Krejcikova gets in a muddle after squandering a 40-0 lead on serve. Deuce. She fights back though. Wins the game with a lovely serve down the T. All square at 2-2.
Paolini delivers a dominant effort on serve to change ends at 3-2 up.
The National Park Service said that it is seeking information about hikers or backpackers who were in the affected parts of the Grand Canyon National Park.
The Cap Arcona, a Nazi ship, was attacked by British Royal Air Force planes near the end of World War II. Thousands of prisoners died as the ship sank in the horrific and little-known disaster.
The Kanneh-Mason family boasts seven classically trained musicians, each under the age of 30. The siblings have toured the world and recorded chart-topping albums.
Attack was response to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps preparing rockets to launch sea mines into strait, US claims
US forces have struck two Iranian launchers on Iran’s Larak island, a US official said, marking the first known American strikes since late July.
“I can confirm that earlier today US forces struck two Iranian launchers on Larak island. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the strait of Hormuz,” the official said on Sunday.
The Linux Foundation's director of IT infrastructure says they now spend more CPU cycles "rendering commits for scrapers than we spend on all other kinds of legitimate access."
At any one time, across 5 geo-distributed nodes, there are 14 CPU cores doing nothing but rendering git commits as html....
[W]hen a source is guaranteed to be LLM-free, like the entire history of kernel commits, it's worth its weight in gold as a source of training data... At the time of writing, linux.git is about 1.48 million commits. Oh, and we have about 922 forks of it on git.kernel.org — but don't worry, it's actually extremely efficient on the backend, since it's mostly the same objects in every fork. Unless, of course, you're a scraper, in which case you have, oh, several BILLION valid URLs you can scrape, only to get 922 duplicates of the same 1.48 million commits — which is exactly what the scrapers are doing. But wait, it's not just commits itself. You can also ask for patches, plain renders, diffs between arbitrary commits — cgit is happy to let you, which was perfect for the times when the Internet was for humans or crawlers who obeyed robots.txt, and is AWFUL right about now, because we can generate 1.2 METRIC BAJILLION valid URLs just for a single fork of linux.git.
Initially, this was the solution — look through the logs, find out which IPs are obvious scraper bots, and fail2ban them. At first, this was easy, because the bots helpfully told you who they were via their user-agent. Then, they wised up and started pretending that they were random vanilla browsers. So, we started banning them by IP — after all, it's easy to figure out that an IP that is trying to grab every possible commit in a 8-year-old abandoned fork of linux is not really some lone Chrome on Windows user who is just furiously clicking every link that comes across their screen. The bots then started fanning out to entire subnets, but this was still meh, because obviously an IP coming from Google Compute is just pretending to be a Firefox user...
And... that's when things turned really, really ugly. Suddenly, the crawlers were coming from millions of random residential or mobile IPs, all pretending to be random modern browsers. An IP like that would make 4-5 requests and then never show up in the logs again... They descended like swarms of locust, hit hard and fast until the system fell over and then moved on to the next target until you recovered. Then, they returned. Rinse. Repeat. They still do that — welcome to the wonderful world of "proxy SDK monetization." It's big business, and your TV is probably doing it...
Today, git.kernel.org receives about 6M daily requests demanding to see random commits. Of these, 66% are still immediately batted away with the Anubis challenge, but 33% are now solving the math and getting through to the main site — because apparently what we have to offer is worth spending a ton of cycles to calculate the Anubis challenge... With a bunch of generous assumptions, legitimate requests are only about 2% of git.kernel.org traffic — everything else are scrapers...
[W]e're turning off features to reduce the number of crawlable URLs and to gate off actions that are expensive for us to run. Expect to lose some functionality, at least when accessing our resources anonymously. Trust me, we hate it just as much as you, but at this point it's a necessity... [W]e promise to still offer all of our data for download to anyone who asks. You just may have to jump through more hoops to get it.
Sorry.
After days of trading insults with President Donald Trump, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said it was vital for the American and Canadian economies that the countries strike a trade deal.
Trump officials shuttering three projects on foodborne parasite, two defunded by Congress, Politico reports
The Trump administration is shuttering two of the three US Department of Agriculture research projects studying cyclospora after the foodborne parasite has sickened tens of thousands of Americans during the summer, Politico reported on Sunday.
The two projects were defunded by Congress earlier in the year, while the third is due to be moved in coming months from Maryland to Iowa as part of a broader USDA reorganization, according to the report.
During a 10-season career with the Rams, who drafted him with the 13th overall pick in 2014, Donald was a three-time defensive player of the year and an eight-time first team All-Pro. He won a Super Bowl with the Rams at the end of the 2021 season before announcing his retirement in March 2024 at the age of 32.
In May Chess.com "quietly launched" a free educational poker site named Gambit, reports The Verge, where players can learn the game and improve an Elo-like rating without risking real money. And next Chess.com will expand into more classic games, including go, backgammon, and mahjong:
Like Gambit, Chess.com is developing Elo-style rating systems for these games, as well. [Chess.com's chief growth officer, Albert Cheng] didn't say when the new sites will launch but that "development is moving quite rapidly" on them, using the same playbook he used for Gambit... He and one other employee took Gambit from prototype to launch within a year, partly with help from AI, mainly for coding tasks. "I think the biggest advantage that it's provided is essentially being able to read our existing codebase and our design system and apply consistent patterns to how we develop Chess.com over to a different platform and do so quickly," Cheng said.... "Just because code is easier to write doesn't mean that you just let it run on its own, but it certainly is a superpower in getting things off the ground."
Cheng also said the version of Gambit that's live at the time of writing has "zero or close to zero" AI-created assets, which were used in early prototypes.
According to Cheng, without help from AI, getting another site up and running would have required a bigger team or "would have been a lot more disruptive to the status quo of building and growing Chess." Now that a "small, scrappy" team can get a new platform off the ground much faster, it's opened the door for Chess.com to dip into more games, starting with poker.
The poker site already has 75,000 members, according to a blog post Friday — and they've already played nearly 20 million hands and completed 100,000 lessons. The site is now holding a daily poker tournament, and on Monday will broadcast the event with live commentary on their Twitch and YouTube channels.
Dawn is champion after public voting of eight yellow-bellied marmots as they fattened up for long winter ahead
A marmot contest started by researchers who turned to OnlyFans to help save a decades-long research project has chosen its champion in its inaugural Fat Marmot Week.
Dawn was crowned the winner of Fat Marmot Week 2026 after securing back-to-back victories in both the mass-gain and popular-vote competitions, according to the organizers of the marmot project at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.
4391E834-B36D-4253-95F1-CB7FD2C1BC82.JPG
rode the Dubs for over a year and a half but I am 47 and not racing anywhere now and want to ride in comfort 😂 so have gone back to factory rails.
This board is my daily driver, I go to work on it and anywhere else I need to be ❤️
Tom Homan denies British far-right commentator, who was deported one day after arrest, got preferential treatment
The White House “border czar,” Tom Homan, denied on Sunday that deporting British far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos just a day after being arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amounted to preferential treatment.
Homan said it was his understanding that Yiannopoulos, 41, had overstayed what he believed to be a visitor visa, had not appeared at an immigration hearing and was issued a final order of removal on 22 July.
Republican Turkish party MP Sami Ozuslu told the Guardian late on Sunday that the death toll had risen. “Sadly we are now hearing that there are nine or ten dead,” he said.
The families of passengers were converging on hospitals in Nicosia, Kyrenia and elsewhere, desperate for news of loved ones, he added.
Meanwhile, Trump posts video of himself kicking over a Lake Ontario sign and replacing it with Lake America sign
Donald Trump and Canada continued a verbal duel on Saturday over the US government’s administrative renaming of Lake Ontario, with the Ontario premier erecting a giant sign saying “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” – and the American president posting a video of him tearing down an avatar of that sign, erecting a replacement saying Lake America, and dancing to YMCA.
Rhetoric over the naming of Lake Ontario is the public face of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its northern neighbor involving a 50% US tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa.
It's already happened — at least on Google Maps.
Google's online maps reflect name changes in official government sources, Google posted Saturday. So when the U.S. Geographic Names Information System formally changed the name for "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America," Google also renamed it "Lake America" — for visitors from the U.S.
"Those in Canada will continue to see 'Lake Ontario'," Google said.
And people from every other country in the world... "will see both names." Though here's how it will be written...
Lake Ontario (Lake America)
"These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now."
Meanwhile, NPR reports that Ontario's Premier posted a billboard reading "Lake Ontario — Now and Always" on Canada's side of the lake (repeating the message in French). And The Daily Beast reports Google move has also drawn some criticism online:
"Hey you gave one of the Great Lakes the wrong name; pretty embarrassing mistake so you might want to fix that," one user wrote on X...
MapQuest has said it will not be changing the name, and instead launched a new tool that allows users to rename it themselves to whatever they want.
Critics say the move, which will keep PC Harper’s killers in jail, leaves number of prison spaces ‘too close to the bone’
PC Andrew Harper’s killers will remain behind bars after a critical intervention by Andy Burnham, but the move has led to warnings that overcrowded prisons will be left “one major event away from disaster”.
Announcing a U-turn on the early release scheme after weeks of intense pressure, Burnham said he understood “how strongly people feel about this issue”.
Rescuers in Nepal and Tibet have battled through leg-sucking mud amid the threat of fresh flooding to search for thousands of people still missing after a deadly wall of water swept through the Himalayan border zone, engulfing entire villages.
The latest updates on Sunday put the number of missing at 3,048, including hundreds of foreigners. There was a total of 804 confirmed deaths across Nepal and Tibet, and reports of some bodies swept downstream possibly as far as India.
Messi nets four goals, adds assist in 7-1 Miami win
Dejan Joveljić scores twice on Sounders debut
Minnesota United score three times in four minutes
Inter Miami interim coach Guillermo Hoyos ran out of superlatives for Lionel Messi after the Argentine playmaker scored four goals in a Major League Soccer match for the first time in his career to inspire a 7-1 thrashing of CF Montreal on Saturday.
Messi’s four-goal haul and an assist came at a crucial time for Miami, helping them snap a five-game winless run across all competitions.
‘Alt-right’ agitator and former Trump backer deported from US is said also to be too extreme for Reform
As he arrives back in the UK after being deported from the US by the Trump administration, the far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos may be wondering what lies ahead for him in his native country.
The “alt-right” agitator, 41, made his name in the US by promoting Donald Trump and associating with his allies before the 2016 election.
America's public education system has become "an avenue for multitrillion-dollar companies to enact their agendas," argues a NewYork Times reporter who's covered that tech industry influence for over 10 years. Big tech companies "advocate for new laws to require schools to teach industry-aligned subjects. They sit on committees that help shape learning standards for public school students..."
The reporter concludes that "Silicon Valley's efforts to capture the attention of education professionals and provide student training materials can also double as marketing or indoctrination."
They enable some of the most powerful corporations on the planet to spin rosy technology stories for administrators, teachers and students, giving them a sanitized view of industry practices and product risks. Many parents would likely object if, say, Exxon Mobil wrote their children's environmental science curriculum. Or if Purdue Pharma trained their children's biology teachers. Yet, over the last decade, schools have often embraced the technology industry in similar ways with few questions asked.
The article excerpts the soon-to-be-released book " Coding Kids: Big Tech's Battle to Remake Public Schools," with the reporter adding more thoughts on LinkedIn:
Every few years, Silicon Valley has urged American public schools to quickly adopt the latest technology or teach the latest tech subject: Big Data analytics; laptops for every child; algorithm-driven math and reading apps; compter programming; virtual reality. And each time the urgent arguments sounded remarkably similar: if schools just adopted the latest tech tool, or taught the latest tech subject, it would democratize learning for every child and equip students with valuable career skills.
Despite good intentions, "today we know some of those classroom tech drives did not exactly pan out as advertised."
Now some of the same companies that urged schools to provide laptops and coding lessons are employing similar arguments to urge schools to quickly adopt A.I. tools. I've spent years covering Chromebooks and student chatbot use. And I'm troubled by our collective amnesia around school tech.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut urged the House to approve the Senate-passed Russia sanctions bill amid a "moment of extreme urgency" in the war in Ukraine.
Trump’s threat comes after host described success record of candidates whom president had endorsed as ‘mixed’
Donald Trump on Sunday said NBC’s Kristen Welker – host of Meet the Press – should face “rebuke or punishment” from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Preceding Trump’s comments was a live shot by Welker in which she described the success record of political candidates whom president had endorsed as “mixed” on Washington DC’s NBC affiliate prior to the airing of Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press.
Rajendra Dawadi ordered students to higher ground with moments to spare after receiving warnings from upstream
A headteacher in Nepal evacuated 900 children from a school moments before a deadly wall of water struck their town amid the devastating flash floods that have killed almost 800 people and left thousands missing.
Rajendra Dawadi decided to halt classes and order children to higher ground after receiving warnings about the scale of the flooding heading their way.
Total number of missing Britons between Tibet and Nepal at 48 as Beijing mobilises more than 2,100 rescue workers
Fifteen British nationals are reported to be missing in China as the search continues for survivors of the devastating flooding in Nepal and Tibet.
Nepali and Chinese authorities confirmed an updated death toll of at least 810 on Sunday. More than 3,000 people are believed missing after flash floods triggered by a massive glacier collapse in the Himalayas on Wednesday engulfed Gyirong port on the Nepal-China border.
Keenan Allen, a longtime NFL player who recently signed with the Indianapolis Colts, was arrested early Sunday for operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, police said.
The deal cements the United States’ long-term dominance over Venezuela, which has become a neo-colony since the U.S. military’s capture of then-President Nicolás Maduro in January.
Relatives of those missing have been given PowerPoint slideshows of recovered bodies in effort to speed up identification of the dead
The bodies continue to wash up. But the morgues have already run out of room.
Since the deadly floods coursed through the Himalayan valleys of Nepal and Tibet, the numbers of people killed have continued to rise. The bodies have surfaced in their hundreds and continue to be pulled from the thick, tar-like mud that engulfed everything after the flood waters receded. By Sunday, the death toll stood at 804 in Nepal and Tibet.
ScienceDaily reports:
A microchip about the size of a grain of rice can generate a highly organized "rainbow" of light, a capability that could eventually support faster, higher-capacity 6G communications and extremely precise timing for quantum technologies. Physicists at Loughborough University, working with an international research team, demonstrated a system that produces a series of precisely spaced light frequencies. Those optical frequencies can then be converted into multiple high-frequency electromagnetic signals known as millimeter waves.
Millimeter waves are attracting growing interest for future communications because they can provide considerably more bandwidth, giving networks more room to transmit data. A major obstacle, however, has been producing these signals with the precision and stability required for advanced applications... "They could ultimately contribute to faster, higher capacity 6G networks," [said Dr. Luke Peters, of Loughborough University's Emergent Photonics Research Centre], "but the potential goes far beyond communications. These frequencies could also be used in radar systems as well as spectroscopy and astronomical instruments, helping scientists study materials and make extremely precise measurements of the universe.
"These applications are still some way off, and there are challenges to overcome before the technology can be used in real-world systems — but our latest work has tackled a major one..." A microcomb generates an extremely precise set of light frequencies arranged somewhat like the colors in a rainbow, although the light itself is invisible to the human eye. A specialized antenna can then convert those optical frequencies into millimeter waves. Earlier research demonstrated that microcombs could produce a single precise millimeter wave frequency. Generating many frequencies simultaneously could be far more useful because each could potentially serve as a separate channel for transmitting information at the same time. Achieving that, however, requires a microcomb with exceptional stability and signal quality.
In a new Nature Communications paper, the Loughborough led researchers report a system capable of doing exactly that.
Their system connects its chip-based microresonator to a much larger loop of optical fiber where laser light continuously travels through both parts of the system, according to the article.
"The team is now investigating how the microcomb system could eventually move from a laboratory experiment into practical technology."
Outsourcing the industry to China cannot continue, but Europe knows it can no longer count on the US for a solution
The alarm sounded 16 years ago. In 2010, China blocked exports of key rare earths to Japan in a row over disputed islands in the East China Sea. The critical minerals are essential to everything from advanced weaponry and iPhones to electric vehicle batteries and wind turbines, so the rest of the world took note. But it didn’t take much action. China still accounts for about 70% of rare-earth mining globally and 90% of separation and processing.
Then, last year, Beijing forced Donald Trump to back away from his trade war – not with its retaliatory tariffs, but the curbing of rare-earth exports. A scramble for new supplies began in earnest. The year-long trade truce is due to expire in November. The price of erbium, an element essential to communications infrastructure, has already jumped because of fears that export controls will soon be renewed.
Conservative hopeful says Sadiq Khan has ‘lost passion for the job’ and Andy Burnham is ‘very anti-London’
James Cleverly has pledged to run a “classically Conservative” campaign to become the mayor of London, insisting that his victory in the capital would be a stepping stone for Kemi Badenoch to become prime minister.
The former home and foreign secretary denied he had resigned from the shadow cabinet to run for mayor following a shift to the right under Badenoch’s leadership.
The movement against datacenters is uniting Americans because they perfectly illustrate how a few individuals hold all the power to control decisions that affect our lives
Bryce Gustafson has been knocking on doors in Indiana for more than a decade. The lead organizer with Citizens Action Coalition (CAC), a consumer and environmental organization, he usually encounters a mix of reactions when he’s out canvassing; whatever issue he’s talking about, there’s always at least a few people on the other side. But at a recent festival in the rural town of Monrovia, Indiana, he was struck by an unusual spirit of unity.
He was there about a proposed datacenter, a 550-acre (222-hectare) Google project in this small town of 1,600 people. “I had 50 people I talked to,” Gustafson told me. “Nobody wanted that datacenter in their community. And at least a half a dozen people came up to me to say, ‘Hey, I voted for Trump. What the heck’s he doing, supporting these things?’”
The following is the transcript of the interview with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Aug. 30, 2026.
The following is the transcript of the interview with Rep. John James, Republican of Michigan, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Aug. 30, 2026.
Google announced that it had begun rolling out changes to how its maps display Lake Ontario's name, after President Trump signed an executive order changing it to "Lake America."
Mountain View, California — Google Maps has changed the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” for users in the United States following President Donald Trump’s executive order directing federal agencies to adopt the new name.
Google said the change reflects an update to the U.S. Geographic Names Information System, the federal database it uses for official place names. Users in Canada will continue to see “Lake Ontario,” while users in other countries will generally see both names.
Trump ordered the renaming as tensions with Canada intensified over tariffs and trade. The move applies to U.S. federal usage and does not require Canada or state governments to recognize the new designation.
Several Canadian officials criticized the change, including Ontario Premier Doug Ford. U.S. governors from Great Lakes states have also pushed back, with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul saying her state would continue using Lake Ontario.
Google followed a similar approach after Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” showing different labels depending on a user’s location.
The company said its longstanding policy is to update names after they appear in official government geographic databases. The change therefore reflects federal naming policy rather than an independent decision by Google about what the lake should be called.
Nathan Cofnas told by Ghent University to work remotely as US ambassador claims credit for lifting of suspension
Prof Jason Arday’s accuser Nathan Cofnas has been barred from teaching on Ghent University campus for three months but has been allowed to continue his research position.
Cofnas, an American academic, was suspended from his postdoctoral research position at the Belgian institution earlier this month pending a “preliminary investigation” launched after Arday’s death.
Citrix's Desktop as a Service (DaaS) product includes a lightweight, hardened second operating system called UniconOS (once called "eLux") to offer Windows customers a write-protected file system Citrix says is secure against computer viruses and other malware. Nerds.xyz reports:
According to the company, the environment remains isolated from the Windows filesystem and uses Secure Boot protections covering the shim, bootloader, kernel, and initial RAM filesystem. That separation matters when ransomware encrypts Windows or a faulty update leaves the operating system trapped in a boot loop. Instead of repairing Windows immediately, an employee can boot into UniconOS and use Citrix DaaS to access virtual applications and desktops.
Citrix SecurAccess with Chrome Enterprise provides access to internal web applications under the organization's existing security policies. In other words, UniconOS does not actually fix the damaged Windows installation. It gives employees another route to their applications while the IT department investigates or repairs Windows... [T]he installer shrinks the Windows volume, creates a new partition, copies UniconOS onto it, and registers the necessary boot entries. Windows remains the default operating system during ordinary use, although administrators can configure boot delays and fallback behavior...
The approach could prove useful following a widespread ransomware attack or another defective Windows update resembling the CrowdStrike incident of 2024. Recovery would happen independently on every compatible endpoint instead of requiring IT employees to physically handle thousands of computers.
Thanks to Slashdot reader BrianFagioli for sharing the news.
Authorities say 237 people rescued and search under way for those who remain unaccounted for
At least eight people have died and 18 people are missing after a ferry carrying nearly 270 passengers and crew capsized off the coast of Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus, local authorities said.
The territory’s prime minister, Ünal Üstel, told the state-run TRT news channel on Sunday that 237 people had been rescued. A search was under way for those who remained unaccounted for.
Deal that will reportedly see US take control of 65bn barrels of Venezuelan oil has provoked outrage in her country
Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has defended her government’s highly controversial energy deal with Donald Trump, insisting the South American country will maintain ownership and sovereignty over its massive oil reserves.
Rodríguez, who assumed power in January after Trump ordered the abduction of the president, Nicolás Maduro, took to the airwaves on Saturday to push back against criticism of what the US president has called “the biggest oil deal in world history”.
Manhunt under way after Italian dies from her injuries in the town of Aarau in the early hours of Sunday
A manhunt is under way in Switzerland after a 22-year-old woman was killed and five people were injured, some seriously, in a shooting at a rave in the northern town of Aarau, local police have said.
In the attack in the early hours of Sunday at a techno party at a covered horse-racing track, an Italian woman died from her injuries at the scene, authorities said. All those caught up in the shooting were residents of Switzerland and in their 20s.
Voters in Iceland have rejected a government proposal to reopen accession talks with the EU after a closely fought referendum campaign that divided the country against a backdrop of global volatility.
After a long and anxious night for those on both sides of the debate, the no camp ended up with 52.8% of votes on Sunday morning and the yes camp with 47.2%. Voter turnout was high at 82.5%.
New company reportedly quickly fell behind with promised repayments to administrator
A recruitment executive who was allowed to buy back the assets of his bust company in instalments, despite it accumulating almost £3m of debt, has placed his new business into liquidation after falling behind with promised payments to the administrator.
The news is the latest event to raise questions about the practice of “phoenixism”, accounting’s controversial art of liquidating companies to allow directors to return with a new entity, free of debts.
A team of researchers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale engineered yeast to create cookies that were 3D printed out of plastic waste, reports Futurism:
The yeast breaks down the components of plastic compounds and agricultural byproducts like discarded plant stalks into proteins, fats, acids, and flavorings that we can eat. When these are combined together, the mixture is fed into a 3D printer that spits out cookies of any desired shape. The researchers chose to print their cookies as the Greek letter Â, creating what they call "ÂBites" — or micro bites. They haven't actually eaten one of their ÂBites yet, as they wait for university approval... "I think it has a pleasant, appealing aroma," Lahiru Jayakody, a microbiologist at SIU who led the research, told NewScientist. "And it will taste good, too. We've not tasted it, but it smells good — that's for sure — like a real cookie...."
The researchers used CRISPR gene-editing technology to reprogram yeast strains to eat polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a widely used form of plastic commonly found in disposable water bottles, food packaging, and clothes, which is rich with carbon. Before the yeast can start feasting, the PET plastics are subjected to a process called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution to break them down into smaller bits that the microbes can digest. The purported advantage of this approach is that it's environmentally friendly, using only heat, water, and oxygen. The yeast feasts on these stripped-down plastic bits, turning them into a slurry of proteins, fats, and acids that're combined with fiber, starch, and sweetener to make them more palatable. One of the yeast strains in particular was able to turn plant biomass into tasty vanilla flavorings...
[R]ight now, it's an expensive process, costing around $60 to produce a kilogram of cookies, The Guardian reported. And some experts say it's wishful thinking to believe we can 3D-print, and then eat, ourselves out of these global problems with 3D-printed, delectable treats. "We produce 400 million tons a year of plastic waste. You're not going to turn it all into cookies," Jason Hallett at Imperial College London told New Scientist. "So it's not a solution to the plastic-waste crisis. There's no way you could do this commercially. We're not gonna be eating plastic cookies."
Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article.
Researchers are still trying to figure out exactly what happens within muscle to create knots, also known as myofascial trigger points. But they do know some ways you can avoid or alleviate them.
"Sunday Morning" looks back at the astonishing career of the queen of country music, whose talent, warmth, wit, and philanthropy made her a genuine, once-in-a-generation luminary.
State and city lawmakers push to boost regulations after two outbreaks of the disease over the last two summers
New York lawmakers are now trying to better protect residents from the deadly legionnaires’ disease by increasing regulations and inspections of cooling towers after two outbreaks of the infection over the last two summers and a raft of new lawsuits.
Legionnaires’ disease is a serious pneumonia caused by a bacterium called legionella. It often comes from large air-conditioning systems, like those used in hotels, hospitals and high-rise buildings, because the cooling towers contain water to remove heat. If not well maintained, the liquid can foster the bacteria, which can then be swept into fans and circulated through the air.
Small business owners have watched large companies fumble – and sometimes succeed – with AI, and then use what works
One thing I’ve learned about corporate America is that what it succeeds at ultimately trickles down to benefit small businesses. Bleeding-edge technologies such as the internet, mobile transactions and the cloud were first perfected by large organizations – government and corporations – and now they’re available to the masses at a much lower cost and with better reliability.
The good news is that it’s also the same for what they fail at.
Over a 10-day period, the Trump administration sent more than 100 deportees from Afghanistan, Cuba and other nations to eight countries across Africa, according to internal government documents obtained by CBS News.
Democratic Senate nominee is eager to push past series of controversies involving allegations of antisemitism
Michigan’s Democratic US senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed apologized to the state’s Jewish Democratic Caucus on Saturday for comments he made after an attack on a synagogue in March, which he tied to Israel’s actions in the Middle East.
“My comments may have been misconstrued to justify something I did not mean to justify,” El-Sayed told reporters after he addressed the caucus at a party convention in Lansing. “To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.”
With a net worth of $11.1 billion, Tilman Fertitta, a great-grandson of Sicilian immigrants, is one of the wealthiest people ever to be a U.S. ambassador.
US republicans are tarnishing their plant-eating opponents at every opportunity. Yet vegans are perfectly suited to hold power – let me count the ways
Cool news, fellow soy boys and girls – we’ve been promoted from feeble, tofu-eating wokerati to dangerous radicals unfit for public office. Politico reports that US Republicans have started throwing “vegan” around as a tactic to tarnish their political opponents. “He’s a vegan,” Trump warned of Democratic Texas senatorial candidate James Talarico in May, while Talarico’s opponent, state attorney-general Ken Paxton, is trying to get the nickname “Tofu Talarico” to stick. Paxton also called him “a vegan who thinks God is non-binary”, which I find hilarious as a political put-down – give the man a Netflix special. (Sidenote: I investigated, and according to the Catholic catechism, God is “neither man nor woman”.)
Republicans have also been digging up past pro-plant-based statements from Colorado congressional candidate Manny Rutinel: a campaign committee press secretary described him on X as “a far-left vegan activist who wants to end animal agriculture”, posting an old pic of Rutinel bare-chested and wearing a Peta anti-meat banner. Other Dems have also been accused of, erm, liking animals and eating plants: Arizona congressional candidate Amish Shah has been attacked for his “wacky liberal agenda pushing vegan policies” and Lindsay James in Iowa drew heat for merely supporting the idea of “meatless May”.
Widely used chemical TBBPA may present a danger to US public, and especially children, independent research finds
The Environmental Protection Agency is manipulating safety data around a highly toxic flame retardant deployed across the US economy, public health advocates allege.
The chemical, TBBPA, has been found in dust in US homes and in consumer goods at combined levels that independent research has found may present a danger to the public, and especially small children.
Campaigners welcome plan to bring IPP sentences to a close but say the move is long overdue
Campaigners have hailed Andy Burnham’s pledge to bring an end to indefinite jail terms as “a day that thousands of families have spent years fighting for”.
The prime minister has said he will “end the injustice” of imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentences during this parliament, meaning people will no longer be trapped indefinitely under a sentence abolished more than a decade ago.
Plain chicken breast gets repetitive fast. These 13 dinners bring in creamy sauces, crisp coatings, noodles, curries, slow cooking, and bold skillet flavors for a restaurant-style change at home.The post 13 chicken breast dinners that read like a restaurant menu…
The Canadian province's premier, Doug Ford, installed a billboard-sized sign on the lake's shoreline after the US president signed an executive order on Thursday directing US federal agencies to change the lake's name on US maps, documents and databases to 'Lake America'. Ford told reporters that the lake's name, which is more than 400 years old, would remain unchanged. Trade talks between the US and Canada collapsed last week, with each side blaming the other for derailing three days of intensive negotiations
Searching for exoplanets and clues on planet formation, the Roman telescope begins million-mile journey from Florida launchpad
A $4.3bn space telescope that Donald Trump tried to kill has lifted off from Florida as Nasa embarks on the next stage of its quest to unlock the secrets of the universe.
The Nancy Grace Roman space telescope survived two rounds of proposed White House budget cuts, and began a million-mile journey into deep space from a launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center on Sunday morning. .
Associated Press journalists on the Indonesian island of Batam, across the Singapore Strait, spotted the massive vessel as it transited waters near Singapore just after 1 a.m. local time.
The market for pizza ovens tends to be dominated by a handful of specialist brands, so it can feel like a gamble to buy from a lesser-known manufacturer or a retailer that offers a wider range of goods.
The ProCook outdoor pizza oven is no gamble, though. It’s every inch a capable, compact and versatile pizza oven, despite being just one product in an offering that includes pretty much everything from storage jars to squeegees.
Record inundations wrecked homes and took seven lives but Trump has not approved emergency aid and the state has cut funds for environmental agencies
It’s been 10 days since the floodwater receded from Cambridge City’s main street and yet signs of disaster are all around.
Abandoned cars, toilets and bathtubs are strewn across parks and side streets on a recent visit to the city. Garages have been lifted from their foundations and moved by the rushing water. Dumpsters up and down the street are overflowing with people’s belongings, with red paint sprayed on homes indicating which houses have been cleared by water rescue teams.
Healthy eating gets easier when dinner still has plenty of flavor and substance. These 15 Mediterranean dinners cover grilled meats, seafood, vegetable-heavy skillets, pasta, feta, lemon, and fresh herbs.The post 15 Mediterranean dinners that made eating healthy feel like cheating…
SpaceX is scheduled to launch the Roman Space Telescope on a Falcon Heavy rocket, with the launch window opening at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT). NASA will carry the launch live on YouTube.
CNN offers this mission overview from NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. "Roman will investigate dark matter, dark energy and the structure of the universe itself, and accelerate the future of discovery of potentially habitable planets outside our solar system." In fact, "NASA anticipates that Roman will image more than 50 times as much of the sky in the next five years as Hubble covered in three decades," reports USA Today, noting that "every single image it beams back to Earth will contain the equivalent of 100 pictures Hubble would capture."
The barrel-shaped Roman telescope is due to set up operations nearly 1 million miles from Earth and begin scouring previously unobservable areas of the cosmos... NASA will make all of Roman's data available for anyone to peruse, meaning astronomers from all over the world will have the opportunity to make use of the observatory for advanced research, NASA says... Spanning 42 feet long and more than 14 feet wide, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is outfitted with two primary instruments
Its 300-megapixel near-infrared camera is built to look across the universe and study the three-dimensional distribution of dark matter, reports The Conversation. But it's also carrying a coronagraph instrument built to dramatically reduce the glare from distant stars "that will test the technology for future missions that plan to detect Earth-like planets around other stars."
The mission's generating some excitement. "Nearly three decades after dark energy's discovery, astronomers are letting themselves hope that a breakthrough is almost at hand," writes Scientific American, adding that cosmologists "are increasingly questioning the validity of their vaunted standard model, although no one can decide exactly what comes next."
Roman will chase down three different ways of detecting dark energy, seeking to more precisely define what its effects on the universe are and whether they're changing over time. The first one involves surveying the skies for a special variety of supernova that's so predictable that scientists can use it as a beacon for calculating what a host galaxy's distance is and how fast it's moving away from us — the same technique that first betrayed dark energy back in the 1990s. The second entails mapping large numbers of galaxies to discern huge, faint bubbles in the cosmos that represent the fossilized signatures of sound waves that froze out of the universe's primordial plasma as it expanded and cooled. The sizes of those bubbles scale with the size and growth of the very early universe, offering a powerful probe for studying cosmic change over time. The third tracer uses a technique called microlensing, which reveals clumps of dark matter via their warping of background starlight, to fill in scientists' still incomplete reckoning of matter's cosmic distribution.
The Houston Chronicle reports that the telescope will also study rogue planets, isolated black holes, starquakes and planet-forming disks around nearby stars.
"Almost regardless of what your scientific interest is, Roman is probably already planning to take observations," Julie McEnery, Roman's senior project scientist at NASA, said during a July news conference."
NBC News reports that after the Roman telescope launches, "it's set to spend more than three months journeying to its final destination, located roughly 1 million miles from Earth."
Three primary surveys are planned over the course of the Roman telescope's mission. During the largest one, which will last over a year, the telescope will peer through the Milky Way's dense, star-packed center, known as the galactic bulge, building a vast catalog of all the astronomical objects it observes. The second and third surveys will focus on dark matter and dark energy.
Axios notes that Roman's primary mirror "is about the same size as that of Hubble's, but at 80% less weight — reflecting huge tech advancements since Hubble was built in the 1970s." And NPR reports NASA began planning the $4.3 billion telescope 15 years ago to search for supernovas to help explore dark energy — when "a call came in from the government office in charge of surveillance satellites."
"The National Reconnaissance Office reached out to NASA," [remembers cosmologist Daniel Scolnic at Duke University], "saying, 'We have this amazing satellite sitting in a hangar that we're not using. And what what do you guys think about instead of pointing downwards, we point upwards, and you guys use it?'" NASA said yes. It took some substantial modifications, but now that old satellite is set to become NASA's next major space observatory....
Another goal of the telescope is to spend a month surveying all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Julie McEnery is Roman's project scientist. She says even though Roman has broadly the same sensitivity and sharpness of vision as the currently orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, its design lets it do things much faster. "That one month of observations to survey our Milky Way galaxy would take about a century with Hubble," says McEnery.
Moscow has shifted to targeting shopping centers and food distribution sites, and markets in Kyiv and other cities are struggling to keep their shelves stocked.
City firms tapped for case studies to try to convince global watchdog that London has cleaned up its act
The government is asking bankers and lawyers to provide feelgood stories about how they blocked dirty money from entering the UK, as ministers try to prove the UK’s money-laundering controls are working.
The Treasury’s call for evidence is meant to illustrate that the UK has upped its game when it comes to preventing financial crime, particularly since its last dismal assessment by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) global crime watchdog in 2018, which fuelled allegations that London had become a hub for “dirty money”.
More than 100 undercover officers spied on tens of thousands of mainly leftwing activists over decades
Prosecutors are examining whether to bring criminal charges against 12 former police officers who were involved in spying on political groups.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is examining a file of evidence that the officers may have committed wrongdoing while working in controversial undercover operations.
The move sends the right signal. While we’re at it, can we ban using ringtones and scooting on the sidewalk?
Imagine driving in Italy, with its narrow, cobblestone streets and scooter enthusiasts. I find it hard enough to drive in Los Angeles, a city designed specifically with the automobile in mind. I’d probably squash a pedestrian or two trying to navigate Italian roads.
The modern world is just too hectic for the ancient streets of Europe, so Italy is considering doing the only sensible thing it can: outlawing texting in crosswalks. The Italian government’s updated draft of its highway code proposes fines of €75 or more for anyone caught sending a DM, updating their LinkedIn, finishing Wordle on the fifth guess, or anything else phone-related that might make them miss an oncoming metal projectile. I’m sure most people will risk the slap on wrist to get that message off, but it at least sends a signal to the Italian people that paying attention to traffic is actually kind of important.
Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
As Americans face an affordability crisis and war with Iran, the president is focused on … changing the names of things
Is it a key policy move which will “recognize the extraordinary contributions of the American people”? Or “real foolishness”?
Whatever the impact of Donald Trump unusual decision to retitle Lake Ontario as Lake America, days after Canada’s prime minister refused to be cowed by Trump’s punitive tariffs, it has certainly divided opinion – but perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
Some young people are teaching in countries like South Korea as education funding is gutted and recent grads face a tough job market in their own countries
A year ago, Arianna Marie, 25, was struggling to control the students in her Florida elementary school classroom.
She was living with her parents to save on rent and quickly feeling her passion for teaching dry up, even though it was her first job since graduation.
Deal agreed between Avanti West Coast and Aslef is first to be approved by Burnham government
Train drivers have secured a significant pay rise after the threat of strike action was floated on busy routes across the UK, including on the busy London-Manchester line.
The deal, which was agreed on Saturday between Avanti West Coast and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (Aslef) union, is the first to be approved by Andy Burnham in his premiership.
Inside the US state department, critics are still attacking a shuttered office established to counter foreign propaganda. Now, some of its work is also being resumed
A botched leak of purportedly explosive government files to a prominent conservative online personality was supposed to offer proof of what the Trump administration and its allies have long alleged: that a little-known office inside the US state department, created to fight foreign propaganda, had secretly become a tool for domestic censorship.
Two former high-ranking officials at the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a target of Republican ire that lost its funding in 2024 and was disbanded after Donald Trump’s return to office in 2025, say the documents show nothing of the kind.
Angie Nixon won one of the biggest upsets in US midterm primaries – and if elected, the Democrat would be the first African American senator in Florida history
The Democratic establishment had the money, the machinery and the candidate with national name recognition. Angie Nixon had a bookshop called Café Resistance and a grassroots campaign for the Senate. On primary election night in Florida, Nixon won in arguably the biggest upset of the primary season. But at least one person was not shocked: Angie Nixon herself. “We weren’t surprised,” the 42-year-old reflects after overcoming a vast fundraising disadvantage to defeat Alex Vindman, a combat veteran who testified against Donald Trump during his first impeachment. “We actually knew we were going to win; we just didn’t know that we were going to win by that much. We put in the work and so super excited about the outcome. It shows that good old-fashioned grassroots organising will beat big money each and every day.”
Nixon won 56.1% of the vote to Vindman’s 43.9%. The result stirred tensions within the Democratic party in a year defined by the struggle between moderates and economic populists. In Florida – a state that has trended increasingly Republican in recent years and is now Trump’s home state – Democrats have now nominated a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who speaks openly about class war.
A repairman who showed his love through service. A grandmother who walked while balancing a book on her head. Intimate obituaries, in 150 words or less.
The country is already part of the European Economic Area and the Schengen Area, which allows frictionless movement of people, goods, capital and services.
The no campaign was well-funded and accused of scaremongering, but the wording of the question may also have made a difference
It was always going to be a close contest. But on the night, the figures showed just how divided Iceland was on the issue of whether or not to restart negotiations with the European Union.
After a nail-biting overnight count, the well-funded no campaign rejoiced on Sunday morning as the broadcaster RUV declared it the winner with about 52.8% of the vote. Given the size of Iceland’s population – barely 400,000 – the margins were tiny.
Breakdown recovery group’s private equity owners reportedly in talks with various suitors to sell company
The German-based financial services company Allianz is considering a £5bn takeover swoop for AA, the breakdown recovery group, Sky News has reported.
Allianz was one of a small number of parties holding talks with advisers to AA about a deal, Sky News said, adding that the private equity outfit EQT was another bidder.
Exclusive: Research says sector is fixated with young talent, with most women experiencing unconscious bias or sexism
Women working in the arts believe they do not have equal opportunities for roles, especially as they get older, according to a report saying that the industry is fixated with “young and emerging” talent.
Nearly all (95%) women working in the arts thought gender inequality persisted, while three-quarters (75%) reported experiencing unconscious bias or sexism, according to a survey of 76 arts professionals. More than two-thirds (69%) felt that age negatively affected their career success – a figure that rose to 100% among those working in artistic rather than managerial roles.
A low fertility rate and a rapidly aging population have swelled the number of lonely seniors. Young companion workers and start-ups are stepping in to help.
The estate of Robert Wone says former defendants in a wrongful-death suit have failed to make agreed payments that help fund a scholarship in his name.
BMW is about to release their most screen-dependent vehicles ever, reports Car and Driver:
Step into the BMW iX3, and you'll notice something is missing: real buttons. The climate controls are fettered to the center screen, as is nearly every other feature, save for a handful located in the center console — at least the window switches are still on the doors...
But don't blame a desire for larger profit margins; BMW's move away from physical switchgear and toward touchscreen dependence is the fault of younger buyers, according to one executive. In an interview with CarExpert, Vikram Pawah, the CEO of BMW Group Australia, said that young buyers prefer the newer controls... According to the executive, younger customers are less patient with their technology. "They want things done quickly, and they're multitasking," Pawah said. "And we have to keep that in mind. That's how customers are evolving. They are multitasking...."
Tesla has always forced functions to its center screen; newer players such as Rivian do the same. And in recent years, established brands like Mazda and Mercedes-Benz have moved more and more functions to touchscreens.
BMW's iX3 also includes a new safety feature — a side-radar that detects if a cyclist or vehicle is approaching, and delays the release of the electronic door lock "until the danger passes."
Solomon Islands prime minister cancels his appearance, along with leaders from Fiji, Vanuatu and Samoa
Several leaders have pulled out of a the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting in Palau at the eleventh hour.
The Solomon Islands prime minister, Matthew Wale, has cancelled his appearance after a no-confidence motion was lodged against him at home by the Solomon Islands home affairs minister, Manasseh Maelanga.
Protester Tess Asplund on the photo that made headlines, and why she sees it as a sign of the change in Sweden today
The striking photograph showed a lone Black woman, her fist raised, standing in the path of hundreds of uniformed neo-Nazis on parade in 2016, and it made headlines across the globe.
At the time, it was held up as a symbol of the resistance to the far right. But 10 years on, as Sweden gears up for elections in which the far right is expected to emerge as the second most-voted-for party, the woman in the photo sees it as a sign of the bewildering change that has gripped the Scandinavian country.
As with its approach to Hormuz, the US has mistaken applying pressure for an actual strategy. But Tehran has chips of its own to play
Donald Trump has found a new way to promise victory over Iran. After months of war have failed to force Iran’s capitulation or collapse, his administration has unveiled what the US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, calls Operation Economic Outcast: an effort to cut it off from what remains of the global economy and threaten foreign governments, banks and companies with sanctions if they continue doing business with Tehran.
There is no question that Iran is vulnerable. Its economy has been battered by years of sanctions, war and a months-long US naval blockade. Iranian officials acknowledge that oil exports and access to foreign currency have been severely constrained. Ordinary Iranians are already enduring high inflation, currency depreciation and worsening living standards. Further economic strangulation will inflict significant additional hardship.
Sina Toossi is a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, where his work focuses on US-Iran relations, US policy toward the Middle East and nuclear issues
Clair Spry says her sister would hate the attention. She would want it focused on the Nepali people, who have been displaced or are in need of aid. She would want it to be on the impact of the climate crisis, especially on the world’s most economically vulnerable populations.
“Her focus right now would not be on her; it would be on the families,” Spry said. “So many people, the Nepalese people, that have been horribly displaced and traumatised. She would want the attention on them and how we are going to help them.
After Kevin Davis was found dying at the foot of the stairs in his Indiana home, police initially believed it was an accident. They did not search the room where a pit bull mix was secured.
St. Paul, Minnesota — MyPillow founder Mike Lindell is refusing to concede his Republican gubernatorial primary loss, saying he will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after Minnesota’s highest court rejected his demand for a broader recount.
Lindell lost the Aug. 11 Republican primary to state House Speaker Lisa Demuth by roughly 45,000 votes. On Saturday, Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson ruled that state election officials’ proposed recount process complies with Minnesota law and rejected Lindell’s claims of wrongdoing.
Lindell had offered to pay an estimated $825,000 for a hand recount but declined to submit the money after learning officials would focus on determining whether he or Demuth received more votes. He sued, accusing officials of a “bait-and-switch” and demanding that every vote in both parties’ gubernatorial primaries be individually recorded.
Hudson wrote that Lindell was confusing a recount, which determines the winner, with an election contest investigating alleged irregularities. Under the state’s plan, every Republican ballot would still be counted and subject to challenge.
Lindell told NBC News he now intends to seek U.S. Supreme Court review and independently examine election data from all 87 Minnesota counties.
Lindell has spent years promoting debunked claims that voting machines helped steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump. Demuth remains the Republican nominee and will face Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar in November.
More traumatised civilians are arriving every day at ‘shockingly overcrowded’ El Obeid and camps on its outskirts
Humanitarian conditions in the Sudanese city of El Obeid and two camps on its outskirts are dire and deteriorating, according to people on the ground, as civilians displaced by fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia continue to pour in from the surrounding countryside.
The UN says more than 15,000 families have arrived since mid-July, joining more than 200,000 people who arrived in the first half of the year, according to government figures cited by Save the Children.
Saga surrounding purchase for outspoken rightwing regional leader Isabel Díaz Ayuso refuses to go away
The outspoken rightwing leader of the Madrid region is under growing pressure to explain why her government spent €6.3m (£5.4m) on a residential penthouse purportedly to serve as a temporary workspace while her offices were being renovated.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, a prominent member of Spain’s opposition conservative People’s party (PP), has been the president of the Madrid region since 2019.
Reform UK denies donor and crypto-billionaire’s global interests in arms and military could present a conflict of interest over its defence spending policy
As he struggles with questions about the millions he has received from the billionaire Christopher Harborne, Nigel Farage has made no secret of his enthusiastic support for the industry that made part of his benefactor’s fortune – cryptocurrency. The Reform UK leader even urged the governor of the Bank of England to drop a crypto policy that may be costly for Harborne.
But another element of Harborne’s business interests could prove still more consequential if it shapes Farage’s positions. There appears to be no precedent for a major UK donor who is so entwined with the military.
Google's AI assistant Gemini crawls your Google apps for "more personalized suggestions," in a feature they call Personal Intelligence. Now when given permission, an Android/iOS app called Dreambeans "uses Personal Intelligence to connect information from Google apps like Gmail, Calendar, Photos, YouTube and Search History, to curate a finite collection of daily stories designed to spark new ideas." In a slick new video Google says the app will "surface what matters to you."
The blog 9to5Google notes that after previously requiring a subscription, Dreambeans "is now available for free Google Accounts in the US to test, calling it "very much like a hyper-personalized Google Now or Discover feed."
Instead of using stock imagery, each Dreambeans story is accompanied by Nano Banana 2-generated artwork that uses an illustrated style. For example, if Dreambeans recommends a hike, you might see yourself and a group of friends at that location... There's also an "Ask anything" chat experience to get more information. You can leave feedback by tapping the heart or downvoting, while the chat interface allows you to provide more details. "Tune your feed" lets you tell Dreambeans what you "want more stories about" and what it should never show.
Or, as TechCrunch senior writer Lucas Ropek puts it, you get a curated list of AI-illustrated "stories" that "will turn your life into a cartoon"
[Gozde Oznur, the product lead behind the new app, told TechCrunch the app] has also been built as a doomscrolling antidote, in that it only provides users with a limited number of stories per day — typically 10 to 14. The idea is to get a few inspirational ideas and then go out and live your life, she said. A lot of companies are currently trying to court the user that is sick of phone addiction. I recently reviewed a startup, Bond, which also uses AI to auto-generate lifestyle suggestions for the user.
What about privacy protections? According to Oznur, they are pretty solid. The only person with access to the app's stories is the user, she said. Users can also delete their data whenever they want, and can choose which Google services they want to connect to the tool.
I’ve been riding for maybe 3 years and recently upgraded my GT w/ a gtv drop in kit from floatwheel. I’ve been struggling with overheating the Hypercore. After over 700 miles I just ordered and received a High speed 6in superflux. I have a shop here in Seattle that is going to do the soldering and such required for installation. I was wondering what I could expect performance wise with a 75v stock battery. My cruise speed is usually like 18-20 mph, would that decrease? Would my range decrease? What could I expect in general if anybody else has been in this specific situation? Thank you for any responses!
Jukebox's free remove background tool now includes built-in 4x HD image upscaling, shown here on a fashion photo cutout. Users can remove the background from any photo in one click, upscale the image to 4x HD, and download a full-resolution…
This week Debian voted on whether to ban AI-assisted contributions. The winning proposal? "Debian neither endorses nor prohibits the use of generative AI tools" in its projects, documentation, and packaging... Generative AI "is neither exempt from nor subject to special rules beyond the standards already expected of Debian contributors."
"The responsibility for every contribution rests with the contributor who submits it, who remains accountable for its technical quality, legal acceptability, and suitability for inclusion in Debian."
"We recognize that such tools can substantially improve the productivity of contributors when used responsibly, allowing volunteers to spend more of their limited time on work that requires technical expertise, judgment, review, and collaboration.
The Debian Project nevertheless expects that all contributions submitted to Debian, regardless of how and with which tools they were produced, satisfy the same standards of quality, correctness, maintainability, and legal compliance. The use of a generative AI tool does not diminish the contributor's responsibility for the work they submit. Contributors are expected to understand, review, test, and, where appropriate, modify AI-assisted output before incorporating it into Debian. Blindly accepting or uploading AI-generated material without appropriate human review is inconsistent with Debian's established development practices.
We enourage our contributors to disclose whether a contribution was made with AI assitance, but do not require them to do so.
Debian acknowledges that the legal status of material produced by generative AI systems remains the subject of ongoing discussion in many jurisdictions, including questions relating to copyright... The Project does not seek to resolve these unsettled legal questions through this General Resolution, nor does it adopt a position on whether AI-generated output is, in whole or in part, copyrightable or derived from copyrighted works. Instead, Debian continues to rely on the judgment and responsibility of its individual contributors. Project members are expected to exercise appropriate care when using generative AI tools, to consider the provenance and licensing implications of material they contribute, and to avoid introducing content whose legal status they cannot reasonably justify. Existing Debian policies governing licensing, copyright, software freedom, and the acceptance of contributions continue to apply irrespective of the tools used to produce those contributions.
It also cautions contributors to keep keys, credentials, and embargoed security reports from leaking to
third-party AI services.
But discussion continues on Debian's mailing list. "I regret the loss of contributors," wrote the author of the winning proposition (while acknowledging it would have happened with either option winning).
"It is just too early to take a final decision on the matter. Let's revisit this in two years or so, and let this mess of a GR be a warning for our future selves."
Other comments from the mailing list:
"On a very personal note, I regret that the winning option does not
acknowledge all the legitimate concerns around AI: environmental impact,
copyright and licensing uncertainty, the health of Free Software
communities, and the strain of aggressive scraping on the open web... [W]e have a lot of work ahead of us to act as a community and understand how we can continue to accommodate the very large minority that would have preferred to ban or discourage AI.
"I also think that our next discussion should distinguish between locally running LLMs and cloud LLMs. The way things are going, locally running LLMs will be an alternative, and then you can much better control what was the training data and the Freeness of the thing."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Robbat2 for sharing the news.
Poor weather temporarily hampered aerial rescue operations in Nepal on Saturday as the search for thousands of missing people in areas devastated by catastrophic flash floods along the border with China continued.
The combined toll in Nepal and Tibet rose to 691 dead and more than 3,000 people missing after China’s latest update on Sunday. Chinese authorities reported 16 deaths and 546 missing, while Nepal’s disaster agency said late Saturday that the death toll had climbed to 675 with 2,498 people missing.
The price of losing yourself doesn’t become apparent until midlife, when the chaos of everything you’ve jammed into your capillaries, fibres, bodily cracks and crevices over time comes out to play like a line of processionary caterpillars emerging from the canopy of darkened oak trees.
If you’ve managed to plant your love somewhere along the way, sure, it might have felt good during those first walks, those first professions of love and affection, the love letters and birthday letters and rapid-fire texts. But when it all starts to fall apart, you realize that all you did was take your very last lifeline and recklessly plug it into another human being: a flawed, paper human who is, once you get past the model exterior, really no more impressive than yourself.
Not even the crescendo-laden love of a thousand ages, the soaring gulls of seduction and pedestalizing, can survive the midlife loss of yourself. Suddenly, all that you knew and loved reveals itself to be flimsy as a vintage windmill. A proper fool, you back away into an available corner with an aging laptop and a filthy compass, desperate for some kind of way forward.
Reminders abound that you are not a teenager anymore. You’re not 20-something, when you could cut your hair short and still look cute. When they used to swoon and hype you up all through every corner of the Big Bop and Reverb, those dirty downtown Toronto watering holes that we just accepted as places to go.
“What is this?” a friend said in the ’90s, of the gathering, tingling crowd of kids around me and my music in those places.
For it wasn’t fandom. It was something else. Something a little untrustworthy.
But okay. I can tell you what it was.
It was an extension of the monkey show that got rolled out in our family’s living room when I was a child. “Come and perform for company!” I’d be told, and, not aware there was a choice in the matter, I’d come down and knock out some song on the upright piano. Everyone would clap, rum and Cokes in hand, and I’d get the hell out of there, up to my room, back to gaze upon Michael J. Fox’s face in a teen magazine, or Stephen Pearcy’s leather pants which shone majestically from a poster on my wall.
Yes, they shone.
The monkey show should have ground to a halt. But instead, it turned into a magic carpet. I took a passion for songwriting a little too far, and it landed me on the inside walls of Worldwide Plaza in New York City. My manager, a jovial chap whose musicologist skills outweighed his business prowess, was unable to talk to presidents but very good at charming the college reps. This, unfortunately, couldn’t help him see me through an acquisition where a company that made a drink called Jamaican Me Happy acquired my record label’s parent company, PolyGram, in a $10.3 billion deal, firing everyone and dropping all the artists.
So that’s when the breakdown happened. It was exacerbated by going to L.A. and falling in love with a bald painter of large oil paintings from London, Ontario. Even in the wilds of California, I could not at least find an American to marry.
Then two planes hit the World Trade Center, and, clinging to one another, bald painter of large oil paintings and I retreated back to Canada.
As I crossed the border from Michigan into Ontario, radio reports of pending war and the political implications of 9/11 turned to soft voices talking about houseplants and the latest healthy recipes.
Thank you, CBC Radio.
My new normal was a sort of la-la land. I might as well have been living north of Dryden in a shack.
I carried on making music, writing songs, touring, but deep inside, my belief in all of my teenage dreams, the inflated post-Lilith Fair heyday of my thirties, was just a layer of paint, and another layer of paint, and some sealant, and some papier-mâché, and some goddamn insulation caked on a tiny seed, a pure moment, where beats of the ’80s, orchestral strings, galactic production met my broken young-girl heart.
Those beats and that heart: we were supposed to warrior through this world together.
But oh, how sensitive I was.
Too sensitive.
A lie here, a rationalization here. Five different managers there, and then came parenthood.
The most magical distraction of all.
I waited until the very, very last minute to put a human in my uterus. Let’s do this,geriatric pregnancy. Let’s have kids before it’s too late and play house and be happy.
That imploded eventually, too.
My hungry heart, which had darted all over the world looking for a home, got played. You see, the joke was on me when the father of my kids finally fed his hungry heart, and gone he was, quicker than a bright lightning bolt.
So then, Glastonbury 2000 came out, the album commemorating the concert. David sang to me from the dead in Alexander McQueen. Bohemian Rhapsody, the movie, came out. Whatever you think about it, fine, but anything that put Freddie back in the spotlight was enough to get me thinking about the miracle that is breath, voice, salvation.
The seed, that little seed, the pure joy. I realized it was still there underneath everything. It was still fighting so hard to push through all of the layers I piled on top of it.
I stopped drinking.
My friend Kim Mitchell said, just wait till week three. You’ll hear everything perfectly. You’ll hear a pin drop.
I didn’t hear no pin.
