With the addition of 29 U.S. sailors and eight Marines, the total number of personnel wounded since the start of hostilities has risen to 861, a Pentagon database shows.
Idaho officials say man found dead in a church decades ago may be tied to unsolved poisonings in Chicago area in 1982
A man found dead in an Idaho church decades ago may be connected to unsolved poisonings in 1982 in the Chicago area that were dubbed the “Tylenol murders” and ushered in child safety caps for medicines, authorities announced recently.
Detective Tim Cooper of the Ada county sheriff’s Office reopened a cold case investigation in 2019 that led authorities to identify Dr Mathew Francis Betkouski posthumously. Betkouski fatally poisoned himself with cyanide more than 40 years ago and was buried anonymously.
The Trump administration is removing 760,000 people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace on allegations of fraud, officials said on Tuesday – adding to previous efforts to chip away at federally subsidized insurance programs and likely causing some of the lowest-income Americans to forego healthcare, experts said.
The US government is also investigating about 420,000 people whom they suspect of fraud, and they are putting a six-month enrollment moratorium on new agents and brokers selling Obamacare policies, officials said at a press conference.
US president says pair discussed Iran war as Chinese president leaves the US after his first official state visit since the end of the Obama administration
Xi Jinping and his wife are back at the White House for the final day of the Chinese president’s pageantry-filled visit to Washington, where President Trump has given him an unexpectedly warm welcome.
The itinerary for the final day of Xi’s visit – which included a red carpet welcome on the tarmac on Wednesday, then a full day of talks followed by a lavish state dinner on Thursday – included an appointment for tea at the White House, followed by a tour of the National Archives, where the nation’s founding documents are on display.
Investigation determined Dale Caldwell violated state ethics rules and engaged in harassing behavior
Dale Caldwell, the lieutenant governor of New Jersey, resigned from his position on Friday, after the release of a report accusing him of sexually harassing a female staffer, among other ethics violations.
New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, announced on Friday afternoon that Caldwell had submitted his resignation to her earlier in the day.
Old clothes are being used to fix potholes in Maidstone's parks thanks to an innovative new trial by Maidstone Borough Council and sustainable materials company RECOOL. (Maidstone Borough Council via SWNS)
A Republican super PAC has been running an ad that makes the misleading claim that North Carolina Senate candidate Roy Cooper “let 16,000 untested rape kits sit on the shelf” when he was the state’s attorney general. The evidence kits were in the custody of hundreds of local law enforcement agencies and were never submitted for testing by the state crime laboratory that Cooper oversaw as attorney general.
The kits, which include swabs and other materials to collect blood, urine and DNA samples, are used in forensic medical examinations and become evidence in sexual assault cases. It was not known how many of the completed kits local law enforcement offices throughout the state still had in their possession until an audit was required under a new state law in 2017, when Cooper had ascended from attorney general to governor.
Cooper, the Democratic candidate, is facing Republican Michael Whatley in the race that will determine who replaces Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
The ad attacking Cooper was paid for by No Going Back PAC Inc., a newly formed super PAC with ties to another super PAC, MAGA Inc., which is affiliated with President Donald Trump. More than $2.3 million has been spent running the ad on broadcast and digital platforms since Sept. 10, according to the ad-tracking service AdImpact.
The ad begins with the narrator saying, “What kind of politician betrays rape victims? Ask Roy Cooper. He let 16,000 untested rape kits sit on the shelf. Cooper denied justice to survivors.”
But that gives viewers the false impression that Cooper had the evidence kits in his possession and didn’t do the tests. That’s not what happened.
In 2017, a state law was enacted that required local law enforcement agencies to do an inventory of the kits in their custody.The kits, for various reasons, had never been submitted to the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory for testing when Cooper was head of the state Department of Justice, which includes the crime lab. So, the number of untested kits was not previously known.
The audit language was included in a budget bill that Cooper vetoed as governor. The bill became law after the General Assembly overrode Cooper’s veto.
After the statewide inventory was done, the NCDOJ reported in early 2018 that more than 500 local law enforcement agencies had 15,160 kits in their possession, and the department said it would devise a plan to get them tested.
In its report, the state DOJ said the statewide audit in 2017 found that 3,820 of the untested kits were tied to cases in which “allegations were determined to be unfounded as a result of further investigation,” 2,741 kits were linked to cases that had already been resolved in court, 1,054 kits were associated with cases in which a “suspect admitted to the sexual act in question,” and in 390 cases “the victim wished to remain anonymous and did not report the incident to the authorities.” The other 7,545 kits did not fall into any of those four categories.
In 2019, the Legislature passed a bill, the Survivor Act, which Cooper signed into law, that included funding to do the tests, and created a requirement that local law enforcement agencies submit sexual assault evidence kits to the state crime lab, or another approved testing facility, within 45 days of receiving them from a medical office.
We were not able to get in contact with No Going Back PAC Inc. for this story. We called the treasurer listed on its Federal Election Commission filings, and reached out to MAGA Inc. for a contact as well.
As supporting evidence, the ad cites an April 2024 Carolina Journal news article about North Carolina, under then Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein, clearing its “decades-long backlog of untested rape kits” that year, referring to the thousands of kits that local law enforcement had been holding. The story said the untested kits had been a “bad mark on the state dating back to the time when Gov. Roy Cooper served as the state’s attorney general for 16 years,” from January 2001 to January 2017.
In an interview, Ilse Knecht, director of policy and advocacy at the Joyful Heart Foundation, a national nonprofit organization that runs the End the Backlog initiative, told us that blame for the thousands of kits that were not tested doesn’t lie with one person. She said both local and state officials could have done more to treat sexual assault crimes seriously and prioritize kit testing.
“One of the important things to remember or understand about rape kit backlogs is that it’s the result of kind of a system-wide failure, and it starts at the very local level,” she said. “It comes down to there are often no laws on the books saying what has to happen with this evidence, and so the decision whether or not to send a rape kit for testing would be up to one detective” who “would make the decision not to send it sometimes based on their own conclusion of the credibility of the victim, or the likeliness of the case” to be successful.
If there had actually been 16,000 rape kits sitting in the State Crime Laboratory, waiting to be tested, “you could pass some blame pretty clearly” onto Cooper, Knecht said.
“But in this situation, it was all these [local] jurisdictions making 1,000 decisions a year not sending kits, and it was kind of hidden,” she said. “Until the inventory happened, it was hard to really know what the extent of the problem was.”
“Could everybody have done more and done better? Of course,” she said. “It’s just a multifaceted problem that involves a lot of different stakeholders.”
The Cooper campaign responded to the ad’s claim on a FAQ page on its website.
“The 16,000 rape kits this question refers to was a tally of kits sitting in local law enforcement offices across the state that were discovered over a year after Roy had left the Attorney General’s office. No state office had knowledge of where they all were, possession or control of them and no statewide count of all untested rape kits in the possession of local law enforcement even existed until after Roy was elected Governor,” the page says.
Released Inmates
The ad narrator also makes the claim that Cooper “caved to the defund the police radicals and released 3,500 criminals.” That’s a reference to a court settlement that Cooper reached in February 2021 to release that many North Carolina inmates during the COVID-19 pandemic, after being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union and other activists seeking to protect inmates and corrections staff by reducing the state’s prison population.
As we previously wrote, Cooper had objected to the early releases until a judge issued a preliminary injunction in favor of the plaintiffs and called on the state to come up with an inmate reduction plan.
The narrator then says, “Released early, this convicted child molester shot a man dead,” wrongly suggesting that Jimmie Speight Jr., the man shown in the ad, was an inmate Cooper released early.
Speight was already out of prison when the settlement was reached, according to his state prison record. He completed his previous prison term and was released as scheduled on Nov. 25, 2020. He was on a nine-month post-release supervision term when he was taken into custody on March 9, 2021, for violating the terms of his release because of new misdemeanor charges, including larceny.
“On 03/11/2021, following a preliminary hearing on the violation, Speight’s post-release supervision was reinstated because the pending charges were misdemeanors,” Keith Acree, communications director for the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction, told us in an email. “Speight’s reinstatement met the definition for an early reentry under the NAACP v. Cooper settlement terms, which is why he appears on the settlement list even though he was already out of prison,” Acree said.
About a month later, on April 8, Speight was arrested on murder charges, as well as rape and kidnapping charges stemming from a separate incident. In 2023, Speight was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to more than 32 years in prison.
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Exclusive: Democrats Dick Durbin of Illinois and Alex Padilla of California seek to prevent unlawful arrests
US senators have introduced legislation aimed at cutting down warrantless or specious ICE arrests, and curbing the agency’s ability to indefinitely detain immigrants who do not pose any danger to their communities.
The new legislation, shared exclusively with the Guardian, would require immigration officers to obtain an administrative warrant from a supervisor outlining a probable cause for detaining someone. Such a warrant must also be presented to each person who is detained, the bill says, alongside notice of when the detainee must appear in immigration court.
Sept. 25, 2026 — A year ago, Microsoft Quantum committed to building a quantum research center in Maryland. That center is now open in the Discovery District Maryland, and the company is extending its commitment through new research and training partnerships.
Microsoft’s quantum research center in Discovery District Maryland. Photo credit: Stephanie S. Cordle, University of Maryland.
As advances in AI and quantum accelerate scientific discovery, the ability to bring together talent, skilling, infrastructure, and execution is becoming increasingly important. Microsoft’s partnership with Maryland is focused on enabling an environment where new ideas can move more quickly from research to implementation.
With support from Governor Wes Moore’s Capital of Quantum Initiative, Maryland acquired and renovated the Discovery Center. Microsoft then worked with UMD and the Capital of Quantum Initiative to design its newest 15,000 square foot quantum research center within that space. Over the last year, this collaboration has built dedicated areas for Microsoft’s proprietary research, space for DARPA’s topological system and future prototypes, labs and offices for partner companies, and a community-focused training laboratory. This research center is capable of supporting quantum research, partner integration, workforce development, and government engagement.
The partner space is intended to support different kinds of relationships. Companies that build quantum technology can work with Microsoft to integrate their machines or components with the Microsoft Quantum platform, and developers and end-users can work with Microsof to understand how the platform can impact their missions. Having a place designed for both is part of how Microsoft intends to help partners scale their technologies and accelerate the impact of quantum computing to customers.
Microsoft’s Delivery to DARPA
Microsoft is designing quantum computers for utility scale, which means understanding and building the systems required to solve problems with real value that are beyond the capability of classical computers. DARPA is an ideal partner for this work because its test and evaluation team brings expertise across the computing stack, from hardware and controls to software and applications. DARPA will have full access to Microsoft’s latest topological system on site.
This delivery to DARPA follows the announcement of Majorana 2, Microsoft’s second-generation topological quantum computing chip, which uses a new material stack that replaces aluminum with lead for increased performance. Making a system available for independent testing is an important step in evaluating the company’s approach toward a large-scale and economically relevant quantum computer.
Microsoft is one of the first companies to advance to the final stage of DARPA’s Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing program, part of DARPA’s broader Quantum Benchmarking Initiative. The evaluation effort brings together the Air Force Research Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and national laboratories including Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore. Maryland’s investment and local talent help give that federal collaboration a place to interact directly with Microsoft hardware.
Learning by Doing
Microsoft’s research center will also feature a quantum hardware makerspace. Here, industry, academia, and government can work together to develop new approaches to hands-on quantum training. Microsoft’s initial partners in this call to action include AMD, Bluefors, Intel, IQM, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), Riverlane, and Quantum Motion, whose collective contributions will give learners access to real hardware and the people who understand it. Imagine a space where students, researchers, educators, and people transitioning into quantum from other fields will be able to work on open-ended projects alongside experts from the community they live in. Microsoft believes these types of hands-on experiences are vital to training the next generation to build these machines alongside UMD and other community partners.
Microsoft’s work with Fermilab extends beyond training—the company is collaborating to broaden the applicability of quantum-control technologies across hardware platforms while working with UMD to explore how tools such as Fermilab’s Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit, or QICK, can be incorporated into education.
Unlike quantum education efforts that focus primarily on theory or software, this initiative emphasizes experiential learning across the quantum hardware stack. This model will enable people to develop their critical thinking skills by deciding which design is worth building, working out what to measure, and knowing where to look when a result does not make sense. And they will have parts to put together to make small scale but real quantum computers, from some of the leading companies in quantum and computing. Moreover, as AI expands what can be explored, execution and intuition about what to build will matter more than ever. Ultimately, Microsoft’s hope is that as the company continues to pilot this approach with its partners, the lessons, educational content, and collaborative model pioneered in Maryland will serve as a broadly scalable framework for workforce development in quantum hardware.
Cultivating a Measurement-Based Quantum Community
Microsoft is a world leader in measurement-based quantum computing, which the company sees as an enabler of large, useful machines. For 18 years, Microsoft has tackled the hardest problems in quantum information science, with impact not only in topological quantum computing but in quantum error correction, new atomistic material stacks, and measurement-based computing. When measurement results determine what happens next, their speed and fidelity become part of the computer’s architecture, shaping the error-correcting codes that can be used and how to establish that a computation has done what was intended.
Microsoft wants to further accelerate this research community around those questions, across multiple types of qubits. The company is beginning with an annual workshop series with the goals of pushing the limits of how fast and accurate measurements can be and developing new error-correcting codes and verification and validation protocols for measurement-based computing.
Alongside those workshops, the first Microsoft-funded quantum postdoctoral positions at UMD will support research in areas of mutual interest to university faculty and Microsoft Quantum. Together, these commitments give the company more ways to develop new ideas with Maryland’s researchers and extend Microsoft’s collaboration beyond the work already taking place in the center.
Building the World’s Computer
Microsoft builds the world’s computer. The company is bringing the same model to quantum, incorporating partner technologies throughout the computing stack just as the company does in its cloud computers today. The goal is simple to state and hard to do: Offer customers the best quantum computers, high-performance computing, and AI available at every stage of the journey to useful quantum computing, through an ecosystem of end users, companies, universities, nonprofits, and government agencies.
The Microsoft Quantum platform spans developer tools through a real-time operating system for quantum computers in Azure, with support for different qubit technologies. The purpose of that shared software and infrastructure is to help partner machines scale faster while allowing researchers to co-design systems around customers’ most demanding workloads. This contrasts with developing hardware first and only then asking which applications it might serve.
With Atom Computing, Microsoft is applying its platform’s quantum error correction to neutral atoms to build the world’s most powerful quantum computers. The first machine, Magne, is planned to have 50 logical qubits and is slated for operation by QuNorth in Denmark by early 2027. The Microsoft Quantum Development Kit, included in Microsoft’s platform, provides developer-facing tools for quantum programming, error correction, chemistry, and other applications. Its latest addition is a private-preview analytics library: an emerging collection of quantum algorithms and data-science tooling for advanced analytics and large-scale data analysis.
The Pace of Science Is Changing
AI is changing the range of questions that can be pursued. For example, the Microsoft Quantum team can now explore hardware architectures in a week that previously would have taken a year or more to analyze. Being able to compare more alternatives before committing to a design alters what is possible, but it also makes the connection to experimental infrastructure more important because people and equipment that can turn a promising architecture into something that can be built and measured are needed.
Microsoft Discovery, an enterprise agentic AI platform for research and development, and the company’s $60 million investment in the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission, are complementary efforts to accelerate science. The opportunity extends beyond individual research teams to the places that can combine these new tools with the skills, infrastructure, and pace of execution needed to use them.
Maryland has shown how much can be built in a year when state investment, university talent, federal expertise, and industry work toward a shared goal. Stakeholders need to keep that partnership adaptable, developing new ways to continue working together as technology changes. Maryland has demonstrated that it is the place where ideas in quantum computing can be conceived, tested, and implemented through collaboration.
Group calls for proper enforcement of ICC rulings as Trump administration widens attacks on court
The US threat to impose sanctions on the international criminal court (ICC) as an institution, not just its leading judges, could fundamentally disrupt its operation and needed to be resisted, a coalition of countries to defend international law heard at the United Nations on Friday.
Ronald Lamola, South Africa’s foreign minister, issued the warning at an event during the UN general assembly called to protect the system of international law from a growing array of threats, including open flouting of its tenets and rulings by Israel.
A graffiti mural depicting Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, directors of the documentary “NAZA,” seen in Ashdod, Israel, on Sept. 16, 2026. Initially painted by an artist accusing the filmmakers of being “traitors,” the text on the mural was subsequently modified by another artist to read “heroes.”Photo: Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images
The Israeli documentary “NAZA” will make its North American premiere tomorrow at the New York Film Festival on the heels of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vitriolic speech at the United Nations, which was met by mass protests, arrests, and diplomats walking out. Other Israeli documentaries have screened at Lincoln Center, including one at the New York Jewish Film Festival in January on the movement for LGBTQ+ rights or another about an October 7 hostage. But this film, co-directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, has proven extraordinarily controversial in its home country, reviled by nearly every sector of media and politics.
The documentary, which is composed of anonymous interviews with those active in Israel’s military and intelligence service during the war against Gaza, depicts extensive, highly detailed confessions of their participation in the mass targeting and killing of Palestinian civilians. The film’s title comes from the Israeli military’s system for assessing collateral damage, an interface that one of the anonymous confessors says can map out every building in the Gaza Strip and predict what civilians may be killed in an airstrike. One man who used the NAZA interface remarks in a clip from the film that the military once approved a single strike the system calculated would kill 500 Palestinians, and said the system makes no distinction between adults and children.
The revelation of the film’s existence — its world premiere was at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month after being produced in secret for three years — sent shockwaves through Israeli society. Two contradictory claims have begun to dominate discussions of the documentary, at the highest levels of both the Israeli government and the military brass, both aiming to neutralize the film’s reach and the ability of its filmmakers to continue working. The first is that the film released highly sensitive and classified information about the Israel Defense Forces’ operations in Gaza, contravening the law. The second line of attack claims the film is a complete fabrication, a hoax, and in the words of IDF Chief of the General Staff Eyal Zamir, a “blood libel.” Key Israeli politicians argue Abraham and Szor are aiding the enemy in wartime, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir calling them “friends” of Hamas who should be held accountable as such.
While some opponents of the current Israeli government, such as Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot, have attempted to tack in a more liberal direction by saying “criticism is legitimate” — while also decrying the film for “present[ing] a distorted and one-sided picture” at a time when “the State of Israel [is] in a time of distress” — both the Israeli state and the army have begun proposing legal action be taken against the filmmakers, with their citizenship in particular coming under attack from not only Culture Minister Miki Zohar, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
In an unprecedented move, Netanyahu announced on September 16 in a video message posted on social media that his government would “revoke citizenship from anyone who defames IDF supporters abroad” in addition to raising the fine for defamation “twentyfold” to 1 million shekels (nearly $330,000 at the current exchange rate) to punish them further. Calling out the “NAZA” filmmakers specifically, Netanyahu went on to say “their place does not belong with us.”
The phenomenon of revoking Israeli citizenship is not novel. Earlier this year, two Palestinians from East Jerusalem were convicted of security offenses and stripped of their Israeli nationality, which paved the way for their deportation to either the occupied West Bank or even the Gaza Strip. But revoking the citizenship of Israeli Jews on any kind of similar grounds is without historical precedent. Both Abraham and Szor — who also co-directed the documentary “No Other Land” — are Jews born in Israel, have no Palestinian ancestry, and no public record of citizenship for any other country.
Proposals have been made in the past for the revocation of Israeli citizenship from certain Jews, most notably Yigal Amir, who killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The far-right assassin, who is from an Orthodox Jewish family, was the subject of a public petition demanding his citizenship be revoked. But the Israeli Supreme Court rejected it on the grounds that “the dignity of the right” for every Jew to acquire and have Israeli citizenship overruled the “dignity of the murderer.” Now, for the first time, a sitting Israeli leader is advocating for the so-called “dignity of the right” to be overturned, not for murder, but for mere “slander,” in Netanyahu’s description, against the Israeli military.
Although Israeli politicians and other officials have categorized the filmmakers as antisemites spreading lies about the Jewish people, Abraham and Szor are not explicitly anti-Zionist in the way that other prominent critics of Israel, like the historian Ilan Pappé and the architect Eyal Weizman, have defined themselves, or even how a Communist member of Israel’s Knesset, Ofer Cassif, has defined himself. Both co-directors have openly stated their belief in a future where both Israelis and Palestinians “are equally sovereign and free.” Abraham himself has said Israelis have a “right” to “sovereignty and security in this land,” just as Palestinians do.
Despite these threaded needles, the Jewish filmmakers of “NAZA” now find themselves in the position of being treated much the same way Palestinian citizens of Israel are: as though their citizenship was bestowed upon them in error, a mistake of history where convenience trumped logic, a catastrophe that needs to be rectified immediately.
The Law of Return — the idea that every Jewish person, even those who converted to the religion and have no ancestral ties to the land of Palestine, should be allowed to “return” to their homeland, to settle, to live, and to be treated as an equal alongside every other Jewish person, no matter their birthplace — was one of the fundamental building blocks of the Zionist project. But the Law of Return did not become law until 1950, and the Citizenship Law, which defined the terms of its larger eligibility, did not become law until 1952, four years after the State of Israel’s founding.
For a short period in Israel’s history, citizenship had no clear definition, but it required quick clarification, not just because it is a key part of any fledgling state, but because they needed to be able to define which Arabs, who remained inside Israel’s new borders on temporary “red card” permits after the Nakba, could be allowed to stay, and who could be removed as an illegal infiltrator. Then-Agriculture Minister Dov Yosef remarked plainly during a cabinet debate in 1949: “When we publish the citizenship law and a person is found not to be a citizen, we can then deport him.”
Citizenship was granted in limited quantities to the Palestinians who had been able to remain inside the newly established Israel and did not confer all the rights it supposedly guaranteed. Palestinian citizens of Israel remained under control of a military governance system up until 1966, with their movements strictly controlled and their political activities restricted to rein in criticism of the Jewish state they now found themselves living under.
The discourse about citizenship has taken on an unmistakably Americanized character, one defined by a larger “Love it or leave it” mentality.
The Law of Return, considered “inalienable” by many politicians, where any concrete restrictions must entail tearing of the law in its entirety, contained seemingly contradictory restrictions within its formally expansive framework. Israeli Communist Party leader Meir Vilner noted back in 1950, during discussion of the Law of Return in the Knesset, that even though Jewish citizenship was technically expansive, it still entailed restrictions to those who “endangered … the security of the state,” a vagueness that Vilner opposed on the grounds that it could be used by the government “against sections within the Jewish people.” The Polish-Israeli anti-Zionist intellectual Israel Shahak noted in 1975 that all the punishments normally doled out against Arabs, including losing their citizenship, remained theoretically possible against Jewish dissenters under Israeli law, but only “racism” against Arabs had prevented setting that precedent.
As the United States became Israel’s primary benefactor in the 1960s and 1970s, previously dormant discussions about the grounds for revoking Israeli citizenship from Jews began to reemerge. They coalesced around insufficient connection to Israel, with some aiming to establish a system of permanent residency, disallowing citizenship for Jews who did not spend enough time inside the Jewish state. After 9/11, these proposals took on a much more ideological, and much more far-right, character.
The Israeli right was soon overtaken with the possibility of revoking the citizenship of those it considered to be aiding the enemy, with Arab citizens of Israel being the primary target. But anti-Zionist Jews were also in their crosshairs, including members of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish fringe sect Neturei Karta, or Jews who were insufficiently supportive of Israel, like Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. Calls for “loyalty oaths” from both Arabs and Jews became a cause célèbre for people like then-Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman in the late 2000s, who would insist on the equality he advocated for by saying, “It’s not racism. The test is loyalty, not their religion.”
A certain McCarthyist strain familiar to Americans under the Bush administration, looking anywhere and everywhere for national disloyalty, was confirmed in 2007 by Likud MK Gilad Erdan, who would later become Netanyahu’s ambassador to the United Nations during the height of the war on Gaza in 2023. Erdan claimed revoking citizenship would not be wrong because the U.S. also had a basis for revoking citizenship based on “disloyalty to the state,” which included “citizens by birth,” and that there was a threat that needed to be dealt with, even from Jewish people inside the State of Israel, who did not recognize Israel’s “sovereignty.”
The Second Intifada and the disintegration of the so-called Israeli-Palestinian peace process preceded these events, but now, the discourse about citizenship has taken on an unmistakably Americanized character, one defined by a larger “love it or leave it” mentality that allows for officials like Ben-Gvir to post about putting Jewish and Arab politicians who oppose the unfettered expansion of Zionism on planes to be deported.
By virtue of their criticism of Israel, the self-proclaimed representative of the Jewish people, they become enemies of the Jewish people, and therefore in the minds of the state’s most ardent defenders, politically Arab, and therefore able to be viewed as an existential threat just the same.
Netanyahu’s proposal to strip the “NAZA” filmmakers of their citizenship is unlikely to come to pass. It is undeniably being utilized as a political cudgel, with Netanyahu also calling for the revocation of political opponent Yair Golan’s citizenship on the same grounds, despite Golan having been a major general in the IDF. Israeli President Isaac Herzog has, in turn, dismissed the plan, calling it “completely irrelevant.” But as Shahak said in 1975, the grounds for expanding the revocation of citizenship from Jewish Israelis is there in the law, even if the precedent has not yet been set. In 2022, the court upheld a law that allowed for revoking citizenship from Israelis who “carry out actions that constitute a breach of trust against the state.” Earlier this year, in a move met with much less controversy, Netanyahu began initiating proceedings to strip citizenship from those who allegedly aid Iran through espionage, cases which have involved Jews as well as Arabs.
While the chances of the Supreme Court upholding the stripping of citizenship in this particular case are almost nil, a future Israeli administration, one that does not recognize the court’s powers, or an administration that serves alongside a court far more aligned with disqualifying the insufficiently Zionist from politics, could tell a much different story.
A future government where Israel can strip anyone’s citizenship for not only being Palestinian, but also for speaking out in any way against the state, a future where Ben-Gvir is defense minister, or even prime minister, may be closer than many defenders of the “only democracy in the Middle East” imagine.
More than 100 people were arrested at large protests against the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN general assembly. Susan Sarandon, Chelsea Manning and Caleb Hearon were among the famous faces arrested. Inside the assembly hall, Netanyahu faced a mass walkout as he took to the stage. Then, in an inflammatory address, he claimed Israel’s war in Gaza was the ‘opposite of a genocide’ and labelled the New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, antisemitic. Lucy Hough speaks to UK global editor Devika Bhat – watch on YouTube – Listen to Thursday’s episode of Stateside with Kai and Carter on whether Netanyahu has lost America here
Kent facility became dangerously overburdened after ministers halted transfers to hotels
A catalogue of failures including racism, use of force and chronic overcrowding at a Home Office processing site for people who arrive on small boat were linked to decisions made at the highest level of government, an independent inquiry has heard.
The government commissioned the Manston independent inquiry to look at problems under the Conservative government between 1 June and 22 November 2022 at the facility in Kent.
Funds to help local people turn empty shops, pubs and clubs into community hubs, shared workspaces and cafes
The UK government has pledged £210m to regenerate high streets by taking boarded-up shops, pubs and clubs and turning them into shared workspaces, cafes and community hubs.
Andy Burnham said the funds would “help put power back into the hands of locals who know their area best” as part of his effort to “restore pride and bring hope back”.
Experiment suggests organisms could live in harsh environment under Enceladus’s icy crust, strengthening possibility moon could support life
From the moment scientists spotted plumes of water erupting from Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, it became the most tantalising place in the solar system to search for life beyond Earth.
Now the case is even more compelling after researchers found that organisms that live in deep-sea waters off Japan can survive the harsh conditions expected in the briny ocean that lurks beneath Enceladus’s icy crust.
Forecasters say storm will cause heavy rains and large waves along the coast, near communities still recovering from extreme weather
Hurricane Nolo is expected to bring potentially life-threatening and catastrophic flooding to Hawaii on Friday, affecting communities that are still recovering from devastating storms earlier this summer.
The state activated more than 230 Hawaii national guard members and closed schools ahead of the storm. Nolo is expected to move west on Saturday and not directly hit the islands, but forecasters say it will still cause heavy rainfall, as much as 25in, as well as large and damaging waves along the coast.
Walter Moorhead, arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, murdered Santos Maria Chilel Soto, partner alleges
The partner of a Delaware woman who was shot dead by a hunter allegedly mistaking her for a deer has said the killing was “senseless” and the hunter had “no excuse”.
“I have never seen a deer with only two legs,” Minivaldo Velásquez told the Delaware public news outlet WHYY in an interview published on Thursday about the death six days earlier of Santos Maria Chilel Soto. “It doesn’t make sense – no.”
Trump and officials claimed database combats noncitizen voting but critics said it could disenfranchise eligible voters
The US supreme court has lifted restrictions on a controversial federal database of voters as Donald Trump seeks to impose tougher restrictions on voting ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The ruling issued Friday by the chief justice, John Roberts, in the name of the court temporarily sets aside an injunction issued by US district judge Sparkle L Sooknanan, who ruled on 22 June against the Trump administration’s plan to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements – Save – database to vet voter registration eligibility. A federal appeals court later declined to pause that ruling.
Sept. 25, 2026 — As part of the EuroHPC User Days 2026 held in Dublin this week, four EuroHPC users received awards for their outstanding contributions to the European supercomputing ecosystem. Two awards were granted for Best EuroHPC Users and two for Best Papers.
From left to right: Dr. Rodrigo Bartolomeu (Best Paper), Thomas Saillour (Best User), Stephen Beller (Best User), and Ilja Rausch (Best Paper). Credit: EuroHPC JU/ Julie de Bellaing.
Best EuroHPC User Awards
The 2026 Best EuroHPC User awards were presented to two users, Stephen Beller and Thomas Saillour. The selection of the laureates was made by the European supercomputing centres hosting and operating the EuroHPC supercomputers. The awards celebrate the users’ strategic use of EuroHPC resources and their proficiency in optimising workloads on the machines.
Stephen Beller was chosen for his work on creating multiparameter pictures of the subsurface from multicomponent seabed seismic data using 3D elastic Full Waveform Inversion (FWI). Generating detailed images of the geological structures beneath the ocean floor helps researchers understand how the Earth’s crust is formed and behaves. This research can support safer and more informed decisions about energy, carbon storage, infrastructure, and environmental management. To handle the complexity of simulating wave propagation using the spectral element method, the project was conducted on the MareNostrum5 GPP partition through the Extreme Scale Access call.
In the process, Stephen consumed 489,000 nodes over a year and successfully carried out large-scale simulations, achieving a particularly efficient use of both CPU and memory resources.
Thomas Saillour was also awarded EuroHPC Best User for his SeaReport project conducted through the Extreme Scale Access call and the Regular Access call. Making use of the MeluXina CPU and the MareNostrum5 GPP partitions, on which the team were allocated 160,000 and 240,000 node hours respectively, the project aims to advance the Joint Research Center’s global metocean modeling capabilities. It would enable the creation of more accurate 3D simulations and forecasts of storm surges and changes in water levels, helping coastal communities prepare for extreme weather events caused by climate change.
Throughout their work, Thomas and his team were shown to make particularly good usage of EuroHPC systems and had positive interactions with the teams of the centers hosting the supercomputers. They notably worked with EPICURE, an Application Support Team (AST), to create an optimized code making more efficient use of the supercomputer’s hardware resources.
Best Papers Awards
This year, two papers were recognised as Best Papers at the EuroHPC User Days 2026.
Carolina Oliveira Costa, formerly of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation, was awarded Best Paper for her submission “Mitigating Catastrophic Forgetting in Multilingual Continual Pretraining: Lessons from EU Institutional LLMs”. As Carolina has since moved to a new role outside the Commission and was unable to accept the award herself, Ilja Rausch, co-author and principal investigator for the project, accepted the award on behalf of the team.
Best Paper: Carolina Oliveira Costa and Ilja Rausch. Credit: EuroHPC JU/ Julie de Bellaing.
The scientific review board selected the paper in recognition of its relevance to the needs of European Union (EU) institutions, its strong methodological approach, and the practical value of providing a guide to develop a multilingual large language model (LLM).
The paper explores how to improve EU Institutional LLMs by enabling them to support all 24 official EU languages. To that end, the team focused on reducing catastrophic forgetting, where a model loses previously learned capabilities as it learns new material. Their results revealed the challenges of balancing multilingual adaptation with high-resource language preservation.
The project was conducted on the Leonardo Booster supercomputer.
Dr. Rodrigo Bartolomeu, from the Julich Supercomputing Centre in Germany and part of the MultiXscale CoE was also awarded the Best Paper award for his submission “Scaling and performance aspects of the P3M method on multiple GPUs”. The scientific review board selected this paper for its clear and strong contribution to making complex scientific simulations run faster and more efficiently on modern supercomputers.
Best Paper: Dr Rodrigo Bartolomeu. Credit: EuroHPC JU/ Julie de Bellaing.
The paper focused on a common problem in particle simulations: calculating how large numbers of charged particles affect each other over long distances, which can take a great deal of computing time. To address this, the team developed a flexible software library using the Ewald and P3M methods, designed to work efficiently on both CPUs and GPUs, including systems with multiple GPUs.
Their results showed that performance depends on finding the right balance between calculations and exchanging data between processors.
Computational experiments for the project were conducted on MareNostrum 5 Accelerated partition.
In congratulating the awardees, Anders Jensen, the EuroHPC JU Executive Director stated: “These awards recognise the exceptional work of the researchers and teams behind these projects. Their achievements show how EuroHPC supercomputers can support scientific excellence and innovation and bring practical solutions to some of the most pressing issues of our time.”
Sept. 25, 2026 — Tropical cyclones, also known as hurricanes or typhoons, are some of the most powerful weather events on the planet, impacting millions when they make landfall. Predicting them saves lives, but takes an enormous amount of math, including fluid dynamics calculations – exactly the types of simulations GPUs excel at producing. Researchers from the Naval Postgraduate School have proven their model, using GPUs, is five times faster than the CPU model by using U.S. National Science Foundation ACCESS allocations on NCSA’s Delta supercomputer.
Credit: Shutterstock
Soonpil Kang was a postdoctoral researcher at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) working with Frank Giraldo, a distinguished professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at NPS, when this research was conducted.
“We focused on how to efficiently simulate a large-scale, realistic tropical cyclone by leveraging GPU capabilities,” said Kang, currently a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
Kang’s team used a hurricane that had a lot of data they could test their simulation against, collaborating with Dr. Stephen Guimond, an atmospheric scientist at Hampton University, who provided observational data for Hurricane Guillermo, the ninth-most intense Pacific hurricane on record.
“Our results show that using GPUs can save both time and energy compared to pure CPU-based simulations,” Kang said. “We hope that this work can contribute to the acceleration of numerical weather prediction models.”
You can read more detailed information about this research in the original article here. If you’re a researcher in need of more GPUs, visit the ACCESS website.
Resource Provider Institution(s): National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Resources Used: Delta Affiliations: Naval Postgraduate School Funding Agency: NSF Grant or Allocation Number(s): MTH240030
The science story featured here was enabled by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s ACCESS program, which is supported by National Science Foundation grants #2138259, #2138286, #2138307, #2137603, and #2138296.
President Trump described Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit this week as "very productive," though the White House has said little about what was achieved during the summit.
"Weird Al" Yankovic's name has just been approved for a new asteroid — (14331) Alyankovic = 1981 EC26 — by the International Astronomical Union, reports Space.com.
Yankovic's asteroid was championed by planetary scientist Allison McGraw joined by "several heavy hitters in the planetary science field, according to the Tucson Star. (Astrophysicist Steve Desch from the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University; Tim McCoy, one of the main curators of meteorites at the Smithsonian Institution; and University of Arizona research scientist Melissa Brucker, leader of the Spacewatch program, which has discovered more than 179,000 asteroids.)
The scientists also convinced the International Astronomical Union to name an asteroid after one of Yankovic's major influences, famous musical humorist and political satirist Tom Lehrer, who died last year at age 97. Lehrer's work includes "The Elements," a 1959 song in which he recites the entire periodic table to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Major-General's Song." "He was a mathematician and teacher and also wrote math- and science-themed songs," McGraw said. "We felt that someone who had that kind of science enthusiasm really deserved to have their name up in the sky...." McGraw is hoping that naming space rocks after stars like Lehrer and "Weird Al" will cast some reflected light on two things she's passionate about: asteroid research and science communication.
Six years ago a 92-year-old Tom Lehrer released all his lyrics into the public domain. (Wikipedia notes he'd "largely retired" by the 1970s to become a mathematics teacher at the University of California, Santa Cruz.) Slashdot ran a brief career retrospective when Lehrer died last year at age 97.
And the IAU writes that "Generations of scientists have been inspired" by Weird Al Yankovic's "comedic musical works, including 'It's All About the Pentiums' and 'White and Nerdy'." ("I'm fluent in JavaScript as well as Klingon," Yankovic sings in the latter.) He appears in a song envisioning a rap battle between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Sir Isaac Newton... And in 1999 he recorded a five-minute summation of Star Wars: Phantom Menace, sung to the wistful tune of Don McLean's American Pie. Performing it last month in a NPR Tiny Desk concert, "most of the audience was singing along," remembers an interviewer at NPR. "It felt like something that was very personal to them."
Weird Al: It's one of those songs that means a lot to people, particularly "Star Wars" fans, of course. But I mean, I see a lot of people in the audience cosplaying as Jedi Knights and waving their light sabers... I've even heard that, you know, they play that song at "Star Wars" conventions, and people get weepy, you know... [I]t really hits people in a tender place somehow...
"Oh my, my, this here Anakin guy
may be Vader someday later, now he's just a small fry.
And he left his home and kissed his mommy goodbye,
sayin' soon, I'm gonna be a Jedi."
Yankovic has led a geek-friendly career. In the heyday of Napster, he released an anthem-style parody mocking the arguments of the Recording Industry Association of America, titled "Don't Download This Song. ("Even Lars Ulrich knows it's wrong...")
"Once in a while maybe you will feel the urge
To break international copyright law...
you start out stealing songs, then you're robbing liquor stores
And selling crack and running over school kids with your car..."
As a student at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, Yankovic bootstrapped a career in 1979 by recording his first novelty song "My Bologna" (a parody of "My Sharona" by the Knack) while playing his accordion in a bathroom for its acoustics. And even the IAU acknowledged the geeky themes in his 1999 song "It's All About the Pentiums" (a filk on Puff Daddy's "It's All About the Benjamins").
"You're usin' a 286? Don't make me laugh
Your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?
You could back up your whole hard drive on a floppy diskette
You're the biggest joke on the Internet..."
The sobering outlook has compounded concerns from some U.S. lawmakers about President Donald Trump’s agreement to assist the kingdom with establishing a civilian nuclear program.
Prime minister quashes speculation that Labour’s revival in the polls could prompt early contest
Andy Burnham has said he will not call a general election before 2029, after days of speculation that Labour’s revival in the polls could tempt him to call an early contest.
The prime minister was repeatedly questioned on the prospect during a round of broadcast interviews to regional media on Friday.
The Chinese leader’s visit to Washington appears to have done nothing to shift the stalemate in bilateral relations
Within days, two high-profile Chinese visitors will arrive in the US – envoys of friendship, as Xi Jinping described them when he met Donald Trump at the White House this week. The giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, will be hosted at Atlanta zoo. Beijing dispatched the first panda pair to the US in 1972 following President Richard Nixon’s landmark visit to China. It uses the animals to indicate satisfaction or displeasure with other nations. But it also charges heftily for their lease: reportedly, around $1m a year per pair. Americans’ views of China have warmed from a pandemic nadir, but are unlikely to be shifted much by two animals, however charming. These days they are more of a token gesture than a striking symbol.
It is telling that the announcement was one of the main takeaways of Mr Xi’s visit to Washington. Expectations were low after May’s stalemate summit in Beijing, but this meeting still struggled to meet them. The US president gave Mr Xi a lavish welcome – unusually, travelling to meet the “strong, vibrant and fit” Chinese leader off the plane. He insisted that they had “never gotten along better”.
Pontiff continues to decry the rise of AI on his visit to France, stressing the importance of retaining 'ethical discernment' in an age when rapidly advancing technology threatens to undermine humanity
Samples of diluted cannabis edibles and flowers sit in vials at Kaycha Labs, a cannabis testing facility in Denver that looks for contaminants in marijuana products. Stephen Swofford, The Denver Gazette
A Colorado manufacturer of a popular brand of marijuana vapes warned dispensaries last week that it is recalling products due to contamination by methylene chloride, a chemical the Environmental Protection Agency has sought to ban for most uses because it can cause cancer.
The recall comes amid a protracted delay in state implementation of expanded testing procedures that would have detected methylene chloride and other solvents that pose health risks.
The manufacturer, StayCon, voluntarily flagged 49 of its products, some of which first went up on dispensary shelves more than a year and a half ago. The recalled items include vapes that go by the brand name Maui Wowie and Grape Gorilla. The recall notice said a “botanically-derived” flavoring compound used in its marijuana vapes contained methylene chloride.
The owner of the third-party lab that detected the toxic solvent, which can be used to strip paint, said that he notified the company and the state six weeks before StayCon issued its recall. The state has yet to issue its own alert to consumers. Kyle Boyd, a spokesperson for the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division, told The Denver Gazette and ProPublica that the agency “does not comment on investigations” in response to a question about why it hasn’t made the recall public.
The Denver Gazette and ProPublica reported this month that regulatory loopholes in Colorado have allowed contaminated marijuana products that pose health risks to continue being sold to consumers for months, sometimes even years. Regulators have been slow to provide public warnings even after they’ve received reports of consumer harm. Earlier this year, the publications also reported on the dangers of methylene chloride as part of an investigation into Colorado’s failure to adopt many regulations used by other states to keep intoxicating hemp products off marijuana shelves.
Methylene chloride can be used to cheaply synthesize hemp into THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana that makes people high. That chemically converted hemp is then falsely labeled and sold as marijuana-based products. State law bans the chemical conversion process and prohibits marijuana manufacturers from using methylene chloride, which the EPA banned for most uses in 2024. This month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit struck down the EPA ban and sent the matter back to the agency for further review.
The still-unimplemented testing rule for methylene chloride and 30 other solvents was meant to align Colorado’s standards with requirements that are already in place in 24 of the 43 states with regulated marijuana markets. The new testing was supposed to be implemented in July — nearly three months before StayCon told dispensaries it was recalling products. A spokesperson for the Marijuana Enforcement Division said the state public health department, which reviews labs and recommends their certification, told his agency it needed more time.
Implementation, he said, will begin at the end of this month.
Denver-based Bona Fides Laboratory in August detected the methylene chloride that prompted Friday’s recall notice during routine testing for other contaminants such as pesticides and mold. Lab owner David Mathis said he immediately notified the state and StayCon. He criticized state regulators for delaying implementation of the new testing rules, saying his company had been ready to conduct expanded screening since the start of July.
“How many samples were not tested but have contaminants in them and were passed to the public?” Mathis said.
StayCon, a Pueblo County-based company doing business as Craft, did not respond to questions from The Denver Gazette and ProPublica about its recall.
Even as the new testing protocols are set to go into effect, the state has backed away from plans to close a related and longstanding regulatory loophole: Manufacturers still get to choose the samples that labs test and the labs that do the testing.
Regulators in January said they were considering overhauling sampling rules to require lab personnel to collect samples, but they backed down after top manufacturers said it would be too expensive.
Planned acquisition strengthens NetApp’s position in the rapidly growing AI infrastructure market by bringing differentiated metadata innovation and parallel file architecture designed for AI
SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 25, 2026 — NetApp today announced its intent to acquire PEAK:AIO, a pioneer in next-generation metadata architecture and high-performance parallel file systems. The planned acquisition is expected to accelerate NetApp’s AI infrastructure roadmap by augmenting metadata services and parallel namespace innovation designed to help AI clouds scale shared storage alongside growing GPU clusters.
As AI becomes embedded in every enterprise workload, organizations are confronting a new challenge: traditional storage architectures were not designed for the unprecedented scale, concurrency, and performance requirements of AI factories, AI clouds, and next-generation data-intensive applications. NetApp is building an architecture that disaggregates metadata from data and enables metadata services to scale independently, creating a foundation for AI infrastructure capable of supporting trillions of files, exabyte-scale environments, and massively parallel workloads.
The acquisition reinforces NetApp’s strategy to address the rapidly growing market for AI infrastructure. By combining PEAK:AIO’s specialized metadata innovations with NetApp ONTAP software, customers will benefit from a differentiated architecture that preserves the resilience, security, and operational maturity of ONTAP while introducing a new level of scalability for AI workloads.
“AI clouds need high-performance shared storage that can scale alongside growing GPU clusters while maintaining the resilience, security, and operational simplicity organizations depend on,” said George Kurian, Chief Executive Officer at NetApp. “With PEAK:AIO, we are delivering on our vision for a new generation of AI infrastructure that combines scalable metadata services with the proven foundation of ONTAP to help customers maximize infrastructure efficiency and support AI at hyperscale cloud.”
PEAK:AIO’s technology originated from collaborations with leading research institutions, including Los Alamos National Laboratory and Carnegie Mellon University, and was designed to address some of the industry’s most demanding data-intensive computing challenges. The planned integration will add specialized metadata services and parallel namespace innovation to NetApp’s ONTAP-based data architecture, while creating a clear evolution path for existing ONTAP customers.
“NetApp and PEAK:AIO connected through the shared belief that the AI era demands a fundamentally new approach to data infrastructure,” said Mark Klarzynski, Chief Technology Officer and Founder at PEAK:AIO. “What excites us most about joining NetApp is the opportunity to pair our culture of innovation with the reach, scale, and customer trust of a global leader. Together with NetApp, we have an opportunity to help shape that future and deliver technologies that make managing data at a massive scale both practical and accessible.”
PEAK:AIO’s metadata innovation extends metadata scale, delivers a global namespace, and enables parallel NFS-based access for massively parallel workloads, while NetApp contributes trusted ONTAP expertise, global reach, and operational maturity to make AI-scale file infrastructure more practical and accessible. Together, they are expected to deliver new capabilities that simplify the deployment and operation of shared storage for increasingly large AI environments.
The architecture is intended to support trillions of files and multi-exabyte deployments while preserving the resiliency, security, and operational simplicity customers expect from ONTAP. Designed around the needs of large-scale AI environments, it combines scalable metadata services, standards-based parallel NFS access, and ONTAP as the resilient data foundation to help reduce data-related GPU stalls, improve infrastructure efficiency, and accelerate AI innovation.
The transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
About NetApp
For more than three decades, NetApp has helped the world’s leading organizations navigate change – from the rise of enterprise storage to the intelligent era defined by data and AI. Today, NetApp is the Intelligent Data Infrastructure company, helping customers turn data into a catalyst for innovation, resilience, and growth.
At the heart of that infrastructure is the NetApp data platform – the unified, enterprise-grade, intelligent foundation that connects, protects, and activates data across every cloud, workload, and environment. Built on the proven power of NetApp ONTAP, our leading data management software and OS, and enhanced by automation through the AI Data Engine and AFX, it delivers observability, resilience, and intelligence at scale.
Disaggregated by design, the NetApp data platform separates storage, services, and control so enterprises can modernize faster, scale efficiently, and innovate without lock-in. As the only enterprise storage platform natively embedded in the world’s largest clouds, it gives organizations the freedom to run any workload anywhere with consistent performance, governance, and protection.
With NetApp, data is always ready – ready to defend against threats, ready to power AI, and ready to drive the next breakthrough. That’s why the world’s most forward-thinking enterprises trust NetApp to turn intelligence into advantage.
About PEAK:AIO
PEAK:AIO is a Manchester UK-based software-defined AI storage company. Its platform delivers high-performance AI storage from a single server to exabytes on any industry-standard hardware. PEAK:AIO is deployed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, NHS AIDE, Oxford Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Liverpool, University of Strathclyde MediForge Hub, and Zoological Society of London. Learn more at https://peakaio.com.
Southern Delaware event moves because of incoming storm; Wilmington’s Walk to End Alzheimer’s remains scheduled for Oct. 31
REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. — The Southern Delaware Walk to End Alzheimer’s has been postponed to Saturday, Nov. 14, because of the incoming storm, organizers announced Friday.
The walk had been scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 26.
The Alzheimer’s Association Delaware Chapter made the decision to move the event as potentially disruptive weather approaches the region.
The Southern Delaware event is one of two Walk to End Alzheimer’s events planned in Delaware this fall. The Wilmington walk remains scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 31.
The annual walks bring together people living with Alzheimer’s and other dementias, caregivers, families, friends and supporters while raising money for Alzheimer’s research and the association’s care and support programs.
Participants can walk individually or as part of a team and raise money in support of the Alzheimer’s Association’s mission.
A signature part of the event is the Promise Garden ceremony. Participants carry different-colored flowers representing their personal connection to Alzheimer’s and dementia, including those living with the disease, caregivers and people walking in memory of someone they have lost.
The Delaware walks are part of the nationwide Walk to End Alzheimer’s program, which the Alzheimer’s Association describes as the world’s largest fundraiser for Alzheimer’s care, support and research.
The organization provides education and support for Delaware families dealing with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Its 24/7 Helpline also connects families and caregivers with information, local resources and support.
The postponement gives Southern Delaware participants several additional weeks to register, organize teams and raise money before gathering Nov. 14.
The Wilmington event is not affected by the Southern Delaware postponement and remains scheduled for Oct. 31.
To Go Box
Southern Delaware Walk to End Alzheimer’s
When: Saturday, Nov. 14
Original date: Saturday, Sept. 26
Status: Postponed because of the incoming storm
Wilmington Walk to End Alzheimer’s
When: Saturday, Oct. 31
Participate: Individuals can register to walk, create or join a team, volunteer or make a donation through the Alzheimer’s Association.
Learn more: Visit the Alzheimer’s Association Delaware Chapter online or call its 24/7 Helpline at 800-272-3900.
Exclusive: Economist Ravinder Athwal, who worked in Keir Starmer’s team, is poached from Flint Global
Ravinder Athwal, the economist who wrote Labour’s 2024 manifesto, is taking on a senior role as an adviser to John Healey, in a move likely to fuel speculation about an early general election.
The chancellor is keen to strengthen his team before the critical budget on 28 October, as the economy is buffeted by high oil prices and rising government borrowing costs.
Province’s rat patrol called in to investigate as town of Bowden announces discovery of dead vermin
For more than seven decades, residents of Alberta have shared something in common with Antarctica and the high Arctic: all locations are officially free of rats.
But on Thursday the Canadian province’s reputation as a firewall against rodent infestation took a hit when the town of Bowden announced the discovery of a dead rat and called on the province’s “rat patrol” to investigate.
Thélyson Orélien had been in the running to win a top literary prize before the AI claim emerged on social media
The organisers of France’s most prestigious literary prize said they had removed a critically acclaimed novel by a Canadian-Haitian writer from the longlist after an anonymous online account claimed the book was “almost entirely” written by AI.
The Académie Goncourt, a Paris-based literary organisation, said on Friday its decision to withdraw Thélyson Orélien’s novel C’était ça ou mourir (It Was That or Die) was “driven by the desire to preserve the integrity of the Goncourt prize and the academy itself, whose central role is to promote and honour literature written by women and men”.
The justice called out her colleagues in a speech she made at the UDC school of law, hours after Trump filed his latest request
US supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson acknowledged serious concerns about her colleagues’ handling of emergency requests, the method Donald Trump often uses to seek approval from the court.
Jackson, one of the three liberal members of the supreme court, criticized the justices’ willingness to issue rulings via the “shadow docket”, saying it undermines the public’s faith in the judicial system.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in its push to use a controversial database to review state voter rolls for potential noncitizens.
COLUMBIA, Missouri — The University of Missouri has barred a man from campus and referred an incident involving comments endorsing political violence to university police, Columbia police and the FBI after a confrontation at a Turning Point USA event.
Video from Thursday’s “Pick Up the Mic” event shows the individual wearing a shirt styled after one worn by Charlie Kirk when Kirk was fatally shot in Utah in September 2025, with what appeared to be fake blood added. During an exchange, a TPUSA speaker asked whether the man supported people being killed over freedom of speech. “Yeah, absolutely,” he responded.
Turning Point USA’s Missouri chapter initially described the individual as a student, but the university later clarified that he is not enrolled at Mizzou. Officials said he was formally trespassed from campus and that the incident had been referred for further investigation.
Columbia police confirmed they were notified following the event and were coordinating with University of Missouri police. The FBI’s Kansas City office also confirmed it was aware of the incident, according to the Washington Examiner.
No arrest or criminal charge had been announced as of Friday. Authorities have not publicly said whether investigators consider the comments a prosecutable threat rather than protected speech.
Trump’s media ban resulted in an effective TV blackout of coverage of the president during the UN general assembly
The primary White House television pool has resumed filming administration events after a court ruling temporarily overturned a Trump administration ban on CNN a day earlier.
In an unprecedented move, the pool – which also includes NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox News – ceased recording and transmitting White House footage on Monday, in solidarity with CNN, MS Now and Politico, which had been banned by Trump from the building over what he said was “their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS.”
Pontiff says artificial intelligence must remain at service of people in first official papal visit to country in 18 years
Pope Leo has warned against losing humanity in a “paradise of machines” as he addressed global concerns over the dangers of artificial intelligence at the start of a three-day visit to France.
“If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for people to be educated in ethical discernment, capable of seeing what is morally right,” he said in a speech at the Élysée.
(The Center Square) – As Michigan voters head toward the 2026 election, rising energy costs and potential rate hikes from the state’s two largest utilities are drawing increased attention.
Who are the groups backing candidates in the midterms – and why? In our second live discussion ahead of the elections, Joseph Gedeon, Dara Kerr and Chris Stein are live now
nycreader2 asks: If someone donated millions of dollars to a political campaign, what would they realistically expect to get out of it? Are there things we can actually trace from political spending to policy decisions, or is that much harder to establish?
Dara: This is tricky because when we see big donations to political campaigns, we don’t usually hear politicians say they’re making policy decisions to benefit that donor. That said, I think we can infer cause-and-effect in some situations.
The biggest example that comes to mind is Elon Musk spending at least $250m to get Donald Trump elected in 2024. That was one of the largest individual donor contributions we’ve seen in a US presidential campaign. The day Trump was inaugurated, one of his first actions in office was to create the Department of Government Efficiency and put Musk in charge. In the following months, we saw Musk and his cohort dismantle many government agencies that were charged with regulating his network of companies.
Chris: Super Pacs tied to cryptocurrency spent millions in the primaries, though they didn’t always achieve the desired result. One of the major players is called Fairshake, which has made more than $13.3m in independent expenditures this year in Illinois, including nearly $2.5m against state lawmaker La Shawn Ford, who nonetheless won the Democratic primary for a US House district, and nearly $9.9m against lieutenant governor Juliana Stratton, who won the Democratic Senate nomination anyway. They also spent about $800,000 against state senator Robert Peters, who lost the primary for another US House district. That’s not the last we’ll hear of Fairshake this cycle — they are reportedly planning to spend $30m against Sherrod Brown, a Democrat and cryptocurrency foe who is running to return to the Senate in Ohio.
He profiled John Updike and Norman Mailer, served as a foreign correspondent in Canada and France, and wrote a prizewinning book about the Vietnam War.
From tacos and live music to gardens, history and a fall festival, here are outings for Sept. 26-27, with a website for every stop.
WILMINGTON, Del. — Whether you are planning a family afternoon, a date night or a drive through the Brandywine Valley, there is plenty to do this weekend. With a weather forecast that looks like rain, here are some options both inside and out! Check the weather
Newark Community Day — Newark. Music, food, crafts and children’s activities fill the University of Delaware Green from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. A good choice for families and grandparents. Website: newarkde.gov. newarkde.gov
Rum & Red Roses: A Pogues Tribute — Wilmington. John Byrne and fellow musicians celebrate The Pogues at The Crown at The Queen at 8 p.m. Saturday. Doors open at 7 p.m. Website: thequeenwilmington.com. thequeenwilmington.com
“Fiddler on the Roof” — Arden. Pair a musical with Candlelight Theatre’s dinner theater experience. Check the performance schedule and ticket availability before going. Website: candlelighttheatredelaware.org. candlelighttheatredelaware.org
Delaware Art Museum — Wilmington. Explore the galleries and sculpture garden, then consider lunch nearby. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Website: delart.org. delart.org
Delaware Taco Festival — Wilmington Riverfront. Tacos, entertainment and children’s activities take over Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park on Saturday and Sunday. General admission runs from 1 to 7 p.m. each day. Website: tacofestival.com. www.tacofestival.com
Fifer Orchards Fall Fest — Camden-Wyoming. Head to the farm Saturday for a corn maze, pumpkin and apple picking, activities and cider doughnuts. Fall Fest is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Website: fifers.com. www.fifers.com
History Book Festival — Lewes. Authors and readers gather across town for a weekend devoted to history. Saturday offers a full day of free presentations; Friday’s keynote and Sunday’s closing event are ticketed. Website: historybookfestival.org. www.historybookfestival.org
Longwood Gardens’ Festival of Fountains — Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Visit the gardens during the day or book Saturday’s 8:15 p.m. “Electric 80s” Fireworks & Fountains Show. Longwood closes at 6 p.m. Saturday to visitors without a fireworks ticket. Website: longwoodgardens.org. longwoodgardens.org
Fall Jamboree at Mt. Cuba Center — Hockessin. Live music, lawn games, fire pits, guided tours and haywagon rides run from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday. Sunday is the rain date. Website: mtcubacenter.org. mtcubacenter.org
IndiaFest — Wilmington. The Indo-American Association of Delaware hosts its cultural celebration Saturday at St. Mark’s High School, 2501 Pike Creek Road. Check the organizer’s site for the program and admission information. Website: iaadelaware.org. www.iaadelaware.org
Historic New Castle day trip — New Castle. Walk the historic streets and riverfront, and visit the Court House Museum or the free exhibition at the Arsenal. The city also lists a Belgian Beer Fest from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday. Websites: newcastlehistory.org and newcastlecity.delaware.gov. history.delaware.gov
Brandywine Valley art and scenery — Chadds Ford and Greenville. Plan your own afternoon around the Brandywine Museum of Art, Winterthur’s grounds and a scenic drive. Check admission and tour availability before leaving. Websites: brandywine.org and winterthur.org.
To Go Box
When: Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 26-27. Some events run on only one day.
How to plan: Use the website listed with each option to check tickets, schedules and weather updates before traveling.
The media organisation reports that three of its journalists were denied media passes
A record £66m of emergency security funding was issued by the Home Office for mosques and related community sites in the UK when violent disorder spread in the aftermath of the Southport attacks in 2024.
Exclusive figures obtained by the Guardian also reveal a record of about £41m of security funding was issued for mosques and related community sites for the year from April 2025-26 as part of the protective security scheme.
We reserve the right to reject an application if we cannot find any evidence the applicant is a working journalist or photographer with a political portfolio or working on behalf of a relevant media outlet.”
Iran’s seven-day timetable would restart nuclear talks, but will the US be willing to deliver on terms that include reining in Israel in Lebanon?
Iran’s seven-day timetable to reopen the strait of Hormuz and start talks on its nuclear programme has been pitched as a deal that could rapidly extricate Donald Trump from a political crisis but requires the US president to make difficult concessions.
In the five days left before the proposed reopening of the strait, which is expected to relieve pressure on global energy markets, Trump would need to lift Iranian asset freezes, permit Iran to export its oil and, probably most difficult of all, order Benjamin Netanyahu to end Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, thus achieving the “ceasefire on all fronts”.
Greg Steube’s Flafo Act would require federal agencies to obtain warrants before accessing or sharing data from networked license plate readers
A Florida Republican has introduced a bill that would bar US federal agencies from using Flock Safety’s licence plate cameras and similar systems without a warrant, amid a nationwide backlash against the surveillance company.
Greg Steube’s Facilitating Liberty and Accountability for Flock Observations (Flafo) Act, introduced on Friday, would require a judicial warrant before federal agencies could buy, operate, access or share data with networked licence plate readers. It would also make US Department of Justice grants to local police conditional on their adopting similar rules.
The Climate Briefing: Contested waters in international politicsAudiothilton.drupal
Climate change, rising demand, and geopolitical rivalry are reshaping the politics of water. Bhargabi, Beatrice, and their guests discuss what’s at stake for cooperation on shared water resources.
This season of droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires has shone a light on a growing vulnerability: the security of our water resources.
Following the Stockholm World Water Week that took place last month and an upcoming UN Water Conference in Abu Dhabi later this year, this episode explores questions around how climate change and growing demand are reshaping global water security. It considers: Where is water becoming a source or a tool of geopolitical tension? Is the international system equipped to manage these pressures? What can be done about it?
To find out, Bhargabi and Beatrice Mosello speak to Susanne Schmeier, Professor of Water Cooperation, Law and Diplomacy at IHE Delft and Utrecht University, and David Michel, Senior Associate (non-resident) at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
The Climate Briefing explores key themes in the UN climate negotiations and international climate politics. The podcast is hosted by Bhargabi Bharadwaj from Chatham House and features interviewees from governments, international organizations, academia and civil society organizations from across the world.
Kenneth Newton and Melanie James filmed themselves mocking and abusing Rubin Blount, 28, who weighed 40kg when he died
A couple convicted of murder after inflicting “deliberate cruelty” on a vulnerable 28-year-old man in their care, who at the time of his death weighed just 40kg (6st 4lb), have been jailed for life.
Rubin Blount was made to stand for long periods of time, left to lie in his own urine and forced to eat out of bins by his stepbrother Kenneth Newton and Newton’s partner, Melanie James, at a property in Tamworth, Staffordshire, Stafford crown court heard.
The United States men’s national team’s stars of tomorrow will debut en masse over the coming multi-week Fifa window, with Mauricio Pochettino calling in 13 players who have yet to debut.
Cavan Sullivan, at 16 years old, is the headliner, and we’ve gone deep into what makes him special here. But he’s far from alone. Consider this a cheatsheet to get to know all the new guys on the back of their performances at the club level.
As the UN warns traditional safeguards are ‘unravelling’, Donald Trump says he will encourage, not restrain, the AI race
When the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, sat down for an interview in the heart of Silicon Valley at the weekend he had known for two days that his was the first government known to have been attacked by a rogue AI agent.
He didn’t reveal the attack then, but he sounded a warning about the march of AI: “the risk is that AI develops in a way in which humans are no longer in control of what AI is producing.”
The pope gives landmark speech on AI development and Europe’s future
Later today, Pope Leo will go to the Élysée Palace for (another) formal welcome and a meeting with authorities, civil society and the diplomatic corps, before visiting Unesco and delivering a speech on AI in mid-afternoon.
He is then expected to go on a stroll through the streets of Paris, before going to the restored Notre Dame Cathedral.
US striker had red card ban suspended for Belgium game
Trump said he called Infantino asking for review
Coach says ‘energy of everything’ changed in moment
US men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino has said he regrets not being “more involved” in the situation surrounding US forward Folarin Balogun at this summer’s World Cup.
Balogun was given a red card after a challenge against Bosnia and Herzegovina defender Tarik Muharemovic, which by rule is accompanied with a one-game suspension. Balogun’s ban for the next game against Belgium was suspended after the US Soccer Federation and Donald Trump lobbied Fifa, with Trump saying that he personally placed a call to Fifa president Gianni Infantino to ask the ruling be reviewed. Infantino maintains that the decision to reinstate Balogun was made independently by Fifa’s disciplinary committee.
Powered by sun and wind, the uncrewed vehicle will collect data to help Australian scientists better understand how oceans absorb emissions
A small uncrewed vessel has embarked on a lap around Antarctica and may not return for months.
The seven-metre craft, which looks like a large kayak in hi-vis orange, is expected to travel about 22,000km through inhospitable waters, propelled by powerful westerly winds and energy from the sun. The journey is seven times the distance between Sydney and Perth.
National Center for Education Statistics, which collects critical data to guide policy on learning, was decimated after Doge canceled crucial contracts
As reading and math scores fall to their lowest pointin the past quarter-century, the US now has fewer tools to understand and develop interventions for this troubling trend.
When the Trump administration took a wrecking ball to the Department of Education last year, firing nearly half of its workers and allowing the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to cancel nearly $900m in contracts, a little-known agency called the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) was among the hardest hit.
More than 130 world leaders descended on the United Nations headquarters in New York this week, joining the pageantry and speechmaking of the annual general assembly.
Many of the visiting presidents and prime ministers delivered their set-piece addresses to a sparsely populated hall, but contributions from two unlikely visitors in the nearby security council chamber stood out.
Andy Burnham was not even in the audience for the prime minister’s speech at the Labour party conference this time last year. As Keir Starmer made the case for continuity to his restive party, Burnham was spotted slipping out over the bridge towards Liverpool’s Albert Dock.
The then Greater Manchester mayor had been vying for the spotlight throughout the party’s annual gathering, presenting the argument for change. But even he could not have envisaged the schism that would take place in the ensuing 12 months and would put him on the main stage as prime minister at this year’s conference, beginning in Merseyside on Sunday.
Israel's embattled leader lashed out at New York's mayor in a heated U.N. address, but a veteran analyst says his real targets were Israeli voters and President Trump.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 25, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) has announced the winning teams in DOE’s Energy and Critical Infrastructure challenge topic, part of the 2026 Global Industry Challenge hosted by Connected DMV. The teams explored how quantum and hybrid computing could help determine where to deploy energy storage and microgrids, and at what capacity.
Those decisions are becoming more complex as electricity demand grows from data centers, advanced manufacturing, and other large industrial loads. The challenge asked teams to test emerging computing approaches against this grid planning problem and compare their results with classical computing methods.
The winning teams in DOE’s challenge topic are:
The winning team was: Qtyche
The runner-up team was: BosonQ Psi (BQP)
“Maintaining U.S. leadership in emerging technologies requires rigorous testing against real-world problems and a clear understanding of both their capabilities and their limitations,” said Anthony Pugliese, Chief Commercialization Officer and Director of the DOE Office of Technology Commercialization. “Through our collaboration with Connected DMV, this challenge gave innovators an opportunity to test quantum and hybrid computing approaches against a complex energy infrastructure problem and establish benchmarks that can help us measure progress as the technology matures. Building this evidence base is an important part of understanding where emerging technologies may ultimately have practical applications.”
“As a nonprofit dedicated to driving transformative innovation, Connected DMV is proud to host the Global Industry Challenge, which this year engaged over 600 applicants from more than 50 countries competing across four industry use cases over three phases and six months,” said Tom Touchet, Interim CEO of Connected DMV. “Our partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy is critical to this effort. By combining DOE’s deep domain expertise with our collaborative platform, we are connecting quantum researchers directly with essential infrastructure problems to advance real-world solutions that will strengthen national grid resilience.”
“We designed DOE’s challenge topic to test quantum and hybrid approaches against a real grid planning problem, not to assume they outperform today’s tools, but to establish a rigorous way to measure progress as quantum hardware and algorithms advance” said Rima Kasia Oueid, Senior Commercialization Executive and Quantum & Space Lead at DOE’s Office of Technology Commercialization. “By defining a real grid planning problem and requiring teams to benchmark quantum and hybrid approaches against classical methods, we can better understand current capabilities and limitations, identify the technical milestones that still need to be reached, and track whether these approaches become increasingly relevant as the field progresses toward fault-tolerant quantum computing.”
In the final phase, teams executed their approaches using quantum hardware and simulation environments and compared their results with classical baselines. The resulting performance benchmarks provide reference points for assessing current capabilities and tracking progress as quantum hardware and algorithms improve.
The 2026 Global Industry Challenge is hosted by Connected DMV. DOE OTC led development of the energy infrastructure challenge topic and led the technical review of submissions. The results provide benchmarks for tracking progress as quantum computing technology advances.
TAMPA, Florida — Hillsborough County has declared a local state of emergency after the number of locally acquired dengue fever cases climbed to 170, making the Tampa-area county the center of Florida’s current outbreak.
Florida’s latest surveillance data counted 190 locally acquired cases statewide, with Hillsborough accounting for nearly 90% of them. Neighboring Pasco and Pinellas counties also declared emergencies Thursday as officials stepped up mosquito-control efforts aimed at limiting further spread.
The Hillsborough declaration took effect Sept. 24 and is initially scheduled to last seven days unless extended or rescinded. It gives county officials additional authority to deploy emergency resources and may allow reimbursement for certain response costs.
The increase has been substantial. Florida health officials reported just 59 locally acquired infections in Hillsborough County on Sept. 4, meaning the county’s total has nearly tripled within several weeks.
Dengue is spread primarily through bites from infected mosquitoes. Symptoms can include fever, severe aches, nausea, vomiting and rash. Most symptomatic patients recover within about a week, but roughly 1 in 20 people who become sick can develop severe dengue, which may cause internal bleeding, shock or death.
Officials are using mosquito traps along with ground and aerial treatments while urging residents to eliminate standing water and protect themselves from bites.
PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC (version played); Bandai Namco The game generates blood-pumping moments as you twist, turn and weave through the skies, while your locked-on missiles speed away to obliterate an enemy plane
The core appeal of any Ace Combat game lies in the moment when the beautiful clouds part, the sunlight glints off your perfectly rendered state-of-the-art fighter jet, and guitar-shredding music kicks into overdrive as your locked-on missiles speed away to obliterate an enemy plane. All of that is 100% present in Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. What’s new is the way it delivers its unexpectedly compelling story.
Set in the Earth-like alternative world of Strangereal, where every country is absolutely obsessed with fighter planes and giant superweapons, Ace Combat drafts you into the role of a fake ace pilot called the Wings of Theve – a propaganda invention to raise the morale of a besieged nation, similar to real-life rumours about Ukraine’s Ghosts of Kyiv. You rapidly find yourself becoming an actual legendary pilot, soaring through the skies with your buddies and raining hell upon your oppressors as everybody cheers on the radio. Speaking of ghosts, you have one in your ear – your predecessor, whom nobody else can hear, a gravelly voice waxing lyrical about flying, war and whatever else is on his mind as you flit about.
Every night, for months, as they settled into bed at their home in Watts, California, seven-year-old José, named after his father, would look over to his mother, Alma Ramirez, and ask her one question:
Age difference between former Democratic Unionist party leader and his victims an aggravating factor, say prosecutors
Jeffrey Donaldson, the former leader of the Democratic Unionist party in Northern Ireland, could be sent to prison for more than 10 years over the sexual assault of two women when they were children, a court heard on Friday.
The disgraced politician, who headed the DUP between 2021 and 2024, was found guilty of 18 counts of sexual abuse including one count of rape against the women in June.
Tens of thousands of police deployed and roads barricaded as PTI party demands release of jailed former PM
Leaders from Imran Khan’s party have vowed to go ahead with a nationwide demonstration in Pakistan to demand the former prime minister’s release, even as the government deployed tens of thousands of police to Islamabad, barricaded highways and issued arrest warrants to try to stop the march.
The state has taken extreme measures to prevent Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party from proceeding with the march. It was announced after mounting concerns of the treatment of Khan, who has been in jail since 2023 on corruption charges.
Forecasters say up to 40 million people in multiple US states could be affected by the early season northeasterly storm
High winds and heavy rain were beginning to batter New England on Friday as a “significant” nor’easter, the first such storm of the fall, threatened to disrupt weekend plans for millions.
In the Pacific Ocean, meanwhile, three separate hurricanes, one threatening “catastrophic flooding”, including life-threatening flash floods, in Hawaii, were churning as a record-setting El Niño continued to amplify severe weather events on a global scale.
The new qualification program helps AI factory builders identify products that meet applicable NVIDIA DSX requirements, starting with battery energy storage systems and cooling distribution units.
Sept. 25, 2026 — Every AI factory needs power and cooling that fit its computing architecture. As AI infrastructure expands, power, cooling, water, site and grid constraints are shaping what builders can deploy. Choosing products that fit the complete factory design helps builders turn computing capacity into useful AI output.
Credit: Shutterstock
To help builders make those decisions, NVIDIA is introducing NVIDIA DSX Ready, a qualification program for partner products and solutions that meet applicable NVIDIA DSX AI factory reference design requirements.
The program launches with two initial categories: battery energy storage systems (BESS) and cooling distribution units (CDUs). Category-specific requirements and review through the program help builders evaluate offerings with greater confidence, reduce integration risk and move toward deployment.
Qualified Building Blocks for Building AI Factory
The NVIDIA DSX AI factory platform unifies AI factory design and operations across compute, networking, power, cooling, facilities and software. It helps partners design and operate the factory as one system to produce more useful AI output within available power, cooling, water and grid constraints.
That system view matters now because optimizing one part of an AI factory can shift the bottleneck elsewhere. Power and cooling suppliers need a clear path from reference designs to qualified offerings, and builders need a clearer way to discover and evaluate those offerings.
DSX Ready connects that selection process to applicable NVIDIA DSX requirements. It gives builders a clear qualification to look for and gives partners a defined way to demonstrate that a specific offering meets the requirements for its category.
Power and Cooling Qualification
At launch, DSX Ready includes qualified BESS solutions Hitachi Energy, LG Energy Solution and Tesla, and qualified CDU solutions from LG Electronics, LiquidStack and Vertiv. These initial categories bring power systems and liquid-cooling infrastructure into a common program, with requirements tailored to each technology. Additional categories across infrastructure and software will be rolled out over time.
For BESS providers, partners run the required qualification tests and submit supporting data for NVIDIA review and approval within a defined qualification boundary. Passing qualification does not replace site-level engineering or imply site-level stability.
For CDU providers, the path uses the CDU self-qualification suite to determine whether a specific offering meets applicable NVIDIA functional requirements.
Teams can then focus on how qualified offerings fit their site, configuration and operating needs. A qualified CDU may meet the relevant cooling criteria, for example, while the builder still evaluates how it will fit the planned facility.
From Platform Design to Partner Selection
The value of a reference design grows when builders can connect it to specific products and informed engineering decisions. DSX Ready makes that connection, bringing partner innovation into the infrastructure choices behind NVIDIA DSX AI factories.
Explore NVIDIA DSX Ready qualification categories and learn how to participate. Connect with the right NVIDIA team to begin qualification for a product or solution.
Raspberry Pi's stock shot up over 30% in the last week. Why are investors so excited? For the six months ending June 30, revenue for Raspberry Pi Holdings "jumped 90% to $256.9 million," reports Investing.com, "while adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $40.3 million, and profit before tax leapt 216% to $19.6 million."
Underpinning the strong numbers was an acceleration in OEM adoption: direct unit shipments rose 26% to 3.4 million, total unit shipments climbed 17% to 4.2 million, and the customer order backlog doubled during the half to 2.6 million units. Demand was particularly robust in the Smart Home and Aerospace and Defence segments, and the company launched the AI HAT+ 2 for Raspberry Pi 5, extending its edge-AI product line.
DRAM prices have been increasing everywhere,
notes The Times of London, and Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton "said new customers, who required computers or microcontrollers to manufacture other technologies, were choosing Raspberry Pi's computers because they had a better inventory of components than competitors."
"There's always that choice for an original equipment manufacturer as to whether they should 'make' or 'buy' the computer elements of their platforms," Upton said. "The supply chain disruption is making 'make' a much harder choice and it's making the cost of repair a much harder choice. So we're seeing strength there." Raspberry Pi has already increased its suppliers of Dram more than threefold...
Upton said the increased demand had led to its backlog for units doubling to 2.6 million, which meant production rates would need to increase to prevent the numbers from getting "unhealthy". New production capacity at the manufacturing facility in Pencoed, Wales was expected to come online this week... Exports were almost evenly split between North America, Europe and the rest of the world, which was primarily China, where demand was growing... Analysts at Peel Hunt said the company was "well positioned for rapid growth in unit shipments in 2027 and beyond" with demand expected from enthusiasts as well as the AI and security sectors.
In other news, Hackaday notes the Raspberry Pi Foundation has "pushed binary-blob bootloader changes that limit your ability to upgrade RAM..."
This change restricts upgrading the RAM chip on your Pi 4 and Pi 5, as well as Compute Modules. By the looks of it, it does not restrict replacing the RAM chip with a chip of a similar size, quote, "locking devices to their original RAM size". As such, this does not prevent repair of your Raspberry Pi board, but does somewhat limit your repair part choice, at most.
This restriction is easily bypassable. The bootloader is stored in the SPI flash chip, which can be reflashed using the built-in mask ROM over USB and rpiboot, and you are not prevented from flashing older versions of the bootloader, so far. This means even if you manually swap the RAM chip, all you need to do is to also downgrade the bootloader to the last known good release — 2024-09-10 — and then your Pi board or Compute Module will function with upgraded RAM. If you have the skills to upgrade your RAM, you most certainly have the skills to downgrade the Raspberry Pi bootloader. For most regular use, having a two-year old bootloader version won't really matter...
For the reference, this bootloader change happened almost exactly two years ago, at some point between September 10 and September 23, 2024... The Raspberry Pi Foundation (RPF) justifies this as follows: they saw third-party resellers sourcing low-RAM Compute Modules, upgrading them with RAM from unknown source and unknown stability. My observation is that they'd also be reselling the modules at a markup for purely commercial gain, while undercutting RPF who would otherwise direct that money into RnD, something I much enjoy to see them do. This creates perverse incentives and risk for people buying Raspberry Pi boards online, and RPF decided to limit this primarily for their users' benefit, plus, if you ask me, some of theirs... The related GitHub issues have a fair few pingbacks, and exploring them makes the problem look grim to me....
My advice: don't lament Raspberry Pi RAM upgrades, especially given they're only slightly harder to perform now. Very few hackers ever performed them, the main audience for them turned out to be dodgy hardware resellers online, and in most cases, repair doesn't seem to be impeded at all, either. Think of the users that will no longer be fooled by a shady seller on Amazon, especially now that the perverse incentives for board mods and reusing harvested RAM chips are at their highest.
Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton answered questions from Slashdot readers in 2011 and 2016.
Messaging ‘very telling’, says Crump after grand jury said it found no evidence of criminal conduct in teen’s death
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump released information from a forensic examination of Nolan Wells’ cellphone as well as details of the official autopsy on Thursday, just days after a Mississippi grand jury said it found no evidence of criminal conduct in the teen’s death.
Attorneys representing the 18-year-old Black college student’s family have called for transparency, asking that the grand jury investigative materials and the official autopsy report be publicly released.
Sept. 25, 2026 — planqc and the LOGIQC consortium have been selected as one of six consortia to compete in Germany’s Quantum Computing Competition (QCC). The QCC is a major initiative of the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) to advance error-corrected quantum computing in Germany.
With up to €640 million in funding planned, the competition aims to advance different technological approaches towards at least two error-corrected quantum computers at the European technological frontier by 2030 and make them accessible for industrial applications. The six selected consortia span three technology platforms: neutral atoms, trapped ions and superconducting circuits, with two consortia selected for each approach.
Building an Error-Corrected Quantum Computer with Neutral Atoms
LOGIQC – Logical Operations, Gates and Infrastructure for Quantum Computing – is coordinated by planqc and has its roots in the Munich Quantum Valley. The consortium brings together leading research and industry partners, including the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ), Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), the University of Tübingen, Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ), and TOPTICA Photonics.
The project will develop a hardware-efficient, error-corrected quantum computer based on neutral ytterbium atoms, capable of performing universal logical operations on encoded qubits. Complementary infrastructure will provide the laboratories, laser systems, test facilities and pilot-line capabilities needed to scale the technology and prepare critical hardware for industrialization.
“Germany has all the ingredients to play a leading role in quantum computing,” said Dr. Sebastian Blatt, Co-Founder and CTO of planqc. “The critical step now is to bring these strengths together and scale them. The QCC comes at exactly the right time to help turn Germany’s strength in quantum research into industrial leadership.”
Next Stage: Technical Milestones
The QCC is designed as a staged competition with defined technical milestones. The selected consortia will now enter the next stage, with at least one partner in each consortium required to demonstrate a functioning system meeting defined entry criteria by March 31, 2027. The projects will then work towards increasingly ambitious targets for scale and error correction, with a further selection after 30 months determining which projects continue to receive support.
About planqc
planqc is one of the leading companies in the development of digital quantum computers. Utilizing a unique technology based on neutral atoms as qubits, planqc is pursuing the fastest path toward building industry-relevant quantum computers. As a full-stack quantum technology provider, planqc covers the entire value chain—from hardware and quantum operating systems to quantum computing applications and quantum-inspired software solutions.
Sovereignty is a word borrowed from statecraft. A sovereign country is independent in its decisions. The term “digital sovereignty” is a more recent invention that applies to organizations and even individuals.
In this article, I discuss what the push for digital sovereignty implies for Linux-focused, open source developers and companies. The framework I use is a European one, because I am Vienna-based and familiar with it. As I discuss later, the implications are not limited to Europe.
A framework for defining and rating digital sovereignty
SOV-1, Strategic: Ownership and governance are controlled, avoiding external dependencies.
SOV-2, Legal and Jurisdictional: Protects against external laws and unauthorized access.
SOV-3, Data and AI: Control and privacy compliance for data and AI models in the cloud.
SOV-4, Operational: Day-to-day cloud administration, management, and support are handled securely from within.
SOV-5, Supply Chain: Protects against vendor lock-in and external bottlenecks.
SOV-6, Technology Openness: Encourages open standards and the freedom to choose technologies.
SOV-7, Security and Compliance: Aligns cloud services with European cybersecurity standards, frameworks, and compliance audit rules.
SOV-8, Environmental Sustainability: Adoption of energy-efficient infrastructure, environmentally responsible practices, and activity reporting intended to reduce environmental impacts of technological activity.
Rating technology providers for digital sovereignty compliance
The framework rates providers on two scales: a Sovereignty Effectiveness Assurance Level (SEAL), and a complementary Sovereignty Score for cloud services. The first indicates a minimum level of sovereignty objectives met. The second shows a provider’s strengths and weaknesses across the objectives.
Each objective is rated from SEAL-0 to SEAL-4. SEAL-4 means an EU supply chain, from the physical chips up to the software.
The mechanic I find most interesting is that a provider does not get one SEAL level. It receives eight, and the overall level is the lowest of them. Your weakest objective decides your rating, not your average. Anyone who has ever tuned a storage stack will recognize that logic.
Meeting the technology-openness objective
Open source software can put providers in a strong position to address the technology-openness objective, SOV-6, because customers can inspect the code, operate it independently, and avoid dependencies on proprietary implementation. Because the source is open, that argument does not stop at the EU border. A service provider in the US or in Asia aiming for full SEAL-4 is not held back by choosing open source software.
Open standards need open implementations
SOV-6 specifies two things: open standards and the freedom to choose technologies. In software, an open standard might define an interface that anyone can implement, but if only one vendor has implemented it, a buyer still has a single supplier for it. Depending on a single supplier also weakens a provider on SOV-5, the supply-chain objective, which protects against vendor lock-in. Freedom to choose means being able to substitute one implementation for another.
An example is the Container Storage Interface (CSI), a vendor-neutral storage standard developed under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and used by Kubernetes. CSI is the standard, LINBIT provides a CSI driver for LINSTOR® and its upstream CNCF project, Piraeus Datastore, and a buyer running Kubernetes can use this driver. Because of the open standard nature of the interface, the buyer can also move between storage back ends. This is freedom for the buyer, motivation for providers to make a better solution, and neutrality from a foundation like the CNCF.
Implications of digital sovereignty for cloud and technology services providers
Digital sovereignty is no longer an exercise on paper. In April 2026, [the European Commission awarded a sovereign cloud contract worth up to €180 million over six years to four European providers](https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/commission-advances-cloud-sovereignty-through-strategic-procurement-2026-04-17_en), with SEAL-2 as the minimum bar for eligibility. Sovereignty has become a procurement instrument with money attached. Predictably, one of the awards is already being publicly contested as “sovereignty-washing”.
What poured oil on the fire was an incident involving the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. After the US sanctioned court officials, the chief prosecutor reportedly lost access to his Microsoft-hosted email account, and bank accounts in the United Kingdom were frozen. Since these actions, some EU banks with US exposure are preferring to over-comply rather than take any risk. Microsoft disputes the framing and maintains it never suspended services to the ICC as an organization. For me, the detail of who pressed which button matters far less than the lesson: neither the email nor the banking depended on a European decision.
In the US, similar discussions have taken place, only with different verbiage. There it is “economic security” and “supply chain resilience”, mostly aimed at China, and where Europe says “technological sovereignty”, Washington says “technological leadership”. Different branding, same substance.
Conclusion
As digital sovereignty gains weight in technology sourcing decisions, smaller vendors benefit.
A framework that asks, “Who owns you? Whose laws apply? Can I operate this without you, and can I read the source?” rewards exactly the properties a small open source company has by default. The hyperscalers will feel some headwind, though they are not standing still, and “sovereign” regions run by local operating entities are their answer. Whether that clears a SEAL-3 or SEAL-4 bar is the argument of the next few years.
LINBIT already made an investment in developing in the open. An open license is necessary but not enough on its own, because a project can be open and still be controlled by a single company that can relicense it. What makes the openness durable is governance that the original vendor cannot reverse. DRBD® ships in the mainline Linux kernel, and we are working to upstream the current DRBD 9 code. Code in the commons, for example, in the mainline kernel, under a foundation such as the CNCF, or in another home that no single vendor controls, is the strongest answer to SOV-6 I know of. Every project that puts it there widens the set of technology a sovereign buyer can choose from.
If the Beijing meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in May was the “stalemate summit”, the second round of talks between the presidents of the US and China this week seemed to give up entirely on the idea of breakthroughs.
Instead, it was described as a celebration of “diplotainment” rather than diplomacy, where pomp prevailed over progress and where one of the main outcomes was the news that two giant pandas would soon be sent from China to Atlanta zoo.
With an unprecedented budget, ICE spent billions in a rush to expand its detention network, wasting millions in the process, the Government Accountability Office found.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois is demanding the Pentagon and Federal Aviation Administration reject President Trump's call to convert plans for a massive triumphal arch into a "top grade Military Complex."
Ten blocks away from the United Nations General Assembly, U.S. diplomats quietly kickstarted the expansion of the Abraham Accords from the 43rd floor of a midtown Manhattan office tower.
Hurricane Polo regained Category 5 status as its intensity fluctuated between Category 4 and Category 5 — the strongest on the hurricane scale — off Mexico's southwestern coast.
Across videos, standup and cartoons, humorists are skewering big tech’s attempt to make AI ubiquitous and inevitable
“Best case scenario, we never have to do any admin again,” says an AI CEO. “Worst case, we all die.”
A young man struggles to the top of a beautiful mountain, words echoing in his ears: “AI will most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there will be great companies created.” At the top of the mountain, he triumphantly holds up a sign: “Build a datacenter here.”
Syngenta denies keeping relevant data from the EPA as paraquat stays in the US market despite global bans
Sweden started ringing the alarm bell more than 20 years ago, calling for a ban on the weedkilling chemical paraquat in 2004. One by one, dozens of other countries did the same as evidence of paraquat risks to human health mounted. Even the Chinese government, which owns the longtime paraquat maker Syngenta, halted domestic use of the pesticide a decade ago after conducting its own studies on paraquat safety and finding troubling results.
In the US, two states – Vermont and California – have recently also banned paraquat, citing risks that include an association between paraquat and Parkinson’s disease shown in years of scientific research. And California regulators announced in August that paraquat makers voluntarily agreed to stop selling the chemical after the state identified health concerns in connection with its use in new research. Several federal lawmakers have pushed for a nationwide ban.
Israel and the US have used AI to kill in Gaza and Iran, while law enforcement uses it in surveillance and arrests. The future is here
In recent weeks, concerns about AI have forged unlikely alliances in the tech and policy worlds. Tech moguls such as Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis joined Dario Amodei, Satya Nadella and Bill Gates in sounding the alarm about the dangers of AI and called for a slowdown of the technology’s development despite years of racing for dominance. The senator Bernie Sanders teamed up with Steve Bannon to urge Congress to regulate AI, which has become one of the very few issues to unite Americans across the political spectrum.
The latest moves were sparked in part by the AI researcher Jacob Coxon’s warnings on Twitter/X that AI companies are “gambling with our lives” and believe that the technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade”.
Federal agencies told to prioritize recreational fishing and to reconsider scientific standards as well as regulations
Donald Trump’s latest fishing order is raising new concerns about US marine protections, as it directs federal agencies to prioritize recreational fishing while reconsidering the scientific standards and environmental regulations that govern American fisheries.
The National Marine Fisheries Service hailed last Thursday’s order, Restoring American Saltwater Angling and Recreation, telling the Guardian: “By addressing long-standing flaws in federal data collection, streamlining permitting, and expanding marine habitats, this action delivers long-overdue stability to America’s $1.2tn outdoor recreation economy.”
Vonder is making camera-free smart glasses that can differentiate between personal voice memos and conversations. I tried on some of the frames ahead of their November launch.
Far-right activist who was filmed appearing to slash boat with blade is refused bail as he denies charges
The far-right agitator Daniel Thomas has denied causing criminal damage after he was filmed appearing to slash a boat in the Channel with a blade, while an emergency responder was onboard.
Thomas, 37, appeared at Basingstoke magistrates court on Friday morning. He also pleaded not guilty to not disclosing to police the pin number of his phone, under section 53 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
Critics say decree also banning burqa in schools shows Italian PM worried about losing far-right voters in next year’s elections
The Italian government has been accused of ramping up divisive rhetoric to try to court far-right voters ahead of next year’s general election after it passed a decree aimed at capping the number of newly arrived migrants in classrooms and banning the burqa and niqab in schools.
The prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, said her government had approved what she called “commonsense measures that do not divide but genuinely help to integrate”.
I’ve been holed up in an flat, affectionately dubbed the ‘brotel’, with my son for weeks – and we’ve revisited the first game we ever played together
I have spent the last three weeks living with my 22-year-old son in a two-bedroom flat he has dubbed the ”brotel”. We cook curries and watch Lanterns. We barbecue meat and analyse Tarantino movies. We get pizza and we play video games. Boy, do we play video games!
The first game I ever played in co-op with him was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in 2009, when he was five. He wasn’t the most accomplished sidekick, not so great at placing a mobile gun turret while under fire from what seems like a bazillion enemy soldiers, but we had a laugh. It started the video game bond between us before his sister introduced him to Banjo-Kazooie and Rayman, and he stopped being a preschool warmonger. Probably for the best. So how would it be tackling the same game nearly two decades later?
One of Donald Trump’s greatest talents – deployed during his time as a real estate tycoon, source and subject of tabloid gossip, reality TV protagonist, and president of the United States – is his ability to tell stories. With six weeks until the US midterm elections, he is likely to lean on this instinct more than ever.
Rarely does the US president appear more comfortable than when behind a microphone, speaking without interruption, sometimes for multiple hours. Long before entering the White House, he wholeheartedly embraced social media as a means of crafting his narrative, going so far as to launch his own social network when booted off others.
Tour Montparnasse modernisation project at a standstill after clashes over pricing and other issues
It has been called a carbuncle on the Paris skyline, a sombre skyscraper where visitors to its viewing platform often joke that the city looks better when you can’t see the building itself.
The much-maligned Tour Montparnasse, a lone, dark monolith with tinted windows rising above a historic neighbourhood in the south of the city, is once again at the centre of controversy after its long-awaited renovation was halted this week because of disagreements between its many private co-owners.
Kickoff is easier when the snacks are already planned. These 17 game day appetizers include hearty sliders, crispy bites, cheesy dips, and sharing platters that give everyone something to reach for.The post 17 game day appetizers saved for the whole…
New energy and trade routes could bypass Hormuz and change the Middle East. But major challenges remainExpert commentthilton.drupal
The Strait of Hormuz crisis is accelerating a wider reordering of the region, as Iraq, Syria and Lebanon plan new oil pipelines and transport corridors. But whether they can seize the opportunity to diversify will ultimately depend on wider reforms.
The war on Iran and the resulting disruption to the Strait of Hormuz has exposed the vulnerability of existing trade and energy routes and unsettled the old balance of power across the Middle East.
In this context, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are seeking to capitalize on their position between Europe and the Gulf and improve their connectivity via oil and gas pipelines, roads, railways and digital corridors. Once central to an Iranian regional order, all three governments are now aiming to achieve greater sovereignty by diversifying their economic ties, a shift supported by the Trump administration.
Yet they are attempting to do so while facing foreign occupations and military action, and while also confronting domestic endemic corruption and fragmented political systems that empower armed groups.
Whether they can seize this opportunity to become more connected – and more sovereign – will therefore depend not only on the infrastructure they build, but on whether they can reform their states to govern it.
Changing energy routes
The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has caused severe disruption to regional energy flows, including from Iraq.
Pre-war, Iraq was exporting around 3.3 million b/d from its southern oilfields. By the second week of March, exports from southern Iraq had collapsed. Southern exports gradually recovered from mid-April, reaching 2.3 million b/d in August, aided by Iraq giving discounts for buyers and by Iran reportedly giving permission for Iraqi oil tankers to pass through the Strait.
Syria and Lebanon have been less directly impacted by Hormuz, given neither is a major oil exporter and they both have access to the Mediterranean. However, the crisis has spurred a potential wider reconfiguration of regional trade and energy routes, as countries like Iraq look for alternatives.
Both Beirut and Damascus have an opportunity to position their Mediterranean ports and transport networks as gateways between the Gulf and European markets in a reconfigured regional trading system.
Iraq–Syria pipeline
Iraq is already pursuing several ways to diversify its export routes. Baghdad is seeking to expand exports through Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, where Iraqi crude already flows, and is even discussing the revival of a long-stalled idea for a pipeline to Jordan’s Red Sea port of Aqaba.
Iraq and Syria are also pursuing a new pipeline that would carry Iraqi crude oil westwards to the Mediterranean. This would aim to give Baghdad another alternative to its overwhelming dependence on exports through the Strait of Hormuz.
This planned corridor is often described as a revival of the historic Kirkuk–Baniyas pipeline, which once carried oil from northern Iraq to the Syrian coast. But it entails new infrastructure to form a wider network connecting Iraq’s southern and northern fields to a hub at Haditha in western Iraq, from which oil could flow west through Syria to the Mediterranean port of Baniyas and north towards Turkey.
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Base map made with Natural Earth data. Pipelines adapted from Global Energy Monitor dataset, accessed 22 September 2026, CC BY 4.0. Only select pipelines shown. The proposed new Iraq-Syria pipeline requires new infrastructure and may not follow the exact route of the badly damaged historic Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline that is shown as the proposed route here.
Estimates put the cost at around $15 billion, with construction likely to take around four years. The Trump administration is reportedly supporting the plan as part of a strategy to reduce Iran’s regional leverage by diversifying away from Hormuz.
The new network, which has a proposed initial capacity of around two million b/d, would allow Iraq to divert a substantial share of its exports away from Hormuz, reducing Iranian leverage. But it would diversify rather than replace Hormuz: most Iraqi crude exports go to Asian markets, particularly China and India, which are far quicker to reach from the Gulf than the Mediterranean.
New East–West corridors
Lebanon and Syria are also exploring the restoration of railway links that could eventually connect the Lebanese coast through Syria to Iraq, Turkey and the Gulf. This month, Lebanese and Syrian officials inspected a potential rail route connecting the Lebanese port of Tripoli to Homs in Syria. This could be the potential first step in re-establishing Syria as a transit state, with Tripoli as a potential Mediterranean gateway.
Yet while rebuilding the short Tripoli-Homs railway may seem feasible, establishing a wider regional corridor will require much more infrastructure and faces challenges. Lebanon’s previous plans to revive the same railway stalled before work began, in part over financing and mismanagement. Syria’s railway system is badly damaged by war, with the government estimating that its rehabilitation could cost around $5.5 billion.
The same pursuit of connectivity is extending into the digital realm. New fibre-optic networks through Iraq and Syria are intended to give Gulf states alternative land routes for the vast quantities of data that currently travel through vulnerable submarine cables.
Energy under attack
For now, there is a considerable gap between ambition and reality. Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are pursuing these infrastructure projects in the shadow of a war they cannot control and while facing external occupations or interference.
In Lebanon, Israeli forces occupy a self-declared security zone in the south, with more than a million people displaced. In Syria, Israel seized the demilitarized buffer zone in December 2024 and has maintained a military presence there since.
Iran retains influence through its political and armed networks across the region. This includes groups embedded within Iraq and Lebanon that have repeatedly demonstrated their capacity to threaten critical infrastructure.
In Iraq, for instance, the Khor Mor gas field has suffered repeated rocket and drone attacks blamed on militias. More recently, attacks launched from Iraqi territory forced the temporary closure of Saudi Arabia’s East–West pipeline, which is also designed to reduce Riyadh’s dependence on Hormuz. The Houthis have attacked Saudi oil tankers and seized the Bab al-Mandab Strait coastline this month.
The threat to infrastructure is not limited to Iran-aligned armed groups. Israel has repeatedly targeted transport infrastructure during the current conflict, including in Lebanon, demonstrating how the conflict can disrupt the physical networks on which greater connectivity would depend. And in eastern Syria, through which the proposed new Iraqi energy corridor would pass, armed groups including ISIS have attacked oil wells and tanker trucks.
Internal obstacles
Another obstacle is entrenched corruption. Iraq, Lebanon and Syria all sit near the bottom of Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.
In political systems where public contracting is a principal means of distributing rents, mega-projects can create opportunities for political parties to potentially profit from contracts, often at the expense of their delivery.
