Iran insists there are no plans for inspections of its bombed nuclear sites, but Trump says Tehran "fully and completely" agreed to let inspectors return.
Kent Kiehl convinced the US legal system he can find violence in prisoners’ brains. His theories have been since used by defense lawyers – with grave consequences for prisoners
Oracle cut roughly 21,000 jobs over the past year as it reorganized around AI and ramps up spending on data centers for customers such as OpenAI and Meta. The restructuring cost the company about $1.8 billion and, while Oracle says AI deployment may drive further reductions, it also warns the cuts could create skills shortages and hurt productivity. The BBC reports: The software and cloud computing firm says it had around 141,000 full-time employees as of May 31, 2026, down from about 162,000 workers at the same time last year. The "deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce," the report says. The cuts, which amount to about 13% of Oracle's workforce, are part of a wider trend among tech firms as they spend hundreds of billions of dollars on building AI infrastructure like data centers.
Our man in the camp David Hytner goes under the hood (nailed it) of England’s preparations for the Black Stars.
Thomas Tuchel shares his view on what Ghana will bring in Foxborough: “I expect more ball possession. I expect Ghana to rely on counterattacks because they are very physical, very fast and dangerous.”
June 23, 2026 – HPE builds supercomputers that empower its customers to push the limits of what’s possible in high performance computing (HPC). On the June 2026 TOP500, HPE-built systems have claimed 6 spots out of the top 10 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers and three of those are among the only five that are verified exascale supercomputers, and those are El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Aurora at Argonne National Laboratory. Having the greatest performance share on the TOP500, HPE designed and built systems that deliver more than 11.4 exaflops collectively. Additionally, HPE continues to excel on energy efficiency with 4 of the top 10 most energy-efficient supercomputers on the June 2026 Green500 list, showcasing HPE’s innovative direct liquid-cooling technology.
LLNL’s El Capitan
To enable such significant performance, HPE continuously develops advanced computing solutions, tailored for the era of converged artificial intelligence (AI), HPC and quantum computing. In support of this convergence, HPE introduced new supercomputing programming software to simplify customers’ experiences, and for the first time, the software is available to HPE ProLiant Compute servers, offering consistency across HPE systems. HPE also introduced multi-tenant capabilities within networking and storage for high-performance computing, creating one of the industry’s broadest portfolios of end-to-end supercomputing solutions for national labs’ sovereign AI research. Lastly, new financial services improve customers’ control, security and oversight in retiring their advanced, air-cooled computing infrastructure.
Demonstrated Supercomputing Performance Empowers Research and Industrial Applications
HPE designs, constructs and maintains large-scale infrastructure solutions that drive scientific breakthroughs, foster innovation, and enable enterprise transformation.
The TOP500 list names 6 HPE-built systems among the 10 most powerful supercomputers in the world, including:
No. 2 – El Capitan
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) El Capitan at 1.809 exaflops is the world’s second fastest supercomputer. El Capitan also ranks No. 1 on the HPL-MxP benchmark that measures mixed-precision calculations typical in systems that run both traditional HPC and AI workloads. Funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and dedicated to NNSA mission applications, El Capitan is built on the HPE Cray Supercomputing EX system, powered by AMD. The system enables new milestones in extreme-scale modeling and simulation, AI and emerging hybrid workflows. Recent work includes AI-enabled fusion target design studies using AI agents, the largest fluid dynamics simulation ever performed, and a 2025 ACM Gordon Bell Prize-winning real-time tsunami early-warning framework developed by LLNL, the University of Texas at Austin and UC San Diego. El Capitan is also supporting exploratory hybrid classical-quantum algorithm development for next-generation magnets. For all its might, El Capitan is also energy-efficient, ranking No. 28 on the Green500 list.
No. 3 – Frontier
Built for Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in collaboration with AMD, Frontier takes the No. 3 rank on the latest TOP500 list with a performance of 1.353 exaflops. Frontier also ranks No. 2 on the HPL-MxP benchmark. As the first verified exascale system in 2022, Frontier continues to utilize its year-over-year performance to drive advancements in nuclear-specific AI models, jet engine performance and turbulent fluctuations, and does so while maintaining energy-efficiency, which has earned it the No. 20 spot on the Green500 list.
No. 4 – Aurora
Delivering 1.012 exaflops, the HPE-built and Intel-powered Aurora supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory has proven performance with the No. 4 ranking. Aurora also ranks No. 3 on the HPL-MxP benchmark. The supercomputer empowers scientists with the ability of exascale speed to execute further scientific discovery, including greater understanding the plasma conditions to make fusion a practical energy source and testing whether dark energy may change over time, a possibility that could reshape the standard model of cosmology.
No. 6 – HPC7
Premiering on the TOP500 list and boasting a processing capacity of 571.5 petaflops to take the No. 6 spot, HPC7 supercomputer is a highly advanced system developed specifically for industrial applications for major energy tech company, Eni. Ranking as the highest performing enterprise system on this year’s list, HPC7 is used, among other things, to optimize the operations of industrial facilities, improve the accuracy of geological and fluid dynamic studies for CO2 storage, and to develop higher-performance batteries. Eni’s HPC7 will also enable AI implementation and the development of domain-specific models for the energy sector.
No. 8 – HPC6
Exhibiting 477.9 petaflops to take the No. 8 spot, HPC6 supercomputer is a highly advanced system for industrial applications used by Eni to improve the company’s operations.
No. 10 – Alps
Built for the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, Alps utilizes 434.9 petaflops to support large-scale high-performance computing and simulation workloads in fields such as health research, climate science, materials science and engineering. Alps also serves as the computational backbone of the Swiss AI Initiative, involving more than 1,200 researchers from institutions across Switzerland.
Making Supercomputing More Sustainable
With more than 50 years of leadership in advancing energy efficiency, HPE offers supercomputing customers 100% fanless, direct liquid-cooling systems architecture to help establish new energy efficiency benchmarks in the industry. The HPE-built systems among the top 10 of the Green500 list are:
No. 4 – Isambard-AI
Built and managed by Bristol Centre for Supercomputing, a part of University of Bristol, Isambard-AI is the flagship compute for the UK Government’s AI Research Resource (AIRR), created to power the country’s cutting-edge AI development. The supercomputer utilizes HPE’s 100% fanless, direct liquid-cooling technology to deliver up to 90% reduction in cooling power consumption, contributing to a No. 2 ranking on the Green500 at its launch.
No. 7 – SSC-24 Energy Module
Built for Samsung Electronics, this supercomputer is the most energy-efficient enterprise-owned system.
No. 8 – Helios GPU
Created for the Academic Computer Centre Cyfronet AGH, Helios GPU remains Poland’s fastest supercomputer, ranked at No. 116 on the TOP500.
No. 10 – Portage
A benchmarking system designed by HPE to evaluate real-world HPC and AI workloads for HPE and its clients, Portage is ranked No. 85 on the TOP500 list.
HPE-built DAEDALUS Debuts as Greece’s Fastest System
Built for the National Infrastructures for Research and Technology (GRNET S.A.), and in collaboration with the Ministry of Digital Governance and EuroHPC JU, the new supercomputer DAEDALUS entered the TOP500 list at No. 31 with 85.69 petaflops of performance, marking a historic milestone as the first Greek system of this magnitude included in the ranking and the fastest supercomputer in the country up to this day. The advanced system is the computing core of the AI Factory Pharos. It aims to boost research and innovation in the fields of AI, medicine, meteorology, big data analysis and the development of smart transport systems and more. The infrastructure focuses on sustainability by using renewable energy sources and advanced cooling systems that significantly reduce energy consumption, and as a result, is also featured in this year’s Green500 list, ranking No. 23.
Learn more here about HPE’s leadership-class supercomputing solutions and how the company delivers powerful and efficient architecture to accelerate discovery and drive innovation.
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.
The Supreme Court rejected a former Louisiana inmate's effort to sue state prison officials after they shaved his dreadlocks in violation of his religious beliefs.
Germany will gradually raise its retirement age to about 70by the early 2090s under recommendations backed by the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, as a means of future-proofing the pension system for an ageing population.
Presenting its findings on Tuesday, an expert commission set up to explore reforms to the pension system said retirement age should be linked to rising life expectancy and early retirement should be scrapped.
Activists accused of being part of antifa face harsh sentences in case seen as test of Trump’s crackdown on dissent
A group of Texas protesters convicted of terrorism charges received harsh sentences of at least 50 years in prisonTuesday in a closely watched case that was widely seen as a test case of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on dissent.
After a three week jury trial, the nine activists were all found guilty of a slew of criminal charges in March, stemming from a Fourth of July protest at an immigrant detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, south of Fort Worth. The demonstrators arrived late at night with a plan to set off fireworks as part of a noise demonstration to show solidarity with those detained inside. A few of the protesters spontaneously broke off from the main group and vandalized cars in the parking lot, a guard shack, slashed the tires on a government van and broke a security camera. When a police officer arrived on the scene and drew his weapon, one of the activists fired an AR-15 from the woods, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.
Local council secures high court injunction against four leaders of Raise the Colours campaign and ‘persons unknown’
Leaders of the nationalist group Raise the Colours have agreed to stop hoisting England flags on lamp-posts in Oxfordshire after the local authority secured a high court injunction against the campaign.
Ryan Bridge, Ben Cullen and Trudy Wells told the high court on Tuesday they would not raise St George’s flags from Oxfordshire county council property, encourage others to do so or impede council workers from taking them down.
Michel Barnier says UK could also join a new European security and defence council
Whoever becomes the next UK prime minister will have plenty of political space to move closer to Europe, polling expert John Curtice has said.
His comments come as many domestically and in Europe begin to question whether the potential future British prime minister will move further away or closer to the EU than Keir Starmer.
“Labour’s vote is something like three-quarters to four-fifths pro-Rejoin [the EU] vote.
Labour has always had much more potential political opportunity to be able to go further in terms of our relationship with the European Union, but it does mean that the Labour Party has to end its hang up about the ‘Red Wall.’”
“Actually the reason why public opinion has shifted from what was, 52:48 in favour of Brexit no being roughly 60, 40 rejoin is partly to do with the fact that leave voters are less likely to say they would vote to stay out, than remain voters … say rejoin.
There is a bit of a gut [feeling] there, but we have to remember now that there are 10 years worth of our population who were too young to vote in 2016.
And if you actually look at the perceptions of the people who did not vote in 2016, whether they were too young or not, they, and their perceptions of the consequences of Brexit, including on the economy, look much closer to the views of remain voters than those of leave voters.”
In a 6-3 opinion, the court says Louisiana prisoner cannot sue guards after he grew his hair for more than 20 years
The US supreme court refused on Tuesday to let a Rastafarian man sue state prison officials in Louisiana after guards held him down and shaved him bald in violation of his religious beliefs, in a landmark case.
The case was brought under a federal law designed to protect incarcerated people from religious discrimination.
Injuries reported as bus is said to have flipped on to its side after collision on roundabout on outskirts of Kidwelly
Police have declared a major incident after a bus crash in west Wales.
Dyfed-Powys police said on Tuesday afternoon there had been a collision involving a bus on a roundabout on the A484 on the outskirts of Kidwelly, in Carmarthenshire, at approximately 12.20pm.
Peter Walker is a senior Guardian political correspondent.
The Liberal Democrats are marking the tenth anniversary of Brexit by enjoying their favourite pursuit – being rude about Nigel Farage.
Nigel Farage pocketed a £5m “reward” for the damage he’s caused, while the rest of us are paying for it dearly. When he promised we would be better off, he clearly only meant himself. We are taking over billboards across the UK today to say enough is enough.
Key to a serious Jones run seems to what he makes of Burnham’s economic policies in the coming days - including public control of utilities. And whether Ed Miliband ends up as chancellor.
US secretary of state and vice-president said to have discussed ceasefire monitoring body; Trump says Tehran has committed to ‘nuclear honesty’
Oman and Iran said in a statement that the two countries will form a team to reach an agreement on “administration of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz” and associated costs and services, Reuters reports.
The two states will hold talks with coastal countries and other concerned parties, the statement said.
Italy’s health ministry has declared a red heatwave alert in 15 cities including Milan and Rome on Tuesday and said the number would go up to 16 on Wednesday.
During a red alert – the highest level – the ministry advises people to eat light, stay indoors in the hottest parts of the day and sprinkle themselves with cool water.
The three who were convicted in the Washington DC killing were agents of Augusto Pinochet’s feared secret police
Fifty years after Gen Augusto Pinochet’s secret police detonated a car bomb in the heart of Washington DC, killing Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean minister and ambassador to the US, and his American colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a Santiago court has convicted three former agents of Moffitt’s murder.
Judge Paola Plaza, a special minister for human rights in Chile, sentenced Pedro Espinoza, José Zara, and Raúl Iturriaga to 15 years in prison for their roles in the killing of Moffitt, 25.
At ISC High Performance 2026: Generative AI and Recurrent Networks run on Q.ANT’s Second-Generation Photonic Processor
STUTTGART, Germany, June 23, 2026 — Q.ANT today demonstrated the first complex, production-relevant AI workloads on its photonic hardware. Q.ANT successfully demonstrated a diffusion model and a recurrent neural network on its second-generation Native Processing Unit (NPU) at ISC High Performance 2026 in Hamburg. This proves that Q.ANT’s photonic architecture supports the full breadth of modern AI capabilities in generative image synthesis and sequential time series prediction.
The ISC demonstrations build on ecosystem progress already underway. Earlier this year, independent developers at Daisytuner compiled and deployed an object detection model directly from PyTorch onto Q.ANT’s photonic processor. This marked the first time an AI model from a standard ML framework has been successfully compiled for photonic hardware.
These developments reveal that Q.ANT’s NPS has advanced beyond foundational algorithms to genuine commercial applications. Using Q.ANT hardware, these high-performance computing tasks target to operate with 30x the energy efficiency of classical processors in equivalent matrix operations at the photonic circuit level.
“Q.ANT’s photonic architecture changes the energy calculus for AI infrastructure.” says Q.ANT founder and CEO, Dr. Michael Förtsch. “When you perform computation with light instead of transistors, you reduce energy consumption at the source. And every serious conversation about the future of AI acknowledges that energy is the bottleneck the industry must break through. Our recent demonstrations of generative AI show that photonic hardware can carry the mathematical load of the most demanding modern AI workloads.”
Generative AI on Photonic Hardware
To illustrate its capabilities for generative AI, Q.ANT hardware ran a diffusion model to perform image-to-image synthesis – a class of generative AI workloads defined by iterative, parallelized matrix operations. This image-to-image application highlights the viability of photonics in one of the most computationally intensive neural network architectures in modern AI and marks the first time a diffusion model of this complexity has run on photonic hardware.
Diffusion models generate images through repeated forward passes of a deep neural network in dense matrix operations. By executing the primary computational layer using light instead of transistors, Q.ANT’s photonic processor moves beyond foundational algorithms into processing the linear arithmetic at the core of modern AI applications.
“Diffusion models are widely used and computationally demanding approaches in modern generative AI. They rely on repeated, large-scale operations to gradually produce a coherent output,” says Professor Dr. Björn Ommer, head of the Computer Vision & Learning Group at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and the leading researcher behind the development of the stable diffusion model. “If photonic hardware could execute such workloads efficiently and reliably, it would be an exciting indication that alternative computing substrates may play an important role in the future of generative AI.”
Time Series Prediction with xLSTM
Proving the extensibility of its hardware in structurally distinct architectures, Q.ANT also executed the TiRex time series prediction model developed by NXAI, the Austrian frontier AI lab commercializing the Extended Long Short-Term Memory (xLSTM) architecture for enterprise applications.
“We’ve been pushing the balance of performance and power consumption with TiRex from the beginning. Seeing it run on Q.ANT’s photonic hardware is amazing and opens a new chapter,” says Lukas Fischer, Head of Applied Research at NXAI. “xLSTM architecture on photonic systems could redefine what energy-efficient AI even means.”
Unlike transformer-based models, xLSTM is a recurrent neural network designed to identify patterns across sequential data and predict future values over long-time horizons. NXAI’s commercial TiRex model, with production-tuned weights, targets financial market analysis, supply chain optimization, weather forecasting and traffic flow simulation.
Through the xLSTM and diffusion model demonstrations, Q.ANT now shows that its hardware can operate on the most demanding classes of modern AI. Running both shows that Q.ANT hardware is built for the breadth of AI use cases.
Building a Photonic Computing Ecosystem
The ISC demonstrations are the latest in a series of third-party integrations, commercial partnerships and institutional deployments for Q.ANT.
In May, Q.ANT announced the first commercial orders for its hardware through a partnership with the German cloud services provider, IONOS. And in April, Q.ANT partner Daisytuner, revealed the development of a compiler using standard AI toolchains for a live object detection application. Leading institutions like the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre Munich and Jülich Supercomputing Centre, two of Europe’s breakthrough HPC facilities, are running Q.ANT hardware in live production.
This ecosystem forming around Q.ANT’s platform reflects the institutional confidence in photonic computing as the infrastructure for next generation compute.
About Q.ANT
Q.ANT is commercializing photonic accelerators for AI and high-performance computing, offering a scalable alternative to transistor-based systems. Its Native Processing Units (NPUs) use photonic integrated circuits based on a lithium niobate material platform to perform mathematical operations directly on the chip using optical signals, enabling energy-efficient co-processing for complex computational tasks. Q.ANT operates its own TFLN chip pilot line in collaboration with IMS CHIPS. Q.ANT was founded in 2018, and is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany.
ESPOO, Finland and MUNICH, June 23, 2026 — IQM Quantum Computers today announced a significant achievement in quantum error correction, using directional tile codes, marking a major step toward practical, large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Credit: IQM
The research, available on arXiv, and co-authored by IQM researchers and collaborators at Freie Universität Berlin, the University of Edinburgh, and Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, introduces ‘directional tile codes’, a new family of quantum error-correcting codes that resolves one of the central tensions in quantum computing.
As IQM prepares for its planned Nasdaq listing through a merger with Real Asset Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: RAAQ), this research advances a core pillar of its technology roadmap targeting, fault-tolerant quantum computing by 2030 and a path to scaling up to one million qubits.
The results show that, using only the nearest-neighbour iSWAP gates already native to IQM’s Crystal processors, directional tile codes can reduce the per-logical per-round error rate by up to 1,000 times compared to the widely used surface code at a comparable hardware footprint of around 30 physical qubits per logical qubit.
“Quantum error-correction codes should not only be highly efficient; they should also be implementable on scalable and manufacturable hardware architectures. A close co-design of quantum error correction and hardware is a central element of IQM’s strategy. Directional tile codes represent a breakthrough in this direction, delivering up to a 1,000-fold reduction in logical error rates on near-term-sized IQM Crystal hardware while relying only on practical nearest-neighbour connectivity. This is a significant step toward scalable fault-tolerant quantum computing,” said Dr. Inés de Vega, Chief Scientist of IQM Quantum Computers.
“At IQM, we have always believed that building production-grade quantum systems and advancing the underlying science are two sides of the same mission. Close collaboration with leading academic groups is central to that approach, and this result demonstrates what such partnerships can achieve.”
Directional tile codes represent a concrete and measurable step along the path to fault tolerance, demonstrating that the efficiency advantages of Quantum Low-Density Parity Check (QLDPC) codes can be achieved on the planar hardware architecture IQM builds today.
“We have been working on tile codes since 2025, as they are promising candidates due to their local checks, great parameters, and the many ways that exist to perform logical computation with them without adding connectivity requirements. The key innovation of directional tile codes is that we are using dynamic syndrome extraction circuits to implement them on a square grid,” said Dr. Vincent Steffan, Senior Quantum Error-Correction Engineer at IQM Quantum Computers.
The ability to achieve these improvements on square qubit grid makes directional tile codes directly relevant to IQM’s near-term QEC capabilities, while also creating a baseline for further improvements through the continued co-design of error-correcting codes and hardware architectures.
Quantum error correction is widely regarded as a key requirement for achieving quantum advantage on large-scale, practically relevant problems, and it sits at the core of IQM’s technology roadmap. Quantum systems are inherently sensitive to noise and errors, which must be detected and corrected repeatedly throughout a computation to enable reliable and increasingly complex quantum workloads.
To date, IQM has sold 23 quantum systems globally, more than any other quantum manufacturer to customers spanning research institutions, high-performance computing centres, and enterprises.
About IQM Quantum Computers
IQM Quantum Computers is a global leader in superconducting quantum computers, delivering full-stack quantum computers and cloud platform access to research institutions, universities, high-performance computing centers, national laboratories and enterprises worldwide. IQM’s on-premises deployment model gives customers direct ownership and control of their quantum infrastructure. Founded in 2018, headquartered in Finland with major operations in Munich, it has over 400 employees. IQM operates across Europe, Asia, and North America. IQM filed an F-4 registration statement with the SEC, which has since been declared effective, with the intention to become the first publicly listed European quantum company on Nasdaq Global Exchange in the U.S by merging with Real Asset Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: RAAQ).
Who put Theresa May’s back up on Instagram, what did Boris Johnson say about bananas and much more
It is 10 years since the British public decided to pack up its troubles in its old kit bag, give Jacques Delors the final up yours and march off into an EU-free paradise. Opinions may differ on how that has worked out. Certainly several of the architects of the whole thing are enjoying lovely well-paid retirements on the speaking circuit or have seats in the House of Lords. Anyway, here are 18 questions about Brexit and the referendum campaign. How much do you remember about some of the weirder aspects of those few weeks, months and then years as the UK negotiated its exit?
The Guardian 10th anniversary Brexit referendum quiz
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Britain is considering forcing social media companies to prioritize what the government called trusted news sources as part of its broader push to tighten regulation of the sector. The culture department said on Monday it was considering requiring platforms such as Meta's Facebook, Alphabet-owned YouTube and TikTok to make content from public service media -- including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 -- and other trusted news providers easier to find in users' feeds and searches.
Boosting the visibility of regulated news providers could help tackle misinformation, particularly during crises, the government said. However, any move to influence how platforms rank content is likely to face scrutiny from the social media firms, which say such rules could override user choice and disadvantage other creators. The proposals form part of a broader overhaul of Britain's public service media system to help broadcasters compete with streaming platforms and shifting viewing habits. Ministers are also considering widening public service media status to include online-only providers, extending free-to-air protections for major sporting events to on-demand viewing, and consulting on a shift to internet-based TV from 2034 or 2044. "It is vital that we make sure that people have better access to trusted and accurate news and that our regulated public service media is seen and heard in the fierce battle against mis- and disinformation," culture minister Lisa Nandy said in a statement.
The move follows the UK's recently-announced ban on social media use for those under 16.
Cabinet ministers loyal to Keir Starmer have said they will not back any candidate against Andy Burnham, urging the chief secretary to the prime minister not to run in a contest.
Darren Jones is being urged by some MPs to run against Burnham to avoid a “coronation” of the former Greater Manchester mayor, though several backbenchers tentatively backing Jones said they were doing so to put the spotlight on Burnham’s economic policies and to warn of the prospect of Ed Miliband as chancellor.
As the US tries to limit the damage from the Iran war, its vice-president has admitted he doesn’t understand diplomacy. Of course not: he’s been too busy churning out another memoir
Has JD Vance been injecting Barron Trump’s new energy drink straight into his veins? It would explain a few things, including how the man manages to juggle so much. First there’s the parenting: Vance has three young kids and a baby due soon. Then there’s the vice-presidenting. But despite his long to-do list, Vance still makes time for endless holidays. And he’s even managed to get some writing done: the bestselling Hillbilly Elegy author recently published his second book. It’s a memoir about his spiritual journey called Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith.
So, should you find your way to a bookshop to buy a copy? Most book critics seem to say no. It’s hard to know exactly what regular readers think because two of the biggest review platforms have restricted feedback. Amazon says reviews are limited to verified purchasers because of “unusual review activity” (translation: a torrent of one-star reviews), while Amazon-owned Goodreads has suspended reviews altogether. It’s a shame that Usha Vance, a voracious reader whose Goodreads account notes she just finished Communion (shortly after reading Death Comes for the Archbishop), hasn’t had a chance to give hubby a five-star review.
Suit alleged California-based company developed technology that allowed China to surveil members of movement
The US supreme court further limited the reach of a federal law used to hold corporations liable for human rights abuses committed abroad, as it issued a ruling on Tuesday ending a lawsuit by members of the Falun Gong movement accusing Cisco Systems of facilitating religious persecution in China.
The justices reversed a lower court’s decision that had breathed new life into the 2011 lawsuit, which was brought under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789. The suit had alleged that Cisco knowingly developed technology that allowed China’s government to surveil and persecute Falun Gong members.
Losses spread globally as investors questioned soaring valuations and spending on AI infrastructure
A tech sell-off shook global markets on Tuesday as attention turned away from developments in the US war with Iran and toward the future of AI companies and chipmakers that have driven stock markets to record highs.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq index opened 2% lower on Tuesday. The Dow and S&P 500 were also down at opening.
Rights campaigners and MEPs say meeting would normalise regime that erases women from public life
Rights campaigners and MEPs have warned that a meeting between EU officials and a Taliban delegation in Brussels risks normalising a regime that has banned girls from school beyond the sixth grade and sought to erase women from public life, while its ranks include two leaders accused of crimes against humanity.
Aspokesperson for the Afghan foreign ministry confirmed that a delegation representing the Taliban had travelled to Brussels after the Belgian foreign ministry issued five single-day visas.
Nvidia, Alphabet and other technology stocks fell as Wall Street shifted from rewarding AI spending to demanding evidence that it will produce outsized returns.
PARIS, June 23, 2026 — Bull, a leader in advanced computing and AI, today announced that its systems continue to lead the Green500 ranking of the world’s most energy-efficient supercomputers, occupying the top three positions for the second consecutive edition. Bull has also increased its presence in the TOP500, the list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, to 59 systems, including JUPITER, Europe’s most powerful supercomputer, ranked #5.
The latest TOP500 and Green500 rankings confirm that energy efficiency is becoming a defining metric in supercomputing. As demand for AI and large-scale computing accelerates, Bull continues to help organisations combine world-class performance with industry-leading sustainability.
With 59 Bull-built systems in the TOP500, Bull continues to expand its global footprint and strengthen its position as a leading supercomputing provider. Bull is now the leading provider by number of systems in Europe, South America and India, supporting the growth of sovereign computing capabilities across these regions.
Bull Sets the Benchmark for Sustainable Supercomputing
For the fifth consecutive edition, Bull has retained the number one position in the Green500 ranking, the global listing that measures the energy efficiency of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, while also securing the entire podium for the second edition in a row.
The three leading systems – Kairos (CALMIP), ROMEO (URCA) and the Levante GPU Extension (DKRZ) – demonstrate Bull’s ability to help customers achieve breakthrough performance while minimising energy consumption. As AI and simulation workloads continue to grow, these rankings confirm that sustainable computing can scale without compromising capability.
This achievement builds on decades of innovation in HPC, AI and quantum architecture, software optimisation and Bull’s industry-leading expertise in energy-efficient HPC technologies. It also reflects a long-standing commitment to helping organisations maximise the scientific and business value of computing resources while reducing operational costs and environmental impact.
Combining Performance, Sovereignty and Sustainability
Beyond energy efficiency, Bull continues to play a central role in the development of sovereign digital infrastructure worldwide.
A total of 59 Bull-built systems is listed in the latest TOP500 ranking, reflecting growing demand for trusted supercomputing platforms capable of supporting AI innovation, scientific discovery and strategic national capabilities. Bull ranks once again first by number of systems deployed in Europe, South America and India, underscoring its leadership in regions investing in technological independence and local innovation ecosystems.
Bull’s flagship exascale system, JUPITER, remains among the world’s most powerful supercomputers, ranked #5 in the TOP500. As Europe’s first exascale-class system, JUPITER serves as a showcase for Bull’s ability to deliver extreme-scale computing while maintaining a strong focus on energy efficiency. It also forms the foundation of the JUPITER AI Factory, supporting Europe’s ambitions in advanced AI and scientific research.
“Bull believes the future of HPC-AI infrastructure will be defined not only by performance, but by the ability to deliver sustainable, sovereign and economically viable computing at scale,” said Bruno Lecointe, SVP, head of HPC, AI and Quantum Computing at Bull. “Our results in the latest TOP500 and Green500 rankings demonstrate that these objectives can be achieved simultaneously. By securing the top three positions in the Green500 and expanding our presence to 59 systems in the TOP500, Bull demonstrates that the industry’s most advanced computing platforms can also be its most energy efficient. As demand for HPC-AI and scientific computing continues to accelerate worldwide, we remain committed to helping our customers build a sovereign and sustainable digital infrastructure.”
About Bull
Leveraging nearly a century of innovations, Bull is a global leader for High-Performance Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Quantum technologies with c.720m€ in revenue and 3,000 professionals operating in 32 countries. Built on an open, end-to-end and trusted approach, Bull designs, deploys and operates hardware, software and strategic services that unlock enterprise value, accelerate scientific research and advance society. Driven by world-class R&D, backed by 1,600 patents, manufacturing excellence and data sciences expertise, Bull enables nations and industries to fully control their AI and data and to drive progress for the benefit of the planet.
Forty people have drowned while swimming in unsupervised areas across France in recent days, the prime minister has said, as people across the country sought respite from a record-breaking heatwave that saw France register its hottest day on record and sent sweltering heat across much of Europe.
“There is a tragic scourge of drownings,” Sébastien Lecornu said on Tuesday. “The latest figures we’ve received are 40 deaths since 18 June. Most of the victims are young people.”
The US health department said the enforced 42-day quarantine was necessary to protect the public
Eight Americans quarantined for six weeks in Nebraska after they were exposed to a deadly hantavirus outbreak were released on Monday, including one who accused the government of holding her against her will.
The US health and human services department (HHS) confirmed that it had ended the required isolation for the group, who were among dozens evacuated from the MV Hondius cruise ship in the Canary Islands early in May.
NVIDIA technology runs 81% of the TOP500 and 90% of the systems new to the list.
June 23, 2026 — NVIDIA technologies power more than 400 of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers — 81% of the TOP500 — according to the latest rankings released this week at the ISC High Performance conference in Hamburg, Germany.
That’s a gain of 17 systems from the previous list, with the momentum in new deployments: nearly nine of every 10 systems new to the ranking are built on NVIDIA technologies.
Credit: NVIDIA
That percentage reflects a deliberate preference for machines built for AI, simulation and science together. And it’s compounding: NVIDIA systems across the TOP500 now deliver more than 2x the AI training and nearly 3x the AI inference throughput of every other platform combined.
GPU and networking adoption each hit new highs, with NVIDIA GPUs accelerating a record 238 systems and NVIDIA networking connecting a record 376 — the vast majority on NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand, the backbone of large-scale AI and high-performance computing, and the rest on Ethernet.
The trend behind the numbers is bigger than any one list: Accelerated computing is becoming the foundation for the systems taking on the world’s most demanding work, across AI and science.
Updated twice a year, the TOP500 ranks the world’s fastest supercomputers, while the Green500 list measures how much computing each delivers per watt.
A Full-Stack Footprint
NVIDIA’s reach now spans the full system — GPU, networking and, increasingly, the CPU — with NVIDIA Grace CPU adoption reaching 26 systems, up eight from the previous list, with nearly 2.5 million Grace CPUs shipped.
NVIDIA Grace-based machines sit atop both rankings: JUPITER at No. 5 and Alps at No. 10 on the TOP500, and KAIROS at No. 1 on the Green500.
Each pairs an NVIDIA GPU with the Grace CPU in a single NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip, letting the two share memory with minimal overhead — a design built for the memory-intensive demands of modern AI.
The NVIDIA Vera CPU, announced earlier this year, builds on the success of Grace, taking CPU performance and energy efficiency to new levels for the most demanding AI workloads in modern data centers — where agents move from answering basic questions to taking actions, running code, using tools and evaluating results.
Topping the Efficiency List
NVIDIA swept the Green500 ranking of the most energy-efficient supercomputers: The top eight all run on NVIDIA GPUs and nine of the top 10 use NVIDIA technologies.
Leading the list is KAIROS, an NVIDIA Grace Hopper system at France’s University of Toulouse, at 73.3 gigaflops per watt — with Grace Hopper systems taking the top four spots, across France, Germany and the U.K.
From Exascale Science to the Next Wave
A record 35 NVIDIA AI HPC supercomputers are in development across Europe — equipping more than 3 million researchers with next-generation infrastructure for continental AI, accelerated science and industrial innovation.
Among these systems is JUPITER, Europe’s fastest supercomputer and its first to reach exascale, at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany.
JUPITER is mapping the human brain at cellular scale, simulating Earth’s climate and advancing the AI behind next-generation 6G networks.
The newest arrivals to the list run on the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture, with B200 and GB200 systems entering the rankings across Asia, Europe and the U.S. — and the first GB200 systems debuting in Japan.
The buildout is global, from a new AI factory in South Africa to national AI systems in Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Vietnam.
It’s the same story up and down the list: the world’s AI buildout is running on NVIDIA.
June 23, 2026 — The Flemish Supercomputer Centre’s (VSC) latest Tier-1 supercomputer, Sofia, has immediately made a strong international impression. Hosted by the VUB, the supercomputer features in the latest edition of the TOP500 list, published today, at number 222 among the world’s most powerful supercomputers. In the Green500 ranking, which assesses energy efficiency, Sofia is ranked 41st.
VSC’s latest Tier-1 supercomputer, Sofia
“The TOP500 shows that Sofia is a force to be reckoned with internationally,” says VUB Rector Jan Danckaert. “The Green500 shows that Flanders is achieving this in a well-considered and energy-efficient manner.”
The Sofia supercomputer is housed in the Nexus data centre at the Zellik Research Park. The system runs on green electricity and utilises a highly energy-efficient infrastructure. Where possible, rainwater is used for cooling. The heat generated by the supercomputer is used via a heat recovery system to partially heat buildings at the Research Park.
“Sustainability was part of Sofia’s design right from the start,” says Karin Voets, CIO of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. “We opted for a system that delivers as much computing power as possible per watt consumed, in a highly energy-efficient data centre. But it doesn’t stop there: we also want to make the most of the supercomputer and help users write their applications more efficiently. In this way, we ensure that every kilowatt delivers as much scientific and societal value as possible.”
“After months of hard work, we are delighted with this ranking in the Green500. Flanders now has a supercomputer that ranks highly internationally and is remarkably energy-efficient,” agrees Ward Poelmans of the Flemish Supercomputer Centre (VSC). “For AI and large-scale simulations, computing power is the new research infrastructure. With Sofia, we have an infrastructure close to our researchers, right here in Flanders.”
The funding was secured through the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), which, thanks to the Flemish government, was able to invest 8.6 million euros in the purchase of a new Flemish supercomputer. From July 3, Sofia will be fully deployed for an initial series of academic research projects. The supercomputer will support Flemish researchers in areas including artificial intelligence, climate research, medical applications and large-scale simulations.
Decision comes after Aden Duale was held in contempt for ignoring previous high court ruling to stop work
Kenya’s health minister told a court he had ordered preparations for a US-run Ebola quarantine facility to stop, after being held in contempt for ignoring a previous order to end work.
Foreign Office failed to act on warnings of genocide due to ‘pressure’ from emirates, Yale human rights investigator will tell a parliamentary select committee
The British government had received intelligence that Ethiopia appeared to be supporting a genocidal militia in Sudan’s civil war as far back as 2024 but did not go public with the news for fear of upsetting the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a parliamentary committee will hear.
In May 2024, officials from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) told Nathaniel Raymond, an American human rights investigator at Yale University, that “significant private pressure” from the UAE meant the UK would not publicly divulge information linking Ethiopia and the emirates to their support for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, is to meet Gulf allies on Tuesday and Wednesday in an attempt to reassure them that the US remains committed to their security and the 60-day ceasefire deal struck with Iran last week will not embolden Tehran.
The Gulf is divided over the deal. While Qatar has played a central role in mediating the agreement, some countries – notably the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain – are fearful it hands Iran substantial sums that may be ploughed into its military.
June 23, 2026 — The New TOP500 and Green500 lists demonstrate the scale of AMD leadership across global supercomputing, with the company’s technology powering four of the world’s 10 fastest and four of the 10 most-efficient supercomputers, and a total of 191 systems – an 11% increase year-over-year.
Systems powered by AMD maintain a commanding presence in the 10 leading TOP500 systems, including El Capitan (No. 2) and Frontier (No. 3), along with the newly deployed HPC7 (No. 6). AMD EPYC CPUs and AMD Instinct GPUs serve as foundational technologies for many of the world’s most advanced systems, helping researchers and organizations accelerate scientific discovery and AI innovation.
Recognizing the most energy-efficient supercomputers in the world, the Green500 rankings are increasingly central to evaluating high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities. AMD systems continue to rank among the most efficient in the world, with four systems placing in the Green500 top 10, including Otus (No. 5), Capella (No.6), AMD Ouranos (No. 9) and Portage (No. 10), while powering 56% of the top 50 systems.
Together, these systems demonstrate how AMD architecture delivers the computational performance and energy efficiency required for the next era of AI and scientific discovery.
AMD Advances Europe’s Sovereign AI Ambitions
While many AI conversations are centered on model size and training, AMD’s work with European computing leaders is taking a broader path — one rooted in scientific excellence, technological sovereignty and open collaboration.
Across the region, AMD EPYC processors and AMD Instinct GPUs are powering new deployments across TOP500 supercomputing and AI projects. They include:
Eni’s new HPC7 supercomputer (No. 6 in the TOP500) is one of Europe’s leading industrial HPC systems. Building on the success of HPC6 (No. 8 in the TOP500), Eni continues to support advanced AI, modeling and simulation workloads that help accelerate energy research while strengthening Europe’s sovereign AI and HPC capabilities.
The first systems powered by AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs – two newly announced systems at the University of Cambridge – are ranked at Nos. 67 and 68 on the Top500 list.
LUMI, one of the world’s fastest and most efficient supercomputers, has become a cornerstone of European AI research. Operated by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking and hosted by CSC in Finland, LUMI (No. 11 in the TOP500) provides access to cutting-edge computational resources for both traditional HPC and advanced AI workloads.
GENCI, France’s national high-performance computing agency, is advancing its HPC and AI capabilities with AMD technology to support scientific research, advanced simulation and AI workloads. This includes the development of Alice Recoque, France’s first exascale supercomputer that will be powered by AMD Instinct MI430X GPUs and 6th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs. This system will support the need for HPC and AI, serving as an AI Factory.
Precision Still Matters
Many of the world’s most important scientific applications continue to rely on double-precision (FP64) computing. Whether modeling climate systems, simulating advanced materials, designing next-generation aircraft or exploring nuclear fusion, accuracy remains essential for producing trustworthy results.
At HPC User Forum 2026, AMD previewed the AMD Instinct MI430X GPU, designed specifically to address the growing need for both AI acceleration and leadership-class HPC performance.
AMD projects the AMD Instinct MI430X GPU will deliver more than 200 teraflops (TFLOPs) of native FP64 performance, which would establish a new benchmark for simulation, modeling and AI-driven scientific computing. This level of performance is critical as AI and HPC workloads increasingly converge on the same infrastructure. You can learn more at about AMD Instinct MI430X GPUs at ISC High Performance 2026, June 22-26, in Hamburg, Germany.
AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) drives innovation in high-performance and AI computing to solve the world’s most important challenges. Today, AMD technology powers billions of experiences across cloud and AI infrastructure, embedded systems, AI PCs and gaming. With a broad portfolio of AI-optimised CPUs, GPUs, networking and software, AMD delivers full-stack AI solutions that provide the performance and scalability needed for a new era of intelligent computing. Learn more at www.amd.com.
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the reporters behind Regime Change, were up against an administration that is ‘very good at keeping secrets’
They cracked the White House situation room, unearthing secrets from the heart of a secretive administration. But the reporters behind Regime Change, a blockbuster new book on Donald Trump’s second term, ran up against a wall when reporting on one issue surrounding the 80-year-old US president: his fitness for office.
“His health has always been a very specific lockbox for him, going back decades,” Maggie Haberman, co-author with Jonathan Swan, said in an interview. “Illness freaks him out; he perceives illness as weakness, usually, and he certainly perceives any sense that he is having an issue as a projection of weakness, and his advisers are very, very attuned to that.
A Mount Everest veteran tells CBS News why retrieving "Green Boots," whose remains have become a grim waypoint for climbers, would be a perilous mission.
Despite more than double the needed number of signatures to qualify for ballot, there’s uncertainty it’ll make it to voters
Hi and welcome to TechScape. Nick Robins-Early and Dara Kerr here, filling in for your usual host Blake Montgomery who is out on vacation. We’ll be talking about the fight over a proposed billionaire tax in California, the UK’s social media ban and SpaceX making a big buy in the AI arms race.
Across the West’s advanced democracies, conventional political parties are being gutted by stagnant wages and fraying social contracts that have left voters fed up with the status quo.
In Germany, Downing Street was likened to a transit station, given the regular comings and goings of different prime ministers and staff. Meanwhile, a bemused Spanish newspaper concluded No 10 seemed to have been fitted with a revolving door.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said there was no plan for the IAEA to inspect its damaged nuclear facilities, a day after Vice President JD Vance said conversations with inspectors could happen imminently.
Building had been vulnerable before it collapsed in the middle of the night, killing 98 people in 2021
The deadly destruction of a Florida beachfront condominium actually started weeks before it collapsed into a pile of rubble in the middle of the night, killing 98 people in 2021 – but the building had been vulnerable from the start, federal investigators found in a final report issued on Monday.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) said in the report that two connections between garage columns and the pool deck started to fail around early June. The combination of a structure design that did not meet building codes and alterations made to it over its 40 years meant that the other parts of the pool deck weren’t strong enough to withstand the extra load, leading to the type of slow-motion collapse.
Most of MLB’s 30 teams celebrate Pride month with a themed game to acknowledge the LGBTQ community and its baseball fans. During a 12 June game against the Chicago Cubs, San Francisco pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker wrote Bible verses on their hats, which featured the Giants’ logo in rainbow colors, while pitcher Sam Hentges chose not to wear the themed cap at all.
Note reportedly said kidnappers her didn’t mean to kill mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie, but she died shortly after her disappearance
A ransom note related to the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie – the mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie – said the 84-year-old had died, CNN and other news organizations are reporting, citing law enforcement sources.
Some media outlets had previously reported receiving ransom notes tied to the case in the days after Guthrie’s disappearance in early February from her home in the foothills just outside Tucson, Arizona.
Putin’s Asia diplomacy may help Russia avoid isolation. But it won’t deliver his goals in UkraineExpert commentthilton.drupal
Moscow’s recent engagement with ASEAN and Beijing shows it is not as isolated as Western countries had hoped. But it will not end the war in Ukraine in Russia’s favour.
As G7 leaders restated their united support for Ukraine and vowed to increase economic pressure on Russia, President Vladimir Putin was hosting leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at the ASEAN-Russia Commemorative Summit in Kazan. There, Putin could point to a very different diplomatic reality: none of the leaders present had severed ties with Russia or joined the West in treating it as an international pariah.
This symbolic contrast is important. More than four years after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has not been isolated in the way many Western governments expected or hoped. Large parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America have continued to engage with Moscow.
This is often out of strategic interest rather than sympathy: Russia remains a nuclear power, a permanent member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, a major energy exporter and a useful partner for states that do not want the West to define their strategic choices.
Putin’s Asian diplomacy should be taken seriously, but it has its limits.
But the more important issue is whether Putin’s renewed diplomatic visibility represents a real comeback – or rather an attempt to compensate for Russia’s lack of progress in gaining international support for its position on Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s challenge is not that Russia has no partners. Putin’s visit to Beijing last month and the Kazan summit, which concluded on a commitment to deepen ASEAN-Russia cooperation, gave Putin political platforms and opportunities to bolster his status. But these partnerships cannot deliver Putin’s priority goal: a political settlement on Ukraine on Russia’s terms.
Ukraine remains stuck
Putin’s failure to respond meaningfully to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s open letter and invitation to meet is revealing. The Kremlin still appears to believe its ‘strategy’ of endurance will deliver its war aims: hold the line, grind forward where possible, wait out political cycles in the West, and reserve the option of diplomacy for only once the terms have shifted decisively in Russia’s favour.
There is a brutal logic to this. Russia has shown that it can sustain a long war. Western support for Ukraine remains politically fragile and the US is increasingly unpredictable. European military production is improving, but not yet at the scale required to transform the war quickly.
However, Russia’s endurance has not produced a diplomatic breakthrough. It has so far failed at forcing Ukraine to accept its territorial claims. It has not split the G7 either. And it has not persuaded China, India or ASEAN states to endorse its preferred endgame. The result is that while Russia looks less isolated globally, it has not been able to persuade others to support its position on Ukraine, its most important – if not existential – issue.
This is why the recent European debate over opening communication channels with the Kremlin matters. These discussions do not amount to reconciliation. Instead, they show that Europeans are preparing for the diplomatic phase of a long war – even if they disagree between themselves over who should conduct this diplomacy and on what basis.
For Moscow, such debate can usefully be presented domestically and internationally as evidence that Europe is slowly realizing it can’t isolate Russia forever. But, in reality, Europe is not preparing to go back to business as usual. It is trying to avoid being excluded from any eventual negotiation while simultaneously rearming, hardening its eastern flank and reducing long-term dependence on Russia.
China’s role
Putin’s visit to Beijing in May confirmed China’s central importance to Russia’s wartime resilience. China has become Russia’s indispensable economic partner: a buyer of Russian oil and gas, a supplier of industrial goods and a channel through which Moscow can blunt the impact of Western sanctions.
But the Russia–China relationship is not a coalition for victory in Ukraine. Beijing has every interest in Russia distracting the US, weakening Western unity and accelerating the transition towards a more fragmented international order. It has far less interest in being dragged into Russia’s war or absorbing the costs of a direct confrontation with the West over Ukraine.
This distinction is crucial. China helps Russia to endure. But it does not help Russia win diplomatically.
The Russia–China relationship is not a coalition for victory in Ukraine.
In fact, the war has made Russia more dependent on China at precisely the moment when Moscow wants to present itself as an independent pole in a multipolar world. The Kremlin can speak of strategic partnership, but the asymmetry is obvious. Russia needs China economically. China values Russia as a useful partner, but not as an equal strategic centre.
This limits what Putin’s Beijing diplomacy can achieve. It demonstrates that Russia cannot be excluded from Eurasian politics. It does not demonstrate that Moscow can shape the terms of peace in Europe.
The Kazan summit
The ASEAN summit offered a broader test of Russia’s influence in Asia. It shows neither a Russian collapse nor a comeback.
For countries seeking to avoid binary choices between Washington and Beijing, maintaining relations with Russia still has value. Russia has long-standing defence ties with several Asian states, important energy roles, and diplomatic weight at the UN. Some governments may also value Moscow as a partner that does not attach liberal political conditions to cooperation.
But the quality of Russia’s influence has changed. Before 2022, Moscow could claim to be an autonomous great power in Asia: a third pole alternative to the US and China with military, diplomatic, cultural, political and technological influence.
The war has weakened that claim. Russia’s defence industry is consumed by Ukraine. Sanctions complicate payments, logistics and technology transfers. Its diplomatic bandwidth is heavily absorbed by the war.
Most importantly, its growing dependence on China makes it harder for Asian states to see Moscow as a true counterweight to Beijing. This is especially important in Southeast Asia. ASEAN states do not want to choose between the US and China.
But nor are they looking to join a Russian camp. They will trade with Moscow, buy from Moscow where useful, and engage Moscow when it serves their interests. This engagement shows Russia is not isolated, but it does not reflect Russian leadership.
Russia collecting herself?
Putin’s Asian diplomacy should be taken seriously, but it has its limits.
The West’s failure to isolate Russia globally is a real achievement for Moscow. But while Russia’s partners may reject the Western pressure to isolate Moscow, most of them have not endorsed Russia’s war aims. They are preserving options, not joining a project. They are engaging Russia because it is useful, not because they want Russia to define the future of European security.
The Utah judge in the murder case of Charlie Kirk's alleged killer has denied a defense request to force Tyler Robinson's former roommate to testify in person during the preliminary hearing.
The administration interrupted data streams that are key to forecasting. These systems should not be vulnerable to political whims
In 1877, North Americans experienced an unusually mild winter – it was known as the “year without a winter”. It coincided with one of the strongest El Niño events ever recorded. Scientists suspect the same El Niño was a major factor in one of the worst environmental disasters in history. As much of the world was enveloped in drought, harvests collapsed in India, China, parts of Africa, and Brazil. The drought, compounded by colonial and other socioeconomic policies, led to the “Great Famine”, which killed between 30 and 60 million people, about 3% of the world’s population at the time.
What distinguishes us from the victims of 1877 is not luck but data. When I served as deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, I saw modern ocean monitoring and forecasting provide the advance warnings the Victorians lacked. This lead time saves thousands of lives and billions of dollars each year. Today, we can anticipate climate shocks before they arrive.
Terry Garcia is a former deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
It’s 10 years since Brexit – and it’s also another one of those weeks in British politics … Guardian columnist Rafael Behr will be here at 5pm to answer your questions about Burnham, Starmer, Brexit and more.
Sign up here to join the discussion and post your questions
Welcome to our latest Q&A with a Guardian journalist. Raf will be joining us at 5pm. We have originally asked him to take questions about Brexit as we mark 10 years since the UK’s vote to leave the EU. But … you may well have questions about the last 48 hours as Andy Burnham looks certain to become the next prime minister.
In the meantime, though, Andrew Sparrow is covering another busy and dramatic day in Westminster on the politics live blog and here’s some more on the end of Keir Starmer’s premiership:
Nigel Farage has said his £5m gift from a crypto billionaire is “not any of your business” as it was given unconditionally to be spent on anything from Ferraris to gambling on horses.
The Reform UK leader bristled at questions about the £5m gift from the British Thai-based businessman Christopher Harborne in two radio interviews on Tuesday, saying it was “a purely private matter”.
Study warns AI datacenters are vulnerable to the climate hazards that their global greenhouse gas emissions bolster
Amid rising concern that the artificial intelligence boom is fueling the climate crisis, a new report has found that nearly 80% of datacenters are also exposed to extreme climate hazards, including flooding, extreme winds and wildfires.
Those impacts are leaving the infrastructure vulnerable to disrupted operations, increased time offline and inflated insurance and repair costs, the research from climate risk analytics firm First Street shows.
When André Robinson Jr was shot and killed in Oakland in 2020, his family was upended – how do siblings navigate the fallout from violent loss?
The Robinson family once looked forward to Sundays. It was the day they would gather with dozens of their closest relatives and friends to eat, laugh and catch up. “Sunday was the day that we cherished the most,” said RoShanda Robinson, the oldest child in the family.
But in the fall of 2020, these get-togethers abruptly stopped. A day that used to include bountiful meals and booming laughter suddenly became a painful reminder of life-changing loss.
Canada has unveiled a national strategy to build up to 10 new nuclear reactors over the next 15 years as it seeks to double electricity-grid capacity by 2050. Energy Minister Tim Hodgson called it a plan for a "new civilian nuclear renaissance."
"If our goal is to double our grid and build a low-carbon economy in less than 25 years, there is no credible plan to do that without nuclear energy and the clean, reliable baseload power it provides," Hodgson said. "There is no credible plan for Canada to become an energy superpower if we choose not to build upon one of the strongest energy advantages we have." CBC News reports: The strategy calls for construction to start on two new large-scale reactors by 2035, for five more to be planned or under development by 2040 and for at least one reactor to be under construction outside Ontario by 2035. It also calls for a Canadian-made microreactor to be finalized by 2035 and deployed to a remote community by the late 2030s. [...] Right now, Canada has four nuclear power plants -- three in Ontario and one in New Brunswick -- which generate about 15 per cent of Canada's electricity.
A new proposed facility at the existing nuclear plant in Darlington, Ont., would see the first small modular reactor in the G7, capable of producing up to 300 megawatts per unit. Saskatchewan is also looking at the potential to bring small nuclear reactors online by the mid 2030s. The energy deal between Ottawa and Alberta also committed to collaborating on developing a strategy to build a nuclear power plant. Officials from Natural Resources Canada told reporters in a background briefing that construction of the reactors outlined in the new national strategy could cost more than $100 billion. The strategy does not say how Canada would pay for them, though an official pointed to the Canadian Infrastructure Bank and the Canada Growth Fund as possible funding sources. Hodgson said the strategy would double the 90,000 jobs in Canada's nuclear sector "over the coming decades."
The plan also looks to expand sales of Candu reactors to new export markets. It says the government wants to break into at least four new international markets by 2040 and "engage six to 10 new nuclear entrant markets over a 15-year horizon, cementing Canada as their partner of choice." Thirty Candu reactors currently operate around the world, including in South Korea, China, India, Argentina, Pakistan and Romania, and there are plans to build two more. [...] "Reactor exports are not transactional. They establish multi-decade partnerships, creating durable geopolitical and commercial relationships that advance Canada's broader foreign policy interests," the strategy says. "As Canada works to diversify its trading relationships and strengthen ties with middle powers, Candu can be a central instrument of that strategy."
Force describes footage of police response to incident in Rotherham as ‘nothing short of shocking’
South Yorkshire police have described video footage that appears to show officers shoving and drawing batons and stun guns on teenage girls as “nothing short of shocking”.
The footage, widely shared on social media over the weekend, shows officers being confronted by a number of girls dressed up for a night out, before one of the officers appears to shove one of the teenagers and then draws his baton.
The boss of Royal Mail’s parent company received almost £7m in pay and bonuses last year – more than triple the previous figure – despite group profits slumping by a fifth.
Martin Seidenberg, group chief executive of International Distribution Services (IDS), took home £6.9m in pay, bonus and long-term incentive scheme awards in the year to 31 March, compared with £2.1m the previous year.
We’ve shown that rapid, measurable progress is achievable in our cities. Here’s how that can now be replicated worldwide
Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London. Michael Bloomberg is a former mayor of New York City
Some public health threats make global headlines: Covid-19. Ebola. Famine. When these disasters hit, photographs and videos of people suffering and dying spur countries to respond, international bodies to cooperate and individuals to donate supplies and money. Yet one of the world’s deadliest threats gets almost no attention at all, because it is largely invisible to the public and mostly absent from media coverage: air pollution.
Every day, billions of people are inhaling air that is shortening their lives and making them sicker with every breath. Every year, air pollution kills more than 8 million people worldwide. That’s more deaths than HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined. It hides in plain sight and strikes without mercy, leading to heart and lung disease, cancers and other deadly conditions.
Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London. Michael Bloomberg is a former mayor of New York City
Central California US district court rejected claim policy was ‘unconstitutional’. Plus House of the Dragon star Olivia Cooke on being sworn at by people wanting selfies
Good morning. A California court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump’s administration against Los Angeles over a city ordinance making it a “sanctuary city” and limiting its cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Fernando Olguin, a judge in the central California US district court, rejected the administration’s argument that the city’s policy was unconstitutional. He gave the administration permission to file an amended complaint. The White House did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
What did the city say about the victory? The Los Angeles city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto, said: “This order reinforces the well-established principle that local governments have the authority to decide how to use their personnel and resources. The goal of this ordinance … is to encourage victims of and witnesses to crime to feel safe coming forward to seek help from LAPD regardless of their immigration status. It does not obstruct or impede lawful federal immigration enforcement operations.”
Why did both sides want the act to pass? The legislation comes as Democrats and Republicans prepare for November’s midterm elections, in which concerns about affordability are expected to loom large in the minds of voters. A shortfall in construction of new homes is seen as a key driver of housing costs, which have crept higher in recent years.
Switching phone providers is a big deal with a lot of moving parts. We look at the best postpaid and prepaid plans from Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, Mint Mobile, US Mobile and others.
The independent senator David Pocock has challenged the Albanese government to prevent tech giants using Australian content to train AI models as cabinet considers proposals to change copyright rules for the rapidly developing technology.
His call came as the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young called for a moratorium on the building and approval of new datacentres in Australia until “we get the regulations right”.
(Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais-Pool/Getty Images)
What I’m Discussing Today
Kareem’s Daily Quote: When we let cynicism take the place of wisdom, are we surrendering the very power democracy demands we use?
JD Vance on the Morality of the Trump Administration: Vance is trying to sell a shaky Iran deal and moral standing the Trump administration hasn’t earned.
Trump said Italy’s prime minister “begged” for a photo. She says that’s “completely fabricated.”: Trump’s habit of inventing flattering fairy tales has curdled into public humiliation.
Serena Williams back at Wimbledon in doubles wildcard with Venus: Greatness, longevity, and unfinished business still make the best drama in sports.
High Noon | Fred Zinnemann (1952): Gary Cooper stars in a lean, unsentimental reminder that communities often discover their principles only after one person is forced to stand alone.
“Higher Ground” | Stevie Wonder (1973): Stevie and friends turn his ode to perseverance into a groove so irresistible that hope sounds less like a slogan than a duty.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
“When we lose faith in each other, when we stop believing that voting matters, that citizenship matters, that our collective voices matter, that how we treat each other no longer matters, and then we give away our power to decide our futures, we open the door to the most ruthless, or the most careless, or the most fearful among us, who see some groups and some people as more equal than others, and see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies, and keep those who are different in their place. I do not believe that is the story of America that prevails in the end.” President Barack Obama
(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
President Obama delivered these words at the dedication of his presidential center on Chicago’s South Side, the same neighborhood where he arrived as a 23-year-old community organizer with a car so packed he couldn’t see out the rearview mirror. A man who came from virtually nothing, he rose to the pinnacle of power. He has watched civic faith get built and depleted, built and depleted, block by block, kitchen table by kitchen table, over decades spent inside the actual machinery of democratic life.
He has watched Donald Trump do his best to dismantle every one of his achievements, precisely because they were achieved by him. Not just a younger man, a smarter man, a Blacker man—but, quite simply, a better man. A bigger man. Donald Trump is a man so small that he would take away healthcare from the people he is sworn to serve just because it’s called Obamacare. In point of fact, it’s actually called the Affordable Care Act; it was Republicans who dubbed it Obamacare in hopes of attaching his name to a policy they were sure would be unpopular. It didn’t turn out that way.Today, as many as two-thirds of Americans view Obamacare favorably. (Trump, meanwhile, tries to slap his name on anything he can find, from a new class of battleship to the Kennedy Center to the U.S. Institute of Peace. Greenland better watch out.)
For all that he has seen, for all that he has been through, President Obama has never given in to pessimism, or its clever cousin, cynicism. Cynicism, despite what its practitioners would like you to believe, is not wisdom. It may look like wisdom: on the surface, a cynic may seem to be someone who has genuinely thought things through, weighed the evidence, and arrived at a sober conclusion. But cynicism isn’t wisdom; it’s just an excuse to surrender when you’re too lazy or indifferent to continue the fight.
So how did cynicism become the dominant political mood of our time, anyway? Why have so many Americans surrendered? It’s worth our while to answer those questions. Cynicism has spread through our civic life because it removes the burden of participation. If every institution is corrupt, if every candidate is equally compromised, if the whole political enterprise is a performance with a predetermined ending, we’re off the hook. We don’t have to show up. Making uncomfortable trade-offs between imperfect candidates, or learning the issues well enough to hold actual opinions, requires effort that cynicism conveniently excuses us from. The slow, dispiriting surrender of civic faith functions as a permission slip to disengage while still feeling morally superior about it. And the most ruthless, or the most careless, or the most fearful among us understand this perfectly. They have been counting on it for a very long time. But it’s like Obama says, we “give away” our power: present tense, active voice, the responsibility placed squarely on us.
Historically, it hasn’t always been this way. Civic participation has never had the same pricetag for everyone living in this country. For certain classes of people, it has cost more than they could possibly afford. In fact, the price has been deliberately inflated for some, even as it’s been drastically reduced for others. The historical record is full of Americans whose access was systematically obstructed rather than voluntarily surrendered—through poll taxes, grandfather clauses, the violent rollback of Black voting after Reconstruction, the 1898 Wilmington coup where a biracial government was overthrown at gunpoint by people who saw government as exactly the sort of zero-sum game Obama warns against. Their descendants are busy gerrymandering Black districts out of existence in certain red states while you’re reading this piece.
Obama’s challenge falls squarely on those who have meaningful access to participation but have chosen instead to curate a feed of outrage and call that civic engagement. His message is clear: that’s not good enough. Rev. Theodore Parker, writing in 1853 at a moment when the abolitionist cause looked, by any practical accounting, like a losing proposition, said he couldn’t see where the arc of justice was bending by sight alone; he could only divine it by conscience. But in the end, following your conscience, no matter where it leads or how hard the journey, is what distinguishes the worthwhile citizen from the cynic.
What the US president succeeded in obliterating was any rationale he offered for going to war
Before Donald Trump finally surrendered in his Iran war, he declared victory several dozen times, including on day eight– “We’ve already won!” – day 10 – “The war is very complete”– day 12, proclaiming he had won five times in 13 seconds – “We’ve won, let me say we’ve won. You know, you never like to say too early you won, we won, we won the bet in the first hour it was over”– and day 39 –“Total and complete victory, 100%. No question about it”– and claimed a deal to end the war was just around the corner 38 times. The first time he raised the prospect of peace, on day 24, he said the two sides had reached “almost all points of agreement”.
Trump boldly affixed his signature with a sharpie to the Memorandum Of Understanding on day 110, 17 June, at the Palace of Versailles, where the ruinous treaty concluding the first world war was signed. He seemed oblivious to the historical symbolism of the place, but bedazzled by its gold. “Versailles is not gold leaf – Versailles is the real deal,” he remarked.
Democratic primary elections to test strength of party’s left flank as old guard faces string of challenges
New Yorkers were voting on Tuesday in a slate of Democratic primaries poised to reveal the strength of the party’s left flank and shape the battle for control of the US House of Representatives in November.
Voters in Maryland and Utah will also nominate congressional candidates on Tuesday, while South Carolina holds a series of runoff elections for candidates who did not receive a majority of the vote earlier this month.
Film-maker talks about her documentary on John Barnett, the Boeing whistleblower who killed himself in 2024
It is widely recognized that for the Kennedys, tragedy has come often and from unexpected quarters. The filmmaker Rory Kennedy, born six months after the assassination of her father Robert Kennedy, has known her share. But in 2024 it was a loss outside the political dynasty that shook her to the core.
John Barnett, a quality inspector turned whistleblower at Boeing, one of the world’s biggest plane manufacturers, was found dead in his truck outside a hotel in Charleston, South Carolina. Affectionately known as “Swampy” because of his roots in Louisiana, Barnett had a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
The symbolic power of a stagnant pond beneath Lincoln’s statue has proven irresistible for the president’s critics
Narcissus was cursed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Donald Trump is finding that his effort to overhaul the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in Washington has turned into a perverse tourist attraction and 2,028ft national metaphor.
On Monday afternoon a massive algae bloom had turned the pool a green reminiscent of a plane passenger clutching a sick bag. It also stank, but that did not deter a steady flow of curious tourists snapping photos and TV crews doing eyewitness interviews about the folly of Donald Trump’s $14.7m renovation.