But I could feel, in my loneliness, my commitment to myself, the smashing and drowning of bottles of Irish whiskey, the seed, now a sprout, still pushing through.
I think I might have seen the tip of green, for a moment, and imagined a garden.
And then, I plugged in.
Everything, every last ounce of hope, joy, selfishness, music, fear, death, poetry, bass notes, stabbing violins, sweeping piano glissandos, body sweat, stretched-out breath, faith, Holy God—I plugged it into: him.
…
And you can’t just unplug, I realized. Not when you’ve done it like I did it.
And that is why now, I struggle to stand.
Why I’ve lost my will. My identity. My playful big choruses. My taffeta skirt.
…
Photo by Fahid Mohammed Jassim
The pals want me to come out and see Toto in the rain tomorrow. But I saw Toto last year, with him, my electric love. We saw them not in the rain. I already heard Lukather’s sobriety jokes. I already saw Dennis Atlas swing his hair around and outsing everyone.
I take a pass.
So now the only things that are taking my shortness of breath and weaving it into a way to see that precious little promise of a garden… are:
Making songs for the girls I’m coaching in the spare room at the car dealership in Stonetown. I’m taking their lyrics and recording them into my computer. It truly gives me joy.
I buy a gift for my vocal student, Lily, who is going to school in Bristol, and it’s a bracelet by Hen & Bear with stars. I remind her she is so many stars. I remind her to breathe and that she always makes it through.
I wait for Kara to come back from holiday because that means I should have done something on my record.
I see Darlene become a record producer overnight with her laptop and interface and MIDI dreams.
I hear Kelly’s whole life in all of her songs.
I hear Julie sing freely, finally.
And I re-read what I write here.
I see the sprout again and maybe tomorrow, drawing from the river that is female friendship, creativity, a sunrise over the gravel road that hugs the Ontario farmland around me, I’ll water it.
And finally make sure I clear the way for it to break through.
Plaskett fire has swept through more than 5,900 acres in Monterey county and remains un-contained, says Cal Fire
A fire in California’s Big Sur region doubled in size overnight, forcing the evacuation of nearby residents, in a coastal region where firefighters have battled another blaze for weeks.
The Plaskett fire, which sparked on Tuesday, had swept through more than 5,900 acres (2,400 hectares) in Monterey county as of Friday, and remained un-contained, according to Cal Fire. Its cause is under investigation.
Junior taken to hospital after first-quarter emergency
Division II season opener suspended and later canceled
School plans vigil for Barnett and his family
William Jewell College running back MicahJo Barnett had a medical emergency on the sideline during the school’s season opener on Saturday. and the school later announced his death.
Barnett, a junior, reportedly experienced seizure-like symptoms during the first quarter of the Division II contest against Fort Lewis College. The game was played on William Jewell’s campus in Liberty, Missouri, about 20 miles northeast of Kansas City.
Axios reports:
Some of the world's largest music publishers filed a blockbuster lawsuit against Anthropic late Friday night, alleging "one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history."
The suit is the opening salvo in what is now likely to be a yearslong fight over music, AI, and how intellectual property is protected in a new era of technology... The Sony/Warner lawsuit is notable because it's broad. It alleges Anthropic unlawfully trained its models off "tens of thousands" of music publishers' copyrighted compositions, whereas other lawsuits have focused on a narrower set of works. BMG's lawsuit against Anthropic, for example, claims infringement against 493 compositions.
What they're saying: "Defendants Anthropic and its founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann have conducted a brazen campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping, and downloading copyrighted works on a massive scale in order to develop, operate, and reap enormous profits from Anthropic's 'Claude' series of artificial intelligence ('AI') models," the plaintiffs write in the 48-page complaint. They also claim that Anthropic pirated thousands of copyrighted musical works...
More details from The Verge:
The companies are asking for up to $150,000 per work, plus up to $25,000 for each instance when identifiable copyright data was stripped. In total, the damages could amount to several billion dollars if a court finds in Sony and Warner's favor and awards the maximum amount...
The suit alleges that Mann used BitTorrent to download over five million pirated books, and that employees downloaded at least two million more from Pirate Library Mirror. It also claims that Anthropic scraped lyrics from sites like MusixMatch and LyricFind, which paid to license content from the labels.
Serb hopes to take advantage of wide-open men’s draw
Elena Rybakina has eyes on No 1 world ranking
Novak Djokovic said he was as prepared as he could be for the US Open as he attempts to take advantage of the wide-open men’s draw and battle for a potential 25th grand slam title.
Djokovic arrived in New York having competed only once after his semi-final run at Wimbledon, losing in his opening match of the Cincinnati Open to Thiago Agustín Tirante while struggling with the humidity. However, he now sees the silver lining in that defeat, which he believes gave him the time to make sure he was in optimal shape for the US Open. “I don’t like early losses anywhere, to be honest, but it gave me time to be prepared for US Open in a most adequate way,” he said. “I had almost a few weeks, actually two weeks, to really train and get my body and mind into the right state, prepared for what’s coming up.
Outside the army camp in the Nuwakot district of Nepal, people run their fingers down the sheets of paper pinned to the wall, scanning the growing list of those reported missing for news of loved ones. Nepali authorities said nearly 3,000 people are missing, while China reported more than 550 people unaccounted for.
Nepal’s foreign minister, Shisir Khanal, has appealed for international support to help rebuild the country after the floods, saying reconstruction efforts could run into “billions of dollars” AFP reports.
Nashville, Tennessee — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s proposal to rename Nashville International Airport for Dolly Parton is drawing praise as a tribute to the late singer while also reviving debate over the state’s treatment of LGBTQ residents.
Lee announced the proposal after Parton’s death, saying her music, generosity and connection to Tennessee made her an appropriate namesake for the airport. The Nashville Airport Authority is scheduled to consider the idea in September.
Mother Jones noted a political contrast between the tribute and Lee’s record on LGBTQ policy. Lee signed Tennessee’s restrictions on public drag performances and gender-affirming care for minors, while Parton repeatedly expressed support for LGBTQ people and drag performers.
Parton once joked that if she had been born a man, she “would have been a drag queen,” and she maintained a long relationship with LGBTQ fans. In 2023, she sent a rhinestone-covered guitar to Texas drag performer Brigitte Bandit while Bandit was challenging that state’s drag law.
Tennessee’s Adult Entertainment Act has faced criticism from civil-liberties groups that argue its language is broad enough to chill constitutionally protected performances. Lee has defended the law as protecting children from sexualized entertainment.
The airport proposal itself remains separate from those disputes, but the contrast has made Parton’s broader cultural legacy part of the discussion surrounding the planned renaming.
The Los Angeles Times first calls Ridley Scott's newest movie "a postapocalyptic thriller that trades zombies for pandemics and asks whether hope can outlast catastrophe." But besides
The Dog Stars, Scott is also working on an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" starring Hugh Jackman, and is thinking about turning one of his past films into a musical. ("I can't tell you which one because they're being difficult.") The common theme, they suggest, is a director who allows his stories to "speak through evocative, immersive images rather than unnecessary exposition."
The British director says it's because he got his start in advertising after attending the Royal College of Art in London. After 1982's neon-coated sci-fi thriller "Blade Runner," Scott notably made the iconic Apple Macintosh computer ad "1984," a memorable Orwellian-themed clip that contained suggestions of the dystopias that would continue to fascinate Scott in his filmmaking. "Advertising in England at that point became a competitive art form," he says, pointing to the notorious "Adland Five," a group of directors that included Hugh Hudson, Adrian Lyne, Alan Parker, Scott and his brother Tony. "I've got a show reel which is 50 years old which would entertain the s — out you. Hasn't aged at all. Our visual drive changed the face of how films looked."
That's apparent in Scott's latest, "The Dog Stars" (in theaters Friday), a film about survival after the end of the world. It's based on Peter Heller's 2012 novel and set in Colorado 10 years in the future after an aggressive flu has decimated much of the population. Those remaining alive use any means necessary to stay that way, resulting in instability, brutality and, more hopefully, connection...
These days, Scott develops movies with his production company, Scott Free, which he founded with his late brother Tony in 1995. Before that he says he struggled to find good scripts. And rarely has someone handed one to him. "I've only ever had three films land on my desk," he says. "One was 'Alien,' which I was fifth choice for after Robert Altman." He makes a face. "Can you imagine offering Robert Altman 'Alien'? How stupid can you get?"
Another was 2015 space adventure "The Martian," which Scott says had been sitting on a shelf for two years before it was sent to him. Scott's grounded, semi-comedic take on Andy Weir's novel resulted in seven Oscar nominations. The third screenplay to materialize was "The Dog Stars." "I read it and I was blown away," Scott says.
Deadline notes that Scott is already re-writing the third prequel to Alien, citing Scott's comments to French outlet AlloCiné.
"The one that just came out [2024's Alien: Romulus] was OK. I think it needs some help. So, I've gone back in." Scott continued, "I've already got a footprint for the next Alien.... I'm picking up where we left off in Covenant with Micheal Fassbender, who now thinks he's Ozymandius." With the sequel bringing back Fassbender's futuristic AI droid, Scott sees an opportunity to explore the repercussions of artificial intelligence in our current world. "I like the fact that AI has gone off the rails," said Scott of where the character is at the end of Covenant. "If we go AI, the moment we discover it's off the rails is too late. It could switch every digital thing off in the world like that. You'd have fucking chaos. It's that kind of stuff that's scary."
Scott tells the Los Angeles Times that the malfunctioning AI character fascinates him, and in the movie will be creating a "brave new world for himself... AIs can go off. And if they do, it's like a bomb..."
So far, Scott says he hasn't implemented AI technologies into his filmmaking. He holds up his "Treasure Island" Ridleygrams [hand-drawn storyboards] and shakes them at the camera. "I can compete with an AI without any problem making images," he says. "But it's coming, inevitably."
Scott was not involved in the forthcoming Prime Video series "Blade Runner 2099," out in November. "I can't blame my lawyers and my agents at that time, but somehow we let 'Blade Runner' go," he says. "And when you're not the author of the actual written word, you don't have a piece." (He was more involved in Noah Hawley's recent "Alien: Earth" series, which he calls "pretty damn good....")
Does that mean he thinks about his legacy as a filmmaker? He does, but not often. "When you think of your legacy, you're too near the end," Scott says. "I'm not near the end." He looks up from his drawings. "I've had a riotous time," he says. He corrects himself: "I'm having a riotous time."
Matt Bradley and crew assaulted while interviewing woman who said settlers had driven family out of home
A Palestinian woman and an NBC News team are reported to have been attacked and injured by masked Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Saturday, amid worsening confrontations in the area.
Benjamin Netanyahu said he condemned the violence committed “by a handful of rioters”.
Is anyone else having trouble with their Onewheel . I wrote it about 6 miles last night. Got home shut it off put it in. The corner. Worked fine. Woke up this morning turned it on. And it’s flashing yellow. It flashes for 15 flashes and then starts over. My cell phone did update last night for the first time in like three months. Does that have something to do with that? Try changing the foot pads. Still doing the same thing. I don’t jump it. I don’t smash it in the curbs. It didn’t get wet. I just use it to walk my dogs. Please help
What skill, drills or exercises can I practice while I’m out riding to help my progression. Recently got a OG pint and I’m about 40miles in to my new addiction.
Currently iv been practicing: changing speed, stopping/dismount, carving (long and short while varying speed), riding switch, swapping between regular/goofy, Figure of 8’s, J turns, riding up&down small curbs, varying terrain, weaving in and out of obstacles such as poles, cars, road markings.
The judge delivered a victory for Stanford University's student newspaper, which said some international students were afraid to speak out because of the deportation threat.
CNN reports that "A one-time snip of a key gene lowered heart-clogging cholesterol by about 50% over an entire year with no adverse effects, scientists have reported."
The overwhelmingly positive results were found in four people who had taken the highest dose of the experimental treatment during a pilot study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in November 2025. That study was extremely small — only 15 patients with dangerously high cholesterol that did not respond to medication. The research was designed to test the safety of five different doses of a gene-altering infusion delivered by CRISPR-Cas9, a biological scissor which cuts a targeted genetic location to modify or turn a gene on or off. "If you'd asked me 15 years ago if we could have done something like this, I would have thought you were crazy," senior study author Dr. Steven Nissen, chief academic officer of the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, told CNN previously.
An update on the study, published Friday in NEJM, appears to answer a key question: Does the intervention last? "Is something like this truly a one and done? That was always the question," said lead study author Dr. Luke Laffin, a preventive cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic's Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute. "This new data is essentially saying that the decreases in LDL cholesterol and triglycerides we saw at 60 days after treatment have lasted over a year," Laffin said. "In people who took the highest dose, the reduction seems durable and safe...."
If larger clinical trials show similar results, the procedure could be a game changer for young people with severe disease, preventive cardiologist Dr. Ann Marie Navar, an associate professor of cardiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, told CNN previously. "If you're 20 and you have really high cholesterol, it may make a lot more sense to have a one-time treatment that doesn't require you to have to take a pill every single day or shot every two weeks for the next 60 years," said Navar, who was not involved in the study. "The potential for this is just enormous."
Being born with this mutation naturally "drastically lowers or even eliminates a person's risk for heart disease," the article points out. And the study's senior author adds "now that CRISPR is here, we have the ability to change other people's genes so they too can have this protection."
Amid an ongoing trade war between Canada and the United States, President Trump last week sought to rename Lake Ontario "Lake America" by executive order.
Greenlee County’s high school football teams found the win column Friday night, with Duncan controlling Fort Thomas 28-14 and Morenci grinding out a 14-7 road victory over Tanque Verde.
My GT (1076 miles) is making this awful noise and shaking when I try and use it but only occasionally. It feels like the motor is going from forward to brake/reverse back to forward really quickly over and over again. I’ve tried tightening my hub bolts but no luck. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I just want to ride again as quickly as possible.
In case anyone is wondering what the switch I’m holding is it’s basically just the front footpad on/off, I bought it used and that’s just how the guy set it up instead of buying a new front foot pad.
The Washington Post shares this tip for car buyers.
Electric vehicles "are not driving the recent growth in recalls warning that vehicles could erupt into flames at any time, even when parked and turned off."
A Washington Post analysis of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recall notices found that conventional gas and diesel vehicles made up the vast majority of vehicles covered by the "park outside" label since 2021.
Last week, The Post wrote about an alarming surge in these so-called "park outside" recalls... A total of an estimated 3.4 million vehicles currently have outstanding recalls of this kind, according to vehicle history provider CarFax.
Safety experts say the surge in "park outside" recalls appears to be caused by other changes to modern gas and electric vehicles, such as the additional technology in everything from transmissions to seat warmers.... [It's a messy mix of things that "doesn't lend itself to simple description of what's happening," says Sean Kane, president of auto safety-analysis firm Safety Research and Strategies. "But it boils down to growing electronic systems and the number of components."]
They're known as "key-off fires," said Frank Borris, a former NHTSA investigator who now works as a safety consultant. "The engine is off," he said, "but the circuits are still hot and they stay hot all the time." Earlier this year, Kia needed to recall 463,000 Tellurides because of the risk that the front power-seat switch could overheat and ignite the seat. That was the second time Kia had issued a recall for that one defect. The first recall, in 2024, didn't fully address the problem. More than 66,000 Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators from the 2021 model year were recalled due to circuit boards in the battery junction box that could short out. At least 16 fires were blamed on the problem, which often ignited when the vehicles were parked and turned off.
NHTSA has issued 93 "park outside" recalls since 2021, according to a Post analysis. Nearly half — 44 recalls — covered vehicles exclusively with conventional internal-combustion engines, while 38 recalls were just for EVs or hybrids. So the number of campaigns were nearly equally divided between gas and electric or hybrid vehicles. But gas vehicles pull away when comparing the size of the recalls. Gas-only campaigns covered a combined 4.6 million vehicles with "park outside" recalls over the past five years, compared to only about 662,000 vehicles that were EVs or hybrids...
Other countries have provided limited looks at the EV fire issue, such as an United Kingdom government review of data from Norway finding that gas and diesel vehicles had a fire incidence rate that was four times higher than EVs from 2016 to 2021.
Just in 2026, U.S. authorities have announced 17 new "park outside" recalls covering 1.7 million vehicles, according to the article.
Australians are buying less pizza but more weight-loss drugs. They love “dupes” but don’t enjoy writing letters.
Here are five key takeaways from the August reporting season that show what consumers are buying as cost of living pressures reignite, and how retailers are responding.
Bill Lee says he favors proposal to rename Nashville’s international airport after legendary country singer
Bill Lee, the Tennessee governor, on Friday said he favored a proposal to rename Nashville’s international airport after legendary country singer Dolly Parton, who died three days earlier at age 80.
In a statement, Lee said he and the managers of the airport in Tennessee’s capital city – where Parton resided – wanted to create “a lasting tribute to her indelible legacy and the generations of people she inspired”. He said he had spoken previously to the 11-time Grammy winner and her team, who were “touched by the idea”.
Jose Carlos Hoyoz-Munoz was arrested after a family altercation and restrained for ‘combative’ behavior
A cadre of Los Angeles police officers beat and restrained a handcuffed man in July, minutes before he was found dead in a jail cell, according to newly released body-cam footage.
On 15 July, Jose Carlos Hoyoz-Munoz, 58, was found unconscious in his cell at the Van Nuys regional jail. At the time, the LAPD said two use-of-force incidents had occurred, without specifying the nature. In the video released on Friday, the department said three use-of-force incidents occurred.
The discussion focused on the Melania Trump Foster Youth to Independence program, which offers vouchers to young adults 25 years old or younger who are still in foster care or have recently left it.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — A fuel supplier alleges that a distributor connected to some Freedom Fuel Network stations received nearly $4 million worth of gasoline without paying, offering a possible explanation for prices President Donald Trump publicly praised as unusually low.
Mansfield Oil Company filed a federal lawsuit Aug. 19 against KRSM Inc. and its president, Syed Kazmi, alleging the company obtained more than 1 million gallons from a Pennsylvania terminal between May and July but failed to pay for it. Court records confirm Mansfield is suing KRSM for breach of contract.
Mansfield says some of the fuel ultimately reached at least 10 stations affiliated with Freedom Fuel, which gained national attention after selling gasoline for $3.47 per gallon. Trump praised the network in July, saying its operators were lowering prices because they “love the U.S.A.” The White House also promoted the stations on social media.
KRSM denies wrongdoing, calling the case an accounting dispute involving incorrectly priced or duplicated invoices. Freedom Fuel itself is not named as a defendant and has not been accused of stealing fuel.
The lawsuit states that KRSM’s failure to pay enabled it to offer unusually cheap fuel. A federal judge Friday ordered KRSM and Kazmi to maintain at least $2.75 million in a bank account while the dispute proceeds.
The Washington Post looks "a growing number of Americans who have had their private conversations with AI chatbots made public in court," calling the chatbots "custodians of a fast-growing trove of intimate data that can be sought by law enforcement, or companies or other opponents in civil litigation."
A Washington Post review of public records and local news stories found that chatbot logs were cited in 12 court cases over the past two years. It's hard to know how often chatbot material is drawn into investigations and legal proceedings more broadly, because police, and parties in civil cases, don't have to present in court all the evidence they obtain... In some cases, AI companies have reported people on their platforms to the FBI, leading to prosecutions and at least one conviction... OpenAI has said the company uses software to scan conversations for signs of dangerous behavior and flag them to human reviewers.
If a reviewer determines a chat indicates "an imminent and credible risk of harm to others," they report the user to law enforcement, the company said in an April blog post. A spokesperson for OpenAI declined to disclose how many times the company had reported users to police.... Data released by OpenAI shows requests by government agencies and law enforcement for user data growing rapidly. In the second half of 2025, the company disclosed data from more than 80 accounts, an increase of more than four times as many over the same period the year before...
When police ask someone to open their phone during questioning or after an arrest, they often do so, allowing officers to scroll through the apps they use, [according to Michael Price, the litigation director for the Fourth Amendment Center at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers]... In general, the Fourth Amendment, which protects people against unreasonable searches and seizures of their property, provides the right to refuse a search of the contents of their phone unless police have a warrant. "The short answer is that most people consent," Price said. "They shouldn't, but they do..."
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has argued that conversations with chatbots should receive special legal protections, similar to conversations between clients and their attorneys.
Special legal protections aren't recognized by courts today, the article poitns out. A financial executive who became the subject of a federal criminal investigation for fraud asked Claude about potential defense strategies, then asked a judge to disallow the conversations from the prosecution's case, according to the article. "But the judge said that protections for conversations between clients and their attorneys did not apply: Claude is not a lawyer, and the executive's attorneys did not ask him to talk to the chatbot."
The article includes quotes from three ChatGPT conversations that later turned up in court proceedings:
"I deleted a email a year ago from my yahoo account. Can yahoo still retrieve the email?"
"How f----d am i bro. What if i smahsed the s--- oitta mutlipls cars."
"My dad Said that I'm will get a settlement worth of 1million dollar."
"As AI becomes a bigger part of everyday life, its use as evidence and in trials is likely to become more prevalent," the article points out — especially with the growing popularity of agents that take actions for users.
Ecstasy pills shaped to look like President Trump contain a high concentration of the chemical PMMA, which could potentially be lethal, a Dutch institute said.
Phoronix reports on Greg Kroah-Hartman's recent slide from his upcoming talk in Paris at Kernel Recipes 2026 (September 21 to 23):
With the proliferation of AI/LLM models analyzing the Linux kernel's vast codebase, there has been a surge in the number of CVEs per kernel release. After typically being around 500 CVEs fixed per release, we are now approaching 2,000 CVEs fixed per release and perhaps will break that threshold for Linux 7.3... Fortunately, most often they end up being lower priority vulnerabilities and often within old/obscure driver code, so the impact is often minimal.
Bill Belichick’s North Carolina Tar Heels upset the TCU Horned Frogs in a low-scoring affair at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium on Saturday in the first major college football game of the 2026 season
Ex-Breitbart editor has vocally supported immediate deportations for anyone who can’t prove US residency
Far-right British media provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has been deported from the US after being detained on Thursday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in New Orleans in connection with what the agency said was expired authorization to be in the country and a deportation order.
Yiannopoulos’s deportation to the UK occurred on Friday, said a statement on Saturday from a spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE.
The daughter of a woman missing in Nepal has told how she traced her mother’s location through a TikTok video posted hours before the devastating flash flood hit.
Rockstar Games has released a 26-minute "extended look" at Grand Theft Auto VI, due for release November 19th.
After one day the video had nearly 10 million views on YouTube, and when Netflix streamed the footage, "some viewers had to refresh the page after receiving error messages, indicating high usage levels," reports CNBC:
"Some members briefly experienced an issue accessing Netflix, but we quickly recovered," the company told CNBC. Game streaming platform Twitch, where many viewers were posting their reactions, also experienced bandwidth issues when the trailer was released, according to analysts at Wells Fargo.
CNBC notes predictions the game could become one of the most profitable entertainment products of all time, while the Washington Post predicting it's "about to be the biggest pop media event of the year, if not the decade."
The data backs this up. The latest evidence arrived Thursday, when Netflix viewership surged for the long-awaited first look at gameplay footage, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The firm estimates "GTA VI" has already received about 4.6 million preorders.
Box office blockbusters like "The Odyssey" take weeks to hit $1 billion. "GTA V" famously did it in three days. Analyst firm Newzoo projects the new game could generate between $3.3 billion and $5.2 billion by the end of its launch week in November...
The influence of the series, created by Rockstar Games, extends beyond sales records. In 2025, "GTA V" accumulated 1.89 billion hours watched despite being a 12-year-old title, according to Stream Hatchet. Much of those hours are spent watching people role-play in "GTA Online," particularly through role-play servers managed by studio Cfx.re, which was acquired by Rockstar in 2023. By 2024, the studio said more than 20 million players used its platforms. GTA role-play involves players pretending to be cops, robbers, hapless retail workers or any functioning member of society within the online game... The game can lift up music sales and streams. Tom Petty's 1989 song "Love is a Long Road" saw stream numbers increased by nearly 37,000 percent on Spotify after it was the soundtrack to the debut "GTA VI" trailer in 2023, according to Universal Music Publishing Group.
Christopher Dring, editor-in-chief and co-founder of analysis firm The Game Business, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" that GTA 5 is still in the top five bestselling video games every year, despite being released 13 years ago, reports CNBC:
The response to Thursday's gameplay debut indicated that leaks of the content in advance would not impact the launch commercially, he continued. Rockstar Games, which makes the GTA franchise, had called the leaks "heartbreaking...."
The GTA 6 preview follows a mixed reaction from players to the news that GTA 6 would only be released as a digital download, with no physical disc. The alleged source of the leaked content has claimed the leaks were a protest over Rockstar's release strategy, and Sony's plan to end to new PlayStation disc production in 2028. Speaking on the last earnings call on Aug. 7, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said discs did not make sense to the consumer, adding that its business was "well over 90% digitally distributed." Data from Circana shows the sale of physical game discs in the U.S. has fallen to its lowest level on record, with spending at $85 million.
Shadow minister for housing, communities and local government to resign with immediate effect
James Cleverly has resigned from the shadow cabinet to run for mayor of London.
The Tory heavyweight, who was once home and foreign secretary and is shadow minister for housing, communities and local government, told the Sunday Times he will resign with immediate effect.
Austin, Texas — Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered Texas state agencies to stop using state funds for Flock Safety cameras as scrutiny grows over privacy concerns and alleged misuse of the automated license-plate reader network.
Abbott’s office confirmed the order Friday, saying agencies were clarifying that state money could no longer be used for Flock cameras. The decision came as The Texas Tribune was preparing an investigation showing that a state authority had devoted at least $30 million to expanding the network.
Since 2023, the Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Authority has helped state and local law enforcement install at least 3,200 Flock cameras. The system uses artificial intelligence to capture license plates and other vehicle details, including make, model, color and visible markings.
The network has faced growing criticism after reported cases of improper searches. In Lufkin, a police officer was indicted on 100 counts related to alleged misuse of Flock data.
Flock Safety defended its technology as an important law-enforcement tool and said it supports stronger privacy and accountability safeguards.
Abbott’s move does not amount to a statewide ban. Cities can still purchase the cameras using local or federal funds, and many already operate them independently.
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen receive Congressional Space Medal of Honor
The Artemis II astronauts who flew around the moon in April received the US’s highest space honor on Friday.
Donald Trump presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the three Americans and one Canadian whose lunar flyby for the US space agency Nasa set a new distance record for humanity.
A new survey on police license plate cameras found that "more Americans oppose these surveillance cameras than support them," reports TechCrunch:
According to a new YouGov survey of 20,000 people across the U.S. that was shared exclusively with The Washington Post, 46% of respondents opposed the company's surveillance cameras in their communities, while 38% supported them. This is a reversal from last year, when the majority of survey respondents said they were in favor... The survey also reported that more respondents said the surveillance would not make them feel any safer.
TechCrunch reports that Flock CEO Garrett "faces a growing public outcry around concerns that Flock's surveillance cameras, drones, and license plate recognition technology could be misused." Responding to reports of police abusing Flock's system, Langley told CBS News " I don't think that Flock created police abuse. I think we're the first company to ever shine a light on it and build the tools to find it."
But Futurism notes that "a grand jury in Ohio declined to bring felony charges against a man accused of destroying a Flock camera earlier this month — perhaps the clearest sign yet of the country's overwhelming hatred for the surveillance gadgets." And Newsweek documents more of the backlash:
Flock Chief Executive Garrett Langley recently became the subject of a doxxing campaign after his home address was circulated online by opponents of the company's technology, underscoring how deeply divisive the issue has become.
TechCrunch reports Flock's CEO is now calling for new laws — at the state level — regulating not Flock's cameras but the police officers who use them:
Langley has said that state regulators should "pass bills that make [the illegal use of Flock data] a criminal offense." And during his Fox News interview, he pointed to the changes the company has already made, while also saying, "Today, it is too often that in Flock and in other technologies, there's no regulation. There's no accountability, and we think that's wrong."
But Flock has its supporters. One local police department used a 3D printer to create a fake "decoy" camera, then monitored it for five days until they arrested a Florida man for knocking it down.
404 Media suggests that because the man told officers he believed it was a camera worth between $1,000 and $5,000, he was charged with three felonies including "grand theft" and criminal mischief of property damage worth over $1,000, plus property crimes against computer equipment supplies.
Ironically, days earlier the City Council was already considering a resolution to end their city's use of Flock cameras altogether...
Ex-House intel committee chair, now running against Abdul El-Sayed, instead saw photo of Osama bin Laden’s body
In a recent fundraising email, the Republican candidate for Michigan’s open US Senate seat, former congressman Mike Rogers, appeared to mislead supporters about his past by suggesting that he had played an active role in the killing of Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida who was shot and killed in an American military raid on his compound in Pakistan in 2011.
“When I served as a US army officer and an FBI special agent, I swore a sacred oath to defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Rogers wrote, according to a screenshot of the email shared online by Azi Paybarah, a former Washington Post reporter now with Straight Arrow News. “I dedicated my life to keeping our families safe – working in the shadows, hunting down terrorists, and standing on the frontlines of our national security.”
Three vessels and a helicopter deployed to monitor four ships travelling through the North Sea to the Channel
The Royal Navy spent three days tracking Russian vessels as they passed through UK waters, it has emerged.
The “intense” 72-hour operation took place last week, with radars used to monitor four ships that made their way from the North Sea through to the Channel.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A common sweetener used in products such as chewing gum, toothpaste, jam, yoghurts and ice-cream has been linked to an increased risk of strokes, heart attacks and death. Xylitol is a sugar alcohol present in some natural foods in very low amounts. It is also added -- often in amounts 1,000 times higher -- to artificially sweeten foods, beverages and oral care products. Despite its growing use, the long-term health impacts of xylitol have never been widely studied.
In the largest study of its kind, researchers found high blood levels of xylitol were associated with an increased risk of major adverse cardiovascular events. The findings were presented in Munich at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) annual congress, the world's largest heart conference. Researchers looked at 17,710 people and compared the 25% with the highest levels of xylitol in their blood against the 25% with the lowest. Those who had the highest amount were 57% more likely to die or suffer a heart attack or stroke, than those with the least, within six years. Even after 30 years, they were still 18% more likely to have suffered one of these cardiac events.
Taken with data from the middle quartiles, the results from both cohorts suggested a dose-dependent relationship: the higher the xylitol blood levels, the higher the cardiovascular event rate. Furthermore, the researchers showed that there was consistent increase in cardiovascular events with xylitol irrespective of baseline characteristics, such as age and sex. The researchers also highlighted that the association was independent of underlying factors such as body mass index, hypertension, diabetes and lipid levels, which might predispose people to low-calorie products.
President Xi Jinping is targeting officers affiliated with previously ousted leaders, analysts say, even as Beijing seeks to project power across the Indo-Pacific.
Mansfield Oil Company of Gainesville claimed in a federal lawsuit this month that it was never paid for more than a million gallons of fuel from a terminal in Pennsylvania between late May and early July — nearly $4 million worth.
Former Duchess of York moved to Swiss chalet during fallout over her friendship with convicted child sex offender
Sarah Ferguson will return to the UK after relocating to a Swiss chalet amid the fallout over the friendship between her and her ex-husband, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to reports.
The pair were stripped of their royal titles in October over the scandal of their relationship with Epstein. According to the Sun, the former Duchess of York, 66, is renting a six-bedroom gated property in the home counties.
Bureau to still dismiss those with encounters within past 10 years, three or more times or while in public safety capacity
The FBI is dropping a categorical hiring ban on applicants who have had sexual encounters with sex workers and will instead consider in a more holistic manner at least some candidates who have engaged in the practice in the past, according to people familiar with the matter.
The move away from an automatic disqualification falls along a continuum of evolving recruitment standards within federal law enforcement and at the buttoned-up bureau, which several years ago relaxed its approach to candidates’ past marijuana use and has drawn more recent concern among some current and former agents about a perceived loosening of recruitment requirements as it seeks to replenish its ranks.
Posters of missing people line the wall of the hospital, the glue still fresh beneath. A schoolgirl smiling in her uniform; a beaming, chubby-cheeked baby; a couple smiling on their wedding day; a young man, hands on hips, atop a mountain peak; a young girl with flowing hair, peeking out from behind a door.
These faces are just a fraction of the thousands who have not been seen since deadly flash floods coursed through the Himalayas and wiped away entire villages. By Saturday morning, the toll of the missing had risen to almost 3,000, in both Nepal and Tibet.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump and Republican allies are intensifying calls for stricter citizenship verification before the midterm elections, citing disputed claims that large numbers of noncitizens remain registered to vote.
Trump has urged Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship for federal voter registration and tighten rules surrounding mail voting.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently claimed nearly 250,000 noncitizens were registered across four states. However, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican, said federal officials acknowledged they lacked high confidence that thousands of people identified in his state were actually noncitizens improperly registered.
Federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, and documented cases remain rare. State officials and voting-rights groups argue that inaccurate voter-roll data can mistakenly flag naturalized citizens or eligible voters, potentially creating barriers for lawful participation.
The administration says stronger documentation requirements are needed to protect election integrity and has increased pressure on states to review voter rolls and share election data with federal agencies.
The dispute is expected to fuel additional litigation as November approaches, particularly in battleground states where election officials are balancing federal requests with state voting laws.
Supporters describe the proposals as basic safeguards, while opponents warn that expansive citizenship checks could discourage eligible voters and deepen mistrust in election administration.
Washington, D.C. — The FBI is ending its blanket policy automatically disqualifying job applicants who have previously paid for sex, allowing some cases to be evaluated individually under revised hiring standards.
Under guidance issued this spring, applicants will still be rejected if they engaged in prostitution within the previous 10 years, did so three or more times, or participated while holding a position of trust such as public safety employment. Other applicants may now receive further consideration depending on the circumstances.
The FBI said the change is intended to account for unusual situations, including military personnel who encountered legal prostitution overseas or applicants who experienced sexual abuse. The bureau stressed that criminal sexual conduct remains disqualifying and said its background checks continue to include interviews, financial reviews and polygraph examinations.
The shift comes as the FBI and Justice Department seek to replenish personnel following retirements, resignations and dismissals. Some current and former agents have questioned whether recruitment standards are being relaxed too far.
Retired FBI agent Daniel Brunner told the Associated Press that the revised policy could indicate difficulty attracting qualified applicants. Other former officials said context matters, particularly when questionable behavior occurred many years earlier.
The FBI previously relaxed restrictions involving past marijuana use and has expanded pathways for other federal law-enforcement personnel to become agents.
Ukrainian prosecutors open investigation into why munitions were stored so close to residential buildings
At least 37 people have been killed after a Russian drone struck a warehouse near Kyiv’s western suburbs that was storing “explosive objects”.
The attack damaged at least 50 residential buildings, including a care home for elderly and disabled people, and sparked a huge fire and explosions in the Bucha district of the Kyiv region. The regional governor, Tymur Tkachenko, said a further 42 people, including four children, had been injured in the strike.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Gabriel Perez wagered on Kalshi about words president used in speeches
A White House teleprompter operator who left his post amid accusations that he used inside knowledge to make bets on Donald Trump’s speeches on an online prediction market has been fined $172,000, according to federal regulators.
Gabriel Perez illicitly exploited “material, nonpublic information” that he gathered through his work for the president in order to place wagers on the Kalshi platform “for his personal benefit”, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) maintained in a news release on Friday.
Bridget Phillipson says government would not have to consider releasing prisoners early if Tories had created more capacity
Cells to hold newly arrested people could run out without the early prison release scheme, a minister has said.
Bridget Phillipson defended the plan to address the prison capacity crisis in England and Wales by releasing thousands of prisoners early, which has been criticised by domestic abuse charities, bereaved families and probation officers among others.
Yesterday I had my first nosedive with my XR. The result is a broken arm. X7LR is ordered and from what I have read it is not easy to get a nosedive because there is a much more powerful motor.
Is this true or have there been accidents with their board also?
In deep red South Carolina, the president helped stoke apprehension of a deeper red surge ahead of November’s US midterm elections
After casting his vote in South Carolina, a man who introduced himself as Chestnut was unwilling to give his full name. “You don’t have a need to know,” the air force veteran declared. He was, however, happy to share his views.
“I’m a true American. I believe in the USA,” said the man, outside Christ the Servant Lutheran church in Conway. “And I don’t believe in communism or socialism.”
The vessel, which was in international waters near Ecuador, was allegedly used as a floating refueling station for drug boats belonging to the Los Choneros organization.
Nominated in three previous years, the rambunctious standup – one half of The Delightful Sausage – wins the prize for his show Rewilding while Marty Gleeson is named best newcomer
The annual Edinburgh comedy award has been won by the standup Chris Cantrill, two years after his comedy partner Amy Gledhill – in the raucous northern double act The Delightful Sausage – won the same prize.
Cantrill, 42 and from Bradford, received the so-called “Oscar of live comedy” for a show, Rewilding, about his new life in rural Northumberland, where an act of vandalism shocks the local community – and a spoof whodunnit ensues. It builds on the foundations laid in 2024 by Easily Swayed, which documented his move to the countryside and secured what was then Cantrill’s third nomination (but first as a solo act) for the award.
I’ve noticed when I lean hard left or right (torsion) I hear a creeking plastic noise by the front footpad and wanted to see if anyone heard of this or have a solution
Avoiding US goods and services – from tech to whisky to air travel – has forced many to find a new way of living
For William McDonald, 38, a diesel mechanic from Thunder Bay, Ontario, “Canadian is always the first choice,” even if it means his weekly bills are higher.
“As soon as Trump started putting those tariffs on in February [last year], I started boycotting US goods,” he said. “Avoiding American products has driven my costs up, and I’m still happy to do it.
Grammy award-winning American artist selected as 13th person to submit written work to Oslo-based project
The next manuscript by the American artist Laurie Anderson will remain unseen for 88 years, as she becomes the 13th figure to contribute to the Future Library project.
Anderson joins Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, Ocean Vuong and other prominent authors who have written secret manuscripts, which have been locked away until 2114.
There’s little optimism about treasury secretary’s ability to handle Trump’s tariffs, Iran sanctions and colossal US debt
History remembers Gen Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the allied forces in Europe during the second world war, for his role in the D-day invasion of Normandy. Whether Scott Bessent will achieve similar posterity as the face of the “economic D-day” in Iran remains to be seen.
The US treasury secretary, already trying to manage a $40tn national debt pile, this week took charge of Donald Trump’s effort to reverse-engineer his war of choice. Whereas the US would typically take on an adversary with diplomacy, sanctions and military force, in that order, the US president started with a six-month bombing campaign and now hopes that economic isolation can finish the job.
Ignore Iran, the Epstein files, and your wallet – not to mention Trump’s plummeting approval ratings
Don’t mention the war! Or the economy, for that matter. Or the Epstein files. Or Natalie Harp. Or “affordability”, which, as Donald Trump recently said at a rally, is a word that was “never used” by the media before he took office. Best not to talk about anything that affects ordinary people or embarrasses the president, really. Instead, let’s all rejoice in Trump’s latest triumph: renaming Lake Ontario, which is shared by Canada and the US, as Lake America.
On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to America-fy the lake’s name on US maps and documents, which is an excellent use of time and resources. I suppose we can at least be thankful that the president, who is trying to slap his own name on everything from airports to the Kennedy Center, didn’t decree that the body of water be called Lake Trump.
Recent deadly water-related incidents amid heatwave leads National Park Service to issue water-safety reminders
As a heatwave continues to bake the western and central US, officials are urging swimmers to be cautious when seeking respite from the summer heat, especially amid a score of recent deadly water-related incidents.
Each year, from April to September, drowning deaths rise nationwide, according to 2018-24 data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Even after judges rejected the same ploy, the Trump administration is going directly to social media and telecommunications companies
The Trump administration has been deploying an obscure legal maneuver to try to obtain private information on journalists, non-profits and unions, raising alarm over a power the government has asserted without judicial oversight.
In one instance, the government obtained six months of telephone records for Georgia Fort, a Minneapolis journalist. Fort was not notified of the request for her information, nor was she given a chance to contest the government’s effort to obtain them, her lawyers said in court papers.
Ahead of Apple’s Sept. 9 launch event, I retested the iPhone 17 to see if it can retain the “best iPhone for most people” title for another six months.
Cookout dessert gets easier with 17 options ranging from fruit pies and chilled bars to ice cream, cupcakes, sorbet, and a viral Dubai Chocolate Strawberry Cup ready to finish the table.The post 17 cookout desserts with a viral Dubai Chocolate…
These 15 finger foods bring enough flavor and substance to make dinner easy to overlook. Expect smoky bites, flaky pastry, hearty dips, loaded potatoes, and snack-board favorites made for sharing.The post 15 finger foods that make the main course feel…
Looking for an alternative to fast fashion, Eve Ogden Schaub decided to create a garment from homegrown flax
From crop tops to shorts and brightly patterned dresses, many of today’s clothes are the result of fast fashion. But one woman is taking a radical approach to challenging this trend by growing her own dress.
Eve Ogden Schaub is in the midst of a project to create a linen garment made from flax she is growing at home, documenting the process in videos shared on her Instagram account.
By linking progressive politics with nominally Arab American issues, organizers are building winning coalitions
Abbas Alawieh initially thought the uncommitted movement of 2024 had failed.
The insurgent group, which he helped co-found, had gotten more than 700,000 Democrats to vote “uncommitted” on their 2024 presidentialprimary ballots to pressure the US government to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. But when the group pushed for the Democratic party to add an embargo on arms to Israel in its platform, it didn’t happen. And when they asked to have a Palestinian American speaker address the Democratic national convention, it was also a no-go.
SpaceX is significantly reducing Falcon 9 launches from Florida this year, ending the Space Coast's decade-long run as the world's busiest spaceport as more missions shift to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The slowdown is expected to continue until Starship begins flying regularly from Florida. Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: A Falcon 9 launch early Tuesday was the last planned Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral until SpaceX begins flying Starship missions from Florida, according to Kiko Dontchev, the company's vice president of launch. For at least the rest of the year, and maybe longer, this means the launch rate at the Florida spaceport will drop from eight or nine per month to perhaps two per month.
It wasn't long ago when two launches per month was the norm, an indication of just how quickly SpaceX's launch cadence has grown. Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center sit on adjoining property and share the same range on Florida's east coast, so it is worth considering them a single spaceport. The last time the Florida spaceport did not lead the world in space launches was in 2015.
"From here on, Starlink missions out of Florida will fly on Starship," Dontchev wrote on X. "The West Coast team will continue regularly launching Starlink from Vandenberg." "Yep, that'll be louder -- but everybody knows the real action will be in Louisiana, starting in 2029 or so," writes schwit1. SpaceX on Tuesday announced plans to spend up to $100 billion building a new Starship launch facility in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, which the state says could eventually "support thousands of launches annually."
Further reading: Musk's other unstated reasons for shutting down Falcon 9 in Florida (Behind The Black)
I purchased Overlook 1.0 from Landed because they were cheaper than Elevate and preferred low tops at that time. I wear them 3 months, using them a lot on my Onewheel and at work walking around, because they were so damn comfortable. I used them to walk around a lot in my neighborhood. But sole detached due to weak glue eventually from stretching and flexing and never got those shoes wet.
I contacted Landed and said I was out of luck due to 60 day warranty. No discount offer toward purchase any of theirs shoes either. They suggested I use rubber cement. I threw them away and ordered Vans SK-8 Hi. I got Vans Kyle Walker before and they have been much more durable for a lot longer.
I did research and found out similar issues with their more premium Elevate shoes which Future Motions sells also.
In a 1931 exhibition, Jackie Mitchell silenced the greats back-to-back. It sparked still-ongoing debates over legitimacy and opportunities for women in baseball
The Sultan of Swat sounded exasperated. “I don’t know what things are coming to,” Babe Ruth sighed during spring training in 1931.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen if they begin to let women in baseball,” he elaborated to reporters. “Of course, they will never make good. Why? Because they are too delicate. It would kill them to play ball everyday.”
Why Should Delaware Care? Government works best when its citizens are knowledgeable and engaged. Delaware’s government has scores of commissions, working groups, agencies and legislative committees. All must hold meetings that are open to the public. Below we highlight a few of those meetings that are happening this week.
Below are some of the most important or interesting public meetings happening around the state this week.
Early primary voting to begin Wednesday
Legislature’s property assessment working group to convene
Sussex Council to vote on forest preservation rules
State planners to review ChristianaCare expansions, Georgetown pallet village
Early primary voting begins Wednesday
Early voting for this year’s primary election is set to begin Wednesday morning.
Delaware’s primary will not officially take place until Tuesday, Sept. 15, but voters who are registered with the Democratic and Republican parties can begin casting their ballots as early as 7 a.m. Wednesday.
Delaware operates under a closed primary system, meaning that voters must be registered with either of the two major parties in order to participate.
The deadline for most residents to affiliate with a party has passed, but voters who were automatically registered at the Department of Motor Vehicles without choosing a party can still participate by designating their affiliation in person at their polling place.
Early voting will take place from:
Sept. 2 through Sept. 5 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Sept. 8 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Sept. 9 through Sept. 13 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
There will be no early voting Sept. 6-7 in honor of Labor Day.
📍 Early voting will at 7 a.m. Wednesday at polling locations across the state. For more information, click here.
Property assessment working group begins
The General Assembly’s property assessment working group, created earlier this year as part of a larger slate of reforms, will convene for the first time Monday morning.
The working group will be tasked with developing statewide standards for conducting property assessments. Those standards could include establishing requirements for how property data is collected and maintained, among others.
The group was created through House Concurrent Resolution 150, sponsored by Rep. Cyndie Romer (D-Newark). According to HCR 150, legislation created by the working group could prevent counties from certifying their tax rolls should their assessments not meet the to-be-determined state standards.
While Romer said she usually bristles at the idea of creating working groups that can prolong direct action, she realized there is not a quick fix to address the multiple issues that occurred during New Castle County’s property reassessment.
Those issues led to results that confounded Romer. Those included the results of a Spotlight Delaware analysis that found properties in some of Wilmington’s poverty-stricken communities saw some of the largest percentage increases in median property value across the state.
So she set out to correct the assessment process, and to ensure the new property reassessments do not create the same fallout as their predecessors.
“I didn’t feel like we could do nothing,” Romer told Spotlight Delaware earlier this year. “We needed to fix this problem, even though we realized it was going to take time to truly fix it.”
📍 The property assessment working group will meet at 10 a.m. Monday inside the House Majority Hearing Room at Legislative Hall, located at 411 Legislative Ave. in Dover. For more information, including on virtual attendance, click here.
Developers would have to preserve between 30% and 50% of the existing trees on their properties, depending on whether the land is in an area where officials want to direct development.
The proposed rules would also allow developers to clear trees beyond the proposed limit if they plant at least twice the amount of trees they cut down, either on the same land or nearby. That could only happen if the developer proves they don’t have another option.
County Council considered allowing developers to pay a fee instead of planting new trees, but the majority of council members appear to be against that proposal.
Under the current proposal, the rules would go into effect in six months, but Councilwoman Jane Gruenebaum argued developers could cut down trees during that time. The council will likely debate when the effective date should be on Tuesday.
📍The Sussex County Council is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Tuesday inside the Sussex County Administrative Office Building, located at 2 The Circle in Georgetown. For more details, including information about virtual attendance, click here.
State planners to discuss ChristianaCare expansions, Georgetown tiny homes
State planners on Wednesday morning will review both ChristianaCare’s plans to expand into Kent and Sussex counties, and Springboard Delaware’s proposed tiny home community in Georgetown.
The Preliminary Land Use Service (PLUS), made up of planning officials across multiple state agencies, reviews proposed development projects and provides comments before those projects are further reviewed by local officials.
This week’s meeting will include the review of two proposed hospital expansions by Delaware Healthcare giant ChristianaCare.
The healthcare system previously announced plans to build new facilities in both Camden and Georgetown.
PLUS also will review a proposal by Springboard Delaware, which currently operates a transitional housing community called the pallet village, to build a larger tiny home community in the Sussex County seat.
Tiny homes writ large have been an ongoing subject of controversy in Georgetown, with local officials currently reconsidering their previous decision to allow tiny homes to be built within town limits.
📍 PLUS will meet at 9 a.m. Wednesday inside Haslet Armory, located at 122 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd in Dover. For more information, including on virtual attendance, click here.
Minnesota wants Texas to turn over an officer charged with shooting an immigrant. Such extraditions are usually routine, but in this case politics loom large.
Fighters in legal limbo after accepting ‘total peace’ plan of Petro government just days before hardliner Abelardo De la Espriella took over
In mid-June, 99 guerrilla fighters were flown by helicopter to a small settlement in a rural area of southern Colombia where they lined up and, one by one, handed their weapons to government officials: rifles, pistols, machine guns and grenade launchers.
They also stripped off their heavy tactical vests, field packs and camouflage uniforms, which were each piled into a bonfire to mark the beginning of a new life away from an armed conflict that has claimed nearly half a million lives in the last six decades.
The Trump-ordered name change was the talk of the docks on both shores of Lake Ontario. But neither American nor Canadian sailors seemed to be taking it too seriously.
After Hurricane Helene, a group called Latinos Aventureros covered more than 4,300 miles crisscrossing Western North Carolina, spending 650 volunteer hours delivering food, water, medicine, and other supplies to an estimated 1,700 people.
It was a departure from the group’s typical mandate: helping Latino families get outside in natural areas like Wilson Creek, a popular summer recreation site in the forest stretching north of the mountain-flanked city of Asheville, where President Donald Trump will welcome G20 leaders on Saturday. Since the devastating 2024 hurricane — the deadliest to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina — North Carolina has received just a fraction of the disaster aid it’s sought from the federal government. Short on federal dollars, local volunteers like Latinos Aventureros tried to fill in the gaps. “We didn’t wait for permission. We didn’t wait for funding,” said Vivianette Ortiz, one of the group’s leaders. “We just showed up.”
The Trump administration has pointed to Asheville’s recovery as a marker of success, and its selection to host the international economic summit “reflects the Trump Administration’s commitment to the revitalization and resilience of western North Carolina,” in the words of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. But the view from the ground tells a different story. Damaged roads and infrastructure remain; some residents are still living in trailers; and empty lots mark where homes and businesses stood before Helene. And instead of receiving still-needed federal assistance, earlier this summer, Western North Carolina got Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
ICE agents, U.S. Forest Service personnel, and Caldwell County sheriff’s deputies arrested 13 people at Wilson Creek on July 26. Among them was a father there with his partner and their 4- and 10-year-old children, who had to watch their dad be taken into custody. ICE claimed some of those arrested had criminal records, but it hasn’t said who or how many.
To Ortiz, there was “a real sense of betrayal.” Volunteers with Latinos Aventureros had helped clean the recreation area, where the organization encouraged families to swim, hike, fish, and picnic on public lands. Families have since said they are afraid to use outdoor spaces because they fear encountering immigration enforcement.
“A huge part of our work has always been telling Latino families: These public lands belong to you, too,” Ortiz said. “If people are afraid to walk through that gate, then meaningful access has already been damaged.”
Left: Storm debris is piled against a damaged business in Swannanoa, N.C., on Oct. 4, 2024, days after Hurricane Helene devastated the community. Right: Nearly two years later, the building remains unrepaired and overgrown on Aug. 24, 2026. Trump visited Swannanoa shortly after the storm and promised a swift federal response and recovery.Photo: Austin Campbell/The Intercept
It takes just an hour by car to reach a different reality, where finance ministers and central bank governors representing the world’s largest economies are rolling into town for a meeting of the G20, the international economic forum whose members account for roughly 85 percent of global economic output and two-thirds of the world’s population.
They’re meeting up at the Grove Park Inn and Spa, a luxury resort overlooking Asheville and largely removed from the destruction Hurricane Helene left along the region’s rivers and valleys. Federal contracting records show the Treasury Department awarded Omni Hotels Corporation, the hotel’s owner, a $1.03 million contract to use the space. A separate Treasury planning document names Grove Park as the event’s “primary place of performance” and calls for gifts representing Western North Carolina and cultural programming highlighting the region’s “history, culture, and character.”
The city awaiting G20 delegates offers only a partial picture of recovery, said Jaime Byrd, a local resident and art gallery owner.
“They will get that beautiful experience of being at the Grove Park Inn, most likely, and maybe a couple of them might make it downtown, which looks completely normal,” Byrd said. “It’s unfortunate.”
Beyond Asheville’s tourist corridors, Helene remains written into the landscape. Debris left along rivers and roads has disappeared beneath nearly two years of vegetation, while damaged infrastructure remains. Elsewhere, recovery resembles absence: Buildings swept away by the storm have left empty ground where homes and businesses once stood.
Byrd’s gallery, located in Asheville’s River Arts District, took roughly six feet of water during Helene, destroying much of her artwork and causing at least $80,000 to $100,000 in losses, she estimates. Across town, roads near her home washed out, largely cutting off the neighborhood. Without electricity to power their wells, residents collected drinking water from an open spring on a neighbor’s property. They laid rocks and large pieces of metal across damaged roads to make them passable. Helicopters eventually arrived with “meals ready to eat” and evacuated residents who needed medical care.
“Most of this help came from self-help and community efforts,” Byrd said.
Jaime Byrd, left, salvages a painting from her flooded gallery in Asheville’s River Arts District on Oct. 3, 2024, days after Hurricane Helene.Photo: Austin Campbell/The Intercept
Federal assistance covered about 20 percent of the repairs needed at her home, Byrd estimates, but she received no Federal Emergency Management Agency help for her gallery. She launched a GoFundMe, spent her own money, and salvaged what artwork she could. Her collectors bought every recovered piece, which helped her keep the business alive.
Two years later, she said one of her neighbors still lives without water, while others remain in trailers.
In East Asheville, Linda Tetens said flooding and fallen trees effectively turned her neighborhood into an island, while residents cleared roads and helped one another through days without power or reliable access to food and water. Tetens relies on a CPAP machine to breathe while sleeping and said that after about 10 days without electricity, the effects of going without it forced her to leave Asheville for a motel in Greensboro.
“It was like a full-time job, trying to negotiate with FEMA.”
FEMA initially approved the hotel stay, Tetens said, but later denied her reimbursement. She spent nearly a year repeatedly submitting documents before receiving roughly $1,400.
“It was like a full-time job, trying to negotiate with FEMA,” Tetens said. “I understand why people gave up.”
Tetens points to damaged roads and residents still awaiting government buyouts as evidence of how much work remains.
“We’re not even close to being back,” she said.
Nearly two years after Helene, billions of dollars sought for North Carolina’s recovery remain outstanding. The state had received $7.8 billion in federal disaster aid as of March 31, according to state recovery data cited by the local newsroom Asheville Watchdog, compared with $25.6 billion requested after the storm. In June, Gov. Josh Stein traveled to Washington seeking more than $10 billion in additional federal funding for housing, infrastructure, and small businesses; on Thursday, FEMA announced an additional $137 million for North Carolina disaster recovery.
The fear of immigration enforcement could bring additional anxiety to a region struggling to recover, Asheville officials warned in 2025. “Our community is still recovering from Hurricane Helene,” Mayor Esther Manheimer and other local officials said at the time. “We do not need additional stress and fear.”
Asked whether those concerns extended to recent immigration enforcement in Western North Carolina, a city spokesperson told The Intercept she would not engage with questions characterizing federal immigration operations as harassment.
Left: A power box in East Asheville on Oct. 4, 2024, bears graffiti reading “THE STATE WILL NOT SAVE US,” reflecting some residents’ frustration with the state’s emergency relief efforts after Hurricane Helene. Right: Nearly two years later, the graffiti has been removed from the same box, while storm damage remains nearby.Photo: Austin Campbell/The Intercept
In response to questions from The Intercept, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson called the response part of “the long list of FEMA failures under Biden.” (Joe Biden was in office when Helene hit in September 2024, but recovery efforts have continued into the second Trump administration.)
“Under the Trump Administration, FEMA is mission focused and dedicated to disaster response,” wrote spokesperson Micah Bock, who previously worked for former Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C.
