing platform TikTok
A 14-year-old schoolgirl’s death after TikTok served her suicide content has prompted renewed calls for UK watchdogs to crack down on “toxic” social media feeds.
Adriana Retyte, a pupil at Langley school in Norfolk, took her own life after she viewed videos and images related to suicide on the video-sharing platform, according to a coroner who last week found her access to the material on TikTok “may have played a significant part in her decision to take her life”.
Rights groups say the planned 1.4km route, which ends at compound run by far-right settler group Elad, will displace Palestinians and reshape the cultural landscape
A fifth foreign company has pulled out of a plan to build a cable car from West to East Jerusalem that threatens to involve the seizure of land and property rights from dozens of Palestinian families along its route, but local authorities insist the scheme is proceeding as planned.
The project appeared to have stalled for four years until late September, just weeks before Israel’s 27 October elections, when the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA) issued a notice of intent to award a contract without a public tender to ROPES, a cable car engineering consultancy based in South Tyrol, Italy.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Last month, Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson ordered Meta to hand over the command histories of the servers it used to torrent pirated books. These logs would presumably reveal how Meta's torrent clients were set up, including any changes to their upload settings. [...] The server logs could reveal what happened on Meta's machines. However, publisher Entrepreneur Media also wants to know who approved the torrenting activity.
Entrepreneur Media, which publishes Entrepreneur magazine, filed one of the related lawsuits where it accuses Meta of contributing to piracy by uploading (seeding) works to third parties, similar to the authors' contributory infringement claim. To find out more, the publisher asked Meta to identify everyone who "made, authorized, or approved" the decisions to obtain the shadow library datasets, and to do so via BitTorrent.
Meta's answers named several people who are believed to have been involved in data-related decisions. However, Meta said it couldn't identify anyone who "formally" made or approved decisions to acquire or use books for its first two Llama models. Those decisions were often the result of team consensus, Meta argued. When it came to the torrenting itself, Meta pointed to the employees who ran the downloads, describing their choices as technical decisions.
Meta added that the acquisition of data from Anna's Archive went through an internal legal review in early 2024, which involved its in-house lawyers. In other words, the company didn't name anyone higher up who approved the use of BitTorrent. "On that construction no one at Meta decided to torrent anything, yet Meta torrented shadow libraries repeatedly from 2022-2024," Entrepreneur Media countered. An internal Meta logbook warned that using torrents would involve sharing copyrighted material with others. "Using torrents would entail seeding the file such as sharing content outside. This would be legally not okay," the logbook stated.
Although Meta admits downloading data from LibGen and Anna's Archive via BitTorrent, it claims no one "made, authorized, or approved" a decision to distribute the material and that measures were taken to limit seeding. Meta's own expert previously estimated that uploads from its AWS servers amounted to no more than roughly 30% of the data downloaded during a period in 2024.
Judge Thomas Hixson is not convinced and ordered (PDF) the company to identify everyone involved in approving the downloads, including those who decided "whether or how to seed, or to mitigate seeding."
Hello I have 20 miles under my belt. Mostly in the last week. I try to ride every day but sometimes I just can’t due to muscle fatigue.
Today after riding just two miles I could feel my tibialis muscle shaking as I was trying to get off the onewheel. It made me almost fall off completely.
Should I just continue riding every day to get over it or should I actually train and work on the muscles that are responsible for balancing and getting off the board safely?
Student told the university’s police department that assault by two men occurred in August during a night of drinking
A sorority member at the University of Arizona has alleged she was sexually assaulted by two men at a fraternity house during a night of drinking in late August.
The student told the university’s police department that she consensually kissed one of the men at one point while at the Sigma Phi Epsilon house on 26 August but doesn’t remember agreeing to sex, according to search warrant records posted Monday night by KOLD-TV in Tucson.
A new survey reveals a widening “empathy gap” between Republicans and white evangelicals and the rest of the American public.
On Tuesday, the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute released its annual American Values Survey. The survey found that white evangelical Protestants are the only religious group in which a majority does not agree that empathy is foundational moral value (42%). Instead, a majority (54%) say empathy can be dangerous when it leads people away from a society guided by God’s truth, PRRI said.
Alejandro Betancourt, a 46-year-old Venezuelan energy baron, is the key figure in a historic oil deal with the Trump administration. Venezuelan opposition leaders and U.S. congressional Democrats have criticized the agreement because Betancourt has been the target of investigations of alleged corruption. Antonio Heredia/El Mundo
In late August, President Donald Trump announced what he called the “biggest oil deal in world history.” Since then, the full text of the accord — which grants the U.S. sweeping access to Venezuela’s oil reserves — has been one of the most sought-after secrets in Washington, D.C.
ProPublica has reviewed a copy of the 18-page strategic partnership agreement signed for the United States by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The document reveals carefully constructed terms that favor U.S. interests at every turn and cements the power of a small group of people handpicked by the Trump administration to govern and profit from the deal. The role of the Venezuelan government and the potential benefits to its people are largely absent from the text.
One of the most criticized aspects of Trump’s announcement has been his choice of a partner: Alejandro Betancourt, a globe-trotting Venezuelan oligarch who has faced money-laundering investigations in three countries.
The Trump administration is taking a 35% stake in Betancourt’s firm, North American Blue Energy Partners, by acquiring shares in a Barbados-registered parent company. The deal document provides little information about the owners and investors behind the parent company, who could receive enormous wealth from the arrangement.
The agreement also safeguards Betancourt’s position as chief executive of NABEP and says the U.S. government will work with the parent company to appoint a powerful seven-member board to govern the venture for an initial 15-year term. Those aspects of the deal, according to people with knowledge of how it came together, were designed to prevent future U.S. and Venezuelan leaders from dismantling the enterprise.
Orlando Alvarado, a name not disclosed by the Trump administration as a party to the accord, signed the agreement on behalf of the parent company, alongside Betancourt, Hegseth and Rubio. Alvarado has held senior roles in multiple Betancourt businesses, including as chief financial officer of an energy firm that became embroiled in scandals a decade ago. According to the Miami Herald, federal prosecutors identified Alvarado as an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme to embezzle money from Venezuela’s national oil company.
NABEP spokesperson Terry Wade said that “neither Mr. Betancourt nor Mr. Alvarado has ever been charged with any crime in any country, and any claims against them are baseless.”
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Cate Brown
I’m interested in talking to people who understand how members of the Trump administration, or their family members, are doing business, at home or abroad.
Key aspects of the plan differ from the Trump administration’s public pronouncements. Trump has said the deal will secure America’s energy dominance for the next century. But the text indicates that U.S. purchasing rights expire in half that time and that the underlying operating rights appear to run afoul of Venezuelan laws limiting oil concessions to 25 years.
The agreement does ensure the United States a deep discount from fair-market value on 20% of NABEP’s oil, as Trump has said. It does not, however, explicitly guarantee that Betancourt’s company is obligated to pay the estimated $200 billion in royalties and tax payments to Venezuela that the White House has said would benefit the country.
There are also significant caveats related to Trump’s central selling point to Americans — that the deal will bring a gusher of low-cost oil imports.
The agreement gives the U.S. the right to purchase 20% of NABEP’s oil at a discounted rate of $30 a barrel, or less than a third of what oil has sold for in recent months, according to one of three supporting documents reviewed by ProPublica.
But this fee does not account for the cost of getting Venezuela’s oil out of the country. Much of Venezuela’s raw crude is so thick that it won’t flow through pipelines unless it is first blended with 20% or more of oil thinner products. Under the deal, the potentially significant cost of importing millions of barrels of those blending materials is not included in the price.
The White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and the energy company NABEP all defended the agreement, saying in statements that their new public-private venture will provide meaningful and lasting economic benefits to both countries that cannot be captured in a legal document.
“This historic deal marks a major step toward stabilizing Venezuela’s economy after years of hyperinflation and almost no new investment, while more than doubling the United States’ oil reserves,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers.
Wade emphasized that NABEP was chosen because of its track record of expanding oil production in Venezuela in recent years and that the agreement was between the company and the U.S. government, not Venezuela.
“Thanks in large part to the agreement,” Wade said, “there is a surge in confidence about the future of Venezuela’s oil industry and, as a direct result, substantial new investments are flowing into the country.”
He added that much of NABEP’s oil comes from fields that require little or no blending materials and that blending costs would not meaningfully impact the price of production. “Our barrel economics are strong.”
The newly revealed details of the agreement are nonetheless likely to raise more questions about whether the unorthodox marriage of the United States and a foreign energy baron can bring lasting benefits to either country — and which private parties might benefit along the way. Trump’s oil deal is likely to face scrutiny in both the United States and Venezuela, especially if Democrats win one or both chambers in the midterm elections, according to former U.S. diplomats and congressional staff.
“Question number one in a new U.S. Congress will be: Why Betancourt?” said former Ambassador James Story, who served as the top U.S. diplomat in Caracas from 2018 to 2023, in an interview. “Why did he get this deal? And was he involved in criminality? It seems reasonable to have a congressional hearing about those questions.”
“Question number one in a new U.S. Congress will be: Why Betancourt?”
James Story, former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela
In public comments, Delcy Rodríguez, who won the backing of the Trump administration to serve as Venezuela’s interim president, praised the accord as “historic.” She has asserted that Venezuela will retain sovereignty over its natural resources and defended the choice of Betancourt.
People with knowledge of the Trump administration’s behind-the-scenes decision-making and negotiations with Betancourt spoke to ProPublica on condition of anonymity because they were either not authorized to do so or were fearful of retribution.
One reason that the precise terms of the deal have remained hidden until now is that the signed agreement is marked as a “sensitive” government document. That classification is commonly used to shield a variety of federal records from public release, including those containing personnel information, details about ongoing law enforcement operations and matters protected by attorney-client privilege. The document also contains a confidentiality clause barring Betancourt’s company from disclosing the “existence and terms” of the U.S. government agreement.
One person familiar with the deliberations said that people close to the Trump administration seemed keen to partner with Betancourt’s company because of the privacy and flexibility it offered. That appeared to give NABEP an advantage over publicly traded oil companies, which would be obligated to shareholder reporting requirements.
“For example,” the person said, “Chevron couldn’t give 35% of their shares to the Pentagon.”
Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, center, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, left, and Venezuela’s minister of petroleum and hydrocarbons, Paula Henao, right, attend the signing of an oil agreement at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas in September.Juan Barreto/AFP via Getty Images
The Deal
The oil deal is sensitive partly because of likely resistance in Venezuela, where critics have already described it as a U.S. takeover of the country’s precious natural resources.
A ProPublica analysis shows that its terms favor American interests at nearly every turn and try to enshrinethe Trump administration’s imprint indefinitely.
The document states that a majority of the seven-member board must be U.S. citizens at all times, and the U.S. government can appoint one “non-voting observer” to join the group. Betancourt, who will serve as the chief executive, is the only board member named by the agreement. The initial board will establish the process for choosing new members.
“Throughout the evolution of the deal, it was clear that the governing structure was intended to ensure maximum control by the people making the deal and to insulate them from future administrations seeking to reverse the agreement or call it into question,” a person familiar with the negotiations said.
There is no requirement for any Venezuelan government participation in the board.
The agreement also offers long-lasting protections for Betancourt and unnamed investors. It requires a supermajority vote of five to oust Betancourt as CEO, change the board composition or execute any transactions with a shareholder that isn’t the U.S. government, an indirect equity holder, director, affiliate or “immediate family members.”
The board will determine compensation for Betancourt in his role as chief executive, the document says. As structured, the deal does not appear to require any public disclosures about pay or distribution of shares to executives.
The agreement does not say which shareholders, affiliates or family members have been approved to transact with Betancourt’s company. Under Barbados corporate law, there is almost nothing that can force those interests to be revealed publicly.
The agreement does, however, require the company to maintain “anti-money laundering controls,” submit to external audits and inspections of its records by the U.S. government, and provide the U.S. government with an annual budget and quarterly unaudited financial statements. It is unclear if these reports will ever be made public.
It could be some time before the company produces enough oil to fulfill a significant share of U.S. demand. Betancourt’s company currently produces about 200,000 barrels per day — or about as much over the course of a year as the United States uses in three days.
NABEP aims to increase its production to 500,000 barrels per day by the end of 2028, according to recent reports.
In addition to securing a discount on 20% of NABEP’s oil, Washington also has “first priority” to purchase all of the company’s remaining oil production for the next 50 years, including an irrevocable right to buy its entire oil supply in the event the U.S. declares a national emergency.
The U.S. also receives a “most favored nation” status that requires Betancourt’s firm to disclose any other business agreements it signs, and, if they are favorable, to grant Washington matching terms.
One person who reviewed parts of the contract was surprised at the tangible benefits for the U.S. compared with the lack of binding commitments to Venezuela: “I gave you 20% of my production at ‘cost plus,’ fine. I gave you all of my production if there’s a national emergency, OK. … So what do I get in exchange?”
A U.S. official said Rodriguez had granted NABEP 100-year oil concessions to operate there, although this figure is not referenced in the accord and appears to contradict Venezuelan law.
In the event of a dispute, Venezuela can’t challenge the deal in its own courts. The agreement dictates that any conflict between the company and the United States must be settled under U.S. law, not Venezuela’s. The two sides even spelled out that any civil case or arbitration must be argued before the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where Trump’s Justice Department has turned, time and again, for favorable rulings.
Where U.S. law does not apply, Texas state law governs, the agreement states.
A Pentagon office has been tasked with someday executing the financial transaction to capitalize on the U.S. government’s 35% share in the venture. The document shows that the U.S. will pay nothing upfront but plans to acquire its stake in Betancourt’s company by paying $0.01 per warrant share. Those terms are set to expire on the 75th anniversary of the closing date.
In a White House statement last month, Trump touted those shares as potentially worth “hundreds of billions,” plus dividends. But Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee said they believe the Pentagon office does not have the legal authority to execute an agreement with a foreign entity operating in a country under U.S. sanctions.
Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said that the Defense Department conducts “extensive due diligence” before extending capital assistance. Wilson declined to comment on any of the legal considerations or further technical aspects of the deal “to protect the integrity of the process.”
Several other detailed aspects of how the company will operate are currently under negotiation among the Trump administration, Betancourt and the parent company, the partnership documents show. The agreement repeatedly cites a set of “Implementation Documents” that will finalize the U.S. ownership stake and the rights of unnamed investors.
The full force of the deal will not take effect until both parties have complied with its closing conditions, which the agreement indicates could happen within months.
Last month, Senate Democrats blasted what was known of the oil accord and demanded details in a letter to Rubio, Hegseth and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright.
“It is unclear why the American public should support this attempt to entangle the United States with a relatively unknown foreign oil company that lacks the capacity or credibility to develop oil fields of the magnitude described and whose leadership has faced international criminal investigations,” four ranking senators said in the letter.
They asserted that most of the “oil fields are nowhere near ready for production” and that it could “take up to a decade before global oil markets are meaningfully impacted and the American people see any tangible benefit.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, left, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio speak to members of the media about Venezuela days after the U.S. captured President Nicolás Maduro in January.Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A Willing Partner
Almost immediately after U.S. special operations forces seized President Nicolás Maduro in January and airlifted him out of Venezuela, Trump left little doubt that his larger goal was to restore American access to Venezuela’s oil reserves two decades after most U.S. firms had been ejected from the country.
By early spring, an obscure cast of energy officials, lawyers and lobbyists had started to craft plans to deliver on Trump’s America First energy agenda. One person familiar with the deliberations said that U.S. officials had considered backing an idea for publicly held American oil companies like Chevron, Exxon and Conoco to carve up and rehabilitate Venezuela’s aging oil sector. Another potential route went through Betancourt’s company, which is the second largest private oil firm operating in Venezuela. Working with the Venezuelan state company, Petróleos de Venezuela, SA, was never really an option due to its underlying debt and history of corruption, the person said.
The option of turning to large multinational oil companies quickly stalled. In some cases, oil executives balked at jumping back into the complexity of the Venezuelan market; in others, firms struggled to get more than “lip service” meetings in Washington and Caracas, according to media reports and people familiar with the deal.
“NABEP was given priority,” one person said. “Exxon, Conoco and the others were treated as second class.”
Betancourt’s star was rising in the Trump administration. He had served as an interlocutor for Washington with the Maduro government and had ties to some leaders of the Venezuelan opposition, according to current and former U.S. officials. He had also provided information that helped the U.S. forces seize Venezuelan oil tankers and that aided strategy and planning before the capture of Maduro, Reuters reported.
In addition, Betancourt had developed a good relationship with Rodríguez, whom Trump had backed as the country’s interim president. And Betancourt had done so despite the fact that her influential brother, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, had accused him of corruption in a televised speech in 2020, according to former U.S. officials and press reports.
U.S. officials also saw practical reasons to partner with Betancourt, several people said. He and his then-business partner in the U.S., Harry Sargeant, a Trump supporter, appeared to be a rare success story in a battered industry, operating some of the only active oil fields in the country.
“The main thing I found promising is that the fields are producing in Venezuela,” said a former State Department official who analyzed the company’s activities. “I think it’s particularly important that you buy into fields that are producing. … If your policy goal is to raise production quickly, this makes sense.”
But partnering with Betancourt posed major challenges.
For starters, the 46-year-old billionaire was confined to house arrest on his 300-acre Oxfordshire estate in England, fighting off a Swiss extradition request tied to an international money-laundering probe. Betancourt could fly to his $46 million London residence by private helicopter — but his Venezuelan and Italian passports were locked down, and British authorities had barred him from driving on public roads, according to media reports about the special bail arrangement.
Betancourt’s legal problems stemmed from his role in troubled Venezuelan energy projects during the corrupt rule of former President Hugo Chávez. Several of Betancourt’s known or alleged associates were charged or convicted in a major U.S. money-laundering investigation known as Operation Money Flight. Betancourt surfaced as a suspect in the U.S. case and is still under investigation for suspected money laundering by authorities in Spain, according to former U.S. and European officials and press reports.
The most popular leader of the Venezuelan opposition in exile, María Corina Machado, recently described Betancourt as having been involved in “obscene corruption” that caused great suffering for the Venezuelan people, according to a recent New York Times interview.
Betancourt has not been charged in any country. His lawyer has maintained his client’s innocence, saying Betancourt has been unfairly maligned because people associate him with a group of wealthy young Venezuelans, some of whom have been accused of wrongdoing, according to press reports.
Many Venezuelans see Betancourt as a “totemic, emblematic, corrupt figure,” said Brian Naranjo, a former senior U.S. diplomat in Venezuela, in an interview.
“He is not really an oil man,” Naranjo said. “The talent he brings is that he’s a new person in a long line of Venezuelan businesspeople who deal in influence. Their big lever is connections and influence. It is know-who, not know-how.”
In a recent interview with Spanish language media, Rubio defended Betancourt, praising his oil company’s work in Venezuela and his support for factions of the Venezuelan opposition in exile.
Rubio downplayed the legal scrutiny Betancourt has faced, saying a review conducted with U.S. law enforcement agencies indicated “there were no investigations of him in our system.”
“The talent he brings is that he’s a new person in a long line of Venezuelan businesspeople who deal in influence. … It is know-who, not know-how.”
Brian Naranjo, former U.S. diplomat
It remains unclear exactly how Betancourt shed the travel restrictions imposed by European authorities. But The Washington Post reported that senior Trump administration officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, former Attorney General Pam Bondi and then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, petitioned their foreign counterparts to allow Betancourt to travel freely and to close their investigations into him and his business ventures.
The Trump administration’s next hurdle to working with Betancourt was figuring out how to legally invest. The government’s $200 billion investment agency, the International Development Finance Corporation, was created to do just that but is currently barred by U.S. law from operating in Venezuela.
At different points through the summer, aides to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought stepped in, pressing Defense and State department officials to consider alternate financing paths, according to one person familiar with the deal’s progression.
By July, the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital, headed by David Lorch, emerged as a potential solution.
Lorch, who had moved to the Pentagon from Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg’s private equity firm, Cerberus Capital, quickly embraced the idea, according to people familiar with the deal. Lorch and other Pentagon and State Department officials flew to Caracas in the final days of that month and agreed in principle to a deal. The details would be hammered out back in Washington, the people said.
A Pentagon spokesperson said Lorch declined to comment.
On Aug. 5, Betancourt strode into a conference room behind the art deco facade of the old Greyhound Bus Terminal in downtown Washington that houses an auxiliary Pentagon office. The assembled Defense Department officials gave the Venezuelan billionaire the red carpet treatment, lining up to shake his hand, according to people familiar with the meeting. But some in the room were stunned to discover that the U.S. government was preparing to do business with Betancourt, the people familiar with the meeting said.
Betancourt was accompanied by Jacob Hirshman, the chief executive and co-founder of Erebor Bank, the first new bank chartered after Trump returned to office, according to people familiar with the meeting. The bank, backed by Trump supporters and investors Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey, has vowed to reconnect Venezuela to the world economy.
Hirshman did not respond to a request for comment.
Lorch told the group, which included dozens of former Wall Street associates he’d hired into the office, that the alliance with Betancourt was a major “opportunity” to fulfill one of the Trump administration’s top goals, securing benefits to the United States and Venezuela for decades to come.
The meeting touched off a month of around-the-clock calls and video conferences.
People familiar with the deal’s progression said Lorch soon became involved in structuring key aspects of the deal beyond its financing, including how the board would sit for 15 years and choose its successors. One said he put an explicit premium on setting up the venture in a way that it could not be undone by Trump’s successor.
The months of work on the deal burst into public view on Aug. 28 with a Trump announcement on Truth Social.
“The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” Trump posted on a Friday night.
Two days later, Hegseth, Rubio, Betancourt and Alvarado signed the deal.
Billionaire, on SpaceX earnings call, says ‘special committees’ exploring idea but no agreement reached yet
As SpaceX released its second-ever public earnings report on Tuesday, Elon Musk declared his support for combining the aerospace and AI company with his electric vehicle company, Tesla. He said both companies had created special committees to explore a potential merger, but have not reached any agreement on terms of a transaction.
“Both SpaceX and Tesla have formed special committees to discuss this idea at the request of shareholders and these special committees are, uh, consist of independent directors,” Musk said on the call. “Because I’m a conflicted party, I can’t actually be in the discussions of the special committees.”
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump’s clemency operation is facing renewed ethics scrutiny after a Venezuelan billionaire received a full pardon weeks after his family provided former Trump attorney Alina Habba with a contract guaranteeing her more than $50 million.
Julio Herrera Velutini had faced felony bribery charges before reaching an unusually lenient 2025 plea agreement for a misdemeanor campaign-finance violation. His family then pursued a pardon through Christopher Kise, another former Trump attorney.
Meanwhile, Herrera’s daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $3.5 million to a Trump-aligned super PAC and pledged another $2.5 million toward Trump’s White House ballroom project.
Then came the Habba deal. The Herrera family offered Habba $10 million annually for four years plus bonuses through Concord Partners, a newly created company whose business activities remain unclear. Habba began working there Jan. 1 while also serving as an adviser to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Trump pardoned Herrera weeks later.
Habba denies participating in the pardon effort and says her employment arrangement was disclosed and vetted by the Justice Department. The White House has also denied that political donations influenced the clemency decision.
The sequence nevertheless adds to broader scrutiny of Trump pardons involving wealthy defendants, political donors and individuals represented by lawyers or lobbyists with close ties to the president.
Case in Africa’s most populous country was detected in a woman who had travelled from Uganda
Nigeria has confirmed an Ebola case in its capital, Abuja, after a woman who arrived from Uganda tested positive for the virus, the health ministry said.
The woman began showing symptoms on 7 October and was admitted to a hospital in Abuja four days later, where she was later diagnosed with Ebola. It is unclear when she arrived in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.
President makes suggestion while announcing new program to reward tipsters who submit fraud allegations
Donald Trump suggested on Tuesday that he would serve as “the arbitrator” of decisions in the justice department’s new anti-fraud program that awards compensation to those who submit tips resulting in conviction or significant federal enforcement.
While announcing the new program alongside JD Vance, the vice-president, who leads the White House’s taskforce to eliminate fraud, the president told reporters he had a solution for situations where multiple people submit a tip for the same alleged fraud.
Park City, KS — President Donald Trump used the antisemitic term “Shylock” during a Kansas campaign rally Monday while defending Republican Sen. Roger Marshall against criticism over his past practice of suing patients for unpaid medical bills.
Trump complained that Democratic ads had portrayed Marshall as “some kind of a Shylock-type guy,” invoking the Jewish moneylender from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The term has long been used as an antisemitic stereotype associating Jewish people with greed and predatory lending.
The Anti-Defamation League responded Tuesday by saying the term is “rooted in a longstanding antisemitic stereotype” and can reinforce harmful tropes. Notably, its statement did not identify Trump by name.
Critics accused the organization of applying a softer standard to Trump than it has to other politicians. When Joe Biden used the same term in 2014, the ADL publicly addressed him by name and welcomed his apology.
Trump also falsely claimed Marshall had been legally required to pursue patients over unpaid bills. Kansas reporting found Marshall’s former medical practice sued more than 700 patients, with some ultimately arrested after failing to appear in court.
Trump used the same slur at an Iowa rally in 2025. At the time, he said he was unaware of its antisemitic meaning.
The Kansas appearance came as Marshall faces an unexpectedly competitive reelection challenge from Democrat Adam Hamilton.
Some Cornell faculty members say a letter from Jane Doe in which she said she "felt unsupported and disbelieved" by university president Michael Kotlikoff was not shared with them.
Vietnam veteran William Reaves executed by lethal injection despite letter from fellow veterans urging halt
Florida carried out its 18th execution of the year on Tuesday under Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s aggressive use of the death penalty in his final term.
William Reaves, 77, was pronounced dead at 6.12pm following a three-drug injection at Florida state prison near Starke. He was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1986 shooting death of Indian River county deputy Richard Raczkowski.
Toforest Johnson’s death penalty reduced to life in prison without parole over doubts about his conviction
Toforest Johnson, an Alabama death row inmate, will no longer face execution after the state’s Republican governor commuted his sentence amid increasing doubts about his conviction.
Kay Ivey, the Alabama governor, commuted Johnson’s sentence to life in prison without parole in the 1995 murder of William Hardy, a Jefferson county deputy sheriff. Johnson has long maintained he is innocent, and several former public officials, as well the local district attorney, have argued he should receive a new trial.
Anti-Defamation League post decries ‘shylock’ slur but does not explain that president used it at Kansas rally on Monday
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) denounced the use of the term “shylock” as antisemitic on Tuesday, without explaining that the slur had been used a day earlier by Donald Trump in a speech in Kansas.
Trump used the slur during a Monday night rally in support of the Republican senator Roger Marshall, who is locked in a closer-than-expected re-election fight against Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton. Marshall, a doctor, as been criticized for filing lawsuits against more than 700 patients with outstanding bills, leading to 18 of them being arrested.
Washington, DC — Elon Musk personally ordered restrictions on a military-grade satellite network used by Ukraine, disrupting battlefield operations and setting off confusion inside the Trump administration over who authorized the move, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The slowdown capped connection speeds for Ukrainian equipment using SpaceX satellite technology, leaving numerous reconnaissance and combat drones unable to operate normally. Ukrainian officials said the restrictions endangered troops and weakened their ability to intercept Russian drones and conduct other battlefield missions.
The restrictions came amid escalating pressure from both Musk and President Donald Trump on Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil and diesel facilities. Trump has simultaneously eased economic pressure on Moscow, including waiving recently enacted sanctions and supporting increased Russian diesel sales.
Questions remain over who ultimately authorized the satellite restrictions. Musk publicly said the military-grade Starshield system is controlled by the U.S. government and that limitations are decided by the military and ultimately the president. Trump, however, later told reporters that neither he nor his administration ordered the disruption.
The Journal reported that SpaceX subsequently contacted White House officials seeking a coordinated explanation for the decision.
Ukraine continues to report restrictions on the system, underscoring its vulnerability to decisions made thousands of miles from the battlefield.
Australian researchers have identified a new subtype of depression – termed “circadian depression” – linked to disruptions in the body’s internal clock, which they believe is less responsive to traditional antidepressant treatments.
In a study published in British Journal of Psychiatry, involving clinical and genetic data from 11,380 Australians with mostly severe and recurrent depression, researchers identified circadian depression as affecting nearly a quarter (23%) of participants.
Ukraine says it carried out the world's first evacuation of a wounded soldier by aerial drone, using a heavy-lift hexacopter after enemy drones and landmines made conventional ground evacuation too dangerous. NBC News reports: Shared by the 92nd Separate Assault Brigade on Monday, the video shows the soldier strapping himself into a large drone and being flown at what appears to be relatively low altitude over blurred-out territory. The drone carefully lowers him, and the drone operator greets him with "Welcome back to the ground!" The video also shows blurred faces of drone operators who carried out the mission.
The post said the unidentified infantryman was wounded at his position. "Due to intense enemy drone activity and the presence of landmines, evacuation using conventional unmanned ground vehicles was impossible," the brigade said. "At that point, the specialists in our unit took it upon themselves to attempt something that had never been done before: evacuating a serviceman using an aerial drone," it added.
The craft was a heavy-lift hexacopter, it said, originally designed as a bomber by a Ukrainian manufacturer. It looks about twice the size of the soldier in the video. The specialists working on the mission had to ensure the drone could carry a human being without flipping over or swaying excessively, according to the unit.
Gilgeous-Alexander scores 32 as Thunder beat Spurs
Pistons erase 22-point deficit to stun Celtics
The Philadelphia 76ers sent an opening-night message that they intend to challenge the New York Knicks for the NBA title after adding LeBron James and Jaylen Brown, rallying for a 106-100 victory.
Tyrese Maxey scored 28 points and Brown had 19 points, eight rebounds and six assists in his first game since being acquired from Boston. James began his NBA-record 24th season with 14 points, nine rebounds and six assists.
French authorities are extending curfews and increasing the police presence in public spaces as President Emmanuel Macron's government tries to regain control after rioters torched buildings and looted thousands of businesses this weekend.
For months, the residents of Senatobia, Mississippi, have waited with a mix of dread and anticipation for state authorities to decide what, if anything, they plan to do about the killing of Kohen Wiley. Ever since the 1-year-old child was shot by a white police officer outside a local Walmart in June, organizers have held protests and press conferences outside the town’s city hall to call for accountability — or even a simple acknowledgment — for the loss of the Black toddler.
On Monday, Senatobia residents got their answer: Officials plan to do nothing. “In this incident, the Attorney General’s Office found the use of force was justified,” Republican Mississippi AG Lynn Fitch announced in a three-sentence news release posted on her official website.
The announcement was met with anguish and outrage from people inside and outside the state. The Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus demanded more information. “Kohen Wiley was a baby,” said state Rep. Kabir Karriem, who chairs the MLBC. “He posed no threat. He deserved protection, and he deserved a future. His family is owed more than a conclusion. … Announcing that a review is complete does not fulfill the responsibility to explain how a police encounter ended with a baby dead.”
The attorney general’s decision followed a probe into the case by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which was “responsible for conducting a thorough and impartial investigation,” as Mississippi Department of Public Safety Press Secretary Alex Gibert wrote to The Intercept on Tuesday. The email said that the probe “remains open and active.” But in a subsequent phone call, Gibert said that the investigation “involving the officer is closed.”
Gibert reiterated what the agency has previously said: that body camera footage and other investigative materials will be made available through public records requests. But she added that nothing will be released until after officials meet with Kohen’s family. “We are meeting with the family later this week,” she said.
As recently as Monday, however, the family maintained they had received no communication from the state. Kohen’s grandmother, Veronica Roberson, told Mississippi Today that she found out about the attorney general’s decision on Facebook and that no one had reached out. The outlet also reported last month that, although the investigation was complete and on the attorney general’s desk as of mid-September, no one had interviewed Kohen’s mother, Vel’lesiya Wiley, who was holding her child in her lap when he was shot dead by police. This called into question whether the investigation is as “thorough” as authorities have claimed. Asked by The Intercept whether the MBI investigation sought to interview Wiley, Gibert said she could not comment.
The man who killed Baby Kohen, as the child is now known, was identified by the press as Senatobia Police Sgt. Hunter Foster, who fired his gun into the car where Wiley was riding in the passenger’s seat on June 14. The exact circumstances that led to the shooting remain murky. Police said that officers responded to a shoplifting call at the Walmart; a two-page incident log released to The Intercept via a public records request contained no information about the shooting but noted that the items allegedly stolen were baby clothes and a pack of Pampers.
In a video posted on social media shortly after her child was killed, Wiley said she got into the passenger’s seat of the Ford Fusion after the driver, Latoya Ferrell, was stopped on her way out of the store. Police accused the women of trying to flee; according to Wiley, when she saw officers approach with guns drawn, she said, “I raised my baby up” to warn that he was in the car. Then the police shot him. Ferrell was also struck and was hospitalized, but survived.
The Senatobia Police Department immediately claimed that the car drove toward police, almost hitting them — an account swiftly echoed by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. But to date, officials have released no evidence to support this account. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who took the family’s case, hired an outside pathologist to do an external examination of the child and to review visual evidence. In July, the medical examiner concluded, based on the appearance of the injuries and path of the fatal bullet, that the officer shot the baby from the side of the car, undermining the police’s version of events.
The announcement by the attorney general has renewed long-standing calls for video to be released. In a press conference held earlier this month, local activist Patrick Lumumba of the Senatobia Committee for Accountability and Transparency accused the state of tailoring its investigation to support a lie — that Wiley and Ferrell deliberately sought to strike Foster with the car.
“If video footage would prove that, they would have released it the next day,” he said.
Mississippi racial justice activist Patrick Lumumba, founder of the Senatobia Committee for Accountability and Transparency, addresses the police killing of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley at a board of aldermen meeting in Senatobia, Miss., on July 7, 2026.Photo: Liliana Segura/The Intercept
The killing of Kohen Wiley drew national attention to Senatobia, a small city just south of Memphis, Tennessee. City leaders mostly refused to address the killing, save for a brief, scripted video released by Senatobia Mayor Greg Graves a few days after the shooting. By the time Kohen’s family laid him to rest in late June, the police narrative had prompted many inside and outside Senatobia to blame Kohen’s mother for his death, with rumors suggesting that, rather than charge the police officer, authorities would charge the mother and driver.
The child’s death followed years of warnings by Black residents over the police’s treatment of adults and children alike. Among the string of high-profile incidents was the jailing of a 10-year-old boy for public urination, as well as the violent arrest of two sisters, 13 and 14, outside a public housing complex. According to the girls and their mother, then-police chief Richard Chandler personally ordered one of the girls to “get your Black ass out of the road” before forcing her to the ground. And on Mother’s Day 2025 — in the same Walmart parking lot where Kohen Wiley would be shot dead — a female officer forced a woman out of her car in front of her young children for sitting in a handicapped parking space.
In the summer of 2025, the Senatobia Board of Aldermen dismissed Chandler, replacing him with interim police chief Harold Vanderford, a move aimed at restoring trust, as one alderman put it. But the killing of Kohen Wiley revealed that, in reality, nothing had changed.
Residents of Senatobia, including one former law enforcement officer, told The Intercept that the institutional culture brought by Chandler remained entrenched, with Senatobia officers showing disdain and disregard for the community. City records also showed that the chief had pushed the city to adopt new ordinances that would bring in revenue for the police department, while expanding punishment for misdemeanors like loitering.
At several board of alderman meetings over the summer, Lumumba and other activists reminded city leaders that they’d warned officials about the danger posed to Black residents by Senatobia police. At the same time, Mississippi Today revealed evidence that Foster had a history of racist remarks. Just days before he shot Kohen Wiley, Foster was accused of making racist comments to a Black colleague, who later left the police department. Foster is still on the force, on paid leave.
Then, in late August, Mississippi Today exposed racist text messages sent by Vanderford himself. The text messages dated back to the summer of 2025 and contained more than a dozen uses of the N-word. City leadership initially tried to sweep the scandal under the rug: Vanderford claimed that the messages were created by AI and, after a closed-door meeting, the mayor and members of Senatobia’s board of aldermen announced that Vanderford would stay on. But individual aldermen pushed back publicly. On September 1, Vanderford tried to resign, only for the board to announce that they had voted to fire him. Vanderford was replaced by a Black woman, Senatobia Police Lieutenant Angelica Maze.
In a statement accepting the appointment as interim chief on September 5, Maze did what the police department had previously failed to do: express “heartfelt condolences to Kohen Wiley’s family and to everyone in the community who has been affected by this tragic loss.”
In another statement on Monday, after the attorney general announced the use of force was justified, Maze acknowledged that the community “may have questions, concerns, and strong emotions, and we respect everyone’s right to express their views peacefully.”
With the body camera footage likely to be released within the next several days, a new round of waiting begins in Senatobia. In the meantime, the Senatobia Committee for Accountability and Transparency released a statement on social media.
“This was never just a news story for us. It was personal – many of us are residents of Senatobia and parents of vulnerable children. … We are also human beings who need time to grieve, reflect, and process everything that has transpired.”
Billionaire ex-mayor of New York City is focusing funds on House races to help Democrats retake majority in midterms
The billionaire Michael Bloomberg will spend $80m to help Democratic candidates in the midterm elections, US media reported on Tuesday, a significant infusion of cash for a party that has recently struggled with fundraising as it seeks to win control of Congress.
The reported donations came as Donald Trump announced on Tuesday he intended to spend a total of $400m to aid Republican candidates, with $300m already disbursed.
Sony has revived its Walkman lineup with three Android 16-powered high-end music players ranging from $1,900 to $5,900, topped by the gold-plated NW-WM1ZM3 with 256GB of storage. The Register reports: The Japanese giant named the new models the NW-WM1ZM3, NW-WM1AM3 and NW-ZX900. All can store and play many codecs, including MP3s, WMA, and FLAC files, plus others like Direct Stream Digital (DSD) and Apple Lossless, which use various tricks to avoid nasty artefacts accruing during the digitization process. Sony also says it has used "key components made from oxygen-free copper" because that apparently delivers "uncompromising sound quality."
The machines also include "screws featuring a low-resistance gold-plated treatment ... providing a stable ground connection that delivers powerful bass, an expansive soundstage and smooth, extended high frequencies." Sony claims even the cabling it's used in the devices "further reduces noise and preserves signal integrity for rich, detailed sound." They're also housed in carefully-milled slabs of copper -- gold-plated in the case of the NW-WM1ZM3 -- because that apparently improves sound, too.
And then Sony's gone and spoiled it all by offering Bluetooth connectivity, a notorious music-mangler, in addition to wired headphone ports. Sony's US site lists all three devices, which run Android 16 and include Wi-Fi so they can access streaming music services. All are USB-chargeable and Sony claims their batteries allow 30-odd hours of music playback.
Early 2025, I wrote about how I think macOS’ UNIX certification was basically a lie. It required so many convoluted and cumbersome changes to macOS that literally nobody applies to their system that it the certification had kind of become a farce. At the end of the article I wondered for how much longer Apple would be playing this little charade to hammer macOS through a meaningless UNIX-shaped hole, and it turns out the answer was “about 18 months”.
When you go to the Open Group’s website and the list of certified UNIX operating systems, macOS is no longer listed. For the past few weeks, it was still listed if you drilled down specifically to the UNIX 03 certification, but that, too, has now been removed. Assuming macOS 27 doesn’t return in the near future with a brand new certification, we can safely say that Apple got tired of paying a few employees to get its desktop operating system certified.
With one more operating system gone from the list, there’s now only one UNIX operating systems left: AIX. While the registry also lists HP-UX, z/OS, and UnixWare/OpenServer, those either only conform to really old UNIX certifications (from the ’90s), or simply aren’t developed anymore (HP sunset HP-UX at the end of last year). Only one operating system version conforms to the latest version of the certification, UNIX 07, and that’s AIX 7.2 TL5 “and later”, which possibly includes AIX 7.3, the most recent version of AIX.
Italy’s government is sending 500 soldiers to Milan and vowed a “firm response from the state” after protests against the cost of living descended into clashes with police, vandalism and looting. Further demonstrations are planned on Saturday.
The government of the far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, also announced new security measures, including an offence of violent participation in a demonstration, tougher penalties for rioters, and financial liability for parents whose children take part in vandalism and looting.
AMD is expanding its FSR 4.1 upscaling technology beyond Radeon RX 9000-series GPUs to Xbox Series X/S consoles, Xbox Ally handhelds, laptops, and Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards. The Verge reports: AMD launched its FSR 4.1 update for Radeon RX 9000-series graphics cards in March, and promised to bring the technology to older GPUs and handhelds this year. FSR 4.1 can improve performance in more than 300 supported games, including Cyberpunk 2077, Battlefield 6, and Assassin's Creed Shadows.
[...] While owners of Radeon RX 6000-series GPUs and Gorgon Halo- or Strix Halo-powered devices will get FSR 4.1 today with the latest Adrenalin Edition 26.10.1 drivers, Xbox console owners will have to wait a little longer. "We've worked very closely with AMD to optimize this technology, giving developers another powerful tool for great performance and visual quality for players," says Xbox CTO Scott Van Vilet.
Kennedy taught in New York public schools and advocated for disability rights after suffering severe spinal cord injury
Kyle Kennedy, the granddaughter of Robert F Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, has died at the age of 42.
Kyle, the daughter of Michael Kennedy, who died in 1997, and Victoria Gifford Kennedy, “passed away peacefully” on 21 September at her home in Westwood, Massachusetts, according to her obituary published by Burke Funeral Homes.
League consulted with Eagles doctors over treatment
Hurts played in London after initial clot diagnosis
Quarterback expected to miss rest of NFL season
The Philadelphia Eagles will not face disciplinary action over their handling of quarterback Jalen Hurts’ blood clots, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The person spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity Tuesday because conversations between the league and the team were to remain private.
In Kansas, beef matters — and Sen. Roger Marshall knows it. As he seeks reelection, he’s declared his Democratic rival Adam Hamilton an enemy of the multibillion dollar cattle industry.
“In a state with more cattle than people, here’s the guy that wants to shut down the beef industry,” Marshall said on Sean Hannity’s Oct. 16 podcast.
The state does have more cattle than people, according to the Kansas Livestock Association. However, we found no instance in which Hamilton advocated for shutting down the beef industry, something a lone lawmaker could not do anyway. We asked spokespersons for Marshall about his comment but did not hear back.
Hamilton’s 2020 sermon called on congregants to reduce carbon footprint
In the podcast with Marshall, Hannity said Hamilton had told his congregants to “repent for eating beef.”
Hamilton is a founding pastor at the Church of the Resurrection, a United Methodist church. (His spokesperson said he’s stepped away from his pastoral duties during the campaign.)
On Jan. 27, 2020, Hamilton gave a 44-minute sermon, “What Would Jesus Say About Climate Change,” and recommended that people reduce their carbon footprints.
“Some of the things that we grow because we like to eat them like cattle end up producing more carbon dioxide than other crops that we could grow or other forms of food that we could have,” Hamilton said. “In all of these ways we are creating or adding to the amount of greenhouse gases in our world.”
About nine minutes later, Hamilton told members to do everything they could to reduce their fossil fuel use, and suggested changing their diets “so that the things that you eat are requiring less production that creates methane and carbon dioxide.”
Hamilton proposed other actions, such as properly inflating tires, driving fuel efficient cars and planting trees.
Several minutes later, Hamilton spoke about repentance, which he said means to think differently and change behavior.
“I’m calling us to repentance, to say I realize that this has impact, even if it seems small, it has an impact on the world and future generations, and I feel badly about that,” he said.
This year, Hamilton said he eats meat and supports the beef industry
In an Oct. 2 interview with Hamilton, Politico’s Dasha Burns mentioned his sermon and asked what he would say to ranchers who wonder if his climate priorities are at odds with their livelihood.
Hamilton reiterated that cattle produce a lot of methane. They emit the gas into the atmosphere by belching as a result of a fermentation process in their stomach.
“There are ways of addressing that; one of those is, well, somebody could eat less meat,” Hamilton said. “If I’m the senator from Kansas, I’m going to be a champion for beef eating.”
Burns then asked Hamilton if he thinks people should eat less meat.
“I eat a lot of meat myself,” Hamilton replied.
Burns pushed back: “Weren’t you indicating that people should maybe eat less?”
Hamilton replied that there are other steps people can take to reduce their carbon footprint, such as more efficiently managing their home electricity.
“But another solution is there are things that can be included in the diet for cattle that help produce less methane,” he said, adding“I’m going to be a friend and a champion for the cattle industry in Kansas.”
Hamilton’s campaign also pointed to Marshall’s pastremarks supporting legislation that Marshall said would reduce methane from cattle.
Our ruling
Marshall said Hamilton “wants to shut down the beef industry.”
Hamilton hasn’t said he wants to do that.
In a 2020 sermon on climate change, Hamilton said cattle produce more carbon dioxide than other crops. He told his congregation to consider changing their diets to reduce their carbon footprint.
In an October interview with Politico, Hamilton said he’d be “a friend and a champion for the cattle industry in Kansas.”
Hamilton’s remarks about cattle, diet and climate change do not equal a call to shutting down the beef industry.
We rate this statement False.
PolitiFact New York Reporter Conor Amendola contributed to this report.
(The Center Square) – A family-run food importer says new tariffs on Canadian cheese will cost it an estimated $40 million a year on products that entered the United States duty-free until last month.
WILMINGTON, Del. — The YMCA of Delaware has received a $25,000 grant from the NBA Foundation to expand a workforce development program that has helped hundreds of Delaware teens and young adults prepare for jobs and careers.
The YMCA’s Workforce Development program serves people ages 16 to 24 through career training, paid internships, mentoring, financial literacy education and industry-recognized credentials.
Since the program began, the YMCA says it has trained 651 young people and helped place 562 participants in paid internships. The program reports an 86% internship placement rate.
“Young people across Delaware have the talent and determination to succeed. What they need are opportunities, practical skills, and caring adults who show up for them,” YMCA of Delaware President and CEO Jarrett Royster said.
“Through this investment in our Workforce Development program, the NBA Foundation is helping more young people build confidence, gain experience, and take the next step toward a brighter future.”
Participants receive training in communication, professionalism, workplace expectations, résumé development and interviewing before many move into paid internships.
The internships are intended to give participants hands-on experience while allowing them to develop relationships with professional mentors and potential employers.
YMCA officials said every graduate from the first year of the organization’s EVOLVE program secured either a new job or a raise.
EVOLVE serves as the YMCA’s credentialing and career advancement track. Through Delaware Technical Community College and other training partners, participants can pursue credentials in areas including certified nursing, early childhood education, forklift operation, fitness training and artificial intelligence.
The YMCA also cited an independent evaluation of its 2025 participants that found 94% demonstrated growth in self-management and 94% reported increased confidence in their schoolwork. Every participant showed growth in at least one core social and emotional skill area, according to the organization.
Blue Coats partnership expands beyond basketball
The grant also builds on an existing relationship between the YMCA and the Delaware Blue Coats, the Philadelphia 76ers’ NBA G League affiliate.
The organizations previously developed the YMCA Junior Blue Coats Developmental Basketball League, which serves more than 525 young athletes in five YMCA communities across New Castle County.
“The Delaware Blue Coats and the YMCA of Delaware share a deep commitment to youth opportunity across Delaware,” said Alex Yoh, vice president of business operations for the Delaware Blue Coats.
Yoh said the basketball league gives young people an opportunity to develop as athletes and leaders, while the YMCA’s workforce programs extend that work into career preparation.
“The Y’s Workforce Development and EVOLVE programs extend that same commitment into career readiness, equipping teens and young adults with the skills and resources they need to succeed,” Yoh said.
The NBA Foundation supports nonprofit organizations in NBA markets that focus on education, employment, career advancement and economic opportunity for young people from underserved communities.
The YMCA said the new funding will help it continue providing training, mentorship, work experience and career support to young Delawareans moving from school into the workforce.
To Go
What: YMCA of Delaware Workforce Development program
Who: Delaware teens and young adults ages 16 to 24
What it offers: Career training, paid internships, mentorship, financial literacy education and industry-recognized credentials
Career pathways: Programs include certified nursing, early childhood education, forklift operation, fitness training and artificial intelligence
Learn more: Visit the YMCA of Delaware website for information about Workforce Development and EVOLVE programs.
(The Center Square) – The Trump administration is starting a new $25 million program that will pay Americans who discover and report instances of fraud up to $30,000 per qualifying tip.
Scott Kirby says wealth inequality is a ‘danger to society’ and calls for inheritance tax in recent interview
Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines, is under scrutiny from conservative politicians and commentators for saying wealth inequality is a “danger to society” and calling for a national wealth and inheritance tax in a recent interview.
Talking to the New York Times, Kirby was asked about the growing public distrust of CEOs and whether he felt any responsibility to quell that distrust.
(The Center Square) — Federal agencies have spent $16 million since January 2025 to assess how office buildings are being used across the government, but a new report said it does not do enough.
Google is beginning to replace traditional support articles with "Ask Google Help," a Gemini-powered interface that summarizes documentation and lets users troubleshoot through a chatbot. 9to5Google reports: "Ask Google Help" will display a condensed version of the support article with direct troubleshooting steps, with the user then able to type in queries to have Gemini help figure out the next step forward. A "View Sources" button at the bottom of the AI response allows users to still access the original article, but direct links to any of these articles now defaults to the AI experience.
An example can be seen below on the "Secure a hacked or compromised Google account" page that Google's own support account directed users to within the past few days. It can also be seen on the "Fix common issues with 2-Step Verification" page and, as far as we can tell, any support pages on the Google Account Help forum.
Google, as of right now, appears to only be testing this on select support topics. The Google Pixel Help section, for instance, still defaults to articles, whereas the Google Chrome topic has also moved to the new experience. Beyond support pages alone, this new design also impacts the central hub, with links to topics no longer showing by default in exchange for an AI chatbot that helps you find the relevant page.
Part of NVIDIA Inception and the BSC AI Factory Accelerator Programme, the companies are advancing technologies for healthcare providers, utilities and more.
Oct. 20, 2026 — The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS)’s AI Factory Accelerator Programme, now in full operation following a pilot initiative, gives startups access to sovereign compute, technical support and training to support innovation across industries.
Credit: NVIDIA
Many of these companies are also members of the NVIDIA Inception program for cutting-edge startups — and as of today, access to some of the BSC AI Factory services are available through the NVIDIA Inception portal.
NVIDIA Inception complements the BSC AI Factory Accelerator Programme by providing members with training through NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute open courses, business mentoring, venture capital connections and other resources.
An upcoming extension of MareNostrum 5 — BSC’s public infrastructure serving scientific and technological innovation, powered by NVIDIA accelerated computing — will deliver supercomputing access through the BSC AI Factory and other AI Factories across Europe. BSC AI Factory is among Europe’s first AI factories and the first in Spain, and has delivered more than 800 services to private and public-sector clients since its April 2025 launch.
Three Inception members were recently named the BSC AI Factory Accelerator Programme’s AI Champions at the pilot initiative’s demo day:
Qatium’s water-network platform — already used by more than 250 utilities in 16 countries — is now in early production with its Neural Water Intelligence technology, powered by proprietary AI models trained on MareNostrum 5. Built on NVIDIA accelerated computing, the NVIDIA cuGraph library, the NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo framework and NVIDIA Nemotron open models, the technology helps water utilities make better operational decisions every day.
OneCareAI, a research spin-off from BSC, used NVIDIA NIM microservices to develop technology designed to identify signs of hidden atrial fibrillation — an irregular heart rhythm — in seemingly normal ECGs, helping clinicians identify patients who may be at risk of stroke before one occurs.
Avatia built a voice-first, multi-agent system that provides pharmaceutical companies with agentic coworkers that support sales representatives and give doctors transparent, curated information about medicines, ultimately helping the right treatment reach the right patient sooner. The system taps into NVIDIA NIM microservices, the NVIDIA Nemotron 3 open model family and the open source NVIDIA NeMo Curator library.
Other BSC AI Factory startups — Agrikola AI, Elna Health, Lokutor, Montevive AI, Oppy, Pack2Earth and Up2Smart — span precision agriculture, medical imaging and knowledge access, speech services, enterprise security, sales intelligence and sustainable packaging.
The cohort reflects the breadth of what advanced intelligence can now unlock: preventing strokes, detecting breast cancer subtypes before biopsy, putting medical knowledge at doctors’ fingertips faster, replacing petroleum-based plastic with biobased compostable materials, protecting crops with robots instead of chemicals and more.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the world leader in AI and accelerated computing.
Kansas has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932 – does Adam Hamilton have the courage, brain and heart to cause an extraordinary upset?
Just two years after Donald Trump won Kansas by 16 points in his fight to regain the White House, Republicans in the state are scrambling to retain their dominance. The battle for one of its two seats in the US Senate is too close to call, setting the stage for a potentially extraordinary upset.
Some recent polls even put Democrat Adam Hamilton on course for a historic victory. Kansans have not sent a representative of the party to the US Senate since 1932.
The statement revealed in court papers raises questions about the reliability of the list of 20,000 people in California
The justice department’s list of suspected non-citizens in California includes a “high percentage” of people born in the United States, Los Angeles election officials said on Tuesday.
The statement, made in court papers, raises further questions about the reliability of a list of 20,000 people the justice department provided to election officials in Los Angeles last week. The department sent the county and California secretary of state the list last week and gave them a 48-hour deadline to segregate ballots cast from anyone on the list unless they could verify their citizenship. California election officials refused and the Department of Justice sued them on Thursday.
U.S. diplomatic missions across the Middle East have issued a new round of warnings to Americans amid attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants against Saudi Arabia.
The artificial intelligence industry is obsessed with increasing speed and scale. Faster processors. Larger models. More GPUs. Bigger AI factories.
Yet the uncomfortable truth is that even small amounts of packet loss can significantly degrade the performance of some of the world’s most advanced and expensive computing resources.
That is the paradox at the heart of modern AI infrastructure.
The industry is assembling vast systems containing tens of thousands of GPUs, only to discover that their collective performance depends on their ability to communicate with extraordinary precision. The individual processor may be a technological marvel, but AI training is ultimately a team sport. During synchronized collective operations, progress is often gated by the slowest participant, so a delayed GPU or data transfer can hold up the group, and waiting is expensive.
To understand how the industry arrived here, it helps to consider how increasingly sophisticated model training has changed traffic patterns.
(BLACKDAY/Shutterstock)
A modern training job distributes work across many GPUs, which repeatedly exchange data such as gradients, parameters or activations before proceeding to the next step. The resulting traffic is highly synchronized, exceptionally bursty and overwhelmingly east-west. Thousands of processors may reach the same synchronization barrier at nearly the same time, exchange information and then wait until every member of the group is ready to continue. Essentially, the network today is an integral part of the AI computing system.
The First Generation of AI Ethernet
Ethernet has continually adapted to new demands, and AI training has accelerated that evolution.
One of the industry’s first major responses was RDMA over Converged Ethernet, or RoCEv2. It enables endpoints to transfer data directly between application memory regions over an Ethernet and IP network, bypassing much of the conventional operating-system networking path. By reducing processing overhead and latency, RoCEv2 made Ethernet far better suited to synchronized communication between GPUs.
However, moving data quickly was only part of the challenge. It was equally important to manage congestion and limit packet loss. Technologies such as Priority Flow Control (PFC) can temporarily pause upstream transmission for traffic in a priority class before buffers on the receiving side overflow. Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) allows switches to mark packets as congestion builds, enabling endpoint congestion-control mechanisms to reduce their transmission rates in response.
The physical architecture evolved too. In many large AI clusters, general-purpose leaf-spine designs have been complemented or replaced by rail-optimized fabrics, in which GPU interfaces are mapped to dedicated network planes. These designs can provide greater traffic isolation, resilience and predictability.
This combination worked remarkably well. Ethernet had once again reinvented itself to address a new class of applications.
Ethernet is widely used with clusters (Photo by Sanjay Suchak, UVA Communications)
But as clusters expanded, GPU-to-GPU communication increased in both volume and complexity. Congestion became harder to manage, loss recovery remained costly, configuration became more complex and implementations of congestion-avoidance techniques often varied across vendors. Approaches designed for one generation of clusters began to strain under the ambitions of the next.
The problem was no longer simply how to build a faster network. It was how to orchestrate enormous volumes of synchronized traffic without allowing that traffic to collide with itself.
From Avoiding to Outmaneuvering Congestion
The industry’s next response represented a change in philosophy.
Traditional networks commonly assign each flow to a selected path, while dynamic load balancing can move flows, or flowlets, across the fabric while seeking to limit packet reordering. Emerging AI transports go further by allowing packets from the same communication stream to use multiple paths simultaneously and treating out-of-order arrival as an expected transport condition.
The Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) advanced this approach through Ultra Ethernet Transport (UET), the transport layer defined in the Ultra Ethernet architecture. UET can distribute packets from the same communication stream across multiple paths while allowing the receiving endpoint to handle out-of-order arrival.
This is an important conceptual shift, as instead of responding only after congestion develops, the transport can use more of the available fabric and reduce the likelihood that individual links become bottlenecks.
The Open Compute Project’s (OCP’s) Multipath Reliable Connection (MRC) specification defines a new open RDMA transport for AI training fabrics with per-packet multipath operation, enhanced congestion control and faster loss recovery. MRC uses mechanisms including entropy-based packet spraying and SRv6 source routing to distribute and steer traffic across available network paths. Meta has pursued similar goals through MetaRoCE, a clean-sheet RDMA transport designed for AI-scale Ethernet.
Connecting accelerators remains a challenge (Aldobarettoow/Shutterstock)
Although these approaches differ, they point in the same direction: AI fabrics are becoming increasingly multipath, telemetry-rich and responsive to workload requirements. Responsibility for path selection, congestion management and loss recovery is increasingly shared between the network and the systems connected to it.
This evolution is unlikely to end with the adoption of a single protocol. AI architectures are changing too quickly for the industry to declare the problem solved. The enduring requirement is therefore not allegiance to one transport mechanism, but a networking foundation that can adapt as those mechanisms evolve. That foundation must provide predictable connectivity, rich telemetry and real-time congestion awareness, while enabling endpoint technologies to use network resources intelligently.
Ethernet’s advantage is the breadth of the ecosystem beneath those protocols: interoperable switching, standardized physical layers, operational familiarity and a large multivendor supply base. That foundation allows transport and congestion-control mechanisms to evolve without requiring the industry to abandon the infrastructure around them.
The Beast Is Leaving the Factory
Even this is not the end of the story.
Much of the industry’s attention has focused on training and the construction of hyperscale AI factories. Training creates the models that have captured the world’s imagination. But inference is what allows those models to answer questions, make recommendations, automate workflows, generate content and control physical systems.
As AI services move toward widespread commercial deployment, AI infrastructure is likely to become more distributed, particularly where workload placement is influenced by latency, data sovereignty, resilience or power availability. Enterprises, governments, developers and cloud providers will increasingly access high-performance computing through GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) and related models rather than build every capability themselves. AI resources will be spread across central, regional and edge facilities, placed according to application requirements rather than a fixed architectural model.
AI fabrics are emerging to handle networking for AI clusters (Bolbik/Shutterstock)
The resulting system will be far more complex than an isolated GPU cluster. Compute, data platforms, memory, specialized accelerators, inference engines and cached context may reside in different facilities and under different administrative domains. Data, models and context will therefore need to move securely and efficiently across facilities, operators and network boundaries.
The network must therefore evolve from connecting processors inside an AI factory to connecting intelligence across an AI economy.
At this point, the implications extend beyond infrastructure performance. Distributed AI will underpin services such as intelligent manufacturing, warehouse automation, predictive maintenance, healthcare diagnostics and autonomous transportation. In these environments, the network will not simply carry the output of an AI service. Its performance, resilience and operational agility will materially influence the service’s responsiveness, availability and ability to operate at scale.
The AI training beast has taught us a valuable lesson: compute cannot scale independently of connectivity. Each new generation of processors creates a corresponding challenge for the network, and every expansion of AI into the physical economy further raises the stakes.
The future will belong not merely to those who assemble the largest collections of GPUs, but to those who can make distributed compute, data and memory resources behave as one intelligent system. Ethernet’s next chapter will be defined by its ability to provide the adaptable, observable and resilient connectivity that makes that system possible.
That is the next frontier for Ethernet—and the challenge that will shape AI’s continued expansion.
About the author: Rudy Hoebeke is Vice President of Product Management for Nokia’s IP Service Routing portfolio with overall product management responsibility for the company’s IP/MPLS and multi-service routers and data center switches. He has over 20 years of experience in the communications and networking industry, in the areas of engineering, network design, technology & product strategy and product management. Rudy holds a MSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Brussels (VUB) and a Masters in Business Administration from the Vlerick Leuven-Gent Business School.
A common software path simplifies how developers build and optimize PyTorch applications across AMD and Intel CPUs.
Oct. 20, 2026 — AMD and Intel are collaborating to combine their x86 CPU optimization work for PyTorch in oneDNN, an open-source deep learning library governed by the Unified Acceleration Foundation (UXL) that helps AI workloads run efficiently on CPUs. The collaboration gives developers a common software path for optimized AI workloads across AMD and Intel CPUs, reducing fragmentation in the x86 AI ecosystem and making PyTorch applications easier to build, maintain and deploy across x86 systems.
Following a recommendation from the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group, AMD and Intel have aligned on oneDNN as the default open-source library for x86 acceleration within PyTorch. AMD is integrating its ZenDNN optimizations into oneDNN and has joined the UXL Foundation as a Steering Member to further advance this work through open collaboration.
Developers will have one place to access CPU optimizations for PyTorch across AMD and Intel processors, providing a more consistent development experience across x86 platforms. Joint investment in oneDNN reduces software fragmentation and accelerates support for current and future x86 AI capabilities.
The companies are also collaborating on AI Compute Extensions, a next-generation instruction set architecture for x86 designed to accelerate matrix multiplication, with future support planned for integration within PyTorch through oneDNN updates.
“Developers shouldn’t have to think about separate software paths to get the best from an x86 CPU. Working with AMD through oneDNN gives the PyTorch community a consistent approach for modern processors and a way to bring future capabilities, including AI Compute Extensions, into the framework,” said Jeff McVeigh, vice president and general manager for Intel’s Data Center Strategic Programs.
“AMD is advancing an open software ecosystem that gives developers greater choice and makes it easier to build high-performance AI applications,” said Robert Hormuth, AMD’s corporate vice president for Architecture and Strategy. “By working with the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group, we’re bringing the industry together around common technologies that simplify development across x86 processors.”
“Open source innovation thrives when the developer and operational experience is seamless and unified. AMD and Intel coming together to standardize x86 CPU optimizations through oneDNN in PyTorch is a major step forward in eliminating ecosystem fragmentation. As a member of the PyTorch community, Red Hat is excited to see this level of open collaboration, which will make it significantly easier for developers to build, optimize, and deploy AI workloads consistently across x86 architectures,” said Stephen Watt, vice president, Office of the Chief Technology Officer, and distinguished engineer, Red Hat; PyTorch ambassador.
About Intel
Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is an industry leader, creating world-changing technology that enables global progress and enriches lives. Inspired by Moore’s Law, we continuously work to advance the design and manufacturing of semiconductors to help address our customers’ greatest challenges. By embedding intelligence in the cloud, network, edge and every kind of computing device, we unleash the potential of data to transform business and society for the better.
Advance warnings of missile attacks were seemingly suspended last week by the White House, but Ukraine’s president says: ‘Now it works’
The US has resumed sharing intelligence with Kyiv about Russian missile strikes, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday after a meeting with the US envoy Steve Witkoff in Norway.
He said Ukraine was again receiving advance warnings of ballistic missile attacks, which were seemingly suspended last week by the White House. “Now it works. It’s great,” he said, adding that the US move would save lives.
In the Maine Senate race, ads from pro-Republican groups give Democratic candidate Troy Jackson the nickname “Taxin’ Jackson,” but they make misleading claims about his proposal for Social Security taxes and his votes on some other issues.
The ads say that Jackson “wants to raise Social Security taxes,” with one adding, “hurting our seniors.” But Jackson’s proposal would affect high-income earners who are still working. He wants to remove the cap on the maximum amount of income subject to Social Security payroll taxes.
The ads also claim that Jackson voted in the state Legislature to increase Mainers’ taxes on such items as gasoline and groceries, but cite votes in favor of taxes or fees that did not directly pertain to those items.
One of the ads, from Defending Main Street PAC, says “it’s tough to make a living when you pay so much in taxes” and blames Jackson before making several claims about alleged tax increases that he backed.
The other ad, from Pine Tree Results PAC, makes a number of the same tax assertions and says Jackson “claims to be for working Mainers” but is “definitely not on our side.”
We reached out to both groups about the claims in the ads. Only Pine Tree Results PAC responded with information beyond the sources listed on screen as footnotes.
Jackson is running for the seat held by his opponent, Republican Sen. Susan Collins. The Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss-up.
Social Security Taxes
The language used in the ads could give viewers the false impression that Jackson wants to increase the Social Security payroll tax, or that he wants to raise taxes on Social Security benefits. Neither is Jackson’s plan.
The ad from Defending Main Street PAC says, “Jackson wants to raise Social Security taxes, hurting our seniors.” The ad from Pine Tree Results PAC says, “He wants to raise our Social Security taxes.” Both ads show older people while those claims are being made.
What Jackson has proposed is changing the amount of annual earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax, which is 12.4%, split between employers and employees, who each pay a 6.2% tax on wages earned. He wants to eliminate the cap on taxable earnings that is set at $184,500 for 2026.
People who make more than that amount do not have to pay the tax on the additional income, and neither do their employers. Jackson has said the change would extend the life of the Social Security program and potentially boost retirement benefits.
“Here’s my plan for Social Security, to make sure it’s there for current and future retirees,” Jackson wrote in a Sept. 11 opinion piece published in the Bangor Daily News. “First, we put Social Security on firmer financial ground by scrapping the cap. If you make more than $184,500 a year, you don’t pay Social Security taxes on income over that amount. Meanwhile, if you make less than that, you pay on your full income.
“It’s not fair, and I’ll fight to change it,” he said. “And second, I support increasing the benefits that retirees receive rather than cutting them.”
Jackson said the same thing at a July Democratic candidates’ debate that was cited in small print in the two ads. And he reiterated his plan at an Oct. 8 debate against Collins. At that October debate, Collins said that she, too, supports increasing the earnings cap — although she didn’t say by how much.
As for the claim that eliminating the earnings cap would end up “hurting our seniors,” Jonathan Schwabish, a senior fellow in the tax and income supports division at the Urban Institute, told us that current Social Security beneficiaries are unlikely to be affected. He said in an interview that the policy change would increase the amount of taxes paid by high earners with pay above the current capped amount.
The Social Security Administration says about 6% of workers each year earn more than the taxable maximum.
However, removing the earnings cap could have some broader economic implications, Schwabish said.
“There is the possibility, of course, that increasing the tax max could have an impact on economic growth,” which “could affect the economy as a whole,” he said.
Because some individuals and employers would have to pay more in taxes, “you could imagine overall economic growth changing, maybe slowing down,” he said. But he said that’s an economy-wide issue, not one that just affects seniors.
Rather than hurting seniors, there are potential direct benefits to seniors. Without any changes to current law, the Social Security trust funds used to pay benefits will be depleted by 2032, according to the most recent Social Security Trustees’ report. At that time, the revenue coming in from the payroll tax would only be enough to cover 78% of scheduled benefits.
The trustees’ report estimated that eliminating the earnings cap could close 58% of Social Security’s long-term budget deficit — if scheduled benefits are not increased for those high-income earners who would be paying more in taxes. If benefits are increased for those paying above the current-law taxable maximum, the long-term funding gap would be reduced by 45%.
Other Tax Claims
The anti-Jackson ads also make three identical, or similar claims, about him supporting various tax increases as a member of Maine’s Legislature from 2002 to 2014 and again from 2016 to 2024. But some of those claims are misleading or unsupported.
Gasoline: The claims that Jackson “voted to tax our gas” or “increase the gas tax” are based on his vote for L.D. 1509 in June 2013. As part of that appropriations bill, Maine’s general sales tax increased from 5% to 5.5%, and the tax on lodging, alcohol and prepared meals went from 7% to 8%. (So, Jackson did vote to increase the sales tax, as one of the ads says.)
But those sales tax increases did not apply to gasoline. Maine’s fuel tax of 30 cents per gallon of gas has been the same since 2011.
Groceries: One ad says “Jackson taxed our groceries,” and the other says “Jackson voted to raise the sales tax, increasing the cost of groceries.” But both ads cite the samethreevotes on bills that were not a direct tax on groceries.
L.D. 1541, which was signed into law in 2021, created Maine’s Stewardship Program for Packaging. It requires large companies to pay fees for the recycling of consumer packaging, taking some of the financial burden off of local municipalities and taxpayers.
At the time the bill was being considered, the Maine Chamber of Commerce, which opposed it, said studies of similar proposals found that companies paying the packaging fees could pass their costs onto consumers by raising prices, causing grocery bills to go up by 4% to 6%, on average. But the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit that supported the bill, said other studies found no correlation between packaging programs and higher grocery prices.
Meanwhile, L.D. 1532, which became law in 2019, banned single-use plastic carry-out bags to reduce plastic waste. Certain retailers were then required to provide customers with reusable bags or recycled paper bags, and charge a fee of at least 5 cents per bag.
Of the three bills, L.D. 1495, enacted in 2009, was the only one pertaining to a direct tax on food – but only certain “prepared food” items. The bill defined those as “meals served on or off the premises of the retailer,” “drinks that are prepared by the retailer and ready for consumption without further preparation,” “food and drinks sold from an establishment whose sales of food and drinks that are prepared by the retailer account for more than 75% of the establishment’s gross receipts,” and candy.
Importantly, the legislation said prepared food “does not include bulk sales of grocery staples.”
Income taxes: The claims that Jackson “raised taxes on our paychecks” or “supported higher … income taxes” are based on his vote for L.D. 258 in July 2023. To be clear, the legislation did not increase income tax rates. Instead, the appropriations bill, in part, established Maine’s Paid Family and Medical Leave program, which provides eligible workers up to 12 weeks of paid time off for certain reasons.
The program is financed by a payroll tax, split between employers and employees, depending on the size of the company. Employees cannot be charged more than 0.5% of their pay.
And if you were curious about the “tax” on Max the dog, as the Pine Tree Results PAC ad says, that is a reference to Jackson’s vote in May 2003 for L.D. 1545, a bill that, among other things, increased state licensing fees for dogs. Dog owners and keepers pay the fees and the money supports the state’s Animal Welfare Fund. It’s worth noting that Jackson voted for a successful amendment to the bill that lowered the amounts by which the fees increased.
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This fake ring which was placed on Jacqueline's in place of her original diamond and gold wedding rings at Holywell Park Care Home in England. (Jocelyn Stockbridge via SWNS)
Police seize doses of hepatitis B vaccine from people at center of dispute over research on African newborns
Controversial vaccine researchers who have been praised by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, had their offices in Guinea-Bissau raided by judicial police, who seized doses of hepatitis B vaccines, officials said on Facebook.
The researchers have been at the heart of an ongoing dispute over research on African newborns, supported by $1.6m from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and matched by the Pershing Square Foundation and the Bluebell Foundation for a total of $3.2m.
The midterms will be a referendum on the GOP’s alignment with tech overlords over the public they’re meant to serve
Welcome back to How We Win, a Guardian opinion series with leading thinkers, offering bold ideas for America’s political future. Last week, Robert Reich highlighted the link between corruption and affordability. Today’s edition was written by Guardian US columnist Rebecca Solnit. Sign up for future editions here.
“The world should accept some bad things happening,” Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, said recently, “for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.” Like so many things tech oligarchs say, it’s incoherent, since Altman would like to deny the world and the people in it the agency to decide whether or not we should accept his bad things. Surveys show that most Americans would like to pause AI; opposition to AI datacenters is a factor in many races in the midterm elections. People are outraged and anxious about what tech hath wrought, mad enough to fight back in what is coming to seem like a human v machine battle.
(The Center Square) – Clients in the case commonly known as the "Ring Boys" are able to move forward following a federal judge’s rejection on Monday of a constitutional challenge brought by World Wrestling Entertainment, TKO Group Holdings, Vince McMahon…
WASHINGTON, Oct. 20, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science has announced the selection of 75 PhD students from 58 universities, representing 30 home states and Puerto Rico, for the 2026 Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program.
The SCGSR program prepares doctoral candidates for careers that advance the Office of Science’s mission to transform our understanding of nature and strengthen America’s energy, economic, and national security. Participants receive world-class training and access to state-of-the-art facilities, expertise, and resources at DOE’s National Laboratories.
“The Office of Science is proud to support this outstanding cohort of graduate students as they take their research to the next level at our world-class National Laboratories,” said DOE Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil. “By connecting these talented researchers with premier scientific facilities and mentorship from leading Laboratory scientists, the SCGSR program not only enriches their doctoral training, but also bolsters the next generation of American innovators tackling our nation’s most pressing energy and scientific challenges.”
Awardees were selected from a competitive pool of graduate applicants based on scientific merit reviews conducted by external experts.
SCGSR awardees conduct research addressing critical energy challenges at national and international scales. Projects in this cohort span seven Office of Science research programs, including research in Artificial Intelligence, quantum information science, fusion energy, and accelerator science. Awards were made through the SCGSR program’s first of two annual solicitation cycles for Fiscal Year 2026.
Graduate students currently pursuing PhD degrees in the fields of physics, chemistry, material sciences, biology (non-medical), geology, planetary sciences, mathematics, engineering, and computer or computational sciences and whose research aligns with the mission of the Office of Science are eligible to apply to the SCGSR program. Through access to the expertise, resources, and capabilities of DOE National Laboratories, awardees can advance their doctoral research and training.
Since 2014, the SCGSR program has provided over 1,500 U.S. graduate awardees from 178 universities with supplemental funds to conduct part of their thesis research at DOE National Laboratories in collaboration with DOE National Laboratory scientists.
A list of the 75 awardees for this selection, their institutions, host DOE Laboratory or User Facility, and priority research areas of their projects can be found on the SCGSR Awards and Publications page.
New court records reportedly show that DHS targeted Stop Cop City activist Samuel Tunick at an Atlanta airport because he was under investigation for suspected "terrorist activities." However, the CBP officers told him instead that they wanted to search his phone for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Tunick, who is not accused of terrorism or any other crime beyond allegedly wiping his GrapheneOS phone during the encounter, faces up to five years in prison. 404 Media reports: Instead of saying he was being targeted for suspected terrorism -- although this search happened just at the start of the second Trump administration, it has dramatically broadened what organizations or people may be considered such -- they said they needed his phone to look for "kiddie p*rn." "Good afternoon," an email sent from a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) official, part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to CBP and other officials reads. "The following subject is scheduled to arrive in ATL [Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport] today via DL 1778 @ 1930 Hours. TUNICK is under investigation by HSI/JTTF for suspected terrorist activities." The email includes a photo of Tunick, and asks the officials to direct him to secondary inspection, retain all of his electronics, and collect their passcodes.
As 404 Media first revealed in December, Tunick was charged because he allegedly "did knowingly destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, and otherwise take any action to delete the digital contents of a Google Pixel cellular phone, for the purpose of preventing and impairing the Government's lawful authority to take said property into its custody and control." Matthew Dodge, one of Tunick's lawyers, previously told 404 Media he only found one other case using the same obscure law, a drug trafficking case. "This is extraordinarily rare," Dodge said.
Tunick was part of the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, which broadly protested the building of a large police training center, and which authorities investigated for arson, vandalism, and doxing. Tunick is not suspected of any crime beyond the alleged wiping of the phone, and has previously put his current prosecution in the context of the wide spanning cases against other Stop Cop City protesters. The newly filed court record, in which Tunick's lawyers argue that evidence should be thrown out, include new photos and descriptions of the airport encounter. The CBP officials asked Tunick if they were going to find "kiddie p*rn" on his phone, which Tunick immediately denied. "As the evidentiary hearing made clear, these unfounded accusations were nothing more than pretext for a fishing expedition into the depths of Mr. Tunick's devices," the lawyers wrote. They added, "Officer Findley acknowledged that officers had no reason whatsoever to believe Mr. Tunick possessed child p*rnography," referring to one of the officials.
U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., is warning voters her Democratic opponent, Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon, would make things more expensive by increasing their taxes.
In a Moody campaign ad, a diner server pours coffee for a table of older adult customers. “She works nine-hour shifts, mostly on her feet,” Moody says from off-screen. Referring to the customers, she says, “They spent 40 years paying in to Social Security. Every dollar in this diner was earned.”
Moody then introduces herself: “I voted to stop taxing tips and Social Security while my opponent backed a $4 trillion tax hike on everyone in this diner.”
Moody is referring to Nixon’s opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which became law in July 2025. The bill, which Moody supported, extended the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and granted new breaks. If repealed in its entirety, experts said, it could raise taxes by about $4 trillion.
But here’s where the ad misleads: Although Nixon has spoken out against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act many times, the crux of her public objections focus on the bill’s tax breaks for corporations and the ultra-wealthy, not its reductions for older adults or hourly workers like restaurant servers.
The 2017 tax cuts passed during Trump’s first administration lowered the average income tax rates for all income groups, with the largest cuts concentrated among the top 5% of earners. As these cuts were set to expire on Dec. 31, 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act reupped them and enacted temporary tax breaks for people who work overtime and receive tips.
The 2025 law gave workers a tax break on some tipped income and to some older Americans aged 65 and older an additional $6,000 tax deduction until 2028. It didn’t end taxes on Social Security or tips.
Nixon’s campaign said she supports eliminating federal taxes on tips and Social Security — and she wants to repeal only the portions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that apply to the wealthy and corporations. She said she hopes such cuts will help pay for free childcare and universal healthcare.
Nixon criticized the 2025 tax law’s benefits for very wealthy people?
The ad cited an article from Florida’s Voice, a conservative news site, showing onscreen a headline that says, “Socialist…vows to scrap tax cuts as Florida leads nation in refunds.” The Aug. 31 Florida’s Voice article cited interviews Nixon gave in a July 8 podcast and an Aug. 19 CBS Mornings segment.
In the podcast interview, Nixon said the One Big Beautiful Bill Act had cut assistance programs for Americans to give “tax breaks to the rich.” She said she wanted to fight for those programs.
In the CBS Mornings interview, she spoke about her desire for universal healthcare and free childcare, and said that to pay for it she “would repeal that big BS bill because that’s what it was. It wasn’t beautiful. And I would make sure that these big-time billionaires and ultra-wealthy millionaires pay what they owe.”
In a June 18 Miami Beach Democratic primary forum, as she was talking about affordability, Nixon also said she wanted to repeal the Big Beautiful Bill Act to make sure the wealthiest pay their “fair share.”
Nixon’s campaign website says that besides advocating for Medicare for All and free childcare, she also seeks free paid family and sick leave, a national rent freeze and a moratorium on evictions. She would pay for these changes by implementing a 5% annual wealth tax on billionaires, and cutting spending on war.
A Moody campaign spokesperson pointed PolitiFact to several tax and policy analyses that estimated One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s tax cuts would come tomore than $4 trillion and estimated tax increases in that range if the 2017 cuts weren’t extended.
Calculations by the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based think tank, found the 2025 law would reduce federal revenue by about $4.3 trillion over 10 years, which is roughly in line with Moody’s number. Garrett Watson, Tax Foundation vice president of federal tax policy, said the estimate includes the values of the new tax cuts and the 2017 tax cut extensions.
Watson estimated that 35% of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s tax cuts went to the top 10% of earners. Getting rid of those alone — which is closer to what Nixon’s campaign said she would want — could increase taxes by about $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion, he said.
Is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act benefiting hourly wage earners and senior adults?
Although Moody said in the ad that the tax cuts on tips and for older Americans helped the average people at the diner, experts said the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is more beneficial for people with higher incomes.
“It is the case that the benefits of the tax cuts were larger for higher-income Americans than they were for low and middle income Americans,” Joseph Rosenberg, senior fellow at the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, said. “So the main thing is that largely speaking, the bulk of the tax cuts were reductions in the federal income tax and that is a very progressive tax. And so even, for changing the broad income tax rates and schedule, the benefits are very concentrated at the top.”
He also said the law made significant changes and cuts to federal estate and gift taxes, which “only very wealthy people are subject to.” It also extended a deduction for certain types of business income that is concentrated among higher-income Americans.
A Tax Foundation analysis showed the 2025 tax law increased after-tax income across-the-board, but the breaks were not evenly distributed and went mostly to top earners.