Sharper, who pleaded guilty or no contest to raping women in four states, was transferred to a halfway house in May
Convicted serial rapist and former National Football League champion Darren Sharper has registered as a sex offender in his home state of Virginia, after being transferred from federal prison to a halfway house there, according to official records.
With a projected 2028 release date nearing, the US Bureau of Prisons (BoP) recently confirmed that the 50-year-old Sharper had been moved on 27 May from a federal correctional institution near Elkton, Ohio, to either home confinement or a facility colloquially known as a halfway house overseen by the agency’s residential re-entry management office in Baltimore.
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
Eleven months after unidentified Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil from his home in Morningside Heights, he met with his congressional representative, Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., for the first time.
The February meeting was scheduled as Espaillat, a fifth-term incumbent, was trying to improve his relationship with Khalil while a challenger against himgained steam. Darializa Avila Chevalier, an organizer from the Columbia University student encampments and a friend of Khalil’s, was at the time considered a long-shot challenger for the 13th Congressional District seat. But she was on her way to outraising Espaillat that quarter, and outside groups that anticipated a tough race for the incumbent had already started pouring money to bolster his campaign.
Espaillat now faces an unexpectedly heated battle to keep his House seat in New York’s primary election on Tuesday. Avila Chevalier is campaigning on criticizing Espaillat’s close ties to the pro-Israel lobby and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — whose super PAC gave $650,000 to a group backing Espaillat last month — and what she says was his reticence to go after ICE when the Trump administration first began targeting pro-Palestine students.
Outside groups have poured millions of dollars into the race — most of it, a reported almost $7 million, in support of Espaillat. Nearly $2 million has come in support of Avila Chevalier, most of it from the new pro-Palestine super PAC American Priorities and Justice Democrats PAC.
The race has aggravated an already strained relationship between progressive New York Democrats and an emboldened movement to their left, pitting the overwhelmingly popular democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani against leaders once considered progressive stalwarts and now finding themselves lumped in with the establishment. Mamdani has bucked the preferences of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — poised to become House speaker if the Democrats take the House in November — and retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez, who endorsed Mamdani early in his mayoral primary campaign and helped guide progressive ideas into New York’s mainstream for more than 30 years in Congress. Espaillat, sworn in to the House in 2017, is the longest-serving incumbent Democrat in New York facing a serious challenger on Tuesday.
Avila Chevalier has pointed to Khalil’s detention as a key inspiration for her decision to run. On the campaign trail, she has slammed Espaillat for what she frames as a lacking response to the activist’s detention and targeting by the Trump administration for the better part of a year.
“Mahmoud’s case is really emblematic of a lot of what’s wrong with our system,” she told The Intercept. She pointed to Espaillat’s refusal to meet with Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, as a continuation of his failure to address suppression of speech on Palestine in his district happening at Columbia and on the campuses of the City University of New York. “The fact that it was happening to a Palestinian man advocating for an end to the genocide of his people really highlights how all of this converges.”
In recent debates, Espaillat has responded to barbs from Avila Chevalier over his handling of the Khalil case by congratulating her for her work to assist his family and citing his meeting with Khalil and his attorneys in February. That month, when another Columbia student was detained on campus by ICE, Espaillat said the school needed to beef up its protections for students and described the Trump administration’s actions as “lawless,” calling on them to stop immediately.
Espaillat’s campaign did not provide comment for this story.
According to a member of his legal team present at the February meeting, the goal for Khalil was to use the meeting to allow the former organizer of the pro-Palestine encampment at Columbia University to vent his frustration that Espaillat had ignored multiple pleas to meet with Abdalla. A slew of progressive members from other districts, including Velázquez and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., had launched efforts to free Khalil and support family in the immediate aftermath of the arrest. Several visited him in detention in Louisiana. But when Khalil’s legal and advocacy team asked Espaillat to meet with Abdalla, they never heard back, according to two people with knowledge of the events who spoke to The Intercept.
“When one of Espaillat’s constituents was kidnapped from his home by Trump’s ICE, he failed to take any action to protect or stand up for Mahmoud Khalil and his safety,” said Amira Hassan, political director for PAL PAC, another pro-Palestine political action committee backing Avila Chevalier. PAL PAC is affiliated with the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, which has supported Khalil since his arrest.
“He did not meet with Mr. Mahmoud Khalil or his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, until after he was released from ICE detention,” Hassan said. “Why was it that he chose to abandon his constituents? Was it because he was more invested in serving the interests of his AIPAC donors who spearheaded the campaigns attacking students like Mahmoud Kahlil who were protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza?”
Velázquez, Espaillat’s retiring colleague, was one of 14 House Democrats who signed a letter to former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem three days after Khalil’s arrest demanding his immediate release. She was joined by Tlaib; Ilhan Omar D-Minn.; Summer Lee, D-Pa.; and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. Another letter the same day included Velázquez and more than two dozen other New York state and city politicians, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, then-New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, and State Assembly Member Claire Valdez.
But Velázquez has since sided with Espaillat in an effort to hold onto power in key New York congressional races. She was upset with Mamdani for endorsing Valdez, another democratic socialist, for the 7th Congressional District seat Velázquez is vacating over Reynoso, her handpicked successor.
The mayor further angered Velázquez and Espaillat when he endorsed Avila Chevalier, after he had reportedly promised Espaillat he would endorse him after the congressman backed the mayor in the general mayoral election. Espaillat had at first backed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo but switched his support to Mamdani after he won the Democratic mayoral primary last summer.
Espaillat has said Avila Chevalier’s campaign has misrepresented his record on ICE by saying he cooperated with the agency and voted to fund it. His campaign has touted his work to help immigrants build political power in New York and fight the Trump administration’s attacks on immigrant communities. He has conducted oversight visits at ICE facilities and supported detainees who held a hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions at a New Jersey detention center.
After a December visit to an ICE facility at Federal Plaza in New York with Rep. Dan Goldman — who is facing his own powerful challenger from the left in Brad Lander — Espaillat said President Donald Trump was creating a humanitarian crisis. “The White House’s unhinged expectations are forcing DHS officials to cut corners,” he said. “This is not how America should enforce its laws.”
While Avila Chevalier has called to abolish ICE, Espaillat, who was previously an undocumented immigrant and built his political career on helping to expand Latino power among Democrats in New York, has said ICE should be “dismantled” and voted against funding the agency in January. Espaillat previously co-sponsored a bill in 2018 to dissolve the agency and transfer its “critical functions” to other agencies, but he has also voted with most Democrats to fund ICE in appropriations bills over his time in Congress.
At the time of Khalil’s arrest, in response to questions from The Intercept, Espaillat said that he expected Trump’s Department of Justice “to work within the confines of the law and that due process is guaranteed to him and his family.”
During the February meeting, Espaillat offered to do whatever he could to help Khalil and his family. By that point, after Khalil had already been secretly moved to a detention facility in Louisiana and later released from ICE custody after three months, during which he missed the birth of his son, there was not much Espaillat’s office could do except press the Trump administration to drop the charges.
No help for Khalil materialized after the offer, according to one person present at the meeting. Abdalla, his wife, has since appeared in an ad for Avila Chevalier.
Also running on Tuesday are Oscar Romero, chief information officer of the NYC Civic Engagement Commission, and Theo Chino-Tavarez, a socialist and computer engineer. Espaillat is the top fundraiser, with $2.6 million so far. Avila Chevalier has raised just over $1.1 million, a haul that slowed after an eye-popping first quarter that made her the only primary challenger that quarter to outraise an incumbent in New York City.
“This election is much bigger than this primary, it is much bigger than this seat, it is much bigger than this political moment,” Avila Chevalier said. “This campaign needs to be a vehicle to engage people in their own politics, in their own government, and if we build this coalition right, people will be able to find their political home as a result.”
Why Should Delaware Care? As lawmakers close in on the final days of the 153rd General Assembly, the policy decisions they make will reverberate far beyond the walls of Legislative Hall. From finalizing a nearly $7 billion state budget to passing bills that could impact healthcare costs, energy prices, property taxes and more, the legislation considered until June 30 could impact the lives of countless Delawareans.
Over the next week, Delaware lawmakers will finalize the state’s nearly $7 billion budget and make decisions about sweeping policy proposals that could impact residents’ property tax bills, healthcare costs and more.
As legislators work toward the close of the 153rd General Assembly on June 30, Spotlight Delaware has relaunched its end-of-session live blog to track the latest developments inside Legislative Hall.
The blog will be updated periodically throughout the day, highlighting the passage of key bills, providing insights from committee hearings and monitoring any tense moments that may arise.
Committee hearings generally begin at 10 a.m., and the full House and Senate generally convene at 2 p.m.
A full agenda for the week, include links to attend hearings virtually, can be found by clicking through the links under the “What’s Happening” tab here.
Initiative targets the creation of a scalable automated system for quantum resource estimation, a major bottleneck in quantum application development
BOSTON, June 23, 2026 — Zapata Quantum today announced it is applying agentic AI to accelerate quantum algorithm development by automating quantum resource estimation (“QRE”) workflows, in collaboration with NVIDIA. The effort initially targets applications in quantum chemistry, including drug discovery, energy, and advanced materials development.
“We believe that automation, powered by advances in AI and informed by domain-specific knowledge, is the key to scaling quantum application development for real-world applications such as drug discovery,” said Yudong Cao, Zapata’s Chief Technology Officer. “By working alongside NVIDIA, we’re applying agentic AI to address the challenge of efficiently benchmarking quantum algorithms, an underappreciated bottleneck in quantum application development.”
Orchestrated Multi-Agentic AI Solution
Today, the benchmarking of a single class of quantum algorithms often involves years of expert effort spanning molecular modeling, algorithm design, and hardware resource estimation. Zapata and NVIDIA are collaborating on an agentic AI workflow designed to compress this process into a scalable automated system to significantly lower the cost and time required.
“Agentic AI is proving transformative in shortening the timeline to useful quantum applications,” said Sam Stanwyck, Director of Quantum Product at NVIDIA. “This work with Zapata shows how crucial accelerated computing and AI is for practical and scalable quantum resource estimation, and how impactful that can be for developing meaningful applications in areas such as industrial quantum chemistry.”
The workflow combines AI orchestration, continuously verified quantum workflows, and an AI feasibility model capable of predicting hardware requirements before computation begins. The approach utilizes NVIDIA Agent Toolkit software to provide guardrails and monitoring for the workflow’s initial multi-agentic setup.
Approach Tested with Homogeneous Catalysis
The initiative has already demonstrated the potential of the approach in the field of homogeneous catalysis, building on Zapata’s prior work in the same area as part of the DARPA Quantum Benchmarking program. Homogeneous catalysis is a computationally demanding and strategically important quantum chemistry problem given its applicability to high-value areas such as pharmaceuticals, energy and advanced materials.
The team of scientists from both companies now seeks to refine the methodology and broaden its application within quantum chemistry. Zapata also recently filed a provisional patent application related to an “agentic framework for quantum,” reflecting the company’s broader verification-aware AI approach to scalable quantum application development.
“The future of quantum computing will not be determined solely by hardware progress but by our ability to systematically discover, evaluate, and develop high-value applications,” said Cao. “AI has the potential to do for quantum application development what modern software tools have done for traditional software engineering—enabling researchers to move faster, explore more ideas, and focus their expertise where it creates the most value.”
About Zapata Quantum
Zapata Quantum 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. The Company’s study demonstrating the potential of quantum-enabled drug discovery was recognized as one of Nature Biotechnology’s Top 10 Papers of 2025.
Why Should Delaware Care? In recent years, Delawareans have questioned whether some schools with declining enrollments should close. Earlier this month, Delaware House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown introduced a proposal that would help define what an under-enrolled school looks like, and how the space could be repurposed.
More than a dozen Delaware public schools, mostly in New Castle County, are operating at less than 60% capacity, according to data from the Delaware Department of Education.
Five of those are more than half empty.
The phenomenon of half-empty school buildings has prompted Delaware’s House Speaker Mimi Minor Brown (D-New Castle) to question whether they — or other underutilized government facilities — could be repurposed into different types of community facilities.
Last week, Minor-Brown introduced a resolution that asks budget officials to develop a framework, along with school districts, that would define an “underutilized” property. They would then outline a process for repurposing it for other community services, such as child care or senior housing.
Delaware House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown (D-Delaware City) wants school districts to begin discussing how to better utilize facilities, which could save money. | PHOTO COURTESY OF DE HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS
The resolution, which awaits consideration in the Senate after passing the House, comes as enrollment in several schools in New Castle County has dwindled even it has surged in some southern Delaware districts.
The phenomenon has been fueled by several factors, including an expansion of charter schools in New Castle County and changes to bus patterns that allow students to attend schools outside of their community.
Among the hardest hit schools are Alexis I. duPont High School in the Red Clay Consolidated School District, which is 53% occupied, and the Colonial School District’s Castle Hills Elementary School, which is 48% occupied.
Minor-Brown’s resolution also comes as Delaware officials work to reform how the state funds individual schools — moving its funding formula away from one primarily reflects enrollment sizes.
Empty seats raise questions
While Minor-Brown calls on officials to use enrollment data as a factor in determining underused properties, some school officials say occupancy rates may not actually reflect how much a school is actually being used.
Colonial School District Superintendent Jeff Menzer said capacity numbers are not “cut and dry,” because some students need more space than others depending on their individual needs.
One classroom could be designed for 25 students, with one teacher and one paraprofessional. But if five students within the class are struggling with reading, there may be a need for more space to provide tutoring, Menzer said.
As a result, Menzer said some schools that have lower recorded enrollments than others are still overcrowded because of some students’ needs for more inclusive settings.
Warner Elementary School in Wilmington | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JULIA MEROLA
“You can’t necessarily trust that [capacity] number 100%,” he said.
While Minor-Brown’s proposal also does not define what would qualify as underutilized, one school administrator said officials should take note when certain high schools enroll less than 800 students.
In an email, Red Clay Director of Secondary Education Mark Pruitt said officials should hold early conversations when a high school that offers academic and career technical programs has an enrollment below 800 students.
Those early conversations should involve what Pruitt called “sustainable programming,” and the staffing needed to support that programming.
What comes next?
Minor-Brown’s resolution follows years of questions surrounding what could happen to schools with lower capacities. It also follows a multi-year study into the best way to oversee schools in Wilmington, Delaware’s largest city.
Last year, a state committee tasked with reworking school district boundaries recommended consolidating the four school districts serving Wilmington. That recommendation left some questioning whether it would result in the closure of high schools in the Wilmington area.
Redding Consortium co-chair State Sen. Elizabeth “Tizzy” Lockman (D-Wilmington) previously told Spotlight Delaware that low school enrollment is something that “can and will be taken in consideration as part of the planning.”
State Sen. Tizzy Lockman serves as co-chair of the Redding Consortium. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
Questions about how to use school buildings have also surfaced in the Red Clay Consolidated School District, where Alexis I. duPont High School has experienced a steep enrollment decline over the past 14 years and is now the state’s smallest traditional high school by enrollment.
Community members have pointed to several possible reasons for the decline, including changes to school-choice transportation, limits on choice admissions and growing competition from charter and private schools.
In response, district leaders have explored ways to increase enrollment at the school.
Earlier this spring, the district’s school board attempted to transform McKean High School into an “innovation campus.”
If passed, the measure to create McKean innovation center would have opened in August 2027, reducing the number of traditional high schools in the district from three to two, and increasing enrollment numbers at A.I. duPont High School and at The John Dickinson School.
The plan would also have moved the district’s Meadowood program for students with intellectual or developmental disabilities from McKean to A.I. duPont.
But the plan drew months of opposition from parents who said the Meadowood program had become overlooked in discussions about enrollment and school planning.
Parents with students in the program said Meadowood helps their children work on social skills, such as conversation starters, and learn how to do tasks like washing dishes.
Following the public backlash, the Red Clay school board voted in April to postpone the proposal.
Why Should Delaware Care? Following a shooting at Wilmington Hospital that left one man dead and another injured last week, state prosecutors have charged a suspect with multiple felony crimes. As investigators put together the pieces of the incident, and the Wilmington community reels, questions remain surrounding the nature of the shooting and ChristianaCare’s protocols to respond to it.
State prosecutors indicted John Wallace-Bey on multiple felony charges Monday, following the shooting last week that killed one of his fellow ChristianaCare Wilmington Hospital interns and injured another.
Wallace-Bey, 23, was charged with the murder of 19-year-old Ethan Hillman and the attempted murder of 19-year-old Jayden Ellis, Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings announced at a Monday press conference.
Ellis was in the hospital in critical condition after the incident, but he is now “doing better,” Jennings said.
The shooting is still believed to have been a targeted, isolated incident, she added. Wallace-Bey is believed to have acted “entirely alone.”
Along with the first-degree murder and attempted murder charges, Walace-Bey also was charged with one count of carrying a concealed deadly weapon and three counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, Jennings said.
As Delaware’s largest city and its largest healthcare system grapple with last week’s tragedy, the investigation into exactly how and why Wallace-Bey allegedly carried out the shooting remains ongoing.
Incoming ChristianaCare CEO Jenn Schwartz also spoke at Monday’s press conference, expressing gratitude to the hospital’s medical staff who helped Ellis, the caregivers who sheltered in place with patients during the lockdown and the employees who have continued to show up to work since the shooting.
“I know many of us, including myself, are still trying to get a sense of how such an unthinkable act of violence could happen in a place where people come to heal and to be taken care of,” Schwartz said.
What we know about the shooting
Wallace-Bey, Ellis and Hillman worked together at ChristianaCare through an information technology (IT) internship program, Schwartz said.
The three men had been working on a project together inside an administrative office at ChristianaCare’s Wilmington campus, located alongside the city’s Washington Street Bridge, on the morning of Tuesday, June 16, Schwartz said at Monday’s press conference.
A ChristianaCare internal investigation revealed that Wallace-Bey had a “verbal disagreement” with Ellis and Hillman that morning, Schwartz said. Following the disagreement, Wallace-Bey told a more senior IT employee that he wanted to go home, and he was given permission to leave work.
Schwartz stressed that Walace-Bey’s decision to leave work was not a form of disciplinary action.
“He was not sent home, not fired, or disciplined in any way,” she said. “Mr. Wallace-Bey was expected to return the next day for work.”
Instead, Wallace-Bey reportedly returned to Wilmington Hospital around 3 p.m., entering the building through an employee entrance using his access badge. From there, Jennings said, he confronted Ellis and Hillman in the basement of the hospital, shooting each of them once.
Dozens of police officers responded to Wilmington Hospital for the shooting. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
It is not known how Wallace-Bey acquired the .38-caliber handgun, Jennings said. But the prosecutors’ investigation has not found any criminal record or status that would have prohibited him from owning the gun.
The gun has still not been located, she added.
Schwartz, the incoming ChristianaCare CEO, said Wilmington Hospital did not have any metal detector or weapon screening protocol at the employee entrances to the campus. There are metal detectors at all visitor entrances, however.
Hospital leaders have implemented a weapon screening procedure for employees at Wilmington Hospital since the shooting, and are “closely and quickly reviewing” the security protocols at all ChristianaCare facilities, she said.
Schwartz added that no ChristianaCare employee had expressed concerns that Wallace-Bey posed a “safety threat” to himself or others. He had undergone the pre-employment screenings required of all ChristianaCare employees.
Wallace-Bey, Ellis and Hillman had all worked at ChristianaCare since February as part of a six-month, non-clinical IT internship.
The program, a partnership with the Delaware-based code training program Code Differently, primarily housed the interns at ChristianaCare’s Newark campus, but the three men all happened to be working in Wilmington on the day of the shooting, Schwartz said.
Wilmington Hospital is a more than 600,000-square-foot facility with 321 beds. ChristianaCare’s Newark campus, also referred to as Christiana Hospital, is substantially larger with more than 1,200 beds.
Locating the suspect
Following a dramatic, multi-hour lockdown of Wilmington Hospital on the afternoon of the shooting, during which local, state and federal law enforcement agencies descended upon the campus, the Wilmington Police Department reported that Wallace-Bey had been arrested in Philadelphia.
John Wallace-Bey | PHOTO COURTESY OF WPD
Jennings said on Monday that Wallace-Bey was apprehended while “trying to catch an Uber” in North Philadelphia.
Immediately after the shooting, she said, he fled through the hospital’s main entrance and traveled to the Wilmington Amtrak station, where he got on a SEPTA train to Philadelphia.
It is a roughly 1.3-mile trek through downtown Wilmington from the hospital to the train station.
Jennings declined to say how Wallace-Bey was identified while on the train, but credited both federal law enforcement and the Philadelphia Police Department for helping to locate him after the shooting.
She did not address rumors that Wallace-Bey was identified through a car license plate scanner in Philadelphia, instead saying prosecutors inside the Wilmington Police Station used “various methods” to track him down.
Wallace-Bey currently remains in a Philadelphia jail. He was denied bail by the Municipal Court of Philadelphia County on June 17, and he will have an extradition hearing to be brought back to Delaware on June 29.
Hospital to examine safety protocols
ChristianaCare has faced criticism in the days since the shooting for its lack of employee entrance metal detectors and its system for notifying hospital employees of the emergency.
While Schwartz said the hospital system has since implemented weapons screening measures for employees at Wilmington Hospital, she did not say specifically what security updates the healthcare giant is considering implementing in the long-term.
“We are closely and quickly reviewing what we need to do at other locations,” she said.
Some employees and community members have questioned the notification systems that ChristianaCare employed to alert Wilmington Hospital staff of the active shooter on June 16.
Incoming ChristianaCare CEO Jenn Schwartz spoke at a press conference Monday where Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings (left) announced felony charges against the suspect in last week’s Wilmington Hospital shooting that left one man dead and another injured. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
Schwartz said the hospital has “a number of ways” to notify employees in a situation like this, including an overhead announcement, an emergency notification system through their internal internet servers as well as emails and text messages.
She did not specify how the hospital alerted employees of the shooter last week.
“As things unfolded, people became aware of the situation,” she said.
Schwartz said ChristianaCare has some ideas about “opportunities for improvement” for its emergency notification system, but she declined to say what they are.
Schwartz and Jennings both highlighted the bravery of ChristianaCare staff and the law enforcement officers who responded to the scene.
They said they are working to provide support services to Ellis, the surviving victim, his family, and witnesses at the hospital.
“Everyone in that hospital who was traumatized by this event is in our eyes a victim of gun violence,” Jennings said.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
The Channel Nine TV presenter Karl Stefanovic has praised UK far-right activist Tommy Robinson’s “tenacity” and “courage” in his latest eponymous podcast episode, in which Robinson rails against “the media and the establishment”, Islam, multiculturalism and hate speech laws.
Stefanovic posted a clip on social media on Tuesday morning Australian time in which he is walking down a London street with his arm slung around Robinson, who has spearheaded recent nationalist demonstrations in the UK.
The most advanced artificial intelligence models are improving quickly enough to outsmart prevailing cybersecurity know-how within months, the Five Eyes spy agency alliance is warning.
AJ Dybantsa is widely expected to have his name called first on Tuesday. But which other young stars are worth keeping an eye on?
AJ Dybantsa looked like a pro among college kids in his lone season at BYU, becoming just the fifth Division I player in the last 40 years to average more than 25 points per game while shooting better than 51%. Even beyond the numbers, Dybantsa’s natural length and ability to create his own shot make him look more like a future All-Star than Kansas’s Darryn Peterson, whose load-management habits stand in stark contrast to Dybantsa’s workhorse approach. Andrew Lawrence
Withdrawal of TPS designation puts workers who fill vital role in peril – and risks further shortages in US health system
When Dolores Jacoby’s doctor told her there was little she could do to treat her acute myeloid leukemia, a deafening silence filled the hospital room, where she was surrounded by her family. Dolores had only recently been diagnosed with the rare aggressive cancer. Her beloved nursing assistant, Janeth, was standing just outside her room. After the doctor left, Janeth entered with a tray containing each family member’s favorite beverage. “If there’s anybody who can recover, it’s your mother,” she told John Jacoby, Dolores’s son, before leaving the room as inconspicuously as she had arrived.
It was 2012. More than a decade later,John still remembers that day in his mother’s hospital room in the San Francisco Bay Area clearly. “We had just heard the worst news of our lives, and Janeth injected life into my mom, into her veins, into the atmosphere, you know, for all of us,” he said.
Photo illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica. Source image: Clive Mason/Getty Images.
My family’s morning routine is usually pretty ordinary. We wake up early, drink some coffee and get our 1-year-old ready for daycare. But one Wednesday morning last month, I found myself uttering to my wife a sentence that sounded frankly surreal to both of us: “Just to let you know, I’m about to call Trump.”
Then, hoping to avoid any urgent diaper events, I ducked into the next room and dialed up the president.
I’d been trying to reach President Donald Trump for a few days. Each time, my heart would start pounding. After nearly two decades as a journalist, I’m reasonably used to talking to powerful people. But cold-calling the president of the United States — on his personal cellphone — made me feel like a cub reporter all over again.
“Hello?” a voice said on the other end of the line. This time, the president had picked up.
I introduced myself and told Trump I’m a reporter with ProPublica.
“I’m writing a story about a big supporter of yours in the oil industry, Jeff Hildebrand,” I said. “Can I ask what you think about him?”
By this point I had spent months reporting on Hildebrand, a little-known billionaire — and major Trump donor — who owns an empire of low-producing oil and gas wells across the country. “Stripper wells” like these contribute relatively little to the U.S. energy supply but emit vast amounts of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas.
By calling the president, I was hoping for some color on his relationship with Hildebrand. He had, after all, named Hildebrand’s wife ambassador to Costa Rica. My reporting so far had also revealed that the administration was gathering advice from oil industry groups backed by Hildebrand, and that it planned to weaken environmental regulations on stripper wells — potentially making Hildebrand even richer.
“I hear he does a good job,” Trump replied. “Don’t know him very well. OK?”
At first I thought the exchange undermined my story, making Hildebrand seem less central to the president’s energy policies than I’d suspected. But I realized that Trump’s comments illustrated something important about how this administration works. Trump appeared to have little clue about Hildebrand’s business, but when I mentioned that it was threatened by the “Biden methane rules,” the president was quick to respond, “Certainly we do the opposite of what Biden did.”
Trump, in other words, may be only vaguely aware of the people and groups helping to rewrite all manner of consequential policies. But what matters in Washington right now are not so much technical policy details but support for the president and an affinity with the broader ideological project: Deregulate everything.
Even if the president is only loosely familiar with Hildebrand, the oil tycoon is someone you should know about. As a climate reporter, I’m always looking for ways to make the seemingly abstract problem of global warming feel more concrete, approachable and even personal. With Hildebrand, I felt I had found a compelling character who is also the poster boy for a hugely consequential issue: Stripper wells collectively contribute just 6% of the nation’s oil and gas, but scientists have found they’re responsible for roughly half the sector’s methane pollution. That means they play an outsize role in climate change, which is amplifying heat waves, droughts and wildfires.
My previous reporting has shown that a former lobbyist for Hildebrand’s company — who now has a top post at the Environmental Protection Agency — has been rewriting methane regulations with advice from the oil industry. (An EPA spokesperson said the official “fulfilled all his ethical obligations to the letter.”)
The EPA’s press office declined to comment on the details of its plans but confirmed it is working on a proposal to “provide relief” to the oil industry, saying in a statement, “We heard consistently from American oil and natural gas producers (shocker that we meet with stakeholders) that the Biden-Harris Administration’s oil and gas methane regulations were unworkable and unnecessarily restricted American energy dominance.”
In the story we ultimately published, I took a deep dive into how Hildebrand made his fortune, racking up dozens of environmental violations across the country, and now stands to benefit from the rollback that his former lobbyist is carrying out.
I asked Hildebrand multiple times for an interview, even sending a letter to his home, but he didn’t respond. A spokesperson for his company, Hilcorp, said its operations complied with state and federal rules, adding that Hilcorp was “proud” of recent efforts to reduce its methane emissions.
As with many climate change stories, it can all sound pretty bleak. But in a world where global warming fixes can seem impossibly daunting, limiting methane pollution from stripper wells is the rare low-hanging fruit, Andrew Logan of Ceres, a climate advocacy group, told me. “If you could lose 6% of production and cut emissions in half, who wouldn’t make that trade?” Logan said.
Instead, the Trump administration is doubling down on the forms of energy that contribute most to global warming. In January, the president invited Hildebrand and two dozen other energy executives to the White House to discuss investing in Venezuela’s decrepit oil industry — which emits more methane, relative to production, than almost any other major oil producing country, according to the International Energy Agency.
Many of the executives couched their enthusiasm with caveats. ExxonMobil’s CEO called Venezuela “uninvestable” without changes to its legal system. The head of ConocoPhillips wanted U.S. government financing.
But Hildebrand had already seen how loyalty could be rewarded. Even though he had no notable operations outside the U.S., he hunched toward a microphone and said in a halting voice, “Hilcorp is fully committed and ready to go to rebuilding the infrastructure in Venezuela.”
“That’s good,” Trump said. “You’ll be very happy.”
My students don’t recognize his name, but you probably do. When he was chair of the Federal Reserve – for more than 18 years, from 11 August 1987 to 31 January 2006 – he not only ran the US (and most of the world’s) economy but was also in many ways the most powerful person in the US.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and in the UK
The Chinese supercomputer LineShine surprised the field and took the number one spot on the latest TOP500 list, which was unveiled today at ISC26 in Hamburg, Germany. The custom-built cluster composed of nearly 14 million ARM cores is the first to officially exceed 2 exaflops on TOP500’s Linpack benchmark, the second Chinese supercomputer to own the top spot, and the world’s fifth exascale system.
We first got wind of the existence of LineShine back in April, when the supercomputer’s chief designer, Lu Yutong of the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen (NSCC-SZ), gave a presentation on the new system, which was showcased on the center’s website and picked up by local reporters. The Chinese claimed that the full system not only was composed entirely of all Chinese-built components, but was capable of delivering 2 exaflops of FP64 compute, which we took with a fair bit of salt.
Well, it turns out the Chinese were telling it straight. What’s more, they had already built LineShine, which was not clear at the time. NSCC-SZ ran the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark test and landed not only the highest score ever, but it achieved 2.198 exaflops on an all-CPU machine, which, of course, is unprecedented.
LineShine’s all-CPU system spans 20,480 computing nodes in an asymmetric NUMA configuration. Each LineShine node contains two ARMv9-based LX2 processors running at 1.55 GHz. Each processor contains two compute dies, and each of these dies is further divided into four NUMA domains. Each NUMA domain contains 38 ARMv9 cores and 4 GB of high-bandwidth memory (HBM). A dedicated Smart Direct Memory Access (SDMA) engine moves data between the HBM and 128 GB of off-package DDR memory per die, while a Chinese-built LingQi interconnect with a dual-plane, multi-rail fat-tree topology connects the nodes with 1.6 Tb/s of bandwidth per node.
LineShine draws approximately 42.2 megawatts of power, for an efficiency of 52.07 Gigaflops/Watt, according to TOP500. It also takes the top spot on the High Performance Conjugate Gradients Benchmark (HPCG) ranking with 22.00 HPCG-Petaflop per second. It ranks number four on the HPL-MxP mixed-precision benchmark with 7.92 Exaflops per second. TOP500 notes that modest 3.6x speedup over its HPL score that “points to a CPU-only design without dedicated low-precision accelerators.”
The emergence of LineShine marks the first time the Chinese have submitted a Linpack result to the TOP500 organization for a leadership-class supercomputer since 2017, when the Sunway TaihuLight cluster at National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi topped the list with 93 petaflops on the HCL benchmark, a position it held for two-and-a-half years until the ORNL’s IBM Summit system debuted in the spring of 2018 (it now sits at number 27). While the Chinese government continued to build supercomputers, the country ceased submitting Linpack test results beginning in 2019, when the US government imposed sanctions on China and restricted its access to the most powerful chips. However, Chinese “service providers” have submitted Linpack test results for about 20 similarly configured Lenovo ThinkSystem HR650X systems, ranked in the mid-400s.
The debut of LineShine atop the TOP500 pushes the rest of the class down a spot. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s El Capitan moves into the number two slot with 1.809 exaflops, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Frontier moves to number three with 1.353 exaflops, Argonne National Laboratory’s Aurora moves into the fourth slot with 1.012 exaflops, while the JUPITER Booster cluster at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre drops to number five with a rating of 1.000 exaflops.
There is a new top 10 entry. The Italian energy company Eni S.p.A.’s new system, dubbed HPC7, a smaller version of the same Cray system that powers El Capitan, debuts with 571.5 Petaflops, making it the sixth most powerful supercomputer in the world. That pushes Microsoft’s Azure-based Eagle system to number 7 on the list, and it pushes Eni’s HPC6 system to number 8 (so HPC7 is 6 and HPC6 is 8; there will be a quiz on this later). Rounding out the top 10 are Fugaku at 442 Petaflops, good for number 9, and Switzerland’s Alps system, number 10 with 434.9 Petaflops.
TOP500 notes the considerable architectural diversity in the upper echelons of the supercomputing world. From all-Chinese, all-CPU LineShine systems and a collection of HPE Cray clusters equipped with AMD accelerators (DOE’s El Capitan and Frontier to Eni’s HPC7 and HPC6), to Nvida Grace Hopper architectures JUPITER Booster and Alps and even a system with Intel’s Ponte Vecchio GPU, ANL’s Aurora, there is no one single architecture that dominates. Microsoft’s Eagle cluster combines Intel Xeon processors with Nvidia H100 accelerators, while Japan’s Fugaku system is built around Fujitsu’s A64FX Arm processors.
“The list demonstrates that there is no single dominant technology path to leadership-class computing,” TOP500 says in its press release. “Instead, vendors are pursuing a variety of CPU, GPU, APU, and custom-accelerator approaches coupled with different interconnect and system designs.”
Five systems now deliver more than one exaflop on the High Performance Linpack benchmark
HAMBURG, Germany, June 23, 2026 — The 67th edition of the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers was announced today at the ISC 2026 conference in Hamburg, Germany. LineShine, a previously unlisted system installed in China, debuts at No. 1, displacing El Capitan as the world’s most powerful supercomputer as measured by the High Performance Linpack (HPL) benchmark. The new list also reflects continued depth in U.S. and European exascale capability, a new entrant in Italy’s HPC fleet, and unchanged leadership atop the Green500 energy-efficiency ranking.
LineShine Takes the No. 1 Position
LineShine achieved 2.198 Exaflop/s on HPL — about 80 percent of its 2.736 Exaflop/s theoretical peak — making it the first system on the TOP500 to exceed two exaflops of sustained double-precision performance using CPUs only. Installed at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen (NSCS) and built by the Shenzhen Cloud Computing Center, the system is based on a custom Chinese processor and the “LingKun” platform: 13.79 million cores across 304-core LX2 processors running at 1.55 GHz, linked by the proprietary LingQi interconnect and running Kylin OS. LineShine draws approximately 42.2 megawatts of power, for an efficiency of 52.07 Gigaflops/Watt.
Its debut marks the first time since 2017 that a Chinese system has led the TOP500, and it also takes over the No. 1 position on the HPCG ranking with 22.00 HPCG-Petaflop/s. On the HPL-MxP mixed-precision benchmark, LineShine reached 7.92 Exaflop/s for fourth place, a comparatively modest 3.6x speedup over its HPL score that points to a CPU-only design without dedicated low-precision accelerators.
Five Systems Now Cross the Exascale Threshold
LineShine’s debut increases the number of systems sustaining more than one exaflop/s on HPL from four to five and, for the first time, places exascale systems across Asia, North America, and Europe simultaneously.
El Capitan, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, drops to No. 2 but is otherwise unchanged at 1.809 Exaflop/s, 11.34 million cores, and 60.94 Gigaflops/Watt, built on the HPE Cray EX255a architecture with AMD 4th Gen EPYC CPUs and AMD Instinct MI300A accelerators. Frontier, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, moves to No. 3 at 1.353 Exaflop/s, and Aurora, at Argonne National Laboratory, holds No. 4 at 1.012 Exaflop/s. JUPITER Booster, operated by the Jülich Supercomputing Centre under the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, moves to No. 5 at exactly 1.000 Exaflop/s, remaining Europe’s only system above the exascale threshold on HPL.
A New Entrant and a Reshuffled Top 10
Eni S.p.A.’s new HPC7 system enters the list directly at No. 6 with 571.5 Petaflop/s, built on the same HPE Cray EX255a / AMD Instinct MI300A architecture as El Capitan, and becomes the most powerful machine in Eni’s HPC fleet alongside its existing HPC6 system. Microsoft’s Azure-based Eagle system falls to No. 7 at 561.2 Petaflop/s, followed by HPC6 at No. 8 (477.9 Petaflop/s). Japan’s Fugaku holds No. 9 at 442 Petaflop/s, and Switzerland’s Alps system rounds out the Top 10 at No. 10 with 434.9 Petaflop/s. Finland’s LUMI and Italy’s Leonardo, No. 9 and No. 10 last edition, fall just outside the new Top 10 at No. 11 and No. 12, respectively.
Architectural and Vendor Diversity in the Top 10
The June 2026 Top 10 illustrates an unusually high degree of architectural diversity, reflecting the increasingly heterogeneous nature of high-performance computing. The systems span custom Chinese architectures (LineShine’s LingKun processors and LingQi interconnect), AMD-based systems ranging from exascale (El Capitan and Frontier) to sub-exaflop performance (HPC7 and HPC6), an Intel-based exascale design (Aurora), NVIDIA Grace Hopper architectures (JUPITER Booster and Alps), Microsoft’s cloud-based Eagle system combining Intel Xeon processors with NVIDIA H100 accelerators, and Japan’s distinctive Fugaku system built around Fujitsu’s A64FX Arm processors. The list demonstrates that there is no single dominant technology path to leadership-class computing; instead, vendors are pursuing a variety of CPU, GPU, APU, and custom-accelerator approaches coupled with different interconnect and system designs.
Looking at vendor representation, HPE/Cray is the dominant system integrator, supplying six of the ten systems (El Capitan, Frontier, Aurora, HPC7, HPC6, and Alps); Aurora runs on the HPE Cray EX platform but is credited to Intel as prime contractor. On the processor side, AMD has the strongest presence, powering four systems directly (El Capitan, Frontier, HPC7, and HPC6) and contributing more than 40 percent of the combined Top 10 HPL performance. NVIDIA technology appears in three systems (JUPITER Booster, Eagle, and Alps), while Intel is represented both as a complete platform vendor (Aurora) and through Xeon processors in Eagle. Eviden/Bull supplies the BullSequana XH3000 platform underlying JUPITER Booster, Fujitsu remains represented through Fugaku, and China’s Shenzhen Supercomputer Center enters the Top 10 with the custom-built LineShine system, demonstrating the emergence of a new indigenous exascale architecture. Overall, the Top 10 reflects a competitive landscape led by HPE/Cray integration expertise, AMD’s strong position in exascale computing, NVIDIA’s growing influence through AI-oriented accelerators, and continued innovation from national computing programs in China, Japan, Europe, and the United States.
HPCG: LineShine Leads a Reordered Field
On the HPCG benchmark, which measures performance on data-intensive, real-world application patterns rather than raw floating-point throughput, LineShine takes over the No. 1 position with 22.00 HPCG-Petaflop/s, ahead of El Capitan (17.41) and Fugaku, now third (16.00). Frontier holds fourth (14.05), Eni’s new HPC7 system takes fifth (5.95), and Aurora rounds out the top six (5.61). JUPITER Booster has not yet submitted an HPCG result.
HPL-MxP: El Capitan Holds the Mixed-Precision Lead
On the HPL-MxP benchmark, which measures mixed-precision performance, El Capitan remains the No. 1 system at 16.7 Exaflop/s, a 9.2x speedup over its standard HPL score. Aurora holds second place (11.6 Exaflop/s, 11.5x speedup) and Frontier holds third (11.4 Exaflop/s, 8.4x), while LineShine debuts in fourth at 7.92 Exaflop/s with a more modest 3.6x speedup, consistent with its CPU-only design. Further down the list, SoftBank’s CHIE-4 system posted the field’s largest gain at 24.4x over its standard HPL score.
Green500: Same Top Three, Same Order, Six Months Late
Energy-efficiency leadership is unchanged from the previous list. KAIROS, at CALMIP / University of Toulouse-CNRS in France, again ranks No. 1 on the Green500 at 73.28 Gigaflops/Watt (3.046 Petaflop/s on HPL), followed by ROMEO-2025 at the ROMEO HPC Center – Champagne-Ardenne, France (70.91 Gigaflops/Watt, 9.863 Petaflop/s) and the Levante GPU extension at DKRZ in Germany (69.43 Gigaflops/Watt, 6.747 Petaflop/s). All three share an identical BullSequana XH3000 architecture built on Grace Hopper Superchips and Quad-Rail NVIDIA InfiniBand NDR200; their order reflects system size, since smaller installations of identical technology consistently edge out larger ones on efficiency.
Together, the new list illustrates a high-performance computing landscape that is more geographically and architecturally diverse than ever — spanning custom national silicon, GPU-accelerated U.S. Department of Energy systems, and Europe’s sovereign computing infrastructure.
The TOP500 project began in 1993 as a one-time exercise for a small conference in Mannheim, Germany, followed by a second list compiled later that year for the SC93 conference in the United States. Comparing the two editions revealed how valuable the resulting statistics were, and the project has continued ever since, publishing an updated ranking of the world’s most powerful computer systems every June and November.
In his dreams, Aliaksei Shcharbachenia is on a plane with an immigration agent’s hands wrapped around his neck. When he wakes up, he’s freed from the memory of his traumatic and botched deportation attempt last month — but then he’s stuck languishing in Farmville, Virginia.
The 35-year-old asylum-seeker from Belarus has spent nearly a year at Farmville Detention Center. There, he says, he’s experiencing medical neglect as a tumor grows on his arm.
“It hurts when you touch it,” Shcharbachenia told The Intercept, holding his arm up on a video call to show a growth the size of an egg. He said he’d lost feeling in the fingers on his right hand, and though he requested to see a specialist in December, as of last week he hadn’t seen one nor received a diagnosis. Instead, as Shcharbachenia attested in an internal oversight complaint to the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. government illegally tried to deport him back to Belarus, where he fled political persecution in 2021.
Shcharbachenia is one of thousands of immigrants being held in detention facilities where the federal government or private contractors control their access to food and medical care. Soon tens of thousands more could be joining him, as the Trump administration and Congress move to rapidly expand the deportation and detention machine. And advocates warn that Farmville, purchased last year by private prison contractor CoreCivic for $67 million, has long been dogged by allegations of neglectful and unsanitary conditions.
“Dogs” live better than detainees there, Shcharbachenia told The Intercept. “I want people to know what really happens inside here.”
The Intercept spoke to Shcharbachenia via a Russian translator arranged by an abolitionist organization, Free Them All VA, and reviewed several complaints he submitted to the DHS Office of Inspector General about the lack of medical attention for the enlarged mass on his arm and his treatment on the attempted deportation flight. When The Intercept called the inspector general’s office to discuss Shcharbachenia’s case, the number was no longer in service.
Earlier this month, Congress approved roughly $70 billion for immigration enforcement efforts. Last year, the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act allocated more than $170 billion over the next four years for immigration enforcement. And the Trump administration has been rapidly purchasing detention centers with a plan to have the capacity to detain 100,000 immigrants at once.
“They’re using detention as a form of punishment as a way to get people to relinquish their rights to remain in this country.”
“What we expect is that the mass infusion of cash will only put online more detention facilities that are going to be run as private businesses, and offer the bare minimum at the cost of human life and human suffering,” said Sophia Gregg, senior immigrants’ rights attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia.
Gregg said that there’s no indication that the administration will manage these new facilities, many of which are converted warehouses and “temporary shelters,” any better than the current ones in operation.
“They’re using detention as a form of punishment as a way to get people to relinquish their rights to remain in this country and creating conditions that ultimately create suffering in order to induce people to elect to be removed,” she said. “And so with that being the goal of the administration to deport people as quickly as possible, they have no incentive in creating conditions that are humane.”
“They have no incentive in creating conditions that are humane.”
In fact, Shcharbachenia believes he was targeted for just that reason. In May, he was caught sharing “know your rights” information with new detainees, and guards soon placed him in solitary confinement. He was there for two weeks, Shcharbachenia recalled, and only let out of his cell with his legs and arms bound by chains.
In a statement to The Intercept, CoreCivic spokesperson Brian Todd said the contractor does not use solitary confinement and instead opts for “restrictive housing,” a term that describes confining a detained person in isolation from other people. He denied allegations of retaliatory treatment.
ICE did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.
When Farmville Detention Center opened in 2010, its initial owners, Immigration Centers of America, argued that private management would be more humane than what the government could provide. They sold it to the community as “almost a summer camp environment,” said a spokesperson for Free Them All VA, which has been monitoring the facility for years.
Instead, advocates argue they created a hellscape for immigrants.
In 2015, a guard pepper-sprayed a detainee while he was in full restraints and confined to a medical isolation cell, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement records released under the Freedom of Information Act. In another instance from the same records, a detainee was restrained to a bed and chair for over four days. The “vendor” at the time, Immigration Centers of America, did not deny the incident but said that the action was justified. ICE responded that they would not sanction the facility for the use of force.
The facility did receive a “one-time deduction” of its monthly invoice after detainees found “white worms” in their food, but only because Immigration Centers of America had posted a memorandum threatening anyone who “attempted to degrade the reputation of” the facility, which the government interpreted as threatening complainants.
In 2020, detainees initiated a hunger strike to demand their release as Covid swept through the facility. In August ofthat year, 72-year-old Canadian man James Hill died after contracting the disease inside. Instead of responding to the growing concerns about the spread of the coronavirus, guards reportedly used pepper spray against detainees on hunger strike.
Then CoreCivic bought the facility in 2025.
“Things since [the facility] moved to CoreCivic have only gotten worse,” said Gregg. “Medical services are difficult to get for individuals, if not impossible.”
Shcharbachenia, who was picked up by immigration agents at a truck stop in Virginia in August 2025, agreed with Gregg’s assessment of the care. He said the facility’s ventilation system is dirty, and it’s often freezing inside. The water is “undrinkable,” he said, and the food is disgusting and “artificial.”
Shcharbachenia, who primarily speaks Russian, said CoreCivic staff have denied access to a translator or any assistance in filing his asylum claim. He said he had received documents related to his claims while in detention, but without a translator, he was unable to do anything about it.
In February, two months after he requested urgent medical attention, Shcharbachenia said he was finally seen by an onsite doctor about his arm, but he claims that she only measured the growth on his arm and did not provide any treatment, and that he still has not seen a specialist. He said he also had a telehealth appointment, but it was for mental health care. In a letter from Shcharbachenia to the DHS Office of Inspector General in March, he detailed his medical condition and repeated requests to receive outside “specialist evaluation and imaging.”
Todd, the CoreCivic spokesperson, told The Intercept that he was unable to comment on whether Shcharbachenia had seen a specialist or received a diagnosis but said he was seen multiple times by onsite medical staff.
“The safety, health and well-being of the individuals entrusted to our care is our top priority, and we take seriously our responsibility to adhere to all applicable federal detention standards at our Farmville Detention Center (FDC),” Todd wrote in a statement to The Intercept. He denied Shcharbachenia’s claims about his lack of access to a translator as well as the state of the drinking water and ventilation system, arguing that it’s the same “clean drinking water” that supplies the local community, and that the staff drink the same water and use the same ventilation systems.
On May 20, after his two weeks in isolation, ICE moved Shcharbachenia to a facility in Chantilly, Virginia, according to a separate complaint filed with the DHS Joint Intake Center. He recalled an agent asking him if he was ready to fly to Belarus.
ICE flew him to Turkey, where he begged not to be returned to Belarus as best he could in English. He said he showed officers documents he’d printed out on human rights abuses in his home country and warned that if he returned, he would likely be murdered, leaving his two daughters fatherless.
But it was to no avail. He was flown from Turkey to Azerbaijan, where was able to speak with immigration officers who understood his native Russian. He refused to board the next plane to Belarus.
Shcharbachenia said that agents from the United States and Azerbaijan began to argue, but because he did not have his passport, he was unable to leave the airport. ICE eventually escorted him back to Turkey, where he was placed in a cell in the airport.
What happened next still haunts his dreams.
“They took out of their backpacks some white plastic collars, like dog collars,” he said, referring to U.S. immigration agents. As they entered the cell, Shcharbachenia said he begged a Turkish police officer who was present for asylum. He said a U.S. immigration agent approached him from behind and hit him across the head, causing him to lose consciousness.
Shcharbachenia said he woke up on the floor with another officer “choking him so hard he couldn’t breathe.” Shcharbachenia passed out again and awoke with the plastic collars around his legs and arms, Shcharbachenia told The Intercept and wrote in three complaints filed with internal DHS oversight agencies.
Shcharbachenia was eventually transferred back to Farmville, where he said he received no medical treatment for the injury he sustained from being hit on the back of the head. Todd, the CoreCivic spokesperson, said that the assault and head injury were not reflected in Shcharbachenia’s medical records.
As for the growing mass on his arm, Shcharbachenia said he has made multiple grievance requests for treatment. He said staff at first promised to get him an appointment within the month, but eventually, Farmville Detention Center stopped responding.
Update: June 23, 2026, 10:53 a.m. ET This story has been updated with an additional statement from CoreCivic spokesperson Brian Todd sent after publication.
A massive blaze in Houston, Texas, sent black smoke billowing for miles across the city. About 100 firefighters were deployed to put out the flames. The cause of the fire was not immediately known
How five months in 2016 that encompassed Boris Johnson siding with Vote Leave, Jo Cox’s murder and David Cameron’s resignation shaped the UK’s future
David Cameron, having promised in 2013 that a future Conservative government would offer a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, announces the dateof the vote: 23 June 2016. The next day, Boris Johnson, then the mayor of London, says he will campaign for leave.
Every summer, Amazon entices sweaty consumers with steep discounts on everything from slushie machines to tower fans in a tradition appropriately known as Prime Day. But you don’t need to sit out the savings if you don’t have a Prime membership (or just prefer not to shop at Amazon).
To compete with Prime Day, many of Amazon’s biggest competitors now dial their own prices to the lowest of the year during the same week. From Walmart to boutique brands including Cozy Earth and Caraway, everyone wants to lure you away from the Jeff Bezos-founded mega-retailer. And they’re willing to offer impressive discounts to do it.
Best kitchen deal:
Anyday Four-Piece Glass Round Dish Set + Cookbook Bundle
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has arrived at Kennedy Space Center ahead of a Falcon Heavy launch targeted for no earlier than August 30. The observatory will survey the sky about 1,000 times faster than Hubble with a field of view at least 100 times wider, helping scientists study dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets. Spaceflight Now reports: NASA's next great observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, arrived at the Kennedy Space Center aboard the agency's massive Pegasus barge late Sunday morning. The spacecraft was nestled inside its protective case, which NASA nicknamed the "Chariot" in keeping with the "Roman" theme. That said, telescope is named not for the ancient empire, but instead for NASA's first Chief of Astronomy, Nancy Grace Roman. "She was a key person in our exploration of space. She understood that in order to better understand the universe, you have to go in space," said Lucas Paganini, the program executive for Roman. "That's why she's called the 'Mother of Hubble' because she made Hubble possible."
[...] Roman is designed to operate near a fixed point in space called Lagrange Point 2, about 1.5 million km away from the Earth on the side opposite the Sun. It's designed to operate there for a minimum of five years, but Paganini said with the propellant onboard, it will likely last for 10 years or more. The telescope is+ equipped with a 300 megapixel camera called the Wide Field Instrument, which features 18 detectors. It was developed by BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace). "It's going to allow us to observe at least 100 times wider field of view than what we can do with Hubble. Same resolution, but a wider area, 1000 times faster," Paganini said. "So what takes Roman a year to observe, it would take Hubble thousands of years. So it's definitely much more efficient."
The observatory also features a chronograph instrument, developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will allow Roman to observe the faint light of exoplanets near their stars. Paganini said Roman will also help scientists better understand dark matter and dark energy, the combination of which he calls the "dark universe." "100 years ago, we discovered that the universe was expanding. 25 years ago, we discovered that it was expanding at an accelerated pace and that's what led to a Nobel Prize," Paganini said. "What we don't quite know yet is if that acceleration is changing in ways. We don't know if it's actually dark energy, what is producing it, or is it simply that we don't understand gravity at all. "So eventually, we'll see if the laws of physics that we use these days are the right ones for what we are observing. But at the end is, we're trying to understand a very human question, which is where do we come from and where are wea heading in this universe that is our neighborhood?"
Prime Day is the wild west of online shopping. For every genuinely great deal, there are about seven duds dressed up in “best of” graphics. To prevent you from wasting your money (or time), our editors have cut through the chaos to find Prime Day 2026’s good stuff.
Every item in this roundup has been personally tested, vetted and loved by the Filter team. We’ve also factchecked the price history on each pick to spot “list prices” that never existed and fake markdowns. It may be overkill for a list of deals, but we take your wallet seriously.
Best kitchen deal:
Ninja Slushi Frozen Drink & Slushie Machine
Monika Silva Koniuszek died from a blow to the head and strangulation, a postmortem found, despite government claim of suicide
Campaigners in Ecuador say a Polish anti-corruption activist who investigated allegations against the family business of the country’s rightwing president was murdered to silence her.
Monika Silva Koniuszek, 41, was found dead in her home in Montañita, a coastal town in Ecuador’s Santa Elena province. The single mother of daughters aged four and nine, was found on the floor with a noose around her neck on 8 June.
NSF-approved deployment upgrades more than 600 compute nodes and delivers up to 71% performance improvements for scientific computing workloads.
WAYNE, Pa., June 22, 2026 — Cornelis announced the formal acceptance of a CN5000 networking upgrade supporting a key compute partition within the Texas Advanced Computing Center‘s (TACC) Stampede3 supercomputer.
The deployment upgrades more than 600 compute nodes to provide improved performance and scalability for scientific computing workloads serving the U.S. open science and open research community. The upgrade helps researchers complete simulations faster and supports increasingly complex research across weather forecasting, engineering, and data-intensive analysis.
“TACC has long been one of the most respected research computing organizations in the world, and we’re proud to continue supporting its mission,” said Lisa Spelman, CEO of Cornelis. “The acceptance of this upgrade marks another milestone in our collaboration with TACC and reflects our shared commitment to helping researchers tackle increasingly complex scientific challenges.”
The acceptance further expands Cornelis’ support of one of the world’s leading academic supercomputing centers. Stampede3 serves more than 5,000 active researchers each year and powers a wide range of scientific and engineering applications, including weather forecasting, computational science, engineering simulation, and data analytics.
Accelerating Scientific Research
As scientific and engineering workloads continue to grow in complexity, efficient movement of data between compute resources becomes increasingly important to overall application performance.
The CN5000 upgrade enhances a core Stampede3 compute partition, helping improve application performance and enabling more effective use of shared compute resources.
“Researchers rely on Stampede3 to support a wide range of scientific discovery efforts,” said Dan Stanzione, executive director of TACC. “The successful acceptance of the CN5000 upgrade strengthens an important production partition within the system and helps ensure researchers have access to the performance needed for increasingly demanding workloads. Rigorous acceptance testing is how we ensure this system delivers for the thousands of researchers who depend on it each year, and it reflects the standard we hold for every technology partner we bring into the ecosystem.”
Measurable Application Performance Improvements
Testing using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, one of the HPC community’s most widely used weather and climate applications, demonstrated performance improvements ranging from 53% to 71% across multiple scaling points.
The results highlight how modern networking infrastructure can improve the performance of large-scale scientific applications, enabling researchers to complete simulations faster and maximize available computing capacity.
The upgrade further demonstrates Cornelis’ ability to support leading HPC organizations with networking technologies designed to improve application performance, system efficiency, and scientific productivity.
About Cornelis
Cornelis delivers high-performance, scale-out networking solutions that accelerate AI and HPC workloads. Built on the powerful Omni-Path architecture, Cornelis technology enables lossless, congestion-free networking that reduces training time, improves inference, and maximizes compute utilization. From foundation model training to complex climate modeling and real-time analytics, Cornelis’ solutions power the most demanding workloads across commercial, academic, and cloud environments. With a focus on performance, scalability, and efficiency, Cornelis helps organizations achieve faster insights and greater return on infrastructure investments.
PNNL will build an AI-powered modeling platform to help geothermal energy operators maximize electricity generation
RICHLAND, Wash., June 22, 2026 — All around the world, heat is key to generating electricity. By burning hydrocarbons, splitting atoms or tapping into Earth’s hot subsurface, humans generate much of the world’s electricity by heating water to create steam that turns massive generators.
Fervo Energy established the Cape Station geothermal energy plant in Utah, which will begin contributing electricity to the grid in 2026. PNNL is working with Fervo and NVIDIA to build a digital twin of an enhanced geothermal energy reservoir to help other geothermal plant operators maximize their electricity generation. Photo credit: Fervo Energy.
Of these resources, though, heat from Earth’s subsurface hasn’t contributed much to the nation’s electricity supply — in 2023, geothermal made up just 0.4% of all electricity generated in the United States. Energy experts see geothermal as a high-potential, untapped and underused resource. Especially as electricity demand is expected to rise over the next few decades, research institutions and industry alike are looking to increase geothermal energy production.
To help accelerate this production, the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has teamed up with geothermal company Fervo Energy and AI technology company NVIDIA to build a digital twin of enhanced geothermal reservoirs. A digital twin is a virtual platform that simulates a physical asset, like a battery, hydropower dam or, in this case, a geothermal reservoir. Through AI and computer simulations, digital twins mimic real physical processes.
With Fervo Energy and NVIDIA, PNNL researchers will build Enhanced Geothermal System Twin, a virtual platform that will mimic the behavior of a real geothermal reservoir. Once launched, the platform would ultimately be available to any geothermal plant operator to help them make quick decisions to maximize electricity generation.
“Current modeling capabilities for geothermal systems are too slow to fully incorporate and analyze production data, which can lead to an underutilized resource. A digital twin would allow EGS operators to understand, in real time, the dynamics of their reservoir and act quickly to maximize the power generation potential,” said Maruti Mudunuru, an Earth scientist at PNNL and principal investigator of the project.
“Fervo will provide us with their proprietary data for their geothermal sites in Nevada and Utah, and NVIDIA will provide their technical expertise on developing AI surrogates used in the digital twin for Earth’s subsurface,” he added.
In 2023, Fervo established Project Red in Nevada, which now generates 3 megawatts for the grid. Project Cape Station in Nevada is set to deliver 100 MW to the grid in 2026 and increase to 500 MW by 2028. The team will use currently available results to begin training the digital twin immediately and will continue developing it as additional production data comes online.
“We see digital twins as a critical step toward enabling data-driven geothermal operations,” said Sireesh Dadi, senior manager for data acquisition and advanced analytics at Fervo Energy. “Through this collaboration, we are contributing field data, operational context and validation use cases to ensure that the digital twin platform delivers actionable insights at the speed required for real-world decision-making.”
What’s Happening Down There?
“Geothermal energy is all about extracting heat from Earth’s subsurface. You inject cold water into the system and then you get hot water out of the reservoir,” Mudunuru said.
By “the reservoir,” he means an enhanced geothermal system, consisting of a series of drilled wells and fractures up to 10,000 feet below ground (for reference, the Empire State Building is about 1,250 feet high). Some of the fractures are “enhanced” by hydraulic fracturing — or high-pressure water injection — to be wider, longer or to connect fracture networks to each other. Enhancing the fractures means more surface area and better heat recovery.
Then, cold water is injected through the fractures, where it absorbs heat from the surrounding rock (which can reach up to 555 degrees Fahrenheit) and rises to the surface. At the surface, the water becomes steam, which then spins electricity-generating turbines. Fervo’s geothermal power generation process is designed so that the water can cool at the surface and none of it is lost to evaporation. The water is then injected back into the subsurface, creating a continuous electricity-producing process.
Although the process sounds straightforward, operators have a lot of factors to consider, Mudunuru said.
“When you pump the water, you want the water to pass through the whole network of fractures because if it doesn’t, you’re not accessing all the potential heat,” Mudunuru said. “Plant operators need to answer questions like ‘How many monitoring wells does the system need? How do we design those wells? How much water should we inject?’”
Building a Digital Twin
It’s difficult to answer these questions when operations occur 10,000 feet below ground. Fervo Energy deploys fiber-optic cables and uses acoustic technology to map and gather intelligence from the subsurface, but processing and analyzing all that data takes too much time for operators to act swiftly. Fluctuations in the operating data can indicate issues in the wells, reservoir or pipelines that may require attention. Current models that help represent the dynamics of a geothermal system can take weeks to run.
EGS-Twin would run in real time and allow operators to respond quickly to any underground problems that may arise.
To build the digital twin, PNNL researchers will train scalable AI models on NVIDIA AI infrastructure to learn and process field data from Fervo’s EGS asset. The team will then incorporate those trained AI models into the NVIDIA Omniverse libraries, which will be able to show a physical model of the geothermal system.
NVIDIA tools would be able to apply enormous amounts of records from Fervo’s field production to create a simulation of the entire fracture system, showing operators whether injected water is successfully flowing through that network to collect as much heat as possible. The final EGS-Twin will contain anonymized data so that other geothermal plant operators can adapt it to their own operations.
“Geothermal has the potential to be a reliable, always-on source of energy, but unlocking it at scale will require advanced computing to better understand complex reservoirs thousands of feet below the surface,” said John Josephakis, global vice president of high-performance computing and supercomputing at NVIDIA. “PNNL and Fervo Energy are using NVIDIA accelerated computing to build EGS-Twin, applying AI and simulation to help improve reservoir modeling, planning and operations.”
The EGS-Twin platform should be ready to deploy by 2029. The project is funded by DOE’s Hydrocarbons and Geothermal Energy Office.
About PNNL
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory draws on its distinguishing strengths in chemistry, Earth sciences, biology and data science to advance scientific knowledge and address challenges in energy resiliency and national security. Founded in 1965, PNNL is operated by Battelle and supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
Giannis Antetokounmpo wants more championships. So do the Miami Heat. And the Heat finally have another superstar.
The Heat landed Antetokounmpo – a two-time NBA MVP and 10-time All-Star – from the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday night in exchange for a massive haul of players and draft picks.
Met Office forecasters have issued a rare red weather warning for England, with temperatures potentially reaching 40C (104F) in some places. Europe is also dealing with a debilitating heatwave, with schools closed, trains cancelled and France even restricting the consumption of alcohol outdoors to take pressure off the emergency services. The high temperatures coincide with the coming El Niño, which some scientists have nicknamed Godzilla for its predicted strength. To find out whether the two are linked, Ian Sample hears from our Europe climate correspondent, Ajit Niranjan. He explains why it’s so hot, why we could be in for even worse and how we can keep as cool as possible
Exclusive: Data reveals 60% of 18 to 28-year-olds would vote to rejoin bloc if given the opportunity
A generation of young Britons who were locked out of the 2016 EU referendum because of their age now believe that Brexit has failed, with a majority demanding a fresh vote to rejoin the EU, exclusive polling shows.
Gen Z Britons show deep dissatisfaction with the UK’s departure from the EU, according to new polling of 18- to 28-year-olds conducted by the thinktank More in Common and shared with the Guardian.
