The Democratic National Committee released a long-awaited autopsy on the 2024 election that party chair Ken Martin has kept under wraps for months.
Microsoft has hired games analyst and investor Matthew Ball as Xbox's new chief strategy officer. With a long track record of analyzing the video game market and industry's biggest shifts, Ball's background could help Xbox rethink its hardware and console strategy at a moment when competition is tougher than ever. Engadget reports: Ball is a venture capitalist and tech industry consultant with a well-documented history of analyzing emerging digital economies and the video game market. He was most recently the CEO and founder of Epyllion, an advisory firm and digital production house that also runs a large-scale metaverse investment fund, and he publishes regular breakdowns of the industry's biggest players and trends, including an annual State of Gaming report. Ball is the author of The Metaverse, a book beloved by Tim Sweeney, Mark Zuckerberg, Karlie Kloss and, not awkwardly at all, former Xbox head Phil Spencer.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A TV ad attacking incumbent Texas Sen. John Cornyn for supporting “Muslim mass immigration” misleadingly cites a 2021 quote from Cornyn about certain Afghan refugees and claims that “Cornyn has a special place in his heart for radical Islam.”
The ad, which started airing on May 12 according to data from AdImpact, came from the campaign of Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who is challenging Cornyn for his seat in the Senate. Neither one garnered more than 50% of the vote in the March 3 Republican primary, sending them to a runoff election on May 26. Paxton got President Donald Trump’s endorsement on May 19.
The ad claims, “Cornyn even believes we have a moral obligation to support Muslim mass immigration.” Shown on screen is a quote from Cornyn saying, “I do think we have a moral obligation to help them.”
But that quote is out of context. According to a TV news report from the Fox affiliate in Dallas, Cornyn said it while meeting with Afghan immigrants and organizations helping evacuees shortly after the U.S. pulled troops out of Afghanistan in 2021. He spoke to two Afghan men who had worked as interpreters for the U.S. military and came to the U.S. on special immigrant visas, or SIVs, which Congress created in 2006 for those in Iraq and Afghanistan who worked with the U.S. government.
At the time, it wasn’t clear how many Afghans eligible for SIVs were left in Afghanistan. “The State Department is still negotiating for the evacuation of some of these individuals, including people who have permanent legal status in the United States,” Cornyn said in the meeting.
“I do think we have a moral obligation to help them, protect them and their families,” Cornyn said.
Between October 2018 and September 2022, more than 5,000 SIV holders were resettled in Texas, according to a 2023 report from the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General.
When we asked Paxton’s campaign for evidence to support the claim that Cornyn has advocated “Muslim mass immigration” beyond that quote, we didn’t get a response.
The ad also says, “Even as Muslim extremists force Sharia law on Texans, Cornyn sides with his friends at groups tied to radical Islamic terror.” The first part of that statement is likely a reference to unfounded claims in recent years that Sharia — the moral code and rules for followers of Islam — is encroaching on Texas.
For example, earlier this year, Paxton referred to plans for a residential development for Muslims outside of Dallas as a “Sharia city.” The Dubai-based developer of the project called that description “inaccurate” in a statement to a local news outlet, saying, “We would also like to clarify that recent characterizations of the project are inaccurate and do not reflect the nature, intent, or structure of The Sustainable City model, which is inclusive by design and aligned with the regulatory and cultural frameworks of the markets in which it operates.” The proposed “sustainable city” development was halted after backlash and an investigation by Paxton’s office.
Cornyn has opposed Sharia in the U.S., introducing a bill May 14 that would ban immigrants who practice Sharia from entering or remaining in the country. He also co-sponsored a bill in October that would prohibit the practice of Sharia in the U.S. if it violated constitutional rights.
The second part of the ad’s claim appears to be a reference to Cornyn’s previous praise for Islamic Relief USA, a Virginia-based nonprofit that does charity work across the country. The ad features a clip of Cornyn from 2021 in which he recognized Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, and thanked the organization for help it provided during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ad, though, describes Islamic Relief USA as being tied to “radical Islamic terror.” The image of a news report in the ad indicates that’s a reference to accusations against Islamic Relief Worldwide, a U.K.-based charity from which the U.S. organization agreed to operate independently in 2019. Islamic Relief Worldwide has denied having ties to terrorism or the Muslim Brotherhood.
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The post Ad in Texas GOP Runoff Attacks Cornyn on Immigration, Islam appeared first on FactCheck.org.
Prime minister tells reporters reporters he would campaign personally in the contest
The Home Office has also published asylum figures this morning. These show that the number of asylum seekers being housed temporarily in hotels stood at 20,885 at the end of March 2026, down 35% year-on-year from 32,326. The Press Association says:
It is the lowest figure since data was first reported in 2022, Home Office figures show.
The total had climbed as high as 56,018 at the end of September 2023.
Brits are leaving on a massive scale and non-EU immigration remains far too high. Mass immigration undermines our society and low wage immigration is bad for the economy. British families feel it in lower wages, longer waiting lists for public services and housing shortages.
Labour must go further and reform indefinite leave to remain before their hard-left flank forces them to abandon it altogether.
Continue reading...Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has triggered global outrage after sharing footage of himself taunting bound activists who had been detained as they tried to sail to Gaza with aid. The video has been widely condemned by world leaders, including the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and by Israeli politicians, among them the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s chief Middle East correspondent, Emma Graham-Harrison – watch on YouTube
Continue reading...Move comes amid condemnation of Itamar Ben-Gvir after video posted showing detained protesters being taunted
Israel has said it has deported all the foreign activists it seized from a Gaza-bound flotilla, after a global outcry over their treatment in custody that led the UK to join other countries in summoning Israeli diplomats for a formal dressing down.
More than 430 activists from countries around the world had been placed in detention in Israel after they were intercepted at sea on Monday while making the latest in a string of attempts to break the blockade of the Palestinian territory.
Continue reading...The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season is quickly approaching, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is releasing its forecast for what to expect.
Aimee Bock, the convicted ringleader of the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud scheme in Minnesota, was sentenced to more than 40 years in prison on Thursday.
DNC chair Ken Martin apologizes for delay in releasing report; Republican senators have queried timing and lack of detail on security bill additions
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and other Democrats spoke held a news conference, ahead of the vote-a-rama Thursday morning.
“The Republican agenda is one big broken promise,” said Schumer, criticizing the Republican budget bill. “We still haven’t seen the bill, because they are fighting with each other.”
Trump v Cook: Donald Trump’s case for firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, as he continues to exert greater control over the US central bank.
Trump v Slaughter: A case which examines the legality of Trump’s firing of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member, Rebecca Slaughter.
Trump v Barbara: In which the court will decide if the administration’s attempts to restrict birthright citizenship are unconstitutional.
Continue reading...Step up your setup with a great standing desk for your office.
A bank levy can quickly put your money at risk, but there are also limits to what this tool can be used for.
Top Republicans fear diverting taxpayer dollars toward the White House ballroom will alienate voters before midterms
Senate Republican leaders are expected to ditch a $1bn proposal for security measures tied to Donald Trump’s White House ballroom following a backlash from members of their own party.
Under pressure from Trump, top Republican lawmakers tried to latch the proposal on to a roughly $70bn bill to restore funding to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the border patrol.
Continue reading...Tony Carruthers’s lawyers say no evidence tied him to 1994 crimes he was convicted of and is mentally incompetent
Tennessee is scheduled on Thursday to execute a prison inmate whose lawyers claim there was no physical evidence tying him to the crimes he was convicted of and is mentally incompetent. Additionally, the inmate’s lawyers believe that the state may be using expired lethal injection drugs to carry out the sentence.
Tony Carruthers, 57, was sentenced to death after being found guilty of the 1994 kidnappings and murders of Marcellos Anderson; his mother, Delois Anderson; and Frederick Tucker, in Memphis.
Continue reading...Documents released by government also show late queen was ‘very keen’ for her son to have prominent role
Formal security vetting and due diligence appear not to have been carried out before the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a trade envoy, the government has said, as it emerged that the late queen was “very keen” for her son to take a prominent role in promoting Britain’s interests.
The first batch of documents relating to the appointment of the then prince as trade envoy by Tony Blair in 2001 includes a memo dated 25 February 2000 and addressed to Robin Cook, the then foreign secretary, in which the then chief executive of British Trade International (BTI), David Wright, said Queen Elizabeth II’s “wish” had been for Mountbatten-Windsor to take on the role.
Continue reading...I'm curious if anyone has commissioned their own rails from a service like PCBway or similar. As someone who lives in Sweden, where the pickings are slim, and prices insane, I'm seriously considering modelling up something similar to the WTF rails and sending the model to PCBway for fabrication. This would allow for all kinds of modifications either for functionality or looks.
What are your thoughts on this?
Demands grow for launch of formal discussion process on how country should address legacies of enslavement
Emmanuel Macron is under pressure to open discussions on reparatory justice for France’s role in hundreds of years of enslavement of African people as he makes a key speech on the legacy of slavery.
On Thursday the French president will celebrate the 25th anniversary of France becoming the first country in the world to recognise the slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity in a 2001 law brought by Christiane Taubira, a former MP from French Guiana.
Continue reading...Prosecutors opt not to pursue hate-crime charges over February incident despite anti-gay slurs captured on video
New Orleans state prosecutors on Thursday filed formal misdemeanor battery charges against Shia LaBeouf, four months after police officers there arrested him on allegations that he struck three men at a bar.
That move from the office of local district attorney Jason Williams means prosecutors opted to not pursue hate-crime charges against LaBeouf, the star of the Transformers film franchise, despite claims evidently supported by video that LaBeouf aimed anti-gay slurs at the alleged victims.
Continue reading...Make a huge upgrade to your office and work life with the best desk you can get in 2026.
ASX-listed company announced in February it would lay off almost 30% of its 7,000-strong workforce across 40 countries
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WiseTech has begun informing staff that they will lose their jobs as part of redundancies the company has said is due to artificial intelligence advancements – although an email to staff in China omitted the word “AI” after a court case against another company in the country.
Staff at WiseTech have been waiting almost three months to be told if they are among the 2,000 people the logistics software company is to cut due to advances in AI. The Australian Stock Exchange-listed company announced in late February it would lay off almost 30% of its 7,000-strong workforce across 40 countries.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: OpenAI claims its new reasoning model has produced an original mathematical proof disproving a famous unsolved conjecture in geometry, which was first posed by Paul Erdos in 1946. If this sounds familiar to you, it's because this isn't the first time OpenAI has made such a bold claim. Seven months ago, the AI giant's former VP Kevin Weil posted on X: "GPT-5 found solutions to 10 (!) previously unsolved Erds problems and made progress on 11 others." It turns out, GPT-5 didn't actually solve those problems; it just found solutions that already existed in the literature. Taunts from rivals like Yann LeCun and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis followed, and Weil promptly took down his premature post. Today, at least, it seems OpenAI didn't make the same mistake twice. Alongside the announcement, the company published companion remarks (PDF) in support of the disproof from mathematicians like Noga Alon, Melanie Wood, and Thomas Bloom, who maintains the Erdos Problems website, and previously called Weil's post "a dramatic misrepresentation." [...] The proof, per OpenAI, came from a new general-purpose reasoning model, not a system specifically designed to solve math problems or even this problem in particular. OpenAI says this is significant because it means AI systems are now more capable of holding together long, difficult chains of reasoning and connecting ideas across fields in ways researchers may not have previously explored. That has implications for biology, physics, engineering, and medicine.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Over the past few months, tomatoes have seen some of the steepest price increases, rising 15% in March alone.
Péter Magyar’s draft amendment would prevent Viktor Orbán from returning to the role
Hungary’s new government, led by Péter Magyar, has put forward a constitutional amendment that would limit prime ministers to a maximum of eight years in office, in effect barring Viktor Orbán from returning to the role.
The draft amendment was submitted on Wednesday, just over a week after the new government took office. It marked Magyar and his Tisza party’s first step in dismantling a constitution that was unilaterally rewritten and amended more than a dozen times as Orbán and his Fidesz party worked to turn Hungary into what they called a “petri dish for illiberalism”.
Continue reading...SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 21, 2026 — AMD today announced that its next-generation AMD EPYC processor, codenamed “Venice,” is ramping production in Taiwan on TSMC’s advanced 2nm process technology, with future plans to ramp production at TSMC’s Arizona fabrication facility. The milestone in the execution of the AMD data center CPU roadmap demonstrates continued progress toward delivering the leadership performance and energy efficiency required for next-generation cloud, enterprise and AI infrastructure. “Venice” is the first high-performance computing (HPC) product in the industry to enter production on TSMC’s advanced 2nm process technology.
Credit: Shutterstock
“Ramping ‘Venice’ on TSMC 2nm process technology marks an important step forward in accelerating the next generation of AI infrastructure,” said Dr. Lisa Su, chair and CEO, AMD. “As AI and agentic workloads scale rapidly, customers need platforms that can move from innovation to production faster. Our deep partnership with TSMC is helping AMD bring leadership compute technologies to market with the speed and scale required to meet this moment.”
As AI adoption expands from training and inference to increasingly complex agentic workloads, the CPU is becoming even more critical to scaling AI infrastructure, coordinating data movement, networking, storage, security and system orchestration across the data center. The ramp of “Venice” comes as AMD continues to build momentum in the server market, reflecting growing customer demand for EPYC processors to power modern cloud, enterprise, HPC and AI deployments.
The “Venice” ramp in Taiwan and plans to ramp at TSMC Arizona reflect AMD’s focus on strengthening its geographically diverse advanced manufacturing footprint. By pairing next-generation EPYC processor innovation with advanced manufacturing capacity across the globe, AMD is expanding the foundation needed to support customers as they deploy and scale AI infrastructure.
“We are pleased to see AMD continue to make strong progress with its next-generation EPYC processor on our advanced 2nm process technology,” said Dr. C.C. Wei, Chairman and CEO, TSMC. “Our close collaboration with AMD reflects the importance of pairing leadership process technology with advanced design innovation to enable the next era of high-performance and AI computing.”
AMD also plans to extend TSMC 2nm process technology across its data center CPU roadmap with “Verano,” a 6th Gen EPYC processor optimized for performance-per-dollar-per-watt leadership. Designed to support cloud and AI computing workloads, “Verano” is expected to build on the AMD EPYC platform with advanced memory innovations, including LPDDR, to deliver the CPU performance, bandwidth and efficiency required for increasingly power constrained workloads and applications.
AMD and TSMC’s partnership spans the technologies needed to scale modern data center computing, from TSMC 2nm process technology for next-generation CPUs to advanced packaging technologies, including TSMC’s SoIC-X and CoWoS-L, used across AMD’s broader AI and data center portfolio. With “Venice” ramping on TSMC 2nm, AMD is advancing the CPU foundation for AI infrastructure while continuing to leverage TSMC’s process and packaging leadership to deliver increasingly integrated compute platforms at scale.
About AMD
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-optimized 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.
Source: AMD
The post AMD Announces Production Ramp of Next-Gen AMD EPYC Processor ‘Venice’ on TSMC 2nm Process Tech appeared first on HPCwire.
The body of 22-year-old Roberta Walls was found in a field in Virginia Beach on the morning of May 15, 1986.
Hey all, I just got some sick wtfs on the cinco de mayo sale and im going to install them today. Does anyone know what angle they are so I can update the IMU in VESC tool?
Thanks amigos!
China and Russia’s strategic duo endures – but its limits are clear Expert comment jon.wallace
This week’s summit shows the relationship is resilient, rooted in shared interests. But China remains wary of commitments on various fronts.
In the past six months, Beijing has emerged as a diplomatic crossroads for all permanent members of the UN Security Council. The latest arrival was a familiar figure to his Chinese host: Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom President Xi Jinping has met more than 40 times since 2012.
Like the Xi–Trump summit last week, international media focused on the apparent personal chemistry between the leaders, dissecting every detail of the diplomatic theatre surrounding the meetings.
In reality, however, geopolitics is rarely driven by personal warmth or political ‘bromance’. It is shaped by strategic interests, calculations of power, and national priorities.
This latest meeting between Xi and Putin was designed to send a message to the world: Beijing and Moscow remain strategically aligned in their effort to reshape the international order. A joint summit declaration, advocating a ‘multipolar world’ and a ‘new type of international relations’, underscored the durability of the China–Russia partnership at a moment of mounting global fragmentation.
Yet beneath the appearance of unity lies a more complicated reality. China and Russia remain bound together by geography, by shared opposition to Western dominance, and by a partially overlapping strategic agenda. But the partnership is not limitless. Beijing is concerned over excessive dependence on Russian energy. And its broader global ambitions continue to place boundaries around how far the relationship can evolve.
The Xi–Putin summit therefore revealed two truths simultaneously: China and Russia continue to operate as a consistent strategic duo on the world stage. But their partnership remains one of pragmatic alignment rather than full alliance.
Geography is the first and most enduring factor binding China and Russia together. The two countries share one of the world’s longest land borders (at 4300 kms it is around the width of the European continent) and they inhabit the same Eurasian strategic space. Neither can afford sustained hostility with the other.
For Beijing, stable relations with Moscow secure its northern frontier and reduce the risk of encirclement by hostile powers from the south. Indeed, part of the purpose of Putin’s visit this week is to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the ‘Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation’ agreed by Putin and Xi’s predecessor, President Jiang Zemin.
For Russia, partnership with China offers economic resilience and geopolitical relevance at a time when Moscow’s relations with the West remain deeply damaged.
This geographic logic has become even more pertinent as the international system grows more polarized. Beijing and Moscow both see value in coordinating against what they describe as Western ‘hegemony’ and unilateralism. Their new communiqué on multipolarity reflects this shared worldview. The language of a ‘more just and equitable’ international order is not simply rhetorical flourish; it reflects a long-standing Chinese and Russian effort to weaken the dominance of US-led institutions and create greater room for alternative centres of power.
That multipolarity serves different but complementary purposes. Russia views it as a pathway out of isolation and as recognition that it remains a major power, despite Western sanctions and diplomatic pressure. China sees multipolarity as a transition toward a world less centred on American strategic primacy and more accommodating to Beijing’s growing economic and political influence.
This convergence has produced a durable strategic partnership. China has provided Russia with crucial economic lifelines since the war in Ukraine began. It has expanded bilateral trade, increased purchases of Russian oil and gas, and sustained technology and industrial exchanges – straining its ties with Europe in the process.
Russia, in turn, has offered China discounted energy supplies, military cooperation, and diplomatic backing on issues ranging from Taiwan to critiques of NATO’s intentions in Asia.
But strategic alignment does not erase asymmetry or mistrust. And it will not override Beijing’s core pursuit of economic self-reliance.
Beijing continues to hesitate over deeper energy dependence on Russia. Although energy cooperation remains a pillar of bilateral ties, China has avoided placing itself in a position where Russian supplies become indispensable.
This explains why long-discussed projects such as the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline continue to move slowly despite repeated rhetorical endorsements. For Moscow, the project is economically urgent: Europe’s reduction of Russian energy imports has made China the Kremlin’s most important prospective long-term energy customer.
But Beijing has approached negotiations cautiously, leveraging Russia’s weakened bargaining position to demand favourable pricing and supply terms. That hesitation is strategic rather than commercial alone. Beijing understands that overreliance on any single supplier creates vulnerabilities.
Chinese policymakers have spent years diversifying energy sources across the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and global LNG markets precisely to avoid geopolitical dependence. Becoming excessively tied to Russian energy would reduce China’s flexibility and expose Beijing to unnecessary strategic risk.
Moreover, China does not share all of Russia’s geopolitical priorities. While both oppose American dominance, Beijing remains more deeply integrated into the global economy than Moscow and has far more to lose from sustained instability. China seeks systemic influence through controlled interdependence with its trade partners and rivals; Russia often seeks leverage through the disruption of global flashpoints.
This distinction matters. Beijing supports Moscow politically to a point but has also been careful not to fully embrace Russia’s confrontation with the West. Chinese leaders continue to preserve economic ties with Europe. They have maintained access to global markets. And they have avoided triggering secondary sanctions severe enough to jeopardize China’s already weakened domestic growth.
The latest Xi–Putin summit therefore showcased a relationship defined less by ideology than by calibrated strategic utility. Both sides benefit from appearing united. Russia gains the appearance of having a powerful partner despite Western efforts at isolation. China maintains a reliable geopolitical counterweight to the US and an important partner in promoting alternative visions of global governance.
I was fine. I think that onewheel is improving how fast I can react. I should have fallen but I was quick… the first thing that popped in my head was falling off the wheel.
Improve anyone else’s balance?
EPA is loosening Biden-era rule that requires US businesses to reduce greenhouse gases used in cooling equipment
The Trump administration is set to loosen a federal rule that requires grocery stores and air-conditioning companies to reduce greenhouse gases used in cooling equipment, in what officials say is a push to lower grocery costs.
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, said the Biden-era rule imposes costly restrictions that limit the type of refrigerants US businesses and families can use.
Continue reading...Russia says "nuclear munitions" sent to Belarus for joint drills in the country that Moscow used as a launchpad for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Hey all, I just got some sick wtfs on the cinco de mayo sale and im going to install them today. Does anyone know what angle they are so I can update the IMU in VESC tool?
Thanks amigos!
WASHINGTON, May 21, 2026 — The Department of Commerce today announced the signing of 9 letters of intent to provide $2.013 billion in federal incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act.
These funds will support a portfolio of quantum companies, including two domestic quantum foundry companies and 7 quantum computing companies to accelerate solving the most critical technology challenges in the race to develop utility scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers.
The Department of Commerce’s quantum incentives are designed to strengthen America’s position in this critical frontier technology. Quantum computing has significant implications for national defense, advanced materials and biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling, and energy systems. A strong domestic quantum ecosystem is essential for U.S. national security, technological resilience and long-term strategic leadership.
These letters of intent demonstrate the Trump Administration’s commitment to strengthening American leadership in emerging technologies by investing directly in advanced manufacturing, research, and microelectronics innovation.
“With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”
Foundry Incentives to Accelerate Domestic Quantum Manufacturing Infrastructure
The Department of Commerce is proposing to provide incentives for two quantum foundries (GlobalFoundries and IBM) to help establish and accelerate foundational domestic manufacturing capacity for the quantum sector.
Quantum Portfolio Spans Multiple Modalities and Addresses Discrete Technology Challenges
The structure of the Department of Commerce’s proposed incentives is intended to provide capital toward an initial portfolio of 7 companies that will address the most consequential, unresolved engineering problems in multiple quantum modalities.
“The CHIPS R&D Office is taking a portfolio approach to strengthen and accelerate U.S. leadership across multiple quantum modalities at once, while focusing each award on discrete technological problems of genuine consequence,” said Bill Frauenhofer, Executive Director of Semiconductor Investment and Innovation. “We will be providing incentives to build domestic quantum capacity, solve the hardest engineering challenges, enable multi-year acceleration of technology roadmaps, and drive continued U.S. quantum leadership.”
The companies listed below receiving CHIPS incentives will address multiple modalities including neutral atom, silicon-spin, superconducting, photonic, and trapped ion and accelerate R&D for the most consequential unresolved engineering problems including device reproducibility, optical complexity, error rates, cryogenic systems integration, control hardware, ultra-fast readout electronics, photonic loss, and interconnects.
The Department will receive a minority, non-controlling equity stake in each company as a condition for receiving the funds to enhance the return for the U.S. taxpayer.
The CHIPS Research and Development Office continues to solicit proposals from eligible applicants for research, prototyping and commercial solutions that advance microelectronics technology in the U.S. Eligible applicants should apply under announcement 2025-NIST-CHIPS-CRDO-01 at www.grants.gov.
Source: NIST
The post US Commerce Dept. Announces LOI with 9 Companies for $2B to Accelerate US Leadership in Quantum Computing appeared first on HPCwire.
Built on years of cryogenic innovation and deep partnerships with the world’s leading quantum innovators, anchored by industry demand
MALTA, N.Y., May 21, 2026 — GlobalFoundries today launched Quantum Technology Solutions, a new quantum business to scale the manufacturing capabilities the quantum industry needs to achieve utility-scale quantum computing. The new business launches with customer engagements, and a pipeline of quantum innovators positioned to scale on its platform.
With more than a decade of partnership with the U.S. Government and customers across critical semiconductor technologies, and sustained investment in cryogenic CMOS, advanced packaging and materials science, GF has built the industrial layer that quantum companies, the U.S. Government and allied innovators can build on. These capabilities mark GF’s entry into the next generation of high-performance computing (HPC). While the past decade of HPC has been defined by advanced-node CPUs, GPUs and AI ASICs, the next generation will be focused on enabling real-world quantum computing, and GF will manufacture the complete quantum hardware solution from quantum processor units (QPUs) to the cryogenic read-out and control ICs that operate them and the advanced packaging and superconducting interconnects that bind them into systems.
The effort is anchored by quantum companies already engaged with GF’s manufacturing and by the U.S. Department of Commerce, a longstanding partner of GF across critical semiconductor technologies. The U.S. Department of Commerce and GF have entered into a letter of intent to award GF $375M to accelerate the build-out of Quantum Technology Solutions, reflecting the national-security importance of a domestic quantum manufacturing base.
In a separate agreement, the U.S. Department of Commerce will receive a strategic equity investment in GF, representing approximately one percent ownership as of today’s date, enabling the American public to share in GF’s growth.
“With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”
“GF’s role as a semiconductor manufacturing engine is accelerating America’s technology leadership. Deepening our partnership with the United States Government will support a coordinated national push to expand domestic manufacturing, build supply-chain resilience and ensure that revolutionary technologies such as next-generation quantum systems are developed and manufactured in the U.S.,” said Tim Breen, CEO of GlobalFoundries.
A Manufacturing-Led Approach to Quantum Scale-Up
Quantum Technology Solutions will be able to leverage GF’s trusted U.S. manufacturing capabilities, with flexibility across its U.S. footprint, to support the foundational capabilities the quantum industry needs to scale.
GF’s proven FDX platform delivers the cryogenic CMOS that provides the sensing, control and readout functions required for quantum systems. Building on that base, GF is developing the manufacturing platforms to build QPUs across multiple qubit modalities — including superconducting, trapped ion, photonic, topological and spin — along with the cryogenic and superconducting heterogeneous interconnect platform that integrates these components into utility-scale quantum systems.
“Quantum is at its inflection point. The hardware is moving from lab-scale to industrial scale, and that transition can only happen inside an advanced semiconductor manufacturing environment,” said Gregg Bartlett, chief technology officer of GF. “The cryogenic CMOS, advanced packaging and 3D heterogeneous interconnect needed for utility-scale quantum computing are exactly what we make every day. Just as CPUs and GPUs underpin classical compute, GF is building the QPU, bringing these capabilities to the leaders across leading qubit modalities and positioning GF as the partner of choice for utility-scale quantum computing.”
Chris Miller, professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, underscores that U.S. leadership in quantum computing will ultimately hinge on the ability to manufacture and scale quantum hardware domestically.
“Quantum computing will be a defining technology of the next decade, and the countries that can manufacture quantum hardware at scale — not just design it — will hold a decisive advantage,” Miller said. “Establishing a dedicated U.S. quantum foundry is exactly the kind of investment we need to translate American research leadership into durable industrial capability, giving the broader quantum ecosystem a secure domestic base to build on.”
About GF
GlobalFoundries (GF) is a leading manufacturer of essential semiconductors, enabling AI at scale from the cloud to the physical world. Through deep partnerships with customers, GF delivers differentiated, power-efficient and high-performance solutions for automotive, aerospace and defense, data center, smart mobile devices, internet of things and other high-growth markets. With global manufacturing operations across the U.S., Europe and Asia, GF is a trusted and holistic technology partner for customers around the world. GF’s talented, global team remains focused every day on security, longevity and sustainability.
Source: GlobalFoundries
The post GlobalFoundries Launches Quantum Technology Solutions to Scale US Quantum Manufacturing appeared first on HPCwire.
The monarch may have thought the role would keep her ‘favourite’ second son out of trouble. How wrong she was
That Queen Elizabeth II was “very keen” for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to take on a “prominent role in the promotion of national interests” as a trade envoy in 2001 demonstrates the fierce support the late monarch always gave her second son.
Knowing he was “the spare”, and undoubtedly acutely aware of the pitfalls of that position – her sister, Princess Margaret, had struggled to find her own role – a mother’s instinct would be to protect, so far as she could.
Continue reading...Satirical project is viral sensation and outlet for protest on social media as it taps into young people’s frustration
It began as a satirical online project after a high court judge compared unemployed young people to cockroaches. Now millions of young Indians are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration.
A parody political party with the insect as its symbol has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humour into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach – an insect known for its ability to survive harsh conditions – as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance.
Continue reading...How might an African credit rating agency improve the continent's financing conditions? 16 June 2026 — 16:00 TO 17:30 BST Anonymous (not verified) Chatham House and Online
This panel discussion, held in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, assesses the potential impact of the African Credit Rating Agency on reducing borrowing costs and lowering barriers to financing for African countries.
This panel event, held in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, will assess the potential impact of an African Credit Rating Agency in reducing borrowing costs and lowering barriers to financing for African countries.The African Union has launched an initiative for the new African Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA) to be headquartered in Mauritius and with operations slated to begin in mid-2026. While seeking to broaden market access, given that only 32 of 54 African sovereigns currently have public ratings, the AfCRA is driven primarily by longstanding accusations of systemic bias in existing ratings by the ‘big three’ credit rating agencies - seen as inflating African default risk and borrowing costs relative to peer countries elsewhere.
Though AfCRA has been framed as an opportunity to reset this perceived Africa risk premium through a more grounded presence on the continent, critics have raised doubts over its independence, the appetite of investors for new ratings and the empirical grounds for alleged bias. Any impact of a new agency on financing conditions must also be considered in relation to wider factors, such as increased fiscal transparency and sustainable growth.
This panel discussion, held in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, will assess the potential impact of an African credit rating agency on reducing borrowing costs and lowering barriers to financing for African countries.
Nottingham university hospitals trust says 11 members of staff dismissed and 14 others given written warnings
An NHS trust has sacked 11 staff members who illegally accessed the medical records of the victims of the Nottingham stabbing attacks.
Valdo Calocane killed two 19-year-old students, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, and Ian Coates, a 65-year-old caretaker, and attempted to kill three other people in the city in June 2023.
Continue reading...Elon Musk's SpaceX is moving ahead with plans to go public in what some expect will be the biggest IPO ever.
UK should not invest in new North Sea oil as it is ‘a price taker, not a price maker’ – Dr Fatih Birol, IEA chief News release jon.wallace
During an event at Chatham House, Dr Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, said the future of UK energy was electrification.
Dr Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, visited Chatham House on 21 May to discuss the continuing Strait of Hormuz crisis, US energy policy, the global impact of renewable energy and artificial intelligence, and the UK’s own energy security debate.
Asked his position on the UK’s energy policy, Dr Birol said ‘the future of the UK energy system is electrification’, which might be powered by renewables, nuclear energy and natural gas. ‘If the UK wants to be a strong, sovereign industrial country I see electrification as the future,’ he said.
Addressing the debate about renewed drilling in the North Sea, Dr Birol said it would be expensive, adding:
‘I don’t still understand how in the UK this becomes a discussion’. He pointed out that even in the US, the largest energy exporter in the world, consumers are still affected by the international oil price, so new North Sea exploration would not affect global oil prices – or reduce prices for UK consumers.
‘I don’t know how the UK can think you can have an impact upon the international oil prices, you cannot. The UK – whatever the field you produce, develop – the UK is a price taker, not a price maker, and it will stay like this.’
He also warned that opportunists may seek to exploit high global oil prices caused by international factors for domestic political reasons:
‘What I’m afraid [of] is the following: the international energy prices, as a result of this, they are going to increase. And they are increasing. And this will affect the domestic prices in the petrol stations, in heating, and so on.
‘In fact, the governments in, let’s say, Europe or UK, or whatever, they don’t have much to do with this, it’s international tension.
‘However there may be some extreme groups – political groups – who can abuse this as a failure of the existing political system in their countries,’ he said.
Addressing the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, Dr Birol said trust in supply from the region had been damaged – ‘the vase is broken’, he said – and that huge efforts would be needed to restore it.
Dr Fatih Birol in conversation at Chatham House.
The world could hit a ‘red zone’ in July or August if the Strait remains closed, he warned, with the crisis already having a greater impact than the three biggest previous major energy shocks combined – the 1973 Mideast war and oil embargo, the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
‘This crisis is bigger, I would say much bigger, than all three crises in history put together,’ he said.
Dr Birol also outlined the threat of inflation and a food supply shock caused by rising diesel and fertilizer prices especially upon emerging economies.
During the event Dr Birol also discussed the growing dominance of affordable electric cars in China and Southeast Asia, and the impact of artificial intelligence on energy security.
When pupils could no longer play outside, St John’s school in Barnet decided to act, enlisting Trees for Cities to help rethink its outside space
The play area at St John’s Church of England primary in Barnet, north London, used to flood so severely it was often unusable. “It would get so bad that the children couldn’t be dismissed from the playground,” says Macci Dobie, the school’s headteacher. “We had to dismiss them from different parts of the school or, literally, parents were stepping into puddles to lift their children out of the classroom.”
Because the school sits in a basin with clay foundations, rain would pool on the grey tarmac and just sit there, often denying the children a proper break for play outside.
Continue reading...Experts say hate-motivated extremists being radicalized online and adopting ideologies of shooters before them
The killing of three men at a San Diego mosque on Monday is the latest example of a disturbing trend in recent decades: hate-motivated shooters learning from – and copying – each other in acts of violence meant to push the nation toward a race war and, ultimately, societal collapse.
The two San Diego shooters, who were 17 and 18, killed 51-year-old Amin Abdullah, a security guard at the Islamic Center of San Diego, 78-year-old Mansour Kaziha, a mosque elder and founding member of the center, and Nadir Awad, 57, who lived across the street and whose wife worked as a teacher at the center’s school.
Continue reading...A coordinated cyberattack by Russia's GRU targeted home and small office routers across 23 states. Here's how to check yours and lock it down.
An Air France flight from Paris to Detroit was forced to divert to Montreal due to U.S. flight restrictions linked to the Ebola outbreak.
HHS advisory says high screen time among youths can be linked to poor sleep and weakened in-person relationships
Health officials in the Trump administration have issued an advisory about children and adolescents’ excessive screen time, warning that negative impacts on sleep and mental functioning have “become a public health concern”.
The advisory from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notes that the amount of screen time reaches an average of four or more hours per day by the time a child becomes a teenager and can be linked to poor sleep, decreased functioning in school, less physical activity and weakened in-person relationships.
Continue reading...Air France flight en route to Detroit, Michigan, landed in Montreal after virus-related travel restrictions
An Air France flight headed to Detroit, Michigan, was redirected to Canada on Wednesday after it was determined that a passenger from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) had boarded “in error” amid new Ebola-related travel restrictions, officials with the US Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) said.
“Due to entry restrictions put in place to reduce the risk of the Ebola virus, the passenger should not have boarded the plane,” a CBP spokesperson said in a statement.
Continue reading...Armenia's pivotal election: What is at stake? 3 June 2026 — 14:00 TO 15:00 BST Anonymous (not verified) Online
Experts examine the tensions facing Armenian democracy, the election’s importance for the peace process with Azerbaijan, and the role of external actors, including Russia and the West.
Experts examine Armenia’s internal political landscape, the trajectory of the peace process with Azerbaijan, and the role of external actors, including Russia.On 7 June, Armenia will hold one of the most important elections of its independence era, in which more than political incumbency over the next five years is at stake. Following intensive negotiations of an agreement with Azerbaijan to settle nearly four decades of violent conflict, Armenia’s June election is widely seen as a national referendum on the peace terms negotiated by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, which many in Armenia see as laden with risk. These elections will also be the most geopoliticised in Armenia’s history, with external actors making their preferences plain in ways that dangerously distract from the democratic process. Under multiple pressures, the democratic transition ushered in by 2018’s ‘Velvet Revolution’ remains fragile and uncertain.
This webinar will discuss the domestic politics of the electoral campaign, the stakes for Armenia’s citizens, the roles played by external actors and the implications for Armenia’s ongoing peace process with Azerbaijan.
The additions come after the ouster of dozens of immigration judges across the country by the Trump administration over the past year.
System named “Zurada” after UofL professor and neural networks pioneer
May 21, 2026 — University of Louisville mechanical engineering researcher Badri Narayanan is investigating the chemical properties of new materials combinations for improved energy storage and conversion. His discoveries have the potential to play a pivotal role in advancing energy storage and conversion technology and lead to cheap, sustainable and efficient batteries for electric vehicles and the power grid.
UofL faculty researchers Jacek M. Zurada, Adam E. Gaweda and Badri Narayanan with the Zurada high-performance computing system. Credit: UofL.
Narayanan’s research to decode how atoms move and interact within these materials requires hundreds of computer simulations, but the work can now progress much faster thanks to a new high-performance computing (HPC) system at UofL. The system allows Narayanan’s team to develop machine learning tools that will perform these simulations much more rapidly.
The “Zurada” HPC system, launched in late 2025, enables Narayanan and researchers across the university to conduct more advanced research in materials development, personalized medicine, AI and many other fields. The blazing fast and versatile system yields rapid solutions to a wide variety of complex computational problems and once programmed, can even perform and analyze a sequence of computer models autonomously. The researchers then assess the final results to move forward with physical experiments.
The system represents a $3.7-million computing investment that significantly enhances the university’s capabilities and will help UofL achieve its strategic research goals.
“This new HPC system represents a monumental leap forward for UofL’s research and development initiatives,” said Jon Klein, executive vice president for research and innovation. “Its processing power, combined with dedicated AI acceleration and ultra-fast networking, will empower our students, faculty and researchers to achieve breakthroughs faster and explore new frontiers previously beyond our reach.”
The materials Narayanan is testing have the potential to significantly improve the next generation of storage batteries over current lithium-ion technology. Narayanan, associate professor of mechanical engineering in the J.B. Speed School of Engineering, is modeling batteries that use iron and aluminum – inexpensive and abundant elements – and sustainable electrolytes, containing simple salts and water.
With Zurada HPC, Narayanan can run the models much more rapidly than with previous systems. He also believes the system has excellent potential to accelerate research in autonomous experimentation.
“We can develop AI models that decide what experiments to run, how to run them and how to analyze the results of those experiments,” Narayanan said. “Most of the heavy lifting is done by AI, and human scientists can come in once every so often to supervise. This platform can get results much faster.”
Using existing approaches, Narayanan said it would take 10 to 15 years to bring a commercial battery product such as the ones he is working on to market. He estimated that autonomous experiments and testing capability with Zurada HPC could shorten that time to 3 to 4 years.
Narayanan also uses the HPC system in his research on metal-insulator transitions in complex oxides, which can be used for preparing the building blocks – called memristors – for brain-like computing platforms.
“We are trying to understand the atomic processes that dictate how the same material can switch from being an insulator to a metal when a voltage is applied.” Narayanan said. “Interestingly, when the direction of voltage is flipped, they turn back to insulators again. These materials hold a lot of potential in mimicking the neurons of the human brain.”
The Zurada HPC system also empowers UofL researchers to advance cutting-edge artificial intelligence research inspired by its namesake, Jacek M. Zurada. A professor of electrical and computer engineering at UofL, Zurada is known for his pioneering research in neural networks – a core technology of today’s AI – since the 1990s and has since become one of the world’s most highly cited researchers in computer engineering, according to data compiled by the global academic publishing and information analytics company Elsevier.
Adam E. Gaweda, associate professor in the School of Medicine and a former PhD student of Professor Zurada, is using Zurada HPC for AI research in personalized medicine.
“A lot of my work involves time consuming and computationally heavy AI model training, fine-tuning and simulation,” Gaweda said. “With the Zurada HPC, I will be able to run multiple such jobs in parallel, thereby accelerating the generation of new results.”
For one project, Gaweda is collaborating with Cheri Levinson in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences to develop tools for individualized treatment of eating disorders. He also relies on Zurada HPC in his project on AI-powered discovery of treatments and interventions to slow progression of chronic kidney disease.
Technical Specifications
The various servers that comprise the Zurada HPC system have different “personalities,” each suited for specific kinds of computation and projects, according to Ritu Arora, associate vice provost of research computing. The system consists of 119 servers and features a powerful blend of blazing fast CPUs, 43 NVIDIA GPUs, very large memory servers, ultra-fast 200 gigabits-per-second networking and 5 petabytes of high-performance storage.
The system is capable of more than 1.6 petaflops of double-precision performance. In other words, Zurada HPC can perform more than 1.6 quadrillion calculations every second.
To understand the magnitude of this capability, imagine if each of the approximately eight billion people on Earth performed one calculation every second. It would take them more than 55 hours to do what this machine can do in one second. This kind of speed is necessary to solve complex problems with billions of interacting variables, such as research in drug discovery, cybersecurity, AI and high-performance materials development.
Researchers can learn more about using the system here.
Source: Betty Coffman, University of Louisville
The post University of Louisville’s New HPC System Accelerates Research with AI appeared first on HPCwire.
The $1,100 midtier Razr is best suited for a narrow slice of buyers.
Strict restrictions on Americans with exposure to Ebola and hantavirus highlight officials’ previous rhetoric on public health measures
The US is imposing strict restrictions on American travelers who have been exposed in dual Ebola and hantavirus outbreaks in ways that experts say could run counter to their legal rights and affect who will volunteer in future public health crises globally.
The latest restrictions highlight officials’ previous rhetoric on public health measures and their attempts to contain outbreaks now, including reported opposition from the White House to Americans returning home.
Continue reading...Charges filed against Raúl Castro for allegedly shooting down planes in 1996. Plus, US employers spend more than $1.5bn a year to fight labor unions
Good morning.
On Wednesday, the US issued a federal criminal indictment against Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former president, and five others, in a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to oust the country’s communist regime.
What are the details? Castro, 94, was charged with conspiracy to kill US nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft related to an incident in 1996 – in which four men were killed by the Cuban military, when two small planes were shot down during a humanitarian mission in the Florida straits.
How has Cuba reacted? Miguel Díaz-Canel, the Cuban president, condemned the indictment as a political stunt that sought only to “justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba”.
What does the video show? Images of dozens of men and women kneeling in rows, with their foreheads to the ground and their hands zip-tied behind their back. Ben-Gvir posted it on his social media account. He appears waving an Israeli flag, mocking and taunting the detainees.
What are global leaders saying? The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, one of the country’s staunchest allies, described Ben-Gvir’s behaviour as “despicable” and said the minister had “betrayed the dignity of his nation”. Others criticizing the video were Italy, Spain, the European Council, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and others. The Spanish foreign minister called the treatment “monstrous, disgraceful and inhumane”.
Continue reading...Motorola's standard Razr foldable, like other new phones in 2026, got a $100 price hike. It's still a reliable folding phone.
The company says it's also planning to add ASL options in the near future.
Smart security cameras don't have to come with fees: These models give a lot while saving your budget.
Check out some great, newly arrived films, including Nope, Black Phone 2 and Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris, on Netflix now.
San Antonio Spurs 113-122 Oklahoma City Thunder
League MVP scores 30 after quiet start to West finals
Already down Fox, San Antonio lose Harper to injury
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander bounced back from a subpar series opener to score 30 points, Alex Caruso added 17 off the bench and the host Oklahoma City Thunder beat the San Antonio Spurs 122-113 on Wednesday night in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals.
Chet Holmgren scored 13 points and reserves Jared McCain and Cason Wallace each had 12 for Oklahoma City. The Thunder finished with a 57-25 edge in bench scoring, plus a 27-10 advantage in points off turnovers.
Continue reading...WASHINGTON and ARMONK, N.Y., May 21, 2026 — Today, IBM and the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) announced a Letter of Intent (LOI) to build an American quantum chip foundry, securing the nation’s global quantum leadership and fueling the country’s growing quantum ecosystem. The CHIPS incentive from the DoC will support the research and development efforts of a new IBM company: Anderon, which will be America’s first pure-play quantum foundry. This initiative represents one of the most significant commitments by the U.S. Government to date in quantum R&D to position the United States to manufacture most of the world’s quantum wafers.
A 300-millimeter quantum wafer. Credit: IBM.
In addition to the $1 billion in CHIPS incentives provided by the DoC, IBM will contribute $1 billion of cash into Anderon, along with IBM investing significant intellectual property, assets, and a skilled workforce, with additional investors expected as Anderon grows. Headquartered in Albany, New York as a standalone company, Anderon will operate as a state-of-the-art 300-millimeter quantum wafer foundry. It will help the nation solidify its leadership at the center of a thriving new quantum industry that is estimated to generate up to $850 billion in economic value by 2040 and spur American economic growth while also bolstering national security.
IBM’s mission to bring market-leading quantum computing to the world remains unchanged. The LOI with the DoC reflects IBM’s global leadership in quantum computing and world-class wafer fabrication expertise. IBM has already developed and tested scalable quantum wafer technology, offering a clear pathway to commercialization. As a pure-play quantum foundry, Anderon plans to tap IBM’s strength in building and deploying quantum computers to offer wafer fabrication for multiple quantum technology vendors across the world.
“With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”
“The Department of Commerce’s incentives strengthen and accelerate U.S. quantum leadership and technological resilience,” said Bill Frauenhofer, Executive Director of Semiconductor Investment and Innovation. “Quantum computing has significant implications for national defense, advanced materials and biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling and energy systems.”
“IBM has pioneered quantum computing for decades. Our work in silicon wafer fabrication has been a key to IBM’s success and will be critical to enable a broader quantum technology landscape that will reshape global innovation and economic competitiveness,” said Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM. “With the support of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Anderon will be well-positioned to fuel America’s fast-growing quantum technology industry.”
IBM plans to use its expertise in fabrication tools and specialized talent to help Anderon build a secure, U.S. based supply of quantum wafers for multiple hardware vendors. Anderon will first support wafer fabrication for superconducting qubit and supporting electronics wafers, with the goal to expand into other quantum modalities.
From the start, Anderon will be prepared to serve as the anchor for a national ecosystem for quantum wafer manufacturing, ensuring IBM and other quantum companies have the ability to catalyze the production of scalable quantum technologies within the United States.
Anderon’s forthcoming leading-edge 300mm wafer processes expect to offer the most advanced quantum wafer technologies, including superconducting wiring, through-silicon vias and bumps, and is backed by established production capabilities such as dedicated process design kits, in-line wafer testing and characterization, and established baseline routes that enable rapid iteration and reliable scalability.
Betting Big on America’s Quantum Future
Quantum computing is a completely new paradigm of computing, poised to solve complex problems far beyond the reach of today’s classical supercomputers and enable breakthroughs in materials science, chemistry, optimization, and cybersecurity, among others.
Fueled by IBM, the United States leads the development of this technology. It remains critical to accelerate this momentum and set the pace for quantum hardware development in order to meet the needs of a thriving ecosystem and to maintain global economic competitiveness and national security for decades to come.
To date, IBM has deployed over 90 quantum systems, including more quantum computers than reported by all other industry players across the globe combined. The company has built a global client and partner ecosystem spanning more than 325 Fortune 500 companies, startups, universities, and government agencies already using IBM’s global fleet of quantum computers to tackle scientific challenges across chemistry, biology, materials science, and more.
IBM has collaborated for decades with federal agencies, including NIST, DARPA, and U.S. Department of Energy laboratories, positioning the company at the center of operationalizing a secure U.S. quantum manufacturing capability and to lead the push to deliver the world’s first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029 for commercial clients.
The launch of Anderon is subject to the negotiation and execution of definitive documents by IBM and the U.S. Department of Commerce in accordance with the letter of intent agreed among the parties as of the date hereof.
For more information, visit www.anderon.com.
About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.
Source: IBM
The post IBM and US Department of Commerce Announce Purpose-Built Quantum Foundry, Supported by Proposed $1B CHIPS Award appeared first on HPCwire.
Nine Candidates Advance to the Third Round of the Additional Digital Signatures for the PQC Standardization Process
May 21, 2026 — After 18 months of evaluation, NIST has selected nine candidates for the third round of the Additional Digital Signatures for the Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Standardization Process.
Credit: J. Wang/NIST and Shutterstock
The advancing digital signature algorithms are:
NIST Internal Report (IR) 8610 describes the evaluation criteria and selection process. These third-round candidates will have the opportunity to submit updated specifications and implementations (i.e., “tweaks”). NIST will provide more details to the submission teams in a separate message. This third phase of evaluation and review is expected to last approximately two years.
NIST is also planning to hold the 7th NIST PQC Standardization Conference in the late spring/early summer of 2027. The conference will most likely be held in (or near) Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Questions may be directed to pqc-comments@nist.gov. NIST thanks all of the candidate submission teams for their efforts in this standardization process as well as the cryptographic community at large, which helped analyze the signature schemes.
More from HPCwire
About NIST
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was founded in 1901 and is now part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST is one of the nation’s oldest physical science laboratories. Congress established the agency to remove a major challenge to U.S. industrial competitiveness at the time — a second-rate measurement infrastructure that lagged behind the capabilities of the United Kingdom, Germany and other economic rivals. From the smart electric power grid and electronic health records to atomic clocks, advanced nanomaterials and computer chips, innumerable products and services rely in some way on technology, measurement and standards provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Today, NIST measurements support the smallest of technologies to the largest and most complex of human-made creations — from nanoscale devices so tiny that tens of thousands can fit on the end of a single human hair up to earthquake-resistant skyscrapers and global communication networks.
Source: NIST
The post NIST Advances 9 Digital Signature Candidates in Post-Quantum Standards Process appeared first on HPCwire.
Firms given maximum fine of €225,000 each and are expected to appeal after lower court had cleared them
A Paris appeals court has found Airbus and Air France guilty of corporate manslaughter over the 2009 Rio-Paris plane crash that killed 228 passengers and crew.
The verdict is the latest milestone in a legal marathon involving two of France’s most emblematic companies and families of the mainly French, Brazilian and German victims of France’s worst air disaster.
Continue reading...Parliamentary rule that only English is allowed has reignited debate about language, legitimacy and postcolonial identity
When the Jamaican MP Nekeisha Burchell stood up to give her maiden speech, she was keenly aware of how much her country’s parliament mirrored the Westminster version thousands of miles away in London.
As in the UK, the session on 12 May had started with the arrival of the ceremonial mace – a 1.7-metre ornamented silver staff representing the British monarch’s authority over parliament – which now rested on a table between the government and the opposition. Despite the heat outside, debate was presided over by the speaker dressed in a ceremonial robe.
Continue reading...BROOMFIELD, Colo., May 21, 2026 — Quantinuum, a leading quantum computing company, today announced the launch of a new quantum project in collaboration with bp aimed at modernizing how the energy sector maps the Earth’s subsurface to locate oil and gas resources.
Few tasks in today’s oil and gas sector demand as much raw computational power as seismic imaging. Building on a successful pilot that demonstrated feasibility, bp and Quantinuum are now scaling their approach to simulate more complex subsurface properties.
“This has the potential to be a very important industrial use case for quantum computing,” said Dr. Rajeeb Hazra, President and CEO of Quantinuum. “By enabling higher-fidelity data at a lower computational cost than classical computing, we can potentially provide a more efficient path for energy exploration.”
On classical computers, computational requirements, such as memory, scale with spatial resolution, so doubling the resolution of a seismic image can require up to double the computational resources. By contrast, in an ideal scenario, a quantum computer could theoretically achieve the same resolution gains with the addition of a single qubit, potentially compressing simulation timelines while also reducing energy consumption.
Hybrid quantum-classical approaches have the potential to further optimize performance, with quantum processors tackling the most demanding calculations while classical systems manage data logic, allowing results to remain grounded in real-world physics.
If successful, this project could demonstrate that quantum computing can help solve real-world bottlenecks in global infrastructure and resource management.
About Quantinuum
Quantinuum is a leading quantum computing company offering a full-stack platform designed to make quantum computing deployable in real-world environments. The company has commercially deployed multiple generations of quantum systems built on the well-established QCCD architecture, which it has implemented with novel designs and capabilities to achieve the industry’s highest accuracy levels based on average two-qubit gate fidelity. Quantinuum has active engagements with market leaders across pharmaceuticals, material science, financial services, and government and industrial markets.
The company has a global workforce of approximately 700 employees, including top scientists and researchers. Over 70% of its technology team hold PhDs and Master’s degrees. Quantinuum’s headquarters is in Broomfield, Colorado, with additional facilities across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Qatar, and Singapore.
Source: Quantinuum
The post Quantinuum and bp Collaborate Towards Solving Fundamental Wave Physics Challenges with Quantum Computing appeared first on HPCwire.
The proposed award through the CHIPS program would accelerate development of U.S. infrastructure and production capabilities to manufacture and deploy silicon-based quantum processors, leveraging Diraq’s proven technologies.
PALO ALTO, Calif., May 21, 2026 — Diraq today announced it has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with the U.S. Department of Commerce for up to $38 million in proposed federal funding from the CHIPS Research and Development Office. This award would support production and scaling of fault-tolerant silicon quantum computing processors via the U.S. semiconductor industry.
“The Department of Commerce’s incentives strengthen and accelerate U.S. quantum leadership and technological resilience,” said Bill Frauenhofer, Executive Director of Semiconductor Investment and Innovation. “Quantum computing has significant implications for national defense, advanced materials and biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling and energy systems.”
“The U.S. Government has played an important role for over 25 years in funding silicon quantum research through entities such as the U.S. Army Research Office and more recently DARPA. The foundational advancements that came from this work underpin Diraq’s technology today,” said Andrew Dzurak, Diraq Founder and CEO. “Silicon-based processors are the most economical and scalable approach to utility-scale quantum computing. By scaling our CMOS qubit technology in the United States, we are defining the industrial standard for the next era of supercomputing and cementing the nation’s role as a global architect of fault-tolerant quantum systems.”
Diraq is pioneering the use of silicon-based quantum processors, which have the ability to contain millions of qubits on a single chip, and are fabricated with existing semiconductor manufacturing processes. No other approach offers a more economical or scalable path to quantum infrastructure at industrial scale. This investment will accelerate Diraq’s roadmap to enable an end-to-end quantum supply chain – including cryostats, chips, and packaging – with fully American production.
“This LOI is a powerful signal that the U.S. government recognizes silicon-based quantum processors as a viable architecture to securing domestic computing leadership,” said Dr. William Jeffrey, Chairman of the Board for Diraq and former Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). “Quantum technology is a matter of national competitiveness. Diraq’s approach, built on decades of foundational research, is uniquely positioned to deliver scalable, fault-tolerant quantum systems.”
Diraq’s quantum computers are engineered to achieve utility-scale unit economics by utilizing existing CMOS manufacturing. Shortlisted for Stage B of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), Diraq’s system architecture is designed to meet the following industrial specifications:
“As quantum computing enters its industrial phase, the challenge shifts from scientific discovery to engineering and scale, making reliable access to advanced semiconductor infrastructure essential,” said Gregg Bartlett, Chief Technology Officer at GlobalFoundries. “We’re proud to partner with Diraq to advance silicon-based quantum processors, leveraging our cryo-CMOS quantum capabilities and broad technology portfolio under one roof to enable quantum systems at scale within a trusted domestic ecosystem.”
Founded in Sydney, Australia, Diraq has U.S. offices and labs in Palo Alto and Chicago, and will soon open a significant new operation in Los Angeles. The company is growing its team and business in the United States and is actively working with domestic partners to further accelerate the U.S. quantum ecosystem.
About Diraq
Diraq is commercializing quantum computing with a silicon-based approach that uses existing CMOS processes. By utilizing the same manufacturing methods that produce today’s semiconductor components, Diraq is pioneering a faster, more economical road to commercial-scale quantum computing. The company’s proprietary ‘quantum dot’ technology is based on 20 years of research by founder Andrew Dzurak, designed to enable millions of qubits on a single chip, for powerful and scalable deployments. Diraq’s mission is to revolutionize quantum computing by unlocking the scale needed for useful commercial applications. Founded in Sydney, Diraq has more than 100 team members globally, with operations in Melbourne, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Source: Diraq
The post Diraq Targets US Silicon Quantum Scale-Up with Proposed $38M CHIPS Award appeared first on HPCwire.
PALO ALTO, Calif., May 21, 2026 — D-Wave Quantum Inc. today announced that it has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) for $100 million of proposed funding under the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce. In connection with executing final award documents, D-Wave would issue $100 million in shares of its common stock to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The LOI marks a significant endorsement by the U.S. government of D-Wave’s annealing and gate-model quantum computing technologies and their potential impact on the U.S. economy.
The U.S. CHIPS and Science Act is aimed at strengthening domestic technology supply chains and advancing national and economic security. Advanced manufacturing and packaging technology is required to scale quantum computing systems and is critical for reinforcing the United States’ position at the forefront of next-generation quantum computing. This funding would accelerate development and scaling of D-Wave’s annealing and gate-model quantum systems, including at its forthcoming research and development (R&D) facility in Boca Raton, Florida as well as its R&D centers in New Haven, Connecticut and Burnaby, BC, Canada.
“We believe that the U.S. government’s strategic investment in D-Wave would advance the country’s global leadership position in quantum computing,” said Dr. Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave. “The award would accelerate D-Wave’s ability to scale quantum innovation domestically, expedite key fabrication processes, and deliver real-world quantum applications to our global customers today. We see this as a transformative moment for not just D-Wave, but also for quantum computing and the United States.”
“With today’s CHIPS Research and Development investments in quantum computing, the Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic quantum technology investments will build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities.”
“The Department of Commerce’s incentives strengthen and accelerate U.S. quantum leadership and technological resilience,” said Bill Frauenhofer, Executive Director of Semiconductor Investment and Innovation. “Quantum computing has significant implications for national defense, advanced materials and biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling and energy systems.”
The funded initiatives would help D-Wave expedite the delivery of advanced superconducting quantum computers, including a 100,000-qubit annealing system and a 10,000-qubit gate-model system. While D-Wave’s annealing quantum computers are commercial today, its gate-model system is expected to reach commercial viability with 10,000 physical qubits, which enable 100 logical qubits. With the larger-scale and higher coherence annealing quantum computing systems, D-Wave expects even greater performance gains for solving computational problems in optimization, materials simulation, blockchain, and artificial intelligence applications. The larger-scale dual-rail gate-model quantum computer will enable dozens of logical qubits, providing a powerful application development platform for a wide range of quantum chemistry and quantum artificial intelligence use cases.
These efforts are expected to contribute to the development of a resilient, end-to-end quantum computing ecosystem, aligned with broader CHIPS and Science Act objectives to build domestic capacity in critical technologies and establish a robust and reliable pipeline for the components required to bring state-of-the-art quantum computing systems into the market.
The Award is subject to the execution by the parties of definitive Award documents.
About D-Wave Quantum Inc.
D-Wave is a leader in the development and delivery of quantum computing systems, software, and services. It is the world’s first commercial supplier of quantum computers, and the first and only to offer dual-platform quantum computing products and services, spanning both annealing and gate-model quantum computing technologies. D-Wave’s mission is to help customers realize the value of quantum today through enterprise-grade systems available on-premises and via its Leap
quantum cloud service, which offers 99.9% availability and uptime. More than 100 organizations across commercial, government and research sectors trust D-Wave to address complex computational challenges using quantum computing. Learn more about realizing the value of quantum computing today and how D-Wave is shaping the quantum-driven industrial and societal advancements of tomorrow: www.dwavequantum.com.
Source: D-Wave
The post D-Wave Signs LOI for $100M CHIPS Act Funding to Advance Quantum Systems appeared first on HPCwire.
The sweeping aid cuts have left the Democratic Republic of Congo struggling to contain an Ebola outbreak despite its extensive experience with the disease.
Weirs, culverts and sluices among 602 barriers demolished in year in attempt to restore 15,500 miles of rivers by 2030
A few miles downstream from a lava field in western Iceland, the gargle of free-flowing water is unbroken for the first time in decades after hydraulic peckers chipped away at a dilapidated dam that once powered a farm. The structure on the River Melsá had continued to block fish migration long after falling into disrepair.
“It wasn’t providing any electricity; the old power house had sheep living in it,” said Hamish Moir, a river engineer from CBEC, a Scottish firm that provided technical support for the demolition in December. To see the river restored to its natural state was “really rewarding”, he said.
Continue reading...Nato chief delivers speech in Sweden as he hints at further changes to US military commitments to Europe
Just as Pavel was speaking in Prague, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was pursuing escalation of the conflict between the two countries.
It’s quite a claim given (checks notes) Russia’s continued and relentless invasion of Ukraine for years.
“Ukraine has demonstrated not only determination and heroism, but also unbelievable capacity to adjust, to innovate, to change.
It is something that we in Europe have lost through many regulatory measures that are necessary in peacetime, but of course in conflict you have to be … flexible and achieve the results in shortest possible time. …
Continue reading...Iran says it's considering the latest U.S. peace offer, as President Trump says he's willing to wait "a couple of days" for a response.
In an inter-peninsula match-up between women's teams that showed the limits of sports diplomacy, players from North Korea remained stone-faced — until they won.
The cleverly designed P1i projector performs surprisingly well given its budget price.
The ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’ is an extraordinary example of bald self-dealing
Donald Trump is stealing almost $2bn in taxpayer money and handing it out to his friends. That’s the upshot of the president’s recent agreement following a $10bn lawsuit he brought in his personal capacity against the IRS, an agency that he oversees. Trump brought the suit over leaks of some documents from his tax returns to the press. To resolve the suit, the justice department will create a fund of nearly $1.8bn – a wildly outsized figure compared with Trump’s somewhat flimsily alleged injuries – that can be doled out to Trump allies. The Guardian describes the fund as “loosely controlled and secretive”, but members of the Trump administration have not ruled out January 6 insurrectionists as possible awardees.
The so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund” will be administered by four commissioners appointed by Trump’s attorney general and one appointed “in consultation” with congressional leadership – Trump, who can fire the commissioners, will have ultimate control. It will have the authority to issue formal apologies for alleged mistreatment of conservative political actors by previous administrations – ie, those few who were prosecuted or sued during the Biden era. When Trump leaves office, any remaining money will not be available for his successor to use similarly, but will instead be distributed back to the federal government. But I doubt that there will be any remaining money. We may never know either way: there is no requirement that the fund’s work be made public, and required reports to the attorney general on its conduct are to be confidential. In addition to the creation of this massive slush fund, the agreement also requires that the IRS drop all audits of Trump and his family.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
Continue reading...Stop guessing at the grill. These our our picks for the best meat thermometers.
It's one of the best camera phones around, but I still think there's one that beats it.
Manchester mayor and Labour’s Makerfield byelection candidate wants to make politics ‘less point-scoring, more problem-solving’
Andy Burnham has said he will back sweeping changes to the electoral system to make politics “less point-scoring, more problem-solving” if he becomes prime minister.
The Greater Manchester mayor has previously called for the introduction of proportional representations for UK general elections, handing more power to minority parties like the Greens.
Continue reading...Firms hit by ‘perfect storm’ of uncertainty about Labour leadership and impact of Iran war
Companies in the UK’s dominant services sector have reported one of the sharpest declines in business activity in a decade, according to a closely watched index.
Businesses are grappling with a “perfect storm” of domestic political uncertainty around Keir Starmer’s leadership as prime minister and the growing impact of the Iran war, leading to soaring costs, supply shortages and job cuts, the report said.
Continue reading...US Preventive Services Task Force had already been largely sidelined before health secretary fired its two chairs
The Trump administration has fired the two leaders of an influential health group that determines when insurance must provide free preventive care, such as mammograms and colonoscopies, for millions of Americans.
In letters dated 11 May, the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, notified the two doctors who chaired the US Preventive Services Task Force that he was terminating their appointments immediately, before the end of their multiyear terms.
Continue reading...The move builds on the streamer's video podcast offerings.
A record 274 climbers scaled the Nepal side of Mount Everest in a single day, officials said. They took advantage of clear weather.
Climbers take advantage of clear weather after threat of ice fall on normal route delayed start of spring season
A record 274 climbers have reached the summit of Mount Everest from the Nepalese side in a single day after a spring season that started late because of the threat of ice fall on the normal tourist route.
The climbers took advantage of the clear weather on Wednesday, said Rishi Ram Bhandari, of the Expedition Operators Association Nepal.
Continue reading...The new plan is attractively priced, if you can bear the limited features.
Lawsuit says university and private investigators conspired to intimidate, terrorize and retaliate against Josiah Walker
A University of Michigan student is suing the school, accusing it of violating his constitutional rights when it waged a vast undercover surveillance operation against him in response to his protest of Israel’s war in Gaza.
The lawsuit, which will be filed on Thursday in federal court by Cair-MI and U-M student Josiah Walker, claims the university and individual private investigators conspired to intimidate, terrorize and retaliate against Walker in 2024 and 2025.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Body-cam footage shared with the Guardian shows agents forced workers out of a van in what a judge has called ‘unlawful’ arrest
Newly released body-camera footage shows US immigration officers stopping a van of farm workers in Oregon, smashing their windows and using facial recognition software to try to identify one of them.
Videos from a 30 October 2025 operation were disclosed in court as part of an ongoing class-action lawsuit challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) arrest tactics and racial profiling by agents. Lawyers for one of the detained farm workers shared the footage with the Guardian.
Continue reading...We've tested the top video doorbells in our homes to find which give you the best eyes on your front door.
SpaceX has revealed its financials for the first time as it prepares for a potentially massive IPO. The New York Times reports: SpaceX's revenue soared to $18.7 billion in 2025, up 33 percent from a year earlier, the company disclosed in a filing required of firms that are seeking to go public. In the first three months of this year, revenue rose to $4.7 billion from $4.1 billion in the same period a year ago. But the company lost more than $4.9 billion last year, compared with a $791 million profit in 2024, as capital expenditures nearly doubled to $20.7 billion from heavy spending on artificial intelligence development. In the first three months of this year, SpaceX lost almost as much money as all of 2025, recording a $4.3 billion loss.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Exclusive: Scotland Yard had been in talks to use Palantir’s AI technology to automate intelligence analysis
A £50m Met police deal with the controversial US tech company Palantir has been blocked by the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, with City Hall citing a “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules.
Scotland Yard had been in talks, revealed by the Guardian last month, to use Palantir’s AI technology to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations. But Khan intervened on Thursday to stop the flagship contract, which would have been Palantir’s largest yet in British policing.
Continue reading...New fraud charges were unsealed Wednesday against a Minnesota daycare owner who federal prosecutors allege tried to flee the country just two days after shutting the center down.
Airline, which took £25m hit on jet fuel in March, says passengers are waiting later to book trips
The airline easyJet has said its summer holiday bookings are lagging behind last year’s, as the Middle East conflict weighs on consumer confidence and passengers appear to be waiting later to book trips.
The budget carrier said it had to spend an unexpected extra £25m on jet fuel in March after the start of the US-Israel war on Iran.
Continue reading...Colombia is a global leader in climate activism. Could US influence drag country to a future of mining and fracking?
Several hours after dark in a quiet Caribbean neighbourhood, a cluster of environmental activists gather on plastic chairs between a mango tree and a courtyard wall emblazoned with the words “Colombia, respira!” (Breathe, Colombia).
So many people have turned up that some have to stand. That is because tonight’s speaker is Susana Muhamad, one of the most admired socio-environmental campaigners in the world, and this is a moment of profound historical significance.
Continue reading...Authorities in Galicia declare two days of mourning after toddler dies during exceptionally high May temperatures
A two-year-old girl has died of heatstroke in north-west Spain after being accidentally left in her father’s car during an unseasonably hot spell that could push temperatures in some areas to 38C (100F).
The child, who has not been named, went into cardiac arrest on Wednesday afternoon after spending several hours inside the vehicle in the Galician town of Brión after her father forgot to take her to nursery.
Continue reading...The Rolling Stone will play a lighthouse keeper in Three Incestuous Sisters, joining a cast including Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley and Saoirse Ronan
Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger is playing a lighthouse keeper in the new film from Happy as Lazzaro director Alice Rohrwacher, which is currently filming on the Italian island of Stromboli.
According to reports in the Italian media, Jagger was photographed on arrival in Stromboli after flying in by helicopter to take a role in Three Incestuous Sisters, Rohrwacher’s adaptation of the 2005 “visual novel” by The Time Traveler’s Wife author Audrey Niffenegger.
Continue reading...Lee Mendelson Film Productions alleges the U.S. Department of the Interior illegally used the jazzy tunes in social media posts and a video game.
"The Late Show" host Stephen Colbert is marking the end of an iconic late-night franchise on CBS.
While Canada may be clinging to fossil fuels, much of the world is moving on
Casual international observers would be forgiven for assuming Canada is in the comforting hands of a climate champ. After all, while climate policy rollbacks reign supreme in Donald Trump’s America, Canada is now led by a man who, while serving as governor of the Bank of England, delivered a celebrated 2015 speech, “Breaking the tragedy of the horizon”, warning the global investment community of the financial risks of climate change; who went on to serve as UN special envoy for climate action and finance; and whose 2022 book Value(s) had much to say about the “existential threat” of climate change. A man who recently dazzled the world with his Davos speech on how middle powers can stand up to global bullies.
Look, we get it. Next to the US president, Carney seems so debonair, thoughtful and calm – a lifeline of stability in a volatile new world.
Seth Klein is a Canadian climate writer and activist, author of the book A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, and former team lead of the Climate Emergency Unit. His newsletter can be found here.
Continue reading...Will Lawrence, an outspoken opponent of AI datacenters, is running in swing district where three mega complexes loom
A prominent environmental organizer calling for a nationwide moratorium on datacenters as he runs for the Democratic nomination in a swing Michigan congressional district has secured an endorsement from Bernie Sanders.
Will Lawrence, co-founder of the youth-led Sunrise Movement climate justice group, was a key figure behind the campaign for a Green New Deal to battle economic and racial injustice while also fighting climate change.
Continue reading...Hundreds of cases reported in the DRC after USAID has been dismantled and key scientific research canceled
A previously undetected outbreak of Ebola is coursing through parts of central Africa, and the US appears to be doing little to help stop it, after massive cuts to global and domestic public health efforts.
There is no cure and no vaccine for the rare Bundibugyo variant of Ebola, which has caused two outbreaks in recent decades. Health leaders and scientists are now racing to understand where the virus is spreading and attempting to stop it – but the US is notably absent in these efforts.
Continue reading...Your iPhone's not angry, it's just disappointed.
Americans are expected to wager more than $3 billion amid the expansion of legalized sports betting in the U.S.
The new fund to provide payouts to those who say the legal system was "weaponized" against them raised immediate questions about its legality, implementation and enforcement.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Last year, the state conducted its first property reassessment in decades. As a result, school districts were able to implement an up to 10% school tax increase without voter approval, sparking outrage throughout the state. But lawmakers say a new bill could provide flexibility to districts while eliminating the sticker shock of large tax hikes.
A new proposal could see taxpayers statewide shouldering smaller school tax increases each year without having to go to referendum.
It is the third bill attempting to address Delawareans’ concerns about school district tax increases following last year’s first-in-a-generation property reassessment.
Sponsored by Senate President Pro Tempore David Sokola (D-Newark), Senate Bill 322 was spurred by school districts across the state choosing last summer to increase their property tax revenues by 10% following Delaware’s first statewide property reassessment in nearly 40 years.
But those tax increases, allowed under a little-discussed state law, only worsened the resident outcry that had been building following reassessment. Sokola’s bill follows two failed attempts by Republican lawmakers earlier this year to scale back districts’ ability to take those automatic tax increases in the future.
While SB 322 would rescind school districts’ current ability to automatically implement a 10% tax increase after property reassessments, it also would allow them to seek additional funding without holding a referendum vote.
Instead of taking an automatic 10% hike, districts – should they meet certain criteria – would be able to implement an up to 2% tax increase each year without seeking approval from voters. That approach mirrors the process in many other states.
If signed into law, SB 322 would not take effect until 2031, after the next property reassessment.
In his remarks during Wednesday’s committee meeting, Sokola said the bill provides flexibility for school districts while also protecting taxpayers from the “sticker shock” of seeing a 10% tax increase after a reassessment.
“Our schools and communities deserve a holistic and carefully measured approach that balances financial interests for our taxpayers with the overwhelming need to maintain and improve academic performance for all students,” he added.
During a hearing Wednesday in the Senate Education Committee, some Republicans questioned the merits of Sokola’s bill, especially as it compared to similar legislation filed earlier this year by Rep. Bryan Shupe (R-Milford).
Last month, Shupe opted to table his bill, House Bill 246, which also would have removed school districts’ ability to automatically implement a 10% tax revenue increase following reassessment, and instead allow districts to take a smaller percentage, if needed.
State Sen. Eric Buckson (R-South Dover), who was the co-prime sponsor of HB 246, said Sokola’s bill did not have the same “hurdles” in place as Shupe’s to prevent a district from unnecessarily taking a 2% tax increase. Under HB 246, districts would have had to demonstrate that they would have lost revenue following a reassessment in order to implement an automatic tax rate increase.
But Sokola’s bill does include language that would prohibit certain districts from automatically raising taxes, albeit different language than Shupe’s.
According to SB 322, a school district would not be able to implement a tax increase if its reserve fund balance – essentially the amount of money in its savings – is more than 10% of the district’s annual revenue.
If a district wanted to implement a tax increase greater than 2%, it would still need voter approval.
While many states require school districts to get approval from voters to fund capital projects, Delaware is one of the few states left that require referendums for operational increases.
During the committee hearing, Red Clay Consolidated School District Superintendent Dorell Green, who also is the president of Delaware’s Chief School Officers Association, spoke in favor of the bill. Green said the legislation is not a “complete solution,” but he noted it is beneficial to both districts and taxpayers.
He said the legislation would grant districts and school boards the ability to “address local funding” while also delaying implementation until after the next reassessment to protect taxpayers.
One professor who studies education funding in Delaware, however, said SB 322 would not address the state’s underlying educational funding inequities.
Kenneth Shores, a professor at the University of Delaware who specializes in education policy, said that districts with higher property wealth, such as Cape Henlopen, will be able to bring in more money with a 2% annual increase than a district in western Sussex County, which may have lower property values.
Shores said the bill would not provide “any kind of state obligation to compensate districts for their property wealth.”
He also pointed toward states like Minnesota, where districts with lower tax-bases can receive state aid to help districts pay for the same level of services as wealthier school districts.
Last summer, multiple school districts, including the Appoquinimink, Christina, Capital, and Indian River school districts, chose to implement the full 10% tax increase during July board of education meetings. At the time, some leaders said taking advantage of the increase would prevent their district from needing to hold, and pass, a referendum.
Others, like the Brandywine School District, announced in July 2025 that it would implement a 1.7% tax rate increase, citing concerns over the future of federal education dollars. The following month, the Brandywine school board changed course, opting to reduce rates for residential properties and increase them for business properties.
Still, post-assessment property tax bills prompted outrage from many New Castle residents over the sticker shock of the increases in their bill. For some residents, tax bills doubled after the reassessment.
Those increases are largely driven by school taxes, rather than county taxes.
By August 2025, state lawmakers held a one-day special legislative session in response to residents’ outrage. They allowed the public school districts in New Castle County to split their property tax rates to provide additional relief to homeowners.
The school boards for the Appoquinimink, Brandywine, Christina, Colonial, and Red Clay Consolidated school districts then approved new rates that lowered tax burdens for homeowners and raised them for commercial property owners.
Christina, Appoquinimink, and Colonial also chose to retain the extra revenue they raised through the automatic tax increases.
By December, four school district leaders testified before the General Assembly’s committee investigating the impacts of the reassessment.
Three months later, two Republican bills seeking to limit Delaware school districts’ ability to implement automatic tax increases following property reassessments were both tabled in committee, or not advanced to a full House vote, after nearly two hours of debate.
After being approved by the Senate Education Committee, SB 322 awaits consideration by the full Senate. If passed, it would then be considered in the House of Representatives.
The post New bill would give Delaware schools right to small annual tax hikes without referendum appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Sussex County farmers field enticing offers to sell their land to housing developers as demand for new homes in the area remains high. But some Sussex residents want the county to discourage those developments, saying new residential areas should be built adjacent to existing ones, not on far off farm fields.
Sussex County farmers are pushing back against proposed development reforms that they say could endanger the future of their farms.
The Sussex County Council on Tuesday held hearings on two ordinances that could discourage a long-criticized practice of building large housing developments on land that is located far from established cities and towns and is targeted for preservation.
Specifically, the proposals would ban subdivisions with more than two homes per acre on farm fields and require more open space within those developments. Advocates say the rules will encourage developers to instead build new homes where infrastructure already exists.
But a group of farmers who spoke during a public comment period at the meeting said the ordinances would also devalue their land, which they often rely on as collateral for loans needed to operate their farms.
Rather than discouraging new homes on farmland, Georgetown farmer Jay Baxter said the devaluation could actually force more farmers to sell to developers.
“You’re hamstringing that next generation by taking the equity away from my farm,” Baxter said.
The comments mark the latest in Sussex County’s yearslong debate over how to balance farmland preservation with the development of new homes amid explosive growth.
The two proposals in front of the council came from recommendations made by the Sussex County Land Use Reform Working Group.
The County Council formed the working group after three newcomers won seats on the elected body by beating incumbents in the November 2024 elections. The victories largely were fueled by resident anger over how the five-person council had previously handled development.
The working group’s stated mission was to come up with ways to ease the impact that ongoing growth has had on affordability, road conditions, public services and the environment.
Last fall, the group recommended a slate of measures that would incentivize housing developers to build dense, walkable communities in areas where there is already infrastructure to support it, and discourage development in the rest of the county.
Though he was a member of the working group, Baxter publicly criticized its recommendations before they were finalized.
But other members, including Center for Inland Bays Director Christophe Tulou, said the county must act to discourage building new homes on farmland because it causes sprawl and traffic congestion outside of growth areas.
Tulou also said during a working group meeting last year that the recommended measures need to be passed as a package, because they collectively represent concessions made by all stakeholders.
If not, he said, the public could “start picking and choosing. And they’re going to find the parts they like. They’re going to fight the ones they don’t like.”
It is not immediately clear whether the two proposals discussed during Tuesday’s meeting has enough support on the County Council.
Based on remarks made during the meeting, Councilman Matt Lloyd appeared to be against the measures. Council Vice President John Rieley expressed his strong opposition to the them.
Meanwhile, Councilwoman Jane Gruenbaum appeared to be mostly in support, and Councilman Steve McCarron seemed neutral, stating “there are no good answers.”
Council President Doug Hudson did not comment on or ask questions about the ordinances during the meeting.
At the end of Tuesday’s meeting, the County Council did not close the record on the proposals, meaning they will likely discuss them again, though it is not certain when that could be.
Separately during the meeting, the council also deferred action on another housing proposal — this one to reform Sussex County’s affordable housing program.
The ordinance would raise limits on rent, and lower the required number of affordable units for a housing development to qualify for a county program that incentivizes developers to build affordable rental units, specifically in areas near the Delaware beaches.
The post Sussex County farmers oppose plan to discourage housing on agricultural lands appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Why Should Delaware Care?
With the lowest average elevation in the country, Delaware is in line to be among the most impacted states by sea-level rise. Coastal communities are at the forefront of those flood risks, and homeowners there will be faced with increasing questions of how much flood resiliency is needed.
A Sussex County condominium board has settled a lawsuit against a former resident who had publicly sought out ways to protect her low-lying community from floods.
The dispute, which highlighted the growing tensions in Delaware’s coastal communities grappling with sea-level rise, began after Simone Reba created a website and spoke at public meetings about what she said were the flood risks facing her Mallard Lakes community.
The condominium board filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery last fall, asking a judge for an injunction that would gag Reba from asking public officials for money or other support for flood repairs or resiliency measures for the coastal development.
The board argued that Reba had no right to act as a formal representative of the community or of the board, which is responsible for the community’s shared resources.
But Reba’s attorney, Daniel McAllister, claimed the lawsuit was an attempt to limit her “participation in the political process and stifle her First Amendment rights.”
The lawsuit could have served as an early test of a new state law designed to protect people from lawsuits they claim are meant to silence public speech. But, earlier this month, the parties reached a confidential settlement that dismissed the case.
The settlement followed Reba and her husband’s sale of their Mallard Lakes condo in April. They purchased a new vacation home in another community nearby.
When reached for comment, Reba said in an email that she continues “to believe in the importance of homeowners being able to communicate with their government officials on public matters and to participate in discussions involving issues that affect their communities.”
Board Vice President Chris Reutershan did not respond to requests for comment.
Reba’s former vacation home is one of 11 in one building on the 61-acre complex that is Mallard Lakes. The community nestled to the west of Fenwick Island, along the northside of Route 54, includes multiple buildings, some of which are slightly elevated to allow water to pass beneath them. The community includes 47 buildings with 477 condominium units sitting mostly within a floodplain surrounded by natural and manmade waterways.
The association’s claims against Reba focused heavily on comments she made during one Sussex County Council meeting in July 2025, as well as other communications with state and elected officials, and a non-association-affiliated website she uses to publish the information she’s collected about the community’s flood vulnerabilities in a changing climate.
The board claimed “misinformation” on the website could impact property values, while Reba’s attempts to seek funding or other resources for the community amounted to “fraud” and misrepresentation. According to the community’s bylaws, no individual homeowner is permitted to act on behalf of the community as a whole or make alterations to shared resources such as the buildings’ exteriors.
Reba said she never misrepresented herself, and her attorney defended her right to free speech and public participation by filing a counterclaim based on the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act passed by state lawmakers last year to further protect free speech in the First State.
She said her independent website will remain up as a resource for community members, even though she and her husband no longer own a condo in Mallard Lakes.
Regardless of this legal battle’s resolution, the case highlights key challenges that rising tides present to Delaware’s coastal communities and homeowners: What is their future vulnerability and preparedness, and who is ultimately responsible for addressing — and paying for — those problems or solutions when floodwaters do arrive?
The condo association says no major damage has occurred in the community since Superstorm Sandy.
Still, Delaware is the lowest-lying state in the United States, and sea levels are expected to continue to rise.
According to State Climatologist Kevin Brinson, sea level as measured nearby in Lewes has risen about 7.25 inches since the community was built in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Based on current trends, which show that sea level rise is accelerating, the area is expected to see that same amount of sea level rise in a shorter timeframe, he told Spotlight Delaware earlier this year.
“In other words, another 7.25 inches by 2040,” Brinson said.
The post Sussex HOA, resident settle lawsuit over flooding and speech appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
The bipartisan legislation, which comes after a Washington Post investigation, would also limit the federal government’s ability to obtain phone records without a judge’s order.
Eight nations have won the World Cup. An expanded field and a grueling schedule means a new champion could emerge from the pack this summer
When Fifa expanded the field for the 2026 World Cup to 48 teams, the sales pitch included giving more nations a chance at glory. In reality, the favorites are nearly always former champions.
To date, only eight nations have won the men’s World Cup. And yet, few of the former champions arrive at this summer’s tournament in their finest form. Spain are a justifiably popular pick as the reigning European champions have plenty of world-class talent. Argentina will hope to defend their title from 2022 after following it up with the Copa América in 2024. France, who top our power rankings, have reached the last two finals, and Kylian Mbappé claims this squad is the best he has been a part of.
Continue reading...Wherever you’re planning to watch the matches – we’d like to hear from you
The men’s World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada is nearly upon us, kicking off on 11 June.
Amid the excitement around the tournament, there has been controversy over Fifa’s ticketing process, the cost of travel, and security concerns for fans travelling to the US.
Continue reading...
More than $7,000 in cable TV subscriptions.
An $11,000 golf cart.
$1.5 million in renovations to office space in a swanky Phoenix high-rise.
And another $1.7 million for Tasers.
Those were among more than $200 million in expenses that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office billed to a class-action settlement aimed at rooting out racial profiling in the department.
A federal judge in 2013 found the department under then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio had violated the constitutional rights of Latino drivers, and the court has required sweeping reforms. These include documenting all traffic stops to detect patterns of racial bias, employing additional investigators to probe reports of deputy misconduct and appointing a monitor to oversee the settlement.
Since Sheriff Jerry Sheridan took office last year, he and Republicans on the county’s Board of Supervisors have cited the cost of complying with these orders to call for an end to the settlement of the case known as Melendres v. Arpaio — even as reviews of the department’s traffic stops continue to show racial disparities affecting Latino residents. The lingering disparities amplified Latino leaders and community members’ concerns as the second Trump administration has boosted local law enforcement’s involvement in its mass deportation campaign.
Maricopa County, home to more than half of Arizona’s population, has approved $353 million in spending related to the settlement since 2013. But an audit of the sheriff’s office spending ordered by the court and a review of the public ledger by Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica show millions of dollars went to expenses that had little or nothing to do with the settlement. (The audit focused on $226 million that the sheriff’s office charged to the settlement over a 10-year period; it didn’t examine legal and monitoring costs or the two most recent department budgets.)
The auditors, who were hired by the monitor, found that nearly 72% of the sheriff’s office spending was misattributed or misappropriated. For example, the full cost of some services and salaries was assigned to the settlement when those jobs were completely unrelated or only partially related to court orders. Only $63 million was appropriately charged to the settlement, they said.
Upon releasing its findings late last year, the two-member auditing team, led by an individual with decades of experience in public finance, noted that overstating the cost of the reforms undermines the court’s credibility. “This mischaracterization misleads the public on the cost of reform efforts and calls into question MCSO’s credibility, transparency, and truthfulness of its reporting,” they stated.
The financial ledgers detail many of these expenses, including more than $310,000 for travel and professional development. Among them are $1,261 for travel in 2020 to research buying a boat and swift-water rescue training — for deputies who work in the desert, $4,070 to train and test whether to buy a horse for the mounted unit in 2021 and $5,077 to attend National Police Week in Washington, D.C., in 2023.
The audit concluded that the county Board of Supervisors, which approves the sheriff’s annual budgets, provided no “meaningful” oversight of its spending and had no process to verify if funds were being used appropriately to comply with court orders.
Indeed, as costs ballooned, the Board of Supervisors rarely questioned the expenses, Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica found based on a review of nearly a decade of public budget hearings.
The supervisors responded to the audit by telling U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow that the reforms, and in particular the audit’s scrutiny of county spending, had far exceeded the original racial profiling complaints.
“Hispanic residents of Maricopa County concerned with racial profiling are unaffected by how the County and MCSO allocate costs,” the filing read. “Nor does any member of the Class experience a constitutional violation because MCSO purchased a golf cart.”
Snow’s 2013 ruling found deputies had relied on race to pull over Latino drivers during immigration actions, violating their rights to equal protection and against unreasonable seizures.
Attorneys for the county have filed a motion to end court oversight. That motion is pending.
“Digging into county finances and trying to minimize the cost of Melendres compliance is not just an insult to taxpayers, it’s beyond the federal court’s jurisdiction,” Republican supervisors Thomas Galvin and Kate Brophy McGee said in a November statement. “Nothing about our budgeting or accounting practices violates federal or state law. This is why we decline to participate in further arguments over compliance costs.”
Sheridan, whose tenure was not covered by the audit period, dismissed the findings and defended his department’s spending practices. The sheriff’s attorneys joined the motion to end court oversight.
The past two years, the Board of Supervisors have approved Sheridan’s budget request, billing an additional $72 million to the settlement.
The auditors, William Ansbrow and Eric Melancon, are barred by Snow from speaking publicly about their work.
Steve Gallardo, the lone Democrat on the five-member Board of Supervisors, has opposed ending court oversight of the sheriff’s office. He said the focus should remain on eliminating biased policing.
The sheriff’s office is above 90% compliance with the two major court orders, but Snow has yet to clear the department in two key areas: racial disparities in traffic stops and a backlog of uninvestigated misconduct claims against deputies.
“We should be having benchmarks in terms of, how do we get in full compliance,” Gallardo told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica in April. “Others are going to say, ‘Well, they keep moving the goalpost.’ Well, let’s continue to move forward. I mean, that should be our overall goals: How do we get in full compliance with the Melendres case?”
The sheriff’s office did not respond to Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica’s questions about the spending.
While the audit and county ledger showed spending that appeared unrelated to the court’s orders, they also showed spending spiraling on things the court had ordered.
In 2013, Snow required the sheriff’s office to purchase body cameras for patrol deputies and sergeants who conduct traffic stops. The audit found that the number of employees required to wear the cameras ranged from 434 in fiscal year 2023 to 513 in fiscal year 2021. Yet the department had purchased 950 cameras from Axon, a Scottsdale company, at a cost of $8.6 million. About $2.9 million of the spending “exceeded the Court’s requirements,” the audit found.
The sheriff’s office also purchased Tasers from Axon, bundled with the body cameras, and charged them to the settlement. The court had not required deputies to carry Tasers.
The sheriff’s office contended that buying the cameras separately would have been more costly. Even so, the audit found, the cost for Tasers — roughly $1.7 million — should have been charged to the department’s general fund instead of the settlement.
To operate body camera docking stations, the department purchased high-speed internet. But monthly invoices revealed that from fiscal years 2020 to 2024, the charges included cable television subscriptions, which were unrelated to the settlement, totaling $7,670.
Since 2016, Snow has required the sheriff’s office to house the Professional Standards Bureau, its internal disciplinary body, separately from its downtown Phoenix headquarters. The order was intended to encourage residents to report deputy misconduct after Snow found department leadership had routinely interfered in discipline of deputies. (Sheridan was Arpaio’s chief deputy at the time.)
To shuttle employees between headquarters and the standards bureau, the sheriff’s office purchased in June 2019 a golf cart valued at $11,800. At the same time, the department was also paying an average of $34,000 a year for additional parking at the bureau building to accommodate visitors and employees, according to the audit and county ledgers.
The sheriff’s office added to these costs in July 2024 by moving the bureau for a second time in less than a decade, the audit shows. The bureau now occupies two floors inside a premium midtown Phoenix high-rise, the court’s auditing team found, citing public real estate listings.
The department spent $1.5 million refurbishing the new offices, which auditors found was inappropriately charged to the settlement. The bureau had already been housed separately from department leadership, they noted. During a visit to the offices last year, a member of the audit team found that some of the space was empty and noted that the bureau could have been housed in “various unused publicly owned properties.”
Sheridan says the bulk of spending on the settlement goes toward staffing. Snow called for the creation of two divisions that enforce the court’s orders: the Court Implementation Division and the Bureau of Internal Oversight. The sheriff’s office also hired additional investigators for the Professional Standards Bureau, as it works to clear a backlog of 433 pending investigations.
“We went from having an internal investigation division with maybe 15 people to well over 50,” Sheridan told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica. “You can see those costs right away.”
During a February town hall meeting, Sheridan criticized the audit and said the court had required the sheriff’s office to hire 25 sergeants. His chief financial officer said those positions cost about $3 million a year.
But the audit determined the sheriff’s office misused funds by charging unrelated or partially related staffing expenses to the settlement. It found that starting in fiscal year 2016, the department shifted the cost of the sergeant positions from general county funds to the settlement.
The audit determined that of the 209 positions charged to the settlement at the start of the 2025 fiscal year, only 55 could be reasonably attributed to Snow’s orders. Another 84 were “inappropriately attributed to Melendres,” while an additional 70 were partially related and should have been prorated to reflect the share of the work related to the settlement versus other duties.
Expenses related to these employees further exaggerated the cost of the settlement. The sheriff’s office charged $1.3 million to purchase 42 patrol vehicles for positions that the audit found were inappropriately attributed to court orders, including six vehicles for employees whose jobs had no connection to the case.
In May 2022, the sheriff’s office began to charge car washes to the Melendres fund for vehicles it purchased for new patrol supervisors. Deputies expensed $3,259 in car washes that were not justified under the court’s orders, according to the audit.
In all, the sheriff’s office misattributed to the settlement or inappropriately expensed about $144 million in personnel costs from 2014 to 2024, the audit determined.
The auditors concluded that the department continues to misattribute funds, citing accounting practices that remain in place. As a result, they warned, taxpayers could be on the hook for millions of dollars more that have nothing to do with rooting out racial profiling.
Galvin and Brophy McGee, two of the Republican supervisors, defended the county’s handling of its finances. “We stand by our budgeting practices and the 209 positions we created as a direct result of the Melendres Orders,” they said in November. “It would be a complete waste of taxpayer money to engage the federal courts in a back-and-forth over what is clearly an issue of local jurisdiction.”
Before the audit was released in October, Republican supervisors were calling for an end to judicial oversight to protect the rights of Latino residents, claiming it had become too costly.
“It’s a huge expense to the Maricopa County taxpayers,” Supervisor Debbie Lesko told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica in July. “It seems like it’s never-ending because the judge just changes; they put out a new order. They move the goalposts, and so we need to resolve this.”
Their attorneys argued in court that the Melendres lawsuit has been a success and the settlement was no longer needed.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which joined the lawsuit in 2008, opposes ending oversight until the sheriff’s office is in full compliance with Snow’s orders. But it signaled a willingness to reduce monitoring of a few requirements that the department has complied with for at least three years.
At a January hearing, Snow said he was reluctant to allow the county to “use cost orders both as a sword and a shield and make statements to the public which may, in fact, be completely inaccurate.” He doesn’t intend to police supervisors’ speech, Snow said, but he could require the county to justify the costs.
Attorneys for the county and the sheriff’s office asked the judge for an opportunity to challenge the findings, which Snow approved. But they soon dropped it, citing the “unnecessary” cost of examining department spending.
Public finance experts said county boards have an obligation to taxpayers to ensure they can account for how each dollar is spent.
Zach Mohr, an associate professor at the University of Kansas who teaches public budgeting, accounting and financial management, reviewed the audit for Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica. He said that if the board disagrees with the findings, “the way to solve that would be to get another audit.”
Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica attempted to contact all current and former Maricopa County supervisors who had approved sheriff’s office spending during the case. Only Gallardo and one former supervisor agreed to comment.
The news organizations’ review of past budget hearings showed supervisors had been more likely to probe spending during the early years of the settlement, as the county created infrastructure to implement reforms. In 2016, for example, Sheridan — then the department’s second-in-command — responded to a question about the court’s requirement to purchase body cameras for deputies, saying it was the sheriff’s office’s idea. “They’re more cutting-edge, and they’re more flexible. They travel with the deputies everywhere. And so it was our desire to do the body cameras,” he said at the time.
In later years, however, supervisors rarely questioned publicly how the sheriff’s office spent the money.
This year was different. Galvin asked the sheriff’s chief financial officer if their Melendres budget request for $36.5 million had been vetted. The officer said yes, adding that requests for the past 13 years were also vetted by the county budget office and state auditor.
Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, who served on the board from 1993 to 2014, was the lone Latina and Democrat during most of her tenure. She told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica she objected to Arpaio’s spending and focus on immigration enforcement — which led to racial profiling, lawsuits and the settlement that continues today.
“The others really didn’t, and they found Melendres was way over the top. But they knew they had to comply.”
She recalled previous allegations of misspending by the sheriff’s office. In 2011, a county audit found the department used $100 million from jail funds to pay patrol deputies. At the time, Sheridan chalked it up to a bookkeeping error, referring to it as a “systems issue.”
The board approved an oversight resolution, adopting rules to prevent the problem from happening again. “Hopefully, this is a chapter in Maricopa County’s history that we close and we never see such an abuse of funds again,” Wilcox told The Arizona Republic in 2011.
The post This Sheriff’s Office Says Racial Profiling Reforms Are Too Costly. Auditors Found It Misused $163 Million. appeared first on ProPublica.
Retirees say inflation, health care costs and market volatility are threatening their financial security.
Amid the unpredictability of President Trump's Middle East policies, Turkey is calling for “regional ownership” and pursuing new security pacts.
A first-person video that an official said is legitimate offers a brutal glimpse into the latest deadly assault on an American house of worship.
Surprise rise in jobless rate will give Reserve Bank more reason to delay another interest rate hike at June meeting
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Australia’s unemployment rate has jumped to 4.5% in April to reach the highest in about four and half years, amid fears rising interest rates and the global oil crisis will smash economic growth.
The surprise rise in unemployment will provide the Reserve Bank with more reason to hold off on a fourth rate hike at its next meeting in June, as financial markets slashed the chance of more interest rate rises this year.
Continue reading...NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says he expects China to fly taikonauts around the moon in 2027, "ratcheting up perceptions of a space race between China and the United States," reports SpaceNews. He is using that prospect to argue for a revamped Artemis strategy and an accelerated path toward a U.S. lunar return. From the report: "The next time the world tunes in to watch astronauts fly around the moon, which will likely be sometime in 2027, they will be taikonauts, and America will no longer be the exclusive power to send humans into the lunar environment," he said. While Isaacman has frequently discussed a race with China to be the next to land humans on the moon, this was one of the first times he predicted a 2027 Chinese crewed circumlunar mission. He repeated the comments later in the day at an industry reception. China has not publicly announced plans for such a mission, which, as Isaacman described it, would likely be similar to NASA's Artemis 2 mission in April. There have been rumors of a mission along those lines, though, and an expectation of a roadmap of missions leading to a Chinese crewed landing by the end of the decade. So far, all the crewed missions to fly around, orbit or land on the moon have been flown by NASA: nine Apollo missions from 1968 to 1972 and Artemis 2. All the astronauts on those missions have been Americans except for Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen on Artemis 2. Isaacman has used the threat that China could land astronauts on the moon before NASA returns there as a rationale for revamping the Artemis lunar exploration program. In February, he announced that Artemis 3, which was to be a lunar landing attempt in 2028, will instead be a test flight in low Earth orbit in 2027, followed by a landing on Artemis 4 in 2028. In March, he changed other elements of Artemis at the agency's Ignition event, including effectively canceling the lunar Gateway to focus resources instead on a lunar base, while calling for a much higher cadence of robotic lander missions.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Gerry ‘the monk’ Hutch has won fans in north Dublin byelection campaign with anti-immigrant rhetoric
Elaine Roe, 61, a cafe worker, has no doubt what is the most important issue in this week’s byelection for Dublin’s north inner city. “The government is wrecking our country, they’re bringing in rapists and murderers and kidnappers. It’s a shame. I might vote Hutch, he seems a normal person.”