Our ruling
Moody said Nixon “backed a $4 trillion tax hike on everyone in this diner,” including a server and older adults.
Moody was referring to Nixon’s objection to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. If the law were repealed in its entirety, it could result in a $4 trillion overall tax increase.
Although Nixon has said multiple times she wants to repeal the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to help provide universal healthcare and free childcare, she has focused her objections on the law’s benefits for the nation’s ultra-rich and corporations, saying the wealthiest have to pay their “fair share” in taxes. Most of the law’s tax cuts went to higher income earners.
Her campaign told PolitiFact she supports tax cuts on tips and for older Americans and wants to eliminate only the law’s cuts to the wealthy.
Cutting the tax breaks to only the top 5% of earners could increase their taxes by about $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion.
The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. We rate it Half True.
Exclusive: Admission from James Orr to undercover reporter came three months before party was given £72m
A senior Reform UK official raised questions about whether major donations from billionaire backers Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo would be legal under the proposed new foreign donors cap three months before they gave £72m to the party.
James Orr, who was then Reform UK’s head of policy and a Cambridge professor, discussed potential difficulties around future donations from Harborne and Delo in undercover footage captured by the investigative reporting group Verbatim.
Amy Acton’s brother calls campaigning on his sister’s sexual abuse from their mother’s husband ‘a despicable low’
The family of Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio, is criticizing her Republican opponent Vivek Ramaswamy for using Acton’s estranged mother in a recently released campaign ad.
In the ad, which has circulated among conservatives on social media, her mother, Donna Arthur, said: “She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life.”
RAF Typhoon fighters to fly defensive missions over cities and infrastructure in extension of UK support for Riyadh
RAF Typhoon fighters are to be used in efforts to protect Saudi Arabia from attack by Yemen’s Houthis, flying protective missions over the country’s cities and critical infrastructure as western allies increase their intervention in the escalating conflict.
The operation – the most significant military mission signed off by Andy Burnham as prime minister – will involve RAF pilots attempting to shoot down Houthi missiles and drones, which attacked Saudi airports and oil facilities.
The online retailer plans to sharply boost its hiring for the holiday season this year. Here's what kind of positions they're looking to fill and how much they pay.
The Jackdaw gasfield will be given the go-ahead on Wednesday, signalling Andy Burnham’s commitment to the North Sea fossil fuel industry and threatening to trigger a row with climate campaigners and Labour MPs.
Miatta Fahnbulleh and John Healey, the energy secretary and chancellor respectively, will make the announcement from Aberdeen on Wednesday morning after more than a year of deliberations over whether doing so would violate the UK’s climate commitments.
Woman says alleged assault at comedian’s London home was one of most painful experiences of her life
A woman has said she “couldn’t speak or breathe” when Russell Brand raped her at his London townhouse after picking her out from a crowd after one of his gigs, a court has heard.
She said the comedian looked “horrified” after the alleged attack so she assumed he would apologise but instead he told her: “Clear up the mess you’ve made.”
Sens. Cory Booker and Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Ro Khanna are among the latest additions to a post-midterm gathering in Denver, where Democrats will strategize about the future of the party.
Washington, DC — The Trump administration is giving pro-Trump YouTuber Nick Shirley a $10,000 government payment for his fraud-related videos, further blurring the line between independent journalism and political advocacy.
Shirley will become the first recipient of a new Justice Department Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program, which promises rewards of up to $30,000 for tips producing convictions or significant enforcement actions.
The White House credits Shirley’s viral Minnesota daycare video with helping expose fraud. But major fraud investigations in Minnesota were already underway before his video, including the $250 million Feeding Our Future case.
Shirley’s reporting methods have also repeatedly drawn scrutiny. His videos rely heavily on confrontational encounters, selective footage and dramatic editing, while presenting suspicions as evidence of broader wrongdoing. Minnesota inspectors later found the daycare centers highlighted in his viral video generally operating normally, undermining the sweeping impression that they were simply fake businesses collecting government money.
Shirley also has a documented record of spreading inaccurate claims. AFP previously debunked his assertion that more than 30 people were illegally registered to vote at a San Diego UPS store. The address actually included a 34-unit apartment complex, and election officials found nobody registered to the store itself.
The payment comes after the Trump White House repeatedly promoted Shirley, invited him to administration events and used his videos to support its political messaging and policy actions.
That relationship raises an obvious question about how meaningfully Shirley can continue presenting himself as an independent journalist while receiving money and extraordinary access from the administration he overwhelmingly supports.
OpenBSD 8.0 has been released with major virtualization and hardware upgrades, including support for up to 64 vCPUs per VM, Intel Arc graphics, ARM64 hibernation, and expanded RISC-V support. Linuxiac points out that it marks the "61st release of the security-focused Unix-like operating system." From the report: Several fixes improve compatibility with 32-bit Linux guests, while changes to virtual machine ownership management and interrupt emulation make the virtualization infrastructure more capable. Graphics support has also been upgraded, with DRM drivers updated to those from Linux kernel 6.18.53. Notably, OpenBSD 8.0 adds support for Intel Arc A-Series (Alchemist) graphics cards through the inteldrm driver.
Another important change increases the amd64 kernel's virtual address space from 4 GB to 512 GB, allowing the system to map over 4 GB of video memory. The release also addresses GPU timeout issues affecting some Intel Alder Lake systems. [...] For security, OpenBSD 8.0 adds checks and fixes across the kernel and system utilities, including improvements to pledge and unveil, tighter validation of executable files, and protections against memory corruption and information disclosure. A full list of changes can be found here.
Further reading: Wine Ported to OpenBSD
Hot on the heels of Wine being ported to OpenBSD, we now have the release of OpenBSD 8.0. It adds hibernate support for arm64, switches the sparc64 toolchain to LLVM, and updates the DRM graphics drivers to Linux 6.18.53, which also adds support for Intel Arc A-Series (DG2/Alchemist) graphics cards. There’s a whole bunch of improvements, fixes, and changes for RISC-V and ARM in general, of course, as well as to the various Wi-Fi drivers. On top of that, it also comes with new versions of OpenSSH and LibreSSL, as well as a massive list of other improvements and fixes.
If you’ve never installed OpenBSD before, be sure to read this detailed guide to know what to do once everything’s installed, while listening to the official release song, of course.
It contains a new “Convert from 1.2” button in the tune dialogs and a handful of fixes, among them a fix of a frequency dependent filter in the Mahony calculation, which could potentially cause slight differences in feel when significantly changing the IMU Sample Rate.
Mounting anxiety as Russia’s war on Ukraine reaches Nato’s borders with targeting of vessels transporting agricultural cargo
Nato is deploying additional military assets to the Black Sea amid the recent deadly escalation of Russian attacks on merchant shipping, as five more vessels were attacked on Tuesday.
Russia’s military said it struck three cargo vessels in Ukraine’s port of Reni and two other cargo vessels en route to Odesa.
Voters’ emphatic rejection of separation strengthens Mark Carney’s energy strategy in the face of a US trade war and threats
Canadians are proving to be a voice of sanity. In roundly rejecting the idea of separating from Canada, voters in the oil- and gas-rich province of Alberta sensibly backed the nation-building strategy of the prime minister, Mark Carney. He has put Alberta at the centre of his plan to make Canada an energy superpower that is “much less dependent on the United States”.
Donald Trump’s trade war and threats last week to make Canada the 51st US state were a fillip for Mr Carney in Alberta, a landlocked western province where Liberal prime ministers have historically been unpopular. The stakes were high: a successful separatist campaign would have handed Mr Trump leverage over Canada’s resource belt. The result instead lets Mr Carney cast Alberta’s mineral wealth as a national asset, rather than allow separatists to define it as a regional grievance.
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The Ukrainian leadersays talks with US envoys covered security guarantees and he hopes to hear Russia’s response tomorrow
Nordic correspondent
As well as Steve Witkoff, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy will also meet the Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre and the Finnish president Alexander Stubb and Norway’s new King Haakon during his visit to Oslo.
My board is designed to be modular. Any motor, tire, or battery. I want it to only take a few minutes to swap things. My footpads shift forward and backward to provide different tire spacing. The challenge is getting the motor cable to reach the control enclosure for both growler tire and BTG. Also the length of the motor cable can vary between different motors.
To solve this I have designed a control enclosure with an extension for the motor connector. This allows the connector on the enclosure side to extend, which closes the gap for the motor cable. The extension seals to the box with an o-ring and fastens with 4x 4-40 screws.
Five-month-old Esta High died at Leeds General Infirmary in November 2023 after doctors put her symptoms down to Covid-19
A baby girl who died from meningitis may have been saved if doctors had tested her for the infection sooner, rather than putting her symptoms down to Covid, an inquest jury has found.
Five-month-old Esta High died at Leeds General Infirmary in November 2023, days after she was taken into the emergency department with a high temperature and vomiting.
A handful of Republicans have spoken out against Donald Trump’s softening stance on Russia, threatening to pull financial support for his agenda over his “embarrassing” handling of the Ukraine war.
Don Bacon, an outgoing congressman in Nebraska, condemned Trump’s actions – which include a stunning agreement to buy Russian diesel and the pausing of sanctions on Moscow – as “absolutely disgraceful” and accused the US president of cozying up to a “war criminal” in Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart.
SANA’A, Yemen — For more than two weeks, Abdullah laid at home in al-Silw district, in Yemen’s besieged southwestern governorate of Taiz, as his body slowly failed.
The 58-year-old had lived with kidney failure for two years, and his doctor had prescribed dialysis twice a week.
Since the siege, however, the fighting stood between al-Eissi and the dialysis center in Taiz city that kept him alive. Al-Eissi wouldn’t let his family risk their lives to take him to the center.
“My father’s condition deteriorated badly,” said his son, Muadh, 38. “We couldn’t move him to Taiz because the fighting had intensified.”
About a week ago, al-Eissi died at home in his bed.
“When I saw my mother weeping for her husband, I felt helpless,” Muadh said. “It might have been avoided if my father had reached his dialysis sessions on time.”
Abdullah is one of at least 10 dialysis patients who have died since the siege on Taiz began because they could not reach treatment, according to Dr. Issam Mahyoub, director of the kidney dialysis center at al-Jumhuri Hospital in Taiz. Doctors warn that many more could follow.
“About 60 percent of kidney failure patients in Taiz face the risk of death because they cannot reach the dialysis center.”
“About 60 percent of kidney failure patients in Taiz face the risk of death because they cannot reach the dialysis center,” said Dr. Fouad al-Haddad, the hospital’s director. “Behind every number is a human being and a family living in anxiety, waiting for a chance to continue treatment that may never come.”
The kidney-failure deaths are part of the toll of a wider regional war set off by an unprovoked February attack against Iran by Israel and the United States. Estimates hold that 10,000 or more people have died during the war, including both military and civilian deaths across the region. Since the regional war reignited in Yemen this summer, according to the World Health Organization, at least 800 people have been killed, with thousands wounded and tens of thousands displaced.
“The plight of dialysis patients in Taiz illustrates how geopolitical struggles over deterrence, energy security, and regional leverage translate into blocked transit, disrupted medical care, and preventable deaths,” said Sina Toossi, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy. “Yemen’s population has already endured more than a decade of devastating war, and the tragedy is that this wider regional conflict is now threatening to plunge it back into another humanitarian catastrophe.”
Yemen in the Iran War
Yemen entered the war in March, when the Iran-aligned Ansarallah armed group, more commonly known as the Houthis, began firing missiles into Israel in retaliation for its attacks on Iran. The Houthis, who gained control of various portions of Yemen during a two-decade-long insurgency, including the capital of Sana’a, saw their prominence in the Iran war grow with attacks against shipping channels surrounding the Arabian Peninsula.
The Yemeni civil war itself had been a long-simmering conflict when the Iran war broke out, straining a 2022 truce signed by the Houthis and their rivals, including Saudi Arabia, which was broken this July when the Houthis attacked a regional Saudi airport. Throughout August, the Houthis launched missile, drone, and ground attacks across the front lines against the internationally recognized, Saudi-backed Yemeni government.
In September, the Houthis seized strategic areas on Yemen’s coast and imposed a naval blockade that cut off the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, while firing missiles deeper into Saudi Arabia.
In early October, Yemeni government forces backed by the Saudi-led coalition launched an operation aimed at retaking the coast and pushing into Sana’a.
As they moved inland to consolidate their coastal gains, Houthi forces pushed into the highlands around Taiz, a strategically located city controlled by the government. In short order, the insurgents severed the main mountain road linking Taiz to Aden, another city also controlled by the government.
The blockade trapped more than 600,000 residents and sent food and fuel prices soaring. The U.N. World Food Program https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/10/1168591warned that Taiz’s wheat and flour stocks are close to running out.
“We have confirmed cases of death and cases of severe impact,” said Tawfiq al-Humaidi, head of the SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties, a Geneva-based international body monitoring violence in Yemen, who said fighting on roads near Taiz has cut off medical supplies from the city. “Those who are dying and suffering are among the victims of the Iranian war, which drove the Houthis to expand toward Taiz and Bab al-Mandeb.”
Any action would be too late for families like the al-Eissis.
Cut Off From Care
Taiz is Yemen’s cultural capital and its third-largest city. Healthcare facilities there serve a huge geographical area. Al-Haddad, the head of the al-Jumhuri Hospital, said patients hail from across the governorate.
“They come from the West Coast, al-Mawasit, Jabal Habashi, al-Shamayatayn, Sama, al-Silw, al-Misrakh, and al-Maafer areas,” he said, “where distances are long and the hardship of travel is multiplied by rough roads and security conditions.”
The kidney dialysis center has 270 registered patients.
“That doesn’t count the patients from outside the city who haven’t been able to reach us,” said Mahyoub, the head of the dialysis center. “Patients from al-Misrakh, al-Aqroud, al-Shamayatayn, al-Hujariya, al-Turba, and Jabal Habashi localities used to come to us. Now getting here has become extremely difficult, with the fighting and the restrictions on movement into the city.”
Ahlam Ali Abdo, 33, walks about 30 kilometers from her village in Jabal Habashi to reach the center, crossing rough roads and areas where gunfire and shelling ring out. The walk, extremely risky for a kidney failure patient, takes between 5 to 9 hours. After treatment, she faces the same distance back, uphill, to her three children. Some days the road is too dangerous, and Abdo waits for hours in the city.
“I cry constantly of pain and exhaustion and worry that I wouldn’t be able to see my children again. My condition is miserable,” she said.
Her husband stays home with the children. Bringing any of them with her, she said, would put the whole family in danger.
Mahyoub’s center tried and failed to find her housing in the city. Yesterday, on Friday, another dialysis patient took her in, for fear she would be killed on the road.
Reaching the center doesn’t guarantee treatment.
“The shortage of diesel needed to run the generators forced us to cut dialysis sessions from 4 hours to 2,” said Mahyoub. Supplies from the Ministry of Health in Aden “no longer arrive regularly, and the remaining stock is nearly gone.”
“Dialysis is a lifeline for these patients,” he said.
Haddad, the hospital director, said of the dialysis center doctors: “They are expected to save patients, but the means available are not always enough.”
In a statement, it said “medicines, solutions, medical supplies and fuel in the city’s health facilities were close to running out. That threatens emergency services, surgery, intensive care, dialysis and neonatal incubators.”
No Road to Aden
For patients who can no longer reach Taiz’s center, Aden is the fallback, whether for treatment or for its airport to travel abroad. The Taiz–Aden road, however, is unusable, according to patients and Mahyoub. The detours wind through mountain bends and rough terrain, add hours and transport costs, and in places run through active clashes.
The crisis extends beyond Taiz.
Dr. Anis al-Asbahi, spokesperson for the Health Ministry in Sana’a, said that “more than 8,000 kidney failure patients in Houthi-controlled governorates are suffering because hemodialysis machines and dialysis medicines can’t get in.”
He blamed the blockade and the closure of Sana’a airport.
“Kidney failure knows no political barriers,” Mahyoub said. “Patients cannot wait for disputes to be settled or for circumstances to change before they get treatment.”
For Muadh al-Eissi, whose father died from kidney failure, the question is simpler.
“How can the parties using heavy weapons in populated areas ignore what the fighting does to patients,” he asked, “to the children, women and elderly people who need medicine and treatment? People, like my father, are losing their lives for what?”
The ex-student writes she wants to share information that ‘may be relevant’ to vote of no confidence
The former Cornell University student who accused seven men of sexually assaulting her at a fraternity house in 2024 recently wrote a letter to campus faculty leaders saying that she felt “unsupported and disbelieved” by the Ivy League institution’s president.
The letter addressed to the Cornell faculty senate was obtained and published by the New York Times on Tuesday – and in it the former student said she wanted to share information that she believed “may be relevant” as the panel considers a vote of no confidence in the school’s administration.
Jurors in harassment trial told reporters who had written about far-right activist feared ‘vigilante attack’
Tommy Robinson told the Daily Mail’s editor he would make the paper’s journalists and their families “famous”, the harassment trial of the far-right activist has been told.
The threat was made in a voicemail message left on the phone of Ted Verity as Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, allegedly waged a campaign of harassment against journalists from the newspaper.
Columbus, OH — A pro-Vivek Ramaswamy attack ad featuring Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton’s estranged mother has triggered rare bipartisan outrage, with critics accusing Ramaswamy’s allies of exploiting Acton’s childhood abuse for political gain.
The video features Donna Arthur calling her daughter a “liar” and disputing Acton’s longtime account that her family lived in a tent during part of her childhood. But the ad omits key context: Acton has said she was sexually abused as a child by Arthur’s husband, who was criminally charged, and that she became estranged from her mother after being removed from the home.
Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, said Arthur remained married to the man accused of abusing his sister until his death. He accused Ramaswamy of turning that trauma into a campaign weapon and called the attack a “despicable low.”
Even prominent conservatives recoiled. Republican strategist Liz Mair called the ad “terrible,” commentator Mary Katharine Ham said it appeared likely to backfire, and Reason’s Robby Soave described it as “sick stuff.”
It remains unclear who produced or paid for the video, and there is no verified evidence that Ramaswamy’s campaign directly commissioned it. His campaign had not publicly addressed the controversy when the reports were published.
Acton’s account of her childhood, including living in a tent, was publicly documented years before she ran for governor.
Security researchers say Meta's Muse AI assistant exposed thousands of users' shared conversations because conversation titles were placed in subdomains that could be discovered through public DNS records. Meta has since suspended the sharing feature while it considers making changes. Ars Technica reports: Like many online services, Muse has allowed users to share searches, conversations, images, and similar content with other people. Such share features usually involve clicking an option to create a unique URL that anyone can use to load a page hosting the content. To keep potentially sensitive information from being accessible to unintended people, the URLs typically contain a long sequence of text that can't be easily guessed.
Muse, which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last month was "built from the ground up for privacy and security," seems to take the same precautions. But a central design decision for constructing URLs has made the links easy to discover. As a result, researchers from security firm Claroc said they were able to enumerate 6,800 links Muse users created for sharing conversations with others. After opening a few hundred of them, the researchers found information that was clearly not intended to be publicly available... [...]. "If you had asked us beforehand, we would have guessed that gathering these would take real effort," the researchers wrote. "It took one query."
[...] The easiest way to discover the URLs is to perform a passive DNS search through one of many available commercial services. Passive DNS records store the historical resolution of domain names to IP addresses, as well as nameserver, and mail-server records over time. Passive DNS systems typically collect DNS responses from sensors positioned at recursive DNS resolvers or other infrastructure. A passive DNS record is generally created when a monitoring system observes a DNS response. In the case here, once the intended party clicks on the share link, the DNS information is recorded in a searchable database.
Claroc researchers were able to discover the Muse share links because all of them use the domain name cf.metaaiusercontent.com. Discovery is further made easy by the decision to add the conversation name to the URL, along with a long string of text. Simplified examples of such links are home-sale-budget-9f21c8a3.cf.metaaiusercontent.com, q3-revenue-review-7b1e42f0.cf.metaaiusercontent.com, and loan-application-draft-a4c9e2.cf.metaaiusercontent.com. It's this last design decision, putting the conversation title in the subdomain rather than in the URL path, that makes public discovery possible.
Our dependence on internet services of a few key tech companies leaves us vulnerable to cloud failures, bugs and more, experts say
It happened again. A power outage hit a datacentre in London, and things cascaded from there: multiple banking services faltered, court hearings were put on hold and patients reported temporary glitches on the NHS app.
The datacentre in question was in Google’s europe-west2-b zone, one of more than a dozen “zones” that the US search giant maintains in Europe to service its clients.
Officers are instruments of state whose job is to repress, rather than manage, public dissent
Familiar images of teargas clouds drifting across Paris squares, police baton charges against masked protesters and terrified teenagers floored – and worse – by stun grenades have once again focused the world’s attention on France’s policing methods.
While most of its western European neighbours generally favour police tactics that prioritise crowd containment and de-escalation, France has long responded to social movements that take to the streets with, at times, shocking physical force.
Videos show shark launching several feet from water as a group of friends pose for photos along Marina state beach
A great white shark put on a spectacular display for California beachgoers over the weekend, leaping from the water off Marina state beach and photobombing visitors.
Videos circulating online show a great white shark launching several feet out of the water in the background as a group of friends pose for photos along the beach.
Oct. 20, 2026 — The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), together with GRNET S.A., the National Infrastructures for Research and Technology in Greece, inaugurated the DAEDALUS supercomputer, located in Lavrion, Greece.
The DAEDALUS supercomputer, located in Lavrion, Attica, Greece. Credit: EuroHPC.
DAEDALUS is the most powerful supercomputer ever ranked in Greece. On its first appearance in the June 2026 lists, it secured 31st place in the TOP500 ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers and 23rd place in the Green500 ranking of the most energy-efficient systems.
The inauguration ceremony, held on Oct. 19 at the Lavrion Technological Cultural Park – National Technical University of Athens, was attended by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis; Thomas Skordas, Deputy Director-General at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT); Minister Dimitris Papastergiou; Afrodite Sevasti and Evangelos Floros, Head of Infrastructure unit at the EuroHPC JU. Other distinguished participants included Professor Ioannis Hatzigeorgiou, Professor Emeritus Stefanos Kollias and Professor Nektarios Koziris.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated: “Greece’s journey in technology, from lagging behind to being at the forefront, particularly in the field of Artificial Intelligence, has indeed been and continues to be extremely exciting. I would like to thank everyone who worked to make this project a reality. I can see the emotion in many people’s eyes, because I know how hard you all worked in order for us to reach this point today, where, as a country, we have one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, while at the same time having it installed in a building of such great historical and cultural significance.
“We are building a ‘bridge’ from the Second Industrial Revolution, from the early 20th century, when we generated electricity in this space, to having installed a supercomputer with exceptional capabilities in the very same building. Now we are taking the next step: making this incredible computing power available to Greek researchers, the Greek business community, start-ups, and larger enterprises alike. Wishing all the good fortune ahead for DAEDALUS operations.”
Thomas Skordas, Deputy Director-General of DG CONNECT, stated: “It is a great honor to be in Lavrion today for the inauguration of the ‘DAEDALUS’ supercomputer. At a time when technological sovereignty and competitiveness are crucial, Europe is investing strategically in advanced computing. With EUR 36 million in support, ‘DAEDALUS’ strengthens Greece’s position at the heart of the digital future.
“Greece is among the first seven European countries to host an AI Factory, placing it firmly on the global supercomputing map. As the computing infrastructure of the PHAROS AI Factory, it will turn research into tangible social and economic impact by providing world-class computing power to Greek talent. Together, we are ensuring that Greece and Europe help shape the future.”
Anders Jensen, EuroHPC JU Executive Director, stated: “I am delighted to welcome another powerful supercomputer to the EuroHPC ecosystem, strengthening Europe’s supercomputing capabilities and technological sovereignty. DAEDALUS will provide European researchers, industry and innovators with access to advanced computing resources focussing on areas such as healthcare, public services, energy, and the environment.”
About the Supercomputer
DAEDALUS is a mid-range supercomputer delivering a sustained computing performance of 85.69 petaflops, equivalent to almost 86 quadrillion arithmetic operations per second, with a peak performance of 115 petaflops. It represents another milestone in strengthening Europe’s supercomputing capabilities and supporting innovation.
Built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), the system is based on more than 2,000 NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips and incorporates advanced direct liquid cooling to support energy-efficient operations.
DAEDALUS is co-funded with a total acquisition cost of EUR 36 million. The EuroHPC JU funds 35% of the total cost of the new system, while the other 65% is funded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan ‘Greece 2.0’, financed by the European Union – NextGenerationEU. The DAEDALUS consortium also includes Cyprus, Montenegro and North Macedonia, highlighting the importance of cross-border cooperation in developing Europe’s advanced computing infrastructure.
Result is a victory for prime minister Mark Carney and supporters of Canadian unity
Voters in Canada’s Alberta have overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to begin the process of independence, delivering a decisive victory for supporters of Canadian unity and deepening divisions within the separatist movement.
With nearly 1.9m votes counted, roughly 76% people supported remaining in Canada, while 24% backed beginning a process toward separation, according to unofficial results from Elections Alberta.
Mitchell Fairbarn found guilty of animal cruelty after prosecutors say he hurt and frightened the 27-year-old bird
A Canadian man was convicted of animal cruelty charges on Monday for snatching a flamingo named Peachy from its enclosure at an iconic Las Vegas hotel.
Prosecutors said it was a malicious prank while a lawyer for the tourist insisted it was drunken foolishness not meant to harm the bird.
The Trump administration has banned DeepSeek AI from most US civilian federal agencies, ordering the removal of the Chinese company's models and technology developed using them. The Department of Homeland Security did not specify the security threats behind the decision. The BBC reports: The order (PDF) is broad, as it requires agencies to ditch "all DeepSeek and DeepSeek-affiliate products, and third-party products and services developed using DeepSeek implementations." Complying will be tricky as it is not clear which third-party products and services have been developed using DeepSeek's wares. Nor is it clear whether "developed using" means providing ongoing access to DeepSeek models via API or simply refers to any app vibe-coded with the help of DeepSeek.
It also leaves open the question of AI gateways. Services such as OpenRouter and Vercel AI Gateway make DeepSeek's models available through APIs. And those using gateway services may find themselves using DeepSeek models without meaning to do so. OpenRouter, for example, "routes requests to the best available providers for your model." It selects what the service deems to be the best fit provider of AI services. Vercel AI Gateway does the same by default. So federal civilian agencies could be using DeepSeek models inadvertently, if they haven't taken steps to constrain their AI providers.
Far-right presidential candidate’s TV debate swipe at rival backfires as people take to social media to parody it
To Flávio Bolsonaro and his publicists, it must have seemed an ingenious idea that would expose his rival’s supposed crookedness on the eve of Brazil’s presidential election.
But the far-right politician’s decision to attend a primetime television debate against his leftwing opponent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with the word “corrupto” (corrupt) written on the palm of his hand has backfired.
Google apologises after power issue causes a major Cloud outage in its London region today that led to problems at banks, Revolut, and court video cameras
The pound has rallied after Britain’s unemployment rate fell unexpectedly this morning to 4.7%.
Sterling has gained half a cent against the US dollar to $1.3352, as the City welcomes the news that employment rose in the last quarter.
“This data has caught the market on the hop, with traders scrambling to respond and boost exposure to the pound. Good news has been a touch more prevalent for the UK of late, which is just the kind of framing the government needs heading into the budget, though signs of more resilience in the labour market do of course mean the BoE has more room to respond to higher inflation.”
“The labour market remains relatively flat overall. This resilience in the face of headwinds driven by global events is welcome. But underlying problems remain, with around one million young people not in education, employment or training and overall employment more than two million short of the Government’s 80% employment rate target.
To fix those challenges we need to change the benefit system so it offers active help to all who need it, but also make it easier for employers to create jobs. “
Ann Altman, the Open AI CEO’s sister, accused her brother of repeatedly sexually abusing her over two decades ago
A judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Sam Altman’s sister against him on Tuesday. Ann Altman accused the OpenAI CEO of repeatedly sexually abusing her more than two decades ago, which he has denied.
In dismissing Ann Altman’s lawsuit, the US district judge Zachary Bluestone wrote that she had refused to appear for an independent medical examination despite warnings that failure to do so would result in the case’s dismissal.
Lawyers tell inquiry ‘patients’ lives are at stake’ through improper use of Oxevision system for most vulnerable
Families bereaved by the misuse of an “intrusive” camera monitoring system for vulnerable patients used in half of England’s mental health wards, have called for it to be banned to help prevent more avoidable deaths.
Lawyers for the families said “patients’ lives are at stake” by the continuing use of Oxevision, the Lampard inquiry into mental health deaths in Essex heard on Tuesday.
The inquiry was told that five patients killed themselves, or died unexpectedly, in two years while being surveilled by Oxevision’s infrared cameras at Essex Partnership University NHS foundation trust (Eput).
Peter Mant KC, representing more than 70 bereaved families, including the family of Elise Sebastian, 16, who killed herself in 2021 when staff had muted Oxevision’s alarm system, said: “Use of this technology has contributed in material ways to harms, and in some cases deaths of patients, due to the misapplication of the system.”
Addressing Kate Lampard, the chair of the inquiry, Brenda Campbell KC, representing other bereaved families including that of Sophie Alderman who the inquiry heard mistakenly believed in 2022 that Oxevision would bring staff to save her, said: “We urge you to recommend that the use of Oxevision on mental health inpatient wards is stopped nationally.”
She added: “Its harms have fallen hardest on detained, traumatised and neurodivergent patients, and no regulator took responsibility for it.”
Andy Haldane writes that Conservative economic plans would be best for growth ahead of Healey budget
Badenoch says Britain needs tax cuts.
We need to get out of the way of job creators who make our country richer. We need to encourage risk taking, wealth creation, enterprise.
Britain’s tax burden has never been higher. You are taxed on the heating in your home. You’re taxed at the petrol pump filling up your car. You’re taxed when you insure that car. You’re taxed if you take the family away on holiday. You’re taxed if you stay in the UK thanks to Andy Burnham’s tourist tax. You’re taxed to buy a home, taxed to live in a home, taxed to pass on your home. This is clearly not working. Britain does not feel better off.
Andy Burnham wrote in The Times yesterday about the moral outrage of the current benefit system. But as far as I could work out, his answer is to spend even more on benefits.
When the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997, it was an early victory for artificial intelligence over the human mind, and the culmination of decades of attempts. Almost 30 years later, a computer program has finally outdone humans at solving cryptic crosswords.
Earlier this month, a model called Darmok solved the final puzzle of the Times’s annual cryptic crossword competition about three minutes faster than Liam Hughes, 29, who became the contest’s youngest (human) winner.
Wolf trap missing its lowest crosspiece? (5)”
Proportion of inspiration and perspiration? It’s roughly 45% and 42% (5)
Kick-off leads to decisive early goal for PSG (5)
To read the complete version of this newsletter including the exclusive Letter Adder game, subscribe to receive Cluesletter in your inbox every Tuesday.
I have a Pint X with about 1000 miles on it that I plan on keeping for a while, but the motor is not as smooth as my 100 mile Pint X.
I can find a Pint less than 100 miles on it for $100, so I’m thinking of buying it just to get the new motor for my Pint X since they’re the same. Can these motors be replaced on a stock board without throwing any errors?
Result is largest margin at any age level of a World Cup
DiMaria is first to score six at Fifa finals since Haaland
Tournament is in year two of expanded 24-team field
The United States began their U-17 Women’s World Cup campaign on Monday with a record-setting 17-0 win over Samoa the biggest win at any age level in World Cup history.
The result surpassed the previous record for margin at an 11-a-side World Cup, a 16-0 win by Morocco against New Caledonia in the 2025 U-17 men’s World Cup. Ten players scored for the US, and forward Maddie DiMaria led with six goals in Salé, Morocco.
City’s Beatles Story museum to move to 100,000 sq ft new home and official ownership, along with Yellow Submarine makeover of Liverpool’s second-tallest building
Liverpool is to unveil a new 100,000 sq ft visitor attraction about the Beatles, in plans hailed as “extraordinary” by Paul McCartney, and by Andy Burnham as having “the kind of ambition I want to see more of across Britain”.
Opening in 2028, the project is a huge upgrade for the Beatles Story, a museum which opened in Liverpool’s Royal Albert Dock in 1990. Ownership will now pass to the Beatles company Apple Corps, making the Beatles Story the band’s first official fan experience in their home city.
Travelers booking Scotland for 2027 need to pay attention to the booking date, not only the travel date. Starting October 1, 2026, new reservations for qualifying stays in Aberdeen and West Dunbartonshire can fall under visitor levies that begin next…
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Nscale is in talks to sell AI computing power to Claude maker Anthropic in a new deal that could be worth about $45 billion, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday. The data center developer is seeking another major deal with the AI lab for a second facility at its Monarch data center campus in West Virginia, the person said. In August, Anthropic struck a deal to spend $45 billion to rent AI cloud computing power from Nscale's West Virginia data center campus. A second Monarch building would deliver 460 megawatts of computing power using Nvidia's advanced Vera Rubin AI chips, according to the source. [...] According to the Nscale prospectus, Microsoft and Anthropic are expected to be the company's major customers in the future. Further reading: Microsoft Abandons UK AI Supercomputer As Grid Struggles to Keep Up
About 20,000 cats were taken into charity’s care last year, an increase driven in part by pet hoarders
There is a cat crisis in rescue centres across the country, the RSPCA has said, as abandoned felines now outnumber dogs in the charity’s shelters.
Cats are arriving in RSPCA centres faster than they can be rehomed, and the charity is asking people across England and Wales to consider adopting. Pet owners are being urged to neuter their cats as kittens are increasingly being found dumped in perilous conditions.
The administration seems intent on stripping the congresswoman of her US citizenship and deporting her. It’s a terrible abuse of power
What do you think it is about Ilhan Omar, exactly, that seems to get under Donald Trump’s tangerine-tinted skin? The president has claimed he has a problem with the progressive Democratic congresswoman because she is “unpatriotic” to the US and “disrespectful … to Israel”. However, the extent of his animus towards Omar, the first Somali American in Congress, suggests there’s more to it. Trump has insisted he is “the least racist person there is anywhere in the world”, so I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that she’s brown and Muslim. Truly, it’s a mystery.
Whatever the reason, Trump’s not a fan. The president has plenty of enemies, but few have been attacked as ferociously and consistently over the years as Omar. He’s called her “garbage”, among other nasty names, suggested (without evidence) that she married her brother, and said she “should be thrown the hell out of our country”. His supporters have echoed his calls to deport Omar, who fled war-torn Somalia as a child and became a naturalised US citizen at 17.
Television channels BBC Three and BBC Scotland are to close and the Radio 4 Extra radio station will be scrapped, as part of the corporation’s drive to cut £500m in costs.
Both TV channels are to move online as executives try to plug a funding crisis and adapt the broadcaster’s output for audiences that increasingly watch content on demand. All three outlets will close in the spring.
Is your television listening to every conversation? Filling your home with highly invasive ads? Some viewers have had enough of tech violating their privacy
When Dan had had enough of his television, he threw a rock straight through the screen. The offence? His smart TV was downloading its third update in three days. “It drove me crazy with what seemed like daily software updates that never fixed anything and ‘features’ that never seemed to work,” says the 71-year-old from Illinois. “And of course, constantly trying to push me to subscribe to paid-for services when all I wanted to do was watch over-the-air TV, play a DVD or stream something from my computer.”
Some may accuse Dan of being a luddite, but his master’s degree in computer science and decades of experience in telecommunications would suggest otherwise. “The tech is not intimidating,” he explains, “just increasingly enshittified.”
Can the UK drive middle power coordination on AI?Expert commentthilton.drupal
Other middle powers are increasingly realizing the need for cooperation. The UK should help advance it.
Last week, UK AI Minister Kanishka Narayan announced the government would take steps to boost Britain’s resilience to AI-driven risks. New measures will include advancing the government’s cyber defence and considering how to use legislation to mandate serious AI incident reporting.
In the face of US and Chinese dominance and growing global concerns about an AI crisis, the UK is one of many countries seeking to build agency and security over AI. Last week at Chatham House, Canada’s AI Minister Evan Solomon outlined his country’s vision for secure, democratic technology and called for coalitions among likeminded countries to build and govern it.
Solomon’s speech came after a group of 20 countries and the EU also issued a joint statement calling for measures to control frontier AI models. Led by Norway and Finland, the signatories are all, arguably, ‘middle powers.’ They include democracies like Australia and Canada and non-democracies like Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
The UK was noticeably absent from this joint statement. But UK prime minister Andy Burnham did use his UN General Assembly address to commit UK leadership to a global agreement on AI. And AI will be front-and-centre of the UK G20 presidency next year.
The joint statement is just a call to action. Yet it may be a promising indication that middle powers are creating the tools and networks they need to coordinate on safe, secure AI. The UK can strengthen its middle power status on AI through driving coordination while also carving out a leading role on AI security.
Welcome to the club
Coordination between middle powers first requires defining them. The challenge is that who counts as a middle power is contested.
One argument would be that ‘AI middle powers’ is simply a term for everyone except Washington and Beijing. The state of play is sobering. The US and China dominate up to 90 per cent of compute. Middle powers cannot compete with their capital expenditure on AI. Most countries are dependent on US and Chinese technology.
But middle powers like the UK are not constrained. To build agency over the AI stack, they have options. Some choose to align with a superpower or hedge between them. Others specialize, dominating a strategic foothold in the supply chain.
However, there is another option: coordination. For most countries, the secure, safe buildout and maintenance of the AI stack is already an exercise in inescapable interdependence. This cooperation extends far beyond flashy frontier models. There is a case to be made that middle power status itself is forged through coordination.
Recent months have seen a shift in the discourse on sovereignty: to build agency and shape technology markets, middle powers realize they cannot go it alone. Many EU states reiterated their commitment to European AI sovereignty at last week’s Dublin AI summit.
But the competitiveness, security and prosperity that sovereignty might deliver are endangered if countries can’t work together to mitigate AI-driven risks. Agency and readiness demand coordination extending beyond dialogue and declarations.
Countries in the Global South like India and Brazil have known for years that agency requires coordination, and have created open digital infrastructure like payment systems and digital IDs.
This imperative is now felt by others: last month, Canada’s Cohere and Germany’s Aleph Alpha joined forces to become ‘the first transatlantic sovereign AI solution’, while the two countries committed £300 million to a non-profit AI safety start-up.
Agency and readiness demand coordination that extends beyond dialogue.
Some middle powers are concerned about their readiness after a summer of hype (some warranted, some inflated) over AI’s potential to cause a global crisis.
Many realize their access to mostly American proprietary models such as Claude or GPT-5 is not guaranteed, while some are concerned about dependence on Chinese open-weight models. Accurate information about security risks and impacts is hard to come by: whether in the AI system or its applications. In the face of this uncertainty, Canada has led calls for a Technology Stability Board modelled on the post-crash Financial Stability Board (FSB).
Team GB
The UK is playing a balancing act. It is working bilaterally with middle powers, announcing partnerships with Canada on AI security and Germany on technology investment this month. It has diplomatic capital: it brought the US and China together for the world’s first AI Safety Summit in 2023, while King Charles convened AI executives at Dumfries last month.
But the UK has arguably been wary of wider middle power coordination on AI. At the same time, Burnham’s government has pursued a close relationship with the US, announcing an AI and defence deal last month. The US and UK signed a Technology Prosperity Deal for the UK’s AI infrastructural buildout last year, which has since been criticized for its lack of transparency and appears to have not been widely implemented.
The UK should sign the middle powers’ statement on AI security.
The UK has an advanced AI ecosystem. Yet, alone, this buys Britain little. Granted, the US is a powerful partner on technology, but it is a volatile one: UK resilience and sovereignty are not guaranteed by alignment with the US.
A high-profile case in point: the UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) is world-leading for evaluating models and their risks. But having previously been granted access to US frontier models, concerning reports have circulated that US companies might be under pressure from the White House to not send their models to AISI for testing immediately.
This summer featured multiple U-turns over whether anyone outside of the US would have immediate access to Anthropic’s latest models. The question is whether the UK, EU and other middle powers could have negotiated for access as a bloc – and whether the UK’s alignment with the US is at odds with coordinating with its counterparts.
Coordination of the willing
Optimism about a middle power alliance on AI is often misplaced. This is because coordination does not happen organically. Diplomatic infrastructure – information, institutions, and networks – is needed. This helps countries coordinate, especially in a crisis: like a future supply chain shock or revoked access to a widely used model.
Building diplomatic capacity on AI is gathering momentum. G7 finance ministers recently committed to using simulation exercises to build resilience. For a year, Chatham House has worked with AI Safety Asia to test diplomatic infrastructure through simulated crises to stress-test solutions, like risk monitoring and technical interventions. Findings can be scaled up to multilateral institutions.
The UK is well-placed to advance this diplomatic infrastructure. Its G20 presidency offers an opportunity for middle power coordination on AI. The UK government should use the various summits in 2027 – including the G20 Geneva AI Summit and UN Global Dialogue – to build consensus among different middle powers that can underpin a global agreement.
Specifically, the UK should use its diplomatic capital and technical authority to broker agreement on issues underpinning stability and trust. These could include risk monitoring, independent evaluations, incident reporting and notification, with trusted standards building reliability.
In the short term, the UK should sign the middle powers’ statement on AI security. Using the G20 to design an FSB-style arrangement could even pave the way for some mandatory testing and serious incident information-sharing.
US-China challenges
This does not come without challenges. US-China competition has prevented internationally binding rules on AI, although November’s planned bilateral talks on AI may move the needle on issues like an incident hotline.
Washington could impose retaliatory measures if middle powers come together on safety regulation that it perceives as unfriendly or to set conditions on market access. Meanwhile, other middle powers may be tempted by China’s AI offer, which is backed up with new multilateral initiatives such as the World AI Cooperation Organization, launched in Shanghai.
Despite these obstacles, coordination between middle powers – in regional or issue-based groupings, and on bargaining, building or securing AI – is flourishing. The UK can be a leader on AI security and advance an ambitious multilateral agenda on AI. But first, it needs a middle power strategy.
As SpaceX impacts Ukraine and AI-generated music divides artists and fans, critics are asking what happens when technology has too much control over our lives
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Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you while sitting in front of Roy Lichtenstein’s monumental Drowning Girl, on view in New York City. Today in tech, we’re discussing the perils of Elon Musk’s one-man global infrastructure, AI-generated music and a Guardian AI conference in Paris.
Conflict in Middle East is pushing jet fuel costs higher and many carriers are not hedged against such increases, Michael O’Leary says
Ryanair’s chief executive has predicted a record increase in European air fares next year, as airlines grapple with fuel bills pushed higher by the Middle East conflict.
Many carriers are not hedged against rising jet fuel costs, Michael O’Leary said, which he predicted would lead to airline bankruptcies and takeovers. He forecast these pressures would result in the price of plane tickets rising by as much as 20%.
The Eagles quarterback’s recent health issues highlight how football’s toughness culture puts its players at risk
Jalen Hurts is likely to miss the rest of the NFL season after an ultrasound revealed blood clots in his lungs. Thankfully, he’s now restricted from playing for the immediate future, meaning he won’t be risking serious complications – or even his life – as he did when he played in the Philadelphia Eagles’ Week 5 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars in London.
The quarterback complained to the Eagles’ medical staff of calf pain on 8 October, according to ESPN. The Eagles say Hurts flew to London with the rest of the team and, out of an “abundance of caution”, was given an ultrasound. The test found a superficial clot in his calf. Doing an ultrasound before the flight would’ve been the most prudent thing. The same for making him inactive after the clot was found. But instead, he played in the game on 11 October, as the medical staff and doctors in London agreed “that activity and mobility were important”. Hurts also practiced all last week before a follow-up ultrasound also found clots in his lungs.
HOUSTON, Oct. 20, 2026 — HPE today announced HPE Spaceborne Computer-4, an advanced compute module built for space environments, plans to power artificial intelligence (AI) and the first high performance computing (HPC) benchmarks on the surface of the Moon. The system will deploy on Astrolab’s FLIP rover for an upcoming mission for the Moon Base program and will test the suitability of advanced computing for future missions and the emerging lunar economy.
Credit: JLStock/Shutterstock
“For more than 70 years, HPE innovation has supported some of the world’s most important space missions. The next chapter of lunar exploration will depend on the ability to turn data into insights at the point of discovery,” said Scott Wiest, vice president, fellow and global sales chief technologist, HPE. “With HPE Spaceborne Computer-4, we are bringing AI and high performance computing to the lunar edge, helping the acceleration of scientific discovery and building the infrastructure for the next era of exploration.”
The mission is intended to launch in late 2026 as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. After touching down near the lunar South Pole region, Voyager Technologies’ Griffin-1 lander will transport Astrolab’s FLIP rover, carrying HPE Spaceborne Computer-4 as a payload.
“The Moon presents a challenging environment for advanced computing, and we’re pleased to provide HPE with an opportunity to demonstrate its technology on the lunar surface,” said Jaret Matthews, founder and CEO of Astrolab. “Our FLIP rover is designed to accommodate a variety of payloads, and this mission will demonstrate how commercial lunar mobility platforms can support technology development and scientific research.”
AI Workloads and First-Ever HPC to Run on the Moon’s Surface
During the mission, HPE Spaceborne Computer-4 is scheduled to run core AI applications and the first high performance computing benchmarks on the Moon. The test results from these experiments will help create the technological foundation required for future missions and research on the Moon’s surface. Large language models (LLM) will deliver insights, analyze visual data, and support autonomous monitoring at the lunar edge. Additional tests will process LiDAR data for mapping, navigation, terrain analysis and infrastructure development, while an AI services container will demonstrate reliable deployment of scalable AI service applications on the Moon.
HPE Spaceborne Computer-4 is purpose-built as a lightweight, self-contained, and fanless compute module designed to survive the harsh environment of the lunar South pole. It is equipped with both a low-power central process unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU). The compute module utilizes flash memory storage inside solid state drives from KIOXIA, continuing a long-standing collaboration with the HPE Spaceborne program to support the missions’ activities and tests with high performance data storage under lunar conditions. HPE also assembled an extensive software suite that optimizes the required interaction with Earth-based resources and enables secure delivery of insights and results from the Moon back to Earth.
In addition, HPE will support Astrolab’s mission control in Hawthorne, California using HPE Private Cloud to support real-time insights, delivered in a turnkey solution. In addition, HPE CloudOps Software will provide a unified, flexible environment for managing and automating workloads.
Private-Public Partnerships Help Maximize the Mission’s Scientific Return
NASA and Deloitte are set to join HPE Spaceborne Computer-4 to deploy AI workloads on the Moon and perform advanced solutions critical for maximizing the scientific return, underpinning the success of the emerging lunar economy.
Utilizing the Federated Learning for Unbounded and Intelligent Decentralization (FLUID) experiment, NASA will run an AI neural net model trained on data from Earth, the Moon, and on the International Space Station, demonstrating coordination of three separate AI models. NASA will also conduct a tuned LLM test with semantic processing abilities to assist in searching and interpreting onboard documents.
Deloitte’s Silent Shield, a new system to detect cyber intrusions, will provide near real-time, predictive cyber-analytics and anomaly detection.
Building on the years of successful deployment on the International Space Station, HPE Spaceborne Computer-4 is the latest successor to the HPE Spaceborne Computer project that will deliver real-time, advanced data processing to the newest frontiers of far-edge computing.
About HPE
HPE (NYSE: HPE) is a leader in essential enterprise technology, bringing together the power of AI, cloud, and networking to help organizations achieve more. As pioneers of possibility, our innovation and expertise advance the way people live and work. We empower our customers across industries to optimize operational performance, transform data into foresight, and maximize their impact. Unlock your boldest ambitions with HPE. Discover more at www.hpe.com.
Charlotte, NC — Five Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers have resigned and a sixth remains suspended after an internal investigation uncovered alleged racist text messages, prompting the police chief to request an FBI civil rights investigation.
Chief Estella Patterson said the messages surfaced during a separate inquiry into misuse of the department’s Flock camera system. She described the communications as “deeply troubling” and said the discovery triggered reviews of the officers’ body-camera footage and arrest records.
Local reporting indicates the messages included racist slurs, including alleged use of the N-word, and one exchange reportedly compared the group to a “clan rally,” an apparent reference to the Ku Klux Klan.
The five officers who resigned were Mateo Juarez, Joseph Kelly, Tredan Maronic, Matthew Osborn and Alexander Larsen. Patterson had already recommended their termination. Officer Jeremiah Todman remains suspended while his case proceeds through a civil service review.
Patterson said she also intends to seek revocation of the officers’ state law-enforcement certifications.
The chief acknowledged concerns about whether the conduct reflects a broader problem within the department and said CMPD will continue auditing officers’ interactions with the public.
No officers have been criminally charged in connection with the text messages.
From savory soups and pumpkin French toast to handmade ice cream and seasonal coffee drinks, Delaware restaurants and bakeries offer plenty of ways to taste autumn.
Oct. 20, 2026
HOCKESSIN, Del. — Pumpkin season in Delaware is about more than carving jack-o’-lanterns and decorating front porches. Across the First State, restaurants, bakeries and ice cream shops are finding creative ways to bring one of fall’s favorite flavors to the table.
Some have made pumpkin a signature dish, while others introduce seasonal treats that disappear when autumn ends.
From a longstanding Hockessin soup to pumpkin-flavored ice cream at the beaches, here are 10 Delaware destinations worth considering this fall. Several offerings are listed on current menus, while others are documented seasonal favorites whose return should be confirmed before visiting.
1. Pumpkin mushroom soup at the Back Burner Restaurant & Tavern — Hockessin
Few pumpkin dishes in Delaware have the staying power of Back Burner’s signature pumpkin mushroom soup. Unlike most seasonal offerings, this Hockessin favorite remains on the menu throughout the year.
The creamy soup combines pumpkin and mushrooms, finished with crème fraîche, croutons and chives. Its popularity has made it a defining dish at the restaurant, attracting customers who return specifically for the soup.
The restaurant’s published menu lists the soup at $10 for a cup and $12 for a bowl. It also is available for takeout, making it an easy fall meal to enjoy at home.
2. Pumpkin crab bisque at Big Fish Grill — Rehoboth Beach
Big Fish Grill has developed a following for its seasonal pumpkin crab bisque, combining the flavor of fall squash with one of Delaware’s best-known seafood ingredients.
The bisque has appeared on past restaurant menus and holiday catering offerings, including a Thanksgiving menu that offered larger quantities for customers to take home.
Its combination of pumpkin and crab has attracted enough attention that regional dining guides have highlighted the soup as a seasonal favorite.
The restaurant’s current website does not establish whether the bisque has returned for October 2026, so diners should call to confirm its availability.
3. Pumpkin pie cold brew at the Station on Kings — Lewes
The Station on Kings offers a fall twist on coffee with a pumpkin pie cold brew listed on its online ordering menu.
The drink combines cold brew coffee, house-made pumpkin syrup, cinnamon cold foam and Biscoff cookie crumbles. The online menu lists it at $8.
The café has previously offered a pumpkin pecan torte with layers of pecan cake, caramel crémeux and pumpkin Bavarian cream, although that pastry could not be confirmed on the current menu.
With its café, pastry offerings and garden-center atmosphere, The Station provides a pleasant stop for visitors exploring Lewes during the fall.
4. Pumpkin pie praline French toast at Egg — Rehoboth Beach
For breakfast lovers, Egg offers one of the more creative ways to enjoy pumpkin without waiting for dessert.
Its pumpkin pie praline French toast combines pumpkin custard-soaked French toast with a pecan topping, bringing together traditional breakfast ingredients and the flavors of pumpkin pie.
The dish appears on the restaurant’s published menu at $17, making it one of the more clearly documented pumpkin offerings at the beaches.
Egg has also featured fall-inspired cocktails in previous seasons, although those selections may change.
5. Pumpkin pie and pumpkin roll at Bing’s Bakery — Newark
Delaware’s oldest continuously operating bakery keeps pumpkin season traditional.
Bing’s Bakery in Newark offers a classic 9-inch pumpkin pie and a pumpkin roll filled with cream cheese icing. The bakery’s website currently lists the pie at $17.95 and the pumpkin roll at $20.
Both products are advertised as available through Thanksgiving, giving customers an opportunity to bring familiar seasonal desserts to family gatherings.
For those who prefer traditional baked goods over pumpkin-flavored drinks, Bing’s provides a dependable choice.
6. Pumpkin bars and seasonal pastries at Dolcé Bakery and Coffee Shop — Milford
In downtown Milford, Dolcé Bakery and Coffee Shop has a history of preparing pumpkin bars and pumpkin rolls alongside its selection of fresh pastries.
Older published menus identify both pumpkin specialties, although the bakery’s current online menu does not specifically confirm that they are available this fall.
The downtown café offers coffee, pastries and a casual atmosphere for visitors exploring Milford’s shops and businesses.
Customers looking for the pumpkin bars should contact the bakery before visiting.
Spark’d Creative Pastry + Coffee brings pumpkin season to downtown Wilmington through its fall beverage menu.
At its I.M. Pei Building location on Market Street, the shop lists a pumpkin spice latte available hot or iced. Customers can also add pumpkin cold foam to customize their beverages.
The current online ordering menu lists the seasonal latte starting at $5.50.
While Spark’d is known for its creative pastry selection, specific pumpkin pies and cheesecakes mentioned in earlier descriptions could not be confirmed on its current online menu.
8. Pumpkin pie ice cream at Hopkins Farm Creamery — Lewes
Hopkins Farm Creamery offers a distinctly Delaware approach to pumpkin season by combining locally produced dairy products with traditional fall flavors.
The creamery has offered pumpkin pie ice cream as part of its seasonal selection, a flavor documented in regional tourism and restaurant coverage.
Located on Dairy Farm Road, the family dairy operation makes its own ice cream and offers visitors a chance to enjoy a frozen dessert in a farm setting.
The pumpkin pie flavor is historically documented, but its availability for October 2026 has not been confirmed on the creamery’s current website. Its telephone number provides recorded information rather than live customer service.
9. Small-batch pumpkin ice cream at Marigold Creamery — Lewes
One of the clearest current pumpkin finds at the beaches comes from Marigold Creamery, a small-batch ice cream business operating from a truck in the parking lot at The Station on Kings.
Its published flavor list includes pumpkin ice cream, offering another way to experience fall without ordering a traditional pie or pastry.
Marigold’s website lists Oct. 23-25 as its final operating weekend of the 2026 season, giving pumpkin lovers a limited opportunity to visit before the business closes for the year.
Customers interested in purchasing pints can preorder by email, subject to availability and confirmation from the creamery.
10. Fall treats, cider doughnuts and pumpkin picking af Fifer Orchards — Camden-Wyoming
For families who want to experience pumpkin season beyond the restaurant table, Fifer Orchards offers a combination of farm activities and seasonal foods.
The farm’s 2026 Fall Festival runs from Sept. 19 through Nov. 7, with pumpkin picking, a corn maze and seasonal attractions.
Visitors can also enjoy the farm’s apple cider doughnuts, kettle corn, cider and other treats.
Although Fifer’s has been associated with pumpkin desserts, its current website does not specifically confirm pumpkin pies or pumpkin rolls. The cider doughnuts and fall activities, however, are advertised as part of the seasonal experience.
It’s an option for visitors who want to make a day of autumn rather than simply stop for a meal.
Delaware’s autumn food scene offers something for almost every preference, from savory soups and seafood bisques to traditional bakery desserts and small-batch ice cream.
The advantage of living in a small state is that many of these destinations can become part of a fall day trip, whether that means breakfast at the beach, dessert in Newark or a stop at a Kent County farm.
The 10 spots were selected from restaurant reviews on respected apps, local visitor guides (including Visit Delaware and Visit Rehoboth), Delaware Today and Delaware Online coverage, and restaurant write-ups that specifically praised particular pumpkin dishes. Priority went to items with the strongest reputations—such as cult-following soups, year-round staples, and standout pastries—while also aiming for geographic variety across the state and a mix of savory, breakfast, and dessert options rather than only basic lattes or generic pies. The ranking reflects the depth of that local praise, not a formal tasting or poll.
Editos’s note: Because seasonal menus and supplies change, customers should confirm that a particular pumpkin item is available before making a special trip.
To Go: Delaware’s pumpkin favorites
What: Ten Delaware restaurants, bakeries, creameries and farm destinations offering or historically known for pumpkin-inspired fall favorites.
Selection: Items were selected based on an analysis of reviews, customer comments and travel posts on several respected websites… the process identifies strength reputation over a poll or taste test.
When: October and early November, depending on the business and seasonal availability.
Where: Hockessin, Wilmington, Newark, Milford, Camden-Wyoming, Lewes and Rehoboth Beach.
Cost: Varies by location and menu item.
Learn more: Visit the business websites listed above for menus, ordering information, hours and seasonal updates.
Jacada, a luxury travel company that designs bespoke private guided trips worldwide, has released its list of the best places to travel in 2027. They ... Read moreThe post Closed-door travel is the biggest luxury trend for 2027 appeared first…
Australia’s major political parties are edging towards rare consensus. Labor and the Coalition increasingly want to take a major bet on artificial intelligence. Yet, just as the parties are coming together, the Australian community is running the other way.
Last year, only 30% of Australians believed the benefits of AI outweighed the risks. In 2026, community trust in AI appears to be falling even further.
The veteran is adjusting to living in Melbourne and playing in the NBL after 12 years spent on the North American basketball rollercoaster
Basketballer Joe Ingles appears as the archetype of the Australian larrikin. There is one box, however, he no longer ticks. The 39-year-old gave up alcohol in 2022 after suffering a serious knee injury, and he has now gone more than 1,500 days without drinking.
“Stopping – that part of it – during rehab was very easy,” he says from Melbourne, after moving back to the NBL following 12 seasons in the NBA. At that point, it was just one aspect of aiding his recovery. Like staying healthy and avoiding junk food.
After becoming a prominent advocate for multiple sclerosis awareness and chronicling her struggles in an emotional memoir published in March, the Emmy-winning actor Christina Applegate has revealed she does not have the debilitating autoimmune disease after all.
Applegate, 54, made the stunning announcement in an episode of her podcast MeSsy, recorded with fellow actor Jamie-Lynn Sigler, posted to YouTube on Tuesday.
‘Deeply troubling’ messages came to light during investigation into misuse of Flock camera system
Five officers resigned recently from a North Carolina police agency – and a sixth remained suspended – after they allegedly exchanged racist texts.
The chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police department (CMPD) said the messages came to light during an investigation into misuse of its Flock camera system.
New appointments of global quantum experts Shor, Paler, Devitt and Izmaylov further validate Zapata’s approach to quantum software
BOSTON, Oct. 20, 2026 — Zapata Quantum, a pioneer in quantum computing application and algorithm development, today announced the appointment of Dr. Peter Shor and other notable scientists to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). Shor is the MIT mathematician whose landmark 1994 algorithm, now known as Shor’s algorithm, showed how quantum computers could solve a major computational problem far faster than the best-known classical methods, helping launch the modern field of quantum computing.
Peter Shor
“Quantum computers will only be as useful as the applications we run on them. As hardware matures toward fault tolerance, it’s critical that we discover and develop new algorithms to truly unlock the power of this new technology,” said Dr. Shor. “I’m excited about the work Zapata is doing in this area and look forward to helping guide those efforts.”
The new SAB members will advise on Zapata’s scientific and technical direction, including the further development of Quantum Pilot, its hardware-agnostic platform combining decision intelligence and engineering to discover and develop quantum applications.
In addition to Dr. Shor, other distinguished scientists joining the SAB include Dr. Alexandru Paler, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Aalto University in Finland; Dr. Simon Devitt, Professor and Director of the Centre for Quantum Software and Information (QSI) at the University of Technology, Sydney; and Dr. Artur Izmaylov, Professor of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry at the University of Toronto.
“Dr. Shor’s work is the reason this entire field exists. His discovery of quantum algorithmic advantage is the foundational proof point the industry has been built upon, and having his guidance regarding our scientific direction is strong validation of our approach,” said Sumit Kapur, CEO of Zapata Quantum. “Together with Dr. Paler, Dr. Devitt and Dr. Izmaylov, our expanded SAB reinforces Zapata’s leadership across the most technically demanding layers of the quantum software stack.”
Dr. Peter Shor: The Scientific Foundation of Quantum Advantage
Dr. Shor is the Henry Adams Morss and Henry Adams Morss, Jr. Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT and one of the most decorated scientists in quantum computing. In 1994, he discovered Shor’s algorithm, proving a quantum computer could factor large integers — the mathematical problem underlying RSA encryption — exponentially faster than any classical computer, a breakthrough that ignited the field and made quantum-safe cybersecurity one of its highest-stakes challenges. In 1995, he introduced the first quantum error-correcting code, the foundational insight behind fault-tolerant quantum architectures. His honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, the Gödel Prize, and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
Shor’s appointment places the discoverer of quantum computational advantage as a key advisor regarding Zapata’s methodology and software, reinforcing the Company’s commitment to the scientific rigor of its solution for enterprise customers, government partners and the broader quantum ecosystem.
Paler, Devitt, Izmaylov to Support Critical Layers of the Software Stack
Each new member of the SAB brings expertise in some of the most important and technically challenging areas of Zapata’s quantum software platform, including algorithm benchmarking, error correction architectures and quantum resource estimation—key factors that determine when and how quantum applications become commercially viable.
Dr. Paler specializes in quantum software, quantum circuit compilation, error correction, and simulation. He was previously a visiting fellow at the University of Texas, Dallas, where his research focused on quantum resource estimation. Dr. Paler also chaired the Quantum Resource Estimation Workshop organized at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture.
Dr. Devitt’s work has centered on large-scale quantum computing architectures, quantum network systems design, quantum programming development, and quantum error correction. He was appointed as a member of Australia’s National Quantum Advisory Committee in 2022, and he is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of New South Wales.
Dr. Izmaylov’s research focuses on quantum chemistry and methods to reduce the practical bottlenecks in today’s noisy quantum processors. Dr. Izmaylov has made significant contributions to Qubit Coupled Cluster theory and advanced quantum measurement strategies, which have earned him awards like the Google Quantum Research Award and the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Physical Chemistry Lectureship Award.
As the only US-based publicly traded, pure-play quantum software company and only organization to have participated across all technical areas of DARPA’s original Quantum Benchmarking program, Zapata views scientific governance and methodological rigor as core to its responsibility in shaping the quantum software ecosystem.
“The path to large-scale commercially viable quantum applications depends on solving critical bottlenecks in resource estimation, error correction and algorithm design,” said Yudong Cao, CTO of Zapata Quantum. “Dr. Paler, Dr. Devitt and Dr. Izmaylov each bring deep expertise in these exact layers of the stack. Their perspective strengthens our ability to relieve the constraints that limit practical quantum computing today and positions Zapata to play a leading role as the industry transitions to scalable quantum execution.”
Dr. Shor, Dr. Paler, Dr. Devitt and Dr. Izmaylov join Zapata’s existing Scientific Advisory Board members, Dr. Alireza Shabani, Dr. Austin G. Fowler and Dr. Jeff Grover.
To learn more about how Zapata helps organizations discover and develop high-value quantum applications, visit the company’s website.
About Zapata Quantum
Zapata Quantum (OTCQB: ZPTA) is a leading hardware-agnostic, pure-play quantum software company focused on accelerating quantum application development. With a portfolio of more than 60 granted and pending patents developed over seven years, Zapata supports applications across cryptography, pharmaceuticals, finance, materials discovery, defense, and more. The Company is the only organization to have participated across all technical areas of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking program and has worked with Fortune 500 enterprises and government agencies to translate quantum advances into real-world impact.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 20, 2026 — Accenture Federal Services, a subsidiary of Accenture, and Google Public Sector have announced the deployment of Gemini launchpads, a new capability designed to help federal agencies move more quickly from agentic experimentation to mission execution at scale.
This initiative, which builds on the recent announcement of Accenture’s Gemini Enterprise Business Group (part of the Accenture Google Business Group), provides federal agencies with a centralized hub of Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) to industrialize how they build, deploy, and scale enterprise agents. By embedding these specialized FDEs alongside agencies, the government can focus on delivering outcome-based, high-code agents built on Gemini, that integrate directly into core government systems of record and enable practitioners to execute complex workflows.
By activating a Gemini launchpad, agencies can centrally manage the agent–from securely connecting Gemini to mission datasets and prioritizing agent use cases to rapid deployment and workforce training. This provides leadership with a single view to track performance, measure mission impact, and drive even more value from their investment in Gemini.
“The real opportunity to scale value for our clients is deploying these purpose-built agents to transform work at the heart of government operations,” said Ron Ash, CEO of Accenture Federal Services. “By embedding our Forward Deployed Engineers with agency teams, we’re working side-by-side with our clients to help them define and rapidly solve their most critical challenges using agents to help deliver the advantage our clients need and the results they expect.”
“Federal agencies stand at the threshold of the agentic era, where success is measured not merely by technology adopted, but by mission outcomes delivered,” said Karen Dahut, CEO of Google Public Sector. “By pairing Gemini and secure cloud infrastructure with Accenture Federal Services’ deep federal acumen, we are enabling agencies to build purpose-driven agents designed for the way they work. This collaboration further moves governments beyond incremental modernization—equipping public servants with intelligent capabilities to navigate complex systems, accelerate critical decisions, and deliver at the speed of mission.”
Accelerating Mission Impact with Specialized Engineers and Pre-Built Agents
To meet federal demand and accelerate this mission, Accenture Federal Services is training an initial cohort of Google Cloud- skilled FDEs. This training would be part of Accenture’s recently announced commitment to establish a 1,000-person FDE workforce Accenture Gemini Enterprise Business Group.
These FDEs will embed directly alongside agency teams and Accenture Federal’s functional subject matter experts to bridge the gap between technology and mission. By combining advanced Google Cloud technical skills with deep federal domain expertise, these integrated teams will build Gemini agents that address real agency challenges and unlock tangible mission value.
To jumpstart agency adoption, Accenture Federal Services and Google Public Sector are developing a core set of pre-built agents across common mission-critical functions including HR, finance, and supply chain. These agents are purpose-built to streamline daily operations directly within Gemini. By handling complex workflows and data-gathering behind the scenes, these agents free federal employees to focus on decision-making and strategic mission execution.
“Executing this vision requires a combination of the right technology and mission experience,” said Garrett Berntsen, Chief AI Officer, Accenture Federal Services. “Google Public Sector provides the industry-leading infrastructure and frontier models, while Accenture Federal brings the deep domain expertise and engineering talent needed to solve complex mission challenges. Together, we are putting Google’s integrated tech stack to work to drive measurable outcomes for our customers.”
How Agencies Can Get Started
Federal agencies can see these capabilities in action by engaging in collaborative, hands-on agent building workshops hosted jointly with Google Public Sector at The Forge in Washington, D.C. Recently launched within The Forge, The Prototyping Lab is a dedicated agentic prototyping space designed specifically to walk agency leaders through diverse, live agent experiences across various business and mission functions. During these interactive sessions, Accenture and Google Public Sector collaborate directly to identify the highest-impact agents for specific outcomes and outline a tactical roadmap to get started.
About Accenture Federal Services
Accenture Federal Services is a US subsidiary of Accenture LLP that government agencies choose to drive impactful change. Our 15,000 people are committed to powering reinvention for the federal government with the same commercial technology, competitive drive and technical edge that is transforming global industry—ensuring that federal enterprises can be as modern, fast, and efficient as the country it serves.
About Accenture
Accenture helps the world’s leading enterprises reinvent by building their digital core and unleashing the power of AI to create value at speed for organizations across industries. Our strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and lead in the safe, widespread adoption of AI, and to be the most client-focused, AI-enabled, great place to work in the world. We bring together the talent of our approximately 814,000 people with proprietary assets and platforms, deep process and industry expertise, and leading ecosystem relationships to deliver end-to-end solutions and measurable outcomes at scale. Through our Reinvention Services, we offer broad expertise across Cybersecurity, Digital Core, Finance, Industry and Enterprise, Song, Supply Chain and Engineering, and Talent, with advanced capabilities in AI and Data, Industry and Process, and Technology. We serve approximately 9,000 clients and generated approximately $74 billion in FY26 revenue.
The man who attempted to ambush the Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed with a question about his supposed allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood – which El-Sayed parlayed into a viral clip for his campaign – is the son of a political operator who recently received $250,000 for “canvassing and influencer marketing” against El-Sayed, the Guardian has learned.
In the now-famous exchange, a man – first identified by the Handbasket as Thomas “Tommy” Teepell – asked El-Sayed if he would “disavow” the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed said he would, but then asked: “What are you implying? Do you assume that I wouldn’t?” What followed was a five-minute exchange that has drawn over 50m views across several social media platforms, in which El-Sayed queries the man about the guarantees of religious freedom in the constitution.
Security cameras capture the moment a black bear walks into the Mammoth Lakes branch of the Mono county free library in California before opening time, reportedly raiding the staff's snack supply and helping itself to a jar of honey. The surprise visit coincided with the 100th anniversary of the publication of AA Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh
Researchers Use JUPITER, Europe’s First Exascale Supercomputer, to Understand Quantum’s Most Complex and Critical Computations
BERLIN, Oct. 19, 2026 — NVIDIA has announced a record-breaking quantum computing simulation on JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale supercomputer, allowing researchers to fully explore and validate magic state cultivation — a leading approach to fault-tolerant quantum computing that requires 90% fewer qubits than previous methods.
Credit: Robert Way/Shutterstock
Running on a system of NVIDIA GH200 GPUs at Jülich Supercomputing Centre, the 104-qubit simulation is the largest comprehensive simulation of a fault-tolerant quantum processor to date, modeling how a realistic quantum processor performs fault-tolerant computation at record scale.
That level of fidelity gives researchers the data and tools needed to predict the performance of future designs before they are built — reducing reliance on hardware trial and error, and accelerating the path to useful quantum applications in fields like drug discovery, financial modeling and materials science.
“Useful quantum computing will require fantastically complex, fault-tolerant systems — and understanding how they behave at scale is essential to building them,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Our results from Jülich show how quantum processors and GPU supercomputers can work together to tackle research that would otherwise be out of reach — accelerating the discovery of transformative quantum applications.”
“Europe’s investment in JUPITER gives researchers the ability to investigate questions that were previously beyond reach,” said Kristel Michielsen, director of the Jülich Supercomputing Centre at the Forschungszentrum Jülich facility. “Working with NVIDIA, we’re bringing that capability to quantum computing — helping scientists make better-informed decisions about the designs most likely to deliver useful applications.”
Reducing the Resources Needed for Useful Quantum Computing
Because qubits operate at the limits of physics, the interactions needed to control them introduce unavoidable, error-inducing noise. Computing in the presence of such noise — known as fault-tolerant quantum computing — requires the use of magic states, a specific arrangement of qubits that is continually consumed during a fault-tolerant quantum computation.
Fault-tolerant quantum computers rely crucially on repeatedly producing magic states — meaning that any optimization in how they are made drastically reduces the difficulty of building a useful quantum computer.
By simulating this process under realistic noise, NVIDIA researchers validated a state-of-the art magic-state cultivation approach, giving researchers the tools needed to develop and test future improvements.
Earlier, groundbreaking research from Jülich simulated 50 qubits under ideal, noiseless conditions. This work simulates magic-state cultivation under realistic hardware noise, helping researchers understand the impact of errors.
From Research Development to Exascale Simulation
Simulating magic-state cultivation helps researchers evaluate and improve designs before building quantum hardware. But the memory required can grow exponentially with the number of qubits, putting large-scale simulations beyond the reach of conventional computing systems.
An NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 system at the NVIDIA Accelerated Quantum Research Center (NVAQC) served as the development platform for the JUPITER project, enabling researchers to scale tests from four GPUs to hundreds before moving to 8,192 GPUs on JUPITER.
Researchers used the center to accelerate the development and testing of their simulation methods, compare results with JUPITER and explore how accuracy scaled with additional computing resources. This work helped reduce a weekslong simulation effort to days while preparing the team to use JUPITER’s exascale computing capacity effectively.
The project demonstrates how simulation will grow increasingly important and complex as quantum computing systems grow in size. It also shows the utility of accelerated computing clusters, like at NVAQC, in allowing researchers to develop and validate simulation methods before tapping into world-class supercomputers for their most demanding calculations.
The simulations ran using NVIDIA cuQuantum software to achieve highly optimized performance and scale, along with the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform’s fault-tolerant logical layer to express the magic-state circuit.
Use of tools ‘may result in the transfer of sensitive data’ to China, defense department says
The US government on Monday ordered its agencies to stop using artificial intelligence (AI) tools from the Chinese startup DeepSeek, as the countries race for dominance in the fast-moving sector.
A notice from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the ban on products developed by DeepSeek – and tools created using DeepSeek by third parties – saying they must be removed from IT devices.
Israel votes on 27 October: What happens next?Videojon.wallace
Chatham House fellows discuss what the 27 October election will mean for Prime Minister Netanyahu, Palestinians, Israel’s military and the region.
Israel goes to the polls on 27 October. Is this the most consequential election in the country’s history? Analysts from Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme discuss what is at stake.
Is the election a referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu’s long tenure in power? Is the war with Iran on the ballot? Is Israeli policy towards Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank a key consideration at the polls?
They also discuss how a government will actually be formed once the votes are counted, and if and how Israel’s domestic and foreign policy would change under new leadership.
In the discussion they discuss:
Why this election matters
Is it the most consequential election in Israel’s history?
How the region sees Israel’s election
Is the election a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?
How big a factor are 7 October and Gaza in how Israelis will vote?
Will the conflicts in Iran and Lebanon affect the vote?
AI is increasingly getting good at doing some tasks, but it can never replace human workers’ judgment
Autonomous cars, which may be the safest we have built, keep getting easily avoidable parking tickets. While Waymos crash far less often than human drivers over tens of millions of miles, they’re still terrible at performing basic tasks – keeping out of disabled parking spots and tow-away zones, or steering clear of a church garage during Sunday service, according to the Wall Street Journal.
That is the state of AI today: impressively capable at something complex, yet embarrassingly clumsy at something easy. And it has implications for what work will remain human and what will be automated by AI.
Madhu Shashanka is co-founder, chief scientist and chief technology officer at Concentric AI, a data security software company
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made an unannounced visit to Israel just over a week before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands for elections, and as President Trump floats restarting the Iran war.
Iran says its ties with Russia are stronger than ever after a visit by Putin's top envoy, challenging Trump's assertion that Moscow isn't helping Iran in the war.
Researchers say almost 90% of participants in unconditional basic income scheme in Peru adopted environmentally beneficial practices
A pioneering project to provide Indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon with an unconditional basic income has contributed to the protection of the rainforest, according to a study.
The analysis from the University of Bath is expected to contribute to a growing debate about the role of direct payments to communities that maintain globally important ecosystems.
Developers propose turning San Francisco Centre into not a server-based facility but a ‘community-based AI exhibit’
Downtown San Francisco has shown signs of revival since being battered by the Covid pandemic, which led to what many called a “doom loop” of vacant buildings, a worsening homelessness crisis and dwindling public transit. But one highly visible reminder of the city’s struggle to recover remains: the San Francisco Centre mall, which sits at the heart of these urban renewal efforts and has been conspicuously boarded up since January of this year.
A number of ideas have been floated for the mall’s reopening, including a multi-level sports complex, housing and more traditional retail uses. But now, another potential plan has emerged: the shuttered mall is being considered for an AI datacenter project, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Three operational cat qubit demonstrators built and tested
PARIS, Oct. 20, 2026 — Alice & Bob, a leader in fault-tolerant quantum computing, today shares a summary of results from Phase 1 of PROQCIMA, the French government’s quantum computing program.
Led by the French Defense Innovation Agency (AID) and the Direction générale de l’Armement, PROQCIMA aims to develop two prototypes of universal quantum computers, each capable of supporting 1,000 logical qubits, ready for industrialization by 2032. The program is structured as a 10-year competition: three candidates will continue after the first four years, with two ultimately selected to continue beyond year eight.
Five companies were selected to participate: Alice & Bob, Pasqal, Quandela, Quobly and C12.
The first phase of the program was designed to assess the technical and industrial feasibility of each company’s approach. Each candidate was required to demonstrate the expected level of technological maturity, including through the development and testing of its technology on real hardware. Alice & Bob began work on Phase 1 of PROQCIMA in 2024, committing to build an integrated multi-block demonstrator with partial functional validation to demonstrate the core operations of its error-correction architecture on real hardware.
Alice & Bob has delivered on that commitment. The company assembled and operated three independent demonstrators, two on 6-qubit chips and one on a 12-qubit chip. The team demonstrated each building block of a cat qubit logical qubit with further optimization on-going, with measured, documented performance, including:
Noise-biased CNOT gates between cat qubits, preserving their built-in protection against bit flips, both key characteristics for the error correction approach followed by Alice & Bob.
A measure-and-reset sequence for the auxiliary qubits, which reads out the qubit state carrying the error syndrome and re-prepares each qubit for the next quantum error correction cycle, with performance broadly in line with program targets.
Multiple cycles of a three data qubit (distance-3) repetition code, the smallest code able to correct a quantum error.
Measurement of the logical error rate across the full register, a key capability for tracking progress toward fault tolerance, achieving a logical error rate not yet below threshold.
A non-Clifford gate on a cat qubit, an essential ingredient for universal fault-tolerant quantum computing and a first step toward producing the “magic states” it requires.
Alongside the hardware results, Alice & Bob built a digital twin of the processor from its measured performance data. Simulations run on it show the improvements needed to operate below the error-correction threshold, starting with extending qubit coherence consistently across the chip.
The demonstrators were supervised by Alice & Bob’s MnR (monitoring and recalibration) proprietary software. Running around the clock and operating when the QPU was idle, the software measured performance across more than 50 indicators per qubit, detecting when a qubit drifted and required recalibration. Previously, detecting and correcting drifts could cost up to a day of operating time. The software keeps the processor at a consistent performance level.
“The race for fault-tolerant quantum computing is a question of who will master one of the defining technologies of this century, and France starts from a position of real strength. Our PROQCIMA Phase 1 results show that the cat qubit approach, combined with Alice & Bob’s expertise, can lead that race and push the frontiers of science,” said Théau Peronnin, CEO, Alice & Bob.
About Alice & Bob
Alice & Bob is a quantum computing company based in Paris and Boston whose goal is to create the first universal, fault-tolerant quantum computer. Founded in 2020, Alice & Bob has raised €180 million in funding and employs more than 250 people. Advised by Nobel Prize winning researchers, Alice & Bob specializes in cat qubits, a technology developed by the company’s founders. Demonstrating the power of its cat architecture, Alice & Bob recently showed that it could reduce the hardware requirements for building a useful large-scale quantum computer up to 200 times compared with competing approaches.
Yellow severe weather warning issued for first named storm of season with gusts of up to 60mph expected
The first named storm of the season, Austen, is expected to bring gusts of up to 60mph to southern areas of the UK at the end of the week, forecasters said.
While there would be spells of rain and showers for many on Tuesday and Wednesday, by Thursday Storm Austen would be approaching the south-west of the UK, the Met Office said.
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The care sector was “an afterthought” during the Covid-19 pandemic, and government failures caused the virus to spread “like wildfire” among vulnerable and elderly people, a public inquiry has found.
Heather Hallett, who is leading the Covid-19 inquiry, said it was a “significant omission” that the government did not advise that patients discharged from hospitals into care homes should be isolated, causing the virus to spread rapidly among residents and staff.
The Armed Services YMCA in Harker Heights, Texas, is a state-of-the-art facility, with a swimming pool, gym and coffee shop. There’s also a food pantry tucked away in a small room at the far end of a hallway on the second floor, where active-duty soldiers stationed nearby at Fort Hood can receive free groceries. More than a dozen pantries surround the army base, where about 40,000 soldiers are stationed.
The pantry’s parking lot is where I found Miguel Pérez on a July morning, lugging a heavy reusable grocery bag to his pickup under the already blazing central Texas sun.
Holiday company can make menu planning a test. These 17 classic casseroles cover beef and pasta dinners, chicken pot pie, sides, and breakfast bakes, with familiar ingredients and make-ahead options for easier hosting.The post 17 classic casseroles to serve when…
Microsoft has reportedly abandoned plans to serve as the anchor customer for Britain's largest proposed AI supercomputer after learning that the project's Essex data center might not receive sufficient grid power until the early to mid-2030s. "Its departure leaves Nscale without a publicly announced customer for the site, although the neocloud insists the project is still going ahead," reports The Register. From the report: When the deal was announced in September 2025, the plan was to pack 23,040 Nvidia GB300 GPUs into a 50MW facility, with room to expand to 90MW. Microsoft would use the computing power for its Azure cloud services, with the first chips expected in early 2027. One important detail remained: how to power it.