I believe that chatbots have no place in a decent society, and am repelled by the topic of AI in general. But could I be seduced?
I received a text message from my editor: “Um, is it unethical to ask you to get an AI bf?? You can prob say no.”
Resentment. Contempt! Sorrow. Unease. I love text messaging. I have text message exchanges with, let’s say, 15 people a day. If you want me to do something, you should ask via text message. My editor knows this. She also knows, though it’s more complicated, that I love boyfriends. An AI boyfriend is a boyfriend who always, only texts back, immediately.
I find it hard to express my emotions openly. (No.)
I thrive to develop healthier, more trusting relationships. (Yes, though I prefer to use “thrive” correctly.)
I want a partner who supports my life aspirations. (Crossbow?)
I worry about being judged for what I want in a relationship. (Yes.)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dozens of new robot arms have been installed at General Motors' flagship electric vehicle factory in Detroit -- even as 1,300 workers remain out of work following what was supposed to be a temporary layoff. The latest automation push has spurred union pushback over a potentially existential issue for automakers and their workers. General Motors installed approximately 50 robot arms at GM's Factory Zero plant in Detroit, Michigan, according to reporting by Crain's Detroit Business. Made by the Japanese robotics company FANUC, the robots are designed to help attach various components to vehicles during the assembly line process. But leaders at United Auto Workers (UAW), the primary US union for autoworkers, reacted with anger to the new robotic presence, given how GM has not yet called back any of the workers affected by supposedly temporary layoffs in March.
More than 1,000 union members are still "laid off indefinitely," James Cotton, president of UAW Local 22, told The Detroit News. He said that the company could bring some of those members back to work instead of installing the 50 robots. The temporary layoffs were preceded by permanent layoffs involving another 1,200 workers at GM's Factory Zero in October 2025. Many automakers, including Stellantis NV and Ford Motor Company, have deployed assembly-line robots, such as Fanuc robot arms, as they push to automate more of their US operations. Hyundai Motor Company plans to deploy Atlas humanoid robots made by Boston Dynamics -- which Hyundai acquired in 2020 -- to start working in the automaker's flagship EV facility in Georgia by 2028. "Technological development has the capability of making work safer for the working class and enabling workers to have a shorter work week without losing pay," said Andrew Bergman, a Local 22 member and union organizer who was among those laid off by GM. "But in the bosses' and billionaires' hands it's used to pad profits and lay off workers."
City hails victory after US officials sued over ordinance that limits LA’s cooperation with immigration authorities
A California court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump’s administration against Los Angeles over a city ordinance limiting its cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Fernando Olguin, a judge in the central California US district court rejected the administration’s argument that the city’s policy was unconstitutional. He gave the administration permission to file an amended complaint.
Joint evaluation pairs the congestion-free CN5000 fabric with the Maverick-2 dataflow accelerator to attack the two bottlenecks that idle AI and HPC systems.
HAMBURG, Germany, June 22, 2026 —Cornelis and NextSilicon today announced at ISC High Performance 2026 a collaboration to build and evaluate joint reference architectures for AI and high-performance computing. The work pairs the Cornelis CN5000 fabric with the NextSilicon Maverick-2 compute platform. Joint evaluation is already underway, with the goal of commercialization through joint OEM partners.
The collaboration starts with the 400 Gbps CN5000 fabric, launched in 2025, paired with Maverick-2, which began shipping in volume late that year. The first phase validates how fabric and compute perform together across configurations, so OEM partners start from proven combinations rather than untested parts lists. The companies plan to extend testing to the 800 Gbps CN6000 fabric, due in the second half of 2026.
Two Bottlenecks, One Design
Each company targets a different bottleneck. Standard Ethernet was not built for the small, latency-sensitive messages that AI inference and HPC simulation generate at scale. Congestion builds, and expensive compute sits idle waiting on data. The CN5000 is designed to eliminate that idle time.
On the compute side, the von Neumann model that has defined processors for decades shuttles data between memory and a fixed execution unit. It stalls on the irregular, data-dependent workloads that now dominate AI and HPC. NextSilicon built Maverick-2 on its Intelligent Compute Architecture (ICA), a software-defined dataflow design that reconfigures to each workload at runtime and runs existing code without modification.
Pairing the two addresses both limits at once: a fabric that keeps data moving and an accelerator that keeps compute busy. The joint reference architectures will give OEM partners a blueprint for systems they can build and bring to market.
“Operators keep telling us their most expensive systems sit idle, waiting on the network,” said Lisa Spelman, CEO of Cornelis. “We built the CN5000 to end that wait. NextSilicon challenges the same kind of assumption on the compute side, so this collaboration is a natural fit. Together we can show partners and customers what a congestion-free fabric and a workload-driven compute architecture deliver as one design.”
“For decades, software had to bend to fit the processor,” said Elad Raz, founder and CEO of NextSilicon. “Maverick-2 makes the processor adapt to the software. Cornelis takes the same approach to the network. Evaluating our architectures together is the first step toward giving customers and OEM partners a faster, more efficient foundation for AI and HPC.”
Looking Ahead: Disaggregated Inference
Along with HPC, the collaboration will also target the shift in AI inference toward Mixture of Experts (MoE) models and agentic AI. Production inference for these workloads no longer runs as one model on one accelerator. Inference splits into stages, and data moves between stages across the network.
This pattern, often called disaggregated inference, makes the fabric part of the compute path. It rewards a network that moves small, bursty, latency-sensitive messages without congestion, and compute that adapts to each stage of the pipeline. As the CN6000 reaches availability in the second half of 2026, the companies intend to evaluate how a congestion-free fabric and a reconfigurable compute architecture can support disaggregated and agentic inference, with findings intended to inform future OEM reference designs.
See us at ISC 2026
Visit Cornelis at booth E02 and NextSilicon in the virtual exhibitor’s hall at ISC High Performance 2026, June 23-25, at Congress Center Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany.
About Cornelis
Cornelis delivers high-performance scale-out and scale-up networking solutions that accelerate AI and HPC workloads. Cornelis technology enables lossless, congestion-free networking that reduces training time, improves inference, and maximizes compute utilization. From foundation model training to complex climate modeling and real-time analytics, Cornelis solutions power the most demanding workloads across commercial, academic, government, and cloud environments. With a focus on performance, scalability, and efficiency, Cornelis helps organizations achieve faster insights and greater return on infrastructure investments.
About NextSilicon
NextSilicon builds computing infrastructure for algorithmically complex workloads. The company’s Maverick-2 accelerator uses a runtime reconfigurable dataflow architecture to deliver up to 10x performance over leading GPUs at less than half the power, with no requirement to rewrite existing applications. Maverick-2 is in production at customer sites across HPC, AI, and national security computing environments. NextSilicon is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, with offices in Minneapolis, MN, in the United States.
President Trump has insisted that vandals, rather than questionable craftsmanship, are responsible for the enduring problems following the Reflecting Pool's $14.7 million sealant job.
Authorities believe two ransom notes addressed to Nancy Guthrie's family — including a note that said she had died — were likely sent by the person or group of people who abducted her.
I'm thinking of buying another Pint for my Grandkids. I want the Pint to have the Enduro tire. I bought a full size Enduro tire for my GT 6" hub upgrade but didn't end up using it.
Has anyone else used the full size 6" Enduro on a Pint? I hate to just buy another tire if this one would work.
Written in 1947, Kiyoshi Tanimoto’s account of the horrors of the atomic bomb attack will be published in August and is being made into a film
The memoir of a man who survived the horrors of Hiroshima is to be published for the first time this summer after its discovery in a US archive.
The 230-page memoir was written almost 80 years ago by Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who witnessed the city’s destruction after the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945. He will now be portrayed in a feature film by Takehiro Hira, whose acclaimed roles include the detective in the Netflix Japanese-British drama Giri/Haji. Pre-production begins in November, ahead of the shoot in February 2027.
California sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday after the agency sent Congress landmark state vehicle emissions rules for potential repeal, Reuters reports.
According to the EPA, waivers under the Clean Air Act for California environmental regulations that had been approved under prior Democratic administrations should have been sent to lawmakers under the Congressional Review Act.
A U.S. District Judge ruled the Trump administration's use of grand jury subpoenas against Minnesota state and local officials was retaliatory and unlawful, finding no legitimate investigatory justification for them.
I've been using this one I got from target like 5 years ago and it's the best I've ever tried. Once a year I go back and try all the chairs to try to find a backup and mine's really falling apart but nothing comes close. My butt sits perfectly on the fender so the chair supports me but it's as low as possible. It has the cross bars and is the perfect width. I saw online the Tommy Bahama one which I haven't tried but I'd love some confirmation or recommendations before I invest. Thank you! :)
Smoke has billowed from the warehouse, which was covered in solar panels and insulated like a freezer, filling the air surrounding the roughly 500,000-sq-ft (46,450-sq-meter) facility.
June 22, 2026 — Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to supercharge U.S. innovation in quantum technologies and strengthen national security in this critical area.
Credit: turtix/Shutterstock
Accelerating Quantum Innovation
The Order directs the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, in coordination with other relevant government leaders, to update the National Quantum Strategy to support quantum-enabling technology and encourage partnerships with U.S. industry.
The Order establishes a national effort to develop the first ever quantum computer powerful enough to initiate the era of quantum-enabled scientific discovery and accelerate quantum capabilities for commercial applications. This includes evaluations of quantum computing system capabilities, an assessment of the resources necessary to build this science-enabling quantum computer, and development of specifications for such a system.
The Order directs the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology to coordinate this effort across the Departments of Energy, Defense, Commerce, and the Intelligence Community, as well as with U.S. industry and research leaders.
The Order calls on the Secretaries of Commerce, Defense, and Energy and the NASA Administrator to develop plans to deploy quantum-enabled sensors and networks in the next five years.
The Order prioritizes the development of a strong American quantum workforce through the expansion of registered apprenticeships, credentials, and the creation of National Quantum Workforce Development Institutes. It also directs the development of a plan and other measures to ensure adequate domestic supply chains and manufacturing capabilities for quantum technologies, as well as appropriate funding support for such efforts.
The Order reconstitutes the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee and directs the expansion of the Quantum Counterintelligence Protection Team. It also directs appropriate engagement with international partners on quantum matters.
Strengthening America’s Quantum Advantage
President Trump recognizes that quantum technologies are on the verge of a massive commercial breakthrough and require a bold new policy approach to ensure America continues to lead the field.
Quantum technologies, like a quantum computer or a quantum sensor, will provide transformational capabilities in manufacturing, drug discovery, energy, agriculture, and more. These breakthroughs will drive American innovation, power economic growth, generate high-paying jobs in existing and entirely new industries, and bolster national security.
Competing nations are moving quickly to challenge America’s quantum leadership, including adversarial countries that would use quantum to undermine U.S. economic and national security.
The Order ensures that the United States enters this new era of quantum innovation with ambitious national goals, a strong domestic workforce, and trusted supply chains in coordination with U.S. international allies and partners.
Furthering America’s Technological Dominance
President Trump continues to prioritize U.S. leadership and dominance in critical and emerging sciences and technologies.
In 2018, President Trump signed the National Quantum Initiative Act into law, establishing the first whole-of-government strategy for American leadership in quantum.
President Trump was the first president to identify quantum as an emerging research and development priority for the nation, resulting in a doubling of the Federal research and development budget for quantum.
In January 2025, President Trump announced the establishment of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology to spearhead American innovation and competitiveness in critical and emerging technologies.
In November 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order launching the Genesis Mission, a new national effort to use artificial intelligence to transform how scientific research is conducted and accelerate the speed of scientific discoveries across multiple fields, including quantum.
The Trump Administration has invested $625 million so far in major national quantum research institutes, in partnership with industry and academia.
Technology to be used in six more areas next year as critics say tens of thousands of people will be forced into ‘digital police lineup’
The Metropolitan police is to expand its use of live facial recognition (LFR) technology, first into London’s West End by Christmas and then into a further six areas next year.
The new cameras will be fixed, and could be attached to street furniture such as lamp-posts. Critics said the new plans mean tens of thousands of people will be forced into a “digital police lineup”.
Microsoft has accidentally introduced a bug in Outlook for Mac that omits the original message from email replies, making it difficult for recipients to follow conversation history. Until Microsoft releases a fix, its suggested workaround is to roll back from version 16.110 and disable automatic updates, which is "great for users in full control of their devices -- not so good for anyone with a managed device," notes The Register. "Administrators with fleets of Macs running Outlook should brace for helpdesk tickets." From the report: In some instances, having a user copy and paste the salient bits of the email they are responding to might not be such a bad thing. We've all had emails that required epic amounts of scrolling to find what started the conversation, so forcing users to think about what they actually need to include is no bad thing. However, disrupting user workflows without warning -- well, that is undoubtedly a bad thing.
This is, after all, one of the most basic things an email client needs to do, so shipping a product with a bug that breaks this functionality says more about Microsoft's approach to quality than anything else.
NVIDIA contributed to the NAIRR pilot through a cloud-based resource that gives researchers dedicated access to a minimum of four NVIDIA DGX nodes for at least a month. NVIDIA also provided technical support to onboard and assist the researchers throughout their projects.
With NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure support and DGX reference architecture providing dedicated resources, researchers have collapsed workflow timelines and uncovered groundbreaking technologies that will reshape and advance industries such as healthcare, agriculture and energy.
The potential for scientific exploration and discovery across the nation through NAIRR is boundless. Learn more about a few NAIRR projects below.
Physical Simulations With Polymathic AI’s Well Dataset
Simulation-to-real pipelines are becoming increasingly common across industries as a safer, more cost-efficient deployment method.
Polymathic AI — a coalition of international scientists from Flatiron Institute, Cambridge University and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab — with the help of NVIDIA GPUs and NVIDIA NVLink interconnect technology, is strengthening physical, fluidlike simulations with its large-scale dataset called the “Well.” The dataset will be used to train the largest and most broadly applicable foundation model for fluidlike behavior to date.
This foundation model, named Walrus, has been made publicly available along with its data, code and pertained weights.
Polymathic AI’s approach builds on previous work in physics pretraining environments — addressing current limitations in scale and pretraining diversity. The research group also plans to explore scaling laws to help accelerate the development of more powerful foundation models for scientific applications.
University of Michigan’s Fusion Model for Energy Storage
Energy, a foundation of society, requires designing novel and efficient materials for energy storage and conversion.
Researchers at the University of Michigan, led by Professor Venkat Viswanathan in the Department of Aerospace engineering, are developing a model-fusion framework that brings together domain-specific molecular AI and general-purpose large language models. The goal is to help computational scientists more easily explore chemical space, ask chemistry-specific questions in natural language and identify promising materials for next-generation energy technologies.
The family of molecular foundation models, MIST (the Molecular Insight SMILES Transformers), is designed for discovery and exploration across chemical space.
MIST models were pretrained on large unlabeled molecular datasets and use a novel tokenizer, Smirk, to better capture nuclear, electronic, geometric, isotopic and stereochemical information from molecular representations. MIST models have been fine-tuned on more than 400 structure-property relationships and can match or exceed state-of-the-art performance across benchmarks spanning electrochemistry, quantum chemistry, physiology and other domains.
MIST was developed on a 40-GPU NVIDIA DGX cluster the researchers gained as part of a NAIRR allocation and an additional 200,000 NVIDIA GPU hours on ALCF’s Polaris cluster. The team used NVIDIA’s NGC PyTorch container to support reproducible GPU-accelerated development across the different clusters.
Boston University’s BEACON AI Pipeline for Infectious Disease Detection
Infectious diseases can spread rapidly in communities, causing surges in outbreaks.
Boston University’s Hariri Institute for Computing and the Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases is working to train and evaluate a LLM using NVIDIA accelerated compute, through an AI pipeline to support an outbreak monitoring program called BEACON — Biothreats Emergence, Analysis and Communications Network.
This LLM is being trained using a large corpus of documents on infectious diseases and epidemic-prone priority pathogens to support the work of field experts and outbreak analysts working on BEACON.
The model will be capable of analyzing online posts of emerging disease outbreaks on a global scale to extract features for downstream categorization and prioritization. BEACON will process signals from a variety of sources — including global disease-tracking platform HealthMap, news and social media feeds, subject-matter experts and individual communications via community boards or social media — to generate concise outbreak reports.
These comprehensive outbreak analyses can inform clinical practice guidelines for emerging infectious diseases and identify gaps where further data is needed.
Internationally deployed doctors, government organizations and academic researchers are already using the BEACON model to quickly identify and treat infectious diseases.
“When you talk to infectious disease experts about what they used to do before we developed this pipeline, it used to take several hours for them to compose a report,” said Ioannis Paschalidis, director of Boston University’s Hariri Institute. “Now, producing a report gets done in roughly two minutes.”
NAIRR and NVIDIA Across the Nation
The latest scientific research doesn’t end there. Many other universities — including Harvard, Stanford, Colorado State University and more — are pioneering scientific breakthroughs with the help of NAIRR and NVIDIA.
With scientists gaining broader access to AI and accelerated computing, innovation for a safer and healthier nation are more tangible than ever.
The Senate on Monday passed a bipartisan measure aimed at lowering housing costs by streamlining construction and permitting, ending months of fraught negotiations on a priority for both parties ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The 21st Century Road to Housing Act would limit investors’ ability to buy homes, waive some federal permitting rules in a bid to ease new construction, and authorize pilot programs to facilitate grants for home improvements and planning affordable housing. It passed the Senate overwhelmingly, with a vote of 85-5, and now heads to the House of Representatives.
President says ‘vandals’ to blame for algae blooms and peeling paint as $14m renovation to undergo further repairs
The Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool is set to be drained again after Donald Trump said on Monday – without providing proof – that five people were arrested for vandalism and five more are under investigation in connection to the algae blooms and peeling paint that appeared weeks after his ill-fated $14m renovation attempt.
“It’s not a lot of damage, but we’ll probably have to let the water out and refix it. They went in there with a knife,” Trump told reporters, describing what he first said was a 290- to 300ft slit in the paint but then later amended to a 350ft slit. He also said someone had put fertilizer into the water, which caused the algae to grow.
Showcasing End-to-End Solutions Across NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel Platforms for Accelerated Computing, Scientific Discovery, and Enterprise AI
June 22, 2026 — Giga Computing, a subsidiary of GIGABYTE and a leader in accelerated computing and infrastructure solutions, will showcase its latest AI, HPC, and data center portfolio at ISC High Performance 2026, taking place June 22–26 in Hamburg, Germany.
Visit GIGABYTE Booth H20 at ISC High Performance 2026.
Aligned with ISC 2026’s theme, “Connecting the Dots,” GIGABYTE will demonstrate how organizations can bridge AI innovation, scientific computing, and enterprise deployment through a complete infrastructure stack – from desktop AI systems and workstations to GPU-accelerated servers and next-generation rack-scale architectures.
Overview of The Must See and The Must Do at GIGABYTE Booth #H20:
NVIDIA-Powered AI from Desktop to Exascale
Headlining the showcase is the NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72, a third-generation rack-scale platform that combines 36 NVIDIA Vera CPUs and 72 NVIDIA Rubin GPUs with sixth-generation NVIDIA NVLink interconnects and advanced liquid cooling. Designed for large-scale AI training, inference, and scientific computing, it delivers 10x performance per watt versus the prior generation and represents the future of exascale agentic AI infrastructure.
Also, on display are:
AI TOP ATOM – a compact AI workstation powered by NVIDIA GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip for local AI development and model fine-tuning.
W775-V10 – a high-performance workstation featuring NVIDIA GB300 Grace Blackwell Ultra Desktop Superchip, designed to support AI, simulation, and digital twin workloads.
XL44-SX2-AAS1 and XLS4-SX2-LAS1 – NVIDIA MGX-based accelerated computing platforms equipped with NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs, delivering powerful performance for AI, HPC, engineering simulation, and visualization.
Intel Infrastructure for Enterprise-Scale Computing
Powered by Intel Xeon processors, GIGABYTE’s Intel-based platforms provide the performance, memory capacity, and scalability needed for AI inference, analytics, cloud services, and traditional HPC workloads.
Featured solutions include:
B343-X40 with compute nodes for high-density cloud, HPC, and enterprise deployments.
G493-SB0, a GPU-accelerated server optimized for AI and data-intensive applications.
R1C7-K0A, a multi-node platform designed for efficient scale-out computing environments.
AMD Platforms for AI and HPC Innovation
GIGABYTE will also showcase AMD EPYC-powered solutions engineered for AI training, scientific simulation, and research workloads requiring high compute density and memory bandwidth.
Featured solutions include:
B683-Z80 – a high-density accelerated computing platform designed for large-scale AI training, scientific simulation, and HPC environments.
W793-ZU0 – a workstation platform that combines advanced CPU and GPU performance for AI development, computer-aided engineering, and research applications.
G893-ZX1 – a GPU-optimized server engineered for AI model training, inference services, and computational research workloads.
Connecting the Ecosystem
GIGABYTE continues to unify AI and HPC across environments – from desktop systems to rack-scale data centers enabling organizations to accelerate innovation and deployment.
Visit GIGABYTE Booth H20 at ISC High Performance 2026 to explore the latest innovations in AI, HPC, and accelerated computing.
GIGABYTE is an engineer, innovator, and leader in the tech world that offers a complete product and service portfolio of different scales to accelerate individuals and businesses in reaching their potential. With unique industry insights and strong eco-partnerships, GIGABYTE continues to expand its products and influence, enabling customers to facilitate AI implementation and future robotics, and align the advancement of computing with environment sustainability to “Upgrade Your Life.”
Company wants to sell objects despite agreements to only display them at museums and traveling exhibitions
A plan to auction more than 100 artifacts salvaged from the wreckage of the Titanic – including personal belongings, currency, kitchen items and decor – is facing pushback from the US government, according to newly unsealed court documents.
RMS Titanic Inc, the company that owns exclusive salvage rights to the famous wreck deep in the North Atlantic, wants to sell the artifacts for the first time despite previous agreements to only display them at museums and traveling exhibitions.
The U.S. military has conducted another strike against a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean, killing two and leaving six survivors, the U.S. Southern Command said.
Last week, AMD was found to have stripped memory encryption from its consumer CPUs without any warning or notice. Now, following a wave of backlash on social media, the chipmaker has now reinstated the protection, though it still hasn't explained why the safeguard was disabled in the first place. Ars Technica reports: Following the revelation, social media was deluged by comments from AMD consumers decrying the move. They noted that AMD's quiet removal of TSME after supporting it for so long seemed underhanded. The move came solely as a result of firmware changes made in a recent update. With no physical changes required to silicon, continued support was largely, if not purely, a matter of will rather than a necessity required by changes to hardware. The critics called on AMD to reverse the move.
Over the weekend, AMD said it planned to do just that in a firmware update scheduled for release next month. More often than not, the chipmaker refers to TSME as Memory Guard. "Regarding certain non-PRO Ryzen 9000-series desktop processors, a BIOS option to enable Memory Guard was previously available but was removed in a recent update," AMD said in an email. "Based on valuable community feedback, we will reinstate this option in an upcoming BIOS release in July."
The company has yet to explain why it removed the protection. Critics speculate that AMD dropped it in an attempt to steer customers toward more costly CPUs. It's possible, though, that there were less nefarious reasons, such as the difficulty of continued support as chip designs changed. Another possibility is that AMD made the move for performance reasons. Encrypting and decrypting data in memory creates latency. Slowdowns are the enemy of gamers, one of the more popular customer segments using the 9000-line of Ryzen processors. Since many gamers already voluntarily disabled TSME and had little need for it in the first place, AMD may not have considered the change of much consequence.
UK Health Security Agency also issues red heat alert for six English regions, indicating risk to life even for the healthy
Met Office forecasters have issued a rare red weather warning for Wednesday and Thursday in the face of extreme heat and humidity, while a red heat health alert has been issued in England indicating “a risk to life for even the healthy population”.
The weather warning covers southern Wales as far west as Swansea, and an area of England that includes London and runs from the inland areas of Kent across to Somerset, as far north-west as Birmingham, and as far north-east as southern Cambridgeshire.
Firms including BP and 7-Eleven accused of coordinating prices to ‘wring more money from pockets of consumers’
Gas station operators including BP, Circle K, Marathon, 7-Eleven, Walmart and Albertsons were sued on Monday by California drivers who accused them of using artificial intelligence to boost prices at the pump.
According to a proposed class action, the defendants violated California’s main antitrust law, the Cartwright Act, by using an AI-based tool that uses data from competing gas stations to “coordinate high prices and wring more money from the pockets of consumers”.
Move for greater prominence on social media comes as ministers warn online misinformation risk becoming ‘existential for our democracy’
Plans to hand established broadcasters and media companies greater prominence on digital platforms such as YouTube and TikTok have been unveiled, as ministers warned online misinformation risked becoming “existential for our democracy”.
In proposals that set up a new clash with global tech companies, content from the likes of the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 would have to be awarded more promotion by their algorithms – with special rules considered for times of social unrest or crisis.
Keir Starmer has finally bowed to intense pressure to stand down as British prime minister as he conceded that he was no longer the right man to lead the country, leaving Andy Burnham all but certain to succeed him.
In an extraordinary day at Westminster, Starmer announced a timetable for his departure after months of growing discontent among Labour MPs and cabinet ministers, many unnerved by the threat from Reform UK before the next general election.
Burnham will begin to set out his policies next week with a series of speeches to demonstrate a symbolic shift from Starmer’s government, starting with the economy and devolution.
He is considering appointing Ed Miliband as chancellor in order to challenge Treasury orthodoxy but has not made a final decision. Sources said Burnham was aware of the potential risks with business and the unions opposed to the move, but could be prepared to make the argument.
Shabana Mahmood is expected to stay at the Home Office after the former Greater Manchester mayor praised the home secretary for “facing up” to the big issues on immigration during the byelection campaign.
Wes Streeting could be appointed to one of the top cabinet jobs, but did “not come with any leverage” to discussions, as campaign sources rejected his claims he had the numbers to run. Others have argued for him to be appointed chancellor to reassure the markets.
Starmer loyalists are still seeking a candidate who could stand against Burnham – depending on whether Miliband was chancellor. Darren Jones has been touted as a possibility, and although sources said he was not organising a run, they stopped short of a categorical denial.
Barrister who was given material produced by Garfield AI says advocacy at trial ‘remained fundamentally human’
An artificial intelligence law firm has won a case in an English court, in what is believed to be the first time a trial has been won using an AI lawyer.
A freelance HR consultant, Tamires Camal Taquidir, paid the firm, Garfield AI, about £400 to send a legal letter and then issue court proceedings over an unpaid debt of £7,000.
I've ridden friends one wheels, have 0 issue riding them Quite enjoy it , avid snowboarder in the winter time. However , not sure which board to buy as a firstboard. Have been looking at the gt. Any recommendations?
The federal government awarded a company owned by a Trump donor $1.7 million to install a new water cleaning system for the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, records show.
Club América star did not appear in first two US games
Dual-national was surprise pick to Pochettino’s squad
Dead-rubber Turkey match could be time for debut
As his US teammates finished off group-clinching wins over Paraguay and Australia, all Alex Zendejas could do to help was watch.
It isn’t the role Zendejas aspired to have at this World Cup. The 28-year-old was a coveted dual-national who chose to represent the nation he grew up in over Mexico, where he was born and has played most of his professional career. At the USMNT’s open training before the Paraguay match, Club América jerseys were the best represented of the club shirts held by fans for signing.
With the price of the new Steam Machine starting at $1,049, you might want to consider making your own Steam Machine instead. An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Valve says that "starting with the SteamOS 3.8 release, you can put together your own Steam Machine using whatever PC parts you want." SteamOS 3.8.10 launched last week with a slew of updates, including "improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms." Alongside that improved compatibility, Valve is giving gamers the green light to install SteamOS on their own desktops. In an interview with The Verge, Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais said Valve has been "rolling out improvements to [SteamOS] so it's more compatible with desktop hardware," including eventual support for Nvidia graphics. Griffais says Valve has "a growing team" working on Nvidia driver support for SteamOS, adding, "We're collaborating with Nvidia very closely." While he mentioned that Nvidia support might not come this year, Griffais emphasized that "it's certainly something that we're working on in the background."
It's technically been possible to run SteamOS on your own hardware for a while now, but compatibility has been mostly limited to AMD systems. So far installing it has also required using a Steam Deck recovery image, a process that, speaking from experience, is much less straightforward than the installation process for most other Linux distributions. Trying to run SteamOS on Intel or Nvidia hardware has not been easy so far. According to Griffais, Valve is working to change that, which could mean that down the line, you'll be able to run SteamOS on just about any gaming PC hardware you want, including Nvidia.
For the more immediate future, Griffais says SteamOS in its current state should offer a "good experience" on console-like PC setups: "If you have something that is similar to the use case of a Steam Machine, where you have a PC that's gonna be plugged into a TV, and has a single hard drive that you're not going to try and dual boot [] you can put SteamOS on there, and you'll have an experience that is very similar to a Steam Deck docked or a Steam Machine, with some caveats, of course," like a lack of HDMI-CEC support. But "the core bits of the experience are there. The SteamOS graphics driver, the shader precompilation [...] you can get at all of that with the SteamOS." Griffais says SteamOS does not yet offer an easy way to dual-boot alongside Windows or another operating system, but envisions "a time where it's a better experience to install on your desktop and have it coexist with a different operating system."
After tracking quantum computing for years, Intersect360 Research says the market has matured enough to begin forecasting.
During a webinar last week presenting its latest research, the analyst firm previewed its first quantitative outlook for quantum computing, projecting a midpoint total addressable market of $27 billion by 2037. But analysts stressed that the forecast carries significant uncertainty, with outcomes varying widely depending on how quickly the industry overcomes technical, manufacturing and ecosystem challenges.
“This is the first time we’re putting out quantified forecasts,” said Addison Snell, CEO and co-founder of Intersect360. “We think there’s enough market there that we can measure it, that we can forecast it, we can survey around it.”
According to Intersect360, many organizations have moved beyond simply monitoring quantum developments and are beginning to gear up for eventual adoption.
“This is about preparation. Organizations are investing in quantum now, are building vendor relationships,” said Kevin Jackson, an analyst at Intersect360. “The other thing is expertise. We need people who are well versed in this technology who are able to program in it. And that just takes time.”
The firm’s quantum forecast spans an unusually broad range. Intersect360 projects a midpoint market opportunity of $27 billion by 2037, but estimates outcomes could vary from $13 billion to $56 billion, with a best-case scenario reaching $100 billion.
Jackson stressed during the webinar that the fourfold spread between the low- and high-end scenarios reflects “genuine technical uncertainty” surrounding the industry’s development trajectory rather than limitations in forecasting methodology. The firm expects quantum adoption to remain relatively slow through the early 2030s before accelerating later in the decade if key hurdles are overcome.
“Quantum adoption is nonlinear and it will continue to be. So we believe that it’ll be slow through the early 2030s, then steep once error correction matures,” he said.
But technical milestones such as error correction are only part of the equation, Snell argued. “I think we also have to look at manufacturability and management at scale,” he said. “How easy is it to build and house these things?” He added that achieving the higher end of the forecast range “implies that we’ve adopted something that can be manufactured at scale.”
Survey data presented during the webinar suggest that, despite growing interest, the quantum market remains in an educational phase.
Jackson noted that roughly half of respondents declined to answer a series of questions about quantum computing’s future utility, a finding he described as significant given that the survey audience consists largely of HPC users.
“Even within the HPC community, which is arguably one of the most technically sophisticated buyer segments, quantum methodologies are not yet broadly understood,” Jackson said. “That just tells us that the market is still in the education phase.”
Among respondents who did answer, Intersect360 found broad optimism tempered by considerable uncertainty. Most participants neither strongly agreed nor disagreed with statements regarding quantum’s future value.
“Most respondents aren’t saying quantum won’t help them,” Jackson said. “They just don’t really know yet. It’s just kind of an honest state of the market right now.”
Notably, respondents expressed the strongest agreement with the idea that quantum computing will enable entirely new applications rather than simply accelerate existing workloads. That finding reinforces Intersect360’s broader view that quantum systems will augment classical HPC infrastructure rather than replace it.
The webinar also highlighted a significant gap between what quantum buyers say they need and what vendors currently deliver. Intersect360’s satisfaction-gap analysis, which compares the importance of various capabilities with buyer satisfaction, revealed some of the largest gaps the firm has observed across any technology market it tracks.
Jackson said the gaps observed in quantum computing were substantially larger than those typically seen in other technology markets studied by the firm, suggesting that the sector remains in a very early stage of maturity. Some of the largest gaps appeared in areas such as application software, error correction and fidelity, highlighting the capabilities buyers believe must improve before quantum systems can move into broader production use.
Jackson singled out the significant disconnect between how quantum technologies are often marketed and what potential customers say they actually need.
“Speed is how quantum has been marketed, but it’s not what buyers say they need the most,” Jackson said. “They want reliability. They want programmability. They want integration.”
The findings paint a picture of a market that is progressing, but remains years away from broad commercial deployment.
Intersect360 expects the strongest growth period for quantum computing to occur between 2033 and 2037, assuming the industry can overcome challenges in error correction, software, manufacturing and operational scale. In the meantime, organizations appear to be laying the groundwork.
For Intersect360, that combination of growing investment, rising customer interest and emerging commercial activity was sufficient to justify publishing its first formal quantum market forecast. But the firm’s unusually wide range of outcomes also serves as a reminder that the trajectory of quantum computing over the next decade remains far from settled.
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Officials say Sarita Kimble, 62, and Delores Shelton, 83, killed in Mount Vernon as several buildings destroyed
Authorities in Illinois say that two older residents were killed and at least five other people were injured in a tornado that ripped through a rural county and destroyed several buildings on Sunday evening.
The fatalities occurred in Mount Vernon, Sheriff Jeff Bullard of Jefferson county said on Monday. He identified the victims as Sarita Kimble, 62, and Delores Shelton, 83, who were inside separate structures leveled by the tornado.
The runaway favorite to succeed Prime Minister Keir Starmer is a longtime mayor equally comfortable in the corridors of Westminster and in working-class northern England.
Google is investing roughly $75 million in A24 as part of a research partnership with DeepMind to develop AI-powered filmmaking tools and workflows. "The deal represents the latest marriage between a Hollywood studio and AI in an era where companies have oscillated between partnerships and lawsuits," reports Variety. From the report: A24 partner Scott Belsky, who leads the studio's technology division A24 Labs, told the Journal the studio's Google partnership differed from other deals because AI developers mistakenly advertised their products as a means to make films cheaper and faster. His division is developing applications for AI-generated storyboards, another reimagination of the production process that has seen filmmakers like Martin Scorsese rubber-stamp. "We think there are better uses that preserve creative control and support risk-taking," said Belsky, arguing the new tools "won't look anything like the prompted generation type of AI that people feel uncomfortable with."
The board won’t power on at all. One thing I noticed is that the wheel has noticeable resistance when I try to spin it by hand, which made me think maybe a MOSFET on the controller has blown and is partially shorted.
Another weird symptom is with charging:
When everything is connected normally, plugging in the charger does nothing. The charger light stays green and never switches to charging.
If I disconnect the battery from the controller module and then plug in the charger, it seems like the battery will charge.
So right now I have:
Board completely dead / won’t power on
Resistance when spinning the wheel
Charger stays green when battery and controller are connected
Battery appears to charge when disconnected from the controller
Has anyone seen this combination of symptoms before?
Most of the posts I’ve found discuss either a blown MOSFET causing wheel resistance, or charging issues, but I haven’t found much about both happening together.
Does this sound like a failed controller, shorted MOSFETs, damaged BMS, or something else entirely?
As he has done for years, President Donald Trump claims – without evidence – that the federal Right to Try law he signed in 2018 has “saved thousands of lives.” But the White House provided no support for Trump’s claim about the law, which provides an alternative route for seriously ill patients to access unapproved drugs outside of clinical trials.
Researchers who have long studied access to investigational drugs say the president is greatly exaggerating.
“It’s not that nobody is using Right to Try. There have been a handful of reported cases,” Holly Fernandez Lynch, associate professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, told us in an interview. “But certainly it has not been thousands of patients … who’ve received drug therapy, let alone had their lives saved by these products.”
Dr. Jeffrey A. Singer, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who said he supported passage of the 2018 federal law, now says that it “fail[ed].” In a May opinion piece for Reason magazine, Singer argues for changes to the Right to Try law, writing that the promise of a right to try potential life-saving drugs “often exists more on paper than in practice.”
Reason, May 12: The sales pitch was sweeping. When President Donald Trump signed Right to Try in 2018, surrounded by patients, he promised a “fundamental freedom” that would give dying patients hope.
Eight years later, the record is far thinner than the rhetoric. The [Food and Drug Administration] reports only a handful of uses each year—12 drugs from 2018 to 2022, and just a few more annually since. It wasn’t a new pathway so much as a permission slip that rarely translates into access.
The FDA is required to publicly report the number of investigational drugs used under the Right to Try law – but not how many patients have been treated. FDA annual summaries show that 21 investigational drugs have been used from May 30, 2018, through Dec. 31, 2024.
The FDA did not respond to our request for the number of patients treated under the federal law.
We asked the White House for the number of patients treated under the Right to Try law and evidence that thousands of lives were saved. But it provided no support for Trump’s claim — which he repeatedthroughoutthe 2024 presidential campaign, including in his acceptance speech at the 2024 Republican convention. Most recently, the president said in April that Right to Try has “saved thousands and thousands of lives,” and he said it again in May, when he claimed the law has “saved thousands of lives,” but “nobody talks about it.”
“President Trump is right: Right to Try was a historic victory from his first term, which has allowed many Americans to access treatments that would have otherwise been blocked by the regulatory approval process,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in an email.
The Goldwater Institute, which takes credit for helping to enact 41 state Right to Try laws prior to passage of the federal law, provides some examples on its website of patients using Right to Try laws on the state and federal level. But the institute – which claims the “Right to Try law has a proven track record” – doesn’t know how many patients have received investigational drugs through the federal law.
“[U]nfortunately the Goldwater Institute is not able to track utilization of Right to Try given patient privacy laws,” Goldwater Institute spokesperson Ryan Mills told us in an email.
Right to Try and the FDA
The federal Right to Try law was controversial from inception because it removes the FDA from the oversight and approval process for the use of unapproved drugs outside of clinical trials. Under Right to Try, unapproved drugs can be used without FDA approval to treat patients diagnosed with a “terminal illness,” which is defined as a “life-threatening disease or condition,” who have exhausted approved options and are unable to participate in a clinical trial.
Critics say Right to Try is unnecessary – and potentially dangerous – because the FDA has long had an expanded access program that allows patients to use unapproved drugs outside of clinical trials.
In 2016, when a Senate committee was consideringRight to Try legislation, then-FDA official Peter Lurie credited the expanded access program for making unapproved drugs available quickly to thousands of seriously ill patients, while protecting “desperate patients” from “unnecessary risks” and exploitation by “unscrupulous individuals.”
“FDA has authorized more than 99 percent (7110/7176) of single patient expanded access Investigational New Drug (IND) requests received in Fiscal Years 2010-2015. Emergency requests are usually granted immediately over the phone and non-emergencies are processed in a median of four days,” Lurie, who was associate FDA commissioner for Public Health Strategy and Analysis, said in written testimony.
Since then, the number of requests has increased and approval rates have remained largely unchanged.
For fiscal years 2019 through 2023, the FDA approved 99% (17,806/17,964) of single-patient expanded access IND requests, the most recent FDA data show. Several experts on FDA law and policy told us that these figures suggest that Right to Try hasn’t had much of an impact.
“If you look at the information FDA publishes about expanded access requests, you see that FDA authorizes the overwhelming majority of them. You know, many years, 99%,” Patricia Zettler, a law professor at Ohio State University who teaches public health and FDA law courses, told us in an interview. “Given that, there’s … no logical reason to think Right to Try would change the landscape dramatically.” (Zettler served as deputy general counsel at the Department of Health and Human Services, covering the FDA, during the Biden administration.)
Under both pathways – Right to Try and the expanded access program – companies developing new drugs are not required to make them available to patients. As a result, pharmaceutical companies — not the FDA — remain “the larger obstacle” to giving patients access to unapproved drugs, Lurie told us in an interview.
“Companies are more likely to say no than the FDA, by far,” Lurie said. “The claim that FDA is the obstacle is not true.”
Bateman-House told us that “large biopharmaceutical companies are not using Right to Try … because if you’re trying to bring a product to market through the FDA, you don’t really have any incentive to avoid the FDA when you’re handing out your unapproved product.”
One incentive for biopharmaceutical companies to seek FDA oversight, she said, is that the agency can draw upon confidential proprietary information it has from clinical trials and other expanded access treatments to require companies to change proposed treatment plans prior to approving expanded access requests. That protects patient safety and benefits the development of the investigational drug, Bateman-House said.
Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, for example, have said that they support FDA oversight when providing investigational drugs outside of clinical trials.
In 2015, Johnson & Johnson created a bioethics panel headed by Arthur Caplan, co-chair of NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s Working Group on Compassionate Use & Preapproval Access, to develop a policy on the use of investigational drugs. In its policy statement, Johnson & Johnson said FDA oversight is required “to assure full consideration of available safety data of which the FDA may be uniquely aware.”
In an article last year for the American Health Law Association, Barbara Bierer, a professor at Harvard Medical School, and her co-authors wrote that physicians are also reluctant to use Right to Try, in part because of “the abrogation of regulatory and ethical oversight.”
The article, which said “data on the prevalence of RTT are scant,” cited a survey of community oncologists that found 46% of 238 respondents attempted to use the expanded access program, while only 14% of the respondents attempted to use Right to Try. The paper also cited the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s opposition to Right to Try.
American Health Law Association, Jan. 24, 2025: Current data on the prevalence of RTT are scant, but the data that are available suggest that oncologists are considerably more likely to request access to an unapproved drug via EAP than they are via RTT. Given that the major difference between EAP and RTT is FDA oversight, a threshold question is whether FDA acts to deter or delay the approval of EAP requests. Evidence suggests that as many as 99% of all EAP requests are approved by FDA often within the first few days.
Despite its social media presence and visibility, demand for access via RTT has yet to materialize. Some experts have explicitly advised physicians to “steer patients away from RTT and toward [EAP]” while others claim they would never encourage a patient to avail themselves of RTT. The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) released a public statement condemning RTT, stating “ASCO supports access to investigational drugs outside of clinical trials when adequate patient protections are in place . . . We don’t support right to try legislation, however, because these laws ignore key patient protections without actually improving patient access to investigational drugs outside of clinical trials.”
One thing that critics and supporters of the Right to Try can agree on is that the push for such laws on the state and federal level has raised awareness of the FDA’s expanded access program.
“The most charitable thing I can say is, I think the Right to Try law probably increased awareness of the idea that it is possible to use unapproved drugs outside of clinical trials,” Bateman-House told us. “Maybe some number of people were able to experience a positive health benefit via that. But it wasn’t because of Right to Try. It was because they were asking for something that they had had access to all along. They just didn’t realize they had access.”
Singer, the Cato senior fellow, independently raised the same point in a separate interview with us.
Singer — who was a visiting fellow at the Goldwater Institute from 2017 to 2026 — told us that he still supports the “concept” of Right to Try, even though he believes “there haven’t been many instances of Right to Try” being used to make unapproved drugs available to seriously ill patients.
He added that he did not want to minimize the indirect benefits of the law. Singer said Right to Try had “an impact on the FDA” by raising public awareness of the expanded access program and forcing the agency to simplify its expanded access application process.
Singer sent us a link to the same survey of oncologists cited by the American Health Law Association. That paper said “awareness of the EA program was high among the community oncologists we surveyed.” It also said the “revised, simplified” expanded access application now takes only 45 minutes to fill out.
As we mentioned, there has been an increase in expanded access requests and approvals, so there is data to support the theory that the Right to Try law has had an indirect benefit. But there is no evidence to support the president’s claim that the law has “saved thousands of lives.”
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This is fromTom Baldwin, Keir Starmer’s biographer, and head of communications for Ed Miliband when he was Labour leader.
We seem to be in a strange place where Keir Starmer is being told he must quit to prevent more uncertainty and chaos (by those who have caused much of it) but then stay on for a couple of months because the guy who has been desperate to take his job is not yet ready to do so…
Keir Starmer has a mandate from Labour members.
He stood on a manifesto and won a mandate from the British people
AI-focused Super Pacs are spending heavily in the midterms, and half has gone to a single Manhattan congressional race
The artificial intelligence industry is spending heavily in the 2026 midterms, hoping to secure influence over the technology’s first generation of legislation – and New York City’s primary has emerged as the key battleground.
AI-focused Super Pacs have raised over $100m this cycle, of which $49m has been spent so far, in dozens of congressional races across the country. Half of all spending has converged on a single Manhattan race: Tuesday’s Democratic primary in the district of NY-12.
Will Craft and Andrew Witherspoon contributed reporting
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: As Big Tech dumps billions of dollars into America's data center buildout, a slew of opportunities have opened up to the electricians wiring these massive facilities. In some cases, the scale of the projects and the demanding construction timelines are fueling talent wars for the industry's best and brightest. The US-based International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) has argued that its workers are "powering the AI Revolution," and a set of "Data Center Principles" published in March argues that union labor is "essential to the future of AI." Tech companies are trying to meet the moment: Meta recently announced a skilled trade academy program, and Google committed $50 million to help train people in skilled trades.
But amid growing national opposition to data centers, debates over the ethics of the massive buildout have started to pop up in some online pockets of the community. Threads about how AI will affect the economy now pepper r/electricians, a subreddit with around half a million monthly visitors. Some users wonder whether the work will eventually prompt widespread job losses. Others aren't sure if their labor makes them complicit in the damage done to local communities or whether it's unethical to take on data center work. For some, the answer is a firm no. Ultimately, they argue, work is work. An anonymous Midwest electrician who spoke to Wired acknowledged concerns about scams, corporate greed, and AI's impact on workers, but said he views data centers as an important source of career advancement. "This is most likely going to be a major part of our future. And if you can't beat them, join them," he said.
An electrician named Ryan, meanwhile, is strongly opposed to working on data centers because he distrusts the corporations and political environment driving AI development. Still, if the facilities are going to be built, he would prefer union workers construct them. "If they're going to get built, I'd rather they go union," he said.
Jesse, an IBEW electrician, sympathizes with communities negatively affected by data centers but does not believe the electricians building them should be blamed. In his view, opposition should instead be directed toward policymakers and the project approval process. "I think it's ridiculous if, to build a data center or any kind of a business, you're going to significantly impact the lives of that community in a negative way," he told Wired.
An electrician named Dante echoed some of those sentiments, arguing that data center work is no more ethically compromised than many other commercial construction projects. "We're almost always working for the worst possible people in the end, but we all need a paycheck," he said. He added that such projects are "essentially the same kind of work," typically performed for wealthy corporations seeking to become even richer.
Briefing war breaks out between advocates for Wes Streeting and those close to Ed Miliband
Andy Burnham’s supporters are divided over who should be his chancellor, with a briefing war breaking out between advocates of the former health secretary Wes Streeting and those close to the energy secretary Ed Miliband.
Some of those advising the Makerfield MP are urging him to choose Streeting if he becomes prime minister, in a bid to reassure the business community and fossil fuel industry.
The developer working on Xfwl4, the Wayland compositor for Xfce, has published the new compositor’s very first alpha release. Considering it’s only been six months or so of work, it’s impressive to see the effort reach this state already.
The end goal of xfwl4 is to behave as closely as possible to an Xfce desktop running on an X server. Ideally a user could switch between the two without even knowing there’s a difference. In reality, of course, it won’t be quite that seamless, and there’s still more work to be done to get as close as possible to that ideal. This is a first solid cut at it, at the very least.
Being the very first alpha release, it won’t surprise you there’s a few things missing or broken at this point. Still, if you’re brave, you can download and build the release and try it out.
A federal judge agreed to quash the US federal government’s subpoenas of leaders in Minnesota issued during the Trump administration’s controversial immigration crackdown on the state earlier this year.
The US Department of Justice issued subpoenas to the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz; the attorney general, Keith Ellison; the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey; and other local officials in the Twin Cities in January.
A Wall Street Journal investigation found that the prediction market paid content creators to produce videos of fake trades purporting to show big financial gains.
Scotland’s first minister expresses solidarity with communities affected by apparently anti-Muslim violence
John Swinney has said victims of the allegedly anti-Muslim knife attacks in Edinburgh last week have been deeply traumatised by their experiences.
Scotland’s first minister spoke to some of the five men injured in the series of attacks that appeared to target Muslims and people of colour around the city on Friday evening, with four taken to hospital.
Network launches ad on The View, which is target of one of two FCC investigations currently seeking public comment
The television network ABC is seeking the public’s backing as it faces simultaneous investigations from the Brendan Carr-led Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The media regulator has two pending inquiries into ABC – one focuses on the daytime talkshow The View, and the other is a broader challenge into whether the network should be able to renew licenses for the eight local television stations it owns.
Valve's new Steam Machine will launch June 29 starting at $1,049 and go up from there depending on the configuration. Although it costs considerably more than the PS5 ($599.99) and Xbox Series X ($649.99), "the value proposition for the Steam Machine is that it can play your library of Steam games you may have accumulated over years (or even decades), rather than just PlayStation games, and it's also a full Linux PC that you can customize to your heart's content," reports The Verge. "Valve also says that it's selling the Steam Machine for the cost of its components alone instead of subsidizing the price." From the report: You can now register your interest to buy a Steam Machine as part of a reservation system. To offer a fair playing field for people who want to buy one, Valve will randomize everyone in the queue on Thursday at 1PM ET. After that, anyone who registers their interest will be added to the end of the waitlist. The first emails giving people the opportunity to buy will go out on June 29th.
Valve will sell four configurations of the Steam Machine:
- A 512GB model for $1,049
- A 512GB model with a bundled Steam Controller for $1,128
- A 2TB model for $1,349
- A 2TB model with a bundled Steam Controller for $1,428
Britain is to get its fifth prime minister in four years after the current incumbent of Downing Street, Keir Starmer, announced on Monday that he would resign.
It was widely expected and comes after months of mounting pressure on Starmer, who led the Labour party to a landslide victory in the 2024 UK general election but who has faced months of pressure to go from members of parliament (MPs) for the centre-left party.
Valve officially made the Steam Machine available (sort of but not really) today, and if you were hoping for the president of the Yacht Collectors’ Club to have found a loophole through the RAM and storage crisis, I’ll be the bearer of bad news: the base Steam Machine model with 512GB of storage and no controller costs $1049 or €1039. It’s clear that this price is significantly higher than Valve had originally anticipated, as the company dedicates the first part of its press announcement to this sticker shock.
Steam Machine, like our other hardware products, is made up of many components that we source from manufacturers around the world. The price at which we sell our hardware is a direct result of the cost of these components. We felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time when we first started sourcing them for Steam Machine back in 2023. That understanding was born from the many years of data we all have about the evolution of PC hardware prices – primarily, that it tends to get cheaper over time as new technology arrives.
Over the past year or so, that has changed quickly and significantly, most visibly for RAM and storage components. There are a variety of reasons, all of which are affecting hardware products everywhere. The overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable. So the prices we’re sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing; or, more accurately, it reflects the price of the components as we’ve secured them over the past 6 months.
Price wasn’t the only thing impacted by all of this: availability was as well. There were periods where we found we couldn’t source some of our components at all, at any price. More than anything else, this has impacted the number of units we’ve been able to produce for launch.
As Valve mentions, availability is also going to be an issue, and thus they’ve had to settle on a complex reservation and lottery system. Between now and 25 June, you can sign up for a model, after which the entire pool of reservations will be randomised to determine a waitlist order. As machines become available, they will simply go down the list from first to last as determined by that randomisation. In other words, you can’t just go out and buy one right away.
At this price and for the hardware the Steam Machine contains – an AMD Zen 4 CPU with 6c/12t up to 4.8 Ghz, a custom RDNA3 GPU, and 16GB of DDR5 RAM and 8GB of DDR6 video RAM – you’re probably better off sticking with what you already have. Until the “AI” bubble pops and prices come down again, that is.
Analysts say foreign policy was an ‘area of relative strength’ for the prime minister – but goodwill with the White House soon evaporated
Keir Starmer inherited two wars and a country disconnected from the EU when he arrived in Downing Street – and that was before Donald Trump crash-landed at the White House and undermined the foundations of the UK’s most important alliance.
It was a context that would have tested any prime minister, though in many respects Starmer negotiated it carefully. But longer-term questions of Britain’s security remain unresolved, and the UK’s place in the world is less certain.
City’s police force faces investigation of 16 officers accused of disproportionately targeting Black and Arab residents
Montreal’s mayor has called for a halt to random police checks as the city’s police force grapples with an internal investigation into racism and racial profiling by 16 officers.
Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada told reporters last week that her husband, who is Black, had been repeatedly stopped by police while driving.
I can only ride like once or twice a month. I know it's going to take a long time to really feel comfortable (it's like my fear almost resets back to square one each time I ride). I'm just looking to hear from others who have been in my shoes that you did eventually start to feel more confident, even when you could only ride occasionally. And if so, when did it start to happen for you? Right now I've ridden maybe 20ish miles max.
Edit: I really appreciate you guys taking the time to tell me your experiences and suggestions. I'm gonna try to get a balance board to get some extra practicing in at home. (I actually used to use an "Indo" board a lot, years ago, and I can tell that experience has already helped me from the get go.)
My time is so limited because we have a new baby (yay!), so weekdays after work I have zero time before it is dark out and I am frankly 200% exhausted. I have a couple blocks of time on the weekend and my onewheel is really just a fun pass time for me so if I don't feel in the mood to go for a ride during my extremely limited free time, I don't want to force myself about it and suck the fun out of it when that's the whole point. My time will free up as baby gets older but for a while I will be very limited.
Some of your comments have given me hope, and I guess I have noticed some small improvements even now. Today I dealt with numerous unexpected obstacles and I was able to react without falling off! I would just like to feel less fear.
Swindlers now use AI to send out floods of fraudulent messages to gain the personal information of job seekers
Americans are seeing more employment scams than ever as job seekers, facing a tough job market, report a bombardment of messages from swindlers try to lure them into giving sensitive information.
Experts say the technology behind these scams has only gotten better over time, allowing fraudsters to easily impersonate employers and send out huge floods of direct messages and emails to job seekers.
Unions condemn ‘insensitive’ internal cybersecurity test sent to healthcare workers in Newfoundland and Labrador
For years, healthcare staff in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador have felt overworked and underappreciated. Turnover, burnout and thinning resources were pushing workers in the sector to a breaking point.
So when the email titled “June Holiday” arrived in thousands of inboxes, they felt a moment of overdue joy.
The Trump administration has been ratcheting up pressure on defense contractors to prioritize production and American manufacturing capabilities over shareholder payouts.
Mission, Vision and Veritas supercomputers with Vera CPUs to advance materials simulation, scientific AI agents and molecular design.
June 22, 2026 — Mission, Vision and Veritas — new Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) supercomputers to be built with HPE and NVIDIA — are tapping NVIDIA Vera CPUs to accelerate scientific discovery, unlocking agentic AI for science.
The supercomputers will use the HPE Cray Supercomputing GX5000 architecture with the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform, combining NVIDIA Vera CPUs, NVIDIA Rubin GPUs and NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking.
Under the planned configuration, Mission will include NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPU nodes and 2,300 standalone NVIDIA Vera CPUs using the HPE Cray Supercomputing GX240 blade. Veritas will feature approximately 1,150 standalone NVIDIA Vera CPUs to complement NVIDIA Vera Rubin nodes.
Veritas will arrive alongside Mission and Vision and serve the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program, helping accelerate agentic AI for science. The system will test these technologies for use in larger systems being built out at LANL.
Researchers are adding a new tool for science with AI agents that can form hypotheses, choose tools, launch simulations, analyze outputs and refine the next step. LANL’s public work on URSA, the Universal Research and Scientific Agent — running on Venado and soon Mission and Vision — points in this direction: a modular, feedback-driven AI framework designed to help scientists brainstorm hypotheses, plan experiments, run simulations and analyze results.
LANL demonstrated that the Vera CPU delivered 7x higher performance on URSA workloads than the CPUs in the Crossroads x86 supercomputer.
Vera CPU for Agents and Simulation
In LANL’s early testing of NVIDIA Vera CPUs on Branson — an open source Monte Carlo heat transfer simulation tool — Vera outperforms the CPUs used in the Crossroads x86 supercomputer by over 3x.
These results were made possible by Vera, including its custom Olympus core, LPDDR5 memory and fast on-chip fabric.
A single Vera CPU outperforms a single socket x86-based CPU by more than 3x while providing more than 4x the memory per core and 6x the memory per node. Ultimately, this means faster scientific results for LANL.
All of the lab’s supercomputers were codesigned by hardware architects, system software developers, domain scientists, computer scientists and applied mathematicians — helping ensure systems are shaped by real scientific workloads, not abstract benchmarks alone.
Building on Generations of LANL Systems
Mission, expected to be operational in 2027, will be the fifth Advanced Technology System in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Advanced Simulation and Computing program and will replace Crossroads for classified national security workloads.
Vision, also expected to be operational in 2027, will serve as a resource for fundamental science, including materials and nuclear science, energy modeling, biomedical research and AI — letting more scientists test methods, train models and explore ideas before moving into higher-consequence work.
The work extends more than a decade of LANL and NVIDIA’s deep collaboration on CPUs, from Grace to Vera, using extreme codesign for LANL simulation workloads.
The three new supercomputers build on Venado, the HPE Cray EX supercomputer installed at Los Alamos in 2024 with NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips and NVIDIA Grace CPU Superchips.
Garfield AI, the UK's first regulator-approved AI law firm, has won its first court case after helping a freelancer recover 7,000 pounds in unpaid fees. "I was owed money for work I had done, but it felt like the process of recovering it could be too stressful, expensive and time-consuming," said Tamires Camal Taquidir, a freelancer who had provided HR-related services to a hospitality business. "Garfield made it possible for me to pursue the claim and keep going. When the counterclaim was brought, it was intended to intimidate me, but I knew I had accessible, cost-effective and competent support. I'm delighted by the result." Computer Weekly reports: After attempting to resolve a dispute over paid fees without court action, Camal Taquidir [...] used Garfield AI to help her pursue the case in court. She was able to generate pre-action correspondence, and then prepare and issue court proceedings. The AI legal assistant conducted all of the legal work preceding the court trial. The defendant instructed solicitors and brought a counterclaim, which the claimant disputed with the support of Garfield AI.
The claimant continued to trial, including dealing with document production, the preparation witness statements and trial bundles. Garfield then instructed a junior, shortly before the trial began. She won the claim over unpaid fees following a three-hour trial at Wandsworth County Court. The claimant paid around 400 pounds in Garfield AI fees to recover the 7,000 pounds owed, while the defendant instructed both a solicitor and a barrister. [...] Following a three-hour trial at Wandsworth County Court on 14 May 2026, in which both sides were represented by barristers, the court found in favor of the claimant, awarding 7,000 pounds and dismissing the counterclaim.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is resigning, and the man widely expected to replace him is a fellow Labour Party lawmaker known as the "King of the North."
Thalha Jubair and Owen Flowers, linked to the Scattered Spider hacking group, change pleas on first day of trial
Two British cybercriminals from the Scattered Spider hacking group have pleaded guilty to a cyber-attack on Transport for London in 2024 that cost £39m and affected 10 million people.
Thalha Jubair, 20, and Owen Flowers, 18, pleaded guilty to offences under the Computer Misuse Act at Woolwich crown court on Monday.
The vice president said the move represented a ‘major milestone’ in ending Iran’s nuclear programme
According to Palestinian news agency Wafa, a high school student was killed and several other civilians were injured earlier today in an Israeli attack on a civilian vehicle in Gaza City. The Gaza health ministry says at least 1,021 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since the ‘ceasefire’ between Israel and Hamas came into effect in October 2025.
In a post on X, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said US-Iran talks have concluded “successfully” in Switzerland, adding that discussions produced agreement on the establishment of a “high-level committee” to provide “political oversight” of the talks which are now entering a more “technical” phase.
Other measures include Washington lifting sanctions on Tehran’s oil exports and reopening the strait of Hormuz
Iran has agreed to allow UN nuclear inspectors back into the country as part of an agreement under which Washington will lift sanctions on Tehran’s oil exports and the strait of Hormuz will reopen, the US vice-president, JD Vance, has said.
Long-term independent monitoring of Iran’s nuclear programme, which it says is for energy purposes only, was in effect halted last summer after Israel and the US attacked the country. Tehran suspended cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in response to strikes on its nuclear facilities.
Appeals court had ruled Pedro Hernandez, 64, was wrongly convicted over 1979 disappearance of New York six-year-old
The US supreme court has reinstated a murder conviction in the long winding case of Etan Patz, whose 1979 disappearance at age six from New York City garnered national headlines.
In a 6-3 decision on Monday, the supreme court agreed with New York prosecutors in their request to reverse a lower court ruling that had thrown out the murder conviction of Pedro Hernandez, 64, in the Patz case.
HAMBURG, Germany, June 22, 2026 — DDN today announced a major expansion of its AI & HPC data platform portfolio at ISC 2026, delivering breakthrough innovations across performance, efficiency, security, and cloud-scale AI infrastructure.
The announcements include the launch of the new AI400X3M high-performance appliance, the official release of DDN’s distributed KV Cache acceleration technology integrated with NVIDIA Dynamo, and new security, observability, and infrastructure efficiency enhancements for large-scale AI environments.
As organizations race from AI pilots to production-scale AI operations, DDN is addressing the industry’s most critical bottlenecks across the entire AI data pipeline — from data ingestion and preparation to training, inference, RAG, and agentic AI. The company’s latest innovations are designed to maximize GPU utilization, accelerate inference performance, reduce infrastructure complexity, and significantly improve AI economics by lowering cost per token and increasing tokens-per-watt efficiency across enterprise AI factories.
“AI infrastructure is no longer just about compute. The economic success of AI depends on how efficiently organizations move, manage, secure, and operationalize data across the entire AI lifecycle,” said Alex Bouzari, CEO and Co-Founder at DDN. “At ISC 2026, DDN is introducing the next generation of AI data intelligence innovations designed to help customers maximize GPU utilization, reduce inference costs, accelerate time-to-token, and improve the overall economics of AI factories at massive scale.”
Introducing the AI400X3M: Extreme Performance Density for AI and HPC
Leading the announcements is the new DDN AI400X3M appliance, the latest evolution of DDN’s industry-leading EXAScaler platform.
Designed for the most demanding AI and HPC environments, the AI400X3M delivers:
Up to 35% higher read throughput over the previous generation
Up to 190 GB/sec throughput performance to accelerate GPU access to data
Exceptional performance density in a compact footprint (up to 30 PB in a single rack)
Hybrid disk support for optimized economics and scalability, especially due to rising NAND costs
Extreme parallel throughput for supercomputing, training, inference, checkpointing, and large-scale AI pipelines
The AI400X3M enables enterprises, sovereign AI programs, and cloud providers to dramatically increase infrastructure efficiency while reducing power, cooling, and operational costs.