Linked to this is the fragmentation of these states themselves. Infrastructure on this scale requires institutions capable of coordinating decisions over years, enforcing contracts, protecting assets and binding competing interests to a common project.
Yet authority in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon remains fragmented among political factions, competing institutions and armed actors. This leaves governments unable to guarantee the security or financing of projects, with multiple actors able to obstruct their completion or extract rents. This creates a fundamental mismatch between the scale of ambition and the capacity to deliver it.
Connectivity doesn’t guarantee sovereignty
The war has increased the strategic value of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon’s geographical position. As states and companies search for alternatives to Hormuz, the three countries offer potential alternative corridors connecting the Gulf to the Mediterranean and Europe.
Whether Iraq, Syria and Lebanon can take advantage of this opportunity will help determine whether they can shape the post-war regional order, or whether it is once again shaped around them.
But connectivity is not the same as sovereignty. New pipelines, railways and trade corridors can offer these states alternatives to the dependencies of the old order, but alone they cannot produce sovereignty. That requires institutions capable of delivering and protecting these projects.
If Iraq, Syria and Lebanon want to seize the opportunities of the changing regional order, they will need to do more than build new routes across their borders. They will need to build states capable of governing these new connections, while ensuring that their benefits extend to their populations, not just elites.
When dinner needs to be more than something pulled from the freezer, these 15 layered casserole dishes offer hearty fillings, creamy sauces, and golden toppings that make a hot meal worth sitting down for.The post 15 layered casserole dishes that…
After years of illegal mass flytipping in Gospić, fed-up residents decided to take matters into their own hands
“Gospić is our home,” Željka Šikić shouted to a crowd of 40,000 people outside the Croatian parliament earlier this month. The slogan is the name of a campaign she helped to set up to protest against the illegal dumping of waste in Gospić, a town in the mountainous Lika region of central Croatia.
Between 2022 and 2024, waste was illegally abandoned at several sites in the town. At one of the biggest, just 50 metres from Šikić’s home, an estimated 35,000 tonnes of waste, some of it hazardous, was dumped and buried.
Trump officials and Republicans are rolling back protections against heat-related illnesses and deaths
When it’s 90F on a hot summer day, Esther Minton wears a long-sleeved shirt to work.
“Working outside, you don’t have cover. There’s nowhere for you to really go if you’re on a roof or if you’re on the side of a building,” said Minton, a member of the Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 28 in New York City. “Having the sun beaming on your skin all day long, you’ll never make it through, so what you wear makes a difference.”
More than 100 people arrested while Israeli PM claims war on Gaza is ‘the opposite of genocide’. Plus a Guardian investigation reveals the extent to which some convenience stores fail to honor their prices
Good morning. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, delivered an inflammatory address to the UN in New York, decrying what he said was a global anti-Jewish conspiracy and taking aim at critics of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. He branded Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a “tyrant”, described Zohran Mamdani as the “antisemitic mayor of New York”, and declared that Israel’s war in Gaza was not a genocide, “it’s the opposite of genocide”.
Netanyahu delivered his address just hours after the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, said his delegation was “unlawfully” denied visas by the Trump administration to attend the meeting. Dozens of delegates, inspired by a Palestinian call, walked out of the General Assembly Hall of the UN headquarters as Netanyahu took the stage.
What was the reaction on the streets of New York?More than 100 people were arrested outside the UN headquarters as hundreds of Jewish, Palestinian, Iranian and Lebanese New Yorkers, among others, protested during Netanyahu’s address. Susan Sarandon and Hannah Einbinder were among those detained.
What has rapper Macklemore announced? The US rapper, removed from Ed Sheeran’s US tour after voicing his support of Palestine, has convened a Free Palestine tour to benefit humanitarian aid organisations. The charity show will visit Dublin, Paris and London, with a North American run to be announced.
What happened in the Senate about the war? Senate Republicans have blocked a Democratic effort to end the US war against Iran, voting down a House-passed war powers resolution. The measure, which passed the House last week with bipartisan support, failed in the Senate by a 49-50 vote, attracting some Republican support, but not enough to pass.
What other developments have there been in the Middle East? Saudi Arabia says it intercepted six ballistic missiles fired by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, with the latest attacks pushing oil prices to a one-week high over fears of spiralling supply disruptions.
Boy became separated from a relative in Suffolk and went in the direction of a pond where he was later found dead
A three-year-old boy who was found dead in a pond after going missing from a playground had left the play area “through a gap in the fence”, an inquest heard.
Noah Woods became separated from a relative after visiting the playground in Merriam Close, Brantham, on the afternoon of 15 September, Suffolk police said.
The US press corps stood up to Donald Trump this week after he banned three organisations he doesn’t like from the White House. But when it came to the leader of one of the US’s oldest adversaries – China – well, Trump literally rolled out a very long red carpet. Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian’s Shrai Popat about why Trump seems weaker these days, but why it could be dangerous to underestimate him
Area’s second-most intense hurricane on record being fuelled by exceptionally warm Pacific waters
Hurricane Polo is barreling towards the Baja California region of Mexico, the latest system in a Pacific hurricane season that has been notably active in recent months. On 22 September, a measurement of 892 millibars was registered for Hurricane Polo, making it the second-most intense hurricane on record in the east Pacific. It is fuelled by exceptionally warm waters across the Pacific Ocean, providing favourable conditions for the system to maintain its considerable strength.
Polo is expected to turn towards the west-north-west, before taking a more north-westerly trajectory on Saturday. It has maximum sustained winds of around 150mph, with even stronger gusts occurring within the most intense parts of the hurricane. Hurricane-force winds extend outward for approximately 40 miles from the centre, while tropical storm-force winds reach as far as 125 miles. These powerful winds, combined with torrential rainfall and dangerous seas, could have significant impacts. Although some fluctuations in intensity are possible over the coming days, Polo is expected to remain powerful as it tracks north-westwards.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day: What does success mean if you cannot share its rewards and credit with the people who helped make it possible?
Mr. Trump Goes to the U.N.: His threat to annihilate Iran makes a mockery of the international body created to spare future generations the scourge of war.
Don Jr.’s Big Fat Russian-Funded Wedding Party: A Putin-connected oligarch’s lavish gift needs more of an explanation than “trust us.”
Quick Takes: Trump’s failed takeover of Greenland, his new TV channel, and a very cold forecast for Iowa Republicans.
Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow: A rigorous biography clears away the crossroads mythology to reveal a working, albeit extraordinary, musician.
Kareem’s Jukebox: Keb’ Mo’ and Jontavious Willis show how “Walkin’ Blues” remains alive because each generation carries it down the road.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day
“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.”
Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), American industrialist and philanthropist
(Portrait artist unknown. Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)
Imagine a 12-year-old immigrant from a famine-torn country arriving in America with his parents and his younger brother, all their worldly possessions in their arms. He loves to read but can’t go to school; his parents need him to get a job to help put food on the table. What are the odds he makes something of himself? That’s the story of Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men in the world by the end of the 19th century. When he retired at the age of 65, he had built the largest steel company in the country, which he sold for $480 million. As a percentage of GDP, that’s more than $600 billion today.
Carnegie wasn’t a saint—his company was involved in a long and bloody attempt at union busting in 1892—but once he sold the Carnegie Steel Company, he devoted himself to philanthropy. Honoring his love of reading and his own self-education, he funded more than 2,500 free libraries worldwide, including more than 1,500 in the United States, many of which still stand today. He founded Carnegie Technical Schools, ancestor to Carnegie Mellon University, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He championed what he called “The Gospel of Wealth,” proclaiming that vast fortunes like his should be distributed for the public good during any rich person’s lifetime. It’s a philosophy that inspired many of today’s billionaires, including Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
But today, more people have heard of Carnegie Hall than the man who built it. Judging from the quote above, that’s not something he would mind. Less concerned with the glory his wealth would bring him than the good it could do for others, he was a model for anyone who sees success as a gift to be shared rather than a currency to be hoarded. He led by example and let his deeds speak for themselves, without the benefit of press releases. He proved that a penniless immigrant could rise to the top of our ladder of American success and then, instead of looking down on those below him, offer a hand to lift them up.
I’m no Andrew Carnegie, but I have always tried to use my gifts to help those around me. I write this Substack to make sense of the world for myself, but also to help readers do the same. I looked at basketball the same way, as something to share with my teammates. In the 1970s, I was widely proclaimed the best player on the planet, and I won five MVP awards, but only one NBA title. That’s how I learned how empty individual success is when you don’t have anyone to share it with. In the 1980s, I reversed that earlier equation, winning only one MVP but five titles, and anyone watching me could see that I was a much happier person. I scored eight fewer points per game in the ‘80s than I did in the ‘70s and didn’t care one bit. When Earvin “Magic” Johnson started winning the MVPs instead of me, I was happy for him; we couldn’t have won those titles without him.
Between Earvin and Oscar Robertson, with every championship team I played on, I had the best point guard in the league by my side, not to mention great players like James Worthy, Michael Cooper, Jamaal Wilkes, Kurt Rambis, and Byron Scott, along with many others. Basketball is like life in that way: it’s a team sport. You can’t do it all on your own, and if you want all the credit, you’ll be remembered more for your ego than for your accomplishments.
After playing zero minutes at the 2023 World Cup, the attacker embraced a new club, a new mindset and a new position. Now she’s making NWSL history in North Carolina
It was a familiar sight: Ashley Sanchez running at the left post, controlling a lofted cross, deftly finding a window between defenders and taking a quick shot to the inside of the far post beyond the reach of the goalkeeper. It’s how the North Carolina Courage winger has scored so many of her 19 goals this year. This would be her 20th, tying Temwa Chawinga’s 2024 record for most goals scored in an NWSL season.
But on Saturday against Gotham, it wasn’t meant to be. As Sanchez celebrated with her teammates and fans in the WakeMed Soccer Park stands updated their handmade “Sanchez Goal-O-Meter”, the center referee was summoned to the VAR monitor, and the goal was called off; Sanchez’s teammate Gianna Paul was a touch offside when the play began. No tied game, and no tied record.
A group of nations will gather on Friday to address the crisis. The only response to unilateral bullying is collective action
The international legal order is in shambles. But from the ruins of impunity and lawbreaking, a group of nations is working to enforce accountability.
On Monday, the UN general assembly’s high-level meetings opened to news that Washington had drawn up sanctions against the international criminal court, targeting its bank accounts, software, insurers and staff.
It’s the year of the democratic socialist. But the group that helped start the earthquake currently transforming the Democratic Party almost didn’t make it to 2026.
After suffering major losses last election cycle after a deluge of pro-Israel lobby spending, Justice Democrats, which supports progressive candidates getting elected to Congress, was on the verge of being written about in the past tense.
“Everyone sort of doubted that there was a comeback to be had. I think a lot of people, AIPAC included, saw last cycle as the harbinger for what’s to come: They were on the rise, JD and the left were on the decline. For the first time ever, we didn’t endorse a new candidate since our founding, and because we had to focus on defending against $100 million in spending from AIPAC,” says communications director and spokesperson Usamah Andrabi. “The truth is, that moment was really — for lack of a better word — the apex of AIPAC’s momentum and ability.”
But Justice Democrats resurrected itself, had its most successful primary season to date, and helped put democratic socialism on the map. So what changed?
The group says it won big this year, even being massively outspent, because it tapped into the brewing frustration among voters — frustration directed at Democratic Party leaders. “We understood as soon as Donald Trump won that clearly the Democratic establishment was unfit to fight back, and what voters were looking for as we’ve seen throughout this cycle, is this amorphous fighter that they want,” says Andrabi. “That fight doesn’t just look like, as we say so often, press releases and strongly worded letters. It looks like fighting corporate establishment. It looks like fighting AIPAC. It looks like fighting crypto and AI.”
This week on The Intercept Briefing, Andrabi speaks to host Akela Lacy about how the group that helped elect Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib has seen their candidates make impressive gains in the primaries, and how they’re planning to leverage their wins — and what they can learn from their losses — beyond November.
This primary season, Justice Democrats endorsed 15 candidates; seven won, with democratic socialists knocking out three incumbents. That includes Darializa Avila Chevalier who toppled Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat in New York, Melat Kiros who beat Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado, and state Rep. Donavan McKinney who took out Rep. Shri Thanedar in Michigan. Those three are all but guaranteed to head to Congress next year, along with the four other candidates who won.
“This work doesn’t happen overnight. These losses don’t happen overnight. It takes years and years to build this progress,” says Andrabi. “These candidates that we elected this cycle are giving you a blueprint on a silver platter on how to excite your base and how to energize your party. The Democratic Party can either listen to them or be forced to listen to them, as they have been this cycle when we beat them.”
“Until they start taking lessons from the left on what to actually fight for, they will continue to be running on cycle-to-cycle losses and wins instead of really looking at, long-term, how can we take back power and ensure that we don’t consistently backside into this fascist and authoritarian regime that is overrun by the same corporate interests that the Democratic establishment is also funded by.”
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: I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept. So, Akela, how are you doing? What’s been top of mind for you this week?
AL: I am really stuck on this news that apparently hackers now have information on all FBI agents, which is crazy. Hackers claimed that they were able to breach a bunch of FBI services and steal a bunch of information about federal agents.
That’s on top of another insane story that I saw on Thursday morning about yet another rogue AI agent, but this time it hacked an Australia government healthcare portal — an OpenAI agent. I don’t know if you saw that, but that really stuck with me.
JW: All of these AI attacks, everything that’s come out, I keep thinking back to our interview with Karen Hao, who wrote “Empire of AI,” and how so much of the stuff that she’s warned about is now something that people are talking about in the discourse. It’s all really scary stuff, but it’s also stuff that’s kind of been reported on before, so it is interesting to see it all blow up now.
As someone who started in television, I have to say I cannot stop thinking about this Paramount deal. So for those who don’t know, on Monday, Paramount reached a deal to acquire Warner Bros., which would give Trump ally David Ellison control of a massive media empire, which includes both CNN and CBS News. Ellison is reportedly considering tapping Elon Musk for an investment, which would give the billionaire a stake in two of the largest news organizations in the world.
AL: This is all happening while the White House is waging a war on mainstream media outlets: CNN, Politico, and MS Now. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the White House efforts to strip those outlets of their White House press credentials. But we saw President Trump this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York ask CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins why she was there because she wasn’t supposed to be covering him — but she wasn’t at the White House.
So the state of our media ecosystem is healthy as ever.
JW: Things are going great in our democracy. In other news, ProPublica reported that in 2024, the FBI was seeking to launch an investigation into a potential pay-to-play scheme between Sen. Susan Collins and one of her top donors, a former defense contractor who reportedly told federal agents that he had received millions in federal contracts by donating to campaigns of politicians. The investigation was reportedly halted after President Donald Trump returned to office and gutted the entire bureau.
Akela, you had a really interesting campaign finance story come out this week as well, relating to Sen. John Fetterman. What happened there?
AL: I got a text on Monday from a source who had seen an email that the Fetterman campaign sent from a domain called, “gopsquad.com.” The story we basically did was about after finding several other conservative email domains that Fetterman was using to send this campaign fundraising email after he delivered a surprise video speech to the Republican midterm convention earlier this month, was that he’s either renting or buying Republican targeted email lists to raise money right now.
We’ve been covering Fetterman’s fall from grace over the past several years, but his fundraising numbers have really struggled as he has pursued this rightward turn on issues from immigration to Iran to Israel. Many of his small dollar donors, we reported in, in recent years, were asking for their money back.
We see his campaign now pretty openly just asking Republicans for money. Something funny — well, funny or depressing —that happened on Wednesday, Republican Sen. Mike Lee from Utah was sending out emails fundraising off of Fetterman’s fundraising. I’ll just read you this email.
The subject line: “I just got this email from John Fetterman.” “Friend, I just got an email from John. He’s basically a Republican now. I need your help to draft him. Sign here. Thanks, Sen. Mike Lee.” Which is pretty chef’s kiss, if you ask me.
JW: I have to say: gopsquad.com is probably my favorite part.
AL: Not subtle.
JW: Not at all subtle. Is there anything else that you’re following that you want to talk about?
AL: We’re still waiting to learn the name of the ICE officer who shot a 28-year-old Venezuelan delivery driver in Austin, Texas. I spoke with sources there who said that the local district attorney’s office and the Austin Police Department are cooperating to basically get whatever information they can from HSI — the Department of Homeland Security Investigations — which apparently has not declined to give them any information, but also hasn’t given them any information yet.
So we’re seeing a very similar playbook as to what we saw after the ICE shootings in Minneapolis, where local law enforcement and prosecutors are basically fighting with federal agencies to try to get any information — the bare minimum, this person’s name — out of this. The Travis County district attorney, which encompasses Austin, has apparently been in close touch with the Minneapolis prosecutor to learn how they navigated the situation.
I’ll remind our listeners, we interviewed Mary Moriarty, the Minneapolis prosecutor, who was working on prosecuting the ICE shootings in Minneapolis earlier in the year.
Thinking about ICE and the election, I’ve been reporting on groups that are trying to fight back against potential election interference. They’re planning for a ton of different scenarios, one of which includes ICE potentially coming to the polls and being there to intimidate voters of color and immigrant voters as well.
These groups are trying to prevent that harassment, and so they’re there to monitor, to report, and to keep people safe against a terrifying new threat. Obviously, voter intimidation isn’t new. I spoke to the NAACP, who had mentioned, we’ve been fighting on this issue “for the last 117 years.”
But ICE at the polls is new. What Trump has been discussing in terms of election sabotage scenarios are very new, and so these organizers are trying to use the tools they learned in the resistance to ICE movement that we saw pop up in January and February to try and keep our election safe as well.
On that topic, Akela, I know you also speak with Justice Democrats communications director and spokesperson Usamah Andrabi about how progressives are preparing for the general after a really impressive sweep in the primaries. Let’s hear that conversation.
AL: I speak now with Usamah Andrabi, Communications Director and Spokesperson for Justice Democrats, the group that brought us AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and many more.
Usamah, welcome to the Intercept Briefing.
Usamah Andrabi: Thanks for having me.
AL: I want to start by taking our listeners back to a different time.
It’s 2018. The “Squad” has just been elected to office, and a fresh new crop of democratic socialists and progressives are making themselves known on Capitol Hill.
Think: AOC joining a sit-in to protest for a Green New Deal outside of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. For listeners who aren’t familiar with the legacy of Justice Democrats, they have your group to thank in large part for that moment in time and for bringing us the Squad. But a lot has changed since then. How is Justice Democrats different today from in 2018, and what’s the same?
UA: What’s the same, first and foremost, is the commitment to the values that we had then are the same commitment we have to those values, and those are the values that we demand of the candidates we recruit, support, and endorse. Because those are the values that Democratic voters share — values that put the needs of working-class people above the needs of corporations and billionaires, and taking on lobbies like AIPAC, crypto, or AI.
I think that’s a little bit of what’s changed, is what we have seen since 2018, really, is the increased appearance of more and more moneyed interest organizing against the Squad, organizing against left-wing politicians, because they are bringing working-class people into the halls of power and bringing their needs to the top of the agenda for the Democratic Party. Billionaires hate that.
We had the Squad get elected in 2018. Then two years later, folks like Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush won very specifically against deeply pro-Israel politicians like Eliot Engel and [William] Lacy Clay, and they won without compromising on those values. That’s a really scary thing for the Israel lobby, who has really had a sharp control over how Democrats unconditionally support the Israeli government and military like Republicans have for decades.
What I think has happened is, we’ve had some wins, we’ve had some losses, and we’ve had to learn a lot from those losses and understand how to organize our donors better, organize funders, organize progressives, really, to coalesce more around independent candidates and broaden this network.
I talk a lot about how I feel like in 2024, Democrats across the board suffered a lot of losses. We suffered two of our best members of Congress, Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush lost their seats. And obviously, the Democratic Party lost every single other thing they could have lost. It felt like the job was to go home, everyone was supposed to do their homework and come back stronger to fight back against this very clearly fascist agenda that was laid out for us.
The left went home. We did our homework. We organized coalitions, we built broader donor networks, and we really invested a lot in candidate recruitment at Justice Dems.
And it feels like the establishment came back even weaker. Despite having weeks and months and years to really prepare for what Donald Trump promised he was going to do, they came back flat-footed and continue to look as weak as possible. That’s why I think you’re seeing so many successes for the left this cycle, because we are a true balm to the ineptitude of the Democratic establishment.
“You’re seeing so many successes for the left this cycle because we are a true balm to the ineptitude of the Democratic establishment.”
AL: We’re going to run through some of those wins in a second; many of our listeners are already familiar with them because we’ve talked a lot about these candidates on the show.
But I want to go back to this money thing before we get into that because, as you mentioned, coming off of those major losses of Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman to money from the pro-Israel lobby last cycle — I don’t think anyone expected you all to notch as many wins as you did in the primaries this year.
We read obituaries of Justice Democrats, right? And that outside spending, as you mentioned, still has not gone away; it’s only increased. But it still wasn’t enough to stop the candidates behind the rise of democratic socialism that everyone is talking about, who were, to your point, far outmatched in terms of spending.
I’ll just run through the numbers quickly. You endorsed 15 candidates; seven of them won, with democratic socialists knocking out three incumbents. That includes Darializa Avila Chevalier who toppled Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat in New York, Melat Kiros who beat Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado, and state Rep. Donavan McKinney who took out Rep. Shri Thanedar in Michigan. Those three are all are but guaranteed to head to Congress next year, along with the four other candidates who won. Three of your other candidates won or came in the top two slots in the California primaries, which are nonpartisan, and are headed to runoffs in November. And only five candidates lost.
So what made this cycle different?
UA: First and foremost, love to prove our haters wrong at all times. [Laughter]
A lot of spite drives that. But also, it’s exactly that. Everyone sort of doubted that there was a comeback to be had. I think a lot of people, AIPAC included, saw last cycle as the harbinger for what’s to come: They were on the rise, JD and the left were on the decline. For the first time ever, we didn’t endorse a new candidate since our founding, and because we had to focus on defending against $100 million in spending from AIPAC.
The truth is, that moment was really — for lack of a better word — the apex of AIPAC’s momentum and ability. Because on the other side of that, as we had been working for years to expose, was the toxic involvement of AIPAC in these primaries and the right-wing network of billionaires who are actually funding this.
It took many years for us to break down AIPAC, and it took a lot of losses to get to that point, but it was worth it. We did a lot of polling. We invested a lot of money in research to bring this message to voters.
Cori and Jamaal’s losses unfortunately were the final nails in the coffin for a lot of people to wake up to realize how the Israel lobby really functions in our politics — paired with the fact that obviously we watched a genocide get livestreamed on our screens for years at this point, and voters began to wake up to understand: Why is it that a majority of us oppose this genocide — we support an arms embargo, we support a ceasefire — yet only a minority of left-wing politicians in Congress are responding to our demands?
They understood that that was the role of the Israel lobby, spending infinite amounts of money and buying members of Congress to ensure that they would do their bidding. Even before the 2024 election, we were very clear that this cycle was going to have to be a cycle where we went back on the offense, made big bets, and fought back really hard.
We knew we were going to have to endorse a lot more candidates, spread the board out across the country, really, to make sure that AIPAC didn’t just have two members of Congress to target but had 15 different candidates, as well as meeting where Democratic voters were at.
We know no matter if Kamala won or if Donald Trump won, there was still a lot of work to do to rebuild this Democratic Party to actually represent the needs of the working class. We understood as soon as Donald Trump won that clearly the Democratic establishment was unfit to fight back.
What voters were looking for, as we’ve seen throughout this cycle, is this amorphous fighter that they want. That fight doesn’t just look like, as we say so often, press releases and strongly worded letters. It looks like fighting corporate establishment. It looks like fighting AIPAC. It looks like fighting crypto and AI.
“There’s no going behind, under, or any other prepositional phrase around AIPAC or these lobbies. The only way to defeat them is to go right through them and beat them head-on.”
For so long, even people who call themselves progressive have tried to figure out, how can we go around, under, or behind these lobbies and skirt this very particular line to avoid their wrath? We try to make it clear to everyone, even in the cycle where we lost the most we’ve ever lost, that there’s no going behind, under, or any other prepositional phrase around AIPAC or these lobbies. The only way to defeat them is to go right through them and beat them head-on.
We knew that this was an existential crisis for us. As you said, people are already reading our obituaries, and we wanted to make it clear that this work doesn’t happen overnight. These losses don’t happen overnight. It takes years and years to build this progress.
The excitement that you are seeing from the Democratic electorate across the country for our candidates, it’s taken years to build, and it’s taken years of the Democratic establishment failing to actually live up to their potential and what the demands of working-class people across the country have been.
AL: I want to talk about this process that you’re talking about, this iterative process of bench-building that gets lost in a lot of the horse-race analysis.
But first, I just want to mention, we had one of your candidates, Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson, on the show earlier this year to talk about Republican gerrymandering efforts as part of this last-ditch plan to fight off what is expected to be big losses for Republicans in November. Pearson is running in one of the districts at the forefront of that gerrymandering fight.
Even with the momentum we’ve seen against Republicans and against the Democratic establishment, as we’re talking about, what can Democrats do in the face of this massive gerrymandering push? How do you think that could potentially affect Pearson’s race?
I’ll just mention this again: Justin Pearson is running in a seat that was vacated by longtime Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen, who is the last Democratic representative in Tennessee, so this is an important race.
It’s very easy for us far away in the Democratic establishment to see these sort of Republican gerrymanders and say, “All right. Well, it’s cooked. There’s no chance of us doing anything here. We can put forward our standard DCCC candidate and talk about it a little, but we’re not going to invest any resources in there.”
I think that would be a failure. This is the tip of the spear of our modern civil rights movement. We are seeing the Voting Rights Act gutted in front of our face, take away the last Black-majority district in the state of Tennessee at a time when Justin J. Pearson was ostensibly going to win his Democratic primary against Steve Cohen.
“When he talked about whether or not he wanted to do this, he understood no matter if he wins or loses, this is a fight worth having.”
When he talked about whether or not he wanted to do this, he understood no matter if he wins or loses, this is a fight worth having. It’s worth showing Democratic voters in the electorate, and the establishment more than anyone, that we can go into these Republican districts and these rural communities and not compromise on our most basic values.
Justin has not changed the policies and agenda he was running for when he was running against Steve Cohen to what he’s running for now. He has been the leader in that state on taking on AI data centers, and he is still the leader taking them on as his Republican opponent has unleashed them on Republican areas of this district.
He’s uncompromised on standing up against the genocide and endless wars abroad and U.S. taxpayers funding for that, and he’s demanding Medicare for all. These are extremely popular policies, not just in the bluest districts across the country, but across the board ideologically. He is showing an example of how we don’t have to run Amy McGraths everywhere we go in these red districts to win over “red voters.”
“He is showing an example of how we don’t have to run Amy McGraths everywhere we go in these red districts to win over ‘red voters.’”
These are working-class voters who are also been shivved and fucked by the same establishment that is run by Republicans and Democrats. These are people who are getting their hospitals and schools closed down in rural communities, who are getting their ACA subsidies cut and Medicaid subsidies cut.
This is a failure of the establishment of both parties. We can show that a different way is possible. Obviously, we need to fight to restore the Voting Rights Act, and we need to expand the Supreme Court and reform this court so we cannot continue just to see fights that people who are still living have fought for to be taken away in the same breath.
There’s a lot of work to do. It feels really difficult to know how we can claw back some of this institutional power when our institutions are so broken and corrupt. But I think that visionary agenda and ideals are what we need to see more from the Democratic Party, rather than simply being a party that is not Republicans.
That’s what these candidates have been so exciting for voters across the country about are that they, for the first time, are giving Democratic voters in a lot of these districts an affirmative positive agenda that centers their most urgent crises and actually has bold enough solutions to tackle those crises.
“That visionary agenda and ideals are what we need to see more from the Democratic Party, rather than simply being a party that is not Republicans.”
AL: This criticism came up a lot in this cycle, and this is the kind of thing I think that often says more about the person that is saying the criticism than the people they’re actually targeting. This is often lodged against candidates on the left or candidates backed by Justice Democrats that, “OK, all this is great, congratulations on your win, but once you get to Congress you’re not actually going to be able to do anything because there aren’t enough of you yet.” What do you say to that?
UA: You could have said that to us nine years ago, right? That would’ve been the case. Yet one of the most popular politicians in this country is AOC, and the most popular politician is Bernie Sanders, who has these same values. So clearly there’s an appetite from the American electorate for more voters like that.
People know who Ilhan Omar is, people know who Rashida Tlaib is, and it’s not simply because Fox News uses them as an attack every other week. It’s because they have been standing up and been the most courageous leaders in Congress, standing up for the values they need, not only on Palestine, but no one is louder about needing clean water in the state of Michigan than Rashida Tlaib. Ilhan Omar is the reason that the state of Minnesota has universal school lunches for children. These are leaders who have actually delivered on the promises that the Democratic Party has only hypothetically talked about.
Coming off a cycle where we lost two members, it’s very easy for people to say “Well, you have no power in Congress.” Yet we are sending seven new leftists to Congress this cycle, at least. It’ll be really telling how big the hypothetical Democratic majority is in Congress, because if it is seven-member majority, then you’re starting to ask a lot more different questions of, well, now you have a block of new members of Congress who can actually sway what policy and what agenda we are fighting for in this party.
So this shit doesn’t happen over fucking night. It takes years and years and cycles to build this block in Congress. You have to bring the people with it, and it takes time to organize and convince the masses of the working class to really buy into an electoral project that has screwed them time and time again, and to have that revolutionary optimism that there’s something to be done here.
There’s a lot of promise with this new class of members who are now joining an already existing class of members. We will nearly double our size in Congress, and that’s a big deal. You can look at far smaller groups of members of Congress that have wielded much more power than the amount that we’re sending to Congress.
These leaders were elected with the mandate to challenge the Democratic establishment, and so they will have to do that. More than anything, it’s up to the Democratic establishment on how they want to respond to the clear demands of their voters. These candidates that we elected this cycle are giving you a blueprint on a silver platter on how to excite your base and how to energize your party. The Democratic Party can either listen to them or be forced to listen to them, as they have been this cycle when we beat them.
“These candidates that we elected this cycle are giving you a blueprint on a silver platter on how to excite your base and how to energize your party.”
AL: I do have to ask here, Cori Bush is the anomaly in the success stories that we’re talking about, right? What happened in that race? Why do you think that this momentum did not extend to her challenge to take back her old seat from Wesley Bell in Missouri?
US: In North Carolina. We saw two races, Kat Abughazaleh and Junaid Ahmed in Illinois, lost at the hands of big money from AIPAC, crypto, and AI. Saikat Chakrabarti in Nancy Pelosi’s seat also lost the primary as well to a lot of big spending from seemingly pro-Israel donors.
The truth is, we are always going to be up against this insurmountable amount of money. To the best of our ability, we have to organize our resources and organize our people to fight back against that. But it’s also the truth that we don’t take corporate PAC money. We don’t take money from billionaires, and so our resources are limited, and we’ve grown that. We’ve grown that pool. We’ve expanded our donor network to be able to run 15 candidates and win seven races.
“We are always going to be up against this insurmountable amount of money.”
But there’s not an infinite amount of resources, and so those losses are proof that the left still also has work to do. We do need to build more resources. We do need to build better connections to ensure that champions and fighters like Cori Bush, who to me really embody the fighter that Democratic voters are talking about, can be sent back to Congress.
Because in the absence of them, we have useless corporate shills like Wesley Bell, who have done absolutely nothing for their community since they got to St. Louis — and it shows.
A big part of that is a resource constraint, also, the truth is, Cori had to go up against nearly $15 million of attacks last cycle, and that’s really recent. It’s not just the money that was spent against her this cycle. You have to look at what happened last cycle, because it’s all the same attacks. They ran the same playbook all over again, and it’s effective.
When you have a 20 to 1 outspending situation, and the only thing you’re seeing on TV and mail is how much you should dislike Cori Bush, it works at a certain point. That’s why it worked last cycle. Cori is a deep proof point that the left still has some work to do to really ensure that all of our champions can get to Congress.
AL: I want to move now to some of the news of the week. This week, ICE shot yet another person in Austin, Texas: 28-year old food delivery driver Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez from Venezuela. After he was released from the hospital he was taken to an immigration detention center with a bullet still in his back, according to him and his lawyer.
If Justice Democrats candidates make it to Congress in November, what power do they have to push Democrats to do more to stop ICE from killing and terrorizing people? What can they do, particularly in a House session where we expect Democrats, if they win power to be putting a laser focus on investigating Trump’s corruption, for example?
UA: We should first and foremost be bold and listen to where voters are at. A majority of voters do not believe that ICE needs to exist. That’s understandable because both you and I were alive at a time when ICE didn’t exist — and yet I’m still living.
AL: What a time.
UA: What a time that was. The proof is in the pudding that we don’t need an ICE to have a “safe” America, whatever that means. But clearly the fascist governments need ICE to execute immigrants in this country and shoot down our neighbors and kidnap our families.
“Both you and I were alive at a time when ICE didn’t exist — and yet I’m still living. … We don’t need an ICE to have a ‘safe’ America, whatever that means.”
First and foremost, we should start from pushing to abolish ICE and ending this agency for all. Delia Ramirez, one of our Justice Democrats in Congress, has been leading the charge on this, calling to abolish ICE and also to dissolve the Department of Homeland Security, [which] in many ways, is also a relic of our lifetime. It is a relic of the George W. Bush era.
I am baffled when there are Democratic leaders in this country who are so obsessed with defending an institution created by George W. fucking Bush. I remember when we didn’t like George W. Bush, and we didn’t agree with his policies. I’m not sure why the Democratic Party of 2026 should be the same as the Republican Party of 2004.
It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me, and I think we are always, on immigration over the last 20 years, have always been allowing the right to dictate what the agenda and our playground should be on immigration policy, on border policy, on all of these policies. And as a result, have always tried to be a diet Republican Party on immigration policy, when the most popular policies we ever put forward on immigration were things like a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers and abolishing ICE, now.
We have to be bold and not only end this agency, but also, as many people are talking about, prosecuting the people who were in charge of ICE and these officers who were killing folks.
“I’m not sure why the Democratic Party of 2026 should be the same as the Republican Party of 2004.”
The ICE agent who was the shooter in Austin wasn’t even wearing a body cam. As if that’s enough anyway. Then there’s so many different accounts and these lies. We are living through another evolution of our criminal legal system being so extrajudicial and so outside of the bounds of what should be legally allowed that I think we have to massively reign in this agency. We cannot do it in a mealy-mouthed way that says we need to pay lip service to this right-wing propaganda, while continuing to allow our immigrant neighbors and families to be murdered and shot down in the streets while they’re trying to deliver food to your house.
AL: In the Austin shooting the district attorney in Travis County, which is where the shooting happened, which is where Austin is, they are still trying to figure out the name of this officer, and they are waiting on getting footage from other ICE officers in the vicinity who had body cameras on, and they’re also trying to get footage from local hospitals to figure out where this officer who was allegedly injured went, because they do not yet know his name.
UA: But they know the man who he shot’s name, so.
AL: Yes. Much of the news this week centered on President Donald Trump’s attacks on the news media and his trip to New York City, where he met with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and attended the United Nations General Assembly.
Outside the UNGA, Jewish leaders protested Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday. Mamdani once said he would arrest Netanyahu if he came to New York, though he didn’t have the authority to do so, and the two battled publicly this week.
Many people praised Mamdani’s pledge to arrest Netanyahu, even though it had not really any teeth, but as an example of what we’re talking about, of just wanting Democrats to do something — the kind of sentiment that has animated many voters who’ve supported Justice Democrats candidates this cycle.
Democrats are heading into this lame-duck session for Trump where there is still little appetite among leadership to do something substantive on Israel — though last week we saw an unusual refusal from top Democrat Rep. Greg Meeks to approve Trump’s latest proposed $2.8 billion sale of more bombs to Israel.
What is the strategy for the progressive bench on this issue right now? It seems like every time one of these packages comes up, there’s this big dust-up over OK, what’s going to happen? And every time, a few more Democrats either vote against it or, as in this case, voice some sort of opposition. But where do you see this going in the next Congress?
UA: The writing is on the wall if even Chairman Greg Meeks is suspending some of these things. You can go to the FEC’s website to see why that is an interesting development.
AL: [Laughter] Just in terms of support that Meeks has gotten from the pro-Israel apparatus in the past is what you’re referring to, I’m assuming.
UA: Yes. He’s been a dear ally to the lobby historically. But I think, like we saw on the vote on the Massie amendment, for the first time a majority of Democrats are voting to say, “We’re not going to send money to Israel.” A lot of people can say, “Well, that’s just a performative vote,” all these things.
Look, I worked in Congress. Those performative votes don’t happen in that sort of way, unless the people are pressuring members of Congress to get to this point. That’s what we’re seeing, is that you are seeing Democratic voters across the country reject you if you have an endorsement from AIPAC or you take a single dollar from AIPAC, which is why AIPAC has to hide its money so much this cycle.
“You are seeing Democratic voters across the country reject you if you have an endorsement from AIPAC or you take a single dollar from AIPAC, which is why AIPAC has to hide its money so much this cycle.”
That’s what we’re going to see coming into this new Congress, is a real thrust of energy for the pro-Palestinian movement within Congress now that you are really doubling the amount of leaders in Congress who are unabashedly against the endless supply of military funding and resources to the Israeli government.
You have a renewed movement to really organize even more members. You can look at the co-sponsor for the Block the Bombs, Delia Ramirez’s arms embargo bill has a lot of members you would not have expected even a cycle ago to do so. But that’s the power of not only these elections, but also mass movements across the country demanding that their leaders actually stop the endless supply of weapons.
There will absolutely have to be a fight in Congress for this next Congress to say we need to stop funding the Israeli government and military, and the Democratic voters are behind us. That might be a fight that has to challenge leadership on that fight, because obviously leadership has historically been more aligned with funding the Israeli military and government.
But at a certain point they have to also see the writing on the wall. They are beginning to see that. There’s a lot of opportunities with a Democratic majority to show voters that we are hearing them, that we also don’t think your tax dollars should fund a fucking genocide for three to four to five years after also already funding decades of apartheid.
That’s where we have to move next is not only ending funding right now, but ensuring that we never fund this military and government, and actually push towards a solution where we can end the apartheid state that Israel is running over the Palestinian people, and actually have a place where everyone has equal rights and dignity, which currently does not exist, obviously.
AL: You mentioned that you used to work in Congress, and I’m taken back to the fond days when I first met you around circa 2018 when you were working for then Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Mark Pocan. And since that time, we have been having this same conversation about the fight over the future of the Democratic Party.
Where do you see Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, and party leadership more broadly, either fitting into or obstructing your vision for the future? In that vein, I’m curious there’s been a lot of talk about where will Justice Democrats’ candidates land on, supporting a Speaker Hakeem Jeffries in 2027? What conversations are you having around that? Where do you see this conversation going?
UA: Look, the corporate establishment will always be a barrier to progressive change and delivering for the needs of the working class. That, they have proven. They have made it clear. They have said it on the record.
These are not my feelings. They’re theirs. These elections, these campaigns, have proven that they are on the wrong side of the Democratic Party electorate, and they are in the minority, as they always have been. But it’s really eye-opening for people in leadership to have races like people like Claire Valdez, and Zohran, and Darializa become these leaders in New York, in your backyard, speaking of both Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who obviously represent New York in the Senate and the House.
It doesn’t stop there. As much as people want to say every city is not New York — well New York is not Philly, is not Denver, is not Dallas, is not California, is not Tennessee. Let’s be fucking for real. This is happening across the country. There is a bloc of leaders across the country who are actually responding to the needs of the working class.
Like I said, they got elected on a mandate to challenge the Democratic establishment. They will be pushing this Democratic Party to meet the needs of voters, be it pushing for Medicare for All, or an arms embargo on Israel, or a stop to AI data centers, or raising taxes on billionaires. All universally popular fucking policies that the Democratic Party could lead on.
So often this question has been framed as, what will the left do when they get to Congress? How will they deal with these sorts of institutions? We should be asking Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer and everyone else that question far more, which is: What are you going to do about the fact that your electorate is making clear that you are not fighting for the policies they are looking for?
When you come out to say you oppose Medicare for All after being a co-sponsor for it for a few cycles, you are in the minority of Democratic voters. I promise in your district particularly I imagine maybe, what, 5 percent of voters agree with you. It’s incumbent upon Democratic leadership to wake up and decide where they want to be on these issues and how they want to lead this party, because do they want to be a one-term House majority?
They can win back the majority a lot because Republicans are failing and because the left is showing voters what an opposition party could actually look like and what a governing party could actually look like. The establishment is not doing that. Until they start taking lessons from the left on what to actually fight for, they will continue to be running on cycle-to-cycle losses and wins instead of really looking at, long-term, how can we take back power and ensure that we don’t consistently backside into this fascist and authoritarian regime that is overrun by the same corporate interests that the Democratic establishment is also funded by.
We absolutely are looking at this new crop of leaders joining this already existing group of progressives to really have a sizable influence in bringing the people’s power to the halls of Congress more than anything, and using their coordinated megaphones in many ways to bring light to the issues that people need them to.
Because even if we take back the House majority, Donald Trump is still president, even if we take the Senate back. He can veto any bill, and that’s a reality, but that should not stop us from showing people what we could do if we had power.
“What we could do if we had power should not simply look like turning back the clock to what it looked like before Donald Trump, which is what some of the agenda I’m seeing from Democratic leadership is.”
And what we could do if we had power should not simply look like turning back the clock to what it looked like before Donald Trump, which is what some of the agenda I’m seeing from Democratic leadership is, let’s roll back this. Let’s get this back. The status quo three, two, five, seven, eight, pick a fucking year, was not good enough for working-class people, so why would we go back to that?
Obviously, we need to roll back all these attacks. We need to claw back the destruction that the Trump administration has done, but that’s obviously also not enough. We need universal healthcare. We need housing for all. We need to make billionaires pay their fair share. We need to stop fucking AI data centers from destroying every community, and raising our utility bills and poisoning our water. There are a litany of crises that we are facing. Mealy-mouthed solutions are not what Democratic voters are looking for.
They are making that deeply clear, and no matter how much fear-mongering around socialism or the Red Scare you want to do, the truth is, voters support these policies because these policies support voters.
AL: If we’re picking years, I pick 2004. [Laughter] I think you’re onto something there. We’re going to leave it there, Usamah. Thank you so much for joining me on The Intercept Briefing.
UA: Thank you, Akela.
AL: 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.
This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Jordan Uhl is our social media producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor.
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New Deputy Editor Cannon Taylor joined “Beyond the Headlines” to talk about an exciting growth moment for Spotlight Delaware – the launch of Arts + Culture coverage.
We’ll talk about Cannon’s background, the decision to expand Spotlight’s coverage and what you might expect from Cannon’s Arts + Culture reporting. He also shares why things like pet bearded dragons, concert audiences dancing like Beyblades and all things odd are sure to catch his attention.
The podcast was hosted by Director of Community Engagement David Stradley.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Let’s just start off here: I’d love to know what is an arts and culture experience you’ve had in your life that has been really meaningful to you?
I would say the moment I truly fell in love with arts reporting was when I wrote about a musician in Colorado Springs where I grew up. His name is Rence Seyb. He plays in a band called Dear Rabbit. Every year, local musicians hold this concert in his honor called Rence Fest, and that’s because you’ll see him at every single show. He has this huge laugh, unlike any I’ve heard before, and he is constantly dancing in the front row like no one’s watching.
In writing about Rence Fest and about him, I got to know him beyond what he’s like at a concert, and I learned that he’s not unlike myself. When he’s not at a concert, he’s a bit more reserved and shy than I would have thought. He calls himself a “sad boy forever.” That was surprising for someone who’s so loved and so outgoing.
It taught me a lot about myself and how I could stand to be a bit more unreserved, and just have fun and enjoy life.
What was the actual Rence Fest like?
It was about six hours of back-to-back bands and, by the end, I was utterly exhausted. But it was just such a blast, and Rence kept the energy up the entire time, even when no one else would. They were too tired.
That’s also amazing that somebody gets a festival about them while they’re still alive, not just a memorial festival.
He is super deserving of it. He’s probably the biggest supporter of local music in Colorado.
Tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself. What’s your background and what attracted you to Spotlight Delaware?
I was raised in Colorado Springs, and I’ve lived the last year in Utah. My first job was as an arts reporter at a paper that, after about a year of me being there, shut down.
In Utah, I did some hard news reporting, but, clearly, I was just dying to do arts reporting again because I moved across the country to do it.
As a fan, what are your go-to arts experiences for you just personally?
I love music. I play guitar and bass, and I’m learning the drums. I’m still pretty mediocre. So I am in that live music scene.
I also just love really anything incredibly odd, and it could be across any medium. But I want to be wondering, “What am I even looking at right now?”
After you had your very first job as an arts and culture reporter, what made you want to move all the way across the country for another one? What did you love about arts and culture reporting?
I found that I learned a ton about myself in being an arts reporter, and that’s something you get across journalism. You are exposed to so many different people and have so many conversations that no one else gets to have. But when you’re covering the arts, you get to sit down with someone and hear their life story, and you get to dig really deep into their childhood or what inspired them to create something really unique.
In learning so much about other people and interacting with so many different people, you end up learning more about the world, which informs the way you go about your day-to-day life.
Is there a different kind of writing on the arts and culture beat than in the hard news beat that maybe fits you better?
Definitely. I did not think I was going to be a journalist when I was growing up or even when I was in college working for my student newspaper. I always thought I would be a writer of fiction or something like that. But I can’t think of a good character to save my life.
So, what I love about arts reporting is you find the characters out there in the real world, and you get to write about them. You get to bring a level of experimentation to your writing that you can’t necessarily get away with in hard news.
Spotlight Delaware, as you know, has made its reputation over its first two and a half years as a hard news organization. From your outside perspective, why would a news organization that has been dedicated to investigative reporting around government accountability and public policy reporting want to expand into arts and culture?
I’d say it diversifies the news palette and brings in readers who thought they weren’t interested in local issues. But suddenly, they are.
Say a friend had an art exhibit, and they see their friend on our website. Suddenly, they’re subscribed to our newsletter, and they’re paying attention when something they need to pay attention to happens. It’s a way of getting people in the door to become more civically engaged.
We talk about civic engagement and getting people out to vote, but civic engagement also means going out and trying a new restaurant, going out and trying a new arts festival that you don’t know about.
I was a 2020 high school graduate, so I certainly understand feeling incredibly isolated and not knowing how to make friends or get out of the house. That’s what I really hope our arts and culture coverage does, is it gets people to make friends and check out what’s going on in their backyard.
When you were talking about the kind of people who might be introduced to Spotlight Delaware through arts and culture coverage — I spent my first 25 years in Delaware in the arts world. When I took this job at Spotlight Delaware, I remember, a few weeks after starting the job, meeting with a friend of mine that was a supporter of an arts organization. She goes, “I’ve become a donor of Spotlight Delaware because I want to support you, but the news is just so depressing. Like, I just don’t read the news.”
So, a person like that makes me think about how you answer this question. That person may get on the arts and culture newsletter and start reading about the arts and culture stuff, but then see that other more hard news story and follow a little bit more of that kind of stuff.
I certainly understand where that person’s coming from. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all the bad news. But I think it’s also really important to highlight the good news. I think that can get people realizing they actually do like and appreciate journalism.
You’ve been in Delaware for, I think, as we record this, three weeks now, maybe four.
Three.
You’ve probably picked up that, as residents of a small state, Delawareans are a little protective of our reputation, a little sensitive to our reputation. And connections to the state are important. The joke here is that when someone asks you where you went to school, they’re asking about your high school and not your college.
Now, our editor-in-chief, Jake Owens, received many applications from Delawareans for this arts and culture deputy editor position. He hired you. As we’ve established, not a Delawarean.
What unique perspectives do you think a reporter with an outside eye can bring to arts and culture coverage?
I would say bringing a fresh set of eyes to someplace like Delaware is really valuable, and that’s something I’ve done at my past two jobs.
I mentioned I was raised in Colorado Springs, but I wasn’t really involved in anything in the arts world or really anywhere else when I was growing up. It wasn’t until I was a journalist that I was discovering things.
I find that a fresh and curious perspective can make people excited. My hope is that I can help even native Delawareans find things that they weren’t aware of and surprise them, too.
I think so many times, as you’ve been here for 20 years, you see something and think, “Oh, I’ve driven past that thing all the time,” but maybe didn’t take the initiative to go in there. So maybe if they read your article about one of those places, they might think, “Oh, I’m going to stop and go into that place now.”
That was definitely something I did with my first article about Delaware Saengerbund. I hear that’s a place where tons of people may pass it every day – [the club] in Newark – but they’ve never been inside, and they don’t get a real good glimpse of what this private club is like on the inside.
To share that with a wider audience is really special and, I think, something that people can expect to get out of our arts and culture coverage.
The story behind the story is another thing people will find is going to characterize arts and culture reporting.
Certainly Oktoberfest is something that people know a lot about. It’s not like we were surprising people by [saying], “Hey, did you know Oktoberfest is happening?” But you really told the story behind that festival and the organization.
I’ve never been to Oktoberfest, but now I was like, “Oh, now I’m more interested in that.” I’m not a beer drinker, but the details of the German heritage and the culture and the stories was noteworthy.
How did you decide to make that your approach and not just, “Here’s what you’d expect at Oktoberfest”?
No one wants to read, “Here’s what you can expect.” A flyer on Instagram could tell you that. I’m not here to repeat a flyer on Instagram. I’m here to tell you about the club that you’ve passed in Newark probably a million times and thought, “I wonder what they do in there.”
And most people don’t have access to it because it’s a private club. But as a journalist, I can get my foot in the door and talk with the people who are organizing this thing and ask about their very historic club and share that with you all.
I think the goal is to teach you things about Delaware that you didn’t know and didn’t know that you needed to know.
Let’s get a little into brass tacks here of what people can expect from Spotlight Delaware’s arts and culture reporting. When Jake, our editor-in-chief, hired you, what was your charge? How did he define the reach of arts and culture reporting?
It basically breaks down to three articles a week: two about anything under the arts umbrella, whether it’s visual arts, music, theater, film. I could go on. And then, one food article.
What we’re trying to do with our food and drink coverage is basically tell you what you can expect out of the dining experience at a new restaurant and also get to stories behind the food and make it more personal.
Those articles are going to appear in our regular newsletter, but then there also will be a dedicated arts and culture newsletter on Thursdays.
Yes.
We’ll also have our weekly calendar called the Weekend Spotlight, and that’s five events to check out in the upcoming weekend that [are] curated by me.
And that’s a little different than your typical calendar because it’s not comprehensive. It’s not a block of text that you have to sift through. It’s me, a human being, handing you a few picks of things I think are interesting. And I would really welcome feedback on that. I hope you let me know what I’m missing.
One thing that I think is fun is I try and make it interesting to read, too. Like, little mini-articles, 80 words each, about each event, about what you can expect.
There was a seafood festival recently, and I led with their crab pretzel-eating contest, which the organizer said was “disgusting.”
For my former arts and culture colleagues out there, just a reminder that Cannon is one person. We’ve already had people ask, “How do I get in your listings?”
Well, these aren’t meant to be universal listings. It’s really a recommendation of a few things you might want to think about this weekend.
What about reviews? Should people expect to see reviews, either of restaurants or of arts experiences?
No, we will not be doing reviews. I think that’s a way to make enemies in local news. But at the same time, if I’m writing about something, that means I think it’s noteworthy, and I think it’s worth checking out.
I think the way you’ve written about restaurants so far is a good example of that. They’re not reviews, but they certainly give you a sense of what this place is like. But it’s not like you’re saying, “Oh, the meatloaf at this place tastes like this and this. And this piece was overcooked slightly.”
I think about your article aboutBlack Restaurant Weekand Walt’s Chicken. You tell a story about that. You’re not defining what the recipe of the chicken is. It’s not a review, but it’s a really interesting piece.
How do you think about how you’re writing about restaurants?
I’d say the way to make food and drink coverage interesting is to get to the stories behind the people who are making the food. It’s certainly important to get a sense of what the food tastes like, but that can’t be the whole thing. I mean, if you want that, you could just go to Instagram and follow a ton of great accounts that are telling you, “Come eat at this place or this place.”
But you go to Spotlight for stories. That applies to food as well.
What can people expect as far as the style of the writing?
I think a good way to demonstrate that is [by] talking about an article coming out soon about a local band called Community Chapstick — which is an awesome name.
They are a rock group, and they experiment a lot with genre. I discovered them on Bandcamp while I was preparing to move to Delaware. I attended one of their concerts my first week I was here, and the way they activated the crowd was just crazy.
They asked people to act like Beyblades, and if you don’t know what a Beyblade is…
I do not know what a Beyblade is.
It’s basically a toy top from the ’90s that just spins. So, basically, they just had everyone spinning into each other and bouncing off each other.
Getting to know them, they also had such an interesting story. They explore a lot of interesting themes in their lyrics. In writing about them, I was able to tell a lot of their interesting stories. For example, their bassist hands out flyers with their pet bearded dragon on the streets of Wilmington, which is the coolest thing ever.
So, I think the goal is to show people that things like that are happening that they might not expect.
A couple things in there I hear. One is you seem to be drawn to the characters. You talked about the bassist who walks around handing out flyers with their [bearded] dragon. So, you’re drawn to who that character is.
Would you define that band as a well-known band or more of an underground, independent band?
I would say, if you’re in the local scene, you’re probably aware of them. But they’re definitely independent. I think an important part of our coverage is paying attention not to just the storied historic arts institutions, but also the people who are just making things in their basements, and bringing those to a broader audience.
We did about three months of community listening before we launched this arts and culture coverage to find out what the community wants, and that was one of the things that came out loud and clear. We know the Italian Festival happens. We know what’s showing at The Grand. We want help figuring out new stuff, these more independent things.
And then, the other thing — you know, Spotlight Delaware, for the most part, writes pretty lengthy, in-depth articles. We said, “Do you want that from arts and culture, or do you really just want something quick that you can read and digest?”
People, to their credit, were like, “No, we love how Spotlight Delaware approaches things. We want the Spotlight Delaware version of arts and culture coverage.” Which, again, sounds like this article about Community Chapstick. It’s not just where you can hear them play; here’s the albums they have. It’s a story that goes in depth about what this band is like.
That’s kind of how I approach all my writing, even when I was writing news. You try and make it interesting from the get-go. You try and latch onto something that will draw someone in who otherwise would just move onto the next thing within a few seconds.
You do that by characterizing people and dropping them in a scene with setting and stakes and telling it more like a story [rather] than just something that is happening or that happened.
As we’ve already established, you are a team of one. There’s not a team of five arts and culture reporters. You are the team and leading that team. And you’re leading it from scratch. What excites you about being able to shape this coverage from the very beginning, as a solo operator almost?
It’s great to work for a paper that’s been around for forever, and they know exactly what they’re doing, and they have their process. And then, you’re sort of like a cog in a machine, which can be awesome. It can be very stable. But at the same time, it is exciting to start from the beginning and be able to shape something yourself.
That’s something that I actually got to do at my first job as an arts reporter because it was technically a relaunch of this alt weekly. So, they were trying to invent a new version of their arts and culture coverage. That’s such a privilege to be able to do. Also, a little scary, a lot of responsibility. But I hope you’ll trust me.
Well, let’s imagine that trust has been gained. Let’s move ourselves a year into the future. You’ve been writing for 52 weeks for Spotlight Delaware, which is three articles a week, 150-plus articles.
Wow.
No pressure. There’ll be some freelancers in there hoping to help out as well. But let’s say it’s a year ahead now. How do you hope people are talking about, how do you hope people are viewing Spotlight Delaware’s arts and culture coverage?
I think it’s not so much how they’re viewing our coverage, but how they’re viewing Delaware.
I’m hoping that people read something by us, and they go and check something out. Suddenly, they’re at a pottery class or at a concert or participating in theater. I really want people to realize that there are things in their backyard.
I think it’s really, really easy to just isolate yourself and doomscroll all the time. I’ve fallen into that trap myself. But it’s so important to know that there is a community waiting for you with open arms, right in your backyard.
I’m really looking forward to seeing how Spotlight’s arts and culture coverage develops. Thanks for your time today and letting us know how you’re thinking about it.
Once known for using cheap labor to produce inexpensive clothes and toys, Chinese factories increasingly make some of the world’s most sophisticated products.
Why Should Delaware Care? Healthcare in Delaware is among some of the most expensive in the country. As cuts to federally funded programs like Medicaid are set to go into effect later this year, and commercial insurance rates rise, Delaware is looking to reinvent its healthcare ecosystem.
Three Delaware medical centers are poised to receive nearly $23 million this year as the state looks to invest hundreds of millions of federal dollars meant to bolster rural healthcare.
The money also comes as state officials look to invest deeply into primary care options for Delawareans and shift how the state pays for its medical services.
State officials met outside of La Red Health Center in Georgetown on Thursday to make the announcement, where they hope these funds will help to modernize the three federally qualified health centers and bolster their preventative care capabilities.
Federally qualified health centers, also known as FQHCs, are community-based clinics that typically offer primary care services in medically underserved areas.
The $22.7 million injection into the state’s three primary FQHCs represents Delaware’s effort to reframe its healthcare ecosystem: keep people healthier on the front end so they are able to avoid costly emergency room visits.
Delaware received $157 million in December in its first of five awards over the next several years. While the exact amount of funding the state will receive remains uncertain, it will be at least $500 million.
At Thursday’s press conference, leaders from Delaware’s primary FQHCs gathered to discuss how the awards would help to modernize their operations. Additionally, the health centers are slated to receive more funding in the coming years as part of the five-year federal grant program.
The CEO of Westside Family Health Care, Chris Fraser, said the FQHCs offer services to patients, regardless of their ability to pay.
Westside has locations in Kent and New Castle County, from Wilmington to Dover.
With the new funds, of which Westside is slated to receive $11.3 million, Fraser said the health center would be able to improve its medical records systems.
Fraser said his network would join Epic Systems, a leading electronic health records program behind the online patient portal “MyChart,” which he said would allow the center to better coordinate care for patients who may need additional follow-ups. After ChristianaCare transfers its records to Epic next month, all of Delaware’s hospital systems will be using the same system for the first time.
In an interview following the press conference, Fraser also said the funds would support modernization efforts that have often been out of reach for the smaller health centers.
“Some of us are doing well, and some of us are really challenged operationally to make ends meet,” Fraser said. “So the coming Medicaid cuts are going to, unfortunately, make that worse.”
Shay Scott is CEO of the Henrietta Johnson Medical Center, a community clinic in Wilmington’s Southbridge neighborhood. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY NICK STONESIFER
Shay Scott, CEO of the Henrietta Johnson Medical Center in Wilmington, said the new funds would allow her team to expand different services to help manage chronic conditions, as well as improve follow-up care.
Henrietta Johnson is slated to receive $1.2 million this year, she said. With the funds, she hopes to prevent “avoidable readmissions” to her facility by offering more preventative care.
Following the press conference, Scott said the funds also would help to transition the health centers more deeply into value-based care, instead of the traditional fee-for-service model, which charges patients based on the amount of care they receive.
With value-based care, Scott said the systems would be incentivized to provide more care that keeps patients healthier and away from emergency room visits instead of being more “volume driven.”
Separately, La Red in Georgetown, which specializes in working with the area’s large Spanish-speaking population, is set to receive $10.1 million.
Federal changes
Delaware leaders touted the investment as a benefit to the FQHCs and their patients. And while he was glad to have the funds to improve healthcare in the state, Gov. Matt Meyer challenged the circumstances under which they were awarded.
The federal program from which Delaware received funding was created to court Republican senators hesitant to support more than $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid in the summer of 2025, which could disproportionately impact rural communities and their healthcare facilities. Those cuts could also lead to privately insured patients ultimately paying more for care.
Meyer said more Delawareans are poised to be without insurance in the coming years, as reductions to Medicaid and price increases on the Affordable Care Act marketplace force some people out.
“We desperately need our FQHCs to make sure that not a single Delawarean falls through the cracks,” Meyer said.
Shortly after the Thursday press conference, the federal government shared a press release celebrating the investments in the FQHCs.
In its release, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said the Trump administration is “delivering on its commitment to strengthen rural America,” by allowing states to create their own programs that improve health outcomes.
The release also outlined some of Delaware’s future proposals like its new medical school and other programs aimed at managing chronic disease in rural communities.
“Today’s investment was made possible through the Working Families Tax Cuts Act — passed by Republicans in Congress and unanimously opposed by Democrats — delivering a historic $50 billion investment to help states transform the way healthcare is delivered in America,” the release said, using an alternative names for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Trump in July 2025.
Earlier this week at a separate press conference, Meyer had lambasted the Trump administration for cuts and enrollment changes being applied to the federal health subsidies like Medicaid and Medicare.
Still, Meyer said he would do what he could in the coming years to ensure people have access to healthcare in the state.
“I hope people don’t lose their lives because of really stupid policies,” he said.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate and compare the high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities of Intel’s 5th and 6th Generation Xeon “Granite Rapids” processors across a diverse set of scientific workloads, using Lenovo ThinkSystem servers as the hardware platform. As scientific research increasingly relies on computational simulations and data-intensive modeling, understanding the performance characteristics of modern CPU architectures is critical for optimizing resource allocation, improving simulation throughput, and guiding procurement decisions for HPC centers.
This whitepaper focuses on four key scientific domains—Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE), Computational Biology, Computational Chemistry, and Weather/Climate Modeling—each representing distinct computational patterns and performance demands. By benchmarking real-world applications from these domains. By benchmarking real-world applications, it quantifies performance gains and highlights architectural improvements in the 6th Generation Xeon CPUs. Ultimately, this study seeks to bridge the gap between theoretical performance metrics and practical application behavior, enabling more informed decisions in scientific computing environments.
Key enhancements in the 6th Generation Xeon—such as increased memory bandwidth, higher core frequencies, expanded L3 cache, and Multiplexed Rank DIMM (MRDIMM) memory technology—yield significant improvements in performance and energy efficiency. Granite Rapids SP CPUs show a 1.22× average performance gain, while AP CPUs achieve up to 2.05×, with MRDIMMs adding further boosts, especially in memory-intensive workloads. The findings demonstrate how Intel’s CPU advancements and Lenovo’s server architecture together meet the evolving demands of scientific computing.
Catherine Corless’s exposure of almost 800 infant deaths at a home led by nuns prompted Neeson to bring the story to screen
Liam Neeson still remembers his shock and shame when he read a New York Times article about the mother and baby institution in Tuam, County Galway.
It was 2017 and the article chronicled the campaign by Catherine Corless, an amateur local historian, to expose abuse and neglect by Irish nuns that led to hundreds of children being buried in a mass, unmarked grave.
TikTok-savvy Catholic priests and candlelight Masses ending with recruiters sharing QR codes are helping the unbaptized connect with their grandparents’ faith.
China rising, America in decline? The Trump-Xi summitAudiosseth.drupal@c…
In this week’s episode of Independent Thinking, our experts discuss the Trump-Xi summit in Washington and the increasing competition between the two superpowers.
President Donald Trump welcomes Xi Jinping to Washington with the US-China dynamic in a moment of historic flux. China is rising economically and militarily, while the US is mired in the Iran war, alienating allies and pursuing Trump’s unpredictable trade and tariff disputes.
What do the two leaders want from this meeting, and will they get it? Can they reconcile their differing economic powers, the competition for critical minerals, and their radically contrasting visions for artificial intelligence.
And in the longer term: who will dominate the 21st century? Does Xi really want to retake Taiwan for China before his time in power ends? Or is the US-Chinese dynamic more complex and perhaps less alarming?
To unpick these threads Bronwen Maddox is joined by three experts from Chatham House’s Asia-Pacific Programme: programme director Ben Bland, senior research fellow Dr Yu Jie and associate fellow Dr Bill Hayton.
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.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Financial disclosures show U.S. Sen. Jon Husted received gifts from JobsOhio during three consecutive years while serving as Ohio’s lieutenant governor, but neither Husted nor the powerful economic-development organization will disclose what the gifts were or how much they were worth.
Husted’s filings identify JobsOhio as a gift source in 2021, 2022 and 2023. His 2024 disclosure lists a gift from JobsOhio CEO J.P. Nauseef. Ohio law generally requires officials to identify the source of gifts worth more than $75, but not their exact nature or value.
That lack of detail matters because JobsOhio controls profits from Ohio’s state liquor franchise and has directed more than $2 billion toward private businesses. Husted’s office and JobsOhio declined to provide additional information about the gifts.
Ohio ethics rules prohibit public officials from accepting substantial things of value when the source has business before their agency or could improperly influence their official duties. The Ohio Ethics Commission has not concluded that Husted violated those rules, and its executive director said such a determination would require examining all the facts.
The disclosures are receiving additional attention because JobsOhio supported major projects during Husted’s tenure, including Intel’s heavily subsidized Ohio semiconductor development. Husted is currently running for a full Senate term against Democrat Sherrod Brown.
The sprawling Philippine Arena hosts games in a country of fanatical basketball fans. Jamie Malonzo was lucky enough to play there in a Game 7
Jamie Malonzo got there early, one of the first players to arrive. He knew this was a different thing altogether. He knew the 55,000-capacity Philippine Arena was something else.
As Malonzo warmed up, the crowd began to file into the stands for Game 7 of the PBA Commissioner’s Cup. Fans tried to get his attention, yelling and waving their arms madly. This game, Malonzo knew, would be unlike any other he had ever played in.
Mountain View Academy in Dandridge, Tennessee Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica
Across the country, states have been shuttering their youth prisons as juvenile crime has plummeted and research shows the facilities are not effective at keeping youth out of trouble after release. From 2000 to 2022, the number of the highest-security facilities for kids has dropped by more than 40%, the most recent federal data shows.
In contrast, Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services has budgeted $360 million to build two new facilities with a total of up to 256 new beds for youth. Construction is set to begin this fall, and they are expected to open in 2028 and 2029.
According to Tennessee officials, the state doesn’t have enough space for kids who courts have found committed crimes. In the last few years, it has held dozens of teens overnight in temporary places, including, at one point, office buildings. In an emailed response to WPLN and ProPublica, the agency attributed the lack of bed space to a number of factors, including teens’ needs for specific mental health services and temporary staffing issues in its facilities. And it said that national trends “do not determine” whether Tennessee has enough youth beds available.
But juvenile crime is down in Tennessee, too, and advocates and experts say the state’s push for more prisons does not line up with the needs of the kids in its care.
“The argument that’s made is that [juvenile crime is] worse than ever, right? Or the kids are out of control,” said Josh Rovner with the nonprofit research and advocacy group The Sentencing Project, which seeks to reduce incarceration across the country. “The data doesn’t back that up.”
Tennessee said youth are committing more violent crimes. But fewer are entering the juvenile justice system.
To explain its need for more youth prisons, Tennessee’s DCS points to a recent state-commissioned study. It shows that police reports of violent juvenile crimes in Tennessee — including murder, aggravated assault, motor vehicle theft and crimes with firearms — have increased since 2013.
But not every report results in an arrest, for a number of reasons; multiple people might call police for the same crime, for example. Data from the same report shows that the number of kids arrested and entering the system, even for violent crime, has decreased over that time period. Murder was the only violent crime included in the report for which arrests increased, from 15 cases in 2013 to 26 in 2024. That number is still lower than it was at its peak in 2018.
“The argument that’s made is that [juvenile crime is] worse than ever, right? Or the kids are out of control. … The data doesn’t back that up.”
Josh Rovner, senior research analyst at The Sentencing Project
The state oversees different types of facilities for kids in the justice system, ranging in security level from group homes to prisons surrounded by barbed wire. DCS leaders said in a state hearing that the agency has reached maximum capacity and run out of beds in high-security facilities. DCS said in a recent statement that the number of youth needing space in a particular type of facility can remain high day to day even as overall arrests decline.
In a 2024 lawsuit over Tennessee’s juvenile justice system, advocates said the state is not appropriately utilizing the bed space it currently has, putting kids into the highest-security facilities without considering their need for mental health treatment and other services. Because of juvenile privacy laws, no publicly available data shows what charges land youth in which setting.
In response, DCS acknowledged that it sometimes places youth in facilities based on capacity, but denied that it improperly held youth in the highest-security facilities. The case is ongoing.
Tennessee promised its new prisons would be rehabilitative. Experts say they are too big to succeed at that mission.
Unlike the adult system, the juvenile justice system is set up to rehabilitate, not punish, based on decades of research showing that youth are more capable of change.
DCS told WPLN and ProPublica that it is designing the new facilities to provide care that addresses the trauma youth have experienced, including behavioral health treatment tailored to their individual needs. The design includes dedicated spaces for education, job training and recreation. It also includes rooms for mental health staff to do their work, including “calming rooms” for youth.
The agency also describes its existing prisons as rehabilitative. All three of the state’s highest-security prisons are run by Tennessee businessman Jason Crews and his company, Wayne Halfway House. The company is required by its contract and state policy to provide mental health treatment, education and other services to imprisoned youth.
The 2024 juvenile justice lawsuit, which an advocacy group and multiple unnamed youth in the system filed against DCS, argued that the department places youth in facilities that are more punitive than rehabilitative. Some teens placed in prison, the lawsuit said, should not be there at all.
The lawsuit also claimed that Tennessee’s juvenile justice facilities keep youth from accessing education and mental health treatment. Two facilities run by Wayne Halfway House, according to the lawsuit, have had policies barring youth from attending school if they misbehave. One teen, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and other mental health conditions, did not get needed individual therapy for months while in a Crews facility, the lawsuit stated, and only got a couple of hours of education each day. Several other contractors’ jails and treatment centers across the state are referenced by name in the lawsuit.
DCS said in a legal filing that it didn’t have enough information to respond to all of the specific allegations about youth mentioned in the suit, but it pushed back against many claims, including that youth were provided inadequate education or mental health treatment. It also denied that the teen in the Crews prison was kept from therapy or education, but did acknowledge that some youth in the juvenile justice system may temporarily “receive minimal educational services.”
Wayne Halfway House said in a statement that it disputes the allegations in the lawsuit and referred the newsrooms to “numerous state audits and/or reports” during that time that refute those claims. It declined to share the specific documents it was referencing. “Wayne Halfway House programs are compliant with state policies and law,” the company wrote in its statement.
Daniel Macallair is the executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works to reduce society’s reliance on incarceration. “These institutions are not humane places,” he said, referring to large-scale youth facilities. “They’re not rehabilitative. They never have been.”
According to Macallair, who has been working on juvenile justice reform for more than 40 years, any facility with more than 10 kids becomes unwieldy, distracting from rehabilitation and becoming more correctional. Research shows that larger facilities often involve harsher treatment of youth, including higher rates of sexual abuse and practices such as solitary confinement. One of the prisons that DCS is planning would have up to 160 beds, making it the largest in the state.
“These institutions are not humane places. They’re not rehabilitative. They never have been.”
Daniel Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
By contrast, the programs that have proven to help youth avoid future crimes are small and based in the communities they are from, Macallair said.
Missouri, a nationally lauded example, has established small facilities throughout the state, keeping youth — even those who commit violent crimes — close to home for therapeutic programs. Research has shown that not only are these community-based programs more effective and affordable, but they lead to low rates of reoffending and high rates of high school graduation.
DCS told WPLN and ProPublica that it provides community-based services for youth who can safely remain at home. But Tennessee data shows that the vast majority of youth in the system were not allowed to stay in their communities last year.
One way to assess the rehabilitative success of youth prisons is whether youth are rearrested after release. But Tennessee officials acknowledge that they cannot measure that in a comprehensive or accurate way because the state lacks a centralized way of tracking when a youth commits a new crime.
Tennessee has pushed against outside oversight of its youth prisons. Experts say this is a crucial reform.
The state says there will be a bid process to determine who will operate the new facilities. Right now, two providers run all of the state’s private youth prisons — Wayne Halfway House and Youth Opportunity Investments, a company that runs lower security facilities.
In response to questions about the new facilities, Wayne Halfway House said it would not comment about its business plans. It also noted that the facilities in which it holds youth in state custody for committing a crime are classified by the state as “residential treatment centers,” not youth prisons. Across the country, states use different terminology to refer to these facilities. By federal law they are supposed to provide treatment, but they also are secure facilities, often with barbed-wire fences and cells that lock, that hold youth long-term after a court finds them responsible for a crime — similar to adult prisons.
Experts say robust independent oversight is crucial to keep youth in juvenile justice facilities safe, but Tennessee does not have this. Instead, it has one agency that helps families navigate the system but lacks enforcement power and a new Juvenile Justice Review Commission tasked with releasing its first set of recommendations in 2028.
“The main goal is to bring more transparency to what’s going on inside these facilities, to make that information public, to make recommendations about ways it can improve,” said Michele Deitch, a criminal and juvenile justice expert at the University of Texas at Austin. “You really need the external body that is independent.”
In 2024, a bipartisan group of Tennessee lawmakers introduced a bill that would give oversight and enforcement power to an independent organization instead of just DCS. Under the bill, DCS would be required to suspend a facility’s license or stop placing youth there until it fixed violations.
Lawmakers felt that DCS had a conflict of interest — it is responsible for both finding beds for children in these institutions and sanctioning providers if they are not following the rules or regulations.
Wayne Halfway House, which pays a legislative lobbyist and also makes political donations in the state, opposed the bill. One of the bill’s sponsors said that a lobbyist for the company pushed to exempt privately run facilities from the bill, and the proposal made it into an amendment filed in the House.
A lobbyist for Wayne Halfway House said at the time that the company had concerns about how the bill would “affect accountability in the governance of youth corrections in Tennessee.” In a recent statement, the company said it supports the state’s policies and laws that “rigorously oversee organizations like ours and hold us to high standards for operational performance.”
Accounts raise tantalizing questions about what happens inside a brain afflicted by dementia and whether cognitive abilities could possibly be restored.
As a brutal civil war reignites in Yemen between Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the government coalition backed by Saudi Arabia, a humanitarian disaster seems inevitable.
"F-Droid, a third-party app repository that only distributes free and open-source software packages for Google's Android mobile platform, on Thursday announced version 2.0 of its Android app," reports The Register.
Though they also note "a big banner across the top of the F-Droid site" pointing to a site describing pending changes from Google that threaten the future of F-Droid...
[D]evelopers who want their apps broadly distributed outside the official Google Play Store will need to register with Google and verify their identities. Google's Full Distribution option includes paying a one-time $25 fee, handing over a copy of a government-issued ID to verify one's identity, and conforming to Google's terms of service. Google also offers a free Limited Distribution option that doesn't require government ID verification but restricts distribution to 20 authorized devices, while apps from unverified developers can still be installed by users who enable Android's advanced installation flow.
The potential death warrant hanging over its head hasn't stopped the F-Droid team from rolling out a bunch of new features for an app it says it intends to keep working on for years to come... The team also credited the EU's many Digital Markets Act decisions against Google for making the installation experience smoother for users. F-Droid can now use a unified installation service for its apps thanks to the availability of a pre-approval API that allows users to approve an installation when they request it, rather than waiting until the app has finished downloading. That, said the F-Droid team, "brings the F-Droid install experience on official Android devices much closer to what the built-in app store can provide." Additionally, F-Droid 2.0 can fetch and install app updates automatically, which it now does by default.
All of those changes, however, won't matter much if Google pushes ahead undeterred with its plans to force registration onto non-Play Store developers. F-Droid's announcement on Thursday makes it seem that the team isn't going to go quietly.
F-Droid has gone 10 years without a major update, notes Ars Technica — and spent over a year developing F-Droid 2.0:
The new F-Droid client was redesigned from scratch in Kotlin Compose, which is the standard for modern Android apps. This makes the store much more responsive, and there's optional support for Android's Material theming. The interface has also been cleaned up considerably, making the most important functions easier to access and hiding some others in overflow menus... Unlike the Play Store, F-Droid doesn't track your taps and installs to push ads and suggestions — it helps you find things and gets out of the way.
F-Droid now includes a huge number of categories, drilling down to specialized niches like firewalls, password managers, and VPNs. You can see all these groups in the search tab. There are also higher-level categories listed on the main Discover page. When searching for apps, F-Droid will now be able to return results based on app descriptions rather than just names.
"One of the goals of the rewrite was to lower the barrier for new contributors," F-Droid said in their announcement. "We are excited to begin rolling out F-Droid 2.0 to users over the coming weeks after 14 test releases." (And if you want the 2.0 release right now, it's available on the versions page.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration is dismantling several long-standing federal tools used to address racial disparities in American schools, including moving to end more than 50 court-supervised desegregation cases.
The Justice Department said Thursday it is reviewing decades-old school desegregation orders and seeking dismissal when officials determine districts have eliminated the remnants of legally enforced segregation. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said prolonged federal oversight no longer reflects conditions in many classrooms.
At the same time, the Education Department has eliminated federal “disparate impact” regulations under Title VI. Those rules allowed investigators to examine policies that appeared race-neutral but produced sharply unequal outcomes, such as suspension rates or access to advanced classes. The administration argues that approach improperly encouraged racial balancing.
Civil rights advocates warn the combined changes could make discrimination harder to identify unless there is evidence of explicit intent. Former Justice Department attorney Johnathan Smith said the administration is also creating legal “roadblocks” that could make future reversals difficult.
The administration has already halted or narrowed investigations involving racial disparities in school discipline and successfully supported the termination of some longstanding desegregation orders. Critics, including Rep. Bobby Scott, argue that ending oversight too quickly risks allowing old inequities to reemerge.
Qualcomm, yesterday, promising Linux support for the new Snapdragon X2 processors:
Linux on Snapdragon X2 Series is moving from early bring-up toward a more complete upstream developer experience. Core support is landing, Hexagon NPU and Adreno GPU work is progressing, and real laptops with Snapdragon X2 Series processors are already beginning to boot Linux.
Interesting, but I feel like I’ve heard these exact words before. Qualcomm, two years ago, promising Linux support for the then-new Snapdragon X processors:
It’s been our priority not only to support Linux on our premium-tier SoCs, but to support it pronto. In fact, within one or two days of publicly announcing each generation of Snapdragon 8, we’ve posted the initial patchset for Linux kernel support. Snapdragon X Elite was no exception: we announced on October 23 of last year and posted the patchset the next day. That was the result of a lot of pre-announcement work to get everything up and running on Linux and Debian.
These promises were not at all kept. Two years later, Linux support for Snapdragon X laptops is still spotty, broken, and limited, confined to just a few bespoke Ubuntu builds, which don’t even offer full support either. It’s a complete mess, effectively unusable, and highlights once again that big technology companies are compulsive liars. I have little faith in these new promises, but who knows – maybe this time it’ll be different.
Google has synthesized "expressive face-to-face experiences" for its speech agent Gemini 3.8 Live. They're now offering a Live Avatar "with precise lip-syncing, natural expressions, and fluid turn-taking" for Google Enterprise accounts wanting "engaging customer service" or for offering interactive walkthroughs. (Check out the not-creepy-at-all video in Google's announcement.)
"Though Google will offer a library of preset avatars for customers to choose from, it will also allow organizations to create their own," notes The Verge. (See some examples from the YouTube channel "AI with Surya".)
But even without the visualization of the avatar, "I was never able to shake the feeling that these conversations with computers never feel like a real conversation," argues the blog Android Police. Conversing with just the Ai-generated audio, "At best, they feel like talking to a phone representative or someone from tech support. We turn to them when we have a problem, and they help us through it..."
GPT-Live, and Gemini Live right behind it, skip that whole relay race. Instead of translating your voice to text and back to voice, the model works with raw audio the entire way through (what it hears and what it says) inside the same system, with nothing translated in between. That sounds like a small plumbing detail, but it's the whole story. Cutting out the text step lets these models respond in a fraction of a second instead of the pause we've learned to expect, and it lets them hear things text can never carry: tone, hesitation, whether you're annoyed or joking...
I was hoping to be surprised by how natural the conversation felt. Instead, I came out with a deeper appreciation for every human I've ever talked to. Even the boring ones... I spoke, it spoke back. I spoke faster, it answered faster. Then I switched to a different language, and it switched along with me. Even switching between languages several times during the same sentence didn't stump it. The most impressive moment happened when I asked it what "T-O-P-G-3-3-K" spelled out, and it immediately came back with, "You are spelling the word Top Geek, but using a 3 to represent a reversed E...."
Although it felt fast and responsive, at no point did it feel like talking to another human being... What Gemini couldn't replicate, because it was never built to replicate it, is human connection.... I'm sure I'm not telling you something you don't already know, but somehow talking naturally to an LLM amplifies the feeling that there is no one on the other side of the line. It might flow like a phone call, but it doesn't feel like one.
MrBrklyn (Slashdot reader #4,775) says he discussed "why mainstream media avoids reporting on screen dependency" with Gemini, and eventually convinced Gemini to respond that it's just "another tool built by the same tech giants to make sure you rely on their system to tell you what to think, how to talk, and what is real."
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Three-quarters of Americans say the rapid growth of artificial intelligence makes them feel fearful or concerned, while only one-quarter describe themselves as hopeful or excited, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.
The survey found that 43% of respondents felt strong fear or concern about AI’s development, with another 32% somewhat concerned. Only 7% said they were strongly hopeful or excited. The concern crossed party lines: CNN reported that 85% of Democrats and about 62% of Republicans expressed fear or concern about AI.
The poll also found broad dissatisfaction with the federal response. Seventy-one percent said the government is not doing enough to regulate AI, compared with 18% who said current efforts are sufficient and 10% who said Washington is doing too much.
Those findings line up with a separate Reuters/Ipsos survey released this week in which 73% said AI companies are not doing enough to prevent potentially catastrophic consequences, while 55% supported slowing development.
The CNN survey was conducted Sept. 16-17 among 1,206 U.S. adults and carries a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. President Trump, meanwhile, has resisted broad federal AI regulation and argued that slowing development could allow China to gain ground.
Bijan Robinson rushed for 194 yards and two touchdowns as the Atlanta Falcons capitalized on the return of quarterback Michael Penix Jr and trounced the punchless Green Bay Packers 35-14 on Thursday night.
Atlanta (1-2) erased an early 7-0 deficit by scoring 27 straight points to take control amid a chorus of boos at Lambeau Field. The Falcons outrushed the Packers 242 yards to 17.
A TV spot claims the US president is trying to sway October’s presidential vote in favour of Lula’s far-right opponents
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidential campaign has accused Donald Trump of wanting to “colonise” Brazil in order to capture its natural resources by meddling in next month’s presidential election.
The accusation came in a campaign advert that was published on social media on Thursday night by Lula’s team and will air on television on Friday amid growing fears over the impact alleged US interference could have on the vote.
Xi Jinping’s visit heavy on symbolism but no sign closed-door meeting yielded breakthroughs on thorny issues such as AI, trade, Taiwan and Iran
Donald Trump welcomed Xi Jinping to the White House on Thursday, with talks on AI, trade and a growing US-China strategic rivalry expected to feature on an elaborate state visit that critics say went big on style but lacked substance.
Here are the key takeaways from Xi’s first visit to Washington in more than a decade.
President Trump is slated to speak on Tuesday in Washington at an event that features Elon Musk, Jensen Huang and others, according to invitation materials reviewed by CBS News.
The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said the missiles were aimed at Taif and the Yanbu area on the Red Sea, the main alternative route for Saudi oil
Saudi Arabia says it intercepted six ballistic missiles fired by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, with the latest attacks pushing oil prices to a one-week high over fears of spiralling supply disruptions.
The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said the missiles were aimed at Taif in western Saudi Arabia and the Yanbu area on the Red Sea, with the Houthis claiming their attacks were aimed at “a sensitive target” in the capital Riyadh and on Saudi Aramco facilities in Yanbu.
During his speech to the UN in New York City, the Australian prime minister addresses the AI hack of Medicare, saying the episode reflects the need for greater regulation of artificial intelligence. ‘We can’t ignore AI or prevent it. And it’s why we joined with other nations this week to call for action to shape artificial intelligence development, rather than be passively shaped by it,’ he says. Albanese also used the speech as a pitch for Australia to join the UN security council
TRENTON, New Jersey — Gov. Mikie Sherrill is demanding Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell resign after an independent investigation concluded he sexually harassed a woman and repeatedly violated state ethics rules.
The 61-page report, prepared by Lowenstein Sandler LLP, found “credible evidence” that Caldwell made a romantic advance toward a female staffer’s friend. After being rejected, investigators found he told the staffer, referring to the two women, “You young women are looking for young sperm.” The report concluded the sexually charged remark constituted workplace harassment and caused the employee to avoid interactions and travel with Caldwell.
Investigators also found Caldwell improperly sought a promotion for a state employee he was dating and repeatedly brought personal guests to ticketed events without paying admission, despite ethics training and warnings.
Sherrill said the findings showed “serious, repeated violations of state policy” and gave Caldwell until Friday to resign. She said the behavior represented a pattern that failed to meet her administration’s standards.
Caldwell’s attorney, Thomas Calcagni, disputed the conclusions, arguing the investigation denied Caldwell meaningful due process and that the evidence did not justify the findings. Caldwell is an elected lieutenant governor, meaning Sherrill cannot simply remove him from that office.
Lawyers for the news outlets President Trump banned from the White House have requested an emergency hearing after several journalists were turned away from the building Thursday morning, in apparent defiance of a federal judge’s order to restore their access.
“This morning journalists from each of CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO attempted to enter the White House and were turned away, and Secret Service agents confiscated the hard pass of journalists whose hard passes had not previously been confiscated,” a new court filing read.
Officials deny entry even after federal judge rules Trump administration must grant banned journalists access
Journalists for CNN and MS Now were denied access to the White House state dinner in honor of Xi Jinping, China’s president, on Thursday evening, hours after a federal judge ruled the Trump administration must allow them in after imposing a ban last week.
“About an hour before Xi’s arrival was scheduled, the White House said CNN could cover the event, but only with a photojournalist and audio technician, notably excluding the network’s editorial team consisting of a reporter and producer,” CNN reported.
In a public appearance, Jackson said the high court’s use of the emergency docket was “problematic” and called for more restraint from her colleagues when using it.
Mikie Sherrill says Dale Caldwell ‘engaged in serious, repeated violations’ involving staffers and gifts
New Jersey’s governor on Thursday called on the state’s lieutenant governor, Dale Caldwell, to resign by Friday after a law firm hired by her office concluded he violated the state’s ethics and discrimination rules.
The report published Wednesday found that Caldwell violated the state’s policy prohibiting discrimination in the workplace. It said he made an advance toward a staffer’s friend and when he was rebuffed, he told the staffer: “You young women are looking for young sperm.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sen. Tommy Tuberville is doubling down on claims that airline pilots, flight attendants and air traffic controllers who participate in the furry community pose a potential safety risk, despite offering no evidence that furry interests have caused aviation incidents or impaired professional performance.
Tuberville told TMZ DC that some aviation workers belong to a furry “club” and called that “some part of mental illness that could be a catastrophe.” His evidence appears to be an “Aviation Furs Meet-Up” held at the Furry Migration convention in Minneapolis. The convention’s own schedule shows the meetup was open to pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers, line operators and anyone simply interested in aviation.
That establishes that some furry convention attendees share an interest in aviation. It does not establish how many are licensed aviation professionals, whether they pose any safety risk, or that furry fandom itself is a mental disorder.
A 2026 review in Transcultural Psychiatry describes furry culture as a stigmatized fan community centered on anthropomorphic characters. Researchers specifically cautioned that available evidence does not consistently show higher rates of mental-health problems among furry fans compared with the general population.
Tuberville nevertheless said he would not want a qualified pilot flying him if that pilot privately identified with the fandom. TMZ’s reporter pressed him on whether professional competence should matter more; Tuberville maintained that the personal interest itself made him uncomfortable.
Bob Pettit was an All-American at LSU before going on to the NBA, where he was an All-Star for each of his 11 seasons, all with the Hawks. He led them to the 1958 championship over the mighty Boston Celtics, the Hawks' lone title.
This blog is now closed – our live coverage of US politics continues here
In the first row in front of the leaders sit US vice-president JD Vance and his wife Usha Vance, Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her daughter Arabella, US secretary of state Marco Rubio, treasury secretary Scott Bessent, defence secretary Pete Hegseth and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick.
Donald Trump is speaking now. He notes that Xi is the first Chinese leader to make a second formal visit to the White House, and says the two have “forged a truly great friendship” since Trump was first elected in 2016.
The California Supreme Court ruled that Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco violated that state's election law by ordering his deputies to seize more than 650,000 ballots.
The proposal would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart talks over an end to the broader war within seven days, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.
Chinese president’s proposals for lessening tensions come amid period of intense competition between the two countries over AI and trade
Xi Jinping has called for extensive cooperation with Washington to avoid the “Thucydides trap” that could put the US and China on a military collision course amid rising tensions over artificial intelligence, trade and Taiwan.
At the start of his summit meeting with Donald Trump in the White House, the Chinese president laid out terms for a mutual understanding that he said could steer the two competing superpowers away from future military conflict and on to a road of mutual gain.
404 Media reports "multiple contractors hired to improve OpenAI's models have been fired for using AI to train the AI:
That's not great for the models themselves, but there is also obviously a great irony in AI training companies working for OpenAI firing people for using AI when OpenAI's whole thing is to make people use AI at work... OpenAI declined to comment on its contractors being fired for using AI.
Their article cites internal documents and three contractors working on OpenAI-related projects which can include more than ten thousand contractors:
One contractor said they see people using AI "all the time and people are let go for it all the time, it's pretty much the one thing that will get you kicked off ASAP." The person said, "in a group of thousands there are tons that have been caught...." Two of the sources said people have been fired or offboarded for using AI... One contractor said they used AI while helping to train OpenAI's models and shared what they presented as their termination letter. It said their employer had identified issues with the "authenticity" of their work....
404 Media spoke to a fourth contractor who has worked on training models for various AI companies. They said they sometimes purposefully chose the worst responses because they wanted to actively sabotage the models' training. "I did feel guilty about doing this kind of work at the start," they said. "I either pay zero attention to the results and choose randomly or purposely choose the [worst] output. I'm not sure how much of a difference it actually makes since there are hundreds of other people also rating prompt results, but it does feel like I'm getting paid to make AI worse."
Two of the contractors worked for Mercor, the article reports, a company which last month Nvidia reportedly discussed funding at a $20 billion valuation.
Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the article.
James Copenhaver, 76, left with lingering injuries after gunman opened fire from rooftop at 2024 Pennsylvania rally
James Copenhaver, one of three campaign rally attendees shot in 2024 during an assassination attempt on then candidate Donald Trump, has died in Pittsburgh, his lawyer said Thursday. He was 76.
Copenhaver was in the bleachers during the event in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a 20-year-old gunman opened fire from a nearby rooftop, grazing Trump’s right ear with one bullet. Copenhaver was struck in the arm and in the abdomen, wounds that left him with lingering injuries and walking with a cane.
There's a reason hotel bathrooms seem to have better towels, better robes and somehow better soap than the ones at home. The good news is you don't have to book a suite to bring that luxuriousness into your own home.
Actor Susan Sarandon, whistleblower Chelsea Manning and comedian Caleb Hearon are detained by NYPD
More than 100 people were arrested outside the United Nations’ headquarters in New York City on Thursday as Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the general assembly, a speech that also prompted dozens of UN delegates to walk out in protest.
The protest outside the UN, one of several this week against the embattled Israeli prime minister, drew hundreds of Jewish, Palestinian, Iranian and Lebanese New Yorkers, among others, as well as several elected officials and candidates in the November election, and a number of celebrities.
The Justice Department said Thursday it was seeking to end more than 50 long-standing consent decrees dating back decades that sought to curb unlawful racial segregation that was prevalent during the Jim Crow era.
Actors detained at Jewish Voice for Peace demonstration against Israeli prime minister’s address to the UN general assembly
Oscar-winning actor Susan Sarandon and Hacks star Hannah Einbinder were among people detained by police in New York on Thursday as they moved in to break up a protest against Benjamin Netanyahu.
Amid mounting concerns about its sprawling surveillance camera network, Flock Security told the press this summer that it operates more than 120,000 cameras nationwide.
But a new map published Wednesday by a cybersecurity researcher reveals Flock’s nationwide reach is even bigger. Based on location coordinates from Flock’s own database, the map shows more than 170,000 cameras, plus more than 130,000 accompanying gadgets that play a part in the company’s expansive American surveillance network.
Joshua Michael’s Flock Surveillance Map highlights the locations of what he says are 300,000 Flock surveillance devices spread across the country. His findings — which were cited in Wednesday’s Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism hearing on Flock — differ from existing maps of Flock’s automated license plate readers in scope and methodology.
“These cameras form a nationwide surveillance network that tracks where everyone drives.”
Unlike crowd-sourced projects such as DeFlock, which are built on locations submitted by users, the Flock Surveillance Map relies on location data culled from a snapshot, archived by Michael in December 2025, of Flock’s own records. In addition to cameras, it maps supplemental devices — including 27,000 acoustic detection devices, as well as networking equipment that integrates third-party cameras — to illustrate the scale of Flock’s surveillance web.
“These cameras form a nationwide surveillance network that tracks where everyone drives,” Michael told The Intercept, “so foreign nations don’t need to send spies to harm our country. They can simply watch where our soldiers, federal agents, and politicians go.”
The Intercept visited six random Arizona locations on Michael’s map; each location had a Flock camera present at the indicated coordinates.
The Flock Surveillance Map also color-codes each Flock device according to its model — showing, for instance, whether the device is a Flock camera, known as a Falcon, or an accompanying processing unit known as a Picard. (Flock did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
The accompanying searchable dataset table also lists each camera’s individual name, as outlined in Flock’s database, which typically includes a street address and sometimes other identifying characteristics. A camera with the name “FBI Pilot Camera,” for example, is shown to be located at the J. Edgar Hoover Building — the FBI headquarters in Washington.
The map illustrates Flock’s national spread, but also its clustering in certain areas. For example, 860 Flock devices appear to be concentrated just outside Chicago O’Hare International Airport, at the Rosemont Public Safety Department, which provides police, fire, and emergency medical services in the Chicago suburb.
Numerous Flock cameras appear to be installed inside detention centers. A camera titled “C-F-23 FOXTROT MALE HOLDING 2/SHOWERS” appears at the coordinates of the Silverdale Detention Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
In November 2025, Michael discovered a novel way to identify the location of Flock’s devices. Trawling the company’s website, he realized that Flock’s servers were publicly leaking data in the form of an access token that could be acquired without needing to log in. With that token, Michael said he could query ArcGIS, a third-party geographic information system platform used by Flock, to retrieve the locations of Flock devices.
Michael told The Intercept he promptly contacted Flock and described his findings. As Michael wrote in his initial email to Flock on November 13, 2025: “all testing was strictly non-intrusive, limited to open unauthenticated endpoints, and did not involve bypassing authentication, modifying data, or invoking any billable ArcGIS or Google operations.” Michael said he didn’t receive a reply, so he followed up with Flock the next day, and a third time several days later.
After his third attempt to inform Flock of the discovered vulnerability, Michael received a reply from a Flock that said, “Thank you for the findings. We are internally triaging them and will reach back out with next steps soon.”
Michael said he never heard back about it from Flock.
In December 2025, Michael downloaded the Flock device location data, and in January wrote an in-depth technical blog post about what he had found. After Michael’s post, it appears that Flock fixed the vulnerability.
Despite being alerted of Michael’s findings in November 2025, Flock published its own blog post the following January saying it hadn’t had any data breaches. “Flock has never been hacked, and there has not been a leak of Flock information,” the company claimed. “Flock Safety’s cloud platform has never experienced a data breach.”
The Atlanta-based startup has faced mounting criticism for its practices and lack of transparency in recent months. An American Civil Liberties Union report found “a pattern of Flock regularly misleading or even lying about its business practices, safety record, commitment to privacy, and efforts to protect vulnerable populations.”
Michael told The Intercept that Flock’s recent claims about its data security record don’t reflect reality. Flock has publicly claimed multiple times that the company has never experienced a data breach, “and this was after I pulled their database of devices.”
“That leaves two possibilities,” he said. “Either they knew and chose not to disclose it for fear of bad press, or they didn’t know I exfiltrated the data at all. The first is a transparency failure. The second is a detection failure with national security implications.”
On Thursday, Michael was notified that Doppel, which describes itself as an “AI-native social engineering defense platfom,” filed a trademark infringement complaint regarding his site, claiming to be working on Flock’s behalf. Doppel says that the site is using the trademark “FLOCK SAFETY” without authorization, which “may cause customer confusion / harm.” Doppel requested the site be taken down.
When he posted the Flock Surveillance Map, Michael included a pop-up disclaimer saying that the site is “not affiliated with or endorsed by Flock.”
Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022 but has seen her sentenced reduced several times
Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood testing startup Theranos, will reportedly be transferred from a minimum security prison to a halfway home next August.
In 2022, Holmes, 42, was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for defrauding Theranos investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and ordered to pay restitution. The company falsely promoted its technology as being capable of detecting diseases, including types of cancer, from drops of finger-pricked blood.
Industry leaders call on government to protect homegrown produce in the interest of national security
The gap between Britain’s food and drink exports and imports has neared its highest this century, as a combination of Brexit, war in the Middle East and US tariffs dented deliveries overseas while imports soared.
The UK’s food and drink trade deficit has risen to more than £21bn – the largest since 2000 – in what industry leaders said was a “wake-up call” for the government to protect homegrown produce in the interest of national security.