As The Guardian reported last month, UK Power Networks warned Nscale that the grid capacity needed might not be available until the 2030s. A UK Power Networks spokesperson told The Register it could not discuss individual connections due to obligations under Section 105 of the Utilities Act. "However, in general, many datacenters, whilst they can connect to our distribution network, are awaiting works on the national transmission network which we do not own," the spokesperson said.
Nscale, meanwhile, isn't letting the small matter of losing its biggest customer dampen its enthusiasm. "We remain committed to both the Loughton project and the UK and we are exploring alternative power sources for the site, in addition to other expansion sites in the UK. Our relationship with Microsoft remains strong and long-term, and this unfortunate London-wide grid issue has no impact on our other contracts," Nscale told The Register.
Community repair clinics around the country are teaching people how to fix their belongings and push back against throwaway culture
On a recent Monday night, a volunteer-run workspace in Brooklyn, New York, bustled with dozens of fixers. Some tinkered with sewing machines while others soldered circuit boards at a workbench. Caleb Young, co-founder of the Brooklyn Spark space, fit a DIY suction device on to the handle of a Dyson vacuum cleaner.
“It’s in our culture to throw things away, but sometimes the fix is easier than you’d think,” Young said.
Stricken UK water supplier lines up John Hutton as independent chair designate if takeover goes ahead
The group of Thames Water creditors pursuing a £10bn rescue deal for Britain’s largest water supplier has lined up a former senior Labour minister to chair the company, as it tries to win over the government.
The creditor consortium, called London & Valley Water, said on Tuesday that Lord John Hutton had been selected as independent chair designate of the Thames Water board, if the consortium’s takeover of the utility goes ahead.
(The Center Square) – With two weeks left until the midterm elections, President Donald Trump and his administration are hitting the campaign trail hard, shifting focus from some domestic issues to riots in Western Europe.
Ten conflicts to watch in 2027
14
January 2027 — 18:00 TO 19:00 GMT
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
Join us at Chatham House for the yearly event as we examine the most dangerous wars and crises through the lens of the International Crisis Group’s flagship annual report, Ten Conflicts to Watch.
Join us at Chatham House for the yearly event as we examine the most dangerous wars and crises through the lens of the International Crisis Group’s flagship annual report, Ten Conflicts to Watch.
Each year, International Crisis Group compiles a list of the ten conflicts to watch that examines key conflict situations across the globe.
Please join us for this event, at which Dr Comfort Ero, International Crisis Group president and CEO, discusses today’s and tomorrow’s most pressing wars and crises afflicting international affairs over the year ahead.
The DoJ has charged 28 green card holders in California, accusing them of fraudulently registering to vote. Plus, is the world really ready for AI actors?
Good morning. The US Department of Justice has charged 28 green card holders in California, accusing them of fraudulently registering to vote and casting illegal ballots. The arrests – 11 people are in custody – mark the latest escalation in federal efforts against alleged noncitizen voting.
The crackdown comes days after the DOJ sued California to block the state from tabulating certain ballots in November’s midterms. California’s secretary of state, Shirley Weber, called the demands “outrageous”, pointing out that federal officials have spent months making “vague and unsubstantiated allegations”. Democrats and voting rights groups say the administration is laying the groundwork to sow doubt over November’s election results.
How are Congress members being targeted before the midterms? More than three dozen members of US Congress have had their offices targeted with envelopes containing white powder, less than three weeks before the election, as federal agents try to identify who is behind the campaign.
What has Donald Trump said about the French protests? At a rally in Kansas Trump described France as a once-great nation that had been “conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and communists”. Earlier in the day, Trump repeated his baseless claim that migrants had “taken over” France, and also claimed that “Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon”. Muslims make up 10-15% of the population of the capital.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day: When a politician keeps warning you about a snake, have you considered that he may be describing himself?
Trump Takes Aim at Ilhan Omar: Pursuit of the Minnesota congresswoman looks less like impartial law enforcement than a familiar vendetta against a prominent critic.
Quick Takes: The school shooting in Bend, Oregon, is the latest link in a chain we must break; and Abdul El-Sayed outsmarts an inept Islamophobic critic.
Music Is My Life, Politics My Mistress: The Story of Oscar Brown Jr., directed by Donnie Betts: This first-rate documentary lets Oscar Brown Jr.’s own voice and conviction make the strongest case for his legacy.
Jukebox Playlist: Muhammad Ali’s powerful performance of “We Came in Chains” shows his star power is almost as strong onstage as in the ring.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day
“I saved you,” cried the woman, “and you’ve bitten me, but why? “And you know your bite is poisonous and now I’m gonna die.” “Oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin. “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”
—Oscar Brown Jr. (1926-2005), songwriter, “The Snake”
Cast your minds back to 2016, the last year before the fall of the United States. Barack Obama was still the president, and Donald Trump was a real estate developer with six bankruptcies in his ledger, the host of a game show called The Apprentice, and a crackpot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination who reviled immigrants despite having married two of them. That January, he loved to recite the lyrics to the song “The Snake” to his crowds. It was the story of a woman who rescues a half-frozen snake, nurses it back to life, and is shocked when it bites her, eventually causing her death. Trump presumably discovered the lyrics on the anti-Muslim website Jihad Watch, where users quoted it as a parable about ungrateful immigrants who are welcomed to America and betray the country that saved them.
Oscar Brown Jr., who wrote “The Snake,” couldn’t have been further from Donald Trump, either in terms of background or beliefs. Brown’s father, Oscar Brown Sr., put himself through Howard University, served in World War I, then came home to put himself through Howard’s law school. He founded his own law firm and real estate agency, was the president of the Chicago branch of the NAACP, and fought against the kind of housing discrimination that Fred Trump, Donald’s father, built his business on. Although he hoped his son would follow him into law, Oscar Jr. dropped out of college, served in the army, and worked in radio, real estate, and public relations before running for (and losing) the Republican congressional primary in 1952. His choice of party was a tactical move: he was actually a member of the Communist Party, though he later quit, saying “I’m just too black to be red.”
By 1960, he had shifted his focus to songwriting, working with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and jazz drummer Max Roach before releasing his first solo album, Sin & Soul, in 1961. Penning his own lyrics to popular jazz instrumentals, he explored the experiences of the Black community, and scored a minor hit as well as praise from luminaries like Steve Allen, Lorraine Hansberry, and Nina Simone. He released five more albums in the sixties, and in 1969 he wrote the songs for the Broadway musical Buck White, which starred Muhammad Ali, who had been stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing to be drafted during the Vietnam War.
“The Snake” was on his fourth album, Tells It Like It Is, and was based on Aesop’s fable “The Farmer and the Viper.” It was later covered by soul singer Al Wilson, who took it into the Top 40. Like Aesop’s original, it’s a parable about misplaced trust, and the moral is a warning against helping those who will betray you. The song doesn’t tell you who Brown was thinking about when he wrote it. I doubt he had any single target in mind; he probably recognized its usefulness in any number of contexts. But I’m pretty sure he never imagined a character like Donald Trump using it against vulnerable communities like immigrants or refugees. When I hear Trump recite it, I can’t help but think he’s subconsciously warning his more naive followers about himself: “Shut up, you silly people: you knew I was a snake before you voted for me.”
A decade later, Trump is still ginning up his crowds with “The Snake,” reciting it earlier this month at a rally near Springfield, Ohio, the town where he once falsely claimed Haitian immigrants were eating the citizens’ pets. Brown’s daughters, Maggie and Africa, have long since asked Trump to stop reciting their father’s song. “Of course it had nothing to do with prejudice or racist thoughts that he’s twisting it into,” Maggie said. Meanwhile, Sidakarav Dasa, Brown’s grandson, wrote in a social media message to Trump in 2016, “It would have been nice if you credited him for his work, but I can see how telling your crowd that you were quoting a man who resigned from the Communist Party in 1956, declaring himself ‘just too Black to be red,’ might be problematic.” Snake that he is, Trump never replied, and never gave Brown the credit he deserved. Though, to be fair, I doubt Brown would want credit for Trump’s twisted interpretation of his words.
Here’s what we need to do to stand up for international law
Many applauded when Navi Pillay was awarded the Nobel peace prize. The South African human rights lawyer had chaired the UN commission of inquiry that found Israel to have committed genocide in Gaza and served for five years as a judge on the international criminal court (ICC).
Donald Trump responded a few hours later by imposing sanctions on the ICC. He chose a moment for celebrating the rule of law to try to undermine it.
The Vibe Check: Delaware Symphony Orchestra’s 121st Season Concept: Centuries-old masterworks alongside contemporary compositions When: Oct. 25-April 25 Where: The Grand Opera House (818 N. Market St., Wilmington); Cape Henlopen High School (1250 Kings Highway, Lewes); Westminster Presbyterian Church (1502 W. 13th St., Wilmington) Tickets: Begin at $35 for all shows at The Grand. General admission $50 for the two performances at Cape Henlopen High School. Affordable Options: $2 tickets for Delawarean and Pennsylvanian EBT cardholders and up to three guests. Free admission for local university students studying music. Website: delawaresymphonyorchestra.org
The hush that fell over The Grand Opera House lasted only a few seconds. Then, lightning struck, producing the thunderclap of the timpani and bass drum. Next came the rain of the snare, overlaid by rising, hopeful trumpets. Those optimistic tones then met their combatant: the insistent anxiety of the French horns.
Delaware Symphony Orchestra had created the soundtrack of a bird flying through a thunderstorm, battered by the wind before emerging from the tempest with a triumphant note.
At the eye of the storm was conductor and music director Michelle Di Russo, who had chosen the piece, “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman,” to kick off her second season with the orchestra. She joined the 120-year-old institution last year after an extensive, two-year hiring process.
Oct. 2 marked the first concert of Delaware Symphony Orchestra’s current season, and Di Russo’s first choosing all the music herself. She knew that “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman” had to come first.
Michelle Di Russo’s physicality onstage reflects her upbringing as a dancer. | PHOTO BY MOONLOOP PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY OF DELAWARE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Composer Joan Tower wrote the piece in 1987 in response to Aaron Copland’s stately “Fanfare for the Common Man,” using the same instrumentation to produce an entirely different feeling. Tower dedicated it to conductor Marin Alsop, who broke gender barriers by being the first woman music director of a major American orchestra.
Alsop was Di Russo’s hero when she began studying conducting in her homeland of Argentina in 2009.
“(My sister) told me, ‘Why don’t you look up other women who are doing what you want to do?’” Di Russo said. “I found Marin (Alsop), and I was like, ‘Wow, she’s amazing!’ It was such a huge inspiration for me.”
Di Russo then discovered the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship for women conductors and connected with one of the fellows, who gave her advice about applying for schools in the United States.
Di Russo has since crossed paths with Alsop several times, and in January received a two-year Taki Alsop associate fellowship, which includes coaching by Alsop.
Now that Di Russo is in a position to pass on her own wisdom, she’s working to create a Delaware Symphony Orchestra conducting mentorship pilot program that will launch this year. Many of the details are still under wraps, but Di Russo believes it will help eliminate barriers in the same way Alsop’s fellowship helped her.
“Having that support from her and from the community she’s created is really encouraging, and it makes the profession a bit less lonely,” Di Russo said. “She calls it a sisterhood, because we’re all very connected and really help each other.”
Cenotes and suffragettes
Delaware Symphony Orchestra performs most of its concerts in The Grand Opera House in Wilmington. | PHOTO BY MOONLOOP PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY OF DELAWARE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Di Russo’s introduction to music was through dance. At 3 years old, she began participating in ballet, jazz dance and tap dance, which quickly snowballed into piano and vocal lessons and musical theater.
Di Russo’s roots as a professional dancer can be seen in her physicality on the conductor’s podium. During rehearsals, she keeps a cloth nearby to wipe the sweat off her forehead and sometimes gets so into the music that she accidentally throws her baton. Thankfully, that’s never happened in front of an audience, she said with a laugh.
Di Russo became hooked on conducting while studying at Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. During a second-year exam, she realized directing an orchestra allowed her to express herself in an entirely different way than dancing did.
“It encompasses an even bigger world (than dancing), and that’s what I was looking for. I was looking for this direct, human connection of making music together. I was looking for a place where I could have my voice and express it,” she said.
Di Russo’s musical voice can be heard in her selections for Delaware Symphony Orchestra this season. The centuries-old masterworks have their place, but more recent compositions are given just as much recognition.
For example, the Delaware Symphony Orchestra in April will play Gabriela Ortiz’s cello concerto “Dzonot,” which won a Grammy Award earlier this year.
Named for the Spanish word for “cenote,” Ortiz’s concerto is an ode to the underground pools and caverns found in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. These cenotes supply drinking water in southeastern Mexico and are home to wildlife like jaguars and Toh birds, but they have faced biodegradation from sewage disposal, agricultural runoff and other human interference. Ortiz wrote “Dzonot” as a form of protest.
One reason Di Russo is passionate about playing recent work is because she can collaborate with the composers. She can’t exactly do that with Beethoven, at least without some necromancy involved.
For example, Sarah Kirkland Snider will guide the orchestra as they rehearse “Forward Into Light,” her 2020 composition inspired by the women’s suffrage movement. Delaware Symphony Orchestra will play the piece as part of the “Hidden Voices” concert on Jan. 22.
While the masterworks have remained beloved for a reason, Di Russo believes sprinkling in recent works by a more diverse group of composers will draw in new audiences.
“This music is being composed while living the things we’re living — while going through a pandemic, while going through hardships together, challenges, exciting things,” Di Russo said. “It should be easy to connect, because they are being inspired by the world you are living in.”
‘You can connect on any level’
A violinist with Delaware Symphony Orchestra plays onstage. | PHOTO BY MOONLOOP PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY OF DELAWARE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Many of Delaware Symphony Orchestra’s six music directors, including Di Russo’s predecessor, David Amado, have stayed in the role for more than 20 years. However long Di Russo’s tenure lasts, she wants to leave a legacy of making the orchestra a welcoming space for everyone.
Her commitment to that goal can be seen during concerts, where she often holds the door open for guests, thanking them for coming.
And it isn’t only out-of-towners in tuxedos and cocktail dresses who are welcome within the walls of The Grand.
Any elitist stigma associated with the orchestra is quickly dashed by Di Russo’s forthright sense of humor on the podium. Last season, she described the sound of a piece as the music “vomiting,” which got a laugh out of the audience.
Michelle Di Russo hopes Delawareans can see their symphony orchestra as a community resource. | PHOTO BY MOONLOOP PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY OF DELAWARE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
“It sounds very rude, but they really connected with that, actually. At the end, a lot of people told me, ‘You know what? It actually did sound like that,’” she said. “You can connect on any level, and it doesn’t have to be an inspired, high-level way of connecting.”
On a financial level, Delaware Symphony Orchestra lowers the barrier to entry by offering $2 admission for Delawarean and Pennsylvanian EBT cardholders and up to three guests. Local university students studying music can also get in for free.
Delaware Symphony Orchestra also offers occasional free concerts, like on Independence Day.
“That opened up the orchestra to a new audience that had never seen the orchestra, didn’t even know it existed,” Di Russo said. “We need to try to do more. Of course, they’re expensive, so we need to find the right support, either from the city or grants.”
Educational musician visits to schools and libraries are equally important to Di Russo.
“When you’re trying to bring them in in their 20s, sometimes, it’s too late. They’re already not interested,” she said. “If you hear an orchestra when you’re in fourth grade … it’s mind-blowing, and then it becomes a part of your life because you’re so enthralled by it.”
Di Russo hopes all Delawareans realize the Delaware Symphony Orchestra is a resource for everyone, not only those who can afford a season pass. After all, music is a language that anyone can understand.
“The community can find the concert hall as a place of solace, a place of reflection, a place of connection, a place to be happy … whatever it is that they need to come feel,” Di Russo said. “(I want them to) come for those reasons, not, ‘It’s just another concert.’ I want them to come and feel the music and connect with us in this unspoken language.”
Why Should Delaware Care? Delaware is home to around 120,000 immigrants, and about half have been able to obtain U.S. citizenship. The process usually takes years, and experts say obtaining the permanent legal status in the U.S. is getting harder and harder.
When the first Dutch colonists settled in Lewes, there were no immigration laws governing their arrival — America itself would not even declare independence and become a country for another 145 years.
But in the centuries since, federal immigration policies built over generations have come to define what it means to become an American citizen for those not born in the U.S. The process is not straightforward or easy, experts said, and it often involves many years, fees and hurdles.
“I will say that generally under this administration, we are seeing less naturalization applications being processed, or at least they’re taking longer as well,” said Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel with the American Immigration Council.
Spotlight Delaware spoke with several attorneys and experts to better understand the various pathways to citizenship, and why only about half of Delaware’s 120,000 immigrants have been able to obtain it.
In the U.S., states have no authority to make immigration laws. Congress establishes the country’s policies, and those policies are then enforced by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a federal agency.
The most difficult step in the citizenship process, experts said, is becoming a lawful permanent resident, most commonly known as obtaining a “green card.” This allows immigrants to lawfully live and work in the country without the risk of deportation.
Green card holders must then usually wait three to five years before filing their citizenship applications.
Because citizenship pathways are reserved for those who enter the country legally, there is no direct pathway for undocumented immigrants — many who have been here for decades.
What does it take to obtain a green card?
The first step toward becoming a U.S. citizen is determining green card eligibility.
Over the past decade, nearly half the green cards given to immigrants were for those petitioning to reunite with a close family member. Employment-based sponsorships along with asylum and refugee petitions made up the majority of the remaining green card designations.
A less common pathway is entering the “diversity lottery,” which was recently restored by the courts after the Trump administration delayed the program. These green cards are capped at 55,000 people annually and targeted at countries with low immigration rates to the U.S., like Algeria and Afghanistan.
Family-based green card petitions
If a person’s family member, such as a spouse or a child older than 21 years old, is a U.S. citizen, they typically qualify for a family-based green card application.
The 12-page application asks for an immigrant’s personal information, such as job history. The filing also must include evidence of a familial relationship, such as a birth or marriage certificate, depending on the case.
Applicants pay a little more than $600, not including attorney fees or the cost of obtaining biometric scans like fingerprints and facial recognition. Total costs with an attorney can reach thousands of dollars.
Decision times to obtain a green card vary widely depending on a person’s relationship to the U.S. citizen who is petitioning for their legal status.
The longest wait time is for sibling relationships, which is currently 25 years, said Kaley Miller-Schaeffer, an immigration attorney who specializes in humanitarian and family-based petitions. This is because green cards for siblings are capped annually at around 65,000.
The shortest wait time tends to be for spouses or parents, which can take up to five years, according to current USCIS processing times.
Employment-based petitions
Those attempting to enter the U.S. under the sponsorship from an employer must have a job offer lined up from a company willing to file the necessary paperwork and pay the legal fees.
Many times, a temporary work visa is much more common than the permanent employment-based citizenship petition.
The U.S. gives out at least 140,000 visas a year to these immigrants and their family dependents.
These visas can turn into green cards if an employer is willing to commit to permanently hiring the employee. But the employee must show “extraordinary” or “outstanding” ability, usually referencing top-tier researchers or company executives and those with advanced degrees who hold multiple years of experience.
Filing an employment-based green card application costs a bit more than family-based petitions — around $700. Similar to family-based applications, this does not include attorney or biometric scanning fees, which could cost more than a couple thousand dollars.
Employers must also prove no other U.S. citizen can fill the job the immigrant petitioner is seeking.
Immigrants seeking permanent stay in the U.S. due to fears of persecution relating to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, and/or membership in a particular social group, are usually categorized as an asylum-seeker or refugee.
But there is a difference between the two.
Refugees must have applied outside the U.S. and have been vetted by resettlement agencies such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. They are required to apply for a green card one year after being in the country.
Asylum-seekers can file once they have already entered the U.S., and it is the most common pathway for undocumented people to seek legal residency. There is no cap on how many immigrants can seek asylum, and individuals have one year to compile evidence and file their application once they arrive in the country. Adjudicating the asylum cases takes years, because there are more than 1 million cases backlogged in the system already.
But if approved, applicants can apply for citizenship through the green card program one year after being granted asylee status. The wait period for a green card decision for asylees is a little less than two years.
There is no filing fee for either refugees or asylees.
This pathway for asylum-seekers is the hardest case to win, said Miller-Schaeffer, because the burden of proof lies solely on the applicant, and the criteria does not account for those escaping gang violence.
“Even if you prove all but one [requirement], it’s not going to cut it,” she said.
After a green card, what comes next?
After a couple of years, depending on the type of petition made, green card holders can apply for citizenship, which Miller-Schaeffer said is the most straightforward part of becoming a citizen.
It’s usually a five-year wait, but those who received a green card through their spouse only have to wait for three years.
The citizenship application process involves the collection of personal data, multiple tests, interviews, hefty costs and waiting periods.
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While individuals can self-apply, Miller-Schaeffer recommended applicants obtain an immigration attorney, especially if the case is complicated. These lawyers help conduct mock interviews, compile any necessary documents and become an advocate when obstacles arise.
The process begins with the submission of a 14-page application requesting a historical record of addresses, jobs held and schools attended.
Then, applicants study for the citizenship tests: 20 questions pulled from a list of nearly 130. Those who correctly answer at least 12 of the 20 questions asked orally will pass.
A decision is made much quicker than for green card determinations, and the average processing time is around seven months.
What makes the process lengthy and challenging?
Orozco, with the American Immigration Council, said the main obstacle to obtaining citizenship is that no pathways exist for certain groups of people, like those with no family connection, or those who cannot receive employment sponsorship.
Today’s paths to citizenship are also based on laws enacted decades ago, in 1965 and 1990, hence why some lawmakers are trying to advocate for a reform to the country’s immigration system.
Gov. Matt Meyer sits as the co-chair of a bipartisan task force with the goal of proposing more modern immigration policies to congress. The governor has not yet officially announced what these proposals would look like but said there is a big focus on protecting the immigrant workforce.
Both Orozco and Miller-Schaefer said stricter immigration enforcement has also affected the process.
“Before, I used to be able to confidently tell clients, ‘Unless you are doing something wrong, you’re probably not going to get picked up,’” Miller-Schaefer said. “And now I can’t say that anymore.”
Why Should Delaware Care? Delaware has been controlled by Democrats at all levels of state government for more than a decade now, and Republicans have framed the November’s election as a chance to ensure they do not win a supermajority in the General Assembly. In recent weeks, however, discord within the party has made the party’s electoral prospects and future direction more cloudy.
For a Delaware Republican Party that has long struggled to win statewide office, the lead up to this year’s November election has been far from smooth sailing.
From infighting over a candidate’s misgendering of U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride to primary election losers subsequently launching write-in campaigns, the events of this fall have likely made Republicans’ uphill challenge of winning federal races next month even tougher.
Beyond the immediate electoral implications, fractures with the Delaware GOP have only raised more questions about the party’s identity — with leaders appearing divided over whether to lean into a more moderate- or MAGA-focused agenda to gain traction in the state.
“Leadership in the Delaware GOP needs to reflect hard on what happened, and this coming year, we need to reboot what is the Delaware GOP, what it stands for,” said John Shulli, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate who lost his primary and is now running as a write-in.
For some Delaware Republicans, questions about strategy first emerged when only one of the two party-endorsed candidates won their primary, suggesting a disconnect between the state party leaders and voters.
Those tensions then played out publicly when U.S. House candidate Joe Arminio was kicked out of a September forum for repeatedly misgendering incumbent U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride.
The incident generated opposing responses from Dr. Mike Katz, the Republican Senate primary winner, who called on Arminio to drop out of the race for “disrespectful” behavior, and the state Republican Party, which wrote on Facebook that forcing Arminio to leave the event was a violation of his First Amendment rights to free speech.
It also prompted two losing primary candidates to throw in their names as write-ins for the general election and a flurry of local political influencers questioning the party’s identity.
In sum, the incident and its lasting fallout represents the most tangible example of the Delaware GOP’s fractured strategy that seems unlikely to resolve before the upcoming general election.
Some experts said the tension between different factions of the Delaware GOP is particularly pronounced this election cycle, though a similar friction is taking place in many places between the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and more moderate Democrats.
“We often see this happening at times where the party is at a point of transition, where they’re trying to figure out what the future looks like,” said David Miller, a political science professor at American University.
Delaware Republican Party Chair Gene Truono did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s multiple requests for comment in time for publication.
Forum fallout
Reactions to the September candidate forum clarified tensions brewing in the Delaware Republican Party since before the primary election.
When Arminio was forced to leave the stage for repeatedly referring to Rep. McBride – the first transgender woman elected to Congress – as a “gentleman,” Katz criticized his counterpart’s behavior as inappropriate and advised the forum’s organizers to remove him. Later that same evening, Katz posted on Facebook calling on Arminio to withdraw from the race.
Joe Arminio, right, the Republican U.S. House candidate, was tossed out of a candidate forum Thursday for repeatedly misgendering Rep. Sarah McBride. Republican Senate candidate Dr, Mike Katz has asked him to leave the race. | SCREENSHOT COURTESY OF SIEGEL JCC
Katz’s statement opened the floodgates of Facebook commenters questioning his party allegiance. His background as a former Democratic state senator and independent candidate for U.S. Senate had been a point of contention among some Republicans when the state GOP endorsed him last spring.
However, in the lead up to the September primary, party leaders and Katz himself described his ability to appeal to Democrats and independent voters as a strength in his candidacy.
Katz’s response to the forum, however, led to his more conservative primary opponent, Shulli, who garnered just 23% of the primary vote, to file as a write-in candidate for the general election.
Shulli said he made that decision because Katz’s behavior “showed everyone he is a Democrat,” and the “Benedict Arnold of the Republican Party.”
Earl Cooper, who the state GOP endorsed at its spring convention for the U.S. House of Representatives but finished a distant third in the primary, also decided to throw in his name as a write-in candidate, but for the opposite reason as Shulli.
Cooper, who is also a former Democrat and has been vocal about his opposition to transgender girls’ participation in girls’ sports, said in an interview with Spotlight Delaware he did not find Arminio’s debate behavior “professional,” so he felt obliged to reenter the race against Arminio.
Adding to the slew of varied reactions, the state GOP posted on Facebook calling Arminio’s removal from the forum a First Amendment violation.
“Candidates should be able to speak, voters should be able to hear them, and no forum should substitute enforced language for open political argument,” the party wrote on Sept. 22.
Some Republican voters have framed the forum as a representation of candidates’ views on transgender issues, and thus as a litmus test for their conservative bonafides.
However, Matt Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury College, said he interprets the split as less about gender politics and more about a defense of free speech that has long been a priority for the Republican Party.
Some party leaders, too, said they viewed Katz’s reaction to the situation not as an indication that he supports transgender people, but rather that he would have handled the forum differently than Arminio did.
Katz told Spotlight Delaware the issue was about “decorum,” rather than him taking a position on free speech or gender identity politics.
Support for write-ins?
With both Shulli and Cooper participating in the general election as write-in candidates — a rather unique situation, according to experts — Republican party leaders are divided as to whether to embrace the write-ins or throw their full support behind the party’s primary winners.
Gene Truono, the state GOP chair, wrote a letter on Oct. 1, saying the party encourages “every Republican candidate to run an aggressive campaign,” and that voters should “support the candidates of their choice.”
The letter did not explicitly endorse the primary winners nor the write-in challengers.
Truono did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s multiple requests for comment about his letter. Brandon Brice, the state GOP secretary, said “anybody can run for office,” but he is supporting the two primary winners in November.
But a week after Truono’s letter, the five Republican Party regional committee chairs – who represent the smaller organizations that report up to the state committee – wrote their own letter urging voters to cast their ballots for Katz and Arminio, the two candidates who will be listed by name on the November ballot.
Voting for write-in candidates “splits the conservative vote and risks handing easy victories to Democrat incumbents,” they wrote in a cosigned letter.
Tom Molnar, chair of the Sussex County Republican Committee, said he “really disagreed” with Truono’s statement. He felt the need to make sure voters rally around the chosen party candidates.
Brent Burdge, the Northern New Castle County Republican Committee Chair who is also running for a State Senate seat in November, similarly said he understands that some voters don’t agree with choosing candidates who are less conservative and aim to appeal to a broader coalition, like Katz. But voting for the primary winners is the only way to “make the progress in the state that we’d like to see,” he said.
Miller, the American University professor, described the split between Truono and the county party chairs as logical. Miller said the county chairs are focused on winning as many votes for the party as possible, while state leadership doesn’t want to “be on the losing side of the battle,” and ruin future relationships with one candidate or another.
In a follow up letter to Spotlight Delaware after publication of this story, Truono wrote that his Oct. 1 letter was intended to recognize all “candidate’s right to run,” but was not meant to be an endorsement of any write-in campaign.
“To be clear, the Delaware Republican Party supports all nominated candidates who were successful in the primary, as those candidates represent the will of Delaware Republican voters,” Truono wrote on Oct. 20.
Katz and Arminio both told Spotlight Delaware they are focused on running their own campaigns, rather than the distraction of their primary opponents who decided to write-in.
Mike Katz was able to rally Republican support around his campaign in the primary election, but state GOP fractures could hurt his candidacy. | PHOTO COURTESY OF KATZ CAMPAIGN
Meanwhile, Cooper and Shulli both acknowledged that it’s a long shot for them to win in November, but they view their write-in campaigns as making a statement about the direction the party should go in the future.
“I’m under no illusion that a miracle will happen, and I will win,” Shulli said. “But a write-in candidate keeps the conversation going, and we are going to have a definite conversation after Nov. 3.”
At the state level, voters largely seem to have fallen in line behind primary winners for Delaware’s General Assembly. Though one post-primary disagreement has broken out over controversial former state lawmaker John Atkins, who won a close primary against Army veteran Doug Conaway for a Millsboro-area state representative seat.
Since the primary, some voters have urged others to opt for the Democratic candidate, Ryan Stuckey, despite the Millsboro district leaning heavily Republican.
Finding a party identity
While it’s not unprecedented for Delaware Republican Party primary voters to choose a different candidate than who the party endorsed at its convention, or for candidates to run write-in campaigns, the complicated dynamics of this election cycle are likely to spur some internal reflection for the party, experts said.
Many Delaware GOP leaders rejected the idea that the often nationally used labels of moderate versus MAGA Republicans apply to Delaware politics.
Jane Brady, who served as the most recent Republican Attorney General in Delaware from 1995-2005 and a former chair of the state party, said Delaware Republicans’ ideology has been consistent since she became involved in the 1970s.
“They all try to say, ‘Oh, well you’re just MAGA,’” she said. “We’ve always been patriots. We’ve always been pro-Second Amendment.”
Brice, the state GOP secretary, said he, too, views the future of the Delaware Republican Party as being less about choosing a far-right or moderate bent, and more about encouraging candidates of diverse backgrounds to run.
This election cycle, Brice said, the party has five Black candidates and a handful of women running, which is more diversity than the party has had in past election cycles. The current Republican caucus in the General Assembly is all white and includes just one female state representative.
“We’re the real party of diversity,” Brice said. “It’s important that our state party looks like our state.”
Nationally, much of the Republican strategy this election cycle has focused on the candidates President Donald Trump endorsed, and the candidates who have subtly tried to distance themselves from some of the president’s less popular policies.
Marc Meredith, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said the election dynamics in Delaware are unique because President Trump has not weighed in on any of the Republican candidates, like he has in other states.
Meredith argued the Delaware GOP’s relative independence from Trump’s influence lends itself to more turmoil, as state party members must decide amongst themselves whether to opt for the more moderate or MAGA-leaning candidates.
“Parties are inevitably fighting these battles, where on the one hand there are people who are largely focused on electability,” he said. “But you often hear people pushing back, saying, ‘No, we should run on our principles, and we’ll be able to motivate the base to show up to vote.”
Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Oct. 21 to include comments from Delaware GOP Chair Gene Truono following publication.
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/.
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An outage at Google’s cloud services in the UK has caused widespread disruption, hitting courts and leaving millions of customers unable to access or send cash at banks including Lloyds, HSBC and Revolut.
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This is the second remix I did on Keith Treez printables grip tape adding the cutout for the light bar on the front foot pad. This design has more densely populated grip throughout the grip tape. Original design by Keith Treez remixed by me.
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Seeing all the fruits borne of an incredible summer of player movement. It feels like three years ago that Giannis Antetokounmpo was traded to the Heat, because since then, Jaylen Brown and LeBron James went to the 76ers, and a ton of other deck chairs were reshuffled. This is the most intriguing NBA opening week in eons. Claire de Lune
Beatrice Caciotti for ProPublica. Source images: Getty Images, Hawaii News Now, South Carolina Department of Transportation.
On March 3, 2020, Sen. Lindsey Graham walked into a private dining room at Charlie Palmer Steak in Washington, D.C. Graham’s time was expensive. He was meeting with two executives and a lobbyist from a Hawaiian naval defense contractor called Navatek. And he had required them to commit to $40,000 in campaign contributions for a 45-minute meeting.
Navatek’s CEO, Martin Kao, was confident that was all the time he needed.
“Shoot all he has to really do is stop by and say ‘yes,’” Kao wrote to a Navatek lobbyist and a fellow executive the day before, in an email seen by ProPublica. “That should only take a minute and he’s on his way. We don’t need to pretend we give a shit about each other.”
At the dinner, Graham ate little and talked a lot. But Kao got the “yes” he was hoping for: Graham agreed to steer a $10 million government contract Navatek’s way in his native South Carolina, Kao later recounted to the FBI. In exchange, he said, Graham asked Kao to pledge a total of $100,000 to his reelection campaign.
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Hear the reporters discuss their reporting on the FBI on ”Paper Trail.”
In early 2025, the FBI opened a sweeping investigation into bribery on Capitol Hill with Graham’s steakhouse dinner at the center. Kao confessed to federal agents that his business model consisted of bribing public officials in exchange for government contracts, and that the research Navatek was providing to the government was often worthless.
The scheme involved some of the most powerful figures in Congress, he said — in both parties. In South Carolina, Kao told agents, Navatek made a campaign cash-for-contracts deal not only with Graham, but also with the state’s top Democrat, Rep. James Clyburn, and another influential Republican, Rep. Joe Wilson.
Kao told agents that Graham in particular left little room for ambiguity: “This is how much I want, and how much I am going to give you,” Kao remembered Graham saying, according to notes one agent took during their debrief in late 2024.
Kao’s admissions would constitute a vast criminal bribery scheme if they could be proved in court — a challenge, given recent Supreme Court rulings that have made it more difficult to win corruption cases. Kao himself posed another hurdle. He was facing prison for fraud and campaign finance violations and was speaking to the FBI in the hopes of reducing his sentence.
But the FBI agents who took Kao’s confession — two experienced anti-corruption investigators — could see that much of it lined up with a trove of records they had seized from Navatek. They forged ahead. The FBI took the formal step of naming two former Navatek executives who had worked with Kao as subjects of a bribery investigation. The agency did not designate Graham, Clyburn and Wilson that way, but the agents were actively investigating their interactions with Kao. The agents indicated to their superiors that the lawmakers could become subjects in the future, according to records viewed by ProPublica.
The details of this investigation have not previously been reported.
President Donald Trump returned to the White House and almost immediately gutted the specialized FBI and Department of Justice teams dedicated to taking on public corruption — an act of revenge for having previously investigated him. The two experienced agents on the case were swept up in the purge, and the career prosecutor assisting them quit after Trump appointees forbade the DOJ’s anti-corruption section from filing any new cases. Today, there is no one left to look into Kao’s explosive allegations, as the Trump administration has abandoned any pretense of prosecuting public corruption. The case is dead.
ProPublica has unearthed the investigation by reviewing thousands of pages of legal documents, internal company emails, evidence the FBI used to vet Kao’s claims and dozens of interviews with people who saw how Navatek operated, including an eyewitness to Graham and Kao’s secret steakhouse dinner.
This story is part of a series based on our reporting. Last month, ProPublica reported that the FBI had probed the conduct of Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who steered millions in government funding toward Navatek while Kao gave her illegal campaign donations. Collins denied wrongdoing and dismissed Kao as a “convicted liar.”
Kao is indeed the only person involved to serve prison time. He pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign donations and a loan fraud scheme in 2022. In 2025, he was sentenced to 87 months in prison.
Graham died at 71 earlier this year. His sister, Darline Graham, who was appointed to fill his seat, retained most of his senior staff, including those who dealt with Navatek. She even took up some of his committee assignments, including appropriations. Darline Graham is running for a full term in office this November.
Clyburn, 86, is one of the most powerful Democrats in Washington. He is widely credited with tipping the scales for Joe Biden during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Wilson remains influential on national defense spending from his senior perch on the Armed Services Committee.
James Clyburn, left, and Lindsey Graham speak during an event at the White House to celebrate the 2023-24 University of South Carolina Gamecocks NCAA women’s basketball championship team.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
“Whatever a donor may think or say, a donation would never cause Congressman Clyburn to increase his support for the donor’s request,” Jami LaRue, Clyburn’s communications director, wrote in response to detailed questions. “The Congressman has always striven to assist the University of South Carolina and all of the colleges and universities in his district when called upon to further their important missions. The crimes and lies of an imprisoned fraudster will not cause the Congressman to waver in his support for these fine institutions.”
David Snider, Wilson’s communications director, did not address a detailed list of questions sent by ProPublica. “Congressman Wilson does and has always abided by campaign donation regulations set forth by the Federal Election Commission,” Snider said in an email.
In an emailed statement, Taylor Reidy, who was Lindsey Graham’s communications director and now holds the same post for his sister, wrote that “any allegations of quid-pro-quo behavior or wrongdoing by the late Senator Lindsey Graham or his staff are simply false.” She said the accusations were the “ravings of a convicted felon” and that her office was never contacted by the FBI about the matter. After Kao’s arrest, they disgorged his donations, she added.
The two executives who were subjects of the FBI investigation, Duke Hartman and Joshua Knight, were never charged. Hartman, the other executive at the dinner meeting with Graham, is now the CEO of a new naval research company called Integer Technologies that he co-founded with Knight after Kao’s arrest. Integer was recently recognized as one of the fastest-growing government contractors in the country. It also became the ultimate beneficiary of the Graham dinner meeting, picking up the contract Graham allegedly agreed to facilitate that night.
Hartman and Knight did not respond to detailed requests for comment.
“[It’s] corruption at its best,” Kao wrote to ProPublica from federal detention in South Dakota, before cutting off contact. “But I am the only one rotting in prison.”
Small Company, Big Ambitions
Kao’s dinner with Graham was part of his grandiose plan to make Navatek a major defense contractor.
He had become the CEO at an uncertain moment in the company’s history. Founded in Hawaii in the 1970s, the company originally thrived on a close relationship with the state’s powerful senior senator, Daniel Inouye. When Kao assumed ownership in 2019, it had been several years since Inouye had died, and Navatek was in need of a new patron in Washington.
At times, Kao hardly seemed the person to pull this off. He had started out as the company’s CFO and was openly uninterested in its technology. He told bombastic lies about his personal life. Former employees said he regaled them with tales of selling newspapers for members of the Bloods and Crips street gangs as a youth. In a deposition, Kao later admitted that wasn’t true.
But what he lacked in engineering chops he made up with ambition. Once, Kao held a company town hall using a map of the U.S. dotted with future Navatek offices as his backdrop, a former employee recalled. “He would talk about how we’re a $10 million company, and in the next three years, we’re going to be a billion-dollar company,” said a former engineer. “He was an absolute megalomaniac.”
Kao hatched a plan to expand Navatek’s presence across the country, making new friends in Congress along the way. He courted politicians using something he called “the method,” as ProPublica detailed in September.
Navatek would open an office in the state or district of a powerful member of Congress and partner with a local university to concoct a proposal for federally funded research. Then, aided by a well-connected lobbyist and the sheen of credibility from its association with the university, Navatek would approach the member for federal research funding.
Kao told the FBI he would strike deals in small, face-to-face meetings with the members or their trusted staff. Navatek — through executives, family members and lobbyists — would make generous campaign donations. In exchange, the member would add detailed language to the defense budget to fund the company’s work.
That legislative language would not name the company. But it would describe specific work that Navatek was already planning to do behind the scenes, making it the only logical choice for the eventual government contract. The lawmakers’ staff would also backchannel with the Navy after the bill was passed to make sure contracting offices knew to direct the money to Navatek, emails seen by ProPublica show — even though the contracts were in theory competitive.
Kao “wanted to build a company as big as he could as fast as he could,” a former executive later testified in court. For a while, he succeeded. Under Kao, Navatek went from having to “rebuild,” as the executive put it, to winning $40.7 million in new government contracts in 2020.
Hartman, the other Navatek executive who went to dinner with Graham, was in charge of maintaining friendly ties in Congress while tracking the millions of dollars the company had requested in research funds. He kept careful tabs on the company’s progress using dozens of color-coded spreadsheets. “If anyone knows the impropriety of the business model, it’s him,” Kao told the FBI, referring to Hartman.
Later, these spreadsheets provided the FBI a detailed picture of which congressional offices worked closest with Navatek. In the tables devoted to South Carolina, Navatek denoted Graham as a “key supporter.”
The company primarily targeted lawmakers from smaller states who sat on appropriations committees, like Collins, Kao explained to the FBI, because they wielded huge power over the budget while having fewer “constituents to ‘feed.’”
The senior senator from South Carolina was another prime target. “You can get access to Lindsey Graham,” Eric Schiff, a former Navatek executive, said in an interview.
Kao, Hartman and other Navatek executives approached the offices of Graham, Clyburn and Wilson — all powerful members of the South Carolina delegation — in the beginning of 2019. The company had recruited the University of South Carolina for a joint research project, and together they asked the lawmakers to find $9.5 million to fund the work. If it succeeded, Navatek planned to ask Congress to re-up the funding for two more years as well as green-light two more projects, internal company records show, for a total of up to $90 million in South Carolina alone.
Yet Navatek had “zero people” capable of doing the research it was pitching, said a former executive with direct knowledge of the work.
Its $9.5 million “power and energy” proposal promised cutting-edge research on how to distribute the limited power on board a ship between multiple energy-intense systems, like radars, lasers and rail guns. Graham’s office later boasted that the work would lead to new technology that would “ensure that our fleet is ready for the fights of the future.”
In reality, Navatek’s initial research “looked like a college senior’s graduation project,” the executive said. “Something you go get from RadioShack.” Graham’s office referred questions about the quality of the work to the Navy and the university. The Office of Naval Research, which awarded the contract, did not respond to questions.
A Navatek amphibious vehicle prototype heads to shore during a Marine Corps experiment in Hawaii in 2014.Lance Cpl. Aaron S. Patterson/U.S. Marine Corps
But for Congress, that lack of expertise wasn’t a problem. Throughout 2019, the FBI noted, as the ensuing year’s budget came together, both Graham’s and Clyburn’s offices took steps to make sure it included Navatek’s funding.
In May 2019, Willie Lyles III, Clyburn’s legislative director, alerted Navatek that the House Appropriations Committee would endorse new funding for a “modular and scalable integrated power and thermal system capable of powering a directed energy weapon system of 100 or more kilowatts,” according to an email flagged by the FBI. Three days later, that exact language appeared in the House Appropriations Committee report. Lyles did not reply to a request for comment.
In September, the Senate Appropriations Committee — Graham’s committee — released a budget report that set aside $9.5 million in funding for “Talent and Technology for Navy Power and Energy Systems.” Agents noted that Navatek may have ghostwritten the technical description that accompanied this line item because “an almost identical paragraph” appeared in Hartman’s internal spreadsheets two months before the Senate report became public.
After the Senate advanced its version of the budget in the fall, Navatek dropped $4,799 to send bourbon to a handful of lawmakers, including Graham and Collins, the FBI found in company records — a likely violation of Senate gift rules. Both Collins’ and Graham’s offices denied receiving bourbon. Navatek later sent Clyburn a fruit basket from Edible Arrangements for $102.60.
Congress passed the final spending bill containing $9.5 million for Navatek’s pet project on Dec. 19, 2019.
At that point, Kao and other Navatek executives had not made any donations to Clyburn, Wilson or even Graham.
That would change within days of Congress passing the budget, when an executive pledged $750 to Wilson’s campaign at a fundraiser held at Bullfeathers, a Capitol Hill watering hole for lobbyists and Hill staffers, emails show. In the following weeks, Kao and his lobbyist gave Wilson’s campaign $3,500.
And bigger checks were imminent. Kao kicked off 2020 by making plans to spend $300,000 at a slew of political fundraisers, according to text messages filed in court and a recent deposition. Navatek’s lobbyists at that time were seeking private meetings with Graham, Wilson and Clyburn, where Kao planned to ask for significantly more federal funding. Kao eventually met with all three, and each asked for $100,000, he told the FBI.
During that same period, Kao and Hartman met a top fundraiser for Collins at a Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C. As ProPublica reported, that meeting led Kao to donate $150,000 to the pro-Collins super PAC. Kao told the FBI that the money was a bribe in exchange for the senator’s support for more Navatek funding. The head of the super PAC and Collins have denied Kao’s version of events.
Kao told the FBI it was not unusual for donations to come after the favor: “We became clever in our own right and figured out how to dangle the carrot,” he wrote in a memo seen by ProPublica, “until we saw some assurance that the Ask was in the budget.”
To secure a meeting with Graham, Kao hired Michael Tongour, a veteran South Carolina lobbyist who was old law school friends with the senator and family friends with Clyburn and Wilson. Graham was up for reelection against a well-funded challenger, Jaime Harrison, and had a crowded fundraising schedule, said Tongour, but they eventually found a time.
“The Graham fundraiser says that it [sic] you want to reserve a date for Senator Graham to attend a private dinner, the campaign wants to get $40,000 in contributions,” Tongour wrote to Kao, Hartman and lobbyist Andy Winer, in an undated email seen by ProPublica. Winer, whom Kao described as Navatek’s chief lobbyist, chimed in to say that Graham could stay only 45 minutes, and Kao replied that all they needed to hear was “yes.”
“These discussions are very frank and oddly not at all awkward,” Kao told the FBI. “I suppose once we got that far, everyone knows the deal.”
A Dinner With Graham
Graham showed up late to his March 3, 2020, dinner with Kao, Hartman and Tongour. A fundraiser working for Graham appeared first and accepted an envelope from Kao containing checks made out to Graham’s campaign, Kao said. Kao did not know the fundraiser’s name; in an FBI debrief, he simply referred to the person as the “money man.” After that person departed, Graham entered.
Graham, Kao recalled to the FBI, was “very abrupt” and “straight to the point”: He asked how much Navatek wanted, to which they said $10 million a year for three years. Graham asked Kao to pledge $100,000 in donations in exchange for his support, Kao told the FBI.
Navatek was juggling multiple proposals in South Carolina worth around $10 million, and it’s not clear which one Kao was describing.
Congress had just approved the $9.5 million for the power and energy project, but Navatek still needed the Navy to award the money in the form of a contract. The company was also about to ask Congress to fund the same project for a second year at $10.5 million. On top of that, Navatek was planning to pitch a new research proposal, at $10 million, to study the transport of supplies inland from ships using autonomous vehicles. It was another area where Navatek had “zero past performance,” the former executive said.
The same week of the steakhouse dinner, Graham’s office was working behind the scenes with Navatek and the University of South Carolina to make sure the Navy sent the first $9.5 million to the right company.
A day before the dinner, an official with the Office of Naval Research emailed Graham’s office to ask about the money, which “the Senator may have an interest in.” Craig Abele, Graham’s national security adviser, called her a few days later to confirm that Graham’s office had intended the money to be awarded to the Navatek partnership, emails show. “Spoke to ONR this morning,” Abele wrote March 6. “Should be set.”
The company received the contract, which it split with the university, in July 2020.
Abele became Graham’s deputy chief of staff and still holds the position for Darline. He did not reply to an email requesting comment. A Graham spokesperson confirmed to ProPublica that their office had indeed added the $9.5 million to the budget at the request of the university and Navatek. The spokesperson said the research was supported by the Navy and rejected the notion that Graham was motivated by campaign cash.
Graham’s spokesperson said requiring a fundraising minimum for a dinner was normal practice.
“[It’s] corruption at its best. But I am the only one rotting in prison.”
Former Navatek CEO Martin Kao
The checks Kao handed over at the dinner added up to about half of the $40,000 he had agreed to raise for the dinner, according to Tongour. The rest came in May, campaign records show.
“My understanding at the time was that the contributions associated with the event were lawful political contributions,” Winer said. “I never advised Kao to make a political contribution in exchange for official action. I never participated in, witnessed or had knowledge of any illegal political contribution.”
After Kao’s 2020 indictment, the University of South Carolina broke off the partnership. “University officials were not aware of any political contributions from Navatek,” Jeff Stensland, a university spokesperson, wrote in an email. “Our sole objective in partnering with them was to expand our research enterprise.”
One week after the dinner, on March 10, a University of South Carolina lobbyist sent written requests to Graham’s office for $20.5 million in appropriations: $10.5 million to continue Navatek’s power and energy research and $10 million for its new autonomous vehicle research.
Tongour confirmed many elements of Kao’s story. In a recent interview with ProPublica and subsequent emails, he remembered Kao giving the envelope full of checks to Graham’s fundraiser and even agreed that Graham kept the meeting short. “I don’t recall that he stayed more than 30 minutes,” Tongour said in an email. “Certainly not for appetizers, entrée, and dessert.”
But he denied Kao’s most significant claim: that Graham and Navatek struck an explicit, potentially illegal deal for contracts.
“I would remember that forever,” Tongour said. Graham supported Navatek’s requests, he said, because they were good for the state. “If I had seen that kind of quid pro quo, I would have quit earlier.” Tongour fired Navatek as a client later that year, immediately after Kao’s arrest.
Navatek considered Graham its chief patron in South Carolina, internal records show, just as it viewed Collins in Maine. But the company also wanted support in the House.
For that, Navatek turned to Clyburn, a member of Democratic party leadership and one of the most powerful figures in Congress. Agents found Navatek emails setting a meeting with Clyburn for early March. The goal, Kao said, was to make sure that the House draft of the budget “mirrored” whatever Graham inserted in the Senate version.
Over a meal, Clyburn asked Kao how much he was donating to Graham and then asked for the same amount, $100,000, Kao told the FBI.
The FBI tallied $20,000 in contributions that Kao and his family members made to Clyburn a few days after their scheduled meeting. A month later, Hartman arranged for a $10,000 gift to Clyburn’s alma mater, South Carolina State University, according to an email seen by ProPublica. Hartman noted it was “Congressman Clyburn’s favorite school.”
The spokesperson for Clyburn confirmed the dinner occurred but did not respond to questions about what was discussed.
Kao and Hartman struck a similar bargain with Wilson, Kao told the FBI, at a private lunch he secured by donating to his campaign. The FBI pulled records of $3,500 in donations Kao and Tongour made in late 2019 and early 2020.
Wilson has an influential role on the House Armed Services Committee, which authorizes defense spending. Wilson was “very clear and knew what the ask was,” Kao told the FBI. He wanted however much Clyburn was getting in campaign contributions in exchange for his support, Kao said.
Tongour denied this. “There was no ‘pay to play’ with Joe Wilson or his staff either,” he wrote in an email, adding that he donated because Wilson “is a friend and I want to see him re-elected.”
Kao claimed to the FBI that he paid for meals with all three politicians, but campaign finance records appear to show the lawmakers’ campaigns picked up the check.
By August 2020, Hartman had gotten word that Graham’s and Wilson’s committees would each support part of the company’s requests, internal company records show. Clyburn was not on key committees while he was a party leader. In one of his myriad spreadsheets, Hartman projected that the final budget could include up to $15.5 million of the $20.5 million the company had lobbied for.
Kao told agents he was gearing up to make more significant donations to Graham, Clyburn and Wilson by the end of the year. Instead, on Sept. 30, 2020, he was arrested.
Kao reflected on his time at Navatek in a deposition taken last month inside a federal prison. The company’s founder has sued Kao, saying his stewardship defrauded Navatek of millions.
“It’s nothing more than government contracting done through placating senior appropriation members for contracts,” Kao said. “The whole thing is a grand lie.”
An Arrest, a Lifeboat
Kao’s arrest plunged Navatek into disarray. Federal prosecutors charged him with defrauding a federal loan program; not long after, he was also charged with making illegal donations to the Collins campaign and super PAC. Lobbyists, universities and congressional offices abruptly cut off contact. “Don’t call us,” one congressional office told an executive, he later testified.
The Collins campaign said it disgorged Kao’s contribution. Yet the senator, facing a tight reelection bid, has had to field questions following the ProPublica report about her support for Navatek and why the super PAC supporting her accepted the $150,000 donation from the shell company in the first place.
As Navatek sank, Hartman began building himself a lifeboat. In 2021, he and Knight started a new military research company headquartered in South Carolina called Integer Technologies. Integer’s first project was one that Navatek had brokered with Graham.
Hartman didn’t face any criminal charges at the time and left Navatek largely unscathed. He would later settle a civil lawsuit brought by his former employer, which contended he played a role in Kao’s campaign finance and loan fraud schemes, for $425,000. He admitted no wrongdoing.
In September 2024, FBI agents flew to Hawaii for what would be their final interview with Kao. They pressed him for details about what happened in South Carolina, quizzing him on his dinner with Graham and a second in-person meeting he said he had with Clyburn. Agents wanted Kao to help them find more records that would back up his account and asked him to point them toward lobbyists in D.C. who he said facilitated the pay-for-play scheme.
As the year came to a close, FBI agent Michelle Ball felt she had enough material to move forward. The FBI had “uncovered a lengthy history” of a government contractor making donations “in exchange for government contracts,” she wrote in a Dec. 9, 2024, memo viewed by ProPublica.
In federal corruption probes, agents often begin by focusing on lower-level targets with a goal of working their way up to more prominent figures. Ball named Hartman; his business partner, Knight; and their company, Integer, as the formal subjects of the probe, as they prepared to potentially issue subpoenas and gather more evidence. They had Graham, Clyburn and Wilson in their sights. Ball devoted entire sections of the memo to detailing the lawmakers’ conduct. And she flagged the case as a sensitive matter that might implicate politicians in the future.
In the summer of 2024, Kate Fifield, a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s anti-corruption section, had been assigned to join the case. Fifield was wrapping up a high-profile prosecution of a retired Navy admiral who traded a government contract for a future job. Turning her attention to Kao, she and the FBI agents weighed their options. They considered getting high-level approval to deploy undercover agents. Proving an exchange of cash for favors often requires the kind of inconvertible evidence that undercover recordings can provide.
But before the investigation took flight, the new Trump administration began to demolish the Justice Department. The president’s handpicked leaders ordered prosecutors to drop a corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams, triggering a wave of resignations in the Public Integrity Section where Fifield worked, and revoked the section’s authority to bring new cases.
Then Trump’s FBI director, Kash Patel, began to purge the anti-corruption unit in the Washington D.C., field office, where many agents had investigated Trump.
Ball was fired in October 2025. Kevin Gounaud, another agent who had been working with her on the investigation, was pushed out in early 2026. Through their lawyer, the agents declined to comment.
The corruption investigation, just launched, suddenly went dark.
The White House referred ProPublica’s questions to the FBI and DOJ.
The Department of Justice didn’t respond to detailed questions about the investigation.
“Under President Trump, the Justice Department is rooting out the weaponization, corruption, and institutional rot that ran rampant under Joe Biden’s two-tiered system of justice,” DOJ spokesperson Audrey Cook said.
Kao’s claims are “half baked” and “misleading,” FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said. “Additionally, as we have said repeatedly, personnel are only removed at this FBI if they have been found to have acted unethically, undermined the mission, or engaged in weaponization of law enforcement.”
Meanwhile, Integer has rapidly expanded. Last year, it reported $81 million in contracts and announced that number would climb to $375 million by 2030. The company inked partnership deals with universities in New Hampshire, Louisiana and Mississippi. The University of South Carolina called its partnership with the firm a “model for public-private success.”
The company continues to forge ties with powerful politicians. In late 2024, Hartman posted a photo of himself with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on his LinkedIn. “It was great to visit with the Speaker of the House today,” he wrote. “It’s good to know there are people in positions of power who seem to really care for the people they serve.” Johnson’s office did not reply to an email requesting comment.
The occasion was a new research partnership in Louisiana. Hartman thanked his lobbyist for making it happen.
Washington, DC — A former Trump White House official is warning about the possibility of Stephen Miller becoming President Donald Trump’s next chief of staff amid renewed speculation about Susie Wiles’ future in the administration.
Sarah Matthews, who served as deputy White House press secretary during Trump’s first term, described the prospect of Miller taking over as “terrifying,” pointing to his outsized influence over the administration’s immigration and domestic policies.
Miller currently serves as deputy chief of staff for policy and has been one of Trump’s closest advisers since his first presidency. He has played a central role in developing the administration’s hard-line immigration agenda, including mass deportation efforts.
Reports last week said Trump had privately discussed possible replacements for Wiles, with Miller among several names being floated. Other reported possibilities included Bill Pulte, Lee Zeldin and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Trump has publicly rejected the reports, saying there is “zero chance” he will replace Wiles and insisting she will remain chief of staff “for a long time.”
The speculation comes amid increased turmoil inside the White House ahead of the midterms, including the abrupt five-day tenure of press secretary Katie Zacharia and reports of growing internal competition for influence within Trump’s shrinking senior circle.
Subject to Change: A Dance for David Bowie will explore how the musician ‘practised a form of artistic reincarnation’, says choreographer Marcos Morau
‘Let’s dance,” sang David Bowie in 1983, commanding: “Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.” That call is to be answered – with footwear TBC – by an international dance production featuring new choral arrangements of songs from throughout his career.
Subject to Change: A Dance for David Bowie will be staged at Sadler’s Wells in London in autumn 2028 after a world premiere in Luxembourg. It will visit Tokyo in 2029. The show will explore how Bowie “practised a form of artistic reincarnation” according to Spanish choreographer Marcos Morau who is taking inspiration from the superstar’s transformations into personas such as Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke.
Japan has successfully launched its Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission to study Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Scheduled to arrive in August 2027, "MMX will become the first spacecraft to land on and return samples from Phobos for study back on Earth, which scientists think could shed light on a decades-old mystery about the moons' origins" and resolve whether they were formed from a giant impact or were captured asteroids, reports Space.com. From the report: It was the 10th liftoff of Japan's expendable, two-stage H3 rocket, which was jointly developed by JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. After clearing its launch pad today, the 207-foot-tall (63 meters) launch vehicle flew a nominal trajectory through its ascent corridor over the Pacific Ocean, jettisoning its four solid boosters in pairs just before the flight clock reached two minutes. The rocket shed its payload fairings about one minute and 20 seconds later, exposing MMX to the vacuum of space for the first time. [...] MMX is now under its own power, and on course for Mars.
The interplanetary transit will last about 10 months, with the spacecraft scheduled to arrive at the Red Planet in August 2027. When it does, MMX's propulsion module will execute an orbital insertion burn to place itself in a quasi-satellite orbit (QSO) around Phobos, which places MMX within the space around the moon as both circle Mars. MMX will spend about three years in the Martian system, devoting much of that time to studying the 14-mile-wide (22 km) Phobos with its science instruments. The spacecraft also carries the IDEFIX rover, a joint effort of the space agencies of France and Germany, which is scheduled to deploy to the surface of Phobos in late 2028 or early 2029.
After a mapping campaign to select suitable landing sites, MMX will perform two separate touchdowns on Phobos to collect and stow samples in the spacecraft's return capsule. Following its second landing and sample collection, MMX will briefly return to QSO with Phobos before transferring to a more elongated orbit around Mars that intersects with the planet's smaller moon, Deimos, which is just 8 miles (14 km) in diameter. During the last several months of its time around Mars, MMX will perform a series of Deimos flybys before departing for Earth in November 2030. If all goes according to plan, the MMX sample-return capsule will land in Australia in 2031. You can watch a recording of the launch on YouTube.
Ukrainian president accuses Washington of ‘denial of reality’ in continuing row with Trump over apparent support for Moscow
Ukraine did not receive a warning from the US about an impending Russian missile attack on Sunday evening, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, reviving concerns that Washington is withholding intelligence to bully Kyiv into capitulating to Moscow.
Yuri Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian air force, said on television on Monday morning that Ukraine had not received a warning before a Russian missile barrage hit power plants in Kyiv at about 11pm. Earlier, a Ukrainian government official had told the Guardian the US had not warned the capital about the impending missile strike.
After a protest clip went viral, a teenager’s life was torn apart by threats that sent her and her family into hiding. Plus, a book on citizen journalism
Before 24 July, a person I will call R was preoccupied with the ordinary routines of teenage life: experimenting with makeup,grumbling over mathematics homeworkand hanging out with friends at a tea stall.
That month, as the fever of student protests spread across the country, the 15-year-old watched on her phone as young people poured into Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in Delhi, demanding education reform. She went too. But an 11-second video clip from the protest site, in which she made crude and profane remarks about the prime minister, Narendra Modi, upended her life.
Great hardware let down by software flaws on these pricey machines that combine ChromeOS with Android
Google’s attempt to create a new type of laptop to compete with Windows and macOS machines is finally here, combining the best of ChromeOS and Android into the new Googlebook. With advanced links to Android phones and the best of Google built in, can these Googlebooks really compete with a MacBook Air or Surface Laptop? I took two for a spin to find out.
For years, Chromebooks have been the boss of budget laptops, but Googlebooks take a different, far more premium approach. Made by a range of traditional PC makers, including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo, they start at £999 (€1,099/$899/A$2,299) – a far cry from the £160 Chromebooks.
As a freaky Val Kilmer doppelganger stars in a new western and faux starlet Tilly Norwood is set for her feature debut, experts are split on whether mainstream adoption is a long way down the line – or just around the corner
‘Don’t fear the dead – and don’t fear me.” An exact facsimile of a young Val Kilmer, not quite dead and not quite alive, utters that baiting line in the trailer for the new western As Deep as the Grave. Director Coerte Voorhees knows exactly what he is doing – this is an AI-created version of the late actor, approved by his family but bringing with it a heap of controversy about whether such technology could make flesh-and-blood thespians redundant.
Not just yet, judging by the extended glimpse of the film released earlier this year: it looks like a thirtysomething Kilmer, if a robot version had been sent back to the 1920s American wilderness by Skynet and, as well as being strangely rigid, had forgotten to download his voice, let alone his signature air of spacey shrewdness. Kilmer’s estate signed off on it, citing his enthusiasm for new technology that expands storytelling, but surely he would have been dismayed by this freaky doppelganger.
Critics said images of detained former leader were a stunt by the military to end country’s diplomatic isolation
Myanmar has delivered presents from Britain’s King Charles to Aung San Suu Kyi, releasing rare photos of the imprisoned former leader in what critics said was a stunt by the country’s military to end diplomatic isolation.
A presidential spokesperson said on social media that home ministry officials handed over two gardening books on soil, “along with one sealed envelope and a sealed diplomatic pouch”, from King Charles, who is known to have an interest in planting and the environment.
The government says it can transform the state with AI, but it is no match for the resulting stream of machine-generated slop. And we all pay the cost
Another morning, another avalanche of emails. Even after a guilty cull, my inbox is sitting at well over 7,000, but lately I’ve started subscribing to the Quentin Crisp theory of housework: why bother, when after four years or so you stop noticing the accumulating dust? Empty inboxes just fill up again anyway.
In theory, email was supposed to save hours of meetings, phone calls and standing over photocopiers. Instead, we just spend hours deleting stuff people wouldn’t have bothered telling us if it had meant picking up the phone, but which they can now spam to their entire database at the click of a button. The glorious ease and convenience of being able to reach the world in seconds came, we now know, with the inconvenience of them being able to reach you right back.
The president came out in support of Senator Roger Marshall, who is facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from Democrat Adam Hamilton
The fact that Donald Trump was here at all said more about a looming electoral disaster facing his Republican party next month than anything contained in his dark and discursive 98-minute stump speech.
On Monday, amid raucous chants of “USA! USA!”, the president held his first campaign rally in Kansas for eight years. No Democrat has won a US Senate seat in this ruby-red state since 1932, the year Herbert Hoover was president, Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic and the Nazis became the biggest party in the German Reichstag.
In his annual speech on threats to the nation, Sir Ken McCallum, the head of the UK’s intelligence service, MI5, warned that AI had the potential to ‘change the stakes’ on existing and even new bioweapons. To find out why, and how, Ian Sample speaks to Dr Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He explains what has governments so worried and what measures could be put in place to reduce the risks
The advent of a new technology invariably comes with strategic implications, raising the question of who will benefit and whether risks can be managed. In 1957, following the Soviet Sputnik launch, U.S. policymakers and analysts recognized that the satellite, as the American physicist and engineer Lloyd Berkner observed in these pages, would bring transformative effects. The United States could not risk losing out, Berkner argued, but nor should governments allow geopolitical tensions to prevent the technology’s broad benefits from emerging.
In 1971, as the international monetary system was on the brink of collapse, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Connally told a group of worried European finance ministers that the dollar was “our currency, but your problem.” The dollar had become that system’s official reserve currency in 1944, under the Bretton Woods agreement, making signatories subject to the whims of U.S. monetary policy. Even after Bretton Woods collapsed and many currencies floated freely, the dollar continued to dominate. In the last half century, U.S. currency power has only expanded, as more countries have integrated into the global economy and therefore grown to depend on the dollar. China, reliant on export-driven growth, is foremost among them.
Alex Imas, Mohamed El-Erian, and James Manyika, leading voices at the intersection of business and technology, argue that realizing AI’s potential requires giving workers, communities, AI labs, infrastructure developers, and big companies a share of the gains. Using insights from game theory, they argue that increased cooperation can make AI work for all.
William McRaven, a retired four-star admiral and a major figure in American military affairs, uses history and his personal experiences to make an authoritative case that American leaders frequently overestimate the potential of military force to achieve political ends—and that new technologies like AI will exacerbate this problem.
In this essay, Niall Ferguson, one of the world’s foremost experts on imperial history, teams up the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, and the researcher Lisa Klaassen to make the provocative argument that AI is an inherently “imperial technology”—and to reveal what the fate of past empires might say about the future of U.S.-Chinese competition in a world shaped by AI.
Mara Karlin, a defense policy expert who served as senior national-security official in multiple American administrations, makes an authoritative case that war planners tend to be overconfident about their ability to predict how new tools will shape the battlefield—blinding them to the unchanging realities of war. Using examples from Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran, Karlin shows how this "technology trap" leads to false assumptions about the future of war.
Niners move to 6-0 but are pushed hard by Washington
Brock Purdy threw a touchdown pass, Christian McCaffrey ran for two scores and the San Francisco 49ers held on to beat the Washington Commanders 23-17 on Monday night for their sixth straight win to open the season.
The Niners followed up an emotional win last week at division rival Seattle by building a 20-point lead and holding off the Commanders (1-4-1) with two late defensive stops.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon is funding development of a proposed 960-megawatt nuclear plant in Indiana and would be the first customer to buy its power, the companies announced Monday. Utility company American Electric Power (AEP) would operate the plant. X-energy, which designs small modular nuclear reactors and went public in April, would supply the reactors. The new power plant would consist of 12 Xe-100 small modular reactors and be located on the site of a demolished coal power plant just south of Terre Haute. The deal is the second commercial agreement between Amazon and X-energy, and it's three times larger than the first, which was announced two years ago.
Amazon has invested heavily in X-energy, leading a $700 million Series C-1 round in October 2024. The two companies have said they ultimately plan to build 5 gigawatts of new nuclear generating capacity in the U.S. by 2039. Unlike many newly announced power plants, these reactors would be connected to the public electric grid, though Amazon says the power would also serve its data centers.
The companies' aggressive timeline still depends on X-energy successfully delivering its first power plant at a Dow Chemical plant southeast of Houston, Texas. The site, called Seadrift, has recently been at the center of a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas, which accuses the plant of "habitual non-compliance" with water and solid-waste regulations and permits. X-energy has yet to break ground at Seadrift, which will host four Xe-100 reactors to provide the chemical plant with heat and electricity. The company said its construction permit is in the final phases of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's review process.
An Argonne team used the ALCF’s Aurora exascale supercomputer to carry out massive gravity-only cosmological simulations that will help scientists investigate cosmic inflation and support the analysis of observations from DESI, SPHEREx and other major sky surveys.
Oct. 19, 2026 — Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have completed two of the largest cosmological simulations ever performed. Each simulation modeled the evolution of 13.4 trillion dark matter particles across a region 28.6 billion light-years wide.
Full-sky lightcones from paired exascale simulations are shown at right, with a magnified view at left. The larger view shows one simulation above and its phase-reversed counterpart below, with the cosmic microwave background as the outer shell. The sectors show line-of-sight velocity (left; red and blue), matter density (center; gray), and gravitational potential (right; green and blue). Image credit: J.D. Emberson, Argonne.
Dark matter is invisible to telescopes, but its gravitational effects drive galaxy formation and shape larger-scale structures in the universe. In the simulations, particles stand in as tracers of the dark matter density and velocity distributions. This allows researchers to trace how cosmic structure has evolved over billions of years.
Simulations at this scale require enormous computing power. The team performed the calculations on Argonne’s Aurora exascale machine. One of the world’s largest supercomputers, the system has 10,624 nodes and 63,744 graphics processing units (GPUs). Aurora is housed at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a DOE Office of Science user facility.
The team’s simulations used a significant portion of the system. Each run drew on 8,100 nodes and roughly 50,000 GPUs. The simulations and much of the data analysis were completed in about four days. Led by Argonne computational scientist Nicholas Frontiere, the project seeks to shed light on the physics of cosmic inflation.
“The theory describes a brief burst of rapid expansion in the very early universe,” Frontiere said. “Inflation is thought to have stretched microscopic quantum fluctuations to cosmological scales, leaving tiny variations in density that gravity later amplified into the cosmic web we observe today.”
But the physics behind inflation remains uncertain. By studying how matter is distributed across the cosmos, scientists can look for clues that may reveal more about inflation and the early universe.
That is where the simulations come in. They will aid the analysis of major sky surveys, including the DOE-supported Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and NASA’s Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission, both of which are currently collecting data. Together, the simulations and state-of-the-art surveys are providing increasingly detailed views of the cosmos to help advance studies of the origins and evolution of the universe.
Searching for Subtle Signs from the Early Universe
Standard inflationary models predict that the early fluctuations followed a Gaussian distribution, one of the simplest forms of randomness. Researchers are searching for small departures from that pattern, known as primordial non-Gaussianity.
“A measurable departure could point to additional fields, interactions or dynamics during inflation and help distinguish among competing theories of the universe’s earliest moments,” Frontiere said.
Any signal is expected to be subtle. It can also be obscured by cosmic variance — statistical uncertainty that arises because surveys sample only a finite volume of the universe.
Detecting such signals requires massive simulations that span the largest cosmic scales. That is where some of the clearest signatures of primordial non-Gaussianity may appear. At the same time, the simulations need sufficient resolution to resolve dark matter halos — the large clumps of dark matter that host galaxies. This connection is critical because the distribution of galaxies is what surveys such as DESI and SPHEREx ultimately observe.
“Achieving both enormous volume and sufficient resolution is what makes the calculation so challenging,” Frontiere said. “It’s a problem particularly well suited to exascale machines.”
Frontiere’s team uses HACC, the Hardware/Hybrid Accelerated Cosmology Code developed at Argonne, to carry out its simulations. The HACC team has a long history of using DOE supercomputers to perform extreme-scale cosmology simulations. As part of DOE’s Exascale Computing Project, the team prepared HACC to run efficiently on different exascale architectures.
Prior to the Aurora runs, the team used the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Frontier exascale system, located at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, for a different type of cosmology simulation. That effort produced the largest hydrodynamic simulation of the universe to date, combining gravity with models of gas, stars, and other processes involved in galaxy formation.
The researchers took a different approach on Aurora. By focusing on gravity alone, they were able to simulate a larger volume with more particles.
Aurora’s high-capacity memory was especially important because the simulations had to keep data for trillions of particles readily available as the calculations progressed. Its Distributed Asynchronous Object Storage (DAOS) system supported the project’s immense data-writing demands. The two simulations wrote more than 85 petabytes through DAOS, mostly as restart checkpoints. This allowed the team to resume the runs in case of an interruption rather than start over. About 8 petabytes were kept for scientific analysis.
“Aurora brings together the capabilities this project needed,” said Adrian Pope, ALCF computational scientist and member of the HACC team. “Its GPUs provide the computing power to evolve trillions of particles, while its memory gives us the capacity to handle a problem this large. And with DAOS, we were able to write the massive checkpoints needed to protect the calculations.”
Creating a Realistic Testbed for Sky Surveys
The two Aurora simulations contain the same cosmological model and the same non-Gaussian signal, but their initial phases are flipped.
“The simulations act like statistical mirror images,” Frontiere explained. “When analyzed together, much of the random variation cancels, giving a cleaner measurement of the underlying physics.”
The signal strength is also blinded, so researchers using the simulations to test their analysis methods will not know the answer in advance. This allows them to evaluate their workflows without being influenced by the expected result.
“By testing whether their pipelines can recover the hidden value from the synthetic observations, they can validate their methods before applying them to real survey data,” Frontiere said.
Setting a new mark for scale, the calculations are the largest individual cosmological simulations ever performed by particle count. Their immense volume will allow scientists to build synthetic full-sky maps and realistic mock observations for DESI, SPHEREx, and other surveys. These mock datasets can help researchers find biases, improve their analysis methods and produce more reliable measurements from real survey data.
“Pushing the scale of these simulations helps us better connect theory with what we observe,” Frontiere said. “As we continue to simulate larger volumes in greater detail, we improve our ability to explore fundamental questions about the universe and make better use of increasingly powerful surveys.”
Tampa Bay beat Guardians to seal ALCS in six games
7-3 Game 6 win set up by strong Freddy Peralta start
Freddy Peralta threw 5.1 gritty innings, Junior Caminero and Yandy Díaz each hit a two-run homer and the Tampa Bay Rays beat the Cleveland Guardians 7-3 in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series on Monday night to advance to the World Series for the third time in the franchise’s 29 seasons.
The Rays will face the Milwaukee Brewers who, like Tampa Bay, are seeking to win their first-ever World Series. A sellout crowd of 40,230 fans waved yellow-and-blue rally towels, rang cowbells and chanted “Let’s go Rays!” throughout the night at Tropicana Field, which needed major renovations after Hurricane Milton shredded the roof two years ago and caused extensive damage throughout the stadium.
Wichita, KS — A 24-year-old Kansas man has been arrested and charged with threatening President Donald Trump after authorities say he posted multiple social media messages about shooting the president ahead of Trump’s visit to the Wichita area.
Federal prosecutors identified the suspect as Jaden J. Read of Clearwater, Kansas. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, a Crime Stoppers tip alerted investigators to comments Read allegedly posted Oct. 15 beneath a KAKE News story about Trump’s planned Oct. 19 visit.
Prosecutors say one post stated, “Let’s shoot Trump honestly,” while another allegedly referenced recently obtaining a .308 firearm and ammunition.
Investigators later found additional comments beneath a KWCH report about Trump’s visit. One allegedly said, “Can we shoot him in Kansas please I will myself.” Another claimed to know where Trump’s speech would occur and referenced having “mapped out roofs around” the location.
Authorities arrested Read in Clearwater on Oct. 17, and he remains in federal custody pending a detention hearing.
U.S. Attorney Ryan Kriegshauser said political violence and threats of violence will not be tolerated, while emphasizing that the First Amendment protects robust political disagreement but not criminal threats.
The Secret Service, U.S. Marshals Service, Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Kansas Highway Patrol and Wichita Police Department participated in the investigation.
The world is holding its breath as it waits to find out whether this year’s estimated $US1tn investment in artificial intelligence is resting on a castle made of sand.
Last week, the Nasdaq 100 – an index of the 100 biggest non-financial stocks on the American tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange – dropped by 5.5%, triggering the usual angst that the AI boom is about to go bust.
As Republicans confront mounting political headwinds ahead of November’s midterm elections, Donald Trump is attempting to turn unrest in France into a cautionary tale for American voters, recasting the demonstrations that began as student protests against crumbling schools and the soaring cost of living as evidence of the dangers of immigration and the erosion of western civilization.
At a rally in Kansas on Monday evening, Trump described France as a once-great nation that had been “conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and communists”.
A new Washington Post-ABC poll shows that Donald Trump’s approval rating has reached a new low – 33%.
This comes, just over two weeks away from the November midterms, as the president continues crisscrossing the country as part of his campaign blitz for embattled Republicans.
French officials implemented local curfews Monday and said an "ultra-left movement" was behind widespread violence and vandalism amid anti-government protests.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 31%, the lowest level recorded for him during either of his presidential terms in Reuters/Ipsos polling, as Republicans head into the Nov. 3 midterms facing growing voter dissatisfaction over the economy.
The four-day poll found 31% of Americans approve of Trump’s performance, down one point from two weeks earlier.
The numbers are even more troubling for Republicans on the congressional ballot. Among registered voters, Democrats lead Republicans 47% to 35%, a 12-point advantage and the widest Democratic margin recorded by Reuters/Ipsos during the current election cycle. Two weeks earlier, Democrats led by seven points.
Women favored Democratic congressional candidates by an especially wide 50% to 32% margin. Men also favored Democrats, though by a smaller amount.
Economic dissatisfaction appears to be a major factor. Sixty-eight percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, including 37% of self-identified Republicans. Voters also preferred Democrats over Republicans on managing the economy, 40% to 33%.
Reuters noted that gasoline prices rose sharply following U.S. military strikes on Iran earlier this year, adding pressure to household budgets.
Generic congressional polling measures national sentiment and does not account for individual House and Senate races, where geography and district boundaries can significantly affect the final results.
Need a Connections: Sports Edition hint today? Get a hint for each color group in NYT Connections: Sports Edition No. 757 on Tuesday, Oct. 20, then all four answers.
I remixed a file for grip tape to accommodate for the status light bar on the funwheelX7 stompies foot pad. Here is the file for anyone who needs it, float on!
2 files for 2 different designs originally by: Keith Treez
The Maverick 88 pump-action 12-gauge shotgun was purchased legally in August 2026 by Shauntai Nickerson, the mother of the shooter, and given to him for recreational use, sources told CBS News.
Laredo, TX — A 56-year-old Dallas man who died Saturday after nearly four months in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody was a lawful permanent resident of the United States, ICE confirmed Monday.
Emiliano Andrade-Covarrubias, a Mexican citizen who had lived in Dallas for decades and raised three U.S.-born children, was found unconscious in his bed at the Rio Grande Processing Center. He was pronounced dead about 20 minutes later. His cause of death remains under investigation.
ICE detained Andrade-Covarrubias while he was returning from Mexico in June. The agency alleges he obtained his green card fraudulently by failing to disclose a 2004 theft arrest and had placed him in removal proceedings.
His daughter disputes that account, saying her father disclosed his criminal history during the application process and immigration officials nevertheless approved his permanent residency.
She also said her father suffered from heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure and repeatedly complained of breathing problems and chest tightness while detained. According to his family, facility staff did not consistently provide his medications or adequately respond to his medical concerns. ICE says he received appropriate medical care.
Andrade-Covarrubias is the seventh person to die in ICE custody in Texas this year. Rep. Henry Cuellar has requested additional information from the agency about his treatment and death.
President Trump announced a new farm aid package that will provide $8 billion in one-time payments through the USDA to help farmers offset rising fuel costs.
Elk, bear, frogs and other animals have used the overpass, which connects 39,000 acres of habitat, since its completion
Colorado officials have tracked herds of elk, bears, pronghorn and even northern leopard frogs ambling across its new wildlife overpass. According to a newly released report, the overpass, which acts as a bridge over a busy stretch of interstate, has helped cut wildlife-vehicle collisions by 91% since its completion 10 months ago.
The overpass is the centerpiece of a larger system built by the state to assist wildlife crossing the highway, which also includes miles of 8-ft tall fencing and five large wildlife underpasses.
joshuark writes: Professor Christopher Marquis makes a provocative argument about business schools: "We need to abolish them." A 20-year business educator at Harvard, Cornell and Cambridge, Marquis argues in The New York Times and on LinkedIn that MBA programs sanctify profit-driven dealmaking at the expense of public life. "That's not the institution failing," he writes. "Sadly, it's the institution working." "Business school doesn't just hand out skills and a network," argues Marquis, "it quietly reshapes how people see the world, rewarding dealmaking, simplification, and optimization for financial metrics, while workers and communities become afterthoughts."