That would be Gerry “the monk” Hutch, a prominent gangland figure who is running as an independent in an election that is far from normal. The 63-year-old – who was jailed for robbery convictions in his youth – is a celebrity candidate in a contest for a parliamentary seat that has been dominated by xenophobia and immigration.
Continue reading...The central committee of the Colorado Democratic Party on Wednesday voted 89.8% in favor of a measure to censure Gov. Jared Polis.
The new rocket features a host of upgrades intended to improve safety and performance of the world's most powerful rocket.
Jack Clark describes ‘vertiginous sense of progress’ and ‘profound changes’ to society alongside risks of technology
An AI system will work with humans to make a Nobel prize-winning discovery within 12 months and tradespeople will be helped by bipedal robots in two years, according to the co-founder of Anthropic.
Jack Clark described a “vertiginous sense of progress” in the technology and made a series of predictions, including that companies run solely by AIs would be generating millions of dollars in revenue within 18 months, and that by the end of 2028, AI systems would be able to design their own successors.
Continue reading...War, empire, and the forgotten power of the United Nations.
Colossal Biosciences says it has grown chickens inside 3D-printed artificial eggshells. "The company says the egg technology could help conserve at-risk bird species," reports MIT Technology. "It could also play a role in a project to re-create the extinct giant moa, a flightless 12-foot-tall bird that once lived in New Zealand and laid four-liter eggs, larger than those of any living bird." From the report: The biotech company today claimed it has developed a "fully artificial egg" as part of its effort to resurrect extinct avian species, including birds like the dodo and the giant moa. But "artificial eggshell" would probably be a better description for the invention. It's an oval-shaped printed lattice, coated inside with a special silicone-based membrane that lets in oxygen, just as a real eggshell does. To generate birds, Colossal took recently laid chicken eggs and carefully poured their contents into the artificial shells, where they continued growing. A window on top lets researchers peek inside. "To see them all moving around in their artificial eggs was absolutely mind blowing," says Andrew Pask, the company's chief biology officer. "You really feel you can grow life outside of the womb." [...] The work on the artificial eggshell was carried out in Dallas by Colossal's exogenous development team, or Exo Dev. That group is also trying to develop artificial wombs for mammals, starting with marsupials. "We're looking at every single facet of what's happening during a mammalian pregnancy to unpack exactly how we then go about recapitulating that," says Pask. For that team, an artificial eggshell is a relatively quick and easy technical win. That's because chickens are already an example of ex utero development. After an egg is laid, a small embryo sitting on top of the yolk starts growing, drawing nutrients from the yolk, the white, and even the shell, which provides calcium. (Colossal says it has to add ground-up calcium to the artificial eggs.) In order to create a moa, Colossal will have to genetically alter another type of bird, changing potentially thousands of DNA letters. But so far, chickens are the only bird species that can be genetically engineered. And that's via a tricky process of editing stem cells that produce egg and sperm. Scientists have to add or delete DNA letters from these cells and then inject them back into an egg. The resulting bird will carry the genetic changes in its gonads -- and then be able to pass them on. Pask says Colossal's idea is that it could modify avian stem cells enough to produce moa-like sperm or eggs. But then you might have the odd situation of a chicken laying an egg with a moa embryo inside it. "You would have chickens making moa egg and moa sperm. But it's still a chicken egg," he says.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 | XR 52 MTE spacer/shim question. I pulled my motor apart and found an existing shim/spacer in the stack. I also have this separate shim shown in the photo. For an XR with a 52mm MTE setup: [link] [comments] |
Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for May 21.
How much should I sell my One Wheel for? Its a GT with pink finder, side guards, foot guards, hyper charger, and bag. The wife just isn't into it. It has 54 miles on it.
Carmen Mercedes Lineberger accused of hiding files related to Trump documents investigation as bundt cake recipe
A former Department of Justice prosecutor is facing felony charges after emailing herself a sealed Biden-era investigative report concerning Donald Trump and attempting to hide the documents as cake recipes, federal authorities said on Wednesday.
Carmen Mercedes Lineberger, who worked as a managing assistant US attorney in Florida, is facing two counts of theft of government money or property in addition to charges related to her alleged alteration of the documents, according to the indictment.
Continue reading...Former CIA Director John Brennan is the subject of two criminal probes being led by the Miami-area U.S. Attorney's Office.
A new study finds that AI hallucinations produced nearly 150,000 fake citations appearing in research papers.
Former president, 94, faces multiple US felony charges, including four counts of murder – key US politics stories from Wednesday 20 May
The United States issued a federal criminal indictment against Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former president, and five others on Wednesday in a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to oust the country’s six-decades-old communist regime.
The 94-year-old political figurehead was charged in Miami, Florida, with conspiracy to kill US nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft.
Continue reading...Initial testing found evidence of metals in water samples, months after province’s residents began reporting unusual numbers of dead fish washing ashore
Papua New Guinea’s government has warned communities not to fish from parts of the New Ireland coastline as preliminary tests show evidence of metals in some water samples, after months of residents reporting dead marine life in the area.
On 7 May the fisheries minister, Jelta Wong, said initial testing conducted by an independent company detected various metals in water samples taken from affected areas around Kafkaf village and Larairu lagoon in New Ireland, an island in eastern PNG.
Continue reading...The Department of Homeland Security is set to implement new entry restrictions beginning Thursday for foreign travelers coming to the U.S. from countries at the center of the latest Ebola outbreak.
Millions of Android owners could receive a payment of up to $100.
I see rumors that it's coming out soon, I have some ideas that I want to test but also you can't do ilog in 4k single lens or 8k60 and the low light is supposedly pretty bad on the X5, but I think it'll get the job done!
Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for May 21, No. 1,797.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for May 21, No. 1,075.
Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle No. 605 for Thursday, May 21.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for May 21 No. 809.
Harvard University faculty members voted to cap the number of A's awarded to students in an effort to make the grades more meaningful.
A former federal prosecutor was charged this week with emailing herself a report on the Justice Department's investigation into President Trump that a judge had kept under lock and key, under the file name "Bundt_Cake_Recipe.pdf."
Plus, a reality TV icon tells us what she's putting in hers.
Vanessa Trump, 48, was married to Donald Trump Jr. for 12 years. They share five children together.
These kinds of intelligence forecasts attempt not only to show the immediate consequences of an American action, but the chain of reactions that may follow.
An investigation finds that some of the biggest companies are making it difficult for customers to keep their data private.
Cuba’s government has also accused US of hypocrisy after acting US attorney general announced indictment of former Cuban president over downed planes
In response to a question on Wednesday morning about how long Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, will hold on before re-starting strikes on Iran, Trump said: “He’s fine. He’ll do whatever I want him to do.”
Trump also cited a poll that gave him 99% approval in Israel. Guardian US has not yet verified this poll.
Continue reading...For its portability and daily productivity, it's a winner. Potential Windows-on-Arm issues and modest graphics chops, however, keep it from being a true all-arounder.
Far-right figure Itamar Ben-Gvir shares footage of himself taunting bound international detainees
Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has sparked a diplomatic crisis by publishing footage of Israeli security forces abusing international activists who were detained as they tried to sail to Gaza with aid.
Three activists were taken to hospital as result of Israeli violence, lawyers representing the group said. They were subsequently discharged. Dozens of others have suspected broken ribs, resulting in breathing problems.
Continue reading...Family and friends from abroad coming to visit? These short-term prepaid mobile plans can keep them connected.
I was a long-time Bitwarden user, until a year or so ago when I started migrating my passwords first to Firefox/LibreWolf, and recently from there to a KeePass database I can transfer and use with whatever password manager application is compatible with KeePass’ file format. It seems I was accidentally on time, as it’s come out over the last few days that Bitwarden is probably going down the drain soon. In February, the company got a new CEO, and in March, it doubled its Premium price, announcing the hike deep in a feature announcement.
The new CEO seems to be a bellwether for what’s to come for Bitwarden. He’s a merger and acquisitions guy, with a history of gutting companies and selling them for parts, and changes to Bitwarden’s website also indicate where it’s headed.
The phrase “Always free” disappeared from the personal password manager page in mid-April. It used to sit prominently under the plan selector. The free plan still exists — for now — but the commitment language is gone.
And then there’s the values rewrite.
Bitwarden used to define its culture with the acronym GRIT: Gratitude, Responsibility, Inclusion, and Transparency. After May 4th, that changed. GRIT now stands for Gratitude, Responsibility, Innovation, and Trust.
Inclusion and Transparency are out. Innovation and Trust are in.
↫ Patrick Boyd
The “Always free” motto quietly reappeared on the site after its removal was uncovered and went viral on Fedi.
The change in CEO, the changes in values, and the removal (and reappearance) of Bitwarden’s well-known and oft-repeated commitment to its free plan have all been quiet. No announcements, no blog posts, no posts on social media – but they did change a four-year old blog post by Bitwarden’s former CEO to change that GRIT acronym. You don’t need to be an honors student to figure out where this is going, and what the new CEO’s plans are for Bitwarden.
Do as I did, and get your passwords out of BitWarden. I strongly suggest using an open format that can be used by any compatible password manager, with KeePass’ formats being the obvious choice. This way your passwords are truly yours, and not dependent on someone’s continued commitment to free plans or proprietary services that can unexpectedly change hands. Bitwarden is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, but with all of the above, one has to wonder how long that’s going to remain a thing.
Taking my Pint S to the beach this summer. What are your must-haves? Any other reccs?
In his application letter, attorney Mike Howell proposed organizing a national gathering of "thousands of victims of weaponization," including those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
I’ve been wanting to pull the trigger since last November. Initially I was thinking a XR-classic, then a GT for extra range and now I discovered the X7 long range. I’m seeing GT on the used market for around $1,600 with very little mileage. Should I get a GT or splurge for the X7? I understand the extra “setup” on the X7 but from what I hear they are almost ready to ride out of the box. Now waiting a month or two for delivery sucks. I’m not a speed demon and mainly looking for good range on bike trails pedestrian trails. Suggestions?
The rocket company may record the largest public offering ever, with a valuation approaching $2 trillion.
Study, published as latest migration figures are released, shows incorrect perceptions driving immigration debate
People mistakenly believe net migration is rising in Britain despite figures dropping to their lowest level in years, a leading thinktank has found.
New research from British Future, published ahead of latest government figures on migration, has revealed a chasm between reality and public perception of net migration, with a substantial portion of the public believing it has increased, despite figures showing a sharp fall.
Continue reading...City made outsized contribution to falling levels of deprivation between 2010 and 2025, thinktank finds
Manchester has recorded the biggest fall in inner-city deprivation in Britain, according to a report, as Andy Burnham stakes a claim that he could replicate the city’s revival nationwide.
As the frontrunner to replace Keir Starmer, the Greater Manchester mayor has placed the city’s economic performance at the heart of his campaign, describing “Manchesterism” as a political philosophy for a more interventionist approach to the economy.
Continue reading...Ian Cheshire says media regulator must address perception it has been complacent and slow on online safety
Ofcom’s incoming chair has vowed to take on the “tech bros”, as he conceded there was now a perception the regulator had been complacent and slow over concerns about online safety.
Ian Cheshire, the former Channel 4 chair who has secured the job overseeing the technology and media regulator, also told MPs he had personal concerns about the impact of social media on under-16s.
Continue reading...Intuit is reportedly cutting about 3,000 jobs, or 17% of its workforce, as it restructures around AI and simplifies its corporate organization. TechCrunch reports: The layoffs come during a bad year for the tech workforce. The tech industry has already cut more than 100,000 jobs this year, per Statista, and is on track to outpace both 2024 and 2025 if the layoff trend continues. Companies such as Amazon, Block, Cisco, Cloudflare, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle have let go of thousands of employees each, all of them citing a need to refocus expenditures around AI projects as a reason to cut jobs and restructure their organizations. [...] Intuit, however, hasn't been perceived as a beneficiary of the AI boom, with its shares consistently underperforming in the broader S&P 500 over the past 12 months. The company has been caught up in the broader current of worries that traditional software-as-a-service firms will not be able to keep up or compete, as new and upcoming AI products and services threaten to change how software is developed and how it is used. In its fiscal second quarter ended January, Intuit reported revenue of $4.65 billion, a 17% increase, and net profit of $693 million, a 48% improvement compared to a year earlier. The company expects revenue to increase by about 10% in the third quarter, for which it will report results later today.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite operations company, with extensive contracts with US, to go public next month
SpaceX unveiled its plans to list publicly on the US stock market Wednesday, disclosing its investor prospectus and revealing details about its financials for the first time. Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite operations company will go public on the Nasdaq exchange at a valuation of about $1.75tn under the symbol SPCX, likely on 12 June. It is seeking up to $80bn in investment.
The company, which is the world’s most prominent rocket maker and which has extensive contracts with the US government, confidentially filed for an IPO last month. The filing allowed for a period of regulatory review before the details became public.
Continue reading...Many analysts view company’s financial performance as a broader referendum on AI buildout
Nvidia continued its years-long streak of beating Wall Street’s expectations for growth on Wednesday, reassuring most investors that the AI boom, particularly the global explosion of datacenters, will continue apace.
“The buildout of AI factories – the largest infrastructure expansion in human history – is accelerating at extraordinary speed,” said Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, in a statement. “Agentic AI has arrived, doing productive work, generating real value, and scaling rapidly across companies and industries.”
Continue reading...Cassidy, who lost his reelection bid last week, called for leaders who are "steady, not erratic" and "thoughtful, not impulsive."
I got an early look at the new features arriving to Android Auto and vehicles with Google Built-in.
The video agent demoed as part of Google Beam is an experiment, and it's shockingly realistic. Is this a helper, or a replacement for people?
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google on Wednesday published exploit code for an unfixed vulnerability in its Chromium browser codebase that threatens millions of people using Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and virtually all other Chromium-based browsers. The proof-of-concept code exploits the Browser Fetch programming interface, a standard that allows long videos and other large files to be downloaded in the background. An attacker can use the exploit to create a connection for monitoring some aspects of a user's browser usage and as a proxy for viewing sites and launching denial-of-service attacks. Depending on the browser, the connections either reopen or remain open even after it or the device running it has rebooted. The unfixed vulnerability can be exploited by any website a user visits. In effect, a compromise amounts to a limited backdoor that makes a device part of a limited botnet. The capabilities are limited to the same things a browser can do, such as visit malicious sites, provide anonymous proxy browsing by others, enable proxied DDoS attacks, and monitor user activity. Nonetheless, the exploit could allow an attacker to wrangle thousands, possibly millions, of devices into a network. Once a separate vulnerability becomes available, the attacker could use it to then compromise all those devices. "The dangerous part here is that you can just have a lot of different browsers together that you can in the future run something on that you figure out," said Lyra Rebane, the independent researcher who discovered the vulnerability and privately reported it to Google in late 2022 in an interview. He said using the exploit code Google prematurely published would be "pretty easy," although scaling it to wrangle large numbers of devices into a single network would require more work. In the thread of Rebane's disclosure to Google, two developers said in separate responses that it was a "serious vulnerability." Its severity was rated S1, the second-highest classification. Since its reporting 29 months ago, the vulnerability remained unknown except to Chromium developers. Then on Wednesday morning, it was published to the Chromium bug tracker. Rebane initially assumed the vulnerability was finally fixed. Shortly thereafter, he learned that, in fact, it remained unpatched. While Google removed the post, it remains available on archival sites, along with the exploit code. Google representatives didn't immediately respond to an email asking how and why it published the vulnerability and if or when a fix would become available. The exploit works by abusing Chromium's Browser Fetch API to open a service worker that remains persistently active. A malicious website can trigger it through JavaScript, creating a connection that can be used "for monitoring some aspects of a user's browser usage and as a proxy for viewing sites and launching denial-of-service attacks," reports Ars. Depending on the browser, those connections "either reopen or remain open even after it or the device running it has rebooted," effectively turning the device into part of a "limited botnet."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
OpenAI is reportedly planning to become a publicly traded company as soon as September.
Google is launching a series of new tools to help scientists leverage AI technology as a force multiplier to accelerate the pursuit of scientific knowledge and discovery. In addition to the collection of tools under the Gemini for Science banner, it is also launching Science Skills, which centralizes data from more than 30 life science databases, as well as a major upgrade to Gemini 3 Deep Think.
Ever since its DeepMind arm launched AlphaFold back in 2018, Google has been intimately involved in utilizing AI for science. The company was an early backer in the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission project to pursue AI for science and engineering in the National Labs.
This week at its Google I/O developer conference, the tech giant brought together several of its existing AI for science projects into a product called Gemini for Science. The new offering includes three primary tools, including Literature Insights for AI-assisted document review, Co-Scientist for hypothesis generation, and Computational Discovery, an AI-powered research engine.
(Image courtesy Google)
Literature Insights enables researchers to perform targeted searches and analyze large bodies of scientific literature. The software, which is powered by Google’s AI-powered research assistant and note-taking app called NotebookLM, allows researchers to interact and “chat” with the data in the literature to uncover nunaces and patterns. Literature Insights also generates high-quality tables, reports, and infographics with embedded links back to the texts.
Hypothesis Generation, meanwhile, is a new offering built on Co-Scientist, the AI assistant developed by Google and DeepMind. The software picks up where Literature Insights leaves off by emulating the scientific method and enabling researchers to create research direciton and define hypothesis. It acts as a research partner and uses the concept of an “idea tournament,” where AI agents compete to generate, debate and evaluate hypotheses. Researchers can also chat with Hypothesis Generation agents to identify the best candidates for further evaluation.
Once a promising hypothesis is in hand, the researcher can fire up Computational Discovery to automate the execution of experiments to prove or disprove the hypothesis. Computational Discovery is built with DeepMind’s AlphaEvolve and ERA (Empirical Research Assistance) software, and utilizes AI agents to generate and score thousands of code variations in parallel, thereby enabling scientists to test novel modeling approaches that would otherwise take months to test manually.
Google researchers published a pair of papers in the journal Nature that showcase the advances made in ERA and Co-Scientist. In the ERA Nature paper, Google researchers say the tool, which is based on an LLM and Tree Search, “discovered 40 novel methods for single-cell data analysis that outperformed the top human-developed methods on a public leaderboard. In epidemiology, the tool generated 14 models that outperformed the CDC ensemble and all other individual models for forecasting COVID-19 hospitalizations. In the Co-Scientist Nature paper, the Googlers document how “the tool helped identify new drug repurposing candidates and synergistic combination therapies for acute myeloid leukemia, which were validated through in vitro experiments.”
Gemini for Science collectively will help drive scientific discovery from time-consuming manual processes to AI-powered automation, write Pushmeet Kohli, the Chief Scientist at Google Cloud and a Vice President in Google DeepMind, and Yossi Matias, a Vice President in Google and General Manager of Google Research, in a May 19 blog post.
Computational Discovery allows researchers to test thousands of code variations in parallel (Image source Google)
“Today science faces a paradox: our collective knowledge is growing so fast that it’s becoming harder for individual scientists to see the full picture,” the Google executives write. “Scientific breakthroughs often rely upon making creative connections between data, but the time required to do this manually can take weeks or even months. AI can help eliminate this bottleneck and serve as a force multiplier for scientific work by handling complex tasks. This allows researchers to focus on identifying and tackling the most impactful scientific problems and directions that would drive progress.”
Kohli and Matias say these tools are already being adopted in pilot projects. It’s working with more than 100 institutions on a variety of projects, including with Stanford University on liver fibrosis, Imperial College London on antimicrobial resistance and The Crick Institute. The company is also working with scientific conferences like ICML, STOC and NeurIPS to develop tools for agentic peer review and scientific validation, such as its Paper Assistant Tool (PAT) and ScholarPeer.
Google is also launching Science Skills, a collection of data and tools for aiding the scientific process in areas like bioinformatics and genomic analysis.
Science Skills comes prebundled with insights from more than 30 life science databases, as well as access to tools like UniProt (Univeral Protein Resource), the free bioinformatics database InterPro, and DeepMind’s own AlphaFold Database and AlphaGenome API.
“We have oceans of data and amazing predictive models,” says Saz Basu, a Google DeepMind research scientist. “But moving from an initial observation to a physical experiment means navigating fragmented manual and sometimes slow process.”
In a demo, Basu showed how Science Skills can be used to glean insights about the underlying mechanism behind a rare genetic disease caused by mutations in the AK2 gene. Working from Google Antigravity, the company’s IDE for AI-assisted development, Basu is able to bring the power of AI models to bear on AK2 gene data in the Alphagenome database to come up with a hypothesis. Basu then connects the model with a protein database to see if there’s the possibility of a causal connection that could be fleshed out in a wet lab experiment.
“It used to take me an entire afternoon to do a workflow like this,” Basu said. “And now we go from observations to hypothesis and designing the blueprints needed to decipher the mechanism in the real world in a matter of minutes.”
Finally, Google is announcing an update to Gemini 3 Deep Think, its AI-powered reasoning “mode” for science, research, and engineering. In a blog post, the Deep Think team says it worked closely with scientists and researchers to enable the model to tackle tough research challenges, “where problems often lack clear guardrails or a single correct solution and data is often messy or incomplete.”
One user of the new mode was Lisa Carborne, a mathematician at Rutgers University who works on the mathematical structures required by the high-energy physics community. In a video posted to Google’s site, Carborne says she was surprised when, after running a draft of a paper through Gemini 3 Deep Think, the model told her some of her math was off.
Rutgers mathematician Lisa Carborne was surprised Gemini 3 Deep Think mode identified errors in her paper
“It gave three separate, irrefutable reasons why our mathematical arguments around one particular statement were incompatible,” Carborne says. “This was pretty destabilizing because the paper had already been peer reviewed.”
The mathematician was surprised to discover that Gemini 3 Deep Think had done the tough work of a highly skilled math expert, like herself and her peer reviewers. The AI model had a different perspective on the work, which she wasn’t expecting.
“It took me a while to understand, because it was really outside of my thought process, and the model’s reasoning was completely correct,” the professor says. “The paper’s at the forefront of research in the subject, and so there’s very little context or training data that the model could have been trained on. So it seemed as if it did the work of a highly trained mathematician.”
According to Google the Deep Think mode is pushing the bounds on what AI can do. The AI mode scored 48.4% on the Humanity’s Last Exam benchmark, which is designed to push modern frontier models to their limits. It scored 84.6% on ARC-AGI-2, got an Elo rating of 3455 on the Codeforces benchmark and reached gold-medal level performance on the International Math Olympiad 2025
Google AI Ultra subscribers now have access to the updated Deep Think mode. Google is also making it available to scientists, engineers and enterprises via the Gemini API. If you would like to get access, you can send a request to Google here.
The post Google Advances AI for Science with New Tools and Tech appeared first on HPCwire.
The popular smart ring is connecting doctors with members who need more assistance.
Demonstration, held at historic location where the ‘Mississippi Plan’ was enacted, comes as southern states race to dilute Black voting power
Thousands of Mississippians, along with allies from other southern states, gathered at the state’s War Memorial Building auditorium on Wednesday in support of voting rights. It was the latest in a series of actions protesting the supreme court’s recent decision gutting the provision of the Voting Rights Act preventing racial discrimination, and held on a site integral to the state’s history of Black disenfranchisement.
Section 2 “stopped states, counties, cities, from passing redistricting maps that discriminate against Black voters and it led to the biggest growth of Black political power since Reconstruction”, said Amir Badat, the southern states director at the voting rights group Fair Fight Action.
Continue reading...Chancellor launches ‘Great British summer savings scheme’ after Keir Starmer postpones fuel duty increase
Rachel Reeves is to promise free summer bus rides for children and cut tariffs on some food imports, as part of a package of measures aimed at easing the costs of the Iran conflict.
The chancellor will give a statement in the House of Commons on Thursday, outlining her latest plans for cushioning the blow to consumers from an expected rise in inflation later this year.
Continue reading...The rumored fourth model of the lineup would sit between the Plus and Ultra smartphones.
Comedian and media mogul Byron Allen brings "Comics Unleashed" to CBS's late-night slot, replacing "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert."
The experiment was simple. A company gave four AI models $20 each and a fistful of instructions, then left them to their own devices.
Acting US attorney general Todd Blanche announced the indictment of former Cuban president Raúl Castro on Wednesday, in what is seen as an escalation in Washington’s pressure campaign against the island's government. The indictment was related to Castro’s alleged role in the downing of two small planes operated by the exile group Brothers to the Rescue. Castro, now 94, was Cuba’s defence minister at the time.
Continue reading...The US supreme court has preserved nationwide access to mail-order abortion pills – for now. As Carter Sherman explains, the fight to protect this medication is far from over, as a nationwide, near-total abortion ban could be on the horizon. Carter speaks with Dr Angel Foster, co-founder of the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, who reveals how the legal battle over abortion pills has affected patients across the US – and what could happen next
Continue reading...Red Hat has released RHEL 10.2 and 9.8 with new AI-assisted command-line tools. The releases also add updated developer toolchains such as Go 1.26, LLVM 21, Rust 1.92, Python 3.14, and PHP 8.4. Phoronix reports: Red Hat Enterprise Linux has introduced the goose command for power users. Goose is an optional CLI AI assistance with model context protocol (MCP) integration. There is also improved visual output via color output enhancements. As for their rationale with the new AI integration: "The business value: Faster problem resolution, and a quicker path for new administrators to become proficient. This translates into higher developer productivity and accelerated project timelines."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
U.S. motorists are likely to face even hotter gas prices as the summer driving season kicks off, according to a new analysis.
The bombshell New York Times report that the U.S. and Israel hoped to install former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the leader of Iran puts the lie to so much of what hawks in the West have been trying to sell their publics about the Iran war.
Despite claims by President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Iran war was never about freedom for the Iranian people.
That much is obvious thanks to Ahmadinejad’s role in recent Iranian history: In 2009, Iranians rose up against a stolen election in what was known as the Green Movement, which was violently crushed by Iran’s security forces to keep Ahmadinejad in power.
Though a populist, Ahmadinejad at the time dismissed the protests as nothing more than the result of “emotions after a soccer match” or, in another instance, “dirt and dust.” These are not the bona fides of a leader who will lead Iran into democracy.
Reading between the lines of history, Ahmadinejad’s position as a coup leader starts to make sense.
Instead of a campaign for Iranian freedom, this war — like much of the U.S. and Israel’s last 20 years of going after Iran — has been about catastrophically weakening Iran. Here, reading between the lines of history, Ahmadinejad’s position as an Israeli–U.S.-backed coup leader starts to make sense.
Ahmadinejad had been largely quiet until he suddenly reemerged into headlines on Tuesday with the Times report. After killing Iran’s supreme leader in the opening hour of the war, according to the Times, Israel targeted a building on Ahmadinejad’s street, ostensibly to “free” him from what was effectively either house arrest or the strict monitoring of his movements. According to some reports, the guards keeping watch on Ahmadinejad were indeed killed, but Ahmadinejad himself was injured, too.
How, if the plot had been successful, was Ahmadinejad supposed to take over? Was the assumption that by assassinating the top leadership, including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals, Ahmadinejad would be able to gain the support of the rest of the top echelon of the security forces? That would be a far-fetched notion.
While he retained his populist credentials over the years, Ahmadinejad’s clashes with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and with the “nezam,” or regime, over social and political issues lost him whatever support he still had among the military wings and the Basij militia. Those forces — though they had helped crush the 2009 protests on Ahmadinejad’s behalf — remained fiercely loyal to Khamenei and the political system of “Guardianship of the Jurist.”
For now, Ahmadinejad is nowhere to be found, raising suspicions that he is in the custody of the IRGC or dead.
It’s hard to imagine the Iranian president who declared in his first few months in office that “Israel must vanish from the pages of time” and subsequently questioned the Holocaust being a good choice for Israel. History shows, though, how Ahmadinejad’s eclectic positioning has previously coincided with Israeli interests.
Coming to power after President Mohammad Khatami’s reform movement and his call for “dialog among civilizations,” Ahmadinejad’s stances damaged Iran’s reputation almost beyond repair.
And this was, somewhat ironically, a boon to Israel, whose leaders could point to the malevolent nature of the Islamic Republic. Ahmadinejad was the perfect figurehead for a bogeyman Iran that needed to be taken down a notch.
Israel and its allies in Washington made hay of Ahmadinejad’s every word — for instance, his sponsorship of a Holocaust denial cartoon contest — and succeeded in turning his remarks into the justifications for an unprecedented and devastating sanctions program. Ahmadinejad’s rule was, in so many ways, bad for Iran.
Which is why, even at the time and certainly later, there were suspicions privately aired in Tehran that he could actually be a Mossad asset — with the caveat, of course, that no hard proof ever emerged. Still, at a time when gaining the trust of the west in nuclear negotiations was paramount, Ahmadinejad was building Israeli hard-liners’ case against talks for them.
Now, of course, the allegation that Ahmadinejad was primed as a coup leader — the first report from an even remotely reliable outlet of a real link to Israel — has only added to the rumors, as have his most recent trips abroad, to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary and to Guatemala, both allies and supporters of Israel.
Trump himself admitted before this latest revelation that Israel bombed some of the people who were candidates to be an Iranian Delcy Rodríguez — the Venezuelan figure who seamlessly took control from kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and reportedly is cooperating with the U.S. The most solid hint Trump gave was that he had someone “inside” Iran in mind, dashing the hopes of Iranian royalists.
Whether or not it is true that Ahmadinejad was an Israeli asset — whenever he may have been recruited or even just unwittingly manipulated — he would have fit Trump’s bill. What he never would have been was a beacon of freedom for the Iranian people. Insofar as the broad contours of the Times report are accurate, we can now be assured that the well-being of the Iranian people has not really ever been at the top of either Trump or Netanyahu’s minds.
The U.S. and Israel may have some commonality in what they’d like to see with Iran, but not entirely. Israel’s interests lie mostly in defanging Iran, even seeing it descend into a failed state that can neither threaten Israel nor challenge its hegemony in the region. The U.S., on the other hand, has consistently focused on Iran’s nuclear potential.
Both Democratic and Republican administrations have indicated that if the nuclear issue was resolved to the satisfaction of the U.S., Iran could potentially be rehabilitated and rejoin the international community. That would have left Iran with the potential to grow into a regional powerhouse and global force — something Israel has long opposed, which is why it tried so hard to derail the 2015 nuclear agreement.
Whatever happens, Ahmadinejad will never be a factor in Iranian politics, even if in the unlikely event that he one day resurfaces alive and free. The Venezuela option for Iran now seems silly, a chimera that should have never been considered.
If the White House had listened to a handful of Iranians or those who know Iran well, rather than Netanyahu and war hawks in Congress, perhaps 175 school children and their teachers would be alive today. The Strait of Hormuz might be open and free. And a nuclear deal could have already been signed.
Instead, there has been war and destruction, wasted lives and wasted treasure, chaos in the region, and the global economy wobbling. Ahmadinejad has once again been bad for Iranians — and now everyone else, too.
The post Ahmadinejad Is Still Bad for Iranians — and Still Great for Israel appeared first on The Intercept.
Can this get updated with sidewinder values
These affordable gifts are proof that impulse buying isn't always a bad thing.
Larry Bushart was jailed for 37 days over a Facebook post after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk
Tennessee officials will pay $835,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who was jailed for more than a month over a Facebook post he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
While many people across the US lost their jobs over social media comments about Kirk’s death, Larry Bushart’s case stood out as a rare instance in which such online speech led to criminal prosecution. The 61-year-old retired police officer spent 37 days behind bars before authorities dropped the felony charge against him in October.
Continue reading...Police say 64-year-old was attacked after confrontation near Battersea Bridge
A murder investigation has been launched after a bus driver died after an assault on Battersea Bridge in London, police said.
Sergei Krajev, 64, died in hospital on Tuesday after the incident in the early hours of Monday morning.
Continue reading...
The Trump administration said it is settling a presidential lawsuit over leaked tax data by establishing a $1.776 billion fund to pay people who say they were victims of judicial "weaponization" under President Joe Biden.
Democratic critics reacted swiftly.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., called the fund "blatant corruption" and a "cash grab." Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said it is "an insane level of corruption — even for Trump." Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., posted on X, "If Trump follows through, it will be the most brazen theft of taxpayer dollars by any president in history."
Democrats said the money might be used to pay people who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, all of whom President Donald Trump pardoned as one of the first acts of his second term.
Trump administration officials did not rule that out.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers May 19 he could not promise to bar compensation for Jan. 6, 2021, rioters, Trump campaign donors or Republican lawmakers whose phone records were seized by then-Special Counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump between his two presidential terms.
Trump weighed in May 18: "This is reimbursing people that were horribly treated, horribly treated. It's anti-weaponization. They've been weaponized. They've been, in some cases, imprisoned wrongly. They paid legal fees that they didn't have. They've gone bankrupt. Their lives have been destroyed."
He continued, "There's been numerous other occasions over the years where things like this have been done."
The federal government often reaches settlements with plaintiffs, and occasionally with large classes of people. Under law, an existing federal judgment fund can be used to pay billions of dollars annually in settlements for "actual or imminent litigation against the government" or settlements by agencies at the administrative level, not involving a lawsuit.
But the Justice Department, in announcing the new settlement fund, pointed to one particular case.
In a May 18 press release, the Justice Department cited a 2011 settlement for the case Keepseagle v. Vilsack as "legal precedent" for the new fund. That case involved lawsuits by Native American farmers who alleged discrimination in federal assistance by government agencies.
We found broad consensus among legal experts that the new fund differs from the Keepseagle fund in four important ways.
"Never in the history of the republic has an acting president leveraged his private litigation, against his own administration no less, to develop what, in effect, is a public benefit program tailor-made for his political supporters and allies," said Adam Zimmerman, a University of Southern California law professor who is an expert on presidential settlements.
Police officers who served at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed suit May 20 to block the new settlement fund.
When contacted for comment, the White House referred PolitiFact to the Justice Department, which did not respond to our inquiry.
The Keepseagle settlement established specific requirements for people to receive payouts from the fund. Recipients had to be Native American and have farmed or ranched, or attempted to farm or ranch, from 1981 to1999. They had to have sought a loan or loan servicing from the U.S. Agriculture Department during that period. And they had to have filed a complaint at the time they were denied a loan or otherwise treated unfavorably.
By comparison, the standard for compensation from the new fund is vague. The document establishing the fund says potential recipients must "assert at least one legal claim stating that the claimant was a victim of lawfare and/or weaponization." It does not define the terms "lawfare" or "weaponization."
Gregory Sisk, a University of St. Thomas law professor, called these parameters an "amorphous plan" to pay unidentified people.
A federal judge approved the Keepseagle settlement, and it had to meet ongoing judicial approval. An appeals court upheld the agreement; the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.
Experts said the Keepseagle settlement’s distribution of excess funds to nonprofit organizations serving Native American farmers and ranchers was unusual, but the 2011 settlement that received judicial approval included that possibility.
In his May 19 congressional testimony, Blanche said five appointees who will oversee the new fund will act independently. But the fund description included no judicial role at any stage. Once Trump’s lawyers dropped their IRS leak lawsuit, any possibility for judicial oversight vanished.
The five-member panel appointed by the attorney general will decide on payouts, with one of the members chosen "in consultation with congressional leadership." The president "can remove any member without cause," the fund outline says, and the president also can fire the attorney general at will, as Trump has already done in his second term.
Such a structure, Sisk said, creates a high risk "that it will be paid to allies of the Trump administration as an ongoing political fund."
The Keepseagle settlement had a $760 million value. Of that, $380 million was left undisbursed to individuals and went to nonprofits. In today’s dollars, the $760 million would be $1.15 billion. The settlement considered 4,300 claims, of which more than 3,600 were accepted.
The new $1.776 billion fund is larger, and the group of potential recipients might be smaller.
The new fund is more than twice as large as Keepseagle’s fund in nominal dollars, and 50% larger in inflation-adjusted dollars. The number of pardoned Jan. 6, 2021, rioters is around 1,600. Even if they’re all included, plus additional claimants in unrelated cases, the total would still likely be smaller than the number of Keepseagle beneficiaries.
"This is a huge payout for a claim by a small number of individuals," Sisk said.
The Keepseagle settlement fund and the lawsuit that prompted it addressed the same issue. The people who could claim compensation from the Keepseagle fund were plaintiffs in the original lawsuit, which is standard for how such settlements are created, said Tax Law Center Policy Director Brandon DeBot.
The new settlement fund, however, did not involve a class of plaintiffs, and the suit that led to the new settlement involved leaks of Trump family tax documents. "The fund, and the issues it purports to redress, have nothing to do with the originating lawsuit and leaked information at the IRS," said Cheryl Bader, a Fordham University law professor.
The plaintiffs in the IRS leak case "were the president, his family, and one of their businesses," DeBot said, and they are specifically barred from receiving monetary payment or damages from the fund.
Trump said, "There's been numerous other occasions over the years" when the federal government created a reserve similar to a new, $1.776 billion anti-weaponization settlement fund.
The Justice Department cited a single settlement in a lawsuit filed by Native American farmers as legal precedent for the new fund, but the two differ in at least four fundamental ways.
The earlier case had more specific compensation standards; significant judicial oversight; a smaller dollar amount for a potentially bigger group of beneficiaries; and a more standard process for creating it.
We rate the statement False.
After a shooting at a San Diego mosque on May 18, social media users began to speculate that the suspects were transgender.
One X account, @amuse, which has more than 685,000 followers and regularly shares falsehoods, wrote in a post with more than 4 million views that the suspects were "identified as a transgender couple by classmates." The post did not provide evidence and when an X user asked Grok for a source, @amuse replied, "I’m the source." Grok is an artificial intelligence chatbot on X.
Another poster, Nick Sortor, who has 1.5 million followers, wrote May 19 on X that San Diego police are "refusing" to name the shooters. "Why, you ask? BECAUSE IT WAS A TRANS COUPLE," he wrote.
Several TikTok videos have made similar claims about the suspects.
It’s become common after mass shootings for some social media users to spread the misleading claim that transgender people are more prone to violence than others. Research shows that the majority of mass shootings are perpetrated by men who are not transgender — and there’s no evidence so far that suspects Cain Clark, 17, and Caleb Vazquez, 18, were an exception.
Sortor’s post included a clip from a May 19 press briefing in which San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said, "What you will not hear from us today is the names of these two suspects. Today is about our victims and our community, coming back together again."
But San Diego police, in a written briefing May 19, identified Clark and Vazquez, who they said shot and killed themselves after the mosque attack.
Officer Abbey Langley, a spokesperson for the San Diego police, didn’t answer questions about the suspects but pointed us to their website and YouTube channel with information about the case. Tina Jagerson, an FBI San Diego spokesperson, said the agency declined to comment on the claims. PolitiFact also reached out to the San Diego Unified School District about these claims but didn’t immediately hear back. We also reached out to the Amuse X account and Sortor but didn’t immediately hear back.
There is no public evidence in news reports or police briefings that Clark and Vazquez were transgender or a romantic couple, and police and the FBI have not described them that way in any video or written news briefings about the case.
San Diego police in a written update said the suspects both lived in San Diego, met online and "exchanged radicalized ideology." Writings by the teens showed they shared "hatred of various religions and races," the police statement said. FBI Special Agent in Charge Mark Remily said in a May 19 press briefing that the evidence showed "they did not discriminate on who they hated."
The Associated Press obtained writings of both suspects and reported that the LGBTQ+ community was among many groups the suspects expressed hatred toward. The New York Times and NBC News also reported that the suspect’s online writings showed hatred toward gays and others.
Although the investigation is early and ongoing, there’s no public evidence that Clark and Vazquez were transgender or a couple. The claim is unsubstantiated and we rate it False.
Clashes between demonstrators and police in La Paz have entered second week, shaking centre-right president
Protests blocking roads across Bolivia and turning the centre of the capital, La Paz, into a battleground between demonstrators and police have entered a second week.
It is the most turbulent moment of the centre-right president Rodrigo Paz Pereira’s mere six months in office since he ended nearly two decades of rule by the leftwing Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas).
Continue reading...Charges filed in Miami against 94-year-old for allegedly shooting down exiles’ planes in 1996
The United States issued a federal criminal indictment against Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former president, and five others on Wednesday in a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to oust the country’s six-decades-old communist regime.
The 94-year-old political figurehead was charged in Miami, Florida, with conspiracy to kill US nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft.
Continue reading...Former Cuban leader Raúl Castro was indicted by a U.S. grand jury in connection with the Cuban military's fatal downing of two planes in 1996 — an escalation in the U.S. pressure campaign against the Cuban government.
Suit says administration is impinging on rights to life and liberty by worsening planet-warming and toxic pollution
Eighteen American youth are demanding that a court immediately halt the Trump administration’s repeal of the scientific finding underpinning virtually all US climate regulations.
The plaintiffs sued the Trump administration in February days after officials revoked the 2009 endangerment finding, which found that greenhouse gas pollution threatens public health and welfare. Filed in the Washington DC circuit court of appeals Venner v EPA alleges that the move infringes upon rights guaranteed by the US constitution, including to religious freedom, life and liberty.
Continue reading...Before you add to cart, here's what you need to know about these devices.
Longtime Slashdot reader Himmy32 writes: GitHub has announced on X that their internal repositories have been breached through a compromised VS Code Extension on an employee's workstation. Bleeping Computer reported that the attack is linked to TeamPCP who have been in the news for a recent campaign affecting Checkmarx, Trivy, SAP, TanStack, and Bitwarden. The group appears to be attempting to sell the stolen code on cybercrime forums. "Yesterday we detected and contained a compromise of an employee device involving a poisoned VS Code extension. We removed the malicious extension version, isolated the endpoint, and began incident response immediately," the company said. "Our current assessment is that the activity involved exfiltration of GitHub-internal repositories only. The attacker's current claims of ~3,800 repositories are directionally consistent with our investigation so far." Although the investigation remains ongoing, GitHub says it has "no evidence of impact to customer information stored outside of GitHub's internal repositories." The company has also not said whether it's in contact with the hackers or if it's received a ransom demand.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The unofficial arrival of summer brings some outstanding sales on our favorite warm-weather gadgets, beauty products and running gear
14 of the very best deals from REI’s 2026 anniversary sale, vetted by an outdoor enthusiast
Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things
Memorial Day is many things: above all, a holiday to honor US military personnel fallen in the line of duty, but unofficially also the start of summer, and for savvy shoppers, a sales bonanza. That is why, while the three-day weekend is best spent poolside or by the grill at a backyard barbecue, it’s also one of the prime opportunities to get a generous discount on some of the summer upgrades you’ve been holding off on.
From beach-ready Bluetooth speakers to a slushie drink maker to delight your guests, we’ve pinned down the very best Memorial Day deals on items Filter staff have personally tested and recommend.
Continue reading...Printing on Linux, macOS, and even on Windows seems to be pretty much a solved problem, but what about printing on OpenBSD?
Anyway, to do so I would need to set up my HP OfficeJet printer, connected wirelessly to the network, on OpenBSD. I chose to do this using HPLIP and CUPS as they are both in ports, I am familiar with how they work, and my printer is old enough that its PPD (driver) file is included in the slightly older version of HPLIP that is ported to OpenBSD. However, after installing both packages, starting the relevant services via rcctl including Avahi, and launching CUPS and finding the printer, I could not get it to install properly. Either it would error out at the end saying the printer couldn’t be added and advise me to check the CUPS error log, or it would seemingly successfully add the printer but I couldn’t print anything and couldn’t adjust the printer settings.
↫ Morgan at his blog
Only very tangentially related, but my personal crowning achievement in computing is somehow making it possible for my PA-RISC c8000 workstation running HP-UX 11i v1 to print to my modern all-in-one HP printer thing, some random HP consumer junker we bought on a whim because it was a returned item and cheap. It took some messing around, but ever since I’ve been able to just print stuff right from any application on HP-UX over the network, wirelessly. Note that the c8000 and HP-UX 11i v1 are almost two decades out of date compared to the printer, but by trying out promising device files included in HP-UX I managed to get it all to work.
I never need it, but I am fairly sure I’m one of the very few people in the world who can reliably print from an HP-UX 11i v1 workstation to a modern throwaway HP junker over Wi-Fi. Put that on my tombstone.
AI was front and center in nearly every announcement at Google I/O, but some features are more useful than others.
⁂ A little progress bar to keep track of our fundraiser! ⁂
➡️ Donate through Ko-Fi ➡️ Donate through SEPA transfer ➡️ Why a fundraiser?
Note that I have to update it manually, and that it includes both Ko-Fi donations, as well as direct bank transfers. Yes, if your country is part of SEPA (EU, more or less), you can now do a safe direct bank transfer using IBAN to a dedicated bank account. This avoids any third parties. Use your bank’s application or website (Name: Thom Holwerda – IBAN: SE08 8000 0820 1684 4657 8414 – BIC: SWEDSESS).
You have until July 1 to lock in a lifetime subscription to Plex at $250.
There's no question that Bose makes some of the best audio gear out there, and you can now get it for less while these deals last.
Officials say sinkhole discovered at about 11am as emergency crews rush to complete repairs
A sinkhole was discovered at New York’s LaGuardia airport on Wednesday, shutting down a runway while emergency crews sought to determine its cause and how to fix it.
In a post on X, LaGuardia, which handles domestic travel, said the sinkhole had been discovered at about 11am “near runway 4/22” while the airport’s operator was conducting its daily morning inspection.
Continue reading...Interest earnings on a CD account of this size will be substantial and, unlike other savings accounts, guaranteed.
A federal judge ordered White House staff and President Trump's top advisers to comply with a law that requires certain presidential records to be preserved.
Four-time MVP agreed to one-year deal with Steelers
Rodgers is reuniting with ex-Packers coach McCarthy
Aaron Rodgers has said that the 2026 season will be the final one of his NFL career.
“Yes. This is it,” the Steelers quarterback told reporters in Pittsburgh on Wednesday when asked if the upcoming campaign would be his last.
Continue reading...Director of Armageddon and Transformers to team up with Universal Pictures for drama based on recent events
Michael Bay is set to direct a military drama based on the recent rescue of two US crew members who crashed in Iran.
According to Deadline, the director of action films such as Armageddon and Transformers will work with Universal Pictures to bring the story to the screen. In April, two soldiers were rescued after their fighter jet was downed, something Donald Trump called “one of most daring search-and-rescue operations in US history”.
Continue reading...When Google's Android XR glasses launch this fall, they'll have a host of helpful features, but their compatibility is what stood out to me most.
International student Rodiyat Alabede, 22, died due to a ‘perfect storm’ of lax safety protocols, advocates say
Patient advocates in Canada have called for a new investigation into the death of a young woman who was donating blood plasma, describing a “perfect storm” of lax safety protocols and poorly trained staff and warning of “systemic issues” at plasma donation sites across the country.
Rodiyat Alabede, an international student at the University of Winnipeg, died of cardiac arrest shortly after a plasma donation in October 2025 at a facility operated by the Spanish healthcare company Grifols. An initial investigation by Health Canada found no links between the plasma donation and her death.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A coalition of thirteen major publishers has won a massive $19.5 million default judgment against shadow library Anna's Archive. A New York federal judge fully approved the publishers' requests, issuing a broad permanent injunction that orders more than twenty specific global registries, hosts, and service providers to immediately disable the site's remaining domains. [...] At first glance, the damages award is the headline figure. Judge Rakoff granted the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each of the 130 "Works in Suit." This brings the final damages bill amount to a staggering $19,500,000. However, as with the $322 million judgment won by the music industry against Anna's Archive in the related Spotify case, it's highly unlikely that this money will be recouped. For now, the operators of Anna's Archive remain strictly anonymous, which doesn't help either. The default judgment (PDF) addresses this and requires the operators to unmask their identities and provide a sworn statement with valid contact information to the court within 10 days. However, since the operators have previously stated they hide their identities to avoid "decades of prison time," it is safe to assume that the operators will simply ignore this request. The true power of this default judgment lies in the permanent injunction. Anna's Archive is known to evade enforcement and change domain names when needed, so the injunction targets the technical intermediaries that keep the site online. Specifically, the injunction orders "all domain name registries and registrars of record" to permanently disable access to Anna's Archive's domains and prevent their transfer to anyone other than the publishers or the music industry plaintiffs in the related case. In addition to domain name services, the order also extends to international hosting providers, who are also ordered to stop working with the site. Leaving no room for interpretation, the order specifically names more than twenty companies and organizations. This includes familiar names like Cloudflare, Njalla, and DDOS-Guard, as well as the domain name registries of the site's current active domains [...]. The names include some intermediaries that were already listed in the Spotify default judgment, as well as new ones.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Announcement made due to computer error at Radio Caroline’s main studio in Essex
A radio station has apologised for “any distress caused” after accidentally announcing that King Charles had died.
The erroneous announcement was made on Tuesday afternoon due to a computer error at Radio Caroline’s main studio in Essex.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Greater Manchester mayor understood to support home secretary’s push to limit legal and illegal migration
Andy Burnham is backing Shabana Mahmood’s controversial changes to the immigration system, his allies have said, in a blow to those in Labour who hope to soften them.
The Greater Manchester mayor is understood to be keen to reframe the changes but supportive of the home secretary’s attempts to limit legal and illegal migration, which have been criticised by some senior Labour MPs as un-British and mimicking Trump.
Continue reading...LAS VEGAS, May 20, 2026 — Dell Technologies is introducing a new generation of storage, compute, cyber resilience and automation innovations built to power the modern data center.
AI is scaling faster than most data centers were built to handle and the applications running the business can’t wait. Enterprises don’t have the luxury of choosing between what’s next and what’s now. Dell’s latest storage, compute, cyber resilience and automation innovations are built to deliver both.
Eliminate Storage Tradeoffs
Dell PowerStore Elite is an intelligent, open storage platform that combines AI-driven software, next generation hardware and non-disruptive modernization. The platform triples performance and density compared to prior generations, packs up to 5.8 petabytes of effective capacity into a single 3U appliance and is backed by an industry-best 6:1 data reduction guarantee. Built on industry-standard E3 flash, PowerStore Elite reduces cost per workload while keeping every component, including drives, controllers and networking, modular and field-upgradable, so organizations can evolve their infrastructure without downtime or data migration.
Redefine Compute And Cooling
The 18th generation of Dell PowerEdge servers deliver up to 70% better performance and 13-to-1 consolidation through advanced air-and liquid-cooling designs. Organizations gain dramatically more compute in the same footprint with unified management and security built in.
Unify Cyber Resilience
From AI-powered attacks to ransomware, today’s cyber threats are growing more sophisticated and disruptive. Organizations need threat detection, unified protection management and rapid recovery working together as a single operational model.
Simplify and Automate the Full Stack
Dell introduces software innovations that deliver cloud simplicity and agentic intelligence for infrastructure management. The Dell Automation Platform serves as the common foundation, powering private cloud deployments and expanding AI-driven automation capabilities.
Private Cloud Everywhere
AI-Driven Automation
Availability
More from HPCwire: Dell Introduces PowerStore Elite with AI-Driven Storage and Next-Gen Hardware
About Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) helps organizations and individuals build their digital future and transform how they work, live and play. The company provides customers with the industry’s broadest and most innovative technology and services portfolio for the AI era.
Source: Dell Technologies
The post Dell Expands AI Infrastructure Stack with New Storage, Servers, Cyber Resilience and Automation appeared first on HPCwire.
Prices drop 6% but president warns of further attacks unless Iran agrees to a deal
Oil prices fell 6% on Wednesday after Donald Trump said that negotiations with Iran were in the final stages, though investors remain wary about the outcome of peace talks as disruption to Middle Eastern supply continues.
Brent crude futures fell $6.64, or 5.97%, to $104.64 a barrel by 1.45pm ET and US West Texas Intermediate futures were down $6.49, or 6.23%, at $97.66.
Continue reading...U.S. government bonds are sagging as investors fret that hotter inflation will keep interest rate cuts on hold.
Security guard Amin Abdullah, Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad were killed in shooting at Islamic Center of San Diego
A security guard who was killed during the shooting at a San Diego mosque on Monday is being hailed as a hero after police said that his actions “undoubtedly” saved lives.
On Monday, two teenagers opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego, California, shooting and killing three men. The two attackers, aged 17 and 18, were found dead several blocks away, from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds, officials said.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. You can read our latest full report here:
The Jordanian military announced it had shot down a drone of unknown origin in its airspace on Wednesday, AFP reports.
No casualties were reported.
Continue reading..."These subjects did not discriminate in who they hated," said Mark Remily, special agent in charge of the FBI's San Diego Field Office.
Starmer has a reasonable list of achievements in power but has undermined himself with a lack of political storytelling
Net migration down by three-quarters, the biggest fall in NHS waiting lists for 17 years, knife crime cut by 10%, the economy growing the fastest in the G7, rising wages, energy bills and petrol prices held down, the biggest sustained rise in defence spending since the cold war, a massive expansion of free childcare …
If Keir Starmer did tub-thumping lists of Labour’s achievements in the style of Gordon Brown, he would not actually have a shortage of things to talk about.
Continue reading...Obama hails Frank as a ‘one of a kind’ LGBTQ+ advocate and key architect of ‘sweeping financial reforms’
Barney Frank, the former US representative who made history as one of the first out gay members of Congress, died on Tuesday night. He was 86.
“He was, above all else, a wonderful brother. I was lucky to be his sister,” Doris Breay, Frank’s sister, told NBC10 in Boston on Wednesday morning.
Continue reading...Earley Story will never forget the name Alfredo Shaw.
As a longtime employee at the Shelby County Jail in downtown Memphis, Story had seen the young man come in and out of the detention facility known as 201 Poplar since the 1980s. Shaw acted cocky, but there was fear in his eyes. Story, a devout Christian, occasionally had conversations with him about God.
In 1994, Shaw became a witness in a grisly triple homicide. A local drug dealer, along with his mother and a teenage friend, had been abducted, murdered, and buried in a freshly dug grave at a cemetery in South Memphis. Prosecutors arrested 25-year-old Tony Carruthers, who had recently gotten out of prison. There was nothing directly tying him to the crime — and he swore that he had nothing to do with it. But Shaw claimed that Carruthers confessed to him. In 1996, a jury sentenced Carruthers to die.
Like most people, Story assumed Carruthers was guilty. But in January 1997, Story himself was accused of a crime he swore he did not commit. He was arrested and charged with selling drugs to an undercover officer. There was no evidence against Story — in fact, the presiding judge initially threw out his case for lack of probable cause. But in 1999, he was tried, convicted, and given probation. The main witness against him was Shaw.
Story was convinced he’d been framed. Over the previous decade he’d become known as a whistleblower, documenting violence and abuse at the jail. This made him a target for retaliation. “I had some enemies within the sheriff’s department,” he said.
“We’re not the only ones he’s done this to.”
Story lost his job and his pension as a result of his conviction. He had been fighting to clear his name for 20 years when, one week before Christmas 2017, he got an envelope in the mail from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. That return address was written in elaborate script below the name “Tony Von Carruthers.”
The envelope contained records confirming what Story had long known to be true: Shaw had been a paid confidential informant. Although this had been an open secret in Memphis for decades, the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office repeatedly denied it. “I have talked to the prosecutors who tried your client and neither is aware of any situation where Alfredo Shaw acted as a paid informant for anybody,” the office had written to Carruthers’s post-conviction attorneys.
The enclosed documents chronicled drug buys Shaw made on behalf of the sheriff’s department between 1991 and 1997. Conspicuously absent was the date when Story supposedly sold drugs to Shaw. Story believed that this should exonerate him. But the courts disagreed.
Story did not know precisely why Carruthers mailed him the records. Nor did he know the truth behind Carruthers’s innocence claim. But when he heard that Tennessee had set an execution date for Carruthers, he was deeply disturbed. No one, he says, should be executed based on the testimony of Alfredo Shaw.
“I’d hate to see him murdered, put to death, when there’s so many open ends,” he said.
Tony Carruthers is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday morning at 10 a.m.
He has maintained his innocence for 32 years.
On Monday, Carruthers’s supporters, including family members and advocates from the American Civil Liberties Union, delivered a stack of petitions to the office of Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee at the state Capitol in Nashville. Despite mounting calls for Lee to stop the execution, on Tuesday he announced that he would not intervene.
In a clemency petition, his attorneys describe Carruthers’s case as a travesty of justice: a death sentence based on lies and a flimsy narrative that was bankrupt from the start. Among those who have spoken out against the execution is Story, now 72. He is joined by another ex-jailer, Bernard Kimmons, who also says he was wrongfully convicted of selling drugs based on Shaw’s testimony. Wearing “Save Tony Carruthers” T-shirts, the men told a Memphis news station that Shaw has a track record of putting innocent people in prison. “We’re not the only ones he’s done this to,” Kimmons said.
False testimony by jailhouse informants is a leading cause of wrongful convictions, often used to fill the gaps in cases where the state’s evidence is weak. The Innocence Project has found that roughly a quarter of death row exonerations are in cases involving a jailhouse snitch.
In Carruthers’s case, no physical evidence implicated him in the murders. Fingerprints from the crime scene have never been linked to anyone, and a blanket found buried with the victims has been shown to have an unknown male DNA profile. Some of the most horrifying details of the crime have also been discredited in the decades since Carruthers’s trial. The case remains infamous in Memphis because of the ubiquitous claim that the victims were buried alive. But this has long been debunked. Although a medical examiner said at trial that the victims suffocated to death, he later retracted his testimony — and other experts have said there was never anything to support it.
These red flags — a lack of physical evidence, unreliable witnesses, and bogus forensic testimony — are all-too familiar features of wrongful convictions. But Carruthers’s case is uniquely shocking in another way: He was sent to death row after acting as his own lawyer at trial. Carruthers’s attorneys have long argued that this doomed Carruthers from the start. They write in his clemency petition that he has a long history of undiagnosed mental illness and “was not competent to stand for trial, much less competent to represent himself.”
Carruthers’s self-representation was especially self-sabotaging where Shaw, the jailhouse snitch, was concerned. By the time Carruthers went to trial in 1996, Shaw had recanted his statements implicating Carruthers in an explosive TV interview, and prosecutors decided against calling Shaw as a witness. But in a perverse irony, Shaw ended up testifying anyway — not for the state, but for the defense. “In an effort to show that the prosecution had secured the indictment with an untrue story,” the clemency petition explained. “Mr. Carruthers believed he had to call Alfredo Shaw to the stand.”
The result was so disastrous that a judge later reversed the conviction of Carruthers’s co-defendant, concluding that Carruthers’s self-representation had violated his co-defendant’s right to a fair trial. That man, James Montgomery, got out of prison in 2015.
To Carruthers’s sister, Tonya, who joined the petition delivery in Nashville — and who said she plans to witness her brother’s execution — the past 32 years have been a living nightmare. She argues that her brother’s conviction was a case of guilt by association — and that his own record made it easy for him to take the fall for a crime he did not commit.
For decades, she said, the press adopted the state’s narrative of the case without examining the obvious problems with the case. “He was already portrayed as a monster in the media before his trial ever started.”
The triple murder that sent Carruthers to death row began as a missing persons case. Forty-three-year-old Delois Anderson lived in North Memphis with her son Marcellos Anderson, her niece Laventhia, and Laventhia’s two young daughters. She worked at a bank during the day and took classes at night.
On the evening of February 24, 1994, Laventhia would later testify, she came home to an empty house. It looked like Delois had been home. “Her car was there. Her purse was there. Her keys were there,” Laventhia said. In Delois’s bedroom, a pack of cigarettes and lighter were in their usual spot, and she had apparently served herself a plate of greens for dinner.
Laventhia figured her aunt had stepped out and would return soon. But that didn’t happen; Laventhia never saw her again.
Around 2:40 a.m. the next morning, a sheriff’s deputy in Mississippi responded to a call about a car on fire just south of the Tennessee state line. The vehicle, a white Jeep Cherokee with gold trim, was traced to a Memphis man who said he had lent it to Marcellos Anderson, nicknamed Cello.
Within a week, news broke that a suspect had led police to a grave of a woman who had been recently buried at the Rose Hill cemetery in South Memphis. Authorities got permission to exhume the body. Under the casket, beneath some wooden planks, were the remains of Anderson, his mother, and 17-year-old Frederick Tucker. Their hands were bound together; Delois Anderson had a pair of socks wrapped around her neck. Tucker and Marcellos Anderson had been shot.
The murders were front-page news in Memphis, where frenzied media coverage soon turned into bad press for law enforcement officials. Police had two main suspects in custody: Carruthers and a man named James Montgomery — the brother of the man who led authorities to the bodies. But Montgomery’s brother had since fled the state, leaving prosecutors without a key witness. With no other evidence against the two defendants, a judge threw out the first-degree murder charges.
Prosecutors scrambled, urging police to “get out and beat the bushes,” as one assistant district attorney would later testify. Before long, a new witness came forward: 28-year-old Alfredo Shaw.
On March 27, Shaw gave a tape-recorded statement to a pair of sergeants with the Memphis Police Department. He said that Carruthers carried out the murders on behalf of a pair of drug dealers who had been robbed by Anderson and Tucker. In fact, he said, Carruthers had tried to enlist him in the crime. “I stated to Tony that I did not want to be involved in that,” Shaw said.
Shaw claimed that he and Carruthers were in the back of the jail’s law library when Carruthers divulged how it went down: He and Montgomery had gone to Anderson’s house in search of the stolen money but only encountered his mother, Delois. They demanded she call her son, who returned to the home with the teenage Tucker. “Carruthers told me they put the gun to Marcellos and made them all go get in the Cherokee,” Shaw said. Carruthers and Montgomery then drove the three victims to Mississippi, where Carruthers shot Anderson and Tucker and set the jeep on fire. They then drove Delois, who was still alive, to the cemetery along with the two bodies, which they threw into the grave. Delois was screaming, Shaw said. So Montgomery pushed her into the grave, too.
Two days later, Shaw repeated the story to a grand jury.
In the two years between the indictment and the trial, however, Shaw began to have second thoughts. In February 1996, he contacted a local TV reporter and, with his identity concealed, recanted his statements on Memphis’s Channel 13. He said that he had been coerced and coached by Shelby County Assistant District Attorney Gerald Harris, who offered him money and promised to dismiss pending criminal charges against him.
Harris appeared in the TV segment too. He told the news station that Shaw was not credible. “I’m not gonna put that kind of witness on,” he said. Like all criminal defendants, Carruthers “has got a right to a fair trial.”
Carruthers and Montgomery were tried together in April 1996. Rather than the murder-for-hire plot Shaw described, prosecutors argued that the men wanted to take over the local drug trade. The theory was constructed entirely from circumstantial evidence, with witnesses testifying that said they saw the men with the victims at some point on February 24, 1994.
“It was all just stories,” Carruthers’s sister Tonya recalled. She attended the trial every day with their mother, describing it as a media circus and a hostile atmosphere. “Our family name became the scourge of the community,” she said. “We were not treated well at all in court.”
Tonya had spoken to her brother shortly after the murders. She remembers him being extremely upset. Although he ran in the same circles as Anderson and did not get along with him, he would never have killed him, she said — and he certainly would not have done anything to hurt his mother. Carruthers’s own daughter was related to the Anderson family through his ex-girlfriend. “If I knew that was gonna happen,” Tonya remembers him saying, “I would’ve done anything I could to stop it.”
Presiding over the trial was Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Joseph Dailey. Case records show that Dailey became convinced that his life was in danger due to reported death threats that swirled around the case from the start. He imposed a gag order on the press to prevent reporters from printing witnesses’ names, as well as unprecedented security measures in the courtroom and at his home.
Dailey was also fed up with Carruthers before the trial began. One by one, defense attorneys appointed to the case told the judge that their client was erratic and abusive and asked to be removed. Dailey ultimately refused to appoint any more attorneys, leaving Carruthers to represent himself. “He is the person who put himself in this position,” Dailey later said while denying Carruthers a retrial.
Several of the state’s witnesses knew Carruthers from prison. One man testified that he had worked with Carruthers on a work detail that included doing shifts in a cemetery — and that Carruthers remarked that hiding a body in a grave would be a good way to get away with a murder. “If you ain’t got no body, you don’t have a case,” he said. Another witness testified about a pair of letters Carruthers sent from prison, in which he boasted ominously about a “master plan” to settle scores on the streets. “Everything I do from now on will be well organized and extremely violent,” he wrote.
Carruthers pointed out that the letters did not actually implicate him in the killings. “He can’t say if I was just in prison just bragging or just running off at the mouth,” he told Dailey. But the judge allowed the letters as evidence.
The state had already rested its case on April 24, 1996, when Carruthers called Alfredo Shaw to the stand. His goal was to show that, as a jailhouse snitch, Shaw falsely implicated him in the murders in exchange for money and favors. But Dailey blocked Carruthers from questioning Shaw about being a confidential informant. The resulting testimony was a disaster for Carruthers.
Shaw testified that he contacted homicide detectives through a Crime Stoppers hotline after hearing about the murders on the news. Carruthers then presented him with his previous statements to police and to the grand jury, creating the impression that Shaw had been consistent in his accounts. When he tried to pivot to show that Shaw had disavowed his previous statements, it backfired. Shaw explained that he only wavered in his accounts because he’d been afraid for his life.
Carruthers and Montgomery were swiftly convicted. In his closing argument urging jurors to sentence the men to die, Harris emphasized the suffering of the victims as they slowly suffocated. “This woman, Delois Anderson, is in a grave, in a pit, alive,” he said. “The tragedy of it is that as she actually breathed in her last breath she was in effect killing herself, bringing things into her body, dirt being on top of her.” It was hard to imagine a more horrifying scene.
After a few hours, the jury came back with a death sentence.
Carruthers had been on death row for well over a decade when an investigator with his federal lawyers in Nashville did a deep dive into his life and background. Such investigations are a critical step in modern capital defense: One of the first things a lawyer is supposed to do to uncover any evidence of trauma, abuse, or mental illness — the kind of mitigating factors that can persuade a jury to spare a client’s life.
None of the attorneys originally appointed to represent Carruthers had undertaken such an investigation. And Carruthers was not able to do such work on his own behalf.
“Perhaps the most prominent issue affecting Tony’s family is that of severe mental illness,” the investigator later wrote in a report. Relatives across generations had schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and Carruthers displayed symptoms of both. When he was 14, his mother, Jane Carruthers, admitted him to a local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. He stayed for five days.
Before long, Carruthers was in and out of juvenile jails. Staff at one facility recommended that he be placed “in a structured therapeutic environment,” but this was easier said than done. His mother was a single parent raising four children; while she worked hard all her life, she struggled to afford the family’s basic needs, let alone cover the kind of care her son might have needed.
“She was extremely hard-working,” Tonya said about her mother, who died a few years ago. “Oftentimes she worked two jobs.” For years she did overnight shifts at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Memphis, where Tonya remembered having occasional meals. Although Tonya described many challenges throughout their childhood, she went on to thrive in a way that her brother never did. Carruthers had anger issues, his sister told the investigator, which worsened as he got older.
After Carruthers turned 20 — an age where mental illness commonly manifests — he became increasingly manic and volatile. On one occasion, according to the report, Carruthers was accused of setting a fire at a house where he was staying. After being restrained and placed in a police car, Carruthers “ate the vinyl off the left rear passenger door, spitting chunks of it on the floor,” according to a police report. A Memphis officer still remembered the episode years later, describing it as a kind of “psychosis.”
At the time, such episodes were attributed to drugs or alcohol. But Carruthers’s legal team was certain that undiagnosed mental illness played a role. Although he repeatedly refused to cooperate with evaluations that could have yielded more specific diagnoses, defense experts nonetheless concluded that he had a type of schizoaffective disorder, whose symptoms included “pervasive delusions and paranoia.”
This was consistent with Carruthers’s behavior at trial, which jurors found off-putting, as well as his ongoing hostility toward his defense attorneys. To date, his case records are filled with declarations, transcripts, and countless letters documenting the fraught relationship with lawyers who were ill-equipped to represent Carruthers — and who Carruthers believed were conspiring against him.
After he was sent to death row, Carruthers became fixated on a belief that he was going to win a lucrative lawsuit against his lawyers. One state post-conviction lawyer memorialized a meeting in which Carruthers showed him a photograph of a green 2006 Jaguar; Carruthers said he planned to buy it with the proceeds from his civil litigation. “He was totally serious about this,” the lawyer wrote. “Tony also told me that it would be okay if the staff poisons him to death, because then his daughter will get a lot of money from the state, and that is his biggest concern.”
Carruthers has always rejected the suggestion that he was not competent to stand trial. While Tonya does not deny that he has shown symptoms of mental illness, she also points out that his paranoia is, in fact, well-founded given what happened in his case.
Decades after Carruthers was sentenced to die, both James Montgomery and Alfredo Shaw gave statements to his defense investigators saying that Carruthers did not participate in the crime. Montgomery pointed at a different man, who died in 2002, as the person who helped kidnap and kill the victims. But the courts refused to allow testing that might confirm this claim.
Shaw, meanwhile, met with a defense investigator on three different occasions while in federal prison in 2011. According to the investigator, he repeated what he had told the TV reporter in 1996, adding that, after the interview aired, police and prosecutors threatened to go after him if he did not revert to his original account. Shaw became visibly tense and upset as he spoke, the investigator wrote.
“I testified falsely at trial because I was fearful that the District Attorney’s Office would retaliate against me.”
The investigator summarized Shaw’s account in a declaration. “I testified falsely at trial because I was fearful that the District Attorney’s Office would retaliate against me,” it read. But Shaw said he was too scared to sign it.
It would take another six years for Carruthers’s attorneys to obtain the first batch of records confirming that Shaw was a paid informant — the same ones that Earley Story later received in the mail. And it was not until 2024 that they obtained additional records casting light on Shaw’s history as a confidential informant, not only for the sheriff’s department, but also for the Memphis Police Department as well. The records showed once again that Shaw was a paid snitch, with every incentive to lie on the stand. By then, Carruthers’s appeals had long been exhausted.
On the eve of his execution, the full story behind Carruthers’s case now stands to be buried with him. The state may put Carruthers to death, Tonya said, but families on both sides still deserve to know the truth of what happened in 1994.
In the meantime, she wants the public to know that he is not the killer who was portrayed in the press. “Please let people know that my brother is not a monster.”
The post False Testimony Sent Tony Carruthers to Death Row. Tennessee Is About to Kill Him. appeared first on The Intercept.
Former Iranian president has a populist, headline-grabbing communication style but is an avowed anti-Zionist. How could Israel see him as a man to do business with?
For all their outward differences, there always seemed to be things that linked Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Donald Trump.
A visit to the then Iranian president’s rather humble Tehran neighbourhood nearly 20 years ago highlighted cost of living problems that prefigured those facing Trump now.
Continue reading...Gas prices, airfares, accommodations and other vacation essentials are more expensive this year compared to last year.
SAN FRANCISCO, May 20, 2026 — Lambda today announced a partnership with Hudson River Trading (HRT), a leading quantitative trading firm, to accelerate HRT’s trading research and development. Lambda is providing HRT access to NVIDIA accelerated computing infrastructure, including NVIDIA HGX B200 systems, advanced networking, storage, and orchestration, enabling its researchers to develop and refine trading algorithms at scale.
HRT’s researchers run compute-intensive workloads to train models and simulate trading strategies at scale. As HRT demand for compute grew, the firm needed a partner that could rapidly deliver capacity, provide clear operational ownership, and ensure the uptime such workloads require. With Lambda, HRT gains a full-stack architecture that accelerates its research roadmap and expands the compute powering its quantitative work.
“Lambda stood out for its technical depth and operational clarity,” said Gerard Bernabeu Altayo, Compute Systems Lead at HRT. “We’re confident we’ve found the right partner to help power our workloads.”
This partnership comes as Lambda continues to expand its AI infrastructure footprint, following six NVIDIA awards and a $1.5B+ Series E fundraise in November 2025. Lambda serves tens of thousands of customers ranging from individual researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers.
“HRT is exactly the kind of customer Lambda was built for: researchers who need massive amounts of compute and infrastructure that delivers,” said Stephen Balaban, co-founder and CTO of Lambda. “We’re proud to power HRT’s research, and we’re here to make sure they have everything they need to do their best work.”
“Quantitative trading requires substantial computational power to train sophisticated models and run large-scale simulations that drive competitive advantage,” said Ioana Boier, Global Head of Capital Markets Strategy at NVIDIA. “By combining NVIDIA’s AI Trading Factory with Lambda’s AI cloud, HRT gains the performance needed to accelerate its most demanding research workloads and operate at market speed.”
About Lambda
Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers. Founded in 2012 by published machine learning engineers, Lambda builds supercomputers for AI training and inference. Lambda’s customers range from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers. Lambda’s mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give everyone the power of superintelligence. One person, one GPU.
About Hudson River Trading
Hudson River Trading (HRT) is a multi-asset class quantitative trading firm based in New York City. Founded in 2002, HRT develops automated trading algorithms that provide liquidity and facilitate price discovery on exchanges and alternative trading systems. With offices around the world, HRT trades equities, futures, options, currencies and fixed income on over 200 markets worldwide. For more information, visit www.hudsonrivertrading.com.
Source: Lambda
The post Lambda Partners with Hudson River Trading to Power Quantitative Research and Development appeared first on HPCwire.
Seagate CEO Dave Mosley said Monday that building new memory chip factories or adding capacity would "take too long" to keep up with AI-driven storage demand. "If we took the teams off and started building new factories or bringing up new machines, that would just take too long. You would end up with more capacity, but then you'd slow the rate of growth on that technology," Mosely said. CNBC reports: Memory chip stocks have soared in recent months as a flood of AI investing has sent demand soaring, with the chips a key part of the AI buildout in data centers. Chip production cycles stretch over many quarters for a single unit, and investors are increasingly wary of how long the leading memory makers can capture demand. CME Group is launching a new futures market for semiconductors, enabling more traders to lock in prices and hedge against the rising prices of computing power. At Monday's conference, Mosely also addressed the "very long lead times" and maintaining predictability with its clients. "We know what's coming out a year from now," he said. "And we've basically gone to the customers and said, 'Look, if you want to plan this really well, which it should be for your data centers, we know what's coming out. You can buy this stuff up to a certain period.' And so we want to keep that four or five quarters of visibility very, very solid for what's being built. But the demand is significantly higher than that."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
PM’s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, among aides briefed on investigation into reporters writing about Labour Together
Keir Starmer’s most senior advisers were briefed about an “indefensible” investigation into journalists writing critical pieces about the Labour Together thinktank, according to a newly released document.
Among the aides who received updates on the probe, commissioned by the thinktank’s director, Josh Simons, were Morgan McSweeney, the former chief of staff to the prime minister.
Continue reading...Conflict and aid cuts are hampering the fight against an outbreak of the deadly virus centred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has faced the deadly threat of Ebola 16 times since the virus was discovered there in 1976, with a 2018-20 outbreak killing almost 2,300 people. On Sunday, the World Health Organization declared the 17th outbreak to be a public health emergency of international concern. So far, 139 suspected deaths and almost 600 suspected cases of the haemorrhagic fever virus have been identified, nearly all in the DRC’s north-eastern provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, with two cases in Uganda of people who had travelled from the DRC.
There is also anxiety about neighbouring South Sudan. The WHO fears the disease has been spreading for a couple of months and, given the highly mobile population, warns that it could take months more to bring it under control. While it judges the risk of global spread to be low, it thinks the regional risk is high.
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Continue reading...Over 100,000 developers have joined the companies’ joint developer community, tapping into NVIDIA and Google Cloud technologies, learning paths and hands-on labs to build what’s next in AI.
May 20, 2026 — At this year’s Google I/O conference, NVIDIA and Google Cloud are accelerating the work of more than 100,000 developers in the companies’ joint developer community, which provides curated learning paths, hands-on labs and events that help them build using the full-stack NVIDIA AI platform on Google Cloud.
Launched at Google I/O last year, the community brings together developers, data scientists and machine learning engineers who want to sharpen their AI skills on the latest NVIDIA and Google Cloud technologies.
New additions for the community are rolling out this year, including a learning path for using the JAX library on NVIDIA GPUs, a new NVIDIA Dynamo codelab focused on inference optimizations, as well as monthly developer livestreams.
Over the last year, the community has become a go‑to hub for AI builders using NVIDIA‑accelerated tools for data science and machine learning. The result has been production‑ready retrieval-augmented generation applications on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and instrumenting observability for agent workloads.
These AI builders are also experimenting with new large language model research and prototyping hybrid on‑premises and cloud inference for real‑world use cases like sports analytics and enterprise data pipelines.
Building with Google DeepMind’s Gemma, NVIDIA Nemotron and Open Frameworks
NVIDIA and Google Cloud are equipping developers with learning resources and hands-on labs that combine NVIDIA libraries, open models and tools with Google Cloud’s AI platform — so they can build optimized, production‑ready AI applications faster.
For example, developers can accelerate data science and analytics with the NVIDIA cuDF library in Google Colab Enterprise or Dataproc, or deploy multi-agent applications by combining Google DeepMind’s Gemma 4 models, NVIDIA Nemotron open models and Google Agent Development Kit with Google Cloud G4 VMs powered by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs in Google Cloud Run or with spot instances.
NVIDIA and Google Cloud work closely across open frameworks like JAX so developers can build, scale and productize JAX workloads on NVIDIA AI infrastructure on Google Cloud — from single‑GPU experiments to multi‑rack deployments — while getting strong performance and a consistent experience.
This work extends to Google Cloud AI Hypercomputer, where the MaxText framework uses these JAX optimizations to train large models efficiently on NVIDIA GPUs.
Building on the same foundation, NVIDIA Dynamo on GKE helps developers optimize large-scale inference — including mixture-of-experts models — so they can serve AI applications more efficiently with NVIDIA accelerated infrastructure on Google Cloud.
To help developers get hands-on with these capabilities, a new learning path on running and scaling JAX on NVIDIA GPUs and a new NVIDIA Dynamo on GKE inference codelab will become available next month for members in the Google Cloud and NVIDIA developer community.
Advancing Responsible AI With Google DeepMind’s SynthID and NVIDIA Cosmos
AI agents are increasingly built from a system of AI models — combining proprietary and open source models that reason, plan and act on users’ behalf.
Amid this shift, trust and transparency are foundational, so developers and organizations can understand how these systems work and what they generate.
NVIDIA was the first industry partner to collaborate with Google DeepMind on SynthID, an AI watermarking technology that embeds robust digital watermarks directly into AI‑generated content, which helps preserve the integrity of outputs from NVIDIA Cosmos world foundation models available on build.nvidia.com.
Cosmos models provide rich 3D perception and simulation capabilities for robots, autonomous machines and other physical AI systems, while SynthID brings content transparency to the imagery and video they rely on.
Together, they help preserve the integrity of AI‑generated content so developers can build and deploy agentic applications more responsibly across cloud, edge and real‑world environments.
Building on a Full-Stack NVIDIA and Google Cloud Platform
This year, Google I/O is putting the spotlight on new agentic experiences and tools for developers — and NVIDIA and Google Cloud are focused on ensuring builders have the infrastructure, software and learning resources they need to make the most of them.
For developers in the community building on NVIDIA and Google Cloud, the skills and tools they learn can scale, effortlessly taking projects from prototype to enterprise‑grade workloads.
At Google Cloud Next, Google Cloud and NVIDIA expanded their full‑stack platform to help developers train, deploy and operationalize agents on Google Cloud. This collaboration includes work on NVIDIA Vera Rubin-powered A5X instances, Google DeepMind Gemini models and more, and is being harnessed by leading AI labs and enterprises including OpenAI, Thinking Machine Labs, Schrodinger, Salesforce, Snap and Crowdstrike.
Source: Ankit Patel, NVIDIA
The post NVIDIA and Google Cloud Empower the Next Wave of AI Builders appeared first on HPCwire.
Commentary: Are you really OK with Google's bot watching your screen while you're not?
Births of the mammals extremely rare in captivity, say keepers, with ‘Womble’ only the second calf born at Chester
Inside a heated incubator at Chester zoo, a wrinkled newborn aardvark nicknamed “Womble” spent its first weeks being bottle-fed milk through the night by keepers determined to keep the rare calf healthy.
Named after the creatures in Elisabeth Beresford’s children’s books and the subsequent animated TV series, the nocturnal animal is only the second aardvark born at the zoo in its 94-year history. Keepers say births of the species are extremely rare in captivity, with the last aardvark calf born in the zoo in 2022.
Continue reading...Case hailed as human rights victory as Tromsø court says Tommy Olsen’s actions are lawful and protected under international treaties
The decision of a Norwegian appeals court to dismiss the extradition of an activist accused of facilitating the illegal entry of people into Greece has been hailed as a rare victory for human rights.
In a judgment described as unprecedented by lawyers representing Tommy Olsen, the Norwegian founder of the NGO the Aegean Boat Report, the court unanimously rejected the request saying his actions were not only lawful but protected under international treaties to which both countries adhered.
Continue reading...Italy and France have summoned the Israeli ambassadors in their respective capitals after Itamar Ben-Gvir, his national security minister, posted the video.
Thirty years ago, a Cuban fighter jet shot down two civilian planes operated by Florida-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue, an incident that inflamed U.S.-Cuba relations.
The Amazon founder said eliminating taxes for lower-income Americans could ease financial pressure and encourage entrepreneurship.
PARIS, May 20, 2026 — Ardian, Artefact, Bull, Capgemini, the EDF group, the iliad Group, Orange and Scaleway have teamed up within the AION consortium to launch an ambitious bid for France under the European Union’s AI Gigafactories initiative.
In the coming years, the competitiveness of EU economies will directly depend on their ability to access massive computing power that is available, affordable and sovereign. The challenge is industrial, financial and strategic: enabling European companies to train, deploy and operate their AI models under controlled conditions in terms of performance, cost and sovereignty.
This is precisely the aim of the project put forward by the AION consortium.
Mobilizing French Excellence to Build World-Leading AI Infrastructure
In response to the rapid adoption of AI and the explosion in demand for computing power, AION brings together all of the critical skills required for creating new-generation European infrastructure.
The consortium leverages the complementary strengths of a wide spectrum of benchmark players covering the entire value chain: supercomputers, microprocessors, quantum computing solutions and critical infrastructure, expertise in energy, cloud platforms, sovereign AI and the development and operation of datacenter infrastructure, as well as AI deployment capabilities, investment capacity and industrial know-how.
AION will also be able to draw on a broad ecosystem made up of technological, academic and industrial partners, as well as user companies such as Le Crédit Agricole, Equans, Future4Care, GENCI, Hugging Face, INRIA, Kyutai, LightOn, Multiverse Computing, Nokia, Opcore, Quandela, PariSanté Campus, Schneider Electric, SiPearl, Sopra Steria, Verne, VSORA and ZML.
France – a Strategic Choice for Hosting a European AI Gigafactory
France has unique strengths for hosting infrastructure of this magnitude. It has abundant, affordable, sovereign and low-carbon electricity thanks to its energy mix that is mainly made up of nuclear and hydraulic power, as well as robust digital infrastructure and recognized expertise across the whole value chain, particularly in data centers, cloud services and high-performance computing.
France has also established itself as one of the most dynamic AI ecosystems in Europe thanks to the quality of its research, the emergence of world-class tech players, and a dense pool of scientific and industrial talent. From research labs to start-ups, through to major end-user companies, it brings together the full range of skills needed to build a competitive AI industry on a European scale.
Hosting an AI Gigafactory would enable France to offer all the conditions for strengthening European tech sovereignty, accelerating AI adoption by private companies and public-sector players, and driving competitiveness and innovation.
An Ambition Built on 4 Pillars
The AION consortium is based on four fundamental pillars:
An Open Consortium to Bring Together the European Ecosystem
The alliance announced today marks the starting point of a project aimed at bringing together all French and European players who are ready and willing to contribute to this shared industrial ambition.
“As an independent European player in data and AI, Artefact is uniquely positioned to observe the rapid growth in demand for computing power, as well as the lack of sufficient sovereign solutions,” said Vincent Luciani, Executive President of Artefact. “We’re technology-agnostic and our priority is to provide our customers with truly resilient solutions based on three dimensions of sovereignty: technology, operations and data. There’s no time for companies to wait – the infrastructure of the future needs to be built today. By joining the AION consortium, Artefact will be able to deploy the most ambitious AI use cases for its customers, within a fully sovereign framework, ensuring freedom, security and resilience.”
“This initiative is particularly important for Bull in its capacity as the only player capable of guaranteeing a mostly European supply chain for AI, cloud and supercomputer infrastructure,” said Emmanuel Le Roux, CEO of Bull. “We see AION as a natural extension of our strategic pathway, bringing additional computing capabilities dedicated to simulation and AI, developing new AI-optimized hardware technologies, and deploying our software platform and data science services to enable the production of industrial AI use cases. Through AION, we’re reaffirming our commitment to strengthening Europe’s ability to develop and operate next-generation AI and cloud infrastructure, while laying the foundations for a more resilient, competitive and independent technology ecosystem.”
“France has major strengths to lead the way in the development of AI infrastructure, including competitively-priced, sovereign and low-carbon electricity,” said Beatrice Bigois, Group Senior Executive Vice-President, Customers & Energy Services, at EDF. “With this consortium, we’re embracing a shared ambition to build a world-class European AI gigafactory based in France, and EDF intends to fully contribute to this strategic momentum for Europe.”
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.
Source: Bull
The post Bull, Orange, Scaleway and Partners Unite on French AI Gigafactory Bid appeared first on HPCwire.
The Russian jets intercepted the U.K. aircraft with one jet flying as close as 19 feet to the British plane's nose, officials said.
There are laws that protect your retirement income from creditors, but there are also exceptions to know about.
New Integration Enables MATLAB and Simulink Workflows on Renesas RA and RH850 Microcontrollers, Streamlining Code Generation, Deployment, and On-Hardware Execution for Faster Validation and Iteration
NATICK, Mass., May 20, 2026 — MathWorks today announced new Hardware Support Packages that directly connect Model‑Based Design and simulation to execution on Renesas’ RH850/U2A microcontroller for automotive applications and the RA6T2 microcontroller for industrial controls. The new MATLAB and Simulink integrations enable engineering teams to move from simulation to running embedded code on hardware with automated build, flashing, and on‑target execution while also accelerating development cycles through the elimination of many manual integration steps.
“Our customers expect a straightforward path from simulation model to microcontroller, and the new integration with MATLAB and Simulink delivers exactly that,” said Brad Rex, Senior Director of System Solution Team, UX (User Experience) Group at Renesas. “By working with MathWorks, we’ve removed the need to assemble toolchains and device drivers by hand so teams can simulate and validate designs earlier, iterate faster, and reduce integration effort across ECU and industrial‑control projects.“
The new support packages give engineering teams a consistent Model-Based Design workflow across both automotive and industrial programs, reducing integration effort and accelerating deployment. Renesas’ RA microcontroller platform is optimized for industrial and robotics applications that require flexible connectivity, real-time responsiveness, and scalable embedded control. The integration with the RA family enables rapid prototyping of servo and variable‑speed drive applications, with one-click deployment that streamlines hardware bring‑up and on‑bench validation for motion profiles and closed‑loop tuning.
The Renesas RH850/U2A microcontroller, widely used in automotive electronic control units, provides the deterministic performance and safety-critical features required for EV motor control, advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), and body electronics. Automotive engineers developing traction motor control for electric vehicles can deploy field‑oriented control and regenerative braking algorithms directly from Simulink to RH850/U2A‑based ECUs. This shortens the time from concept to vehicle‑level testing, supports smoother torque delivery during rapid transients, and speeds calibration across drive cycles—without writing initialization code or custom build scripts.
“Our collaboration with Renesas strengthens the level of interoperability that engineers expect when using MATLAB and Simulink,” said Anuja Apte, India Product Marketing Manager, MathWorks. “By providing a direct path from Simulink models to optimized microcontroller deployment, we help engineering teams move from design to hardware more efficiently while staying integrated with the broader toolchains they rely on. This approach reflects the MathWorks Connections program, which brings partners and customers together to accelerate innovation and reduce time to market within a widely adopted engineering and scientific platform.”
For more information on the new hardware support packages in MATLAB and Simulink, visit the Renesas RH850 hardware support page and the Renesas RA hardware support page on the MathWorks website.
About MathWorks
MathWorks is the leading developer of mathematical computing software for designing engineered systems. MATLAB, the language of engineers and scientists, is a programming and numeric computation environment for algorithm development, data analysis, and visualization. Simulink is a block diagram environment for simulation and Model-Based Design of multidomain and embedded systems. MATLAB and Simulink provide a unified computing platform that empowers engineering teams to model, simulate, and deploy complex engineered systems spanning industries such as automotive, aerospace, energy, and medical devices. MATLAB and Simulink are fundamental teaching and research tools at the world’s top universities and learning institutions. Founded in 1984, MathWorks employs more than 6,500 people in 34 offices globally, with headquarters in Natick, Massachusetts.
Source: MathWorks
The post MathWorks Launches New Renesas Hardware Support Packages appeared first on HPCwire.
Watchdog group glued trackers to 53 of the chain’s cups across nine states and found none ended up at a recycling facility
If you attach a GPS tracker to a “widely recyclable” plastic Starbucks cup and drop it in an in-store recycling bin, you might expect it to end up in a recycling plant, but the environmental watchdog organization Beyond Plastics says that’s not the case in a new report.
Starbucks announced that their plastic cups were now considered “widely recyclable” earlier this year, according to How2Recycle, a group affiliated with the consumer packaging industry that helps private companies label their packaging with recycling options. The coffee giant touted the achievement as a “big milestone, with huge impact”.
Continue reading...Raúl Castro and five others have been indicted by a U.S. grand jury in Florida, according to court filings made public Wednesday.
UK calls incident ‘unacceptable’ after Su-27 jet comes within six metres of unarmed RAF plane over Black Sea
A Russian jet flew within six metres of an RAF spy plane flying at 500mph over the Black Sea, one of two mid-air incidents last month described as “dangerous and unacceptable” by the defence secretary, John Healey.
An Su-27 jet conducted six passes in front of an unarmed RAF Rivet Joint flying close to its nose in mid April, risking a collision that could have caused a diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
Continue reading...A long-running lawsuit over Vizio's Linux-based smart TV software is headed to trial in August, with the Software Freedom Conservancy arguing that GPL rules require Vizio to release complete source code owners could use to modify, maintain, or strip ads and tracking from their TVs. Ars Technica reports: The outcome could reverberate across the industry. Because many of today's popular smart TV operating systems are Linux-based, the case may help determine how much control many owners have over their sets. Access to the full code would allow users to make meaningful changes to how their TVs work, including limiting ads or deactivating automatic content recognition. [...] The Software Freedom Conservancy argues it has the right to Vizio OS's source code because it owns several Vizio TVs and because the operating system is based on Ubuntu, a Linux distribution. (SFC employees bought seven Vizio TVs from 2018 to 2021 after getting complaints about Vizio not sharing its TVs' source code, according to the complaint.) In general, the Linux kernel is provided under the terms of GPLv2, as noted by kernel.org, which is run by the Linux Kernel Organization. SFC's lawsuit alleges that Vizio breached GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 by failing to make available the complete source code for Vizio OS. The case is currently in the Orange County Superior Court of the State of California. The lawsuit targets Vizio specifically, but the impact could extend to other Linux-based smart TV OSes such as LG's webOS, Samsung's Tizen, and Roku's Roku OS. "We expect all companies who distribute Linux and other software using right-to-repair agreements like the GPL in their products would comply with these agreements," Denver Gingerich, the director of compliance at SFC, told Ars. [...] SFC expects a ruling within three to six months of the conclusion of the trial, which is currently scheduled for August 10.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
LAS VEGAS, May 20, 2026 — Dell Technologies has introduced Dell PowerStore Elite, a new class of modern storage platform that delivers advanced performance and efficiency through software-driven innovation and a fully refreshed hardware platform. PowerStore Elite supports block, file, virtual machines and container workloads with mixed-generation clustering that lets existing customers adopt the latest PowerStore without disruption.
Credit: Shutterstock
Enterprise storage decisions have never been more important. Data is exploding. AI workloads are expanding. Cyber threats are intensifying. Flash supply dynamics are putting new pressure on infrastructure planning. And IT teams are expected to modernize through all of it, without adding complexity, risk or operational overhead.
PowerStore Elite is built for this moment. It’s an intelligent, open storage platform combining AI-driven software, next generation hardware and non-disruptive modernization so customers can keep storage infrastructure modern as future requirements change.
Software-Driven Innovation at the Core
PowerStore Elite’s software advancements deliver up to 3x more performance and 3x more throughput than previous generation systems on a unified platform built to adapt as workloads evolve:
Next-Generation Hardware, Standards-Based by Design
PowerStore Elite’s refreshed hardware, based on Intel Xeon Scalable processors with up to 50% more Intel CPU cores, DDR5 memory, PCIe Gen 5 support and a new 200Gb RDMA node interconnect improves internal load balancing and failover.
Available in three new models, Dell PowerStore 1500, 5500 and 9500, PowerStore Elite packs up to 40 drives and 5.8 petabytes of effective capacity into a single 3U chassis. It delivers up to 3x the density of prior generations on low-profile E3 NVMe flash. Because that flash is industry-standard rather than proprietary, customers benefit from broader supply, competitive pricing and freedom from vendor lock-in, a meaningful advantage in today’s constrained supply environment. Up to 40 network ports per appliance, with 64Gb FC (128Gb-ready) and 200/400Gb Ethernet-ready connectivity, provide the flexibility to consolidate workloads at scale.
Industry-Best 6:1 Data Reduction Guarantee
Dell’s data reduction guarantee has long been a competitive advantage. With advancements in data path efficiency and hardware-assisted compression, PowerStore Elite raises the bar from 5:1 to a new industry-best 6:1 guarantee that helps customers offset costs with predictable, long-term storage economics, even in supply constrained environments.
Stay Modern Without Starting Over
PowerStore Elite integrates into existing environments without forcing customers to rethink how they operate. New systems cluster with earlier PowerStore deployments, data and workloads move without downtime, and capacity or performance can be added incrementally where it delivers the most value.
Lifecycle Extension (LCE) reinforces this model by turning modernization into an ongoing benefit. Existing customers can transition to PowerStore Elite more cost-effectively, while new deployments get a predictable path to stay current. Customers receive data-in-place upgrades with deployment included, a dedicated technical advisor and buy-three-get-one-free capacity expansions, all backed by 24/7 Dell ProSupport or ProSupport Plus.
AI-Powered Simplicity
From individual arrays to fleet-wide operations, PowerStore Elite puts AI to work where it matters most. Built-in intelligence reduces manual effort by up to 95%, continuously balancing workloads, tuning performance and improving efficiency in real time.
At the fleet level, Dell AIOps capabilities extend that intelligence across the entire environment with predictive insight and automation, allowing administrators to offload manual reporting, performance trending and capacity planning. With AIOps, customers can resolve issues up to 10x faster than traditional approaches. Dell Cyber Detect is a new integrated offering that extends AI-powered ransomware detection directly into Dell PowerStore. Trained on thousands of ransomware variants and inspecting data at the byte level with 99.99% accuracy, it pinpoints the last known clean copy so organizations can recover fast.
Built to Evolve with Customer Needs
Beyond raw performance, PowerStore is built to adapt as enterprise workloads evolve, extending its capabilities across private cloud, containers and modern application environments.
“Private clouds are only as powerful as the storage underneath them,” said Arthur Lewis, president of Dell’s Infrastructure Solutions Group. “Nearly 20,000 customers trust PowerStore to run their business and with PowerStore Elite, customers get a generational leap in performance and density on a container-based architecture built to evolve with their workloads. That’s what future-proofed infrastructure actually looks like. PowerStore Elite isn’t just the next generation, it’s the new gold standard.”
Availability
More from HPCwire: Dell Expands AI Infrastructure Stack with New Storage, Servers, Cyber Resilience and Automation
About Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) helps organizations and individuals build their digital future and transform how they work, live and play. The company provides customers with the industry’s broadest and most innovative technology and services portfolio for the AI era.
Source: Dell Technologies
The post Dell Introduces PowerStore Elite with AI-Driven Storage and Next-Gen Hardware appeared first on HPCwire.
Soft power institution faces funding crisis linked to Covid-era government loan due to be repaid by September
Staff at the British Council in Italy will go on strike over deep cuts that would slash about 80% of its workforce due to a funding crisis facing the organisation.
Out of 130 of its teaching staff across Rome, Milan and Naples, 108 are being targeted as teaching activities in Italy face the axe. The move would end 80 years of British Council English language teaching in Italy as part of the organisation’s global mission to promote British culture and education across the world, sources said.
Continue reading...  | Hello all. I’ve been wanting to get better at bonking. So I’m gonna do it every day till you guys say they’re perfect. Watching this back I can see I have a long way to go. [link] [comments] |
All three accounts can be viable for your $2,500 over the next year, but here's which one stands out the most.
May 20, 2026 — Anvil, one of Purdue University’s most powerful supercomputers, is undergoing an upgrade to its data repositories in order to provide researchers with easy access to large artificial intelligence (AI) datasets. These AI datasets are hosted on the system and will enable scientific breakthroughs and a faster time-to-discovery using AI and machine learning techniques.