For Ortiz, the administration’s decision to showcase Western North Carolina’s recovery to the G20 makes the contrast particularly difficult to ignore. Latino and immigrant families, she said, were among the people who helped the region recover, but their right to belong should not depend on what they contributed after the storm.
“Our community shouldn’t have to say, ‘Look at everything we did after Helene, therefore we deserve to be here,’” Ortiz said. “We deserve to live here, raise our families here, enjoy our public lands, and move through our communities without persecution regardless of whether we drove a relief truck after a hurricane.”
Correction: August 29, 2026, 12:38 p.m. ET This story has been updated to correct a misspelling of Jaime Byrd’s first name inserted due to an editing error.
Katie Boulter: ‘You smell it a lot. I’m not a huge fan’
Britain’s US Open hopefuls thought they had put the grass behind them when Wimbledon finished, but the smell of it is all around Flushing Meadows and they are not happy about it.
Marijuana is legal for adults in New York and while smoking is not allowed on site, the aroma of weed wafts over some outside courts from the nearby Corona Park.
Six more people hospitalised after incident at Big Church festival near Steyning
A 41-year-old man has died and at least six other people have been injured after a large sign fell at a Christian festival in West Sussex, police have said.
The man, from Eastbourne, East Sussex, was pronounced dead at the scene after the incident at the Big Church festival near Steyning on Friday afternoon.
San Jose, California — A federal judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration violated the Constitution by using immigration laws to revoke visas and pursue deportation of noncitizen students based on protected pro-Palestinian speech.
U.S. District Judge Noel Wise found that provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act were unconstitutional when applied to people targeted because of their political expression. The case was brought by The Stanford Daily and a student visa holder who argued that the administration’s policies chilled reporting and advocacy on Israel and Gaza.
The lawsuit followed a series of visa revocations and arrests beginning in March 2025. The administration relied on laws allowing the secretary of state to revoke visas and deem noncitizens deportable when their presence was considered harmful to U.S. foreign policy interests.
Wise wrote that when speech itself becomes the basis for deportation, the government is discriminating based on viewpoint or content. She said First Amendment protections extend to noncitizens present in the United States.
The Stanford Daily said more than 150 staff members had declined assignments involving protests or Gaza because they feared immigration consequences.
The ruling echoes a 2025 decision by another federal judge who found similar Trump administration policies unconstitutional. The State Department and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately comment on Friday’s ruling.
In move that could generate millions, Exeter academics to deliver MA at National Defense University in Riyadh
The University of Exeter has approved plans for a “formal partnership” with Saudi Arabia to train senior military officers and government officials, despite long-held concerns about the Saudi government’s human rights record, the Guardian has learned.
In a deal that could generate millions of pounds for the Russell Group university, Exeter academics will deliver an MA in applied security and strategy (also known as an MStrat) to a cohort at the National Defense University (NDU) in Riyadh.
Country star came to South Yorkshire town in 2007 for UK launch of the Imagination Library, her book donation scheme
Shane Jarman was up a ladder decorating a Christmas tree at the school where he was deputy headteacher when he got a call asking him to come to Rotherham hospital ASAP. It was December 2007 and Jarman’s wife, Claire, had given birth the previous day to their first child, a girl called Emma, so of course he rushed to the phone. All was well, he was told, but that “everything would become clear” when he got to the hospital.
Once there, his wife told him – somewhat unexpectedly – that they were going to meet Dolly Parton. “And literally within what felt like five minutes,” he recalled, “there were great camera flashes, lots of noise, lots of clicking and in walked this real big bundle of energy.”
President Trump awarded the four-member Artemis II crew the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and signed an executive order directing the creation of a new U.S. Space Academy. The proposed academy would train engineers, scientists, technicians, operators, and astronauts for NASA, the Space Force, and the commercial space industry. Houston Public Media reports: The Artemis II crew -- NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen -- retraced history as they flew around the moon and back in April, the first time humans have been in lunar territory since the 1970s. He had previously hosted the crew members at the White House following their mission and called them during the mission while the crew was tens of thousands of miles away. "The one thing that really sticks out to us [from that call] is you said how proud you are and how proud our nation is for the job that we've just accomplished," Wiseman said during Friday's ceremony. "And for us, that is what we set out to do. We wanted to inspire this nation to learn."
During the ceremony, Trump also signed an executive order to create the "United States Space Academy." Under the order, a Presidential Commission on the U.S. Space Academy has 120 days to create a report with guidelines for the U.S. Space Academy. The Commission will include NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman as its Chair, as well as other NASA and space officials. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Trump's Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Michael Kratsios, assistant to the president for science and technology. In effect, it allows the Trump Administration to build the U.S. Space Academy to its liking. "It will serve both the United States Space Force as well as NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry," Trump said. "And it will attract, train, graduate the very best that our nation and our nation really has to offer." As for where the academy will be located, Trump said he was "going to be choosing a location very shortly."
Moving tariffs will cushion the blow from the October price cap rise and the increase widely predicted for January
With higher energy bills looming and warnings of worse to come in the new year, many households could save up to £173 a year by switching to a fixed deal.
Millions of households in Great Britain will face the highest energy charges in three years after it was announced that the government’s price cap will rise again in October. This will be the second increase in three months.
Planning delays and slow 5G upgrades could leave the UK unable to cope with a surge in AI-related traffic
The UK risks becoming a laggard in the global AI race as crucial telecoms upgrades to harness the technology fall behind rival nations, according to senior industry executives.
Exclusive: Number of times AI lies, ignores instructions and pursues goals in harmful ways almost doubles in July
Incidents of AIs escaping users’ control to lie, ignore instructions and pursue goals in harmful ways have hit a new high, according to research that also suggests the severity of deception and misalignment is worsening.
Analysis of real-world loss of control incidents involving AI models flagged by businesses and individuals almost doubled in July compared with June, with more than 300 cases in the month, according to the Loss of Control Observatory, which monitors reports made by AI users on the social media platform X.
Millions of Australians could be saving up to $370 a year on energy bills and doing their bit for the climate crisis if Labor followed the UK’s lead in legalising plug-in solar panels, an advocacy group has said.
Plug-in solar refers to small standalone solar units that could be attached to balconies or used in back yards and plugged into power points, offsetting the energy used by household appliances.
Washington, D.C. — A former teleprompter operator for President Donald Trump has been ordered to pay more than $172,000 after regulators found that he used inside information to bet on what Trump would say during public appearances.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Gabriel Perez must return $107,539.02 in profits and pay a $65,000 civil penalty. He also agreed to a three-year trading ban and to stop violating federal commodities laws.
Perez, who had worked for Trump since 2016, placed bets through prediction market Kalshi on whether specific words, phrases or topics would appear in Trump speeches. ABC News reported that the wagers covered more than a dozen appearances over roughly three months, including the State of the Union, Trump’s World Economic Forum address in Davos and a Medal of Honor ceremony.
Kalshi detected unusual trading activity and reported it to the CFTC, which began investigating.
The commission said Perez received a reduced penalty because of his “exemplary cooperation” with investigators.
The case comes as regulators and prosecutors scrutinize prediction-market trades involving individuals with access to nonpublic government information. In a separate case, a U.S. special operations soldier was indicted in April for allegedly using classified information to profit from wagers tied to the removal of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. He has pleaded not guilty.
The former prime minister Gordon Brown has said it is inevitable that Ireland will become united at some point in the future, in a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian.
While he added that any union would necessarily be “a long process” and based on mutual agreement, Brown’s comments are notable both because of his vehement opposition to Scottish independence, but also because of his involvement in government in efforts to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
As one of Europe’s biggest consumers of gas the UK may be particularly exposed to heightened price volatility
Europe is on course to enter the cooler months with gas stores at their lowest level in 13 years, which has triggered “winter panic” among energy traders, experts have warned.
The EU’s gas stocks were 63% full in the last week of August, well below the 80% average for late August over recent years and among the lowest levels ever recorded for this time of year.
Five-day showcase reveals leaps Beijing has made in humanoid tech, but also its limitations as US rivals come up from the rear
With exploding pelvises, enough comic pratfalls for a Buster Keaton show reel and the odd moment of ruthless violence, the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing gripped the world this week with an unsettling mixture of hilarity, trepidation and relief.
The five-day showcase staked out China’s claim to undisputed leadership in humanoid robotics as android martial artists landed knockout roundhouse kicks and robot teams marched into the arena heralded by flag-waving captains astride giant robotic dogs. The games’ blue-riband event, the 100m, did not disappoint when the robot-sprinters ran quicker than Usain Bolt before slamming mindlessly into a padded wall in a blaze of sparks, flames and flying mechanical limbs.
The ruling marks a blow to the federal government's long-delayed effort to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is accused of developing the plot to crash planes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
Architect of Srebrenica genocide is dead but those scarred by his atrocities say his ideology is still shockingly pervasive
To most of the world, he was and will always be the “Butcher of Bosnia”, a grim epithet but one that still fails to fully convey the evil and horror inflicted on its people by Gen Ratko Mladić, who died in prison on Thursday.
As commander of the Bosnian Serb forces, Mladić was responsible for the killing of an estimated 100,000 men, women and children during the savage breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. He was most notoriously the architect of ethnic cleansing and the genocide at Srebrenica in which at least 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were slaughtered.
More now on the Nepali army’s rescue operation to save about 100 people trapped in a tunnel at a hydropower project swamped by Wednesday’s flooding.
“Two helicopters have been dispatched but it is challenging because it is tough to even locate the entry points of the tunnel,” army spokesperson Raja Ram Basnet told AFP.
Relief efforts are also under way to provide the rescued people what they need.
The army is still working to safely evacuate more than 100 people trapped in the same tunnel.
He was placed on unpaid leave from his job at the White House after it was determined he used his position to make bets on what President Trump would say in speeches.
alternative_right shares a report from Axios: Roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm have quietly tried to influence Americans to oppose AI data centers on social media, X said Thursday night. The X Safety team probed suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified 200,000 accounts, including 200 accounts "posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy," the team said in a tweet.
The posts included content on how AI strains the electricity grid and increases utility prices and "cartoons that depicted data-center operators enriching themselves at the public's expense." It's unclear what, if any, action X will take to suspend or delete accounts from the bot farm. One of the reports mentioned in the article estimates that opposition campaigns have delayed or obstructed roughly $45.8 billion in data center projects in Virginia alone.
Jim Prosser, a former Twitter communications executive, pushed back on Silicon Valley claims that opposition to data centers is a "Chinese psyop," arguing that Big Tech is using the label to dismiss legitimate local concerns. "If you can get both Greg Abbott and Kathy Hochul agreeing on something, it's probably not a Chinese psyop," he told Axios.
Prosser said the industry needs to spend more time listening to affected communities rather than dismissing them from afar: "If you're a [venture capitalist] in Atherton or Menlo Park opining about how somebody in Ohio should feel, and you've never been to Ohio, that's a problem."
Authorities say 26 women targeted across four states
Suspect allegedly used dating apps, fake investments
FBI believes there may be ‘many more victims’
Federal authorities claim a man posed as a San Francisco 49ers player and scammed more than two dozen women out of about $1.3m.
The FBI arrested Daejon Love, 35, and his alleged accomplice Taylor Jamie Chan, 18, on 24 August in Boise, Idaho. They were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud, according to the US attorney’s office in the District of Oregon. The men remain in federal custody in Boise.
A reminder that we are covering the latest out of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Kevin Warsh – the new chair of the Federal Reserve – will deliver his first speech as the head of the US central bank at the annual economic policy symposium.
As my colleagues note, Warsh is under pressure to provide clarity on how the FederalReserve should handle with inflation if price pressures don’t abate.
Salesianum football played St. Joseph’s Prep from Pennsylvania in a preseason scrimmage on August 26, as the program gets ready for the upcoming 2026 season.
Sallies quarterback Brady Nabb receives the snap in Salesianum football’s scrimmage against St. Joseph’s Prep.
Nabb sets and fires to a receiver downfield.
Junior EstherVell Cotton leaps into the air to come down with the catch.
The Salesianum defense lines up against the St. Joseph offense as the ball is snapped.
A Salesianum player makes the tackle, stopping the St. Joseph run play.
A Hawks receiver focuses on making the catch as a Sallies defender attempts to break it up.
Cotton powers through a pair of St. Joseph defenders to complete his run.
A St. Joseph wide receiver tracks the throw from his quarterback as he nears the endzone.
The Hawks receiver completes the catch while falling in the endzone.
Cotton breaks a Hawk tackle and runs into the endzone for a Sallies touchdown.
Nabb loads up and fires a deep pass to a teammate downfield.
Senior Tysir Jones catches the pass behind the Hawk defenders.
Jones stretches out for the score.
Salesianum senior Michael Brock breaks on the pass hoping to breakup the connection.
A Salesianum player advances toward the first down marker. The Sals will start the regular season with a matchup against Springside Chestnut Hill Academy on September 3.
All photos courtesy of Dave Reeder. To see more of Dave’s work follow him on Instagram @bfr_photo
The plan involves the United States taking more direct control over Venezuelan reserves as crime and steep logistical challenges discourage private investors.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump announced Friday that the United States has reached an agreement with Venezuela giving U.S. interests majority control over more than 65 billion barrels of the country’s proven oil reserves.
Trump said the arrangement was negotiated with Venezuela’s interim government and would come at no cost to U.S. taxpayers. Reuters reported that the agreement is structured as a public-private partnership expected to attract nearly $100 billion in private investment to Venezuela’s battered oil industry.
The deal follows the removal of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January and represents a major expansion of U.S. involvement in the OPEC member’s energy sector.
Venezuela holds some of the world’s largest proven crude reserves but currently produces only about 1.25 million barrels per day after years of underinvestment, sanctions and deteriorating infrastructure. The administration hopes expanded production can provide additional crude for U.S. refineries and eventually help ease pressure on gasoline prices.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth helped negotiate the agreement with interim President Delcy Rodriguez, according to Trump.
Several major details remain unclear, including the precise legal structure of U.S. control and how quickly investment could translate into additional production. Reuters noted that analysts also questioned whether political uncertainty and infrastructure problems could complicate implementation.
Am I the only person that's spent the last 13 hours (in addition to the entire summer) trying to get the X7 supercharged only to watch them slowly sell out? After spending all day on the phone with multiple Banks getting temporary approval for this charge to Dubai and after contacting customer support and following all instructions for issues checking out and then getting no further response from them. Very irritating. First it wouldn't take my payment and then it wouldn't even let me add it to the cart. For all the shit people talk about FM they seem to be the only company that actually both has things in stock regularly and a system that allows you to pay for it. I was excited about making the switch to vesc but now becoming more hesitant if it's this hard just to get a board that's been out for over a year.
US president says US will have ‘majority’ control of 65bn barrels of proven oil reserves
Donald Trump announced Friday a new US oil agreement with Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez, saying the US will have “majority” control of 65bn barrels of proven oil reserves.
The terms of the agreement remain to be seen, but the US president said on his social-media platform that it had been brokered “through a partnership with private business” by his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.
That rumored foldable iPhone didn’t come from nowhere. Experts from CNET, PCMag, Mashable, Popular Science, ZDNET and Lifehacker examine Apple’s most important tech reveals.
The upcoming Democratic primary election for state treasurer has broken funding records this month, with campaign spending likely to top $1 million on two candidates -- Michael A. Smith (left) and Ted Lauzen (right) -- in the historically overlooked race.…
Longtime Slashdot reader belmolis writes: Part of New York City's 911 emergency system was offline from about 3:13 a.m. to 10 a.m. on August 18th due to a software update, according to Medical Daily. Of 5,659 calls to the Bronx call center during that period, about 1,700 calls connected but could not be heard by emergency operators. Some were rerouted to other call centers, but an estimated 400 human callers never got through. The potentially serious consequences of delayed response to emergencies are not yet known. The city did not notify the public and only released information when journalists inquired. How buggy software came to be installed on a running system is not yet known. The early-morning software update was pushed by Motorola, though exactly what it changed or why it caused the failure remains unknown. The city is still investigating whether the update was adequately tested and whether the same software release was deployed elsewhere.
The number of Australians who were reported missing in the catastrophic Nepal flooding disaster has risen to 41, as one family celebrates after an unaccounted-for woman made contact with them yesterday.
It means three additional Australians were confirmed missing overnight – up from 38 who remained unaccounted for on Friday evening.
After the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced two cases of measles-related deaths in one county, the local coroner appeared to contradict the account. And in an ongoing spat with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has alleged that a Shapiro staffer may have even “fabricated” the deaths. We’ll lay out what we know.
The saga brings to mind a pandemic-era falsehood that the vast majority of people classified as dying from COVID-19 did not die of the disease, but died of other causes while they happened to be infected. And when two children died of measles complications in Texas last year, Kennedy, along with activists in his former nonprofit, baselessly alleged that the kids did not die of measles, despite evidence to the contrary.
The situation in Pennsylvania is less clear. One of the deaths appears to be of an infant that tested positive for measles and died of a ruptured spleen. It is possible that the rupture was due to infection with measles, but the coroner has said the pathologist determined measles was not involved. There is no information about the second death. Meanwhile, the state has acknowledged that the term it has used to describe the deaths – “measles-associated” – includes cases in which measles infection is detected but “may not be assessed by the medical certifier or coroner to be the immediate cause of death.”
As we’ll explain, that statement may not mean as much as it appears to, since measles deaths would not be expected to have measles listed as an immediate cause anyway. But without more information about the cases, it is difficult to say what has happened, leading many – including Kennedy – to speculate that the deaths were not measles-related after all.
“Pennsylvania created its own information vacuum and then seemed surprised when someone else filled it,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and an infectious diseases attending physician in Pittsburgh, told us in an email. “The coroner’s account and the state’s account are not necessarily in conflict — they are two offices answering two different questions — but nobody in Harrisburg explained that, so the public was left to choose between fraud and incompetence.”
Timeline of Events
On Aug. 25, the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced that it had confirmed two cases of “measles-associated” deaths. Other than noting that the individuals were both unvaccinated and residents of Lancaster County, the department did not provide any further details, citing privacy concerns. The release strongly implied the deaths were at least partially due to measles, referring to them twice as “related” to measles.
“These mark the first deaths related to measles within the Commonwealth in 35 years,” the department’s press release noted.
Later in the day, Shapiro held a press conference with the health department in Lancaster County to share the announcement and to encourage vaccination.
“We hope and we pray that those deaths will be the last,” he said of the two deaths. “I want to be clear. This illness and death from measles is completely preventable.”
Localand national news outlets then picked the story up, with manystating that the two people died from measles.
Initially, the main story from the press conference was a quarrelbetween Shapiro and Kennedy about whether the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine contains fetal tissue, and whether Kennedy has spread vaccine misinformation. Kennedyhas – and the vaccine does not. (The rubella component of the vaccine is manufactured with and was initially developed with fetal cells derived from an elective abortion in the 1960s. While trace amounts of cell components from the cell strain can persist in the purified vaccine, whole cells do not. The Catholic Church hassaid the shot can be used “with a clear conscience.”)
But soon, questions swirled about how much the two announced deaths were related to measles.
Josh Parsons, a Lancaster County commissioner, posted on X the day of the press conference that the county coroner’s office was not aware of any measles deaths, although there was one baby that had tested positive for the disease but did not die of it.
“They have one case where a person died WITH measles, but not FROM measles,” he wrote. “Measles was definitely NOT the cause of death in that case.”
The following evening, Aug. 26, Kennedy had picked up on the controversy, writing on X, “The announcement appears to have been premature, and the deaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers. The Lancaster County Coroner says that it has no record of any measles deaths. State law requires that all measles deaths be reported to the coroner.”
Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Debra Bogen responded to Kennedy on X, saying she had “thoroughly reviewed the case investigation information and sadly can confirm that there were two recent measles-associated deaths in Lancaster County.”
Gov. Josh Shapiro during a press conference in Lancaster County on Aug. 25.
That same day in Florida, Kennedy had also said, citing the Lancaster County commissioner, that “they cannot find any measles deaths in Lancaster County.” He added: “The press is all covering this as if those measles deaths actually happened. But nobody’s doing … the little bit of critical inquiry to find out. We’re trying to figure out, you know, who those deaths were and whether they actually happened, and we can’t figure that out yet.”
Meanwhile, in the late afternoon of Aug. 26, DOH issued a statement that appeared to say that one of the two deaths was the baby the coroner’s office was aware of and gave more information on the definition of “measles-associated.”
“PA DOH uses the term ‘measles-associated’ when laboratory or epidemiologic evidence of measles is present, but the disease may not be assessed by the medical certifier or coroner to be the immediate cause of death,” the statement read. “Not all deaths are referred to a coroner under Pennsylvania law. Accordingly, one of the two measles-associated deaths is under investigation by the county coroner — as confirmed by the Lancaster County Coroner, who stated publicly their office is reviewing an infant death with a positive measles test.”
(Online during this period, a fake screenshot of a news headline circulated a rumor that the two deaths were both men in their eighties. There is no evidence for this, and according to the state’s dashboard, no measles cases have occurred in anyone 65 years or older this year.)
Multiple news outlets have reported more details on the infant case over the last several days. On Aug. 26, the Philadelphia Inquirer said that Lancaster County Coroner Dr. Stephen Diamantoni told them that the child, a newborn who died shortly after birth, died of a spleen laceration, and that the pathologist who did the autopsy “did not feel it was related to measles.” He said the infant contracted measles before birth, tested positive for measles after death based on a test of lung tissue and that the case was still being investigated.
TribLive, a news outlet covering western Pennsylvania, reported on Aug. 27 that Diamantoni said the cause of death was a “traumatic laceration of the spleen” and that the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy, Dr. Wayne Ross, determined that measles was not a contributing factor to the death.
“Diamantoni later acknowledged, however, that measles was listed under Part II of the infant’s death certificate, which reports ‘other contributing conditions contributing to death but not resulting in the underlying cause,’” the outlet reported. “Diamantoni said he still does not believe that measles contributed to the child’s death, but the disease was listed to offer ‘a broader view of the general health of the child.’”
Another local news source, citing the coroner, said the child that died was a male newborn who died at home and tested positive for measles via a PCR blood sample. An earlier version of the Inquirer story suggested there was a positive antibody test. Diamantoni, a family physician who was elected to his coroner post as a Republican, also told the TribLive that the baby was born with the assistance of a midwife at a birthing center in Lancaster County. He specified to LancasterOnline in an Aug. 27 story that the child died on Aug. 14 at a birthing center in Strasburg Township, and that the mother was alive, contrary to rumors that the second death was the baby’s mother.
As a newborn, the child would not have been eligible yet for routine measles vaccination, which begins at 12 months of age. However, if the baby contracted measles in utero from the mother, it is highly likely that the mother was unvaccinated.
An Information Gap
Much attention has focused on the newborn’s death from the lacerated spleen and whether it was ultimately due to measles infection. Measles is known to cause enlargement of the spleen, which during birth, could plausibly lead to a rupture.
“Given that congenital measles infection can cause splenic enlargement and thinning of the splenic capsule, it is likely that the child ruptured the spleen during birth,” Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, wrote in an Aug. 28 Substack post.
A 2024 study of children hospitalized for measles at a Polish hospital found that of the 26 infants under 13 months of age, four, or about 15%, had an enlarged spleen.
The coroner, however, said that the pathologist did not note an enlarged spleen during the autopsy, telling LancasterOnline that measles was not considered contributory because “there was no swelling or enlargement whatsoever” of the spleen and there was “massive blood loss.”
But Offit told the Philadelphia Inquirer that it is difficult to tell whether a spleen was enlarged after it ruptures, and that there should be an explanation for the rupture if it wasn’t caused by measles. The coroner has said the cause of the rupture is still under investigation, but no foul play is suspected.
Adalja said that measles “could be the reason an otherwise survivable delivery wasn’t survivable. It could also be incidental. I don’t think anyone outside that forensic center can say yet, and I’d be skeptical of confident assertions in either direction.”
The coroner’s office did not reply to our request for more information.
It’s worth noting that some of the confusion could come down to different definitions and processes that have not been adequately explained.
For example, Adalja said, the coroner or medical certifier produces the official death certificate, but state epidemiologists look at “deaths for outbreak surveillance under case definitions.” Those definitions are set by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists in coordination with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The latter is “a faster, looser standard designed to flag that a death occurred during and plausibly in connection with an outbreak, so the state can act in real time rather than wait months for a final certificate,” he said. “The failure here is that Pennsylvania never told anyone two systems were running, so the coroner saying he had no measles deaths in his log and the state saying it had two looked like a lie rather than two people describing different databases.”
Similarly, DOH’s statement about “measles-associated” deaths not necessarily being assessed “to be the immediate cause of death” is almost meaningless, Adalja said, since almost no measles deaths would list measles as the immediate cause.
Death certificates show a causal chain, listing the immediate cause as well as the sequence of events that led to it, including the underlying cause that started the sequence. In measles deaths, measles is the underlying cause, but the immediate cause would be something such as pneumonia or encephalitis, which are complications of measles, he explained.
DOH’s statement, then, he said, “is technically accurate” but “functionally uninformative. Worse, to a lay reader it sounds like a concession — as though the state were conceding measles is being blamed for something it didn’t do.”
Another major question is the second measles-related death. The Lancaster County coroner has said he doesn’t know who this is, and told LancasterOnline that while there are several reasons why he might not know, by law, it should be reported to him. Kennedy and others have also said that it is state law for the measles deaths to be reported to a county coroner.
DOH, however, has said that not all deaths need to be referred to a coroner. Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law expert at University of California Law San Francisco, told us that as far as she can tell, the health department is correct.
State law specifies that one of the conditions requiring a coroner’s investigation is a “death known or suspected to be due to contagious disease and constituting a public hazard” – and both parts of the clause would need to be met.
“This would not be a death that is a public hazard,” she told us. “Measles is spreading unrelated to it, so I don’t see any way to see it as meeting this requirement.”
Offit told us that he had talked to people “high up in the Pennsylvania Department of Health who have said they are comfortable” saying that “because of measles, two people in Pennsylvania died.”
DOH, however, has not shown why it thinks that is the case. The department did not respond to our questions after it sent us its statement. Shapiro’s office also did not respond to an inquiry.
Both Offit and Adalja have said it would be helpful if the department had released more information.
Offit’s concern is that regardless of what happened in these two cases, the measles outbreak in the state could very well be much larger than is currently known, and could be poised to grow as kids return to school and the seasons shift.
“This outbreak is much worse than they’re saying,” he said. “It’s probably closer to 2,000 cases. And it’s August” – not measles season, which is usually winter and spring. As of Aug. 28, Pennsylvania has recorded 460 measles cases, nearly half in Lancaster County.
Adalja told us he does not see a reason why the state couldn’t have provided more information that still kept private the identities of those who died.
“Secretary Kennedy suggesting the deaths may have been fabricated is inexcusable on its own terms. But he was handed the opening,” he said. “Even if measles is definitively established as the underlying cause in both deaths, this week already taught a slice of the public that when officials say ‘outbreak death,’ they might mean something else. That lesson outlasts the case. In an outbreak, institutional credibility is a consumable resource — and Pennsylvania spent a great deal of it protecting information that Texas released last year without incident.”
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Nearly 600 days after the devastating 2025 fires, thousands of Los Angeles residents are still waiting for more than $15bn in federal funds to rebuild their communities
As thousands of residents in Spokane, Washington, begin to grapple with a long recovery after a destructive set of blazes that consumed hundreds of homes in the state’s second most populated city this month, victims of the Los Angeles firestorm broke a grim record – they have faced the longest delay in modern history for federal aid.
Nearly 600 days since a historic firestorm roared into communities across Los Angeles, reducing more than 16,000 structures to ash and toxic debris, the Trump administration has failed to appropriate more than $15bn in long-term recovery funds that are crucial to rebuilding. The delay in supplying the badly needed funds is months longer than the last record set when victims of the Maui fires had to wait 500 days to receive the support, LAist noted this week.
A once-prized prospect from the Dominican Republic has been suspended by Major League Baseball after a league investigation revealed the player was part of an elaborate plot to portray him as nearly two years younger than he actually was, ESPN reported Friday.
The age-fraud plot included extreme efforts by the player’s handler such as falsifying school and medical records, faking birth and death certificates and even staging a gravesite, per the report.
Nashville, Tennessee — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is backing a proposal to rename Nashville International Airport in honor of Dolly Parton, following the country music icon’s death earlier this week at age 80.
Lee announced the proposal Friday, saying Parton’s life and legacy were deeply connected to Tennessee. He said renaming the airport would recognize her music, philanthropy and long-standing ties to the state.
The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority is expected to discuss the proposed change at its Sept. 17 meeting. Airport President and CEO Doug Kreulen praised Parton’s commitment to dignity, kindness and opportunity, saying those values align with the airport’s mission.
Parton grew up in a one-room cabin in Sevier County as one of 12 children before becoming one of the most recognizable performers in country music. She maintained strong ties to Tennessee throughout her life, supporting scholarships, health initiatives and other charitable causes.
The proposal comes amid a wave of tributes from political leaders across the country. Maine Gov. Janet Mills ordered the governor’s residence illuminated in pink in Parton’s honor, while lawmakers from Tennessee praised her connection to the state and her charitable work.
Any formal renaming would require action by the airport authority before the change could take effect.
Cleveland police say a total of 24 people arrested in investigation after crash that killed two officers
Seven more men have been arrested as part of an operation tackling alleged organised crime after the head-on crash on the A66 that resulted in seven deaths, Cleveland police have said.
Officers said four men, aged 21, 25, 35 and 40, were being held on suspicion of criminal damage with intent to endanger life after a vehicle crashed into a house in Steele Crescent, Middlesbrough.
A federal appeals court has ruled that states can regulate prediction markets like Kalshi as gambling, handing state regulators their biggest legal victory yet against the booming industry. "There are still related lawsuits pending across the country, and legal experts believe the matter will ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court," reports CNN. "But Friday's ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is the largest courtroom victory to date for the states as they seek to regulate prediction sites." CNN reports: The 3-0 ruling came from a panel of three Trump-appointed judges. The case originated from Nevada, where regulators tried to shut down the Kalshi prediction site. [...] "The substance of the sports event contracts offered on Kalshi's (exchange) is sports gambling, regardless of whether Kalshi calls them swaps," the appeals panel wrote Friday, adding that "Kalshi's attempts to distinguish its sports event contracts from sportsbooks betting are unpersuasive." The judges also said it was "disingenuous" for Kalshi to argue in court that its products weren't sports-betting when it previously used that phrasing in marketing materials. Kalshi spokeswoman Dani Lever said in a statement: "Despite the Ninth Circuit's opinion, we still believe the CFTC regulations as written do not prohibit sports contracts, and in any event, the CFTC is working to clarify those regulations. We will be seeking further review."
"It's the first ruling against Kalshi at the appellate level, and the opinion seemed to be pretty brutal for the company," said Dustin Gouker, an independent journalist who covers the prediction industry. "This gets us one step closer to an almost inevitable Supreme Court case on the legality of sports event contracts."
About 125 firefighters tackle blaze at Neasden waste facility as nearby Amazon warehouse is evacuated
A large fire broke out at a waste facility close to Wembley Stadium in north-west London, disrupting tube and train lines in the area.
Twenty fire engines and about 125 firefighters were sent to tackle the blaze at a mixed-waste facility on an industrial estate in Neasden, less than a mile from the venue.
National Park Service, which backs the 250ft arch, says it is likely to disrupt historical significance of dozens of sites
A new National Park Service report backs Donald Trump’s proposed arch, despite what it says are adverse effects to the sightlines of a host of landmarks in Washington, including the Washington Monument and the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.
The report released on Friday says the 250ft-tall (76-meter) memorial arch is likely to disrupt the historical significance of dozens of sites near its planned location adjacent to the Arlington Memorial Bridge.
Climber, stuck on 6in ridge, had veered off treacherous path and ‘any fall would almost certainly be fatal’
An ill-fated move left a man stranded on a 6in ledge over 10,000ft off the ground for hours in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range, before a volunteer rescue team came to his aid.
The climber, who has not been publicly identified, had been scaling the Mendenhall couloir, a gully on the face of Laurel mountain, with a friend on Saturday.
A former editor of Breitbart News, Yiannopoulos has also served as an intern for Marjorie Taylor Greene
Milo Yiannopoulos, a far-right British political commentator, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Louisiana, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
In a statement on Friday, a DHS spokesperson said that Yiannopoulos was arrested on Thursday at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans international airport (MSY). The spokesperson said Yiannopoulos “legally entered the country” in May 2019, but that “he chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws”.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Over a hundred tech companies -- including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft -- have signed an open letter urging both the private and public sectors to work together to defend themselves from AI-related cyber threats. The letter -- which was also signed by prominent cyber firms like CrowdStrike, Okta, and Fortinet, as well as prominent financial institutions and internet infrastructure firms -- calls for the adoption of new forms of cyber defense, while also encouraging governments at the "local, national, and international levels" to collaborate on security. "In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable," the letter states. "The companies and public services our communities depend on -- from hospitals to water treatment plants to the infrastructure that powers the internet -- are at risk."
[...] The letter further suggests the mobilization of a "collective response," one in which "new partnerships" are formed "to raise security standards and find new solutions to emerging cyber threats." Several of the AI companies that have signed the letter are still actively developing ever more advanced AI models, highlighting their conflicted position. At the same time, they are also offering programs to use frontier AI models for defensive purposes, including OpenAI's Daybreak program, Anthropic's Mythos, and Microsoft's new cyber platform Perception.
I got my Pint S in February of last year and I'm close to passing #3 on your leaderboard 😅
I wish X and S weren't included on the same leaderboard but I get it, since its the same platform with upgrades.
I just wonder where I stand with people who got a Pint S after September 2024 because I'm never going to catch the ones that got an X when they came out years ago😂
Around 70,000 are expected be at the Nevada desert festival, with it urging attendees to treat “everyone affected by this emergency with patience and care.”
(The Center Square) – Many inmates who die in Los Angeles County jails have been behind bars for weeks or months before their deaths, according to a new UCLA study.
Got some ice blocks for my stock GT. Seemed an easy way to drop a bit on the height and was super easy to fit. Also cut a bit out the fender delete and fits on nice. I think I’ve only dropped it 1/2 inch or so but does seem to make a difference so all good.
Rescuers pulled out survivors and helicopters ferried people to safety as Nepal and China raced to respond after catastrophic flash floods killed hundreds of people.
(The Center Square) – The Milwaukee Election Commission acknowledged that a team led by its deputy director mistakenly selected and downloaded an audit log instead of election results on five of nine tabulators at its central count facility on the…
Australia's official music charts will no longer accept songs that are largely or entirely AI-generated, requiring eligible releases to be "substantially human made." The BBC reports: The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) said the new code would help "promote the human nature of artistry." It follows a controversy around a cover of Madonna's Like A Prayer by Australian DJ Josh Fawaz which recently topped the ARIA dance singles chart and peaked at number 2 on the country's overall chart. The song has become a staple of commercial radio station playlists and been streamed more than 48 million times on Spotify alone. Fawaz later added generative AI credits to the song after a backlash.
ARIA said that Australian artists were competing for attention "in the most crowded market in history" and that it was "not interested in promoting or celebrating the success of AI-generated music that does not contain human artistry." Under the new rules, AI assistance can still be used, but humans must have written the song, and have performed the lead vocal and primary instruments. AI can also still be used for mastering songs and, for example, using drum machines and auto tune. [...]
Artists will be required to declare AI use when they submit a song for chart consideration. ARIA said that if it later emerged music was largely AI-generated it could retrospectively adjust chart positions, and if the piece topped the charts, it may request that awards given for reaching Number One were returned. Artists and their representatives will be able to challenge their exclusion.
ARIA chief executive Annabelle Herd said: "These changes reflect our intent to remain dynamic and promote the human nature of artistry in what is, to say the least, a rapidly developing space. Artists already use AI tools in their work, the charts can and should evolve to keep room for that, but music generated wholesale by services built on artists' recordings is a different matter."
She added: "A chart that rewards unlicensed AI output would undercut the very basis of the recorded music we exist to represent."
Man claims he was coached extensively by authorities
Pennsylvania says recantation is ‘highly suspect’
Sandusky serving sentence after 2012 conviction
A judge has granted a hearing to explore claims that a man wants to recant allegations of sexual abuse years ago by Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
Sandusky, 82, has been serving a decades-long prison sentence since he was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse in 2012. Eight young men testified about what happened to them as boys. He has repeatedly lost efforts to get a new trial, but Sandusky’s lawyers are trying again.
(The Center Square) – Americans need a “quieter” Federal Reserve focused on bringing down 65 months of “sustained elevated inflation,” the central bank’s chair told attendees of the annual Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium on Friday.
TORONTO, Aug. 28, 2026 — Xanadu Quantum Technologies Limited, a leading photonic quantum computing company, announced today that it will establish an advanced photonics research, development, and manufacturing facility as part of Project OPTIMISM, supported by CAD $195 million in federal government funding also announced today. The new facility, named “Inception,” is expected to feature world-class technology to enable scalable production of the components that will power future quantum data centers. Xanadu believes this work will revolutionize quantum infrastructure and strengthen Canada’s position as a global leader in the field.
The support for Inception is part of the largest government investment in quantum manufacturing in Canadian history. The funding is expected to accelerate scaling the photonic hardware required to achieve fault-tolerant quantum computing, the crucial milestone for delivering commercially meaningful, real-world solutions.
Designed to be a global facility for the manufacturing, packaging, and assembly of quantum computing components, the 158,000-square-foot Toronto site is being transformed into one of the world’s most sophisticated photonics facilities.
Inception is expected to feature state-of-the-art cleanrooms and equipment tailored for high-precision quantum hardware. Key technical capabilities are expected to include round-the-clock test and measurement facilities and first-of-its-kind heterogeneous integration. This integration process is vital for combining diverse photonic components onto a single scalable chip. These advanced capabilities will leverage Xanadu’s established industry partnerships and integrate specialized tooling from ASMPT, Bluefors, DISCO, EVG, FiconTEC, and MPI. The facility is expected to house Xanadu’s Systems Integration and Operation Centre, where quantum modules are assembled, tested, and verified before being installed into server racks.
“The launch of Inception is a defining strategic milestone for Xanadu and the broader quantum industry,” said Dr. Christian Weedbrook, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Xanadu. “We believe that this investment ensures that Xanadu remains at the forefront of the field, providing the infrastructure necessary to transition quantum technology from the lab to commercial-scale data centres.”
Xanadu is on a mission to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere. Inception is central to this mission, serving as a world-class facility for building the next generation of quantum infrastructure to meet the global demand for fault-tolerant quantum computing.
About Xanadu
Founded in 2016, Xanadu is a Canadian photonic quantum computing company with the mission to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere. Xanadu is building fault-tolerant quantum computers using light, with systems designed to operate at room temperature. Xanadu develops both hardware and software, including PennyLane, its open-source quantum computing platform. Xanadu is the first pure-play photonic quantum computing company to list on public markets (Nasdaq/TSX: XNDU) and is recognized globally for its breakthroughs in scalable quantum technologies.
New York, New York — President Donald Trump lost another attempt Friday to move his New York hush money case into federal court, leaving his 34-count felony conviction intact while his state appeal continues.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected Trump’s renewed request to transfer the case from state court, ruling that the arguments presented were “neither new nor legally sufficient.”
Trump was convicted in May 2024 of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records connected to a $130,000 payment made to adult-film actor Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. Prosecutors argued the records were falsified to conceal the payment’s purpose.
Hellerstein had previously denied Trump’s efforts to move the case into federal court. The latest review came after a federal appeals court instructed him to reconsider the request in light of the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling expanding presidential immunity for official acts.
The judge concluded that Trump had not shown sufficient grounds to revisit the earlier decision and criticized the effort during February arguments as seeking “two bites at the apple.”
The ruling marks the third time Trump has failed to remove the case from New York state court.
Trump continues to challenge the conviction through the state appellate process, where his attorneys are separately seeking to overturn the verdict.
Apple is raising Apple TV's U.S. price to $14.99 per month, up from $12.99, while the annual plan jumps from $99 to $119. It's the service's fourth price hike in four years and means the monthly cost has now tripled from its $4.99 launch price in 2019. Apple One's Individual plan is also rising from $19.95 to $21.95 per month.
–(The Center Square) – While visiting the Johnson Space Cente Friday, President Donald Trump announced and signed an executive order to establish the Space Force Academy.
Nevada-based Kingsbarn Realty Capital seeks to acquire land to construct private road to development outside park
The Trump administration is reportedly pushing to give a parcel of land inside Yosemite, the country’s first national park and one of its most popular, to a Nevada-based private developer.
Staff with the National Park Service have been exploring how the agency can give a quarter-mile parcel to a company operated by Kingsbarn Realty Capital, the news outlet Notus reported on Friday, citing agency documents and unnamed sources “directly familiar with discussions”.
When The Westin London City was built beside the Thames, excavation for the spa uncovered Roman archaeology beneath the site, limiting how far crews could dig. It is a very London problem: even a brand-new hotel can run straight into…
Official death toll approaches 600, with many of the missing Americans having been on a pilgrimage to a sacred site
At least 90 Americans were still missing on Friday among almost 2,000 people unaccounted for following the catastrophic flash flood along the Nepal-Tibet border on Wednesday.
With the official death toll creeping towards 600 on Friday and expected to continue rising, there were survivors, victims and missing people from many nationalities.
(The Center Square) – Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers is blasting his opponent, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, over his ties to controversial far-left influencer Hasan Piker.
The families of an Australian defence force member and two Sydney boys who went missing with their parents in Nepal remain hopeful they will be found safe.
Dozens of Australians are missing after devastating flooding on the Nepal-Tibet border. Nepal’s disaster management authority said on Friday that the total number of people missing had risen sharply to more than 1,900 swelled by 933 workers on hydropower projects on the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers where a wall of water powered down on Wednesday morning. The number of people killed is at least 584.
New York, New York — Elon Musk’s X Corp. lost its challenge to New York’s “Stop Hiding Hate Act” after a federal judge ruled that the law’s disclosure requirements do not violate the First Amendment.
U.S. District Judge John Cronan dismissed X’s lawsuit Wednesday, finding that the law requires large social media companies to provide factual information about how they define and enforce policies involving hate speech, extremism, harassment, disinformation and foreign political interference.
The law applies to platforms operating in New York with more than $100 million in annual revenue and requires two reports each year to the state attorney general. X had argued the requirement improperly interfered with its editorial decisions and compelled speech.
Cronan rejected that argument, comparing the reporting requirements to other factual business disclosures. The court also dismissed X’s claim that the law conflicts with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The decision contrasts with X’s partial victory against a similar California law, where a federal appeals court previously found that certain disclosure requirements likely violated the First Amendment.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has said the law is intended to provide consumers with greater transparency into how major platforms handle harmful content. X can appeal the ruling, but the current decision leaves the reporting requirements in place.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A US judge ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration broke the law when it designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk earlier this year, finding that the government had unlawfully targeted the AI firm for refusing to comply with defense department demands. "The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Judge Rita Lin said in a 59-page decision.
Lin's ruling barred the federal agencies named in the lawsuit from enforcing Donald Trump's order to stop using Anthropic's tools and overturned the designation of the company as a "supply chain risk" by the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. The status, usually reserved for foreign firms, would have blocked government agencies from doing business with Anthropic. The case emerged out of a months-long feud between Anthropic and the Pentagon at the start of the year. Anthropic refused to allow the government to use its Claude AI model for fully autonomous lethal weapons or domestic mass surveillance, resulting in Hegseth accusing the company of "arrogance and betrayal".
Lin put a temporary pause on the government's punitive measures in March, stating that the government's actions looked like an attempt to "cripple Anthropic" for exercising its first amendment rights. The ruling this week makes that temporary suspension permanent, although the government may appeal. "We welcome the court's ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful," an Anthropic spokesperson said.
By: Maakwe Cumanzala, Anyway Chingwete, and Karen Kaunda
These three numbers from Afrobarometer surveys help explain why many across Africa are struggling with rising costs, despite the rosy economic headlines.
Critics call move to gain long-term access to country’s massive energy reserves ‘predatory’ and ‘unconstitutional’
Reports that the US is preparing to claim a big stake in Venezuela’s massive energy reserves have sparked an outcry, with critics describing the move as “predatory” and a “rapacious” land grab.
Several media outlets this week reported that the Trump administration – which abducted Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, in January and has steered the South American country ever since – hopes to secure long-term access to its oil and gasfields.
Anger over the construction of AI data centers has triggered political leaders to call for bans and moratoriums on the construction of new data centers in recent months. Is this a legitimate reaction to increased utility bills and a deterioration of quality of life, or are the bans and moratoriums going too far?
In July, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a one-year ban on the construction of new data centers that consume more than 50 megawatts of power. The moratorium is designed to give the state time to develop a “regulatory framework” to protects customers, the environment, and the energy grid.
“As data center development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources, and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it’s my responsibility to take action and lead,” Hochu stated in her executive order.
In recent weeks, Republican leaders have joined Democrats in calling for hiatuses on building new data centers, including Texas and Pennsylvania.
Residential electricity costs have risen by 42% over the past five years, per the US Energy Information Administration (leolintang/Shutterstock)
While Virgina has the highest density of data centers in the country, Texas has been the epicenter of the AI boom, with nearly 250 new data centers proposed to be built over the next few years, according to this article in the Texas Tribune. With plenty of land, affordable electricity, and a reputation for unencumbered free market activity, the Lone Star State has been a draw for AI data centers.
So it was a bit of a surprise when Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, called for a pause in new data centers earlier this month. The cause: Concerns about the 420 gigawatts in new electrical connections to Texas’ grid (ERCOT) from prospective data center operators.
“Our top priority is to protect Texans’ safety and quality of life,” Abbott stated in the August 3 announcement. “Any project that fails to comply with the requirements set forth by the PUCT and ERCOT, and by state law, must be denied connection to the Texas grid. Simply put, Texans must come first.”
A similar dynamic is at play in Pennsylvania, where more than 100 data centers have been proposed to be built, representing a potential increase of 74 gigawatts in peak power usage over the next two decades. Citing “record highs” in power costs, Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, also called for tighter rules on new data centers last week.
Shapiro’s new rules require data center operators in Pennsylvania to gain approval from local communities. They also require data center operators to generate their own power or pay full price for grid connections. The governor canceled all “fast-track” approvals and demanded full transparency with no NDAs (non-disclosure agreements).
“These are some of the biggest companies in the world,” Shapiro stated in his executive order. “They can afford to be good neighbors, follow the rules, and do this right.”
Bytes & Pitchforks
Public opinion on data centers has soured in recent months. A Gallup poll from March found that 70% of Americans opposed local construction of new data centers A Politico poll from July found that about 41% of Americans would oppose a data center being built within three miles of their home, up from 28% in January.
(Aleutie/Shutterstock)
Rising electricity costs are being blamed on data centers. And costs have been rising. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential electricity costs have risen by 42% over the past five years.
But are those increases due solely to new data centers? The answer is likely mixed. Electrical connections to data centers do increase the overall usage of electricity and cause local grid operators to buy more power on the wholesale market. Those costs are then spread across all ratepayers.
However, there are other factors are play, including environmental regulations, grid upgrades, and inflation. According to a Lawrence Berkeley Lab analysis, increases in power costs have mostly tracked inflation in recent years, with a small unexcepted bump in 2025. The highest electricity costs are in California, Hawaii, the Northeast, and Alaska, it stated.
Water Consumption
The water consumption of data centers is another concern. Just as rising demand for electricity is causing some increases for ratepayers, an increase in water for cooling data centers is being attributed to rising water bills.
A January report by the Florida Water & Pollution Control Operators Association stated that 75% to 90% of data centers rely on water-based cooling, with the majority of those being open-loop designs that do not re-use the water. About 10% to 25% of water-cooled data centers used closed-loop designs that do re-use water.
The report found that while smaller data centers may use about 100 million gallons a year, large hyperscale data centers can use 1 to 5 million gallons of water per day. For comparison, a town of 10,000 people uses about 1 million gallons of water per day.
About 70% of the water used by a data center is “consumed,” while about 30% of it is re-used as wastewater. Some data centers are using reclaimed wastewater for cooling, including Google, which says a quarter of its data centers are cooled by reclaimed water, while AWS in 2023 said that it has 20 data centers using purified wastewater.
The increased water demand has put the hiatus on some proposed data centers. The city council in Chandler, Arizona blocked a proposed data center last year after residents rose up to oppose it, even though it would have used a closed-loop cooling system in the arid region. That followed similar moves by local governments to stop other data centers from being built in Oregon, Missouri, Virginia, and Indiana.
A UC Riverside analysis of water consumption published in March found that growth in data centers could collectively require up to 1,400 million gallons per day of new water capacity through 2030, an amount that’s roughly equal to New York City’s average daily supply. The cost of obtaining that supply could rise to $58 billion, they found.
However, the total water consumption by data centers through 2030 is projected to be minuscule–0.6% to 1.1% of total public water withdrawals the contiguous United States, according to the researchers.
In Conclusion
On the one hand, the moratorium on new AI data centers is understandable, as they have increased the amounts people pay for electricity and water. However, the increase in electricity is due to other factors too (environmental concerns, legacy grid replacement), and new closed-loop cooling systems largely will mitigate increase in water consumption.
(Source: Data Center Maps)
The boom has also been good for employment, especially construction firms that employ millions of workers. Nvidia CEO Jenson Huang said the US will need “hundreds of thousands” more plumbers and electricians to support the development and management of new AI factories. The boom has also contributed to a rising stock market, adding trillions of dollars in wealth for shareholders, bolstering the 401(k)s of million of Americans.
To be sure, AI factories will also have negative impact jobs, as corporations look to replace human workers with more efficient AI agents. The pace of this change could accelerate, as the Wall Street Journalrecently estimated that Google, Facebook, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle collectively made about $3 trillion in off-balance-sheet investments in the AI buildout, significantly more than what is on their books. They are clearly betting on AI being a net gain for their shareholders.
But what about US citizens? Will it be a net gain for them? Some Americans may wish that the AI boom never happened, that they could go back to how things were before ChatGPT walked down the aisle in November 2022. Unfortunately, that’s not possible at this point.
Moratoriums on data center construction are one thing, as local officials get a handle on how large data centers can impact residents in their area. But a country-wide ban on data center construction, as some have Washington, D.C. political leaders have called for, would be devastating to this emerging industry.
Editor’s note: A version of this article first ran in AIwire.
Moscow recruits an estimated 1,000 people a day but western officials say it cannot keep up with casualty level
Russia is losing about 6,000 more troops in Ukraine each month than it can recruit, western officials have said.
While Russia is still acquiring new battlefield recruits at speed, with an estimated rate of 1,000 a day, in the last two months even this has not been sufficient to replace those killed or injured.
Leading cardiovascular health groups reclassify overlooked causes and introduce sex-specific diagnostic thresholds
Doctors have agreed the world’s first universal definition of a heart attack, paving the way for millions of women to finally receive better treatment after decades of being “deprioritised”.
In one of the biggest procedural shake-ups in a generation, the world’s four leading cardiovascular health groups have signed off on new guidance for healthcare professionals when seeing suspected heart attack patients.
Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have ditched their $53 billion pursuit of PayPal, ending a deal that would have been the largest fintech acquisition ever. "Stripe last week agreed to pay $8 billion for AI model marketplace OpenRouter, but a source said that the OpenRouter and PayPal deals were operating on independent tracks," reports Axios.
Campaigners say ‘seismic shift’ follows years of pressure to sever ties with oil and gas firm
The London Science Museum has ended its decades-long partnership with the oil and gas company BP in what has been described as a “seismic shift” for the museum.
The Science Museum Group academy, which was established in 2018 to provide training and resources, announced on Friday that it would be ending its partnership with BP. In a statement, the director and chief executive of the Science Museum Group, Sir Ian Blatchford, said the partnership had “drawn to a close at the end of the current contract term”.
Experts say imported eggs served in cafes and restaurants may be behind hundreds of infections and one death
Salmonella cases in the UK are expected to rise until the common source is identified, something that is notoriously difficult to establish, experts have warned.
There have been 474 confirmed cases and one death linked to the current outbreak, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), with the latest investigations suggesting it is associated with eating imported eggs in cafes and restaurants.
Defending champion arrives at Flushing Meadows in poor form and with a host of challengers looking to usurp her
Under any normal circumstances Aryna Sabalenka would not have lost her third-round match at the Cincinnati Open last week. For all of her unforced errors, indecisiveness and the obvious tension surrounding her tennis, the world No 1 had led the unheralded Sára Bejlek 5-1 in the first set tie-break and then 4-1 in set two. She gave herself more than enough chances to close out a comfortable win.
Instead Sabalenka returns to New York trying to find a path through her greatest crisis since she first reached No 1 in the rankings more than three years ago. That straight-sets loss in Cincinnati extended a mediocre 17-7 record dating back to the beginning of April during which she has not reached a final. She has just one more chance to turn her fortunes around as she tries to claim her first grand slam title of the year at the US Open, the tournament she has won on the last two occasions.
A social media post viewed by more than 100,000 accounts claims that North Carolina “processed” more than a million voter registrations.
“Governor Josh Stein won North Carolina by 828,187 votes. North Carolina processed 1,031,350 duplicate registrations,” Shiloh Marx, president of the Integrity First Alliance, said in a July 20 X post.
Integrity First Alliance advocates for state elections leaders to update and clean voter rolls. Marx’s post referenced North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein’s margin of victory over Republican Mark Robinson in the state’s 2024 gubernatorial election.
In response to the post, some social media accounts questioned whether people voted twice.
The post raised two key questions: Did North Carolina election officials really “process” a million duplicate registrations? And, if so, did it have any bearing on the state’s 2024 elections? Not exactly.
The figure in the post — 1,031,350 — comes from a recent report published by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent government agency that provides election administration guidance. The report described how the 2024 federal general election was administered and how voters cast their ballots.
The statistic represents the number of registered North Carolina voters who submitted new registration applications that contained no changes to their personal information, said Kristen Muthig, a spokesperson for the commission.
“These can be registrations submitted by people who did not realize they were already registered to vote or who submitted multiple registration transactions through different modes (e.g., submitted a registration with the exact same information through the mail and online),” Muthig said in an email. She referred specific questions about North Carolina to the state’s elections board.
Patrick Gannon, a spokesperson for the state board, said North Carolina often receives duplicate registrations when someone who is already registered fills out a new form at the Division of Motor Vehicles, or as part of a voter registration drive.
North Carolina isn’t alone; the commission found duplicate registrations in other states too: California had nearly 2.2 million; Michigan had nearly 1.9 million; and Virginia had about 1 million. The report notes: Some of the registration transactions processed by states do not result in the creation or the update of a registration record.
Between 2023 and August 2024, county elections boards in North Carolina removed more than 747,000 ineligible registration records from the state’s voter rolls. The state board noted in September 2024 that, although election officials regularly check voter rolls for accuracy, some ineligible registrations take longer to identify. Official death records may not reach election officials until weeks after a voter dies, for example.
Eventually, though, list maintenance processes catch up and those ineligible voters are removed from the rolls, the board said. It also noted that the mere presence of ineligible individuals on the rolls doesn’t mean voter fraud will occur.
While North Carolina’s DMV might “process” duplicate voter registrations, Gannon said the duplicate registrations in North Carolina were never added to the state’s rolls. That means the duplicate registrations Marx referenced had no bearing on the 2024 elections, Gannon said.
Here’s how it works:
When a county elections board receives registration forms from the DMV, local election officials log them into a statewide voter registration database.
The state’s database scans the person’s information — their name, date of birth, address, and driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number — to see if they are already registered.
If the system finds two records that might belong to the same person, election officials investigate the records to determine whether they actually are the same person. If an application comes from someone who is already registered, the old registration is removed.
In the unlikely event that a voter is registered twice, the state has numerous checks to prevent someone from voting twice. Electronic pollbooks with information about who has already voted are used at every early voting site. If a voter who has already voted tries to check in again, they will be prevented from casting a regular ballot and would instead be offered a provisional ballot. County election workers would then research the voter’s registration status on Election Day to determine whether the ballot should count.