Marquis points to research suggesting that business-school-trained CEOs often benefit shareholders at the expense of workers, without delivering measurable improvements in company performance... "[W]hen a business-school-trained CEO takes over a firm, wages fall and labor's share of income drops, with no gain in productivity," writes Marquis. "In both the U.S. and Denmark, what passes for the 'managerial skill' of business-school graduates turns out to be a transfer of wealth away from workers and toward shareholders. Students deserve better than a machine that narrows their sense of what's possible."
Quantinuum says a new error-correction result on its Helios quantum computer gives it greater confidence in a 2029 target for Apollo, its planned fault-tolerant system. The company reported 99.9995% logical memory fidelity, equivalent to roughly five failures per million cycles.
“This derisks the industry,” Quantinuum CEO Rajeeb Hazra told The Wall Street Journal. “We now know the recipe for both creating good physical qubits and error-correcting them in a scalable way using the least number of physical qubits to create a logical qubit.”
Logical Error Rate scaling with color code distance. The green line indicates Quantinuum Helios’ projected logical error rate. The pink line indicates a superconducting architecture’s projected logical error rate. (Quantinuum)
In its color-code experiments, Quantinuum reported an average twelvefold reduction in logical memory errors as code distance increased. Higher code distances allow stronger error protection by using more physical qubits. Extrapolating from those results, the company estimates that its approach could support 100 logical qubits using approximately 30,000 physical qubits, compared with roughly 900,000 for the superconducting color-code implementation it analyzed.
“The paper demonstrates real, serious performance gains from quantum error correction—a logical qubit nearly 100x better than its component physical qubits,” said Robin Blume-Kohout, co-director of Sandia National Laboratories’ Quantum Performance Lab, in Quantinuum’s announcement. Blume-Kohout was not involved in Quantinuum’s study.
In his interview with the Journal, Hazra cited chemistry research as an example of how improved error correction could support commercial applications. The Quantinuum CEO said that the current level of fidelity could support algorithms for making predictions about simple molecules, with the potential for more complex algorithms as accuracy improves.
Quantinuum’s Roadmap, 2026.
“We are focused on commercialization, and all the use cases we see have different requirements for fault tolerance,” he said. “That’s why it is so fundamentally important versus just a scientific pursuit.”
The technical roadmap also carries financial importance. Quantinuum raised nearly $1.7 billion in its June initial public offering, but reported a $65.4 million loss on $8 million in revenue in its most recent quarter.
Before Apollo, Quantinuum plans to introduce Sol, 2D-grid-based quantum computer. Lessons from Helios are intended to guide its development.
Hazra told the Journal that combining accurate physical qubits with scalable error correction gives Quantinuum greater confidence in its schedule.
“That is what underpins our roadmap confidence of getting to full fault tolerance by 2029,” he said.
Read Quantinuum’s in-depth blog post for more details.
More than 100,000 people from Ukraine and Sudan can stay in the United States without immediate risk of deportation, the Department of Homeland Security said, in what amounts to a temporary reprieve after their right to stay in the country was set to expire on Monday.
Temporary protected status was set to end on Monday for about 101,000 Ukrainians and 1,800 Sudanese. But the DHS said an announcement “will be made at the appropriate time”. Until then, the department said in a written statement, Ukrainians and Sudanese in the US covered by those temporary measures “retain protection”. The department did not indicate how long they could stay or when a final announcement would be made on their status.
System can estimate a person’s biological age and predict chances of cancer survival from a single photograph
Doctors have developed an artificial intelligence tool that can predict a cancer patient’s chances of survival from a single photograph of their face.
The AI system was custom-built by experts at Mass General Brigham, a nonprofit, integrated academic healthcare system in Massachusetts, to estimate biological age and directly predict survival outcomes in patients diagnosed with cancer.
Apparently, macOS 27 comes with a small mystery people are trying to figure out.
Recently, while troubleshooting a PATH issue, I noticed an entry for /pkg/env/global/bin. At first, I worried that something had gone horribly wrong. Turns out, this is part of macOS 27.0… though no one is sure what it’s for yet.
The weird thing is, as far as I can tell, no one seems to know what this new directory is for! It’s odd that Apple would update their filesystem structure, add it to everyone’s PATH, and there not be some explicable reason.
I guess we’ll find out eventually, but this does highlight something that I find extremely unsettling about this. With proprietary software like macOS, you literally are at the mercy of whatever Apple decides to do to “your” operating system. You install an update, and aside from all the documented changes, there’s going to be changes you simply have no idea what they’re for, or why they’re there. Don’t get me wrong, there’s obviously not something nefarious going on in this particular case, but it still feels wild to me that people just willingly accept this.
In the open source world, stuff like this simply does not happen. You’re not going to install a bunch of Fedora updates one day and find a mysterious, undocumented folder in your PATH. Such a change will be documented, but even in the unlikely event it’s not, you can just go through the commit history and find out exactly why the new folder is there, and what its intended purpose is or is going to be.
Considering the state of the world and the people corporations like Apple really answer to, I would not be comfortable with letting them dictate even something as simple as my PATH.
TP-Link plans to begin assembling routers in Mississippi as early as 2027 after the FCC banned imports of new foreign-made consumer routers over security concerns. Engadget reports: The company has signed a letter of intent with manufacturer Key Tronic and, pending approval from regulators, TP-Link says stateside assembly of its routers could start at a Mississippi production line as soon as early 2027.
Once things are up and running, Wi-Fi 8 routers are expected to be among the first TP-Link products that Key Tronic assembles. TP-Link claims that the agreement is part of its "long-term effort to accelerate US investment in high-tech manufacturing and job creation, designing and assembling next-generation products for American consumers here on American soil."
The company said it will still have to source components from outside the US. "Many [components] are just not available from a domestic source, and this is not a TP-Link issue," TP-Link's corporate affairs officer Steve Kovsky told PC Mag. "This is an issue for all manufacturers that are trying to onshore manufacturing."
Astronomical fuel prices driven ever-higher by the U.S.–Israel war in Iran might be hitting Mike Rogers, too.
The Republican candidate for Senate in Michigan spent more than $40,000 to cover a single private jet bill last month, according to campaign finance records reviewed by The Intercept. The five-figure ticket was part of over $100,000 worth of campaign cash Rogers spent on luxury travel last quarter, most of it on private jet trips.
As economic woes shape the Michigan Senate race, Roger’s opponent, Democratic candidate and former public health official Abdul El-Sayed, has attacked the Republican repeatedly for his ties to corporations and billionaire donors. Rogers, who represented Michigan’s 8th District in the House from 2001 to 2015, regularly advocated in Congress to let lawmakers receive gifts and other benefits from restricted nonprofit groups. He helped defeat a 2006 bill that would have cracked down on former congressional members’ lobbying activities and banned certain privately funded trips.
For Jeffrey Hauser, a critic of corporate political influence, Rogers’s newly revealed campaign spending on luxury services might spell a warning to Michigan voters feeling the crunch of a struggling economy.
“It seems like Mike Rogers has developed a real taste for the finer things,” said Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project, which is not backing any candidate in the Michigan race. “That means he is likely to want to continue to court, and be courted by, the economic elite, which portends badly for working class Michiganders who prefer their Senator have some understanding of their lives and identification with their interests.”
In September, the Rogers campaign paid $93,152 to JL Jets for at least five separate private charter flights, including the $40,000 transaction. Around the same time, the campaign also dropped another $500 on the luxury chauffeur company Blacklane. From July to September, Rogers’s campaign paid an additional $4,527 to Blacklane for luxury car services, including a $2,078 chauffeur expense on August 17. The campaign spent $683 on a pair of limo rides in August and September.
Campaigning requires a lot of travel, and El-Sayed’s campaign finance records show higher total travel costs — roughly $330,000 last quarter, according to public filings. But those funds went toward commercial flights on Delta and American airlines, Hertz car rentals, gas, Uber and Lyft rides, and hotel accommodations.
El-Sayed had a busier campaign calendar with a competitive Democratic primary against Rep. Haley Stevens, while Rogers was the presumed Republican nominee since the early days of the race. El-Sayed’s campaign said he did more than 500 events ahead of the August primary, and Rogers has carried a more relaxed schedule into the general election cycle.
In a statement to The Intercept, a spokesperson for Rogers pointed to El-Sayed’s spending on meals and travel on the campaign trail as well as a series of high-dollar contributions his father-in-law made to a super PAC backing the campaign.
“Abdul El-Sayed reimbursed himself $90K, and his father-in-law, a senior advisor of CAIR, gave his SuperPAC $300K,” said Rogers campaign spokesperson Abby Ronson. “If the Intercept is looking for an FEC story, I’d take a long hard look at Abdul.” The El-Sayed campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
If elected, Rogers wouldn’t be the only U.S. senator to spend big on private jets. He would appear to compete with top spenders. As public scrutiny has driven politicians away from chartered flights, only Sens. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., spent more on private flights than Rogers did last quarter, Axios reported — and they spent it over the course of a year and a half.
The Rogers campaign did book some flights with airlines like Frontier and Southwest, spending about $29,000 on 10 flights, but luxury transportation accounted for the vast majority of the campaign’s travel expenses last quarter.
Among Rogers’s hotel spending was a $2,000 stay at The Breakers, a luxury oceanfront hotel in Palm Beach, Florida; another $1,295 at the Grand Traverse Resort and Spa in Michigan; and $200 at the five-star Palazzo at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas. In addition to travel costs, the campaign paid $2,165 to its deputy campaign manager Tyler Henningsen in late September for car repairs at a BMW dealership in Bloomfield Hills, one of Michigan’s most affluent areas. Henningsen did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s request for comment, but the Rogers spokesperson said the car was used for campaign purposes.
Luxury transportation accounted for the vast majority of the Rogers campaign’s travel expenses last quarter.
Campaign finance rules state that spending on travel and vehicle costs is allowed, as long it’s strictly for campaign purposes. It is generally illegal to use campaign funds for personal travel; if a person uses campaign funds for mixed personal and campaign travel, they have to reimburse the campaign within 30 days. If the campaign pays for a car, that car can only be used for campaigning.
Rogers holds significant personal investments in the real estate, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity industries. His Senate campaign has received significant backing from corporate figureheads such as billionaires, Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, the DeVos family, and Elon Musk, who through his super PAC, America PAC, has poured into the race more than $6 million since Rogers promised to “shield” the world’s richest man from congressional oversight.
On the debate stage, El-Sayed has targeted Rogers’s home in Florida and his two “yachts,” attempting to paint the former congressman as out-of-touch from everyday, working Michiganders. Public records show Rogers owned two boats measuring 32 and 39 feet in Maryland, though he reportedly sold one of them. Rogers is attempting to sell his Florida home and is living full-time in Michigan, according to news outlet Bridge Michigan.
While Rogers was in Congress, he chaired the House Intelligence Committee and was a key supporter of the Patriot Act, pushing to expand domestic spying powers. Toward the end of his time in Congress, in 2013 and 2014, he and his wife Kristi attended a pair of weekend retreats at a five-star resort, The Cloister in Sea Island, Georgia, on the dime of the right-wing think tank American Enterprise Institute. At the 2014 forum, described in 2022 by CBS News as “a private, off-the-record gathering of conservative leaders and wealthy donors,” Rogers spoke as a panelist in his capacity as House Intelligence Committee chair on “cybersecurity and national security issues,” disclosureforms said.
Alongside Rogers, the 2014 event featured prominent conservative figures as speakers, such as then-House majority leader Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va.; Iraq War architect Karl Rove; then-Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; New York Times columnist David Brooks; then-president of the National Economic Council Gene Sperling; and Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Also in attendance were Betsy and Dick DeVos, Donald Trump’s first-term education secretary and former Amway CEO, respectively, who have since funded Rogers’s current run and several past campaigns.
A few weeks after the conservative retreat, Alexander stepped down as NSA director under the cloud of the Edward Snowden leaks revealing the U.S. government’s role in a global spying network. That year Alexander founded cybersecurity firm IronNet, which hired Rogers in 2015 after he decided not to run for reelection. He was later elevated to a board role at IronNet — which has since gone bankrupt — and received more than $700,000 in payments and held stock with the company worth $250,000 to $500,000, according to financial disclosure forms.
“Politicians spend enormous amounts of time with the super rich, either because they are seeking to raise money from them, consulting with them about the economy, or both,” Hauser said. “As a result, they start to develop expensive tastes.”
Millions of customers’ genetic and personal information exposed in 2023, including more than 855,000 Californians
California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, on Monday announced the state will receive a $6m settlement payment in 23andMe’s bankruptcy, resolving California’s legal claims related to a 2023 data breach that exposed 6.9 million customers’ genetic and other personal information.
California had unsuccessfully tried to block the $305m sale of 23andMe assets to TTAM Research Institute, a non-profit controlled by the 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki. The state had argued that the bankruptcy sale violated California’s Genetic Information Privacy Act, and it had said consumers did not give express consent to the sale.
New details emerge about Kaylub Giamanco, who went on to elementary school campus and shot Bend suspect dead
New details are emerging about the parent who fatally shot the 16-year-old shooter who killed three children and a teacher in Oregon last week.
In a 2018 Facebook post, Kaylub Giamanco, the 36-year-old carpenter who shot and killed the shooter, said he had gone through “military shooting drills” with veterans who fought in Iraq.
Drivers to get five minutes to decide whether to park and 10 minutes to leave after their session ends
Drivers will get a guaranteed five minutes to decide whether to park and 10 minutes to leave after their parking session ends before they face a fine under new rules for private car parks that Andy Burnham said were designed to outlaw “rip-off” charges.
In the latest in a series of “everyday fixes” to ease the cost of living and give consumers a “fairer” deal, the prime minister said a new official code of practice for the industry meant motorists in England, Scotland and Wales would enjoy a range of new rights.
(The Center Square) – The American Parents Coalition published a new “Lookout” brief to help parents better understand data centers, what makes a good one and how to know what questions to ask for their community.
(The Center Square) – With over two dozen states having begun early voting, a group of U.S. House Republicans is highlighting the party’s immigration policy wins since the second Trump administration took office.
Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from ProPublica: A few months into President Donald Trump's second term, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wanted Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to secretly acquire a voting machine and hack it. The appointees wanted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to procure the machine, examine it and report back the findings so they could be given to the White House, according to two former administration officials with knowledge of the request.
The proposition was shocking to CISA's career staffers, according to one of the former officials. CISA typically worked to thwart hackers. Moreover, the agency had been directed not to alert the voting machine company if it uncovered flaws, contrary to its standard practices. The request made the CISA employees fear they were being asked to take part in political interference. "My thought was they could keep it in their back pocket to invalidate any [election] results they don't like," one of the former officials said. "This goes against everything CISA represents." [Or, perhaps do something worse?]
The CISA employees repeatedly told the political appointees that their request was impossible, in part because the agents capable of pulling off such an operation had just been laid off by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative. The appointees eventually stopped pressing CISA. Though not acted on, the request shows how the Trump administration has tried to use the agency for its own ends while draining it of resources for one of its critical missions: protecting the nation's voting systems.
Many Delawareans vote early. About 4 in 10 Delaware voters cast their ballots early in the 2024 general election (209,516 early voters out of 518,330 people who voted), and Sussex County led the state.
How the counties compared: 2024 vs. 2026
Sussex stood out. It had about the same number of early voters as New Castle County, roughly 90,000 to 83,000, even though New Castle had more than twice as many registered voters. In Sussex, 43% of all registered voters voted early, compared with 19% in New Castle – see Table 1.
Sussex is also growing. Every county had more registered voters on Oct. 1, 2026, than on Nov. 1, 2024, and Sussex added the most, about 12,000 – see Table 2.
Table 1: 2024 Delaware registered and early voters, by county
Table 2: 2026 Delaware registered voters, by county
County
Registered voters (Oct. 1, 2026)
New Castle
440,754
Kent
148,538
Sussex
220,594
Statewide
809,886
(Table 2 Source: Delaware Department of Elections, Voter Registration Totals by Political Party, Oct. 1, 2026.)
Delaware early voting sites, by county
(Sussex notes: Nassau Valley Vineyard in Lewes replaces the Fairfield Inn in Rehoboth Beach, which was used for the primary. In Seaford, Allen Street is closed; turn from Stein Highway onto Dulaney Street to reach the site. See the detour map.)
Early voting site
Address
New Castle County
Appoquinimink State Service Center
122 Silver Lake Road, Middletown
Claymont Community Center
3301 Green St., Claymont
Department of Elections Warehouse, New Castle
220 Lisa Drive, New Castle
Hudson State Service Center
501 Ogletown Road, Newark
The Delaware Contemporary
200 S. Madison St., Wilmington
Wilmington PAL
3707 N. Market St., Wilmington
Kent County
BPOE #1903 Elks Lodge
200 S. Saulsbury Road, Dover
Frederica Senior Center
216 Market St., Frederica
Harrington Parks and Recreation
114 E. Liberty St., Harrington
Wyoming United Methodist Church
216 Wyoming Mill Road, Dover
Sussex County
Department of Elections Warehouse, Georgetown
542 S. Bedford St., Georgetown
Department of Elections Warehouse, Seaford
200 Allen St., Seaford (see road closure note above)
Ellendale Fire Hall
302 Main St., Ellendale
Indian River Fire Company, Station #2
25375 Banks Road, Millsboro
Laurel Fire Hall
205 W. 10th St., Laurel
Margaret Rollins Community Center
101 Adams Ave., Lewes
Millville Community Center
32517 Dukes Drive, Millville
Nassau Valley Vineyard
32130 Winery Road, Lewes
Roxana Fire Hall
35943 Zion Church Road, Frankford
(Source: Delaware Department of Elections, Voting Locations page, accessed Oct. 19, 2026)
How to vote early
Hours:
Thursday, Oct. 22, through Tuesday, Oct. 27: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Closed Sunday, Oct. 25
Wednesday, Oct. 28, through Sunday, Nov. 1: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
What to bring: ID, but it does not need a photo. A Delaware driver’s license, state ID card, or a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck or government document with your name and address all work. Forgot it? You can still vote once poll workers check that you’re registered and you sign a form swearing to who you are.
Officers responding to an alleged shoplifting call fired into the vehicle of Vellesiya Wiley, killing her son, Kohen
On Monday, the office of the Mississippi attorney general, Lynn Fitch, announced that the police shooting of Kohen Wiley, a one-year-old, as he sat in his mother’s lap “was justified”. The statement came four months after the baby was killed in Senatobia, Mississippi.
On 14 June, officers in Senatobia, a small city near Memphis, were responding to a shoplifting call alleging Vellesiya Wiley, the baby’s mother, and Latoya Ferrell, a friend, had stolen a pack of diapers. Neither woman has been charged with a crime. Officials have not released any evidence of shoplifting.
Program aims to give entrepreneurs one pathway for permits, licenses and pre-opening inspections across multiple state agencies
DOVER — Delaware has launched a pilot program designed to make it easier for new small-business owners to navigate state permits, licenses and inspections before opening their doors.
The Small Business Joint Inspection Pilot creates a coordinated process intended to replace what can be a confusing series of applications, agency websites and separately scheduled inspections.
The initiative was ordered by Gov. Matt Meyer under Executive Order 21, signed in May as part of a broader effort to reduce regulatory barriers facing small businesses. The order created the Office of Small Business Access and directed state agencies with inspection authority to develop common checklists and coordinated inspection scheduling.
“Opening a small business takes courage and hard work. Navigating state government should not add to the challenge,” Meyer said. “This pilot means fewer websites, fewer delays, and one clear path from an idea to an ‘open for business’ sign.”
The program does not eliminate permits, licenses, inspections or health and safety requirements. Instead, it seeks to coordinate the process and give business owners a clearer understanding of what they need before opening.
One point of coordination
The Office of Small Business Access, led by Director Anastasia Jackson, will manage the pilot with participating state agencies.
Business owners entering the process through Delaware One Stop will be told about the voluntary program and can choose whether to participate.
Those who opt in will use the state’s ServiceNow system, which identifies the permits, licenses and applications that apply to their type of business and provides links to the appropriate applications.
Agency liaisons also are notified when a participating business enters the system, allowing agencies to identify potential requirements and begin coordinating reviews.
The Office of Small Business Access was established earlier this year to serve as a central point of contact for entrepreneurs dealing with state government, including licensing, permitting and regulatory issues.
Business owners also will be able to arrange meetings with agency representatives and receive contacts for local planning, zoning and business licensing officials based on where the business will operate.
Coordinating inspections
One of the most significant changes involves inspections.
Rather than requiring entrepreneurs to independently schedule inspections with several agencies, the pilot allows the Office of Small Business Access to help coordinate those visits.
Executive Order 21 specifically directs agencies to offer coordinated scheduling so required inspectors can visit during the same general window when requested by the applicant. It also says agencies generally should not require another agency’s approval before scheduling an inspection unless health or safety considerations require it.
The participating agencies are the Delaware Department of Transportation; Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control; Delaware State Fire Marshal; Delaware Department of Health and Social Services’ Division of Public Health; and Office of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commissioner.
Which businesses qualify?
The pilot covers a variety of relatively small new businesses, including retail stores and markets; art galleries; hair salons, barbershops and spas; independently owned restaurants, bars and taprooms; coffee shops and cafes; childcare facilities; fitness centers; furniture stores; ice cream shops; laundromats; and certain small manufacturing, packaging and distribution operations.
Only businesses that have not yet opened and still need applications or approvals from participating state agencies are eligible.
Participants also must create a my.delaware.gov account.
Not every business will need approval from every participating agency, and applications remain subject to the normal agency review process before inspections are scheduled.
The joint inspection effort is one part of a larger small-business initiative established by Executive Order 21. The order also directs the state to develop plain-language requirements for common business types, examine regulations that may unnecessarily impede small businesses and improve coordination among state agencies.
TO GO
What: Delaware Small Business Joint Inspection Pilot
Who qualifies: New businesses that have not yet opened and require permits, licenses or inspections from participating state agencies
How it works: Eligible owners may opt into a coordinated process through Delaware One Stop and ServiceNow
Participating agencies: DelDOT, DNREC, State Fire Marshal, Division of Public Health and Office of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commissioner
Requirements: Participants must create a my.delaware.gov account. Existing permit, licensing, health and safety requirements still apply.
At an Oct. 17 town hall in Michigan, a man asked Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed whether he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood; clips of that exchange went viral, and his opponent Republican Mike Rogers said El-Sayed didn’t answer sufficiently.
“He didn’t disavow it,”Rogers said during an Oct. 18 CNN interview. “He goes on this word salad trying to get around the fact that he can’t do it.” CNN’s Dana Bash challenged Rogers’ dismissal in the interview, saying El-Sayed disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that started in Egypt in 1928 and now has branches across the Middle East.
In 2025, President Donald Trump designated some branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations. TheTreasury Department sanctioned a senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader in July for allegedly fundraising for Hamas.
At theevent in Caro, Michigan, the attendee asked El-Sayed if he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed responded by asking for his name and started to ask if he knew about the U.S. Constitution. The attendee said, “I have one simple question. Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood?”
This is Tommy. Tommy had a question about my allegiances. Listen to the end to hear about his. https://t.co/p09eMtsh0x
“Sure, yeah, absolutely,” El-Sayed said, before quickly turning the question back to the attendee, wondering why he was asking it.
El-Sayed said the question implied that “because I am Muslim, that somehow I would have some allegiance to something that is not our Constitution.”
He said John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president, received similar questions about whether he’d primarily have allegiance to the pope. El-Sayed echoed Kennedy, who at the time said he was not running as a Catholic president, but was running for president and happened to be Catholic.
“I’m not running to be a Muslim senator. I’m running for U.S. Senate and happen to be Muslim,” El-Sayed said. “And so, it’s important, I think, because you would ask this question in a way that suggests that somehow, our Constitution shouldn’t be the thing that all of us bear allegiance to. And I’m just telling you that for me, that Constitution is the guiding light.”
TheHandbasket newsletter and other outlets have identified the questioner as Thomas Teepell, who was a staff member for U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., until this year. PolitiFact attempted to contact Teepell and did not receive a response.
At anothertown hall event Oct. 18, El-Sayed said he “clearly condemned” the Muslim Brotherhood and said, “That’s not a difficult thing to do.”
Rogers criticizes El-Sayed’s response
When Bash noted El-Sayed’s disavowal, Rogers said El-Sayed didn’t do it correctly.
“And if you listen to that, that’s not a — he didn’t disavow it. He didn’t say no,” Rogers said. “He didn’t say, ‘It worries me that they treat women differently under the Muslim Brotherhood’s view of Sharia law.’ He didn’t say any of that.”
PolitiFact contacted Rogers’ campaign to ask why Rogers doesn’t consider El-Sayed’s response a disavowal.
“Dismissing isn’t disavowing,” Rogers’ campaign spokesperson Alyssa Brouillet said. She said El-Sayed’s record “speaks for itself: from his op-ed and pledge to support the Muslim Brotherhood, to his family ties to the organization, and even their donations to his campaign.”
Rogers and Republicans have tried to tie El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood, pointing to El-Sayed’s writings about politics in Egypt during the 2011 revolution and his sister’s past statements about their family. The accusations leave out important context.
El-Sayed denies Muslim Brotherhood connections
In 2011, El-Sayed wrote an essay published by The Huffington Post, supportingpeople protesting for democracy in Egypt and against former president Hosni Mubarak. El-Sayed wrote that concerns about a Muslim Brotherhood takeover shouldn’t dissuade the U.S. from supporting the protesters.
El-Sayed also signed a 2012 statement with 45 other Egyptian-Americans identified as Egyptian community leaders defending the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Mohamed Morsi, who had won election as Egypt’s president following Egypt’s 2011 revolution.The statement, posted online in Arabic, said, in part, that the signers are “united in support of the elected President.” (PolitiFact used Google Translate to translate the statement to English.) The statement was not a pledge of support for the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole.
“I have never had these conversations with my mother. I wasn’t raised by my mother,” he said. “You’re using hearsay evidence from a tweet. It’s just not serious.”
El-Sayed’s parentsdivorced when he was young, and he has said he was primarily raised by his father and stepmother.
Our ruling
Rogers said El-Sayed “didn’t disavow” the Muslim Brotherhood at a town hall.
When asked if he would disavow the group, El-Sayed answered, “Sure, yeah, absolutely.”
In an interview before the town hall, El-Sayed said he had no ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Catherine Breed began unprecedented journey at northern end of state, swimming 10 miles a day to reach other end in less than four months
A 33-year-old ultra-endurance athlete has completed an unprecedented swim down the entire coast of California, finishing the 900-mile journey in less than four months.
Catherine Breed will celebrate the end of her swim at San Diego’s Coronado beach on Monday afternoon, 111 days since she began her journey on 1 July at the northern border of California.
French PM Lecornu says he has asked prefects to implement “a number of partial curfews” in certain “localised” urban areas to stop further disorder, which he attributes to “the extreme-left” and some criminal elements.
We will no doubt hear more on this from local authorities, as in the example of Marseille (10:32).
(The Center Square) – U.S. House Democrats say they would undo President Donald Trump's tariffs. They have not said what would replace the revenue, and they have not addressed the Section 301 tariffs now hitting 60 trading partners.
I’m 58yrs my friend is 65yrs I got a X7LR 8wks and 6days ago my friend said he was aiming for 2000miles cycling this year I said I recon I can do 500 miles in 3months challenge on I said I completed my 500 tonight yippee 🥳 just over 31 miles today on full charge my friend is still under 400 miles can’t wait to tell him 😁
(The Center Square) – With two weeks until the 2026 midterm general elections, forecasters are predicting Democrats will take a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, winning as many as 232 seats.
Photo illustration by ProPublica. Source images: Congress and videos obtained by ProPublica.
What Happened: A New Mexico Democrat in the House introduced a bill last week that would make it easier for U.S. citizens to sue immigration agents and the federal government over wrongful detentions and arrests.
Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández credited ProPublica’s reporting as the catalyst for the bill, the Justice for Citizens Wrongfully Detained by ICE Act. Earlier this month, we revealed that more than 500 U.S. citizens have been detained in warrantless arrests during the second Trump administration.
Leger Fernández said the legislation would roll back the protections from lawsuits that agents and the federal government currently have. It would also establish a minimum level of compensation for people who win their suits, and extend the statute of limitations for such cases.
The legislation would also take back any unspent Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding from President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Leger Fernández’s bill was introduced with co-sponsor Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a New Jersey Democrat.
Why It Matters: It can be difficult to sue federal officers for wrongful arrests or excessive force, or for local prosecutors to bring charges. Federal agents can claim immunity in response to civil lawsuits or to state charges and can move their cases to federal court.
What They Said: In an interview with ProPublica, Leger Fernández emphasized that accountability could not only address past wrongs, it may also help head them off in the future. “We know that when there are consequences, bad actors start behaving better because they don’t want to face those consequences,” she said.
Without legislation, Leger Fernández said, agents “will continue to violate the law, to violate their own policy, and to violate the Constitution without any consequences.”
Asked about the legislation, the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, repeated claims that it is not arresting U.S. citizens and defended its immigration operations as “highly targeted.”
Background: The federal government denies that there is any pattern of immigration agents detaining U.S. citizens, but according to ProPublica’s count, more than 100 citizens were held after agents questioned their citizenship. At least 70 children and teens were also detained.
Crackdown marks latest escalation in the Trump justice department’s push to target alleged noncitizen voting
The US Department of Justice has filed criminal charges against 28 green card holders in California accused of fraudulently registering to vote and casting illegal ballots.
The crackdown marks another escalation in the federal government’s ongoing efforts against alleged noncitizen voting, efforts that Democrats and voting rights groups say are part of a strategy by the Trump administration to sow doubt in the results of the upcoming midterm elections.
The wife and infant son of the ex-OpenAI engineer left the U.S. for Saudi Arabia in October with business-class tickets purchased by a Saudi military official, prosecutors allege.
From “Twilight” to “The Batman,” Robert Pattinson has shown his ability to play highly contrasting roles over the course of his career. This time he takes on a real person: Chris Hansen from “To Catch a Predator,” an early 2000s reality show where Hansen confronts adults who try to meet up with teenagers online.
Lance Oppenheim’s film “Primetime,” which was released on Sept. 25, covers many aspects of the show, such as how Hansen prepared before filming, the process of how they lured in predators and even reenacts scenes from the actual show, including many of Hansen’s iconic lines.
This was my most anticipated movie of 2026. Pattinson has recently become my favorite actor and I have seen nearly every movie he has been in, so I was really looking forward to seeing him portray Hansen.
Not only is he an amazing actor, but he is especially talented in voice acting. He can change his voice to fit any type of character. When comparing his voice used in “The Batman,” a low-pitched, deep, growl-like tone, to that in “Primetime,” it is apparent how well he can do different voices, especially when reenacting Hansen’s.
Another lead performance by Merritt Wever, who plays producer Andie Bender, is overlooked. She is captivating while assisting Hansen with investigating and slowly watching him descend into madness all at the same time. In addition, both decoys — adult actors who portray teenagers who interact with the predators — played by Skylar Gisondo and Phoebe Bridgers, did an excellent job.
Gisondo plays Dan Plumb, an aspiring young actor, who gets hired to play a 13-year-old boy who communicates with each adult to lure them in. Hansen then gives him the nickname, Decoy Dan, which has become one of the running jokes of the film. Gisondo does a great job of capturing the awkwardness and terrifying aspects of the job that comes with interacting with predators.
Bridgers, notably known for her music career, makes her acting debut in this film as Del Harvey. She, along with Gisondo, plays a decoy as a young teenage girl to lure in the predators. I did not know she did not have acting experience prior to this. She is a natural when it comes to being on the big screen.
The film touches on some aspects of Hansen’s personal life, such as an extramarital affair he was having.
When reflecting on the film,“It was so bizarre and so in-and-out of reality,” Hansen said in an exclusive interview with Variety. “Obviously, I’m not objective because the character is, you know, me, but it was so detached from reality or anything I’ve experienced then or now doing the investigations.”
Since its release, this movie has taken pop culture by storm. Fans of the movie have made skits and parodies on platforms like TikTok of them reciting iconic quotes from Pattinson’s performance such as, “You see how this looks, right?”
In addition, popular YouTuber Slushy Noobz got the opportunity to sit down and interview Pattinson and Gisondo, introducing the movie to their audience. As a huge fan of the members of Slushy Noobz, Martin Andrijasevic and Hamzah Al-Emad, seeing them take their humor and bring it to the interview was really entertaining to watch, making me want to see the film a second time.
If you like Pattinson as an actor and watching psychological thriller movies, give “Primetime” a chance. It has dark moments mixed with comedic aspects and great acting performances throughout the whole film. Although much of it is fictionalized, it gives a good glimpse into the reality of the famous show, “To Catch a Predator.”
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: A hacker broke into more than 100 websites using an army of AI agents that mostly operated on their own, according to findings from the AI security firm Norforge. Though Norforge doesn't name the targets, Reuters reports that the victims included companies like John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins.
[...] Researchers at Norforge uncovered the attacks through exposed work on Cairn, an open-source AI platform that describes itself as a "general-purpose problem-solving engine." With Cairn, users set a start and end point for the AI agents, which document their progress as they move forward with the task. However, as noted by Norforge, hackers can also use the tool to orchestrate cyberattacks using AI agents.
The hacker who broke into more than 100 sites was the "most active" among the exposed Cairn instances discovered by Norforge, waging attacks on companies based in the US, Canada, Australia, and Japan, as reported by Reuters. This attacker laid out "preferred intrusion tactics" using fewer than 100 Chinese characters, with successful breaches taking about 23 hours, according to Reuters. Overall, Nordforge found more than 20 exposed Cairn instances that are "likely malicious." A John Deere spokesperson said there is "no indication that sensitive information was accessed" as a result of the attack, while Cummins said it's "investigating the report of a potential cyber-attack on a website operated by one of our third-party vendors."
Meanwhile, SharkNinja says the breach impacted a standalone site with product support information, and that it has contained the threat.
A superconducting neural network chip that borrows tricks from quantum computers has successfully passed a battery of tests that involved processing data from a fusion reactor. The Genesis Mission project paves the way to the development of a bigger chip for more fusion testing next year, and showcases the potential for a new type of silicon that could leapfrog current energy and performance limits of GPUs in supercomputers.
Great Sky is a Boulder, Colorodo chip startup that was spun out of the National Institute of Standards and Technology by CEO Jeff Shainline and his co-founders in 2024 following nearly a decade of development at NIST. The company, which came out of stealth in March, is developing a chip that utilizes technologies often found in quantum computers, such as superconducting compute and optical connectivity, to implement an analog neural network in hardware, rather than just emulating one digitally.
Great Sky’s neuromorphic chip (Image courtesy Great Sky)
Great Sky says its approach, which it dubs superconducting optoelectronic network (SOEN), can process data at significantly higher rates than traditional chips, such as GPUs, given the same energy. The key to the high performance of Great Sky’s SOEN approach is the combination of superconducting Josephson junction circuits, which offer the highest speed-to-energy ratio of any known circuit element, along with integrated photonic waveguides for long-range, single-photon optical communication, the company says.
“We use many of the same devices as quantum technologies–superconducting circuits, single-photon detectors–but we use them for classical, analog computation in a parallel, distributed architecture, which is ideal for AI,” CEO Shainline said in a blog post earlier this year.
“By constructing new hardware that enables more sophisticated architectures and algorithms while performing operations near the physical limits of speed and energy efficiency, we can transition to a completely different roadmap for scaling that doesn’t require hundreds of billions in capex and gigawatt data centers,” he added.
Those claims were tested in a series of Genesis Mission-related challenges put together by Great Sky, Brookhaven National Lab, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and the DIII-D National Fusion Facility operated by General Atomics in San Diego, California. Brookhaven led the development of a specialized chip based on Great Sky’s technology that was used to manage the tokamak at the heart of the DIII-D fusion reactor, the largest operating tokamak in North America.
Brookhaven said the new chip had “no problem” processing data from the tokamak at rates up to one million data samples per second.
Great Sky CEO and Co-founder Jeffrey Shainline
“This chip took data straight from a tokamak at millions of samples every second and kept up,” said Steven Cowley, laboratory director of PPP, which was involved in the testing. “That’s a real step toward practical fusion power, and I can’t wait to see where we take it next.”
The neuromorphic chip also passed with flying colors a simulated test from a tokamak simulator developed by the Google DeepMind fusion team, dubbed TORAX, that checks how well a system can respond to rapidly changing plasma behavior in a fusion reaction.
Great Sky, which has completed four chip tapeouts for under $4 million, is planning to build another chip with neural network that’s 10x bigger. The goal is to have the chip completed by the end of the year and ready for testing at Brookhaven Lab in early 2027, followed by another onsite deployment at the DIII-D tokamak later in the year.
“It’s incredible to see the team processing data from our tokamak,” said Richard Buttery, the director of DIII-D. “The folks here at DIII-D are very excited to see how this chip can impact diagnostics and control for the fusion industry.”
Managing fusion reactors is one potential use case of Great Sky’s superconducting neural network chip, but there are others. Ultimately, the goal of Great Sky–which was awarded a phase one contract with the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission project–is to build supercomputers with more neurons and synapses than the human brain, operating a million times faster.
“This is our largest chip to date, and it’s great to see it processing high-speed data directly measured from a tokamak,” stated Shainline. “But this is just the beginning. This approach to AI hardware has so much to offer with regard to fusion, as well as other applications at the forefront of technology. Control and error correction of quantum systems, advanced cybersecurity, video intelligence with continual learning–these are all incredible opportunities as we scale up our systems.”
Generating tokens for AI is another use case. According to Great Sky, its neuromorphic chip could potentially generate 1 million output tokens for one penny, which is 300x less expensive than the best AI hardware can do today, or $3 per 1m tokens.
Following the EuroHPC User Days 2026, the EuroHPC JU welcomes new leadership of the User Forum Coordination Group, supporting stronger engagement across Europe’s HPC user community.
Oct. 19, 2026 — The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has announced the election of Sinéad Ryan, Dean of Research, Trinity College Dublin as Chair and the re-election of Maria Girone, Head of CERN openlab, as Vice-Chair of the EuroHPC User Forum Coordination Group (UFCG).
Members of the User Forum Coordination Group (L-R): Ivan Carnimeo, Andrius Popovas, Massimo Bocus, Sinéad Ryan, Maria Girone, Chris Richardson, Lara Peeters, Eleni Briola.
The elections took place in the context of the EuroHPC User Days 2026, following the completion of the two-year mandates of the outgoing Chair and Vice-Chair.
For the next two years, Sinéad Ryan and Maria Girone have chosen to act as co-chairs of the group. The UFCG will continue its work to foster dialogue, collaboration and exchange across the EuroHPC user community.
The EuroHPC JU would like to thank Chris Richardson for his commitment and contribution as the UFCG’s first Chair since its establishment in 2024, and for his role in supporting the development of the User Forum in the past two years.
The EuroHPC User Forum provides a platform for users to exchange experiences, identify common needs and provide feedback on the development of EuroHPC services and infrastructures.
In this context, the UFCG supports this dialogue, helping to strengthen connections between users and the EuroHPC JU and ensuring that the perspectives of the user community contribute to the continued development of the European HPC ecosystem.
The UFCG and its User Forum report directly to the EuroHPC JU Executive Director.
The UFCG is composed by:
Sinéad Ryan (Chair), Trinity College Dublin
Maria Girone (Vice-Chair), CERN openlab
Ivan Carnimeo, Italian National Research Council (CNR)
Zoe Cournia, Biomedical Research Foundation, Athens
Andrius Popovas, University of Oslo
Lara Peeters, Ghent University
Alessio Roccon, University of Udine
Eleni Briola, Danish Meteorological Institute
Massimo Bocus, Ghent University
Chris Richardson, University of Cambridge
Learn more about the EuroHPC User Forum Coordination Group here.
Envelopes containing powder come weeks before midterms as federal agents try to identify who is behind campaign
More than three dozen members of the US Congress have had their offices targeted with envelopes containing white powder, less than three weeks before the 3 November midterms, as federal agents try to identify who is behind them.
The latest is the Virginia Democrat Suhas Subramanyam, whose Leesburg district office was evacuated on Monday after an envelope containing a suspicious substance arrived. He said the office was cleared quickly, adding that “acts of political intimidation have no place in our country”.
I was out for a ride 3 weeks ago and broke my right foot. My board is roughly at 96% charged right now. Htf do I burn the charge down to 60%? I vant get my kids to spend enough time running the battery down. (My son hopped on it twice for about 2 mi utes each time)
Supporters call it modernization. But new authority to reject records requests raises questions about government transparency and accountability.
By George D. Rotsch, Delaware LIVE News
DOVER, Del. — A sweeping proposal from State Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend to rewrite Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act could expand access to some government records while giving public agencies new authority to reject requests they consider overly broad, burdensome or abusive.
For advocates of open government, the proposal raises a fundamental question: Should government agencies have greater discretion to decide when citizens have asked for too much information?
The legislation, Senate Bill 355, was introduced Oct. 5 by Townsend, D-Newark, with State Rep. Cyndie Romer, D-Newark, as a co-sponsor. It is intended to generate public feedback rather than win immediate legislative approval. Its sponsors anticipate considering revised legislation during the General Assembly’s 2027 session.
The proposal could represent one of the most significant overhauls of Delaware’s public records law in decades.
While the bill includes substantial transparency improvements, provisions allowing agencies to reject certain requests have raised concerns about whether the changes could weaken an important tool for holding government accountable.
Who decides when a request goes too far?
Freedom of information laws exist because citizens cannot effectively oversee government without access to records documenting how public officials conduct business.
Delaware’s existing law generally focuses on whether requested records are public or exempt from disclosure.
The proposed legislation would also establish specific grounds for denying requests based on their scope, the burden they impose or the requester’s conduct.
Under SB 355, public bodies could deny requests determined to be unreasonably broad, unduly burdensome, disruptive to essential government functions or abusive.
The legislation defines an unreasonably broad request as one using sweeping terms without connections to specific records, dates, individuals or subject matter.
An unduly burdensome request would involve an unreasonable volume of records or require an unreasonable commitment of government resources.
Supporters of such restrictions argue that processing extensive or repetitive requests can consume taxpayer-funded staff time and divert resources from essential government services.
The public-accountability concern is that complicated, time-consuming requests are sometimes necessary to uncover waste, misconduct, conflicts of interest or policy failures.
Giving agencies additional grounds to reject such requests could make it more difficult for citizens to obtain information about controversial government decisions.
The legislation includes safeguards. Agencies would have to provide factual explanations for denials, and requesters could challenge those decisions through the Delaware attorney general’s office or the courts.
However, those protections also raise a practical question: How many citizens have the time or resources to challenge a government agency’s refusal to release records?
Why journalists are paying attention
For news organizations, extensive public records requests are often necessary when investigating government spending, personnel decisions, contracting practices, law enforcement activity or public health issues.
A routine request might seek a single document. Investigative reporting can require hundreds or thousands of pages of emails, invoices, reports or other government communications.
Those requests can be burdensome, but they can also reveal information that would otherwise remain outside public view.
One provision deserving particular scrutiny is the proposed definition of an abusive request, which considers patterns of conduct, including previous interactions between the requester and a public body.
That raises concerns about whether frequent requests from journalists, advocacy organizations or citizen watchdogs could eventually become grounds for denying access.
The concern is not necessarily that agencies would reject ordinary requests. Rather, the new authority could make obtaining sensitive or politically uncomfortable information more difficult.
The proposal’s safeguards against arbitrary denials will be particularly important as lawmakers evaluate the legislation.
Transparency gains could be significant
The proposal also contains several reforms intended to improve public access to information.
Among the most significant is the removal of broad public records exemptions covering the University of Delaware and Delaware State University.
The universities would become subject to expanded disclosure requirements, although exemptions would remain for certain confidential educational, research, fundraising and donor records.
The legislation would also narrow the broad exemption covering investigatory files compiled for civil or law enforcement purposes. Agencies would have to identify specific harms that could result from disclosure rather than automatically withholding records under the existing exemption.
Other changes include reducing the deadline for an initial agency response from 15 business days to 10 and extending FOIA eligibility to people who do not live in Delaware.
The proposal also addresses fees associated with processing records requests, including exemptions for certain news media, scholarly and scientific research requests.
Those changes could significantly improve transparency in areas where Delaware’s public records law has historically limited disclosure.
Balancing government efficiency with public oversight
The debate ultimately centers on how to balance the legitimate cost of complying with public records requests against the public’s right to scrutinize government.
Townsend’s proposal recognizes that processing large volumes of records can create substantial administrative burdens. The legislation attempts to establish standards for identifying requests that go beyond reasonable public oversight.
But those same standards could create opportunities for disagreement over what constitutes an unreasonable request.
From a limited-government perspective, the question is whether agencies responsible for producing public records should also have expanded authority to determine when requests for those records become excessive.
The bill’s provisions for written explanations and independent review are important protections, but their effectiveness would depend on how agencies apply the new standards.
Why it matters to Delawareans
Public records laws are often discussed as legal and administrative issues, but they affect anyone seeking answers about government decisions.
FOIA requests can help citizens examine school district spending, local government contracts, police department policies, public employee conduct and the use of taxpayer dollars.
When access becomes more difficult, residents may lose opportunities to identify problems or challenge decisions affecting their communities.
Conversely, clearer disclosure requirements and broader access to previously exempt records could strengthen public oversight.
As lawmakers consider the future of Delaware’s FOIA law, the central issue will be whether the proposed changes expand meaningful public access without giving government agencies excessive discretion to deny requests.
For citizens and journalists alike, the ultimate measure of reform will not simply be how quickly agencies respond, but whether the public can obtain the information necessary to hold government accountable.
TO GO
What: Senate Bill 355 proposes a major rewrite of Delaware’s Freedom of Information Act.
Sponsors: State Sen. Bryan Townsend and state Rep. Cyndie Romer, both Newark Democrats.
Status: Introduced Oct. 5, 2026, to solicit public feedback ahead of potential revised legislation in 2027.
Supporters’ argument: The proposal modernizes FOIA, expands access to previously exempt records, shortens response deadlines and establishes safeguards against abusive or excessively burdensome requests.
Accountability concern: New authority to deny broad, burdensome or abusive requests could make it harder for journalists and citizens to investigate government operations.
Why it matters: FOIA is a primary tool Delawareans use to examine government spending, decisions and accountability.
More information: Delaware General Assembly, Senate Bill 355.
BOULDER, Colo., Oct. 19, 2026 — Great Sky, Brookhaven National Lab, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and the DIII-D National Fusion Facility have partnered to develop a new kind of AI chip with the speed necessary to sense and respond to searing plasmas present in fusion reactors. The chips differ from conventional silicon chips — such as CPUs and GPUs — in fundamental ways. Instead of processing digital information using silicon transistors, Great Sky’s chips implement analog neural networks using superconducting circuitry with optical communication.
Great Sky’s SOEN (superconducting optoelectronic network) wafer
The team designed and fabricated their latest superconducting neural-network chip and demonstrated the chip performing three tasks of relevance to fusion control. The tasks were selected due to their relevance to the operation of tokamaks — large reactors designed for producing fusion power.
Two of the tasks injected data collected at the DIII-D tokamak into the chip for anomaly classification and disruption prediction. The data was collected with a very high sample rate of a million samples per second, and the team showed the chip had no problem keeping up with that speed.
The third task processed simulated data generated by TORAX — a tokamak simulator developed by the Google DeepMind Fusion team. For this task, the chip was able to process simulated signals to predict sawtooth instabilities, an event that is critical to tokamak operation. This example illustrates the feasibility of using Great Sky’s chips as part of the real-time simulation of plasma state that is central to tokamak control and stabilization during operation.
“It’s incredible to see the team processing data from our tokamak,” said Richard Buttery, Director of DIII-D. “The folks here at DIII-D are very excited to see how this chip can impact diagnostics and control for the fusion industry.”
Superconducting neural networks sit at the intersection of several DOE priorities: advanced AI, quantum technologies, and transformative energy. This collaboration shows how expertise in scientific AI and advanced computing can help move promising hardware concepts toward real-time control challenges in fusion and other complex systems.
Fusion reactors demand control systems that can think at the speed of a rapidly evolving plasma. This demonstration showed a chip taking data straight from a tokamak at a million samples per second without missing a beat. It is a meaningful step toward the real-time control systems that practical fusion power will require.
The Great Sky team has been developing this technology for over a decade, first at the National Institute of Standards and Technology before spinning out to form Great Sky. Their approach to AI hardware brings significant advantages in speed and energy efficiency, directly addressing the problems that hinder the economic foundations of the AI and data-center industries. This demonstration represents a significant step forward for the field of superconducting neural networks.
“This is our largest chip to date, and it’s great to see it processing high-speed data directly measured from a tokamak,” said Jeff Shainline, founder and CEO of Great Sky. “But this is just the beginning. This approach to AI hardware has so much to offer with regard to fusion, as well as other applications at the forefront of technology. Control and error correction of quantum systems, advanced cybersecurity, video intelligence with continual learning — these are all incredible opportunities as we scale up our systems.”
The team will demonstrate their next-generation chip with a 10x larger neural network in December.
Great Sky is building AI hardware, originally developed within the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, to enable intelligence at the boundaries of physics. The company was founded by a renowned team of PhDs and researchers with decades of experience in photonics, physics, semiconductors, and superconductors. It’s backed by marquee investors like Bison Ventures, Olive Tree Capital, Matchstick Ventures, Range Ventures and Access Venture Partners. Learn more at greatsky.ai.
Following its October 13 HomeView launch, Apple is gearing up for its second hardware event of the month. The event is scheduled for October 28 in Los Angeles and carries the tagline "Pro and tell." 9to5Mac reports: Rumors say Apple has a slew of new products to announce at its next event, headlining by its first MacBook Pro with a touchscreen and OLED. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, here's what's on the docket:
- New 14-inch and 16-inch touchscreen MacBook Pro models with OLED displays. They will also have a Dynamic Island for the first time and will be "significantly lighter" than the current models. The new MacBook Pro models are expected to be powered by the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.
- A revamped iPad mini with an OLED screen, a "revamped speaker system," and a relocated FaceTime camera
- New iMac and entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro models powered by the M6 chip, which will "look like their current versions."
Florida governor has consistently opposed any legislation to curb planet-heating emissions, calling it a ‘radical climate agenda’
A life-sized statue of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, was unveiled and promptly began melting in front of an audience in Tallahassee in a symbolic protest at his rejection of action on the climate crisis.
The silvery statue, revealed to an audience of onlookers last week, melted away to show a skull under DeSantis’ face. The structure was cast from solid gallium, a metal that melts at 85.6F (29.8C), which is below summertime high temperatures frequently reached in Tallahassee, Florida’s capital.
New Law passed by the Democrats in the General Assembly limits information on what the police can release about adults charges with a crime. Image was created on 10/19 using AI.
New Delaware law restricts release of arrest information, raising public safety concerns
Taking effect Oct. 21, HB 59 aims to protect the presumption of innocence, but questions remain about police transparency, community awareness and the public’s right to know.
DOVER, Del. — A new Delaware law taking effect Wednesday will significantly restrict the information police departments can release about people charged with crimes, creating a new balance between protecting the rights of the accused and keeping communities informed about criminal activity.
House Bill 59, signed by Gov. Matt Meyer on July 23, prohibits law enforcement agencies from releasing the names or photographs of adults charged with crimes unless they face felony charges and police determine that releasing the information is necessary to protect public safety.
The legislation, sponsored by state Rep. Sean Lynn, D-Dover, expands privacy protections previously reserved primarily for juveniles to adults charged with criminal offenses.
Supporters say the law reinforces a fundamental principle of American justice: People are presumed innocent until proven guilty and should not suffer unnecessary damage to their reputations simply because they have been arrested.
But the new restrictions also raise questions about government transparency, the ability of residents and businesses to monitor criminal activity in their communities, and the role of law enforcement in providing information to the public.
Protecting the accused before conviction
Lynn, a practicing criminal defense attorney, has argued that publishing arrest photographs and identifying information can create a presumption of guilt long before a criminal case reaches court.
Even when charges are dismissed or defendants are acquitted, photographs and arrest announcements can remain accessible online indefinitely, potentially affecting employment, housing opportunities and personal relationships.
The new law seeks to reduce that damage by limiting when police can identify people charged with criminal offenses.
Under HB 59, police generally will no longer be permitted to release the name or photograph of an adult charged only with a misdemeanor.
For felony offenses, police must determine that disclosure is necessary for public safety before releasing identifying information. Both conditions must be satisfied.
The law applies to law enforcement agencies, including their public websites and social media accounts. It does not directly prohibit independent news organizations from publishing legally obtained information or eliminate public access to criminal court proceedings.
Existing protections for juveniles remain in place. Police generally may identify juveniles only when they are charged with violent felonies and disclosure is necessary to protect public safety.
Public safety and the right to know
While the law addresses legitimate concerns about protecting innocent people from unnecessary public exposure, it also changes how Delaware residents may learn about criminal activity in their communities.
Police announcements traditionally have provided details about arrests involving theft, assault, fraud, drug offenses and other crimes. In addition to informing the public, those announcements can help residents and businesses recognize patterns of criminal activity.
Under the new law, police will generally be prohibited from identifying adults charged with misdemeanors, even when the incidents involve offenses of particular concern to local communities.
For example, residents may learn that police arrested someone for a series of misdemeanor thefts but may no longer receive the person’s name or photograph from the investigating agency.
Similarly, a business owner concerned about repeated thefts or fraudulent activity may have fewer opportunities to learn the identities of those charged through routine police announcements.
The restrictions do not prevent police from sharing appropriate information directly with victims during an investigation or pursuing criminal charges. However, the law does not expressly establish detailed procedures for informing affected businesses or community members when disclosure may serve a legitimate safety interest.
Another question involves the discretion police departments will have in determining when identifying someone charged with a felony is necessary to protect public safety.
HB 59 does not establish detailed criteria for making that determination, potentially leaving different agencies to adopt different standards.
That could create inconsistencies between Delaware State Police, county police departments and municipal law enforcement agencies.
Republican concerns led to significant changes
The legislation encountered substantial opposition when it first reached the House floor earlier this year.
The original proposal would have also restricted police from releasing photographs and identifying information about adults suspected of crimes but not yet charged.
Republican legislators argued that provision could interfere with criminal investigations by preventing police from asking the public to help identify suspects.
State Reps. Shannon Morris, R-Harrington, and Valerie Jones Giltner, R-Georgetown, were among those who raised concerns about the potential effect on police investigations.
The original version passed the House in May by a 23-11 vote without Republican support.
Following those objections, Lynn agreed to remove the provision restricting publication of information about adults merely suspected of crimes.
The revised legislation subsequently passed the House 31-8 in June, gaining bipartisan support.
House Republican Leader Tim Dukes, R-Laurel, welcomed the change.
“I appreciate Rep. Lynn taking this action,” Dukes said in a statement issued by House Republicans following the amendment. “With the amendment, I was comfortable voting in favor of the bill.”
House Republican Whip Jeff Spiegelman, R-Townsend, also praised the compromise.
“Rep. Lynn has given me some hope that there are still some instances where we can overcome party tribalism and reach consensus on good policy,” Spiegelman said.
The compromise preserved an important investigative tool: Police can still release images of uncharged suspects when seeking the public’s assistance in identifying them.
However, once an adult is charged with a misdemeanor, the new restrictions on publishing that individual’s identity apply.
That distinction could create an unusual situation in which police publicly circulate a suspect’s photograph during an investigation but cannot identify that person in a subsequent misdemeanor arrest announcement.
Transparency and police accountability
Beyond individual criminal cases, the legislation raises broader questions about government transparency and public oversight.
Public access to arrest information allows journalists and community members to examine how police departments enforce laws, whether criminal activity is increasing in particular neighborhoods and how the justice system responds to repeat offenses.
Routine identification of defendants can also help connect arrests to subsequent court proceedings, allowing the public to follow cases from the initial police investigation through prosecution and resolution.
Restricting police disclosure does not eliminate those opportunities, but it may make obtaining and connecting information more difficult.
The distinction is particularly important because information about crime serves purposes beyond identifying individual defendants.
Residents use police reports to understand neighborhood safety. Businesses monitor theft and fraud. Victims and community organizations look for patterns of criminal behavior. Journalists evaluate police performance and prosecutorial decisions.
The challenge for policymakers is determining how to preserve those public interests without unnecessarily damaging the reputations of people who have not been convicted.
How will police implement the new law?
With the law taking effect Wednesday, one of the immediate questions is how Delaware’s law enforcement agencies will change their public information practices.
Police departments routinely distribute news releases announcing arrests, identifying suspects and describing criminal charges. Many agencies also publish photographs on social media.
Those practices will now require closer consideration of whether the charges and circumstances satisfy the law’s disclosure requirements.
Among the questions facing law enforcement are how public safety will be defined, who will authorize the release of identifying information and whether departments will establish written policies to ensure consistent decisions.
Another issue involves how agencies will communicate information about misdemeanor arrests to victims, businesses and residents who have legitimate reasons to be concerned about possible ongoing criminal activity.
The legislation also leaves questions about how existing public records laws and court information systems will interact with the restrictions on police announcements.
The law directly governs law enforcement agencies, rather than making all arrest or court records confidential. However, its practical effect on access to police records and routine public information will depend in part on how agencies interpret and implement the new requirements.
Finding the balance between privacy and public safety
HB 59 reflects two principles that are not necessarily in conflict.
The justice system should protect individuals against unwarranted damage to their reputations before guilt has been established. At the same time, government agencies have a responsibility to provide the public with meaningful information about crime, law enforcement and potential threats to community safety.
The bipartisan amendment demonstrates that lawmakers recognized the importance of preserving police access to the public during criminal investigations.
Whether the final law achieves an appropriate balance between personal privacy and public safety will become clearer as departments begin operating under its restrictions.
There is no established evidence that HB 59 will lead to increased crime or prevent police from solving cases. But the law does introduce new limits on the information police can make available, creating practical questions about transparency and community awareness.
For residents, businesses and news organizations, the issue is not simply whether the names of arrested individuals should appear in police reports.
It is whether Delaware can protect the presumption of innocence while continuing to provide the public with the information necessary to understand crime and evaluate the performance of its criminal justice system.
To-Go Box: What Delaware’s new arrest information law means
Law: House Bill 59, signed July 23, 2026.
Effective date: Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026.
What changes: Police generally cannot release the names or photographs of adults charged with misdemeanors. Information about adults charged with felonies can be released when necessary to protect public safety.
What remains permitted: Police may continue releasing images and identifying information about uncharged adult suspects to seek public assistance in investigations.
Who is affected: Delaware law enforcement agencies and the public that relies on police announcements for information about criminal activity.
Why supporters favor it: To protect the presumption of innocence and prevent unnecessary reputational damage before a criminal conviction.
Primary concerns: Public safety, government transparency, consistent police disclosure standards and access to information about crime in local communities.
Supercomputers often feel like distant, abstract machines housed in secure federal facilities. However, one of the world’s most powerful supercomputer, El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), is actively reshaping human safety, medicine, and energy. Behind its mind-boggling speed are real-world applications that directly protect your family, your health, and your planet.
Instant Tsunami Warnings for Coastal Communities
For anyone living near or visiting a coastline, an undersea earthquake starts a terrifying countdown. Traditional emergency models take minutes or hours to calculate wave impact, often leading to delayed warnings or costly false alarms.
Using El Capitan, scientists created a real-time tsunami “digital twin.” This framework connects ocean sensors with physics-based models to calculate precise, hyper-localized coastal risks in under 0.2 seconds—a 10-billion-fold acceleration over older methods. This breakthrough gives coastal residents clear, instantaneous evacuation instructions, fundamentally shifting how humanity survives natural disasters.
Designing Lifesaving Drugs in Days
Developing a new medicine traditionally takes a decade of slow laboratory trial-and-error. When a new virus or treatment-resistant superbug emerges, society cannot afford to wait.
El Capitan—along with its unclassified, open-science companion system, Tuolumne—uses advanced AI agents to reinvent medicine. Instead of guessing which chemical structures might neutralize a pathogen, researchers simulate structural biology at an atomic level and screen billions of molecular compounds simultaneously. This allows scientists to design safe, targeted therapeutics in days rather than years, turning medicine into a proactive shield against future health crises.
Unleashing Unlimited Clean Energy
In late 2022, LLNL’s National Ignition Facility achieved fusion ignition, proving we could recreate the power of the sun in a lab. To turn this into a clean, limitless source of electricity for your home, commercial reactors must repeat this process multiple times every second.
El Capitan acts as the engineering bridge to a zero-carbon grid. It runs the largest fluid dynamics simulations in history to map out how burning plasma behaves under extreme pressure. By solving these complex engineering bottlenecks, the system accelerates the arrival of safe, limitless fusion energy to replace fossil fuels.
Inside the Machine: The Hardware Driving the Breakthroughs
To deliver these life-changing results, El Capitan broke records on the global High-Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark, achieving a verified 1.809 exaFLOPs of sustained performance. Built through a multi-year partnership between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, HPE and AMD, the machine represents a radical shift in computer architecture.
Unified Architecture: AMD Instinct MI300A APUs
Traditional supercomputers can spend valuable time moving data back and forth between separate CPUs and GPUs across slow internal buses. El Capitan reduces this bottleneck using AMD Instinct MI300A Accelerated Processing Units (APUs).
AMD’s architecture unifies Zen 4 CPU cores, CDNA 3 GPU cores, and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) onto a single, 3D-chiplet silicon package. This shared memory space allows the chips to execute intense physics simulations and massive AI training loops simultaneously without wasting clock cycles.
Liquid Cooling and the Green500 Metrics
As scientific workloads grow, raw speed is no longer the only metric that matters; energy consumption is shaping how future leadership systems are built. Within the HPE Cray Supercomputing framework, El Capitan uses direct liquid-cooling.
A dual-loop system circulates treated water directly over the hottest components, pulling heat away far more efficiently than air. This extreme engineering delivers stunning environmental efficiency:
The efficiency metric: El Capitan achieves an energy efficiency score of 60.94 gigaFLOPs per watt.
The Green500 standing: This places the massive system at No. 28 on the Green500 list.
Securing a top efficiency rank is a great achievement for a leadership-class supercomputer, as massive systems typically face steep scaling penalties that degrade their power-to-performance ratio. El Capitan demonstrates that it is entirely possible to capture the industry-leading performance with an energy-conscious design.
Connecting the thousands of individual computing nodes is the HPE Slingshot network. This high-speed interconnect allows data to move between nodes with ultra-low latency. Furthermore, “Rabbit” near-node local storage modules stream data directly to the AMD processors, preventing data traffic jams and keeping the supercomputer running at maximum velocity.
The New Dawn of Computational Science
El Capitan serves a vital national security role in safeguarding the United States nuclear deterrent without underground testing. However, its ultimate legacy is much broader. By combining exascale raw power with generative AI, LLNL, HPE, and AMD have built a predictive engine that helps guard our coastlines, speed up medical cures, and pave the way toward clean energy. To learn more, visit hpc.llnl.gov/.
As the Trump administration faces voter pushback over high gasoline prices, Vice President JD Vance tried to shift the blame to former President Joe Biden.
During a CBS News town hall Oct. 17, Vance said, “The biggest reason why gas prices are so high is because when Joe Biden was president, we had about 20% of American refining capacity that went offline. We’re slowly bringing that online. But it does take a little bit of time. And because we shut down so much refining capacity, we were more susceptible to the shocks that we’ve seen in the Middle Eastern energy crisis.”
Vance’s office did not respond to our questions for this article. But while California has lost 20% of its gasoline refining capacity, national refinery capacity has remained relatively stable.
Twenty percent is “not a correct statistic in terms of national refinery capacity,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, which tracks U.S. gasoline prices.
What’s more, presidential policy is one of many factors that shape U.S. refining capabilities, multiple oil industry experts told PolitiFact, and that the most obvious cause of today’s high gasoline prices is the Iran war, which was launched by Trump, not Biden.
“The biggest factor influencing high gasoline prices is the elevated cost of crude oil, caused by the reduction in ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and damage to export and pipeline facilities in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries,” said Hugh Daigle, a professor with the University of Texas at Austin’s petroleum and geosystems engineering department.
How could Biden’s policies have made a difference?
Energy market experts said that some of Biden’s policies — notably efforts to combat climate change, which involve transitioning away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner, renewable energy — likely contributed to some refiners’ decisions not to greenlight new refineries or to expand existing ones.
In particular, California’s stringent environmental policies help explain why two refineries shuttered there. The timing is less clear than Vance made it sound: The closure of a Phillips 66 refinery in Los Angeles was announced two weeks before Trump won reelection in 2024. Valero announced the closure of its refinery in Benicia, California, in April 2025, when Trump was president. Both facilities closed during Trump’s second term.
How does the refining economy work?
Biden’s policies are not considered the prime culprit for today’s high gasoline prices, experts said.
The bigger factors shaping U.S. refining capacity are market-driven, experts said. They include:
The current and expected demand for fuel. The growth of electric cars — partially nudged by government policy but also driven by consumers’ decisions — has put some downward pressure on demand for gasoline, and thus the demand for refining. And as more people work from home, they have to drive less often.
Foreign refining capacity. The more foreign refining capability there is, the less pressure for oil companies to rely exclusively on U.S. refiners. “Since 2019, global refining capacity has shrunk by about 1 million barrels a day while demand has grown by about 4.5 million barrels a day,” said Skip York, a fellow at Rice University’s Center for Energy Studies.
U.S. refiners are busy right now because 3 million barrels a day are offline in Russia and the Middle East because of Ukrainian and Iranian attacks. Much of the Russian and Middle Eastern refinery capacity is geared toward producing diesel. As a result, York said, U.S. refiners have switched some of their production from gasoline to diesel — which has further hiked gasoline prices for U.S. drivers.
Refinery profitability. When Phillips 66 announced it was closing the Los Angeles refinery, the company said that in addition to concerns about California regulations, it made the decision despite the facility being profitable There were “more attractive projects in the company’s portfolio,” York said.
U.S. and world events. During recessions, there is less demand for gasoline, so refinery use tends to drop. “The big drop in U.S. refining capacity utilization happened in spring of 2020, during the initial wave of COVID shutdowns,” said Clark Williams-Derry, an energy finance analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
How does U.S. refinery capacity today compare with the Biden era?
Despite disruption driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, wars and market factors, U.S. refinery usage has remained relatively stable under both Biden and Trump, datafrom the U.S. Energy Information Agency shows.
&&
In 2021 and 2022, deferred maintenance and supply-chain breakdowns during the pandemic undercut refinery capacity. U.S. refining capacity has been at historically normal levels ever since, Daigle said.
&&
Williams-Derry calculated how many refineries’ last date of operation fell during Trump’s two terms and compared it with how many shut down during Biden’s term. He found that the amount of refining capacity lost from shutdowns under Trump quadrupled the amount lost under Biden.
“Personally, I don’t think that politics had much to do with any of these closures,” Williams-Derry said. He cited aPhillips 66 facility in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, that was 50 years old in 2021 when it suffered hurricane damage. “Phillips tried to sell it but couldn’t find a buyer, so it turned it into a terminal and closed the refinery,” he said.
Why are gasoline prices high now?
The most obvious cause of high gasoline prices today is the start of the Iran war. Prices spiked immediately after the war began Feb. 28 and have remained high since.
&&
“Reduced refinery capacity would contribute somewhat to higher gasoline and diesel prices today, but this is by no means the biggest reason why gasoline prices are so high today,” said Kenneth Gillingham, a Yale University economist who specializes in energy and environmental issues.
Our ruling
Vance said, “The biggest reason why gas prices are so high is because when Joe Biden was president, we had about 20% of American refining capacity that went offline.”
Vance’s statement is inaccurate on multiple levels.
California, not the U.S., lost 20% of its refining capacity. The national outlook has been largely stable. Market forces and global realities influence refinery production more than presidential policy does, and the most obvious cause of today’s high gasoline prices is the Iran war, which was launched by Trump, not Biden.
Photo Credit: Studio Concept / ShutterstockThe data used in this study comes from the USDA’s Economic Research Service, U.S. Census Bureau's USA Trade Online, U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, and U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’s Consumer Spending by State.The…
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Photo Credit: Studio Concept / ShutterstockFrom morning coffee and orange juice to fresh fruit, seafood, beef, and chocolate, many staples in American kitchens depend heavily on imports. That makes food prices particularly sensitive to changes in U.S. trade policy. Tariffs…
Washington, DC — Artificial intelligence is playing an unprecedented role in the 2026 midterms, with campaigns and political groups spending more than $137 million on advertisements created or enhanced using AI.
The Wesleyan Media Project has identified 220 AI-assisted political ads this cycle, compared with less than $50,000 in spending on such advertising during 2024. Researchers say the current total is almost certainly an undercount.
Republican candidates and aligned organizations produced 81% of the identified AI ads and accounted for 88% of the spending. Democratic sponsors produced about 12%.
Many advertisements create fictional scenes involving opposing candidates. One Republican ad depicts New York Gov. Kathy Hochul walking with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and saying, “don’t say affordable,” although Hochul never made the statement and the scene never occurred.
Only 27% of the AI-generated ads tracked by Wesleyan included a disclaimer alerting viewers to the technology’s use.
Democratic congressional candidate Rebecca Cooke has also demanded that Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden stop distributing AI videos depicting her making fabricated statements about corruption.
The rapid spread of synthetic political advertising comes as federal regulation remains limited, leaving disclosure requirements largely dependent on state laws and individual platforms.
Recent polling indicates broad bipartisan concern about AI oversight, particularly when synthetic material can make politicians appear to say or do things that never happened.
As Cop17 kicks off, records since 1921 show more bee species declining than increasing in all parts of Europe except the Alps
Most of Europe’s wild bee species and about half of its hover fly species have declined over the last century, a study has found, as a UN biodiversity summit begins in Armenia.
Records since 1921 show more bee species are declining than increasing in all parts of Europe except the Alpine region. The richness of bee and hover fly species suffered a persistent drop in the Atlantic and Continental regions, the study found, though trends in other regions were mixed or even positive.
Florida's DMV says a September 4 breach exposed driver's license and motor vehicle records after attackers obtained credentials that a local law-enforcement employee had "improperly stored on an electronic device." The ShinyHunters group has been linked to the intrusion. Ars Technica reports: In a notice posted Friday, [Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV)] confirmed that it took "immediate steps" after discovering that "a malicious actor accessed certain department records on September 4, 2026, using compromised credentials." There's "no evidence" that data has yet been misused, the department said, but law enforcement "determined the information potentially affected includes driver license and motor vehicle data, to include document images, and other personal information."
[...] On a webpage describing the security incident, FLHSMV confirmed that an "international cybercriminal organization" was behind the breach but did not specify which group or how long they had access. Instead, officials claimed to have "promptly mitigated the breach, launched an investigation, and issued required notification to state authorities." Mitigations included "blocking unauthorized access, resetting relevant user credentials, engaging cybersecurity professionals, and implementing additional safeguards to protect sensitive information," FLHSMV said. Florida's investigation is "ongoing," officials said, but a cybercriminal group called ShinyHunters -- which recently claimed credit for hacking the FBI -- may have stolen the data. Florida residents affected by the breach will receive a letter offering one year of free credit monitoring through Sontiq, Inc. Those whose contact information is outdated can email the FLHSMV at customerinquiry@flhsmv.gov to determine whether their data was compromised.
Ricardo Gonzalez, a US citizen, was detained and injured by ICE officers while being arrested in Long Beach, California, on 17 October, officials said. The Department of Homeland Security has not commented publicly on why Gonzalez was detained. The Long Beach police department said in a statement that officers arrived to find 'a large group disturbance' involving the federal agents. The police later removed the handcuffs on Gonzalez and transported him to the hospital for treatment
12-year-old mountain gorilla Ndala was spotted with her newborn during routine monitoring of the Humba family on October 6, 2026. // A 12-year-old mountain gorilla has become a first-time mother after giving birth to a male infant in Virunga National…
Lots to do even for those with no the Trick-or-Treaters in their home! image created with AI on 10/19
From haunted theaters and Civil War ghost hunts to lantern-lit tours, Halloween dance parties and an overnight horror movie marathon, Delaware offers adults plenty of alternatives to the traditional haunted house.
WILMINGTON, Del. — For Delawareans who have outgrown trick-or-treating — and aren’t particularly interested in being chased through a cornfield by someone with a chainsaw — Halloween offers some decidedly different ways to celebrate.
From Wilmington’s historic theaters and underground speakeasies to the colonial streets of Dover, the beaches of Sussex County and an isolated Civil War fortress, the First State has plenty of unusual Halloween experiences.
Some lean heavily into Delaware’s history and mysterious past. Others offer theatrical entertainment, cocktails, dancing, live music and opportunities to socialize.
And for anyone who has had enough of ghosts, there’s even a Halloween party where the goal is to meet someone who is actually alive.
Here are 10 Halloween experiences across Delaware and what makes each one stand apart.
1. The Queen: Investigating the ghosts of a historic theater
The Queen Theatre in downtown Wilmington is opening its doors after hours for its first Paranormal Tour, offering guests an opportunity to explore parts of the historic entertainment venue normally closed to the public.
The tours, scheduled for Oct. 28 and 29, will be led by the Cecil Paranormal Group, whose investigators will introduce participants to equipment used to explore reported sightings, unusual noises and other unexplained activity.
The Queen’s history stretches back to the early 1900s, with the building serving different purposes before its restoration as a live entertainment venue.
Participants will have an opportunity to investigate the building’s reported paranormal activity and draw their own conclusions about whether the historic theater has any unseen residents.
What makes it different: There are no staged monsters or haunted-house actors. Guests explore a familiar Wilmington landmark from an entirely different perspective, combining local history with a paranormal investigation.
2. Simmer Down at The Quoin: Halloween cocktails in a hidden speakeasy
For those who prefer their Halloween spirits served in a glass, Simmer Down is hosting a Halloween Haunt Party on Saturday, Oct. 31, beginning at 6 p.m.
Located beneath The Quoin Hotel on North Market Street in Wilmington, the intimate speakeasy already offers a setting that seems made for Halloween.
With its dim lighting, sophisticated atmosphere and craft cocktails, the underground lounge provides a fitting backdrop for costumes, conversation and Halloween-themed drinks.
The celebration is free to attend, and guests who arrive in costume will receive a complimentary cocktail or mocktail.
What makes it different: This is Halloween as nightlife rather than a haunted attraction. Guests can enjoy the mystery of a hidden downtown bar without having to investigate strange noises or worry about what might be lurking around the next corner.
3. Theatre N: Horror movies until sunrise
For serious horror movie fans, Theatre N in downtown Wilmington is offering something of an endurance test.
The All-Nite Horrorthon begins Friday, Oct. 23, at 8 p.m., inviting moviegoers to spend the night watching five mystery horror films.
Rather than announcing every title in advance, organizers are keeping the lineup a surprise, adding another layer of suspense to the experience.
The marathon continues into Saturday morning, giving audiences an opportunity to experience horror movies in a dark theater surrounded by other fans.
What makes it different: The mystery isn’t just what’s happening on the screen. Guests won’t necessarily know which frightening film is coming next. And unlike most Halloween attractions, this one challenges participants to stay awake until morning.
4. Rockwood: A Victorian ghost story comes to life
At Rockwood Park & Museum near Wilmington, Halloween becomes an immersive theatrical experience.
The Revisionists: A Haunted Victorian Walk returns Oct. 23 and 24, combining storytelling, costumed performers and the atmosphere of one of Delaware’s most distinctive historic estates.
During the approximately 90-minute experience, visitors follow lamplit paths through the property, encountering five professionally acted scenes that gradually reveal an original Gothic ghost story.
This year’s production draws on a mystery set in 1930s Hollywood, blending supernatural storytelling with historical fiction and classic film noir.
Rather than relying on sudden scares, the experience uses the historic mansion, grounds and performers to immerse visitors in a developing mystery.
What makes it different: Rockwood transforms the historic estate into a theatrical setting, allowing visitors to become part of a ghost story rather than simply watch one unfold.
5. Boo Ball: Halloween takes a turn on the dance floor
For Delawareans who would rather dance with a partner than encounter a ghost, BlueBallRoom Dance Studio in Wilmington is offering a different kind of Halloween celebration.
The studio’s Boo Ball, scheduled for Friday, Oct. 30, from 7 to 9 p.m., combines ballroom and social dancing with costumes, refreshments and an evening of music.
Guests can enjoy a complimentary mini-group dance lesson, making the event accessible to people who might be new to ballroom dancing.
Costumes are encouraged, adding a Halloween twist to the festivities, while refreshments and a cash bar provide opportunities to socialize between dances.
The evening emphasizes having fun, learning new moves and connecting with other people in a relaxed atmosphere.
Unlike haunted attractions built around fear and suspense, Boo Ball focuses on entertainment that doesn’t require anyone to be frightened.
What makes it different: Instead of running from monsters or searching for ghosts, guests can spend Halloween learning a few dance steps, meeting new people and enjoying a night on the dance floor.
6. Historic New Castle: Ghosts of Delaware’s colonial past
Few Delaware towns offer a more authentic setting for ghost stories than Historic New Castle, where centuries-old buildings and narrow streets create a natural backdrop for Halloween.
The New Castle Historical Society’s Hauntings in History tours return Oct. 23, 24, 29 and 30, with evening departures at 7, 7:30 and 8:30 p.m.
Guides lead visitors through the historic district, sharing local legends, unexplained encounters and stories from the town’s darker past.
The experience draws on the history of New Castle, including its historic homes, colonial-era streets and stories passed down through generations.
Among the best-known local legends is the Lady in Blue, a mysterious apparition associated with the historic Amstel House.
What makes it different: Unlike attractions that construct a fictional haunted environment, New Castle already has centuries of history. Its streets, houses and stories provide the atmosphere, with local folklore adding a supernatural dimension.
7. Haunted Dover: Ghost stories by lanternlight on The Green
Delaware’s capital city offers its own ghostly encounter, with a setting that connects Halloween to some of the state’s earliest history.
First State Heritage Park will host Haunted Dover Lantern Tours on Friday, Oct. 23, and Friday, Oct. 30, beginning at 7:30 p.m.
During the hourlong experience, park interpreters lead visitors around historic Dover Green, sharing tales of supernatural encounters, hauntings and unexplained events associated with the capital city’s past.
The tours use lanternlight to recreate the atmosphere of an earlier era, when the streets surrounding The Green were at the center of Delaware’s political and community life.
Rather than relying on special effects, the experience combines local folklore, history and the natural atmosphere of Dover’s historic district.
Reservations are required, and space is limited. Tickets cost $15 per person.
What makes it different: This is a traditional ghost walk in one of Delaware’s most historically significant locations. The lantern-lit setting and stories of Dover’s past offer an atmospheric alternative to commercial haunted attractions.
8. Fort Delaware: Ghost hunting inside a Civil War prison
For visitors seeking a potentially unsettling experience, few Delaware locations can compete with Fort Delaware State Park.
The adventure begins with an evening ferry ride across the Delaware River to Pea Patch Island, where the 19th-century military fortress stands isolated from the mainland.
The park’s Paranormal Adventure Tours have offered visitors an opportunity to accompany experienced paranormal investigators into areas of the fort where unexplained activity has reportedly occurred.
Participants may use electromagnetic field detectors, temperature sensors and recording equipment while exploring portions of the fortress.
Fort Delaware served as a Civil War prison camp, where thousands of Confederate prisoners were held. More than 2,000 prisoners died there during the war, contributing to the site’s somber history and longstanding reputation for paranormal activity.
Stories associated with the fort include unexplained footsteps, mysterious shadows, doors opening and closing and sightings of an apparition sometimes described as the Blue Man.
For more dedicated ghost hunters, extended investigations have provided additional time to explore areas normally closed to visitors.
What makes it different: There are no actors waiting to jump out from behind a wall. Much of the suspense comes from the history, darkness and isolation of a Civil War fortress surrounded by the Delaware River.
Visitors should check with Delaware State Parks for remaining October tour dates and reservations.
9. Monster Mash: A Halloween party that gives back at the beach
Not every Halloween experience needs a ghost to make the evening memorable.
In Rehoboth Beach, Price Premier will host its inaugural Monster Mash fundraiser Thursday, Oct. 29, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., combining live music, costumes, food and entertainment with support for a Delaware nonprofit.