New Anvil datasets available to accelerate discovery driven by AI. Credit: Purdue University.
Datasets are invaluable for research, but this holds especially true for AI research. AI modeling and machine learning typically rely on immediate access to massive collections of data, whether the end goal is to train a new model or to use an existing one for more specific research. Domain-specific datasets accommodate a researcher’s needs via a single package. However, these packets of data have a downside.
The problem inherent in datasets is that they contain exactly what a researcher wants—a colossal amount of data. The sheer volume of information contained within datasets entails an extraordinary storage footprint, long transfer time, and impact on the machine’s memory. Even researchers utilizing HPC resources can be waylaid by the effort of obtaining the datasets they need and ensuring they are located where their system can use them. The Anvil team at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC) decided to help researchers bypass this issue by amassing datasets into a data repository that is pre-downloaded and ready for use on an HPC system, backed by a fast underlying network. Now, anyone with access to Anvil can use these datasets immediately in their work, saving them both time and hassle on their projects, and accelerating research.
“Making popular datasets natively available on Anvil fundamentally changes how researchers work,” said Haniye Kashgarani. “Datasets with very large numbers of files are hosted in Anvil Object Storage and are also made available in optimized formats such as SquashFS and LMDB on the Anvil file system. This immediate, high-performance access allows scientists to fully leverage HPC and AI workflows without the overhead of data transfers, storage constraints, or redundant downloads. As demand grows, additional widely used datasets can be added to the platform upon request.”
The most recent additions to Anvil’s data repositories are its AI datasets. This collection covers computer vision, PhysicalAI, and robotics, and supports tasks such as detection, segmentation, tracking, control, reinforcement learning, and large-scale model pretraining and evaluation across domains, including everyday objects, smart spaces, and embodied PhysicalAI. There are currently nine datasets in the collection, with more to come. The new AI datasets will enable scientists on Anvil to leverage machine learning techniques and quickly develop AI models that can be embedded into physical systems such as robots or drones, without needing to download and manage the data themselves.
In addition to the new AI datasets, Anvil hosts dataset collections for geospatial, hydrological, meteorological, covariates, igenomes, and GeoAI research. In total, these collections amount to over 215TB worth of data. RCAC’s efforts to centralize and host these valuable datasets on Anvil make the data more easily discoverable, accessible, and usable for scientists throughout the nation.
“One of our goals with Anvil is to push the limits of scientific discovery,” says Arman Pazouki, Director of Scientific Applications at RCAC and co-PI on the Anvil project. “Hosting these datasets on Anvil makes research more efficient, allowing our users to focus on conducting science instead of on data management. As a result, researchers will be able to harness the power of AI and machine learning easier than ever before, expediting the rate at which scientific breakthroughs are possible. This is just one small step in how Anvil is helping to reshape the world of research and expand access on a national scale.”
Researchers who would like to use Anvil’s datasets can learn more here.
To learn more about High-Performance Computing and how it can help you, please visit Purdue’s “Why HPC?” page.
Anvil is one of Purdue University’s most powerful supercomputers, providing researchers from diverse backgrounds with advanced computing capabilities. Built through a $10 million system acquisition grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Anvil supports scientific discovery by providing resources through the NSF’s Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS), a program that serves tens of thousands of researchers across the United States. Anvil also supports advanced artificial intelligence research as an official resource provider of the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot.
Researchers may request access to Anvil via the ACCESS allocations process or through the NAIRR allocations process. More information about Anvil is available on Purdue’s Anvil website. Anyone with questions should contact anvil@purdue.edu. Anvil is funded under NSF award No. 2005632.
Source: Jonathan Poole, Purdue University
The post Purdue’s Anvil Streamlines AI Research with Ready-to-Use HPC Data Repositories appeared first on HPCwire.
Retired Capitol police officer and DC officer allege Trump’s $1.8bn fund unlawfully rewards January 6 rioters and allies
Two police officers who clashed with rioters at the US Capitol during the January 6 insurrection in 2021 have sued Donald Trump over plans to create a $1.776bn “anti-weaponization” fund.
The fund, which critics have argued is essentially a slush fund, is set to compensate allies of the US president who he claims were victims of prosecutorial overreach.
Continue reading...Xi Jinping welcomed Vladimir Putin to Beijing with pomp and pageantry, just days after hosting Donald Trump. But as Russia’s war in Ukraine makes Moscow increasingly dependent on China, and western leaders thaw relations with Beijing, what does the power imbalance mean for Xi and Putin’s relationship? Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s deputy head of international news, Devika Bhat
Continue reading...Keir Starmer describes the agreement, worth double original estimates, as a ‘huge win’ for British businesses
Keir Starmer has struck a trade deal with six Gulf states in what he described as a huge win for British business, ending four years of talks led by four different prime ministers.
The deal will offer £3.7bn worth of opportunities for exporters – double the original estimates – particularly in the food and luxury car sectors but also defence, aerospace, hospitality and other services, the government said.
Continue reading...Police said the vehicle became disabled and took on water, prompting the driver and passengers to abandon it before calling for help
Authorities in Texas have removed a Tesla Cybertruck from a lake after the driver intentionally drove into it in an attempt to try the vehicle’s “wade mode.”
On Tuesday, the Grapevine police department announced the vehicle’s recovery from Katie’s Woods Park Boat Ramp, adding that the “driver stated he intentionally drove into the lake to use the Cybertruck’s ‘wade mode’ feature”.
Continue reading...Barney Frank, a Democrat who represented Massachusetts in Congress for 32 years, has died. He was 86 years old.
Asked what he said to Israel's leader about a decision to hold off on new Iran strikes, Trump said Netanyahu will "do whatever I want him to do."
The 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize is facing backlash after several winning entries were accused of being AI-generated, with one Caribbean winner's story flagged as fully AI-written by a detector that WIRED says it independently confirmed. From the report: Each year, the Commonwealth Foundation, a nongovernmental organization in London, awards its short story prize to one writer in each of five regions: Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. One overall winner is then selected from that short list. Regional winners take home [about $3,350], while the top winner, to be announced next month, claims [about $6,700]. On May 12, the respected UK literary magazine Granta published the top five 2026 entries -- all previously unpublished, per the rules of the contest -- on its website. (It has hosted the winning submissions for the prize since 2012.) Within days, however, one entry aroused suspicion. "The Serpent in the Grove," a story by Jamir Nazir of Trinidad and Tobago, which had taken honors for the Caribbean region, struck a few people as bearing the stylistic tells of AI-generated text. "Well, this is a first: a ChatGPT-generated story won a prestigious literary prize," wrote researcher and entrepreneur Nabeel S. Qureshi, a former visiting scholar of AI at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, in a post on X on Monday. "'Not X, not Y, but Z' sentences everywhere, the 'hums' trope, and plenty of other obvious markers of AI writing. A major milestone for AI, at any rate..." "They say the grove still hums at noon," Nazir's mysterious and atmospheric tale begins. In his screenshot of the opening paragraphs, Quereshi highlighted the second line as what he considered to be a signature example of AI syntax: "Not the bees' neat industry or the clean rasp of cutlass on vine, but a belly sound -- as if the earth swallows a shout and holds it there." As the literary community undertook a closer read of Nazir's story, many criticized its language and metaphors as nonsensical, wondering how the Commonwealth judges could have seen any merit to them. Others shared screenshots showing that the AI-detection tool Pangram flagged "The Serpent in the Grove" as 100 percent AI-generated, a result that WIRED independently confirmed. (While no AI-detection software is perfect, third-party analysis has consistently determined Pangram to be the most accurate, with a near-zero rate of false positives.) [...] Besides Nazir, two more winning authors have drawn allegations of using AI in their work. Pangram finds that "The Bastion's Shadow," by Maltese writer John Edward DeMicoli, winner for the Canada and Europe region, is fully AI-generated; it scans "Mehendi Nights," by Indian writer Sharon Aruparayil, winner for the Asia region, as partly AI-generated. Neither DeMicoli nor Aruparayil immediately returned requests for comment when reached through their respective social media accounts. The other two short-listed stories, by Holly Ann Miller of New Zealand and Lisa-Anne Julien of South Africa, deliver "fully human-written" results from Pangram. Wired also reports that one of the judges for the prize has been "accused of using AI to craft her descriptive blurb that accompanied the listing of 'The Serpent in the Grove' as a regional winner.'" Pangram labels the text as "AI-assisted."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tight primary in Philadelphia district, seen as key test of ‘Mamdani moment’ across US, bolsters Democrats’ left flank
Chris Rabb, an unflinching progressive state representative, declared his campaign for Pennsylvania’s third congressional district was “indomitable” after winning the Democratic primary in a race that became a proxy battle over the direction of the Democratic party.
In a significant victory for the party’s left wing, Rabb took roughly 45% of the vote in Tuesday’s contest, comfortably ahead of the early frontrunner, state senator Sharif Street, who fell to under 30%, and surgeon Ala Stanford.
Continue reading...Deal is the biggest acquisition for Murdoch since family resolved dispute over future control of media holdings
James Murdoch, second son of publishing giant Rupert Murdoch, has agreed to acquire some of Vox Media’s assets, including New York Magazine, in a deal believed to be worth about $300m.
The 53-year-old publishing scion is acquiring the assets through his company, Lupa Systems, which has built up holdings in Art Basel, the traveling art fair business, and Tribeca Enterprises, the media and entertainment company co-founded by Robert De Niro, and Bodhi Tree Systems, a strategic investment platform that is a major stakeholder of India’s largest media and entertainment company, JioStar.
Continue reading...Tennessee officials will pay $835,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who was jailed for more than a month over a Facebook post he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Former health secretary standing down after saying he no longer had confidence in Keir Starmer as PM
Labour is in a curious, transitional state at the moment. Officially Keir Starmer is committed to staying as leader and prime minister until the next election. There is no formal leadership contest underway. But, informally, it has already started, with Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting already setting out their offer to the Labour membership. We will hear more from Streeting this afternoon. But much of the parliamentary party is already working on the basis that a Burnham premiership is all-but-inevitable, and so Streeting’s interventions may turn out to be more about shoring up his position in a potential future Burnham administration than a rehearsal for an election that may never happen.
Here are some of the stories out today covering Starmer, Burnham and Streeting.
Ailbhe Rea in the New Statesman says an insider describes the atmosphere in No 10 now as “very, very odd”. She says:
Starmer and his remaining loyal cabinet ministers want to make every day that they are still in office count, and are determined to cut through the noise of the leadership drama. Many cabinet ministers, who may not survive long in their posts if Starmer is replaced as Prime Minister, are desperate to set a legacy and bank achievements in their briefs while they can. “Let’s get out there and make the case for what we’re doing,” has been Starmer’s message to colleagues. There is even a fleeting hope inside Downing Street that the leadership speculation “burns itself out”, that “Wes and Andy tearing chunks out of each other for weeks might just make Keir look better”. But even many loyalists accept that is wishful thinking. “The writing is on the wall, even if we don’t know exactly what form that takes yet,” one concludes.
Patrick Maguire, Geraldine Scott and Larisa Brown in the Times say Starmer could stay in Downing Street until early next year. They report:
Ministers familiar with Starmer’s thinking say he has no plans to step down before the Labour Party conference in September and is unlikely to relinquish office before Christmas.
They told The State of It, the political podcast from The Times and Sunday Times, that there were still significant obstacles ahead for Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, who on Tuesday refused to rule out breaking Labour’s manifesto pledge against tax rises.
Caroline Wheeler in the i says cabinet ministers are already angling for jobs in a Burnham administration. She says:
Senior ministers are preparing visits to Makerfield amid growing expectations in Westminster that Burnham could ultimately take the Labour leadership – and with it the power to appoint the next Cabinet.
“The equation cabinet ministers are making is that if they go and he wins they will get a plum job,” one senior source said. “If they don’t go and he wins, he will remember. And if they don’t go and he loses, he will remember.”
Many now believe that Burnham is lining up to make Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, as his chancellor. It comes as Miliband’s special adviser was seconded to work with Burnham for the by-election campaign …
Burnham is also widely expected to make Lucy Powell, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, his deputy prime minister. Multiple sources said that other women likely to be given top jobs include Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, and Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary, who is also the co-chair of the influential soft-left Tribune group of MPs.
Sam Blewett at Politico has taken an in-depth look at the team supporting Burnham. He says the key figure is Kevin Lee, director of the Greater Manchester mayor’s office, who has been advising Burnham with little break since 2010.
Continue reading...The Amazon founder has denied any personal involvement in the film, which failed to recoup its budget on release
Jeff Bezos has defended Amazon’s controversial Melania documentary as “a good business decision” while denying any personal involvement.
The Amazon founder and executive chairman was asked about the film during an interview on CNBC this week. The film, which followed the first lady in the period before Donald Trump’s second inauguration, was purchased by the company for $40m with Melania herself making a reported $28m. Amazon also spent around $35m on marketing.
Continue reading...A credit card charge-off won't wipe the slate clean, despite what it sounds like. Here's what happens instead.
May 20, 2026 — The new EuroHPC JU-funded project, EuroTPC, launched this month, will enhance European participation in the Trillion Parameter Consortium, a global initiative to advance open and collaborative research on AI for science.
The EuroTPC project will establish a clear and actionable framework to ensure that European perspectives are effectively represented in strategic decisions within the international Trillion Parameter Consortium (TPC).
In parallel, the EuroTPC project will establish a dedicated TPC Office in Europe, serving as a central coordination hub for European participation. The office will support collaboration among European partners, align activities with EU strategic priorities, and contribute to the development of a EuroTPC Roadmap for Europe.
By enabling coordinated European contributions to open, large-scale AI models, including all the data, evaluation and infrastructure around them, the EuroTPC project will support the development of extreme-scale, state-of-the-art, trustworthy, and reliable AI for science aligned with European values, ultimately strengthening Europe’s digital autonomy and competitiveness.
The project will also foster stronger synergies between HPC and AI, supporting the optimisation of massive-scale AI models for critical scientific domains, including climate modelling, drug discovery, and industrial innovation.
Finally, the project will facilitate deep collaboration between the experts from EuroHPC AI Factories, European supercomputing centres, scientific communities, and private entities, leveraging workshops, hackathons, and technical working groups, to ensure broad stakeholder engagement.
More Details
The EuroTPC project’s consortium is led by Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), together with leading European institutions with complementary expertise in HPC, AI and innovation from other four European countries: CSC (Finland), CINECA (Italy), Neovia Innovation (France), and BADW-LRZ (Germany).
The project officially started on May 1, 2026 and will last three years.
The EuroTPC project has been selected following the call for proposal HORIZON-JU-EUROHPC-2025-INCO-01 and is funded by the Horizon Europe program, with a total EU contribution of €1,498,875.
The international Trillion Parameter Consortium (TPC) is a global initiative launched in 2023 to advance open and collaborative research on AI for science. Resulting models, systems and resources are expected to significantly impact scientific discovery, industrial innovation, and public services in the years ahead.
Source: EuroHPC JU
The post EuroHPC Launches EuroTPC to Strengthen Europe’s Role in Global Trillion Parameter Consortium appeared first on HPCwire.
A CBS News medical correspondent and doctor says her "biggest concern for the World Cup is actually measles. It's not hantavirus, it is not Ebola."
The $1.776 billion fund, which is part of the agreement to settle Trump's lawsuit against the IRS and Treasury Dept., is to be used to compensate those who claim that the government weaponized the legal system against them.
The Power of Siberia 2 pipeline could carry 50 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas annually to China.
Bodies of Jane Adetoro, 36, Christina Walter, 32, and Rebecca Walter, 31, from London, were recovered from sea last Wednesday
Three women whose bodies were recovered from the sea off Brighton beach last week have been identified as sisters from London.
Emergency services were called after concerns were raised for a person’s welfare at about 5.45am on 13 May, before three bodies were pulled from the water near Madeira Drive.
Continue reading...Top House Democrat calls out SEC schools for silence
Campaign comes as states move to redraw voter maps
Hakeem Jeffries, the top US House Democrat, has amplified calls for Black athletes to boycott public universities in states that have moved to limit voting rights, saying an “unprecedented moment, featuring an unprecedented attack on Black political representation” requires an “unprecedented response”.
Jeffries’s comments came Tuesday as the NAACP launched its “Out of Bounds” campaign. The campaign targets universities in eight states – Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Georgia – whose athletic programs generate more than $100m in revenue. Those eight states have moved to draw new voter maps after the supreme court’s Louisiana v Callais decision severely weakened the Voting Rights Act.
Continue reading...Commentary: Doom was a landmark creative achievement, while Google I/O's two-hour ode to AI seemed to lack even the barest semblance of genuine ingenuity.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The AI coding boom is now coming directly for Android app development. On Tuesday at Google IO 2026, the company announced new native Android app creation capabilities in its web-based Google AI Studio, shrinking a process that takes weeks of setup and coding down to minutes. The company also said that consumers will be able to use Gemini AI to find the apps they need, both on the Play Store and the web, expanding opportunities for developers to have their apps discovered. Google says the new capabilities could make sense for anyone from a seasoned developer looking to prototype a new app quickly to a first-time creator. [...] The apps are built with the Kotlin programming language using Google's Jetpack Compose toolkit and with support integration with hardware sensors like GPS, Bluetooth, and NFC, the company says. However, the resulting creations, for now, are only meant to be used personally, as publishing for family and friends is still on the roadmap. The company suggests the technology could be used for the creation of personal utilities and simple social apps, hardware-enabled experiences, or AI-powered experiences. Google is also adding an "Ask Play" AI overlay to the Play Store that lets users discover apps through natural-language conversations. "Perhaps more importantly, apps will begin to be surfaced with users' conversations with Google's Gemini virtual assistant, exposing developers' apps to millions of users," adds TechCrunch.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Exclusive: Electoral Commission calls for new controls as Demos finds tools made up fake scandals, invented candidates or gave wrong date
The Electoral Commission has called for new legal controls over misinformation from AI chatbots, after a thinktank found they had made serious mistakes during the recent Scottish election.
The thinktank Demos said its investigation had found that AI services gave voters misinformation to 34% of the questions it posed, which it said raised worrying questions about the lack of regulation of AI platforms in the UK.
Continue reading...Earlier this week, a decision by the Supreme Court to return two federal appeals cases to the lower courts will likely start another significant challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 about who can file violation claims about election districts.
On Monday, in an unsigned order, the justices returned State Board of Election Commissioners v. Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe to the lower courts to be reconsidered in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais. In that 6-3 ruling from late April, the Court narrowed the ability of states to use race as a determining factor under the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 in creating election districts.
In his majority opinion in Callais, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that any use of race in considering the composition of voting districts needed to meet the Court’s most demanding test: strict scrutiny. Justice Elena Kagan called the majority ruling “the latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”
The unsigned order will start the process of integrating the Court majority’s thinking from Callais into how the lower courts may consider when private parties can file claims of racial discrimination in election redistricting cases.
The question of private enforceability of the Voting Rights Act
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP cases were argued in different courts, but they dealt with same issue: Who can file a voting district discrimination claim under the Voting Rights Act or Section 1983, a powerful civil rights statute dating back to the Reconstruction era? In the Turtle Mountain Band case, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, the Spirit Lake Tribe, and three Native American voters sued the North Dakota Secretary of State, alleging that new district election boundaries discriminated against their rights under the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2.
While a district court ruled in the Turtle Mountain Band’s favor, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision. The appeals court said that only the attorney general, and not private parties, could seek to enforce Section 2 violations. It also held that the plaintiffs could not cite Section 1983 as allowing them to pursue a claim in court.
In the Mississippi NAACP case, a three-judge panel for the United States District Court for Southern District of Mississippi Northern Division agreed with the plaintiffs that the state’s 2022 state legislature redistricting maps violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as racial gerrymanders. The state appealed to the Supreme Court, claiming private parties may not sue to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act or seek Section 1983 action to pursue a claim.
The precedents about private enforceability
The big question in the Turtle Mountain Band and Mississippi NAACP cases is the fate of the precedents about the implied rights of private parties to pursue their own Voting Rights Act or Section 1983 enforcement actions. In Turtle Mountain’s writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court, the petitioner cited data from various sources that, nationally, private plaintiffs brought approximately 91 percent of all Voting Rights Act Section 2 challenges between 1982 and 2024. “Section 2 has always been enforced primarily by private litigants. The Eighth Circuit’s decision thus deprives voters in seven states of the ability to protect their own rights under Section 2,” they argued in their petition.
The petitioners also claimed that the Eighth Circuit’s ruling conflicted with the Supreme Court’s precedent of Morse v. Republican Party of Virginia (1996), where the Court agreed that a private right of action existed to enforce Section 10 of the Voting Rights Act. They also cited another precedent, Gonzaga v. Doe (2002), which allows for statutory tests for causes of private action under Section 1983.
Among the arguments against private enforceability of the Voting Rights Act is the decision from a divided Eighth Circuit in 2025 that cited its own recent precedent in Arkansas State Conference NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment (2023). In that decision, a divided panel upheld a district court ruling that “the Voting Rights Act lists only one plaintiff who can enforce Section 2: the Attorney General.”
North Dakota’s secretary of state Michael Howe, in his response to the Turtle Mountain Band’s petition, argued that the courts have not fully considered private enforceability questions. “Until very recently, few courts appear to have actually analyzed whether vote dilution claims are properly enforced by private parties, whether directly under Section 2 or through Section 1983. And long-held assumptions—especially about whether Congress intended to allow statutory claims to be privately enforced—have proven to be unfounded once the Court takes a closer look.”
Howe cited Medina v. Planned Parenthood (2025), where a divided Supreme Court decided that the Medicaid Act’s "any qualified provider" provision did not create a private right of action that individuals can enforce in federal court under Section 1983.
The Supreme Court’s order calls for the two lower courts to consider the Callais decision as a factor in deciding who can bring a Voting Rights Act or Section 1983 challenge about voting districts. The new stricter evidence requirements from Callais would also require higher levels of proof of present-day intentional racial discrimination to pursue a claim. For now, the two cases are starting over in the lower courts, but they may not stay there for long.
In his concurring opinion in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021), Justice Neil Gorsuch noted that “our cases have assumed—without deciding— that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 furnishes an implied cause of action under Section 2. Lower courts have treated this as an open question.” While that question was not at the Court in Brnovich, it will be in front of justices soon.
As for Monday’s order, it was issued with objections from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. The two cases presented “only the question of Section 2’s private enforceability, which our decision in Louisiana v. Callais did not address,” Jackson wrote in Monday’s order. She would have affirmed the Mississippi decision and reversed the Turtle Mountain Band decision.
Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.
Philadelphia, Kansas City and Atlanta are among the hosts showing that price-gouging at this summer’s tournament is, ultimately, a choice
Philadelphia has spotted an opportunity. A chance to burnish a budding reputation as one of the East Coast’s most pleasant and interesting big cities – in the view of this columnist, at least – and one of its most affordable, too.
The ample offering of public transportation to the six 2026 World Cup matches slated for Lincoln Financial Field (dubbed Philadelphia Stadium for the tournament, as per Fifa’s sponsor rules) will set fans back a mere $2.90. Tickets to see those matches are somehow getting cheaper on the secondary market – down about 16% from last month. Hotels are still reasonably priced. And fan fests will remain free for every day of the tournament. There will be no getting charged three times as much for shade, either, as you will in Los Angeles.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Employer of woman who cares for disabled mother was asked to deduct ‘debt’ from salary despite court ruling she had nothing to pay
A woman providing full-time unpaid care for her elderly disabled mother says her job was put in jeopardy after welfare officials wrongly pursued her employer for a nonexistent “benefit debt” quashed by the courts nearly four years ago.
The 44-year-old woman said she was staggered when the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) wrote to her employer out of the blue this month demanding they deduct the long-forgotten universal credit overpayment “debt” from her salary.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Google DeepMind agrees to Acas talks after workers sign petitions about governments’ use of AI for defence and intelligence
Google DeepMind has agreed to enter formal talks with UK tech workers that could lead to trade union representation amid growing staff concerns about the use of its AI by the US and Israeli governments’ defence and intelligence.
In a groundbreaking move, the artificial intelligence arm of the multi-trillion dollar Google empire, led by the Nobel prize winner Demis Hassabis, has agreed to meet the Communications Workers Union and Unite at the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) after workers based at its London headquarters this month voted to make a bid to unionise.
Continue reading...Airstrike at the start of the war was aimed at freeing populist ex-president from house arrest, US newspaper claims
Fresh questions have been raised over the US and Israeli effort to depose the Iranian regime after it was claimed that Israel wanted to put the populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power.
Ahmadinejad’s turbulent presidency, from 2005 to 2013, was marked by incendiary attacks on Israel but he recast himself as a critic of the regime and champion of the poor after falling out with the supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
Continue reading...Jerusalem embassy told to issue protest to Palestinian Authority leaders, warning ‘consequences will follow’ if they do not comply
The US has ordered its Jerusalem embassy to press the Palestinian leadership into dropping a bid for a senior position at the UN general assembly, anxious that the role could allow Palestinians to chair high-profile debates on the Middle East.
A 19 May state department cable seen by the Guardian instructed the US embassy in Jerusalem to issue a demarche (a formal protest) to the leaders of the Palestinian Authority. It put pressure on them to withdraw the bid for a role as vice-president of the general assembly by 22 May, warning that “consequences will follow” if they failed to comply.
Continue reading...A decade after the referendum, EU leaders would welcome closer ties – once the UK has understood the ‘European deal’
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Brexit’s back. Well, sort of. If it ever really went away. At any rate, an awful lot of ink has been spilled – in Britain, at least – over last weekend’s remarks by a would-be PM that Brexit was “a catastrophic mistake” and the UK’s future lay “back in the EU”.
That reflects, first, just how deep the wounds of Brexit still run. A decade after the referendum unleashed an identity politics so powerful it still dominates UK debate, Britain’s voters remain divided into the two warring tribes of remain versus leave.
Continue reading...The pictures represent the longest-distance ever seen between two pictures of the same humpback whale, researchers said.
This blog is now closed
In Brussels, Rutte begins by stressing the importance of Nato ministers meeting in Sweden, the alliance’s “newest ally” who joined in 2024.
“This says a great deal about how fundamentally our security environment has changed, especially when it comes to Europe. It is more dangerous, it is more contested and it makes it all the more important that Nato allies work together to safeguard our freedom and security,” he says.
Continue reading...How tough is the move from college football? We asked three players drafted by the New York Jets in the first round
After a dismal 2025, the future is looking a little brighter for the New York Jets. They selected Texas Tech edge rusher David Bailey second in the 2026 draft and had two more first-round draft picks – Oregon tight end Kenyon Sadiq (No 16) and wide receiver Omar Cooper, from national champions Indiana, who they chose at No 30. We spoke to the trio during their first week at 1 Jets Drive.
What have been the biggest surprises about your first week in the NFL?
Continue reading...Image sensors for phones and digital cameras come in a wide variety of sizes. But does that matter?
Driving sims were overtaken by open world fantasy adventures, but new upgrades show how much joy there is in the genre
I have spent the last week careening around Japan in a Porsche 911, seeing the sights, racing other cars and occasionally veering off the road to plummet through an ancient bamboo forest. You all know what’s coming next … this wasn’t in real life, folks – it was in Forza Horizon 6, the latest instalment in Microsoft’s series of open world driving games set in authentic-looking, real-world locations.
Reviewing this game (which is out now on Xbox and PC, and coming to PS5 later in the year) has reminded me of the sheer fun and exhilaration that driving games can provide. It’s easy to forget, but this was the biggest genre in town from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Consoles were sold on how good their racing games were: the original PlayStation had Ridge Racer, the Sega Saturn had Daytona USA. Later came the dirt-track thrills of Colin McRae Rally, the chaotic destruction of Burnout, the sophisticated realism of Gran Turismo. They were the bestsellers of the era, showcasing the future of real-time 3D visuals.
Continue reading...Critics say employers spend money hiring union-avoidance consultants and lawyers while not investing in workers
US employers spend more than $1.5bn a year on labor union opposition efforts, according to a report published on Wednesday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Employers spent company money hiring consultants and law firms specializing in union avoidance and on legal counsel, representation, and litigation services during union elections and organizing campaigns.
Continue reading...With September approaching, the iPhone 18 rumor mill is pointing toward a foldable debut, a variable aperture camera and a release calendar Apple has never tried before.
Flash flood warnings and school closures in Texas as the US north-east breaks heat records before a dramatic cooldown
Hundreds of flight cancellations have been reported in Texas as storms roll over the state, leading to flash flood warnings and school closures, while punishingly high temperatures in the north-east break records before a dramatic cool-down.
Nearly 150 flights were canceled or delayed at Dallas Fort Worth international airport on Wednesday and nearly 700 delayed on Tuesday, according to Flightaware. The FAA issued a ground stop in Dallas and Love Field.
Continue reading...Say goodbye to watery homemade iced tea and coffee and bag this magic chiller ahead of summer.
The Massachusetts Democrat led a sweeping overhaul of the financial industry and was one of the first openly gay members of Congress.
Choreography of back-to-back visits appeared deliberately mirrored but China made sure the differences were noticed
Days after Donald Trump was greeted in Beijing with a military band, an honour guard and dozens of youths waving American and Chinese flags, Vladimir Putin arrived in China to an almost identical spectacle.
The choreography of the two welcomes appeared deliberately mirrored, designed to showcase Beijing’s ability to host leaders from Washington and Moscow with equal grandeur.
Continue reading...Vilnius residents urged to take shelter during alert, after Nato and EU warn that Russia is diverting Ukraine’s drones
Lithuania’s president and prime minister were rushed to underground bunkers and residents of the capital, Vilnius, urged to take shelter during a warning issued after a drone violated the country’s airspace.
Air and train traffic in and around the city was suspended after the mobile phone “take shelter” alert, the first issued in an EU and Nato country since the start of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Continue reading...The Climate Briefing: Oil and gas producers in the Gulf: a deep dive (part 2 of 2) Audio thilton.drupal
Anna and Bhargabi speak with Robin Mills (Qamar Energy), Jessica Obeid (New Energy Consult) and Neil Quilliam about how the countries around the Gulf are approaching – and may be impacted by – the energy transition.
All eyes are currently on the Gulf due to the US-Israeli war on Iran and the disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz. In this two-part series, the Climate Briefing co-hosts and their guests take a deep dive into the region, which plays a crucial role in the global supply of oil and gas.
The first part of the series (released on 21 April) delved into the history of the region, addressing questions such as: How did the Gulf countries become such dominant fossil fuel exporters? What has this dominance meant for their geopolitical influence? And what role have oil and gas played in conflicts and coups in the region?
Part 2 focuses on how the countries around the Gulf are approaching – and may be impacted by – the energy transition. It also explores the implications that the US-Israeli war on Iran could have for the region in the medium to long term.
To discuss these issues, Anna and Bhargabi are joined by Robin Mills (CEO of Qamar Energy and Non-Resident Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University), Dr Neil Quilliam (Associate Fellow with Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme and Partner at Azure Strategy), and Jessica Obeid (Founding Partner at New Energy Consult and Board Advisor to various energy and policy institutions).
The Climate Briefing explores key themes in the UN climate negotiations and international climate politics. The podcast is hosted by Bhargabi Bharadwaj and Anna Aberg from Chatham House and features interviewees from governments, international organizations, academia and civil society organizations from across the world.
You can also listen to The Climate Briefing on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
The aircraft entered the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area Special Flight Rules Area, or DC SFRA, around 11:15 a.m. on Tuesday.
New site will strengthen Queensland’s role in advanced manufacturing and accelerate company’s path to utility-scale quantum computing
BRISBANE, Australia, May 20, 2026 — PsiQuantum today announced that the company will anchor its project to build the world’s first utility-scale quantum computer at Moreton Bay Central. Early site works have commenced ahead of a formal groundbreaking in June.
Image Credit: City of Moreton Bay
The site, located in City of Moreton Bay, is home to a developing precinct slated to host several events during the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Brisbane. The precinct is also home to the University of the Sunshine Coast’s Moreton Bay Campus and is the future site of a Technical and Further Education (TAFE) Centre of Excellence dedicated to advanced manufacturing.
“PsiQuantum’s mission to build the world’s first utility-scale quantum computer requires speed, agility, and strong partnerships,” said Victor Peng, Interim Chief Executive Officer of PsiQuantum. “City of Moreton Bay provides the infrastructure, scalability, and collaborative environment we need to deliver. We look forward to continued partnership with City of Moreton Bay and our partners in the Federal and Queensland governments to move this project forward and realise this technology.”
PsiQuantum partnered closely with City of Moreton Bay to identify and secure a site capable of supporting the infrastructure and operational requirements for utility-scale quantum computing. The precinct sits on the site of the former Petrie Paper Mill, which was equipped to support large-scale industrial operations, and has the power and utility infrastructure needed for complex manufacturing.
Ahead of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games and additional development at the precinct, new energy infrastructure has also been commissioned. The Moreton Bay Central site ultimately offers PsiQuantum the strongest pathway to meeting the company’s technical requirements and development plans at speed and scale.
The project also presents an opportunity for PsiQuantum to help shape a broader, long-term innovation ecosystem, supporting skills development, attracting talent and enabling future-focused industries supported by the next generation of computing.
The project reflects the Queensland city’s growing reputation as a destination for globally significant industries.
“PsiQuantum’s decision to establish its project in City of Moreton Bay is a significant opportunity for economic growth, not just for our city but for Queensland,” said Peter Flannery, Mayor of City of Moreton Bay. “This investment will help drive highly skilled jobs, attract new industry, and strengthen Queensland’s position in advanced manufacturing and future technologies. Moreton Bay Central is becoming a destination for businesses looking to grow alongside a skilled workforce, strong infrastructure and leading education and training institutions.”
“Bringing together world-leading technology alongside the University of the Sunshine Coast, TAFE Queensland and a growing advanced manufacturing sector creates real opportunities for collaboration, skills development and innovation,” said Jodie Shipway, Deputy Mayor of City of Moreton Bay. “This is about more than a single project, it’s about building a connected innovation precinct where education, research and industry work side-by-side to drive new jobs, new capability and long-term economic growth for Queensland.”
“Welcoming PsiQuantum to Moreton Bay Central is a major milestone for our city,” said Scott Waters, CEO of City of Moreton Bay. “This precinct is designed to bring together industry, research and community, and this project will help drive long-term innovation, investment and jobs for Moreton Bay Central and Queensland.”
PsiQuantum appreciates the collaboration and partnership with the Brisbane Airport Corporation following the company’s 2024 announcement that it would build the world’s first utility-scale quantum computer in Brisbane.
“Brisbane Airport has been a constructive partner to PsiQuantum, and we thank the team for the positive engagement and support shown throughout our time working together,” said Robert Lindwall, Head of Operations for PsiQuantum in Australia. “We greatly appreciate the professionalism and cooperation of the Brisbane Airport team during this process.”
“Quantum computing will deliver great benefits for Queensland, from accelerating breakthroughs in health and climate science to strengthening the state’s advanced industries and we look forward to seeing the positive impacts PsiQuantum will achieve,” said Brisbane Airport’s Executive General Manager Commercial Scott Norris. “With established infrastructure, strong connectivity and transport links, Brisbane Airport continues to accelerate the release and development of strategically located land for industry and business, making it an ideal base for technology, innovation and research to grow.”
Next week, PsiQuantum will open its Test and Validation Lab at Griffith University’s Nathan campus, marking an important step in building Queensland’s quantum research, engineering, and technical capability as the industry continues to develop.
About PsiQuantum
PsiQuantum was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The company’s mission is to build and deploy the world’s first useful quantum computers. PsiQuantum’s photonic approach enables it to leverage high-volume semiconductor manufacturing, existing cryogenic infrastructure, and architectural flexibility to rapidly scale its systems. Learn more at www.psiquantum.com.
Source: PsiQuantum
The post PsiQuantum Unveils New Australian Site at Moreton Bay Central appeared first on HPCwire.
Collaboration targets quantum-enhanced approaches to simulation and design challenges across aerospace, life sciences, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing
BROOMFIELD, Colo., May 20, 2026 — Quantinuum has announced a strategic collaboration with Synopsys, a global leader in electronic design automation and engineering simulation, focused on the integration of quantum computing into the modern engineering toolkit to help overcome the “computational wall” believed to be limiting the pace of industrial innovation.
Modern industrial design depends on high-fidelity simulation to make better decisions earlier — potentially reducing costly prototypes, shortening development cycles, and improving product performance. Across aerospace and advanced electronics, teams rely on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and electromagnetic simulation to predict real-world behavior before build and test.
However, as products become more complex, simulation workloads scale dramatically and can require computational resources that exceed the capabilities of even the most advanced classical supercomputers. As a result, engineers must increasingly balance simulation accuracy against runtime, cost and development speed. The collaboration between Quantinuum and Synopsys seeks to overcome these limitations by integrating quantum computing capabilities directly into advanced engineering workflows.
“Our goal is to turn quantum computing into a practical business advantage for the world’s most innovative companies,” said Dr. Rajeeb Hazra, President and CEO of Quantinuum. “By improving how these core design equations are solved, we aim to help innovators explore more accurate models and accelerate breakthroughs in materials and next-generation technologies.”
The companies aim to build a scalable, end-to-end workflow that integrates quantum algorithms directly into existing industrial software and libraries. By combining the industry-leading accuracy of Quantinuum’s systems with Synopsys’ deep expertise in engineering simulation and design tools, the partnership aims to make quantum computing a functional part of the modern engineering toolkit.
“This partnership is about giving innovators the tools they need to solve the world’s most difficult design challenges,” said Prith Banerjee, Senior Vice President of Innovation at Synopsys. “By integrating quantum computing into today’s engineering workflows, we believe we can accelerate innovation while maintaining the standards and reliability that customers trust.”
The collaboration focuses on three key goals aimed at driving value for the engineering sector:
By building on established CFD and electromagnetic capabilities, this effort aims to allow that as quantum computers scale, industrial engineers can explore future computational advantages without having to reinvent their design process. This approach builds on decades of validated engineering expertise while opening a new potential path alongside the new frontier for computing.
More from HPCwire: Honeywell Confirms Quantinuum IPO Filing as Quantum Firms Face Market Scrutiny
About Quantinuum
Quantinuum is a leading quantum computing company offering a full-stack platform designed to make quantum computing deployable in real-world environments. The company has commercially deployed multiple generations of quantum systems built on the well-established QCCD architecture, which it has implemented with novel designs and capabilities to achieve the industry’s highest accuracy levels based on average two-qubit gate fidelity. Quantinuum has active engagements with market leaders across pharmaceuticals, material science, financial services, and government and industrial markets.
The company has a global workforce of approximately 700 employees, including top scientists and researchers. Over 70% of its technology team holds PhDs and Master’s degrees. Quantinuum’s headquarters is in Broomfield, Colorado, with additional facilities across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Qatar, and Singapore.
Source: Quantinuum
The post Quantinuum and Synopsys Partner to Bring Quantum Computing to Industrial Design appeared first on HPCwire.
LOUISVILLE, Colo., May 20, 2026 — Infleqtion today highlighted recent quantum computing advances that strengthen the company’s progress toward utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing: the release of resource-superstaq, a new open-source architecture-level resource estimation package; a record dual-species rubidium-cesium entangling gate; a new theory preprint co-authored by Professor Mark Saffman, Infleqtion’s Chief Scientist for Quantum Information, showing a path to neutral-atom entangling-gate fidelity beyond 99.9%; and a static magnetic-field approach to sub-Doppler cooling and optical atom transport.
Together, the advances demonstrate the strength of Infleqtion’s full-stack approach to neutral-atom quantum computing, combining hardware-aware software, quantum error correction-enabling architectures, high-fidelity dual-species operations, gate-design theory for lower physical error rates, and scalable atom motion. By tightly coupling hardware development, quantum error correction, resource estimation, compilation and application design, Infleqtion is working to shorten the timeline to transformative quantum computing. The announced capabilities are designed to reduce resource overhead, support more efficient magic-state production, advance high-fidelity entangling operations, and enable fast, in-place syndrome measurement for scalable fault-tolerant systems.
“What’s notable about these breakthroughs is that we’re moving the needle on quantum software, hardware and theory simultaneously. Each of these advances represents a distinct layer of the quantum stack, from how we move atoms to how well our qubits perform to how developers interact with our systems,” said Pranav Gokhale, Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of Quantum Computing of Infleqtion. “Neutral atoms give us a uniquely flexible platform to do that since progress in one layer unlocks progress in the others. Collectively, these breakthroughs show how we’re building the entire foundation needed to unlock utility-scale quantum computing.”
Open-Source Resource Estimation for Fault-Tolerant Application Planning
Infleqtion has open-sourced resource-superstaq, the newest addition to the suite of tools and packages within Infleqtion’s commercial Superstaq quantum software platform. The technical preprint is available at Resource Estimation via Efficient Compilation of Key Quantum Primitives.
Quantum resource estimation is a critical element of modern quantum application development, enabling developers to extrapolate the quantum computing resources, including qubit count and circuit runtime, needed to execute an application at scale. Comparing these estimates with publicly available hardware roadmaps is one of the most direct methods for evaluating timelines for commercial-scale quantum solutions.
The new open-source package provides a practical on-ramp for customers, collaborators and researchers preparing applications for Infleqtion’s neutral-atom quantum computers. By estimating the resources required to execute fault-tolerant workloads on Infleqtion-relevant neutral-atom architectures, resource-superstaq gives users clearer insight into how their applications are expected to perform on Infleqtion systems, including projected qubit requirements, runtime and sensitivity to key compilation and error-correction assumptions. The tool also supports Infleqtion’s hardware and architecture development by helping evaluate how design choices such as atom movement, measurement zones, multi-species arrays and QEC implementation strategies affect application-level performance.
Because implementation and evaluation of neutral-atom hardware design decisions require substantial theoretical modeling and device engineering, resource-superstaq is designed to support a rapid design iteration cycle. The tool enables Infleqtion to efficiently explore the design space for fault-tolerant neutral-atom quantum computers and pair effective physical architectures and QEC-enabling middleware with high-impact applications.
By making resource-superstaq openly available, Infleqtion is giving customers, collaborators and the broader quantum research community a clearer view into how fault-tolerant quantum applications will perform on neutral-atom systems. The release allows users to explore the assumptions behind resource estimates, test the tool against their own workloads, and contribute improvements that expand its usefulness over time. This open, collaborative approach is intended to accelerate application readiness, strengthen confidence in resource estimates, and help the ecosystem make more informed decisions as the industry advances toward fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Development of resource-superstaq was performed in collaboration with the University of Chicago.
“Resource estimation only means something if it reflects how the hardware actually works. That’s what makes this collaboration with Infleqtion so valuable,” said Professor Fred Chong of the University of Chicago. “Resource-superstaq is built around the real characteristics of Infleqtion’s neutral-atom systems, which means the estimates it produces are ones the research community can actually test, challenge, and build on. Enabling researchers to validate the assumptions behind a resource estimate is one of the best ways we can accelerate the path to fault-tolerant quantum computing.”
Record Dual-Species Rb-Cs Gate Fidelity for In-Place Syndrome Measurement
Infleqtion researchers also demonstrated what the company believes is a world-record dual-species rubidium-cesium entangling gate fidelity in a neutral-atom quantum computing platform. The work, described in Qubit syndrome measurements with a high fidelity Rb-Cs Rydberg gate, reports an inter-species Rydberg gate between Rb and Cs atoms with world-record fidelity of 0.975 ± 0.002.
The dual-species architecture is a key element of Infleqtion’s roadmap because it enables fast, in-place quantum non-demolition qubit measurements for quantum error correction. By using different atomic species for data and ancilla qubits, Infleqtion’s approach can perform measurement operations with reduced disturbance to nearby data qubits, helping avoid additional movement or shelving operations that can slow logical cycle rates and add error.
The same work demonstrates multi-atom error syndrome measurements on two- and three-qubit plaquettes, core building blocks for surface-code quantum error correction. Infleqtion’s architecture combines fast in-place syndrome measurement enabled by the dual-species approach with in-place atom addressing and atom motion capabilities, creating a flexible platform for the physical operations required by fault-tolerant neutral-atom systems.
New Theory Work Shows Path to >99.9% Neutral-Atom Entangling Gates
Complementing Infleqtion’s experimental dual-species gate result, a new theory preprint from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, co-authored by Professor Mark Saffman, Infleqtion’s Chief Scientist for Quantum Information, identifies a path to improving neutral-atom entangling gate fidelities beyond 99.9%. The paper, Entangling gate performance and fidelity limits with neutral atom Förster resonances, outlines how refinements to Rydberg gate design could significantly improve one of the core building blocks required for fault-tolerant quantum computing.
High-fidelity entangling gates are essential to reducing the overhead required for quantum error correction. By showing a credible path to lower physical error rates, the new theory work complements Infleqtion’s recent hardware progress and supports the company’s broader roadmap toward scalable, fault-tolerant neutral-atom quantum computers.
The result also highlights one of the key advantages of neutral-atom systems: the ability to combine high-fidelity operations, flexible connectivity and scalable architectures in a platform designed for quantum error correction. Together with Infleqtion’s dual-species gate demonstration, resource estimation tools and atom motion advances, the work strengthens the case for neutral atoms as a leading path toward utility-scale quantum computing.
“This work demonstrates a credible path toward entangling-gate fidelities beyond 99.9%, an important milestone for scaling reliable quantum systems,” said Professor Mark Saffman, Chief Scientist for Quantum Information at Infleqtion. “Continued advances in gate performance can significantly reduce the overhead associated with quantum error correction and help accelerate the development of commercially useful quantum computers.”
Static Magnetic-Field Atom Transport for Scalable Neutral-Atom Architectures
Infleqtion also announced a new static magnetic-field technique for sub-Doppler cooling and optical transport of cesium atoms, described in Sub-Doppler laser cooling and optical transport of cesium with static magnetic fields. The result establishes a more effective approach for atom motion, a critical capability for neutral-atom quantum computing architectures.
Neutral-atom systems rely on the ability to prepare, move and arrange atoms while preserving coherence and minimizing operational complexity. Conventional alkali atom cooling often requires time-varying magnetic fields, which can introduce unwanted coupling between atom preparation and coherent operations. Infleqtion’s static-field approach enables sub-Doppler cooling and optical transport of cesium while keeping the magnetic-field gradient unchanged.
In the reported demonstration, Infleqtion achieved 17 μK temperatures, direct loading into a shallow optical lattice, and optical transport over 17 cm within the same static-field environment. The work supports continuous-operation architectures by spatially separating atom preparation from regions requiring long coherence times and by delivering millions of atoms per second to a science cell.
Webinar to Present and Discuss Results
Infleqtion will host a webinar on June 24, 2026 at 10:00am MDT to present its recent results and discuss their implications for fault-tolerant neutral-atom quantum computing, resource estimation, quantum error correction, high-fidelity entangling-gate design and scalable atom motion. Registration is available here.
About Infleqtion
Infleqtion, Inc. (NYSE: INFQ) is a global leader in quantum technology, delivering neutral-atom solutions for quantum computing, networking, sensing, and security. With a product portfolio spanning quantum computers, quantum optical clocks, RF receivers, and inertial sensors, Infleqtion’s full-stack approach combines high-performance hardware with the company’s proprietary Superstaq quantum computing software platform. Infleqtion’s systems are already in use by the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, the U.K. government, and in multiple collaborations with NVIDIA. With operations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, Infleqtion meets the demands of government and commercial customers across the space, defense, energy, finance and telecommunications sectors.
Source: Infleqtion
The post Infleqtion Advances Neutral-Atom Roadmap with Resource-Superstaq and Dual-Species Gate Milestones appeared first on HPCwire.
Young Americans are suing the president for violating rights with executive orders that fuel the climate crisis
Eva Lighthiser was at a dorm party on her Colorado college campus last month when she had to call it an early night.
“I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got to go to bed, I’m flying out to Portland tomorrow,’ and then of course follow-up questions get raised,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Well, it’s a lot to explain.’”
Continue reading...Ive been riding XR and Pint for a few years now, and when my XR was “in the shop” and I was just riding my Pint, I found I really like how nimble it is. So that has me looking at the FW Atom, finger hovering over the early bird “order now” button. But I am hesitating because I do find the Pint size just a little small for me. The Atom says it has “wider footpads” but I’d really love to know the actual measurements, tip-to-tail and side-to-side, tire size, hub etc. im hoping it is more like a Growler in size/ride. I could wait for early reviews to come in I guess, but I’m not sure I can hold out!
Dr Peter Stafford’s wife and four children are also being monitored for symptoms amid Ebola outbreak in Congo
An American doctor who contracted Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been flown to Germany for treatment, along with his wife and four children, as the World Health Organization warned of the “scale and speed” of the outbreak.
Authorities have reported at least 134 suspected deaths and more than 500 cases of the hemorrhagic Bundibugyo virus, which has no approved treatments or vaccines. The outbreak, which has spread into urban areas, has been declared a public health emergency requiring international response.
Continue reading...After testing out the Hypershell X Ultra S exoskeleton on a Grand Canyon hike, I learned that this tech is a tool, not a cure for my disability. Here’s what it can do for you.
Billionaire philanthropist’s Open Society Foundations has worked to advance justice and human rights around world
For decades, the Open Society Foundations have worked to advance justice and human rights in Africa, the Middle East and trouble spots around the world. But the OSF’s latest major investment is aimed at a crisis closer to home.
On Tuesday, the organisation, founded by the billionaire philanthropist George Soros and headquartered in New York, announced a $300m spend aimed at boosting economic security and defending civil liberties in the US.
Continue reading...Commentary: At Google I/O 2026, the tech giant was obsessed with talking to itself. From the outside, it felt remorseless and exhausting.
Blue Apron ditched the subscription requirement and revamped the business in more ways than one. Here's our full review.
A prosecutor in the trial of a former assistant principal facing criminal charges over a 2023 school shooting said she dismissed concerns about a gun in a student's bag.
The singer was one of her country’s most’s popular musical exports, and travelled the world with an evangelistic vision for spreading cumbia music
Totó la Momposina, one of the most celebrated musicians in Colombian history, has died aged 85.
Her three children announced her death from a heart attack on Instagram. “Totó was a woman who, with her voice and extraordinary dedication, carried the culture and memory of the Colombian people to the far corners of the world,” they added.
Continue reading...U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class and Afghanistan war veteran Jose Serrano told CBS News his wife, Deisy Rivera Ortega, was detained by ICE despite doing the "right thing."
PM tells Commons extending the temporary 5p cut is a necessary response to cost-of-living pressures
Keir Starmer has announced an extension to the temporary 5p cut in fuel duty, as widely expected, telling the Commons it was a necessary response to cost-of-living pressures.
Before a wider package of measures due to be announced by Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, on Thursday, Starmer used prime minister’s questions to announce the extended freeze and a vehicle tax break for the haulage industry.
Continue reading...US president, like a cult leader whose commune keeps getting smaller, commands fierce loyalty from a shrinking base
“Thomas Massie caught in a throuple!” screamed the AI-generated attack ad that showed the Republican congressman supposedly dining with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar then checking into a hotel with the two progressives. “Thomas Massie betrayed President Trump!” it added.
Crude but effective, as it turns out. Massie, from northern Kentucky, lost the most expensive House of Representatives primary election in history on Tuesday to Ed Gallrein, a farmer and former US Navy Seal backed by Donald Trump.
Continue reading...Raúl Castro is being indicted on charges related to Cuba's deadly 1996 shootdown of planes operated by humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue, U.S. officials told CBS News earlier this month.
The flow of arms and money feeding the war in Sudan can be cut. What is missing is the will Expert comment jon.wallace
Diplomacy that does not disrupt the flow of foreign weapons, finance, and logistics into Sudan is underwriting, rather than ending the war.
It is three years since conflict broke out between the two armed centres of power in Sudan: the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The war has created a humanitarian crisis that is the worst in the world according to the UN, with 14 million people displaced.
Although its roots are domestic, it is non-Sudanese actors that have kept the war alive. Externally procured weapons and cross-border logistical pipelines have sustained the battlefield capacity of both the SAF and RSF. That support shapes each side’s calculus, making continued fighting appear more rational than a negotiated exit.
This diagnosis is increasingly articulated by policymakers and diplomats. Yet a coherent international strategy to disrupt flows of arms and funding into Sudan has yet to emerge.
The April 2026 Berlin Conference crystallized that failure. It did deliver €1.5 billion in humanitarian pledges. And the Berlin Principles for Sudan is the most explicit multilateral call yet for external backers to halt their support to the SAF and RSF.
But the Principles did not rule out the prospect of these warring parties controlling Sudan’s transition to peace. And it shied away from naming their external backers. It also made no recommendations on how to disrupt arms pipelines and imposed no real costs on the war’s enablers.
The Quad – a group including the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, intended to lead efforts to end the war – has done little better. Its September roadmap contained no enforcement mechanism and was rejected by the SAF before it could be tested.
That reflects the Quad’s structural dysfunction: The UAE and Egypt are accused of enabling Sudan’s warring parties, yet are expected to play a leading role in efforts to secure a ceasefire.
Regardless of these failures, the US and its partners have the means to pressure those fuelling the war to fulfil their commitments to end it. What has been missing is the will.
The UAE’s role in sustaining the war remains the most consequential, and the most documented. A Wall Street Journal investigation, Amnesty International field documentation, and UN expert reporting all allege that the UAE has transferred arms to the RSF, including advanced Chinese drone systems. Abu Dhabi strongly rejects claims that it supports the RSF and has faced no formal censure.
On the other side, Turkey reportedly supplied Bayraktar-type drone systems to the SAF at virtually no diplomatic cost (Turkey denies providing drones directly to the SAF). Iran is also alleged to have supplied drones to the SAF – something the SAF denies.
One thing is certain: drone strikes in Sudan have surged, accounting for over 80 per cent of at least 880 documented civilian deaths between January and April 2026 alone.
But scrutiny of these non-African suppliers has obscured the role of regional actors in perpetuating the war.
Egypt publicly champions Sudan’s territorial integrity while supporting the SAF – and has integrated its commodity networks in the SAF war economy. It has also reportedly established a drone base in the Oweinat tri-border area with Libya and Sudan. That could signal a growing entanglement in the conflict.
Reports indicate that Eritrea has hosted and trained pro-SAF militia in Eastern Sudan, helping the army retake central Sudan and Khartoum from the RSF last year. Ethiopia, meanwhile, has reportedly allowed its territory to be used to train RSF fighters. And this month the SAF accused Ethiopia – and the UAE – of being linked to a drone strike on Khartoum’s international airport: both countries denied involvement.
Ethiopia also sits on the AU’s Peace and Security Council (PSC) alongside Uganda – which the SAF accuses of backing the RSF: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni met with the RSF commander known as ‘Hemedti’ earlier this year. The situation makes the PSC structurally incapable of holding either party in the war to account.
Other countries also have significant roles. The UN confirms that Libyan territory has been used to facilitate cross-border movements of fighters, arms and materiel to the RSF. And the UN identifies similar supply lines through Chad.
Early this year, Kenya hosted RSF representatives in Nairobi, allowing them to announce the formation of a parallel government. The SAF accuses Kenya of supporting the RSF but President William Ruto strongly denies those claims.
The war has generated a business logic that is now self-sustaining. Chatham House has documented gold as the war’s connective tissue, leaving Sudan through informal corridors across East Africa, with South Sudan a key RSF logistics node.
What Sudan needs now is ‘deproxification’: the end of the process by which external actors fuel the war, with the SAF and RSF acting as their proxies. This must involve the coordinated disruption of every arms route, gold shipment, and logistics corridor keeping the war alive.
The US holds the greatest leverage but has yet to show the willingness to use it. Sanctions could impose real costs on the UAE for its patronage of the RSF. But Washington will not easily take such a step: it views good relations with the UAE as essential to the success of its policy regarding Gaza, Iran, and the Abraham Accords.
The Trump administration should seriously consider handing the Sudan file to Vice President JD Vance. Both Tom Perrielo (President Biden’s Special Envoy) and Massad Boulos (Trump’s Senior Adviser for Arab and African Affairs) have carried insufficient weight in Abu Dhabi. Vance would likely be taken more seriously, having conducted high-stakes back-channel diplomacy on the Iran war. He would draw international media attention to the war. And, as vice president, he has more power to coordinate action across the US Treasury, State Department and others.
UK report argues people have greater control over longevity than widely understood, but others say claim is simplistic
Individuals bear at least 80% of the responsibility for their ill health in old age, according to a report aimed at challenging the belief that physical decline is either inevitable or primarily the responsibility of the state.
The report, launched at the Smart Ageing Summit in Oxford last week, argues that individuals have far greater control over their longevity than is commonly understood. The authors call on the government to take legislative action on alcohol comparable to restrictions on smoking.
Continue reading...WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says risks from the Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda are "high at the national and regional levels, and low at the global level."
Keisha Lance Bottoms wins Democratic primary outright, while Republicans Burt Jones and Rick Jackson will face off
The Republican primary campaign for Georgia governor will go to a June runoff, with the lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, facing off against the healthcare billionaire and political newcomer Rick Jackson – and locking out Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state and longtime political enemy of Donald Trump who was on track to finish a distant third.
Jackson, a political newcomer who was relatively unknown in the state, upended the contest by pouring nearly $50m of his own money into campaign advertising. Republican candidates spent more than $100m in total, according to tracking figures from AdImpact. Jones, who has been endorsed by Trump, and Jackson will continue their showdown on 16 June, which has soaked up almost all of the available advertising inventory on Georgia television.
Continue reading...The grinder makes the biggest difference in your home coffee setup. Here's what a coffee expert told me to use.
Seven-term incumbent had spoken out against Iran war, government spending and Jeffrey Epstein files. Plus, Trump’s ‘board of peace’ receives just $23m to rebuild Gaza
Good morning.
Voters in northern Kentucky on Tuesday rejected the incumbent congressman Thomas Massie, who has been critical of Donald Trump, in favor of the president’s hand-picked candidate.
Where else held primaries on Tuesday? Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, Oregon and Idaho. Georgia also delivered a defeat to a prominent Trump critic, while a Trump ally won in Alabama, too.
How significant was Kentucky? Massie, a seven-term incumbent, has been an outspoken GOP opponent to Trump – repeatedly clashing with the president over Iran, government spending and the Jeffrey Epstein files. In response, Trump treated the primary as a personal vendetta.
What is at the top of the agenda? For Putin, it is likely to be reciprocal trade and investment, as Russia’s economy continues to suffer over the cost of its war in Ukraine and related sanctions. China, Russia’s largest trading partner, buys almost half of Moscow’s oil exports.
What about foreign policy? Xi said the world was in danger of returning to the “law of the jungle”, adding that further hostilities in the Middle East were “inadvisable”, and calling for a ceasefire, state media reported.
Continue reading...Almost 50 years after he first got his hands on a computer, the Oxford professor still believes in the power of technology. Can his beloved game theory explain why Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs consistently misuse it?
Michael Wooldridge is like the teacher you wish you’d had: approachable, able to explain difficult things in simple terms, neither dauntingly highbrow nor off-puttingly cool, and genuinely enthusiastic about what he does. “I love it when you see the light go on in somebody, when they understand something that they didn’t understand before,” he says. “I find that incredibly gratifying.”
He comes across a regular sort of guy, which, as an Oxford professor with more than 500 scientific articles and 10 books to his name, he clearly isn’t. Typically, his favourite work is his contribution to Ladybird’s Expert Books – an update of the classic children’s series – on artificial intelligence. “I’m very proud of this,” he says, as he hands me a copy from his bookshelf. We’re in his study in the University of Oxford’s somewhat municipal computing department on a sunny spring day. Maybe it’s the campus setting, but our discussion almost takes the form of a seminar.
Continue reading...A New York exhibit of more than 3,000 volumes bills itself as ‘an exercise in radical transparency’ – and a bid for attention
This February, a story broke that seemed like it might finally be the one. Reporters at NPR had noticed that there were pages missing from the enormous tranche of Epstein files released by the Department of Justice. Further reporting revealed that the files in question were 2019 FBI interviews with a woman who claimed to have been sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump when she was a minor. The justice department had no good explanation for why the documents had been withheld. Trump issued blanket denials.
It was all starting to feel like a good old-fashioned something-gate, the kind of scandal that might even bring down a presidency. But then, as with so many other stories in the era of Trump, its spark was subsumed by a new fire. On 28 February, Trump launched an unprovoked and likely illegal war against Iran, and the Epstein files were once again pushed off the front pages.
Continue reading...
As reporters at the Lexington Herald-Leader, we first started hearing troubling stories in 2023 from former clients and staff of Addiction Recovery Care, once Kentucky’s largest residential addiction treatment service provider. Over the last three years, we have spoken with dozens of former and current ARC clients and staff. And in April, we teamed up with ProPublica to publish a story detailing how ARC allegedly used staff to falsely bill Kentucky Medicaid for millions, an allegation the company denies.
For our next story, we want to take a closer look at how ARC treated the people who came to the organization seeking help with their sobriety. We are particularly interested in hearing from clients, as well as staff who worked closely with clients to deliver care.
If you were or are an ARC client or employee, tell us about your experience with the treatment provider. Your perspective will help guide our reporting, ensuring we understand the issues from all sides.
You can fill out our brief form or email Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Alex Acquisto aacquisto@herald-leader.com.
We take your privacy seriously and will contact you if we wish to publish any part of your story.
We’re gathering these stories for our reporting, which can take several weeks or months. We may not be able to follow up with everyone, but we will read everything you submit and it will help guide our project.
The post Tell Us About Your Experience With Kentucky’s Addiction Recovery Care appeared first on ProPublica.
Google is again pressuring some longtime G Suite Legacy users to move onto paid Workspace plans, warning that accounts flagged as "commercial use" could lose access to Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and other services if appeals fail. "The trouble, according to users, is that the appeals system appears about as transparent as a brick," adds The Register. From the report: A reader alerted The Register to what appears to be a new crackdown on long-standing G Suite Legacy accounts, with similar complaints now piling up on Reddit from users accused of violating Google's non-commercial use policy, despite insisting they use the accounts only for family email and personal domains. Reports have been stacking up on Reddit's r/gsuitelegacymigration subreddit from users who say their long-running personal G Suite Legacy accounts are suddenly being classified as "commercial use" accounts and pushed toward paid Google Workspace plans by May 2026. A lot of users have been through this before. Google spent part of 2022 trying to wind down free G Suite Legacy accounts, then changed course after users running family domains made enough noise. Now some of those same users are being told they have fallen outside Google's rules after all. Emails seen by The Register warn users their accounts have been "identified as being used for commercial purposes" and say Google may start suspending Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Meet, and other Workspace services if they do not either win an appeal or begin paying for Workspace subscriptions. "Please upgrade to a paid Google Workspace subscription to continue using your services. Look out for a notification regarding the appeal process in Google Admin console or email," the email reads. "If you don't take action during your 45-day appeal period, Google will begin suspending your Google Workspace core services, including Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Meet. As a result, you will lose access to these core services and data." One wrongly-flagged user said the company reversed its decision after they filed a GDPR data request seeking evidence. Others were less fortunate, with some reporting that family-only custom domains were permanently classified as commercial despite failed appeals.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A survivor of a recent plane crash near Florida was allegedly found with roughly $30,000 inside a bag labeled with the name of a Bahamian politician.
Ukrainians lament appalling toll of fighting on their country’s bird population
Russia sent kamikaze drones to attack the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia in February. They hit buildings and killed several people. One unreported victim of the bombardment was a male long-eared owl, blinded in one eye and found with a badly broken wing. A passerby scooped up the stunned bird, put him in a box and took him to the city of Dnipro.
The owl – nicknamed Sunny – is now recovering in a cosy room belonging to Veronica Konkova. No longer able to fly or hunt, Sunny instead hops around.
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Within days of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, Republican lawmakers across the South moved with remarkable speed to carve up Black constituencies and consolidate political power. Tennessee rushed to dismantle Memphis’s majority-Black district. Louisiana went further, postponing an ongoing election and moving to eliminate a majority-Black district that snakes for more than 200 miles, from Baton Rouge to Shreveport. South Carolina and Georgia began maneuvering toward special sessions to redraw districts to be even more favorable to Republicans.
Democrats have warned that up to one-third of the Congressional Black Caucus could disappear, and Republicans aim to pick up as many as 15 House seats.
The immediate reaction shattered the comforting fiction that America has somehow transcended race in its democratic life. The court may describe these protections as outdated relics of another era, but the swift political response revealed something older and more durable beneath the surface: preserving racial hierarchy remains one of the most potent organizing instincts in American politics.
The Supreme Court’s continued dismantling of the Voting Rights Act is often framed as a tragedy that primarily affects Black Americans. It is that. But in a much larger sense, it also reveals how willing the country is to weaken its own democracy to keep these racialized systems of power intact.
It is no surprise that many of the former slaveholding states have once again moved to cheat the nation out of its democratic values. While most Confederate soldiers did not personally own slaves, the poison of white supremacy still convinced countless poor and working-class white men to fracture the country, slaughter their fellow Americans, and march themselves into mass death on the battlefield to preserve a racial order that benefited an elite planter class more than it ever benefited them.
After the Civil War, the South could have become a multiracial democracy built around poor Black and white laborers with overlapping economic interests. During Reconstruction, formerly enslaved Black Americans briefly helped build some of the South’s first systems of universal public education and expanded democratic participation across the region. But Southern elites responded by enacting Jim Crow laws — not merely to dominate Black Americans, but also to preempt any nascent democratic solidarity. As historian Heather Cox Richardson has written, wealthy Southern landowners understood that interracial democracy threatened the entire economic order that had sustained plantation rule.
The system harmed Black Americans most brutally. White racists got what they wanted: segregation, lynchings, and Black exclusion from political life. But it also left millions of poor and working-class white Americans trapped inside oligarchic state structures, one-party political machines insulated from accountability and designed to serve landowners, industrialists, and political dynasties. As Suresh Naidu, a professor of economics and international affairs at Columbia University, found in his study of postbellum Southern disenfranchisement that poll taxes and literacy tests didn’t just suppress Black voters — they also hurt democratic participation across the South as a whole, reducing overall voter turnout by 8 to 22 percent.
As a result, public goods, such as schools and sanitation, weakened, labor organizing collapsed under racial division, and political options narrowed for Southern whites. These shadows still haunt the South, the region that accounts for the nation’s highest poverty rates and lowest per capita GDP compared to other regions.
Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the Voting Rights Act into law, infamously observed that “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket.” Johnson was articulating a fundamental truth about American political history: Racial status has often been used as compensation for democratic and economic weakness.
It’s a system that has never disappeared.
The erosion of democracy in our current era also cuts both ways. As the Voting Rights Act is chipped away, blue states are increasingly incentivized to answer Republican gerrymandering with politically motivated maps of their own. The country drifts further from representative democracy and deeper into a retaliatory system where both parties manipulate their electorates for survival.
Ordinary Americans become pawns in a larger struggle over racial hierarchy and entrenched political power. Millions of voters — many of them white Americans — are treated as acceptable political sacrifices in the effort to preserve white conservative hegemony across the South. Their votes become collateral damage in a campaign of anti-Blackness.
It is an odd gamble to watch: these southern Republican yes-men rushing to exploit the hollowed-out voter protections at a period of time when their states have so much to lose. As other Republicans have voiced concerns about Trump’s unilateral war on Iran, it is actually the bodies of the South that stand to risk the most, as Southern states have long supplied a disproportionate amount of the nation’s combat troops.
Trump’s tariff wars have also hammered away at that historic pillar of Southern agriculture, particularly the soybean, cotton, poultry, and manufacturing sectors that rely heavily on exports to foreign markets. Farmers across states like Arkansas, Texas, Georgia, and the Carolinas have been forced to depend on bailouts after retaliatory tariffs slashed export demand and destabilized prices.
In trying to keep Black Americans farther from opportunity and power, white Southerners ultimately moved those civic possibilities farther from themselves, too.
The South’s democratic decline has carried material consequences far beyond voting booths. Today, many of the same states most aggressive in restricting voting rights also rank among the nation’s worst in healthcare access, maternal mortality, and rural hospital closures. And as I’ve written before, the South also leads the nation in rates of gun violence.
Millions of poor and working-class white Southerners now live with the realities of political systems shaped by a stark lack of public investment and democratic accountability. In trying to keep Black Americans farther from opportunity and power, white Southerners ultimately moved those civic possibilities farther from themselves, too.
What we stand to be left with is an electoral system based on voting blocs engineered by the elites, for the elites. Researchers found that when politics harden into insulated gerrymandered coalitions, democratic systems become less responsive, less representative, and more vulnerable to authoritarian behavior. Politically jaded Americans, who increasingly identify as independents or report feeling disenfranchised by both parties, have now catapulted themselves into an arena with even fewer choices and no real levers left to pull to exercise political power.
In response, the Democrats have largely offered a restrained, institutional response, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries urging Americans to “summon the courage, character and conviction” of civil rights figures like Rosa Parks and John Lewis, which feels backwards as hell as the Supreme Court incinerates their legacies.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is populated with politicians and legal thinkers who have long resented the hard-fought civil rights victories in the 1960s. Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s closest political advisers, has railed against the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, the law which banned European preferences in immigration. Russell Vought, an architect of Project 2025 and Trump’s current director of the Office of Management and Budget, has argued that the post-1960s civil rights bureaucracy should be remolded away from protecting diversity and toward defending the interests of white Americans.
The right-wing campaign to roll back civil rights protections has always rested on a myth, on a dismissal of the role Black Americans have served throughout American history. It assumes the long battle for equal protections, fair labor, and true democracy was only for the benefit of Black people. It’s a falsehood that serves only to deepen racial divisions to discourage any form of class-based solidarity. Instead, we have been here through time to hold America to its promised principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — a stress testing of its legitimacy for all.
But for a court so convinced America has made “great strides” in ending racism, it is worth asking why its allure is still so powerful, and why so many white Americans are willing to trade away parts of their own freedom in its service. Perhaps it lies in the pervasiveness of understanding racism as only a “Black problem” — an unfortunate deviation from an otherwise “normal” white arrangement. As sociologist Robert Terry once put it, “To be white in America is not to have to think about it.” But that lack of self awareness carries a cost: generations of white Americans re-ushering in white hegemony so reflexively they often fail to see how it has shrunk their own democracy, political imagination, and livelihoods in the process.
The post The End of the Voting Rights Act Isn’t Just a “Black Problem” appeared first on The Intercept.
MEPs had twice frozen ratification process in protest at Trump’s threats to increase tariffs and take control of Greenland
The EU has finally agreed to implement its trade deal with the US after five hours of talks between members of the European parliament and member states in the hope of averting more tariffs threatened by Donald Trump.
It means the agreement struck last July at the US president’s Scottish golf course can now enter into force, removing import duties on most US goods entering the EU.
Continue reading...Your purchases won't disappear from your device, but you won't be able to use it to acquire new titles.
John Krasinski is back as CIA operative Jack Ryan in an action movie that is bigger than its TV series predecessor but feels way too safe to move the needle.
Stuart Machin argues government should reduce tax and regulatory burden on supermarkets instead
The boss of Marks & Spencer has called a government proposal for voluntary price caps on essential food items “completely preposterous”, saying it should reduce tax and regulatory burdens instead.
Stuart Machin, the chief executive of the clothing, homewares, food and beauty retailer, said M&S already lost money on some basic items such as milk, bread and baked beans and made very slim profits on other products such as eggs and sugar.
Continue reading...Groups claim game platform’s design and business model conflict with children’s developmental needs
Online child safety campaigners including Jonathan Haidt, the bestselling writer on the mental health impacts of social media, have called on the Trump administration to investigate Roblox, the booming gaming and chat platform used by 150 million people daily, including a large number of under-13s.
Haidt’s Anxious Generation Movement, Fairplay and the rightwing anti-pornography National Center on Sexual Exploitation are among groups claiming Roblox’s design and business model conflict with children’s developmental needs.
Continue reading...Some Christian conservatives are only eating foods mentioned in the Bible. At least Jesus wasn’t devouring ultra-processed sausage rolls ...
It looks like all the raw milk Conservatives have been chugging may have curdled some of their brains. Some very odd wellness ideas, many of them Maga-adjacent, have been popping up in the US lately. Vaccines are evil! Testicle tanning will boost testosterone! According to health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, seed oils are unknowingly poisoning Americans! Beef tallow will make your skin glow!
The latest unorthodox theory to gain a cult-like following? Biblical eating. This is a somewhat fuzzy concept that tends to focus on eating foods mentioned in the Bible. While the idea isn’t new, it has been resurrected. A recent New York Times piece notes that it has had a “resurgence in recent months”.
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.
Continue reading...The justice department’s lawsuit is part of a federal effort to reframe AI consumer protections as ideological overreach
This April, the US Department of Justice joined Elon Musk’s xAI in suing the state of Colorado to kill its AI anti-discrimination law.
When the federal government sides with a billionaire against a state trying to protect its residents from AI discrimination, that’s not only a Colorado story. That’s everyone’s story.
Dr Genevieve Smith is a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University, founder of the Responsible AI Initiative at the UC Berkeley AI Research Lab and a member of professional faculty at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business
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In October, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued pharmaceutical companies tied to Tylenol in state court, repeating claims made a month earlier by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that the pain relief drug was linked to autism and ADHD in children.
Paxton, a close ally of the Trump administration who had already announced a U.S. Senate bid, accused drugmakers of marketing Tylenol to pregnant mothers without disclosing its dangers. “The reckoning has arrived,” the state’s attorneys wrote in the lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies Johnson & Johnson, Kenvue Brands and Kenvue Inc.
“By holding Big Pharma accountable for poisoning our people, we will help Make America Healthy Again,” Paxton proclaimed in a news release that echoed Kennedy’s slogan.
Paxton hired the Chicago law firm Keller Postman to argue the case in state court. The firm had served as lead counsel in a similar case about Tylenol’s safety that was dismissed a year earlier by a New York federal judge who found the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses unreliable.
But the court the attorneys chose to bring the suit in wasn’t in Austin or any of the state’s large counties that have extensive experience and multiple judges handling large, complex litigation. It was in Panola County, a community of 23,000 residents on the Louisiana border that Trump carried by 67 points two years ago and whose sole state district court judge is a Republican.
At a hearing that month in the three-story brick courthouse in the county seat of Carthage, Kim Bueno, the lawyer representing the drugmakers, accused Paxton’s office of pushing a baseless lawsuit through forum shopping — seeking out judges and juries that plaintiffs believe will be most favorable to them, rather than filing suit in the courts that most commonly handle similar cases.
“These claims have been rejected over and over and over again in courts of law by the same plaintiff’s counsel,” said Bueno, who declined an interview request. “And now they’re trying, once again, to suggest that Tylenol is harmful for women when pregnant. And it’s been soundly rejected.”
The case was not the first that Paxton’s office had filed in a county with little connection to the allegations of wrongdoing made by his office. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have identified at least 30 cases filed by the attorney general over the past nine years that have a tenuous connection to the counties in which they were filed.
The filings mark a striking departure from Paxton’s previous opposition to the practice. In a 2017 legal brief that Paxton wrote on behalf of 17 states, he urged the U.S. Supreme Court to crack down on forum shopping in federal courts. The practice, he wrote, “has the pernicious effect of reducing confidence in the fairness and neutrality of our Nation’s justice system.”
Paxton’s approach also subverts what the Legislature intended when it passed a law in the 1990s that required plaintiffs to file lawsuits in counties where a “substantial” part of the alleged violation took place, according to three legal experts. That was done at the behest of conservatives who felt trial lawyers were flocking to venues favorable to them to win big damage verdicts against businesses.
“It looks like the attorney general’s office is interested in engaging in litigation games that it would otherwise decry if the shoe were on the other foot,” said Michael Ariens, a professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, who has studied laws regulating where lawsuits can be filed.
Neither of Paxton’s Republican predecessors, Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, appears to have employed this strategy. ProPublica and the Tribune reviewed hundreds of cases filed outside of the state’s five large urban counties during their tenures. Each had a clear connection to the venue Abbott or Cornyn chose.
Neither Abbott nor Cornyn, who Paxton is trying to unseat, responded to requests for comment. Trump on Tuesday endorsed Paxton in the race.
Texas’ major consumer protection law gives the attorney general some flexibility with those cases despite the state’s broader restriction on forum shopping. The office does not have to prove that a substantial part of the events in a consumer protection case happened in the place where it files suit but can instead file in counties where a defendant has done business.
But Paxton has stretched the boundaries of that law, too, according to legal experts and to former staffers of the attorney general’s office who argued against him in court. Last year, for example, the attorney general filed a lawsuit against the gaming platform Roblox in King County, a ranching community of about 200 people east of Lubbock. Its key justification for selecting the tiny county was that residents there had internet access.
Paxton, who did not respond to requests for comment or to written questions, has not spoken publicly about his office’s decisions to file lawsuits in courts with little connection to the cases.
At the November hearing in Panola County, Judge LeAnn Rafferty, a Republican first elected in 2016, did not question the attorney general’s office on its venue choice but asked, “Do you disagree with the defendants’ assertion that Tylenol is the safest choice for pregnant women who have a fever?”
“It depends on — oh, you said for having a fever? That probably is true,” replied J.J. Snidow, a partner at Keller Postman. “There are not alternatives in the pain relief space to Tylenol that don’t also have risks.”
Tylenol makers, Rafferty said, already tell pregnant women to consult with a doctor before taking the drug. Rafferty declined to comment about the case. Snidow said Keller Postman had no comment. Paxton has repeatedly turned to the firm as he has grown increasingly reliant on private attorneys to litigate major cases for his office.
Kenvue directed ProPublica and the Tribune to a statement on its website that said there is “no proven link” between acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, and autism. A spokesperson for Johnson & Johnson said the company has had nothing to do with making or selling the drug since splitting with Kenvue in 2023.
Rafferty threw out five of the six claims in the attorney general’s lawsuit. She dismissed one for insufficient evidence. In the other four, Rafferty ruled that the state did not have jurisdiction over Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue Inc. because they do not manufacture or sell Tylenol in Texas.
She allowed one claim to proceed that alleged Kenvue Brands had violated the state’s consumer protection act by making false claims about Tylenol’s safety.
With most of the claims thrown out, the attorney general’s office doubled down on its strategy.
Two weeks later, it filed a new case against the pharmaceutical companies.
This time, it chose Bailey County, a community of 7,000 residents on the New Mexico border.
For decades, plaintiffs’ attorneys from across the U.S. swarmed courts in small Texas counties that had reputations for sympathetic judges and generous juries. The practice became so ubiquitous that The Wall Street Journal branded the Texas judicial system a “Wild West embarrassment.”
In 1995, Robert Duncan, then a Republican state representative from Lubbock, resolved to crack down on the practice. He authored a bill that required a “substantial part” of a lawsuit’s claims be connected to the county of filing.
An attorney himself, Duncan recalls traveling hundreds of miles from his home in the Texas High Plains to the Rio Grande Valley for cases that had no connection to the border region. Forum shopping, Duncan told ProPublica and the Tribune, had led to too many attorneys choosing courts where there was “no reason to be there other than the bias or prejudice of whatever the plaintiff’s lawyer is trying to establish that would favor the case, as opposed to giving the defendant a fair opportunity.”
Duncan declined to comment on Paxton’s practice of filing lawsuits in counties with little connection to the allegations of wrongdoing.
Paxton was not in the Legislature when Duncan’s bill passed but, as a freshman representative in 2003, he supported legislation that gave judges more power to dismiss lawsuits they concluded belonged in another state.
He also railed against “rampant forum shopping,” asserting that the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017 should restrict the practice after plaintiffs in patent infringement lawsuits began flocking to courts that most often ruled in their favor. The Eastern District of Texas had become the most popular venue for the lawsuits, even though few of the cases had clear connections to the area. Most cases landed on the docket of a judge based in rural Harrison County, 140 miles east of Dallas, where plaintiffs won 78% of the time, according to legal researchers.
That waned after justices ruled that federal courts must strictly enforce a decades-old law requiring corporations in patent disputes to be sued only in their home states.
Since then, Paxton has repeatedly engaged in forum shopping in state courts, legal experts said. In fact, his office, or attorneys on behalf of his office, have filed 11 cases in Harrison, the same county where he argued that federal courts should limit plaintiffs from filing.
“It’s hypocritical for the AG to criticize patent litigants for forum shopping but then to forum shop himself,” said Paul Gugliuzza, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. “Forum shopping, judge shopping — it’s usually not unlawful, but it is highly opportunistic, and, in many circumstances, probably shouldn’t be lawful.”
Paxton notched one of the biggest wins of his tenure in Harrison County. He secured a $1.4 billion settlement from Meta after alleging that the Facebook parent company captured Texans’ biometric data without their consent. Paxton’s office contended in court filings that Harrison was a proper venue for the 2022 lawsuit because the company had done business in the county and a substantial part of the alleged lawbreaking occurred there. The office did not provide specifics.
Meta has an office in Travis County, home to Austin, not in Harrison, where only about 0.2% of Texans live, but the company did not challenge the venue. The company didn’t admit to wrongdoing in the settlement and did not respond to questions about the case. It’s unclear why its lawyers did not seek a different venue, but the judge in the case, Republican Brad Morin, denied a transfer in at least one other lawsuit involving Paxton during the Meta litigation.
Paxton has not limited his efforts to find more favorable courts solely to small counties. The attorney general has repeatedly filed cases, particularly political ones, in Tarrant, the state’s largest Republican county and home to Fort Worth.
In August, Paxton’s office chose the county as the venue to sue former Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke and his political organization, Powered By People, after the group helped pay expenses for Democratic members of the Texas Legislature who left the state to block the passage of new congressional maps. The maps, drawn at Trump’s behest, favored the GOP.
The attorney general’s office stated in court documents that the case had a “substantial” connection to Tarrant County because the group planned a rally in Fort Worth. When O’Rourke sought to move the case to El Paso County — where he lives and where the group is headquartered — Paxton accused him of forum shopping. O’Rourke did not respond to an interview request.
Paxton secured a court order in Tarrant that prohibited Powered by People from fundraising while the case was pending. But within weeks, the 15th Court of Appeals overturned the decision. It noted that Paxton was a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, which created an incentive to blunt Democrats’ ability to campaign. The judges said the order infringed on the organization’s free speech rights before a court had determined guilt.
Legal experts say such forum shopping erodes trust in the court system. It is especially problematic when it comes from the attorney general, who is supposed to defend state laws and preserve public trust in the justice system, they said.
“It’s hard to respect the system if you think it’s being employed in a way you fundamentally think is unfair,” said Paul Grimm, a former U.S. district judge in Maryland and an advocate of restricting forum shopping.
In at least two recent cases, Paxton has tested a novel interpretation of state law governing where lawsuits can be filed. His office has argued that if a company does business over the internet, it can be sued in any Texas county.
One such case was a 2022 lawsuit against pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca. Two law firms filed the case against the company under a law that allows private attorneys to sue on behalf of the attorney general. The lawsuit accused AstraZeneca of defrauding Medicaid by giving kickbacks to healthcare workers in exchange for prescribing the company’s products. The company, which did not respond to a request for comment, said in legal filings that the lawsuit sought to punish its innocuous outreach to doctors and did not identify a single patient harmed or taxpayer dollar wasted.
Paxton’s office formally joined the case in July. Attorneys working on behalf of his office argued that Harrison County was the proper venue because the firm’s website could be accessed from there, company salespeople had visited the county and a local clinic had a brochure for one of the company’s drugs.
When AstraZeneca asked Morin, the lone Harrison County judge, to transfer the case to Travis County, he refused without explanation. The company appealed and, in November, the 15th Court of Appeals overruled Morin’s decision. The court concluded that he abused his discretion in declining to move the case. Morin did not respond to a request for comment.
The court also found that Paxton’s office failed to provide proof that any of the alleged lawbreaking occurred in Harrison County. It ordered the case transferred to Travis County, where it is ongoing.
That month, the attorney general’s office argued that Roblox could be sued in King County, an expanse of rolling plains with no incorporated communities, because third-party retailers there sold gift cards to access the online gaming company.
Then the office made another bold claim: that companies with websites can be sued anywhere, no matter how small the county.
“This is a case about ubiquity, about being online and accessible to all children throughout the state,” Mark Pinkert, a Florida lawyer whom Paxton’s office had hired as outside counsel, argued at a hearing to discuss a request from Roblox that the case be moved to Travis County. “They are advertising broadly.”
Pinkert did not respond to a request for comment.
Roblox’s attorney Ed Burbach was stunned by the argument. He’d previously led the civil litigation division at the attorney general’s office under Abbott. The office’s longstanding practice, Burbach told the judge, was to file statewide consumer protection cases in Travis County.
This new argument by the attorney general’s office would obliterate the Legislature’s attempts to limit forum shopping by allowing any company to be sued in any county, Burbach said.
“That is simply not the law,” Burbach said, adding that most Texans, including lawmakers, would “be shocked to hear that outside counsel of the AG’s office would be arguing that.”
The judge transferred the case to Travis County, where it is ongoing.
Burbach declined to comment, but Paul Rogers, a law professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, warned of the dangers if Paxton succeeds at getting courts to side with his expansive interpretation. The attorney general, he said, would have “a lot of power to file any lawsuit, in any county, for any reason, whether the underlying lawsuit has merit or not.”
In Washington, Trump and Kennedy’s public rebukes of Tylenol have tapered off. Paxton, however, continues to vigorously pursue his lawsuit against the drugmakers in state court.
After the setback in Panola County, the attorney general’s office filed an urgent request in Bailey County, arguing that Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue should be barred from selling any products in Texas until they filed paperwork and paid a $750 fee to register with the secretary of state. (Such registration would allow Paxton’s office to strengthen its case in Panola County.)
Though Paxton’s office was already involved in a lawsuit against the pharmaceutical companies in Panola County, the attorney general’s office stated in court filings that it did not know the companies’ attorneys, so it could not notify them of the suit.
Without hearing from the drugmakers’ lawyers, Judge Gordon Green ordered the companies to register. He said they could be barred from doing business in Texas if they didn’t. Paxton proclaimed the ruling a “major win” over Big Pharma.
The victory was short-lived. A week later, the drugmakers’ lawyer Aaron Nielson, who had previously served under Paxton as the state’s solicitor general, attended a hearing in Green’s court. He accused Paxton’s office of sleight of hand by trying to relitigate claims that had already failed to persuade the Panola County judge.
“This is blatant forum shopping and taking another bite at the apple,” said Nielson, who did not respond to a request for comment. “They decided to bring Your Honor into this, rather than let the Court that they chose continue with its own proceedings, which we think is highly improper.”
At the end of the hearing, Green withdrew the order requiring the companies to register. He did not respond to a request for comment.
The Panola and Bailey county cases are awaiting a ruling from the 15th Court of Appeals.
In the meantime, the attorney general’s office tried yet another gambit in Panola, where the judge had allowed one of its original claims to move forward.
Paxton’s lawyers amended their original lawsuit in the county. They noted that Green had ordered the drugmakers to register to do business in Texas, which meant Texas now had jurisdiction to pursue the claims that had been dismissed.
They omitted the fact that Green voided that order.
By referencing the order as if it were still in effect, the attorney general’s office risks losing credibility with the Panola County judge, Gugliuzza said.
“If you knowingly are presenting false information to the court, that is textbook sanctionable conduct,” Gugliuzza said.
The post Ken Paxton Wanted to Crack Down on Forum Shopping. Now Lawyers Say He’s Improperly Seeking Out Favorable Courts. appeared first on ProPublica.
The Supreme Court's term is set to end around the end of June, with decisions on birthright citizenship, transgender athlete bans and gun rights still to come.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware has some of the highest healthcare costs in the country. Nearly a decade ago, the state began measuring how much it spends on healthcare in an effort to tamp down costs on consumers and the state budget. But since tracking that goal began in 2018, the state has continued to blow past self-imposed spending goals.
Healthcare spending in Delaware is yet again on the rise.
Earlier this month, state officials announced that medical spending by consumers topped $11.3 billion in 2024, a more than an $876 million jump from the prior year. It was their first report since lawmakers defanged one of the few entities able to use this data to bring down costs.
Every year, a group of state revenue analysts predicts the level at which they believe healthcare costs will burden Delaware taxpayers – called healthcare benchmarks – in an effort to keep growth contained.
Delaware has blown past its self-imposed healthcare spending goals nearly every year since its inception in 2018. According to the state report, 2024 spending rose nearly three times higher than the state’s benchmark goal of a 3% increase.
Some of the highest spending in 2024 included hospital inpatient spending at $2.2 billion, prescription drug benefits at $2 billion and hospital outpatient spending at $1.8 billion.
In almost every category, spending increased by at least 6%, with some categories as high as 15%. The state pulled its spending numbers from claims data from different insurers including the private commercial plans, the Veterans’ Health Administration, Medicaid and Medicare.
Officials announced the spending hike during a Delaware Health Care Commission meeting on May 7, where they also discussed how costs continue to rise while the state continues to fall behind on different quality benchmarks like the prevalence of obesity and cancer screenings.
Following the meeting, the state’s health secretary called the growth “unsustainable.”
“What we are doing isn’t working, and we need to take rapid steps to transform the way care is delivered and paid for,” Delaware Department of Health and Social Services Secretary Christen Linke Young said in a LinkedIn post.
In 2018, then-Gov. John Carney created the healthcare benchmark by signing two executive orders. One of the orders also formed a subcommittee on the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council (DEFAC) responsible to study that spending and recommend a manageable level of increases.
In 2022, state lawmakers passed a bill codifying many of the initiatives created by Carney’s executive order. Delaware is one of eight states with a government-mandated benchmark meant to stem healthcare prices, including neighbors Maryland and New Jersey.
Years later, Delaware officials introduced legislation that would have given an oversight board the ability to hold hospitals accountable to the annual benchmark by, in part, vetoing hospital budgets it deemed excessive.
That law, House Bill 350, was challenged in court by ChristianaCare in 2024, ending in a settlement nearly a year and a half later that watered down the board’s power to enforce the benchmark.
That new law, Senate Bill 213, was signed into law earlier this year by Gov. Matt Meyer.
Before SB 213, the Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board’s oversight – the board with the power to reject excessive hospital budgets – would have followed a four-step process.
Hospitals would submit detailed financial documents, which board members would review. If they deemed hospital spending to be too large, they would put the facility on a “performance improvement plan.”
If a hospital failed to correct its overspending, the board could then modify or veto its budget.
When SB 213 became law, the board no longer had the power to modify or veto hospital budgets of hospitals it deemed to be too profligate. After ChristianaCare sued the state over the constitutionality of those powers, a judge was set to examine that question, should the lawsuit have continued.
The new bill also made technical adjustments to language in the original HB 350, including renaming the performance improvement plan, a “benchmark compliance plan.”
At the center of those plans are whether hospitals keep their spending below the annual benchmark for how much DEFAC believes healthcare should cost Delawareans.
If a hospital’s spending exceeds the state’s projected benchmark, the cost review board now would require it to send in a compliance plan outlining how it intends to bring prices down.
The law also introduces “meaningful cost containment arrangement” plans, which are described as “contracts between hospitals and payers” meant to hold the hospitals responsible for controlling health care spending in a specific area.
Hospitals can enter these agreements and be exempt from the benchmark plans for one year, the law said. But it does not exempt them from the financial reporting requirements outlined in the law, like sharing budget information and labor costs.
The amendments are primarily technical, but the one with the most substance would require hospital CEOs to attest to whether their companies are in compliance with their meaningful cost containment arrangement plans.
At the May 7 Delaware Health Care Commission meeting, members discussed the growing costs to patients and the continued explosion of expenditures each year.
Young, Delaware’s health secretary, said she agreed with another member of the commission who said Delawareans are not receiving the maximum value from the healthcare system.
“We are spending more money every year, and we are not getting what the people of Delaware want and should be getting from our health care system,” Young said during the meeting.
Young added the state is pushing to make changes to how patients pay for care and incentivize treatment that keeps patients healthy, instead of billing for every procedure they receive, effective or not, as is done now.
The conversation then shifted to primary care, and the difficulties of scheduling time with a provider. Commissioners’ remarks come as lawmakers are set to weigh a primary care reform bill aimed at rewarding providers that keep patients healthy and away from costly trips to emergency rooms.
But the bill faced strong opposition from the state’s hospital systems that do not support price cap provisions included in the legislation meant to tamp down the costs on patients and the state.
Lawmakers in the state Senate unanimously passed that bill, Senate Bill 1, on Tuesday.
The post Delaware healthcare spending explodes yet again appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware has among some of the highest healthcare prices in the country. In recent years, lawmakers have become frustrated with the growing burden on not only patients, but also on the state budget. As one of Delaware’s largest employers, the government is now looking to reduce the pinch on its own health insurance benefits plan.
More than two months after lawmakers introduced Senate Bill 1, a primary care reform bill that also includes price caps for government-regulated insurance plans, state senators unanimously passed the legislation on Tuesday.
But the bill’s prime sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend (D-Newark), filed two substitute versions of his original bill — changing some of its most controversial provisions — before the legislation was brought to the Senate floor.
Those changes would delay the implementation of price caps on hospital procedures, limit some state oversight in setting those caps, and completely exempt some hospitals from the law altogether.
The bill aims to rein in healthcare costs to consumers, which have exploded in Delaware in recent years. By capping how much a healthcare system can charge for services, while incentivizing primary care services, legislators hope to force a reset in how healthcare is approached in the state: If patients can be seen in low-cost primary care settings, they may avoid more costly care later.
The challenge is that virtually all of Delaware’s healthcare services are tied up in just a few major hospital systems, whose budgets are largely dependent on pushing patients through a variety of primary, specialty and surgical care.
Disapproval from the state’s hospital systems led to extended closed-door negotiations between lobbyists and legislators over the amendments to the bill.
On Tuesday, Townsend said a vote on SB 1 was a “long time coming,” and the goal of the bill is to prevent unnecessary illnesses. Additionally, he said investments in Delaware’s primary care infrastructure within the bill would help to lower costs to the state.
“You actually save money by keeping people well, and we have got to have that be a key focus,” Townsend said.
Prior to the vote, Brian Frazee, CEO of the Delaware Healthcare Association, a trade group that represents the state’s hospitals, said his organization supports the amended version of SB 1.
He said in a statement the amended bill addresses healthcare costs, while also acknowledging “headwinds” faced by hospitals in delivering care.
“The status quo is unacceptable, and Delaware hospitals are once again leading the way with collaborative solutions,” Frazee said. “We’re proud to lead because so much is at stake for our patients and communities.”
For months, the fate of SB 1 sat in limbo as lawmakers and hospital lobbyists negotiated amendments to the controversial reform.
But lawmakers introduced changes to the bill in recent days, many of which delay the enactment of its most contested provision to regulate hospital prices.
The original bill introduced reference-based pricing to medical services covered under both insurance for state employees and some commercial plans regulated by the Department of Insurance. Essentially, this would limit the amount of money a provider could be reimbursed by insurers, tying that amount to a predetermined benchmark.
Prior to the amendments, Delaware intended to set that benchmark at 250% of what the federal government pays providers through Medicare.
Now, those price caps would not go into effect until 2029. Price caps for both inpatient and outpatient procedures would also take effect on a phased basis, with costs not scaling down to that 250% of Medicare level until 2033.
Senate Bill 1 also prioritizes investments for primary care and is aimed at preventing costly trips to emergency rooms.
By taking aim at how high Delaware healthcare providers can negotiate their prices with insurers in addition to making those insurers spend 11.5% of their medical costs on primary care, the state hopes to better compensate providers proactively working to improve Delawareans’ health outcomes.
The substitutions maintain those investments in primary care services from insurers, in addition to the controversial price caps that hospitals had staunchly opposed earlier this year.
Still, the amendments carve out exemptions for hospitals that are dependent on patients who pay for care using Medicare and Medicaid, which would include TidalHealth in Seaford, Beebe Healthcare in Lewes and Saint Francis Hospital in Wilmington, Townsend said.
Asked if these provisions would apply to ChristianaCare, Frazee said the exemptions would not include the health giant’s Wilmington campus.
A separate provision that hospitals took exception to, which allowed a state board to set rates for procedures that did not have a comparable Medicare rate, like pediatric care, was also removed in the amendments.
The amendments maintain price cap exemptions for hospitals and other healthcare providers if they use a “global budget model” that is approved by the state insurance department.
Global budget models set annual fixed prices for inpatient and outpatient procedures, meaning hospitals are paid on the front end to deliver services at a cost set by their previous Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements from previous years.
In neighboring Maryland, the state implemented global budgeting for all of its acute care hospitals in 2014, according to a report from Mathematica.
Under the revised bill, hospitals would also have a say in the regulatory process to determine any adjustments to their federally managed Medicare rates. According to the bill, the Delaware Department of Insurance is required to establish this regulatory process within 18 months of the bill’s enactment.
That process would see the insurance department and State Employee Benefits Office, which manages state employee insurance plans, develop a methodology to “determine any appropriate annual inflationary or other applicable adjustments” to a hospital’s Medicare rate, which is set by the federal government.
By adjusting a hospital’s Medicare rate, its price cap would also then be adjusted, since it is based on a hospital’s Medicare reimbursement rate.
According to the bill, the state also would work “in consultation with Delaware hospitals” to determine how any annual adjustments from Medicare rates are calculated – giving hospitals a voice in a process meant to regulate them.
Asked how the law would ensure that hospital systems do not help to write regulations that would be favorable to themselves, Townsend said he expects them to try.
But still, he said he believes the Department of Insurance have been “absolute pit bulls” and would ensure the regulations are appropriate.