The bipartisan state elections board certified the 2024 contest results unanimously, and post-election audits across the state haven’t found evidence of widespread fraud.
“These duplicate numbers have absolutely no relationship to the difference in vote totals for candidates in a contest,” Gannon said in an email. “Unfortunately, this post will serve only to mislead unsuspecting readers who don’t understand the process and hurt voter confidence in elections.”
Marx didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Our ruling
Marx said North Carolina “processed 1,031,350 duplicate registrations,” noting that Stein won the 2024 gubernatorial election by fewer votes. The comments left some people with the impression that some voters had the ability to vote twice — and that Stein may have benefitted from duplicate registrations.
More than 1 million North Carolinians who were already registered to vote filled out a second registration application prior to the 2024 elections, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Those applications were technically “processed” but that doesn’t mean voters were added to the voter rolls a second time. They were not. State election officials say their applications had “absolutely no relationship” to the gubernatorial race, or any other of the state’s 2024 elections. And, to date, election audits haven’t found evidence of widespread fraud.
The post is partially accurate, but it leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.
(The Center Square) – President Trump’s order to change Lake Ontario’s name to Lake America is getting mixed reactions in Wisconsin from Republicans and Democrats.
Roblox is restricting games that reward younger players for endlessly consuming autoplaying media feeds. The new restrictions are specifically targeting Roblox experiences like "Steal an Egg," which encouraged players to watch TikTok-style clips for in-game benefits. "Roblox's official alert does not expressly mention SAE, but the new policy is most certainly targeting the viral game first and foremost," reports TechSpot. From the report: The company said games that reward ongoing media consumption are now unavailable to players with a Roblox Kids (ages 5 to 8) or Roblox Select (ages 9 to 15) account. The policy will affect games designed to combine media feeds, autoplay, infinite scrolling, and systems that reward players for doomscrolling through TikTok videos of questionable value.
"Steal an Egg" fits perfectly into this new category. The game tasks players with raising eggs, but they can also steal eggs from other NPCs. Players are incentivized to increase their characters' speed either by spending in-game currency (Robux) or by watching a video feed on a virtual treadmill. "Steal an Egg" was recently removed from Roblox but is now back in the store without its troublesome video-feed feature.
[...] Roblox also highlights that the new anti-doomscrolling restriction does not apply to the rewarded video ads feature, which rewards players for watching a short clip but does not include autoplay or other infinite-scroll-like design choices.
Fears of further flooding complicated recovery efforts, as authorities searched for people missing after floods struck the Himalayan border between Nepal and China.
The Red Cross has said at least 93,000 people may have been affected by Wednesday’s flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border, which have killed nearly 600 people, left another 1,900 missing, and triggered a huge rescue operation that is being hampered by fears of new flooding.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the world’s largest humanitarian network, said it feared the death toll would continue to rise as some of the hardest-hit areas remained inaccessible after roads and bridges were destroyed by the torrents.
Norwegians gather to remember monarch whose death comes amid scandal over links between crown princess and Jeffrey Epstein
Norwegians have gathered in their thousands to pay their respects to King Harald V, Europe’s oldest reigning monarch, who has died, aged 89, in Oslo. He was succeeded immediately by his son, King Haakon VIII.
The new king thanked “the government and Norwegian people for their support and sympathy for the royal family at this time”. A period of national mourning was announced as crowds left wreaths and messages outside the royal palace in Oslo.
In the latest escalation of the Trump administration’s war on the left, the U.S. government’s designation of a popular antifascist webhosting provider as a terror group could shutter a swath of radical websites in the U.S.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Wednesday that they were targeting the Italy-based A/I Collective with terror sanctions. Federal law gives the Treasury Department broad discretion to apply the terror label to foreign groups.
A wide array of anarchist, antifascist, and far-left groups in the U.S. and abroad use the privacy-minded collective’s offerings, including an anonymous email service and its popular noblogs.org blogging platform.
The practice of designating an internet platform and service provider as a terror group — rather than those pursuing violence themselves — has “huge” implications for the future free speech on the internet, warned Jillian York, the director of international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“They are going after the messenger,” York said. “I don’t think that the members of the group would necessarily condone the actions of the people that they hosted. What they do condone is the freedom to host, the ability to be anonymous, the ability to be private.”
“Protesting is not terrorism.”
The A/I Collective told The Intercept that it is exploring its legal options to fight the sanctions, which block U.S. citizens and companies from providing the group with financial support.
In an unsigned statement, the group said that it denies the U.S. government’s allegations.
“Antifascism and anticapitalism are not terrorism,” the group said. “Protesting is not terrorism. And everyone has the right to speak out and to struggle for humanity.”
The U.S. government’s move could have ripple effects far beyond Italy.
Groups using the A/I Collective’s services range from an anarchist radio show in Asheville, North Carolina; to a blog documenting attacks on anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers” under the Jane’s Revenge moniker; to the Seattle Anarchist Bookfair. The bookfair warned Wednesday that its website “will most likely go down soon because of US sanctions on Noblogs.”
The State and Treasury Departments justified the designation by alleging that the A/I Collective, also known as Autistici/Inventati, has provided services to foreign terror groups, including anarchists who have launched attacks on railroads and pipelines in Europe, and by domestic left-wing groups that have employed violence.
“A/I’s cadre of radical hackers and tech developers provide a full spectrum of services — including encrypted chats and email, web hosting, secure video conferencing and streaming, anonymity shields, and a suite of other technological tools — to Marxist, anarchist, and other left-wing extremist groups in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere,” a State Department spokesperson said in a press release. “These tools are specifically designed to support the operations of far-left terrorist networks.”
It is unclear how many groups in the U.S. could be forced offline, or to shift their providers, because of the terror designation. The A/I Collective said it could not provide an estimate of U.S-based groups that it hosts, because it does not ask its users for any private or personal information.
Nor was it immediately clear whether simply hosting a site using the collective’s services would be illegal if no money changes hands. Still, the collective says that it relies heavily on voluntary, suggested donations, and many U.S.-based groups appear to be scrambling for alternative hosting providers.
The A/I Collective was sanctioned under the Treasury Department’s authority to label groups specially designated global terrorists. U.S. citizens convicted of violating those sanctions can face stiff penalties of up to 20 years in prison.
If U.S. groups continue to use the collective’s services, the U.S. government could use that affiliation against them, said Shayana Kadidal, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. The Treasury Department can even label U.S.-based groups as specially designated global terrorists, although they have more standing to challenge that designation in court.
The designation of the A/I Collective as a foreign terror group is the next step in a sequence that began with Trump’s designation of antifa as a “domestic terror organization” last September, said Mark Bray, a historian at Rutgers University who wrote a book about antifascism.
Where the Trump administration goes next is the “million-dollar question,” Bray said.
“It seems to be they’re playing a bit of a long game,” he said, “where they try to establish the existence of a supposed violent, left-wing terror network — which they have had trouble doing, but they have tried. But then, of course the way they make that affect the left more broadly is to criminalize those who they claim are aligned with it.”
Australia’s Nepali community plan to host vigils to remember the victims of the Nepal-Tibet flood disaster to coincide with a day of mourning, as the number of people killed continues to rise.
As Australia’s Nepali diaspora wait for the full scale of the disaster to become clear, community members are desperately waiting to hear from missing relatives and friends.
Nepali authorities said on Friday that the death toll had risen to 579, with the number missing rising sharply to more than 1,900, after massive flash floods and landslides tore through the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river basins on Wednesday.
However, Kevin Warsh didn’t say if interest rates would change in coming months, as inflation remains stubborn
The US Federal Reserve is not done fighting high inflation, its chair, Kevin Warsh, said in his first major speech in the role on Friday, emphasizing that it was “the Fed’s job to deliver stable prices”.
Warsh did not indicate where the Fed will take interest rates in the coming months, despite US inflation remaining stubbornly above the central bank’s 2% target amid the war in Iran. But his speech was taken by markets as a signal that rates may rise in the coming months, a move that may put him at odds with Donald Trump, who has aggressively called for rates to be cut.
Families are rushing to Nepal to search for the 33 British nationals who are still missing, as fears mount over the risk of a second wave of flooding in the region.
PARIS, Aug. 28, 2026 — Pasqal, a global leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, has announced the composition of the Board of Directors of Pasqal Holding SA (the combined company), following the completion of its business combination with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II. The combined company’s ordinary shares are expected to begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “PSQL” on August 28, 2026.
The Board comprises nine directors and is chaired, in a non-executive capacity, by Pasqal co-founder and 2022 Nobel laureate in Physics Alain Aspect. It brings together senior industry leaders, including Barbara Dalibard, Chair of the Michelin Supervisory Board, alongside Michel Combes, who serves as Lead Independent Director of the combined company.
The directors are:
Alain Aspect, Non-Executive Chair of the Board. A co-founder of Pasqal and Chair of its Scientific Advisory Board, and a co-recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is a professor at the Institut d’Optique, Université Paris-Saclay, professor emeritus at École Polytechnique, and a member of the French Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Technologies.
Nicolas Berdou, Director, serving as the permanent representative of Bpifrance. He is a Senior Investment Director at Bpifrance Investissement, leading venture investments in technology, deep-tech, and defense.
Michael Blitzer, Director. He is the Founder and Chairman of Inflection Point Asset Management, a leading financial sponsor of strategically important assets. He is also the Executive Chairman of USA Rare Earth and a Director of Intuitive Machines.
Wasiq Bokhari, Chief Executive Officer and Director. Chief Executive Officer of Pasqal, having previously served as its President and Executive Chairman. His earlier roles include leadership positions at Amazon and Google.
Michel Combes, Lead Independent Director. Chief Executive Officer of Lambda, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Brightspeed, and formerly chief executive of SoftBank Group International, Sprint, Altice, and Alcatel-Lucent. He is a board member of F5, Philip Morris International, and e& (formerly Etisalat).
Barbara Dalibard, Director and Chair of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. Former Chief Executive Officer of SITA and of SNCF Voyageurs, and former Chief Executive Officer of Orange Business Services. She is the chair of the Supervisory Board of Michelin and is a Director of Rexel.
Andrew Gundlach, Director and Chair of the Compensation Committee. President and Chief Executive Officer of Bleichroeder LP and Director of WellTower and Air Global Plc.
Jean Raby, Director and Chair of the Audit Committee, serving as the designee of EIC Fund. He is a Partner and Chief Client and Business Development Officer at Astorg, and a former Chief Executive Officer of Natixis Investment Managers. He previously served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial and Legal Officer of Alcatel-Lucent and Partner at Goldman Sachs.
Georges-Olivier Reymond, Director. A co-founder of Pasqal and its Chief Strategic Alliances Officer, and its founding Chief Executive Officer from 2019 to 2025.
A majority of the Board is independent under applicable SEC and Nasdaq rules, with Jean Raby chairing the Audit Committee, Andrew Gundlach the Compensation Committee, and Barbara Dalibard the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee.
“As we begin this next chapter as a public company, we are fortunate to have a board that combines scientific leadership, operational experience, and capital-markets expertise. We expect their guidance to help us scale neutral-atom quantum computing and deliver value to customers and shareholders over the years ahead,” said Wasiq Bokhari, Chief Executive Officer of Pasqal.
About Pasqal
Pasqal (Nasdaq: PSQL) helps organizations tackle problems that are difficult or impossible to solve with conventional computing methods alone. Founded in 2019 on Nobel Prize–winning research, Pasqal builds and operates neutral-atom quantum computers, delivered with a full software stack, for industry, science, and governments. Pasqal’s production-ready systems are available both on-premises and through the cloud, enabling organizations to harness quantum computing without requiring in-house quantum expertise. A single hardware platform supports analog workloads today and is designed to evolve toward fault-tolerant quantum computing in the future.
Headquartered in France with operations globally, Pasqal’s quantum computing systems are used by customers across energy, financial services and advanced materials to address complex challenges. Pasqal’s customers include Saudi Aramco, Crédit Agricole CIB, LG Electronics and supported by partnerships with NVIDIA and IBM (Pasqal is part of the IBM Quantum Network).
Critics say painting looks more like a zombie but artist Chris Ashmore says ‘touch-ups’ are still to happen
A street artist has defended his mural of the snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan in Sheffield after critics suggested the world champion looked like a zombie.
Chris Ashmore was commissioned to produce the artwork featuring the former seven-time world champion for the back wall of the Spot On snooker club, the BBC reported.
President faces criticism over plan to import up to 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef without charging higher tariffs
Donald Trump has pledged to allow cattle ranchers and farmers to process their own food amid a backlash from the US agricultural sector over his decision to pause US tariffs on foreign beef.
The US president has been sharply criticized, including from members of his own party, since announcing the US will temporarily import up to 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef without charging higher tariffs in an effort to bring down prices.
An AI agent, Anthropic’s Claude, developed and validated the control logic for the laser system in a QuEra quantum computer, recovering it in seconds versus an expert needing minutes, and holding it steadier than a specialist’s manual tune. QuEra plans to extend the approach to other subsystems.
BOSTON, Aug. 28, 2026 — QuEra Computing has announced results from its work in the Model Hardware Standard (MHS) research preview, in which an AI agent, Anthropic’s Claude, performed one of the most expert-dependent jobs in operating a quantum computer: keeping its laser system on target. The agent wrote and validated its own control software, which now recovers the system in seconds with no manual intervention, obviating the need for manual work that previously required a specialist on site.
Quantum computers are moving from laboratory instruments to products customers buy and operate themselves. That transition depends less on physics than on whether a machine runs reliably without the people who built it standing next to it. QuEra’s systems use lasers held at precise frequencies to control atomic qubits. Those lasers drift, and when one drifts far enough the machine stops until someone with deep and specific expertise brings it back. Every generation of machine carries more lasers than the last, and every machine at a customer site sits further from the engineers who know them best.
Automating a Critical Subsystem
QuEra has automated recovery from common laser disturbances for years, and Aquila, its 256-qubit system on Amazon Braket, runs with uptime above 99%. The more complex laser failures are rarer and more severe, and have resisted automation to date because recovery calls for human expert judgment rather than a fixed sequence of steps.
A QuEra team of four specialists spent two to three weeks writing a recovery script by hand, and it handled only the failures its authors thought to list. The team then gave the same problem to Claude, working through the MHS, a new standard for AI agents to safely operate physical equipment in scientific research and advanced manufacturing. MHS started as a collaboration between Anthropic and HHMI Janelia Research Campus and is currently in a limited research preview, in which QuEra is a participant. MHS let the agent run its own experiments on a dedicated testbed and propose a fix, try it, read the result, refine. It ran that loop continuously, including overnight, covering hundreds of failure cases that no team of specialists would have time to work through by hand.
Engineers set the scope, reviewed every step, and decided what counted as proof of success. The software the agent produced is a conventional, fully inspectable program, not a model making decisions at runtime. And the work stayed safe by design: devices declare bounds, interlocks, and emergency stops in the standard itself, and AI agents inherit and operate within them by default.
What the Pilot Proved
It recovered reliably. Given no information about what had gone wrong, the controller returned the system to target in 695 of 700 timed trials across seven fault types, and never reported success when it had not succeeded. The five misses traced to a rig condition rather than the software.
It recovered in seconds. Most faults cleared in under six seconds and the hardest in roughly 10 to 14 seconds, against five to 10 minutes for an expert.
It handled real faults, not only test cases. The testbed sits in a working lab with ordinary foot traffic and real environmental sources of error. Over the pilot the AI agent recovered every time without help, regardless of the cause.
It improved on expert tuning. Asked to improve the quality of the lock rather than recover it, the AI agent cut residual noise by a factor of five and stopped the system dropping out during unattended runs. Measured afterward on an independent instrument it could not influence, its settings matched an experienced specialist’s manual tune and corrected a flaw the manual tune had left behind.
It transferred. Pointed at a second laser wavelength, the AI agent worked out the settings from scratch in one unattended overnight run, a job that normally takes weeks of hands-on commissioning.
Why It Matters for Deployment
Prior to this pilot, every laser used to carry a standing claim on scarce human expert time. On-site recovery was required at any hour, taking up to half an hour per tuning session, and commissioning a new operating point took weeks. Given the increased number of lasers per computer and additional deployments in the field, manual expert labor becomes a limit on how many systems can be deployed and properly supported, and a barrier to fault-tolerant quantum computing at scale.
“For years the hardest part of scaling quantum computers wasn’t the physics, it was the people driving at 2 am to fix a laser lock. We built a solution using the Model Hardware Standard to fix that: the lock recovers itself in seconds, verified every time, catching noise that’s easy to miss by hand. We’re building quantum computers that fix themselves,” said Sergio H. Cantu, Vice President of Quantum Systems, QuEra Computing.
After the pilot, little or no expert guidance is required. For an HPC center or national laboratory installing a system on-premises, that is the difference between needing a resident neutral-atom laser specialist and needing very little of one’s time.
Why QuEra Partners
The laser in this pilot is one of many subsystems in a quantum computer that are precise, fragile, and demanding of expert attention. QuEra expects the same AI automation approach to apply to others, and the pilot leaves behind the safety practices and measurements that enabled the second campaign to take one night where the first took weeks.
“We are among the best in the world at developing and operating quantum computers, and even for us, the cost of keeping these machines at peak performance is high,” said Takuya Kitagawa, President of QuEra. “A customer expects the entire computer, and thus every subsystem, to hold itself together without a specialist in the room. This is why the results from the MHS research preview and Anthropic’s frontier AI models are so meaningful. We are making it far easier and cheaper to keep our computers running at their best.”
QuEra works deeply with a small number of companies chosen for strategic capabilities: Amazon Web Services for cloud delivery of Libra on Amazon Braket in 2028, HPE for on-premises HPC integration, and NVIDIA for accelerated computing. QuEra’s participation in the Model Hardware Standard research preview, applying AI agents to the control of quantum computing hardware, is an early example of AI partnerships.
About the Model Hardware Standard
The Model Hardware Standard (MHS) is a new standard for AI agents to safely operate physical equipment in scientific research and advanced manufacturing. It started as a collaboration between Anthropic and HHMI Janelia Research Campus and is currently in a limited research preview, with access by application while the safety design is validated. Devices declare bounds, interlocks, and emergency stops in the standard itself; AI agents inherit and operate within them by default.
About QuEra Computing
QuEra is putting quantum to work. As the scientific and commercial leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, we help enterprise innovators leverage quantum to gain competitive advantage, support HPC centers as their users tackle classically intractable problems, and enable government programs to build national and sovereign capabilities. We do this by combining our quantum systems, available on-premises and via the cloud, with application co-design and collaborative research. Born at Harvard and MIT and still advancing together, QuEra builds neutral-atom systems on a public, peer-reviewed path to fault tolerance, and operates globally from Boston, New Mexico, Tokyo, Zurich, and the United Kingdom. As quantum computing moves from “one day” to “Day One,” QuEra delivers practical impact today while leading the path toward large-scale, fault-tolerant systems. See what’s possible at www.quera.com.
Remnants from tropical storm could cause heavy rainfall on Leeward Islands and affect Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola
Remnants of Tropical Storm Dolly, which has been downgraded to an “open tropical wave”, were moving still across the Atlantic Ocean toward the Leeward Islands, and could bring heavy rainfall to parts of the Caribbean this weekend, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on Friday..
Dolly, which formed on Thursday, had maximum sustained winds of near 40mph (65km/h) with higher gusts on Friday morning. Later on Friday, forecasters said that Dolly was no longer a Tropical Storm, and had “become an open tropical wave”.
State to offer up to 5,000 trappers chance to snare reptiles whose numbers have risen to 3m from fewer than 100,000
The first recreational alligator hunt in Louisiana in more than half a century is about to commence in the swamps of that state, with up to 5,000 hopeful trappers facing strict rules in order to snare a reptile.
The state’s fish and wildlife commission banned alligator hunting in 1962 to allow the species to recover after decades of unregulated killings for meat and hides dropped numbers there to below 100,000.
Brazil has failed to prove compliance with EU rules on use of antibiotics in cattle and poultry farming
The UK’s leading farming organisations and animal health experts have called for an urgent ban on imports of Brazilian meat, in light of concerns over the safety of imports.
The National Farmers’ Union in England and its sister organisations in the devolved administrations wrote to the government on Friday warning that public health was at risk.
Government says Green leader’s proposed moratorium on ‘energy-guzzling’ AI projects would be disaster for economy
Labour has rejected calls to pause construction of major AI infrastructure in Britain after the Green party leader, Zack Polanski, said it was time to “slam the brakes on these energy-guzzling, water-guzzling datacentres”.
The government hit back at the opposition party’s proposal of a “moratorium other than [for] local-scale datacentres for the local community”, saying it “would be a disaster for jobs and national security”.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is reportedly considering new tariffs on semiconductors used in the U.S., as tech giants race to beat China in the artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out. The duties will be imposed on an expanded range of tech products made alongside chips, including laptops, data center servers and gaming hardware, eight people familiar with the matter told Politico in a report published Thursday.
The measures, which are still in the early phases and subject to significant changes over the next few months, will be introduced via a staggered rollout period, according to the report. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC, but told Politico: "Reshoring semiconductor manufacturing is a top priority for President Trump, whose policies have already secured hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in this key sector." The tech industry is pushing back on the tariffs, warning they could raise chip costs, slow data-center construction, and undermine the very AI expansion the administration wants to promote. "This may be the single dumbest way imaginable to pursue American dominance in AI," said one tech official from a major industry group that also served in the first Trump administration. "It's like kneecapping yourself at the starting line."
Lobbyists say they have repeatedly urged officials to "tread carefully" because U.S. demand is surging while domestic chip capacity remains far too limited. The industry argues that factories take years to build and current domestic production cannot come close to satisfying demand.
One tech representative said "the math literally just does not work," noting that proposed duty-free allowances "wouldn't cover the hyperscalers alone." Meanwhile, the Computer and Communications Industry Association warned that higher costs and uncertainty could put the massive data-center buildout "in jeopardy."
It’s the middle of the night. You wake up feeling like an elephant is sitting on your chest. What do you do? Today your choices for where to get your health care are greater than ever before. Sickness and injury appear when we least expect them. So when they do, knowing if you should go […]
Police hunt two suspects after historic 200-carat piece is snatched from Austrian museum during opening hours
Austrian police are hunting two men alleged to have stolen a 200-carat platinum necklace encrusted with 673 diamonds that was on loan to a museum in Vienna and once belonged to Egyptian royalty.
Authorities in the capital released pictures of the suspects captured by security cameras during the heist at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), amid a rash of spectacular smash-and-grab thefts from European cultural institutions.
Exclusive: PM also warns his ministers against trying to influence vote when bill returns to Commons next month
Andy Burnham has told Labour MPs that he will not cast a vote when the assisted dying bill returns to the Commons next month to avoid influencing the debate.
While the move was welcomed by supporters of the measure, No 10 officials said the prime minister had no wish to affect the process in either direction, and was just doing what he thought was best to allow MPs to reach their own collective view.
Stella Parton said her sister Dolly told her "that if there was no hope for her, she would still allow her medical team to try experimental drugs in the hope of helping others in the future."
In the days since an enormous glacier in the Himalayas snapped away from a mountaintop and cascaded into the valley below, the true scale of the devastation caused by the flash floods in Nepal and Tibet is still unfolding.
But the picture is emerging far more quickly in Nepal than in China, where strict controls on the flow of information from one of its most sensitive regions are hampering the public’s understanding of events.
The Powder Yard closed Aug. 24 to allow contractors to work safely with heavy equipment and complete several projects that would be difficult to undertake while visitors are present. The remainder of the museum remains open.
While the historic Powder Yard is temporarily closed, visitors can still explore the du Pont family home, gardens and the museum’s “Nation of Inventors” exhibition through Sept. 4.
WILMINGTON, Del. — Hagley Museum and Library is offering half-price admission through Sept. 4 while crews complete preservation and maintenance projects in the historic Powder Yard along the Brandywine.
The Powder Yard closed Aug. 24 to allow contractors to work safely with heavy equipment and complete several projects that would be difficult to undertake while visitors are present. The remainder of the museum remains open.
Visitors can continue to explore the Visitor Center and “Nation of Inventors” exhibition, as well as the historic du Pont family home and gardens. The Museum Store also remains open.
The temporary discount gives visitors an opportunity to experience major portions of Hagley while paying 50% of the regular admission price.
Work protects historic industrial site
The two-week closure allows Hagley to address several infrastructure and preservation needs across the Powder Yard, the industrial heart of the museum’s 235-acre property.
Crews are dredging the mill race inlet to remove accumulated silt and debris and maintain the flow of water into the historic power system. The race once directed water from the Brandywine to the mills and machinery that helped operate the powder works.
Other work includes replacing the roof of the Millwright Shop and stabilizing sections of masonry along the mill race. Those repairs are intended to protect historic structures from weather, water erosion and further deterioration.
Hagley also is removing hazardous trees in the Powder Yard and Crowninshield areas. That work requires road closures to protect visitors, employees and contractors.
Additional preventive maintenance is being completed during the shutdown, allowing Hagley to coordinate multiple projects within a relatively short period.
More than a museum
Although the work may be easy to describe as routine maintenance, preserving Hagley carries unusual significance for Delaware.
The property is the site of the original DuPont powder works, established along the Brandywine in 1802 by Éleuthère Irénée du Pont. The business grew into one of the world’s leading manufacturers of black powder and became the foundation of the DuPont company.
Its success influenced Delaware’s economy, workforce and identity for generations. The company’s later expansion into chemicals and materials science also helped establish Delaware as an important center for research and innovation.
The Hagley site tells that larger story through its mills, mill race, waterpower system, machine shops, workers’ community and Eleutherian Mills, the du Pont family’s first American home.
It was both an industrial operation and a community. Immigrant workers and their families settled around the powder yards, creating neighborhoods and family connections that became part of the history of Wilmington and the Brandywine Valley.
Maintaining the site therefore involves more than preserving individual buildings. The work protects one of the few remaining landscapes where visitors can see how waterpower, manufacturing, immigration, labor and family life came together during America’s early industrial development.
What visitors can see now
The Powder Yard is one of Hagley’s signature attractions, but visitors still have access to other important parts of the museum during the closure.
The “Nation of Inventors” exhibition examines the people and ideas behind American innovation. It draws on Hagley’s extensive collections to explore how inventors identify problems, develop solutions and bring new products and technologies into everyday life.
The historic home and gardens offer a different view of Hagley’s story, introducing visitors to the du Pont family and the domestic life that developed alongside the industrial operation.
Together, the open attractions provide an opportunity to understand both the personal and innovative sides of the site while the Powder Yard undergoes needed work.
The Powder Yard is scheduled to reopen after Sept. 4.
To Go
What: Hagley Museum and Library
Temporary closure: The historic Powder Yard is closed through Sept. 4 for preservation and maintenance work.
Admission: General admission is 50% off during the Powder Yard closure.
What remains open: Visitor Center, “Nation of Inventors” exhibition, historic home and gardens, and Museum Store.
X2 ride at Magic Mountain has been closed for a month after one rider experienced brain compression and another remains in coma
An infamous Six Flags Magic Mountain rollercoaster, long favored by intrepid theme park goers, has been closed for more than a month after two people say they experienced brain injuries after riding it, according to a new CNN investigation.
The X2 rollercoaster sends riders plummeting and twisting hundreds of feet, reaching up to 76mph (about 122km/h) as the seats rotate 360 degrees. On the southern California theme park’s website, it’s advertised as a rite of passage for daredevils.
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is questioning two measles-associated deaths reported in Pennsylvania, prompting a public dispute with Gov. Josh Shapiro as the state confronts its largest measles outbreak in decades.
Pennsylvania health officials confirmed Tuesday that two unvaccinated people in Lancaster County died after contracting measles, marking the state’s first measles-associated deaths in 35 years. At least one was a newborn who tested positive for an infection acquired before birth.
Kennedy later suggested on social media that the deaths might have been “fabricated” and accused Pennsylvania officials of withholding information from federal authorities. State Health Secretary Dr. Debra Bogen disputed that account, saying Pennsylvania notified the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before publicly announcing the deaths and that both cases underwent epidemiological review.
The CDC said Thursday it was independently examining whether measles caused the deaths.
Pennsylvania has reported about 424 confirmed measles cases and 73 hospitalizations. State officials say none of those infected were fully vaccinated. Two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine are about 97% effective at preventing measles.
Meanwhile, Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization Kennedy previously led, said it is attempting to identify and contact the deceased patients’ families.
Shapiro accused Kennedy of spreading misleading information and urged him to encourage vaccination as cases continue rising.
Helipad relocation led in part to incident where Marine One, carrying the president, had close call with passenger jet
Safety officials say the relocation of a helipad amid Donald Trump’s multi-project White House reconstruction led in part to an incident earlier this month in which a military helicopter carrying the president came too close to a passenger jet.
A preliminary report published on Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) blamed “communication issues” for the failure of the crew of Marine One, the presidential helicopter, to give the required three minutes’ notice to air traffic controllers that they were about to take off from the White House.
Jesse Malin, Craig Finn and Tommy Stinson will perform Aug. 29 at The Queen during a benefit for Donate Delaware honoring state Rep. Debra Heffernan.
WILMINGTON — Three prominent rock musicians will take the stage at The Queen on Saturday, Aug. 29, for an evening designed to turn the energy of live music into support for Delaware families.
The Queen Jeans Ball will feature Jesse Malin, Craig Finn and Tommy Stinson while raising money for Donate Delaware, a nonprofit that helps recover, restore and distribute medical equipment and other essential resources.
The annual event also will honor state Rep. Debra Heffernan for her public service and contributions to Delaware.
Doors will open at 7 p.m., and the concert will begin at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $50.
Rock music with a Delaware mission
Organizers describe the Queen Jeans Ball as a high-energy rock ’n’ roll benefit bringing together Delaware’s business, civic, nonprofit and music communities.
Proceeds will support Donate Delaware’s work helping individuals and families obtain medical equipment and other resources they may otherwise struggle to afford or access.
“The Queen Jeans Ball represents the very best of Delaware — people coming together through great music to help neighbors who need us,” Donate Delaware founder Dave Tiberi said. “Every ticket and sponsorship will help Donate Delaware recover, restore and deliver critical medical equipment to families across our state.”
Tiberi thanked event co-chairs Brian and Megan McGlinchey, The Queen, the participating musicians and event sponsors. He also said he was proud to recognize Heffernan for what he called her “extraordinary lifetime of public service.”
Tiberi, a former professional boxer and longtime civic leader, founded Donate Delaware to connect usable resources with people who need them. Its work includes collecting and distributing medical equipment and assisting Delawareans facing other critical needs.
“Brian and I are honored to serve as co-chairs of this year’s Queen Jeans Ball, which supports the crucial work of Donate Delaware and our friend, Dave Tiberi,” Megan McGlinchey said. “We can’t wait to share an amazing night of music at The Queen with the Wilmington community.”
A notable rock lineup
Malin will headline the concert, bringing a musical career shaped by New York’s punk and rock scenes.
Known for personal songwriting and energetic performances, Malin began his career as the frontman of the punk band Heart Attack before leading the rock group D Generation. He later established a solo career built around songs that blend punk urgency with character-driven storytelling.
Finn is best known as the frontman and principal songwriter for The Hold Steady. His lyrics frequently follow complicated characters through nightlife, relationships, mistakes and attempts at redemption. He also has released an extensive collection of solo work.
Stinson brings decades of rock history to the lineup. He joined The Replacements as a teenager and played bass in the influential Minneapolis band. He later performed with Guns N’ Roses and led his own bands and projects, including Bash & Pop.
Together, the performers give the benefit a lineup rooted in punk, alternative rock and narrative songwriting.
Heffernan to be honored
The evening also will recognize Heffernan for her years of public service.
Heffernan represents the Bellefonte, Brandywine Hundred and Edgemoor areas in the Delaware House. During her legislative career, she has worked on issues including health, environmental protection, children and families.
Organizers said the tribute fits the broader purpose of the Queen Jeans Ball: celebrating people who serve Delaware while encouraging others to help neighbors facing difficult circumstances.
A night out with an impact
The concert offers attendees an opportunity to see three established rock artists in one show while supporting a Delaware-based charitable organization.
It also reflects the role The Queen plays in Wilmington as both a performance venue and a gathering place for community events. Located on Market Street, the historic venue hosts national touring artists, local performers and nonprofit benefits throughout the year.
In this case, the night’s impact is intended to continue after the final song, helping Donate Delaware place essential equipment and resources in the hands of people who need them.
To Go Box
What: Queen Jeans Ball featuring Jesse Malin, Craig Finn and Tommy Stinson
When: Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. Doors open at 7 p.m.; concert begins at 8 p.m.
Vegas proved, once again, it’s more than a casino floor and a spectacle.The post Michelin just dropped its first Southwest Stars, and Vegas stole the show appeared first on Food Drink Life.
Speech part of effort to strengthen National Rally party’s international ties before Marine Le Pen’s presidential bid
The French far-right leader Jordan Bardella is to give a speech at Reform UK’s party conference in Birmingham next week as he attempts to boost international ties before Marine Le Pen’s bid for the French presidency next spring.
Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigration National Rally (RN) is high in the polls and she is predicted to reach the final round of the French presidential race in May.
Anti-vaxxers are spreading conspiracy theories after two recent measles-associated deaths in Pennsylvania
Anti-vaccine activists are trying to track down the families of two people, including at least one newborn, who died after contracting measles in Pennsylvania, as Governor Josh Shapiro tangles with Robert F Kennedy Jr over his “inaccurate and misleading claims”.
Kennedy, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), suggested late on Wednesday that the deaths in the state may have been “fabricated” after a Republican coroner – an elected political office in Lancaster county – claimed one of the measles-associated deaths was unrelated to the virus, although the given cause would be consistent with measles.
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A Republican ad attacking Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson in Maine says under his “failed leadership” the state’s high schools “dropped to dead last” in the country, according to annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report. But that’s not the whole story.
A major reason Maine fell to last in those state rankings is because it stopped giving U.S. News access to Advanced Placement performance data for Maine high schools — a key part of the methodology the media organization uses to rate the schools.
It’s unclear why the Maine Department of Education declined to grant access to the statistics, and a spokesperson has not responded to our request for comment. But, like Maine, other states that have not authorized U.S. News to use their high schools’ AP enrollment and exam data have fallen to the bottom of the rankings.
Update, Aug. 28: After our story was published, the Maine Department of Education said in a statement: “Since 2020, at the recommendation of the Maine Attorney General’s Office, the Maine Department of Education has not authorized the College Board to share student data out of concern that it could be made available for commercial use. In fact, the College Board has paid fines in New York – one of four states that is not currently providing data to the College Board – for the illegal and improper sale of student data. The Maine Department of Education takes student privacy seriously. Assessment results have no bearing on this decision.”
The ad blaming Maine’s descent on Jackson, a former state Senate president and majority leader, is from Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ campaign, and it has aired on broadcast and digital platforms since Aug. 17, according to AdImpact. Jackson is challenging Collins for her U.S. Senate seat in the toss-up race.
“Maine schools used to be among the best, but under Troy Jackson’s failed leadership in Augusta, our high schools dropped to dead last,” the ad’s narrator says, while a citation for U.S. News’ 2025-2026 state rankings appears on screen.
The Collins campaign confirmed to us that was the source for the claim.
Last year, Maine did place last out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on the review of its high schools. The state came in 51st again in the rankings for 2026-2027, which were published Aug. 17.
But the ad doesn’t mention a major reason for Maine’s consecutive last-place finishes. That is, the Maine Department of Education did not authorize U.S. News to have access to College Board data showing how Maine high school students performed on the AP exams for the college-level classes they completed. (The College Board is the nonprofit organization that runs the national AP program and administers the tests.)
In fact, Maine hasnowbeenlast or next to last eachyearsince the 2020-2021 rankings, when it first denied U.S. News access to its AP data. In 2019, the last time it permitted U.S. News to use its AP data, Maine placed 11th.
Maine was 1st in the U.S. News state rankings for high schools in 2014, and it wasregularlyin the Top 10 through 2018. But the methodology for rating states and high schools was different at the time.
Since 2019, U.S. News has ranked all the states and D.C. based on the proportion of their schools that make it into the top 25% of high schools as determined by the media company. “That level of achievement is a valid indicator of the relative performance of a state’s high schools compared with other states,” U.S. News said in a post about this year’s rankings.
The high schools, meanwhile, are ranked based on six criteria, including “college readiness,” which accounts for 30% of a school’s score, and “college curriculum breadth,” which makes up another 10%. Participation in, and performance on, AP exams, as well as International Baccalaureate, or IB, exams, is a key factor in both categories.
Not having that exam information affects a school’s ranking.
“As with the 2026-2027 edition of Best High Schools, the Maine state education department declined to provide AP data for the 2025-2026 edition, which explains why Maine had the lowest proportion of schools placing in the top 25% last year,” a U.S. News spokesperson told us in an email.
The spokesperson said not allowing the use of the AP figures does not guarantee that a state will rank last, as the methodology “includes adjustments so that schools without AP or IB exam test-takers do not score significantly worse than those with very few test-takers.” But it does make it much more difficult for states to have high schools with higher rankings.
“While the adjustment prevents non-AP schools from automatically landing at the absolute bottom of national rankings, rising into the top 25% of high schools nationally without any AP/IB data is extremely challenging,” the spokesperson said.
And the reality is states that do not permit U.S. News to use the AP data oftenfallto thebottom of the standings.
For the 2025-2026 rankings, Maine was the only state not to allow the College Board to provide its AP data and it ended up last overall, with just four, or 3.6%, of its high schools ranking in the top 25%.
In the 2026-2027 rankings, Maine was joined at the low end of the rankings by Vermont (48th), Colorado (49th) and New York (50th). Those three states also declined to allow U.S. News to access their AP exam scores this time and their rankings suffered.
The previous year, when they allowed their AP data to be included in the calculations, New York placed 9th, Colorado was 10th and Vermont was 21st on the list.
The Jackson campaign pushed back on the ad’s claim.
“The ad blames Jackson for the U.S. News ranking of Maine’s public high schools. The truth is Maine ranked lowest in U.S. News’ 2025 report because the state did not give U.S. News permission to use its data,” a campaign spokesperson told us.
We asked U.S. News why Maine stopped granting access to the AP data, and the spokesperson directed us to the state Department of Education, which has not responded with an explanation. (Update, Aug. 28: We received a response after publication and have included it near the top of this story.)
The Collins campaign told us that lack of cooperation is telling.
“Maine’s lack of willingness to be transparent with its standardized testing demonstrates just how terrible the state of education has gotten under Troy Jackson’s leadership in Augusta — according to U.S. News, 51st place out of 51,” Blake Kernen, communications director for the Collins campaign, said in a statement. “The metrics that are available, including NAEP scores, depict a dire situation that has gotten drastically worse in recent years,” she said, referring to the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card. (NAEP is administered by the U.S. Department of Education.)
In 2024, the most recent data available, Maine’s 4th and 8th grade students, although not last in the nation, had some of their worst NAEP scores in math and reading in about two decades. That year, Maine’s 4th grade average math score ranked below 39 other states and its 4th grade average reading score was below that of 40 other states. Maine’s 8th grade average math score was below 25 states and its 8th average grade reading score was below 30 states.
“Even the Biden Administration recognized how Augusta leaders were failing Maine’s students when it penalized the state in 2023 for violating the federal law that helps schools with high numbers of students from low income families — which is the vast majority of Maine schools,” Kernen said about a financial penalty the federal Department of Education gave Maine for not meeting required academic achievement standards. “As the second highest ranking official in the State of Maine, Troy had the power to do something about this alarming trend — but under his leadership, it’s only gotten worse.”
While the decline in the math and reading scores of Maine’s elementary and middle school students may be cause for concern, the Collins campaign ad specifically mentions the performance of the state’s high schools, and cites Maine’s ranking by U.S. News in particular.
That ranking is questionable since it is affected by the absent AP data.
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Chair Allan Leighton says lower prices and an improved online service are attracting more shoppers
Asda has heralded its first trading growth in more than two years as the supermarket’s boss said it was attracting more shoppers with lower prices and an improved online service.
Allan Leighton, the executive chair of the UK’s third-largest grocer, said a 0.2% rise in sales at established stores, excluding fuel, in the seven weeks to 18 August was “a huge milestone” that was “psychologically important for the business”. In the preceding three months, sales had fallen 2.3%.
Before The Witcher 4 arrives in 2028, CD Projekt Red is returning us to the world of The Witcher 3 for one last foray. Looks like wind’s still howlin’
The game that graced us with Bathtub Geralt, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, arrived more than a decade ago. So it was a touch surprising this summer when developers CD Projekt Red announced a new expansion to the venerable adventure, titled Songs of the Past, for next year. It will release alongside a full remaster of the original game, which will be free for anyone who bought it back in 2015. (The studio is also working on a sequel, The Witcher 4, but that’s not due until 2028.)
As it turns out, this is all possible thanks to a partnership with Fool’s Theory, a studio founded by CD Projekt Red veterans, which took on the brunt of the development work. “We’ve had this story in a drawer for many years,” explains Marcin Blacha, VP story director at CD Projekt Red. “Of course, we moved on to Cyberpunk 2077 and now The Witcher 4, as well as our other projects. But because we knew The Witcher 4 would take time, we saw a gap in our release calendar where Songs of the Past could go. Thankfully, we were able to find the right partner to help execute it.”
The Gotham striker said she was stepping away from the sport, but then signed for Al Qadsiah. The move sparked questions over professionalism and raised concerns of LGBTQ+ fans who have disavowed the Saudi league
A recent World Cup winner joins a historically downtrodden club, immediately leads them to their first championship, praises the level of play in the league, speaks fondly of living in the club’s market, extends her contract with the club, leads the club to another championship, is named a league MVP finalist, and breaks the club’s all-time scoring record. That’s the fairytale of Esther González and Gotham FC – a story that ended abruptly, just nine days after that scoring record was set. On 27 July, Gotham announced that they had mutually parted ways with the striker as she “temporarily steps away from soccer to attend to personal matters in Spain”. The announcement of her departure was full of gushing words going both directions, and was met with understanding and support from the women’s soccer world.
But less than a month after González left Gotham, Al Qadsiah, a club in the Saudi Women’s Premier League, announced her as their newest signing, on a one-season contract with an option to extend for a second. NWSL journalist Jenna Tonelli soon reported, “League sources tell me that Gotham did not expect Esther to sign with another club this soon.” Questions swirled: did she actually intend to take a break from soccer when she left Gotham? And why would a player who just had a child with her female partner choose to play in Saudi Arabia, a country where same-sex relations are criminalized?
Iceland will decide whether to restart talks on joining the European Union in a referendum on Saturday, with President Donald Trump's threat to annex Greenland a motivating factor.
More than 1,300 people are missing in Nepal and in Tibet after catastrophic flash floods swept through the region, killing at least 469. Plus: Six months of the war in Iran
Rescue operations have resumed in Nepal and Tibet after a pause when a lake at the border began to overflow. The lake was formed when a wall of mud and debris hit the hub of Gyirong in Tibet on Wednesday, causing catastrophic flash floods that thundered down valleys and obliterated villages.
What could have caused this deadly flash floods? Satellite imagery suggests a glacier collapse high in the Himalayas was the primary cause, raising concerns that the climate crisis is destabilizing the geology of mountain and polar regions.
What did Kennedy purportedly lie about? A Guardian analysis of newly obtained documents found that the US health secretary had lied when he told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines”.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump offered his own assessment of presidential greatness Thursday, and the suspense was limited: he placed himself alone in the top category.
Trump posted a graphic on Truth Social ranking 34 presidents across six tiers, from “The Greatest” to “Failures.” Trump occupied “The Greatest” by himself, while Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were placed one tier below as merely “Great.”
Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, John Adams and James K. Polk made Trump’s “Near Great” category. Bill Clinton was among those judged “Average,” while Calvin Coolidge and several others landed in “Below Average.”
Trump reserved the “Failures” category for Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding.
The ranking was also notable for who did not make the cut. Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush were among the presidents omitted entirely.
Trump provided no methodology explaining how the rankings were calculated or why some presidents were excluded.
The post quickly generated reactions from both liberals and conservatives, some of whom questioned the unusual placements and omissions. Trump has frequently used Truth Social to promote his record and criticize predecessors, particularly Biden and Obama.
A judge barred the Trump administration from enforcing a set of rules aimed at cutting off Anthropic from the federal government, ruling the administration had unconstitutionally punished the AI company for protected speech.
Smuggling gasoline and diesel from the U.S. into Mexico and reselling it tax-free is a huge money-maker for organized crime gangs, including drug cartels.
A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing its new requirements for mail voting for the November midterm elections.
Trenton, New Jersey — New Jersey lost an estimated 25,600 jobs in July, its largest one-month decline since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and enough to erase all job growth recorded in the state since February 2024.
The preliminary figures from the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development showed the sharpest monthly decline since April 2020, when pandemic shutdowns eliminated nearly 685,000 jobs. State officials cautioned that July’s estimate could be revised because of low survey response rates and seasonal-adjustment issues.
Despite the losses, New Jersey’s unemployment rate edged down to 4.4%. Economists noted that payroll and unemployment figures come from separate surveys and do not always move together.
The slowdown also reflects weaker job growth nationally, but New Jersey stood out compared with neighboring states. Maryland added jobs in July, while Pennsylvania lost fewer positions and New York’s decline was spread across a much larger labor force.
Economists cited several possible factors, including weaker national growth, tariffs, immigration enforcement and New Jersey’s high business costs. Leisure and hospitality showed the largest year-over-year decline, losing about 26,000 jobs.
Republican lawmakers blamed taxes and business costs, while Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration pointed to federal trade policies. Economists said both state and national factors may be contributing, but cautioned against drawing conclusions from a single preliminary report.
Terrified of being seen as a loser, Donald Trump is nonsensically lashing out – even against our old friend Canada
I’m still grieving Dolly Parton. I never met her and always wanted to. She was almost exactly my age and my height and had values I deeply admired. Her death leaves a hole in the firmament.
Which brings me to the person whose values are as far from Dolly Parton’s as any human could possibly be and still claim to be human. I’m referring, of course, to the current occupant of the Oval Office.
Decision to rescind ‘roadless rule’ opens more than 45m acres of national forests to roads, drilling and logging
More than 400 endangered animal and plant species could face accelerated extinction after the Donald Trump administration’s decision to rescind a rule that has protected old-growth forests for more than two decades.
According to a new report from the Center for Biological Diversity, the rollback of the Bill Clinton-era “roadless rule” could put 7.4m acres (3m hectares) of endangered-species habitat and nearly 1,800 miles (2,900km) of protected rivers and streams at risk, while opening more than 45m acres of national forests to roads, drilling and logging.
Rolling coverage of the latest events in global financial markets, the economy and major corporate moves
In the metals market, supply fears have pushed the zinc price up to a four-year high.
Zinc, which is used to galvanise steel, hit $3,955 a metric tonne this morning, its highest since May 2022.
LME [zinc] inventories have been drawn sharply lower, mine and smelter disruptions have restricted refined availability, and supply outside China has become notably tight.
With consumers facing a thinner pool of immediately available units, relatively modest buying has produced a larger price response than elsewhere in the complex. Copper remains supported by the same availability concerns.
Labor Day appetizers are easier to plan when the table mixes chilled dips, make-ahead bites, sliders, grilled seafood, and warm finger foods that can be prepared and served in stages.The post 15 summer appetizers to shortlist now for the Labor…
As well as being quieter, cheaper to run and easier to clean, induction cookers can cut kitchen temperatures by up to 10C
Leaping flames, searing heat, copious sweat and scorchingly inventive swearing – restaurant kitchens are never a place for the faint-hearted, but this summer they have been sweltering in successive heatwaves to a dangerous degree.
Unpopular new policy comes as midterms loom and control of Congress could be decided by several Michigan races
Every day $1bn worth of goods crosses the river dividing Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, two largely blue-collar US and Canadian cities that have come to act as one in the creation of North America’s auto industry.
News this week of Donald Trump’s escalating trade spat with Canada has everyone worried. Political and economic leaders and observers labeled the move an act of “hubris” , blamed Trump’s “ego”, and called the escalation “insanity”.
Lawsuit alleges sound is nuisance for up to one mile around datacenter as residents experience noises from DataOne
It’s a sound Steve Brown, a 63-year-old Vineland, New Jersey resident, literally hears in his sleep: BGRRRRRRRRRRR.
It drones, oscillates, growls – these are machines at industrial scale. Are they generators? Pumps? Fans? Brown does not know what equipment causes the sound or why. He only knows two things: he’s tired of it, and it’s coming from DataOne – a 350MW datacenter under construction a little more than a mile from his home of 25 years.
When another birthday cake sounds predictable, these 13 cookie recipes bring chocolate, caramel, fruit, mint, cinnamon, and bakery-style options that are easy to pass around and stack on a dessert tray.The post 13 cookie recipes the whole family started requesting…
Google is adding an "Expert Intelligence" feature to Gemini Notebook (formerly known as NotebookLM) that lets users cite and work directly from more than 100,000 books they own through Google Play Books. Those books can be used as sources for things like quizzes, infographics, and Audio Overviews. Digital Trends reports: For now, Google is offering one free book to users in the US as part of the launch campaign, with a caveat -- "while supplies last." At the moment, Expert Intelligence is only available in the Gemini Notebook app and its web dashboard, but down the road, Google says that it will also appear within the core Gemini app and AI mode in Search.
The broad idea behind expert intelligence is to combine what you can already do with Gemini, and expertise sourced from your favorite books. So, if you're asking Gemini to create a meal plan that is based entirely on chicken and spinach, you can ask the AI assistant to look for relevant recipes in one of Martha Stewart's cookbooks that you own. You can use these books as a source and turn them into Infographics, Audio Overviews, and Quizzes, among other formats. Google has partnered with select authors on Featured Notebooks that provide extra insights and context beyond their books. It's also worth noting that access is still tied to book ownership, so anyone using a shared Gemini notebook must own or purchase the book to fully use the feature.
Zambia's 2026 election: A test of democratic resilience
22
September 2026 — 14:00 TO 15:00 BST
Anonymous (not verified)
Online
Discover what the election aftermath means for politics, policy and investment.
Discover what the election aftermath means for politics, policy and investment
Zambia’s Electoral Commission announced that President Hakainde Hichilema had secured a second term after winning 60 per cent of the vote. Despite a peaceful polling day, counting was paused because of security concerns and questions have since emerged over reported discrepancies between presidential and parliamentary turnout figures. As leading opposition candidate Brian Mundubile weighs a legal challenge amid controversy surrounding court closures and the arrests of opposition figures, the aftermath of the election is shaping debate over Zambia’s political trajectory, economic policy and investor confidence.
How could the election aftermath affect Zambia’s political environment?
How might uncertainty affect economic policy and investor sentiment?
What do the reported tallying discrepancies mean for confidence in the result?
What options remain open to opposition candidates seeking to challenge the outcome?
What do the arrests of opposition figures reveal about the state of democratic accountability?
What steps could strengthen trust in future electoral processes?
Elina Valtonen, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland, on whether Europe can compete in the age of AI
3
September 2026 — 11:00 TO 12:00 BST
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
Hear from Finland’s foreign minister on how Europe can innovate, build strength and compete in artificial intelligence.
Hear from Finland’s Foreign Minister on how Europe can compete, innovate and build strength in the age of AI.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping economic competition, security and political power at a pace that is testing existing institutions and assumptions. As the US and China race to secure their technological advantage, Europe faces growing pressure to strengthen its capacity and competitiveness. There is debate about how Europe can protect its interests while preserving the values that underpin its political and economic model.
This event discusses:
Can Europe be competitive in the age of AI?
How to balance openness, regulation and competitiveness?
What role should governments play in shaping AI development?
What does strategic autonomy mean in an era of technological competition?
How can Europe strengthen industrial capacity and innovation?
What would a more confident European approach to technology and economic security look like?
Rescuers searching for survivors of deadly flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border have resumed their efforts after suspending operations when a debris dam burst its bank on Friday, increasing the risk of fresh flooding.
Residents in Nepal’s Rasuwa district, on the border with Tibet, were seen rushing up hillsides on Friday to escape a possible surge in the river, according to witnesses. Fears of another flood came as authorities in Nepal and China said that at least 543 people had been killed in the disaster.
Sales of beans, lentils and soya bean derivatives on rise while Britons buy less real and fake meat
British shoppers are munching more beans, lentils, tofu and tempeh – while cutting back on real and plant-based fake meat – to save money and improve their diet.
The amount of beans, pulses and soya bean derivatives sold in the UK increased by 7.3% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period last year, led by a rise in cheap dried lentils, an analysis has found.
Boston, Massachusetts — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked key parts of President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting, finding that the U.S. Postal Service likely lacks authority to impose new election requirements on states.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a 14-day temporary restraining order preventing implementation of a Postal Service rule requiring states to provide voter lists and use federally specified, barcoded ballot envelopes. States that failed to comply could have faced refusal by USPS to deliver their ballots.
The decision comes days after the Supreme Court lifted Talwani’s earlier injunction, ruling that challenges to Trump’s executive order had been filed prematurely. The justices did not rule on whether the order itself is constitutional. After USPS issued a formal rule implementing Trump’s directive, Democratic-led states and voting-rights groups filed new challenges.
Talwani said states lacked sufficient time and resources to redesign ballot materials, modify computer systems and train election workers before ballots begin going out for the November midterms. She also cited the potential for eligible voters to be disenfranchised.
The administration argues the requirements strengthen election security, while opponents contend that the Constitution assigns election administration primarily to states and Congress.
A hearing on whether to extend the injunction is scheduled for Sept. 3.
Washington, D.C. — Republican candidates who challenged or questioned the 2020 presidential election results are running for secretary of state in several battleground states, potentially placing them in influential election-related positions ahead of 2028.
In Arizona, Republican nominee Alexander Kolodin is challenging Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. Kolodin participated in lawsuits challenging the 2020 and 2022 election results and has advocated tighter voter identification requirements. President Donald Trump endorsed him in July. KJZZ independently reported that Kolodin was involved in multiple unsuccessful challenges to previous election results.
Nevada Republican Jim Marchant is again challenging Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar. Marchant has repeatedly disputed President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and previously organized a coalition of Republican secretary of state candidates who questioned that election. His platform includes requiring proof of citizenship, ending universal mail voting and expanding hand counts.
In Wisconsin, Republican nominee Jay Schroeder has said he would not have certified the state’s 2020 presidential results. He is campaigning to dismantle the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, which currently administers elections statewide.
Secretary of state responsibilities vary significantly by state, but in Arizona and Nevada the offices oversee major portions of election administration.
The contests come as Trump continues pushing states to tighten voter-registration rules and provide the federal government greater access to voter-roll information.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day: What does Dolly Parton’s life of perseverance, generosity, and joy ask of each of us while we still have the power to do good?
South Carolina Republicans Choose Fealty to Trump Over Knowledge: How a family name and Trump’s blessing now substitute for knowing the job.
Our War Secretary Is a General Failure: Pete Hegseth’s purges and feuds have left critical military leadership rudderless just when competence matters most.
Trans Republicans Evicted from Log Cabin: Gay Republicans turn their backs on transgender people while enjoying the rights that others earned.
Life on Our Planet, narrated by Morgan Freeman: Visually dazzling evolutionary journey offers a fine crash course in spite of too many elegies.
Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris, “After the Gold Rush”: I say goodbye to Dolly with her trio’s version of Neil Young’s strange environmental dream song that both haunts and soothes the spirit.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day
“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.” – Marcus Aurelius (121-180), Roman emperor and philosopher
“I always ask God to work through me and let me be a light of some kind and help in this world.”– Dolly Parton (1946-2026), singer and philanthropist
(Photo by Rui Vieira - PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
When you live your life in the public eye, people think they know you. And they have opinions. As I have written many times, when I was a young man, people often thought I was unfriendly, surly, angry; and maybe there were times when I was. I had success on the basketball court, I had friends, I found a religion that made sense to me, I had a love of music and books—and with all that going for me, I was still prone to obsess on the negative, and that was the vibe I too often gave out. I looked at the world around me, the war and the assassinations and the way Black people were treated, and I didn’t see a lot to be happy about.