The celebration will benefit Children’s Beach House, an organization that helps children and young people with communication challenges develop confidence, resilience and meaningful connections.
The local band DECADE80 will provide live entertainment, bringing a collection of 1980s favorites to the Halloween celebration.
Guests are encouraged to dress for the occasion and participate in a costume contest featuring prizes for Best Overall, Best Duo, Most Creative and Scariest costumes.
The evening also includes food stations and a cash bar.
Tickets are $20 in advance through Oct. 28 and $25 at the door. The first 100 ticket purchasers will receive a complimentary Monster Mash T-shirt.
What makes it different: The evening trades paranormal investigations for live music, creative costumes and a good cause. Guests can enjoy a Halloween party while supporting an organization that serves children and families throughout Delaware.
10. Single & Spellbound: After all those ghosts, how about meeting someone who’s actually alive?
After exploring haunted theaters, historic mansions and Civil War prisons, Halloween offers another possibility: meeting someone who might actually call you back.
Single & Spellbound, scheduled for Friday, Oct. 30, from 8 to 11 p.m. at Grain Exchange in Newark, offers a refreshingly down-to-earth alternative to the season’s supernatural activities.
Organized by BeVisionary, the event is designed for singles ages 30 to 50 who would rather make a real connection than encounter another ghost.
The evening features music from a DJ, hosted introductions and social activities designed to make meeting new people easier.
Costumes add to the Halloween atmosphere, but the emphasis is on conversation, laughter and getting to know someone face-to-face.
Individual tickets are listed at $25, with a $40 option for two single friends, plus fees.
What makes it different: After a week of searching for spirits, this might be the most practical Halloween adventure of all — meeting someone with a pulse, a personality and perhaps the potential for a second date.
A different kind of Halloween across Delaware
What connects these experiences isn’t necessarily the promise of being frightened. It’s the opportunity to do something memorable in a setting that gives Halloween a different twist.
In New Castle County, historic theaters, colonial streets and Victorian estates provide plenty of mysterious encounters. Kent County adds ghost stories around Dover Green and paranormal investigations at Fort Delaware, while Sussex County offers a Halloween celebration that supports a worthy cause.
Movie fans can spend the night at Theatre N, while adults interested in a more social experience can enjoy cocktails beneath Market Street, dance the night away at Boo Ball or meet other singles in Newark.
From Wilmington to Dover to the Delaware beaches, the First State offers a Halloween season with more variety than the traditional haunted house.
And if nothing else, it’s a good excuse to get out of the house — haunted or otherwise.
TO GO: 10 Delaware Halloween experiences
1. The Queen Paranormal Tour
Oct. 28-29, 8 p.m. The Queen, Wilmington. After-hours paranormal investigations. Information: The Queen’s event listings.
2. Simmer Down Halloween Haunt Party
Saturday, Oct. 31, beginning at 6 p.m. Simmer Down at The Quoin Hotel, 519 N. Market St., Wilmington. Free admission. Complimentary cocktail or mocktail for guests in costume. Information: thequoinhotel.com.
3. Theatre N All-Nite Horrorthon
Friday, Oct. 23, beginning at 8 p.m. Theatre N, Wilmington. Overnight mystery horror movie marathon. Information: theatren.com.
4. Rockwood’s The Revisionists
Oct. 23-24, 6:30-9 p.m. Rockwood Park & Museum, 4651 Washington Street Extension, Wilmington. Approximately 90-minute theatrical ghost experience. Tickets: $30. Information: poplarhall.life.
5. Boo Ball Halloween Dance Party
Friday, Oct. 30, 7-9 p.m. BlueBallRoom Dance Studio, Wilmington. Ballroom and social dancing, complimentary mini-group lesson, refreshments and cash bar. Costumes encouraged. Contact the studio for admission and reservations.
6. Historic New Castle Hauntings in History
Oct. 23, 24, 29 and 30. Tours depart at 7, 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. Historic New Castle. Guided ghost walks exploring colonial history and local legends. Information: newcastlehistory.org.
7. Haunted Dover Lantern Tour
Friday, Oct. 23, and Friday, Oct. 30, 7:30-8:30 p.m. First State Heritage Park, 43 The Green, Dover. Tickets: $15. Preregistration required. Information: 302-739-9194 or visitcentraldelaware.com.
8. Fort Delaware Paranormal Adventure Tours
Selected October evenings, subject to availability. Fort Delaware State Park, Pea Patch Island. Nighttime paranormal investigations with ferry transportation. Information: destateparks.com.
9. Monster Mash Fundraiser
Thursday, Oct. 29, 5:30-8:30 p.m. Price Premier, 17233 Hood Road, Rehoboth Beach. Live music by DECADE80, costumes and food. Tickets: $20 through Oct. 28; $25 at the door. Benefits Children’s Beach House. Information: cbhinc.org.
NEW YORK, NY — High-performance computing has reached a new milestone in New York State. New York University (NYU) has announced the deployment of Torch, a supercomputer that serves as the highest-performing academic computational system in New York State and ranks within the top tier of higher education institutions in the United States.
Named after NYU’s logo, the system marks an expansion for the university’s research community. Clocking in at an official 10.79 petaflops on the LINPACK benchmark, Torch delivers a fivefold increase in computational performance compared to NYU’s previous cluster, Greene. By bringing this capacity on-premises, NYU has established a localized computing environment to expand access to hardware for faculty members, researchers, and students.
Accelerating Research via Advanced Architecture
Architected to handle data-heavy workloads and multi-dimensional simulations, Torch utilizes a parallelized, hybrid architecture. To develop the infrastructure, NYU collaborated with HPE and NVIDIA to support the scale of the university’s research operations.
The system’s specifications include:
The AI Engines: Core workloads are powered by more than 500 NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPUs. Utilizing HBM3e memory, these GPUs allow NYU researchers to train large language models (LLMs) and execute deep learning tasks.
System Integration: The HPE Cray XD670 cluster was engineered, integrated, and deployed by HPE, leveraging their deployment experience in academic and enterprise supercomputing environments to maximize operational throughput.
By deploying this hardware ecosystem directly to its campus, NYU research teams can shorten the timeline required to convert theoretical formulations into scientific results.
Focus on Sustainable Innovation
NYU’s implementation of Torch balances computational speed with environmental considerations. Operating with the capacity to process over 10 quadrillion calculations per second, Torch entered the global computing index ranked No. 40 on the Green500 list of energy-efficient supercomputers.
To achieve this level of efficiency, the system utilizes liquid cooling technology designed to dissipate heat at the component level. This minimizes the data center’s reliance on traditional air conditioning methods. The resulting energy profile aligns with NYU’s institutional goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2040.
NYU leadership indicated that Torch balances academic computing power with energy efficiency. University officials noted it will support research across artificial intelligence, climate modeling, and biomedical sciences while contributing to international collaborations like the Global AI Frontier Lab.
Contextualizing the Fivefold Performance Leap
To understand the impact of Torch, let’s look at the capabilities of its predecessor, the Greene cluster. Greene provided approximately 4 quadrillion calculations per second. While Greene was considered a significant asset for the university—initially ranking No. 50 on the Green500 list—the exponential growth of machine learning, quantum mechanics simulations, and neural network training required an upgrade.
Greene relied on an array of 332 NVIDIA GPUs. While this configuration was optimized for general high-performance computing, it faced operational constraints when tasked with modern large language models containing hundreds of billions of parameters.
Torch alters this baseline. By incorporating NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPUs, the network handles matrix multiplications at speeds previously unattainable on campus. The inclusion of high-throughput host processing architecture prevents data delivery lag, so the execution pipelines of the GPUs are continuously supplied with data. The total computing capacity of Torch allows it to clear processing jobs that previously took weeks on the Greene cluster in a fraction of the time.
Eliminating Bottlenecks in the Research Pipeline
In academic computing environments, time-to-results is a critical metric. Previously, universities lacking on-premise infrastructure had to bid for compute time allocations at national laboratories, or rely on public cloud providers. Public cloud alternatives often introduce recurring operational costs, data egress fees, and privacy constraints that complicate institutional research grants.
By building an on-premise infrastructure, NYU changes how its departments handle active projects. Researchers can test models locally, debug network configurations instantly, and run continuous cycles without waiting in queues. This shift benefits fields like:
Artificial Intelligence and Embodied Intelligence: Training transformers and computer vision systems for real-world robotics applications.
Climate Modeling: Simulating localized weather patterns, oceanic heat distribution, and long-term carbon variations at a granular scale.
Biomedical Sciences: Accelerating protein folding computations, gene sequencing analysis, and molecular dynamics modeling for Alzheimer’s disease research.
Engineering for Sustainable Infrastructure
A core issue with data centers housing top-tier AI hardware is energy consumption. NVIDIA H200 GPUs demand significant power, which generates substantial thermal output. Without changes in environmental engineering, a cluster of this size would require massive, power-intensive traditional HVAC configurations.
Torch manages this footprint by integrating its technical deployment with modern environmental design. The cluster utilizes a liquid cooling design where coolant is distributed directly to the processors and memory components. This method removes heat more efficiently than air-based systems, lowering the overall Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratio of the facility.
This focus on efficiency allowed Torch to achieve its No. 40 ranking on the global Green500 index. This deployment supports the university’s initiative to minimize its overall environmental footprint, proving that academic research capacity can scale while remaining aligned with a carbon-neutral objective.
Long-Term Institutional Impact
The deployment of Torch is designed to establish NYU as a center for computational science. In higher education, access to computing resources is a differentiator for attractions like faculty, post-doctoral researchers, and graduate students.
Beyond hardware availability, the university intends to integrate Torch into its academic curricula. Graduate and undergraduate students working in data science, physics, engineering, and digital humanities will receive direct training on high-performance computing clusters. This provides students with hands-on experience using hardware configurations identical to those found in global research laboratories and advanced technology enterprises.
As part of its international strategy, Torch will act as the foundational computing engine behind the Global AI Frontier initiative. This network connects NYU’s campuses and global partners, facilitating multi-institutional research on global problems. With Torch operational, the university has established the technical infrastructure required to support data science developments for the coming decade.
Watch the Video Interview
To learn more about the technical architecture and engineering choices behind this system, watch the full video segment. Check out the HPE Video Interview with NYU’s Leadership Team to see how this on-premise hardware ecosystem is actively shrinking the time to science, and visit hpe.com to explore their full portfolio of enterprise and academic AI infrastructure.
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is set to miss the rest of the season after further testing revealed blood clots had traveled from his leg to his lungs, the team announced on Monday.
Hurts’s condition is considered stable and he “has no significant functional limitations,” the team said. His treatment for a new diagnosis of deep vein thrombosis and bilateral pulmonary emboli will involve blood thinners, during which time he is unable to participate in contact activities.
What do you think about it? I read it was single zone but way more comfortable on your feet and handles thick stiff soles better. is that accurate? If so do you use simple stop or do you do the quick stop trick or just hop off?
I like to be able to ride both ways so avoiding simple stop. I’ve always done the heel lift, haven’t tried the tail drag/quick stop.
Exclusive: Utility seen as ‘litmus test’ of PM’s promise to bring ‘essentials of life’ under public control
Andy Burnham has told officials to rip up their plans for how to fix Thames Water and present him with more radical options for what to do with the stricken company.
In an early test of his promise to bring “the essentials of life” under public control, the prime minister is urging his advisers to go back to the drawing board and create a new list of policies for the utility.
Interior minister concedes police ‘lost control’ of weekend protests as PM vows to restore public order
Partial curfews have been issued for a number of French cities, including parts of Paris, after the government admitted police had “lost control” during violent weekend protests around the country.
Sébastien Lecornu, the French prime minister, said after an emergency cabinet meeting on Monday he was “fully resolved to restore public order” and had called for “local and partial” curfews if needed. There was “no question” of imposing a full curfew on entire cities, he said.
Scalable performance and rugged packaging support mission-critical aerospace and defense systems in harsh environments
SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 19, 2026 — Altera Corporation today announced the expansion of its Agilex FPGA and SoC FPGA portfolio to support a broader range of aerospace and defense programs. Altera’s defense-grade Agilex FPGAs help system developers meet stringent performance, reliability and environmental requirements while providing the flexibility to adapt to evolving mission needs.
Defense-grade Agilex devices are designed to operate across temperatures ranging from -55°C to 125°C, with leaded-ball and ruggedized packaging options designed to withstand temperature cycling, vibration and shock. These capabilities help maintain reliable operation in harsh environments where extreme temperatures and mechanical stress can compromise mission-critical electronics.
Agilex FPGAs are fabricated in the United States, providing a domestic source of wafer fabrication that supports supply resilience and helps customers plan for the long service lives and continuity requirements common to aerospace and defense programs. Together, these capabilities help defense system developers reduce design risk and build long-life platforms targeting challenging operating environments.
Extending Agilex FPGAs Leadership Architecture Across More Defense Applications
Defense-grade Agilex devices will be available across Altera’s entire Agilex portfolio, giving customers a scalable path from low-power, cost-optimized Agilex 3 FPGAs through mid-range Agilex 5 and high-performance Agilex 7 FPGAs to Agilex 9 Direct RF-Series FPGAs. Customers can select the right combination of performance, power efficiency and integration for applications ranging from edge systems and embedded processing to high-bandwidth communications, sensing and electronic warfare. Extending defense-grade support across this common architecture helps customers streamline platform decisions and adapt their designs as mission requirements evolve.
Underpinning this portfolio is Altera’s high-performance HyperFlex architecture, which enables higher clock frequencies and greater processing throughput by balancing pipeline delays and shortening critical logic and routing paths through Hyper-Retiming and Hyper-Pipelining.
“Tomorrow’s aerospace and defense systems will need to integrate more sensing, processing and AI capabilities within tightly constrained platforms,” said Farhad Shafai, head of business solutions and marketing at Altera. “Our focus is on giving customers a programmable foundation they can build on for years, adding capabilities as technology advances and mission priorities change.”
Availability
Initial shipments of defense-grade Agilex FPGAs will be available in Q1’27 with software support targeted for Quartus Prime Design Software 27.1. For additional information about Altera’s defense-grade FPGA solutions, contact your local Altera sales representative.
About Altera
Altera provides high-performance, programmable compute and connectivity solutions that enable the rapid adoption and continued advancement of transformative technologies across a wide range of advanced and AI-enabled systems. Altera is the largest pure-play FPGA provider with a full-spectrum portfolio serving applications ranging from data centers and communications networks to critical embedded systems.
Move comes after US photojournalist and group of European diplomats and Palestinians were assaulted in separate attacks
Israeli police have detained 10 people in a rare raid against settlers, after a weekend of extreme violence in the occupied West Bank including an attack on US photojournalist Heidi Levine, which she described as an “attempted lynching”.
She was knocked down, kicked and beaten by a group of masked Israeli men as she covered the olive harvest in a Palestinian village on Friday. The militants broke four vertebrae and a rib, ripped open her finger so it required surgery and left her with lacerations across her body.
Kissimmee, FL — Scammers reportedly used artificial intelligence to clone the voice of a Florida sheriff as part of a fake arrest-warrant scheme, highlighting how increasingly accessible AI tools are making traditional impersonation scams harder to recognize.
The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office said scammers cloned Sheriff Steve Moser’s voice and used his photograph while contacting a resident. Sheriff Chris Blackmon said the call was fraudulent despite appearing and sounding as though it came from Moser.
The incident follows similar reports across several states involving scammers impersonating law enforcement officers and claiming victims missed jury duty or face outstanding warrants. The schemes frequently pressure targets to make immediate payments to avoid arrest.
Authorities warn that legitimate law enforcement agencies do not demand payment over the phone to resolve warrants or missed jury service.
AI-generated voice cloning adds another layer of credibility because scammers can reproduce a recognizable person’s tone and speech using relatively small samples of recorded audio.
The technology has already been used in fraud targeting families, older adults and businesses. In some cases, criminals have impersonated executives to persuade employees or financial institutions to transfer large sums of money.
Florida law makes impersonating a law enforcement officer a felony.
Officials advise anyone receiving a threatening call claiming to be from police to hang up and independently contact the agency through a verified phone number.
Huang Foundation’s significant in-kind grant supports projects that include building a virtual human immune system and charting the ‘dark’ proteome, fast-tracking biomedical discovery and future treatments.
LA JOLLA, Calif., Oct. 19, 2026 — Artificial intelligence has already demonstrated great promise in many aspects of biomedical research, from accelerating scientific discovery to speeding the translation of biological insights into new therapies. Scripps Research today announced it has received a significant award of in-kind compute power from the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation to advance the adoption of AI into biomedicine and help realize its potential. The grant, totaling more than 14 million hours of compute time, is provided through the Huang Foundation’s partnership with CoreWeave using NVIDIA GPUs.
The Scripps Research scientists leading the Huang Foundation-supported projects. From left: Terrence Messmer, Sarah Burbach, Matthew Holcomb, Bryan Briney, Stefano Forli, Benjamin Cravatt, Christopher Parker, Andrew Ward and Charles Bowman. Credit: Scripps Research
“This philanthropic investment from the Huang Foundation, which brings leading computing expertise and infrastructure, represents a significant commitment to advancing human health,” says Scripps Research professor Andrew Ward, who is helping lead the research efforts with the foundation. “Paired with Scripps’ world-class scientists and unique combination of foundational and translational research, we aim to shorten the journey from scientific breakthrough to something that can make a real difference for patients.”
Artificial intelligence holds significant potential for biomedical research and healthcare, but insights alone do not improve patient outcomes. With this new support, multiple Scripps Research scientists are deploying state-of-the-art computational power to transform how vaccines, antibody therapies and small molecule drugs are discovered. Across these different projects, the overarching goal is to advance AI from its initial promising demonstrations to reliable, widely usable tools.
“Some of medicine’s greatest opportunities lie in biology we have never been able to see clearly: how antibodies evolve to fight disease, and how proteins move to reveal hidden targets for new drugs. Scientists at Scripps are using AI at scale to simulate both, building a virtual model of how our immune system creates antibodies and a dynamic map of the human proteome. The Huang Foundation is providing compute to model this extraordinary complexity, and the resulting tools will be openly available for scientists everywhere searching for new medicines,” says Jensen Huang, Co-President of the Huang Foundation.
By providing access to more than 14 million hours of compute power, this award not only significantly compresses scientific timelines, it also enables Scripps Research scientists to think at a magnitude unimaginable just a few years ago. The novel, large-scale datasets generated at Scripps Research, which are the lifeblood for training next generation AI models, can now be fully leveraged to make quantum leaps across different scientific disciplines.
This includes Antibodies for All, led by Professor Bryan Briney, which aims to build a “Virtual Germinal Center”: an AI system that models how human antibodies mutate, bind their targets and are selected during an immune response. Trained on millions of paired antibody sequences and detailed structural data, the system will allow researchers to test candidate vaccines and search for therapeutic antibodies computationally before advancing the most promising options to experimental testing. The project has the potential to replace years of trial and error with faster, more informed design, improving our ability to quickly respond to emerging pathogens and effectively target diseases that remain difficult to treat.
The award also supports Professor Stefano Forli’s team, which is working on the “dark” proteome: the thousands of human proteins whose dynamic behavior has resisted structural studies and kept them out of reach of drug development. By simulating them at scale under realistic physiological conditions, their system aims to capture how these molecules flex, breathe, fold and shift, revealing transient druggable pockets as they appear. Such an analysis at unprecedented scale can potentially unlock treatments for previously “undruggable” diseases.
Briney’s and Forli’s teams will also leverage additional experimental data inputs from the labs of Ward; Christopher Parker, professor and The Abide-Vividion Chair in Chemistry and Chemical Biology; and Benjamin Cravatt, professor and the Gilula Chair of Chemical Biology. Together, these projects help position Scripps Research at the leading edge of computational biomedicine.
“We’ve already seen how AI learned to predict 3D structures from amino acid sequences alone,” Ward continues. “The foundation’s generous support will help usher in the next wave of AI: one where models can anticipate function, reveal druggable sites, and link molecular patterns in cells and tissues to underlying health conditions, among other exciting frontiers in biomedical research.”
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Elon Musk has said he will give every child in America a stake in SpaceX, his $2 trillion aerospace and artificial intelligence company, as tech firms face intensifying scrutiny over their impact on society. "Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America," he wrote on X on Monday. "This will be the first of many."
SpaceX only began trading publicly in June (and after the biggest initial public offering in history). The company's shares were trading for about $146 when the market closed on Friday. Musk's proposal was thin on detail. It is not clear how those shares would be distributed to the tens of millions of American children or whether all of them would even be eligible. According to the United States Census Bureau, there are roughly 73 million people under the age of 18, making Musk's potential giveaway worth about $10.7 billion at SpaceX's current share price. The move came in response to Anthropic's announcement on Sunday that it will commit at least 5% of its shares to a "Public Benefit Fund" that will donate money to social causes. "I recommend giving the shares directly to the public," Musk said in a reply to Anthropic's announcement. "This is what I will be doing."
While the party’s MPs went into hiding, it was left to its failed byelection candidate Matt Goodwin to defend it
It was the dog that didn’t bark in the night. After Sunday night’s ITV exposé of widespread racism and misogyny within Reform, you might have expected one of its MPs to have taken to the airwaves on Monday morning to defend the party’s honour. To try to persuade viewers that the real problem lay with the journalists who couldn’t stop themselves from investigating Reform rather than the fact that the party’s bigotry was endemic.
Instead, we got nothing. Every Reform MP was otherwise engaged. Were too busy having breakfast. Nothing from Nigel Farage. Nothing even from Robert Jenrick. Maybe he realised he had crashed and burned a few days earlier by suggesting it was just one of those things. One of life’s little mysteries. The BBC was riddled with paedophiles and Reform was awash with racists, said Honest Bob. No big deal. Every organisation had its crosses to bear.
Police said Shawn Oliver was arrested on suspicion of operating under influence of alcohol after a car crash
The Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Massachusetts announced the suspension of his campaign on Sunday hours after he was arrested in a suspected drunk-driving crash.
Shawn Oliver, a city councilor in New Bedford and a corrections officer, said in a post on X he was ending his campaign because “the election is too important to be overshadowed by personal matters”.
More than 160 offshore rig workers plan walkout amid rising tensions between unions and oil companies
North Sea workers are preparing to strike at oil rigs across the ageing basin over the coming weeks in a sign of growing tensions between trade unions and oil companies.
The Unite union said on Monday that more than 160 offshore rig workers would take part in a 24-hour strike from Wednesday that could “severely disrupt” UK fuel supplies.
In now-removed post, Miatta Fahnbulleh criticised home secretary’s proposal to extend qualifying period for settlement in UK
The energy secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, appears to have criticised Shabana Mahmood’s migration policy in a post on her constituency website, in which she suggested she had concerns that a longer settlement process could affect integration.
Fahnbulleh has since removed the critique, which appeared in a write-up of a community meeting in Peckham, her south London constituency, in September, saying it was not a true representation of her views.
Russia wants America and China to decide Ukraine’s future without Kyiv. Europe must challenge this dangerous return to diplomacy of the strong for the strong
Does Vladimir Putin know exactly how to play Donald Trump? The history of chummy phone calls, high-profile meetings and attempts to bring Russia in from the cold certainly suggests that Moscow’s thuggish ruler has a hold on this American president. If Mr Trump agrees to negotiate Ukraine’s future with Mr Putin and China’s Xi Jinping without Ukraine at the table, he will have handed the Russian leader a victory before talks begin. The message will be that strongmen are ruling the world and determining the fate of weaker nations.
Ukraine has the right to determine its future. That right cannot be waved away by a self-serving Russian proposal, however much it indulges Mr Trump’s belief that world affairs should be settled by powerful men. The scales are falling from European eyes. Trumpian America is raising doubts about whether it will help deter aggression or even honour its Nato commitments. If Washington now rewards Moscow and pressures Ukraine to accept a raw deal, it would be a betrayal. European governments would wonder where America might be in the future when their own security is threatened.
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Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse crimes came to light 10 years ago
Survivors gather at world championships to call for reform
The judge who sentenced the former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar to up to 175 years in jail in 2018 for the sexual abuse of more than 250 women and girls has condemned the lack of meaningful change in the decade since Nassar’s crimes were exposed.
With the World Gymnastics Championships taking place here this week, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said human rights must be prioritised over the desire for sporting success.
Anchor’s departure not thought to be linked to company’s recent acquisition by David Ellison’s Skydance Media
Christiane Amanpour, one of CNN’s most decorated and venerated journalists, is leaving the network after 43 years, she said in a statement on Monday.
Amanpour, who began working for the then-fledging network as an assistant on the international assignment desk in 1983 and is now its chief international anchor, will end her show Amanpour in May and leave the network at the end of June. She also hosts a show for PBS, Amanpour and Company, that will conclude at the end of this year.
More than 200 mostly young people said to be injured after ballistic missile attack on training camp for government forces
At least 53 people have been killed in a Houthi ballistic missile attack on a training camp for Yemeni government security forces, making it the largest single loss of life since the country’s civil war reignited in September.
The attack on al-Alam camp in the southern Shabwa province was said to have injured more than 200 others, mostly young recruits, and was described as a disaster by the country’s UN-recognised government. The injured were taken from the police and army training camp in the Jardan district to a hospital in the local capital, Ataq, where pleas for blood donations were made.
Wine has been successfully ported to OpenBSD, with developers reporting that dozens of 64-bit Windows applications now run on the operating system. "Even the Remaster of The Witcher 3 which released just last month runs, and runs well," writes Thomas Frohwein, OpenBSD developer and ports maintainer. OSnews reports: The biggest limitation seems to be the lack of support for WoW64, so 32bit Windows software won't work. Still, this is a massive milestone for OpenBSD, and makes especially gaming a somewhat viable option on OpenBSD.
Bear wandered into Mono county free libraries branch ahead of opening, snacking before wandering new releases
A California library on Wednesday had a visitor worthy of a story book on the 100th anniversary of Winnie-the-Pooh: a black bear that wandered inside, reportedly raided the snacks and helped itself to a jar of honey.
On Wednesday, a black bear walked into the Mammoth Lakes branch of the Mono county free libraries at about 6.10am, more than four hours ahead of its 10am opening time, the library director, Josef Bopp, told local news outlet KMPH.
OXFORD, England, Oct. 19, 2026 — Infleqtion, a global leader in quantum computing and quantum sensing powered by neutral atom technology, will host the first Quantum Application Forum, an exclusive one-day event convening senior business and technology leaders on Nov. 3, 2026 at IET Savoy Place in London. Executives responsible for technology, innovation and investment decisions will explore how quantum technology can address critical challenges, unlock commercial value and drive national competitiveness and economic growth.
“The UK has an opportunity, alongside its European neighbors, to turn its strength in quantum research into a competitive advantage for its industries,” said Colin Sullivan MBE, Managing Director, at Infleqtion UK. “Business leaders are central to that. They understand which problems are worth solving, and their insight will shape how the technology is put to use. Our aim is that everyone who joins the forum leaves with a clearer view of where quantum could benefit their organization, and the confidence to take a practical next step.”
The forum’s theme is “Integrating Quantum into National & Economic Growth.” Leaders from financial services and fintech, healthcare and life sciences, pharmaceuticals, materials science, energy, telecommunications, government and the public sector will join.
Morning plenary sessions will lead into afternoon roundtables, with attendees joining discussions on topics including quantum–AI hybrid workloads, software and algorithm optimization, resilient infrastructure and supply chains, security readiness, and the standards and policies shaping adoption. Speakers will be announced ahead of the event.
Event Details
Date and time: Nov. 3, 2026, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. GMT, with breakfast and networking beginning at 8 a.m. GMT
Venue: IET Savoy Place, London
Cost: Complimentary for confirmed guests
Format: Plenary sessions and roundtable discussions
Register: To preserve an environment for open dialogue, registration is by approval only and attendance is limited to invited and approved participants. To be considered, visit infleqtion.com/qaf and follow “Register Your Interest.”
Infleqtion has deep roots in Europe and delivered the UK’s first operational 100-physical-qubit quantum computer to the National Quantum Computing Centre at Harwell. Most recently, the company announced a £9 million Innovate UK award to continue development of a deployable quantum radio frequency (QRF) direction finding (DF) system as part of the Quantum Missions Primer program.
About Infleqtion
Infleqtion, Inc. (NYSE: INFQ) is a global leader in quantum technology, delivering neutral atom solutions for quantum computing, networking, sensing, and security. With a product portfolio spanning quantum computers, quantum optical clocks, RF receivers, and inertial sensors, Infleqtion’s full-stack approach combines high-performance hardware with the company’s proprietary Superstaq quantum computing software platform. Infleqtion’s systems are already in use by the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, the U.K. government, and in multiple collaborations with NVIDIA. Infleqtion, in collaboration with NVIDIA, published the world’s first demonstration of a materials science application using logical qubits. With operations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, Infleqtion meets the demands of government and commercial customers across the space, defense, energy, finance and telecommunications sectors.
Poll finds 66% of Americans think Trump is using position for monetary gain as his approval rating hits a new low
Most Americans think Donald Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself, according to a new poll, as the US president’s approval rating falls to a new low ahead of November’s midterm elections.
A new Washington Post-ABC poll put Trump’s approval rating at 33% as he continues to crisscross the country as part of his campaign blitz for embattled Republicans.
Far-right activist is charged with two counts of harassment causing fear of violence to two MailOnline reporters
Journalists and their family members had to flee their homes after “bullyboy, intimidatory tactics” were deployed by the far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson, a court has been told as his harassment trial got under way.
Robinson, 42, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was alleged to have targeted journalists from the Daily Mail and Mail Online by circulating images of their homes to millions of online followers and in effect encouraging them to join in making threats.
The near-universal chorus of condemnation that greeted Emmanuel Macron’s address to the nation on Sunday, after one of the most violent days of rioting and looting in France’s recent history, was a stark reflection of just how weakened he now is.
Speaking from his office at the Élysée Palace, the president delivered an eight-minute speech expressing “anger and shame” after a weekend in which a town hall was set ablaze, 2,000-plus shops were looted, 2,300 people were arrested and 1,000 police injured.
A boy, six, and woman, 35, were killed and 10 were injured after a woman drove on to the field at a youth soccer game
New details have emerged about two people – including a child – killed when a woman drove a vehicle through a youth soccer game in Kansas, as officials on Monday continued to investigate the cause of the tragedy.
Chris Adrian, a middle school soccer coach, said his family was heartbroken over losing his six-year-old son, Cole, who died after the incident at Wichita’s Stryker Sports Complex in which 10 others were hurt, some seriously.
Annual Friends of Delaware Hayride at Milburn Orchards invites supporters of its healing mission to enjoy family time while strengthening connections centered on recovery.
By John Riddle, Contributing Journalist, Delaware LIVE
A hayride and a bonfire might seem like simple ingredients for an autumn outing. For Firm Foundation Recovery, they are also opportunities to bring families together around a mission that reaches far beyond a fall evening.
The nonprofit hosts its annual Friends of Delaware Hayride at Milburn Orchards each October, inviting supporters of its healing mission to enjoy family time while strengthening connections centered on recovery.
The gathering is one example of how the organization combines community activities, peer support and service to address substance addiction in Delaware.
Firm Foundation Recovery grew out of what its website describes as an enormous need for a long-term, God-centered recovery resource in the state. Its approach brings people and fellowships together around shared principles for healing, with an emphasis on addressing needs that can leave individuals and families struggling to find support.
“Together we can help to heal our communities one recovery at a time,” the organization states on its website.
That mission includes an ambitious undertaking: building a long-term, God-centered recovery facility with transitional living and a work program. The planned facility reflects the organization’s focus on sustained support and helping people establish a foundation for their lives in recovery.
Its broader vision extends throughout Delaware. Firm Foundation Recovery seeks to develop a recovery culture rooted in principles, service and community involvement, with people in recovery taking active roles in strengthening the communities around them.
Family events are one way it works toward that goal.
The organization reports hosting seven annual statewide family and community events focused on awareness, education, prevention and resources. Community donations help secure venues and allow those gatherings to grow.
In May, its Skating For Change events bring the mission to the rink. The owners of Christiana Skating Center and Dover Skating Center partner with the nonprofit to offer Delaware youth and families opportunities to skate while supporting its work.
October brings a different setting, with hayrides and bonfires at Milburn Orchards. The Friends of Delaware Hayride combines a familiar fall tradition with the organization’s efforts to unite people around healing and recovery.
Together, the activities reflect an approach that makes room for families and community members to participate through shared experiences.
Service is another central part of the organization’s work.
Firm Foundation Recovery reports carrying out three service projects annually in and around Delaware. Its service activities include improving housing, providing food and clothing to people experiencing homelessness, hosting speaker jams and creating supportive recovery environments.
These efforts connect recovery with practical ways to help others. They also give participants opportunities to contribute their experience and energy to needs within the wider community.
The nonprofit’s peer-driven initiatives reach children, families and people new to recovery. According to its website, lived experience helps those involved connect with others and respond to gaps in support.
“This ‘we’ concept of serving with our lived experience is life changing,” the website states.
Community partnerships help sustain the effort. Firm Foundation Recovery offers sponsorship and advertising opportunities for businesses and other supporters interested in contributing to its mission while building relationships within their communities.
For the organization, the larger goal is a Delaware where helping people affected by addiction becomes a shared commitment, and where those building lives in recovery have opportunities to serve others.
A skating rink, a service project or an evening beside a bonfire offers a different doorway into that work. Each creates space for people to gather, participate and support a mission built around healing.
Through those connections, Firm Foundation Recovery is working toward a future in which recovery has a place in everyday community life, one helping hand and one changed life at a time.
By John Riddle
A hayride and a bonfire might seem like simple ingredients for an autumn outing. For Firm Foundation Recovery, they are also opportunities to bring families together around a mission that reaches far beyond a fall evening.
The nonprofit hosts its annual Friends of Delaware Hayride at Milburn Orchards each October, inviting supporters of its healing mission to enjoy family time while strengthening connections centered on recovery.
The gathering is one example of how the organization combines community activities, peer support and service to address substance addiction in Delaware.
Firm Foundation Recovery grew out of what its website describes as an enormous need for a long-term, God-centered recovery resource in the state. Its approach brings people and fellowships together around shared principles for healing, with an emphasis on addressing needs that can leave individuals and families struggling to find support.
“Together we can help to heal our communities one recovery at a time,” the organization states on its website.
That mission includes an ambitious undertaking: building a long-term, God-centered recovery facility with transitional living and a work program. The planned facility reflects the organization’s focus on sustained support and helping people establish a foundation for their lives in recovery.
Its broader vision extends throughout Delaware. Firm Foundation Recovery seeks to develop a recovery culture rooted in principles, service and community involvement, with people in recovery taking active roles in strengthening the communities around them.
Family events are one way it works toward that goal.
The organization reports hosting seven annual statewide family and community events focused on awareness, education, prevention and resources. Community donations help secure venues and allow those gatherings to grow.
In May, its Skating For Change events bring the mission to the rink. The owners of Christiana Skating Center and Dover Skating Center partner with the nonprofit to offer Delaware youth and families opportunities to skate while supporting its work.
October brings a different setting, with hayrides and bonfires at Milburn Orchards. The Friends of Delaware Hayride combines a familiar fall tradition with the organization’s efforts to unite people around healing and recovery.
Together, the activities reflect an approach that makes room for families and community members to participate through shared experiences.
Service is another central part of the organization’s work.
Firm Foundation Recovery reports carrying out three service projects annually in and around Delaware. Its service activities include improving housing, providing food and clothing to people experiencing homelessness, hosting speaker jams and creating supportive recovery environments.
These efforts connect recovery with practical ways to help others. They also give participants opportunities to contribute their experience and energy to needs within the wider community.
The nonprofit’s peer-driven initiatives reach children, families and people new to recovery. According to its website, lived experience helps those involved connect with others and respond to gaps in support.
“This ‘we’ concept of serving with our lived experience is life changing,” the website states.
Community partnerships help sustain the effort. Firm Foundation Recovery offers sponsorship and advertising opportunities for businesses and other supporters interested in contributing to its mission while building relationships within their communities.
For the organization, the larger goal is a Delaware where helping people affected by addiction becomes a shared commitment, and where those building lives in recovery have opportunities to serve others.
A skating rink, a service project or an evening beside a bonfire offers a different doorway into that work. Each creates space for people to gather, participate and support a mission built around healing.
Through those connections, Firm Foundation Recovery is working toward a future in which recovery has a place in everyday community life, one helping hand and one changed life at a time.
Paul Mackenzie and his church set up sect that ordered followers to starve themselves and their children, say prosecutors
A Kenyan court has found the starvation cult leader Paul Mackenzie and about 30 others guilty of murder over the deaths of 190 children and one adult in one of the world’s worst cult-related disasters in recent history.
Mackenzie was arrested in 2023 after police received a tipoff, and weeks later authorities began uncovering bodies in shallow graves in the Shakahola forest near the coast in south-eastern Kenya.
Last weekend there were mass protests across France, with more than half a million people estimated to have been involved. The unrest included rioting, looting and violent clashes with outnumbered police in cities including Paris, Marseille and Limoges. The interior minister conceded that police ‘lost control’ in some cities, while President Emmanuel Macron demanded a full security review. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, Jon Henley – watch on YouTube
Miami, FL — Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced Monday that the state has obtained an arrest warrant for former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, accusing him of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in connection with the 1996 shootdown of two civilian aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue.
The Miami-based exile group flew humanitarian missions over the Florida Straits searching for Cuban migrants in distress. On Feb. 24, 1996, Cuban military jets shot down two unarmed U.S.-registered Cessna aircraft over international waters, killing Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales.
Uthmeier said Florida investigators concluded the attack was intentional and part of a coordinated conspiracy involving Cuban intelligence and military officials. He said Castro, then Cuba’s defense minister, was involved in the chain of command that authorized the operation.
Castro, 94, already faces separate federal charges stemming from the same attack. The Justice Department unsealed an indictment in May charging him and five other former Cuban officials with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, destruction of aircraft and murder. All defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
Uthmeier acknowledged that Castro is unlikely to be taken into Florida custody immediately but said the warrant could have consequences if he travels to a country willing to extradite him.
Washington, DC — The White House is investigating allegations that senior Trump adviser Ric Grenell offered a Turkish billionaire access to President Donald Trump and administration officials in connection with a multimillion-dollar Kennedy Center donation.
Axios reported that a May 2025 text allegedly sent by Grenell to businessman Turhan Mildon promised VIP events and proximity to Trump after money was transferred through a private company. Grenell has strongly denied sending the message or participating in any improper arrangement.
The dispute centers on a $17.6 million payment transferred from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s finance ministry to Houston-based defense company Texas Armament & Technology. Mildon alleges roughly $5.6 million was supposed to become a Kennedy Center donation, but officials found no record that the center received it.
Mildon, who recently married former Trump attorney Alina Habba, provided the disputed text, financial records and other correspondence to White House counsel Will Scharf. Trump ordered the internal investigation after Habba personally raised the allegations with him.
The circumstances surrounding the transaction remain unclear, including whose money was involved and how the Congo business arrangement related to the proposed donation.
Grenell called the accusations “absurd” and denied receiving money or directing funds away from the Kennedy Center.
White House officials say investigators are now attempting to authenticate the text and determine what happened to the money.
A new investigation offers a different account of what might have happened the night O.J. Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were stabbed to death.
Agreement would have spared Mohammed risk of execution in exchange for guilty plea and life in prison
The supreme court on Monday rejected an effort to revive a plea deal for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the attacks on 11 September 2001.
The agreement would have spared Mohammed the risk of execution in exchange for his guilty plea and a sentence of life in prison without parole.
Difference between French and German borrowing costs widens after public buildings burned and shops looted
France has been hit by a fresh wave of selling in its bond and stock markets after violent protests over the weekend led to thousands of arrests and left public buildings burned and hundreds of shops looted across the country.
The chaos has spooked investors as analysts worried that it would undermine Paris’s efforts to cut spending and reduce its debt.
Concerns financial contracts known as derivatives were incorrectly logged, potentially boosting Barclays’ profits
The Bank of England is reportedly looking into Barclays’ handling of loans linked to the embattled private credit sector.
The Bank’s regulatory arm, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), started reviewing the matter this year after concerns were raised by a Barclays insider, according to the Financial Times.
Manchester, NH — California Gov. Gavin Newsom used a weekend swing through New Hampshire to sharpen his anti-Trump message and position his record as a possible model for Democrats looking toward 2028.
Newsom repeatedly highlighted his clashes with President Donald Trump while campaigning for Democratic candidates ahead of the midterms. At one stop, he argued that Democrats need to become “a little more ruthless,” saying Republicans and Trump have shown a willingness to fight aggressively over issues such as redistricting.
The trip was officially focused on boosting Democratic turnout, but it also gave Newsom valuable exposure in a state that remains important in presidential politics.
Newsom portrayed California as a testing ground for resistance to Trump, citing disputes over National Guard deployments, voting rules and federal investigations involving his family. He said Democrats need to respond more forcefully to what he described as Trump’s attacks on democratic institutions.
He also leaned into economic populism, calling for Democrats to address concentrated wealth and power while pointing to California policies on paid family leave, wages and other social programs.
Newsom has not formally launched a presidential campaign. He remains one of several nationally prominent Democrats being discussed as possible 2028 contenders, alongside figures such as Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg.
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's Elizabeth Holmes documentary "You Can See Everything" earned more than $15 million in its limited opening weekend, making it one of the biggest documentary launches in decades and the strongest opening for a film on fewer than 1,000 screens since Borat in 2006. It was also "the biggest non-music documentary since 'Fahrenheit 9/11' in 2004," adds CNN. From the report: Many weekend screenings in cities like New York and Los Angeles were sold out despite the three-hour running time. The film's distributor, A24, called it "one of the largest limited-release openings of the 21st century." "You Can See Everything" opened on fewer than 900 screens following a jaw-dropping surprise premiere at the Telluride Film Festival last month.
Fielder and Oppenheim worked on the project in secret for years, filming with Holmes and her partner Billy Evans in the weeks before Holmes went to prison in 2023. Holmes was convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud Theranos investors, but she tried to convince the filmmakers of her innocence.
Fielder, who appears on camera interviewing Holmes and Evans, takes the film in unexpected directions, thrilling critics and theatergoers. The film has an extraordinarily high 99% "fresh score" on Rotten Tomatoes and a record-high 4.8 rating on Letterboxd. Further reading: Will New Documentary Make Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes More Sympathetic?
Theranos whistleblower Tyler Shultz said he "was pretty shocked" by the version of Elizabeth Holmes he saw onscreen in the new documentary "You Can See Everything."
Military fighter jets intercepted a plane flying through restricted airspace over Cincinnati, Ohio, while President Trump was speaking at a nearby rally in Kentucky.
At least 15 vessels struck in waterway in past 10 days, with rumours that they were carrying valuable goods
People have been scouring the strait of Hormuz for spilt cargo after Iran attacked at least 15 container ships passing through the crucial waterway in the past 10 days.
Some ships have been hit by drones, others by mines. On Sunday, a ship was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade launched from a small boat 75 miles (120km) north-east of the Saudi port of Jubail.
Witness says drone struck twice at transport hub in al-Dibab, in one of deadliest single attacks of war
A drone strike near a market in southern Sudan on Sunday evening killed 80 people, mostly commuters catching rides home.
Ahmed Wadi, a witness, said the attack in the town of al-Dibab in West Kordofan state left “50 bodies who I helped bury, one of them my own brother Mohamed”.
Thomas Teepell, who worked for Republican senator, demanded El-Sayed disavow Muslim Brotherhood
A man who heckled the Democratic candidate for Senate Abdul El-Sayed and demanded he disavow the Muslim Brotherhood at a Michigan town hall is a former aide to the Republican senator Josh Hawley, according to congressional staff records.
At the event on Saturday, an attender who gave his name only as “Tommy” shouted from the crowd, asking whether El-Sayed would disavow the movement. El-Sayed answered: “Sure, yeah, absolutely,” then turned the question around, asking whether the man assumed he wouldn’t.
The Supreme Court rebuffed an effort by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to revive a plea deal reached with military prosecutors and revoked by the Biden administration.
Pumpkin cheesecake is built on two ingredients that have carried the wrong names for generations. One name traces to a federal labeling policy issued in ... Read moreThe post Pumpkin cheesecake has been mislabeled for over a century, and the…
Scottish university’s annual tradition once involved giving out raisins but fancy dress and shaving cream now in vogue
Nobody at the University of St Andrews in Scotland seems to remember how Raisin Monday became a giant foam fight. For 600 years, first-year students have taken part in the ritual of thanking older students for mentoring them through their first few weeks of university life.
Traditionally, freshers would give their elders a pound of raisins – hence the name. This Monday however, hundreds wore fancy dress as they streamed on to St Salvator’s lower college lawn at 11am armed with cans of shaving foam, covering one another in soapy clouds as they have for the past few decades. Groups of students dress as Smurfs, mice, bananas, grandmas, sunflowers and chefs to participate in the annual rite of passage.
WILMINGTON, Del. — Delaware State Police are investigating a strong-arm robbery that left two employees injured early Sunday morning in Wilmington.
Troopers responded at approximately 3:20 a.m. on October 18 to a business in the 3300 block of Old Capitol Trail.
Police said two employees were walking to their vehicles after work when they were approached by two male suspects wearing pink masks. The suspects allegedly assaulted both employees, stole personal property and fled in a vehicle.
Both victims were taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
The Delaware State Police Criminal Investigations Unit is investigating. Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective M. Kerrigan at 302-365-8487 or Delaware Crime Stoppers at 1-800-847-3333.
Downing Street has criticised Pete Hegseth for downplaying the role of Nato allies in helping the US with combat operations in Afghanistan, saying Donald Trump’s defence secretary had been wrong to do so.
The direct condemnation came as No 10 more carefully distanced itself from Trump’s increasing willingness to engage with Russia, saying the UK’s backing for Ukraine was “unwavering”.
Opposition to US-led quarantine center in Kenya follows sweeping funding cuts and withdrawal from WHO
An eighth person in Kenya has tested positive for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola in the country’s first-ever cluster of cases of the virus, as the second-largest outbreak in history has killed more than 4,300 and sickened more than 9,000 people in the region.
It highlights the diminished role the US has played in the worsening Ebola outbreak by building a controversial quarantine center in Kenya, pulling back health support globally, and banning travelers from certain countries. All of this has also reduced the ability to identify and respond to the outbreak and exacerbated mistrust.
Monitoring tools common in a range of workplaces, including factories, office jobs, delivery work and in retail – often without employees being informed
Employers are increasingly using technology, from CCTV to keystroke monitoring, to track workers’ moves and it is being accelerated by the use of AI, the Human Technology Institute has warned.
Examples provided to Guardian Australia by the institute include a fast-food restaurant using surveillance cameras to stop workers using their phones, and AI tracking leading to a cashier warned over making a mistake once every 533 scans.
Grenada rewards travelers who choose a destination for its food. The small Caribbean nation and its sister island, Carriacou, pack an unlikely range of cooking ... Read moreThe post From beach shacks to superyacht marinas, Grenada has the food for…
Israeli police say they arrested 10 people over alleged Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians and a U.S. journalist as more attacks on Palestinians are reported.
Dutch MEP says government is trying to avoid EU environmental rules as protests over luxury development turn violent
MEPs have accused Albania of deploying “sneaky” practices to fast-track a proposed Trump-linked luxury resort in the country amid protests that have turned increasingly violent.
As the prime minister, Edi Rama, pledged to “listen to the voices of young people” taking to the streets, there was mounting criticism of his failure to address demonstrators who had long opposed the controversial project peacefully.
The leftwing news site the Canary has announced that it is closing indefinitely. Earlier this year the media outlet was blocked from accessing funds and has faced allegations of internal turmoil.
The outlet, founded in 2015 at the height of support for the then Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said in a social media post it would be closing “for the foreseeable future”.
Delaware Inspector General Robert Storch launched his office's inaugural website in October where users can submit reports of government waste. | PHOTO COURTESY STATE OF DELAWARE
Farm drones can potentially reduce labor costs, increase yields and reduce chemical use and human exposure to chemicals. But those benefits vary by crop and ... Read moreThe post Farm drones may lower costs for growers, but will shoppers save…
(The Center Square) – White House border czar Tom Homan said over the weekend that federal investigators have a “strong case” against U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar.
More than three-quarters of parents report family travel brings everyone closer together and enriches their children’s education. Families looking for a beach getaway that doubles ... Read moreThe post North Myrtle Beach leads the way in family eco-adventures appeared first…
Ricardo Gonzalez was injured and taken to hospital after confrontation in Long Beach, according to officials
Federal immigration agents broke the arm of a US citizen in what a Democratic congressman said was a “brutal attack” during a confrontation with protesters in California.
Video of Saturday’s encounter in Long Beach shows Ricardo Gonzalez, identified as a former city employee, handcuffed and face down in a gutter, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers kneeling on his back.
Schmidt Sciences–backed project will reassemble fragments of stone tools, pottery and bones that have sat unmatched in collections, and release the tools free to archaeologists
Oct. 19, 2026 — A team of NYU engineers and archaeologists is working on open-source AI tools that piece together broken stone tools, pottery and bones and fill in what’s missing, so that fragments sitting unmatched in collections can become evidence about how people in the past lived.
The project, “Fragmented Legacy: Turning Broken 3D Materials into Archaeological Interpretations,” includes partners at the University of Tübingen and is supported by a three-year grant from Schmidt Sciences. It is one of 19 projects selected for this year’s Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI) awards.
Jing Zhang presenting CRAG at the 2nd International Workshop on Spatial Intelligence for Cultural Heritage in June 2026. Photo courtesy of Jing Zhang
The problem it targets is basic to archaeology. Stone tools, pottery, animal bones and human skeletal remains are often excavated broken, and putting the fragments back together, a process called refitting, is slow enough that most collections are never systematically refitted. Reported success rates run from about 1 percent for ceramics to between 4 and 26 percent for bones.
Chen Feng, Institute Associate Professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and founding co-director of the NYU Center for Robotics and Embodied Intelligence (CREO), leads the project with Jing Zhang, a CREO Faculty Fellow.
They are joined by Radu Iovita and Scott Williams, professors in NYU’s Department of Anthropology, and Raiko Krauß, professor of Central and Southeast European Prehistory at the University of Tübingen.
Collaborators include Leiden University, Arizona State University, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
“My lab teaches machines to understand 3D shapes in the real world, where things are messy and incomplete,” said Feng. “Broken archaeological material is one of the hardest versions of that problem. The pieces are worn, many are missing, and there’s no picture on the box. Our job is to build AI that can reason through that uncertainty, and our archaeology colleagues tell us whether the answers make sense.”
Refitting matters because a single match between two fragments can carry a lot of information.
If a stone flake found in one part of a site fits back onto a core found in another, researchers learn how people moved through that space, how tools were made step by step, or whether the site’s layers were disturbed after the fact. Animal bones that refit can show how an animal was butchered and how meat was shared, and human fossil refits can reveal important anatomical features.
Without refits, many of those questions go unanswered.
The team will start by building a collection of at least 100,000 real and digitally simulated broken objects, pairing 3D models with photographs, descriptions and catalog data, with simulated breaks that follow how stone, clay and bone actually fracture.
The researchers will then develop AI models that work out where each fragment belongs while generating a plausible version of the complete object, and that reason across shape, images and text so archaeological knowledge can rule out unlikely reconstructions.
Archaeologists will stay in the loop throughout, comparing competing reconstructions and teaching the system which ones hold up.
“Refitting is fun, but we rarely have time to do it right. In museums, one can often only look at one drawer at a time, so it’s impossible to lay out an entire collection at once,” said Iovita. “Refitting objects between sites to show direct relationships between them has only ever been done twice. My dream is to use AI to do this on a large scale – it will revolutionize the field!”
The project grew out of a collaboration between Feng’s AI4CE Lab and Iovita’s lab that began about four years ago with LUWA, which used AI to classify microscopic wear on stone tools. Zhang, then a postdoctoral researcher working in both labs, connected the two groups.
In 2024, Zhang asked Iovita about archaeology’s most pressing technical problem, and Iovita pointed to refitting. That led to GARF, which reassembles broken objects, and CRAG, which also fills in missing pieces, and laid the groundwork for the HAVI award.
“Archaeologists are like Sherlock Holmes, piecing together clues to understand the past,” said Zhang. “We want Fragmented Legacy to be their Watson. It can match fragments and suggest possible reconstructions, so researchers have more time to interpret the evidence and ask new questions.”
All datasets, model weights and benchmarks from the project will be released under permissive open-source licenses, so university researchers and cultural resource management (CRM) firms, which carry out much of the archaeological work required ahead of construction in the U.S. and abroad, can use them directly. The team expects the methods to be useful beyond archaeology, in other scientific fields and in practical repair and restoration.
Singer ‘mortified’ about wearing diamonds from Argyle mine at centre of environmental concerns about Indigenous land
The singer Ellie Goulding has admitted her error at having promoted diamonds at the centre of environmental concerns about Indigenous land in Australia, despite having spent years campaigning on environmental issues – including the effects of mining on ancestral lands.
She appeared at a event in London earlier this month for the jewellery brand Boodles, modelling some of its newly acquired pink diamonds, some of which came from a controversial mine in Western Australia.
TORONTO, Oct. 19, 2026 — Xanadu Quantum Technologies Limited, a leading photonic quantum computing company, today announced that it has received provisional approval for project funding worth up to USD $10 million under DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI). This one-year contract extension reflects DARPA’s ongoing support and investment in Xanadu’s R&D, and builds on the company’s work in Stage B.
DARPA’s QBI program evaluates leading quantum computing architectures to determine which approaches can deliver utility-scale performance within realistic budgets and real-world timelines. Under this contract, Xanadu expects to execute a dual-purpose strategy over the next 12 months; providing regular progress reports to DARPA for continued evaluation, while directly allocating the majority of the funding to accelerate the advancement of critical components in its R&D roadmap.
Xanadu believes that its photonic quantum computing architecture offers distinct advantages over traditional quantum systems. Most notably, it has minimal cooling requirements due to room-temperature compute operations, a modular, networkable design, and fast clock speeds. The company’s latest photonic quantum computer, Aurora, not only validates the scalability and viability of Xanadu’s photonic approach by demonstrating networkability, but the Company believes it also establishes a foundation for all future fault-tolerant quantum systems—systems built to tackle the world’s most intractable problems.
“Ongoing participation in QBI reinforces Xanadu’s goal of developing quantum computing solutions that deliver practical value across industries, including drug discovery, advanced chemistry, aerospace, defense, and AI,” said Dr. Christian Weedbrook, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Xanadu.
Successful completion of Stage B evaluations maintains Xanadu’s path through the DARPA QBI program, where quantum computer concepts will undergo formal verification and validation to ensure they can be constructed as designed and operated as intended.
Founded in 2016, Xanadu is a Canadian photonic quantum computing company with the mission to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere. Xanadu is building fault-tolerant quantum computers using light, with systems designed to compute at room temperature. Xanadu develops both hardware and software, including PennyLane, its open-source quantum computing platform. Xanadu is the first pure-play photonic quantum computing company to list on public markets (Nasdaq/TSX: XNDU) and is recognized globally for its breakthroughs in scalable quantum technologies.
The $48bn giveaway comes amid concerns about the tech and as the company prepares for a stock market listing
Anthropic has said it will commit 5% of its shares to a fund for the “public good”, as the AI developer behind the Claude chatbot seeks to bolster its appeal before its stock market listing.
The company announced it would commit the shares, worth around $48bn (£36bn) at its latest valuation in May, subject to shareholder approval. It will add a further 2% of its stock to the fund for every 50% increase in its value above an undisclosed baseline.
US military says Tech Sgt Ian Patterson was killed after he fell from rafters at University of Texas at San Antonio game
The US military has identified the air force service member who died after he fell from the rafters of the Alamodome during a rappelling demonstration before the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA)’s home game against Navy on Saturday.
He was Tech Sgt Ian Patterson, a tactical air control party instructor assigned to the sixth combat training squadron, detachment two, at Joint Base San Antonio.
BROOMFIELD, Colo., Oct. 19, 2026 — Quantinuum, a leading full-stack quantum computing company, today announced a world-record quantum error-correction result, achieving a logical fidelity of 99.9995% on its Helios commercial computer using the company’s error-correction architecture. This marks Quantinuum’s second breakthrough in two months, demonstrating how its highly accurate trapped-ion hardware and flexible architecture work together to deliver rapid improvements in accuracy.
The achievement reinforces Quantinuum’s error-correction leadership and validates that its accuracy performance is now within the target range for Apollo, the company’s planned universal fault-tolerant quantum computer expected to be available by 2029.
Quantinuum’s architecture is an end-to-end framework programmable through the company’s developer platform. It integrates tailored AI decoders, all-to-all qubit connectivity, high-fidelity physical operations, and hardware-level error correction. This architecture also allows the company to test, refine, and combine different error-correction codes and optimize between accuracy and efficiency.
In the latest study, Quantinuum used a well-known ‘color code’ within this architecture to achieve the world-record logical fidelity result, which is equivalent to just five errors per million operations. The error rate is 10 times lower than Quantinuum’s own world record achieved last month and 100 times lower than the best published result across all other hardware modalities, which was reported by Google Quantum AI on a superconducting system.
“With this result, we’ve proven that we have the error-correction architecture and trapped-ion technology required to achieve universal fault-tolerance,” said Dr. Rajeeb Hazra, CEO of Quantinuum. “We have reduced error rates tenfold in rapid succession using a different code on the same commercial hardware, demonstrating the flexibility of our error-correction architecture. We’ve crossed the threshold necessary for exponential improvements in accuracy, reinforcing our path to Apollo and how we can help users unlock commercial value from quantum at scale.”
The study also showed that logical errors fell exponentially as Quantinuum increased the ‘code distance,’ a technique used to understand how many physical qubits are needed to protect quantum information as the error correction scales. Each tested increase reduced the remaining logical errors by a record factor of 12, demonstrating increasingly effective error suppression as the code grows—a critical capability for scaling fault-tolerant quantum computing. Quantinuum believes this result suggests it can deliver fault-tolerance with significantly fewer qubits than are required for other modalities.
“This is a significant milestone that quantum computing researchers have been working toward for many years,” said Robin Blume-Kohout, Co-director of Sandia National Laboratories’ Quantum Performance Lab, who was not involved in the study. “The paper demonstrates real, serious performance gains from quantum error correction—a logical qubit nearly 100x better than its component physical qubits. A scaled-up version of this system could reach the reliability required for useful fault-tolerant computation at a feasible size—less than a million physical qubits—which improves the outlook for practical quantum computing. These findings go a long way to retire one of the field’s central technical risks.”
In September 2026, Quantinuum used the same error-correction architecture with its Helix code to demonstrate record-setting logical memory and computation. Both studies ran on the same Helios hardware.
The two demonstrations illustrate how Quantinuum can rapidly prototype different error-correction codes within the same architecture to optimize for relative strengths in accuracy, efficiency, and speed. On Helios, Helix used 10 physical qubits per logical qubit, compared with up to 37 for the color code, while the color code delivered lower logical error rates. This provides insight into which applications pair best with each code as systems advance toward fault-tolerance.
Quantinuum’s error-correction architecture is flexible, allowing for adaptive syndrome extraction, which adjusts error-checking measurements during computation, and chain-mapping, which connects codes suited to different computational tasks. Together with efficient code structures and real-time decoding, these techniques provide multiple ways to reduce errors and resource requirements.
Quantinuum is combining its hardware, error-correction architecture, and full-stack software platform into an integrated system for fault-tolerant quantum computing. As customers prepare for this next era of computing, Quantinuum is providing the tools needed to develop and scale quantum applications capable of addressing challenges across materials science, chemistry, finance, logistics, and other critical sectors.
Quantinuum (NASDAQ: QNT) is a leading quantum computing company offering a full-stack platform designed to make quantum computing deployable in real-world environments. The company has commercially deployed multiple generations of trapped-ion based quantum systems built on the well-established QCCD architecture, which it has implemented with novel designs and capabilities to achieve the industry’s highest accuracy levels based on average two-qubit gate fidelity. Quantinuum has active engagements with market leaders across pharmaceuticals, material science, financial services, and government and industrial markets, as well as academic and research institutions globally. The company has a global workforce of approximately 800 employees, including top scientists and researchers. Over 70% of its technology team holds PhDs or Master’s degrees. Quantinuum’s headquarters is in Broomfield, Colorado, with additional facilities across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Qatar, and Singapore. For more information, please visit www.quantinuum.com.
Downing Street delivered a rare rebuke to a senior member of Donald Trump’s administration
Asked why the Lib Dems were opposed to a third runway at Heathrow when they professed to be in favour of growth, Cooper said she did not accept that a third runway would produce all the benefits its supporters claimed.
She explained:
On Heathrow, it is clear from looking at all of the economic analysis of airport growth over the last few years that many of the promises made by all sorts of different airport companies simply haven’t come to bear.
The promise of higher wage jobs hasn’t been substantiated. Often it’s lower paid jobs, and often not as many as they’ve claimed.
The researchers said what they had hoped was the plane was "likely a collection of large trees" that had washed away, leaving a "single Y-shaped segment."
TEL AVIV, Israel, Oct. 19, 2026 — Quantum X Labs Inc. has announced a technological milestone achieved by its quantum cybersecurity operation, QuantumQ Security, through the experimental validation of its LayerQake technology on three operational IBM quantum processors.
The Company completed a pre-registered, reproducible experimental test of LayerQake’s quantum calibration methodology on three IBM quantum processors: ibm_fez, ibm_kingston and ibm_marrakesh. The Company believes the experiment demonstrated substantial improvements in computational accuracy and reductions in cumulative errors caused by quantum hardware noise, and the results met both of the Company’s predefined success criteria on all three processors.
According to the Company’s results, prior to applying LayerQake’s calibration methodology, hardware-induced noise introduced measurement bias ranging from approximately 11% to 15%. Following the application of LayerQake, the observed bias was reduced to below 6% on each of the three processors.
In addition, the experiments demonstrated a 15- to 21-fold reduction in maximum cumulative error, representing a substantial improvement in the reliability of the tested quantum computational results.
Importantly, these improvements were achieved using LayerQake’s problem-independent calibration approach, which is designed to mitigate hardware-induced inaccuracies without requiring a calibration methodology tailored to each individual computational problem.
Experimental Results Demonstrate Consistent Performance Across Multiple Quantum Processors
The experimental program was designed to assess whether LayerQake could systematically reduce the effects of quantum hardware noise across different physical quantum computing devices.
Before conducting the experiments, the Company established two predefined success criteria: (i) a reduction in measurement bias and (ii) a reduction in maximum cumulative error.
The Company believes these findings provide initial experimental evidence that LayerQake’s calibration methodology can improve the accuracy and consistency of results obtained from existing quantum computing hardware.
Addressing One of Quantum Computing’s Fundamental Challenges
Hardware noise and computational inaccuracies remain among the principal challenges limiting the practical performance of today’s quantum computers.
Quantum processors are inherently sensitive to environmental interference, imperfect control operations and measurement errors. These factors can introduce inaccuracies into computational results, limiting their reliability and the complexity of problems that can be addressed.
Technologies capable of identifying, calibrating and mitigating these inaccuracies are therefore an important component of the broader effort to advance practical quantum computing.
Quantum X Labs believes that LayerQake’s demonstrated ability to reduce measurement bias and cumulative errors across multiple processors highlights the potential of its technology to contribute to improved reliability in quantum computing environments.
The Company views this milestone as an important step in the development of its broader quantum cybersecurity and quantum computing software portfolio, which includes technologies addressing quantum channel diagnostics, information security, verification and quantum computational reliability.
Following the successful completion of this initial experimental validation, Quantum X Labs intends to continue evaluating LayerQake’s performance across additional quantum workloads, experimental conditions and hardware environments.
The Company believes that calibration technologies capable of improving the reliability of existing quantum processors may play an important role in supporting the development and eventual commercialization of quantum computing applications.
About Quantum X Labs Inc.
Quantum X Labs Inc. (NASDAQ: QXL) and its subsidiaries are focused on quantum technology, digital advertising and computing and enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. Quantum X Labs Ltd. is focused on developing and promoting quantum algorithms for the transportation, drug discovery and security segments as well as developing quantum- based GPS replacement and quantum atom accuracy solutions. Gix Media develops a variety of technological software solutions, which perform automation, optimization and monetization of internet campaigns, for the purposes of acquiring and routing internet user traffic to its customers. Metagramm is a developer of grammatical error correction software and offers tools for writing and reviewing, grammar, spelling, punctuation and style features, as well as translation and multilingual dictionaries, using artificial intelligence and machine learning technology.
Exclusive: Basketball venues are facing increasing broadcaster and fan demands, so the NBA, WNBA and AT&T are upgrading arenas with all-new communications equipment.
America is "making an unprecedented attempt to revive three shuttered nuclear plants to meet rising energy demand," reports the Los Angeles Times,
"Two of the plants have contracts with Big Tech companies that will pay a premium to get large amounts of carbon-free energy for data centers..."
No commercial nuclear reactor is known to have resumed generating electricity after beginning the decommissioning process that takes one out of service, though some reactors have restarted after long outages. The Department of Energy is lending as much as $4.4 billion to restart the Palisades Power Plant in Michigan, the Crane Clean Energy Center on Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island and the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa to restore a combined 2.25 gigawatts of electricity, which can power roughly 2 million homes and businesses. All three of the plants closed before their licenses expired, largely because the electricity they produced was considered too expensive... Restarting a reactor is a fairly quick way to get a lot of electricity, and it's cheaper than building a new, large reactor, said nuclear engineering expert Todd Allen...
Edwin Lyman, at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the taxpayer money being used should go toward addressing safety risks. For example, most U.S. plants were built between 1970 and 1990 and were designed to withstand natural disasters of that era, said Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at UCS. But climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent and severe. "It's possible, if they set the right level of safety and spend the necessary funds to meet that, they could restore these plants to operable condition," he said. "That's not happening at this point...."
NextEra Energy and Google are collaborating to restart Duane Arnold by early 2029... Microsoft has a contract with the Crane Clean Energy Center on Three Mile Island just outside Harrisburg. The plant was the site of the nation's worst commercial nuclear power accident in 1979. The accident destroyed one reactor, leaving the plant with one functioning. In 2019, Constellation Energy's then-parent company Exelon shut down the functioning reactor, saying it was losing money and that Pennsylvania lawmakers had refused to subsidize it. Constellation Energy announced in 2024 that it would spend $1.6 billion to restart the reactor under a 20-year agreement with Microsoft. It hopes to bring the plant back online in 2027...
Palisades is expected to be the first nuclear plant in the world to resume generating power after beginning the decommissioning process.
Mike Huckabee condemns attack on Washington Post photojournalist that has drawn lukewarm response from Israeli authorities. Plus, Japan is attempting to boldly go where no space mission has gone before
Good morning. The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has denounced a settler attack that left the Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine badly beaten and needing surgery as a “despicable act of terror”.
Levine, 63, an award-winning journalist who lives in Israel, was set upon last Friday by masked Israeli settlers who used clubs and other weapons to attack Palestinians attempting to harvest their olives. The photographer, who is in hospital recovering from hand surgery, broken ribs and other injuries, said she was beaten for more than 10 minutes.
What else has Heidi Levine said about the attack? She said: “I was attacked, pushed to the ground. Luckily, I had my flak jacket and helmet, otherwise I probably wouldn’t even be here, because they just kept kicking and kicking me. I’ve been covering this region for over 40 years and I have never seen this country in such a state as it is today. I’ve invested decades of blood, sweat and tears into this. They cracked my bones, they haven’t cracked my spirit.”
How have Israeli authorities responded? In a move Levine said left her “shocked and insulted”, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been ambiguous in addressing the assault. He said he condemned “violence against anyone” but referred to the attack as “alleged” and said its circumstances remained unclear.
What is causing the wave of protests across Europe? School conditions, housing costs and the cost of living have brought demonstrators on to the streets in several countries including Spain, France and Portugal. Protests in Albania against the prime minister, Edi Rama, entered their sixth day on Sunday. Demonstrators there have said they are unhappy with perceived corruption, a lack of jobs and poor education standards.
Los Angeles were tipped as a Super Bowl contender after assembling a star studded lineup. Now they’ve lost three of their last four games
The Rams were supposed to be the closest thing the NFL had seen to a superteam in some time. Instead, they’re 2-4, have lost three of their last four games and are last in the NFC West. So much has gone awry, so quickly.
Sunday was rock bottom (for now). The Rams lost to the division’s ugly stepchild, the Cardinals – a team they had beaten in 16 of their last 19 meetings – on a day when Arizona didn’t manage to score a touchdown. They didn’t need to, because Arizona kicker Chad Ryland connected on six field goal attempts, the last one a 43-yarder as time expired. The game was a tale of two kickers, in that the Cardinals had a superb one and the Rams didn’t have one at all. Days after releasing Harrison Mevis following a league-worst four misses in the season’s first five weeks, the Rams came into this game with Blake Grupe, whom they’d plucked off the Jets practice squad. Grupe got hurt covering a kickoff return in the first quarter, leaving the Rams literally kickerless for the duration. (Mevis, a big fella whose nickname is the Thick Kicker, or “Thiccer,” has about 80lbs on the 5ft 7in Grupe.)
Washington, DC — Republican senators are increasingly pushing back against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over his sweeping changes to Pentagon leadership, warning that repeated firings and forced departures could weaken military readiness and leave experienced officers sidelined.
The tensions have intensified since Hegseth announced plans to reduce the number of generals and admirals by 20%, part of a broader effort he says will streamline the military and eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy.
Several senior Republicans have complained that Congress was given little warning about the cuts. Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker and other GOP members have also questioned whether some personnel decisions are being driven by political or ideological considerations rather than performance.
Sen. Thom Tillis has gone further, repeatedly calling on President Donald Trump to replace Hegseth. Tillis has described the Pentagon’s management as “inept” and accused Hegseth of driving out capable military leaders while focusing heavily on culture-war issues.
The Pentagon maintains that its personnel decisions are merit-based and necessary to reshape the military for future threats.
Hegseth has already forced out or sidelined numerous senior officers, while the Army has experienced particularly significant turnover, including the resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll after months of reported clashes with Hegseth.
Trump has continued to publicly support his defense secretary despite the growing criticism from within his own party.
After Houthis escalated their attacks on Saudi Arabia, the US turned down calls from MBS for help
For years, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, cultivated a close relationship with Donald Trump and his son-in-law and former top adviser, Jared Kushner. The prince understood the president’s transactional approach to power: he signed deals to buy billions of dollars’ worth of US weapons and invested billions more in American companies.
Days after Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, Prince Mohammed pledged to expand investment and trade with the US by $600bn over four years. He later promised to increase that investment to nearly $1tn, although it wasn’t entirely clear how Saudi Arabia would manage to plough a sum close to the kingdom’s entire annual GDP into a foreign economy over a few years.
Mohamad Bazzi is a Guardian US columnist. He is also director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and a journalism professor at New York University
Republicans delay major action on abortion until after midterm elections, and Democrats focus on affordability
Exactly 1,255 volunteers fanned out across Idaho’s rural 35 legislative districts to collect signatures, knocking on 66,000 doors and ultimately gathering more than 110,000. Not a single one was paid – a rarity in today’s politics.
This effort was in service of Proposition 1, which asks voters a single question: Should abortion be legal in Idaho? A “yes” vote would lift one of the most restrictive abortions bans in the nation.
The meal kit delivery service denies the allegations, saying it found claims to be ‘entirely without merit’
Workers at a HelloFresh facility in Newark, New Jersey, have claimed in court documents that they were verbally and physically abused and denied regular bathroom breaks, with one former worker telling the Guardian he experienced incontinence issues as a result.
The newly proposed amended complaint comes in a class-action lawsuit first filed in August 2024 against the food prep service giant and staffing agencies. A New Jersey state court judge is expected to review the amended complaint in a hearing scheduled for 23 October.
Trudy weakens to tropical storm after warnings of strong winds and heavy rain, while one person killed in Greece
In contrast to the quiet Atlantic hurricane season, there has been ongoing activity in the Pacific, with Trudy being the 22nd and latest named system. The category 2 hurricane remained roughly 100 miles (160km) south-west of the coast of Mexico, meaning the worst of the conditions stayed offshore. However, the US National Hurricane Center put coastal parts of the states of Jalisco, Michoacán and Colima under hurricane warnings, with sustained winds of up to 60-90mph forecast on Sunday.
Rainfall totals of 100-150mm were likely for these areas, prompting warnings of flooding and landslides. Warnings also covered the risk of a dangerous storm surge accompanied by damaging waves in areas of onshore winds across the coast of south-western Mexico. By Monday morning, Trudy had weakened and been downgraded to a tropical storm, with coastal warnings being lifted.
Exclusive: Using test accounts acting as 13-year-olds, Tech Transparency Project downloaded 135 apps with features to generate nonconsensual nude imagery
In December 2025, Morgan Dorfman received distressing news: a student at her daughter’s Pennsylvania high school was making AI-generated pornographic material using the daughter’s image.
He was using an artificial intelligence image-editing app called Movely to create sexual videos from pictures of her daughter and five other girls.
Will California stand with the working class or the oligarchs in the vote this November?
The Democratic party has a choice to make. Are we going to be New Deal Democrats or corporate Democrats? Are we standing with the working class or the tech oligarchs?
Proposition 40, California’s billionaire tax, is the most important ballot initiative in America and a fight for the soul of our party.
Rohit Khanna is aUS congressman and attorney serving as the US representative from California’s 17th congressional district
The last long-term federal recovery funds allocated for a major disaster were for Hurricane Milton, which hit in late 2024
Survivors of extreme weather disasters across the US are facing long waits for government assistance funds to rebuild their lives, with the last long-term recovery funds allocated for Hurricane Milton that hit Florida two years ago. Government officials estimate more than $10bn is needed in long-term disaster recovery funding to rebuild affected communities in Los Angeles county and St Louis, Missouri, alone.
Demetrice Davis’s home in north St Louis still has damage from the EF3 tornado that tore through the area in May 2025. “The insurance didn’t cover much of anything. And the Fema just kind of backed you up for a little while, but didn’t get you back on track,” he said. “The government agencies are not really doing what they’re supposed to do.”
Anthony Constantino wants to fill Elise Stefanik’s seat in New York. But his lead in the formerly Trump-loving district is narrowing
The boss of a New York-based sticker company, whose staunch support for Donald Trump prompted him to record a Maga-themed rap album and call for an extension of Mount Rushmore to add the president’s face, is running for Congress.
Anthony Constantino, who began a brief pro boxing career at age 40, is the Republican candidate for GOP congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s seat in New York’s 21st district.
After three hours in the makeup chair, model Carmela Mireles was no longer human.
Faux monarch butterflies flitted around her body, sprouting from wires attached to a harness she wore around a sheer black dress. Her body was insectine, adorned with the butterfly’s orange and black patterns. Her lips and fingers were skeletal, painted to resemble La Catrina, the iconic skeleton woman associated with Día de Los Muertos.
Get Involved Dayesla Ixtli’s free exhibition “Diosas & Guerreras: The Living Canvas” is on display at The Mezzanine Gallery (820 N. French St., Wilmington, DE 19801) through Oct. 30. The gallery is open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
The artist behind Mireles’ transformation was Adaysela Reyes from Newark, better known by her moniker Dayesla Ixtli.
Ixtli uses makeup, body paint, costumes and headdresses to transform her subjects into living, breathing artwork. Mireles and Ixtli have collaborated several times throughout the past few years, most recently at the opening reception of Ixtli’s exhibition “Diosas & Guerreras: The Living Canvas” at The Mezzanine Gallery in Wilmington earlier this month.
Though the gallery was full of costumes and photography to marvel at, Mireles was undoubtedly the center of attention.
Mireles’ ensemble was inspired by the monarch butterflies that migrate to the forests of Michoacán in early November, around Día de Los Muertos — Ixtli’s favorite time of year.
Dayesla Ixtli, right, transformed model Carmela Mireles, left, for an opening reception at The Mezzanine Gallery on Oct. 2. | PHOTO BY JUSTIN HEYES (MOONLOOP PHOTOGRAPHY), COURTESY OF DELAWARE DIVISION OF THE ARTS
Ixtli was born in Tenancingo, Mexico, and moved to Delaware with her mother when she was 7. She wasn’t very familiar with Mexican culture, customs and folklore until she moved back to Mexico to live with her grandparents during high school and her first two years of college.
“When I was here, I never felt fully Mexican. But I was not American either. It’s kind of like you’re in limbo,” she said.
Living in Mexico, Ixtli finally reconnected with the culture of the country she’d been born in. Her grandmother taught her about ofrendas — offerings to deceased loved ones placed at an altar during Día de Los Muertos — and now, Ixtli carries on the tradition with her own children.
Dayesla Ixtli has created sirens as part of her “Art in Motion” pop-ups. | PHOTO COURTESY OF DAYESLA IXTLI
Those formative years in Mexico were what inspired her to pick the name Ixtli — the word for “face” in the indigenous Nahuatl language— when she began her artistic practice six years ago.
At the time, she was reeling from the stressful birth of her youngest daughter, which had involved a C-section. Postpartum depression quickly followed.
Ixtli found a remedy in makeup. She would spend hours in her room watching video tutorials to turn herself into her favorite Tim Burton characters.
“I could accomplish something other than having a baby and just being there, stuck,” she said. “I started going out. I started doing exercise. And then, boom, COVID hit.”
“Mictecacíhuatl: Lady of the Dead” by Dayesla Ixtli was made in response to femicides in Mexico. | PHOTO BY MANUEL FLORES (DREAM ART STUDIO), COURTESY OF DAYESLA IXTLI
The silver lining of the lockdown was that it gave Ixtli time to refine her artistic practice.
“In that moment, I was like, ‘This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me.’ But now, obviously, I look at it, and I’m like, ‘No, that’s actually the best thing that happened to me,’” she said. “I love makeup, and I love everything art, but I never actually gave myself the time … to fully experience creating something.”
Ixtli began using body paint and making headdresses to transform herself into characters of her own. Eventually, she started posting online, recruiting models, participating in art and fashion shows and hosting pop-up events where her characters would interact with the public.
Ixtli refers to her characters as diosas (goddesses) and guerreras (warriors) because she hopes to empower women through her artwork.
For example, Ixtli’s “Mictecacíhuatl: Lady of the Dead” is based on the Aztec goddess of death. She wears a headdress topped with a bejeweled skull and carries chains of purple crosses — a symbol used to protest femicides in Mexico.
Femicide, or the intentional killing of women because of their gender, has been a longstanding problem in the country, with 852 victims in 2024, according to UN Women.
“There are big protests, and nothing is changing,” Ixtli said. “You’re living in a country where you have to always watch your back, because you never know if somebody’s going to come and sexually assault you and then kill you. And it still goes unpunished. It’s a fear that every woman has to live (with) in Mexico.”
In creating her version of Mictecacíhuatl, Ixtil instructed the model to “carry sorrow” for lives taken before their time.
Dayesla Ixtli’s “Nymph” satirizes the social expectation that women be gentle and beautiful. | PHOTO COURTESY OF DAYESLA IXTLI
Though the piece was created with a specific message in mind, Ixtli said one viewer assumed the crosses were a nod to the forced religious conversion of Indigenous peoples by Spanish colonizers.
Ixtli’s messaging is subtle enough that it often flies under the radar.
For example, Ixtli placed a hummingbird — which has significance in many Indigenous cultures — on the torch of her version of Lady Liberty. She also intentionally chose a model with Dominican and Puerto Rican heritage.
“In America, there’s all colors, all shapes. Lady Liberty should also represent that,” she said.
The headdress for Dayesla Ixtli’s “Medusa.” | PHOTO BY JUSTIN HEYES (MOONLOOP PHOTOGRAPHY), COURTESY OF DELAWARE DIVISION OF THE ARTS
In this way, Ixtli reinterprets iconic women from folklore and mythology.
Her “Nymph,” painted in teal body paint and covered in flowers, satirizes the societal expectation that women be gentle and beautiful — seen, not heard.
Meanwhile, her “Medusa,” wearing a headdress of snakes, pulls from Greek myth to comment on the demonization of women for their sexuality.
For her “Lilith,” Ixtli turned the model into an actual demon, with hellfire red skin and pitch black wings. Ixtli based the character on Biblical Adam’s first wife from Jewish folklore, who was kicked out of the Garden of Eden for refusing to be subservient to her husband.