He also explained that the bill’s amended language would allow for flexibility in later years if the federal government decided to raise the Medicare reimbursement rate. The state would then be able to examine those rates and determine whether they would follow suit, Townsend said.
“We want a mechanism here in Delaware to float up or float down accordingly,” Townsend said.
The vote on the floor was relatively uneventful, as lawmakers seemed to be in agreement over the bill’s provisions and its potential impact on healthcare in the state.
State Sen. Ray Seigfried (D-Claymont) said prior to the vote patients pay “too much” for care in Delaware right now, and the state has an obligation to hold hospitals accountable for high costs.
Seigfried, a former ChristianaCare executive, said costs in Delaware exceed those of neighboring states like Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. When people believe hospitals prioritize profits over patient wellbeing, hospitals begin to be viewed as “predators,” he said.
“It is our chance to stand up to recognize public dissatisfaction, to offer a solution, a remedy to this situation,” Seigfried said on the Senate floor.
In addition to Seigfried’s remarks, State Sen. Eric Buckson (R-South Dover) asked to be added as a co-sponsor of the bill.
Following the unanimous approval, state and hospital officials mingled in the statehouse lobby after what had been a monthslong negotiation process.
Now, the bill will be considered by lawmakers in the House of Representatives, beginning with a hearing in the Administration Committee. That meeting has yet to be scheduled.
Townsend said he believes the bill would pass in the House and that he is hopeful Gov. Matt Meyer supports the legislation.
Make your voice heard on legislative issues in Dover this year. Click the button below to find your representative or senator and let them know your opinion on proposed legislation.
The post Senate advances healthcare pricing reform, amendments dilute impact appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Wife of former PM, who encountered Worboys in 2007, says parole refusal last week was ‘huge relief’
Carrie Johnson, the wife of the former prime minister Boris Johnson, has said there could be “up to 1,000, if not more”, victims of the black-cab rapist, John Worboys.
Johnson, who helped bring the serial sex attacker to justice, said she had been contacted by more women who believed they had been assaulted by him.
Continue reading...‘China has already eaten much of German industry’s lunch and is preparing to start on dinner,’ thinktank says
Germany must stop admiring China’s success in the EU or it will sleepwalk into the kind of deindustrialisation the US experienced 25 years ago, a leading Brussels thinktank has said.
With China’s surplus with Germany having doubled between 2024 and 2025 from $12bn (£9bn) to $25bn, creating a $94bn trade imbalance, the Centre for European Reform (CER) said Europe’s largest economy risked a repeat of what happened in the US in 2001 when a sudden surge in imports permanently hollowed out towns in the American midwest.
Continue reading...We look at what Celtic’s title win means for Scottish soccer, Argentina’s World Cup plans and the prospect of a Premier League without Pep Guardiola
Sir Alex Ferguson may have him beat for longevity and number of titles. Arsène Wenger can take some credit for English soccer’s modernization in the 1990s, but Pep Guardiola completely changed the landscape in his decade as Manchester City manager.
Continue reading...Clock would stop for injuries, substitutions and set pieces
MLS previously used a stopping clock from 1996-1999
Ifab last debated a stopping clock in 2017
Major League Soccer has had discussions with the International Football Association Board, global football’s rule making body, about trialing the use of a stopped clock in matches.
A continuously running clock that does not stop for fouls, set pieces, injuries and the like is foundational to the way time has been kept in the sport almost from its inception. However, the use of a clock that stops is commonplace in other American sports like basketball and gridiron football. It was even briefly used in MLS itself from its 1996 founding until the end of the 1999 season, and is still used in US college soccer.
Continue reading...The streamer has given us a broadcast so powerfully isolating it effectively anticipates sport’s viewerless future
Game 7 in the NBA playoffs: a chance to kick back, enjoy the drama of a winner-takes-all shootout between basketball’s big beasts, and … switch over from your regular TV provider to Amazon Prime? The excitement drains from the occasion at the first touch of the remote. Amazon no doubt imagined it had landed a real coup when the Eastern Conference semi-final series between Detroit and Cleveland extended to its maximum length, thereby handing the retail giant’s streaming arm, Prime Video, the right to air a Game 7 in the first season of its partnership with the NBA. In the event, Sunday’s game was a dud: a blowout win for the Cavs, playing on the road, that had all the electricity and charm of a stint in the doctor’s waiting room. Fortunately for viewers, Prime Video did its best to match the moment by producing a broadcast that was every bit as dull and juiceless as events on the court.
The pre-tipoff highlight was an interview with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, on the occasion of his coronation as this season’s MVP, in which the Oklahoma City star appeared to be speaking from a movie theater for some reason. Blake Griffin, the house beefcake on Prime Video’s studio set, chided ESPN insider Shams Charania for leaking this year’s MVP announcement hours earlier: “It’s Sunday, Shams – go to brunch, you nerd.” If Hillary had won and Shams had kept his trap shut, we’d all be at brunch! The game got under way, and things did not improve. During the half-time show, Dirk Nowitzki rambled Germanly about various topics, while fellow former MVP Steve Nash delivered lines like “That decisiveness in isolation is so important” with all the conviction of a hostage recording a ransom video. Host Taylor Rooks tried valiantly to compensate for the lack of chemistry on set by laughing at even the slightest hint of a joke from any of her panellists. Awkward laughter delivered over dead air on a platform it feels like a punishment to access: that’s the Prime Video NBA playoffs guarantee.
Continue reading...Ron Shinnick did not mention the firing of the Cohutta police force, which was later rehired, in resignation letter
The mayor of a small town in the US state of Georgia has resigned shortly after firing his community’s entire police department, a step that the local governing council ultimately reversed – but that he nonetheless took amid a political spat pitting him and his wife against members of the force.
In a 15 May resignation letter that the Guardian reviewed, Ron Shinnick avoided mentioning his attempted termination of the Cohutta police department, word of which gained international media attention. The letter instead said Shinnick had opted to vacate the mayoral post he had held since 2014 due to “health concerns” faced by family members outside Cohutta.
Continue reading...
Launched as a new kind of gun retailer in 2012, the Range USA chain was built to look and feel different from the smaller, unwelcoming shops and gun ranges often associated with the industry.
Its founder and president, Tom Willingham, wanted to make the experience of buying and shooting firearms more mainstream. So he modeled his company on big box chains, striving for bright, comfortable outlets that would be inviting to women, novices and others put off by some older gun stores.
Today, Range USA has bloomed into a formidable brand, with 50 stores in 14 states, a footprint that spans from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Coast.
But despite efforts to set itself apart, the company is beset with the same vexing problems faced by more traditional retailers. Federal regulators have repeatedly cited its employees for failing at basic protocols designed to help thwart illegal sales, and guns purchased at its stores keep getting recovered by police.
Take the recent killing of Chicago police officer John Bartholomew, who was fatally shot on April 25. The suspect who used a 10-millimeter Glock 29 to shoot Bartholomew was not the original owner of the gun. It was first purchased in 2024, according to investigators, in an illegal transaction at a Range USA store in the northwest Indiana town of Merrillville, a short drive from Chicago.
Records obtained by ProPublica show that, in the years before the gun in the fatal shooting was purchased, the store was cited for serious compliance failures on multiple occasions by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the federal agency tasked with oversight of the nation’s gun retailers.
The Merrillville store faced revocation of its license following a 2022 inspection that determined a background check was missing for one sale, according to ATF inspection records. Inspectors also determined that the company made “no significant improvement” toward rectifying over a half dozen previous violations, ATF records show.
In their response to the findings, Range USA managers blamed the store’s antiquated system for filing federal sales paperwork, telling inspectors the underlying problems would be cured once the company moved to an electronic system. The ATF later rescinded the recommendation on the Merrillville store after proof was found that the background check had been conducted.
Records show that between 2020 and 2024, federal authorities recommended revoking the licenses of three other Range USA locations, including two in Ohio.
In 2021, inspecting the Range USA in Dayton, the ATF determined an employee sold a firearm to a person who failed a background check, records show. Company representatives admitted to the agency that the employee had failed to follow store policy and “missed the appropriate connections” concerning illegal sales, despite training. They said the company would implement new policies to head off additional lapses.
A year later, at the Range USA in Lewis Center, an ATF inspector found that a sales clerk had falsified records of a gun sale after accepting an expired conceal-and-carry permit in lieu of conducting a background check, records show. In response, Range USA managers disputed that its employees lied intentionally.
All the Range USA stores that faced revocations are currently open, according to the company’s website, though some have paid fines. Now, as Range USA contends with another controversial gun sale, the ATF is weakening Biden-era penalties for failures to ensure compliance with federal gun regulations, including those meant to deter criminals.
The company did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment. It has often responded to ATF findings by blaming employee mistakes and staff turnover while making promises of improved training, records show.
Meanwhile, the chain has continued to grow. In 2025, Range USA sales, according to industry trade publications, increased by just over 5% even as the industry cooled. With that momentum, the company is eyeing another expansion. It plans to open three new locations by 2027.
Amid this success, Willingham became a staunch advocate for the industry. In the last five years, he’s contributed to a political action committee that has sought to elect candidates friendly to the interests of gun retailers like Range USA.
Both Range USA and Willingham personally have given to a committee run by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association that lobbies for the gun retail industry. Range USA has given $35,000, and Willingham $5,000.
The violations cited at Range USA shops sometimes have grown out of investigations into straw sales, transactions where customers lie to purchase guns on behalf of someone prohibited by law from buying them. These guns are typically resold for profit and sometimes end up being used in crimes.
In Chicago, where gun sales are banned, Bartholomew is not the first officer to be killed with a straw sale executed in Indiana, just the most recent. Nearly five years ago, Ella French was shot to death by Emonte Morgan during a traffic stop. The gun he used was purchased by another man, Jamel Danzy, from Deb’s Gun Range in Hammond, Indiana, in March 2021.
Danzy lied by claiming on a required form that he was purchasing it for himself, when in fact he intended to pass it along to Morgan, according to federal investigators. He was ordered to serve two and a half years in prison for making false statements on federal forms. Morgan was sentenced to life without parole following his 2024 conviction for French’s killing.
In recent weeks, Chicago was confronted with the loss of another public safety officer. Bartholomew was inside a hospital when he was shot to death while guarding Alphanso Talley, a suspect in an armed robbery who allegedly drew the concealed gun and opened fire. Talley has been charged with murder and has yet to enter a plea.
That gun was allegedly purchased two years prior at the Merrillville Range USA by Olivia Burgos, who now faces criminal charges for making false statements in order to facilitate the sale. According to federal investigators, Burgos told store employees that she was purchasing the gun for herself. In actuality, investigators allege, she bought the gun on behalf of her boyfriend, a felon prevented from legally purchasing one.
She also allegedly lied by indicating on federal purchase documents that she was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the sale. According to federal investigators, Burgos told them she was addicted to fentanyl and was on the drug when she signed the papers for the gun. Federal authorities have charged her with making a false statement while purchasing a firearm.
The gun eventually made its way to Talley. An investigation into its path to Chicago is ongoing.
Last year, advocates with the gun control advocacy group Brady United alleged negligence by Range USA, several Range employees and Willingham in a straw sale from a different shooting, linked to its store in Shorewood, Illinois, about 50 miles outside Chicago. The suit grew from a 2023 incident where then-18-year-old Maxwell Williams shot a woman through the neck amid an argument at a large house party. He later pleaded guilty to aggravated battery with a firearm and is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Illinois state prison.
Williams, who at the time wasn’t old enough to buy a firearm, had his girlfriend illegally purchase one on his behalf, the suit alleged. According to court records, the Range USA sales clerk proceeded with the sale despite signs that the girlfriend was not the actual buyer. Video taken of the transaction shows Williams verbally directing her on which gun to buy and counting out the cash for the purchase himself, the lawsuit alleges. The girlfriend pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery in the shooting.
Range USA has denied the allegations from Brady and moved to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that its employees had no knowledge of any criminal intent by Maxwell or his girlfriend. Attorneys for the company also cited the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which they said preempts lawsuits against gun retailers and their employees over harm caused by guns bought at their stores.
A solution to the problem of detecting and preventing illegal sales like those that preceded the deaths of the two Chicago police officers has eluded lawmakers and industry figures alike. Employees at retail gun stores are generally taught to notice typical signs of straw purchases and are entitled to end any suspect transaction. But even with good-faith efforts, straw sales persist.
For its part, the ATF has established several surveillance programs requiring retailers to report potential or suspected straw purchases. The trigger for one such effort was so-called “crime guns,” those recovered by police within three years of being sold at retail. Stores with more than 25 such guns annually were targeted for enhanced scrutiny, a program known as Demand Letter 2.
Under the Biden administration, the program was used to connect guns purchased on underground markets to the original sellers. Last year, Trump officials announced the program would be discontinued.
According to an analysis by Brady, about two-thirds of Range USA locations were included in the Demand Letter 2 program between 2022 and 2023.
Gun industry figures consistently deny responsibility for straw sales, putting the blame on the buyers who are breaking the law by lying about their intentions. Part of their solution rests on educational programs and training for retailers on how to spot signs of straw buyers.
In 2021, under President Joe Biden, the ATF began a new strategy — sometimes referred to as the “zero-tolerance policy” — of conducting more frequent inspections and applying harsher penalties to retailers who repeatedly failed to comply with federal guidelines governing gun sales.
After it was adopted, the industry saw a huge increase in the number of recommendations for gun-store license revocations issued by the ATF. Those do not lead to immediate closures, as stores are allowed to fight the revocations through administrative hearings and court appeals that can last years. The revocations plummeted under Trump last year.
Whether the Biden-era policies effectively reduced gun trafficking is still a matter of debate. One expert reached by ProPublica said that the enhanced enforcement didn’t begin in earnest until the middle years of the Biden administration. Before it could take root, they said, the Trump administration upended the policy.
Last month, Trump officials gathered in Washington, D.C., to mark the agency’s pivot away from the Biden-era enforcement measures and usher in a more industry-friendly approach. ATF Director Robert Cekada said that as part of its new direction, the agency will streamline and modernize gun-sale paperwork to help cut down on clerical errors and make consequences for good-faith mistakes more lenient.
“We are proposing to remove unnecessary hurdles that were standing in the way of law-abiding citizens and businesses,” Cekada said. “We are proposing to restore clarity and predictability in our standards.”
He also stressed that public safety remains one of its top priorities. “ATF remains the greatest friend to state and local law enforcement officers, and we believe that these rules will not negatively impact public safety,” he said.
Asked to comment on the end of the zero-tolerance policy, an ATF spokesperson told ProPublica in an emailed statement: “These are administrative and regulatory changes to processes and definitions, not changes to the underlying prohibitions that keep firearms out of dangerous hands. The ATF does not believe any recently released proposed rules will jeopardize public safety.”
Professor Daniel Webster, a longtime researcher of gun trafficking at Johns Hopkins University, said the ATF’s new direction sends a “dangerous signal” to retailers and the public that surveillance of straw sales is no longer a priority. The new rules tell retailers, “Do whatever you want,” he said. “My take is that this ATF is more interested in protecting the industry than in the American public.”
In an emailed statement, NSSF spokesperson Mark Oliva said the organization and its members are “committed to ensuring firearms remain beyond the reach of those who cannot be trusted to possess them. That category includes criminals.”
The post This Gun Shop Stayed Open Despite Repeated Violations. Then a Cop Was Killed With One of Its Guns. appeared first on ProPublica.
Congress' decision not to extend enhanced marketplace tax credits has boosted the appeal of alternative health coverage with lower monthly premiums.
Keir Starmer, Britain's first Labour prime minister in 14 years, is fighting for his political life as mainstream parties crumble in favor of more extreme voices.
Whether you want to improve your home’s security or simply know who’s at the door, the latest generation of smart doorbells will help put your mind at ease
• The best robot vacuums, tested
Doorbells have evolved. Today, they watch us as we approach, let the people inside the home know we’re coming sooner than our finger can hit the button, and give them a good look at our faces before they open the door. They’re essentially security cameras with a chime function.
If you haven’t already installed one of these handy tools, there’s a huge array available. Choosing the best video doorbell can be a bewildering task, with various factors to consider, including how much of your doorstep you want to see and whether you’re prepared to pay for a subscription. To help make the decision a little bit easier, I tested eight popular video doorbells to find the best.
Best video doorbell overall:
Google Nest Doorbell (battery)
Best budget video doorbell:
Blink smart video doorbell with Sync Module 2
Firearms used by shooters, aged 17 and 18, in fatal rampage were registered to one of their parents
The two teenage assailants responsible for a mass shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, California, rushed toward the mosque “fully armored” with handguns and rifles, authorities said.
A security guard shot and struck one of the shooters, according to members of the mosque, but the attacker continued charging. The guard, Amin Abdullah, alerted administrators of the school at the Islamic Center, telling them to go into lockdown, before he was shot and killed. “If it was not for him … the carnage would be much worse,” said the imam, Taha Hassane. “He sacrificed his life.”
Continue reading...It's getting harder and harder to guess whether a face is AI. The University of New South Wales recently launched an AI faces test, which challenges users ability to distinguish between real and fake faces. Guardian Australia's Carly Earl and Matilda Boseley take the test to see if it's a science or just vibes
Continue reading...Campaigners warn against blanket restrictions and say focus should be on blocking teenagers from platforms with ‘risky’ features
Online safety campaigners have urged Keir Starmer to block under-16s from accessing social media apps that do not meet strict safety standards, instead of implementing a broader Australia-style ban.
The NSPCC, Molly Rose Foundation and Smartphone Free Childhood said tech platforms should not be allowed to offer “risky” features to teenagers such as infinite scrolling, disappearing messages and push notifications.
Continue reading...Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have identified an ultra-faint galaxy seen just 800 million years after the Big Bang. The galaxy contains almost no heavy elements, shows signs of intense early stellar radiation, and could offer a rare glimpse into the first stages of galaxy formation. Phys.org reports: In a paper published in the journal Nature, a team of scientists led by Kimihiko Nakajima, an astronomer at Kanazawa University, Japan, describes how they used the telescope to study a part of the deep universe and discovered a faint galaxy called LAP1-B. "LAP1-B establishes a 'fossil in the making,' a direct high-redshift progenitor of the ancient ultra-faint dwarf galaxies observed in the local universe," they wrote. Because the galaxy is so small and distant, it would normally be impossible to see. However, it was spotted due to a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, in which a massive cluster of closer galaxies acts like a giant magnifying glass, boosting the light from LAP1-B by 100 times. The scientists realized that most of the light from the galaxy wasn't coming from the stars, but from glowing clouds of gas. They analyzed this light by splitting it into a spectrum and studying the emission lines, which revealed the chemical composition of the gas. They found that the galaxy contains almost no heavy elements, and its oxygen abundance is about 240 times lower than the sun's, making it one of the most primitive star-forming galaxies ever observed. The emission lines also revealed intense ionizing radiation, which is what scientists expect to see from the first generation of stars. The team also measured an elevated carbon-to-oxygen ratio. This matches the predicted chemical signature for the first star explosions in history from Population III stars, the first stars to exist in the universe. The stars we see today are Population I stars, which formed later and contain more heavy elements. Another fascinating finding is that, after measuring the gas's motion and speed, the researchers concluded that the galaxy is held together by a massive cloud of invisible dark matter.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Special anniversary edition of award-winning headphones are some of the best sounding you can buy, but cost far more than top Sony noise cancellers
Sony’s latest noise-cancelling headphones are a special anniversary set made to celebrate a decade of its prized 1000X series, designed to be plusher, slimmer, more comfortable and the best sounding yet.
The original 1000X launched in 2016, igniting a fierce rivalry with the dominant Bose and its QuietComfort line, which would push noise-cancelling technology dramatically forward as each tried to outdo the other with subsequent releases.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Employment tribunal claim says worker lost his job after distributing leaflets throughout London office
Google is facing a legal challenge from an AI engineer who claims he was unfairly dismissed after he protested against its work for the Israeli government, in the latest sign of growing concern about the social and ethical impacts of AI.
The engineer distributed flyers around Google DeepMind’s London offices, which read “Google provides military AI to forces committing genocide” and asking colleagues: “Is your paycheck worth this?” He also emailed colleagues about Google’s 2025 decision to drop a promise not to pursue weapons that harm people and surveillance violating international norms and urged them to unionise.
Continue reading...The 18-year-old high school student reached the top of the world’s tallest mountain on her second attempt
An 18-year-old high school student from Melbourne became the youngest Australian to climb to the top of Mount Everest on Wednesday.
According to her Garmin data and a post on Instagram, Bianca Adler reached the 8,849 metre summit at nearly 6.30am Melbourne time, and nearly 2.30am Nepal time, with her guides, Pemba and Ngdu.
Continue reading...Thomas Massie, who repeatedly broke with Trump, lost to retired Navy Seal Ed Gallrein who was recruited into the race by the president. Key US politics stories from Tuesday 19 May at a glance
Donald Trump displayed his supremacy over the Republican party on Tuesday when voters in northern Kentucky rejected the maverick congressman Thomas Massie in favour of the US president’s hand-picked challenger.
Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy Seal and farmer who was recruited into the race by Trump, defeated the seven-term incumbent in a primary election in Kentucky’s fourth congressional district, in what the president’s allies framed as a test of whether dissent could still exist inside today’s Republican party.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed.
Trump told reporters he is giving Iran until the weekend or early next week, to make a deal to end the war.
He said that yesterday he was within an hour of deciding to resume bombing Iran but that his negotiators had reported progress in talks.
I never tell anybody when. But they knew that we were very close. I would say we were. I was an hour away from making the decision to go today, and we would probably not be talking about a beautiful ballroom today. We’d be talking about that.
I had made the decision, so they called up. They had heard I made the decision. They said, sir, could you give us a couple of more days because we think they’re being reasonable.
Well, I mean, I’m saying 2 or 3 days, maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday something. Maybe early next week, a limited period of time, because we can’t let them have a new nuclear weapon.
Continue reading...Similar wars end in similar ways.
The real test of Sheinbaum’s security strategy.
Pennsylvania voters went to the polls on Tuesday, casting their votes for Republican and Democratic candidates in congressional, gubernatorial and local races.
Millions of litres of sewage have been spilling into the capital city’s waters since February after the catastrophic failure of a Moa Point wastewater plant
A fix to stop millions of litres of sewage continuing to pour into the waters off the coast of New Zealand’s capital, Wellington will be in place by November, officials have said, with full repairs at the cost of NZ$53.5m by late next year.
More than 100 days since the catastrophic failure of the city’s wastewater treatment plant on 4 February, a mix of raw and partially screened human effluent is still being flushed directly into the Pacific Ocean.
Continue reading...Cleveland Cavaliers 104-115 New York Knicks (OT)
Knicks had trailed by 22 points in fourth quarter
Brunson scores 38 points in MSG victory
Jalen Brunson sparked one of the NBA’s greatest postseason comebacks, a rally from a 22-point deficit in the fourth quarter, and finished with 38 points as New York beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 115-104 in overtime in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals.
After a record-setting run through the first two rounds, the Knicks were going nowhere for 40 minutes against the Cavs, trailing 93-71 with 7:52 to play. But Brunson relentlessly attacked James Harden to spark an 18-1 run, and he tied the game at 101-101 on a basket with 19 seconds remaining in regulation.
Continue reading...An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has signed the nation's first law banning prediction market sites from operating in the state, and in response, the Trump administration has sued, teeing up a legal battle over the most far-reaching crackdown on popular services like Kalshi and Polymarket. It comes as states confront a growing standoff with the Trump administration over how to regulate the industry, which allows people to bet on virtually anything. The new state law makes it a crime to host or advertise a prediction market, which it defines as a system that lets consumers place a wager on a future outcome, like sports, elections, live entertainment, someone's word choice and world affairs. The prohibition extends to services supporting prediction markets, like virtual private networks, that could allow consumers to disguise their location and get around the ban. It would force prediction market sites like Kalshi and Polymarket to leave the state, or face possible felony charges. The law takes effect in August. The law has a carve-out for event contracts that serve as an insurance policy in the event of "harm, or loss sustained" and for the purchase of securities and other commodities. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's lawsuit seeks to block the law before it starts, arguing the prediction market industry should be exclusively regulated by federal officials. "This Minnesota law turns lawful operators and participants in prediction markets into felons overnight," said CFTC Chairman Michael Selig. "Minnesota farmers have relied on critical hedging products on weather and crop-related events for decades to mitigate their risks. Governor Walz chose to put special interests first and American farmers and innovators last." An updated version of the prediction market bill allows trading on weather, an exception that followed pushback from the agricultural industry, which has historically used futures trading on weather as a hedge against storms and other inclement weather that can affect a harvest. Walz is expected to sign it soon. "We as a state should decide how best and what regulations we think should attach to gambling, to protect public safety, to protect our kids," said Minnesota Rep. Emma Greenman, the Democrat who introduced the measure. Kalshi spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana called the ban a "blatant violation" of the law. "Minnesota banning prediction markets is like trying to ban the New York Stock Exchange," said Diana, adding that "this actively harms users because it reduces competition and drives activity offshore."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In biggest primary night so far this year, key races were held in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, Oregon and Idaho
Donald Trump displayed his supremacy over the Republican party on Tuesday when voters in northern Kentucky rejected the maverick congressman Thomas Massie in favour of the US president’s hand-picked challenger.
Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy Seal and farmer who was recruited into the race by Trump, defeated the seven-term incumbent in a primary election in Kentucky’s fourth congressional district in what the president’s allies framed as a test of whether dissent could still exist inside today’s Republican party.
Continue reading...Rep. Mike Collins and former college football coach Derek Dooley will advance to a runoff next month in the Georgia GOP primary for Senate, as Republicans vie for an opportunity to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.
Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for May 20.
Democrats see four districts as essential in midterms bid to retake House as 16 representatives seek re-election
Primaries across Pennsylvania clarified key battlegrounds for November’s midterm elections on Tuesday.
Sixteen of the state’s 17 US representatives are seeking re-election, and Democrats are zeroing in on four districts they view as essential pickup opportunities in their bid to retake the House. Donald Trump carried Pennsylvania by fewer than two points in 2024, and his return to the White House has sharpened Democratic focus on constituencies they see as vulnerable.
Continue reading...Former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has secured enough support to avoid a runoff in Georgia's closely watched Democratic primary for governor, CBS News projects
Tom Phillips on life in the country four months after the US abduction of the former president Nicolás Maduro
“The last time I flew out of Venezuela was right at the start of August 2024, just after the disputed presidential election,” the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips, tells Annie Kelly.
“It was a moment of real turmoil. There was a huge wave of repression that was unfolding as Nicolás Maduro tried to silence any kind of dissent to his bogus claim to have won that election. Thousands were thrown in prison, many were going underground, and journalists were racing to get out of the country.”
Continue reading...Poland was set to receive forces whose deployment was abruptly halted last week.
The NTSB also revealed that the crew of the crashed jet had been reassigned to it after their original plane was taken out of service.
Move brings an end to a 60 day visa-free stay that was agreed with 93 countries, including the UK, US and much of Europe
Thailand is drastically cutting the length of visa-free stays for tourists from more than 90 countries in an effort to curb crime involving foreign nationals, officials said on Tuesday.
Tourism is a crucial source of jobs in Thailand, and the country has struggled to return to the number of foreign arrivals recorded before the Covid pandemic. However, concerns over visitors breaking the law have led to calls for tougher immigration rules
Continue reading...For context, I've always rode with proper gear and good shoes. Tonight was the first really hot day in northern New England, around 90 degrees. It was hot in my house because I haven't put the A/Cs in yet so decided to just hop on my pint x and explore the new development in my quiet neighborhood since they just paved it. Decided to ride barefoot. Holy crap was that such an amazing experience. Slow carving with such dramatic feedback was not what I was expecting. New obsession unlocked. Just wish my flat feet could keep up, but will definitely do it again.
The national average for a gallon of gasoline has been ticking up since the start of the war with Iran. The latest average of $4.50 a gallon is an increase of over $1.50 since the war started.
Russian president is welcomed to Beijing with an honour guard after saying relations with China have reached an ‘unprecedented level’
Vladimir Putin has arrived in Beijing for a state visit, four days after Donald Trump left China.
Putin was greeted by China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, when he landed on Tuesday evening, with an honour guard alongside Chinese youths waving China and Russia’s national flags in a welcome ceremony on the tarmac.
Continue reading...Social media platforms that don't remove nonconsensual videos or photos may face enforcement action by the Federal Trade Commission.
Chris Rabb won by nearly 15 points in a hotly contested four-way primary on Tuesday night, marking a triumph for progressives who sought to add the Pennsylvania state representative to their ranks in Congress.
The 3rd Congressional District race unfolded along key fault lines animating the Democratic Party, from the influence of special interest groups to Israel and its genocide in Gaza. It staked out a clear contest between the party’s progressive and moderate wings.
The split marked a contrast to the 7th Congressional District primary in the Lehigh Valley, where the left and the establishment united behind Bob Brooks, a firefighters’ union chief who sailed to victory Tuesday night.
Brooks will run in what’s expected to be a tight general election in November against freshman Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie. Rabb is all but guaranteed to win the deep blue seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Dwight Evans.
Rabb, who has been a vocal critic of U.S. military support for Israel, attracted endorsements from progressive members of Congress like Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. One of his top opponents, state Sen. Sharif Street, earned the support of Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., while Dr. Ala Stanford, a pediatric surgeon, was backed by a pro-Israel super PAC. Also on the ballot was Shaun Griffith, an attorney who never broke through in the polls.
In a statement released Tuesday night, the Democratic Socialists of America celebrated Rabb, who recently joined the group’s Philadelphia chapter, and pointed to key political causes for the left in Congress.
“There is a new Democratic Socialist in Congress,” the group wrote on X. “We will be with Congressman Rabb every step of the way in the fight to abolish ICE, free Palestine and win Medicare for All.”
Rabb has collected endorsements from 10 members of Congress, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and progressive groups including the Pennsylvania Working Families Party, the Philadelphia chapter of DSA, Justice Democrats, and Jewish Voice for Peace Action.
“Chris Rabb is exactly what Democratic voters nationwide are demanding — progressive trailblazers who fight for their communities, not just when it’s politically convenient but when it’s morally necessary,” said Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats, in a statement. “While the party machine has spent decades failing to meet the needs of its voters, Rabb has taken the fight to corporate interests, billionaire CEOs, and Republican extremists his whole career.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, considered one of the Democratic Party’s moderate rising stars, waded into the race in its final weeks to try to stop a powerful Philadelphia union backing Street from inadvertently boosting Rabb’s campaign with attack ads against Stanford, Axios reported. Nevertheless, Stanford and Street appeared to split establishment-friendly support, trailing late Tuesday night with about 30 and 25 percent of the vote, respectively, to Rabb’s 44.
In the Lehigh Valley, Brooks handily defeated his primary opponents in the 7th Congressional District, marking a win likely to be claimed by the left and center alike.
Brooks campaigned on affordability and fighting corruption, highlighting his union bona fides rather than aligning with a specific wing of the Democratic Party. By late Tuesday night he had secured more than double the support of any of his competitors: former federal prosecutor Ryan Crosswell; former Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure; and Carol Obando-Derstine, an engineer who previously worked for former Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and former Gov. Tom Wolf.
On the campaign trail, the retired firefighter argued that the real divide in his district was between the working class and the billionaire class and their allies. “The whole system is rigged against us, and the only way we’re going to fix it is by sending people like us to Washington, D.C., to represent us,” Brooks said at a recent event.
Unlike in the 3rd District, progressives and more mainstream Democrats united behind Brooks. Shapiro, the governor, has been an outspoken surrogate for Brooks, who was also endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Working Families Party.
In a statement celebrating Brooks’s win on Tuesday night, Sanders pointed to two other candidates with union backgrounds who prevailed in primaries this year.
Brooks’s win “follows the recent progressive victories of iron worker and union leader Brian Poindexter in OH, and union organizer Analilia Mejía in NJ,” Sanders wrote on X. “We’re making progress!”
“We deserve representatives who come from the working class and will stand up for the working class, and that’s what Bob has done for his entire life and career,” said Nick Gavio, mid-Atlantic communications director for the Working Families Party, in a statement announcing the party’s endorsement.
The Cook Political Report rates the general election for the 7th District a toss-up, and Brooks is expected to face a tight contest against Mackenzie, who narrowly flipped his Lehigh Valley seat from blue to red in 2024 and is widely considered to be one of the most vulnerable members of the House this cycle.
As of late Tuesday night, Brooks had nearly 42 percent of the vote, while Crosswell and McClure came just shy of 21 percent each, and Obando-Derstine received just over 17 percent.
Brooks benefited from critiques of his opponent, Crosswell, a former Republican who launched his campaign after quitting the Department of Justice in the early days of the Trump administration, when federal prosecutors were under pressure to drop corruption charges against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams in return for Adams’s cooperation on immigration enforcement. Crosswell faced criticism for his previous role in prosecuting “many, many” immigration cases as an assistant U.S. attorney while running for district with one the largest, but politically diverse, Latino communities in the state.
“Trump has built his agenda on targeting our immigrant community. I’ve seen exactly what that means for families like mine,” Obando-Derstine, who was born in Colombia, wrote in a statement to The Intercept. “Anyone who chose to carry out those attacks against our community has no business being in office. We deserve leaders who stand with us when it matters, not just when it’s easy.”
Advertisements from a mysterious super PAC called “Lead Left” also became a backdrop to the race. The ads attacked both Brooks and Crosswell on their progressive credentials, and sought to curry left-leaning support for McClure. “Lamont McClure kicked ICE out of Northampton. He takes on Trump and wins,” says the narrator in one of the advertisements.
Although the donors are anonymous, the super PAC reportedly has connections to a prominent Republican donation-processing firm.
This developing story has been updated.
The post Pennsylvania Results: Chris Rabb to Join the Squad in Congress as Bob Brooks Tries to Flip Key Seat appeared first on The Intercept.
The imam of a San Diego mosque that was targeted in Monday's shooting told CBS News that his community has seen a rise in "Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment" in recent years.
Google's smartwatch software gets buried under a heap of AI health news at I/O 2026.
Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for May 20, No. 1,796.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for May 20, No. 1,074.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for May 20 No. 808.
The Internal Revenue Service is permanently barred from pursuing claims against President Trump or his company based on prior tax returns, part of a controversial settlement deal between the Justice Department and Mr. Trump.
Polls have closed for primaries in several states on Tuesday, including the most expensive House primary in history.
President Trump endorsed former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein in Kentucky's 4th Congressional District.
The man may have saved many lives by radioing his warning before he was killed at the Islamic Center of San Diego, along with a shopkeeper and a neighbor, the center's director said.
At annual I/O conference, company debuts a product for everyday consumers to create autonomous AI agents
Google announced on Tuesday that it would expand its search bar, the centerpiece of the most-visited website in the world, with a heavy dose of artificial intelligence. The tech giant is also trying its hand at hi-tech glasses again, more than a decade after wearers of its first eyewear were dubbed “glassholes” and laughed out of San Francisco.
Google executives announced at the company’s annual conference for software developers, Google I/O, that its search box would accommodate longer and more specific queries than before – questions more like those people would ask one another than Search’s idiosyncratic syntax. The changes will direct users to engage directly with Google’s chatbot. The change to search is underpinned by the company’s new artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3.5, announced the same day.
Continue reading...Republican Rep. Thomas Massie lost his Kentucky primary on Tuesday, handing a victory to the president in a race seen as a referendum on Donald Trump.
It also reaffirmed the grip of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in GOP politics.
AIPAC’s super political action committee and two other groups backed by pro-Israel donors poured more than $15.8 million into the race either opposing Massie or supporting his opponent, former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, according to Federal Election Commission reports released through Tuesday.
That blizzard of cash may not have been as important for Republican primary voters as Trump’s hatred of Massie. Still, it helped make the 4th Congressional District race the most expensive House primary in history, with overall spending reaching $32 million, topping the 2024 New York Democratic primary in which AIPAC’s super PAC aided Westchester County Executive George Latimer in ousting then-Rep. Jamaal Bowman.
Massie had framed the race in terms that led to accusations of antisemitism, calling it “a referendum on whether Israel gets to buy seats in Congress.” He denied the charge and repeated similar language in his concession speech Tuesday night. “For 14 years, those S.O.B.s in Washington tried to buy my vote,” Massie said. “Why did the race get so expensive? Because they decided to buy the seat.”
Massie is a libertarian contrarian who reliably votes for the conservative position on measures in the House — but he has generated headaches for Trump on everything from the Justice Department’s files on Jeffrey Epstein to the NSA’s surveillance of Americans.
He has also been a critic of U.S. funding for Israel and the war on Iran. His vote has helped make every attempt at blocking the conflict through a war powers resolution bipartisan, although so far all of them have fallen short.
A spokesperson for AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, described Massie as “the most anti-Israel Republican in the House.”
The Kentucky representative says he is taking a stand on principle: He has always opposed foreign aid in general.
“I have never voted for foreign aid to Egypt, to Syria, to Israel or to Ukraine,” Massie told CBS News. “But the ones in Israel, since they’re the biggest recipients of it, that makes them a little bit mad.”
Republicans still overwhelmingly support Israel, according to public opinion polls. But the share who do so has declined significantly over the last few years, and younger GOP voters are much less supportive of unconditional funding for Israel.
When he emerged for his concession speech on Tuesday, a grinning Massie told the crowd, “I would have come out sooner but I had to call my opponent and concede, and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.”
In a statement congratulating Gallrein on Tuesday, AIPAC announced that voters “support Democratic and Republican candidates who view a strong U.S.-Israel relationship as an American interest and reject those who focus on attacking that alliance and pro-Israel Americans.”
“Massie has been one of the most consistently hostile voices in Congress toward the U.S.-Israel relationship and the millions of Americans who support it,” read the AIPAC statement posted on X. “Our community was proud to support Gallrein and help ensure Massie’s defeat.”
The race was dogged by accusations of antisemitism and salacious, negative advertising. Massie’s opponents seized on a pro-Massie super PAC’s television ad that featured a picture of anti-Massie billionaire donor Paul Singer with a rainbow Star of David and that accused Gallrein of being backed by “the gay mafia.” Meanwhile, the anti-Massie camp created a deepfake artificial intelligence ad pointing to the few times he crossed party lines to accuse him of being in a “throuple” with progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.
Singer was the largest donor to MAGA KY, the Trump-supported super PAC that was created specifically to oust Massie.
Also spending against the representative were the United Democracy Project and the Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund.
This developing story has been updated.
The post Thomas Massie Loses His Seat in a Win for Trump — and AIPAC appeared first on The Intercept.
A smart scale provides various metrics right from your bathroom.
A security guard who was among the victims killed in a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego is being hailed for his heroism and bravery during the attack.
Single strike on the village of Deir Qanoun al Nahr in the coastal Tyre province killed 10, including three children and three women, health ministry says
Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon on Tuesday killed at least 19 people, including four women and three children, Lebanon’s health ministry said, the latest in near-daily attacks from both sides that have not stopped despite a fragile, US-brokered ceasefire.
Israel’s military did not immediately comment on the casualties or specific incidents, but said that between Monday afternoon and Tuesday afternoon, it had targeted more than 25 sites of Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon.
Continue reading...Altadena group pans report as ‘pages of deflection’ and cites reliance on ‘department insiders’ rather than residents
Los Angeles county fire officials did not discriminate on the basis of race or socioeconomic status and did not delay in their evacuation orders during last year’s deadly Eaton fire in Altadena, a consulting firm found on Monday.
At the behest of the county and its fire department, the California-based firm Citygate Associates conducted an investigation into how evacuation alerts were deployed last January, after emergency response officials came under fierce scrutiny for reported delays.
Continue reading...Commentary: Just as AI Overviews are starving digital publishers of search traffic, AI-driven YouTube features will likely trigger a drop-off in video creation.
Retail sources rebuff government proposal as ‘unjustified’ and likely to push costs up across board
UK supermarkets have been asked by the government to consider freezing the prices of some essential foodstuffs to protect the public from inflation fuelled by the Middle East conflict.
Retailers rejected the plan, criticising its potential cost amid rising taxes, fuel and energy costs and arguing it could push up prices for shoppers overall.
Continue reading...National Audit Office says potential benefits are ‘considerable but uncertain’ while risks are ‘immediate and substantial’
The cost of the government’s £38bn nuclear plant in Suffolk is subject to “significant uncertainty” and may outweigh the benefits for UK households until at least 2064, according to the government’s spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office (NAO) has warned that although the potential benefits of the Sizewell C nuclear plant are considerable, they remain uncertain. The risks, however, are “immediate, substantial and borne by the public”.
Continue reading...The government must act to redress the unequal impact of climate change, or risk rising temperatures making disparities worse
It may not always feel like it, but Britons are going to have to get used to living in a hot country.
Temperatures are already 1.4C above the historic norm, and heading for a 2C rise in the next two decades. This may not sound like much, but it will mean far higher temperatures in summer – heatwaves as high as 45C lasting for more than a week, dwarfing the previous record of 40C in 2022 – as well as more frequent droughts and severe flooding, according to a major report published on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Landmark report calls for widespread air conditioning and says UK temperatures forecast to exceed 40C by 2050
British homes will need air conditioning to survive predicted levels of global heating, the government’s climate advisers have warned in a report, as measures such as drawing curtains, opening windows and growing trees for shade are not likely to be enough.
Air conditioning should be installed in all care homes and hospitals within the next 10 years, and in all schools within 25 years, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC), which published a major report on adapting to the impacts of global heating on Wednesday.
Continue reading...In new Netflix documentary, pop superstar says she ‘got through it, again’, referring back to successful treatment for breast cancer in 2005
Kylie Minogue has revealed that in early 2021 she was diagnosed with cancer for a second time, after diagnosis and successful treatment for breast cancer in 2005.
The pop star discussed the previously unannounced diagnosis in a new Netflix documentary entitled Kylie, available from today. “My second cancer diagnosis was in early 2021. I was able to keep that to myself … Not like the first time,” she said, referring to her highly publicised first treatment.
Continue reading...BrianFagioli shares a report from NERDS.xyz: Plex is raising the price of a new Lifetime Plex Pass from $249.99 to $749.99 on July 1. That's a $500 increase for media server software. Plex says it needs the money for "long-term development" and future features, but a lot of self-hosting folks are already wondering if this is basically a soft way of killing the Lifetime option without officially removing it. At nearly $750, are people just going to move to Jellyfin instead? As for those future improvements, Plex said the roadmap includes better downloads support, restored music and photo library support in mobile apps, NFO metadata support, IPv6 support, playlist editing on mobile, audio enhancements, and transcoding improvements.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This is a virtual museum of operating systems (and standalone applications) running under emulation, implemented as a Linux VM for QEMU, VirtualBox, or UTM.
A custom emulator-independent launcher is provided, and all OSes and emulators are pre-installed and pre-configured. The launcher includes a snapshot feature to quickly revert broken installations back to a working state. Hypervisor installers and shortcuts to run the VM on Windows, macOS, and Linux are also included.
↫ Andrew Warkentin’s Virtual OS Museum
These types of preconfigured archives exist in the gaming world, but I’ve never seen something like this for operating systems. The amount of love, work, and care that have gone into this effort must’ve been immense, as it contains more than 1700 installs, more than 520 platforms, and more than 570 distinct operating systems, all wrapped into a single download, with a nice launcher on top to make using all of this as easy as possible. You can either download the full offline version at 121GB zipped, or a version that downloads each image as you fire them up for the first time at 14GB zipped.
The contents span just about everything from early mainframes to desktop operating systems to all kinds of mobile platforms, from the late 1940s to today. I haven’t yet found the time to download the whole thing, but I am absolutely going to, as there are so many names in here that I’ve been wanting to play around with for ages, but just never got the time to set up virtual machines or emulators for.
This is going to be an amazing resource for the kinds of people who read OSNews.
The Emirates erupted as the Gunners were crowned champions – with expats, drivers and a boy in pyjamas out to celebrate
‘Twenty-two years,” said the father to his son, shaking his head reflectively. “Twenty-two effing years.” Standing outside the Emirates Stadium among an ever-growing crowd, he was not alone in trying to get a handle on his feelings. Arsenal had just won their first league title in a generation, after all.
From the moment Eli Junior Kroupi gave Bournemouth a first-half lead over Manchester City, the red part of north London was preparing to party. Arsenal’s only rivals for the title had to win to take their duel to the final day. A half-time deficit was not a good start. The landlord of the gridlocked Gunners pub on Blackstock Road had a glass of champagne in his hand, though it may have been something to do with the prospective takings.
Continue reading...Hundreds of firefighters continue to battle the wind-driven fire in the Simi Valley area as at least one home is destroyed
More than 17,000 people were under evacuation orders in southern California on Tuesday as a wildfire threatened suburban homes.
The wind-driven Sandy fire was reported on Monday in the hills above Simi Valley, about 30 miles (48km) north-west of Los Angeles.
Continue reading...Four Republicans voted with nearly all Democrats to advance the Iran war powers measure, with GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy joining the Republican defectors for the first time.
Commentary: Forget "Ask YouTube." Google should prioritize the AI work it's doing in science.
Republican defeated in primary says backing Trump’s conviction ‘may have cost me my seat, but who cares?’
Returning to the US Capitol after a stinging primary re-election loss, Bill Cassidy, a Republican senator of Louisiana, said he had no regrets about his “momentous” vote to convict Donald Trump on 2021 impeachment charges during his first presidency.
“I voted to uphold the constitution. It may have cost me my seat, but who cares?” Cassidy told reporters in the Capitol. “I had the privilege of voting to uphold the constitution – isn’t that a great thing?”
Continue reading...President says $400m building costs to be funded by private donors, but has asked for taxpayers to cover security costs
Shouting over the banging and clanging sounds from heavy construction equipment, Donald Trump on Tuesday gave a group of reporters a closer look at the construction for the White House ballroom he’s building on the site of the former East Wing to mount a defense of the project that has hit a speed bump in Congress.
The administration has asked for $1bn from taxpayers for security additions on the White House campus, including for the ballroom. But the Senate parliamentarian ruled the proposal could not be included in a bill to fund immigrant enforcement agencies for three years, and several Republican lawmakers have balked at the price tag in an election year where voters are grappling with gasoline, grocery and other prices spurred to new heights by the Iran war and the disruption in oil supplies.
Continue reading...But most GOP voters want candidates who'd back most or everything Trump wants.
Chamber advances bill for first time as four Republicans join all but one of Senate’s Democrats in favor
The Senate voted on Tuesday to advance a war powers resolution aimed at forcing Donald Trump to end the war in Iran unless he receives congressional authorization to continue it.
Tuesday’s 50-47 vote marks the first time the chamber has advanced the bill, the eighth attempt at doing so since the conflict began in February.
Continue reading...Hit me up on discord please.
CBS News was unable to determine what type of mines were in involved in this latest assessment.
US vice-president appeared to align with attendees of Tommy Robinson’s ‘unite the kingdom’ rally in London
The US vice-president, JD Vance, has urged anti-immigration activists in the UK to “keep on going” after tens of thousands gathered for a rally in London.
Vance appeared to align himself with those who attended a march on Saturday where the far-right activist Tommy Robinson told supporters to prepare for the “battle of Britain”.
Continue reading...Luigi Mangione supporters have loudly made their feelings known outside every court appearance, but several are now in court with official press passes.
Google is giving its iconic search box its first major redesign since 2001. The new design incorporates, you guessed it, artificial intelligence, "getting bigger and more interactive so that people can ask even longer questions and upload photographs and videos into queries," reports the New York Times. "In addition, people can ask follow-up questions with a chatbot on Google's main search page." From the report: The company will also offer digital assistants, known as agents, to automate searches so that someone who may be apartment hunting can be notified of a new listing without opening a real estate site like Zillow. The search features will be powered by a new artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3.5 Flash. Google said the model had improved on creating software code and performing autonomous tasks, worked faster and was less expensive to run than comparable models. [...] Google is also bringing one of A.I.'s biggest breakthroughs -- software coding -- to search. When people research complex topics like astrophysics, Gemini can build interactive graphics and simulations behind the scenes to provide a deeper answer than its previous listing of websites. Google said it was introducing an alternative to the agents powered by Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. Called Gemini Spark, the service is embedded in Gmail, Docs and other Google products, where it can turn meeting notes spread across emails and chats into a single document. It can also read and draft emails. "The open web is on its way out," says Richard Kramer, a financial analyst with Arete Research. "With A.I., Google is reducing everyone to raw data providers."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
May 19, 2026 — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) leaders, scientists and engineers joined national voices at the Special Competitive Studies Project’s (SCSP) AI+ Expo May 7-9 in Washington, D.C., highlighting how AI is reshaping science, security and energy innovation.
On May 7, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Director Kim Budil, fourth from left, joined a public-private panel on AI for science, where she highlighted LLNL capabilities and AI focus areas, including the National Ignition Facility, El Capitan, high-fidelity modeling and simulation and advanced materials and manufacturing. Photo credit: Jeremy Thomas.
The public Expo brought together government, industry, academic and Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories for three days of sessions, demonstrations and exhibits focused on AI, national security and U.S. technological competitiveness. It was the third such event hosted by the SCSP, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on U.S. competitiveness in AI, emerging technology and national security.
For LLNL, the conference offered a national stage to show the Lab’s efforts in AI for science and how DOE’s Genesis Mission is moving from concept to capability, with Lab leadership and researchers participating in panels, technical talks and live demonstrations spanning AI-enabled design, molecular discovery, bioresilience, high-performance computing (HPC) and fusion energy.
LLNL’s presence was especially visible during a busy stretch of programming on May 7, with Lab representatives contributing to sessions across the Expo. LLNL Director Kim Budil joined a public-private panel on AI for science, where she pointed to LLNL capabilities and AI focus areas, including the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the exascale supercomputer El Capitan, high-fidelity modeling and simulation and advanced materials and manufacturing.
Budil said the Lab is using AI and machine learning to speed cycles of learning, improve simulations and rethink how advanced manufacturing can support national security missions. Bringing AI into manufacturing, Budil added, could change not only how components are built, but how technologies are designed in the first place.
Budil also discussed how the Genesis Mission is designed to bring the national laboratories’ scientific workforces, large-scale experimental facilities, advanced computing capabilities and mission focus together in a new AI-enabled framework.
“The goal for Genesis is to revolutionize how we execute all those missions and incredibly enhance the productivity of our researchers,” Budil said. “Bringing together all this intellectual horsepower, with these incredible experimental and computational capabilities, is our opportunity to transform the way science is done in America.”
Across the venue, Brian Spears, technical director for the Genesis Mission, joined a panel on Genesis and framed the effort as a national-scale push to harness AI for science, technology and security. Spears said Genesis could use AI to double the impact of U.S. scientific research and development while delivering what he called “innovation overmatch” for national security superiority. He said Genesis is intended to connect AI with the DOE complex’s distinctive strengths, from HPC and precision experimentation to high-consequence production.
“We sit inside a computing revolution,” Spears said. “These AI technologies are transformative. The Genesis Mission is AI to uplift the entirety of the U.S. ecosystem — public and private.”
Meanwhile, in a conversation on bioconvergence, biosecurity and bioresilience, LLNL Bioresilience Incubator Director Shankar Sundaram highlighted LLNL’s pioneering role in connecting frontier science and national security needs in biodefense. He emphasized that AI-enabled progress in building national bioresilience depends on bringing together biological data, predictive models and compute at scale.
“National labs have the ability to bring scientific and technological depth along with a national security mission and mindset,” Sundaram said. “Data, especially functional data, is a strategic asset.”
DOE Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil, director of the Genesis Mission, visited a demo by Livermore Institute for Fusion Technology (LIFT) researchers, who discussed AI-driven tools to support the design and eventual operation of fusion power plants. Pictured (l-r) are LLNL staff scientist Derek Mariscal, DOE’s Gil, Savannah River senior scientist Holly Flynn and National Ignition Facility & Photon Science Communications Director Thomas Lynch. Photo credit: LIFT team.
Over the past decade, LLNL has developed and demonstrated AI and computation-driven methods that are reshaping preparedness — improving early detection and accelerating the development of countermeasures against emerging biological threats, while working with the private sector to help broaden their application in the health sector, Sundaram explained.
The Lab’s presence reflected a larger DOE message that opened the Expo on May 7. In a fireside chat, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright framed the Genesis Mission as a way to connect AI tools, national laboratory capabilities, scientific data and private-sector partners to accelerate progress on major science and energy challenges.
“Take AI tools, take our national labs, take the data sets, take awesome partners, and rapidly increase our ability to innovate things that take years to test, diagnose and figure out how they work,” Wright said. “How can we do that in months so we can massively accelerate the pace of scientific discovery? That’s the Genesis Mission.”
DOE Under Secretary for Science Dario Gil also emphasized the speed and scale of the effort during his fireside chat on May 9. Gil said Genesis’ recent call for proposals has drawn thousands of submissions from more than 800 institutions, adding that the response reflected a broad national push to organize universities, laboratories and industry around AI-enabled science.
“Ultimately, we seek to double the productivity and impact of America’s trillion-dollar-a-year R&D engine within a decade,” Gil said.
LLNL’s participation extended beyond the main-stage conversations. LLNL computer scientist Brian Van Essen delivered a technical talk at the DOE booth on FLASK Copilot, an AI-enabled tool for molecular and materials discovery. The project stems from a Laboratory Directed Research & Development Strategic Initiative led by Van Essen (Foundation-Learning Artificial Intelligence for Synthesis Knowledge) and is designed to help researchers identify new molecules and optimize molecular properties.
In practice, the tool is intended to help scientists move more quickly from a desired material or molecular property to candidate molecules and possible synthesis pathways, reducing the time spent navigating disconnected tools and computational environments.
Van Essen said FLASK Copilot is designed to accelerate discovery by connecting commercial frontier AI models, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, with LLNL-developed chemistry tools, HPC resources, custom models and human domain expertise. The goal, he said, is to reduce the friction between scientific ideas and computational workflows.
“AI by itself cannot solve our national science and security problems,” Van Essen said. “We need to couple it with our traditional modeling and simulation tools, our domain experts and our unique experimental resources.”
That coupling is only useful if scientists can actually use the tools in the environments where they work, Van Essen added, explaining that the broader promise of FLASK Copilot and similar agentic systems is that they can extend team science into AI-enabled workflows.
“These agentic, multidisciplinary workflows can bring the team together and make everybody better outside of their domain,” Van Essen said.
At the AI+ Expo, LLNL computer scientist Brian Van Essen delivered a technical talk at the DOE booth on FLASK Copilot, an AI-enabled tool for molecular and materials discovery. Photo credit: Elisa Esme Abadi.
At the DOE booth, Van Essen also demonstrated the Multi-Agent Design Assistant (MADA), an LLNL-developed AI framework that combines large language models with simulation tools to help interpret natural language prompts from human designers and generate physics simulation inputs. MADA has been used in fusion target design work to generate simulation decks for MARBL, the Lab’s next-generation 3D multiphysics code, and to explore variations in inertial confinement fusion capsule geometry using LLNL supercomputers like El Capitan and Tuolumne.
In another booth demo on May 9, Derek Mariscal and Mackenzie Nelson from LLNL’s Livermore Institute for Fusion Technology discussed AI-driven tools to support the design and eventual operation of fusion power plants. The demo, which Gil visited ahead of his fireside chat, connected to LLNL research on high-repetition-rate laser systems — the kind that would be needed for future inertial fusion energy power plants — where lasers ignite targets 10 times or more per second and require AI-enabled prediction, control and operations.
“This tool represents a joint effort from national lab and academic partners to pool our expertise and apply frontier AI models to advancing the national goal of commercial fusion energy, in concert with the Genesis Mission,” said Mariscal.
Throughout the three-day event, LLNL’s presence reflected a central theme of the Expo: AI is moving from a standalone technology to connective tissue linking data, simulation, experimentation, manufacturing and mission execution.
For LLNL, that shift does not mean replacing scientists, but giving them new ways to move faster through complex design spaces, ask better questions and connect national laboratory capabilities to urgent challenges in security, energy and discovery science. Realizing that future, Budil said, also will require new ways of collaborating with industry and other external institutions.
“We’re learning how to work in a very different way with the private sector,” Budil said. “They’re peer organizations and partners in a way we’ve not experienced before.”
Source: LLNL
The post LLNL Showcases AI-Enabled Science, National Security and Energy Innovation at AI+ Expo appeared first on HPCwire.
A bipartisan bill would ask electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid drivers to pay annual fees because they don't pay gas taxes.
We can inter Google Search to the Google Graveyard.
At its Google I/O conference on Tuesday, Google unveiled an AI-powered overhaul of Search centered around a reimagined “intelligent search box” — what the company describes as the biggest change to this entry point to the web since the search box debuted more than 25 years ago.
Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. Google is also introducing tools that can dispatch “information agents” to gather information on a user’s behalf, along with tools that let users build personalized mini apps tailored to their needs.
↫ Sarah Perez at TechCrunch
The attack on online search has been ongoing for a long time, and it has already resulted in most people with a higher-than-average interest in technology to either no longer use Google, or just to not use online search at all. I used DuckDuckGo for a long time, until I switched to Startpage somewhere last year, and I have never looked back. Startpage (and many others like it) is a very simple, basic search engine: it just gives you a list of links. That’s it. That’s all I ever want from a search engine, as the task of then vetting each link for relevancy, accuracy, trustworthiness, and so on, is up to me, where it very well belongs.
I do not want – and the world should not want – a massive technology corporation like Google, with a deeply vested, existential interest in guiding you towards websites from the companies that pay them for ads, to guide your online browsing experience. Google Search is already riddled with ads, but at least they’re labeled and somewhat obvious. With these new “AI” chatbot-style interfaces, not only are its sources nebulous and tucked away, if they even exist at all, but they also just make shit up, fail at the most basic of tasks, and generally just suck at what they’re supposed to be doing. This will make online search with Google worse.
Worse yet, this will make it even easier for the billionaire Epstein class to sow dissent among the population, creating rifts and hatred where none should exist, solely to keep the peasants occupied fighting each other so they don’t turn their anger towards the real reason their lives suck. Panem et circenses has transformed into divide et impera, and these nebulous chatbots with complex, invisible levers and dials will only make the divide easier.
LEUVEN, Belgium, May 19, 2026 — This week at ITF World, imec is presenting a world first: a quantum dot qubit device fabricated using High NA EUV lithography. This achievement marks a milestone toward the industrial scaling of more reliable qubits, the basic computational units of quantum computers. To the best of the company’s knowledge, this is the first integrated hardware device created using High NA EUV lithography.
Of the various quantum platforms currently under investigation, silicon quantum dot spin qubits are considered a promising candidate for industrial scaling and are often referred to as ‘the industry qubits’. Their production process is largely compatible with the production of standard computer chips on silicon (CMOS), a research domain in which imec has built global authority over the past decades.
“We can leverage decades of semiconductor innovation and reuse the entire ecosystem of silicon scaling, moving quantum devices beyond lab experiments to large-scale, manufacturable systems,” said Sofie Beyne, project leader and quantum integration engineer at imec. “This is where silicon-based qubits have a clear advantage.”
Silicon quantum dot spin qubits confine an electron within a silicon nanostructure (the gate layer). The ‘spin state’ of the trapped electron is used to store quantum information. Gaps between the various gates must be minimized to limit environmental noise. Imec has succeeded in fabricating a functioning network of qubits with gaps of barely 6 nanometers. Thanks to the nanoscale of this hardware component, millions of quantum bits can theoretically be integrated onto a single chip.
“High NA EUV enables the precise patterning of silicon quantum dot qubits,” said Kristiaan De Greve, imec fellow and program director for quantum computing. “As the coupling strength between neighboring quantum dots increases exponentially with the gap between them, we need to reliably pattern gaps of a few nanometers between the control electrodes of the quantum dots. This is a true engineering feat, thanks to our integration and patterning teams and ASML’s outstanding high NA EUV technology.”
This demonstration builds on imec’s previous results with silicon quantum dot spin qubits,which showed that CMOS-compatible processes can lead to low charge noise and stable qubit operation. By adding High NA EUV lithography to the production process, the focus shifts from individual demonstration devices in the lab to 300mm fab-compatible, reproducible quantum bits.
While it’s obvious that High NA EUV lithography will be crucial for sub-2nm logic and high-density memory technologies that fuel the rapid growth of advanced AI and high-performance computing, it is now becoming clear that it will also play a pivotal role in hardware for future quantum computing.
About imec
Imec is a world-leading research and innovation hub in advanced semiconductor technologies. Leveraging its state-of-the-art R&D infrastructure and the expertise of over 6,500 employees, imec drives innovation in semiconductor and system scaling, artificial intelligence, silicon photonics, connectivity, and sensing.
Imec’s advanced research powers breakthroughs across a wide range of industries, including computing, health, automotive, industry, consumer electronics, aerospace and security. Through IC-Link, imec delivers customized solutions, from concept to full-scale manufacturing, to meet the most advanced design and production needs. Through imec.ventures, imec creates, co‑creates new ventures, and supports existing semiconductor deep‑tech companies to scale-up.
Imec collaborates with global leaders across the semiconductor value chain, as well as with technology companies, start-ups, academia, and research institutions in Flanders and worldwide. Headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, imec has research facilities in Belgium, across Europe, the USA and the GCC region, and representation on three continents. In 2025, imec reported revenues of €1.2 billion.
For more information, visit www.imec-int.com.
Source: imec
The post Imec Debuts 1st Quantum Dot Qubit Device Built with High NA EUV appeared first on HPCwire.
The following is a hands-on introduction to Futhark through a collection of commented programs, listed in roughly increasing order of complexity. You can load the programs into the interpreter to experiment with them. For a conventional introduction to the language, Parallel Programming in Futhark may be a better choice. For more examples, you can check our implemented benchmarks. We also maintain a list of projects using Futhark.
Some of the example programs use directives for plotting or rendering graphics.
↫ Futhark homepage
As a non-programmer, I just think the name is cool.
Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, appeared frustrated with questions from House Democrats who pressed him on a range of issues about the conflict.
 | Anyone in Houston? Suck so bad over here 😭 [link] [comments] |
I have a spare gts setup and would like to vesc it without breaking the bank. There are a couple concerns I have with thor 400 but it seems like the only controller that could work with the gts 113v battery. It also seems to be sold out all the time. I've checked the 1st of the month and the 15th but no luck. Are there any other alternatives that will work with a 113v battery pack?
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Inside Climate News: A proposed merger of the largest utility in the country by market value, NextEra Energy, with the sixth-largest, Dominion, would create a megacompany at a time when data centers and rapid increases in electricity demand are reshaping the industry. The proposal, announced Monday morning and contingent on state and federal regulatory approval, would result in a company that leads in nearly every aspect of the US power and utility industry, including overall electricity generation, natural gas generation, and renewables. The $67 billion deal combines NextEra's size and reach with Dominion's positioning as the local utility for the world's largest concentration of data centers in northern Virginia. But the results are likely bad for consumers and the environment, creating a company with enormous financial and political strength that will be difficult to effectively regulate, according to consumer advocates and analysts. For perspective, only Exxon Mobil and Chevron would be larger based on market value among US-based energy companies. "Mergers are not about consumers; they're about shareholders," said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School. "For the Dominion shareholders, they are selling their shares at a premium. The executives are getting massive payouts for facilitating this, assuming it all goes through, and obviously NextEra believes the transaction is going to add value to the company. Ratepayers are all an afterthought." The deal makes financial sense for both companies, said Andrew Bischof, an equity analyst for Morningstar. "We view the transaction as allowing NextEra to accelerate its data center ambitions, which had trailed those of its regulated peers, by using Dominion's expertise and relationships to expedite NextEra's data center hub plans," he said in a note to clients. NextEra, based in Juno Beach, Florida, includes Florida Power & Light, the largest regulated electricity utility in the state, and NextEra Energy Resources, a wholesale electricity supplier that owns power plants across the nation. Dominion, based in Richmond, Virginia, includes regulated utilities serving much of Virginia, parts of North Carolina and South Carolina, and other assets across the country. The company would be called NextEra Energy, and NextEra CEO John W. Ketchum would serve in the same role after the deal closes. Robert M. Blue, Dominion's CEO, would be the CEO for regulated utilities for the merged company. The parties said they expect regulatory approvals to take 12 to 18 months. NextEra shareholders would own 74.5 percent and Dominion shareholders would own 25.5 percent, respectively, of the combined company in the all-stock transaction. "We are bringing NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy together because scale matters more than ever -- not for the sake of size, but because scale translates into capital and operating efficiencies," Ketchum said in a statement. Although the companies claim the deal would produce savings, including $2.25 billion in Dominion customer bill credits, former regulator Marissa Paslick Gillett said she was "flabbergasted by the tone deafness," arguing that major utility mergers rarely deliver the promised "synergies" and often create "a behemoth" that is harder to regulate. Others warned that a larger NextEra could use its political power "to the disadvantage of ratepayers," while climate advocates said expanding methane gas plants to serve data centers would worsen pollution and leave vulnerable communities "at the short end of the stick."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The World Health Organization’s chief said on Tuesday that he was “deeply concerned about the scale and speed” of an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda that has resulted in a spike in deaths — to at least 130 — and more than 500 suspected cases. The outbreak is complicated by the rare strain of the disease, known as Bundibugyo, that standard field tests often miss and for which there are no vaccines or therapeutics.
Experts say Trump administration policies — like dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and withdrawing from WHO — have further undermined global health security and negatively impacted the response to the outbreak. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned of emerging cases in urban areas, including reports of cases in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, and Goma, a crossroads city in Congo that borders Rwanda.
The Intercept reported on the porous borders and worrying public health responses in Goma during an Ebola outbreak in 2019. At the time Anthony Fauci — then the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — laid out the dangers of Ebola spreading in that urban center. “Since Goma is a city of millions of people, and since it has an international airport, it is a great concern,” he explained. “If Ebola could get into Goma and spread in Goma, that increases the likelihood that it could spread beyond the DRC into neighboring and distant countries.”
Experts have expressed alarm that the virus has been spreading undetected for weeks at least — and likely months — in Ituri Province, a remote area of eastern Congo that borders South Sudan and Uganda. The region, long riven by conflict, is home to many displaced persons and a haven for itinerant workers and smuggling operations. It has weak medical and public health infrastructure, making contact tracing is extremely difficult.
“The province of Ituri is highly insecure. … Conflict has intensified since late 2025, and fighting has escalated significantly over the past two months, resulting in civilian deaths. Over 100,000 people have been newly displaced, and in Ebola outbreaks, you know what displacement means,” said Tedros. “The area is also a mining zone, with high levels of population movement that increase the risk of further spread.”
Previously, USAID supported NGOs and healthcare workers in rural communities on the front lines of such outbreaks. “They’re the people standing between us and disaster,” said Margaret Harris, a former senior WHO official and a medical doctor who responded to Ebola outbreaks in West Africa in the mid-2010s and Congo in the late 2010s.
Harris praised the past work of USAID, and the U.S. in general, in responding to previous outbreaks of Ebola. This current outbreak can be managed, she said, but that it will take funding, training, equipment, and supplies — like personal protective equipment, medications, and fluids — for local healthcare workers. Harris, now a global health specialist at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research said that while some might argue that governments should pay for their own healthcare workers, she noted such front-line personnel provide a service that extends far beyond a nation’s borders. “They are protecting global health security,” she told The Intercept, adding: “And they were also simply doing good for ordinary people.”
A U.S. government official with experience working with foreign non-governmental organizations, who spoke on background because they were not authorized to talk with the press on the subject, told The Intercept on Tuesday that there was “no question” Trump administration policies have helped to undermine the global public health response. This indictment was echoed by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn, the ranking member on the House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies subcommittee.
“Infectious diseases do not respect political borders.”
“The Trump administration has systematically dismantled much of our global health infrastructure, without giving a thought to the consequences. Now, we are seeing those consequences play out,” DeLauro told The Intercept, noting that the administration dissolved USAID, cut the United States off from the WHO, and carried out mass layoffs across the domestic global public health space.
“This will not be the last outbreak of a deadly infectious disease,” DeLauro said. “We must invest in global health infrastructure. Not only to be reliable and effective partners, but to be prepared for the next outbreak. In public health, isolation is not a strategy. Infectious diseases do not respect political borders.”
On Monday, the State Department announced that on “May 15, 2026, within 24 hours of learning of the confirmed cases, the Department leveraged its outbreak response and humanitarian assistance capabilities.” The WHO actually issued an alert of a high-mortality outbreak in Ituri, which included deaths among healthcare workers, 10 days prior. On May 14, blood samples were finally analyzed across the country, in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa. A day later, the analysis confirmed Bundibugyo virus disease, a strain of Ebola.
“I cannot help but wonder if the administration had not taken such drastic action to dismantle so much of our global health infrastructure, that we would have been able to identify this outbreak earlier and stop it from spreading as much as it has,” DeLauro said in a separate press release.
“It is false to claim that the USAID reform has negatively impacted our ability to respond to Ebola,” a State Department spokesperson told The Intercept. “In fact, by bringing USAID global health functions under the new GHSD bureau at the State Department, our efforts are more aligned and effective. Funding and support to combat Ebola continue, working with allies and partners.”
When asked about the lag between the first notification of a disease outbreak and the U.S. response, the spokesperson did not reply to multiple requests for comment.
On his first day back in office last year, Trump began the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO and cutting all funding for the U.N. health agency. “World Health ripped us off,” Trump said at the time. The withdrawal process was completed January of this year.
Tedros announced that WHO has a team on the ground supporting the national responses to the African outbreak, noting his organization had “deployed people, supplies, equipment and funds,” including millions from an emergency fund.
“The outbreaks of Ebola and hantavirus in the past two weeks show why international threats need an international response,” Tedros said on Tuesday, also referring to the recent outbreak on an expedition cruise ship of a rare virus carried by rodents. “They show why the world needs the international health regulations, and why it needs WHO.”
The post Ebola Outbreak Rages After Trump Gutted Global Health Safeguards appeared first on The Intercept.
The indictment, which was first reported by CBS News, marks the latest in a series of probes by the Justice Dept. related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Google's annual developer conference kicked off with a keynote Tuesday. We'll be bringing you updates throughout the conference.
Google Docs Live, Ask YouTube and Project Aura made the top of my list. But the future also looks somewhat slop-py.
Starlink says the price increases will support ongoing improvements to its network.
A summer job was once a seasonal tradition for millions of American teenagers. No more — here's why fewer young people are expected to clock in when school ends.
HERNDON, Va., May 19, 2026 — ShorePoint, LLC, a leading cybersecurity services firm dedicated exclusively to strengthening federal customers’ cyber resilience, today announced the launch of its new HPC Security Hub. The hub is an online resource built to help federal agencies, national laboratories, and industry partners better understand the growing cybersecurity challenges surrounding high-performance computing and advanced computing environments.
“Federal agencies are advancing toward increasingly interconnected HPC and AI ecosystems,” said Matt Brown, co-founder and CEO of ShorePoint. “However, proper security guidance designed for these environments remains limited. We created this hub to help close that gap by providing practical resources, terminology guides, expert perspectives and industry events for agencies and organizations that are operating some of our nation’s most mission-critical supercomputing systems.”
Resources on the hub include two reference assets designed to build a shared understanding of advanced computing security language:
New content, including analysis and educational resources, will become available regularly as the hub expands.
“HPC systems were originally designed with speed and performance as the priority, often relying on physical isolation and trusted-user models as primary security controls,” added Ian Lee, Director of Advanced Computing Solutions at ShorePoint. “As these environments become increasingly connected to external systems, technology leaders and practitioners are reevaluating how to apply security frameworks that align with today’s threat landscape. This hub was created to support those efforts.”
Learn more about ShorePoint’s HPC Security Hub here.
About ShorePoint
ShorePoint is an elite, fast-growing cybersecurity services firm dedicated exclusively to strengthening the cyber resilience of federal agencies and their missions. With deep expertise and a forward-looking approach, ShorePoint’s experts operate where tomorrow’s threats are already taking shape — from AI and high-performance computing security to supply chain assurance — helping customers stay ahead of an evolving threat landscape. ShorePoint is based in Herndon, VA.
Source: ShorePoint
The post ShorePoint Debuts HPC Security Hub as Federal HPC and AI Security Needs Grow appeared first on HPCwire.
CLEMSON, S.C., May 19, 2026 — Clemson University is advancing South Carolina’s quantum research capacity through a $650,000 initiative supporting the Scalable High-Performance and Quantum Computing Systems Lab (ScaLab), an effort focused on improving how quantum programs are optimized and executed on real hardware.
Led by Dr. Rong Ge, ScaLab focuses on improving how quantum software runs on real machines. Quantum computers operate very differently from traditional systems, and writing programs that perform efficiently on physical devices remains a central challenge in the field. The lab develops tools that help adapt software to the unique constraints of quantum hardware, improving reliability and performance in real-world settings.
The project supports core research, talent development, and statewide capacity building. Of the total investment:
The initiative builds on South Carolina’s earlier statewide investment in quantum information science and technology. In 2023, state leaders committed $15 million to coordinate quantum readiness across institutions and industries. ScaLab reflects a continued shift toward sustained, project-based research that strengthens technical depth while building the human infrastructure necessary for long-term quantum capability in the state.
“As quantum hardware matures, performance increasingly depends on how well software is adapted to the physical system,” said Dr. Rong Ge, Director of ScaLab. “By integrating physics-informed machine learning into the compilation process, we are improving how quantum programs run in practice while training students to contribute meaningfully to this rapidly evolving field.”
Through research collaboration and statewide engagement, ScaLab positions Clemson as a contributor to the evolving software and systems layer of quantum computing while strengthening South Carolina’s quantum ecosystem.
Source: Quantum in South Carolina
The post Clemson Strengthens South Carolina Quantum Ecosystem Through ScaLab Investment appeared first on HPCwire.
Waiting for my Supercharged X7 to arrive which I ordered last month. I have since purchased both of these rails. Does anyone have any opinions on which will provide a better ride with a Thundercat BTG Tire?
Receiver tested positive for marijuana
Player must serve 30 days in jail
Kansas City Chiefs receiver Rashee Rice has been ordered to serve 30 days in jail after violating his probation with a positive test for marijuana.
Rice was booked Tuesday afternoon in Dallas County, Texas, and is due to be released on 16 June. The timeline means he will miss organized team activities and a mandatory minicamp.
Continue reading...President Trump says he scrapped a planned attack on Iran at the request of Gulf allies as "serious negotiations" on a peace deal are underway.
Many Americans are signaling disapproval of the technology amid fears that it will eclipse already competitive entry-level jobs.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the creation of the fund as part of the settlement of President Trump's lawsuit against the IRS over the leaking of his tax returns.
The popular battle royale video game is now available everywhere, except Australia.
OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy has joined rival AI lab Anthropic. "The hire is a major coup for Anthropic in the high-stakes competition for elite AI talent -- and another sign the company is emerging as a magnet for some of the industry's most respected technical minds," reports Axios. From the report: Karpathy will start this week on Anthropic's pre-training team, which is responsible for the massive training runs that give Claude its core knowledge and capabilities, according to Anthropic. Karpathy will help launch a new team focused on using Claude itself to accelerate pretraining research -- an increasingly important frontier as AI companies race to automate parts of AI development. "I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D," Karpathy said in a post on X. Karpathy is a rare AI figure with credibility across research, industry and education. He was a founding member of OpenAI before serving as Tesla's director of AI, where he led the computer vision team behind Autopilot. Karpathy coined the term "vibe coding" and recently described himself as being in a "state of AI psychosis" since December -- embracing "tokenmaxxing" and aggressively stress-testing frontier models.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Commentary: Google's new content-generation tool is joining an oversaturated market of AI stuff we don't want.
Family seeks answers after incident at uncovered maintenance hole near Cartier building late at night
The family of a New York woman is struggling for answers after the 56-year-old fell to her death upon stepping out of her car and slipping down an open maintenance hole on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue.
The woman in question died on Monday night and was identified by family members as Donike Gocaj, from Briarcliff Manor, a commuter belt area north of New York City.
Continue reading...One Republican lawyer close to the administration told CBS News that they expect the fund to face court challenges even though "a lot of people in MAGA world are already counting their money."
 | Any suggestions for digital shaping settings for a first timer? [link] [comments] |
Back-to-back visits to Beijing by the American and Russian presidents are highlighting how China's Xi Jinping is the world leader to be reckoned with and courted.
Outcome of contest for seat just outside Wigan could change the course of British politics for years to come
Andy Burnham will face Reform UK’s Robert Kenyon in next month’s crucial Makerfield byelection in a clash that could change the course of British politics for years to come.
Reform are billing Kenyon, a plumber and army reservist who contested the seat just outside Wigan in the 2024 general election, as a local champion taking on a professional politician who is using the seat for his own advantage.
Continue reading...Granta publisher says ‘perhaps we never will know’ true authorship of work that won Commonwealth prize
A few syntactical tics – and the verdict of an AI detection platform – have sparked a furore over the possibility that a short story given a prestigious literary award was written by AI.
The foundation that awarded the prize and Granta, the magazine that published the winning story, said they had considered the allegations but had not reached a conclusion as to whether they were true.
Continue reading...Addendum quietly slipped into widely criticized agreement creating a $1.7bn fund to compensate president’s allies
The justice department quietly added a provision barring the IRS from auditing Donald Trump’s tax returns on Tuesday, amending a widely criticized agreement that creates a secretive and loosely controlled $1.776bn fund to compensate allies of the president.
The addendum, signed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, says the government is “forever barred” and “precluded” from examining the tax returns of Trump, his family, company and “related companies”. The agreement applies to anything filed before the agreement was reached. It was posted on the justice department website on Tuesday morning, a day after the department announced creation of the fund.
Continue reading...Another Google I/O 2026 announcement: A new AI running in the background to handle scheduling, emails and more.
President Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday in the Texas Senate race, seeking to bring to an end a costly contest just a week ahead of the scheduled runoff.
Struggling to hire specialized talent? These strategies can help you reach qualified candidates in today's market.
The BSC quantum infrastructure, MareNostrum Ona, has completed its evolution with a new 35-qubit processor, which is available to the research, public, and business communities through the Spanish Supercomputing Network
May 19, 2026 — The Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) has taken another step forward in the development of its quantum partition, MareNostrum Ona, with the incorporation of a new 35-qubit chip. This system, developed with 100% European technology and under an open-access model, positions BSC as a benchmark in Europe for the deployment of quantum systems with these characteristics.
The development of the system is part of the Quantum Spain initiative, driven by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service through SEDIA.. Credit: BCS
Since its launch, the system has undergone a progressive evolution through the addition of various processors, moving from an initial capacity of 5 qubits to reaching its current configuration of 35 qubits, which was recently installed.
This advancement constitutes the final milestone of Quantum Spain, an initiative coordinated by BSC and driven by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service, through the Secretariat of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence (SEDIA). The project, which began in 2022, is financed by the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and is framed within the España Digital 2026 program, as well as the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (ENIA).
Quantum Spain is a collaborative effort involving 27 benchmark research and supercomputing institutions in Spain, including 14 nodes of the Spanish Supercomputing Network (RES) and other institutions such as CSIC, ICFO, and universities like the University of Barcelona, the Autonomous University of Madrid, and the Polytechnic University of Valencia, among many others.
“The addition of this 35-qubit processor completes the technological roadmap we had set for ourselves. Quantum Spain aimed to demonstrate the technological maturity of the field and move from experimental quantum computers to the deployment of an operational machine. But most importantly, all this development maintains its open nature: any research group or company can access real quantum hardware integrated into a supercomputer like MareNostrum 5, something that is still exceptional in Europe,” indicates Alba Cervera, BSC researcher and coordinator of Quantum Spain.
The system was installed and commissioned by the Spanish joint venture (UTE) Qilimanjaro-GMV. Based on superconducting technology, it is integrated into the MareNostrum 5 supercomputer, enabling the exploration of new forms of computing that combine classical and quantum capabilities.
“This system marks the transition from experimental quantum to operational quantum. Qilimanjaro, along with GMV and BSC, has proven that we have the industrial capacity in Spain to produce, deploy, scale, and maintain real quantum systems in production, integrated into one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe. And, above all, accessible from day one for the scientific and industrial community to accelerate adoption and pave the way for the new ideas that will define this new quantum revolution,” states Marta P. Estarellas, CEO of Qilimanjaro.
The scientific community, companies, and public bodies can request its use through the Spanish Supercomputing Network (RES) and run their algorithms on real quantum hardware, allowing them to validate results and develop new applications in a real environment.
To date, the RES, as a distributed Unique Scientific and Technical Infrastructure (ICTS), has granted access to its quantum resources to a total of 45 projects. Together, these have accumulated nearly 4,000 computing hours and led to the development of several scientific papers, showcasing the growing interest of the scientific and technological community in this type of infrastructure and its application in real-world environments.
“After months and years of intense work and preparation, we have brought a European quantum computing system into production, which is part of a Spanish ICTS and one of the largest and most complete computing systems in the world. Now, with the system stable, our job is to support the users of this infrastructure,” comments Sergi Girona, Operations Director at the BSC.
Quantum computing promises to revolutionize multiple disciplines by facilitating the analysis of phenomena at the atomic scale. Its potential uses range from chemistry—where it could boost the creation of new materials and pharmaceuticals—to solving complex challenges in fields like logistics or finance.
Furthermore, its capacity to improve process efficiency positions it as a strategic tool, particularly when integrated with artificial intelligence to design more advanced machine learning algorithms. In terms of security, it could redefine cryptography, posing both unprecedented challenges and more secure solutions.
Currently, MareNostrum Ona is being further reinforced with the installation of a new analog quantum computer, which is part of one of the quantum computing nodes of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking. This system will expand and enhance the center’s research capabilities and will also be available to users.
More from HPCwire: EuroHPC Signs Procurement Contract for MareNostrum-Ona Quantum Annealer in Spain
Source: BSC-CNS
The post BSC Expands Its Quantum Computer Capacity and Consolidates Open-Access Infrastructure appeared first on HPCwire.
LOS ALTOS, Calif., May 19, 2026 — Verkor, Inc., an enterprise agentic AI startup, today unveiled VerTQ, the industry’s first TurboQuant silicon IP. VerTQ is an accelerator IP implementing Google’s TurboQuant algorithm, which reduces the KV cache memory requirements of large language models (LLMs) by 4.3x.
By significantly lowering memory demands, VerTQ enables LLM inference applications to operate more efficiently using less memory — a resource increasingly in short supply — while also improving performance by reducing pressure on memory bandwidth.
VerTQ Block Diagram
Google introduced TurboQuant (TQ) in March 2026. According to Verkor, VerTQ represents the first hardware implementation of the TurboQuant approach.
VerTQ compresses KV-cache data while also accelerating the computationally intensive attention process. By performing Flash Attention operations — including online SoftMax — directly on-chip and without decompressing KV-cache data, the accelerator reduces memory bandwidth demands and improves inference efficiency.
The design targets edge AI deployments, including autonomous vehicles, drones, and robotics systems, where performance, power efficiency, compact form factors, and cost remain critical constraints.
According to Verkor, VerTQ was developed using Conductor 2.0, progressing from algorithm to a fully functional, timing-verified FPGA implementation in approximately 80 hours.
The VerTQ deliverable package is available immediately and includes product and microarchitecture specifications, verification IP, unit- and system-level testbenches, commented RTL, FPGA netlists and downloadable images, test plans, and supporting design documentation.
“Conductor 2.0 compresses the chip development cycle from years to weeks,” said Suresh Krishna, CEO of Verkor. “We’re constantly enhancing Conductor, running it on ever-larger chip designs, to deliver complex silicon IPs from impactful algorithms.”
For more information on VerTQ and Conductor 2.0, please find the technical paper at https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.05170.
About Verkor
Founded by top AI/LLM researchers and semiconductor veterans, Verkor is an enterprise agentic AI innovator and a technology leader in the development and deployment of end-to-end semiconductor design automation platform. Since its inception in May 2025, Verkor has delivered three generations of Conductor, Verkor’s design automation agent, with each generation building exponentially larger designs. The latest generation of Conductor can now build FPGA, ASIC, or SoC for data center, edge computing, networking, communication, automotive, security, industrial, etc., verticals.
Source: Verkor
The post Verkor.io Unveils VerTQ TurboQuant Accelerator for Edge AI Inference appeared first on HPCwire.
Social Security recipients may be in line for a 4% COLA adjustment. Here's how they can earn 4% on their savings now.
Online publication Puck previously reported Weiss could be moved to a new role with less oversight of the network
CBS News’ parent company, Paramount, is standing by CBS News’ editor in chief, Bari Weiss, amid a torrent of controversies and lagging ratings on some programs.
The network released a statement supporting her after a report that senior leadership at the company has discussed changing Weiss’s role to lessen her oversight of CBS News – and, potentially, CNN, if the company’s acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery receives government approval.
Continue reading...There is no shortage of entertainers in Carlo Ancelotti’s picks for this summer’s tournament. They’ll also need a solid base if they are to win a sixth title
In their attacking heyday, Brazil never struggled to find a winning complement in defence. Individual attacking brilliance only comes off if others nearby are doing the hard yards; for every Ronaldinho, there is a Roque Júnior.
The current generation doesn’t lack entertainers. Of Carlo Ancelotti’s 26-man squad for the World Cup, which was announced on Monday, nine players are listed as attackers, a high number for most squads, with nine defenders left to sweat their responsibilities whenever possession changes hands.
Continue reading...I installed some fangs and hadn't crashed with them on yet so I wasn't sure how good they were.
Finally took a real ride on my GT last night after a bad crash last august where I broke my cheekbone (Dirt and rocky trail, don't think I'll do that again) Have been terrified to get on it again since then and haven't travelled more than a block since.
Got a wild hair last night to give it a spin up on some local non busy roads and rode it with some more speed. While going up a hill I nose dived but my fangs gave me enough time to react and roll when I landed instead of getting immediately slammed. Gentlest crash on that thing ever and I don't think I'd ever ride another OW without them.
Business owners often have a million things to juggle with day-to-day operations. Have you taken the time to slow down and think about what you can be doing now to prepare yourself and your business for later in life? If the answer is no, you aren’t alone. Although 76% of business owners plan to transition over the next 10 years, only 35% of businesses have a formalized succession plan in place.
You’ve worked hard to grow your business, so it’s important to think about what will happen when you want to move on from the company – whether that’s retirement, selling the business or trying something new. Thoughtful planning in advance can help give business owners peace of mind knowing that both you and your business will be cared for in retirement. A plan can also ensure your employees are cared for and, if you choose, allow your business to continue serving the local community.
Here are some tips for business owners to consider:
Planning ahead can help give you peace of mind and avoid unnecessary stress in the future. Everyone’s situation is unique, so make sure your plan incorporates your personal needs and desires. A financial advisor can be a helpful partner in putting together your plan. They can also identify how you can work toward your personal and retirement goals, separate from the equity you may have in your business.
Also consider working with an estate planning attorney to help incorporate your business into your estate plan. A basic estate plan for most business owners should include: a revocable trust, a will, a financial power of attorney, a health care power of attorney, and beneficiary designations. Make sure to review these documents periodically with your attorney to ensure they still reflect your wishes.
Assembling a team of trusted professionals can play a big role in making sure your preferences are honored after you transition away from the business. They can also help evaluate the value of your business, which can be important to know in the succession planning process.
Consider including your financial advisor, certified public accountant, business and estate planning attorney, insurance advisors, business valuation professional, investment bankers, and/or business brokers. Spending time, effort and money now to build a team of people you trust can help drive more favorable outcomes in the end.
When it comes to investing for retirement, the sooner the better – whether you are a business owner or not. Starting with investing now can give your money more time to potentially grow.
If you don’t have a company-funded 401(k), there are other retirement planning options for business owners to consider, like an IRA or solo 401(k). Make sure to consult your tax advisor, as they can help you understand the tax implications of each option and identify which one may be right for you.
Taking the time now to thoughtfully plan for your retirement as a business owner may seem daunting, but it can help ensure peace of mind later in life. There’s a lot to consider, so staying informed is key. If you’re looking for more resources in your financial journey as a business owner, visit our library of free educational content at chase.com/theknow.
The post Protect what you’ve built: Here’s why business owners should think about their succession plan appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Polymarket users can now trade on private companies' valuations, IPOs and secondary market activity.
The London-headquartered lender Standard Chartered announced plans to cut more than 7,000 jobs by 2030, with CEO Bill Winters saying the bank will replace some "lower-value human capital" through automation and AI while offering retraining to affected workers. "It's not cost-cutting. It's replacing in some cases lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we're putting in," CEO Bill Winters told reporters. "So, the people that want to reskill, that want to carry on, we're giving every opportunity to reposition," Winters said. Reuters reports: The cuts, alongside higher shareholder return targets announced in a strategy update, come as StanChart is at the tail-end of a decade-long effort to transform itself from a potential takeover target to a steadily profitable lender. Its London-listed shares, which have risen 65% in the last 12 months, fell 0.5% in early trading, as analysts said the new targets were at the conservative end of their expectations. "In a world full of uncertainty, performance may prove more challenging further out," said Ed Firth, analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, citing how the bank has benefited in recent years from high interest rates and huge wealth flows. StanChart's move to streamline operations and rein in costs comes as more global firms slash jobs by deploying AI to improve efficiency. Japanese lender Mizuho in March unveiled up to 5,000 job cuts over a decade. And banks globally are scrambling to integrate frontier AI models and fend off rising cyber threats. The most affected roles will be in the bank's back-office centres, including those in Chennai, Bengaluru, Kuala Lumpur and Warsaw, according to Winters. "Of course we're using AI along the way and AI will be a huge facilitator and enabler of that," he added, referring to its ongoing revamp to automate more of its core banking system. StanChart said it would deliver over 15% return on tangible equity in 2028, more than three percentage points higher than in 2025, and building to about 18% in 2030. Meta also announced plans to reassign 7,000 employees into AI-related initiatives, just ahead of layoffs expected to affect roughly 8,000 workers.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Multimodal Gemini, including voice input, and Google's new autonomous AI assistant, will arrive on MacOS over the coming months.
US vice-president says Iran must agree to never have a nuclear weapon; Tehran warns US against resuming hostilities
Iran’s army has warned it would “open new fronts” against the US if it resumes attacks on the country amid reports that Donald Trump is weighing up restarting military operations in Iran amid an impasse in negotiations.
“If the enemy is foolish enough to fall into the Zionist trap again and launches new aggression against our beloved Iran, we will open new fronts against it, with new equipment and new methods,” army spokesperson Mohammad Akraminia said, according to Iran’s ISNA news agency.
Continue reading...As campaigners take to the streets for what could be the most significant byelection for decades, the Reform leader’s absence remains a mystery
It has been six days since Nigel Farage cancelled a scheduled appearance at a Reform UK rally in Sunderland, a key election target in Labour’s heartlands.
The reasons given – chaos in government and what appeared to be an impending Labour leadership race – seemed logical. After all, as a quotation sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte goes: never interfere with an enemy while he is in the process of destroying himself.
Continue reading...President claims planned Tehran attack postponed to allow talks to continue – but no indication peace plan is imminent
As he seeks an exit from the Iran war, Donald Trump is increasingly outsourcing his policymaking to US allies in the Middle East, while the White House appears unable to find a simple way to end the fighting and reopen global shipping lanes held by Tehran.
In Trump’s telling, the “dealmaker-in-chief” has maintained a consistent policy toward Iran aimed at preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, leveling threats and incentives to reach a new deal that would also open the strait of Hormuz.
Continue reading...Metropolitan police yet to receive criminal reports relating to claims made in BBC programme
Police have urged potential victims of sexual assault who appeared on Married at First Sight UK to contact them, after female participants made allegations of rape and sexual misconduct.
A BBC Panorama episode that aired on Monday evening documented accusations from contestants about their time on the reality TV show. Two women, who are not named, alleged they were raped by their on-screen husbands, while a third woman who agreed to be identified, Shona Manderson, accused her on-screen husband of taking things too far during sex. All the men deny the claims.
Continue reading...Acting US attorney general made comments about the Epstein associate at a Senate hearing over budget requests
Todd Blanche, the acting US attorney general, told lawmakers on Tuesday that he would not recommend a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes.
Blanche’s comments came during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, where he was testifying before the appropriations subcommittee over budget requests for the justice department.
Continue reading...US secretary of state says WHO was ‘a little late’ in identifying deadly Ebola outbreak in the DRC and Uganda
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said on Tuesday that the World Health Organization (WHO) was “a little late” in identifying the deadly Ebola outbreak in the the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.
On Tuesday, Rubio told reporters: “The lead is obviously going to be CDC [Centers for Disease Control] and the World Health Organization, which was a little late to identify this thing unfortunately.”
Continue reading...New information surfaced at hearing into the November 2025 UPS freight plane crash in Louisville
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) revealed on Tuesday that it is reviewing reports of cracks in a wing mount before the left engine sheared off from a UPS freight airplane on takeoff from Louisville, Kentucky, in November, resulting in a crash that killed 15 people.
That information surfaced at the beginning of a two-day hearing into the crash of the delivery service’s MD-11, which left all three crew members and 12 people on the ground dead. An additional 23 people on the ground were injured as an auto parts recycling plant ignited after the freighter crashed into it.
Continue reading...Roots of idea for ‘ending neoliberalism’ have been growing over many months – with many different influences
Manchesterism is “the end of neoliberalism”. That was the claim made by Andy Burnham in his campaign launch video this week – a film which made an audacious offer not just to his byelection constituents in Makerfield, but how he intended to change national politics and the economy.
But the 2026 doctrine of Manchesterism is very different to its 19th-century namesake, when it was a byword for free trade.
Continue reading...We now know what they look like, but not their cost or name.
Renewed threat comes after US president said he was ‘an hour away’ from ordering a strike before pulling back
Donald Trump has again threatened Iran, saying the US may launch new attacks if Tehran continues to refuse the significant concessions he wants before a deal can be struck to end the Middle East war.
The US president said he had called off a fresh wave of strikes, which would have broken the ceasefire in place since early last month. “I was an hour away from making the decision to go today,” Trump said on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Defence secretary say party has turned in on itself in thinly veiled criticism of Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting
John Healey has criticised Labour figures jockeying to become prime minister in a politicised speech in which he said the party’s “very credibility“ in government was at stake if the infighting deepened.
The defence secretary, a Keir Starmer loyalist, said the party had turned in on itself since the May elections in what appeared to be direct criticism of Andy Burnham, Wes Streeting and even the junior defence minister Al Carns.
Continue reading...US president calls Paxton an ‘America First Patriot’ and ‘MAGA Warrior’ ahead of runoff against John Cornyn
Donald Trump has endorsed the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, in the state’s Republican primary, bolstering his bid to unseat the incumbent US senator, John Cornyn.
The US president praised Paxton, a hardliner who has pitched himself as a political warrior for Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, as an “America First Patriot” in a post on social media on Tuesday.
Continue reading...The virus behind the latest Ebola outbreak is the Bundibugyo virus, which is less common and there is no vaccine or treatment.
King distinguished herself as a tennis champ at Cal State Los Angeles, winning Wimbledon doubles while enrolled
When Billie Jean King left college in 1964, she had a purpose. Within a few years, she had become the top-ranked tennis professional in the world. Over a trailblazing career, she won 39 championships, a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a congressional Gold Medal – all while pushing publicly for gender and pay equality.
Last year, she finally returned to finish the degree in history she started more than six decades ago. On Monday, she graduated at 82 years old.
Continue reading...Apple's MacBook lineup includes three tiers: Neo, Air and Pro. See our favorites and find the best MacBook for your laptop budget and needs.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Michael Purzycki served as mayor of Wilmington, the state’s largest city and its economic engine, for eight years, including through COVID. Prior to his public service, Purzycki led the economic revitalization of the city’s Riverfront.
Michael “Mike” Purzycki, the former two-term mayor of Wilmington who oversaw a downtown revitalization after first spearheading the redevelopment of the city’s Riverfront district, has died. He was 80.
Purzycki died following a “hard-fought battle with cancer,” according to Wilmington Mayor John Carney’s office. The exact date of his passing wasn’t immediately clear and an official obituary is forthcoming.
After serving for eight years, Purzycki decided not to seek a third term in the 2024 election, citing his age and a desire to spend time with his family. That cleared the way for then-term-limited Gov. Carney to make an unprecedented run for city office.
Calling him a “giant” and the closest thing to the big brother he never had, Carney said in a statement, “He was so many things, and, above all else, Mike had the heart of a public servant. I can’t think of anyone who has had a greater impact on this city.”
Purzycki’s legacy may best be encapsulated with the work he achieved before being elected mayor in 2016, having led the Riverfront Development Corp. to turn a dilapidated section of warehouses along the Christina River into a significant commercial sector.
He is survived by his wife, Bette Richitelli, three children and two grandchildren.
Growing up in Newark, N.J., Purzycki made his way to Delaware through his first love in life: football.
He earned a scholarship to the University of Delaware and found success as a wide receiver, breaking all the university’s position records for the era. That performance on the field earned him a free agent contract with the NFL’s New York Giants, but the joy would be short-lived.
He injured his knee in training camp, got cut by the team and was never able to play professionally again.
In a 2020 interview with the Delaware Business Times, Purzycki recounted how he fought to receive compensation following his injury at a time when players’ rights were often ignored.
“When I got cut, I came home, and I told my father I thought I should get paid because I got injured,” Purzycki told DBT. “I didn’t get cut because I wasn’t good enough. He told me I was crazy.”