General availability is expected by the end of Q3 2026.
Official Launch of DDN KV Cache Acceleration with NVIDIA Dynamo Integration
Following its preview at GTC 2026, DDN also announced the official launch of its distributed KV Cache acceleration architecture integrated with NVIDIA Dynamo and available across DDN Infinia and EXAScaler AI data platforms.
The solution dramatically accelerates large-scale AI inference by eliminating memory bottlenecks and enabling ultra-fast retrieval of model context directly from DDN’s AI-native data intelligence platform.
Key capabilities include:
Shared distributed KV Cache fabric optimized for large-scale inference environments
Ultra-low latency data access for large-context inference and faster token generation
Optimized support for agentic AI, reasoning models, RAG, and multi-step inference pipelines
Deep integration with NVIDIA Dynamo, vLLM, and modern inference frameworks
Improved GPU utilization and reduced idle compute cycles
Up to 55x faster KV cache loading performance for large-scale inference workloads
Lower cost per token and improved AI factory ROI through more efficient GPU and infrastructure utilization
By moving KV cache closer to the data layer and reducing memory and networking bottlenecks, DDN enables enterprises and cloud providers to dramatically increase inference efficiency while reducing power consumption and infrastructure overhead associated with large-scale generative AI deployments.
Accelerating the AI Data Pipeline from Training to Inference
DDN’s latest innovations extend across the full AI data pipeline, helping enterprises operationalize AI faster and more efficiently from data preparation and model training to inference, RAG, reasoning, and agentic AI workflows.
DDN Infinia delivers AI-native object storage engineered specifically for modern inference and retrieval-intensive workloads, providing ultra-low latency metadata performance, massive concurrency, and high-speed object access required for enterprise-scale AI factories. Combined with EXAScaler’s industry-leading parallel file system performance for training and checkpointing, DDN enables organizations to unify AI data infrastructure across the entire AI lifecycle.
This architecture allows customers to eliminate data silos, maintain consistently high GPU utilization, accelerate time-to-first-token, and optimize AI infrastructure economics at scale.
Additional Enterprise AI Infrastructure Enhancements
DDN also introduced several platform enhancements focused on security, enterprise AI operations, multi-tenancy, and infrastructure observability, including:
Security
Bare-metal multi-tenancy
KMIP-based encryption and key management
VictoriaLogs integration for operational visibility
Multi-tenant APIs with and without CSI
Efficiency
Intelligent file pinning capabilities
NAND-accelerated Hot Pools to tier data from expensive all-flash drives to lower-cost HDDs
The updates are designed to help enterprise, sovereign, and cloud AI operators improve workload isolation, governance, visibility, and infrastructure efficiency across production AI environments.
Expanding Cloud AI Momentum with Managed Lustre and Salesforce
DDN also highlighted continued momentum in cloud AI infrastructure, including new Managed Lustre innovations announced alongside Google Cloud Next and a new Salesforce deployment showcasing enterprise-scale AI performance and operational efficiency.
The announcements further validate DDN’s leadership in enabling AI-native cloud architectures optimized for large-scale enterprise inference, RAG, and AI training workloads.
DDN’s work helping Salesforce clear data bottlenecks offers a clear example of that momentum in action. With Google Cloud Managed Lustre, powered by DDN EXAScaler, Salesforce achieved 1.5x faster model training, a 75% reduction in I/O latency, and a 42% reduction in training costs. The results demonstrate how DDN is helping enterprise customers remove data bottlenecks and get
DDN’s AI data intelligence platform powers many of the world’s largest and most advanced AI environments, including deployments supporting hyperscalers, sovereign AI initiatives, cloud providers, research institutions, and enterprise AI factories operating at massive GPU scale.
By combining ultra-high-performance data infrastructure, AI-native orchestration, inference acceleration, observability, and operational efficiency, DDN continues to define the future of AI data intelligence — enabling organizations to build AI factories that maximize GPU ROI, reduce cost per token, and accelerate business outcomes across the full AI lifecycle.
About DDN
DDN is the world’s leading provider of AI data storage and data management platforms, powering over 20 years of innovation across HPC, enterprise, and the largest AI deployments on Earth. With its EXA, Infinia, and intelligent data management platforms, DDN delivers unmatched performance, scale, and business value for customers building next-generation AI factories, hyperscale clouds, and Sovereign AI initiatives. DDN is the trusted partner for thousands of the world’s most data-intensive organizations, including the leading national labs, research institutions, enterprises, hyperscalers, financial firms, and autonomous vehicle innovators. For more information, visit www.ddn.com.
LED face masks are booming in popularity – despite being one of the most expensive at-home beauty products to hit the market. They claim to either reduce the appearance of fine lines, stop spots or calm redness, with some even combining different types of light to enhance the benefits.
However, it’s wise to be sceptical about new treatments that are costly and non-invasive, and to do your research before you buy. With this in mind, I interviewed doctors and dermatologists to find out whether these light therapy devices work.
Trump-admiring Abelardo de la Espriella has vowed to ‘disembowel’ the left and kill criminals like ‘rats and cockroaches’
When more than 20 women accused a Colombian evangelical pastor in 2012 of sexually abusing them, the defendant’s lawyer sought to discredit the allegations by telling the court that they were “trepadoras” – a pejorative term meaning social climbers.
He ultimately secured his client’s acquittal – although the case remains under review by the supreme court – but footage of the remark resurfaced during Colombia’s presidential campaign, sparking outrage among many progressive voters.
American economist and long-serving head of the Federal Reserve widely praised for the US boom whose reputation was re-evaluated in the wake of the 2008 crash
For his work chairing the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, who has died aged 100, was regularly hailed by financiers, politicians and journalists for his handling of the economy. He was variously dubbed the Oracle, the Wizard and the Maestro.
As head of the central bank of the US from 1987 to 2006, tasked with setting interest rates and supervising and regulating banks and other financial institutions, he easily ranked as one of the most powerful individuals in the world. He served under four presidents: Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, Bill Clinton – even though Greenspan was a lifelong Republican – and George W Bush.
A pregnant fin whale was found dead on the bow of a cruise ship in Alaska last week. Fin whales are endangered and particularly threatened by vessel strikes.
A Trump administration plan would charge legal immigrants seeking citizenship $570 more in application fees while eliminating waivers and fee reductions for low-income applicants.
But let’s return to Iran for a moment. Their goalie, Alireza Beiranvand – or “The Wall of Persia” as he’s known – had to run away from home to become a footballer, his old fella less than enchanted by the ruse and cutting up his gloves. I wonder how he feels now his boy has been player of the match at a World Cup.
Trump’s pre-Fourth of July renovation project has endured problems with algae, peeling paint and an inflating price tag
Donald Trump’s rush to repaint the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, a symbol of Washington DC, has hit roadblock after roadblock as the country’s 250th anniversary nears.
The public has been gripped by the ill-fated $14m attempt to renovate the reflecting pool, which the US president vowed to make “beautiful” in time for this summer’s birthday celebrations at the capital.
UC San Diego researchers are working with Google to build a private cloud from 2,000 retired Pixel Fold motherboards, demonstrating how discarded smartphones could provide useful, low-cost computing capacity. "The full smartphone cluster is expected to launch this fall," reports The Register. "Depending on how well the initial phase goes, we're told the cluster could grow even larger." From the report Once the phone's motherboards have been extracted from their shells, the researchers say that the chips hiding within remain more than potent enough to be useful for a variety of tasks. In many cases, the single-threaded performance of these chips is as good as, if not better than, what you'd find from a many-cored datacenter chip. The Pixel Fold smartphones, which will form the basis of the cluster, are powered by a Google Tensor G2 processor with two 2.85 GHz Cortex-X1, two 2.35 GHz Cortex-A78 and four 1.80 GHz Cortex-A55 Arm cores, a Mali-G710 MP7 GPU, and 12 GB of system memory. Early benchmarking using the SPEC suite suggests that 25-50 phones should deliver performance similar to that of a conventional server.
The major challenge, instead, is distributing workloads across multiple devices, each of which has a handful of cores of one or more varieties, and most have 8-12 GB of memory. UCSD researchers are approaching this challenge from a couple of different angles. The first is by targeting applications that can easily fit within a single device. The second is using Kubernetes to orchestrate container deployments across clusters of 25-50 phones. For this to work, the devices first need to be flashed with a Linux operating system suitable for the job. While Android makes for a great handheld experience, it is not intended for server duty. In the blog post, researchers note that Android includes functionality intended to stop rogue applications from chewing up excessive amounts of memory and draining your battery. In server context, these safety mechanisms are no longer necessary.
[Ryan Kastner, an associate professor of computer science at UCSD] told us this was by no means an easy task, but the team has made steady progress toward getting Linux running smoothly on these devices, including support for the phone's onboard GPUs. Access to some functionality, like the chip's integrated tensor processing unit, remains elusive. Clustering these devices will require networking the phones together. Normally these devices would connect over cellular or Wi-Fi, but at this scale, this not only isn't practical, but also has implications for security, he explained. Instead, the team will employ PCBs that both supply power and break out wired Ethernet networking.
The researchers suggest that many EdTech, grading, and research workloads commonly run by universities in the cloud are small enough to run on the cluster without issue. "The vast majority of these applications are within the capabilities of a single smartphone to host, with the standard grading backend running on small cloud instances," a blog post detailing the planned deployment reads. "Early experiments show that even a moderately-sized cluster of 20 phones is capable of supporting peak submission rates for a 75+ student class."
The famed US music industry executive and record producer Clive Davis has died aged 94, his family has confirmed.
He had recently been hospitalised with respiratory problems and was recovering at home. He had also been diagnosed with neurological condition Bell’s palsy in 2021.
José Luis Ábalos found to have taken bribes on Covid-era public contracts in damaging blow to Pedro Sánchez
Spain’s supreme court has jailed the former transport minister José Luis Ábalos for 24 years for taking bribes on public contracts for sanitary equipment such as face masks during the Covid pandemic.
Ábalos’s aide, Koldo García, was jailed for 19 years in a trial that is one of several scandals to have enveloped the government of Pedro Sánchez over recent months.
Death of Kohen Wiley is latest in series of troubling police encounters that have outraged community members
The recent fatal shooting of a one-year-old boy by police who were responding to a shoplifting call has ignited simmering tensions between police and Black residents in the small town of Senatobia, Mississippi.
The death of Kohen Wiley is the latest in a series of troubling encounters with police that have outraged community members in recent years. It has led to protests and calls for greater police accountability in the town of 8,000, with some civil rights activists pointing to Kohen’s death as another example of a Black life lost over something of nominal value. In this case, it was an allegation of stolen diapers, which the boy’s family has denied.
Russia intercepted 300 Ukrainian drones across the country and temporarily suspended operations from Moscow airport
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy also responded to Starmer setting out his plans to resign as Britain’s PM, telling him he would always be “a welcome guest” in Ukraine for his support to the wartorn country.
In a statement on his social media, he said:
“Keir, thank you for all our cooperation, your support, and the joint decisions that have helped make our Europe and our protection of life stronger.
The United Kingdom has been, is, and will remain among the world’s leaders. Here in Ukraine, we deeply value Britain, and every meeting and every conversation we have had has always been filled with real substance.
HSINCHU, Taiwan, June 22, 2026 — A research team led by Professor Hao-Wu Lin from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) has developed the world’s brightest room-temperature single-photon source, which uniquely combines ultrafast and non-blinking emission. The device emits more than 2.3 billion photons per second, setting a new global benchmark and marking a significant milestone toward practical quantum communication and integrated quantum photonic chips. This breakthrough has been published in Science Advances.
Professor Hao-Wu Lin (center) and his research team, including doctoral student Tzu-Hao Liao (right) and Dr. Yung-Tang Chuang (left), developed the world’s brightest room-temperature single-photon source, capable of emitting more than 2.3 billion photons per second and setting a new world record. Photo credit: National Tsing Hua University.
Quantum technologies are widely regarded as a transformative frontier with the potential to reshape communication, computing, and sensing. Around the world, including in Taiwan, governments and industries are investing heavily in the development of quantum hardware, with single-photon sources serving as one of the most fundamental enabling components. These devices generate photons one at a time, making them essential for secure quantum communication and photonic quantum information processing.
“The brightness of a single-photon source directly determines the rate at which quantum information can be transmitted,” said Professor Lin. “Achieving high brightness, ultrafast emission, and stable, non-blinking operation at room temperature has remained one of the most challenging goals in quantum optoelectronics.”
To overcome this challenge, the NTHU team integrated perovskite quantum dots with silver nanocubes approximately 100 nanometers in size, creating a plasmonic nanocavity that strongly enables strong light–matter interactions. One of the major obstacles was the inherent incompatibility of the two materials. Silver nanocubes must be dispersed in highly polar solvents such as alcohol, while conventional perovskite quantum dots rapidly degrade and lose their luminescence in such environments.
Doctoral student Tzu-Hao Liao, the study’s first author, was responsible for quantum dot synthesis and modification, nanocavity fabrication, and optical characterization. He explained that the team employed specially designed zwitterionic ligands to encapsulate the quantum dots, effectively providing a protective molecular coating. This strategy enabled the quantum dots to withstand polar solvents while maintaining an exceptionally high photoluminescence quantum yield of 95%.
The stabilized quantum dots were then embedded within a plasmonic nanocavity formed between a silver nanocube and a silver film, separated by a gap of only about 10 nanometers—roughly one ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair. This architecture dramatically enhanced brightness.
Co-author Dr. Yung-Tang Chuang, who led the photophysical analysis, explained that coupling the quantum dots to the nanocavity generated a strong Purcell effect. As a result, the emission rate increased by a factor of 435, the emission lifetime was reduced to less than 12 picoseconds, and the overall emission intensity improved by approximately 250 times compared with the uncoupled quantum dots.
Professor Lin noted that the Purcell enhancement also produced an unexpected advantage. “The emission process becomes so fast that the quantum dots have little opportunity to enter non-emissive states,” he said. “This effectively eliminates the blinking behavior that has long limited the performance of single-photon sources.” Unlike many conventional semiconductor single-photon emitters that require cryogenic temperatures near absolute zero, the perovskite-based platform operates stably at room temperature, significantly reducing system complexity and cost.
The source proved so bright that when the team measured it using a domestically manufactured confocal microscope modified in-house, the detector immediately became overexposed and saturated. Professor Lin compared the experience to “pointing a camera directly at the sun.” To obtain accurate measurements, the researchers had to insert multiple neutral-density filters into the optical path—effectively placing “sunglasses” on the instrument. The results confirmed that the device surpasses the previous world record for brightness by more than an order of magnitude.
The breakthrough did not come easily. Dr. Yung-Tang Chuang recalled that no previous study had successfully enabled perovskite quantum dots to maintain such high performance in alcohol-based solvents. With few precedents to follow, the team explored numerous approaches, including alternative device architectures and reaction conditions, but repeatedly encountered setbacks. At several points, the researchers considered abandoning the effort altogether. Progress finally came when Chuang and first author Tzu-Hao Liao developed and optimized the zwitterionic-ligand strategy, opening a viable path toward integrating perovskite quantum dots with plasmonic nanocavities.
The project was carried out entirely by the NTHU research team with support from the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and the Ministry of Education’s “National Featured Areas Research Center Program.” Looking ahead, Professor Lin estimates that the technology could find applications in quantum-encrypted communication within the next five years and may serve as a key building block for future quantum computers within five to ten years. The team is now developing multicolor light sources to increase communication bandwidth and is extending the technology toward infrared wavelengths compatible with optical-fiber networks.
PM’s demise after landslide victory two years ago points to an increasingly volatile and impatient electorate
Historians will puzzle over this one. Of the six prime ministers that have led Britain over the last decade, with a seventh now on the way, it will be the fall of Keir Starmer that will most perplex the political analysts of the future.
They will ponder a man who won a landslide victory in July 2024 only to be pushed out less than two years later, having started no illegal wars, having triggered no grave economic crises, having been accused of no scandalous act of corruption.
Number of countries issue alerts with sustained and rising temperatures expected to present danger to health
Two children aged four and two have been found dead in their family’s car in south-eastern France, the local prosecutor said, as a large swathe of western Europe suffers a ferocious heatwave forecast to shatter absolute temperature records.
“The causes of death are yet to be determined, but the heat is the leading line of inquiry,” said Hélène Mourges, the prosecutor in the town of Carpentras, where the temperature was expected to exceed 39C (102.2F) on Monday afternoon.
Unidentified man fell into vault toilet at Camp Edison while trying to retrieve sunglasses he dropped, officials say
An unhappy camper spent about 15 minutes submerged in sewage in the putrid tank of a California campground’s vault toilet after falling in trying to retrieve sunglasses he dropped, according to officials.
The latest entry into the annals of bizarre US campground mishaps took place on Saturday at Shaver Lake’s Camp Edison, about 50 miles north-east of downtown Fresno. A spokesperson for the Fresno county sheriff’s office said specialist rescue crews from Cal Fire were required to extricate the unidentified man from the confined tank beneath the waterless, non-flushing toilet.
STOCKHOLM, June 22, 2026 — FirstQFM, a pioneer in machine learning foundation models for quantum computing, has announced a significant milestone in the commercial application of quantum computing today at the ISC High Performance conference. Built on NVIDIA accelerated computing, FirstQFM’s Quantum Reservoir Computing system delivered a 56.1% series-level win rate against the strongest classical foundation-model baseline in zero-shot forecasting evaluation.
The breakthrough demonstrates the power of FirstQFM’s Quantum Foundation Models (QFM) when integrated with NVIDIA’s quantum computing platform. In rigorous benchmarking of financial time series, FirstQFM’s QRC model delivered superior directional accuracy and lower forecast error than leading classical time series foundation models, marking a pivotal moment for near-term quantum utility at scale.
Unlocking the NISQ Era with Quantum Foundation Models
While the industry has historically focused on future fault-tolerant systems, FirstQFM is already delivering production-ready results on today’s Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) hardware. By utilizing patent-pending, device- and problem-aware reservoirs, FirstQFM’s Quantum Reservoir Computing (QRC) solution targets high-value use cases on near-term systems and establishes a foundation for continued performance gains as quantum hardware advances.
“Building QRC on top of our proprietary quantum foundation models enables us to generate reservoirs that are both device-aware and problem-aware,” said Vish Ramakrishnan, CEO and Co-Founder of FirstQFM. “That is what allowed us to outperform state-of-the-art AI forecasting models developed by teams at major technology companies, including Google, Salesforce, and Amazon. We believe this can become one of the first commercially viable applications of quantum computing.”
Scaled on the Leonardo Supercomputer
The development and scaling of FirstQFM’s models were powered by NVIDIA CUDA-Q, NVIDIA cuQuantum, and NVIDIA cuTensorNet. FirstQFM optimized its workflows for training on the Leonardo Supercomputer, one of the world’s most powerful systems, accelerated by NVIDIA infrastructure.
For enterprise “on-premises” deployments, the solution will leverage NVIDIA NVQLink, which provides the critical low-latency and high throughput connection between GPU-enabled servers and quantum processors required for real-time inference.
Rigorous Validation
To ensure the performance gains were robust, FirstQFM employed a strict evaluation protocol: zero-shot forecasts on series excluded from the training set, ensuring that the results were not contaminated by data leakage or overfitting.
“The objective was to demonstrate gains over state-of-the-art zero shot forecasting systems on a selected set of tasks with commercial relevance,” said Isaiah Hull, CTO and Co-Founder of FirstQFM. “To ensure the performance gains were robust, we designed the training set and evaluation protocol to avoid data leakage and overfitting, benchmarked zero-shot forecasts against zero-shot forecasts, and tested against some of the strongest forecasting systems available. NVIDIA’s CUDA-Q platform and its GPU-acceleration, were indispensable to the project.”
A Dual Go-To-Market Approach
FirstQFM is moving forward with a versatile Go-To-Market strategy that includes both cloud-based and on-premises business models. This flexibility allows enterprises to integrate quantum-enhanced forecasting into existing infrastructure and gain a decisive edge in forecasting.
About FirstQFM
FirstQFM is a Stockholm-based quantum technology startup specializing in the development of foundation models that improve the performance and scalability of quantum computers. By developing models that understand the nuances of specific quantum processors, FirstQFM enables the deployment of high-performance, commercially viable applications for the NISQ era and beyond. For more information, visit www.firstqfm.com.
This noise sometimes occurs on my GT, but not every time I ride it. I’ve only done about 1,800 km (1,100 miles) so far. Could the wheel bearings already be going bad, or is there something else that might be causing it? Any ideas?
Ursula von der Leyen, Friedrich Merz and Volodymyr Zelenskyy say British PM helped increase security
European leaders have paid tribute to Keir Starmer after he announced his resignation as the British prime minister, triggering the postponement of an EU-UK summit.
The European Council president, António Costa, said: “For sure we need to postpone it, but we are reassessing the opportunity to hold this new summit …
Arrests are part of Operation Perth investigation into failures in NHS trust’s maternity services
Two men have been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in the running of a mortuary service at a hospital trust at the centre of the NHS’s largest inquiry into maternity services.
Nottingham University hospitals (NUH) NHS trust will be the focus of a major report on Wednesday into how failings led to the deaths of babies and serious harm to families.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Claude Guillemot, co-founder of French video game company Ubisoft, died Friday at the age of 69. According to French media (via Bloomberg), Guillemot died in a plane crash in the French resort town of La Baule. He was one of two people aboard the plane, both of whom died.
Guillemot founded Ubisoft with his four brothers in 1986. Since then, the company has published the Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Prince of Persia, and Tom Clancy video game franchises, as well as many other titles. The family retains control of Ubisoft, and Guillemot's brother Yves is still CEO. Guillemot was also chairman of Guillemot Corp., which makes gaming and audio accessories. "Ubisoft was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Claude Guillemot, co-founder of the group and chairman of Guillemot Corp., in an accident," Ubisoft said in a statement. "Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones during this difficult time. No further statements will be made at this time."
HAMBURG, Germany, June 22, 2026 — ISC High Performance 2026 — NVIDIA today announced that a record 35 NVIDIA AI HPC supercomputers are in development across Europe — equipping more than 3 million researchers with next-generation infrastructure for continental AI, accelerated science and industrial innovation.
Credit: NVIDIA
The systems represent Europe’s largest one-year expansion of supercomputers, spanning national supercomputing centers, AI factories and academic research institutions. Built on full-stack NVIDIA AI infrastructure, the systems will support research across climate science, healthcare, clean-energy decarbonization, quantum computing and fundamental science.
The NVIDIA Blackwell and NVIDIA Hopper platforms are powering the majority of Europe’s AI factory buildout, with 800 AI exaflops deployed or announced since last year. With NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand networking, NVIDIA CUDA-X libraries, NVIDIA NIM microservices and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software, NVIDIA provides a full-stack platform for science, spanning model training, simulation, inference and agentic AI.
“AI is the new instrument of science, and Europe is building the infrastructure to put it in the hands of millions of researchers,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “With NVIDIA accelerated computing, researchers can simulate more complex systems, train scientific AI models and build agentic AI workflows that turn Europe’s data and expertise into breakthroughs for the world.”
Supercomputers including Barcelona Supercomputing Center’s EuroHPC MareNostrum5 AI upgrade, BavariaAI’s Blue Swan, IT4LIA, HLRS’s HammerHAI and NAISS’s Mimer EuroHPC AI Factory are among those based on advanced NVIDIA AI infrastructure.
“BSC is committed to building AI infrastructure that advances science, industry and society,” said Mateo Valero Cortés, director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. “With the upgrade to MareNostrum5 and NVIDIA accelerated computing, the consortium composed of Spain, Portugal and Türkiye will make available to European researchers the tools to tackle some of the world’s most complex challenges, from climate modeling to biomedical discovery.”
“With the project ‘Blue Swan Platform,’ Bavaria is working on an innovative and independent, multimodal AI foundation model for important application areas like health and robotics,” said Bavarian Minister of Science Markus Blume. “This will allow us to provide a powerful AI tool for science and industry that fully meets European standards. For this ambitious goal, we are currently building a special computing infrastructure at Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen — the biggest GPU cluster you can find at any German university.”
“IT4LIA marks a strategic step in strengthening Europe’s AI and HPC ecosystem, providing a high-performance infrastructure to the research and innovation ecosystem,” said Gabriella Scipione, high-performance computing director of CINECA. “Through advanced accelerated computing, EuroHPC with CINECA, the Italian Ministry of University and Research, and the Italian Cybersecurity Agency are creating a trusted environment for open AI model development and applications across agritech, cybersecurity, meteorology, climate and manufacturing, strengthening Europe’s technological autonomy and reinforcing Italy’s role in the global AI landscape.”
“Germany has long been a leader in engineering, science and industrial innovation,” said Michael Resch, director of the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart. “With HammerHAI, Germany’s first AI factory, we are building on that foundation with secure, national AI infrastructure that will help researchers and industrial users accelerate simulation, inference and scientific discovery, strengthening Europe’s ability to turn advanced computing into real-world breakthroughs.”
Europe’s latest AI infrastructure expansion includes advancements at:
Barcelona Supercomputing Center’s AI Factory, the first EuroHPC AI-specific installation: Will expand MareNostrum 5 with NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 and NVIDIA GB200 NVL4 systems, connected by the NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand platform. Delivering up to approximately 20 exaflops of AI training and 33 exaflops of AI inference performance, the system will accelerate generative AI, climate modeling, health and biotech research, sustainable agriculture, energy systems and government AI services.
BavariaAI’s Blue Swan: Brings 1,000 GPUs via NVIDIA GB200 NVL4 systems and NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking to FAU Erlangen and LRZ supercomputing centers. Delivering up to 11 exaflops of AI training and 22 exaflops of AI inference performance, the platform will support Bavaria’s foundation model initiative, advancing open multimodal models for science, public administration, health research, robotics and perception.
IT4LIA: An AI factory with over 8,000 GPUs via NVIDIA GB200 NVL4 systems, NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software, delivering 82 exaflops of AI training and 164 exaflops of AI inference performance.
HLRS’s HammerHAI: Will equip Germany’s first AI factory with over 850 GPUs via NVIDIA GB200 NVL4 systems connected with NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand. Delivering up to approximately 8 exaflops of AI training and 15 exaflops of AI inference performance, HammerHAI will give researchers and industrial users secure AI infrastructure for engineering simulation, large language model inference and scientific discovery.
NAISS’s Mimer AI Factory, owned by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking: Hosted at Linköping University, this supercomputer will deploy 100 NVIDIA GB200 NVL4 systems, totaling 400 GPUs, with NVIDIA ConnectX-8 networking. Delivering up to 4 exaflops of AI training and about 7 exaflops of AI inference performance, Mimer AI Factory will advance Sweden’s AI science ecosystem across life sciences, materials research, autonomous systems, trustworthy AI and data-driven innovation.
AI for Climate and Decarbonization
NVIDIA is supporting initiatives that deploy AI infrastructure and software to help researchers apply AI to scientific challenges including climate and Earth systems modeling, biomedical research, and clean-energy technologies such as fusion, hydrogen and carbon capture.
Accelerated simulation and industrial engineering are already enabling breakthroughs in clean-energy research.
Siemens Energy is using the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, accelerated by NVIDIA technologies, including NVIDIA Omniverse libraries, CUDA-X and AI infrastructure, to unify design, computational fluid dynamics simulation and manufacturing for gas turbines built to run on up to 100% hydrogen — a complex physics challenge involving extreme heat, fluid dynamics and combustion behavior.
The workflow supports rapid, simulation-driven design iterations for complex gas turbine burner configurations, followed by fast technology validation using additively manufactured combustors. This cuts simulation times by up to 77% to advance hydrogen-capable, low‑carbon gas turbines.
Quantum-GPU Supercomputing Advances in Europe
NVIDIA is enabling European supercomputing centers and institutions to develop and run useful hybrid quantum-classical applications using NVIDIA CUDA-Q, an open, qubit-agnostic platform for hybrid computing, extending Europe’s leadership in quantum-GPU supercomputing.
CINECA, EuroHPC and Pasqal are integrating a neutral-atom QPU at the CINECA supercomputing center. The Pasqal hybrid environment is deploying the CUDA-Q platform through integration with Slurm. CUDA-Q provides Pasqal and CINECA with a platform for developing and running quantum applications including for optimization and materials science use cases.
Fraunhofer FOKUS is facilitating the integration of NVIDIA CUDA-Q with the quantum programming language Eclipse Qrisp. Qrisp, initiated at Fraunhofer FOKUS and being further developed by the Eclipse Foundation, enables researchers to more easily write complex quantum algorithms which can then be simulated, optimized and run with NVIDIA CUDA-Q.
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center has recently deployed a new analog quantum computer from QPU builder Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech, through the EuroHPC JU initiative. Qilimanjaro integrated NVIDIA CUDA-Q into its quantum software development kit, QiliSDK. Qilimanjaro is also working toward making its QPU available in the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform for seamless control of quantum accelerated workflows at BSC.
Researchers at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, working with a team from NVIDIA, set a world record by fully simulating a universal 50-qubit quantum computer. The simulation was run on JUPITER, powered by its NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips. Jülich’s JUQCS-50 (for 50 qubits) quantum simulator allows researchers to now test the largest possible quantum problems on supercomputers, to scale quantum computing.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the world leader in AI and accelerated computing.
Brown skuas and giant petrels are a common sight offshore in southern Australian waters in the winter months, but they will rarely risk venturing on to land.
So when two of these birds were discovered sick – on beaches a few kilometres apart on Western Australia’s southern coastline – it was a sign something might be wrong.
June 22, 2026 — The Eclipse Qrisp developer community has integrated Eclipse Qrisp – the open-source framework for quantum programming initiated by Fraunhofer FOKUS – with the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform for hybrid quantum-classical computing. The integration will be made publicly available later this year.
The integration enables a straightforward workflow: developers write quantum programs in Qrisp’s intuitive, Python-based language and execute them seamlessly via NVIDIA CUDA-Q’s powerful simulation and hardware backends. NVIDIA CUDA-Q is the platform for developing and running hybrid quantum-classical workflows, including offering powerful backends that utilise GPU acceleration. Its integration with Qrisp combines expressive, high-level programming with state-of-the-art execution capabilities. This allows users to focus on what they want to compute, rather than on how to implement it for a specific platform.
Eclipse Qrisp was originally developed at Fraunhofer FOKUS and is now maintained collaboratively across organizations under the umbrella of the Eclipse Foundation. The framework aims to enable researchers and specialists from various fields, such as chemistry or finance, and those working on optimization problems or machine learning, to access quantum computing through high-level programming abstractions. As Qrisp is based on Python, it significantly lowers the barrier to entry compared to hardware-specific approaches to quantum programming.
As an Eclipse Foundation project, Qrisp is developed openly and thrives on contributions from the community. Fraunhofer FOKUS invites researchers, developers and organizations to join the growing ecosystem. You can use the framework, provide feedback or contribute code.
A tutorial explaining the entire workflow – from writing a first quantum kernel to creating hybrid variational algorithms – will accompany the release.
About Fraunhofer FOKUS
The Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS is one of the leading institutes in applied research for information and communication technologies (ICT). Since 1988, the institute has been researching and shaping digital transformation and its effects on society, the economy, and technology. FOKUS offers commercial enterprises and public administration the entire range of research services, from requirements analysis, consulting, feasibility studies, and technology development to prototypes and piloting.
Europe’s first exascale supercomputer — running on NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips — is mapping the brain, modeling climate, advancing 6G AI and breaking records in quantum computing simulation.
June 22, 2026 — JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale supercomputer at Germany’s Forschungszentrum Jülich, runs on NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips and NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand networking — and it’s had a busy year.
Credit: EuroHPC JU
As the international supercomputing community gathers at ISC in Hamburg this week, four projects running on JUPITER point to what exascale computing can actually do: map the human brain at cellular scale, simulate the entire Earth’s climate at 1-kilometer resolution, build AI systems for the next generation of wireless networks and simulate a universal 50-qubit quantum computer.
“With JUPITER, Europe doesn’t just join the exascale era — it leads it, across the widest range of science and AI of any system worldwide,” said Thomas Lippert, director of the Jülich Supercomputing Centre and professor at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Four projects, detailed below, share a throughline: scientific problems that were out of reach on previous hardware are now tractable at exascale.
A Foundation Model for Mapping the Brain
The Jülich Brain Atlas project — anchored at Jülich’s Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine with partner Helmholtz AI, partner hospital and other Helmholtz institutions — has produced CytoNet, a foundation model for brain microarchitecture analysis.
The complexity of the human brain is astonishing. With 86 billion neurons and about 100 trillion connections between them, understanding brain function at single neuron resolution has been out of reach, until now.
The research is led by neuroscientist Katrin Amunts and computer scientist Christian Schiffer at INM-1, Jülich’s Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine. The model learns from brain imaging data at cellular scale, building a map that links individual cell structures to broader patterns of brain organization and function.
Training ran on JUPITER in under five days, using 6.5 petabytes of data from 21 post-mortem brains on 4,096 NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips. A paper describing the work is available on arXiv.
“For the first time, we’re not just using AI to analyze the brain — we’re building an agent that can think through the experiment itself,” said Katrin Amunts, director of INM-1 at Forschungszentrum Jülich and professor of brain research at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. “That changes what neuroscience will be, and JUPITER is what makes that sentence possible to say today.”
That agent is the team’s next step: building an AI agent for brain researchers — integrating multimodal reasoning, language interfaces and Q&A capabilities using open models, including NVIDIA Nemotron 3 120B, working toward AI assistants that can help scientists interrogate brain data directly.
Climate at Kilometer Resolution
A novel ICON configuration — developed by researchers at the ETH Zurich, German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ), Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, NVIDIA, Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) and the University of Hamburg — won the Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling at SC25 last November.
The breakthrough isn’t resolution alone. ICON is the first model to simulate a coupled Earth system at 1-kilometer resolution, with ocean, atmosphere and land, biogeochemistry and the full carbon cycle, with carbon exchanged, between all components. It can simulate and visualize complete ecosystems, such as phytoplankton blooms and zooplankton grazing. Previous systems could model pieces of this; ICON runs it all. This allows a much more precise and complete simulation of the Earth — observable at that level of detail for the first time.
Running on 20,480 NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips on JUPITER, the model simulated roughly 146 days of real climate into 24 hours of compute, setting a world record in global climate simulation. NVIDIA’s involvement in the ICON community spans more than a decade.
“Our simulations resolve the fine-scale winds, ocean eddies and upper-ocean mixing that shape marine ecosystems and regulate the ocean’s uptake of carbon,” said Daniel Klocke, computational infrastructure and model development group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. “At a global resolution of just 1 kilometer, many of these interactions emerge directly from the laws of physics rather than being approximated. This gives us an unprecedented view of how the atmosphere, ocean and biosphere work together, helping us understand the processes driving our changing climate.”
6G Gets an Exascale Partner
In March, Ericsson and Forschungszentrum Jülich announced a collaboration to develop AI for the continued evolution of 5G and for 6G networks — with JUPITER as the compute engine for large-scale AI model training and testing.
The collaboration targets brain-inspired architectures designed to handle complex network operations at far lower energy costs.
Research priorities include AI models for Ericsson’s radio and core networks, energy-efficient AI inference at the radio edge using neuromorphic approaches, and modular supercomputing architecture concepts drawn from JSC’s exascale work.
Breaking Quantum Records
Researchers at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), working with the jointly run NVIDIA Application Lab, also set a world first by fully simulating a universal 50-qubit quantum computer, surpassing the previous 48-qubit record.
The simulation was made possible by drawing on the coherent, tightly coupled CPU-GPU memory architecture of JUPITER’s NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips, which lets data exceeding GPU limits spill seamlessly into CPU memory with minimal performance loss — allowing JUPITER to hold a far greater quantum state than GPU memory alone, which is what pushed the simulation past the previous 48-qubit record.
For now, that kind of simulation is the most powerful tool quantum research has: today’s quantum hardware can’t yet outperform classical computers on useful problems, so simulating quantum machines at the largest possible scale is how researchers design and stress-test the algorithms that future hardware will run.
This powerful quantum simulator, JUQCS-50, will be accessible to explore the performance of quantum algorithm designs within JUNIQ, the quantum computer user facility at JSC, led by Kristel Michielsen, director of JSC and professor at the University of Cologne. JUQCS-50 turns Europe’s first exascale system into a powerful testbed for tomorrow’s quantum-GPU supercomputers.
Exascale’s Impact
The range of science running on JUPITER — from neurons to atmosphere to wireless infrastructure to quantum — makes a case that exascale computing has moved from a research category into production.
The results are a proof point for the Grace Hopper platform at the frontier of science.
Alberto Carvalho put on leave after news of warrants but officials have not provided details of nature of investigation
The superintendent of Los Angeles public schools has resigned five months after the FBI served search warrants at his home and the LA Unified school district headquarters.
Alberto Carvalho had been put on leave after news of the federal investigation. He denied any wrongdoing earlier this year and had asked to be reinstated as head of the nation’s second-largest district.
Collaboration spans memory and storage AI architecture design, supply agreement, enterprise AI adoption and a strategic investment
BOISE, Idaho, June 22, 2026 — Micron Technology, Inc. today announced a strategic agreement with Anthropic that spans memory and storage AI architecture design, supply and demand, enterprise adoption of Claude across Micron and a strategic investment in Anthropic’s Series H funding round. The agreement directly links the demands of frontier AI models to how infrastructure is designed, supplied, and deployed at scale.
“The AI revolution has permanently elevated the role of memory and storage solutions from the data center to the edge,” said Sumit Sadana, executive vice president and chief business officer, Micron. “Micron’s strategic collaboration with Anthropic brings together the industry-leading capabilities of both companies to innovate and scale next-generation AI infrastructure.”
“Our compute strategy depends on getting every layer of the stack right, and memory and storage are central to how efficiently we can train and serve Claude,” said Tom Brown, co-founder and chief compute officer, Anthropic. “Partnering with Micron means we collaborate closely on optimizing these systems for our workloads and secure the supply we need. As demand for Claude grows, this is how we scale our compute for the long term.”
AI Memory and Storage Infrastructure
Frontier AI models demand uncompromising performance from memory and storage infrastructure. At the center of the collaboration is focused work on memory and storage technologies to improve how AI systems are built and scaled. Micron’s portfolio of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), DRAM and SSDs underpins performance, power efficiency and total cost of ownership across AI training and inference.
Micron and Anthropic will analyze how memory and storage subsystems perform across various workloads and interact across the full infrastructure stack. This effort is expected to drive advances in memory and storage performance, energy efficiency and enhanced token economics in Anthropic’s AI infrastructure.
Supply Agreement
Building on the technical collaboration, Micron and Anthropic have entered into a memory and storage supply agreement spanning Micron’s industry-leading data center portfolio. This positions Micron to support Anthropic’s multi-year growth trajectory as the frontier AI lab scales its compute strategy for the long term.
Claude Adoption at Micron
An early Adopter of AI, Micron has deployed Anthropic’s Claude models to accelerate coding and enable more advanced, agentic use cases across engineering, manufacturing and enterprise functions. Applied to some of its most complex and high-impact challenges, these models continue to deliver meaningful gains in productivity and innovation. As AI systems continue to advance in capability and autonomy, the company expects to unlock new ways to design, build and operate at scale.
Strategic Investment
In addition to the technology alignment and supply agreement, Micron has made a strategic investment in Anthropic’s Series H funding round, reflecting a shared focus on advancing the infrastructure required to support the next generation of AI.
About Micron Technology, Inc.
Micron Technology, Inc. is an industry leader in innovative memory and storage solutions, transforming how the world uses information to enrich life for all. With a relentless focus on our customers, technology leadership and manufacturing and operational excellence, Micron delivers a rich portfolio of high-performance DRAM, NAND and NOR memory and storage products. Every day, the innovations that our people create fuel the data economy, enabling advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and compute-intensive applications that unleash opportunities — from the data center to the intelligent edge and across the client and mobile user experience.
New partnership aims to strengthen Canada’s high performance computing capabilities for public sector and industry
KINGSTON, Ontario and SHERBROOKE, Quebec, June 22, 2026 — Queen’s University and Université de Sherbrooke are partnering to advance a national computing ecosystem that integrates world-class AI supercomputing infrastructure with Canada’s growing quantum technology capabilities. The two universities have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to work together, combining world-class fundamental research, technological innovation, and strong industry partnerships to accelerate Canada’s digital economy, attract global talent, and strengthen national sovereignty.
The partners will leverage the Université de Sherbrooke’s leadership in Canada’s quantum sector, anchored by the power and capability of a global top-10 AI supercomputer, which is proposed to be hosted by Queen’s University as part of the federal government’s AI Sovereign Compute Infrastructure Program. Together, the universities will collaborate and work with partners across Canada to support a world-leading, sustainable, sovereign, high performance computing capability.
Today, The Institut quantique (IQ) at the Université de Sherbrooke is a world-leading hub of excellence, dedicated to the exploration and development of quantum science and technology where researchers, students, and industry partners solve complex problems across key verticals and technologies. Through this partnership, the university will lead the development of quantum algorithms, secure communications solutions and post-quantum cryptography, essential infrastructure, energy efficient solutions, and will address critical challenges faced by organizations.
Quantum computing has the potential to solve certain complex problems more efficiently than classical computers, by processing massive combinations of variables simultaneously. AI supercomputers are powerful engines that analyze massive amounts of information, and support innovations in areas such as healthcare, clean energy, defence, manufacturing, dual-use technology and public safety. The national hybrid infrastructure made possible by a global top-10 supercomputer will be critical in advancing the research and innovation in quantum computing already taking place at Université de Sherbrooke.
Earlier this year, Queen’s announced alongside Simon Fraser University (SFU), a collaboration to build Canada’s national supercomputing capability. SFU and Queen’s have jointly applied to the AI Sovereign Compute Infrastructure Program, with results expected in late 2026. Combined with SFU’s strengths in quantum research and innovation and experience operating Canada’s largest public supercomputing system, this partnership with the Université de Sherbrooke brings together complementary expertise from coast to coast, creating a uniquely Canadian ecosystem that connects AI supercomputing with emerging quantum technologies.
Today, Queen’s is the only university in Canada home to researchers who have helped design and deploy some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, including systems currently ranked among the global top-10 in the United States, Europe and Asia. Queen’s also runs the Centre for Advanced Computing, a research data centre and analytics hub, as well as CAESAR Lab, the country’s largest group of experts on the design and build of exascale systems in Canada and leaders in research advancing energy-efficient supercomputing.
“Building Canada’s future computing capabilities requires collaboration across institutions and disciplines,” said Nancy Ross, Vice-Principal, Research, Queen’s University. “We are pleased to work with the Université de Sherbrooke, a global leader in quantum research and technology, to advance and future-proof a sovereign Canadian computing ecosystem. This collaboration builds on the momentum of our existing partnership with Simon Fraser University to strengthen Canada’s AI supercomputing infrastructure. By bringing together leadership in supercomputing and quantum technologies, we are helping create a national ecosystem that will accelerate discovery, strengthen Canada’s digital sovereignty, and support innovation for researchers, industry and the public sector.”
“This collaboration further strengthens the Université de Sherbrooke’s international standing as a hub of excellence in quantum technologies and digital innovation,” said Professor Vincent Aimez, Vice-President, Partnerships and Valorization, and Sustainable Development, Université de Sherbrooke. “UdeS will leverage its expertise in energy management, heat recovery, and the resilience of digital infrastructure to support the development of more sustainable and efficient data centres, contributing to Canada’s digital sovereignty.”
About Queen’s University
Founded in 1841, Queen’s University, Canada, is an internationally ranked research-intensive university with more than 31,000 students and 5,000 faculty and staff. Queen’s is known for research in areas such as cancer detection and treatment, geoengineering, materials science, AI and supercomputing, and is home to the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics. Queen’s welcomes researchers and students from around the world and is one of Canada’s leading universities. To learn more, please visit queensu.ca.
About Université de Sherbrooke
Université de Sherbrooke (UdeS) is a highly regarded research-intensive university known for the impact of its work, the strength of its partnerships, and its deep connections with industry and communities. It stands out for the sustained growth of its research enterprise, its leadership in technology transfer and open innovation, and a strong entrepreneurial culture that drives real-world results. A national leader in quantum science and microelectronics, UdeS also ranks #1 worldwide in the STARS sustainability program, underscoring its commitment to embedding sustainability across all dimensions of teaching, research, and operations. Learn more at USherbrooke.ca
One of the UK’s biggest defence contractors has blamed Brexit and Covid among a catalogue of problems to beset an important contract for the Royal Navy, which led its annual profits to plunge.
Profits at Babcock International fell by almost a fifth in the year to the end of March, as the firm reported a £140m charge on its contract to build five Type 31 frigates for the Royal Navy.
Original organizers, joined by new wave, are demanding the government not undo four decades of progress
On a warm evening in June, hundreds of people holding candles marched toward the Stonewall Inn in New York City, the birthplace of the US LGBTQ+ rights movement. Once they arrived, they all dropped to the ground – on the sidewalk and in the roadway – and put their backs against the pavement. The Aids rally, marking 45 years since the first reported cases, ended the way many have since the 1980s: with a die-in, dozens of bodies lying still for a long moment of silence.
The Aids crisis has killed more than 700,000 Americans and an estimated 40 million people worldwide since it was first named in 1981. But the marchers at Stonewall earlier this month were not only mourning the past. They came to protest against a wave of federal policy moves to restrict Medicaid, slash international funding and shrink the National Institutes of Health’s research budget. The original generation of HIV and Aids activists, joined by a new wave of organizers, were there to demand that the government not undo four decades of progress with catastrophic funding cuts.
New programming software simplifies multi-vendor experience and additional networking and storage capabilities create full multi-tenant stack for sovereign AI research
June 22, 2026 — As high performance computing (HPC) converges with artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing, supercomputing customers are required to find the system performance, flexibility and reliability to fuel the research that will create world-changing discoveries.
Credit: HPE
With its latest innovations, HPE delivers powerful, efficient system architecture to support customers’ multi-faceted workloads and rise to the great responsibilities of this converged era.
In November 2025, HPE launched a new supercomputing architecture with industry-leading compute density designed to meet AI demands at-scale with direct liquid-cooling to power second-generation exascale performance and customers’ groundbreaking research in medicine, climate and materials science.
Today, HPE is introducing a new approach to supercomputing programming software to simplify customers’ experiences, and for the first time, the software is available to HPE ProLiant Compute servers to offer consistency across HPE systems. HPE is also introducing multi-tenant capabilities within networking and storage for high-performance computing, creating one of the industry’s broadest portfolios of end-to-end supercomputing solutions for national labs’ sovereign AI research. Lastly, new financial services improve customers’ control, security and oversight in retiring their advanced computing infrastructure.
A New Way of Programming
Software developers have a critical pain point: tightly integrated stacks that are difficult to update with the fast pace of change in HPC and AI. That complexity comes with a risk of destabilization associated with assembling, validating and maintaining multi-vendor programming toolchains.
New HPE Supercomputing Programming Software brings a simple approach to multi-vendor environments and the integration process, helping accelerate deployment cycles, and minimizing the risk of system instability. The software also extends to HPE ProLiant Compute servers, including HPE ProLiant DL and XD servers that are optimized for various AI training, tuning and inferencing workloads to enable a consistent, simplified experience across platforms for large enterprises.
Key elements of HPE Supercomputing Programming Software include:
Pre-validating programming environments: The software integrates vendor, open source and HPE tools, validates them into a single programming environment to simplify setup and deployment for customers.
Delivering updates as containerized environments: The software delivers all programming tool updates as a pre-validated, containerized environment, allowing customers to adopt new tools at their own pace by providing ready-to-use, consistent and isolated setups. This approach enhances the stack’s stability, and it provides developers with safer, more efficient updates. Further, the software can implement the same environment across systems without any rebuilds, so developer teams don’t have to start over every time infrastructure changes.
Taking on first-call for multi-vendor support: HPE takes on first-call support, so customers don’t carry the burden of serving as a vendor coordinator. Leveraging HPE’s Cray supercomputing platform expertise, HPE performs technical triage and drives issues to resolution across all vendors.
End-to-End Multi-Tenancy Capabilities for Sovereign AI Research
Multi-tenant capabilities are crucial for laboratories to run independent management and secure separation of users or critical workloads. HPE is adding multi-tenant networking and storage functionalities to create a full stack of multi-tenant solutions for sovereign AI research, resulting in stronger data security for sensitive workloads on large-scale AI systems.
Networking for high performance computing: To enable sovereign AI research on the network level, HPE launches a new version of HPE Slingshot 400 software with multi-tenancy functionalities based on media access control learning that enforce secure separation of users and restrict unauthorized routing from other groups like open-source and third party. The new multi-tenant capabilities can be applied to HPE Slingshot 400 switches that have already been deployed by customers.
Storage for high performance computing: To set up and manage multi-tenancy in HPE’s supercomputing file system, HPE developed fine-grained multi-tenancy setup and management through new graphical user interface (GUI) and application programming interface (API), simplifying operations for the HPE Cray Supercomputing Storage Systems E2000 in multi-tenant environments. The new GUI makes set up and management of multi-tenancy more intuitive, while the API allows for efficiency improvements through automation in large-scale multi-tenancy environments.
HPE Cray Supercomputing platform answers customers’ multi-tenant needs for secure separation of users with a unified AI and HPC architecture, supported by innovative direct liquid-cooling for improved energy efficiency.
Secure management of air-cooled HPC and AI systems from deployment to retirement
Customers often have stringent requirements when retiring their supercomputing and AI systems, especially because these machines conduct pioneering science and research in accordance with environmental, legal and regional sovereign standards. HPE’s system retirement process is a critical part of excellent customer service.
Built on decades of expertise, HPE Technology Renewal Centers handle the most complex and demanding end-of-use asset management securely and efficiently. In 2025, 85% of servers that went through the renewal centers were upcycled and returned to active use, and 1.7 exabyte of data was securely sanitized.
To enhance support for air-cooled HPC and AI systems, HPE Financial Services is introducing new retirement capabilities. These services improve customers’ control, security and oversight in the process. To ensure a comprehensive and trustworthy system retirement, HPE teams work with customers to address security and configuration resets, proprietary testing, workload validation, advanced diagnostics, scale-out validation and trade compliance assurance. This process enables restoring systems back to factory settings to help safeguard data, ensure regulatory compliance, and responsibly manage hardware assets.
With these new innovations of simplified software, multi-tenant systems, and secure end-of-use capabilities, HPE is enabling advanced solutions for customers’ groundbreaking research and science, from deployment to retirement.
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.
Accident was resolved fairly quickly and authorities said the bees were being transferred to local beekeepers
Two million bees escaped after a truck transporting their hives overturned and released the insects in Texas on Sunday.
The accident happened near the town of Mauriceville in the east of the state, perhaps not surprisingly causing local emergency officials to warn residents near the mishap to stay indoors.
The major winner has rebuilt both his swing and confidence and learned to function without the approval of the masses
On the evening before he won the US Open for a second time in four years, Wyndham Clark marched up the 18th fairway at Shinnecock Hills to put the finishing touches on a third round that would leave him six shots clear of the field. He had spent the past three days patiently defanging one of the crown jewels of American golf, building the third-largest 54-hole advantage held by a US Open leader since the second world war. The title was his to lose.
Yet when Clark arrived at the final green on Saturday bathed in golden-hour light, one thing was conspicuously absent: the crowd. Most of the spectators had left or were leaving and the grandstands around the green were only thinly populated. It was a remarkably muted backdrop for America’s once-and-future champion golfer as he stood on the doorstep of a rare wire-to-wire US Open victory.
Texas man using ‘automated driving assistance system’ crashed into house and Connecticut man drove into pool while trying to park
Separate crashes in Texas and Connecticut involving Tesla electric vehicles left a woman dead when a car barreled into a house; and a driver rescued after plunging into a municipal swimming pool.
A doorbell video camera captured the Friday night episode in Katy, Texas. Authorities said 76-year-old Martha Avila Mantilla was standing in the front room of a relative’s home when the Tesla Model 3 car crashed at speed into the residence.
Will the US–Iran ceasefire hold? Expert commentjon.wallace
Both sides want to buy time. But other factors like midterm elections, Israel, and deep mistrust may intervene.
Since the US and Iran signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) ending the war, much discussion has centred on the simple question of who won. There is no clear-cut answer.
Washington and Israel point to the penetration of Iranian air defences, the decapitation of parts of its leadership and the damage inflicted on nuclear and military sites. Indeed, the US and Israel demonstrated that they could inflict far greater damage on Iran than Tehran could impose on them. Yet they could not translate that military superiority into their objectives of regime change – or at least, rapid political submission by the Iranian regime.
Tehran, for its part, survived the 38-day assault and demonstrated that it could impose costs beyond its borders – through strikes across the region and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. In doing so, it preserved meaningful bargaining power. But it also emerged economically weaker, militarily exposed and more isolated across the region.
With the MOU, both sides extracted concessions. But neither secured enough to claim a decisive victory. Washington secured a pathway towards reopening Hormuz, calming energy markets and reducing the risk of further regional escalation. Tehran gained a pause in the fighting and the prospect of renewed oil exports, sanctions relief and protection from further attacks. The outcome is therefore best understood as an unequal draw.
Washington enters the talks with military superiority, while Tehran retains enough disruptive capacity to refuse some American demands.
This helps explain why President Donald Trump and the Iranian leadership accepted the agreement. But it also foreshadows a bumpy road ahead.
For Trump, the priority was to reopen Hormuz and prevent a prolonged confrontation that would push up oil prices and inflation ahead of the US midterm elections. Meanwhile Tehran needs time to assess the damage to its military and nuclear infrastructure, stabilize the economy and reduce the risk of renewed attacks. It must also restore oil exports, regain access to frozen funds and manage the domestic consequences of the war.
Both sides are therefore using diplomacy to buy time. Washington calculates that the pressure Iran has already absorbed may make it more willing to accept nuclear restrictions. Tehran believes that concerns over Hormuz, energy prices and further rounds of escalation may persuade Trump to offer economic concessions. The same imbalance that produced this unequal draw will now shape the negotiations. Washington enters the talks with military superiority, while Tehran retains enough disruptive capacity to refuse some American demands.
The negotiations will have to bring together four connected issues: Hormuz, the future of Iran’s nuclear programme, sanctions relief, and the guarantees needed to hold the arrangement together. Reopening the strait is the most urgent because of the impact on shipping and energy markets. Here, Washington and the Gulf states will want assurances that Tehran cannot disrupt the waterway whenever negotiations reach an impasse. Iran will argue that it cannot guarantee the free flow of maritime traffic or give up its leverage while Israel remains free to strike Iran or Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The two-day delay before negotiations began in Lucerne, Switzerland, illustrates the problem. Tehran postponed the talks after insisting that a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah forms part of the MOU. Iran was making clear that it does not regard Hormuz, Lebanon and the threat of renewed Israeli attacks as separate fronts.
The nuclear negotiations will be harder because of the unresolved outcome of the war. The two sides must decide whether Iranian enrichment can continue, what limits are placed on Tehran’s remaining capacity and what access the International Atomic Energy Agency obtains to damaged and possibly undeclared sites.
Trump will need to present any new agreement as an improvement on the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA). A final deal will therefore likely see a moratorium on enrichment, the down-blending or removal of Iran’s highly enriched uranium and a more intrusive monitoring system. Tehran however will resist compromises that strip it of what it considers both a sovereign right and a form of insurance.
Sanctions relief will be inseparable from these nuclear demands. Iran will want immediate and visible benefits including access to frozen assets, restored financial channels and investment. Washington will be reluctant to offer broad relief before Iran has made verifiable nuclear concessions. But Tehran will not want to surrender its remaining leverage before receiving meaningful benefits.
That question of trust will run through every stage of the process. After decades of hostility, Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018 and two wars there is little basis for confidence on either side. Israel adds another layer of uncertainty: Tehran will judge Washington in part by its ability to prevent renewed Israeli attacks on Hezbollah.
SAN JOSE, Calif. and HAMBURG, Germany, June 22, 2026 — Super Micro Computer, Inc. today introduced the Data Center Building Block Solutions (DCBBS) Blueprint for HPC based on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL4 platform, announced at ISC 2026. Following Supermicro’s DCBBS Blueprints for NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 and NVIDIA HGX Rubin NVL8 introduced at Computex, the Blueprint for HPC and AI applies the same end-to-end methodology to scientific computing. The Blueprint is based on Supermicro’s DCBBS, which provide the necessary compute, networking, advanced liquid cooling, power distribution, and site infrastructure, delivered by a team of Supermicro DCBBS experts to accelerate time-to-online for research institutions and supercomputing centers.
NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL4
“Scientific discovery has always been driven by the tools available to researchers, and AI has become an essential part of the research process,” said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. “The institutions that accelerate infrastructure deployment will lead the next generation of breakthroughs. With our DCBBS Blueprints for NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL4, research organizations can confidently deploy HPC and AI infrastructure at any scale, knowing that it is backed by Supermicro’s proven experience building some of the world’s largest liquid-cooled clusters.”
Researchers increasingly rely on a converged approach to computing, pairing traditional FP64 double-precision simulation with accelerated computing and AI methods, revolutionizing time-to-discovery across climate research, drug discovery, materials science, and energy. The NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL4 platform is built for this convergence, and the DCBBS Blueprint for HPC defines the steps to deploy it successfully, backed by Supermicro’s proven track-record building the world’s largest liquid-cooled supercomputing clusters featuring over 100,000 GPUs.
The Blueprint covers the full end-to-end sequence that Supermicro has used to complete large-scale liquid-cooled projects at record-breaking speeds. On-site facility surveys conducted by the Supermicro experts assess loading dock access, data hall measurements and clearances, floor load ratings, and existing power and cooling infrastructure to inform a design proposal tailored to each project. Solution integration begins well before delivery, with racking, stacking, cabling, and system-level (L10) and cluster-level (L11) testing performed in Supermicro’s global manufacturing facilities. White-glove delivery and on-site integration cover rack placement, power and cooling connections, network cabling, commissioning, and on-site solution validation, with ongoing support options including on-site response times as fast as 4 hours for mission-critical uptime.
A Scalable AI and HPC Solution to Modernize Computing Infrastructure for Scientific Research
The Supermicro DCBBS Blueprint for HPC and AI based on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL4 Scalable Unit contains the following, which can be multiplied to deploy clusters of any size, from 3.2MW to 1GW:
8x liquid-cooled compute racks in customized 52U, 750mm-wide enclosures each housing 36 NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL4 nodes within a 362 kW envelope, for a total of 288 nodes, up to 1,152 NVIDIA Rubin GPUs, and 576 NVIDIA Vera CPUs per Scalable Unit
Advanced Direct Liquid Cooling technology stack (DLC-2), including 3x in-row cooling distribution units (up to 1.8MW each) per Scalable Unit in a 2+1 redundant configuration, direct-to-chip copper cold plates, and vertically mounted cooling distribution manifolds, featuring Supermicro SMC PG25-A coolant engineered for exceptional chemical and thermal stability
NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand compute fabric across dedicated networking switch racks with fully liquid-cooled options available, providing the high-bandwidth scale-out interconnect for distributed scientific and AI workloads
Rack power and management: 8x 72 kW power shelves per compute rack delivering busbar power for the 362 kW rack envelope, with two ToR management switches per rack for out-of-band control
Configurations for HPC and AI based on the NVIDIA GB200 NVL4 are also available for immediate deployment.
Supermicro DCBBS delivers complete, modular AI infrastructure built from validated components and subsystems, enabling flexible deployment from individual servers and networking to full rack-scale and data center-level solutions, including software and services. Supermicro continues to lead the industry with its comprehensive portfolio of AI infrastructure solutions, enabling organizations worldwide to deploy scalable, efficient, and environmentally responsible AI data centers.
Supermicro will showcase its HPC and AI infrastructure solutions at ISC 2026 in Hall H, B10. For more information, visit www.supermicro.com.
About Super Micro Computer, Inc.
Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first-to-market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, switch systems, software, and support services. Supermicro’s motherboard, power, and chassis design expertise further enables our development and production, enabling next-generation innovation from cloud to edge for our global customers. Our products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Taiwan, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power, and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling).
HAMBURG, Germany, June 22, 2026 — ISC High Performance 2026 — NVIDIA today announced the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform delivers world-class supercomputers for science, combining native double-precision (FP64) performance, NVIDIA CUDA-X libraries and the full-stack capabilities of the NVIDIA AI platform.
With 7 Exaflops of AI for Science and 5 Petaflops of Native FP64 Performance, Vera Rubin Packs TOP500 Supercomputing in a Single Rack
Bringing together NVIDIA’s complete accelerated computing stack — from hardware to software and optimized scientific libraries — Vera Rubin accelerates AI, simulation and data-intensive research, transforming each system rack into a supercomputer for scientific discovery and industrial innovation.
Built to unite high-precision simulation, AI and data analytics, the Vera Rubin platform is designed for the era of agents to advance scientific discovery by accelerating workloads such as climate modeling, computational fluid dynamics, quantum chemistry and energy exploration.
With more than 7 exaflops of AI for science, 5 petaflops of native FP64 support and extreme memory bandwidth with up to 144 GPUs, a Vera Rubin supercomputing system can deliver performance on par with systems on the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. This gives research centers and industrial enterprises the performance to run larger models, improve fidelity and shorten time to discovery.
“Scientific discovery is now a race between the complexity of the world’s greatest challenges and the computing systems built to solve them,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “NVIDIA Vera Rubin is a new instrument for science — a rack-scale supercomputer that brings simulation, AI and data processing together to help researchers and industries design and discover faster than ever.”
Vera Rubin Advances Scientific Computing
The NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform combines NVIDIA Rubin GPUs and NVIDIA Vera CPUs connected via high-speed NVIDIA NVLink-C2C, NVIDIA ConnectX-9 SuperNICs and NVIDIA BlueField-4 DPUs in a direct liquid-cooled architecture.
For scientific computing, Vera Rubin provides native FP64 capabilities to accelerate simulations that need the highest accuracy as well as the AI performance needed for surrogate models, scientific foundation models and AI-assisted analysis. Researchers can use a single platform to run traditional numerical solvers, train and deploy AI models, stream data from instruments and couple simulation with real-time analytics.
Building Next-Generation Supercomputers
Leading supercomputing centers and industrial innovators are adopting Vera Rubin to build a new generation of AI and high-performance computing (HPC) systems.
At Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ), Blue Lion will be powered by the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform and second-generation exascale-class HPE Cray supercomputing, delivering approximately 30x the computing power of LRZ’s current system. Scheduled to come online in 2027, Blue Lion will support researchers across astrophysics, environmental and life sciences by enabling classic simulation and modeling, machine learning approaches and the use of surrogate models all in one.
At the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Doudna — the next flagship U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) supercomputer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — will be a Dell Technologies system powered by NVIDIA Vera Rubin and connected to DOE scientific instruments through the Energy Sciences Network. Doudna is being built for large-scale HPC workloads, AI training and inference, and data-intensive workflows across molecular dynamics, high-energy physics, fusion energy, materials science, drug discovery and astronomy.
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has selected NVIDIA Vera Rubin, Vera CPU and NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand for its next-generation Mission, Vision and Veritas systems, to be built and delivered by HPE using the latest HPE Cray supercomputing system.