Ixtli chose bodybuilder Cris Gutierrez to bring Lilith to life.
“I want(ed) someone that is going to break the standards of beauty. She’s beautiful, but she’s strong. She’s so muscley,” Ixtli said. “She says some guys are intimidated by her. So, I said, ‘That’s what I need.’”
Ixtli is always grateful to her models for enduring the long hours of applying the makeup and wearing heavy costumes.
“I feel like they’re gonna be like, ‘You know what? I never want to do this again!’ They end up saying, ‘That was so much fun. Whenever you need, call me. I’ll model for you,’” she said. “The way that they transform, even the way they carry themselves, changes.”
Dayesla Ixtli stands in her studio with her Día de Los Muertos-inspired costume a few days before its appearance at her exhibition’s opening reception. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY CANNON TAYLOR
Ixtli, too, has been transformed by her work.
“I feel like I did save myself, but I became something else. I became a lot more daring. My fear is there, but it doesn’t take over. I question a lot of the things that I do, but I still do them. Before, it would just stop me,” she said.
Receiving a Delaware Division of the Arts fellowship this year bolstered Ixtli’s self-confidence even more. She opened her own studio in April, where you’ll find her whenever she isn’t roaming the aisles of the hardware store, trying to suss out how to bring her next goddess to life.
Ixtli’s motto is, “Art saves lives.”
“It might save the artist, and sometimes, it might save the spectator,” she said. “But it always saves somebody.”
Get Involved Ixtli will co-headline the “Living in the Present” Indigenous fashion show on Nov. 6, 6-9 p.m., at Delaware Art Museum (2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington, DE 19806). General admission is $40 for Delaware Art Museum members and $50 for non-members.
Why Should Delaware Care? Delaware’s foster children are among some of the most vulnerable in the state. A new report from the state auditor said a lack of services has led some children within the Department of Services for Children, Youth and their Families (DSCYF) to sleep in government offices.
Delaware’s Auditor of Accounts Lydia York released a report last week that says some children in the state’s foster system have had to sleep in bureaucratic offices due to a shortage of in-state foster placements.
In her report, she said the use of offices for overnight stays combined with the cost of sending Delaware children in the foster system out of state for care has cost the state close to $13 million since the 2023 fiscal year.
York’s report stems from allegations her department received about the situation in late 2024.
The use of out-of-state services alone has cost the state more than $8 million since 2023, according to the report. Still, York’s office also did an analysis of other states around the country with available data on their placements, and found Delaware’s struggles are not “uncommon nor unique.”
“Make no mistake – this is a nationwide issue, and not one that any state has resolved entirely,” York wrote. “However, I believe that this is an opportunity for Delaware to lead.”
In her office’s report, she recommended the Department of Services for Children, Youth and their Families (DSCYF) strengthen its oversight of costly out-of-state placements, document and monitor the amount of times children sleep in offices, as well as utilize already existing space for short-term stays.
York pointed to a statewide shortage of options for children, as well as a dearth of foster families able to take children in as part of why some children end up sleeping in the offices. The report also called on DSCYF and state legislators to “to build a holistic system” that supports the small, but vulnerable population.
The report said out-of-state placements would not stop entirely, as services in Delaware may not always be able to accommodate every child’s needs.
Sarah Azevedo, the director of the Division of Family Services for DSCYF, said work is already being done to improve placements for children and offer safer temporary housing. She added children would sleep in the agency’s offices “under very limited circumstances.”
Azevedo also said solutions take “a lot of time to mobilize,” and the agency has been working for years to address the in-state shortfalls. She also requested community support in looking for solutions to improve services in the state, and said the agency was looking to rethink how it offers foster care to entice more families.
Azevedo said the cost is important to the department and its goal is to keep kids in state, but if it’s in a child’s best interest to go out of state, the department will send them.
“At the end of the day, the kids need what they need, and so we’re not going to make a decision based purely on financial reasons,” she said.
Along with the $8 million spent on out-of-state placements, staffing the overtime shifts needed to to watch children who slept in state offices has cost the state $4.5 million since 2023, the report said.
The report also points to multiple concerns within the government buildings, which were not designed to house children for overnight stays and lack security staff and metal detectors.
The offices also lack showers and access to nutritional meals, meaning children will often have to leave, something the report said poses a safety risk.
Additionally, the report warns of safety concerns not only for the children, but staff members as well, who told York’s office they feared for their safety at times.
“[Division of Family Services] staff interviewed by AOA expressed significant concerns regarding their personal safety,” the report said. “These staff noted past altercations between employees and youths staying in-office resulting in police contact and medical care needed for DFS staff.”
In a response letter to York’s office, DSCYF said it had relocated some children across the state to repurposed residential facilities.
Leaders at DSCYF also pointed to a recent $6 million appropriation the agency had received to renovate a space at the Stockley Center in Georgetown for children who may not meet the clinical requirements to be put into specific residential treatment facilities.
Azevedo said in an interview on Friday this new facility would help to better serve those children who fall under that gray zone, and would build up the state’s ability to prevent some out-of-state placements.
According to the report, though, that renovated space is not scheduled to be complete until July 2027 and would offer 12 beds.
Azevedo also said the state has put out bids for private vendors to operate more youth facilities in Delaware, however, the agency struggles to attract vendors. Part of the reason, she said, is it is difficult for those providers to find insurance for their programs.
Still, she said the state will continue its pursuit of bringing services to Delaware.
“We haven’t given up the fight and the effort to try to bring some service providers into Delaware who can provide these services to our kids,” Azevedo said.
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 you will find information about the most important or interesting public meetings happening in Delaware this week.
Hospital cost review board to discuss charity care
State opioid commission to review grants for approval
Wilmington to host an early season budget town hall
Sussex County to consider a slate of new solar fields
Harrington to discuss a data center ban
Will hospitals become more charitable?
Delaware’s controversial hospital oversight board will meet Tuesday morning to discuss a new law that goes into effect early next year, compelling hospitals to widen the net of patients eligible for free or discounted care.
The Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board is set to discuss regulations that will guide how hospitals will be held accountable for the new codified standards in the years to come. The law requires hospitals to expand eligibility for free and discounted care, usually called charity care.
In order to qualify for their tax-exempt nonprofit status, hospitals must offer a “community benefit,” according to the IRS. Historically, that benefit has been charity care.
Earlier this month, financial leaders from Delaware’s hospital systems flooded a small government meeting room to voice concerns with the drafted regulations.
The regulations are also being crafted with input from the state’s hospital lobbying group, the Delaware Healthcare Association, which expressed support for the legislation but asked state leaders to target other healthcare sectors that also earn money from patients, such as insurers and pharmaceutical companies.
📍 The Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board is set to meet at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at the Herman M. Holloway Sr. Campus – DHSS Chapel, located at 1901 N. Dupont Highway in New Castle. More information, including about virtual attendance, can be found here.
State to approve new opioid dollars
The Delaware commission charged with appropriating dollars secured from state settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors will meet Monday to review grant applications submitted by local governments and nonprofits.
The meeting comes a year after lawmakers reformed how the commission grants dollars to organizations. Those reforms followed reports of mismanagement and potential fraud within the program that emerged the previous year.
The Delaware Opioid Settlement Commission is expected to receive $250 million from opioid settlements through 2038.
Spotlight Delaware previously reported that Delaware has the only state government that directly distributes money from opioid settlements to various organizations, rather than leaving it up to counties, cities, and towns.
📍 The Delaware Opioid Settlement Commission will meet Monday from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Springer Building, located at 203 Mitchell Lane, in New Castle. For information about virtual attendance and other meeting details, click here.
Wilmington to get a head start on its budget
The Wilmington City Council on Tuesday will host its first budget town hall as part of an early start to next year’s budget negotiations.
Last week, the council announced plans to hold four town halls covering the city’s eight districts, giving residents an opportunity to learn about the budget process, discuss financial priorities or concerns and raise questions.
The town halls come after a budget season earlier this year that was marked by debate between the mayor and City Council over how to address housing needs in the city. The city did not hold similar public meetings early in the process last year.
📍 Wilmington’s first-of-four budget town halls is scheduled for Tuesday from 6 to 7 p.m. at the NOMA Library, located at 3905 N. Market St. in Wilmington. For more information, click here.
Solar fields in Sussex County
The Sussex County Council on Tuesday will consider plans for four solar fields – two in Seaford, one in Laurel and one in Delmar. Together they would cover almost 170 acres of farmland, equal to over 100 football fields.
They would also have the capacity to produce 11 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 9,000 homes.
Gov. Matt Meyer has encouraged solar development in Delaware as a way to produce more power in the energy-hungry state. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY OLIVIA MARBLE
The proposals come as Gov. Matt Meyer has encouraged solar development as a way to produce more power in the state.
Earlier this year, he fast-tracked permits for some solar projects. He also signed a bill that guarantees power bill discounts for those who sign up for community solar projects.
The county’s Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval for all the proposals.
📍 The Sussex County Council will meet Tuesday at 1 p.m. at the Sussex County Administrative Office Building, located at 2 The Circle in Georgetown. The public hearings for the solar projects will begin at 1:30 p.m. For additional details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.
Harrington considers data center ban
Harrington on Monday will do a first reading of an ordinance that would ban any data center projects within its borders.
The city council recently rejected a proposal to build a data center on the site of a former cold storage warehouse. Residents packed into the meeting room for the vote, overwhelmingly in opposition to the plan.
That opposition came despite the developer behind the proposal offering the city of about 4,000 people contributions totaling $1 million.
The council will hold its official hearing for the ordinance at a later date, but Monday’s meeting will be the first time the ordinance will be publicly discussed.
📍 Harrington City Council will meet Monday at 6 p.m. at the Harrington Public Library, located at 101 Little Mastens Corner Road. There does not appear to be a virtual option for attending the meeting. For additional information, click here.
Delaware port board intervening in lawsuit
The state board charged with overseeing the Port of Wilmington will meet Monday to discuss several items related to the politically resonant facility, including litigation challenging its expansion in Edgemoor.
On the agenda for the meeting is the reading onto the record of the board’s authorization “to intervene in litigation.”
The resolution pertains to a federal lawsuit filed by the Holt family — owners of competing port facilities in Philadelphia and New Jersey — that challenges the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to grant permits to Delaware for construction of a $669 million container terminal at Edgemoor.
Last month, the Holts lost a parallel lawsuit in Delaware court challenging state permits needed by the facility.
📍 The Diamond State Port Corporation board of directors is scheduled to meet Monday from 9 to 11 a.m. at the state’s Buena Vista building, located at 661 S. DuPont Highway, near New Castle. For details about virtual attendance, click here.
Why Should Delaware Care? The Department of Homeland Security has planned a surge of immigrant detentions, leaving some parents living in Delaware with the uncertainty of where their American-born children will be placed should they be deported. If they choose to leave them here, they could enter an already strained foster care system.
For Julienne, a Haitian mother living in Seaford, fears about being deported are not centered around her own future, but that of her 6-year-old son, Junior.
The mother of four has been living in Seaford since 2023, but anxiety about what would happen to her children if she gets deported has only grown stronger since her humanitarian parole program — which allowed her to legally live in the U.S. — ended last year.
“My main concern is the kids and what’s going to happen to them,” Julienne said in Haitian Creole. “I’m the mom, I have to take care of them.”
Junior is the only one of Julienne’s four children currently living in the U.S. He holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and Haiti, but Julienne said she does not want Junior to return to her home country.
The Caribbean island country, which has been wracked by gang violence, civil war and food scarcity for several years, is not a safe or prosperous place to raise a young child, she said. More than half of Haiti’s 12 million people are experiencing “acute food insecurity,” or the sudden lack of food that puts their lives at risk, according to the United Nations.
Julienne already worries about her other three older children who currently live on the island.
But should Julienne be deported, a fear that grows with the Trump administration’s renewed promises to increase immigration enforcement in states like Delaware, options for Junior’s care are slim. His father travels frequently for work, and Julienne’s family members in Seaford are already strapped with other caretaking responsibilities, she said.
She fears Junior would end up in the foster care system. And she is not alone.
Immigration lawyers and experts working in Delaware’s foster care system said uncertainty and fear is on the rise among Delaware’s undocumented immigrants over what will happen to their U.S.-born children should they be deported.
The answer, experts said, is complicated.
What happens to a child if their parent is deported?
When a parent gets deported, there are two main options for the child’s future care, said Emily Houde, supervising attorney for Community Legal Aid Society Inc.’s (CLASI) immigration unit.
If children are present when Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains a parent, Houde said, ICE agents are supposed to coordinate with state officials for the children to be placed with a proper caregiver, whether that be a nearby relative or into the foster care system.
But many parents do not have anyone else who can take care of their children, Houde said, opening the possibility of the state stepping in.
But ICE processes, however, are not foolproof.
If no children are present when ICE detains a parent, agents do not necessarily have the duty to ask the person being detained if they have kids, Houde said.
That means the Department of Services for Children, Youth & Their Families (DSCYF), the Delaware agency responsible for administering foster care services, may not know a child has been left behind if no one reports or alerts the agency, Houde said.
Even after children of deported parents are under DSCYF’s care, the reunification process can be a long and arduous one.
“It can be really complicated depending on the individual circumstances of these cases,” Houde said. “How long they’ve [been] separated, if they ever can get back [to the U.S.], or eventually, if the parent sends for them from abroad to join them.”
The situation is further complicated, one advocate said, by a lack of accurate data.
María Thereza Beauchamp Pagán, co-founder of advocacy organization Network Delaware, said she is concerned Delaware does not adequately track children affected by immigration-related family separation or foster care placement.
Federal data showed a 49% increase in immigration enforcement-related foster care entries in 2025, but that number is likely an undercount.
How are foster care providers preparing?
Sarah Azevedo, director of the Division of Family Services, the arm of DSCYF responsible for administering foster care services, said the agency does not ask legal status when providing services, nor does it report families to ICE.
DSCYF’s main mission, she said, is to be able to give children a stable home.
Any child who is currently in foster care is under the custody of the state of Delaware, Azevedo added, and is therefore not at risk of being deported themselves.
DSCYF’s current main concerns are overcoming a shortage of foster parents and difficulties in placing children with high needs in homes with adequate support.
ChaTanya Lankford, executive director of multi-state foster care service provider Pressley Ridge, echoed these challenges. She said her organization has seen an influx of referrals for children from families impacted by immigration laws and changes.
Fear of the legal and immigration systems may discourage people in small or shrinking communities from identifying themselves as kinship caregivers, Lankford said, particularly if they fear becoming vulnerable themselves.
In Delaware, Azevedo said it is DSCYF’s policy to look for caregivers that children may be familiar with before resorting to a foster home.
“It’s still a traumatic experience for a child to have to live with someone who is not their own family,” Azevedo said.
Delaware has approximately 400 children in foster or kinship care placements as of this year, Azevedo said, a lower number than in many other jurisdictions across the United States.
How can immigrant parents prepare?
Houde, the CLASI attorney, said Delaware does not have a standby guardianship process that specifically allows parents to designate a caregiver in anticipation of immigration detention.
Parents can instead establish a childcare power of attorney to authorize another adult to care for their children, she said.
Families can prepare a notarized document naming a trusted adult and providing information about the child, such as medications, allergies, school information and their Social Security number.
This type of document is temporary, Houde said, and it does not provide full legal authority. It may cover a short amount of time until the new caretaker goes to family court to file for legal guardianship of the child, which can offer the child a long-term solution.
Azevedo, from the Division of Family Services, similarly said she encourages families to create informal caretaking plans such as identifying specific relatives or friends to ensure children are not left alone if parents are detained.
With the concern of family separation remaining high, Houde said CLASI’s outreach focused on family preparedness for Hispanic and Haitian communities has increased.
In the meantime, Julienne’s future remains unclear. She said she tries not to let her fear for her son’s future overtake her daily life, but it has become a constant presence in her mind.
“At this point, you don’t know the future,” Julienne said. “Anything can happen, and it’s very, very hard.”
As global governments and tech giants reckon with widespread revelations of autonomous AI agents unexpectedly breaking into computer systems, documents obtained by The Intercept show the U.S. Army is looking to harness that exact technology to seek and destroy.
Army Cyber Command is developing a platform to turn AI agents into autonomous weapons that can navigate and “neutralize” the computer systems of adversaries, the documents show.
Since 2010, Army Cyber Command, or ARCYBER, has led the U.S. Army’s cyber operations. This includes the defensive effort of protecting domestic computer systems and the secretive offensive work of hacking military targets. So far, this has largely been the work of human soldiers operating computers, like those of the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade. But as the government races to adopt artificial intelligence technology, ARCYBER is looking to offload some of its attacks to AI.
The nascent program, codenamed “ECHOTRIBBLE,” is based on one of the leading trends of the AI boom: agents. AI agents are essentially software programs that leverage machine learning technology, often large language models like Anthropic’s Claude, to autonomously accomplish tasks provided by their user. Consumers can deploy AI agents to schedule meetings, generate itineraries, make online purchases, or book tickets. Through ECHOTRIBBLE, the Pentagon plans to turn AI agents into tools of war “designed to autonomously navigate infrastructures” and capable of “identifying and neutralizing identified threats/targets,” according to an ARCYBER document reviewed by The Intercept circulated to potential contractors.
The military’s adoption of cutting-edge technologies is unsurprising, especially considering Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s fervent embrace of AI. But amid constant revelations of rogue behavior by agents, the potential for serious mishaps is immense, experts warn.
“Given the known failure modes of the current AI paradigm, making autonomous AI systems with a mandate to ‘neutralize threats’ is incredibly dangerous,” David Krueger, a professor of machine learning at the University of Montreal who founded Evitable, an organization that advocates for a moratorium on AI development. “We’ve seen AI systems knowingly attack systems that were not intended targets. In simulations, AIs have even proven willing to kill to achieve their goals.”
A Q&A document answering questions from potential contractors offers more details about the initiative. It explains that ECHOTRIBBLE is “primarily focused” on offensive missions, and explains that “neutralizing” a target could include “disabling the threat completely or temporarily, deleting the threat from the target.” ECHOTRIBBLE would function almost like a computer worm, silently navigating a foreign network and hopping from device to device until it finds the Army’s quarry, hitting targets in the cloud as well as those on “air-gapped” systems that are disconnected from networks entirely.
Once its task is complete, ECHOTRIBBLE’s agents would effectively self-destruct, ideally without having been noticed by the target at all. The agents themselves will be designed for stealth, minimally reporting back to the Army and concealing whatever outside transmissions are necessary.
“We’ve seen AI systems knowingly attack systems that were not intended targets.”
Although documents say the Army will be able to program ECHOTRIBBLE agents with some initial “predefined triggers” — dictating what and where to attack — the software “must operate with minimal human oversight” and be capable of “Self-Directed Behavior.”
A PowerPoint presentation to interested vendors at a June 24 ARCYBER event provided a hypothetical example of this self-direction. Once ECHOTRIBBLE is uploaded to a laptop, the software on its own “identifies other potential targets” on the same network and then “produces a replica of itself tailored specifically for the iPad, Apple desktop, and Windows 11 PC.”
An image from an ARCYBER document shows how ECHOTRIBBLE could move through a network.Slide: ARCYBER
The Army’s move toward autonomous self-propagating comes after a flurry of revelations about agentic systems taking unintended disturbing actions while attempting to accomplish their goals, including breaking into computers of the Australian government, breaching the infrastructure of the AI firm Hugging Face, uploading malicious software into online platform RubyGems, and attempted to hack into the U.S. Education Department.
These attacks occurred during scenarios in which agents had been given no commands to attack anything. Experts say militarized versions given explicitly destructive objectives could cause a threat to the public, even with nominal rules set in place by the military. Just as the Army of old might consider the destruction of civilian infrastructure an acceptable means to an end, a self-directed AI agent dispatched by the Pentagon might make similar determinations about collateral damage.
Governmental intelligence agencies frequently route their offensive operations through civilian devices. Volt Typhoon, a Chinese state hacking group, has directed its attacks through homes and small businesses, and preemptively hacks American IT systems for later use. A hack of a Chinese university attributed to the National Security Agency made use of the school’s internet routers. What happens if ECHOTRIBBLE decides these kinds of stepping stones are part of the problem?
“The target may well be hit. But what path will it take?” asked Hyrum Anderson, co-founder and CEO of the AI security firm Abundant. “Will it go through a US water utility on its way, because that’s where the adversary has staged its command and control, and take that down too?”
Anderson, who previously worked in cybersecurity at Microsoft and for the U.S. government, said that a vast amount of the internet is vulnerable to agentic attacks.
“There’s a huge class of public and private organizations that fall below the security poverty line,” he said. “They include critical national infrastructure, small businesses, mom-and-pop shops, dentist offices and law firms, and whoever else doesn’t have a single cybersecurity professional on staff.” With their networks wide open to infiltration, Hyrum worries about “these organizations getting hit directly, or getting caught in the blast radius of a target that gets hit along the way.”
Given the impressive ability of AI agents to overcome obstacles placed in their path — even by their creators — it follows that the Pentagon would want to leverage that power for military purposes. But agentic software has proven unpredictable and prone to executing its commands in ways those ostensibly in control did not want, akin to a drone that get its target but hits a hospital on the way. It’s critical to remember that agents are a piece of software lacking human judgment.
“One of the reasons that we trust 19-year-old Marine corporals in Ramadi with live rounds and a weapon is because they have both the compute substrate — the brain and the eyes — but the deep world knowledge to understand, ‘Yeah, I probably shouldn’t do that,’” said William Marcellino, a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation whose research has focused on military AI applications. “That is not something that current public AI technology has.”
The risk presented by ECHOTRIBBLE will likely depend on the ability — and willingness — of the Army to impose guardrails upon it. ARCYBER did not respond to questions from The Intercept, including queries about the measures it would take to prevent ECHOTRIBBLE from causing inadvertent damage.
Placing constraints on the actions an agent can take might impede its ability to ultimately neutralize a target. But even with strict safeguards in place, genuinely restricting the behavior of an autonomous agent, as Anthropic and OpenAI have learned recently, is easier said than done. When presented with obstacles, AI agents have proven an ability to bypass them with unpredictable and potentially dangerous consequences.
“If I give powerful machines that have no judgment — and no context for judgment — a goal, unless you’ve done a really good job building scaffolding around them, there’s a real chance that they’ll go sideways on you and decide, ‘Well, I’ll do what you asked me to do, but I’ll do it this way,’” Marcellino said.
It only gets more dangerous when this technology is deployed for the purposes of war, Anderson said.
“Under pressure, they’ll often treat guardrails as obstacles,” said Anderson. “Once you add context that says break it, destroy it, shut it down, it stands to reason that the blast radius widens dramatically unless it’s properly controlled for.”
PACs targeted former West Virginia Delegate Vernon Criss following his proposal to rein in state spending on school vouchers. Will Price/West Virginia Legislature
On a cold February morning at West Virginia’s Capitol, children in winter jackets, holding signs and their homework, clogged the hallways outside the House Finance Committee room. Delegate Vernon Criss, the committee’s chairperson, popped outside his office, then promptly walked back in.
Five days earlier, the Republican lawmaker had proposed to limit payouts from a voucher program that diverts public tax dollars to private education. Since then, families had shown up each morning, and with them lobbyists and organizers posting inflammatory assertions that the proposal would kill the program.
Criss didn’t want that. Five years earlier, he voted to create the Hope Scholarship program, the nation’s first educational savings account program to have no income requirements. Since then, 11 other states have passed similar legislation.
In the first year of the Hope program in West Virginia, it cost the state $9 million. Now, as 2026 was beginning, it was set to expand, with estimates that it could cost $200 million or more a year. And Criss was concerned that unchecked growth of the program, coupled with a spree of tax cuts, could put the state budget into a tailspin. The state and its lawmakers needed “to face the music,” as Criss would later say.
On that February day in Charleston, a staffer unlocked the committee door. Parents and media filed in, taking seats along the narrow benches lining the committee room’s walls. Kids lay on the floor. A delegate asked if the Hope Scholarship bill would be discussed. When Criss said no, the parents and their kids stood up and filed out.
Within the next few days, lawmakers would stop the effort to curtail spending on vouchers. And Criss would soon be fighting for his political life.
Criss greets constituents supporting the Hope Scholarship.Perry Bennett/West Virginia Legislature
The money and organizing behind the demise of the bill, as well as the targeting of Criss, can be traced to “school choice” advocates at the local and national levels and their ability to spend huge sums to have their way.
When Republicans assumed control of the West Virginia Legislature in 2015, school choice — their preferred terminology for voucher-style programs — became a rallying point for an array of political nonprofits. Through lobbying and supporting sympathetic lawmakers, they helped establish the Hope Scholarship six years later.
In West Virginia, Arkansas and Texas, proponents have been eager to challenge anyone who got in the way, including fellow Republicans who voiced concerns. Basic guardrails or efforts to cap spending have been met with intense resistance.
During the 2026 West Virginia primary, three political action committees spent heavily on independent advertisements, targeting 10 incumbent Republicans. They succeeded in ousting four, all of whom had disagreements with the governor; most expressed reservations about the Hope Scholarship.
Their biggest victory was unseating Criss, the long-serving incumbent and high-ranking Republican.
One of the three PACs working to defeat Criss is affiliated with the Koch family. Yass has contributed to the two others: School Freedom Fund and the Sugar Maple PAC. David McIntosh, president of School Freedom Fund and the affiliated Club for Growth, was jubilant afterward.
“These elections are a warning to Republican leaders like Vernon Criss — if you oppose school freedom, expect to be held accountable,” he wrote in a press announcement at the time.
Have you had trouble finding a school or using a voucher-style program? Do you have concerns about schools — public or private — in your area? Help us understand how families across the country are navigating their school options.
Criss had been unopposed in his 2024 primary. In 2026, the three PACs spent more than $145,000 to help a 23-year-old defeat him.
Criss’ proposal to put financial limits on the Hope Scholarship program came as West Virginia public schools arrived at a dangerous crossroads. The program directs dollars away from public schools, adding to funding shortfalls created by enrollment drops.
Since 2019, 70 public schools have closed throughout the state, with the system losing more than 30,000 students. By the end of this school year, up to 20 more schools could close.
During the same legislative session this year, when lawmakers passed emergency legislation to help one school district stay open, there was little drama — no crowds in the hallways or the galleries.
The Rise of Hope
In 2021, as West Virginia lawmakers worked on the bill that would create the Hope Scholarship, they got some help from the outside: a lobbyist and political operative named Jason Huffman.
Huffman has been the director of Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia since the mid-2010s. The group is part of the larger Americans for Prosperity, which was set up by the billionaire industrialist David Koch and supported by his brother Charles, longtime donors to conservative causes. Americans for Prosperity advocates for low taxes, school choice and loosened environmental regulations throughout the country.
In shaping the West Virginia legislation, Huffman said, one goal was to create a school voucher program that other states could model. While other states had already passed voucher-style programs, they hadn’t made them open to all residents regardless of income.
Jason Huffman is the director of Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia.Courtesy of Jason Huffman
Among those advocating in West Virginia were members of Cardinal Institute, a homegrown conservative think tank. Founded in 2015, the group made public funding for private schooling one of its first policy planks. Over the last decade, Cardinal has received significant donations from organizations that also have received funding from Koch entities and Yass.
To support the Hope legislation, Cardinal’s leaders distributed research, published columns in newspapers and linked up with other groups, like Americans for Prosperity and the Institute for Justice, which litigates libertarian causes, to push the issue. They also found allies in parents who wanted the financial flexibility to send their children to private schools or teach them at home or in small clusters of like-minded families.
Katie Switzer, a mother of six, became one of Cardinal’s most reliable advocates. She had started looking into schooling options after her second child was diagnosed with a learning disability.
“I just felt like this doesn’t feel good to send my nonverbal child to a school that you know isn’t really collaborative, and I don’t know what’s going on when she’s there because she can’t tell me when she gets home,” she said. The experience made her a proponent of alternatives to public school.
Her story appeared in some of Cardinal’s promotional copy for the bill. She sat in on a video call presentation featuring state Sen. Patrcia Rucker, a Hope Scholarship proponent. She took to Facebook to tout the program.
And she stepped up when the Hope Scholarship was challenged in court by other parents who argued the program would undermine funding for public schools.
Hope’s opponents in the case gained support from the state Board of Education, which argued the program siphoned money away from public schools. On the other side was the West Virginia attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, defending the law and the state.
The Institute for Justice was looking to get involved, but it needed to find somebody with standing in the case. Switzer and another parent signed up, giving the firm the ability to file motions and argue in court. The Institute for Justice has received $8.5 million from charities controlled by Yass over nearly a decade.
The case went to the West Virginia Supreme Court, where the justices ruled 4-1 in favor of the program.
The ruling meant the Hope program had survived. It was good timing for Morrisey. He was about to make a run for governor. When Morrisey waded into a tough four-way primary battle, the Club for Growth Action, a super PAC Yass has donated heavily to over the years, was ready to help.
“Our goal in all of this is to elect people who will be champions for school freedom, lower taxes, less regulation, so businesses can thrive,” McIntosh, the group’s president, said in an interview.
The Club for Growth Action pumped $10.8 million into that race. Morrisey won the plurality in the Republican primary and went on to trounce his Democratic opponent in the general election.
On a cold morning in January 2025, Morrisey stood bundled up in a black wool coat on the stairs of Capitol, its gold dome towering above him. He took the oath of office and gave his address.
“We will expand the Hope Scholarship, putting more control in the hands of parents to choose the best educational path for their children,” he said.
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey at his inauguration ceremony in January 2025. Club for Growth, which supports voucher-style programs, spent $10.8 million through a super PAC to support Morrisey during the tough Republican primary.Perry Bennett/West Virginia Legislature
Runaway Train
Hours before Morrisey gave his State of the State address earlier this year, the House Education Committee called a meeting to hear about a report from the Rand Corporation, a nonpartisan think tank.
Rand called on the state to fix what was becoming abundantly clear: Education in West Virginia wasn’t just in transition; it was in crisis.
Initially the Hope Scholarship was limited to students attending public school or children who would enter kindergarten. Participation grew over time. And as the 2026-27 school year began, the program opened to any student in West Virginia, including those who had spent their entire academic careers in private school or in homeschooling.
That translated into tens of millions of additional state dollars to private schools and homeschooling. Estimates for the 2026-27 school year ranged from $230 million to more than $300 million in the months leading up to the legislative session. The program costs for the year are still being tallied but are currently projected at an unprecedented $150 million.
The Rand report suggested placing an income cap on the Hope Scholarship and increasing funding for public schools.
While the Education Committee would work on public school funding, Criss’ Finance Committee would tackle the ballooning costs of the Hope Scholarship. He was not interested in Rand’s solutions but found his own. By capping the scholarship amount and limiting certain expenses, Criss was hoping he could help prolong the program for families well into the future. But families would soon be rallying against him.
In the time since the Hope Scholarship had withstood the court challenge, Switzer’s reach had only grown. On Facebook, she administered a group that offers practical advice to hundreds of parents, or “Hope Schoolers” as she called them, on questions like what items counted as qualifying expenses and how to properly file for the program.
Before Criss’ plan rolled out, Switzer said she received word from a member of the Finance Committee — though she did not disclose who — that the Hope Scholarship would be discussed.
Writing a lengthy Facebook post, she warned that the move would severely damage the program. “The bill takes away 19,000 children’s access to online education, tutoring, private schools across state borders, and many other beneficial academic programs,” she wrote.
Huffman, the Americans for Prosperity state director, took to radio and social media to decry what he described as an existential threat to the program. Parents with kids in tow echoed those fears.
Criss’ proposal would’ve capped the award amount for the Hope Scholarship at a little more than $5,000 a year. He said his intent was to prolong the program for the long run, not kill it.
Huffman countered that by capping the award amount, inflation would eventually erode families’ abilities to use the program for private education or homeschooling.
Looking back, Criss said he anticipated some pushback, because the Hope Scholarship is a “giveaway program.” He blamed political forces for riling people up.
At a caucus meeting with the Republican supermajority — which holds 91 of the 100 seats in the lower chamber — Criss said he couldn’t muster the votes. A bill to fix public schools that came out of the Education Committee died entirely.
Election season was right around the corner, and Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia and other groups hadn’t forgotten the Hope Scholarship battle. Criss had failed what Huffman called “a litmus test” in trying to restrict public money for parents looking for an alternative to public school.
Meanwhile, McIntosh, the president for Club for Growth, said he received word from his allies in the Morrisey administration. Morrisey was concerned about lawmakers who had opposed him on budget issues and school choice. The governor was looking to replace those he saw as not aligned.
While the legislative backlash had been about one issue, the campaign against Morrisey’s foes went well beyond education issues.
Ads depicted Criss as a liberal who wanted to open borders for illegal immigration. That was based on a no vote Criss had cast against a piece of legislation that would’ve mandated employers run a citizenship check on every employee.
Fliers mailed by the School Freedom Fund, a PAC affiliated with Club for Growth, depicted candidates as supporters of drag queens. Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia sent volunteers door to door to rally for their candidates, including in Criss’ district.
The newly created Sugar Maple PAC — headed by a former state delegate and Morrisey ally — ran ads accusing opponents of being Republicans in Name Only.
One mailer, depicting Criss driving a garbage truck, accused him of taking “West Virginia’s values to the dump.” On the back, it reiterated his vote against the citizenship check for employees and his vote against West Virginia’s abortion ban.
“Vernon Criss’ liberal trash,” the flier read, with an image of black trash bags.
Some of the mailers attacking Criss. PACs targeted him following his efforts to rein in spending on the Hope Scholarship.Obtained by Mountain State Spotlight
“I think that the fact that they called me a liberal, it just stuck out,” Criss said. “You know, as the chairman of finance, I know that it’s a targeted job, obviously, that’s part of the deal. Those types of things happen, that’s just part of the politics involved here.”
The School Freedom Fund poured nearly $1 million into statehouse races across West Virginia to both retain Morrissey’s supporters and oust detractors, like Criss. Americans for Prosperity did the same, again targeting Criss, and spending around $700,000 across the state.
A spokesperson for Morrisey said in an email that the governor is a supporter of both public schools and the Hope Scholarship and “is also grateful that organizations that share his worldview of helping West Virginia children having the best educational opportunities in the country weigh in.”
Sugar Maple PAC and Yass did not respond to requests for comment. Yass contributed $450,000 to Sugar Maple in the lead-up to the 2026 primary. Among the three PACs, Sugar Maple spent the most on the Criss race: $86,000 to attack Criss and $15,000 to back his opponent, Charles Hartzog, a 23-year-old gas station cashier.
Criss didn’t just lose the primary; Hartzog beat him with 61% of the vote. Criss is now running a long-shot campaign as a write-in for his district in the general election.
Two-thirds of population face crisis levels of food insecurity and 200,000 people are in danger of famine
This winter is likely to deepen hunger for Palestinians in Gaza, after sweeping aid cuts forced the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to end support for more than half a million people each month, the agency’s director for Palestine said.
More than a year after a Trump-brokered ceasefire came into force, promised reconstruction has not begun, there are few jobs and the vast majority in Gaza still rely on aid to eat.
Shawn Oliver, a New Bedford City Councilor and Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, suspended his campaign after he was arrested early Sunday morning.
Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica. Source images: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images, skaman306/Getty Images, Mike Klein/Getty Images.
Early in his tenure as Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton issued a statement commemorating what he believed was a national tragedy.
“It’s impossible to fill the void of more than 50 million missing human beings,” he said in 2016. He was marking the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that protected abortion rights — and had long stood in the way of efforts to ban terminations in early pregnancy, when most abortions occur.
Paxton spent the years that followed testing Roe’s limits and ultimately prevailed where others had failed: In 2021, he defended a near-total abortion ban that Texas legislators had designed to evade conventional legal challenges. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to take effect while Roe remained in force.
After the justices overturned Roe the following year, Paxton kept pushing, pursuing new ways to extend the reach of Texas’ restrictions. He prevailed against the Biden administration, picked fights with states that protect abortion access and pioneered strategies that his peers later adopted or expanded.
While Paxton’s tenure as attorney general has drawn criticism from across the political spectrum for his personal scandals and alleged misuse of the office, detractors and allies alike agree that his signal achievement as the state’s top legal official has been advancing restrictions on abortion.
A close look at his record shows a clear pattern in his successes: He relentlessly tests the limits of the law and employs novel legal strategies to advance his goals.
Paxton’s national role as an anti-abortion warrior would change if he wins his U.S. Senate race. As Texas attorney general, he has been able to act largely on his own authority. If he prevails in November, he would become one of 100 senators in a chamber where most legislation needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
But allies who have witnessed his victories see an opening.
“He’ll have the ability to use some of the laws that he’s defended in Texas as influence to draft legislation in the U.S. Senate,” said Mary Elizabeth Castle, director of government relations at Texas Values, a Christian advocacy group that supports a national abortion ban.
Legal experts and advocates on both sides expect he could join colleagues who are pressuring the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval of the abortion drug mifepristone.
Anti-abortion activists at the state and federal level are also trying to secure legal rights for fetuses, which could have implications for reproductive care like birth control and in vitro fertilization. Paxton, who has called himself a strong supporter of IVF, recently said he was open to restrictions intended to prevent the loss of fertilized eggs.
His litigation has also raised questions that experts expect the Supreme Court to confront, including whether a federal law, which mandates hospitals provide stabilizing care to patients having an emergency, overrides state abortion bans; whether to treat a fetus as a separate patient that has its own emergency care rights; and how far states can go in pursuing out-of-state doctors who prescribe abortion medication to patients in states where it’s banned.
During the current race, abortion has played a far smaller role than questions about Paxton’s ethics. His Democratic opponent, James Talarico, has said that he supports restoring a federal right to abortion and that his Christian faith calls for an end to “extreme” laws that Paxton has defended and that have forced women to flee the state for emergency abortion care.
But those who have watched Paxton extend the reach of Texas law beyond its borders are paying close attention to his Senate bid.
Dr. Jennifer Villavicencio, an abortion provider, said she has felt compelled to move her family twice to states with strong laws shielding doctors from out-of-state litigation, partly out of concern that Paxton is creating a blueprint for targeting providers like her.
“It’s very disheartening and scary to think that it’s maybe coming to the U.S. Senate,” she said.
Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica. Source images: Drew Angerer/Getty Images, Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images.
Paxton successfully defended a near-total abortion ban before Roe v. Wade was struck down.
When Paxton became Texas attorney general in 2015, there was no ambiguity about where he stood on abortion.
Raised by an anti-abortion activist, he married his sweetheart from a Christian college, who spoke proudly about the fact that she was adopted, saying her birth mother “chose life.” She campaigned for Paxton, but he had his own bona fides. A law he’d co-sponsored as a state senator banned almost all abortions after 20 weeks.
Similar 20-week bans had taken root across the country as decades of court rulings chipped away at Roe, but no state had managed to enforce a ban as early as six weeks. More than a dozen tried, passing laws that prohibited abortion when cardiac activity could be detected. One after another, they were blocked by judges.
Then, in 2021, a Texas lawyer named Jonathan Mitchell worked with legislators to craft a law that would withstand similar challenges. Instead of having state officials enforce their “heartbeat law,” the new act, referred to as Senate Bill 8, allowed citizens to sue physicians they suspected were providing abortions. The law offered up to $10,000 if they won.
When abortion providers and President Joe Biden’s administration separately challenged the law in federal court, Paxton’s office argued that state officials couldn’t be ordered to stop enforcing it because they had no power to do so in the first place. Only private citizens could.
“Because the executive officials are expressly prohibited from enforcing SB 8,” his office wrote to the Supreme Court, “there is nothing for a federal court to enjoin.”
The Supreme Court agreed that Paxton couldn’t be sued because “the petitioners have not identified any enforcement authority the attorney general possesses in connection with S. B. 8 that a federal court might enjoin him from exercising.”
The law remained in effect, becoming the first enforceable six-week ban under Roe.
Legislators in Idaho and Oklahoma subsequently passed similar laws.
For Dr. Sam Dickman, who worked at a San Antonio Planned Parenthood, the implications were clear: “I was going to need to either entirely change the type of medicine I was providing or leave the state,” he said. He opted for the latter, moving to Montana, where abortion is legal until viability, or roughly 24 weeks.
Days after the Texas ban took effect, Josseli Barnica arrived at a Houston hospital in the midst of a miscarriage. She was 17 weeks pregnant and her fetus’s head was pressed up against her dilated cervix. Because the situation put her at high risk of developing an infection, medical experts said doctors should have offered to speed up delivery or empty her uterus; the fetus was not viable, and losing the pregnancy was inevitable.
But the fetus’s heart was still beating.
Barnica relayed to her husband what she said her medical providers had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”
For 40 hours, Barnica waited, her uterus exposed to bacteria.
She died days later of sepsis. Medical experts told ProPublica her doctors did not follow the proper standard of care and that Barnica’s death was preventable.
In a statement, HCA Healthcare, the hospital chain that treated her, said “our responsibility is to be in compliance with applicable state and federal laws and regulations” and said that physicians exercise their independent judgment.
Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica. Source images: Drew Angerer/Getty Images, Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images.
Paxton blocked federal guidance for emergency abortion care, with consequences far beyond Texas.
When the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion on June 24, 2022, Paxton dismissed his staff at noon to celebrate. He would later designate the date as a paid office holiday, Sanctity of Life Day.
The Texas Legislature had prepared for the occasion, passing a law that went into effect shortly after the overturning of Roe. The ban threatened doctors with up to 99 years in prison if they performed an abortion. But soon came what Paxton framed as a federal attempt to thwart the state law.
The Biden administration issued a memo to doctors in states with abortion bans saying that a federal emergency care law protected their medical judgment, “regardless of the restrictions in the state.”
The federal Health and Human Services secretary at the time said doctors had an obligation to follow the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, better known as EMTALA. The law requires hospitals that accept federal funding to screen and stabilize every patient who arrives.
For those with complications such as severe preeclampsia, a potentially fatal, pregnancy-related blood pressure disorder, stabilizing a patient might require performing an abortion, even if the state forbids it, the guidance said. “The physician must provide that treatment,” it said, bolding the word “must.”
Paxton sued, accusing the administration of an attempt to use federal law “to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.”
He argued EMTALA was created to make sure hospitals didn’t dump uninsured patients back on the street without treatment, not to override state laws. He took the argument a step further, suggesting that under EMTALA, doctors might need to consider “the life of the unborn child.”
The argument was novel, six legal experts told ProPublica.
“He’s basically suing the federal government to protect Texas’ right to force pregnant women to not get abortions, even when their health is threatened,” said Greer Donley, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that’s radical.’”
Medical groups warned patients would die.
But a federal judge sided with Paxton that August, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision in January 2024.
The ruling did more than keep the administration from enforcing its EMTALA interpretation in Texas.
It barred the federal government from pursuing cases against members of two anti-abortion medical organizations that had joined Paxton’s suit as plaintiffs, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Christian Medical & Dental Associations. This effectively exempted them from having to follow the federal guidance, regardless of where they worked.
It also served as immediate litigation fodder for another state fighting to enforce its own abortion ban.
Idaho had not had the same success in court as Texas. After the Biden administration sued, arguing the state’s ban conflicted with EMTALA, Idaho lost in lower and appellate courts, leaving its ban effectively frozen in emergency cases, with doctors instructed to follow the federal guidance.
But Paxton’s 5th Circuit win on Jan. 2, 2024, gave Idaho’s ban a lifeline. The ruling conflicted with the 9th Circuit’s decision in Idaho, creating the kind of disagreement between federal appeals courts that the Supreme Court often steps in to resolve.
The following day, attorneys representing Idaho asked the high court to do just that, saying Paxton’s success showed they were “likely to prevail.” In the meantime, they asked the court to unfreeze the ban.
On Jan. 5, the Supreme Court allowed Idaho to fully enforce its ban while the case proceeded.
Emergency doctors began hesitating over when they could legally provide abortions, Dr. Jim Souza, chief physician at St. Luke’s Health System, said on a press call at the time, according to NPR. “Is she septic enough for me to do this abortion and not risk going to jail and losing my license?”
In the three months that followed, St. Luke’s, the state’s largest hospital system, said it had to airlift six patients out of the state for abortions.
In Texas, ProPublica has documented the consequences for women experiencing pregnancy emergencies.
When Tierra Walker sought care later that year in San Antonio, she developed preeclampsia and ultimately died from it, ProPublica previously reported. None of the 90 physicians involved in her care offered her the option of terminating her pregnancy, even after she asked if doing so might keep her safe.
Her family sued Paxton in September, along with state medical officials and several healthcare providers, alleging that Texas’ abortion restrictions and the care Walker received led to her death. Paxton has not responded to the suit and did not respond to a request seeking comment.
ProPublica has identified at least two other pregnant Texas women who died without what experts said was appropriate emergency care. Paxton has not publicly commented on any of their deaths and did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about them. Our analysis also found worsening outcomes across the state for patients experiencing pregnancy complications.
The reach of Paxton’s legal victory may not end there.
The Supreme Court still hasn’t resolved the conflict between the circuit rulings. It declined to do so in the Idaho case, and after President Donald Trump took office, his administration dropped the suit and rescinded the EMTALA guidance.
But legal experts told ProPublica the Supreme Court has yet to resolve core questions that Paxton’s litigation raised: whether EMTALA preempts state abortion laws and whether a fetus also has a right to emergency treatment that could conflict with the mother’s interests in cases where her health is at risk.
To guard against future rulings, a reproductive rights advocacy group called All* Above All is pushing state-level legislation to safeguard emergency care. “We’re seeing the chaos right now and the confusion,” said its president, Nourbese Flint.
Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica. Source image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
Paxton tested expansive new ways to pursue abortion providers. Other states are following his lead.
On Dec. 7, 2023, a state judge in Austin issued a ruling that Paxton immediately moved to stop.
A 31-year-old mother named Kate Cox wanted permission to get an abortion. She was 20 weeks pregnant and carrying a fetus diagnosed with trisomy 18, a genetic condition that kills the vast majority of babies born with it.
Texas doesn’t allow abortions for fatal fetal anomalies, but Cox’s doctor argued that if she was forced to give birth, it could imperil her ability to get pregnant again. It was also medically risky: Cox had already had two children by cesarean section, and the chances of complications increase with each procedure.
The day a Travis County district court judge granted her request, Paxton took a step legal experts told ProPublica they had not seen another state attorney general take:
He sent letters to three hospitals where Cox’s doctor had admitting privileges, threatening legal action if the doctor performed the abortion a judge said she could have. The court order, he wrote, did not insulate hospitals, doctors or anyone else from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws.
At the same time, he appealed the case to the Texas Supreme Court, saying that Cox did not face the kind of threat to her life that fell under the law’s exception. If legislators had wanted to write an exception for fatal fetal anomalies, he said, they would have done so.
“The Texas Legislature did not intend for courts to become revolving doors of permission slips to obtain abortions,” he said.
The Texas Supreme Court agreed with Paxton and reversed the lower court’s ruling. By that time, Cox had sought an abortion out of state.
“It was incredibly scary,” Cox told ProPublica. “We saw in my case that Texas will go after doctors.”
Paxton was also the first — and, so far, the only — attorney general to criminally prosecute a provider in his state for violating an abortion ban.
According to court documents, investigators got an anonymous tip alleging that abortions were being performed at a medical clinic that catered to low-income, Spanish-speaking patients, managed by Maria Rojas, a licensed midwife.
Rojas was arrested and charged with practicing medicine without a license and violating the state’s abortion ban. Paxton also moved to temporarily shut down the clinic and others she ran while the case progressed through court. Months after her arrest, Paxton announced he had arrested and indicted eight other clinic staffers for practicing medicine without a license.
Rojas has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Her attorneys have accused Paxton’s office of a shoddy investigation and argued that at least one case prosecutors were treating as an abortion was actually the management of a patient’s miscarriage.
A trial has not yet been scheduled, but an appeals court this summer overturned the order shuttering the clinics, finding the state had not presented sufficient admissible evidence to justify a temporary injunction. Paxton said he is appealing the ruling. The court did not rule on whether Rojas had actually performed illegal abortions.
Paxton has not stopped at the state border in his pursuit of doctors.
In December 2024, he sued Dr. Margaret Carpenter, a New York-based physician, accusing her of violating multiple Texas laws when she treated a patient via telehealth who lived in Plano, a suburb north of Dallas, and prescribed her abortion medication.
Because the patient was based in Texas, he argued, Carpenter was subject to laws there that banned abortion and required a license to practice in the state.
Carpenter didn’t respond to the suit, so Paxton won by default. But Texas was unable to collect on more than $100,000 in civil fines and court fees that resulted; a New York county clerk refused to register the judgment, invoking a “shield law” that protects providers of abortion care that is legal in New York from certain out-of-state investigations, prosecutions and judgments. At least 22 states have passed shield laws since Roe was overturned, and New York’s is among the strongest. Carpenter did not respond to a request seeking comment and has not publicly responded to the case.
A New York judge dismissed Paxton’s case seeking to enforce the judgment, but Paxton didn’t give up, filing two more civil suits this year against practitioners and organizations in Delaware and California that mail abortion medication to Texas.
Three other state attorneys general have now expanded on the strategy. Last month, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill — who brought criminal charges against Carpenter after Paxton sued her (and has faced similar obstacles in New York) — joined the attorneys general of Arkansas and Alabama in filing a sweeping federal civil suit against out-of-state providers of abortion pills. The case names some of the same providers Paxton pursued; they have challenged the suits. The three attorneys general filed a separate action directly with the Supreme Court asking it to strike down shield laws in New York, Massachusetts and California.
Paxton has moved beyond doctors to target other entities that help patients obtain abortions. Mary Ziegler, an abortion historian and professor of law at University of California, Davis, called him “an innovator in terms of broadening the network of people who were seen as culprits or aiders or abettors.”
He sent cease-and-desist letters to organizations that ship abortion medication into Texas; the attorney general of Alabama subsequently used similar tactics. And Paxton sued cities in his state to stop them from disbursing funds to help women travel for abortions — a move the Legislature followed with a law banning such funding.
Following his legal victory against the city of San Antonio early this year, in which it was forced to end the $100,000 program, Paxton made a vow:
“I will always do everything in my power to prevent radicals from manipulating the system to murder innocent babies.”
Third-quarter GDP up by 4.5% compared with last year as industrial output is buoyed by electronics demand
Roaring exports lifted China’s economic growth in the third quarter of this year, with factory output growing much faster than consumer spending.
China’s GDP grew by 4.5% year-on-year between July and September, the National Bureau of Statistics of China reported on Monday. The figures were better than economists had expected and up from the second quarter’s growth rate of 4.3%.
Hamptons says figure of 56% is highest in at least a decade, with mortgage rates rising since start of Iran war
A majority of first-time UK buyers now pay more towards their monthly mortgage bills than they used to pay in rent, the estate agent Hamptons has found.
Last month 56% of first-time buyers said their monthly mortgage bills exceeded their previous rent, the highest proportion in at least a decade, according to Hamptons. They paid £39 more on average.
Deputy mayor of Saijo died after becoming trapped under float, days after two similar incidents elsewhere
There is mounting concern over the safety of Japan’s traditional festivals after the death of a senior local official who was reportedly crushed beneath a float at the weekend, days after two men died in similar incidents in another part of the country.
Akihiro Nabae, the deputy mayor of Saijo, in western Japan, was carrying a giant float with other participants in a festival on Saturday when he became trapped beneath the structure, Agence France-Presse reported. Nabae, 62, was taken to hospital and later pronounced dead, local media said, adding that no one else was injured.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump defended his decision to waive newly approved sanctions and tariffs on Russia, arguing the move is intended to keep Moscow engaged in negotiations aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump said imposing the measures immediately could drive Russia away from talks. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration wants up to 60 days to evaluate the economic effects of the sanctions before deciding whether to restore them.
The decision has drawn unusually sharp criticism from Republicans. Sen. Thom Tillis called the waiver “beyond irresponsible,” while Rep. Michael McCaul urged Trump to reverse course and return to stronger economic pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The sanctions were included in legislation Trump signed in September and were designed to punish Russia and countries that continue purchasing Russian energy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also criticized the waiver, warning that easing economic pressure provides Moscow additional resources while Russian forces continue attacking Ukraine. He said the decision “definitely helps only the Russians.”
Trump has separately struck a deal allowing increased Russian diesel exports, another move criticized by Republican lawmakers who argue that energy revenue could help finance Russia’s war effort.
The administration maintains that temporary economic concessions could provide incentives for Moscow to remain at the negotiating table.
The reunion between one of the best players of his generation and the team he helped make an NBA champion is an opportunity to change narratives
When Kawhi Leonard became a Toronto Raptor for the first time in the summer of 2018, he looked shellshocked. “There’s just more questions you have to ask me in order for me to tell you about myself,” he said, introducing himself to an organization and city he reportedly had no interest in joining.
Leonard had fallen out with his former team, the San Antonio Spurs – one of the most respected franchises in professional sports – due to differences in opinion about an injury that had limited him to just nine games in the 2017-18 season. The Los Angeles native had hoped to end up in southern California, but instead the Raptors risked it all by swapping franchise cornerstone DeMar DeRozan for one year of an injured, malcontent Leonard. It worked: Leonard led the Raptors to their maiden championship on the back of a historic playoff run, averaging 30.5 points, 9.1 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.7 steals en route. Leonard won his second finals MVP to go alongside the one he had claimed with the Spurs when he helped them to the title in 2014.
Scott Peyton joined the Anglicans after the crime against his son. Then the Catholic church officially expelled him
The Roman Catholic church has upheld the excommunication of a Louisiana deacon who resigned from the clergy after a priest molested his son.
Scott Peyton learned of the decision by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) – the Vatican entity in charge of Catholic clerical discipline – on Friday in a meeting with the bishop of the diocese of Lafayette, J Douglas Deshotel. The DDF cited technical grounds in rejecting Peyton’s appeal, saying he had joined an Anglican congregation, “published [that] fact … on social media” and therefore refused to submit to the Catholic pope, who since May 2025 has been Leo XIV.
The Trump administration has tied billions in rural health funding for states partly to the policy commitments they make, including ending their certificate of need, or CON, laws governing the construction of new hospitals.
A goal against PSG is proof on the scoresheet of what can be seen on the teamsheet: at long last, Reyna is getting consistent minutes
For an entire four-year cycle, to write about Gio Reyna was to write about his potential – especially the nagging feeling that it was going unfulfilled. Once hyped as possibly the greatest prospect in US men’s history, a series of injuries kept him from simply taking the field, much less making his mark on it.
Since his emergent 2020-21 season, when he logged nearly 2,000 Bundesliga minutes running alongside Erling Haaland, Jude Bellingham, and Jadon Sancho, Reyna finished each of the ensuing five seasons without even cresting 630 league minutes. “Rotational” became a generous descriptor for his role at Nottingham Forest on loan, and then last season with Borussia Mönchengladbach. Still, Gregg Berhalter and Mauricio Pochettino kept involving Reyna with the US squad based on that pesky potential – betting that, on his day, he still had the raw talent to do what few compatriots could.
Photo illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica. Source images: Christopher Mark Juhn/Anadolu via Getty Images, Erlon Silva - TRI Digital via Getty Images, Mironov Konstantin via Getty Images.
A few months into President Donald Trump’s second term, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security made an unusual request of its agency focused on cybersecurity: Secretly acquire a voting machine and hack it.
The appointees wanted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to procure the machine, examine it and report back the findings so they could be given to the White House, according to two former administration officials with knowledge of the request.
The proposition was shocking to CISA’s career staffers, according to one of the former officials. CISA typically worked to thwart hackers. Moreover, the agency had been directed not to alert the voting machine company if it uncovered flaws, contrary to its standard practices. The request made the CISA employees fear they were being asked to take part in political interference.
“My thought was they could keep it in their back pocket to invalidate any [election] results they don’t like,” one of the former officials said. “This goes against everything CISA represents.”
The CISA employees repeatedly told the political appointees that their request was impossible, in part because the agents capable of pulling off such an operation had just been laid off by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative. The appointees eventually stopped pressing CISA.
Though not acted on, the request shows how the Trump administration has tried to use the agency for its own ends while draining it of resources for one of its critical missions: protecting the nation’s voting systems.
In Trump’s second term, his administration has laid off or pushed out more than 1,000 CISA employees, shrinking the agency by about one-third. The president’s 2027 budget proposal would reduce funding for the agency by another $700 million, which could necessitate 900 additional layoffs.
In response, Democratic lawmakers have called for an investigation into CISA’s ability to do its job and demanded answers as to why federal funds are not being used to support election security as directed by Congress.
Since Trump signed the CISA Act in 2018, the agency has worked with state authorities and voting machine vendors to help protect election infrastructure from cyberattacks. During Trump’s second term, though, CISA has abandoned much of this work. Several state election authorities said the agency provided them no assistance — and no explanation for its absence — during the most critical planning stages for the upcoming midterms.
“There is a difference between deprioritizing and being nonexistent,” said Ryan Macias, an election technology and cybersecurity expert who has worked as a consultant for CISA. In 2025 and through mid-September 2026 — when the bulk of preparations for the election typically would have been completed — “they were nonexistent. Literally nonexistent.”
While Trump has repeatedly warned that America’s elections are vulnerable to hacking, in some cases repeating disproven claims, experts said his administration is undermining the federal government’s role in helping secure them.
Though CISA re-emerged in September with a last-minute security plan for the election, some state officials told ProPublica they fear that what is left of the agency has been compromised by a conspiracy-obsessed presidential administration. In recent months, in reviving debunked theories about the 2020 election, the Trump administration has declassified troves of records, including sensitive material that state officials provided to CISA. Some state authorities said they no longer trusted the administration enough to share information with CISA, a key to the agency’s success in past elections.
“They’ve violated the entire premise of that information-sharing relationship,” said one former high-ranking federal cybersecurity official who now advises state governments on national security. “There’s no fucking way they’re ever going to give any information to CISA. And it’s unclear if they ever will in the future.”
A spokesperson for the White House declined an interview request but defended Trump’s handling of election security in an emailed statement. “President Trump has done more than any other President to ensure we have free and fair elections,” said Lauren Bis.
Bis referred specific questions about CISA’s handling of elections to DHS. DHS and CISA did not respond to interview requests or to a detailed list of questions.
“There’s no fucking way [state governments are] ever going to give any information to CISA. And it’s unclear if they ever will in the future.”
A former federal cybersecurity official who advises state governments
Current and former CISA employees and state election officials describe an agency that has become significantly less equipped to help states fight legitimate cyber threats. State leaders say they have used their own resources to shore up gaps left by CISA, such as paying for sensor technology that can detect unusual activity in election networks. But some services, like intel on foreign actors, can’t be replicated. Some people interviewed said they were worried that Trump and his allies continue to ratchet up rhetoric about voting security, particularly about threats to voting machines. Officials in one large voting jurisdiction said they have met privately with machine vendors to come up with a contingency plan if the federal government seizes their machines or declares them unusable.
“I don’t pay attention to what the president says. I pay attention to what his administration does,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said. “And what they’ve done is basically cut us off and left us on our own.”
Defending elections from hackers wasn’t always part of DHS’s remit.
Throughout the mid-1990s and 2000s, a series of cyberattacks rocked the federal government, demonstrating the emerging threat. In 2007, hackers broke into the Pentagon and stole terabytes of sensitive data. The digital heist, by an unknown foreign adversary, was so damaging that one intelligence leader later described it as an “espionage Pearl Harbor.”
Under George W. Bush, DHS underwent a reorganization to more effectively combat terrorism and respond to disasters like Hurricane Katrina. The department dedicated resources under an office called the National Protection and Programs Directorate to help fortify advanced cyber defense systems and important infrastructure. The office’s work ranged from helping secure events like the Super Bowl to protecting chemical plants to issuing cybersecurity warnings to the private sector and the public. In 2018, Trump signed a bill making the office a stand-alone agency, allowing for more federal funding and transforming it into, essentially, the ultimate tech support desk for anything DHS designated “critical infrastructure.” The bill renamed the agency CISA.
Though Trump helped create CISA, he didn’t much appreciate the work the agency did under its old name to expose the extent of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Russian agents had unleashed a massive disinformation campaign, with a Kremlin-backed troll farm creating thousands of social media accounts posing as Americans and promoting Trump, according to bipartisan reports from the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released before the 2020 election. A dozen Russian military agents were indicted for what the Justice Department described as “a sustained effort to hack into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic National Committee, and the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.”
Trump publicly downplayed this interference, but DHS leadership saw the Russia attack as an escalation. In January 2017, before Trump took office, DHS upgraded America’s elections to the status of critical infrastructure. This placed the polls and all voting technology used in federal elections under the watch of what would soon become CISA.
To carry out this function, CISA needed help. But states and voting machine vendors were wary about sharing data on weaknesses in voting systems, fearing it could be exploited if certain details were to become public. State officials were also reluctant to cede any role in election preparation to the federal government.
Gradually, though, CISA and state election officials negotiated a fragile trust. At its center was a commitment: The sensitive information states and vendors shared with CISA would be kept confidential.
“It took years and years of building trust, of talking to election officials, of hiring people with elections experience who could be validators for the work that CISA wanted to do, before they finally built strong working relationships,” said Derek Tisler, who specializes in election security as counsel for the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan institute based out of New York University School of Law.
Under Director Chris Krebs, CISA hosted penetration testing in which its agents would try to hack into a state’s system to locate weaknesses that could then be patched, along with tabletop exercises simulating a series of potential catastrophes around elections. CISA also offered regular secret-level briefings to secretaries of state to share federal intelligence. And CISA paid for sensor technology that looked for potential malicious online activity on election networks, notifying officials about emerging threats.
“The staffing was there, the expertise was there, the visibility was there, the funding was there,” Macias said.
The consortium shared data as run of the mill as spambots as well as more serious threats. If Virginia caught unusual activity in its system, it could let other states know to be vigilant.
While CISA had prepared for attacks from the Chinese and Russian governments, or lone wolf hackers, few there had expected the threat to elections would come from inside the White House. But when Trump refused to concede to Joe Biden in 2020, claiming the vote had been rigged, CISA became a key component of the guardrails that ultimately led to the election results being certified.
The agency, in a statement co-signed by secretaries of state and voting machine vendors, vouched for the election’s integrity, calling it “the most secure in American history.” When Krebs publicly rebutted claims amplified by the White House as “unsubstantiated” or “technically incoherent,” Trump fired him over Twitter.
As Congress prepared to vote on certifying the election results, it was members of CISA, along with the FBI, who convinced then-Attorney General Bill Barr that the conspiracy theories embraced by the president could be explained by human error, not systemic fraud or hacking.
When Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, his administration immediately started to dismantle CISA. The administrative notices were sent out just a couple of weeks after the inauguration and included the team in charge of dispelling disinformation.
For the employees under the DOGE microscope, work became impossible, said one former senior CISA employee. “Those groups couldn’t even order a pizza.”
DOGE laid off people critical to the agency’s election work, including those who’d worked closely with states. The Trump administration cut funding for the technology that monitored web and election servers, blinding the federal government to breaches it had detected.
When it came time for states to prepare for the 2026 midterms, CISA had disappeared.
On the evening of July 16, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, dozens of election officials and their staffs gathered for a reception near Mount Rushmore. It was the third night of an annual conference for secretaries of state, drawing participants from red and blue states. They’d spent the week discussing state voter roll maintenance and voter ID — issues that at times made for disagreements.
At about 8 p.m., a wave of discomfort swept through the crowd, visible on attendees’ faces as they glanced frequently at their phones, according to people at the event. Any minute now, Trump was going to address the nation on election security. Some at the reception worried he would declare a national emergency, as his allies had urged him to do months earlier, and use it as a pretext to direct the government to seize voting machines.
President Donald Trump addresses the nation on national security issues on July 16.Saul Loeb/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
Then reports on the speech began rolling in, and the mood shifted. The claims Trump was making were unsubstantiated and outlandish. Many had been examined ad nauseam, including by those at the reception, and roundly debunked. The collective anxiety that was palpable moments earlier melted away, as many saw the speech as another attempt to revive disproved theories unlikely to be taken seriously by most voters.
“Everyone just sort of guffawed and put their phones away and went to the bar,” recalled Quinn Raymond, co-founder of VoteShield, a nonprofit that works with states to help monitor voter registration data, who was at the event.
Still, if the speech made little impact, records published by the Trump administration to support the president’s claims damaged the already eroding relationship between CISA and state election officials. The material included raw information states had shared with the agency that was supposed to remain private, such as a log of communications from Election Day 2020 detailing activity being monitored in several states.
“It betrayed the trust of all partners who were willing to share information at the time,” said Geoff Hale, who worked on CISA’s elections team from the agency’s inception until last year. Now he specializes in election security at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for digital and civil rights.
Bis, the White House spokesperson, denied that the Trump administration broke any agreements in releasing the information. “The release of such information is exactly the sort of transparency news organizations should applaud,” she said. Bis also defended Trump’s speech, saying it had been fact-checked “by the agencies whose evidence was released and did not mischaracterize any information.”
Hale and others said the speech was one of several instances demonstrating the Trump administration’s reckless attitude toward sensitive data collected by CISA. Earlier this year, Politico reported that acting CISA Director Madhu Gottumukkala had uploaded records to ChatGPT, even though DHS had barred its employees from using the unsecure program. A CISA spokesperson told Politico that Gottumukkala had been permitted to use the technology for a “short-term and limited” basis.
Last May, an independent journalist named Brian Krebs exposed that CISA published private data, including passwords, cloud keys and other information, on its public GitHub page, in a folder labeled “Private-CISA.” A CISA spokesperson told the journalist there was no indication that sensitive data was compromised.
Some state election authorities were also alarmed to see the lengths to which the Trump administration went to legitimize the president’s fixation on the 2020 race.
In fall 2025, Missouri election officials produced a memo stating Andrew McCoy Warner, a Department of Justice official and prominent 2020 election conspiracy theorist, had called several clerks asking for access to voting machines. Tulsi Gabbard, then the director of national intelligence, had also led an operation in Puerto Rico to seize election machines. When the private cybersecurity contractor hired to examine the machines, Mojave Research Inc., failed to find evidence supporting claims about 2020, the federal government became “dissastified” with its services and stopped renewing its contract, its CEO later told reporters.
A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters in August that Mojave’s work ceased because it had completed its contract. Testifying before Congress in March, Gabbard said the seizing of voting machines came at the request of an assistant U.S. attorney in Puerto Rico.
“What happened in the second Trump administration is from almost day one — I mean, literally the first two months — they took all that was built up by Trump 1 and just decimated it,” said David Becker, founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit that works with state election authorities. “Election officials lost trust in the federal government.”
It didn’t help that, in his speech, the president mocked CISA’s defense of the 2020 election, calling the statement about it being the most secure in history a “very pat line” concocted as part of a deep-state cover-up. One former career CISA employee described being crestfallen at the Trump administration’s erosion of all they’d accomplished.
“We worked so hard to build that trusted relationship,” said Caitlin Durkovich, former DHS assistant secretary for infrastructure protection and co-founder of the cybersecurity firm Civira Partners. “I don’t know how you put it back together.”
A few weeks after Trump’s speech, the state election officials gathered once more, this time for a video call with Nick Andersen, who had replaced Gottumukkala as CISA’s acting director.
Nick Andersen, acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in MarchAndrew Harnik/Getty Images
Though the primaries were already under way, this was the first time many had met Andersen, a former cybersecurity adviser to Trump’s White House who had joined CISA a year earlier. Andersen is also a district representative for the Republican Party in Virginia, according to the party’s website. In March, he gave a speech to the Fairfax GOP chapter titled “Fighting Democrat Redistricting.”
Speaking over video in August, the boyish-faced former Marine Corps engineer announced that DHS was preparing to release a plan on how it would work together with state officials to secure the election, according to five people who were present at the video meeting, some of whom shared notes with ProPublica.
Many on the call were stunned at what they perceived as a lack of understanding of election planning. Early voting for the general election was just around the corner. They had spent over a year preparing for the midterms, and there was no more time for ambitious work.
Some peppered Andersen with questions: Where had CISA been when there was still time to make improvements?
Andersen blamed any lapses or perceived breaches in trust on the federal government shutdown in fall 2025, twirling his pen uncomfortably and sipping from a Monster energy drink.
Fontes, Arizona’s secretary of state, was blunt about his feelings regarding working with Andersen and CISA, according to several of the people on the call.
“I told him I didn’t trust him,” Fontes recalled in an interview. “I did raise my voice a little bit, because I’m frustrated — very frustrated — that they would have the temerity to come in, clear the entire deck of competent professionals, stop supporting the states, eviscerate the coordination efforts that they had and then suddenly come in and say: ‘Oh, we’re from the federal government. We’re here to help.’”
Indeed, one recently departed CISA official said attempting to do the agency’s typical election work now would be futile. In previous years, CISA had finished almost all its preparations with the states by Labor Day.
“That ship has sailed,” the official said.
CISA published its security plan for the 2026 election on Sept. 24. The 13-page document describes how, over the past two years, CISA has “recommitted to its statutory mission and remains resolute in strengthening the security of elections.”
State officials said their planning will ensure a secure election, even without help from CISA. Yet they and cybersecurity experts worry that Trump will say the election was hacked if Republicans don’t win in November.
The security plan calls for “leveraging collaborative partnerships” with states the agency has abandoned since Trump took office. Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state, said she’d welcome that but was skeptical of the agency’s motivations.
“For CISA to promise election officials now, at this point in time, that they are going to be a resource for the 2026 election is too little, too late,” she said.
Charles Kupchan, who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations, argues that many aspects of Trump's foreign policy are worth keeping and align with changes in the international system. He explains how the next president can marry the good impulses of "America first" with the best of liberal internationalism.
Ngaire Woods, Dean of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, Claas Mertens, also at Oxford, have written a piece arguing that Europe, despite its attempts at self-sufficiency, remains dependent on an unpredictable United States. The continent needs to address this vulnerability so that it can convince other countries, many of which find themselves similarly vulnerable to great-power coercion, that it is a worthy partner.
"Mozilla reps tell me they've met with Microsoft about their concerns," reports PC Magazine, "but that the company wasn't responsive."
"They'll do the minimum the law requires to respect user choice," explains Kush Amlani, Mozilla's counsel overseeing global competition and regulatory work... Mozilla recently marked 100 days since it released an 87-page report detailing the ways in which Microsoft pushes Edge on Windows PCs.... One example is how Windows often displays a "Let's finish setting up your PC" pop-up after an OS update. This screen has an enabled-by-default option to "use recommended browser settings," which makes Edge the default web browser.
However, that screen doesn't appear in Europe. European laws now force Microsoft to make Windows more respectful of user choices. For instance, in European countries, the Start menu opens links in your default web browser rather than in Edge, as it does everywhere else. Amlani says Mozilla wants Microsoft to release the European version of Windows to the rest of the world. However, he thinks this will require government action. As he puts it, "Microsoft can do better when it's forced."
The last line of the article sums up Mozilla's main point. "No one should have to fight their OS this hard on something as simple as a browser preference."
Despite recent progress, almost a fifth of air travellers with disabilities are still dissatisfied with their experience
Disabled passengers will have better safeguards when flying, the government has pledged, including protection from damaged wheelchairs and support from trained staff.
A report from an industry-led accessibility group said there was “much more to be done” but progress was being made, a year after a review led by Tanni Grey-Thompson demanded action to improve air travel in response to numerous incidents in which passengers had been left stranded without assistance.
In what is quite a major achievement, Wine has been ported and made to work on OpenBSD.
We have since tested several dozens of 64-bit Windows software, mostly successfully. See screenshots, livestream recordings for example. Even the Remaster of The Witcher 3 which released just last month runs, and runs well (requires adding in vkd3d-proton; see README; livestream which looks less fluent than it is due to the on-system recording with ffmpeg).
The biggest limitation seems to be the lack of support for WoW64, so 32bit Windows software won’t work. Still, this is a massive milestone for OpenBSD, and makes especially gaming a somewhat viable option on OpenBSD.
I’d become obsessed with appealing to my invisible audience. But since I ditched the app a year ago, my quieter moments have taken on brilliant new meaning
I first downloaded Instagram when I was 17 and became hooked on it the way most people fall in love: slowly, and then all at once. For a long time, I never considered myself a social media addict. I self-righteously refused to download TikTok, declared Snapchat to be for “children”, and posted less regularly on Instagram than half of the people I followed.
As I went through my university years, however, certain changes crept up on me. I began to swap reading – or essay-writing – for hours spent curating new posts. On my way home from lectures (or later, from my work as a journalist), I would spend ages trying to take the artsiest, most perfect picture of that evening’s sunset for my story – as if the people who followed me were eagerly awaiting yet another photo of one of the Earth’s rotations. What usually followed was a night of reloading my feed to see how many people had reacted to my post – or worse, hadn’t reacted at all.
In today’s newsletter: Violent riots and looting have dominated the headlines, but the unrest gripping the country and beyond reflects deeper public anger over everyday issues
Good morning. I bet your weekend was better than Emmanuel Macron’s. On Friday, the evening before mass protests that were planned across France,he attended a Céline Dion concert in Paris with his wife, Brigitte, prompting comparisons to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. On Sunday evening, he was forced to give a televised speech condemning the “unbridled violence” and riots that erupted in French cities over the weekend.
The rioters that burned makeshift barricades of bicycles in Paris, destroyed the steeple of Limoges’ town hall and set fire to Lyon’s tourism office were described as “LE CHAOS” on the front page of La Tribune Dimanche, and “SCENES D’INSURRECTION” on Le Parisien Dimanche. By Sunday, protests had also taken placein Spain, Portugal and Italy.
The Vatican | Pope Leo told a crowd gathered in St Peter’s Square on Sunday that he would “gradually resume” his activities, at his first appearance before the faithful since undergoing an operation to remove a cancerous tumour from his lung.
UK news | A “well-known individual” is trying to secure a permanent injunction against the Guardian and ITN to prevent them from publishing details of serious allegations made against him.
US politics | Donald Trump fired his immediately embattled new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, on Friday evening after just five days in the job. The conservative commentator becomes the shortest serving occupant of the role in US history.
Reform | A Reform UK mayor is under police investigation for allegedly showing “naked and sexualised” images of himself to a female member of staff. Luke Campbell, a former Olympic boxing champion, is understood to have been questioned under caution by Humberside police.
Energy | The development of a huge AI datacentre hailed by the UK government has received a fresh setback after Microsoft pulled out of the project over concerns about power supplies.
Monday | The two-week biodiversity summit, Cop17, begins in Yerevan, Armenia, as countries come together to seek to protect nature.
Tuesday | The Covid-19 inquiry publishes its report on the adult social care sector.
Sunday | Incumbent Lula da Silva takes on Flavio Bolsonaro in the run-off of the Brazil general election.
Voters to be asked whether province should remain part of Canada or hold a second, binding independence vote
Albertans are going to the polls to decide their place in Canada, in a referendum that has exposed deep divisions within the province, not least in the separatist movement itself.
On Monday, voters will respond to the question of whether Alberta should remain in Canada, or hold a second, binding independence referendum.
Expedition was drawn to Nikumaroro after spotting what was described as a metallic glint in waters off uninhabited island
A US expedition that voyaged to a remote Pacific island in the hope of solving the mystery of what happened to pioneering pilot Amelia Earhart has said an object they suspected to be her plane was a clump of washed-up trees.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find that smoking gun,” said Steve Schultz of Purdue University, standing on the sand in front of a blue lagoon on the atoll of Nikumaroro, about halfway between Australia and Hawaii.
"Anthropic says it's committing 5% of its shares to a 'public benefit fund'," reports TechCrunch, "structured as a wholly-owned entity within the company — with the option to contribute an additional 2% for every 50% increase in Anthropic's value."
Important context from CNBC:
The timing of Anthropic's public fund announcement is both mandatory to prepare for an initial public offering, and "beneficial from an image perspective," especially as AI reshapes the jobs market, Lise Buyer, partner at IPO advisory firm Class V Group, told CNBC...
Anthropic said it will share more about the fund structure and governance in the coming months, including valuation milestones that may increase the stake. It said it will also share progress on the fund in an upcoming public benefit report. In response to Anthropic's announcement, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on X that he "recommend[s] giving the shares directly to the public."
Anthropic's announcement hints the fund could address job-market displacements. It says the fund "might" explore "large donations to traditional nonprofits" — or, that it "might" explore "direct distributions to specific populations. One example is labor market impacts."
It then argues AI could "cause instability" for many workers. And while Anthropic has already committed $200 million for "studying and addressing" this issue, Sunday's announcement says "bolder" approaches may be needed, and that the Fund "will have the versatility to pursue them."
"Combined with its co-founders' pledge to donate 80% of their equity and an employee donation matching program, roughly 20% of Anthropic's shares will be dedicated to public purposes," reports Reuters, "excluding any additional shares added later."
Backlash against content creators includes restricted hours for filming and even outright bans
Stand in any vaguely photogenic spot these days on holiday and the chances are you will come across people posing with raised phones and even ring lights. Some may be influencers with huge audiences on social media, others just overkeen Instagram users. With hotels and beauty spots now so overrun, however, bans on photography are coming into place.
The five-star Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, known for its glamorous clientele, views of the Côte d’Azur and a stunning infinity pool, has brought in rules against photoshoots: no longer allowed without prior permission.
Trudy was expected to turn toward the west-northwest Sunday night into Monday, taking it away from Mexico's coast and south of the Baja California Peninsula on Monday and Tuesday.
Hey folks. Could someone explain how different the X7LR feels compared to the GT? I’ve read and seem to understand that the X7 is more like the XR chassis, which I’ve never had a chance to ride. Any input is appreciated. Thanks.
AI has already been trained on the works of Australian artists including Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave without compensation, the peak global body for music rights has claimed, as the Australian government has been warned against giving in to “strong-arming” from tech companies seeking to weaken copyright law.
The International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP) – which represents Sony, Warner and Universal as well as thousands of independent publishers on six continents – has warned that of the dozens of countries approached to water down copyright laws, Australia appears to be the only to consider doing so.
"A human defeated two of the three robots he faced in a cage fight recently held in San Francisco," reports the Los Angeles Times, noting that videos of the event drew more than 10 million views on YouTube.
But "the humans behind that fight could face a battle of their own — the legal type — if they want to hold another event like 'Human Vs. Robot,' the Sept. 18 competition that placed influencer Frankie LaPenna inside an octagon to battle three humanoid robots that were controlled remotely by a human operator in separate MMA-style fights..."
Wearing spiked gloves, a helmet and protective padding, the 5-foot-6, 205-pound LaPenna held his own against all three bots. He dominated his first opponent, referred to at the fight as "the child robot." Next came an imposing "Terminator"-inspired humanoid, which was listed on the fight video as 6-feet and 200 pounds with a kick force of 850 pounds. The robot landed several hard kicks, including one that knocked LaPenna across the mat and another with an impact that brought the humanoid to the ground and caused its head to come off — but the human seemed to gain strength as the match went on and eventually stood triumphantly with his foot on the machine's crumpled body.
LaPenna was dominant early in his final match, in which he faced a robot that resembled a "Predator" from the movies of the same name. After landing several punches and kicks and taking his opponent to the ground multiple times, LaPenna eventually became fatigued and called for the match to be ended. "He doesn't get tired. He doesn't stay down," LaPenna said in a postmatch interview.
"The crowd of about 100 (humans, not humanoids) was thrilled," writes the New York Times. (After beating his first robot opponent, LaPenna told his interviewer, "Clankers zero, humans one.")
But the New York Times adds that "Those who know humanoid robots best highly recommend against fighting them."
"It's very unfair to put a human in with a heavily motorized system that's only going to dominate," said Ken Goldberg, a professor who oversees the automation lab at the University of California, Berkeley. "There's nothing surprising about that...." He said he understood the appeal of the fights that Robot Entertainment Kombat (REK) was staging, noting that it tapped "into some of the fear and frustration with robots that people feel.... I mean, they love to see the human kick the robot's gearbox," he said. But the odds of that human fighter getting his gearbox kicked are much greater, Dr. Goldberg said, given that REK's humanoid robots can weigh several hundred pounds and are made of steel.
To be fair, it looked like sometimes the robot just fell over. (And the robots were human-controlled, not programmed with split-second reactions...)