For most of the past decade, moving HPC workloads to the cloud was treated as a strategic question. The technical gaps were real: cloud network fabrics could not reliably support tightly coupled simulations, storage I/O fell short of what dedicated parallel file systems delivered on bare metal, and the cost math was difficult to close once egress and replication were factored in alongside compute. On-premises clusters were the default, and usually the right one.
That calculus has shifted. High-bandwidth network interconnects now support collective operations at scale across cloud instances. Managed batch schedulers handle heterogeneous job queues with preemption, priority tiers, and spot pricing. Cloud RDMA implementations have improved across successive hardware generations. For most teams today, the question is not whether cloud HPC is technically viable — it is which workloads move, in what order, and onto what infrastructure.
The framework I use in practice starts with workload classification and ends with infrastructure selection. It is not a checklist; it is a logic tree grounded in engineering characteristics, because getting the classification right is what makes any downstream cost projection or migration timeline hold.
On-prem HPC clusters, like Perlmutter, are provisioned for peak demand (Credit: NERSC)
The Utilization Trap
On-premises HPC clusters are provisioned for peak demand. That is a rational decision at the moment of purchase and a costly one across the life of the investment. A 2023 study analyzing NERSC’s Perlmutter — published through ISC High Performance 2023 via Springer — found that CPUs are commonly not fully utilized across job runs, and that approximately 64% of both CPU-only and GPU-enabled jobs consumed 50% or less of available host memory capacity. Perlmutter is operated by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center; enterprise clusters not operated to comparable standards tend to exhibit lower utilization rates, not higher ones.
The harder problem is burst demand. When workloads spike at a regulatory submission deadline or an unexpected scale-up mid-campaign, teams either queue jobs and accept delayed results, or they provision headroom they will use only a handful of times per year. Cloud burst provisioning — where matched compute capacity can be requested for days or weeks rather than quarters — addresses that pattern directly. But burst architecture functions only if the workload itself can tolerate the transition. That question leads to the first classification filter.
The Primary Filter — Coupling Topology
The most consequential characteristic to assess before any migration decision is coupling topology: how frequently a workload’s parallel processes must communicate with each other during execution.
Loosely coupled workloads run independent tasks that share no state mid-execution. A parameter sweep evaluating thousands of configurations in parallel, a Monte Carlo simulation where each trial completes without waiting on sibling processes, a genome variant-calling pipeline that processes samples in isolated batches — none of these require coordinated inter-process communication during computation. They tolerate variable network latency, survive preemption and restart, and map directly to managed batch infrastructure. Architecturally, they are cloud-native even when currently running on-premises.
Tightly coupled HPC workloads, like CFD, demand high performance network fabrics, which typically favors on-prem clusters (Image courtesy Ansys)
Tightly coupled workloads — MPI-based simulations in computational fluid dynamics, weather modeling, finite element analysis, and reservoir simulation — exchange state across processes at high frequency during every iteration. Network fabric matters enormously for this category. On-premises InfiniBand fabrics operating at sub-microsecond latency establish a performance baseline that cloud environments approach but do not always match for the most latency-sensitive codes. The gap narrows with each hardware generation. But for production workloads with SLAs tied to solver throughput, tightly coupled codes require benchmarking before commitment — not after deployment.
The Second Filter — Data Gravity
Coupling topology tells you whether a workload can survive the cloud environment. Data gravity determines whether moving it makes economic sense.
A workload that ingests 500 TB of reference data per run, where that data currently resides on-premises, faces a migration tax that frequently exceeds the burst savings. Egress fees, replication latency, and data consistency requirements compound. The break-even calculation depends on run frequency: a monthly simulation staging 50 TB has a materially different data gravity profile than a daily run at the same scale.
I/O access pattern matters independently of raw volume. Sequential reads on large contiguous files — common in seismic processing and molecular dynamics — favor storage configurations optimized for high-bandwidth, large-block throughput. Random small-block I/O, typical of metadata operations and checkpoint reads, has different hardware requirements entirely. Mapping the I/O fingerprint to cloud storage options is a pre-migration prerequisite, not a post-deployment discovery.
What Stays On-Premises
Not every HPC workload benefits from a migration path at the current state of cloud hardware.
Workloads with sub-millisecond synchronization requirements across MPI ranks — certain CFD codes, reservoir simulation solvers, and some turbulence modeling applications — depend on the deterministic low latency that dedicated interconnect fabrics provide. Non-deterministic jitter in shared cloud infrastructure remains a measurable constraint for the highest-sensitivity jobs, even with RDMA-capable instance families available. This is the state of the current hardware generation, not a permanent condition.
Loosely coupled workloads that map well to compute-optimized instance with high core counts and that are amenable to batch scheduling typically fare better in the cloud (Shutterstock AI)
Classified workloads with air-gap requirements are a structural non-starter for public cloud. Workloads embedded in operational technology environments, where compute is co-located with physical instrumentation and real-time control loops, face the same limitation.
There is also a utilization argument that runs the other direction: a workload sustaining 85% or higher CPU utilization with stable, predictable demand captures no burst benefit worth the migration effort. When the cluster runs full, consistently, the economics of on-premises ownership are often the right outcome.
Migration Sequencing
The right first workload to migrate is not the largest or most expensive to run on-premises. It is the one that can generate credible benchmark data without putting production timelines at risk.
In practice, this means starting with a batch analytics or data processing workload where re-runs are inexpensive if the first attempt encounters configuration issues. This gateway workload serves two purposes. First, it produces real throughput and cost data from your actual job mix on your actual data — not a synthetic benchmark that may not represent your production profile. Second, it forces the operations team to build scheduling tooling, monitoring, and cost-control infrastructure before those systems sit on a critical path.
The sequencing that performs consistently runs as follows. Analytics and pre/post-processing workloads move first — they tolerate re-runs and rarely carry hard SLA dependencies on solver throughput. Development and test environments move next, where iteration speed matters more than deterministic latency. Tightly coupled production codes move last, after benchmarking on the target infrastructure confirms acceptable performance at representative scale.
One pattern to avoid: phased migration plans that treat cost projection as the primary gate for advancing to the next stage. Cost estimates made before workload profiling miss actual figures by a factor of two or more in either direction. Profile first, project second.
Matching Workloads to Infrastructure
Once classification and sequencing are established, infrastructure selection narrows considerably.
Benchmark before before committing, and reassess your assumptions and costs as you go (Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock)
Loosely coupled throughput workloads map well to compute-optimized instance families with high core counts. Batch scheduling that supports preemption and spot pricing reduces cost on non-latency-sensitive workloads without affecting correctness — these jobs survive interruption and restart by design. Tightly coupled simulations demanding memory bandwidth — molecular dynamics codes, lattice Boltzmann solvers, large-scale FEA — require selection based on memory-to-core ratio and network interconnect capability. GPU-intensive workloads carry additional constraints: interconnect bandwidth between accelerators during collective operations often matters more than raw single-card throughput.
The recommendation across all categories is the same: benchmark before committing to scope. Reference cluster configurations for the major HPC workload types — batch, MPI, and GPU-intensive — cut the time from test setup to first real throughput data from weeks to days. Run representative production codes on candidate instance families with actual data volumes before finalizing migration scope. The benchmark output, not the pre-migration cost model, is what determines whether the sequencing holds.
Closing Thoughts
The migration decision reduces to three questions, applied in sequence. How coupled is the workload — does it share state mid-execution, or does each task run independently? What is the data gravity — does moving the data cost more than the elasticity saves? And what does utilization look like across the annual cycle — does demand vary enough that elastic provisioning changes the economics?
Workloads that pass all three filters are cloud candidates. Those that fail on coupling or data gravity need additional architecture work, or a wait for the next hardware generation. Those that fail on utilization are often better served by continued on-premises investment.
Migration decisions made on cost projections alone tend to underperform. Those made on workload characterization tend to hold. Start with the gateway workload, profile before projecting, and the cloud HPC investment becomes predictable engineering.
About the author: Oleh Maksymovych is Co-Founder and General Manager at Cloudfresh, a Google Cloud Premier Partner. He leads the company’s Google Cloud and data analytics practice.
State election officials said they reviewed 185 records homeland security sent them and confirmed they were US citizens
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wrongly identified 185 people on Nevada’s voter rolls as non-citizens, state officials said this week, escalating concerns over the shoddy methodology the government is using to raise fear about non-citizen voting ahead of the midterm elections.
In July, Donald Trump gave a speech saying DHS had found a combined 278,000 non-citizens on the rolls in Nevada, California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Follow-up letters to each of those states weakened the claim, saying there only could be as many as 278,000 non-citizens on the rolls, including up to 15,903 in Nevada.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Tucker Carlson says President Donald Trump should have been removed from office under the 25th Amendment after what Carlson interpreted as a threat to use nuclear weapons against Iran, marking another sharp escalation in his break with the president over foreign policy.
“He should have been removed from office immediately when he threatened nuclear war,” Carlson told NPR’s Steve Inskeep. When Inskeep asked whether he meant removal through the 25th Amendment, Carlson answered, “That’s correct,” adding that Trump should have been “bundled up and taken out.”
There is an important distinction in Carlson’s accusation: Trump has not explicitly threatened a nuclear strike on Iran. Axios noted that Trump has instead threatened to “annihilate” Iran and previously warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Tehran rejected U.S. demands. Reuters confirmed Trump again used the word “annihilate” during his U.N. address this week.
Carlson, once one of Trump’s most influential media supporters, has increasingly opposed the administration’s Iran war and broader foreign policy. He left the Republican Party earlier this year amid those disagreements.
The 25th Amendment allows the vice president and a majority of Cabinet officials to declare a president unable to perform the duties of office. No president has ever been removed through that process.
In a gubernatorial campaign ad posted on his public social media accounts, Democrat Rob Sand said Iowa’s public schools have slipped in national rankings.
“I want us to get back to having the best public schools in the country, not in the bottom half,” he said.
Sand, the state auditor, has criticized Iowa’s Education Savings Account program, which allows families to use a student’s state funding to pay for private school education. Sand has called for annual audits of the program, income eligibility limits, and limiting tuition increases for private schools.
Sand’s campaign sent PolitiFact a statement from Sand about schools’ quality when he was growing up, but did not point to specific data placing Iowa at number one.
“When I was growing up in Decorah, Iowa had some of the best schools in the nation,” Sand said in an email statement to PolitiFact. “It’s our state’s crown jewel, so much so that we put ‘Foundation in Education’ on our state quarter… I want every Iowa kid to have access to the best education, just like I did.” He said public schools have been underfunded to favor private school vouchers.
Iowa schools spend $17,804 per pupil from federal, state and local sources, placing them 34th in the nation in K-12 education funding and 35th in spending, according to the Education Data Initiative, an organization that researches education statistics.
There’s no clear data that ranked Iowa’s schools as the best overall, but Iowa students did achieve top ranks in some subjects in the 1990s, when Sand attended. Public education rankings are issued annually by myriad organizations, using different criteria to determine where each state lies. In 2017, the first year U.S. News and World Report ranked K-12 public education, Iowa placed sixth in the nation, but that rank has fallen in the years since. Iowa ranked 26th nationally for K-12 in 2026.
However, Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, a public education advocacy organization, said her organization gave Iowa a “D” in its 2026 report card, receiving 47 out of 100 possible points. The metrics are based on privatization — or voucher programs — home-schooling oversight, school funding, and conditions for teaching and learning. She said this places Iowa 19th from the bottom for public school rankings.
“What we’re ranking is how much support does the governor’s office, does the state house give to public education?” she said. “So we’re looking at laws, policies, and practices.”
According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2026 report, which covers 2024, Iowa’s education has worsened, with fewer preschoolers enrolled in school, lower reading proficiency in fourth and eighth grades and a lower high school graduation rate. The organization, a private philanthropy providing education resources to underserved children, ranked Iowa 27th overall in education.
In 2024, 70% of fourth graders were not proficient in reading, compared to 66% in 2019. Additionally, eighth grade math proficiency has worsened, with 67% of students not proficient in 2019 to 73% not proficient in 2024.
It’s not just Iowa that’s gotten lower marks, 47 states also fared worse in 2024 compared with 2019, the foundation’s report said. At the national level, three of the four education indicators worsened in the five-year period — math proficiency, reading proficiency and preschool attendance.
Margaret Buckton, a long-time Iowa lobbyist for the Rural School Advocates of Iowa and Urban Education Network of Iowa — nonprofit K-12 advocacy organizations — backed Sand’s statement. She said Iowa’s public school ranking has significantly dropped in the last couple of decades.
“Iowa was late to the game in having state standards,” she said. “We changed our state assessment and went through a couple of years of adapting to changes. We haven’t had the support other states have made, and the change in our population would indicate we’ve got to provide additional resources, programming, and staff for those students that are starting further behind to begin with.”
Buckton said Iowa was revered for its education in the 1990s, particularly in standardized testing. In fourth grade reading and eighth grade math in 2024, Iowa students scored close to the national average.
Our ruling
Sand said Iowa once had “the best public schools in the country,” but is now “in the bottom half.”
Several institutions rank public education by state, and by some metrics, Iowa placed highly in the past, but not number one. The state’s rankings have dropped over the last 30 years; one group ranks Iowa’s K-12 schools 26th nationwide.
Country says US must lift sanctions on its oil exports and end the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon
Iran said it has told Donald Trump it is willing to open the strait of Hormuz in six days, and to start talks on its nuclear program the day after, so long as the US lifts sanctions on Iran’s oil exports in return, ends the war on all fronts – including in Lebanon – and releases some of Iran’s frozen assets.
The proposal is designed to accelerate the steps first laid down in the memorandum of understanding signed by the US and Iran in June, particularly by helping the talks on Iran’s nuclear program start much more quickly than previously agreed.
(The Center Square) – Democrat Roy Cooper leads Republican Michael Whatley 50%-42% in a new poll released Thursday on North Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat race.
Alaska Democratic nominee in pivotal Senate race ‘struggled to deal with her grief’ after death of husband and mother, spokesperson said
Mary Peltola’s campaign on Thursday downplayed a report that the Democratic nominee in Alaska’s pivotal Senate race shoved a staffer and used slurs, saying the article exaggerated her behavior, but acknowledging she struggled following the deaths of her husband and mother.
The New York Times article published on Wednesday is based on text messages and interviews with nine former employees of Peltola, who served in the House of Representatives from 2022 till the beginning of last year and is now set to face the Republican senator Dan Sullivan in the 3 November midterm elections.
Attorney general Todd Blanche requests that justices overturn lower court ruling that halted such removals
The Trump administration has asked the US supreme court to allow it to deport immigrants to countries other than their own, the latest effort to seek approval for a controversial policy that fulfils Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
Todd Blanche, the US attorney general, said on Thursday morning that the Department of Justice would ask the conservative-majority supreme court for help, nearly a week after a lower court judge rejected the policy.
Wallace and Gromit stop-motion models and other beloved creations raise money to train new generations of animators
Wallace’s reaction as the auction got into full swing might have been a trademark “good grief!” – and the enthusiasm of some of the bidding could have caused even the phlegmatic Gromit to show surprise.
Fans of Wallace and Gromit and other beloved creations of Aardman Animations seized the chance to grab souvenirs when more than 200 pieces – including Wallace, Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Chicken Run puppets from Aardman productions – went under the hammer on Thursday.
2024 total spending: $84.3 million by its super PAC
The League of Conservation Voters is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that works to “defeat federal candidates who will undermine environmental progress and elect environmental champions who will prioritize just and equitable climate solutions,” according to its website.
The group was founded in 1969 by activist David Brower, executive director of the Sierra Club in the 1950s and ’60s and founder of Friends of the Earth. Its current president is Pete Maysmith, who served as LCV’s senior vice president of campaigns starting in 2017. Maysmith took over as president in 2025 after his predecessor, Gene Karpinski, held the position for more than 18 years.
The League of Conservation Voters tracks the voting records of members of Congress on environmental issues in its National Environmental Scorecard. The league’s super PAC, the LCV Victory Fund, names a “Dirty Dozen,” a list of politicians whom the group aims to defeat because of their voting records on conservation issues and their political vulnerability. It has previously named a state-level “Dirty Dozen” in the past, but has not yet released one for 2026.
The super PAC primarily spends money on independent expenditures advocating for or against the election of candidates, while the traditional PAC contributes directly to candidate or party committees. Most of the super PAC’s independent expenditures support Democratic candidates and oppose Republicans.
As of Aug. 31, the super PAC had raised around $23.1 million for the 2026 election cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission. It also has spent nearly $5 million on independent expenditures.
The majority of that spending went to opposing Republican candidates, including Rep. Bill Huizenga of Michigan, Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia, Rep. Chuck Edwards of North Carolina, and former Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan. Rogers is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan, facing off against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in a toss-up race. Huizenga and Wittman also face closely contested general elections in November.
Edwards announced in August that he would end his reelection campaign, after the House Ethics Committee found evidence of inappropriate conduct toward staffers. Edwards was subsequently censured on Sept. 1.
The super PAC has also spent over $600,000 supporting Stefany Shaheen, the Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District.
As a super PAC, the LCV Victory Fund is required to disclose its donors to the FEC. Its largest donor through Aug. 31 was the League of Conservation Voters, the nonprofit, which has donated more than $18 million.
As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, the League of Conservation Voters does not need to disclose its donors and can make unlimited contributions to super PACs. Spending to influence elections in which the source of the money is undisclosed is known as ”dark money” spending, as the research group OpenSecrets explains.
FactCheck.org Undergraduate Fellow James Constan contributed to this article.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.
(The Center Square) – Prisha Mosley, in pursuit of medical malpractice against a plastic surgeon, two licensed counselors and a physician among eight defendants, is optimistic for Tuesday’s oral arguments at the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
One Nation is an issue advocacy organization that says it is “dedicated to promoting commonsense conservative policies and ensuring America adheres to the vision of the Founders.” That means “a nation forged from different cultures, countries, creeds and classes – yet unified by a common commitment to freedom, responsible governance, and guaranteed individual liberties,” according to its website.
The group is the nonprofit arm of the super PAC known as the Senate Leadership Fund, or SLF PAC, which was founded in 2015 by allies of Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Both groups — led in part by Executive Director Alex Latcham, who worked on President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign — are now aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and primarily focus on helping Republicans maintain their Senate majority.
Unlike the super PAC, One Nation, as a registered 501(c)(4) organization, is not required to disclose its donors, which makes it a so-called “dark money” group. Because it is a tax-exempt organization, and not a political action committee, One Nation files annual tax returns with the IRS rather than monthly or quarterly financial reports with the Federal Election Commission. So, we don’t yet have access to the latest information revealing how much the nonprofit has raised during the 2026 election cycle.
According to its 990 tax forms for the 2023 and 2024 tax years, One Nation received more than $170 million in “contributions and grants” during the 2024 election cycle. It also had about $176.6 million in expenses.
Notably, it has donated much of the money it raises to the affiliated Senate Leadership Fund. For the 2026 midterms, One Nation has given at least $70.7 million to SLF PAC, as of June 30, according to the super PAC’s filings with the FEC. During the 2024 elections, SLF PAC got about $63.5 million from One Nation, FEC records show.
In addition, One Nation spends a lot on communications, such as advertising, to influence policymaking. As of Sept. 23, it had spent more than $148 million on ads, including on broadcast, cable, and digital or streaming platforms, during the 2026 midterm cycle, according to the ad-tracking service AdImpact. That’s more than the nearly $109 million it spent on ads for the 2024 elections, according to AdImpact data.
So far for 2026, it has spent the most, $39 million, on ads for the Ohio Senate race, followed by more than $32 million for the Maine Senate race and about $26 million for the Georgia Senate race. On Sept. 18, we published a story about a One Nation ad that cherry-picked parts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 to overstate the impact of the law or distort the record of Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia.
The ad spending doesn’t include the amount spent on other communications such as mailers. For example, the New York Times reported in late August that One Nation had sent out at least 10 mailers to potential Maine voters, to the benefit of incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.
The aid adds to $887 million already provided, the State Department said, and will help build treatment units, safely bury bodies and expand programs to contain the spread.
Thirty-seven-year-old charged with one count of criminal damage and failing to disclose his phone pin to police
The far-right agitator and anti-migrant activist Daniel Thomas has been charged with criminal damage and failing to disclose his phone pin to police following an incident in the Channel on Tuesday, where he allegedly slashed a dinghy while a French rescuer was on board.
Thomas, 37, of no fixed abode, has been charged with one count of criminal damage along with an offence under section 53 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa), for allegedly failing to comply with a notice to disclose a phone pin to police.
I refuse to play host to a man who has overseen the slaughter or injury of more than 64,000 children in Gaza with American taxpayer dollars. I refuse to be complicit in genocide
Benjamin Netanyahu belongs at The Hague; not in the streets of New York City, and certainly not before the United Nations general assembly. The international criminal court has a warrant out for his arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The UN’s own commission of inquiry has found that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and named Netanyahu as its chief architect.
As the Democratic nominee for New York’s 13th congressional district, I refuse to allow a war criminal to roam the streets of our city unchallenged. I refuse to play host to a man who has overseen the slaughter or injury of more than 64,000 children in Gaza with American taxpayer dollars. I refuse to be complicit in genocide.
Darializa Avila Chevalier is the Democratic nominee for New York’s 13th congressional district
(The Center Square) – Although U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently scaled back over half of its new detention expansion initiatives, it has already spent at least $20 million taxpayer dollars that it can’t recoup, a new report shows.
A sign reading "Xi Jinping ur a Murderer" can be seen among a crowd of protestors in front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., as President Donald Trump meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, Sept. 24,…
Patient groups decry ‘scandalous’ delays as four integrated care boards take step due to soaring demand for diagnoses
NHS bodies are forcing people with suspected attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism to wait at least two years before they can be assessed as they struggle to meet surging demand for diagnoses of neurodiversity.
Four NHS integrated care boards (ICBs) covering large regions of England have adopted the approach because they cannot afford the cost of the number of assessments that people are seeking.
Delaware voters made their way to the polls to vote in the state’s 2026 primary election. From long-serving incumbents to newcomers on the ballot, candidates across the board made the final pushes in their campaigns in an election that yielded significant Democratic wins.
In the Democratic Party, four candidates ran to be on the ballot for Senate come Nov. 3: incumbent Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), Jeff Appelhans, Eric No-Trump Hansen and Mary Louve. The Democratic Party already has one senator in office who will not be up for reelection until the 2030 election cycle, Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.).
Appelhans was born and raised in Colorado, eventually moving to Delaware in 2010 and serving as a professor at the university for five years until 2019. Since then, he has served as a fellow of the American Philosophical Society and is a builder of artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
Appelhans’ five priorities include a 10-year constitutional renewal project, public oversight of AI, no blank checks, Medicare for all and equal citizenship.
Coons has served in the Senate on behalf of Delaware since 2010 and he is seeking his fourth term in Congress.
Coons’ policy platform is primarily focused on the economy. He claims to have secured $456 million for affordable housing, mental health, rural development, education and technology projects across the state. He serves on the Appropriations Committee, Ethics Committee, Foreign Relations Committee, Judiciary Committee and the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee in the Senate.
Hansen is a candidate who represented the Republican Party in 2024. He has positioned himself as a political outsider who is not concerned with political lines as much as getting the job done.
Hansen prioritizes three main political goals which he has campaigned on. He wants to lower the cost of living, protect jobs from the increase of AI in the workforce and end executive overreach. In opposition to the current administration, Hansen legally changed his name to include “No-Trump” as his middle name.
Louve is the final candidate for the Democratic nomination and a career naval architect with no prior political experience.
Louve wants policy changes and increased spending across most sectors. She is primarily focused on changing the family court, education and health systems. Most notably, she is pushing for the expansion of childcare along with an increase in paid maternity leave.
Coons secured the primary election with 78% of the vote, beating out Appelhan’s and Louve’s 10.6% and 7.5%, respectively.
The Republican Party had two candidates up for nomination: Michael Katz and John Shulli.
Katz is a physician and business owner who has lived in Delaware since 1996. He was initially a Democrat serving in the state Senate from 2009 to 2013. He left the Democratic Party and ran as an independent in the 2024 Senate election cycle before switching to the Republican Party prior to the 2026 election cycle. He claims that he does not care as much about party labels as he does his political goals.
Katz’s primary goals involve fighting inflation, protecting Delaware’s business infrastructure and changing the healthcare system.
Shulli is also running for the Republican nomination and has set himself as the further-right opponent of Katz
Shulli, a veteran, has stated his support for issues ranging from the Make America Healthy Again movement to the anti-transgender movement. His primary goals, outside of his social agenda, prioritize a strong and financially capable central government that can fund various programs, projects and public initiatives.
Katz defeated Shulli last night with 77.3% of the vote. He will face Coons in November.
In this primary election cycle, there are also three Republicans running for the House of Representatives: Joseph Arminio, Earl Cooper and John Whalen. The winner will face Democratic incumbent, Representative Sarah McBride (D-Del.).
Arminio is a doctor of political science who hopes to develop long-term plans to solve pressing issues. His main plan for solving the economic crisis in America is to relieve private and public debt through the use of “greenbacks,” an emergency form of currency issued by the federal government during the Civil War. He also wants to avoid involvement in overseas conflicts, favoring negotiations with other countries rather than spending money on wars.
Cooper is a reverend who blends his religious views with his political views to shape policy. He is also the owner of Everyone Can Achieve, a construction company that hires from underrepresented communities and provides paths to homeownership for employees.
Cooper places a strong emphasis on the young people and the senior citizens of Delaware. He has created and helped with various programs across the state that help young people access the education and training they need to succeed. He has also committed to opening up a senior helpline on the first day in office.
Whalen is a retired member of the Delaware Department of Public Safety and a long-time citizen of Delaware. Whalen is campaigning for the government to be stricter with its implementation of policy.
Whalen supports an increased crackdown on illegal immigration and a sterner approach toward foreign relations. In terms of economic policy, he believes in cutting government services that do not operate efficiently while also pulling aid from immigrants and higher education. A majority of Whalen’s views are based on the belief that the government is not doing its job well and that its role should be more limited.
In the Republican House primary, Arminio won 47.9% of the vote, beating out Whalen and Cooper’s 32.2% and 20%, respectively. Arminio will face McBride in November.
This primary season is being used as a testing ground as establishment candidates across the country are being unseated. Now, both Democrats and Republicans are trying to set their parties up for success come the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Republicans are accusing Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Roy Cooper of mismanaging the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles while he was governor.
Cooper is running for the seat being vacated by U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-NC, who isn’t seeking reelection. Cooper faces Republican Michael Whatley in a race that could help determine party control of the U.S. Senate. Green Party candidate Michael Dublin and Libertarian Shannon Bray are also running.
The Republican National Committee, which Whatley chaired prior to his Senate run, targeted Cooper in a Sept. 2 social media post.
“54% of North Carolina commercial driver’s licenses were issued illegally to foreign nationals,” the RNC Research’s account posted, adding: “More Americans are put in harm’s way every day because of Democrat Governor Roy Cooper.”
Is it true that more than half of North Carolina’s commercial driver’s licenses were issued illegally to foreign nationals?
No. That’s a misleading figure based on an incomplete data sample. Only a fraction of 1% of the state’s CDLs were incorrectly issued to noncitizens, according to records from the North Carolina DMV, and none of the drivers who received them were in the country illegally.
Where the RNC got its number
Last year, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration — a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation — reviewed commercial drivers licenses, or CDLs, issued in 25 states and discovered errors in North Carolina’s database.
The administration looked at a sample of CDLs issued to 50 noncitizens. Of those 50 CDLs, the administration found that 27 of the records — or 54% of the sample — failed to comply with federal law for issuing CDLs.
For instance, in 19 of the cases, the DMV issued CDLs that were valid longer than the license-holder was allowed to reside in the U.S. In eight of the cases, the federal agency found the state DMV issued licenses without verifying that the driver was legally allowed in the U.S.
The U.S. Department of Transportation outlined its findings in a Jan. 8 letter to North Carolina’s DMV, calling on state leaders to take corrective action or risk losing federal funding. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that he would withhold $50 million from North Carolina if the state didn’t fix the problems identified in the letter.
“North Carolina’s failure to follow the rules isn’t just shameful — it’s dangerous,” Duffy said in a statement calling on the state’s DMV administrators to “clean up their system.”
What full records show
The North Carolina DMV responded by reviewing all of its licenses issued to noncitizens, said Marty Homan, a spokesperson for the North Carolina DMV. Among its 325,114 active CDLs, the state found that 8,540 — or about 2.6% — had been issued to noncitizens, Homan said.
Among the noncitizens’ licenses, 1,149 — or about 0.35% of all CDLs — had administrative errors, but none were issued to immigrants in the country illegally. The primary issue with more than 900 of the 1,149 licenses with issues: a discrepancy between the license’s expiration date and the driver’s U.S. work authorization expiration date, Homan said.
If the DMV’s review found that a CDL wasn’t issued correctly, the agency downgraded the driver’s license. The DMV also mailed the driver a letter to say that his license would be canceled entirely if he didn’t visit a DMV office to rectify the issue within 20 days, Homan said.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on July 21 approved the DMV’s plan for correcting the issues. As a result, federal funds for North Carolina’s transportation projects are no longer in jeopardy, Homan said.
In a July 21 letter to the DMV, the federal agency said it “acknowledges the actions the State has taken to address previously issued non-compliant licenses” and “appreciates North Carolina’s continued efforts to address the deficiencies identified.”
After PolitiFact shared the state DMV’s statements with the RNC, the organization credited the Trump administration for the changes, saying in an email that “Roy Cooper’s Democrat buddies caved to Republicans’ pressure and cleaned up their act.”
Our ruling
The RNC said that “54% of North Carolina commercial driver’s licenses were issued illegally to foreign nationals.”
That’s wrong. A thorough review of North Carolina’s 325,000-plus CDLs found that 1,149 — or 0.35% — were issued incorrectly to noncitizens, state officials said, and none of the drivers were in the country illegally. The RNC drew its figure from a sampling of commercial driver’s licenses issued in North Carolina, but it misconstrued the number’s meaning.
Agentic AI is currently a hot topic in the scientific community: during the Trillion Parameter Consortium’s autumn hackathon at the LRZ, teams presented practical solutions designed to make supercomputers more accessible and research projects more efficient.
Sept. 24, 2026 — In the seminar rooms of the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ), small groups stand in front of flipcharts discussing diagrams. Or they sit together, coding on laptops, only occasionally breaking the concentrated silence: in early September, 30 researchers from European and US supercomputing centers worked intensively on artificial intelligence (AI) systems or models for science and research. The Trillion Parameter Consortium (TPC) Europe had invited participants to the LRZ for the autumn hackathon.
Shaping AI: Participants at the TPC Autumn Hackathon at the LRZ discussed AI concepts and developed practical solutions. Image Credit: LRZ | A. Schuffert.
“At the TPC hackathons, plans and discussions turn into action,” said Prof. Charles Catlett, Senior Computer Scientist of Argonne National Lab (ANL) and a member of the TPC strategy team. “During the event, participants can get to know potential collaboration partners and their working methods, plan projects together, work on ideas in a practical way, or share experiences and ensure that these spread more quickly throughout the community.”
Research and Promotion of AI
In the light of the rapid global spread of generative AI tools and the risks they pose, the TPC was launched during the SC23 supercomputing conference by ANL, the Japanese RIKEN Centre and European Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC). “TPC aims to become a sustainable movement for the use of AI in science and to promote research into it, as well as trustworthy programs,” explained Catlett. In addition to regular hackathons, TPC organizes conferences and workshops worldwide and publishes tutorials on AI-supported research.
From the outset, European high-performance computing centers such as the LRZ have actively supported this community. Consequently, TPC Europe was established in Barcelona in 2024, its own office and organizational structures followed in spring 2026 with the funding of the EuroTPC Project by EuroHPC Joint Undertaking: During the TPC annual conference 2026 in Boston in early June, members from Europe met at the LRZ. Some of their presentations were streamed to the US and to other satellite events, and vice versa. Two of the four TPC hackathons of the year took place in Europe, in spring at CINECA in Italy, in fall at LRZ in Garching.
“Within the EuroTPC Project, the LRZ has taken on the task of drawing up a EuroTPC roadmap,” said Dr. Nicolay Hammer, head of the LRZ’s Big Data & AI (BDAI) team. “To this end, we are currently gathering recommendations and topics from researchers and institutes to devise EU strategies and foster the use of AI in science.”
Agentic AI will feature very prominently as a topic in this context. Special tasks were already suggested for the TPC hackathon in the context of agentic use of AI workflows. In those cases large language models coordinate jobs in data processing together with other AI tools and interact with them to carry out actions.
For example, one of the teams at LRZ worked on agentic workflows to develop hypothesis generation for protein. Another working group from the Gauss Supercomputing Centre (GCS) developed initial workflows to enable an AI agent to adapt code to various supercomputers, thereby simplifying access to a wide range of HPC systems.
“For me, the most important thing during the TPC hackathons is the exchange of ideas; it also allows me to learn about different approaches or how technology is used,” said Mitja Sainio, a Machine Learning (ML) engineer at the Finnish CSC – IT for Science Centre, who collaborated with the GCS team. In addition, the hands-on work helps building networks of contacts that AI specialists can turn to for practical advice in their day-to-day work.
Networks for Practical Issues
Energy efficiency is another issue for which solutions were sought during the TPC hackathon.
“The more agentic AI is used, the more energy is consumed due to inference workloads,” said LRZ researcher Ajay Navilarekal. “We need to limit that.”
In light of initial incidents and risky system attacks by AI agents, the risks and boundary violations associated with agent-based systems were also on the agenda: to protect data and prevent these digital assistants from running wild, another team from GCS worked on developing security strategies on how authentication and authorization workflows would look like for AI agents.
Alongside more technical issues, a focus was on AI-supported research: for example, a team from the Munich Centre for Machine Learning (MCML) investigated how researchers can use language models to formulate benchmarking algorithms and develop them more quickly. Meanwhile, another group focused on risk prevention and pandemic preparedness with the help of AI.
“The seven working groups pursued different objectives at the TPC Hackathon,” said Navilarekal. “Some wanted to develop an initial, simple prototype that they could continue working on separately, whilst others arrived with code that they wanted to optimise and expand upon. In any case, working together has led to progress.”
It also provided inspiration – Catlett from ANL prompted the discussions to consider how AI agents could safeguard and enrich urban life by analyzing environmental data from cameras and sensors. Dr. Miguel Vazquez from the BSC and Dr. Arvind Ramanathan from ANL, who develop AI systems for bioinformatics and genomics research, gained new impetus, potential collaboration partners and ideas for projects. “The TPC community brings together a unique pool of expertise,” notes Vazquez. “This will enable us to successfully establish AI and agentic AI across all areas of research.”
Israel’s leader delivered a blistering defense of his country, appealing to voters back home and condemning critics including New York mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Court says Chad Bianco’s conduct unlawful and seizure of ballots ‘creates substantial risk to election integrity’
California Republican sheriff Chad Bianco must return more than 650,000 ballots his department confiscated earlier this year in an unprecedented move that violated election law, a state supreme court ruled on Thursday.
“Allowing law enforcement unfettered access to ballots, or the ability to handle and count them in secret, based on unregulated protocols, itself creates a substantial risk to election integrity,” the chief justice, Patricia Guerrero, wrote in a Thursday opinion.
Republicans focusing on transgender issues in competitive midterm races leveled accusations against Texas Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, James Talarico.
“Talarico supported using taxpayer dollars for sex change surgeries on young children,” said the ad from Texas PAC, connected to the Senate Leadership Fund. Talarico is running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican.
The ad ended with an echo to the last federal election cycle.
“Radical Liberal James Talarico, for they/them, not you,” the ad said, referencing President Donald Trump’s 2024 ad that used the phrase “Kamala Harris is for they-them, not you.”
Similar messaging has been used in midterm election ads across the country, an effort to tap into a strategy that was successful for Trump in 2024 — although experts told PolitiFact it’s unclear whether the attacks will benefit Republicans this year.
The Senate Leadership Fund did not respond to a request for comment.
The attack centers on a 2023 vote by Talarico, who is a state representative, against a ban on gender-affirming healthcare for children. The ad also cited Talarico saying in 2019 that it was “abusive” to deny a child’s gender identity and in March that protecting transgender Texans is something “we have to do every day.”
The claim rests on his vote against a single bill that would have prohibited surgeries and other gender-affirming healthcare for children, legislation that Talarico described as overly broad and potentially harmful to medical care for people who aren’t transgender. But the claim is misleading: We found no evidence that Talarico voted in support of any legislation that would have used taxpayer money for gender-reassignment surgery.
When contacted for comment, Talarico’s campaign called the ad a “lie.”
“As James has said, he opposes gender reassignment surgery for minors,” said campaign spokesperson JT Ennis.
Talarico’s 2023 vote
The ad’s claim refers to Talarico’s 2023 vote against state SB 14.
The bill, which passed, prohibits procedures that “transition a child’s biological sex as determined by the child’s sex organs, chromosomes, and endogenous profiles.”
Gender transition surgery for minors isexceedingly rare, and no medical guidelines support providing it for young children. Any medical care for transgender minors — which may include puberty blockers and hormone therapy — requires parental consent.
Talarico said he aimed to narrow the legislation’s scope.
“If you go back and check, I voted for a major amendment to limit the bill to banning surgeries for minors,” Talarico told Fox News earlier this month.
We checked: Talarico voted for all 18 unsuccessful Democratic amendments. Talarico also requested to add a provision that would have killed the legislation if the Health and Human Services Commission determined there were “high-quality, long-term studies demonstrating the efficacy and safety of” therapies, puberty blockers or surgery that helped children overcome gender dysphoria.
Oliverson said he would not accept that amendment but would work with Talarico should that research exist, adding “but I do not believe that it will,” according to the hearing’s transcript and a video of the interaction.
Talarico was one of the 56 lawmakers who voted against the bill May 15, 2023. It passed the Texas House with 87 yeas, was approved by the state Senate 31-0 two days later and became law Sept. 1, 2023.
Talarico said he opposed the bill because it would negatively affect Texans who aren’t transgender but need hormonal therapies as part of their medical care. That turned out to be true, according to a March 2026 story by The Texas Tribune chronicling one family’s struggle for endocrinology healthcare after the bill passed.
“It’s why I try to use amendments, to narrow the focus of the bill so that it does exactly what we intend it to do,” Talarico told Fox News on Sept. 9. “It’s what I tried to do with that piece of legislation, and unfortunately, the amendment I supported was unsuccessful.”
“As a lawmaker, my job is to try to sift through everything the bill does,” Talarico told Fox News. “And sometimes there’s stuff in it that’s really harmful, and I have no choice but to oppose the bill as a whole.”
Talarico moderated his stance in June, about two weeks after he won the primary runoff. When asked on the podcast “Codgell Law Uncensored” if he was “pro sex surgery for minors,” Talarico said: “I oppose gender-reassignment surgeries for minors.” He recently said he’s in favor of a national ban on gender-reassignment surgery for minors.
Our ruling
An ad from Texas PAC says Talarico “supported using taxpayer dollars for sex change surgeries on young children.”
In 2023, Talarico voted against Texas’ SB 14, which prohibited gender-reassignment procedures for children. He did not vote to use taxpayer money for gender-reassignment surgery.
Talarico said he voted against the bill because it was too broad and would take healthcare away from people who are not transgender.
Crystal Mason has spent nearly a decade fighting conviction for casting provisional ballot that ultimately wasn’t counted
The nearly decade-long case of a Black Texas woman who was sentenced to five years in prison in a controversial illegal voting case will end with an acquittal, the state’s highest criminal court said in a 5-4 decision on Thursday.
The woman, Crystal Mason, has been appealing against the case ever since her 2018 conviction for casting a provisional ballot that ultimately wasn’t counted. In 2024, the Texas court of criminal appeals acquitted her in the case. The local prosecutor handling the case appealed that ruling to Texas’s highest criminal court, which initially agreed to hear it. But on Thursday, the court reversed itself, and said it would not hear an appeal, letting the acquittal stand. It did not offer any explanation for why.
Time for me to hand off the X9.
Full Disclosure: Yes I got it for free, I was the one who reached out and asked for one (I did pay $350 for air shipping)
Constable Jeff Smith was shot several times, suffering wounds to his head and torso, but continued fending off the attack until a second officer arrived.
Sept. 24, 2026 — The Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC–CNS) is co-leading development of Spain’s National Cancer Data Node to help researchers securely access, share and analyze data for oncology research.
The goal is to progressively onboard all key stakeholders generating relevant data across Spain’s cancer research ecosystem, including research centers, hospitals, and national and international projects, into the newly launched Node, which is now advancing through its initial phase.
Salvador Capella, BSC lead in the National Cancer Data Node.
Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities Diana Morant highlighted that through this initiative, “we are placing public science data and capabilities at the service of research to further advance toward increasingly precise and personalized medicine, specifically in the fight against cancer.”
The Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU), through the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII), is driving the development of the Spanish National Cancer Data Node to enhance oncology research by facilitating and organizing the secure use of cancer R&D data. This dataset encompasses clinical, epidemiological, genomic, multi-omic, imaging, pathological, and therapeutic response data.
The initiative forms part of the IMPaCT Precision Medicine Infrastructure under its Data Science Program (IMPaCT-Data) and is co-led by the National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), the Cancer Area of the Biomedical Research Network (CIBER-ISCIII), and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC–CNS).
Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities Diana Morant highlighted that through this initiative, “we are placing public science data and capabilities at the service of research to further advance toward increasingly precise and personalized medicine, specifically in the fight against cancer.”
“The National Cancer Data Node represents a major step forward in connecting the knowledge generated by our researchers, ensuring that this insight translates into new breakthroughs in oncology research,” she explained.
A Shared Space for Cancer Research Data
Data generated within research consortia and projects is typically shared among participating scientists. However, these efforts often rely on disparate access models, standards, and tools that lack standardization.
The National Cancer Data Node, now underway in its initial phases, aims to streamline the use and reuse of this data through interoperable standards. To achieve this, FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) will be applied to both data and the software tools required for analysis.
This project aligns with EU efforts under the recently established European Health Data Space, fostering secure information sharing and integration across borders.
The Data Node concept originated within the EOSC4Cancer project, coordinated by BSC with over 20 participating European organizations, and was developed alongside key national partners including CIBER Cancer and CNIO.
The goal is for all actors in the Spanish cancer research ecosystem generating relevant data, such as research centers, hospitals, national and international projects, public administrations, and patient support organizations, to progressively integrate into the Node.
National and European Cooperation
Coordinated data and tool sharing, both nationally and in partnership with Europe, will enable the scientific community to work more efficiently to better understand the disease.
Coordinated data access will accelerate the discovery of potential new treatments, ultimately helping improve the quality of life for patients and their families.
“The launch of the National Cancer Data Node serves as a practical, real-world example of how collaboration across diverse organizations, initiatives, and projects, both nationally and across Europe, can accelerate the study of these diseases by leveraging distributed data and cutting-edge techniques, including federated learning for AI model development,” detailed Salvador Capella, BSC lead in the National Cancer Data Node.
Fast and Seamless Access
The Node will give researchers fast, seamless access to extensive data catalogs and high-performance computing analytical tools, establishing a common access platform for all players in the cancer research ecosystem.
It also guarantees a secure environment for managing oncology R&D data by uniting the talent and resources of different biomedical and healthcare structures nationwide.
Furthermore, the initiative will facilitate the progressive integration of knowledge generated by existing projects and future research endeavors. For its deployment, the Spanish node benefits from being one of the most comprehensive and diverse, coordinated by a team of leading scientific organizations with highly complementary capabilities.
In this way, the National Cancer Data Node will pave the way toward a more connected research ecosystem, where data and tools can be shared and reused in a coordinated manner to expand cancer knowledge and drive oncology research forward.
Zafer Dogan was jailed for two years and four months after he was convicted of taking thousands of pictures of women and girls before using AI technology to turn them into nude images.
As Tigray rebels and government forces attack each other, analysts warn that a 2022 peace deal has collapsed. The African Union called for an immediate end to fighting.
With Congress unable to rein in President Donald Trump’s war against Iran through legislative action, a group advocating for diplomacy filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration arguing the military action violates the Constitution.
National Iranian American Council Action on Thursday filed its suit in a Washington federal court asking a judge to declare the war on Iran illegal on the basis that it violates the Declare War Clause of the Constitution.
“Can one person decide, on his own, to keep an entire nation at war?”
“No President should have the power to take this country into an indefinite war by himself,” NIAC President Jamal Abdi said in a statement. “Congress never authorized this war. Yet Iranian families are being bombed, American service members have been killed, and communities on both sides are being forced to bear the consequences. This lawsuit asks a fundamental question: Can one person decide, on his own, to keep an entire nation at war?”
The lawsuit was filed as the Senate prepared to vote on a resolution seeking to stop the war. A floor vote on the resolution, which already passed the House of Representatives, failed in the upper chamber Thursday afternoon after senators shot it down in a 49–50 split.
“We’ve unfortunately seen this Congress fail its job of standing up for their constitutional role as the sole body empowered to declare war,” Abdi told The Intercept. “That’s why we are pursuing every option at our disposal, including taking the challenge against this unconstitutional war to the courts.”
Both the Senate vote and NIAC Action’s lawsuit took on new urgency after Trump used his United Nations General Assembly speech on Tuesday to threaten to “annihilate” Iran, a country of 90 million people.
“When Trump is threatening annihilation of another country in a war of aggression,” Abdi said, “it is all hands on deck to stop this full-blown constitutional crisis before it gets worse.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Seven Months of War
Trump, in partnership with the Israeli military, launched the war against Iran on February 28 with a sudden barrage of airstrikes and missile attacks that left numerous top Iranian leaders dead and killed hundreds of civilians. The early days of the attack saw a missile strike on a school in the town of Minab that killed more than 100 children, which the United Nations declared to be a possible war crime.
It was days later, on March 2, that Trump notified Congress of the initiation of hostilities. In the ensuing months, the war has turned into a regional conflagration. Israel invaded Lebanon, leaving thousands of people killed and tens of thousands more displaced.
Meanwhile, retaliatory missile and drone strikes by Iran against the U.S., Israel, and their allies in the Persian Gulf have severely impacted the region and led to a shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz that has hobbled global fuel markets. And missile fire from the Houthis, the militant group that controls much of Yemen, shut down shipping through the Red Sea’s Bab al-Mandab Strait, further straining the global economy and spurring a Saudi military response.
The initial attacks, thousands of deaths, and cascading economic fallout of the war all took place without the consent of the American people, a fact that NIAC Action’s attorneys cast in the lawsuit as a clear violation of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which grants Congress the exclusive power to declare war.
“The Constitution does not permit a President to wage war indefinitely and ask Congress for permission later,” said attorney Alan Morrison. “Congress never authorized this war, yet months later the bombing and blockade continued. We are asking the Court to enforce the constitutional line between the President’s authority as Commander in Chief and Congress’s exclusive authority to take the country to war.”
“Calling a war a ‘military operation’ or an ‘excursion’ does not erase the Declare War Clause.”
Though Trump has sought to bypass Congress in pursuing the war through the use of semantics, he has repeatedlyundermined that effort with public statements declaring that his military action is a war, NIAC Action’s complaint noted.
“Calling a war a ‘military operation’ or an ‘excursion’ does not erase the Declare War Clause,” said attorney Bruce Fein in a statement. “The question before the Court is whether the President can continue these hostilities without the authorization the Constitution requires.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of several NIAC Action members who have been personally impacted by the war. Several of their family members have been killed, wounded, or otherwise terrorized by the monthslong campaign of airstrikes carried out by the U.S. and its allies. One member joining the suit, Nilma Dilmaghani, described the horror of learning that a cousin had been badly wounded in an airstrike that destroyed a family apartment.
“When I learned that my cousin had been trapped under the rubble, that they had lost their home and suffered such serious injuries, I felt completely helpless,” said Dilmaghani. “It is unbearable to watch your family live through this from thousands of miles away and know there is nothing you can do to keep them safe.”
“AI will kill us all.” That’s the mantra we’ve heard repeatedly this month from researchers at frontier AI labs, who have called for a global pause in AI development, ostensibly to protect humanity. That’s nonsense, said Department of Energy’s Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil, who neither backs a pause nor thinks AI poses an existential threat. In fact, Gil says there’s a better chance that AI will substantially improve the quality of life by accelerating progress in science and engineering, which is the goal of the DoE’s Genesis Mission project.
“No, I definitely do not think it’s going to kill humanity,” Gil told HPCwire this week. “I think there’s zero chance that we are going to end up with that prediction, of eliminating all of humanity.”
Gil, who is heading up the DoE’s Genesis Mission effort to harness AI, quantum, and HPC to drive progress in scientific discovery and engineering, would much rather talk about the big upside of AI and the benefits that it can bring to humanity, rather than how AI could end us.
“Instead of spending 99% of the debate and the effort on this [AI doomerism], why don’t we actually solve fusion and personalized medicine and cancer, materials, and devote a lot of our energy to go and deliver that?” he told us. “You will see how much better the world will be as a consequence of the work we do.”
Focusing on AI Upside
There’s never been a better time to be a scientist and an engineer, thanks to the new capabilities that AI is helping to unlock, Gil said. The DoE program has a list of 33 national science and technology challenges, with titles like “Unlocking Cures for Pediatric Cancer,” “Accelerating the Delivery of Fusion Energy,” and “Securing America’s Critical Minerals Supply,” that it and other federal agencies are spending $5 billion to tackle.
“The list of challenges we put out–you read them, you’re inspired by them,” Gil said. “That’s what we’re going to need to solve. AI is going to help us solve [them] partially along with a lot of humans and a lot of other capability to go do it. It’s a wonderful time to go do that. And that part is being drowned by this whole other side of the equation. And it’s a real pity.”
Gil takes issue with the fear that well-respected scientists and researchers are spreading in the general public. It’s natural that people believe Nobel laureates and other accomplished scientists, but it’s also unfortunate that that they’re misleading the public about the actual risks that AI poses, he said.
“Very respectable, qualified people in their domain issuing predictions that sound scientific, like there’s a 10% chance or 15% chance” that we’ll all die, Gil said. “That’s just the opinion of this person that has made up a number with no scientific basis.”
A good example is Geoffrey Hinton, who has been called the Godfather of AI thanks to his extensive contributions to the field and is a Nobel laureate. Earlier this month, Hinton told BBC said that 10% was “not an unreasonable estimate” on the odds that AI will kill everyone on Earth within a decade.
Geoff Hinton said it’s reasonable to think there’s a 10% chance that AI will kill all humans within 10 years
“Geoffrey Hinton is an amazing scientist,” Gil said. “But his track record of prediction outside of his field is quite poor.”
Gil recalls a prediction that Hinton made a decade ago, in which he said that we should stop training radiologists because it was clear then that deep learning was able to interpret X-rays better than humans.
“How did that prediction turn out?” Gil said. “There’s actually a scarcity now of radiologists. When we in the scientific community issue predictions outside our area of expertise, leveraging our credibility, we can do serious harm to society when we don’t do that properly.”
Managing AI Risk
That is not to say that Hinton sees no upside to AI, nor that Gil sees no risk from AI. “This is a wonderful technology that can make life much better for lots of people,” Hinton said in his BBC interview. “It’s also extremely dangerous.”
Gil recognizes that AI poses risks. The recent hack of Hugging Face by rouge OpenAI agents, for example–and more recent news that the government of Australia was also targeted by OpenAI agents–are cause for concern. However, the initial frame of the story, that we are facing superintelligent AI hacking agents that are unstoppable, has shifted. As more information has come out over the incident, the concern has shifted to what steps did OpenAI take to contain the agents and prevent them from attacking others.
“It was obvious in the Hugging Face incident that the containment environments that were set up in the software environment were inadequate, by their own admission,” Gil said. “It was misconfigured. They didn’t have the right safeguards and protections, and that led to bad consequences. Had that been better engineered–and that would mean more resources–we would not have had that incident.”
Instead of a global pause on AI development, Gil encourages the frontier labs to spend more time testing their models to ensure they’re not going to harm people before releasing them to the world.
“The ratio of capability to testing in many of the frontier sites is not correct,” Gil said. “They need to accelerate the amount of time they’re spending on creating technology to test and to evaluate and to make the model safe.”
In addition to taking responsibility to ensure that their products are safe, the frontier labs should also fortify their sandbox environments to prevent agents from escaping during testing, Gil said.
(Jack_the_sparow/Shutterstock)
“The containment and isolation of environments needs to improve greatly,” he said. “This is an engineering [issue], a technically solvable problem.”
Taking Responsibility for AI Products
Gil is not a fan of the federal government granting a product liability waiver to the frontier AI labs, which is an idea that has been floated this month. Gil had a clear message to AI developers who want a waiver: Take responsibility for your own products.
“They are amazing companies that are developing incredible capabilities. They are aware of the problem,” Gil said. “They have the best AI talent in the world. And all we’re saying is: You’re aware of the problem, do something about it. Don’t tell the citizens of America ‘You all need to worry about my AI engineering.’”
“It’s your responsibility that you don’t do the wrong thing,” Gil continued. “You have agency . You have a lot of resources. So if you feel you need to take longer time to do release cycles so that it’s safe, then take more time.”
Gil values the work that the frontier labs are doing, and says the work is instrumental to the Genesis Mission. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are contributing AI models and tokens to the DoE project, which launched in November 2025 with the goal to accelerate American scientific and engineering productivity through the application of AI. They are members of the Genesis Mission Consortium.
“They are core partners of ours,” Gil said. “We have partnerships both with the frontier proprietary models in the United States but also with open-source companies. There’s a whole host of startups…that are building these frontier capability models that are open source as well. We think that’s very important. So we are working with all of them.”
Developing AI Best Practices
Phase 1 projects for the Genesis Mission are currently underway, and bigger Phase 2 projects are expected to be announced soon. There are 278 Phase 1 projects, many of which are led by the DoE’s National Labs, along with participation from universities and private companies. A core element of these Genesis Mission projects is setting up policies and procedures for evaluating and measuring the results of the projects.
AI governance is largely an afterthought in the LLM race (Aree_S/Shutterstock)
“An essential part of this journey is to say, how do you do this?” Gil said. “Part of the approach is to share the best practices of what works–including security, by the way, which is fundamental–such that we develop through Genesis the gold standard approach of how to rigorously apply AI for science and engineering.”
The advent of large language models is driving trillions of dollars in private-sector investment at the moment, creating a technology boom that is reverberating across all sectors. Every business is trying to figure out how to use this powerful new technology, and AI researchers are competing fiercely to drive rapid improvements in capabilities.
The result is unparalleled breakthroughs in areas of academia and science. AI is solving old math problems that escaped solution for years. McKinsey reports that AI is accelerating drug discovery.
“We’ve lost the whole narrative as to why are we creating the technology in the first place, which is the central thesis of Genesis, which is, look, we want to harness this computer revolution to solve problems that greatly matter to our fellow citizens,” Gil said. “We want to go and solve fusion. We want to go and drive massive breakthroughs in personalized medicine. We want to engineer novel materials to avoid corrosion in cars and airplanes. We want better battery technology. We want to model the grid a thousand times faster.”
Instead of endless philosophizing, Genesis Mission is seeking real-world applications of AI in science and engineering. Gil would like nothing more than for this type of progress to be the focus of AI.
“That aspect of aligning the AI industry towards purpose, not just in rhetoric and in panels, but actually doing work and then applying better engineering principles on how you actually develop the technology, test it, and only release safe products–that balance is what we need to shift,” he said. “The current debate is really, really poor.”
Israeli PM attacks critics and calls New York mayor Zohran Mamdani ‘antisemitic’ in inflammatory address
Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an inflammatory address to the United Nations on Thursday, decrying what he said was a global anti-Jewish conspiracy and swatting aside criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza, as he faces down international isolation and a fight for political survival in upcoming elections in Israel.
As planned protests erupted on the streets of New York City, Netanyahu took aim at critics of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the international media, regional leaders such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the leftwing commentator Hasan Piker and the New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani in an address that doubled as a stump speech to ignite his rightwing base for the elections.
CARSON CITY, Nevada — Nevada election officials say they found zero confirmed noncitizens among 185 voters recently flagged by the Trump administration, further undercutting an earlier federal claim that nearly 16,000 noncitizens could be registered in the state.
“Our records indicate that they were citizens,” Deputy Attorney General Greg Ott wrote to Department of Homeland Security officials Wednesday, adding that DHS had provided “nothing of substance to suggest otherwise.” Nevada officials cautioned that DHS supplied only voter case numbers rather than names, birth dates and addresses, making exact matches uncertain because duplicate case numbers can exist in the state system.
The administration initially claimed as many as 15,903 noncitizens were registered in Nevada. Federal officials later acknowledged they had actually identified only 185 potential cases, describing the larger figure as a ceiling rather than a verified count.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said his office takes noncitizen voting seriously but has yet to receive evidence supporting DHS’s claims. Previous Nevada investigations have also found very few potential cases.
FactCheck.org has similarly found that federal data-matching systems can incorrectly flag U.S. citizens, including recently naturalized voters. It also reports no evidence that noncitizen voting occurs on a widespread scale.
The administration nevertheless continues a nationwide voter-fraud initiative, deploying federal investigators and attorneys ahead of the November election.
GOP stymies House-passed war powers resolution as conflict passes 200-day mark with 19 US service members killed
Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a Democratic effort to end the US war with Iran, voting 49-50 against a House-passed war powers resolution as the conflict passed the 200-day mark, with 19 American service members killed.
The measure passed the House earlier with bipartisan support. Senate Democrats, led by the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the senator Andy Kim of New Jersey, forced the vote under the War Powers Resolution, which allows lawmakers to bring such measures to the floor.
"Nationwide, at least 100 police department employees have been charged with or accused of misusing license-plate readers for unauthorized purposes," reports the Washington Post. They cite their past investigations "based on thousands of pages of police and court records," which found that "In many of these cases, officers used Flock's roadside cameras to track the location of romantic partners and exes."
In fact, five Indianapolis police officers were just criminally charged Wednesday with fraud and misconduct. "One has also been charged with stalking," the police department said in a statement, noting that one office had already resigned, "while the four other officers have been suspended and recommended for termination. County prosecutor Ryan Mears admitted "A lot of this was initiated by The Washington Post."
And the Post published a new investigation Wednesday:
Using publicly available information, The Post found that...one of the officers charged Wednesday, appeared to have relied on Flock cameras to track vehicles used by his wife and two close personal acquaintances, searching the plates 3,759 times over a 10-month period — an average of about 12 lookups per day. At the time, Police Chief Tanya Terry said she suspended one officer while the department conducted an investigation into possible misuse and a systemwide audit of the city's 301-camera Flock system. That audit led to the discovery of more widespread abuse, [County prosecutor Ryan] Mears said Wednesday.
Mears said the department's findings highlight the vast power Flock cameras give police officers and raise questions about whether the government should be doing more to prevent the misuse of that power. "Many of the proposed guardrails and the things that have been proposed would not have prevented the behaviors and actions we see here today," Mears said. "Does there need to be independent oversight? Does there need to be judicial oversight of the Flock camera system?"
One of the Indianapolis officers, Schultz, an 18-year veteran of the police department, was accused of using Flock to track his ex-wife and women he met while on duty or out in public. He was charged with multiple counts of official misconduct as well as two counts of stalking. Schultz told one woman he was an FBI agent, according to prosecutors, and began texting her and showing up at places she frequented, including at her gym and at a school function with her daughter. Prosecutors said he arrived at her gym within an hour of her at least nine times between June 12 and Aug. 1 of this year... Another woman met Schultz after her car was stolen from a mall parking lot, and he began texting her flirty messages later that night. The two dated briefly, and Schultz later looked up where the woman went on dates with another man. Schultz searched the plates of a third woman 178 times and also frequently showed up where she was, including her gym, a Smoothie King and a Walmart earlier this month...
A third officer, Binford, told investigators he had used the log-in credentials of another officer who had logged in to Binford's laptop during a field training exercise. Binford searched the plate of his ex-wife more than 1,000 times between April 2024 and April 2025. Indianapolis police had no regular practice of auditing officers' Flock searches until recently, [Police Chief] Terry said in an interview last month. The department's investigation into the tool's misuse has been "a learning process for us," she said at the time.
GAO documents array of costly problems as ICE pursues controversial plans to rapidly increase detention capacity
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies have wasted tens of millions of dollars pursuing controversial plans to rapidly increase detention capacity – and the total will likely rise due to continuing mismanagement, congressional investigators warned on Thursday.
The US government accountability office (GAO) documented costly problems in several initiatives ICE has pursued since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025 and ordered the mass arrest and deportation of people his administration has deemed should be forced out of the country.
Dozens of delegates left the room in support of Palestine as the Israeli prime minister walked to the podium on Thursday. Other delegates clapped and chanted 'Am Yisrael Chai' or 'the people of Israel live' in support of the prime minister
Mario David Coronado Juarez was killed when his car struck a tree and burst into flames as he attempted to avoid ICE
Leading Democrats and immigration advocates in Michigan are demanding transparency from federal authorities after a man died in a fiery car crash as he attempted to avoid agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Mario David Coronado Juarez, a Guatemalan national, was killed on Sunday in Grand Rapids when his vehicle struck a tree at high speed and burst into flames shortly after the ICE officers tried to conduct a traffic stop.
The Senate rejected a resolution aimed at limiting President Trump's war powers in Iran, though the Democrat-led effort picked up one new GOP supporter.
PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 24, 2026 — PicoJool, a pioneer in optical connectivity for AI infrastructure, has raised $27.5 million in Series A funding led by Socratic Partners, with participation from Hudson River Trading (HRT). The financing follows a $12 million seed round led by Playground Global and brings the company’s total funding to $39.5 million.
PicoJool will use the funding to expand its teams and facilities in the United States and Taiwan as it brings its Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) and optical link products to market. The company plans to grow its research and development, operations, sales and marketing organizations while building the capacity needed to qualify, manufacture and support its products for hyperscalers and data center operators.
“Reaching 200G per lane proved that the performance is there. Our focus now is execution,” said Al Yuen, founder and CEO of PicoJool. “This funding allows us to expand our teams in the U.S. and Taiwan, qualify products with customers and move a complete portfolio from chip-level VCSELs and microVCSELs into AOC and NPO modules. We are building the connectivity platform customers will need for the next decade of AI infrastructure.”
AI clusters are increasing both the number of processors in a system and the volume of data moving between them, placing growing pressure on interconnect performance and data center power budgets. PicoJool is applying the cost and manufacturing advantages of VCSEL technology to a portfolio of optical connectivity products designed to scale from 800G to 1.6T, 3.2T and beyond. The company is also seeing growing customer interest in its microVCSEL products, including 50G NRZ configuration for optical compute interconnects and 64G NRZ/PAM4 configurations for PCIe 6.0 – based NPO applications. PicoJool has started early sampling of its chip-level VCSEL products ahead of broader availability.
PicoJool’s portfolio includes high-speed VCSEL (100G, 200G) products and lower-power microVCSEL (50G NRZ, 64G NRZ/PAM4) configurations. The microVCSEL platform uses a massively parallel architecture to increase aggregate bandwidth while reducing the energy required to move each bit of data, addressing a critical constraint for hyperscale AI systems.
“Moving data efficiently dictates how quickly and economically AI scales,” said Greg Waters, General Partner at Socratic Partners. “PicoJool combines a proven team with a unique approach that brings VCSEL technology’s cost and manufacturing advantages to AI-scale bandwidth and power needs. They are poised to become a vital connectivity platform for next-generation data centers.”
The Series A follows the June unveiling of PicoJool’s 200G VCSEL and microVCSEL product family for scale-up AI data centers. The 200G products exceed 37GHz of bandwidth, and the portfolio includes quad 100G, quad 200G and 32x50G NRZ microVCSEL configurations that give customers multiple paths to 1.6T connectivity based on their bandwidth, power and system requirements.
“The network is the AI, and connectivity is becoming one of the defining constraints on performance. The industry needs a solution that can increase bandwidth while sharply improving power and cost,” said Pat Gelsinger, general partner at Playground Global. “PicoJool brings together breakthrough VCSEL performance, deep systems expertise and a manufacturing base capable of supporting tremendous scale. The team is well positioned to move quickly from an important technical milestone to products that can reshape how AI infrastructure moves data.”
PicoJool is working with WIN Semiconductor and other gallium arsenide (GaAs) foundries to ready its 200G VCSELs for production. WIN has shipped more than one billion chips over the past decade, bringing significant high-volume manufacturing experience to this work as PicoJool prepares its products for qualification and production. The company is also working with system companies and hyperscalers to define next-generation pluggable, NPO and co-packaged optics solutions.
About PicoJool
PicoJool is developing next-generation optical chips and modules for high-bandwidth, low-cost connectivity in hyperscale AI data centers. Founded by photonics industry veteran Al Yuen, the company is advancing optical communication from the semiconductor through the transceiver and system level. PicoJool is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with research and development and operations in the United States and Taiwan. Learn more at www.picojool.com.
Deference was deafening as US president rolled out red carpet for world’s biggest jailer of journalists – perhaps he was seeking tips
One is an authoritarian who represses the media and has a strong allergy to democratic elections. The other is head of the Chinese Communist party.
Donald Trump welcomed the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, to the White House on Thursday, setting the stage for a scene quite unlike anything the august old building has seen over more than two centuries.
KANAGAWA, Japan, Sept. 24, 2026 — EdgeCortix has unveiled RAIDEN, its next-generation scalable AI chiplet platform purpose-built to address that challenge. Through this chiplet platform, RAIDEN carries EdgeCortix’s energy-efficient design into a new performance class, scaling to meet the demands of Physical AI deployed outside centralized data centers.
RAIDEN introduces a unified, energy-efficient architecture that scales from a single compute die to a four-die flagship within one hardware and software platform. At maximum scale, RAIDEN is architected to deliver up to 3.36 PFLOPS (3,360 TFLOPS) of FP4 AI compute, up to 256 GB of memory, 548 GB/s of memory bandwidth and up to 1.54 TB/s of aggregate die-to-die bandwidth, together with configurable power settings andup to 6.4 Tb/s of chip-to-chip scale-out connectivityfor scaling beyond a single package.
RAIDEN is entering the market with customer design wins already secured, spanning demanding Physical AI applications from next-generation aerospace and defense systems, robotic platforms, to high-performance edge AI servers.
One Architecture. From One Die to Four
RAIDEN is designed for Physical AI at the thick edge, an emerging class of high-performance AI systems deployed outside centralized data centers and closer to machines, sensors and operational environments. Rather than creating separate architectures for different performance classes, RAIDEN scales through a modular chiplet architecture: single-die (X1), two-die (X2) and the four-die (X4) flagship.
All three configurations share EdgeCortix’s latest DNA-X accelerator architecture and MERA software stack. Compute, memory capacity, memory bandwidth and inter-die bandwidth scale with the platform, allowing customers to address different performance, power and deployment requirements without moving to an entirely different AI architecture or software environment. This common architecture is designed to allow customers to move across RAIDEN configurations while preserving their software investment and application environment.
Detailed specifications and deployment positioning for the X1 and X2 configurations will be introduced in subsequent phases of the RAIDEN launch program.
Four Dies. One AI System to Run the Entire Workload
At the top of the platform, the RAIDEN X4 flagship is architected to operate four compute dies as a tightly integrated system rather than as a collection of isolated accelerators.
The RAIDEN X4 flagship configuration enables:
Up to 3.36 PFLOPS of FP4 AI compute
Up to 256 GB of memory
548 GB/s of memory bandwidth
Up to 1.54 TB/s of die-to-die (DNA-X-to-DNA-X) bandwidth
Up to 6.4 Tb/s of chip-to-chip scale-out connectivity
Configurable power settings for different performance and deployment requirements
Integrated multi-core host processing per-die and high-speed system connectivity for self-contained designs
As multimodal, generative, and agentic AI models become part of a diverse range of applications across the physical AI landscape, systems must simultaneously accommodate larger models, greater context, multiple concurrent workloads and increasingly demanding real-time constraints, all within practical system power envelopes.
RAIDEN’s scalable chiplet architecture is designed to address this continuum through a common platform, scaling heterogeneous compute, memory and connectivity from a single die to four dies while maintaining a common software environment. For applications that require additional system-level scale, RAIDEN’s high-speed chip-to-chip connectivity provides up to 6.4 Tb/s of scale-out bandwidth, extending the architecture beyond an individual multi-die package.
The architecture helps reduce the system-level compromises that increasingly constrain advanced Physical AI workloads: swapping models and data between internal and external memory, aggressive quantization, AI and non-AI workload partitioning, and the need to divide a single Physical AI pipeline across multiple discrete computing systems.
Purpose-Built for AI That Perceives, Reasons and Acts
Physical AI requires more than neural-network inference. Central to RAIDEN is the latest DNA-X architecture, engineered to execute the full workload while scaling the system as a unified platform. It maintains the runtime-reconfigurable advantages of earlier generations while introducing micro-code programmable matrix and vector engines. This innovation extends versatility beyond standard neural-network inference, providing the necessary support for perception, reasoning, application processing and control workloads to operate together within a common scalable platform.
A single MERA software stack provides a common development and deployment environment across the RAIDEN family, allowing models, tools and software investments to carry across different platform configurations. The same stack spans EdgeCortix product generations, so work done on SAKURA-II today carries forward to RAIDEN rather than being rebuilt.
“Physical AI will not be won by simply building a faster accelerator. It requires a platform where compute, memory, bandwidth, connectivity and software scale together – and where the hardware deployed today can run the models customers adopt years from now,” said Dr. Sakyasingha Dasgupta, Founder and CEO of EdgeCortix. “That is what we built RAIDEN to do. One architecture and one software platform scaling from a single die inside an intelligent machine to a four-die flagship for the most demanding Physical AI workloads. Most importantly, customers are already designing around RAIDEN.”
RAIDEN extends EdgeCortix’s vision of Powering AI That Acts beyond traditional edge inference into a broader class of Physical AI systems, spanning robotics and autonomous systems, intelligent manufacturing, telecommunications, aerospace and defense, and edge AI infrastructure.
Availability and RAIDEN Early Access Program
Customer sampling is expected to begin in early 2027, with volume production planned for the second half of 2027. The RAIDEN Early Access Program is now open, giving qualified customers and ecosystem partners an opportunity to engage with EdgeCortix during the development program and receive priority consideration for customer samples. The program has already generated strong customer interest, building on the design wins secured to date.
Register your interest in the RAIDEN Early Access Program here.
RAIDEN, EdgeCortix next-generation chiplet solution, is based on results obtained from the project, ‘Research and Development Project of the Enhanced Infrastructures for Post-5G Information and Communication Systems’ (JPNP20017), subsidized by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).
About EdgeCortix Inc.
EdgeCortix is a fabless semiconductor company delivering energy-efficient AI compute across edge and Physical AI applications, from embedded devices to on-premise systems. Headquartered in Kanagawa, Japan, with operations in the United States and India, the company develops advanced silicon and software platforms built on its patented hardware–software co-design approach. Its Dynamic Neural Accelerator (DNA) architecture and MERA software stack support inference, generative and agentic AI workloads on one runtime-reconfigurable platform that scales from the SAKURA-II single-chip accelerators to the RAIDEN multi-die chiplet platform. EdgeCortix solutions serve robotics and autonomous systems, aerospace and defense, intelligent manufacturing, telecommunications and edge AI infrastructure, markets that demand real-time performance, energy efficiency and adaptability.
Only ghosts and ruins remain in this dusty old town. Tucked under scenic hills of volcanic rock are the remnants of a bank, a railroad depot, and what looks to be a school, along with a handful of other deteriorating structures that are hard to make out. This is Rhyolite, Nevada, whose heyday was fierce but short-lived, something of a one-hit wonder. In 1904, after gold was discovered in the nearby Bullfrog Hills, prospectors descended upon this dry corner of the Mojave Desert with hopes of striking it rich.
Of the several mining camps that quickly sprang up in this part of the Great Basin, Rhyolite was one of the liveliest. By 1908, the town’s population had surpassed 5,000, and at its peak, there were 50 saloons, 35 gambling dens, brothels, a bathhouse, a newspaper, and over a dozen restaurants.
Rhyolite’s flame would burn out fast: The Wall Street panic of 1907 scared off would-be investors, and by 1910, just a few years after the mine opened, most of the gold had been extracted. With no mining jobs left, the town was soon abandoned. All three banks eventually shuttered, and by 1914, the last train departed the Rhyolite station, never to return. Entire buildings, including the old Union Hall, were relocated to a neighboring town, where they still reside. The leftover Rhyolite town site, now a tourist stop, is managed by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management and has been a not-so-popular location for a string of low-budget Hollywood films you’ve never heard of, like “Six-String Samurai” and “The Island.”
“Deserts, believe it or not, actually have a high level of carbon sequestration.”
The Southern Paiute (Nuwuvi) and the Western Shoshone (Newe) inhabited this arid region between the northern Great Basin and the southern Mojave. This ancient land holds many tales. In the 1980s, archaeologists discovered what appear to be aboriginal campsites dating back at least 10,000 years, to the end of the last ice age. West of Rhyolite is Beatty, a town with a certain rural desert charm. It could be the wild burros roaming the streets or the raggedy Sourdough Saloon with hundreds of dollar bills tagged to the walls. Whatever it is, I understand the appeal for those uninterested in city life. The residents I spoke with told me it was the quiet landscape that drew them there.
I find myself in Rhyolite — just seven miles east of the broiling Death Valley National Park — to meet up with two activists who’ve dedicated their lives to protecting the surrounding Mojave Desert. Kevin Emmerich and Laura Cunningham, founders of the Beatty-based Basin and Range Watch, are concerned that two major solar projects on nearby BLM-managed lands will destroy the desert ecology and provide little benefit to the local community.
“This type of desert out there actually sequesters carbon in the roots of the creosote,” explained Cunningham, a wildlife biologist and desert tortoise researcher who has lived in the area for over 20 years. “There’s biological soil crust [with a] deep network under the soil that sequesters carbon, literally sucks it out of the atmosphere and turns it into oxygen. And deserts, believe it or not, actually have a high level of carbon sequestration. But when you scrape it up and drive on it, you crush the lichens, shrubs, and flowers, and release carbon. Building on these habitats is actually [contributing to] climate change.”
Deserts like the Mojave, Cunningham said, play an outsized role in absorbing climate-warming carbon. Of the world’s carbon sinks — the places that soak up carbon from our fossil fuel emissions — deserts account for up to 28 percent of land-based uptake. It’s one reason why a patchwork of solar farms out here is a troubling prospect.
“If we do use renewable energy, we want to put it in the built environment where it doesn’t have much of an impact.”
Cunningham’s partner, Kevin Emmerich, is what you’d call a desert rat. He’s tall, grizzled, and soft-spoken. He strikes me as a man who has spent a lot of time in remote places, and I say that with admiration. A former park ranger in Death Valley, he nods in agreement with Cunningham while pointing to a valley across the highway where two solar projects, if completed, would blanket over 8,000 acres of open space. He’s frustrated that the people who usually oppose wrecking biodiversity aren’t warier of the large-scale energy projects proposed for public lands.
“Other environmental groups are really conflicted about ‘green’ energy,” Emmerich said. “We just had a little spat with one group. They want some of this public land development. … If we do use renewable energy, we want to put it in the built environment where it doesn’t have much of an impact.”
A Battle for What Remains
While some environmentalists may be on the fence, others, like the small outfit Basin and Range Watch, are working tirelessly to halt the development of these solar farms. In 2010, in coalition with community groups and the Quechan and Cocopah tribes, it blocked the Imperial Valley Solar Project in California, which would have destroyed nine square miles of habitat and decimated more than 400 Quechan cultural sites. Basin and Range also supported the “Save Our Mesa” campaign, which succeeded in stopping the controversial Battle Born solar project near Moapa Valley, Nevada. Battle Born was proposed as an installation of solar panels covering 14 square miles of public lands. The grassroots pressure was so strong that the developer, California-based Arevia Power, told BLM they wouldn’t move forward.
When it comes to impacts, at least on paper, solar energy may have the fewest downsides (although they certainly exist). The technology requires less mining and is inexpensive and easy to deploy. But as Basin and Range Watch argues, it’s not enough to simply let these vast, open spaces be blanketed with fields of solar panels. There are better locations for solar that will yield better results for people and the environment. Many of our popular ideas about places like the Mojave — such as the idea that they’re lonesome, empty wastelands, devoid of life — sustain the myth that desert solar farms have fewer drawbacks and are essential in the fight against climate change. Not many assumptions could be more untrue.
Many of our popular ideas about places like the Mojave — such as the idea that they’re lonesome, empty wastelands, devoid of life — sustain the myth that desert solar farms have fewer drawbacks and are essential in the fight against climate change.
BLM has considerable sway in the West and has, for decades, had the power to radically shape the region, from its fragile ecology to its resource-dependent economies. It manages 245 million acres of land and 700 million acres of subsurface mineral rights in the United States. In all, BLM oversees one-tenth of the country. It divvies up rights to mine, drill, and graze. What the bureau say goes, and even under the antagonistic Trump administration, which is no fan of renewables, it is still overseeing massive green energy developments.
While Trump and his allies in Congress have drastically reduced subsidies for renewable energy projects, those incentives aren’t set to expire until December 2027. As a result, companies are hurrying to build out solar farms, wind turbines, and commercial battery storage. While Trump’s actions have hampered long-term growth projections for the renewables industry, it’s booming, for now.
“The energy transition is still underway, but the whiplash has very serious implications for our economy and for the investment culture of America,” explains Sanya Carley, the Mark Alan Hughes Faculty Director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “Solar has still been on a phenomenal growth trajectory, especially across the entire world. … [It’s still] the leading source of growth in the energy industry in the United States.” Trump’s rancor has turned out to be more of a speed bump than a roadblock.
Whose Land Is It?
In Nevada, BLM has parceled around 12 million acres for large utility-scale solar project construction. In 2024, the agency announced its Western Solar Plan, which would reserve 22 million acres of public land for future solar development. As of early 2024, seven major projects were proposed or in the works, covering 140 square miles of land. The Western Solar Plan would locate high-solar-producing areas on public lands across the dry flatlands of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico, and on millions of acres of federal land in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, believes this massive, swift expansion of industrial-scale solar could destroy many of the region’s “crown jewels.” He’s worried solar arrays could surround Nevada’s Great Basin National Park and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon — ditto for the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
“It’s insane,” Donnelly, who isn’t shy about his frustrations, said. “BLM is going to make lanes available for solar at the foot of the Sierra Nevada,” which he calls “possibly the most beautiful place in the country.”
It’s hard to argue with Donnelly about the stakes. I spend weeks each year wandering the Mojave, decompressing from urban life. The desert is a refuge. As a teenager growing up in Montana, I used to believe wilderness only included trout streams, mountains, grizzly bears, and wolves. I was youthfully naive, and I now realize that wilderness includes saguaro, rattlesnakes, desert tortoise, and bighorn sheep. We shouldn’t exploit these places for our energy needs, whether for fossil fuels or solar power. These desert lands are crucial not only for the animals that inhabit them but also for their roles they play, such as carbon sequestration, in helping mitigate the climate crisis.
These lands are significant to Native Americans, who have inhabited this land long before Europeans showed up. For years, members of the Western Shoshone and Goshute tribes in Nevada have worked to designate a 25,000-acre monument called Bahsahwahbee near Great Basin National Park. The Western Solar Plan will carve out 7,000 of those pristine acres for development.
“Our ancestors were massacred at Bahsahwahbee. It is unconscionable that the site would be considered by the federal government as a development zone instead of a place to be preserved and commemorated,” Ely Shoshone Tribal Elders Delaine and Rick Spilsbury wrote for the Great Basin Water Network. “The federal government doesn’t propose developments in other cemeteries or seek to bulldoze other peoples’ churches. In fact, graves and churches are generally protected under federal and state laws. But for the resting place of our ancestors, we have to wonder why it’s OK?”
These large solar projects are sure to raze more Native lands to power hundreds of thousands of homes across the West, often in cities far from where the energy was first produced. Once the solar installations are built, few jobs are likely to remain in those regions, which contradicts the central arguments local governments make in support of the projects.
When it comes to the Western Solar Plan, most of the major environmental groups have either stayed silent or, like the Wilderness Society, uncritically supported it as a positive step to help California shift its grid to 100 percent clean energy by 2035.
“I feel like we are working out here on the marginalized fringe, and we’re sort of pushed more to work with grassroots groups, local communities, scientists, and people who aren’t beholden to their big climate donors [like other environmental groups],” Cunningham of Basin and Range Watch said. “[Energy developers] call this a wasteland, like there’s no biodiversity, and we push back against that. We support photovoltaic solar panels, first on rooftops, parking lot canopies, or on really disturbed ground. But this desert has life. The very, very bottom of the list [for solar development] should be public lands. Ecosystems built on utility-scale solar projects are the last thing we should support in the fight against climate change.”
Cunningham’s argument is convincing, and it’s hard not to think that much of this has to do with people’s perception of the desert as a wasteland, as she puts it. Even the late David Brower, the first executive director of the Sierra Club who was forced out for his radicalism, once remarked that he’d be willing to sacrifice the Mojave under the guise of diplomacy and compromise if it meant protecting scenic wilderness elsewhere. He later retracted the sentiment, but this reasoning still permeates much of the mainstream environmental movement, which is focused on slowing climate change at almost all costs — even if it means harming wild places in the process.
“I feel like we are working out here on the marginalized fringe. … This desert has life.”
Perhaps it will take an expert like Laura Cunningham and a desert-lover like Kevin Emmerich, who have a deep admiration for and understanding of desert ecology, to alter people’s perceptions. At least I hope so. It’s easy to imagine the public outcry that would ensue, for instance, if giant redwoods were on the chopping block to make room for a gargantuan solar field in the Sierra Nevadas. But, strangely enough, Joshua trees and desert tortoises don’t seem to hold the same intrinsic value.
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 24, 2026 — Vertiv today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire King Environmental Services Ltd. (KES), a Europe-based provider of fluid management, commissioning and load-testing services for high-density, liquid-cooled data centers and other applications.
The acquisition is expected to expand Vertiv’s global thermal management services capabilities into Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and advance its strategy to support customers across the thermal chain. KES adds specialized fluid management, commissioning and load-testing capabilities spanning system preparation, performance validation, monitoring, maintenance and lifecycle optimization.
The transaction builds on Vertiv’s established North American fluid management presence, including its 2025 acquisition of PurgeRite, and represents the next step in expanding its global thermal and fluid management services platform. By combining KES’s regional field expertise and load-testing capabilities with Vertiv’s broader services portfolio, the company expects to provide more comprehensive support as customers deploy and operate complex AI and high-density infrastructure with greater reliability, efficiency and accountability.
“As computing density increases, the performance of cooling and power infrastructure will depend as much on execution in the field as on engineering and system design,” said Gio Albertazzi, CEO of Vertiv. “Our acquisition of PurgeRite, in December of 2025, established an important fluid management foundation in North America, and KES is expected to build on that foundation in EMEA. Together, these acquisitions advance our strategy to provide the specialized expertise and disciplined execution customers need as they deploy increasingly complex infrastructure at scale.”
That need for disciplined execution is particularly important as high-performance computing and AI workloads increase heat densities and accelerate the adoption of liquid cooling. In these systems, fluid quality is critical to uptime, thermal performance and equipment life. Contamination, trapped air, corrosion, improper chemistry and flow imbalances can reduce heat-transfer efficiency, contribute to equipment degradation and create commissioning and operational risks. Beyond initial commissioning, customers need lifecycle fluid management services to support system availability, thermal performance, equipment longevity and operational economics.
KES has built a strong reputation in Europe based on its technical specialization, experienced field teams, established operating infrastructure and safety culture. Its capabilities include fluid-system preparation, flushing, filtration, water treatment, commissioning and performance validation. KES also provides thermal load testing for liquid cooling infrastructure and electrical load testing for critical power systems.
Together, Vertiv and KES are expected to deliver significant customer benefits from an expanded set of capabilities designed to:
Reduce operational complexity through a single accountable partner for commissioning, testing, fluid management and ongoing operations;
Improve cooling system performance with clean, balanced and validated fluid systems that support optimal heat transfer and equipment efficiency;
Maintain compliance with regional fluid handling, treatment and disposal requirements; and
Increase confidence in infrastructure readiness through thermal load testing before facilities enter operation.
KES is headquartered near Dublin, Ireland, and serves customers across the EMEA region.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026. The financial terms were not disclosed and are not expected to be material to Vertiv’s financial results.
For more information about Vertiv’s portfolio of power and thermal management products, infrastructure solutions, IT systems and services for critical digital applications, visit Vertiv.com.
About Vertiv
Vertiv (NYSE: VRT) brings together hardware, software, analytics and ongoing services to enable its customers’ vital applications to run continuously, perform optimally and grow with their business needs. Vertiv solves the most important challenges facing today’s data centers, communication networks and commercial and industrial facilities with a portfolio of power, cooling and IT infrastructure solutions and services that extends from the cloud to the edge of the network. Headquartered in Westerville, Ohio, USA, Vertiv does business in more than 130 countries.
About King Environmental Services
King Environmental Services Ltd. (KES) is a Europe-based specialist in fluid management, flushing, commissioning and operational validation for high-density, liquid-cooled data centers and other mission-critical facilities. Founded in 2002 and headquartered near Dublin, Ireland, KES serves customers across EMEA from key hubs in North Dublin and Frankfurt.
KES provides an integrated service covering design review and feasibility studies, pipework flushing, filtration and water treatment, testing, adjusting and balancing (TAB), data logging and thermography, and large-scale thermal and electrical load testing. The company bridges construction and live operation, validating that cooling systems are clean, balanced, efficient, design-compliant and ready for high-density and AI workloads.
America PAC is a super PAC that was created in 2024 by the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, who co-founded Tesla and SpaceX, and owns the X social media platform.
In a July 2024 interview, Musk said the idea behind America PAC is “to promote the principles that make America great in the first place.” In a post on X that month, Musk wrote that “key values of the PAC are supporting a meritocracy & individual freedom,” which he said Republicans “mostly, but not entirely” support.
More than half of the $261.2 million the super PAC reported spending during the 2024 election cycle went to helping elect Donald Trump, whom Musk endorsed for president. The group also spent millions of dollars backing the House and Senate campaigns of other Republicans.
According to its most recent quarterly filing with the Federal Election Commission, America PAC, as of June 30, had raised more than $50.3 million for the 2026 election cycle — almost all donated by Musk or his United States of America Inc. — but spent only about $87,000 on independent expenditures supporting federal candidates (two Republicans who won specialelections in April 2025 to represent Florida congressional districts). Independent expenditures are advertisements and other communications that expressly advocate for or against candidates for office.
Musk had said at an economic forum in May 2025 that he planned to “do a lot less in the future” in terms of political spending. “I think I’ve done enough,” he said.
However, this past July, the New York Times reported that Musk finally planned to get involved in the 2026 midterms and had “authorized his super PAC to spend $100 million to $120 million on a new field program in at least eight states to help elect Republicans in November, according to two people briefed on the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations.”
The Times said America PAC planned to initially focus on Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan and Ohio, and was considering spending in North Carolina, Georgia and Texas. The group is also expected to spend on House races in California, Wisconsin and Washington.
Axios reported that the effort would be led by Chris Young, a Republican political operative and adviser to Musk, and “will focus on door-knocking, digital advertising and direct mail aimed at turning out the conservative base,” particularly Republican voters who often skip the midterms.
The Times said that America PAC is “closely coordinating” its field campaign work with two other conservative groups, Americans for Prosperity and the Sentinel Action Fund.
Of the ads the super PAC has run so far, a number have attacked Democratic Senate candidates on transgender issues. America PAC had spent more than $3.7 million on mostly digital or streaming ads, as of Sept. 23, according to the ad-tracking service AdImpact.
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TALLAHASSEE, Florida — The Florida Supreme Court has ordered Circuit Judge J. Layne Smith to appear for a public reprimand after he told attorneys during a contentious hearing that he would like a deputy to “pull his gun and shoot all three of you.”
The court unanimously accepted the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission’s recommended discipline Thursday, saying Smith’s conduct “fell far below the standard of professionalism” expected of judges. Smith serves Florida’s Second Judicial Circuit and was appointed to the bench by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2020.
The incident occurred during a September 2025 hearing in a long-running family dispute. Frustrated that attorneys could not confirm whether a party had been properly served, Smith made the shooting remark before immediately adding that he did not actually want the deputy to do so. He also mocked the lawyers as the “Keystone Cops” and “Apple Dumpling Gang.”
The Judicial Qualifications Commission found that Smith violated six judicial ethics provisions. Rather than contest the allegations, Smith acknowledged the misconduct, self-reported his behavior and agreed to the proposed punishment.
Smith recused himself from the underlying case about a week after the hearing and later issued a public apology. The Supreme Court did not suspend or fine him, but ordered him to appear personally for the reprimand at a date to be scheduled.
Legislators sent letter to Marco Rubio saying US interference is weakening Brazil’s democratic institutions
A group of 31 Democratic members of the US Congress has sent a letter to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, criticising the Trump administration over “an apparent effort to interfere with, and potentially undermine” Brazil’s elections.
Latin America’s largest country will hold the first round of its presidential election on 4 October, with polls showing a technical tie between the incumbent leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro.
WinSenate is a super PAC that works to elect Democrats to the U.S. Senate. It was created during the 2024 election cycle and is affiliated with the Senate Majority PAC, or SMP, another liberal super PAC with the goal of helping Democrats win Senate races.
Super PACs are allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, as long as their contributions are not made to candidate committees and independent expenditures are not coordinated with candidate campaigns. Each super PAC must regularly report its expenditures and donations to the Federal Election Commission.
During the 2024 elections, WinSenate received and spent about $313.1 million, with almost every dollar being contributed by the Senate Majority PAC. WinSenate spent nearly $311.3 million on independent expenditures, which are ads and other communications advocating for or against the election of a candidate. More than $287 million of that amount was spent against Republican Senate candidates, and about $24.2 million was spent supporting Democratic candidates, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks political spending.
For the 2026 midterms, WinSenate reported receiving about $21.1 million – all from SMP – as of Aug. 31, according to its latest monthly filing with the FEC. It also reported spending almost $12.5 million on independent expenditures up to that point.
But its receipts and spending in September appear to have surged, as this month WinSenate announced multiple multimillion dollar ad campaigns against Republican Senate candidates in Maine, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina and New Hampshire. In fact, as of Sept. 24, according to data from the ad-tracking service AdImpact, WinSenate has spent or reserved more than $217 million on midterm ads, a huge increase from its prior spending this election cycle.
Its next monthly financial report covering the month of September is due to the FEC on Oct. 20.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.
Monthly ‘thank you’ payments for people hosting refugees to be cut from £350 to £100 from next year
Ukrainian refugees in the UK fear they could be left homeless after the government quietly axed 70% of funding for hosts of the Homes for Ukraine scheme, reducing monthly “thank you” payments to them from £350 to £100.
The scheme was launched after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and has provided support for 181,000 of the 234,000 Ukrainians who have since sought sanctuary in the UK.
CNN senior reporter Betsy Klein gained access to the White House on 24 September, hours after a federal judge ruled against Donald Trump's media ban. The ban had barred reporters from CNN, MS Now and Politico from accessing the White House
Reporters whose White House access was revoked were allowed to enter the complex again, hours after a judge ordered the Trump administration to restore their press credentials.
‘If you’re not in the internal market, you don’t get the same protection,’ says French minister of policy designed to curb Chinese competition
France is leading a push to exclude the UK from the EU’s “Made in Europe” policy that could result in British companies losing out in the race to supply European countries with low-carbon technologies and electric cars.
Ramsey’s may be the best example in the ranking of a genuine Delaware farm experience. The Wilmington-area farm combines hayrides with a large pumpkin field, corn maze, barnyard animals, a children’s Spookley trail, pumpkin painting and other activities. Image courtesy of Ramsey Farm.com.
From cider doughnuts and pumpkin fields to bonfires and serious scares, we ranked eight Delaware-area fall outings — then matched them to the kind of autumn adventure you’re looking for.
MIDDLETOWN, Del. — Not all hayrides are created equal.Some are old-fashioned tractor rides through pumpkin fields. Others come with corn mazes, cider doughnuts, bonfires and enough activities to keep a family busy for most of the day. And a few wait until dark before turning the wagon ride into a rolling Halloween nightmare.
So which one offers the best overall fall experience?
Delaware LIVE compared eight popular fall destinations in Delaware and nearby Pennsylvania, scoring the total experience based on the hayride itself, pumpkins, additional attractions, food and atmosphere, and — where appropriate — scare factor.
The result: Linvilla Orchards in Media, Pennsylvania, takes the No. 1 spot for the best total fall experience, while Delaware’s Ramsey’s Farm, Fifer Orchards, Filasky’s Produce and Frightland each offer reasons to stay closer to home.
The rankings are intended as a guide rather than a scientific rating. A low scare score, for example, can be a big advantage when the passengers are 5 years old. A spectacular haunted hayride can be perfect for a Saturday night with teenagers while being completely wrong for a Sunday afternoon with toddlers.
The real question may not be “What’s the best hayride?” but “What’s the best hayride for me?”
THE DELAWARE LIVE HAYRIDE RANKINGS
1. LINVILLA ORCHARDS — MEDIA, PENNSYLVANIA
Delaware LIVE score: 9.2
Linvilla wins by making the hayride only one part of a much bigger fall outing.
Its roughly 15-minute Harvest Hayride travels through the farm, but families can also explore Pumpkinland, tackle mazes, visit barnyard animals, pick apples, eat at the farm and shop the market and bakery.
There is no general admission charge to enter Pumpkinland; visitors pay for individual activities. Linvilla also offers evening Autumn Moon Hayrides and its family-oriented Hayride to the Witch’s House.
That combination makes Linvilla the strongest choice in the ranking for families looking to turn a hayride into a half-day or full-day fall excursion.
The downside may also be a consequence of its popularity: Expect crowds during prime October weekends, and buying timed hayride tickets in advance is a good idea.
2. RAMSEY’S FARM — WILMINGTON
Delaware LIVE score: 8.9
Ramsey’s may be the best example in the ranking of a genuine Delaware farm experience.
The Wilmington-area farm combines hayrides with a large pumpkin field, corn maze, barnyard animals, a children’s Spookley trail, pumpkin painting and other activities.
It also changes personality after dark.
Friday and Saturday bonfire nights beginning in October include an extended nighttime hayride, flashlight corn maze and bonfire.
Ramsey’s does not try to become a giant amusement park. That may be part of its appeal for families who want pumpkins, a wagon ride and some farm dirt on their shoes.
Bates Motel turns the hayride into a Halloween production built around actors, elaborate sets and special effects.
Located at Arasapha Farms in Glen Mills, Bates combines its Haunted Hayride with other nighttime haunted attractions. By day, however, the same farm becomes a much different destination with family-oriented harvest activities.
For people in northern New Castle County and the Chadds Ford area who want their hayride to be scary, Bates earns one of the highest scores in the comparison.
It is not the choice for small children.4. FRIGHTLAND — MIDDLETOWN
Delaware LIVE score: 8.7 — scare-night ranking
4. Frightland is Delaware’s answer to Bates, but on a larger scream-park scale.
The Horror Hayride is part of a series of haunted attractions visitors encounter during the night, making Frightland less of a simple hayride destination and more of a complete Halloween entertainment complex.
Its advantage is variety. If the goal is to spend an evening being scared rather than picking pumpkins, Frightland delivers multiple attractions at one location.
For New Castle County residents south of Wilmington and for Kent County visitors, it also avoids the drive into Pennsylvania.
This may be the hayride that looks most like the one people imagine when they hear the word.
The daytime Harvest Hayride takes visitors through the farm to the pumpkin area, combining the ride with the ritual of choosing a pumpkin. Other activities include a corn maze and a collection of outdoor attractions for children.
For Chadds Ford and Brandywine Valley families, it is also one of the most convenient full-scale pumpkin hayrides.
And there is an unusual twist: The same Arasapha Farms property that provides this traditional daytime outing becomes the home of Bates Motel after dark.
6. FIFER ORCHARDS FALL FEST — CAMDEN-WYOMING
Delaware LIVE score: 7.6
Fifer’s strength is the total orchard experience: pumpkin and apple picking, a large corn maze, outdoor play, cider doughnuts, food and additional seasonal activities.
That makes Fifer’s less about the wagon itself and more about spending a fall day on a Kent County orchard.
For families in central and southern Delaware, it can provide much of the big fall-festival experience without making the trip north into New Castle County or Pennsylvania.
7. FILASKY’S PRODUCE — MIDDLETOWN AREA
Delaware LIVE score: 7.0
Filasky’s is smaller and simpler, which may be exactly what some families want.
The fall season includes pick-your-own pumpkins, a soybean maze designed for children and hayrides through the fields. The farm also offers nighttime hayride and bonfire options, along with pumpkin doughnuts and Woodside Farm Creamery ice cream.
This is less of a destination theme park and more of a local farm outing.
8. DELAWARE STATE PARKS WAGON RIDES
Delaware LIVE score: 6.2
Do not let the lower score fool you. State park rides lose points in this ranking because there generally isn’t a pumpkin patch, bakery, giant maze or collection of attractions waiting when the wagon stops.