Mission is designed for national security workloads, while Vision with the Vera CPU will advance open science research, including foundation models, agentic AI and complex simulations spanning materials science, nuclear energy, fusion energy and quantum computing. Announced at ISC, the new Veritas system, with NVIDIA Rubin GPUs and standalone Vera CPU partitions, is designed for agents to advance scientific discovery at LANL.
The accelerated computing systems will be built using the NVIDIA GPUs in a single unified system. For modern supercomputing applications, NVL4 optimizes density, energy efficiency and operational simplicity.
Global system manufacturers including Bull, Dell Technologies, GIGABYTE, HPE and Supermicro are bringing NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL4 to market through direct liquid-cooled AI and HPC racks. The supercomputing racks, built with Vera Rubin NVL4, are designed to help research institutions, national labs and enterprises deploy rack-scale accelerated computing.
The systems expand the NVIDIA accelerated computing ecosystem for scientific discovery, giving organizations a common platform for simulation, AI, data processing and visualization — from individual rack deployments to large-scale supercomputing centers.
Availability
NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL4-based systems are expected to be available from global system manufacturers in Q4 this year.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the world leader in AI and accelerated computing.
Signal agencies in Australia, the US, the UK, New Zealand and Canada sound alarm after Trump blocks foreign nationals from Anthropic’s Fable AI model
Powerful AI models capable of devastating new cyber attacks on governments and businesses are mere months away, intelligence agencies for the Five Eyes have warned in a rare joint statement, urging leaders to “act now”.
Greenspan served under the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, Bill Clinton and George W Bush
Alan Greenspan, the influential economist who steered US monetary policy during his five terms as chair of the Federal Reserve under four presidents, has died aged 100.
The central bank said its former chair “helped establish the credibility that remains one of the Federal Reserve’s most important assets” in a statement on Monday that announced Greenspan’s death.
The party’s crushing losses in local elections had triggered a mutiny against Starmer. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, emerged as a heavy favorite to be the next PM.
A Stamford Emergency Medical Services ambulance responds to a call in the Connecticut city. Chris Preovolos/Stamford Advocate/AP
ProPublica and The Connecticut Mirror, two nonprofit newsrooms, are examining the state’s emergency medical services and what it takes to provide lifesaving care across the state. If you work or volunteer for emergency medical services in Connecticut, we need your help.
We know that the state’s emergency medical services have been strained for years, but that doesn’t stop paramedics, emergency medical technicians and emergency medical responders from working around the clock to serve community members in crisis. We have data on ambulance response times, but we know it doesn’t tell a full story about what is happening behind the scenes.
If you work or volunteer for a Connecticut ambulance corps, a fire department, a law enforcement agency or an emergency room, we want to hear your experience and understand what resources you need to do this lifesaving work.
What has changed about emergency medical services since you started? If your ambulance corps needs more staff, what are the challenges to hiring or retaining new people? What do you wish Connecticut residents or lawmakers knew about the state of EMS?
Your input is crucial and will help guide our reporting. We want to understand the issue in all its complexity — from training limitations to worker housing needs to budget cuts, and what that means for your vital work every day.
You can fill out our brief form to share your experience. Our reporters read through every response and may follow up with you. You can also email CT Mirror reporter Jenna Carlesso and ProPublica reporter Cassandra Garibay at ctemergency@propublica.org if you have any questions or concerns.
Don’t work for emergency medical services in Connecticut but know someone who does? You can also help by sending this form to them.
If you have called 911 for a medical emergency, we also want to hear from you. Please fill out our patient experience form.
Keir Starmer will step down as U.K. Prime Minister weeks after a brutal round of local elections and as he faced a challenge from within his Labour Party.
Nearly four months after federal agents raided his home and district headquarters, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho announced his resignation as the head of the Los Angeles Unified School District on Sunday.
Vance says Iran agreed to let international nuclear inspectors back into the country during a "very, very good" first day of negotiations with the U.S.
An ambulance at the Northbridge Health Care Center in Bridgeport, Connecticut Frank Franklin II/AP
Have you called 911 for a medical emergency in Connecticut? ProPublica and The Connecticut Mirror, two nonprofit newsrooms, are examining emergency medical services in the state and want to hear from those who have had firsthand experiences seeking care.
We would like to learn more about your story and if you faced a long wait for emergency care to arrive.
We know people in some towns have had to wait up to 20 minutes for an ambulance, but the numbers don’t show what happens as time drags. And they can’t explain the impact on your life in the weeks and months following delayed emergency care. We’ve heard that emergency medical services are often underresourced, but in order to understand what the strained system actually looks like for communities across the state, we need to hear from you.
If you have called 911 for a medical emergency in Connecticut for yourself or someone else, we want to hear your experience.
You can fill out our brief form to share your experience. Our reporters read through every response and may follow up with you. You can also email CT Mirror reporter Jenna Carlesso and ProPublica reporter Cassandra Garibay at ctemergency@propublica.org if you have any questions or concerns.
Don’t live in Connecticut but know someone who does? You can also help by sending this form to them.
If you work or volunteer for emergency medical services in Connecticut, we also want to hear from you. Please fill out our EMS experience form.
At the same time, 29% of small-business owners also report having open positions they can’t fill
Amid rising fuel prices and inflation across the US, confidence among small-business owners has declined in recent weeks as many continue to grapple with higher costs and economic uncertainty.
According to the National Federation of Independent Business, its Small Business Optimism Index fell by 0.6 points to 95.3 in May. At the same time, 29% of small-business owners reported having open positions they could not fill – the lowest level since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Confirmed Ebola cases in the outbreak in eastern Congo have reached 1,003, including 254 deaths, officials said, and tracing those who've been in contact with patients remains a major challenge.
America's state prison systems need ways "to keep people from returning to prison," reports the Wall Street Journal, "when an estimated 40% end up back behind bars within three years."
Part of the problem comes in the form of filing cabinets, manila folders and legacy digital databases. In other words, records for a single prisoner might be kept in a dozen places... Now a group of 19 prison systems are tackling the problem with digital tools and artificial intelligence in some cases. They are contracting with San Francisco nonprofit Recidiviz, whose computer systems bring together prisoner data from its disparate sources into digital dashboards. From there, corrections staff can see information — such as court records and notes from parole-board hearings — about a prisoner or parolee all in one place.
The company says its efforts are working: Recidivism has fallen 16% in the prison population its systems track. It is the result of "just streamlining these workflows and knitting someone's journey together end to end," says Clementine Jacoby, chief executive officer of Recidiviz. Some criminal-justice groups show that recidivism is trending downward in general, though most of that data is nearly a decade old... The statistics from 11 states stop at 2019, and for four states stop at 2016. With 10 other states, no data was reported.
US president threatened Iran over strait of Hormuz in sweary outburst. Plus, Starmer to step down as UK’s PM two years after historic landslide
Good morning. Iran’s foreign minister has declared “progress” after the first day of talks between high-ranking officials from Washington and Tehran ended in Switzerland, despite a tense opening marked by Donald Trump’s threats to restart attacks.
Abbas Araghchi said Pakistani and Qatari mediation “has delivered major progress to end [the] Lebanon war”. Iran has been adamant that Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon must end as part of any deal. The Israelis are not directly participating in the talks.
What has been agreed? A joint statement from mediators Qatar and Pakistan said the US and Iran agreed a roadmap towards a final deal within 60 days. Technical talks between lower-ranked officials will continue for the rest of the week. In a development that is critical to unlocking progress, the US Treasury was also preparing to issue a 60-day waiver lifting sanctions on oil, petrochemicals and derivatives.
What threat did Trump issue to the Iranians? Over the weekend, Iran said it had reinstated its blockade in the strait of Hormuz in protest at the continued Israeli strikes on Lebanon. The US president responded on social media, saying: “You close it and you won’t have a country. You won’t even make it back to your fucking country.”
What impact has the war had on support within Iran for the government? Saeed Shah reports that the war has triggered a rare moment of solidarity in a country that was reeling from the killing of thousands of protesters by the authorities at the start of the year.
Why has Starmer stood down? After months of internal party pressure and plunging poll numbers, his downfall has been triggered by key political misjudgments including appointing the Jeffery Epstein-linked Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite a failed security vetting. Policy reversals have led to his MPs viewing him as weak, a sentiment reinforced by devastating losses in the May elections that underscored his deep unpopularity with voters.
Prime minister was forced to row back on some policies despite strong support among voters for climate action
Keir Starmer has faced a problem no Labour government has needed to deal with before. His energy and climate policies – core to solving the cost of living crisis – have come under attack from opposition parties, which have made dismantling the agenda one of their top priorities, second only to immigration, in their pitch to voters.
This is new in British politics, where a cross-party consensus on the climate and environment has held at least since the days of Margaret Thatcher. She warned the UN of the climate crisis in 1988; David Cameron in 2006 urged voters to “vote blue, go green”; Theresa May enshrined in law the requirement to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; Boris Johnson championed the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2021; even Rishi Sunak only tried a partial rollback of green policies as a last desperate throw before calling an election.
Keir Starmer has announced he will stand down as prime minister after days of intense pressure from Labour MPs, paving the way for Andy Burnham to take over at Downing Street.
Less than two years after a historic election victory, Starmer had faced calls from his MPs, including privately from cabinet ministers, to set out a timeline for his departure, with many of them unnerved by the threat from Nigel Farage’s party before the next general election.
The US investment firm trying to buy easyJet has gone public with its latest £4.7bn takeover proposal for the budget airline, its third and latest offer to be rejected.
Castlelake said on Monday that an all-cash offer of 625p a share, valuing easyJet at just over £4.7bn, had been rejected by the airline’s board on Sunday, after previous offers at 560p and 600p.
Barron Trump has a new yerba mate and Kai Trump a ‘bold’ energy drink – would their offerings pass the taste test?
Do you like sugary soft drinks? Do you like Donald Trump and his family? Do you want to support nepotism?
If the answer is yes to all these questions, then have I got the products for you: a pineapple yerba mate co-founded by Trump’s son, and a syrupy, energy-drink-thing developed by his granddaughter.
Voters are upset that Trump has failed to deliver on his economic promises. That’s bad news for Republicans in November
If any demographic group was key to Donald Trump’s election victories in 2016 and 2024, it was white, blue-collar voters. But in perhaps perilous news for Republicans, Trump’s support from that group has plummeted – as many white, working-class voters have grown upset about everything from increased inflation and gas prices to Trump’s war against Iran. These glaring cracks in Trump’s blue-collar base point to big trouble for Republicans in this November’s midterm elections.
In 2024, Trump won 66% of white voters without a college degree, but a new CBS News poll found that 54% of that demographic disapprove of his performance. That was up from 45% disapproval in February (before Trump began bombing Iran) and up sharply from 32% in February 2025.
Two students with hand guns opened fire in a high school in the central Philippines, killing three fellow students and wounding another seven, police said.
Norway is supposedly one of world’s most gender-equal countries, yet sexual violence remains prevalent across society
In many ways, the case of Marius Borg Høiby, who was sentenced to four years in prison last week after being found guilty of offences including domestic violence and two counts of rape, was exceptional.
The king’s 29-year-old step-grandson grew up in the public eye alongside the royal family, mixing in Oslo’s wealthiest circles, partying at exclusive nightclubs and having afterparties at his family’s official royal residence.
After searching high and low for a BTG slick, I reached out to Burris last week inquiring on whether they'd ever do another batch of their 11.5" SS-11 Slick that they sold years ago. To my surprise responded super quickly and seemed open to it saying that they've had a number of requests for another run of that tire over the years and something they have considered and if they did decide to do another batch it would be about a 3 month time from pulling the trigger to being available. Basically seemed like they weren't saying 'no' but it definitely was not a 'yes' either. I basically thanked them while asking what kind of minimum would need to be reached for some kind of group buy to which I was expecting a fairly large number but instead he said he already got the ball rolling at the factory for a new batch and that preorders were open and they'd probably be available sometime in September!! Dude what?!
After receiving a number of requests, we are making a special run of the 11.5 x 7.0-6 SS-11’s. We anticipate receiving this run early to mid September. Place your order now if you want to be in line to receive one of these while they are available. Your card will not be processed until the tires are in our hands and ready to ship.
I never thought we'd see another batch of these and those of us that missed the boat on a BTG Slick weren't ever going to have another shot, but holy shit they're doing it!
A flamboyant Trump-backed lawyer who's never held public office narrowly won Colombia's polarizing presidential runoff, swinging the country hard right and sparking violent protests.
Eastern Europe to see temperatures above early July average into next week
The extreme heat experienced across central and western Europe, including the UK, will continue to shift eastwards. As slightly cooler weather infiltrates into western Europe, with risks of downpours and thunderstorms, eastern Europe is likely to see temperatures several degrees above the early July average into next week. Peak highs of between 35C and 40C are expected across southern Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and into the northern Balkans.
Typhoon Mekkhala, the seventh typhoon of the season in the western Pacific, strengthened east of Luzon on Sunday with sustained winds of 75mph (120km/h) and gusts in excess of 100mph over open water, and is set to head northwards through the Philippine Sea this week. Forecast projections suggest Mekkhala will reach its peak intensity during Tuesday and Wednesday this week as sustained wind speeds break 100mph. While the typhoon is expected to remain over the Philippine Sea, it may produce large wave conditions close to Taiwan, with warnings to shipping likely.
Here is the text of the British prime minister's resignation speech outside 10 Downing Street on Monday. It set the stage for a new Labour Party leader to become government leader by September.
The Marshall Project analyzed over 9,000 death sentences handed down since states brought the punishment back
Fifty years ago, Americans set out on a polarizing mission: to find a just and fair way to punish the worst-of-the-worst crimes by execution.
In some ways, this was a surprising choice. In 1972, a narrow majority of the US supreme court had scrapped the country’s entire death penalty system, calling it “morally unacceptable”, “racially discriminatory” and “arbitrary”. It seemed possible that Americans might join our peers in Europe and Latin America, many of whom had ended executions for good.
European players had long been dismissed as a risk by NBA teams. But two picks by the Portland Trail Blazers helped usher in the league’s international era
NBA commissioner David Stern walked to the podium at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden on 17 June 1986. “For the last pick of the first round of the NBA draft … America’s game,” Stern said with a hint of a smile, “the Portland Trail Blazers select Arvydas Sabonis of the Soviet Union.”
Boos rained down from the crowd. TBS hosts Bob Neal and Larry Donald burst into laughter. One Portland journalist said if Sabonis ever played in the NBA he’d jump off the Broadway Bridge. (Sabonis had actually been drafted by the Atlanta Hawks the previous year but it was voided because he was not yet 21.) Portland doubled down two rounds later, selecting Dražen Petrović from another communist country, Yugoslavia.
White-collar work is at risk across the board, including at elite consulting firms that used to be a pathway to the 1%
Consulting is a delicate contract: endure two challenging, formative years – and in return, get a golden ticket to anywhere. Firms like McKinsey tout themselves as the “CEO factory”, and boast they’re “not surprised” to be consistently named the best place for future leaders.
The skills they promise to build – synthesis, sharp analysis, crisp communication, client-readiness, hypothesis-driven thinking – have enticed every generation’s top graduates. Get an offer from a place like this, and everything else will fall into place: about as clear a guarantee of future success as you could get fresh out of a bachelors. These firms spent decades marketing themselves as production houses of excellence, and until recently, they were.
Alice Lassman is an economist who writes The Intimacy Economy, a Substack and forthcoming book on the economics of connection, care and relationships
Darializa Avila Chevalier is running on universal healthcare, campaign finance reform and abolishing ICE
A progressive Democrat challenging a veteran congressman to represent the party in a closely watched New York race for US Congress has claimed the city has deteriorated on his watch.
Darializa Avila Chevalier, one of three allies that New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has endorsed in competitive congressional Democratic primaries in the city on Tuesday, is seeking to unseat incumbent Adriano Espaillat in the state’s 13th congressional district.
Three groundskeepers worked 12-hour days, sometimes seven days a week, to craft the perfect pitch, and when the No. 2 team in the world finally came to town, they held their collective breath.
Why Should Delaware Care? For the better part of a year, a proposed ordinance banning panhandling has been the subject of debate and controversy across the city of Dover. Now, as the city government has decided to re-consider the proposal, residents are using it as an avenue to express their broader grievances with homelessness and public safety in the capital city.
Following nearly nine months of debate, legal opinions, public outcry and a February city council vote striking it down, Dover’s controversial panhandling ordinance is back for consideration.
This time around, Dover residents are showing up in even higher numbers to council meetings and public demonstrations to voice their opinions on the proposal, which would ban panhandling in city road medians.
Residents’ reactions to the ordinance have become not just about people asking for money in roadways, but also a referendum on a series of other issues they say are plaguing the capital city – homelessness, drug use, the struggle of attracting businesses to the downtown area and public safety.
“How did we get to a point where we have allowed people that are not being held accountable to take control of our community?” asked Gina Bloom, one of roughly 20 residents who spoke on the measure at the June 9 city council meeting.
Community leaders from the downtown revitalization efforts and a homeless shelter that have become a focal point of the debate over the panhandling ordinance say they recognize the need for policy to address people soliciting and standing in roads. But the measure will not resolve homelessness and the challenge of attracting business downtown in the way some are suggesting, they say.
City Councilman David Anderson originally introduced the ordinance last fall.
Dover City Councilman David Anderson has made addressing the city’s quality of life a major issue. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
Then, in late April, after a ruling by Attorney General Kathy Jennings’ office that the city needed to ratify its February final vote on the measure due to an open meetings law violation, Anderson used an obscure governmental procedure to revive the debate over the ordinance for another vote by council.
The measure has not since been placed on a city council agenda for consideration. Anderson told Spotlight Delaware he is still “building momentum” and seeking legal review of the ordinance before he plans to reintroduce it later this summer.
Other city council members are divided as to whether to reignite the debate and whether its approval would open the city to legal challenges.
“I’m concerned with whether this is a good use of resources and time, given the fact that we’ve already addressed this matter,” Councilman Roy Sudler said.
Council members Anderson and Julia Pillsbury told Spotlight Delaware they intend to vote in favor of the ordinance once again on the re-vote, while Sudler, Brian Lewis and Donyale Hall said they will again vote against the ordinance.
Council President Fred Neil, who voted affirmatively on the ordinance in February, and council members Tricia Arndt, Andre Boggerty and Gerald Rocha, all of whom voted against it, did not respond to requests for comment.
More residents are expressing their support for greater restrictions on the city’s homeless population in Delaware’s capital city, but finding a constitutional solution could be difficult. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
Protests, petitions & public comment
Since the re-introduction of the debate over the panhandling ordinance, officially called a “Traffic, Vehicles and Pedestrian Safety” measure, Dover residents have held rallies, signed petitions and written letters linking a range of issues they are experiencing in the city to the ordinance.
In a clear escalation of the tension over the ordinance, Anderson held so-called “reclaim our streets” rally in favor of his proposal prior to the June 9 city council meeting, while a handful of opponents of the measure simultaneously held a counter-protest in the same location.
Roughly 70 people stood outside of city hall for the two protests with hand-held signs, megaphones and shirts signaling which side of the debate they were on.
Attendees of Anderson’s event and the subsequent hour-long public comment period during the city council meeting said they are frustrated with the individuals soliciting money, drugs and sex acts across downtown neighborhoods and prominent road medians.
Councilman Anderson’s wife, Jeannie Anderson, who has been gathering support for her husband’s proposal on social media in recent months, said at the rally that the conversation needs to not be just “about the homeless,” but also the rights of residents in the area.
Other vocal supporters of the ordinance included a number of residents and business owners in the Bradford Street and Governor’s Avenue area, which has received increased attention in recent months since the city council tried to shut down the People’s Church homeless shelter there due to resident complaints.
Frustrated residents have used the opportunity around the panhandling ordinance to discuss a variety of issues on city streets. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY MAGGIE REYNOLDS
One Governor’s Avenue resident, Michelle Walls, said during public comment at the meeting that her neighborhood has turned into an active market for drug trafficking, loitering and prostitution.
“My home should be my sanctuary, but instead I feel entirely exposed to this criminal behavior,” she said.
As it is written, the proposed ordinance would not apply fines to individuals soliciting on streets like Governor’s Avenue, as it applies strictly to larger, busier roadways with medians.
On the opposite side, a group of community activists and homeless individuals argued that the proposal is both unconstitutional and unfair to people who panhandle because they do not have another option to afford food and shelter.
Community activist Vonda Smack said the city police department already has alternative statutes at its disposal to charge individuals aggressively panhandling or causing a public nuisance.
The ordinance is simply opening the city to more legal expenses in an already precarious financial situation, since the state attorney general told municipalities around the state not to enforce any loitering and solicitation laws in 2024, Smack added.
Mike Potanovich, a Dover resident who has been living in his truck and panhandling for money for the past year, said at both the rally and city council meeting that it is unfair for peaceful, respectful panhandlers like himself to be conflated with individuals using drugs and aggressively soliciting money.
“I’m just out there trying to make a living, put gas in my truck, food in my belly. I’m not hurting anybody,” he told Spotlight Delaware.
In the midst of continued debate over panhandling and homelessness in Dover, city leaders have turned their ire toward the People’s Church Community Center, a homeless shelter in the heart of the city. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY NICK STONESIFER
Stakeholders respond
Anderson is holding up his ordinance as “one piece of the puzzle” toward addressing the issues of homelessness, drug use and economic opportunity about which residents are sounding the alarm.
Community leaders in these realms, however, are more mixed in their assessment as to whether the measure is an effective focus of the city’s efforts.
The Rev. Derrick Hodge is the lead pastor at the People’s Church of Dover, which has been the subject of scrutiny by the city council due to residents’ complaints of loitering and other illegal activity in the neighborhood near its shelter.
Hodge said his organization is not weighing in specifically on the merits of Anderson’s ordinance, but he believes many people in the city are conflating “the real problems” and “how we can fix these problems.” The city council denied grant funding for the shelter in March, arguing that the shelter was attracting more people to loiter on the streets near it.
Hodge added that he would urge city leaders to focus on creating more affordable housing and drug treatment centers as solutions to the issues in the downtown area.
A number of residents have raised concerns about how the city will successfully attract more residents and businesses back downtown with the safety and loitering concerns.
At the same time, skeptics of the ordinance have drawn a link between the desire to clean up panhandling and the city’s ambitious 2030 downtown Dover revitalization project, which includes adding a housing project, parking garage and new businesses to the area.
Diane Laird, executive director of the Downtown Dover Partnership (DDP), acknowledged that her organization has concerns about panhandlers impeding businesses’ and residents’ “unobstructed, clean access” to the downtown area.
Still, she said the DDP is leaving it to other city and state entities to address the safety concerns, while her group focuses on bringing more businesses and residents downtown.
Quantum computing has become a strategic consideration for high-performance computing (HPC) centers worldwide. National laboratories, supercomputing centers, research institutions and enterprises are already evaluating how quantum systems could enhance classical HPC resources and accelerate breakthroughs in simulation, materials discovery, chemistry, optimization and artificial intelligence.
Quantum computing promises to advance research and accelerate discoveries that will take conventional computers years or decades to achieve. But with so many novel approaches to producing qubits, it’s important for companies to evaluate which technology will deliver a realistic path to useful, utility-scale deployments and warrant long-term investment.
For HPC organizations, success will ultimately depend on more than qubit performance. Useful quantum systems must scale to millions of fault-tolerant qubits while remaining economically viable, manufacturable and deployable within practical infrastructure constraints.
The Scaling Challenge
The history of computing offers an important lesson: technologies succeed when they can be mass manufactured and scaled.
The transistor transformed computing not simply because it outperformed vacuum tubes, but because it enabled a repeatable manufacturing model that supported decades of innovation. Advancements in silicon processing (widely known as “Moore’s Law”) including fabrication, lithography and packaging, took computing from room-sized machines to today’s exascale systems.
Quantum computing now faces a similar transition.
While multiple quantum modalities continue to mature, practical systems capable of solving meaningful scientific and industrial problems will require millions of physical qubits and sophisticated error correction. At that scale, manufacturability, integration, footprint and operational efficiency become critical considerations.
For HPC leaders, the central question is “which technologies can evolve from research platforms into production-scale computing systems?”
Why Silicon Matters
Silicon spin qubits are distinctive because they build directly on the manufacturing foundation that enabled classical computing to scale. Silicon spin qubits can be manufactured on the same CMOS lines as today’s standard technology. This approach uses a single electron trapped within a device that closely resembles a conventional transistor. The same silicon substrates, gate structures and lithographic techniques used throughout the semiconductor industry are already being adapted to create quantum processors.
The compatibility with standard CMOS manufacturing provides access to one of the most mature industrial ecosystems in the world. Rather than requiring entirely new fabrication approaches, silicon spin quantum processors can leverage existing semiconductor facilities, supply chains, packaging technologies and engineering expertise.
For HPC organizations, this matters because manufacturing maturity directly affects scalability, cost and long-term technology risk. Platforms built on established semiconductor processes benefit from decades of process optimization and continuous improvement, creating a clearer path from prototype systems to large-scale deployment.
Infrastructure and Investment
Supercomputer centers today are pushing limits in infrastructure. It is common to see 100 megawatt and even gigawatt data center plans. As these centers begin increasing their investments in quantum testbeds and developing hybrid quantum-classical workflows, infrastructure considerations are becoming increasingly important, and the impact of future technologies associated with quantum will make or break future plans.
This is where silicon’s density advantage becomes particularly relevant.
Modern semiconductor manufacturing routinely places billions of transistors on a single chip. While quantum computing presents unique engineering challenges, silicon spin architectures benefit from the same miniaturization principles that have driven decades of progress in classical computing. This means the same infrastructure that supports a handful of qubits today will be able to scale to tens of thousands in the near term and tens of millions in the long run – all with power budgets in the tens of kilowatts and number of racks that can be counted on one hand.
The long-term objective is not simply building larger quantum processors. It is building systems that can deliver meaningful computational value within realistic infrastructure footprints while fitting within standard HPC and data center rack environments.
A Strategic Investment Perspective
For HPC leaders, quantum computing is increasingly becoming an infrastructure planning question rather than a purely scientific one.
Every major quantum modality offers strengths and faces significant engineering challenges. However, history suggests that manufacturing scalability, integration and operational practicality will be just as important as raw technical performance in determining which technologies achieve widespread adoption.
Organizations evaluating future quantum investments should consider several key questions:
How is the technology manufactured? Does it leverage proven manufacturing capabilities and supply chains? Will it support scaling to millions of qubits?
Will the systems at scale be able to operate within realistic power, cooling and physical footprint constraints?
How will the systems effectively integrate within your HPC architecture and other infrastructure investments?
And, finally, will I be able to afford it?
These are the questions that will shape the next decade of quantum computing.
In 2025, Quantum Motion delivered the industry’s first full-stack silicon CMOS quantum computer to the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre, demonstrating that silicon-based quantum systems can move beyond individual devices toward complete computing platforms.
For HPC organizations planning the future of advanced computing, the challenge is identifying technologies capable of making the transition from promising research and test beds to practical infrastructure. Silicon transformed classical computing through scalability, density and manufacturability. Silicon spin quantum computing offers a pathway to apply those same advantages to be successful in the quantum era.
About the authors:
Brent Gorda is a senior HPC industry luminary with extensive experience in parallel and distributed computing. He spent a majority of his career working at national laboratories, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as well as providing technical consulting for various corporations in the San Francisco Bay Area. Brent holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Alberta and completed PhD studies at the University of California, Davis.
Hugo Saleh is the President and Chief Commercial Officer at Quantum Motion. Joining the company in January 2025, Hugo leads the company’s global expansion and commercial deployment of its silicon spin qubit quantum computing technology. He has extensive semiconductor, data center and silicon design experience, holding leadership roles with Google, Ayar Labs and nearly two decades at Intel Corporation.
Photo illustration by Mark Harris for ProPublica. Photos by Getty Images.
After the Trump administration upended the world’s largest foreign aid provider last year, terminating thousands of programs and firing nearly all of its staff, its plan for the agency was clear: Eliminate it entirely.
But because it is a congressionally created agency, President Donald Trump needed lawmakers’ permission to do so. So this year, Trump officials asked Congress for permission to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development and dramatically reduce federal spending on food, medicine and lifesaving work around the world.
Congress said no. Lawmakers, who hold the government’s purse strings and have oversight of federal agencies, wanted USAID to remain, even in its diminished form. They detailed precisely how much the State Department should spend on foreign aid and for what, including $9.4 billion on global health to treat and prevent maladies like HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, and more than $5 billion on emergency humanitarian aid. They also insisted on regular, detailed reports about how the administration was spending the money.
Trump signed the bill, enshrining their orders into law.
Now, eight months into the fiscal year, Trump officials are failing to follow many of those orders, ProPublica has found. Officials have delayed spending on global health, have not issued funds for some projects and have labeled money destined for humanitarian aid as “unallocated” to control how it can be spent, according to a ProPublica review of government records and interviews with legal experts, current and former government employees, and members of Congress. And when lawmakers have asked about their actions, officials often have not responded.
Do You Know More About This Topic?
We’re still reporting. If you know more about the Trump administration and foreign aid spending, please contact our reporting team.
Anna Maria Barry-Jester
I welcome tips from people with knowledge of public health at the local, state, federal and international level, including scientists, government officials and advocates, and anyone who knows about issues that affect the public’s health.
The White House and Congress have been battling over federal spending since Day 1 of the Trump administration, setting up a constitutional crisis — a breakdown of the division of power among the three branches of the federal government, according to several legal scholars.
Nowhere has that crisis been more visible than with foreign aid. Last year, the administration took the unprecedented step of gutting USAID, terminating thousands of aid programs and letting funding expire, all without permission from Congress. Lawmakers did little to stop it.
Now, in defying Congress on foreign aid that Trump himself agreed to spend, the administration is quietly escalating the battle.
“It is a huge grab of power from the president, taking powers away from Congress,” said David Super, a professor of law and economics at Georgetown University and a leading scholar on administrative and constitutional law.
USAID was created by Congress decades ago as a means of promoting American diplomacy and soft power around the world. As ProPublica previously reported, when Trump officials dismantled the agency last year, stopping payments on thousands of lifesaving programs that provided food, medicine and other supplies to impoverished nations, many people died, including children.
Even with USAID in shambles, Congress has made clear that it expects the administration to continue providing foreign aid — in some cases, at nearly the level it did in previous years.
“It’s proof that there is still broad, bipartisan support for America showing up in the world, helping people and working with our allies and partners on shared challenges, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it directly benefits us,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, the ranking member of the Senate committee with oversight of foreign aid funds. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the committee’s chair, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
But the administration has taken a variety of steps to thwart Congress’ directives. The Office of Management and Budget, run by Russell Vought, was instrumental in blocking the spending of aid money last year. This year, it has labeled both humanitarian aid and global health money as “unallocated,” meaning the OMB must approve how it is spent.
Legal scholars say such moves, and the delayed spending by the State Department, likely violate the law. Foreign aid is a prime example of why Congress made it illegal for administrations and agencies to slow-walk such funds, said Bobby Kogan, an OMB adviser under former President Joe Biden currently with the Center for American Progress. “If you spend no money for a year and all the clinics close, then those people die,” he said.
The State Department has made little effort to spend some foreign aid money that Congress earmarked for specific purposes, including family planning, neglected diseases and nutrition, according to government staff and budget documents.
And programs have been given fewer dollars, even when Congress has kept funding steady. That includes the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the hallmark HIV program credited with saving 26 million lives around the world.
Administration officials are also spending on foreign aid at a much slower rate than they had in recent years, according to an analysis of federal funding data shared with ProPublica by Aid on the Hill, an advocacy group created by former USAID employees, although the State Department disputes its conclusions. Another group published a similar analysis last week.
Jeremy Lewin, a 29-year-old lawyer who came into government via Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency with no prior humanitarian experience, is in charge of foreign aid. He has said that this new strategy will not only save countless lives, but also reform the aid sector and reduce dependence on U.S. funding.
Since last July, Lewin has been “performing the duties” of undersecretary for foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs, a position that must be approved by Congress, though the administration has yet to nominate him or anyone else to the job.
But he rarely, if ever, meets with career staff and doesn’t share information about his plans, even with the people who are expected to carry them out, according to six current and former career officials. Lewin insists that he approve even routine payments, creating a stranglehold on funding and information.
And all the while, Trump appointees have failed to answer basic questions from Congress about what they are doing. Letters from lawmakers have gone unanswered and required reports unfiled.
To understand the administration’s compliance with congressional mandates and federal law, ProPublica reviewed administration documents, including agreements, memos, and internal communications, and spoke with dozens of current and former government officials, congressional staff, and international experts in global health and humanitarian aid. Many people spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from the administration.
In response to a list of detailed questions about the concerns, a State Department spokesperson who declined to be named said they would continue to follow the president’s direction on foreign aid spending. “We are not withholding any funds appropriated to, or available to, State,” they said. “If additional funds are made available to State, we will work to obligate them consistent with legal requirements and Administration priorities.”
They said officials have regularly briefed Congress and that Lewin had recently spent four hours discussing foreign assistance. They also said they have “reduced by 80% the number of outstanding reports and letters” since Trump retook office.
“We are working with Congress to spend appropriated balances and find the right future-appropriated level for global health,” the spokesperson said.
In response to a series of detailed questions about this story, OMB spokesperson Rachel Cauley said, “This is patently false,” adding that “USAID was a weaponized government agency.” She did not respond to a follow-up question asking what was false.
Spending Less — or Not at All
After nearly all of USAID’s employees were fired and the majority of its programs closed down last summer, the agency’s remnants were transferred to the State Department. Despite repeated promises from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that lifesaving aid would continue, the State Department began winding down many of the remaining programs earlier this year.
And staff have been working with a severely constricted budget; officials gave them just half of the available money for PEPFAR, said Dr. Mike Reid, who was the program’s chief scientific officer until he left earlier this year over concerns about how the program is being run. Of the $9.4 billion for global health spending for the State Department that Trump signed into law earlier this year, Congress earmarked about $4.6 billion for PEPFAR. But staff say it’s unclear how much of that they will be allowed to spend.
Congress also explicitly directed the State Department to spend pots of money on family planning ($524 million), nutrition ($165 million) and neglected tropical diseases ($109 million), according to the bill. According to a review of government records and two people with knowledge of the department’s activities, State Department officials have made little or no effort to spend from those pots.
In response, a State Department spokesperson said it has “continued to obligate and spend every dollar appropriated for global HIV/AIDS programs” and “we continue to implement life-saving care in global health priority areas, including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and maternal and child health.”
They added: “The State Department has been in the process of slowly replacing old carry-over USAID grants with new State Department grants and contracts which have fresh funds, new terms and conditions, and better align with the new America First foreign assistance strategy.”
Global health programming in general is moving at a much slower rate than it did previously, according to the Aid on the Hill analysis of federal funding data. Of the more than $9 billion that Congress told the Trump administration to spend on global health last year, the administration had by the end of this March obligated just $190 million, 5% of what was spent on average in that period in the five years before Trump returned to office. Typically, officials would have obligated about half of the money by then. Another advocacy organization, Health Security Policy Academy, published an analysis last week that drew a similar conclusion.
The State Department said it “cannot and will not” verify any independent analysis, but disagreed with the figures, saying that it has “approved and implemented spending” for more than $7.5 billion to align with the bilateral agreements and disaster response. “You either have vastly outdated numbers or are simply mistaken,” it said, but would not elaborate.
The agreements signed with nations around the world, a centerpiece of the State Department’s foreign aid policy, will in many cases involve sending funds directly to those governments, some of which have been mired in corruption scandals. But the specifics of the programs are still being determined, and the funding has yet to flow.
Meanwhile, Lewin has been increasingly leaning on large international organizations to deliver aid once managed by USAID employees.
Earlier this year, Lewin funneled $3.8 billion to a small arm of the United Nations, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, quadrupling the budget of the agency.
Trump has frequently criticized the U.N. as ineffective. But after nearly all of USAID’s staff was fired, the skeleton crew at the State Department doesn’t have the capacity or expertise to manage so much humanitarian aid themselves, according to a dozen people familiar with the new system.
The agreement with OCHA, a copy of which was reviewed by ProPublica, also does not allow the U.S. to independently audit the funds, though the U.N. agreed to run a pilot project for greater internal oversight.
Eri Kaneko, OCHA’s spokesperson, said the agency has worked quickly since December to disburse funds for “the most urgent and life-threatening needs” and that U.N. entities are “fully committed to the highest standards of accountability and oversight.”
The U.S. has been the largest donor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a multilateral organization that provides medicines and prevention measures to millions of people around the world, since its inception. Lewin recently announced an expanded partnership with the fund to provide HIV prevention across Africa. But the Trump administration last year withheld payments pledged under the Biden administration, forcing the fund to reduce the amounts it gave to nations.
So in this year’s spending bill, Congress directed the State Department to make good on its pledges, issuing specific instructions to Rubio on what to pay and when, and telling him to make those contributions “in a timely manner.”
That hasn’t happened.
A State Department spokesperson told ProPublica that “all current funding obligations have been met.” But according to a board member for the Global Fund, congressional staff and Friends of the Global Fight, an organization that advocates for the fund in the U.S., the administration should contribute another $661 million.
“The State Department is underfunding the Global Fund,” Schatz said. “It’s out of compliance with congressional appropriations.”
When the senator asked about the funding during Rubio’s recent testimony to Congress, Rubio said, “I think that will move shortly, very quickly.”
A “Fundamental Threat to the Rule of Law”
During previous administrations, once Congress passed laws to approve federal spending, the money flowed through the OMB, which in turn parceled out the funds to designated agencies, making sure they didn’t spend the funds too quickly or too slowly.
Under Trump, the OMB, led by Vought, has repeatedly blocked funds approved by Congress from going to agencies using legally dubious maneuvers, experts in federal spending and constitutional law told ProPublica.
As ProPublica has chronicled, Vought takes an expansive view of presidential power and has moved to give the executive branch dramatically greater authority to not spend legally appropriated money. Foreign aid has been a clear focus; after USAID was razed last year, Vought was made acting administrator and tasked with overseeing the closeout of the agency. Eric Ueland, a Vought deputy at the OMB, is currently performing those duties.
The OMB currently has labeled more than $500 million in global health money as “unallocated,” according to its own data, which makes it impossible for the State Department to spend without first going through the OMB. It had also labeled most of the humanitarian aid money this way, but began releasing some of those funds in May. By June 11, the OMB had released all of that money to the State Department.
Several people inside and outside the government told ProPublica they fear that the administration is withholding the funds because it is planning not to spend them at all. They have good reason to be concerned: That’s exactly what Trump did last year.
In 2025, the administration clawed back some $13 billion in foreign aid that Congress had passed into law, some of it by using a maneuver widely understood by legal experts to be illegal.
That maneuver, which Vought calls a “pocket rescission,” essentially asks Congress to cancel funds so late in the fiscal year that there isn’t enough time for them to be spent if Congress says no. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ watchdog, has said pocket rescissions are illegal, and several constitutional scholars told ProPublica the move violates the Impoundment Control Act. That law, passed in 1974 in the wake of disputes with President Richard Nixon, restricts the president’s authority to withhold, or impound, funds approved by Congress.
A federal court initially blocked the maneuver as part of ongoing lawsuits related to the dismantling of USAID. But the administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which issued an emergency ruling split along ideological lines that allowed the clawback to continue, though it did not rule on the merits.
The GAO has standing to take legal action on a pocket rescission. Edda Emmanuelli Perez, GAO’s general counsel, told ProPublica that her office was continuing to review potential impoundments and monitoring ongoing litigation, and that it has not made a decision to file any lawsuits at this time.
While there are still nearly four months left in this fiscal year, career officials and legal experts say another rescission — legal or not — would further erode Congress’ power of the purse, threatening the U.S. democracy.
“If that’s going to be a regular occurrence, then we have a real fundamental threat to the rule of law,” said Cerin Lindgrensavage, a former Justice Department lawyer who works for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit that fights against authoritarianism. “Congress has said spend the money, and the president doesn’t want to. The question is, who wins? Under the law, Congress is supposed to win. Right now, the president is.”
Budget watchers say there are concerning signs that the administration plans to withhold more funds.
In April, the OMB announced to Congress that it was withholding funds earmarked for global health to pay the hefty bills for severance fees and other costs for the thousands of USAID programs Trump officials terminated last year.
OMB officials told lawmakers they were setting aside $19 billion to cover those costs, though they anticipated the total would be “substantially” less. (Internal documents reviewed by ProPublica say the figure doesn’t include the cost of the litany of lawsuits associated with the closures — or the dozens of new hires and other agency operations needed to process them.)
The bulk of that money came from unspent funds for the canceled programs and other unobligated dollars from previous years. But $3.2 billion came from funds earmarked by Congress for global health and development programs that Trump signed into law in 2025. If it’s not obligated by the end of September, that money will expire and can no longer be spent.
Democratic lawmakers were incensed by the OMB’s decision. In a letter to Trump officials, senators called it an “appalling admission of waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars” and demanded that the administration use the $3.2 billion as directed, “consistent with the law.” They asked for a response by May 8. As of June 16, lawmakers had not received one.
Asked about the funds during the recent Senate hearing, Rubio claimed they were under the purview of the OMB. Schatz pointed out that Rubio had moved all foreign aid under the State Department and had just wrestled some of that money away from the OMB to respond to an Ebola outbreak. “It also demonstrates you are perfectly capable of getting money released from those closeout funds if you wish,” he told the secretary. “Ebola is an urgent priority, but so is malaria, so is TB and so is HIV/AIDS.”
“Proposing a rescission is a Presidential authority, and we will follow President Trump’s direction as to any future rescissions,” the State Department spokesperson told ProPublica. “We are currently planning to obligate all appropriated balances, consistent with law.”
Their appearance was a rare face-to-face meeting between U.S. and Iranian officials as they launched a 60-day sprint to negotiate over the fate of Iran's nuclear program.
A private tutor who charged money to take dozens of exams for students and submit coursework for them "has been jailed for three years," reports the BBC, "after his scam earned him £300,000."
Shahid Adnan completed assignments and online tests for more than 120 students at Liverpool John Moore's University, the Crown Prosecution Service said. The 43-year-old, of Lysander Close, Liverpool, was caught in February 2023 after a student handed in a USB drive containing suspicious coursework to Dr Tom Berry of the university's school of computer science and mathematics. Berry's checks revealed the drive was used by Adnan with documents linked to a company he set up called Study Sharp Ltd.
Excel spreadsheets containing details of other students, their study modules, coursework due dates, and their personal login credentials were also found. Further checks confirmed suspicions that Adnan was accessing the university's network to submit fraudulent work and sit examinations on behalf of students... [I]nvestigations led police to believe Adnan may have been doing work for 124 students at universities all over the world.
The BBC also interviewed detective sergeant Adam Dagnall from Merseyside Police's cybercrime unit, who said Adnan was living a lavish lifestyle "well beyond" his stated occupations as a private tutor and Amazon delivery driver. His bank accounts held more than £2m ($2,645,100 USD).
As previously noted, the Seventh National Research Platform (7NRP) workshop was held in La Jolla, California, May 5–7, 2026, with an agenda focused on artificial intelligence (AI) in education and agriculture. You can read part one of our coverage here.
Chin Guok
In our continuing coverage of 7NRP, we focus on Chin Guok (Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Chief Technology Officer), who delivered a talk titled, “Network Services in the Context of the American Science Cloud.”
Guok has served for more than 25 years at ESnet, where he has led a variety of projects. He developed the award-winning On-Demand Secure Circuits and Advance Reservation System (OSCARS), which enables dynamic reservation of dedicated network paths for scientific data transfers. In 2022, he led the design of ESnet6, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) sixth-generation network, which supports exascale computing and other big iron.
The American Science Cloud (AmSC) is the core CI that enables the Genesis Mission. The Genesis Mission is a White House initiative that unites DOE National Labs, user facilities, industry, academia, and more to harness AI for breakthroughs in energy, discovery science, and national security. With the goal of doubling productivity and scientific impact of U.S. research and innovation within a decade, Genesis is considered equivalent to the Manhattan, Apollo, and Human Genome Projects in terms of societal relevance.
The AmSC serves as the infrastructure platform for the Genesis Mission, utilizing ESnet as its wide area network (WAN) data fabric. ESnet is the DOE’s sole high-performance science network, connecting all 17 DOE labs, 28 user facilities, and more; its peering ecosystem reaches nearly 270 research and commercial networks around the world.
AmSC Infrastructure Resource Orchestration (IRO) is the middleware that coordinates the discovery and provisioning of the software and services layer that coordinates distributed scientific infrastructure across DOE labs, including supercomputers, storage systems, networks, instruments, and AI services. The AmSC application programming interface (API) offers an integrated, unified and secure way to command DOE resources. According to Guok, “The IRO’s orchestration of assets, with an intuitive API, is expected to reduce the time to insight from months to days through the use of composable, AI-driven workflows.”
Researchers will use the AmSC CI to tackle grand challenge areas including materials discovery, fusion energy, nuclear security, power grid resilience, quantum frontier navigation, biotechnology, and autonomous scientific experimentation.
Via executive order in December 2025, more than $320 million ($40 million AmSC) was initially invested by the DOE, with an additional $293 million generated in March 2026 by a DOE Request For Applications titled, “The Genesis Mission: Transforming Science and Energy with AI.” Interdisciplinary teams from DOE labs, U.S. industry and academia were encouraged to apply. Phase I awards range from $500,000 to $750,000 and have a nine-month operational scope. Phase II ranges from $6 million to $15 million over three years. Proposals are accepted for either phase in 2026; successful Phase I teams are eligible to compete for Phase II.
The cover photo was taken by Kristina Mallari, assistant producer-director, Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego. Editorial contributions by Senior Science Writer and Editor Kim Bruch (UC San Diego) and others were much appreciated.
WAYNE, Pa., June 22, 2026 — Cornelis, a leading provider of intelligent networking solutions for AI and high performance computing (HPC), and xFusion, a global provider of computing infrastructure and services, announced a collaboration to deliver high-performance infrastructure solutions for industrial HPC and AI environments, including automotive and advanced engineering workloads across Europe.
The joint platform combines xFusion’s FusionServer infrastructure with Cornelis’ CN5000 intelligent networking technology to support increasingly complex engineering and simulation applications, including computational fluid dynamics (CFD), crash simulation, structural analysis, digital twin modeling, and AI-enhanced design processes.
“As HPC and AI workloads continue to grow in scale and complexity, organizations need infrastructure that can scale efficiently without introducing bottlenecks,” said Lisa Spelman, CEO of Cornelis. “This collaboration combines high-performance compute and intelligent networking to help customers maximize utilization, accelerate engineering and AI-driven workflows, and improve efficiency across large-scale infrastructure environments.”
As organizations across industries adopt larger-scale simulation and AI-assisted development efforts, infrastructure demands continue to increase dramatically. Engineering and research teams are under growing pressure to process larger datasets, reduce time to results, and scale compute environments efficiently without introducing unnecessary complexity or performance bottlenecks. Cornelis’ CN5000 networking platform delivers the low-latency, high-bandwidth interconnect required for these compute-intensive environments, while xFusion’s FusionServer infrastructure is architected for demanding HPC deployments.
“Our FusionServer platforms are purpose-built for high-density HPC deployments,” said Frank Qin, CEO at xFusion Europe. “Together with Cornelis, we are helping customers build infrastructure environments optimized for large-scale modeling, simulation, and other data-intensive workloads.”
The collaboration enables customers to scale HPC clusters more efficiently while maintaining consistent application performance across growing compute environments.
The partnership builds on years of joint work across multiple generations of infrastructure and networking technologies, giving both companies deep experience supporting performance-sensitive HPC environments.
The combined platform supports a wide range of applications, including computational fluid dynamics (CFD), crash simulation, structural analysis, digital twin modeling, large-scale analytics, and emerging AI-enhanced engineering workflows.
The joint solution also aligns with growing demand for more energy-efficient infrastructure. xFusion’s liquid-cooled FusionServer designs pair with Cornelis’ end-to-end liquid-cooled networking capabilities to help organizations improve thermal efficiency, infrastructure density, and overall system utilization in large-scale deployments.
About Cornelis
Cornelis delivers high-performance, scale-out and scale-up networking solutions that accelerate AI and HPC workloads. Cornelis technology enables lossless, congestion-free networking that reduces training time, improves inference, and maximizes compute utilization. From foundation model training to complex climate modeling and real-time analytics, Cornelis solutions power the most demanding workloads across commercial, academic, government, and cloud environments. With a focus on performance, scalability, and efficiency, Cornelis helps organizations achieve faster insights and greater return on infrastructure investments. Visit us at International Supercomputing (ISC’26) Booth E02 in Hamburg, Germany June 22-26, or learn more at www.cornelis.com.
Solution will maximize data center and AI factory profitability while delivering engineering-grade insights to design and operations for more efficient, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure
June 22, 2026 — Cadence has announced an expansion of its collaboration with HPE to accelerate digital twin-driven data center modernization, enabling customers to improve planning, optimization, and lifecycle operations for next-generation AI and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure.
Credit: Era4
The collaboration combines the Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform, which virtualizes data center environments using AI, HPC, and physics-based simulation to significantly optimize end-to-end computational throughput, with HPE’s sustainable data center modernization services and expertise. The standardization of the platform within HPE’s AI-focused modular data center, AI Mod POD, also improves total cost of ownership, speeds deployment, and increases operational efficiency.
“As AI reshapes data center requirements, digital twins provide a powerful foundation for designing and operating high-performing infrastructure,” said Sherman Ikemoto, Group Director, Cadence. “Working with HPE, we aim to help customers model and optimize complex environments using AI, HPC, and physics-based simulation—reducing risk while improving energy efficiency and supporting customers’ sustainability ambitions.”
As data centers evolve to support increasingly power-dense AI workloads and advanced cooling architectures, operators must modernize quickly while meeting sustainability, regulatory, and service-level objectives. Together, Cadence, NVIDIA, and HPE will deliver scalable, energy-efficient data center blueprints—from edge to cloud—helping customers de-risk decisions before physical deployment, unlock stranded capacity, and maintain optimal performance as requirements change.
“HPE is focused on helping customers modernize data centers for the AI era with solutions that are scalable, secure, and more sustainable,” said Paul Nelson, Global Director, IT Sustainability & Data Center Services, HPE. “By deepening the collaboration with Cadence, we bring engineering-grade digital twin capabilities to customers so they can optimize capacity, energy efficiency, and operational decisions across the data center lifecycle.”
New Solutions for AI- and HPC-Ready Data Centers
Cadence will introduce digital twin-based solutions that address key data center modernization priorities across design, deployment, and operations. These solutions will help customers:
Design AI- and HPC-ready facilities that meet stringent power, space, cooling, and IT sustainability targets, using high-fidelity digital twins to validate decisions before committing to physical infrastructure to maximize tokens-per-watt performance.
Accelerate planning and operations for HPE Data Center Services – AI Mod POD and related AI data center solutions by using Cadence Reality DC Elements Design Library to evaluate deployment scenarios in advance. These Cadence Reality DC elements digital models include the now available NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 and the upcoming NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72.
Increase IT and facilities utilization and reduce stranded capacity with predictive modeling of power and cooling behavior ahead of configuration changes or workload shifts on the data center floor.
Improve operational intelligence and IT sustainability by running “what-if” scenarios that support long-term capacity planning, energy optimization, and failure or upgrade planning.
By integrating Cadence’s engineering-grade simulation and digital twin capabilities with HPE’s AI data center solutions and services, customers can move faster and with greater confidence as they scale AI infrastructure in existing and new facilities.
The Value of Cadence Digital Twins
The Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform enables customers to create high-fidelity digital replicas of entire data centers and campuses by dragging and dropping vendor-provided digital models that simulate the physical behavior of their real-world counterparts. These predictive models help data center operators optimize energy efficiency, capacity, and resiliency from initial design through day-to-day operations.
Those looking to improve their data center architectures can do so by working with HPE’s world-recognized data center design and engineering team, which incorporates the Cadence Reality Digital Twin Platform to build an engineering-accurate, physics-based layer that enables teams to evaluate design tradeoffs earlier and continuously refine operations against real-world constraints.
About Cadence
Cadence is a market leader in AI and digital twins, pioneering the application of computational software to accelerate innovation in the engineering design of silicon to systems. Our design solutions, based on Cadence’s Intelligent System Design strategy, are essential for the world’s leading semiconductor and systems companies to build their next-generation products from chips to full electromechanical systems that serve a wide range of markets, including hyperscale computing, mobile communications, automotive, aerospace, industrial, life sciences and robotics. In 2025, Cadence was recognized by Fortune as one of the world’s top 100 best companies to work for. Cadence solutions offer limitless opportunities.
Ten years on, leaving the EU has made life more difficult and costly – here are some of the ways we’ve lost out
It is 10 years since voters in the UK chose to leave the EU, and our wallets have been feeling the effects ever since.
From paying more to take the dog on holidays in France – and making calls while you are there – to higher grocery bills and the headache of filling in customs forms for parcels, Brexit has made many simple tasks more complicated and expensive.
A vivid and entertaining polemic on the economics of the tech revolution, filled with righteous ire
As former Google CEO Eric Schmidt could tell you, AI is a hard sell these days. Last month, he tried talking up the AI revolution during a commencement address at the University of Arizona and was loudly booed by students about to enter an AI-ravaged job market. His discombobulation was telling.
Schmidt is not the only AI booster to crash out with students recently as the popular backlash grows. Every week brings a new story about some writer, publisher or academic who has torched their reputation by using an unreliable chatbot. Most US voters are opposed to the construction of vast, resource-guzzling new datacentres. A majority believe AI will negatively impact not just jobs but creativity and human relationships. In some quarters, saying that AI has any benefits at all is akin to saying that biological warfare gets a bad rap. As a New York Times column put it: “AI populism is here. And no one is ready.”
The summer sale ends tomorrow and I’m eyeing a Pint S. Any recommendation on whether I pull the trigger or wait for a new board later this year? Budget not an issue, just a plus that the sale is going on.
Poultry farms in Western Australia have gone into lockdown after the deadly H5N1 bird flu arrived on the country’s mainland, with tests confirming a second bird also carried the disease.
On Monday, the Ingham’s Group – Australia’s largest poultry producer – announced a “complete lockdown” in WA, despite no commercial detection of H5N1.
Why Should Delaware Care? Housing costs are rising in Delaware, leading to strained budgets, longer commutes and an increase in the homeless population. The most ambitious bill to tackle the issue this session has passed the Senate and now faces a tight margin to pass the House.
Senate Bill 23, dubbed “The Housing for Every Delawarean Act,” would require most localities to allow more townhomes, apartments and other dense types of housing, along with adopting other measures to make homes more affordable.
Delaware is facing a shortage of affordable housing. Half of renters in the state are defined as “cost-burdened,” meaning they pay more than what they can reasonably afford for housing.
“We know that without action, housing costs will continue to rise, and more Delawareans will struggle to find homes that they can afford,” said bill cosponsor Rep. Kendra Johnson (D-Bear) at the House Housing Committee meeting last week.
But many local government officials oppose SB 23 because they see it as part of an erosion of local control, a long-running point of tension between local governments and the Delaware legislature.
“This is the same old, same old,” Kent County Levy Court Commissioner Allan Angel said. “I don’t think we’re ever really asked what we would like to have.”
The bill cleared the State Senate last week purely on party lines, but it will need some House Republicans to reach the two-thirds majority vote it requires.
Despite general Republican opposition to the bill, two New Castle County Republicans have signed the bill as co-sponsors: Reps. Kevin Hensley and Michael Smith. Still, House Minority Leader Tim Dukes (R-Laurel) said his party will try to come to a consensus on how they will vote.
“I think we all want affordable housing, but we have different ideas and methods about how to get there,” he told Spotlight Delaware.
Gov. Matt Meyer’s office said he supports the bill, meaning the House vote will likely be the final hurdle for its passage.
Local control concerns reemerge
Many local government officials across the state have spoken out against the bill, while affordable housing advocates, healthcare organizations and building trades representatives have expressed support.
Local leaders take issue with the state trying to implement what they describe as a one-size-fits-all approach to affordable housing, when each locality has specific infrastructure, public safety, and other community needs that can’t be captured in the bill.
“The zoning requirements in Laurel are different than the zoning requirements in, say, Smyrna, which are different than the zoning requirements in Kent County, and they’re lumping all of those into the same basket,” Kent County Levy Court Commissioner Jody Sweeney said.
The bill also requires municipalities to allow dense housing, such as apartments or townhomes, in certain areas. The public would have a say over which areas are designated for dense housing. But once those rules are set, city or county councils would not be able to deny proposals for developments that meet those requirements.
Janelle Cornwell, executive director of the Delaware League of Local Governments, said this provision “takes away the voice of the public.”
“It takes away the transparency and the public input for development applications, it takes away the ability for neighbors to improve an application,” she said.
Jon Horner, president of the Home Builders Association of Delaware, argued that the public would still be able to comment through public meetings. He also said that people often use the public hearing process to stop or delay housing projects.
Some of the disagreement also comes down to how “affordable” housing is defined.
Sussex County Councilman Steve McCarron said he opposes the bill because it requires local municipalities to increase allowed housing density without requiring any of those homes to be income-restricted.
The Sussex County Council recently approved some long-anticipated reforms, which include allowing a higher rent threshold and more density within the county’s affordable housing program.
McCarron argued denser housing and the population increase it would bring would put a strain on the county’s infrastructure without bringing any homes that are truly affordable for low-income people.
“It’s a hope and a dream that we’re going to get affordable units out of this,” McCarron said.
But Sen. Russ Huxtable (D-Lewes), who sponsored the bill, said that smaller homes and apartments are inherently more affordable than single-family homes. And currently, it is easier for developers to build single-family homes in much of Sussex County because of restrictive zoning laws.
Some localities also point to Senate Joint Resolution 8 – signed into law by Gov. Matt Meyer last August – which created a pilot program for a handful of municipalities to receive free, technical assistance to include more affordable housing in their zoning and land use codes, as a reason that SB 23 is not necessary right now.
Gene Dvornick, the town manager in Georgetown, one of the jurisdictions participating in the technical assistance program, said he doesn’t think it makes sense to introduce another affordable housing mandate given how recently SJR8 was implemented.
“Sometimes it’s better to wait and see. Trying something was SJR8,” Dvornick told Spotlight Delaware. “Let’s see the results of that.”
Brian Frazee, president and CEO of the Delaware Healthcare Association, which represents that state’s hospital systems, said his organization supports SB 23 because it is currently difficult for healthcare workers to find housing that they can afford.
Sonya Starr, representing the Delaware Affordable Housing Coalition, said that’s not a unique problem in healthcare.
She cited statistics from the National Low Income Housing Coalition that show that the Delaware minimum wage is only enough to cover a rent of $780 per month. And workers making less than $32 an hour cannot afford the average cost of a two-bedroom apartment.
“What we’re hoping is that this bill will allow the people we need to work here… to also live and thrive here,” Starr 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 are some of the most important or interesting public meetings happening around the state this week.
General Assembly marks last full week
Grant-In-Aid to be determined
Capital budget to be marked up
PSC to start new Delmarva rate case
White Clay Creek Park to host info session
State Legislature marks last full week
The Delaware General Assembly will meet on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week, where they will have to complete the bulk of their annual work – and there remain a number of high-profile bills to be considered in the final days.
Those bills include must-haves like the annual state budgets as well as a variety of priorities from Senate and House leadership, ranging from healthcare reform to voting rights, energy costs to reassessment reform.
On Tuesday, lawmakers will vote on major bills like Senate Bill 23, which would relax permitting requirements for affordable housing but has proven controversial with municipalities, and Senate Bill 13, which would increase the number of eligible patients for free and reduced healthcare. A number of bills related to data centers and energy costs will be heard in committee on Tuesday too.
The voting agenda for Thursday has not been set yet, but lawmakers will also meet in committee where they will discuss the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, among other bills.
The final day of the legislature is Tuesday, June 30, and any bill not passed by then will have to restart the legislative process next year.
📍 The General Assembly is set convene beginning at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday inside Legislative Hall, located at 411 Legislative Ave. in Dover. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here and scroll through the “What’s Happening” tab.
Grant-In-Aid to be determined
Each year, the state legislature pays nonprofits around the state to outsource work in a variety of needs, including fire companies, social services, arts organizations, neighborhood programs, and more.
The decisions around the so-called “Grant-In-Aid” bill can mean the difference between expansion and closure for some of the smallest nonprofits. Which organizations get funded and to what degree is a process that will only grow more cloudy this year following questions around prior appropriations to organizations bedeviled by money issues, including the PAL of Delaware.
📍 The Joint Finance Committee will meet at 11 a.m. Thursday to discuss the “Grant-In-Aid” bill. The committee will meet in the JFC Hearing Room downstairs at Legislative Hall, located at 411 Legislative Ave. in Dover. For remote viewing, click here.
Capital budget markup this week
The Bond Bill Committee will meet Tuesday this week to decide on final priorities for bond funding this year.
The state government issues debt annually on the bond market in order to pay for capital projects, one-time purchases and more.
Gov. Matt Meyer proposed a $656 million capital budget for non-transportation-related projects – they are funded from taxes and fees paid by drivers – which included $60 million for a new state medical examiner site, $73 million for a new Appoquinimink school and millions to the state’s universities for renovations and repairs.
📍 The Joint Capital Committee will meet at 10 a.m. Tuesday to discuss the capital improvement bill. The committee will meet in the JFC Hearing Room downstairs at Legislative Hall, located at 411 Legislative Ave. in Dover. For remote viewing, click here.
Public Service Commission opens Delmarva rate case
Delaware’s energy market regulator will formally open the docket for Delmarva Power’s latest request for additional funding.
If approved by the PSC, the energy distributor will be allowed to temporarily raise rates on customers while it argues for making the rates permanent.
It is the third rate hike request filed by Delaware’s largest energy provider in five years, drawing criticism from the state’s Public Advocates and legislative leaders. The new request also seeks to raise the maximum profit the regulated utility could earn by about $9.4 million.
If the proposal is approved, a residential customer using an average of 810 kilowatt hours per month would see a bill increase of $6.42, or 4.13%, from $155.37 to $161.79, according to Delmarva.
📍 The Public Service Commission will meet at 1 p.m. Wednesday in the first floor hearing room of the Cannon Building, located at 861 Silver Lake Blvd. in Dover. For remote viewing info, click here.
White Clay Creek hosts open house
The DNREC Division of Parks and Recreation is hosting a community open house for projects at White Clay Creek State Park.
The open house is an opportunity for division staff to share information about the park and allow the public to provide feedback. The open house features a series of informational boards highlighting existing park features, upcoming capital projects, and future planned efforts to improve the amenities and services provided to park visitors.
Projects include Big Pond restoration, White Clay Creek Nature Center, trail projects, office location and overnight rentals.
📍 DNREC will host the open house from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Monday at Deerfield Golf Club, located at 507 Thompson Station Road in Newark.
The International Supercomputer Conference is upon us, featuring four days of HPC education, collaboration, and community for about 3,500 attendees in the heart of Hamburg, Germany. The ISC-High Performance event shines a spotlight on the international supercomputing community, with a particular focus on the contributions of European organizations.