Not satisfied with that, Purzycki called the team offices and asked for storied owner Wellington Mara, and surprisingly, he connected with him. He later met with Mara in New York City and pleaded his case. A few weeks later, checks started arriving.
“I had tears when I drove out of camp … but I’m pretty resilient,” Purzycki said. “I’ve never been one to collapse.”
After the end of his football career, Purzycki would eventually end up in the real estate business, brokering sales and investing and developing properties as well, ranging from residential to commercial to golf courses and marinas.
Purzycki would earn a law degree in his early 30s before serving as legal counsel to the Delaware Senate in the early 1980s. In 1982, he was elected to the New Castle County Council, serving nine years before stepping down.
In 1996, then-Gov. Tom Carper tapped him to become the first executive director of the Riverfront Development Corp., a state-chartered nonprofit tasked with selling a redevelopment of former shipyards and warehouses along the Christina River.
From the start, Purzycki envisioned the area as an economic engine for the city, directing the construction of the Chase Center on the Riverfront where the former Dravo Shipyard once stood. Just two years later, the convention center opened for a world-class exhibit on the last Tsar of Russia.
“[Then-Gov. Carper] looked around, and he said, ‘I have no idea how you did this, and I don’t think I want to know, but I’m glad you did,’” Purzycki recalled in a 2021 interview.
About 560,000 people came through the exhibit at the then-First USA Riverfront Arts Center in a five-month run.
“It was remarkable,” Purzycki added. “It just kind of gave us a sense of what the possibilities were.”
From there, shops, restaurants, hotels, apartments, a movie theater, beer garden and corporate offices for Barclays Bank and AAA Mid-Atlantic have joined the Riverfront, fulfilling the vision that Purzycki laid out.
Megan McGlinchey, the current executive director of the Riverfront Development Corp. and a protégé of Purzycki, said the Riverfront transformation was remarkable not just for the physical change it brought, “but the psychological shift it created for Wilmington.”
“For decades, many people viewed the city through the lens of decline. The Riverfront gave Wilmington a visible success story. It helped attract residents back into the city and created momentum that extended beyond the Christina River into Market Street, adjacent neighborhoods, and now Riverfront East,” she told Spotlight Delaware, referring to the next expansion on the eastern bank of the Christina River.
When Purzycki pursued the mayor’s office in 2016, he entered a crowded field that already had six candidates, including incumbent Dennis Williams.
The city was still recovering from growing violence on its streets and a battered image brought upon by a Newsweek cover story that deemed the city “Murdertown USA.”
Purzycki, who by then had led the Riverfront revitalization for 20 years, said his city was “troubled by the sharp rise in crime, the lack of confidence in city leadership and the loss of optimism in Wilmington’s future.”
He narrowly won the primary race by 234 votes over Eugene Young, a rising young Black community activist who would later join Carney’s gubernatorial Cabinet. For years, critics argued Purzycki had come out on top by convincing a wave of Republicans to switch parties and back him in the Democratic primary – the city is so heavily Democratic that it acts as a de facto general election.
“He was a good man, and while we politically went up against each other in 2016, I had the pleasure of working with him on a variety of projects since, especially during my term as head of Delaware State Housing,” Young told Spotlight Delaware on Tuesday. “So we got to work together on a variety of projects impacting and helping the people of the city, and my heart goes to his family.”
Purzycki served two terms from 2017 to 2025, including the entire span of the COVID pandemic.
He helped to bring economic revitalization to the Market Street corridor, working in particular with the Buccini Pollin Group – the city’s largest for-profit developer – to build new apartments, restaurants and attractions in the stretch. The total investment by the firm founded by local brothers Chris and Rob Buccini has eclipsed $2 billion – a figure that was once unthinkable in the city.
On Tuesday, Rob Buccini told Spotlight Delaware that he and his brother first met Purzycki in the early 2000s, when they developed the Christina Landing apartments. They found him “intimidating but also inspiring.”
“Mike understood the complexity and the risk that we undertook on these projects, which I always appreciated,” he said.
Looking back, Buccini said that Purzycki’s success at the Riverfront made their work possible in the rest of the city. They often picked up investment bankers at the train station and took them there first, before heading to Market Street or other areas they wanted to build in.
“We had to show them the test case of what was possible. I don’t know that we’d be anywhere close to where we are now without it,” he said.
The Purzycki-BPG partnership also helped bring new businesses like Bardea, which has received vaunted James Beard Award nominations, to the city, drawing significant attention to the changing nature of the corridor.
They also built the Chase Fieldhouse – and subsequently attracted the Philadelphia 76ers’ Blue Coats G-League team – and a major HBCU Week exhibition to the city during his tenure.
City Council President Earnest “Trippi” Congo, who often battled with Purzycki in the latter half of his tenure, said that while they had their differences, Purzycki was “able to do some things as mayor and as the leader of the Riverfront Development Corporation that not too many people could have managed.”
In particular, Congo highlighted Purzycki’s championing of the annual HBCU Week and College Fair.
“I think that there is no denying that HBCU week would not be what it is today without his influence. He used his influence to help thousands of Black students receive millions of dollars in scholarships,” Congo said. “His legacy will live on forever.”
All of that growth helped to stabilize the city, which had seen a falling population in the years prior, and has since reached 73,000 residents, a level not seen since 2009.
In 2022, he laid out a $50 million plan, paid for by COVID-era American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, to invest in neighborhoods across the city. He worked with nonprofit developers to build new homes or rehab existing ones on the East Side. Purzycki also worked with REACH Riverside to build new public housing and resources in the community.
After COVID, however, Purzycki was faced with a changing economic climate in the city, as employers began leaving downtown high-rises for remote work opportunities. New development just north of the city limits also drove more tenants from the city’s downtown district.
Some of those buildings have now been converted into apartments, which will change the nature of the city’s future downtown core.
Hanifa Shabazz, who served as city council president for Purzycki’s first four years, called the late mayor a “visionary” and an “innovative developer.”
She said that many will remember him by his work on the Riverfront and what he brought to the city, but Shabazz remembers him as a friend and an excellent singer.
She recounted some 10 years ago, when she and Purzycki would sing duets at the First State Gridiron Dinner & Show, where they would imitate songs by Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett, changing the lyrics to express what mattered most to them as leaders in the city.
“Just to be engaged with him … we were able to see what could possibly be for Wilmington and use our resources to get it done,” she said.
One of Purzycki’s first major tasks as mayor was to try to ease the level of gun violence in the city, and he tapped Robert Tracy, a veteran of the New York and Chicago police forces, to take the helm of the Wilmington Police Department.
Through the use of data-driven policing strategies and violence intervention efforts, shootings and murders fell sharply in the city, but they rebounded during the COVID era. As of the last year of his mayorship, Wilmington saw 81 shootings and 14 deaths – the city’s lowest totals in two decades.
Haneef Salaam, a longtime criminal justice and civil rights advocate in Wilmington, also pointed to Purzycki’s work before becoming mayor, when he chaired the Wilmington HOPE Commission in the mid-2000s. Purzycki was supportive of reentry initiatives in the city, including to help fund a reentry conference hosted by the HOPE Commission and the Delaware Center for Justice, securing space at the Chase Center and helping cover food costs, Salaam said.
“He was always willing to give financially and be a part of the conversation when it came to reentry, before reentry was even a big deal in Delaware,” he added, noting that Purzycki donated to two other reentry nonprofits that he operated.
Salaam said he appreciated Purzycki’s vision, which he feels is responsible for the fine dining downtown that Wilmington has today, but he wished the former mayor had done more to include residents in his efforts.
“I didn’t mind his vision. I just thought that he was excluding the current residents from being a part of the vision,” he said.
Despite the drop in bloodshed, the WPD also saw a 5% spike in complaints against officers during Tracy’s four-year tenure from 2017 to 2021. The lack of diversity in the top ranks of the police force – in a city that is majority Black and Latino – also led to a resolution of “no confidence” against Tracy by the city council. He left the next year to take over the St. Louis Police Department.
In the last months of his mayorship, Purzycki likewise came to a loggerheads with council over a proposal to nix the residency requirement for city employees. Ultimately, a vote of no confidence in the mayor was rejected by council members, but a comment likening the debate of the primarily Black council to “mob rule” by the white mayor elicited claims of racism.
Even after he left office, his push to rehabilitate the historic Gibraltar estate – which neighbors his own home – drew controversy, particularly after Spotlight Delaware revealed that the city had spent millions to stabilize the property with little public scrutiny.
Bud Freel, a longtime friend who has been assisting Purzycki on that project, said the news of his passing was “like a gut punch.”
“He loved this city, and he loved the people that made up the city of Wilmington,” Freel told Spotlight Delaware. “He was just a hardworking, decent guy who just tried to do his best, and I just think everybody in Wilmington owes a debt of gratitude to Mike for what he’s done over the years.”
The post Former Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki dies at 80 appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
May 19, 2026 — Agentic AI has always called for a different kind of CPU. NVIDIA CEO and founder Jensen Huang introduced the answer — the standalone Vera CPU — at GTC San Jose in March as NVIDIA’s next multi-billion dollar business.
On Friday, that CPU went from NVIDIA’s labs into customer hands.
Ian Buck hand-delivered the first NVIDIA Vera CPU systems to Anthropic, OpenAI, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and SpaceXAI — marking the moment agentic CPUs move from announcement to production.
The first NVIDIA Vera CPUs arrived at three of the world’s leading AI labs on Friday — Anthropic in San Francisco, OpenAI in Mission Bay, SpaceXAI in Palo Alto — followed by a delivery to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in Santa Clara on Monday. NVIDIA Vice President of Hyperscale and High-Performance Computing Ian Buck hand-delivered them.
“Agentic AI is creating a new CPU moment in the AI factory — as models move from answering to acting, Vera is purpose-built to keep that work moving at scale,” Buck said.
The big idea: imagine you could work 10x faster. Could your computer keep up? Agentic AI puts more demand than ever on the infrastructure used to do all kinds of work — from building slides to compiling and testing software, analyzing data, searching files or even running simulations.
AI agents don’t run on GPUs alone. Every agentic sandbox, every tool call, every orchestration layer, every long-context retrieval operation — that’s CPU work. Vera is a new class of CPU designed with that reality as its starting point.
This gauntlet of concurrent, real-time tasks puts pressure on CPUs in ways traditional core-density focused designs were never built to prioritize. Vera packs 88 custom NVIDIA-designed Olympus cores, 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth and 50% faster per-core performance. Under constant load, work completes more quickly — increasing the efficiency of the entire AI factory and helping users get their work done with faster responses.
Vera Heads to San Francisco and Anthropic
The first delivery landed at Anthropic’s sleek SoMa offices in San Francisco.
James Bradbury, Anthropic’s head of compute, took the handoff from their conference room near the Bay.
Buck, aided by a bare NVIDIA Vera CPU motherboard he carried as a guide, walked Bradbury through the server built around the new CPU, talking through the features that make Vera different.
“Scaling compute is an important accelerant for the growth of models,” Bradbury said. “We’re excited to see Vera emerge as a promising part of the ecosystem when solving for agentic workloads.”
Feeding OpenAI’s Workloads
At OpenAI’s Mission Bay headquarters, the handoff moved outside — to an open-air balcony off the main offices.
The famously moody San Francisco weather cooperated on this day as Sachin Katti, head of compute infrastructure at OpenAI, thanked Buck for bringing the server over.
Buck walked through Vera’s features and, at one point — retrieving a screwdriver from his pocket — pulled off the lid to reveal the system’s insides.
On the Peninsula With SpaceXAI
The day’s final delivery took place at SpaceXAI’s offices in Palo Alto.
NVIDIA’s team walked Elon Musk through the system’s interior. Musk listened, then started asking questions — about cores, about memory layout, about cooling.
SpaceXAI is evaluating Vera for reinforcement learning workloads and the agent-based simulation pipelines that drive its training stack.
Vera Comes Home to the South Bay and OCI
On Monday inside the Oracle AI Customer Excellence Center, a team from OCI, including Karan Batta, who leads overall product management, and Gary Miller, chief customer and partner success officer, took a tour of the unboxed Vera CPU system. In the background, an NVIDIA GPU rack spun through OCI customer workloads from around the globe. The center is where Oracle customers come to kick the tires on a variety of AI workloads.
Buck explained how Vera will help.
“When AI models are posed a question, the answer, often, isn’t already prepped and ready to go. “The models actually have to generate some Python code to arrive at the correct answer,” Buck said. A task at which the Vera CPU excels. “That’s why we are seeing the demand for CPUs skyrocket,” Buck continued.
A trend the OCI team was also witnessing.
“OCI plans to deploy hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA Vera CPUs beginning in 2026 because agentic AI demands sustained performance at massive scale,” said Batta. “Vera’s architecture is purpose-built for high-throughput reasoning workloads, delivering the efficiency, density and footprint OCI needs to power the next generation of enterprise AI.”
OCI is the first cloud provider to deploy Vera at hyperscale. For enterprise customers, that means production-grade agentic AI infrastructure at a scale no other cloud provider can match today.
The OCI team was eager to put Vera to work, offering their customers another system to customize and validate their agentic AIs and workloads, Miller said. “I am really looking forward to the reaction of people who come through here, and working together to get the most from Vera,” he said.
What Vera Delivers
Vera is part of NVIDIA’s extreme co-design story, alongside the NVIDIA Rubin GPU, BlueField 4 DPU, Spectrum-X and MGX rack architecture.
In addition to powering standalone CPU systems, Vera is the host processor for Vera Rubin NVL72 where it pairs via second-generation NVIDIA NVLink-C2C to a pair of Rubin GPUs.
In these systems, Vera and Rubin share a unified memory architecture that keeps accelerated compute highly utilized.
Vera’s fast CPU cores and interconnect handle orchestration, control, and data movement needed to feed GPUs at 2x the energy efficiency of traditional infrastructure.
The age of agentic AI has a purpose-built CPU, and its name is Vera.
Learn more about the NVIDIA Vera CPU here.
Source: Ian Finder, NVIDIA
The post NVIDIA’s Vera CPU Lands at Leading AI Labs as Agentic AI Demand Grows appeared first on HPCwire.
New region strengthens Vultr’s commitment to affordable, high-performance cloud infrastructure and Europe’s thriving open source and AI ecosystem
MILAN, May 19, 2026 — Vultr today announced the launch of its 33rd global cloud data center region in Milan, coinciding with AI Week 2026 at Fiera Milano Rho, where over 700 international speakers will gather for Europe’s largest AI event. Vultr is a platinum sponsor and is also co-hosting the AI Agent Olympics Hackathon with over 1,000 participants.
Milan becomes Vultr’s ninth European cloud data center region, joining Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Manchester, Paris, Stockholm, and Warsaw. This launch represents the company’s latest expansion of a global network reaching 90% of the world’s population within 2–40 milliseconds. Vultr’s cloud data center location will be delivering Vultr’s full-stack AI infrastructure, including Vultr’s flagship cloud compute offering, VX1, in addition to Vultr’s full range of bare metal and cloud GPU offerings from NVIDIA and AMD.
The region will serve enterprises and developers running demanding workloads, including AI, SaaS platforms, databases, analytics, ERP software, microservices, and APIs. Vultr Cloud Compute plans are available from 2 to 192 vCPUs, offering dedicated compute resources with broad software compatibility, easy integration, and transparent billing.
Vultr benchmarks show Cloud Compute delivers up to 23% better performance and 33% lower cost than comparable hyperscaler compute plans – resulting in up to 82% better price-to-performance.
“Italy is one of Europe’s fastest-growing cloud infrastructure markets, and Milan is at the heart of it,” said J.J. Kardwell, CEO of Vultr. “Vultr is here because the enterprises and developers driving that growth need high-performance cloud infrastructure without the cost and complexity of the traditional hyperscalers. This is a long-term investment in Italy and in European AI innovation.”
To further enhance regional connectivity, Vultr is now a connected Autonomous System Number (ASN) at the Milan Internet Exchange (MIX), enabling direct peering with other ASNs on the exchange to keep traffic local, reduce latency, and increase bandwidth for regional users.
About Vultr
Vultr is on a mission to make high-performance cloud infrastructure easy to use, affordable, and locally accessible for enterprises and AI innovators around the world. Vultr is trusted by hundreds of thousands of active customers across 185 countries for its flexible, scalable, global Cloud Compute, Cloud GPU, Bare Metal, and Cloud Storage solutions. In December 2024, Vultr announced an equity financing at a $3.5 billion valuation. Founded by David Aninowsky and self-funded for over a decade, Vultr has grown to become the world’s largest privately-held cloud infrastructure company.
Source: Vultr
The post Vultr Expands European Footprint with 33rd Cloud Data Center Region in Milan appeared first on HPCwire.
PARIS and HAMBURG, Germany, May 19, 2026 — Bull, a leader in advanced computing and AI, today announced the delivery and inauguration of a new supercomputing infrastructure for Airbus, Europe’s largest aerospace company, as part of a multi-year supercomputing contract. This key milestone follows the entry into service of two new supercomputers, and their respective modular data centers, delivered in Toulouse in 2025 and more recently in Hamburg in 2026.
Increasing demand on Airbus’ HPC infrastructure, driven by the rapidly evolving aerospace market, has created the need for a more powerful and flexible solution. By delivering this HPC infrastructure, Bull helps to triple Airbus’ simulation capacity, enabling engineers to both enhance existing products and design the next generation of aerospace solutions, while maintaining the highest standards of safety. Airbus is using its new HPC environment for critical tasks such as aerodynamic design, acoustics (cockpit, fuselage, cabin, etc.) and structural stress analysis.
As Airbus’ strategic HPC partner, Bull has progressively deployed its supercomputing infrastructure across multiple sites. The first system was delivered and entered into service in Toulouse in 2025, just 14 months after contract signature. The delivery of the Hamburg supercomputer in 2026 now marks the completion of this major program and paves the way for the inauguration of a fully operational, multi-site supercomputing infrastructure.
As part of this multi-year high-performance computer contract, Bull delivers a full turnkey solution, covering computing systems, storage and data centers, in an HPC-as-a-service model. Based on a unique design approach, these modular data centers bring together a set of several pre-built and interchangeable modules in which the HPC system is pre-integrated at Bull’s flagship factory in Angers (France), before being assembled on-site, forming a complete, turnkey data center.
The system’s energy efficiency is maximized with Bull’s Direct Liquid Cooling technologies enabling Airbus to optimize power consumption. Thanks to this patented solution, the heat generated by the system is reused to supply neighboring buildings.
In addition, Bull’s expert engineers in industrial HPC, based in Germany, have provided specialized expertise in the development of innovative simulation environments, including application optimization support, further strengthening Bull’s leading role in providing advanced HPC solutions.
“This long-term strategic and technological collaboration highlights the critical role of HPC in driving innovation and breakthrough programs across the aerospace and manufacturing industries,” said Martin Matzke, head of Central Europe and Northern Europe, at Bull.
“Our collaboration with Airbus to deliver a turnkey HPC solution is a cornerstone for Bull and our high-performance computing business. Being recognized as an HPC strategic partner by a global, world-renowned industry player is an honor for our teams,” said Bruno Lecointe, head of HPC, AI and Quantum Computing at Bull.
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.
Source: Bull
The post Bull and Airbus Inaugurate Multi-Year HPC Infrastructure Across Europe appeared first on HPCwire.
Spurs can seal its survival with a win away at its London rivals.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Until this past weekend, a contractor for the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) maintained a public GitHub repository that exposed credentials to several highly privileged AWS GovCloud accounts and a large number of internal CISA systems. Security experts said the public archive included files detailing how CISA builds, tests and deploys software internally, and that it represents one of the most egregious government data leaks in recent history. On May 15, KrebsOnSecurity heard from Guillaume Valadon, a researcher with the security firm GitGuardian. Valadon's company constantly scans public code repositories at GitHub and elsewhere for exposed secrets, automatically alerting the offending accounts of any apparent sensitive data exposures. Valadon said he reached out because the owner in this case wasn't responding and the information exposed was highly sensitive. The GitHub repository that Valadon flagged was named "Private-CISA," and it harbored a vast number of internal CISA/DHS credentials and files, including cloud keys, tokens, plaintext passwords, logs and other sensitive CISA assets. Valadon said the exposed CISA credentials represent a textbook example of poor security hygiene, noting that the commit logs in the offending GitHub account show that the CISA administrator disabled the default setting in GitHub that blocks users from publishing SSH keys or other secrets in public code repositories. "Passwords stored in plain text in a csv, backups in git, explicit commands to disable GitHub secrets detection feature," Valadon wrote in an email. "I honestly believed that it was all fake before analyzing the content deeper. This is indeed the worst leak that I've witnessed in my career. It is obviously an individual's mistake, but I believe that it might reveal internal practices." "Currently, there is no indication that any sensitive data was compromised as a result of this incident," a CISA spokesperson wrote. "While we hold our team members to the highest standards of integrity and operational awareness, we are working to ensure additional safeguards are implemented to prevent future occurrences." The GitHub account in question was taken offline shortly after CISA was notified about the exposure. However, according to Caturegli, the exposed AWS keys remained valid for another 48 hours. "What I suspect happened is [the CISA contractor] was using this GitHub to synchronize files between a work laptop and a home computer, because he has regularly committed to this repo since November 2025," Caturegli said. "This would be an embarrassing leak for any company, but it's even more so in this case because it's CISA."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Some employees will be moved to new teams focused on AI agents and cloud infrastructure
As Meta races to recenter itself around artificial intelligence, the tech giant is mandating that more than 7,000 workers must move to new teams, and it’s radically changing some employees’ jobs. The Guardian has also learned that some of these reassigned employees will shift to two new teams: one building AI cloud infrastructure and another that’s building an internal AI agent codenamed Hatch.
Late last week, Meta employees received a notice that engineers had been “selected” for reassignment and would begin reporting to the cloud infrastructure and Hatch teams by the end of this week. Meta made a similar move last month when it reshuffled at least 1,000 engineers on to a new data labeling team called Applied AI, or AAI – at first giving them the option to volunteer, but later telling workers: “Transfers aren’t optional.”
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AI infrastructure and software company Scale AI has signed an MOU with the Department of Energy to support the Genesis Mission – the collaborative AI for science initiative bringing together leading national labs and advanced computing environments.
The move adds another commercial AI infrastructure player to an ecosystem that is increasingly centered around integrating AI models with scientific datasets and high performance computing systems. Some of the big tech players that are already connected to the initiative including Nvidia.
Public details for the Scale AI and DOE agreement are not available. No specific projects or deployment timelines have been announced. At this stage, it remains more of a collaborative framework rather than a fully defined operational initiative.
Much of messaging by Scale AI is based around the challenges surrounding scientific data infrastructure. There is greater emphasis on “unlocking the right data”. That is not surprising as industry trends and reports show data has emerged as the critical element in the success of AI systems.
In its announcement, Scale AI framed fragmented and difficult to operationalize research data as one of the biggest obstacles in allowing AI systems to be fully integrated into scientific discovery workflows.
The DOE national labs generate enormous amounts of data but often struggle to derive full value from it. That’s where Scale AI’s core expertise of data labeling and annotation could be useful in helping operationalize scientific data.
Most of the attention in AI for science went toward bigger models and more compute. The data itself is becoming a greater part of the problem. A lot of scientific data still sits across disconnected systems and highly specialized research environments that modern AI systems were never really designed to navigate. The goal now is to make large scientific datasets usable inside operational AI systems.
The Scale AI team aims to change this. They shared in a blog that “the massive amounts of data generated across America’s 17 National Labs represents a strategic resource that, if utilized properly, can unlock transformative advances in U.S. scientific leadership…This is the “data bottleneck,” not a lack of data, but the gap between data that exists and data that is actually usable for AI-driven discovery.”
(VideoFlow/Shutterstock)
The partnership comes at a time when Scale AI continues expanding its footprint. Earlier this week, Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) reportedly expanded its agreement with Scale AI from $100M to $500M.
Scale AI is also involved in the Defense Innovation Unit’s Thunderforge program, which focuses on bringing AI into military planning and operational decisions. This is part of President Trump’s Golden Dome homeland defense initiative.
These moves underscore Scale AI’s growing role in operational AI infrastructure beyond its original data labeling business.
Scale AI was founded in 2016 by Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo as a data labeling company. The early focus was to help ML teams prepare training data for AI systems. However, demand for LLMs and operational AI systems accelerated. To meet that demand, the company expanded into broader AI infrastructure solutions.
In recent times, Scale AI has focused more on getting data into a usable state for real world AI deployments. That positioning fits naturally with many of the challenges emerging inside scientific computing environments.
Last year Wang departed for Meta’s superintelligence initiative. Former Uber Eats executive Jason Droege later took over as CEO. Despite change in leadership, Scale AI has continued expanding further into operational AI infrastructure. Meta has become a major backer of Scale AI.
The Genesis Mission itself is also evolving. Much of the early attention surrounding AI for science focused heavily on compute scale and frontier models. However, now the attention is shifting toward the infrastructure required to operationalize AI across complex scientific environments.
(IR Stone/Shutterstock)
Scientific AI systems face a different set of constraints than traditional enterprise AI deployments – reproducibility, traceability, and domain specific validation within simulation based workflows. All this makes data orchestration and operational reliability increasingly important layers of the stack.
The bigger problem is not the AI models themselves, but connecting them with existing research systems and scientific workflows. That aligns with the direction of the Genesis Mission itself.
Partnerships with companies, such as Scale AI, that are focused on operational AI infrastructure helps the initiative move beyond isolated AI experiments toward larger scale integration across scientific computing and research environments.
Scale AI shared “Signing this MOU is an important step in getting the data layer right in this mission. It allows Scale to engage more directly with DOE, align on shared priorities, and discuss how AI is applied across some of the most important scientific challenges facing the country.”
The agreement gives Scale AI a much closer role in how the DOE may eventually connect AI systems with scientific data and national lab research environments.The company could play an important role in how advanced computing environments integrate with national lab research workflows, while strengthening its position inside large scale government backed AI infrastructure initiatives.
This story originally ran in BigDATAwire.
The post Scale AI Joins DOE’s Genesis Mission as Scientific AI Shifts Toward Data Infrastructure appeared first on HPCwire.
Eight states have moved to draw new maps after supreme court ruling that severely weakened the Voting Rights Act
The NAACP on Tuesday launched a campaign urging Black athletes, their families, alumni and fans to boycott athletic programs of public universities in states that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation”.
In the announcement of the “Out of Bounds” campaign, the civil rights giant name-checked eight states – Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Georgia – whose flagship public athletic programs generate more than $100m in annual revenue. Each of those states has moved to draw new maps to limit Black voting representation, following the supreme court’s Louisiana v Callais decision severely weakening the Voting Rights Act.
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The world’s best BSD (I’m kidding, I love them all equally) has released version 7.9, now available through your update tools and on mirrors the world over. OpenBSD 7.9 brings a ton of changes, fixes, and improvements, such as delayed hibernation support on amd64. This will allow OpenBSD laptops to briefly wake up from sleep, to then immediately drop into hibernation. A small but incredibly welcome change is that sysupgrade will now handle low space on /usr more gracefully, which will make quite a few people who once hit that limit very happy.
OpenBSD 7.9 also brings VA-API and open Widevine support to its Chromium (and derivatives) port, and OpenBSD can now run as a guest under Apple’s hypervisor for M-series Macs. There’s initial low-level support for the FUSE API, the maximum support processor count on amd64 has been raised from 64 to 255, there’s improved support for managing complex core configurations in the scheduler, and many more changes. There’s also the usual new versions of LibreSSL and OpenSSH, of course, but that’s a given.
This blog is now closed, follow the latest development on today’s Europe blog
The latest drone alerts come as Ukraine and Latvia were this morning forced by Russia to repeatedly refute Moscow’s claims that Kyiv was preparing attacks against Russia from Latvia.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson confirmed that Ukraine does not use the territory of Latvia for its operations against Russia and refuted Moscow’s claims.
“Russia is lying about Latvia allowing any country to use Latvian airspace and territory to launch attacks against Russia or any other country.”
Continue reading...Jonathan Andic released on €1m bail after being questioned in connection with death of Isak Andic in 2024
The son of Isak Andic, the founder of the fashion chain Mango, has been released on bail of €1m (£866,000) after being arrested and questioned in connection with his father’s death in Catalonia almost 18 months ago.
Andic died in December 2024 after apparently falling 100 metres down a ravine while hiking in Montserrat, near Barcelona, with his son, Jonathan. His death aged 71 prompted tributes to him from politicians, journalists and the fashion world.
Continue reading...Two off-duty officers allegedly assaulted a sex worker in a taxi in Ciutat Vella, according to police in Catalonia
The Toronto police force, which is already under intense public scrutiny, is facing fresh questions after it emerged that three off-duty officers on vacation in Barcelona were arrested in connection with a sexual assault last week.
According to police in Barcelona, the alleged assault occurred in the early hours of 13 May, when the trio of police officers were travelling in a taxi with a sex worker in the Ciutat Vella neighbourhood of the Catalan capital.
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There is concern among some in the Justice Department that the pending charges against him are weak, sources said.
Unsure whether a robot mower could handle my complex lawn, I signed up for a robot mower subscription. Here's how it went and what surprised me.
Microsoft is launching three new Intel-powered Surface devices for businesses: the Surface Pro 12, Surface Laptop 8, and a smaller 13-inch Surface Laptop model. These new machines come equipped with newer Intel chips, a few business-focused upgrades, and notably higher starting prices. "The high pricing of these three new Surface devices is a sign of things to come for whatever consumer models Microsoft is planning this year," notes The Verge. From the report: This time around Microsoft is refreshing its Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models with Intel's latest Core Ultra Series 3 processors first, ahead of similar models with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X2 processors later this year. The new Surface Pro 12, or as Microsoft calls it the Surface Pro for Business 13-inch (12th Edition), will be available for businesses today, starting at an eye-watering $1,949.99. The base model will include an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor, 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and the regular 13-inch PixelSense LCD display. Businesses will have to pay extra for models with Intel's Core Ultra 7 processor, up to 64GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage. The top spec Surface Pro 12 with a Core Ultra 7, 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage will be priced at $4,399.99, and there are also OLED screen options and models with 5G connectivity. The Surface Pro 12 5G starts at $2,249.99, with a Core Ultra 5, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. [...] Microsoft is also launching two new versions of the Surface Laptop for businesses today. The Surface Laptop 8, or Surface Laptop for Business 13.8 or 15-inch (8th Edition) as Microsoft calls it, will also be available with a range of Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 chips. It launches alongside a smaller 13-inch model, which is confusingly labeled the Surface Laptop for Business 13-inch (1st Edition). The 13.8-inch model starts at $1,949.99, and includes Intel's Core Ultra 5 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. While Surface devices for businesses have typically had higher pricing than consumer models, the $1,949.99 starting price for a Surface Laptop 8 is almost double the original price of the Surface Laptop 7. RAMageddon really has come for Microsoft's Surface Pro and Surface Laptop devices, after recent price increases meant the existing consumer models are now $500 more expensive than their original starting price. The max configuration for the 13.8-inch Surface Pro 8 will include a Core Ultra 7, 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage for $4,299.99. A similar version of the 15-inch model (with an x7 processor) will be priced at $4,499.99.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Liberal justice warned court could be seen as political after recent decisions backed by conservative supermajority
The US supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a rare public rebuke of the nation’s highest court, declaring that it “can and should be better” in the wake of a string of controversial moves by its conservative supermajority.
Weeks after writing a solo dissent as the supreme court effectively gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act, Jackson – its newest member and fiercest liberal voice – delivered a stark warning over the risk of the court being seen as political.
Continue reading...A fast-growing brush fire that started on Monday morning in southern California has prompted evacuation orders for thousands of people and damaged at least one home.
The Sandy fire was reported just after 10am in Simi Valley, a city in Ventura county about 30 miles north-west of Los Angeles. The blaze spread to more than 1,300 acres by its second day. Several neighbourhoods in nearby northern LA were put under evacuation warnings. Under an evacuation warning, residents are not required to leave immediately but are encouraged to be alert and be prepared to leave if conditions worsen
Continue reading...Investigation launched as video circulates online showing officer firing at vehicle and colleagues dragging away body
Authorities in Jamaica have launched an investigation after CCTV footage of a woman’s fatal shooting by police sent shock waves across the Caribbean nation.
Footage circulating on social media shows a police officer firing at a vehicle during a protest on Sunday in Granville, in Jamaica’s north-western parish of St James. The bullet hit Latoya Bulgin, 45, who was behind the wheel of the vehicle.
Continue reading...Filings reveal $220m to $750m in trades on US president’s behalf in first quarter of 2026, including securities linked to largest US companies
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were invested in Eli Lilly on Donald Trump’s behalf earlier this year, according to financial disclosures, as the US drugmaker benefited from his administration’s move to expand access to blockbuster obesity treatments.
Ethics filings revealed several thousand trades on the US president’s behalf tied to stocks and bonds in the first quarter of 2026, with a cumulative value of between $220m and about $750m.
Continue reading...WHO chief said he was ‘deeply concerned’ after at least 500 suspected Ebola cases and 130 deaths reported in outbreak of Bundibugyo strain
Global health leaders are considering whether vaccines or medicines still in development could be used to fight Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as the World Health Organization’s chief said he was deeply concerned by the outbreak’s speed and scale.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there had been at least 500 suspected cases of Ebola and 130 suspected deaths in DRC since the new outbreak began – up from about 200 cases and 65 deaths when it was announced on Friday.
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President Trump has been openly mulling a takeover of Cuba similar to the operation that toppled Venezuela's Nicolás Madoro. What it would mean for the regime's leaders remains to be seen. Here are some of the figures to watch.
Investigators have been looking at a handful of Chinese firms that together control the majority of unrefrigerated shipping container manufacturing around the globe, the sources said.
A long and bitter legal battle between tech billionaires Elon Musk and Sam Altman has culminated in victory for the OpenAI boss. Musk has vowed to appeal the verdict. But what did the trial reveal about big tech and the global AI race. Lucy Hough speaks to Guardian US tech and power reporter Nick Robins-Early - watch on YouTube
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Microsoft is turning Azure Linux into a general-purpose, Fedora-based cloud distribution available to all Azure customers, while also productizing Flatcar as Azure Container Linux for immutable container hosts. "When Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation, there was this big conspiracy theory that somehow the Linux Foundation was undermining open source in partnership with Microsoft, and now you announce that you're shipping a Linux distribution," Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation's CEO, said in response to Microsoft's surprise announcement. "That's amazing." ZDNet reports: Until now, [Lachlan Everson, Microsoft's Principal Program Manager on Azure's open-source team] noted, "we had Azure Linux only available to third-party customers through AKS specifically, and that was Azure Linux 3.0." Going forward, this will be ACL. Everson emphasized that Azure Linux 4.0 is the culmination of years of internal usage and the evolution of the earlier Mariner distribution. "So we've been running Azure Linux for many years internally, and we got through to 3.0, and we only allowed it on as a container host on AKS. What we've done is make it a general-purpose, so this is all the learnings that we've had in the heritage of Mariner." Under the hood, Azure Linux 4.0 is based on Fedora Linux and is delivered as an open distribution on GitHub. This code is available now. Yes, Red Hat knows that Microsoft has done this. Everson continued, "So, we made a decision to use Fedora as an upstream, so it's using RPMs in the Fedora ecosystem. Microsoft curates the packages and the supply chain to fit Azure's cloud platform." Microsoft also created "it to be purpose-built for Azure, which integrates vertically into all of our infrastructure to give you the best Azure Linux experience on Azure." While Azure Linux will ship as a VM image, Microsoft is already preparing a developer-friendly path onto Windows desktops: "And as of today, we have it as a VM image for your VM host on Azure. We're going to announce WSL images as well." While developers will be able to run Azure Linux locally through WSL, Microsoft is not positioning it as a traditional desktop Linux. Asked whether he could run it on his laptop, Everson said: "I will be able to run it on my laptop, or what have you. Yes, on Windows 11." However, when pressed about a desktop experience, Everson was clear that there are "no plans" for a graphical environment. "It's optimized for server-side in the cloud," he said, adding that even on a developer machine, users should expect a lean environment. "Minimal packages, yeah. The idea is that we offer you a consistent experience to do your development on your machine, and that you can take your workloads as you develop them on your machine and run them with VS Code. You can run your applications on that, and know that the platform is the same that you're running on the cloud, so that you have that kind of consistency between environments." Flatcar itself remains the upstream project, but Microsoft is packaging it for Azure customers. Everson described Flatcar as "purpose-built, immutable, secure by default, production-ready operating system, and Azure Container Linux is the productization of that, but we're still investing in the upstream Flatcar ecosystem and pulling that downstream into a productized exterior experience just for container workloads, so it's a container hosting in AKS." To underscore the immutable model, he added that "Everything's baked in, so there is no package manager. We bake the bits into the immutable, and they're in the immutable version. So Azure Container Linux is the immutable version. So you shouldn't be changing any system packages or any application packages. Anything that you need to change is customer workloads run in containers."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Officials from Baltic states say Moscow behind latest such incident but also tell Kyiv to be more careful with its routing
A Romanian F-16 Nato jet shot down a drone over Estonia on Tuesday in what appears to be the latest case of Russian electronic jamming diverting long-range Ukrainian drones into the alliance’s territory.
A local resident told the Estonian public broadcaster, ERR, that he had seen two fighter jets – part of a Nato force policing the skies over the Baltic states – flying in the area before a loud bang that brought the drone down. He said the drone had crashed about 30 metres from the nearest residential building.
Continue reading...Officials will determine if standard process was followed before lethal strikes in Caribbean and eastern Pacific
The Pentagon’s internal watchdog has opened an investigation into whether US military commanders followed proper procedures when conducting boat strikes in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.
The office of inspector general at the Department of Defense is examining whether military commanders stuck to the standard six-step process the US military is required to follow before approving and carrying out lethal strikes, according to an 11 May memo initiating the review.
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Player was actually NFL offensive player of the year
Receiver made a total of three tackles last season
Jaxon Smith-Njigba has built a justified reputation as one of the most electrifying receivers in the NFL. So it was understandable that the Seahawks star was surprised when he received a trophy for the league’s defensive player of the year.
Smith-Njigba actually won the NFL’s offensive player of the year after setting franchise records with 119 receptions and 1,793 receiving yards last season. But when he received his trophy the engraving read “Defensive Player of TheYear”.
Continue reading...Darren Jones says release will be ‘one of the largest government publications ever laid in this house’
On Friday parliament’s intelligence and security committee issued a damning statement about the government’s response to the humble address requiring the release of documents relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US. It said the government was not fully complying with what is in effect an instruction from the Commons. For good measure, the committee also accuses the government of not keeping proper record of its decisions and of doing far too much business by WhatsApp. Here is our story, by Henry Dyer and Paul Lewis.
At 12.30pm Jeremy Wright, deputy chair of the committee and a former Tory attorney general, will ask a Commons urgent question about this. He is asking Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, to reply.
Continue reading...  | Back in March I recieved an older OW2114xxxxxx Pint (5313 hw and 5040 fw) with a known bad battery. The board had sat for at least 2 yrs, but I was able revive the battery and balance the cells enough to get it back riding. They would balance to 62.6v (4.18 ea) but then 2 of the cells would lose voltage pretty quickly. Clearly 2-4 bad cells (last picture). I was able to use this as an extra/driveway board for friends...but had to constantly rebalance the cells after each session...while also closely monitering battery temp to <130F. After the latest rebalance, the board will show 62.6v and then immediately drop to 22.5v and die when unplugged...but individual cells still show 4.17+... Battery is obviously shot and I would like to replace the battery w an OnlyAmps or Nexus to extend the range...but am worried the BMS may be shot too. Any thoughts on how to bench test a BMS? They seem hard to come by and I dont really want to buy a whole new FW pack for $300...rather go aftermarket battery and use my existing BMS, if possible. Appreciate any help/experience. [link] [comments] |
Former first lady delivered veiled but sharp remarks on US politics during speaking tour that began in Melbourne
It was a curious question: who was going to pay $895 (US$640, £476) to see Michelle Obama speak at 12.30pm on a Tuesday in Melbourne? While she is an indisputably excellent public speaker, the ticket prices for Obama’s first-ever speaking event in Australia raised a few eyebrows, ranging from the $895 “platinum” package (which promised a priority seat, an “exclusive” brunch, and a “commemorative lanyard and tote bag”) to the cheapest seats at $195 a pop.
A sign that expectations may have been bigger than our wallets in a cost-of-living crisis: two weeks ago, my “cheap” seat at the back was suddenly upgraded to a much better spot due to “a recent change in production requirements” that was left unexplained. Another: the visibly empty patches at the front of the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
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Continue reading...An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Meta told employees on Monday that it was reassigning 7,000 workers to focus on new initiatives around artificial intelligence, the latest change in a company transformation spurred by the powerful technology. Employees will be moved to four new organizations focused on building new A.I. tools and apps, Janelle Gale, Meta's head of human resources, said in an internal memo. The organizations will use "A.I. native design structures" and have fewer managers per employee than other parts of the company, she said, adding that company leaders will send details about the new roles on Wednesday. The restructuring "will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding," Ms. Gale wrote. Meta declined to comment further on the changes. The move comes shortly before Meta begins laying off roughly 8,000 employees, or 10 percent of its work force. Ms. Gale also mentioned Wednesday's layoffs in her memo. "We know days like this are extremely hard, and we appreciate you showing up for each other," Ms. Gale said. According to the NYT, employees have been asked to work remotely that day and emails about the layoffs would be sent at 4 a.m. local time. Employees in the United States will receive 16 weeks of severance pay, along with two extra weeks for every year they worked at Meta.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Karim Khan is wrong to say he has been exonerated of sexual misconduct. The case must proceed swiftly
The international criminal court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has been on an exoneration tour, with stops including an interview with Mehdi Hasan and an appearance at the Oxford Union. Accused by a lawyer in his office of repeated sexual misconduct, which he denies, he claims that an internal review of the allegations has vindicated him but the situation is more complex than that.
It has been a year since Khan took a leave of absence while the claims against him were investigated as an internal employment matter. That absence has left the ICC under the control of his deputies, with important decisions to be taken in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere. Yet the ICC member states, which have ultimate authority over whether Khan stays or goes, have dawdled, acting as if they had all the time in the world. And the procedure that they relied on to resolve the matter turned out to be a travesty.
Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments. Before joining Human Rights Watch, he served as a federal prosecutor in New York and Washington
Continue reading...Independent scientists say the technology, while impressive, lacks some components to be truly considered an artificial egg.
Attack marks first time military action has forced a fully operating nuclear power plant to rely on backup generators
• Middle East crisis – live updates
A drone strike that cut off external power to a nuclear reactor in the United Arab Emirates this week has revived concerns over the safety of nuclear plants during wartime.
Reactor no 3 at the Barakah nuclear plant lost vital off-site power for about 24 hours after the attack on Sunday, forcing it to rely on emergency diesel generators.
Continue reading...Darren Jones says there are good reasons not to disclose certain details and next batch will be released next month
A senior minister has defended the government’s decision to withhold information relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Washington ambassador from a powerful parliamentary committee.
Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, told the Commons on Tuesday there were good reasons not to disclose certain information, adding that the next tranche of documents would not be published until next month.
Continue reading...Garden featuring giant woman carved out of tree makes designer one of few female artists to win
Featuring a giant, sleeping woman carved out of a fallen tree, Sarah Eberle’s hauntingly beautiful garden has won the top prize at the Chelsea flower show.
Eberle, now the Royal Horticultural Society’s most decorated gardener, is a rarity; she is one of only three women to have won Best in Show at Chelsea as solo designers in its 100-year history.
Continue reading...Cornwall Insight predicts rise in price cap of nearly 13% in Great Britain as Iran war pushes up gas costs
Energy bills for households in Great Britain could increase by more than £200 a year to almost £1,900 from this summer in “a kick in the teeth” for millions struggling with the cost of living crisis.
A typical gas and electricity bill is forecast to rise to the equivalent of £1,850 a year from July under the industry regulator Ofgem’s quarterly price cap, according to analysis by the energy consultancy Cornwall Insight.
Continue reading...I really enjoy my XRC that has over 700 miles now. It's definitely an improvement over the XR+ I had before. I ride mostly paved paths, and my usual top speed is around 19mph. I'm 155lbs and I haven't felt pushback or heard the haptic buzz so far. I do get worried that riding close to 20 may be in the danger zone. That's why I'm considering the X7 Sport. Does it make sense to upgrade? I wouldn't worry about riding near the limit anymore, but is that enough of a reason to buy a new board when this one has been flawless? Is there an adjustment getting used to the X7 rails vs straight? I'm almost 70, which makes me consider the crash more than I did 20 years ago. Help me out of my decision paralysis!
Frank Cottrell-Boyce tells MPs to focus on early-years reading, with more support for parents and nursery workers
The children’s laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce has urged the government to prioritise pleasure over learning in children’s reading.
Giving evidence to MPs on the education committee, which is investigating the crisis in reading for pleasure among children, the screenwriter and novelist said conversations about children’s reading too often revert to attainment in school.
Continue reading...Enthusiasts track down weapon used to fell fleeing Eli Wallach amid preparations for 60th anniversary of film’s release
Six decades after Clint Eastwood nonchalantly used a cigar to light its fuse and fell a fleeing Eli Wallach, the Manchester-made cannon that appeared in the Good, the Bad and the Ugly has been rediscovered in a museum in south-east Spain.
The artillery piece was tracked down by the Sad Hill Cultural Association, a group of volunteers dedicated to restoring the graveyard near Burgos, northern Spain, built for the climax of Sergio Leone’s seminal spaghetti western.
Continue reading...Odai Shanah details being among the children forced to huddle in a classroom during attack at the Islamic Center
A nine-year-old boy has described witnessing Monday’s deadly shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, saying that he “saw bad stuff” and huddled in closet during the attack.
Odai Shanah, whose mother emigrated from war-torn Gaza and settled in southern California two decades ago, told Reuters that he heard a barrage of gunshots coming from outside the walls of the mosque complex, which also houses an Islamic day school.
Continue reading...Want to buy a home or refinance your current one? Here are the mortgage interest rates you'll need to know now.
Get ready for the end.
Abstract expressionist’s Number 7A, 1948, becomes the fourth most expensive work ever sold at auction
A Jackson Pollock painting has sold for a record $181.2m (£135.3m) at Christie’s in New York.
The sale on Monday made Number 7A, 1948 the fourth most expensive work ever sold at auction, according to ARTnews.
Continue reading...May 19, 2026 — The Director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS), Mateo Valero; the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Universities of the Government of Spain, Juan Cruz Cigudosa; and the Minister of Research and Universities of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Núria Montserrat, met this Tuesday at the BSC with the Under Secretary of the United States Department of Energy, Darío Gil, to sign a letter of intent aimed at advancing scientific and technological collaboration.
The collaboration includes disciplines such as artificial intelligence, healthcare, quantum information science, high-performance computing, and the applications of AI and computing to drive scientific discovery broadly.
The signatory parties reaffirmed the importance of scientific cooperation in scientific disciplines with a global impact, including artificial intelligence (AI), healthcare, quantum information science, high-performance computing, and the applications of AI and computing to drive scientific discovery broadly.
They also agreed that “scientific discovery and technological innovation drive progress and prosperity worldwide.”
As they noted, joint scientific cooperation among all parties “is especially critical now, with the ever-accelerating race for global technology dominance.”
Promotion of Joint Research
They also agreed that “each side will aim to expand and strengthen laboratory-to-laboratory collaboration in critical technology areas.” They will promote joint research, researcher exchange, shared infrastructure, and public-private partnerships for mutual benefit. Additionally, they share an interest in reinforcing research security and aligning practices to protect innovation.
The announcement of this collaboration highlights “the importance of our shared commitment to shape the future of next-generation innovation and to ensure that their citizens benefit from those investments.” The parties share expertise in scientific disciplines ranging from high-performance computing to quantum technologies and will synergistically drive progress on innovation and discovery.
Finally, during the meeting, all parties looked forward to future engagements to usher in a new chapter of collaboration.
Source: BSC-CNS
The post BSC Hosts US-Spain Initiative for Next-Gen Research Collaboration appeared first on HPCwire.
Smotrich vows to retaliate by waging ‘war’ on Palestinian Authority and orders evacuation of a West Bank village
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has said the international criminal court (ICC) prosecutor has sought a confidential arrest warrant against him, and promised to retaliate by waging a “war” on the Palestinian Authority.
He said he had ordered the evacuation of the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as part of measures against the authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank under agreements with Israel.
Continue reading...New electoral maps are erasing Black representations. The effort takes its cues from American history
Early this month, a single pen stroke effectively ended representative Steve Cohen’s career in Congress. The man who has represented Memphis for 19 years will turn 77 later this month, but he wasn’t planning on retiring. He hadn’t lost any primary. The reason was that his district had been erased around him.
A new electoral map, passed by the Republican-led state legislature and signed by Bill Lee, the governor, divides the ninth district three ways. “Last week Tennessee Republicans silenced the Black vote here in Memphis to make Republican victories likely,” Cohen said in his statement. That’s succinct and accurate.
Jamil Smith is a Guardian US columnist
Continue reading...Iranian state media showed wedding ceremonies in Tehran for dozens of couples said to have volunteered for "self-sacrifice" in the war with the U.S.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is a fun popcorn flick, with little story and no purpose. Just shut off your brain and you'll be fine.
Conflict, mistrust and delayed detection could complicate response to emergency caused by Bundibugyo variant
To be around the centre of an Ebola outbreak is to become used to the smell of chlorine. At hospitals and government buildings, surfaces are sprayed with it and hands washed in a 0.05% solution that can kill the virus in 60 seconds.
Infrared handheld thermometers take temperatures at airports and border crossings. Any indication of a fever prevents passage. Contact-tracing teams crisscross the countryside.
Continue reading...Ruling blocks detentions at three federal courthouses except in rare cases amid protests over tactics
A federal judge in New York has banned US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from arresting immigrants in or around three federal courthouses in lower Manhattan, where vigorous confrontations have played out since the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency.
Under an order issued on Monday by P Kevin Castel, a US district judge, federal agents are no longer allowed to make arrests of immigrants except under exceptional circumstances at the sites where hearings are held before immigration judges.
Continue reading...The new DG started by stressing the need for ‘velocity’. First, he’ll have to navigate staff cuts, culture wars and a sea of fake news
Matt Brittin’s message was pretty clear on his first day as director general of the BBC. It was echoed in a schedule that included an introductory LinkedIn video as well as meetings with the newsroom, podcast, radio, current affairs and research and development teams. It was there in his first all-staff email, which used the word “velocity” twice and invoked the second world war to call for a “sense of urgency”.
Alongside Brittin’s affection for the BBC and public service broadcasting, his message can best be summed up as “move fast but break nothing”.
Jane Martinson is an academic and Guardian columnist. She is a board member of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian Media Group, and writes in a personal capacity
Continue reading...44-year-old lost comeback fight in just 17 seconds
Carano hints she may return to compete again
Gina Carano has admitted she would have faced serious harm if she hadn’t tapped out of her comeback fight against Ronda Rousey on Saturday night.
The 44-year-old hadn’t fought since 2009 when she faced Rousey in the contest, which was part of a high-profile MMA card on Netflix. The fight was a complete mismatch and lasted just 17 seconds, with Carano tapping out after Rousey, who was making her own comeback after nearly a decade away from competition, put her opponent in an armbar.
Continue reading...Survivors say they'd asked for more medical support before the Iranian drone strike that killed six U.S. soldiers at their command post in Kuwait in the war's first 24 hours.
The Trump administration is doubling down on efforts to resettle White Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees, proposing to increase the government's refugee cap to welcome thousands more of them, according to a plan obtained by CBS News.
In yet another staggeringly corrupt and unprecedented move, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department on Monday announced a $1.776 billion slush fund, drawn from public coffers, to funnel payouts to Trump loyalists.
The fund is part of a deal decided by the Trump administration to drop its weak $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over a leak of the president’s tax returns. The entire lawsuit had itself become an egregious example of self-dealing: Trump’s Justice Department suing Trump’s IRS on behalf of Trump.
Over 90 House Democrats recently signed an amicus brief to the presiding judge asking that she dismiss the suit. A settlement, the Democrats wrote, would create a “specter of corruption unparalleled in American history.”
With his popularity at historic lows, Trump can only turn to these kinds of payouts for his allies and dwindling base.
Before the judge could respond, however, Trump withdrew the lawsuit and moved to set up something even worse than that specter: a slush fund beholden entirely to Trump, with little in the way of judicial or congressional oversight.
According to the Justice Department announcement, the so-called “anti-weaponization” fund — to remedy the purported weaponization of the U.S. government — will be paid out to Trump allies who claim they were targeted by President Joe Biden’s administration. The irony that the fund itself is just one of Trump’s countless weaponizations of the government should be lost on no one.
The fund amount — $1.776 billion — is, of course, an on-the-nose reference to American independence and tells us everything we need to know about this deal. For most of the country, there is little of substance in this too-cute-by-half dollar amount. Instead, the material benefit will go to the largely to the white ruling classes with some crumbs for Trumpian militia members convicted under Biden.
Trump’s reckless and brutal presidency is materially harming the American working classes — even the white working class. With his popularity at historic lows, Trump can only turn to payouts like this, pardons, and the spectacle of white supremacist violence; these are all he has to offer his allies and dwindling base.
That’s what this slush fund does: nod to Trump’s allegiance to his supporters, the vast majority of whom will get little other than the mood elevation that comes with having their resentments recognized — what W.E.B. DuBois once called the “psychological wages” of whiteness, a benefit that is only felt by virtue of the greater oppression of others.
Trump’s authoritarian capitalism will not, after all, uplift the white working class; there aren’t enough U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement signing bonuses or slush-fund payouts to go around.
The slush fund money would come directly from the Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund, which is typically used to pay legally reached settlements and court judgments. But in this case, a commission picked by Trump’s attorney general will apparently hand out payments as it pleases.
No specific recipients have been named yet, but beneficiaries could reportedly include Proud Boys and other January 6 Capitol rioters, many of whom have since pardoned by Trump.
The fact that any payouts will be funded by taxpayer dollars is not mentioned in the Justice Department’s fund announcements.
“This is a theft far worse than Watergate,” wrote civil rights attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnik on social media. “There is no other word for it. They are stealing $1.78 BILLION dollars to pay Trump’s allies, despite knowing that these people are not legally entitled to any money.”
The Trump regime hopes programs like this “anti-weaponization” fund can appease just enough of an active base to hold power under minority rule, while enriching all those in Trump’s inner circles who in turn stick by his side regardless of what happens in elections.
The Trump regime hopes programs like this fund can appease just enough of an active base to hold power under minority rule, while enriching all those in Trump’s inner circles.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told the New Republic that he sees the fund as Trump and his lawyers “figuring out a way to refund the January 6 militia, presumably to get them ready for the next round of battle.”
Raskin added that, should the Democrats retake the House and Senate in the midterms, they would shut down the fund and demand transparency about any payments made. According to the Congress member, any payouts to January 6 participants would violate the Fourteenth Amendment by aiding in an insurrection against the U.S. It is, however, no easy task to claw back money once doled out.
“It is my personal opinion that this is a criminal act and people should respond accordingly,” noted Reichlin-Melnik.
The problem is that for Trump’s regime and its loyal Supreme Court, the distinction between presidential criminal corruption and permissible executive action has all but evaporated.
The challenge, then, is to show that Trump’s meager offerings are not worth accepting.
The post Trump’s “Anti-Weaponization” Fund Is a Handout to His Hardcore Supporters appeared first on The Intercept.
The enhanced features are coming to VoiceOver, Magnifier, subtitles and more later this year.
Tommy Carstensen oversees one of the most sophisticated archives of Epstein materials, while Tristan Lee’s database allows searches of faces who appear in the files
Before the US Department of Justice (DoJ) missed a legally mandated, December 2025 deadline to release unclassified files related to the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, the Denmark-based data scientist and bioinformatician Tommy Carstensen was not especially concerned with the case of the accused sex trafficker.
“I hadn’t even watched the Netflix documentary,” he said.
Continue reading...If you’re using or planning on adding a red light therapy mask to your skin care regimen, here’s what experts want you to know.
As resistance to datacenters grows, Musk and others are painting a rosy picture. But the US must institute protections
As Americans grow increasingly worried that AI will wipe out millions of jobs and create a permanent new underclass, tech billionaires are rushing to reassure us not to worry – the subtext being: please don’t bring out the anti-AI pitchforks.
Even Elon Musk, who recently merged SpaceX with his AI company, has joined the effort, essentially telling people “don’t worry, be happy” about AI. Musk wrote last month that “Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government” would save everyone thrown out of work by AI.
Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues
Continue reading...The only person with Mango clothing chain founder Isak Andic when he died on a hike was his eldest son, and his testimony was reportedly "inconsistent."
Retired NHS worker Nicholas Stone died after becoming unwell at protest against far-right Bristol Patriots
The police watchdog is investigating the use of force against a retired NHS worker who attended a counter-demonstration against the far right and died shortly after contact with officers there.
Nicholas Stone, 65, who lived in Bristol, died on 10 January after becoming unwell at a protest opposing the rightwing group Bristol Patriots, who were demonstrating in the city centre.
Continue reading...Pub owner’s sale to Barcelona-based brewer Damm is latest takeover of a British beer by an overseas buyer
Pub chain Greene King has agreed to sell its Old Speckled Hen ale brands to the Spanish owner of Estrella lager, making it the latest in a series of British beers to be snapped up by overseas buyers.
Barcelona-based brewer Damm has agreed to buy Old Speckled Hen brands, including its non-alcoholic and golden ale versions.
Continue reading...Police in Spain arrested the son of Isak Andic, the billionaire founder of the Spanish fashion brand Mango, for allegedly having played a role in his December 2024 death.
Gemini AI, Android XR, smart glasses and more are all on deck for today's keynote.
Political chaos has engulfed Britain, with six people holding the U.K.'s top job in a decade, including one prime minister who lasted only 45 days.
Amazon is adding AI-generated "podcasts" to Alexa+, letting users request custom audio explainers on any topic featuring two synthetic co-hosts. Variety reports: Seemingly to dispel the notion that these "podcasts" will be AI audio slop, Amazon emphasized that it has deals with major news organizations to ensure "accurate, real-time news and information." Those include the Associated Press, Reuters, the Washington Post, Time magazine, Forbes, Business Insider, Politico and USA Today; publications from Conde Nast, Hearst and Vox Media; and more than 200 local newspapers across the U.S. In an example clip shared by Amazon of the new Alexa Podcasts feature, the two AI-generated hosts discuss "the latest music releases." A male Alexa+ narrator says more than 50% of music listening now comes from unsigned artists. "The monoculture is just gone," a female-voiced Alexa+ narrator chimes in. The male Alexa+ host says there has been "stoner metal," indie pop and experimental hip-hop music "all dropping on the same Friday," and adds, "That's not chaos -- that's the healthiest the music ecosystem has ever been." [...] To use Alexa Podcasts, users can simply tell Alexa what topic they're curious about and "it does the rest in minutes." Alexa+ will provide an overview of what it plans to cover, and let you adjust the length and direction before it generates the podcast. When your episode is ready, you'll get a notification on your Echo Show device and the Alexa app.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
San Antonio Spurs 122-115 Oklahoma City Thunder (2OT)
Spurs take Game 1 of best-of-seven series
Victor Wembanyama had 41 points and 24 rebounds, Dylan Harper finished with 24 points and a team playoff-record seven steals, and the San Antonio Spurs beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 122-115 in a double-overtime classic to open the Western Conference finals.
Wembanyama sealed Monday night’s game with a pair of dunks in the final minute, one of them leading to a three-point play as the Spurs stole home-court advantage and beat the Thunder for the fifth time in six meetings this season.
Continue reading...A bear mauled to death a man at Vitosha, a mountainous region just outside the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, authorities said.
Our research has uncovered young entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka and Pakistan using AI tools to make deeply objectionable content – and money
Niamh McIntyre is a senior reporter at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Scroll through any Facebook feed in Britain and, between the baby announcements and petty neighbourhood beefs, you’re likely to come across an account with a union jack profile picture and a vague, generic name like Britain Today.
These accounts – and there are hundreds, possibly thousands of them – present themselves as the work of British patriots. In one typical, AI-generated video, a middle-aged man claims his local cafe “has stopped serving pork, bacon and sausages just to avoid offending people”. Another post from the same account includes a sepia-tinted set of images of Victorian London, mourning a time when the city “was English, first-world and beautiful”. Alongside this type of reactionary nostalgia, it’s not unusual to see memes that call Islam a “cancer”, decry Muslims praying in public as an “invasion of the west” or promote the “great replacement theory” (which claims that white populations are being deliberately replaced by non-white immigrants).
Niamh McIntyre is a senior reporter at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Continue reading...The global population is aging faster than care systems can manage. Is AI the solution to keeping older people safe and independent in their homes?
We tested Samsung phones spanning from $300 to $2,000. Our top recommendations include one that won a CNET Lab Award for having the fastest charging.
Trump’s approach to Taiwan could jeopardize its future. Indo-Pacific allies are taking note Expert comment LToremark
Trump’s comments on Taiwan after his meeting with Xi and an apparent move towards ‘strategic stability’ with China could have consequences for Taiwan’s future and erode trust among US allies.
When US President Donald Trump met with China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing last week, there was concern that he might negotiate the future of Taiwan to strike a deal with China. For Beijing, Taiwan is the most important issue in the US-China bilateral relationship. Xi even warned that if the issue is mishandled, it could trigger ‘clashes and even conflicts’.
Reports in the run-up to the meeting suggested that China would seek a change in America’s long-standing position on Taiwanese independence. Rather than merely ‘not support’ it, China wants the US to ‘oppose’ Taiwan’s independence and to endorse Beijing’s goal of unification. Such a shift in US policy might appear symbolic, but it would be disastrous not only for the self-governing island, but also for America’s posture in the Indo-Pacific and the region’s security.
In the end, such a shift did not materialize. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio even asserted that America’s position remains unchanged. But the momentary respite has merely deferred the underlying anxiety.
A better insight into Trump’s thinking on Taiwan comes from an interview with Fox News, that aired soon after he departed Beijing. Three things stood out. First, Trump said that he will use a $14bn weapons sales package to Taiwan that requires his approval as a ‘very good negotiating chip’ to deal with China. Earlier this year, the president deferred the multi-billion-dollar sale of missiles, anti-drone equipment and air-defence systems until after the summit to avoid derailing it.
Trump also said he has consulted with Xi on the matter and seems willing to negotiate a future arms sale to Taiwan with Beijing. This runs against one of the 1982 US Six Assurances to Taiwan, which states that the United States will not consult with China on its arms transfers to Taiwan. The assurances serve to reassure Taipei to restrain it from provocations and bolster its defensive capabilities to deter Beijing. Further delaying arms deliveries could operationally weaken Taiwan’s defensive capabilities, upend the military deterrent – and make Taiwan more jittery.
With Trump and Xi reportedly set to meet at least three more times this year, the temptation to hold back US arms transfers in order to preserve the summit cadence will only grow. It could also tempt Beijing into asking for more concessions that weaken US security guarantees, such as restrictions on cabinet visits to Taiwan or curtailing US transits by the Taiwanese president.
Second, when asked about whether the United States would come to Taiwan’s aid in case of a conflict, Trump maintained the US line of strategic ambiguity. But he also said that the US was not looking to fight a war 9,500 miles away. Ambiguity only works as deterrence when underwritten by credible resolve – and Trump’s comments cast doubt over that. The statements also come as US military resources have been diverted from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East and its munitions stockpiles are depleted. Beijing could read this as an opportunity to test American credibility, and slowly chip away at Taiwan’s resolve by ramping up its intimidation tactics.
Third, during the interview Trump parroted Beijing’s view of who is to blame for tensions in the Taiwan Strait. ‘We are not looking to have somebody say let’s go independent because the United States is backing us’, he said. Beijing has framed Taiwan’s desire for independence as the main reason for the deterioration of relations. Trump also failed to mention Beijing’s relentless coercive pressure on Taiwan and actions in the Taiwan Strait. His tacit endorsement could serve to legitimize Beijing’s narrative and tactics.
Taken together, Trump’s comments undercut the precarious balance that has characterized US policy on Taiwan for decades. It would sow doubt among the Taiwanese public about the credibility of the US security guarantee and their own ability to defend the island. They could also embolden Xi, who seeks a fourth term next year and has vowed to not let the Taiwan issue pass onto the next generation.
Another concern arising from the summit is Beijing’s new framing of the US-China bilateral relationship as pursuing ‘constructive strategic stability’. Marco Rubio also echoed this phrase in his interview with NBC News during the summit, implying Washington has endorsed this idea, at least rhetorically. What it actually means is unclear. Beijing has long preferred vague formulations because it can change their substance based on its interest. This could have implications for Taiwan. Any US action contrary to Beijing’s core interests on the issue could be framed as a violation of this strategic stability, with Washington cast as the disruptive party. How much the Trump administration cares about the framing is unclear. But if it does, the pattern of withholding assistance to Taiwan as leverage could harden into the new baseline.
Teenage suspects died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, say officials. Plus, why American women want to leave the US at twice the rate of men
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Good morning.
Authorities are investigating a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego as a hate crime.
What do we know about the suspects? The mother of one of the suspects had called police about two hours prior, informing them that her son was missing along with several of her weapons and her vehicle. Police were looking for the teenager and his friend when they received a 911 call from ICSD.
What is Trump claiming now? That the leaders of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia approached Washington over the chance of making a deal that would be “very acceptable” to the US, and stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
… and Iran? Its foreign military spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, claimed Pakistan had shared Iran’s latest proposal with the US. There were contradictory reports from Islamabad, which has acted as mediator: one source appeared pessimistic, while others said Tehran had made concessions.
Continue reading...Capture that once-in-a-lifetime moment with these great cameras.
Russia's army has started three days of nuclear weapons drills involving thousands of troops across the country, as Kyiv escalates its drone attacks and with President Vladimir Putin headed to China.
The bodies of two Italian divers have been brought to the surface after the Maldives' worst diving disaster, with two more yet to recover, a government spokesman says.
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Why our worst days might be saving us
The Blockchain Leaks: How Wall Street's new betting obsession became a National Security threat
Video Break: Psyche Spacecraft prepares for Mars flyby
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“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy wrote some of the most brutal, sun-scorched landscapes in American literature. And he wasn’t exactly known for handing out cheerful life advice. But in his novel No Country for Old Men, he came up with this:
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
It is a fantastic piece of wisdom because it completely flips the script on how we handle things when life goes sideways.
I’ll admit that for me the jury is out when it comes to “luck” in general. People who profess a belief in a higher power (and I’m one) usually put the concept of luck somewhere on a back shelf, where it becomes less of a tenet and more a figure of speech. Which is how I’ll use here because, frankly, the point is too good to pass up.
So let’s pretend we’re on the way to an important meeting and get rear-ended on the freeway, or a relationship we thought would last forever suddenly falls apart. That’s when we look up at the ceiling and ask, Why me?
Bad luck is no longer a toss of the dice but a targeted strike from the universe.
But McCarthy’s quote suggests that life is a massive, chaotic web of cause and effect, and we are only ever seeing one tiny thread at a time.
Think about the classic example of missing a flight because you got stuck in a nightmare traffic jam on the way to the airport. You may be sweating or swearing or both. To add insult to injury, you’re stuck with a rebooking fee. But later you find out that your missed flight experienced severe turbulence, or worse, an engine failure.
Suddenly, that curse of a traffic jam has turned into a shield.
The problem is, we rarely get that dramatic of a reveal. Most of the time, if our bad luck saves us from a disaster, we will never even know a thing about it.
When a door gets slammed in our face, whether it’s a job rejection, a relationship, or a failed investment, it forces us to change our trajectory. To take a detour. And that detour may have just avoided whatever disaster was barreling down the main road we wanted to take. In other words, we don’t get to see that alternate timeline where we got exactly what we wanted…and it completely ruined our life.
I’m not saying we should celebrate when bad things happen. Pain is real, disappointment stings, and nobody likes losing. But McCarthy’s quote isn’t a cheesy “everything happens for a reason” slogan. It’s much grittier. It’s an admission that we are fundamentally blind to the bigger picture. It’s a reminder to have a little humility when we judge the events of our own lives.
Or, let’s say none of that is true. Let’s say bad luck saves us from nothing. How’s that feel? Is it helping? Whereas, on the flip side, the admission that we don’t know everything can take the sting out of frustration.
So the next time a plan falls apart or “bad luck” derails your week, you can take a deep breath, look at the wreckage, and think: Huh. I wonder what bullet I just dodged.
Researchers found over 1,600 primates listed for sale on Facebook, TikTok and more over a six-week period in 2025
A new report from leading wildlife and conservation organizations has revealed a sharp rise in the online sale of primates across major social media platforms in the US, raising concerns about wildlife trafficking, public safety and animal welfare.
The report, titled Primates for Purchase: The Surge in Sales on Social Media in the US, was released Tuesday by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Continue reading...Election in Allentown pits three establishment insiders against a firefighter with a populist message
Allentown, Pennsylvania, is the kind of place the national media brings up every now and then to talk about the troubles of the working class. That’s for good reason: the city is a great stand-in for America’s blue-collar blues. Billy Joel even wrote a song about it. The same goes for neighboring Bethlehem, which once was home to the largest steelmaking operation in the world. That operation shuttered in 2003 and was replaced by a casino.
No doubt the Lehigh valley has seen better days. But it’s not all in the rear view. In fact, this week this blue-collar bastion could decide the future of the Democratic party.
Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623
Continue reading...As many as 40% of women aged 15 to 44 say they want to migrate, citing better work life balance to Trump’s politics
It was in 2022, when Americans were reeling from the news that the supreme court had overturned Roe v Wade, that Jen Barnett got a firsthand glimpse of just how viable her new business could be.
Days before the court ruling, she had launched a website aimed at Americans looking to move abroad. As confusion and consternation set in over what the ruling meant for US women, Barnett watched traffic to her website steadily tick upward. “We had this huge spike.”
Continue reading...Ben Crump says $4.85m police settlement over fatal traffic stop helps to show how ‘truth must always come to light’
“No amount of money can erase” the pain that motorist Ronald Greene’s death at the hands of Louisiana police inflicted on his loved ones, but a $4.85m settlement which the state has agreed to pay his family helps illustrate how “the truth must always come to light”, their attorney has said.
Ben Crump recently expressed those sentiments in a statement that served as one of his and his clients’ first public reactions to news first reported by the Guardian that mediation talks on 12 May had yielded a settlement between Louisiana authorities and Greene’s family.
Continue reading...Republican critic of president faces challenge from Ed Gallrein, while Georgia and Pennsylvania hold key contests
The biggest day of primaries yet arrives Tuesday, with voters in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, Oregon and Idaho, heading to the polls to select candidates ahead of November’s midterm elections.
While many primaries will be resolved with little drama, some have shaped up to be among the most contentious elections of the year so far, serving as gauges of Donald Trump’s control of Republicans, and the direction Democratic voters are looking to steer their party as they seek to retake control of Congress.
Continue reading...
At the beginning of his three-year federal prison sentence for felony tax evasion, Roger Shoffstall lost his telephone privileges when a guard caught him running his small Alaska phone company from behind bars.
He’s lost a lot of privileges over the years. Shoffstall, 75, can’t serve on a federal jury. Unlike most Alaskans, he doesn’t receive an annual Permanent Fund dividend check. And he is not allowed to own a gun.
One thing never changes, however: Each year, the federal government sends his company, Summit Telephone, more than $1 million.
The money comes from a special government subsidy program that Congress created to bring fast, affordable phone and internet service to hard-to-reach places. You help pay for it.
Pull up your latest phone bill and look for a line labeled “Universal Service Fund.” Some phone companies list it as a “Universal Connectivity Charge” or fold it into a “Regulatory Programs & Telco Recovery Fee.” It’s all the same thing: a surcharge added to the monthly bill of phone customers throughout the United States.
The federal government and phone companies don’t call it a tax — but it acts like one. Carriers must currently contribute 37 cents of every dollar of their interstate and international phone revenues to the fund.
In Alaska, where many communities can only be reached by plane or boat, the Federal Communications Commission has given telecommunications companies $4.6 billion in these subsidies since 2016. That’s more than $600 per Alaskan per year. More per resident than in any other state.
Yet after all that spending, Alaska still ranks near the bottom for access to the very land-based, high-speed internet service the money was meant to deliver.
Some communities have yet to be wired at all. In others, fiber-optic cables or microwave towers offer internet with speeds that were recently clocked, statewide, as the slowest in the country. Even with the subsidies, the service comes at a steep price to customers: often hundreds of dollars a month for internet one-tenth what the FCC considers broadband quality.
The federal program has kept money flowing to companies like Shoffstall’s whose operators have troubled pasts. It also gives money to companies like Shoffstall’s regardless of how many people use their services. And fewer and fewer Alaskans have done so since low-earth satellites from Starlink entered the market at better prices. (Satellite internet doesn’t qualify for the subsidy but costs about $90 to $130 per month for download speeds up to 280 megabits per second in the same service area as Summit Telephone. According to Summit’s website, its fastest internet plan in the same region maxes out at 25 Mbps and costs $135 a month.)
Alaskans pay the most for phone and internet but get the slowest service. Please fill out our quick survey to share how much it costs you to get online and what you think of the service.
All of these excesses appear to fall within the program’s rules or the FCC’s discretion.
A telecom on the Aleutian island of Adak receives more than $350,000 a year to provide phone and low-speed internet services to 306 buildings, according to FCC records, even though the state Department of Labor says the island is home to fewer than 80 people. One business owner said everyone he knows on the island has moved on to Starlink anyway.
GCI, the state’s largest telecom and its largest subsidy recipient, got $466 million just two years after its settlement with the federal government for alleged fraud related to the same subsidy program. (The settlement said it was neither an admission of guilt by GCI nor a concession by the Justice Department that the claims were not well founded.)
Shoffstall and his attorney did not respond to repeated interview requests or answer detailed questions sent by email. On Thursday, Shoffstall sent two documents to the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica asserting that he is a sovereign citizen of the United States, an ideology that the FBI has described as “those who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or ‘sovereign’ from the United States.” The FBI has categorized the extremist version of this movement as “domestic terrorism.”
Larry Mayes, the owner of Adak Eagle Enterprises, the company that receives the subsidy to provide internet on Adak, declined to answer questions about the funding. “You’ll have to talk to the FCC about that,” he said, hanging up the phone.
In a written response to questions, GCI said it and other Alaska telecoms depend heavily on the subsidies to provide services across the state.
“Before and after the settlement, GCI continued to work with the FCC and customers to provide high-quality communications services in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations,” the GCI statement said. “The settlement did not change Alaskans’ growing demand for these services, GCI’s willingness to provide them, or the criticality of USF funding to the sustainability of those services.”
The FCC did not respond to requests for comment. The agency is weighing the future of the program and recently circulated a proposal to overhaul or potentially sunset elements of the subsidy that funds companies like Summit.
Alaska telecom lobbyists and executives said that the state provides some of the most challenging geography to serve in the United States, and that they have made great progress in bringing internet access to Alaska.
Christine O’Connor, executive director of the Alaska Telecom Association, said the subsidies have improved access and lowered costs for rural Alaskans.
“There is simply no way that rural Alaskan communities could be connected with Anchorage or with the rest of the United States and the world” if consumers living in rural Alaska communities had to pay the full cost, she wrote in a statement to the Daily News and ProPublica.
But Daniel Lyons, a former attorney whose law firm represented Verizon and AT&T and who now teaches internet law at Boston College Law School, said the subsidy program is broken. The fundamental problem: No one has ever rigorously tested whether it works.
“It’s not proven how successful it is,” said Lyons, who specializes in telecommunications and internet law, “because the FCC is not very good at auditing its program.”
In Shoffstall’s case, the FCC pays his company what works out to about $800 per month per customer. Lyons has advocated scrapping this approach and sending the subsidy directly to consumers instead, letting them choose which provider gets their money. In Alaska, that might mean Starlink, though some new users say they are being charged a “high demand” fee of $1,500 to sign up, or its future satellite competitors like Amazon Leo.
“If the goal is to make sure everybody gets online,” Lyons said, “you try to find the families that can’t afford service at market rates and you give subsidies to them directly.”
Alaska’s outsized share of the subsidy traces back to a man memorialized with a life-sized bronze statue in the Anchorage airport.
Sen. Ted Stevens — “Uncle Ted” — spent 40 years delivering federal money to Alaska and was nearing the height of his power in 1996 when Congress passed the Telecommunications Act, creating the modern Universal Service Fund.
It was before smartphones or Netflix. Most homes in America had no internet, and by the late 1990s “high-speed” service meant 200 kilobits per second — faster than dial-up modems but too slow to play high-definition video. Today, the FCC defines broadband, which is just another way of saying high-speed internet, as 100 Mbps. That’s 500 times faster than in the ’90s.
As chair of the committee that controlled the FCC’s budget, Stevens ensured Alaska telecoms received special treatment, according to Carol Mattey, a former FCC official who oversaw efforts to reform the subsidy.
“It would be suicidal to do something to make the head of the Appropriations Committee angry at you,” said Mattey, who served as deputy chief of the commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau.
Stevens lost reelection in 2008 while under a corruption indictment that was later dropped. He died two years later in a plane crash on a trip from a private lodge owned by GCI, the Alaska telecom giant. GCI’s current president and chief operating officer, Gregory Chapados, is Stevens’ former chief of staff.
A GCI spokesperson wrote that while Stevens chaired the Appropriations Committee, he did not at the time chair the Senate Commerce Committee, which drafted the Telecommunications Act and oversees the subsidy program. Chapados, who served as chief of staff for Stevens from 1986 to 1992, was not involved in developing the Telecommunications Act, the company said.
The company said it “maintains constructive working relationships with all members of our delegation to advocate on behalf of our customers and all other Alaskans.”
Nationally, the subsidy program allows payments to any company that the FCC or state regulators have designated as an “eligible telecommunications carrier.” How much they get depends on whether they want to provide internet to village schools, health care clinics or simply remote communities.
In its statement to ProPublica and the Anchorage Daily News, GCI said, “There are no provisions in the Telecom Act extending special treatment for Alaska.” But the state is treated differently in practice. In 2016, the FCC created a program called the Alaska Plan specifically for carriers here, allowing them to negotiate their own performance targets rather than being subject to the same cost models applied elsewhere.
Alaska’s geography made it especially difficult for the agency to estimate the cost of serving customers in the state, Mattey said. The FCC assumed the companies would only set goals that they would be able to achieve.
They tried to adjust the national formula for distributing money to account for this factor, Mattey said, but Alaska telecoms kept pushing back and FCC officials gave up.
“We tried so hard not to treat Alaska differently because our goal was to create defined deployment obligations for all companies, and we failed,” she said of the 2016 reforms. “The political pressure was too strong.”
Summit has received $12 million over the past decade by promising to deliver internet to 337 locations across a collection of woodsy, roadside neighborhoods just north of Fairbanks. Filings by Summit report dozens of new connections in some years, a combined total of 271 as of 2025.
But according to the FCC’s interactive map of all locations U.S. telecoms report actually serving with internet, the number of customers using Shoffstall’s service is far smaller. In a phone interview, the company’s acting general manager, James Perry, said that Summit has about 120 internet customers and 160 in total.
Mattey said the rules of the program say nothing about making sure the lines that a subsidy recipient builds actually get used — only that they get built.
Companies that fall behind on building out their network can have their subsidies reduced. But they are allowed to go on collecting cash long after the technology they use has become outdated, customers have moved on to cheaper and faster alternatives or their community has become a ghost town.
“They’re playing by the rules, so to speak,” Mattey said. “It’s a flat amount of money the government has decided they are entitled to.”
Shoffstall’s penchant for setting his own rules first landed him in trouble in 1996. State prosecutors charged him with a misdemeanor when he mailed documents whose tone and language mimicked court orders to an Alaska bank, demanding money.
The trial ended without a verdict when Shoffstall agreed to change his plea from not guilty to no contest. He received a suspended imposition of sentence, a judgment entering a conviction with no jail time, contingent upon completing probation. Over the decades since, he has continued to file paperwork in state court, federal court and with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources claiming to be a sovereign citizen not bound by the same court systems as other Alaskans.
An electrical technician by trade, Shoffstall bought the business for about $675,000 in 2000.
Shoffstall’s customers live mainly in the hillsides north of Fairbanks. Some right off the highway. Some at the end of snowy roads littered with warning signs like: “You are no longer a trespasser. You are a target.”
People moved here when the famously independent and rough-edged city of Fairbanks felt too urbane. They moved here to get off the grid. Not on it.
Among Shoffstall’s customers was a Sunday school teacher who’d arrived in Alaska in 1981, answering phones for a small insurance company.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, still the days of landlines and dial tones, Lois Sannes found herself frustrated with a surcharge added to calls in the Summit service area. She began complaining to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska.
She wrote so many letters to the governor that someone wrote back. Sannes met with an attorney, who she said told her the IRS had launched a criminal investigation into Shoffstall.
Separately, Shoffstall’s company was under scrutiny from the regulatory commission itself.
When Summit sought approval for the rates it charged other telecom companies to use its phone lines, the commission allowed them to look at Summit’s unredacted financial reports. A consultant hired by the rival telecom companies testified to the commission that Summit’s spending appeared unusually high, poorly documented and in some cases tied to transactions between the company and Shoffstall himself.
Roughly 95% of the company’s revenue around this period came not from phone customers but the federal subsidy program and payments redistributed through the telecom industry itself, according to audited financial statements Summit filed with state regulators.
The dispute before the regulatory commission ended when Summit and its competitors agreed to a settlement. The commission issued no findings on whether there were indeed problems with Summit’s books, as the consultant’s report had outlined.
But a new legal issue arose for Shoffstall — this time from the IRS, whose investigation Sannes had heard about. On Sept. 15, 2009, a federal grand jury indicted Shoffstall on allegations of felony tax evasion. The charges said he “willfully evaded the payment of his income taxes” for at least eight years beginning in 1996.
Shoffstall’s former accountants testified against him.
“I told him that he was going to get nailed, that’s not a question,” certified public accountant Garry Hutchison told the jury. “The only question is whether or not it would bring the company down.”
A Fairbanks jury found Shoffstall guilty on Feb. 5, 2010, after a five-day trial.
The FCC has the power to cut off subsidies to recipients convicted of fraud and other financial crimes related to the subsidy program. How closely related the crime must be to the subsidy payments is up for interpretation by the agency.
On one hand, Shoffstall’s indictment said he used his position running a federally subsidized company to obstruct the IRS investigation. On the other, the conviction was for tax evasion related to money he personally owed the IRS.
There is precedent for the FCC closely scrutinizing a subsidy recipient who’s been convicted of evading personal income taxes.
The FCC Wireline Competition Bureau directed the Universal Service Fund’s administrator to look into whether Hawaii-based Sandwich Isles Communications misused its subsidy dollars. The action followed owner Albert Hee’s conviction on federal tax crimes in 2015.
The FCC fined Sandwich Isles and Hee $49.6 million and ordered the company to repay $27 million in what it described as improperly received subsidies. Hee’s attorneys contested the charges, arguing that he had concealed nothing and that the government mistook accounting errors for criminal intent. A jury disagreed.
It’s not clear whether the FCC investigated Shoffstall after his conviction; the agency did not respond to questions about the case.
But records show that Shoffstall’s company steadily continued to receive Universal Service Fund subsidies, even while Shoffstall was in prison. Two months after his release in January 2013, Summit reported collecting $1.1 million in annual subsidies.
When Shoffstall’s probation officer told a federal judge that Shoffstall was ignoring his probation requirements, he was arrested on Dec. 9, 2013, and went back to prison for several months. His company received $859,393 in Universal Service Fund subsidies during that time.
In the years that followed, the subsidies to Summit grew. FCC data shows Summit in 2016 received one of the highest levels of federal subsidies per customer in the country.
As of that year, Shoffstall’s company paid him an annual salary of up to $121,000 and paid an annual dividend of up to $155,000 to a holding company for which he was the sole shareholder. His company stopped publicly disclosing that information after 2016, as the Regulatory Commission of Alaska stopped requiring detailed annual reporting, leaving far less financial information available to the public.
Sannes, the former Summit customer who once pressured state regulators to take a closer look at the company, now lives in Wisconsin. Asked if she was surprised to learn that the company’s subsidies not only continue today, but have increased to $1.5 million a year, Sannes said she had assumed his criminal conviction alone would have been enough to cut off the money.
“I’m horrified,” she said.
Summit Telephone is named for a mountaintop, Cleary Summit, outside Fairbanks. Sled dogs can be heard howling from their plywood houses, and every so often a semitruck barrels down the highway, swirling snow as it hauls gold ore from open-pit mines.
In the winter, you might see a rocket launch from a valley a few miles north, from the world’s only rocket launch site operated by a university. The hills are known for world-famous aurora borealis displays, and a collection of Airbnbs and lodges line winding roads.
As the subsidies flowed to Summit, Shoffstall continued to create and distribute documents intended to look like court orders. He submitted paperwork in federal court arguing he didn’t have to pay taxes — in one 2017 filing accusing the federal government of “high crimes” against him, in another issuing what he called a “summary judgment” against President Donald Trump for “fraud, collusion and conspiracy.”
None of this stopped the state’s telecom industry from spotlighting him as a poster child. O’Connor, the executive director of the Alaska Telecom Association, cited Summit to state lawmakers in 2018 as an example of a company forced to “muddle along with the obsolete technology” rather than upgrade its network due the burden of state overregulation. Raising the rates to provide upgrades would have required Summit to make its case to regulators that the fee increases were necessary.
Asked whether it was an appropriate use of public funds for a company like Summit to receive roughly $10,000 per customer per year in federal subsidies, O’Connor did not directly answer. In a written response, the Alaska Telecom Association said the program “is specifically designed to support building and operating telecommunications networks in high-cost areas” and that participating providers “are subject to FCC program requirements, reporting obligations, and oversight.” Asked whether it stood by its 2018 characterization of Summit, O’Connor said her testimony was focused on the challenges facing smaller providers generally.
Shoffstall never upgraded to expand its service. According to the FCC broadband map, Summit’s equipment today remains incapable of delivering internet faster than 25 Mbps — one-fourth the FCC’s current definition of broadband.
Meanwhile, the internet marketplace has changed. Some Alaskans no longer need or want the slower subsidized service.
One recent Saturday, 74-year-old Philip Marshall shoveled a waist-high tunnel through the snow to a cabin near the top of the mountain. A wood carver, he wore a red ski cap decorated with the flag of Denmark. Asked about his internet access, he invited a reporter inside and made a pot of black tea.
Marshall said his wife, Janet, moved into this cabin before he met her. The construction boom for the 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline had raised rents so high within Fairbanks’ city limits during the mid-1970s that she moved here out of town. Like many cabins outside Fairbanks, the home is “dry,” meaning there’s no running water. Old-timers hauled the building itself up the side of the mountain on sleds.
In interviews, several of Marshall’s neighbors said they have no complaints about the internet speeds Summit provides. One said she pays Summit $95 a month and the internet is fine for her needs. Another, who retired after a career working on remote Alaska radar sites, said he uses the service too. But he’s recently added satellite internet.
Others who have opted for the low-orbit satellite dishes, which deliver speeds up to 10 times faster than Summit for about the same price, have dropped their Summit plans altogether. One especially clear evening recently, Marshall stood in the snow and counted 18 satellites passing overhead within nine minutes. “Starlink,” he said.
The company and corporate parent SpaceX did not respond to questions and do not publicly release the number of users in Alaska. But Ookla, a company that offers tools people can use to test their internet speed, offered a proxy measure: About 1 in 10 Alaskans who tested their home internet speed through Ookla connected via Starlink, compared with roughly 1 in 67 in California.
The Marshalls haven’t felt the need to pay for either service. Their cellphones give five-bar, 5G service from a nearby tower. Finishing his tea, Marshall pulled on his jacket to head back outside. Still have to shovel a path to the outhouse, he said.
In the corner of the room, a plastic box the size and color of a concrete brick sat near the floor. It was for the Summit internet line that public subsidies pay the company roughly $10,000 a year to provide. Unplugged and unused.
The post This Convicted Felon Gets $1 Million a Year to Sell Obsolete Internet Service. You Pay for It. appeared first on ProPublica.
I reviewed Samsung, Roku, Amazon, and Hisense TVs under $300 and found one clear winner.
Apple's iOS 26 brought these summaries back to many iPhones in 2025.
The Post used AI to analyze 50 televised sports games for references to betting.
Trying to remove your personal information from the internet, and out of AI's training data, can be like "trying to remove pee from a pool," one expert said.
The billions of dollars in advertising invested annually by sports betting companies have profoundly changed televised sports in the U.S., the analysis showed.
Why Should Delaware Care?
As state lawmakers seek to further expand election transparency rules in Delaware, an ongoing legal battle could remove some of those same campaign finance disclosures entirely. As the lawsuit – waged by a conservative, billionaire-backed advocacy group – makes its way through the courts, some political candidates in the First State have already begun campaigning ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.
A conservative advocacy group has filed a lawsuit challenging a key instrument of election transparency in Delaware, which, if successful, could upend nearly 15 years of campaign finance law months before the November midterm elections.
Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit advocacy organization funded by the influential Koch brothers, filed the lawsuit in federal court on April 17, seeking to overturn the Delaware Elections Disclosure Act on the grounds that its extensive campaign finance transparency requirements serve to discourage political speech and thus violate the First Amendment.
Similar legal battles waged by Americans for Prosperity have gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
And the group’s current fight in Delaware to scale back campaign finance requirements comes as lawmakers in the state House of Representatives consider a new bill, House Bill 216, which would further expand those disclosures.
Ross Connolly, the Northeast regional manager for the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, said the group is not currently working in Delaware due to its disclosure laws, but would like to get involved in ongoing education and property tax debates.
“We would like to be in Delaware,” he said. “We just will not put our small or large donors … at risk of being singled out in an unfair way and being attacked because they believe in the cause of Americans for Prosperity and they want to help us in our mission.”
Along with its lawsuit, Americans for Prosperity also filed a motion seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the state from enforcing its disclosure requirements while the case moves through the legal process. A hearing on that motion has yet to take place.
Originally passed in 2012, the Delaware Election Disclosure Act was touted as an innovative tool to combat dark money influences in Delaware politics. It was enacted in reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission decision in 2010, which ushered in a new era of political financing by removing longstanding limitations on corporate spending on election campaigns through political action committees (PACs).
The law aimed to close a loophole in the state’s campaign finance laws through which a third-party organization from outside the state could conceal its donors as long as its political advertisements avoided explicitly advocating voters to choose a specific candidate in an election.
Lawmakers introduced requirements that any entity engaging in that type of political advertising within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election must disclose financial records detailing the funding of their ads and include ways for the public to find a list of their funders. The full names and mailing addresses of anyone contributing more than $100 to the organization during the election cycle also must be disclosed to the state.
Americans for Prosperity’s suit argues the law’s requirements “violate the right to private association, chill free speech and association, and overstep the government’s legitimate disclosure interests, all in violation of the First Amendment.”
“In the state of Delaware, there are onerous laws around disclosure of donors, which we view as a fundamental right of free speech in this country,” Connolly said. “It goes back to the founding [of the country], of being able to give money, time, resources to a cause without having to disclose who you are, your address, all these things.”
In a statement to Spotlight Delaware regarding the lawsuit, Attorney General Kathy Jennings condemned the Koch brothers, whose conservative network raised and spent over $500 million during the 2024 election cycle, as “a disease in America’s campaign finance system.”
Jennings and Delaware Election Commissioner Anthony Albence are named as defendants in the suit.
“Americans on both sides of the aisle hate dark money groups and the blank check that the Supreme Court handed them in Citizens United,” Jennings said in a statement. “Now the people who perfected the Super PAC and embodied our corrupt campaign finance laws are in Delaware fighting to keep dark money dark. Delawareans deserve to know who’s trying to buy their elections.”
Albence’s office declined to comment.
Connolly said other groups, like the American Civil Liberties Union, have joined Americans for Prosperity in previous legal challenges of similar financial disclosure laws, illustrating that these types of disclosure laws face opposition across the political spectrum. That includes the organization’s successful court battle defeating a California law that required charities operating in the state to confidentially disclose their major donors to the state.
Americans for Prosperity’s lawyers argued in that case that the state could not guarantee donor privacy, and the requirement represented an undue First Amendment burden discouraging people from potentially supporting certain charities. Charitable organizations already have to submit lists of their major donors to the Internal Revenue Service.
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled the California law violated the First Amendment and was too broad to be “narrowly tailored to an important government interest” – namely, election transparency.
Andrew Bernstein, civic engagement counsel for ACLU of Delaware, said the local chapter is not involved in Americans for Prosperity’s current lawsuit, though he confirmed the national group’s previous support of Americans for Prosperity efforts in other states.
He also said ACLU’s local efforts are currently focused on derailing HB 216, the bill that would further expand disclosure requirements for third-party advertisers engaging in political communications around elections.
“In the current political climate, we think this would create a severe chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of individuals to associate with organizations, as they may fear reprisal if they were listed in such a way,” Bernstein said.
Americans for Prosperity’s lawsuit is not the first time the state has had to defend the Delaware Election Disclosure Act in court.
After it was first passed, local conservative group Delaware Strong Families filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the law using similar legal arguments outlined in Americans for Prosperity’s current lawsuit.
A federal court ruled in favor of Delaware Strong Families’ challenge, but the state successfully appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2015.
Then-Gov. Jack Markell, who signed the 2012 law into effect, said at the time it was an “important victory for transparency in Delaware elections.”
“Delaware voters deserve to know who is responsible for advertisements and other materials asking for them to support or oppose candidates,” Markell said.
Briefs from both sides addressing Americans for Prosperity’s request to temporarily halt the state from enforcing its election disclosure rules while the full legal case unfolds are due by the end of the month.
The post Conservative group challenges Delaware campaign finance law appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Why Should Delaware Care?
The Mother African Union Church is one of the oldest Black-founded congregations in Delaware and served as a refuge for generations of people. A fire that destroyed the church building on Sunday brought faith leaders, neighbors and elected officials to an event to declare their support for the future of the congregation.
At first, JoAnn Eatmon was certain the video clip showing flames shooting high above her beloved church in Wilmington’s Cool Spring neighborhood had been created by artificial intelligence. The scene seemed too unbelievable to be real.
Then she noticed the flowers in a set of pots she had placed near the front door of the church just days earlier.
“I saw our flower pots and that let me know it was real,” Eatmon said.
Eatmon was one of several congregants of the Mother African Union Church who gathered Monday outside the charred ruins of the historic sanctuary for a news conference. Many embraced in disbelief as they reflected on the loss of the building, which had served as the physical home of the 200-year-old congregation since the 1960s.
Others — including the church’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Ronald W. Whitaker II — emphasized the congregation’s resolve to rebuild.
Whitaker described the fire as one of the “most painful moments” in the church’s history but said the congregation’s future remained bright.
“For more than two centuries, this congregation has survived hardship, injustice, storms and struggle, and by the grace of God we’re still standing,” Whitaker said during the news event, which drew elected officials, neighbors and members from other area congregations.
The commitment to rebuilding emerged as a central theme throughout the event. One speaker proclaimed that the congregation’s “latter state will be better than its formal state.” Another compared the devastating blaze to the 2019 fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral, which was rebuilt in the years later.
New Castle County Executive Marcus Henry, who lives in the city, said he would provide dollars to the church for the rebuild.
“Please count us in in helping this rebuild effort,” Henry said.
Also speaking at the news conference was Wilmington Fire Chief John Looney, who said fire officials were still in the early stages of an investigation to determine the cause of the early-Sunday morning blaze.
Looney said officials were awaiting an assessment from a structural engineer before sending investigators into the ruins. While he spoke, the stone walls of the historic church stood behind him. Most of the remaining structure was destroyed by the fire.
Pressed whether he could quell gossip that had spread about the blaze, Looney noted that he had seen several rumors online, but reiterated that it was too early to release information.
The fire chief did confirm that two firefighters suffered minor injuries while fighting the blaze.
Also speaking were elected officials who expressed their condolences, including Gov. Matt Meyer, and Lt. Gov. Kyle Evans Gay.
The speakers Monday also reflected on the historical significance of Mother African Union Church, describing it as a spiritual home for generations of Black people in Delaware.
The church’s former pastor, the Rev. Lawrence M. Livingston, told the story of how the congregation was founded in 1813 by Peter Spencer, a formerly enslaved man who became one of the country’s most influential religious leaders at the time.
Livingston called Spencer a figure whose significance to American history was “right up there with the Founding Fathers.”
“This congregation was the first incorporated African American congregation in the country,” Livingston said.
Spencer initially led about 40 people out of a predominantly white church in 1805, according to the church website’s history page. Then the groups later split from the Methodist Episcopal denomination after “it became clear the congregation of African Americans would not be allowed to select their own preachers or trustee leaders.”
Over the subsequent decades, the congregation spoke out about injustices beyond Delaware, according to newspaper archives. A public notice posted in a 1831 edition of the Delaware Gazette described how Spencer and other members of the church publicly opposed the ongoing colonization of Africa.
“Resolved that this meeting view with deep regret the attempt now making to colonize the free people of color on the western coast of Africa,” the public notice stated.
Shortly after founding the congregation, Spencer also started an annual gathering of members of his Methodist denomination. The event, called the August Quarterly, attracted thousands of Black people from across the region for generations.
It continues to this day.