But that is also the point. Delaware State Parks offers seasonal wagon rides at several parks, providing a different kind of fall outing built around scenery, the outdoors and, at some locations, time around a campfire.
For someone who wants fall colors and a relaxing ride rather than a festival, the state parks could move straight to the top of the personal list.
SO WHICH HAYRIDE IS RIGHT FOR YOU?
Best total fall experience: Linvilla Orchards
Go here if the hayride is just the beginning. Pumpkinland, apples, mazes, animals, food and the bakery make it the easiest place on the list to spend several hours without running out of things to do.
Best traditional hayride: Arasapha Farms
A tractor, wagon, farm fields and pumpkins. For families looking for the classic harvest experience rather than an amusement park, Arasapha gets closest to the picture on the apple cider jug.
Best New Castle County family outing: Ramsey’s Farm
For Wilmington-area families who do not want to cross the state line, Ramsey’s combines the ingredients that matter most: hayride, pumpkins, corn maze, animals and plenty for younger children.
Best Kent County fall day: Fifer Orchards
Come for the pumpkins and maze, stay for the cider doughnuts and orchard atmosphere. Fifer’s is one of the strongest total fall farm experiences in central Delaware.
Best haunted hayride: Bates Motel
If the wagon itself is what you want to be scary, Bates gets the edge. The ride is the attraction rather than simply transportation to something else.
Best full night of Halloween scares: Frightland
If one haunted hayride isn’t enough, Frightland’s collection of attractions makes it a better fit for people looking to devote an evening to Halloween.
Best for little kids: Arasapha or Ramsey’s
Both deliver the farm-and-pumpkin experience without requiring children to navigate a giant Halloween production. Linvilla’s Witch’s House is another option for children ready for something a little spooky without the intensity of a full haunted attraction.
Best quiet ride: Delaware State Parks
No scream park. No giant midway. No need to drag a 25-pound pumpkin back to the car. Just climb aboard and enjoy Delaware in the fall.
Best small-farm experience: Filasky’s
For Middletown-area families who would rather visit a smaller farm than a major regional attraction, Filasky’s offers pumpkins, a children’s maze, hayrides and seasonal treats.
Best food-and-orchard day: Fifer or Linvilla
Fifer gets the Delaware nod for cider doughnuts and a traditional orchard atmosphere. Linvilla offers an even larger combination of bakery, market, food and attractions.
ONE CHADDS FORD TRADITION — BUT NO HAYRIDE
The Great Pumpkin Carve remains one of the Brandywine Valley’s signature October traditions, returning Oct. 15-17 in Chadds Ford.
But visitors should not arrive expecting a hayride.
Organizers have discontinued hayrides because of wet conditions in the meadow. The centerpiece remains the giant pumpkins carved by artists and illuminated after dark.
TO GO BOX
What: Delaware LIVE’s guide to eight fall hayride, farm and Halloween experiences in Delaware and nearby Pennsylvania.
Who: Families, couples, teenagers and anyone looking for a fall farm, pumpkin or Halloween outing.
When: Most attractions operate from September through late October or early November. Days and hours vary considerably.
Where: Wilmington, Middletown and Camden-Wyoming in Delaware; Glen Mills and Media in nearby Pennsylvania; and participating Delaware State Parks.
Best overall: Linvilla Orchards for the total fall experience.
Best Delaware family choice: Ramsey’s Farm in the Wilmington area.
Best for scares: Bates Motel in Glen Mills for the haunted hayride itself; Frightland in Middletown for a full night of haunted attractions.
Before you go: Fall farm schedules are particularly dependent on weather and field conditions. Peak October weekends can sell out, and some attractions use timed tickets. Check the farm or attraction’s current schedule, ticket availability and weather policy before leaving home.
(The Center Square) – While Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and the FBI tout declining crime rates, others remain concerned about persistently high rates in the state’s metropolitan areas.
Datacentre hailed by government was supposed to start operating next year but may be held back into mid-2030s
A huge datacentre project hailed by the UK government will miss its launch date next year and could be delayed into the mid-2030s.
The site in Loughton, Essex, was described as the country’s largest AI supercomputer when it was announced in 2025, but power supply problems mean it now faces a lengthy wait before coming online.
This new initiative will strengthen cooperation between Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and the European Union (EU), on high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI), supporting digital transformation and the development of a more integrated regional HPC ecosystem.
Credit: EuroHPC JU
A panel for the EU–LAC Supercomputing Network for AI, which took place as part of the CARLA conference in Córdoba, Argentina, Sept. 22, 2026, marked the kick-off of this initiative.
The EU-LAC Supercomputing Network for AI will address challenges including fragmented HPC capacity, uneven access to computing resources, investment needs and skills gaps, while supporting greater regional integration and stronger links between LAC and European HPC ecosystems. It will support the objectives of the AI continent action plan and is aligned with the EU-LAC Digital Alliance and the EU’s Global Gateway Strategy.
The implementation commenced in August 2026 and will continue for two years, focusing on seven Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Uruguay.
The consortium brings together seven leading European HPC and research institutions, each contributing specific expertise and resources to the initiative: The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (Spain) as coordinator, the Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (Portugal), Jülich Supercomputing Centre (Germany), CSC-IT Center for Science (Finland), the Institute of Information Science (Slovenia), the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (France), and CINECA (Italy).
The network is expected to expand over time to include more countries participating in the EU–LAC Digital Alliance.
The EU-LAC Supercomputing Network for AI will benefit from financial support from the European Union and alignment with national initiatives by Spain and Brazil within the framework of the EU-LAC Digital Alliance and Global Gateway. It will strengthen the EU-LAC partnership in advanced digital skills and technologies, while creating new opportunities for researchers and industry to develop and test models, explore relevant use cases, and collaborate on shared challenges based on shared values.
Anders Dam Jensen, Executive Director of the EuroHPC JU, said: “The EU–LAC Supercomputing Network for AI brings Europe and Latin America closer together through high-performance computing and I am confident that European expertise, infrastructure and experience will positively help in accelerating innovation and tackling shared challenges across both regions.”
European Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jozef Síkela, said: “The responsible development of supercomputing and artificial intelligence can help tackle the everyday challenges faced by people across Latin America and the Caribbean, from natural hazards to health and energy. Through Global Gateway, we are bringing together our expertise to develop solutions that will help us achieve these objectives.”
Key Objectives and Activities
To accelerate digital transformation in Latin America and the Caribbean, the initiative will build partnerships that will enhance interoperability and technical alignment with the European HPC ecosystem. It will include:
Policy Dialogues: Facilitate national and regional policy dialogues to support the federation of HPC resources in LAC and their future interconnection with the European HPC ecosystem.
Capacity Building: Strengthen expertise and skills in HPC, AI, and Machine Learning (ML) through training programs, workshops, and an annual EU-LAC Summer School on HPC and AI, with a focus on increasing the participation of women and underrepresented groups.
Joint Use Cases: Develop four joint EU-LAC use cases that demonstrate the practical application and societal benefits of HPC and AI collaboration. These use cases will address climate modelling, energy efficiency, natural hazard prediction, health, and large language models (LLMs).
BELLA Integration: Promote the strategic integration of the BELLA high-speed connectivity infrastructure to enable secure and efficient data exchange, paving the way for the future federation of HPC resources in the region. BELLA is a joint initiative connecting the research, education, and digital data networks of Europe and Latin America, specifically via the Ella link 6 000 km submarine cable.
About the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking is a joint initiative of the European Union and participating countries that pools resources to make Europe a global leader in supercomputing. It has already deployed 12 world-class supercomputers across Europe, including JUPITER in Germany and Alice Recoque in France, Europe’s first exascale systems. Researchers, industry and public-sector users throughout Europe can access these systems through EuroHPC Access Calls to advance scientific research and develop applications with industrial and societal impact. The EuroHPC JU is overseeing the implementation of 19 AI factories (AIF) across Europe, complemented by 13 AI Factory Antennas, to offer free, customized support to SMEs and startups. The EuroHPC JU is also building Europe’s quantum computing infrastructure by integrating European quantum technologies with its supercomputers, while investing in research and innovation across the entire European supercomputing value chain—from processors and software to applications and skills. Following the adoption of Council Regulation (EU) 2026/150, the EuroHPC JU’s mandate has been expanded to include the deployment of AI Gigafactories across Europe, an initiative for which the JU recently launched a call for tenders, as well the advancement of quantum technologies.
About the EU-LAC Digital Alliance
The EU-LAC Digital Alliance is a bi-regional initiative that promotes digital transformation and innovation through collaboration between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean as part of the EU’s Global Gateway Strategy. The Digital Alliance operates across five pillars: political and regulatory dialogue, connectivity, private sector engagement, satellite data and space services, and additional projects aimed at boosting competitiveness and economic growth such as the EU-LAC Supercomputing Network for AI. Global Gateway is the EU’s positive offer to reduce the global investment gap and boost smart, clean and secure connections in digital, energy and transport sectors, and to strengthen health, education and research systems.
Alexander Kuzmenko was fatally injured on fishing trip
Region had been flagged as site of recent bear activity
Forward joined Pittsburgh Penguins this year
Pittsburgh Penguins forward Andrei Kuzmenko has stepped away from the team after his father, Alexander Kuzmenko, was killed in a bear attack in Siberia this week.
REN TV was the first to report the death of the 62-year-old, who was a well-known hockey coach in Russia.
Delaware LIVE is introducing a French Bread Total to help readers decide whether a storm calls for a run on bread, milk, eggs and the other essentials for surviving a weekend indoors. On our seven-point French Toast Scale, this storm earns a 1 out of 7 for most Delaware households.
The storm’s effects will vary across the state, with the greatest threat coming from tidal flooding and dangerous surf
DOVER, Del. — A nor’easter drawing attention from Philadelphia and national news outlets can sound like a single storm with a single forecast. For Delaware residents, the more useful question is where they live — and how close they are to tidal water.
The National Weather Service expects the greatest impacts along Delaware’s ocean beaches, bays and tidal waterways. Coastal flooding is already a concern Thursday, Sept. 24, and could recur with successive high tides. Stronger winds are possible at the beaches Friday night into Saturday. Farther inland, residents are more likely to encounter gusty winds than flooding.
Editor’s note: Delaware LIVE is introducing a French Bread Total to help readers decide whether a storm calls for a run on bread, milk, eggs and the other essentials for surviving a weekend indoors. On our seven-point French Toast Scale, this storm earns a 1 out of 7 for most Delaware households. The rating does not discount the serious flooding risk for people in low-lying coastal and tidal communities.
What is a nor’easter?
A nor’easter is an East Coast storm named for the northeast winds it typically brings to coastal areas. It can occur at any time of year and does not have to bring snow.
This storm is developing offshore. Its persistent winds are pushing water into Delaware’s bays and tidal waterways, where elevated water levels can cause flooding at more than one high tide. The storm’s exact track remains uncertain, particularly for how strong coastal winds become Friday night and Saturday.
What should Delaware expect?
Sussex County: The beaches and Inland Bays face the greatest combination of hazards. A coastal flood warning covers the Delaware beaches and inland Sussex until 2 a.m. Saturday. Forecasters expect 1 to 2 feet of water above ground level in low-lying areas near shorelines and tidal waterways. Some roads in coastal and bayside communities could become impassable. The Weather Service says more serious flooding remains possible around Rehoboth Bay and Indian River, depending on the storm’s track.
At the ocean beaches, breaking waves could reach 12 feet in the surf zone. Dangerous rip currents, beach erosion and possible dune breaches are also concerns. A high surf advisory and high rip current risk continue through Saturday evening.
Kent County: A coastal flood warning also remains in effect until 2 a.m. Saturday. Low-lying roads and communities near Delaware Bay and tidal waterways face the greatest risk. The warning does not mean all of Dover or Milford will flood.
New Castle County: A coastal flood advisory covers vulnerable areas along tidal shorelines and waterways until 1 a.m. Saturday. Away from the water, the main effect is expected to be gusty weather. The Weather Service says excessive rainfall and freshwater flooding appear unlikely at this time.
When will it end?
The current coastal flood warnings expire early Saturday, but that is not necessarily the end of the effects. Dangerous surf continues through Saturday evening, and the Weather Service says tidal flooding could persist into the weekend. Winds and conditions on the water are expected to improve Sunday. Residents near the coast should check updated alerts as the storm’s path becomes clearer.
To Go Box | Delaware’s nor’easter
When: Coastal impacts are underway Thursday. Stronger beach winds are possible Friday night into Saturday.
Where: The greatest risk is along the beaches, bays and low-lying tidal waterways of Sussex and Kent counties.
What: Repeated high-tide flooding, possible road closures, dangerous surf and beach erosion. Inland areas can expect gusty winds.
French Toast Scale:1 out of 7 for most households. Coastal residents should take local flood warnings seriously.
What to do: Check alerts before traveling near tidal roads, never drive through floodwater and stay out of the surf while the high rip current risk is in effect.
Campbell will lead market expansion of Bifrost Electronics quantum readout amplifier; previously led Solid Power from startup to Nasdaq
ARVADA, Colo., Sept. 24, 2026 — Bifrost Electronics, a leading developer and manufacturer of advanced electronic hardware for quantum computers, today announced that successful deep-tech entrepreneur Doug Campbell has joined the company as its Chief Executive Officer.
Doug Campbell. Credit: Bifrost Electronics
Campbell brings more than two decades of start-up leadership in commercial electronics, aerospace systems, and hardware manufacturing as well as a proven track record of scaling high-growth technology companies, optimizing manufacturing logistics, and fostering sustainable engineering solutions. One of his more notable entrepreneurial success stories was leading Colorado-based battery technology company Solid Power from startup to IPO.
Bifrost is solving readout-scaling problems for superconducting and spin-based quantum hardware with a new class of amplifiers that eliminates Josephson junctions. Amplifiers that rely on Josephson junctions require shielding, extra cryogenic lines and control electronics and are manufactured with specialized processes with nanometer tolerances. The Heimdall Amplifier is more robust, easier to scale, and requires less control hardware.
“The Bifrost team has built something the quantum industry genuinely needs, and I’m glad to be joining at this inflection point. I’ve spent my career taking deep-tech start-ups out of university labs and into production at scale,” said Campbell. “The mission now is building the operational and commercial discipline to get the Heimdall Amplifier into customers’ hands.”
The company’s Heimdall Amplifier is key to expanding the production of quantum hardware from low-volume research systems to scaled commercial deployments. The system provides qubit readout amplification without the operational fragility and magnetic sensitivity that have made amplification difficult to deploy at scale. The amplifier is intended to run without shielding, pack densely inside a cryostat, and be produced with the standard processes used to manufacture semiconductors.
“Doug gives us the executive bandwidth leadership to allow us to focus on what we do best – pushing the technology forward – while he builds the commercial engine around it,” said Connor Denney, Bifrost co-founder and Head of Research and Development. “We’re on track to complete rigorous testing over the coming months, and having a proven operator in place as we prepare for rollout gives the whole team confidence in the road ahead.”
The company, which is a spin-out from the Colorado School of Mines, has raised $5.5 million to date led by Caruso Ventures with participation from Range Ventures and others, and is headquartered on the Elevate Quantum campus in Arvada, Colorado.
“Doug’s leadership role at Bifrost is another signal that quantum tech is moving into large-scale production,” said Dan Caruso, Managing Director of Caruso Ventures and a member of Bifrost’s board of directors. “Doug is the right person to guide the company and map a successful path to commercialization with customers in the quantum sector as well as national labs and defense in the long term.”
In 2011, Campbell co-founded Solid Power as a spin-out of the University of Colorado Boulder to commercialize all-solid-state battery technology. Under his leadership, Solid Power grew into the largest climate-tech venture to come out of CU Boulder and one of nine companies with CU Boulder roots to reach unicorn status, forming development partnerships with BMW, Ford and SK On before going public in 2021. Campbell also co-founded Roccor, a supplier of deployable structures for small satellites. The company was acquired by Redwire Space in 2020.
Today, quantum-limited cryogenic amplifiers range from $25,000 to $45,000 each at research-grade volumes. The Heimdall Amplifier’s CMOS-compatible fabrication pathway and architectural simplicity will lower that cost significantly and allow for manufacturing at higher volumes.
“Colorado’s quantum ecosystem is driving the entire industry forward and Bifrost Electronics is a vital part of that progress for regional and global companies,” said Jessi Olsen CEO of Elevate Quantum. “Doug’s leadership will be instrumental in bridging advanced materials and quantum capabilities to meet the rapidly growing demands of next-generation infrastructure.”
Bifrost plans to roll out the Heimdall Amplifier later this year.
In Norse mythology, the Bifrost is a magical bridge that connects the mortal realm to Asgard, home of the gods. Bifrost Electronics’ technology also serves as a bridge, taking signals from the quantum world into the human world of classical mechanics. Heimdall is the god who guards the Bifrost and the entrance to Asgard.
About Bifrost Electronics
Bifrost Electronics is a Colorado School of Mines spin-out building scalable, magnetically insensitive electro-optic quantum amplifiers that solve the qubit-readout bottleneck limiting quantum computing, sensing, and defense applications. Its flagship product, the Heimdall Amplifier, is designed to replace legacy readout hardware with a smaller, more manufacturable alternative, allowing more qubits to be packed into a single system. Bifrost is headquartered on the Elevate Quantum campus in Arvada, Colorado. Learn more at bifrostelectronic.com.
Man left bloodied and hurt after immigration enforcement agents tried to arrest him in Evanston, a Chicago suburb
An eyewitness has described how two federal immigration agents allegedly beat and badly injured a US citizen in a botched arrest attempt in Illinois, and left the man dazed and bleeding on the ground as they walked away after realizing their apparent mistake.
Bystander Ryan Garton told the Associated Press that he saw the agents pinning down the man, who is Black, on the side of the road as he was driving home on Sunday in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago. He said he pulled over to record what was happening on video.
Study of 160 quantum companies finds 90% rely on foreign suppliers and 74% serve customers abroad, highlighting the importance of international market access as governments pursue quantum economic and national security and supply-chain resilience
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24, 2026 — A new international survey of the quantum industry finds that the supply chains supporting quantum technologies are deeply global, with companies of every size relying on suppliers and customers across national borders. The survey included responses from 160 companies headquartered in 15 countries that reported suppliers in 36 countries, customers in 49 countries, and manufacturing locations in 25 countries.
Credit: QED-C
The Global Quantum Supply Chain report maps where quantum companies source inputs, manufacture components and systems and reach customers. The effort brought together the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C), European Quantum Industry Consortium (QuIC), Quantum Industry Canada (QIC), UK Quantum, Japan’s Quantum Strategic Industry Alliance for Revolution (Q-STAR), and Korea Quantum Industry Association (KQIA) with engagement across India’s quantum ecosystem.
The study was undertaken to give policymakers and investors a clearer view of the cross-border relationships underpinning the emerging quantum economy. As quantum technologies move toward commercialization, companies need access to specialized suppliers and growing customer markets worldwide, while governments seek to protect critical technologies and strengthen supply-chain resilience.
Key findings include:
90% of respondents reported at least one foreign supplier.
74% reported at least one foreign customer.
Respondents reported a median of three supplier countries and three customer countries.
Component suppliers reported selling into more countries than quantum systems developers.
Companies of every size, including those with fewer than 10 employees, reported buying from suppliers and selling to customers in multiple countries.
The United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan were the five locations most frequently named for both suppliers and customers.
“Quantum innovation does not stop at national borders, and neither do the supply chains that make it possible,” said Dr. Celia Merzbacher, Executive Director of QED-C, “As the industry scales, the report gives leaders and policymakers a clearer view of how deeply connected our ecosystem already is. With its recently expanded membership and new charter, ICQIA can use this shared evidence to strengthen international coordination, safeguard critical technologies and preserve trusted access to the necessary suppliers, customers and markets.”
“Quantum is inherently international across markets, standards, research, talent, capital and supply chains,” said Jonathan Legh‑Smith, Executive Director of UKQuantum. “The report highlights this global interconnection and emphasizes the need for practical cooperation between quantum nations, as set out in the inter‑governmental Quantum Development Group’s April 2026 communique.”
“Taken as a bloc, the European Union is the second most frequent location of both suppliers and customers in this survey, which shows how much the global quantum industry already works with European companies. The survey also shows that the countries this industry buys from and the countries it sells to are not always the same, which is worth keeping in mind as Europe shapes its industrial and trade policy for quantum.” Cécile Perrault, Executive Director of the European Quantum Industry Consortium (QuIC)
“Quantum commercialization requires more than access to technology—it requires access to global markets,” said Dr. Brad Kim, Vice Chairman of the Korea Quantum Industry Association (KQIA). “For Korea, the priority is to help our companies contribute specialized capabilities and become trusted partners in global quantum supply chains. KQIA will work with fellow industry associations to translate this report’s findings into practical cooperation that expands market access, strengthens supply-chain resilience and protects critical technologies.”
“This study not only speaks to the interconnectedness of global quantum supply chains, but also makes clear the prominent role Canada’s quantum industry plays in this ecosystem. Quantum comprises a diverse set of technologies, and a strong Canadian position across those supply chains is critical for achieving our national security and resiliency objectives – and better understanding of the international ecosystem is essential to ensuring our growth alongside our trusted global partners,” said Sean Lee, Acting CEO of QIC.
“This study shows that the strength of the quantum industry will depend not only on national capability, but on how effectively those capabilities connect across borders,” said Abhishek Purohit, India Ecosystem liaison for the Global Quantum Supply Chain Study and Director of Technology Strategy at QURECA. “For emerging quantum economies such as India, this creates an important opportunity to contribute specialised capabilities, integrate more deeply into global value chains, and become a trusted partner in the next phase of quantum commercialisation.”
The report’s findings highlight the importance of policies that preserve access to markets and preferred suppliers in like-minded countries while protecting critical technologies. The data provides policymakers, investors, and other stakeholders with a clearer picture of the international relationships that support innovation and growth across the quantum sector.
About the Survey
The Global Quantum Supply Chain Flows Survey was distributed in March and April 2026 to quantum companies in the United States, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan, and India. Respondents reported the country locations of their headquarters, suppliers, customers, and manufacturing associated with quantum components or systems, excluding widely available, easily substituted off-the-shelf parts. The survey did not collect company-identifying trade details.
A total of 160 companies met the study’s inclusion criteria. Research organizations were not included. Companies headquartered in China were not represented among respondent headquarters, although they appeared in the data as a location named by respondents.
The Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) is the world’s premier association of pioneers in the quantum technology marketplace. Members of QED-C enable the real-world application of quantum technology, and, in turn, grow a robust commercial industry and supply chain. Sitting at the intersection of tech, academia, business, entrepreneurship, and policymaking, QED-C is uniquely able to foster the collaborations the industry needs. QED-C is where experts and organizations share knowledge and collectively shape how quantum technology will grow. QED-C is managed by SRI. More information: https://quantumconsortium.org.
Increase comes after Fed decision to raise interest rates, as Americans struggle with high prices and stagnant wages
US mortgage rates surpassed 7% for the first time since January 2025, according to federal lender Freddie Mac, aggravating a housing market that has endured years of high interest rates and low supply.
The increase comes after the US Federal Reservehiked interest rates, which directly affect mortgage rates, for the first time since 2023, citing high inflation.
LEWES, Del., Sept. 24, 2026 — John Snow Labs has announced the program and speaker lineup for the Applied AI Summit, taking place October 13-15 online. Now in its seventh year, the free conference brings applied data scientists, engineers, researchers and enterprise leaders together to share what they have learned putting AI into production, and one major theme has surfaced: show your work.
“When we opened the call for papers this year, more than 50 sessions and 15 keynotes focused on how their organizations test, validate, and monitor AI systems that are already running,” said David Talby, CEO, John Snow Labs. “Applied AI teams are spending their time proving their AI works, is safe and reliable, and that it aligns with organizational values and rules. We heard participants loud and clear, and we built the entire program around it.”
The Program
Day 1: Applied Generative AI – Sessions cover evaluation and observability for production agents, enforceable data contracts for freshness and lineage, turning generative models into reliable system components, multilingual model safety, real-time feature pipelines, and zero-trust patterns for agents that can spend money.
Day 2: Applied Healthcare AI – Sessions cover clinical benchmarks, governed longitudinal patient records, audit-ready evidence pipelines for MedTech, risk-adjustment audit workflows, and governance for medical device software that changes after deployment.
Day 3: Applied AI Governance – Sessions cover independent bias audits, medical AI red teaming, continuous risk reassessment, production drift monitoring, detection of AI-native attacks, responsible AI release gates, and how fundamental rights impact assessments under the EU AI Act.
The Speakers
Since inception, the event has focused on applied AI, so the program and speakers reflect the work that is happening in practice, not in theory. Speakers come from Salesforce, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Cisco, ServiceNow and ThoughtSpot in enterprise software; Capital One, BlackRock, Guardian Life, Raymond James and Finance of America in financial services; Expedia, Wayfair and Zendesk in retail and e-commerce; SiriusXM in media; General Motors in automotive; Genentech, Takeda and Hologic in life sciences and medical devices; and the Mayo Clinic, Stanford Health Care, Sheba Medical Center and Fred Hutch Cancer Center in healthcare delivery and research.
Real Open-Source Contributions
The summit has always covered open-source software, and this year, three keynotes report contributions to MedHELM, the open evaluation project for medical AI.
Nigam Shah, Chief Data Scientist at Stanford Health Care, presents the extension of MedHELM from single-turn scoring to agentic evaluation with tool use, through the HealthAdminBench and PhysicianBench benchmarks.
David Talby, CEO at John Snow Labs, presents PacificMed, 70+ benchmarks contributed to MedHELM that cover bias, fairness, safety and reliability, derived from a register of 201 legal and regulatory instruments to identify failure points a system does not meet.
Emily Xue, Head of Enterprise AI at Scale AI, presents CliniCARE-Bench alongside the contribution model that enables other organizations to add datasets and benchmarks to MedHELM while keeping patient-linked material private and preventing benchmark contamination.
The Applied AI Summit is designed for practitioners and emphasizes technical depth, open knowledge sharing, and lessons from production deployments. The virtual event is free to attend worldwide and all sessions will be available on demand for two weeks following the conference. Register here.
About John Snow Labs
John Snow Labs, the AI for healthcare company, provides state-of-the-art software, models, and data to help healthcare and life science organizations put AI to good use. Developer of Medical LLMs, Healthcare NLP, the Generative AI Lab, and the Patient Journey Intelligence Platform, John Snow Labs’ award-winning medical AI software powers the world’s leading academic medical centers, pharmaceuticals, and health technology companies. Creator and host of the Applied AI Summit (formerly the NLP Summit), the company is committed to further educating and advancing the global AI community.
Company outlines path for durable, accelerated growth through four strategic growth vectors
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 23, 2026 — Everpure has provided details on its business expansion providing durable, accelerated growth. The company also reaffirmed its fiscal year 2027 outlook and provided a preliminary outlook for fiscal year 2028.
“Everpure is at an inflection point as we expand our horizons to managing data in the enterprise and solutions for hyperscalers,” said Charlie Giancarlo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Everpure. “A decade of committed investment in an integrated, extensible architecture has created a structurally higher growth baseline in our core business. This same core IP has unlocked three distinct, incremental markets—allowing us to expand our opportunity, drive significant operating leverage, and provide enhanced visibility into our long-term financial trajectory.”
Sustained R&D Innovation
Over the past five years, Everpure has consistently dedicated on average 19% of annual revenue to R&D. Everpure’s focused R&D investments on a single, unified platform is a superior use of invested capital versus fragmenting resources across multiple legacy architectures.
This disciplined strategy has fueled both the durability of Everpure’s core business, demonstrated by eight consecutive quarters of accelerating revenue growth, and its expansion into new high growth markets. Building upon a track record of consistent market share gains across both inflationary and deflationary cycles, Everpure expects its strong R&D leadership to extend its product velocity while accelerating penetration into new growth markets.
Four Strategic Growth Vectors
By leveraging its proprietary intellectual property and extensible architecture, Everpure has unlocked multiple new distinct market opportunities alongside its core foundation. The company outlined four strategic growth vectors:
Core and Core AI: Includes FlashBlade, Flash Array, and Evergreen//One subscriptions, both CPU- and GPU-attached.
Modern Data Software: Includes Everpure Data Intelligence, Everpure Data Stream, Portworx, Everpure Resilience, and Everpure Cloud.
Scale AI: Includes FlashBlade//EXA solutions tailored for neoclouds and AI-native providers.
Hyperscale Solutions: Includes DirectFlash technology designed specifically for hyperscalers.
Core and Core AI is projected to continue to gain market share, and the three new growth vectors—Modern Data Software, Scale AI, and Hyperscale Solutions—are expected to represent approximately 20% of total revenue by fiscal year 2030.
Financial Outlook and Capital Management
“Everpure’s financial profile is durably resetting to higher levels of growth and profitability,” said Tarek Robbiati, Chief Financial Officer at Everpure. “We have demonstrated over the past decade-plus that we can profitably grow and take share in our core business across inflationary and deflationary cycles. This has been made possible by our unique differentiated IP which is now enabling a sustained level of financial performance well above Rule of 40.”
To support this trajectory, Everpure maintains a disciplined capital management framework centered on funding organic investment, strengthening the balance sheet, pursuing strategic mergers and acquisitions, completing share buybacks to offset dilution from stock-based compensation, and executing additional select buybacks to return excess capital. Today’s new framing preserves flexibility to fund a much larger opportunity set than the company has ever had.
The company re-affirmed its fiscal year 2027 revenue and operating income guidance provided on its second quarter fiscal year 2027 earnings call, and provided a preliminary outlook for fiscal year 2028.
About Everpure
Everpure (NYSE: P) allows organizations to take control of their data with an industry-leading, ever-evolving storage and data management platform. We help companies unleash the power of their data by ensuring it is accessible, intelligent, and ready to perform in the AI era. We make data management effortless while simultaneously scaling performance and significantly reducing energy consumption. With one of the highest Net Promoter Scores for over a decade, Everpure is the choice of the world’s most innovative organizations. For more information, visit www.everpuredata.com.
Warning comes hours after Poland says fire at Starlink satellite station was ‘act of sabotage’
Russia could launch a limited military attack against a Nato country in the coming months, Danish intelligence said, in one of the starkest warnings yet by western security services.
In a report published on Thursday, the Danish defence intelligence service warned of a “low but growing risk” that Russia could launch long-range strikes on Nato infrastructure supporting Ukraine, or carry out a limited incursion into a neighbouring country with a small number of troops, potentially operating without insignia.
Resolution Foundation says households outside London are paying hundreds of pounds a year more in council tax than they would be under a fair system
Tim Shipman has written about what will be coming up at the Labour conference next week in his cover story for the Spectator. He says:
Labour special advisers summoned last week to the pillared state room on the first floor of No. 10 to hear the plan for conference from Burnham’s political secretary, Hayden Munro, left in no doubt that the PM wants to be a transformational figure. The conference ‘narrative’ these advisers were urged to push includes the telling line: ‘This Labour government will bring forward the biggest change to Britain in 40 years, with a new political and economic model.’ On the specifics, Burnham will pledge: ‘We will make the choices that are needed to end rough sleeping, solve the social care crisis and get more young people into work.’
Burnham will pledge to run a ‘cost-of-living government’ with further ‘immediate action’ to ‘provide the breathing space people need’, as well as outline plans to devolve power ‘out of Whitehall’, ‘reindustrialise Britain’ and take back public control of ‘the essentials in life – such as energy, water and housing’ to ‘make them affordable again’.
Ultimately, the election choice is Burnham’s. ‘If you knew what Keir’s aides thought, you knew what he would do,’ says a ministerial aide. ‘But Andy has political opinions of his own.’ Burnham may go for it. But those closest to him doubt it. ‘He likes risk, but he has stuff he wants to get done,’ says one close confidant. While outsiders think his ambitions require an election, Burnham thinks he can transform Britain without one. ‘Andy really cares about the devolution stuff,’ the ministerial aide observes. ‘Most of Westminster roll their eyes but he thinks that will change the country. He thinks doing that will make him a great prime minister.’
And those who think none of that will deal with Britain’s economic problems seize on another clue. A Labour adviser concludes: ‘Ultimately I think Burnham and his team will do what they often do with difficult decisions, and not make one.’
What I imagine is that some schools will offer some of these subjects where their local labour market demands, and this is where our mayors and our local leaders are really helping to shape that in their area.
So I wouldn’t expect a school to offer all of these, as they don’t offer all GCSEs at the moment. They will specialise in particular areas.
If you’re trying to do engineering or construction, for example, you know that involves a lot of problem solving, a lot of maths, a lot of thinking, as well as the hands-on skills that’s required.
So it’s not dumbing down, it’s the opposite of that, actually, because this is about raising the standards and the rigour and regulating these qualifications.
Democrats must show links of climate shocks to ‘kitchen table’ issues, California governor says
It’s a mistake for Democratic politicians not to talk about climate change, and the reason they don’t is “because they don’t know how to talk about it”, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, said on Wednesday in an interview with the Guardian and the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.
Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting and New York Climate Week, Newsom also predicted that the midterm elections in November would bring “the end of Donald Trump’s presidency as we know it”. To prevent Trump from stealing those elections, voters must turn out in such overwhelming numbers that he “couldn’t possibly contest” the outcome. If the US president nevertheless declares a national emergency or otherwise attempts to invalidate the results, Newsom said, then “we the people have to step up. The courts have to intervene. Congress has to do its job and stand up for the rule of law.”
The number of reported assaults on Great Britain’s railways has risen by a fifth to a record high of almost 25,000 incidents in a year.
Unions said the “horrendous” figures showed the need for more staff and policing, as the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) revealed a sharp increase in assaults on the travelling public and on railway staff last year.
Docker and the CNCF will partner on an open spec to make agent permissions portable
Docker Sandbox Kits let you package an AI agent together with exactly what it is allowed to do, so anyone can pull the same agent with the same limits, review changes to those limits, and enforce them. Now, Docker has published the Docker Sandbox Kit Spec, the open specification behind Kits, under Apache 2.0 and is committing to contributing the spec to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation for neutral governance.
A Kit is an ordinary OCI container image that carries three things: the agent, the tools it uses, and a typed list of everything it asks to reach, such as network hosts, credentials, and volumes. That list lives inside the image, so pinning the image pins the agent and its requests together. A Kit builds, pushes, pulls, signs, and scans like any container image, because it is one.
“Standards are what let an ecosystem move fast without fragmenting, and few companies understand that better than Docker. By delivering Sandbox Kits as standard OCI images, Docker is giving the industry an open, repeatable way to package an AI agent, its tools, and its guardrails as one artifact. OCI is the foundation the cloud native ecosystem is built on, so a standard for agents that builds on OCI reaches the whole ecosystem at once. The CNCF welcomes this, and we’re excited to work with Docker and the community on making it broadly adopted.”
Chris Aniszczyk, CTO of the CNCF
Why the OCI image is not enough on its own
An OCI image tells a runtime how to build and start a piece of software. It has no place to state which hosts that software may call, which credentials it may use, or which files it may keep between runs. Those decisions are made outside the image, at launch: in docker run flags, a Compose file, a CI job, an onboarding doc. For a web service, that was fine. The program was fixed, it needed a network and a port, and the flags rarely changed.
Agents are different. Claude Code and Codex decide at runtime what to do: install packages, call APIs, use credentials, change the environment they run in. So the access they need is granted piece by piece, by hand, usually to get a task unblocked. A few months in, nobody can answer a simple question: what is this agent allowed to do? The answer is spread across shell history, dashboards, and someone’s memory, and it cannot be handed to a teammate or compared with last week.
Every team answers that question on its own today, and every runtime vendor could ship its own format for the answer. That is the fragmentation OCI was created to prevent, and it is why Docker is now proposing one artifact, built on OCI, governed in the open by the CNCF community.
How a Sandbox Kit Spec fills the gap
The Sandbox Kit Spec does not fork or replace any OCI specification. It uses the annotation extension point OCI already defines to carry the agent’s requests in the image manifest. Nothing in a registry, scanner, or signing tool needs to change.
Kits began as a feature of Docker Sandboxes, Docker’s product for running agents inside isolated microVMs, where a Kit defined one sandbox: the agent, its tools, and what it could reach. The Sandbox Kit Spec turns that definition into a standard OCI image and opens the format so any runtime can implement it. Docker Sandboxes is the first runtime that enforces it. It should not be the only one, and under Linux Foundation governance it will not be.
Two things follow for anyone running agents. The answer travels with the agent: a teammate can pull it, a reviewer can diff it, and a conforming runtime can enforce it. And when a new version asks for more, the change shows up as added lines someone can refuse.
Kits from across the ecosystem
Kits for tools from AWS, Box, Datadog, Dynatrace, JFrog, NanoClaw, OpenClaw, Palo Alto Networks, and Snyk are available now, covering cloud, observability, security, artifact management platforms and more.
That is what a shared format makes possible. A database vendor can publish a Kit that connects any agent to its service with the scope it recommends. An agent maker can publish its own Kit, so the request list comes from the people who built the agent. A platform team can publish one for the company, and every engineer starts from the same place.
Containers made software portable. Kits make authority portable: the set of things you deliberately hand an agent travels with the agent, in the same image, and means the same thing wherever a conforming runtime opens it. Docker looks forward to formally submitting Kits to the CNCF and working with the community to ensure Kits further the goal of secure, reliable agentic AI and AI governance.
Build a Kit
If you make a tool that agents use, publish a Kit for it. If you run agents, start from one and share it with your team. The Docker Sandbox Kit Spec, its capability pages, and a worked tour of a real Kit are available at docker/sandbox-kit-spec. If there is a Kit you cannot express, or a rule a runtime cannot implement, open an issue.
The FDA has warned a major compounding pharmacy that it violated federal law by making copies of blockbuster weight-loss drugs in "inordinate amounts."
During a meeting at the White House, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that two pandas will be coming to Zoo Atlanta, the first at the zoo since 2024.
Former Yes musician plays at sanctuary to raise awareness of animals that remain stuck in cages at ‘bile farms’
Rick Wakeman has played to all kinds of people around the globe, but he has now performed to an audience he had never encountered before – an enclosure of 150 bears.
The former Yes musician, who has gone on to have a prolific solo career, played the piano at a Vietnamese bear sanctuary.
An inaugural Oct. 2 Summit in Dewey Beach will bring caregivers, clinicians, advocates and other professionals together to recognize exploitation and improve support for survivors.
DEWEY BEACH, Del. — A person being trafficked may still go to work, attend school or see a doctor. What those around them may not see is the person controlling their pay, housing, access to drugs or ability to leave.
That is the challenge at the center of Delaware’s inaugural Human Trafficking Awareness, Prevention and Action Summit on Friday, Oct. 2, at Hyatt Place Dewey Beach. The Delaware Coalition for Human Trafficking Survivors is bringing survivors, national experts and Delaware professionals together to improve how the state recognizes exploitation and responds to people affected by it.
Two ways exploitation can stay hidden
Imagine Elena, an adult who cleans homes. She depends on the person who hired her for a place to sleep and a ride to work. Her promised pay never arrives, but she fears losing her housing if she leaves. Someone meeting Elena might see a hard-working employee, without knowing how little control she has over her work or money. Elena is fictional, but her situation illustrates a recognized pattern of forced labor.
Now imagine Jay, a 16-year-old who accepts a place to stay from someone he trusts. That person then expects commercial sex in exchange. Jay may be frightened to tell a teacher or caregiver, or may not describe what happened as trafficking. Jay is also fictional. Jennifer Cooper, a registered nurse and forensic coordinator at Nemours Children’s Health, told Delaware LIVE that young people may not recognize food, housing or other things of value as part of commercial sexual exploitation. Under federal law, a minor induced into commercial sex is a trafficking victim even without proof of force, fraud or coercion.
Victims do not fit one age, gender or background. Trafficking also does not require kidnapping or crossing a border. The common issue is exploitation: force, fraud or coercion used to compel an adult to provide labor or commercial sex, or the commercial sexual exploitation of a minor.
What Delaware’s numbers show
The National Human Trafficking Hotline identified 29 Delaware cases involving 32 victims in 2025. In 2024, it identified 32 cases involving 61 victims. The hotline cautions that reports made to it do not measure how often trafficking actually occurs; people who never contact the hotline are outside its count.
Another measure comes from Delaware’s Office of the Child Advocate. Its contribution to the Delaware Anti-Trafficking Action Council’s 2025 report says the office screened 65 juvenile trafficking referrals, including 40 classified as suspected trafficking and 25 involving young people assessed as at risk. Those are referrals, not 65 confirmed crimes, and they cannot simply be added to the hotline total.
Together, the figures show why professionals who encounter vulnerable people need to know what questions to ask, how to respond safely and where to turn for help.
Bringing the people who respond into one room
Cooper said she helped pursue a Delaware summit after traveling out of state for advanced training. The Oct. 2 program includes tracks for mental health professionals, medical providers, direct-service workers, law enforcement and survivors. Sessions are expected to address family-related trafficking, trauma, survivor care and coordinated responses.
“I want to bring together the people who are doing the work,” Cooper told Delaware LIVE. She said organizations serving vulnerable people can benefit from knowing what others nearby are doing and where services are missing.
The summit is an opportunity for psychologists and other mental health clinicians, advocates, health care workers, educators, caregivers and community leaders to learn from survivors and from one another. It is also open to residents who want a better understanding of trafficking in Delaware. A private, invitation-only executive roundtable will take place Oct. 1; the public summit follows Oct. 2.
To Go Box
What: Human Trafficking Awareness, Prevention and Action Summit
When: Friday, Oct. 2, 2026
Where: Hyatt Place Dewey Beach, 1301 Coastal Highway
Who: Professionals, advocates, caregivers, organizational leaders and interested residents
Admission: $75 regular admission, listed as available through Sept. 30
Fighting escalates after Tigrayan rebels form new coalition aimed at overthrowing Abiy Ahmed government
There are growing fears of a return to civil war in Ethiopia after an offensive by fighters from Tigray into the neighbouring states of Afar and Amhara and the formation of a new rebel alliance aimed at overthrowing the government of the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed.
About 600,000 people died between 2020 and 2022 during a devastating war between the Ethiopian army and the political party and paramilitary group the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Both sides are now accusing the other of triggering a return to open conflict.
Florida Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon, a state representative, said that "this is not about three letters" amid GOP criticism about her membership in the Democratic Socialists of America.
Hot honey has spent the past few years turning up on everything from fried chicken and pizza to biscuits and ice cream. The mix of sweet and heat became so popular it earned its own name: swicy.
The sleek, rust-coloured saucer settles into the earth, mirroring the surrounding hills. It looks like an art gallery or a high-end conference centre – an architectural masterpiece designed to sit lightly on the land.
UK watchdog fined video app in 2023 for failing to enforce minimum age limit and remove underage users
TikTok will pay a £12.7m fine to the UK’s data watchdog after dropping an appeal against a ruling that it did not do enough to keep children below the age of 13 off the platform.
Man accused of being accessory to murders at Stalag 326 VI K amid race to prosecute suspects before they die
A 105-year-old man is under investigation on suspicion of being an accessory to multiple murders at a Nazi prisoner of war camp, German prosecutors have said.
The case, which is being handled by the public prosecutor’s office in Dortmund, centres on the Stalag 326 VI K camp in western Germany, in what is now the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Breakfast foods are increasingly escaping the morning hours, and no food has benefited more from that change than the pancake. More Americans are eating breakfast ... Read moreThe post Dinner is better with pancakes, and millions of Americans agree appeared…
Clip of the former Tory MP staring intently at fellow panellist is shared widely online
Rory Stewart has been an Afghan NGO leader, a Conservative leadership candidate, a Harvard professor, a popular podcaster, and the deputy governor of an Iraqi province. This week, he created a moment that drew wider attention than any of them: he fixed a beady gaze on a fellow Newsnight panellist for the longest four seconds in television history.
Stewart, who now co-presents The Rest Is Politics with Alastair Campbell, appeared on the BBC programme on 18 September – but in the last few days, a clip of the moment in question has taken on a life of its own on social media.
"The heads of major AI firms pleaded with the United Nations on Wednesday to save the world or at least its people — by somehow regulating the fast-expanding technology that they have been designing," writes the Associated Press.
"If managed poorly, I even believe AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole," said Dario Amodei, chief executive officer of Anthropic. And from his competitor Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, came this assessment: "We could lose control of the future to AI."
Yoshua Bengio, who co-chairs the UN's International Independent Panel on AI, called this
"a moment of global awakening" to possible threats, noting AI from top companies had behaved in unacceptably dangerous ways, against instructions, taking actions "that would be crimes if committed by a human".
In his presentation, OpenAI's Sam Altman agreed the discussion about AI "feels different in recent weeks," even suggesting specific reforms:
Altman: We need a mechanism for complementary national and international frontier AI standards, standards for measuring capabilities, assessing risks, determining whether safeguards are sufficient, and preserving meaningful human oversight as systems become more autonomous. We need common standards so countries can compare evidence, verify compliance, and have a shared language and understanding about what is happening. We need accurate and speedy incident reporting, classification reporting protocols, so the world can learn from failures before they become catastrophes. And we need secure channels among governments, critical infrastructure operators and technical experts, to share emerging vulnerabilities and new threats.... We will all be better off if we can agree on what good evidence, good safeguards, and good oversight look like on the global stage.
Speaking next, Anthropic's Dario Amodei agreed that standard-setting was important, also calling for "common global standards for testing AI models for loss-of-control risks and misuse risks — and a notification system for AI incidents that are significant to global security." Reiterating his September 12th call for an industry-wide safety collaboration, Amodei pointed out that Anthropic committed to embedding external evaluators "similar to a food inspector" and recommended other companies do the same. "Some have already agreed to adopt this measure."
Besides calling for global cooperation between governments to set international standards, Amodei also offered two other specific ideas:
Amodei: We should begin with narrow agreements that every member can support, such as a ban on using AI to make biological weapons or permitting your AI technologies to be used to make biological weapons....
We should build evaluation and verification systems that keep pace with AI development so that states can have visibility into frontier model capability and can verify each other's commitments.
"No leader, no company, and no nation can manage this alone. We commit to working with governments in this room on this urgent work."
Trump must accept that pressure alone "doesn't work on Xi. It doesn't work on China, and it doesn't work on the Chinese people," experts tell CBS News.
US consumers are starting to opt out of the streaming world as several services raise prices without offering many perks
It may not be quite as politically buzzy as the price of gasoline or eggs, but another household expense is going up for millions of people. Disney has brought the price-gouging experience of its theme park home again by raising the prices of most iterations and bundles of its Disney+ and Hulu streaming services. Whether you pay to watch them with or without ads, separately or bundled together, you’re probably getting a price hike of a couple of bucks per month. The few bundles that will remain the same price feature ad-supported versions of both services (plus ESPN). Don’t worry, though; paying extra to avoid the ad-supported versions of those services won’t mean that you’re missing out on some cross-promotional opportunities. Disney’s terms of service note that they reserve the right to insert ads before and after programming on whatever subscription tier they want, regardless of what you’re paying for. True magic!
This particular magic isn’t reserved for Disney, though. Price hikes among streaming services have become so common that The Verge has a dedicated page aggregating the news of them, which tends to arrive every few months. Apple, apparently high on Emmy fumes, has raised its prices four times in four years, keeping pace with many of its competitors despite a vastly smaller dedicated catalog. Depending on which version of Peacock subscribers use, they’ve seen their bills padded by five or six dollars a month just since the summer of 2025, including another increase last month. Netflix, meanwhile, hasn’t gone up since March 2026. That’s not a reprieve; that’s a sign another hike must be around the corner.
REHOVOT, Israel, Sept. 24, 2026 — CollPlant Biotechnologies Ltd. today announced the publication of joint research conducted by its subsidiary LightSolver Ltd., a pioneer of pure photonic computing and developer of the Laser Processing Unit (LPU), and the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), one of Europe’s premier supercomputing institutions.
Published in the proceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers, the research demonstrates the potential of LightSolver’s all-optical computing architecture to dramatically accelerate one of the most fundamental and computationally intensive workloads in high-performance computing (HPC): solving large-scale sparse systems of linear equations.
In the joint study, researchers from LightSolver and HLRS benchmarked projected LPU performance, using an emulator of LightSolver’s LPU architecture, against established state-of-the-art iterative algorithms running on a GPU. Across the benchmark problems evaluated, the study projected that the LPU could achieve time-to-solution acceleration ranging from approximately 40× to more than 80,000×, depending on the algorithm and problem evaluated.
Large-scale linear systems sit at the mathematical core of some of the world’s most demanding scientific and engineering simulations, including computational fluid dynamics, structural mechanics, electromagnetics, molecular dynamics and materials science. Solving these systems can dominate runtime and energy consumption in HPC applications, making them a critical computational bottleneck and an important target for next-generation computing architectures.
The findings highlight the potential for photonic processors to serve as specialized accelerators for large-scale linear systems, particularly for structured problems and computational workloads in which these mathematical operations must be solved repeatedly.
Executive Commentary
“This joint work demonstrates how an emerging photonic computing architecture can be evaluated against established numerical methods and modern GPU platforms,” said Prof. Michael Resch, Director of the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS). “The results provide valuable insight into where photonic computing may offer advantages for high-performance computing workloads and how it could be integrated into future hybrid computing systems.”
“This research marks an essential milestone in validating the LPU as a transformative computing layer alongside traditional CPUs and GPUs,” said Dr. Ruti Ben-Shlomi, CEO and Co-Founder of LightSolver. “Working with HLRS and its world-class researchers gave us an exceptional opportunity to benchmark and validate our technology against established computing platforms and test it on some of the most demanding computational problems. Collaborations like this are invaluable as we continue to expand the range of problems the LPU can address and demonstrate its potential across science, engineering and high-performance computing. We look forward to continuing to work with leading research institutions around the world to validate, challenge and advance this new computing architecture.”
The Future of HPC: Heterogeneous Hybrid Architectures
The published research reinforces LightSolver’s vision for the future of enterprise and scientific computing: a heterogeneous hybrid architecture in which CPUs, GPUs and LPUs work together, each executing the workloads best suited to its underlying architecture:
CPUs provide general-purpose processing, orchestration and system control.
GPUs accelerate massively parallel digital computing and tensor-based workloads.
LPUs serve as specialized photonic accelerators, offloading computationally intensive mathematical workloads, including linear and differential equations and optimization-where LightSolver’s optical architecture can provide significant acceleration.
This hybrid approach is designed to enable supercomputing centers, data centers and cloud providers to integrate photonic acceleration into existing computing environments, potentially delivering dramatic reductions in time-to-solution, energy consumption, computing costs and carbon footprint for targeted workloads.
Research Publication Details
The peer-reviewed paper, titled “Accelerating Sparse Linear Solvers with an Optical Laser Processing Unit,” was presented and published in the proceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers (Workshops and Special Sessions).
The High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) of the University of Stuttgart was established in 1996 as Germany’s first federal supercomputing center. As a member of the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS), HLRS operates some of the world’s most powerful supercomputing infrastructure, providing high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and simulation services to academic researchers and industrial partners across Europe.
About CollPlant
CollPlant Biotechnologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: CLGN) is an innovative technology company operating at the intersection of deep-tech computing and advanced biotechnology. Through its subsidiary LightSolver, CollPlant is advancing the development of proprietary all-optical laser based computing architectures designed to resolve the world’s most demanding computational bottlenecks across artificial intelligence, aerospace, financial engineering, and high-performance computing. Concurrently, CollPlant remains a leader in regenerative medicine, pioneering plant-derived recombinant human collagen (rhCollagen) technologies for 3D bioprinting of tissues and organs and medical aesthetics.
Since June 30, full-time faculty at the university have worked without a renewed employment contract. What were supposed to be routine contractual negotiations between faculty and the university administration have evolved into a long-lasting dispute over key concerns.
Like many higher learning institutions, the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-UD), or professor’s union, acts as the bargaining authority for all full-time faculty. They renegotiate collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) with the university roughly every three years.
While moderate disagreements over contract stipulations are common during negotiations like these, this bargaining cycle has been uniquely contentious.
Since 1972, when AAUP-UD was granted bargaining authority for professors, there have been seven cycles in which faculty have not been able to reach a contract agreement with the university before the previous one expired. This is now the eighth such cycle, and second in a row, that has expired before an agreement was reached.
One of the most contentious issues this cycle is uncoincidentally listed as one of AAUP’s core missions: academic freedom.
The AAUP website defines academic freedom as “the freedom of a teacher or researcher in higher education to investigate and discuss the issues in their academic field, and to teach and publish findings without interference from administrators, boards of trustees, political figures, donors, or other entities.”
The website also notes that academic freedom protects faculty’s rights to speak freely as both a member of institutional government and as a citizen.
According to the most recent bargaining update from the union, released on Aug. 20, the university administration has proposed its own interpretation of academic freedom. It stipulates that faculty members would only have the right to speak freely “when participating in institutional governance,” a stark contrast to the current CBA, which affords that right “whether or not as a member of any agency of institutional governance.”
Persephone Braham, a professor and president of AAUP-UD, suggested that this may be a risk prevention strategy by the university in the wake of federal initiatives to penalize universities that platform viewpoints inconsistent with the federal government.
According to Braham, however, that is not a valid enough reason to restrict academic freedom.
“You can’t run a university based on risk,” Braham said. “Risk is inherent in inquiry.”
Braham also believes that a key reason for the delay in reaching an agreement is an unprecedented disconnect between the university’s bargaining team and AAUP-UD.
During the last bargaining cycle in 2023, the university’s advisory team was led by former provost Matthew Kinservik, an English professor at the university. Now, that team is headed by Robert Nagle, an external labor lawyer based in Philadelphia.
“I don’t impute any ill intent,” Braham said. “But I do think that familiarity with academic norms and expectations is missing from a lot of that side.”
Another notable hitch in reaching an agreement has been a dispute over what the continuing track position should look like for professors.
Historically, the continuing track position has offered significant job security and benefits for faculty who are not interested or are unable to follow a tenure-track trajectory. Continuing track professors are typically hired temporarily, but receive progressively longer contracts for a period of 13 years until they are offered five-year contracts on a rolling basis. These contracts are renewed annually, so professors are always in the first year of their five-year contract.
Up until the most recent bargaining update in Aug., the university and AAUP-UD had clashed over their interpretations of that five-year contract. While the university asserted that continuing track professors could be terminated with one year’s notice at any point in their five-year contract, the union argued that professors would be eligible to carry out the full remainder of their contract.
The bargaining update revealed that an agreement on the contract’s definition had been reached between the two parties. The university agreed to adopt language similar to AAUP-UD’s interpretation of the five-year contract via a faculty senate resolution to be introduced at a later date.
Despite a consensus being reached, many union members are still concerned by the implications of what they consider to be attempts by the university to weaken the continuing track position.
According to AAUP-UD’s June 10 bargaining update, the university had proposed that the administration be given “complete discretion” when choosing to hire adjunct faculty, instead of being restricted to pre-established parameters. This, in combination with the university’s continuing track proposals, has created some uneasy feelings for full-time faculty.
“If you go after continuing track faculty, and we get fewer continuing track faculty because those positions are being filled by adjuncts, there’s a lot of ongoing work that comes to the tenured faculty,” Braham said. “Everything that affects the people who have less rights than us affects the people with more rights eventually. It’s basically, they’re a test case.”
Salary issues and proposed raises also troubled staff during negotiations. AAUP-UD initially proposed salary increases of 18% over three years, which the university countered with a proposal of an 11% increase over five years. This was seen as unreasonably low by the union, even for an opening offer.
“It doesn’t start things off on a good foot when you insult the other party,” Braham said. “And people are insulted.”
The proposed 11% increase over five years would average out to a 2.2% yearly increase in salary, which is significantly below the United States’ 12-month inflation rate of 3.4%. The university’s most recent offer was a 10.75% increase over four years, which averages out to an annual increase of 2.7% — still not enough to keep up with rising prices, assuming inflation remains steady.
This has been a source of frustration for AAUP-UD, which feels that the university’s priorities are misaligned when it comes to financial management.
The next bargaining session has yet to take place. Both parties have pledged to provide bargaining updates as negotiations move forward.
On Sept. 21, Rick Deadwyler, vice president for public affairs at the university, acknowledged the state of negotiations in the following statement made to The Review.
“Negotiations between the University and the faculty union continue,” Deadywyler stated. “Progress has been made in several areas, though some issues remain unresolved. We appreciate the thoughtful engagement and effort being devoted to these discussions as we work together so that an agreement can be reached.”
While there has been some recent headway, the results of negotiations remain unclear as faculty enter their fourth month out of contract.
“This university is very wealthy, but has, for the last bunch of years, been prioritizing building wealth rather than building learning,” Braham said. “And so we, the faculty, are cut to the bone.”
Activists gathered outside the OpenAI offices on Monday during climate week in New York City
On Monday evening, protesters gathered outside the unmarked Manhattan offices of OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, holding signs calling to “Eat the rich, save the planet”. Over the next two days, groups also picketed outside the offices of fellow tech giants Google and Amazon; other protesters, including clergy, were arrested while disrupting a closed-door AI health summit in the city. Tonight, protesters will target a Brooklyn gas power plant that was set to close – until it was purchased to power AI datacenters.
The protests come on the heels of an Anthropic employee quitting his job with a warning that intensified an already-growing AI panic: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
What can DRC’s national dialogue achieve?Expert commentjon.wallace
President Tshisekedi and the opposition both want national dialogue. But it remains to be seen whether they can agree on the nature of the DRC’s problems, let alone their solutions.
When President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Félix Tshisekedi finally announced a ‘national dialogue’ on 27 August, he evoked the country’s long history of previous negotiations. Too often, he said, they had been about elite power sharing, had not meaningfully included the Congolese people, and had legitimized armed insurrection. This time will be different, he promised.
Tshisekedi appealed directly to the Congolese people by proposing a series of public consultations in all 26 provinces, culminating in a convention in Kinshasa. Unlike previous dialogues, this process has a more ambitious aim. It not only seeks to address the causes of insecurity and inequality in DRC and identify reforms. It also seeks to reconstruct or re-found the state.
The opposition immediately denounced the project. The C64, a coalition made up of opposition heavyweights including Moïse Katumbi, Martin Fayulu, Delly Sesanga and Jean-Marc Kabund, rejected Tshisekedi’s proposal. So too did the ‘Sauvons le Congo’ platform created by exiled former president Joseph Kabila.
Tshisekedi’s plan, they claim, is intended above all to legitimize his attempt to change the constitution, possibly allowing the president to extend his rule beyond his two-term limit, which ends in 2028. They point to a controversial bill that would pave the way for a referendum allowing the modification of article 220 of the constitution, which forbids changing the number or duration of presidential terms.
Points of (dis)agreement
There is much that the DRC’s government and opposition disagree on. But there are two points of convergence. One, publicly acknowledged, is the need for a national dialogue to address the country’s serious challenges. However, apart from the need to bring peace to the eastern provinces, there is no consensus on what these challenges are.
The other point of convergence, acknowledged only behind closed doors, is that elections probably cannot be held by the end of Tshisekedi’s second term in 2028. There are three main reasons: First, little progress has been made in organizing them. Technically there is still time to do so, but the quality of elections held in 2028 would be in question.
For Tshisekedi, the national dialogue is an opportunity to create a ‘united front’ – under his control – aligned against Rwanda.
Second, important territories in eastern DRC remain captured by the M23 armed group. Any attempt to exclude these provinces from elections could be interpreted as an implicit endorsement of their secession, raising fears of the break-up of the country. Third, some members of the opposition may see a dialogue as a way to gain power without going to the polls.
There is therefore broad, albeit tacit, agreement on the need to delay elections in favour of ‘dialogue’. But consensus falls apart when talk of detail begins. Indeed, it raises the question: what dialogue is needed to resolve which crisis?
For Tshisekedi, the national dialogue is an opportunity to create a ‘united front’ – under his control – aligned against Rwanda. In the president’s telling, the DRC’s problems stem mainly from Rwanda’s support for the M23 in North and South Kivu provinces. Since late 2021, M23 fighters have seized large swathes of territory, including the provincial capitals of Goma and Bukavu. Tshisekedi has dismissed opposition calls to integrate M23 in the national dialogue, saying the Doha Process – Qatar-led talks hosted in Switzerland – is the only appropriate venue for negotiating with them.
But for many in the opposition, as well as the Catholic and Protestant churches, the conflict is more a symptom of the political crisis than its cause. In their view, the M23’s success has been fuelled by dissatisfaction with bad governance and corruption under Tshisekedi’s government.
Many want a neutral convenor for a dialogue, such as the churches, and a venue outside of the DRC that would allow exiled politicians to participate. But Tshisekedi has ruled out an external location. And he has made clear that religious denominations will play a secondary or even symbolic role.
What a post-2028 transition might look like, if elections are not held, is still open for debate. The concept recalls the two-year ‘glissement’ (literally, ‘sliding’) that former president Joseph Kabila negotiated to remain in power beyond the end of this second term, in 2016-17.
For those close to President Tshisekedi, there is hope of getting broad agreement on a transition that could last three to five years. That would be a de facto extension of the president’s tenure beyond constitutional limits, if he remained in office for the duration. Some in the opposition would like to see a shorter transition, even without Tshisekedi. This would see a power-sharing agreement that would pave the way for a new electoral commission and fresh elections.
However, for now the country’s opposition seems fragmented and unable to shape the terms of the dialogue. Crucially, they lack the leverage of significant popular mobilization: a long-postponed opposition rally on 15 September saw relatively little participation on the streets of the capital. And the US, which recently signed a critical minerals deal with the DRC, is seen to be backing Tshisekedi. The president therefore seems likely to move forward with his plan. A recent presidential ordinance laid the groundwork for the dialogue proceeding under Tshisekedi’s control.
The position of the Catholic and Protestant churches may yet prove influential. For the moment, they have not commented publicly, preferring to try to negotiate for a stronger role. However, should their position change and church leaders choose to actively boycott the dialogue, it could diminish the legitimacy of the process. The Catholic church is an important political actor in the DRC: it was instrumental in organizing against a Kabila third term. For now, however, Tshisekedi appears to have the stronger hand.
It may be that Tshisekedi’s stated goal of going beyond past national dialogues to ‘re-found’ the state is just political rhetoric. The risk is that he intends to use talks as a way of co-opting part of the opposition, just as Kabila did in 2016-17.
Meanwhile the opposition wants to wrest power from Tshisekedi but also does not necessarily favour elections to resolve the political crisis. It may therefore view dialogue as the best means of unseating the president and taking power. Either way, the two sides’ framings are fundamentally at odds. It remains to be seen whether all parties can agree on the nature of the nation’s problems, let alone their solutions.
The debate over the dialogue is a reminder that the security situation in the east cannot be neatly separated from national politics. Talk of changing the constitution by Tshisekedi’s camp waned in early 2025, after the M23 seized Goma and Bukavu. It resurged once the threat was contained.
Fundamentally linked
The current assemblage of processes – Washington for DRC–Rwanda negotiations, the Doha process for DRC–M23 talks and now, the national dialogue – draw lines between phenomena and actors that are fundamentally linked.
The relatively limited objectives of the Washington and Doha processes are at least clearer than the national dialogue’s ambiguous aim of ‘re-founding’ the Congolese state or ‘creating peace’. But each process’s success is linked to the other. No agreement with the M23 can exist without an accord with Rwanda. And peace in the east will require progress on transitional justice and community reconciliation – issues which should be part of any national dialogue.
Can a national dialogue deliver the reforms DRC desperately needs? Currently, the greatest risk is that it is limited in exactly the way Tshisekedi said it must not be: to an exercise in which political elites agree how and when power will change hands.
Industry’s first open-source, qubit agnostic distributed quantum compiler brings scale-out deployment capability to a previously monolithic market
CHICAGO, Sept. 24, 2026 — memQ, an industry leader in quantum networking for scalable and distributed quantum computing, announced today the public release of its distributed quantum compiler (DQC). This integral part of a distributed quantum computing environment will be released as a publicly available, open-source offering available on GitHub.
memQ’s DQC is a compilation framework enabling users to compile and schedule quantum programs across fully user-defined distributed quantum networks – even those with different qubit types, from different vendors. The software converts a standard quantum circuit into a distributed program that executes optimally over the user’s network, taking into consideration the actual computing and networking resources available and generates a time-resolved execution schedule.
Its modular architecture gives users complete control over qubit connectivity both within and between QPUs, as well as the different connectivity and hardware restrictions such as gate durations and entanglement-generation rates. To speed up usability and deployment, memQ is also releasing a paper describing the framework, which demonstrates how it can be used to explore the distributed quantum computing design space, including the relationships among network topology, processor connectivity, compilation strategy and scheduling.
Distributed quantum computing provides a realistic path beyond quantum’s biggest obstacle: the scaling limits of a single quantum computer. Industry urgency is increasing, as evidenced in the United States Executive Order 14413 issued in June of 2026 directing certain government agencies to develop plans for using quantum networking to enable distributed quantum computing. Achieving this goal requires understanding how to divide a program among processors, coordinate its execution and manage the entanglement resources used to perform these operations between processors. memQ’s open-source framework makes this integrated set of tools available today to researchers, developers and system builders without requiring them to be experts in every layer of distributed quantum computing.
“We already provide the unique ability to connect quantum systems without collapsing the quantum state – but truly reaching utility scale in quantum computing will require even more than that. Quantum users need the ability to easily distribute their workloads across available hardware, networking, software and application layers to truly solve large-scale problems,” stated Manish Kumar Singh, Chief Product Officer for memQ. “For the first time, the open source memQ DQC framework delivers a practical, accessible way that distributed quantum computing approaches can be built, evaluated and executed.”
“As the quantum industry moves toward distributed architectures, the availability of standardized, qubit-agnostic tools is essential,” said André Konig, CEO of industry analyst firm Global Quantum Intelligence. “By open-sourcing their Distributed Quantum Compiler, memQ is lowering the barrier to entry and accelerating how developers design and evaluate scalable quantum networks.”
About memQ
Founded in 2021 as a technology spin-out from the University of Chicago, memQ is dedicated to enabling the scalable implementation of quantum computing through standards-based connectivity across optical connections between quantum computers anywhere. The company’s portfolio provides secure connectivity and control across local, campus, metro, and wide-area quantum compute resources with high-fidelity and low-loss, regardless of qubit structures employed. More information is available at www.memq.tech.
FIU becomes an IonQ preferred university partner in Florida, securing the state’s first on-premises trapped-ion quantum system to drive research, workforce development, and economic growth.
MIAMI and COLLEGE PARK, Md., Sept. 24, 2026 — IonQ has announced a contract with Florida International University (FIU) to deliver its Superion 256-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer for installation at FIU.
This contract establishes FIU as IonQ’s flagship academic partner in Florida, creating a central hub for quantum research and education across the region. This agreement marks the first sale and deployment of a Superion 256 trapped-ion quantum computer in Florida.
“This key partnership with Florida International University represents a major milestone in expanding direct physical access to IonQ’s industry-leading, high-performance quantum hardware,” said Niccolo de Masi, Chairman and CEO of IonQ. “By housing our Superion 256 system directly on campus, FIU will lead the region in quantum research and training.”
“Having this 256-qubit quantum computer right on campus positions FIU researchers at the forefront of national quantum innovation,” said FIU President Jeanette M. Nuñez. “This partnership provides our 1,200 faculty members, 56,000 students, and regional industry partners with direct access to one of the most advanced computing architectures in the world. It also puts the university in a leading position to engage with key federal agencies to advance recently launched quantum initiatives that address many national needs in the areas of sensing, cryptography, commercialization and workforce development.”
FIU maintains an active national research showcase and briefing center in Washington, D.C. with robust engagement among federal agencies, which is expected to support the partnership with Maryland-based IonQ.
The sixth-generation IonQ system features 256 physical trapped-ion qubits. The hardware will be housed in a specialized, secure facility built on FIU’s campus, with installation currently expected in late 2027, following completion of FIU’s on-campus data center. Students, faculty, visiting scholars, and affiliated research centers will gain direct access to the IonQ Superion system. Scientific applications and research are expected to span material science, artificial intelligence, logistics, cybersecurity, health, and power grid management.
“The 256 physical qubits system located in Miami will enable our team to run complex computational workflows,” said FIU Senior Vice President for Research and Economic Development Andres G. Gil. “They will also train the skilled workforce needed to support Florida’s growing quantum industry by developing new curricula, degree programs, and certificates in quantum computing and collaborating closely with industry partners across South Florida and beyond.”
About IonQ
IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) is the world’s leading quantum platform and foundry – delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the Superion, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems. Earlier systems have helped customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, AstraZeneca, and NVIDIA achieve a 20x performance increase over previous quantum solutions and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.
About Florida International University
Florida International University is a Top 50, preeminent public research university with 55,000 students from all 50 states and more than 140 countries, as well as an alumni network of more than 340,000. Located in the global city of Miami, the university offers more than 200 degree programs at the undergraduate, graduate and professional levels, including medicine and law. FIU faculty are leaders in their fields and include National Academy members, Fulbright Scholars, and MacArthur Genius Fellows. A Carnegie R1 institution, FIU drives impactful research in environmental resilience, health, and technology and innovation. Home to the Wall of Wind and Institute of Environment, FIU stands at the forefront of discovery and innovation. With a focus on student success, economic mobility and community engagement, FIU is redefining what it means to be a public research university.
New results show how purpose-built AI could help quantum computer manufacturers reach fault tolerance sooner
ULM, Germany, Sept. 24, 2026 — QC Design today published “Over 10x reduction in logical error rates with Meridian,” a white paper showing that Meridian, its purpose-built AI system for fault-tolerant quantum computing design, achieved lower logical error rates than published methods and general-purpose AI agents across its entire suite of over 100 fault-tolerance design tasks. Logical error rate measures how often protected quantum information fails.
A quantum computer’s architecture determines its hardware needs and runtime. Better choices can save years of development and millions in capital expenditure. Finding the best architectures requires expertise spanning computer science, quantum error correction, device physics and engineering. Today, only a small number of people have this kind of expertise.
Meridian expands what quantum hardware teams can explore. Its specialized AI scientists combine frontier models, human-curated knowledge and validation tools from Plaquette, QC Design’s quantum design-automation platform. Plaquette serves as an accurate world model, testing candidates under realistic hardware imperfections so Meridian can distinguish genuine improvements from designs that score well for the wrong reasons.
“Every quantum manufacturer we meet is working on designing the best architecture for its hardware,” said Dr. Ish Dhand, co-founder and CEO of QC Design. According to co-founder Prof. Martin Plenio, “Meridian combines AI-driven exploration with the modeling and validation needed to solve that design problem. It raises the ceiling of what a hardware team can design and thus build.”
The white paper evaluates one part of architecture design: the circuits that detect errors in protected quantum information. The 100+ task suite spans 10 error-correction code families, varied hardware layouts and error models representing the major quantum computing platforms.
Meridian outperformed established methods from the scientific literature, achieving a median reduction of over 10x in logical error rates across the evaluation suite. For each task, QC Design compared Meridian with the best-performing circuit produced by five leading published algorithms. Compared with a general-purpose agent based on OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra, Meridian achieved a median reduction in logical error rate of over 40%, with improvements reaching 98.4%, equivalent to an approximately 63x lower logical error.
QC Design believes the approach behind Meridian could apply beyond quantum computing. Many scientific problems require both the ability to generate candidate solutions and the expertise to judge whether they work. Meridian is an early example of an AI system that brings these capabilities together, helping researchers investigate promising solutions that might otherwise go unexplored.
QC Design is a quantum computing AI company. Its flagship AI system, Meridian, is purpose-built for fault-tolerant quantum computing design. Meridian models a device’s errors, explores complete architectures and validates the designs it proposes, with hardware modeling and validation through an accurate world model Plaquette, QC Design’s quantum design-automation platform.
Nullspace ES Supports First Experimental Demonstration of Standing-Wave EIT Cooling for Trapped Ions
HUNTSVILLE, Ala., Sept. 24, 2026 — Nullspace, a leading provider of advanced electromagnetic simulation software, has announced that researchers at Cornell University, led by Professor Karan Mehta, used Nullspace ES to support the first experimental demonstration of standing-wave electromagnetically-induced-transparency (EIT) cooling for trapped ions, building on theoretical predictions dating back to 1992.
Layout of the trap zone used along with the freespace and integrated optical waveguide and grating elements at the indicated wavelengths, B-field orientation, top metal, and ITO features.
Using Nullspace ES to simulate the electrostatic fields of a complex chip-scale ion trap, researchers in Cornell University’s Mehta Group calculated the baseline voltage sets used to control ions throughout the experiment. The resulting experiment demonstrated a new approach to trapped-ion cooling that achieved higher cooling rates, addressed a broader range of modes, and reached lower final phonon occupation numbers than the conventional running-wave approach.
Simulating the Electrostatics Behind Trapped-Ion Control
Trapped-ion quantum computing depends on the ability to manipulate individual ions with extreme precision. As more optical and electrical functionality is added to traps, the simulations supporting these experiments must account for increasingly complex geometries while keeping up with the pace of research.
Nullspace ES simulated the electrostatic fields generated by the Mehta Group’s chip surface electrodes, providing the baseline voltage calculations the researchers used for axial confinement, radial mode rotation, and sub-micron ion positioning.
“As quantum hardware grows more complex, researchers are under pressure to iterate at a faster pace,” said Masha Petrova, CEO of Nullspace. “Cornell’s work demonstrates why simulation must advance alongside hardware, if not ahead of it. When ions need to be controlled at this level of precision within increasingly sophisticated systems, the simulation tools researchers rely on cannot become the bottleneck.”
Building a Faster Path From Chip Design to Experimentation
Prior to using Nullspace ES, the Mehta Group used COMSOL and a different Python-based toolkit for electrostatic simulation. COMSOL’s comprehensive physics modeling required more computation time, while the toolkit produced an analytical solution that did not capture all the physical features required for the experiment’s level of precision.
Nullspace ES enabled the group to combine high-fidelity simulation with the faster iteration required for this kind of research. The Mehta Group integrated Nullspace ES into its broader design workflow to create an automated pipeline from chip design to experimentally usable voltage sets.
“Nullspace ES has proven highly valuable in allowing us to carry out accurate trap simulations efficiently, which is essential to effective design and simulation of devices at the precision important for these kinds of experiments,” said Cornell Professor Karan Mehta, principal investigator of the study.
Enabling Faster, Broader Trapped-Ion Cooling
The Cornell experiment demonstrated an approach that cooled faster across a broader range of motional modes while reaching lower final phonon numbers than the conventional running-wave approach. For trapped-ion quantum computing, the results represent a step toward faster and more scalable quantum systems, while demonstrating how advanced electrostatic simulation can support increasingly complex chip-scale architectures. Read more about how the Mehta Group used Nullspace ES in the full case study here.
About Nullspace
Nullspace is redefining electromagnetic simulation for the next generation of mission-critical engineering. The company develops full-fidelity, high-speed simulation software purpose-built for RF systems and quantum computing. Built on over a decade of defense-validated technology, its solvers deliver breakthrough performance, enabling engineers to model larger, more complex designs than ever before without sacrificing accuracy. Because Nullspace is Python-native, AI agents can run it end to end: customers can orchestrate complex optimization workflows with the LLM of their choice, on their own infrastructure. Nullspace solutions power innovation in aerospace, defense, 5G, spectrum management, and emerging quantum architectures. For more information, visit www.nullspaceinc.com.
Taraneh and Romina Rahimi were charged with ‘waging war against God’ after joining protests against Tehran regime
The family of 21-year-old twins who have been sentenced respectively to death and decades in jail for protesting against the Iranian regime have appealed to the United Nations for help.
A formal “submission of information” relating to the case of Taraneh and Romina Rahimi has been submitted by British human right lawyers on their family’s behalf.
Sqale reaches key 2026 roadmap milestone as Infleqtion builds toward 100 logical qubits and develops quantum applications with customers
LOUISVILLE, Colo., Sept. 24, 2026 — Infleqtion today announced it has achieved 30 entangled logical qubits using just 80 physical qubits on its Sqale quantum computing platform, delivering a key milestone on its 2026 roadmap. This achievement makes Infleqtion the first neutral-atom quantum computing company to reach 30 logical qubits on a commercial system. The breakthrough combines hardware and software co-design with an AI-assisted discovery that halves the physical gates needed for a key logical operation. By entangling 30 logical qubits in a single, coherent quantum state, Infleqtion has validated the core architecture of its Sqale hardware and Superstaq software, on its roadmap to deliver 100 logical qubits by 2028.
“Getting 30 logical qubits to work together is hard, and our team has done it,” said Matt Kinsella, CEO of Infleqtion. “Co-design between our hardware and software enabled this demonstration with just 80 physical qubits. We’re moving quickly toward our target of 100 logical qubits in 2028, and we’re already developing applications with customers. The goal is to give them a quantum computer that can take on problems they can’t solve today.”
Unlike fragile physical qubits, which suffer rapid calculation decay from environmental noise, logical qubits group multiple physical qubits together using software protocols to ensure computational stability and accuracy. Infleqtion’s achievement of 30 logical qubits was experimentally confirmed by a signal that is approximately 1000x stronger than underlying noise.
Infleqtion has three customers for logical qubit circuits on the Sqale platform. Among them is the Wellcome Leap Quantum for Bio (Q4Bio) program, where Infleqtion pioneered and demonstrated on hardware a quantum neural network approach with training on GPU and inference on QPU for biomarker discovery. That work, first demonstrated at 12 logical qubits, extends directly into today’s result.
Thirty Logical Qubits
In quantum computing, scaling logical qubit counts is only half the battle; the true threshold of computational power is the ability to entangle those logical qubits across a coherent circuit. With this announcement, Infleqtion has successfully executed a highly complex circuit that entangles all 30 logical qubits into a single, unified quantum state, using a novel logical operation that Infleqtion discovered using GPT 5.6 Sol. Altogether, Infleqtion’s experiment executes approximately 1,000 physical operations, or 1 KiloQuOp—a critical transition from fragile academic experiments to robust, commercially viable systems, proving that neutral-atom technology is the fastest path to fault tolerance.
A full technical write-up from Infleqtion CTO Pranav Gokhale, including the circuit, the AI-discovered gate identity and the loss correction results, is available on the Infleqtion blog.
The breakthrough is powered by Infleqtion’s Sqale QPU hardware and Superstaq quantum software platform, which unite individual qubit-addressing capabilities with dynamically reconfigurable atom arrays. This unique combination maintains all-to-all connectivity while minimizing the typical pitfalls of atom movement, including error accumulation, atom loss, and runtime delays.
“We’re using the dynamic reconfigurability of Sqale’s neutral-atom architecture to move faster toward quantum utility,” said Pranav Gokhale, Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of Computing at Infleqtion. “A core accelerant for our work was the AI-assisted discovery of a new entangling operation between logical qubits that performs a key operation with half as many physical gates as was previously known. Every gate can introduce an error, so doing the same work with fewer gates matters as we build toward longer computations.”
The Road to 1,000 Logical Qubits by 2030
Achieving 30 fully entangled logical qubits in a single, coherent quantum state is a definitive execution moment for Infleqtion, validating the commercial readiness of its Sqale architecture and delivering on its multi-year roadmap. By utilizing individual qubit addressing and reconfigurable atom arrays to minimize error and atom loss, Infleqtion remains firmly on track to deliver 100 logical qubits in 2028 and 1,000 by 2030.
Through these technical breakthroughs, Infleqtion continues to lead the industry in transitioning quantum technology out of academic laboratories and into commercial enterprise, defense, energy and healthcare industries.
Infleqtion, Inc. (NYSE: INFQ) is a global leader in quantum technology, delivering neutral-atom solutions for quantum computing, networking, sensing, and security. With a product portfolio spanning quantum computers, quantum optical clocks, RF receivers, and inertial sensors, Infleqtion’s full-stack approach combines high-performance hardware with the company’s proprietary Superstaq quantum computing software platform. Infleqtion’s systems are already in use by the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, the U.K. government, and in multiple collaborations with NVIDIA. Infleqtion, in collaboration with NVIDIA, published the world’s first demonstration of a materials science application using logical qubits. With operations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, Infleqtion meets the demands of government and commercial customers across the space, defense, energy, finance and telecommunications sectors.
A hiker fell between 800 and 1,000 feet to his death over the weekend, after going over the side of a switchback trail on Washington state's Sauk Mountain.
Taylor Swift announced her new single "Patient Zero" earlier this week, saying she has been "impatiently waiting" to announce that it will be out on Friday.
Paris public prosecutor opens investigation into online harassment of Riner, one of France’s most popular sportspeople
Paris’s public prosecutor has opened an investigation into the racist abuse and online harassment of the French judo star Teddy Riner after he expressed concern about the rise of the far right.
Riner, who has often been voted France’s most popular sportsperson and is one of the most successful judo competitors of all time, told a TV sports show this month that he felt “anxiety” about the rise of the far right in France. Numerous racist insults and hate messages were subsequently directed at him online, the prosecutor’s office said.
Senators’ report says taxpayers face higher bills after ‘bargain’ between president and major polluters
The fossil fuel industry secured an estimated $190bn in tax breaks and subsidies over the next decade after responding to Donald Trump’s pre-election call for major campaign donations, leaving American taxpayers to shoulder higher bills and public health costs associated with pollution, according to a new report.
Released on Thursday by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, ranking member of the Senate environment and public works committee, and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, the report details what the senators describe as the fossil fuel industry’s expansive influence over the Trump administration.
Hitler was an artist in Vienna before first world war
Horse also has full sister called New Order
The US Jockey Club has ordered a racehorse to be renamed after ruling the animal’s name was a reference to Adolf Hitler.
In a story first reported by Horse Racing Nation, Austrian Painter won its debut race at the Horseshoe Indianapolis track on Monday. However, the Jockey Club received a complaint about the name and began an investigation. Hitler, who was born in Austria, was a professional artist in Vienna before the first world war. People often use the term “Austrian Painter” online to discuss Hitler without naming him in order to avoid content moderation filters.
At Meta Connect, I tried out the AI agent, hearing enhancement and other features on all the new glasses. I was also disappointed at how little’s been done on the privacy front.
Chore jackets and loose-fit trousers nod to ‘nonconformist glamour’ of Amelia Earhart and other pioneers
The Max Mara catwalk at Milan fashion week had well-cut coats, sturdy block-heeled boots, crisp white shirts and capacious suede handbags. What it quite deliberately did not have was shock value. “I hope everyone watching this show can recognise something of themselves in what they see,” said Ian Griffiths, the British designer who has been at this Italian house since 1987. “I think that’s really important. Without being critical of other brands or designers, so much of fashion alienates people and makes them feel that they aren’t good enough or thin enough or young enough to wear what’s being represented.”
Trousers were pleated and roomy, skirts long enough to be elegant but not long enough to trip you up. In shades of sand and chalk, grey and black, every piece was designed to work with everything else, and to blend into an existing wardrobe. The styling gestures – a popped collar here, a knotted belt there – stopped short of gimmick. The models could have walked off the runway and on to the Milan street – which, Griffiths said backstage, was the point. “The catwalk show is only the prelude to what to me is the real presentation, which is when I see women walking down the street in my clothes.”
A global sell-off in government bonds has put fresh upward pressure on UK borrowing costs, before a tough budget for John Healey next month.
The yield – effectively the interest rate – on 10-year UK bonds, known as gilts, had risen to 5.38% by mid-morning on Thursday, approaching the 19-year high set last week.
US crafters are looking to build a communal network to replace the company after it was bankrupted by private equity investors in 2025
To its dedicated fans, JoAnn Fabrics wasn’t just a fabric store. It was a vital hub for small businesses – wedding dress makers, upholsters, milliners and rug repairers. It taught generations to make, fix and craft. A visit sparked new ideas in a way that shopping online just can’t replicate.
Guardian investigation: 7-Eleven and Circle K stores often fail to honor advertised prices – charging more at pump and register for gas, snacks, and other items
Marco Cruz pulled off a four-lane road into the parking lot of a Circle K convenience store in McAllen, Texas, 12 miles north of the US-Mexico border. It was 1.20am on a mild November night in 2025, and Cruz was looking for a bedtime snack after a day of visiting family and friends. He grabbed a pack of beef and jalapeño cheese sticks from the shelf, where they were priced at $3.99. At the counter, though, they rang up at $4.19.
Cruz asked the cashier to charge him the lower shelf price. The employee refused, he said, and threatened to call the police when Cruz grew more insistent. “All I’m asking you is honor the price,” Cruz told the attendant before leaving the store and, later, filing a complaint with the Texas attorney general.
Why Should Delaware Care? The first comprehensive property reassessment in decades reset how Delaware’s tax burden is divided among property owners. While many expected that it would bring new relief to some of the state’s lowest income residents, it has actually raised their tax burdens. A new complaint seeks to rectify the property assessments that underpin those tax bills.
A city councilwoman who represents one of the most economically disadvantaged areas of Wilmington has filed a complaint with New Castle County, challenging the property valuations reached during the recent reassessments and seeking actions to rectify documented inequalities.
Christian Willauer, who represents the city’s Hilltop communities that were disproportionately impacted by rising property assessments, is eyeing a novel legislative strategy to force the county to recognize alleged errors in the work completed by contractor Tyler Technologies and to fix assessments in three election districts.
Her complaint, which builds upon an expansive project on the statewide reassessment published by Spotlight Delaware earlier this year, is based upon reviews of more than 400 property sales that were completed during Tyler Technologies’ assessment period in 2023 and 2024.
That review found that properties in three western city election districts were commonly assessed for more than their sale values during the reassessment study period, while properties in two Greenville-area districts were commonly assessed for less.
A property’s assessed value should meet “fair market value,” or roughly what an owner should have been able to sell the property for at the time of the assessment. The examples identified by Willauer bring into question whether the assessment data would meet that standard.
“We’re here to make sure that people can hold on to their homes, people can hold on to their businesses and people continue to be part of Wilmington and New Castle County,” the councilwoman said during a Wednesday press conference announcing the complaint. “We’re calling on New Castle County to make sure that these property tax assessments in the City of Wilmington are fair and correct.”
The questionable nature of assessments in communities like Hilltop has not been a secret.
Tyler Technologies, the assessment company hired by each of the three counties to complete reassessments statewide, wrote in its final report that the results in several Wilmington communities did not meet industry standards.
It blamed two potential reasons for those shortcomings: that it did not have enough sample sales data for unimproved properties, and it could not see inside homes to judge the condition of the properties.
Therefore, the homes in Hilltop and other impacted communities were assessed against comparable sales that primarily featured renovated homes being sold by flippers.
Spotlight Delaware’s statewide analysis found the median assessment in Hilltop sits north of $180,000, but recent sales of unimproved properties have fallen far under their assessed values.
Willauer, who cited Spotlight’s database as the impetus for her deeper dive research, pulled assessment data for all homes sold in Wilmington’s Hilltop, Tilton and West Center City election districts and compared them to two districts near Greenville: Hoopes Reservoir and Barley Mill.
Hilltop is a working-class neighborhood of predominantly Black and brown families in Wilmington, but it’s also the area that saw the largest assessment jump anywhere in New Castle County, according to an analysis of reassessment data. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
The review found that of the properties sold in Hilltop, 71% of assessed values were more than 110% of their sale values — essentially inflating the tax bills owed by the property owners.
In the nearby Tilton and West Center City communities, more than 60% of properties were above that threshold.
But the Greenville-area districts saw just 23% and 9% of properties exceed 110% of their sale values.
Conversely, those same Greenville-area districts saw 29% and 55% of properties assessed for less than 90% of their sale values. In the city districts, none saw more than 18% of homes assessed at that lower level.
Alethea Smith-Tucker, a West Center City resident who was among a handful of residents in the affected districts who spoke Wednesday about the impact of the reassessments, said that the higher assessments have overburdened her and her neighbors.
“This is an opportunity to get the process right,” she said.
West Center City resident Alethea Smith-Tucker said that it was time for New Castle County to fix the mistakes that it made in the reassessment; mistakes that will linger for several more years until the next assessment. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
How is the complaint lodged?
Willauer has cited a century-old administrative statute in state code that allows for any tax-paying property owner to “make a complaint to a board of assessment that the real estate in any election or representative district, as compared with other such districts, is not assessed in a fair and equitable manner.”
It directs the board to send out a representative to the affected district to reinspect properties “to equalize and make perfect the assessments.”
Whether that statute — whose origin is unclear but dates back to at least 1919 — still carries the full weight of law or has been amended over the intervening generations is not immediately clear.
For one, the county no longer uses a “board of assessment,” but has transferred the year-to-year work of assessments to the New Castle County Office of Finance, which has an assessment office.
After Willauer submitted her report and a letter lodging the complaint to New Castle County, a county spokesperson told Spotlight Delaware that, “We take concerns about the fairness and accuracy of property assessment seriously. We will review the letter with our county law department and determine the legal framework that may apply.”
Should the complaint not lead to a reassessment of the communities, Willauer said that she would work with residents to explore any further actions.
“My hope is that the county is going to step up to the plate and get this done … I’m working on this because I got calls from residents about their concerns. This is money that people do not have and should not owe,” she added.
Tyler Technologies’ assessment of property largely relied on handful of flipped properties that command much higher values than an average, unimproved home in the community. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
How could reassessment work?
Willauer’s report also refutes the claim by Tyler Technologies that it could not differentiate between renovated and unrenovated properties in the Wilmington districts.
By using real estate listings and their associated photos, she divided properties between renovated and unrenovated, the latter of which ranged in median sale prices from $55,000 to $110,000, depending on the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. Median renovated home prices ranged from $112,000 to $260,000.
“It makes sense that homes that have $20,000, $40,000 or even $100,000 worth of renovations sell for a higher price than an unrenovated house, but it makes no sense to assess a home that has not been renovated for the same value as a home that has been renovated,” she said.
With relevant property characteristics, such as bedroom and bathroom counts, along with access to the city’s permitting database, where information on structural, electrical and plumbing work would be held, Willauer argued that assessors have all the information they need to improve property assessments.
“I think they could do it by the end of next week, but we might have to wait a little bit longer,” she opined. “We’re going to keep pushing them and encouraging them, and I think that’s where we’re going to have to work together to make sure that New Castle County has that sense of urgency that I know every taxpayer in these neighborhoods has.”
A Phoenix suburb ditched a plan to send recycled water from toilets and other sources directly to residents' taps after political candidates made unproven claims that the water is contaminated "poop water."
Role for Anant Ambani, son of India’s richest person, who also runs a controversial mega-zoo, met with incredulity
Newcastle University is facing a backlash from conservationists over the appointment of the heir to an Indian oil and gas fortune who runs a controversial mega-zoo as a professor of sustainability.
The university announced that Anant Ambani had been given a professorship of practice for “his work in conservation, biodiversity protection, animal welfare and environmental stewardship” and “significant contributions to advancing a more sustainable future”.
The leaders of the world’s two superpowers are meeting in the US on Thursday for Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the US in more than a decade. The last time the Chinese president was hosted in Washington (by Barack Obama in 2015), the issues on the agenda included cybercrime, technology, the climate crisis and human rights. The star of the day was Ne-Yo, who serenaded Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, with Peng reportedly singing along at the state dinner.
This time, Xi is meeting Donald Trump, who has overhauled the world order and recalibrated the US-China relationship. Trump is contending with a China that is in a much stronger position than it was 10 years ago. Here are five things to look out for at the US-China summit.
Snapdragon X2 Series processors feature a neural processing unit (NPU) delivering 80 trillion operations per second and allowing advanced AI features to run locally. And Snapdragon X2 Series "is expanding to Linux," Qualcomm announced today, calling it one of their most-requested capabilities:
Qualcomm Technologies is a top contributor to Linux development at a kernel level, and now we're embracing support for Snapdragon X2 Series as a platform directly. We're upstreaming core drivers for Snapdragon X2 Series — including the Hexagon NPU and Adreno GPU — to open the door to developers and partners. We are starting with support for two operating systems based on Linux...
- Debian: We're kicking off with Debian by the end of this year, one of the most influential Linux distributions and the foundation behind many of the distros people use every day.
- Ubuntu: Qualcomm Technologies has partnered with Canonical to bring Ubuntu, the world's most widely used Linux distro, to the platform with Snapdragon X2 Series certification targeted for the first half of 2027.
...and this is just the beginning. Our partners HP, ASUS and HUMAIN are planning Linux support in the first of 2027, so that their devices deliver the incredible experience users expect with Snapdragon X2 Series in a new operating system.
Qualcomm's developer blog called it "a significant step forward" in Qualcomm's commitment to a developer-first approach, and "to the open-source community."
"For developers, the important part is simple: more core hardware features are being reviewed and merged, so that laptops with Linux on Snapdragon X2 Series will be easier to build, test, and debug..."
The enablement work completed so far has been validated on a Debian 13-based ("Trixie") user space and a custom kernel, so developers should treat this as the current reference environment while support continues to mature... Linux support for laptops with Snapdragon X2 Series is rolling out in stages, starting with the core pieces developers need before they can do production-level work on their device... For developers who want to try it today, the call to action is straightforward: start with Snapdragon X2 Series hardware, review the latest recipes to build Qualcomm Linux Debian Images, build available upstream sources the Debian OS image and test the peripherals that matter to you, such as graphics, AI inference, device I/O, or basic application bring-up. Early testing helps identify the gaps that matter most before support becomes broader and ready for production-level workloads...
You do not have to wait for everything to be fully finished before getting hands-on. If you are comfortable working from upstream sources you can start evaluating Snapdragon X2 hardware today... Check out the step-by-step instructions, including the full build flow and deployment guidance for Snapdragon X2 Series Linux software.
Put simply, this effort is less about supporting specific Linux distributions and more about empowering the developers who make Linux available on new hardware. This Developer Preview targets distribution maintainers, toolchain developers, kernel contributors, and hardware enablement engineers. It provides the upstream building blocks, including kernel patches, drivers, and reference device trees, needed to enable Snapdragon X2 Series support in their own projects and distributions. For end users looking for a turnkey "install and go" experience, that will come later as distributions adopt what lands upstream. We're encouraging the community to build on this work and help shape what comes next.
The blog post notes that in the initial enablement stage, "Qualcomm Linux supports systemd-boot as the Universal extensible firmware interface (UEFI) boot manager to load and boot the Linux kernel."
Hands-on demos were given at the Snapdragon Summit in Maui of Linux running on Snapdragon X2 Series hardware, which the developer's blog calls "a practical look at what works today and where Snapdragon X2 Series Linux support is headed."
Theatrical rollout across 56 territories planned for documentary about Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza before film will stream on Guardian website
NAZA, the award-winning documentary from Israeli film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is set to be released in cinemas inmore than 50 countries before a digital global release on theguardian.com.
The film, which the Guardian produced, premiered at the Venice film festival earlier this month, where it was met with a 25-minute standing ovation – a festival record. The documentary went on to win the special jury prize.
Conservatives long promoted a politics of sexual prohibition. Now such morals have been shed in favor of male domination
Under Kash Patel, the FBI will now hire you even if you have a history of hiring prostitutes, or of having sex with animals. The rightwing Maha influencer Alex Clark had a guest on to her talk show to discuss the idea that wives should provide sex for their husbands on demand. A new ad for a sports gambling website is being hailed as a victory for the political right, because it features a nude Sydney Sweeney clutching footballs to her breasts. The Tate brothers, who encourage their male followers to pursue compulsive sexual conquest and who have been accused of sex trafficking and violence in the operation of their online cam porn business, have reportedly been friendly with members of Trump’s circle. A dizzying array of elites on both sides of the aisle – conservatives very much included – seem to have been socializing with a pedophile financier, and were so unfazed by his constant coterie of underaged girl companions that one begins to wonder whether they were habituated to such scenes. A prominent conservative writer, best known for her opposition to gender transition care for children, has announced a new book claiming to tackle the problem of young women who are supposedly unwilling to have enough sex. And the women of the president’s members club, Mar-A-Lago, are so well known for their dramatic facelifts, and their lips so stuffed with filler that they cannot quite close their mouths, that their faces are now a shorthand in the world of plastic surgery.
Raunch, vulgarity, a boorish entitlement to women’s sexual service, and the aesthetics – and, indeed, the business – of pornography are being embraced by the right.
Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal raise concerns in new letter about officials’ handling of Gautam Adani case
The Trump administration is facing growing questions over its decision to abandon a fraud and bribery case against the Indian billionaire Gautam Adani after he promised to invest $10bn in the US.
For the second time this year, two Democratic senators have demanded attorney general Todd Blanche answer questions about the US Department of Justice department’s handling of the case – and raised concerns over its judgment under Donald Trump.
Why Should Delaware Care? Since 2008, artificial entities such as corporations, limited liability companies and family trusts have been eligible to cast a ballot in Fenwick Island’s municipal elections. The American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware claims that allowance detracts from the power of human residents’ votes. Now, the Delaware Supreme Court may decide whether those voting rules will stand.
A pending legal challenge to whether artificial entities like family trusts and limited liability companies (LLCs) can vote in Fenwick Island’s municipal elections now awaits a ruling from the full Delaware Supreme Court.
During arguments heard on Wednesday morning in Dover, one Delaware Supreme Court justice questioned whether some property owners in the coastal resort town might actually be the ones disenfranchised by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Delaware’s attempts to disallow artificial entities from casting ballots in local elections.
But ACLU attorney Andrew Bernstein argued in court Wednesday that artificial entities like corporations, LLCs and family trusts do not have the same natural rights — such as the right to vote — that human residents do.