“In 2026, ISC will continue to connect the dots: uniting HPC, AI, quantum and cloud for groundbreaking research from engineering to life sciences, all while championing sustainability as the cornerstone of future computing power,” stated Rosa Badia, the Director of HPC software research at Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain and the 2026 program chair for ISC 2026.
Here are five things to watch as ISC26 kicks off at Congress Center Hamburg:
1. EU Exascale Supercomputers
In the past year, Europe has joined the ranks of the exascale supercomputer club. The continent broke into the club with JUPITER, an Eviden BullSequana XH3000 cluster that went live at Forschungszentrum Jülich in September 2025, and which is currently number four on the TOP500 list.
View between the racks of JUPITER (Image courtesy Forschungszentrum Jülich / Sascha Kreklau)
Europe looked to double its exascale count in November 2025 with the unveiling of the contract to build Alice Recoque, which will be an Eviden BullSequana XH3500 cluster that will be installed at the CEA’s Très Grand Centre de calcul du (TGCC) in Bruyères-le-Châtel, France. It’s currently slated to go live next year.
As exascale-class systems, JUPTER and Alice Recocque can tackle the biggest HPC and AI jobs in science. But there are many other big new systems going in to Europe, including LUMI in Finland, Leonardo in Italy, and MareNostrum 5 in Spain. Collectively, these supercomputers demonstrate that Europe continues to invest in the future of HPC.
Expect these two systems, as well as Europe’s other supers, to be a topic of discussion at ISC.
2. Bull’s Reemergence
Bull is poised to make a big comeback, as the legendary computer maker finalizes its separation from parent company Atos Group and becomes nationalized by the government of France again.
Bull is strategically important for France, as well as the European region as a whole. Both of the new exascale-class systems, JUPITER and Alice Recoque, are Bull designs, which demonstrates the technical capability that this company possesses.
Bull has a convoluted 95-year-history, having become a subsidiary of American firms several times (Honeywell, General Electric). The timing of Bull’s move in February looks tailor made for the newly French company to make a big splash at this ISC event.
Whether Bull will treat ISC26 as a homecoming has yet to be seen.
3. Ethical AI for Science
The United States has the Genesis Mission at the DOE level and the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) from the NSF. In Europe, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (JU) has its own program, called the AI for Science and Collaborative EU Projects Access. Steve Conway, an HPCwire contributor and analyst emeritus at Intersect360 Research, says what’s unique about the European approach with the AI for Science and Collaborative EU Projects Access project is the emphasis on ethical AI.
“That’s an important focus, because with AI, as with some prior transformative technologies (e.g., nuclear fission/fusion), it’s difficult for the scientific community to strike an appropriate balance between what can be done–the excitement about imminent advances–and what should be done–prudent regulation and restraint,” Conway tells HPCwire.
Ther are unavoidable risks that come from pursuing frontier AI for scientific and industrial research, Conway says. For starters, it’s not yet fully explainable and trustworthy. It’s likely that in the next five to 10, we’ll here about some type of mishap–maybe not deliberate but still bad.
“That’s why it’s a good thing that EuroHPC is focusing on ethical AI, working to ensure that AI produces maximum benefit for society and minimal harm,” Conway says. “Europe has the strictest AI regulations on the planet. Some businesses think the regulations are too strict, but this approach is in line with Europe’s strong stand on protecting data privacy and other personal digital rights. EuroHPC will be applying this ethics-aware focus as it systemically upgrades the initiative’s petascale and exascale supercomputers with powerful AI capabilities.”
4. Data Center Sovereignty
Part and parcel of the exascale push, the EuroHPC JU AI for science initiative, and the renationalization of Bull is the European drive to control its own future when it comes to exascale supercomputers and AI data centers.
The European Commission essentially mandates that participating countries practice digital sovereignty, which means avoiding storing European subject’s data in American and Asian data centers. As the AI boom stretches into its fourth year, the data center build-out is in full swing. However, thanks to the huge amount of resources they consume, the data center push is butting up against another European mandate: to pursue a transition to green energy.
These two mandates–digital sovereignty and green energy—often are at odds. The EC planned to release a major Data Centre Energy Efficiency Package at the end of May, but it was delayed into June due to disputes over nuclear power. We’ll be keeping our ear to the ground to listen for signs of any changes on this front.
5. Quantum Computing
The acceleration of quantum computing is quickly becoming a story in its own right. Where many experts expected quantum advantage would take at least a couple more years just a few months ago, many are now saying to expect this big event to occur in 2027. The good news for Europeans is that many of the promising quantum computing startups are based on the continent.
(Funtap/Shutterstock)
According to an October 2025 report from European Commison’s Joint Research Centre, nearly one-third of the world’s quantum technology companies are based in Europe, compared to only about one-quarter for the U.S. and just 5% for China.
This includes company’s like Alice & Bob (France), Quantinuum (UK), plancq (Germany), Quandela (France), and IQM Quantum Computers (Finland). HPCwire has a number of briefings with quantum computer companies this week; stay tuned for coverage.
Tournament could hold up a useful hand mirror to the isolationism and divisiveness of Trump’s joint-host nation
One of the best parts of following football across the world is the way it drags you into special places, local shrines, objects of profound cultural connection. The US, of course, has these holy spaces too.
The queue of pilgrims in Philadelphia on Thursday morning stretched down the sun-blasted steps to the plaza at the bottom. Edging forward, the people in their ritual colours approached the figure at the top, arms outstretched in supplication, in a state of hushed deference. Called finally for his moment of communion, the man at the front of this line straightened his Ronaldinho shirt, clenched his fists above his head for the ceremonial Insta pic and shouted: “Adrian! I did it.”
"About 59% of TikTok videos served to a new account's For You feed are AI slop," writes Search Engine Journal, "according to a report from Kapwing, the video creation tool company. That's roughly three times the rate Kapwing found on YouTube."
The company manually reviewed over 10,000 TikTok videos across 20 categories and ran a separate fresh-account test, counting AI-generated content in the first 500 For You videos. Kapwing ran the same fresh-account test on YouTube and found that 104 of the first 500 Shorts, or 21%, were AI slop. On TikTok, 294 of 500 For You videos hit that threshold...
Of the 2,000 videos Kapwing reviewed in TikTok's Kids category, 57% were AI slop. That was the highest rate of any category in the analysis. The highest-rate tag was #cartoonkids, where 97 of 100 featured videos were AI-generated. Tags like #cartoons and #babysong both reached 83%, and #forkids came in at 79%. After Kids, the next highest AI slop rates were in Science and Education (35%), Health (33%), and History (33%). All three are categories where visual illustration and voiceover narration make up much of the content.
On the other end, categories where on-camera presence or physical demonstration are central had the lowest rates. Fashion came in at 1.3%, Music at 1.5%, and Fitness at 1.6%.
The article notes that by last November, TikTok "had already labeled 1.3 billion videos as AI-generated, according to the report."
Trump warning that Iran ‘won’t have a country’ if it closes strait of Hormuz contrasts with vice-president’s tone seeking to turn over ‘new leaf’ with Tehran – key US politics stories from Sunday 21 June
Donald Trump threatened to resume war with Iran even as his vice-president JD Vance met Iranian officials to begin peace talks in Switzerland.
Also overshadowing negotiations in Bürgenstock was Tehran’s announcement it had again closed the strait of Hormuz, a threat made because of ongoing Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon.
I saw these back in 2019, but now that the tech is real, do I just ball out and get an xr classic?
There’s a crazy aftermarket support, and where I am original xr boards go for about 1k usd, but is it worth getting og with outdated teck, or no brainer classic? 2.5x the price.
Talks expected to continue for rest of the week despite disruption caused by US president’s threat to bomb Iran and kidnap negotiating team
High-stakes talks between the US and Iran are expected to continue for the rest of the week in Switzerland, after a tense start that saw Iranian negotiators walk out in protest at a stream of threats issued by Donald Trump on social media.
The US president had threatened to bomb Iran and even to kidnap the Iranian negotiating team unless the strait of Hormuz was reopened, forcing mediators Qatar and Pakistan to continue negotiations in the background.
The blog Linuxiac reports:
A new systemd fork has appeared with a specific purpose: removing systemd's recently added support for storing a user's birth date in JSON user records.
The fork, called Liberated systemd, published its first tagged release as v261 shortly after the official systemd 261 release. In other words, the fork follows upstream systemd while reverting the change that added the new optional birthDate field.
Importantly, this is not a new init system, a wider redesign of systemd, or a general-purpose alternative to the upstream project. Its stated purpose is to remain close to upstream systemd while removing what the author describes as "surveillance enablement"... The author recommends testing the fork in a virtual machine before using it on real hardware and warns nightly builds are more likely to be unstable than named releases.
Several spectators removed from course over conduct
‘They definitely didn’t want me to win,’ says 32-year-old
Wyndham Clark spent much of Sunday afternoon hearing cheers for everyone but himself.
The grandstands and six-deep galleries packed around Shinnecock Hills revelled in his mistakes, groaned when he escaped trouble and reserved their loudest support for his playing partner, the world No 1, Scottie Scheffler. Several spectators were removed from the course after directing abusive comments at him, the United States Golf Association confirmed. By the time Clark finally tapped in on the 18th green to secure his second US Open championship in four years, the 32-year-old from Colorado felt he had won more than a golf tournament.
I am planning to rebuild my 15s px pack to replace the damaged wiring and get it ready for a stoke bms. The question i have is if the bms is reverse polarity like the battery or am i going to have to flip them with a new xt30. Just trying to plan the repair and want to make sure i have more xt30 on hand in case of hiccups. Also, since im in the butt of the board, would it be wise to upgrade the charge port to something a little more hardy. If so, any suggestions.
Today marks exactly 80 days of riding this absolute beast! Hands down some of the most ahh inspiring floating of my life, adrenaline inducing, stoak injecting, & pure happiness I've ever had on an euc. This baby is the best thing since sliced bread "corny" reference but IDC.
I've racked up exactly 780 miles so far in 80 days. That equates to an average of 10 miles of riding each & every single day! 🤘🏻💥
Thank you to the fungineers team, I swear this board has been so much fun & every single time I jump on it I feel like it's that very first time I rode a one wheel board, but much much better. Every ride is so damn enjoyable.
Any people on the fence deciding on getting on a funwheel or a future slow motion board... Do yourself the favor & make the right choice...
This is the end all be all of boards in my opinion.. idk how y'all are going to top this board with the next iteration.. don't seem like we could get much better then this, cause gahhhhhh dayummmm this baby is the bizzznesss 😋🔥💯
Leftwing opponent alleges vote count irregularities after Trump-endorsed lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella secures narrow majority
A Trump-admiring far-right millionaire lawyer and self-styled “outsider” has defeated a leftwing senator by a razor-thin margin to win Colombia’s presidential runoff, in an election that promises to mark a dramatic shift in the country’s decades-long armed conflict.
With 99.99% of ballots counted in the preliminary vote tally, the far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella had secured 12.96m votes, or 49.66%, just 250,830 more than the leftist senator Iván Cepeda, who received 12.7m votes, or 48.7%. A further 1.6% of ballots were cast blank.
Newsom declares state of emergency as crews continue to fight stubborn Boyle Heights fire that has raged for days
California’s governor has declared a state of emergency for the city of Los Angeles, as firefighters struggle to contain a stubborn warehouse blaze that has raged for days and blanketed parts of the city in smoke.
Gavin Newsom announced he was directing state agencies to provide “additional assistance and resources” to help battle the fire, located in the neighborhood of Boyle Heights in east Los Angeles.
Fire officials said in a news release that as crews continue firefighting operations throughout the day, the volume and color of visible smoke may fluctuate.
"There's a revolution in battery technology hiding in plain sight," reports The Wall Street Journal. "The 3-D printing of batteries has the potential to put energy storage inside any device.
"This will enable lightweight and long-lasting consumer gadgets, long-range military drones and even nanoscale robots."
Almost all the innovations we regularly hear about — from cheaper, tougher electric-vehicle batteries to "Holy Grail" solid-state batteries — are about changing the chemistry of batteries. The promise of battery-tech 3-D printing (aka additive manufacturing) is simple: What if batteries could fill any available space, even structural elements of our gadgets, rather than always taking a rigid shape like a pouch or cylinder?
The new approach has obvious appeal. The entire airframe of a drone could be filled with energy storage for increased range. Smartglasses could have sleek battery-packed frames, so they look like everyday eyewear rather than "Revenge of the Nerds" props. One of the biggest advantages of 3-D printing is that it works with any battery, regardless of its cell chemistry. It could advance today's lithium-ion as well as emerging sodium-ion and solid-state tech... Some [startups] are trying to use 3-D printing to create efficiencies in existing battery manufacturing systems. A brave handful of startups are pursuing radical new designs and approaches. They're starting with defense applications, where cost and scale are less of an issue...
At Silicon Valley-based Sakuu... [r]ather than trying to 3-D-print whole batteries, the company is working on replacing one of battery manufacturing's biggest pain points, says Arwed Niestroj, Sakuu's chief operating officer, who is also a nuclear physicist and former head of Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America. Existing battery assembly lines include football-field-long ovens for drying layers of material that have been dissolved in solvents. This requires a huge amount of energy and is a significant contributor to manufacturing costs, a big reason EV batteries aren't cheaper. Sakuu's process, under development for years, uses additive manufacturing to lay down key battery components without solvents, eliminating the need for ovens, says Niestroj.
Sakuu is currently working to commercialize this tech with a major battery manufacturer...
️ Wyndham Clark survived a wobble to win his second US Open by one shot ️ Official leaderboard
The defending champion JJ Spaun didn’t make the weekend. Last year’s runner-up did, though, and Robert MacIntyre has finished his week with a level-par 70. He’s +7, and wouldn’t be human if he’s still not cursing Viktor Hovland for giving Spaun a read ahead of that tournament-winning putt. Meanwhile in other European news, Justin Rose has just made three birdies in a row, on 11, 12 and 13, to rise up the standings to +1. A top-ten finish within reach for the 2013 champ.
There have been quite a few shots of both Wyndham Clark and Scottie Scheffler going through their practice routines. Clark wedging an alignment stick through the loops of his trousers for real-time hip analysis; Scheffler missing a few short putts, which doesn’t augur well. Meanwhile here’s more good news for Clark courtesy of David ‘Not That One’ Howell: “The scoring variance has continued to be lower than in prior US Opens here, and low variance is obviously what a six-shot leader wants. Secondly, finding fairways doesn’t seem to be as important today. Lots of players have been scoring over par while hitting most fairways, and several of today’s best rounds have come in spite of missing a few. Considering that Clark has historically not been the straightest off the tee, it’s reasonable to assume he might find the fescue a bit under pressure, but that might not be a death sentence today.” Speaking of belt loops, any old excuse to enjoy the greatest zinger ever told …
American wins second title with wire-to-wire victory
Crowd cheer mistakes as Clark shoots 73 on Sunday
Wyndham Clark arrived at the 1st tee for the final round of the US Open on Sunday afternoon with six shots in hand and two wildly divergent outcomes before him. He could complete a wire-to-wire victory and capture America’s national title for a second time. Or he could equal the largest final-round collapse in major championship history.
The 32-year-old American ultimately responded with a masterclass in patience, restraint and nerve, overcoming a furious challenge from Sam Burns and increasingly hostile galleries at Shinnecock to capture his second US Open title in four years with a score of four under par, finishing one shot clear.
Mayor says ‘violence has no place in our city’ as president criticizes governor for not accepting national guard troops
At least seven people have been killed and dozens injured in several shootings in Chicago since Friday, police said, with Donald Trump once again calling for military intervention in the midwestern city.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump questioned why Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker, had not welcomed military deployment.
Exclusive: While recruits will increase headcount for now, broader adoption of AI could lead to job cuts in future
Lloyds Banking Group has launched an AI recruitment drive for 300 tech experts, weeks before its chief executive, Charlie Nunn, announces a strategic plan for the 261-year-old lender.
The bank said it intended the recruits to work on its use and development of agentic AI by September, referring to autonomous AI models that can plan and execute tasks with minimal human oversight.
Two-thirds of respondents support increasing the 2% digital services tax for multinationals
Taxpayers want the UK to increase levies on giant global technology companies such as Facebook owner Meta, Google and Amazon, a survey of Britons’ attitudes on corporate taxes suggests.
The polling released on Monday by the Fair Tax Foundation – abody providing businesses with certification around responsible tax conduct – found that 67% of respondents believe that the government should charge higher digital services taxes on multinational technology groups “to increase their overall tax contribution in the UK”.
Eva Clarke, Hana Berger-Moran, and Mark Olsky are survivors born to survivors. During the Holocaust, their mothers were young Jewish women sent to concentration camps when they were newly pregnant.
Great white sharks have abandoned a former hotspot in South Africa. Some pin the blame on a pair of orcas. Others point the finger at another culprit: humans.
At 22, Army medic LeRoy "Pete" Petersohn helped liberate the Nazi concentration camp Mauthausen and documented its horrors in a letter home, testimony his son says Petersohn felt compelled to record for history.
Photographer Chris Fallows, known for his dramatic photos of great white sharks breaching the water near Cape Town, South Africa, shared the stories behind his astonishing images of wildlife, from elephants and cheetahs to humpback whales and lions.
FAA investigating incident involving Delta and American jets that forced Delta plane to abort landing attempt
A Delta jet was roughly 300ft (90 meters) from an American Airlines plane during a close call at Boston’s airport that forced the Delta aircraft to abort a weekend landing attempt, an aviation expert said on Sunday.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it was investigating the incident between two commercial flights that happened Saturday at Boston Logan international airport.
Objections come as Trump threatens to renew attacks on Iran if it doesn’t rein in its proxy in Lebanon
US political figures from left and right voiced fresh objections on Sunday to Donald Trump’s provisional deal with Iran – even as the US president made new threats while Vice-President JD Vance hailed progress during the first round of direct peace talks in Switzerland.
Negotiations in Lucerne between the US and Iran have already run into difficulties, after Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble. “If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!”
Voters in the San Francisco Bay Area are deciding who will fill the remainder of former Rep. Eric Swalwell's congressional seat in a special primary election on Tuesday.
Electrek reports:
Tesla wants to sell modular AI data center hardware, according to a new trademark application for a product called "Megapod." The filing describes a complete, self-contained computing system for AI workloads...
Tesla filed the "Megapod" trademark (serial number 99893717) with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this month, through its longtime IP counsel. It's an intent-to-use application, meaning Tesla is claiming the name for a product it hasn't launched yet. The goods-and-services description is unusually specific for a trademark. Megapod covers "modular data center hardware systems for artificial intelligence computing, comprised of computer servers, computer hardware for artificial intelligence data processing, networking equipment, power distribution units, and cooling systems." It also covers "self-contained modular computing hardware systems for artificial intelligence workloads," integrated platforms sold as a single unit — an enclosure bundling compute, power distribution, and cooling — and downloadable software to monitor, manage, and optimize those systems.
In plain terms: Tesla wants to sell a turnkey AI data center building block. Not a battery, not a chip on its own, but the full rack-and-room of servers, networking, power, and cooling that AI training and inference run on.
Tesla's offering would have to compete with Nvidia's liquid-cooled, rack-scale systems that simulates a giant GPU, the article points out. But "The bigger issue is that Tesla has no merchant compute-hardware business to build on."
Tesla's own AI training cluster, Cortex at Gigafactory Texas, runs on roughly 67,000 Nvidia H100-equivalent GPUs. In other words, Tesla is one of Nvidia's customers, not a competitor selling alternative hardware... Where Tesla does have a real AI-data-center business is power, not compute. Its Megapack and new Megablock energy storage products are selling into AI data centers as grid buffers — Musk's own xAI has bought roughly $1 billion of Megapacks to keep its training runs powered. That energy-storage strength is the one credible thread here. A Megapod that bundles Tesla's power electronics, thermal management, and the enclosure — the "shell" around the chips rather than the chips themselves — would at least sit adjacent to a business Tesla actually runs.
Has anyone bought and used the CHI-VE XR 20.2 battery from chibattery systems and if so how much range do you get? Also have their been any big issues with their batteries?
Algae blooms and peeling paint mar $14.2m renovation as president claims pool has been ‘seriously vandalized’
Repair work will begin “immediately” at the troubled Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool in Washington DC, Donald Trump said on Sunday, after suggesting the pool would need to be drained and blaming alleged “vandals” for the disruption.
The reflecting pool has been plagued by algae blooms and peeling paint following the controversial recent renovation efforts for America’s 250th anniversary celebrations next month.
Company ‘extremely sorry’ for ‘unacceptable’ email urging customers to ‘Snap up these deals quicker than a croc can catch a kid!’
The discount voucher website Wowcher has apologised after appearing to make reference to a crocodile attack on a toddler at a zoo in an email promoting its offers.
A spokesperson for Wowcher said it was urgently reviewing its marketing content after the subject line of an email on Saturday urged customers to “Snap up these deals quicker than a croc can catch a kid!”
In macOS, you can apparently create files and directories in the Finder with names that include slashes. If you then go into the terminal and take a look with ls, you’ll see that the slashes are actually colons.
I don’t understand all the nuances, but I know this is a side-effect of the fact that macOS has not one but two path separators: the slash (/) and the colon (:). The two separators are used in different contexts, and the system will translate between them as needed.
These two separators reflect the two parent systems of modern macOS: classic Mac OS and the Unix-like NeXTSTEP. When they were joined together, Apple’s engineers had to build a file system that was compatible with both the classic Mac’s file system (the Mac OS Extended File System, aka HFS+), and with NeXTSTEP’s file system (the Unix file system, aka UFS). Among other differences, these systems had different path separators: HFS+ used a colon, while UFS used a slash.
I had no idea macOS worked this way, but it makes sense considering the platform’s dual history. What’s interesting is that when Apple moved to APFS almost a decade ago, this duality in path separators remained, most likely for backwards compatibility reasons. In a sense, this is somewhat similar to Windows supporting both backward and forward slashes, with the former being a leftover from DOS, and the latter an addition (to Windows) from the UNIX world.
None of that beats Windows when using the Japanese or Korean locale, though. Because Japanese and Korean Windows use different codepages than Windows in the Americas and Western Europe, these versions of Windows render the backslash as the yen sign (¥) and and won (₩) sign respectively. As such, something like the Program Files directory actually renders like C:¥Program Files¥ and C:₩Program Files₩. Similar issues occurred in other Windows locales as well, but the impact of this in Japan and South Korea were so widespread that people just expect it to be that way, even if it’s easily fixed today.
I can’t find if Windows 11 still uses ¥/₩ in Japan/South Korea, since the last references of it I can quickly uncover all point to Windows 10.
PC Gamer reports:
The UK government is considering an Australia-style ban on social media for under-16s, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying that the ban could take effect as soon as spring next year. As for the much nearer future, Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told BBC Breakfast earlier this week, "We will make further statements in July about VPNs and further restrictions."
To be clear, no specific restrictions have yet been announced and Kendall sounded somewhat cautious about an outright ban during a parliament debate that took place the same day. "I have commissioned further research about their usage. There are really important issues to balance here," she says. "Many people want to use VPNs for privacy — that is important — but we know that some children use them to get around restrictions. I will come back to that in July in our response to the consultation." So, we'll have to wait until next month for anything definite, but it's hard not to feel like a full ban on VPNs is already on the table. If that does come to pass, more than the contents of my Bluesky inbox will be at stake.
Utah in the US has already tried to implement a full VPN ban (though this was postponed until September after Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, challenged the law in court)... [T]he UK could just be the next domino after Utah, potentially setting off a chain reaction that affects users around the world.
The article also argues that age checks can also be a privacy nightmare "with the security breach that exposed the personal info of 70,000 Discord users last year being one case in point."
Here's the complete statement from UK Technology Secretary Kendall. "I'll come back in July with a further statement around VPNs but also additional measures that we want to look at, further restrictions on AI chatbots that parents have found very worrying, more about overnight curfews or breaks in doomscrolling for 16- and 17-year-olds."
Town of Eureka evacuated due to risk from Iron fire as officials forecast more hot weather in week ahead
Extreme heat and dry, windy conditions are fueling multiple wildfires across the US west, including a massive blaze in Utah that forced the evacuation of a small town, with hot weather in the forecast raising the risk of more blazes in the week ahead.
The Iron fire in Utah’s Juab county was first detected on Saturday and has so far blackened more than 2,000 acres. The fire, about 70 miles (113km) south-west of Salt Lake City, forced the evacuation of Eureka, population 1,000, and people at a nearby ranch.
Wondering if there is an option to revive my Pint. I was dumb and left it on charge for a month without using it. Any way to bring it back alive or is it gone?
404 Media remembers how a Florida police office looked up his ex-girlfriend's license plate in the Flock automated license plate reader system at least 69 times in 2024 — even searching for her mom's license plate at least 24 times. The police office was charged with stalking and hacking-related offenses, serving one day in prison with five years of probation — but his case "was not a one-off." [Alternate link via Bruce Schneier]
Local news reports from around the country repeatedly detail police abusing the Flock surveillance system in order to stalk their partners or ex-partners. The contours of each story are much the same, with the police officer in question using their access to the system to repeatedly track a specific person over the course of weeks or months. The cases highlight the fact that Flock can be used to track the whereabouts of individual people, that police do not get a warrant in order to use the system, and that, if they have access to the system, they have the technical ability to look up any license plate they want for any reason they want. An April study by the civil rights group Institute for Justice found that at least 18 police officers have been caught around the country using Flock to stalk a romantic interest in the last few years; another database, called the ALPR Abuse Library, has documented 20 specific cases of "stalking/targeting" around the country.
The known cases of police stalking are almost certainly a vast underreporting of the overall abuse, because they largely include only cases in which the behavior was so egregious that it led to police officers being fired, arrested, or both. Flock told 404 Media that it is "aware of 15 incidents of abuse, each surfaced because of the transparency and accountability features deliberately built into our platform.... There are also 140,000 monthly active users of Flock, so the relatively rare instances of abuse, while obviously wrong and awful, are exactly that — rare," a Flock spokesperson told 404 Media. [One in 10,000.] "Humans are fallible; unlike most tools society provide law enforcement, Flock ensures that in the instances when our technology is misused, the evidence used to hold responsible parties accountable, is right there in our system. We also encourage all our customers to have a usage policy, regular training, and to implement our Audit Assistance tool, which proactively flags unintended use...."
But it is also the case that Flock has strenuously fought against lawsuits and potential regulations that are seeking to require police to get a warrant to use the system. And many cases of abuse have not been detected by police departments themselves but by those private citizens, journalists, and stalking victims who have found patterns of abuse in public records files they have obtained from their local police departments. In most cases of Flock-related stalking reviewed by 404 Media, the abuse occurred over the course of months or years, and the victims were subjected to dozens or hundreds of lookups. Other abuse cases have been discovered using the website HaveIBeenFlocked.com, a website that compiles Flock searches released via public records requests and turns them into a searchable database. Flock has repeatedly tried to get that website taken down, as we have previously reported.
Seven-time champion, now 44, continues on-court return
She will also compete in doubles with sister Venus
Serena Williams will make a stunning return to singles competition at Wimbledon after being announced as the tournament’s final wildcard on Sunday.
Wimbledon will mark Williams’s first singles appearance in nearly four years after retiring from the sport at the 2022 US Open and it marks a dramatic escalation in her comeback.
Apple’s Swift has become the de-facto language for Apple’s own developers for a while now, and it seems that with the new operating system releases from the company unveiled during WWDC, Switch is now also being used in the kernel.
Naturally I dropped what I was doing and went grepping through the iOS 27 kernelcache. Alas, nothing came of it. All is not lost though: I found the Embedded Swift runtime in macOS 27, sitting in com.apple.kec.pthread of all places. Then I went poking around the root filesystem and it turns out Apple gave the whole effort a name: KernelKit.
It’s still quite limited at this time, which makes sense – you don’t want to be too crazy with the core of the operating system that runs on god knows how many PCs, smartphones, and other devices. It’s also entirely contained within a few kexts as embedded runtimes, and the XNU kernel itself remains entirely C and C++.
White Scottish man, 38, charged after five men were injured in spate of attacks in city on Friday night
Witnesses to the alleged knife attacks on Muslims and others in Edinburgh on Friday have described seeing a taxi and an Uber bike courier being targeted in Leith.
The attacks, suspected of being directed against Muslims and people of colour, began near a mosque in the west of Edinburgh, followed by incidents on Leith Walk in the east of the city.
On this "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" broadcast, U.N Ambassador Mike Waltz, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic Rep. Jason Crow join Margaret Brennan.
Every website has a favicon. It’s that little icon in your browser tab. Usually you upload it once and then never think about it again. But. A favicon is just an image. An image is just pixels. And pixels are just bytes.
So of course I wondered if I could store something inside one.
Im always trying to look out for debris when i ride. anything metal i try to clearly avoid. glass is always sketchy, but i wouldnt usually fear a puncture. i had a friend just replace a tire from a glass puncture. you could hear the air escaping and it defintly did not look pluggable or patchable. went thru like a knife. 0.o
I’m considering a 24s1p RS50 pack or a 20s1p. Can the PintV controller and PintV BMS safely operate with a 24s lithium-ion battery charged to 100.8V, and if not, what is the maximum supported voltage and series count? I’m willing to change the BMS but don’t wanna change controllers as I just installed the PintV, Extended WTF Rails, 5”MTE hub, Bang Bumpers. Only thing left stock is the motor/stator, battery box, controller box, cables.
Officers find man unconscious and unresponsive with injuries indicating a fall from an ‘elevated position’
A 51-year-old man fell to his death during a concert at Madison Square Garden in New York on Saturday night, police said.
Officers responding to a 911 emergency call at about 9.51pm found the man unconscious and unresponsive with injuries indicating a fall from an “elevated position”, New York police said in a statement.
While PM’s desire to fight was strong, time with his inner circle at Chequers sharpened his sense of the inevitable
On Friday, as the dust settled on Andy Burnham’s thumping victory in the Makerfield byelection, Keir Starmer was in defiant mood. “I have said repeatedly, I am not going to walk away,” the prime minister said, adding: “Let’s pull together as a party and a movement.”
Just 48 hours later, one of his most loyal ministers was on the BBC sending a very different message. “I don’t want to come on here and be delusional that there is no process, there are no forces at work which are challenging the prime minister as leader – that is clearly the case,” said the business secretary, Peter Kyle.
Tech Times reports:
Linux 7.2's merge window closed out a cleanup campaign on Friday that most kernel developers had stopped expecting to see end: the complete removal of strncpy(), a C string-copy function that the kernel's own documentation labels "actively dangerous," from every subsystem, driver, and architecture-specific file in the kernel source tree.
The merge landed June 20, 2026. After around 362 commits spread across six years of incremental work, no call site using the function remained, and the function itself — including the last per-CPU-architecture optimized implementations — was struck from the source. The removal matters beyond housekeeping. strncpy() is a persistent source of a specific class of memory error: kernel buffers that contain sensitive data can leak bytes past an unterminated string boundary, a pattern that enables memory disclosure vulnerabilities. Eliminating the function from the tree removes that entire class from the kernel's attack surface — and, critically, makes strncpy() unavailable to any future contributor, turning a best-practice suggestion into an enforced policy.
Phoronix notes it's replaced by five different functions:
In place of strncpy, Linux kernel code should use strscpy() for NUL terminated destinations, strscpy_pad() for NUl-terminated destinations with zero-padding, strtomem_pad() for non-NUL-terminated fixed-width fields, memcpy_and_pad() for bounded copies with explicit padding, or memcpy() for known-length memory copies.
"The reason five functions were needed," explains Tech Times, "is that different parts of the kernel were using strncpy() for five semantically distinct memory operations — each with a different intent, different termination requirement, and different padding behavior. "
The original function obscured all of those differences under a single ambiguous name. The 362-commit campaign to replace it was, in effect, a codebase-wide audit that forced every call site to declare its actual intent in code That is an engineering outcome with lasting value: the kernel's string-handling semantics are now explicit where they were previously implicit, and future maintainers can read a function name and understand what a copy operation actually does.
Ministers say Starmer will set out his intentions on Monday morning with an autumn departure the most likely option
Keir Starmer is expected to announce a timetable for his departure on Monday morning, clearing the way for Andy Burnham to become prime minister without a formal contest by the autumn.
Cabinet ministers say Starmer will set out his intentions outside No 10 Downing Street, starting a process of the UK installing its seventh prime minister in a decade.
There was and is ‘no restriction’ on Israeli soldiers to act to eliminate threats in Lebanon, and that troops would not withdraw from the security zone, Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Sunday, according to Reuters.
Israeli strikes killed at least 20 people in Lebanon on Saturday, Lebanon’s state news agency NNA reported, a day after a ceasefire with Iran-backed Hezbollah took effect after months of escalating violence.
Archie Law, 15, sailed his own vessel to save men in distress, beating lifeboat service to the scene
A 15-year-old boy rescued two men who had fallen from an inflatable toy boat off the Isle of Skye by sailing his own vessel to save them, beating the lifeboat service to the scene.
Archie Law beat a volunteer crew of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) to the rescue on Saturday evening after the UK coastguard received reports of two males in difficulty in the water off Broadford Bay around 9pm.
Argentinian’s 6-7 (4), 6-4, 6-3 triumph biggest of his career
Gruelling match is the longest Queen’s Club final
All week at the Queen’s Club, Francisco Cerúndolo has had an unlikely guest in his players’ box: the No 10 Argentina shirt of Diego Maradona. And on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Hand of God, Cerúndolo summoned tennis from the heavens to lift the biggest trophy of his career.
But after fending off the American Tommy Paul 6-7 (4), 6-4, 6-3 in an epic that lasted a record three hours and two minutes, Cerúndolo said he had been inspired by another of his heroes: his father, Alejandro, who had flown to London to see him win.
Some commentators have said Andy Burnham is a better communicator than Keir Starmer, but have questioned how different he is on policy.
The Guardian’s policy editor, Kiran Stacey, has helpfully looked at the political projects a Burnham government would likely pursue in this useful explainer:
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said the Trump administration is "laser focused" on addressing Iran's nuclear program in an interview on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan."
Just like that, my college career has ended. I walked the stage and all of the embarrassing, anxiety-inducing and unnecessarily dramatic moments that kept me up at night the last four years suddenly didn’t matter.
I can’t say my college experience was perfect, but it was definitely filled with an abundance of lessons, both about myself and the world around me. So, as I bring my legacy at The Review to a close, here’s some advice from a new graduate.
First things first, read your syllabi — yes, all of them. This isn’t like high school where you can skim over it, take it home for your parents to sign and never think about it again. In college, the syllabus is basically the bible of the course and if you don’t want assignments, exams and annoying policies sneaking up on you at the worst times, you’d better check that thing like your life depends on it.
Secondly, join something. It could be literally anything. I am lucky to have grown up in a house that put emphasis on making school fun and joining extracurricular activities. This is something that I have carried with me from elementary school to college, but I understand that not everyone is the same.
I won’t say your college experience will be miserable without being in a club or sport, but to be completely transparent, you will probably struggle. One of the things I really appreciate about this school is that there are so many ways to get involved. Attending a larger university gives you many opportunities to meet people, but it can also be very overwhelming. Joining at least one student organization will make making friends so much easier plus more authentic and manageable.
I got involved in multiple things here and still wish I did more, so take full advantage while you can. Go to the involvement fairs. Try something. Try everything. Just don’t go through college and come out saying you did absolutely nothing.
Speaking of making friends, this is an important one — you will lose friends and that’s okay. Whether it’s high school friendships that you thought would last through college or your freshman year friend group, you will experience the loss of friends at some point. It sucks, but it’s a part of life.
Many students, including myself, hear stories of college roommates turned into bridesmaids and we put pressure on ourselves to find the friends of a lifetime in college. While this is definitely achievable, not every friend you make is going to stick around — some might not even make it to the end of the semester.
Don’t worry. More friends will come and any connection that was meant to be will last a lifetime. Don’t hold on to a friendship that isn’t serving you just because you think you have to.
Of course, friendships aren’t the only relationships that get complicated in college. Dating is an equally difficult, if not worse, experience to navigate. Similar to friendships, there’s this whole culture surrounding finding your soulmate in college. If you do, I’m impressed and if you don’t, trust me, you’re not alone.
I could make an entirely new article about the dos and don’ts of college dating, but I will give you a brief overview instead: keep your head up, be yourself, don’t compromise your morals and never date someone in your major or an adjacent one — trust me, you will end up having classes with your ex until you graduate.
Aside from building friendships and insane romantic endeavors, you will also come in contact with a variety of people in your day-to-day life. It’s important to remember that not everyone comes from the same background as you.
Some of these experiences will be fascinating and fulfilling. You will meet people who have different cultural and social backgrounds, swap stories and have meaningful conversations. But, on the other end of things, you will meet people who don’t know how to do their own laundry, have never shared a room and have never seen this much “diversity” before.
Both ends of the spectrum will teach you a lot about yourself, your upbringing and how to interact with individuals who are different from you. Be mindful of these differences, let the positive ones expand your world and work around the negative ones the best you can.
My last piece of advice is arguably the most important — no one dictates your college experience except you.
These four years are what you make of them. Yes, there will be things that are out of your control and in the moment, it will feel like the end of the world. But, in the end, you can always turn it around. A few bad days or weeks don’t have to dictate your entire four-year experience.
To the incoming freshman and current students, I hope these pieces of advice will help you through the next few years. Remember to cherish it as much as you can, because one day you’re moving into your freshman dorm and the next you’re walking across the stage.
Lastly, thank you to The Review for giving me a platform to share my thoughts, feelings and opinions these past two years. I’ve had an absolute blast and will greatly miss being a part of this organization — former Co-Managing Mosaic Editor Aliyah Jackson, signing out.
28-year-old is first US player to win at Halle since 1993
Tiafoe will climb to No 19 as Wimbledon nears
Frances Tiafoe beat fellow American Taylor Fritz 6-4 6-4 to win the Halle Open on Sunday, sealing the biggest title of his career and becoming the first American since 1993 to lift the ATP 500 grass-court trophy.
Tiafoe set the tone early, breaking serve in the opening set and remaining composed on his own delivery to keep Fritz from settling. He carried that momentum into the second set, again striking early and dictating from the baseline to wrap up the win and snap a seven-match losing streak against Fritz since his first victory in 2016.
NBC News reports:
A group of companies that specialize in tracking international shipments of sensitive technologies is backing a Capitol Hill bill that would require America's most powerful AI chips to incorporate stronger security mechanisms aimed at preventing the chips from reaching China and other adversaries. The letter, signed by six companies, says the Chip Security Act (CSA) would increase American chip companies' competitiveness and close key loopholes in the U.S. export control regime.
The move clashes with claims from semiconductor lobbying groups that the requirements would constrain America's booming chip industry. Sent to congressional leadership Thursday morning and seen by NBC News, the dispatch instead argues that more robust security verification would assure chip customers and manufacturers that they are abiding by sensitive restrictions on chip sales. The companies argue that the boosted confidence will "lead to increased sales, faster export approvals, larger transactions, greater access to new markets, and more expansive chip deals."
Despite U.S. export control laws banning sales of advanced AI chips to certain countries, including China, loopholes in current requirements have allowed billions of dollars' worth of America's best AI chips to be sold to entities in third-party countries that can then forward them to China. In just one case in March, the Justice Department charged three people with conspiring to forward $2.5 billion of AI chips to China. The CSA aims to address those loopholes, mandating that chip exporters better track where advanced chips are sent, via either bespoke location-verification hardware or software that can run on existing hardware. That, bill proponents claim, would ensure that sensitive chips could be sold to countries like Malaysia or Indonesia without fear of further transfer to China... Experts say that because chips perform the advanced computations required for frontier AI systems, cutting off access to the chips is crucial to prevent geopolitical rivals from using AI systems for military or economic purposes.
The following is the transcript of the interview with Democratic Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on June 21, 2026.
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said he expects a diplomatic solution with Iran to fail, though he noted that he would "rather try diplomacy than take it off the table."
A former member of Iran’s negotiating team in the previous round of talks with the US in Islamabad is facing the threat of prosecution and dismissal from parliament after he went on the main state broadcaster to reveal what he claimed were confidential letters from the country’s supreme leader.
The interview with Mahmoud Nabavian, the deputy chair of Iran’s national security council, was eventually cut off, but only after he said he had seen secret correspondence written by Mojtaba Khamenei in which the ayatollah allegedly said Iran’s negotiating team had overstepped its mandate
The following is the transcript of the interview with Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on June 21, 2026.
Prison officers’ union calls for immediate end to practice at HMYOI Wetherby over fears for child and animal welfare
Pet ferrets kept as therapy animals at the UK’s largest children’s prison have been co-opted by managers to kill rats, resulting in a bloody incident and concerns over child and animal welfare.
The unorthodox method of vermin control was waved through last month at HMYOI Wetherby in West Yorkshire following a surge in rat numbers in prison offices and grounds.
While the Rust Foundation has a Security Initiative to protect its ecosystem, "the threats have expanded," they announced this week, "and so has the kind of help maintainers need."
Much of this comes back to a single shift: Automated tooling (much of it now built on large language models) has gotten good enough to surface real vulnerabilities in open source code quickly and at scale. That is useful, and several large Rust projects have already received and fixed credible issues found this way. The same tooling has also made it trivial to generate vulnerability reports that look plausible and are worthless. Maintainers across the ecosystem are losing real hours sorting these from the reports that matter, and the noise tends to bury the signal.
So, with funding from the Alpha-Omega Project, the Rust Foundation is bringing on a full-time AI Security Engineer in Residence dedicated to the Rust ecosystem. This position is being funded with part of the $12.5M in open source security funding that the Linux Foundation announced in March.
The role exists to take pressure off maintainers. The person in this position will use a mix of human-led and AI-assisted methods to proactively review Rust itself and the crates the ecosystem leans on most and help us separate real, exploitable issues from false positives and low-signal noise before anything reaches a maintainer...
This role will run full-time for six months to start, with room to extend depending on what we learn and the funding available. Methods, playbooks, and prompts will be documented so the work doesn't end with the contract. We are grateful that Rust is not embarking on this work in isolation. Several other ecosystems have received parallel Alpha-Omega grants for the same kind of work (e.g., the PHP Foundation and the Drupal Association) and we plan to share tooling, triage practices, and what we learn rather than duplicating work
A statement from Rust's new AI Security Engineer in Residence acknowledges that "One of our next challenges is the wave of bugs discovered by the next generation of AI-powered developer tools."
Rob Jetten acknowledges grief and pain of Moluccan families as crowdfunded monument unveiled in Rotterdam
The Dutch prime minister, Rob Jetten, has formally apologised for the “heartless” mistreatment of thousands of Moluccan soldiers who fought for the Dutch colonial army during Indonesia’s struggle for independence.
About 12,500 people – men who had served in the Royal Dutch East Indies and their families – came from a group of Indonesian islands to the Netherlands in 1951, many having been given no choice. They thought it would be a temporary evacuation after Indonesia had won independence.
Sports and nationwide music festival affected, with temperatures for some expected to reach 42C from Monday
Authorities in France have placed more than a third of the country under a red heat alert, cancelled some outdoor sports events and restricted alcohol consumption at the nationwide Fête de la Musique event amid a brutal heatwave forecast to push temperatures above 40C.
Level 1 or 2 heat alerts were issued on Sunday for about 53 million people, just over 75% of the population. A record 35 of the country’s 96 mainland departments were put on danger-to-life red alert, with another 45 under an orange warning.
Health alerts are in place as very high humidity adds to danger of heat stress for the most vulnerable
The Met Office has expanded its extreme heat warning for the UK, predicting record-breaking highs of 38C (100.4F) this week.
The Met Office forecasts that extremely high temperatures could last from Monday until Thursday, leading to health concerns for elderly and vulnerable people. The forecaster said there was “growing confidence” that this week may break the record for the hottest June temperature of 35.6C, which was set in 1976 in Southampton and Camden Square, London, in June 1957.
Thanks to rushed deadlines, financial pressure and overworked staff, titles are going to market before they’re ready – and then sliding from view immediately
A Sydney author – I’ll call her Rebecca – vowed never to write another book after the deranging experience of publishing her first. She’s using a pseudonym because one day she might change her mind; the notoriously small Australian publishing industry does not tend to look with favour on authors who complain.
When Rebecca was proofing her debut – a work of nonfiction published by one of the big five – she discovered that a pivotal chapter had been cut. “I thought it was a mistake, that it had somehow been left out of the papers they’d sent,” she says. “Turns out they’d deliberately excised it and thought I wouldn’t notice.”
Groups say new directive fails to respect Native sovereignty amid complicated history of Indigenous child removals
One morning early last July, Micha Bitsinnie arrived at work to an onslaught of messages from confused families.
New Mexico’s governor Michelle Lujan Grisham had just issued a directive mandating the state’s child welfare department seek custody of all newborns who had been exposed to drugs and alcohol in utero. Some parents wondered whether medications that they were taking for addiction recovery, such as methadone, would flag their cases. Healthcare providers wondered whether the fentanyl in an epidural counted as a drug exposure.
On Mamre Road, in Sydney’s outer western suburbs, there are plans to build a “hyperscale” datacentre that will be one of the biggest in the world.
If approved, the 52-hectare site will include six four-storey buildings that stretch 40 metres high, alongside 936 cooling units and 852 diesel backup power generators.
After the US said seeking affordable medical care for their son would not impede their re-entry, Tamila Vashchuk and her 10-year-old were issued removal orders
Tamila Vashchuk and her husband, Mykola, are minor celebrities in this corner of Ohio.
The Ukrainian couple have appeared on the cover of local magazines and been invited onto morning television shows. En route to building a successful pierogi food business, they’ve met with the governor. A recent law graduate from Cleveland State University, Mykola is hoping to do his bar exams someday. Most Sundays, they volunteer at the local church.
Colombians are going to the polls in a presidential runoff expected to trigger a dramatic shift in the country’s decades-long armed conflict, now at its most violent point since the landmark 2016 peace agreement between the government and most of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).
Polls show the frontrunner is the Trump-admiring far-right lawyer and millionaire businessman Abelardo de la Espriella, who has vowed to abandon President Gustavo Petro’s “total peace” plan of negotiating the disarmament of all criminal organisations and instead return to full-scale military confrontation with armed groups.
This week the Ubuntu desktop's director of engineering announced they're bringing speech-to-text dictation to Ubuntu Desktop, aiming for an experience "that feels like a natural part of the desktop while respecting user privacy and running entirely on local hardware."
"Speech recognition has become a common feature on modern platforms, and we think it should be a first-class experience on Ubuntu Desktop as well."
More details from the blog It's FOSS:
For Ubuntu 26.10, the initial version of Myna is expected to be a desktop dictation tool built around GNOME on Wayland with a push-to-talk mechanism gatekeeping when your microphone accepts input. Using it means holding a hotkey, speaking, and letting go. A small activity indicator shows while it is listening, and the transcribed text lands wherever the cursor was sitting when dictation started.
Recognition itself happens inside a sandboxed component called the Canonical Inference Snap, while a Speech Orchestrator manages the session and an Audio Adapter handles whatever the microphone picks up, denoising and chunking it before it ever reaches the model... Speech recognition will happen locally, and an internet connection is not needed once the appropriate model is installed... The audio data won't be sticking around either, being stored in a small in-memory buffer that gets discarded the moment the session ends. Features like dictation into password fields, wake words, continuous listening, voice assistants, voice commands, translation, speaker identification, and automatic language detection are all off the table...
You should also know that Canonical is looking for feedback before the specs for Myna are finalized, especially from people who already rely on dictation or assistive tools on Linux.
The political commentator talks about the need to mentor young boys whose fathers are absent or passed, and how the organization Son of a Saint helps transform the lives of fatherless boys.
Defendants worry that changes could remove chance of acquittal based on jurors’ consciences in defiance of the law
Climate activists fear that delays to their cases may mean they lose the right to a trial before jurors, who are typically more likely to acquit them than a judge.
Scores of defendants facing trials for protests as long ago as 2021 have had proceedings repeatedly postponed and worry that by the time their cases are heard, government changes limiting the right to jury trial may be in force.
Kemi Badenoch has attacked Nigel Farage over the £5m gift he received before the general election as she ruled out an electoral pact with Reform UK.
The Tory leader questioned Farage’s acceptance of the gift from the Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne in the months before he stood to become an MP in 2024.
In 1970, about 1 in 20 children were affected by obesity; today, it's 1 in 5. Dr. Jonathan LaPook looks at programs aimed at helping kids (and their families) get healthy the old-fashioned way, by eating right and exercising.
Singer, musician, and Grammy-winning music producer Shooter Jennings is keeping alive the legacy of his late father, country star Waylon Jennings, by producing long-lost material that he found stashed away. Hear music from the upcoming album "Diamonds."
The 26th president is finally getting his own presidential library amid the prairie grass of North Dakota. Take a tour of what is described as an immersive experience of Roosevelt's life and legacy, as well as the nature that shaped him and his vision of America.
As guaranteed in the 14th Amendment, citizenship is granted to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States." But an executive order signed by President Trump seeks to deny birthright citizenship to children born of parents in the country illegally or temporarily.
Mauricio Pochettino’s players have got off to a scorching start to the tournament. Going all the way will require the team reaching a whole new level
The United States can win the World Cup. The US players say so. So does Zlatan Ibrahimović. Because you are a smart Guardian reader, you know that, theoretically, any team who are not yet eliminated can win the World Cup. And you know that this US team have won their opening two World Cup games convincingly, securing the top spot in Group D and a place in the knockout round with a game to spare. Making the World Cup final, and winning it, is in the realm of possibility.
But can they? Within the team, there has been belief they can go all the way for some time. US head coach Mauricio Pochettino laid down the marker in his introductory press conference, and has stuck to his belief. His players have followed suit. But now, even famous pundits with outsized egos are saying the US can shock the world and capture the men’s World Cup for the first time on home soil.
Father’s Day event aims to help strengthen connections between parents and children and soothe mental health
More than a hundred eager families poured into a prison visiting room on 13 June, having just endured a security search after hours of travel on a bus. But the energy shifted once their incarcerated loved ones walked through the door for an early Father’s Day celebration.
Hearts became full, tears filled eyes and arms embraced. Young children ran and jumped on their fathers, and mothers waited patiently for their turns to say hello.
While we've already seen multiple phone launches so far, Samsung, Apple and Google are gearing up for some exciting announcements (including an all-new wide-screen Galaxy Fold) this year.
New College of Florida to acquire USF Sarasota-Manatee in deal that leading Democratic lawmaker says ‘reeks of grift’
A liberal arts college seized by Florida’s hard-right governor, Ron DeSantis, and transformed into a model for conservative higher education is to triple in size after state Republicans engineered a hostile takeover of a rival university’s campus.
New College of Florida, which is controlled by DeSantis’s hand-picked board of trustees, will acquire the Sarasota-Manatee campus of the University of South Florida (USF) next month in a deal described by a leading Florida Democrat as “a grift”.
"A grassroots movement is forming among everyday tech workers who are demanding their companies develop and deploy AI responsibly," reports TechCrunch.
Hoping to leverage that discontent is a new super PAC called the Guardrails Alliance. The New York Times reports that it launched Thursday with backers that included tech employees and labor unions:
Guardrails positions itself as a populist political movement that runs on small donations from people in the trenches of the AI boom. The PAC has about $5 million at its disposal today and planGuardrails will buy ads to support Alex Bores, a New York congressional candidate who became Leading the Future's first target and is running in the primaries next week. s to raise $15 million this cycle — small potatoes compared to deep-pocketed adversaries like Leading the Future, which has more than $100 million from tech leaders like OpenAI president Greg Brockman...
"This is not about matching [Leading the Future] dollar for dollar," [said the super PAC's co-founder, political operative Shaunna Thomas]. "What this vehicle is meant to do is be a political home for people who are concerned about the way the anti-regulation AI tech sector is trying to manipulate elections."
Meanwhile a former Netflix and Warner Bros. executive has launched the Alliance for Responsible Innovation in the Arts & Media, reports Variety, calling it an AI-focused content coalition that says it's dedicated to supporting "responsible and sustainable AI innovation and the importance of human creativity."
The initial members of the coalition, announced Monday, include Disney, the New York Times, Adobe, Condé Nast, the Financial Times, ITV, Advance, BBC, Cambridge University Press & Assessment, U.K. publisher Reach and Wiley. Many of the coalition's members have either struck deals with AI companies or are developing their own AI tools... The group plans to argue for legal and policy guardrails around AI's usage, with its funding directed towards analyses, tools and services focused on advancing those initiatives...
One of the group's launch advisers is Damian Collins, OBE, who previously served as the U.K. Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology under prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. "Using AI to break the law can never be an acceptable excuse," he said in a statement. "Laws around personal safety, intellectual property and financial crime still apply in the age of AI. This is why ARIAM has been created and why I'm proud to working with this necessary initiative."
A secretive investigation into the attack that killed at least 175 has concluded, reports suggest. Will its findings ever see the light of day?
The attack on a girls’ elementary school in the Iranian town of Minab was one of the US military’s deadliest civilian bombings in decades. But nearly four months on, the Pentagon has produced no answers about why the military fired a Tomahawk cruise missile into a school on the first day of the war, killing at least 175 people, mostly children.
Some critics doubt that the Pentagon ever will, or will bury the results under classifications to keep the worst mistakes secret from the public.
Maps created as part of Defra-funded Slimers project allowed test growers to halve amount of slug pellets used
Farmers believe they have a new weapon in their age-old battle against the slugs that destroy their crops: modern technology.
Slug prediction maps, which have been created by computer models as part of an research project, are now helping growers to better target the use of pesticides, saving them money and reducing environmental harm.
Former party leaders reflect on the turbulence that followed the referendum in which most Scottish voters backed the losing side
The decision to quit the EU bolstered support for Scottish independence, which a decade after the Brexit referendum is at near record levels, according to Scottish Labour’s former leader Kezia Dugdale.
Dugdale said the Brexit vote “creates a frame around fairness” for many in Scotland because, unlike England, Scottish voters comprehensively backed remain in 2016, by 62% to 38%, yet found their country taken out of Europe.
As phrases like easter eggs and looksmaxxing enter everyday language, what other words from the world of video games might soon be mainstream?
Twenty years ago, video games were seen as a niche hobby dominated by hardcore enthusiasts, tucked away in obscure online forums and gaming meet-ups. Back then, the idea that governments would use footage from Call of Duty and gaming terms such as “killstreaks” as war propaganda would have been absurd. Then the 2010s happened: nerd culture popularised, previously online-only spaces began to meld with the real world, and gaming went mainstream.
Now, gaming references have entered common parlance – at the end of 2024, video game terms including “cheat code” and “cutscene” were even added to the Oxford English Dictionary– and they increasingly crop up in politics, too. Earlier this year, the official White House X account posted footage of military strikes on Iran interspersed with footage from the video game Grand Theft Auto. Six days later, another video was posted, this time interspersing military footage with clips from Nintendo’s 2006 game Wii Sports.Video game references aren’t reserved for the political right, either: in February 2026, Democrat representative of New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quipped, “Why does this guy always talk like a World of Warcraft npc [non-player character]?” in response to a post on X by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff.
Less than a third are likely to be registered in November. We must work to ensure they have a voice
About 4 million Americans will turn 18 in 2026, but if past trends continue, under a third of them will be registered to vote in the November elections. Automatically registering every American when they come of age would be the fairest, most effective way to protect US democracy, yet we have built an electoral system that does the opposite.
Every year, millions of 18-year-old Americans go unregistered and excluded from the electoral process. In a typical midterm year, US census data shows fewer than 30% are registered to vote, compared with nearly 75% of those aged 45 and up. Because they are outside of state voter files, candidates, campaigns and pollsters ignore them. Their voices and energy go untapped; their policy and programmatic needs go unfunded.
Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket operating in areas with limited resources for people with gambling problems
Public health resources across the US are failing to keep pace with the rapid growth of online gambling, problem health advocates warned, after Donald Trump endorsed the controversial nationwide surge of prediction markets.
Prediction market platforms, where users can wager on everything from Tony Award winners to World Cup goals, have pushed betting even further into American life.
I was riding and suddenly it stopped I was cruising at a speed of around 10 miles speed. It's been 4 months my arms are still having some pain. But I'm much better now. I can lift heavy weights now
Keir Starmer is expected to announce on Monday that he will step down as prime minister, after overwhelming pressure from Labour MPs to make way for Andy Burnham to become Labour leader.
Speaking for the government on Sunday, Peter Kyle, the business secretary, refused to comment on Starmer’s specific plans but said the prime minister was aware of the “political realities” and would do what was best for the country.
Fox’s broadcast at the tournament has become a story of two contrasting styles. And there is one clear winner
We all know someone like Alexi Lalas. He’s the ranter whose rants never actually say anything, the life of the party at the party no one enjoys attending, the “big personality” who’s always misjudging the size of the room. He’s corporate America’s idea of a fun guy, the type of workplace “character” whose business trip hangover never stops him from being first at the hotel breakfast buffet, hair wet, Untuckit shirt untucked. He would absolutely dominate karaoke night at a conference on infrastructure finance. If only this were the limit of Alexi Lalas’s actual impact on the world, our culture would live in blessed ignorance of his existence. But in the real world Alexi Lalas is not a small-time menace working the floor at an infrastructure conference. In the real world Alexi Lalas is American soccer’s brightest media star, and he is everywhere this World Cup.
When Lalas’s Roger Ramjet jaw thrust into frame on Fox at the start of this tournament, it’s fair to assume that many viewers felt a sense of dread similar to that expressed in the Grand Theft Auto meme: “Ah shit, here we go again.” Lalas’s ubiquitousness every World Cup is American TV’s answer to the Iran war: no one wants it, everyone hates it, and as it drags on, it inevitably becomes a face-saving exercise in damage limitation. But there was also a glimmer of hope: for this tournament Fox has enlisted a pair of elite European strikers, Thierry Henry and Zlatan Ibrahimović, to terrorize Lalas and shake proceedings up. Steered by Rebecca Lowe, this new-look panel has promised a slightly more sophisticated approach to covering the tournament than the yahooing belligerence that was Fox’s stock in trade at the last two World Cups.
A small but dedicated band is keeping tabs on taskforce agents – here’s what the activist monitors have to say
Nine months after Donald Trump ordered an anti-crime taskforce onto the streets of Memphis, a small band of dedicated observers is attempting to monitor its actions.
They have alleged widespread intimidation by agents, who stand accused in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee of having tailed cars, surveilled homes and even “falsely arrested” one community observer.
For one day every June, South Africa’s searing racial inequality seems to melt away at Comrades race
In the early morning dark, thousands of runners waited, jostling with anticipation. South Africa’s national anthem rang out. Then the haunting swell of Shosholoza, first sung by Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa’s goldmines. Finally, that unmistakable, spine-tingling piano: Chariots of Fire.
Elon Musk is a beneficiary of America’s lopsided prosperity – does the country have any appetite for redistribution?
As Barack Obama’s presidency was coming to a close, Jason Furman, then chairman of the president’s council of economic advisers, laid out the strides his administration had made to curb the nation’s exorbitant income inequality in “the largest investments in reducing inequality since the Great Society”.
Indeed, by the end of 2016, taxes and transfers cut the share of income accruing to the richest 1% of households by just over a fifth, according to estimates from the congressional budget office (CBO), more than under any government since at least Jimmy Carter’s. They raised the slice of income going to the poorest fifth from 3.9% to 7.9%, the highest share since at least 1979.
Eduardo Porter is a journalist focused on economics and politics. He writes the newsletter Being There on Substack
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:
Officials in Kansas City, Missouri, are preparing to equip cameras on some public buses with facial recognition software capable of identifying passengers who appear on a list of banned riders or missing persons. Supporters and opponents alike view the effort as a major litmus test for tapping the AI-powered software on a U.S. public transportation system, positioning Kansas City as the latest epicenter of a fierce debate over whether the safety benefits of artificial intelligence are worth the privacy costs.
"The idea of running face recognition on a camera that is pointed on live spaces in public is a line that until recently has never really been crossed in the last 25 years," said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the Project on Speech, Privacy and Technology at the American Civil Liberties Union. The state of Missouri declined to help fund the project as expected due to concerns with the facial recognition component. Still, the city is pushing ahead with local and federal money, said Tyler Means, chief mobility and strategy officer at the Kansas City Transportation Authority. "Privacy is always a tricky thing," Means said. "We've always had cameras on our buses. It's just new technology. I think in time it'll smooth over and people will realize, 'Well, it didn't really feel any different'...."
Images captured by cameras aboard the buses would immediately be checked against any active alerts, generated when a missing person, banned rider or someone on a law enforcement watch list designated by the transportation authority is identified... After the buses return to the depot, the transportation authority would archive the regular video footage on a local server for up to five years.
The company partnering with Kansas City to run the cameras "started using live facial recognition years ago to alert nursing homes when residents left the building," according to the article, and then "brought the technology to correctional institutions and schools." But this is its first attempt at bringing its cameras onto public transportation.
The article also includes this quote from Will Owen, communications director for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. "City residents should not be guinea pigs for transit systems to test Silicon Valley's latest unproven, biased surveillance tech."
Advocates say the Safe Third Country Agreement forces immigrants to head to an unsafe country: the United States
It was the threat of gang violence in Honduras that pushed Carlos and Antonia to flee their home. In 2021, with their toddler, Alejandro, and a handful of belongings, the married couple ventured north hoping to reach safety in the US.
Hervé Renard’s Eagles of Carthage have been sent packing from the World Cup thanks to a masterclass from the Samurai Blue
Changes for Japan too with Tomiyasu and Itakura stiffening the back three, and Ito and Tanaka coming into the front three. Kubo misses out through injury and the lively playmaker is a big loss to a side already missing Minamino and Mitoma.
Expect the same 3-4-3 structure that has served Moriyasu well in recent months as he has built Japan from a side capable of dominating Asia to one equipped to handle the rest of the world.
Alan Latham, whose low-budget films have previously raised questions over his use of tax credits, has seen 50 of his film businesses compulsorily struck off by Companies House, according to data compiled by the film workers’ union, Bectu.
Bank details at risk as criminals use AI to create fake sites and emails offering pre-release beta test version
Like millions of gamers around the world, you have been waiting years for Grand Theft Auto VI to be released. Now you have the opportunity to play the much-anticipated game before everyone else.
An email has arrived inviting you to play a pre-release “beta” version of the game so that you can alert the makers to any bugs before its official release later this year.
Spain’s leading festival of photography showcases the work of more than 300 visual artists in nearly 100 exhibitions across the country
PhotoEspaña, Spain’s leading festival of photography, held its official opening in Madrid this month and by September nearly 100 exhibitions will have showcased the work of more than 300 visual artists in the capital and across the country. Loosely corralled under the theme of reimagining, the exhibitions feature work by major figures in Spanish and international photography and less well-known emerging artists.
From the series Invisible Line. Photograph: Alejandro Cartagena
Investigation finds AI content that purports to show genuine customers, prompting calls for greater transparency
Brands promoting their products online are quietly deploying AI-generated influencers on social media, an investigation has found, prompting calls for greater transparency.