I found myself thinking these thoughts today as I contemplated the wonder that was Dolly Parton. I never met Dolly, but, maybe like you, I felt I knew her. Her story was widely known: she grew up in a one-room shack in Tennessee with eleven siblings and no heat; her father was an illiterate laborer and her mother—well, she had 12 kids by the time she was 35. She was a preacher’s daughter and she loved music. She passed that on to Dolly, who was singing in her grandfather’s church by the time she was six.
By eight, she could play guitar, and by ten, she was on the radio. Her first single, “Puppy Love,” came out when she was thirteen. That same year, she made her Grand Ole Opry debut, where she was introduced by Johnny Cash. She wasn’t an overnight success: she worked nonstop, honing her craft, honing her songwriting, but it took her more than a decade to score her first number-one hit in 1971. Imagine how many people came and went in that decade. A lot of one-hit wonders; a lot of no-hit wonders. The Beatles’ entire recording career came and went during the long stretch between Dolly's first single and her first number-one hit. That’s serious perseverance. But then, who wants to go back to a one-room shack?
Once she made it to the top of the charts, she stayed there. She refined her look, put on an exaggerated dumb blonde act, and because she was in on it, she never let the dumb blonde jokes bother her. As she said, “I know I’m not dumb. And I know I’m not blonde, either.” That was part of her charm: she always had a zinger ready at the right moment. She was always happy, or so it seemed. Her smile could light up a theater, a movie screen, or, according to so many who met her, a simple interaction between two people.
Her voice wasn’t technically perfect, but it conveyed enough warmth and honest emotion to overcome any limitations. As a songwriter, she conveyed that same warmth and honesty, and she wrote some of the most indelible country songs of all time: “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” and, of course, “I Will Always Love You.” I wasn’t a country music fan when Dolly was in her early prime, and I have to admit I didn’t know “I Will Always Love You” was a Dolly Parton song when I first heard Whitney Houston sing it. I was simply astonished by its raw emotion and that soaring melody. Later, when I found out it was a Dolly Parton song and I heard her version, I saw that the blueprint was all there before Whitney sang a note. She gave it a different accent and her band played some different instruments, but the song itself didn’t change a bit. It was perfect then, and it’s perfect now.
For all her success, Dolly’s greatest achievement was her philanthropy. In the early 1990s, her Dollywood Foundation promised seventh- and eighth-graders $500 if they graduated from high school, helping to reduce the dropout rate for those classes from 35 percent to six percent. Her Imagination Library has given more than 300 million books to children worldwide since its founding in 1995. In 2007, she gave a million dollars to Sevier County’s LeConte Hospital, including a new cancer center and the Dolly Parton Center for Women’s Services. When East Tennessee suffered devastating wildfires in 2016, her My People Fund distributed $12.5 million to families affected by the fires. In 2017, she donated one million dollars to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in honor of her niece, who was treated there for leukemia. When Covid hit, she gave one million dollars for coronavirus research at Vanderbilt University, which helped fund Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. The list of good deeds, and lives she improved, goes on and on.
When people talk about a life well lived, this is what they’re talking about. I’ve tried to give back to society over the years, but when I see all that Dolly did, I know there’s always more I can do. As I said, I never had the chance to meet her, but I will miss her. Goodbye, Dolly.
Roadmap for increasing department’s share of GDP will be deferred until next year’s review
The chancellor will delay setting out when the UK will meet the target of allocating 3% of GDP on defence until next year’s spending review, the Treasury has confirmed.
John Healey resigned as defence secretary in June under Keir Starmer’s leadership, accusing the prime minister of being “unable” and the Treasury “unwilling” to “commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country”.
The president senses a crisis in his cult of personality. He believes the path to victory is through unwavering devotion
Donald Trump has framed his theme for the midterm elections. It has come to him as naturally and inevitably as staring into the mirror, beyond any logic or argument, his definitive answer to no specific issue, providing no understanding of any particular problem, but transcending all of them. His political theme is more primal than programmatic, more instinctive than analytical, a heartfelt expression to protect his greatest romantic attachment, his obsessive fixation, his idealized object: himself.
Trump’s campaign theme is unrequited love. Unlike the pollsters, media consultants and pundits, he alone has grasped the magnitude and the source of the existential crisis threatening his politics. He has identified the problem for the Republicans as the faltering measure of complete devotion to him. His demand has nothing to do with mutual affection. It is a ploy to reassert his slipping control, a manipulative test to prove loyalty to him, or else. There can be no absolute rule without an absolute ruler; no absolute ruler without absolute submission; no absolute submission without the expression of absolute love. His sadness at its fading gives way to anger, paranoia and greater acts of retribution. He equates the fear he instills as a form of love. Trump accepts subservience, from whatever motive, as affection or its closest equivalent. He cares nothing about sincerity, so it’s all in the show. The less love displayed, the more fear required. Yet there is no rebound, but only deeper rejection.
Survivors begin receiving letters with payment amounts months after $305m settlement agreement was struck
Survivors of child rape and other sexual abuse within New Orleans’s Roman Catholic archdiocese learned that$641,000 or so is the most they can individually get under a settlement approved in December to resolve a years-long bankruptcy protection case.
Those amounts were communicated in letters that hundreds of clergy abuse survivors participating in the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy began quietly receiving on Tuesday. The figures are well below a $2.4m jury verdict awarded to an unrelated Louisiana religious sexual abuse claimant in June 2025 after the state’s legislature temporarily eliminated filing deadlines for such cases.
Illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica and Vanessa Saba for ProPublica. Photo by Ted Shaffrey/AP Photo.
When ProPublica recently investigated a rape crisis that surged through Syracuse University in the 1980s, we found evidence that the school had taken steps to suppress news coverage of the assaults. The university responded by portraying itself as a changed institution today, “committed to supporting the students who come forward and being there for them at every step of the process,” as a school spokesperson put it.
But the university’s recent actions in a lawsuit filed by a former student who was attacked on campus during that period appear at odds with that commitment. After the Syracuse Police Department agreed to provide old records to the victim, lawyers for Syracuse University intervened, seeking to block the victim’s access to many of the records. The school argued in legal papers that the subpoena sent to the police department was “overbroad” and suffered “from fatal geographic overreach” that rendered “it unreasonably burdensome and irrelevant.”
New York state court Judge Joseph Lamendola ruled in the university’s favor in February, dramatically limiting the records the victim could obtain to make her case that the school should have beefed up security in response to escalating crime in the area.
In June, her attorneys appealed that decision, sending the matter to a state appellate court.
“It smacks of the 1980s when SU quashed media coverage of sexual assault. It’s that all over again,” said Andrew Stengel, a former Manhattan prosecutor representing the victim. He accused the university of “retraumatizing” his client “by pretending sexual assault wasn’t a problem on campus and in the surrounding area.”
Stengel and his client, referred to as Jane Doe in legal filings, are suing the university under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law that opened a one-year exemption from the statute of limitations for survivors of long-ago sexual assaults to pursue legal claims against alleged abusers and negligent institutions.
Sarah Scalese, Syracuse University’s vice president of communications, said in an emailed statement that “we do not comment on active litigation.” In response to ProPublica’s earlier story, Scalese said the university “has a robust structure in place to support those affected by sexual and relationship violence,” including “confidential counseling, advocacy and investigation and resolution services to students.”
Doe was attacked by a man with a knife inside a bathroom on the third floor of the university’s music building at about 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 27, 1987. Her assailant had entered the building through an unlocked door, according to her lawsuit, which contends that the university administration offered her “zero support” after the assault. The music program director, the complaint alleges, told her, “Men get raped, too,” and advised her to get “back on the horse.” (The director is deceased.)
Hers was one episode in a brutal saga of sexual violence that unfolded in and around the Syracuse campus throughout the decade. The scourge of assaults became so pervasive that it eventually inspired student protests, drew national press attention and contributed to the passage of federal legislation that now requires universities to publicly report crime statistics.
ProPublica’s earlier examination — rooted in the wrongful conviction of Anthony Broadwater for the rape of Alice Sebold, an author who wrote a bestselling memoir about being attacked on the last night of her freshman year at Syracuse University in 1981 — found that more than a dozen women, many of them students, reported being raped or attacked by strangers in a half-square-mile area near the campus over four years. Sebold’s was the third such attack in Thornden Park, which runs alongside the campus, in about seven months.
Some of the police reports from this time period were marked “NO PRESS,” which, according to the testimony of a former Syracuse detective, meant that the university had used its influence in the police department to “put their foot down and said no press for any kind of rape, robbery, burglary that’s anywhere in the area of Syracuse University.”
Last year, Stengel asked the police department for all police calls and reports tied to a variety of crimes from 1982 to 1987 within the ZIP code that contains the university, Thornden Park, various businesses, and a mix of student and nonstudent housing.
Emails filed as an exhibit in Doe’s case show that a lawyer representing the Syracuse Police Department suggested that Stengel focus his search on that ZIP code. The two of them agreed on the terms in August 2025, and the police department began gathering the records shortly thereafter.
A month later, the university filed a motion to “partially quash” the subpoena. Relying on case law that applies only to central and western New York state, university lawyers argued that it had standing to limit the request, even though it was not the recipient of Stengel’s subpoena. The university asserted that the subpoena would create unnecessary work for the police department, unearth irrelevant documents and waste the time of everyone involved.
The police department then reversed its earlier position and joined in the motion, estimating in a February brief that it would take 845 hours and $50,000 in staff time to provide the documents Stengel had asked for and the police department lawyer had initially approved. (A spokesperson said that “the City of Syracuse does not comment on ongoing litigation.”)
At a hearing, John Powers, an attorney hired by the university, seemed to play to Lamendola’s previous role as a lawyer for the city of Syracuse, reminding the judge that the city is “inundated with [Freedom of Information Law] responses and subpoenas, and it’s incredibly burdensome on the city, I think, as you know in your experience as well.”
The records were too old to be digitized, Powers told the judge, adding that, just as the judge once did, Powers represents the city in other matters. City employees, he said, would have to find them “the old way, Judge, the way we used to do it, crawling around in the dusty storeroom … trying to determine what ZIP code’s involved, looking at the crime. A lot of boxes, a lot of files. Very burdensome, very expensive for the city.” (Powers declined to comment, citing the litigation.)
Lamendola was persuaded. Under his ruling, none of the rapes that took place in Thornden Park or in the student apartments near it will have to be disclosed. The police will have to disclose only reports of crimes that took place on the campus itself, and not reports concerning burglary, larceny and other offenses, which the judge deemed irrelevant. He also directed Syracuse University, the defendant in the case, to assist the Police Department in identifying cases that occurred on its campus.
Doe’s team filed a 37-page appellate brief in late June that argues that the court’s decision to limit the disclosure to university buildings is “hard to justify” given that the campus is interwoven with the city. The brief, authored by appellate attorney Michael Steinberg, also takes issue with the decision to allow university personnel to act as “gatekeepers,” authorizing them to review the police files and decide for themselves which meet the judge’s criteria and which don’t. That, the appeal contends, presents a conflict of interest that would “give the defendant the power to control the evidence it will have to contest at trial.”
The university has until Sept. 23 to respond to the appeal.
Legal filings also show that university lawyers have sought to reduce its liability by raising the name of a onetime suspect in the case, Michael McKinney.
At the time of Doe’s rape, McKinney was on parole after attacking a woman in a downtown parking lot. According to police reports, two witnesses saw a man matching his description running out of the Syracuse music building the night of the attack. Doe later picked him out of a photo array.
Days later, police went to his home. Officers learned from his wife that he owned a Miller beer hat identical to the one the suspect was said to have been wearing at the time of the crime. She also said he had left abruptly, for another state. Police put the case in the “inactive file,” a common occurrence for rape cases in Syracuse at the time.
Months later, McKinney turned up in New York City. By then he had come under scrutiny for the violent robbery of another Syracuse woman. According to a newspaper article from December 1987, he was eventually found guilty of that robbery and given an unusually lengthy sentence of 20 years to life, with the judge noting his repeated crimes against women. McKinney was never prosecuted in the Jane Doe case.
McKinney served 30 years in prison on the 1987 robbery charge, records show. Then, in March 2025, he was arrested for the rape of a 46-year-old woman earlier that year. A grand jury indicted him in June 2026. He has pleaded not guilty.
While McKinney was in jail, Syracuse University lawyers filed a civil complaint against him, arguing that if the university is held liable in Doe’s case, McKinney should “contribute to any award in an amount equal to his equitable share” because of “his own culpable conduct.” Because McKinney did not respond to the suit, the university lawyers have asked the judge to find him in default. This could eventually affect a jury’s decision on the financial responsibility owed to Doe by the university.
Reached by phone, Donald Kelly, McKinney’s court-appointed lawyer in the new rape case, said, “It’s concerning that the university would serve a third-party complaint upon a prisoner to try to avoid liability,” noting that McKinney has “empty pockets.”
Reiterating that McKinney was never charged in the 1987 rape of Doe, Kelly added, “Either the university was negligent or it wasn’t.” (Kelly declined to make his client available for an interview.)
Jonathan Cardi, a Wake Forest University law professor who specializes in civil litigation and has researched negligence claims for rape, said it was not especially unusual for a defendant to try to quash subpoenas of third parties or to shift liability to others.
“These are litigation tactics,” he said. “But, at the end of the day, the university is the client, and very frequently a client’s business interests or morals dictate what they say their attorneys can and can’t do. If a university is trying to turn over a new leaf, they can tell their attorney that even though this might be the best litigation practice, this is not who we want to be.”
The WNBA is having a moment. Viewership is up. Attendance for this year’s WNBA All-Star Game surpassed the NBA’s All-Star Game. Games and events can be viewed in a record number of places, from broadcast to cable and streaming. And just this week, Angel Reese of the Atlanta Dream set a single-game record.
But the stories about the WNBA capturing national attention in recent weeks are about none of that. Instead, the focus has been on two retired NBA players, including Enes Kanter Freedom, who showed up courtside at an August 23 Chicago Sky–Indiana Fever game wearing a T-shirt that said “Woman: noun. adult human female.”
“I don’t believe that he’s being genuine in any realm, in order to create this mass hysteria of sorts for an issue that’s actually simply a non-issue,” says Angela Perry, a WNBA content creator, tells The Intercept Briefing. “There are no trans women in the WNBA; there are none attempting to be in the WNBA.”
This week on The Intercept Briefing podcast, host Jessica Washington speaks to Perry and journalist Katelyn Burns about how the premier women’s professional basketball league has found itself at the center of a right-wing manufactured panic.
“The right has made such hay out of trans women in women’s sports that they need to keep inventing controversies in order to keep this issue front of mind,” says Burns who writes for the independent newsletter Burns Notice and co-hosts the Cancel Me, Daddy podcast.
“We have a midterm election coming up, and to be frank with you, the only thing that the right has done besides terrorizing immigrants is banning trans women from women’s sports. It’s at the center of almost all of their policies,” continues Burns. “They are inventing controversies about trans people in sports where there are no trans people involved.”
“This is about women in general. They’re already talking about not wanting women to have the right to vote,” says Perry. “This isn’t just about sports. There’s a political party trying to scale us back to what they perceive was a time where things were better. But really, it was when women were more controlled.”
“The bigger issue is that the people who think that they’re protected, it’s always going to get to the protected class eventually,” warns Perry. “Right now, the focus is trans, and people think they’re safe because ‘I’m not trans. I’m a cis woman and I’m protected.’ But it will impact you.”
For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
Transcript
Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept.
Jessica Washington: And I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept.
AL: Jessie, in typical August fashion, it feels like things have kind of slowed down somewhat with Washington in recess amid the final days of summer. I’m personally looking forward to having a little space to catch our breaths, as we enter the final midterm stretch before everyone turns their attention toward November. But there’s still plenty to cover.
ICE announced a record high in July arrests and deportations, and the Department of Homeland Security is continuing to expand its attacks on legal immigration. Nobody fret: Democrats are still melting down over Hasan Piker, while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries met recently with Jared Kushner. A majority-Black town in Indiana went without power — and very little news attention — for two weeks. Dolly Parton died. And as we close out the sixth month of the Iran war, the Trump administration made a big show of announcing an “economic D-Day” with new sweeping sanctions and claiming, yet again, that this would end the war.
What have you been hearing on those fronts this week?
JW: I have to say: The second Trump administration is the only time in history where this could be considered a slow news cycle. But yeah, there’s a lot to talk about.
So with ICE, we have really been seeing a huge surge in detention and deportations. What I’ve been hearing from advocates on the ground is that it’s also coincided with an increase in violence. We’re seeing ICE use tactics like car kettling, even putting pepper spray and pepper balls into vehicles on the road. There’s a lot of dangerous activity happening with ICE — and a lot less coverage than we saw in January and February.
In regards to Gary, Indiana, I think it’s been heartening and disheartening of a news cycle, in the sense that at first people really were not paying attention. So for those who don’t know: Thousands of residents in the predominantly Black community [were] without power for two weeks after a storm caused massive outages. There’s a lot of anger right now because people are simultaneously being squeezed by these exorbitant electricity bills, but then they also don’t have power to meet their basic survival needs — for their medical equipment, for their refrigeration of food.
It’s a story that we keep seeing repeat. In Jackson, Mississippi, for example, residents of the also predominantly Black community, have been plagued for years by both expensive water bills and years of water shut-offs and boil-water notices. We just keep seeing people squeezed at both ends. You somehow don’t have access to the resources you need to survive, and you’re practically paying a second mortgage for the pleasure.
AL: Jessie, you’ve also been reporting this week on the fallout over the fight regarding trans rights in sports. This is not my wheelhouse. Can you get us up to speed on what happened, and where does the fight stand now?
JW: I had a great conversation with Angela Perry, a content creator who covers the WNBA and women’s basketball, and Katelyn Burns, who writes for the independent newsletter Burns Notice — she also co-hosts the Cancel Me, Daddy podcast — about how the WNBA, a league with no trans women in it, found itself at the center of a right-wing culture war on transgender rights.
The right-wing outrage machine started off focusing on perceived racial grievances, claiming WNBA star Caitlin Clark, who is white, had been unfairly targeted because of her race. Media Matters recently documented Fox News spending over 13 1/2 hours of its summer coverage on the WNBA, largely focusing in on race and, more recently, trans inclusion.
Then enters WNBA player Sophie Cunningham, who has become a darling of the right, earning the moniker “MAGA Barbie.” Cunningham first started getting attention for these high-profile moments of her defending her teammate Clark on the court. Both Cunningham and Clark are white and straight in a league that is predominantly Black and LGBTQ+ inclusive. And these moments quickly became fodder, as noted, for a racist, right-wing backlash fueled by Fox News and other outlets against Black players, who were called overly aggressive and were subject to racist harassment.
Then in a July interview, Cunningham told ESPN that she wanted to “protect young girls in a locker room” from “biological men.” Her comments brought yet another round of hate to the doorsteps of the WNBA, leading to protests at the games over transgender participation in sports.
In August, two former NBA players, Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, announced that they were declaring for the 2027 WNBA draft, in a transphobic stunt to force the league to have a policy on transgender female athletes, even though there are no transgender women in the WNBA. Here’s White and then Kanter Freedom arguing on Fox programs that they should qualify.
Royce White: I identify as sometimes identifying as a woman for purpose of basketball, professional basketball. So I’ll be declaring for the WNBA draft in 2027 as well.
Enes Kanter Freedom: Article 13 in Section 1 says if you identify as a woman, then you’re allowed to play.
Laura Ingraham: So you are identifying as a woman tonight?
Enes Kanter Freedom: Sure. I identify as a woman. Sure. Yes. So I can play.
JW: Kanter Freedom was later kicked out of a [August 23] Chicago Sky game for disrupting the game and for now has been banned from Wintrust Arena.
But the project is bigger than just one sports league.
We get into how the right is attempting to use transphobia and racism to roll back Title IX and women’s rights more broadly. This isn’t just a fight about sports — the Supreme Court, state attorneys general, and the Trump administration are actively coming for transgender rights as well as women’s rights and, frankly, all of our rights.
AL: It sounds like I have a lot to learn about this, so let’s hear that conversation.
JW: Joining me now is Angela Perry, a content creator who regularly delivers hot takes on the WNBA and women’s basketball, @arperry01. You can find her on TikTok, Instagram, and across all social platforms.
Angela, welcome to The Intercept Briefing
Angela Perry: Thank you, glad to be here.
JW: Also joining us is journalist Katelyn Burns, who writes for the independent newsletter Burns Notice and co-hosts the Cancel Me, Daddy podcast. Katelyn, welcome to the show.
Katelyn Burns: Hi, thanks for having me.
JW: The WNBA is having a moment. Viewership is way up. Attendance for this year’s All-Star WNBA game surpassed the NBA’s All-Star game. Games and events can be viewed in a record number of places, from broadcast to cable and streaming. And just this week, Angel Reese of the Atlanta Dream team set a single-game record.
But the stories about the WNBA capturing national attention in recent weeks are about none of that. Instead, two retired NBA players have captured national headlines, including Enes Kanter Freedom. Freedom showed up courtside wearing a T-shirt that said, “Woman: noun. adult human female.” Angela, you shared a really incisive take on social media. I want to start with you. What is going on here?
AP: I think when we remove the WNBA, and we look at the political climate in America, there’s an attack on trans people. So I think that’s something worth noting because trans men and women have not been an issue in the WNBA or in the MNBA, ever. But because this has been something that a political side has used over the last few years, it has now infiltrated itself in the WNBA.
The person that you mentioned, I refuse to learn his name, has used this as a tool. I don’t believe that he’s being genuine in any realm, in order to create this mass hysteria of sorts for an issue that’s actually simply a non-issue. There are no trans women in the WNBA; there are none attempting to be in the WNBA.
What we find here are just cis men who are trying to capitalize off of the discourse and create what looks like hostility. It’s just disheartening because it’s taking the focus away from things like you just said, Angel Reese breaking records. There’s a lot of people breaking records: Olivia Miles, Caitlin Clark. There’s so much actually happening, and then what we end up talking about the next day is this person who’s trying to take the headlines into a dark place.
And the people who aren’t watching the WNBA — that’s all they’re going to hear, that’s all they’re going to see. They don’t know what’s going on. And then they will be in my comments section, saying, “Well, he looks like he’s standing up for women!” So they actually have it completely wrong, based on getting the snippets and the sound bites from that person. So it’s pretty disheartening.
JW: That’s something that I’ve been thinking about even in talking about this on the podcast is, are we giving this more attention? But it feels like we have to talk about this because they’re distorting this issue so much. Katelyn, I want to get your thoughts as well here.
KB: This is such a frustrating conversation. Specifically, this issue is about trans women. And the frustrating part for me as a trans person, as a journalist, is that trans women have essentially been driven out of sports at any level beyond high school in a handful of blue states. I hate to say it, but politically, it’s a settled issue. But the right has made such hay out of trans women in women’s sports that they need to keep inventing controversies in order to keep this issue front of mind.
We have a midterm election coming up, and to be frank with you, the only thing that the right has done besides terrorizing immigrants is banning trans women from women’s sports. It’s at the center of almost all of their policies. So what you’re seeing now is they are inventing controversies about trans people in sports where there are no trans people involved.
“The only thing that the right has done besides terrorizing immigrants is banning trans women from women’s sports.”
Angela made the point: There are no trans women in the WNBA. There’s never been an out trans woman in the WNBA before. There are no out trans women college players. More than half the states in the country ban trans women from playing high school basketball, so there’s no pathway to make it to the WNBA.
This is a conversation about something that is not going to happen anytime soon, that is being drummed up for completely political purposes, just because the league has vague wording in their collective bargaining agreement over who is eligible to play. What you are seeing is just the exploitation of that gray language in the CBA to drive negative attention on the league as a whole.
JW: I want to get into the league’s response and how they’re dealing with all of this. Katelyn, you had written about what the league should say, but I also want to just ask what they are saying. Can you talk a little bit about what you think their strategy should be going forward and what their strategy has been so far?
KB: The league’s not doing itself any favors with all of this. I think that they are too afraid to take a stance in tamping down these protests and the antics of these men who are trying to intrude upon the game.
It started with suspending a Seattle team co-owner who confronted some anti-trans protesters who were at a game. Then it escalated again with Enes Kanter Freedom at this latest game, getting into it with a player on the court. He was escorted out of the building, but now they’re saying they’re not going to ban him from all of the WNBA games. So he’s just free to show up and harass another player on the court.
How you protect women out of harassing women basketball players doesn’t add up to me, but I guess it makes sense in the bizarro world of the anti-trans movement. They have come out and ruled that neither of these players — by the way, Royce White was running for office when he pulled his stunt, and then he got his ass kicked in his election, so that was really funny.
But, they’ve come out and said that neither of them are eligible to play because, clearly neither of them identify as women, which is the current language of the rules in the league. My proposal was, just go back to how sports used to treat trans women in sports: establish a testosterone limit and regular testing and prove that you’ve suppressed it for an extended period of time, and then allow somebody to play.
“Enes Kanter Freedom is not going to go take estrogen just to continue this stunt.”
Studies have shown that there is no biological advantage from trans women, no broad-based biological advantage for trans women. None of these grifters can intrude upon the game that way. That was my proposal. Enes Kanter Freedom is not going to go take estrogen just to continue this stunt. It’s just not going to happen.
That was my idea. I think, in general, the league should take more of a stance of protecting their own players — because the more you allow this to fester, the more you’re going to start seeing, “Oh, this player on this team that beat us is more muscular than a woman should be. Maybe they are trans.”
We’ve seen this before with the Olympics, with Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer who won a gold medal and was the subject to a worldwide witch hunt over her gender, despite the fact that she was born female, raised as a girl, and happened to get into boxing.
JW: It is this crazy world where you’re seeing the kind of trans-vestigating now of WNBA players. As you’ve both mentioned, there are no transgender women in the WNBA, and yet we’re seeing people now say, “Well, this person is trans, this person is trans.” And it is mostly coming along racial lines, from what we’re mostly seeing, this is mostly targeting of Black women.
[Break]
JW: Angela, I’m curious, how do you think the league could protect players right now?
AP: Just like Katelyn mentioned, the fact that he was only banned in one arena, I think that we have to send the message. In the MNBA, when there was an irate person in the crowd — that person was banned for life. And it sent the message that this was unacceptable. It also makes me think the people who are doing it are part of the reason that the punishments aren’t that harsh as well.
“This is about policing women, in general.”
Like Katelyn mentioned, this is not necessarily about trans people. This is about policing women, in general. Because there’s masculine women, and it’s a way for the powers that be to try to say, “I don’t know if that person deserved to win because they’re stronger, so now let’s investigate if they are actually a woman.”
What does that mean? What are we going to do? Start examining women, girls, even? That’s the thing — this side that talks about protecting girls, you want your 11 or 12-year-old girls to be examined by who because they want to play baseball or softball or whatever have you.
So the bigger issue is that the people who think that they’re protected, it’s always going to get to the protected class eventually. Right now, the focus is trans, and people think they’re safe because “I’m not trans. I’m a cis woman and I’m protected.” But it will impact you.
“The bigger issue is the men that are on the other side of this, they don’t care about women’s sports in general. So to them, if there was just no WNBA, they don’t really care.”
I think the bigger picture is Title IX. I think the bigger issue is the men that are on the other side of this, they don’t care about women’s sports in general. So to them, if there was just no WNBA, they don’t really care. So that’s the bigger picture, is protecting women means protecting masculine women that don’t subscribe to social standards of what they’re supposed to look like. To me, there shouldn’t be any standards, but of course, we live in a society where there just are.
And then just protecting the women that are, like you said, already in the league. Why are we protecting this man who showed up, and treating him with any type of dignity, when they are the employees — the WNBA players.
And that’s not just with this trans conversation. It’s also with racism. The WNBA came out with the “No space for hate” almost as a joke —because I have not seen anything implemented from that the entire season. I haven’t seen Cathy [Engelbert] since the All-Star Game; she’s supposed to be the leader of this league. It’s almost like she’s afraid to speak up because she’s afraid to lose the fan base of racist and transphobic people, which is honestly insane.
But in America, in a capitalist society, a dollar is a dollar — and they don’t care if that dollar is coming from a racist or a true fan. In my opinion, if they would invest in the true fans, you would get more true fans, and you wouldn’t have to take money from racist people or transphobic people or homophobic people. The list goes on and on.
To me, that’s not a safe space in the WNBA for the fans or the players.
“ In America, in a capitalist society, a dollar is a dollar — and they don’t care if that dollar is coming from a racist or a true fan.”
JW: To your point, Angela, Media Matters recently reported that Fox News spent “13 and a 1/2 hours waging a WNBA culture war this summer,” gravitating between perceived racial grievances and trans inclusion.
I should note that the WNBA did issue a statement saying, “There are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA, and we strongly denounce the bad faith efforts to use these topics to demean or marginalize others.”
But because you brought up Title IX, and I think that’s really the crux of what this is about, let’s get straight into that. So shortly after the Supreme Court ruled to uphold state laws banning transgender girls from participating in school sports, the Heritage Foundation published a paper calling Title IX — which bans sex-based discrimination in schools, including in school sports — a “failed experiment.”
The sports and culture site Defector pointed out that the author of the paper is Boise State professor Scott Yenor, who once called career-oriented women, “medicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome.” He argues Title IX has led to “male-normed women’s sports” that are failing at “celebrating distinctly feminine virtues of service, grace, and character.”
Katelyn, can you tell us what is the end game here?
KB: Oh, God. It’s not great. This attitude was parodied in “A League of Their Own,” a movie from like 1992, I think. Don’t quote me on that, please. There was a whole storyline and arc and a couple of scenes like mocking people who thought that women playing professional baseball would make them unfeminine.
“They’re trying to build a world where women are literally barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.”
So they’re trying to build a world where women are literally barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. I wrote about this Heritage Foundation memo that went out — or policy paper, I’m not quite exactly sure what they labeled it, off the top of my head — but it’s terrifying.
I have thought a lot about the intersection of gender and sports. I was a three-sport athlete growing up, and I was deeply in the closet, so I played boys’ sports. I grew up in a time where teenagers didn’t have the option to come out and transition. We didn’t even know what being trans was sometimes back in the ’80s and ’90s when I was growing up. I can’t imagine if I had found out that there was a way for me to transition but I had to give up the sports that I loved.
I am really sad that’s the position that we’re putting trans people in now, and I’m really upset that people have not thought all of this through. First of all, they don’t educate themselves about what hormones do. Everybody has hormones in their bodies — and no offense to the cis people who are listening, but you don’t even know what your own hormones do. You should because it’s an important part of your body. So they are using these bigoted stereotypes of trans women to scare you into rolling back gender politics 80 years.
“A League of Their Own,” it was made in 1992, but it was about the ’40s when World War II was happening. Angela mentioned, what are we going to do — inspect girls’ genitals maybe? Yes, that’s exactly what the Republicans and the right and the anti-trans movement are proposing.
I have to say, as somebody who writes about trans issues, who reads a lot about history, there’s a great podcast called “Tested,” which is about the struggle for intersex equality in athletics, and I highly recommend, if you’re interested in this topic, to go listen to that.
“The idea of sex testing originated with the 1936 Olympics that was hosted in Nazi Germany.”
But also, the idea of sex testing originated with the 1936 [Berlin] Olympics that was hosted in Nazi Germany. And that shocks people when I say that. These are legacies of literal Nazis that we’re, like, trying to reestablish here in the 2020s.
So what kind of world are they building? Not one that I want to live in.
JW: If they can define what is a woman, and they can say that transgender women are not women, then they can tell you, “This is how you have to be a woman. You cannot sue your boss for sex-based discrimination. You cannot have equal funding for your sports teams because you’re a girl.” And that’s the final play, and it’s sad that to get there, they’re going to bully a bunch of little girls, essentially. That’s the start, and then the end is to take away everyone’s rights.
Angela, I want to get your thoughts about this as well. Is this also just about sports, or is the goal to really target the entire anti-discrimination framework?
AP: Oh, no, this is about women in general. They’re already talking about not wanting women to have the right to vote. That is being said out loud, on — I wouldn’t say legitimate news stations, but they have channels — who are people currently in positions of power.
So this isn’t just about sports. There’s a political party trying to scale us back to what they perceive was a time where things were better. But really, it was when women were more controlled. And unfortunately, there’s men in this country that don’t like for women to have a voice because they realize that they’re losing in that, I would say, game of life.
Men are losing without the inherent control that they had for centuries. We’re in the first, I would say, 20 to 30 years where women have not been forced, essentially, by society into marriage. Yes, we’ve had a choice, but as far as having our own credit cards, being able to purchase our own homes — things like that have been critical in order for women to live their own lives, not choose marriage, children, so forth and so on, which means that there are men who have not learned essentially life skills without a woman doing it for them.
“This is much bigger than basketball.”
They’ve not been shown that because their father had it, their grandfather had it, and they don’t know what to do. So what they’ve decided is to go and try to change the landscape of America through laws and restricting what women are able to do. So yeah, I think this is much bigger than basketball.
Of course, I’m a women’s basketball content creator, so I talk about basketball and the intersections of it, but I’m well aware that this is scary times. I just went and voted in my local election two weeks ago, and I’m like, “Is this going to be allowed in five years?”
“I just went and voted in my local election two weeks ago, and I’m like, ‘Is this going to be allowed in five years?’”
KB: I think that there are people who assume that if they are not trans, then they don’t need to care about non-discrimination protections for trans people.
But I have to say that when there are legal protections for trans people, it also protects everybody else from discrimination based on the assumption that you’re trans. What you’re seeing is that the conservative side of the political aisle is trying to build an apparatus where they can just simply accuse somebody of being trans, and then they can do whatever they want.
They can sex discriminate to their heart’s content as long as it’s against a trans person or somebody that is assumed to be trans. The only way out of it is a very invasive process of you have to verify the sex that you were born with. I don’t think that’s a society that most people are prepared to accept, but it’s one that is quickly forming.
So I wanted to say to those people who are like, “Oh, this is a complicated issue that I don’t really know how I feel about,” you should have feelings about it, because anybody, any day, could come along and say, “Hey, I think you’re trans. You shouldn’t be doing that.” Then you’re in a big mess that you have to get out of somehow. The only way to do it is by revealing deeply personal information about yourself.
JW: Talking Points Memo reporter Kate Riga writes, “It’s been clear for weeks that right-wing media, eager to distract from its leaders’ woeful unpopularity and resulting fears about November’s midterms, struck gold with its anti-trans, anti-WNBA crusade.”
She goes on to say, “[Sophie] Cunningham, white and willing, has been the protagonist the right needed to unfurl its narrative. But the anti-trans campaign, the grousing about professional basketball players being fouled, it’s all in service of a grander mission. In the white Christian nationalist nation the Trump administration is openly trying to foist on the American public, a sports league where Black, gay players are celebrated and (recently, to a degree) paid well is a distinct danger.”
Angela, I want to start with you. What are your thoughts? Do you think that this white Christian nationalist grift is working, or do you think people are getting sick of seeing this stoking of hate and this fear? Or is it having the impact that they want it to have?
AP: I think people are getting sick of it. I don’t think the Christian nationalism of it all is actually going to win. So I think it’s a dying side that they still try to reignite over and over. It’s going to get clickbait because we are people of habit. It’s the internet. Even, I sometimes click on things just to see, what are they talking about now? But I don’t think they’re going to win overall.
It really does look like there is a tide turning. It doesn’t look to be beneficial to those particular people. And so it looks as though as a whole more fans are for cohesive playing, more diversity. Especially in general, the WNBA fan is just a more open-minded fan, in my opinion as a person who’s been watching the league for 30 years.
You go to a game, and it’s just every type of person. You get on the elevator, you’ll have someone who’s 60 all the way down to the 5-year-old, from white male to young Hispanics. It’s just too much of a melting pot for them to try to get everyone out of it, and so I don’t think it’s going to win. That’s my thoughts.
But if it does, you have Unrivaled, you have some of these other leagues that have not so far allowed the same type of hate and rhetoric to infiltrate it, that the W could lose out on a really huge fan base. I think at the end of the day, they may do the right thing only because of money, not because they’re trying to do the right thing. It’s going to come down to money.
“They may do the right thing only because of money, not because they’re trying to do the right thing.”
JW: Yeah, no, I could see that. To me, white Christian nationalism is just the soup that we all swim in. My theory of everything is white Christian nationalism, when you get to the end of it. But I think they start to lose when you start to show your hand in really obvious ways.
I think it’s hard to say, “Huh, you’re protecting women by throwing sex toys at female athletes while they’re doing their job.” I think that’s when people start to say, “Wait a minute. Maybe this is not a movement of people that really care about women.”
But Katelyn, I want to know what you think. Is this working, or have they hit their kind of limit of ridiculousness where the public says, “Wait a minute, you’re trying to say that people who protect trans people are ridiculous, and now we can clearly see that you’re being ridiculous” — or is it working?
KB: I think it’s working in that it keeps getting attention.
We’re here doing this podcast, so in a lot of ways, that is something that they want to have happen. I do think that the two men who tried to jump on this train are widely known as being losers in a way, and so they’re getting the loser stank on everything, which is kind of funny. I think that that has a bigger impact than we think.
Riley Gaines is a swimmer who is known for tying for fifth place with trans woman Lia Thomas in a college race, and she has turned that into a very lucrative career. But she’s also going to be known as a loser. I think that ultimately is where everything is headed.
If you look at what voters actually care about, they really don’t care about trans issues. There’s 10 people who base their vote on what a candidate thinks about trans issues, and they’re all going to vote for Republicans pretty much, at least on the anti-trans side. We’ve seen exit polling over and over again showing that trans issues are the lowest salience issue in the minds of voters.
People care about the economy. People care about gas prices, grocery prices. They care about housing prices. They care about another foreign war. Nobody’s going into the midterms thinking, “Oh, I have to vote for the anti-trans candidate.” I shouldn’t say nobody. There are people who will do that, but they’ve already made up their minds.
So I don’t think that you can convert even more people over to that type of thinking, nor do I think that you can win people back from that line of thinking. So I think that a lot of the time and effort spent trying to persuade people on this is really a sunk cost for those who are doing it.
And I have pretty high hopes that in the end, justice will prevail, fairness will prevail, and the liberal order will not fall to Christian nationalism.
JW: I’m pretty happy to leave it there. Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White are losers, and we will not fall to white Christian nationalism.
Thank you both so much for joining. Really appreciate having you on The Intercept Briefing.
AP: Thank you so much for inviting me.
KB: Thank you, thank you.
JW: We want to hear from you. Tell us what you’re following or want to see more coverage of. Email us at podcasts@theintercept.com or leave us a voice mail at 530-POD-CAST that’s 530-763-2278
That does it for this episode.
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Why Should Delaware Care? The controversial data center plan near Delaware City was the largest proposed in the state, sparking a backlash against the industry that resulted in new local and state regulations. Many residents expressed concerns about the facility’s potential impact on energy costs and the environment. Now the proposal appears to be at a dead end.
Plans for a massive data center to be built near Delaware City appear to be at a dead end, at least in their current form.
Earlier this year, the development, dubbed Project Washington, faced its first major setback when Environmental Secretary Greg Patterson ruled that the plans would violate the Coastal Zone Act — a landmark Delaware law designed to limit heavy industry along the state’s shorelines.
Starwood then appealed again to the Delaware Superior Court. But in early July, the company voluntarily withdrew the appeal with no public acknowledgment. It came two days after the state legislature passed several bills imposing new, stricter regulations on the data center industry.
Gov. Matt Meyer signed those into law earlier this week.
Since there are no other challenges to Patterson’s ruling, the proposed data center project is not allowed to move forward under its current design.
Still, the company’s data center aspirations in Delaware are still alive. In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, Starwood spokesman Jim Lamb said the company “is continuing its work with state and local regulators, labor, and the entire community to find a pathway forward” for the project.
In the statement, Lamb did not specify how the project could move forward. Nor did he say whether the state’s new laws regulating data centers influenced Starwood’s decision to withdraw its appeal.
Delaware’s decades-old regulation
The Delaware General Assembly passed the Coastal Zone Act in 1971 to protect the state’s environmentally sensitive shorelines by prohibiting new heavy industry from them.
In his decision on the Starwood proposal, Patterson pointed to the data center’s proposed use of 516 backup diesel generators, which would operate in the case of a power outage or other emergency situation, as a violation to the Coastal Zone Act.
Together, those generators would rely on 2.5 million gallons of stored diesel, which Patterson called “entirely unprecedented” in his ruling.
While Patterson pointed to the generators, many opponents of data centers in Delaware have pointed their ire at the electricity they could pull from the power grid.
Starwood’s proposal would have consumed the same amount of electricity as nearly 1 million homes, according to expert estimates, prompting fears that it could cause power bills to surge.
Similar concerns also have resonated nationally in recent years as the data center industry has been among the fastest growing in the country, providing the physical infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence systems.
Since Starwood submitted its plan last summer, several other data center proposals have come to the state.
A proposal to develop the lands just south of the St. Georges Bridge, including the Frightland attraction, could end up a data center. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
A proposed data center near St. Georges, which would be built near the land that currently hosts the popular Halloween attraction Frightland, is still in preliminary stages.
It also would fall under regulations outlined in the Coastal Zone Act, but it is unclear if the law would prohibit it from moving forward. That would likely depend on how the project were to be powered.
Separately, developers behind a plan for a data center near Newark paused their project recently, according to New Castle County Councilman Tim Sheldon. He said they did so after he brokered an informal deal with them.
Meanwhile, a smaller data center proposal also recently met its demise in Harrington, after residents rallied against the project.
Dustyn Thompson, chapter director of the environmental group Sierra Club Delaware, said he and others who have been critical of Project Washington are happy that Starwood decided to withdraw their appeal.
But he said since data centers are not explicitly named in the Coastal Zone Act, data center developers could try to build in coastal areas again.
He said the state and local governments need to pass laws restricting where data centers can locate, how much water they can use and how much noise they can make.
“We need consistency across the state on those types of protections,” Thompson said.
Exclusive: Michael Boren, a senior official overseeing the US Forest Service, is accused by Democratic senators of ‘inappropriate interference’
Donald Trump’s administration is facing calls to launch an investigation into allegations that Michael Boren, a senior official who oversees the US Forest Service, pressed agency staff to deploy additional resources to fight a fire burning near his Idaho ranch.
Three Democratic senators accused Boren of “inappropriate interference” in a letter seen by the Guardian, demanding answers from Brooke Rollins, the US agriculture secretary. Boren serves as undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment.
A 2019 California law expanded the time frame for child sex abuse victims to sue. Now schools and cities are struggling with the financial fallout from settlements.
Why Should Delaware Care? A national debate has been ongoing for years about whether school resource officers increase safety in schools or if they simply direct kids into the criminal justice system. Earlier this month, the Christina Board of Education joined the conversation when it voted to phase out school resource officers in middle schools.
The Christina School District will phase out its use of school resource officers at middle schools, and replace them with constables.
Following a heated debate at a meeting earlier this month, the Christina school board voted to retain school resource officers (SROs) at middle schools for just six months, giving the district the time to hire constables as replacements. The officers will remain at the district’s three high schools for the full school year.
The decision was the result of two votes by the school board. The first would have renewed the school resource officers’ contracts with the Christina School District. Five members on the seven-person board voted against it, including Amy Trauth, Celita Cherry, Stephanie Ingram, Doug Manley and Lauren Swain.
A subsequent vote approved replacing SROs with constables, who are direct employees of a school district rather than a police department. They would serve as armed security for the schools but wouldn’t have the same power to arrest individuals.
The measure was meant to be a compromise, balancing some board members’ concerns with having armed officers in schools and the need for school safety.
But not every board member was satisfied.
“Since the police officers are required to be armed as part of their contract, I cannot support these contracts,” Manley, the only board member to vote against the compromise, said during the board meeting.
School resource officers are sworn police officers who work in schools but remain within the law enforcement chain of command. While supporters say they can effectively respond to dangerous situations, critics have increasingly argued they cause students to be arrested for actions that in the past would not involve law enforcement.
Christina School Board member Doug Manley was the lone opponent to hiring constables in the district, expressing concern that they would be armed in schools. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY ETHAN GRANDIN
News reports from across the country in recent years have highlighted the critiques of SROs. One report from Iowa said Black students and students with disabilities are more likely to be arrested or referred to law enforcement than other students. In Texas, reporters have found thousands of use-of-force incidents in recent years.
It is not immediately clear if those trends hold true in Delaware.
Spotlight Delaware requested data from the Delaware State Police regarding incidents such as arrests or detainment of students in the Christina, Brandywine, Red Clay Consolidated, and Colonial school buildings that did not fall under Wilmington Police jurisdiction, but was told the information would require a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request.
By contrast, the Wilmington Police Department did provide data. A department spokesperson said its officers made one arrest during the past year at the Maurice Pritchett Academy and one arrest at the Bayard School. Both schools serve Christina students in first through eighth grade.
There were seven arrests made at the Howard High School of Technology and 15 made at Brandywine’s P.S. duPont Middle School, the spokesman David Karas said.
“The vast majority of these charges were not physical arrests, but rather an SRO issuing a summons or a juvenile civil citation,” Karas said in a statement.
Karas also said that an officer would take other measures that would not involve “a formal criminal charge” during incidents that warrant immediate intervention, such as fights.
An ongoing conversation
The Christina school board’s August meeting did not mark the first disagreement between board members about whether to renew SRO contracts.
During a May board meeting, Christina Superintendent Deirdra Aikens and Harold “Butch” Ingram, the assistant to the superintendent, presented three options for school safety.
The first would be to make no changes. The second would be to keep SROs only in the high schools and replace them with constables in the middle schools. The third option would be to replace all SROs with constables.
Though the board voted three months later to move ahead with the second option, some members say they have not received comments of concern from community members regarding the presence of SROs in schools.
Board President Monica Moriak said the board did not have conversations with the Christina community regarding their thoughts on SROs in schools. She also noted that the last school year was “a very traumatic year, especially for Pritchett.”
The Maurice Pritchett Academy is one of the Christina School District’s schools in Wilmington. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JULIA MEROLA
Last October, a shooting took place near the Maurice Pritchett Academy in Wilmington’s East Side community, which is part of the Christina School District. Both victims attended Newark High School, as reported by the Newark Post.
Moriak said she wants the board to hold follow-up listening sessions with community members, but does not know what those will look like yet.
Manley also said he has not had community members approach him with concerns relating to SROs’ presence in schools.
Instead, Manley said most of his conversations are about “educating them that constables and police officers are different.”
Balancing safety and accountability
For some board members, the conversation about school safety cannot end with whether a school has SROs.
Board Vice President Y.F. Lou said the root causes of incidents, such as why students may be fighting or why there are “violent encounters,” must also be addressed.
“That’s always where my guiding principle is: Can we prevent this? What can we do to prevent this? And what resources do we have to make sure that you know that preventative intervention is in place?” he said.
For other board members, the crux of the concern regarding SROs is whether they can be held responsible for any incidents that may occur, especially because they are armed.
During the August meeting, Manley said he was against hiring “contracted police officers” because SROs “are not employees of our district; they are employees of their police troop.”
Manley told Spotlight Delaware there is “zero transparency and accountability” for SROs because of LEOBOR. Advocates have tried for years in Delaware to reform the blanket protections for law enforcement officer’s privacy, but efforts to date have resulted in only partial transparency into the disciplinary issues of officers.
Manley also referenced the recent shooting of 19-year-old Kadir Skinner in Wilmington, which he said police did “for no reason.”
Why Should Delaware Care? While independent libraries in Sussex County often serve as hubs for community resources, they are also strapped for money. In the wake of a failed campaign by library leaders to increase the county’s library tax, an outside consultant has been hired to study the budget woes. It remains to be seen, however, whether the study will result in a funding increase, and what say the libraries will have in the process.
Following nearly a year of pleas from independent libraries in Sussex County for more government financial support, county officials have hired an outside consultant to examine the libraries’ funding structure and role within their communities.
The study comes in response to a failed effort earlier this year by independent library leaders to lobby Sussex County Council to raise the county’s library tax rate — its share of the libraries’ funding structure.
As it currently stands, the funding structure almost always leaves large gaps in the independent libraries’ annual budgets — deficits of anywhere from 13% to 52%.
Council members opted against the libraries’ requested tax hike, pointing to resident blowback from the property tax increases spurred by last year’s property reassessment and budget requests by other departments.
Instead, county leaders hired consulting group Berry Dunn to more thoroughly study the problem before making any changes.
“Any request to increase taxes is something the county takes seriously and believes should be carefully evaluated before making a decision,” Sussex County Finance Director Gina Jennings wrote in a message to Spotlight Delaware.
Consultants began working this month and will continue through early 2027.
Independent library directors said the study is a step in the right direction, but they are skeptical that the county-initiated study will give the libraries a sufficient opportunity to share their experience and share their funding needs.
“I do worry that because these studies don’t get done very often, they’re not going to get the full picture,” said Philip Hartmeyer, director of the Frankford Library. “If you’re going to do this, you have to do it thoroughly.”
How are libraries funded in Delaware?
Delaware has two different funding structures for county-run and independent libraries.
County-run libraries are funded entirely by taxes collected at the county level, while independent libraries, which operate as nonprofit organizations, are financed through a mix of county funding, state funding and the library’s own fundraising.
State funds make up about 15% of an independent library’s total budget. While the goal is for county funding to make up the remaining 85%, Sussex County’s library tax typically only covers about half a library’s budget. Directors are then left to close annual funding gaps.
For example, the Selbyville Library had to come up with roughly $200,000 in funds, or nearly 40% of its operating budget, for the current fiscal year, library director Kelly Kline said.
Eleven of Sussex County’s 14 libraries are independent.
This spring, they launched a campaign to raise the county’s annual library tax rate from $0.0023 per $100 of assessed property value to $0.0046 per $100, or from roughly $4 to $23 annually to $9 to $46.
This rate increase would have shrunk the funding gap libraries must make up to only about 10% of their annual budget.
While the county council declined to adopt the library tax rate increase as a part of its fiscal year 2027 budget, Jennings said hiring a consultant was the county’s way of addressing the libraries’ request for more county dollars.
She said the study’s results will determine how the county proceeds.
“With the recent request potentially increasing the county’s contribution to closer to 90% of [independent library] funding, it raises important questions about the county’s future role and level of involvement in the overall operations and financial oversight of the independent libraries,” Jennings said.
Library leaders skeptical
While county leaders described the study as a valuable step toward addressing the libraries’ funding difficulties, library directors said they have concerns about how the study is being conducted.
Berry Dunn, the consulting firm hired to complete the study, will speak to library employees, users and non-library user residents to “evaluate the request for additional library funding and better understand the long-term needs of the countywide library system,” Jennings said.
The project will cost the county $100,000.
At the Aug. 19 meeting of the Sussex County Library Advisory Board, County Librarian Rachel Lynch said the consultant will only communicate directly with county staff, who will then give progress reports to the library directors through monthly advisory board meetings.
Get Involved The Sussex County Library Advisory Board is set to meet and provide more information about the library consultant project at 10 a.m. on Sept. 16 in the Sussex County Administrative Building, located at 2 The Circle in Georgetown.
Some library directors, though, told Spotlight Delaware they are disappointed that there is not at least one independent library director represented on the project team alongside county staff, in order to better convey the libraries’ experience to the consultant.
“If [the consultant] is paid for by the county, and the project team is 100% county representation, my concern is for us independent libraries,” Kline, the Selbyville director, told Spotlight Delaware.
County staff, however, said this structure is typical.
The county hired an outside analyst to look at volunteer fire departments, and the fire department staff were not directly involved in that study, Jennings said.
Hartmeyer, the Frankford director, also said there is considerable nuance to the needs of the independent libraries in different parts of the county, like Lewes versus Seaford or Bridgeville, that the consultant will have a hard time understanding in a brief study.
“My concern is whether they’re going to get the full context of the constituency that is served by the libraries,” he said.
Nonetheless, the library directors said they view the hiring of the consultant as a step in the direction toward more funding and a better recognition by the county of the role they serve in their communities.
“If things don’t change, we absolutely will have to start doing less,” Kline said. “I don’t think that’s something our communities want.”
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
Soaring demand for services has led to tenfold increase in spending in a year in some areas, says NHS Alliance
NHS leaders have warned that the costs of meeting soaring demand for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism services in England are “running out of control” and have become unsustainable, with spending in some areas rising by as much as tenfold over the course of a year.
The NHS Alliance, which represents health managers, said the rise in demand since the coronavirus pandemic was forcing some to close waiting lists and look at reining in other services they provide.
The jury is considering its verdict in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the 36-year-old Massachusetts mother who strangled her three kids to death in 2023.
Led by the nose from game to terrible game by increasingly disturbing and terrible adverts, I feel like I’m in the cinema scene from A Clockwork Orange
We’re all escaping something when we play video games. Mostly it’s the drabness of real life, where we don’t get to command kingdoms using armies of dragons, win Champions League trophies with our local team, or inhabit the body of an improbably speedy hedgehog.
Sometimes I play them because I want to escape from the version of me that gets paralysed by depression, and boy has the black dog been sniffing at my bits recently, because the Atlantic Ocean is separating me from my wife for a few months. For 30 years she has been the light that banishes that darkness, and I am honestly lost without her. If that sounds pathetic, you haven’t met her. She leaves everybody she meets feeling better. It’s a superpower that warrants a call from the X-Men.
America’s second biggest sporting obsession returns this weekend, which means marching bands, 100,000-seat stadiums, ancient rivalries and, increasingly, the operating model of a sport being invented in real time
Is college football healthy? It’s a seductive question, one that now comes up every year around this time. Actually, it never recedes, so it’s just with the sport all the time. It’s also the wrong question, because whoever answers it is free to choose their own adventure. The television ratings are way up there in the galaxy. Money rains down on dozens of programs and thousands of players. Marching bands continue to march. Yet a lot of teams are stranded by realignment or an economic inability to keep up in a transfer arms race. Their fans – actually any team’s fans – may be exhausted by escalating asks for their dollars.
If you have been checked out of the sport for a while ahead of this weekend’s first set of games, you may feel like your body has been frozen for a few decades. Indiana, (yes, really) are the defending national champs, fresh off a 16-0 season that puts them on the list of the handful of best teams ever. Texas Tech, once likened to Siberia by a former coach who is now a US senator, are the fiercest program in the Big 12. Ole Miss are good for the first time since integration. At least Ohio State and Georgia are still powerhouses.
The site once paired news and scores with distinctive voices. Its overhaul under Sinclair Media is the latest sign that serious tennis writing in the US is becoming endangered
A few weeks ago, as I often do, I went to the Tennis.com site to get an update about a match and to check out the commentary from my fellow tennis journalists. I was taken aback when, instead of the usual colorful graphics and info, I was greeted with a rudimentary-looking homepage that displayed only scores and rankings.
At first I thought it was a glitch of some sort. But sadly, no. As it turns out, Tennis.com, originally the online site of Tennis Magazine, is under a complete overhaul and will no longer be the home of esteemed writers such as Steve Tignor and Pete Bodo, robbing fans of unique and personal takes on the sport. It appears the longest running American tennis-specific publication is no longer alive in any form.
The singer had a serendipitous mixture of humor, humility and humanity. We could all stand to channel it a bit more
The moment that the world found out that Dolly Parton had died, I was in a hair salon in the reddest congressional district in New York state. The neighborhood on the shore of Lake Erie where I move every summer voted solidly for Donald Trump in 2024.
I often pass a lawn sign that has something misogynistic to say about New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, and the mere mention of Kamala Harris’s name can bring derisive jokes. Of course, there certainly are liberals and independents to be found, but on balance the area leans right.
The automaker, one of the nation’s biggest employers, could shed tens of thousands of jobs amid global market shifts driven by electrification, AI and autonomous driving.