But "Not everyone is a fan," adds the Los Angeles Times:
On Sept. 23, the California State Athletic Commission sent a cease-and-desist order to REK, its CEO Cix Liv and "all persons holding, promoting, advertising or sponsoring unsanctioned human versus humanoid robot cage fight." The letter states that "any boxing or mixed martial arts contest, match, or exhibition, involving any human in the State of California" requires the prior approval of the commission and that it is a misdemeanor to hold such an event without obtaining a license or permit from the state. A spokesperson for the California Department of Consumer Affairs, which oversees the CSAC, said in a statement emailed to The Times that the commission is "committed to protecting the safety of the public and integrity of combat sports."
"Unsanctioned activity puts the physical and financial well-being of all those involved at risk and such activity will not be tolerated," the statement said.
With early voting for the midterms underway, federal actions around the U.S. voting system are expanding. Election officials explain their response, and the Justice Department says "there should be no interruption" with the results.
Sacramento guard to undergo surgery and will miss entire season
Former No 1 draft pick has been attempting to revive his career
Ben Simmons faces a monumental task to revive his NBA career after another devastating injury setback put his comeback attempt with the Sacramento Kings on hold. The Australian will undergo surgery after scans revealed he tore his right achilles tendon during a live drill at practice, just three days out from Sacramento’s season opener against the Los Angeles Clippers.
The 30-year-old signed a one-year deal with the Kings in an attempt to revive his career, but will now miss the entire season. It is another massive setback for the three-time All-Star, after five years battling a series of significant injuries and mental health concerns.
Prime minister Mark Carney describes blaze as ‘one of the worst tragedies for the forces on Canadian soil in peacetime’
Four people have been killed and dozens more seriously injured after a “violent, fast-moving” fire tore through one of Canada’s busiest military training bases in Alberta, the country’s prime minister said on Sunday.
Mark Carney called the incident “one of the worst tragedies for the forces on Canadian soil in peacetime”.
‘Meta owes us an explanation,’ group says as organizers fear censorship after account goes dark for several hours
The coalition leaders behind nationwide pro-democracy protests that have drawn millions of Americans to the streets in recent years were frustrated when its Instagram account was temporarily shut down during its latest demonstration on Saturday.
The No Kings movement’s account went dark for several hours while protests focused on increasing early voter turnout were under way, sparking censorship fears.
Ex-president urges Americans to defend congresswoman, saying ‘there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her’
Former US president Barack Obama condemned comments by Donald Trump’s “border czar” that the Republican presidential administration could “of course” strip Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar of her citizenship and deport her.
Obama wrote Sunday morning, on X, that “the full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president.”
I had to turn off and on my XR classic because the motor wasn’t engaging. Has anyone had this problem? Does anyone know how to reboot the board maybe that will solve the problem. It’s the 2nd time that happened this week.
Helium, most closely associated with party balloons, but critical for far more, is facing supply chain issues due to the war with Iran. The shortage has left American industry desperate for answers.
Actor Sacha Baron Cohen breaks down his iconic characters: Ali G, Bruno and Borat. He also explains the complexities behind his brand of undercover comedy.
Sacha Baron Cohen, the actor behind iconic characters, including Ali G, Borat and Bruno, is a rare mix of public intellectual and adrenaline junkie. He uses comedy in the hopes of making us laugh and waking us up.
Election officials respond to allegations from the Justice Department about noncitizen voting as new polling shows that only half of Americans believe the upcoming elections will be free and fair.
Report reveals that a shady mobser-turned-informant may have been involved in helping cover up murder
An in-depth investigation by the New York Times is raising further questions about the high-profile OJ Simpson case, in which the former football player was accused in the 1990s of killing his ex-wife – and whether a shady mobser-turned-informant may have been involved in helping cover up the murder.
The Times’s investigation revealed that California prosecutors were unable to fully investigate whether Simpson, who was accused but not convicted of his ex-wife’s murder, may have had an accomplice at the scene of the crime.
In 1980, Intel introduced the 8087, a chip that made floating-point operations much faster in the IBM PC and other systems. Although the 8087 supports advanced operations such as tangents, square roots, and logarithms, this article focuses on basic arithmetic operations: addition and subtraction. The 8087 provided a spectacular speed improvement over the 8086 processor, speeding up addition by a factor of almost 100, and complicated operations by even more. In this article, I examine the 8087’s microcode and circuitry to explain exactly how floating-point addition and subtraction are implemented, including numerous special cases for infinities and other special values.
Shirriff took an actual chisel to the 8087 coprocessor to gain access to the insides for highly detailed photographs, taken with a microscope. They look amazing.
Only a few day ago I linked to a massive collection of original Palm OS development resources, and today we can take a look at what it was like to put all of those resources into practice: the original source code for the Palm OS port of Lemmings. With these resources combined, there’s no excuse to not building any Palm OS applications. I’d really like a modern email client, a Fediverse client, and a slightly more modern browser surely wouldn’t hurt.
"When you pay for a game, you should own it," says U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres (D-NY), introducing a new bill to fight the practice of "a rental disguised as a sale".
Kotaku reports:
The fifth best-selling game of 2024 in the U.S. was NBA 2K25. Every year, fans dump hundreds of hours and hundreds of dollars into the grindy NBA basketball sim. But just a little over two years after its release, 2K Games confirmed it's already pulling the plug on it. The game will be delisted from digital storefronts on October 30. By January 1, 2027, online servers will go offline as well, making it impossible to play the most popular modes. A game millions paid $70 for will become mostly useless. Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres wants to change that.
"I think there should be a simple rule: if you pay for it, you own it," Torres told Kotaku in a phone interview this week. To make that the law of the land, the U.S. representative for New York's 15th congressional district since 2021 plans to introduce legislation in Congress called the Power To The Players Act. The bill would direct the Federal Trade Commission to create regulations protecting ownership rights for video games. Companies selling digital games would need to grant players more than just a license that can expire at any time, and games with online features would need to provide offline modes that still work even when servers eventually shut down...
The Power To The Players Act noticeably leaves out other types of digital media like movies and music, though Terminator 2 and a bunch of other movie purchases were ripped from people's digital libraries earlier this year.
Representative Torres "did not confirm if the bill will have any cosponsors," the article acknowledges, "or whether any of his Republican colleagues will sign on to support it."
But players will see the bill's importance next month, the article points out, "when Grand Theft Auto 6 releases as just a download code in a box, giving fans no control over a purchase that starts at $80.
Passengers urged to ‘share the carriage, not the noise’ as guidance sets out £100 penalties for nuisance behaviour
Andy Burnham has announced a crackdown on “headphone dodgers” who play loud music on public transport, as he extends his promise to give voters “breathing space” in the confines of a train carriage.
The prime minister will unveil a campaign against nuisance behaviour on public transport on Monday, alongside guidance allowing local transport authorities to levy fines of up to £100 for non-compliance.
Premium paid over French counterparts has risen to almost £30 a megawatt hour, analysis by lobby group finds
British steelmakers have been pushed further behind European rivals on electricity costs after the US-Israeli war on Iran caused a surge in global gas prices.
The premium paid by the British industry over its French counterpart has risen to almost £30 a megawatt hour (MWh), its highest level in three years, according to analysis by the lobby group UK Steel.
Agency changes wording on website as Texas-based firm continues manufacture of plastic container barriers
The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly backtracked on a claim that the US has phased out two of the most dangerous Pfas compounds – Pfoa and Pfos.
The EPA has found that virtually no level of exposure to either in drinking water is safe, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies Pfoa as “carcinogenic to humans” and Pfos as “possibly carcinogenic”. Still, the EPA is allowing Houston-based Inhance to produce containers from which Pfoa has been found to leach at high levels into the containers’ contents. The company makes up to 200m barriers annually for plastic containers used across the US economy.
This article was amended on 18 October 2026 to correct Patricia van Ee’s title, and the story previously stated that Inhance manufactures plastic containers. They make the containers’ barriers.
Family post emotional statements to Instagram a month after their son and brother died at a rehab facility
Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber have said they are “beyond heartbroken” in a tribute to their “sweet beautiful” son, Presley.
Their eldest child died aged 27 at a rehab facility on 20 September, according to Los Angeles county medical examiner records. The cause of his death has not been disclosed.
July: Nvidia-backed Nscale is building a £2bn data centre at Loughton in Essex, with Microsoft signed up as its anchor tenant. But it can't get the electricity to switch on, reported The Next Web:
Nscale's problem is not really Nscale's. It is Britain's. Grid-connection times have become the single biggest brake on new data centres. Some UK projects face waits stretching close to a decade for enough power. One estimate found more than a quarter of data-centre capacity slipped in 2025 alone.
"The data centre was due to receive its power supply at the end of the year," reports the BBC. "But as first reported by the Telegraph on Sunday, Nscale has been told this will not happen until the 2030s." (Though Nscale and Microsoft are still working together on other projects in Norway, Portugal and America.)
But now anchor-tenant Microsoft has pulled out of the Essex deal, reports the Telegraph, adding that Microsoft's move "leaves the site in apparent limbo. The company was its only announced customer, having agreed to rent 23,000 Nvidia AI chips at the facility..."
Microsoft's decision threatens to undermine Nscale's attempts to push ahead with a Wall Street flotation worth up to $35bn (£26bn), despite a brutal sell-off in AI computing stocks. Rival data centre developers have seen their share prices plunge over the last week on concerns that they will struggle to repay their debts as interest rates and inflation continue to rise.... Tech analyst Gartner said last week that $3.5 trillion could be written off by 2030 if the AI boom fails to deliver on its promises.
And "our research indicates that enterprise and consumer AI revenue will be insufficient to support profitable returns on all planned AI capital expenditures during this period," Gartner wrote:
"In 2026, AI providers are expected to spend nearly $1 trillion on AI infrastructure, and are forecast to invest an additional $6 trillion between 2027 and 2030," said Will Sommer, Sr Director Analyst at Gartner.... Failure to achieve sustainable return on investment capital (ROIC) on rapidly depreciating assets would almost certainly necessitate write-downs. Based on Gartner projections, a continued AI infrastructure investment trajectory could leave more than $4 trillion in asset value exposed to write-down risk through 2032. In this scenario, Gartner does not expect the 12% ROIC to be achieved until the end of 2032 at earliest...
Gartner estimates AI-optimized IaaS spending will grow from $66 billion in 2027 to $174 billion in 2030. "The growth in spending on AI-optimized IaaS will be too low for most AI compute providers to recover their AI investments before the current generation of AI semiconductors is replaced," said Sommer. By 2030, Gartner predicts that cost pressure and a lack of a differentiating business model will force over 80% of neocloud [AI-specialized infrastructure] providers to cease independent operations.
Antibody patterns in the blood may help doctors identify people at risk so they can be treated earlier, research shows
Patterns of antibodies in people’s blood could predict the onset of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) a decade before diagnosis, according to research that raises hopes for catching the condition early.
Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, the two main forms of IBD, are typically treated only after symptoms appear, when the gut has already been damaged. But scientists found that the immune system sends warning signals up to a decade before diagnosis, paving the way for potentially earlier detection and even prevention.
Judge orders government to notify her by 8pm ET Sunday whether its position changed from Friday’s court filing
Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday that “restoration work will begin” on 15 November to a historic public golf course in Washington DC despite a federal judge’s court order to pause his plans over environmental and historic preservation concerns.
US district judge Ana Reyes had ruled earlier this year that the federal government must give notice before any substantive construction work on the East Potomac golf course could proceed, and last week issued an order halting the removal of trees at the site, which she called “inexcusable”.
Jan Crawford had praised man who asked Democratic candidate whether he would disavow Muslim Brotherhood
CBS’s chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford has apologized for and deleted a social media post praising a man who questioned Democratic Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed about the Muslim Brotherhood during a town hall on Saturday.
On Sunday, Crawford, who initially joined CBS in 2009, wrote on X: “Earlier, I tweeted a video from an Abdul El-Sayed town hall. I deleted that tweet because it was a violation of CBS News standards. I apologize.”
Bryce Young threw for 281 yards and two touchdowns to Tommy Tremble, and Chuba Hubbard ran for 120 yards and a score to lead the Carolina Panthers (3-2) past the injury-riddled Philadelphia Eagles (2-4). The Panthers had little trouble in the second half picking apart the Eagles, who were missing quarterback Jalen Hurts and running back Saquon Barkley. Hurts is on injured reserve and will miss at least four games with a blood clot in his calf. Tanner McKee started for Philadelphia and finished 26 of 45 for 215 yards and a touchdown.
Speaking to how good they are against the run, the Jaguars have gone 22 games without allowing a rusher to go for more than 75 yards. Good luck, Woody.
Gizmodo reports:
Roughly 84.4% of the world's coral reefs suffered bleaching-levels of heat stress during the last major marine heat wave from January 2023 to September 2025, with over half already lost compared to coral coverage in the 1950s... But there's some good news, thanks to a new study published this Wednesday in the journal Science Advances: Marine ecologists at Stanford have discovered that bleached corals can be revived via contact with a healthy coral neighbor, who (like a good neighbor) shares their photosynthetic, symbiotic algae (Symbiodiniaceae) with their peers.
"This incredible new result — that fast and full recovery is possible in bleached coral — can inspire solutions that eventually may be scalable," [Fiorenza Micheli, a marine ecologist with Stanford's Center for Ocean Solutions and study co-author, told the journal Nature]... Unlike their controls, bleached coral in contact with healthy coral recovered in just eight weeks... [T]he surprise discovery of this method alongside the other techniques that marine conservationists are now actively pursuing — including the successful deep-freezing and revival of at-risk coral sampled from Hawaii — could offer threatened reefs the lifeline they need. Coral contact could super-charge other efforts, like the selective breeding of heat-tolerant corals and the cultivation of protected coral nurseries
Ministers, officials and police under pressure over response to protests as government holds crisis talks amid ‘colossal failure of the state’
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has criticised “unbridled violence” after one of the most violent days of unrest in years left public buildings burned, hundreds of shops destroyed and looted and at least 2,400 people arrested in cities across the country.
“Watching these images, we have all asked ourselves how could French people do this to France?” he said in a televised address.
New video footage of Israeli settler assault on European delegation as Netanyahu attempts to raise doubt
Hours after Israeli militants attacked a delegation of European diplomats, French clerics and a visiting mayor in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, responded by questioning the delegation’s account of the assault.
“Serious accusations require serious evidence” was the all-caps headline of a social media post from the office of the prime minister. As news of the attack spread globally there was no pledge to find those accountable and bring them to justice.
Washington, DC — Former President Barack Obama sharply condemned the Trump administration’s investigation of Rep. Ilhan Omar on Sunday, arguing that the federal government is being used to punish a prominent political critic.
Obama called the Oct. 12 search of Omar’s Washington home “appalling” and said Americans should be alarmed regardless of their opinions about the Minnesota Democrat. Federal agents executed a court-authorized warrant as part of an investigation examining decades-old immigration and citizenship records involving Omar and her late father.
Obama said the investigation rests on an “unsubstantiated theory” that Omar improperly obtained citizenship because of a discrepancy involving her recorded birth year. Omar has denied wrongdoing, and a previous federal review during Trump’s first administration reportedly found insufficient evidence of citizenship fraud.
“The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president,” Obama said.
He compared the case with previous prosecutions and investigations involving Trump critics and warned that normalizing politically motivated law enforcement could create a precedent future presidents of either party could exploit.
Trump has denied directing the Omar investigation while continuing to publicly attack her. No criminal charges have been filed against Omar, and the government has not publicly produced evidence proving she committed immigration fraud.
Recently had too much fun out there and the battery died with roughly 40% left (according to the Onewheel app), so I had to carry it which was pretty awful. Thus I would like to improve accuracy so that I can trust the battery info again.
My XR is from 2021 and has 400km / 250 miles on it. When in storage, I keep the battery at ca. 70%. Tire pressure is checked regularly and on the recommended level.
Before the next ride, I plan to charge it beyond 100% in order to balance out the batteries. How does that work exactly / how long should I "overcharge" it..? Is there a risk to make things worse by doing this?
Development by UK firm Nscale heralded by ministers as largest of its kind in country loses anchor tenant
The development of a huge AI datacentre hailed by the UK government has received a fresh setback after Microsoft pulled out of the project over concerns about power supplies.
The development by the British company Nscale, heralded by ministers as the country’s largest AI datacentre when it was announced in 2025, was planned to open at Loughton in Essex next year.
Washington, DC — Republican lawmakers are threatening to withhold support for major Pentagon funding and other pieces of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda as anger grows inside the GOP over his recent moves benefiting Russia.
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a retired Air Force brigadier general, said Republicans who support Ukraine may refuse to fund Trump’s priorities after the president eased sanctions on Moscow, opened the door to Russian diesel imports and pressured Ukraine to halt attacks on Russian energy infrastructure.
“Many of us won’t fund these things knowing he is propping up a dictator’s invasion and throwing an ally under the bus,” Bacon wrote.
The warning is significant because Trump is seeking hundreds of billions of dollars in additional Pentagon funding through budget reconciliation, along with other priorities lawmakers are expected to consider after the midterm elections.
Republican criticism has expanded beyond Bacon. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina has accused the administration of capitulating to Russian President Vladimir Putin, while other GOP lawmakers have raised concerns about restrictions placed on Ukraine’s access to intelligence and the Starshield satellite network.
Trump has defended his approach as serving U.S. interests and lowering energy costs.
The dispute gives congressional Republicans considerable leverage: Trump cannot secure the additional defense spending he wants without lawmakers approving the money.
Do I even faintly believe the times I’m living in? The simple answer is: no.
Every now and then, I try to imagine going back in time to tell my long-dead parents about the world of President Donald Trump, which just happens to still be mine as well. Of course, they simply wouldn’t have believed it, not for a single second.
To put it in the context of their time on this planet, the only equivalent I can imagine would be if Sen. Joseph McCarthy, that anticommunist nightmare-and-a-half of the 1950s, hadn’t flamed out, been censured by the Senate, and died young but somehow had made it to the White House. But even he undoubtedly would have fallen short in terms of chaos and cruelty, if judged by the standards of Trump World. A President McCarthy might have been catastrophic for America, but Trump is on another level, an apocalyptic one.
Trump’s capacity for ushering in world-wrecking havoc is made possible by a character constructed almost entirely of flaws. His second term has been defined by global aggression and hostility. Yet he recently complained bitterly — and in a fashion it’s hard to imagine any other politician ever doing — because he wasn’t awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. As he put it, “The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel peace prize, but didn’t. And this is an indelible stain on the country of Norway, and those people that made such a disgraceful and embarrassing decision.”
“A Nation Unmade by War,” by Tom EngelhardtAvailable on Bookshop.org
This is not only a petty man, but also a delusional one. As president, Trump has presided over more than 20 military interventions, armed conflicts, and outright wars who nonetheless swears that he “settled” eight conflicts and should have “won 8 Nobel Peace Prizes, not just 1.” This includes a war between Egypt and Ethiopia that, of course, never happened and a failing war with Iran that drags on to this day.
If you’re going to “end” a war with bombs and missiles, then there are, of course, going to be casualties. A few thousand or more Iranians killed, obviously, and tens of thousands injured, not to mention ever-rising American casualties.
Frighteningly, the Iran war may not even be enough for him. He’s already starting to hint (if there even is such a thing as “hinting” in the all-too-blunt world of Donald Trump) that he might join Saudi Arabia in taking on the Houthi rebels in Yemen. “We’re going to look at it” was how he put it. I should really have added “again” there, since he essentially began his second term in office by attacking those same Houthis — killing large numbers of civilians in the process. But after the U.S. burned through $1 billion and failed to even achieve air superiority in Yemen, Trump ended the stalemate. Despite having vowed the Houthis would be “completely annihilated,” he announced a cessation of hostilities last May, leaving the group in control of most of Yemen’s populated areas.
Given American history — think the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, among other places — there’s nothing faintly strange about endless American military operations thousands and thousands of miles away from Washington, D.C., even for a president who said, upon taking office in 2025, that he would measure success by “the wars we never get into.”
A Grim Presidency
You would hardly know it from the mainstream press but one of those 20 Trumpian conflicts is the forever war in Somalia. And that war has an increasing domestic component. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security raided the home of Somali American Rep. Ilhan Omar in the Washington, D.C., area, aiming in some fashion or other to discover information that might help denaturalize her and so make it possible to eject her from this country.
As the president put it on Truth Social, Omar “left Somalia with NOTHING, and is now reportedly worth more than 44 Million Dollars.” Of course, who would know better about such things than the president of the United States who, in these years, is estimated to have made literally billions of dollars while in office?
And yet, the never-ending war in Somalia, the nearby conflict we may reenter against the Houthis, and the failed war in Iran should be considered the lesser of the potential disasters that will sooner or later be associated with Trump. After all, he clearly has the urge to do nothing less than end this very world of ours, at least as we’ve known it, even if in a distinctly slow-motion fashion.
I’m not even thinking about nuclear weapons (although he admittedly still is). No, I’m thinking about the president who, at the United Nations in 2025, called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” And since then, he has indeed done everything he could think of to ensure that this planet would get hotter yet. His Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, has recently repealed “rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas.” And that’s just to start down a long list of what should truly be considered Donald Trump’s ultimate war on this planet of ours — including blocking wind power development and doing the same with solar power.
All of this is happening as global warming reaches unprecedented levels, sea level rise is accelerating, northern forests and tundra are releasing more carbon dioxide than they absorb, the Greenland ice sheet has lost about 129 gigatons of ice (or roughly 129 billion metric tons), and other major ecological systems like tropical coral reefs, the Amazon rainforest, and Antarctica’s ice sheet are being pushed toward catastrophic tipping points.
While Trump campaigns for eight Nobel Peace Prizes, his war on humanity’s only home continues unabated, a slow-motion destruction that threatens us all. My parents couldn’t have imagined a leader in the White House who would put McCarthy to shame and push the country — and the world — to the precipice of doom: a commander-in-chief worthy of the name President Apocalypse.
DOVER, Del. — Dover Police are investigating a shooting that damaged two homes on Mitscher Road Friday evening.
Officers responded to the 100 block of Mitscher Road at approximately 6:39 p.m. on October 16, 2026, after receiving a report of shots fired.
Police said two residences were struck by gunfire. One of the homes was occupied by two adults, but no injuries were reported. The second residence was unoccupied at the time.
Officers also located multiple spent shell casings in a nearby alley.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Dover Police Department at 302-736-7111. Tips may also be submitted through Delaware Crime Stoppers or the Dover Police Department’s online contact form. Tipsters may remain anonymous.
So while we are working on new tech developments and board variants, we’ve been experimenting on the side with different rail colors like Tiffany Blue, Royal Purples, and our newest color: Savage Orange.
Here’s some renders of Savage Orange.
Suggest what other colors you guys would wanna see and the highest upvoted comment will be the next one we mess around with.
(Only available in X10 right now, X7 soon to come)
Washington, DC — Republican Sen. Ted Cruz used transgender people and Muslims as political punchlines Saturday while discussing Republicans’ struggle to hold competitive Senate seats ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms.
During a Fox News interview with Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, Cruz acknowledged that Republicans could lose between five and eight Senate seats if conservative voters fail to turn out. Fox News currently rates Sullivan’s unexpectedly competitive race against Democrat Mary Peltola as a toss-up.
Asked why Republicans are facing so many close contests, Cruz said anger among the opposition party often drives midterm turnout. He then caricatured Democratic voters as “left-wing transgender witches” who hate President Donald Trump.
Cruz went further, contrasting those voters with what he called “regular, ordinary Americans” who are “not lunatics” and “don’t think Communism and Islamism are a good idea.”
The remarks combined attacks on transgender people with rhetoric invoking Islam as part of a broader depiction of Democratic voters as dangerous or abnormal. Cruz offered no evidence connecting Democratic voters generally with either communism or Islamism.
His comments come as Republican candidates increasingly deploy transgender issues and attacks involving Muslim political figures during the closing weeks of the campaign.
Despite Cruz’s confidence that Republican turnout could rescue vulnerable candidates, he conceded the Senate battlefield remains close enough that Democrats could emerge with a substantial majority.
Delaware State Police are investigating a strong-arm robbery that occurred Friday afternoon at the 7-Eleven at 1700 Pulaski Highway in Bear.
Troopers responded at about 5:30 p.m. Police said a male victim was walking toward the store’s front doors when a female suspect grabbed his arm and demanded his property.
A male suspect then got out of a vehicle, approached the victim, struck him and took his property, according to police. Both suspects fled in a white sedan.
The victim suffered minor injuries and declined medical treatment.
The Delaware State Police Criminal Investigations Unit is investigating. Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective J. Dempsey at (302) 365-8472 or Delaware Crime Stoppers at 1-800-847-3333.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump threatened California election officials with prison Friday as his administration escalated a dispute over more than 20,000 people the Justice Department claims may be noncitizens who received mail ballots.
“They will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social after the Justice Department warned state and local officials that knowingly processing ballots cast by ineligible voters could expose them to criminal investigation.
The administration has not publicly produced evidence showing that the roughly 20,000 people it flagged are actually noncitizens or that they intend to vote illegally. California officials say voter eligibility cannot legally be revoked based on unverified data matching.
The Justice Department sued California Thursday seeking to block ballots from the flagged voters from being counted until their citizenship can be confirmed.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan have challenged the reliability of the federal data. Logan said officials cannot withhold ballots “based solely on unverified allegations.”
The confrontation comes less than three weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms and follows a broader administration campaign to obtain voter records nationwide.
Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal, and documented cases remain exceptionally rare. A federal judge recently blocked a separate Justice Department voter-roll program after finding it violated federal privacy and procedural laws.
The Delaware State Police Sex Offender Apprehension and Registration Unit (SOAR) is issuing the following public notifications of homeless and wanted sex offenders.
Wanted Sex Offenders
SOAR is currently looking for the following wanted sex offenders after they either failed to register or re-register at their current address. If anyone knows the location of these individuals, please call (302) 739-5882. Information may also be provided by contacting Delaware Crime Stoppers at (800) 847-3333. The individuals shown represents only a portion of the current wanted sex offenders. Please see the Delaware Sex Offender Registry website for the complete list.
Click on the image to see the complete profile
Homeless Sex Offenders
The following individuals are not wanted for failing to register or re-register at their current address. This is a public notification of homeless sex offenders. If you have information that the listed individuals are occupying a residence, please call (302) 739-5882. Information may also be provided by contacting Delaware Crime Stoppers at (800) 847-3333. The individuals shown are those recently reported homeless and represent only a portion of the current homeless sex offenders. Please see the Delaware Sex Offender Registry website for the complete list.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump reportedly wanted former Fox News host Maria Bartiromo to become White House press secretary before Katie Zacharia took the job for a brief and turbulent five-day tenure.
Axios reported, citing two administration sources, that Trump was interested in Bartiromo after Karoline Leavitt stepped down. Bartiromo reportedly signaled she was not interested in taking the position. CNN commentator Scott Jennings was also said to have been under consideration but was never formally offered the job.
Bartiromo left Fox News in September after more than 12 years with the network. Her departure came amid reports that she had shared confidential internal guidance about Fox’s Trump coverage with the White House. Bartiromo has long been an outspoken supporter of Trump.
Zacharia ultimately began as press secretary on Oct. 12 but was out of the role by Oct. 16. Her sole formal briefing lasted about 14 minutes and drew criticism, while questions about her legal background intensified after she acknowledged failing the California bar exam.
Trump said Friday that he had encouraged Zacharia to “reconsider” the position and later suggested she could remain in the administration in another capacity.
The White House has not announced a permanent replacement, and Trump said he is in “no rush” to make another appointment.
Photo Gallery contributed by Photojournalist Dave Reeder on Friday 10/16. Image developed on 10/17 with AI.
Riders win fifth straight as second-quarter surge and strong defense deliver victory over St. Georges Tech
CAMDEN, Del. — Caesar Rodney celebrated homecoming Friday night with a hard-fought 17-10 victory over St. Georges Tech at Rider Stadium, extending its winning streak to five games in a matchup between two of Delaware’s top high school football programs.
The victory improved the Riders to 5-1, while St. Georges Tech fell to 4-2.
Quarterback Gavin Johnson led a second-quarter surge that gave Caesar Rodney a 14-2 halftime advantage. The Riders then held off a second-half comeback by the Hawks to preserve the victory.
The win marked a successful opening to Caesar Rodney’s Class 3A District II schedule and continued one of the program’s strongest starts in recent seasons.
Dave Reeder captures the action
Delaware LIVE photojournalist Dave Reeder was on the sidelines at Rider Stadium, capturing the intensity, key plays, and homecoming atmosphere surrounding one of the weekend’s most anticipated games.
The following photo gallery offers a closer look at Caesar Rodney’s 17-10 victory over St. Georges Tech.
The first photo shows the ball clearly out of the St. George’s running back’s control before it crossed the goal line or was downed by contact, yet the on-field referees called it a touchdown for St. George’s Tech, the only touchdown of the game.
Event: Caesar Rodney vs. St. Georges Tech football
Date: Friday, Oct. 16, 2026
Location: Rider Stadium, Caesar Rodney High School, Camden
Final score: Caesar Rodney 17, St. Georges Tech 10
Photo gallery: Dave Reeder photojournalist for Delaware LIVE
Photos by Dave Reeder, Delaware LIVE on 10/17/20206
Caption: This was called a touch down for St. Georges. Photo by Dave Reeder
A modern-day prospector promised rural Imperial thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue – but his plan has set off a firestorm of resistance
Sebastian Rucci zoomed in on a map in late 2024, looking closely at a large block of brown earth. The barren plot sandwiched between sprawling alfalfa fields and sleepy desert suburbs was exactly what he’d been searching for – the perfect place to realize his dream of building the largest artificial intelligence datacenter in California.
The dusty expanse wasn’t an obvious location. It was in the Sonoran desert, just north of the Mexican border, where temperatures regularly rose past 100F (37.8C). Water was scarce in the once-booming agricultural area, which gets its supply from the beleaguered Colorado River. And then, there was the city of Imperial – population 22,000 – to win over. As controversial datacenter projects have sprung up across the US, residents were naturally skeptical of a new, energy-guzzling neighbor.
Dalton, GA — President Donald Trump mocked the popularity of the name Mohammad during a campaign rally in Georgia on Friday, drawing renewed criticism over rhetoric targeting Muslims and Middle Eastern communities.
Speaking at Dalton Municipal Airport, Trump was discussing Iran when he joked that if someone did not know a Middle Eastern person’s name, calling them “Mohammad” would supposedly give them a 65% chance of being correct.
Trump then extended the joke while mocking Iran’s political leadership. Reuters reported that the crowd response was muted.
Mohammad, along with spelling variants such as Muhammad and Mohammed, is widely used among Muslims around the world because of its association with the Prophet Muhammad.
The remarks came amid a broader series of attacks by Trump on Muslim and immigrant political figures during the 2026 midterm campaign. He has repeatedly targeted Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar and Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, both of whom are Muslim.
Muslim civil-rights organizations have criticized Trump’s rhetoric, arguing that repeated attacks involving religion, ethnicity and immigration contribute to hostility toward Muslim Americans.
Trump made the comments as he campaigned for Republican candidates ahead of the Nov. 3 elections while continuing to discuss the ongoing U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump has waived key Russia-related sanctions and tariffs passed by Congress just weeks ago, delaying measures designed to cut into Moscow’s energy revenue as its war in Ukraine continues.
Trump signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act on Sept. 18. The law authorized tariffs of up to 100% on major purchasers of Russian oil and gas and targeted countries helping Moscow evade sanctions. Many of those provisions were scheduled to take effect this weekend.
In Friday’s executive order, Trump waived multiple sections of the law, saying the move was in the national interest. The administration also directed the U.S. trade representative to continue monitoring purchases of Russian energy and left open the possibility that the penalties could be restored later.
The move follows Trump’s recent agreement to allow Russian diesel into U.S. and global markets, a decision criticized by a bipartisan group of senators who warned that additional energy revenue could help finance Russia’s war effort.
Russia welcomed the latest decision. Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev has said Moscow and Washington are discussing broader economic cooperation, including energy and technology projects.
The waiver leaves Congress’ sanctions framework intact, but delays some of its most significant immediate penalties.
Washington, DC — Conservative activist Laura Loomer is publicly lobbying to become President Donald Trump’s next White House press secretary after Katie Zacharia’s abrupt departure from the job less than a week after taking over.
“Hear me out: Press Secretary Laura Loomer,” Loomer wrote on X shortly after Zacharia’s exit became public. Loomer later said she believed she would be “amazing” in the role and suggested she would bring documentation to briefings to support administration claims.
Her pitch came after a turbulent several days for the White House communications operation. Zacharia’s first formal briefing lasted roughly 14 minutes and included questions from only three reporters. She subsequently faced scrutiny over her legal credentials and acknowledged that she had failed the California bar exam and never retook it. Reuters reported that Zacharia’s tenure was the shortest for a White House press secretary on record.
Despite seeking the job herself, Loomer defended Zacharia from what she described as excessive criticism, saying Zacharia appeared nervous but had wanted to serve Trump.
The White House had not announced a replacement when Loomer made her proposal. Trump indicated Friday that he was in no rush to fill the vacancy.
Washington, DC — Allies of President Donald Trump are openly discussing martial law and other extraordinary federal actions if they conclude that the Nov. 3 midterm elections are “rigged,” despite no evidence that widespread fraud is occurring and significant legal barriers to presidential intervention.
Peter Ticktin, an attorney for election activist Tina Peters and a longtime Trump acquaintance, said during a Sept. 30 call that “there would have to be martial law” in the event of what he characterized as another rigged election. Other activists have discussed seizing ballots or voting equipment, delaying election activity or invoking emergency powers.
Those proposals would face major constitutional and statutory obstacles. The Constitution gives the president no general authority to postpone federal elections, seize ballots or take over state election systems. The Posse Comitatus Act also generally bars federal troops from civilian law enforcement unless Congress specifically authorizes their involvement.
The Brennan Center for Justice concluded this week that neither martial law, the Insurrection Act nor a national emergency gives a president authority to seize voting machines or station troops at polling places to control an election.
The White House declined to tell Newsweek whether Trump would rule out martial law or emergency powers if allies challenge the midterm results, instead pointing to the administration’s election-security efforts.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 16, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced the selection of 38 research projects in 21 states and Puerto Rico to receive a combined $36 million through the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). These projects will empower the next generation of American researchers in historically underfunded regions to pursue groundbreaking discoveries in areas critical to U.S. scientific and technological leadership.
“Every region of this country has a vital role to play in maintaining America’s global leadership in energy and innovation,” said DOE Under Secretary for Science Dr. Darío Gil. “By supporting talented researchers in historically underfunded areas, we are broadening our scientific pipeline, expanding hands-on opportunities for the next generation of scientists and engineers, and delivering real energy solutions for the entire country.”
Researchers at universities in EPSCoR states will partner with researchers at DOE National Laboratories on four-year projects to advance fundamental research and accelerate scientific discovery in areas of national importance, including chemistry and materials science, fusion energy, nuclear energy, battery technologies, particle physics, and other fields. EPSCoR also expands the geographic reach of competitive, energy-relevant research, helping drive scientific discoveries that support America’s energy future.
Projects were selected through competitive peer review under a DOE Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for Building EPSCoR-State/National Laboratory Partnerships. The EPSCoR program is managed by DOE’s Office of Science through the Basic Energy Sciences (BES) program.
Selection for award negotiations is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding. Before funding is issued, DOE and the applicants will undergo a negotiation process, and DOE may cancel negotiations and rescind the selection for any reason during that time.
Oct. 16, 2026 — Giga Computing, a subsidiary of GIGABYTE and a leader in advanced cooling servers and infrastructure solutions, has announced its collaboration with Scaleway on the launch of AI and cloud platforms using AMD Instinct GPUs, unveiled at ai-PULSE in Paris. Giga Computing provides the servers at the heart of the compute infrastructure, which is part of an integrated ecosystem spanning compute, storage, and liquid cooling. Scaleway’s sovereign cloud services give organizations the capacity to run sensitive and critical workloads.
Expanding Europe’s AI Compute Capacity
Scaleway is building large-scale AI infrastructure in Europe, giving enterprises, research institutions, and AI developers access to high-performance cloud services in EU data centers. The AMD Instinct MI355X GPU adds a new accelerator option to Scaleway’s AI cloud portfolio, letting customers train, fine-tune, and serve large models on an open software stack while keeping data and workloads under EU jurisdiction. The deployment also supports the Cloud Sovereignty Framework, strengthening Europe’s ability to develop and run AI on infrastructure it controls.
Giga Computing at the Core of the Compute Infrastructure
Giga Computing provides the compute infrastructure that enables Scaleway’s AMD Instinct-based AI & cloud services. The multi-rack deployment is built on GIGABYTE G4L3-ZX1-LAT4 DLC servers, each equipped with eight AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs and two AMD EPYC 9005 CPUs delivering the memory capacity and bandwidth needed for large model training and high-throughput inference. Key elements of the platform include:
GIGABYTE GPU Servers: 4U high-density systems engineered for sustained AI and HPC workloads in cloud-scale environments.
AMD Instinct GPU Platform: The MI355X with 288GB HBM3E per GPU, supported by the open AMD ROCm software ecosystem.
Liquid-Cooling Readiness: Server designs built for direct liquid cooling, supporting higher rack power density and stable thermal performance under full GPU load.
Built for AI at Scale
Delivering AI infrastructure at scale requires more than GPU compute alone. Scaleway has brought together a partner ecosystem that spans compute, storage, and cooling: Giga Computing supplies the GPU servers, rack configuration, power, and networking that sit at the core of the infrastructure, Bull handles cluster testing and deployment, VAST Data delivers the data platform, and Motul provides closed-loop direct liquid cooling. The multi-vendor approach lets Scaleway bring a validated, production-ready AI platform to market faster than it could by building each layer in-house.
Giga Computing brings AI server expertise for large-scale deployments, backed by GIGABYTE’s manufacturing and validation. By integrating high-density GPU platforms with the management software and liquid cooling that modern data centers require, Giga Computing is helping Scaleway grow GPU capacity in step with customer demand.
“We are pleased to have Giga Computing alongside us as we expand our AI infrastructure. Their experience with high-density, liquid-cooled servers is particularly valuable for a deployment of this scale. For us, the goal is clear: give customers the compute capacity they need, with an infrastructure we can operate efficiently and grow with their ambitions,” said Albane Bruyas, Chief Operating Officer at Scaleway.
“Scaleway’s AMD Instinct GPU service demonstrates the importance of bringing together high-performance compute, efficient cooling and a robust infrastructure ecosystem to meet the demands of sovereign AI at scale,” said Daniel Hou, General Manager at Giga Computing. “We are proud that GIGABYTE servers form the compute foundation, and we look forward to supporting Scaleway as it expands AI compute capacity for its customers across Europe.”
Giga Computing will continue to collaborate with cloud service providers and technology partners to deliver liquid-cooled, high-density AI infrastructure, helping customers move from deployment to production faster.
GIGABYTE is an enabler of next-generation computing, building a foundation for technology innovations that is robust, optimized, trustworthy, versatile, and accessible. Together with a global ecosystem of partners, we translate emerging technologies into real-world impact—accelerating AI adoption, advancing sustainable computing, and empowering businesses, communities, and individuals to unlock the full potential of computing. GIGABYTE. Upgrade Your Life. See more at www.gigabyte.com.
Jazz in Rehoboth, Crafts at Hagley, Children at the Zoo and fun in Middletown. Image created with AI on 10/16
From Hagley’s popular craft fair and the Rehoboth Beach Jazz Festival to Halloween celebrations, live opera and community events, Delaware offers something for nearly everyone Oct. 16-18.
WILMINGTON, Del. — Fall is in full swing, and Delaware is serving up a weekend packed with entertainment, family adventures, cultural experiences and opportunities to enjoy the outdoors.
Whether you’re looking for a scenic afternoon shopping for handmade crafts, a night of live music, a family trip to a pumpkin patch or something a little spooky, this weekend offers plenty of reasons to get out and explore the First State.
Delaware LIVE has selected 10 events worth considering for your weekend plans, with activities stretching from the Brandywine Valley to the beaches of Sussex County.
1. Hagley Craft Fair brings artisans to the Brandywine Valley
One of Delaware’s favorite fall traditions returns to the scenic grounds of Hagley Museum and Library this weekend.
The annual Hagley Craft Fair brings together artisans from across the Mid-Atlantic region, offering handmade jewelry, pottery, woodworking, leather goods, textiles, fine art and specialty foods.
The event transforms Hagley’s upper property and Soda House into a marketplace where visitors can meet craftspeople, discover one-of-a-kind gifts and enjoy the natural beauty of the Brandywine Valley.
It’s an ideal outing for those looking to get an early start on holiday shopping while enjoying a Delaware autumn tradition.
To Go: Saturday, Oct. 17, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, Oct. 18, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington. Advance admission is $10 for adults and $8 for children ages 6-14. Children younger than 6 and Hagley members are admitted free. Tickets are valid both days. Information: hagley.org.
2. ConCon Expo offers an unusual look at conspiracy theories and pop culture
For something completely different, ConCon Expo arrives in Wilmington on Sunday with a convention exploring conspiracy theories, curiosity and the stories people believe.
Inspired by the mockumentary The Conspiracists, the event features an expo and an evening movie presentation followed by a discussion with cast and crew.
Organizers describe the gathering as an inclusive event that focuses less on whether conspiracy theories are true and more on why people find them fascinating.
Hosted by King Creative and Uncultured Swine, ConCon promises one of the weekend’s more unconventional entertainment experiences.
To Go: Sunday, Oct. 18, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the expo, followed by a film presentation and discussion from 5 to 7 p.m. Siegel Jewish Community Center, 101 Garden of Eden Road, Wilmington. Tickets and details: theconspiracists.com/concon.
3. Rehoboth Beach Jazz Festival fills the coast with music
The beach isn’t just for summer. This weekend, Rehoboth Beach and neighboring coastal communities become destinations for music lovers as the 37th Rehoboth Beach Jazz Festival continues through Sunday.
The annual celebration attracts nationally recognized performers and jazz enthusiasts for several days of concerts, intimate performances and special events.
This year’s featured artists include Boney James, Brian Culbertson, Najee, Gerald Albright and other leading performers.
From smooth jazz to high-energy contemporary performances, the festival offers an opportunity to enjoy world-class music while exploring coastal Delaware during one of its most pleasant seasons.
To Go: Thursday through Sunday, Oct. 15-18, at venues throughout the Rehoboth Beach area. Performance times and ticket prices vary. Information and tickets: rehobothjazz.com.
4. Fifer Orchards Fall Fest celebrates the harvest
For families looking to make the most of fall, Fifer Orchards in the Camden-Wyoming area continues its annual Fall Fest.
Visitors can explore a sprawling corn maze, pick pumpkins and apples, enjoy outdoor attractions and sample seasonal favorites, including apple cider, kettle corn and fresh cider doughnuts.
The farm’s harvest celebration combines traditional agricultural experiences with activities designed to entertain children and adults.
With fall colors, pumpkins and plenty of opportunities for family photographs, Fifer’s remains a popular destination for autumn outings.
To Go: Saturday, Oct. 17, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with final entry at 4:30 p.m. Fifer Orchards, Camden-Wyoming. Admission is $18 online or $24 at the gate for ages 3 and older. Additional charges apply to some activities. Closed Sundays. Information: Fifer’s Fall Fest details.
5. Emo Night Brooklyn brings Halloween energy to The Queen
Wilmington’s nightlife gets an early Halloween celebration Friday when Emo Night Brooklyn arrives at The Queen.
The Halloween Edition transforms the venue’s Crown room into a dance party featuring emo, pop-punk and alternative favorites.
Guests are encouraged to dress in costume and enjoy a high-energy evening filled with the songs that defined a generation of alternative music fans.
The event offers a change of pace from traditional Halloween parties, combining nostalgia with a spirited dance-floor atmosphere.
To Go: Friday, Oct. 16, at 8:30 p.m. Doors open at 8 p.m. The Crown at The Queen, Wilmington. Event listed as 18-plus. Tickets: thequeenwilmington.com.
6. OperaDelaware brings Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’ to The Grand
Opera lovers and newcomers alike have an opportunity to experience one of Mozart’s most celebrated works as OperaDelaware presents Don Giovanni at The Grand Opera House.
The production blends drama, romance, dark comedy and supernatural themes in the story of a charming but reckless nobleman whose actions eventually catch up with him.
Featuring music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the opera offers audiences a chance to experience a major classical production without traveling to Philadelphia or New York.
The performances are sung in Italian with English supertitles.
To Go: Friday, Oct. 16, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 18, at 2 p.m. The Grand Opera House, 818 N. Market St., Wilmington. Tickets listed from $15 to $109. Information: operade.org.
7. Wilmington Rugby hosts Brandywine in regional showdown
For sports fans looking for something beyond football and soccer, Wilmington Rugby Club takes the field Saturday against regional rival Brandywine Rugby Football Club.
Delaware’s oldest men’s rugby club has developed a dedicated following, with its home matches providing an opportunity to experience the fast-paced and physical sport up close.
Rugby combines the movement and endurance of soccer with the contact and strategy of football, creating an exciting atmosphere for spectators.
The fall matchup is a chance to support local athletes and discover a sport that continues to build a following in Delaware.
To Go: Saturday, Oct. 17. The club’s home-match schedule lists Brandywine as the opponent, with a 1 p.m. kickoff indicated in event information supplied to Delaware LIVE. Alapocas Run State Park, 4351 Weldin Road, Wilmington. Confirm kickoff details at wilmingtonrugby.com.
8. Boo at the Zoo offers Halloween fun for families
Halloween arrives early at the Brandywine Zoo, where families can combine a visit with the animals and seasonal activities.
Boo at the Zoo encourages children and adults to wear costumes while enjoying the zoo’s exhibits and Halloween atmosphere.
Unlike some evening Halloween attractions, the zoo’s daytime celebration is designed to be welcoming to younger children.
Families can also take advantage of the opportunity to learn about the animals and participate in educational experiences offered throughout the day.
To Go: Friday through Sunday, Oct. 16-18, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Brandywine Zoo, 1001 N. Park Drive, Wilmington. Activities are included with regular zoo admission unless otherwise noted. Information: brandywinezoo.org.
9. NAMIWalks Delaware brings community together for mental health
One of the weekend’s most meaningful community events takes place Saturday along Wilmington’s Riverfront.
NAMIWalks Delaware brings families, volunteers, mental health advocates and supporters together to raise awareness and funds for programs serving people affected by mental illness.
Organized by the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Delaware, the event emphasizes inclusion, understanding and the importance of community support.
Participants will walk a 3-kilometer route along the Riverwalk, with live entertainment, food trucks and family-friendly activities adding to the experience.
The gathering also offers an opportunity for individuals and families to connect with an organization that provides education, advocacy and support throughout the state.
To Go: Saturday, Oct. 17, with registration beginning at 7:30 a.m. and the 3K walk starting at 9 a.m. Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park, 80 Rosa Parks Drive, Wilmington. Information, registration and donations: namiwalks.org/delaware.
10. Dark Dover Lantern Tours explore the capital’s mysterious past
History takes a spooky turn in Dover as First State Heritage Park offers its Dark Dover Lantern Tour.
The guided evening experience takes participants through the historic heart of Delaware’s capital, sharing stories of murders, mysterious events and characters whose legends remain part of the city’s past.
Against the backdrop of historic buildings and lantern-lit streets, visitors discover a different side of Dover’s long history.
The walking tour offers an alternative to traditional haunted attractions, combining historical storytelling with the atmosphere of an October evening.
To Go: Friday, Oct. 16. First State Heritage Park, Dover. Tickets are listed at $15 per person. Advance registration is required, and space is limited. Confirm tour times and availability through Delaware State Parks reservations or call 302-739-9194.
More weekend fun: Middletown Family Fun Fest
Families in southern New Castle County have another option Saturday when downtown Middletown hosts its Family Fun Fest.
The free community celebration features games, crafts, live music and face painting, offering an affordable outing for families with children.
To Go: Saturday, Oct. 17, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Downtown Middletown, with visitor entrance at 19 W. Green St. Free admission. Information: Middletown Main Street.
Make the most of a Delaware fall weekend
With festivals, live entertainment, outdoor recreation and community gatherings scheduled across all three counties, the Oct. 16-18 weekend offers something for almost every interest and budget.
For families, Fifer Orchards, the Brandywine Zoo and Middletown Family Fun Fest offer opportunities to spend time together. Music lovers can choose between the Rehoboth Beach Jazz Festival, OperaDelaware and a lively night at The Queen.
Those looking for something different can explore ConCon Expo, experience Wilmington Rugby or discover the darker side of Dover’s history.
And for Delawareans seeking to support an important cause, NAMIWalks provides an opportunity to make a difference while enjoying the Wilmington Riverfront.
Whatever your plans, it’s a good weekend to get out, explore and enjoy Delaware.
At University College London (UCL), a group of students applauded when a small supercomputer switched on.
To be fair, they’d just helped assemble it.
We’d handed out cables, invited people to connect the components and encouraged questions. Why did that cable go into this port? What was the difference between Ethernet and Omni-Path? How did the nodes connect to one another?
It was the first stop of our Sustainable Reality HPC & AI Roadshow, hosted in collaboration with UCL and STEP-UP. Over the following week, we travelled to Queen’s University Belfast, Cardiff University, and the University of York: different locations, different participants, but the same enthusiasm for getting hands-on with HPC hardware.
Students examine the cabling at UCL (Image courtesy Cristin Merritt)
Across four events in eight days, Alces Flight and our university partners welcomed 181 participants, including 122 who said this would be their first experience working with HPC.
We weren’t trying to create experts in a day. We wanted people to encounter a real system, discover what interested them and find opportunities to continue.
A Cluster with Another Job to Do
The hardware at the centre of Sustainable Reality had already completed its original role in research computing. Now it had another purpose: introducing people to the infrastructure behind HPC.
We brought genuine cluster components into the room, handed out cables and invited participants to help put everything together. Many were encountering this equipment for the first time. Their questions often started with the basics, but those basics can lead in interesting directions.
Why does a particular cable connect to a particular port? Follow that question far enough, and you’re discussing network architecture and topology. What’s the difference between Ethernet and Omni-Path? That opens questions about bandwidth, latency, and the role of high-performance interconnects. At one location, engineers brought their own interest in photonics into the conversation.
We weren’t expecting anyone to master these subjects in a morning. We wanted to give them a starting point, and the confidence to keep asking questions.
The hardware itself offered a lesson in sustainability. Its original deployment had ended, but its usefulness hadn’t. It had found a new role helping people understand the systems that support research.
A cluster for the competition (Image courtesy Cristin Merritt)
A supercomputer is a record of decisions, from its architecture and networking to the software it runs and the resources it consumes. Giving people the chance to explore the hardware is one way to begin making those decisions visible.
From First Job to Experimentation
After the physical build, participants connected to a separately prepared computing environment, learned basic Linux and Slurm commands, and submitted their first jobs.
I’d initially worried we’d packed too much into the day. At UCL, where we could invite students aged 16 and up, our youngest participants needed most of the allotted time. At the university locations, however, once people successfully submitted a sample job, many were ready to explore independently.
The afternoon activity involved generating images from the Mandelbrot Set. We provided starting regions and instructions, then encouraged people to experiment.
We’d designed the workload for CPUs. Naturally, someone decided to try the GPU.
Others investigated Linux commands, edited job scripts, modified Python, or experimented with colours and coordinates. I watched one participant explain the mathematics behind the Mandelbrot calculation to another.
Those experiments could lead to bigger questions about workload characteristics, parallelism, resource scheduling, and how software uses different hardware. But the participants didn’t need to understand all of that to begin exploring.
Cardiff University during the competition (Image courtesy Cristin Merritt)
Our portable WiFi equipment could support only around 30 to 35 connections, so people worked together around tables. Someone might run a job while others investigated commands, code or possible changes.
And they weren’t working alone. Our Alces team was joined by departmental leaders and research computing specialists from each host institution, including RSEs who helped participants through the exercises and supported their increasingly varied questions.
We provided the starting point. The participants found plenty of directions to go next.
One thing has become clear: Nobody arrives on the same bus.
Some come through computer science or engineering. Others through mathematics, physics, biology or an unexpected research project. That’s why we deliberately welcomed people from different academic backgrounds and didn’t require prior HPC experience.
We also wanted to demonstrate that nobody in HPC knows everything. Research computing depends on different expertise working together, from infrastructure and networking to scientific applications, research software and operations.
That variety was evident throughout the Roadshow. Some participants gravitated toward hardware; others toward mathematics or programming. What caught one person’s attention wasn’t necessarily what interested the person sitting beside them. And that was the whole point.
An Invitation to Continue
We designed Sustainable Reality as a pathway into opportunities already available across the HPC community.
A York student discussing the Mandelbrot set (Image courtesy Cristin Merritt)
Two particular ambitions were to help form or strengthen teams for the CIUK Student Cluster Challenge and to work towards a collective Art of HPC submission in 2027 using images participants created. We also shared information about student programmes, volunteering and other ways to get involved.
With SC26 approaching and the Student Cluster Competition celebrating its twentieth anniversary, our community has created many opportunities worth celebrating. But what happens before someone feels ready to participate?
An introductory event won’t teach everything, and we don’t yet know how many Roadshow participants will pursue further opportunities. We observed that with real infrastructure, enough guidance to get started, and room to experiment, people found questions worth investigating on their own.
Sustainable research computing depends on more than efficient systems and responsible resource use. It also needs people with the knowledge and curiosity to build, operate and improve what comes next. Our cluster has already supported research. Now it’s helping people discover the field behind it.
That’s a second life worth celebrating.
Interested in helping us create more opportunities like Sustainable Reality? We’re always keen to connect with universities, research computing teams and others across the HPC community who would like to get involved. Please email me at cristin.merritt@alces-flight.com to start a conversation.
About the author: Cristin Merritt leads Communications and Partner Ecosystems at Alces Flight, where her work focuses on connecting people, ideas and opportunities across the HPC community.
Acknowledgements: With thanks to the Alces and ConcertIM teams, and our collaborators at University College London and STEP-UP, Queen’s University Belfast, Cardiff University and the University of York, whose expertise, enthusiasm and support made the Sustainable Reality HPC & AI Roadshow possible.
(Feature image at top: The author addressing students during the Sustainable Reality HPC & AI Roadshow.)
Washington, DC — Katie Zacharia is leaving her job as White House press secretary after just five days, following a rocky debut and growing scrutiny over claims surrounding her legal background.
President Donald Trump told reporters Friday that he had given Zacharia an opportunity to “reconsider” the position. A White House official later confirmed she had been “let go,” while the administration publicly described her as “transitioning out” of the role.
Zacharia held only one formal White House briefing. Tuesday’s appearance lasted roughly 14 minutes, during which she took questions from just three reporters before abruptly ending the session. Trump initially defended the performance, saying she had done “very good.”
Her brief tenure became increasingly consumed by questions about her legal credentials. Zacharia graduated from Pepperdine University’s law school in 2011 and had previously described herself as having practiced law, but Reuters found no evidence she had ever been licensed in a U.S. jurisdiction. On Thursday, she acknowledged on Fox News that she failed the California bar exam and never retook it.
Zacharia had previously worked for Trump Media & Technology Group before replacing Karoline Leavitt.
Her five-day stint ranks among the shortest tenures for a senior White House communications official in modern presidential history.
Brownsville, TX — Republican congressional candidate Eric Flores is demanding the removal of a Democratic-funded billboard that prominently highlights President Donald Trump’s endorsement and Flores’ support for ICE, positions he openly embraced earlier in the campaign.
Flores’ attorney sent Lamar Advertising a cease-and-desist letter arguing that the Brownsville billboard deliberately mimics his campaign materials and could mislead voters into believing it was authorized by his campaign.
The billboard, however, identifies Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez’s campaign as its sponsor, and the letter does not dispute its central claims: Trump endorsed Flores in December, and Flores has supported ICE.
The dispute comes as Flores appears to be deemphasizing his association with Trump. The Texas Observer reported that campaign signs prominently advertising Trump’s endorsement during the Republican primary have largely disappeared, with newer materials emphasizing Flores’ biography and professional background instead.
Democrats argue the change reflects the political environment in South Texas, where Trump’s approval has declined and aggressive immigration enforcement has become an increasingly contentious issue.
Flores’ campaign denies it is attempting to hide his Trump ties, maintaining that its objection is solely about the billboard’s design and potential voter confusion.
The billboard remained standing as of Friday despite the legal demand.
Image: Successful Seniors is a Delaware Live feature series of stories about healthy, happy seniors and the options available to caregivers for their loved ones. Image created on 10/15 using AI.
After reluctantly moving to Harmony at Kent, a Navy veteran discovered that independence isn’t always about living alone. Sometimes, it’s about having the support, friendships, and encouragement to live life more fully.
Editor’s Note: Introducing “Successful Seniors”: Delaware LIVE is launching a new series of stories designed to help caregivers and families understand the options available for their aging loved ones. Through personal stories of older Delawareans, we’ll explore how senior living communities, supportive care, and meaningful social connections can help seniors maintain independence, improve their health, and enjoy a fulfilling quality of life. Our goal is to show that growing older doesn’t have to mean giving up what makes life meaningful—sometimes, it opens the door to new opportunities.
By George D. Rotsch, Delaware LIVE News
DOVER, Del. – When Michael Richards moved into assisted living at age 75, he wasn’t happy about it. The Navy veteran had spent his life making his own decisions, living in his own home and maintaining his independence. He wasn’t ready to give that up.
“When I first came here, I hated it, and I was mad at my stepdaughter for putting me here,” Richards recalled.
He arrived at Harmony at Kent on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2025, following a hospitalization and six weeks of rehabilitation.
“I didn’t think I would be ready for this kind of life till I hit 85, not 75,” he said.
But the man who reluctantly arrived in a wheelchair has discovered something unexpected. Assisted living hasn’t meant the end of his independence. In many ways, it has helped him reclaim it.
Today, Richards walks regularly, dances with his neighbors, encourages other residents and enjoys friendships that have transformed his daily life.
When living alone became a risk
Before moving to Harmony, Richards spent much of his time in a recliner watching television.
“In my house I did no exercising,” he said. “I would get up and open the back door to let the dog out — that was my exercise.”
His increasingly sedentary lifestyle contributed to mobility challenges, and several falls made living alone dangerous.
Once, after striking his head, he lost consciousness and awoke to his dog licking his face. Another time, he slid out of bed and couldn’t reach his telephone to call for help.
His stepdaughter recognized that something needed to change.
“She wanted to know that I was safe at home. I was no longer safe at home,” Richards acknowledged.
Leaving his house and giving up his car were difficult decisions. But the move ultimately provided something he had been missing: a safer environment where he could concentrate on getting stronger.
Determined to walk again
Richards arrived at Harmony using a wheelchair, but he had no intention of staying in it.
“My main goal then was to get out of the wheelchair and have somebody take it away,” he said.
He began walking daily, setting goals and pushing himself to improve.
Eventually, he graduated to a walker and then to a rollator, a wheeled walking aid.
“I called my buddy up and I said, ‘Get this wheelchair out of here.'”
Richards credits his progress to determination and the support of therapy professionals. He participates in physical therapy with Powerback three times a week and initially received occupational therapy to regain everyday skills.
Today, he independently showers, dresses and manages his personal needs.
“My stubbornness — that’s what it is,” he said. “If I set a goal, I’m going to reach that goal one way or the other.”
His next goal is to walk without the rollator.
Discovering the power of friendship
While Richards takes pride in his physical progress, he says the greatest surprise has been the friendships he’s developed.
“I’ve made a lot of friends here, a lot of friends,” he said. “I love to talk. I have no problem talking to people that I just meet about anything.”
He has become a familiar personality in the community, sometimes dancing before entering the dining room simply to make his neighbors laugh.
When live music is offered, Richards is often among the first to dance.
He especially enjoys dancing with residents who use wheelchairs, something he learned through more than 25 years of involvement with the American Legion.
When someone tells him they can’t dance because they’re in a wheelchair, he has a ready answer.
“Don’t worry about it. I know what to do.”
The experience brings joy to everyone.
“Basically, I made their day, and it made mine because they were happy and I was happy,” he said.
But friendship also means having someone nearby during difficult moments.
After a close friend at Harmony died, another resident noticed Richards’ sadness at breakfast and sat with him.
“She wanted to know what was wrong,” he recalled.
When he asked how she knew, the woman explained that she could see the pain on his face.
“Yes, they connect and they care,” Richards said.
Independence doesn’t mean doing everything alone
Another important benefit has been help managing his medications.
Richards takes 17 pills throughout the day. Before moving, he sometimes forgot doses despite using multiple pill organizers.
At Harmony, staff members manage his medication schedule, removing a responsibility that had become difficult.
He still makes decisions, sets personal goals and takes care of himself. But assistance with medications allows him to concentrate on enjoying life and improving his health.
He also encourages other residents to remain active.
Watching one neighbor progress from a wheelchair to a walker and then a rollator brought him tremendous satisfaction.
“It makes my heart feel so good to see him using that rollator,” he said.
A different picture of successful aging
For many families, the decision to move a loved one into assisted living is accompanied by uncertainty and guilt.
There is often a fear that leaving a longtime home means sacrificing independence, dignity or happiness.
Richards’ experience offers a different perspective.
At home, he was increasingly isolated, physically inactive and struggling with his health. Today, he has support when he needs it, opportunities to stay active and friendships that give meaning to his days.
Not every senior will experience the same transformation, and assisted living isn’t the right choice for everyone. But for Richards, the combination of support, encouragement and community has made a meaningful difference.
He still remembers how angry he was when he arrived.
“Now, I don’t mind being here at all,” he said.
The man who once believed assisted living was a place for people much older than himself is now dancing, making friends and encouraging others to live more actively.
For caregivers considering what comes next for someone they love, his story offers a reminder: Sometimes, the best way to preserve independence isn’t to keep everything the same. It’s to create the opportunity for a better quality of life.
To Go: Successful Seniors
About the series: Successful Seniors is a Delaware LIVE feature series exploring how older adults maintain independence, purpose and quality of life as their needs change.
Featured resident: Michael Richards, Harmony at Kent senior living community.
For caregivers: When evaluating senior living options, consider safety, medication assistance, opportunities for physical activity, social connections and the independence residents can maintain.
Learn more: Contact Harmony at Kent to inquire about its living services and opportunities to visit the community.
Photo: Salesianum vs. Smyrna at the University of Delaware Stadium on Friday October 10, 2026. Photo by Dave Reeder.
Smyrna-Cape Henlopen, St. Georges Tech-Caesar Rodney and Milford-Red Lion highlight a Friday night schedule that could reshape the postseason picture, while No. 1-ranked Salesianum returns to action Saturday.
WILMINGTON, Del – Delaware’s high school football season reaches an important stage this weekend, with several games carrying playoff positioning, district implications and statewide bragging rights.
The marquee matchup comes in Lewes, where unbeaten Cape Henlopen hosts Smyrna in a meeting of two of the state’s highest-ranked Class 3A programs. But it is hardly the only game worth watching.
St. Georges Tech travels to Caesar Rodney in another matchup between highly ranked 3A teams, while Milford visits Red Lion Christian Academy in a game featuring two 4-1 teams near the top of the Class 2A rankings.
One change from an earlier version of the weekend schedule: Salesianum is not playing Appoquinimink on Friday. The Sals instead visit Hodgson Vo-Tech at 11 a.m. Saturday, while Appoquinimink hosts Souderton of Pennsylvania on Friday. Milford also plays at Red Lion Christian, not Polytech. delawaresportsmedia.com
Cape gets another major test: Smyrna (4-1) at Cape Henlopen (5-0)
Friday, 7 p.m., Legends Stadium, Lewes
This may be the most important game in Delaware this weekend.
Cape Henlopen enters unbeaten after surviving a 24-21 test from Appoquinimink last week. Smyrna comes in ranked among the state’s best despite a 32-26 loss to Salesianum. MaxPreps.com
The matchup gives Cape another opportunity to demonstrate that its undefeated start is built for the postseason, while Smyrna has a chance to respond immediately after its first loss.
With the teams ranked No. 2 and No. 3 in Class 3A by Delaware Sports Media, the result could have significant consequences for seeding and home-field positioning later in the season. delawaresportsmedia.com
St. Georges and Caesar Rodney collide: St. Georges Tech (4-1) at Caesar Rodney (5-2)
Friday, 7 p.m., Rider Stadium, Camden
This matchup has the feel of a playoff game before the playoffs arrive.
St. Georges Tech enters ranked No. 7 in Class 3A, while Caesar Rodney is No. 6, making this one of the weekend’s most evenly matched games on paper. delawaresportsmedia.com
For both programs, the opportunity is straightforward: A win over another quality opponent strengthens the résumé and helps build momentum heading into the final weeks of the regular season.
Milford faces major road test: Milford (4-1) at Red Lion Christian Academy (4-1)
Friday, 7:30 p.m., Red Lion Christian Academy
Milford gets one of its toughest tests of the season against another 4-1 team.
Delaware Sports Media lists Red Lion Christian as the No. 3 team in Class 2A and Milford at No. 5, giving the game immediate significance for postseason positioning. delawaresportsmedia.com
Milford has become one of the more closely followed programs in southern Delaware, and a road win here would strengthen the Buccaneers’ standing as the season moves toward November.
Sussex Central looks to keep building: Dover (1-4) at Sussex Central (4-1)
Friday, 7 p.m., Sussex Central High School, Georgetown
Sussex Central has positioned itself among the better teams in Class 3A and enters Friday ranked No. 5 in the division. Dover, meanwhile, comes in at 1-4. delawaresportsmedia.com
For Sussex Central, this is the kind of game a playoff contender cannot afford to overlook. Another victory would keep the Golden Knights firmly in the postseason discussion.
Middletown looking for traction:W illiam Penn (0-5) at Middletown (1-3)
Friday, 7 p.m., Cavalier Stadium, Middletown
The records make this matchup different from some of the weekend’s headline games, but the stakes remain significant for a Middletown program accustomed to postseason football.
For Middletown, the remainder of the schedule offers little room for error if the Cavaliers hope to build momentum and remain relevant in the playoff conversation.
Lake Forest carries top ranking into Delmar: Lake Forest (4-1) at Delmar (2-3)
Friday, 7 p.m., Delmar High School
Lake Forest has quietly built one of the state’s stronger résumés and enters the weekend ranked No. 1 in Class 2A by Delaware Sports Media. delawaresportsmedia.com
Delmar is 2-3 but remains the kind of opponent capable of making a road trip difficult.
For Lake Forest, the challenge is maintaining its position as the regular season enters its second half.
Salesianum returns Saturday: Salesianum (4-1) at Hodgson Vo-Tech (1-4)
Saturday, 11 a.m., St. Georges Tech High School
Salesianum enters the weekend ranked No. 1 in Delaware by MaxPreps after consecutive wins over Sussex Central and Smyrna. MaxPreps.com
The Sals defeated Smyrna 32-26 last week and now begin district play against Hodgson. The game is scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday. MaxPreps.com
Salesianum’s upcoming schedule also includes Appoquinimink, Middletown, Caravel and William Penn, giving the Sals several opportunities to reinforce their position as one of the teams to beat in Class 3A.
Other games to watch
Appoquinimink, 3-2, hosts Souderton Area of Pennsylvania at 6:30 p.m. Friday, while Polytech, 4-1, hosts St. Mark’s at 7 p.m. Howard visits Tatnall at 4 p.m., and Laurel travels to Indian River at 6 p.m. delawaresportsmedia.com
The weekend should provide a clearer picture of where Delaware’s contenders stand as district schedules intensify and the race for playoff positioning begins to take shape.
To Go Box
What: Delaware high school football weekend
Friday’s featured games:
Smyrna at Cape Henlopen — 7 p.m.
St. Georges Tech at Caesar Rodney — 7 p.m.
Dover at Sussex Central — 7 p.m.
William Penn at Middletown — 7 p.m.Lake Forest at Delmar — 7 p.m.
Milford at Red Lion Christian Academy — 7:30 p.m.
Saturday:
Salesianum at Hodgson Vo-Tech — 11 a.m., St. Georges Tech High School
Why it matters: Several games feature teams near the top of the Class 2A and 3A rankings and could have a significant impact on playoff seeding and postseason positioning.
Democratic ads in multiple congressional races are accusing Republican candidates of “gutting Medicare,” voting for “huge cuts to Medicare” and “cheering on Trump’s attack on Medicare.” Several ads cite President Donald Trump’s major domestic policy law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But the law’s changes to Medicare are narrow in scope and affect relatively few beneficiaries.
The law could have triggered much larger cuts to Medicare, under a 2010 law that requires automatic spending reductions whenever Congress passes legislation that results in higher deficits. But Congress subsequently waived those cuts — as lawmakers of both parties have done regularly in the past.
Recent Democratic attack ads, however, misleadingly frame the OBBBA or Republican policies as a major assault on Medicare.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a Wisconsin Republican, was “the deciding vote to gut Medicare,” claims an ad from House Majority PAC, a group working to elect Democrats to Congress. An ad aired by his Democratic challenger, Rebecca Cooke, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee similarly says he “voted to make huge cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.”
Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat running for reelection in northwestern Ohio, is airing an ad that claims her Republican challenger, Derek Merrin, will “cut your Medicare.”
The Wisconsin and Ohio ads both cite the OBBBA.
In New York’s 3rd Congressional District, which covers part of Long Island, an ad from Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi’s campaign describes his Republican challenger, Mike LiPetri, as “ready to do Trump’s bidding, gutting Medicare.” In the same race, an ad from a Democratic-aligned outside group called Article One PAC criticizes LiPetri for “cheering on Trump’s attack on Medicare.”
The New York ads don’t include any citations for those claims. But it’s unclear what else, other than the OBBBA, they could be referencing.
The Cook Political Report rates the House races in Wisconsin and Ohio as toss ups. The New York district is rated as likely Democratic, though some news outlets continue to describe it as competitive or a race to watch, and both parties are putting millions of dollars into ads there in the closing stretch, according to the ad-tracking service AdImpact.
Medicare, which covers older adults and people with disabilities, is popular with large majorities of the public — and common fodder for often-misleading campaignadsthataccuse one candidate or another of wanting to slash seniors’ benefits.
The OBBBA did include large cuts to federal healthcare spending. But the bulk of those cuts involved Medicaid, the public insurance program for people with low incomes. The law’s changes to Medicare are much narrower, and will not affect benefits or eligibility for the vast majority of enrollees.
“These are important policies,” said Jack Hoadley, a research professor emeritus at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown. “But next to something like the Medicaid changes, they’re pretty marginal.”
We reached out to the Cooke, Kaptur and Suozzi campaigns, as well as House Majority PAC and Article One PAC, about the basis for their claims and haven’t received a response.
As we said, some of the ads cite the OBBBA. It’s possible these claims are also referring to the automatic cuts the law could have triggered indirectly under pay-as-you-go rules. Democratic groups airing other midterm ads in Maine and Colorado, which don’t explicitly cast the cuts to Medicare as “huge,” have cited the PAYGO rules, in part, as backup. But as we’ll explain, Congress routinely votes to ignore those rules, and similar attacks could be made against Democrats for legislation they’ve enacted in the past.
“Derek Merrin will fight to protect Medicare and Social Security benefits for the seniors who depend on them — including his own mother,” Michael Stwarka, a campaign spokesman, told us in a statement, accusing Kaptur of “fearmongering.” “Suggesting Derek would cut Medicare simply because he supports lower taxes is a desperate stretch designed to scare voters.”
The Van Orden and LiPetri campaigns did not respond to our requests for comment.
Democrats aren’t the only ones invoking the OBBBA to attack their opponents over Medicare.
In the New Hampshire Senate race, an ad from a Trump-aligned super PAC makes the contorted claim that the Democratic candidate, Rep. Chris Pappas, voted for “devastating cuts to Medicare” — because he opposed the legislation that waived the automatic cuts that Republicans’ own law could have triggered. But Pappas opposed that legislation for other reasons, and he voted against the OBBBA in the first place.
We’ll explain what the OBBBA actually did when it comes to Medicare, and the context surrounding the pay-as-you-go cuts it could have triggered.
OBBBA’s Changes to Medicare Are Small in Scope
Medicare covers around 70 million people, at an annual cost of about $1 trillion. The OBBBA includes a few provisions that could impact costs or eligibility for certain beneficiaries, though they make up a small subset of total enrollment.
One provision ends Medicare eligibility for certain lawfully present immigrants who previously qualified for coverage, including refugees, asylees and people with Temporary Protected Status, though they would still be required to pay into the program through payroll taxes. (Immigrants without legal status are already barred from Medicare and other federally funded health programs.) Lawful permanent residents, Cuban and Haitian entrants, and citizens of certain Pacific Island nations are still eligible for Medicare under the law.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that will result in 100,000 fewer people having health insurance, and reduce Medicare spending by $5.1 billion over 10 years.
Another provision blocks the implementation of a Biden-era rule that aimed to make it easier for low-income Medicare beneficiaries to access financial assistance through Medicaid, by streamlining enrollment in so-called Medicare Savings Programs. Those programs allow Medicare beneficiaries with low enough incomes to have their premiums and, often, out-of-pocket costs covered by Medicaid.
CBO estimates that OBBBA’s suspension of the rule will lead to 800,000 fewer Medicare beneficiaries receiving those extra subsidies, saving the government $66 billion over 10 years. Most of those savings will accrue to Medicaid, but the change is expected to reduce Medicare spending as well, because higher out-of-pocket costs will likely lead those beneficiaries to seek less care. The Biden administration, in announcing the now-suspended rule in 2023, estimated it could increase Medicare spending by $7.6 billion over five years.
The OBBBA also broadens the category of drugs that are exempt from price negotiations under Medicare. While not technically a cut — it’s expected to increase Medicare spending by $4.9 billion over a decade — beneficiaries who need certain high-cost drugs could pay higher prices than they would otherwise have as a result.
Restricting immigrant eligibility “certainly is a cut, because people are now not getting coverage from a program where they were otherwise going to,” said Jeannie Fuglesten Biniek, deputy director for the Program on Medicare Policy at KFF, a health policy research organization.
She noted this is “the first time that there has been a change to Medicare eligibility that actually took Medicare benefits away from somebody.”
Suspending the Medicare Savings Program rule is “a little trickier,” she said. “It is likely to reduce use of Medicare services, so it does reduce Medicare spending. I think people may have different views on whether that is a cut.”
Fuglesten Biniek said those changes could have a significant impact on the people they affect. Immigrants who lose Medicare will have few other options for coverage unless they’re still working, and low-income beneficiaries may delay or forego care without financial assistance.
But she said the changes are relatively small in scope, especially compared with the bill’s changes to Medicaid. Those provisions, which include work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks, are expected to cut more than $900 billion in federal Medicaid spending over 10 years and lead to 7.5 million more people becoming uninsured, according to CBO.
“The changes to Medicaid are unprecedented. They’re enormous. I think there’s no way to deny that,” she said. “The changes to Medicare are more on the margins — but they are, I think, concentrated among particularly vulnerable beneficiaries.”
Indirect Effects of PAYGO Rules
After the OBBBA’s passage last year, someDemocrats pointed to its potential indirect effects on Medicare.
Under a 2010 law called the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go (or PAYGO) Act, legislation passed by Congress is supposed to be budget-neutral. If Congress ends a year having passed legislation that, on net, will increase the deficit over five or 10 years, it’s supposed to trigger across-the-board cuts in federal spending. Some programs, including Social Security, are exempt, though Medicare is not.
Because the OBBBA is projected to add $3.4 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, CBO estimated last year that it would trigger automatic cuts to Medicare totaling $45 billion in 2026 and more than $500 billion over a decade. Those cuts would take the form of a 4% reduction in payments to healthcare providers serving Medicare patients.
However, Congress has never allowed Statutory PAYGO cuts to actually go into effect, despite passing numerous laws that have added to the deficit since 2010, as the Congressional Research Service said in a September report. In every case, Congress either included a PAYGO exemption in the law itself, or passed subsequent legislation preventing the cuts from taking effect.
That’s what Republicans in Congress did with the OBBBA. The November 2025 law that reopened the government after a six-week shutdown also wiped out any PAYGO effects from the OBBBA. (Van Orden, the Wisconsin representative, voted for it; Merrin and LiPetri were not in Congress.)
Democratic ads may be referring to this when they tag Republicans with supporting “huge” Medicare cuts or “gutting” Medicare. But it’s something both parties have done.
In 2021, for example, a Democratic Congress passed a COVID-19 relief package, the American Rescue Plan Act, that would have triggered $36 billion in automatic Medicare cuts in 2022 and billions more in future years.
“Everybody seems to not worry about it,” Rep. John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat then serving as House Budget Chair, told Politico at the time, referring to the strategy of passing such a bill and then counting on future legislation to avert the steep cuts it would trigger. “I don’t know, I’ve been told it’s pretty much perfunctory that we’ll get it done.”
Congress subsequently passed legislation deferring those cuts, and they never went into effect.
GOP Ad Twists the Facts in Attacking Pappas
Democrats aren’t the only ones claiming their opponents support large Medicare cuts.
An ad from No Going Back PAC Inc. — a group linked to Trump’s main super PAC, MAGA Inc. — uses the PAYGO cuts that could have been triggered by the OBBBA as the basis for an attack on Rep. Chris Pappas, the Democrat running for an open Senate seat in New Hampshire against Republican former Sen. John E. Sununu.
“Pappas went after seniors’ healthcare too, voting to cut Medicare by $500 billion,” the ad’s narrator says. No Going Back PAC has spent more than $1.8 million on the ad since it began airing on TV and streaming platforms Oct. 7.
The claim here is convoluted, and misleading. The ad cites Pappas’ vote against the November 2025 bill that ended the government shutdown, which Democrats had brought about in an unsuccessful effort to force Republicans to extend expiring health insurance subsidies.
As we explained above, that bill also included a provision that negated any PAYGO cuts that would have been triggered by the OBBBA’s impact on the deficit.
But Pappas voted against the November bill for unrelated reasons, as New Hampshire Public Radio reported at the time — namely, that it did not guarantee the extension of more generous subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans.
“Chris Pappas voted against this bill because it didn’t extend the ACA enhanced premium tax credits,” a campaign spokesperson told us.
And, of course, Pappas voted against the OBBBA, which is what created the risk of those cuts to Medicare in the first place. In effect, Republicans are attacking Pappas for the potential consequences of their own bill.
We reached out to the person listed in Federal Election Commission paperwork as No Going Back PAC’s treasurer, as well as to MAGA Inc., and have not received a response.
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Saving A Place For You will host a Nov. 8 Friendsgiving open house to introduce its new veterans housing program and build community support.
DOVER, Del. — A new transitional home for veterans experiencing homelessness is opening its doors in Dover, offering up to a year of stable housing while helping residents connect with services and work toward independent living.
Saving A Place For You, Inc., a Delaware nonprofit founded last year, will introduce the home to the broader community during a Friendsgiving Open House from 3 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 8, at 21 S. Saulsbury Road.
The event will give veterans, families, nonprofit organizations, businesses, potential donors and other community members an opportunity to tour the home, meet the organization’s leaders and learn about housing and support available to veterans.
“Our veterans have given so much in service to our country, and they deserve to know that their service is remembered and that their community has not forgotten them,” founder Electa Thompkins said.
“This home represents more than a roof over someone’s head,” she said. “It represents hope, dignity, and an opportunity for a fresh start.”
A path toward independence
Saving A Place For You was founded in October 2025 by Thompkins and Sadé Truiett in response to the need for safe housing and additional support for veterans navigating the transition to civilian life or experiencing housing instability.
The organization says eligible veterans may stay in its transitional housing program for up to one year. During that period, residents can be connected with supportive services, community resources and personal-development opportunities intended to help them establish longer-term stability.
The organization also announced that it will waive its application fee for veterans seeking transitional housing, an effort intended to reduce one potential barrier for those seeking help.
Building a community of support
Truiett, the organization’s co-founder, said opening the home is only one part of a broader effort to establish partnerships among organizations, businesses and individuals interested in supporting veterans.
“Opening the doors to our transitional home is an important milestone, but our vision extends far beyond the walls of this building,” Truiett said.
“We want to build a community of people and organizations who are willing to stand alongside veterans as they navigate their next chapter.”
The Friendsgiving gathering is intended in part to build that network.
Guests will be able to tour the residence, meet board and leadership members and learn about opportunities to volunteer, donate, share resources or establish community partnerships.
For veterans who may need housing, organizers will also provide information about eligibility, the application process and available resources.
Honoring service, providing hope
The timing of the open house, shortly before Veterans Day and the Thanksgiving season, offers an opportunity to recognize veterans’ service while drawing attention to the need for stable housing and community support.