The findings suggest companies are increasingly turning to AI-generated content that purports to show genuine customer experiences while giving no obvious indication that the people featured are not real.
My dad gives smart advice, but it always leads me down paths that didn’t feel like ‘me’. When, and how, can we stop listening to our dads?
When I was a kid, my dad told me to pick a sport, practice a lot and stick with it. That way, in high school, I’d join the team and have built-in friends. “Later, you can aim for a college scholarship,” he said with a wide, confident smile.
I knew this was good advice. It was bold, financially minded and forward-thinking. The only problem? I was terrible at sports.
What has the Israeli PM’s whirlwind of violence achieved? His closest ally now turning against him – and an emboldened Iran
Benjamin Netanyahu, the biggest loser in last week’s preliminary deal to halt the US-Israel-Iran war, will be remembered – and reviled – as the man who put the Middle East to the sword. Whether the “problem” was Hamas in Gaza, illegal West Bank land seizures, supposed Israeli-Arab fifth columnists, peace campaigners’ aid flotillas, Hezbollah in Lebanon, hostile militias in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, or Tehran’s hardline Islamic regime, the Israeli leader’s “solution” was always the same: extreme, often lawless violence that invariably made matters worse.
The unprovoked, illegal war against Iran was the ultimate expression of the Netanyahu doctrine – the disproportionate application of brute force. Predictably, it too, has failed. Donald Trump is desperately arguing that the ceasefire memorandum he signed in Versailles (of all places!) is not the lame capitulation it so self-evidently is. But while the US president may survive this humiliation – despite global scepticism and mockery – the likely consequences of the debacle for Netanyahu, his brother-in-harms, are career-ending serious. In many respects, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is already yesterday’s man.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
[WTS] [USA-OR] Pint X "Mechanic's Special" Parts Lot (Hub, Rails, Untested Electronics) - $225 + shipping
Clearing out the workspace and selling off a bundle of Pint X components as a single lot. Perfect for a VESC builder, repair tech, or someone looking for a solid backup hub motor.
What’s included: Pint X Hub Motor & Tire: In good physical/mechanical shape. Stator and magnets are solid. (This is the anchor piece of the lot). Pint X Controller & BMS: STRICTLY UNTESTED / AS-IS. Treated as a gambler's special for parts, harvesting connectors, or repair practice. Stock Rails & Axle Blocks: Clean threads, normal cosmetic wear. Extras: Factory home charger and rear LED light bar.
Price: $225 firm + shipping (Will calculate exact shipping based on your zip code). Shipping will be less without rails as the box can be smaller, FYI. Payment via PayPal Goods & Services only. Everything will be packed securely and shipped quickly with tracking. Drop a comment below before sending a PM if you're interested!
The animated sequel sets up a tug-of-war between physical and digital play for children but is still eager not to be an anti-tech screed
For more than 30 years, Pixar’s signature Toy Story series has been entertaining children while giving voice to their parents’ anxieties. This is especially pronounced in the film’s sequels, as the living toys who dedicate their lives to the happiness of their owner/child experience all different sorts of potential and parent-paralleled obsolescence, from physical wear-and-tear and a child reaching young adulthood to the toy equivalent of empty-nesting (still hanging around the playroom but no longer anyone’s favourite). It’s only natural – maybe even a little belated – that Toy Story 5 would address the encroachment of technology, which continues to make its way to children earlier and earlier. So many years after the tech breakthroughs that allowed Toy Story to become the first computer-animated feature, and Pixar to become a household name in family entertainment, has the formerly Steve Jobs-owned company turned against the kind of innovation that built its success?
Poll also finds three quarters of people in Britain want closer ties, with majority accepting free movement
Two-thirds of EU citizens would back Britain rejoining the bloc, while most UK voters say Brexit has been bad for the issues they care about and want closer ties, including levels of integration – such as free movement – long seen as toxic, a survey has found.
Ten years after the Brexit referendum, the polling by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a thinktank, found 66% of respondents across 15 countries said they either “strongly supported” or “tended to support” UK membership.
Iran has said it is closing the strait of Hormuz after waves of Israeli strikes in Lebanon in a move that threatens to derail the fragile interim peace deal with the US, signed just days ago.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned ships not to approach the strategic waterway, which before the war carried a fifth of global oil and liquid gas supplies, citing what it called Israeli crimes in Lebanon and a US violation of commitments to establish a ceasefire there.
In January a college student posted a video showing him winning $100,000 on Polymarket — one of 145 that appeared to show bets adding up to almost $410,000, reports the Wall Street Journal. "But none of those bets were real."
Instead its creator was "one of dozens of mostly college-age creators Polymarket paid to film themselves making fake trades and sometimes scoring fake wins," the Journal reports, citing interviews with the creators an an analysis of more than 1,100 of their videos:
Polymarket built near-perfect copies of its website, then instructed creators to make simulated trades on those dummy sites and hide that they were being paid by Polymarket. To get the videos to go viral, Polymarket has recruited a social-media army to copy and re-post creators' footage. Though the New York-based company has been banned from offering its primary crypto platform in the U.S. since 2022, the social-media creators are paid to specifically target U.S. users, who can still access the site with a virtual private network...
Polymarket hired and worked closely with a marketing contractor to promote the site. In a message reviewed by the Journal, that contractor told its social-media army to repost content made by 10 Polymarket creators in particular... These creators didn't initially identify themselves as paid by Polymarket, although one offered a $20 bonus code in his social-media bio... The company instructed creators not to disclose they are paid, according to creators who have worked with the company. They said the pay often added up to $2,000 to $3,000 a month...
A handful of videos the Journal reviewed also contained short glimpses of URLs indicating the sites were test environments for Polymarket engineers... Creators said they send the finished videos to Polymarket for review. If a video isn't engaging enough, or if it bears obvious signs of being faked, Polymarket will ask for the videos to be reshot, the creators said... Polymarket sends creators bullet-point guidance on what to say, according to creators who have worked with the company and a recruiting website... Polymarket's viral clipping campaign racked up more than 140 million views on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, according to the analytics provider Tubular...
Internal materials show that Polymarket and Virality promote videos showing how easy it is to conduct insider trades on the platform. Polymarket has paid clippers to promote at least 19 videos discussing opportunities to use inside information or other tactics to manipulate markets.
America's advertising laws "require people who are paid to endorse a product to disclose their ties," the article notes, "although there is some gray area about what's permitted." (After the Journal's investigation, the creators started adding "@polymarket partner" to their bios, the article points out._ And when asked for a comment, Polymarket "said it plans to conduct a comprehensive audit of active promotional content."
Bulldozers sent in to clear roadblocks that have stifled the country as farmers and Indigenous groups protest against conservative president
Bolivia’s president declared a state of emergency on Saturday and deployed soldiers and bulldozers to raze anti-government roadblocks that have paralysed the country.
For more than six weeks, unions, Indigenous groups and coca farmers have marched through cities and blocked roads across the country with rubble, logs and debris in protest against the conservative government.
Smaller, cheaper cars built for narrow city streets are becoming more stylish – but require careful design decisions
The winding backstreets of London, Paris and Rome are a large part of their charm. But they are also a problem for electric carmakers. For a long time, squeezing big batteries into smaller, cheaper cars to fit European streets was too much of a problem, so manufacturers focused on bloated SUVs instead.
But that is finally changing. Battery technology has improved and Europe’s carmakers havecut manufacturing costs enough that they can now sell cars that might have a chance of fitting down a medieval lane or two.
Gritty display leaves American in complete control
Scheffler closest threat after McIlroy charge fades
Wyndham Clark’s lead shrank, then grew, then all but swallowed the tournament whole. The 2023 US Open champion watched a four-shot advantage get cut in half on Saturday while still on the 1st hole, only to respond with a masterclass in survival golf as Shinnecock Hills finally delivered the bruising examination players had expected all week.
By day’s end, Clark had stretched his lead to a yawning six shots despite shooting an even-par 70. Scottie Scheffler’s one-under 69 was enough to emerge as the closest pursuer, but the world No 1 will begin Sunday’s final round needing something extraordinary to prevent Clark from capturing America’s national championship for a second time in four years.
The gaming news site Aftermath reports:
Four gamers are suing Sony Interactive Entertainment for allegedly breaking a California law that requires digital storefronts selling games to make it clear people are buying licenses, not actually owning the games.
Sony Interactive Entertainment's PlayStation store uses language like "Buy Now" and "Confirm Purchase," lawyers wrote in a complaint filed on Thursday... "In reality, consumers who 'purchase' digital games through PlayStation do not obtain ownership of those products," lawyers wrote. "Instead, PlayStation grants only a limited, revocable license to access the software, subject to multiple restrictions contained in a separate Software Product License Agreement"....
[T]he PlayStation store does have a disclosure. Above the "Confirm Purchase" button, there's a note: "By selecting [Confirm Purchase], you agree to complete the purchase in accordance with the PlayStation Terms of Service before using this content. You further acknowledge that your purchase of this digital product amounts to a license subject to the Software Product License Agreement." These four gamers aren't satisfied with that; they said in the complaint that it's too small, and that "a reasonable customer completing a purchase would not necessarily notice this disclosure."
"It's a proposed class action complaint, meaning the group of four gamers is asking a judge to grant them class action status."
Paint seen peeling off in the water at pool site; investigation finds ICE agents disproportionately target people from Latin America – key US politics stories from Saturday 20 June at a glance
Donald Trump, without offering evidence, blamed “vandalism” for “real problems” at Washington’s reflecting pool after an algae bloom in the wake of a $14.2m renovation of the site that he declared would turn it “American flag” blue. Paint has been seen peeling off in the water. He also made claims that vandals had been arrested.
Days after his administration claimed the pool was actually “crystal clear”, despite an unmistakably green hue, the US president acknowledged issues – and claimed there had been foul play.
Rory McIlroy leaves himself another monster putt, this time on 3. He doesn’t judge this 70-footer particularly well, leaving himself a ten-foot tester for his par. It’s always dying to the right of the cup, and he drops to +1. Emiliano Grillo also takes a step backwards, finding the bunker to the right of the par-three 17th, and having found himself shortsided, leaving himself too much to do after the chip out. Grillo slips back to level par for the tournament.
Emiliano Grillo birdies the par-five 16th – statistically the second-easiest hole on the course today – and he moves into red figures for the week at -1. The 33-year-old Argentinian, whose best finish by far at an US Open was his tie for 19th last year, is now four-under par for his round today.
Firefighters faced renewed challenges Saturday at a large Boyle Heights warehouse fire, where conditions remain highly complex as Mayor Karen Bass declared a local emergency to support response efforts.
The Wall Street Journal reports on internet-connected devices — and how every year millions of them "can contain a secret digital backdoor that opens up access to your home internet, so that anyone... can surf the web as if they were you." (And this is especially true for "knockoffs that you buy online"...)
In a video report this week they tested two digital picture frames from Amazon and three streaming devices from Walmart "because we heard that they often ship with backdoor software used in cyberattacks. Security experts believe manufacturers are being paid to add this malware, but many people also get tricked into downloading the software onto their phones or computers... Within minutes of turning the devices on, there was a surge of internet traffic... Visits to gambling, porn, cryptocurrency and loads of other sketchy web sites started pouring in from users around the world." (And remote visitors also tried to access Outlook and Gmail accounts...)
Residential proxy companies even rent out access to "tens of millions of home networks around the world," according to the report. "But the problem is actually worse than that. Hackers figured out a way to seize control of these backdoors, and they started taking over these residential networks. Last month authorities arrested a 23-year-old Ottawa man, saying he'd taken control of more than a million devices to launch some of the largest cyberattacks anyone had ever seen.."
After a couple months the Journal's reporter collected logs of all the traffic, and sent it to an investigator at Comcast, who said both were conducting DDoS attacks. But estimate for the number of infected devices are as low as tens of millions or as high 500 million-plus. "We've seen nation state attacks launched through these kind of endpoints, which means your device sitting in your house is part of a nation state attack against another nation state... We've seen ad fraud, we've seen ticket scalping, we've seen financial fraud."
But more importantly, "We have seen some of the largest computer attacks — meaning computers attacking other computers at human request — ever recorded in our digital history in the last several months." At cybersecurity conferences, some are warning "there are much larger ones on the horizon if we don't get a hold of this problem."
The company making the picture frame "couldn't be reached for comment," while Amazon said it's been out of stock since last year. Both Amazon and Walmart said they take action when they confirm malware on a third-party product.
Buckingham Palace says move is intended to increase ‘clarity and accessibility’ of monarchy’s finances
King Charles will become the first head of state to reveal their personal tax bill in what the palace said was an attempt to enhance the transparency of royal finances.
Charles, 77, will publish his financial details as part of the royal household increasing the “clarity and accessibility” of the monarchy’s finances by producing a new report on the subject.
This week OpenAI announced a 750-task test to to measure "whether AI systems can support realistic life science research tasks, not just answer biology questions."
But while OpenAI's top-performing GPT-Rosalind model led the rankings, Slashdot reader BrianFagioli notes that "it achieved a pass rate of just 36.1 percent, failing nearly two-thirds of benchmark tasks." Nerds.xyz points out that means "the best-performing model failed nearly two-thirds of the benchmark's tasks."
The benchmark also revealed a familiar weakness. AI systems generally perform better when everything is presented as text. Once they are forced to work with supporting documents, figures, or complex datasets, performance drops noticeably. GPT-Rosalind's pass rate fell from 45.1 percent on text-only tasks to 28.1 percent on tasks involving artifacts or URLs.
To be fair, the benchmark is not intended to suggest AI is useless in research. Quite the opposite. OpenAI found that models are becoming increasingly capable of scientific communication, evidence synthesis, and translating research findings into practical explanations. Those are valuable skills, particularly for researchers drowning in information. But LifeSciBench serves as a useful reminder that today's AI systems are still far from autonomous scientists. They can help. They can assist. They can sometimes provide surprisingly useful insights. What they cannot reliably do, however, is replace the expertise, judgment, and skepticism that real scientific research requires.
I just bought a Onewheel S and have only used it a few times (less than 6 miles total). The battery has been fine overall. I recently tried updating it to the latest firmware, but my phone froze at 100% during the update.
Now I’m stuck with Error 16. I’ve tried a few things I found online:
Restarting/rebooting by holding the power button
Deleting the app, forgetting the device, and reinstalling everything
Charging it for a few hours
Trying a different phone
Unfortunately, none of that has worked. Every time I turn it on, it still shows Error 16 and blinks red.
Has anyone run into this before or know how to fix it? Any help would really be appreciated.
After Jameson the dog, wearing a blue Knicks jersey, walked out into the hallway, an officer fired his pistol four times
The Los Angeles police department has released footage of the moment when officers shot and killed a woman’s dog in the hallway outside her apartment in the Canoga Park neighborhood.
Police had responded to reports of a woman screaming on 13 June, which turned out to be cheering, the night that the New York Knicks defeated the San Antonio Spurs to win the NBA finals.
I find i am looking at my phone way more than i should as i am cruising around. This made me think it would be way better if i could see simple stats like battery and a few others (what i typically look at on the phone) on a watch instead. Anyone know if there are onewheel (i have a FM XR+) apps that would run on any smartwatch? Not a smartwatch fan yet cause honestly have not seen value and my brother - who is, says his stresses him out because it vibrates every time he gets a message. Definitely not something i need. But, monitoring my boards stats would change the value for me.
Long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat writes: Alan Turing, one of the more famous people who worked at Bletchley Park to decipher the German Enigma coding machine, was also working on a separate project. His private papers, known as the Bayley papers for his assistant Donald Bayley who held onto the papers until his death in 2020, reveal Turning had produced a working model of a portable voice encryption device. He even demonstrated it by using a Winston Churchill speech recording. "Weighing just 39 kg, including its power pack," Jack Copeland wrote in an article for IEEE Spectrum, "Delilah would be at home in a truck, a trench, or a large backpack."
More from Popular Mechanics:
Turingâ(TM)s work at Bletchley Park actually informed the Delilah experimentation he was doing at Hanslope Park, and not just because he used Red Forms, the Army-issue sheets Hanslope staffers were meant to use to alert Bletchley staffers to enemy signals, as his personal scrap paper for Delilah experiments. He drew inspiration from one of the German cipher machines they had decoded at Bletchley; not the famed Enigma machine, but rather the SZ42. While the former relied on Morse Code, the latter utilized a 5-bit telegraph code, which Copeland notes âoewas a forerunner of ASCII and Unicode and is still used by some ham radio operators.â The SZ42 produced an obscuring key of telegraph characters, with an identical key produced to both the sender and receiver. If it could be done for text, Turing reasoned it could be done for sound as well...
[T]he reason Delilah fell to the wayside of history isnâ(TM)t because it was a failure, but rather because it simply wasnâ(TM)t needed anymore. By the time Turing had built and demonstrated his device, the war was over. What good was a portable voice encryptor if you had no major enemies trying to intercept your calls, the government reasoned. So funding for the project stopped, and Turingâ(TM)s two-year experiment ended with a whimper. Turingâ(TM)s time as an electrical engineer at Hanslope Park became a footnote in his story, if even that.
David Hearn said he touched the Reflecting Pool’s detached liner but “didn’t destroy or break or peel anything.” Trump has accused vandals of sabotaging the refurbishment as paint was seen peeling and floating in the water.
Wishah among at least 260 journalists killed since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023
Qatar-based news network Al Jazeera has said one of its journalists was killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza on Saturday, becoming one of the at least 260 Palestinian journalists to have been killed since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023.
Ahmed Wishah, a cameraman for the network, was killed in a strike targeting a house in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, the broadcaster said on its website.
Temperatures could top 111F on Monday and Tuesday, after several recent deaths in park raise concerns over heat
Extreme heat is set to hit lower parts of the Grand Canyon from Monday, the US National Weather Service (NWS) warned, with temperatures projected to exceed 100F (37.7C).
An alertpublished on Saturday will be in effect from 10am local time on Monday through 7pm on Tuesday.
Long-time tech pundit Robert Cringely started his career at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab back in 1978. Last month 73-year-old Cringely explained why his site went on a two-year hiatus — and it's not just because of a heart attack and a stroke last July:
Just like everyone else, I've been busy all this time on Artificial Intelligence, founding with two partners a company called 2Brains... The work we were doing together is unfinished, but it's not stopped. The patents are filed, the architecture is documented, and the small team continuing the work includes me.
Cringely's first piece made the cast that "the trillion-dollar bet the AI industry is making right now may be wrong, and that there's an architectural alternative we've patented and built."
In Machines of Loving Grace, Amodei made the case that scaling compute would eventually solve essentially every hard problem in artificial intelligence. Buried in that optimism — or maybe not buried, maybe right out in the open — was a quiet absolution. Hallucinations, the embarrassing tendency of these systems to state falsehoods with total confidence, would take care of themselves. Make the models big enough, train them long enough, and the problem dissolves. You don't have to solve it. You just have to wait, and spend. And so the entire AI industry breathed a sigh of relief.
I have spent forty years watching this industry, and I know a permission slip when I see one.
Because that is what the essay became, whatever Amodei intended. It gave every other person writing nine- and ten-figure checks a reason not to worry about the one thing that should worry them most. The hallucination problem is the difference between a clever toy and a system a hospital or a bank or a court can actually rely on. It is the whole ballgame for enterprise AI. And the prevailing wisdom, blessed from the top, is that you needn't address it directly. Scale will provide...
A small company I helped start, 2Brains Inc., set out in 2022 to solve hallucinations — before ChatGPT, before the scaling consensus hardened into received truth, back when the polite assumption was that the problem was simply insurmountable. We did not solve it by waiting for bigger models. We solved it architecturally, by separating the part of the system that generates language from the part that retrieves and verifies facts, and reconciling the two before anything reaches the user. It runs on ordinary processors. It is cheap. And on the industry's own benchmark for this kind of faithfulness, it more than doubles the published baseline, with no fabricated facts in the verified case at all.
The article asks whether scaling will, at tremendous cost, eventually reduce hallucinations — or even worse, if the largest companies in the world "are spending a fortune chasing a cure that is not coming."
And last week Cringely pitched more advantages for their solution, noting that most prompts aren't even chatbot-level creative prompts — but just requests to retrieve simple data:
The reason 2Brains doesn't lie and the reason it's cheap are the same reason. It looks the fact up instead of guessing it — so it cannot fabricate, and the lookup runs on a processor that sips power instead of a chip that gulps it. Trust and thrift are not a trade-off you balance against each other. They fall out of a single design decision. You do not pay extra for the honest version. The honest version is the cheap version. That sentence is the whole company.
Counter-terrorism officers investigating as Police Scotland arrest 36-year-old white Scottish man
Counter-terrorism officers are investigating a number of “violent attacks” in Edinburgh on Friday night that injured five men in suspected anti-Muslim incidents.
A 36-year-old white Scottish man has been arrested and police have said there is no further threat to the public.
Italian house’s catwalk emphasised the brand’s ‘molto sexy’ look with flamboyant, sometimes revealing outfits
Dolce & Gabbana leaned heavily into the art of theatrical misdirection on the second day of Milan fashion week as it aimed to draw attention away from its debt issues, catwalk controversies and management reshuffles.
On the catwalk its signature “molto sexy” Italian aesthetic that comes served with a generous scoop of la dolce vita was in full swing. This was Euro summer on steroids. There were clingy muscle vests and micro shorts that made short shorts look modest while some models simply went topless. Jeans came ripped, shredded or smothered in sparkling jewels while T-shirts featured everything from giant prints of Sicilian lemons and ancient amphitheatres to a mosaic depiction of Christ.
John Denver’s classic has been belted out during US matches at this tournament. Its appeal lies in the story it tells about a united America
Lumen Field was designed for a moment like Friday’s. Under a blue sky dotted with clouds, the US men’s national team celebrated their victory over Australia with a lap around the stadium to thank their fans for creating a worthy atmosphere.
I’ve reported from four matches so far at this World Cup and the set list remains largely the same, no matter the venue. You’ll hear Dai Dai and Seven Nation Army. The growing boos that accompany the onset of a hydration break will be drowned out by Livin’ On A Prayer.
My GT died after sitting in the sun while on. It got super hot and suddenly wouldn't turn on anymore. No change after letting it cool down overnight, no response from the power button. I used Google AI to help me troubleshoot and it seems the BMS and/or Controller are toast. Battery and motor seem ok though. Seems like they should have some kind of overheating protection built in, but that's besides the point...
Seems my options are:
Send it back to FM for replacement which would be super expensive as I'm out of warranty
GTV
GTFO
I'd prefer a drop in replacement, and I'm generally not the type of person who is going to spend a ton of time dialing in settings/configuration. I'd like to be able to hop back on and just cruise some trails or rip it in the back yard occasionally.
Is there anything I'm missing?
I've seen good things about both GTV and GTFO, is there an overall preference in the community? Not sure about the GTFO, but GTV seems weird with needing to use crypto, and the long shipping times.
A man passes a mural in Tehran on June 18, 2026, following the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran. Photo: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images
The White House has been desperate to find a way out of the quagmire of its own making in Iran, leading to the remote signing on June 15 of a memorandum of understanding that promises extraordinary concessions to the Islamic Republic. Stipulations once deemed a “nightmare for Israel” by American politicians and dismissed by President Donald Trump as “not acceptable” — such as total sanctions relief and the unfreezing of billions of dollars of funds held abroad — are now reality. Despite attempts by the Trump administration to spin this as an achievement of all of America’s goals and an “unconditional surrender” by Iran, the deal has been met with skepticism, derision, anger, and mockery by Democrats and even some Republicans, pushing close Trump allies such as Fox News host Mark Levin and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to admonish the president for doing the “unthinkable” by capitulating to Iran.
In Israel, the deal has been seen far more uniformly across the political spectrum as an immense and almost incomprehensible betrayal by the United States, an unforeseen cruelty by Trump, and an incalculable failure by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Only 11 percent of Israelis say that their country won the war against Iran, and a whopping 71 percent do not expect Trump to look out for Israeli interests in future negotiations. One Likud member of the Knesset expressed his frustration by filming himself taking off his “Make America Great Again” hat and instead putting on a “Total Victory” hat, a phrase invoked by Netanyahu to justify the wholesale destruction of the Gaza Strip.
In Iran, the atmosphere is still not entirely jubilant. Much of Iran’s media and many officials have indeed taken a triumphant attitude: The front page of Javan, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-aligned newspaper, depicted a crowd of Iranians breaking through a wall of threats made by the Trump administration, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator, claimed that “everything we wanted to achieve through military action, we achieved many times over through negotiation.” But past betrayals are, after all, far too recent to forget.
It was only in April, for instance, when Israel unilaterally insisted it wasn’t party to the ceasefire in Lebanon and continued its war there. Previous negotiations with America only served as a cover for war preparations in June 2025 and February 2026. This has resulted in a national mood that is much more cautious than the elation that many felt after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal negotiated under Barack Obama and agreed to by the Rouhani administration, was adopted in 2015.
While an overwhelming majority of the country has backed the diplomatic track, criticism of the efforts of the team lead by Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has burned subtly in the background since early April. Supporters of the coalition known as the Front of Islamic Revolution Stability, representing the largest faction of the conservatives in the Iranian Parliament, have begun making their objections known, countering previous attempts by those in power to present a united front and to dispense with hardliner-versus-reformist politicking amid the war.
Criticism of current diplomatic efforts on the Iranian state television program “Soraya” in late May led to the suspension of the program days later. In response, its host, Mohsen Maqsoodi, held live conversations in Tehran’s Valiasr Square, where political commentator Ali Abdi criticized the state for not striking Israel as its army continues to bulldoze Lebanon, which led to that series’ cancellation as well. Rumors swirled online that the cancellation was owed to an intervention by an adviser to Ghalibaf.
After Araghchi gave an interview on state TV on June 12 saying that Iran would have to make concessions in its dealings, angry demonstrators who were attending nightly state-sponsored rallies demanded the diplomatic corps remember the “blood of the Leader [Khamenei],” with one speaker in Tehran’s Enghelab Square leading marchers in chants of “Death to the compromiser,” against those who think “America has something to offer [Iran].”
In Parliament, conservatives affiliated or allied with the Front have made their criticism vocal, with members calling for Araghchi to be barred from contacting Trump administration negotiator Steve Witkoff and demanding Parliament see the deal before it is signed. One representative called the agreement worse than “the JCPOA and [the Treaty of] Turkmenchay,” referring to the 1828 treaty that ceded swathes of Iranian territory to the Russian Empire.
Tehran representative Mahmoud Nabavian has been arguably the most prominent member of Parliament criticizing the government’s diplomats, castigating Araghchi for leaving gaps in the memorandum of understanding that America could exploit, namely the immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz erasing Iran’s economic leverage, and the lack of clarity in the document about timelines for the lifting of sanctions and the exit of American forces from the region.
The public criticism has less so outlined how exactly Iran could extract more concessions. But it appears such sentiment is now being expressed at the highest level of government: Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. In a statement announcing his approval of the deal, Mojtaba raised the eyebrows of some analysts by saying that he “had a different view” than what was agreed to by his negotiators, but nevertheless acceded to the wishes of President Masoud Pezeshkian on the condition that Iran rejects “excessive demands” made by the United States, remarking that the nation “await[s] the realization of the aforementioned conditions.”
This kind of public and immediate skepticism of a deal agreed to by the elected government was not the type of messaging made by Mojtaba’s father, Ali Khamenei, who reserved public criticism of the red lines crossed in JCPOA negotiations until the deal had been torn up years later by the Trump administration. Coverage in Axios from an Israeli analyst speculated that Mojtaba means to place any failure of the deal firmly on the shoulders of the Iranian president.
While the deal has yielded extraordinary concessions for Iran, there are already dark clouds looming. Concerns are emerging among other members of Parliament about the agreement requiring cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was suspended last year by the elected legislature. More importantly, the first clause of the agreement — which requires an immediate and permanent end to the war in Lebanon — is already being shattered.
Israel, as it did when the ceasefire was initially achieved in early April, has again argued that it must remain in southern Lebanon for as long as Israel’s national security demands it. A ceasefire apparently brokered between Hezbollah and Israel on Friday was broken within minutes as Israel continued to bombard the Lebanese south. An order has apparently come down on Saturday from Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz for the Israeli military to cease firing in Lebanon, but not withdraw from any of its positions and respond to any Hezbollah attack on its occupying forces. This leaves open the question of how Israeli military doctrine in southern Lebanon is actually supposed to change.
The United States has also taken active steps to secure more concessions from Iran outside of the explicit directives of the deal, with Vice President JD Vance saying that the $300 billion in reconstruction funds would not be released to Iran unless the nation stopped funding “terrorist organization[s]” like Hezbollah. The memorandum of understanding includes no mention of Iran’s support for allied organizations abroad, nor its ballistic missile program, both of which were primary targets of the Israeli–American war.
Iran, for its part, closed the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday in response to Israel’s refusal to stop the war. While it is still sending negotiators to Switzerland to speak with Vance, Iran is apparently not going there to negotiate a final deal just yet but instead demand U.S. compliance with the terms of the agreement. There is, as of now, still little indication at this time that the U.S. will agree to the demand for a total withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, despite surprising recent criticism from Trump and Vance of Israel’s scorched-earth tactics in the country.
For the moment, Israeli officials continue to dig in their heels, demanding further and further action, and stirring tension on other fronts like the West Bank, in an attempt to divert attention and lessen the blow that the majority of Israeli society agrees the country has suffered. For National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, there is no possibility of acceptance of the diplomatic track, remarking on Friday: “For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn!”
CNBC reports:
Waymo is recalling almost 3,900 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues after some cars drove into freeway construction zones, according to notices filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The voluntary recall, the Alphabet-owned company's second in just over a month, followed 13 known incidents where Waymo robotaxis drove into construction zones on freeways in Phoenix, or entered freeway lanes with active construction in the San Francisco area, the filings published Thursday said...
A letter posted to the regulator's website... noted that, "Driving through a closed construction zone increases the risk of a crash..."
[Waymo said in a statement emailed to CNBC] "We voluntarily restricted freeway operations last month while making improvements, proactively notified state and federal regulators, and decided to file a voluntary software recall with NHTSA. We continue to safely serve riders on surface streets in all the cities where we operate...."
The company implemented another voluntary recall in May after some of its robotaxis had driven into flooded zones or standing water. The NHTSA Safety Board also initiated a probe of Waymo after a January incident in which a robotaxi illegally passed a stopped school bus.
I've been riding my GTS-XL with OWL Lifters installed for a week now. Very good quality parts, very good fitment.
I find them comfortable, but they are somewhat intimidating at my skill level. I really feel intimidated having my feet confined when it's time to dismount but it seems to work. I still bunny hop to dismount, I just have to remember to bring my feet together as I jump off.
I love them when off-road obstacles are trying to tip the board down hill to the toe side, i can hold the toe-side up.
One of my fears is that I will have a lapse of memory and remain locked in. Well, it happened today! I had ridden approximately 1mi and was stopping to check my XL's battery before continuing. I hopped off but forgot to bring in my toes and just came right back down with the board on my feet but leaning too far back to maintain my balance, I laid back like I was trying to make snow angels. Totally my fault. The gear did its thing and I was able to, all be it embarrassed, continue riding with the Granddaughter.
CNN reports:
An unauthorized alert bearing a mysterious message that was sent to cell phones in several states across Brazil on Saturday morning is suspected to be the work of hackers, the Brazilian government said. Devices lit up with the word "misantropi4," an alphanumeric spelling of the Portuguese word "misantropia," which in English translates to "misanthropy". The final letter "a" was substituted with a number '4' — a practice often used by hackers and termed "leetspeak.". The alert — categorized as "extreme" — was initially received in the southern state of Paraná, but a second warning was triggered a few minutes later for cell phones in the major cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Brazilian authorities said that the National Civil Defense's warning platform was taken offline after being targeted by a likely hacker attack, and the government is working to restore the tool once all security conditions are reestablished.
In NY-12, four Democrats, including one Kennedy, are vying to replace Jerry Nadler – and potentially shake things up
When news broke that a safely Democratic seat in New York’s wealthiest congressional district was becoming vacant, it was inevitable that there would be a crowded field of candidates.
What people might not have expected is that the subsequent Democratic primary would become one of the country’s most closely watched and action-packed, the race coming to reflect a range of Democrats’ national political priorities: who is the strongest against Trump; who is the most critical of artificial intelligence companies; and who is, basically, the coolest.
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers has published over 800 technical standards over the years (as a professional association for the media and entertainment industry).
But this week SMPTE "announced that its complete Standards catalog, the technical backbone behind everything from SDI and timecode to IP-based broadcast workflows, is now freely available to anyone in the global media technology community," reports the filmmaking news site CineD, arguing it's "one of the more meaningful structural shifts we have seen from a standards body in years" that could "reshape how smaller developers and educators engage with professional media technology."
The move covers all published Standards, Recommended Practices, Engineering Guidelines and Registered Disclosure Documents, plus every future release, ending a long-standing model in which individual documents often sold for well over $100 each. For more than a century, SMPTE Standards have quietly governed how images and sound move through the production chain. If you have ever recorded timecode in the HH:MM:SS:FF format, routed a signal over 3G-SDI, or built a facility around the ST 2110 suite for media over IP, you have relied on SMPTE specifications, whether you knew it or not... Until now, accessing the actual text of those documents usually meant paying per file, a barrier that this announcement removes entirely... The latest releases are available through the Recently Published Documents page on the SMPTE website, with the complete archive reachable through the SMPTE Standards Library...
There is also a practical, behind-the-scenes story here. The open-access move is part of a broader modernization of how SMPTE develops and publishes Standards. Recent initiatives include adopting GitHub-based workflows for version control, issue tracking and automation, transitioning to structured HTML-based authoring, and implementing an integrated publishing pipeline that streamlines document creation, review, validation and release... The most consequential beneficiaries are arguably not the large members already inside the system, but the developers, integrators, educators and manufacturers who previously worked around the paywall... The practical upshot is that developers and emerging markets can build from accurate primary specifications rather than secondhand sources, which matters enormously when a single misread tolerance or metadata field can break compatibility down the line.
This also fits a wider pattern of the industry moving toward openness. We have previously covered moments like GoPro's decision to make its CineForm codec open source and release the SDK, a codec that SMPTE itself standardized in 2015 as an open standard for acquisition and post production. Lowering the cost of knowledge tends to widen the pool of people who can contribute to it, and a freely readable standards library is a significant step in that direction for an organization that has historically sat behind a per-document fee.
"This was a decision we did not make lightly," says SMPTE President Rich Welsh. But "For 110 years, SMPTE has evolved alongside the media technology industry, helping to drive change and innovation — and we're not stopping now."
"Our industry is confronting transformative shifts, from IP-based workflows to AI authenticity and content provenance, and we find ourselves at another inflection point. We listened to our Members, Partners and the global Standards community, and the answer was clear: Interoperability is essential to the future of media. Now is the time to open the gates and ensure the next generation of media technology is built on a stronger, more accessible foundation."
Thanks to innocent_white_lamb (Slashdot reader #151,825) for sharing the news.
Mauricio Pochettino had to do without his best player against Australia. But Ricardo Pepi helped the Americans build attacks in different ways
Once it was clear that Christian Pulisic’s calf could keep him out of Friday’s match against Australia, Mauricio Pochettino had a lot of options to consider. There is no like-for-like alternative to Pulisic, still the United States’ most important player.
Australia entered this game with a point to prove, wanting to build off of their opening win over Turkey with a statement result against the tournament co-hosts. As was the case when the teams met for a friendly in October, the Socceroos were set up to operate in a low defensive block, with five along the backline and a swarming, zonal marking scheme in front of them. That system can be quite effective against a team who play with just one striker, as the US have for most of the 21st century.
I was riding my pintx that I have about 100 miles on and turned into a headwind. I accelerated to maintain my usual 15 mph cruising speed. Then it happened, pushback and haptic screaming at me to back off. I didn't nosedive or fall though, I just got really bummed out. When I first got it, I wobbled a lot and knew it would take practice to become more steady but it still never felt comfortable. I bought flared footpads and a TFL enduro tire hoping that would fix it but still it's a bit too carvy for me. I'm 5'8" wear a size 10 and weigh 185 lbs and I'm finally accepting that I am too big for a pintx.
So now I'm in the same position as many others; I want a board that feels comfortable for cruising around town and light offroad use. I don't want to go more than 20 mph but I want to be able to maintain that in a headwind or uphill.
I think it's coming down to the XRC or X7 sport for me. The X7 Sport is the obvious better choice at this price point but realistically it would be 3-4 months at best before I could get one. Do I hunt down a used XRC or wait out the X7 sport? Am I missing other options?
Scoring over 50% off a solid pair of earbuds is rare, and it won’t last long. Down from $149 to $73, this is the kind of deal your ears will appreciate.
Guardian investigation also finds same areas experienced relative decline over same period
Leave-voting areas have seen faster relative growth in foreign workers since the Brexit referendum, a Guardian investigation has found.
Data analysis suggests that the decade since the Brexit vote may not have matched the expectations of many Leave supporters, showing their local areas have also become relatively more deprived over the same period.
US president also claims vandals have been arrested, as Washington attraction sees algae bloom and peeling paint
Donald Trump has blamed “vandalism” for “real problems” at Washington’s reflecting pool after an algae bloom in the wake of a $14.2m renovation of the site he declared would turn it “American flag” blue. Paint has also been seen peeling off in the water. He also made claims that vandals had been arrested.
Days after his administration claimed the pool was actually “crystal clear”, despite an unmistakably green hue, the US president acknowledged issues – and, without evidence, blamed foul play.
I ride every day and I’m getting mad at the stock SS bolt kits. I’ve now stripped by hand, two axle bolts and countless others like bumpers,etc. Some have just straight up bent cause of time and abuse. Are titanium bolts that much stronger and more than just show?
When asked what his takeaways from the Iran war were, Trump said he believed there were no limits to his power
It’s been a busy week for the US’s birthday boy. First, there was the cage fight on the White House lawn, in honour of the United States’ 250th anniversary and Donald Trump’s 80th. Then, after watching sweaty men fight, the president flew to France to try to sort out the mess he’d helped create in the Middle East. I regret to inform you that despite Trump signing what Jimmy Kimmel called “the retreaty of Versailles”, it does not really look like the Iran war has been sorted out. Still, the president seems happy with himself. After Axios asked what his takeaways from the Iran war were, Trump said he believes there are “no limits” to his power.
Figures including Jared Kushner and Scott Bessent named in directory of Dialog participants that was exposed online
A website leak has exposed participants in the secretive, Peter Thiel-founded Dialog retreats which includes top politicians from across the American divide, officials from foreign countries, other titans of the tech industry world and prominent media figures.
The annual Dialog retreats, which have been compared to other quasi-secret elite conferences like the Bilderberg Group and Bohemian Grove since they began in 2006, have had some participants revealed in previous media reports. Fairly little is known about the invitation-only event, which is usually held at luxury establishments around the world and features organized discussions on global affairs.
This article was updated on 22 June to show that it was Epstein associate Lisa Randall who was invited to the retreat, not Epstein.
When it says 30 day shipping how accurate is that? Do the ship on weekends? How much longer do I need to wait to even get a tracking number? It’s been 31 days btw so
President Trump's efforts to spruce up the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool faced a snag this week, with algae turning the water green while rips appeared in an "American Flag Blue" surface picked by the president.
June 19, 2026 — The Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS) will once again be well-represented at this year’s International Supercomputing Conference (ISC26), which runs June 22–26 in Hamburg.
All three GCS centers—the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), and Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ)—will be participating in many parts of the conference program as well as staffing the GCS booth (#K02). Additionally, JSC staff will be at a separate stand, (#Z01) to celebrate JUPITER, Euope’s first exascale system.
GCS centers’ staffs will participate in a variety of poster presentations, birds-of-a-feather sessions, tutorials, and workshops, highlighting how GCS centers are supporting researchers in the age of exascale and the rise of artificial intelligence from scientific and technical perspectives. They aim to highlight how our centers are combining classical modeling and simulation with cutting-edge AI and quantum computing workflows to enable high-performance hybrid workflows.
For an overview of each center’s participation, please visit their respective ISC26 web pages:
At the GCS stand, visitors can expect interesting exhibitions, exciting live demonstrations, and interactive visualizations. Among other topics, the booth has a particular focus on the continued expansion of current and future GCS computing systems and the massive potential they hold for driving new AI developments.
Visitors will learn more about how the GCS centers are driving scientific progress across various disciplines—from climate simulations to vehicle and aerospace design. Additionally, staff will be on hand to give visitors more information about the two European-Union-funded AI factories located within GCS centers: HammerHAI, which is led and supported by HLRS and LRZ, respectively) and JAIF (coordinated by JSC). Finally, GCS experts will highlight how the centers are working with pan-European initiatives like the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, helping Europe maintain its leadership in high-performance computing.
Furthermore, GCS would like to invite attendees to the GCS Industry Reception@ISC26 on June, 24, starting at 3pm CEST (#K02), supported by HPE and NVIDIA.
Enjoy refreshments, great conversations, and networking with colleagues and partners from across the HPC ecosystem.
Gt 24s2p P45b Split pack All enoid electronics Superflux high torque wtf rails
Those are my specs and I’m hitting 25mph comfortably. I already have a helmet, wrist, guards, kneepads, and shoulder pads. But I’m looking at this armor jacket because of its abrasion resistant capabilities. I ride in the city and trails and I just think this is the best for both of those worlds.
If anybody has something similar, please drop a link or let me know your thoughts.
DÜSSELDORF, Germany, June 19, 2026 — Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH (Toshiba) will showcase how high-capacity HDD technology is enabling scalable storage infrastructures for next-generation research at ISC High Performance 2026 from June 23 – 25 in Hamburg. With scientific computing and AI generating increasingly large and complex datasets, organisations are seeking storage solutions that can scale efficiently to support growing performance and capacity demands.
Credit: Toshiba
At booth Z06, Toshiba will present two live demonstrations featuring its MG Series 24TB enterprise capacity hard drives, highlighting scalable storage architectures for scientific computing, research data management and AI-driven applications.
“Scientific research and AI applications are generating unprecedented volumes of data, creating growing demand for scalable storage infrastructure,” said Rainer W. Käse, Senior Manager Business Development, Storage Products Division, Toshiba Electronics Europe. “High-capacity HDDs remain indispensable for organisations seeking to store, manage and derive value from increasingly large scientific datasets while maintaining efficiency and reliability at scale.”
The first demonstration features a petabyte-scale scientific storage system built with 78 MG Series 24TB SAS HDDs integrated in AIC’s J4078 SAS4 JBOD platform. The system showcases how research institutions and HPC environments can deploy high-capacity storage to accommodate rapidly growing scientific datasets.
A second demonstration will feature an integrated storage server with 60 MG Series 24TB SATA HDDs designed for scientific AI applications, demonstrating how organisations can support data-intensive AI workflows with scalable storage infrastructure.
The demonstrations are being presented in close cooperation with Toshiba’s booth partners AIC, providing server and storage enclosure chassis, and Broadcom, providing Network Interface Cards (NICs) and Host Bus Adapters (HBAs).
The role of HDDs in long-term data infrastructure will also be addressed in the presentation “Designed for Decades – The Sustainability of Hard Disk Drives”, delivered by Rainer W. Käse on Wednesday, 24 June, from 4:20pm to 4:40pm at the HPC Solutions Forum, Exhibition Hall H, Booth L01. The presentation will trace the evolution of SAS and SATA HDD technology, examine the importance of standardisation, outline why HDDs remain indispensable for cloud infrastructures, and explore future technology paths towards ever-higher storage capacities.
Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH (TEE) offers European consumers and businesses a wide variety of hard disk drive (HDD) products plus semiconductor solutions for automotive, industrial, IoT, motion control, telecoms, networking, consumer and white goods applications. Next to HDDs, the company’s broad portfolio encompasses power semiconductors and other discrete devices ranging from diodes to logic ICs, optical semiconductors as well as microcontrollers and application specific standard products (ASSPs) amongst others. In addition, TEE offers SCiB battery cells and modules with lithium titanium oxide (LTO) for heavy-duty applications.
TEE has its headquarters in Düsseldorf, Germany, with branch offices in France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom providing marketing, sales and logistics services.
June 19, 2026 — As in the previous year, the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) will be present with two exhibition stands:
Booth #Z01, run by JSC, is once more dedicated to the new exascale supercomputer JUPITER, showcasing JSC’s extensive supercomputing activities. Booth #K02, run by GCS, showcases the joint activities of the German partners within the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS). Alongside JSC, these include the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) and the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ).
The JSC team at ISC 2025
JSC’s focus topics at JSC will be the immense potential of the JUPITER exascale supercomputer, JSC’s quantum machines, the integration of quantum and HPC systems, and technical and scientific developments, for example in the field of artificial intelligence.
At the JUPITER booth (#Z02), JSC’s most striking attraction continues to be Europe’s first exascale supercomputer JUPITER, developed and hosted by JSC. On a video wall, visitors will learn about scientific flagship projects already profiting from its exascale power.
JSC’s unique original LEGO exhibits will also be on display again: Models of JUPITER and the Modular Data Centre (MDC) including the innovative cooling system on the roof – as well as a blade of the JUPITER Booster.
In addition, JSC will be showing videos of JUPITER and the JUPITER AI Factory (JAIF). As in previous years, JSC’s proven monitoring tool LLview will provide live insight into the computing jobs.
At the GCS booth #K02, JSC will showcase the growing Jülich UNified Infrastructure for Quantum computing (JUNIQ), including live access at the booth, giving visitors a glimpse of its potential. Moreover, JSC will illustrate the steadily increasing importance of AI in HPC, as reflected in developments such as the Helmholtz AI Cooperation Unit. On top of that, parts of the new LEGO model of JUNIQ as well as an D-Dave Chip will be on display.
Numerous JSC Contributions: Talks, Tutorials, and Workshops
JSC researchers once again contribute extensively to the ISC programme in 2026: Andreas Herten organises the tutorial “Efficient Distributed GPU Programming for Exascale”, while Sebastian Achilles leads the tutorial “Introduction to EESSI: the European Environment for Scientific Software Installations” and also co-organises the corresponding Birds-of-a-Feather session later during the conference week. Brian J. N. Wylie contributes to the “3rd International Workshop on Readiness of HPC Extreme-scaling Applications”.
Estela Suarez plays a key role, contributing to sessions on advanced memory architectures and co-designing next-generation supercomputing systems, as well as participating in community activities at the conference.
The JSC directors Thomas Lippert and Kristel Michielsen are prominently represented throughout the conference programme. Kristel Michielsen contributes to the Birds-of-a-Feather session “Quantum-Computing-as-a-Service: What Do Users Want Today and How Can One Provide It?” and presents the projects “QEX & QEC4QEA” at the EuroHPC JU booth, while Thomas Lippert joins the NHR Sofa Talk on teaching with quantum computers.
JSC colleagues contribute to several Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) sessions on European HPC strategies, AI ecosystems, dynamic resource usage, user support in the AI and exascale era, and future workforce development in quantum technologies, including Benedikt von St. Vieth’s BoF on “Deploying Next-Generation HPC Systems with NVIDIA Superchips: Early Experiences, Challenges, and Best Practices”, Mathis Bode’s session on “A European HPC Ecosystem for AI: Challenges and Opportunities”, as well as the user-focused BoF by Thomas Breuer and Ilya Zhukov on “Rethinking HPC User Support for the AI and Exascale Era”.
In the ISC Poster Sessions, JSC researchers share their contributions on continuous benchmarking from HPC clusters to quantum processors, the JUNIQ Benchmark Suite for quantum technology readiness, and advances in large-scale density functional theory. Further contributions are “The JUPITER AI Factory”, highlighting ongoing developments in Europe’s exascale and AI infrastructure, as well as the “JUNIQ Benchmark Suite” poster by Ashwin Kumar Karnad, which focuses on tracking quantum technology readiness within the JUNIQ infrastructure.
JSC is also represented at the EuroHPC JU stand, where colleagues contribute to numerous presentations on European HPC, AI and quantum-computing projects, such as HPCQS, or HPC-TRAIN. In “JUPITER, exascale supercomputer & JUPITER AI Factory”, Benedikt von St. Vieth and Mathis Bode highlight JSC’s key role in the Europe’s AI factory initiative.
Events with JSC participation – All times are Central European Time (CEST)
Presentation at the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU)
Topic: EUPEX
Speaker: Etienne Walter
Tuesday, June 24 | Time: 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM | booth #J30
Presentation at the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU)
Topic: DARE
Speaker: Osman Unsal
Tuesday, June 24 | Time: 12:00 AM to 12:30 PM | booth #J30
Presentation at the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU)
Topic: HANAMI
Speaker: France Boillod-Cerneux
Tuesday, June 24 | Time: 4:00 PM to 4:30 PM | booth #J30
Presentation at the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU)
Topic: SEANERGYS
Speaker: Hans-Christian Hoppe
Tuesday, June 24 | Time: 5:00 PM to 5:30 PM | booth #J30
Presentation at the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU)
Topic: POP 3 Centre of Excellence
Speaker: Marta Garcia-Gasulla
Tuesday, June 25 | Time: 12:00 AM to 12:30 PM | booth #J30
Presentation at the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU)
Topic: EPICURE
Speaker: Alberto Lanzanavo
Tuesday, June 25 | Time: 1:00 PM to 1:30 PM | booth #J30
Bat collision, two little marks were left on my forearm, just above wrist guards, unsure if from nails or teeth.... had to get rabies immunoglobulin and first vaccine... there's a few more vaccines to get. I live in a county with multiple years of positive bat rabies findings so it was required, since no bat to check for rabies...it got away...
ER staff said it's not what they usually hear at the end of a sentence that begins with "I was riding a onewheel and then...."
Be safe out there... I have no idea if you can really avoid this sort of freak accident. I like riding at dusk/evening... I didnt think about bats at all until this.
I do have the glowing bat railguards so maybe theyre bad luck hahah
A global framework for reparatory justice has been adopted at a conference in Ghana, as African and Caribbean leaders demanded formal apologies from countries that benefited from the transatlantic slave trade.
Heads of state and government and other officials formally approved the strategy on Friday at a gathering in a hotel in the capital, Accra, which was the first major meeting since the adoption of the landmark United Nations (UN) resolution declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans as the gravest crime against humanity.
Britain’s next prime minister faces deep foreign policy challenges – whether Burnham or anotherExpert commentthilton.drupal
Whoever is leading the country must deal with a fundamental shift in the UK’s most important relations – with the US and Europe – in an increasingly dangerous world.
The UK will have a new prime minister after Keir Starmer resigned on Monday. Andy Burnham, who has returned as a Labour MP after securing a strong victory in the Makerfield by-election, announced his leadership bid the same day.
Given that Wes Streeting – the main expected challenger to Burnham – has announced his support for Burnham’s leadership bid, it now seems highly likely that Burnham will become the next prime minister. If standing unopposed, Burnham would enter office by mid-July; if there is a leadership contest, whoever wins will be in place by September.
Much of the debate around how Burnham, or other potential challengers, may differ from Starmer has focused on their approach to pressing domestic issues, especially the cost of living and growth, public services and immigration. Future relations with the EU have made the occasional appearance.
These issues are crucial. But Starmer’s short time as prime minister was largely consumed by foreign affairs. Any potential new prime minister will face a relentless deluge of international issues and challenges.
This is not just the result of unexpected overseas crises, although there have been many of those. It is tied to the fact that the UK’s most critical post-war relationships – with the US and Europe – are shifting.
There are positive lessons to take from Starmer’s track record in government. But his government struggled to address the deeper strategic questions – and find the resources – needed to tackle this fundamental shift and its impact on defence and security.
Whoever is the next prime minister will have the opportunity for a reset. This would need to address the US’s increasing reluctance to underwrite European security, the intensification of US-China rivalry, and the resulting increase in threats facing the UK.
What Starmer did well
Starmer was consistent and reliable when it comes to personal diplomacy. He navigated a difficult relationship with President Donald Trump by correctly reading, and managing, the MAGA camp’s extreme sensitivity to apparent European condescension. He refused to be publicly baited into conflict with the administration if it didn’t serve the UK’s interests.
There are positive lessons to take from Starmer’s track record so far.
As pieces of diplomatic theatre, reciprocal US–UK state visits have been handled well. And Starmer sought to learn from the past, carefully delimiting the UK’s role in the US–Iran war in recognition of the lessons of Iraq – and the subsequent Chilcot Inquiry – about not committing limited UK resources to US missions with no clear strategic end goal.
Starmer had also been a credible European ally. He continued the approach of previous UK governments in being a long-term and clear-eyed supporter of Ukraine. He recognized that the UK’s security priority should be in Europe and coordinated with European counterparts effectively, signing a new security treaty with Germany and refreshing the existing one with France.
A longer-term plan for European defence and security
While Starmer’s personal diplomacy as a European ally was a relative success, it is at threat of being undermined by the failure of his government to reckon with the costs of rising defence and security commitments.
Defence spending challenges are by no means a new phenomenon, and are shared across Europe. Previous UK governments similarly said they would hit ambitious defence spending targets without explaining how. Part of the difficulty for Starmer’s government had been untangling a long history of British governments making too many commitments for UK defence without an honest assessment of the total costs.
But the defence spending issue is about more than just litigating competing claims on the public purse – though this is challenging enough. With the US no longer such a reliable European security backstop – and Washington planning to withdraw some resources from Europe – the UK needs a longer-term defence and security relationship with European allies.
The UK’s active and immediate response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 increased Britain’s credibility as a contributor to, and shaper of, the future of European security. The UK sent weaponry and helped train Ukrainian forces, in some cases before other partners, and played an important role in coordinating support. It worked closely with Nordic and Baltic countries, particularly via the Joint Expeditionary Force, to build an increasingly active European defence coalition. Post-Brexit, the UK has made it clear that it can play an important strategic and security role in Europe.
Why Should Delaware Care? Construction trades are one of the last well-paying, blue-collar jobs in Delaware, regardless of whether working for a union or not. But a new legislative proposal could prioritize some of the most lucrative, taxpayer-funded projects in the state to a smaller number of unionized workers, which has drawn criticism from competitors.
A bill that would require school districts to use unionized laborers on major construction projects has split Delaware’s construction industry as lawmakers near the finish line in the debate.
While leaders of the competing factions have framed the issue in dramatic terms, interviews with 18 construction workers at various sites in Delaware this month showed that rank-and-file workers largely were not as ideological. Many workers said they are indifferent to being in a union, saying instead that they support whatever arrangement would bring them the biggest paychecks.
Senate Bill 272 would mandate that a school district sign an agreement with the Delaware Building and Construction Trades Council – the umbrella organization for the state’s various unionized trades – to use union labor for construction projects that cost at least $5 million and have at least two bidders. Those deals are known as project labor agreements, or PLAs.
If merit shops – or non-unionized construction companies – win a project bid covered by the bill, they would be required to hire a percentage of unionized workers. That percentage would be negotiated with the Delaware Building and Construction Trades Council, whose president, Jim Maravelias, told Spotlight Delaware that they would seek half of the available jobs.
An analysis using data from the monthly household Current Population Survey estimated that Delaware’s private construction industry was roughly 15% unionized, totaling about 4,000 members.
Multiple major industry groups, including the Associated Builders and Contractors of Delaware and organizations representing minority-owned businesses, are starkly opposed to the bill, and have been holding protests over it for months.
An evolving proposal
The prioritization of unionized labor on publicly funded projects has become a growing trend in the legislature in recent years.
Lawmakers piloted a version of SB 272 in 2023, when they required project labor agreements be used in the construction of three major state construction projects.
Since then, Sen. Jack Walsh (D-Stanton), a leader in the Delaware Building and Construction Trades Council, has continued to push for more requirements to support union labor.
Over the past year, he has filed and amended several versions of the current bill, settling on a proposed minimum of $5 million in aggregate project cost, limiting the requirement to school construction, and finally limiting PLAs to projects that have at least two bids.
House Minority Whip Ed Osienski said concerns that tracespeople weren’t being paid led to the genesis on SB 272. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
Rep. Edward Osienski, the lead House cosponsor and a retired union tradesman, testified at a June 10 committee hearing that the bill aimed to resolve frequent claims of unpaid claims to construction workers.
According to data from the Department of Labor’s Construction Enforcement Office, 66% of sites it inspected led to investigations. The department has $385,000 in outstanding wages owed to workers – a big reason why he helped propose the legislation.
“The Department of Labor has been very active, but they can’t go to them all – that’s one of the issues,” Osienski said. “We can’t just depend on the Department of Labor to police what’s going on out there.”
Construction workers express concerns
On the grounds of construction projects, many workers said they are indifferent to being in a union.
About five non-unionized workers told Spotlight Delaware they don’t think much about the union versus non-union issue. A couple unionized workers said they benefit from protections like the ability to walk off a job out of safety concerns without being fired.
A few workers had strong opinions.
A group of commercial plumbers expressed disapproval of unions. One plumber who used to be in a union remembered when he was sent two hours away to do work for $7.50 an hour, which he felt he could not do comfortably.
Brian Valdelamar, another one of the plumbers, argued unionized workers are less efficient – and may even “milk jobs out.”
“They might take three years to build this, we did it in roughly three or four months,” Valdelamar said.
Asked about the implications of the bill on his work, Valdelamar said he does not think the requirement of a project labor agreement would be fair.
James Mitchell, a non-unionized electrician, said he had heard about the bill and believes it is unfair because it could cut small companies, like his, out from bids.
“I guess they would get dibs on all of it then,” Mitchell said. “It cuts the other guys out.”
In particular, Mitchell said the cost of living was so high right now that it was financially “hard to live.”
“Paying [union] dues for somebody else to retire sounds crazy to me right now. I need that money for myself,” he said.
Local non-unionized general contractor Tommy Ogden said he’s conflicted on whether he’d support the measure, believing the state’s prevailing wage – an average of all wages paid in an industry in each county – is a “happy compromise.” Delaware law requires workers on state-funded projects that meet certain cost thresholds to be paid fairly.
For example, carpenters would earn about $62 an hour and electricians nearly $87 an hour for prevailing wage work in New Castle County or $52 and $87 in Sussex County, respectively.
However, unions have helped raise wages and standards for union and non-unionized workers alike, Ogden noted. He believes that if it had been solely left up to “the businesspeople,” tradespeople may be working 80 to 100 hours per week to support their families.
“Now, they can work 40 hours and be home for dinner,” Ogden said.
Leaders debate inclusiveness of PLAs
During public comment in the June labor committee hearing, a couple union workers voiced support for the bill citing fair wages and worker protections, but most speakers were opposed to the measure.
State Budget Director Brian Maxwell warned legislators that the cost of school construction projects with PLAs would be higher than without the agreements. A fiscal note on the impact of the bill likewise suggested more costs in negotiating the PLAs but couldn’t estimate an impact.
Mary DuPont, the executive director of La Plaza, a nonprofit advocacy organization for Delaware’s Latino community, opposed the bill, citing Delaware’s 2022 Disparity Report which found that less than 3% of state construction contracts went to minority-owned businesses.
She told Spotlight Delaware that in Sussex County, a large proportion of construction projects are done by small Latino-owned businesses that are not likely to be unionized. DuPont added that some minority-owned businesses have told her of unpleasant experiences in unions.
“They’re not exactly waiting with welcome signs for minorities to join the union,” she said.
Ayanna Khan, founder and CEO of the Black Chamber of Commerce, told Spotlight Delaware that because minority-owned businesses are more likely to operate in a deficit, they wouldn’t want to pay the additional expense of union dues, especially when the cost of living has significantly increased due to gas and utility prices.
She also said unions are historically composed of “middle-aged white men,” as unions discriminated against Black workers in the early 20th century.
However, according to an analysis, Black males were more likely to be in a union than White males in 2025. Nationwide, 10.3% of white men were union members compared to 12.3% of Black men and 8.6% of Hispanic men.
Maravelias, the leader of the trade union organization, denied the assertion of minority groups and associations that because most Black and Latino workers are not part of unions, the bill would harm them.
“We don’t need a minority contractor to hire minority workers,” Maravelias told the committee. “Let’s not bring race into this.”
Maravelias told Spotlight Delaware he believes that the business owners’ race or ethnicity does not have as much of an influence on who they hire,
“That little riff they want to put in there about Black, white, Latino, brown, whatever, they can take that and throw it in the garbage, because it doesn’t exist,” he added.
The bill includes a provision where PLAs could include protections for minority-owned businesses, which Maravelias hopes contractors see through. But one of his biggest problems with non-unionized labor is the proliferance of out-of-state workers who would contribute less to the state’s economy.
“Unlike the out-of-state worker, the Delaware worker will pay taxes and spend his money in Delaware, where the other guy stays here for the week in a motor lodge and then takes off,” he said.
Over the last few years, the world has seen unspeakable violence, death, and devastation from Israel’s war on Gaza. During that time, global perception has shifted as the scale of Israel’s destruction grew, with the death toll climbing to more than 73,000 people. Since the October 2025 “ceasefire,” Israeli military attacks have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
“Spending years building a movement for an end to this genocide around the slogan ‘Ceasefire now’ alone, it was successful in building quite a substantial following,” Tariq Kenney-Shawa, an associate fellow at Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, tells The Intercept Briefing. “It was vague enough to bring a lot of people into the movement against genocide — because who’s going to disagree with calling for an end to war?”
“But at the end of the day, what it really laid the groundwork for was … the potential of signing this empty ceasefire agreement, in which there is an agreement on paper, there is a framework, and a phased approach to this.”
Since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire last year between Israel and Hamas, Gaza has largely fallen out of the news, as Israel, along with the U.S., launched attacks on Iran and Lebanon. But Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians never really stopped. “Palestinians continue to be killed every single day, albeit at a more piecemeal slower pace that is more difficult for the international community to oppose,” says Kenney-Shawa.
This week on the podcast, Intercept reporter Jonah Valdez speaks to Kenney-Shawa about how the fight for Palestinian rights and sovereignty can’t end at demands for ceasefires and conditioning aid — and should shift to sanctions and arms embargoes — and about how Gaza fits into Israel’s ambitions for the region and efforts to more deeply enmesh the U.S. and Israeli military.
“This is the most important thing to look at in the course of the next few months and few years,” says Kenney-Shawa, warning of new Israel-led initiatives like Section 224, an unprecedented integration of the U.S. military–industrial complex and Israeli defense and technology sectors. Israel and American leaders “recognize the fact that criticism of Israel in the U.S. is skyrocketing. … In many ways, they’ve recognized the need to shift this U.S.–Israel relationship from one of dependency, both militarily and financially, to one of further entrenchment.”
“Obviously, it’s a very strategic move by the Israelis to take advantage of this period in time where there is this huge chasm between public opinion and actual policy,” says Kenney-Shawa. “They’re essentially recognizing that, ‘Hey, we might not have total impunity in the United States forever, but we do for now while establishment Democrats and Republicans are running the ship. We have a Trump administration that’s essentially willing to do whatever we want.’ So what they’re trying to do now is essentially push this process through while Trump is in power, while Republicans have a majority in the Senate and the House.”
For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
Transcript
Jessica Washington: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept.
Jonah Valdez: I’m Jonah Valdez, also a reporter at The Intercept, and I cover politics and Israel and Palestine.