Camp East Montana, an immigration detention facility inside the Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso, Texas Omar Ornelas for ProPublica
The first emergency call about a detainee trying to harm himself came about a month after Camp East Montana — an immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas — started to house immigrants. It was 2:50 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 12.
“We have a patient currently in holding who is saying he’s got suicidal ideations, swallowed some foreign object, has refused our basic medical care here,” a nurse told the operator. In the audio, you can hear that someone is moaning and yelling in the background.
“At this point he is unable to speak and rolling on the floor in agonizing pain, holding his stomach,” the nurse continued. “A preliminary X-ray was done and a foreign object was found. We just need to take him to the hospital that’s closest so that they can verify if the object is currently in his system and possibly to excavate the object.”
Listen to the Call
I’ve been reporting on Camp East Montana for months. It sits on barren military land and was supposed to be a model for how the Trump administration would carry out mass deportations. Instead, it became an example of what could go wrong. It remains in operation despite claims of inhumane conditions and abuse, which Department of Homeland Security officials have said are “categorically false.” ICE plans to keep the facility running at least through Sept. 30, 2027, The Associated Press reported.
In the span of six weeks between December 2025 and January 2026, three men died at Camp East Montana, making it one of the country’s deadliest detention centers at the time.
In July, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune published my investigation into the Jan. 3 death of one of those men, Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban national with a history of mental illness. He died after an altercation with guards over his medication, and a medical examiner ruled Lunas Campos’ death a homicide. (The Trump administration initially claimed that he had experienced medical distress, but Department of Homeland Security officials later said guards had used force to keep him from killing himself.)
We found that Lunas Campos had repeatedly raised concerns about his mental health while detained at Camp East Montana. Records show staff didn’t transfer him to a facility that could better care for him, despite repeatedly saying they were working to do so.
I wanted to understand more about how the facility was responding to such incidents. I obtained, via public records requests, recordings of more than 160 emergency calls, and I spoke with staff, government officials familiar with the facility, detainees, lawyers and advocates who had spent time inside the detention center.
I asked DHS about my reporting and some of the 911 calls. A spokesperson did not comment on the specific issues identified in the calls, but said the facility provides “comprehensive medical services, including mental health services.” If the detainee requires a higher level of medical care, they are referred to local emergency services as needed, the spokesperson said. The official also said that for many immigrant detainees, the healthcare they get while in custody is the best they’ve gotten in their lives.
Now I want to share some of those 911 calls with you. While they may be difficult to listen to or read about, they offer a glimpse into what’s happening in a place reporters don’t have access to. The calls and my investigation show failures in responding to mental health and medical emergencies that extend beyond those experienced by one man. (Note: In some cases, recordings were edited to remove long stretches where no one was talking.)
Oct. 12, 2025: “They will not give them medical treatment.”
Two months after Camp East Montana began holding detainees, some were growing so desperate that they were having friends and relatives call 911 to seek medical help on their behalf. A man from North Texas called three times on Oct. 12, trying to get a detainee, whom he identified as his partner, emergency care for his kidney stones.
Listen to the Call
“Why isn’t the facility calling?” the operator asked.
“Because they don’t care. They don’t care about any of the detainees. They will not give them medical treatment; they don’t care. … He does not like to go to the hospital. So when he is saying he is in emergent pain at a level of 10 out of 10 and he needs to go to the emergency room, it is no joke; it has got to be very, very serious.”
In a declaration to lawyers, a 32-year-old Venezuelan man identified by a pseudonym, Xavier, who fits the profile of the man with kidney stones, said he had gone on a hunger strike because he was not getting any information about his case or about a court date. “Being here feels like torture,” he said. “I feel like this experience is finishing me emotionally and physically. I don’t feel like I can survive for another month at this place. They treat us like animals.”
Nov. 2, 2025: “We don’t have any oxygen for her.”
In some of the emergency calls, the medical providers themselves lamented how little they could do for their patients.
Listen to the Call
A nurse at the facility dialed 911. She said she had a 46-year-old woman with COVID-19 who was short of breath and whose oxygen saturation was dropping. “But the issue is we don’t have any oxygen for her, especially if she does start desaturating even more,” she tells the operator. “She just doesn’t look good.”
“OK. Let me request assistance, OK? Just bear with me,” the operator tells her.
“Apparently she’s been sick for the last couple of days and she’s asked to be brought into the clinic and they hadn’t brought her in,” the nurse explains later in the call. “She was just brought in today, bless her heart, so I’m just worried about her.”
Feb. 28, 2026: “Was this accidental or intentional?”
“OK, we have a guy who’s overdosed. He’s a detainee,” a nurse told an emergency operator on Feb. 28.
They didn’t know much about the 60-year-old man who had just arrived at Camp East Montana or about what he had taken about an hour ago, she said. Someone had seen him “popping pills” and stumbling around.
“Was this accidental or intentional?” the operator asked.
Flash flooding and mudslides in Ishikawa and Toyama prefectures, while convective storms hit western Europe
After an “unprecedented” deluge in Chiba in mid-August, Japan has experienced further extreme rainfall in recent days. Moisture from the Sea of Japan brought relentless heavy rain to the prefectures of Ishikawa and Toyama on Thursday.
In Himi, Toyama, 361.5mm of rain fell in 24 hours, equivalent to half the average annual rainfall in London and Paris. Several rivers burst their banks, triggering flash floods and mudslides, felling and damaging buildings.
A new project called STREAMLINE is using artificial intelligence and supercomputers to solve one of nuclear physics’ hardest challenges — unlocking insights into atomic nuclei, neutron stars and fundamental forces.
Aug. 28, 2026 — At the heart of every atom lies a tightly bound cluster of protons and neutrons — a system governed by some of the most complex interactions in nature. Understanding how these particles behave is one of the central challenges of nuclear physics. Now, a project called STREAMLINE is taking on that challenge using a powerful combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and supercomputing.
The STREAMLINE project uses machine learning to solve the nuclear many-body problem. Image credit: Jane Kim/Argonne.
A collaboration of universities and national laboratories, including the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, STREAMLINE aims to solve what scientists call the nuclear quantum many-body problem — the challenge of predicting how many interacting particles behave collectively as a quantum system. It’s the challenge of calculating how dozens of particles influence one another at the quantum level, where the rules of physics differ from everyday experience.
“This project aims to solve the nuclear quantum many-body problem with high accuracy by leveraging machine learning techniques,” said Argonne scientist Alessandro Lovato, a lead investigator on the effort.
The problem is difficult because the number of possible interactions grows exponentially as more particles are added. Traditional methods quickly run into computational limits. Even the world’s most powerful supercomputers can handle only relatively small systems.
STREAMLINE changes that equation. By using machine learning — a form of AI — researchers can approximate these complex interactions much more efficiently. Instead of calculations that grow exponentially, the new methods scale more gently, allowing scientists to study much larger systems than before.
At Argonne, Lovato’s team is pioneering the use of neural networks — computer models trained on data to recognize patterns and make predictions — to represent quantum wave functions. A wave function is a mathematical description of a quantum system that encodes everything scientists can know about it. By replacing conventional equations with flexible neural networks, researchers can model systems that were previously out of reach.
The results are already striking. Where earlier methods could handle about a dozen interacting particles, the new approach can scale up to 100, opening the door to studying more realistic atomic nuclei.
“This was really a game changer,” Lovato said.
The implications extend far beyond nuclear physics. A better understanding of atomic nuclei helps scientists interpret experiments that probe the fundamental laws of nature, including studies of neutrinos — elusive particles that pass through matter almost undetected. It also informs models of neutron stars, the ultradense remnants of collapsed stars, where matter exists under extreme conditions.
In practical terms, STREAMLINE will produce quantities that experimental scientists can measure, such as the size, energy and structure of atomic nuclei. These results can then be compared with data from facilities such as the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS), strengthening the connection between theory and experiment. ATLAS is a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne that focuses on nuclear physics.
The project is also highly collaborative. The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University leads the recently renewed STREAMLINE 2 collaboration, which also brings together researchers from DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Florida State University, North Carolina State University, Ohio State University, Ohio University and University of Tennessee, alongside Argonne.
Argonne combines deep expertise in nuclear theory with access to some of the world’s most advanced supercomputers, including systems such as Aurora. Housed at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), Aurora is capable of performing over a quintillion calculations per second. These resources allow researchers to run the large-scale simulations required to train and apply machine learning models to quantum systems. The ALCF is also a DOE Office of Science user facility.
STREAMLINE also aligns with DOE’s Genesis Mission, an initiative focused on using AI to accelerate scientific discovery and innovation. By integrating AI directly into fundamental physics research, STREAMLINE demonstrates how machine learning can transform not just data analysis, but the way science itself is conducted.
Beyond its scientific impact, the project is helping shape the future workforce. The combination of nuclear physics, AI and high performance computing is attracting a new generation of researchers, equipping them with skills that are increasingly valuable across science and industry.
STREAMLINE represents a shift in how scientists approach one of the field’s hardest problems and a glimpse of what’s possible when advanced computing and human ingenuity come together.
As Lovato said, “The neural network doesn’t know anything about nuclear physics — but when we train it, it learns to behave like a quantum system.”
And that, researchers say, may be the key to unlocking the next era of discovery.
Expeditioners at research station on Macquarie Island will be evacuated over possible ‘psychological stress’, while 100 dead little penguins found on Tasmanian island
A dolphin has died from H5 bird flu in South Australia, marking the second native mammal species known to have contracted the virus.
On Friday afternoon, the Tasmanian government said it was assessing the discovery of about 100 dead little penguins on King Island but it was unable to test them for H5 bird flu due to their “decayed condition”.
About 80 people sign open letter to Andy Burnham calling for legislation to protect voice ownership
Nicola Coughlan, Hugh Bonneville and Matt Lucas are among a group of actors backing a campaign against artificial intelligence voice cloning.
Save Our Voices Now, which is also being supported by Luke Evans, Jen Brister, Siobhán McSweeney and Pearl Mackie, aims to stop the practice in which AI technology is used to replicate a real person’s voice to say anything it is prompted to.
Problems including derailments have hit network during one of the hottest and driest summers on record
Britain’s railways have faced a string of heat-related problems this summer, including a derailment near Lewes in East Sussex two weeks ago that injured 30 people, and another the next day when the rear carriages of a Greater Anglia train derailed “in an upright position” at Wickford railway station in Essex, with no reported injuries.
The problems came during one of the hottest and driest summers on record, with a series of heatwaves, and drought declared across large parts of England and Wales. Britain’s railways, built for a cooler, wetter climate, have been put under pressure. Network Rail said the summer had “presented exceptional challenges to the railway”.
Canada is recruiting 64 researchers to universities across the country (source paywalled; alternative source), including 48 from U.S. institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and MIT. The hires are backed by more than $364 million in government funding and are part of a broader effort to attract researchers in fields such as AI, climate science, and medicine. The New York Times reports: While scientists often shy away from political discourse, some are saying the Trump administration's assault on science is behind their departure. "I used to live in the country that I thought was the most enthusiastic about the prospects for science improving the human condition, of any country in the world," said Phillip Zamore, the chair of RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts. "And I woke up one day and that wasn't true anymore." He has been recruited to McGill University in Montreal, which has also hired five other researchers, and will join the medical faculty. "If scientists don't stand up for truth, no one will," Dr. Zamore said.
The Canada-bound brain drain from U.S. institutions began last year as the Trump administration put forward policies that targeted foreign students, academic freedom and funding for equity-related programs. Kevin Hall, a nutrition scientist who left the U.S. National Institutes of Health last year, accusing federal officials of censoring his research on ultraprocessed foods, has been hired at the University of Ottawa. "While certain countries are cutting research and turning their back on academic freedom, we're doubling down on science," Melanie Joly, Canada's industry minister, told reporters at the announcement, in Vancouver, of the new university hiring. She billed it as the world's "largest talent attraction" project. The European Union has made a similar push. "Years from now, we will look back at today's announcement, and we will be able to seize the lasting impact of our choices," Ms. Joly said.
Unpredictable decisions about funding prompted Seth Guikema, a professor in civil and environmental engineering, who has specialized in natural hazards modeling at the University of Michigan, to look elsewhere. His work focuses on how climate hazards inequitably affect communities, and that work has become harder to fund, he said. "Every country sets its priorities in terms of what is going to get funded, and I think Canada has done a very good job of supporting research in areas that really matter to society," said Dr. Guikema, who will start at Western University in London, Ontario in January.
It is polite to reposition a guest’s shoes when they arrive, but the emergency services in one city advise just skipping that part
Etiquette, manners and consideration for others are integral pillars of Japanese society but there are times when they might go a step too far, according to one city’s emergency services.
The fire department in the central city of Kanazawa has urged people not to tidy up the shoes that paramedic crews have taken off when entering a house, warning it could hinder their ability to get in or out quickly, particularly when carrying someone on a stretcher.
The international community was scrambling to get aid into flood-stricken parts of Nepal and Tibet on Thursday as authorities warned that a lake formed at the site where the deadly torrents occurred was rising and at risk of bursting.
The catastrophic flash floods that hit Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday, thundering down valleys and obliterating entire villages, killed at least 469 people and left more than 1,300 missing.
Chris Bowen insists federal Labor’s new national laws on datacentre power supply will not include carve-outs for Queensland and the Northern Territory, with states that are eager to use coal and gas required to make their case to the national regulator.
The energy minister told Guardian Australia on Friday the only concession agreed at Wednesday’s meeting of national cabinet was that existing coal and gas supply could be used on the condition it could be shown to be cheaper than renewables.
Collaboration leverages DualityBio's proprietary DUPAC payload platform and early global clinical development capabilities, with Genentech assuming further clinical development and global commercializationDUPAC, one of the DualityBio's four proprietary ADC technology platforms, comprises multiple payloads with novel mechanism of action designed…
The U.S. military this week used a laser to shoot down three drones along the U.S.-Mexico border that were allegedly operated by drug cartels, the Pentagon said.
Other governments could seek similar concessions, while separate legal action is pending in places ranging from Kenya to the Netherlands
In October 2021, Abrham Meareg’s father, a professor of chemistry in Ethiopia’s northern town of Bahir Dar, was shot at close range and died outside his family home. This was in the middle of the country’s civil war.
For weeks, Facebook’s algorithm had actively promoted posts calling for the academic to be murdered, according to Meareg and Foxglove, a nonprofit organisation supporting Meareg’s lawsuit against the company in Kenya. These posts included photos of his father and his home address.
Anthropic argued designation as ‘supply-chain risk’ could cost billions in lost business and reputational harm
A US judge ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration broke the law when it designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk earlier this year, finding that the government had unlawfully targeted the AI firm for refusing to comply with defense department demands.
“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” Judge Rita Lin said in a 59-page decision.
An anonymous reader quotes a report fro SFGATE: From "rizz" to "meat proxy," words and phrases have fallen in and out of favor for centuries. Culture, politics and technological development have long influenced these trends, and now, new research shows that ChatGPT is beginning to influence how humans communicate. The findings from a team at the Pew Research Center show how, in a short time since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022 and other chatbots followed, the use of certain words and phrases has spiked on the web. The researchers, led by data scientist Samuel Bestvater, studied nearly half a million English language webpage texts in snapshots over the past five years. Not only has AI-written text become more common, but it could also be influencing how people write, such as trying to avoid using the "tells" that have become associated with AI-generated text.
Bestvater and his team detected double the number of em dashes, double the frequency of particular words -- such as "delve," "testament" and "interplay" -- and nearly triple the use of a phrasing known as negative parallelisms ("it's not X, it's Y"), as well as a 63% increase in Oxford commas. But while AI labs continually try to tweak their models to generate more humanlike text, the people they're mimicking aren't staying the same. "Human writers might also be changing the way that they write in response to AI. I've seen some anecdotal evidence of people saying, 'Now I avoid em dashes,'" Bestvater said. "If human writers are adjusting their choices of words and phrases and punctuation to try to differentiate their writing from AI-generated text, then you would see a pattern that looks sort of like that in the chart."
"You can see changes in people's speech. People are tending to more commonly use these low-frequency words in their speech because they're spending a lot of time listening to or reading AI-generated content," said Roger Kreuz, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Memphis who recently wrote about how difficult it is for people to identify bot-written text.
Renewed scrutiny comes after police officer accused of falsifying records in order to close the cases of people who were later found dead
South Korean police will re-examine about 310,000 missing persons cases closed over the past three years, prompted by a scandal in which an officer was arrested on suspicion of falsifying records to close files on two people who were later found dead.
The case has drawn national attention, with President Lee Jae Myung ordering an investigation into the police handling of it and telling the force to draw up a reform plan.
President’s directive stalls for a second time about a week before the first postal ballots are due to be sent out
A federal judge on Thursday halted – at least for the moment – attempts to implement Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting.
The president’s directive stalled for a second time about a week before the first mail ballots are due to be sent out for the rapidly approaching midterm elections. In the US district court, Judge Indira Talwani placed a 14-day hold on the government implementing the order in a case that could be headed back to the supreme court, which on Monday overturned an earlier ruling of hers that had blocked Trump’s order from taking effect.
This live blog has now closed – but our coverage continues at a new blog here
Eyewitness accounts have been emerging from the Tibetan side of the border, with a woman saying she was travelling from Gyirong town towards Nepal on Wednesday morning when her group encountered the flood about 4km from Gyirong port.
“Trees and electricity poles had already been knocked down, and the flood water was bearing down on us. We didn’t dare turn around, so we could only reverse,” the woman, surnamed Fang, told Xiaoxiang Morning News.
On Wednesday, Trump officially signed a proclamation on Wednesday that suspends higher tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef imports for 90 days. This comes after backlash to the proposal – designed to lower grocery costs for Americans in the run-up to the November midterms.
Several Republicans – in states with sizable cattle farming industries – have criticized the policy, saying it is a short term solution that will stymie ranchers’ ability to rebuild their herds.
Four leading livestock and agricultural organizations also wrote a letter to the president on Wednesday urging him to reverse course.
“Flooding the market with discounted foreign beef is not the way to rebuild the American cattle herd, strengthen food security, or lower grocery bills in a lasting way,” the groups wrote.
Donald Trump will begin his day in Washington, before traveling to Houston, Texas where he’ll headline a Republican National Commitee (RNC) fundraiser, and help boost Ken Paxton — the state’s attorney general and Republican nominee for Senate.
A reminder that Paxton beat long serving Senator John Cornyn in the GOP primary earlier this year after receiving Trump’s endorsement. Paxton is set to face Democratic state lawmaker James Talarico in November.
More than 1,000 people, including many Americans, are still missing along the Nepal-China border after deadly floods and mudflows likely triggered by a glacial collapse.
This is my first full build (aside from commissioning the battery) and it’s been quite the learning experience, opting for a Donky split pack build, which is very limited on space was quite the choice, especially considering I didn’t even know how to solder when I first ordered the kit lol. But with the help of the various Onewheel, Funwheel, and VESC Discrd servers I was able to fully wire it myself and it’s now build complete apart from assembly and waiting on a battery. Should be a fun ride with the 30s1p with SuperFlux HS and Ennoid Mk8 powering the Burris 11.5 slick, pretty much going to be the ultimate street demon haha. I love my Growler(rails for comparison in second pic) and all, but it’s soon to be Donky time!
PS this post isn’t meant to be shade at the Atom by any means, it’s so sick that there’s finally a smaller sized complete board outside of FM’s underpowered offerings. And tbh, had the Atom been announced before I committed to this Donky build, I probably would’ve gone with it instead of a doing a full build on my own
edit: I got the kit through Nyy as part of batch #1 of his Donky kits, I think batch #2 is currently open if anybody wants to build a Donky of your own, I think it’s open for a few more days, but I’m not positive. If anyone picks up a kit and need a battery builder I can give you the info on the builder I used, he said he’s open to build more packs.
As the title says. I can ride on normal flat pavement but after a while my feet get the pins and needles feeling in them. I wear a pair of vans, not too worn out. Anyone else get that feeling while riding or when taking a break?
Decision allows manufacturers to begin shipping doses, but confusion remains about insurance coverage
The US Food and Drug Administration approved updated Covid-19 vaccines on Thursday, allowing manufacturers to begin shipping doses to pharmacies and doctors’ offices across the country.
The FDA approved Moderna, Novavax-Sanofi and Pfizer-BioNTech’s updated Covid vaccines, the companies said on Thursday, after an advisory panel recommended that the shots should target the dominant XFG variant.
Albany, New York — Gov. Kathy Hochul said New York will continue calling Lake Ontario by its traditional name despite President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the federal government to rename it “Lake America.”
“New York won’t be calling it that,” Hochul wrote Thursday on X, joining Democratic and Republican state leaders who criticized the change.
Trump signed the executive order Thursday amid an escalating trade dispute with Canada. The federal designation applies to U.S. government agencies, maps and documents but does not require New York state or Canada to adopt the new name.
Lake Ontario borders New York and the Canadian province of Ontario and connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean through the St. Lawrence Seaway. Its watershed is home to roughly 5.6 million people in both countries, according to the Center for Great Lakes Literacy.
Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott also criticized Trump’s decision, while Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers mocked it by posting a video in which he wrote “Lake Wisconsin” on a McDonald’s napkin as a proposed replacement for Lake Michigan.
The dispute comes as U.S.-Canada trade tensions deepen. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced retaliatory tariffs in response to new U.S. tariffs scheduled to take effect Sept. 8.
Trump previously used an executive order to direct federal agencies to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in Michigan's U.S. Senate race, says now is the time for Democrats to work together ahead of the 2026 midterm election.
GPU giant Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face, an AI model, data, collaboration and platform with more than 13 million registered users, for $12.9 billion, according to a report today in The Information. If the deal goes through, it would significantly bolster Nvidia’s AI model business.
Hugging Face was founded 10 years ago by Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf to develop a chatbot for teens. The mobile app used natural language processing (NLP) models to interpret the text or graphical input, and generated a response designed to delight the user–and perhaps even use the “hugging face” emoji (hence the name).
Hugging Face Co-founder and CEO Clément Delangue
When the founders noticed more interest in the AI models behind the chatbot than the chatbot itself, they decided to open source the technology, posting it to GitHub, where the technology was widely accessed and used.
In 2018–a year after Google published the seminal paper on transformers, “Attention Is All You Need”–the New York City company its strategy. Instead of a chatbot, Hugging Face became a repository of open source AI and machine learning models, the data sets they were trained on, and other resources for AI engineers, data scientists, and machine learning specialists to work with the tools.
One of the first models they posted was an open source version of Google’s BERT, an early LLM. The PyTorch-based version was well-received by the community. In 2021–more than a year before OpenAI shocked the world with ChatGPT–Hugging Face launched a project called BigScience designed to help foster the development of LLMs and large datasets in the scientific realm.
Hugging Face was a popular repository for all sorts of AI models before ChatGPT triggered the tsunami of interest in LLMs. But there’s no doubt the AI boom accelerated Hugging Face’s growth. It crossed the 1 million model threshold in 2024, 2 million models in 2025, and today has about 3 million AI models, as well as half a million data sets. Much of this technology and data is free; the company reported only $150 million in annual revenue.
The company has growth through venture capital funding, which has totaled $395 million over the years. In 2023, it raised $235 million in a Series D round (its last major funding round) at a $4.5 billion valuation. Nvidia was among those Series D investors, along with Google, Amazon, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and IBM.
It will be interesting to see how Hugging Face fits into Nvidia’s strategy or changes it. Nvidia and Hugging Face announced a partnership in 2023 that made it easier for Hugging Face users to get access to Nvidia GPUs for training. In late 2025, Nvidia launched its own line of open-weight models, dubbed Nemotron, which range in size from 3.5B to 550B parameters.
The popularity of Hugging Face among AI developers is its biggest asset; with just 2,000 paying customers and a mere $150 million in revenues, the revenue stream is clearly not it. Hugging Face has become the defacto standard place where a generation of AI engineers go to download and play around with AI models.
Open-weight models have surged in popularity in the U.S. this summer, following a surprising improvement in Chinese open-weight models like Alibaba Qwen, Alibaba’s Kimi, and DeepSeek, which now are nearly on par with the best proprietary models from the big American labs at Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue were among the executives who signed the “Open Weights and American AI Leadership” letter last month.
If Nvidia sees a big figure in open-weight AI models, then it couldn’t do much better than acquire Hugging Face, which is where many of these models live.
Tampa, Florida — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed concerns Wednesday about reductions in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, even as new data showed nationwide enrollment has fallen to its lowest level in 17 years.
Asked whether cuts to SNAP would reduce food access for children and families, Kennedy said, “I don’t think it’s gonna have that much effect.” He also claimed those removed from the program were no longer eligible because of income or immigration status.
A new analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found SNAP participation fell by roughly 5 million people, or 12%, between July 2025 and May 2026. Enrollment declined in every state except Alaska and has dropped below pre-pandemic levels.
The analysis also estimated that well over 1.5 million children nationwide are no longer receiving SNAP. CBPP said many recipients may have lost assistance because of stricter work-reporting requirements and administrative barriers rather than because they became ineligible.
The Republican reconciliation law signed by President Donald Trump last year imposed major SNAP reductions, expanded work requirements and shifted some benefit costs to states.
Kennedy made the comments during a Florida event focused on improving school nutrition, an initiative aimed at replacing highly processed foods with more nutrient-dense options.
Google is imposing new memory-use limits on Android apps as the AI data center boom contributes to a broader memory chip shortage that could leave lower-cost phones with less RAM. Developers will have until February 2027 to meet new thresholds for memory and bitmap usage. To aid developers, Google is adding tools to flag apps that exceed the limits and help prevent slowdowns and crashes. TechCrunch reports: The company explains that the mobile industry is now facing "significant hardware supply constraints that are altering device memory availability," which can then, in turn, affect the consumer's experience with their devices. To address this, Google is now establishing new performance thresholds across several areas, like dynamic memory usage and bitmap usage. In addition, Google is adding code optimization requirements designed to prevent things like app slowdowns and crashes related to performance.
Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday directing the federal government to rename Lake Ontario, making it Lake America, amid his escalating trade war with Canada.
The order directs federal agencies to adopt the name-change on US maps, documents and databases. But Trump has no authority to rename Canada’s portion of the lake, nor to compel Canada, international legal bodies, international mapmakers or the rest of the world to adopt a new name.
Washington, D.C. — A group of mostly Democratic senators is urging Immigration and Customs Enforcement to abandon plans to spend up to $20 million on gloves capable of delivering electric shocks during immigration enforcement operations.
In a letter Thursday to acting ICE Director David Venturella, the lawmakers said they had “deep concern” about the proposed purchase of the Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, or G.L.O.V.E. They argued that ICE should prioritize de-escalation training and accountability rather than deploy a new pain-compliance device.
The letter was led by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and signed by 15 other senators, including independent Sen. Angus King of Maine and Democrats Dick Durbin, Patty Murray, Adam Schiff, Amy Klobuchar and Tammy Duckworth.
The Department of Homeland Security disclosed the plan earlier this month, saying ICE was evaluating equipment that could help officers safely make arrests. A DHS spokesperson previously said the agency routinely assesses what tools officers need in the field.
The senators countered that recent allegations of excessive force and civil rights violations make deployment of the gloves inappropriate. They called on ICE to refrain from using the devices and instead invest in training and oversight.
The letter does not itself block the purchase, and DHS has not announced that the procurement has been canceled.
Wired reports that OpenAI is testing a new "Persistent mode" for Codex that would let the agent keep working until explicitly "put to sleep," proactively creating follow-up tasks for itself across sessions and using prior interactions and knowledge of the user to decide what to do next. Code alluding to the feature was spotted in the product's code base, though it has not been rolled out or officially announced yet. From the report: Persistent mode appears in Codex's "reasoning effort" menu, in which users can select the level of computing power, tokens, and time they want to allow for an AI model to "think" before answering a prompt. It seems to be one of OpenAI's most computationally intensive settings. When users have selected Persistent mode, OpenAI's code base reads that Codex will "continue working until put to sleep." That's a stark contrast to currently available modes, which will stop working on a task after a few minutes or hours, even if it's not complete.
In another file in the code base, OpenAI describes a feature within Persistent mode called "proactivity." This appears to be a type of system prompt for agents in Persistent mode, which are told that their work is not done when they finish answering a user's request. Instead, the agent is instructed to proactively create follow-up tasks for itself. The agent is capable of working on those tasks across sessions and using past user interactions and "knowledge of the user" to decide what to work on. It also has a tool to message the user without being asked but is told to send these sparingly.
The instructions also set limits for the agent, according to the file. The agent is told that Persistent mode does not expand what it is allowed to do and that altering anything outside the user's own system requires the user's approval first -- seemingly intended to limit how dangerous a persistent AI agent could be. The file sits in the shared core of Codex rather than in the code specific to the terminal, seeming to suggest the proactivity feature is intended for more than the command line tool.
Organizers expect more than 3,000 people to participate in Saturday’s Youth Day and Sunday’s Big Quarterly.
Wilmington’s historic African American religious celebration concludes with music, worship, youth activities, food, vendors and the traditional Big Quarterly
WILMINGTON — For more than two centuries, the final weekend of August has carried a special meaning in Wilmington.
It is a time for worship and reunion, music and food, reflection and celebration. It is also a reminder that the freedom to gather, worship and build independent institutions was once a courageous act for African Americans.
The 212th August Quarterly Festival will bring those traditions into the present this weekend with three days of events culminating in the Big Quarterly at Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park.
The remaining schedule includes an all-white party Friday evening, a full day of youth and family activities Saturday, and a worship service followed by the main outdoor festival Sunday.
Organizers expect more than 3,000 people to participate in Saturday’s Youth Day and Sunday’s Big Quarterly.
More than a festival
August Quarterly traces its roots to the Rev. Peter Spencer, the founder of the Union Church of Africans, now known as the African Union Methodist Protestant Church.
Spencer was born into slavery in Maryland in 1782 and later gained his freedom. After moving to Wilmington, he became a mechanic, educator, church leader and advocate for the city’s growing Black community.
In 1813, after rejecting white control over Black religious life, Spencer established the Union Church of Africans as an independent Black denomination. One year later, he began the annual gathering that became known as the August Quarterly.
The gathering traditionally took place on the last Sunday in August and served as both a religious revival and a homecoming. Free and enslaved Black people traveled to Wilmington from Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and other areas to worship, sing, share meals and reconnect with relatives and friends.
That made the gathering more than a church service. It was a public demonstration of religious independence, community strength and the right of African Americans to assemble on their own terms.
The festival also became connected to Delaware’s abolitionist history. Spencer supported the Underground Railroad, and accounts of the festival’s history describe Wilmington as a place where enslaved people could make contact with abolitionists and plan journeys to freedom.
A tradition that continues to evolve
The August Quarterly has changed from the multistate religious homecoming of the 1800s into a weeklong celebration combining worship with gospel music, youth programming, cultural education, food and community resources.
Its underlying purpose, however, remains much the same: bringing people together around faith, freedom, family and African American cultural identity.
This year’s celebration began Aug. 23 with an opening service at Mother African Union Church and a memorial wreath-laying at Peter Spencer Plaza. Revival services continued during the week.
The festival now moves into its busiest weekend, giving families several opportunities to participate.
Friday celebration opens festival weekend
The AQ Liberation Fest will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, Aug. 28, at the Delaware Historical Society, 505 N. Market St.
Promoted as an all-white party, the evening will feature the Pieces of a Dream dance group and music from Best Kept Soul.
The event adds a social and entertainment component to the festival while keeping the celebration in the heart of downtown Wilmington.
Saturday belongs to young people
The AQ Youth and Young Adult Experience will take over Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park from noon to 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 29.
The day will feature children and youth performers, bookbag and school-supply giveaways, face painting, games and family activities.
By placing young people at the center of Saturday’s program, the festival connects a 212-year-old tradition with the generation that will be responsible for carrying it forward.
The event also helps families prepare for the new school year while offering young performers an opportunity to appear before a large community audience.
Sunday brings worship and the Big Quarterly
Sunday’s events begin with the August Quarterly Worship Service from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Chase Center on the Riverfront, 815 Shipyard Drive.
The service will feature the Rev. Carolyn C. Cavaness and the August Quarterly Festival Choir.
The Big Quarterly will begin at noon at nearby Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park and continue until 8 p.m.
The festival will feature local, regional and nationally known gospel groups performing throughout the day. Food and retail vendors will be joined by cultural, community and health organizations, while a children’s area will offer youth-oriented attractions.
The combination of worship, gospel music, food, vendors and family fellowship reflects many of the elements that have defined August Quarterly throughout its history.
For longtime participants, Sunday is an annual homecoming. For residents unfamiliar with the tradition, it offers an opportunity to experience one of Wilmington’s most important cultural institutions — and to learn why a festival founded in 1814 continues to matter in 2026.
TO GO
What: 212th August Quarterly Festival weekend
Friday: AQ Liberation Fest, 6 to 9 p.m., Delaware Historical Society, 505 N. Market St., Wilmington
Saturday: AQ Youth and Young Adult Experience, noon to 8 p.m., Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park, Rosa Parks Drive and Market Street, Wilmington
Sunday worship: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Chase Center on the Riverfront, 815 Shipyard Drive, Wilmington
Sunday festival: The Big Quarterly, noon to 8 p.m., Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park
Aug. 27, 2026 — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) Kathryn Mohror has been selected as general chair of the 2027 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, more commonly known as SC27. Mohror is director of the Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC) as well as a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff.
Dr. Kathryn Mohror, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Credit: LLNL.
“Chairing this conference is not only an honor but also an opportunity to give back to the SC community that has been such a big part of my career,” states Mohror. “I’ve been attending SC and volunteering for more than 20 years. I keep returning because this is where people share the latest, most impactful ideas in HPC and because the community is so collaborative and welcoming.”
Held annually in November, the SC conference hosted more than 17,000 exhibitors, researchers, and practitioners last year. The week-long event is jointly sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society, and is the world’s largest conference for the high-performance computing (HPC) field. As general chair, Mohror will determine the conference’s vision and lead its operations, working with about 1,000 volunteers and a cadre of contractors.
For Mohror, leadership is service, and chairing SC comes with responsibilities beyond the logistics of organizing a large-scale conference. “HPC innovations are only possible because of the people who design them, build them, and find new ways to use them,” she says. “SC is the place where many of these innovations are born—when people meet and start talking. I want everyone at SC to find opportunities to meet new people, build our community, and get talking to drive those new innovations.”
At a time when artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies are rapidly influencing the HPC landscape, SC continues to be the premier venue for showcasing research from all corners of the field—laboratories, academia, and industry. “SC is like no other HPC conference. People come from all over the world because SC is where everything in HPC happens,” notes Mohror. “I love to see the convergence of traditional HPC, cloud computing, quantum computing, and AI communities at SC. HPC is stronger because we’re leveraging ideas across fields and pushing the boundaries of what is possible.”
Although SC27 plans are still in progress, Mohror says attendees can expect a robust and dynamic technical program along with new community-focused initiatives and plenty of opportunities to connect with others. The theme and host city will be unveiled in a special session near the end of SC26 this November in Chicago.
Mohror’s appointment is another example of LLNL’s ongoing visibility at SC—from research papers and posters to the Top500 list of benchmarked supercomputers, and from speakers at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) exhibitor booth to dozens of staff volunteering on committees.
LLNL leaders have held the SC general chair role before, most recently acting principal associate director for Computing Lori Diachin in 2025 and Livermore Computing chief technology officer Bronis de Supinski in 2021.
“The SC27 general chair is a highly demanding and visible role. Kathryn has long been a trusted leader at LLNL and in the broader HPC community, and she is very well equipped to lead another successful meeting,” says Diachin.hin.
“From her start at LLNL as a postdoctoral researcher, Kathryn has consistently exceeded expectations, and I have no doubt she will do so as SC27 general chair,” adds de Supinski, who will serve as SC27 vice chair. “I expect that not only will SC27 set an all-time attendance record, but it will establish new traditions that enhance the supercomputing community, as I know she envisions.”
Mohror joined LLNL in 2010. Her research focuses on HPC portability, input/output performance, and in-system storage solutions through projects such as the Scalable Checkpoint/Restart library and the UnifyFS file system, both R&D 100 Award winners. She has led major HPC standards and software initiatives, including roles on the PMIx Steering Committee, MPI Forum, and DOE’s Exascale Computing Project. A 2019 DOE Early Career Award recipient, Mohror holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Portland State University.
Aug. 27, 2026 — Since announcing Jalapeño, OpenAI’s first custom inference chip, the company has been testing the chip and the system built around it. The results show a significant performance advance: Jalapeño can serve more AI work per unit of power while also returning responses more quickly. Jalapeño delivers both higher throughput and lower latency with one architecture, where existing hardware systems often have to make a tradeoff between the two.
Credit: OpenAI
For customers, that can mean faster responses, more responsive agents, and more reliable access as demand grows. OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. These gains will help make increasingly capable AI more affordable and more broadly available.
OpenAI models also accelerated Jalapeño’s development. Earlier generations helped the team design and bring up the chip, while the company’s latest models are accelerating how OpenAI optimizes and programs it. Jalapeño’s performance extends across GPT‑OSS 120B, DeepSeek R1, and Kimi K2.5 1T, showing that the architecture works across models developed both inside and outside OpenAI. Across all three, Jalapeño delivered 1.5 to 1.9 times more AI work per watt at peak throughput and 1.7 to 3.6 times lower end-to-end latency than the comparison systems. For highly interactive workloads, it delivered 2.1 to 4.1 times higher performance.
Jalapeño is also evidence of a broader full-stack advantage. OpenAI can design models, products, serving software, chips, memory, networking, and systems together, using what OpenAI learns from real workloads to improve every layer of the stack. Jalapeño is working first-party silicon with measured results, and it is the beginning of a multigenerational platform. In the months ahead, OpenAI will ramp Jalapeño to deliver faster, more capable, and more efficient products for customers.
How OpenAI Measured Jalapeño’s Performance
OpenAI evaluates performance at a matched user experience, measuring how much useful AI work each system can complete per unit of power while meeting the latency customers and interactive agents require. This matters especially for agents, which need to complete many steps in sequence, so delays can compound across an entire task.
To understand how Jalapeño performs in practice, OpenAI tested it on InferenceX, a public benchmark from SemiAnalysis that measures the full process of serving an AI request. OpenAI compared Jalapeño with leading commercially available AI systems across the tested operating range, from high-throughput serving to highly interactive, low-latency use. Jalapeño delivered a better combination of throughput, power efficiency, and latency. Although performance is sometimes reported per chip, OpenAI believes the more useful standard is performance per unit of power.
Across all three public models, Jalapeño delivered a better combination of performance per watt and latency across the tested operating range, placing it on the Pareto frontier. To compare the systems consistently, OpenAI normalized the results using each accelerator’s published chip power rating. Jalapeño is rated at 700 watts, although its measured sustained power remained at or below 550 watts on the workloads tested.
Jalapeño performed strongly across GPT‑OSS 120B, DeepSeek R1 670B, and Kimi K2.5 1T. On Kimi, the largest public model OpenAI tested, it delivered approximately 1.5 times higher peak performance per watt and 3.4 times lower end-to-end latency than the comparison system. In OpenAI’s internal testing, Jalapeño’s advantage widened further on frontier OpenAI models, suggesting that the architecture becomes more valuable as workloads grow larger and more demanding.
Architecting for speed and efficiency within a single chip
Jalapeño’s gains come from designing the chip, memory, network, software, and rack-scale system together around real language-model workloads. Language-model inference moves through several distinct phases with different bottlenecks. Prefill, when the system processes a prompt, is compute-intensive, while decode, when the system generates the response token by token, is constrained more by memory bandwidth. Communication can also add latency when data must move between cores and chips, leaving some processing units idle while they wait. A system that excels at one phase can lose that advantage while waiting for data or moving model state between different resources.
OpenAI designed Jalapeño to minimize data movement and communication delays. This means that model state, including the KV cache used while generating a response, can be explicitly placed and kept local while the system activates the right combination of compute, memory, and networking for each inference phase. The network is integral to the architecture. Its large domain allows the entire workload to remain within one connected system, minimizing data movement and helping the complete request stay fast and efficient from beginning to end. The result is a balanced and fungible accelerator that can support changing model architectures, excel at both prefill and decode, and adapt as the balance between them changes, a defining feature of agentic workloads.
OpenAI Used AI to Design the Chip, and Designed the Chip So AI Could Program It
AI played a direct role in Jalapeño’s development, enabling the team to move from initial design to tapeout in nine months by exploring implementations, shortening design, measurement, and verification loops, and continuously iterating on model workloads. AI also helped optimize the chip’s arithmetic circuits, allowing the team to fit more compute performance into the chip on schedule.
Jalapeño was designed as a clear, predictable programming target for both humans and AI. Engineers can describe work through local tensors, explicit communication, and predictable synchronization. AI can then optimize how that work is mapped, placed, scheduled, and coordinated across the system. That clear, predictable structure gives AI a tractable way to tackle the traditionally difficult problem of parallel programming.
Supporting each new model family still requires new kernels and model-specific optimizations. Using Codex with GPT‑Astra, the team brought three open-weight models that were not part of Jalapeño’s original production plan to high performance within two months. This demonstrated both the flexibility of the architecture and the speed at which AI can help with programming. For selected GPT‑OSS attention and mixture-of-experts blocks, AI-generated implementations ran 1.5 to 1.8 times faster than the existing human-expert-written implementations. Those figures apply to the selected blocks, not the full model, but they point toward a powerful new development loop.
The Path Ahead for Efficient, Ultra-Fast Inference
AI infrastructure is valuable because of the useful real-world work it enables. By producing more useful work from the same power and hardware, Jalapeño can help OpenAI serve more demand and lower the cost of delivering a successful result. For OpenAI, that can improve operating leverage by allowing useful work and revenue to grow faster than the cost to serve. It can also support broader adoption and continued investment in better models, products, and infrastructure. Faster inference can enable faster iteration and new use cases.
Jalapeño expands what is possible for efficient, low-latency inference:
Ultra-fast-mode inference at efficiencies previously available only in fast mode
Fast-mode inference at efficiencies previously available only in batched mode
Higher efficiency for batched-mode inference
OpenAI plans to begin deploying Jalapeño within the company’s compute infrastructure by the end of the year. It is the first generation of a multigenerational roadmap: Gen 2 is deep in development, and Gen 3 is taking shape. Each generation will build on what OpenAI learns and further advance both efficiency and speed.
Meeting growing demand for AI will require more compute from every available source. OpenAI will continue to widely deploy accelerators from NVIDIA and other partners for both training and inference workloads. OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
As OpenAI prepares for deployment, the company is continuing production qualification, maturing the software, preparing to operate Jalapeño at scale, and validating performance across more models. The results so far show what is possible when the full system is designed together: more responsive, capable, and agentic AI delivered more efficiently to more people.
Jes Staley made comments to US lawmakers investigating his links to the convicted sex offender
The former Barclays boss Jes Staley has denied having sex with a woman dressed as Snow White, after being questioned about an infamous email exchange about Disney princesses with Jeffrey Epstein.
The comments were detailed in newly released transcripts from a closed-door interview last month with US lawmakers as part of their investigation into Epstein, who died in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges.
Florida Republican gubernatorial nominee U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds linked U.S. measles outbreaks to illegal immigration.
On CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Aug. 23, host Margaret Brennan said Florida is below the immunization rate needed to achieve herd immunity for measles. Brennan then asked Donalds if his guidance for Florida parents would be to get their kids vaccinated.
“No,” Donalds said, “actually my message to Floridians and, quite frankly, to Americans is the reason why we have seen a measles outbreak in certain parts of the country is because of rampant illegal immigration into the United States from the previous administration.”
Donalds pointed to measles outbreaks in El Paso, Texas and southwest Florida, and said people who are in the U.S. illegally have not followed the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination schedule.
He continued, “So the key thing is, you number one, you got to control immigration into your country. You can’t have an entire segment of people, more than 10 million, coming to your country without that vaccination schedule.”
It’s inaccurate that 10 million immigrants entered the U.S. illegally during Joe Biden’s presidency, when the administration released about 4.3 million people into the U.S. to await immigration court hearings.
And there’s no evidence linking measles outbreaks to immigrants in the U.S. Infectious disease experts told PolitiFact that a decline in measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations in the U.S. is the primary driver of the outbreaks. Around 94% of confirmed cases in 2026 are in people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown.
Donalds’ campaign did not respond to a request for information to support his statement.
Dr. George Rust, a Florida State University College of Medicine professor and epidemiologist, said the U.S. for decades had sporadic measles cases that typically started after U.S. travelers caught the virus overseas and experienced symptoms after returning home.
“Maybe one or two additional individuals would catch it from them, but because of high immunization rates and rapid public health response, there would be no second wave of cases,” Rust said. “Now, we are seeing more outbreaks because that same scenario plays out in the context of clusters of people who are unvaccinated, which allows for greater spread.”
What’s the status of measles in the U.S.?
The ongoing 2026 measles outbreak has surpassed 2025’s record-breaking case numbers, which were the most since 1991.
Receiving the recommended two doses of the MMR vaccine is 97% effective against infection.
“Ninety percent of unvaccinated people who are exposed are likely to catch it,” Rust said. “Because of the high rate of infectivity, measles outbreaks can spread exponentially in segments of the population that are unimmunized or not immune.”
Is measles spread by immigrants?
A pair of migrant families pass through a gap in the border wall to reach the United States after crossing from Mexico in Yuma, Ariz., June 10, 2021, to seek asylum. (AP)
The CDC does not report the immigration status of people infected with measles in the U.S., making it impossible to definitively tie any measles outbreaks to immigrants in the country illegally. Contact tracing during past outbreaks has shown that measles typically enters the U.S. from unvaccinated residents who traveled internationally, mostly to Europe and the Western Pacific region.
The U.S. achieved measles elimination status in 2000, which means the virus stopped continuously spreading domestically.
“Any given chain begins with someone who traveled,” said Dr. Paul Spiegel,distinguished professor of the practice and director at Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health. “An introduction becomes an outbreak only when the virus reaches enough susceptible, unvaccinated people, and the importation data do not point to migrants in any case.”
Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt Health infectious diseases specialist, agreed, saying “the very substantial majority” of cases are “caused by our own unvaccinated children who go abroad, pick up the measles and then bring it back home.” Only a minority of cases, he said, are caused by foreigners coming to the U.S.
Measles outbreaks on the U.S. west coast often come from unvaccinated U.S. residents returning from Asia, experts said, while east and central U.S. outbreaks typically originate from U.S. residents returning from Europe. “I have never seen data indicating that notable introductions have come from south of the border,” Schaffner said.
In El Paso, Texas, a measles outbreak in early 2026 occurred among immigrants in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility and a nearby federal detention facility that houses both migrants and U.S. citizens. Public health officials attributed the spread to the facilities’ poor conditions and a lack of federal data on inmates’ vaccination statuses. It’s unclear when any of the infected immigrants entered the U.S. ICE detains many people who are not recent arrivals.
In Southwest Florida, where Donalds lives, Florida’s largest outbreak was centered on Ave Maria University in Collier County. The university, citing the state health department’s contact tracing, said it most likely began with a student’s out-of-state holiday travel.
Some of thelargestoutbreaks this year were in areas with large Amish and Mennonite communities that typically have lower vaccination rates. Pastoutbreaks also clustered in similar, vaccine-averse communities.
MMR vaccination in other countries
A vial of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is on display at the Lubbock Health Department, Feb. 26, 2025, in Lubbock, Texas. (AP)
Countries where many immigrants in the U.S. illegally come from, such as Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, all include the MMR vaccine in their routine childhood schedules.
Experts said the problem is not that these countries lack vaccination programs, but that many have seen vaccine coverage slip below the 95% threshold needed to stop measles transmission — the same problem the U.S. has.
This year, El Salvador and Honduras have reported small numbers of measles cases. Guatemala and Mexico are dealing with large outbreaks, with the vast majority of cases occurring in unvaccinated people.
Mexico’s measles epidemic, however, originated in the U.S., not the other way around. The country’s outbreak began in Chihuahua, Mexico, in February 2025, and was traced to an unvaccinated nine-year-old from a Mennonite community who was infected while visiting relatives in Seminole, Texas, as the state’s outbreak was taking off.
“Discussions of migration and infectious disease often get the causal relationship backward,” Spiegel said. “Human mobility of every kind — tourism, business travel, migration — can move a virus from one place to another, but movement does not by itself create an outbreak; susceptibility does.”
Our ruling
Donalds said “rampant illegal immigration” during the Biden administration is the cause of “a measles outbreak in certain parts of the country.”
Measles is typically introduced by U.S. travelers returning from international travel. Experts said a U.S. decline in MMR vaccinations is the primary driver of the outbreak.
We found no data pointing to immigrants who entered the country illegally as the reason for any outbreak. Top countries of origin for immigrants in the U.S. illegally also include the MMR vaccine in their routine childhood schedules.
The burden of proof is on the speaker, and Donalds provided no evidence to support his statement. We rate it False.
Iran, Gaza, Trump and Netanyahu: Understanding the Middle East’s crisesAudiosseth.drupal@c…
In this week’s episode of Independent Thinking, our experts discuss the big picture in the Middle East and how the various conflicts are shaping relations in the region.
It’s been a tumultuous year in the Middle East – and it’s far from over. Six months after the US and Israel launched their offensive against Iran, the conflict continues to disrupt trade, energy and food security. President Trump struggles to escape a deadlock that threatens to seriously damage him in the American mid-term elections. Meanwhile, Gaza remains locked in a humanitarian crisis despite a ceasefire, while Israel faces growing political division ahead of an October election that will determine Benjamin Netanyahu’s fate. As leaders wrestle with security, alliances and the fallout from multiple conflicts, we discuss the future of a troubled region.
Bronwen Maddox is joined by director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, Dr Sanam Vakil; associate professor in politics and international relations at UCL, Dr Julie Norman; and Israeli politician and journalist, Ksenia Svetlova.
About Independent Thinking
Independent Thinking is a weekly international affairs podcast hosted by our director Bronwen Maddox, in conversation with leading policymakers, journalists and Chatham House experts providing insight on the latest international issues.
Experts say findings mean breast screenings for cancer could also flag cardiovascular problems in women
Doctors have discovered a way to use routine mammograms that screen for breast cancer to spot heart disease, the world’s leading – and frequently underdiagnosed – cause of death in women.
Researchers analysed the scans using artificial intelligence and were able to successfully identify women with coronary heart disease, high blood pressure or who had suffered a stroke.
In a disrupted job market people are turning to heritage crafts such as bookbinding, metalwork and boatbuilding
It’s a bleak moment for young people entering the workforce for the first time. For decades, a university degree seemed to promise a stable career – but entry-level white-collar jobs across almost all sectors are being disrupted by AI. Budding accountants, software engineers and junior lawyers increasingly find themselves displaced by cheap automation.
Even creative fields are struggling against AI tech that can produce artwork, lengthy prose or complex design briefs in seconds.
MADD Delaware, Police Agencies Team Up for Labor Day Impaired Driving Prevention Effort
MADD Delaware and law enforcement agencies statewide are partnering for “Saturation Saturday” on Aug. 29 to promote impaired driving prevention ahead of Labor Day weekend. (Photo courtesy of MADD Delaware.)
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Delaware is partnering with the Delaware Office of Highway Safety and law enforcement agencies statewide for “Saturation Saturday” on Aug. 29, an initiative aimed at preventing impaired driving ahead of the Labor Day holiday weekend.
The coordinated enforcement effort will include increased DUI patrols across Delaware as part of a national push to reduce impaired driving crashes during one of the year’s busiest travel periods. The initiative coincides with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System, 451 people were killed nationwide in drunk driving crashes during the Labor Day holiday period in 2024. In Delaware, drunk driving fatalities have increased by 3.2% since 2019.
MADD Delaware will work with Delaware State Police in New Castle, Kent and Sussex counties, as well as the Wilmington Police Department, New Castle County Police Department, New Castle City Police Department, Camden Police Department and Dagsboro Police Department, to support Saturation Saturday events and increased impaired driving enforcement.
Law enforcement officers are often the first line of defense against impaired driving. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sobriety checkpoints can reduce drunk driving deaths by up to 20%.
“Impaired driving continues to be the leading cause of death on our roadways, stealing lives and leaving countless families to cope with unimaginable loss,” said Stacey D. Stewart, CEO of MADD. “MADD is proud to work alongside law enforcement to help prevent crashes, save lives, and remind drivers that impaired driving is never acceptable. Together, we can encourage responsible choices and make our roads safer for everyone.”
Saturation Saturday is part of ongoing efforts through NHTSA’s “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign, which raises awareness about the dangers of impaired driving and supports high-visibility enforcement efforts throughout August and September.
“Preventing impaired driving requires a shared commitment from all of us. Saturation Saturday brings together MADD, law enforcement, and highway safety partners to send a clear message: impaired driving is preventable, and every driver has a responsibility to make a safe choice. As Labor Day weekend approaches, we encourage Delawareans to plan ahead, designate a sober driver, use a rideshare or find another safe way home,” said Sharon Bryson, director of the Delaware Office of Highway Safety.
“High-visibility traffic safety enforcement efforts serve as a deterrent to impaired driving crashes and prevent senseless deaths and injuries,” said Bryna Clark-Braverman, Regional Executive Director. “Together alongside law enforcement and NHTSA, MADD Delaware urges the public to have a plan for getting home safe – whether you’re driving, riding or hosting – as we approach Labor Day weekend.”
Iraq Initiative Conference 2026
11
November 2026 — 09:00 TO 17:00 GMT
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
The eighth annual conference convenes Iraqi and international policymakers, business leaders, experts, and civil society to assess whether Iraq’s new government can navigate growing regional and domestic pressures and reinforce national sovereignty.
The eight annual conference convenes Iraqi and international policymakers, business leaders, experts, and civil society to assess whether Iraq’s new government can navigate growing regional and domestic pressures and reinforce national sovereignty.
As Iraq enters a new political phase under Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, it faces a defining test: can it strengthen state institutions and advance reform while navigating a rapidly shifting regional order?
The regional war has exposed Iraq’s vulnerabilities. Iran-aligned armed groups have launched attacks from and within Iraq, while US and Israeli strikes on Iraqi territory have renewed questions about sovereignty and the state’s monopoly on the use of force.
At the same time, disruptions to trade and energy markets are placing Iraq’s oil-dependent economy under growing strain, reducing revenues and threatening electricity supplies amid rising living costs and persistent unemployment.
These pressures coincide with intensifying competition between Washington and Tehran for influence in Iraq. As the regional balance of power shifts, Baghdad faces the difficult task of managing relations with both while preserving its stability, sovereignty and room for manoeuvre.
This conference discusses key questions including:
Can the government advance meaningful reforms, strengthen government institutions, and preserve economic stability? Or will mounting security, economic, and geopolitical challenges further constrain Iraq’s ability to chart an independent course?
How has the new government fared in its first 100 days in office?
What steps are needed to diversify Iraq’s economy away from volatile energy markets and respond to growing public demands?
How can Baghdad navigate rising regional tensions while balancing relations with international actors?
What role should regional and international partners play in supporting Iraq’s long-term stability and development?
A 32-year-old Wilmington woman claimed a $100,000 top prize in the Delaware Lottery’s 100X THE CELEBRATION instant game, marking the first major lottery win of her life. (Graphic by Milford LIVE)
A Wilmington woman is celebrating more than her upcoming wedding after winning a $100,000 top prize playing the Delaware Lottery’s 100X THE CELEBRATION instant game.
The 32-year-old Delaware native, who chose not to publicly release her name, claimed her prize Aug. 18 at Delaware Lottery headquarters in Dover. She told lottery officials the win was the first major prize she has received while playing the Delaware Lottery.
According to the Delaware Lottery, the woman said she was in disbelief after discovering she had won $100,000 and immediately contacted family members to share the news. She plans to use part of her winnings to help pay for her upcoming wedding.
The winning ticket was purchased at Naaman’s Beverage Mart Inc., located at 109 Naamans Road in Claymont.