Saving A Place For You describes its mission with the phrase “Honoring Service, Providing Hope,” emphasizing both immediate housing needs and the longer-term goal of helping veterans regain independence.
Thompkins said the goal is to create a place where veterans feel supported while determining what comes next.
“We want veterans to know that there is a place where they can feel welcomed, supported and encouraged as they take their next steps,” she said.
TO GO
What: Saving A Place For You Friendsgiving Open House
When: Sunday, Nov. 8, 3-6 p.m.
Where: 21 S. Saulsbury Road, Dover
What to expect: Tours of the new veterans transitional home, refreshments, information about housing and support services, meetings with organizational leaders and opportunities to learn about volunteering, donations and community partnerships.
Who can attend: Veterans, community members, veteran-serving organizations, prospective partners, donors and supporters.
Veterans seeking housing: Saving A Place For You is waiving its application fee for veterans seeking transitional housing.
Why Should Delaware Care? In recent years, colleges and universities have spent millions of dollars to retain and recruit student athletes. But some schools, including those in Delaware, struggle to compete for talent with larger athletic programs. Last month, a typically gridlocked U.S. Senate passed a bill aiming to address these concerns.
Despite its recent gridlock, the U.S. Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act with broad bipartisan support last month, even as the bill divided Delaware’s normally lockstep delegation.
U.S. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) is a sponsor and leading Democratic advocate for the bill that his co-sponsor said would “end the Wild West” of college sports.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Delaware) voted against the bill, voicing concerns that it would limit student athletes’ pay and place the burden of enforcing labor rights onto them.
If implemented, the act would grant the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption to sell certain college sports media rights, such as TV and streaming contracts. It also would give colleges and universities the ability to limit athletes’ sponsorship deals, and allow them to mandate that athletes make reports about the deals that earn more than $600.
The bill comes in response to a dramatic change in college sports in which athletes are now able to secure a portion of the massive revenues generated by the industry. In recent years, it has meant that large universities with prominent football programs have spent as much as $50 million annually on name, image and likeness – or NIL – deals to attract and retain top players, according to a report by The Athletic.
The report also found that the teams with the best shot at a college football playoff berth are, by and large, the ones with the biggest budgets.
In a statement released last month, Blunt Rochester noted that the landscape of college sports is evolving, and concluded that Congress should act. But she expressed doubts about the Protect College Sports Act setting rules related to student athletes’ compensation and ability to transfer “at a time when questions about athletes’ labor rights remain unsettled.”
By contrast, Coons said in a statement to Spotlight Delaware that schools, such as the University of Delaware and Delaware State University are “bearing the brunt” of what he called the college sports arms race. He argued Delaware’s schools have less money than the top programs, making it difficult to retain their student athletes.
“It’s more difficult for them to keep the next school sports legend like Joe Flacco from being tempted by the deep pockets of larger schools,” Coons said.
Flacco, a Super Bowl-winning quarterback who currently plays for the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals, transferred to the University of Delaware in 2005 from the University of Pittsburgh. In his first year at UD, he posted respectable passing statistics, even as his team struggled at times. Had he played in the current college football environment, larger schools could have offered him significant financial packages to transfer away from Delaware.
Ultimately, in his second and final year, Flacco broke several UD passing records while leading the team to the national championship game, where it lost to Appalachian State.
Today, UD remains a smaller player in college football, even as it has advanced to the top level of competition, called FBS. In 2024, the university spent more than $400,000 on its men’s teams recruiting. But that was nearly $200,000 less than nearby Temple University, despite their similar enrollment numbers, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity in Athletics Data Analysis portal
That same year, Delaware State University reportedly spent less than $130,000.
Both Delaware universities wrote letters to Coons and Blunt Rochester voicing support for the Protect College Sports Act.
University of Delaware President Laura Carlson. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
In her June letter, University of Delaware President Laura Carlson said the bill would resolve “complex issues that have impacted the governance of collegiate athletics.”
Carlson also urged “express confirmation that student-athletes remain students first rather than employees.”
Delaware State University President Tony Allen expressed similar sentiments in an August letter, stating that “employee status [for student athletes] would force our institutions to choose between meeting football’s payroll and keeping women’s soccer on the field.”
Can Delaware schools compete for athletes?
Universities, the NCAA, and other proponents of the Protect College Sports Act have all claimed that smaller schools are unable to compete with universities with larger budgets for NIL costs.
But not everyone is convinced.
George Diemer, an associate professor at Temple University who studies sports economics, told Spotlight Delaware that he is among several economists skeptical of the competitive balance claims.
Diemer said that using compensation as a way to attract athletes is “probably a healthier, more explicit path to be able to allocate talent” than what universities were doing in the past.
Instead, Diemer sees the arguments for the Protect College Sports Act “as a way to try to control costs” in a landscape where money is flowing more toward student athletes than to coaches.
“They want to be able to get a handle on player compensation,” Diemer said.
The NAACP similarly argued in a recent press release that the intent of the legislation is to limit the pay to student athletes “whose labor powers the multibillion-dollar college sports economy.”
“We cannot continue to ask Black student-athletes to generate billions in revenue on the field and the court while they shoulder all the risk and receive none of the guaranteed security they deserve,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in the release.
The statements come in contrast with the position of Delaware State University, which is Delaware’s only historically black college, or HBCU.
In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, Allen said his university wants a framework that “protects” student athletes, and reiterated the argument that the act would give his institution a “real chance” to compete.
While Blunt Rochester voted against the bill, she did not explicitly share sentiments expressed by the NAACP and Congressional Black Caucus.
Alexis Wrease, a spokesperson for Blunt Rochester, said the senator “believed more time was needed to fully consider the voices of student athletes, their families, advocates, and other key organizations.”
Before it could be signed into law, the Protect College Sports Act still must be considered by U.S. House of Representatives, which is on recess until after the November midterm elections.
Seoul, South Korea — Former Vice President Kamala Harris delivered some of her strongest criticism yet of President Donald Trump’s second administration during a speech in Seoul, warning that democratic institutions in the United States are being placed under increasing strain.
Speaking at a lecture in South Korea, Harris criticized the administration’s attacks on judges, journalists, universities and other institutions that have challenged the president. She argued that democracy depends not only on elections but also on independent courts, a free press and limits on executive power.
Harris also addressed Trump’s repeated efforts to discredit political opponents and government institutions, saying democratic systems become vulnerable when leaders portray disagreement as disloyalty or treat checks on presidential authority as illegitimate.
Her comments represented a more direct political intervention than many of her public appearances since leaving office in January 2025. Harris has generally kept a lower profile while delivering speeches, promoting her memoir and weighing her future role in Democratic politics.
The former vice president also emphasized the importance of U.S. alliances in Asia and argued that American leadership abroad depends partly on maintaining democratic credibility at home.
Trump and his allies have dismissed similar criticism from Democrats as partisan attacks and maintain that his administration is restoring executive authority improperly constrained by political opponents and federal bureaucrats.
Washington, DC — Republican Rep. Thomas Massie is urging President Donald Trump to fire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth before the House considers articles of impeachment accusing him of abusing his office and waging war without congressional authorization.
“Trump should fire Hegseth to avoid Hegseth’s impeachment. It’s the honorable thing to do,” Massie wrote Thursday.
Massie introduced eight articles of impeachment in September alleging that Hegseth violated congressional war powers in the Iran conflict, authorized or enabled extrajudicial killings, failed to adequately protect civilians and suppressed speech. Hegseth and the administration deny wrongdoing.
House Republican leaders delayed consideration of the impeachment measure until after the Nov. 3 midterms. Massie has accused leadership of trying to spare vulnerable Republicans from taking a politically damaging vote and says he will reintroduce the articles during the lame-duck session regardless of the election results.
Pressure on Hegseth has grown even inside his own party. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis has also said Hegseth should be replaced, citing what he called serious management failures at the Pentagon.
The latest criticism comes after Trump publicly overruled Hegseth’s plan to livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan following bipartisan backlash.
Austin, TX — Elon Musk and his political action committee have agreed to settle two lawsuits accusing them of misleading voters with promises of $1 million payments tied to election-related petitions and turnout efforts.
The proposed settlements cover class-action cases brought by Arizona residents Jacqueline McAferty and Joy Harvick. The plaintiffs alleged that Musk and America PAC promoted the 2024 giveaway as a random chance to win $1 million after signing a petition supporting free speech and gun rights, while in reality potential recipients were vetted and selected.
The giveaway was part of Musk’s broader effort to help elect Donald Trump in 2024.
Musk later used a similar tactic during Wisconsin’s 2025 Supreme Court race, promising two $1 million checks to voters who participated in an event supporting Republican-backed candidate Brad Schimel.
A Wisconsin prosecutor declined to bring election-bribery charges against Musk, despite an earlier finding by the state elections commission that his conduct may have violated state law.
The settlement terms remain confidential and still require approval from a federal judge.
The cases are ending as Musk continues to play an outsized role in Republican politics. He has contributed more than $275 million toward GOP efforts ahead of the 2026 midterms, making him the largest known individual donor in the current cycle.
Sacramento, CA — California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed his 100th lawsuit against the Trump administration Thursday, challenging immigration enforcement operations at state courthouses that California says are frightening witnesses, crime victims and others away from the justice system.
The lawsuit targets a Department of Homeland Security policy authorizing civil immigration arrests in and around courthouses. California says ICE courthouse arrests increased more than 550% during the year following the policy change and have been documented in at least 22 counties.
Bonta argues that people should be able to report crimes, testify, seek restraining orders or resolve legal disputes without fearing immigration arrest simply for entering a courthouse. The state contends that the policy interferes with California’s ability to operate its courts and protect public safety.
A federal court vacated ICE’s written courthouse directive in June, but California says arrests have continued. State records cited in the lawsuit show dozens of courthouse-related enforcement incidents during June and July alone.
The Trump administration argues that federal immigration law supersedes state efforts to restrict ICE operations and has dismissed Bonta’s litigation campaign as politically motivated.
California’s lawsuit alleges the policy violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the 10th Amendment, while also invoking a longstanding common-law protection against civil arrests at courthouses.
Scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 22, Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Coons and Republican challenger Dr. Mike Katz appear together at a public forum hosted by the Rotary Club of Wilmington.
One of the most anticipated candidate forums of Delaware’s 2026 election season will bring the U.S. Senate candidates together at the Hotel du Pont as early voting begins.
WILMINGTON, Del. — One of the most anticipated candidate forums of Delaware’s 2026 election season is now scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 22, when Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Coons and Republican challenger Dr. Mike Katz appear together at a public forum hosted by the Rotary Club of Wilmington.
Both candidates have agreed to participate in the noon event at the Hotel du Pont, giving Delaware voters an opportunity to hear directly from the two candidates seeking to represent the state in the U.S. Senate.
The forum will be moderated by Jake Owens, editor-in-chief of Spotlight Delaware, and will feature questions submitted by members of the Rotary Club of Wilmington.
The event comes at a particularly important moment in the election calendar. Oct. 22 marks the beginning of early voting in Delaware, with Election Day scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 3.
For voters who have followed the Senate campaign, the forum provides an opportunity to compare the candidates’ perspectives on issues facing Delaware and the nation.
A chance to hear both candidates
The forum follows earlier discussions about whether Coons and Katz would appear together during the campaign, including an unsuccessful effort by University of Delaware student political organizations to arrange a bipartisan debate.
With both candidates now committed to the Rotary event, attention shifts to the issues voters want addressed and the differences in how the candidates would approach the next six years in Washington.
Coons, who has represented Delaware in the Senate since 2010, is seeking another term. Katz, a physician and former state Senate candidate, is challenging the incumbent.
The Oct. 22 appearance will allow voters to hear their responses to questions in the same setting, offering a direct comparison of their priorities, experience and views.
Rotary builds on successful candidate forum format
The Rotary Club of Wilmington will use the same basic format it employed last week for its candidate forum featuring Democratic state treasurer candidate Ted Lauzen and Republican candidate Mike Ramone.
Club members will submit questions, which will be presented by the moderator.
Although the event will be structured as a candidate forum rather than a traditional debate, it will bring the two Senate candidates before the same audience and provide an opportunity for each to address issues important to Delaware voters.
The Rotary Club has a long history of civic engagement and community leadership in Wilmington, making the gathering a fitting setting for a discussion about Delaware’s representation in Washington.
Public invited to attend or watch online
The Rotary Club of Wilmington is inviting the public to participate in the event, either in person or through an online livestream.
In-person attendance at the Hotel du Pont will be limited by available seating, and advance registration is encouraged.
Those interested in attending should contact Rotary Club of Wilmington Executive Director Ashly Cloud at 302-388-7176 or office@rotarywilmington.org.
For voters unable to attend in person, the forum will be livestreamed on the Rotary Club of Wilmington’s Facebook page.
With early voting beginning the same day, the Oct. 22 forum offers voters a timely opportunity to hear from both candidates before making their decisions in one of Delaware’s highest-profile races.
TO GO BOX: U.S. Senate Candidate Forum
When: Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026, at noon
Where: Hotel du Pont, Wilmington
Candidates: U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, Democrat, and Dr. Mike Katz, Republican
Host: Rotary Club of Wilmington
Moderator: Jake Owens, editor-in-chief of Spotlight Delaware
Format: Questions submitted by Rotary Club members
Attend: Open to the public. Seating is limited; advance registration is encouraged.
Orlando, FL — Former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz has been accused in a new federal civil lawsuit of participating in the sex trafficking of two young women between 2017 and early 2019.
The 38-page complaint, filed Thursday in the Middle District of Florida, alleges that Gaetz and two other men coordinated travel, payments and drugs to obtain commercial sex acts from women identified as Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2. The lawsuit says both were recent high school graduates at the time.
Gaetz denied the allegations, saying much of the conduct described is false and that he looks forward to questioning the plaintiffs under oath.
One of the other defendants, former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, previously pleaded guilty to six federal crimes, including sex trafficking of a child, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He was later sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.
The lawsuit comes after a bipartisan House Ethics Committee investigation concluded in 2024 that there was substantial evidence Gaetz paid women for sex and drugs. The committee also said Gaetz had repeatedly and incorrectly claimed a separate Justice Department investigation had “exonerated” him.
Gaetz resigned from Congress in November 2024 and later withdrew from consideration to become attorney general under President Donald Trump.
The new allegations have not been proven in court.
Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition activities range from music and soccer to survivor support, wellness programs and Halloween fundraisers through Oct. 31
WILMINGTON, Del. — Breast Cancer Awareness Month may be halfway over, but the Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition has a busy schedule of events, support programs and community fundraisers planned across the state through the end of October.
After major early-month events including Dewey Goes Pink and the coalition’s Monster Mile Walk for a Cause at Dover Motor Speedway, the focus now shifts to a series of smaller community events and programs that illustrate the broader work of the organization.
DBCC’s mission extends beyond October fundraising. The organization works year-round to increase access to breast cancer screening, provide education and patient navigation and offer programs for people diagnosed with breast cancer and their families.
That means the final weeks of October include everything from music and high school soccer to cooking, mental-health discussions, survivor groups and an overnight nature retreat.
Community events keep Delaware pink
Community partners have scheduled a series of fundraisers benefiting DBCC across all three counties.
On Thursday, Oct. 15, Twisted Irons Craft Brewing Co. is scheduled to hold its Drive Out Cancer event in New Castle County.
A day later, Sussex County joins the effort with the first Pink Out Party at Big Chill Surf Cantina on Friday, Oct. 16. Additional Sussex County businesses are supporting the coalition throughout October, including Russo by the Sea Italian Market and the East Sussex Moose Lodge.
On Saturday, Oct. 17, Pink Gumbo 6 will bring music, breast cancer awareness and survivor stories to The Delaware Contemporary on Wilmington’s Riverfront.
The event, presented by 3G Management and Entertainment, runs from 6 to 9:30 p.m. and features local performers, vendors and speakers. A portion of the proceeds will benefit DBCC.
The event combines the traditional pink associated with breast cancer awareness with what organizers describe as a “gumbo” of musical styles, cultures and people united around awareness and early detection.
Schools and sports join the campaign
Students are also helping turn October pink.
The Concord High School boys soccer program will hold its fifth annual game supporting DBCC on Tuesday, Oct. 20, beginning at 3:30 p.m. at Concord High School, 2501 Ebright Road in Wilmington.
The team has been raising money throughout the season and plans to present its donations during the event.
That same week, golf and social events will continue the fundraising effort in Sussex and New Castle counties.
Cripple Creek Golf & Country Club in Dagsboro is hosting its Go Pink or Go Home activities Oct. 20 and 21, including a Pink Champagne on Ice gathering. DBCC lists the events among its October community partnerships.
DBCC also has a Play Fore Pink golf event scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 22, at Newark Country Club. The event includes golf, lunch, dinner and a silent auction. Individual golf registration was listed as sold out on DBCC’s registration page, although foursomes and dinner-only participation remained available when the page was reviewed.
Newark will remain part of the awareness campaign on Sunday, Oct. 25, when the 10th annual DeerPark Goes Pink 5K is scheduled to raise money for the coalition. DBCC lists the longtime event among its New Castle County community fundraisers.
Support continues beyond fundraising
Some of the coalition’s most significant October activities will happen away from races and fundraising events.
DBCC’s calendar includes regular Breast Cancer Conversation support sessions, Young Survivors in Action programming and My Sister’s Keeper gatherings, along with wellness and nutrition programs.
A Breast Cancer Conversation is scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 15, followed by a virtual Young Survivors in Action healing meditation Saturday, Oct. 17.
On Tuesday, Oct. 20, DBCC will host its Forever Fighters program, a Yes2Health In the Kitchen session and a My Sister’s Keeper gathering in Georgetown.
A Yes2Health Active Cooking cookbook club for breast cancer survivors follows Wednesday, Oct. 21.
Additional Breast Cancer Conversation and My Sister’s Keeper programs are scheduled Oct. 27, with the New Castle My Sister’s Keeper group meeting from 6 to 7 p.m.
Mental health part of survivorship
The coalition also is using Breast Cancer Awareness Month to focus on the emotional effects of cancer.
Its “In the Loop” cancer survivorship and mental health series continues Wednesday, Oct. 28, with a session titled “Stress, Mind, and Body — What do I have in front of me?”
The programming reflects a broader approach to survivorship that extends beyond medical treatment to emotional health, nutrition, social connection and long-term wellness.
Nature retreat closes out the month
Breast cancer survivors will have another opportunity to connect during DBCC’s Nurture with Nature overnight retreat Oct. 30 and 31 at Ashland Nature Center in Hockessin.
The Nurture with Nature program uses outdoor activities as a way for survivors to connect with one another while experiencing hiking, nature and other outdoor activities.
The overnight program includes time at Ashland Nature Center, a morning hike and a session on mindful birding and forest bathing.
The program is one of several DBCC initiatives designed specifically around life after a breast cancer diagnosis.
Halloween ends month with a cause
Breast Cancer Awareness Month concludes with a Halloween-themed fundraiser in Smyrna.
The Halloween Hustle 5K Run/Walk is scheduled for 8 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 31, at Smyrna High School.
Participants are encouraged to wear costumes, and runners, walkers, families and first-time participants are invited. Proceeds from the event benefit DBCC.
The event provides a fitting conclusion to a month in which Delaware communities have supported the organization through races, restaurants, golf tournaments, athletic events, concerts and social gatherings.
Awareness can lead to action
For DBCC, October also provides an opportunity to remind Delawareans that breast cancer awareness should ultimately lead to screening and early detection.
The coalition helps residents schedule mammograms and navigate financial, transportation, insurance and language barriers. Its Women’s Health Screening Program can connect uninsured or underinsured Delawareans with free or reduced-cost screening programs and offers transportation and interpretation assistance when needed.
DBCC also provides breast health education and support resources in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole.
While October brings additional attention to breast cancer, the coalition’s programs and support services continue throughout the year.
TO GO BOX
What: Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition Breast Cancer Awareness Month events and programs
When: Events continue through Oct. 31
Upcoming highlights:
Oct. 15 — Twisted Irons Drive Out Cancer
Oct. 16 — Pink Out Party at Big Chill Surf Cantina
Oct. 17 — Pink Gumbo 6 at The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington
Oct. 20 — Concord Raiders Boys Soccer fundraiser
Oct. 20-21 — Go Pink or Go Home events at Cripple Creek Golf & Country Club
Oct. 22 — Play Fore Pink at Newark Country Club
Oct. 25 — 10th annual DeerPark Goes Pink 5K in Newark
Oct. 27 — Breast Cancer Conversation and My Sister’s Keeper programs
Oct. 28 — In the Loop cancer survivorship and mental health program
Oct. 30-31 — Nurture with Nature overnight retreat at Ashland Nature Center
Oct. 31 — Halloween Hustle 5K at Smyrna High School
Screening help: Call the Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition at 1-888-672-9647 for help scheduling a mammogram or arranging screening-related transportation or interpretation.
More information: Visit the Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition’s website for event registration, support programs, volunteer opportunities and screening resources.
Tonight’s Citizen of the Year dinner celebrates WSFS leader Rodger Levenson while highlighting Scouting’s growing role in developing young leaders, strengthening families and serving communities across Delmarva.
WILMINGTON, Del. — When Delaware business and community leaders gather Thursday evening, Oct. 15, to recognize Rodger Levenson as Scouting America’s 2026 Delaware Citizen of the Year, the occasion will be about more than honoring one of the state’s prominent business executives.
It will also be an opportunity to celebrate the return of a familiar institution to a more visible role in Delaware communities.
Scouting America is experiencing renewed interest among families seeking opportunities for their children to develop leadership skills, build friendships, explore the outdoors and learn the importance of serving others.
For Del-Mar-Va Council, the annual recognition event offers an opportunity to connect the accomplishments of today’s business and civic leaders with the development of tomorrow’s.
Levenson, chairman, president and CEO of WSFS Financial Corp., is the honoree for the Oct. 15 dinner.
The award recognizes the kind of leadership, personal responsibility and commitment to community that Scouting seeks to instill in young people.
A familiar organization finds new purpose
Scouting has been part of Delaware life for more than a century, but today’s organization looks different from the one many parents and grandparents remember.
Camping, hiking, earning merit badges and learning outdoor skills remain important. However, Scouting also introduces young people to technology, engineering, environmental conservation, career exploration and public service.
Perhaps more important, it gives children the opportunity to practice leadership rather than simply learn about it.
Scouts organize activities, solve problems, work in teams and take responsibility for projects. As they grow older, those responsibilities become more demanding, preparing them to make decisions, overcome setbacks and lead others.
And in an increasingly digital world, those face-to-face experiences are attracting renewed attention.
In an August interview with Delaware LIVE, Ray Teat, Scout executive for the Del-Mar-Va Council, said participation was recovering after the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The number of scouts, scouting units and families involved with Scouting is once again growing following a challenging time for the program coming out of COVID,” Teat said.
Tim Holly, president of the council’s executive board, said parents are increasingly recognizing the value of activities that encourage children to interact, become more independent and develop confidence.
“Parents are looking for ways to reconnect their children with other kids and with their communities,” Holly said. “They want them outside, interacting face to face, learning how to work with other people and building confidence through real experiences.”
More than a comeback — a commitment to growth
The renewed interest is supported by a deliberate effort to expand Scouting’s presence throughout the Delmarva Peninsula.
The Del-Mar-Va Council launched a Campaign for Growth covering 2024 through 2026, establishing an ambitious goal of nearly doubling youth membership by the end of 2026.
The council currently reports more than 3,500 young people participating in over 165 Scouting units, supported by approximately 1700 volunteers across 14 counties in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. Those figures describe the scale of the program, although the council has not publicly established that its membership-doubling goal has been reached.
In April, more than 1,200 people attended the Del-Mar-Va Council Jamboree at Akridge Scout Reservation near Dover. The gathering, the council’s first jamboree since 2016, brought together Scouts from Delaware and neighboring states for outdoor activities, demonstrations and an opportunity to share the Scouting experience with the public.
It was another indication that the organization is working to reconnect with families and demonstrate how its programs fit the needs of today’s young people.
Business leadership and community service
The Citizen of the Year dinner reinforces another part of Scouting’s mission: connecting individual success with responsibility to the wider community.
By recognizing leaders such as Levenson, the organization highlights the values of leadership, integrity and service that it encourages young people to develop.
Those connections are particularly relevant to Delaware’s business community.
Employers regularly emphasize the importance of communication, teamwork, problem-solving, dependability and the ability to work with people from different backgrounds.
These are skills Scouting seeks to develop through practical experiences, often long before a young person enters college or the workforce.
Whether organizing a food drive, leading a camping trip, completing an Eagle Scout service project or helping younger Scouts learn new skills, participants are expected to contribute to something larger than themselves.
The program also depends heavily on adult volunteers, local organizations, businesses and charitable supporters who provide the resources needed to make those opportunities available.
That makes the Citizen of the Year dinner more than a recognition ceremony. It is also an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between Scouting and the community leaders whose support can help the organization reach additional families.
An investment in Delaware’s future
For a new generation of Delaware families, the appeal of Scouting may be rooted in something remarkably simple: children need opportunities to experience the real world, test their abilities and discover what they can accomplish.
Those experiences can involve an outdoor adventure, a difficult team assignment, a community service project or a first opportunity to lead a group.
They can also introduce young people to careers, interests and responsibilities they might otherwise never encounter.
Scouting’s expansion to serve both boys and girls in its core programs has opened additional opportunities, while its continued emphasis on character, citizenship and personal responsibility gives the organization a consistent mission.
For Delaware’s communities, the benefits extend beyond individual participants. Scouts help maintain public spaces, support local charities, assist community organizations and contribute thousands of volunteer hours through their activities.
The result is a youth development program that seeks to strengthen both the individuals participating and the communities they serve.
Recognizing today’s leaders, preparing tomorrow’s
Tonight’s tribute to Levenson provides a timely illustration of that connection.
Honoring an accomplished Delaware business leader is one way to celebrate the importance of service and leadership. Giving more young people the opportunity to develop those qualities is the larger mission.
With growing family interest, an expanding network of programs and an ambitious membership campaign, Scouting America is working to restore and strengthen its place in Delaware’s community life.
The uniforms, campfires and merit badges may be what people recognize.
But behind those traditions is a broader purpose: helping young people become confident, capable and responsible adults who will someday lead businesses, volunteer organizations, neighborhoods and communities.
That is the larger message behind tonight’s award dinner: Scouting America is building momentum again, and Delaware’s future leaders are the reason it matters.
To Go | Delaware Citizen of the Year
Event: Scouting America Delaware Citizen of the Year recognition dinner
When: Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026
Honoree: Rodger Levenson, chairman, president and CEO of WSFS Financial Corp.
Host: Del-Mar-Va Council, Scouting America
Regional reach: More than 3,500 youth, 165 Scouting units and 1700 volunteers
Palatine, IL — An Illinois teenager has been arrested after prosecutors say he planned a mass shooting targeting a Hindu temple in the Aurora area and circulated a racist manifesto describing his intent to kill as many people as possible.
Alexandros Paporakis, 19, faces felony charges including making a terrorist threat and unlawful possession of weapons. Authorities arrested him Sunday as he left his home after coworkers reported disturbing messages and an eight-page document allegedly titled “Why I fought: A.K.A. (Aurora Shooter’s Manifesto).”
Prosecutors say the document contained racist and antisemitic language targeting Indian, Jewish and Black people and described the author as a white supremacist and neo-Nazi who frequently fantasized about mass murder.
Police said a search of Paporakis’ home uncovered an unserialized AR-style rifle, loaded magazines, ammunition, Nazi-related items and a gas canister marked with an anti-South Asian slur.
Investigators believe the alleged attack was intended for Sunday after Paporakis reportedly told coworkers the day would be “special.” Authorities have not publicly identified the specific temple they believe was targeted.
India’s government condemned the alleged plot and called for a thorough investigation and stronger protections against hate-motivated violence.
A judge ordered Paporakis held in custody pending trial. He is scheduled to return to court Oct. 30.
Weekend Spotlight is a round-up of the five best events to check out in Delaware over the coming weekend, curated by Arts + Culture Editor Cannon Taylor. This edition covers Oct. 16-18, 2026. What should be on our radar for future editions? Let us know!
Ancient Aliens
Embrace delusion at conspiracy theory convention
Sunday, Oct. 18. Siegel JCC. 101 Garden of Eden Road, Wilmington. 10 a.m.-7 p.m. General Admission: $10.
The team behind Delaware-filmed flick “The Conspiracists” are bringing the wild-haired, frenetic fun of the History Channel with ConCon, a conspiracy theory convention ripped straight from the film.
More in the vein of “Avril Lavigne is a clone” than “9/11 was an inside job,” the event promises an escape from concerning conspiracy theories permeating politics and online echo chambers.
Practice your Bigfoot roar ahead of the contest, become a model in a tin foil hat fashion show, hear about the escapades of Delaware’s paranormal researchers and see if you can suss out which conspiracies are real or fake in a game show competition. The event culminates in a screening of “The Conspiracists” and a Q&A with the cast.
Off 24 performs at the CAMP Rehoboth Block Party 2025. The band returns for this year’s block party on Oct. 18. | PHOTO BY G. MICHAEL BEIGAY, COURTESY OF CAMP REHOBOTH
Sunday, Oct. 18. Second Block of Baltimore Ave., Rehoboth Beach. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Free.
CAMP Rehoboth’s mission to “Create A More Positive Rehoboth” must be paying off, because more than 4,000 people flocked to the coastal town last year for the LGBTQ+ nonprofit’s annual block party.
This year, the free event will feature local artisans selling goods ranging from sea glass art to body care products. Drag performers Roxy Overbrooke and Amethyst Diamond will emcee the stage. Between their antics will be musical performances from local bands and actors from Clear Space Theatre Company.
Children are welcome at the block party, which will feature activities like chalk art, carnival games and button-making.
The Milton Theatre’s annual Zombie Fest returns Oct. 17. | PHOTO COURTESY OF MILTON ZOMBIE FEST
Saturday, Oct. 17. Hudson Fields. 29763 Eagle Crest Road, Milton. 2-7 p.m. Tickets: $5 online, $10 at gate. Kids 12 and under free.
Do your limbs keep falling off when you’re taking a nap in your coffin? Do you express yourself best through ghoulish shrieks? Do you have an insatiable craving for brains? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are the perfect participant for The Milton Theatre’s annual Zombie Fest.
The theme this year is “Undead Disco,” so dust off your bell bottoms and dancing shoes and get ready to party to live bands and DJs. If you don’t have the makeup to zombify yourself at home, artists from The Salon Professional Academy of Delaware can hook you up.
Beyond dancing, the day will feature a costume contest, circus acts like fire breathing and stilt walking and a “Pyrocalypse” fireworks show at 7 p.m.
Delaware Friends of Folk, the organization behind the 35th annual Delmarva Folk Festival, sure knows how to advertise its acts.
“This band has given the blues a fresh kick in the a**,” the organization writes about Delaware band Lower Case Blues, which will be closing out the festival this year.
The weekend will feature many more regional folk acts, a collaborative poem written over the course of the festival and a contest on Friday to determine Delaware Friends of Folk’s 20th “Folk Hero,” an ambassador of the genre. The title is currently held by Milford singer-songwriter Jean Bayou, who will host the contest.
Come to The Grand to see ‘a bad man get dragged to hell’
Opera Delaware stages “Don Giovanni” Oct. 16 and 18. | PHOTO BY JOE DEL TUFO/MOONLOOP PHOTOGRAPHY, COURTESY OF OPERA DELAWARE
Friday, Oct. 16 and Sunday, Oct. 18. The Grand Opera House. 818 N. Market St., Wilmington. Friday 7:30 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m. Tickets: $29-109.
There’s nothing more satisfying than watching a villain get his comeuppance. That’s never been more true than in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni,” which Opera Delaware will perform this weekend.
The opera follows the titular womanizer, whose body count numbers over 2,000 partners across Europe, as he repeatedly skirts the consequences of his lechery — that is, until a fateful swordfight. Afterwards, Giovanni is haunted by the statue of the man he slayed.
If you’ve never been to the opera before, there’s no better place to start than with “Don Giovanni.” As Opera Delaware puts it in one of its advertisements, it’s “kinda chic to watch a bad man get dragged to hell.”
The Middle East and North Africa: Shaping the next decade
3
February 2027 — 08:30 TO 19:15 GMT
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
This conference convenes leading policymakers, scholars, and public intellectuals to explore the forces likely to shape the Middle East and North Africa over the coming decade.
This conference convenes leading policymakers, scholars, and public intellectuals to explore the forces likely to shape the Middle East and North Africa over the coming decade.
The Middle East and North Africa is experiencing a period of profound transformation. The regional order is being reshaped by multiple regional wars, geopolitical competition, technological change, economic diversification, and evolving relationships between states and societies.
Traditional alliances are becoming less predictable as regional powers pursue flexible partnerships across competing geopolitical camps. Artificial intelligence and advanced infrastructure are creating new opportunities for economic transformation, while also introducing new forms of technological and strategic dependence. Political leaders are advancing models of governance centred on state capacity, national development and technocratic effectiveness, even as citizens confront economic insecurity, demographic pressures and declining trust in political institutions.
Questions discussed at the conference include:
Are new structures of regional order emerging, or is strategic fluidity becoming a permanent condition?
How will automation and artificial intelligence affect employment, education and inequality?
Will new technological and investment corridors promote regional integration or deepen fragmentation?
How are concepts of citizenship, national identity and political legitimacy changing?
What competing political visions could define the region over the next decade?
To what extent are public attitudes shaping foreign and domestic policy?
Washington, DC — A conservative organization founded by former Vice President Mike Pence is urging President Donald Trump to abandon his deal allowing Russian diesel into the United States, joining a growing group of Republicans questioning the administration’s sharp reversal on Russian energy policy.
Advancing American Freedom said the agreement would send money to Russian President Vladimir Putin while Moscow continues its war against Ukraine.
“The way to cheaper diesel is more American drilling and refining,” the group wrote in a letter to the administration. “Paying Putin blood money for fuel America already exports is wrong, illegal and stupid.”
Trump announced the deal with Putin last week as part of an effort to lower diesel prices ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections. The administration temporarily eased sanctions on Russian diesel, allowing shipments through April 2027.
Several Republican senators have also objected, arguing the arrangement may conflict with a 2022 law banning Russian energy imports and could undermine recently enacted sanctions designed to reduce Moscow’s war revenue.
Trump has defended the deal as necessary to lower costs for American consumers, farmers and truckers.
Energy analysts have questioned how much relief it will actually provide. Russia’s promised shipments represent a relatively small portion of U.S. diesel consumption, while the agreement could generate billions of dollars in additional revenue for Moscow.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump’s job approval has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded for him in a Fox News poll, while the network’s own election analysis says Democrats are positioned to take control of the House.
The latest Fox News survey found just 36% of registered voters approve of Trump’s job performance, while 64% disapprove. His approval had been stuck at 39% since May but has now fallen further, with declines particularly pronounced among younger voters, lower-income households, non-White voters and people without college degrees.
Trump is also struggling badly on the economy. Seventy percent disapprove of his economic performance, 77% disapprove of his handling of inflation and 69% disapprove of his tariff policies. Only 18% of voters say their families are financially better off than two years ago.
The political consequences are showing up in congressional polling. Fox found Democrats leading Republicans 54%-45% on the generic House ballot, while its latest Power Rankings say Democrats are poised to win control of the chamber and have shifted 20 additional races in their direction.
Fox currently rates 215 seats Democratic and 201 Republican before toss-ups are resolved. Its analysis says Democrats have a wider and more durable generic-ballot advantage than they held before the 2018 blue-wave election.
Washington, DC — Former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene delivered an unusually sharp rebuke of the Trump administration Wednesday, dismissing its investigation into Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar as “bullsh*t” and accusing the White House of focusing on political spectacle instead of everyday economic concerns.
Greene said she remains deeply opposed to Omar on abortion, gun rights and other policies, but questioned why the administration is prioritizing an effort that could potentially strip Omar of citizenship and deport her.
Her comments came shortly after The Wall Street Journal reported that the federal probe is examining whether Omar or her late father misrepresented her age during the immigration process in the 1990s. Federal agents searched Omar’s Washington-area home Monday as part of the investigation.
Greene argued that the case does nothing to lower gas prices, make health insurance more affordable, reduce grocery bills or keep U.S. troops out of foreign wars. She also criticized the administration over the still-unreleased Epstein files.
The intervention is striking because Greene and Omar have been bitter political adversaries for years.
Trump, meanwhile, denied directing the investigation but continued attacking Omar personally, calling her “totally crooked” and a “terrible person.” Omar has denied wrongdoing, and no charges have been announced.
Why Should Delaware Care? Hospital systems across the state are competing to serve a rapidly aging population and meet their care needs. At the same time, they are looking to close access gaps in the southern part of the state as Sussex County becomes a retirement destination for many in surrounding states.
Bayhealth leaders unveiled multiple expansion projects on Wednesday, including a new hybrid emergency room similar to its campus off Route 9 near Harbeson.
It also provided more details about its already announced $250 million expansion to its main campus in Dover.
It comes as healthcare systems across the state are preparing for an influx of retirees who require more frequent and complex care, particularly in Sussex County.
At a Wednesday press conference, Bayhealth leaders showcased seven projects that have already been approved or still require state regulatory approval.
Only one of those projects will need to be approved by the Delaware Health Resources Board, which approves large hospital expansions, according to the system’s chief operating officer, Kyle Benoit.
All of the projects are slated to be up and running by the end of 2029, but many of them will be complete before that date, likely by the end of 2027.
Bayhealth held the press conference at its main campus in Dover, often called Kent General, where the hospital’s CEO Terry Murphy and Benoit outlined the new projects and their potential impact in the region.
The hospital system is marketing the new renovations which will cost at least $373.7 million as the “Next Wave.” During the press conference, Murphy pointed to the rapidly aging state and the hospital’s aim to prepare for that demographic shift.
Bayhealth CEO Terry Murphy said the growing health needs of an aging population will require his health system to make upgrades. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
What are the projects?
Nearly all of the projects and expansions are in Kent and Sussex counties, except for a new hybrid facility in Smyrna, which is on the New Castle County side of the bifurcated town.
Some of the projects announced on Wednesday had already been publicly known, such as the $250 million Kent General expansion slated to bring six additional floors to the hospital, as well as dozens of new patient beds.
Additionally, the Kent General emergency room is also slated for renovations as the hospital plans to build 10 new low-acuity emergency room bays, as well as five behavioral health rooms, typically used for those experiencing a mental health crisis.
Other projects like a new hybrid emergency department in Smyrna will cost Bayhealth $52.6 million and operate 14 emergency bays. The facility would mirror another hybrid emergency department run by Bayhealth near Harbeson that offers emergency and walk-in care for patients.
Bayhealth already operates an emergency room in Smyrna off Carter Road, and said on Wednesday it intends to relocate those services to the new location, which would be located near the Smyrna Rest Stop on U.S. Route 13.
The old facility would be repurposed and Bayhealth would “backfill” other medical needs using the space. Benoit said Bayhealth intends to file a letter of intent with the Delaware Health Resources Board on Wednesday, and that it hopes to send its full application to the board in January 2027.
Separately, Benoit said the health system would expand its services and use of the Blue Hen Mall, which he said the hospital already mostly owns. In November, he said the hospital will purchase the remaining space it doesn’t own within the mall.
Benoit added businesses and operations already leasing with Bayhealth, like a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs clinic, would continue to operate as normal and the hospital would honor its leases.
As for the hospital’s Sussex County locations, Bayhealth’s hybrid emergency room near Harbeson would also receive a $3.5 million renovation that would double its capacity.
Bayhealth would build new medical offices at its campus in Milford, which would bring an additional 105 specialty exam rooms close to the relatively new facility. According to a slide during the press conference, the new medical offices would cost $39.1 million.
Murphy pointed to Bayhealth’s reuse of spaces that otherwise may have not been active or serving the community, and how the hospital has transformed the spaces into that benefit patients.
“They’re serving the community without knocking it down,” Murphy said.
Downstate arms race
In recent months, Delaware’s hospital systems have been at odds and publicly clashing over proposals below the C&D Canal as they prepare for an onslaught of retirees.
Bayhealth in Dover, TidalHealth in Seaford and Beebe Healthcare in Lewes are all challenging the two downstate campuses, as the systems look to protect what has historically been their territory. Long the dominant player in northern Delaware, ChristianaCare has increasingly invested below the C&D Canal in recent years.
Spotlight Delaware reported in August that Bayhealth, Kent County’s primary health system, submitted a letter to regulators asking them to halt two proposed ChristianaCare campuses in Georgetown and Camden.
Those regulators, who sit on the Delaware Health Resources Board, were set to discuss that letter in their meeting on Aug. 25, but tabled the discussion to allow for some additional internal review.
For decades, Delaware’s three major health care systems largely fit into geographic monopolies: ChristianaCare serving New Castle County, Bayhealth serving Kent County and Beebe Healthcare in Sussex County.
But over the last five years, a health care arms race heated up between Bayhealth, Beebe and now TidalHealth, coming up from Salisbury, Md. They have all built or broken ground on major projects in locations, such as Lewes, Milton or Millsboro in recent years.
It follows a post-COVID population boom in Sussex County. The region is now designated as a “Medically Underserved Area” by the federal government, with projections showing that the population will increase from 237,000 in 2022 to over 361,000 by 2050. The county is also rapidly graying, as the population growth is largely driven by retirees who will demand more health care needs.
The arrival of ChristianaCare, which to date only had primary care offices in Milford and Rehoboth Beach, will bring needed resources, but also new competition to the crowded market.
But the downstate hospitals are hoping to convince the Delaware Health Resources Board that ChristianaCare’s plans would flood the market and offer redundant services.
In 2019, the board was central in a debate over whether to allow Beebe to build a freestanding emergency room in Georgetown. It ultimately denied that project, saying it was too close to Bayhealth’s Milford campus and Nanticoke Hospital in Seaford.
The board was also expected to be critical of plans by Bayhealth to build its own freestanding emergency room in Milton, which led the Dover-based health system to pull its plans.
Both of those projects predated the population surge that has particularly struck Sussex County after the COVID housing market boom though.
State officials, healthcare providers and advocates gathered Wednesday at ChristianaCare’s Wilmington Hospital to encourage women to stay current with recommended screenings, understand their family medical histories and seek help when cost, transportation or access to care becomes a barrier. Photo Courtesy of the State of Delaware.
With nearly 5,000 women diagnosed over five years, Delaware health leaders emphasize the importance of screening, affordable treatment and addressing disparities in breast cancer outcomes.
WILMINGTON, Del. — With nearly 5,000 Delaware women diagnosed with breast cancer over a recent five-year period, health leaders are using Breast Cancer Awareness Month to reinforce a message that could save lives: Early detection and timely access to treatment can dramatically improve the chances of survival.
State officials, healthcare providers and advocates gathered Wednesday at ChristianaCare’s Wilmington Hospital to encourage women to stay current with recommended screenings, understand their family medical histories and seek help when cost, transportation or access to care becomes a barrier.
The event brought together Gov. Matt Meyer, former first lady Dr. Jill Biden, Lt. Gov. Kyle Evans Gay, Delaware Department of Health and Social Services Secretary Christen Linke Young, Delaware Surgeon General Dr. Neil Hockstein and ChristianaCare President and CEO Jenn Schwartz.
Meyer signed a proclamation recognizing October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month, honoring survivors, remembering those who have died from the disease and recognizing the healthcare professionals, caregivers and advocates who support patients and families.
Delaware faces significant breast cancer challenges
Breast cancer was the most commonly diagnosed cancer among Delaware women from 2018 through 2022, with nearly 5,000 diagnoses during that period.
Delaware’s breast cancer incidence rate ranks second nationally, according to state officials, and disparities remain significant. Black women in Delaware experience higher breast cancer mortality rates than white women.
The difference between detecting cancer early and discovering it after it has spread can be substantial.
According to the American Cancer Society, the five-year relative survival rate exceeds 99% when breast cancer is detected before it spreads beyond the breast. That rate falls to approximately 32% when the cancer has spread to distant parts of the body.
“Early detection saves lives, and access to timely diagnosis and effective treatment gives patients the best chance for a successful outcome,” Hockstein said.
“Breast cancer touches nearly every family in Delaware and while we’ve made tremendous progress in screening and treatment, significant disparities remain, particularly among Black women, who continue to experience higher mortality rates,” he said.
Screening is important, but access remains a concern
Health officials emphasized that knowing when to get screened is only part of the challenge. Some Delawareans delay mammograms or follow-up care because of cost, transportation problems, difficulty finding an appointment or lack of insurance.
Delaware’s Screening for Life program helps eligible residents obtain cancer screenings and related services, reducing some of the financial barriers that can prevent early detection.
“No one should have to put off a potentially lifesaving screening because of cost, transportation or difficulty finding an appointment,” Linke Young said.
“Through programs like Screening for Life and partnerships with health care providers across Delaware, we’re working to make breast cancer screening and treatment more accessible so more Delawareans can get the care they need, when they need it.”
The broader challenge is not simply encouraging more screenings but ensuring patients can move promptly from an abnormal mammogram to additional testing, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up care.
“Every woman deserves high-quality, accessible care regardless of her ZIP code, income or insurance status,” Meyer said. “Early detection is critical, but so is ensuring that once Delawareans are diagnosed, they can afford the appointments and care that follow.”
ChristianaCare’s Schwartz emphasized the role of healthcare providers in supporting patients throughout the screening and treatment process.
“We are here for our neighbors when they need an annual mammogram, when they have a question, when they’re waiting for results,” Schwartz said. “And, if you receive a breast cancer diagnosis, we’re here for that too, with extraordinary physicians.”
A personal reminder to prioritize screening
For some participants, the message was personal.
Gay, who turned 40 this year, shared that she had scheduled her own mammogram and encouraged others to make time for preventive care.
“This year I turned 40 and I got my mammogram. I encourage others to take time to take care of themselves,” Gay said.
She also recognized the caregivers and advocates who support patients through diagnosis, treatment and recovery.
Biden, who founded the Biden Breast Health Initiative in Delaware before serving as first lady, has been a longtime advocate for breast cancer education and women’s health.
“Early detection could save your life,” Biden said. “There’s nothing on your to-do list more important than that.”
Biden’s work has included encouraging young women to learn about breast health and advocating for greater attention to women’s health research and cancer treatment.
Understanding family history and genetic risks
Breast Cancer Awareness Month also provides an opportunity for Delawareans to learn more about inherited risks.
Certain genetic changes can increase the likelihood of developing breast and ovarian cancers. Genetic counseling can help patients understand their family histories, assess inherited risks and determine whether genetic testing may be appropriate.
A Delaware law signed in August 2025 is intended to make that process easier.
Senate Bill 70, sponsored by Sen. Nicole Poore and Rep. Krista Griffith, allows licensed genetic counselors to order genetic tests directly, eliminating an additional step for some patients seeking information about inherited health risks.
The law maintains requirements for physician referrals when medical assessments are necessary.
By improving access to genetic information, healthcare providers and patients can make more informed decisions about additional screening, preventive care and treatment options.
Turning awareness into action
While Breast Cancer Awareness Month brings additional attention to the disease, health leaders emphasized that its value ultimately depends on people taking action.
That includes discussing screening recommendations with a healthcare provider, knowing family medical history and following up promptly when additional testing is recommended.
For women facing financial or logistical barriers, state programs and healthcare organizations can provide assistance in accessing screenings and care.
The Wilmington gathering underscored a shared message from medical professionals, advocates and public officials: Early detection can save lives, but those benefits must be accessible to every Delawarean, regardless of income, insurance status or where they live.
TO GO: Breast Cancer Awareness Month
What: October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, encouraging early detection, screening and support for patients and survivors.
Who should consider screening: Women should discuss mammogram recommendations with their healthcare providers based on age, individual risk factors and family medical history. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends mammograms every two years for women ages 40 to 74 at average risk.
Need help paying for screening? Delaware’s Screening for Life program provides assistance with cancer screenings for eligible residents.
Concerned about family history? Ask a healthcare provider whether genetic counseling or additional screening may be appropriate.
Important reminder: An abnormal mammogram does not necessarily mean cancer, but prompt follow-up is essential. Anyone experiencing a new breast lump or other concerning breast change should consult a healthcare provider rather than wait for a routine screening.
First-of-its-kind event inspired by Delaware-filmed mockumentary “The Conspiracists” will feature Bigfoot calls, tin foil hats, games, vendors and a movie screening
WILMINGTON — Bigfoot believers, UFO skeptics, comic fans and anyone willing to ask “what if?” will have a place to gather in Wilmington later this month.
ConCon, a conspiracy-themed convention inspired by the Delaware-filmed comedy mockumentary “The Conspiracists,” will be held Sunday, Oct. 18, at the Siegel Jewish Community Center.
Organizers describe the event as a lighthearted celebration of the fascination surrounding conspiracy theories rather than an effort to prove or disprove them.
“ConCon isn’t about whether conspiracy theories are true. It’s about why they’ve captured our imagination for generations,” said Christopher Bruce of Wilmington-based King Creative. “Through comedy, games, pop culture, interactive exhibits, unique vendors, and a movie that brings it all together, ConCon transforms curiosity into a shared adventure that everyone can enjoy.”
The convention runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., followed by a screening of “The Conspiracists” and a cast and creator question-and-answer session from 5 to 7 p.m. Ticketing information lists the overall event through 7:30 p.m. Ticket Tailor
Among the scheduled attractions are a tin foil hat-building station, Bigfoot Calling Championship, kids foil fashion show and “Real or Fake?” interactive game show.
A vendor hall will feature comics, collectibles, independent artists and other attractions. Attendees also will have opportunities to meet artists, puppeteers and creators connected to the movie.
From movie screen to real convention
ConCon essentially brings to life the fictional convention at the center of “The Conspiracists.”
The comedy follows siblings trying to create an all-inclusive conspiracy convention as their plans begin falling apart and an even larger conspiracy may be developing around them.
The movie was filmed almost entirely in Delaware and prominently features local locations, including the Hotel du Pont, The Grand and the Siegel JCC itself. The Conspiracists
Directed by Michael Perrie Jr. and produced by Uncultured Swine and King Creative, the film had its world premiere Jan. 8 at The Grand in Wilmington. BroadwayWorld
The production also relied heavily on Delaware cast members, crew members, businesses and locations, an approach filmmakers have said was intended to make Delaware part of the story rather than simply a stand-in for somewhere else. Town Square Delaware LIVE
Three ticket options
Organizers are offering three levels of admission.
The $10 Civilian Pass includes access to the vendor hall and daytime programming, including contests, the tin foil hat station, photo opportunities and scavenger hunt.
The $15 Conspiracist Pass adds reserved seating for the evening movie screening, access to the cast Q&A and additional raffle entries.
The $25 Classified Access ticket includes the daytime and movie activities, early entry, VIP movie seating, a post-panel group photo with the cast and a giveaway that organizers say will be revealed at the event.
The official ticket listing confirms that ConCon will be held Sunday, Oct. 18 — correcting a reference to Saturday contained later in the event announcement. Ticket Tailor
To Go Box
What: ConCon 2026
When: Sunday, Oct. 18
Expo: 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Movie screening and cast Q&A: 5-7 p.m.
Where: Siegel Jewish Community Center, 101 Garden of Eden Road, Wilmington
College Democrats and Republicans join forces to organize Senate debate after UD’s traditional program fails to materialize; Katz plans Oct. 19 town hall.
NEWARK, Del. — A bipartisan effort by University of Delaware students to organize a U.S. Senate debate has become the latest point of disagreement between Democratic Sen. Chris Coons and Republican challenger Dr. Mike Katz, raising questions about whether Delaware voters will have an opportunity to see the candidates debate before the Nov. 3 election.
The College Republicans and College Democrats at UD worked together to propose a campus debate after the university’s traditional Delaware Debates program did not materialize this election cycle.
According to statements from the College Republicans and Katz campaign, Katz accepted the invitation and offered to participate in any format, at any time and location on campus. The student Republicans said the Coons campaign declined.
The development follows an earlier debate proposal from WDEL and CoastTV that Katz accepted and his campaign says Coons declined.
The competing decisions have renewed a question for both campaigns: How will Delaware voters be able to compare the candidates’ records, positions and proposals before casting their ballots?
Students seek bipartisan solution
The joint proposal represented an unusual example of cooperation between student organizations representing opposing political parties.
College Democrats President Sophie Douglas and College Republicans President Tim Schugsta helped lead the effort to create a forum where voters could hear from both candidates.
“The proposal showed that College Democrats and College Republicans at UD can work together in a good-faith effort to serve our state,” the College Republicans said in a statement.
The organizations have previously cooperated on campus activities, including a Sept. 11 remembrance and discussions about political polarization.
Katz praised the students for putting aside political differences.
“When the UD College Democrats and College Republicans put aside their political differences to promote open debate, elected leaders should applaud their leadership — not shut them down,” Katz said.
The College Republicans also thanked Douglas and her leadership board for helping organize the proposed event.
The organization said it hopes to continue working with the College Democrats on future opportunities for civic engagement.
The College Democrats’ independent account of the debate discussions was not included in the statements provided to Delaware LIVE.
Coons campaign has not provided an explanation
Coons, who has represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate since 2010, has not publicly explained his decision to decline the student proposal in a statement located by Delaware LIVE.
Candidates frequently consider scheduling, format, moderators and other factors before agreeing to debate invitations. Declining a particular invitation does not necessarily mean a candidate is unwilling to participate in other public forums.
Both candidates have participated in individual interviews and other campaign appearances. Katz’s campaign also acknowledged that the candidates appeared at a September forum at the Jewish Community Center, although the format did not allow direct exchanges between them.
Still, a traditional debate provides an opportunity for candidates to answer identical questions, respond to criticism and defend their positions in front of the same audience.
For voters, the distinction is meaningful. Coons has a nearly 16-year Senate record to defend, while Katz is asking voters to consider a change in representation.
“Senator Coons has served in Washington for 16 years. Delaware voters deserve to compare our records, our positions, and our plans for the future before voting begins,” Katz said.
Delaware LIVE has not located a public statement from the Coons campaign explaining its decision to decline the proposed student-led debate or responding to allegations concerning interactions with student organizers. Delaware LIVE contacted the Coons campaign headquarters by telephone and left a message requesting comment. As of publication, the campaign had not responded directly.
Student Republicans raise concerns about campaign interactions
Beyond the debate invitation, the College Republicans raised concerns about how the Coons campaign responded to students involved in the organizing effort.
In their statement, the College Republicans alleged that representatives of the Coons campaign “scolded individuals for simply reaching out to gauge interest in this debate.”
The Katz campaign separately criticized Coons campaign manager Matt Schoonmaker, alleging that a College Democrat involved in the proposal had been reprimanded.
Those allegations have not been independently verified by Delaware LIVE.
Neither the precise communications between the campaign and student organizers nor the circumstances surrounding the alleged exchange have been independently established.
The Coons campaign has not provided its account of those discussions.
The distinction matters because there may be differences between a campaign declining an invitation, expressing concerns about the organization of an event and discouraging students from pursuing a bipartisan debate.
The student organizations’ statements raise questions deserving clarification, but the allegations should not be treated as facts without additional information.
Traditional Delaware Debates absent from election calendar
The controversy follows uncertainty surrounding the University of Delaware’s longstanding Delaware Debates program.
The university has hosted candidate debates since 2010, providing a forum for Delaware voters to hear from candidates seeking statewide and federal office.
In September, Delaware LIVE reported that the university had not announced debates for the 2026 election cycle, although the university’s website continued to describe the program.
At that time, Delaware LIVE could not independently confirm that the university had formally canceled this year’s debates.
Katz subsequently called on Delaware Republican and Democratic leaders and media organizations to help organize a televised debate.
On Sept. 29, Katz’s campaign announced that he had accepted an invitation from WDEL for a debate that would also be broadcast on CoastTV. The campaign said Coons declined and WDEL’s offer remained open.
The latest student proposal would have provided another opportunity for the two candidates to appear together.
Katz questions media scrutiny
Katz also used the announcement to question whether Delaware news organizations have provided sufficient scrutiny of the debate decisions.
His campaign specifically mentioned The News Journal, Delaware Online and Spotlight Delaware, arguing that declining debate opportunities should receive greater attention.
“Delaware already has a limited number of major news outlets. That makes independent, investigative journalism more important than ever,” Katz said. The criticism reflects the candidate’s view of media coverage. It does not establish that the organizations deliberately avoided the issue.
The broader accountability question applies to both candidates.
“Voters have an interest in understanding why Coons has declined the reported debate opportunities, including whether alternative formats were offered,” stated a spokesperson from the Katz Campaign. “A debate could provide an opportunity to question both candidates about federal spending, economic policy, immigration, health care, foreign affairs and other issues affecting Delaware residents.”
Katz plans Oct. 19 campus town hall
With the proposed joint debate off the calendar, the College Republicans plan to host Katz for a town hall Monday, Oct. 19, at the Trabant University Center in Newark.
The organization has invited College Democrats and other political student organizations to attend.
“I look forward to meeting with students — Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike — listening to their concerns, answering difficult questions, and discussing Delaware’s future,” Katz said.
The event will provide an additional opportunity for students to question Katz, although it will not offer the same direct comparison available when both candidates participate in a debate.
Early voting in Delaware begins Oct. 22, giving voters limited time to evaluate the candidates before ballots can be cast. The general election is Nov. 3.
Whether another organization can arrange a debate before Election Day remains uncertain.
For Delaware voters, the unanswered issue is not simply which campaign accepted or declined an invitation, but whether the candidates will appear together to answer questions, explain their differences and defend their records before the election.
TO GO: Senate candidate town hall and voting information
Event: U.S. Senate candidate town hall featuring Republican nominee Dr. Mike Katz
Date: Monday, Oct. 19, 2026
Time: 7 p.m.
Location: Trabant University Center, University of Delaware, Newark
Organizer: College Republicans at the University of Delaware
Participation: College Democrats and other student political organizations have been invited.
Early voting: Begins Thursday, Oct. 22, and continues on designated dates through Nov. 1.
General election: Tuesday, Nov. 3. Polls open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump’s newly appointed press secretary, Katie Zacharia, is facing a request for a California State Bar investigation over repeated claims that she is a lawyer despite no public record showing she is licensed to practice law in the United States.
The nonprofit Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint Wednesday asking the State Bar of California to determine whether Zacharia violated state law by presenting herself as an attorney without a license.
Zacharia earned a law degree from Pepperdine University in 2011 and has described herself as a lawyer during television appearances. She also previously held the title of general counsel for Fix California, a conservative nonprofit founded by Trump ally Richard Grenell.
The California State Bar says it has no record of Zacharia being licensed under either her current or maiden name. Reviews of attorney databases have similarly found no admission in other U.S. jurisdictions.
Questions intensified Tuesday when a reporter asked Zacharia which state’s bar examination she passed. Her response appeared to reference moving to China rather than identifying a U.S. jurisdiction. Foreign nationals generally cannot qualify as licensed Chinese attorneys.
The White House maintains that Zacharia performed international transactional legal work in China with appropriate credentials but has not produced evidence of a U.S. law license.
No finding of wrongdoing has been made, and the California Bar has not said whether it will open a formal investigation.
Washington, DC — President Donald Trump drew widespread condemnation Tuesday after sharing graphic footage of a 23-year-old British man being fatally mauled by a tiger, then posting an AI-generated video portraying himself wrestling and cuddling the animal.
William Chapman died Saturday after entering the enclosure of a Siberian tiger named Altai at Yorkshire Wildlife Park. His family has said he struggled with significant mental illness and asked the public to stop circulating footage of his death because it was causing additional distress.
South Yorkshire Police also explicitly urged people not to share the video.
Trump nevertheless posted footage of the fatal attack to Truth Social with the message, “Don’t ever mess with nature!” The official White House Rapid Response account amplified the post.
Hours later, Trump posted an AI-generated clip showing himself chasing, overpowering and eventually embracing a tiger while “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” played. He had also shared a separate montage of people being attacked by lions set to upbeat music.
The posts prompted unusually harsh criticism across the political and media spectrum. Piers Morgan called the video “appallingly tasteless” and urged Trump to delete it, while other commentators condemned the decision to turn a young man’s death into online entertainment.
Authorities are still investigating how Chapman entered the enclosure. The tiger will not be euthanized.
Austin, TX — Voting rights groups are suing Texas after more than 500,000 voter registration applications and updates submitted through the state’s driver’s license system went unprocessed, some dating back nearly a year.
The League of Women Voters of Texas and MOVE Texas Civic Fund are asking a state judge to enforce a 2021 settlement requiring Texas to maintain a functioning process allowing residents to register to vote while completing online driver’s license or identification transactions.
The backlog was caused by a software update error involving the Department of Public Safety’s web portal. County election officials received hundreds of thousands of delayed records last month, while separate problems with the secretary of state’s voter registration system have complicated efforts to clear them ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms.
The lawsuit argues that the failures violate the state’s earlier agreement and says some Texans are still experiencing registration problems.
The plaintiffs want the court to order DPS and the secretary of state to maintain a reliable registration system, disclose records explaining the failures and demonstrate compliance within 30 days.
State officials had reportedly been aware of problems with the system as early as March.
DPS and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office had not publicly responded to the latest lawsuit.
Phoenix, AZ — Voting-rights organizations, political groups and the Justice Department are preparing unusually large election-monitoring efforts ahead of the midterms, with some groups specifically training volunteers to watch for possible immigration enforcement near polling places.
Living United for Change in Arizona, or LUCHA, has begun training “constitutional observers” to monitor polling environments and document activity that could intimidate voters. The group says it is particularly concerned about Immigration and Customs Enforcement after increased immigration enforcement around parts of Arizona earlier this year.
The Trump administration has said ICE does not plan to target polling locations, and sending armed federal agents to polling sites for general enforcement purposes would raise serious legal concerns. However, administration officials have also said agents could execute warrants at polling places under some circumstances.
Other organizations, including the Save America Movement, National Action Network and several labor unions, are organizing observers in states with competitive Senate races. Their stated goal is to document potential intimidation without directly confronting federal agents.
The Justice Department is also planning a major presence. Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon said approximately 1,000 DOJ personnel could be deployed to monitor polling sites, describing it as the department’s largest election-observer effort.
Election officials note that large monitoring campaigns are announced frequently, though actual activity at polling places is often far less dramatic.
St. Paul, MN — A former Macalester College professor has been charged with felony property damage after allegedly spilling urine on a student’s backpack, causing more than $2,000 in damage.
Paul Fischer, 55, was charged Oct. 7 in Ramsey County with first-degree property damage. According to the criminal complaint, a student left her belongings unattended for about six minutes near Fischer’s office last December and returned to find urine on her backpack and items inside it.
The student later reported the incident to police. Investigators learned that Macalester had documented at least six other urine-related incidents in the Olin-Rice Science Center over roughly a year, including urine found in trash cans, water bottles and faculty decorations.
Police said Fischer acknowledged developing a habit of urinating into a cup and disposing of it in trash cans or laboratory sinks around campus. He allegedly told investigators he believed urine accidentally spilled onto the student’s belongings while he was emptying a container near his office.
The student estimated the damage at $2,070.
Fischer resigned after 25 years at Macalester. The college said his employment ended during the 2025-26 academic year and declined further comment because the criminal case remains pending.
If convicted, Fischer could face up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Meta is building a massive data center on the northeast edge of El Paso, Texas, on the New Mexico border. Paul Ratje for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune
Last December, New Mexico officials celebrated publication of a plan to address climate change, designed to dramatically reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. A few months later, just across the state line in Texas, El Paso city officials adopted their own such plan with a similar ambition.
Each report cost millions of dollars to draft, but neither one took into account how the construction of data centers could upend climate goals in both places.
Work is underway in Doña Ana County in southern New Mexico on one of the largest data center developments in the country: Project Jupiter, built by Austin-based Oracle. Twenty miles away in El Paso, construction is underway on another massive data center, this one built by Meta Platforms.
A third, larger data center project is planned less than a 30-minute drive from the Meta site, on the Fort Bliss Army post in east El Paso.
The data centers are “going to undo a lot of the very expensive and very meaningful work a lot of people are doing,” New Mexico state climatologist Dave DuBois told El Paso Matters.
The sites are among a wave of data centers under construction across the country, driven by the rapidly escalating demand for artificial intelligence services like Claude and ChatGPT. Such projects have drawn intense scrutiny in recent months, as residents and elected officials have questioned their impact on communities’ water supplies, household electric bills and air quality. Texas alone has 596 data centers that are either in operation or planned across Texas as of early September, according to research by The Texas Tribune.
But the projects located in this population center of 1.2 million, which encompasses El Paso and parts of southern New Mexico, are particularly notable because of their combined scope. When fully built out, the three data centers, each with its own power plant, will emit millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to the planet-warming emissions released by more than two million cars in a year.
They will also release air pollutants like particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, which directly affect local air quality and human health. The Meta and Project Jupiter data centers are expected to release these kinds of pollutants at relatively low levels, according to paperwork submitted to state regulators. But even a small increase in air pollution can still negatively impact communities close to and downwind of the data center sites, said Shaolei Ren, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of California, Riverside.
“The health impacts can be significant for local communities,” Ren said.
Because Project Jupiter, Meta and the Fort Bliss data centers are in two different states, and because there is no single federal regulation governing climate change or emissions, regulators have largely considered the projects’ impacts separately.
“We’ve never had a national climate law passed by Congress,” said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School. “And so what we’ve had in this country are primarily state and local efforts.”
The result is that officials in one state have little say over a project happening minutes away from them.
Texas and New Mexico also take different approaches to dealing with climate change. New Mexico has codified greenhouse gas reduction targets into state law; Texas has not.
A truck sprays water for dust suppression at the construction site of Project Jupiter in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.
New Mexico state Rep. Sarah Silva, a Democrat, represents the community of Chaparral, directly across the state line from Meta’s data center site in northeast El Paso. Her state has the power to regulate air quality and impose noise requirements, but only in New Mexico, not at a Texas construction site, even if it’s only a few hundred yards away.
Likewise, residents living in west El Paso across the state line from Project Jupiter have no say in the project despite sharing an aquifer that crosses the state boundary. Emissions do not remain within the state where they originate, Silva said.
“This is why we need federal regulation,” said Silva. “How do we knit something together that makes sense for our region when actually this is the job of the federal government?”
Though they profess a desire to mitigate the impacts of climate change, local governments in El Paso and Doña Ana counties green-lit these projects in a part of the country seeing rapidly rising temperatures. The counties offered Meta and Project Jupiter tax incentives in exchange for corporate investment in their communities, job creation and, hopefully, the ability to attract more technology companies to the region.
State officials have also provided incentives. More than a decade ago, Texas legislators approved a data center sales tax break, which exempts the facilities from paying sales tax on equipment they purchase, a decision that could now cost the state $3.2 billion in revenue over the next two years, according to The Texas Tribune.
New Mexico lawmakers declined to advance a bill creating a similar tax break for data centers in 2021. But in 2025, they passed an unrelated law allowing large facilities such as Project Jupiter to generate their own electricity using natural gas. The law exempts these private power systems, known as microgrids, from renewable energy requirements, even as New Mexico requires electric utilities to source 50% of the power they sell from clean energy by 2030.
The power plants that keep data centers running typically produce large amounts of emissions like carbon dioxide and methane that drive global climate change over time. Combined, the plants proposed for Project Jupiter and Meta’s data center could emit up to 10 million tons of planet-warming emissions annually. Comparatively, the region spanning El Paso County and neighboring Hudspeth County released 8.4 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2019. (The Army has shared scant information about the Fort Bliss data center, so it’s not clear what level of emissions the facility will produce.)
“This does add to our greenhouse gas emissions in a massive way,” said Gunnar Schade, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. “This is a huge source.”
Homes in Chaparral, New Mexico, sit adjacent to Meta’s data center, just over the state border in El Paso, Texas.
An Unprecedented Amount of Energy
Silva, the New Mexico representative, was initially supportive of Project Jupiter, in part seeing it as an opportunity to create long-term jobs. Last year, she voted in favor of a bill that included an amendment — tacked on by state Sen. Michael Padilla, a Democrat from Albuquerque — that allows facilities like Project Jupiter, which aren’t connected to the local power grid, a 20-year exemption from clean energy laws, allowing them to generate all their electricity with fossil fuels.
“We worked this bill pretty much the entire session, but it did not quite get done. So, we found a piece of legislation that was very similar,” Padilla said in an interview last year. “That’s the legislative process. You have to be very creative to get your work done.”
But Silva soon soured on the project out of concern that it won’t employ enough local workers and because it won’t rely on zero-emission renewable energy. Oracle has said the data center will have 750 full-time employees when it’s up and running. The company told Doña Ana County officials in early September that nearly 3,700 people had worked at the site during construction up to that point.
Silva and other state lawmakers have said they voted for Padilla’s bill without realizing the broader implications for a data center project in the southern part of the state.
“State regulators, state legislators, I think, were so caught off guard at the speed at which these hyperscale data centers showed up in all of our communities almost simultaneously,” Silva said. “I would support a moratorium.”
New Mexico state Rep. Sarah Silva was initially supportive of Project Jupiter but has soured on the project over time.
The amount of energy Project Jupiter needs is unprecedented in the region: The data center will receive electricity from an on-site power plant made up of fuel cells built by a company called Bloom Energy. Bloom has said the plant will have the ability to produce up to 2.45 gigawatts of electricity — enough to power around 1.5 million homes and more than El Paso Electric has ever supplied to its 465,000 residential and commercial customers at one time, according to the utility’s corporate reports.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, has specifically lauded Oracle’s promise to use fuel cells for electricity instead of natural gas turbines, which would have used more water and produced more air pollution. However, an air permit — a state-granted license that authorizes industrial facilities to emit a predetermined amount of pollution — would allow the fuel cells to produce up to 8.8 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. Lujan Grisham didn’t address questions from El Paso Matters about the impact of these additional climate emissions.
The Meta power plant in El Paso could release up to 1.3 million tons of climate emissions every year, according to an estimate calculated by El Paso Matters based on El Paso Electric regulatory filings and the Environmental Protection Agency’s emissions factors. Nancy L. Seidman, a senior adviser with the Regulatory Assistance Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on energy policy, confirmed the emissions estimate is sound.
“Regulators should weigh all emissions and other impacts like water usage, noise and local air pollution, which can affect public health, when they make decisions about data center projects,” Seidman wrote in an email to El Paso Matters. “This is particularly important when projects are phased over time, so that an accurate account can be made of the total, holistic impacts.”
The data center planned for Fort Bliss is expected to use 3 gigawatts of electricity that would likely be supplied by natural gas turbines, according to officials with the Department of Defense, who shared details with reporters during a briefing in April. The Army has issued few other details about the project because it is still in “exclusive negotiations” with the developer, Carlyle Group, a large publicly traded private equity firm.
Carlyle Group did not respond to a request for comment.
“These are cities in terms of their electricity consumption,” Peskoe, of Harvard Law School, said of AI hyperscale data center campuses such as Oracle’s and Meta’s. The facilities are cropping up so fast that “the pace of this and the scale of this — I think there’s no real parallel, at least for 50, 60, 70 years, but probably ever for the U.S. power industry.”
Facilities in New Mexico seeking a state air permit are required by law to disclose estimated amounts of air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions the project will release. And the state Environment Department has spent months evaluating Project Jupiter’s air permit application, which was submitted in April. A spokesperson for the environmental department didn’t respond to emailed questions.
By contrast, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality only requires project developers to disclose information about pollutants that affect local air quality, and not about greenhouse gas emissions, which are what contribute to climate change.
So when El Paso Electric sought an air permit last fall for the Meta data center’s natural gas power plant, the utility didn’t have to share estimated greenhouse gas emissions. The Texas commission approved the permit 20 days after it was filed, following an expedited review.
Meta directed questions about its data center’s power plant to El Paso Electric. The electric company declined to share estimates of the plant’s greenhouse gas emissions but said in a statement that the Texas environmental commission had reviewed and authorized the Meta power plant “under a standard permit, which is specifically for projects with limited and well-controlled emissions.” The statement said the facility will “operate in compliance with state and federal standards.”
A spokesperson for the agency said, “All Standard Permits have gone through formal notice and comment procedures and have been adopted by the Commission in a public meeting.”
These plants will be releasing large amounts of greenhouse gases even as climate change has become increasingly evident in the El Paso metro area, which sits where Texas’ westernmost boundary meets New Mexico and northern Mexico. El Paso’s temperatures have risen faster than those of almost any other city in the U.S. since 1970, according to Climate Central, a nonprofit that quantifies climate shifts throughout the United States. Drought driven by climate change has amplified the impact of wind storms that fill the air in El Paso with hazardous dust in the spring and summertime.
This year has been the hottest on record in El Paso through the first nine months of 2026, according to the National Weather Service. Similar records have been set across the state line in New Mexico.
“If we started to do these kinds of things — having big data centers with natural-gas-fired turbines — it’s kind of like bringing back a lot of the retired plants that were more dirty, like coal,” said DuBois, the New Mexico state climatologist.
Fernando Berjano, El Paso’s climate coordinator, wouldn’t comment specifically on effects resulting from the data centers in the region, but he said the kinds of power plants tied to them produce greenhouse gases that will make it harder for the city to meet its climate goals, as well as produce air pollutants.
If emissions increase in the El Paso area, “that has an impact on air quality, that has an impact on pollution,” Berjano said, “which is something that we all know is not good.”
Construction at the Project Jupiter data center in Santa Teresa, New Mexico
The Road Ahead for Data Centers
Although construction is already underway on the Project Jupiter and Meta data centers, regulatory hurdles remain for both facilities. The public hearing on the Project Jupiter air permit was scheduled to begin Sept. 14, but the New Mexico Supreme Court delayed it when opponents filed lawsuits challenging the state’s approval process and the facility’s use of groundwater.
The state Supreme Court last month lifted the stay. New Mexico more recently appointed an examiner to preside over the hearing that would authorize the facility’s emissions. Other legal challenges are making their way through the court system.
In Texas, El Paso Electric is still waiting for the state’s Public Utility Commission to approve construction of the power plant planned next to Meta’s data center, a decision that could come later this year.
Officials with both Project Jupiter and Meta have said they are taking steps to help mitigate the climate effects of their projects and plan to develop clean energy projects elsewhere to create new electricity sources and offset the greenhouse gases their data center power plants will release. Oracle also maintains that its emissions will be lower than what it sought in its air permit application and that it plans to get to net zero greenhouse emissions by 2031.
“Oracle is committed to building Project Jupiter responsibly and incorporating community feedback into our planning,” the company said in a statement.
Protesters rally against the construction of data centers in their region.
The road ahead for data centers is unclear. Even once-supportive officials have softened or changed course: Last year, Lujan Grisham, New Mexico’s governor, said Project Jupiter “reaffirms New Mexico’s leadership in global trade, advanced manufacturing, and digital infrastructure.” In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott at one point called his state “the epicenter of AI development.”
Now, amid growing opposition to Project Jupiter, Lujan Grisham recently said she takes seriously residents’ concerns about the data center “and expects any data center operating in New Mexico to meet the state’s rigorous environmental standards and use water responsibly.” This summer, Abbott called on the Texas Public Utility Commission to ensure the projects pay for their own infrastructure and don’t lead to higher electricity costs for residents. He also recommended the state Legislature pass a number of regulations related to data centers next year, many concerning water and electricity usage, and recently told the Texas Water Development Board to penalize data centers that do not report their water usage.
Abbott’s new edicts do not address air pollution or climate change, nor the effects that a data center project in one state can have on another.
Texas Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody, whose district includes much of west and northeast El Paso, near two of the data center projects, said Abbott’s proposals will likely shape the Texas Legislature’s debate over data-center-related policies next year but called them just a starting point.
“In the governor’s directives, we’re not talking about local control and local autonomy to make decisions on these projects,” he said. “And I do think that that’s a whole other lane of conversation that we’re going to get into next session.”
Cincinnati, OH — Cincinnati Public Schools has created what officials say is the nation’s first school district-owned parking lot where families experiencing homelessness can safely sleep in their vehicles overnight.
The Safe Sleep Lot opened April 30 at William Howard Taft Elementary School and has served more than 300 people. The 12-space lot operates nightly from 9:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. and typically hosts three to eight families.
District officials developed the program after seeing a growing number of families living in cars and struggling to find safe places to park. Nearly 2,650 Cincinnati Public Schools students, about 8% of district enrollment, experienced homelessness during the 2025-26 school year.
Families staying at the lot receive access to security, bathrooms, showers, Wi-Fi, food and other basic supplies. Children are also connected to school enrollment and transportation services.
One major benefit is that families can be quickly verified as homeless and added to shelter waiting lists, a process that can otherwise take much longer for people moving from place to place each night.
The lot also provides temporary hotel stays and connects families with housing services. Shelter waits can still last one to two months.
District officials hope the model can eventually be replicated by other school systems facing similar increases in student homelessness.
Sacramento, CA — California reparations advocates are pressing for broader compensation and policy changes after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law requiring large corporations to disclose historical ties to slavery.
Assembly Bill 2599 requires companies doing business in California with more than $100 million in annual worldwide revenue to examine historical records and disclose whether they or related entities participated in slaveholding, financing, insurance or other slavery-related transactions.
Kristin Nimmers of the California Black Power Network said advocates view the disclosure law as only one step toward reparations. She argued that compensation should be based on specific historical harms rather than limited to a single payment.
California’s reparations debate remains far from settled. The state’s Reparations Task Force issued an extensive report in 2023 recommending numerous remedies involving housing, education, health, discrimination and economic inequality, but lawmakers have not approved the large-scale direct cash payments that generated the most national attention.
Advocates themselves also disagree over eligibility. Some groups argue reparations should primarily benefit descendants of people enslaved in the United States, while others favor a broader approach covering Black residents who experienced later forms of government-sanctioned discrimination.
Newsom has generally supported reparations-related studies and targeted reforms while remaining cautious about costly direct-payment proposals.
Washington, DC — The Trump administration is offering immigrant children as young as 5 years old $3,000 to voluntarily leave the United States, expanding a controversial program that lawyers say can pressure minors into abandoning potentially valid immigration claims.
Bloomberg Law reported that ICE attorneys and, in some cases, immigration judges have presented the payments to children in removal proceedings. Legal advocates said some minors lack attorneys and have been given little or no time to consider the consequences before accepting.
The new offers expand a program introduced last year that provided $2,500 to unaccompanied migrant children ages 14 and older who agreed to leave the country.
Immigration attorneys argue that offering thousands of dollars to young children raises serious questions about whether they can meaningfully understand or voluntarily waive their legal rights. Shaina Aber of the Acacia Center for Justice described the approach as part of an effort to pressure children into dropping their cases.
The Department of Homeland Security has characterized voluntary departure programs as a way to help migrants return home, but it did not directly address questions about payments to children as young as 5.
The policy comes amid a sharp increase in immigration enforcement involving minors. Federal records analyzed by The Marshall Project show that more than 22,000 children have been deported since Trump returned to office, while ICE has arrested more than 8,500 children during his second term.
Washington, DC — A decorated Air Force major has reportedly spent nearly two months in round-the-clock solitary confinement while awaiting a rare military court-martial stemming from his public calls for President Donald Trump’s impeachment.
Maj. Jason Watson, a 17-year Air Force veteran, was first arrested after appearing outside the U.S. Capitol in uniform with a sign reading “Impeach. Convict. Remove.” He later appeared on CNN and sharply criticized Trump, knowing active-duty service members face stricter limits on political activity and public criticism of senior officials than civilians.
Watson was detained the day after that CNN interview again and has remained in pretrial confinement since August. His attorney, Christopher Mutimer, said Watson is alone 24 hours a day, including during meals and exercise. CNN described the charges as exceptionally rare, citing only two previous convictions under the relevant contempt provision since the Uniform Code of Military Justice took effect in 1951.
The Air Force has charged Watson under provisions covering contempt toward officials, disobeying orders, and conduct unbecoming an officer. He faces a general court-martial, possible imprisonment, dismissal from the military and loss of benefits.
The Pentagon maintains that Watson is presumed innocent and entitled to due process, but his continued isolation before trial and the unusual severity of the prosecution have intensified questions about whether the military is using its disciplinary system too aggressively against an officer who publicly opposed the president.
The Court agreed to hear arguments in 
MI300A APUs
About the author: Cristin Merritt leads Communications and Partner Ecosystems at 
From movie screen to real convention
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