“That has been happening every year since 1814,” Livingston said.
In recent years, the church has continued to be a site for activism. Community advocate and Alicia Clark, who also is a member of the August Quarterly organizing committee, recounted how a decade ago Livingston opened the church to accommodate an investigation she organized into claims of racism in state government.
Her team was able to interview individuals within the safety and comfort of the church building, which allowed them to candidly share their stories, Clark said.
“This was one of the locations where we hosted a town hall, which was really important because it’s based here in the community. It’s a trusted institution,” Clark said.
The post Historic Black Wilmington church leaders vow to rebuild following devastating fire appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
London-headquartered bank will reduce back-office jobs and aims to move some workers to new roles
Standard Chartered plans to cut more than 7,000 jobs over the next four years as it increasingly uses artificial intelligence.
The London-headquartered lender is one of the first major global banks to lay out plans to cut thousands of jobs, citing AI as a driver to make its operations slimmer as it seeks to increase its profitability and tackle competition.
Continue reading...When leading California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra was state attorney general, his office pushed the state Supreme Court to artificially inflate a Black man’s IQ in order to execute him.
Following the lead of his predecessor, former California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Becerra’s office was battling a defense that argued Robert Lewis, originally sentenced to death in 1991, was ineligible for execution because he was intellectually disabled. Lewis’s attorney, Robert Sanger, told The Intercept that while individual attorneys general can’t control everything their deputies do, he was disappointed with how Becerra’s office handled the case.
“I was kind of feeling like it would be a good time for the AG to say, ‘OK, we tried and he’s intellectually disabled. We got that determination made. Let’s just let it go,’” Sanger recalled. “Instead, it went all the way to oral arguments in front of the [state] Supreme Court.”
The effort failed: The Supreme Court of California overturned Lewis’s death sentence in 2018, and the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a measure banning the practice of adjusting IQ based on race in death penalty cases two years later.
Becerra is now polling first in the crowded race to replace term-limited Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. His campaign had at first lagged behind his opponents, but then-Rep. Eric Swalwell was hit with explosive sexual assault allegations — which he denies — and dropped out, and Becerra surged to the front of the field. He’s just ahead of Trump-backed Republican candidate Steve Hilton, followed by Tom Steyer, the hedge-fund billionaire racking up endorsements from progressive groups including Our Revolution and praise from the California chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.
In Lewis’s case, Becerra picked up where Harris left off; her office had been the first to ask the courts to artificially inflate Lewis’s IQ so the state could execute him.
“On the one hand, he’s part of a long line of Democratic attorney generals who have taken this approach of, ‘It’s not my problem,’ not accepting responsibility for what their criminal attorneys are doing in court,” said Natasha Minsker, who leads the California Anti-Death Penalty Coalition, which helped push the bill banning the practice of race-based IQ adjustments for people on death row. “On the other hand, it just demonstrates where their true priorities and values are.”
Becerra has not taken a clear public position on the death penalty in his gubernatorial campaign, but his critics have raised concerns about his pursuit of executions at a time when his party was moving in the opposite direction. He has said he has “serious reservations” about the death penalty and voted for a 2016 state ballot measure to abolish it in California, where the state hasn’t executed anyone since 2006. Still, two years after his vote, Becerra’s office argued to execute Lewis. Though Newsom imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in 2019, Becerra fought to uphold death penalty sentences during the Covid-19 pandemic. And though he oversaw law enforcement for four years in California, a state that has significantly cut its prison population in recent years and adopted other reforms under pressure from activists, Becerra’s criminal justice record has not played a large part in his gubernatorial campaign.
After serving as California attorney general, Becerra was named secretary of Health and Human Services during the Biden administration. His name recognition from that post, plus 24 years in Congress, have earned him endorsements from Democrats including Reps. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., and Ted Lieu, D-Calif.; state and local elected officials; and several labor unions including SEIU California, California State Council of Laborers, and the United Nurses Associations of California.
Still, his former colleagues from his time leading HHS raised eyebrows as his campaign gathered speed after Swalwell’s exit, and some of Becerra’s critics have seized on his overseeing of migrant children as HHS secretary. Also looming behind his surge is a criminal trial involving his former political adviser and Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, who pleaded guilty on Thursday to three felonies in a corruption case involving scheme to steal money from Becerra’s campaign. In a statement last week after the plea, Becerra said; “As I said from day one, I was not involved, I did nothing wrong. And now the record confirms it. We can close the book on this.”
Becerra’s criminal justice record has received less scrutiny in the gubernatorial race, where Becerra is competing with Republican opponents stressing their own tough-on-crime bonafides.
Becerra’s campaign website outlines his priorities as fighting Donald Trump, building more affordable housing, lowering costs, building clean energy, improving California’s disaster preparedness, channeling AI “for human benefit,” and addressing homelessness. It does not have a specific page devoted to criminal justice.
“Democratic politicians want to take credit for the progressive things they did as attorney general, but they are not taking responsibility for the regressive positions that the office advanced under their leadership.”
In response to a questionnaire from the political arm of the California chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union, which declined to comment on Becerra’s record for this story, Becerra said he agrees with reforms like prioritizing prevention strategies over punitive sentencing and improving funding and staffing for public defender’s offices. He also said he would support banning facial recognition in police body cameras, more public access to police records, and having social service workers respond to homelessness and mental health crises instead of police.
“We see this repeatedly,” Minsker said. “Democratic politicians want to take credit for the progressive things they did as attorney general, but they are not taking responsibility for the regressive positions that the office advanced under their leadership.”
Becerra’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
While Becerra has not had to thoroughly address his criminal justice record yet on the campaign trail, the topic plagued his predecessor as attorney general, Kamala Harris, when she ran for president in 2020.
Harris, who served as California attorney general from 2011 to 2017 and San Francisco district attorney before that, faced myriad attacks from left and right that hampered her first presidential bid over her prosecutorial record while she campaigned as a reformer.
At the time, activists across the United States were animated by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, which set off a wave of protests and heightened scrutiny of so-called “tough on crime” politics. Six years later, the political winds have largely shifted.
Sanger, the attorney in the IQ death penalty case, said he felt that some of the attacks on Harris were unfair, because attorneys general “can’t go through and regulate every single thing that their deputies do in these very complex cases.” But, he added, he’s been generally dissatisfied with California’s last three top prosecutors.
“I have been disappointed in each one of those attorneys general in not taking a more active role with their deputy attorneys general, and with them not taking a position on the death penalty,” Sanger said.
As attorney general, Becerra also faced criticism for shielding police from measures designed to hold them accountable. Two major California newspaper editorial boards wrote scathing criticisms in 2019 saying Becerra sided with law enforcement “against public transparency” and had betrayed both “public trust and the law” by not complying with a state police transparency law.
At the time, Becerra threatened to charge journalists with crimes unless they destroyed a list of police officers convicted of crimes. Becerra took more than $300,000 in campaign funds from law enforcement unions in his run for attorney general. The political action committee for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, a state prison guards’ union, gave $320,000 to a group backing Becerra and other candidates that cycle. News outlets raised questions about his ability to “police the police,” while owing much of his campaign support to their unions.
The prison guard’s union gave $25,000 in March to a group opposing Steyer. The group, “California is Not for Sale, No on Steyer for Governor 2026, a Coalition of Housing Advocates, Labor and Small Business,” is spending $24 million against Steyer and is backed by the state’s real estate and energy industries. Steyer is self-funding his campaign with more than $120 million. The CCPOA did not respond to a request for comment.
The prison guards’ union is one of many special interest groups that have played an outsized role in California politics, said James King, a formerly incarcerated prison reform advocate in Oakland. King, who is supporting Steyer, said the CCPOA was spending against Steyer because he is campaigning against those kinds of special interests. Plus, the union wants to preserve its budget, which has increased even as the state has shrunk its prison population in recent years, King said.
“It’s deeply ironic” that groups including the CCPOA “are funding an initiative called ‘California is Not for Sale,’” King said. “They have shown time and time again that they are only interested in advancing the status quo. And it’s clear that any candidate they are working to oppose and spending money to oppose, they must see as a threat to the status quo.”
In 2020, Becerra sided with law enforcement again to oppose a bill to require independent state investigations of police killings after previously having refused to conduct an independent investigation into the police killing of 22-year-old Sean Monterrosa, whom a police officer shot in the back of the head. Becerra’s office later launched an investigation into destruction of evidence in the case.
Monterrosa’s sister, Michelle Monterrosa, told the San Francisco Standard last week that she won’t vote for Becerra in the gubernatorial election. “How can we trust someone who continues to put his own advancement before actually standing with the people?” Monterrosa said.
The post Xavier Becerra Pushed to Inflate a Black Man’s IQ to Execute Him as California AG appeared first on The Intercept.
We’re investigating Alaska internet companies this year, and we need your help.
Alaskans pay higher costs for slower internet speeds than most Americans. The government has spent billions of dollars of public money to try to fix the problem, and we want to know how it’s really going in your community. Please fill out this quick survey to share how much it costs you to get online and what you think of the service.
Take our quick survey to help in the reporting.
If you know someone in Alaska who is not able to access the internet and wants to share their experience, they can contact reporter Kyle Hopkins at 907-854-8540 (phone or WhatsApp). We will add more options for participation soon — stay tuned!
We appreciate you sharing your story, and we take your privacy seriously. We will contact you if we wish to publish any part.
The post We’re Investigating Alaska Internet Companies. We Need Your Help. appeared first on ProPublica.
Trump has repeatedly made false claims that white Afrikaners facing genocide with costs of resettling them at $100m
The US government has said it will increase the number of white South Africans it admits as refugees this year from about 7,500 to 17,500, claiming that “unforeseen developments in South Africa created an emergency refugee situation.”
Since starting his second term in office last year, Donald Trump has repeatedly made false claims that white Afrikaners are racially targeted and face a “white genocide”, which South Africa’s government has furiously rebutted.
Continue reading...From the Galaxy S26 Ultra and Pixel 10 Pro Fold to the OnePlus 15, these are the best that we recommend buying. One of these even earned a CNET Lab Award for charging.
Athletes spend thousands of hours refining their game. But sometimes they try other measures to gain success
For Jason Terry, everything changed in 1997. It was the night before the NCAA national championship game and Terry’s Arizona Wildcats were set to take on the University of Kentucky. Terry shared hotels rooms with teammate Mike Bibby on road trips and the pair understandably had trouble sleeping before the biggest game of their lives so far.
“Mike Bibby and I were anxious for the game,” Terry says. “So, we both put our full uniforms on – socks, everything. And we slept in them. The next day, we ended up winning the national championship. After that, I was like, ‘OK, I think I’m superstitious and I need to keep this thing going.’”
Continue reading...An uptick in people skipping Obamacare premium payments in many states suggests the Affordable Care Act's rising costs are hitting home for 2026 enrollees.
After a month stranded, a ship's Filipino crew voted under mounting pressure to risk the perilous six-hour journey, made treacherous by mines and Iranian attacks.
Milique Wagner always insisted that his 2013 murder conviction was built on an informant’s lie. But Wagner said he couldn’t persuade his trial lawyer to investigate that, even after the informant confessed to the murder and testified that Philadelphia police and prosecutors knew the truth.
In 2015, Wagner’s appeal failed, and he faced life in prison.
But Wagner had another chance at freedom under a state law that allowed him to get a new court-appointed lawyer to help him challenge his conviction. Court records show that the attorney never spoke with the informant or looked into the detective on the case, who made headlines after being benched for secretly paying a witness. Instead, Wagner’s lawyer urged the judge to shut down his client’s petition, writing in June 2017, “There are no meritorious issues that could be raised.”
Wagner would remain in prison another six years before prosecutors acknowledged that police had hidden evidence suggesting that the informant had committed the murder and the detective was corrupt. Although Wagner maintains his innocence, he agreed to a plea deal for third-degree murder that allowed him to leave prison.
The opposition Wagner faced from his own lawyer is permitted under Pennsylvania’s Post Conviction Relief Act, the law that allows people in prison to raise newly discovered evidence or argue that their previous lawyer mishandled the case. The state provides a lawyer in these cases, but with a catch: The attorney can argue against the client’s claims and withdraw from the case by filing what’s known as a “no-merit” letter.
A Philadelphia Inquirer and ProPublica investigation found case after case in which court-appointed attorneys did minimal work to examine their clients’ claims and rejected what later turned out to be legitimate legal issues. The findings reveal that Philadelphia’s post-conviction system repeatedly delayed or denied justice for wrongfully convicted people who then spent years or decades behind bars.
The news organizations reviewed 250 of Philadelphia’s reversed convictions and sentences since 2018 in violent felony cases. Wagner was one of at least 50 people whose lawyers said there was no basis to challenge their cases, only for judges to later decide they deserved new trials or sentences.
While in some cases the exonerating evidence did not emerge until years after the no-merit letter was filed, a majority were tossed out based on issues the PCRA lawyers overlooked or rejected.
Three years of invoices appointed attorneys submitted to the court, covering 83 homicide PCRA cases in which the lawyers filed no-merit letters, show the extent of lawyers’ efforts.
Those attorneys did not arrange a single phone call with the client, contact the trial lawyer or obtain the police or prosecution case files about three-quarters of the time. Those case files have been a key source of evidence in overturned convictions since Philadelphia’s district attorney began making them available to lawyers six years ago.
Homicide cases are the most serious ones a lawyer can handle. But many lawyers handling homicide Post Conviction Relief Act cases never spoke with their clients before rejecting their claims. Here’s how often they took basic steps in 83 cases.
In some cases, records show the attorneys rejected their clients’ claims just days or weeks after being appointed and submitted filings with factual errors, including the wrong defendant’s name. They filed no-merit letters despite red flags, such as a client’s co-defendant having already been exonerated or a detective who locked the client up having been arrested for assaulting witnesses or tampering with evidence.
Daniel Anders, the administrative judge who oversees Philadelphia’s court-appointed counsel system, did not respond to requests for comment.
Judge Barbara McDermott, who oversaw many PCRA cases before recently retiring from Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas, defended the system and said it is working as intended.
“We’re never going to be a perfect system, but within the system we’ve had we’ve done the best we can,” she said, adding that no-merit letters play an important role in shutting down pointless challenges. “At some point, there has to be finality to cases.”
In Pennsylvania, a person looking to challenge their conviction starts by filing a PCRA petition, often handwritten on a state-issued form. If it’s a person’s first PCRA, a judge will assign a lawyer to amend it.
Robert Dunham, a lawyer who spent years training attorneys across the state to litigate death-penalty appeals, said appointed lawyers are too often limiting their review to the issues their clients raised. He said the job is to reinvestigate the entire case to catch things previous lawyers missed.
“[The clients are] not lawyers. In many cases they are impaired,” Dunham said. “They don’t have the ability to conduct a factual investigation because they’re in jail.”
Stephen T. O’Hanlon, the attorney appointed to Wagner’s case, sent no-merit letters to nine clients who would later have their convictions or sentences overturned. That was more than any other attorney identified in the Inquirer and ProPublica examination, but O’Hanlon also handled among the most PCRA cases.
Five of the nine cases were later overturned in state or federal court based on issues with the trial or plea he rejected or did not raise.
O’Hanlon said the attorney code of ethics prevents him from making arguments he knows to be false or frivolous and that, in each case, the judge and prosecutor agreed with him at the time.
“Yes, it’s good that they got off on some kind of five-years-later technicality,” he said, “but it’s wrong to suggest there was any problem with” the no-merit letters.
O’Hanlon said he conducted a diligent review of Wagner’s case and exchanged numerous letters with him. According to court records, he sent an investigator to interview multiple witnesses.
“I knew he wasn’t going to fight for me.”
Milique Wagner
Wagner provided the Inquirer and ProPublica a copy of a letter he said he wrote to O’Hanlon in 2016, asking him to look into Philip Nordo, the corrupt homicide detective who’d typed up the informant’s statement. O’Hanlon said Wagner never raised Nordo as an issue at the time. Pointing to Wagner’s eventual plea deal, he said Wagner is “factually guilty” of the murder.
Wagner said O’Hanlon seemed to be against him from the outset. He pointed to a letter O’Hanlon wrote him, six weeks after he was appointed, seemingly unaware that Wagner had been convicted by a jury. “Didn’t you eventually enter a plea on your case? I’m having a hard time understanding how your issues can get around [that].”
Wagner asked the judge for a new lawyer, arguing the letter proved O’Hanlon was not interested in advocating for him.
“I knew he wasn’t going to fight for me,” Wagner said in a recent interview.
The judge kept O’Hanlon on the case.
The roots of Pennsylvania’s no-merit letter go back to the case of Dorothy Finley, who in 1979 filed a PCRA challenging her conviction for a robbery-murder in North Philadelphia. As required in Pennsylvania, a judge appointed her a lawyer.
After Finley’s lawyer decided her conviction was sound and asked to be taken off the case, a Philadelphia judge told him to file a letter with the court explaining why there was no merit to the issues she raised.
The state appeals courts agreed with Finley that her post-conviction lawyer didn’t do his job adequately. But in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case and ruled that she did not have a constitutional right to a lawyer once her case hit the post-conviction stage. The decision left it to Pennsylvania to decide what counts as effective representation and what’s required of a lawyer who wants to drop a case.
Justice William Brennan Jr., in dissent, warned that the ruling would create a double standard in the justice system. Guaranteeing a lawyer to people who couldn’t afford one and then allowing that lawyer to oppose their client’s case turns the right to counsel into “a meaningless ritual,” he said. Meanwhile, a defendant who can afford private counsel would receive a “meaningful review” of their claims.
Finley died in prison a decade later. The no-merit letter that attorneys file in PCRA cases is now commonly known as a Finley letter.
The requirements to file a Finley letter are minimal: A lawyer only needs to describe what was done to review the case, list each claim the client wants raised, explain why the claims are bogus and notify the client of their rights.
“It puts the burden on the client, and it sets up the defense lawyer as an extra prosecutor.”
Jennifer Merrigan, co-founder of the nonprofit law firm Phillips Black
Nationally, few states have set standards for post-conviction representation. But appeals standards published in at least 10 other states urge lawyers to avoid filing no-merit briefs when possible. The National Legal Aid & Defender Association says there should be “extremely strict” limits on them and that they should never be filed if clients are serving life terms. In Philadelphia, court data and invoices show, appointed lawyers file them in about half of all homicide PCRA matters.
Court records are filled with examples of Philadelphia lawyers filing letters attacking clients who would eventually prevail in court, calling their claims “self-serving and unfounded,” “unfathomable,” “outrageous” and “specious.”
“The fault lies with [my client,] not the courts,” lawyer Earl Kauffman wrote in a 2021 Finley letter. Pennsylvania’s Superior Court rejected Kauffman’s determination in a 2023 opinion.
In an interview, Kauffman said he didn’t recall the case but stands behind his work.
“Whatever they decide, they decide — whether they agree with me or disagree with me,” Kauffman said of the higher court’s opinion. “I did what I did. I saw what I saw. I analyzed what I analyzed.”
O’Hanlon wrote a 2015 no-merit letter calling his client’s actions unjustifiable, in that he “emptied his gun, firing eight shots, at a fleeing car in a public street” — even though a federal judge, in ruling that he deserved a new trial, would interpret the same evidence as supporting the client’s self-defense claim. Asked about that finding, O’Hanlon said the judge’s observation had no bearing on the case.
Jennifer Merrigan, a co-founder of the nonprofit law firm Phillips Black, said Finley letters routinely contain adversarial language and often breach confidentiality to use information lawyers have uncovered against the clients. She viewed these as “some of the most egregious ethical violations I’ve seen in my career.”
“Some read like a prosecutor’s closing argument,” she said. “It puts the burden on the client, and it sets up the defense lawyer as an extra prosecutor.”
Merrigan helped analyze 100 Finley letters filed in Philadelphia homicide cases for a recent Harvard Law Review article. The authors of the study — an attorney at Merrigan’s firm and a Finley letter recipient who later got his conviction overturned — concluded that the letters revealed “entrenched routine disloyalty and incompetence, even in extremely high-stakes criminal cases.”
Clients can pay a steep price, said Dunham, the longtime appeals lawyer. “Sometimes any lawyer is better than having no lawyer — but sometimes having any lawyer is worse than having no lawyer,” he said. “What happens when you get a bad lawyer in the Finley process is you lose your rights.”
That’s because if a lawyer discards a valid issue, it is forfeited forever.
That’s what happened to Quahir Trice, who argued that when Philadelphia prosecutors used a statement by his co-defendant to convict him, the move improperly prevented Trice’s lawyer from cross-examining the witness against him.
Trice’s new lawyer, appointed by the court to handle his PCRA, filed a Finley letter. But by the time Trice’s case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices wrote that although Trice would have had a winning claim, the issue was dead. Trice’s lawyer had missed an “obvious means” to raise it in his PCRA and was now barred from doing so.
Trice was ultimately freed in 2022 after the Philadelphia district attorney’s office let his lawyers access his police file, which contained long-hidden evidence that police had alternative suspects and that witnesses lied at his trial.
But five lawyers who handle court-appointed cases said the process set up by the Pennsylvania courts has made clear that their duties in PCRA cases are limited, and that digging into the police file or even speaking with the client is, in many cases, unnecessary.
“Sometimes any lawyer is better than having no lawyer — but sometimes having any lawyer is worse than having no lawyer.”
Attorney Robert Dunham
George S. Yacoubian Jr., who has filed close to 100 Finley letters since 2018, said the courts have made those parameters clear. “A PCRA attorney is not supposed to be going back to the very beginning and investigating every possible thing,” he said. He added that while he has an ethical duty to his client, he has a “higher obligation to the system of law” to not present frivolous cases.
Yacoubian has written Finley letters in about 80% of his PCRA cases since 2018, court records show. He said that’s to be expected.
“If a client pleads guilty and there is nothing in the transcript to suggest the plea was coerced or forced or involuntary or unknowing, there is very little if anything that can be done for those defendants,” Yacoubian said.
However, dockets showed that a majority of his Finley letters were for clients who had gone to trial, not taken pleas.
Three Yacoubian clients, whose claims he rejected, would later be granted new trials after privately retained lawyers found valid claims to raise. Teri Himebaugh, the lawyer who won one of those PCRA cases, said it “really wasn’t all that difficult” to crack, but she said the prior lawyers had done little to investigate the case.
Pennsylvania’s Superior Court sent three other Yacoubian cases back to the lower court. Twice they determined his clients deserved a hearing on the issues Yacoubian had rejected. In the other case, the higher court said it was unclear whether he’d understood his client’s claim, because there was no indication they had ever spoken.
Yacoubian declined to discuss specific cases but said his filings were based on the issues in front of him.
“There are some claims that a petitioner makes that are completely baseless,” he said. “Sometimes Finley letters are just necessary.”
O’Hanlon, the lawyer who handled Milique Wagner’s case, has filed more than 100 Finley letters since 2018. Half, dockets show, were filed less than a month after he was formally appointed.
That’s a tight window in which to thoroughly investigate a case, said attorney Daniel Silverman, who in 2021 won a new trial for one of O’Hanlon’s Finley letter recipients. In a court filing, Silverman wrote that O’Hanlon’s Finley letters suggest he “often performs little or no investigation in these cases and views his role more as an agent of the courts, helping to quickly dispose of cases, than as an advocate for his client.”
That case was thrown out based on a flawed jury instruction. The federal court partly blamed O’Hanlon for “overlooking obvious issues.”
In another case that was overturned, prosecutors wrote in a court filing that O’Hanlon had “failed to fully read” a PCRA by a client who said his lawyer had neglected to call a key defense witness. O’Hanlon wrote, incorrectly, that his client had not named any such witness. A federal judge agreed to toss out the conviction.
O’Hanlon said in an interview that he didn’t overlook the issues, but based his Finley letters on Pennsylvania court precedent and the factual circumstances of each case.
O’Hanlon said that Finley letters often result from clients having missed filing deadlines. And, he said, he had to work with the issues his clients raised, not manufacture new ones.
“If there are negotiated guilty pleas, almost all of those should be Finleys,” he added, because those clients have stated on the record that that plea was knowing and voluntary. But in three guilty-plea cases, the Superior Court later disagreed with him and said his clients’ issues at least merited a hearing. In one, the appeals court eventually threw out the client’s sentence altogether.
O’Hanlon said he has won relief for numerous clients in PCRA cases and digs deep into each case, but sometimes he uncovers more evidence of guilt. He emphasized that even those who won new trials ended up taking pleas. “They’re still substantively guilty of murder,” he said.
In seven of the nine cases that would later be overturned, O’Hanlon’s Finley letters reflect his certainty that his clients are guilty, often describing the evidence of guilt as “overwhelming” or “compelling.”
One client O’Hanlon said had no claims that could outweigh his “overwhelming” guilt was Byshere Lawrence, who was 15 when he was arrested for murder in 2011. Court records show that his trial lawyer never met with him, which Lawrence claimed resulted in an unfair trial.
Another, Ronald Rogers, argued his lawyer should have objected when the judge overseeing his 2011 murder trial threatened a recanting witness with a perjury charge and “the maximum consecutive sentence” unless he reverted to his prior testimony accusing Rogers.
O’Hanlon sent Finley letters to both rejecting those claims. Judges would later throw out each conviction based on the ineffectiveness of each man’s trial lawyer, and both took plea deals rather than continue fighting their cases.
Rogers described that as a decision born of desperation.
“I thought, I gotta get home,” he said. “I gotta see the people I love one more time.”
He was released in December after nearly 17 years in prison. His two children had to grow up with their father behind bars.
O’Hanlon said that he could not have raised the issues that later won the clients’ relief, either due to the clients’ instructions at the time or due to state court precedent.
“There are years and years of subsequent procedural history, with multiple courts agreeing with me and some not agreeing with me,” he said.
But former clients said the letters undermined one of their last shots at freedom.
Hakeem Moore, who received one of those letters before his family finally hired a lawyer who uncovered evidence that led to his conviction being overturned, said getting that letter in his prison legal mail was devastating. O’Hanlon noted Moore ultimately took a guilty-plea deal, and said the evidence that freed him was not available when he handled the case.
“It’s like a betrayal. You’re supposed to be fighting for me,” Moore said. “I was scared that I was going to have to die in jail.”
For almost 40 years, the requirements created in the Finley case have set the minimum for what’s required of court-appointed PCRA lawyers in Pennsylvania. Beyond that, lawyers are largely left to decide what constitutes a meaningful review.
They are subject to some oversight: Pennsylvania courts require judges to independently review the record before accepting a Finley letter. And the whole court-appointed system is overseen by a supervising judge who has the power to review complaints and remove lawyers.
The analysis of invoices in homicide PCRA cases showed that even though most lawyers filing Finley letters did not take basic investigative steps, judges approved of the work that attorneys had done in more than 90% of the letters filed.
“There are years and years of subsequent procedural history, with multiple courts agreeing with me and some not agreeing with me.”
Stephen T. O’Hanlon, the attorney assigned to Milique Wagner’s case
And even if judges take issue with lawyers’ work, that does not necessarily affect their ability to take more cases. Once on Philadelphia’s court-appointment list, lawyers can remain there indefinitely.
That’s a sharp contrast to the federal court for Pennsylvania’s Eastern District, where lawyers must reapply every three years, self-reporting everything from previous case outcomes to disciplinary actions to judicial findings that they were ineffective in court.
In Philadelphia, the supervising judge has the authority to remove lawyers from the list in response to complaints. But formal reprimands from the state disciplinary board and criticism from the state appeals court have not affected some lawyers’ eligibility to continue taking appointed cases.
One lawyer, Lee Mandell, was officially reprimanded last year for waiting six years to schedule a PCRA hearing, during which time two key witnesses died. James Lloyd was reprimanded in 2020 for failing to contact his client for 10 months after being appointed, then making up a letter to cover up that fact.
Judges still appointed both to handle cases, and Philadelphia’s court leadership in 2022 tapped Lloyd to lead a training on PCRAs for other lawyers.
Lloyd did not respond to emails or phone calls requesting an interview. Mandell declined to comment.
Also continuing to receive appointments is attorney Douglas Dolfman. The state Superior Court criticized his PCRA work six times over the last six years, finding he abandoned two clients and “deprived [another] of meaningful representation.” In one case, the Superior Court said the lower court could consider “sanctions including, but not limited to, reporting him to the disciplinary board.” The state bar directory shows no disciplinary action followed.
In an interview, Dolfman said he diligently investigates each case and fights hard for his clients.
“If the person has been in jail for 20 years, you’re pretty much not finding anything. Most likely everything has been exhausted already,” Dolfman said. He didn’t address the appellate court’s criticism.
As for Milique Wagner, after receiving the Finley letter he’d spend another nine years in prison for the murder to which the prosecution’s star witness had confessed.
But in 2022, the disgraced detective who built the case against him, Nordo, was convicted of raping informants and funneling them crime reward money.
A year later, the district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit agreed that the prosecutor’s failure to disclose evidence about Nordo and the informant who testified against Wagner had resulted in an unfair trial.
Wagner came home from prison in January. He’s starting over in life at age 37 and looking for work. He married a woman who has been taking care of his ailing grandmother.
He said he has not given up on clearing his name in court, but he’s decided to represent himself going forward. He no longer has faith that a lawyer would help him.
“It’s like a game to them,” he said. “I’m not going to gamble. I know how it turned out before.”
The post With a Chance at Freedom, They Faced an Unexpected Obstacle: Their Own Lawyers appeared first on ProPublica.
Zainab Sheriff unjustly sentenced to four years in prison for incitement and threatening language, say activists
Lawyers, politicians and activists have called for the release of one of Sierra Leone’s best-known celebrities, who they said was unjustly imprisoned as part of a government crackdown on free speech and political dissent.
Zainab Sheriff, a singer and reality-TV show contestant who became a political opposition figure, was sentenced in April to four years and two months’ imprisonment for incitement and using threatening language.
Continue reading...Microsoft; PC, Xbox Series X/S (PS5 due later)
Dreamy vistas of the country’s natural beauties are stunningly delivered – but won’t distract from thrilling high-end driving adventures
The Forza Horizon games have always been about drama. Not just the tension and excitement of racing, but also the sensory impact of the natural environment – the sun rising over a dense city, rain clouds hovering above a valley floor. There are moments in this game – perhaps after emerging from a dense forest, or coming up from an underpass – where Mount Fuji briefly appears in the distance, hazy yet majestic, the Platonic ideal of a volcano – and it almost takes your breath away. Fans of this series have been waiting years for Japan and now here it is, the whole country, reduced, remixed and repackaged as a driving paradise.
In many ways, Forza Horizon 6 is a continuation of what this series has always been about. You enter a festival-style driving competition then drive around a vast map splattered with various races and challenges, earning reputation by competing well and buying new vehicles for your extensive garage. There are slight changes this time – you start as a rookie not an established legend, so you have to qualify to enter the festival, and Playground has re-introduced the need to unlock successive levels of competition bringing back the sense of progression from the earliest titles in the series. You start out clattering about in slower C-class vehicles on easier circuits and have to work hard to start lining up against super cars such as the Ferrari J50 or Lamborghini Huracán.
Continue reading...Europe is testing laser-based satellite communications through a new mountaintop ground station in Greece, aiming to deliver faster, more secure links than traditional radio systems as bandwidth demand grows. The Register reports: Lithuanian space and defense biz Astrolight says that it has commissioned a new optical ground station in Greece that will support ESA-backed CubeSat missions testing laser-based communications between satellites and Earth. The Holomondas Optical Ground Station was built through the PeakSat project, led by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with backing from the European Space Agency and Greece's Ministry of Digital Governance. Its job is to receive data from satellites via infrared laser links rather than the radio systems that space operators have relied on for decades. PeakSat and ERMIS-3, two Greek CubeSats launched in March under ESA's wider Greek IOD/IOV mission program, both carry Astrolight's ATLAS-1 optical communication terminal. Astrolight also built the ground segment, giving the project a fully integrated end-to-end optical communications setup. [...] The company says the station uses an 808-nanometer laser beacon and an optical C-band receiver capable of receiving data at up to 2.5 Gbps. Unlike traditional RF systems, optical links use tightly focused infrared beams that are harder to intercept or jam while also supporting significantly higher throughput.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I was never able to kill my px in a day, I tried. idk if the extra power will make me just plain ride it more but is it worth the extra 400?, and if you think it is, what have you done with the extra range? grocery runs? mountain bike trails? 25 miles seems like SOOOO much NGL
Rising volume of components imported from China prompts warning of cannibalisation of European industries
Europe is facing a fresh China shock that threatens to cannibalise local factories, leading to job losses and de facto colonisation of industry by Beijing, trade analysts and representatives have said.
They fear the plunging exchange rate and support for Chinese “zombie firms” has echoes of the crisis in the US 25 years ago when the term “China shock” was coined. It referred to the impact of China bursting on to the global trade stage after becoming a member of the World Trade Organization, with soaring imports displacing local industries and causing the loss of up to 2.5m jobs.
Continue reading...Dr Sharmila Chandran suspended until 20 September as Royal Australasian College of Physicians agrees to work with regulator to meet its obligations
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The charities regulator has suspended the president-elect of one of Australia’s oldest medical colleges for allegedly contravening a direction from the NSW work health and safety watchdog.
The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) on Monday issued a notice suspending Dr Sharmila Chandran as a responsible person of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, which is a registered charity, until 20 September.
SafeWork NSW advised that Chandran’s alleged failure to comply with a directive not to contact RACP staff was exposing them to “immediate and serious risks” to their psychological health and safety, the ACNC said in a public statement.
The intervention follows months of conflict within the RACP’s board, which culminated in an extraordinary general meeting last month to which police were called.
Continue reading...HMAS Farncomb had been due to be retired this year, but is now expected to operate until about 2036
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Taxpayers will fork out an extra $11bn to extend the lifespan of Australia’s ageing Collins-class submarines for another decade, bridging the capability gap before the scheduled arrival of the first Aukus vessels in 2032.
Originally designed to have a 30-year working life, the six Adelaide-built submarines have already been operational for between 23 and 30 years. The Albanese government announced in 2024 that it would undertake so-called “life of type extension” works to keep the six Collins class boats in the water for an additional 10 years.
Continue reading...What will Apple announce this year? Guess correctly to earn chances for a grand prize.
Commemoration of atrocity at Nova music festival confronts those who deny its gravity, says Elkana Bohbot
Two police vans waited expectantly near the front entrance. Officers patrolled the pavements while suited security men with ear pieces stood stern-faced, casting suspicious looks at those approaching. The location in east London had not been disclosed until that morning but no chances were being taken.
It was not for a visiting dignitary or even an embassy of a country in conflict that all this was deemed necessary but the Nova exhibition, a commemoration of the 378 people massacred at a music festival on 7 October along with the 44 taken as hostages and the 19 of those who died in Hamas captivity.
Continue reading...Port has upgraded offshore wind facilities and is to expand quays, ferry terminals and cruise ship services
The operator of Belfast harbour plans to spend £1.3bn over the next 25 years to take advantage of strong economic growth in Northern Ireland, in what would be one of the largest non-governmental investments in the region’s history.
The Belfast Harbour Commissioners said the money would be spent on upgrading the port, with the possibility of residential property developments that could add another £750m in investment on top.
Continue reading...Prosecution is seen as landmark step towards justice over abuses of refugees trying to reach Europe from Africa
A former militia commander accused of overseeing murder, rape, enslavement and torture in Libyan detention centres has appeared at the international criminal court for a hearing that campaigners say is a landmark step towards “justice, truth, reparation and deterrence” of abuses of refugees trying to reach Europe from Africa.
The prosecution of Khaled Mohamed Ali El Hishri on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity is the first to reach a courtroom resulting from the ICC’s investigation into crimes in Libya after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Continue reading...The dawn of a strange new European consensus.
Pope Leo takes the Vatican where Francis could not.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the MTA and LIRR unions reached "a fair deal" to end the strike after three days.
Apple sells five iPhone models, and we've tested them all. In fact, one iPhone won a CNET Lab Award for fastest wireless charging.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Sony reportedly won't release its major single-player PlayStation games on PC anymore. According to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Hermen Hulst, who heads up PlayStation's studios business, informed employees in a town hall on Monday about the change in strategy. Schreier had previously reported on the shift in March, saying that Sony scrapped plans to launch PC versions of last year's Ghost of Ytei and "other internally developed games." Online games will still come to multiple platforms following this change in strategy, Schreier reported at the time. In recent years, Sony has released many of its biggest games on PC, including Spider-Man 2, Ghost of Tsushima, both The Last of Us games, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, and multiplayer titles like Helldivers 2 and Marathon. Two years ago, Hulst committed to releasing PlayStation's live-service games "day and date" on PC and PS5, but its single-player PC releases have been less consistent, with Hulst saying that the company takes a "more strategic approach." In April, Microsoft's new Xbox chief Asha Sharma said the company is "reevaluating" exclusive games for the platform. "Players are frustrated," she wrote in a memo. "New feature drops on console have been less frequent. Our presence on PC isn't strong enough. Pricing is getting harder for people to keep up with. And core experiences like search, discovery, social, and personalization still feel too fragmented." "The model that got us here won't be the one that takes us forward," the memo adds.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Banner was unveiled during Sunday’s game
Suspects fled the stadium after incident
The Washington Nationals have identified at least one person who will be banned from the ballpark after a banner promoting a white nationalist website was unfurled in the crowd during Sunday’s game.
A team spokesperson also said the Nationals are coordinating with District of Columbia police on an investigation.
Continue reading...I’m currently riding a pint X with quite a few mods (no vesc) and there is a fairly good deal around my area for a GT, and they keep dropping the price it’s gone from 1800 to 1300 in the last three weeks and it isn’t looking like anyone’s interested, I am 250 pounds and 6’ 2” should I buy it?
Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware’s corporate franchise industry contributes about a third of the state’s multi-billion-dollar budget, allowing the state to offer a lower tax climate to residents. A spate of deincorporation moves to other states, started by billionaire Elon Musk, has raised concerns about the future of that industry, though.
Delaware’s top official overseeing the state’s corporate franchise industry had a simple message for the masses wringing their hands over whether the First State would remain the leading state for incorporation: Mellow out.
Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez detailed Delaware’s incorporation data during Monday’s hotly-watched meeting on financial projections – the first meeting since Gov. Matt Meyer dismissed a member of the state’s financial oversight board after he questioned a lack of data on the industry. She reported that all categories of entities saw increases.
In total, the state was home to more than 2.28 million entities at the end of 2025, or an increase of about 130,000 entities over the prior year. Those businesses will raise more than $2.1 billion in state revenue, or about $100 million more than 2024.
“I think that the general climate at the beginning of 2025 has really mellowed out over the last calendar year. Senate Bill 21 and just some marketing that we have been doing pretty much from day one of this administration has really helped to settle everyone’s potential anxiety or unease about Delaware,” Patibanda-Sanchez told the members of the panel known best by its acronym, DEFAC.
The early release of the detailed data – it isn’t typically shared until the Division of Corporations’s annual report is published – may help to assuage lingering concerns by state legislators, business leaders and the public.
A collection of taxes and fees on the industry that handles legal and regulatory filings for corporate America feeds more than $2 billion to the state budget, or about a third of all revenue. That funding has long been cited as the reason Delaware can continue to not impose a sales tax and keep other taxes low compared to neighboring states.
But a constant drip of proxy statements from companies seeking shareholder approval to move their incorporations – often to competing states like Nevada or Texas – has made the Meyer administration’s task of changing the narrative more difficult.
While they began with celebrity billionaire Elon Musk’s companies Tesla and SpaceX – after he lost a lucrative contract dispute in state courts – those ranks have grown to include others like Dell, Coinbase, and Dropbox, among others.
A Newsmax headline touting the $3 trillion combined market value of those departing companies was widely shared in conservative circles and promoted by the Delaware Republican Party. The story did not interview anyone from the state, nor disclose that Newsmax’s parent company had been among those reincorporating.
Market values don’t factor into Delaware’s incorporation industry, however, which caps annual payments at $250,000 for the largest corporations.
Patibanda-Sanchez, who has spent much of the last year attending legal and industry conferences around the country to discuss the benefits of incorporating in Delaware, called out those flawed criticisms in her comments.
“Conjecture, misinformation, and exaggeration must never be part of any discussion regarding the franchise,” she said. “The impact those types of statements have can ripple far beyond this room.”
Newly created corporations or those moving to Delaware do not create the same headlines, but the new data showed the number of those largest entities grew by more than 24,000 last year. They will contribute an additional $13.6 million over the prior fiscal year, or an increase of about 1%.
A slight decrease in the percentage of initial public offerings (IPOs), or companies listing on the stock market for the first time, choosing to incorporate in Delaware last year raised some questions from DEFAC members.
Patibanda-Sanchez replied that the Division of Corporations was watching those numbers and meeting with advisory law firms to discuss the state franchise. However, she noted that the vast majority of IPOs that did not come to Delaware ended up incorporating internationally, particularly in Caribbean countries, rather than other U.S. states.
“We are still the No. 1 choice for venture capital,” she added. “The forms that venture capital rely upon still require Delaware law.”
The slow rate of growth in the state’s franchise tax – the annual fee that allows corporations to keep their domicile in Delaware and powers the industry’s budget impact – also raised some questions.
Rick Geisenberger, a former Delaware finance secretary who spoke during public comment, said it was “totally unprecedented to have back-to-back, essentially flat revenue growth when domestic equity markets are as strong as they’ve been the last two years.”
“I’m glad this body is asking probing and perhaps even uncomfortable questions, and that the Secretary is studying the drivers,” Geisenberger said. “Those answers are going to be critical in understanding the underlying causes and what the state can and should do on all matters of important public policy considerations, not just with respect to our corporate laws, but also whether it is prudent to increase Delaware’s reliance on a closely related revenue source, unclaimed property.”
Money from unclaimed property – derived from a range of different sources like dormant bank accounts, security deposits, utility refunds, uncashed stock dividends, unspent gift cards, and more – adds nearly $400 million to state coffers annually. But it has been under the microscope, following a loss for one revenue source in a U.S. Supreme Court case in 2023.
On Monday, the DEFAC board also approved the latest projections for the upcoming fiscal year, which added $196 million in funding largely on the back of higher than expected personal income tax returns. That pushes the annual appropriation limit for the state budget that will begin July 1 to $7.3 billion, easing any concerns of revenue declines this year.
The post DExit fear has ‘mellowed out’ as entities grow, secretary says appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for May 19.
This blog is now closed. See our latest full report: Trump claims planned attack on Iran postponed after Tehran makes new proposal to end war
Friedrich Merz has been embroiled in a row with Donald Trump over his war on Iran ever since the German chancellor suggested the Trump team was being outplayed in its negotiations with Tehran and said he would not advise his children to study or work in the US in the current climate.
The Guardian’s Berlin correspondent, Deborah Cole, has looked at the declining relationship between the two leaders in this story. Here is an extract:
Disputes over trade and military aid for Ukraine have fuelled tensions between the US and its European allies and tested the Nato alliance.
Merz is struggling to revive an anaemic German economy and has said the impact of the US-Israeli military action in Iran and the ensuing closure of the strait of Hormuz has been severely damaging to European interests.
We strongly condemn the renewed Iranian airstrikes against the United Arab Emirates and other partners. Attacks on nuclear facilities pose a threat to the safety of people throughout the entire region. There must be no further escalation of violence.
Iran must enter into serious negotiations with the USA, stop threatening its neighbours, and open the strait of Hormuz without restrictions.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed.
Democratic reactions to the news about Trump moving to withdraw his lawsuit against the IRS are coming in. Ron Wyden, a top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said Trump deserved no credit for dropping the lawsuit, regardless of his reasons.
“Even by his standards the move he’s trying to get away with now is a stunning act of corruption,” said Wyden in a statement. “What Trump wants is a $1.7bn slush fund for right-wing political violence and subversion, and if he follows through, it will be the most brazen theft and abuse of taxpayer dollars by any president in American history.”
Continue reading...Democratic senators called extension ‘indefensible gift’ to Vladimir Putin as supply concerns keep Brent oil above $110 per barrel
The US has announced another 30-day extension of a sanctions waiver allowing purchases of Russian seaborne oil to aid “energy-vulnerable” countries hit by the Iran war, reversing plans not to grant an extension.
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said the Treasury was issuing the 30-day general license after a previous waiver lapsed on Saturday. This will allow temporary access to Russian oil and petroleum products stranded on tankers without violating severe US sanctions on Russian oil majors, he said.
Continue reading...Democrats criticize deal as a slush fund that ‘funnels taxpayer dollars’ to president’s political allies
The justice department announced on Monday it was creating a loosely controlled and secretive $1.776bn fund to compensate Donald Trump allies as part of an agreement in which Trump and his sons dropped a $10bn longshot lawsuit against the IRS.
The money, which critics said was essentially a slush fund, will be overseen by five commissioners – four of whom would be appointed by the attorney general and removable by Trump – who would oversee the body’s work. A fifth commissioner will be appointed “in consultation” with congressional leadership. The fund also has the power to issue “formal apologies” and will send a quarterly confidential report to the US attorney general outlining who has been paid from the fund. There is no requirement that the fund’s work be made public.
Continue reading...Former House speaker, who had not yet weighed in, declared Connie Chan ‘best prepared’ to represent city
Nancy Pelosi on Monday endorsed Connie Chan, a San Francisco supervisor, in the race to succeed her as the city’s representative in Congress, calling her the candidate who “stands above the rest”.
Pelosi, the first woman to serve as speaker of the House, will retire at the end of her term and had not yet weighed in on the contested primary for the San Francisco district she has held for nearly 40 years. But as early mail-in ballots trickle in ahead of the 2 June primary, Pelosi declared Chan the “leader best prepared to carry forward the fight for San Francisco in the Congress”.
Continue reading...With inflation hitting its highest point since 2023, Kiana Powell told CBS News, "I cannot let a deal go to waste if it's something that I am using daily."
I have major trouble riding during the day. Call it social anxiety or the spotlight effect or just me being a baby, but it seriously hinders my ability to have fun. I talk myself out of it almost every time for fear of being noticed. Is exposure the only way to get over this? Any other tips from riders who have faced a similar issue?
President’s remarks about Taiwan arms deals being a ‘negotiating chip’ with Beijing have been seized on by Chinese state media
It has been an unsettling few days for Taiwan’s government. When Donald Trump met Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday, many feared the unpredictable US leader could upend Washington’s longstanding support for Taipei.
But beyond a starkly worded statement from Xi stressing China’s claims over Taiwan, which it claims as part of its territory despite never having ruled it, initial signs appeared good for Taipei.
Continue reading...Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for May 19, No. 1,795.
Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for May 19, No. 1,073.
Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for May 19, No. 807.
Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle No. 603 for Tuesday, May 19.
Massie said the president is worried about his preferred candidate Ed Gallrein's chances in the Kentucky race.
Three people were killed in a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, and two suspected shooters were found dead inside a vehicle nearby, police said.
Fire on Santa Rosa Island in Channel Islands national park becomes state’s largest this year and threatens rare plants
A wildfire that broke out on an island in the Channel Islands national park has become California’s largest wildfire so far this year, burning through more than 10,000 acres, destroying historic structures and endangering rare plant communities that conservationists had struggled to reclaim.
About six dozen firefighters have been deployed to control the blaze, which broke out on Friday, but their efforts have been undermined by strong winds. The fire is currently at 0% containment, according to a Cal Fire incident report.
Continue reading...The New York Times sued the Defense Department Monday for the second time in recent months over media access.
OpenAI’s plans now seem all but guaranteed, given that the world’s richest man couldn’t put a stop to them
On Monday morning, a jury in Oakland, California, handed a resounding victory to Sam Altman and OpenAI in their long, bitter courtroom battle with Elon Musk.
The federal jury found Altman, OpenAI and its president, Greg Brockman, not liable for Elon Musk’s claims that they unjustly enriched themselves and broke a founding contract made with Musk when founding the startup. The unanimous verdict, delivered after less than two hours of deliberation, is a stark rebuke of Musk and his lawyer’s claims that Altman “stole a charity” through his leadership of OpenAI.
Continue reading...The Swedish brand's most critical EV yet arrives with 307 miles of range, 800-volt charging and the weight of an entire electrification strategy on its shoulders.
I've ridden a lot of onewheels over the years around 3,000 miles across a few boards, I sold mine a few years ago and I really want to get back onto it. Seeing the group riders gather at the park by my house is making me remember how much fun it was and I can finally get one of my own,
I've seen a lot on vesc and float wheels and don't know which to go with. Im looking around the 2.5k amount there's a bunch of used boards for sale around me and and in was looking at a used GT or XR and then upgrading it. But I just saw some videos on the float wheel and I can't decide anymore
Hey reddit! I got a onewheel pint that I had modded with the custom firmware a few years back and its been a couple years since ive used it and now the battery is shot, so im thinking of selling it and got a few questions for yall?
How much do you guys think would this onewheel sell for? As is and if I get a new battery for it?
Does having it molded with the custom firmware make it more valuable?
Any where I can go to get a new battery? (Live in Toronto, canada BTW)
Let me know what you guys think!
Iran executed more than twice as many people last year as it did in 2024, according to a new report by Amnesty International.
 | The stand is also 3D printed, and holds the charge brick and cables. [link] [comments] |
The Spectra supercomputer built by Penguin Solutions using Maverick-2 chips from NextSilicon received fully system acceptance by Sandia National Lab, NextSilicon announced today. The news marks a milestone for the chipmaker and could pave the way for a new generation of more energy-efficient supercomputers that adapt themselves to tackle big workloads rather than throwing more watts and FLOPS at the problem.
Spectra is the second system deployed under Sandia National Laboratories’ Vanguard program, following the installation of the ARM-based Astra system back in 2018. Spectra is a 64-node machine equipped with 128 Maverick-2 accelerators using Penguin Solutions’ OCP-based Tundra servers and a negative pressure coolant system from Chilldyne.
Sandia has put the new supercomputer through its paces in anticipation of using this new type of supercomputer for HPC workloads, namely modeling nuclear reactions. Sandia has successfully run several workloads under the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program on Spectra, including HPCG, the molecular dynamics simulation LAMMPS, and SPARTA, the lab announced in December.
NextSilicon’s Maverick-2 is based on a ICA dataflow architecture
While it’s the second supercomputer in Vanguard, Spectra is the first supercomputer to use NextSilicon’s new chip architecture. That’s important for scientific computing, which is looking for alternatives to GPUs, which have gotten bigger, hotter, and more energy hungry, while they haven’t necessarily gotten better at running scientific workloads.
Maverick-2 is the latest chip based on NextSilicon’s Intelligent Compute Architecture (ICA), a data flow architecture that NextSilicon says allows the chip to virtually rewire itself to adapt to changing workloads. ICA is a major departure from traditional von Neumann architectures, which NextSilicon Founder and CEO Elad Raz says wastes 98% of a processor’s computing capacity on overhead.
According to NextSilicon, Maverick-2 can deliver 10x the computational performance of the latest Nvidia GPUs, but while consuming just 60% of the electricity. The company says the new chip, which started shipping last fall, can run Cuda, allowing it to function as a drop-in replacement for Nvidia GPUs. It can also run Python, C++, and Fortran code with porting or rewriting the programs.
“This is a significant step toward what we have been building: an accelerator that delivers performance while reducing power consumption,” Raz stated. “For HPC organizations evaluating next-generation infrastructure, Spectra begins to show what Maverick-2 can do when put to the test.”
Spectra runs in a Penguin Solutions’ Tundra server using Chilldyne’s negative pressure liquid cooling (Image courtesy Sandia National Lab)
GPUs have become common components in supercomputers, thanks to their capability to crunch through massive datasets in a parallel manner. Nvidia and AMD have developed generations of GPUs used in thousands of supercomputers built for the Department of Energy’s National Labs, university supercomputing centers, and private industry.
While GPUs are still highly sought after for scientific workloads, it’s clear that they are not the only game in town. Chips like Maverick-2 show that non-Von Neumann architectures could have a future in powering modeling and simulation workloads, which have been the bread and butter of scientific computing.
Having a diversity of suppliers is also important, as the supply chain crunch has made it difficult to obtain highly popular GPUs, such as those from Nvidia, as well as common computing components, like DRAM. Nvidia’s pivot to favoring lower precision workloads in its most recent GPUs, including Blackwell and Rubin, is another factor in the DOE’s sourcing equation. That is something that AMD is seeking to capitalize on, as it continues to emphasize the FP64 capacity of its line of GPUs.
“We have to keep available options to complete our mission, because the mission is not optional,” James Laros, a senior scientist at Sandia who oversees a program to test new computing architectures at Sandia, told Reuters.
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The post Sandia Lab Gives Approval to Spectra Supercomputer appeared first on HPCwire.
UK foreign secretary says urgent pressure needed to get strait of Hormuz reopened and fertiliser and fuel moving
Global fertiliser supplies must be freed up within weeks to avoid disaster, with harvests suffering and food prices rising, the UK’s foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said.
The war in Iran has frozen shipments of fertiliser through the strait of Hormuz, creating a supply crunch that has already damaged farming in the UK, Europe and the US and is having its worst impacts in the developing world, where farmers cannot afford the higher prices now being charged.
Continue reading...Figures disclosed by nursing union show big rise on reported incidents which may only be ‘tip of the iceberg’
Racist abuse of NHS nurses has jumped by 86% in the last few years, which their union’s boss has blamed on the normalisation of extreme views in politics and the media.
One nurse was called a monkey by a colleague, a patient threw a hot drink at a nurse and followed up with racial abuse, and in several cases others were called the N-word, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) disclosed.
Continue reading...Tracker of attitudes towards artificial intelligence also finds almost half of the public would prefer to avoid it
One in three university students think AI will wipe out jobs so rapidly it will trigger civil unrest, according to a survey by King’s College London (KCL).
Students are among the heaviest users of AI, the poll found, with 77% using it at least a few times a month – compared with 46% of workers – and 27% using it daily or almost daily.
Continue reading...The FBI is seeking up to $36 million for nationwide access to automated license plate reader (ALPRs) data, which could let it query vehicle movements across the U.S. and its territories through a commercial database. 404 Media reports: "The FBI has a crucial need for accessible LPRs to provide a diverse and reliable range of collections across the United States. This data should be available across major highways and in an array of locations for maximum usefulness to law enforcement," a statement of work, which describes what data the FBI is seeking access to, reads. ALPR cameras generally work by constantly scanning the color, brand, model, and license plate of vehicles that drive by. This creates a timestamped record of where a particular vehicle was at a specific time that law enforcement can then query, effectively letting them see exactly where someone drove across time. The technology has existed for decades, but has become more pervasive in recent years. The FBI says it is looking for a vendor that will let it log into a Software-as-a-Service system and then query the collected ALPR data with license plate information, a description of the vehicle, a time or date, and geolocation information. The FBI says it is looking for ALPR coverage in the following areas: Eastern 48 (East of the Mississippi River); Western 48 (West of the Mississippi River); Hawaii; Puerto Rico; Alaska; and outlying areas such as Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or Tribal Territories. In effect, the FBI is looking for ALPR data nationwide and even beyond. An attached price template indicates the FBI is willing to pay $6 million for each of those broad areas, bringing the total to $36 million. The FBI says it intends to award the contract to a single vendor, but if any such vendor is unable to fulfill all of the requirements, the agency may award the contract to up to two vendors. The contract is specifically for the FBI's Directorate of Intelligence, which oversees the agency's intelligence mission. The FBI is not only a law enforcement agency, but also part of the Intelligence Community. The report notes that the contract appears aimed at vendors like Flock or Motorola Solutions, since they're some of the only companies able to provide the sort of data the FBI is seeking. Further reading: Small Town Fights Over Flock's AI-Enhanced Network of License Plate-Reading Cameras
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
After a blowout year in 2024, HPC spending slowed a bit in 2025, posting a more modest–but still very impressive–gain of 16.9% over the previous year, led by strong growth in AI workloads, GPUs, and cloud computing, according to Hyperion Research.
Hyperion Research’s most recent data shows global HPC/AI spending totaled more than $70 billion in 2025, which was roughly $10 billion more than the world spent on HPC and AI servers, storage, software, services, and cloud computing in 2024.
Led by vigorous spending for on-prem HPC servers, total spending in 2024 was up 23.5% compared to the previous year, making it the hottest year for HPC spending that Hyperion CEO Earl Joseph had seen in the past three decades. “We’re seeing this explosive growth in HPC right now,” Joseph said at SC25 in St. Louis, Missouri.
How the $70 billion in 2025 HPC and AI spending is divied up (Source: Hyperion Research)
The $70 billion spent in 2025 is nothing to shake a stick at and represents solid and continued growth in high-end systems, but it fails to match the huge increase in HPC and AI computing from 2024. That’s not surprising, as sustaining that level of growth would have been extremely difficult, even amid an AI boom.
According to Joseph’s presentation from Hyperion’s recent HPC User Forum event, which was held earlier this month in Austin, Texas, spending for on-prem servers in 2025 cooled from the red-hot 23.4% rate that we saw in 2024. Globally, $29.4 billion was spent for on-prem servers in 2025, representing a 15.0% increase over 2024, when about $25.2 billion was spent.
HPE accounted for about 22.1% of the 2025 on-prem HPC sales, or about $6.5 billion, down from $7.2 billion in 2024. Dell Technologies increased its share to 18.2% on the back of $5.3 billion in HPC sales, up from $3.9 billion in 2024. Lenovo and Inspur brought in $1.8 billion and $1.2 billion in on-prem HPC sales, respectively, followed by Sugon, Penguin, Atos, IBM, Fujitsu, and NEC. Penguin passed IBM and Atos with $508 million in on-prem HPC sales compared in 2025 to $356 million in 2024.
Total spending for on-prem servers is projected to amount to about $32 billion in 2026, reaching about $54 billion by 2030, driven by strong demand for supercomputer-class ($10 million to $150 million) machines. The weakest segment growth-wise continues to be workgroup-level HPC machines, which Hyperion defines as medium HPC entry-level ($250,000 to $1 million) machines.
(Source: Hyperion Research)
The AI boom is driving insatiable demand for pricey GPUs that consume lots of power and demand liquid cooling. That is changing what HPC systems look like, with much fewer nodes deployed globally and a big increase in price per node.
Josph’s presentation nodes that, after peaking around 2.2 million HPC nodes in 2021, only about 500,000 nodes have been delivered per year during 2024 and 2025. And the revenue (or cost) per node has skyrocketed, from an average of less than $10,000 per node to more than $50,000 per node today.
Meanwhile, spending in the cloud surged to $12.4 billion in 2025, as the cloud has become a viable option for many HPC workloads, according to Joseph’s presentation.
Cloud spending last year increased 29.7% over 2024, when about $9.6 billion was spent, Hyperion data shows. The 2024 cloud spending figure was a 21.3% increase over 2023 cloud spending levels. Hyperion projects HPC and AI to drive $30 billion in spending in the cloud by 2030.
Demand for storage continued to be strong in 2025, with $12.8 billion spent on storage globally, representing roughly a 27.5% increase over 2024 storage spending levels. Continued investments in storage are likely, as the AI boom drives the need for much larger data sets, Joseph said in his report.
The post HPC Spending Cooled in ‘25, Hyperion Says appeared first on HPCwire.
Teenage suspects die of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, officials say, as FBI investigates shooting as hate crime
Three people were killed in a shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, California, in what authorities said was being investigated as a hate crime.
Two suspects, aged 17 and 19, were also dead from apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds, officials said. The FBI said it was looking for information from the public as it investigated the shooting. The bureau had set up a tip line.
Continue reading...OpenAI CEO and president found not liable for breaking contracts made with Musk when founding the startup
A jury ruled in favor of Sam Altman in the culmination of a long and bitter legal battle that pitted the richest person in the world against a leader of the AI boom.
The federal jury in Oakland, California, found Altman, OpenAI and its president, Greg Brockman, not liable for Elon Musk’s claims that they unjustly enriched themselves and broke a founding contract made with Musk when founding the startup.
Continue reading...Trump claims number of medications available via the discount program will increase nearly sevenfold
Donald Trump has announced a major expansion of his prescription drug website, TrumpRx, claiming the number of medications available via the discount program will increase nearly sevenfold.
Experts raised questions earlier this year about the limited number of drugs listed on the site, suggesting they would appeal to a relatively small group of patients.
Continue reading...LIRR commuters are taking shuttle buses and subways into New York City as the largest commuter rail system in North America remains shut down.
A researcher known as Chaotic Eclipse has released a proof-of-concept exploit for a new Windows zero-day dubbed MiniPlasma, which BleepingComputer confirmed can grant SYSTEM privileges on fully patched Windows 11 systems. The researcher claims the bug is effectively a still-exploitable version of a 2020 flaw Microsoft said it had fixed. From the report: At the time, the flaw was assigned the CVE-2020-17103 identifier and reportedly fixed in December 2020. "After investigating, it turns out the exact same issue that was reported to Microsoft by Google project zero is actually still present, unpatched," explains Chaotic Eclipse. "I'm unsure if Microsoft just never patched the issue or the patch was silently rolled back at some point for unknown reasons. The original PoC by Google worked without any changes." BleepingComputer tested the exploit on a fully patched Windows 11 Pro system running the latest May 2026 Patch Tuesday updates. In our test, we used a standard user account, and after running the exploit, it opened a command prompt with SYSTEM privileges, as shown in the image [here]. Will Dormann, principal vulnerability analyst at Tharros, also confirmed the exploit works in his tests on the latest public version of Windows 11. However, he said that the flaw does not work in the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Canary build. The exploit appears to abuse how the Windows Cloud Filter driver handles registry key creation through an undocumented CfAbortHydration API. Forshaw's original report said that the flaw could allow arbitrary registry keys to be created in the .DEFAULT user hive without proper access checks, potentially enabling privilege escalation. While Microsoft reports having fixed the bug as part of its December 2020 Microsoft Patch Tuesday, Chaotic Eclipse now claims the vulnerability can still be exploited.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Far more American children have likely been separated from their parents during immigration sweeps than previously understood, according to a report by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Brookings.
The report published Monday estimates more than 100,000 U.S. citizen children have had a parent detained since President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign began last year. The analysis cites reporting from ProPublica on the detention of parents, which can often lead to family separations.
During Trump’s first administration, a policy of family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border ended after widespread outrage. Now, the breakup of families is happening amid sweeps by immigration agents across the country.
About 400,000 people have been detained by immigration agents since Trump returned to office, Brookings noted. But it’s nearly impossible to know how many family separations that has caused, since the administration does not track it.
Families are also now being split up in ways that are more dispersed, more hidden and harder to track.
Brookings created its estimate by using census information to approximate the number of children that detainees have. It estimated that roughly 200,000 children, including 145,000 American kids, have had a parent detained. The think tank notes that the actual number could be somewhat higher or lower.
ProPublica used a different, more conservative, approach that relied on government data obtained through a public information lawsuit by the University of Washington. We found that in just the first seven months of Trump’s second term, at least 11,000 American children had a parent detained. We also found that Trump has been deporting about four times as many mothers of American children per day as President Joe Biden did.
As we noted, our figures are almost certainly undercounts. For instance, the government data relies on detainees self-reporting whether they have children. In some cases, agents may not ask and parents may not share details about their families out of fear of what might happen to their children.
“There are a lot of families that are in the situation that are not being written down,” said Tara Watson, one of the authors of the Brookings report. It’s “important both for transparency and from a child health and wellbeing perspective to know what’s happening to the kids. How many of them are leaving the U.S.? How many of them are staying in the U.S. with close family? How many of them do we really not know what their situation is?”
ProPublica also followed multiple families through their sudden separations and found a wide variety of outcomes for the children.
Doris Flores, a mother from Honduras, was separated from her breastfeeding infant after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested her and her fiance at the same time. In the rush to find someone to care for the baby and Flores’ 8-year-old daughter, she called on their local pastor to take the children in.
In response to the Brookings findings, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, sent an oft-repeated statement that the agency “does not separate families,” adding that parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or instead to have them placed with a person the parent designates. DHS said this is consistent with the practices of past administrations.
However, guidelines for ICE officers encountering parents have changed. A document known as the Parental Interests Directive was given a new name under Trump — the Detained Parents Directive. Its preamble, which once instructed agents to handle immigrant parents in a way that was “humane,” has been stripped of the word.
The post More Than 100,000 American Kids Have Had a Parent Detained in Immigration Sweeps, Report Estimates appeared first on ProPublica.
Apple's annual conference is expected to focus on AI integration in advance of the next iPhone.
Estimated £1bn per year is laundered through vape stores, barbers, mini-marts and sweet shops, officials say
“Dodgy” retail outlets such as vape stores, barbers, mini-marts and sweet shops suspected of being used to launder £1bn of criminal money will be targeted by a new specialist unit, the government has said.
A £20m National Crime Agency cell will run and coordinate investigations and raids into UK businesses suspected of acting as fronts for gangsters, the Home Office said.
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Eleven journalists from across the country join the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program, which seeks to expand the ranks of editors in newsrooms across the country whose work is aimed at accountability and impact.
Established in 2023, the program has trained more than 31 journalists to date. It begins with a five-day intensive editing boot camp in New York, with courses and panel discussions led by ProPublica’s senior editors. After the boot camp, participants will gather virtually throughout the course of the year for continuing development seminars and be assigned a ProPublica senior editor as a mentor for advice on their work and careers.
Alumni continue to work in the field in newsrooms like The Boston Globe, KQED, The Texas Tribune, ESPN and ProPublica. This year, more than 130 journalists applied for a spot in the program.
“Each year, we are thrilled by the number of people who reach out to us for this training,” Managing Editor Ginger Thompson said. “It’s ProPublica’s way of supporting investigative reporting at a time when our mission couldn’t be more vital.”
Introducing the 2026 cohort of the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program:
Aaron Sankin is the data editor at The Marshall Project, a criminal-justice-focused nonprofit news organization. He was previously an investigative reporter with The Markup, where he won the Edward R. Murrow Award for reporting on predictive policing, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Philip Meyer Journalism Award for an investigation into racial and socioeconomic disparities in internet service pricing, and the Gerald Loeb Award for an innovative online privacy inspection tool. He also covered online extremism at The Center for Investigative Reporting and helped launch HuffPost’s San Francisco vertical. He is a graduate of Rice University and lives in New York.
Deblina Chakraborty is senior science editor at CNN, where she oversees coverage of science and space, leading a team of writers and editors who explore intriguing discoveries, scientific breakthroughs and daring missions. Previously, she was a general features editor and an off-platform editor for CNN. She’s also managed editorial teams at Denver7 and HLN Digital and hosted the award-winning podcast “Stuff You Missed in History Class.”
Josh McGhee is the Chicago bureau chief of MindSite News and covers the intersection of criminal justice and mental health with an emphasis on public records and data reporting. He previously reported for Injustice Watch, The Chicago Reporter, DNAinfo Chicago and WVON covering criminal justice, courts, policing, race, inequality and politics.
Kynala Phillips is the editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Neighborhood Dispatch, a new initiative that partners with residents to cover community voices, concerns and improvements. Previously, she led the events program at Kansas City PBS, and worked as a service journalism reporter at The Kansas City Star, where she covered housing, public services and marijuana legalization. She holds a master’s degree in engagement journalism from the City University of New York and an undergraduate journalism degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Karen Chávez is executive editor of USA Today’s Asheville Citizen Times in North Carolina. During her more than 20-year career at the paper, she served as investigations editor, assistant sports editor and an outdoors and environment editor. Previously, Chávez, a New York native, also worked as a reporter in Montana, Idaho and Arizona. Chávez’s reporting exposed a district attorney’s wrongdoing and led to his removal for willful misconduct in office (which won a Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Award). Her reporting also exposed a decadeslong pattern of alleged sexual abuse of students at the Asheville School by faculty and other students (which won North Carolina Press Association awards). At the Citizen Times, Chávez led national coverage of Tropical Storm Helene, the deadliest and costliest natural disaster in North Carolina history. The team she led was honored for their dogged coverage, including a first place National Headliner Award for public service journalism.
Kevin Uhrmacher is the deputy news applications editor at ProPublica, where he leads a team of developers who use code to report and build interactive stories and databases. He joined ProPublica in August 2025 after 11 years at The Washington Post as a reporter and editor on the graphics team focused on politics and public policy. At ProPublica, he led the development of the Rx Inspector database that shows patients which factories made their prescription generics. He has edited graphics for three Pulitzer Prize-winning projects. Uhrmacher graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Margaret Ho is an assistant editor in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, where she collaborates with reporters who cover the Justice Department, the rule of law and political fact-checking. She started at the Times in 2010 as a copy editor on the business desk after working as a grant writer for a charter school in Harlem, New York.
Padma Rama is a senior political editor at NPR focused on national politics. She works with NPR’s network of member stations. Previously, she was a congressional reporter and senior producer at The Associated Press and worked at CNN’s D.C. bureau.
Rosalie Chan is a senior editor helping to drive editorial strategy for Business Insider’s tech coverage. She joined the company as an enterprise tech and cloud reporter, reporting on key industry players like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Broadcom, VMware and more. As a reporter, she has broken scoops on those companies and delved into a wide array of topics, like the open source licensing wars, the rise and fall of various developer startups, coding boot camps and sexual harassment in tech. Most recently, she was an editor on a Business Insider team investigation into the environmental and economic impacts of data centers that won the George Polk Award. Chan holds a bachelor of science degree in journalism and computer science and a master of science in law from Northwestern University.
Thy Vo is an investigative editor for InvestigateWest, a nonprofit newsroom covering the Pacific Northwest. She’s worked as a community journalist in the West for nearly a decade, covering government, politics, courts and immigrant communities for outlets like The Colorado Sun, Law360, The Mercury News and Voice of OC. Vo grew up in Anaheim, California, and now lives in Colorado.
Yoohyun Jung is The Boston Globe’s data editor, leading a team of computational journalists focused on delivering compelling data-driven journalism. She was part of the Spotlight team honored as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2025 for its investigation on Steward Health Care, a troubled Boston-born hospital chain that ultimately collapsed. Previously, she was the deputy data editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, where she worked on some of the organization’s most ambitious data-driven storytelling projects. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Jung began her journalism career in Arizona, where she worked for two of the state’s largest newspapers in Phoenix and Tucson covering numerous beats, including criminal justice and education.
The post ProPublica Selects 11 Journalists for Investigative Editor Training appeared first on ProPublica.
Musk's suit alleged multiple defendants colluded to steal a charity, corrupting a technological nonprofit from within.
The US president says plans for a US military strike on Iran have been paused because ‘serious negotiations are now taking place’
Iran has made a new proposal for a deal to definitively end the war in the Middle East, officials in the region said on Monday, with Donald Trump claiming he had postponed new military strikes so talks could continue.
But while the US president has regularly used social media to threaten Tehran, and to claim that a peace deal was within reach, there has been no sign of an immediate breakthrough in the stalled negotiations to end the war.
Continue reading...When Apple's AI assistant gets major renovations with iOS 27, what does that mean for privacy?
All month, people all over the world have been nervously watching as the Hantavirus spread aboard a cruise ship called the MV Hondius. Three people from the ship died and as the virus spread to other passengers, people wondered – is this the next pandemic? It isn't. But as Guardian health correspondent Melody Schreiber tells host Kai Wright, the outbreak revealed how Trump's cuts to government funding for public health and a climate of rampant misinformation have affected our readiness for the next pandemic.
Continue reading...U.S. wage growth is lagging inflation for the first time since 2023, eroding consumers' purchasing power.
Nintendo is trying to secure a touchscreen-specific monster-catching patent that could be relevant to Palworld Mobile. Japan's patent office has initially rejected the application for lacking an inventive step over prior art, but the company could appeal or amend the claims. Games Fray reports: The Japan Patent Office (JPO) has now made a new monster-catching patent application by Nintendo public. Patent Application No. 2026-019762 covers monster-catching of the kind already asserted against the PC and console versions of Palworld and is from the same patent family as two of the three patents Nintendo is already asserting against Palworld, but with a touchscreen focus. Potential targets are the upcoming Palworld Mobile game and Tencent's Roco Kingdom: World, which is presently available only in China but likely to expand internationally. Nintendo filed the application this year with a request for a fast-tracked review. The JPO has indeed been quick, and the response is that Nintendo's application lacks an inventive step over the prior art. Nintendo already amended the claims in February and can try to amend them again. It can try to persuade the examiner and potentially appeal the decision. But the initial rejection suggests that Nintendo will not obtain the desired touchscreen monster-catching patent quickly. The rejection was communicated on April 24, 2026. Nintendo could abandon the application now, but Nintendo being Nintendo, they are more likely to try to persuade the examiner to arrive at a different conclusion, even though the reasons for the rejection are strong. In many patent examination processes, the initial rejection is essentially just an invitation to present one's best arguments. Here, however, the rejection notice is so well-reasoned that it will be an uphill battle for Nintendo. Nintendo's application would cover a touchscreen-controlled game in which a player moves through "a field in a virtual space," uses "a capture item for capturing a field character," and can summon "a battle character" to fight that creature. During combat, the game would display "a plurality of commands including at least an attack command and an item command," selected through "an operation input using the touch panel." The key claim is that when the capture item is used "during a battle" or "in a non-battle state," the game performs "a capture success determination," and, if successful, "the field character is captured and set to a state owned by the player."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Fire reported in Simi Valley, north-west of LA, as mandatory evacuation orders were issued for over 20,000 residents
A fast-growing brush fire ignited on Monday morning in southern California, prompting evacuation orders for thousands of people and damaging at least one home.
The Sandy fire was reported just after 10am in Simi Valley, a city in Ventura county about 30 miles north-west of Los Angeles.
Continue reading...It's better buy a used pint x and upgrade it with the kit pintv power kit by floatwheel or buy a fkoatwheel atom?
Final price is about the same
Trump administration unveiled sweeping restrictions on press access at the US defense department last September
The New York Times has filed a second lawsuit against the Pentagon, arguing that its recent policy requiring journalists to have official escorts when on Pentagon grounds is unconstitutional.
The Trump administration unveiled sweeping restrictions on press access at the US Department of Defense, which it calls the Department of War, last September.
Continue reading...Concerns over lithium-ion batteries — not the bots' personalities — keeps them off Southwest flights.
EPA outlines effort to kill Biden-era rules as critics condemn RFK Jr and Lee Zeldin’s ‘hocus pocus’
The Trump administration has announced a plan to kill Biden-era drinking water limits on four Pfas “forever chemicals”, and to delay the implementation of standards for two other compounds.
The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing two separate rules to delay and rescind the limits. The rules must go through an approval process that can take several years, and almost certainly will be challenged in court.
Continue reading...AI-driven tools are transforming accelerator and detector design, will improve performance and enable real-time data analysis
May 18, 2026 — Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are shaping major design and research decisions for the planned Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a next-generation nuclear physics research facility that will collide electrons with protons or nuclei to probe matter’s structure.
The EIC — being built at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory in partnership with DOE’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) — will reveal the inner structure of matter in unprecedented detail. It is the world’s first collider designed with AI and machine learning integrated into both its accelerator and detector systems.
Kevin Brown (left), Vincent Schoefer, Weijian (Lucy) Lin, and Levente Hajdu, pictured here in the Main Control Room of the recently retired Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, are members of the EIC-BeamAI collaboration. This group is developing and testing AI tools, such as machine learning, using real accelerator systems at Brookhaven Lab to inform the design of the future Electron-Ion Collider. Photo credit: Kevin Coughlin/Brookhaven National Laboratory.
“EIC is a new facility that can take advantage of AI and machine learning from the start,” said Tanja Horn, a professor of physics at The Catholic University of America, and co-chair of AI4EIC, a working group devoted to developing AI for the EIC. “A wide array of AI tools is now available — perfectly timed for the EIC.”
Brookhaven and Jefferson Lab, along with more than 300 collaborating institutions around the world, are designing the 2.4-mile (3.9-kilometer) ring-shaped accelerator, with two beams circulating in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. A house-sized particle detector, ePIC, will act as a high-speed 3D camera to capture what happens when these beams — each about the width of a human hair — collide.
The EIC will reuse key components of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a DOE user facility at Brookhaven Lab that completed operations in February 2026. Building on RHIC’s foundation, the project’s scientists, engineers, and collaborators are combining decades of expertise with AI-enabled systems to optimize both the design — and the future operation — of this new DOE Office of Science user facility.
“AI will be embedded across the accelerator that produces collisions between electrons and ions, the detector that captures data from those collisions, and the systems that record, share, and analyze that data,” said Abhay Deshpande, associate laboratory director for nuclear and particle physics at Brookhaven Lab and the EIC science director. “The goal is to ensure that the EIC is ready with AI-enabled systems that speed the path to discovery when it turns on in the mid-2030s.”
The AI tools developed to enhance the EIC may also have impacts on how other future facilities built for science or broader applications are designed, optimized, and run for years to come.
Using AI to Optimize Accelerator Performance
AI has long been used to improve accelerator operations, particle identification, and data analysis at facilities such as RHIC and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. In earlier facilities, however, these AI capabilities were often added years after construction. For the design of the EIC, teams such as the EIC-BeamAI collaboration are developing and testing AI tools, such as machine learning, using real accelerator systems at Brookhaven Lab — enabling faster, more precise tuning from the outset.
AI-assisted simulations can quickly reproduce the kinds of signal patterns particles leave in a detector, helping scientists test detector designs and analyze collision data more efficiently. These images compare two ways of simulating how a pion, a type of particle, would appear in a detector. The Geant4 image on the right is the reference simulation. Geant4 is the standard detailed detector simulation widely used in particle physics, producing highly accurate but slow simulations, while the AI-assisted version, as shown on the left, is designed to produce similar detector patterns much faster. Image credit: Cristiano Fanelli.
“What’s exciting is that machine learning lets us operate accelerators in ways we simply couldn’t before,” said Kevin Brown, a physicist at Brookhaven Lab who served as head of control systems for RHIC and its injector accelerators. “We’re not just tuning machines — we’re teaching them how to tune themselves.”
By “tuning,” Brown refers to adjusting tens of thousands of parameters that keep beams stable and maximize collisions — a complex task traditionally managed through constant manual adjustments.
“It’s very difficult for a human being to keep on top of all these settings and beam characteristics all the time,” said Georg Hoffstaetter de Torquat, a Cornell University professor with a joint appointment at Brookhaven Lab. “With machine learning, what we write is essentially computer supervision — the system monitors conditions and adjusts controls automatically.”
To train these self-tuning models, scientists rely on real accelerator data. The EIC will use decades of operational data from RHIC to train and validate AI tools. BeamAI collaborators have already demonstrated this approach in RHIC’s pre-accelerators, where machine learning algorithms can maintain beam quality comparable to that achieved by expert human operators.
“And the routine can run all the time,” Hoffstaetter said. “It’s like having an operator dedicated to the task continuously.”
These systems also generate a “digital twin” — a virtual model that mirrors the accelerator in real time, allowing scientists to test adjustments without interrupting operations.
“As the system optimizes, it learns parameters of the real accelerator, like the misalignment of magnets,” Hoffstaetter said. “That makes future adjustments even better.”
Researchers emphasize that AI enhances, rather than replaces, human expertise. Operators can monitor AI-driven changes in real time, while built-in safeguards ensure systems operate within safety limits.
“Machine learning has the potential to make operation safer,” Hoffstaetter said. “A digital twin, for instance, can identify unusual magnet behavior and prompt a shutdown before the machine is at risk.”
Optimizing Detector Design with AI
AI’s role at the EIC extends beyond controlling beams in the accelerator. Scientists are also applying these tools to design the massive detector where collisions occur.
Scientists design detectors by modeling their geometry digitally and running simulations of particle collisions to evaluate performance. They iteratively refine these designs before construction begins — a process that traditionally requires millions of computationally intensive simulations.
To streamline this work, EIC collaborators are applying AI and machine learning to automate key parts of the workflow. One leading effort is the DOE-supported project AI-Assisted Detector Design for the Electron-Ion Collider (AID2E), a collaboration among Brookhaven Lab, The Catholic University of America, Duke University, Jefferson Lab, and William & Mary.
“We are building a framework that allows AI to assist the design of large-scale detectors,” said Cristiano Fanelli, associate professor of data science and director of technology at William & Mary, the lead principal investigator of AID2E, and co-convener of the AI4EIC working group. “These systems involve complex optimization problems that are difficult for humans to explore efficiently but well suited to AI-assisted approaches.”
Researchers are training algorithms to predict how design changes affect the detector’s ability to identify particles, allowing them to explore many configurations in a fraction of the time required for full simulations.
“AI can identify optimal solutions, but only within the objectives and constraints defined by physicists,” Horn said.
By combining physics expertise with AI-assisted optimization, researchers can more efficiently refine detector design while reducing computing costs and energy use.
Enabling Real-Time Data Analysis and Event Reconstruction
Once the detector is built, the challenge shifts from design to data — capturing and interpreting an enormous stream of collision events as they occur.
The EIC detector, known as ePIC, will use cutting-edge technologies to detect particles created in collisions between high energy electrons and protons or ions — the nuclei of larger atoms — moving close to the speed of light. These collisions generate complex signals and background “noise” that can obscure key information. Traditional approaches rely on fixed rules and manual tuning, but the EIC will use AI-driven systems to filter and prioritize data in real time. This image shows simulated particle hits and tracks. Credit: Sean Preins/VIRTUE.
“We’re trying to develop algorithms that can handle data flying at you at a rate of 500,000 collisions per second,” Horn said. “It’s an interesting challenge.”
These collisions generate complex signals and background noise that can obscure key information. Traditional approaches rely on fixed rules and manual tuning, but the EIC will use AI-driven systems to filter and prioritize data in real time.
The facility is expected to produce data streams of up to 100 gigabits per second — comparable to tens of thousands of high-definition video streams running simultaneously — requiring a powerful readout network that can process data almost as quickly as it is generated.
“We want a fast response to flag information,” said Alex Jentsch, a staff scientist at Brookhaven Lab who specializes in detector systems and is part of the AID2E collaboration. “Machine learning can help us disentangle interesting things from things we don’t care about.”
Beyond filtering data, AI is also transforming how scientists reconstruct collision events. Deep learning models translate the tiny traces particles leave behind as they pass through the detector into detailed information about their energy and momentum, improving both the speed and accuracy of event reconstruction.
“Deep learning is uniquely suited to modeling complex, high-dimensional detector responses directly from data,” Fanelli said. “It complements established methods and human expertise to improve reconstruction and analysis.”
Together, these AI-driven approaches improve how detectors are developed and how collision data are processed, allowing researchers to extract insights more quickly.
“We are contributing to a broader effort across nuclear and particle physics to advance near real-time data analysis,” Fanelli said.
As the first collider designed for the AI era, the EIC represents a new model for how science is done — shaping the design of future research facilities for decades to come.
About Brookhaven National Laboratory
Brookhaven National Laboratory is 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. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.
Source: Amber Aponte, Brookhaven National Laboratory
The post Brookhaven’s Electron-Ion Collider Embeds AI Across Accelerator and Detector Systems appeared first on HPCwire.
 | I ate it shortly after the video... thankfully sand is more forgiving than pavement [link] [comments] |
Victim in his 20s was beaten up in north London street having stepped outside a property to use his phone
A Jewish man is being treated in hospital for injuries to his face and body after being attacked by a number of men in north London.
Police were called in the early hours of Monday morning following reports that a Jewish man had been assaulted by a number of men outside a property on The Grove in Golders Green.
Continue reading...California jury dismissed all charges, finding that Musk missed the three-year statute of limitations to file suit.
President Trump said he received a request from the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
President Trump had accused the Treasury Department and IRS of unlawfully allowing a government contractor to leak his tax returns and those of his sons and company.
President Trump had warned Sunday that "the Clock is Ticking" for Iran to accept a peace agreement.
The Trump administration announced it's restricting people who don't have U.S. passports from entering the country if they have been in Congo, South Sudan or Uganda amid the Ebola outbreak.
Christian Castro charged with five counts over shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis in Trump immigration crackdown
The federal officer who shot a Venezuelan man during the Trump administration’s militarized immigration crackdown in Minnesota was charged with assault on Monday.
There is a nationwide warrant for the arrest of Christian Castro, 52, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot Julio Sosa-Celis on 14 January. A state investigation into the incident had been hampered by federal agencies’ refusal to share information with state prosecutors.
Continue reading...
MOLLY PENHALE
Staff Writer
From Graham King and the creators of Queen’s biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Michael” explores Michael Jackson’s journey to becoming one of the most influential pop stars in history. Directed by Antoine Fuqua, this film highlights the star’s story, beginning with the Jackson 5, then transforming into the solo artist so many know and love.
Jaafar Jackson, Michael’s own nephew, steps into the role as Michael himself. Jaafar is the son of Jermaine Jackson, who was an original member of the Jackson 5, but later left the group.
Another notable actor in this film is the iconic Colman Domingo who plays Joseph (Joe) Jackson, Michael’s father. The makeup team did a great job of transforming him into the paternal leader of the Jackson family. The heavy makeup and cosmetics on his face made him nearly unrecognizable.
I was initially turned off by this film due to the bad reviews it was receiving. I knew I had to see it for myself before forming an opinion on it since I have always been a Michael Jackson fan — and it is safe to say I was not disappointed. In fact, my roommate and I could not sit still in our seats.
The film opens in Gary, Indiana in 1964, shortly after the formation of the Jackson 5 when Michael was still a young boy. The opening scene shows the brothers rehearsing under the strict expectations of their father, who demands perfection. After a late-night performance, Joe tells his sons they need to go practice immediately rather than going to bed. In response, Michael says he thought they had done really well.
This angers Joe and from this moment on, establishes the man that he was: strict and controlling, but also extremely ambitious. He wants his boys to make it big and knows that Michael specifically has a gift in singing and dancing. He knows he has to use Michael to his full potential.
Once the Jackson 5 make it big, including being featured on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” Michael expresses a desire to experiment with solo work, independent of his father and brothers. His father, however, does not approve and wants the brothers to work strictly as a group.
On his own time and apart from the Jackson 5, Michael records his first major solo studio album, “Off the Wall,” in 1979, opening the door for a new wave of fame solely for Michael. People loved Michael while he was performing with the Jackson 5, so hearing him on his own was exciting for his fans.
From there, Michael’s fame only grew. In 1984, Michael won eight Grammys, seven alone for his studio album “Thriller,” earning him the record for most wins in a single night and worldwide recognition. The film features iconic moments throughout Michael’s career, including the famous “Thriller” music video, the “Beat It” choreography and so much more.
The movie also touches on the pressure Michael was under from his father to keep performing with his brothers. Despite the popularity and money the Jacksons got from the success of Michael’s solo work, his father felt that Michael was betraying the family by pursuing his own music. Michael goes as far as firing his own father as his manager due to his overbearing presence and the decisions being made over his own music.
One of the most talented actors in this film is Jaafar. Not only does he portray Michael, but in my opinion, he is an embodiment of him. This being his acting debut proves the natural talent that comes from the Jackson family. He nailed Michael’s mannerisms in dancing and in talking perfectly. At some points throughout the film, I was second-guessing whether it was Jaafar or Michael himself since Jaafar looks so much like his uncle.
Personally, I’m glad that they chose a family member to play Michael. I don’t believe that anyone else could have played Michael better than someone blood-related to him. There are countless Michael impersonators online, but none of them could have portrayed the artist as convincingly as Jaafar did.
Some other notable performances include Juliano Krue Valdi, taking on the role of young Michael at just nine years old when he was cast. Much like Jaafar, Valdi bears a striking resemblance to Michael. He was chosen for the role because of his ability to impersonate the artist through viral dance videos. His performance is extremely impressive given the size of the role at such a young age, and he nailed it.
The movie recreates some of the shows from the Jacksons’ iconic “Victory Tour,” one of the last tours where the Jackson 5 performed together before Michael officially went on his own. This scene showcases some of Michael’s songs, such as “Human Nature” and “Workin’ Day and Night.”
Perhaps my favorite part of the film was the recreation of Michael’s “Bad” tour. The intensity and energy of the scene made it feel as though I were actually attending one of his concerts. It was the perfect way to wrap up the film and tease the second “Michael” movie that will also star Jaafar Jackson.
Whether you are a Michael Jackson fan or not, I highly recommend giving this film a watch for its strong performances and entertaining recreations of Michael’s most iconic songs throughout. Since watching this movie, all I listen to is Michael Jackson — and I’m sure you will as well.
Meta is expected to begin cutting about 8,000 jobs this week as it pours more money into AI infrastructure and looks to "offset" other investments, with additional layoffs reportedly possible later this year. According to CNBC, the morale has worsened inside the company. "Internally, there's an emerging sense of dread across wide swaths of the company," the report says, citing current and former Meta employees. "That's in part because more cuts are expected this year, including a potential round of layoffs in August, followed by another round later in the year, some of the sources said." From the report: [...] Whatever anxiety investors are experiencing, the feelings inside the company are more intense, with some longtime staffers questioning Meta's AI pursuits under AI chief Alexandr Wang, while also weighing if now is the time to leave for opportunities at other companies in the AI race, according to current and former employees. Data aggregated by Blind, an anonymous professional network that requires users to verify their employment with a work email address, reveals some of the internal malaise. Meta's overall rating by employees on Blind has declined 25% from a peak in the second quarter of 2024 to the current period, with a 39% drop in its culture rating. In every category other than compensation, Meta has seen a ratings decline and dramatically underperforms rivals Amazon, Google and Netflix, the Blind data reveals. The company's full-court press with AI included the recent debut of an employee tracking tool intended to collect data from staffers' actions, such as mouse movements and keystrokes on their work computers. The Model Capability Initiative, or MCI, as it's called, is part of Meta's efforts to train AI models to power digital agents that can perform various coding and white-collar tasks. Employees have characterized the data tracking tool as "dystopian," according to messages viewed by CNBC, with some workers expressing fear that personal information could be leaked. Some Meta workers have noted that their workplace computers appear slower since the company initiated the project, adding to their frustration, sources said. Meta workers responded by creating an online petition that urges Zuckerberg and leadership to shutter the project. "Collecting and repurposing this kind of data raises serious concerns around privacy, consent, and trust in the workplace," the petition says. "It should not be the norm that companies of any size are permitted to exploit their employees by nonconsensually extracting their data for the purposes of AI training." Further reading: NYT: 'Meta's Embrace of AI Is Making Its Employees Miserable'
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Researchers from Argonne will both serve on committees and as speakers at the May conference. Topics include AI accelerators, reproducibility, scaling and more.
May 18, 2026 — The 40th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS) provides a forum for engineers and scientists from around the world to present their latest research findings in all aspects of parallel computation. Taking place in New Orleans on May 25-29, 2026, Argonne researchers are serving on several IPDPS program committees, including Valerie Taylor (Applications), Ian Foster (Measurement Learning and AI), Zhiling Lan (Measurement, Performance, and Experiments), and Avinash Kumar Maurya (System Software). Swann Perarnau is Tutorials co-chair.
Workshops
A distinguishing feature of the IPDPS conference is the many co-located workshops. Argonne researchers are involved in several of these.
HPC for AI Foundation Models & LLMs for Science (HPAI4S’26) will address high performance, scalability and energy efficiency of foundation models through a combination of system-level and algorithmic aspects, parallelization techniques, data reduction strategies and low-overhead checkpointing, as well as evaluation and benchmarking.
Argonne organizers are Franck Cappello (General Chair), Bogdan Nicolae (General Vice-Chair), Avinash Maurya (Organizing Chair), Robert Underwood (Program Committee Chair), Romain Pereira (Program Committee member).
Argonne paper presentations:
8th Workshop on Parallel AI and Systems for the Edge (PAISE 2026) seeks to gain feedback and solutions to challenges facing edge computing, including control flows, infrastructure, data flows and applications. Argonne organizers are Yongho Kim and Seongha Park (Program Committee members) and Raj Sankaran (Workshop organizer).
Heterogeneity in Computing Workshop (HCW) will seek novel ideas from both the research and industry communities on theoretical and practical aspects of computing in heterogeneous computing environments. Argonne organizer: Murali Emani (Technical Program Committee member).
Sixteenth International Workshop on Accelerators and Hybrid Emerging Systems (AsHES). This workshop focuses on understanding the implications of accelerators and heterogeneous designs on the hardware systems, porting applications, performing compiler optimizations and developing programming environments for current and emerging systems. Argonne organizer: Jiayuan Meng (Steering Committee member).
7th Workshop on Extreme-Scale Storage and Analysis (ESSA 2026). This workshop brings together researchers and developers in data-related fields — such as storage, I/O, processing, and analytics — on extreme-scale infrastructures, including HPC systems, clouds, edge systems, and hybrid combinations to discuss advancements and potential solutions to the new challenges encountered. Argonne organizers: Matthiew Dorier (Program Committee member) and Franck Cappello (Steering Committee member).
29th Workshop on Jobs Scheduling Strategies for Parallel Processing (JSSPP 2026). JSSPP aims to enhance scheduling techniques, reproducibility, and real-world impact by providing a forum for research papers, workload traces, and open problem descriptions.
Argonne paper presentations:
Tutorials
Building Scalable Agentic Systems for Science: Concepts, Architectures, and Hands-On with Academy. This half-day tutorial will introduce participants to the design, deployment, and management of scalable agentic systems for scientific discovery. Argonne’s Ian Foster is presenting.
For further program details, visit the IPDPS 2026 website at ipdps.org.
Source: Argonne National Laboratory
The post Argonne Researchers Play Key Role at Parallel Computing Conference appeared first on HPCwire.
Content creators, get ready to put aside your handheld action cams -- the Robot Phone is coming.
SAN JOSE, Calif., May 18, 2026 — Western Digital Corporation today announced a significant step in next-generation infrastructure security with the integration of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) into its newest high-capacity Ultrastar UltraSMR hard disk drives. As AI infrastructure evolves from compute-centric deployments to data systems that persistently retain information across every inference, training run, and interaction, the durability and security of that data becomes foundational, not optional. These drives are currently in qualification with multiple hyperscale customers, reflecting strong early interest in quantum-resilient storage architectures.
AI data systems generate and retain massive, long-lived data sets. Securing that data over decades, not just years, must be a core requirement of modern infrastructure. WD’s launch of the first hard drives to implement NIST-approved quantum-resistant algorithms marks a definitive industry transition — from theoretical planning to deployed hardware-level defense. By hardening the root of trust, WD provides a critical safeguard against threats like harvest now, decrypt later (HNDL) and similar attacks. This helps protect the massive data lakes fueling today’s AI innovations against the cryptographic protection-breaking power of tomorrow’s quantum computers. WD is among the first to bring post-quantum cryptography into production storage infrastructure, helping lead the industry’s quantum transition with deployed, standards-aligned, infrastructure-level protection, setting a new baseline for trust in AI-era data systems.
Why Post-Quantum Storage Security Matters Now
As AI infrastructure and workloads generate and retain data in perpetuity, the value of that accumulated data grows, and so does the urgency to protect it against threats that are advancing faster than most organizations anticipate.
WD’s PQC Implementation
WD’s PQC implementation on the new Ultrastar DC HC6100 UltraSMR is designed to help protect device trust chains from manufacturing through field service. This implementation represents more than a feature enhancement; it reflects a broader shift toward embedding quantum-resilient security directly into the foundation of data infrastructure. The focus is on securing device-level trust, including firmware integrity and key management, rather than data-at-rest encryption.
Key elements include:
“As AI data compounds and becomes more valuable and long-lived, securing it for the future is no longer optional. Quantum computing represents one of the most significant technology transitions of our time, and it is advancing faster than many organizations anticipate. The security architectures that have protected enterprise storage for more than a decade will need to evolve,” said Dr. Xiaodong (Carl) Che, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President at WD. “Integrating post-quantum cryptography into our Ultrastar enterprise-class drives is part of our commitment to helping customers stay ahead of threats that are already present in the form of HNDL attacks. By aligning with NIST standards and CNSA 2.0 today, we are helping enterprises build a clear, low-friction path to quantum-safe storage infrastructure.”
As quantum security requirements advance, data protection at the infrastructure layer is becoming a baseline requirement for AI-driven enterprises. WD is helping define the next baseline for trust in AI infrastructure, where security is embedded at the foundation of the system, not added as an afterthought. WD expects to expand PQC capabilities across additional enterprise hard drive product lines over time.
About WD
WD, also known as Western Digital, builds the storage infrastructure that powers certainty in the AI-driven data economy. At the forefront of innovation, WD partners with the world’s leading hyperscalers, cloud service providers, and enterprises to deliver reliable storage solutions that are proven and trusted at scale. Driven by a culture of innovation and execution, WD helps customers store, protect, and use the world’s data with confidence. Follow WD on LinkedIn and learn more at www.wd.com.
Source: Western Digital Corportation
The post Western Digital Brings Post-Quantum Cryptography to Ultrastar Enterprise HDDs appeared first on HPCwire.
A man armed with a rifle carried out a string of attacks, killing at least six people and wounding eight others, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
The pope’s encyclical will address ‘the protection of the human person in the age of AI’, the Vatican says
In the first major text of his papacy, Pope Leo will address the rapid rise of artificial intelligence.
The Chicago-born pontiff will present the document, known as an encyclical, at the Vatican next week during an event attended by Christopher Olah, the co-founder of Anthropic – a US-based AI firm that has clashed with Donald Trump’s administration.
Continue reading...Champion’s childhood coach recalls his early promise while a six-year-old fan hopes to follow in Rai’s footsteps
There was a real buzz and sense of pride at the 3 Hammers golf complex in Wolverhampton, the old stomping grounds of Aaron Rai, who on Sunday became the first Englishman since 1919 to win the US PGA Championship.