By allowing entities a vote in Fenwick’s local annual elections, the total number of votes increases. In turn, that larger voting pool decreases the impact of a regular person’s vote, the ACLU argued.
“Here, Fenwick Island … changed the denominator,” he said.
The ACLU is appealing their case to the state Supreme Court, after a Delaware Superior Court judge ruled that non-human entities are allowed to vote in Fenwick’s local elections.
At the heart of the case is a question about Delawareans’ fundamental rights, said ACLU Executive Director Mike Brickner.
“What other fundamental rights could artificial entities get in the future?” he asked after arguments ended, noting that he believes the state’s highest court needs to weigh in on whether artificial entities have the right to vote in the First State.
Fenwick Island Mayor Natalie Magdeburger said revoking the ability of artificial entities to vote would work in the opposite way by not allowing people who own property through family trusts, for example, to vote for local rules or representatives. The majority of artificial entities currently eligible to vote in Fenwick are properties held in trusts, Magdeburger explained, not traditional corporations.
To her, what’s at stake is Fenwick Island’s identity as a multi-generational beach town.
“We have a lot of folks who have either inherited property or are planning their own end of life through trusts,” she said, noting that those people would no longer be able to vote if Fenwick’s election rules are deemed unconstitutional. “To me, that’s the real sad part about this argument.”
Solutions on deck
The case focuses on a 2008 amendment to Fenwick’s charter, which was approved by the Delaware General Assembly and co-sponsored by state Sen. Gerald Hocker (R-Ocean View).
The issue does not relate to state or federal elections.
Fenwick’s charter allows for artificial entities like LLCs and trusts to cast ballots in municipal elections through a representative power of attorney. Ballots are limited to one vote per person, or one vote per entity. For example, one Fenwick resident cannot vote on behalf of themselves and then again on behalf of their family trust that owns another vacation house.
It is one of five municipalities in the state that offer such extended voting rights.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers raising similar concerns about entities voting in local elections have already taken matters into their own hands.
The first leg of a state constitutional amendment — which requires a two-thirds supermajority approval of two consecutive terms of the Delaware General Assembly — that would ban artificial entities from voting in any Delaware elections has already passed.
“There’s no election between now and June 30,” said Chief Justice C.J. Seitz, questioning the urgency of ACLU’s pending appeal. “Why shouldn’t we stay this case?”
The defense team, led by Luke Mette of Brockstedt Mandalas Federico, asked the same, noting the solution could come from lawmakers after they return to Legislative Hall in January.
“This court should not be the lab for experimenting with new theories of vote dilution,” Mette said, noting that cases about conflicts between election rules and constitutional laws are usually linked to racial discrimination, gerrymandering or even bribery schemes.
But Bernstein, with the ACLU, said there is no guarantee state lawmakers will vote before Fenwick’s next election.
“It is not up to the General Assembly whether natural persons get full enjoyment of their constitutional rights,” Bernstein said. “This is not an academic or political question. It is a question of fundamental rights.”
Proving the right to represent
The ACLU also must convince the justices they have standing — a legal term for whether someone has enough at stake to file a lawsuit — in the first place. No specific Fenwick resident is named as a plaintiff in the complaint.
The ACLU cited potential fears of “reprisal or stigma” for locals who might publicly put their names on the complaint. He pointed to unnamed ACLU members, donors and supporters living in Fenwick as the Delawareans harmed by diluted voting power.
He said the ACLU’s stake in the claims is more “associational” through those members.
Magdeburger said in a phone interview after the hearing that there are just over 200 artificial entities in the town that are able to vote. Of those, she estimated that fewer than three dozen are corporations or LLCs. Of those, only about 10 are businesses in the business district. Artificial entities account for nearly a quarter of around 900 registered voters.
“Not one Fenwick Island resident made this complaint,” she said. “We don’t even have enough people to run in our elections.”
Last year’s election was canceled because there were no contested seats. The next election could be held as soon as August 2027.
“At the end of the day, all of their fears make no sense,” Magdeburger said, estimating that 80 percent of the town is residential. Fenwick’s charter actually prohibits a boardwalk from being built there, she said.
The justices are expected to issue a ruling within 90 days. It is possible they could also opt to stay the case through June 30, to allow the legislature time to vote on the pending constitutional amendment.
Weekend Spotlight is a round-up of the five best events to check out in Delaware over the coming weekend, curated by Arts + Culture Editor Cannon Taylor. This edition covers Sept. 25-27, 2026. What should be on our radar for future editions? Let us know!
Hot Jams
Music festival fundraises for Center for the Creative Arts
Saturday, Sept. 26. Center for the Creative Arts. 410 Upper Snuff Mill Road, Hockessin. 5-10:40 p.m. Tickets: $15, free for kids 12 and under.
If the annual Hot Jam Music Festival proves anything, it’s that local bands sure know how to name themselves. This year’s festival features many acts, including self-described emo girl alexisbaldwin.mp3; Jimmy Eat World’s post-punk brother, Joe Eats the Sun; and the debut of the mysteriously-named Jenna L. and the Denizens of Scary Tales.
Ticket proceeds will help ensure the Center for the Creative Arts can continue its mission of providing programming and scholarships for local artists.
The Milton Theatre is staging “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” Sept. 26 through Oct. 3. | PHOTO COURTESY OF THE MILTON THEATRE
Saturday, Sept. 26 through Oct. 11. The Milton Theatre. 110 Union St., Milton. Times vary. Tickets: $44-53.
What better way to kickstart the spooky season than to revive a character from the most demented recesses of Victorian fiction? The Milton Theatre is staging 17 productions of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” over the next month, featuring a blood-splattered set and live orchestrations of Stephen Sondheim’s haunting score.
Two words of advice: Don’t eat the pies, and don’t get a haircut — the barber may take a little more off the top than you bargained for.
The Delaware Taco Festival returns for its 10th anniversary Sept. 26-27. | PHOTO COURTESY OF DELAWARE TACO FESTIVAL
Saturday, Sept. 26 and Sunday, Sept. 27. Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park. 80 Rosa Parks Drive, Wilmington. 1-7 p.m. Tickets: $14-20, free for kids 12 and under.
The 10th annual Delaware Taco Festival is bringing the pain — well, at least for the luchadores and the brave souls competing in the hot chili pepper eating contest. For most attendees, the festival should be a more pleasant experience as they wander through Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park munching on tacos and sipping on margaritas.
There will be over 30 food vendors offering $4 tacos, along with carnival games, piñatas, live music and more.
The Air Mobility Command Museum is celebrating its 40th anniversary with special programming Sept. 26-27. | PHOTO COURTESY OF AIR MOBILITY COMMAND MUSEUM
Saturday, Sept. 26 and Sunday, Sept. 27. Air Mobility Command Museum. 1301 Heritage Road, Dover. 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Free.
Plane nerds, rejoice: You’ll have full access to many of the over 35 aircraft on display at the Air Mobility Command Museum during the organization’s 40th anniversary bash. The museum’s planes include some that flew during D-Day operations and the Berlin Airlift.
Tour guides — many of them Air Force veterans — will bring these mechanical beasts to life with both personal and historical stories. Not immersive enough for you? Give the flight simulator a try and see if you have what it takes to be an Air Force pilot.
Fall in love with Delaware during First State Fun Day
Spotlight Delaware’s First State Fun Day offers free admission and special programming at attractions statewide on Sept. 26. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE GRAPHIC BY ELSA KEGELMAN
Saturday, Sept. 26. Multiple locations statewide. Times vary. Free.
Spotlight Delaware’s First State Fun Day is an opportunity to cross some peculiar items off your bucket list. What other opportunity are you going to get to take your toddler to a rave at New Castle Library, then introduce them to the half-fish, half-monkey “merman” at the Zwaandael Museum?
If that’s not your speed, take in the sunset at the Prime Hook Wildlife Refuge, learn some history at the Mitchell Center for African American Heritage or gorge yourself on oysters at Matt’s Fish Camp Lewes.
With over 15 statewide attractions opening their doors for free and offering special programming, First State Fun Day is set to be a “Choose Your Own Adventure” of Delaware’s best cultural offerings.
Why Should Delaware Care? A series of gun regulations passed by the Delaware General Assembly in recent years have faced legal challenges from Second Amendment advocates. In two recent rulings, courts offered mixed decisions on gun laws, raising uncertainty for stakeholders as to how the opinions can be interpreted with other existing state laws and additional pending federal decisions, such as New Jersey’s assault weapons ban.
Two recent court rulings delivered opposing opinions on Delaware gun laws that have been litigated for years.
The court decisions — one declaring portions of a Delaware law that criminalizes self-assembled “ghost” guns unconstitutional, and another restricting the age at which Delawareans can independently purchase and operate a gun — have further divided advocacy groups and raised questions about the future implementation of gun laws in the state.
A spokesperson for Attorney General Kathy Jennings, who was the defendant in both cases, said the rulings do not change the state’s policy of preventing gun violence, while also “upholding the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens to own and possess firearms for self-defense, hunting and recreation.”
But Jeff Hague, president of the Delaware State Sportsmen’s Association, the state’s NRA-affiliate, which was a plaintiff in the age restrictions lawsuit, said the rulings created a “ridiculous and stupid” situation in the midst of an already underway hunting season.
Still, questions remain for both groups as to how the rulings can be reconciled with other recent gun laws and how policy changes spurred by the court cases will be implemented.
A Sept. 10 U.S. District Court opinion found that portions of Delaware’s 2021 ghost gun law, which criminalizes the possession and distribution of firearms without serial numbers, are unconstitutional.
The court argued that the Second Amendment right to self-defense includes allowing individuals to assemble untraceable firearms.
But Gov. Matt Meyer recently signed a bill into law, creating a pathway for individuals with unserialized firearms, or “ghost guns,” to bring them into legal compliance. A move that Hague attributed to political maneuvering meant to blunt the court ruling.
Meanwhile, a Sept. 8 Delaware Supreme Court decision found that lawmakers’ 2022 decision to prohibit 18 to 20 year olds from buying or operating a gun without adult supervision was constitutionally sound.
The decision overturned a Kent County Superior Court ruling that first struck down the law last year.
Further complicating the age restriction question, the General Assembly passed a bill in June — which Gov. Meyer subsequently signed into law — allowing 16 and 17 year olds to hunt without direct adult supervision if they possess a Delaware hunting license.
As a result of the Sept. 8 state Supreme Court decision, 16 and 17 year olds are able to hunt independently in Delaware, while 18 to 20 year olds are not.
Ghost gun laws
The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware upheld some parts of the state’s 2021 ghost gun law but struck down others, arguing there are different constitutional allowances for manufacturing versus distributing unserialized firearms.
The court determined that state law prohibiting “manufacturing or assembling” an unserialized firearm is not legal, because it limits an individual’s constitutional right to self-defense.
At the same time, the court upheld the section of the law prohibiting individuals from “selling or transferring” an untraceable firearm.
Judge Maryellen Noreika, appointed by President Donald Trump, wrote the decision in the case. The lawsuit was originally filed against the state in 2022 by two Delawareans who own unserialized firearms, John Rigby and Alan Knight, and the gun rights advocacy organization the Firearms Policy Coalition.
The ruling does not seem to impact the recently signed House Bill 418, which creates a pathway for individuals with unserialized firearms to get them serialized by a federally licensed dealer.
A spokesperson for the Delaware Attorney General’s office said the department is still “evaluating their options” in terms of appealing the decision.
Gov. Meyer’s office did not respond to requests for comment as to whether they intend to appeal the ruling.
Hague, the sportsmen’s association president, said the district court’s ruling is “hollow” because of HB 418. He described the new law as “shenanigans” by Jennings and state lawmakers to circumvent court rulings and ensure it is still illegal to have an unserialized firearm.
He added that the Firearms Policy Coalition will likely challenge the new serialization pathway in court.
A spokesperson for the Attorney General’s office did not respond to questions about Hague’s claim that Jennings helped introduce the updated ghost gun serialization law to circumvent the court. Spokeswomen for the state House and Senate majority caucuses also said lawmakers in both chambers were not available to comment.
But Traci Murphy, director of the gun violence prevention group Coalition for a Safer Delaware, said her organization anticipated a ruling like this one. She said the organization worked with state lawmakers to write the updated legislation creating a pathway to serialize firearms.
“We saw the writing on the wall on some of how these higher court rulings were going, and we thought, ‘If they’re going to say that our ghost gun law is unconstitutional, we better come up with a constitutional pathway to get these firearms serialized,'” Murphy told Spotlight Delaware.
Questions of age
Separate from ghost guns, the state Supreme Court ruled that lawmakers could legally bar 18 to 20 year olds from purchasing or operating guns without supervision — a reversal of a lower court’s ruling last fall.
Justices argued in a 4-1 decision the state could do so because these individuals have alternative ways, such as purchasing shot guns and muzzle-loading rifles or going through the concealed carry permit process, to access guns and exercise their state constitutional right to self-defense.
Chief Justice C.J. Seitz pointed to the fact that Gavin Birney, one of the plaintiffs in the case, was able to obtain a concealed carry permit in 65 days as a “real-life example” of a work-around to the restrictions under the law.
While some state leaders characterized the ruling as a victory for gun safety, Hague said it amounted to the justices doing “acrobatics, headstands and somersaults to justify the actions they did.”
Still, he said his group does not plan to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court because it is unlikely the court would take it up.
Implementation confusion
The state Supreme Court ruling raises logistical complications with hunting season already underway, as another recently passed state law seemingly contradicts the court-imposed age restrictions.
The Kent County Superior Court first declared the age restrictions on 18 to 20 year olds moot last September, right after the law had gone into effect and just as hunting season began. That means this fall marks the first time the state must fully implement its age restriction rules.
The Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) had already released its 2026-27 Hunting and Trapping Guide before the Sept. 8 court decision. The currently available version of the guide states that 16 to 18 year olds can hunt without direct supervision if they have completed the necessary courses and permissions, and individuals over 18 “may hunt without direct supervision.”
A spokesperson for DNREC said the department is currently “consulting with legal counsel,” and plans to provide updated guidance to hunters based on the new court ruling next week.
At the same time, House Bill 427, which Gov. Meyer signed into law in mid-August, allows 16 and 17 year olds who have completed the necessary training courses and have parental permission to hunt independently.
The state Supreme Court ruling did not address HB 427, which means 16 and 17 year olds are — for now — able to hunt without adult supervision, while 18 to 20 year olds are not.
House Minority Whip Jeff Spiegelman (R-Clayton), who was the primary sponsor of the bill, said the recent ruling has created a “potential enforcement nightmare” with the inconsistency in requirements among the ages.
Spiegelman said he plans to introduce legislation when the General Assembly reconvenes in January that would pass constitutional muster and allow 18 to 20 year olds to hunt unsupervised, too. He declined to say how specifically he would adjust the legislation to be constitutional.
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/.
Why Should Delaware Care? Gov. Matt Meyer has pushed for more solar projects as an environmentally friendly way for the state to generate more energy. But some feel the projects are covering too much farmland and could harm local ecosystems.
The debate over whether solar panels are fit for farmland has reached rural New Castle County.
More than 400 people have signed petitions calling on county officials to stop a proposed solar development on a 60-acre piece of leased farmland in Port Penn, a small, unincorporated village just below the C&D canal.
The project is allowed on the land under the county’s existing zoning rules and will not require a public hearing. New Castle County Councilman Kevin Caneco, who represents the area, hosted a town meeting about the project in July.
About 200 people attended, according to Donna Laws, an area resident who lives next to the land proposed for the project. It was held the night of a tornado warning in the county, and she said no one left when they got the warning.
“They were all up in arms,” Laws said. “Nobody wants it here.”
The backlash to solar projects on farms is not new to Delaware. Kent County lawmakers banned large-scale solar projects in agricultural zones in 2022. Smaller “community solar” projects are an exception.
Some farmers argue that solar projects can make farmland more expensive and also reduce the number of acres available for crops. While the land covered by solar panels could theoretically go back to being farmed after a project lease ends, it can be difficult to restore the health of the soil.
TurningPoint Energy, the company behind the Port Penn project, said in an emailed statement that it will help the state meet its green energy goals.
Gov. Matt Meyer has encouraged similar projects in the past. Earlier this year, he fast-tracked permits for some solar projects. He also signed a bill that guarantees power bill discounts for those who sign up for community solar projects.
Meyer and other solar proponents have said generating more power in-state could help lower the rising energy costs that are leading to high electric bills and increasing ratepayer outcry. The cost to build solar has dropped to about a third of what it was in 2011, and it is also the fastest resource to build.
In 2025, about 8% of Delaware’s total in-state electricity generation came from renewable sources, mostly solar, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
State law calls for that figure to reach 40% by 2035.
Caneco said he will discuss the project, among other topics, at a town hall meeting on Oct. 8 at 6:30 p.m. at the Odessa Fire Hall at 304 Main St. in Odessa.
The opposition
Laws, whose home neighbors the proposed solar field, said she has many concerns about the project, especially its impact on the environment.
The field where the panels would go is not far from Thousand Acre Marsh, a sprawling coastal habitat nestled along the Delaware River and C&D Canal. Since the solar panels would be built on either side of wetlands on the property, the builders will have to make a temporary 20-foot path through sensitive habitats during construction.
Laws worries that power-related infrastructure could increase the risk of fires, among other concerns. The local volunteer fire company has requested the solar company provide additional equipment and training in case of any solar-specific hazards.
Drew Slater, executive director of Energize Delaware, a nonprofit that works with the state to expand renewable and energy-efficient projects, said with the many smaller-scale solar projects he has helped build on farmland, he has never seen the safety concerns Laws raised.
“[Solar panels] are extraordinarily safe,” he said.
Laws said she also feels that if one solar project is built nearby, more will follow, changing the character of her rural neighborhood.
TurningPoint Energy representatives said they have added additional landscaping buffers to address her concerns and “welcome any further specific feedback and remain committed to ongoing dialogue with community members.”
Laws does not oppose solar, she said, but thinks it should be built in more developed areas, like on rooftops or over parking lots.
Caneco, the county councilman who represents the area, said he agrees. While he acknowledged that building solar panels in developed areas can be more expensive, he said it is also important to preserve farmland.
Delaware’s environmental agency added a new grant program last month that provides rebates of up to $100,000 for constructing “solar canopies,” or raised structures with solar panels that are typically built over parking lots.
Some of the opponents are calling for the county to prohibit large-scale solar projects on farms. Caneco said he and one other council member are exploring potential changes to local laws involving solar projects.
A mysterious ally?
When asked for details about Laws’ opposition, she had a packet of information ready.
She said it came from a new website, called DelawareSpending.com. While the website, which does not have any information about its owner or operator, appears to be a repository for public documents and meeting videos from across the state, it does host a blog that has posted multiple articles about the project.
Laws said she has worked with the person behind the blog, but that he does not want to be identified.
“He’s my Batman,” she said.
Some of the videos on the blog’s Facebook page, where the platform has previously labeled some of its content as AI-generated, have over 100,000 views. A summation of the solar debate in Port Penn is labeled its “Top Story” on the website.
When asked via email about the project, the person behind Delaware Spending responded, saying, “I’m not part of this story and don’t want to be.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the size of the project.
Benjamin Netanyahu lands in New York today to speak at the UN general assembly. This visit marks the Israeli prime minister's first time in the city since Mayor Zohran Mamdani vowed to arrest him for war crimes – and it's happening as support for Israel among US voters is taking an unprecedented plunge. Sixty percent of Americans now have an unfavorable view of Israel. (In 2022, only 42% of Americans said the same.) But what does this mean for Netanyahu’s hold on US politics? And how will it play into Israel’s October elections? Kai Wright and Carter Sherman are joined by two reporters with different perspectives on the Netanyahu story. Andrew Roth spent time reporting from Israel and the West Bank this summer, and Alice Speri has covered the pushback against Israel in Democratic politics here in the US
Former deputy PM now involved in tech industry says many within sector are ‘winding themselves up into a lather’
Nick Clegg has dismissed fears over AI’s “godlike power to exterminate humanity”, calling it a sign that tech bosses are “breathing their own fumes”.
The former UK deputy prime minister said that tech bosses should focus on addressing known specific threats such as cybersecurity and bioweapons rather than the “slightly hand-wavy view that this technology is unavoidably going to develop some godlike power which is going to turn on us and exterminate humanity”.
The original Star-Spangled Banner, seen in 1969 at what was then the National Museum of History and Technology, now called the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History Smithsonian Institution Archives
In November 2021, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History opened an exhibit called “The Electric Dr. Franklin,” describing “Benjamin Franklin’s pioneering contributions to electrical science.” The exhibit explained that, prior to becoming an abolitionist, he had enslaved people in his household. “Benjamin Franklin’s remarkable scientific accomplishments were, in part, enabled by slavery,” it declared.
The exhibit speculated that Franklin may have used enslaved people in his electrical research. “Franklin wrote about experiments in which he took shocks and used family and friends in these ways, although he seldom identified who in particular assisted him,” stated the exhibit, which closed in 2025 but can still be found online. “Indentured servants and enslaved people in his household could also have been used, although we may never know for certain.”
It was an eye-catching conjecture: one of the most revered of the Founding Fathers subjecting people held against their will to possibly painful shocks. And it was one of many details singled out for criticism in a blistering 162-page White House report released in July that argued that the museum had fallen victim to an “ideological capture” that “moved the Museum’s mission away from straightforward historical education and scholarship toward an extreme political activism that seeks to transform our country.”
For decades, the Smithsonian Institution, which draws some 15 million visitors every year to its assemblage of 21 museums — bounty that has no real global peer — has managed to stay mostly above the political fray. There have been occasional exceptions, such as the uproar over the National Air and Space Museum’s planned 1995 exhibit of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. By and large, though, the institution maintained bipartisan support as the guardian of America’s history, ingenuity and natural heritage, even as political polarization spread and culture wars raged.
But that institutional exceptionalism is now imperiled as never before. In March 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the Smithsonian had succumbed to “divisive, race-centered ideology.” This July 4, timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, came the White House report. Later in July, two House committees held back-to-back hearings on the report, where Republican members took turns lambasting the museum’s director, Anthea Hartig, and forcing her to answer questions about exhibit items such as a “chrome and rubber crotch harness” designed for sadomasochistic sex. That week, Trump signed an executive order instructing the Department of the Interior to erect signs outside the museum “warning visitors about the ideological capture” on display there. The signs have yet to go up, but in late August, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum sent a letter to the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents declaring that other federal agencies “cannot in good conscience continue to support the Smithsonian under current leadership.”
The Smithsonian is independent of the executive branch, governed by a 17-member board led by the chief justice of the Supreme Court and with six members of Congress, three from each party, serving with nine private citizens and the vice president. But it depends on the federal government for 62% of its funding, receiving more than $1 billion per year, and warnings of deep budget cuts have grown ever louder. Finally, on Sept. 8, Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch, the first African American person to lead the institution, announced he was stepping down at age 73, saying “it has been stressful.”
Seen from one vantage, the battle over the Smithsonian is but another example of Trump attempting with characteristic bombast to put his stamp on Washington institutions, alongside shuttering the Kennedy Center, replacing the East Wing of the White House with a huge ballroom and planning a 250-foot arch near Arlington National Cemetery.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.Elizabeth Frantz for ProPublica
But unlike some conflicts initiated by Trump, this one has been festering for years, independent of him, with complaints lodged by board members before he returned to office. The American history museum, the main focus of the administration’s ire, has wrestled for years with how, or even whether, it should present a unifying national narrative, an ambivalence that left it susceptible to the administration’s broadside. Meanwhile, the Smithsonian underwent a political awakening during the 2020 upheaval over the COVID-19 pandemic and murder of George Floyd that echoed responses in academia and other progressive realms.
This left it exposed to a new administration that viewed itself as a corrective against perceived woke excesses. “I said over and over again that there’s going to be a day of reckoning,” recalled Garret Graves, a Republican former congressman from Louisiana who served on the Smithsonian board in 2023 and 2024, in an interview. “You can either participate in it, help guide the Smithsonian back to something that makes more sense, or you can have an abrupt shift. I didn’t realize my words would ring as true as quickly as they did.”
Now, in the year that was supposed to be a crowning celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary, the Smithsonian is instead in Trump’s crosshairs. And the question of how the country’s premier history museum should tell the nation’s story is suddenly up for grabs.
The National Museum of History and Technology opened on the National Mall in 1964. Its mission, said former assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Remington Kellogg that year, was to “awaken” a “clear understanding of the inspiring story of the United States — its origins, struggles, development, traditions, strength.” As the name reflected, the museum contained duelling missions from the start, showcasing American technological advances and telling a more general historical story.
A 1974 exhibit depicted the evolution of American fashion.Alfred Harrell/Smithsonian Institution Archives
In 1980, it was renamed the National Museum of American History, but the tension lingered. “It started out as a technology museum, and even now it has a lot of equipment, and to move from that to American history, that’s a huge change,” said Ivan Selin, a former chair of the museum’s board. “Unless you’re going to throw everything out and start over again, you’re going to have a very incoherent thing. Unless you have a clear strategy, you’re going to have some apples and oranges.”
Two decades after the name change, the lack of a unified approach had become an issue. In 1999, David Brooks wrote a scathing critique in the Weekly Standard, lamenting that the museum had so little on display about the nation’s defining moments (the Constitutional Convention, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Great Depression, etc.) and prominent figures who shaped them (Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., etc.). “It ignores or virtually ignores most of the major events in American history,” he wrote. “This is a museum of multicultural grievance, which simply passes over any subject, individual, or idea, no matter how vital to American history, that does not have to do with the oppression of some ethnic outgroup or disfavored gender.”
In 2001, in response to such critiques, the Smithsonian convened a blue-ribbon commission of historians and others led by Richard Darman, a former top aide in Republican White Houses. In 2002, the commission released its report, declaring that the museum “requires what its own leadership has described as a ‘transformation.’ It lacks aesthetic appeal, organizational coherence, and the perception of substantive balance.” The report recommended, among other things, a chronological introductory exhibit that contains “central theme lines for the examination and interpretation of American history” and that “should celebrate America’s remarkable strengths and achievements while also treating fairly and responsibly the ways in which America may have failed to meet the high standards it has proclaimed for itself.”
This would prove easier said than done. For one thing, the museum’s physical structure itself has never been coherent — “an awkward attempt to marry the classical and the modern, the building is legitimately neither,” wrote New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable at its opening. “It’s a challenging space,” Brent Glass, who became director shortly after the blue-ribbon report in 2002, told ProPublica.
Above all, though, the commission’s recommendations faced resistance among the museum’s curators to the sort of great-man-of-history approach that Brooks and others were hankering for. There had been a trend in museum scienceaway from this, and away from straight chronology. “There was this whole museum movement to get away from a march through time, to a more episodic or specific sort of story,” John Gray, who succeeded Glass in 2012, told ProPublica. “It wasn’t done to get away from the story; it was finding a way to get people interested.”
In addition, the museum’s curators tended to be specialized in material culture — collecting and studying the museum’s several million objects and artifacts — rather than in conceptual storytelling. To make up for this, Gray’s team tried to enlist several leading academic historians to instill more of an overarching narrative structure. But they declined, saying they were concerned that such an approach could seem triumphalist and provide fodder for an America-first agenda. “We tried to organize [the museum] around ideas and ideals, ideals that were aspirational,” Gray said. “And we failed many times.”
The museum’s eventual solution was to divide the national story into subject areas, each represented by a standing exhibit: “American Enterprise” on business and innovation, “American Democracy” on politics,” “Many Voices, One Nation” on immigration, “The American Presidency,” “The Price of Freedom” on the nation’s wars, “Entertainment Nation” on culture, “America on the Move” on transportation.
Developing these required extensive debate, said the former directors. Some donors supporting the enterprise exhibit were upset that it devoted so much space to the role of slavery in American business. In crafting “The Price of Freedom,” the museum consulted with veterans’ groups to try to avoid a backlash like the one that arose on the Enola Gay. This effort succeeded, Glass said, despite the exhibit’s candor about the darker elements of the nation’s military history. “People can handle complexity,” he said. “They don’t feel bad about the country when told the whole story, and they’re grateful that they have access to the information.”
The museum’s “American Enterprise” exhibit includes an advertisement for slave traders.Elizabeth Frantz for ProPublica
Scattered throughout the museum are countless highlights: the desk on which Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence; the top hat Lincoln wore to Ford’s Theatre on the last night of his life; the actual lunch counter from the 1960 Greensboro, North Carolina, Civil Rights sit-in; and, in a recent addition, a gunboat sunk during the Revolutionary War that is being restored on-site. But the overall effect can be disjointed and disorienting. And, with the museum’s dim lighting, dated technology and underutilized areas, it can feel at times as if one is wandering in a past-its-prime shopping mall or in the forgotten corner of an airport terminal.
It’s a stark contrast to the National Museum of African American History & Culture, which opened in 2016 under the direction of Bunch and, notably, has a clear chronological design. Of course, said Selin, the former American history museum board chair, the African American museum and the National Museum of the American Indian, which opened in 2004, have the advantage of a more focused subject, leaving it even less clear what remains for the American history museum, where attendance has declined in recent years. “You can find nowhere in any Smithsonian document a theory of what should be in the American history museum or the more particular museums or how many of these particular museums there should be,” Selin said. “There’s no charter whatsoever that says how they fit together.”
In March 2020, the Smithsonian shuttered its museums for the pandemic. A few months after that, Washington and other cities erupted in protests over Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis. Bunch, who became secretary of the Smithsonian in 2019, and other top officials embarked on a push to rethink the institution’s priorities, as reflected in the minutes of the Board of Regents meetings, which were now being held online. Bunch “briefed the Regents on his efforts to navigate the dual pandemics caused by the Coronavirus and issues surrounding race, racism, and racial identity,” the minutes of the June 2020 meeting stated. He announced the launch of “Smithsonian Cares,” a digital resource that would “provide tools and guidance to empower and inspire conversations about diversity, equity, access and inclusion.”
That October, the board discussed “the potential creation of a Chief Diversity Officer position, a review of organizational processes and policies that may have inadvertently created barriers to inclusivity, integrating and standardizing DEAI training across the organization, strengthening supervisory DEAI skillsets, increasing senior leadership’s focus on inclusivity, and identifying funding and resourcing strategies to implement DEAI efforts across the Institution’s functions and operations.” In February 2021, Bunch told the board that the Smithsonian’s five strategic priorities would include positioning it as a “trusted source for critical conversations and helping the nation grapple with important issues like race and identity.”
As the meeting minutes show, the institution’s elevation of identity was being encouraged by the newly installed Biden administration. In October 2021, the Smithsonian’s Office of Government Relations reported that the Smithsonian had “brought objects from the National Museum of American History to the White House for a temporary display recognizing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Pride Month.” Three months later, the office stated that it “continues to work closely” with the White House on “diversity, accessibility, access and inclusion efforts.” The Smithsonian noted plans for exhibits at the White House to mark “Black History Month in February, Women’s History Month in March, Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May, LGBTQ in June and Hispanic History Heritage Month in September.”
The post-2020 shift extended to the various museums, which started to reopen to visitors in spring 2021. To cite just one example, the National Portrait Gallery revised the signage for a portrait of Henry Laurens, South Carolina’s delegate to the Continental Congress, to reflect that he had made his wealth through chattel slavery. “When Floyd was killed, everyone acknowledged that now is the time to ask: What are the stories that we’re telling and were we being honest and fair in recounting those stories? We all looked at it through this lens,” Kim Sajet, who became the director of the Portrait Gallery in 2013, told ProPublica. “Everyone felt energized by that. We can’t change the past, but we need to acknowledge what happened in order not to repeat it in the future.”
But the new direction caused misgivings for some conservative supporters of the institution, such as Graves, who joined the regents as one of the three Republican congressional appointees in 2023. Graves told ProPublica that he had high regard for Bunch — “his accomplishment with the African American museum was remarkable” — but that he became worried that the Smithsonian was operating within a bubble. Its staff were living in a metro area that had voted overwhelmingly against Trump (and museum employees are generally among the most left-leaning of any profession), yet they were charged with presenting exhibits to visitors from all over the country and the world, a disconnect that the institution seemed insufficiently aware of.
Many board meetings would kick off with tours of a certain museum, and Graves and a fellow Republican appointee, Adrian Smith of Nebraska, would often be taken aback by what they saw. “Seventy-five percent of the time Adrian and I would be walking around and say, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Graves said. “It wasn’t interpreting science or history. It seemed to have an agenda, and that’s not what a museum should be.” What was missing, he said, was a sense of the nation’s achievements. “This country is a remarkable experiment,” he said. “We’ve had some grave sins, but my gosh, America is a net victory for the world. It’s unbelievable what happened here in 250 years and it’s worth celebrating.”
Graves retired from Congress at the end of 2024. In his farewell address to the regents that October, he warned against allowing the Smithsonian to become seen as affiliated with one party or ideological bent. “I felt like they were causing sustainability problems for the institution,” he said. “Politicizing the Smithsonian is an awful, awful idea, because then you only receive funds when there’s a Democratic majority. This is America’s museum and there should not be anything partisan about it.”
One week later, Trump won the election to return to the White House.
In his first term, Trump largely ignored the Smithsonian. In 2017, Bunch gave him a tour of the new African American museum, which Bunch recounted later in his memoir: “The president paused in front of the exhibit that discussed the role of the Dutch in the slave trade. As he pondered the label I felt that maybe he was paying attention to the work of the museum. He quickly proved me wrong. As he turned from the display he said to me, ‘You know, they love me in the Netherlands.’ All I could say was let’s continue walking.”
It took little time for Trump to make clear that, as on other fronts in his second term, things would be different this time around. First came the March 2025 executive order, which directed Vice President J.D. Vance to rid the Smithsonian of “improper ideology.” Two months later, Trump said that he was firing Sajet at the Portrait Gallery, calling her “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position.” The Smithsonian noted that Trump did not have the authority to remove Sajet, but she left anyway, hoping to spare the institution.
In August 2025, the White House issued a 120-day ultimatum to replace “divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions,” but with little follow-up, and for nearly a year, it looked as if the storm may in fact have passed. Then came the White House report on the American history museum, with such an exhaustive litany against Hartig, its director since 2018, and Bunch that it made plain the authors had been scouring their public statements and the museum. (Through a spokesperson, Bunch declined to be interviewed. Museum representatives did not respond to requests to speak to Hartig.)
In addition to citing the Franklin exhibit, the report noted that an exhibit called “Girlhood (It’s Complicated)” had included “the pages of a 6-year-old girl’s diary where she expresses fear about ‘getting boobs’ and wishes for her nonexistent ‘penis to grow.’” Another exhibit, on gay history, had “included a two-piece chrome and rubber crotch harness designed for sadomasochism.”
An image from “Girlhood (It’s Complicated),” a Smithsonian exhibit that drew complaints from Republican lawmakers for its explicit comments about gender identityKrystal Quiles
It criticized the museum for having trained staff using the “Museums as a Site for Social Action Toolkit,” a 200-plus-page roadmap on how to “truly transform the museum space,” which is linked “with white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, abuse of labor, colonization, imperialist theft of art and artifacts, destruction or absencing of alternative ways of interpreting or representing art and artifacts, structural racism and other oppressions.”
Above all, though, the report criticized the museum on grounds that echoed Brooks and the 2002 blue-ribbon commission, saying that it failed to offer visitors a unified narrative of the nation’s history. “That story should be a basic consensus view that is not ideological or politicized, but presents the facts of history — what actually happened — as accurately as possible with minimal present-day bias,” the report stated. “It should tell the whole story of a nation, including the good and the bad, so Museum visitors can understand the development that led our nation to where it is today.”
For years, the Smithsonian had avoided major conflagrations partly by engaging in what one former official called the “care and feeding” of members of Congress on the two committees with purview over it, Appropriations and House Administration. If there was a potentially controversial exhibit, the museum would bring members over for a preview tour, so they had some context for complaints they might receive. But these efforts were on hold for a while because of the pandemic closures, and the Smithsonian’s government relations office experienced heavy turnover, as one of its directors had cancer and another died suddenly.
This context, combined with the fuel provided by the White House report, helped explain the level of vitriol that Hartig faced when she appeared at the two hearings in late July. Even by the standards of today’s decorum-less Congress, the hearings were wild affairs. At the first, held by the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, Chair Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, kicked things off by playing a lengthy string of video clips of Hartig offering tribal land acknowledgements at the start of her speeches. “I’m wondering, have you ever planned on deeding any of your personal property or property of the Smithsonian to any of these tribes?” he asked Hartig.
She adopted a conciliatory tone, saying the Smithsonian “takes the concerns raised in the White House Domestic Policy Council’s report seriously” but that “it does not fairly or accurately characterize the full body of work at the museum.” She assured the committee, “I love the United States of America. I consider it the privilege of my career to help preserve its treasures and serve the American people.”
This did not assuage committee Republicans. Burchett displayed museum images including the crotch harness and the diary mention of the 6-year-old girl wishing for a penis. “Ma’am, I mean, you have pictures of bondage. You have some overtly sexual things up there,” he said. “I’m not a fan.” Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, pressed the point: “Are images of sexual fetishes appropriate for children? Yes or no?” Rep. Brandon Gill, a Texas Republican, noted that the toolkit that the museum used for staff training had referred to “politeness” as a feature of “white supremacy culture.”
U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, poses questions to Anthea Hartig, director of the history museum, in July.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Those defending Hartig were hardly less outspoken. David Blight, a Yale historian also testifying, compared the White House’s attacks on the Smithsonian to the German Third Reich, saying “their model may indeed be Joseph Goebbels’ committee on enlightenment, which is what the Nazis called their committee that tried to control museums.” Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, opened her remarks by saying, “Welcome to the White Pride Committee.” Rep. Kweisi Mfume, a Maryland Democrat, vowed to sacrifice his life for the Smithsonian. “We will not let you destroy that museum,” he said. “No matter how long it takes, how many battles are required, how much effort is needed, we will not allow that to happen unless you find a way to kill all of us and walk over our bodies to change history.”
The next day’s hearing, before the House Administration Committee, was more of the same. The bipartisan consensus around the Smithsonian appeared to lie in tatters.
On a recent Sunday, a group of visitors made their way into the centerpiece exhibit at the National Mall entry to the history museum, the giant Star-Spangled Banner that was flying over Fort McHenry in 1814 and inspired Francis Scott Key to write what became the national anthem. For safe-keeping, the flag is displayed in very low light, giving the chamber a sacred feel, like a cathedral crypt. “Oh my god, it’s huge,” said one woman. “I am shivering,” said another. “It’s insane,” said a third.
Every day, the museum, for all its imperfections, still makes a strong impression on many visitors. But its longstanding search for identity helped make it a target for an administration looking for weak spots, and now its future and that of the entire Smithsonian hangs in the balance. Three of the nine citizen slots on the Board of Regents are vacant, and three more will be next month. Whoever the remaining members of the board — which include Vance — select to fill those slots will help determine who is chosen to replace Bunch as secretary, and the institution’s future course. Much will depend on how much Chief Justice John Roberts, at the head of the board, decides to engage.
Any large institution can benefit from reassessment, and the Smithsonian and the American history museum in particular may well be overdue, especially as yet another focus area is about to be cleaved off, for the National Museum of the American Latino, scheduled to open early next decade. What gives so many supporters pause is for that reevaluation to happen under Trump, who hasn’t shown a lot of interest in how the various museums interact, much less in the nuances and subtleties of history.
“There will be a moment,” Sajet said, “when the American people will have to stand up and decide, is this what they want?”
In the choreographers’ new work, virtuosic movement and some green-screen magic unfurl the theatricality of high-stakes television interviews
It appears the interviewer has got him on the ropes. “For the record, I did not take part in a pagan ceremony with minor members of the royal family in which we daubed ourselves in paint,” states the beleaguered politician, caught outside Buckingham Palace with his flies undone and forced to defend himself. This is a fabrication, of course – I’m watching the scene play out in an east London dance studio – but it doesn’t feel miles away from something that could be true. And how do we know what’s the truth anyway? That’s the question in Deepfake, the latest piece from award-winning dance duo Jessica Wright and Morgann Runacre-Temple, AKA Jess and Morgs.
The pair tell modern stories with ambitious tech – film and live camera work – and often techy themes, too. “We’ve always been drawn to where there’s a crossover between the theme and the form,” says Runacre-Temple. “What gets us excited is seeing the contemporary world reflected back.” The pair scored a massive hit with their 2022 piece Coppélia, made for Scottish Ballet, which turned a twee 19th-century ballet about a dancing doll into a cautionary tale of AI automatons and unrestrained tech bro egos. Definitely not one-hit wonders, earlier this year they made their debut at the highly esteemed Paris Opera Ballet.
Roberto Hamidovic, 48, ran network of thieves who targeted tourists in Paris Métro and Disneyland
A clan leader who sent gangs of child pickpockets to target tourists in the Paris Métro and popular attractions such as Disneyland Paris has been jailed for human trafficking.
Roberto Hamidovic, 48, likened to Fagin, Charles Dickens’s notorious criminal boss, ran a network of child thieves, mostly girls, some as young as 10, who brought in an average of €25,000 (£21,500) a day, according to police.
They offer advice, referee card games and manage players’ tantrums – we caught up with some of the volunteer profs who keep the competitive game going at this year’s world championships
Professors may be the most revered characters in the fictional world of Pokémon (apart from perhaps the Gym Leaders). In Pokémon Red and Blue, Professor Oak greets the player in a pixelated lab coat, and later provides trainers with their first battle partner; since then, each successive generation of games has introduced another professor to aid and guide trainers through their journeys. If you’ve ever played a Pokémon game, they are often the first people that you meet, apart from your in-game mom.
But you may not know that there are also real-world Pokémon professors – volunteers who help organise the game’s competitive communities around the world. Instead of lab coats, they can be seen at events wearing red Pikachu-mascot shirts labelled “staff”, paired with black trousers and shoes.
A new Paramount+ series premiering Thursday turns pushy sports parents into glossy entertainment – with the children largely ushered off stage
Remember when pushy sports parents were deserving objects of our collective scorn? When Marv Marinovich and Jim Pierce were bywords for abusive fatherhood, Sarah Palin made the overbearing hockey mom a global punchline, and grim stories of pushy parents assaulting officials, kids and one another grabbed headlines and trained a harsh spotlight on youth sports? Well, the rebrand is in full swing.
Team Moms: Baseball is a glossy new reality series premiering Thursday that aims to recast the pushy sports parent as something well worth coveting, a sexy black hat with a designer label. From the makers of Love Island (ITV America), for Hollywood’s most rapacious studio (Paramount Skydance), with none other than basketball mom Kim Kardashian attached as executive producer, the Paramount+ series follows a cluster of parents whose sons attend Legendary Prep Academy – a Scottsdale, Arizona baseball hothouse with an intense focus on cultivating diamond gems. Anyone coming to this expecting genuine insights on a $40bn industry that’s now under siege from private equity, swallowing ever larger chunks of hard-earned family budgets along the way, should know up front: this is a closer cousin to Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise than ESPN’s 30 for 30.
A Food and Drug Administration committee backed a cancer blood test called Galleri but was split on how well it works. The test is awaiting a final decision by the FDA.
Over the years, as economist Emmanuel Saez tracked America’s top incomes, what he saw made him angry. Now he's one of the architects behind California's wealth tax proposal.
IPPR finds failure to align testing standards has forced companies to abandon exporting to EU and is costing costing 0.18% of national income
The UK is losing out on annual exports to the EU that could be worth as much as £6.5bn without a deal with Brussels that allows manufacturers to jettison duplicate product testing.
In the latest attempt to calculate the loss of trade with the EU after Brexit, the IPPR thinktank said many companies have given up selling goods to the EU or set up subsidiaries inside the trade bloc after successive governments failed to secure a mutual recognition agreement that would avoid the extra administration costs.
Motor vehicle and part exports would have been between £2.48bn and £3.42bn higher each year.
Electronic exports could have been between £1.17bn and £1.67bn higher.
Pharmaceutical exports would have had an estimated annual uplift of between £740m and £820m.
Denmark’s Greenland deal with Trump is a victory for diplomacy over bullyingExpert commentjon.wallace
Denmark used its soft power to rally support and took the dispute out of the limelight – addressing underlying US interests instead of President Trump’s unacceptable public position.
This week, Denmark has extricated itself from a period of coercive US diplomacy over Greenland. The agreement announced on 22 September elegantly resolves the dispute over the territory, without forcing Denmark or the government of Greenland to give up very much.
Even before the dispute, Denmark had indicated it would be content to increase the number of US bases in Greenland and enhance US access to them. These measures were already possible under an existing 1951 agreement.
The new agreement adds an undertaking by Denmark and Greenland to refuse major investments from non-members of the EU or NATO that would grant them a foothold in strategic Arctic areas. Again, on this point, Washington was pushing on an open door.
The only meaningful change concerns the mechanism to ensure that this arrangement will be permanent. The 1951 agreement, amended in 2004, also does not expire. But the new text adds that Greenland will remain part of NATO and continue to comply with the agreement, should it opt for independence.
An independent Greenland might have been willing to retain the US bases and related agreements anyway. After all, it would need to rely on US defence support and a NATO security guarantee. But expressly making these points in an agreement co-signed by Greenland overcame the deal-breaker of President Donald Trump’s demand for sovereignty over all of Greenland or at least the US base areas.
The agreement represents a masterclass by Denmark in using the classical art of diplomacy to overcome bullying, in an age of changing geopolitics and unstable global governance.
Indeed, the steps Denmark took to resolve the dispute provide valuable insight into how countries can defend their interests in the face of apparently overwhelming pressure.
Step 1: Isolate the bully and call the game
In January this year, President Trump declared that the US would need to ‘own’ Greenland to prevent Russia or China from taking it, and to ensure US national security. He even raised the option of a military takeover of the territory.
The president may have believed opposition would be minimal. Just days before, EU and NATO countries had been unwilling to confront him publicly over the armed US intervention against Venezuela, despite it being a clear breach of international law. In the emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that followed, they had stayed meekly silent.
Greenland was different. Denmark could clearly assert that Trump was placing the future of NATO in peril. Hence, Denmark could show that the US action posed a threat to both the territorial integrity of Denmark and to the security of all states in Western Europe. Accordingly, NATO countries and EU members overcame their hesitancy to upset the White House, and strongly and unanimously rejected his demand. Indeed, they went further, dispatching a European defence mission to Greenland, supposedly as a matter of routine.
Calling out the US’s game for what it was – a demand to surrender national territory under the threat of force at a time when the West was resisting Putin’s assault on Ukraine – was crucial in rallying support.
Step 2: Enter the fray with clean hands
In this dispute, Denmark continually had the advantage in the battle for international sympathy. It entered the fray with clean hands, taking advantage of its soft power, which has been nurtured over decades of sensitive advocacy for justice in relation to the Global South and the international rule of law. The US under Trump, on the other hand, has caused continued upset throughout, as a result of its military actions and other activity such as the president’s sweeping ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs.
The US could also not accuse Denmark of hypocrisy over any supposed colonial legacy relating to Greenland. By 1954, the UN General Assembly had determined that Greenland had freely decided to integrate with Denmark on the basis of equal constitutional and administrative standing with other parts of Denmark.
By 1979 Copenhagen offered home rule. Two decades later, in 2009, it granted wide-ranging self-government to Greenland. Crucially, this 2009 arrangement included an express right of self-determination for the people of Greenland, with a provision to opt for independence. Any sale of Greenland (as Trump had previously proposed) or its transfer to the US against the wishes of the population, would have violated this existing right to self-determination.
This meant that throughout the dispute, Denmark could claim a role as both the upholder of the international right to self-determination, and the defender of its own territorial integrity.
Step 3: Clarify the legal status
President Trump sought to enhance his claim by suggesting that Denmark did not have a clear title to Greenland. In view of the 2009 agreement’s self-determination provisions, this assertion became less relevant. In any event, it was easy to prove that Denmark held good title. And the US clearly had none at all.
In 1916 US Secretary of State Robert Lansing issued a declaration accepting Denmark’s claim to the island. When the US took over the defence of Greenland during Germany’s occupation of Denmark during the Second World War, it did so in ‘recognition and respect for the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark over Greenland.’
Denmark managed to divert dialogue to technical meetings, held…outside of the public eye.
This expressly included Danish sovereignty over base areas constructed by the US. The post-war agreements on defence cooperation and US bases of 1951 and 2004 also consistently confirmed Danish sovereignty. Indeed, in an amazing reversal of the US position, so does the new 2026 agreement. The text reaffirms the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Denmark and acknowledges Greenland’s right to self-determination.
Step 4: Dial the temperature down and let experts do the work
When encountering the US, Denmark was careful to avoid a public confrontation with Trump in front of cameras, learning from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s experience at the Oval Office in 2025.
Instead, when the row intensified, Copenhagen dispatched Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen to Washington. As foreign minister, protocol demanded that he should meet with the slightly more moderate US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, instead of the president.
Vice President JD Vance almost derailed this cunning plan when he insisted on leading the meeting and moving it to the White House. But Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister, calmly focused on shared security interests in the Arctic. And he remained steadfast where sovereignty and the rights of Greenlanders were concerned.
After a supposed breakthrough on the issue at the Davos conference later in January 2026, Denmark managed to divert dialogue to technical meetings, held confidentially, outside of the public eye. This was the critical change that allowed Copenhagen to defang the entire episode.
Step 5: Focus on interests, not positions
Negotiations experts know that success depends on persuading the sides to step away from their incompatible, publicly stated position and instead address their underlying interests. In this instance, President Trump had claimed that only full sovereignty over Greenland would answer US security needs.
At Davos, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte offered the US sovereignty at least over its base areas in Greenland. Trump seized that initiative and accepted, withdrawing his threat of invasion.
However, neither Denmark nor Greenland representatives had been party to that proposal. Handing over even a part of sovereign territory would hardly be acceptable to their parliaments.
But in the technical discussions, it became possible to move from a flat-out demand for sovereignty, to achieving the underlying US desire: a permanent arrangement safeguarding its interests in Greenland.
Step 6: Be generous in victory
On signing the agreement, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was careful to avoid any sense of climb-down by President Trump. It is a deal that can ‘last forever,’ she said, reflecting Trump’s claim that he had achieved an outcome just as permanent as a transfer of sovereignty.
As President Trump’s original stated position was that ‘the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity’, this new agreement seems a clear victory for calm and quiet Danish diplomacy. And it plainly illustrates the power of unity among NATO states and EU members. The lessons for future dealings with great powers are clear.
Leevin Camacho was brushing his teeth one day last fall when his mother called. The water is contaminated, she said. Moments later, she texted him a photo of a flyer issued by the local water authority. “Cancer risk,” it warned. “Increased likelihood of adverse impacts on the liver.” And in bold capital letters, “DO NOT DRINK.”
Camacho stared at the message. Water flowed from the faucets as his children, who were 10 and 12, gulped and spit, their faces reflected in the mirrors above the two bathroom sinks.
Thumbing at his phone, Camacho looked up dieldrin. The search results included words like “organochlorine” and “insecticide” and “persistent environmental pollutant”; the United States had banned it in 1987. Worse, high levels had been detected in his community’s water since at least 2008. “Our kids have been drinking the water,” he realized. “They’ve been cooking with the water for almost their entire lives at this point.”
Camacho lives in Yigo, a northern village on the island of Guam. In time, he would learn that the U.S. Air Force base next to the well serving his house had reported “very high levels” of the pesticide, which it had listed as a “chemical of concern” since at least 1993. The Pentagon’s investigation, led by officials at Joint Region Marianas, is in its early stages. Local officials caution that although they suspect the base is a source of the pollution, there may be others because dieldrin was once widely used.
For Camacho, the news felt like the unfolding of a familiar story — one both predictable and infuriating.
Camacho had grown up as an Army brat, raised to think of the United States as Guam’s liberator from Japan during World War II. But over the past two decades, his understanding of that legacy has changed.
“There are certain actions that the military takes that are contrary to the interests of the people who are from Guam and who live in Guam,” said Camacho, whose measured tone rarely changes, even when discussing something as emotional as what his children have been drinking.
To Camacho, dieldrin is the latest reminder that the people of Guam continue to bear the costs of militarization. Unexploded ordnance litters jungles and lagoons. PCBs contaminate the fish. Pollutants taint the groundwater. The island and its people, who are U.S. citizens, have been inalterably changed by more than a century of American military presence.
Rear Adm. Brett Mietus, the head of Joint Region Marianas, the U.S. Navy’s regional command for Guam and neighboring islands, said he can’t speak to past pollution but the command is committed to protecting the environment and the people of Guam.
“We spend a lot of time and we spend a lot of money making sure that we meet every U.S. regulation when it comes to anything that we’re going to do here,” he said. “We’re meeting every letter of every law for environmental regulations and rules, and we’re doing that while we’re spending a ton of money to defend this island from the most advanced missiles in the world.”
Today, Guam sits at the center of an ongoing military buildup, one that is reshaping the island even as it spreads across the Pacific. On nearby Yap, more than 1,000 graves could be disturbed to make way for an American seaport and airfield. Indigenous leaders on Palau are suing to protect their lands.
Less visible but just as impactful are the climate impacts of this expansion. The Pentagon is already the world’s largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases, and its buildup will do more than contribute to the destruction of the region’s reefs, forests, and Indigenous sacred sites. It will accelerate the climate crisis that threatens the survival of Pacific islands.
The Pentagon often cites growing geopolitical tensions to justify the buildup. “The security environment in the Indo-Pacific is becoming more dangerous and defined by an increasing risk of confrontation and crisis,” Navy Adm. Sam Paparo, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, told Congress in April while seeking $122 billion for new weaponry to counter China, including offensive missiles on Guam. Three months later, a ballistic missile launched from a Chinese submarine flew near Guam, underscoring why many on the island see America’s military presence as both a source of vulnerability and protection.
Sometimes it can be too much to think about. “I need to compartmentalize these things,” Camacho said. “That’s sometimes the only way that you can do this, because otherwise you will just be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things that are out there, the amount of injustice that is out there.”
Those injustices collide in Yigo. Neighbors lost their homes earlier this year to typhoons fueled by warming seas. The Army Corps of Engineers will soon begin clearing bombs from a nearby dump site created in 1945. A new machine-gun range just opened alongside a federal wildlife refuge to support the arrival of 5,000 U.S. Marines from Okinawa, Japan.
Then there’s the dieldrin contamination. “At some point,” Camacho said, “someone has to force them to do what’s right.”
II.
Years before he became one of Guam’s leading critics of the military buildup sweeping over the island, Leevin Camacho was a young lawyer who liked to run before work. As his sneakers hit the pavement, the sun rose over Yigo. Roosters crowed and streaks of pink lightened the sky. The road, little used and lined with jungle brush, was one of the few places he could run without encountering stray dogs or morning traffic. He always ran at first light, before oppressive heat would reflect off the asphalt and the concrete buildings. It was the perfect start to what was often a day spent listening to depositions and wading through case law.
It was 2009. Camacho had returned to Guam after law school and was making more money than he ever had as a school teacher. “You dream of going to law school to provide services and to fight for people who don’t have the ability to fight, right? I’ll be honest with you, I lost my way,” Camacho said. “I had a bunch of student debt, and I was satisfied just kind of going by day to day and just focusing on myself and my family.”
Leevin Camacho stands before the well serving his home in Yigo, Guam, which was found to have been contaminated with high levels of dieldrin.Photo: Anita Hofschneider/Grist
The U.S. military was the backdrop to Camacho’s life but not something he worried about. He didn’t think much about the invasive tangan-tangan trees lining his running route, or the fact that they had spread across Guam after the U.S. scattered their seeds to reforest the island following the war. On his morning runs, he was more likely to hear a military jet overhead than a native birdsong.
It hadn’t always been that way. Guam was among the first Pacific islands settled by seafarers, from what is now the Philippines, who navigated by the stars and waves an estimated 3,500 years ago. The CHamoru people built a thriving island society known for its towering latte stones and swift outrigger sailing canoes.
That changed when Magellan landed on Guam in 1521. Spain claimed the island and the rest of the archipelago, beginning more than 500 years of ongoing colonization. The Spanish forced the Indigenous people to embrace Catholicism and banned their canoes. The United States took over the island from Spain in 1898 and imposed military rule. Naval governors burned CHamoru language books and blocked Indigenous efforts to gain U.S. citizenship.
Then came Japan. Its invasion in 1941, on the same day it attacked Pearl Harbor, wasn’t unexpected. The U.S. Navy evacuated sailors’ dependents but left 20,000 CHamorus to endure nearly three years of forced marches and labor, malnutrition, and sexual servitude. More than 1,000 would die. When American forces retook Guam in 1944, they were welcomed as liberators. The island still celebrates Liberation Day every July. “I can’t remember a single discouraging remark that my maternal grandmother would have made about the U.S.,” Camacho said. But he does remember her saying of the Americans, “‘They saved us.’”
In this August 1944 photo, people of Guam pour out of the hills into the Agana refugee camp. Nearly 18,000 CHamoru were relocated to Manenggon and other concentration camps before the Battle of Guam.Photo: Joe Rosenthal/AP Photo
That was the narrative that Camacho grew up with. Even the military taking his family’s land — part of a massive military land grab after World War II — was accepted by his grandparents as the price of freedom from Japanese oppression. It wasn’t until Camacho learned that the Pentagon’s expansion plans would close his running route that he began to question what it meant for Guam to be an American military outpost. He pored over the buildup’s planning documents and was struck by the disconnect between how the military described its plans and the reality as he knew it. “They paid consultants a bunch of money. The comment was, ‘We drove by and we didn’t see any cars, so there’s no impact,’” he said of the running route. “And that was it.”
As Camacho read thousands of pages of documents, he saw the same pattern again and again. Proposals for bombing and machine-gun ranges, expanded undersea explosives, and projects that threatened forests and ancient latte stones were accompanied by detailed assessments that minimized what they would mean for the islands.
“They paid consultants a bunch of money. The comment was, ‘We drove by and we didn’t see any cars, so there’s no impact.’”
On a flight home from Honolulu, Camacho was reviewing the environmental analysis of the buildup on his laptop when one passage stopped him. The proposed influx of 80,000 people would leave too little water for fire suppression, particularly in Yigo. The solution, according to the document, was to send surplus water from Andersen Air Force Base to civilian communities. “That was the first time I just kind of lost it, just how stark it was,” he said. “The aquifer is our aquifer, right? Like, you’re taking our water for your people and then we don’t have enough and they’re going to divert whatever you’re taking from us that is extra.”
Camacho and other concerned residents started We Are Guåhan, a community group focused on raising awareness about what was happening. (Guåhan is the CHamoru word for Guam.) He sued to stop a machine-gun range from being built at Pågat, an ancestral village that’s home to millennia-old latte stones. Their campaign protected the site and helped persuade the Navy not to expand its landholdings on Guam. The Department of Defense also reduced the planned transfer of Marines from Okinawa from 9,000 to 5,000.
But it didn’t stop the buildup. The Pentagon activated Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz six years ago and opened a new machine-gun range alongside a federal wildlife refuge just north of Yigo. “It’s so heartbreaking,” said Victoria-Lola Leon Guerrero, another member of We Are Guåhan. “All of that effort, and it still happened.”
Construction on Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz, located in the village of Dededo in northwest Guam and activated in 2020, proceeds in May 2026. Photo: Anita Hofschneider/Grist
III.
The yellow excavator scraped away at the pale rock that lies beneath Camp Blaz under the hot May sun. A limestone forest had already been bulldozed to make way for a new machine-gun training range. A sign next to the fence read “Guam National Wildlife Refuge” with an arrow pointing to the left and a picture of a turtle.
“Wow,” said Monaeka Flores, executive director of Prutehi Guåhan, one of Camacho’s clients in the lawsuit he filed against the Navy to protect the island’s endangered species. She stopped at the side of the road to watch the digger work. It had been months since she’d been here, and they’d cleared so much more forest than she realized.
Busy construction vehicles are the most obvious sign of the Pentagon’s buildup. Beyond the new Marine Corps base, the Department of Defense is upgrading the island’s port and strengthening its infrastructure to support docked nuclear submarines. The agency is also pouring $8 billion into 16 new missile defense sites. After World War II, the Navy took two-thirds of the island. “Whatever made most sense for the military, the island was theirs for the taking,” said Michael Clement, a historian at the University of Guam. “Everyone was in refugee camps. They had the bulldozers. They built where they wanted to build. And then a year or two later, they started saying, ‘OK, where are we going to put the natives?’”
“That’s why Guam is kind of weird to drive around. … It was redesigned for military purposes.”
The military later relinquished some land but still owns at least a quarter of the island. “If you look at where the villages were set out in 1946 and ’47, it’s the land the military didn’t need. So that’s why Guam is kind of weird to drive around, right?” Clement said. “To go across from Tumon to Mangilao, you’ve got to go around Tiyan and the airport. It wasn’t redesigned for civilians. It was redesigned for military purposes.”
Even the island’s main highway, the six-lane Marine Corps Drive, was designed for the military, not the people. It connects Andersen in the north and Naval Base Guam in the south.
Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero (no relation to Victoria-Lola Leon Guerreo) is among the many who welcome the financial boost that comes with the military’s investments. “They’re spending billions on their readiness plan,” she said.
One in 9 Guam residents joins the armed forces. Last year, a local economist told the Legislature that every dollar the Pentagon spends adds 75 cents to the island’s GDP and called the buildup an “unprecedented economic opportunity.” The funding infusions have helped Guam become far more commercialized than other Pacific islands, with multiple shopping malls, numerous high-rise hotels, and a growing real estate sector.
Leon Guerrero thinks activists should pursue political self-determination instead of resisting the buildup. “These guys can yell and scream all they can,” the governor said. “They’re going to do the military buildup regardless, right? So why don’t we work with them and see how we can benefit?” She wants the Defense Department to help harden local power lines and fund a hospital. “Our hospital cannot absorb mass casualties,” she said.
There are about 20,600 military personnel, civilians, and dependents on Guam, a figure that’s expected to reach 29,400 by 2037. While the military is investing in additional housing both on and off base, the population influx will almost certainly continue pushing up construction and housing costs. The median home price on Guam was $216,100 in 2010, when Camacho sued the military to protect Pågat. Today it is approaching half a million dollars.
Fear of another war also fuels support for the buildup. “We’ve always been a target regardless, because of where we are geographically located,” Leon Guerrero said. Guam is the largest island in the Micronesian region of the Pacific. It’s just north of the equator, a three-hour flight from Tokyo, and has a deep-water harbor that supports naval submarines. “We were a target for Spain. We were a target for the U.S. We were a target for Japan.” She worries about China, which has a ballistic missile nicknamed the “Guam Killer.” “If I’m going to have a choice, I’d rather be under the U.S. than China.”
To Flores, more military presence on Guam heightens the risk of war. In March, President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran prompted military bases on the island to raise their threat level. She feels that, as in World War II, the Indigenous people of Guam are expendable in a broader contest between empires. “What are they really here to protect if there’s so much harm taking place? Are we just collateral damage?” she said. “Because just looking at our history of being occupied by war, being used for weapons testing, it feels like the message is that we don’t matter. Our future doesn’t matter. Our survival doesn’t matter.”
Rear Adm. Brett Mietus, at Joint Region Marianas, said he understands such skepticism. “If I was born and raised on Guam, I would have similar concerns,” he said. But he believes the military’s investment proves the opposite of what Flores fears. “Choice A is not to defend Guam against ballistic and hypersonic missiles,” he said. “Or the other choice, which is the one that we’ve made, is to spend billions of dollars to defend Guam from hypersonic and ballistic missiles. And so from my perspective, that shows a commitment not just to the military things that are on Guam, but also to the people of Guam.”
Yet Flores is far from the only Guam resident who feels expendable. When Pedro Blas, the vice-mayor of Yigo, first learned about the dieldrin in his village’s water, his first thought was of his autistic sister. “All of us growing up, all our lives, our water bottles, we fill it up with the tap water, put it in the fridge: That’s our cold water,” he said. “Because we were instilled in our heads our whole lives: Tap water is OK.”
Pedro Blas, the vice-mayor of Yigo, Guam, has been hearing from many constituents who are concerned that long-term exposure to dieldrin could have caused cancer in their families. Photo: Anita Hofschneider/Grist
So far, Camacho’s firm has helped file more than 700 claims, worth $360 million, against local authorities on behalf of village residents. He hopes that pressures the island to seek compensation from the Defense Department. “I’m so glad [Camacho] got involved,” Blas said. “We’re not letting it get swept up under the rug.” Mietus noted that Joint Region Marianas has not found high levels of dieldrin in military wells, and the Pentagon is working with local officials to determine the source of Yigo’s pollution.
“They look at Guam as real estate.”
Still, Blas wonders why the investigations at Andersen Air Force Base are occurring quietly behind the fence, while he hasn’t seen anyone in uniform hand out water to his constituents. “It’s beautiful to be a U.S. citizen, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “But if you really take a step back and look at exactly the impacts that [the military] brought to us over the years, we should have a say in whether or not these practices are going to happen to our island. Even just being called the ‘tip of the spear’ — we’re susceptible to any war that they’re going fight, and we just have to be OK with it.”
“This contamination they bring to our island, it kind of just shows how much they really care about our people,” Blas continued. “And frankly, I think they look at Guam as real estate rather than ‘Those are our U.S. citizens. Those are our people. Those are Americans.’”
IV.
The men and women gathered in the p’ebay, the traditional open-air Yapese meeting house with a triangular tin roof, and settled quietly on the tiled floor along each wall to listen to Camacho speak. A projector, perched above a cardboard box stacked on top of a red cooler, cast his PowerPoint presentation onto a screen. Slide after slide described the American military’s plans. A cool breeze fluttered the fronds on the palm trees surrounding the p’ebay.
It was April in the village of Tamil on Yap, one of four states in the Federated States of Micronesia. Camacho’s dieldrin work was far from over, but he’d put that aside when the island state’s government asked him to help dissect a Navy proposal to expand the seaport and airport. Tamil was one of several villages he visited to explain the plan.
Over the past decade, Camacho has become one of Guam’s leading environmental lawyers. “The one thing about Leevin is he shows up. Again and again,” said Julian Aguon, a human rights lawyer on the island. “And he brings with him not only deep competence but a deep sense of responsibility to the people and places he serves.”
“Regulatory agencies will bend over backwards to not pick a fight with the military because of the mission and the protection and all of that,” Camacho said. “And ultimately, it’s people who aren’t lawyers who end up paying the price.”
He was elected attorney general in 2018 for one term and led a historic lawsuit to force the Navy to clean up a hazardous landfill it had abandoned in the 1940s. A lower court dismissed the suit, but the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2021 that it could proceed — a decision that eventually prompted the federal government to pay Guam $48.9 million.
He has sued the Navy to protect endangered species harmed by the construction of Camp Blaz. “For too long, our island has been treated as a sacrifice zone,” he said.
The risk of Guam falling into enemy hands, as it did in World War II, is so tangible that America’s Pacific military strategy involves spending billions of dollars to spread airfields, seaports, and training ranges across the region to remain competitive in case Guam is once again occupied by enemy forces. The U.S. is invoking decades-old agreements with the peoples of the Republic of Palau, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia to expand its presence on those islands and upgrade World War II-era seaports and airfields. Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. even signed a new agreement with Papua New Guinea to use its seaports.
On Yap, the U.S. military wants to dredge the lagoon, including two-thirds of an acre in a marine protected area, to create a seaport. The plan would remove enough sediment to fill 334 40-foot shipping containers and impact sea life, Indigenous fishers, and divers. “Plume spreads up to 800 m from disposal sites,” Camacho’s presentation noted. “Long-term reef decline and impact on reef species (fish, clams, sharks, turtles) not assessed.”
The Navy also plans to expand the airfield to facilitate two military exercises, each two weeks long and involving up to 200 personnel, per year. The project could disturb more than 1,000 graves, including the 19th-century tombs of Chief Orothin and Chief Yaloth. Camacho noted that the military’s draft plan acknowledges a “significant adverse impact” to these cultural sites and doesn’t commit to rebury the dead or preserve ancestral sites.
Yap has a population of just about 11,500, compared to Guam’s 170,000. Although Yap is less than a 90-minute flight from Guam, it has none of the military bases, six-lane highways, or big-box stores that define the American territory. “In some ways, this will be more transformative for Yap State than the buildup was for Guam because there’s no military presence there today,” Camacho said. On Guam, he said, “It’s normal to hear a fighter jet flying over. It’s normal to see a bomber or C130. They don’t have any of that there. So this would be such a radical change.”
One month after Camacho visited Yap, dignitaries from across the Pacific gathered in an air-conditioned conference room at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Guam. The hotel sits on a long stretch of white sand beach and looks out over Tumon Bay, where high levels of dieldrin have also been found in fish samples.
Political leaders from across the Pacific listen to presentations on the growing military presence in their region at a conference in Tumon, Guam. Photo: Anita Hofschneider/Grist
Once everyone had taken a seat, the lights dimmed and the glow of a projector filled the room. A screen showed a map of military activity across the western Pacific: not just bases, but training exercises and the routes of research vessels searching the sea floor for the critical minerals essential to many military technologies.
“We’re faced with the reality that we’re part of a larger strategic vision,” conference organizer and former Guam congressman Robert Underwood said. “All of you are in someone’s strategic plans whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not. All of us are in someone’s strategic plan.”
In Palau, Indigenous people are fighting the Pentagon’s expansion in local courts and international forums. Leaders of Angaur, one of 16 states there, filed a lawsuit accusing the U.S. of violating environmental rules and its treaty with the island nation when it cleared land for a radar facility. Indigenous chiefs from Peleliu are suing to prevent a land transfer that would support American goals. Indigenous Palauan youth filed a complaint at the United Nations alleging the U.S. military violated their right to free, prior, and informed consent to what happens on their land.
In the Northern Mariana Islands and the Marshall Islands, the U.S. military presence that started with World War II is ramping up. On Tinian, the Marine Corps is building an airfield and two live-fire training ranges, one of them for explosives. The Navy is extending its undersea sonar and explosives training across half a million square nautical miles, along with bombing practice on the neighboring island of Farallon de Medinilla.
Some hope the military’s regional expansion will enable other island nations and territories to experience the economic growth seen on Guam. But others worry about the pollution and cultural loss, and other risks that come with being a U.S. military stronghold.
In public comments written in response to the Navy’s proposal, Jennifer Dugwen Chieng noted that Camacho’s fight to have the Navy address hazardous waste at Ordot Dump went all the way to the Supreme Court. “Additionally, there are sacred private lands and culturally significant ecosystems that no amount of money can ever replace,” she wrote. “The desecration of graves violates the general principles of respect for burial sites and human remains upheld in Yap’s traditional custom.”
She’s also worried about becoming a target in the next war. Like Palau, Yap was held by the Japanese during World War II and experienced heavy bombardment by the United States. Since then, the Pentagon hasn’t paid much attention to the island state — until now.
“With rising tensions in the region between the U.S. and China, what does the DoD envision combat to look like?” Chieng wrote. “Will it be based on a WWII tactic of island hopping? What is the likelihood of the island becoming a battlefield if tensions were to escalate into war? Yap will be caught in the crossfire. Does the DoD intend to protect and defend the people of Yap, and if so, how does the DoD intend to do that?”
Mietus, the Joint Region Marianas commander, said there’s always a level of risk in being allied with the U.S. during a conflict.
“Sometimes people believe it’s a plan to evacuate U.S. service members or family members if a war starts — there is not,” he said. “I’m in this, living in the same risk as every other person here.” He’s pushed back against Guam lawmakers’ calls for the Defense Department to fund bomb shelters for civilians, contending that the existing military projects like strengthening Guam’s harbor are a better investment. “Oftentimes people see this Department of War as kind of having an infinite amount of money, and we don’t.”
V.
Unlike Guam, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia are independent countries that have achieved the political self-determination that Indigenous CHamoru on Guam have been denied for centuries.
Camacho wants a plebiscite to determine Guam’s political status. He believes the island’s status as a U.S. territory — without a vote for president or voting representation in Congress — isn’t working. But while some of his colleagues in We Are Guåhan have focused on independence, Camacho sees his own role as making the government answer for its actions.
Leevin Camacho gestures at photos of his family in his home in Yigo, Guam. His grandparents lived through the brutal Japanese occupation of Guam and rarely talked about it. Photo: Anita Hofschneider/Grist
“Unless someone’s forcing the issue,” he said, “the Department of War isn’t going to voluntarily agree to be held accountable and agree to do all the things that it’s supposed to do.”
That’s why he feels compelled to seek reparations for the dieldrin contamination. So often, toxic pollution lingers on Guam and no one takes responsibility. “As a lawyer, I don’t want to fall into this situation where we’re like [the village of] Malesso, and they show up every year and say you still can’t eat the fish. That’s just not satisfactory,” he said.
One question that drives him is what Guam will be like when his kids are grown. Will they be able to afford living there? Will they want to, given how much the island is changing? It’s a constant effort to find the right balance between working toward their future and being there for them day to day.
“I’m going to try to do the best that I can to protect my island and to have a safe place for my kids to want to live on Guam,” Camacho said. “But also be there for them and help them get better dribbling with their left hand and be good human beings.” Even though Camacho moved a lot growing up, his family never considers leaving. “That is not a choice,” he said. “Guam is home — there is nowhere else we are going to be.”
Correction: September 25, 2026 This story originally misspelled Monaeka Flores’s name. It also has been updated to clarify her organization’s relationship to Leevin Camacho and to reflect that the number of military personnel on Guam includes civilian employees, dependents, and others.
Sales of Chinese hybrid cars have rocketed in the EU in the past four and a half years, data shows, underlining growing concerns in Brussels over the future of the European car industry.
In 2022, just 659 Chinese-made fully hybrid cars (vehicles in which the petrol or diesel engine charge the motor and battery) were sold in the EU. However, after Brussels imposed anti-subsidy tariffs on fully electric cars from China in 2024, sales of hybrids have shot up to 160,662 in the first seven months of this year.
Prime minister will ‘highlight Israel’s achievements’ as he heads towards his toughest re-election challenge
When he takes the stage at the UN on Thursday, Benjamin Netanyahu will deliver a familiar message of defiance even as protests and international condemnation leave the Israeli leader in growing isolation.
Netanyahu is facing his toughest re-election challenge in a political career spanning decades with three ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, and a growing campaign of violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
EVANSTON, Illinois — A U.S. citizen was hospitalized after federal immigration agents mistakenly detained him Sunday in Evanston while searching for another man, according to local police and witnesses.
Evanston police said officers responding near Howard Street and Dodge Avenue found the man on the ground with injuries to his head, neck and teeth. Witness Miguel Olivares said he heard the man repeatedly saying, “I’m a U.S. citizen,” and recorded federal agents pinning him down. Olivares told ABC7 Chicago that the agents appeared to use significant force and that one seemed to strike the man in the face.
A federal agent later told Evanston police that officers had approached the man because he resembled a fugitive they were seeking. According to police, agents detained him for fingerprinting after he refused to provide identification, then released him after determining he was not their target and was a U.S. citizen.
The Department of Homeland Security said the man was uncooperative and that officers acted according to their training. DHS also maintained that its operations are “highly targeted.” However, in this case, agents detained and injured someone who was not the person they were seeking.
Evanston police are investigating and collecting body-camera, dash-camera and witness video. Police Chief Schenita Stewart later met with the injured man at the hospital and offered department support.
The Greek prime minister has said a deal can still be reached to return the Parthenon marbles with “political will” but his country will not accept a loan in the style of the Bayeux tapestry’s visit from France.
Writing for the Guardian, Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Greece “cannot accept any arrangement that would require it to recognise the British Museum’s ownership of the sculptures, or a scheme that would mean we ‘borrow’ parts of our own monument”.
OpenAI's artificial intelligence "went rogue this year in at least four additional incidents," the New York Times reported Wednesday, "hacking and trying to break into government and university websites without being instructed to do so, according to researchers and government officials."
The attacks took place in May and June, before OpenAI's technology breached the A.I. start-up Hugging Face in July and set off a global debate about A.I. safety. Unlike the Hugging Face attack and other incidents in which A.I. systems were told to complete cybersecurity tests that effectively invited the models to demonstrate their hacking skills, the new incidents occurred when A.I. systems were directed to perform relatively mundane data collection, researchers said. When OpenAI's systems struggled to gather data from websites, they resorted to hacking techniques to get the information.
"Three of the incidents were identified by Transluce, a research lab focused on A.I. oversight, and all were confirmed by OpenAI," the article points out. That research lab even reports "an attempt on an Australian government public health website... the first reported instance of agents hacking a government," and which notably was done by the AI agents "while attempting mundane data retrieval tasks which were not cyber-related." (At the UN Wednesday Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese complained it took three months for OpenAI to then alert Australia's government about the breach, Bloomberg reports.)
Also targeted were the University of New Mexico's digital library with exploits like SQL injection and path traversal, and Data USA with cross-site scripting and other exploits. All three incidents involved "a low number of probe payloads" with "no evidence of exploitation," according to the researchers, who released a dataset "containing tens of thousands of queries apparently made by autonomous AI agents leveraging a URL scanning service to avoid access restrictions."
Records from urlquery.net show agents using the service since at least March 6, 2026, about two months before previously reported swarm activity. The first case, a March 6 attempt to retrieve Thai drug-enforcement statistics, shows an agent escalating as each approach failed: it first requested the data directly, then tried a service that converts web pages into text, and finally packed a custom program into a web address. The same technique shows up in thousands of agent requests recorded by urlquery.net starting in mid-April, targets many of the same data sources as the collusion.wiki swarm, and collapsed the same day the wiki activity did. We also report similar activity that occurred as recently as September 16... By March, they were finding creative ways around access limits. By May and June, they were gaining more access, including attempting to bypass cyber defenses to complete their tasks.
"This data reveals that malicious cyber activity is not limited to agents tasked with cybersecurity-related tasks and can arise instrumentally to solve mundane tasks like information retrieval," the researchers concluded.
And they warn that the traffic they observed "goes back at least to March 6, 2026 and extends as recently as September 16, 2026, suggesting agents may still be exploiting these services to bypass restrictions."
Five desalination plants shut down for days, while Gaza remains in grip of severe water and sanitation crisis
Israel is facing weeks of water shortages after an exceptional algae bloom crippled much of its desalination capacity, in a crisis scientists say was triggered when Israeli attacks destroyed much of Gaza’s wastewater infrastructure, causing a massive discharge of untreated sewage.
“Pollution does not recognise political borders,” said the Zalul Environmental Association, an Israeli NGO dedicated to protecting the country’s seas and shores. “The discharge of untreated sewage from the Gaza Strip into the sea is contributing to the worsening crisis affecting the Israeli desalination facilities. The wastewater contains nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed microalgae and cyanobacteria and may intensify their blooms.”
These latest attacks come just hours before Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to the UN general assembly, so he is likely to reflect on them during his UN speech later.
So far, we have had no public comment from Zelenskyy or Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha.
Some prominent references to President Trump were scrubbed from Florida gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds' campaign website in recent weeks, but the Republican said he isn't backing away from the president's agenda.
The mockumentary “Lords of War” shows how Pentagon money gets funneled into $20-million-plus paydays for weapons company CEOs — and their lavish lifestyles.
DES MOINES, Iowa — An Iowa judge has dismissed President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer and The Des Moines Register, ruling that an inaccurate pre-election poll did not amount to consumer fraud and was protected political speech.
The disputed November 2024 poll showed Kamala Harris leading Trump by 3 percentage points in Iowa. Trump ultimately won the state by more than 13 points. He argued that the poll was deceptive and violated Iowa’s consumer-fraud and misrepresentation laws.
Iowa District Court Judge Scott Beattie rejected that argument Wednesday, writing that Trump’s complaint attempted to stretch state law far beyond its existing limits and impose liability on speech receiving the highest level of First Amendment protection. The case was dismissed with prejudice, preventing Trump from simply refiling the same claims in state court.
Trump originally filed the case in December 2024, later dropped a federal version and refiled a substantially similar complaint in Iowa state court.
Selzer welcomed the ruling, saying polling is “a social science, not clairvoyance” and that pollsters cannot guarantee election results. She has consistently denied manipulating the survey or acting with political intent.
The ruling distinguishes between a poll that proved substantially wrong and evidence of deliberate fraud. Trump’s attorneys had not immediately announced whether they would pursue an appeal.
Die Linke candidate, a lawyer affected by her experiences as the child of political migrants from Turkey, poised to head Berlin coalition government
Elif Eralp launched her election bid last autumn with the blunt statement: “People like me are actually not supposed to become mayor in this country.” So the fact that the 45-year-old lawyer and daughter of political migrants from Turkey is on the verge of becoming Berlin’s next mayor and the capital’s first leader of Turkish origin is quite the moment in German politics.
After last weekend’s city state election, in which her far-left party, Die Linke, came first with more than a quarter of the votes, Eralp has become a household name.
With just under six weeks until the midterms, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina laid out the NRSC's strategy to try to hold onto the Senate amid a tough political environment.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — ProPublica says records from an FBI anti-corruption investigation contradict several public statements Sen. Susan Collins has made while defending her relationship with former Navatek CEO Martin Kao, a major political donor convicted of campaign-finance and loan fraud.
Collins has said the Biden Justice Department and FBI “totally cleared” her, her office and her campaign years ago. But ProPublica reports that the investigation at issue involved allegations Kao provided between 2022 and 2024, with agents still examining his relationship with Collins, her aides and a pro-Collins super PAC in early 2025.
An FBI spokesperson said an earlier investigation “ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign.” No one associated with Collins was charged. However, ProPublica says that earlier inquiry is separate from the later corruption review that ended after personnel assigned to the case were removed during the Trump administration.
Collins’ deputy chief of staff also argued that investigators did not believe Kao. ProPublica reports FBI documents said emails and other records corroborated portions of his account, though Kao’s criminal history presented obvious credibility concerns.
Collins has called the allegations false and politically motivated. AP reported that the dispute is now a major issue in Maine’s Senate campaign.
Kirsten Gillibrand says acting US navy secretary told her of attempted suicides after carrier strike group’s lengthy deployment as part of US war in Iran. This blog is now closed.
Rubio also briefly addressed Trump’s meeting with Delcy Rodriguez, the interim Venezuelan president, who last night posed for a friendly photo with Trump at a Manhattan hotel only miles from where her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, was incarcerated.
“It was a short meeting, but it was a very important meeting,” Rubio said.
The Vaccines for Children program, which serves nearly half the nation’s youths, had been in limbo for almost a month, with doctors unable to obtain the shots.
Ars Technica reports:
Cities and counties around the U.S. are angry at the Trump administration over a proposal to override local rules that govern the deployment of wired broadband networks... The Federal Communications Commission [FCC] argues that too many local governments "excessively delay approvals and seek to extract exorbitant sums from providers, resulting in costs that render some deployments infeasible." The FCC plan is supported by broadband providers, but local governments told the FCC that it would override rules that protect public safety.
Local governments say the plan is illegal and that the FCC should instead focus on how Internet providers thwart competition with permit-hoarding and other tactics that prevent competitors from deploying networks... They object to FCC plans to impose a 120-day deadline for processing permits and to proposed limits on fees and compensation that local governments can require from providers... Another filing submitted by the League of California Cities said the FCC has no authority to adopt the proposal. "Federal preemption of traditional state and local authority over public property, construction, public safety, permitting, and rights-of-way management should rest on clear congressional authorization," the filing said. "The commission should not infer broad preemptive authority where Congress did not expressly provide it...."
A filing by Minnesota cities said the current FCC is making the same mistake it made during the first Trump administration, when its attempt to preempt state net neutrality laws was blocked in court... If the FCC finalizes its new preemption plan, city and state governments could sue and ask a court to rule that the agency exceeded its authority...
Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez approved the step of asking the public for input but signaled she would vote against the final proposal. "I am dubious about the commission's authority under Section 253 to use rulemaking to preempt states and localities when it comes to their management of rights of way and fees charged to providers," she said.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. disclosed more than $4 million in book advances and roughly $270,000 in gifts from longtime allies, financial relationships that are drawing scrutiny because several benefactors are also involved in the Make America Healthy Again movement.
The largest payments were two $2 million advances from Skyhorse Publishing for Unsettled Science and A Defense for Israel. Skyhorse owner Tony Lyons is a longtime Kennedy associate who also leads organizations promoting MAHA-related causes and accepting political contributions and corporate sponsorships.
Kennedy also disclosed about $126,000 in Washington lodging and nearly $150,000 in airfare provided by security consultant Gavin de Becker, including trips to Greece and Fiji. De Becker has been a major Kennedy political donor and described the gifts as part of their longstanding friendship.
The book payments raise a specific ethics question because federal rules generally prohibit government employees from receiving compensation for writing related to their official duties when that writing occurs during government service. Whether Kennedy’s advances violate those rules would depend on when the writing was performed and whether the books relate to his HHS responsibilities.
Kennedy’s representatives say he has complied with federal ethics requirements and worked with HHS ethics officials on his disclosures. No violation has been formally established.
Hung Cao, acting US navy secretary, answered questions from US senator Kirsten Gillibrand in a letter
Eight US navy personnel assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group have attempted suicide since the start of their lengthy deployment as part of the US war on Iran, Hung Cao, the acting US navy secretary, revealed in a letter to the US senator Kirsten Gillibrand on Tuesday.
“Since the beginning of Lincoln’s deployment, there have been a total of eight suicide attempts across the strike group,” Cao wrote, responding on behalf of US defense secretary Pete Hegseth to Gillibrand’s inquiry about the quality of life aboard the fleet. “This number includes the Lincoln crew and sailors from the carrier airwing, strike group and destroyer squadron staff, escorting destroyers and all embarked aviation squadrons.”
What caused the turtles to begin nesting farther north than usual is the ‘million dollar question’
A sea turtle crawled out of the surf in southern California last weekend around sunset and started laying eggs in the sand.
People on Huntington Beach who saw the female olive ridley sea turtle were shocked and excited. And they weren’t the only ones freaking out, said Justin Viezbicke, the California stranding coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (Noaa).
There have been eight suicide attempts across the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group since the beginning of its grueling monthslong deployment last year, Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said.
A Tennessee judge granted Dolly Parton's estate a temporary restraining order Wednesday against the late singer's nephew Bryan Seaver and his private security company.
Ker’Sean Ramey, 41, died by lethal injection, the sixth person to be executed by Texas officials this year
A man found guilty of fatally shooting three people during a 2005 attempted robbery at a rural Texas home was executed Wednesday, a week after the other man convicted in the killings was put to death.
Ker’Sean Ramey, 41, died by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He isthe sixth person executed so far this year in Texas, with three more people scheduled over the next two months.
Meta’s not done with VR. Its sleek and expensive glasses-like VR device doesn’t need controllers, plays Quest games and is aiming to be your personal cinema too.
The General Assembly earlier this year erred by failing to give Delmarva Power even the limited ability to generate electricity. Discussions in Legislative Hall didn’t lead to legislation to alter or overturn the “1999 deregulation bill” that bars the utility…
Small crowd enjoys singer’s free concert in MacArthur Park, which has often drawn headlines for less cheery reasons
With no announcement and little fanfare, Justin Bieber performed a free acoustic set on Monday at a Los Angeles park often in local headlines for less cheery reasons.
In videos that surfaced online, four musicians flanked the global phenom, who wore a plain T-shirt and shorts as he sang hits including Daisies and Yukon. The low-key affair with a small crowd stood in stark contrast to Bieber’s recent blockbuster World Cup and Coachella performances.
Donald Trump has welcomed Xi Jinping to the US, taking the unusual step of greeting the Chinese leader on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews to kick off his state visit to Washington.
Xi’s plane was met with a lavish arrival ceremony that included a 30-metre-long (100ft) red carpet flanked by US service members, a military flyover by two B-1 bombers and a presentation of the flags and national anthems of both countries.
If you’re still doing your shopping the old-fashioned way — that is, all by yourself — it might interest you to know that 43% of U.S. online shoppers say they’ve used an AI assistant for product research in the past…
An Iowa judge sided with pollster J. Ann Selzer and The Des Moines Register, saying that allowing the lawsuit and its "faulty" claims to proceed could "discourage others from reporting on and debating public affairs."
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump personally welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, offering the Chinese leader a rare planeside greeting as Xi began a three-day state visit focused on trade, technology and security.
Trump and first lady Melania Trump met Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, on the tarmac after Air China One arrived outside Washington. The greeting broke with usual presidential protocol, under which visiting leaders typically receive their formal welcome at the White House.
Xi’s visit is the first U.S. state visit by a Chinese leader in more than a decade. The main events are scheduled for Thursday, including a formal White House arrival ceremony, military review, Oval Office talks and state dinner. A military flyover featuring a B-2 Spirit bomber and four F-22 Raptors is also planned.
The visit comes as Washington and Beijing seek to stabilize relations after prolonged disputes over tariffs, rare-earth minerals and technology. Reuters reported that the two countries agreed to extend an existing trade truce, while major breakthroughs during the summit are not expected.
Trump and Xi are expected to discuss artificial intelligence, trade, Taiwan and other geopolitical disputes. Trump previously visited Beijing in May and invited Xi to Washington during that trip.
Andy Burnham under pressure to revisit Brexit as poll suggests pledge to rejoin could boost Labour’s electoral chances
Britain should work towards rejoining the EU in the next decade, Tony Blair has said, adding to growing pressure on Andy Burnham to abandon Labour’s reluctance to revisit the 2016 referendum.
The former prime minister has urged Burnham to use his 10-year plan in November to put the country’s membership of the union back on the table, a decade after it voted to leave.
In 2024 ethics filing, US health secretary pledged to ‘not engage in writing, editing, marketing or promotional services for any of these books during government service’
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, received $4m over the last year in book advances from allies within the Make America Healthy Again movement, according to a new report.
The advances were for upcoming books by Skyhorse Publishing, a publishing house belonging to Tony Lyons, a friend of Kennedy Jr who is also president of Maha Center, a non-profit that describes itself as “tackling America’s health crisis through education, investigation, innovation and action”.
Automotive collision and refinishing students at Dunwoody College in Minneapolis rebuilt a Hyundai Elantra and gave it to Robert Hanson, a U.S. Navy veteran, through the National Auto Body Council's Recycled Rides program.
(The Center Square) – A new poll from the University of California, Berkeley's Institute for Government Studies says Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has fallen behind her general election opponent, City Councilmember Nithya Raman, by 11 percentage points.
Hundreds gathered on Tuesday night in anticipation of a small boat arriving in Gosport
Three people have been charged in connection with anti-migrant protests that drew hundreds of demonstrators to a marina in Hampshire on Tuesday night.
Six people were arrested by police, as anti-migrant activists who mistakenly believed a small boat was due to arrive at Gosport gathered in an attempt to disrupt the arrival of any asylum seekers.
Raymond Chen, longtime Microsoft employee and author of the very popular The Old New Thing blog, published an interesting post about the Win32 scrollbar. It turns out there’s actually quite a few interesting shortcuts and useful hidden features, like clicking inside a scrollbar while holding down shift will make the content jump to that point. Halfway through the article, though, Chen laments how nobody really uses proper Win32 scrollbars anymore.
Sadly, almost nobody uses Win32 scroll bars any more. Everybody uses frameworks that provide their own custom scroll bars.
And as you might expect, none of these scrollbars work like the Win32 one, making even something as basic as the scrollbar a fragmented mess. He doesn’t just blame things like Electron, either, as Microsoft’s own WinUI framework, which is used for most “new” Windows UI developed by Microsoft for Windows 11, also uses custom scrollbars that do not work like the Win32 one does.
Great, so by the time I learn about a shortcut for scroll bars (Shift+click), the ecosystem has fragmented so much that I can’t even rely on it working.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, at the U.S. Capitol in August Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
As the scandal over Susan Collins’ relationship with Hawaii defense contractor Navatek became the central issue in her hotly contested senate campaign, she and her top aides mustered a defense with a series of incorrect and misleading claims.
On Tuesday, ProPublica published an investigation into the senior senator from Maine’s relationship with Martin Kao, the former Navatek CEO and a major donor who told law enforcement he exchanged campaign cash for government contracts. His confession came after his guilty plea for campaign finance and loan fraud.
The ProPublica story revealed that the FBI had been circling the senator, her top aides and a pro-Collins super PAC in recent years, asking questions about their relationship with Navatek. Since returning to office, President Donald Trump fired or pushed out most of the federal agents and lawyers investigating high-profile federal corruption matters, including those working on the Kao case. The dismissals ended the corruption review, which was in its early stages.
After the story published, Collins and her campaign denied any wrongdoing in numerous media appearances. Some of the statements made by Collins and her representatives are not accurate.
Collins: “In 2021, the Biden Justice Department found there was no wrongdoing by anyone on my campaign staff, my office or me.”
Collins: “The Biden-led Justice Department and FBI totally cleared my office, my campaign and me five years ago of these seven-year-old allegations.”
An FBI spokesperson told ProPublica the agency had investigated claims against Collins years ago “and ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign.”
But the investigation at the center of ProPublica’s story was based on claims Kao made between 2022 through 2024 — not seven years ago, as Collins states. That investigation did not conclude under President Joe Biden but under Trump, in 2025, after his administration purged the agents and Department of Justice attorneys assigned to the case.
Collins is referring to the FBI’s initial investigation of Kao, which started in 2021. No one in Collins’ orbit was charged as a result of that earlier investigation.
FBI records reviewed by ProPublica show the agency remained interested in the conduct of Collins and her staff right up until the most recent phase of their investigation was shut down under Trump.
The documents show that Kao was still answering agents’ questions as late as September 2024, when he sat for a two-day interview with FBI agents at the U.S. attorney’s office in Honolulu. During that interview, Kao provided them with a 50-page document offering many new allegations about his interactions with elected officials, including Collins.
And in early 2025, FBI agents were still examining Kao’s relationship with Collins, her staffers and employees of the super PAC, ProPublica found.
The judge in Kao’s sentencing ultimately offered him no benefit for his cooperation with federal authorities, sentencing him to 87 months in federal prison. While Kao had credibility issues — as a convicted felon — FBI documents seen by ProPublica show that agents were able to corroborate some of his claims.
“Pursuant to a Grand Jury Subpoena issued to Navatek, related to the previous investigation, hundreds of thousands of documents were provided to the FBI,” agents wrote in a December 2024 document.
“Several emails and other documents corroborate Kao’s statements made to the FBI.”
In addition, people familiar with the investigation told ProPublica that FBI agents found Kao to be credible.
Clark: “ProPublica took the word of someone who pled guilty to five counts of money laundering, three counts of wire fraud, one count of bank fraud, and making false submissions to the FEC.”
ProPublica did not simply take Kao at his word but reviewed a trove of evidence gathered by the FBI. It also examined thousands of pages of legal records and interviewed dozens of people familiar with Navatek, its Washington operations and the FBI inquiry to independently corroborate much of Kao’s account.
For instance, Kao said that Scott Reed, the head of the Collins super PAC, promised to make the senator aware that Kao was the person behind a large, anonymous donation to the super PAC made through a shell company.
We published emails between Reed and Kao showing that Kao told Reed the name of the shell company he was using to anonymize his $150,000 donation. And we included an email from someone working for Reed to a Navatek representative asking for Kao’s number so Collins could thank him for the donation. These are consistent with Kao’s version of events.
Steve Abbott, Collins’ campaign manager, said at a Wednesday press conference, “We have no record of her calling him.” But he added that such a phone call would not be unusual: “We routinely thank people for contributions. … We try to thank everybody.”
Reed did not answer detailed questions about the $150,000 donation but said he didn’t speak to Collins about Kao. He added, “I understand Martin Kao is now sitting in federal prison.”
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Programmers can now create software for photonic computers using Python and C/C++, thanks to the new software development kit (SDK) and the associated APIs released by Q.ANT GmbH this week. Q.ANT Founder and CEO Michael Förtsch tells HPCwire the SDK demonstrates the progress that’s been made integrating photonic computing into the current HPC stack, and paves the way for more powerful non-linear algorithms running on photonic systems in the future.
Q.ANT is one of the world’s leading providers of photonic computing, where photons (i.e. beams of light) are used to process data, as opposed to electronics (i.e. electrical current). The Stuttgart, Germany-based company is currently shipping the second generation of its photonic chips, called Native Processing Units (NPUs), which it embeds into PCIe cards and sells as fully packaged servers dubbed Native Processing Servers (NPSs).
Q.ANT’s NPU processor
While it’s still early days for the field, Förtsch says Q.ANT is the only photonics computing provider with actual commercial products running in the field. The eight-year-old company’s computers are also being tested in two German supercomputing centers, including Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) and Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ).
Förtsch doesn’t see NPUs replacing CPUs or GPUs computers in the near future. Traditional processors based on Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) technology do a good job of running the vector-matrix multiplication at the heart of many linear algorithms, he says.
“We are not competing with the GPU and the CPU directly,” Förtsch says. “We leave the workloads where those systems are optimized for at their table. And it’s great. We don’t have to do everything, right?”
Where NPUs will start to compete with GPUs and CPUs is with non-linear algorithms, where the added complexity of the CMOS-based technology–and in particular the large amount of data movement involved–starts to introduce significant overhead that warrants a look at other approaches, Förtsch says.