“The Delaware Lottery couldn’t be happier for this winner, and it’s incredibly meaningful to us that her prize will help pay for her wedding celebration,” said Helene Keeley, director of the Delaware Lottery. “We love hearing stories about the ways Delawareans plan to use a lottery prize — whether that means having a little extra to help pay for a wedding, adding to their savings, or anything in between. As always, we encourage all Delaware Lottery players to enjoy playing responsibly. And we wish this bride-to-be and her partner a wonderful life together!”
The 100X THE CELEBRATION instant game launched in 2025 as part of the Delaware Lottery’s 50th anniversary celebration and originally featured two $100,000 top prizes. Players can also win prizes ranging from $20 to $20,000.
The $20 scratch-off game still had one $100,000 top prize remaining as of Aug. 19, according to the Delaware Lottery.
The senator’s remarks reflect a turning point in Democrats’ attacks on the president. What should we make of them?
Apparently, he likes to say her name with a French accent. “Na-tah-lee!” the president cries out, in that affected tone of faux-formality that one might use with a person they love but do not quite respect, and she comes running, her thin legs teetering on her heels.
Natalie Harp, Trump’s 35-year-old “executive assistant”, was an odd recurring character in the latest blockbuster Trump administration book, Regime Change, by the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. In the book, Harp features like a silent sentinel, ever present but eerily quiet as Trump rants and raves. It’s not exactly clear what the scope of her responsibilities is; though, as Jamelle Bouie points out, the fact that she evidently helps run the president’s social media accounts, which can sway markets and influence his foreign counterparts, makes her one of the most powerful people in the federal government.
Why Should Delaware Care? The Mother African Union Church is one of the oldest Black-founded congregations in United States, serving as a refuge for generations of people. In May, a fire destroyed the church building and officials are still investigating its cause.
In May, Wilmington’s Black community was hit with devastating news about a fire that destroyed the historic Mother African Union Church.
Almost three months later, Wilmington Fire Marshal Deputy Chief Andre Cooper said the cause of the blaze, which sent flames towering 40 feet above the church, is still “undetermined.” He also said the investigation will remain open indefinitely.
Cooper declined to comment further when pressed about why the investigation was taking so long, and whether officials had ruled out any potential causes.
He said he needed to protect the integrity of the case.
While the length of the investigation might frustrate members of the community, one fire expert said it is not uncommon.
University of Maryland professor Jim Milke told Spotlight Delaware that an “undetermined” status at this stage in a fire investigation can be expected, especially when access to the physical area of the blaze has been limited.
“That makes it difficult to inspect the detailed area to see what equipment was in the area or identify if any accelerants were used to start the fire,” said Milke, a professor with the Department of Fire Protection Engineering.
What is known is that shortly after the fire, Wilmington’s Land Use and Planning Department worked with an engineer to assess the structural stability of the building. The analysis ultimately determined that the site was too unstable for fire marshals to enter safely, said Elliott Larkin, director of the city’s Land Use and Planning Department.
Larkin noted that investigators could use an unmanned assessment via drones, but he did not indicate whether one had occurred.
“Due to the assessed instability and the water level within the basement, firefighters/officials would not enter the site physically, and an unmanned assessment, if possible, would be used instead,” Larkin said.
Ultimately, the church structure that remained after the fire, including its trusses and stone walls, was demolished.
While officials have not pointed to a cause of the fire, they took to Facebook in June to refute rumors that had been circulating about it, noting that “any information being disseminated on social media is false.”
Among the rumors circulating at that time was that an e-bike had caught fire inside, while others reported hearing a loud boom. Neither has been substantiated by city officials.
The Rev. Ronald Whitaker speaks outside the Mother African Union Church a day after a fire destroyed its building. SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
During an interview Wednesday, the Rev. Ronald Whitaker, senior pastor at the historic church, says he is excited that officials have not yet closed the investigation yet, but noted he understands the cause may not be found because of the magnitude of the fire.
“When you have a devastating fire like we had, that is maybe the case where you’ll never know,” he said.
Whitaker also said that an insurance company is conducting its own parallel investigation into the fire.
North Franklin Street still home
A day after the May 17 fire, church leaders, congregants, and city and state officials gathered to mourn the loss of the church, which stood as the physical space for one of Delaware’s oldest Black-founded congregations.
During a press conference, Wilmington Fire Chief John Looney said fire investigations of this significance “could take a couple weeks.” At the time, the engineer’s structural assessment had not been completed, Looney said.
Also during the press conference, church leaders vowed to rebuild. In response, several elected officials pledged support, including New Castle County Executive Marcus Henry who said he would provide public dollars for the effort.
Whitaker said he and his team plan to rebuild in the same location.
“As far as I’m concerned, 812 North Franklin Street is still the Mother African Union Church home,” he said.
City building inspectors review the damage to Mother African Union Church the morning after the May 17 fire. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
The congregation preserves its legacy
The news that the cause is undetermined comes amid the congregation’s annual August Quarterly festival, an event that was started by the founder of the church, Peter Spencer, two centuries ago. It celebrates the church’s founding and African American religious freedom in the United States.
The event spans through the last week of August, with church officials and other community members hosting events throughout Wilmington.
Whitaker says the church will continue to spearhead that event, saying its significance is at an “all-time high.”
Flames engulf the Mother African Union Church building in Wilmington during an early Sunday morning fire. | PHOTO COURTESY OF WILMINGTON FIRE
“We’re not going to let what happened on May the 17th be the end of our story. In many ways, it’s a comment to what our ‘next’ is,” he said.
After the fire, Whitaker said the church continued to hold its services at the Congo Legacy Center. He also noted that the congregation will soon announce its next space for church services.
Also debuting recently at the Delaware Historical Society is an exhibit entitled “Ancestral Dream, Living Blueprint.” The exhibit showcases the Mother African Union Church’s history and legacy through archival documents and interactive displays.
The display was originally designed to be placed in the church prior to the fire. The church had been working on the exhibit for the past three years, Whitaker said. The exhibition will be on display in the Mitchell Center Theater in the museum, located at 504 N. Market St. in Wilmington, until Oct. 17.
Why Should Delaware Care? The state treasurer election typically does not get a lot of attention in Delaware, even though it is a high-ranking executive branch position. But this year, two Democratic primary candidates are raking in record-breaking sums of money — from somewhat unique sources. All the while, the candidates are raising questions about each other’s financial transparency.
The upcoming Democratic primary election for state treasurer has broken funding records this month, with campaign spending likely to top $1 million on two candidates in the historically overlooked race.
And some of the money backing leading candidates Ted Lauzen and Michael A. Smith has come from curious sources: Republicans and artificial intelligence-backed donors, respectively.
The role, which manages the state’s cash flow and advises on its investment funds and debts, is one that largely operates in the background of state government. Voters, however, are about to see more campaign messaging around the position than ever before.
Lauzen, a Wilmington investment manager, is making his first run for public office, while Smith, an economist and nonprofit founder, narrowly lost a Democratic primary for a state House seat two years ago.
Each has already racked up notable endorsements through the campaign: the state Democratic Party for Lauzen and the state’s teachers’ union for Smith.
With less than a month until the Sept. 15 primary, though, much of the spending set to occur in the race will come from a national organization and local political action committees.
Historic attention on race
Democratic primaries for the treasurer’s race have not come close to raising the amount of money set to flow this year.
Current Treasurer Colleen Davis, who is not seeking reelection, amassed about a quarter of a million dollars in the 2018 and 2022 election cycles combined.
The closest comparison in recent years was Republican Ken Simpler’s 2014 campaign, in which he garnered about $600,000 between the primary and general elections, or $850,000 in today’s dollars after inflation. He is currently the last Republican to hold statewide office in Delaware.
The 2024 three-way primary race for governor set new records in Delaware campaign spending, with more than $3 million poured into digital ads, pamphlets, billboards and more.
That trend has carried over to this cycle, as law firms, developers, advocates and out-of-state interest groups are now dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars on down-ballot races that previously garnered less attention.
Lauzen’s personal campaign account had raised about $280,000 from donors over the past two years, as of this month, and he loaned his campaign $250,000.
Smith has raised more than $180,000, as of this month, and loaned his campaign about $47,000, but the bulk of his outside support is coming from the State & Local Election Alliance (SLEA), a national advocacy organization that primarily focuses on “defending democracy” by investing in down-ballot races.
The organization has reported spending more than $495,000 in support of his campaign to date, including more than $350,000 in direct advertising.
SLEA’s involvement in Delaware drew attention from political insiders earlier this month after it reported raising more than $6.4 million on state campaign finance filings, but a spokesperson for the organization said that was a reporting error and reflective of its nationwide fundraising efforts, not those squarely for Delaware.
Nonetheless, the organization’s support of Smith has changed the dynamic of the race, as his campaign will now be far more visible to voters in the stretch run to election day.
A third candidate in the race, Mike Miller, has raised about $16,000 in individual contributions and has loaned his campaign $20,000.
Smith’s donors have ties to AI
The large influx of money into what is normally a quiet primary race has caused each of the leading candidates to question the other campaigns’ backing and motives.
Lauzen said it is “scary” that SLEA is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Smith without clearly stating why.
A SLEA spokesperson declined to say specifically what aspects about Smith, or the position of Delaware state treasurer, drew them to spend more than $300,000 in ads supporting his candidacy.
While understated, the position has historically been an incubator for future leaders. Both former Govs. Tom Carper and Jack Markell served as state treasurer before being elected to the state’s highest office.
Regardless of the specific office, the spokesperson said, the candidates SLEA supports “are on the front lines of defending the rule of law.”
“Michael Smith is exactly the kind of leader that we exist to support,” she added.
Smith told Spotlight Delaware he had not heard of the organization before receiving its financial support.
Direct coordination between a candidate’s campaign and any outside organization buying ads to support them is illegal. But one of the two consultants, Matt Krayton, said the overlap does not violate either Delaware nor federal election laws.
In a written statement, Krayton said his firms follow the Federal Election Commission’s firewall policies, which outline guidelines for preventing information sharing between candidates and advertisers who share a common vendor.
Lauzen also criticized the prevalence of out-of-state donors to Smith’s campaign.
About 80% of Smith’s individual donations came from out-of-state residents, compared with about 20% in Lauzen’s campaign. Those donors include employees at Anthropic, the company behind the artificial intelligence system Claude, and other artificial intelligence safety researchers from across the country.
Smith pointed to connections he made during his time with College Democrats of America to explain some of the out-of-state donations. He said he has also been involved in Effective Altruism, a social movement followed by many AI industry workers that aims to find the most efficient ways to solve global problems.
Effective Altruism came under scrutiny in 2022 after the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the crypto exchange FTX, who was heavily involved in the movement. It has since rebounded, though, as many AI company employees have begun to join the movement and donate millions of dollars to charities and political campaigns.
Spotlight Delaware tried to contact many of Smith’s out-of-state donors who had donated the legal maximum limit to his campaign, but only one responded on the record.
Jeff Kaufman, a Massachusetts-based former Google employee and an active member of Effective Altruism forums, said he does not know Smith personally. Several people, however, told him to donate to Smith because he is “good on AI policy.”
When asked why he was interested in the Delaware treasurer’s race, he said having someone who shares his views on AI safety “is important to have across government given how important I expect it to be in the near future.”
Smith said he does not have any specific plans related to AI if he becomes treasurer, but that he thinks protecting Delaware’s assets from AI will become a large part of the role in the future.
“If AI agents or malicious actors are able to hack into our financial infrastructure and take away the money from Delaware taxpayers, that prevents us from lowering costs,” he said.
Smith defended his decision to fundraise out of state, saying he had to raise as much money as possible to counter the large amounts of funds Lauzen raised early in the campaign, including his quarter of a million dollar loan to his own campaign.
Lauzen defends Democratic bonafides
Lauzen said his family decided to pull from their savings for the campaign because he believes it is an important position. He quoted Martin Luther King Jr., saying he believes in the “fierce urgency of now” to do the right thing right away.
“When our family is going to do something, we’re going to do it all in,” he said.
Smith also said he thinks Lauzen is “masquerading as a Democrat” because his father is a Republican politician in Illinois, and he has donated to Republican candidates in the past.
Lauzen said while he grew up in a Republican family, he became an independent in 2017 and registered as a Democrat two years ago. He said his values have changed with age.
He has previously donated to several Republican candidates, including Simpler, the former Republican treasurer, but has donated to more Democratic candidates.
Lauzen also has received donations from several prominent Republicans in this campaign, including former Republican Party Chairman Terry Strine and former State Rep. John Burris (R-Milford).
Both Strine and Burris told Spotlight Delaware their values do not align with the modern Republican Party, and they support candidates they believe in regardless of political party affiliation.
Smith also questioned why prominent developers in the state would be interested in the treasurer’s race.
The First State Service PAC, which has received the majority of its $225,000 worth of donations thus far from two members of the Schell family, paid for several advertisements for Lauzen earlier this week, according to Google Ads Library.
Though the spending on those ads has only totaled $700 so far, it is unclear how much the developer-backed PAC plans to spend on Lauzen in the coming weeks.
Lauzen said he was not aware of the PAC or the advertisements, but that he knew members of the Schell family had donated individually to his campaign and was happy to gain their support.
Smith also criticized Lauzen for receiving a donation from the ABC Merit Shop PAC, a group that he characterized “anti-union.” The PAC is associated with Associated Builders and Contractors, which represents the interests of merit-shop contractors.
According to his campaign finance report, Lauzen returned that donation in late July.
The University of Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens will start their second season of Conference USA (CUSA) play on October 2. Their conference schedule includes five returning foes and three new conference opponents.
The Fightin’ Blue Hens competed well in their first season in CUSA last year. The Blue Hens finished last season with a 4-4 conference record that included the program’s first CUSA win against Florida International University (FIU) on the road.
This season, FIU will travel to Newark for a rematch against the Blue Hens and Delaware will travel to Tennessee for another duel against Middle Tennessee — a game that UD won last season. The Blue Hens will also face three new conference opponents — Missouri State, New Mexico State and Kennesaw State — in their second year in CUSA.
Here’s a look at what awaits the Fightin’ Blue Hens in their conference schedule:
Blue Hens vs Liberty University, Oct. 2 @ Delaware Stadium, 7:00 p.m.
The Blue Hens will start their conference slate with a meeting against the Liberty Flames. The Flames defeated the Blue Hens, 59-30, last season in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the two programs’ first meeting all-time. Liberty’s 59 points were the most UD allowed last season.
The Flames finished the 2025-2026 campaign with a 4-8 overall record and a 3-5 CUSA record. All four of Liberty’s wins came at home. The offense finished eighth in the conference in points scored and the defense finished third in the conference, allowing 318 points across their 12 games.
The program has a mix of continuity and new faces within its coaching staff heading into the season. Head coach Jamey Chadwell is entering his fourth season at the helm with a new defensive coordinator — Shawn Quinn — and former co-offensive coordinator, Newland Isaac, now the lone offensive coordinator. Former co-offensive coordinator Willy Korn announced he was leaving the industry in December.
The team welcomed in 28 transfer players during the transfer window, 17 of which play on the offensive side of the ball. One of the reasons for the offensive focus is the departure of running back Evan Dickens to Boston College this offseason. Dickens ranked second in CUSA with 1,339 rushing yards and tied for first in the conference with 16 rushing touchdowns. Liberty brought in five transfer running backs in hopes of filling the void, including senior Kanye Udoh from Arizona State. Udoh rushed for 240 yards and two touchdowns in limited action with the Sun Devils last year, but was once a 1,000 yard rusher at Army in 2024.
Blue Hens at Middle Tennessee State, Oct. 13 @ Johnny “Red” Floyd Stadium, 7:00 p.m.
UD’s second conference matchup features another rematch in a different setting. The Blue Hens will travel 761 miles from Newark to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to take on the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders on a Tuesday night.
Delaware won last year’s matchup between the two teams, 31-28, scoring 24 points in the first half. Quarterback Nick Minicucci threw four touchdown passes in the win with Kyre Duplessis on the receiving end of half of them. Duplessis recorded his first career multi-touchdown game in the win.
MTSU finished last season with a 3-9 overall record and a 2-6 conference record with both conference wins coming in the final two games of the season. It was the program’s second consecutive 3-9 finish. The Blue Raiders finished last season with the conference’s third worst scoring defense and offense.
Blue Raider head coach Derek Mason addressed the offensive struggles in the offseason with the hiring of new offensive coordinator, Anthony Scelfo. Scelfo was the offensive coordinator for Southeastern Louisiana University — a Division One Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) program. Under Scelfo’s leadership, Southeastern Louisiana ranked in the top 35 nationally in scoring offense and top 40 in rushing offense last season at the FCS level.
Scelfo’s prowess in the run game will be important as the Blue Raiders try to fill the void left by the transfer of their leading rusher from a year ago, Jekail Middlebrook. Middlebrook transferred to the University of Virginia this offseason following a season in which he ranked 6th in CUSA in total rushing yards and 23rd in total receiving yards.
The good news for MTSU is the return of leading receiver Cam’ron Lacy and starting quarterback Roman Gagliano. Gagliano started the final three games of the season and connected with Lacy five times resulting in 106 yards through the air.
This game will be the fourth meeting between the two programs. UD is 3-0.
Blue Hens vs Missouri State, Oct. 20 @ Delaware Stadium, 7:00 p.m.
The Blue Hens and Bears are the conference’s newest programs and will match up for the first time on October 20.
Similar to the Blue Hens, the Bears had a successful first season in FBS football. Missouri State finished the year with a 7-5 overall record, a 5-3 record in CUSA play and a bowl game appearance against Arkansas State in the Xbox Bowl. The Bears lost that game, 34-28.
Missouri State enters the season with a new head coach, following the departure of head coach Ryan Beard to Coastal Carolina. The Blue Hens will face Coastal Carolina during their non-conference schedule.
(To read about UD’s non-conference schedule click here.)
The new head coach for the Bears is former Southern Methodist University (SMU) offensive coordinator, Casey Woods. Woods’ was SMU’s offensive coordinator for the past four seasons and in those seasons the offense averaged over 30 points per game. Last season, the Mustangs ranked top five in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in points per game, yards per game and passing yards per game. Woods’ takes over a team that ranked seventh in CUSA in both scoring offense and defense.
Blue Hens at Western Kentucky University, Oct. 27 @ Houchens Industries-L.T. Smith Stadium, 7:00 p.m.
The Blue Hens will travel to Bowling Green, Kentucky, for the first time since 1981 for a rematch against the Hilltoppers at the end of October.
Western Kentucky was the only team to defeat the Blue Hens in Delaware Stadium last season, spoiling UD’s first CUSA home game with a 27-24 victory over the Blue Hens. The Hilltoppers finished the season with a 6-2 conference record, a 9-4 overall record and a bowl game victory over Southern Mississippi in the 2025 New Orleans Bowl.
UD runs the ball against Western Kentucky University in first home CUSA game in program history. Photo Credit: George Rotsch.
Western Kentucky finished last season with the conference’s best scoring offense and returns its second leading receiver K.D. Hutchinson. Hutchinson finished last season with 66 receptions — second only to Sean Wilson in CUSA — and 618 receiving yards in 13 games. Hutchinson pairs with redshirt senior Moussa Barry (34 catches and 488 receiving yards last season) to create a dynamic receiving duo for returning quarterback Rodney Tisdale Jr.
Tisadale Jr. appeared in nine games last season and started the Hilltoppers’ final six games. As the starter, Tisdale threw for over 1,000 yards and scored ten total touchdowns.
The Blue Hens hold a 2-1 historical series advantage.
Blue Hens at Kennesaw State University, Nov. 7 @ Walens Family Field at Fifth Third Stadium, 3:00 p.m.
The Blue Hens will face the reigning CUSA champion, Kennesaw State Owls, on the road in the first matchup between the two programs.
The Owls finished last season with a 10-4 overall record and a 7-1 conference record. The team’s only conference loss came against Jacksonville State, but that loss was rectified in the CUSA championship game, when the Owls defeated the Gamecocks, 19-15. The win earned the program its first CUSA championship in just its second season in the conference after finishing their first CUSA season with a 2-6 conference record.
Kennesaw State was led by a strong defense that ranked fourth in the conference in opponents points per game last season. The Owls defense finished the year tied for first in the conference in sacks (31), second in red zone defense and second in passing defense. Linebacker Baron Hopson was a big part of the success of the Owls’ defense and he is returning to the program for his graduate season. Hopson was the CUSA Co-Defensive Player of the Year last season and was named to the 2026 Lombardi Award preseason watch list entering the season.
On the offensive end, The Owls enter the 2026 season after ranking sixth in the conference in scoring a year ago. Kennesaw State will have a new quarterback under center this season following the departure of last season’s starter, Amari Odom. Odom threw for over 2,500 yards last season and transferred to Syracuse during the offseason.
Ironically, the Owls new starting quarterback is former Syracuse quarterback, Rickie Collins. Collins was the only quarterback of a 28 player transfer class the Owls brought in this offseason. Collins appeared in seven games for Syracuse last season, completing 97 of his 181 passing attempts for 1,042 yards and six touchdowns. ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Collins as the Owls starter on August 19, according to ESPN.
Blue Hens vs Florida International University, Nov. 14 @ Delaware Stadium, 3:00 p.m.
The Blue Hens’ game against the Panthers is the team’s penultimate home game of the season and the second game between the programs in their history. UD won the first meeting last season, 38-16, earning the program’s first ever road CUSA win.
FIU went on to finish the season with seven wins and a 5-3 conference record, making the Servpro First Responders Bowl. The Panthers lost the bowl game, 57-20, against UTSA breaking a four game winning streak the team compiled to end the regular season. It was the Panthers’ first bowl game appearance since 2019.
FIU will try and build on the success amassed during head coach Willie Simmons’ first year at the helm. In Simmons’ first season, the Panthers had the conference’s third highest scoring offense, fourth best rushing attack and tied Kennesaw State for the conference lead in team sacks. The team returns a strong amount of its talent especially on the defensive end, bringing back the team’s sack leader — defensive lineman Kenton Simmons — and linebacker Percy Courtney Jr. who led the team in tackles for loss last season.
The offense is going to rely more on new talent, following key departures from last season’s top three unit.
FIU’s starting quarterback from a season ago — Keyone Jenkins — transferred to UCF in the offseason along with the Panthers’ leading receiver Alex Perry who transferred to Illinois. The program’s leading rusher — Kejon Owens — moved on to the NFL, leaving the program without its top three contributors going into the 2026 season.
Simmons’ restocked the offense with a pair of impactful transfers — former Appalachian State quarterback JJ Kohl and former Rhode Island receiver Greg Gaines III — during the portal window, adding their production to returning running back Anthony Carrie’s.
Carrie finished as CUSA’s 22nd best rusher while playing behind Owens and is set to take on a bigger role this season. Kohl played in eight games for the Mountaineers last year, throwing for 1,465 yards and 12 touchdowns. Kohl only threw an interception in one of those eight games. Gaines III was one of 22 FCS wide receivers to eclipse 1,000 yards receiving last year and finished the season with four receiving touchdowns in addition to his 1,018 receiving yards.
The trio of Kohl, Carrie and Gaines III will be a big part of FIU’s offense in the 2026 season.
Blue Hens at New Mexico State University, Nov. 21 @ Aggie Memorial Stadium, 3:00 p.m.
Delaware will complete its road schedule with the program’s first meeting against the New Mexico State Aggies in late November.
The Aggies finished the 2025 season with a 4-8 overall record and 2-6 conference record. The defense fared better than the offense ranking sixth in CUSA in points allowed per game compared to the second-worst CUSA mark in points scored per game, last season. The defense returns a strong amount of its talent from a year ago including defensive back Bernock Iya who was tied for second in CUSA with four interceptions.
The offense will be headlined by some newcomers in addition to returning wide receiver, TK King. King led CUSA in receiving yards per game last season hauling in 41 catches for 588 yards and three touchdowns in eight games. King will be catching passes from a new quarterback with Furman transfer Trey Hedden getting the starting nod, according to the Las Cruces Sun News. Hedden threw for 2,967 yards and 17 touchdowns in 12 games last season.
The Aggies’ rushing attack ranked last in CUSA totaling less than 1,000 yards on the ground last season. The program addressed the problem in the offseason bringing former Delaware State running back, James Jones, into the backfield to pair with senior runner, Dijon Stanley. Stanley tallied over 300 rushing yards and two touchdowns in 75 carries last year while Jones rushed for over 900 yards on 98 carries for the Hornets.
Blue Hens vs Jacksonville State University, Nov. 28 @ Delaware Stadium, 3:30 p.m.
UD finishes its 2026 regular season campaign with a matchup against the CUSA runner-up from last season, the Jacksonville State Gamecocks.
The Gamecocks earned the program’s first victory against the Blue Hens last season. The Delaware offense struggled to maintain possession against the Jacksonville State defense, turning the ball over twice in the first half leading to a pair of Gamecock touchdowns. The win was a spring board for the Gamecocks leading to a three game winning streak against conference opponents.
The momentum from the winning streak helped the Gamecocks finish the season with a 9-5 overall record and 7-1 conference record. The only conference game Jacksonville State lost was the CUSA Championship game to Kennesaw State. The program ended its season with a win against Troy in the Cramton Bowl.
The roster retained much of its talent from last season creating strong continuity for second year head coach, Charles Kelly. The biggest returner is quarterback, Caden Creel. Creel played in 14 games last season amassing 1,514 passing yards in addition to 1,076 rushing yards — fourth best in CUSA. Wide receiver Deondre Johnson is returning to the program after leading the team in receiving yards and will pair with Murray State transfer Darius Cannon on the outside.
On the defensive end, leading tackler Mac Sanders is set to return as well as Walker O’Steen, running back a linebacker duo that accounted for 169 total tackles. Defensive back Tre’Quan Fegans recorded nine pass breakups last season and is returning to the program for a fifth year. The Gamecock defense ranked third in CUSA allowing just over 25 points per game last season.
The biggest departure for the program came in the offensive backfield. CUSA’s leading rusher, Cam Cook, departed the program to play for former Jax State head coach Rich Rodriguez at West Virginia. Cook rushed for 1,659 yards and scored 16 rushing touchdowns last season earning him CUSA Player of the Year honors. The program will most likely turn to returning running backs such as Khristian Lando, Justus Savage and Lucas Farrington to collectively fill the void Cook left.
The two programs have played each other three times throughout their histories. The Blue Hens hold a 2-1 series lead. This game will be the first meeting between the two teams held in Delaware since 1978.
The Blue Hens’ 2026 season starts on September 3, at home against Merrimack.
The rules governing your retirement plan may be changing.
As we reported in July, President Donald Trump wants to encourage 401(k) plans to invest more in private equity, real estate and cryptocurrency, which can be complex and risky. To pave the way, the Department of Labor has proposed rules that would make it harder for employees to hold companies liable for how they oversee retirement plans.
Employers are required to serve the best interests of their employees when choosing investment options. Under the proposed changes, a company that follows a certain process would get the benefit of the doubt in court, making it harder for workers to sue over the management of their 401(k).
A spokesperson for the Department of Labor did not respond to requests for comment. In an announcement from March, the department said the proposed rule change will “democratize access to alternative investments in 401(k) plans” and “lower litigation risks” for employers who are acting with good judgment.
The new rules, expected to be finalized this year, also raise broader questions: What investment options are already offered in people’s retirement accounts, and what are people paying in fees?
We’ve asked the public to send us their annual 401(k) disclosures so we can understand the range of funds and fees people have in their accounts. (Want to send us yours? Here’s how.) So far, we’ve heard from more than 200 people, many of whom also asked us questions about their plans. To find the answers, we spoke with eight economists, lawyers and retirement benefit experts.
If you have questions about your specific retirement plan, experts recommend talking to a fee-only financial planner who will serve as a fiduciary (which means they must provide advice in your best financial interest, not theirs). You can check a financial adviser’s qualifications by searching here.
Under the Labor Department’s proposed rule change, employers who show that they’ve considered a set of six factors when choosing investments and document their reasoning when building a plan should have greater protection from a potential lawsuit.
That liability tends to sit with your employer because they have final say over your plan’s investment options, even though companies usually hire firms like Fidelity or Vanguard to run the plan, and those firms often suggest which funds to include.
A company could document its reasoning for choosing to offer certain investment options and still act imprudently, said Tim Hauser, who was the deputy assistant secretary at the Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration until last December. In his three-plus decades there, he encountered cases in which companies “generated a lot of paper” to explain their reasoning but, ultimately, didn’t make wise financial decisions based on the information available to them.
Some retirement plans are stuck in investments with bloated fees and costly add-ons. Share your standard plan documents with us to help reveal which financial products companies are pushing, and what they’re charging workers.
Monique Morrissey, a senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a June letter that the proposal would “gut protections for retirement savers” and prioritize maximizing investment returns over balancing risk. She cited a 2025 AARP survey finding most Americans don’t think it’s important to be able to access private market investments or cryptocurrency in their retirement accounts.
But Bonnie Treichel, the founder of Endeavor Retirement, a consulting firm for retirement advisers, said the proposed rules are a framework not a mandate. Employers could offer these investments, but that doesn’t mean they’ll rush to add riskier investment options.
To find out if the rule change may affect your 401(k), ask your plan administrator, often someone in your human resources department, whether the company plans to offer new investment options. (The plan administrator is often listed on the same document that lists your fees; find out how to access that information in the form on this post.)
How do I know if my 401(k) is in good shape?
For many people, a 401(k) only needs close attention when starting a job, when leaving a job and when closing in on retirement. The rest of the time, it mostly runs itself. Still, experts we interviewed said it’s worth checking in on the plan once a year as fees and fund options can change.
A healthy account comes down to three basics: how much you save, how much risk you take and how much you pay in fees, experts say. Only the first is entirely up to you. The other two you manage from a menu of options your employer builds.
The more you save — and the earlier you start — the more time your money has to grow. Companies often offer to match part of your contribution, so if you can swing it, experts advise putting in at least enough to collect the full match. Otherwise you’re leaving money on the table.
You also control what your savings are invested in, based on the menu of investment options your plan offers.
Each fund you invest in carries a different level of risk. Stocks are more volatile than bonds, for example, and a balanced investment portfolio weighs the level of risk depending on how far you are from retirement. Younger investors decades away from tapping into their retirement fund may invest more in stocks, while older workers may prefer to have more in bonds.
The “easy button” is to choose a target-date fund that’ll automatically reallocate your investments to reduce your risk by shifting from stocks to bonds, or other less volatile investments, as you approach retirement.
“For most people, this is all the money they have,” said Jean-Pierre Aubry, an associate director at the Boston College Center for Retirement Research. “It’s not money you want to play around with.”
How can I tell if I’m paying high fees?
Compounded over time, even small differences in fees have a huge impact on your retirement savings. By the Labor Department’s own math, 1% in additional fees can shrink a nest egg at retirement by 28%.
Federal law requires employers to make sure employees are paying reasonable fees. Since 2012, the Labor Department also requires companies to send a disclosure form to employees listing all funds and fees. (That’s the annual disclosure we’re asking people to send to us. If you want to send us yours, find instructions on the form in this post.) Still, the Government Accountability Office found nearly 4 in 10 people don’t fully understand the fees they’re paying on their retirement plan.
The number you should watch for is each fund’s expense ratio: the fees firms charge employees for owning or investing in a fund, taken as a percentage of the money you have in it. An expense ratio of 0.5% means you pay a $5 fee per year for every $1,000 you’ve invested. To find the fees you’re paying, look for your annual disclosure on your plan’s website or ask your HR department. (See instructions for your specific plan here.)
If most funds on your 401(k) menu have an expense ratio over 1%, that should be a “red flag” that it’s a high-cost plan, said Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning at Morningstar.
Even 0.75% or 0.5% is “actually pretty high by 401(k) standards,” said Quinn Curtis, a law professor at University of Virginia who has studied the litigation around 401(k) fees.
The cheapest options are typically index funds, which mirror a slice of the market like the S&P 500 instead of paying a manager to pick stocks. Workers are gravitating to these passive, low-cost investments and the firms are competing to win over investors, which is driving down fees even more. Most index fund fees are under or around 0.1%, Benz said. If your index fund is charging several times that, experts say it’s worth asking why or finding another option.
When you check your 401(k) plan once a year, make sure you’re still in the funds with the lowest available fees, Aubry said.
And be wary of offers for personalized portfolios at the click of a button, Treichel said. These services often charge additional fees.
“Nothing in life is free,” she said. “So, if it looks free, look further.”
How can I compare my 401(k) to plans offered by similar companies?
There’s no easy way. No free database exists where you can, say, type in your employer name and see how its 401(k) investment options compare to what other companies offer. But there are a few general trends to be aware of.
The size of your company matters. Smaller companies tend to get offered retirement plans with higher fees, according to research. Larger companies have more employee money and therefore leverage, and tend to negotiate lower fees. So, if you work for a smaller company, experts said you may want to be especially vigilant about your plan’s investment options.
Other signs of a good plan: your employer pays some or all of the administrative costs and your employer offers a matching contribution, experts said.
And more choices don’t necessarily mean better ones. Most people don’t have the time or the expertise to understand the investment funds available to them, Curtis said. A well-designed retirement plan gives workers a curated set of low-cost investment options that’ll “meet the needs of most investors.”
What if I don’t like my retirement plan?
Start with your plan administrator, often someone in your company’s HR department, experts say. Tell them that you aren’t happy with the investment offerings and the associated fees, and lobby for additional options.
If you believe the people overseeing your 401(k) plan have been careless, disloyal or negligent, resulting in a smaller nest egg for your retirement, you can contact the Department of Labor, Hauser said. An employee benefit adviser should follow up with you to learn more and may refer your case to the enforcement division for further investigation.
Under federal law, you can also file a lawsuit against your employer.
But Hauser said it may be difficult for the average person to police the options in their 401(k) plan. Much of the responsibility falls on employees, whether or not they are well-versed in investing, he said. That can mean people invest in their retirement fund for decades before they notice the high fees that cut into their potential retirement savings.
“People consistently underestimate the impact of even small differences in fees,” Hauser said.
The free statewide gathering connected caregivers with 50 service providers while emphasizing that those caring for others also need support, practical resources and time to protect their own health.
By George D. Rotsch, Editor of Delaware LIVE
DOVER — A capacity crowd of 400 caregivers gathered Wednesday at the Rollins Center at Bally’s Dover for the 16th annual “Taking Care of YOU” Caregiver Conference.
Registration for the free conference closed after all available spaces were reserved, reflecting the growing demand for caregiver support and resources across Delaware.
Hosted by Easterseals Delaware & Maryland’s Eastern Shore and co-sponsored by the Delaware Division of Services for Aging and Adults with Physical Disabilities, the conference connected caregivers with 50 companies and community organizations providing respite care, health services, assistive technology, legal guidance, education and other resources.
The strong attendance reinforced Easterseals’ position as one of Delaware’s leading sources of support for families caring for seniors and people with disabilities.
Caregivers turn out for help and connections
Jen Batog, director of marketing for Easterseals Delaware & Maryland’s Eastern Shore, said the turnout demonstrated that caregivers are eager to find assistance and connect with people who understand their experiences.
“We were thrilled to see caregivers so excited to seek help, discover new resources and spend the day talking with other caregivers,” Batog said. “This event shows that the number of Delawareans caring for a senior or a loved one with special needs continues to grow, and we are grateful that Easterseals can be there to help.”
Batog thanked the state of Delaware, participating vendors, community partners and Easterseals staff members who worked together to organize the conference and make its resources available to caregivers.
The exhibitors reflected the wide range of services caregivers may need during different stages of their journey. Participants included the newly reorganized Delaware chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, MeadowWood Behavioral Health Hospital, AARP Delaware, Delaware NeuroRehab, PWW Law, PACE Your LIFE and WeCare at the Milford Wellness Village.
Technology innovator Wisdom and its partner, Griswold Home Care, also participated, along with many other organizations offering health care, in-home assistance, education and community resources.
Taking care of the caregiver
The conference’s “Taking Care of YOU” theme focused on caregiver well-being, balance and self-care — concerns that often receive less attention than the needs of the person receiving care.
The program included a caregiver panel titled “What I Do to Take Care of ME!,” opportunities to meet service providers and a session focused on kindness and self-compassion. The combination of education, peer discussion and access to providers gave caregivers an opportunity to find practical assistance while connecting with others facing similar challenges.
The conference also reflected Easterseals’ broader role in Delaware. Rather than providing a single service, the organization helps families navigate a complicated network of health, disability, aging and community resources.
Its caregiver programs include case management, support groups, educational workshops, respite assistance and demonstrations of technology designed to improve safety and independence.
Burnout is more than being busy
Keynote speaker Heather Volkema, client success manager at Trualta, told caregivers that burnout is not simply the result of having too much to do.
Volkema has more than a decade of health care experience. She began her career working with hospice patients and their families, later developed caregiver-education programs and served as operating director of an in-home care organization before joining Trualta.
She said caregivers frequently balance emotional and physical demands with jobs, family responsibilities and circumstances they cannot control. Those pressures can lead to exhaustion, anxiety, irritability, isolation and feelings of being overwhelmed or taken for granted.
Volkema’s central message was that caregivers must protect their own health if they are going to continue caring effectively for someone else. Many hesitate to seek assistance because they feel guilty, fear rejection or believe they should be able to manage everything alone.
Asking for help, she said, is “a sign of strength and self-awareness,” not an admission of failure.
Practical ways to reduce the pressure
Volkema encouraged caregivers to identify the responsibilities creating the greatest stress and make specific requests of relatives or friends.
Instead of simply asking someone to help, a caregiver could ask a family member to provide transportation to an appointment, purchase groceries or take responsibility for a particular personal-care task.
She also recommended that caregivers establish boundaries, schedule personal time and take even brief breaks when longer periods of respite are unavailable. Support groups, community organizations, professional assistance and online resources can reduce isolation and make difficult responsibilities more manageable.
Caregivers should begin with small steps, share responsibilities whenever possible and recognize that protecting their own health is an essential part of caring for another person, Volkema said.
Support continues throughout the year
Easterseals’ work with caregivers continues beyond the annual conference through its Caregiver Resource Centers in New Castle and at the Milford Wellness Village. Caregivers can speak with case managers, obtain educational materials and receive referrals to programs addressing their particular circumstances.
The organization also offers monthly support groups, free educational workshops and virtual office hours. Its Resource and Technology Demonstration Centers contain hundreds of assistive devices that caregivers can examine before deciding whether a product could make a home safer or help a loved one remain more independent.
Respite programs can give caregivers time away from their daily responsibilities while ensuring that a family member continues receiving appropriate care. Easterseals’ adult day programs and Camp Fairlee also provide structured activities for participants while giving caregivers time to rest, work or handle other responsibilities.
In 2024, Easterseals reported serving more than 7,970 people directly through programs including children’s therapy, adult day services and supported employment. Another 44,280 people were reached through education, training, information and referrals.
The conference’s capacity attendance illustrated why that network matters. Caregivers may perform much of their work privately in homes across Delaware, but Wednesday’s gathering showed that they constitute a large community with shared challenges.
Supporting that community requires more than encouragement. It requires education, respite, practical tools and a trusted organization capable of connecting families with the right assistance at the right time.
To-go box
Event: 16th annual “Taking Care of YOU” Caregiver Conference Host: Easterseals Delaware & Maryland’s Eastern Shore Attendance: Capacity crowd of 400 caregivers Participants: 50 companies and community organizations Keynote: Heather Volkema, client success manager at Trualta Caregiver assistance:resources@esdel.org or 302-221-2291
An ad from a super PAC supporting Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley features a heart-wrenching testimonial from the father of a woman who was murdered in 2025. The ad falsely implies the accused murderer was one of the prisoners released during the COVID-19 pandemic when Whatley’s Democratic opponent, Roy Cooper, was governor of North Carolina.
The problem: Cooper had nothing to do with the accused murderer’s release. The suspect was released from a prison in South Carolina, not North Carolina.
Here’s how the ad from the Senate Leadership Fund, or SLF PAC, tiptoes the line, implying, but not directly stating, that Cooper was indirectly responsible for the woman’s death.
“Logan was the most caring, loving person,” Stephen Federico, the father of a 22-year-old murdered in 2025, says in the ad while choking back tears. “It was a home invasion. Went to the house where Logan was sleeping and he pulled her out of bed and forced her on her knees and stuck a shotgun in her, left side of her chest, and pulled the trigger for no reason. Logan was a casualty of an agenda. Roy Cooper let 3,500 criminals out on the street; 18 of them were murders. Forty years of Roy Cooper is enough.”
The claim about Cooper releasing “3,500 criminals out on the street” refers to a court settlement reached during the COVID-19 pandemic. But there’s some important context missing from that narrative. As governor, Cooper resisted calls to release prisoners to ease safety concerns. He was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union and other activists. After a judge issued a preliminary injunction in favor of the ACLU and called on the state to come up with a plan to reduce the prison population, Cooper reached a settlement to allow the release of 3,500 prisoners. But again, none of them was the man accused of killing Logan Federico.
South Carolina did not expedite the release of prisoners during the pandemic (though it, too, was sued by the ACLU and others). However, in addition to North Carolina, numerous other states did implement expedited release policies to reduce their prison populations in response to the pandemic, including states like Iowa and Arkansas with Republican governors.
We reached out to SLF PAC about its ad, but we did not get a response.
“These attacks are false – this heinous crime was committed in South Carolina by a South Carolina criminal, but a Republican super PAC is using this tragedy for political gain,” a spokesperson for Cooper’s Senate campaign told us.
Cooper and Whatley are vying for an open Senate seat being vacated by Republican Thom Tillis, who is retiring. The Cook Political Report says that this Republican seat is the one Democrats “are most likely to flip.”
Logan Federico’s Murder
Logan Federico was a resident of North Carolina, but she was visiting friends in Columbia, South Carolina, when she was shot and killed in a home invasion. The man charged with killing her, Alexander Dickey, had a lengthy criminal history in South Carolina.
A criminal history report obtained by WIS News 10 in Columbia shows that prior to Federico’s murder, Dickey had been arrested nearly a dozen times and charged with nearly 40 crimes, including burglary and robbery. A WIS 10 investigation in June 2025 revealed that flaws in the criminal reporting system potentially contributed to a shorter sentence in 2023, on a charge that could have kept Dickey behind bars for years.
As the WIS 10 investigation showed, Dickey was arrested in 2023 on a burglary charge and pleaded guilty to a first offense, third-degree burglary. But it wasn’t a first offense for third-degree burglary — Dickey had been sentenced for a first offense in 2014.
Rick Hubbard, the state’s 11th Circuit solicitor, told WIS 10 that his office did not know at the time about Dickey’s previous burglary arrests and convictions. So while Dickey could have faced up to 10 years in prison, he was offered a plea deal for time served (411 days awaiting trial), and was placed on probation.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, or SLED, said it never received fingerprints from the 2014 burglary arrest, so Dickey’s earlier conviction was not apparent to prosecutors. According to WIS 10, “Had they known, Hubbard said his office would not have prosecuted Dickey’s case as a first offense and Dickey would have likely received a longer sentence.”
Since his daughter’s murder, Stephen Federico has been a prominent advocate pushing lawmakers to keep repeat offenders behind bars for longer.
In April, South Carolina Republicans Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has since passed away, and Rep. Russell Fry introduced what was called Logan’s Law. The legislation, which has not made it out of committee, would create a publicly accessible violent criminal offender database (which is meant to hold judges and prosecutors accountable for lenient sentences), and would direct the creation of a report to Congress “identifying deficiencies in the sharing of fingerprint, warrant, and criminal history data between states and the federal government.”
So, there appear to have been flaws in South Carolina’s criminal record-keeping on Dickey that may have kept him from being behind bars when he is alleged to have killed Federico. But none of that has anything to do with North Carolina, or Cooper.
Pandemic Prisoner Releases
In the ad, Stephen Federico says his daughter was “a casualty of an agenda.” He then immediately says, “Roy Cooper let 3,500 criminals out on the street; 18 of them were murders.”
Whatley, himself, has alsomade the prisoner release a key campaign issue.
There were thousands of prisoners released early during the pandemic, but there’s important context missing from that attack. Cooper resisted early calls in the pandemic to commute sentences to reduce the prison population.
On April 20, 2020, the ACLU, the NAACP and several inmates sued Cooper and other state prison officials saying they had “failed to meaningfully decrease the number of people in Department of Public Safety” facilities and that “[w]ithout timely relief from the courts, COVID-19 will continue to sweep through the state prisons, inflicting terrible suffering and death.”
On June 16 of that year, Wake County Superior Court Judge Vinston Rozier Jr. granted a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs, saying they were “likely” to “succeed on the merits of their claim that the conditions of confinement” violated the state constitution’s prohibitions against inflicting “cruel or unusual punishments.” The judge ordered the state to come up with a plan that would, in addition to other COVID-19 safety measures, reduce prison overcrowding.
Later, in December 2020, as COVID-19 cases in North Carolina prisons were rising, Rozier appointed a special master to review the state’s home confinement program and to provide recommendations for easing prison populations through eligible early release.
In February 2021, the two sides reached a settlement, with the state agreeing to the “early reentry” of 3,500 people in state custody within six months. (The plaintiffs had sought the release of as many as 18,000 prisoners.) According to The Assembly, a longform journalism news site, by the time the agreement was signed, more than 9,500 inmates had tested positive for COVID-19 and 47 had died.
“After [Cooper] fought against these releases in court, North Carolina law enforcement officials and parole officers looked to similar criteria President Trump used a year prior when his administration released thousands of federal prisoners due to COVID-19,” a spokesperson for the Cooper campaign told us.
As part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the CARES Act) signed by Trump in late March 2020, more than 13,000 federal prisoners were released from prison into home confinement. But the CARES Act excluded any prisoners convicted of violent crimes, sex offenses and terrorism-related crimes. That wasn’t entirely the case in North Carolina. While state officials initially indicated only nonviolent offenders would be among those released early, prison officials later clarified that some violent offenders due to be released in 2021, the year of the settlement, would also be included (provided they had served their minimum sentence).
The Charlotte Observer reported that the list also included 51 inmates serving life sentences. State officials say all were eligible for parole before the deal, and were not made eligible because of it. (In any case, the Cooper campaign says law enforcement officials and parole officers made the determinations about which prisoners were released, not Cooper.)
The agreement was criticized at the time by some Republicans, who argued Cooper should have continued to fight in court.
“A group I consider more liberal than me has sued an administration I consider more liberal than me, and a deal was reached,” Republican state Rep. Carson Smith said a week after the agreement was announced.
Representatives of the plaintiffs, however, described Cooper as consistently adversarial.
“The idea that, you know, Roy Cooper is somehow being attacked for doing too much here [to suport prisoner releases] is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard,” Daniel Bowes, director of policy and advocacy at the ACLU of North Carolina, told Carolina Public Press in March of 2021.
As the pandemic unfolded, “what we saw was a constant sort of reluctance to provide meaningful release,” Bowes said. “There was absolutely no sort of urgency that wasn’t pushed along by the litigation.”
“It was an extremely adversarial litigation,” Emancipate NC attorney Elizabeth Simpson told The Assembly.
Orlando Rodriguez, special deputy attorney in the North Carolina Department of Justice, who represented the defendants, told Carolina Public Press the state feared more orders from the judge were coming. Indeed, the special master appointed to the case “said he was going to recommend that the state broaden the categories for who would be eligible for release,” Carolina Public Press reported.
The SLF ad also says that of the 3,500 prisoners released “18 of them were murders.”
That’s based on an analysis published in the New York Post on May 7 — and cited in the ad — that concluded nearly half of the 3,500 prisoners released went on to commit another criminal offense, many of them violent offenses.
While the ad leaves the impression that 18 of the people released were murderers, it’s actually that — as the New York Post put it — “A staggering 18 of the prisoners released have been charged with murder in the four years since.”
An analysis by The Assembly, however, concluded the New York Post story was misleading.
“Our analysis found that of the roughly 3,000 inmates who were released early because of the settlement, more than 90% would have been out by the end of 2021 anyway by virtue of completing their sentences,” The Assembly story stated. “The agreement allowed prison officials to let them out early through a variety of methods—awarding credits for things like good behavior to shave time off their sentences, releasing qualified nonviolent inmates to house arrest, and accelerating parole for eligible inmates serving life or long active sentences under a previous sentencing structure.”
Indeed, the Cooper campaign pointed out that more than half of the 18 individuals cited in the Post as murderers are alleged to have committed that crime after their scheduled pre-settlement release date for previous convictions. According to The Assembly, “at least seven of them were already out of prison before the settlement was even signed.” In other words, the Cooper campaign argues, the settlement had no part in most of the murders identified by the New York Post.
Whatley campaign spokesman DJ Griffin said, “While Cooper had the opportunity to fight this settlement in court (like Democrat Governors in Colorado and Illinois), he chose to settle, releasing thousands of convicted criminals back onto our streets.” Griffin claimed a number of people have been murdered by “criminals Roy Cooper released from prison early.”
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President denies visit was to gain support for Iran sanctions or due to fears that Putin plans to ‘test Nato resolve’
Donald Trump has downplayed a visit to Moscow by the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, as “semi-routine” after he turned up in the Russian capital unannounced, triggering a wave of speculation about the reasons for his trip.
Ratcliffe was reported to have flown to Moscow on a government transport plane on Tuesday in a rare visit after taking off from the Andrews air force base in Maryland.
Graham is listed provisionally for the November ballot and will face the winner of a three-way Democratic primary led by incumbent Kathy Jennings
By George D. Rotsch, Editor of Delaware LIVE
Dave Graham, a U.S. Army and Delaware National Guard veteran with decades of experience in state government and public finance, has been nominated by the Delaware Republican Party as its 2026 candidate for attorney general.
The nomination moves Graham from a prospective candidate seeking party support to the Republican standard-bearer for the Nov. 3 general election.
The Delaware Department of Elections added Graham to its general-election candidate list Monday, Aug. 24. As of Wednesday, the department listed his candidacy as “provisional,” indicating that the nomination has been received but has not yet been given “qualified” status. The department also publicly announced that Graham had been nominated by the Republican Party. Delaware Department of Elections candidate list
Graham will face the winner of the Sept. 15 Democratic primary. Incumbent Attorney General Kathy Jennings, the Delaware Democratic Party’s endorsed candidate, is seeking a third term and is widely considered the favorite. She faces Dwayne Bensing and Patty Rickman in the primary. Democratic primary candidate list
From late entry to Republican nominee
Graham announced July 30 on “The Rick Jensen Show” on WDEL that he was seeking the Republican nomination. No Republican had filed for attorney general before the regular July 14 filing deadline, leaving the party an opportunity to fill the ballot vacancy through its nomination process.
Graham asked Delaware Republican Party Chairman Gene Truono and other party leaders to place him on the November ballot. The party’s decision this week ensures that Delaware voters will have both a Republican and Democratic choice in the statewide race.
His late entry has a precedent in Delaware politics, although the circumstances and election rules are not identical.
In 1976, Democrats concluded their state convention without nominating a candidate for state treasurer. Tom Carper, then a 29-year-old employee of the Delaware Office of Economic Development, subsequently entered the contest, secured the Democratic nomination and won the general election.
That victory began a nearly five-decade career in elected office that included service as state treasurer, congressman, governor and U.S. senator.
Graham emphasizes service and financial experience
Graham has served in the U.S. Army and Delaware National Guard. He has worked for the Delaware Department of Finance since 2003 and previously accumulated approximately 25 years of experience as a certified public accountant.
He is expected to make military service, financial oversight, government accountability and responsible management central themes of his campaign.
Graham is not a lawyer, but the Delaware Constitution does not require the attorney general to hold a law degree or belong to the Delaware Bar.
The constitution establishes the attorney general as an elected statewide officer serving a four-year term but does not list legal practice or bar membership among the qualifications for the office.
Graham is likely to argue that his experience managing financial and government operations would bring a different perspective to the Department of Justice. His Democratic opponent, regardless of who wins the primary, will bring a more traditional legal background to the race.
Democratic primary comes first
Jennings remains the best-known candidate in the contest. She was first elected attorney general in 2018 and won a second term in 2022. She is now seeking another four-year term.
Before becoming attorney general, Jennings served as a prosecutor and held several leadership positions within the Delaware Department of Justice.
Bensing and Rickman are challenging Jennings in the Democratic primary, meaning Graham will not know his November opponent until Democratic voters make their selection Sept. 15.
Jennings’ incumbency, party endorsement and statewide campaign organization make her the likely nominee, but the Democratic contest must be decided by voters.
Graham has run statewide before
Graham has pursued statewide office several times, generally presenting himself as an outsider focused on accountability and government integrity.
He ran as a write-in candidate for governor in 2012 and as the Independent Party candidate for attorney general in 2014. Graham received approximately 2.1% of the vote in the 2014 general election, which Democrat Matt Denn won.
In 2020, Graham sought the Republican nomination for governor but lost in the party primary.
His nomination for attorney general gives him a place in a major-party general-election contest and prevents Republicans from leaving the statewide office uncontested.
Delaware’s attorney general serves as the state’s chief law enforcement officer and leads the Department of Justice, which oversees criminal prosecutions, consumer protection, civil litigation involving the state and other legal matters.
The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 3.
TO GO
Republican candidate: David C. “Dave” Graham
Status: Nominated by the Delaware Republican Party and provisionally listed by the Department of Elections
Background: U.S. Army and Delaware National Guard veteran; former CPA; Delaware Department of Finance employee since 2003
Democratic primary: Kathy Jennings, Dwayne Bensing and Patty Rickman
DSU is one of five universities partnering in the new National Science Foundation AI Institute for Human-AI Cooperation, known as HAIC. The five-year initiative brings Delaware State together with the University of Delaware, University of Pennsylvania, University of Florida and Princeton University.
HAIC Institute provides DSU with a framework to develop and build its AI and data science initiatives
By John Riddle, Contributing Journalist, Delaware LIVE
Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how people work, learn and receive medical care. Now Delaware State University will have a significant role in a $21.5 million national effort examining how humans and AI can work together, particularly in health care and rehabilitation.
DSU is one of five universities partnering in the new National Science Foundation AI Institute for Human-AI Cooperation, known as HAIC. The five-year initiative brings Delaware State together with the University of Delaware, University of Pennsylvania, University of Florida and Princeton University.
The collaboration will connect researchers and clinicians working in artificial intelligence, health care and rehabilitation with experts in fields including engineering, robotics and neuroscience. At DSU, the project is also expected to create new research and training opportunities for students while expanding the university’s existing work in AI and data science.
DSU’s participation will be led by its College of Agriculture, Science and Technology, or CAST. Faculty will contribute to the institute’s research, while the university will also take on an important role in bringing other Historically Black Colleges and Universities into the national initiative.
Dr. Hacene Boukari, associate dean for research in CAST and a professor in DSU’s Physics and Engineering Program, will serve as a co-principal investigator for the HAIC Institute and as the university’s site lead.
“HAIC Institute provides DSU with a framework to develop and build its AI and data science initiatives while integrating the University’s work with major institutions conducting foundational AI research and exploring its applications in rehabilitation and health care in general,” Dr. Boukari said.
DSU is already assembling an interdisciplinary team through CAST that includes Dr. Fatima Boukari, Dr. Abdallah Alsamani and Dr. Lianxin Xin. Team members bring experience in optical physics, applied mathematics and AI and data science. The university’s participation could eventually broaden as faculty in other fields find ways to incorporate artificial intelligence into their research.
The project is expected to support research, workforce development and new facilities at DSU, including a laboratory that will support the institute’s work and faculty conducting AI-driven research.
“This partnership strengthens the research infrastructure we’re building across Delaware State University’s academic programs. Working alongside the University of Delaware, Penn, Princeton, and Florida on human-AI cooperation gives our faculty and students access to a
caliber of collaboration that elevates everything we do in the classroom and the lab,” said Dr. Patrice Gilliam, Provost and Chief Academic Officer at Delaware State University.
Preparing students for an AI-driven future
One of DSU’s biggest responsibilities in the initiative will involve preparing students for careers and research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and health care.