It was the first major title of the 31-year-old’s career and Rai described it as “truly a dream come true”. “It’s phenomenal to think of how many things have gone into it and extremely rewarding to be stood here,” he told Sky Sports.
Continue reading...CHICAGO and WARSAW, Poland, May 18, 2026 — Argentum AI has announced the signing of a landmark 300MW AI data center infrastructure agreement valued at approximately $2.5 billion with Boosteroid and DL Invest Group, marking one of the largest independent AI compute infrastructure deployments in Europe.
The agreement establishes a long-term framework for hyperscale AI infrastructure deployments supporting enterprise artificial intelligence workloads, advanced model training, and next-generation inference systems. Under the agreement, Argentum AI will deploy institutional-scale GPU infrastructure within a new high-density AI data center platform designed specifically for large-scale compute operations.
The project is expected to support tens of thousands of next-generation GPUs, including future deployments of NVIDIA GB300 systems, providing dedicated AI compute capacity for global enterprise and AI-native customers.
“This agreement represents another major step in building the independent infrastructure backbone required for the global AI economy,” said Andrew Sobko, CEO of Argentum AI. “The demand for large-scale AI compute continues to accelerate globally, and institutional-grade infrastructure deployment is becoming one of the defining challenges of the technology industry. This project positions Argentum AI at the center of that transformation.”
“We are excited to partner with Argentum AI on one of the most ambitious AI infrastructure projects in Europe,” said Ivan Shvaichenko, CEO of Boosteroid. “The future of AI will belong to the companies that can deliver massive compute capacity quickly, reliably, and at scale. That is exactly what we are building together.”
The facility will deliver high-density colocation infrastructure, advanced cooling systems, redundant power architecture, and enterprise-grade network connectivity specifically optimized for AI compute environments.
Boosteroid brings deep operational knowledge to the project, backed by the high-density GPU infrastructure it has already deployed and continues to run across 29 data centers in Europe, North America, and South America. Managing this global footprint has given its engineering teams a practical understanding of how to build and maintain reliable, low-latency networks at scale. That track record gives the new AI facility a strong foundation for meeting the performance demands of complex enterprise computing.
Argentum AI continues to expand its global AI infrastructure footprint through strategic partnerships, power-backed deployments, and long-duration compute agreements designed to meet the rapidly growing demand for dedicated GPU capacity worldwide.
Argentum AI is actively engaged with top-tier U.S. financial institutions and global investment banks to structure and provide large-scale financing solutions supporting hyperscale AI infrastructure deployments. As demand for AI compute continues to accelerate, the company is focused on combining institutional capital, power-backed infrastructure, and GPU deployment into a unified platform capable of supporting multibillion-dollar AI expansion globally.
“The partnership with Argentum AI and Boosteroid represents one of the key projects supporting the development of independent AI infrastructure in Europe. At DL Invest Group, we are consistently building a European real estate and digital infrastructure platform dedicated to hyperscale AI solutions. Our competitive advantage is our fully integrated operating model covering the entire investment process – from real estate and power infrastructure, through development and execution, to long-term asset management. This enables us to deliver scalable infrastructure that allows our technology partners to accelerate growth and strengthen their competitive advantage. Our ambition is to become one of the leaders of digital transformation and AI infrastructure development in Central and Eastern Europe” concluded Dominik Leszczyński, Founder & CEO of DL Invest Group,
About Argentum AI
Argentum AI is an independent, institutional-grade AI cloud platform focused on deploying large-scale GPU infrastructure for enterprise artificial intelligence applications, advanced compute systems, and next-generation AI workloads.
Source: Argentum AI
The post Argentum AI Signs $2.5B 300MW AI Data Center Agreement with Boosteroid and DL Invest Group appeared first on HPCwire.
Review: Apple's bold redesign begs you to look its way -- especially in orange -- but the best-in-class battery and superb cameras are the real reasons to go Pro.
Samsung delivers modest but meaningful upgrades to the Ultra's design, cameras and battery. And yes, the phone is packed with new AI features -- and most of them are actually pretty useful.
After three weeks of testimony, which was covered extensively here on Slashdot, a U.S. jury on Monday ruled against Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI, finding that he waited too long to bring his claims that the company betrayed its nonprofit mission. Reuters reports: The trial had widely been seen as a critical moment for the future of OpenAI and artificial intelligence generally, both in how it should be used and who should benefit from it. Following the verdict, Musk's lawyer said he reserved the right to appeal, but the judge suggested he may have an uphill battle because whether the statute of limitations ran out before Musk sued was a factual issue. "There's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding, which is why I was prepared to dismiss on the spot," U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said. In his 2024 lawsuit, Musk accused OpenAI, its Chief Executive Sam Altman and its President Greg Brockman of manipulating him into giving $38 million, then going behind his back by attaching a for-profit business to its original nonprofit and accepting tens of billions of dollars from Microsoft and other investors. Musk called the OpenAI defendants' conduct "stealing a charity." OpenAI was founded by Altman, Musk and several others in 2015. Musk left its board in 2018, and OpenAI set up a for-profit business the next year. OpenAI countered that it was Musk who saw dollar signs, and that he waited too long to claim OpenAI breached its founding agreement to build safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. "Mr. Musk may have the Midas touch in some areas, but not in AI," William Savitt, a lawyer for OpenAI, said in his closing argument. The verdict followed 11 days of testimony and arguments where Musk's and Altman's credibility came under repeated attack. Lawyers for OpenAI embraced each other after the verdict was announced. Microsoft faced an aiding and abetting claim. In a statement, a Microsoft spokesperson said, "The facts and the timeline in this case have long been clear and we welcome the jury's decision to dismiss these claims as untimely." Recap: Musk Accused of 'Selective Amnesia', Altman of Lying As OpenAI Trial Nears End (Day Twelve) OpenAI Trial Wraps Up With 'Jackass' Trophy For Challenging Musk (Day Eleven) Sam Altman Testifies That Elon Musk Wanted Control of OpenAI (Day Ten) Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Testifies In OpenAI Trial (Day Nine) Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight) Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven) Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six) OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five) Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four) Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three) Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two) Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Former contestants claim there was not enough protection for cast during making of Channel 4 show
Two women have alleged they were raped during the filming of Married at First Sight UK, one of Channel 4’s biggest shows, and a third alleged she was subjected to a non-consensual sex act.
The show did not do enough to protect them, the women told an edition of the BBC’s Panorama outlining their allegations.
Continue reading...Have $7,500 that you're looking to protect and grow? Here's how much interest you'd earn with these three accounts.
Kalshi announces two-year investment to National Council on Problem Gambling ‘focused on trader health and safety’
The prediction market Kalshi, which maintains it is not a gambling platform, has announced plans to give $2m to the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) as it continues to ride a nationwide surge.
While prediction markets allow users to bet – or “trade” – on the outcome of almost anything, from elections to sports to geopolitical events, the industry has vehemently fought efforts by state officials to regulate its platforms like those of conventional gambling giants.
Continue reading...XR sat for a few months at probably around 80%. I finally got around to replacing the rails and tire and took it for a ride. It rode perfectly normal for a few hours and then after taking a tumble it powered off. We tried to turn it back on and now every time we power it on, it gives me an error 16 and cuts the power. It won’t ride for more than a few seconds every time I cycle it. I am able to connect to the board via the Onewheel app, but the battery always reads as 0%. I’ve tried draining the battery to see if maybe at a lower percentage it might reconnect. I’ve plugged my buddy’s XR battery into my controller and it works fine. Guessing it’s a battery issue but wondering if anyone has ran into this before. I don’t really want to buy a new battery if I don’t have to but willing to, I just want to ride. 😩
Health officials to take ‘proactive measures’ in response to the ongoing Ebola virus epidemic in the DRC and Uganda
US health authorities confirmed on Monday that an American has developed Ebola after being exposed during their work in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); officials also said that they were taking “proactive measures” to protect US citizens in response to the ongoing Ebola virus epidemic in the DRC and Uganda.
Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the case on Monday and said the individual was being evacuated to Germany. They developed symptoms over the weekend and tested positive late Sunday, said Satish K Pillai, an incident manager for the CDC’s Ebola response in a press conference.
Continue reading...Britain likely to face ‘warm, welcoming stance’ if it seeks re-entry but also a ‘hard-headed one’ – with no special deals
Britain would not be able to rejoin the EU on the special terms it enjoyed in the past, veterans of the Brexit negotiations have said.
The warnings came as senior Labour politicians jostling for the leadership of their party and country talk openly about wanting to return to the union at some point in the future.
Continue reading...LAS VEGAS, May 18, 2026 — Dell Technologies has announced a broad set of advancements to the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA, delivering the foundation enterprises need to move from AI ambition to realized outcomes. With more than 5,000 customers already deploying the Dell AI Factory, these portfolio additions are designed to help organizations adopt AI with confidence, scale with purpose, and achieve results on infrastructure they control, with data they trust.
Credit: Shutterstock
Most enterprises don’t have an AI ambition problem. They have an AI execution problem. Data availability and quality remain the top implementation challenges across organizations at every stage of AI maturity. Without a trusted, AI-ready data foundation, even the best infrastructure falls short. Pilots stall before they reach production, and the promise of agentic AI remains out of reach. Dell and NVIDIA address this with a simplified, integrated approach that can accelerate time-to-value by up to 84% and gives enterprises the confidence to scale.
Agentic AI at for Every Workload
As agentic AI workloads grow in complexity, cloud costs are becoming increasingly unpredictable. Organizations are seeking a more controlled approach to deploying autonomous AI where performance, data sovereignty and cost efficiency are paramount.
Dell Deskside Agentic AI, a new solution powered by Dell’s high-performance workstations and NVIDIA NemoClaw, allows enterprises to more securely build and run autonomous agents locally with data that never leaves the device. Supported by end-to-end Dell services, the solution is designed for specialized groups in software engineering, academic research and regulated industries, converting variable cloud token costs into a controlled infrastructure investment. With Dell Deskside Agentic AI, organizations can break even versus public cloud API costs in as little as three months.
NVIDIA OpenShell, the secure runtime for autonomous agents, is now supported across the entire Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA. This allows organizations to build, deploy and govern agents with privacy controls, from Dell Pro Precision towers and Dell Pro Max with GB10 and GB300 through to Dell PowerEdge XE servers. The Dell-NVIDIA AI-Q 2.0 Reference Architecture, powered by the Dell AI Data Platform with NVIDIA, extends this foundation with a production-ready multi-agent research workflow for regulated industries.
Turning Enterprise Data into AI Fuel
AI is only as good as the data it can find, trust and act on. Dell is announcing significant advancements to the Dell AI Data Platform that make enterprise data AI-ready at scale across the full lifecycle, from discovery and preparation to analytics and AI-driven experiences.
Next-Generation Infrastructure Built for the Demands of Modern AI
Dell is expanding its AI infrastructure portfolio with new systems built for modern enterprise AI workloads. As the top rack-scale infrastructure provider, shipping more than twice the number of rack-scale servers compared to the closest competitor, Dell is adding PowerRack to the industry’s broadest AI infrastructure portfolio.
Dell PowerRack is a fully integrated system – compute, networking and storage engineered as one – with thermal design, power management and software optimization built to work together from the ground up. The result is accelerated AI and HPC workloads at enterprise scale, without the integration overhead of component assembly. Dell PowerRack for storage and networking are simplified, rack‑scale platforms delivering factory‑integrated dedicated Dell Exascale storage and Dell PowerSwitch networking with a system‑level approach to performance, power and cooling, managed consistently through the Dell Integrated Rack Controller.
Additional infrastructure updates include:
Scalable Solutions with an Expanding Open Ecosystem
The new Dell AI Ecosystem Program gives AI software providers a structured path to validate solutions on Dell AI Factory infrastructure, turning fragmented innovation into proven, deployable outcomes. For enterprises, this means lower-risk paths to production-scale AI, faster POC-to-production and the ability to run AI solutions where data lives.
Bringing AI leaders and frontier models to the enterprise helps organizations maintain control over their data, models and operations within their trusted environments.
In addition, ServiceNow customers will be able to leverage the Dell AI Factory to bring together infrastructure and enterprise workflow automation, enabling organizations to discover, govern, and operationalize AI focused on business outcomes
New validated AI solutions for common enterprise outcomes spanning agentic AI with Mistral, computer vision with Fogsphere and Ipsotek, an Eviden business, immersive AI with UneeQ Digital Humans, and code assistants with Poolside — are deployable directly from the Dell Automation Platform catalog. New security solutions and services using CrowdStrike, Fortanix and F5 provide full-stack, 24/7 protection and confidential AI across AI infrastructure, data, models and applications for more resilient AI foundations. JFrog and Dell deliver a central hub for securely managing AI models, MCPs, Agent Skills and software artifacts at scale.
About Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) helps organizations and individuals build their digital future and transform how they work, live and play. The company provides customers with the industry’s broadest and most innovative technology and services portfolio for the AI era.
Source: Dell Technologies
The post Dell Unveils Broad AI Factory Upgrades to Accelerate Enterprise Agentic AI Deployment appeared first on HPCwire.
A truck driver was sentenced to over 13 years in prison for smuggling $9.4 million worth of cocaine in a shipment of Skims, Kim Kardashian's shapewear brand.
Expected candidate in Makerfield byelection says party ‘needs to change if we are to regain people’s trust’
Andy Burnham drew the battle lines for the future of the Labour party on Monday as the Greater Manchester mayor promised he would “change Labour” and win back the voters the party had lost.
Burnham, who is expected to be Labour’s candidate in the Makerfield byelection, claimed it would be no ordinary campaign and said he would make it about national issues where Labour was failing, in a direct challenge to the prime minister.
Continue reading...Residents of Ituri province fear spread of disease and economic impact of outbreak six years after the last
“On public transport, in bars and at mass gatherings, everyone is talking about Ebola,” said Gloire Mumbesa, a resident of Mongbwalu, a mining town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He said cases of the disease had been reported locally and panic was engulfing the area because of the lack of a vaccine for the Bundibudyo strain. “The fear is that this disease may spread to many other areas.”
Residents of Ituri province in eastern DRC, where the World Health Organization announced an outbreak of Ebola last week, are living in growing fear of the possible continued spread of the disease and its deadly impacts, nearly six years after the last outbreak in the region ended.
Continue reading...Ofcom to update codes of practice amid rise in ‘revenge porn’ and AI-generated deepfakes targeting women and girls
Social media, messaging platforms and online forums that publish intimate image abuse – often intended to humiliate women and girls – are being instructed to follow new guidelines to stop it spreading.
Ofcom said it would change its codes of practice to force service providers to detect and quash intimate image abuse – sometimes called “revenge porn” – and crack down on AI-generated deepfakes. A wave of deepfakes emerged in January when Elon Musk’s Grok AI was widely used to create sexualised videos of women in bikinis.
Continue reading...Here are the highly rated series you should check out on HBO Max, plus new additions in May.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Going back to grad school has long been the Plan B of young professionals who aspire to climb higher in their careers or struggle to get promoted in a tough job market. New data show that getting a master's degree isn't the guarantee it used to be. The unemployment rate for workers under 35 with a master's degree has rarely been higher in the past 20 years, according to the Burning Glass Institute, a labor-market think tank focused on the future of work, which analyzed data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics going back to 2003. At the same time, the unemployment rate for workers under 35 with a Ph.D., law degree or medical degree has rarely been lower. "For most of the past two decades, these lines moved together -- not anymore," said Gad Levanon, chief economist of Burning Glass. Levanon has a theory about why the payoffs for advanced degrees have uncoupled: "More degrees chasing fewer of the positions those degrees were meant to unlock." [...] While degrees from law school and medical school amount to a license to practice, master's degrees are more of a signal, Levanon said. And a signal loses value when so many people have one, he added: "It's hardly a sure bet to securing a good job." Now master's-degree holders under 35 are at the 77th percentile of unemployment, where the 50th percentile is normal, according to the Burning Glass analysis. Even associate-degree holders have had a higher employment level for the past year. Unemployment among master's-degree holders has been worse only about a quarter of the time in the past 20-plus years. There was a stint during the Covid-19 pandemic when this cohort was out of work at higher rates, and a more prolonged stretch as the U.S. climbed out of the recession in 2008 and 2009. "Every indication is hiring managers now are more receptive than ever to the idea that a person doesn't need a graduate degree to be competitive," said Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president of SHRM, the chief lobbying group for human-resource professionals. "We are seeing that, hands down, especially in the last two or three years with AI," he said of job readiness. Employers just want to know, "Can you do it?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho was locked down following the midair crash during the Gunfighter Skies Air Show.
About 36% of children whose parents were detained were younger than six, Brookings Institution study found
More than 145,000 US children have probably experienced a parent being detained by immigration authorities since the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency, according to a new report published by a reputed US thinkthank.
The report, released on Monday by the Brookings Institution, estimates that about 146,635 children who are US citizens have had a parent detained during the mass deportation campaign the Trump administration embarked on after he retook office in early January. The study further found that of those children, more than 22,000 experienced the detention of all of their co-resident parents.
Continue reading...To celebrate my 21 years and 20000 posts as OSNews’ managing editor, it’s time for a massive fundraiser: €1 for every story I’ve posted over the past 21 years, for a long-term total goal of €20000. Because OSNews is ad-free and independent, I rely entirely on your donations and support for my income and OSNews’ continued survival. Your donations ensures OSNews remains free of ads, corporate influence, and other commercial interests that have ruined so many great websites.
Why support OSNews?
I want to make sure I can run OSNews for another two decades and another 20000 posts, and I need your help to do so. Since my wife, who has a tough, underpaid job in elderly care, is largely unable to work due to health reasons caused by that very same job, my income has become a lot more crucial for our kids, my wife, and myself. With OSNews readers being more skeptical of subscription-like things like our Patreon than most people, it’s exactly these one-time donations that make up the bulk of your support.
To sweeten the deal, I’ve come up with a bunch of silly incentives that will unlock at certain thresholds:
I know many of you don’t really care about incentives and silly things like these, but I think they’re fun and add some interesting things to donate to. The donations already started coming in, so we’ve got a small head start. Also, if anyone has any idea on how to add a cool progress bar to OSNews to keep track of the donations and incentives, please let me know. I’m sure some of you can whip something up or point me to something.
OSNews was founded in 1997, so we’re almost 30 years old. Let’s keep this wonderful little corner of the people-focused web alive for just a euro per post. Everyone here deserves it, because y’all are great. ♥️
Big news from the Haiku forums: the Haiku ARM port is running on M1 Macs now.
This is bare metal, no VM. m1n1+u-boot deal with the Apple-specific parts of booting, so we can boot UEFI images from USB like any PC.
↫ smrobtzz on the Haiku forums
USB is apparently broken, but all 8 cores are functional, and it boots to a desktop. It’s still early days, for the ARM port in general and the M1 Mac port specifically, but it’s a great start.
Pouria Zeraati, who worked for a dissident Farsi-language broadcaster, was attacked outside his home in 2024
The stabbing of a journalist in London was a planned attack ordered by a third party acting on behalf of the Iranian state, a court has heard.
Pouria Zeraati, a British journalist of Iranian origin, had worked for Iran International, a Farsi-language dissident broadcaster, when he was stabbed in the leg outside his west London home in 2024.
Continue reading...If most popular Labour politician cannot win this seat then party’s electoral problems run deeper than Keir Starmer
The Makerfield byelection is bigger than Andy Burnham. Of the Labour MPs who were back on the constituency’s doorsteps in Hindley Green and Winstanley, just after an intensive local election campaign, many said the fight felt existential.
It matters because it is probably the closest the UK will ever come to a direct presidential-style election, run through one single constituency and likely to decide the future of the Labour party.
Continue reading...The "ongoing market conditions" are making gaming a very expensive hobby.
A court case in New York has highlighted how Iran is using technology to recruit agents who may not even be regime supporters
When on Friday a 32-year-old Iraqi was brought before a court in New York to be charged with planning to attack Jewish community sites in the US, a curtain was suddenly lifted on a corner of a shadowy world.
The detention of Mohammed Saad Baqer al-Saadi in Turkey last week revealed rare details of Iran’s efforts to use terrorism to sow discord among communities in Europe, the UK and the US – but also the outlines of an uncertain and threatening future.
Continue reading...The return of Google Glass? Why smart glasses could be at the core of Google's future ecosystem.
Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum denies any links between her Morena party and organized crime
Pressure is mounting on Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, after two former top officials from the country’s Sinaloa state – both members of her Morena party – gave themselves up to US authorities over alleged ties to the Sinaloa cartel.
The state’s former security minister Gerardo Mérida Sánchez crossed the border into Arizona last week and was taken into custody by US marshals, Mexico’s security ministry said. Sinaloa’s former finance minister, Enrique Díaz Vega, was taken into custody in New York.
Continue reading...All it takes is a few smart tweaks to your hiring strategy to help your job ads reach more qualified candidates.
From old PCs to dusty printers, here's where to drop off your outdated tech without paying a cent.
Microsoft is testing long-requested Windows 11 customization options, including a resizable taskbar, smaller taskbar buttons, and a more configurable Start menu that lets users reduce recommended content. BleepingComputer reports: Starting with Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8493, the taskbar can now be configured to use smaller buttons and moved to the bottom, top, left, or right side of the screen. "The ability to move the taskbar to the top or sides of the screen has been one of the most requested features, and we are bringing it to Windows 11," said Diego Baca, partner director of Microsoft Design. "With this update, when small taskbar is enabled, you get smaller icons, a shorter taskbar, and more vertical space for your apps (see video below). No restart or sign-out is required." [...] Microsoft is also rolling out changes to give Windows users more control over the Start menu, allowing them to toggle off recommended content and customize its size. "These controls are designed to work together. If you want a Start menu with just your pinned apps, you can turn off Recommended and All," Boca added. "If you want a full Start that shows everything, you can leave it all on. The goal is simple: it is your choice, and it should be easy to make." However, Microsoft will maintain a list of recently installed apps, as it is a key way for users to discover new applications alongside the Microsoft Store. Furthermore, Microsoft is improving file relevance by adjusting how files are displayed and ordered to prioritize the most relevant items, and will also allow users to hide their name and profile picture from the Start menu. [...] In addition to taskbar and Start menu improvements, the company plans to reduce notifications, simplify Windows settings, and ensure that device setup on new Windows PCs requires fewer reboots. Microsoft is also working on improving Windows search, aiming for a more consistent experience across the Start menu, taskbar, File Explorer, and Settings.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Gemini will now have more control over your apps and tasks. It could be the start of a wider shift in how we use our phones.
Surprise: The series won't make its streaming debut on HBO Max.
‘Tank Day’ event causes outrage with ‘malicious mockery’ of deadly crackdown during dictatorship era
The chief executive of Starbucks in South Korea has been dismissed after the company ran a promotional event using slogans that evoked a massacre of pro-democracy protesters during the country’s dictatorship era, sparking outrage and boycott calls.
The coffee chain launched a “Tank Day” campaign on 18 May for its “Tank” tumbler series. The date coincides with one of the most politically sensitive days in South Korea’s calendar, when citizens commemorate the 1980 democratisation movement in Gwangju, 167 miles (270km) south-west of Seoul.
Continue reading...North America will host this summer’s tournament
European fans encouraged to visit Canada for World Cup
Canada’s sports minister, Adam van Koeverden, has expressed confidence that hosting the World Cup this summer could be the key to agreeing a new trilateral trade deal with the United States and Mexico.
The three World Cup hosts are facing a deadline of 1 July for a mandatory review of the existing free trade agreement between the countries, the USMCA, and initial discussions have been problematic.
Continue reading...  | I have a gt but idk if i want a thor 301 or gtv kit from tony but i wondered if this list is decent or not. Im super new and i have a friend who will help with the settings. [link] [comments] |
Luigi Mangione’s notebook allegedly contains writing related to the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Other items, including a phone, are not admissible.
The former German chancellor added that diplomacy alongside military deterrence is crucial when dealing with Russia.
Elsewhere, we are getting a line from Rome, with the Italian foreign ministry confirming that rescuers have located the bodies of four Italian divers believed to be deep inside an underwater cave in a Maldive atoll, AP reported.
Five Italian divers are believed to have died while exploring a cave at a depth of about 50 meters in Vaavu Atoll on Thursday, according to Italy’s foreign ministry, way below the recreational diving limit of 30 meters.
Continue reading...How does artificial intelligence use tokens, and should we be worried that AI now has claws? Here's a quick primer on the vocabulary of today's inescapable technology.
Deal would create largest regulated US utility, serving 10 million customers as AI-driven demand for power surges
NextEra, a US energy giant, announced on Monday that it will buy Dominion Energy in a $67bn deal, creating what the companies say will be the world’s largest regulated utility business.
The deal comes as the appetite for energy sources has swelled with the construction of massive datacenters across the country, built largely to supply rising demand for AI.
Continue reading...DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia, May 18, 2026 — Aramco, one of the world’s leading energy and chemicals companies, in partnership with Pasqal, a global leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, today officially inaugurated the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s first quantum computer.
Aramco and Pasqal also unveiled the first commercial Quantum Computing as a Service (QCaaS) platform in the Middle East, opening a new chapter in building regional expertise and accelerating the development of quantum applications across the energy, materials and industrial sectors.
Marking a major milestone in the region’s technological advancement, QCaaS enables remote cloud access for potential clients around the globe. Located at Aramco’s data center in Dhahran, the computer provides customers with immediate, low-latency access to quantum hardware through a secure cloud platform to address complex industrial challenges.
Ahmad O. Al Khowaiter, Aramco Executive Vice President of Technology & Innovation, said: “This quantum milestone belongs to our Saudi researchers, engineers and scientists. By investing in joint training and research, we are building world‑class quantum expertise right here in the Kingdom—an expertise that will power the next generation of energy solutions, accelerate lower‑carbon fuel development, and enhance reservoir and supply‑chain optimization. Let this achievement be the catalyst for an innovation‑driven economy, creating high‑impact, future‑ready jobs for our youth and advancing Saudi Vision 2030.”
Wasiq Bokhari, Pasqal CEO, said: “Aramco is not just waiting for quantum computing, it is helping to shape it as a global leader. This inauguration is evidence that the most demanding industrial challenges in the world are now being tackled with Pasqal’s quantum processors, software and specific solutions. For Pasqal, deploying our system for use in Aramco’s business-critical operations, while also being available to the region’s enterprises and research community, is a part of our core mission: to enable practical and secure quantum computing at scale today.”
Pasqal has been designing and building high-performance hardware and cloud-ready software since 2019, to address complex challenges in optimization, simulation, and artificial intelligence. Following its initial deployment in November 2025, the Pasqal Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) is powered by neutral-atom technology and controls 200 programmable qubits. Today’s inauguration formalizes its entry into active operation across a growing portfolio of industrial use cases and enables enterprises to explore and develop quantum-enhanced solutions for real-world industrial challenges.
Under the terms of the partnership, Aramco will progress a roadmap of use cases on a production-ready QPU as a foundational customer, accelerating development of quantum-hybrid solutions for its programs across energy, materials and industrial operations. Other external organizations, including research institutions, universities, and enterprises, can use Pasqal’s cloud platform to access one of the few quantum computers in the world.
Aramco’s domestic venture capital arm, Wa’ed Ventures, initially invested in Pasqal in January 2023, reinforcing efforts to localize advanced quantum technologies and accelerate the development of the regional quantum ecosystem. Since then, Aramco and Pasqal have built a structured quantum program targeting high-value operational challenges across multiple workstreams, where quantum-hybrid approaches unlock capabilities beyond classical computing. These Aramco workstreams include port logistics optimization, CO₂ storage optimization, well placement, rig scheduling, building the Kingdom’s quantum workforce, and making quantum computing available throughout the region.
More from HPCwire
About Aramco
As one of the world’s leading integrated energy and chemicals companies, our global team is dedicated to creating impact in all that we do, from providing crucial oil supplies to developing new energy technologies. We focus on making our resources more dependable, more sustainable and more useful, helping to promote growth and productivity around the world.
About Pasqal
Pasqal is a global leader in delivering practical quantum computing at scale utilizing neutral atom technology and dedicated software for industry, science, and governments. Since its founding in 2019, Pasqal has leveraged Nobel Prize winning research to build high-performance quantum systems and cloud-ready software designed to address complex challenges in optimization, simulation, and artificial intelligence. Headquartered in France, Pasqal employs over 275 people and serves over 25 clients and partners, including Aramco, CMA CGM, OVHcloud, Thales, IBM (Pasqal is part of the IBM Quantum Network), and Sumitomo. Backed by more than USD 500 million in total funding from leading international investors, Pasqal is pursuing a listing on Nasdaq in partnership with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II (Nasdaq: BBCQ) and is accelerating the adoption of scalable, high-performance quantum computing worldwide.
Source: Pasqal
The post Pasqal and Aramco Launch QCaaS Platform for Saudi Quantum Computer appeared first on HPCwire.
I’ve seen some wild projects in my day, but this one is definitely up there as one of the more ambitious.
Stock Microsoft Windows CE 2.11 running on a real Nintendo 64. A custom HAL drops the unmodified
nk.libkernel onto VR4300, brings up the CE 2.11 GWES desktop and shell, mounts the EverDrive-64 X7’s SD card under\SDCard, treats the N64 controller as a mouse, plays sound through the N64 AI hardware via the standard CE wave stack, and runs third-party CE 2.11 EXEs straight off the SD card.This is a hobby reverse-engineering project: there is no official CE 2.11 port to N64 from Microsoft. Everything below the unmodified
↫ ThroatyMumbonk.lib(HAL, OAL, display driver, FSD, kbd/mouse PDD, wave PDD, RDP-accelerated GDI fill, ed64-X7 driver) is part of this repo.
Getting a fully operational desktop on Windows CE 2.11 is a lot harder than it appears at first sight, because this earlier version of Windows CE didn’t come with many of the reference implementations of components that later versions would add. OEMs were supposed to develop their own user interfaces for Windows CE 2.11, so the entire desktop you see here on this N64 port – window manager, taskbar, file manager, and so on – consists of custom code developed by ThroatyMumbo, using the standard Windows CE APIs.
That’s not all, though, as the same applies to the various drivers needed to make Windows CE 2.11 talk to the hardware in the Nintendo 64. Windows CE 2.11 contains the interfaces for drivers but OEMs were supposed to write their own device drivers. So ThroatyMumbo did: the display driver, input drivers, sound driver, cartridge driver, and so on, are all written from scratch. Absolutely incredible. Note: it seems “AI” has been involved in this project, but it’s unclear to what extent. I didn’t see any telltale signs, but readers have reached out to me about this.
The result of all this is that you can now run Windows CE 2.11, including a familiar shell, on your N64, and run any Windows CE applications as well. Absolutely wild.
Why Egypt is helping to end the Iran war Expert comment thilton.drupal
Cairo is working with regional partners for a diplomatic resolution to the war as it aims to improve its economy, counter Israeli dominance and restore focus on Gaza, Sudan and the Horn of Africa.
Egypt has responded to the Iran war by actively engaging in diplomacy and mediation. This strategy is not aimed at fighting for influence or competing with Pakistan for the role of the main mediator. Rather, it is designed to achieve Egypt’s central objective of ending the war.
This reflects Egypt’s wider approach of risk-management in a volatile region as it seeks to defend its interests, establish stability near its borders and revive its ailing economy, which has been further strained by the war.
Egypt condemned Israel’s previous strikes on Iran in June 2025, and reportedly pushed for de-escalation before the US-Israeli attack on Iran in late February 2026. However, Cairo did not publicly condemn these US-Israeli strikes, reflecting the depth of US deep involvement this time.
Since then, Cairo has condemned Iran’s strikes on Gulf countries. It has deployed Rafale fighter jets and air defence systems to the UAE and other Gulf states.
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has toured the Gulf twice since the outbreak of the war. He publicly urged President Donald Trump to stop the war in March.
Egypt has also formed part of a new informal quadrilateral grouping in the region along with Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. These four countries share concerns over the regional agenda being pushed by Israel and its partners, including the UAE, and fear that a collapse of the Iranian regime would tip the regional balance in Israel’s favour.
Since mid-March, the quad members have engaged in several diplomatic meetings to end the war. Alongside these meetings, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty has led a diplomatic blitz, coordinating closely with the quad members, Gulf states, the US and European powers.
In mid-March, Egypt’s General Intelligence Service reportedly initiated backchannel contacts with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and proposed a five-day truce as a confidence-building measure for a ceasefire. According to reports, these discussions contributed to President Trump embracing a more diplomatic approach, which eventually resulted in the Pakistan-mediated ceasefire agreement.
Egypt’s efforts to end the war are part of a long-term risk-management strategy to safeguard its security and economic interests amid regional volatility. To this end, it has four main objectives.
First, Cairo wants to preserve the safety and freedom of navigation in the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Red Sea by preventing any single power from establishing hegemony in the Horn of Africa and encouraging the Yemeni Houthis to stay out of the conflict.
Second, it seeks to counterbalance Israel’s ambitions to achieve dominance in the region.
Third, Egypt wants to see the Trump administration’s attention returned to other conflicts that Cairo views as more serious threats. These include the faltering ceasefire in Gaza, the ongoing war in Sudan, and Egypt’s dispute with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Finally, Egypt wants to see continued commitment from the US and Gulf states to invest in and support its economy, which has been among the most vulnerable to rising energy prices and the flight of foreign debt investors. Since the outbreak of the war, fuel prices have increased by up to 30 per cent, while the Egyptian pound has decreased in value.
The end of the war may add momentum to these goals. However, de-escalation alone will neither remove long-term threats near Egypt’s borders nor slow Israel’s regional dominance. Egypt’s conflict with Ethiopia over Nile waters will also remain regardless.
Even before the Iran war, Egypt played key mediation roles in regional conflicts, from the war in Gaza to internal rifts between Gulf states. Mediation has been a safe policy choice that reflects Cairo’s inherent risk aversion and its efforts to increase its diplomatic relevance and restore its reputation as a bulwark of stability.
Domestically, mediation also helps to bridge the gap between opposing views within the establishment over whether to adopt a proactive regional posture or pursue strategic inaction.
Alongside diplomacy, Egypt has recently shown a growing tendency to deploy its military. For example, Egypt deployed troops in Mogadishu in February this year, in the context of countering Ethiopia and Israel’s ambitions in the Horn of Africa. Its deployment of troops to the Gulf also signals its alignment with Gulf partners.
This foreign policy is not without challenges. Egypt’s vision for the post-war regional order is built on old formulas of pan-Arab national security that do not necessarily have broader support across the region.
For example, on 8 March, Foreign Minister Abdelatty revived President Sisi’s 2015 call to establish a joint Arab military force. Yet Arab elites are split over whether Iran or Israel is their main adversary and lack a unified stance. The plan also faces disagreement over the force’s command and structure, and potential opposition from the US.
There is one specific way in which the non-corporate open source projects typically document how their infrastructure work: not at all, and Flathub is no different. The full picture likely lives only in my brain, and while it could be sorted out by anyone (especially in this LLM age, yay or nay), why should it only be me thinking at night about all the single points of failure?
Like any system that evolved naturally, it’s all over the place. It’s tempting to tell its history chronologically, but even then, it’s difficult to find a good entry point. Instead, this post focuses on what happens when users call
↫ Bart Piotrowskiflatpak install; later entries will cover the website and, finally, the build infrastructure. Buckle up!
As time goes by and more and more issues with Flatpak are addressed, I feel my attitude towards the technology change somewhat. I’m still very much a traditional package manager type of person, and will opt for my distribution’s repository if the versions they have are up-to-date, but I’m no longer audibly groaning if an application I want is only really available as a Flatpak. For the increasing number of normal, average users switching to Linux, Flatpak is probably the right way to go, especially since it can easily coexist with your traditional package manager.
The only part of the linked article that made me raise my eyebrow was the reliance on Fastly, which seems to form an important linchpin of the whole Flathub stack. Fastly is an American company, and while they support Flathub entirely for free, the state of the world does have me wonder if this couldn’t evolve into a problem in a myriad of ways, perhaps through questionable people acquiring Fastly or through pressures from the clown car US administration.
I’m sure it’s all fine, but it’s hard not to think of these things in this day and age.
Étienne Davignon, 93, was last living person targeted in investigation into assassination of DRC’s first PM, Patrice Lumumba
A 93-year-old Belgian former diplomat who became the first person to be charged in the murder of the Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba has died before he could stand trial.
The death of Étienne Davignon, an aristocrat who served as a European commissioner during a decades-long career as one of Belgium’s leading diplomats and industrialists, was confirmed by the Jacques Delors Institute thinktank, where he had served on the board.
Continue reading...Microsoft is finally rolling out one of the most requested set of features to Windows 11: a movable and resizable taskbar. Windows 11 did away with the ability to move the taskbar to any side of the screen, as well as a various other taskbar customization options, that had been there since the very first iteration of the taskbar in Windows 95. Now they’re finally bringing it back.
Microsoft is finally rolling out two of the most requested features: the ability to move the taskbar and make it smaller, so you have more screen space. I tested Windows 11’s new movable taskbar integration, and it’s just as good as the original Windows 10 version, which let you move the taskbar to the top or sides.
↫ Mayank Parmar at Windows Latest
It works exactly as you’d expect it to, with icons, text, menus, and other user interface elements adapting to their new location on the sides or top of the screen. I feel absolutely stupefied that I need to make a news item about this in this, the year of Our Lady 2026, but I know a lot of people stuck on Windows 11 were really missing these basic features.
Rejoice.
US president’s approval rating falls to 37% days after he said Americans’ financial situation is not motivating him to broker deal with Iran
Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest point of his second term, amid mounting frustration over the cost of living and the US-Israel war on Iran.
As November’s US midterm elections loom, most American voters believe Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran was the wrong choice, according to polling released on Monday.
Continue reading...SHERBROOKE, Quebec, May 18, 2026 — Nord Quantique, a pioneer in the field of quantum error correction and quantum computing, today announced the closing of a $30 million investment to support the advancement of the Company’s roadmap towards fault tolerance in 2030.
“Our hardware-efficient approach to quantum computing requires a fraction of the qubit overhead and a fraction of the capital. We aren’t interested in building the biggest or most expensive machine. Our goal is to build the most efficient one,” said Julien Camirand Lemyre, CEO and Co-founder, Nord Quantique. “This investment, and the investor interest behind it, is validation we are on the right path.”
This new funding builds on significant non-dilutive funding momentum. Previously, Nord Quantique secured $16 million USD through the Canadian Quantum Champions Program, a federal initiative designed to boost scalable quantum computing development in Canada. The company also advanced to Stage B of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), securing $5 million in funding, with an opportunity to receive up to an additional $10 million during this phase of the program. The next stage of DARPA QBI, Stage C, brings the potential for up to $300 million in additional funding.
The combination of private investment and competitive government funding reflects growing confidence in Nord Quantique’s technology roadmap and execution strategy. Investors in Nord Quantique now include BDC, certain fund(s) managed by Fidelity Investments Canada ULC, Panache Ventures, Presidio Ventures, Quantacet, Quantonation, and Real Ventures.
Nord Quantique differentiates itself through a highly efficient approach to quantum error correction. Instead of relying on extensive qubit redundancy, the Company’s architecture leverages bosonic codes and multimode logical qubits to correct errors directly at the qubit level. This approach achieves a 1:1 logical-to-physical qubit ratio, maximizing computational efficiency, enabling faster clock speeds and scalable, data-center-compatible quantum systems. As part of its roadmap towards utility scale quantum computing, Nord Quantique is focused on building useful, fault tolerant quantum computers by 2030.
About Nord Quantique
Founded with the vision of reinventing computing from the qubit up, Nord Quantique is advancing quantum error correction and scalable architectures toward commercially viable, fault-tolerant quantum computers. By embedding quantum error correction directly into each qubit using superconducting bosonic codes, the Company enables a 1:1 logical-to-physical qubit ratio. This unique approach delivers scalable performance, fast clock rates, and an efficient energy and physical footprint—unlocking a clear path to useful, error-corrected quantum computers.
Source: Nord Quantique
The post Nord Quantique Raises $30M to Advance Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing Roadmap appeared first on HPCwire.
Here are the best Windows laptops most similar to Apple's MacBook Neo, Air and Pro models, tested and reviewed by CNET's experts.
Pew research shows Americans are more worried than excited about AI as graduates voice fears over jobs
A former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, was met with students’ boos at a university commencement address in Arizona on Sunday when he raised the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) and its effects.
Schmidt – who led the tech giant for more than a decade, acquiring a multibillion-dollar fortune in the process – was speaking to as many as 10,000 graduating University of Arizona students when he addressed the impact of modern technology on society.
Continue reading...TEL AVIV, Israel, May 18, 2026 — NextSilicon, a leader in next-generation computing solutions for AI and high-performance computing (HPC), has announced that Spectra, the second system deployed under Sandia National Laboratories’ Vanguard program, has met all system acceptance requirements. This result demonstrates that NextSilicon’s Maverick-2 runtime-reconfigurable accelerators can operate within the requirements of a national security HPC environment, executing mission-relevant workloads as part of Sandia’s Vanguard evaluation process. Full system acceptance marks a significant milestone in Sandia’s ongoing evaluation of Maverick-2 as a candidate architecture for future HPC deployments.
Spectra is Sandia National Laboratories’ newest supercomputer and the second in the Vanguard program, which explores advanced computer architectures for national security applications. Photo credit: Craig Fritz.
Spectra comprises 64 compute nodes equipped with 128 Maverick-2 dual-die accelerators. The system was built and deployed through a collaboration among Sandia National Laboratories, NextSilicon, and Penguin Solutions, and supports the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program. Vanguard is a multi-lab program that includes Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
System Acceptance Under Vanguard Program Marks Key Milestone
To qualify for acceptance, Spectra demonstrated performance, stability, and application compatibility across workloads. Unlike conventional GPU accelerators, Maverick-2 adapts its computational resources to each application at runtime. During evaluation, Spectra executes HPCG, LAMMPS molecular dynamics, and SPARTA Monte Carlo simulations as part of the acceptance process.
“System acceptance at Sandia is not a checkbox. It means Maverick-2 ran mission-relevant workloads, demonstrated system stability, and showed the computational scientists at Sandia what this architecture can deliver,” said Elad Raz, Founder and CEO of NextSilicon. “This is a significant step toward what we have been building: an accelerator that delivers performance while reducing power consumption. For HPC organizations evaluating next-generation infrastructure, Spectra begins to show what Maverick-2 can do when put to the test.”
How Sandia’s Vanguard Program Evaluates Emerging HPC Architectures
The Vanguard program serves as Sandia’s primary mechanism for evaluating novel computing architectures against real mission workloads before any decision to scale into production. Spectra is only the second system ever fielded under this program, following Astra, which demonstrated the viability of Arm-based processors for HPC workloads in 2018. Vanguard acceptance evaluates performance, stability, and application behavior under real operational conditions.
“The Vanguard program exists to put new architectures through rigorous evaluation against workloads that are directly relevant to our mission,” said James H. Laros III, Senior Scientist and Vanguard Program Lead at Sandia National Laboratories. “Our partnership succeeded in executing all benchmarks and applications specified, meeting acceptance criteria we defined for this phase in the program. This outcome is exactly what our process is designed to test, and it gives us a solid basis for continued evaluation of this technology.”
“Being selected to build the system with the capability of testing NextSilicon’s transformative accelerators at scale is a great opportunity, and Penguin Solutions is proud to be part of this groundbreaking project,” said Phil Pokorny, chief technology officer at Penguin Solutions. “Sandia’s Vanguard program is designed to select new technologies and challenge them with the toughest problems faced by American science and engineering teams. The Spectra cluster will enable extensive research that may eventually demonstrate further acceleration of mixed physics and AI workloads.”
Maverick-2 is currently deployed at dozens of customer sites worldwide. Successful acceptance at Sandia extends that footprint to one of the most closely evaluated computing programs in the U.S. government. For commercial HPC buyers assessing alternatives to GPU-based infrastructure, Spectra offers a reference point grounded in rigorous evaluation against mission-critical workloads in an operational national security environment.
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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.
Source: NextSilicon
The post NextSilicon’s Spectra System Meets Sandia Vanguard Acceptance Requirements appeared first on HPCwire.
Mordecai Kurz argues tech oligarchs erode democracy through monopolies – and predicts how the trend may end
The billionaires of today are unusually aggressive in their hoarding of cultural and technological influence, according to Mordecai Kurz, a Stanford economist whose research connects monopoly power with political and economic inequality. In his new book, Private Power and Democracy’s Decline, publishing 19 May, he argues the US is living through an extreme version of a pattern that has repeated itself since industrialization: technological power concentrating in the hands of a few, which is eroding democracy.
According to Kurz, technological moguls have long seen themselves as superior beings whose natural role is to shape society – so they have no problem disrupting the institution of democracy. During the first Gilded Age, in the late 19th century, as the US was enjoying its first ascent as an industrial powerhouse, wealthy industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller “invented all kinds of theories about human evolution”, twisting the logic of social Darwinism to convince themselves that their success was a sign they had been selected by nature to influence society, Kurz explained. Now, the Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, has suggested his technology has a mystical potential to become a transcendent good. He has also openly acknowledged it could lead to mass unemployment.
Continue reading...The Ring 2026 Battery Doorbell Pro has more features than any doorbell I've tested, but it tries to do too much at once.
Why Should Delaware Care?
In his second year in office, Wilmington Mayor John Carney says he will double down on encouraging affordable housing in Delaware’s largest city. But several council members, concerned about how new money would be spent, are supporting an alternative proposal to send dollars directly to people struggling to secure housing.
A divide between the Wilmington City Council and Mayor John Carney over affordable housing spending is intensifying, with council members pushing forward a competing housing initiative that they say would help more low-income residents at a lower cost to the city.
During a Thursday meeting, council members discussed the initiative, which would create new housing assistance programs, including eviction-prevention aid and homeowner repair grants.
To incentivize development, the plan would also allocate at least $10 million into a city housing trust fund to be overseen by the City Council and the mayor’s office. The city would then ask the state to match the city’s contribution to the trust fund.
In all, the $12.5 million plan was presented as an alternative to Carney’s proposed $20 million housing initiative, which relies on subsidizing developers to build affordable housing.
If passed, the measures could be funded through the upcoming city budget.
The competing initiative has been spearheaded by council members Christian Willauer, Shané Darby, and Coby Owens. WIllauer called it a more “fiscally responsible” way to carry out housing.
“The big difference between what the city has proposed and what council members are working on is that we are trying to address different sets of housing issues, we’re trying to have a greater impact with more people with less money,” Willauer told Spotlight Delaware.
Daniel Walker, Carney’s deputy chief of staff, previously said the proposed amendment would increase long-term costs for city residents. He also said it relies unrealistically on still-uncommitted state government dollars.
Carney’s office did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Thursday’s meeting follows weeks of council scrutiny of Carney’s plan, which he unveiled during his budget address in March. In the budget speech, Carney noted that the city had added 4,000 new housing units since 2016 – 800 of which were affordable.
“It’s time to build on that progress,” he said then.
But during past week’s meetings, council members pressed officials from the mayor’s office about whether his plan would do enough to help low-income and current Wilmington residents.
They also expressed skepticism over whether it would create opportunities for minority developers, and whether the city should be spending such a large amount from its reserves for a one-time initiative.
“We need a lot more details and guardrails on any spending around the construction of affordable housing,” Willauer said during a meeting last month.
During the Thursday council meeting, Darby proposed a measure to create the Housing Trust Fund, which she said she has been working on for the past few years.
The fund would aim to support the development of more affordable housing, create supportive housing for the homeless, and fund programs to help residents become homeowners, among other measures.
The legislation would also establish a community advisory board made up of representatives from neighborhood-based housing groups, landlords, and people who have struggled to find housing. The board would work with the mayor’s office and council to help make recommendations about how the money should be used.
During the meeting, a debate over the Housing Trust Fund quickly collided with concerns over the Christina Park homeless encampment. Last week, the city notified residents of the city’s only sanctioned homeless encampment that they must leave by June 15.
“I’m for anything that y’all can do to help those people out, to get them into permanent housing, and whatever you can do to stop the evictions until everybody down there gets housing,” said one resident, Lip Betley, during the meeting.
Several other residents and advocates used public comment to support the council’s initiatives, while also questioning how the city can close the encampment before more long-term housing options are available.
One Christina Park resident told the council he was working to secure housing but needed paperwork from Social Security, with an appointment scheduled after the park’s closure deadline.
He said the timing could leave him with nowhere to go for several days.
“Until then, I literally have no place to live,” the resident said.
Beyond herself and Willauer, Darby said the measure has support from council members Owens and Alex Hackett, as well as Council President Trippi Congo.
Willauer also proposed three separate bills related to the alternative housing plan, including an eviction settlement program that would make one-time payments to help tenants avoid eviction.
Lisa Lessner, who coordinates Delaware’s right-to-representation program, said Wilmington saw an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 eviction filings in the past year. She and Jennifer Perez, managing attorney for Community Legal Aid Society’s housing unit, said that small settlement payments can often help resolve cases quickly, especially when a tenant owes a limited amount of back rent.
Perez also noted that the funding matters because eviction cases move quickly once they are filed. The money would help attorneys negotiate settlements before tenants lose their homes.
In a letter to the council, Cerron Cade, Carney’s chief of staff, said the administration could not support the measure because it relies on a fixed list of legal aid agencies, which could discriminate against smaller nonprofits.
He also noted that it does not require financial counseling or case management to prevent repeat evictions and does not ensure that funds would go directly toward back rent or eviction settlements.
Separate from the council’s housing plan, Darby also discussed an ordinance, to create an online rental registry, which would require landlords to register properties with the city and update the information regularly.
The goal is to give city officials better enforcement and oversight of the rental properties in Wilmington.
Darby said the measure has support from the mayor’s office.
Hackett also proposed a pilot program to help eligible Wilmington residents cover the upfront cost of moving into a rental unit. The measure would allow the Department of Real Estate and Housing to provide up to $2,000 in assistance.
The post Wilmington City Council, mayor push competing affordable housing initiatives appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
Energy security comes from using local, renewable resources to power, heat and cool communities, as Ukraine is doing
Donald Trump’s unjustified war on Iran and the resulting global fuel crisis is a continuing reminder that true energy security and independence will continue to elude us so long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels.
Whether it’s wars over oil and gas resource access or attacks on fossil fuel power plants and energy grids, this reliance on finite resources only worsens a country’s threat profile. News this month of Russia’s deadly attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Russian drones swarming Ukrainian power stations and Kyiv running out of time to prepare for another winter of attacks on its energy grid illustrates this urgency.
The US representative Lloyd Doggett serves Texas’s 37th district in the House of Representatives and is a member of the Ukraine caucus and the House sustainable energy and environment coalition. Michael Shank PhD is adjunct faculty at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, and at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution
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It was their dream home, a newly built, 2,500-square-foot modern farmhouse with a playroom that Mitch and Kara Meredith had saved for 12 years to buy for their growing family. During construction, family members had written their favorite Bible verses on studs throughout the house. For four idyllic years on Darlene Lane, the couple hosted birthday parties for their two young daughters, who became fast friends with the other children in the recently built subdivision in Fort Gibson.
Then one evening last summer, five weeks after the couple’s third child was born, their bathroom flooded.
When their 7-year-old ran into the garage to report that water was all over the floor, Mitch assumed a pipe had burst, or perhaps the toilet was backed up.
Then he entered the bathroom. A thick, black fluid with an oily sheen covered the floor. Kara yelled from their bedroom for him to come quickly; the same substance was flowing out of the floor next to their bed.
Mitch, along with several family members, fought the flood all night, vacuuming up the sludge and emptying buckets out the window. Black goo covered their arms. Shiny rainbow patterns covered their shoes. After pulling the bathtub away from the wall, Mitch saw that the substance was gushing through the house’s foundation. It was clear this wasn’t a plumbing problem.
Around 5 a.m., Mitch’s uncle turned to him. “I think this is oil,” he said. The family called the fire department, and Kara rushed their three children, including their infant, to her grandmother’s house.
“And that’s the last time we got to be in our home,” Mitch said.
The Frontier and ProPublica’s reporting on oil and gas pollution in Oklahoma over the last year has shown how old oil wells abandoned by the industry pose severe public and environmental health risks. Officially, the state lists 19,000 orphan wells that state regulators are responsible for cleaning up, but the true figure is likely over 300,000, according to federal researchers.
State records suggest that the Merediths’ house may have been built on top of an improperly plugged oil well drilled in the 1940s. And on that fateful Saturday last August, something woke it up.
Mitch drilled a hole into his home’s concrete foundation in hopes of diverting the sludge out of the house and into the yard. It worked: The foul-smelling water began to pour out of the cavity, filling a deep trench they had dug.
Many of their possessions were ruined. A strong smell of gas hung throughout the house, permeating clothes, sheets and mattresses.
After leaving Darlene Lane, the family moved four times in four months — at times paying their mortgage and rent simultaneously.
At the outset of the crisis, the family had pinned most of their hopes on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the regulatory agency responsible for overseeing oil and gas — including pollution from the industry and plugging old wells. They wanted the agency to figure out what happened — and help them clean it up.
It did not take long for their hopes to transform into anger.
State regulators, according to the family, have done little to help them.
“They wanted to act like it would go away,” Mitch said.
In October, more than a month after the flooding began, Jeremy Hodges, the director of the commission’s oil and gas division, met with Mitch and Kara at the house.
He told them that when his team stuck a gas reader into the hole in their bathroom floor, where the oily water continued to flow, it showed gas concentrations at explosive levels, according to a recording that the Merediths provided to The Frontier and ProPublica.
The local public works authority had also brought out a gas reader. It found gas levels that constituted a “serious and immediate hazard,” according to a report.
Old, unplugged wells — like the one that state records indicate is near or possibly under the Merediths’ house — are known to leak gas and toxic fluids.
Hodges also told the couple that the agency would likely have to tear down the house to look for the well and plug it. Subsequent sampling conducted by the commission showed salt readings that suggested the presence of wastewater resulting from the production of oil and gas. Other testing by the state’s environmental quality department found elevated levels of heavy metals commonly found in oil field wastewater including barium and bromide. Mitch took his own samples and paid an environmental lab to test them. The results also pointed to oil and gas pollution.
But as the months wore on, the agency never stated explicitly that the mysterious substance contaminating the Merediths’ home was the byproduct of oil and gas production. It simply referred to the pollution as “water” in public statements.
In a packed town hall in March convened after the family began criticizing the agency on social media, community members grilled Hodges and several other high-ranking agency representatives about the Merediths’ situation for two hours, pressing them about the environmental risks and demanding action. About half of Oklahomans live within 1 mile of oil and gas wells.
“Would you live there?” a woman in the audience asked Hodges.
“I’m not going to answer that,” he responded, prompting jeers from the crowd.
“So you’re saying that you don’t want to answer the question of whether you would actually live in that house?” asked Mitch’s brother, Matt Meredith.
“That’s a hypothetical,” Hodges said. “I’m not going to answer that.”
Homeowners facing such an event should file damages with their insurance companies, Jim Marshall, an administrator with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, said from the front of the community center conference room. But the family’s insurance company had denied their claim last fall — citing exclusions for pollution and water damage — without ever inspecting the damage, according to the Merediths’ attorney. The Merediths have sued American Mercury, their insurance company, which did not answer questions about the case because of pending litigation, as well as their developers, who did not respond to requests for comment.
At the public meeting, Marshall suggested underground water sources could be pushing fluid into the home, noting that the Merediths’ neighborhood once contained several ponds. If the culprit is not oil and gas, that would shift the responsibility for cleanup to other state agencies. Marshall, Hodges and an agency attorney repeatedly told the crowd that with the house likely blocking access to the well, the agency had reached the end of its legal ability to help the Merediths.
Jack Damrill, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, did not answer questions about what the agency thinks is causing the pollution but said it “recognizes the seriousness of the concerns raised regarding the Meredith family matter, as well as the broader public interest.” The agency, he said in a statement, has “devoted significant investigative time, technical expertise, and regulatory resources to reviewing the situation and will continue to evaluate any new, relevant information as it becomes available.”
Last week, Oklahoma lawmakers passed a bill introduced by the Merediths’ state senator, Avery Frix, that would create a fund to compensate homeowners whose houses have been damaged by oil and gas pollution. While hopeful that the legislation will help them, Mitch noted that it requires the commission to confirm the presence of an old well, something the agency has yet to do at the Merediths’ home.
On Darlene Lane, the flow of contamination increased in late April and continues to seep into their neighbor’s yard.
“What I’ve begged for from the beginning is for them to help me contain it,” Mitch said. “They have refused to do anything.”
Nine months after they were forced to flee their dream home, the family of five is crammed into a 900-square-foot, two-bedroom bungalow on Mitch’s parents’ farm where the couple had lived as newlyweds. The girls share a bunk bed. The baby sleeps in Mitch and Kara’s room.
The girls often ask to play with the neighbors they had to leave behind, along with many of their possessions. Their toys still line the shelves of their bedrooms in the house on Darlene Lane, awaiting their return. Wet clothes sat in the washer for months. Half-packed boxes are scattered around the floor, evidence of the family’s panicked retreat last August.
The house is stuck in time, like a museum of the Merediths’ old life.
We’ve reported on oil and gas pollution contaminating drinking water, killing cattle and damaging property. We need your help to show how this affects people across the state.
The post Oily Sludge Is Flooding Their Dream Home. Oklahoma Regulators Say They Can’t Help. appeared first on ProPublica.
Why Should Delaware Care?
If Republicans lose just one seat in the Delaware House of Representatives this November, Democrats will gain a supermajority that would allow them to enact state constitutional amendments with no bipartisan support. Two recent announcements by GOP representatives that they will not seek reelection this fall could further complicate Republican efforts to hold on to any piece of legislative power in the First State.
Recent announcements by state Reps. Kevin Hensley (R-Odessa) and Jeff Hilovsky (R-Long Neck) that they will not seek reelection this fall could add a new wrinkle to House GOP efforts to block Democrats from gaining a supermajority in the General Assembly’s lower chamber.
Republicans must now defend five of their 12 currently-held seats in the House. Losing just one would give Democrats a key two-thirds supermajority – allowing them to amend the state Constitution without any bipartisan support.
And Hensley’s seat, House District 9, could present a unique challenge. The southern New Castle County district that covers Odessa, Townsend and Port Penn boasts nearly twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans.
As of May 1, the district was home to nearly 24,000 registered voters – 10,164 Democrats; 5,854 Republicans; and 7,799 voters unaffiliated with either party.
Republican officials last week acknowledged the importance of holding on to Hensley’s seat, but they also said finding the right candidate to succeed the long-serving representative – along with the four other retiring members of their caucus – is top of mind.
“We still have to find the right people in the right districts,” said House Minority Whip Jeff Spiegelman (R-Clayton) . “…Hopefully those people will be able to knock on enough doors and and let the constituents of those areas know how important keeping some semblance of balance in state government is.”
Hensley announced his decision not to seek reelection last week during a monthly coffee meeting with his constituents. A recent health diagnosis spurred his decision, he said.
His announcement followed a similar one from Hilovsky days prior, in which the Long Neck-area representative said in a statement that he would retire following the end of this year’s legislative session.
Hensley and Hilovsky’s respective announcements follow four other long-serving Republicans — Reps. Charles Postles, Ron Gray, and Richard Collins along with State Sen. Dave Lawson — saying they would not seek reelection.
Currently, nearly one-third of Republicans serving in the General Assembly will retire this fall. Spiegelman, the House Minority Whip, told Spotlight Delaware he was not aware of any other Republican representatives considering retirement.
He acknowledged it can be difficult as a Republican lawmaker in a predominantly Democratic state. But that dynamic, Spiegelman said, makes the upcoming election cycle that much more important.
“Of course we’re getting tired of losing battles,” Spiegelman said. “But again, the most important thing is preserving some semblance of balance in a very blue state.”
He added that Hensley’s retirement was solely due to the Odessa-area representative’s health, and not because of his 2024 drunk driving arrest or because he is tired of serving his constituents.
In an interview with Spotlight Delaware, Hensley reflected on his 12 years in office. First elected in 2014, he said he was most proud of his work championing education. He specifically pointed to legislation he sponsored to create Delaware’s School Safety and Security Fund, and his work advocating for students with disabilities.
While Hensley said he is stepping away from government to prioritize his health, he did not rule out a return to public service in the future.
“I’m taking life on a day-by-day basis,” Hensley said. “However, I would never say never.”
Hilovsky’s decision to retire, the lawmaker said, was because of his desire to play an active role in his grandchildren’s lives. He said he wants to be able to pick up and visit them on his own schedule, not the General Assembly’s.
He highlighted his legislation surrounding diabetes care and improving financial literacy for Delaware students as work he is particularly proud of.
Hilovsky also stressed the importance of preventing Democrats from winning a supermajority in the House, a move he said would be “catastrophic.”
“I really think that only in the most significant circumstances that the [state] Constitution should be changed,” Hilovsky said. “And if we lose one seat, it will change overnight. Multiple things will happen that are not representative of the 45% of Delawareans that are not voting for Democrats.”
Hilovsky said he supports the Republican candidate running to succeed him, Dan Zitofsky. A Democrat, Gregg Lindner, is also running for the District 4 seat.
There currently is not a Republican candidate officially in the race to succeed Hensley in District 9, but he said multiple people have reached out to him expressing their interest in running.
Two Democrats, Gemma Lowery and Michelle Wall, have tossed their hats in the ring and are slated to face off in the Sept. 15 primary election.
“Frankly, my No. 1 goal is to make certain that somebody is in my seat that will work in the best interest of all of our constituents in the ninth district,” Hensley said.
The post More Republican retirements hit Delaware statehouse appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.
The bitter Michigan Senate primary was heating up earlier this month when a mystery group bought $5 million in TV ads boosting the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s preferred candidate in the Democratic race, Haley Stevens.
The group had an anodyne name — the Center for Democratic Priorities — and no track record in Michigan politics. It was incorporated in Delaware seven months ago under a shroud of secrecy.
Online sleuths soon discovered, however, that whoever was behind the group had used the same consulting firm employed by a super PAC affiliated with AIPACs to buy the ads. Suspicions fell on the pro-Israel lobbying shop or its super PAC affiliate, which has repeatedly created so-called “pop-up” super PACs to influence elections elsewhere. AIPAC issued a denial that it was funding the ads.
Thanks to Federal Election Commission rules, voters may not know the true source of the ad campaign for months.
With the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision 16 years ago, special interest groups began using a raft of loopholes to pour money into elections without disclosing who was doing the spending. Super PACs can take in unlimited donations and spend unlimited amounts — as long as they do not coordinate directly with candidates. Now, big money forces in politics are growing ever more sophisticated about exploiting legal loopholes to obscure their identity.
Today, groups are setting up pop-up affiliates, gaming disclosure deadlines, and using party-specific conduits — akin to a sub-political action committee — to help deflect attention away from the origins of their cash.
“All their spending on election ads immediately before a primary or general election is anonymous to voters — particularly when they use names that have no meaning.”
“All their spending on election ads immediately before a primary or general election is anonymous to voters — particularly when they use names that have no meaning and have no indication of the broader groups they are tied to,” said Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center and a former attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s enforcement division. “They are very damaging to transparency for that reason.”
In the 2026 election cycle, front groups are proliferating, with cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence industries getting in on AIPAC’s game.
Groups aligned with the two tech industries have split their operations into Democratic- and Republican-aligned affiliates. The benefit can be twofold: obscuring the ultimate source of the donations, while also attracting from the large pool of partisan funders who want to give donations solely to one party.
The “pop-up” super PACs and party-affiliate PACs are not always “dark money” — a loosely defined term that generally refers to political operations that don’t disclose their donors’ identities. Nevertheless, the way they are set up can make it much more difficult for voters to follow the lavish campaign spending.
Campaign finance experts say the trend is poised to continue unless Congress and the FEC decide to act. Until then, here is a guide to who is funding the groups, what they are called and how they work.
AIPAC used a complicated web of political committees to influence the Illinois primary elections in March. Whether or not it is using the same tactics in Michigan — the group did not respond to a request for comment — observers expect it to continue to hide its campaign spending in the months to come, as primary candidates battle over AIPAC’s influence.
AIPAC itself is a tax-exempt nonprofit, which prohibits direct engagement with electoral politics. But the group is publicly affiliated with a traditional political action committee that can take donations of up to $5,000 per year; AIPAC PAC can donate directly to candidate campaigns.
AIPAC’s supporters can also give to United Democracy Project, a so-called “super PAC.” United Democracy Project is openly affiliated with AIPAC, an increasingly toxic brand among Democrats.
As AIPAC weighed involvement in the recent Illinois primaries, three new “pop-up” super PACs took advantage of campaign finance reporting loopholes to hide their donors’ identities. The groups — Elect Chicago Women, Affordable Chicago Now, and Chicago Progressive Partnership — were created so late in the campaign that they were only required to disclose their donors after voting in the primary was over.
The groups were created so late in the campaign that they were only required to disclose their donors after voting in the primary was over.
The groups’ donors were finally revealed after the election. They included two wealthy Chicago political donors: Michael Sacks, the CEO of an asset management firm, and Anthony “Tony” Davis, the co-founder of a private equity firm.
Before those groups filed official campaign finance reports, journalists had built a circumstantial case linking them to AIPAC through the use of campaign vendors linked to the pro-Israel lobby group.
Eventually, the hard truth emerged. FEC reports filed after the election revealed that Elect Chicago Women and Affordable Chicago Now got funds from United Democracy Project. Then Elect Chicago Women turned around and handed $1 million to the third group, Chicago Progressive Partnership.
That complicated two-step helped Chicago Progressive Partnership conceal its donors as it was running ads that many observers said were misleading. In Illinois’s 9th Congressional District, the group attempted to boost one pro-Palestinian candidate in an apparent attempt to harm another, the influencer Kat Abughazaleh. Abughazaleh ultimately lost.
In the same congressional race, Elect Chicago Women spent money to support state Sen. Laura Fine and oppose progressive Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, who won.
In other races, it was easier for voters to track how AIPAC-aligned groups were spending their money. In some of the contests, the pop-up super PACs never popped up. Instead, United Democracy Project spent directly.
In Michigan, the new group Center for Democratic Priorities has yet to file any registration documents with the FEC. If it is classifying itself as a super PAC, it will not have to file disclosures revealing its donors until July 15, according to Ports.
With AI and crypto becoming increasingly ubiquitous, Washington is trying to sort out the regulations that could have huge impacts on these industries. In turn, crypto and AI businesses are making huge investments in electoral politics. So far, however, crypto and AI have taken a different approach to influencing elections than AIPAC. Rather than using “pop-up” super PACs, they have divided their influence operations into Republican and Democratic affiliates.
The biggest crypto super PAC is called Fairshake. The group is funded by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, as well as two crypto companies the firm has invested in, Coinbase and Ripple Labs.
The venture capital firm’s co-founder Marc Andreessen rose to fame in the 1990s for co-founding the web browser Netscape. More recently he has become notable as one of Donald Trump’s biggest defenders in the tech world and a frequent visitor to Trump’s Florida estate Mar-a-Lago.
Fairshake spends money on Republican primaries through its GOP affiliate, Defend American Jobs, and Democratic races through an outfit called Protect Progress. Fairshake has portrayed itself as an equal-opportunity shop, but the group’s extraordinary spending in favor of Republican candidate Bernie Moreno in 2024, when he ousted former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, opened it up to accusations of partisanship.
Brown is now running to return to the Senate against JD Vance’s Republican replacement, Jon Husted. His rhetoric this time around has been notably more muted when it comes to crypto.
Fairshake’s split personality allows donors to pick a single-party affiliate for its campaign giving. Democratic megadonor and angel investor Ron Conway donated to Protect Progress in 2024, for instance, only to announce later that year that he was breaking from the network over its support of Moreno.
The model of using party-specific affiliates may be less deceptive than “pop-up” super PACs, Ports said, but it is still misleading.
“They know that a Republican voter doesn’t want to hear from a super PAC that supports Democratic candidates. [Republican voters] are not going to trust that messaging as much, or vice versa,” she said. “They are dividing this money up to try to present their message as persuasively as possible to their target audiences.”
Fairshake’s spending on Republicans has not gone far enough for some figures in the fractious crypto world. The Winklevoss twins — the brothers behind a top Coinbase competitor, a cryptocurrency exchange called Gemini, which is distinct from Google’s AI assistant — have given millions’ worth of bitcoin to the Digital Freedom Fund PAC, which is explicitly opposed to the Democratic Party. The Digital Freedom Fund has also drawn donations from crypto exchange Kraken, another Coinbase competitor. So far the PAC has not spent heavily on political campaigns, but that could change as the midterm election season heats up.
Yet another crypto political action committee, The Fellowship PAC, is chaired by an executive at the domestic affiliate of the international stablecoin company Tether, which has recently begun mounting a push into the U.S. market. The company is backed by $10 million in donations from Cantor Fitzgerald, the bank that holds the U.S. Treasury notes backing Tether’s stablecoins. Former Cantor Fitzgerald chief Howard Lutnick serves as Trump’s commerce secretary. The PAC has endorsed only Republican candidates thus far.
Two of the artificial intelligence industry’s biggest players are backing rival political influence operations. OpenAI and Anthropic have picked their fighters in a battle over how much of a role the government should play in regulating AI.
On one side, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife have donated to Leading the Future, a super PAC that aims to be an umbrella organization for the industry along the lines of Fairshake.
Perplexity AI and Andreessen Horowitz — which was an early investor in OpenAI — have also given money to the umbrella super PAC.
Leading the Future has a Democratic affiliate, Think Big, as well as a Republican arm, American Mission. Conway, the Democratic megadonor, has given only to Think Big, while Joe Lonsdale, the voluble right-wing venture capitalist, has given to American Mission.
If that structure sounds eerily similar to Fairshake, that is no accident. One of Leading the Future’s shot-callers is Josh Vlasto, a political operative who once worked for two powerful New York Democrats: former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
OpenAI has generally favored a more relaxed approach to AI regulation. One of its top competitors, Anthropic, has staked out a position — at least rhetorically — in favor of stricter rules.
To pursue that aim, Anthropic recently created a traditional corporate political action committee, AnthroPAC, that can donate directly to politicians.
The $380 billion company has also made a major donation to a political nonprofit called Public First Action. That group sits at the heart of a network of affiliated super PACs: the bipartisan Public First PAC, the Democratic-aligned Jobs and Democracy PAC, and the Defending Our Values PAC for Republican causes.
The Republican and Democratic affiliates are led respectively by former Reps. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, and Brad Carson, D-Okla.
Public First Action has donated to all three super PACs. In a statement to The Intercept, a spokesperson called the three PACs “aligned” but said they all operate independently and that Anthropic does not play a role in directing any of the groups’ political spending.
“Public First Action did not establish Jobs and Democracy PAC, Public First PAC, or Defending Our Values PAC, all of which are independent from Public First Action and were established separately,” said the spokesperson, Anthony Rivera-Rodriguez.
In a recent North Carolina primary, Public First Action’s Democratic affiliate spent $1.6 million boosting incumbent Rep. Valerie Foushee over her opponent Nida Allam, a Durham County commissioner who has supported a moratorium on AI data center construction.
Allam told The Intercept that she believes the Anthropic-backed super PAC network has split its spending arms into Democratic and Republican affiliates to blunt attacks like those that have dogged United Democracy Project. AIPAC’s super PAC has long faced criticism in Democratic primaries for drawing donations from Trump-supporting billionaires.
Anthropic and its backers “are trying to confuse folks to say, ‘we’re not the same,’ so that their spending is not on the same FEC reports,” she said.
Anthropic voluntarily disclosed its donation to Public First Action. But since the group is set up as a nonprofit rather than a campaign committee, voters may never know who Public First Action’s other donors are. And the group does not intend to disclose them, Rivera-Rodriguez said.
“We’d welcome a broader conversation about transparency in political spending, starting with the hundreds of millions Big Tech companies are spending to prevent any regulation of AI whatsoever,” he said. “That said, Public First Action, Jobs and Democracy PAC, Public First PAC, and Defending Our Values PAC make all public disclosures required by law either to the FEC or the IRS, and those filings are publicly available online. Additionally, all advertisements by those groups include the required disclaimers identifying who is paying for the advertisement.”
Allam is convinced that spending from AIPAC and the Anthropic-backed groups helped tip her race. She claimed 48.2 percent of the vote compared to Foushee’s 49.2 percent.
“For the incumbent to not receive more than 50 percent of her district’s support, that shows you that working families want change, they want something different,” she said. “We can build a progressive grassroots movement without being aligned with the same people who gave us Trump and MAGA Republicans.”
Correction: May 18, 2026, 12:53 p.m. ET
A graphic previously featured the Winklevoss twins as represented in the 2010 movie “The Social Network”; the images have been replaced with photos of the Winklevoss twins.
The post Who’s Spending in Your Congressional Election? We Tracked the Front Groups Fueling the 2026 Midterms. appeared first on The Intercept.
US president writes ‘vote the bum out’ as congressman faces close race against Trump-endorsed Republican
With two days to go before the next big test of Donald Trump’s iron grip over his party, the president went head-to-head on Sunday with his nemesis, Thomas Massie the Kentucky congressman who is in a fight for his political life in Tuesday’s Republican primary.
Over an eight-hour period starting in the early hours of Sunday, Trump took to his bully pulpit on Truth Social to taunt Massie, one of very few senior Republicans who has dared to defy him. Massie is the “worst and most unreliable Republican Congressman in the history of our Country”, the rant began, followed by a mid-morning exhortation to Kentucky voters to “vote the bum out on Tuesday”.
Continue reading...Known for his ‘Manitowoc Minute’ skits and midwestern humor, the journalist turned comedian is speaking out against the AI datacenter boom in Wisconsin
Last summer, journalist turned comedian Charlie Berens started getting social media messages from concerned Wisconsin residents about plans for a massive datacenter campus in their state.
The developer, Vantage Data Centers, claimed the $8bn project would largely run on zero-emission energy resources like solar, wind and battery storage. The company said the campus would bring thousands of temporary construction jobs and potentially more than 1,000 permanent jobs to Port Washington, a city of 13,000 people about a half-hour north of Milwaukee. Residents opposed the project for what they said was lack of transparency and criticized the lucrative tax incentives offered to Vantage. They worried about the strain on local water and energy sources from an enormous 1.3-gigawatt project that could ultimately span 1,900 acres.
Continue reading...The FTC settled its case with Media Matters for America. But it doesn’t have to win in court to achieve its goals
Is there something “radically left” about being anti-Nazi? That was the question a judge put to the lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission, which has no good answer.
This week, the FTC abruptly settled its case with Media Matters for America, a media watchdog the FTC had been investigating over its reports about pro-Nazi content running alongside ads on X. Those reports drove advertisers off the platform and prompted the X owner, Elon Musk, to threaten a “thermonuclear lawsuit”.
Continue reading...Almost exactly 21 years ago, in June 2005, at a mere 20 years old, I took over the managing editor role at OSNews from Eugenia. I had already published a few articles in the years prior, and had given Eugenia enough confidence to suggest me as her replacement. It was, and is, a great honour.
In those 21 years and more than 20000 posts, I’ve seen a lot of beautiful things. Linux grew from a curiosity among nerds into a popular desktop operating system, and often a better choice for gaming than Windows. The BSDs flourish steadily, growing into even stronger and capable alternatives to desktop Linux than they already were. On the commercial side of things, new offerings challenged the hegemony of Microsoft and Windows. While Android and Chrome OS are at best merely tolerated, the idea that a newcomer would produce not one, but two operating systems that would successfully take on Microsoft and Apple seemed unimaginable when I started in 2005.
While many alternative operating systems of the early 2000s faded away, we’ve also seen success stories there. Haiku evolved from an unusable, unstable promise on the horizon into a stable, daily-drivable operating system. The unique Genode Framework and Sculpt OS keep exploring and redefining the boundaries of what a general purpose operating system should be. Redox has exploded onto the scene, and keeps making massive strides almost every month. OS/2 is still actively updated, maintained, and sold. The Amiga will outlast us all.
Internet culture, too, is changing, and while things definitely look bleak right now, there are sparks of hope and joy. The general attitude towards the big technology companies among the general public has shifted from admiration to mistrust and dislike, corporate social media seems to be crumbling, and the youngest generations absolutely despise the latest hype, “AI”. All is certainly not lost, and sometimes I feel shimmers of hope that the pendulum may swing back to a more people-focused web, a web we’ve been part of since 1997.
In those 21 years and more than 20000 posts, I’ve also seen a lot of hypes come and go, hypes that if I didn’t embrace them, I’d surely be left behind. The “pivot to video“, the cryptocurrency mania, NFTs, virtual reality and the metaverse, “AI” – all technologies and concepts I recognised for the hypes that they were, and consequently ridiculed and ignored, much to the dismay of many believers. I’ve got the angry emails and comments to prove it.
This illustrates something about OSNews that I value and hold dear: OSNews doesn’t jump on bandwagons, doesn’t frantically try to follow the latest trends, doesn’t cave under the pressure of big money interests. OSNews is constant, stable, deliberate, patient. Since 1997, we’ve covered the technology industry with interest, excitement, and wonder – tempered by a healthy dose of skepticism. When you follow this industry for almost three decades, you learn to spot the patterns and see the threads before anyone else does.
That’s not to say we haven’t gone through changes. The most significant changes to OSNews happened in recent years, where instead of working on the site on a mostly voluntary basis with a pittance of ad revenue coming my way, I’ve turned my work for OSNews into my job. As part of this change, I removed all advertising from our website, morphing OSNews into a fully reader-funded endeavour. No ads, no corporate interests, no media network breathing down my neck. OSNews is a truly independent technology news website, a rarity these days. I don’t have to keep corporate overlords or advertisers happy, and you’d be surprised to learn just how rare that is on the modern web.
The OSNews website itself is fairly unchanging too, having gone through only a handful of redesigns since its founding in 1997. We’ve been using our current design, developed by Adam Scheinberg, for as long as I can remember (10-15 years?), and thanks to our independent, ad-free nature, any possible future redesign would only make the site simpler and even faster than it already is. There’s no redesign in the cards at the moment, but rest assured, if it ever comes, we’ll buck the trend of websites getting ever more complex and demanding and make OSNews lighter and even faster.
And yes, despite commenters making up far less than one percent of our readership, I’ll always opt to keep them. We might be a site of lurkers, but comments are a core part of OSNews. Even the annoying ones. Especially the annoying ones.
That being said, there’s going to be a small change to our design, rolling out today (it might take a few reloads for it to appear). To mark my 21 years and 20000 posts, OSNews is getting a new-ish logo, which combines the classic, intertwined beveled “O-S” from the early 2000s with the modern logo we’ve been using over the past 15 years or so. The O and S are intertwined once again, highlighting the continuity and stability I want OSNews to bring in this chaotic industry (I can write corporatese if I want to). Fun fact: this “new” logo was actually designed like 20 years ago, and we’ve had it in our back pocket ever since. Why create something new and of the times, when you’ve got something great sitting right there?
Aside from the new logo, I’ll be running a big fundraiser to mark this occasion early next week, with some silly incentives at various thresholds. If we reach the ultimate goal – a euro for every story I’ve posted – I’ll overcome some very deep-rooted fears and anxieties, and tattoo the OSNews logo on my body, as my very first tattoo. OSNews has been part of my life for more than two decades, and I have every intention to add at least another two – having such a core part of my life immortalised on my body only makes sense.
I’ve written about my anxiety disorder and how it affects me here on OSNews, and it’s been preventing me from getting various tattoos I’ve been wanting for decades (and not for the reasons you may think – it’s not the pain or the needles). No better way to get fucking over it by making a public promise to tens of thousands of people. You can start donating today, but I’ll publish a proper post about it on Monday.
Of course, OSNews wouldn’t exist without all of you, our hundreds of thousands of readers. Whether you donate or not, whether you comment or not (you probably don’t!), each and every one of you contributes to making OSNews the steady success it’s been for almost 30 years. Few websites can boast such an uninterrupted lineage, and it’s thanks to all of you who keep coming back, every day.
Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. ❤️
Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito found themselves in the minority on Thursday, when the court ruled that telehealth access to the abortion drug mifepristone could continue, leaving the dissenting conservatives to foreshadow a future showdown over abortion rights.
Both justices railed against the decision, with Alito calling it a “scheme” to get around their ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson that eliminated the nationwide right to an abortion in 2022. Abortions have increased since their decision, Alito lamented, largely due to telehealth access.
In 2025, far more residents of states with total abortion bans received telehealth provisions of medication abortion than traveled out of state to receive care in places with fewer restrictions. And roughly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023 were medication abortions. But advocates warn that the dissents from Thomas and Alito highlight that the threat to abortion access still looms large.
“We’re breathing a sigh of relief. I would say that the immediate threat to mifepristone is over,” said Claire Teylouni, interim co-executive director of Reproductive Equity Now, “But it’s certainly clear from reading those dissents that the threat … is far from over.”
In his dissent, Thomas argues that the Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law passed in 1873 that remains on the books but has not been enforced in decades, prohibits the mailing of abortion medication. “The Comstock Act bans using ‘the mails’ to ship any ‘drug … for producing abortion,’” Thomas wrote. “Applicants are not entitled to a stay of an adverse court order based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise.”
The Comstock Act originally prohibited the mailing of “obscene” materials, such as pornography, contraceptives, and any drug or device that can be used to produce an abortion. But legal scholars have argued that the law is unenforceable and unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds and other modern case law.
In 2022, a Department of Justice memo clarified that the law does not prohibit the mailing of drugs that could be used to perform an abortion because there is “an insufficient basis for concluding that the sender intends them to be used unlawfully.”
Despite the memo and the fact that the Comstock Act has not been enforced in decades, conservatives, including Thomas and Alito, have been eager to use the law to push a national abortion ban.
“Enforcement of the Comstock Act has the potential to threaten the broader supply chain with regard to the reproductive health care system as a whole,” warned Teylouni. Arguably if enforced, the law could even jam up access to surgical tools used in abortion care and the shipping of abortion medication to states without bans.
Republican lawmakers have argued that the Comstock Act should be enforced by the courts to “prosecute those who obtain mifepristone through the mail.” In Project 2025, policy analysts similarly argue that the Department of Justice should enforce federal laws like Comstock to prohibit the mailing of abortion medication writ large.
President Donald Trump has previously claimed that he would not enforce the Comstock Act in this way, but advocates have seen troubling signs out of the administration about how they might eliminate access to mifepristone in other ways.
“We’re focusing on some pressing threats that are already ongoing,” said Anna Bernstein, principal federal policy adviser at the reproductive and sexual health research organization Guttmacher Institute.
In late 2025, the Food and Drug Administration began a safety review of mifepristone, despite over 20 years of evidence that it’s a safe medication. Bernstein said her organization is keeping a close eye on the “politically motivated” review at the FDA, which she argues flies in the face of the science.
The combined regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol, the drug typically used in tandem with mifepristone to induce a medication abortion, carries a less than 1 percent risk of serious adverse events. Comparatively, the risk of maternal death associated with childbirth is roughly 14 times higher than the risk associated with abortion care.
But despite medical evidence of its safety, the threat to mifepristone from the FDA has increased in recent days. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned earlier this week, and he was replaced by Kyle Diamantas, a former lawyer.
Within hours of his appointment on Tuesday, Diamantas was reportedly on the phone with anti-abortion advocates reassuring them of his moral opposition to abortion. According to a press release sent from an anti-abortion advocate, regarding her conversation with Diamantas, she said that he promised that reviewing mifepristone would be a “top priority” and that he was “pro-life.”
“We continue to have concerns that the [review is] going to be politicized and not based in science and medicine,” said Teylouni.
The Thursday ruling allows providers to continue to send mifepristone through the mail or to retail pharmacies, while the case plays out in the lower courts. Earlier this month, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had reinstated previous FDA requirements that mifepristone be dispensed in person, threatening telehealth access, a critical lifeline for abortion access for people in states with and without abortion bans.
The Supreme Court issued an initial ruling staying the appeals court decision earlier this month, which they extended on Monday, before making their final decision on Thursday to allow access to continue while the Louisiana v. FDA case plays out in court.
But a looming concern for advocates is that both the courts’ more politically attuned conservatives and members of the Trump administration could be waiting to make a move on abortion access until after the midterms in a ploy to avoid the disasters of the post-Dobbs elections.
“We’re definitely concerned, because we know that the Trump administration understands that it’s politically unfavorable to restrict access to abortion and to mifepristone,” said Guttmacher Institute’s Bernstein. “We’ve all seen the reports of them slow-walking to the midterms, and we know why politically they might want to do so.”
While the Comstock Act serves as a significant threat to abortion access, advocates note that if mifepristone is no longer able to be sent through the mail, people can still access medication abortion care.
Mifepristone works by stopping the pregnancy from growing and initiates the separation of the embryo from the uterine lining. The other drug, misoprostol, causes contractions which expel the contents of the uterus.
Misoprostol can be safely and effectively used on its own to induce an abortion. However, the process of abortion “is prolonged when it’s with a misoprostol-alone protocol,” explained Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, a public health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco’s Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health research coalition. “And patients report higher levels of side effects, so a lot of cramping and a lot more bleeding.”
Despite the small victory yesterday, Teylouni said that abortion advocates cannot afford to be “complacent” right now.
“This decision could have been the biggest blow to abortion access since the Dobbs decision,” she said. “Anti-abortion extremists are not going to stop attempting to ban abortion, and they want to see the Comstock Act invoked and enforced to limit telehealth prescribing again.”
The post A “Scheme” Against Dobbs: SCOTUS Dissent Hints at Next Phase of Abortion Rights Fight appeared first on The Intercept.
The Pentagon’s top watchdog says cuts to civilian harm mitigation and response efforts have been so severe under War Secretary Pete Hegseth that the United States cannot adequately protect civilians in conflict zones.
Thursday’s scathing analysis by the Department of War’s inspector general came on the same day that the top U.S. commander overseeing the war in Iran dismissed reports of civilian casualties and said the U.S. had no means to corroborate reports of strikes on hospitals and schools. The inspector general specifically notes that the military stopped funding a database that tracks civilian harm that could be used for such verification.
While damning, the former chief of harm assessments at the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence nonetheless called the new report a “whitewash” that downplays the evisceration of the Center and the entire enterprise devoted to reducing civilian casualties.
The report focuses on the implementation of the Pentagon’s 2022 Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, or CHMR‑AP, which was mandated by the department to take full effect by the end of 2025. The inspector general found serious deficiencies and a chronic failure to meet timelines for 11 objectives consisting of 133 incomplete “implementing actions” by the end of last year. The inspector general found that the Department of War “did not fully implement any of the CHMR-AP objectives by the end of FY 2025.”
“This is a crisis of the Trump Administration’s own making: They slashed the staffing and funding for civilian harm mitigation, and now they can’t adequately follow the law and implement the CHMR-AP, leaving civilians and our own military personnel at risk,” Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the co-chair of the Protection of Civilians in Conflict Caucus, told The Intercept. “The Inspector General’s report is clear about what that means: wasted munitions, failed strikes, damaged alliances, and propaganda wins for our adversaries. The Trump Administration needs to reverse course immediately so we can save lives and protect our national security.”
The Intercept has previously reported on Hegseth’s gutting of CHMR efforts. More than a year ago, five current and former Defense Department officials described Pentagon efforts to eliminate or downsize offices, programs, and positions focused on preventing civilian casualties.
The 43-page inspector general report details continuing efforts to hamstring protections for civilians in war zones, noting that “DoW Components ended funding for the CHMR data management platform, stopped holding Steering Committee meetings, lost or reassigned many of the personnel dedicated to CHMR, and lost personnel and leadership” at the Center of Excellence, which is focused on training and employing tools for preventing civilian casualties.
“What exists of the Center of Excellence since March 2025 is a shell on paper with no budget, no mandate or real mission, no authority.”
Wes Bryant, who until last year served as the chief of civilian harm assessments and senior analyst and adviser on precision warfare, targeting, and civilian harm mitigation at the Center of Excellence, is one of those “lost personnel,” having been forced out of his job after blowing the whistle on efforts to dismantle CHMR efforts.
“It is completely whitewashed of the truth,” Bryant said of the report. “It reads as if the IG is completely deliberately ignoring the fact that the center and the entire CHMR enterprise was targeted for immediate shutdown, that 90 percent of billets were either terminated or forced out, and that what exists of the Center of Excellence since March 2025 is a shell on paper with no budget, no mandate or real mission, no authority and is completely locked out of visibility and oversight on all investigations and operations.”
The watchdog’s evaluation noted that Hegseth’s War Department “may not comply with its civilian casualties and harm policy” — which is required under federal law. The investigation also found that eliminating CHMR funding and personnel also “decreases readiness and increases risk to DoW personnel, mission success, and military objectives,” according to officials at the Joint Staff, which is headed by Gen. Dan Caine, and at geographic combatant commands, which oversee U.S. operations in various corners of the world.
While couched in stilted language, the report details dangers to civilians due to cuts to CHMR efforts. It makes note of deficiencies in “personnel and capabilities” to protect civilians under Pentagon regulations that are mandated by federal law. And it mentions a lack of necessary “tools” at the Center of Excellence, including a “data management platform” meant to track civilian harm incidents. The report notes that “according to Joint Staff and [combatant command] officials, eliminating CHMR funding and personnel makes mitigating or responding to civilian harm more difficult.” Such officials also noted that “eliminating CHMR funding and personnel reduces battle space awareness and increases the risk of civilian casualties, damaged coalitions and alliances, loss of legitimacy, increased local resistance, propaganda opportunities for adversaries, prolonged conflicts, and failed strikes.”
“This report makes it clear that the DoD is not complying with the law, nor its own policies, both of which were built on a bipartisan basis upon years of hard-learned lessons from wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria,” Madison Hunke, the U.S. program manager of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, told The Intercept. “As Congress develops the budget for the upcoming fiscal year, they must ensure that it not only provides the DoD with the resources it needs to comply with law and policy but also conduct rigorous oversight to keep the DoD accountable for implementing these critical programs.”
Reporting by The Intercept found a combatant command that has gone from a military backwater to one engaged in regular kinetic activity — U.S. Southern Command — is unable to cope with the volume of civilian casualty reports. After the U.S. attacked Venezuela in January , the U.K.-based watchdog group Airwars attempted to submit documentation of civilian casualties to SOUTHCOM, which oversees military operations in Latin America. The organization learned that SOUTHCOM has no mechanism for submitting these reports. After reaching out to the Pentagon, Airwars was told to submit documentation to the Center of Excellence.
The report specifically mentions the Center’s “support for organizations such as the U.S. Southern Command,” despite the fact that the Center “lost large numbers of personnel and leaders,” does not have “the tools designed to meet its statutory roles and duties,” and that the Army had developed plans, early last year, to euthanize it.
The report notes that an official from an unnamed combatant command “stated that they largely divested their CHMR personnel, functions, and responsibilities as of March 2025.” Another said that they did not “want to spend resources on actions or make future commitments for a program that may be significantly changed.”
As the Pentagon has starved the CHMR enterprise, the U.S. has killed more than 2,000 civilians across the world — from Latin America to Africa to the Middle East — during Trump’s second term. “This is unprecedented in terms of the sheer number of theaters where harm to civilians has been reported within such a short space of time,” Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen, a policy specialist with Airwars, told The Intercept, referencing attacks in the Caribbean Sea, the Pacific Ocean, Iran, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.
Airwars tracked reports of at least 224 civilians in Yemen killed during the Trump administration’s campaign of air and naval strikes — codenamed Operation Rough Rider — against Yemen’s Houthi government in the spring of 2025. This nearly doubled the civilian casualty toll in Yemen from U.S. attacks since 2002, meaning that almost as many civilians were reportedly killed in 52 days as the previous 23 years of airstrikes and commando raids.
The preliminary findings of a U.S. military investigation revealed by The Intercept and other outlets determined that the United States conducted an attack on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran, in February, contradicting assertions by President Donald Trump that Iran struck the school. More than 150 civilians were killed, most of them children.
Almost 115,200 civilian homes, commercial properties, and other civilian sites have been damaged in the U.S.–Israel war on Iran, according to a report from the Iranian Red Crescent Society last month; this includes 763 schools. The Red Crescent also reported that more than 334 medical, health, pharmaceutical, and emergency centers have been damaged, including 18 of its own centers. Twenty-four health workers have been killed and 116 injured, according to Iran’s Ministry of Health and Medical Education.
“U.S.–Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 2,362 civilians, including 383 children, and injured over 32,314 civilians, according to official figures,” Raha Bahreini, a regional researcher with Amnesty International’s Iran Team told The Intercept and other journalists during a press briefing late last month.
On Thursday, Adm. Brad Cooper — the senior officer overseeing U.S. combat operations in Iran — told senators that the strike on the school in Minab was the only civilian casualty incident he knew of after more than 13,600 U.S. strikes.
Airwars has chronicled more than 300 civilian casualty incidents in Iran since the start of the conflict.
“How do you explain the publicly available information that 22 schools have been hit and multiple hospitals?” asked Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., citing a New York Times report. “There’s no way we can corroborate that,” Cooper replied.
The inspector general’s report specifically says that a database used for tracking civilian harm — which could be used in verification efforts — was abandoned. The “Army stopped funding the data management platform,” it notes.
Cooper said that preventing civilian harm is “a matter that I’m passionate about.”
Hegseth has launched overlapping efforts to weaken transparency, scuttle accountability, hobble military justice, and undercut protections for civilians in conflict — from replacing the Pentagon press corps with pro-administration sycophants and firing the top legal authorities of the Army and the Air Force last year, reportedly pursuing changes that would encourage lawyers to approve more aggressive tactics and take a more lenient approach to those who violate the laws of war.
Late last month, Hegseth repeatedly dismissed congressional concerns about civilian harm and respect for the laws of war in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. “The Department of War fights to win,” Hegseth replied when asked if he stood by his statement that the U.S. would afford enemies “no quarter” — a war crime.
While the U.S. has been clinging to a rickety ceasefire with Iran for more than a month, Trump has previously threatened to commit genocide there. “We’ll go back and finish them off. And, by the way, more than that,” he said on Friday.
Bryant believes that efforts by congressional Democrats and press coverage of civilian casualties — and the ensuing pressure on Hegseth — has kept the lights on at what remains of the Center of Excellence and held CHMR on life support. “Given all the controversy and heat that Hegseth and the administration have since received for civilian casualties, it has behooved them to be able to technically say that some semblance of the program still exists,” he told The Intercept. “However, I can tell you with 100 percent confidence that it exists at this point entirely on paper and as a legal CYA,” or cover your ass.
The post Internal Pentagon Report Reveals Hegseth Is Willfully Putting Civilians in Danger appeared first on The Intercept.
Google recently launched something called Health Coach, an “AI” thing that’s part of the company’s new Fitbit products. Let’s check in with how that’s going.
Put simply, Google’s paid replacement for Fitbit Premium immediately began hallucinating, even admitting to having made up the data before asking if, you know, maybe I’m the one who actually forgot to input a run. Remember, this is my very first report from this thing, making for an awful first impression. Even after this correction, the run data continues to exist within the AI-powered home screen layout, despite no record actually appearing within my account. It’s not exactly a great advertisement for a platform that costs $10 per month or $100 annually.
↫ Will Sattelberg at 9To5Google
The entire US’ – and thus much of the world’s – economic growth is built on this trash. What could possibly go wrong?
One of the top pieces of customer feedback in the graphics driver area is clear: “Windows Update downgrades my drivers.” Today, we are announcing a policy change to how display drivers are published through Windows Update — allowing 2-Part HWID + Computer Hardware ID (CHID) targeting for new devices. This change gives customers more control over their display driver of choice while preserving OEM control over the devices they ship.
↫ Garrettd at Microsoft’s Hardware Dev Center
Windows Update randomly downgrading your graphics drivers seems to be a common enough occurrence that its supposed fix deserves its own feature announcement and blog post. This is a real operating system that runs on most of the world’s PCs.
A Manhattan resident who was on the cruise ship at the center of the hantavirus outbreak traveled freely after leaving the ship, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not warn public health authorities in New York of her potential exposure to the deadly virus, according to New York City and state officials.
The woman, a dual citizen of New Zealand and the United States with residences in Manhattan and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was one of 30 passengers who left the MV Hondius expedition cruise ship while it docked at Saint Helena island, in the South Atlantic, in late April after one passenger had already died of a lethal strain of hantavirus. A second and third passenger died days later, one on board and one in a hospital in South Africa, but by the time the ship had become a focus of headlines worldwide, the woman was well on her way on a globe-hopping itinerary.
The CDC informed health officials in various states of other Americans potentially exposed to the virus, but failed to alert New York health officials about the Manhattan woman.
There is no indication that the woman intended to come back to the United States or to New York any time soon. Instead, she continued on a multi-continental trip around the world. Her ability to continue traveling — and the lack of notice issued to authorities in the location to which she might eventually return — raise worrying questions about the potential spread of the disease, said Dr. Abraar Karan, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University.
“If she’s on the loose, then we need to be aware of where she might come back to,” Karan said. “So the New York Department of Health, and officials at the port of entry, they need to make sure this person is flagged when they return.”
The traveler, a 75-year-old former pharmaceutical executive, matches the description of a former ship passenger who is now in quarantine in Taiwan, according to local news reports there. Her peregrinations first came to light in reporting by Intercept contributor Jacqueline Sweet, who published a report on the traveler on her personal Substack.
The woman’s dual nationality and connection to addresses in multiple states appears to have muddied the lines of communication.