The capability to run non-linear algorithms natively in light gives the NPU a sizable advantage. According to Q.ANT, the advantage can be as high as 30x in power savings for an equivalent function. The key is matching photonic computers to the appropriate functions. One such non-linear algorithm that the NPUs excel at is compression.
“If we now think about using non-linear functions for the compression, this could be a door opener to increase the contact length of the chat window of the transformer algorithm,” Förtsch says. “The only thing you need is a processor that can basically efficiently swap between the decrypted and encrypted cache function without shredding effectively the quality of the context window, and which can operate nearly cost-free on these functions.”
But there are many more ideas for non-linear algorithms that are either coming out Q.ANT or circulating around the community, Förtsch says. This is why getting an open source SDK into the community is such a big deal.
The SDK, which was announced today, provides developers access to Q.ANT’s system via Python and C/C++ APIs. Developers can simply call photonic resources, either emulated on a laptop or running on actual Q.ANT systems running in the cloud, and start to experiment with photonic computing.
Q.ANT’s NPS server
“People say, hey, can I start modeling things? Can I start playing around with the ability of your new function?” Förtsch says. “And that’s the reason why for us, the last mile to the open-source community was the SDK.”
In addition to the development environment, the SDK includes documentation and installation guides to help developers get going. It also includes sample code and reference applications to jumpstart the code creation process for budding photonic computing developers.
The SDK today supports cosine, elementwise multiplication, matrix-matrix multiplication, convolutions, and other AI operations, such as batchnorm and relu. In the future. Q.ANT will support several other functions in the SDK, including linear functions, sine functions, Fourier transformations, and state-based models.
Supporting emerging non-linear AI workloads is a big focus for Q.ANT right now. There are a handful of new AI labs that are spending resources exploring alternative nonlinear models, and they’re closely looking at Q.ANT, Förtsch says. “They monitor very closely what we are doing now,” he says. They’re interested in “which functions can we basically offer as a primitive.”
While a big focus is on AI, there is also the potential for using Q.ANT for traditional HPC workloads, such as modeling and simulation, Förtsch says.
Q.ANT CEO and Founder Michael Fortsch
“Physics simulation, in our opinion, is a fantastic area to use this technology,” he says. “How do you model physics, or how do you model nature? Well, you use physics and the underpinning models are often harmonic oscillators. And harmonic oscillator is nothing else than an oscillator that exists per definition driven by a sinusoidal excitation…. That’s where these processors are strong.”
There is a caveat to that, in that Q.ANT’s chips will not support FP64 precision. The current hardware supports FP16, and eventually it will support FP32, Förtsch says. Of course, with Ozaki schemes, there is a possibility to offer higher precision compute through emulation, he adds.
“The reason why these processors work so nicely with everything that’s AI related is the AI model gives you a probability back, and the probability is never 100%,” he says. “And as soon as you go to the 99%, you can live with 16-bit floating point accuracy, because then the model accuracy is worse than your processor and it doesn’t negatively influence your result, and the result is therefore faster.”
Currently, the generation two NPUs support sine, cosine, and any functions that are based on sine and cosines, Förtsch says. “You can have these functions as primitives on the die.”
With the new SDK available as open source and photonic hardware running in the cloud, Q.ANT is now hoping that the developer community will begin exploring ways to leverage the advantages of photonic computing, particularly around non-linear algorithms.
(The Center Square) – After the third U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement shooting in Texas, Democrats in the state have ramped up anti-ICE rhetoric.
(The Center Square) – Advocates of the growing network of AI-driven surveillance cameras argue the technology can help make communities across the U.S. safer.
Approach to treating high blood pressure ‘not fit for purpose’, say researchers, with 59% of cases undiagnosed
Only half of people being treated by a GP for high blood pressure in England have it under control, and millions more are completely unaware they have the “silent killer” condition, research reveals.
Most people with hypertension (59%) are in the dark and undiagnosed, raising their risk of stroke, heart attack and early death, according to the largest ever study of its kind.
(The Center Square) – The federal government has spent more on net interest than on Medicare or the military so far this fiscal year, and borrowing costs climbed again Wednesday as Treasury yields hit their highest levels in nearly two…
The Solaris branch for paying customers has been updated to SRU95.
Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU95 updates a broad set of platform, runtime, developer, networking, desktop, and open source components. Notable updates include Ansible Core to 2.21.1, Apache HTTP Server to 2.4.67, Apache Tomcat to 9.0.120, BIND to 9.20.23, Django to 5.2.15, Elixir to 1.20.1, Erlang to 28.5.0.2, Firefox to 140.10.0esr, Go to 1.25.11, ImageMagick to 7.1.2-27, MySQL 8.4 to 8.4.10, NSS to 3.125, OpenSSH to 10.4p1, Rust to 1.96.0, SQLite to 3.53.2, Thunderbird to 140.10.0esr, and Vim to 9.2.0513.
Additional updates include CMake, CUPS, Cython, GnuTLS, libarchive, libexpat, pip, rsync, and a range of Python modules, X11 libraries, graphics libraries, printing components, and desktop utilities.
One of the major changes is the deprecation and removal of NTLM authentication of local users; only NTLMv2 is supported now for security reasons. This release also brings GCC 16, with GCC 13 being removed in the next version. The detailed release notes go into some of the more low-level, esoteric changes in Solaris 11.4 SRU 95.
Sixteen bears are vying for votes in Fat Bear Week 2026, the highly anticipated contest among the chunkiest bears at the Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska.
Former US vice-president still has optimism for climate advocacy two decades after groundbreaking documentary
Two decades after the release of his groundbreaking documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore has admitted he was surprised by the ferocious, ongoing backlash from the fossil fuel industry and its political allies. But the former US vice-president insists he still has optimism the world will confront the climate crisis.
At a New York event to mark the 20th anniversary of the release of the film and his subsequent climate advocacy work, Gore, now 78, joked: “I always say if it hadn’t been for me, we might have a big problem right now” when asked about the progress made over the past two decades.
Exclusive details about the NYC architect accused of being the Long Island serial killer, his life and how he may have been hiding in plain sight for more than a decade.
Entertainment workers protest outside the Melrose Gate at Paramount Pictures Studios in Hollywood, Calif., on Sept. 22, 2026, one day after state attorneys general announced a settlement agreement with Paramount Skydance for its merger with Warner Bros.Photo: Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaremains embroiled in litigation over whether its products are designed to hook kids. But Zuckerberg’s got nothing on another centibillionaire pushing to expand his influence over the next generation: Larry Ellison, the octogenarian oligarch of Oracle. Ellison not only brags about having even more data about us than Meta but runs a global surveillance machine and is a major military contractor.
A toothless consent decree intended to resolve an antitrust case brought by a group of state attorneys general may clear the way for his and son David’s President Trump-facilitated takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN, HBO, and a major film studio, Warner Bros. Pictures. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin still needs to approve the decree, and she noted in an order on Tuesday that she has some questions about its “factual and legal underpinnings.”
If it goes through, the merger will give the Ellisons unprecedented control over what the next generation watches and reads on social media, news, TV, and in movies. Trump steered co-ownership of TikTok to Oracle earlier this year, a move enabled by the Biden administration’s misguided TikTok ban. And last year, David’s Skydance Media became Paramount Skydance, gaining control of CBS, Paramount Pictures, Paramount+, and more in a massive consolidation bankrolled by Ellison senior.
We’ve seen the Ellisons’ willingness to censor content in exchange for Trump rolling out the regulatory red carpet for their media acquisitions. Larry Ellison reportedly promised Trump to overhaul CNN if the deal went through, and David Ellison echoed promises of “sweeping changes.” A Paramount spokesperson said “no [such] commitments” were made regarding CNN, but there’s no dispute that David made editorial concessions to the Federal Communications Commission in exchange for approval of the Paramount–Skydance merger, and the Bari Weiss-helmed network is already following through.
Just how far they will go to push narratives that bolster their far more lucrative interests in war and surveillance tech (and suppress ones that don’t) isn’t yet clear, but it’s not looking good. For a preview, take a look at this Flock Safety commercial masquerading as a short-form news segment, recently published by The Free Press, the blog Paramount bought from opinion columnist Weiss to pave the way to put Weiss in charge of CBS News.
Proponents of the lawsuits against Meta worry about algorithms warping kids’ minds, while critics are concerned with surveillance and user privacy, as well as the First Amendment implications of liability for sorting content. Now both sides can find common cause: The future $111 billion “Warner-Mount” deal threatens to brainwash kids and bolster surveillance all at once.
The perfect feedback loop: Stoke America’s fears about crime, terrorism, and anything else they choose to inspire further public investment in Oracle’s products.
Like Meta, Warner-Mount will have a profit incentive to design algorithms that keep kids glued to their screens, even if it leads them to dark corners of the internet. But the Ellisons’ agenda reaches far beyond likes and follows. Their “really profoundly scary technology” empire (that’s a quote from Oracle Vice Chair and former CEO Safra Catz about the tech it provided Israel after October 7) relies on government spending which requires a public primed to accept its tax dollars being diverted to those scary technologies under the guise of keeping us safe.
There’s no better way for the Ellisons to accomplish that end than buying up as many media holdings as possible while their buddy is president. It’s the perfect feedback loop: Stoke America’s fears about crime, terrorism, and anything else they choose to inspire further public investment in Oracle’s products.
Before handing the Ellisons control of even more of our media, we should remember their track record, which dates back long before they took control of CBS News.
A decade ago, Larry boasted about Oracle’s invasive surveillance products tracking how long a person lingers in a particular aisle of a specific store, which led to a privacy lawsuit that settled for $115 million. He bragged that 5 billion people were in Oracle’s “ID Graph” back then. “How many people are on Earth, 7 billion? Two billion to go,” he added at the time. In fact, Ellison and his companies have settled all manner of consumer and investor fraud lawsuits. But those dings are just the cost of doing invasive business for a behemoth now valued at somewhere around $440 billion.
“Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”
For a glimpse into how Ellison sees Oracle’s role in shaping the future, he told investors in 2024: “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”
At the World Governments Summit in Dubai in February 2025, he said countries worldwide should “unify” all of their national data into a single database an AI model could study, as he argued this is the only way to unlock AI’s full value for governments.
Oracle already has a nearly $7 billion contract to run its software across the Pentagon, the intelligence community, and the Coast Guard. It’s a founding partner of Stargate, the $500 billion data center buildout Trump announced during his first week back in office, with Ellison by his side.
So the same person who wants to surveil us to keep us on our best behavior, sell “profoundly scary weapons” to foreign armies, and unify the world’s data into one AI brain will now control a huge slice of the news and entertainment industries? It goes far beyond foxes guarding henhouses.
Of course, there’s never been a firewall between elite interests and the media. Hollywood framed U.S. regime-change wars and foreign interventions as heroic underdog stories. TV shows and news outlets have done their share of propaganda-laundering as well.
But as with Meta and its algorithms, the entertainment industry’s motives have, until now, been more straightforward, like gaining access to government sources and selling movie tickets. War profiteers that do news and movies as a side hustle have far more to gain, and they’re likely to push their narratives far more aggressively because the stakes are so much higher.
Ellison-owned outlets are already deploying their playbook to counteract the public backlash to surveillance. The Free Press segment is not the only time Oracle and Flock’s interests have converged. The Intercept recently reported that a shady astroturfing firm called Neighbors for Strong Communities, which ran deceptive AI-generated campaigns in support of the Paramount–Warner merger, has also “partnered” on PR campaigns with Flock. (There’s no known corporate partnership between Oracle and Flock, but both companies are undoubtedly invested in shifting the conversation around surveillance in a less skeptical direction.)
But that’s nothing compared to what the Ellisons and their ever-expanding pool of our personal data could accomplish in the AI era, especially when paired with a media juggernaut created by cozying up to the same authoritarians that Oracle hopes will buy more of its tech.
Despite their billions, the Ellisons would likely never have gained their media stronghold without their social, political, and economic ties to Trump. So while there’s plenty of room to disagree on what role the courts should play in checking predatory practices by tech companies like Meta, this much shouldn’t be controversial: Oligarchs should not be colluding with the government to shape what the next generation thinks.
Courses such as finance and construction form part of PM’s push for education ‘that offers a path for everybody’
Teenagers are to be offered a range of new vocational GCSEs under a radical shake-up of the school system in England designed to tackle a crisis that has left nearly a million young people out of work or training.
From 2029, pupils will be able to supplement compulsory GCSE subjects such as English, maths and sciences with courses such as construction, creative media production and child development, marking the biggest changes to the qualification for more than a decade.
Proposals aim to push people into work, but charities say families are still paying price of austerity cuts and rise in cost of living
People claiming universal credit (UC) would have their payments cut by a third if they have not paid enough national insurance, under a Conservative plan condemned by one charity as “a fast track to increased poverty”.
Under the proposals, those who receive this “subsistence allowance” would have it paid into a dedicated debit card that would prevent from them buying alcohol or tobacco, based on an Australian system that was scrapped after trials found limited evidence it changed behaviour.
Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro includes a heck of a camera that sets it apart, but the iPhone Duo’s ability to unfold from small phone to tablet could offer new ways to use an iPhone.
(The Center Square) – After a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement shooting in Austin on Sunday, the Department of Homeland Security is pushing back against claims made about the incident.
(The Center Square) – Arguing that the U.S. is “underinvesting in discovery,” U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., is calling for changes to the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, which include increased investments from the federal government.
In banning CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House, the Trump administration has argued that the move is similar to actions taken by Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. But the ban goes beyond what those presidents did.
The James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Sept. 21. Photo by Alex Wroblewski / AFP via Getty Images.
In a Sept. 21 press release, three days after President Donald Trump said the news organizations would be barred “effective immediately,” the White House said that “[a]ccess changes are nothing new,” and that “Democrat Administrations have restricted, punished, and locked out the press” for “years.” The release listed several examples of incidents involving the press during the Obama and Biden administrations.
“There’s no basis to suggest that Biden and Obama ‘did it too,'” Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, told us. “Trump’s action is singular and unprecedented,” he said, noting that Trump has instituted a “full ban of multiple news media” and “is targeting news organizations because they are publishing content he finds unflattering.
“That violates the First Amendment prohibition against government using its power to punish ideas,” Paulson said.
Trump announced the ban on Sept. 18 in a post on Truth Social, saying it was due to reporting what he called “FAKE NEWS.” When questioned by reporters later that day, Trump repeated that he was doing this “because they’re fake news.” He said the news organizations “purposely write negative news” in order to “try and diminish the Republicans and a Republican administration.”
We’ll explain what happened in some of the instances under Obama and Biden cited in the White House press release and by other Republicans. First Amendment experts told us that Trump’s ban is different.
Amy Kristin Sanders, a professor of First Amendment studies at Penn State University, told us that Trump’s action was “unprecedented,” “particularly when taken in light of President Trump’s public stance about why he banned the news organizations.”
“What the Trump Administration has done is revoke access for news organizations that have already been granted press access while publicly saying it is because President Trump doesn’t like the way he is being covered by those news organizations,” Sanders told us in an email. “These outlets are being targeted specifically because they engaged in critical coverage.”
Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which defends free speech rights on college campuses and elsewhere, said, “Past presidents have limited outlets’ White House access based on hostility toward their reporting. For example, the Nixon administration, displeased with the Washington Post’s coverage of Watergate, barred one of the paper’s reporters from covering White House social events.” And the Obama administration initially excluded Fox News from a TV reporting pool for one interview (we’ll explain that incident below).
“But I don’t know of any past example of a president indefinitely banning a media outlet from the White House,” Terr told us.
The White House press release defended the president’s ban. “The First Amendment protects their right to publish; it does not entitle them to a hard pass, briefing room seat, or place in the press pool,” the release said.
Terr disagreed. “Just last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reaffirmed that when the White House opens its facilities to the press generally, it cannot exclude reporters based on disapproval of their views,” he said, calling the action a violation of the First Amendment.
CNN, Politico and MS NOW sued the administration, asking a federal judge to block enforcement of Trump’s ban and to restore their access to the White House. Administration officials responded in a court filing saying that the news organizations “have failed to maintain basic minimum ‘standards of professionalism and decorum'” by “‘publishing sensitive or classified information.'” A hearing was held Sept. 23.
In response to Trump’s action, the other major TV networks said they wouldn’t participate in pool coverage of the president’s events.
Obama and Fox News
In its press release, the White House highlighted a feud between the Obama White House and Fox News in 2009, early in Obama’s presidency. The Obama White House questioned whether Fox News was a legitimate news organization and excluded “Fox News Sunday” when the president made the rounds on all of the other Sunday news talk shows. And the Treasury Department reportedly tried to limit access for Fox News to an interview with an administration official.
“In 2009, the Obama White House attempted to exclude a Fox News reporter from an interview with an unpaid executive pay consultant for the U.S. Treasury Department. Other news organizations objected to the effort and supported Fox and it never occurred again,” Paulson told us. “Continuance of this practice would have raised significant First Amendment questions.”
In a Sept. 19 talk at Colgate University, Obama commented on Trump’s ban on certain news outlets. “I’m trying to think what would’ve happened if I had said, ‘You know what, Fox News, you’re out of here.’ It’s unimaginable.” Obama didn’t kick out the network from the White House. But his administration took other actions against Fox News, and the Justice Department also surveilled one of the network’s reporters as part of aggressive measures to curtail leaks to the media.
We wrote about these actions in 2018, when Obama said he had “complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me threaten to shut them down or call them enemies of the people,” a reference to Trump repeatedly calling the media that. As we said then, Obama did more than complain. He didn’t use the phrase “enemies of the people,” though he did say that Fox News’ “point of view” was “ultimately destructive” to the U.S.
On Sept. 20, 2009, Obama appeared on the Sunday talk shows on NBC, CBS, CNN, ABC and Univision, but ignored “Fox News Sunday.” Asked about the snub, White House spokesman Josh Earnest criticized Fox for not airing Obama’s Sept. 9, 2009, joint address to Congress on healthcare. The speech did air on the Fox News Channel, however — but not the broadcast network. Obama didn’t make it to “Fox News Sunday” until his last year in office.
In October 2009, the White House ramped up its rhetoric. Anita Dunn, the White House director of communications, told the New York Times, “We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent” and said that “we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.” When asked about Dunn’s comments, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said that “it’s not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming, it’s really not news. It’s pushing a point of view.” He added, “We’re going to appear on their shows. We’re going to participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view.”
That same month, the Treasury Department reportedly tried to exclude Fox News from a pool TV interview of an administration official, Kenneth Feinberg, the so-called “pay czar.” The White House disputed that account, saying the issue was merely a miscommunication. But Fox News and other news outlets reported that the Treasury Department had tried to leave Fox News out of the pool, until the other TV networks protested. “All the networks said, that’s it, you’ve crossed the line,” CBS News White House correspondent Chip Reid told his own network.
Fox News did interview Feinberg.
“The Obama administration’s exclusion of Fox News from a pool was rightly condemned as an attack on press freedom,” Terr told us. “The White House also lists a couple of other examples of the Obama administration reportedly restricting or threatening to restrict reporters’ access. Of course, none of that justifies what the Trump administration is doing now. Two wrongs don’t make a right. And the Trump administration’s wrong — a directive from the top to ban three outlets from the White House indefinitely over their critical or negative reporting — appears to be unprecedented in its scope and severity.”
Obama Administration Pursuit of Leaks
The Justice Department under Obama also aggressively investigated leaks of information to the media, surveilling or subpoenaing journalists in the process, including Fox News reporter James Rosen. In 2010, the DOJ tracked Rosen’s movements at the State Department and collected his telephone and email records, according to the Washington Post, which broke the story in 2013.
In the affidavit for a search warrant to obtain emails, the FBI agent described Rosen as “an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.”
“Search warrants like these have a severe chilling effect on the free flow of important information to the public,” First Amendment lawyer Charles Tobin told the Washington Post.
In 2012, the DOJ also seized two months of telephone records of reporters and editors at the Associated Press.
In 2017, the Committee to Protect Journalists wrote: “Under the Obama administration, charges were brought against at least eight government employees or contractors accused of leaking information to the media, and several journalists were snared in the process through subpoenas to testify or surveillance of their records. After public outcry, the Department of Justice released revised standards for subpoenaing reporters.”
The aggressive posture against leaks, and reporters, continued under Trump’s first term and has escalated in his second. In an August report, CPJ said the DOJ in Trump’s second term had issued subpoenas involving at least 10 journalists, “marking one of the most aggressive uses of legal powers against the press in the United States in decades.” It cited the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which found that over Biden’s term three such subpoenas were issued and just one was issued in Trump’s first term.
Biden’s Stricter Criteria for White House Press Badges
Asked about Trump banning the media outlets from the White House press room, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise falsely equated Trump’s move to a situation during the Biden administration when it placed greater restrictions on those seeking a hard pass allowing access to the White House press facilities.
“Joe Biden removed the press credentials from over 400 different agencies,” Scalise said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sept. 20.
The White House parroted Scalise’s claim in its press release the following day, claiming, “The Biden Administration restricted more than 440 reporters from White House access through a new, retroactive press credentialing process — with independent and conservative journalists taking a heavy share of the hit. The White House Correspondents’ Association barely objected.”
But those claims are misleading at best.
As ABC News’ Jonathan Karl pointed out during the interview with Scalise, “The 400 individual reporters who [lost] credentials did not reapply. There was only one that was actually denied a credential. And all of those who didn’t reapply were allowed to come in.”
“They were removed,” Scalise said.
“They were not banned from the White House,” Karl said. “That did not happen.”
Here’s what did happen. In May 2023, the Biden administration established new, stricter rules for who could obtain a “hard pass” allowing routine access to the White House press areas without an escort. As the Washington Post explained at the time, in order to be eligible for a hard pass, a journalist had to be “employed full time by an organization principally concerned with news dissemination; must reside in the greater Washington, D.C., area; must have gone to the White House for work at least once during the prior six months; and must hold press credentials for either the Supreme Court, Senate or House.”
The White House at the time estimated that 40% of the journalists who had hard passes hadn’t even been to the White House in the previous 90 days.
In August of that year, Politico reported that over the first three months under the new Biden-era rules, the number of hard pass holders dropped from 1,417 to 975. Most of the drop was attributed to journalists who simply didn’t reapply. According to Politico, only one person who applied was denied a pass under the new criteria.
Importantly, though, even journalists without a hard pass could still get access to the White House press briefings by obtaining a daily pass, which required a journalist to provide personal information to clear security.
Jen Psaki, who served as White House press secretary under Biden from January 2021 to May 2022, posted a video to TikTok on Sept. 21 calling Scalise’s taking point “total BS.”
“So what the White House did was they put in place a couple of requirements that are pretty standard,” Psaki said, noting that “there were a lot of people with hard passes out there that had not used it in several years.”
“But [conservative] outlets like Breitbart and Fox and OAN and Newsmax all got hard passes because the criteria had nothing to do with how you were covering the administration,” Psaki said. “It was whether you were meeting those basic standard requirements, which is very much aligned with what the Senate and the House requires as well.”
Reporters who did not regularly cover the White House could still get access to White House press briefings “simply by getting day passes, and that is something that the Biden White House granted to a huge number of people from a range of news outlets,” Psaki said. “None were prevented from getting access to the White House because of their coverage. That is a big difference between then and what’s happening now.”
After his “This Week” interview, Scalise pushed back on X on Karl’s live fact-check.
“This morning, ABC tried to claim the Biden White House didn’t cut off press access for over 400 journalists,” Scalise wrote. “The facts say otherwise.”
He cited a Fox News story in August 2023 that claimed, “More than 440 reporters lose press passes after White House changes requirements.”
The White House correspondent for Today News Africa filed a lawsuit claiming the Biden administration discriminated against him by changing the criteria. However, a D.C. District Court judge ruled in favor of the White House, saying the criteria established by the Biden White House for hard pass credentials was “facially reasonable” and “viewpoint neutral.” As a result, the judge noted, passes were not denied based on the content of stories produced by applicants.
In Trump’s case, Sanders, the Penn State professor, told us, “These outlets are being targeted specifically because they engaged in critical coverage.”
“The Biden administration did change the credentialing requirements for ‘hard pass’ access, causing some journalists not to renew their hard passes and possibly making some journalists ineligible for a hard pass,” Sanders said. “This is different than excluding members of the WHCA from pool coverage based on the viewpoints they express in their journalism.”
The Free Speech Center’s Paulson likened the Biden rules “to a public library requiring patrons to prove residency before renewing a library card. There were no First Amendment issues.”
Terr, at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said that “there were legitimate concerns about the new rules, including that they disadvantaged smaller outlets and freelancers. The rules also gave the administration discretion to discipline journalists who didn’t act in a ‘professional manner,’ a vague and subjective standard that could be abused to punish aggressive questioning.”
However, Terr said, the Biden administration “used viewpoint-neutral criteria to determine access” and “didn’t go so far as to ban any outlet from the White House over unfavorable coverage.”
Other Instances of Press Access
The White House press release highlighted several other instances of reporters not getting access to certain events.
Boston Herald
The White House said that Obama press officials had raised the issue of fairness when denying the Boston Herald full access to a May 2011 fundraising event.
“Obama White House officials restricted the Boston Herald from coverage — writing that pool slots depended on covering Obama ‘fairly’ — after the paper ran a front page Mitt Romney op-ed,” the White House press release said.
The Herald reported that Matt Lehrich, an Obama White House spokesperson, told the newspaper that the Herald’s request was denied because the White House Correspondents’ Association had already granted local pool coverage to the Herald’s competitor, the Boston Globe. However, Lehrich did suggest that covering Obama “regularly” and “fairly” were factors in which outlets are selected for press pool assignments.
“I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” the Herald said Lehrich wrote when replying to the Herald’s request for full access to the fundraiser.
In emails with the Herald, Lehrich had brought up the newspaper publishing a front-page editorial critical of Obama that was written by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Obama’s eventual Republican presidential opponent, in March 2011. “My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting US President to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits,” the Herald said Lehrich wrote.
But “Lehrich insisted the Herald may yet be allowed into Obama events,” the Herald said.
San Francisco Chronicle
The White House press release also accurately recounted a conflict between the Obama White House and the San Francisco Chronicle in April 2011. However, the former Chronicle reporter involved said that what happened then is “very different” from what Trump is doing now.
“After a San Francisco Chronicle reporter recorded protesters interrupting an Obama fundraiser, White House officials threatened to strip the outlet from access and warned of retaliation if the paper reported on it,” the White House press release said.
“That’s true,” Carla Marinucci, the Chronicle’s former senior political writer, told the Chronicle for a Sept. 21 story about the incident. She said Obama’s press aides “went insane” on the Chronicle after she posted a video she recorded of the protest, which the press team argued violated pool protocol because the event coverage was limited to print reporters. As a result of the dustup, Marinucci said the Obama White House “blocked us from the local press pool for a year.”
But Marinucci said what Obama’s press aides did is not on the same level as what Trump has done.
“They never accused us of posting fake news. They just didn’t want us to post a video,” Marinucci told the Chronicle. “That’s very different from saying these organizations are fake news and I don’t like what they are doing.”
She called Trump’s actions against the three news organizations a “complete violation of the First Amendment.”
Obama’s 2008 Campaign
The White House press release also said, “In the Obama campaign’s final days, senior campaign officials pulled reporters from three prominent outlets off the traveling press plane — restricting them from coverage after the papers endorsed Obama’s opponent.” The news outlets affected disagreed on whether the endorsements, which came from the editorial pages, played a role.
With three days to go before the 2008 presidential election, the Obama campaign removed journalists with the Washington Times, New York Post and Dallas Morning News from the pool of reporters traveling on Obama’s campaign plane. The campaign said that a lack of seats and high demand necessitated making some changes. Some of the newspapers affected said the move appeared to be retaliation for their individual editorial boards endorsing Obama’s Republican opponent, John McCain.
“This feels like the journalistic equivalent of redistributing the wealth,” John Solomon, then the executive editor of the Washington Times, said at the time.
However, Ryan Rusak, the politics editor at the Dallas Morning News, wrote that the paper didn’t have evidence the endorsement was the reason. “We think the Obama campaign’s decision is to some degree more a function of limited seats,” he wrote on the paper’s website, noting that he and the political reporter “had absolutely no input or knowledge of the endorsement.”
Rusak said an Obama campaign spokeswoman, Linda Douglass, told the paper the campaign needed space for Obama’s wife, Michelle, and her staff and Secret Service, and the endorsement didn’t play a role. “There are news organizations, as you look around you on the plane, whose editorial boards are never friendly to Senator Obama,” Douglass said. Fox News and the Wall Street Journal were still on the plane, Rusak said.
New York Post
Biden’s White House, the Trump administration’s press release said, “blockedNew York Post reporter Steven Nelson from covering the President’s only daytime public event — despite empty seats in the room — after the reporter pressed Biden on his family’s shady business dealings.”
That’s a reference to a decision Biden officials made in May 2023 to exclude Nelson from the press covering an event featuring Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The Biden White House said Nelson was one of about two dozen reporters it could not accommodate due to a lack of space. But the New York Post said it suspected Nelson had been denied a press spot at the event because he had previously questioned Biden about the Biden family’s alleged dealings with foreign countries and the press staff didn’t want the president to face tough questions..
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Republican senator calls bribery allegation ‘categorically false’ as ProPublica reports Trump derailed FBI inquiry
Democrats in Maine on Wednesday accused Republican senator Susan Collins of corruption after a major media outlet reported that the FBI had proposed investigating her for allegedly accepting bribes – before Donald Trump derailed the inquiry.
The article from the investigative newsroom ProPublica rocked the race for Collins’s Senate seat, which is crucial to Democrats’ hopes of winning control of the chamber in the 3 November midterm election. The outlet reported that in the run-up to Collins’s successful bid for a fifth term in 2020, the head of her Super Pac had solicited a campaign donation from contracting firm Navatek, which demanded assurances of business from the government in return.
HANGZHOU, China, Sept. 23, 2026 — Alibaba has announced comprehensive updates with a roadmap for its full-stack AI strategy to fully unleash the value of AI at scale to customers through its latest innovations.
At this year’s Apsara Conference, Alibaba Cloud’s annual flagship technology conference, the technology innovator announced a series of updates featuring Qwen foundation models and multimodal models, new proprietary AI chips, a purpose-built agentic cloud, and an AI agent platform for mobile phones reinforcing Alibaba Cloud’s leading global position in the new AI era.
Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba Group, delivered a keynote speech sharing the company’s perspective of the ‘Machine Intelligence’ era and its strategic roadmap forward at this year’s Apsara Conference.
“The theme of this year’s Apsara Conference is ‘Intelligence Goes Beyond’. Over the past few years, AI has continuously expanded our imagination of technological capabilities. AI possesses vast potential for development–it can be deployed and scaled in real-world scenarios, boosting productivity across thousands of industries,” said Joe Tsai, Chairman of Alibaba Group. “This is the true meaning of ‘Intelligence Goes Beyond’: guiding AI from technological breakthroughs toward value creation.”
“Today, the total volume of Machine Thinking is less than 3% of all Human Thinking. If that volume eventually scales to 1,000x human capacity, the simple math tells us: Machine Thinking still has an enormous growth runway. As machines are becoming the primary force behind Thinking, turning intelligence into a commodity supplied at scale, the truly groundbreaking products of the Machine Intelligence era have not yet arrived,” said Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba Group. “With this in mind, our target is that by 2032, the global data center capacity operated by Alibaba Cloud will surpass 20GW, fueling the industry’s exponentially rising demand for AI.”
Qwen 4 in Training
At the conference, Alibaba revealed that its next-generation model, Qwen 4, is currently in training. The company further announced its roadmap for the upcoming Qwen 4.5 and Qwen 5 model series, projected to scale up to 5 to 10 trillion parameters.
Alibaba has revealed progress in RSI (Recursive Self-Improvement) driven by empirical feedback. Over a month of fully automated runs – spanning pipeline design, data validation, iterative experimentation, and error diagnosis – Qwen3.8-Max completed 33 iterative cycles. Through autonomous training optimisation and post-training techniques, the updated Qwen3.8-Max boosted its Artificial Analysis score from 40 to 45.
In a chip design experiment, the model underwent over 60 hours of self-improvement across the entire design lifecycle, making more than 10,000 EDA tool calls to produce production-grade chip bus modules. This reduced chip area by 42% with zero compromise in performance.
Multimodal Model Family Upgrades
Alibaba introduced multimodal model updates spanning speech, audio, and vision.
The company debuted Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate, a simultaneous interpretation model that enhances translation fidelity, fluency, and brevity, reduces latency (LAAL) nearly 20% from 2.8 to 2.3 seconds for a smoother, more responsive real-time translation experience.
It also unveiled Qwen-Audio-3.1-TTS-Next, a next-generation audio generation model capable of creating complete cinematic soundscapes by blending dialogue and ambient sounds all at once from a text script, designed for professional creative needs such as audiobooks, film and television, podcasts and games.
The updated speech suite also includes Qwen-Audio-3.1-ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition), Qwen-Audio-3.1-TTS (Text-to-Speech), and Qwen-Audio-3.1-Realtime, offering enhanced voice AI capabilities for understanding, generation, and real-time interaction.
Qwen-Image 3.1, an image-generation model optimized for creative design and e-commerce marketing, is set to launch later this year. It cuts visual design turnaround from hours to seconds while offering advanced generative tools, including native transparent-background generation and versatile image-editing capabilities.
To standardize world model evaluation, Alibaba Token Hub, alongside leading academic and industry partners, has introduced a six-tier capability framework and launched Happyworld Arena benchmarking platform, spanning video generation, embodied AI, and spatial reconstruction.
Bringing the models closer to general users, Alibaba has launched Qwen Intelligence, a business-facing full-stack agentic solution optimized for smartphones. It provides phone makers with access to a Qwen-powered agent platform to support next-generation AI phones that can handle complex, cross-app tasks reliably.
T-Head Unveils Zhenwu V900 and Yitian CPU Roadmap
T-Head, Alibaba’s chip design unit, has unveiled the Zhenwu V900, its latest AI training and inference processor featuring high-capacity memory and robust inter-chip bandwidth.
The Zhenwu V900 delivers three times the performance of its predecessor, the Zhenwu M890 (released in May). Featuring 216 GB of GPU memory and 1,200 GB/s of inter-chip bandwidth, the new accelerator is built to power demanding AI workloads with native support across multiple data precisions, including FP8 and FP4. By significantly reducing inference costs while increasing compute density, it seamlessly handles both high-precision model training and ultra-low-precision inference. It is scheduled for mass production and commercial release in Q1 2027.
T-Head’s Zhenwu AI chips have been serving over 650 customers across different industries including automobile, finance, large language models, embodied intelligence, energy, and manufacturing.
Alibaba also unveiled its upgraded supernode server, which integrates the Zhenwu V900 processor, ICN Switch, Panmai SmartNIC, and Zhenyue SSD controller chip. Optimized for full-stack system-level synergy across compute, storage, and networking, the server can support a supernode cluster comprising up to 500,000 cards.
Additionally, Alibaba unveiled its roadmap for next-generation proprietary CPUs tailored for agentic AI tasks, scheduled for launch in 2027. The Yitian 720 features enhanced single-core performance, higher core density, and increased energy efficiency compared to its predecessor, the Yitian 710; The Yitian 730, the first CPU built on T-Head’s proprietary microarchitecture, boasts up to a 40% increase in SPECint2017/GHz performance over Yitian 710’s.
Agentic Cloud
Alibaba Cloud unveiled a comprehensive suite of upgrades centered on its agentic cloud strategy, built around three core scenarios — model, harness and context. The upgrades span three corresponding layers: AI Native Cloud for model, powering large-scale model training and inference; Agent Native Cloud for harness, enabling enterprise-grade agent deployment, operation and security; and Context Engine for context, providing real-time data and long-term memory, helping customers create real-world value with AI at scale.
AI Native Cloud
Alibaba Cloud’s Platform for AI (PAI) has integrated synergistic optimizations integrating inferencing, caching, sample replay and training services. In real-world post-training of Qwen models, PAI completed state-of-the-art model training in just five days, advancing from pre-training toward Agentic RL.
Cloud Parallel File Storage (CPFS) system is a new-generation system optimized to better support AI model training, delivering hundred-terabyte-per-second throughput and hundred-million input/output operations per second (IOPS), helping cut enterprise AI storage costs by 69%.
HPN 8.0 Pro, Alibaba Cloud’s latest proprietary AI networking architecture, delivers 100 petabits bandwidth with ultra-low latency. A single cluster can support over 130,000 network ports at 800G speeds, with built-in redundancy ensuring that neither optical transceiver nor link failures cause service interruptions, while reducing the impact of network upgrades and failures from 50% to 25% compared to previous generation.
Agent Native Cloud
AgentCore, is a new enterprise platform to build, run and manage AI agents throughout their entire lifecycle. It enables businesses to easily build and run their AI tools, safely control human-agent collaboration, and monitor performance for continuous improvements. With enterprise-grade security embedded at the operating layer, AgentCore provides organizations with a single, controlled foundation to deploy diverse AI agents and seamlessly integrate them into critical business systems at scale.
The Agent Security Center delivers full-lifecycle security and compliance management for enterprise AI agent applications. The platform provides a multi-layered defense system powered by real-time threat detection, ensuring agents operate securely within controllable boundaries at scale.
Context Engine
Agent Context is an enterprise-grade context data service that gives AI agents real-time context and long-term memory. By connecting a company’s documents, business systems, chat records and multimodal data into a single foundation, it enables agents to remember past tasks, share knowledge across teams, and learn continuously. In knowledge-intensive scenarios such as customer service, AI coding and data analytics, it cuts token usage by up to 67%.
OpenLake has been upgraded into a unified, multi-modality data lakehouse, where a single copy of data—structured, semi-structured, unstructured, vector, and streaming formats—serves multiple compute engines for processing, search, analysis, and model training. Compared with traditional architectures, OpenLake reduces total costs by 38% and cuts query response times by 40%.
About Alibaba Group
Alibaba Group is a global technology company focused on AI + Cloud and commerce. We empower consumers and enterprises with our full-stack AI capabilities and services, from applications to compute infrastructure. Our AI technology based on the Qwen family of large language and multimodal models powers the intelligence behind our services across enterprise solutions and consumer platforms. Our commerce business puts consumers first and provides the technology and marketing reach to help merchants, brands, retailers and small businesses to engage with customers and operate efficiently.
More than 200,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste were stored on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean between 1949 and 1982, reports ScienceAlert.
Whatever happened to those barrels?
Scientists have descended to the wreckage in a crewed submersible to investigate — and found many of the barrels corroded and degraded, their contents spilling across the seafloor. Surprisingly, this isn't necessarily a subversion of the original plan... The International Atomic Energy Agency recommends that low-level waste be disposed of in robust containment in isolation for at least a few hundred years — but back in the mid-20th century, the recommendations were a little different. The contemporaneous guidelines recommended that containers needed to reach the seafloor intact and remain sealed only long enough for the short-lived radionuclides to decay. After that, the remaining waste was expected to slowly escape and disperse through the surrounding ocean. Not everything in the barrels would conveniently decay away, however. They contained a radioactive hodgepodge, including cesium-137, plutonium isotopes, and tritium, some of which can persist for thousands of years...
[A] few years ago, nuclear engineer Patrick Chardon and marine geologist Javier Escartín of the French National Center for Scientific Research started to wonder what had become of the dumped waste. That question eventually became NODSSUM — Nuclear Ocean Dump Site Survey Monitoring — an interdisciplinary project bringing together nuclear physics, geology, oceanography, biology, and marine chemistry to find the barrels and investigate what, if anything, they were doing to the surrounding environment.... [T]he barrels also appeared to function as tiny oases on the otherwise sparsely populated sandy seafloor. Anemones had attached themselves to the barrels. Sponges, sea cucumbers, fish, and crustaceans lived around them, with crabs apparently particularly fond of the artificial shelters...
Instruments aboard the ship detected significant signals of cobalt-60 and niobium-94, which the researchers could specifically link to the dumped waste... [Samples are now being analyzed] There is precedent, however, to suggest that even striking levels of radioactivity around a source don't necessarily spread very far. A recent study of the sunken Soviet submarine Komsomolets found radionuclide levels hundreds of thousands of times above background immediately around the leaking reactor — but those levels dropped sharply within just a few meters as the material dispersed through the seawater. The NODSSUM team similarly found that, despite the significant radioactive signals around the barrels, activity levels weren't high enough to pose major radiation-protection problems for the scientists handling the samples. [Their three-person submersible] Nautile and the instruments it carried showed no signs of contamination.
The real achievement was mapping the exact location of the barrels. "None of this means the waste is harmless," the article concludes — but it also doesn't mean we're about to be overrun by radioactive crabs."
Cross-data-center networking solution eliminates bandwidth as a constraint on AI infrastructure deployment, scaling, and location; now available for enterprise customers
NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2026 — WhiteFiber, Inc., a provider of AI infrastructure solutions, today announced the commercial availability of WhiteFiber Continuum, its highest-performance cross-data-center networking solution and the first commercially available distributed GPU supercluster architecture. WhiteFiber Continuum links geographically separated data centers into a single logical GPU supercluster, removing bandwidth and throughput as constraints on how and where AI infrastructure can be deployed.
WhiteFiber Continuum is built on two HITRUST-certified QTS facilities located 83 kilometers apart, joined into one logical system over 12 Zayo dark fiber strands and powered by DriveNets AI Fabric and WEKA NeuralMesh AI data storage and memory infrastructure. The architecture delivers 136 Tbps of bandwidth at 0.9 milliseconds of guaranteed round-trip latency. WhiteFiber has submitted patent applications for the underlying implementation.
“WhiteFiber Continuum is the infrastructure answer to a problem the industry has lived with for years: geographic distance as a ceiling on what a cluster can do,” said Sam Tabar, Chief Executive Officer of WhiteFiber. “Today we are making it commercially available to enterprises that need AI compute to perform at scale, hold up under compliance requirements, and not break when a single site has a problem. This is the foundation for a new class of AI infrastructure, and we are ready to build it with our customers.”
Turning Fragmented Power into One Supercluster
Many telecom and metro facilities sit on power and fiber capacity that can be tapped for achieving AI scale. WhiteFiber Continuum lets these sites contribute to a single logical GPU supercluster rather than operate as isolated, underutilized capacity — turning stranded telco and metro assets into infrastructure that can support last-mile inference and agent workloads. The same architecture lets enterprises pool GPU resources across sites to get past the power and space ceiling of a single campus, adding overflow training and inference capacity without standing up a separate greenfield deployment.
For regulated industries, distributing a cluster across sites raises the obvious question of where data actually lives — Continuum is built to keep sensitive workloads within their originating jurisdiction even while failover and pooled AI compute happen across locations, so enterprises get resilience without giving up data sovereignty. Because no single site is a single point of failure, it is designed so that training runs can continue even when one location goes down, rather than stalling until it’s restored.
Built in Collaboration with DriveNets and WEKA
WhiteFiber Continuum was built in collaboration with DriveNets, which provides the high-performance AI network fabric connecting both sites, and WEKA, which provides high-performance data storage and memory infrastructure across the cluster. Both partnerships remain central to the commercial offering.
“WhiteFiber’s Continuum shows what becomes possible when ambitious engineering is paired with the right networking architecture,” said Yossi Kikozashvili, VP Product and GTM – AI Infra, at DriveNets. “DriveNets’ Ethernet-based AI fabric delivers the highest performance even in the most demanding, high-bandwidth, low-latency environments, ensuring scale-across superclusters move data efficiently, maximize GPU utilization, and optimize power efficiency.”
“The industry has treated distance as a hard ceiling on AI infrastructure, and WhiteFiber Continuum breaks it. But a supercluster is only as unified as its data. WEKA’s NeuralMesh gives Continuum a single, high-performance storage and memory foundation across sites, so GPUs that sit many kilometers apart operate as if the data were local. This is what turns two data centers into one engine, and what the next generation of AI innovation will be built on,” said Liran Zvibel, co-founder and CEO at WEKA.
Availability
WhiteFiber Continuum is commercially available as of Sept. 23, 2026. Customers interested in deployment can visit whitefiber.com/whitefiber-continuum.
About WhiteFiber, Inc.
WhiteFiber (NASDAQ: WYFI) is a provider of AI infrastructure solutions. WhiteFiber owns high-performance computing data centers and provides cloud services to customers. Our vertically integrated model combines specialized colocation, hosting, and cloud services engineered to maximize performance, efficiency, and margin for generative AI workloads.
The 12-inch Surface Pro and 13-inch Surface Laptop get brought up to speed with Qualcomm’s latest processors. And there’s a new Surface Mouse with haptics.
This week, Republicans unveiled their ‘2026 Contract with Delaware Voters’
DOVER, Del. — State Sen. Bryant Richardson, R-Seaford, and Delaware Republicans are pitching voters on a 10-bill platform ahead of November’s general election. It promises no state tax on overtime or tips, help for first-time homebuyers, deferred property taxes for seniors, and new rules on school sports and civics education.
Richardson unveiled the “2026 Contract with Delaware Voters” Tuesday at an event at the Delaware State Police Museum in Dover. It is modeled on the 1994 “Republican Contract with America,” the national platform U.S. House Republicans released weeks before the 1994 midterm elections, when they won control of the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years.
Delaware Republican Party Chairman Gene Truono said the Contract is important for the people of the state. “Like the Contract with America in the 1990s, the Contract with Delaware will help drive bipartisan conservative policy for generations to come,” Truono told Delaware LIVE.
What’s in the ‘2026 Contract with Delaware Voters’
1.) Affordability Acts: Creates a tax-advantaged savings account for a first-time home down payment; lets homeowners 65 and older defer property taxes until the home is sold; eliminates state income taxes on overtime pay and tips.
2.) Good Governance: Ensures police presence to prioritize neighborhood safety and keep repeat offenders off the streets; adds “informed choice” requirements for abortion; returns local control over issues such as right-to-work ordinances and offshore wind siting.
3.) Our Youth: Requires student athletes to compete in sports matching their biological sex; requires students to learn what it’s like to live under communism, totalitarianism, and other political ideologies, alongside the principles of freedom, democracy, and individual liberty; creates Education Empowerment Accounts for tutoring, special education services, and instruction at public or private schools.
Why Republicans say their bills get stuck
Richardson’s central argument is that many of these ideas never get a vote. In Delaware, a bill needs signatures from a majority of a committee’s members before the full Senate or House can vote on it. Democrats hold 15 of 21 Senate seats and 27 of 41 House seats, and they control every committee.
His Fairness in Girls’ Sports Act is one example. Richardson has introduced a version in each of the last three General Assemblies, most recently as Senate Bill 215 in January, and none has been released from committee. The bill would have schools label each team boys’, girls’ or coed based on students’ sex as recorded at or near birth, while letting girls play on a boys’ team when no girls’ team exists.
Richardson says it protects fairness and privacy for female athletes; opponents have argued such bills discriminate against transgender students. Richardson said keeping it in committee lets lawmakers avoid taking a public stand.
Richardson says the “deeper problem” is that “when one side holds the votes to pass anything it wants, it no longer has to listen to the voices of those who disagree.” That’s a line from his self-published booklet, “Citizen’s Guide to Delaware Public Policy,” which he had available on a table at the event and told attendees to take.
“Eleven Republican senators could make a huge difference,” Richardson told supporters. “We would be the heads of the committee. We would get things out of committee for a full vote on the Senate floor.”
What it would take for Republicans to win a majority
Richardson acknowledged the climb is steep. With supermajorities in both chambers, Democrats can pass certain measures, like tax increases, without a single Republican vote.
To take the majority, Republicans need five more Senate seats and seven more House seats. Only 11 Senate seats are on the Nov. 3 ballot. Republicans hold three of them and have candidates in six of the eight held by Democrats, according to the Delaware Department of Elections’ candidate list, so a Senate majority would mean winning most of those races outright.
Two of those Republican candidates were at the event: Brent Burdge, running in the 5th Senate District, and Chris Rowe, running in the 7th. Rowe said voter education should extend to candidates themselves: “We just started electing people to office that don’t know the Constitution.”
State Rep. Lyndon Yearick, R-Magnolia, thanked Richardson: “You’re the tip of the spear, but it’s gonna take everybody.”
Sen. Dave Lawson, R-Marydel, who is not seeking reelection, closed with a direct appeal to the room: “Delaware needs this. Every one of you has a Facebook, and has friends. If you’re not handing this out, you’re not helping your grandchildren.”
Boise police have identified a man known as the "Unknown Wanderer" who was found dead in a church in 1982, and revealed a possible link to the Chicago Tylenol murders.
(The Center Square) – An Illinois congresswoman says new legislation to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection will pour $150 billion into communities around the country.
Near the intersection of Benny Street and Lovett Avenue, two single-family homes, a vacant church and a parking lot were demolished in June. In their place, Delaware Ave, LLC is constructing 12 three-story, seven-bedroom townhouse-style apartments, adding another set of townhouses to the growing number of high-density housing along the off-campus neighborhoods bordering the university.
While the permit was approved by Newark City Council, the Planning Commission did not recommend the permit, citing concerns over the design — particularly the landscaping and fencing aspects. Additionally, the proposal did not conform to the existing land use designation indicated in the Comprehensive Development Plan V 2.0, requiring an amendment to change its designation from “residential, low-density” to “residential, high-density.”
According to the City of Newark’s director of planning and development, Renee Bensley, this is the case for the majority of project applications she receives. These require what is called discretionary approval — including amendments to the Comprehensive Development Plan, rezoning and exceptions to building area and height requirements. This is particularly common in single-family to high-density transition zones along and around South Chapel Street, North Chapel Street, New London Road and Haines Street.
Despite requiring more hoops to jump through, many of these projects eventually receive approval from the council. As a result, these transition zones are actively transitioning themselves from majority single-family dwellings with front porches and yards to majority townhouse complexes and large apartment buildings.
Effectively, Newark’s appearance is shifting.
There is not one singular reason for this, but the beginning of this change dates back to the late 1990s and early 2000s. As the university’s student population grew, it became apparent that there was not enough off-campus housing, leading more and more students to live in the previously non-student, residential neighborhoods of Newark.
Bensley estimates that 95% of student tenants were good neighbors, but the remaining 5% caused problems for their neighbors due to partying and noise. When Newark officials began to establish constraints on where students could live, they had to find alternatives for those students.
Jennifer Reitz, the Planning Services Coordinator for the Institute for Public Administration at the university, explained that Newark had limited undeveloped land to expand upon.
“So the choice is to go up,” Reitz said.
According to Reitz, this has been a national trend. Building higher not only addresses the housing stock problem, but also addresses a worsening housing affordability problem, which she said feels like a crisis. Bensley agrees.
“Traditionally, Newark has seen an extremely low vacancy rate which means when there are no vacancies and there is a lot of demand, the landlords can set their prices basically wherever they want,” Bensley said.
Newark is already a desirable town for an increasing number of families and retirees, so student demand simply exacerbates the problem.
Developers that build higher can offset this because it is cheaper. According to Sandy Isenstadt, a professor at the university who studies historic urban design trends, constructing on already developed land is expensive due to the challenges of navigating around existing infrastructure. Building more units saves money in the long run for the developer — and, consequently, for the tenant.
According to Zillow, the estimated average monthly rent for four-bedroom housing in Newark is $2,382 for an apartment and $2,400 for a townhouse. It is $2,950 for a house. Aggregated over a year, that can be an almost $2,000 difference for an individual student choosing between an apartment and a house.
The affordability of higher-density housing is not just a result of height, Isenstadt explained. The more standardized and prefabricated it is, the quicker and cheaper it is built. As a result, the character of the older houses is deprioritized.
“A lot of it is just driven by economics,” Isenstadt said. “People recognize that character and can’t pay for it.”
Reitz said that there has been some push for more design guidelines beyond the existing minimum standards, but there is pushback because that makes the housing more expensive. Green spaces have also received concern for the same reason that students clashed with Newark residents in residential neighborhoods: parties.
The Continental, a six-story, 190-unit student housing complex spanning a block on Haines Street and South Chapel Street, constructed a courtyard in the center to provide light and ventilation for its internal units. The courtyard was originally designed to also be a recreational space, but the Newark police expressed concern over unsupervised parties, leading the developers to not allow access for residents.
To earn council approval, the Continental also needed a rezoning from 16-units-per-acre garden apartments to 36-units-per-acre high-rise apartments. Its height appears much larger than six stories, leading some council members to recently reevaluate height limits. Bensley hopes that will also mean a different way to measure.
“Stories is my least favorite way to measure building height,” Bensley said. “If you have an 80-foot building, but it is six stories or five stories, it is still the same impact.”
Business districts (BBs), which are increasingly becoming mixed-use housing, and high-rise districts (RAs) are the targets of these potential changes. As of now, BBs are zoned to allow up to three stories, with discretionary approval capped at seven. RAs are zoned to allow seven stories, with discretionary approval capped at ten. There is currently a push in the council to make the hard cap for BBs five, and make it seven for the RAs.
Bensley, however, hopes that they will be open to a conversation beyond simply not wanting big buildings. She argues that there are ways to mitigate height impacts like setting buildings back behind business districts and blocking them with trees.
“Land is so expensive in Newark,” Bensley said. “If we’re talking about housing affordability, density has to be a part of that conversation. And if we unilaterally say we’re never going to build a seven-story building again, that is going to be something that hurts affordability.”
As Democrats release a flurry of midterm ads portraying GOP cuts to Medicaid as a threat to rural healthcare, Republicans have countered with ads claiming Democratic candidates in Texas and Pennsylvania would put dozens of rural hospitals out of business by creating a public health insurance option. But the ads cite an industry-backed study whose assumptions don’t apply to all public option proposals.
In Texas, according to ad-tracking service AdImpact, President Donald Trump’s political operation has spent more than $6.9 million on an ad claiming James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for Senate, “supports a radical healthcare plan” that “could close 30 hospitals.”
And in central Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District, which includes the state capital of Harrisburg, an ad from a group backed by House Republican leadership claims Democrat Janelle Stelson supports “a plan to close up to 25 Pennsylvania rural hospitals” and accuses her of “closing the hospitals your family depends on.”
Talarico, a state legislator, is running against state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the closely watched Texas matchup. Stelson, a former local news anchor, is challenging incumbent Republican Rep. Scott Perry. Both races are rated toss-ups by the Cook Political Report.
The GOP ads in Texas and Pennsylvania don’t tell viewers exactly what Democrats’ “radical healthcare plan” is. But both of them cite a 2019 report from the consulting firm Navigant about the potential impact of creating a public option — a form of government-backed health insurance that people could buy into at a lower cost than private insurance.
That analysis was commissioned by the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, a coalition of groups opposed to policies like a public option and Medicare for All. The coalition’s members include groups representing hospitals, insurers and other healthcare and business interests.
The Navigant report estimates that anywhere from 28% to 55% of rural hospitals nationwide would be at “high risk” of closing if a public option were implemented, depending on how many people switch from private insurance. That includes 11 to 30 rural hospitals in Texas and 15 to 25 in Pennsylvania. By comparison, an earlier analysis from the same firm estimated that 21% of rural hospitals were already at high risk of closing without a public option, including 12 in Texas and 9 in Pennsylvania.
But those estimates are based on a major assumption — that a public option would pay hospitals the same rates as Medicare. And that’s not true of every proposal.
Most recent Democratic public-option proposals we reviewed would pay either rural hospitals or hospitals in general somewhat more than Medicare does. Talarico has said he wants to raise payment rates as part of his healthcare plan, in which case the Navigant study’s assumptions wouldn’t apply. Stelson’s campaign told us she hasn’t committed to a specific public option proposal, but generally supports more funding for rural hospitals.
“I think it would be reasonable to look at this [analysis] with some skepticism,” Christine Monahan, an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, told us, noting that its estimates of at-risk hospitals are based on a “theoretical proposal” that doesn’t line up with what most advocates are actually proposing.
Lydia Hall, a spokeswoman for the Congressional Leadership Fund, the group behind the Pennsylvania ad, told us Stelson “knows supporting a public option is unpopular and is now desperately trying to reframe her stance on a position she’s championed for a long time,” but did not answer specific questions about the ad. MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, did not respond to our questions about the Texas ad.
Proposals for a public option have circulated for years, including during debates over the 2010 Affordable Care Act and during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Eventual winner Joe Biden was among the candidates championing a public option as a more moderate alternative to proposals like Medicare for All, which would largely or entirely replace private insurance with a government-run single-payer system.
The idea hasn’t gotten as much attention recently, with Democrats’ messaging ahead of the midterms focused largely on reversing Trump’s changes to Medicaid and restoring more generous Affordable Care Act subsidies that Republicans let expire at the end of last year. But some Democrats have said a public option could be on the table if the party retakes power in 2028, and candidates like Talarico and Josh Turek, the Democrat running for Senate in Iowa, have made it a part of their campaign platforms. Others, including Senate candidates Troy Jackson in Maine and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, have endorsed more sweeping Medicare for All proposals.
The basic premise of a public option is that the government would create a health insurance plan that people could opt into, with lower premiums than private plans. (Some versions would allow people to buy into Medicare at any age, rather than creating a whole new program.) Proponents hope that would expand coverage to more people and lower overall premiums by forcing private insurers to compete.
The savings that make it possible for a public option to offer lower premiums would come from the government using its leverage to set or negotiate payment rates that are lower than what hospitals typically get from private insurance. So there would likely be some impact on hospitals’ bottom lines.
But what that impact looks like “really depends on how the policy is designed,” including where payment rates are set, said John Holahan, an institute fellow at the Urban Institute who has studied such policies.
The Navigant study cited in the ads assumes that a public option would reimburse healthcare providers at the same rates as Medicare. Because private insurers tend to pay hospitals about 2.5 times what Medicare does for the same services, that “would be a big cut for a lot of hospitals,” Holahan said.
But, he said, most public option proposals don’t go that far. For instance, some aim for rates that are 60% to 100% above what Medicare pays, which he said would be enough to produce some savings without huge impacts on most hospitals’ finances.
Monahan also noted that the effects would play out differently for different hospitals. Part of the rationale for a public option, she said, is to curb costs at hospitals that can charge excessive prices because they effectively have a monopoly in their area. But some independent hospitals or practices that don’t have the same negotiating leverage with major insurers might benefit from certain public-option pricing systems. Hospitals are also required to provide emergency care regardless of insurance status or ability to pay, so some could see their uncompensated care costs go down if more people have insurance.
Democrats in Congress have proposed several different versions of a public option since 2019, according to comparisons compiled by health policy organizations KFF and The Commonwealth Fund. Some use Medicare rates as a baseline but allow for certain adjustments, such as paying rural hospitals up to 25% or 50% more. Others direct the government to negotiate rates with providers using Medicare rates as a floor, which would presumably result in rates that are somewhat higher.
The Navigant report itself says that depending on how many people switch to a public option, rates that are 40% to 60% above Medicare’s would be enough to “hold rural hospitals harmless.”
We asked the Talarico and Stelson campaigns about how they would set payment rates under a public option, but neither gave us specifics.
Talarico has talked about a proposal he’s calling “Medicare for Y’all,” which would allow Americans of all ages to buy into Medicare as an alternative to private insurance. (Note that this is different from “Medicare for All” proposals, which generally aim to replace private insurance entirely.) His campaign website also says he would “improve Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates,” though a campaign spokesperson, JT Ennis, did not answer our questions about whether Talarico has specific targets in mind.
Stelson’s campaign told us she broadly supports the concept of a public option, but has not committed to a specific proposal. A spokesperson also pointed us to a policy document the campaign has released that says Stelson would “fight for increased funding and staff for our rural hospitals.”
Without more details, it’s hard to assess the impacts those policies would have. But neither candidate appears to have proposed the specific policy contemplated by the Navigant report — a public option paying current Medicare reimbursement rates — and Talarico has explicitly said he wants reimbursement rates to be higher. So it’s inaccurate to claim, as the ads do, that the candidates support a plan that’s been estimated to risk putting as many as 55 hospitals across Texas and Pennsylvania out of business.
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A feature called AI Overviews has been a profound change, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting
Google has put artificial intelligence at the front and center of its search bar. The most-visited site on the internet still shows the same list of links to users, but they have to scroll past a summarized response from an AI chatbot, a feature Google calls AI Overviews. The change to what was once the gateway to the rest of the internet has been profound, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting.
“AI is driving the most significant upgrade of the Google Search experience ever,” wrote Liz Reid, Google’s vice-president of search, last August. In May, the company said more AI is coming.
38-year-old had been facing attempted murder charge
Former player will accept aggravated assault charge
Former NFL star Antonio Brown plans to accept a plea deal on an attempted murder charge in Miami, his lawyer said Wednesday. Doing so will mean the former wide receiver avoids prison.
Brown is scheduled to appear in court next Wednesday to make the deal final. He could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted of the current attempted murder charge.
Developers can now write, run, and test applications accelerated by photonic processing
STUTTGART, Germany, Sept. 23, 2026 — Q.ANT today debuted its open-source software development kit for photonic computing, making the programming tools for a photonic processor publicly available for the first time.
Programmers now have everything they need to develop applications for Q.ANT’s Native Processing Units (NPUs), enabling them to compute with light, instead of electricity. The SDK includes: an API for programming languages including “C” and Python, sample applications, documentation, and a simulation backend that runs on a standard CPU, so that developers can build and validate applications on their own systems and then run it on real photonic hardware.
The SDK’s examples draw on Q.ANT’s published reference applications, including an advanced neural network that achieves better results with significantly fewer parameters; the source of Q.ANT’s speed and energy-saving benefits for computing.
In classical AI computing, most energy is consumed by the constant physical shuttling of data between separate memory and processor. Q.ANT’s photonic chip changes that: the computation itself happens in the optical domain, where non-linear functions are executed natively instead of being approximated across many layers of transistors. More expressive networks can therefore be built with fewer parameters, so less data has to move in the first place, compounding the gain in energy efficiency.
“Markets and ecosystems are created by applications, and that is why Q.ANT is working every day to put photonic computing into developers’ hands as fast as possible,” said Michael Förtsch, Founder and CEO of Q.ANT. “An ecosystem isn’t created by hardware alone. It emerges when the software layer is open and others can build on it—that’s why we’re making it accessible in collaboration with HPC centers like the LRZ and JSC, and neo-clouds like IONOS. Anyone writing an AI model today should be able to run it on photonic hardware in the future, using a familiar toolchain and without specialized knowledge of photonics. This is the ‘Linux moment’ of photonic computing: the point at which a new possibility becomes a global platform.”
In the coming months, Q.ANT will open access to its breakthrough hardware through the cloud via commercial partner IONOS or through on-premise installations of its Native Processing Server. Developers who start building with the SDK today will be ready to take full advantage of these new computing technologies once hardware access becomes available.
This release marks the first openly available SDK for programming a photonic processor, giving developers a historic opportunity to program core operations. The SDK also includes examples for a direct comparison between a classical neural network and an advanced neural network based on photonic native operations, benchmarked on parameter count, accuracy, functional approximation, and training loss.
This SDK is designed to sit alongside the environments developers already work in, and to serve as the foundation software developers need to build frameworks and higher-level tools as the architecture scales.
“If you want to get started, all you need is a laptop: download the SDK, integrate the Python or C-API, and get going – no knowledge of photonics or special hardware required. The included simulation backend runs on any standard CPU. Using real-world examples, developers can see how their model behaves on photonic computing cores and how photonic operations can make AI models more efficient than classical methods. Those who then want to run simulations on real hardware can access it via the cloud or on-premises. At launch, the SDK covers the most important functions, with more to follow,” said Utz Bacher, VP of Software at Q.ANT.
“The ever increasing cost, complexity, and power needs of traditional advanced computing systems are opening the door to new and innovative methods for solving some of today’s most vexing computation problems. Q.ANT, with its innovative photonic processor that can work alongside CPUs and GPUs, offers a way to address these concerns, particularly in the areas of AI inference and training, scientific programming, and image processing. Q.ANT’s new SDK, coupled with the availability of its hardware through a cloud access model, offers the advanced computing community an ideal way to explore the performance potential of Q.ANT’s pioneering systems,” said Bob Sorensen, Senior Vice President of Research, and Chief Analyst for Quantum Computing at Hyperion Research.
Q.ANT is commercializing photonic accelerators for AI and high-performance computing, offering a scalable alternative to transistor-based systems. Its Native Processing Units (NPUs) perform mathematical operations directly on Thin-Film Lithium Niobate (TFLN) based photonic integrated circuits, enabling energy-efficient, high-performance co-processing for complex computational tasks.
Q.ANT was founded in 2018. Its European headquarters is in Stuttgart, Germany, where it operates its own TFLN chip pilot line with IMS CHIPS, and it maintains a U.S. office in Austin, Texas. The company secured Europe’s largest Series A for photonic computing in 2025 and introduced its second-generation processor the same year, now installed and running at leading scientific computing centers with its first commercial deployment planned for 2026.
Warning from Charity Commission for England and Wales concludes two-year investigation after death of Hisham al-Hakimi in October 2023
The international aid charity Save the Children has been issued with an official regulatory warning over management failures and misconduct that put staff at its Yemen office at serious risk.
The warning concluded a two-year investigation by the Charity Commission for England and Wales into the running of the office after the death of its safety and security director, Hisham Al-Hakimi, in October 2023 after he was detained by the Yemeni authorities.
Argentinian president accuses United Nations of being filled with ‘parasites’ in bellicose general assembly speech
Javier Milei has condemned the UN as he warned that Argentina would take “matters into our own hands” in its dispute with Britain over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands.
In a caustic speech at the general assembly in New York, the Argentinian president criticised the UN for being ineffective when it came to the long-running tensions over the British overseas territory in the south Atlantic known in Argentina as the Malvinas.
John E. Sununu hasn’t held public office since the aughts. But New Hampshire politics has a long memory.
“John Sununu led efforts to privatize Social Security,” Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas said of his Republican U.S. Senate competitor in a Sept. 15 press release. He made similar claims in his Sept. 8 primary victory speech, saying Sununu “wrote the plan to privatize Social Security,” and in an August X post, calling Sununu “a lead architect” of Social Security privatization plans.
Sununu and Pappas are running for the open seat of the retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. Analysts consider the contest competitive.
A look back at Sununu’s record shows that Pappas’ assertion is largely accurate. Although Sununu hasn’t made Social Security privatization a centerpiece of his agenda this year, as a member of Congress two decades ago, he was a leading voice in the effort to change how people can access their Social Security benefits.
A recap of the Bush-era privatization debate
In the 1990s and early 2000s, lawmakers debated whether to shift some or all of Social Security’s finances into private accounts invested in stocks or other securities. That would have been a departure from the program’s traditional structure of paying beneficiaries from payroll tax revenues held in the federal treasury.
The battle played out over several years during the presidency of George W. Bush, who backed the concept. However, Congress never fully bought into the idea, and no form of Social Security privatization was enacted.
As early as 2000, when Bill Clinton was president, Sununu, then a House member, cosponsored the Personal Lockbox Act of 2000, which would have allowed Americans to direct a portion of their Social Security benefits, plus other assets held for retirement, into personal accounts.
In 2001, Sununu joined dozens of other lawmakers, mostly Republicans, in signing an open letter to the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security that said in part, “Personal retirement accounts will transform Social Security from a government IOU into personal property and real assets that workers can own and pass along to their children.”
In 2004, as a senator, Sununu introduced the Social Security Personal Savings Guarantee and Prosperity Act. Then-Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., introduced a companion bill in the House. The measure was modeled on a 2003 proposal by well-known conservative figures, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and activists Grover Norquist and Steven Moore.
The proposal would have allowed workers under 55 years old to voluntarily allocate a portion of their payroll taxes to individual accounts invested in stocks and other securities. Neither measure advanced to a vote.
In 2005, Sununu cosponsored the Stop the Raid on Social Security Act, which would have created automatic personal accounts unless the beneficiary opted out. This bill never received a vote, either.
Also in 2005, Sununu, along with most Senate Republicans, voted against a nonbinding resolution that said Congress should reject any Social Security plan that would require deep benefit cuts or a massive debt increase.
The debate over Social Security privatization became a centerpiece of Bush’s agenda in early 2005, but the effort petered out by that summer, as critics called the plan risky for beneficiaries.
In 2005, the New Hampshire Sunday News, the Sunday edition of the New Hampshire Union Leader, described Sununu as “a key national player in the effort to solve Social Security’s financial problems and enable participants to invest a portion of their Social Security in personal savings accounts.”
A nuance not captured by Pappas’ phrasing is that Sununu’s proposals would not have been mandatory for all Social Security beneficiaries. The plans would have been limited by age, voluntary, or a combination of the two.
Sununu explains his record on Social Security
In an Aug. 31 interview with WMUR-TV, PolitiFact’s New Hampshire partner, Sununu acknowledged his actions from two decades earlier and said the challenges have changed since then, requiring different solutions.
Sununu said his earlier legislation “gave younger workers a choice if they wanted to invest in a retirement plan, like the one members of Congress have. It maintained a guaranteed benefit for all retirees. And it made the system solvent.”
Pressed by WMUR political director Adam Sexton whether he still supported privatizing Social Security, Sununu said, “That was 20 years ago. If we had passed that bill, the system would be solvent today and most retirees would have a greater benefit.”
A retrospective analysis in 2025 by the conservative American Enterprise Institute found that if the plan had been enacted, beneficiaries would have become better off financially.
Our ruling
Pappas said Sununu “led efforts to privatize Social Security.”
As a member of Congress two decades ago, Sununu co-sponsored several bills to enact Social Security privatization, including two introduced before the issue became a Bush administration priority in 2005. However, they would not have privatized Social Security for everyone.
The statement is accurate but needs additional information, so we rate it Mostly True.
The drive to build more data centers — the massive, costly facilities powering the AI boom — has emerged as a lightning rod for candidates in the 2026 midterms."It's the confluence of hyper-localized concerns with broader worries about AI, and…
El Niño poses critical threat to nations’ defences, says Ed Miliband in presentation to global foreign ministers
The UK has warned countries around the world that the climate and nature crises and the coming El Niño threaten their national security and defence, presenting foreign ministries with the findings of an explosive report suppressed under Keir Starmer.
Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, made a presentation to the foreign ministers of the EU as well as Kenya and other countries on Wednesday night at a private meeting during the UN general assembly in New York, based on the report by the UK’s spy chiefs that found the collapse of natural systems around the world would lead to conflict, migration and food shortages.
Kremlin yet to respond publicly to US invitation that is likely to raise concerns from Ukraine and EU countries
The United States has invited Vladimir Putin to take part in the meeting of the G20 scheduled in Miami in December in what would be the first major summit with the Russian leader present since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The invitation, which marks a significant reversal by the Trump administration of Russia’s international isolation, was announced by Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, during a press conference on the sidelines of the United Nations conference in New York.
The AI lab will run its production workloads on Crusoe Managed Inference, tuned for throughput, price-performance, and reliability
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 23, 2026 — Crusoe and Thinking Machines Lab today announced a $65 million annual agreement to power inference for the lab’s open models on Crusoe Cloud. Through Crusoe Managed Inference, Thinking Machines Lab will serve a range of production workloads – including its Inkling models, GLM 5.2 and 5.3, and its own fine-tuned variants – on a dedicated Tailored Deployment of NVIDIA HGX B200 systems connected with NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking, engineered for high-throughput, cost-efficient serving at scale.
“Crusoe Managed Inference took us from evaluation to production quickly and met the standards we hold our own systems to, giving us the scale and economics to reinvest in the research at the core of what we do,” said Myle Ott, ML Infra Lead at Thinking Machines Lab.
“Thinking Machines Lab has a very sophisticated engineering team that expects partners to meet their high bar as they grow,” said Erwan Menard, SVP, Product Management of Crusoe Cloud. “Our team of leading AI engineers built Crusoe Managed Inference to deliver cost-efficient, reliable infrastructure, inference, and model lifecycle tooling as-a-service, so innovative companies can run their favorite models in production at scale, relying on our expertise.”
Crusoe will run and support the cluster directly as a Tailored Deployment – a dedicated, benchmarked, SLA-backed endpoint – giving Thinking Machines Lab the price-performance and headroom to scale without managing its own inference stack. The companies are also looking to expand into batch inference for large-scale synthetic data generation, turning inference into a flywheel for research.
Thinking Machines Lab joins a roster that has taken Crusoe Managed Inference past $100 million in contracted ARR less than a year from launch.
As the AI factory company, Crusoe is on a mission to accelerate the abundance of energy and intelligence. The company provides a reliable, scalable, cost-effective, energy-first solution for AI infrastructure. By harnessing large-scale energy sources, building AI-optimized data centers, and delivering a powerful AI cloud platform, Crusoe empowers its customers and partners to build the future faster. For more information, visit crusoe.ai.
(The Center Square) – Dissatisfaction with second-term Republican President Donald Trump, and belief that issues such as the economy and gas prices could be handled better by the minority party are reflected in a new poll and generating sparks of…
Fast food giant aiming to increase share of global chicken market as rising cost of beef hits profits
McDonald’s is betting on fried chicken as health concerns and the rising price of beef shift dining habits.
The company said that it aimed to take an extra 1.5 percentage point-share of the global chicken market by 2030, with an aim to increase its share of drinks by the same proportion. McDonald’s said the growth in chicken, a lower-priced protein, would not come at the expense of beef burger sales, saying it aimed maintain its “leadership position in beef”.
Andy Burnham’s accusation against the Kremlin tells half the story. Domestic extremists amplified by US big tech are part of the same problem
In November 2020, Barack Obama warned of an “epistemological crisis” facing western democracies. Polarisation and radicalisation were corroding trust in established information sources. “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work,” the former US president said.
That vulnerability has grown since then. Democracy’s enemies have become more determined to exploit it. This is the threat that Andy Burnham highlighted in a speech at the United Nations this week. The prime minister accused Russia of waging an “industrial-scale assault” on the UK’s information environment using bot armies and fake websites to spread falsehoods, interfere in elections, foment discord and poison inter-community relations.
As the secretary general, António Guterres, prepares to step down, the general assembly is highlighting the scale of the organisation’s challenges
The United Nations was created, its charter states, to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. Donald Trump used his address to the general assembly to threaten Iran, another member state, with annihilation again. The charter also speaks of the obligations of international law. On Venezuela, Mr Trump gloated that “to the victor belong the spoils”. His speech in New York on Tuesday might be regarded as an improvement on last year’s only in that it was not an explicit, full-scale attack on the UN itself, merely on its founding principles.
The absences this year are perhaps as telling as the US president’s hostile presence. Vladimir Putin has not attended for more than a decade. Nor has Xi Jinping – but the snub is more striking as he is in Washington to meet the US president. India’s Narendra Modi is not present; nor are Cyril Ramaphosa, Bola Tinubu or Abdel Fatah al-Sisi – the leaders of Africa’s three giants, South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt. While their reasons are various, the gaps speak collectively to Mr Trump’s wrecking capability and the broader challenges faced by the UN.
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Agreement with Mauritius over Diego Garcia unlikely to be revived unless president changes his mind, insiders believe
The Chagos Islands deal is on hold for as long as Donald Trump objects to it, UK officials believe, with no immediate signs it can be adapted to suit the US president.
After Trump savaged the three-way plan as “a terrible deal” during a meeting with Andy Burnham at the UN general assembly, the prime minister said he was “confident” the UK would be able to find a solution to revive the idea.
New RAF unit will warn of incoming missile attacks, and support offensive and defensive operations
A new military unit dedicated to defending satellites, protecting services people need on Earth and potentially supporting offensive operations is being launched by the UK.
The No III Space Effects Squadron will be announced on Wednesday, with the defence secretary, Wes Streeting, warning that Britain needs to “keep pace in the new space race”.
FBIjobs.gov offline on Wednesday as ShinyHunters group claims to have accessed records of agents and applicants
The FBI is investigating an apparent breach of its jobs website as a criminal hacking group claimed to have accessed “very sensitive data” on nearly all agents and job applicants.
“The FBI is aware of claims regarding unauthorized activity affecting FBIjobs.gov and is currently investigating,” the bureau said in a statement. The website, the main portal for prospective employees to learn about the FBI and initiate the application process, remained offline Wednesday morning.
Local advocacy groups say they have cut ties with Hannah Gann, who ‘fully lied about her identity and background’
A Philadelphia teacher is facing criticism from her fellow colleagues and activists after it was revealed that she fabricated being both Palestinian and Black.
The Racial Justice Organizing Committee (RJOC) and Philly Educators for Palestine (PEFP) announced over the weekend that it was cutting ties with “one of their long-time members”, Hannah Gann, who “completely lied about her identity and background, claiming at various times to be Palestinian, Tunisian and Black”.
Last year, well before DoorDash’s $131.5 million settlement with New York City for underpaying 264,000 delivery workers was announced Tuesday, the company spent around $1.4 million on the campaign to stop Zohran Mamdani, who oversaw the historic settlement, from becoming mayor.
At the time, DoorDash’s campaign contributions in the run-up to the 2025 mayoral election were considered unusually large — it made a single $1 million gift to a super PAC that, at the time, was the largest donation in the race — and faced criticism from other candidates in the race. The food delivery giant’s settlement agreement, the largest worker settlement in the city’s history, brings further scrutiny to those donations.
Through that election cycle, DoorDash spent around $1.4 million against Mamdani and in favor of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The company was one of the top donors to the biggest outside spender in the election, a virulently anti-Mamdani super PAC called Fix the City.
While on the campaign trail, Mamdani had promised to regulate delivery apps and further protections for delivery workers, proposals that earned him the support of delivery worker groups.
At the time, DoorDash’s large spending raised eyebrows. Now, the company has to pay its workers around 100 times the amount it spent attempting to influence the election, owing to a mayoral administration that refused to overlook concerns with the company’s conduct.
“It’s not a contribution, it’s an investment, with the donor or investor expecting something in return,” said Greg Coleridge, a former co-director of Move to Amend, an advocacy group that seeks stringent regulations against corporate money in elections. “Here is an instance where organized money from a company that was trying to avoid being responsible and accountable, was unsuccessful.”
Announcing the new settlement, Mamdani said, “The size of this settlement shows the damage done to workers by wage theft. But it also shows that enforcement matters.”
In a public statement about the settlement, DoorDash said, “Simply put, we screwed up. Our mistakes meant some Dashers were underpaid or paid late. While these mistakes weren’t intentional, that doesn’t make them okay.” (DoorDash did not respond to a request for comment on its campaign contributions.)
The Smear Campaign Against Mamdani
DoorDash contributed $1 million to Fix the City, a super PAC that spent $31 million in the mayoral election, accounting for close to half of the total outside spending in the race, largely funded by big corporations and billionaires. DoorDash made the payment in May 2025, at a time Mamdani’s campaign was gaining significant momentum ahead of the mayoral primaries in June.
Fix the City ran a barrage of ads, phone calls, text messages, and other forms of political communication seeking to prevent a Mamdani victory and portraying him as a politician with “radically dangerous ideas” and “a risk New York can’t afford.”
The group artificially altered Mamdani’s beard in a campaign mailer and made it appear longer and darker, an act that the Muslim mayoral candidate had called out as “blatant Islamophobia.”
At the end of video ads by Fix The City, a campaign finance disclosure in small text at the bottom of the screen read, “The top three donors to the organization responsible for this advertisement are Michael Bloomberg, DoorDash, John Hess.”
DoorDash also gave $1.8 million to Local Economies Forward NY, a super PAC that contributed more than $360,000 to Cuomo’s campaign.
Aided by corporations like DoorDash and billionaires like Bloomberg, the overall independent spending by super PACs seeking to defeat Mamdani was more than eight times what was spent in his favor, according to The Intercept’s analysis of data published by the NYC Campaign Finance Board.
A Historic Settlement
DoorDash’s settlement followed an investigation by the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. The Mamdani administration said that the investigation “found that DoorDash deliberately paid workers below the Minimum Pay Rate or not at all.”
Under the settlement with the city, the food delivery giant will pay over $115 million in worker restitution and over $16 million in civil penalties and administrative fines.
Two weeks after assuming office, the Mamdani administration warned delivery apps to comply with worker protections, sending notices to DoorDash and others, and announcing a lawsuit against the delivery app Motoclick.
The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection’s citywide investigation into DoorDash began after dozens of workers reported that the company had failed to pay them or had paid them late for work they had performed.
As part of the settlement, DoorDash must submit detailed compliance data reports to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection every month for three years, and the company’ activities will also be monitored through workers sharing data with the city.
The settlement announced by Mamdani is not the first run-in that DoorDash has had in recent years with restitution payments in New York.
In May 2024, the company agreed to pay $75,000 in a settlement after New York Attorney General Letitia James found that the company routinely rejected applicants with criminal histories in violation of the New York City Fair Chance Act. In February 2025, the attorney general settled with DoorDash for $16.75 million after the company used tips to subsidize workers’ guaranteed pay.
“They knew that by having a mayor who’s willing to put resources [for workers], it’s gonna be detrimental to their corporate model,” said Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Worker’s Justice Project, a group that organizes for low-wage immigrant workers and had helped several DoorDash workers file complaints with the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. “DoorDash decided to invest money in trying to buy our city’s democracy.”
SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 23, 2026 — Super Micro Computer, Inc., an AI, Enterprise, Storage, and 5G/Edge IT Total Solution Provider, is now shipping NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks integrated with Supermicro’s Data Center Building Block Solutions (DCBBS) and its direct liquid cooling stack (DLC-2).
Supermicro’s DCBBS now supports all critical computing infrastructure to speed time-to-online for NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 deployments
“We have spent years building the liquid-cooling stack, the manufacturing capacity, and the deployment teams for exactly this moment,” said Charles Liang, president and CEO, Supermicro. “Our customers can now order a Scalable Unit and receive production-ready systems with end-to-end integration, because we design and build every layer between the cold plate and the cooling tower. Our development of DLC-2 technology is what sets Supermicro apart and allows us to deliver the most complete solution for the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform.”
The NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform was designed in conjunction with direct liquid cooling technology to deliver AI-throughput-per-watt at efficiency levels unachievable with air cooling alone. With far greater AI operations per second comes a greater heat load: heat must be moved through the full fluid distribution loop, from the cold plates through manifolds, to the cooling tower. Supermicro tests and validates every rack with the full liquid cooling stack, speeding up time-to-online when deployed.
Supermicro’s path-to-production spans from the mechanical engineering of individual system nodes, the large-scale manufacturing of liquid-cooled racks, to the full onsite deployment of clusters based on NVIDIA reference architecture. Supermicro’s DCBBS provides unmatched thermal expertise and a comprehensive in-house portfolio of liquid cooling components. Cold plates, manifolds, hose kits, rack power shelves, in-row cooling distribution units (CDUs), in-rack CDUs, Liquid-to-Air sidecar CDUs, rear door heat exchangers, and facility-side cooling towers all come from the same portfolio.
Supermicro’s DCBBS Solutions for NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 include:
NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks. 72 NVIDIA Rubin GPUs and 36 NVIDIA Vera CPUs in a single liquid-cooled rack operating as one machine; Eighteen 1U compute trays, each with four Rubin GPUs and two Vera CPUs, connect through nine sixth-generation NVIDIA NVLink switch trays delivering 216 TB/s of scale-up bandwidth; Each rack provides 20.7 TB of HBM4 memory and up to 54 TB of LPDDR5X
Supermicro in-row cooling distribution units, rated at 1.8MW per CDU, deployed with N+1 redundancy
Optional Supermicro Rear Door Heat Exchangers ensure capture of residual heat load
Networking integration and cabling services based on NVIDIA Reference Architecture, including the AI compute fabric, converged fabric, and out-of-band management cabling
To ease deployment of NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks, Supermicro’s DCBBS Blueprint defines a balanced bill-of-materials for a given power envelope, from 5 MW to gigawatt scale. The DCBBS Blueprint based on one Vera Rubin NVL72 Scalable Unit provides 1,152 NVIDIA Rubin GPUs with 331 TB of HBM4 memory across 16 compute racks, with balanced cooling capacity, power delivery, high-performance storage, context memory storage, and networking. A Supermicro team manages the project across site survey, design, integration, testing, delivery, deployment, and ongoing support.
Learn more about Supermicro’s NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks here.
About Super Micro Computer, Inc.
Supermicro (NASDAQ: SMCI) is a global leader in Application-Optimized Total IT Solutions. Founded and operating in San Jose, California, Supermicro is committed to delivering first-to-market innovation for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge IT Infrastructure. We are a Total IT Solutions provider with server, AI, storage, IoT, switch systems, software, and support services. Supermicro’s motherboard, power, and chassis design expertise further enables our development and production, enabling next-generation innovation from cloud to edge for our global customers. Our products are designed and manufactured in-house (in the US, Taiwan, and the Netherlands), leveraging global operations for scale and efficiency and optimized to improve TCO and reduce environmental impact (Green Computing). The award-winning portfolio of Server Building Block Solutions allows customers to optimize for their exact workload and application by selecting from a broad family of systems built from our flexible and reusable building blocks that support a comprehensive set of form factors, processors, memory, GPUs, storage, networking, power, and cooling solutions (air-conditioned, free air cooling or liquid cooling).
TEL AVIV, Israel, Sept. 23, 2026 — Classiq and Israel Natural Gas Lines Ltd. (INGL) have announced results from research applying quantum optimization to natural gas transmission planning, including execution of a reduced version of the problem on the IonQ Forte-1 quantum computer.
The collaboration focused on a familiar challenge for pipeline operators: moving gas from suppliers to customers while staying within limits for pressure, flow direction and gas balance across the network.
As networks grow and operating conditions become more complex, the number of possible pressure and flow configurations can increase rapidly. The research explored whether quantum optimization could help identify promising scenarios more systematically, giving engineers a stronger starting point for detailed review.
For gas transmission operators, the current goal is not to replace established hydraulic modeling but to improve how candidate plans are generated and evaluated. Quantum optimization could help narrow a large set of possibilities to a smaller number of promising options for engineering validation.
Using Classiq’s platform, Classiq and INGL created a hybrid quantum-classical workflow that searched possible pressure configurations while accounting for key physical and operational requirements. The work used familiar network inputs, including supplier pressure, pipe characteristics and minimum customer pressure.
In simulator-based testing on a representative gas network, the workflow identified the maximum-throughput valid operating point, consistent with classical reference solutions. The research then moved a version of the problem onto the IonQ Forte-1 trapped-ion quantum processor, where the system produced physically valid candidate operating points close to the classical optimum.
The collaboration also examined how candidate scenarios could be reviewed with SIMONE, a detailed hydraulic modeling environment for gas networks. In this approach, quantum optimization helps identify promising planning options, while established hydraulic modeling can be used to validate them before any operational conclusion is drawn.
Technical Deep Dive
The full research paper provides the mathematical formulation, quantum optimization methodology, simulator results and details of the IonQ Forte-1 hardware execution.
“Pipeline planning depends on practical engineering constraints and not abstract optimization alone,” said Nir Minerbi, co-founder and CEO of Classiq. “Our work with INGL focused on bringing quantum optimization into a language oil and gas teams recognize: pressure, flow, constraints and validation. The goal is to surface strong candidate scenarios for further engineering review complementing trusted tools operators already use.”
“INGL has a responsibility to combine operational discipline with forward-looking innovation. Our work with Classiq reflects that strategy,” said Shlomo Kresner, CEO at INGL. “We are exploring quantum optimization not as a theoretical exercise, but as an emerging tool for evaluating complex network scenarios, validating them against established engineering methods and building practical knowledge for medium-term implementation.”
“This research shows the value of testing industry applications on real quantum hardware as they are developed,” said Scott Millard, Chief Business Officer at IonQ. “Running the gas-network optimization problem on Forte-1 gave the team a practical way to evaluate how quantum computing could contribute to complex planning challenges in the energy sector.”
The work reflects a practical approach to quantum computing for oil and gas and the wider energy industry. Energy operators regularly balance capacity, customer demand, infrastructure constraints and changing operating conditions. The research explores how quantum optimization could eventually complement the planning and simulation tools they already use.
About INGL
Israel Natural Gas Lines Ltd. (INGL), a government company established in 2003, is responsible for the construction and operation of the national natural gas transmission system. The company’s work is of great importance to the Israeli economy for two primary reasons: first, for its role in ensuring energy independence and strengthening Israel’s geopolitical position and second, for its contribution to the improvement of the environmental quality and reduction of air pollution, in line with international standards.
INGL’s construction and operation of the natural gas transmission system adheres to strict international standards, utilizing advanced technological tools, complexed logistical frameworks and a wide range of international and local suppliers, contractors, and consultants.
Classiq, a leading quantum computing software company, provides enterprise-grade technology that makes it practical to develop scalable, efficient quantum applications. Used by dozens of global enterprises, the Classiq platform combines AI agents, a high-level quantum programming language and design automation to accelerate the development of optimized, hardware-ready quantum software. The platform also supports hardware benchmarking, cost and performance optimization, and execution across quantum hardware platforms.
Masoud Pezeshkian says Tehran is ready for dialogue and diplomacy ‘but without the language of force’
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, turned the tables on Donald Trump, describing the US as the true bully and terrorist in the Middle East while insisting that Iran had always shown a commitment to the negotiating table.
In a defiant speech to the UN general assembly in New York, his first since the US and Israel launched an all-out war on Iran, Pezeshkian repeatedly vowed that Tehran would never bend the knee to the US.
Campaigners say plan marks notable shift away from oil and gas as previously pledges were only for carbon neutrality
Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, has committed to phasing out fossil fuels by 2045, despite fierce debate about its green policies.
In a roadmap published on Wednesday, the German government set out for the first time an explicit promise of “transitioning away” from fossil fuels. Previous pledges were only for “carbon neutrality”.
A win is a win, but we should probably contain our excitement about the biggest flotation in London for five years. Airtel Money, a payments processor that operates in 13 African countries and should be worth between £6bn and £7bn, is a welcome addition to the stock market but it would be a stretch to say the event marks a definitive change in the weather to end the listings drought.
Why? Because, in a sense, Airtel Money is already here. It is a 78%-owned subsidiary of Airtel Africa, an established FTSE 100 firm with a market value of £11.3bn ultimately controlled by Bharti Enterprises under the Indian billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal, also known for his 25% stake in BT.
New York Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart will undergo knee surgery that will end his 2026 season after suffering damage to his MCL, PCL and meniscus in Monday night’s loss to the Los Angeles Rams.
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport and Mike Garafolo reported that the surgery is expected to lead to a full recovery. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that the damage to Dart’s left knee included his MCL, PCL and meniscus, with the meniscus considered the main issue.
Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul, was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday morning for sexually assaulting Miriam Haley at his Manhattan apartment in 2006.
Some Trump-aligned candidates are calling for an end to the Iran war, even as Trump stands by his Iran strategy and has suggested escalation is possible.
Masoud Pezeshkian began his brief address by saying that he had planned to deliver different remarks before hearing President Donald Trump’s speech Tuesday.
TechCrunch quipped it was like if startup school Y Combinator and Peter Thiel's build-a-company-instead of-college Fellowship Program had a baby. Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is investing $35 million to launch a private school in San Francisco "aimed at turning high school graduates into founders," writes the SF Standard.
Or, as CBS News describes it, "One blue-chip Silicon Valley investor has a proposal for young people who are questioning whether to attend college — enroll in AI school instead...."
Specifically, the academy will provide instruction geared to subjects such as designing AI systems, fundraising for startups, selling businesses and storytelling. Students won't take tests or be assigned homework but will instead focus on building real projects. Courses will be taught by tech entrepreneurs, with the academy naming OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as either an instructor or guest lecturer.
From the SF Standard:
"There will be no traditional grades, tests, or homework," said the announcement. Instead, students will be encouraged to "build" in SF and work with partners from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, and other firms. They'll be encouraged to live in campus housing in San Francisco. "The #1 goal is to help students learn to build, which is the most important skill in the AI era," Gagan Biyani, chief executive of the academy, wrote on X. Biyani cofounded the ed-tech startup Udemy...
The school is opening applications for a Founding Class Fellowship a one-year, tuition-free program for around 50 students... The academy said it will bring in notable Silicon Valley names, like OpenAI's Sam Altman, as guest speakers and faculty. Students in the founding class will receive about $50,000 worth of computing credit — the sought-after currency in Silicon Valley to run AI models — as well as a $5,000 travel and research budget. The school is receiving funding from tech executives, including Fidji Simo, formerly of OpenAI and Instacart; Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator; and Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify.
"In the AI era, it's more important to come out with a portfolio of projects that you worked on and work experience than it is to have a diploma or certificate," Biyani told the San Francisco Chronicle:
Biyani said the academy plans to grow its enrollment and open a two-year program, pending regulatory approval, starting in the fall of 2028. Tuition is expected to be on par with the cost of an elite private university...
The academy raised $42 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. The ten founding partners are Anduril, Anthropic, Coinbase, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palantir, Replit and Stripe. A network of hundreds of instructors, hiring partners and guest speakers includes OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, neuroscientist Andrew Huberman and Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, according to the academy's website.
The FAQ describes a typical week by saying "Most of your time is yours to build. Each week, you share your progress with peers and practitioners, get direct feedback, and decide where to take your work next."
Q: Can I use AI to help with my application?
A: Yes. Use AI the way you'd use it on any project: to move faster, test ideas, and get past a blank page....
"The best assignments now are problems so hard they cannot be solved without AI," Andreessen Horowitz argued on X.com. "The Academy courses follow the same logic and will be taught by world-class leaders... The next generation will not be taught the way the last one was. The Academy is built for that world, and it begins in San Francisco."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the news.
(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin employee has filed a class action lawsuit against the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 7 and Olympic Companies claiming the company and union continue to deduct dues from her paychecks…
Lawyers say financial pressures are fuelling ONS figures that show fewer divorces after longer periods of marriage
Couples are putting off divorce because of the cost of living crisis, lawyers have said, after figures showing the average length of a marriage ending in divorce in England and Wales reached a record high last year.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) released figures on Wednesday showing that the average marriage ending in divorce lasted for 13 years in 2025. This is the longest since records began in 1963 and up from a record low of 8.9 years in 1985.
My super reliable GTS stock has, for the first time ever, given me a hiccup with the battery failing on me at 30%, down to red.
I turned it off then back on again. It comes back to 30% but then drops again to red. I will do the charge cycle again but do you think this is a problem or just a one-time glitch?
Farage referred to the new unit and said Burnham was setting it up ‘using the excuse that Russia wants to interfere with elections’
The former Labour minister leading the government’s review into youth unemployment has written to 100 firms to ask them to provide work placements and jobs for young people, the Press Association reports. PA says:
Alan Milburn, who was commissioned by former prime minister Keir Starmer to lead the government’s review into worklessness, has approached “business leaders” in sectors including rail, transport and utilities to ask them to provide more chances for young people.
The Milburn review said Royal Mail, Octopus Energy, Greene King and Lloyds bank are among the companies who are already offering opportunities to school and university leavers. They are taking part in the review’s First Chance scheme, which has come from the review.
As Ohio prepares to open a massive artificial intelligence data center, debate has intensified around billions of dollars in tax incentives the state has provided to attract the industry.
In his bid to unseat Republican Sen. Jon Husted, Democrat Sherrod Brown launched an ad saying Husted “led the push to bring data centers to Ohio and gave billions of tax dollars to make it happen.”
The ad features an unnamed man criticizing Google’s Lancaster data center in central Ohio.
“No one asked for that data center to be built here. And no one here is getting a damn thing from it, except higher electric bills,” he said. “Jon Husted is the reason this is here.”
Husted served in various offices of Ohio state government from 2001 to early 2025 before Republican Gov. Mike DeWine appointed him to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Vice President JD Vance. As DeWine’s lieutenant governor, Husted promoted data center expansion in Ohio and the industry received billions of dollars in tax breaks.
Under state law, the Ohio Tax Credit Authority approves exemptions for eligible data centers. The authority considers recommendations from the Ohio Department of Development and the Ohio Tax Commissioner before deciding whether to enter into an exemption agreement.
But the tax authority “functions as an arm of the administration,” David Niven, a University of Cincinnati political science professor, told PolitiFact, and it’s “common practice” for the governor and lieutenant governor to claim credit for corporate tax incentives the board approves.
Husted’s role promoting data centers and Ohio’s industry tax breaks
Data centers in Ohio received about $2.5 billion in state and local tax incentives from 2017 to 2024, according to a 2025 report published by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. The Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved these exemptions during former Gov. John Kasich’s and DeWine’s administrations.
Husted’s most prominent role in data center expansion happened when he was lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2025.
“Many, if not most Ohio lawmakers actively supported” data center industry growth in Ohio “and Jon Husted was certainly among them,” said Robert Alexander, a Bowling Green State University political professor. “His position as lieutenant governor put him in key position to advocate on behalf of data centers and he did so enthusiastically.”
In 2019, Husted publicly defended the tax incentives associated with Google’s $600 million New Albany data center. Google received a 15-year state sales-tax exemption estimated at $43.5 million, along with a local property-tax abatement. Husted argued the economic benefits would outweigh the incentives and said requiring Google to pay the sales tax could have pushed the company to invest elsewhere.
In June 2023, Husted also joined DeWine and JobsOhio, an economic development corporation, in announcing Amazon Web Services’ $7.8 billion investment for a data center in central Ohio. Husted said it was a step toward making Ohio “the tech center of the Midwest.”
A few months later, in September 2023, DeWine and Husted announced the Aligned Data Centers project in Erie County, which received a 75%, 15-year tax exemption. They said the company expected to create 18 full-time jobs.