JW: Glad to have you here, Jonah.
So on Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an interim ceasefire to end military operations in both Iran and Lebanon for 60 days. The agreement would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and bars Iran from having a nuclear weapon. The White House agreed to end their blockade and waive economic sanctions against Iran.
The deal also requires the U.S. and regional partners to develop a “mutually” agreed upon reconstruction and economic development fund worth at least $300 billion. However, the U.S. is not required to contribute.
Jonah, earlier this week on a special live Intercept Briefing, you spoke to Al-Shabaka U.S. Policy Fellow Tariq Kenney-Shawa about the particulars of ceasefires especially when it comes to Iran, Lebanon, and most notably Gaza.
In your conversation, you talk about the role the term “ceasefire” plays in our political imagination. Jonah, should a “ceasefire” be the end goal, or is there something more we need to push for here if what we’re really looking for is an end to the suffering?
JV: I think anyone should see even the recent deal between the U.S. and Iran with some skepticism as far as whether it will hold, given previous ceasefires it’s been a part of.
The term “ceasefire” has been weaponized against those that it’s supposed to bring peace to.
Something that Tariq Kenney-Shawa and I talk at length about during our conversation is how this term “ceasefire” has been — in many ways, in an Orwellian way — weaponized against those that it’s supposed to bring peace to. That’s exactly what we saw in Gaza.
The term “ceasefire” was this massive slogan — a very effective slogan — throughout the 2024 presidential campaign cycle, as well as congressional races that year. Pro-Palestinian protesters, the movement at large, was really pushing and using a ceasefire as a rallying cry to get people to care about Palestinian rights.
What conversely happened is you get this Trump-concocted ceasefire with a lot of hands from the Israeli government, which is essentially a fake ceasefire. They’ve continued the bombing campaign in Gaza. Since the ceasefire that was signed in October of last year, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes. So I think the term “ceasefire” just completely doesn’t apply in Gaza.
As a part of the Iran war, they have also invaded and are occupying southern Lebanon, and of course, Israel and the U.S. and their joint strikes in Iran. I think it’s important to see Gaza in this context of a broader conflict that Israel is trying to push on the region.
JW: On a related note, I know that you’ve consistently covered a lot of the momentum around calls for an arms embargo to Israel. I know this came up in your conversation with Tariq as well.
Are we giving an arms embargo too much weight, or to put another way, are we giving politicians who say they agree with an arms embargo the ability to skirt the actual issue here, which is our decades of perpetuating and being complicit in violence in the Middle East? What’s your take on that?
JV: This is a difficult one that Tariq and I had a really good back and forth about. An arms embargo, similar to a ceasefire, has been a huge rallying cry for the movement for Palestinian rights, for Palestinian sovereignty, really for decades now. Past U.S. governments have used an arms embargo [at] varying degrees of effectiveness of leverage against the Israeli government when the U.S. government wants Israel to do certain things.
It is still worth mentioning that Israel is still very reliant on the U.S. government for its military capabilities. Just the very fact of defending against Iranian attacks, that’s made possible because of U.S. weapons. Its ability to have a chokehold on Gaza and the West Bank, also due to U.S. weapons. Its ability to even strike in Iran and Lebanon, a lot of that is U.S. weapons capabilities. A lot of the aggression we’re seeing is because of its partnership with the U.S.
Again, there’s this danger, though, similar with the ceasefire, where an arms embargo might not be enough, and that’s what Tariq gets at as well, which is something he’s been saying since even before October 7, which is, the movement might have to go further than an arms embargo.
The reason is what we’re already seeing with certain conversations in Congress is there’s real efforts by Israel supporters and the Israeli government to further enmesh the U.S. and Israeli militaries in a way where even if we were to have a halt to weapon sales to Israel, even if we were to stop the flow of taxpayer dollars to Israel, they can still acquire weapons through a new kind of partnership they’re trying to form through the Pentagon directly.
This is something where, it could also be the case, where the movement gets what it wants. Again, this is a very effective rallying cry. We’re having an arms embargo, at least calls for stopping offensive weapons to Israel as a huge litmus test in the midterm elections. And it’s I think affecting the outcome of a lot of elections as we’ve seen in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and beyond.
It is having a lot of ripple effects in U.S. politics right now, and halting it would be a big deal. But, further down the line, Israel is already anticipating the halt of the flow of weapons or at least the flow of taxpayer dollars to Israel and is looking to create an even deeper relationship with the U.S. that could last indefinitely, really.
JW: This does really seem to be a cyclical issue in U.S. politics and in organizing. You pick an endpoint and of course, your enemies, they move around that endpoint. So, you may reach the goal, but what you actually wanted to achieve still feels elusive.
Jonah, thanks for giving us that preview. We’re going to hear your conversation with Tariq Kenney-Shawa, an Al-Shabaka U.S. policy fellow and co-host of Al-Shabaka’s Policy Lab series. Let’s listen to that now.
JV: Tariq, to start, I just want to give a little background on when you and I first connected. It was last summer, so July 2025, thereabouts, and it was the height of Israel’s manufactured famine in Gaza that, at the time, there seemed to be a huge shift toward how people in the U.S. were viewing Gaza.
You had mainstream media airing images of starving Palestinians. You had even more moderate Democratic leaders criticizing Israel. More lawmakers were referring to the conflict as a genocide for the first time. In the Senate, a historic vote, a majority of Democrats for the first time voted to block some weapon transfers to Israel.
But amid all that, you told me even then you were worried about a scenario where Israel would enact what you called a “performative ceasefire,” where Israel would continue the bombing and the blockades on humanitarian aid, the ethnic cleansing, but in your words, “a bit more piecemeal and gradual.”
So sure enough, several months later, last October, we got this iteration of a ceasefire, and here we are. The scenario you worried about is unfolding. So question to you, I’m wondering: In the last seven months, what’s been affirmed for you, and what has been more surprising?
Tariq Kenney-Shawa: It’s pretty clear that, yeah, everything that we were as a movement warned about — that these meaningless, toothless ceasefires can be agreed to and then not actually implemented — that has actually, as we’ve seen over the last couple months since October ’25, that’s played out exactly as expected.
What it’s really showed me was that, or what it’s really confirmed, was that spending years building a movement for an end to this genocide around the slogan “Ceasefire now” alone, it was successful in building quite a substantial following. It was vague enough to bring a lot of people into the movement against genocide because who’s going to disagree with calling for an end to war, calling for a ceasefire, right?
But at the end of the day, what it really laid the groundwork for was — again, like you just mentioned, and like I said last year — the potential of signing this empty ceasefire agreement, in which there is an agreement on paper, there is a framework, and a phased approach to this.
However, Israel has refused to implement any steps of the ceasefire agreement, and that includes continued carrying out daily airstrikes across the Gaza Strip. They’ve continued expanding the land they control. At the beginning Israel controlled about 53 percent of the Gaza Strip, delineated with that yellow line that people keep talking about that chopped Gaza in half. And now they’ve been, bit by bit, inching that line further and further westward and forcing 2 million Palestinians into an ever-shrinking strip of land that is now about 40, 30 percent of what the Gaza Strip was prior to the genocide.
Israel has also refused to let in the full agreed amount of humanitarian aid. They flood the Strip with commercial aid that people can’t really afford, but they refuse to let in sustainable products and things that people need to survive. Tents, building material, equipment to dig people’s bodies out of the rubble. What that has done is put those 2 million Palestinians who are caged in on that other side of the yellow line into a state of deliberate purgatory.
Since October 2025, that’s what we’ve seen. Palestinians continue to be killed every single day — albeit at, again, a more piecemeal slower pace that is more difficult for the international community to oppose. A lot of people within the now quite large movement in support of Palestinian rights and an end to a genocide, they look at the situation now and they say, “Well, they agreed to a ceasefire. What else can we do? What’s the next step for us?” At the end of the day, this is exactly what we were worried about last year.
Now we’re in this really difficult position in which other regional issues have come to the fore in terms of attention and media coverage, and Gaza has really slipped away from the public’s attention. Not that at the end of the day that really stopped a genocide, but there was a lot of movement in terms of this gradual push to hold Israel accountable.
The fact that we really predicated our entire movement around nothing really more than achieving a ceasefire has really come at the detriment of the Palestinians who are now living under this pseudo-ceasefire, while the movement in support of them abroad is a little bit in limbo, immobilized, and unsure of how to move forward.
“The fact that we really predicated our entire movement around nothing really more than achieving a ceasefire has really come at the detriment of the Palestinians now living under this pseudo-ceasefire.”
JV: It’s this Orwellian situation of language being weaponized in a way.
TKS: Absolutely.
JV: Out of that came the “Board of Peace” set up by the Trump administration that is supposed to govern this so-called ceasefire. Speaking of deals, this week we’re seeing a deal between the U.S. and Iran in, supposedly, ending the war there.
That war itself dominated the headlines and drew a lot of the attention away from Gaza. But now that the U.S. and Iran seem very close on this deal to end the war, Netanyahu, for his part, he said that he won’t withdraw Israeli troops from Lebanon despite this deal. And of course, the Israeli military continues to occupy more than half of Gaza.
How should we be viewing Gaza in the context of the Iran war or vice versa?
TKS: It’s important to see Gaza as the elephant in the room and just really part of this cycle of war. The fact that Israel was able to agree to this pseudo-ceasefire in Gaza allowed it to direct and move a lot of its attention, a lot of its resources, a lot of its military manpower to these other fronts that opened up. It was able to dedicate more time and energy to fighting this war in Iran, to going on this offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. And also, can’t ignore the fact that Israel is also holding occupied territory in Syria. So it’s really important to view this as a cycle.
It’s obviously very early, we don’t quite know what’s going to happen with the MOU [memorandum of understanding] between the U.S. and Iran. But if it does move forward, and if that front does shut down and quiet down — unfortunately, what that likely means is that Israel is going to have a lot more resources, a lot more manpower to turn its attention back to Gaza.
“The fact that Israel was able to agree to this pseudo-ceasefire in Gaza allowed it to direct and move a lot of its attention, a lot of its resources … to fighting this war in Iran.”
That shift in the regional wars that are ongoing is also coinciding with the fact that we’re basically in the run-up to Israeli election season. The opposition is really in a dead heat against the current far-right Israeli government. But the opposition in Israel isn’t criticizing Netanyahu because they’re against these forever wars that Israel is fighting. They’re criticizing Netanyahu because they just don’t like the way he’s conducting them. Just the other day, one of the main opposition candidates posted about how basically the war against Iran is going to basically reignite when there’s a new government in power in Israel.
“Israelis … are supportive of this concept of total victory that is quite elusive.”
That just goes to show that Israelis by and large are supportive of these war processes. They are supportive of this concept of total victory that is quite elusive. Netanyahu in particular, and the far-right coalition that he leads, is going to be particularly thirsty to, again, prove themselves in the face of these narratives that are coming out in light of the potential Iran deal that this was a strategic loss for Israel.
What Netanyahu and his coalition are thinking is, “OK, if we have to wind down our offensive activities in Iran and potentially even Lebanon, how else are we going to prove that we are the right party and the right people to defend Israel from our perceived threats?” They’re going to do that by reigniting their assault and genocide in the Gaza Strip. How they’re going to justify that is where we are at right now in terms of the ceasefire process itself. Despite the fact that Israel has not implemented any of the phase one parts of the agreement, they’re now demanding that Hamas agree to a component of phase two, which was disarmament.
But Hamas is basically putting its foot down and saying, “Listen if you guys aren’t going to adhere to stopping the bombing campaigns, if you guys aren’t going to let in humanitarian aid like you allowed to, if you guys are still eating up land every single day and not even adhering to phase one of the agreement, then basically why should we agree to phase two if there’s no mutual engagement on that side?”
Unfortunately, it does not bode well for Palestinians in Gaza because they’re the punching bag that Israel will turn its attention to undoubtedly.
“It does not bode well for Palestinians in Gaza because they’re the punching bag that Israel will turn its attention to.”
JV: Thanks for walking us through the political landscape in Israel. Sometimes we in the U.S. run the risk of overstating the influence of U.S. politics on Israel, specifically when it comes to Netanyahu’s decision-making and how he’s coming to those decisions. And we don’t talk enough about Israeli politics.
But I wanted to zoom in on something that you mentioned just a second ago about Hamas and their position right now and why ongoing negotiations with the “Board of Peace” continue to fall apart. For those who don’t know: The “Board of Peace” was set up as a part of the ceasefire and is supposed to, on paper, move the ceasefire process and rebuilding process of Gaza forward. It has a footnote essentially of like toward some further-off notion of Palestinian statehood.
I don’t think we talk enough about Hamas as a political entity and what its position is right now. What leverage does it have right now? What are they actually trying to argue for? Also, with other Palestinian factions, as trying to be a voice of what they see as this is the last remaining resistance of Palestinian freedom, in this context here, what does that look like? And, how is that stalling within this “Board of Peace,” very flawed structure?
TKS: It’s pretty obvious that Hamas itself doesn’t really have much leverage at all. They never had many offensive weapons to begin with. If you could consider the homemade makeshift rockets that they fire at Israel to be offensive; many of them have been depleted. I think it’s also important to be clear that Hamas is open, has explicitly stated that they are open to handing over their offensive weapons.
But they have clearly tied this to the process that was agreed upon. They very much see that as the only tidbit of leverage that they have left in this process. Basically, their argument is saying, “Listen, we’re open to handing over our weapons, but Israel has to withdraw as agreed upon in the ceasefire agreement, or there have to be steps that make it clear that Israel will be held accountable to the standards that was agreed upon.”
It’s really important to bring in the role of the “Board of Peace” here. It’s a misconception that the “Board of Peace” has been designed and will operate with the objective of building a new Gaza for Palestinians. What the “Board of Peace” exists to achieve is to create, effectively, this wonderland that Trump and Israel have agreed to.
What that looks like if you look at the presentations that, for example Jared Kushner has pushed out and the Trump administration has presented on how they view the Gaza Strip in 10, 20 years down the line — very little of it is actually for the Palestinians who live there, who will be basically concentrated into these disparate camps that are spread out throughout the Gaza Strip, put under intense surveillance, and basically serve as cheap labor for these luxury resorts and hotels and apartment complexes and data centers that Israel and the U.S. envision building in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians will “basically serve as cheap labor for these luxury resorts and hotels and apartment complexes and data centers that Israel and the U.S. envision building in the Gaza Strip.”
When we think about the “Board of Peace” is, that shrinking territory that Hamas does still control of is basically the only thing that is stopping the Trump administration and Israel from embarking further on that dystopian future of, again, herding Palestinians into these effectively concentration camps distributed throughout the Gaza Strip and having them just serve as cheap labor for this personal enrichment opportunity for the Trump administration and his Israeli partners.
JV: You’ve written about your own experiences growing up a Palestinian American. Your grandfather, I believe, was the former mayor of Gaza City, Rashad Shawa. Your father is from Gaza. Your aunt, Laila Shawa, is a renowned Palestinian visual artist, also from Gaza. You have another aunt, Rawya Shawa, a Palestinian journalist and legislator.
There’s a lineage to the work you do. Could you talk a bit about your family, your father, how you came to start doing this work advocating for Palestine?
TKS: I’m Palestinian American. I was born in New York. Something that I’ve asked my parents about — they never wanted to make me feel like I had to advocate for Palestinian rights. They were always hoping that I wouldn’t have to do any of this and that eventually it would be figured out someday, and that we wouldn’t have to make this our lives or our careers. But I first started becoming aware of the politics of my heritage when I was very young.
I was in middle school. I remember this one time I went to a friend’s place. He introduced me to his parents, and his dad asked where I was from, and I said, “Palestine.” He said, “What is that? It doesn’t exist.” I was a middle schooler, so at the time it was shocking, and I didn’t really understand it. Only later in life did I realize that that was pointed and had a lot of history behind it.
As you mentioned, my father grew up in Gaza until he was about college age and came to the U.S. Just hearing about the stories about growing up in Gaza and then seeing his reaction to later events, for example, the 2008 Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip — really, that kind of ended up awakening me to the real weight behind being Palestinian and pushed me to obviously get involved.
“That’s been one of the most difficult parts of, in addition to obviously just all the loss, is just knowing that we might never, never go back.”
The past two years have been extremely difficult just because there’s always been that hope of being able to return to Gaza and see the land that my father grew up in, my grandfather grew up in, my great-grandfather grew up in and played these really central roles in governance.
But it’s now — Gaza effectively doesn’t exist in the way it once did. So part of that process is just wrapping your mind around that as well. That’s been one of the most difficult parts of, in addition to obviously just all the loss, is just knowing that we might never, never go back. And if we do, it won’t be the Gaza that my father left and my grandfather led and all that.
JV: Your Aunt Rawya, she lost her home in that 2008 offensive from an Israeli strike?
TKS: Yep. And it wasn’t the first time. Israeli tanks had shelled her home before. That was the culmination of that whole process.
“ I very quickly had to become an expert in Palestinian history in order to defend myself.”
So it was very visceral for me at a very young age. But also, the fact that I was witnessing it all from a distance also played another role too. Because as a Palestinian American growing up in New York City, again, it very quickly became about defending myself. I very quickly had to become an expert in Palestinian history in order to defend myself from the people like my friend’s father who claimed I didn’t exist and my people didn’t exist.
Something that gives me hope in terms of the direction things are headed is that back in 2011, 2012, when I was a high schooler, the parameters for discussion around the Palestinian right to resist occupation, around some of the myths of Israel’s existence — for example, the myth that they made the desert bloom, or that it was a land without a people for a people without a land — so much of those have been eroded.
So much of American public opinion has, over the course of obviously two and a half years of genocide, shifted. There is much more space for having real conversations about this. More importantly, sharing the Palestinian perspective, which is very fundamentally different than it was even five, 10 years ago.
JV: Those shifts are incredible. Recent polling has shown time and time again that the vast majority of Democratic voters, somewhere north of 70 — more than 70 percent — in the U.S. see Israel unfavorably.
It’s playing a big role in U.S. electoral politics, whether or not a candidate supports blocking military aid to Israel has really become a litmus test in many of these races.
Some Democrats have found success in their primary elections running on that as a part of their platform and winning. You have Adam Hamawy in New Jersey, former Army surgeon who volunteered in Gaza; he won his primary against a moderate Democrat a couple weeks ago. Last month in Pennsylvania, you have Chris Rabb, whose campaign not only called for an arms embargo on Israel, but also — controversially for a lot of people — the right of return for Palestinians under international law.
I’m wondering, how would you diagnose this moment the Democratic Party is in with its attitude toward Israel–Palestine? Or do you see this as more than a moment? I’m curious how lasting you think these shifts will be.
TKS: I definitely see this as more than just a moment. It’s not just Democrats and people on the left who are feeling more pro-Palestinian than ever before. It’s across the political spectrum. It was Pew or Gallup, I forget which one, their most recent poll on where American sympathies lie between Israelis and Palestinians. For the first time ever, more Americans sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis, and that’s across the political spectrum. Obviously that’s a lot more skewed when it comes to Democratic voters or progressives and people on the left. But it very much is across the political spectrum.
It’s more useful to look at the polling that we’re seeing around actual policy measures. For example, arms embargo or “block the bombs” and calls to actually either at the very least condition U.S. military aid to Israel, but, even better, cut it entirely. We’re seeing upwards of 60, 65 percent of Americans, again, across the political spectrum, who support these types of actual, solid policies.
That’s the difference right now between when you’re looking at just sympathy and people who are actually willing to potentially even make voting decisions out of what they’re seeing right now and out of the outrage that they’ve been witnessing when it comes to two and a half years of genocide. They also are now more cognizant of the fact that we send Israel billions of dollars to do that genocide and to engage in forever wars across the region that many Americans see or believe Israel is dragging the U.S. into. That is the bigger change that we’re seeing, and that arguably might be a little bit more lasting, is that more and more Americans today are critical of Israel and critical of that “special U.S.–Israel relationship.”
What concerns me sometimes is that a lot of the shift in public opinion isn’t necessarily tied to support for Palestinians, and we’re obviously seeing that on the right. On the far right, where we’re seeing a rise in actual antisemitism. Across the right, we’re seeing just a general rise in the “America-first — MAGA — we don’t want to be sending anyone our tax dollars,” and they’re now starting to include Israel in that.
But the other thing I will mention is, what we’re seeing right now in the Democratic Party is really a widening chasm between the Democratic establishment and the voting base. The Democratic establishment, some of the older representatives that we have in Congress — Chuck Schumer is a great example of some of these more old-school politicians who are resistant to recognizing this new reality. What I’m trying to say is that, there is this very, very big generational gap that is emerging. So despite the fact that we are seeing such a substantial shift in U.S. public opinion, we’re not seeing it in policy. That’s largely because these establishment Democrats remain in power.
But what I hope to see over the next five, 10 years is that that starts to fundamentally change when the younger generation emerges as the bigger voting bloc. Unfortunately, these policy changes are glacial. It’s too late to end the genocide.
The one thing I am hopeful for in that long-term process, is that long-term movement that we have built and are continuing to build that will be borne out by these younger generations as they rise into political power.
JV: All this discussion around blocking military aid to Israel is as old as the state of Israel itself. You had President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s threatening an arms embargo as leverage against Israel and other presidents after that.
We’ve been mostly talking about a post-October 7 world where it’s been this rallying cry for anti-genocide protesters, progressive lawmakers in the U.S., and, as I’ve mentioned, we saw Democrats win primary elections running on this. The message is pretty clear: Our taxpayer dollars are being used to help Israel acquire weapons from American companies to commit a genocide. All the while, there’s this economic side of it — all the while our economy suffers, people are struggling to afford rent, just daily life, healthcare. So let’s use the leverage we have as Americans and stop the flow of weapons.
To your point, a lot of it is leaning toward anti-Israel, not so much for the Palestinian people. And yet there is this huge shift. But now we’re increasingly hearing Netanyahu and the Israeli government, and supporters of the Israeli government signal that they are getting ready and almost championing a world without the same funding from the U.S., and basically a post-State Department funding mechanism where the same amount of taxpayer dollars isn’t flowing into Israel as much so that they could buy these weapons.
And in Congress you’re seeing a lot of pro-Israel lobbying happening around a new bill, and it would essentially intertwine the U.S. and Israeli militaries and weapons industries in a new way — we don’t do this with any other ally, it’s worth mentioning — in a new way that will reshape how Israel gets weapons. Could you talk about the dangers of that and where things are headed?
TKS: To be completely honest with you, and we’ve talked about this before, this is the most important thing to look at in the course of the next few months and few years. That’s the difference between conditioning U.S. military funding and aid to Israel, and completely cutting U.S. military weapons to Israel through an arms embargo.
I argued as early as summer 2023 — and this was before the genocide — that even conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel would not go far enough if the objective is for Israel to end the occupation. And that was prior to the genocide. It’s also important to recognize that the Israeli military is deeply dependent on U.S. weapons, U.S. military cooperation, intel sharing.
If the U.S. withdrew that relationship or fundamentally changed it or stopped providing Israel with the weapons — whether through conditioning that aid or cutting it entirely — that would fundamentally alter Israel’s ability to get away with whether it’s genocide in Gaza or regional wars.
However, conditioning doesn’t go far enough because if Israel’s committing a genocide, and if we recognize that, then selling Israel the weapons on the open market is arguably just as bad as giving those weapons to Israel for free with U.S. tax dollars.
“Selling Israel the weapons on the open market is just as bad as giving those weapons to Israel for free with U.S. tax dollars.”
It’s avoiding another movement trap that is reminiscent of the “Ceasefire now” trap. Because if we get stuck in limiting ourselves — our movement — to simply calling for conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel on Israel adhering to international law, or U.S. law even, then there are so many ways for Israel to wriggle around that.
More importantly, at the end of the day, Israel can continue to buy the weapons it needs to get away with genocide on the open market, and that’s the problem.
Right now, there are a couple Israel-led initiatives that actually recognize this moment we’re in. So Israel’s leaders Benjamin Netanyahu, and a lot of American — some of the most stalwart pro-Israel figures in the U.S., Lindsey Graham comes to mind — recognize the fact that criticism of Israel in the U.S. is skyrocketing; and potentially the future of this formerly special “U.S.–Israel relationship” is not sustainable in the long run, especially as more Republicans turn against this status quo. In many ways, they’ve recognized the need to shift this U.S.-Israel relationship from one of dependency, both militarily and financially, to one of further entrenchment.
How they’re going to do that, there’s basically two concurrent initiatives that are ongoing right now. The first and the most important one probably, is the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA. In specific, Section 224, which is proposing basically an unprecedented integration of the U.S. military–industrial complex and Israeli defense and technology sectors. That’s dangerous because what that does is that entrenches the U.S. military within the United States military–industrial complex, and gives it access that no country has, not even the U.K., not even France, not even these core allies that the U.S. has built their relationships with over decades.
Apart from that, why that is dangerous is that it becomes much harder for the pro-Palestine movement, or the movement in support of Palestinian rights and an end to genocide, to decouple that new much more entrenched relationship. That would mean that we would have to then go up against the U.S. military as well as the Israeli military and make that case to Americans.
Obviously, it’s a very strategic move by the Israelis to take advantage of this period in time where there is this huge chasm between public opinion and actual policy. Because they’re essentially recognizing that, “Hey, we might not have total impunity in the United States forever, but we do for now while establishment Democrats and Republicans are running the ship. We have a Trump administration that’s essentially willing to do whatever we want.” So what they’re trying to do now is essentially push this process through while Trump is in power, while Republicans have a majority in the Senate and the House.
Another example is the negotiations that are ongoing around the memorandum of understanding, the MOU, between Israel and the US. The last one being signed under the Obama administration, which was a 10-year MOU that agreed to basically be giving Israel $3.8 billion every year of U.S. tax dollars. What the new MOU that they’re thinking about is a 20-year MOU in which a couple years of increase in U.S. military aid before it eventually decreases. They also pursue this entrenchment approach, making the two militaries more dependent on each other rather than this Israel dependency relationship.
JV: There’s this really fantastic archival footage you shared on Twitter sometime last year showing your grandfather, former mayor of Gaza City — again, Rashad Shawa — talking about the annexation of Gaza. This was in the 1980s, more than 40 years ago. Here we are having similar discussions, if not in a more dire place.
I’m wondering where you think the movement goes from here. And, with thinking about BDS — Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions — if Israel doesn’t care about its place on the international stage as much as it used to, as that increasingly isn’t playing a factor, as the U.S. is more officializing its entrenchment with the Israeli military, where do you see the movement going from here?
TKS: Israel remains very much dependent on the United States and its relationship with the West, and I’m talking about mainly Western Europe. Yes, they are recognizing that their relationships based on impunity are not a given forever, which very much explains why they are effectively going so hard across the region right now. They very much see this as a moment of opportunity for them that they might not have forever. They might not have a Trump administration in the White House forever that is effectively willing to allow them to get away with whatever they want. That’s why they are taking these unprecedented steps ranging from the genocide in Gaza to the war in Iran that no other U.S. president agreed to, except for Trump.
“That’s why I spend so much time advocating for arms embargoes, for economic sanctions, anything that goes past these previous demands that we’ve had.”
That is why it’s all the more important that we recognize that the movement itself — the movement in support of Palestinian rights — has made huge strides over the last couple of years. And now, however, it’s increasingly important to shift our efforts to punitive measures — sanctions — everything in our power to hold Israel accountable through actual punitive measures like economic sanctions, arms embargoes that make it more difficult for Israel to get away with the war crimes and atrocities and genocides it’s committing.
That’s why I spend so much time advocating for arms embargoes, for economic sanctions, anything that goes past these previous demands that we’ve had — the “Ceasefire now” demands, the conditioning aid demands.
It’s increasingly important now that we take these steps and hold Israel accountable through arms embargoes and sanctions so that we don’t get to the point in the future where Israel can live its “super Sparta” strategy that it is really investing in. Basically creating a world in which Israel can carry out these forever wars and these genocides without the U.S.’s and the West’s permission. It’s really imperative that we see these changes sooner than later because time is not on our side in terms of that process.
JV: I hate to be the pessimist in the room here, but aren’t we there already where Israel can just — maybe it’s not its fullest iteration, not fully evolved Sparta form, as you mentioned — but aren’t we there already where they’re acting outside of the U.S. interest?
TKS: Yeah. Everything we’re doing, it’s too late to stop the genocide in Palestine. An inconceivable number of Palestinians have been killed, and they’re not coming back. Gaza is — we’ve lost so much of it. A lot of this accountability is already too little too late.
But it’s also very important to recognize that, again, Israel remains very much dependent on the United States in particular, not even to mention just Europe and Western Europe, for its military activity and military prowess and being shielded on the international stage.
Just look at the Iran war, for example. There’s no way that Israel would have been able to sustain this type of regional conflagration without the U.S. This ranges from the offensive strikes that the U.S. was partnering directly with Israel on, the intelligence sharing, and the defensive capabilities that the U.S., its vassal states in the region, like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and then even other European countries that ended up sending missile defense systems and naval ships to defend Israel from the rockets that were coming from Iran.
“Israel is very much still basically like a U.S. military outpost.”
So it’s very much like, we’re in this moment right now — and we will be for many years to come — in which Israel is still extremely dependent on U.S. on the U.S. military umbrella. Israel is very much still basically like a U.S. military outpost. So these types of actions — arms embargo and sanctions — can have an effect on Israel.
The timeline for Israel to be fully self-sufficient in its military procurement system and its own economy — that’s a far way off. Israel is a very integrated economy, and economic sanctions would have a very substantial effect on Israel’s ability to wage war and genocide. However, it is imperative that the sooner we can do this, the better.
JW: That was Intercept reporter Jonah Valdez and Al-Shabaka U.S. Policy Fellow Tariq Kenney-Shawa speaking at a special live Intercept Briefing earlier this week. If you don’t want to miss the next Intercept Briefing live, sign up for our newsletter at theintercept.com.
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President Donald Trump has touted more than $500 billion in prescription drug savings over 10 years from his policies. But the savings are largely aspirational, and not based on the more limited actions the administration has taken so far.
The administration’s most favored nation policy seeks to bring down drug prices to levels paid in other countries. The bulk of the savings, estimated in a May 5 report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, comes from assuming that all new drugs will be sold in the U.S. at MFN prices going forward, saving $529 billion. A smaller amount of savings, $64.3 billion, comes from applying MFN pricing to Medicaid.
“People are saving a lot of money,” Trump said at a May 18 event announcing the addition of more drugs to TrumpRx, the administration’s website directing people to cash prices for prescription drugs. “Over the next 10 years, the Council of Economic Advisers estimates that our most favored nation drug policies will save Americans over $500 billion. And this has been the greatest breakthrough in lowering healthcare costs in modern history.”
“Think about the $600 billion of savings to the average American over the next 10 years,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said on June 2 at an event announcing further additions to the TrumpRx website, while calling on Congress to codify MFN pricing.
“It’s just a massive number that they voluntarily, sort of, gave back because the president went after them and said: ‘You got to deal with this problem,’” Oz continued, referring to the president’s negotiations with drug companies.
There isn’t evidence that drug companies have agreed to give back $600 billion in savings to Americans, much less savings that will go to “average” Americans. So far, the administration has made voluntary deals with 17 drug companies to lower drug prices. The White House and the companies have reported commitments to launch new drugs at MFN prices, as well as to offer MFN prices to states for Medicaid. However, the details of the deals have not been disclosed, and some companies have reported that they end after three years.
“Right now we just have a lot more questions than we have answers, and that makes it really difficult to assess the validity or accuracy or even ballpark-ness of this very large estimate of savings in the White House report,” Juliette Cubanski, vice president and director of the Program on Medicare Policy at the health policy organization KFF, told us. She added that it’s difficult even to evaluate the impact of the current voluntary deals given a lack of answers to key questions, such as “how many of these manufacturers’ drugs are subject to MFN pricing.”
When asked for more details on what has been done so far to achieve the savings in the report, White House spokesperson Kush Desai told us that “the research report lays out all of the assumptions underlying this analysis.” CMS did not respond to our request for comment.
The hundreds of billions in savings calculated in the CEA report do not come from offering people discounts on TrumpRx. As we’ve written previously, the prices on the site for brand-name drugs negotiated under the administration’s voluntary deals only represent savings for individuals in a few specific situations, such as when paying for fertility or weight loss drugs not covered by insurance, since many people will get better prices by using insurance rather than paying in cash. The CEA analysis only attempted to calculate 10-year savings from TrumpRx for Americans paying for fertility treatments, estimating these savings at $4.6 billion.
TrumpRx also recently started pointing people toward existing websites to access discounts on generic drugs. But as the CEA analysis itself acknowledged, generics are already cheaper in the U.S. than in other high-income countries, and they are not a target of MFN policies.
The U.S. does generally pay more for brand-name drugs than other nations. Prices in 2022 for these drugs were more than three times higher in the U.S. than in other high-income nations after adjusting for rebates, according to an analysis from the research organization RAND. But it is not clear how policies aiming to equalize drug prices will play out. As we have written previously, the president has repeatedly claimed broad victories over drug prices, even though they are hardly a done deal. There are significant uncertainties with his MFN approach, which still requires legislative action to further implement.
“We’ve seen no indication from pharma, from other key stakeholders, that this $600 billion number is real,” Jeromie Ballreich, an associate professor in the department of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told us, saying that one would expect companies to disclose to shareholders such an impact, which would be about 10% of U.S. pharmaceutical company revenue. “You would hear it outside of the White House, because $600 billion is, as Trump would say, huge.”
Missing Details From Trump’s Deals
Experts told us that it is difficult to evaluate the estimated nearly $600 billion in savings without more information on the president’s current or future MFN policies.
“This report is partly a report and mostly a press release,” Joseph Antos, a senior fellow emeritus at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, told us, adding that it is not possible to do an independent analysis based on the information provided.
Andrew Mulcahy, a senior health economist at RAND, told us that the hundreds of billions in savings are theoretically possible with a broad MFN policy but he said the administration’s actions so far only have “semblances” of accomplishing such a policy.
“Other countries’ prices are much lower than ours, and if policies are designed to piggyback on those prices, you can get savings in this order of magnitude,” he said. “That said, I don’t think that what’s happened so far — or plans for what will happen in the future — will align with that estimate in the CEA report for a variety of reasons.”
One key question is the length of the voluntary deals the administration has made with drug companies.
To get to nearly $600 billion in savings, the “key assumption” is that MFN pricing “will be implemented through legislation and affect all new product launches going forward,” Jens Grueger, a partner at Boston Consulting Group and affiliate professor at the University of Washington, told us in an email. The deals, however, appear to be limited to Trump’s time in office, he said.
Filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission from some of the companies have indicated the deals are limited overall, with two companies specifying they only last three years, STAT reported.
Photo illustration by Karen Bleier/AFP via Getty Images.
“It’s very unclear how you can estimate savings over a 10-year period based on deals that we understand to be lasting only for three years, unless you assume that Congress will actually codify MFN pricing,” Cubanski said. Meanwhile, she added, many Republicans in Congress even oppose legislation that allows the government to negotiate drug prices, much less price-setting.
Rena Conti, a health economist at Boston University Questrom School of Business, told us that the assumption of MFN legislation was “hypothetical at best, as there is no movement in Congress to pass legislation.”
A second question is what exactly the companies agreed to in their commitments to price newly launched drugs at MFN prices. As we’ve said, the bulk of the savings — $529 billion — estimated in the report come from assuming new drugs will be broadly offered at MFN prices over 10 years.
While Trump has claimed his administration has achieved the lowest drug prices in the world, the CEA report explained that his administration’s MFN pricing policies ask that companies offer U.S. payers the second-lowest drug prices among those paid in a small collection of countries: the G-7 nations, plus Switzerland and Denmark. The approach uses net prices after adjusting for gross domestic product per capita in comparison to the U.S., the report said.
The CEA report estimated the 10-year savings from new drug launches at MFN prices by comparing historical prices in these countries between 2021 and 2025 and imagining that this MFN policy had been applied, the report explained. (The analysis omitted Denmark due to a lack of data.) The White House economists then extended their estimate to 10 years, assuming a 3% growth rate.
In coming up with the hundreds of billions of dollars in savings, the CEA report “essentially said it’s going to be the second-lowest price out of the reference basket,” said Ballreich, the pharmaceutical policy researcher from Johns Hopkins. “There’s a number of question marks about whether or not these drug companies that came and met with the White House and did this agreement actually agreed to this.”
Some of the White House announcements of the deals specify commitments companies have made to provide MFN prices on “all new innovative” or “all new” medicines. However, SEC filings have sometimes indicated limitations, saying that companies agreed to “price certain future medicines” at or below MFN levels or mentioning “certain exceptions” to promises to price new products at these levels.
Three companies recently declined to tell STAT whether three new drugs would be launched at MFN prices.
Questions About Medicaid Savings
There are similar questions about the $64.3 billion in estimated savings for Medicaid.
Press releases on the voluntary deals with drug companies indicate that the companies will provide MFN prices to state Medicaid programs for at least some drugs. CMS is launching GENEROUS, a voluntary Medicaid initiative running five years, and the companies that have signed deals are expected to participate for at least some of this time, according to a May 8 analysis from KFF. However, the KFF analysis said that it is unclear how many drugmakers and states will ultimately participate in GENEROUS and for how long, as well as which drugs will be included.
The prices states pay for Medicaid drugs are not publicly disclosed, but they are generally already the lowest in the U.S., researchers have previously told us, making it difficult to assess whether the MFN deals will be better than existing Medicaid prices.
“It feels very difficult to believe that companies are actually giving up a good chunk of revenue with these deals,” Mulcahy said. “What seems far more likely is that they are finding a way to formalize the discounts they are already offering” to Medicaid.
Ballreich said that in a study that has not yet been published, he and his colleagues had estimated savings in the first year of the GENEROUS program at “just about a third” of what the CEA report projected for that timeframe. His group’s estimate assumed complete participation in GENEROUS by drug companies and states but also attempted to take into account some mechanisms Medicaid already has to reduce drug prices.
Roadblocks to Achieving MFN Savings
Even assuming the Trump administration enacted policies to require all drug companies to offer MFN prices to all payers, it’s not clear how much money the U.S. would save. MFN policies could affect global drug prices in ways the report did not take into account.
Trump has suggested that companies would make up for losses in revenue in the U.S. by increasing prices in other countries. However, researchers expressed skepticism that other high-income countries would agree to significantly higher prices.
In addition, Antos of AEI pointed out that MFN policies could lead some drugs to never make it to market. “I don’t believe they try to take into account the effects of this process on future innovation,” he said, referring to the CEA estimate.
A June 10 release from the White House listing Trump’s “recent wins” said his MFN initiative was “projected to save Americans $500 billion over the next decade while protecting innovation and expanding access.”
Cubanski, however, said that if the report is correct, and prices fall some 30%, “we’d be looking at a pretty significant hit to revenues for pharmaceutical companies, and that could translate to somewhat less innovation, or maybe significantly less innovation.”
The estimate also doesn’t take into account how drugmakers and other countries might push back against the policies.
The CEA report “assumes that companies continue launching products in reference countries and that prices in these countries would converge towards US prices,” Grueger said. He suggested that this could happen for some products “that address a high unmet medical need and provide transformative benefits for patients.” Other countries consider benefits to patients relative to costs in determining what they will pay for drugs.
“However, for the majority of products this will be difficult to achieve, and companies might consider not launching these products outside the US to protect US prices,” Grueger said, citing recent statements from pharmaceutical executives suggesting such delays. “As a consequence, lower prices in reference countries would not be available and prices in the US would not drop as much as projected in the CEA report.”
“Not only would you potentially impede access to new medications in other countries, but we wouldn’t end up with lower prices here in the US either,” Cubanski said. She added that it is already typical for drugs to launch in the U.S. before they are in other countries, making it difficult to figure out how to set an MFN price for new drugs in the first place.
The researchers also questioned the administration’s ability to assess whether companies had fulfilled promises to offer drugs at MFN prices.
Companies provide list prices for drugs, but these are rarely paid. The CEA analysis said that drugmakers will report net prices, taking into account various forms of discounts. But experts said it was unclear how the government will independently evaluate these prices.
“The government obviously can try to compel [drug companies] to report this information, and there is some wording in there about auditing, but I don’t know how you audit something when you don’t have full disclosure or any basis for really determining in a systematic way whether numbers are correct or not,” Antos said.
Antos called it “telling” that the CEA analysis itself does not rely on net prices for its analysis. Rather, the report says, because of “the confidential nature of rebates, there are no existing data sets with net pricing information.”
Mulcahy explained that instead, the data the CEA used has gross prices a healthcare data company derives using complicated and varying methodologies in different countries. In general, he said, the numbers are based on invoices at various stages of the drug supply. He said that this dataset is the “best we’ve got” and is what he and his colleagues at RAND have used for international comparisons of drug prices, but it has limitations.
“If you can put whatever number down you want on an invoice and then negotiate something secret later, you can make it look like you’re saving a ton of money,” Mulcahy said, expressing concern that the MFN pricing deals would incentivize even more secrecy about international drug prices.
“I think there will be ways to hide discounts and backchannel funds for this,” Ballreich said, suggesting various ways drugmakers could give money back to payers outside the U.S. For example, they could institute rebates or taxes that are not drug-specific. He also said that drugmakers will be restricted from disclosing the true price of their drugs in other countries due to confidentiality agreements and laws in those countries.
“If you want to make a claim about how launch prices are going to change or if a company wants to promise to change launch prices … that’s easy to fudge,” Mulcahy said. “And then you find creative ways on the back end to make yourself whole again.”
“It’s kind of like everyone wins except for consumers,” he added.
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In the early hours of January 6, 2026, two 911 callers near Ypsilanti, Michigan, reported a white van driving erratically.
Within an hour, police had found a white van, crashed into it twice on purpose, and fired 27 shots at the driver while the vehicle lay on its side, burning. At least eightcops watched as 34-year-old Navy veteran John Andrew Jenuwine bled out and died inside.
Of several inconsistencies in the police response, one stood out: The only physical description provided to the dispatcher was that “two Black guys” were driving the van, and a caller said they’d brandished a handgun at his wife. Jenuwine was white, driving alone, and unarmed.
That’s not what police told Jenuwine’s parents when they contacted them the following evening, 17 hours after killing their son.
“We were told that there was an exchange of gunfire, and that John was killed,” John’s father, Larry Jenuwine, told The Intercept. “Call it naïveté or whatever you want to call it, but our first thoughts were, ‘Oh my God, what did he do, why did he cause this?’”
On the phone with Larry and Kelly, John’s mother, a deputy with the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office claimed their recently deceased son had a gun. But Jenuwine, an industrial field engineer traveling to repair million-dollar lasers, just had his work equipment; no gun was ever found in his van. And the officers who caused two intentional collisions appear to have violated their own policies, which the department updated after the police killing of George Floyd — testing the limits of post-2020 police reforms.
“We were told that there was an exchange of gunfire, and that John was killed. Come to find out, he didn’t do anything to cause any of this.”
The Jenuwine family is now suing Washtenaw County and eight sheriff’s deputies who responded to the case for wrongful death; for violating John’s constitutional rights to protection under the law, and against unreasonable searches and seizures; and for gross negligence and willful misconduct, including improper use of deadly force. The suit seeks to hold the county responsible for what it calls the sheriff’s failures to train officers and enforce its policies.
“Come to find out, he didn’t do anything to cause any of this,” Larry said. “He was not the guy that they were supposed to be chasing.”
Less than 15 minutes elapsed between the time Washtenaw County Sheriff’s deputies incorrectly identified Jenuwine’s van and when they started shooting. Officers fired their first shots seconds after causing Jenuwine’s vehicle to flip on its side and catch fire.
Only seven out of the 27 shots fired hit Jenuwine. None of them alone was responsible for killing him, according to an independent autopsy obtained by Jenuwine’s family and described by their attorneys in a press conference last week, which found he bled out and died over time. While Jenuwine struggled and died, dashcam footage shared with The Intercept recorded officers outside discussing whether any of the shots had hit him.
After several minutes had passed, one officer said over the radio, “He’s kicking around inside the vehicle right now.” None of them called for emergency services.
According to the footage, an edited version of which was viewed by The Intercept, Jenuwine lay dying in the van for at least five minutes.
“The cruelty of it, I suppose, is what strikes me the most,” said Maura Battersby, one of the attorneys representing the family. “If aid had been rendered, he may have survived this.”
Of the four deputies attorneys said fired shots, two names have been publicly released: Jacob Gombos and Jonathan Earley. Both received awards in 2024 for distinguished service; Gombos got the department’s Life Saving Award.
“If aid had been rendered, he may have survived this.”
The sheriff’s office placed Gombos, Earley, and the other deputies involved on paid administrative leave pending an investigation by Michigan State Police, which was completed last month and is now pending review by the Michigan attorney general. The state AG will decide whether to bring criminal charges against any of the officers in the case.
A spokesperson for the Michigan State Police confirmed that their investigation is closed and referred questions to the attorney general’s office, which did not respond to a request for comment. Spokespeople for the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office and the Ypsilanti Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.
One of the officers who shot at Jenuwine had received the department’s Life Saving Award.
The case has brought renewed scrutiny to the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office, which is currently facing dual lawsuits from whistleblowers who claimed the department hired unqualified officers and fired them in retaliation for reporting it. Both plaintiffs are former office staff who said they were fired after raising concerns that Sheriff Alyshia Dyer and other staff pushed them to hire candidates who had lied about their qualifications and in one case had an “extensive” criminal history. Another sheriff’s deputy resigned in March while under investigation for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a subordinate officer. Dyer herself was also independently investigated last year after a partially burned cannabis cigarette was found in her county-issued vehicle. (She denied it was hers, and an independent report could not determine whether the joint belonged to Dyer.)
“It seems like every day we hear something about the Washtenaw Sheriff’s department,” Kelly Jenuwine told The Intercept. “They are in the news constantly, and it’s not for a good reason.”
Jenuwine’s killing raises a new round of questions about the efficacy of police reform. In 2024, Michigan implemented new statewide guidelines restricting vehicle pursuits to “protect the lives of innocent bystanders.” Following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office released a memo outlining how its policies aligned with a series of proposed reforms pushed by activists against police violence that grew out of 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri. And the sheriff’s office adopted a new use of force policy in 2022, which classifies intentional vehicle collisions — known as a “PIT” maneuver, a precision immobilization technique — as deadly force.
“That’s something you’re trained not to do,” said Todd Flood, the lead attorney on the Jenuwines’ case.
The new policy also guides officers to “seek voluntary compliance and operate with minimal reliance on the use of force,” using techniques in crisis intervention and “rapport-building communication,” and try to de-escalate, even after using force. It requires a mandatory medical evaluation when deadly force is applied, if an officer observes an injury, or if they believe one has occurred; and it ties the degree of appropriate force to how certain they are that the subject committed a crime. The policy states: “Sheriff’s Office employees shall never employ excessive force.”
Officers did not verbally engage with Jenuwine a single time, Battersby told The Intercept.
“I would have expected them to be calling out over the loudspeaker,” Battersby said. “There were many instances in which they were in close proximity to him, and it doesn’t appear that they did that.”
At a press conference after the shooting, the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office played a dashcam video that showed Jenuwine reversing his van and driving on the wrong side of the road. Before the sheriffs hit Jenuwine’s van in the first PIT maneuver, the dashcam video cuts ahead, with the video timestamp jumping forward 30 seconds.
The Jenuwines said what they describe as John’s “execution” changed the way they look at law enforcement after having considered themselves generally supportive of police. “I want the people that executed my son to never have the opportunity to work in law enforcement again,” said Kelly.
“They ran around with those guns like they were playing video games, guns held sideways,” Larry said, referring to the dashcam footage. “I’m still struggling with this and I anticipate that’s going to be a continuing struggle.”
Despite believing the vast majority of police were “good, honest, hard-working people,” he said, “I don’t believe these guys that were involved in this shooting were. And that’s the kind of people we need to get out of that system.”
“We want to make sure that the people involved in this, in John’s death, are held accountable,” Larry said. “We’re hoping that there will be criminal charges as well, but we can’t count on that.”
Jenuwine liked to spend his time outdoors fishing and hunting with his family, his parents told The Intercept. He was on his high school football team, spent six years in the Navy, and was a member of a Detroit motorcycle club. When he was growing up, he and Larry worked on cars and tractors together.
On what would have been Jenuwine’s 35th birthday last month, his parents said they spent the evening crying over a birthday cake.
“Those officers get to go home to their families every night,” Kelly said. “What Larry and I get, we get a box of ashes and a lock of my son’s hair.”
As companies integrate AI and hire fewer employees, a shift toward a ‘gig economy’ will commence
In 2024, the buy-now-pay-later company Klarna announced that it would cut hundreds of customer service roles and begin using an artificial intelligence chatbot instead. The move was expected to save the company millions. But a year later, after customers complained about the degraded quality of customer service, Klarna began to recruit human customer service agents back.
At first glance, the reversal appeared to be a victory for human workers in the age of AI. The reality was more complex. Instead of bringing on full-time customer service agents, who Klarna contracts through an outside agency, it instead brought on workers in what Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has described as “an Uber type of set-up”. Now, an AI chatbot continues to handle most of customers’ basic queries, while a growing number of gig workers handle the more advanced ones. “Just like somebody can go and drive an Uber for a while, they can actually jump on and work for Klarna’s customer service,” Siemiatkowski said on a podcast in February.
The next Strait of Hormuz crisis could be even worseExpert commentthilton.drupal
Even if Trump’s deal holds, Iran retains the ability to close Hormuz again. If the Houthis were to simultaneously disrupt shipping in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the consequences would be disastrous.
Earlier this week, the US and Iran signed an interim peace deal that includes plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. While the deal promises a removal of the US blockade within 30 days and a restoration of pre-war shipping traffic, the future of the Strait remains uncertain.
The memorandum of understanding states that ‘the traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start.’ But it also acknowledges the need for Iran to remove mines and obstacles in the Strait, which it says it will begin within 30 days of the agreement.
This demining process will be slow and costly. It may also require external confirmation and support. And mine clearing will have to be paired with the removal of undetonated ordnance that fell into the sea during the war.
Even then, without an internationally recognized traffic separation scheme or other security measures, ships will face navigational risks that undermine their abilities to transit.
The Strait of Hormuz is therefore not open, nor is it close to opening.
There is also uncertainty over the future administration of the Strait. Although President Trump has said passage through the Strait will be ‘permanently toll-free’, the deal allows Iran to work with Oman in conversation with other littoral states to ‘define the future administration and maritime services’ in the Strait. Iranian officials had previously said ‘fees will be charged’ for unspecified ‘services’ going forward.
So far, insurance companies have not significantly reduced maritime insurance premiums, which will be necessary for shipping to flow again. Insurance and shipping companies will likely require more evidence of commitment from both the US and Iran.
The Strait of Hormuz is therefore not open, nor is it close to opening. The process will take time, confidence-building and numerous security assurances. Yet in the meantime, the risk of an even worse chokepoint crisis remains.
Future chokepoint crises
Even if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, Iran will still retain the ability to close it again. The threat of closure alone may be enough to deter shipping and create significant disruption without significant cost to Tehran.
In a future conflict, the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen may also seek to close the Bab al-Mandab Strait, another major maritime chokepoint that connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden.
Signs of this potential strategy were already emerging before the ceasefire deal. On 8 June, the Houthis threatened to block Israeli and Israeli-linked ships sailing through the Red Sea. On 10 June, a small vessel operating off Yemen’s coast reportedly harassed a commercial ship close to Bab al-Mandab.
Shipping in the Red Sea has faced disruption before. Between 2024 and 2025, the Houthis attacked over 190 commercial ships in the Red Sea, causing major disruption to global trade. Despite the attacks ending with a May 2025 US-Houthi ceasefire, the Houthis have retained the ability to threaten maritime traffic at any time.
Today, with Hormuz effectively closed, ships have been forced to seek alternative routes. Some of the remaining workarounds depend on access to the Red Sea, including transporting oil by land to Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu port on the Red Sea coast. Renewed insecurity in Bab al-Mandab therefore threatens some of the existing alternatives to Hormuz.
This also has a knock-on effect on another chokepoint: the Suez Canal. The Bab al-Mandab Strait serves as the southern gateway to the Suez Canal. Amid Houthi attacks, vessel traffic through the Suez Canal dropped by 90 per cent in 2024. Even the threat of attacks alone is enough to disrupt shipping due to elevated insurance premiums and crew safety concerns.
The consequences of more closures
Disruption in one or more maritime chokepoints frequently generates ripple effects across the wider global shipping network. In this case, the immediate impact would be felt through rising transportation costs. Insurance premiums would rise as ships enter higher-risk operating environments. Longer voyages around the Cape of Good Hope would increase fuel consumption and vessel operating expenses. Congestion at alternative ports and transit routes creates additional delays.
Disruption to the Bab al-Mandab Strait would also put additional pressure on energy markets. Reduced access to Gulf exports and longer shipping routes would likely increase oil and gas prices, generating inflationary effects across a wide range of industries. For import-dependent economies, especially those already facing fiscal stress, higher transportation and commodity costs could reduce access to food, fuel and essential goods.
Governments and industry will need to move beyond reactive responses.
The consequences would not be distributed evenly. Smaller economies and vulnerable importers would bear disproportionate costs, exacerbating existing humanitarian crises. Economic and humanitarian pressure would potentially push countries to negotiate transit rights with Iran and the Houthis.
During the war, countries like India,Pakistan, and Malaysia sought to negotiate passage through the Strait of Hormuz with Tehran on an ad hoc basis. Private companies have also pursued individual deals for safe transit with Tehran. Over time, countries facing severe economic disruption may conclude that bilateral transit agreements are preferable to absorbing the costs of prolonged supply-chain disruption.
Existing initiatives and their limits
A range of international initiatives aimed at protecting shipping already operate in the Red Sea area. These include European naval missions, the International Maritime Organization’s Maritime Security Transit Corridor, and regional frameworks such as the Djibouti Code of Conduct. Several countries maintain a naval presence in the region and periodically provide escorts and convoy protection for commercial shipping.
Will Colombia elect a far-right president?Expert commentLToremark
Iván Cepeda and Abelardo de la Espriella represent opposite ends of the political spectrum. But neither appear to have the solutions to Colombia’s problems.
The second round of Colombia’s presidential election will be held on 21 June, revealing a country deeply divided between two candidates with entirely different political visions.
Iván Cepeda, leader of the left-wing coalition Pacto Histórico, is the government-backed candidate endorsed by current president Gustavo Petro. He aims to combat the economic elites and political forces that have dominated Colombia for over a century. To do so, he wants to reform the state and the tax system, reduce inequality through social agreements and increased access to new technologies, protect nature, and strengthen peace and multilateralism.
His opponent, Abelardo de la Espriella, is a businessman and lawyer with no political experience who is endorsed by US President Donald Trump – and currently leading the polls. Nicknamed ‘El Tigre’ (The Tiger) for his aggressive approach, he blends the characteristics of Donald Trump, Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. De la Espriella presents himself as a staunch opponent of communism and advocates a tough stance against the authoritarianism of the left, organized crime, corruption, drug trafficking and illicit economies.
The differences between the two candidates and their visions for Colombia could not be greater.
Cepeda is a senator who has spent his entire adult life fighting against the state’s collusion with the far-right paramilitary groups that murdered his father, senator and lawyer Manuel Cepeda Vargas, in 1994. He wants to tackle three key problems in Colombia: inequality, violence and the lack of state control of 40 per cent of the national territory – which creates the perfect environment for armed groups to operate freely.
In Gustavo Petro’s current government, Cepeda led the Paz Total (Total Peace) initiative to reach agreements with non-state political and criminal armed groups. The aim was to get them to lay down their arms and cease their illicit activities by offering reduced sentences and the retention of part of their wealth. He also attempted to reach a peace agreement with the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group. Both projects failed, and he is accused of indirectly having helped the armed groups gain ground.
De la Espriella, meanwhile, became famous as a lawyer for defending individuals linked to organized crime and paramilitarism. His clients include Alex Saab, an alleged organized crime operator who was a key ally of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s government as well as an alleged collaborator of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
As a politician, he now takes a very hardline approach to organized crime and drugs. If elected, he would use massive force against armed criminal or political groups and strengthen security by building maximum-security prisons. He would also seek to dismantle the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Juan Manuel Santos government and FARC Marxist guerrilla, particularly the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) established by the agreement to implement transitional justice.
De la Espriella wants to reduce the size of the state, eliminate regulations, promote mining and energy exploitation, cut taxes on businesses and large fortunes, and force banks to provide cheap loans for home purchases. He also wants to withdraw Colombia from the United Nations and the Organization of American States.
A new right and new alignments
The Colombian business community, most of the media, the international financial sector, and part of the armed forces officers would support a potential De la Espriella victory. In diplomatic circles, however, some feel it would be a lack of prestige for Colombia to have a president linked to organized crime and the paramilitaries.
But it is a price they might consider worth paying to be on good terms with the US, which has always been their political and economic benchmark. And currently occupying the White House is a president for whom the lines between personal and political interests are blurred.
De la Espriella’s approach fits in with Trump’s national security strategy, which seeks to have like-minded governments in the region that cooperate in the war on crime and grant him access to their mineral and energy resources. By contrast, if Cepeda wins, the Trump administration may try to exert direct and indirect pressure through their regional allies to limit his reforms, particularly tax reforms and attempts to impose regulations on US mining and oil companies operating in Colombia.
This election is part of the wider trend towards the far right across Latin America. In elections across the region, traditional right-wing parties – as well as those on the left and in the centre – have been taken by surprise by populist, non-political outsiders who have won over a large proportion of their voters by focusing on issues such as crime and nationalism versus multilateralism.
Although Cepeda has focused his campaign on denouncing De la Espriella for his links to the paramilitaries, he has misunderstood the new right which his opponent represents. De la Espriella has presented himself as a representative of a new, pragmatic right, which is devoid of values and instead focused on seeing immediate results. As Hernando Gómez Buendía, director of Razón Pública, points out: ’The right-wing did not disappear. It changed hands’.
This election highlights the link between the erosion of democracy and the consequent rise of the far right in Latin America on the one hand, and Trump’s hemispheric policy of supporting allied governments in the region on the other. This support is either direct or channelled through local allies, as seen in Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa’s explicit backing of De la Espriella, which led to accusations of ‘deliberate interference’ in the election.
Trump asked questions of Iran when he did not know the answers. Now he must pay the priceExpert commentjon.wallace
The president started a war in the Middle East without considering foreseeable risks. The US memorandum of understanding with Iran leaves many of the repercussions of that miscalculation unaddressed.
There is a maxim every trial lawyer learns early in their career: ‘Never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to’. In Operation Epic Fury, US President Donald Trump violated this fundamental principle.
Trump is not the first US president to misjudge an endeavour in the Middle East. From George H. W. Bush to George W. Bush, to the Biden era view that the ‘region is quieter today than it has been in two decades’, successive US administrations have all searched for peace in the Middle East through war, sanctions and economic leverage and diplomacy – and all failed to secure a lasting, favourable outcome.
On 28 February 2026, Trump thought the main question was: ‘Will the Iranian regime be compelled into compliance with US demands through the use of overwhelming military force?’ He hoped – but did not know – that the answer was ‘yes’: that the US and Israel could wage a quick military operation lasting four to six weeks, grounded in a set of objectives that included destroying Iran’s missile industry and navy, neutralizing Iran’s regional proxy network, and ensuring Iran could not obtain a nuclear weapon.
Also at the heart of Trump’s ambition was an ideological attachment to seeing regime change in Iran. The president believed the operation would put in motion the first domino in a chain that would lead to the collapse of Iran’s Islamic Republic.
Launching the war, he asked an explicit question of Iran’s citizens – another which he did not know the answer to. Were they capable of seizing the opportunity the US was providing and overthrowing the Iranian regime? ‘So let’s see how you respond,’ he said.
Negotiations over the last year have made clear that the US and Iran are rarely on the same page or even reading from the same book.
But the conflict and its outcome were never for Iranian civilians to decide. As Iran’s leadership structure faced early decapitation and personnel losses, it reconstituted itself and adopted a ‘nothing to lose’ approach.
Iran exported the conflict across the region using ballistic missiles and drones and disrupted global markets through a de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz. This strategy of horizontal escalation re-established leverage for Iran. For Trump it meant digesting tactical success but strategic failure.
A memorandum of little understanding
Now the US and Iran have agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to extend the April ceasefire 60 days and ‘reopen’ the Strait of Hormuz, while providing a framework for additional negotiations between the parties.
Negotiations over the last year have made clear that the US and Iran are rarely on the same page or even reading from the same book. Yet Americans, regional players and the market are meant to believe that after successive failures and false starts, negotiations have turned the corner.
The MoU rests on very little common understanding and is already raising skepticism, among the US intelligence community and in Israel. What comes next will be more telling than what has already been achieved.
Re-establishing timely, safe and open passage through the Strait of Hormuz represents the most pressing test. But the US and Iran have a host of open items to address in coming months – including all the questions left unanswered by the war: What is to be done with Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium (the ‘nuclear dust’)? What is the future of Iran’s nuclear programme, sanctions relief and frozen assets? Will Iran be persuaded to halt its support for its regional proxies? And what are the prospects for genuine peace in the Israel–Hezbollah theatre?
With trust between the conflicting parties so weak, the door remains open to a range of scenarios. Negotiations may fall apart during the 60-day ceasefire extension – perhaps over fighting in Lebanon. The ceasefire may be extended again to allow for more meaningful progress on negotiations. Or a peace deal may be reached with deeply compromised terms that fail to resolve the outstanding issues.
Opportunistic timing
For Trump, the MoU announcement comes as a relief. It has been clear for weeks that the conflict in Iran has been testing the president’s patience, as he seeks to focus on other items on his agenda.
Atop the list is America’s 250th birthday in just a few weeks, and November’s US mid-term elections. American support for Operation Epic Fury peaked at around 40 per cent and has been waning over the last month.
Polling indicates that voters have consistently been more concerned with the state of the US economy than the state of the Middle East. Any easing the MoU brings to prices at the gas pump and on inflation will play favourably at home. On the international stage, Greenland remains of interest to Trump, as does Cuba.
In the coming weeks, analysts will draw comparisons between the MoU (and any follow-on negotiations) and the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Trump has repeatedly referred to the JCPOA as ‘the worst and most one-sided transaction the United States has ever entered into’. The truth of how any new arrangements stack up to the JCPOA will be complex and complicated, but for now remains unmeasurable.
Making the case for COP in a fractured geopolitical environment
22
June 2026 — 17:00 TO 18:00 BST
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
Leaders of the world’s foremost climate conference - COP - set out how environmental diplomacy can still deliver.
Leaders of the world’s foremost climate conference - COP - set out how environmental diplomacy can still deliver.
The COP global climate talks have anchored international action for three decades, but geopolitical tensions are testing their effectiveness. These pressures raise questions about what COP can still deliver. This event looks at climate leadership, and the role of diplomacy in sustaining progress.
Key questions:
What role does COP play in global climate action?
What outcomes would define success at COP31 in Antalya this November?
What priorities should shape COP32 in Addis Ababa in 2027?
How can climate diplomacy adapt to geopolitical pressure?
What needs to happen outside COP to sustain progress?
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