A spokesperson for the New York State Department of Health told The Intercept that after raising the issue with the CDC, they learned that the agency had notified a different state of the woman’s possible exposure to the virus. The spokesperson did not identify the state in question, but public records show the woman is registered to vote at an apartment in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Despite her voter registration in Florida, she has referred in social media posts to the co-op she owns in Manhattan as her home.
Representatives of the CDC and the Florida Department of Health did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment. Florida has not reported that it is monitoring any residents for possible exposure to hantavirus.
New York and other states — including California, Arizona, Washington, Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina — have reported residents with possible exposures, with some states indicating they received notice from the CDC and others saying cruise passengers self-reported. All 18 U.S. citizens who returned to the country directly from the cruise are currently in quarantine in Omaha, Nebraska, and Atlanta, Georgia, while another 16 citizens who shared a plane with a woman evacuated to Johannesburg are being monitored.
The outbreak took place aboard the MV Hondius, an “expedition” cruise ship that takes adventurous passengers on a monthlong specialized polar tour, stopping at hard-to-reach islands in the South Atlantic. The cruise attracted wildlife enthusiasts, biologists, and extreme travelers attempting to visit as many countries and territories as possible, willing to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for the trip.
On April 6, one of those travelers, a 70-year-old Dutch man who prior to the sea voyage had spent more than three months traveling in South America, became ill. He died onboard on April 11, and on April 24, the victim’s 69-year-old wife disembarked at Saint Helena; the next day, she flew to Johannesburg, South Africa, where she died soon after. A third passenger died on May 2 — the same day that the World Health Organization declared an outbreak of hantavirus as the culprit.
The CDC has been accused of a slow response to the outbreak, holding its first briefing on the crisis on May 9, a week after WHO announced that the deaths were caused by the rare Andes strain of hantavirus, which is spread in South America by the pygmy rice rat and which can be transmitted among humans via close physical contact with someone already showing signs of infection. Because the early symptoms of the virus, including fever, fatigue, and muscle aches, are common in many other viral infections, the disease can be hard to identify before the rapid onset of more serious symptoms like pneumonia and respiratory distress.
In the case of the hantavirus outbreak, as with other public health crises, officials need to walk a careful line between ensuring safety and avoiding panic, Karan said. And the key to keeping a lid on the outbreak is ensuring proper quarantine for anyone with a potential exposure.
“Because this took place on a cruise ship, it actually helped us detect this quickly, and for now it appears to be decently contained,” Karan said. “But the problem is that, it’s not like you have a camera on these people to know if they’re not going out or seeing other people. So you don’t definitely know unless they’re quarantining at a monitored center.”
Compounding the trouble, however, is that many of the passengers on the cruise are part of an “extreme travel” subculture whose lifestyle centers around relentless jetsetting. Even with the international attention being paid to the ship and its passengers, a number of people have been found to have trekked globe-spanning itineraries since the outbreak was revealed.
The itinerary of the Manhattan woman after she left the MV Hondius showed a complexity typical of such “extreme travelers.” In a social media post on April 28, the traveler said she had flown from Saint Helena to Johannesburg, where she stayed in a hotel before flying on to Hong Kong and then to Bangkok, Thailand. In Bangkok, she wrote that she took a shuttle across the city to its second airport and flew to Trang, in southern Thailand, where she stayed in a hotel overnight before taking a boat to the island of Ko Ngai. Her most recent social media post was from Hanoi, Vietnam, several days before reports surfaced of the former ship passenger matching her description under quarantine in Taiwan.
She was just one of 30 travelers who left the ship while it docked at Saint Helena, prior to the declaration of an outbreak — setting off a scramble by global public health officials to identify everyone who might have been exposed.
The profile of the passengers themselves complicated the picture, according to Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and co-author of “VIRAL: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19” who advocated for more scrutiny of a possible lab origin for the virus that caused the Covid pandemic.
“The cruise selected for these extreme travelers, and you cannot ask for a potentially better superspreader,” Chan said. “And if one of the passengers presented to an international hospital with symptoms without the hospital being aware of their exposure on the ship, by the time the hospital would know, healthcare workers could have already been exposed.”
Most public health officials agree the hantavirus outbreak is unlikely to transform into a pandemic. But the incubation period for the Andes virus is anywhere from four to 42 days, raising concerns that the traveler and others who left the ship prior to the outbreak becoming known could transmit the virus to others if they become sick. That’s led global health officials to scramble to identify passengers and notify their home countries. But the timing of these communications, and how they unfolded, are unclear, as the case of this woman reveals.
While the CDC alerted a number of states, including New York, to the fact that residents with potential exposures could be coming home, the Manhattan-based traveler appears to have slipped through the cracks, and state health officials there only learned of her connection to the state after receiving inquiries from Sweet.
It appears that the MV Hondius’s parent company first reported that this passenger was a New Zealand national to New Zealand health authorities. After The Intercept began making inquiries with the New Zealand Ministry of Health in conjunction with reporters from news outlet Radio New Zealand, as well as to the woman and other conference attendees, the Ministry of Health told Radio New Zealand that although the woman had ignored their previous attempts to contact and assist her, on Tuesday she suddenly contacted them. The Ministry of Health said they had alerted the United States last week that she was in fact a resident of the U.S., and not New Zealand, and on Tuesday, they also alerted health officials in the country she is in currently, which is unknown.
On Monday, news from New Zealand broke that an American woman, since reported as being from California, had turned up in remote Pitcairn Island, a tiny South Pacific island with less than 50 residents. She had flown from Saint Helena after departing the MV Hondius early to San Francisco, before flying to Tahiti and then taking a boat voyage to Pitcairn. It’s unknown if any health authorities contacted her before her travels. She is now being quarantined on the island.
Reached by The Intercept, a spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health pointed to an existing press release about monitoring hantavirus exposures and added: “When we have new information to share, we will do so.”
Chan advised that “the WHO should make a list of all passengers available to all countries so they can be aware of visitors with exposure, rather than rely on each country.” Communication between the WHO and the United States was delayed in the days of the MV Hondius outbreak, since the Trump administration left the global health alliance, but the CDC and the WHO have reportedly been working together for the past week.
“In a best-case scenario there are no more waves, but this shows the WHO and the CDC are not prepared. This was the best-case scenario, with the passengers all known from the cruise,” Chan said. “When you can mess up with this controlled of a scenario, what will happen next time?”
The post CDC Didn’t Tell New York About Resident on Hantavirus-Plagued Cruise appeared first on The Intercept.
Malcolm Turnbull: AUKUS is ‘a huge wealth transfer from the Australian government to the US and the UK’ News release jon.wallace
Speaking at Chatham House, the former Australian prime minister strongly criticized the joint Australia–US–UK submarine project.
Malcolm Turnbull, former Australian prime minister, visited Chatham House on 11 May to discuss Australia’s foreign policy, its US alliance, and the role of middle powers in the context of US–China rivalry.
Asked about the AUKUS trilateral security partnership between Australia, the US and UK, which is meant to provide Australia with nuclear attack submarines, Mr Turnbull said it was a ‘huge wealth transfer from the Australian government to the US and the UK’.
‘It’s a submarine deal with no submarines…It was a terribly bad deal, a really stupid deal,’ he said, adding that US naval yards are not producing submarines at sufficient scale and speed to meet AUKUS needs.
Malcom Turnbull discusses the AUKUS deal at Chatham House
Addressing the UK part of the deal, which would see joint development of a new nuclear submarine class, he said that ‘the UK shipbuilding industry, particularly the submarine industry, is in complete disarray…We shouldn’t have cancelled the deal with France’.
He said that it would be better for the UK to go into partnership with France to design a new nuclear submarine class, with the aim of developing common defence platforms for Europe.
During the event Mr Turnbull also discussed the summit between Chinese President Xi and US President Trump, Australian relations with the Trump administration, and Australia’s role in Pacific security.
IN 16 pages, the Trump administration’s new official counterterrorism strategy outlines in broad terms who it views as terrorist threats and priority targets, ranging from anti-fascist activists to ISIS and so-called narco-terrorists. The line “We will find you, and we will kill you” appears in the memo.
“[The] strategy brings together Trump’s war on the wider world, which stretches from interventions and wars in Yemen and Somalia to Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea,” says Intercept senior reporter Nick Turse. “It combines it with the administration’s war on dissent at home which has also been lethal, as we saw on the streets of Minneapolis. … We can consider this strategy a new declaration of war by the Trump administration on its enemies both foreign and domestic, both real and imagined.”
This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington and colleagues Turse and Noah Hurowitz, who covers federal law enforcement, dissect how the Trump administration is painting anyone it wants to go after — state and non-state actors — as terrorists. “Fundamentally, this document is a list of the administration’s enemies and a promise of what they’re going to do to them,” says Hurowitz. “This anti-terror imperative makes for a very flexible and useful means of tamping down on dissent.”
“We’re not just talking about rhetoric here,” says Washington. “We’ve seen the administration actually use these terms in action when it comes to the boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific that killed nearly 200 people as of early May.”
“The actual legal justification for the strikes is, like so much else, secret,” says Turse, who has been covering the attacks on so-called narco-terrorists. “We’re talking about a fake war in which the enemies aren’t even read into the fact that they’re in an armed conflict with the United States.” He adds, “It’s really built on a quarter-century of executive overreach and targeted killings around the world. It’s the price of Congress allowing Presidents Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump to hunt and kill people by drone from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and Somalia. It took this legally dubious, at best, post-9/11 drone war and laid the groundwork for a completely illegal one in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean.”
“Say what you will about the people around President Trump,” Hurowitz notes, “but they have proved very adept at finding levers of power and levers of pain to go after their enemies.”
For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
Jessica Washington: Welcome to the Intercept Briefing. I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept.
Maia Hibbett: And I’m Maia Hibbett, managing editor at The Intercept.
Last week, we talked about the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and the news on that subject has been moving really fast. I was wondering if first you could just give us a quick update on what else is happening since that last conversation.
JW: There’s been a lot happening since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act last month, well, gutted it again further, I should say. In Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee signed into law a new congressional map eliminating the only majority-Black district. Then in Alabama, House primaries are next week, but the Republican governor is planning to hold a special vote in four districts in August after the state redraws a more GOP-friendly map. Republican leaders like Speaker Mike Johnson are excited about it. Here he is talking about it on “Fox and Friends.”
[Clip]
Brian Kilmeade: There’s Tennessee, Alabama. How many more?
Rep. Mike Johnson: Potentially South Carolina, maybe Missouri, Mississippi. There are other states who are similarly situated. And we think the analysis is, by the end of all this, when you correct all that, Republicans’ll probably pick up between seven and eight seats and maybe double digits, depending on how many states get involved. That’s obviously a good thing for the outcome.
[Clip ends]
JW: My only reaction to hearing that is that Republicans are clearly hiding the ball here. They’re saying that this is about fairer representation, but in Mississippi, they’re clearly trying to eliminate representation for Black Americans. The governor has called to redraw a map that would eliminate Rep. Bennie Thompson’s district. He is the only Black representative representing Mississippi, a state that is nearly 40 percent Black.
Maia, did anything strike you in that clip or just anything about this redistricting effort at all?
MH: I just keep getting struck by the way Republicans are framing this as some sort of anti-racist effort, that the way congressional districts are drawn sometimes to take into account the racial diversity or lack thereof of an area is inherently anti-democratic. And as you’ve pointed out before, in reality, that’s a disingenuous framing of what they’re doing.
JW: Yeah. We’re going to continue to watch the fallout from the Supreme Court. But I want to talk about some other news.
There’s been talk online that we might be facing a new pandemic. Maia, what can you tell us about the hantavirus, and do I need to start stockpiling toilet paper?
MH: No, please, no one go buy a lot of toilet paper. Never helpful.
There’s definitely a lot of chatter and panic online, but I don’t think there’s any sign that this is going to be a new pandemic. A pandemic is when there is this uncontrolled disease spread on a global scale, and there’s really no sign that’s going to be the case here.
It is, however, really fascinating. This is a wild example of a group of people who have been traveling all over the world, who are all on a ship together, and then a very rare infectious disease breaks out. People are certainly freaked out and worried about this when they’re reading about it online, and I think there’s a lot of information on Twitter, on Instagram, everywhere. There’s a lot of panic.
What the general scientific consensus says is still that this strain of the virus, which is known to spread between people, is still more likely to spread animal to human, not human to human. And when it does spread between humans, it typically requires close contact. So you’re having a conversation with someone and your faces are close together, you’re exchanging saliva, there’s some sort of large droplet transfer, something like that, is the most likely way for this to spread between people.
We don’t know everything about it, and of course, viruses do change, but that is still the overall scientific consensus. It’s not known to spread the way Covid does, where it’s aerosolized and someone in the room has it and anyone else in the room could get it.
The most well-known vector for this disease to spread is from people actually inhaling particles from the feces or urine of rodents, especially rats. So really the people, I think, who are at the highest risk are anyone who might be in a setting where they’re cleaning that up or otherwise really directly exposed.
JW: Gross, but I do feel a little bit safer. [Laughter.]
But one thing, I do have some concerns about — we know who’s in charge of HHS, we know who’s in charge of the FDA. Do we have the public health infrastructure to deal with something like this?
MH: We know that since the Trump administration came back into office and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was appointed to be in charge of Health and Human Services, the CDC has been pretty dramatically gutted. And the Trump administration just doesn’t have the kind of infrastructure the U.S. government used to maintain in order to keep an eye on pandemics and other disease outbreaks. So that certainly is concerning.
For example, there was a lot of chatter last week. Marjorie Taylor Greene was spreading claims that ivermectin was going to be helpful for keeping this virus at bay, and Intercept contributor Austin Campbell reached out to the CDC and asked what they thought of that, and he just never heard back. They never had a stance on it.
Another Intercept contributor, Jackie Sweet, tracked down for a piece this past week on her Substack the case of a 75-year-old cruise ship passenger who had dual residency in both the U.S. and New Zealand. She had managed to totally evade the supervision of public health authorities, which is staggering because there were fewer than 150 people on that ship. So it’s a little bit wild that they couldn’t keep track of them all.
JW: So what I’m hearing from you is that we’re lucky that it’s this kind of virus and not something that is easier to transmit person to person?
MH: I would say that’s right, yeah.
JW: I want to talk about some other reporting that we published this week. On Tuesday, my co-host Akela Lacy published a story about Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student and Palestinian rights activist who was detained by ICE for protesting in support of Palestinians as a part of the Trump administration’s targeting of student protesters. So I know the story goes into a little bit more detail about that targeting. Maia, what can you tell us about the story?
MH: I think a lot of our listeners probably remember this moment last spring when he was detained, and he was one of the first of this group of students that the Trump administration was targeting. What Akela’s story found was that two days before ICE arrested Mahmoud Khalil, the FBI had gotten an anonymous tip which accused him of calling for, and this is a quote from the tip, “violence on behalf of Hamas.”
Now, we don’t really have any detail in this document on what the tip is. It came in via a FOIA request that his legal team received and passed on to Akela, and the document is mostly redacted. But what we do know is that less than two weeks after they got the tip, the FBI closed this investigation, and they found that the tip did not warrant further investigation.
But by then, he was already in ICE detention in Louisiana, and the Trump administration was already calling him a “Hamas supporter” and accusing him of being a supporter of terrorism. At this point, we now know that the FBI at least had found that allegation was not worth looking into.
JW: That’s really interesting. It feels like we’re going to be unraveling what actually went behind the Trump administration’s targeting of these students. This really fits into broader efforts from the Trump administration to target any of the president’s perceived political enemies, both abroad and in the United States.
MH: Exactly. And this week, everyone in the newsroom has really been focused on this project that you’ve been working on with our colleagues, Nick Turse and Noah Hurowitz, about how the Trump administration is taking that political targeting apparatus to the next level, and what the next phase of it will look like. Could you tell us a little bit more about that project?
JW: We’ve been poring through this new counterterrorism strategy that’s been handed down from the Trump administration. I know that sounds incredibly boring, but this is a document laying out the president’s strategy for coming after his political enemies in the United States and abroad, and potentially giving him the authority to kill his political enemies.
So we’ve been really looking into this next evolution of President Donald Trump’s attempt to label his enemies — so anyone who disagrees with him — as “terrorists.” And I’ve now successfully dragged both of my brilliant coworkers onto the show to talk about it. Nick is a senior reporter covering national security and foreign policy, and Noah is a federal law enforcement reporter.
MH: Let’s hear that conversation.
JW: Nick, Noah, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.
Nick Turse: Thanks so much for having us.
Noah Hurowitz: Thanks for having us.
JW: Let’s dive right into this project. Last week, the Trump administration released its counterterrorism strategy. The 16-page memo outlines who they view as terrorist threats and priority targets. The three of us have been combing through this document for an in-document analysis that we just published.
To start, Nick, can you tell us a bit more about this document and the objectives of the administration?
NT: I consider this a truly foundational document, a genuine distillation of Trumpism as both a movement and a system of governance. The document is the brainchild of the senior counterterrorism director at the National Security Council, Sebastian Gorka, who’s a truly bizarre figure and whose credentials for the job of counterterrorism czar are highly dubious.
This Gorka-led strategy brings together Trump’s war on the wider world, which stretches from interventions and wars in Yemen and Somalia to Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea, and it combines it with the administration’s war on dissent at home which has also been lethal, as we saw on the streets of Minneapolis. The 2026 counterterrorism strategy puts so-called domestic “antifascist” or antifa organizations on par with actual terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda as well as with international drug cartels.
“The 2026 counterterrorism strategy puts so-called domestic ‘antifascist’ or antifa organizations on par with actual terrorist organizations, such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, as well as with international drug cartels.”
It states that there are three major types of terrorist threats. So we’re talking about what they call legacy Islamist terrorists, Al Qaeda and ISIS; narco-terrorists like the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua; and these supposed violent left-wing extremists, which include anarchists and anti-fascists. The latter are longtime Republican boogeymen but don’t actually exist in a real way as, say, urban guerrillas or something like that in the United States.
This is a fictional foe. We can consider this strategy a new declaration of war by the Trump administration on its enemies, both foreign and domestic, both real and imagined.
JW: I think that’s a really good way to look at this document. If we think about it as a foundational text of the Trump administration, then the foundation of the Trump administration is a politics of vengeance, which I think is borne out in so many of the administration’s policies, both at home and abroad.
Noah, I want to bring you in. One thing that this document does is loosely define who is and who isn’t a terrorist. So I want to ask you, what did we now learn about who’s considered a terrorist?
NH: One thing that I found really interesting about this document is that it specifically calls out previous weaponizations of government counterterrorism policy, which is, I think, a pretty clear reference to the prosecutions of right-wing groups, and specifically participants in January 6.
As we know, FBI Director Kash Patel, prior to becoming head of the FBI, was very critical of the federal government’s policies toward violent right-wing extremists, which statistically have been a majority of the domestic terrorists in the United States. This document really explicitly does away with that and explicitly names left-wing groups or left-wing people holding left-wing ideologies as terrorists.
There’s a specific line about doing away with the weaponization of counterterrorism policy against American citizens, when in reality we’ve seen the very explicit weaponization of counterterrorism policy and rhetoric by this administration against its domestic foes, if you will.
Most notably, the language used to describe Alex Pretti and Rene Good in Minneapolis following their deaths, and also the prosecution of nine protesters for their roles in a demonstration outside of an ICE facility in Texas last July. This is the Prairieland case in which eight defendants were convicted on terrorism charges. They might say that they’re ending the weaponization of counterterrorism against American citizens, but in reality, we’ve seen a dramatic escalation of it.
JW: One group that you didn’t mention here, but is mentioned repeatedly throughout the document, are people who the administration calls adherents to radical pro-transgender ideology.
Clearly throughout this document, we’re seeing references to the Christian right, references to the idea that anyone who does not adhere to these very specific tenets of white Christian nationalism — a very specific subset of white evangelical Christianity — that those groups are also considered terrorists under this document.
In April, the Trump administration released the anti-Christian bias task force report which allegedly detailed the Biden administration’s radical efforts to punish Christians and also highlighted President Donald Trump’s efforts to restore religious liberty. There are very similar themes to that document. There clearly is an effort to target anyone who is not a part of MAGA world, and so that includes, obviously, Christian nationalists, but other groups as well.
Noah, I want to ask, how would you characterize what the administration has outlined here?
NH: Fundamentally, this document is a list of the administration’s enemies and a promise of what they’re going to do to them.
JW: Nick, we’re not just talking about rhetoric here. We’ve seen the administration actually use these terms in action when it comes to the boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific that killed nearly 200 people as of early May.
The administration has alleged that they are targeting “narco-terrorists.” This has been going on now since September of last year. What evidence has the administration provided to justify what appear to be extrajudicial killings?
NT: Actually, we haven’t seen one shred of evidence. Instead, we’ve been treated to outlandish claims that are demonstrably outright lies. President Trump has repeatedly claimed that the vessels that the U.S. is attacking are trafficking fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. Trump says that the boats are hit, and then you see bags of fentanyl floating in the ocean.
First off, fentanyl is shipped in dramatically smaller quantities than, say, cocaine. You wouldn’t see bales of it floating in a body of water in the aftermath of an airstrike. It’s really beside the point. No fentanyl comes to the United States from South America. Ninety-nine percent of the fentanyl comes into the U.S. through legal ports of entry primarily from Mexico by U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. Cartels would have to smuggle fentanyl down to South America to smuggle it back by boat.
The actual legal justification for the strikes is, like so much else, secret. There is a classified opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. It was drawn up by an interagency lawyers’ group, including representatives of the CIA, the White House Counsel, Department of Justice, and the War Department’s Office of General Counsel. It claims that narcotics on these supposed drug boats, cocaine essentially, are lawful military targets because their cargo generates revenue for cartels whom the Trump administration claims are in a non-international armed conflict with the United States.
Government officials told me that this secret memo wasn’t actually signed by the assistant attorney general until days after the first boat strike on September 2 of last year. So the strikes came before the horse. I should also note that attached to this secret legal memorandum is a similarly secret list of what they call “designated terrorist organizations,” or DTOs. That list is secret too.
So we’re talking about a fake war in which the enemies aren’t even read into the fact that they’re in an armed conflict with the United States.
JW: As you’ve reported, nearly 200 people are dead as a result of these strikes, but there are survivors. What do we know about the survivors of these strikes?
“To me, that says that there’s a higher evidentiary standard to hold someone on drug charges than to kill them for supposed smuggling.”
NT: Yeah, very little at this point. Most survivors have been gravely injured, or they’ve been left to die at sea by the United States. What’s notable is that behind closed doors in classified briefings, military officials have said that they can’t actually hold or try the individuals that survive because they can’t satisfy the evidentiary burden. They can’t bring these people to court because they know they would lose. To me, that says that there’s a higher evidentiary standard to hold someone on drug charges than to kill them for supposed smuggling. So I think of these strikes as a centerpiece counterterrorism strategy of the Trump administration.
It’s really built on a quarter-century of executive overreach and targeted killings around the world. It’s the price of Congress allowing Presidents Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump to hunt and kill people by drone from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and Somalia. It took this legally dubious, at best, post-9/11 drone war and laid the groundwork for a completely illegal one in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean.
Experts in the laws of war, as well as members of Congress from both parties, say that these boat strikes are illegal extrajudicial killings because the military isn’t permitted to deliberately target civilians, even suspected criminals who don’t pose an imminent threat of violence.
JW: It is so telling that they say they have the legal authority to kill people, but not the legal authority to hold them. I think it just shows the entire game, frankly.
[Break]
JW: Noah, the strategy repeatedly references narco-terrorists in Latin America as principal targets for the Trump administration’s counterterrorism efforts around the world. Does this help us to understand anything about what the administration has been doing in Venezuela, Cuba, and elsewhere?
NH: I think what it helps us understand is that the drug war is and always has been a instrument for various U.S. foreign policy objectives, particularly in Latin America.
“The war on drugs continues to be a very useful cudgel for U.S. foreign policy in the region.”
Actually labeling these somewhat nebulous drug trafficking groups as explicitly as terrorist groups was, until fairly recently, a right-wing fever dream. But on day one, President Trump signed an executive order asking the State Department to label various drug trafficking groups in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America as terrorist groups. What that tells us is that the war on drugs continues to be a very useful cudgel for U.S. foreign policy in the region.
It’s been used by Trump to discipline and pressure President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico. It’s been used to underwrite the sanctions regime against the government of Nicolás Maduro. Then, of course, as a pretext for the kidnapping of Maduro in January.
This counterterrorism strategy, like the national security strategy released late last year, makes repeated reference to the Monroe Doctrine, which is a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy dating back to 1823 when President James Monroe issued a diktat, if you will, basically saying that the Western Hemisphere is closed to further colonization by Spanish forces and other European powers, and basically it’s our corner of the world, butt out.
The strand of “American First” nationalism that undergirds the Trump administration’s foreign policy is heavily influenced by this Monroe Doctrine. Now what’s interesting is that it was posed as a sort of anti-colonial doctrine — that the Spanish should stop meddling, that the British should stop meddling. But it has been used in an essentially colonialist or imperialist fashion by the United States to assert power in the Western Hemisphere for centuries now.
It is popular among American-first nationalists because it is a vision of the world that predates liberal internationalism, and instead — it’s not isolationist, it’s not, “We’re going to sit in our country and take care of ourselves” — it is, “We are going to take care of ourselves by projecting power in the Western Hemisphere.”
That is something that we’ve seen very explicitly from the Trump administration, both in rhetoric, in the national security strategy and the counterterrorism strategy, and in its actions. We’ve seen that in Venezuela. We’ve seen that in Cuba with the reinforced blockade. We’ve seen that in Mexico with the Trump administration’s treatment of President Claudia Sheinbaum.
We’ve seen that in other countries where it appears that the Trump administration, especially through Marco Rubio, are trying to create a sort of Pan-American right-wing project linking the brain trusts and power of Javier Milei in Argentina, the supporters of Juan Orlando Hernández in Honduras, the administration in Paraguay, and the the government of Ecuador, where we’ve also seen military strikes against alleged drug traffickers.
JW: Nick, this Pan-American view isn’t really limited to the Western Hemisphere. We had a conversation with historian Greg Grandin as well where he got into this. Can you talk about how the administration has also loosened rules of engagement and the effects of that on countries with U.S. military operations?
NT: This new strategy boasts that as soon as Trump retook the White House he reinstituted loosened rules of engagement that were used during his first term in office. In retrospect, we know that these weak rules during Trump’s first term had a profound effect across the Middle East and Africa. Attacks in Somalia, for example, tripled after Trump relaxed targeting principles. At the same time, U.S. military and independent estimates of civilian casualties across U.S. war zones, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen all spiked. The U.S. conducted more than 200 declared attacks in Somalia during Trump’s first term, and that was a more than 300 percent increase over the eight years of the Obama presidency.
Now, Trump, already in less than a year and a half in office in the second term, is on the cusp of eclipsing his first four years of strikes in Somalia. A review of the Trump era rules by the Biden administration found that the operating principles used in these strikes including what had previously been at a near-certainty that civilians would not be injured or killed in the course of operations, were severely watered down.
When I talked to retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, who led Special Operations Command Africa during Trump’s first term, he told me that this shift in the rules of engagement led to a major shift in who could be targeted and who would be killed. In essence, it made it much easier to strike targets.
Back in 2023, in an investigation for The Intercept, I found that these rules in one case led to the deaths of three and possibly five civilians in a strike in Somalia, including a young mother, a 22-year-old, Luul Dahir Mohamed, and her 4-year-old daughter, Mariam. Members of the U.S. strike cell didn’t know what they were looking at and somehow misidentified Luul as a man and completely missed Mariam.
The mother and child had hitched a ride in a pickup truck that the U.S. targeted. Luul and Mariam actually survived the initial strike but were killed in a double-tap attack as they fled for their lives. This was only possible because of these loosened rules of engagement that Trump has now bragged about in this 2026 counterterrorism strategy.
JW: Frankly, it’s alarming to think that now we’re going to see even more incidents like that, like you just described. And we’re seeing people targeted here at home too.
Nick, I was looking at a piece you did last year focused on NSPM-7, the presidential memorandum that effectively created a secret list of domestic terrorists, which included everyone from anti-Christians to anti-capitalists.
One of the haunting questions from your piece was whether the administration has the authority to kill people on the list that it has designated as terrorists. The line “We will find you and we will kill you” appears in this new counterterrorism strategy. I know that stuck out to both of us as incredibly chilling.
Does this new strategy give us an answer to your earlier question? Does the administration have the legal authority to kill its enemies?
NT: The White House and Justice Department have never answered this question. It’s been left hanging there in both cases since the fall when I started asking.
But in December, Gen. Gregory Guillot, the Chief of U.S. Northern Command, a four-star general who takes his orders from Pete Hegseth and oversees the United States, seemed to answer this question, and worryingly so. When he was asked about his willingness to attack so-called designated terrorist organizations within U.S. borders by Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island. Guillot said that if he had questions about such an order, he would ask Hegseth, and if not, if he thought it was a legal order, then he would “definitely execute that order.”
“You don’t get four stars on your shoulder by saying, no, sir, that’s immoral. I won’t do what you want, sir.”
Now, as far as four-star generals go, Guillot has a good reputation. People on the Hill, decent people there, like him. He’s not a Hegseth acolyte, not a MAGA general. But the military are, in the end, orders followers. They kill on command. They do what they’re told. You don’t get four stars on your shoulder by saying, no, sir, that’s immoral. I won’t do what you want, sir.
You don’t see a lot of military officers at any level pushing back against the orders of this administration to attack and kill people, whether it’s in Iran or Venezuela, or specifically the boat strikes that every legal authority worthy of that name says are illegal extrajudicial killings.
With secret lists of both foreign and domestic terrorists, we don’t know who can be targeted. But it’s possible that so-called left-wing extremists could be targeted and killed on Trump or Hegseth’s say-so. In a world of secret wars, secret enemies lists, secret legal findings, we just can’t know for sure. And that alone should scare every American.
JW: I think most people in the United States would like to believe that the military would not follow those kinds of orders. But as you’ve documented throughout your entire career, we cannot count on individual soldiers not following through on those orders.
The fact that we now have an enemies list and a counterterrorism strategy that is rather explicit about targeting the left, that includes the words “We will find you and we will kill you,” I think that should be terrifying to pretty much anyone.
Noah, you’ve covered other targets, specifically nonprofits. Can you talk a little bit about how that fits into the broader efforts to not only tamp down but arguably eliminate any dissent? Has the Trump administration strategy here evolved over the last year? And if so, how?
NH: As we’ve mentioned before, this anti-terror imperative makes for a very flexible and useful means of tamping down on dissent. Prior to the Trump administration returning to power, I reported extensively on what was known as the “nonprofit killer bill,” which was a piece of legislation in Congress that would allow the Treasury Department to revoke the nonprofit status of any 501(c)(3) organization found to be providing material support for terrorism.
That was a bill that had received relatively broad bipartisan support prior to the reelection of Donald Trump, and then in the immediate aftermath of the reelection of Donald Trump, it became much more of a partisan issue because suddenly the Democrats looked around and realized that we were going to be handing this tool to a new emboldened Trump administration. So that bill ended up languishing in legislative hell.
I see that as an early warning sign of the way in which the Trump administration planned to use this terrorism rhetoric to tamp down on pretty non-terroristic political enemies. I think that we’ve seen most clearly that coming through in its prosecution of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Now, that is through the DOJ. They are not necessarily using the rhetoric of anti-terror against the SPLC in that lawsuit, which is based on the use of undercover informants in white supremacist groups. They did accuse the SPLC of essentially providing material support to these extremist groups by paying informants, but it was a slight evolution of the somewhat more crude use of this terrorism label against political enemies.
But we do see that they are using every tool in the toolbox to delegitimize, to prosecute, to make the lives harder of anyone they see as their political enemies.
JW: What’s also fascinating, maybe horrifying is the better word, is the fact that they don’t even have to pass this legislation. They don’t even have to convict these organizations on any charges, and yet there’s already damage. The Intercept has been reporting on the fact that certain financial institutions essentially complied in advance and began preventing donations from their donor-advised funds to SPLC.
Nick, at different points in history, we’ve seen the government target civilians it perceived as enemies of the state, from the McCarthy era to COINTELPRO to the war on terror. Perhaps it’s too soon to tell the full impact, but how does what we’re seeing now with the Trump administration compare to these other periods?
NT: I was really struck by some of the language in this new counterterrorism strategy. At one point, it notes that the national counterterrorism activities “will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups” whose ideology is and this is quoting, “anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
This language of neutralization, it really harkens back to the FBI’s analogous and infamous COINTELPRO program that you mentioned which was employed in the 1960s and 1970s to target the civil rights movement; the new left; anti-Vietnam War protesters — basically domestic groups and individuals. It’s very much the spiritual precursor to Trump’s current war at home. It’s just that COINTELPRO was secret, and Trump’s effort is out and proud.
“This type of counterintelligence was meant to ‘expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize’ — that language again — ‘African American groups and leaders.’”
According to a 1976 Senate Select Committee report on U.S. intelligence activities, COINTELPRO turned a law enforcement agency into a law violator. The Senate committee found that the FBI went beyond the collection of intelligence to secret action designed to “disrupt and neutralize target groups and individuals,” and that they used wartime counterintelligence techniques that were antithetical to a democratic society. There was a 1967 internal FBI memo that laid this out basically that this type of counterintelligence was meant to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” — that language again — “African American groups and leaders.”
These efforts were meant to, this is another quote, “cause serious physical, emotional, or economic damage to the targets,” according to the Senate committee. Martin Luther King Jr., for instance, was one of the targets of the FBI’s campaign. The Senate Select Committee again uses that same language. They said that the FBI targeted him to neutralize him. The man that was in charge of the FBI’s what they called “war against Dr. King,” said that they used the same methods they employed against Soviet agents. It’s the Cold War at the time, very much at war with the Soviet Union.
To me, I think Trump is really reinstituting COINTELPRO under a new name.
“Trump is really reinstituting COINTELPRO under a new name.”
JW: The groups that you just mentioned are all generally considered left-leaning movements. What impact did those efforts have on leftist movements in the United States?
NT: Yeah, COINTELPRO and some analogous operations were going on at the same time. They really weakened activist groups. They sowed dissent within organizations, discord among members. They broke up families. They encouraged gang warfare on the streets of American cities. It got people killed.
They utilized informants and agent provocateurs. They undermined groups that were trying to bring about social change through democratic means and hurt people that really just wanted to build a better, more inclusive America.
We can talk about the promise of 1960s radicalism and the movement and people trying to bring about social change and how it failed. But, we can’t seriously address those failures if we don’t talk about a sophisticated government campaign that was meant to undermine those groups and destroy those people.
JW: Are we doomed to repeat that history, to repeat that fate of previous leftist movements? Or is there a way for alleged enemies of the state to fight back? Noah, I want to start with you.
NH: Oh, yeah, we’re doomed. [Laughter.] Just kidding. No, I think there are definitely ways to push back on these. The Trump administration has been dealt a number of defeats in various district courts on a number of important policies.
So it’s going to be really important for groups like the SPLC to fight back from a legal basis. We’re also seeing a number of the charges that are being brought against protesters in various cities that have been invaded by ICE fall apart. The Prairieland case in Texas was actually a bit of an outlier. If you look at a lot of the cases, particularly in Chicago and Los Angeles, the charges brought against protesters there, where the rhetoric of terrorism has been used against them by the administration, have often fallen apart because juries see through what the prosecution is saying against them.
“We’re going to keep seeing creative methods used to tamp down on dissent.”
I think that we are early in this administration and we’re going to keep seeing creative methods used to tamp down on dissent. Say what you will about the people around President Trump, but they have proved very adept at finding levers of power and levers of pain to go after their enemies.
The SPLC lawsuit is a really good example of that. I’m sure they knew that these donor-advised funds were going to stop allowing donations there. It’s not just the bad press. It’s not just the legal headaches. There’s all sorts of problems that you kick off when you make an accusation like this in court.
So we are going to continue to see this so-called anti-terrorism carried out against leftist groups. It’s just going to be really important to find creative ways to push back on.
JW: Nick, how does the left survive this?
NT: The only reason that we, the public, that Congress, anyone ever found out about the COINTELPRO program is because a tiny group of academics, a daycare director, and a taxi driver broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, in 1971, stole more than a thousand classified FBI documents, and exposed the FBI’s illegal operations.
The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI, as they called themselves, changed our understanding of how underhanded and unhinged the U.S. government is and can be. And they were just regular people.
I’m not encouraging people to break into an FBI field office, but activists are still smart and committed, and I’m confident they’ll find a way to expose today’s illegality.
I hope and I humbly ask that they send whatever they uncover to The Intercept.
“I’m not encouraging people to break into an FBI field office, but activists are still smart and committed.”
JW: Sounds like we’re going to have a lot more documents to go through. We’re going to leave it there. We go into much more detail about the far-reaching implications of the administration’s counterterrorism strategy beyond what we cover here, so you can check out our story. You can find it at theintercept.com, and we’ll link it in the show notes.
Nick and Noah, thanks for joining me on The Intercept Briefing.
NT: Thanks so much for having us.
NH: Thanks so much.
JW: That does it for this episode.
This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our Managing Editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. William Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.
Slip Stream provided our theme music.
This show and our reporting at The Intercept doesn’t exist without you. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join.
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Until next time, I’m Jessica Washington.
The post “We Will Find You and We Will Kill You” appeared first on The Intercept.
the Trump administration last week unveiled its “2026 Counterterrorism Strategy,” a 16-page collection of threats, grievances, hyperbole, and lies. The memo is a truly foundational document and a striking distillation of Trumpism as an ideology, movement, and system of governance. It also serves as a new declaration of war on the Trump administration’s enemies — foreign and domestic, real and imagined.
The brainchild of National Security Council official Sebastian Gorka, the “Counterterrorism Strategy” weaves together Trump’s war on the wider world — which stretches from interventions and wars in Yemen and Iran to Nigeria and Somalia to Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea — with the administration’s war on dissent at home, which has targeted immigrants, legal observers, activists, protesters, and the press.
Under the guise of protecting America, it takes aim at wide swaths of Americans, putting targets on the backs of the most vulnerable.
The “Counterterrorism Strategy” formalizes a drastic shift in focus for counterterror efforts. Now, according to the Trump administration, the nation is battling three major types of terror groups: “Legacy Islamist Terrorists,” the long-standing focus of America’s counter-terror efforts; “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs”; and “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.”
This last group is defined in the document as people the administration deems to be “anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.” This puts antifa — a fictional foe that is actually a collection of ideas and not an organization — on par with actual terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group, and drug-trafficking syndicates such as the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
The memo makes no mention of right-wing extremist groups, despite rafts of research, from the U.S. government and others, demonstrating that such groups have been responsible for the majority of violent attacks in America in recent years.
Following 9/11, the George W. Bush administration published the first official National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. The 2003 document purported to set “the course for winning the War on Terror,” with a focus on “destroying the larger al-Qaida network,” by defining the threat and laying out big-picture goals and objectives. New strategies have been issued numerous times, over multiple presidencies, since.
“The Trump administration has repurposed the ‘terrorism’ framing and applied it to new boogeymen.”
Explaining the 2026 strategy last week, Gorka leaned into the lies which permeate the Trump administration’s document. “Very simply, it’s common-sense counterterrorism based on reality not fake threats,” he explained. “In the president’s foreword and in chapter one, we make it very clear we will not permit the use of the most powerful national security tools in the world including the counterterrorism enterprise to be used as political weapons.”
Rep. Valerie Foushee, D-N.C., had a very different interpretation, calling the strategy “a plan on how they’re going to attack people on the left,” noting that antifascists are “not a real terrorism threat in the United States.” She added that the effort is “completely corrupt.”
To contextualize the U.S. government’s radical new approach to counterterrorism, The Intercept analyzed the document, highlighting revelatory passages that show how the Trump administration is bringing the war on terror home.
History ultimately judges presidents by their priorities, both deeds and words.
While calling out slavery as the cause of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln still focused his second inaugural address on reconciliation over retribution. “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations,” he pronounced.
On the eve of World War II, as the threat of fascism loomed over the world, President Franklin D. Roosevelt readied a nation for war, not with ferocious rhetoric but by envisioning a new world founded upon the freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. “That is no vision of a distant millennium,” he told Congress on January 6, 1941. “It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.”
These presidents were deeply flawed. Both committed grave injustices, were responsible for immense harm, and neither lived up to their most laudable words. But those words survived for a reason and are now part of the American canon.
For President Donald Trump, the “2026 Counterterrorism Strategy” is as good as any collection of words in defining him. Nothing better illustrates his vision of America’s role in the world than Trump’s capstone quote. He concludes the foreword with words that ring true from the streets of Minneapolis, where federal agents killed U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti during anti-ICE resistance; to a school building in Minab, Iran, where more than 100 children were killed in a U.S. airstrike; to the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, where close to 200 civilians have been killed in attacks on alleged drug boats; and should follow him forever: “We Will Find You and We Will Kill You.”
Under U.S. law, the government can designate “foreign terrorist organizations,” a process that typically entails a formal declaration by the secretary of state at the direction of the president, allowing the Treasury Department to impose financial penalties and the Justice Department to prosecute people for providing “material support” to such groups. Congress has not passed any law creating a domestic terrorism designation, nor is there a standalone crime of “domestic terrorism.”
This has not stopped Trump from aiming the counterterror apparatus at domestic targets in his second term. Under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7, which Trump issued last September, vaguely defined enemies are not only typified by “support for the overthrow of the United States Government,” but also advocacy of opinions clearly protected by the First Amendment including “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” as well as “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
In this document, the Trump administration makes clear it considers any American who it believes has “adopted ideologies antithetical to freedom and the American way of life” to be a terror threat.
“The Trump administration has repurposed the ‘terrorism’ framing and applied it to new boogeymen, like alleged narcos as well as a caricature of their domestic political opposition,” Brian Finucane, a senior adviser for the U.S. Program at the International Crisis Group, told The Intercept.
What’s notable here isn’t just the “major terror groups” included — it’s the type of groups the Trump administration omitted.
“Absurdly, the document incorrectly labels drug cartels, ‘legacy Islamist terrorists,’ and violent left-wing extremists as the top counterterrorism threats — despite years of data proving that right-wing extremism has presented the most persistent and deadly threats to Americans for decades,” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
In fact, a 2025 analysis conducted by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies found that, over the past decade, right-wing extremists carried out 152 attacks in the United States and killed 112 people, compared with 35 attacks and 13 deaths attributed to left-wing militants. Islamist jihadist-inspired attacks resulted in 82 deaths over the same span.
The new “Counterterrorism Strategy” signals a jarring shift in the priorities of the national security apparatus. Instead of having the security state primarily focus on foreign actors and those domestic threats responsible for the most violence in recent years — like white supremacists and violent militias — the president is effectively siccing them on anyone who dares to disagree with him or his supporters.
“This is a very severe degradation of freedom of thought [and] freedom of speech in the country, and it should be raising alarm bells,” said Robert P. Jones, president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute.
“It does look like a very straight blueprint drawn from white evangelical Protestant Christian circles,” said Jones, the author of the forthcoming book “Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy.”“What they call radical ideology is essentially anything that differs from that conservative, white evangelical Protestant worldview.”
By labeling drug-trafficking networks as terrorists, Trump is operating in a long tradition of using the rhetoric of war to refer to an issue that is rooted in public health. The terrorism framing is simply the logical next step in the decadeslong war on drugs that is, more often than not, used as a cudgel by U.S. policymakers to keep Latin American countries in line, said Alexander Aviña, a historian at Arizona State University.
“They’re using drug war counterterrorism as a cover,” Aviña said. “They’re effectively maintaining control over the region through a bunch of proxy right-wing governments, but it’s being framed as counterterrorism, as an anti-drugs operation. The innovation here is that they’re applying war on terror legislation and laws to drug trafficking organizations”
The problem with labeling drug networks as “terrorists,” however, is that the vast majority of drug traffickers differ from organizations like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group in that they have no real membership, and they operate for profit, not to achieve an ideological objective.
Despite Trump’s boasts of his prowess at fighting terrorism, both Al Qaeda and ISIS were the top threats in his 2018 counterterrorism strategy. They are called out specifically in the new document as well.
In fact, Gorka’s inclusion of ISIS directly contradicts longtime claims by Trump. “We defeated ISIS in record time,” Trump said in his 2024 election-night speech. Last year, at his commencement speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he said: “I defeated ISIS in three weeks.”
The idea that Christians, who make up two-thirds of the U.S. population, are under siege is belied by the data. Hate crimes motivated by anti-Christian bias are far rarer than attacks motivated by racism or xenophobia in the United States, and other religious groups are far more likely to report being the victim of a religiously motivated hate crime than Christians. An analysis of 2023 FBI hate crime data found that less than 10 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes were believed to be motivated by anti-Christian bias.
“There’s really no evidence-based reason why a report focused on the domestic front would disproportionately feature violence against Christians. There’s just no evidence that that is the most pressing problem facing us in the United States today,” said PRRI’s Jones.
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing, right-wing influencers and media outlets rapidly spread misinformation about the shooter’s gender identity and supposed “pro-transgender” ideology based on unverified claims about the bullet casings used in the shooting. Trans people are far more likely to be victims of gun violence than perpetrators. In mass shootings carried out between 1966 and 2025, less than 1 percent of the shooters were transgender, according to the Violence Prevention Project. The overwhelming majority of shooters were cisgender men.
“In the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder, news outlets and people with large platforms online raced to share unconfirmed reports that wrongfully tied the LGBTQ+ community to the shooter,” Human Rights Campaign national press secretary Brandon Wolf told The Washington Blade. “Jumping to those conclusions was reckless, irresponsible, and led to a wave of threats against the trans community from right wing influencers, and a wave of terror for the community that is already living scared.”
While Trump has frequently threatened his political opponents in public, experts in extremism told The Intercept that “this kind of language” in a national security document should raise alarm bells. It’s one thing when the president rants about “radical gender ideology” at a rally, said Jones. “But when it gets put into a national presidential security memo, when it gets put into a report that’s led by a task force at the U.S. Department of Justice, and when it’s put into a counterterrorism document … these are laying the legal framework for prosecution.”
This language of “neutralization” in this new strategy harkens back to the FBI’s analogous and infamous COINTELPRO program, which was employed in the 1960s and 1970s to target the civil rights movement, the New Left, and anti-Vietnam War protesters, among other domestic groups and individuals and, according to a 1976 Senate Select Committee report on U.S. intelligence activities, “turn[ed] a law enforcement agency into a law violator.” The FBI, the committee found, “went beyond the collection of intelligence to secret action designed to ‘disrupt’ and ‘neutralize’ target groups and individuals,” using “wartime counterintelligence” techniques that “would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity,” which they were not.
A 1967 FBI memo notes that purpose of this type of “counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” African American groups and leaders. Efforts included “sending anonymous poison-pen letters intended to break up marriages,” “encouraging gang warfare,” “falsely labeling members of a violent group as police informers,” and other means to “cause serious physical, emotional, or economic damage to the targets,” according to the committee. Their investigation found that civil rights leader “Martin Luther King, Jr. was, for instance, the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to ‘neutralize’ him” and that “the man in charge of the FBI’s ‘war’ against Dr. King” said they used the same methods employed against Soviet agents.
Antifa, short for antifascist, is a decentralized, leftist ideology, a collection of related ideas and political concepts much like feminism or environmentalism. Over the last decade, however, Republicans have used it as an omnibus term for left-wing activists — as if it were an organization with members and a command structure. They have increasingly blamed antifa for terrorist violence.
In 2019, during his first term, Trump floated the idea of declaring antifa “a major Organization of Terror,” likening it to the group MS-13, an international criminal gang that originated in the U.S. and that the administration added to the foreign terrorist organization list last year. “The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,” Trump tweeted in 2020, during protests after the police killing of George Floyd.
Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said, however, that antifa was “not a group or an organization” but a “movement or an ideology.” Trump lashed out, calling antifa “well funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS who are protected because the … FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find their funding source.” After Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, Trump blamed “antifa people” for inciting violence.
Finally, last September, Trump signed an executive order designating antifa as a “domestic terror organization.” He followed it by issuing NSPM-7, which directs the Justice Department and elements of the Intelligence Community and national security establishment to target “anti-fascism … movements” and “domestic terrorist organizations.”
On his press tour touting the new strategy, Gorka said “left-wing violent radicals like antifa and the anarchists” were the “most ascendant” terror group and — without evidence — claimed they were “the people who killed our friend Charlie Kirk.” He said these leftists are “people who think that if you don’t agree with them politically, they get to kill you.”
The new document detours to discuss the wrongful detention of Americans abroad. Ironically, the Trump administration has unlawfully detained thousands of people residing in the United States, including those with legal status, targeting everyone from perceived political dissidents to racial and ethnic minorities.
Last year, the Trump administration detained Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk for writing an op-ed, as revealed by legal documents unsealed as a result of litigation from The Intercept and other parties.
Also in 2025, the administration sent Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadoran national with an order preventing his deportation to his country of origin, to CECOT, a prison in El Salvador notorious for human rights abuses. He has since been released to his home in Maryland, but the administration has continued to target him, including with criminal prosecution.
Issued by President James Monroe, the Monroe Doctrine is a foundational principle of U.S. foreign policy opposing any foreign interference in the Western Hemisphere — except by Washington. It’s seen by American nationalists and by modern “America First” Trump ideologues as marking a “golden age” of U.S. power in the region, according to historian Greg Grandin.
“Going back to World War I and World War II, America First nationalists have liked the Monroe Doctrine because they saw it as an alternative to liberal internationalism,” Grandin said. “They were never isolationists, even though that word is often applied to them, because they’ve long claimed the right to intervene and project power in the Western Hemisphere.”
Now, Trump is using the spectre of terror to justify extrajudicial killings of alleged drug traffickers at sea and the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The U.S. military has conducted 58 attacks on so-called drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September 2025, killing more than 190 civilians.
Experts in the laws of war, as well as members of Congress from both parties, say the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians — even suspected criminals — who do not pose an imminent threat of violence.
The assertion that this campaign has resulted “in a more than 90% decrease in maritime drug smuggling” into the U.S. slightly tempers similarly outlandish and false figures from Trump, who regularly claims that “drugs entering our country by sea are down 97 percent.” Experts say these claims are meant to deceive the American people. “It wouldn’t be the first time this administration just made up something out of whole cloth,” Sanho Tree, the director of the Drug Policy Project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, told The Intercept.
Even the Pentagon’s own figures refute Trump’s numbers. “He’s trying to imply that 97 percent of the cocaine that left South America by boat headed to the United States has been stopped,” said Rear Adm. William Baumgartner, the former commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District, who oversaw drug-interdiction operations in the Southeast U.S. and the Caribbean Basin. “That’s not true and is contradicted by the administration’s own statements.” Acting Assistant Secretary of War for Homeland Defense and Americas Security Affairs Joseph Humire, for example, offered completely different numbers to Congress, telling the House Armed Services Committee in March that there “has been a 20 percent reduction of movements of drug vessels in the Caribbean and an additional 25 percent reduction in the Eastern Pacific.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen an attempt by the administration to enshrine a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, with the term also appearing in the administration’s national security strategy document in December. But it’s not entirely clear what, precisely, this corollary means, said Aviña, the historian.
“It’s supposed to be an addition to the Monroe Doctrine, but we don’t get a very precise definition of what that is,” said Aviña. “It harkens back to the Roosevelt Corollary, but Teddy Roosevelt was very clear about what his addition was: international police power.” Trump makes no claim to a new power. “So Trump is working in that tradition, but in a weird and imprecise way.”
The loosened rules of engagement during Trump’s first term had a profound effect across the Middle East and Africa. Attacks in Somalia tripled after Trump relaxed targeting principles, while U.S. military and independent estimates of civilian casualties across U.S. war zones spiked. The U.S. conducted 219 declared attacks in Somalia during Trump’s single term in the White House, a more than 329 percent increase over the eight years of the Obama presidency. Trump is already on the cusp of eclipsing those numbers in less than a year and half. Since taking office last year, Trump has overseen at least 190 attacks in Somalia.
A review of Trump-era rules by the Biden administration found that, in some countries, “operating principles,” including a “near certainty” that civilians would “not be injured or killed in the course of operations,” were reportedly enforced only for women and children, while a lower standard applied to civilian adult men. All military-age males were considered legitimate targets if they were observed with suspected al-Shabab members in the group’s territory, Donald Bolduc, who led Special Operations Command Africa at the time, told The Intercept.
A 2023 investigation by The Intercept found that Trump’s directive contributed to a particularly disastrous attack in Somalia that killed at least three — and possibly five — civilians, including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter, Mariam Shilow Muse. The mother and child survived the initial strike but were killed by a double-tap attack as they fled for their lives. “They know innocent people were killed, but they’ve never told us a reason or apologized,” said Abdi Dahir Mohamed, one of Luul’s brothers. “No one has been held accountable.”
The document employs its section on Europe to shamelessly promote racism, white nationalism, and Christian supremacy employing a stilted worldview that ignores the U.S. role in the immigration it rails against.
“Trump officials are clearly weaponizing anti-Muslim bigotry in their campaign to heap pressure on Europe. They are baselessly insinuating that European policies that welcomed migrants — who largely fled their home countries due to the impact of U.S. backed wars and regime changes — created an incubator for terrorism,” Erik Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, told The Intercept. “At the same time, however, the White House continues to implement the exact kind of violent, interventionist policies that drove mass migration and generated extremism in the first place.”
“There is this kind of praising of Western culture and values, the denigration of ‘alien cultures,’” said Jones. “What’s behind those is really a sense of European superiority, and that gets translated into the U.S. in racial terms. So it really is a white Christian worldview here that’s being projected and protected.”
Experts on white supremacy and Christian nationalism told The Intercept that the Trump administration is spreading misinformation about a Christian genocide in Africa in order to stoke white Christian nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiments at home. “In Nigeria, it’s genocide against Christians, and in South Africa, it’s the supposed genocide against these white Afrikaners,” Christine Reyna, a professor of psychology at DePaul University, told The Intercept. “And so in absence of an actual genocide in the United States against either of these two groups, you can keep that narrative of that existential fear of extermination and genocide and oppression that is alive and well within a certain subset of white Americans.”
In addition to using the conflicts in Africa to spread propaganda domestically, experts on Christian nationalism tell The Intercept that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth believes in waging war to achieve Christian supremacy abroad, without respect to international laws or norms. “Hegseth believes that he is carrying out a spiritual and actual war to vanquish a Christian nation’s enemies and protect and promote a Christian nation,” Sarah Posner, an investigative journalist covering the Christian right, said on The Intercept Briefing podcast. “For Hegseth, biblical law is the only law he feels obligated to obey. The law of war, international law governing military conflicts, and human rights and civilian rights in war — he believes don’t apply to him.”
While Christians have been the victims of violence in Nigeria, they have not been the primary target, and experts overwhelmingly reject the idea that a Christian genocide is occurring in that country. Research from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, an independent global monitor of conflict and protest data, found that of the 1,923 attacks on civilians in Nigeria that occurred as of November of last year; 50 of those attacks targeted Christians because of their religion. According to experts, the majority of the violence has focused on land disputes.
Trump’s Christmas Day attack was another in a long string of failed and futile U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Africa documented by The Intercept over the last decade This includes blowback from U.S. operations and failed secret wars, civilians killed in drone strikes, coups by U.S. trained officers, increases in the reach of terror groups, surging fatalities from militant violence, human rights abuses by allies, massacres of civilians by partner forces, and a catalogue of other fiascos.
The document casts Trump’s strategy as a departure from the failed forever war interventions of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. But Sarah Harrison — who served as an associate general counsel at the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel, International Affairs, where she oversaw the Africa portfolio, and as counsel to the deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs — sees little difference. “Setting aside the bombast about protecting Christians, the fundamentals of Trump’s Africa CT policy isn’t that distinct from his predecessors: a light military footprint to facilitate intel sharing and drone strikes with an emphasis on supporting the partner nation. These policies fail because they ignore the drivers of conflict and refuse to acknowledge the need for a political solution,” she told The Intercept.
The U.S. government’s own statistics bear out this record of futility and failure. Throughout all of Africa, the State Department counted 23 deaths from terrorist violence in 2002 and 2003, as U.S. counterterrorism efforts began to ramp up on the continent in the wake of 9/11. Last year, there were 22,307 fatalities from militant Islamist violence in Africa, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. This represents an almost 97,000 percent increase since the early 2000s, with the areas of greatest U.S. involvement — Somalia and the West African Sahel — suffering the worst outcomes.
The document ends as it began, with unserious bombast that reads like little more than AI slop fashioned from administration talking points. Evoking the administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy, which called for a restoration of “Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity,” the Trump administration appears to be making up for its own insecurities with claims that the president has restored America’s “civilizational confidence” through a baptism of fire. In reality, the document projects a heady blend of weakness and anxiety and espouses a counterterrorism strategy akin to a 12-year-old boy’s vision of foreign policy: boasts about killing one’s way to victory.
In a post-release media tour where he spoke with MAGA outlets and administration sycophants, Gorka expressed amazement at how little negative reporting there was about the new counterterrorism strategy. “Even the left, they’re so on their heels. I did a kind of press call when we released the strategy,” said Gorka. “Fifty articles were written. … Only one of them … was even slightly negative.” (The Intercept’s invite must have been lost in the mail.) He continued: “We are moving so fast, they just can’t keep up with us — which is delicious.” His interviewer, Dean Cain, best known for playing second fiddle in “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” responded, “That’s wonderful.”
“If the U.S. government counterterrorism enterprise hadn’t jumped the shark before, it certainly has now,” said Finucane. “The administration has repurposed the terrorism framing and applied it not only to alleged narcos but also perceived domestic political opponents — as we saw with the way the administration baselessly smeared Renee Good and Alex Pretti as ‘terrorists’ after gunning them down. The whole situation would be much funnier if the Trump administration wasn’t currently engaged in a lawless killing spree under the guise of ‘counterterrorism.’”
The post How Trump’s New Counterterrorism Strategy Puts You at Risk appeared first on The Intercept.
President Donald Trump on multiple occasions has assured the public that high gasoline prices will “rapidly” or “quickly” decline “as soon as” the war with Iran ends. Energy experts told us that prices will start to fall when the conflict is resolved, but it could take many months before the national average price is back to where it was before the conflict began.
“For pre-war prices to show up, it could take beyond a year,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for the fuel-price tracking service GasBuddy, said in an interview. But he told us that there are “a lot of different potential” outcomes depending on what happens when the war ends.
The average U.S. price for regular grade gasoline was $4.50 per gallon as of the week ending May 11, according to the Energy Information Administration. That was up $1.56, or 53%, from the average price of $2.94 during the week ending Feb. 23 – which was five days before the U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran.
Gasoline prices spiked after Iran responded to the joint attack by blocking the Strait of Hormuz – a vital waterway in the Middle East for trade – stopping the vast majority of crude oil exports from the Persian Gulf region. About 20 million barrels of oil and oil products were exported through the strait per day in 2025, which was about one-quarter of global seaborne oil trade, according to the International Energy Agency.
The reduced supply caused oil prices to increase, and that led to the rise in gasoline prices, since the cost of oil makes up about half of what drivers pay at the pump. Because it’s a global oil market, “if something goes wrong anywhere, the price goes up everywhere,” Mark Finley, a nonresident fellow in energy and global oil at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told us in March.
But Trump has said repeatedly that gasoline prices will fall fast when the war concludes.
“As soon as it’s over, you’re going to see gasoline and oil drop like a rock,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on May 11.
About a week before that, on May 1, during a Florida event for seniors, Trump said that “it’s going to come down lower than it was,” referring to the price of gasoline. “When all of that stuff comes out,” he said, mentioning “pent up” oil in the Strait of Hormuz, “you’re going to see prices dropping on gasoline like you’ve never seen.”
The same day, at another event in Florida, the president said the price of gasoline will “snap back” in the end. “I believe it will snap back very, very quickly,” he said.
And Trump isn’t the only person in his administration to make such a claim.
On May 4, in an interview with Fox News, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he is “also confident” that gasoline prices are “going to come down very quickly” at the end of the conflict with Iran. “This gasoline — this temporary aberration — will be over in a matter of weeks or a month,” he said.
Experts told us it’s difficult to predict exactly what will happen in the long run. But they said it could be months, plural, before motorists see substantial price relief at the pump. Getting back to pre-war prices would take longer than Trump’s and Bessent’s remarks suggest, they said.
“When the strait opens in a meaningful way, it would likely have a fairly quick impact to start pushing prices down,” De Haan said, adding that price decreases will depend on how quickly oil tankers resume transporting shipments through the strait to increase the global supply.
“It’s very contingent on how much oil starts getting through the strait, whether it’s all or nothing,” he said. “But it’s going to take several weeks for those ships to reach destinations once it becomes open. So, at best, it’s probably going to still be two to three weeks before the flows of oil can normalize. So, at least several weeks, and potentially beyond that.”
“If the strait were to reopen today,” he said, “it would probably be early June until ships started going in and out,” and “it could be until July for some of those cargoes to start getting to the market.”
De Haan told us he was reluctant to make specific price predictions because of the uncertainty of the situation. But he did say that a return to average gasoline prices at less than $3 per gallon in the immediate future seems doubtful.
“Beyond the big drop, the initial big drop, it could take quite a bit longer for gas prices to more noticeably get back to like pre-war levels,” he said. “That’s going to take quite a bit of time, and the longer the situation goes on, the more time that could end up taking.”
Abhi Rajendran, a nonresident fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy and the director of Oil Markets Research at Energy Intelligence, largely agreed.
“Should the conflict actually find some path to resolution, then I think prices could come down,” he said. But how fast that happens is another matter.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be quick and look like before-the-conflict prices were,” Rajendran said. He said he doesn’t see $3 per gallon gasoline “anytime soon,” even if the conflict ends, because “there’s still damage that’s been done to the supply side and to inventory, and that’s going to be felt for a little while.”
After a while, Rajendran said, he could see gasoline prices settling at between $3.25 a gallon and $3.50 a gallon, which is “higher than they were before the conflict.”
Meanwhile, Tom Kloza, chief energy adviser for Gulf Oil, predicted that prices in many states could be “back in the $3-$3.50/gal neighborhood” in the final 100 days of the calendar year, when he said “gasoline prices almost always drop” because “demand slumps and the formula for motor fuel changes.”
However, that projection could change, he said in an email to us, if the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz continues, or if a strong hurricane hits the Gulf of Mexico, which would “lengthen the $4-$4.75/gal pricing backdrop.”
“What happens between now and Labor Day is tougher” to forecast, he said.
Back on April 16, in an interview with CNN, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said prices would “certainly” decline after the conflict with Iran ends. But he was less sure about when the average price would again be below $3 a gallon.
“That could happen later this year,” or “that might not happen until next year,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
But one day before that, in an April 15 press briefing from the White House, Bessent, Wright’s fellow Cabinet secretary, said he was “optimistic” that “we can have $3 gas again” this year, between June 20 and Sept. 20.
Skip York, another nonresident fellow in energy and global oil at Rice’s Baker Institute, told us that, like Wright, he believes $3 gasoline may not happen until next year.
“[R]eturning to $3/gal gas looks like more [of] a 2027 resolution,” he said in an email, in which he listed several reasons prices often “[go] up like a rocket, but down like a feather.”
York said when wholesale gasoline prices rise, “retailers raise pump prices immediately to cover the expected cost of replacing inventory.” When wholesale prices come down, however, “retailers may still be selling higher‑cost inventory and wait for cheaper supplies before cutting prices.”
In addition, he said, “Retailers often wait for a sustained downward trend before reducing prices because a quick cut could force them to raise prices again if wholesale costs rebound.”
Market behavior and competition is also a factor. “Drivers tend to more actively shop when prices rise but less as they fall; that reduces competitive pressure to cut prices quickly,” he said.
Finally, York added, abrupt supply shocks, such as geopolitical events and refinery outages, “cause fast price increases driven by consumer fears of shortages,” while easing those risks and rebuilding inventories “takes time, so declines are more gradual.”
As of May 14, the war with Iran had gone on for 75 days, which is much longer than the “four to five weeks” that Trump initially said he intended for it to last.
With the U.S. so far being unable to reach a deal with Iran to end the conflict, and having a ceasefire agreement with Iran that is on “massive life support,” as Trump said on May 11, the president has proposed temporarily suspending the federal tax on gasoline.
That would reduce gasoline prices by about 18.4 cents per gallon and prices for diesel by about 24.4 cents per gallon. But that plan would also require approval from Congress, and it is not yet clear if there is enough bipartisan support to make that a law.
Furthermore, the experts said, eliminating the gasoline tax, even temporarily, could help keep prices more elevated than they otherwise would be.
“While relieving the gasoline tax would lower pump prices, that lower price also would encourage more consumption, meaning it would take longer to rebuild inventory,” York said. “If a policy doesn’t improve supply availability, it doesn’t really help restore physical fundamentals back to pre-conflict levels.”
De Haan also said that the plan for a federal gasoline tax holiday “could actually stimulate demand,” which would add to the imbalance between demand and supply and “could send prices higher.”
In a May 11 floor speech criticizing Trump on Iran, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that “Senate Democrats will support real action to lower costs.” But he said a decrease of 18 cents per gallon is hardly enough.
“Eighteen cents isn’t a dollar fifty, which is how much the price of gas has gone up since this war started,” he said. “Americans don’t need just a few cents back.” He said the “best way to lower costs” was to end the war.
Schumer said, “Trump could end this war tomorrow and prices would plummet by far more than 18 cents a gallon.”
But, as we explained, while experts have said that the price of gasoline will likely start going down not long after the war ends, it is less likely that the price will “plummet” as quickly as Schumer suggested.
In its Short-Term Energy Outlook for May, the EIA projected that the average retail price for gasoline will be $3.88 for 2026 and $3.62 for 2027. That’s up from the average prices the agency projected in early February – before the war began — which were $2.91 in 2026 and $2.93 in 2027.
In its May analysis, the EIA said its most recent price projections assume that the Strait of Hormuz “will remain effectively closed through late May, with flows slowly starting to resume in late May or early June.” If that happens, the agency said it expects it will take “until late 2026 or early 2027 for most pre-conflict production and trade patterns to resume.”
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The EU’s Digital Markets Act has been in effect for a mere two years, but despite all the obstructionism, malicious compliance, and steady stream of lies from US tech companies and Apple in particular, it seems this rather basic consumer protection legislation is already bearing fruit.
In a two-year review report on the DMA, the European Commission notes that alternative browser usage has soared, data portability solutions are spreading, alternative application stores are growing, and much more. On top of that, end users can now opt out of companies combining various data sources for profiling, and a “significant share” of EU users have apparently done so. Furthermore, end users in the EU can now remove preinstalled applications (whereas American users cannot) and they can download their data from big technology companies and authorise other companies to use that data.
Mozilla published a blog post detailing how it has profited from the Digital Markets Act, and it ain’t no peanuts: every ten seconds, someone on iOS chooses Firefox on iOS’ browser choice screen, which amounts to more than six million Firefox users on iOS. They also tend to stick with Firefox on iOS, as retention is five times higher when this browser is chosen through a browser choice screen.
Academic analysis points the same way. Independent researchers compared Firefox daily active users in the EU with 43 non-EU countries. Comparing the 15 months before and after browser choice screens rolled out on iOS, they found that Firefox daily active users (DAU) were 113% higher in the EU than it would have been without the DMA. On Android, it was 12% higher. The smaller Android effect is due to the fact that Firefox usage there started from a much higher base, and the Android rollout has been more uneven than on iOS. The research also shows that the DMA’s effect is growing over time.
↫ Gemma Petrie and Tasos Stampelos on the Mozilla blog
Both the underlying data in the EC report and the data Mozilla provides indicates that the Digital Markets Act is having real and tangible effects, for end users, developers, and companies alike. The neverending barrage of anti-EU and anti-DMA propaganda from Apple, the US government, and their PR attack dogs seems to have been weirdly justified, from the American perspective: basic consumer protection legislation does, indeed, work to lessen the stranglehold major technology companies have on our lives.
And considering just NVIDIA’s market cap alone is now equal to more than 17% of the United States’ GDP, it makes sense the Americans are unhappy with the DMA. That’s going to make one hell of a sound when it pops.
Q: Has President Trump asked for a billion dollars for the ballroom?
A: Since the White House announced plans in July for a ballroom, the president has promised to fund its construction without using public money. But in May congressional Republicans proposed $1 billion in federal funding for “security adjustments and upgrades” including at the White House and the ballroom site.
President Donald Trump has claimed that the new White House ballroom would be privately funded, using “not one dime of government money.” But Republicans in Congress have proposed $1 billion in public funds for “security” features, prompting criticism from Democrats that this means taxpayers are paying for the ballroom.
The White House has said the congressional proposal is strictly for security elements, not the ballroom itself.
When Trump first began touting the project shortly after he took office in 2025, he said he would foot the bill himself. When it was officially announced on July 31 at an estimated cost of $200 million, the president answered a question from a reporter about the source of the funding, saying, “It’s a private thing, yeah, I’ll do it, and we’ll probably have some donors or whatever.”
The press release for the project said, “President Trump, and other patriot donors, have generously committed to donating the funds necessary to build this approximately $200 million dollar structure. The United States Secret Service will provide the necessary security enhancements and modifications.”
As recently as late March, when the estimated cost had doubled to $400 million, the president maintained that it would be donor-funded, saying, “This is taxpayer-free. We have no taxpayer putting up 10 cents.”
But following the April 25 shooting during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, some congressional Republicans cited security concerns and proposed public funding for the project, arguing that the White House needs to have a secure facility for hosting large events.
“If this is not a wake-up call, what would be?” Sen. Lindsey Graham said on April 27, referring to the shooting, while announcing legislation that would authorize $400 million to build the ballroom and fund a military installation below it. (More on that later.)
A week later, Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, announced a proposed $1 billion for the Secret Service to provide “security adjustments and upgrades, including within the perimeter fence of the White House Compound to support enhancements … relating to the East Wing Modernization Project, including above-ground and below-ground security features.” The ballroom is replacing the East Wing.
The funding was part of a $72 billion plan to fund the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement through 2029 without Democratic support. It followed a record-breaking partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that hinged on Democrats’ demands for changes to immigration enforcement policies after agents killed two U.S. citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Democrats panned the proposal, with Rep. Jared Huffman of California saying, “They’re sending Trump $1 billion to build a gilded room for their balls,” and Rep. Susie Lee of Nevada saying, “The economy in NV is tanking, gas prices are going through the roof … and Republicans are throwing down $1 Billion for Trump’s ballroom.” Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland wrote on X on May 5, “Trump said, ‘Not one penny is being used from the federal government’ to fund his ballroom boondoggle. True, in the sense that $1 billion is a lot more than one penny!”
In a meeting on May 12, the Secret Service chief reportedly told Republican lawmakers that only $220 million of the $1 billion proposal would be used to fortify the ballroom with bulletproof glass, drone detection equipment, chemical filtration systems and other security elements. The rest would be used for training and security measures elsewhere, as a DHS spokesperson also told us in a statement.
Both the White House and Grassley’s office have responded to the criticism by pointing to language specifying that the $1 billion allocation would cover only “security”-related features. “None of the funds made available under this section may be used for non-security elements of the East Wing Modernization Project,” the legislation reads. We asked Grassley’s office for further details on what might qualify as a security feature, but we didn’t get an answer to that question.
Instead, we were provided a statement attributable to a Senate Judiciary Committee spokesperson that said, “The reconciliation text speaks for itself, providing funds for critical security enhancements to ensure Secret Service can fulfill their duties of securing the White House, protecting the President, members of the administration and White House visitors, and supporting broader public safety for designated events like America 250 and the World Cup.”
Likewise, a White House spokesman said, “The Ballroom will still be paid for with the private funds raised. The reconciliation package introduced was funds for DHS and USSS to better secure the WH complex.”
Here’s what we know so far about the project.
The Trump administration began demolition of the East Wing of the White House in October to make way for what it has described as a 90,000 square-foot ballroom that can seat 650 people, although the president has said that it will have a capacity of 999.
The move drew condemnation from some architectural and historical organizations, prompting a lawsuit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In March, the federal judge handling that case ordered that construction of the ballroom should stop until plans receive authorization from Congress, although he allowed for the continuation of construction “necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House.” The administration has appealed.
Another lawsuit brought against the administration revealed in April the funding agreement for the project. The agreement cited a comprehensive design plan for the White House complex that the National Park Service published in 2000 after about a decade of research, planning and public comment.
That design plan “identified the need for expanded event space to address growing visitor demand and provide a venue suitable for significant events,” the funding agreement said.
That’s true, but nowhere in the plan does it suggest a ballroom to replace the East Wing of the White House. Rather, it emphasized the importance of maintaining the existing structure of the White House complex and recommended expanding space underground, including a new meeting and conference space near the West Wing that could accommodate up to 200 people. It also recommended building a special events plaza in the ellipse on the south side of the White House.
As for the donors who have contributed to the fund to build the ballroom, a reporter asked on May 7 for a list and Trump responded, “I have no problem with it. You’re not supposed to because it’s done under a way where you don’t have to do that, but I have no problem. They’re unbelievable people. These are great patriots.”
In October, the White House released a list that included both companies — such as Amazon and Meta — and individuals — such as the Winklevoss twins, who had accused Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea to build Facebook and now run a cryptocurrency exchange, and Stephen A. Schwarzman, CEO of alternative investment firm Blackstone. The list didn’t include any dollar amounts for donations to the ballroom. Trump, himself, was not listed among the donors.
In March, Trump began speaking more about the military’s involvement in the project.
“The military wanted it more than anybody,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on March 26.
Three days later, he said, “There’s not one dime of government money going into the ballroom,” but he immediately added that “the military’s building a massive complex under the ballroom, and that’s under construction and we’re doing very well.” He described the ballroom as a “shed” over the subterranean military installation. “Everything’s drone-proof and bulletproof.”
There isn’t much publicly available information about plans for the new installation or the former bunker under the East Wing, which was built during World War II and has been updated over the years. “Known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), it can become a command center for the president as needed,” the White House Historical Association wrote in a 2024 social media post. “For example, after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush and his team spent time in the PEOC.”
Trump was also taken to the bunker during his first term, amid protests following the death of George Floyd in 2020. He described the visit as an “inspection.”
The cost of construction for the new bunker and other security elements — which Trump has said would include “bomb shelters” and “very major medical facilities” — is also unclear.
But Trump said on May 7 that the $400 million he’s promised to collect in donations will pay for “the ballroom section of the ballroom,” while the $1 billion proposed in the reconciliation bill is “for projects having to do with safety … in a certain section of the White House grounds. That’s not all for the ballroom.”
We asked both the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, if they were paying for any of the construction. The Defense Department didn’t respond.
A DHS spokesperson provided this statement: “The $1 billion in funding included in the reconciliation bill will assist the United States Secret Service in delivering critical security upgrades at the White House to minimize threats, including, but not limited to, the security components of the East Wing Modernization Project, which will afford needed protection for the President, his family, and visitors, along with additional security functions. This hardening of the White House complex is long overdue, especially in today’s heightened threat environment. A majority of the money provided by the bill will fund other core critical missions for the USSS such as training, money for the Special Operations Division, and increased security measures to ensure safety at multiple upcoming events of national significance.”
Update, May 18: The Senate parliamentarian — a nonpartisan professional position that assists in applying legislative rules — found that the $1 billion in funding couldn’t be included in a budget reconciliation bill, Democrats announced on May 16. Reconciliation bills can be passed with only a simple majority. But a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader John Thune indicated in a social media post that Republicans would redraft that provision.
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In an escalation of its efforts to criminalize and eradicate trans healthcare, Donald Trump’s administration has sent its first known criminal subpoenas to hospitals that have provided gender-affirming care for young trans people.
New York University Langone received a criminal grand jury subpoena last week from the US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas demanding information about teens who received care from the hospital’s now-shuttered trans youth health program, as well as information on the medical staff who provided that care.
In accordance with a New York state shield law, the hospital posted a public notice to inform affected patients. The notice also said “several” other institutions had received similar subpoenas, which the hospital said demands “information pertaining to patients under the age of 18 who received gender affirming care” between 2020 and 2026.
Previous administrative subpoenas for confidential patient information have been reliably quashed in courts around the country as blatantly unconstitutional, illegal intrusions into patient privacy. So far, these have been related only to civil investigations. The Langone subpoena means that the federal government has now launched a criminal investigation into trans youth healthcare providers, and in Northern Texas, a judicial district prone to extreme, right-wing decisions.
What we do know for certain is that resisting every government demand here is the only acceptable path forward.
It appears that providers, not the trans patients or their guardians, are the target of the criminal investigation. Since federal grand juries are the black boxes of the criminal legal system, little information is available about the details of the case. It is not even publicly known what charges the prosecutors could be pursuing. The subpoena demands sweeping information including medical records relating to any patients under 18 who received gender-affirming treatments, including puberty blockers, hormone treatments, or any other “clinical services.” What we do know for certain is that resisting every government demand here is the only acceptable path forward.
When it comes to healthcare providers, New York’s Shield Law is specifically in place as a protection from out-of-state prosecution. But the law has not yet been robustly tested against a federal case.
“The hospital may try to fight the subpoena, in whole or in part, in court — but because the federal government is strategically pursuing the case in one of the most conservative courts in the country, Langone faces an uphill battle,” S. Baum wrote in the trans news and advocacy site Erin in the Morning. “This round of litigation could also put the efficacy of Shield Laws to the test.”
The Justice Department’s aim, whether or not the grand jury leads to prosecutions, is to further intimidate and harass healthcare providers and hospital administrators nationwide into preemptively ending services for trans young people. Many institutions, including NYU Langone, have already complied and stopped providing such care. Convening the grand jury is yet another direct and immediate attack on trans kids and adults, and a threat to bodily autonomy and medical confidentiality more broadly.
We also know by now that the Constitution or our country’s laws are no constraint on the Trump administration. Prosecutors and lawmakers will continue to throw everything they can against the wall until something sticks to establish a new political-legal reality — one usually achieved after a case winds its way up to a favorable federal judge, and eventually the far-right Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, NYU Langone has shown itself to be an easy target. In response to threats from the federal government last year to withhold funding, the hospital ended its Transgender Youth Health Program. Despite the fact that a federal court in April ruled that the government cannot withhold funding over trans healthcare provision, more than 40 hospital systems have stopped providing necessary medical care to trans youth based on the Trump regime’s threats.
The fact that Langone already bent to Trump’s demands by shuttering the program but is still facing a potential criminal probe only proves the folly of compliance. Should the hospital, or any other hospital system, supply federal prosecutors with patient’s or worker’s personal information, patients would be well within their rights to sue for HIPAA violations and potentially even civil rights violations given the discriminatory nature of the request. Patients and their families can also file a motion against the subpoena — a precedent that has been set when it comes to administrative subpoenas asking for trans patients’ information.
“If you capitulate, you’ve actually opened yourself up to liability for selling out your constituents.”
Earlier this year, for example, the families of six trans teens who had received treatment at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles filed a motion to quash an administrative subpoena on behalf of themselves and more than 3,000 other transgender youth patients and families whose identities and private medical information the subpoena demanded. A settlement was reached, in which the government withdrew the subpoena requests seeking patient-identifying information and instructed Children’s Hospital to redact all such information from any documents produced.
Meanwhile, a federal judge in the Northern District of Texas — from the same district where the criminal grand jury is empanelled — ruled earlier this month that Rhode Island Hospital in Providence must comply with a Justice Department administrative subpoena for trans youth patient information, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and medical records. In response, the Rhode Island Office of Child Advocate filed an emergency motion to quash the request. In a hearing over the motion in a Providence court, U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy slammed the Justice Department for conducting a “fishing expedition” by seeking medical records and patient information in a scrambling effort to criminalize healthcare provision; she also said the case was quite clearly “shopped” to Texas.
For institutions and individuals, the stakes for resisting a criminal grand jury subpoena are higher. Individuals can be jailed and fined for the length of the grand jury in order to compel them to testify, and institutions can be slapped with hefty fines. But the consequences of giving in are graver still: Hospitals that capitulate to these demands could be subject to costly patient class action over privacy and rights violations. Institutions that hand over information are also aiding the potential criminal prosecution of medical care providers — an attack on the entire medical profession.
“If NYU Langone and other providers turn the confidential data of their patients over to the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for Northern Texas, everyone’s privacy, everyone’s healthcare, everyone’s civil rights are compromised,” Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller and congressional candidate, wrote on Bluesky.
In March, a federal court ruled that a case brought by Columbia University students could proceed against the university. The lawsuit argues the university became a “third-party collaborator” in unconstitutional actions when it supplied the names and disciplinary records of students involved in Palestine solidarity organizing. The court determined Columbia could be found liable as a “state actor” for acting under government coercion to suppress student speech. Students and civil rights advocates sued the school for handing over student information in response to a congressional subpoena. While a civil, rather than a criminal, case, the finding should make institutions reflect on their readiness to comply with discriminatory and unconstitutional requests from this administration.
“If the calculus before was that it’s better to comply with the federal government because it is either face saving or economically saving for these private institutions, now there’s the counterbalance: If you capitulate, you’ve actually opened yourself up to liability for selling out your constituents,” civil rights attorney and CUNY law professor Zal Shroff, who is representing plaintiffs in the case against Columbia, told me.
Given that a federal grand jury subpoena is itself explicitly coercive, it’s unclear whether exactly the same legal claim could be made against NYU should it comply with the government’s demands. Shroff noted, “It may be that they are seeking to use the criminal process to avoid what has been found in the civil process,” but that nonetheless, “legal consequences work in multiple ways” when it comes to people’s ability to challenge private entities for their compliance with the administration’s harms. Continued complicity with Trump’s regime, however, has a known result.
“NYU caved and ended care and they’re still being hit with a grand jury subpoena. It’s incredibly clear that no amount of preemptive compliance will stop this attack,” Harvard Law instructor Alejandra Caraballo wrote on Bluesky. “You either fight or you will be destroyed by this administration. Caving will not save you.”
The post DOJ Escalates War on Trans Youth Healthcare With Criminal Subpoenas appeared first on The Intercept.
After nine execution dates, three last meals, and a Supreme Court ruling in his favor, Richard Glossip should soon walk free.
In conversation with Sir Michael Moritz 25 June 2026 — 17:00 TO 18:00 BST Anonymous (not verified) Chatham House
Sir Michael Moritz, one of the most influential figures in modern technology and investment, for a discussion with Bronwen Maddox, Chatham House Director and CEO, about his latest book Ausländer.
Sir Michael Moritz, one of the most influential figures in modern technology and investment, for a discussion with Bronwen Maddox, Chatham House Director and CEO, about his latest book Ausländer.Born in Wales to Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, Michael Moritz began his career as a journalist for Time, where he wrote the first definitive history of Apple, before joining Sequoia Capital in 1986. Over nearly four decades, he orchestrated some of the era-defining investments in Silicon Valley, including Google, Yahoo, PayPal, Stripe and Klarna. Now a leading philanthropist through his foundation Crankstart and knighted for his services to the economy and charity, he remains a singular voice on global business, history and social responsibility.
In Ausländer, spurred by the discovery of papers after his mother’s death, he traces his family’s journey of escape and exile from the Holocaust – and the fate of those detained and murdered in those years. The book offers a raw and reflective exploration of identity, migration, fear and belonging, and the experience of being Jewish over the past century. Moving from the trauma of 1930s Germany to the Welsh valleys and eventually the boardrooms of California, Ausländer is an exploration of the shadow that ‘outsider’ status casts across generations and an assertion of the fragility of security.
The discussion takes place against a background of deep concern about antisemitism in the UK and ways of combating it. Following the terrorist attack in Golders Green in London, the UK raised its national terrorism threat level to “severe”. In Ausländer, Moritz asserts that “almost every day there is something that [President Donald] Trump does which makes me think of the past” and that he had applied for German citizenship; he ruled out the UK, saying to the BBC he believed that Britain was an uncomfortable place for Jews today.
Chaired by Bronwen Maddox, Chatham House’s CEO and Director, this conversation will explore how the lessons of Moritz’s family history should inform our understanding of this contemporary crisis and what must be done to protect the principles of a pluralistic society.’
The leading progressive candidate to replace longtime Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi in Congress is opposing a pair of wealth taxes on the ballot in his state and district: a one-time statewide tax on California billionaires and a local San Francisco tax on the city’s wealthiest businesses and corporations.
California state Sen. Scott Wiener’s opposition might seem uncharacteristic for someone running a progressive campaign, but it’s consistent with the priorities of two top donors to a super PAC backing his candidacy.
Crypto mogul Chris Larsen and venture capitalist Garry Tan — a pair of wealthy Bay Area tech executives funding a pro-Wiener super PAC called Abundant Future — have been outspoken advocates of stopping the taxes, both of which aim to help fill funding gaps in healthcare and social services after the Trump administration’s recent cuts to Medicaid. Larsen has poured millions of dollars into the fight.
The statewide tax, known as the Billionaire Tax Act, would levy a one-time 5 percent tax on the state’s billionaires’ wealth and assets. The local San Francisco proposition, colloquially known as the Overpaid CEO tax, would tax companies whose CEO makes 100 times more than their median worker, which mostly applies to companies with billionaire CEOs. Both will likely be on the ballot in November, as Wiener also hopes to be.
Larsen, the billionaire co-founder and executive chairman of the blockchain service Ripple Labs and now a mainstay in Bay Area political funding, has donated $100,000 to the PAC backing Wiener — the most of any individual donor — and $700,000 opposing the Overpaid CEO tax, according to federal and San Francisco city records. He’s spent far more fighting the statewide billionaires’ tax, sinking $5 million of his own wealth and another $5 million from Ripple into the Golden State Promise PAC, an anti-tax PAC he founded, per state records. Larsen gave an additional $2.5 million to a separate anti-billionaire tax group, Building a Better California, founded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. (Brin has reportedly already left the state to avoid the tax.)
Tan, the CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator, has less money to throw around, but he’s made vocal opposition to the tax measures a key part of his brand. He frequently invokes the specter of billionaires and startups fleeing the state and spreads claims that the statewide tax would mean Google’s founders would owe 50 percent of their stocks, which the tax’s backers have dismissed as false. He’s contributed $25,000 to Abundant Future.
Larsen and Tan likely see their support as “political investments that they expect a return on,” said Jeremy Mack, executive director of Phoenix Project, which tracks corporate spending in San Francisco politics. Wiener owes much of his political strength to the donors who have boosted his housing causes during his state Senate career, including Larsen and Tan. With those backers now animated against the wealth taxes, Mack said that supporting them would be “political suicide” for Wiener.
But Wiener’s opposition to the taxes positions him against the political currents now driving the Democratic Party’s progressive wing. California’s major labor unions, a supermajority of San Francisco’s board of supervisors, and national progressive leaders like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., all support the pair of taxes. Even Pelosi, Wiener’s would-be predecessor and a known moderate, is in favor of the local San Francisco tax. SEIU California, one of the state’s largest labor unions, withdrew its endorsement of Wiener in early April over his opposition to the tax measures.
Both of Wiener’s opponents in the three-way June 2 primary — progressive member of San Francisco’s board of supervisors Connie Chan and Justice Democrats co-founder Saikat Chakrabarti — are in favor of the taxes. Most California voters support the statewide billionaire tax, according to a March poll, including 72 percent of Democratic voters.
“If you look at who is bankrolling [Wiener], he is doing the bidding of massive corporate interest,” Justin Dolezal, a San Francisco bar owner and co-founder with Small Business Forward, an advocacy group that supports both wealth taxes, told The Intercept. “That’s what he’s looking out for, rather than the average, everyday working San Franciscans.”
Wiener’s campaign did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.
“He is doing the bidding of massive corporate interest. That’s what he’s looking out for, rather than the average, everyday working San Franciscans.”
While Wiener in the past has brushed off concerns of corporate backers influencing his policy, saying that he and his wealthiest donors “have agreements and disagreements,” their alignment in opposition against two popular wealth taxes has drawn concern from housing and homelessness advocates, who were already skeptical of Wiener for boosting housing development in the city that they argue favors real estate corporations. The real estate industry was consistently among his top donors during his state Senate elections.
Wiener is a proponent of the “Yes in My Backyard” movement that seeks to address the housing crisis by increasing the housing stock, while opponents criticize it for its emphasis on boosting development rather than redistributing wealth. The movement has morphed over the past several years with the growth of the abundance movement, which is popular among San Francisco’s powerful billionaires and aims to remove regulations and red tape to speed up development.
In addition to being top donors to Abundant Future, Tan and Larsen, along with Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppleman, have been consistent supporters of Wiener’s YIMBY vision. During his decade in the state Senate, Wiener introduced a series of bills that cut regulations to accelerate housing development across the state, a core tenet of YIMBYism and abundance. Critics on the left dismissed his policies as rewards for corporate commercial real estate developers that failed to meet San Francisco and the state’s housing needs, as well as exacerbating gentrification and displacement of its low-income residents. Opponents instead argue for redistribution of wealth, using the housing that already exists and direct investment in services for low-income people.
Confronting challenges over his support from wealthy donors during his campaign for Congress, Wiener often refers to his track record of taking on corporations, such as introducing AI regulation bills, one of which drew the ire of some of his tech backers, including Tan. But earlier this year, Wiener and Tan partnered on a failed state bill that would have restricted Big Tech companies from self-preferencing their products over smaller companies. While Wiener touted the legislation as a way to rein in the likes of Apple and Google, Tan’s company, Y Combinator, likely would have benefited because it helps launch new startups.
Tan has also worked to insulate the tech sector from organized labor, accusing the state’s labor leaders of having the goal of “killing the tech golden goose and taking maximum waste into the budget … until CA ceases to work for everyday Californians.”
Larsen, meanwhile, railed against unions at a San Francisco business event in January, calling on his peers to “start fighting on par with the unions when they propose these absolutely stupid propositions like this crazy CEO tax.” Larsen echoed the message at a separate tech donor gathering Tan hosted months later.
Larsen did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment. A spokesperson for Tan told The Intercept to “look at Mr. Tan’s posts on X/Twitter,” where Tan has called the billionaire tax “a destroy tech in California proposition” and the overpaid CEO tax “bad policy wrapped up in anti-billionaire bullshit.”
Wiener’s legislative record reveals an inconsistent history of supporting progressive taxation. In 2018, he opposed a successful local tax on big businesses to fund homelessness services. Two years later, Wiener supported the first iteration of the CEO tax, the first of its kind nationwide, before it was undone in 2024.
At a candidate forum in January, Wiener said he supported progressive taxes, but he would wait until the Billionaires Tax Act got on the ballot to decide. In April, Wiener said he opposed the local CEO tax, saying he didn’t want to interrupt San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s economic recovery agenda and that he would pursue similar progressive tax reform in Congress. And last week, after the state billionaire tax’s backers announced they had the necessary signatures to enter it on the ballot, Wiener said he was also against the statewide tax.
“California already has an unstable boom-bust tax system because of the devaluation of property taxes and reliance increasingly on income taxes on wealthy residents,” Wiener told the San Francisco Standard. He said he disagreed with the approach, especially given that it’s a one-time tax.
“It sounds like a person that’s in opposition, but doesn’t want to be seen as Republican,” said Paul Boden, a longtime advocate for people living unhoused. “It’s the neoliberal justification for continuing down the same neoliberal path since Reagan: that doing something that might impact some wealthy people is bad for all of us.”
“It’s the neoliberal justification for continuing down the same neoliberal path since Reagan: that doing something that might impact some wealthy people is bad for all of us.”
Boden, the executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, has long sparred with Wiener on his housing and homelessness policy. In 2016, when Wiener was a San Francisco board supervisor, Boden spoke out against a letter Wiener wrote to the city’s police chief, which had called for a sweep of homeless encampments amid that year’s winter storms. He has criticized Wiener’s housing policies, arguing they prioritize middle-income San Franciscans over the city’s poor.
The results of Larsen and Tan’s ad spending can already be seen on the airwaves in and around San Francisco. Abundant Future has been running ads and sending mailers that paint Chakrabarti, who is advocating to nationalize AI by turning struggling AI companies into public utilities, as a carpetbagger amid his surge in recent polls. Larsen has said that he supports candidates promoting AI regulation, and he plans to spend millions backing Alex Bores, a New York congressional candidate facing heavy oppositional spending from a PAC backed by openAI.
Larsen-funded ads released by his Golden State Promises PAC aired during California’s recent gubernatorial debate, saying the billionaire tax would “backfire and hurt you.”
Supporters of the local and state wealth taxes argue that more revenue is needed to address California’s shortfall due to federal healthcare funding cuts, which is estimated at a $100 billion loss over the next five years. There are more than 200 billionaires who live in the state, according to Forbes data compiled by tax advocates. Most of the revenue from the one-time state tax would go to healthcare, with some set aside for food assistance at schools and other education programs.
Revenue from San Francisco’s local Overpaid CEO tax — which has been estimated to bring in $250 to $300 million each year — is designed to go to the city’s general fund, with its supporters hoping to invest in healthcare, mental health treatment, and housing support. Larsen and opponents are also funding support for a dueling “poison pill” measure, which would negate the Overpaid CEO tax if approved.
To Mack of the Phoenix Project, this kind of spending is par for the course in politics but should inspire voters to think critically about whom they support.
“The more politicians are in their pockets,” said Mack, referring to wealthy donors, “the less we can expect regular Californian/San Franciscan people’s voices to matter.”
Correction: May 14, 2026, 4:05 p.m. ET
A previous version of this article misstated the first name of a San Francisco bar owner and co-founder with Small Business Forward; he is Justin Dolezal, not Jerome.
The post This California Congressional Hopeful Opposes a Billionaire Tax. So Do His Tech CEO Backers. appeared first on The Intercept.
A city official in Miami Beach, Florida paid thousands of dollars to hire billboard trucks with text attacking specific members of an anti-Zionist Jewish group, according to a new filing in federal court.
David Suarez, a city commissioner for Miami Beach, is accused of hiring the trucks to drive past a Jewish Voice for Peace demonstration outside the Art Basel festival in Miami Beach in December. The trucks accused JVP of being an “extremist group” and singled out members Alan Levine and his wife, Donna Nevel, with the label “Jew Hater,” according to court documents that Jewish Voice for Peace South Florida filed on Wednesday.
The trucks arrived while JVP and other Palestine solidarity organizations were protesting Art Basel in what has become an annual tradition since 2023. Activists have picketed each year outside the annual art fair, calling for a boycott over financial ties between Art Basel sponsor UBS and Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturer.
Nevel, a native of Miami Beach who described her early education in Jewish ethics as a driving force behind her activism, accused Suarez of targeting her and her husband over their clashing views of Judaism and Israel’s assault on Gaza.
“The Commissioner has targeted me and called me a Jew hater because I differ with his views on Israel,” Nevel said. “When we saw the billboards, we didn’t know Commissioner Suarez was the one who created and paid for them, but having watched his destructive, taunting behavior in City Commission meetings over and over again, I can’t say I was shocked to learn it was him — though, even for him, it was extreme.”
Supporting exhibits filed alongside the motion include an invoice from Mobile Billboards of Miami dated December 6, 2025, charging Suarez $4,000 for the rental of three trucks, and an email from the company to a Gmail account that JVP claims is the commissioner’s personal email address.
After publication, Suarez sent The Intercept an email doubling down on his accusation. “You can use this response, only in its entirety,” Suarez wrote, “as a jew, I can spot a jew hater a mile away.”
The motion, filed in the Southern District of Florida on Wednesday, requests that the court compel Suarez, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner, and others to produce documents related to a larger court case brought by JVP over a city ordinance that the group claims was passed to stifle its protests against the genocide in Gaza.
“In the months since October 2023, the Mayor and the Miami Beach City Commission have become active supporters of Israel’s campaign of relentless destruction in Gaza,” the group wrote in its broader complaint filed in September of last year. “At the same time, the Defendants have aggressively sought to silence critics of the Israeli onslaught in Gaza, first by adopting a resolution that prohibited the City from hiring contractors who refused to do business with Israel, then by publicly castigating Israel’s critics for their views, and finally by passing an unconstitutional anti-protest Ordinance explicitly designed to silence criticism of Israel.”
The city government of Miami Beach has come under fire recently for allegations that it targeted pro-Palestine residents, including Raquel Pacheco, a local artist who in January received a visit to her home by police after writing a Facebook post criticizing Meiner for his pro-Israel views. In March, Pacheco sued the city, Meiner, and police chief Wayne Jones in federal court alleging that the visit to her home violated her First Amendment rights.
A spokesperson for Meiner told The Intercept that the police visit was motivated by legitimate security concerns and denied that it took place due to disagreement with Pacheco’s political speech.
Similar stunts to the Miami Beach billboard trucks have become a hallmark of pro-Israel groups seeking to discredit and attack pro-Palestine activists. Accuracy in Media, a pro-Israel pressure group focusing on allegations of antisemitic media bias, has hired so-called “doxxing trucks” on multiple occasions to personally call out members of the pro-Palestine movement at Columbia University and other college campuses. In January, a state court in New York ruled that a defamation lawsuit over the tactic could proceed.
Update: May 13, 2026, 6:11 p.m. ET
This story has been updated with a statement from the Miami Beach mayor’s office.
Update: May 14, 2026
This story has been updated with a statement from city commissioner David Suarez.
The post Miami Beach Official Hired Billboard Truck to Call Pro-Palestine Activists “Jew Hater,” Lawsuit Alleges appeared first on The Intercept.
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