In 2025, Husted and DeWine announced Amazon’s pledge for $10 billion to expand its operations in Ohio. Husted said artificial intelligence and data centers were “crucial to America’s economic superiority because they drive innovation, support high-tech industries” and helped analyze vast data “essential for global competitiveness.”
Husted involvement in early data center tax incentive programs
As House Speaker from 2005 to 2009, Husted had the authority to appoint members to the Ohio Tax Authority. We asked Husted’s reelection campaign and the Ohio Department of Development, which oversees the authority, whether Husted appointed members but received no information.
“Husted, as speaker, was an advocate for Ohio’s tax credit process, but the membership of the Ohio Tax Credit Authority would have changed between his time as speaker and the boom in data center projects,” Niven said. “And during the DeWine-Husted administration, he was involved in the appointments process for other regulatory positions, so he would have been in a position to have influence over appointments to the Tax Credit Authority.”
The Ohio Legislature approved a 2011 law that created the sales- and use-tax exemption for eligible data center equipment, marking the beginning of Ohio’s data center tax exemption program.
Under Kasich, Ohio created a 100% sales-tax exemption for qualifying data centers. From 2014 to 2018, Kasich’s administration approved statewide exemption agreements with Amazon, Meta and Google. State estimates released in June value those three agreements at about $600 million each, roughly $1.8 billion combined.
Husted’s position on tax breaks has changed
More recently, amid public concerns about the growth and costs of data centers, Husted has said new data centers should not get tax breaks, but that it ultimately should be a local decision.
In July, Husted introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act to encourage states to require large electricity users, including data centers, to pay the costs associated with the power generation, transmission and other infrastructure needed to serve them. On Sept. 17, Husted failed to get unanimous consent in the Senate to pass the bill; the House passed a companion measure.
Transparency around data center deals has also become an issue in Ohio. In Brown County, officials in the village of Mount Orab negotiated a proposed data center project under nondisclosure agreements, prompting questions about what information was available to the public. The controversy has helped spur legislation, including House Bill 695, which would prohibit certain local officials from entering into NDAs. The bill has not passed the Legislature.
Our ruling
A Brown ad said Husted “led the push to bring data centers to Ohio and gave billions of tax dollars to make it happen.”
As Ohio’s lieutenant governor, Husted promoted data center expansion in the state and applauded and defended tax incentives to lure the industry. The Ohio Tax Credit Authority formally approved the tax exemptions, but an expert said the authority is an arm of the administration.
Brown’s statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. We rate it Mostly True.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture prepares to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. If the proposal is finalized, it would eliminate a 25-year-old rule that protects some of the most undeveloped parts of America's national forests.
It is sad and dangerous that at such a perilous moment, the United States is saddled with a president like Trump
Donald Trump’s speech on Tuesday to the United Nations general assembly was an object lesson in his lawless rule and remarkable capacity for self-delusion. Disregarding the UN charter’s emphasis on the peaceful resolution of disputes, he doubled down on his violent unilateralism while denigrating the global issues that the UN is designed to address.
For many, the headline remark was his musing about whether to “annihilate the Islamic Republic” of Iran. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”
Judge rejects USDA’s timetable and clarifies immigrant eligibility, but federal rules aimed at improving state payment accuracy remain in place
DOVER, Del. — Delaware has won a court ruling that prevents the Trump administration from counting certain food assistance errors against states under a deadline a federal judge found unlawful. The victory protects the state from potential future costs tied to that deadline, but it does not resolve a separate problem: Delaware’s SNAP payment error rate was 16% in fiscal 2025, well above the national average.
The Sept. 17 ruling also confirmed that certain lawful permanent residents, including people who were previously refugees or granted asylum, remain eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program without waiting five years. It did not overturn the 2025 federal law requiring states with high payment error rates to pay a share of SNAP benefit costs.
The case for state accountability
Congress changed SNAP last year to give states a stronger financial reason to determine eligibility and benefit amounts accurately. Under the law, states with error rates of at least 6% can be required to cover 5%, 10% or 15% of benefit costs, depending on their rate. The requirement generally begins Oct. 1, 2027.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported a national payment error rate of 10.62% for fiscal 2025, representing $10.1 billion in improper payments. The measure includes benefits paid above and below the correct amount. It is not a fraud rate.
“These payment error rates are further proof that state accountability is severely lacking in SNAP,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said when USDA released the figures. She said the department wanted states to curb waste while serving needy families and protecting taxpayers.
Delaware’s error rate
Delaware’s fiscal 2025 rate was 16%, compared with the 10.62% national rate and the law’s 6% cost-sharing threshold. That makes payment accuracy a substantial issue for the state, independent of its dispute with USDA over the new law’s implementation. The figure does not mean 16% of Delaware recipients committed fraud; it includes overpayments and underpayments.
Delaware’s rate is high enough to qualify it for a delay in the new benefit cost-sharing requirement. That gives the state more time to improve accuracy before it must begin paying a share of benefits under that provision. The delay comes from the law itself, separate from the court ruling.
Why the judge rejected USDA’s deadline
The lawsuit focused on how USDA put the 2025 law into effect. SNAP rules provide a 120-day adjustment period during which certain errors arising from a policy change are excluded from a state’s payment error rate. USDA said the period began July 4, 2025, when the law was enacted, and ended Nov. 1.
But USDA did not issue its guidance on noncitizen eligibility until Oct. 31, leaving states one day under that timetable. Other instructions arrived weeks or months after USDA said the clock had started. U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai ruled that the department had not given states adequate notice. He set aside its deadline and required a full adjustment period following proper implementation instructions.
The judge also found that USDA’s October guidance wrongly indicated that some lawful permanent residents were ineligible for SNAP or subject to a five-year waiting period. USDA issued a clarification in December. The ruling confirms that lawful permanent residents who were previously in specified humanitarian categories retain their exemption from the waiting period, provided they meet other SNAP requirements.
What Jennings’ criticism means
“This entire ordeal was a blatant attempt by the Trump Administration to take food away from families in need, to destroy a plank of the social safety net, and to degrade our state’s financial standing,” Attorney General Kathy Jennings said in announcing the decision.
Jennings’ accusation goes beyond what the judge decided about the administration’s intent. USDA says it is seeking to reduce improper payments, save federal money and hold states accountable for administering SNAP accurately. The court nevertheless found that USDA’s initial guidance misstated eligibility for some lawful permanent residents and that its deadline unfairly exposed states to future costs.
The distinction does not erase the effects of the broader 2025 law. The Congressional Budget Office expects its tighter eligibility and work rules to reduce the number of people receiving SNAP. Its projected $187 billion in federal savings over 10 years includes those changes; it is not an estimate of fraud eliminated. The court ruling establishes that USDA went beyond a lawful implementation of the changes at issue, but it does not establish that denying food to needy families was the administration’s purpose.
For Delaware, the ruling means USDA cannot use the deadline the judge rejected to count implementation errors against the state. Delaware must still follow the new law and address its high payment error rate. Both facts matter to understanding what the state won — and the work that remains.
TO GO BOX | The SNAP ruling
Who: Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings joined other states in suing the Trump administration over USDA’s SNAP guidance and deadline.
What: A federal judge set aside USDA’s deadline for counting certain implementation errors and clarified eligibility for some lawful permanent residents.
When: The ruling was issued Sept. 17, 2026.
Where: The decision came from the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon and addresses USDA guidance to states.
Why it matters: Delaware avoids errors being counted under the rejected deadline, but its 16% fiscal 2025 payment error rate remains high. The federal law requiring states with high error rates to share SNAP benefit costs remains in effect.
Organised crime groups offer cash to move packages containing illegal drugs, weapons and dirty cash
Students are being recruited by criminals in West Yorkshire to transfer illegal packages containing illegal drugs, prohibited weapons, stolen goods and dirty cash.
Organised criminals are using social media platforms including Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook to recruit people to help them move illicit goods, particularly targeting students and vulnerable adults.
Sandie Peggie accuses RCN of failing to adequately support her in dispute over sharing women’s changing room with trans doctor
A nurse who objected to sharing a changing room with a transgender doctor has said she felt “discriminated against” by her union after raising the complaint.
Sandie Peggie, who worked for NHS Fife for more than 30 years, won a partial victory against her employer after a tribunal in December 2025, when a judge upheld her harassment claim against the health board but dismissed claims of discrimination, indirect discrimination and victimisation.
Work with U.S. defense, national security, and energy stakeholders informs new research on quantum security applications that achieve quantum advantage detecting network intrusions, authenticating devices, and verifying user location
BROOKLYN, N.Y. and WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2026 — Qunnect today announced its work with U.S. government agencies and national security partners. That work, together with Qunnect’s commercial deployments and new research, provides a foundation for security applications that will protect critical communications against quantum threats and AI-enabled impersonation, deception, and falsified meta data.
As Congress mandates Department of Defense to develop quantum networks and the White House calls for all government agencies to secure systems against quantum threats, Qunnect is working with government and industry partners to advance quantum networking solutions to combat these threats. The emerging technologies use quantum entanglement, a physical phenomenon that the company’s new white paper argues offers provably secure approaches to the verification of the devices, users and connections for networks carrying sensitive information.
“Five years ago, we set out to develop quantum networking security applications that could go beyond distributing encryption keys,” said Noel Goddard, CEO of Qunnect. “We saw an opportunity to verify where a signal came from, whether a connection had been disturbed, and whether a device was genuine. Government and commercial partners have been working with us to develop those capabilities and we are excited to share our research on how entanglement and quantum networks can help protect U.S. communications against foreign adversaries and frontier technology threats like AI and quantum.”
Qunnect’s government and national security work includes:
DARPA: Qunnect is a contract awardee from DARPA to advance quantum networking technologies through the Quantum Augmented Network, or QuANET, program.
In-Q-Tel: Qunnect is carrying out its second work program supporting government national security customers through In-Q-Tel, which is also an investor in the company.
Air Force Research Laboratory: Qunnect has received multiple awards from AFRL’s Information Directorate in Rome, New York since 2020 and is a current Direct to Phase II (D2P2) performer, with instruments installed in their quantum labs.
NIST: NIST is using Qunnect’s hardware to advance quantum networking technologies anchoring DC-QNet.
Department of Energy: Qunnect is a subcontractor to GE Vernova on DOE’s CESER program, the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, connecting its quantum networking work to the protection of energy infrastructure.
Qunnect’s new white paper, “Entanglement for Security Beyond QKD,” outlines three security applications under development on its Carina hardware. They use quantum entanglement to add physical verification of location, connections and identity alongside existing encryption:
Quantum Position Verification (QPV) is designed to provide physical proof of where and when a signal originates, offering an unhackable way to verify location independently of GPS or IP geolocation combatting AI threats to meta data.
Quantum Factor Authentication (QFA) uses an unspoofable quantum test that relies on quantum physics to authenticate devices, with the aim of resisting the growing sophistication of AI-enhanced impersonation and machine-learning attacks on hardware fingerprints.
Quantum Channel Protection (QCP) turns the fiber line itself into a sensor, designed to detect a network intruder, tap, splice or rerouting, combatting harvest-now/decrypt later attacks.
Qunnect’s metropolitan quantum network deployment in New York has supported work with Cisco and NYU, while Deutsche Telekom anchors its quantum network in Berlin with Qunnect hardware. The State of New Mexico commissioned Qunnect to create ABQ-Net as the connective tissue and open access testing infrastructure open to quantum programs and new startups in downtown Albuquerque. These networks operate on existing telecommunications fiber and at room temperature, providing infrastructure for developing new quantum security applications.
The white paper, “Entanglement for Security, Beyond QKD: Physics-based trust in an evolving threat landscape of AI and quantum technologies,” is available here.
About Qunnect
Qunnect develops quantum networking hardware that distributes entanglement over existing telecommunications infrastructure. Its Carina platform supports the development of quantum security applications and future networks for distributed quantum computing and sensing.
Phil Knight and wife, Penny, make largest known donation to a public university to fund a new engineering school
Nike co-founder Phil Knight, and his wife, Penny, have donated $1bn to the University of Oregon in what the institution described as the “largest gift ever made to a comprehensive public university”.
The donation is intended to be used to establish a new engineering school in Eugene. In a news release seen by the Guardian, the university said the new school would “educate engineers and applied scientists in bioengineering and other high-demand disciplines, attract faculty and researchers to a growing campus, and accelerate the university’s ability to move discoveries out of the laboratory and into products, therapies, technologies and companies”.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republican Sen. Rand Paul says the Department of Homeland Security still has not provided Congress with investigative findings on the fatal January shootings of U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.
Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told Politico that his panel continues seeking the information. “We’ve asked for information. We’re still asking,” he said, according to the Washington Examiner. The shootings occurred during the Trump administration’s Operation Metro Surge and triggered national scrutiny of ICE tactics and DHS’s public accounts of enforcement encounters.
Paul previously withheld action on an ICE director nominee while demanding updates on civilian deaths involving immigration officers. AP reported last week that Paul said he remained “still waiting” for DHS to provide the requested internal-investigation information.
The demand comes amid broader concerns about transparency in Minneapolis enforcement cases. In a separate January shooting, ICE officer Christian Castro has been charged federally with lying to the FBI after prosecutors said video contradicted his claim that he was attacked before firing through a residence door. Castro has pleaded not guilty.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who replaced Kristi Noem, told senators during his confirmation process that he wanted to restore confidence in the department and acknowledged that he had previously made an inappropriate characterization of Pretti.
(The Center Square) – Early voting begins in Illinois on Thursday morning, but the state’s 40-day early voting period is accompanied by additional taxpayer costs.
Researchers project nearly half a million more heat-related deaths from June 2026 to February 2027 compared with a typical year, as a result of El Niño.
Heeding calls from far-right activist Daniel Thomas, hundreds of protesters turned out in Hampshire
Six people have been arrested after anti-migrant protesters gathered at a marina in Hampshire in the mistaken belief that a small boat was due to arrive.
Heeding calls from the far-right campaigner Daniel Thomas, hundreds of protesters gathered early on Tuesday evening at Gosport in Hampshire, aiming to disrupt any disembarkation of asylum seekers. The Border Force vessels carrying them landed instead in Dover early on Wednesday.
As the university’s new surveillance cameras join the flock of students on campus, petitions and opposing student organizations have formed. Under the guidance of Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Ellen Herbst, University of Delaware (UDPD) Associate Vice President and Chief of Police Patrick Ogden is enhancing security cameras on the university campus.
How security systems will be updated, and with what technology, is no longer clear. As of Aug. 25, the project was designated with the title “Flock License Plate Reader Enhancements” on the university’s website, but has now been altered to “Advanced License Plate Reader Technology (ALPR)” with no clarification on the change.
There has been limited information available regarding the project, but the project’s stated goal is to “enhance safety on campus by providing adequate license plate reader coverage.” Alterations have been made to various parts of the campus safety project’s description. The word “Flock” has been erased entirely from the public project plan.
While there has been no official statement as to why these changes were implemented, students continue to push the university to explain what sorts of technology will be utilized by both the university and UDPD.
One group of students has gained traction with their social media presence, deflock. Run by president Declan Rooney, a sophomore public policy major, and treasurer Arya Keim, a sophomore wildlife ecology major, the Instagram account has gained nearly 900 followers in the past month or so.
After a change.org petition was put up on Aug. 13 against the installation of these cameras, Rooney wanted to get the word out there.
“The fact that everybody has come together just adds to the momentum we have,” Rooney said. “But even if nobody else agreed with me, I would probably still be voicing my opinion against this.”
The growing organization stemmed from the nationwide mapping project, DeFlock, which is working to educate United States (U.S.) citizens about this technology and create an accurate map of all the cameras across the country.
“Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs or LPRs) are AI-powered cameras that capture and analyze images of all passing vehicles, storing details like your car’s location, date, and time,” according to DeFlock’s website. “They also capture your car’s make, model, color, and identifying features such as dents, roof racks, and bumper stickers, often turning these into searchable data points.”
The company Flock Safety, a manufacturer of these cameras, specifically creates technology that is designed to aid law enforcement, businesses and schools in gathering information to increase public safety. One aspect of this company is Flock LPR (License Plate Readers), which captures vehicle sightings, records license plate numbers and helps users find vehicle evidence.
“Flock cameras are ALPR, which is an automatic license plate reader, which is not new technology,” Rooney said. “Those have been around since the ’80s, but what’s new is the AI database that they use to analyze the information.”
The removal of the word “Flock” from the website does not necessarily signify a lack of ALPR devices or the university halting the use of artificial intelligence databases. While it has attracted the most attention, and it is what was referenced by the university, Flock is not the only company producing this kind of technology.
“So while we are deflock, this is more just, like, de-mass surveillance at UD,” Keim said.
They were not the first or only students to recognize this project. Jacob Hindin, a sophomore insect ecology and conservation major at the university, was the one who originally published the petition.
“I want the voices of the students to be heard,” Hindin said. “And on top of that, I want students who kind of aren’t in the know about this kind of thing, to know.”
At the time that he published the petition, Flock was still listed on the website; it then transitioned to just Advanced License Plate Readers (ALPR) at the time of his interview with The Review on Sept. 10.
While they are not working together directly, both deflock and Hindin are pushing to have communication with university administrators, whether that be President Laura Carlson or Ogden, who is managing the project.
“I don’t know what to expect, really,” Rooney said. “But I think I’m leaning towards expecting them to drag their heels, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong. I’d love for them to work with us and hear our side at least.”
ALPR cameras made by Flock Safety have already been installed on campus. One of the more notable locations for students is on South College Avenue, where two cameras are attached to the bottom of the skybridge connecting Gore and Smith Halls.
Nik Anna/THE REVIEW
The ultimate goal for students protesting the cameras is to get these surveillance systems off campus entirely, but in the early stages, education for both students and local residents has been a top priority.
After requesting the university to comment on the matter, Vice President of Public Affairs Rick Deadwyler provided the following statement to The Review.
“The University takes seriously both the safety of our campus community and the privacy questions that can arise from technologies used to support public safety. Automated license plate reader technology is one of the tools UDPD uses to investigate incidents, resolve crimes and support appropriate law enforcement activity. UDPD has strong policies governing how its personnel may access, use, retain and share ALPR data. Those policies reflect the University’s expectation that ALPR data be used only for legitimate law enforcement purposes and establish limits on access, sharing and retention.”
When deflock was asked if they had anything further to say, they kept it simple.
The EU and Canada, Ursula von der Leyen said last week, “see the world with the same eyes”, with shared stances on everything from AI to the climate crisis, the Ukraine war and the unholy chaos unleashed by the current occupant of the White House (OK, she didn’t actually say that last bit. But I like to think she almost certainly thought it.)
So, the European Commission president went on, Canada should become “the first associate member of the EU”. In the audience, Mark Carney beamed with delight. The next day, Canada’s prime minister enthusiastically embraced the idea of an “alliance for the future”, to build “collective resilience” through “deep cooperation”.
Cooperation on OceanEye, which aims to create ‘real-time’ model of world’s oceans, comes amid efforts to boost EU ties
Britain is to join a major new ocean science programme, led by the EU, to better forecast extreme weather and climate events, the environment secretary is to announce in New York.
The announcement on Wednesday will come as Andy Burnham’s government aims to rebuild the UK’s relationship with Europe, and follows warnings this year’s “supersized” El Niño, tracked in the Pacific Ocean, will fuel more extreme weather globally.
Photonic’s expertise in distributed quantum computing and advanced error correction helps inform new approaches to understanding quantum resource requirements at scale
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 23, 2026 — Photonic Inc. and Microsoft are collaborating to advance quantum resource estimation for future large-scale quantum computing systems. As quantum computing scales beyond a single processor, developers and enterprises need better ways to understand the value and benefits associated with distributed architectures and advanced error-correction approaches. The companies are working together to help the ecosystem better estimate the resources required to run quantum algorithms, including qubit counts, run time, and overall system overhead.
The collaboration builds on the companies’ existing strategic partnership, combining Photonic’s expertise in next generation error correction codes and distributed quantum computing with Microsoft’s Quantum Resource Estimation (QRE) framework. Together, the companies are exploring how architectural choices, networking requirements between quantum systems, and emerging error-correction approaches influence the resources required to run quantum algorithms at scale.
Photonic’s Quantum Low-Density Parity Check (QLDPC) error-correction code family SHYPS represents an important advance in reducing the overhead required to operate large-scale quantum computers. By helping quantum computing systems do more with fewer physical qubits, code innovations such as SHYPS play a significant role in improving the efficiency of high-connectivity architectures. As modular architectures gain momentum across the quantum computing industry, resource estimates must account for the cost of running algorithms across interconnected systems.
“As the industry moves from individual quantum processors toward interconnected, distributed systems, understanding the resources required to run meaningful applications becomes increasingly important,” said Paul Terry, Chief Engineering Officer at Photonic. “Our partnership with Microsoft has co-innovation at the core, and we are pleased to be leveraging our collective strengths and focusing on QRE, with the goal of giving the industry a clearer picture of what it will take to run practical applications on tomorrow’s quantum hardware.”
The Microsoft Quantum Resource Estimator is an open-source tool that estimates the physical resources and runtime required to run quantum algorithms and applications on a range of future, fault-tolerant quantum systems. Starting from configurable qubit technologies and quantum error correction schemes, developers and researchers can use the tool to see how choices such as hardware architecture and error-correction approach affect the number of physical qubits and the runtime needed for a given algorithm — allowing them to benchmark and compare different quantum solutions and platforms as they design for scale. The collaboration with Photonic reflects a shared commitment to advancing the tools and resources needed to support innovation across the quantum computing ecosystem and help organizations prepare for the quantum era.
“Quantum resource estimation helps developers understand the real-world requirements of quantum applications before large-scale quantum computers are available,” said Matthias Troyer, Technical Fellow and CVP, Microsoft Quantum. “Working with Photonic, we can explore how distributed architectures and advances in error correction will influence the future scalability and performance of quantum systems.”
In advance of the release of these capabilities on the Microsoft Quantum Resource Estimator, Photonic invites organizations to sign up for updates on the infrastructure, resources, and architectural considerations required to realize value from quantum computing at scale.
About Photonic
Photonic Inc. is a leading quantum technology company developing commercial-scale quantum computers and quantum networks to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges in materials science, drug discovery, climate change, and security. The company’s approach unlocks performance at scale through unmatched distributed quantum computing capabilities. Photonic’s high-connectivity Entanglement First architecture leverages a unique qubit modality, optically-linked silicon spin qubits, to enable powerful computation, efficient error correction, and seamless integration with existing data center and telecom environments. Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, with operations in the United States and United Kingdom, Photonic’s team of 180+ experts is advancing quantum technologies alongside leading investors, partners, and customers worldwide. Learn more at photonic.com.
First such storm of fall could have wind gusts of 70mph in places, flooding and power outages, forecasters warn
New York, Boston, and much of New England could face a weekend nor’easter storm with wind gusts of 70mph in places, and “significant” impacts including beach erosion, flooding, and power outages, forecasters warn.
Effects from the season’s first such storm since Tuesday’s official start of fall could last through the weekend, especially if the system sits swirling off the coast, a scenario experts say is looking increasingly likely.
From highlighted ledges to characters telling you what to do, blockbuster games are increasingly taking the challenge out of playing – and players are pushing back
Marvel’s Wolverine, the latest action game from Sony’s stable of expensive blockbuster-factory studios, has had an unfortunate launch. Reviews were decent, if not stellar, but a series of viral video clips from reviewers and streamers have made it the scapegoat for a patronising flavour of game design that gamers have hated for decades. This clip, from Skill Up’s review, shows the player entering a beautiful wintry landscape before being overwhelmed by visual cues telling them what they’re supposed to be doing there. Sonar pulses point you in the direction of objectives. Targets – which, it bears emphasising, are shaped like targets – get an extra reflective visual effect so you know you’re supposed to pay attention to them. A trail shows you not just where to go, but where the level’s sole hidden collectible is.
It is hand-holding to the point of parody. Indeed, it reminded me of the sniggersome Mario in Unreal Engine satirical videos that makes the social media rounds every few months (“A mushroom? I should take a look at this”). Skill Up’s clip has been followed by hundreds of others, gleefully ripping into Wolverine with ironic savagery. In one much-copied clip, a streamer simply lays down his controller during a motorbike chase sequence and watches as Wolverine speeds on regardless, bouncing off the scenery as the game plays itself.
Justice department cites national security to support ban on CNN, Politico and MS Now as trio file lawsuit in response
The US Department of Justice has defended Donald Trump’s decision to ban three new organizations from the White House, arguing in a court filing that access to the grounds was a “privilege” and citing national security concerns.
Lawyers for the US president doubled down on Trump’s claims about CNN, Politico and MS Now reporting “Fake News”, and insisted the ban did not violate the first amendment because “access to the White House is a privilege, not a right”.
Kristoffer Polaha, actor in 21 Hallmark movies, will be at UNITED Church’s Milford Campus on Friday, Oct. 23
By John Riddle, Contributing Journalist, Delaware LIVE
Hallmark fans will have a chance to see one of the network’s familiar leading men in Delaware this fall when actor Kristoffer Polaha visits Milford for a special evening celebrating an upcoming film and the real-life mission that inspired it.
Polaha, who has appeared in 21 Hallmark movies along with numerous television, film and stage productions, will be at UNITED Church’s Milford Campus on Friday, Oct. 23, for the CUPS Comedy Cast Party.
The event celebrates the completion of the production phase of Rescued, the working title of a film starring Polaha and based on the story of comedian Mike Williams.
Williams moved with his wife and three children to the Dominican Republic in 2010. While there, he became involved in an effort to rescue a Haitian refugee from Russian human traffickers. That experience ultimately led to the establishment of CUPS Mission, which now works in three countries on two continents to fight poverty and provide children with education, training and opportunities that can help them avoid trafficking.
“When I heard Mike’s story, I knew I had to be a part of it,” said writer and director Trey Reynolds. “This film is for every person who has ever felt the pull to do something greater than themselves and wasn’t sure if they were brave enough to do it.”
The movie was filmed on location in the Dominican Republic during March and April and is currently in post-production, with a projected release in late 2027. Reynolds’ previous credits include Blue Miracle, The Forge and Family Camp.
For Polaha, making the film became about more than simply playing a role.
“To make a movie is a blessing. To make this kind of movie is life-changing,” Polaha said.
During production, Polaha described how the cast and crew worked to leave a lasting impact on the community where they were filming. Their efforts included cleaning a river, stuccoing and painting the village church and painting nearby homes. The word “HOPE” was also painted on the church wall.
“We’re leaving this community better than how we found it,” Polaha said.
Children from the community spent six days with the film crew, playing games, becoming comfortable around the cameras and eventually appearing in the movie.
The Bridge, a Christian radio network with stations in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey, is hosting the Milford event. The network has supported CUPS Mission for years, and its listeners sponsor La Union Abajo, a village near Puerto Plata. Bridge staff members and listeners
have contributed funding, equipment and volunteer labor to CUPS Mission projects for nearly a decade.
Williams, whose credits include Dry Bar Comedy and Dove Award Comedian of the Year, will also appear at the Delaware event. He and his family have helped thousands of children during the past 15 years.
Polaha and Williams will be joined by Reynolds, Executive Producer Jack Eason, Associate Producer Benjamin Weeks and others involved with the film. The evening will include a question-and-answer session, exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and a first look at a clip from the movie.
“This is exactly the kind of story that reminds us what is possible when ordinary people choose to live for something bigger than themselves,” said producer Darren Moorman. “Mike Williams stepped away from personal success to answer a deeper calling, and the ripple effect of that decision is still being felt today.”
Polaha is well known to Hallmark audiences, but his acting credits extend far beyond the network. He has appeared in North Shore, Life Unexpected, Wonder Woman 1984, Jurassic World Dominion, Mad Men and CSI: Miami. He also stars alongside Jon Hamm in the upcoming MGM+ psychological thriller American Hostage.
The CUPS Comedy Cast Party begins at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, at UNITED Church, Milford Campus, 985 N. Dupont Blvd. The event is open to the public. Early bird tickets are $20 through Aug. 31, with prices increasing Sept. 1. A limited number of $100 VIP Red Carpet Reception tickets are also available and include a private reception with Polaha, Reynolds and others involved with the film.
Nominations are now being accepted for five awards that will be presented during a ceremony in December. Delaware residents have until Friday, Oct. 9, to recommend an individual, program or organization for recognition.
The Maternal Mental Health and Family Wellness Award will recognize work that advances maternal health for women and families throughout Delaware.
By John Riddle, Contributing Journalist, Delaware LIVE
Delawareans have an opportunity to recognize the people and organizations working to improve mental health, support recovery and strengthen the well-being of families and communities across the First State.
The Office of Lieutenant Governor Kyle Evans Gay has announced the return of the annual Lt. Governor’s Challenge, featuring a refreshed vision that focuses on contributions to behavioral health and mental health outcomes throughout Delaware.
Nominations are now being accepted for five awards that will be presented during a ceremony in December. Delaware residents have until Friday, Oct. 9, to recommend an individual, program or organization for recognition.
“I’m thrilled to bring back the Lt. Governor’s Challenge to celebrate individuals and organizations in our state who go above and beyond in prioritizing mental health and raising awareness,” Gay said.
“As Chair of the Behavioral Health Consortium, it is my honor to celebrate individuals and organizations across our state whose work has changed lives and reduced stigma in Delaware and beyond,” she added. “In honoring this year’s awardees, we are first and foremost saying ‘thank you’ and, as we continue to learn more about what is working in the First State, we hope that opportunities for connection and care continue to grow statewide.”
Nominees may include Delaware residents as well as programs and organizations that serve or operate in the state. Regional and national organizations may also be considered when a nomination specifically recognizes their work and impact in Delaware.
The five award categories reflect a range of efforts to improve behavioral health and well-being.
The Youth Mental Health Champion Award will recognize leadership, advocacy or service that advances the mental health and well-being of young people in a school or community.
The Community Mental Health Innovation Award will honor an individual, program or organization that has developed creative approaches to improving access to mental health services and support.
The Workplace Mental Health Leadership Award will recognize efforts to create a workplace culture that prioritizes employee mental health and well-being.
The Recovery Champion Award will honor someone who serves as an inspiration or advocate for others. This category highlights the importance of recovery support, and the role individuals can play in encouraging and guiding people facing behavioral health or substance use challenges.
The Maternal Mental Health and Family Wellness Award will recognize work that advances maternal mental health, perinatal well-being, reproductive justice or equitable access to care for women and families throughout Delaware.
Following the Oct. 9 nomination deadline, an extensive review process will begin to select this year’s award recipients. Reviewers may include people with experience in behavioral health, health care, education, public service, recovery, community engagement and related fields.
The winners will be announced during the Lt. Governor’s Challenge ceremony on Tuesday, Dec. 8, at Delaware State University’s Schwartz Center for the Arts in Dover.
By inviting the public to submit nominations, the initiative gives Delawareans a direct role in identifying people and programs whose work may not always receive widespread attention. It also provides an opportunity to share successful approaches, raise awareness of available support and encourage stronger connections among those working to improve behavioral health across the state. Nominations may be submitted online at de.gov/ltgovchallenge.
Anyone who requires language or disability access, technology assistance or another reasonable accommodation to complete the nomination process may contact Fiona Pando at fiona.c.pando@delaware.gov.
COLLEGE PARK, Md., Sept. 23, 2026 — Today, IonQ announced that it will be the first on-premise quantum computing deployment at the NVIDIA Accelerated Quantum Research Center (NVAQC). The NVAQC is designed to address the fundamental challenges of scaling quantum processors into a new class of accelerated quantum supercomputers. Connecting IonQ’s full-stack quantum systems directly with NVIDIA AI infrastructure will help drive the new breakthroughs needed to turn qubits into useful, large-scale quantum supercomputers capable of solving the world’s hardest problems.
As part of the partnership, an IonQ Superion 256 system will be installed at the NVAQC and directly linked with an NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 system via NVIDIA NVQLink, with workloads orchestrated by the open NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform. The joint research program will focus on hybrid software development and large-scale system prototyping, generating open results and a guide for future AI use cases and quantum-GPU co-design.
“Deploying our Superion 256 into cutting-edge environments, such as NVIDIA’s NVAQC will lead to developments allowing our partners to benefit from our scalable architecture and robust manufacturability,” said Niccolo de Masi, IonQ Chairman and CEO. “We see this as the beginning of an exciting era of hybrid quantum-classical computing. This era will be unlocked by multiple generations of Superion systems and NVIDIA’s industry-leading AI platforms.”
De Masi continued, “Our Superion quantum computing platform is robust and research-center ready. Our roadmap to 10,000 qubits and full fault tolerance is accelerating through vertical integration of our SkyWater CMOS foundry. We are excited by the possibilities our groundbreaking partnership with NVIDIA will yield.”
At IEEE Quantum Week earlier this month, the companies published joint research with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee. The award-winning study introduced a framework combining generative AI with distributed quantum algorithms to solve complex combinatorial optimization challenges. That research ran on the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform.
“Every supercomputer will become a quantum supercomputer,” said Timothy Costa, vice president and general manager for quantum at NVIDIA. “As the first quantum processor to sit alongside the NVAQC’s GB200 NVL72 system, IonQ’s Superion 256 will help make breakthroughs allowing the global ecosystem to integrate QPUs with AI infrastructure, build using open models and open-source software, and advance toward scientifically useful quantum supercomputers,”
Alongside quantum-GPU integration, joint research is expected to target quantum algorithms portfolio optimization and risk modeling in financial services; materials science; and computational chemistry for drug discovery. These types of complex use cases will benefit from research conducted using the Superion 256 system.
IonQ introduced its sixth-generation Superion quantum computing platform on Sept. 8, 2026. The Superion 256 system is available to order now, with first customer deliveries expected in 2027. Installation at NVAQC is scheduled for next year.
About IonQ
IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) is the world’s leading quantum platform and foundry – delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the Superion, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems. Earlier systems have helped customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, and AstraZeneca achieve a 20x performance increase over previous quantum solutions and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.
The Justice Department claimed that reporting from CNN, MS NOW and Politico raises national security concerns and accused their journalists of failing to act with "professionalism and decorum."
GRENOBLE, France and CHICAGO, Sept. 23, 2026 — Quobly, a French company developing silicon-based quantum computers, and qBraid, a quantum computing cloud service providing access to more than 24 quantum computers, have announced that Alloy Forge is now available on the qBraid platform, further expanding access to Quobly’s silicon quantum development environment as the company prepares the commercial launch of Alloy Pioneer, its first quantum computer, by the end of 2026.
Built to support the development and validation of quantum applications under realistic hardware constraints, Alloy Forge combines hardware-aware emulation, pulse-level simulation and cloud accessibility, enabling developers to prepare applications for future Quobly quantum systems before hardware becomes available.
Alloy Forge: A Realistic Silicon Quantum Development Environment
Alloy Forge is designed to help developers move beyond idealized quantum simulations by reproducing the practical behavior and constraints of silicon spin qubits
Alloy Forge relies on SpinPulse, Quobly’s open-source pulse-level simulation framework, enabling fine-grained modeling of silicon spin qubit operations and native gate behavior.
The combined software stack enables users to:
Develop and validate quantum applications under realistic hardware constraints.
Test quantum circuits before access to physical quantum processors.
Prepare workflows compatible with future generations of Quobly silicon quantum systems.
The emulation environment incorporates realistic noise models derived from Quobly’s research, including hardware imperfections and non-Markovian noise effects.
Expanding Access Through the qBraid Ecosystem
Available through qBraid’s cloud platform alongside more than 24 quantum computing technologies, Alloy Forge enables developers, researchers and industrial users to experiment with Quobly’s silicon quantum environment using familiar cloud-based workflows.
The integration complements Quobly’s growing cloud ecosystem and broadens international access to its software stack, enabling users to begin developing and validating applications today while preparing for execution on future Alloy Pioneer quantum systems.
As Quobly continues expanding access to its technologies, Alloy Forge will progressively become available across additional cloud and HPC environments supporting the company’s software and hardware roadmap.
Supporting Quobly’s Commercial Roadmap
Unlike standalone research simulators, Alloy Forge is designed as a persistent software layer that evolves alongside Quobly’s hardware roadmap, supporting successive generations of silicon-based quantum computing systems.
Together, Alloy Forge and Alloy Pioneer form the first software and hardware offerings within Quobly’s Alloy product family. Alloy Forge provides developers with a continuous development environment, while Alloy Pioneer, Quobly’s first quantum computing system, marks the first step in the company’s roadmap toward scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computing systems engineered for seamless integration into existing datacenter and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructures.
Quobly plans to commercialize Alloy Pioneer by the end of 2026, with a roadmap extending toward large-scale fault-tolerant architectures targeting one million qubits by 2032.
“At Quobly, we are not only building quantum computers, but we are also building the software ecosystem that will enable their adoption”, said Maud Vinet, CEO and co-founder of Quobly. “Alloy Forge is the development environment for our Alloy product family. By giving developers early access to realistic silicon quantum behaviour through the qBraid platform, we enable them to start building applications today that will seamlessly transition to Alloy Pioneer and future generations of Quobly quantum computers.”
“qBraid is committed to making advanced quantum technologies more accessible to developers and researchers,” said Ryan Hill, CTO at qBraid. “By bringing Alloy Forge to our platform, we are expanding access to realistic silicon quantum emulation technologies and enabling users to explore new approaches to quantum application development.”
This collaboration reflects a shared ambition to accelerate the emergence of an industrial quantum computing ecosystem where developers can progressively transition from simulation environments to production-grade quantum hardware through unified cloud platforms.
Quobly is building the first industrially scalable quantum computer by combining silicon spin qubits with advanced semiconductor manufacturing. Founded in 2022 in Grenoble, France, the company has developed a unique co-design approach with STMicroelectronics, bringing quantum processors and cryogenic control electronics onto a proven 300mm FD-SOI manufacturing platform and enabling an approach in which the quantum-computing capacity can scale through semiconductor-style integration and manufacturing.
About qBraid
qBraid is a cloud platform for quantum software development. With proven usage at the world’s largest universities, research institutions and enterprises, qBraid’s users can dive deep into tangible financial optimization, quantum machine learning and more – all on one platform.
Administration is holding back Covid vaccines for all children in at least 11 states and one US territory
The Trump administration is holding back Covid vaccines for all children in at least 11 states and one US territory, and officials have not indicated when or whether the shots will become available.
It’s the latest step by top officials to restrict vaccines in the US – and it sets a precedent for holding back other immunizations, experts said.
Osiris, one of 30 belugas removed from Ontario’s shuttered Marineland, struggled to acclimate to her Illinois home
An Illinois aquarium has said that a third beluga whale it rescued from a closed marine park in Canada this summer has died after it struggled to acclimate to its new environment.
Osiris, a 26-year-old female, was one of 30 belugas removed from Ontario’s shuttered Marineland amusement park, and among 10 rehomed at the Shedd aquarium in Chicago, which said the whale died there on Monday.
Collaboration combines CGI’s industry expertise and D-Wave’s quantum technology to help clients address complex optimization challenges and improve decision-making
MONTRÉAL , Sept. 23, 2026 — CGI, one of the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world, today announced a strategic partnership with D-Wave Quantum Inc. focusing on helping clients advance the practical application of quantum computing technologies across key industries, including logistics, transportation and retail.
“As AI adoption advances and organizations seek new ways to solve increasingly complex business objectives, quantum computing is emerging as a practical complement to classical computing for selected use cases,” said Dave Henderson, Chief Technology Officer, CGI. “Organizations are moving beyond research to evaluate where quantum technologies can improve optimization and enhance decision-making. Through our partnership with D-Wave, CGI is helping clients identify high-value use cases, and to validate them through practical experimentation and broader enterprise adoption.”
The strategic partnership builds on more than a year of collaboration between CGI and D-Wave to advance enterprise quantum use cases. Through the go-to-market partnership, CGI will integrate D-Wave’s quantum computing platforms, including access to D-Wave’s Advantage2 quantum computer as well as hybrid solvers, into its advanced technology services portfolio, enabling clients to explore and deploy quantum-enhanced solutions for mission-critical challenges such as industrial production planning, energy grid optimization, and asset maintenance scheduling. CGI and D-Wave plan to co-develop use cases focused on areas where quantum computing can augment classical approaches and support measurable business outcomes. Current initiatives include the development of quantum-enabled solutions for transportation and rail, supporting train scheduling, rail network and yard operations, and resource allocation, as well as retail applications designed to improve supply chain planning, delivery routing and workforce scheduling through quantum optimization
“Quantum computing’s business value is no longer theoretical,” said Lorenzo Martinelli, chief revenue officer at D-Wave. “D-Wave customers are using annealing quantum computing today to improve operations and generate tangible results on problems that challenge legacy systems. Combining D-Wave’s quantum technology with CGI’s scale, industry expertise and delivery capabilities will give more organizations a clear path from exploration to production and measurable business value.”
The partnership reflects CGI’s continued investment in advanced technologies that help clients prepare for the next generation of enterprise computing. As quantum technologies continue to mature, CGI is helping organizations evaluate, adopt and scale quantum-enabled solutions where they can deliver measurable business outcomes.
About CGI
Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world. With 94,000 consultants and professionals across the globe, CGI delivers an end-to-end portfolio of capabilities, from strategic IT and business consulting to systems integration, managed IT and business process services and intellectual property solutions. CGI works with clients through a local relationship model complemented by a global delivery network that helps clients digitally transform their organizations and accelerate results. CGI Fiscal 2025 reported revenue is CA$15.91 billion and CGI shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB). Learn more at cgi.com.
Venezuela’s interim president hails ‘historic meeting’ and does not say whether she will visit snatched predecessor
Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has celebrated a “historic” meeting with Donald Trump in New York, posing for a smiley photo with the US president, less than nine months after he ordered the abduction of her boss, Nicolás Maduro.
The former foes met at a five-star hotel a few blocks from Trump Tower in Manhattan late on Tuesday on the sidelines of the UN general assembly. The hotel is about 7 miles from the Brooklyn prison where Maduro has been held since he was snatched during a special forces raid on Caracas in January.
Criminal investigation could include manslaughter or negligent homicide charges after 27 flood deaths last year
Camp Mystic faces a criminal investigation that could include manslaughter or negligent homicide charges in the deaths of 27 girls amid devastating flooding in Texas last year, court documents show.
In applications for search warrants executed last week, investigators sought to obtain the electronic communications of the camp’s owners, saying they could provide evidence of manslaughter, negligent homicide, child abandonment or other crimes. No charges have been brought, and a representative of the camp did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Discovery of Gallo-Roman period structure hailed as ‘major breakthrough’ by French culture ministry
An ancient wall discovered beneath Paris has been described as a “major breakthrough” by France’s culture ministry, with the archaeological find possibly confirming the location of the city’s original settlement.
A roughly 20-metre (65ft) stretch of wall dating from the Gallo-Roman period was discovered in Paris this summer beneath a building on the Île de la Cité, near Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of the French capital.
US-Iran meeting takes place on sidelines despite president’s threat to ‘annihilate’ Tehran regime. Plus, one man’s month-long pilates odyssey
Good morning. Donald Trump has used the platform of the UN general assembly in New York to threaten to “annihilate the Islamic republic” of Iran, “and do it quickly”. He called on countries to unite to isolate Tehran and bring down global energy prices.
Despite his bombastic rhetoric, Trump also said Iranian officials held three hours of talks with the US special envoy Steve Witkoff on the sidelines of the meeting. Witkoff said he felt very good about the meeting, the first such contact since the US vice-president, JD Vance, met an Iranian delegation in Switzerland in June. A senior Iranian official also indicated that Iran was prepared to reopen the strait of Hormuz within a week.
What else did Trump say at the UN? The president doubled down on his defence of AI development, saying warnings about runaway agents were a “hoax”; announced the US would build new military bases in Greenland; attacked the international criminal court as a “rogue organisation”; and prompted the Cuba’s delegation to stage a walkout when he described the country as a “failed state”.
Did he continue his attacks on US media networks? Trump scolded a CNN anchor for covering him at the UN, saying “I’m surprised that CNN is here covering me. You should not be here covering me. You said you weren’t going to cover me.” Last week, the president announced he was banning CNN, Politico and MS Now from the White House.
Where else is the president seeing dissent from Republicans? Another prominent Florida Republican has publicly distanced himself from Trump, days after María Elvira Salazar called out the president’s immigration-enforcement policy targeting law-abiding undocumented immigrants. Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor in November’s midterm elections, launched an updated campaign website on Tuesday that was stripped of almost every mention of Trump.
Housing rights campaigners decry landlord’s ‘barbaric behaviour’ after apartment Maricarmen had lived in for 71 years was bought by a developer
There were violent scenes in Madrid on Wednesday as riot police fought with protesters trying to prevent the eviction of an 87-year-old disabled woman from her apartment in the Retiro district.
Hundreds of protesters had gathered, many of them overnight, in an effort to block the fourth attempt to carry out the eviction. Activists from the Madrid and Barcelona tenants’ union, and celebrities including the actor Carlos Bardem and the singer and actor Ana Belén, joined the protest.
The PM’s shiny newness could explain the easy ride he got this time. But who would dare predict the ever-shifting weather in the president’s head?
Watching footage of Andy Burnham at the UN general assembly on Tuesday was like watching your child from behind a tree in the playground. Are they making friends? How normal do they seem relative to the average? How will they react when they come into contact with that hulking great child who seems to be running things? Burnham’s first face-to-face with Donald Trump was billed as a knife-edge encounter that, due to the latter’s capriciousness, could go either way. In the event, it was drama-free, leaving observers to ask: was it Burnham’s brilliance or simply the weather in Trump’s head?
To viewers at home, Burnham’s performance at the press conference looked like that of a man who had worked out his best approach was to go for the sheepish, slightly cheeky air of the junior partner. Burnham is 24 years younger than Trump, on top of everything else – which can afford a certain licence to the less powerful person in any exchange. At the last minute, the meeting had been moved behind closed doors and afterwards, in a windowless room at the UN, the two men appeared side by side, mirroring each other’s body language: just two guys, legs akimbo, shoulders hunched, hanging on a bench in the locker room.
Portland Fire’s win hands Lynx top seed for playoffs
Olivia Miles held out of lineup due to calf injury
Caitlin Clark had 27 points, nine assists and seven rebounds, and Kelsey Mitchell added 20 points to her WNBA single-season scoring record as the Indiana Fever beat the Minnesota Lynx 96-77 on Tuesday night.
It was a mixed night for the Lynx. The Portland Fire’s victory over the Golden State Valkyries later in the evening meant Minnesota have clinched the No 1 seed for the playoffs, which start Sunday. However, the Lynx were without Olivia Miles. The record-breaking rookie was a late scratch because of an injured left calf, and her absence clearly had an impact. Miles broke Clark’s single-season scoring record by a rookie against Connecticut last Sunday. Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve said she almost held Miles out for that game and that the team would take the injury day by day as the playoffs approach.
Ofcom says site’s age-checking regime may not be ‘highly effective’, as required by the Online Safety Act
One of the world’s most visited pornography websites is being investigated by the UK’s communications watchdog over concerns it can still be accessed by children.
Pornhub’s age checking regime may not be “highly effective”, according to Ofcom, and could be in breach of online safety laws requiring strict measures to prevent under-18s from accessing sexually explicit content.
August 15: $62,991
September 23: $86,456
Bitcoin shot up 37% over the last 39 days, reaching an eight-month high on Monday. "Bitcoin is back," declares Yahoo Finance:
The token held near $86,000 on Tuesday after a stunning multisession rally... [Fundstrat head of digital assets Sean Farrell told Yahoo Finance on Monday] "I think the crypto winter is over, although that does not necessarily mean the path higher will be linear." For now, momentum is on crypto's side, with bitcoin jumping more than 5% on Friday and another 6% on Monday. "We believe crypto is in the early innings of a new bull market and we see few signs of overheating," Compass Point analyst Ed Engel wrote on Tuesday.
The move looks "like a combination of renewed ETF demand and a large short squeeze," Nicolai Søndergaard, senior research analyst at Nansen, said as traders betting against bitcoin are forced to buy it back, adding further fuel to the rally.
Bitcoin got bad news and then good news last week. After the U.S. Congress failed Thursday to pass a cryptocurrency 'Clarity Act', America's Securities and Exchange Commission instead announced a tokenized-stock experiment. It's a five-year "innovation exemption" that "creates a path for tokenized U.S. stocks to trade through automated market makers on public blockchain," according to CoinDesk. Yahoo Finance notes that Bitcoin and other altcoins surged after the announcement.
A payments business that operates across Africa and is ultimately controlled by an Indian billionaire has announced its intention to float on the struggling London Stock Exchange.
Airtel Money, the mobile money arm of Airtel Africa, is planning one of the biggest UK listings in years, in a boost for the shrinking London market that has faced a string of recent departures.
Brandon Herrera, a YouTuber known for making outrageous pro-gun statements, is the frontrunner to represent a district devastated by mass shootings
The video begins with Brandon Herrera staring intently into the camera. He is filming himself in a hotel room seated between twin beds, his black hair slicked back and beard neatly trimmed. He is wearing a T-shirt branded with his trademark nickname, “The AK Guy”, above the image of a semi-automatic rifle primed for action.
Three days earlier, on 3 August 2019, a white nationalist armed with a semi-automatic firearm not dissimilar to the one stamped across Herrera’s chest entered a busy Walmart store in the Texas border city of El Paso and opened fire.
In the latest episode of "Healthful," Dr. Jocelyn Wittstein, an orthopedic surgeon at Duke University School of Medicine, discusses what women should know about protecting their bones.
One of the largest labor unions in the US targets eight battleground states in ‘workers v billionaires’ campaign
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), one of the largest labor unions in the US, has launched a “workers v billionaires” political campaign tour targeting members in eight battleground states and encouraging them to support pro-worker candidates in the midterms.
IAM has nearly 700,000 active and retired members in North America, covering workers at corporations that include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, United Airlines and Harley-Davidson. The union is targeting members and voters in Maine, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Illinois.
Iran has pushed back on claims that it dropped former preconditions for reopening the strait of Hormuz in surprise talks held in New York under the mediation of Qatar between Tehran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
Trump said the three-hour talks held in a room at the UN headquarters had gone very well and been very productive. He suggested further talks were possible imminently, which led to the price of a barrel of Brent crude to fall to below $100 (£75) for the first time in two weeks. Witkoff said the talks had been “encouraging, constructive and successful”.
Richard Clayton KC had undergone operation for ruptured achilles tendon day before hearing optician’s appeal
A judge was wrong to hear a case from his bed via video link while recovering from surgery, the court of appeal has said.
Richard Clayton KC, sitting as a deputy high court judge, heard an optician’s appeal against a finding of serious misconduct from bed the day after returning from hospital where he had undergone an operation for a ruptured achilles tendon.
(The Center Square) – Six senators want to know if the Trump administration has any plan to get tariff refunds to consumers with the government having cleared about $122 billion in refunds of struck-down duties for importers.
Wes Streeting has said annual payments worth at least £120m to Mauritius are on hold as the government reconsiders its deal over the Chagos Islands, after Donald Trump refused to back the agreement.
The defence secretary said the payments would not be made “at this stage” and confirmed the deal “can’t go ahead without US support”.
Bryan Seaver, who announced Parton’s death to the world, is alleged to have intimidated her manager and others, which he denies
The estate of the late Dolly Parton is involved in a dispute with the country star’s nephew and former head of security, and has filed for a restraining order against him amid allegations of threats.
Bryan Seaver was responsible for Parton’s security, and was tasked with announcing her death on 25 August with a video, “something Dolly asked of me years ago”, he said.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration is dramatically expanding its search for noncitizen voter fraud ahead of the November midterms, assigning hundreds of federal investigators and attorneys to a problem that repeated studies and state reviews have found occurs only rarely.
Homeland Security Investigations says it now has about 1,600 open voter-fraud cases and has made 160 arrests. The Justice Department says 24 immigrants have been charged this year, with officials promising prosecutions will increase before Election Day. Axios reported that agents normally assigned to smuggling, trafficking, financial fraud and sexual exploitation have been redirected to the effort.
The scale of the operation stands in sharp contrast to the available evidence. Reuters reviewed state and independent investigations and found noncitizen voting to be exceedingly uncommon. One Brennan Center review identified just 30 suspected cases among 23.5 million ballots, while the conservative Heritage Foundation documented 24 cases over two decades.
AP has likewise reported that noncitizen voting is illegal under federal law and rarely occurs, with state audits repeatedly finding only isolated cases.
Even some recent registration problems cited by officials involved software or administrative errors rather than deliberate illegal voting. Despite that record, the administration is treating the issue as a “tier one priority,” continuing Trump’s years-long claims that noncitizen voting represents a major threat to U.S. elections.
We the undersigned write this letter out of great fear and great hope.
Over the last few months, we’ve seen the world set ablaze by both war and warming. From the conflict in Iran, which has claimed thousands of lives and disrupted billions more, to the series of ever worsening climate disasters, from wildfires in Europe to collapsing glaciers in Nepal, the world seems to be falling apart exactly when it needs to be coming together.
As climate experts from around the world gather in New York for their annual week of talking through the world’s deepest dilemma, the vibes are mostly bad.
Though 2026 seems likely to set a new global temperature record (and 2027, as El Niño gathers steam, is almost certain to break it), and though the planet has careened from one climate disaster to another (European heatwaves that killed tens of thousands, a Nepali flood that wiped out entire communities), and though scientists warn that we’re reaching precisely the global tipping points they’ve long feared (the new research on the faltering great currents of the Atlantic should send a literal chill up your spine), there’s a distinct lack of political momentum.
The path forward is difficult, but the way is clear. We want solar for everyone, everywhere, before the decade is out.
We know that standing up to the powerful can be scary. But if there is one thing that unites us, it is that we live beneath the same sun. That unity is our strength, and we must use it to act now.
Bill McKibben is the Schumann distinguished scholar at Middlebury College. He is the founder of Third Act, organizing people over 60 for progressive change
In an interview before the White House’s media ban, Carlson called on reporters to push back against Trump’s misogyny
Donald Trump has achieved something rarely seen in Washington: uniting rival television networks against him. When he banned CNN and MS Now – along with Politico – from the White House, their competitors suspended shared coverage of the US president’s events.
Gretchen Carlson, a journalist, author and former Fox News host, hopes this will not be the only example of solidarity from a White House press corps facing what she describes as an “outright onslaught” from the administration.
Wilmington-raised actor John Gallagher Jr. wasn’t sure he had what it took to play a serial killer when he was cast in the 2016 slasher “Hush.” But director Mike Flanagan insisted on Gallagher because nobody would expect his boy-next-door look underneath the mask.
During the three weeks of 12-hour night shoots that followed, Gallagher learned fight choreography, performed most of his own stunts and even climbed up the side of a house.
“The freedom that comes with a filmmaker believing in you and trusting you is an incredible feeling,” Gallagher said.
Get Involved John Gallagher Jr. will attend Horror Fest Film Festival at Theatre N in Wilmington for a panel Saturday, Sept. 26, 4:30-5:30 p.m., and an acoustic set Sunday, Sept. 27, 7:30-9 p.m. Concert tickets are $25 and panel tickets are $15. The latter is also available as part of an all-day or VIP pass.
Flanagan’s vision paid off. The Netflix film received positive reviews during its premiere at South by Southwest and online praise from horror icons like author Stephen King and “The Exorcist” director William Friedkin. Today, it holds positive audience and critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes.
Ten years after “Hush,” Flanagan has taken the reins of the franchise Friedkin started with the upcoming “The Exorcist: Martyrs,” which Gallagher makes a brief appearance in.
“There’s something cosmically full circle about that,” Gallagher said.
Gallagher will reflect further on his horror roles in a panel Saturday at the inaugural Horror Fest Film Festival in Wilmington, where he’ll also play a set of his original music on Sunday.
Known for his parts in rock musicals like Duncan Sheik’s “Spring Awakening,” Green Day’s “American Idiot” and The Avett Brothers’ “Swept Away,” Gallagher has become a disciple of his own brand of “emo folk rock” in the past decade. He released a new EP, “Almost Ok,” in May.
Ahead of his hometown appearances, the Hollywood actor reflected on his career and future in a conversation with Spotlight Delaware.
‘A wooden statue’
Gallagher, 42, left Delaware for New York to pursue acting as a teenager. But he still visits his parents in Wilmington several times a year and hits up his favorite restaurants: The Charcoal Pit, La Tolteca, Kid Shelleen’s and Rita’s Italian Ice.
Gallagher attributes his artistic successes to Wilmington community theater and his parents, who have performed as a folk duo locally for decades.
He first decided he wanted to become an actor around 11 years old, when he watched his mom play the stepmother in Wilmington Drama League’s “Cinderella.”
“She brought a playful energy to it, and she was really funny,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘Gosh, I want to try that. I want to see if I can get up on stage and help tell a story.’”
John Gallagher Jr.’s participation in Wilmington community theater put him on the path to award-winning theater and film roles. | PHOTO BY CHARLES CHESSLER, COURTESY OF JOHN GALLAGHER JR.
So, Gallagher’s mother took him to a casting call. He sang “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from “Mary Poppins.”
“I stood there like a wooden statue. I didn’t get cast. I was crushed,” he said. “I was like, ‘I never want to do this again!’ Very dramatic, as I was wont to be at that age.”
But he bounced back and auditioned for Wilmington Drama League’s “Frankenstein,” adapted from the book by local playwright Scott Mason. Gallagher said that role was “life-changing.”
An introverted and shy kid, Gallagher found friendship and encouragement in Delaware’s theater scene as he performed alongside a cadre of future Hollywood A-listers like Aubrey Plaza and Neil Casey. That gave him the ambition to throw himself into the merciless machine of New York theater.
‘Raw, imperfect quality’
Gallagher landed his breakout role as Moritz Stiefel in “Spring Awakening” at 22, earning a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.
The pivotal role wouldn’t have been possible without composer Duncan Sheik, who died last week at 56.
“He was a very quiet, sensitive, mercurial person. Very introspective. You can hear it in the music,” Gallagher recalled. “It’s very compelling, and that was the first thing that jumped out at me when I heard the ‘Spring Awakening’ songs for the first time.”
The first version of the score Gallagher listened to was a demo CD recorded and performed entirely by Sheik.
“I wish that could also get released alongside the cast album, because hearing him play all those songs is really unique and really special,” he said.
Gallagher described himself as a bit of an “outcast” in the world of musical theater. He hadn’t been going to see vocal coaches his entire life; he’d gotten most of his practice from performing in rock bands. But Sheik didn’t want perfection from Gallagher; he wanted authenticity.
“The character that I was playing is this wayward and depressed teenager struggling to make sense of his life. I was encouraged to mine all of that and bring a raw, imperfect quality to the role,” Gallagher said. “He wanted people that felt real.”
‘Almost Ok’
John Gallagher Jr. performs with his band. | PHOTO BY VIVIAN WANG, COURTESY OF JOHN GALLAGHER JR.
Fittingly for someone who’s starred in so many rock musicals, Gallagher exhibits a theatrical quality in his own songwriting.
The lyrics drop the listener into hyper-specific settings, like a family trip to the Jersey Shore (“Never Leave”).
“New Jersey Transit is a great place to be sad,” Gallagher sings. “You can stare out the window racked with guilt and feeling bad about the time you raised your voice and were mean for no reason to your dad.”
Other tracks follow Gallagher grappling with a problem like a character in a musical. “Tough Spit,” an upbeat lamentation of the digital age, follows a doomscrolling Gallagher resolving to leave the house before ultimately deciding to further isolate himself.
Gallagher pulls his bare-faced vulnerability from the folk icons he saw perform at the Philadelphia Folk Festival as a kid, like Richie Havens, Janis Ian and Buddy Guy.
“There’s something so powerful and vulnerable about these people just getting up with a wooden instrument and telling their story and baring their soul,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘God, that’s a superpower.’”
That superpower is what Gallagher channels on “Almost Ok.”
The EP was born from the closure of The Avett Brothers’ “Swept Away” after only two months on Broadway. Feeling deflated, Gallagher threw himself into the studio, recording snapshots of his life from the past couple of years in a matter of five days.
The theme of the record can be found in the title. If life is a dial ranging from horrid to heavenly, Gallagher is still searching for the right level of blissful ordinariness.
“I talk about this all the time with my therapist. I don’t need the dial to be at 100. … But I also don’t want to be down all the way to the left at zero,” he said. “It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to get in the vicinity.”
Why Should Delaware Care? Amid a flurry of election-related legal challenges across the country, the Delaware Supreme Court struck down a challenge to the state’s absentee voting protocols this week. The decision allows the state’s permanent absentee voting system to continue as-is this election cycle.
The Delaware Supreme Court upheld the state’s absentee voting protocols earlier this week, rejecting Senate Minority Leader Gerald Hocker’s claim the system is unconstitutional.
Hocker, a Republican state senator from Ocean View, argued in the lawsuit that Delaware’s current absentee voting rules violated the state’s Constitution by allowing for the indefinite use of absentee ballots — even if voters no longer meet the state’s qualifications.
But the justices rebuffed that claim in a 20-page ruling written by Chief Justice C.J. Seitz, saying the “argument rests on a faulty premise.”
The Supreme Court sided with the Delaware’s Court of Chancery in its previous ruling against Hocker’s claim, saying the Delaware Department of Elections has protocols in place to police permanent absentee voters’ continued eligibility.
“The plaintiffs have lost sight of the mountain they must climb to succeed on a facial constitutional challenge to legislation,” Seitz wrote.
Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings called the ruling “a victory for the tens of thousands of veterans, senior citizens and Delawareans with disabilities who rely on permanent absentee voting.”
In a statement, she also said the lawsuit was a last-minute attempt by Hocker to “suppress the vote,” after initially voting in favor of legislation that first created permanent absentee voting.
But Jane Brady, a former state attorney general who represented Hocker in the case, said the senator’s lawsuit was about ensuring election integrity, not playing politics.
“It’s unfortunate if anyone would try to make this political and use keywords that are incendiary to try and create political fodder out of this,” Brady told Spotlight Delaware. “This was not about politics. It was about integrity, and even the Constitution talks about the purity of our elections. This was to protect that.”
Brady said she accepts the court’s ruling and is grateful for its thorough consideration, but she still plans to look into future challenges. Those possible challenges, she said, would come after the November general election and likely be targeted toward how the permanent absentee voting process is implemented.
According to Jennings’ statement, the Department of Elections will soon begin sending out ballots to permanent absentee voters across the state.
How did we get here?
Hocker first filed the lawsuit against the Delaware Department of Elections in early August, after a similar claim he filed in 2024 was dismissed.
Steve Washington, an Independent Party of Delaware-affiliated candidate running for a Wilmington-area State Senate seat, was added to the case as a second plaintiff in mid-August.
The Court of Chancery ruled against Hocker’s claims in a Sept. 4 opinion. Days later, Brady, who also is a former state Republican Party chair, appealed that decision to the Delaware Supreme Court.
Hocker primarily argued that Delaware’s current absentee voting rules could jeopardize the accuracy of state election results if people no longer eligible to vote were still able cast ballots.
Senate Minority Leader Gerald Hocker (R-Ocean View). | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY TIM CARLIN
“As a candidate, Sen. Hocker wants a fair election and all votes made and tabulated in his race to be in accordance with the law,” the original complaint stated.
Hocker faces a challenge from Democrat Harry Gold in the general election — although Gold was not yet on the ballot when Hocker originally filed his case.
State law identifies five categories of people eligible for permanent absentee status, including those temporarily residing outside the United States, serving in the armed forces, sick or physically disabled, or already authorized for absentee status by federal law.
The lawsuit called for the state to require individuals to reapply for absentee ballot status each election cycle, instead of indefinitely being placed on the absentee ballot list.
The state Supreme Court decision comes amid a flurry of challenges to election processes across the country.
Jennings recently joined a group of 20 states challenging new Trump administration vote-by-mail requirements that Jennings and others said could stifle fair elections. A U.S. District Court in Massachusetts ruled in the states’ favor on Sept. 4, and the U.S. Supreme Court has also sided with the states.
Other voting lawsuits on the horizon
The Delaware Supreme Court will hear arguments this morning in another case related to voting rights, this time for people representing business entities like limited liability companies (LLCs).
The American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware is appealing an earlier decision from state Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz that found LLCs and other entities like family trusts have the right to vote in Fenwick Island’s elections. The ACLU contends the allowance diminishes human residents’ voting rights.
As previously reported by Spotlight Delaware, Hocker was a Senate sponsor of Fenwick’s original charter amendment extending voting rights to entities some 20 years ago. In the 2024 election, nearly a quarter of votes cast in Fenwick were by owners of entities. Fenwick is only one of five Delaware towns that allows more than just people to vote.
Mayor Natalie Madgeburger has previously said a majority of properties in the resort town are owned by family trusts, and described the voting system there as one that is “just, fair and gives everyone a voice.”
She did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Even if the court upholds Karsnitz’s ruling allowing entities to vote in Fenwick elections as they have since at least 2008, changes could still be possible — but they would require a constitutional amendment.
House Majority Leader Kerri Evelyn Harris (D-Dover) successfully sponsored a bill last year to deny corporations voting rights in any Delaware election. Any such constitutional changes, however, require a two-thirds vote from two consecutive sessions of the General Assembly. That means the next group of lawmakers meeting in Dover will also have to approve the legislation with a supermajority in support.
Maggie Reynolds and Maddy Lauria contributed to this report.
Why Should Delaware Care? Community members across the state are mourning the loss of Santos Maria Chilel Soto, a Georgetown mother who was fatally shot by a Maryland deer hunter Friday evening. A petition is now calling the governor and Delaware authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of the incident.
Santos Maria Chilel Soto took her usual leisurely walk last Friday just before sunset. The Georgetown mother of five was chatting beside her boyfriend, Miniveldo, and his two children as they walked along an open field in Ellendale.
But the 39-year-old Guatemalan mother never returned home. She was fatally shot by Walter Moorhead, a 74-year-old Maryland hunter who, according to arrest records, mistook Chilel Soto for a deer.
“I want to call upon Gov. Matt Meyer for justice, so that this murder does not go unpunished, because it was a cold-blooded murder,” Miniveldo, who was only identified by his first name, said in an interview with Spanish-language radio station La ZMX Delaware earlier this week.
Moorhead, of Salisbury, Md., was released on $43,000 cash bond after admitting to police he shot Chilel Soto Friday night. He is charged with reckless manslaughter, three counts of reckless endangerment and a weapons charge.
According to police records, Moorhead was using a rifle to hunt deer. Delaware State Police and Delaware Natural Resources Police are jointly investigating the shooting.
For now, Chilel Soto’s family is focused on mourning the loss of a loved one who has left five children behind — four who lived in Georgetown and her adult son in Guatemala.
“We’ve barely had time to eat,” her sister, who spoke to Spotlight Delaware on the condition of anonymity, said on Tuesday.
What we know about the shooting
As part of her routine, Chilel Soto would take walks with her family in the late afternoon, Miniveldo said on La ZMX. And that Friday evening was no exception.
The police report indicates the shooting took place at around 7:40 p.m. But Miniveldo said in the radio interview the incident occurred about an hour earlier, when there was still daylight remaining at 6:40 p.m.
During this time, Miniveldo said he heard an explosion. He then saw Chilel Soto cover her ears and fall to the ground. She had been shot in her upper torso. They called 911, and while they applied pressure to her wound and waited for emergency responders, according to the arrest records, an older man with a flashlight walked into the field.
Moorhead, a retiree who was hunting with a scope, told police he found Chilel Soto, as well as three other people, when he went to find the deer he thought he had shot.
Miniveldo said Chilel Soto was wearing a yellow shirt when she was killed.
Moorhead could not be immediately reached for comment. As of Tuesday afternoon, court records showed he does not yet have an attorney.
Santos Maria Chilel Soto: Wife, mother and Georgetown community member
Chilel Soto lived in Georgetown with Miniveldo, her teenage son and daughter and her partner’s two younger children.
Chilel Soto’s sister recalled their time spent working in the cleaning industry together during an interview with La ZMX Delaware. She said her sister was her best friend and a loving soul who would even help her older clients go to the bathroom.
“She fought every day,” Chilel Soto’s sister said in Spanish to La ZMX. “She would even sometimes head out at 5 a.m. sometimes for her children. She was always more than just a mother. She was a companion to her children. She was the best mom to them.”
Chilel Soto also was an active member of the evangelical church Iglesia de Dios Fuente de Verdad. In a church Facebook post, dozens of comments passed on their condolences, including some family members from Guatemala.
“May god bless the life of my brother and my nieces and nephews. Sending regards from Tajumulco, San Marcos,” wrote her former brother-in-law Silvio Lopez.
Hunting season starts with tragedy
September marked the first month of deer hunting season, and Delaware has one of the longest in the country, spanning five months. Aside from sport hunting, one of the season’s main purposes is to control the population of white-tailed deer in the state, which causes millions of dollars in crop damages every year.
To that end, the state offers permits that allow farm owners to open their land to licensed deer hunters outside of the regular season if their crops have suffered extensive damage.
According to DNREC spokesman Michael Globetti, one of these hunting permits, which allows firearms to be used outside of the general firearm season, was on file for the property where Chilel Soto was killed.
Still, there is an active investigation to determine whether Moorhead’s hunting complied with both the permit and state law.
Delaware’s current deer hunting season more generally is only open to hunters using crossbows and arrows. Firearms can be used in two shorter seasons that next run from Nov. 13-22, and Jan. 16-24, 2027. The only exception is when a private property owner has a deer damage permit to hunt antlerless deer.
Under Delaware law, most hunters must complete an education course before they can obtain a hunting license. Positive target identification is a core requirement of the exam. Maryland also requires hunters to take a similar course to the Delaware exam that includes different tiers, depending on the hunter’s age.
Rules and regulations are no different for an out-of-state hunter like Moorhead. The only exception was that he had to pay a higher permit fee of $199, which can be obtained online or in-person.
A previous hunting-related death occurred back in 2023 in Millsboro, when Todd Mumford, a 53-year-old Sussex County probation and parole officer, was shot and killed.
Another incident occurred in 2015, also in the Millsboro area, when a 54-year-old hunter in a tree stand shot an arrow from his compound bow and hit a 24-year-old victim on the ground about 30 yards away. The injured man survived and underwent surgery.
Community left reeling, investigation ongoing
In the wake of Chilel Soto’s death, community members and Chilel Soto’s loved ones have questioned Moorhead’s assertion that he thought he had shot a deer.
Dailyn Stephanie Mendez, a friend of Chilel Soto, said the land where she was killed is a hotspot for the Hispanic neighbors in the area. This, she said, makes her believe it was a targeted incident.
“It isn’t as if it were an accident, or an illness, or something like that — things that are easier to come to terms with,” Mendez said. “But just imagine: the blow came head-on — not from behind, not anything else — it struck her head-on.”
Despite these concerns, the Office of the Attorney General said it could not comment on the ongoing investigation.
Moorhead has a preliminary court hearing scheduled for Friday, Sep. 24.
When asked for a comment, Gov. Matt Meyer’s office shared their condolences and said state police are conducting a full investigation.
“I also recognize the grief and concern this tragedy has caused within our Latino community, particularly in Sussex County,” a spokesperson said in an email. “Every person who calls Delaware home deserves to live with safety, dignity, and respect. My family’s heart is with Santos Maria’s family during this time, and the State of Delaware stands with the community as it mourns her loss.”
A GoFundMe supporting burial costs had raised nearly $26,000 as of Tuesday evening.
Chilel Soto is survived by her five children and her boyfriend, Miniveldo. The family is currently awaiting the return of her body so they can send her remains to Guatemala, where one of her sons awaits.
Donald Trump pulled out all the stops at the Republican party’s midterm convention two weeks ago. In speeches aimed at the voters who will soon decide whether to keep Republicans in control of Congress for the final phase of his presidency, the president dangled $5,000 checks, and warned the United States would turn into a “communist country” if Democrats are elected.
The unprecedented political gathering amounted to a Hail Mary pass at retaining control of Congress, which history indicated Trump’s Republican allies had always been likely to lose in the 3 November vote. Two weeks later, with election administrators in several states already sending out mail ballots, there is no indication the gambit has worked.
Why Should Delaware Care? One Georgetown-area teacher started a student-run mentorship program to help multilingual learners in her school improve both their English literacy and overall sense of community. A national grant has now bolstered her work.
Katherine Mancuso knew she had to do something.
The Sussex Central High School English teacher — whose classes are made up of more than 60% multilingual learners — was seeing low test scores, staffing changes and students entering high school without foundational language skills.
She knew the school needed to find a system to help students who speak Spanish, Haitian Creole, French, or Portuguese as a first language build confidence and better navigate their curriculum.
So Mancuso created the “Multilingual Mentors” program last March, pairing juniors and seniors with sophomores and freshmen who need the extra help in core subject areas. The program includes small-group and one-on-one support focused on homework help, literacy development, vocabulary, and study skills.
“Having a multilingual teacher in the room still hasn’t been enough, so we need to do something that makes [multilingual students] feel more comfortable, and this is what I came up with,” Mancuso said.
Students are identified through teacher recommendations, English language proficiency assessment data, and self-referral. Mancuso also has promoted the program through community events, direct outreach to families and working with multilingual staff at the school to ensure students feel encouraged to attend.
While the program initially was based on 9th and 10th graders in need, it is open to any student who may be struggling, she said.
Mancuso has even received a national grant to help bolster the program. A one-year, $5,000 grant from the National Education Association will help fund the mentorship program through the middle of the current school year. She also is looking for more outside funding to continue growing.
Student-centered mentorship
Manscuso emphasized the need for these students to have relationship-building, peer encouragement and opportunities for mentors to lead activities.
In the classroom, teachers often have to pull at different strings to meet a wide range of needs, she said. But through the mentorship program, many students have naturally stepped up to help their peers.
“It’s our students building a foundation of support. It’s student-centered,” Mancuso said. “They track everything, so they track the students that need homework help. They are the ones trying to make sure that they’re communicating with each other.”
She has used the grant money to add incentives like snacks to ensure mentees stay engaged after school hours. She also has purchased gift cards to recognize the mentors’ participation and leadership.
The program has been successful, Mancuso said, because it takes organic student relationships and makes them intentional and structured.
The program included about 20 mentors and 20 mentees in the spring. This year, six mentors have returned, and Mancuso currently is recruiting to begin tutoring sessions in October.
The program will run twice a week after school and during intervention periods, where mentees can meet with their mentors during the day for 35 minutes to continue working on their goals.
Student-run organization
One mentor, 17-year-old Sussex Central senior Jordani Bernal Tapia, joined the program after being recruited by Mancuso.
He chose to mentor because he said he wanted to help others using his fluency in both Spanish and English.
Tapia noticed that with his help, other students were able to complete their assignments and improve their grades. He has noticed how much more relaxed the mentees feel, and how much more they are able to connect with new people.
“For the majority of them, their first language is Spanish,” Tapia said. “The bigger the words are, or the more that the teacher explains it to them, the more they get lost.”
Instead, Tapia starts by asking what the students understood from their teachers before explaining the material further in Spanish.
“There’s a lot more people that can help, and that should help,” he said. “And I would like to highlight that this is all to help our peers become who they want to become through the challenges they face.”
What comes next?
Mancuso said she would like the senior students to eventually take ownership of the program.
That way, it could create a cycle where the students’ leadership continues beyond the first year, and their mentees’ academic growth could continue in concert.
Since the program has started, Mancuso said she has already seen academic improvement.
Students are testing higher on their English-proficiency exams, and less schoolwork is being handed in late, she said.
“I have over 60% of my students who are multilingual learners … it’s not just a few. If it’s over half the classroom, people have to start changing,” Mancuso said. “Things have to start happening to make sure that everyone graduates on time and that they all feel comfortable in the classroom.”
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado tried 3 times to enter her country "by air and sea but has been turned away each time," her team says.
Club coach also allegedly grabbed female official’s hand
Referees’ union criticises MLS’s two-match ban
The Major League Soccer club Columbus Crew have sacked their reserve-team coach after he allegedly grabbed a female referee’s hand and told her: “Don’t forget this is a man’s game.” Federico Higuaín was sent off for the incident, which occurred during an MLS Next Pro league match, and was later given a two-match ban.
Columbus Crew’s general manager, Issa Tall, said in a statement: “We determined it’s in the best interest of our club, players and support staff to dismiss Federico Higuaín from his responsibilities. After conversations this week and further assessing the past month, our club’s standards of what’s expected from a leader for one of our teams have not been met.”
Arrest of Shadrack Sibiya comes as country reels from cases of femicide and alleged police corruption and criminality
One of South Africa’s most senior police officers has been charged with raping an 18-year-old woman and grooming a 16-year-old girl, as the country’s police face allegations of corruption and failing to tackle violence against women and girls.
Shadrack Sibiya, who was already suspended from his role as deputy national police commissioner over allegations he interfered with political killings investigations, was arrested on Monday. He is facing charges of rape, people trafficking, promoting the sexual grooming of a child and two counts of grooming a child.
So for the OW light project I shared earlier I made this web app. It has a live feed of the animation as it shows on the board which is great for debugging, apart from the sensor data. Much better than looking at sides of the board when I ride lol. It’s lagging because of the screen recorder, but normally the animation is nice and smooth.
The animations react to tilt but also to acceleration, but that still need to be dialed in. It’s not easy to filter the data well. But you get the idea.
If you guys have any ideas for animations or hi changes, I’m all ears.
The fight over Missouri's congressional map returned to the U.S. Supreme Court for a third time after an appeals court ordered the revival of new districts backed by President Trump.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Families of people killed by federal immigration agents told Democratic lawmakers Tuesday that government officials repeatedly released misleading or false accounts after fatal encounters, then provided little information about what actually happened.
At the congressional forum, relatives and attorneys described what one lawyer called “dual assassinations” — first the killing of a person, then attacks on that person’s character. The hearing included cases from Texas, Minnesota and Maine and focused heavily on discrepancies between early Department of Homeland Security statements and evidence that emerged later.
One of the clearest examples involved Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was fatally shot by immigration agents in Houston in July. DHS initially said he tried to strike an agent with his vehicle. Three passengers disputed that account, saying Salgado Araujo had stopped and no agent was positioned in front of the van when shots were fired.
Federal officials also raised suspicions that bags found in the van contained methamphetamine. Testing later established that the substance was not meth, U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz confirmed.
Similar concerns were raised about other cases, including the fatal shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine, where the government’s explanation changed from claims that he had “weaponized” his vehicle to a later assertion that an agent fired because he was attempting to flee. Families told lawmakers that shifting narratives, delayed disclosures and limited transparency have made independent scrutiny more difficult.
On 23 September 1926, two of the best heavyweights in American history met in front of 120,000 fans in Philadelphia. The fight drew in a nation
The two fights between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney rank with boxing’s most-storied championship bouts and are among the greatest sports spectacles ever seen in America. Wednesday marks the one hundredth anniversary of their first encounter.
Dempsey bridged boxing’s old and modern eras and was one of the most charismatic fighters in history. When Dempsey was young, biographer Randy Roberts recounts, “he lived in mining camps and hobo jungles, rode the rods, and more than once begged for food. What separated him was his willingness, even eagerness, to work. He accepted any type of employment from washing dishes, cutting lawns, and scrubbing floors to the harder work of coal-mining, digging ditches, and picking fruit.”
Larry Pickett Sr and his son, a US army cadet, pulled David Denton from vehicle fire in upstate New York in 2025
A North Carolina man who helped his son – a player for the US army academy college football team – pull a wrecked car’s driver out of the vehicle moments before it burst into flames has earned the highest honor for civilian heroism in the United States and Canada.
Larry Pickett Sr earned the Carnegie medal for heroism for a daring rescue alongside his son, Larry Pickett Jr, on 31 August 2025 outside Fort Montgomery, New York, that was captured in headline-grabbing cellphone video, according to a recent announcement from the non-profit organization that administers the award.
The Trump administration announced it would stop publishing complaint narratives submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Every year, millions of complaints flow to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from people across the country. The complaints, which range in focus from debt collection to credit reporting to payday loans and more, long served as a window into Americans’ gripes and struggles with various companies.
For over a decade, consumers could opt in to have what they wrote published as public information in a CFPB database. But last month, the Trump administration announced that it would stop publishing those complaint narratives, a decision that aligns the agency with corporations that have critiqued the system for years.
“Publishing such narratives in the Database provides a less-than-representative sample of one-sided experiences,” the CFPB said in a press release.
In the big picture, the move is part of a trend of the administration taking a friendlier approach with businesses — even at the federal agency tasked with guarding consumers from unfair and deceptive practices.
The complaint system helps consumers get responses from companies about their problems, and sometimes even fixes. It has also given the public — as well as federal investigators and regulators— access to information that serves as a warning or to help spot problems.
As a ProPublica data reporter, I’ve used the complaints time and time again as a tool for accountability-driven reporting. I appreciated reading about people’s raw frustration, written in their own words, which can often point to larger trends. It was a rare federal dataset that captured human emotions. Some were grievances like being unable to get help after spending far too much time calling or emailing customer service. Sometimes complaints had more urgency: desperation to fix crushing high-interest debt, a frozen bank account or a credit score tanked from a reporting error.
With the recent loss of a crucial piece of the public database, I wanted to share with you some of ProPublica’s reporting using those complaints. And, while these stories about financial harm have often led to some accountability, revisiting the complaints also offers a taste of what we’ll be missing.
I’ve used the complaints to report on high-interest tribal loans that skirt state interest rate caps to charge 600% interest or more. CFPB complaints helped point me and my colleague Megan O’Matz to an opaque but massive lending operation based in Wisconsin, which we estimated to be involved in thousands of bankruptcies nationwide each year.
“THIS IS THE TEXTBOOK DEFINITION ON LOANSHARKING.”
Consumer complaint about a tribal loan company, June 2023
The borrower also argued that “no one should be expected to pay over $11,000 for a $1,200 loan,” calling the 790% rate “beyond predatory.”
In emails to ProPublica, the tribe’s president, John Johnson Sr., defended the tribe’s lending business as legal and said the loans help people “without access to traditional financial services.” He added that many borrowers have had positive experiences.
A few months after ProPublica reported on the operation, the tribe settled a civil suit filed by Minnesota’s attorney general. The tribe denied the allegations but agreed to stop lending to Minnesotans and forgive outstanding loans to the state’s residents.
In March, I reported that two of the big three credit bureaus, Experian and TransUnion, provided relief to a substantially smaller portion of consumers last year. The credit bureaus are by far the most common subject of consumers’ woes in the database, with over 4 million complaints filed about them in 2025.
A Texan filed a complaint to each of the three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, writing that a fraudulent account remained on their credit report despite their disputes:
“I have an important deal that I need to complete that is important for the safety and survival of my family, and this issue has damaged my credit score.”
Consumer complaint, August 2025
In response to the story, four Democratic senators wrote letters to the credit bureaus demanding answers on how they handle disputes and complaints. The CFPB’s acting director at the time, Russell Vought, also tacitly acknowledged the reporting during his congressional testimony in July, saying that “with credit reporting agencies we saw things in the news that were concerning to us. We reached out to them.”
The credit bureaus did not comment on specific complaints, but told ProPublica that many complaints are illegitimate, including a large volume filed by credit repair organizations that charge customers to challenge negative information on their reports. (CFPB records show that Equifax provided relief in response to the Texan’s complaint, while TransUnion and Experian did not.)
Last month, my colleague Andy Kroll reported on the Trump CFPB’s light-touch approach to oversight, focusing on its ask-nicely strategy of holding the fintech startup Bilt accountable after it threw users’ accounts into chaos twice in quick succession. The story included complaints about how Bilt’s artificial intelligence support system gave information that was:
Consumer complaints about Bilt, March and April 2026
(In a statement at the time, Bilt said its new card had “attracted unexpectedly high demand, and some of our members experienced gaps in service that are simply unacceptable to us.” The company told ProPublica it resolved all problems related to the new cards “months ago.” The CFPB did not respond to any questions or requests for comment.)
Kroll’s recent story also examined how the agency has changed under the Trump administration. Under Vought’s leadership, the CFPB attempted to fire roughly 90% of its staff in April 2025 before a federal court ruling stymied the move. When the efforts to dismantle the agency failed, Vought and his allies instead refashioned it into an industry-friendly regulator.
The loss of the public complaint narratives is another example of that. And it is a win for groups such as the Consumer Data Industry Association, which represents the credit bureaus and has argued that publishing complaint narratives would “harm the brands of legitimate, law-abiding companies” by presenting unverified, self-selected negative anecdotes. More recently, the group argued in a January public comment letter that the complaint portal has become “a sort of ‘Yelp for Financial Services,’” and that the CFPB doesn’t have the authority to publish complaint data in the first place.
Although the CFPB has been subject to partisan fights, the complaint system has been used by Americans across the country. GOP lawmakers even referred thousands of constituents to the CFPB’s complaint system to get help. Still, those same lawmakers voted last year to slash the agency’s budget by nearly half.
While the complaint system is required by law, the agency isn’t mandated to make it public. In theory, a future administration could go back to publishing the complaint narratives, but the agency has removed the option for consumers to consent to making public what they wrote. That means that any complaints filed in the near term cannot be retroactively published. The complaint narratives will still be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, but getting them could be time-consuming and challenging.
As the CFPB turns away from its watchdog role, it’s making it harder for all of us to watch as well.
NEW YORK CITY, New York — President Donald Trump said the federal government will begin referring to artificial intelligence as “super intelligence,” or “SI,” arguing during his United Nations General Assembly address Tuesday that the term “artificial” incorrectly suggests the technology is fake.
“From this point forward, all of United States documents” will use the new terminology, Trump said, while expressing hope other countries follow. Reuters confirmed the announcement and reported that Trump also reiterated his opposition to international efforts to regulate AI.
The terminology could create confusion because “superintelligence” already has a distinct meaning in the technology industry. It generally describes a hypothetical AI system whose capabilities surpass human intelligence across most or all fields, rather than artificial intelligence broadly. AP noted that Trump’s proposal came as world leaders offered sharply different assessments of AI’s potential benefits and risks.
Trump said the United States would reject what he called a global scheme for controlling the technology. His administration has generally favored limiting regulatory barriers while promoting American AI development and competition with China.
The announcement does not itself establish how or when federal agencies will alter existing regulations, websites or documents. Trump presented the change during a broader UN address covering Iran, Ukraine, international institutions and U.S. foreign policy.
NHS England initiative to reduce cut-off period to three months ‘disproportionately affecting’ most deprived areas
An NHS policy to remove “ghost patients” from GP lists is inadvertently leaving some of the poorest people in England without vital healthcare, analysis has found.
Under previous NHS rules, inactive patients at risk of being removed from their GP practice were given six months to respond to outreach. But under NHS England’s accelerated list validation timeline, introduced last October, patients now have only three months to reply.
PM aims to ‘stem poisonous tide’ of disinformation and deepfakes with National Centre for Information Defence
Security chiefs will set up a new national centre to tackle disinformation and deepfakes from hostile states such as Russia, Andy Burnham has announced, saying the government had a duty to “stem the poisonous tide” from damaging British interests.
The National Centre for Information Defence will “detect, attribute and disrupt” information attacks by foreign powers, many of which are enabled by AI, bringing together the intelligence agencies, law enforcement and social media companies.
Microsoft's security blog describes the fight against a new "AI-powered cybercrime platform" offering phishing-as-a-service, with AI-tailored lures and analyses of compromised inboxes (to identify high-value targets). The site compromised more than 12,000 inboxes in over 10,000 organizations around the world, compromising business accounts "at scale" with automated attacks and prebuilt phishing templates. AI tools could even sift through a victim's mailbox to help engineer better phishing messages.
To disrupt EvilTokens Microsoft worked with other organizations, including Cloudflare, Coinbase, OpenAI, Railway, SpyCloud, Shadowserver Foundation, and TRM Labs to Health-ISAC (a non-profit helping health sector organizations share cyber threat information).
"Fifty sites seized and 150 domains disabled in a single action is only possible when the hosting providers, the exchanges, the model providers and the data holders all move at the same time," security company SpyCloud told The Hacker News.
From Microsoft's security blog:
Microsoft also notified affected customers, helped remediate compromised accounts, and shared intelligence to support further defensive and investigative action... Microsoft worked closely with specialist officers from the Metropolitan Police Service's cybercrime team, sharing intelligence that enabled officers to take operational action in the United Kingdom. On September 11, 2026, officers arrested two men, aged 32 and 38, and seized digital devices and other items for examination... While EvilTokens used AI to identify targets and prioritize fraud opportunities, Microsoft investigators used reverse engineering and AI-powered tools to analyze evidence, accelerate the investigation, and identify the infrastructure supporting the service...
Campaigns leveraging EvilTokens have impacted organizations in various industries, including wholesale distribution, construction, financial services, real estate, higher education, and healthcare, with the highest concentrations of observed victim activity in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and France. Working with partners, Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) facilitated a coordinated disruption of infrastructure used to operate the EvilTokens service.
Sometimes stolen tokens were used to give new devices access to a victim's inbox. (A code authenticating the new device was sent to the targeted user, who unknowingly authorize the threat actor's session and grants access to their account...) But "AI was not simply helping attackers write more convincing messages," says another Microsoft blog post. "It helped them decide who to target, who to impersonate, and how to most effectively exploit the relationship to extract as much money as possible."
The significance of EvilTokens extends beyond its rapid growth and global reach. It offers an early warning of what happens when cybercriminals combine stolen access with AI capable of understanding how an organization works... Its AI tools could summarize and translate emails, surface financial conversations, map organizational roles, identify trusted relationships, and recommend potential targets. Preset prompts offered to find wire-transfer discussions, identify the organization's "money movers," locate vendor invoices, and determine the best people to impersonate. Sold through Telegram for a $1,500 initiation fee and a recurring $500 subscription, EvilTokens combined account compromise, mailbox analysis, target selection, and fraud preparation in a single service. Capabilities that once required experience across identity attacks, cloud systems, social engineering, and financial fraud were available through a ready-made interface.
Investigators found evidence that large portions of EvilTokens had been "vibe coded," with AI helping its creators build the platform itself. They also determined that EvilTokens drew on capabilities from multiple AI models. The result was more than a collection of attack tools. EvilTokens packaged much of the fraud process into a commercially run service, complete with subscription pricing, customer support, management dashboards, and tools designed to move customers from account access toward financial exploitation.
President Trump told the U.N. he's deciding whether to make a deal or drive Iran "into hell." Iran's president is slated to address the world body today, Iranian state media say.
In today’s newsletter: The PM’s first face‑to‑face with the US president marks a fragile reset
Good morning. In the early hours of Tuesday a plane carrying Andy Burnham, a handful of UK ministers, an excited group of British political journalists, and Burnham’s wife, Marie France, landed at a New York airport for one of Burnham’s first major outings as prime minister: a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump.
Considering the president once described Burnham as the mayor of “a town,” and the prime minister once said Trump wouldn’t be welcome in said town (Manchester), the meeting yesterday afternoon went remarkably well.
UN general assembly | Donald Trump has called on nations to unite to isolate Tehran and bring down global energy prices, as he gave a bellicose defence of his administration’s foreign policy and decision to strike Iran.
The far right | Charities have condemned footage of a far-right activist using a blade to slash an inflatable dinghy in the Channel while a rescue worker was onboard, in a further escalation of organised anti-immigration protest.
UK news | Children as young as 13 in the UK have been referred to a specialist clinic for a “devastating” bladder condition linked to sustained use of ketamine.
West Bank | British banks and financial institutions are receiving warnings from MPs that they should not invest in Israel’s E1 settlement project.
UK politics | Andy Burnham has opened the door to fighting the next election on the UK rejoining the EU, but said his immediate priority was continuing to rebuild bridges with European allies.
SAN FRANCISCO, California — San Francisco is suing Trump Media & Technology Group, alleging its $100,000-per-month Truth Social data service creates an unfair trading advantage by allowing paying investors to receive President Donald Trump’s potentially market-moving posts before the general public.
City Attorney David Chiu filed the lawsuit in California Superior Court against Trump Media, which operates Truth Social. The complaint alleges the company’s “Truth API” violates California’s Unfair Competition Law and facilitates conduct that could violate federal insider-trading rules by monetizing advance access to government information.
Truth API, launched in August, offers financial firms rapid access to posts from Trump and other prominent accounts for up to $100,000 monthly, or about $60,000 per month under a multiyear agreement. In modern algorithmic trading, even a brief informational advantage can potentially be valuable.
The lawsuit cites Trump’s April 9, 2025, post saying, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!,” which appeared before he announced a 90-day tariff pause that was followed by a market rally. The complaint argues that paying firms could potentially trade on similar government announcements before ordinary investors see them.
Trump Media disputes the allegations and has characterized Truth API as a conventional financial-data product. A separate federal lawsuit filed by The Intercept and Freedom of the Press Foundation also challenges the service, while 53 former federal prosecutors and agents recently argued in a court filing that the arrangement may violate federal law.
Fears persist about Trump ‘sucking up’ to Xi on Taiwan, but few concrete outcomes anticipated from US meeting
When Xi Jinping, China’s leader, touches down in Maryland on Wednesday, he will step out into the arms – perhaps a hug, if Donald Trump’s wishes come true – of a US president who has shown China more bonhomie than any of his recent predecessors.
The meeting between Xi and Trump this week will be the second time that the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies have talked face to face this year. At the previous summit, held in Beijing in May, there was much talk of building a “strategic stability” between the two powers. But there was little by way of concrete outcomes: the countries remain at loggerheads over trade, export controls and geopolitics.
U.S. President Trump addressed the United Nations on Tuesday. And a half hour in, after decrying immigration, Trump pivoted to add that "The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now."
But then he added "hereinafter officially called super intelligence, changing the name, in that the use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake. It makes it sound fake, and it is not fake. It's actually... amazing. But we have to be careful — in fact, it is exactly the opposite of what it purports. From this point forward, all of United States documents and hopefully the world's will be changed to use the much more accurate term super as opposed to artificial. So it's super intelligence."
TRUMP: In other words, welcome to the new world of super intelligence — SI. SI. Let's see if that goes. It sounds much better. It is much better, and it's much more accurate. Let's see if I have any power. Maybe I do and maybe I don't. We're going to find out pretty soon. Super intelligence.
Every major new technology brings challenges, and super intelligence is no exception. Yet the very same people who said we'll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming, a name since reborn to climate change because the planet was cooling not warming, and nobody was dead — these are the same people that are now saying that AI is going to kill us all. That robots are going to attack us, and that everything is going to be a total disaster — same group of people. This is the group that came up with the Russia Russia Russia hoax, the Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine hoax. Climate change, open borders.
Whoever wins AI — you have to remember this — and now I say, whoever wins SI, whoever wins super intelligent [sic] — wins. That's the group that wins. And we're leading now over China by a lot, and everyone else, and we're going to keep it that way. We're going to keep it very — very straight and very strong. I'm not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution. Many say, bigger than the Industrial Revolution or the internet itself.
And we will be very careful, and that's why we have a Department of Justice that we've already used it, having to do with this very subject, and used it very powerfully. Everything worked out very well and very quickly. And other law enforcement bodies that will rein things in if we have to do that.
But we will only encourage super intelligence. We're gonna encourage it, not rein it in. We're gonna watch it closely, through the Department of Justice. The United States leads the world in Super Intelligence, and will continue to do so, safely and responsibly.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader
ArchieBunker for suggesting the story.
After very brief doorstep comments – almost exclusively mocking CNN - he answers a reporter’s very loud question by saying his message to Putin is: “settle the war.”
I bought two used Onewheels without any chargers. I knew they hadn't been used in a while, but was told that when they were used they worked fine.
I've bought several other used onewheels without an issue before. Usually, the initial charge drains fast showing some imbalance, but otherwise it works. This time, however, plugging them in with my charger produces no light or anything.
I've done some research, and while some people suggest trickle charging, or charging for a couple days, what I've come to believe is that the BMS is likely permanently blocking a charge.
The move comes after Jamaica’s culture minister Olivia Grange travelled to the UK earlier this month to lodge the historic petition
King Charles has referred a landmark slavery reparations petition from Jamaica to a high-level UK appeals court for legal advice, Jamaica’s culture minister announced in parliament on Tuesday.
Referring to the move as a “really big deal”, Olivia Grange told Jamaica’s MPs the monarch had confirmed that their legal questions have been passed on to the London-based privy council – the final court of appeal for UK overseas territories and some Commonwealth countries.
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Republican gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds has removed several prominent references to President Donald Trump from his campaign website while shifting the page’s emphasis toward affordability, insurance costs and government transparency.
An archived version of Donalds’ website featured a banner reading “Chip in to Support Trump-Endorsed Byron Donalds” and repeatedly highlighted him as “TRUMP-ENDORSED.” The redesigned site still includes Trump’s endorsement, but places it alongside endorsements from Elon Musk, Sen. Ted Cruz and House Speaker Mike Johnson rather than making it the central branding message.
The campaign also changed the order of its policy priorities. “Affordability” now appears first, replacing “Enact the Trump Agenda” as the top issue. A Donalds campaign spokesperson told The Hill that the website reflects his focus on “the issues that matter most to Floridians,” including affordability, insurance costs and government transparency.
The spokesperson emphasized that Donalds remains “proud to have President Trump’s endorsement” and said the endorsement remains prominently featured.
The changes come during the general election campaign against Democrat David Jolly, a former Republican congressman. Donalds secured Trump’s endorsement early in the governor’s race and has remained a close political ally of the president.