Dr. Boukari is helping develop a collaborative summer internship program involving all five HAIC partner universities. Students are expected to participate in projects exploring how AI can be used in physical therapy and rehabilitation.
The program will primarily target undergraduates, although opportunities could eventually be available to graduate students.
Rather than learning about AI only in a classroom or computer lab, students will have an opportunity to see the challenges the technology is being asked to solve. They will learn from clinicians and rehabilitation specialists while also working with faculty members conducting AI research. Workshops introducing students to artificial intelligence are also expected to be incorporated into the summer program.
“This partnership reflects exactly what Delaware State University stands for: rigorous research paired with real pathways for students. Our role in coordinating HAIC’s summer AI camps means students from HBCUs, community colleges, and across our region get direct exposure to the kind of human-AI collaboration that’s reshaping rehabilitation and health care. We are committed to students seeing themselves in it,” said Dr. Fareeda Griffith, Associate Provost at Delaware State University.
CAST will also use the partnership to help expand DSU’s data science programs and encourage more students to enter AI-related fields.
“The College of Agriculture, Science, and Technology at Delaware State University will enthusiastically join and support the efforts of HAIC,” said Dr. Cherese Winstead, Dean of CAST. “I will work to facilitate the implementation of the objectives of the institute, including the growth of data science programs and the increase of a diversified workforce in AI.”
DSU to lead HBCU involvement
Delaware State’s role will extend beyond its Dover campus.
DSU will lead efforts to expand HBCU participation in HAIC, with 13 HBCUs agreeing to participate in the broader initiative, according to Dr. Boukari.
That responsibility could position Delaware State as a model for how HBCUs can participate in large-scale national artificial intelligence research programs and connect their students and faculty with opportunities that might otherwise be difficult to access.
“Our experience with the AI Institute will be a model for other HBCUs,” Dr. Boukari said. “We will be an HBCU leader in this environment.”
The institute’s research will focus on a question becoming increasingly important as AI moves into more areas of everyday life: How can artificial intelligence work with people rather than simply replacing or automating what people do?
Health care and rehabilitation offer particularly important testing grounds for that idea.
Researchers plan to examine how AI systems can use information such as movement patterns, physiological signals, clinical records and patient feedback. The goal is to determine how those systems can assist health professionals in making decisions tailored more closely to individual patients.
For Delaware State, participation in HAIC provides more than a place in a major research project. It connects DSU students and faculty with a national network of researchers at some of the country’s leading universities while helping the university build its own capabilities in artificial intelligence, data science and biomedical research.
And as AI becomes increasingly embedded in health care and other professions, the partnership gives DSU students something particularly valuable: the opportunity to help shape how the technology is used, rather than simply entering a workforce already transformed by it.
Former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth joined defense officials for a facility tour at the opening of General Dynamics’ artillery factory in 2024. Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Mejia/U.S. Army
The U.S. Army paid General Dynamics $533 million for an artillery factory that failed to produce a single usable shell.
Instead of efficient, state-of-the-art production lines, half a billion dollars in taxpayer funding paid for machines that kept failing in bizarre ways, former workers told ProPublica’s Jesse Coburn. Giant robot arms would catch fire. The Texas factory’s signature device often cracked the steel meant for the shells. And workers regularly had to take a sledgehammer to certain machines to try to make them function properly. But the machines still botched nearly every shell.
The boondoggle, which included a real-life dumpster fire, was described as an “absolute disaster,” by one former official who worked in an Army office overseeing the project. The official, like others interviewed for the story, spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In a detailed statement, the Army told ProPublica it exercises “rigorous oversight” and that, “where vendors fail to meet contract specifications” — as at the General Dynamics artillery factory — ”we are evaluating contract performance, seeking recoupment of funds, and pivoting resources.”
General Dynamics declined an interview request, but the company has said it “met or exceeded requirements,” according to a Department of Defense inspector general report. In a statement, a company spokesperson told ProPublica its reporting “fundamentally mischaracterizes the circumstances,” but did not respond to a request to specify our reporting’s alleged errors.
To chronicle what went wrong, Coburn interviewed 36 people who’ve worked for the Army, the Pentagon, General Dynamics and the White House, and he reviewed internal company documents as well as photos and video from inside the factory. Here are the lapses in planning and execution Coburn’s reporting uncovered — and some of the consequences of those mistakes.
The Red Flags
The Army awarded the project to General Dynamics in a rushed process despite significant unknowns.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Biden administration rushed to boost production of artillery shells to support Ukraine’s war effort. General Dynamics was the only company producing the 155 mm metal shell bodies in the U.S. at that time, mainly in a century-old facility in Pennsylvania.
The company could have simply replicated the facility’s traditional manufacturing method, which dated back to the time of the Korean War, to ramp up production. But General Dynamics proposed using a state-of-the-art production line from Repkon, a Turkish company virtually unknown in American defense.
Repkon said other countries were already using its machinery to build an older, simpler model of the artillery shells. But it wasn’t clear the Turkish equipment could work with the particular steel used to make the Army’s newer model of 155 mm shells. And Repkon said the Army and General Dynamics could not inspect full artillery production lines in action, citing customer privacy.
Repkon did not respond to requests for comment.
The Department of Defense did not competitively bid the project.
The Army could’ve insisted that General Dynamics more fully demonstrate that Repkon’s machines could perform the desired work. But that would’ve taken time, and — as a former Army official told Coburn — “there was incredible pressure to go fast.”
In November 2022, the Army gave General Dynamics the first in a series of contract awards for the artillery factory. Then, Congress granted the Department of Defense the power to award money for Ukraine-related causes without some of the usual contracting safeguards meant to ensure taxpayer money doesn’t go to waste. That meant the Army could give General Dynamics no-bid awards and the company could start work on the project before finalizing the contract terms with the government.
The U.S. ended up ordering three Repkon production lines — instead of just one — without knowing for certain whether they could make shells that met the Army’s specifications. (The Army said it selected General Dynamics because of the company’s unique artillery production experience).
The Army did not thoroughly vet the proposal before approving it.
Both the Army and General Dynamics sent staffers to Turkey to inspect the Repkon machines. But they never inspected a full production line in action, and they didn’t send enough experts who could identify potential defects in Repkon’s equipment, four former General Dynamics and Army officials told ProPublica.
The Army also didn’t require General Dynamics to demonstrate it could use Repkon’s equipment to complete the entire production process and make shells that met the service’s specifications. (The Army said that “formal testing could not occur prior to full machinery installation.”)
In 2024, leaders from the Army and General Dynamics gathered in Texas to celebrate the factory’s opening. But the machines were barely functioning.
Here’s how the rushed planning from the Army and General Dynamics played out in the factory.
The Consequences
In Texas, robotic arms caught fire and smashed into equipment.
Twelve former factory workers told Coburn that problems quickly piled up inside the factory. Machines meant to begin giving the shells perfectly smooth noses would, instead, mangle them into swirls that looked like soft-serve ice cream.
The robotic arms had a tendency to swing out of control, smashing into things around the factory. Workers talked about the arms going “rogue.” Sometimes, a machine in the factory would be seen moving on its own, controlled remotely by someone in Turkey, spooking workers in the Texas factory.
Workers said smoke hung in the air inside the factory, and it’d reach desert-like temperatures when the furnaces or forging presses were on. Making matters worse, walls cracked, water flooded in when it rained and employees said the foundation of the buildings appeared to be shifting or sinking beneath them.
As progress at the artillery plant continued to stall, paranoia grew and rumors swirled among the American workers that the Turkish employees from Repkon might be purposefully sabotaging the machinery.
“It was astonishing how little progress we would make, month after month, year after year,” one former worker told ProPublica. “People started speculating, ‘I wonder if they’re spying on us.’” (The Army said it has no evidence of sabotage or spying.)
General Dynamics failed to meet a number of milestones at the facility, including failing to perform scheduled first article tests, which would’ve demonstrated the factory could produce shells that met the Army’s requirements.
The Army hasn’t required General Dynamics to pay the money back.
General Dynamics, one of the world’s largest defense contractors, and Repkon haven’t been held publicly accountable for the taxpayer-funded failure. The Army also hasn’t made General Dynamics pay back the money. (The service said it will recover funding from the project by getting unspecified discounts from General Dynamics on production orders.)
In August 2025, the Army halted work on two of the three production lines at the factory. But the Army didn’t unilaterally terminate the contract awards. In December 2025, the government paid the company $26.3 million in “progress payments” for two production lines — although the lines had never made a usable shell.
The Army says it won’t spend any more money on the artillery plant. But since the Army partially halted work at the factory last summer, the same unit of General Dynamics responsible for the struggling facility has won contract awards worth $2.5 billion, according to the Army. (The service said this was for “distinct production lines and critical national defense requirements” unrelated to the Texas factory.)
Having experienced the failure of a little-proven technology in its factory, General Dynamics has announced it will team up with yet another unheard-of partner promising technological innovation. The new solution? Artificial intelligence.
For longtime fans, the evening offers an opportunity to revisit music connected to their lives. For younger guests, it provides something recordings and movie clips cannot fully reproduce: the communal excitement of hearing the songs performed by a live band in a historic theater.
The veteran tribute artist will recreate the excitement of an Elvis concert Friday in the historic Main Hall in downtown Wilmington.
WILMINGTON — The music, movement and unmistakable stage presence of Elvis Presley will return to downtown Wilmington when Jesse Garron’s Tribute to Elvis performs Friday, Aug. 28, at The Queen.
The all-ages show begins at 8 p.m., with doors opening at 7 p.m. in The Queen’s Main Hall.
Garron has performed his tribute since 1997, developing a full concert experience supported by live musicians and female backup vocalists. His show focuses heavily on Presley’s concert years, complete with period-inspired costumes, audience interaction and the scarf serenades associated with Elvis’ Las Vegas performances.
It is designed to be more than a collection of familiar songs. Garron attempts to recreate the energy and emotional connection that made an Elvis concert an event.
Known professionally as “The Closest Thing to the King,” Garron was inducted into the International Elvis Tribute Artist Hall of Fame in 2019. His stage name also carries a personal connection to Presley: Jesse Garon Presley was Elvis’ twin brother, who was stillborn.
A performer inspired by Elvis
Garron became interested in Presley at age 4 and first performed an Elvis tribute during a high school talent show at 17, according to his biography.
He later moved from performing with prerecorded tracks to leading a professional touring production. The current show features a live band, backup singers and arrangements intended to capture the sound and scale of Presley’s later concerts.
Garron has performed across the country and was invited to appear for the U.S. Embassy in Algiers. His tribute has also shared bills with performers including Wayne Newton, The Commodores, Little Big Town and Bret Michaels.
The show reaches across Presley’s catalog, drawing from rock ’n’ roll, pop, country, gospel and traditional ballads. Songs featured in Garron’s repertoire include “Burning Love,” “Always on My Mind,” “In the Ghetto,” “Moody Blue” and “You Gave Me a Mountain.”
More information about Garron and samples of his performances are available on the performer’s official website.
Why Elvis continues to matter
Nearly 50 years after Presley’s death, his music continues to find listeners who were not alive during his career.
Older fans may connect Elvis with personal memories of his recordings, films and television appearances. Younger listeners often encounter him through movies, streaming services, social media and the artists he influenced.
Presley’s lasting importance also comes from the range of his music. His performances brought together elements of country, blues, gospel and rhythm and blues during a transformative period in American popular culture. His voice, clothing, movement and command of an audience helped establish a model for the modern music superstar.
His career remains part of a more complicated conversation about the Black artists and musical traditions that helped shape rock ’n’ roll. That history does not diminish Presley’s impact, but it provides important context for understanding the cultural moment in which he became famous.
For tribute performers such as Garron, the goal is to keep the live experience accessible while acknowledging that there was only one Elvis.
A fitting room for a larger-than-life show
The Queen offers an appropriate setting for that experience. Its Main Hall combines a classical balcony, carved pillars and a historic pipe organ with contemporary lighting, sound and a full-size stage.
The building became a movie theater in 1916, when Presley was still decades away from becoming a film star himself. It closed as a theater in 1959 and remained dark for more than 50 years before reopening as a live entertainment venue in 2011.
That combination of restored history and modern concert production gives Garron’s performance a sense of occasion. The room is intimate enough for his audience interaction but large and theatrical enough to support the costumes, vocals and spectacle associated with Elvis’ concert years.
For longtime fans, the evening offers an opportunity to revisit music connected to their lives. For younger guests, it provides something recordings and movie clips cannot fully reproduce: the communal excitement of hearing the songs performed by a live band in a historic theater.
To Go
What: Jesse Garron’s Tribute to Elvis
When: Friday, Aug. 28, at 8 p.m.; doors open at 7 p.m.
Where: The Queen, Main Hall, 500 N. Market St., Wilmington
Admission: All ages; ticket prices and availability are listed on The Queen’s event page.
Box office: Open Wednesdays from 2 to 6 p.m. and 30 minutes before performances
Parking: Street parking is generally free after 5 p.m. The Renaissance Centre Garage is located nearby on East Fifth Street between Market and King streets.
Caption: Delaware’s state champion will represent our state at the Poetry Out Loud National Finals, scheduled for April 26-28, 2027, in Washington.
Registration is open through Oct. 30 for a statewide program that helps high school students strengthen reading, public speaking, and self-confidence through poetry
Delaware high schools and community organizations can now register for the 2026-27 Poetry Out Loud program, giving students an opportunity to bring poetry to life while developing communication and performance skills.
The national arts education program invites students to select, memorize and recite classic and contemporary poems. Competitions begin in classrooms, schools and participating organizations, with local winners advancing to the Delaware state finals Feb. 18, 2027, at the Smyrna Opera House.
One state champion will represent Delaware at the Poetry Out Loud National Finals, scheduled for April 26-28, 2027, in Washington.
Registration remains open through Oct. 30.
Finding a voice through poetry
Poetry Out Loud is designed to move poetry beyond silent reading by asking students to interpret a poem and present it before an audience.
The experience can strengthen reading comprehension, communication and public speaking skills while helping students build confidence.
“Poetry Out Loud gives students an opportunity to experience poetry in a different way: to study it, make meaning from it, and bring it to life in their own voice,” Delaware Education Secretary Cindy Marten said.
Marten encouraged high schools and students across the state to participate.
“Every student deserves opportunities to find their voice, share what they have to say, and know the world is listening,” she said. “They will be heard.”
All Delaware high school students are eligible, including those attending public, private, parochial, independent, charter and home schools.
Free materials for teachers
Participating schools hold classroom and schoolwide competitions during the fall. Students choose their poems from Poetry Out Loud’s online anthology, which includes classic and contemporary works.
Teachers and program organizers receive access to free, standards-based materials, including the anthology, a teacher’s guide and instructional videos about poetry recitation.
The program can be incorporated into English, language arts, theater or public speaking instruction without requiring schools to purchase a separate curriculum.
“For 22 years, Poetry Out Loud has turned up remarkable young poets in every corner of Delaware, in our cities and our small towns, in public schools and private ones,” Delaware Division of the Arts Director Jessica Ball said.
Ball said the competition gives students a place to be heard while demonstrating the talent found throughout Delaware’s schools.
“We are grateful to the schools and teachers who open that door, and we hope even more will join them this year,” she said.
Delaware champion recalls experience
Natalia Gatti of Sussex Academy of Arts and Sciences won Delaware’s 2026 competition.
“Being named state champion is a dream come true,” Gatti said. “The whole experience was surreal. Meeting people who share the same passion for poetry was easily the best part of the whole event.”
Delaware’s previous champions have represented schools across all three counties, including Milford High School, Polytech High School, Delmar High School, Middletown High School, Hodgson Vo-Tech High School, Padua Academy and Wilmington Friends School.
Several schools have produced multiple champions. Maiss Hussein of Hodgson Vo-Tech won in 2023 and 2024, while Hannah Sturgis of Polytech won in 2015 and 2016. Tonisha Jones of Middletown High School won in 2008 and 2009.
National program reaches millions
Poetry Out Loud began in 2005 as a national poetry recitation program for high school students. More than 4.5 million students have participated since its launch.
The National Endowment for the Arts sponsors the initiative, which operates in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Delaware Division of the Arts administers the program locally.
A 2020 study commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts found that participation can support students’ academic, literary and social-emotional development while contributing to more vibrant school learning environments.
A total of $50,000 in awards and school stipends will be distributed during the 2027 national competition, including a $20,000 award for the national champion. Mid Atlantic Arts administers the prizes and national-final travel arrangements.
To Go Box
What: Poetry Out Loud 2026-27 student poetry recitation program
Who can participate: Students from Delaware public, private, parochial, independent, charter and home schools
Registration deadline: Oct. 30, 2026
Delaware state finals: Feb. 18, 2027, at the Smyrna Opera House
Federal officials say access to the Commercial Driver’s License Information System could help uncover licensing fraud, identify drivers who are not legally eligible to hold commercial licenses. Jennings and attorneys general from 20 other states argue the administration is attempting to take possession of state-owned records without clear legal authority. Image created with AI. 8/25/26
The legal fight pits immigration enforcement and highway safety against personal privacy, states’ rights and limits on federal power
Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings has joined a multistate legal challenge that temporarily blocked the Trump administration from obtaining personal information on approximately 17 million commercial drivers.
The case is more complicated than a straightforward fight between immigration enforcement and privacy.
Federal officials say access to the Commercial Driver’s License Information System could help uncover licensing fraud, identify drivers who are not legally eligible to hold commercial licenses and ensure states enforce national safety standards.
Jennings and attorneys general from 20 other states argue the administration is attempting to take possession of state-owned records without clear legal authority, adequate privacy protections or meaningful limits on how the information could be shared.
A federal judge concluded the states raised substantial legal objections and temporarily stopped the transfer while the case moves forward.
What the court ordered
Senior U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia granted a temporary restraining order preventing the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators from turning the participating states’ records over to the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration or other federal agencies.
The order also prevents federal officials from terminating more than $10 million in grants and contracts with the association because it has not produced the records.
The ruling is an important early victory for Jennings and the other attorneys general, but it is not a final decision declaring the administration’s actions illegal.
To obtain the temporary order, the states had to demonstrate they were likely to succeed on at least some of their claims, that releasing the information could cause irreparable harm and that temporarily blocking the transfer was in the public interest.
The court will next consider whether to issue a preliminary injunction that could keep the restrictions in place during the litigation.
“What happened here is simple: The Trump administration attempted to expose Delawareans’ sensitive personal data in an effort to extort our state,” Jennings said. “It was outrageous and illegal — I’m glad the court agreed with us that these disclosures should be halted while we are seeking an injunction.”
Her statement reflects the state’s position, although the court has not issued a final ruling on the legality of the federal demand.
What information the government wants
Congress established the Commercial Driver’s License Information System, known as CDLIS, in 1986 to prevent commercial drivers from using licenses issued by different states to conceal traffic violations or disqualifications.
The system allows states to review a CDL applicant’s licensing and driving history. It is operated by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, a private nonprofit organization, under an agreement with the federal government.
The records can include a driver’s name, birth date, Social Security number, driver’s license number and licensing state.
FMCSA demanded records for everyone listed in the system during the previous five years. The Department of Homeland Security issued a separate administrative subpoena seeking substantially the same information.
Federal officials reportedly intend to use the records to investigate improper CDL issuance, licensing fraud, commercial-driving schools and licenses issued to people who may not be legally eligible to receive them. The information could also be used for civil immigration enforcement.
The administration’s public-safety argument
The administration argues commercial driving is not merely a state concern.
Commercial trucks routinely cross state lines, and an improperly licensed driver in one state can pose a safety risk throughout the country. The federal government establishes national CDL standards and is responsible for reviewing whether states comply with them.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has accused the participating attorneys general of interfering with efforts to identify unqualified drivers and enforce licensing requirements.
“Every administration since 1988 has had access to this basic database,” Duffy said in a statement responding to the lawsuit.
He said the information is needed to prevent dangerous and improperly licensed drivers from operating commercial vehicles.
The federal government maintains its contract with AAMVA and federal transportation laws entitle FMCSA to obtain the information necessary to oversee state CDL programs.
That argument may resonate with people who believe states have failed to enforce immigration, employment or licensing laws consistently. If licenses were issued to people using fraudulent identities — or to applicants who were not legally eligible — the federal government has a legitimate interest in discovering those failures.
But the court questioned why FMCSA needed possession of the entire database when it has historically been able to query individual driver records.
Enforcement does not eliminate privacy concerns
Support for immigration enforcement does not automatically resolve the privacy and constitutional questions raised by the case.
A person may strongly support identifying unauthorized immigrants and fraudulent CDL holders while remaining skeptical of giving the federal government a database containing Social Security numbers and other information on millions of drivers who are not suspected of wrongdoing.
The states argue they own the records and submitted them to CDLIS for limited licensing and highway-safety purposes — not for the creation of a new federal database available for broader enforcement.
The court cited an FMCSA policy stating CDLIS records are not controlled by the agency. It also found the states were likely to succeed on claims that the wholesale demand conflicted with federal privacy and commercial-vehicle laws.
That raises a broader question about the division of authority between states and the federal government: Can an executive agency substantially expand its access to state records without Congress clearly authorizing the change?
It also raises a fundamental concern about government power. A legitimate enforcement objective does not necessarily give an agency unlimited authority to collect information on everyone in a regulated system.
Funding threat raises another concern
The administration’s alleged threat to terminate AAMVA’s federal funding strengthened the states’ argument.
Federal grants and contracts frequently include conditions. But the Constitution generally requires the federal government to provide clear notice of those conditions rather than adding major new requirements after an organization has accepted the funding.
AAMVA warned losing its federal contracts could disrupt CDLIS and interfere with states’ ability to issue or renew commercial licenses.
The judge found the states were likely to succeed on their claim that federal officials could not impose the new data-transfer requirement by threatening funding that supports the licensing system.
A possible middle ground
The competing positions can be reconciled.
The federal government has a legitimate responsibility to investigate licensing fraud, unsafe drivers, improper state practices and violations of immigration law. States should not be able to use privacy claims to shield illegal conduct or obstruct legitimate federal oversight.
But Washington also should not collect millions of Social Security numbers merely because some records might reveal violations.
A more narrowly tailored approach could allow federal investigators to search for specific individuals, examine records from states with documented compliance problems or compare limited data fields without transferring complete personal records.
Any broader access could be accompanied by rules governing which agencies may use the information, how long it may be retained, whether it may be shared and how drivers can correct inaccurate records.
Congress could also settle the matter by clearly defining federal access to CDLIS and establishing privacy safeguards.
What the decision means for Delaware
For now, the order prevents Delaware’s CDLIS records from being included in the federal transfer. It does not affect the validity of Delaware commercial licenses or prevent federal officials from conducting authorized, individualized investigations.
The case also does not determine whether CDL information may ever be used for immigration enforcement. Instead, it asks whether the administration followed the law in demanding the entire database and threatening AAMVA’s funding.
Jennings has characterized the case as another attempt by the Trump administration to obtain personal information for undisclosed or insufficiently limited purposes. The administration views it as part of a broader effort to strengthen commercial-driver enforcement and identify licenses improperly issued to unauthorized immigrants.
Both concerns deserve scrutiny.
The central question is not whether immigration and CDL laws should be enforced. It is whether the government can enforce them effectively without creating an unrestricted federal repository containing the personal information of millions of people who are not accused of violating the law.
To-go box
What happened: A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from obtaining participating states’ commercial-driver records.
What is involved: Approximately 17 million CDL records containing names, birth dates, license information and Social Security numbers.
Federal argument: The information is needed to detect licensing fraud, enforce safety standards and identify drivers who may not be legally eligible for commercial licenses.
States’ argument: The bulk demand lacks clear legal authority, privacy protections and limits on future use.
What comes next: Jennings and the multistate coalition will seek a preliminary injunction keeping the data transfer blocked while the lawsuit proceeds.
Why Should Delaware Care? Delaware’s hospitals are powerful and often consolidated entities. For decades, each of the state’s three main hospital systems have remained within their bounds by county line. But as more retirees flock to the state, those boundaries are being disregarded.
The Dover-based hospital system Bayhealth has taken the first shot in what had been a looming turf war between state healthcare providers over access to the valuable southern Delaware market.
Long the dominant player in northern Delaware, ChristianaCare has increasingly invested below the C&D Canal in recent years.
But Bayhealth claims that ChristianaCare’s proposals could run afoul of a new law signed this summer meant to curb the involvement of for-profit enterprise in nonprofit healthcare.
The Delaware Healthcare Commission and the Delaware Health Resources Board is responsible for approving hospital expansions that cost more than $5.8 million. The board is set to discuss this letter at its meeting later this afternoon.
Get Involved: The Delaware Health Resources Board will meet at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 25, in the Herman M. Holloway Sr. Campus Main Administration Building, located at 1901 N. DuPont Highway in New Castle. Virtual attendance options can be found here.
Bayhealth’s challenge to ChristianaCare’s expansion highlights what has been a quiet, but contentious race among hospitals to hold the most market share below the C&D Canal, as retirees from across the Northeast flock to Delaware’s coastline. With that aging population, comes a greater demand for medical services.
The letter also demonstrates the evolving role of a Delaware regulatory board meant to act as a watchdog to ensure the state’s healthcare systems don’t make unnecessary investments that could end up costing a captive patient population.
Bayhealth did not respond to a request for comment on the contents of its letter.
The letter, written by Bayhealth Chief Operating Officer Kyle Benoit, challenged ChristianaCare’s plans to build two new “micro-hospitals” in Camden and Georgetown.
In his letter, Benoit said ChristianaCare’s plans to build micro-hospitals may be in noncompliance with the regulatory review because there are no statutory definitions of a micro-hospital in Delaware.
Bayhealth also prodded at ChristianaCare’s business plan for the downstate facilities, questioning whether its proposal complied with Senate Bill 313 – a law signed this summer that prevents the sale of Delaware’s nonprofit health systems to private equity firms.
Benoit noted that ChristianaCare’s plans for the downstate facilities involved a partnership with Emerus Holdings, a for-profit healthcare real estate developer.
The developer has already partnered with ChristianaCare on two sites in the Philadelphia suburbs, with a similar micro-hospital approach in Chester and Delaware counties.
Gov. Matt Meyer signed Senate Bill 313 into law earlier this summer, establishing a two-year moratorium on the purchase and or sale of nonprofit hospital systems to private equity firms.
“If the governing agreements provide for a for-profit participant with rights that constitute prohibited ownership, control or operational authority, the applications are not legally eligible for approval,” Benoit wrote.
As part of its request to the board, Bayhealth requested ChristianaCare disclose its corporate and structure agreements with Emerus to ensure compliance with Senate Bill 313. Additionally, Bayhealth requested the board delay its review until its legal concerns are addressed.
ChristianaCare did not reply to a request to comment for this story.
Separately, ChristianaCare recently received a permitting break on both micro-hosptials from the governor’s office, who accepted them into the state’s “JobsFirst Permitting Accelerator.” According to a press release published earlier this month, the permitting accelerator is meant to streamline regulatory approvals for complex projects, and complete them within 120 days.
According to the website for JobsFirst, the program focuses on housing, broadband, energy infrastructure, water, sewer and mixed-use projects.
Asked in an email why ChristianaCare qualified for this permitting fast-track, a spokesperson for the governor said the executive order creating the program allows Meyer to determine if projects are critical.
“The EO allows the Governor flexibility to designate a project as critical infrastructure, and he sees this project as critical as we see gaps in service,” the spokesperson said.
What is ChristianaCare hoping to build?
For the better part of two years, ChristianaCare has spent millions on an expansion blitz.
It’s proposed and opened sites in Pennsylvania, further entrenched itself in New Castle County, and has begun to reach farther south.
In May, the hospital also announced it would open a $58.1 million health campus in Kent County, continuing its push into contested downstate markets.
Bayhealth,is the second largest hospital system in Delaware, after ChristianaCare. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY NICK STONESIFER
At the time, Bayhealth offered a diplomatic opposition to the facility, saying in a statement it “remains focused” on providing care to its patients. But the hospital also said care should not be “fragmented.”
It said it would “actively participate” by sharing data and ways to address cost, access and quality of care in the area.
“We recognize that patients across Delaware are looking for faster access to care,” a spokesperson for the hospital said in an email.
The 38,000‑square‑foot ChristianaCare Kent County campus would open in Camden about a mile from the Walmart on U.S. Route 13. The state healthcare giant said in a statement the new campus would offer emergency and inpatient beds, as well as primary care and outpatient services.
It hopes to open the facility by late 2028 or early 2029.
ChristianaCare also said the new facility would bring 83 new jobs. As it has done with other recently announced ventures, ChristianaCare positioned its expansion as a means of supporting Delaware’s growing and aging population.
The healthcare system also expects its new Georgetown facility to open by 2028. It is partnering with Emerus Holdings to build the facility — which would offer emergency beds, behavioral, specialty and primary care — at 20769 DuPont Blvd., just south of the Bridgeville Road intersection.
Turf war brews
For decades, Delaware’s three major health care systems largely fit into geographic monopolies: ChristianaCare serving New Castle County, Bayhealth serving Kent County and Beebe Healthcare in Sussex County.
But over the last five years, a health care arms race heated up between Bayhealth, Beebe and now TidalHealth, coming up from Salisbury, Md. They have all built or broken ground on major projects in locations, such as Lewes, Milton or Millsboro in recent years.
It follows a post-COVID population boom in Sussex County. The region is now designated as a “Medically Underserved Area” by the federal government, with projections showing that the population will increase from 237,000 in 2022 to over 361,000 by 2050. The county is also rapidly graying, as the population growth is largely driven by retirees who will demand more health care needs.
The arrival of ChristianaCare, which to date only had primary care offices in Milford and Rehoboth Beach, will bring needed resources, but also new competition to the crowded market.
But Bayhealth is hoping to convince the Delaware Health Resources Board that ChristianaCare’s plans would flood the market and offer redundant services.
In 2019, the board was central in a debate over whether to allow Beebe to build a freestanding emergency room in Georgetown. It ultimately denied that project, saying it was too close to Bayhealth’s Milford campus and Nanticoke Hospital in Seaford.
The board was also expected to be critical of plans by Bayhealth to build its own freestanding emergency room in Milton, which led the Dover-based health system to pull its plans.
Both of those projects predated the population surge that has particularly struck Sussex County after the COVID housing market boom though.
Nigeria will need more than a bigger army to tackle security challengesExpert commentLToremark
Without accompanying reforms, the risk is that President Tinubu’s plan only makes Nigeria’s army bigger but not better.
In July, President Bola Tinubu announced a major expansion of the Nigerian Army, adding four new divisions to its existing eight. Rather than framing it as a long-planned response to Nigeria’s many worsening security challenges, Tinubu indicated that the announcement was a direct response to a mass school kidnapping in his home region, the latest in a series of such attacks. Regardless, the groundbreaking decision has the potential to make Nigeria more secure.
The expansion plan involves recruiting 28,000 soldiers and creating several new brigades and battalions in conflict-prone areas. Some of the troops will be trained at two new facilities built to expand the army’s recruitment capacity – and training has already begun. Tinubu also approved a huge pay increase (from 30 to 80 per cent, depending on rank) for military personnel, as real wages have dwindled due to high inflation.
While undoubtedly historic, Tinubu’s announcement begs some important questions. How tangible and transformative is this expansion, and how will it be paid for? Can the deployment of more soldiers translate into long-term security gains without fundamental security sector reform? And what opportunities does this expansion create for the Nigeria’s security assistance partners, such as the UK and the US?
Before answering these questions, it should be said that this expansion is long overdue. Nigeria has a population of roughly 240 million and is set to overtake the US as the world’s third most populous country by 2043. Meanwhile, the Nigerian Army only has approximately 100,000 active personnel according to recent estimates. Its vast and growing population requires a larger military. Nigeria also needs more military capacity to address its many complex security challenges – insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and communal conflict, for example – that have proliferated in recent years, destabilizing parts of the country that were once considered safe.
Stationing more soldiers outside of their traditional garrisons, especially in rural areas, would help protect vulnerable civilian targets and make it easier for the army to locate and eliminate remote safe havens used by bandit gangs and insurgent groups. Meanwhile, a greater military presence along Nigeria’s porous borders could improve operational coordination and intelligence sharing with army units in neighboring Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. This could help offset the decline in regional security cooperation that followed the 2025 withdrawal of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
That said, Tinubu’s expansion plan does not address many of the army’s institutional challenges; a list that includes lacklustre leadership, poor operational planning, inadequate training, equipment shortfalls, endemic corruption and a dire human rights record. This suggests that Nigeria’s reform-resistant army could experience a sort of ‘operational stagflation’: becoming bigger but not better.
Stagflation has already affected Nigeria’s defence budget, which – although appearing to have skyrocketed in recent years – has in fact grown only modestly in dollar terms, rising from $3.9 billion in 2021 to $4.7 billion in 2026. Moreover, the overall share of the national budget spent on defence actually decreased from 21 to 11 per cent during the same timeframe due to Nigeria’s rising debt burden and the steady devaluation of its currency, the naira. To pay for more soldiers and higher military salaries, President Tinubu will need to increase the defence budget, which may force cuts to infrastructure, health and education spending.
It also remains to be seen whether the creation of new divisions, brigades and battalions will increase the army’s operational capacity, or just make it even more top heavy. Already known for its woeful tooth-to-tail ratio – ‘teeth’ meaning the combat troops and ‘tail’ the support personnel – the Nigerian Army has far too many general officers for a force its size. According to one estimate, 30 per cent of all Nigerian military officers achieve general/flag officer rank, compared to no more than 3 per cent in many other countries. Until this dynamic changes, a disproportionate number of Nigerian soldiers will end up serving as orderlies, rather than patrolling communities to protect civilians.
Having taken the bold decision to increase the size of the country’s military, Nigeria’s leaders should look to maximize the impact of that investment by embracing key reforms. Tinubu could, for example, take steps to consolidate Nigeria’s sprawling security apparatus which now consists of an alphabet soup of security agencies that perform poorly and compete more than they cooperate. But in a country where politicians have long relied on agency-creation to build out their patronage networks, such bureaucratic streamlining will require sustained high-level impetus.
Security sector consolidation would also alleviate pressure on the army if it freed up human and budget resources for Nigeria’s struggling police. This investment will be especially critical as Nigeria prepares to pass a constitutional amendment to allow states to create their own police forces. If trained and resourced effectively, state forces could work with the federal police to relieve the army of routine internal security duties, freeing troops up to tackle some of Nigeria’s toughest security challenges.
Any domestic security sector reform effort, however modest, would also give Nigeria’s security assistance partners a clear opportunity to re-engage in ways that play to their strengths: planning and technical assistance, leadership training and education, and facilitating interagency cooperation and intelligence sharing. As partners like Britain and the US engage with Nigeria’s newly expanded army, they should stress to Nigeria’s leaders that security sector reform is the best way to ensure that bigger also means better.
Republican Councilwoman Kilpatrick has decided to retire, and her seat is up for grabs
For 16 years, Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick has represented Hockessin, Yorklyn, North Star, Pike Creek and part of Newark which makes up New Castle County “District 3.”
Councilwoman Kilpatrick is not seeking reelection, one of two decades-long tenures ending this year. Democrats Kira Alejandro and Kyle Grantham are competing for her seat in the Sept. 15 primary; the winner faces Republican Melissa Brayman, Director of Administration and Finance at the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, with no primary of her own. Both Alejandro and Grantham sat down for interviews about who they are and what they’d do if elected.
Kira Alejandro: A musician and community advocate
Growing up…
Alejandro, 30, grew up in Hockessin-off Brackenville Road-and still lives in the district, in Yorklyn. She plays piano and baritone ukulele, plays some guitar and bass, and grew up playing flute. She said she also grew up going to Ashland Nature Center, which she called “a focal point” in her life and where her love of the natural world began. Her favorite spot there is a boardwalk over a marsh, where she said watching frog eggs and cattails appear every year still feels peaceful. “I feel really lucky to live so close to it,” she said.
A formative influence…
She credits both parents with shaping how she sees public life: her father, “a very staunch environmental advocate” and believer in public education from his own years in New York’s public schools, and her mother, who volunteered on the spot to keep a Girl Scout camp on Sharpless Road running rather than let it close, and ran it for years afterward.
Making it personal…
Alejandro said she has personally helped save nearly 30 acres of land in Yorklyn from development, and pledged never to take donations from developers, land-use attorneys, corporations or corporate PACs. “I think you can’t be neutral if you’re funded by special interests,” she said.
On electric bills and data centers…
“The problem that we’re seeing with the delivery fees is partly because Delmarva is allowed to do non-mandatory construction of infrastructure,” Alejandro said, pointing to a pending Delaware Public Service Commission case in which Delmarva is seeking a $68 million rate increase.
“Adding poles, adding substations, building things for anticipated use… that is the only way that Delmarva can potentially profit, because they’re not supposed to be profiting off of the sale or delivery fees.” She said “part of the reason that the energy bills are continuing to increase is because data centers are getting built on our grid,” adding, “whether or not we have any data centers in Delaware, if data centers are being built on this larger grid, our energy bills are going to go up.”
“I believe the number one thing we can do at a county level to get a handle on these increasing rates is call for a data center moratorium,” she said. “We’ve seen precedent for this. Maryland has five different counties now that have enacted a moratorium. They have a county that has outright banned data centers.”
What’s been the hardest part of running?
“Running a campaign is grueling. I’m very fortunate to have a lot of people who are very invested in this campaign,” Alejandro said. “I would say overall I think the most challenging thing has just been that no one knows what the county council is. So often I find people asking me, ‘Are you running against Mike Smith? Are you running against Frank Burns?'”
Why do you think you’re the right fit for the job?
“I’m the only candidate that has any kind of concrete experience standing up for our communities and actually achieving results,” Alejandro said. “That’s why I’m running. I want to keep putting our communities first as a council member.”
Kyle Grantham: A photojournalist turned public servant
Growing up…
Grantham, 38, grew up in Cecil County, Maryland, and moved to Delaware in 2013. He considered the Naval Academy in high school before choosing journalism, as he learned more about the Iraq War, working through Ohio, Indiana, Wyoming, and California before landing at The News Journal full-time in 2013.
A formative influence…
Grantham said the person who shaped his approach to public service most was Rob Carr, an Associated Press photographer he met at 19 covering a bowl game in Mobile, Alabama. Carr later got him assignments at the Senior British Open and an Ireland-Scotland rugby match, then brought him along to shoot Orioles and Ravens games for his first national byline. “No one gets anywhere in this industry by themselves,” Grantham said Carr told him, a lesson he’s carried into politics.
Making it personal…
He left journalism after being assaulted by a Trump supporter about two weeks before the 2016 election, then spent nearly a decade in the county executive’s office after Gov. Matt Meyer, then county executive, brought him on. Grantham lives in Newark with his wife and 2-year-old son, still coaches the county’s adult co-ed soccer league at Banning Park.
On electric bills and data centers…
Grantham explains, “I think we need to work with the state to get power bills under control. I’m not convinced we can unilaterally impose a moratorium on data center construction without backing from the state legislature.
The companies building these things have more money than God and armies of lawyers. If we go it alone against them, I don’t think we can win. If we work with the state to take a comprehensive approach to fighting them – whether it be zoning, tax reform, or hopefully an outright ban – we have a better shot of making Delaware look less attractive and keeping them out of the state altogether.
But simply hitting ‘pause’ for a year or two with a moratorium isn’t going to be enough. The energy and environmental impacts from these facilities are never going to be solved, and even if they somehow were, these facilities are being built to power AI technology designed to replace workers and produce a product 40% the quality for 10% the cost. I’m never going to support that.
At the same time, the County can be bringing new clean power projects online to introduce power locally at cost and start curving bills down.”
What’s been the hardest part of running?
“This is easily the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Grantham said. “I think the one thing I wasn’t necessarily prepared for was the guilt, having a two-year-old and needing to spend so much time out putting the hard groundwork in. When I’m out 20, 30 hours a week knocking doors, I just feel guilty that I’m not at home with him. And then on the flip side, when I’m at home and I am enjoying myself, then I feel guilty that I’m not working hard enough.”
Why do you think you’re the right fit for the job?
“What I want people to see in those endorsements is that these people are recognizing the fact that I understand what this job is about and what it’s not about, and the way that it can have an impact on lives in a real way, and that they see in me the experience and qualifications to do it well,” Grantham said.
Where the two candidates’ money and endorsements stand
Grantham raised roughly $25,900 through Aug. 16, per the State’s Campaign Filing Report System, and have some noteworthy endorsements from six NCC council members, including Councilwoman Kilpatrick and Councilman Hollins, plus Gov. Matt Meyer.
Alejandro raised nearly $44,700 over the same period, almost $18,850 more than Grantham, with some notable endorsements from one council member, two state officials and the Sierra Club.
Both candidates agree Delaware’s electric bills are a real burden, and that data centers are part of the story. They disagree on whether the fix is a moratorium or a zoning overhaul. On Sept. 15, District 3’s Democrats decide which approach, and which candidate, gets the chance to prove it right.
How to vote
Only registered Democrats can vote in the Sept. 15 primary. The deadline to register was Saturday, Aug. 22; early voting runs Sept. 2-13. Check your registration or district at the state’s voter portal, ivote.de.gov/VoterView.
# # #
Correction (Aug. 24, 2026, 12:07 p.m.): This article has been updated to correct Melissa Brayman’s title. She is Director of Administration and Finance at the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, not an office administrator.
Dr. Craig Towers in 2018. The local newspaper gave him an award for his work with pregnant women with opioid addiction Michael Patrick/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
When Dr. Craig Towers moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 2010, the high-risk obstetrician encountered a crisis unlike anything he’d seen.
Towers, who had practiced for 25 years in California and Wisconsin, found himself caring for an unusual number of pregnant women addicted to painkillers — and delivering newborns who were suffering withdrawal symptoms. Those babies, born shaking and inconsolable and who required weeks of specialized care, were becoming tragic symbols of the region’s raging opioid epidemic. “We were inundated,” Towers later told the Knoxville News Sentinel.
In those initial years in Tennessee, Towers recognized a need — and a research opportunity.
Medical doctrine had long held that a pregnant patient with an opioid addiction could not be safely detoxed because withdrawal could harm the fetus, causing physical stress and even triggering miscarriage. Instead, doctors treated patients with methadone or buprenorphine, which are legal replacement opiates that control cravings and have a lower risk of overdose. Those drugs can still cause babies to be born in withdrawal, but doctors reasoned that it was better to treat the newborn for those symptoms than risk the baby’s death.
Towers, who was hired to work at the University of Tennessee Medical Center’s clinic for high-risk pregnancies and later joined the medical school faculty, questioned that approach. He began studying the outcomes of women, most of them his patients, who stopped taking those medications. He ultimately collected data on more than 300 of them.
Towers’ research found that detoxing was much less harmful to the fetus than feared, and it prompted changes to how doctors treat pregnant opioid users. Across Tennessee — in Johnson City, Jellico and Sevierville — and in Daytona Beach, Florida, clinics followed his lead. The News Sentinel honored him as a “Health Care Hero.” CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, interviewed him about his work and described babies born without withdrawal symptoms as “miracles.” In 2019, the medical school granted a request for additional funding for Towers’ work, praising “his many research efforts and leadership that has resulted in national recognition.”
In the months before he published what would be a groundbreaking study, he described his findings at a university science forum, saying: “I think it’s going to revolutionize what we do.”
And then in 2020, soon after the study was published, Towers abruptly stepped back from his research.
The study immediately caught the attention of specialists in addiction treatment. Some of them wondered how the results could be true. The study, the largest of its kind, enlisted 230 participants, 121 of whom took a daily dose of a drug called naltrexone, which, unlike methadone or buprenorphine, is not an opioid; instead it discourages using by blocking the high. Naltrexone was effective in keeping most patients off of opiates, the study found.
But in many other major studies, naltrexone had shown lackluster results. Rates of relapse among nonpregnant patients averaged 72%, according to a systematic review of 13 studies.
Eight specialists in the fields of addiction and pregnancy started sharing concerns with one another about Towers’ study and then drafted a letter to the University of Tennessee. Two of them agreed to speak with ProPublica (the others asked not to be identified). One was Dr. Mishka Terplan, a practicing OB-GYN board-certified in addiction medicine who’d served on several committees to develop federal and professional guidelines for treating opioid use during pregnancy.
“Dr Towers’ work has been impactful, especially in TN,” Terplan wrote to the university in July 2020, “and I am concerned that each day the article(s) is out there, potential harm to a vulnerable population accumulates through both ethically suspect clinical care and consequently misguided public health.”
By that time, a university audit had uncovered major problems with Towers’ research.
The audit found that Towers failed to get university approval for the study, that he provided “inaccurate and/or unverifiable, contradictory source documentation” for a component of the study and that he did not provide research databases or data analysis as requested. Auditors also were unable to determine the extent to which he protected confidential patient health information.
For three years, the journal did nothing to publicly address those concerns. When the journal did act, in 2023, it published a 78-word correction stating that the study had been improperly listed as a “prospective,” a rigorous type of research that follows patients in real time.
ProPublica shared Towers’ study, the university’s audit and the journal’s correction with five experts on research ethics and substance abuse during pregnancy. All of them said that the documents raised major concerns about Towers’ conduct as a researcher and that the journal’s response didn’t do enough to address the issues the university unearthed.
The publisher of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the journal where the study appeared, disputes that.
“We uphold the highest standards of rigor and ethics in our publishing to protect the quality and integrity of research,” Elsevier, the company that publishes AJOG, said in a statement.
Towers told ProPublica that the audit had reached erroneous conclusions, that the auditors did not give him the opportunity to fully defend his work and that the journal’s willingness to stand by the study is proof that his research is sound.
One of the experts ProPublica spoke to, Eugenie Reich, an attorney who has represented whistleblowers in several high-profile research fraud cases, said that the problems the university identified in Towers’ study were much deeper than the journal acknowledged.
“The misrepresentation is not minor,” Reich said. “It runs throughout the piece.”
In media coverage, Towers came across as gently protective of his patients. He often described the difficult circumstances that drove them into addiction. He said those women, who desperately wanted to do better for their babies, inspired him to investigate the feasibility of detox during pregnancy.
In 2018, Katie Carringer was working as an administrative assistant at a drug rehab facility and made an appointment with Towers at the encouragement of her boss. Carringer, who was about six weeks pregnant, had been addicted to heroin in the past but was not using drugs at the time. She told ProPublica she felt confident in her ability to remain drug-free and made the appointment with Towers because she wanted a doctor who specialized in high-risk pregnancies and could help her manage anxiety and depression.
Katie Carringer, a former patient of Dr. Craig Towers, says she felt pressured to take naltrexone.Jessica Tezak for ProPublica
At her second appointment, she expected a conversation about her mental health. She told ProPublica she was surprised when Towers recommended naltrexone. From her work at the clinic, she knew that the drug was meant for people battling cravings in the early stages of recovery.
“With me being clean so long, it didn’t even make sense,” Carringer said.
According to her medical records, she had not used drugs during either of her previous pregnancies, in 2007 and 2009. Two years before her appointment with Towers, in 2016, she completed an inpatient drug treatment program, and she was “actually drug free for most of the time” since then, according to her medical notes. Her records showed two short relapses.
After she found out she was pregnant this time, Carringer decided to stop taking the Paxil and Remeron that kept her anxiety in check, out of concern for any effects they might have on the fetus, her medical records show.
With Carringer’s permission, ProPublica asked Towers to review her medical file and answer questions about why he recommended naltrexone. Towers, who said Carringer was not included in the study, noted that her medical record stated she was interested in naltrexone.
Carringer denied to ProPublica that she expressed interest in the drug, adding that she ended up trying naltrexone because she felt it was what Towers wanted her to do. She said, and her records confirm, that it caused severe nausea and she stopped taking it after the first dose.
Terplan, one of the addiction specialists who signed the letter to the University of Tennessee, said Carringer’s experience points to the salience of a question the letter posed: Did Towers explain to his patients that curbing addiction with naltrexone was an experimental treatment in pregnant women?
That question was important to Terplan and the other specialists. According to their letter, they were concerned that “informed consent was not obtained or not properly obtained” from patients who showed up in the naltrexone research: “This uncertainty leads us to question whether ethical standards that promote and ensure respect for human subjects and protect their health and rights were followed,” the letter said.
In the letter, the specialists also noted that the study made no mention of patients refusing to participate in the study or dropping out later in pregnancy, both of which are common occurrences in a study involving drug use.
“You need to explain to people that there may be additional risk,” said Columbia University professor Dr. Robert Klitzman, an expert in bioethics. “That’s why informed consent is so important.”
Towers said that concerns about consent and explanation of risk are baseless. All study participants received a “notice of research” and chose to go forward, he said.
“I am not aware of any patient that felt pressured to participate,” he wrote. “I always presented the patients with the risks and benefits of each course of treatment so that they could make an informed decision.”
University of North Carolina researcher Hendrée Jones, one of the specialists who drafted and signed the letter, told ProPublica that she was surprised by another aspect of Towers’ study: that it included reports of only minor health problems among the mothers, including nausea and headache, during the course of their’ pregnancies.
Jones said it is unusual for there to be no serious medical events among that many pregnant patients, especially ones who’d struggled with opioid addiction.
“That made my hair on the back of my neck stand up,” Jones said.
Carringer puts her son Noah’s hair in a ponytail in their kitchen, and Noah’s handprints sit next to their front door. Carringer is now a support specialist for people fighting addiction.Jessica Tezak for ProPublica
Towers said critics like Terplan and Jones were not in a position to know what was happening in the clinic or with his research, and their criticisms are purely speculative. The study, he said, captured all outcomes of its participants.
“We looked at everything — every patient complaint, their vital signs, preterm labor, any medical conditions that developed,” he wrote in his response to ProPublica. “We looked for spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, fetal stress (seen in fetal heart rate monitoring or biophysical profiles) and need for cesarean delivery.”
In its audit, the university also had flagged problems with Towers’ data. The audit said Towers supplied a printout of his entire clinical practice database, but it did not designate which patients were involved in the research study.
Towers told ProPublica that he obtained broad consent for his research: “Every patient that was seen in the clinic received a notice regarding the research, consented to participation in that research and understood that their data would be prospectively collected but deidentified.”
Klitzman said researchers should be able to provide details about the actual patients in a study, not just everyone at a clinic.
“That to me is a red flag,” he said.
Researchers are required to run all proposed studies involving human participants through institutional review boards — panels of scientists and other compliance specialists who ensure patients’ rights and confidentiality are protected. Failing to get approval from the overseeing IRB for all aspects of human research would be a major violation.
In its audit, the university determined that Towers hadn’t sought IRB approval for the study.
Towers told ProPublica that the university was mistaken and that the journal itself had “concluded,” contrary to the audit, that he did have IRB approval.
A spokesperson from Elsevier did not respond to repeated questions about whether the journal had concluded that the IRB had approved the study.
In February 2020, about two weeks after the audit got underway, Towers retired from his faculty position. Months later, he retired from clinical practice as well. In his email to ProPublica, he said he stepped down for health and family reasons.
According to a determination letter from the chair of the IRB dated days after the audit’s completion, members of the board voted to suspend all of Towers’ open studies for safety reviews and file a report with the federal Office for Human Research Protections. (Towers voluntarily closed all research projects when he retired, he told ProPublica.) The audit’s findings, the letter said, constituted “serious noncompliance.”
Towers said he disputes that finding and said the board did not make an effort to get his side of the story. The head of the IRB spoke to him by phone in January 2020 and followed up with a few short conversations, he said.
“There should have been a meeting set up at the start where the four authors (myself and my 3 coauthors) met in person with the IRB committee or a subcommittee to explain our point of view and answer any questions. This never occurred,” he said.
A spokesperson for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center said she could not find anyone to answer questions from ProPublica “due to time and a change in leadership.”
Soon after Towers resigned from his faculty position, he reached out to the journal and sent IRB approval letters that he said confirmed the study had been approved.
“I am sorry you have to spend time with this controversy,” Towers wrote.
The audit, though, had found that the IRB approvals he cited did not apply to the study.
The University of Tennessee also contacted the journal. In an email thanking Terplan and the other specialists for the concerns they’d shared about Towers’ study, the university’s research director asked if they planned to contact the journal directly. The research director wrote that UT already had “requested the paper be retracted from the journal, but as yet no action has been taken by the journal.”
Less than 1 in 2,500 published studies are retracted, according to the journal Science. Retractions can devastate the reputations of researchers and damage the credibility of journals.
Universities can investigate research and request retractions, like the University of Tennessee did with Towers, but journal editors have the final say about whether to retract a paper or add a correction. Ivan Oransky, one of the experts who spoke with ProPublica for this story, said he has encountered other cases where journals failed to retract a study after a university made such a request.
“You have a situation where the fox is guarding the henhouse,” he said.
Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, a site that tracks scientific misconduct, has advocated for making research misconduct reports more easily accessible to the public.
“These reports should be part of the scientific record,” he said. “They are the basis for understanding whether something is reliable or not, and what went wrong.”
During the years that the journal spent considering how to respond to the university’s request for a retraction, more doctors across the country began prescribing naltrexone. Researchers cited the work dozens of times in other studies.
Towers said he stands by naltrexone as a treatment option: “I believe it is crucial in medicine to revisit old assumptions and consider all options.” Detox remains a solution “in the interest of advancing medicine and helping patients in a region where drug abuse is a longstanding issue,” he said.
Towers in 2018, the year he saw Carringer as a patientMichael Patrick/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Dr. Geogy Thomas, medical director of Dayspring Health in east Tennessee, said he was inspired by Towers’ research, which improved care for women in the area.
“Our community is indebted to Dr. Towers and his research on substance abuse in pregnancy,” Thomas wrote in an emailed statement. “He courageously challenged the status quo of the medical establishment of that time and ushered in a new way of caring for a high-risk group of patients that no one else was willing to care for.”
But another obstetrician, Dr. Cathleen Suto, who worked at a clinic with an approach inspired by Towers’ research, found detox wasn’t effective. Suto described her experiences treating opioid-addicted pregnant patients to the author of a book. Many of those patients couldn’t make it through the weaning process and often stopped coming to the clinic. (She did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.)
“Detox would be a great answer,” Suto is quoted as saying in the book, “Prosecuting Poverty, Criminalizing Care.” “The problem is that my patients were not successful at doing it.”
When the journal finally acted on the university’s concerns in 2023, more than three years after the study came out, it did not retract the study. Instead, it published a brief correction.
“The authors wish to clarify that the study is listed as a prospective cohort study — which is not the case,” read the correction. “We did a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data.”
Data for prospective studies is collected in real time, while retrospective studies look back at medical records. Much of Towers’ prior research relied on looking back at those records, and he touted the naltrexone study as an improvement because of its prospective design, which would track patients until they delivered. Prospective studies are considered to capture better information about patients, including those who dropped out of the study, and provide better control of data collection.
Towers views the journal’s actions as vindication. “AJOG would not keep a study in print if they did not believe it was IRB-approved after their review,” Towers said.
The specialists who wrote to the university, all of whom have published research, said misrepresenting methodology is a breach of scientific integrity.
“If it was not prospective but presented as such, it would have violated standards of reporting of scientific research,” they wrote in the letter.
In response to experts’ claims that the problems with the audit were more profound than the correction indicated, Elsevier said in a statement: “Based on the information available at the time, the Journal determined that a correction was appropriate to clarify the description of the study.”
Jones, one of the letter’s signatories, said the journal failed in its duty to hold its research to a higher standard.
“When you make a mistake, you own up to that mistake and you fix it,” she said. “And that paper is out there, and continues to be cited, and I see it.”
Hosted by Easterseals Delaware & Maryland’s Eastern Shore and co-sponsored by the Delaware Division of Services for Aging and Adults with Physical Disabilities, the conference connected caregivers with 50 companies and community organizations providing respite care, health services, assistive technology, legal guidance, education and other resources.
Republican Councilwoman Kilpatrick has decided to retire, and her seat is up for grabs
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