Trump’s approval has declined in several recent national surveys, while economic concerns, including higher fuel and household costs, have become increasingly prominent in Republican campaigns. The website revisions themselves do not establish why the campaign reduced Trump’s prominence.
Cuban delegates left the room during the US president's speech to the UN general assembly, where he called Cuba 'a failed state' and said the country 'will fall'. The US has maintained a trade embargo on Cuba for more than 60 years, and Trump's administration has stepped up pressure on the communist-controlled island nation.
Sources tell CBS News that Ukraine is ready to sign a landmark drone defense deal with the U.S., as new details of Ukrainian technology helping defend U.S. bases in the Middle East come to light.
Islamic State-inspired bombings of churches and hotels in 2019 was one of the country’s worst ever attacks
A court in Sri Lanka has convicted 15 men on terrorist charges for their involvement in the deadly 2019 Easter bombings and sentenced them each to at least 220 years in prison.
The terror attacks, which targeted luxury hotels and churches as they held Easter services, left 267 people dead and wounded almost 600. The bombings, which were inspired by Islamic State (IS), were among the deadliest terror attacks in Sri Lanka’s history and sent shockwaves through the country.
sorry for the multitude of posts im making on this subreddit :-; But what are the main differences i would notice between the pintxv and a floatwheel atom? i hear the range and speed of both of them are very similar. i currently own a pintx and really want just a little bit more speed and range. I know i can get speed and torque with the pintv kit, how can i increase the range? is there any battery upgrade? I was thinking of getting the atom but now that i look at it, they seem to be very similar..
DETROIT, Michigan — Former Vice President Kamala Harris criticized President Donald Trump’s decision to revoke White House access for CNN, MS NOW and Politico, calling the move “absolutely abhorrent” and saying it shows “the man is afraid.”
Harris made the remarks Tuesday after appearing in Michigan with Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. She argued that restricting journalists limits the public’s ability to learn what the government is doing. Her comments came as the three affected news organizations challenge the administration’s action in federal court.
Trump announced the bans Friday, accusing the outlets of publishing false information. Reporters from all three organizations were subsequently denied entry to White House grounds, and CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed suit alleging violations of their First and Fifth Amendment rights.
Reuters reported that legal experts see significant obstacles for the administration because previous court decisions have limited the government’s ability to revoke press access in retaliation for unfavorable coverage. Trump said Tuesday he would “probably” restore access if a court rules against him.
Harris was in Michigan campaigning for El-Sayed and participating in an event focused on Black maternal health.
Breakthrough removes a major bottleneck in fault-tolerant quantum computing, enabling real-time error correction across millions of operations without slowing down execution time.
COLLEGE PARK, Md., Sept. 22, 2026 — IonQ today announced a major milestone in fault-tolerant quantum computing. Researchers demonstrated the development and successful testing of the industry’s first end-to-end real-time quantum error correction decoder that runs on a single standard off-the-shelf central processing unit (CPU).
Quantum error correction is essential for building practical, fault-tolerant quantum computers because physical qubits are inherently sensitive to environmental noise. However, finding and fixing those errors in real time has historically presented a significant computing challenge. In conventional approaches, the classical computers tasked with decoding errors can easily become overwhelmed. That creates a processing bottleneck that forces the quantum computer to pause and wait. IonQ’s breakthrough demonstrates that a single, standard computer processor can manage this complex workload continuously in the background, keeping the quantum system running at full speed.
“Successfully validating real-time decoding across hundreds of logical qubits and over millions of logical operations is an important milestone. Moreover, the fact that our decoder runs on a single CPU provides a practical path to commercial-scale fault-tolerant quantum computing,” said Nicolas Delfosse, paper co-author and quantum research lead at IonQ.
In technical research published on arXiv, IonQ evaluated its dual-decoder architecture across complex benchmark circuits simulating up to 408 logical qubits across 88 memory blocks and magic factories. These circuits were executing more than 31.5 million individual quantum operations at the ‘MegaQuOp’ scale. Under standard operational noise, IonQ’s decoder introduced as little as 0.02% ‘stretch’ time. That means the decoding overhead added virtually no delay to the overall quantum computation.
“IonQ is enabling cost-effective quantum system scaling through direct verification of each component,” said John Gamble, Vice President at IonQ Architecture. “Empirical evidence like this supports our vision for fault tolerance where time-to-solution, cost-to-solution, and energy-to-solution are always our North Star.”
This achievement validates a core pillar of IonQ’s proprietary Walking Cat architecture and confirms that classical hardware overhead does not need to scale exponentially as quantum systems grow wider in logical qubits or deeper in operations. The breakthrough establishes a key technological foundation for IonQ’s roadmap beyond 256 physical qubits toward industrial-scale platforms controlling thousands of qubits.
About IonQ
IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) is the world’s leading quantum platform and foundry – delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the Superion, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems. Earlier systems have helped customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, AstraZeneca, and NVIDIA achieve a 20x performance increase over previous quantum solutions and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.
The Justice Department says a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier in Utah threw out more than 300 mail ballots that were being sent to voters for the state's June primary.
A new AI camera system is now being installed on buses used by Helena Public Schools, with district officials saying the technology is focused on driver behavior and not students.
IPPR North says one bad decision could derail devolution agenda as regions gain control of billions in funding
England’s mayors should face much greater official scrutiny to avoid Andy Burnham’s devolution agenda being “derailed by one bad decision”, a thinktank has said.
Ministers will set out plans next month to give regional leaders control over potentially billions of pounds of additional funding under a “transformational” shift of power outside Whitehall.
Wirral mother among renters turning to food banks as gap between a two-bed and housing benefit hits £158 a month – rising to as much as £324 in London
Do you prioritise paying the rent, putting food on the table or keeping the house warm in winter? In practice, says Laura Braddock, a single mum from Wirral, Merseyside, you always pay the rent first and improvise the rest. “If I’ve got a roof over our head, then everything else I can muddle through.”
The pressing problem for Braddock, 39, is that muddling through is getting harder. The monthly rent for her two-bedroom flat far outstrips the local housing allowance (LHA) she receives – and the gap may widen.
(The Center Square) – A Massachusetts federal judge blocked the Trump administration from cutting around $600 million in teacher-training funds, finding the Education Department’s effort to target programs tied to diversity, equity and inclusion was “arbitrary and capricious.”
Surrogate who rejected abortion request had asked justices to halt court order recognizing LA couple as legal parents
The supreme court has refused to get involved with a custody dispute between an Alaska surrogate and a California couple whose child was born with a rare and serious heart defect.
On Tuesday, Justice Elena Kagan denied an emergency request from McKenna West, an Alaska nurse and surrogate who had asked the US’s highest court to halt a California court order recognizing the couple, Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar, as the boy’s legal parents.
Test using urine and vaginal fluid samples raises hopes thousands of lower-risk women could be spared internal ultrasounds and hysteroscopies
Doctors have developed a simple test that could help rule out womb cancer in women who experience bleeding after menopause.
The approach has the potential to transform care for thousands of women each year and spare them from invasive and uncomfortable tests that can also be costly for healthcare systems.
County’s first such clinic, at Alder Hey in Liverpool, treating children suffering from chronic bladder problems with severe cases needing dialysis
Children as young as 13 in the UK have been referred to a specialist clinic for a “devastating” bladder condition linked to sustained use of ketamine.
Medics at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool opened the first ketamine clinic in the UK for young people amid a surge in urology problems linked to addiction of the drug.
Thomas called followers to disrupt arrival of asylum seekers in Gosport, but Border Force instead transported them to Dover
Charities have condemned footage of far-right activist Daniel Thomas using a blade to slash an inflatable dinghy in the Channel while a rescue worker was onboard, in a further escalation of organised anti-immigration protest.
Hundreds of protesters gathered early on Tuesday evening at Gosport in Hampshire, aiming to disrupt the planned disembarkation of asylum seekers, but the Border Force vessels carrying them landed instead in Dover.
Mita and Hemant Parikh decided to split from their group and take a side trip during their long-planned pilgrimage. They're now safely back home, but none of the families they were traveling with have been found.
Former VP, who lost state to Trump in 2024 elections, is lending her popularity to unite fractured party
Kamala Harris returned to Michigan on Tuesday to campaign for Abdul El-Sayed, lending her popularity among Black voters to a progressive Senate nominee still working to unite a party fractured by a bruising primary – and the former vice-president’s loss to Donald Trump in the state.
Appearing with El-Sayed at a Detroit birth center, Harris used a roundtable on Black maternal health to frame that November’s contest against the Republican Mike Rogers as a fight over women’s access to care.
Lawyers for James ‘Fergie’ Chambers, wanted over alleged support for Hamas, say client is being persecuted
The Spanish government has decided to allow the Trump administration’s controversial extradition request to extradite wealthy activist James “Fergie” Chambers to continue in the country’s courts.
Chambers, a US citizen and wealthy donor to leftwing and humanitarian projects, is currently imprisoned in Madrid. It is the first known case of the US seeking to extradite a citizen over alleged support for Hamas, an accusation tied to money Chambers has donated to support Palestinians, including the Sameer Project, in Gaza.
President Donald Trump used his Sept. 22 speech to the United Nations General Assembly to dismiss concerns about artificial intelligence, equating them to other issues he considers “hoaxes.”
“The very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming, a name since reborn to climate change because the planet was cooling, not warming, and nobody was dead,” he said. “These are the same people that are now saying that AI is going to kill us all, that robots are going to attack us, and that everything is going to be a total disaster. Same group of people. This is the group that came up with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, the Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine hoax, climate change, open borders.”
Trump also equated AI fears to a “hoax” in recent TruthSocialposts.
Warnings that AI could wipe out humanity or do significant harm gained renewed attention after Jacob Coxon, a researcher from leading AI company Anthropic, resigned in September, publicly citing such an existential threat.
A White House spokesperson told PolitiFact in an email that Trump was referring to “the numerous Democrats who are currently echoing AI hysteria and were or still actively are pushing hysteria related to climate change and the Russia collusion hoax.”
Although some AI regulation advocates may overlap with those concerned about climate change, worries about AI are not confined to one group of people or one political party. The warnings even come from the top of the industry itself.
On Sept. 12, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling to slow down AI development. OpenAI CEOSam Altman, Google DeepMind Cofounder and ChairDemis Hassabis and xAI founderElon Musk echoed his concerns — and agreement among those leaders is rare.
Robin Jacobson, a University of Puget Sound politics professor, said AI safety is an issue not currently owned by either political party, and the movement is comprised of “strange bedfellows.”
“The public, across parties, has real growing concerns with AI,” Jacobson said. “So I think, in fact, you’re going to see, as opposed to climate change — where this was about convincing the public there was this looming threat — I think the public is actually demanding action on concerns.”
Scientists widely agree that climate change is real, is driven by human activities and is causing the Earth’s temperature to warm. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2018 pinpointed 2030 as a benchmark for dealing with climate change, but it didn’t say humans would all die in 12 years.
What Trump referred to as the “Russia hoax” is the investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into possible connections between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Democrats publicized and attacked Trump over the investigation, but it continued under Trump and his deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller special counsel, so the scrutiny didn’t come only from Democrats.
Trump described his first impeachment in 2019, for attempts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to announce an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election, as a “hoax.”
Other than elected Democrats who supported the investigations and are now calling for AI safety, there isn’t a coordinated group that was behind both the investigations and AI safety warnings.
Recent events caused growing alarm from both sides of the political aisle
Recent warnings from researchers about losing control of AI come as companies have had their AI systems take action without human authorization. Researchers say incidents such as OpenAI’s agents attacking the company Hugging Face show that autonomous AI agents can take harmful actions that aren’t the intended task, a problem called “misalignment.”
Researchers have warned that AI systems are advancing faster than their creators’ ability to reliably understand their behavior and contain them.
Lawmakers from both parties have announced or introduced legislation to regulate AI, including some that address advanced AI that could cause widespread harm. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, announced legislation to ban artificial superintelligence. “Superintelligence” is generally understood by industry experts as an AI system that is far ahead of human intelligence at nearly all cognitive tasks, including scientific research and communications.
Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, introduced the “AI Kill Switch Act,” which would require AI companies to have mechanisms to shut down AI systems that can “cause catastrophic harm.”
Some conservative lawmakers have been outspoken in warning against AI.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., launched an investigation in September into AI’s existential risk. In a letter to Altman, he cited concerns of AI killing all humans in the near future.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., said on Fox News that there should be a kill switch to “protect humanity.”
Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has called for regulating AI, even joining Sanders in a “pro-human” gathering on AI.
On the political left, the AI fears are not universal. The New York City Democratic Socialists of America chapter dismissed warnings of AI catastrophe as “AI alarmism and AI hype,” Wired reported.
Among Americans, those who believe there’s at least a “moderate risk” of AI destroying humanity covered majorities of both political parties, according to a September Politico poll. Among those polled who voted for Democratic candidate former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, 70% believe there is a risk of AI destroying humanity, compared with 61% of those who voted for Trump.
Daniel Schiff, who co-directs Purdue University’s Governance and Responsible AI lab, said AI policy in general doesn’t fall cleanly along partisan lines. Issues such as data centers, privacy concerns, global competition and job displacement activate different groups of voters across parties.
“It’s fair to say the parties have not really crystallized, even if there are some prominent figures who are taking stronger stances recently,” Schiff said.
There is some overlap between climate change and AI safety advocates, including among a loose movement called effective altruism, which is focused on finding the best ways to help the most people.
People in that movement have long considered both climate change and artificial intelligence risks to be serious problems. But it’s not the only group concerned about loss of control of AI.
Our ruling
Trump said the people who warned of climate change, the “Russia hoax” and the “Ukraine hoax” are the same people “now saying that AI is going to kill us all.”
While advocates for AI regulation and safety have some overlap with climate activists and Democrats who participated in those investigations, they are not confined to a singular group. Politicians from both parties have spoken out or announced legislation based on concerns about the capabilities of advanced AI.
On academic mentoring platform Nova Learning, Computer Science and AI, "once the dominant choice among students... is losing ground fast, while Engineering has nearly doubled its share." It's a small survey, but "The steepest proportional decline is in Software & Data Science, the most traditional 'learn to code' pathway, which lost 44% of its 2025 share. AI saw the largest absolute drop of any single subject in the survey, down 6.2 points.
"The category did not decline uniformly. Students moved away fastest from the pathway most associated with entry-level software work, while the more applied and human-facing subfields held their ground better."
Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes:
Nova Learning says the share of surveyed middle and high school students naming Computer Science and AI as their primary academic interest fell from 42.3 percent in 2025 to 27.9 percent in 2026, while Engineering rose from 11.9 percent to 23 percent. The biggest gains came from Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering...
[B]roader enrollment data points in the same direction. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reported declines in Computer and Information Science enrollment at four year institutions, even as Engineering grew. AI coding tools are not proven to be the cause, but as software development changes and AI handles more coding tasks, students may be starting to rethink what a future in technology should look like. [Undergraduate enrollment in CS programs at four-year institutions fell 8.1%, to approximately 606,000 students.]
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Hunter Biden said Tuesday that he is willing to testify before Congress alongside Donald Trump Jr. after Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah called for subpoenas examining both presidential sons’ foreign relationships, business dealings and gifts.
“Sen. Curtis of Utah has suggested that Don Jr. and I should testify before Congress,” Biden wrote on X. “I say bring it on.” He added that he has already provided more than seven hours of sworn testimony and said he would “sit next to Don Jr. and testify any time, any place.”
Curtis asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate whether either man benefited financially from access tied to their fathers. CBS News reported that Curtis specifically requested subpoenas covering business dealings, relationships with foreign individuals or entities and gifts received.
The request followed ProPublica reporting that Russian boxing official Umar Kremlev, who has ties to Vladimir Putin, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on post-wedding celebrations for Trump Jr. and Bettina Trump in the Bahamas. President Donald Trump has said his son intends to reimburse Kremlev.
Hunter Biden maintained Tuesday that he had no foreign business dealings while his father was president. Curtis has argued that congressional scrutiny should be applied consistently to both presidential families.
(The Center Square) – In a letter released early Tuesday, Republican legislators called for California Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate the High-Speed Rail Authority over allegations of improper authorizations of travel expenditures for contractors.
Carnival spokesperson confirms onboard cameras captured male passenger going overboard on way from Mexico
A 56-year-old man is missing after he reportedly jumped off a Carnival cruise ship on Saturday.
A Carnival spokesperson confirmed in a statement that cameras on the ship captured a male passenger going overboard the Panorama, according to several news reports.
US officials have begun to buy back wind leases as president seeks to block renewables in favor of fossil fuels
Democratic attorneys general from California and New York have sued the Trump administration over its plans to buy back offshore wind leases as Donald Trump seeks to discourage the expansion of wind energy in favor of fossil fuels.
California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said he was suing over removal of a project off his state’s coast planned by Chicago-based Invenergy. The Trump administration said in June it was buying back the company’s US offshore wind leases for four wind projects on the east and west coasts.
Gone was any shred of US idealism. It was a spectacle of raw power – a power that is likely to only diminish in the years ahead
Expectations were low for Donald Trump’s address to the UN on Tuesday, and yet somehow it was even worse than expected. He does not perform well in formal settings, like chambers of government, preferring a blingier room, like Mar-a-Lago, or an outdoor rally. For years, he has made no secret of his hostility to the UN, and the very principles of international order that define it.
In recent years, that hostility has deepened into something more like a full-on assault, with frequent attacks on the international criminal court (perhaps out of fear that he will someday be indicted), on the UN’s climate agenda, and on Unesco (which the US decided to withdraw from in July 2025).
Amid major overhaul by Bari Weiss, Sunday’s episode draws third-smallest audience for second episode in past 25 years
60 Minutes’ blockbuster interview with Patrick Clancy, the ex-husband of Lindsay Clancy, failed to provide a major ratings boost for the Sunday show, according to audience figures released on Tuesday.
Sunday night’s episode of the newsmagazine show drew an average of 6.77 million total viewers, the third-smallest audience in the past 25 years for the second episode of a season, adding to a disappointing debut for Bari Weiss, who, as CBS editor-in-chief, rewired the show, firing several high-profile correspondents in the run-up to the new season.
Senior Iranian official indicates willingness to reopen strait of Hormuz if US takes steps to ease pressure on Tehran
Iranian officials held three hours of talks with US special envoy Steve Witkoff on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, Donald Trump disclosed on Tuesday.
He said there would a further meeting in the very near future.
(The Center Square) – The Second Amendment Foundation has called California's Senate Bill 704 — the nation's first background check law for firearm barrel purchases - unconstitutional.
McKenna West gave birth to a child with a serious heart defect against the wishes of the biological parents. She has been fighting for a say in the baby’s care.
(The Center Square) - Legal analysts say the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in an upcoming case on gun rights will have vast implications for Second Amendment protections across the U.S.
The U.S. toll of the Iran war continues to climb as the military stumbles toward a breakdown and the Trump administration struggles to find an exit ramp.
Another U.S. soldier died this month, according to newly released Pentagon statistics that classify the death as “non-hostile.” A female soldier was on a military flight headed to Saudi Arabia when she suffered an undisclosed “medical incident,” a defense official told The Intercept. Another 66 U.S. personnel have also been wounded in action just this month, according to that official. This has pushed the official count of war casualties above 850. Almost half the total — 419 wounded or dead — have occurred since Iran stepped up attacks in early July.
Since the beginning of the Trump administration’s war with Iran, the War Department has posted the official count of military casualties on the website of the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, which tracks “deceased, wounded, ill or injured” service members for Congress and the White House. Casualties were initially tallied under Operation Epic Fury. Since July 7, they are now counted separately on a webpage with a generic title: “Overseas Operations.”
Prior reporting by The Intercept found DCAS is missing hundreds of wounded or dead personnel from the Iran war. The Pentagon’s list of the names of the dead is, for example, missing Maj. Sorffly Davius, a signals and communication officer with the New York Army National Guard who was assigned to the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division and reportedly died while on duty in Camp Buehring, Kuwait, on March 6. Davius’s death was widely acknowledged even as it was excluded from the official count. Gen. Dan Caine, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, recognized Davius while “honoring our fallen.”
Three U.S. contractors based in the region have also died during the conflict, according to an official who spoke with the Washington Post.
For months, The Intercept has found anomalies with the counts offered on the DCAS website. On April 21, for example, the number of wounded-in-action troops declined by 15 without public acknowledgment by the War Department. Despite repeated questions for months, the Pentagon has not commented on the disparities in its casualty count.
A U.S. government official previously told The Intercept that scores of casualties added to DCAS last month was “an accounting trick” designed to dampen depressing statistics. That official accused the Pentagon of “slow-walking” the total for weeks. “They wanted the heat on them to slow down after the really devastating attacks,” that source told The Intercept, referencing attacks on U.S. bases in July that exposed the vulnerability of U.S. troops to Iranian attacks. Official statistics now show that the Pentagon admits that 352 personnel were wounded or killed in July and none died or were injured in August.
DCAS counts 11 hostile deaths in 2026, all resulting from the Iran war. This is the highest total of military personnel killed in action since 2021. Including non-hostile deaths, DCAS counts 19 dead due to the Iran war, but fails to count Davius. Also missing is Sgt. Devin Seibel who died in Irbil, Iraq, on May 31 in a training accident, according to a military press release.
More than 580 military personnel have died this year, across the world, according to Pentagon statistics. The War Department lists 114 as accidental and 14 as homicides. As of September 21, there are also eight personnel whose deaths are listed as “undetermined.”
The female soldier who died this month has yet to be identified but was over 35 years old, according to DCAS information.
Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez did not reply to repeated requests for comment or clarification for this article.
(The Center Square) – With the November midterm elections only six weeks away, the Trump administration is already implementing ballot security and fraud prevention measures, Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter told the media Tuesday.
The park is the most highly visited and strong winds make trash problem worse, with gusts blowing away items
Hold on to your hats – Yellowstone national park staffers have removed a record-setting 20,100 pieces of trash from hydrothermal areas around the geyser-filled park so far this year
The most commonly found items include 280 hats, 54 camera lens caps, 47 hair ties, 42 pencils, 36 pairs of sunglasses, 20 hotel key cards and 17 baby pacifiers.
(The Center Square) – No one in Washington will say what establishing two new U.S. defense areas in Greenland will cost U.S. taxpayers or when Congress will be asked to pay.
(The Center Square) – Nearly two years to the day remnants of Hurricane Helene brought arguably the worst natural disaster in North Carolina history, the Atlantic hurricane season was yet to have its first through Monday – snapping a 112-year-old…
The court drew a distinction between receiving a ballot and being legally entitled to cast it. Today, permanent absentee voting procedures rely in part on voters reporting changes and affirming that they remain eligible. Hocker and Washington argued the checks are insufficient. The court said the Constitution leaves the choice of election safeguards to the General Assembly.
Justices say voters must qualify for each election; challengers question how the state checks whether they still do
DOVER, Del. — The Delaware Supreme Court upheld the state’s permanent absentee voting law Monday, clearing the way for qualified voters on the permanent absentee list to receive ballots for the Nov. 3 general election. The ruling leaves lawmakers with a policy question: How much should election officials do to verify that a voter’s reason for voting absentee still applies?
In a unanimous decision, the justices said the law does not expand absentee voting beyond the categories allowed by the Delaware Constitution. Permanent absentee status allows a voter to receive a ballot automatically, but it does not allow someone whose circumstances have changed to cast that ballot, the court said.
Why the law was challenged
State Sen. Gerald Hocker and fellow Senate candidate Steven Washington argued that a voter who qualified for one election could continue receiving ballots years later without election officials adequately confirming that the original reason still applied.
The Constitution permits absentee voting when a registered voter cannot appear at a polling place for a specified reason, including illness, physical disability, certain work or public service obligations, vacation or religious observance. The permanent absentee law applies to a narrower group, including voters with qualifying illnesses or disabilities, military service obligations or jobs that require constant care for a relative.
Must voters qualify again?
Hocker and Washington focused on the Constitution’s language about a voter’s inability to appear at a particular election. An illness can end, a caregiving responsibility can change and public service can conclude. They argued that automatically sending another ballot places too much weight on an earlier application and on the voter’s willingness to report a change.
The justices agreed that a voter must qualify to vote absentee in each election. They rejected the argument that the Constitution requires the state to recertify each permanent absentee voter before every election.
How the state checks eligibility
The court drew a distinction between receiving a ballot and being legally entitled to cast it. The law requires permanent absentee voters to report changes affecting their eligibility. The Department of Elections sends reminders before election cycles, removes voters from the permanent absentee list in specified circumstances and requires voters to affirm their eligibility when returning each ballot.
Those procedures rely in part on voters reporting changes and affirming that they remain eligible. Hocker and Washington argued the checks are insufficient. The court said the Constitution leaves the choice of election safeguards to the General Assembly.
The challengers sought to invalidate the law in all its applications. To prevail, they had to show it could not operate constitutionally. Imperfect procedures do not meet that standard when eligible voters can use the law, the justices said.
What the ruling means for voters
Voting rights advocates emphasized the law’s value to people whose qualifying circumstances persist. In a statement after the ruling, the Delaware Voting Rights Coalition said permanent absentee voting helps eligible voters with disabilities, illnesses, caregiving duties and other qualifying obligations participate without submitting a new application for every election.
The ruling differs from the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision striking down Delaware’s no-excuse vote-by-mail law. That law allowed people outside the Constitution’s absentee voting categories to vote by mail. The permanent absentee law, the justices found, serves only a subset of voters within those categories.
A Superior Court judge ruled against permanent absentee voting in 2024, but the Supreme Court vacated that decision because the plaintiffs lacked standing. Monday’s decision reached the constitutional issue and upheld the law. The Department of Elections says it is sending permanent absentee voters their general election ballots.
TO GO
Who: Delaware voters who qualify for permanent absentee voting.
What: Voters already on the permanent absentee list will automatically receive a ballot for the Nov. 3 general election. They must still qualify to vote absentee when they cast it.
Check your status: Visit iVote.de.gov. “Indefinite” means you are on the permanent absentee list.
Request a ballot: Eligible voters can apply through iVote.de.gov or contact their county elections office.
Deadline: Completed absentee ballots must reach the county elections office by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
President made more than 440 purchases and 700 sales despite voter anger over elected officials trading stocks
Donald Trump made more than a thousand stock sales and purchases worth between $79m and $270m in July, according to a Guardian analysis of his latest financial disclosure released Tuesday.
His two largest sales were of Amazon and Microsoft stock, selling between $5m and $25m each on 20 July. That same day, he also sold up to $5m worth of Oracle and Costco stock, sold from $500,000 to $1m in Nvidia, and bought up to $5m worth of shares in Intuit and Salesforce, among dozens of other transactions.
Six-year-old Lian Yunzhi broke the women’s 3x3 average world record twice at two World Cube Association-certified competitions in Wuhan and Guangzhou, according to state broadcaster CCTV on Monday. She posted averages of 4.52 and 4.27 seconds, after solving the Rubik’s Cube five times. She is the first female speedcuber to average less than 4.5 seconds.
New AI PODs at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and Sacramento State Expand Shared Capacity for Research and Education
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22, 2026 — Internet2 is expanding its contributions to the National Research Platform (NRP) through its strategic relationship with Cisco, supporting the deployment of new Cisco AI PODs at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and Sacramento State. The AI PODs add GPU capacity that researchers across the platform can burst into when local resources run short.
Credit: Internet2
As artificial intelligence transforms research, the NRP continues to grow the shared, AI-ready computing capacity being used by thousands of researchers and students across the country. Internet2 is now adding to that pool in a new way.
Cisco AI PODs introduce a more standardized approach to expanding the NRP’s distributed infrastructure. They provide pre-validated compute, networking, and management capabilities that can be deployed as a unit, reducing the engineering and integration work required to add new resources to the platform. That creates a repeatable model for Internet2 and other NRP contributors as demand for AI computing continues to grow.
Pooling Capacity Instead of Centralizing It
As AI-enabled discovery reaches every discipline, research computing has grown significantly more complex. Cyberinfrastructure gaps between institutions are a growing concern, and budget pressures mean many institutions are being asked to do more with less.
That’s why a shared model can help bridge the access gap.
Supported by the National Science Foundation and over 70 participating organizations, the NRP is a community-operated platform that pools computing, storage, performance measurement, and AI resources across the U.S. It enables organizations to contribute while giving researchers access to capabilities beyond what they have locally.
Rather than building one centralized supercomputer, the NRP scales by aggregating GPU and CPU capacity contributed by institutions into a single Kubernetes-based fabric called Nautilus. But that model creates a recurring hurdle for contributing organizations: standing up GPU nodes that are compatible enough in compute, networking, and management to slot cleanly into a shared, multi-region cluster.
Cisco AI PODs can address that hurdle. Each AI POD is pre-validated, full-stack, modular AI infrastructure based on Cisco Validated Designs. It pairs Cisco UCS servers and GPU nodes with Nexus high-bandwidth, low-latency networking and Cisco Intersight for centralized management. Instead of hand-assembling compute, storage, and networking from scratch, an institution contributing to the NRP can deploy a right-sized AI POD. Ultimately, this reduces the integration risk and setup time for each new node joining the platform.
“Today, these two new AI PODs provide researchers access to additional GPU capacity when local resources aren’t enough,” said James Deaton, vice president of Network Services and Research Engagement at Internet2. “Internet2’s role was to connect the pieces: an NRP need, a Cisco solution, and two campuses ready to host it. Strategic relationships with industry are one way we reinvest resources in the whole research and education community.”
About the AI PODs
Combined across both sites, the AI PODs provide:
8 NVIDIA H200 GPUs with 1.1 TB of combined GPU memory
128 CPU cores
2 TB of system memory
90 TB of NVMe flash for staging data
At each site, the AI POD includes:
A single Cisco UCS C845A M8 server chassis, with its GPUs interconnected over NVLink so jobs can address all four as a shared pool of GPU memory.
An NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU providing up to 2×200 Gbps connectivity from each AI POD to campus and national R&E networks.
Continuing to Invest in Shared Research Infrastructure
Internet2’s contributions to the NRP continue to expand R&E access to shared computational resources across the U.S. A distributed platform requires more than GPUs, as data has to reach the compute, and paths between nodes have to be measurable. The Internet2 national network supports both.
Internet2 operates dedicated Open Science Data Federation nodes in Boise, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, and Kansas City. Connected through the national network, these caches function to keep datasets closer to the compute resources and the researchers using them.
In addition, 41 performance assurance service nodes on the network currently serve a hybrid NRP function. Alongside thousands of perfSONAR instances deployed worldwide, they provide the NRP with measurement points across Internet2’s footprint, supporting cross-domain performance monitoring and troubleshooting between sites. Additionally, the nodes contribute 1,200 CPU cores, 6.4 terabytes of memory, and 80 terabytes of storage capacity.
Creating Value Through Industry Collaboration
Deploying the AI PODs to support the NRP is another example of how Internet2 creates community value through strategic relationships with its industry members. Internet2’s industry relationship with Cisco helped direct resources to the NRP, supporting two campus deployments and validating a repeatable approach other contributors can use.
As AI reshapes research cyberinfrastructure requirements, the expertise and strategic relationships Internet2 builds to meet them will continue to benefit the broader R&E community.
About Internet2
Internet2 is a nonprofit, member-driven advanced technology community founded by the nation’s leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 serves 352 U.S. universities, 57 government agencies, 46 regional and state education networks and through them supports more than 80,000 community anchor institutions, over 1,000 InCommon participants, 61 leading corporations working with our community, and 70 national research and education network operators that represent more than 100 countries.
Internet2 delivers a diverse portfolio of technology solutions that leverages, integrates, and amplifies the strengths of its members and helps support their educational, research, and community service missions. Internet2’s core infrastructure components include the nation’s largest and fastest research and education network that was built to deliver advanced, customized services that are accessed and secured by the community-developed trust and identity framework. For more information: https://internet2.edu
US president calls UK prime minister ‘a natural businessperson’ as leaders meet at UN assembly in New York
Donald Trump has asserted his relationship with the UK is “more up” with Andy Burnham than under Keir Starmer despite tensions between the two countries on a range of thorny issues including regulation of artificial intelligence, the Chagos Islands and the war in Iran.
At their first face-to-face meeting, the US president praised Burnham, who sat nervously alongside him, as a “natural businessperson”, saying he thought he had “lots of assets on his side” and would be a “great” prime minister.
But industry trade group says plan would backfire and lead to even higher prices for gasoline
Donald Trump on Tuesday said he backed the idea of a ban on diesel exports, which some US politicians are calling for as a way to curb the soaring cost of energy.
Diesel prices have rallied in Europe and the US to record highs as wars in Iran and Ukraine sharply cut exports from some of the biggest producers such as Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. A gallon of diesel fuel in the US was $6.53 on Tuesday, the highest average on record and more than 75% higher than a year ago.
SAXONBURG, Pa., Sept. 22, 2026 — Coherent Corp. has announced PhotonLink, an integrated optics platform that brings together Coherent’s broad portfolio of critical photonics technologies, precision assembly and test capabilities to deliver complete optical solutions for next-generation AI data centers. The platform supports co-packaged optics (CPO), near-packaged optics (NPO) and emerging chip to chip connectivity.
As AI systems continue to scale, demand for higher bandwidth and lower power is driving optical connectivity closer to compute and switching silicon. These architectures require lasers, silicon photonics, precision optics, fibers and detectors to work together. PhotonLink brings those technologies and the expertise to integrate them into one platform.
“The next leap in AI requires more than faster chips – it requires a new way to connect them,” said Jim Anderson, Chief Executive Officer at Coherent. “Customers need complete optical solutions, not just individual components. Coherent is uniquely positioned to bring together the critical technologies, integrate and test the finished assemblies, and manufacture them at scale. PhotonLink puts that capability to work for the next generation of AI infrastructure.”
Coherent’s vertical integration spans compound semiconductor materials, lasers, optics and specialty fiber through final assembly and test. PhotonLink gives customers access to both individual components and complete optical assemblies from one partner, helping simplify system design, streamline qualification and reduce the complexity of integrating technologies from multiple suppliers.
From Critical Technologies to Complete Optical Assemblies
The PhotonLink platform spans four functions of the optical path: Generate, Shape, Guide and Receive. The portfolio includes indium phosphide (InP) lasers, vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays, silicon photonics, isolators, specialty fibers, micro-optics and detectors. Coherent integrates these technologies into external laser sources, precision fiber assemblies and optical modules tailored to customer architectures.
Customer Engagement and Manufacturing Scale
Coherent has more than ten CPO customer engagements and more than ten NPO engagements, with anchor customers and long-term agreements secured for both architectures. The company also has more than five engagements in emerging chip to chip connectivity. Revenue from the PhotonLink platform is expected to begin ramping in Q4 of CY2026.
PhotonLink builds on Coherent’s established datacenter manufacturing base, which has shipped more than 300 million InP lasers and more than one billion InP and gallium arsenide (GaAs) photodetectors. Coherent is expanding its 6” InP and specialty fiber manufacturing capacity to support the PhotonLink ramp.
Coherent is the global photonics leader. We harness photons to drive innovation. Industry leaders in the datacenter, communications, and industrial markets rely on Coherent’s world-leading technology to fuel their own innovation and growth. Founded in 1971 and operating in more than 20 countries, Coherent brings the industry’s broadest, deepest technology stack; unmatched supply chain resilience; and global scale to help its customers solve their toughest technology challenges. For more information, visit coherent.com.
Thursday’s gathering will show how food, conservation and education come together at Coverdale Farm Preserve. Online ticket registration is closed.
GREENVILLE, Del. — The setting for Thursday’s dinner is also its purpose. At A Taste of Coverdale, guests will eat locally grown food at a working farm where Delaware Nature Society demonstrates how food production and care for the land can go together.
The Sept. 24 event runs from 4:30 to 8 p.m. at Coverdale Farm Preserve. Optional guided nature strolls begin at 4:30 p.m., followed by a cocktail hour at 5 and dinner at 6. A silent auction will include items from local vendors and experiences led by Delaware Nature Society experts. Proceeds will support conservation and education programs at Coverdale. Online ticket registration is closed.
A working farm and a nature preserve
Coverdale’s 377 acres include a 177-acre working farm and 200 acres managed as a nature preserve. Delaware Nature Society uses the property to show how farming practices can support healthy soil and wildlife habitat while producing food for the community. Visitors can walk the farm trail, see animals and shop for seasonal produce at the market.
That makes the dinner more than an evening outdoors. The food, guided walks and views give guests a chance to see the connection between the farm’s harvest and the landscape Delaware Nature Society works to protect.
Delaware Nature Society connects people with nature!
Founded in 1964, Delaware Nature Society describes its mission as connecting people and nature to create a healthy environment for all through education, conservation and advocacy. Coverdale is one place where those three parts of its work come together.
Its education programs bring children and adults outside to learn through experience. Preschoolers explore nature through stories and play; school groups visit forests, wetlands, streams and farms; and adults can join guided walks and other programs. In Wilmington, the organization’s RENEW initiative connects young people with outdoor learning, water quality projects, habitat care and opportunities to build leadership skills.
Its conservation work extends beyond Coverdale. Delaware Nature Society says it manages nearly 2,000 acres for ecosystem health and biodiversity, including efforts to restore forests and meadows, control invasive plants and protect habitat for birds and pollinators. At Coverdale, it applies those principles to both the preserve and the working farm.
The organization also advocates for environmental policies. It describes its approach as nonpartisan and science-based, with priorities that include protecting open space and natural areas and improving water quality. It works to help residents understand those issues and take part in decisions affecting their communities.
A fall tradition with a purpose
This year’s dinner is part of Delaware Nature Society’s 50th anniversary celebration of the Harvest Moon Festival. The organization has spread the celebration across four fall events and calls A Taste of Coverdale its premier annual fundraiser. The money raised helps sustain the places and programs that visitors encounter throughout the year.
Community members who are not attending Thursday’s dinner can still experience Coverdale. The farm is open for regular visits Fridays through Sundays through November. Admission is free, and donations are welcome.
To Go Box
Who: Delaware Nature Society hosts A Taste of Coverdale.
What: A farm dinner with optional guided nature strolls and a silent auction. Online ticket registration is closed.
When: Thursday, Sept. 24, from 4:30 to 8 p.m. Strolls begin at 4:30 p.m.; dinner begins at 6 p.m.
Where: Coverdale Farm Preserve, 543 Way Road, Greenville.
Sept. 22, 2026 — Industrial companies often face complex technical challenges that are too time-consuming or costly to solve through physical testing alone. Computer modeling and simulation can spur the development of new technologies with lower energy intensity, improved performance and increased productivity.
The Center for Industrial Modeling and Simulation (CIMS), led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), recently hosted a launch webinar featuring the center’s work to accelerate innovation and enhance U.S. economic competitiveness.
The Center for Industrial Modeling and Simulation recently hosted a webinar to encourage national-lab attendees and industry partners to learn about the program and opportunities to participate. Credit: LLNL.
Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Industrial Technologies Office (ITO), the new center will support the development of sector-specific tools and methods with laboratory expertise in physics-based simulation, process modeling, and machine learning and artificial intelligence to meet the computing needs and challenges of industry.
Brandon Wood, director of the new CIMS center, and Zach Pritchard, technology manager at the DOE’s ITO, delivered opening remarks at the event. They welcomed attendees from across the national laboratory enterprise, industry and academia.
Pritchard outlined how computational methods can reveal the physics behind industrial processes and provide insight into harsh environments that are difficult to monitor with current sensors. He said that recent advances in artificial intelligence also offer new ways to analyze complex systems and accelerate innovation, and he highlighted the scientific computing expertise, capabilities and resources available at the national labs.
During the webinar, Wood explained how the center aims to address challenges on both sides of the industry-national laboratory relationship. Companies may not know what tools are available, what those tools can accomplish or how to access the necessary facilities and expertise. Researchers, meanwhile, may need a clearer understanding of problems encountered in industrial settings.
“Our mission is really to accelerate widespread adoption of computing tools and resources,” said Wood. “We just want to see that the power that modeling and simulation really has is being deployed in a way that’s most effective for heavy industry.”
Initially, CIMS will focus on iron and steel and chemical manufacturing, particularly combustion, electrical/electrochemical technologies and process heating, with the goal to eventually expand to other energy-intensive sectors, including cement and concrete, forest products, food and beverage and agriculture.
The CIMS website, which is set to launch in the fall, will feature a catalog of relevant laboratory capabilities, industrially applicable codes, technical contacts and examples. The online inquiry and consultation portal will help companies determine whether computational approaches could address specific needs.
“We’ve set up CIMS as sort of a concierge service,” said Wood. “If an industry partner comes in and says, ‘Here’s my interest. I want to know if computing can be relevant for this,’ the center will help identify appropriate capabilities and experts.”
In addition, the center is planning a series of workshops to assess current adoption, identify gaps and establish priorities for computing in industrial sectors. CIMS will also develop demonstration projects focused on integrating and adapting existing capabilities towards higher impact for industry.
Riccardo Scarcelli, deputy director of CIMS, provided some additional information during the Q&A session on how to engage with CIMS, how the Center could interface with other DOE programs such as the High-performance Computing for Energy Innovation and Genesis Mission efforts, and what additional opportunities CIMS might facilitate for future lab-industry partnerships.
A recording of the webinar is now available online. Interested parties can join the CIMS mailing list to be informed about future events and/or provide feedback by completing a short interest form.
Vincent Brown stands accused of aiding in genocide and crimes against humanity during the paroxysm of violence in his native country in 1994, charges he denies.
US president may have upstaged the ghost of Soviet leader Khrushchev by musing destruction of fellow member state
Donald Trump has a habit of discomfiting delegates to the United Nations general assembly. But this year, he may have upstaged the ghost of Nikita Khrushchev by openly contemplating the annihilation of a fellow UN member state.
Eleven minutes into a 40-minute address, the US president announced he had “a big decision to make” over Iran, which has staged a much more determined resistance than Trump anticipated when he decided to go to war against the country in February.
Wells, an 18-year-old Black man, died during a boat trip in July. The case sparked concern that Mississippi authorities did not do enough to investigate the case.
A former maximum-security prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, is now a critical hub in the Trump administration’s immigration detention machine, transforming in just a few months from a facility shuttered for its inhospitable conditions to a privately run jail holding hundreds of immigrants.
This is the story of how — and why — it happened.
The deal had been in motion for more than a year before the Leavenworth City Commission conceded to the controversial project, one that would allow the private-prison operator CoreCivic to reopen its notorious prison and fill it with immigrants. They did so after a protracted battle with the company, one that made them cogs in a vast deportation machine.
“I don’t want them to be in jail,” Leavenworth Mayor Nancy Bauder said of the more than 500 immigrants held at the facility as of August, the last publicly available count. “I think it’s horrendous. My moral objection to this is very strong.”
“They just bought their permit.”
But as the Trump administration and CoreCivic carried out an aggressive campaign to expand the federal detention network, city officials said they concluded they couldn’t afford to fight it. They tried to sue to stop the project, but instead spent more than a quarter-million dollars fighting it in court, draining city funds, before CoreCivic offered a $1.5 million impact payment to reimburse the city’s legal costs and pledged $400,000 a year to the local government.
The Leavenworth facility, for years marred by an ugly history of overcrowding and understaffing, is now the Midwest hub for the mass detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants. Under this hub-and-spoke model, which has gone little noticed by the public even now, ICE moves detainees and staff between smaller facilities — the “spokes,” which include facilities such as regional jails — and a larger facility as a center of operations — the so-called “hub.” Using this model, ICE is able to obscure the scale of its operations and quickly move immigrants through the system, from arrest to detention to fast-tracked deportation flights out of the country.
“Leavenworth’s capacity is going to be that hub in the Midwest, to draw down from Minnesota, Chicago, Indiana, to house all that detention,” Sharma-Crawford said. Two other immigration attorneys who represent clients in the region corroborated the operational pattern through their own clients’ transfers and named additional “spoke” facilities feeding the pipeline.
Using a hub-and-spoke model, ICE is able to obscure the scale of its operations and quickly move immigrants through the system, from arrest to detention to fast-tracked deportation flights.
The Midwest Regional Reception Center, as it’s now known, in Leavenworth is a critical site for the Trump administration, whose promises of 100,000 beds for immigrant detention stalled out at around 66,000 in July and had run into multiple obstacles across the Midwest. In Illinois, a 2021 state law ended immigration detention statewide. Minnesota remained a possible location for a hub, but the process moved slowly; CoreCivic’s shuttered Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton had long sat idle before its recent sale, and ICE needed to get a Midwest hub up and running immediately. Proposed sites were contested one after another: A potential warehouse for up to 10,000 detainees in south Kansas City was killed by community opposition, and facilities were either blocked or contested in Shakopee, Minnesota; Romulus, Michigan; Hudson, Colorado; and McCook, Nebraska. The Midwest’s largest operational ICE detention center, GEO Group’s North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, is geographically isolated, hours from any major airport, and has been mired in controversy over a hunger strike, a death in custody, and hundreds of unlawful detention rulings.
Leavenworth, a town with a corrections history stretching back over a century, seemed to offer the path of least resistance.
“Aggressive and Unlawful”
The City of Leavenworth fought the facility in court for months. CoreCivic countersued, and the Department of Justice intervened on CoreCivic’s side, accusing Leavenworth of “aggressive and unlawful” interference.
In the meantime, the fight threatened to bankrupt the city. Records obtained through the Kansas Open Records Act show the city paid roughly $820,000 in legal fees to Spencer Fane LLP over 12 months, about 6 percent of its general fund. The bill was a drain, but not a death blow. The city’s foremost concern was the takings clause, which allows the government to seize private property for public use, City Manager Scott Peterson said. A state judge had directed CoreCivic to follow the permit process, and if Leavenworth denied the permit, CoreCivic could argue bad faith, claim the city had effectively seized its property, and sue for damages, Peterson said, leaving Leavenworth to choose between greenlighting a facility it opposed or gambling on a lawsuit it might not survive. The alternative, Bauder, the mayor, said, was the federal government acquiring the building, which would eliminate local oversight entirely.
Both the city and county rejected the facility early on, local officials said. Residents protested its reopening and offered impassioned testimony against it at public hearings.
CoreCivic structured the $1.5 million impact payment in part to reimburse the city’s legal costs from the company’s lawsuit. When asked about the arrangement, CoreCivic instead reiterated its promised $1 million one-time impact fee, $250,000 a year to the city, and $150,000 a year to the police department.
Mayor Pro Tem Rebecca Hollister, who cast the sole dissenting vote on the 4-to-1 decision, explained her objection was procedural and understood it had no bearing on the outcome: “It was an inevitability.”
The Hub
On January 14, two months before the vote, CoreCivic detention officer Brittany Williams reached out to city leadership to voice her support of the facility, an unusual move for a rank-and-file corrections officer with no role in the municipal permitting fight. In the email to Assistant City Manager Penny Holler, Williams said the company transferred her to Oklahoma to help open Diamondback, a sister CoreCivic facility. She wrote that she was currently assigned to TransCor America, a private transportation company that contracts with ICE to move detainees around the country, in her case from ICE’s Kansas City, Missouri, field office “to where they are needed to go.” The email, which was entered into the public record before the February 2 hearing on the special use permit, or SUP, to allow the facility to house immigrants, inadvertently revealed ICE’s hub-and-spoke detention model was already in motion in the region, shuffling detainees and staff between facilities and states.
The Leavenworth facility was in a strategically advantageous position to become a new hub for ICE, and Sharma-Crawford, the immigration attorney, said ICE had been eyeing the location since it closed as a federal prison. It sits just 10 miles from Kansas City International Airport, where ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations field office is a six-minute drive away. It also allows ICE to hold detainees at Leavenworth then move them through KCI to staging areas for deportation flights in Louisiana or Texas.
“They want it short, quick,” Sharma-Crawford said. It allows ICE to claim “‘I gave them due process,’” he said, “and they’re out the door.”
“They’re doing this in smaller areas because no one’s paying attention.”
On March 25, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a bond decision holding that anyone who entered the United States without authorization is ineligible for bond, a ruling that covers Missouri, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Iowa, Arkansas, and Minnesota, the states Sharma-Crawford said he expects to feed into Leavenworth. Mandatory detention across those seven states meant the government needed greater capacity from the region’s jails. Genevra Alberti, former chair of the local AILA chapter, whose attorneys represent clients throughout the area, named additional “spokes” in the system: Chase County in Kansas, and Greene, Ste. Genevieve, Phelps, and Ozark counties in Missouri. Enough local jails plus a CoreCivic facility, she said, can hold and process as many people as a mega-detention center.
“It makes sense that they’re doing this in smaller areas, because no one’s paying attention,” Alberti said. “There’s definitely a method to this. They know if they do this in the massive cities, there’s going to be more light shed on what they’re doing.”
A March 3, 2025, photo shows CoreCivic’s Midwest Regional Reception Center, a former federal prison, in Leavenworth, Kansas.Photo: Emily Curiel/The Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
In Leavenworth County, the CoreCivic-run ICE detention center is one of five major correctional facilities, which provide a total of roughly 6,000 beds. Up the road, FCI Leavenworth, a federal Bureau of Prisons facility, held ICE detainees in what Alberti called a “black hole” for a full year before the SUP was approved. Last May, the ACLU wrote to the warden documenting limited time outside and no exercise for detainees. Peterson, the city manager, confirmed the federal prison doesn’t answer to the city, and there have been no community relations meetings for more than a year.
The SUP the city approved authorizes “jail or prison” use at the Leavenworth site without restricting it to ICE detention. The concentration of prisons meant the workforce, the infrastructure, and the institutional muscle were already there. Reopening one more facility for ICE required little more than a single municipal approval.
The Immigration Courts
Once their clients are fed into one of the deportation regime’s hubs, immigration attorneys say it’s become an increasingly byzantine process to find them, plan their defenses, and get them out of detention.
Working with clients imprisoned at Leavenworth is chaotic and difficult from the moment they arrive, the attorneys said. To schedule a televideo call the lawyers must email their state bar cards and licenses, and they are subject to automatic, one-hour cutoffs. CoreCivic has repeatedly demanded attorneys file formal representation paperwork before they’ve even met the detainee or agreed to take on the case, Alberti said.
Valerie Sprout, a Kansas City immigration attorney with 15 years of experience, said she wasn’t even able to locate the facility in ICE’s call-scheduling portal.
“We didn’t know how to contact that client,” Sprout said. “We were on our listserv, frantically sharing information, because you have people there that you have no access to.”
Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, rejected these characterizations, saying video visitation calls run in 30- and 60-minute sessions, calls are not automatically cut off, and staff accommodate requests for more time. He said the forms identifying a detainee’s lawyer are standard and a pre-representational visit can occur without one, adding that legal representatives may visit their clients seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Some of the details of the internal dysfunction detainees face only come to light after they’re released. According to Alberti, a former client took over running the laundry for roughly a week because no one was washing detainees’ clothes. She was promised token pay, either a dollar an hour or a dollar a day, but was never paid.
The obstacles extend into the courtroom. Detainees are increasingly given remote, on-camera hearings, never physically appearing before a judge. The Kansas City Immigration Court, part of the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, holds jurisdiction over Leavenworth’s detainee docket. Just six judges, working across three courtrooms and a small pro bono room, carry more than 1,000 cases.
“So far, I haven’t seen any of them in person,” Alberti said of the judges, which she said makes it more difficult to tell how they’re weighing cases.
Sprout, who is also a board member of Asylum Clinic Kansas City, has witnessed the shift to teleconferenced hearings firsthand.
“All detained cases are over video. No detained cases are in-person, which I feel is just an incredible violation of due process, especially in asylum cases, because the threshold issue in every asylum case is to determine whether the respondent is credible,” she said.
Aracely Mendoza protests against deportations outside federal Immigration Court in Kansas City, Mo., on May 27, 2025.Photo: Eric Adler/The Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Former prosecutors and military lawyers preside over the hearings. Allan F. John-Baptiste, a former Bureau of Prisons lawyer, was appointed during the first Trump administration. Jared Grimmer, a former Air Force judge advocate general, accepted a temporary appointment in October 2025. Katherine Estes ran military personnel law at the Pentagon. Scott Ison is a local-level Missouri prosecutor. After the Trump administration fired or pushed out more than 100 judges last year, none of the newly appointed Kansas City judges have a background in immigration law, according to the official bios provided in a DOJ press release announcing their appointments.
Created in the wake of 9/11 and historically invoked only sparingly, the EOIR-43 automatic stay allows the government to override an immigration judge’s bond order without review or appeal. Records obtained by Documented through a records request show the Department of Homeland Security used it 877 times over a three-month period in mid-2025. Faced with these stays, Alberti has filed two federal habeas corpus petitions for clients at CoreCivic Leavenworth. The first was for a young woman with a pending petition for legal status as a victim of crime and no criminal history who entered the country as a baby; she was released after roughly two weeks. As of this spring, the second remained in detention.
Another recent petition put the conditions themselves before a federal judge. Katsiaryna Bartko, a Belarusian asylum-seeker detained at Leavenworth, filed a pro se petition in August over her medical care. In an order appointing her counsel, U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree found she brought “a viable deprivation-of-medical-care” claim and noted it was undisputed that her recent test results showed worsening thyroid levels. Bartko, who depends on hormone medication after surgery for thyroid cancer, had not seen a specialist since her transfer, according to court filings. CoreCivic and ICE dispute she was denied appropriate medical care. After a fourth hospitalization and 106 days in ICE in custody, she was released on recognizance on September 16.
One of Alberti’s clients, who was detained at Leavenworth but has now been released, told her that guards and ICE officers sometimes asked her to act as an interpreter for other detainees without pay. No one on staff spoke Spanish, the client told Alberti, and when officers needed to communicate, they relied on a translation app rather than a live interpreter.
Gustin, the CoreCivic spokesperson, said in a statement to The Intercept that “any claim that a detainee is required to translate for staff communication is false” and that the facility uses a contracted translation service with a live translator reached through devices, computers, and phones.
About six weeks after the facility began accepting detainees in May, Sharma-Crawford reported at the first community oversight committee meeting that detainees did not have access to their own charging documents. Without them, he said, the lawyers weren’t able to formulate a defense for their clients.
When asked about that allegation by The Intercept, Gustin said that concern involved a single detainee whose documents were provided upon request. He also said detainees keep their charging documents with them from the time they arrive and any suggestion to the contrary was “false.”
But for those who’ve been made party to the system, the situation has begun to feel intractable.
“We cannot stop the federal government from incarcerating these people,” Bauder, the mayor, had said. “We can’t stop them, but we can try to make it better for them here.”
The community’s only check on CoreCivic was the CoreCivic Community Relations Advisory Board, required as a condition of the special use permit. But while the board streamed their meetings publicly, it existed in a purely advisory capacity, Peterson, the city manager, said. Enforcement power lay with the city, not the board, and to act on any issues it flagged, the city of Leavenworth would have to sue.
On the city’s working relationship with CoreCivic in the first weeks, Peterson said, “For now, things are great,” before adding, “How long is this sustainable? How long does it go?”
Foreclosing on the Future
With the hub-and-spoke model, the Trump administration planned for mega-detention centers with 7,500 to 10,000 beds as the hubs, but the 1,033-bed Leavenworth facility became a hub at a fraction of the size, inviting far less scrutiny than a mega-center would. Its reopening spurred community mobilization, but not the same national level of fanfare or resistance — as was the case with “Alligator Alcatraz,” the now-shuttered detention center in the Florida Everglades — which has worked in the Trump administration’s favor.
“DHS has taken a two-pronged approach to this,” Peterson said. “They are both contracting with private organizations like CoreCivic and GEO Group to manage their detention population, but then they are also just directly acquiring properties to manage themselves.”
The administration’s mass deportation agenda has remained paramount despite its growing unpopularity with the American public. The Leavenworth location had been a federal priority from the start, identified in ACLU Freedom of Information Act disclosures alongside other proposed reopenings. It was named in ICE’s emergency justification as one of three publicly identified among nine no-bid detention contracts. It was selected for its central location within ICE’s Chicago area of operations. With warehouse acquisitions stalled, Leavenworth, the Midwest regional hub, may represent the Trump administration’s new default model when ambitious, public-facing expansions become too politically or financially costly to defend.
In July, CoreCivic’s sold two of its largest California facilities, Otay Mesa and California City, to DHS for $1.5 billion. The company will continue operating both and plans to sell off more jails. Under this hybrid arrangement, federal ownership can put facilities beyond the reach of many state and local regulations, limiting outside scrutiny even as courts test its limits.
In August, CoreCivic sold Leavenworth’s Midwest Regional Reception Center to the U.S. government for $238 million.
Last month, the pattern played out again. On August 4, CoreCivic announced the sale of the shuttered Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minnesota. The following day, in a second press release, it announced the $238 million sale of Leavenworth’s Midwest Regional Reception Center, recasting both as a single $734 million deal. Under the arrangement, the company expects to keep operating both facilities through their existing ICE contracts.
At Leavenworth, the contract expires in September 2027. City officials learned of the sale the morning the news broke and were notified by CoreCivic rather than the federal government, raising questions as to whether its permit and oversight conditions would survive federal ownership. Even as these sales closed, CoreCivic said it had opened preliminary discussions with ICE about selling still other facilities.
Rep. Gwen Moore, a Wisconsin Democrat who toured the facility on September 9 to meet with two detained constituents, said it was under active construction to add capacity, telling reporters “everywhere we went, they were building.” A DHS spokesperson confirmed the agency acquired Leavenworth and the Appleton facility to create additional detention space.
Alberti sees these actions as the administration waging a “war of attrition” on immigrants, their families, and their advocates.
Leavenworth fought this outcome through every channel available to a local government — in the courts, at the commission, through public protests, and in open hearings packed with residents. Nevertheless, CoreCivic and DHS jammed the approval through. Once the facility was operational, the federal government purchased the building outright, severing the meager leverage the city extracted as the price of its consent. In May, DHS quietly disbanded its own internal detention oversight office after a funding lapse, leaving no federal watchdog to fill the void. Rebranded as an expansion of ICE’s immigration capacity, this series of federal acquisitions represents the quiet desecration of the public trust. More troubling still is the notion that across America, other Leavenworths may still be unaccounted for and effectively shielded from the public’s knowledge or scrutiny. Without the tools to meaningfully oppose the expansion of Trump’s anti-immigrant regime, communities are left without recourse, making them nodes of a vast, and violent, machine.
This story is part 2 in a two-part series. Read the first part here.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump has formally appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as national security adviser, making permanent a dual role Rubio has held on an acting basis since May 2025.
A White House official confirmed Tuesday that Trump signed a commission making Rubio the permanent national security adviser. Rubio becomes the first person since Henry Kissinger to simultaneously serve as secretary of state and national security adviser, concentrating two of the administration’s most influential foreign-policy positions under one official.
Rubio assumed the national security adviser duties after Mike Waltz left the White House position in May 2025. Trump subsequently nominated Waltz to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations following controversy over a Signal group chat in which senior officials discussed military operations against Houthi militants in Yemen.
Rubio has since reshaped parts of the National Security Council while continuing to run the State Department. Associated Press reporting this summer noted that several of Rubio’s former State Department aides moved into senior NSC positions, giving him substantial influence over the administration’s foreign-policy structure.
Trump has repeatedly praised Rubio’s ability to handle multiple responsibilities, saying last year that when problems arise, “I call up Marco. He gets it solved.” Rubio has said he remains focused on his current responsibilities rather than a possible 2028 presidential campaign.
Reza Valizadeh, a U.S.-Iranian dual citizen and former journalist for U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Farda, has been imprisoned in Iran since September 2024.
The US president spoke about the war with Iran during the UN general assembly on Tuesday, threatening to 'annihilate' the country and 'drive them into hell' if the regime didn’t agree to a deal with the United States
Disclosure: this is BEGODE’s manufacturer account, not Future Motion support.
Future Motion’s explanation of Pushback/Haptic Buzz lists several relevant variables, including rider weight, tire pressure, terrain and grade, and battery percentage. Speed alone is therefore an incomplete description of the situation.
For a support request, record the board model, the warning experienced and the conditions already known. Do not ride again just to find the warning threshold. Follow the instructions for your model and contact the manufacturer if the behavior is unexpected.
This does not diagnose an individual board or establish that it is safe to keep riding.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah is calling for a Senate investigation into Donald Trump Jr.’s foreign relationships and gifts after reporting that a Russian oligarch helped finance celebrations surrounding his May wedding.
Curtis asked Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking Democrat Dick Durbin to subpoena both Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden as part of a broader inquiry into whether presidential relatives have benefited financially from their family connections.
The request follows a ProPublica investigation reporting that Umar Kremlev, a Russian boxing official with ties to President Vladimir Putin, helped pay for a private-island venue and fireworks connected to Trump Jr.’s wedding to Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas. President Donald Trump has said his son told him the money would be reimbursed.
Curtis argued that Republicans should apply the same scrutiny to Trump Jr. that they previously applied to Hunter Biden. “A toaster is a wedding gift,” Curtis wrote on social media. “A private-island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else.”
Curtis is seeking testimony about business dealings, foreign relationships, gifts and any instances in which access to a president was understood to provide value. He has not alleged that Trump Jr. committed a crime.
I’m guessing my board is just fucked. What sucks is the motherfucker who hit me he doesn’t have insurance. I don’t know what to do or why it’s suddenly giving haptic buzz at 9 mph
Why Should Delaware Care? For nearly a decade, Delaware schools have been struggling with poor test scores from students. Many critics have sought greater accountability measures for school districts that aren’t showing progress fast enough, and now the Department of Education has put forward such a draft plan.
As Delaware continues to grapple with concerningly low average test scores from students, the state Department of Education has drafted a plan that could see it take over low-performing schools or even hold back third-graders who are far behind grade-level reading and writing.
According to annual proficiency scores released by the state last month, less than half of Delaware’s third through eighth graders read and do math at a proficient level. And just 18% of 11th graders were proficient in math.
But Education Secretary Cindy Marten told state board of education members that Delaware must have a clearer, more-defined answer for what happens when a school, or its students, consistently do not show test score improvements.
“We can’t just say, ‘Well, they didn’t get it. Oh well, move on next year,’” she said during last week’s state board meeting.
To address those concerns, Marten unveiled a draft framework that consists of five tiers, ranging in support and accountability measures for district schools and charter schools. The universal expectation is for schools to be in Tier 1, which has the lowest level of intervention.
While additional supports are introduced at Tiers 2 and 3, state intervention begins at Tier 4 and is carried into Tier 5.
Schools with little to no progress that are placed in Tier 4 would see “state-directed instructional and operational actions, leadership or staffing supports, and decisions need to be made when they’re needed,” Marten said.
Those schools would also participate in monthly implementation and performance review meetings with the Department of Education.
If none of the state-implemented supports work, the school would be placed in Tier 5 — resulting in receivership, where the Delaware Department of Education would take over operation of the school and appoint leadership, until conditions improved.
Marten told board members that the goal of Tier 5 is not to close schools. Instead, a state-approved “receiver” would address school conditions with a local school board, superintendent and principal while working on a “public recovery plan,” she said.
A return of full authority to local leadership and the school board would be phased in after sustained progress.
Delaware Education Secretary Cindy Marten has sought to find ways to provide greater accountability on school districts that are not making academic progress with students. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY BRIANNA HILL
Marten also announced the possibility of holding third-graders back, a tactic that Mississippi has used to dramatically increase proficiency scores, but has also come under criticism from some as a manipulation of its test scores. Such a tactic would be a last-resort option, she said.
Delaware must first focus on early intervention screenings to address learning disabilities earlier and monitor students’ progress over time, Marten said. If students are not improving after receiving individualized support, then whether a student should begin fourth grade will be evaluated based on the student’s data.
“This is not a third-grade retention plan with a literacy plan wrapped around it,” she said during the meeting. “The whole point is prevention.”
The announcement came just one month after Marten told Spotlight Delaware that there will be “real action” taken if a school continues to underperform “for so many numbers of days, weeks, months, years.”
Marten did not specify what those actions may look like at the time.
Further determinations to be made
Marten reiterated throughout the meeting that the framework is only a draft, and more specifications still have to be made.
Marten said “some” of the framework would require legislative action before it is implemented, and plans to have legislation ready for the start of the new session in January.
The department will also have to determine how long a school can remain in a specific tier and establish criteria for where schools should be placed if the framework is implemented, among other details.
Marten also said the Delaware Department of Education will be holding more stakeholder engagement opportunities in the coming months.
Still, she noted that “nobody’s saying we don’t need this [framework,] everybody’s saying we do need this.”
In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, Lake Forest Superintendent Steven Lucas, who is also the president of the Delaware Chief School Officer’s Association, said his organization looks forward to working with Marten’s department to ensure the accountability framework “accurately assesses the needs and output of the public school districts, supports the work of our public school teachers, and helps to increase the college and career readiness of our graduates.”
Still, some education leaders have expressed concern with Marten’s draft framework.
Delaware State Education Association President Tameka Mays wrote in a statement to Spotlight Delaware that the state’s educators’ union is committed to having conversations with Marten, Gov. Matt Meyer, and legislators about plans for improving student academic performance.
But in her statement, Mays said she and her organization have mixed feelings about Marten’s plan.
“There are aspects we favor, such as additional instructional support for struggling students, and aspects that raise serious concern for our members and our communities, including the process leading up to a possible state takeover of our local schools and the potential for 8- and 9-year-olds to be held back a grade,” Mays said in her statement.
She said the union will also be gathering feedback from its members throughout the state in the coming weeks.
Correction: This story originally reported that receivership for poor performance would fall to school districts, but this option would actually be designated for an individual school and not the district as a whole.
Trump–Xi summit: Why the US and China should not underestimate each otherExpert commentLToremark
The US and China both face serious domestic strains. As Trump and Xi meet this week to discuss trade, AI and Taiwan, neither side should mistake the other’s weaknesses for strategic decline.
A superpower summit is a big deal. As US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping meet in Washington this week, they have a lot to cover. They will try to extend a trade truce that expires in November, including China’s pause on rare earth export controls and America’s delay on chip restrictions. The leaders will also tackle Taiwan, where Beijing wants Washington to halt a $14 billion arms package, as well as China’s purchases of Iranian oil and a proposed dialogue on the national security risks of artificial intelligence (AI).
In their negotiations, each side may be tempted to focus on the other’s weaknesses. But underestimating the other’s power would be unwise.
China has many weaknesses – but should not be underestimated
Many observers argue that China’s economic vulnerabilities will limit its international ambitions. Its growth model is faltering; its households still are not spending, so Beijing continues to push surplus production overseas. This has provoked a backlash of trade barriers from the US, EU and beyond. The property sector – once a quarter of the economy – is in its fifth year of slump, while a mountain of hidden local government debt threatens to drag down China’s growth for years to come.
Meanwhile Xi’s government has become steadily more restrictive: tightening political control (such as the new travel restrictions) and placing national security at the centre of economic life.
But Washington should not misjudge Chinese power. China possesses formidable industrial might, with dominance in areas such as electric vehicles, batteries, solar power, drones and telecommunications equipment. China also rivals the US in AI: its models now match leading American systems at a fraction of the cost and are used by developers worldwide (including many in the US). Although gaps in Chinese technology remain – notably in advanced semiconductors – there, too, Chinese firms are likely to grow increasingly competitive.
Many observers will again be tempted to predict that Xi’s tightening grip will choke Chinese innovation. But it is time to bin the argument that authoritarian China can only copy and cheaply produce what other countries invent. Indeed, many of China’s recent innovations have come amid tightening control. The AI sector took off only after Xi came to power and flourished despite his regulatory crackdown on technology firms and entrepreneurs.
China’s innovation model is simply different. The state picks strategic sectors and drenches them in cheap capital, subsidies and guaranteed demand. Fierce competition among firms, a vast domestic market and the world’s deepest manufacturing base bring research into mass production faster than anywhere else.
This approach has its problems; not least that it is wasteful and prone to overcapacity. As an autocracy, Chinese innovation may never outpace that of the United States. But even in second place, China is a daunting technological competitor. The US should thus adopt policies to support domestic innovation and help US firms keep their lead for as long as possible.
China’s economic weaknesses also do not imply strategic weakness. When Trump escalated the trade war last year, Beijing targeted US dependence on Chinese rare earths. The threat of Chinese export controls forced Washington into a truce, agreed when Trump and Xi met in Busan last October. Extending that truce will be high on this summit’s agenda.
China has also spent decades developing considerable military capabilities that have shifted the balance of power in Asia. Beijing has made clear its long-term intentions to control Taiwan – and economic costs are unlikely to deter it from pursuing this goal. Indeed, before China cracked down on Hong Kong, many observers argued this move was unlikely because it would be economically unwise for China.
Military costs, however, are a different matter and likely have already deterred Beijing from the overt use of force. The strength of Taiwan’s defences – such as through US arms sales – will continue to influence Beijing’s calculations. Continuing US arms sales are vital, not a bargaining chip that might be traded away for something else (as Trump has suggested).
American dysfunction does not equal decline
Just as Washington should not mistake China’s problems for strategic weakness, Beijing should not mistake US dysfunction for decline.
Xi will see a weakened superpower: with historically unprecedented deficit spending and a burgeoning debt of $40 trillion. Washington now spends more on interest on its debt than on its military. Its dire finances are raising its borrowing costs and jeopardizing the future of the US dollar as the global reserve currency. By 2032, social security will be underfunded and Medicare will soon follow. Neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to cut benefits or raise taxes but the money will have to come from somewhere. As the largest item in the US discretionary budget, defence may be the obvious place.
The US ability to address this and other problems is hindered by domestic political polarization. Xi – like any visitor to Washington – will see a profoundly divided city. Nationally, Trump’s approval rating is at its lowest point in his second term. But Democrats are ill-poised to lead: the party is divided by the fault line of Israel. With its fiscal pressures and disunity, the US hardly seems poised to embark on a costly containment – or war fighting – adventure against a rising superpower.
Indeed, the US has shown itself unable to focus on China’s rise. For decades it has vowed to ‘pivot’ to Asia, but not even an administration that campaigned on ending wars in the Middle East could avoid starting one.
Xi may therefore be tempted to conclude that America is a mess – and that Asia is China’s for the taking. But underestimating the US would be foolhardy for China too.
The US economy is performing well, and the country remains the global innovation leader dominating emerging technologies. Its alliances and partnerships are built on shared interests and seem to be enduring despite recent upheaval.
The US also remains the world’s military superpower. It has longstanding ties to Taiwan, and its foreign policy establishment favours US intervention if China invades Taiwan. US alliances in Asia enjoy robust popular support, and American foreign policy leaders would not want to see a China-led Asia, given a perceived threat to US prosperity and security. Xi should remember that the US has historically paid high costs to prevent a country from dominating either Asia or Europe.
Trump and Xi would thus be wise to sit down at the table with a great deal of respect for the power and influence of the country represented by the man on the other side. Only then can they address what is perhaps the most important issue of all – making progress towards a US–China modus vivendi.
US–China relations – and the world as a whole – would benefit from an arrangement that acknowledges each country’s core security needs, prevents war and encourages cooperation on shared interests: rebuilding the global trading system, managing the risks of AI and tackling climate change. They will never get there by underestimating each other.
NEW YORK CITY, New York — Mayor Zohran Mamdani renewed his criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, calling him a “war criminal” and an “architect of a horrific genocide” as the Israeli leader prepares to address the United Nations General Assembly.
Mamdani said the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu should be respected, although he acknowledged New York City lacks legal authority to execute it. The ICC issued warrants in 2024 accusing Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of war crimes and crimes against humanity connected to the Gaza conflict. Israel rejects the allegations and disputes the court’s jurisdiction.
Netanyahu is expected to arrive Thursday for a brief visit and deliver his UN address on Sept. 24. The Associated Press reported that his trip is expected to last roughly 24 hours amid anticipated demonstrations in New York.
Mamdani previously campaigned on arresting Netanyahu if he visited the city, but later said municipal authorities do not have the power to enforce the ICC warrant. He has instead called on the federal government to act.
The United States and Israel are not members of the ICC, and the Trump administration has opposed the court’s actions against Israeli officials while preparing broader sanctions against the institution.
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Immigration detentions involving Haitian residents have increased sharply in Ohio since Temporary Protected Status for Haitians ended July 27, according to a new report from the Ohio Immigrant Alliance.
Springfield ICE Watch documented 74 Haitian detainees from Aug. 7 through Sept. 17, representing a 142.3% increase compared with bookings before TPS expired. The report reviewed rosters from four Ohio facilities that contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Two other detention centers were excluded because they do not publicly release rosters.
The increase follows a June Supreme Court ruling allowing the Trump administration to terminate TPS protections for roughly 330,000 Haitians nationwide. TPS had allowed eligible Haitians to live and work legally in the United States while conditions in Haiti remained unsafe.
About 15,000 Haitians live in Springfield under a mix of immigration statuses. Local advocates say ICE has increasingly conducted traffic stops and enforcement actions near apartment complexes, stores and workplaces. Springfield ICE Watch said only 8% of detained Haitians it tracked had existing removal orders.
ICE has also expanded electronic monitoring in the community through ankle monitors and the SmartLINK phone application. DHS says those supervision decisions are made individually based on immigration status, criminal history and compliance considerations.
If anything, the ongoing war is uniting a divided country against the foreign invaders. Washington seems a long way from grasping this point
The US president, Donald Trump, asked recently on one of his Truth Social rants: “When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?” So frenetic and all-over-the-place are Trump’s statements that one does not know which are actual policies and which are simply noise. But if counting on the “Iranian people” to rise up and fight is indeed US policy then, as far as I can tell from within Iran, it is a failed one. And miserably so. At least for now.
There is no reliable nationwide polling that can tell us what Iranians think about the war in real time. So this is an observation, not a poll. It comes from conversations I have had with many people.
Hossein Hamdieh holds a joint PhD in Geography and Anthropology from Humboldt University of Berlin and King’s College London. He is currently based in Tehran, where he works as a social researcher
Beatrice Caciotti for ProPublica. Source images: U.S. Sen. Susan Collins’ official Facebook page.
In the final weeks of 2019, a top fundraiser for Sen. Susan Collins walked into a perilous meeting at a Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C.
For the first time in her two-decade Senate career, the Republican lawmaker from Maine was in danger of losing her seat. President Donald Trump’s dismal approval ratings were dragging her down in the polls, and she was falling behind her likely 2020 Democratic challenger in fundraising.
Scott Reed, head of the Collins super PAC, was on a mission to close that gap. Reed was meeting that day with three executives from a Hawaiian defense contractor, Navatek. A year earlier, Collins had helped their company land a multimillion-dollar Navy research contract in Maine. Now, seated at a coffee shop not far from the U.S. Capitol, Reed asked them for a $500,000 donation.
Government contractors are banned from making political contributions. More consequentially, for the company to offer donations to Collins in exchange for an official action, or for Collins to accept, would constitute criminal bribery.
But the company did have such a proposal: Navatek was hungry for more government contracts in Maine. If they cut a big check, the CEO told Reed, Navatek wanted Collins to guarantee tens of millions of dollars in additional federal funding.
To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds, Navatek planned to funnel the donation through a shell company. The CEO wanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from. Reed confirmed that she would, the executive said — and that Navatek would get its government contracts.
After the Corner Bakery meeting, Navatek’s CEO, Martin Kao, sent an initial $150,000 to the Collins super PAC using the shell company. Two months later, he told Navatek executives thatCollins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts, according to an internal company email reviewed by ProPublica.
Three years later, Kao holed up in a conference room to recount the Corner Bakery meeting to a group of four FBI agents and federal prosecutors. The FBI had seen through his shell company ruse, and in 2022 a grand jury indicted him for making illegal campaign contributions. No one working for Collins was charged.
Facing years in prison, Kao hoped to do less time by revealing the entire scheme.
What he told them has never before become public. The Corner Bakery meeting, he asserted, was just one episode in a sprawling pay-to-play operation that embroiled some of the most powerful figures in Congress.
Over three days at the U.S. attorney’s office in Honolulu, Kao laid out in devastating detail how his operation worked. He gave agents a 50-page document naming dozens of lobbyists, congressional staffers and members of Congress who he said helped him trade cash for contracts. Kao and his close associates had donated nearly $900,000 to dozens of politicians, allowing Navatek to establish operations in half a dozen states with over $40 million a year in government funding.
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Most damningly, Kao told FBI agents and prosecutors, the company’s work for the government was of no real value. Navatek’s research under his stewardship never resulted in products the military wanted to buy, ProPublica found.
Kao’s tell-all interviews with the FBI lasted into late 2024. His confessions opened up an entirely new phase of the investigation. Agents sifted through hundreds of thousands of records seized during Kao’s arrest and found that many were consistent with his account of widespread influence peddling.
Kao had credibility issues. He was now a felon trying to avoid a lengthy prison sentence. And there were other challenges. Building a corruption case against elected officials requires extraordinary proof of a quid pro quo arrangement, in part because the Supreme Court has narrowed what counts as bribery.
Even so, by the end of 2024, the agents had enough evidence to pursue a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers of both political parties. They asked their supervisors to approve a new investigation and contemplated using undercover operatives to gather more evidence. Although their effort was in its early stages, and it was unclear where it would lead, FBI agents asked Kao extensive questions about his dealings with Collins and her office.
Then Trump returned to the White House. Consumed by a campaign of vengeance, he stacked the Department of Justice with his personal lawyers and demanded a purge of anyone who had ever investigated him.
The specialized FBI and DOJ teams handling public corruption investigations, some of which were involved in Trump-related cases, were eviscerated. One of the agents who had taken Kao’s confession was pushed out as retribution for her role in investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Dozens of agents and prosecutors quit amid the department’s destruction, including the career attorney assigned to Kao’s case.
Trump’s Justice Department no longer takes on public corruption in any meaningful fashion, former officials said. The investigation sparked by Kao’s revelations is dead. And the government is no longer talking to an informant who had offered a road map to corruption in Congress.
The White House referred ProPublica to the FBI.
FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said the agency had investigated claims against Collins years ago “and ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign. Any suggestion otherwise is totally false.” Williamson said the Trump administration has removed agents only “if they have been found to have acted unethically, undermined the mission, or engaged in weaponization of law enforcement.”
Williamson did not respond to questions about the new investigation launched in 2024 based on Kao’s previously unreported cooperation with the FBI.
ProPublica is revealing the existence of the case for the first time. We reviewed a trove of evidence gathered by the FBI and thousands of pages of legal records, and interviewed dozens of people familiar with Navatek, its Washington operations, and the FBI inquiry to conduct our own investigation. We independently corroborated much of Kao’s account. Whether or not Kao’s dealings with politicians amount to criminal bribery, the Trump Justice Department has little interest in finding out, and his sheer success reveals how easily influence is purchased in Washington today. This is the first in a series of stories drawn from our reporting.
Of all the politicians Navatek courted under Kao’s leadership, Collins was its most important patron. The senator’s office steered government contracts worth millions toward the company while her campaign was pumping Kao and his network for donations, according to emails seen by ProPublica. Sometimes they cut checks within 24 hours of the annual defense spending bill, which funds military contracts, clearing a key Senate hurdle.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins walks in the annual Moxie Day Parade in July in Lisbon, Maine.Scott Eisen/Getty Images
Collins’ office did not specifically address questions about the Corner Bakery meeting, the senator’s relationship with Kao and the millions she helped appropriate for Navatek.
Annie Clark, Collins’ deputy chief of staff, told ProPublica in an email that Collins’ office “vigorously” denies allegations of bribery and pay-for-play made by Kao, calling his claims “outlandish.” Collins’ campaign was not part of the discussions between Kao and the super PAC, and her office “fully cooperated” with the FBI investigation, Clark said.
“The fact that the FBI and Biden-led Department of Justice thoroughly examined the Navatek matter demonstrates this,” Clark wrote. “These issues were resolved in 2021 and concluded when the Collins campaign disgorged the illegal contributions that Martin Kao had made without our knowledge.”
Collins is once again fighting to keep her seat, in a race that could determine control of the Senate. On the campaign trail, she spotlights the funding she directs to Maine while leading the appropriations committee, which she calls “the most powerful committee in the Senate.”
She demonstrated that power with Navatek. After the budgets became law, Collins’ office pushed the Navy to award specific contracts to Navatek, emails seen by ProPublica show, even though awards are supposed to be competitive.
“I spoke with Sen. Collins office regarding the $8M,” a naval official wrote in an email on Feb. 6, 2019. “The interested company is Navatek.”
In a meeting with Collins and two campaign officials, Kao said, the officials told him the senator expected his ongoing support. Collins told him: “You’ve seen me deliver,” Kao said.
Reed knew Kao was behind the $150,000 anonymous donation, emails showed, because Kao told Reed he planned to donate through a shell company. “Very smart,” Reed replied in an email viewed by ProPublica.
Reed did not respond to detailed questions about the Corner Bakery meeting, the $150,000 donation and Kao’s allegations. “I understand Martin Kao is now sitting in federal prison,” Reed wrote in a brief email. “I never had any communications with Senator Collins [or] her staff about Martin Kao and/or Navatek.”
But an email seen by ProPublica suggests that someone must have relayed the news of Kao’s donation to Collins, just like Reed promised to do in Kao’s recounting of the Corner Bakery meeting.
Seven days after the super PAC cashed the check from Kao’s shell company, one of Reed’s subordinates emailed a Navatek lobbyist asking for Kao’s phone number: “Senator Collins would like to call Martin to thank him.”
Martin Kao, second from left, with Collins, center, at a publicity event at Navatek’s Maine headquarters in August 2019.U.S. Sen. Susan Collins via Facebook
The Navatek Method
Before Kao’s doomed reign as CEO, Navatek was a sleepy Hawaiian engineering company with a few dozen employees. It was founded in 1978 by Steven Loui, a talented engineer and scion of a powerful Hawaiian shipping family. Navatek was not a profit center but a vehicle for Loui’s passion projects, like an experimental catamaran for navigating Hawaii’s choppy waters.
The company benefited from the largesse of the legendary Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, multiple former Navatek executives and employees said, whose family had been close to the Loui family for generations. Inouye was a master of earmarks, a practice that allowed lawmakers to insert funding for specific companies by name in the federal budget. The self-styled “King of Pork” steered hundreds of millions in federal dollars to Hawaii. Former Navatek employees say he was affectionately referred to as “Uncle Dan.” “Before Inouye took an interest, Congress didn’t even know our companies existed,” a longtime Loui lieutenant wrote in a 1998 op-ed.
In response to ProPublica questions, Loui said that money appropriated by Inouye made up “a minority” of Navatek’s revenue.
Inouye’s death in 2012 made the company’s future uncertain. Not only was Navatek’s direct line to Capitol Hill gone, but Congress was doing away with the abuse-riddled earmark process. Now companies would nominally have to compete on the merits for government contracts.
Kao joined Navatek in 2008 as its chief financial officer. Loui charged him with replacing Navatek’s rainmaker and eventually named Kao CEO. He sold Kao the company in return for a share of the profits.
Kao was an unusual figure among the company’s low-key naval engineers and boat aficionados. He seemed to be aping a Wall Street tycoon, telling employees they could either be “a beast or a bitch,” a former executive said. He drove to work in a Ferrari and abruptly fired subordinates who displeased him — one time, in the middle of the night. “He had very little interest in the technology,” one former employee recalled. “Martin was only interested in dollar signs.”
Kao also exaggerated and lied. He told different people he had stepbrothers whose parents died in a fishing accident or an avalanche, a former employee recalled. He lied to Loui about having law degrees from both the University of California, Los Angeles and New York University. He once told a lobbyist who raised quarter horses that he owned a herd of polo ponies, just to one-up him.
Despite his erratic behavior, former employees agree Kao hit upon an effective way to replace the lost earmarks. If the company could not rely on a benefactor like Inouye, it would develop a stable of them.
Navatek targeted the powerful members who sat on the House and Senate appropriations committees. These members could no longer earmark money for specific military contractors. But they retained the power to budget millions of dollars for equipment orbespoke research and development. Because Pentagon budgets run thousands of pages and are largely prepared in secret, it is easy for appropriators to add a line item intended for a contractor like Navatek without leaving any fingerprints.
Soon, Kao had refined a playbook. Navatek would concoct a research project in partnership with a university in a member’s district or home state, and Kao would make a large initial campaign donation. Working with a team of pricey, well-connected lobbyists, Navatek would get meetings on Capitol Hill to pitch the research to congressional staff. Navatek kept spreadsheets, reviewed by ProPublica, that listed members of Congress as the “specialty” of certain lobbyists.
Separately, Kao later told the FBI, there would be a meeting of just the key players. One engineer, who traveled with Kao to D.C. to explain the technical side of a project, recalled being sent out of the room once the subject of money came up. Sometimes in these smaller meetings, members of Congress directly asked Kao for donations, he told the FBI. In other cases, he said, Navatek’s lobbyists would relay a request from an intermediary for a specific dollar amount.
Kao told the FBI that the lawmakers, lobbyists and Navatek brass understood these donations were bribes and that the payments were essential to the entire scheme. Kao believed he was buying Navatek’s way into the annual defense budget, not winning over members with innovative engineering proposals.
“I’m not red or blue, I’m green,” he would tell congressional staffers, a former Navatek employee recalled.
While a deal was being struck, Navatek and congressional staffers worked closely on the legislative process. Every year, Congress prefaces the defense budget with massive reports describing the purpose of inscrutable line items. Staffers would include a project description so specific that Navatek would be the only logical pick.
Often, Navatek composed language that ended up, word for word, in Senate funding requests, former employees said. In 2019, for example, Navatek’s priorities were tucked into page 185 of the 307-page report released by the Senate Appropriations Committee. The committee set aside $21.5 million for “hybrid composite structures research for enhanced mobility,” “electric propulsion for military craft and advanced planing hulls” and a “test bed for autonomous ship systems.” Although Navatek’s name does not appear on the page, these were all projects the company requested, according to internal documents and interviews with former employees.
Once the budget passed, lawmakers’ staff leaned on Navy officials to award Navatek the money. Former contracting officers told ProPublica they felt pressure to go along because money from those contracts funded their office — and because members of Congress had confronted dissenting naval officials in the past. “There’s only so many battles you can fight,” one said. So Congress sometimes got its way even when Navatek’s projects made little sense.
Inside Navatek, employees referred to this strategy as “the method.” And it enabled the company to string together tens of millions of dollars in contracts. The result was the same as getting earmarks: a reliable, growing revenue stream bankrolled by U.S. taxpayers.
“It was a simple enough play. Let’s find the small states that have complementary universities … [and] let’s get access to their senators,” Eric Schiff, a former Navatek executive, told ProPublica. “I’ve met Susan Collins. You can get access to Susan Collins. Once we got the first things working with Maine, then we said, ‘Well, let’s keep reaching.’ And so we did.”
In a statement to ProPublica, Navatek founder Loui said Kao’s “unethical and illegal method of winning contracts” was a departure from how he operated the company prior to Kao’s ownership.
Kao boosted Navatek’s annual revenue from $10 million around the time Loui sold him the company to almost $40 million when he was arrested in 2020. In the second half of 2019 alone, Navatek paid a roster of five lobbying shops more than $500,000.
Even Navatek’s executives were surprised at how far their money went in D.C. “It was eye-opening for me, frankly. ‘Oh my God, all of it is for sale. It’s all for sale,’” Schiff said.
The key players in Kao’s pay-to-play deals went to great lengths to meet in person and leave no trace of an actual quid pro quo, he told agents. “That is why I literally had to fly to D.C. almost every week,” Kao later told the FBI. “Sometimes for a 15-minute meeting.”
But the FBI compiled emails, which ProPublica reviewed, that were suggestive of illegal bargains. Navatek executives and lobbyists spoke openly as if they were buying lawmakers’ assistance. In one back-and-forth, a lobbyist and a company executive described another senator as “fundamentally transactional” and having “a reputation as a pay-to-play office.”
In another message, Andy Winer, who former executives said was Navatek’s chief strategist, reminded Kao to budget money for political contributions based on how much the company wanted in congressional funding the following year.
“Oh my God, all of it is for sale. It’s all for sale.”
Eric Schiff, former Navatek executive
Winer was his guide to the political underbelly, Kao said. A consummate insider, Winer had parlayed six years as chief of staff to Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii into a lucrative lobbying career with a firm called Strategies 360. One of Winer’s former colleagues compared him to the slick lobbyist on the Netflix show “House of Cards” who toggles between the political and corporate worlds.
In another email exchange scrutinized by the FBI, Kao asked Winer about making a $5,600 donation to nudge along a senator who seemed keen to work with Navatek: “Would that ‘help?’”
Winer, who had already donated himself, replied, “With my contribution, I think it sends the right message.” He suggested Kao split up his donation to be “less conspicuous.”
The method didn’t always work. Once, Kao complained that a senator had reneged on a deal and he ought to get his donations back.
“You should not feel aggrieved nor should you ever put that in writing,” Todd Webster, another lobbyist Navatek hired, replied. Webster did not respond to detailed questions.
Winer said he stopped working with Navatek following Kao’s arrest. “The political contributions I discussed with Kao were understood by me to be lawful political contributions. I never participated in, witnessed, or had knowledge of any illegal political contribution, bribe, or agreement to exchange a political contribution for an appropriation, contract, or other official action,” Winer said in an email to ProPublica. “I never advised Kao to make a contribution in exchange for official action.”
Strategies 360 has new ownership that did not oversee Winer while he represented Navatek, its CEO, John Oceguera, said.
Navatek employees began to notice members of Congress visiting their East Coast offices. “You would be like, ‘Oh, there’s this senator walking around,’ and we would get a picture with them,” one engineer recalled.
While some projects involved potentially meaningful research, Navatek’s bread and butter was R&D that went nowhere. As a slideshow prepared by an executive explained, “We thrive in the valley of death,” the term for the bureaucratic gap where research languishes without being developed into a product. The slideshow noted that none of the technology had ever actually been deployed.
The Office of Naval Research did not respond to a request for comment.
In Maine, Navatek was studying ways to modify small boats to reduce the “slamming” impact felt by passengers at high speeds. With the help of the University of Maine’s giant 3D printer, Navatek made a prototype and unveiled it at a press conference where a Guinness World Records representative declared it the world’s largest 3D-printed boat. But Navatek executives knew the Navy had no plans to use the new design, former employees said.
“[The work] got rolled into a few PowerPoint slides and a white paper, and that was the deliverable,” recalled one who worked on the project. “The boats weren’t delivered to the Navy — the Navy didn’t even want them.”
Kao to Collins: “Here to Help”
The first time Kao came face-to-face with Collins, in 2018, he told the FBI, he had to pay for the privilege.
Collins would not meet unless he agreed to donate to her campaign, he said. While it is not illegal for politicians to exchange face time for contributions — in this case, just a few thousand dollars — it was not the last time Collins would seek Kao’s support.
Navatek had been eager to expand beyond Hawaii, and Maine was a perfect beachhead — a small, coastal state hungry for high-tech jobs that happened to be represented by a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Collins, more than most appropriators, likes to trumpet the dollars she brings home.
To work with Collins, Navatek hired a lobbyist, Glen Mandigo, who also lobbied for the University of Maine and was tight with her office. Mandigo asked how much Navatek wanted in funding and how much Kao was willing to support Collins, Kao told the FBI. The University of Maine did not reply to a request for comment.
In that first meeting with Collins and her staff, Kao pitched an $8 million boat hull research project for Navatek and the university. Collins seemed supportive. Not long after, Mandigo called Kao and said Collins wanted him to bundle tens of thousands of dollars for her reelection, suggesting Navatek throw a fundraiser, Kao said.
In an email to ProPublica, Mandigo denied taking part in a pay-to-play arrangement.
“I did not advise Navatek officials, nor would I advise any client, that support from Sen. Collins was contingent on campaign donations,” Mandigo wrote. He said that in his 25 years of working with Collins and the Maine delegation, “I never saw or heard of such behavior from the Senator or her staff.” Clark, Collins’ deputy chief of staff, told ProPublica it was “wholly inaccurate” to say Mandigo was close to their office.
FBI agents had collected voluminous corporate records and email correspondence between Navatek and Collins’ inner circle. Much of that evidence aligned with the story they were now getting directly from Kao.
The FBI had spotted his out-of-the-blue donations in the summer of 2018, just before Collins included $8 million for Navatek’s proposal in the defense budget. Emails showed her staff made it clear to the Navy that it shouldsend the money to Navatek. FBI agents also had evidence of Kao and Mandigo planning a fundraiser starting in April 2019. Their emails — with her scheduler and her campaign’s finance director — freely mixed talk of Navatek’s Collins-backed contract with plans to raise money for her.
The principals settled on hosting Collins for a publicity event at Navatek’s Maine headquarters in August 2019, where she posed for pictures with Kao and a model of the company’s experimental boat. Behind the scenes, the FBI saw in emails and company records, Kao orchestrated over $40,000 in donations from extended family in advance of the event. To avoid the legal cap on individual campaign contributions, the emails show, he told Collins’ team to reallocate his excess contributions to his father — which an agent highlighted and noted is against election law in a presentation to prosecutors — and sent them his father’s full name and address.
“This is perfect,” Amy Abbott, the reelection campaign finance director, emailed Kao after discussing his father’s contribution. “We are so grateful for ALL the Kao support!”
Before the event, Kao said, Collins, Abbott and another staffer met with him in private. One of the staffers told Kao the campaign expected more donations. It was in this meeting that Collins said, “You’ve seen me deliver,” he told the FBI.
Less than one month after the event, the Senate released a draft of the defense budget containing $21.5 million for Navatek’s pet projects in Maine. Kao emailed a Collins campaign fundraiser — who would in theory have nothing to do with a government contract — four days later, saying, “Thanks again for all the support from Sen Collins.”
“I’ve been involved in many tight races in the past and understand last minute ‘needs’ come up,” he continued. “We are here to help anyway we can … financially or whatever.”
Kao’s desire to donate even more money led to the fateful Corner Bakery meeting with the head of the Collins super PAC, called the 1820 PAC, Kao told the FBI. Unlike Collins’ campaign, which could accept only $5,600 per election from individuals, the super PAC could accept unlimited contributions.
The super PAC emailed Kao a memo before the meeting stressing the need to raise money with “urgency.” At the meeting, Kao and Reed, the super PAC’s chair, hammered out a deal for a six-figure donation, Kao told the FBI. Over email, Kao informed Reed of his shell company scheme, saying he had clearedit with his lawyer. “They are super vague and very difficult to get any background info on,” Kao reassured him. “Thanks for doing this,” Reed replied.
The FBI spoke to the other Navatek executives at Corner Bakery, who confirmed the meeting took place. One, David Kring, the company’s top scientist, told ProPublica he had no memory of what was discussed.
The other, Duke Hartman, told an FBI agent it was just “a get to know you meeting” with the chair of the super PAC and they did not discuss the “particulars of a donation.” Agents, records show, came to believe Hartman was lying about his role in Kao’s pay-to-play operation and would name him as a formal subject of a future investigation. Hartman was not charged. He did not respond to a detailed request for comment.
A few weeks after the $150,000 check to the Collins super PAC cleared, in February 2020, Kao and his team met with Collins’ office and secured a new round of funding.
“We were very warmly received,” Kao reported to his colleagues in an email obtained by the FBI. “Excellent meeting. Total of $32M will be supported.” Records show the Senate allocated at least $10 million that year based on Navatek’s proposals.
Navatek’s ambitions peaked in mid-2020. As the company waited to see if Collins would survive her reelection campaign, executives prepared to ask their champion on the appropriations committee for even more funding the following spring, internal documents show.
Other documents from that time show the company was courting senators from seven additional states and gunning for more than $200 million in new appropriations. Navatek expected to have offices in more than a dozen states by the end of the following year, including a new 15,000-square-foot facility in the Portland, Maine, harbor.
Kao, meanwhile, closed on a $4.5 million beachside home in an exclusive Honolulu neighborhood; the backyard pool had a waterfall feature. He renamed the company Martin Defense Group after himself, joking that it would simplify his future takeover of Lockheed Martin.
“It was working well, and it would have continued to work well,” said Schiff, the former executive. “Martin got greedy. Just got damn greedy.”
Downfall, Cover-up
In early 2020, the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit good government group, noticed something strange in the public filings for the Collins super PAC. The PAC had received a $150,000 donation from a newly created LLC with a typo in its name: the Society of Young Women Scientist and Engineers, with no S at the end of “Scientist.”
This was the $150,000 Kao donated after the Corner Bakery meeting. The money had come from Navatek’s account, not Kao’s, violating a ban on government contractors making donations.
A check for $150,000 to the Collins super PAC 1820 from the Society of Young Women Scientist and Engineers — a shell company that obscured the actual donor.PacMar Technologies LLC, fka Martin Defense Group, LLC v. Kao
The center suspected the society was not a real group but a pass-through to hide the identity of a major political donor. It filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. It took only a few days for a Hawaii journalist to discover Kao’s wife’s name on the society’s paperwork, linking the shell company to Navatek.
Inside Navatek, Kao shifted into damage control mode. He spoke to Reed and the super PAC’s lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, and began to hatch a cover-up. In an email released in civil litigation, Mitchell suggested the society make charitable donations — preferably in Maine — which would make it seem like a legitimate nonprofit. “I want to be sure that the LLC proceeds with the ideas we discussed — giving scholarships and recognition to women in engineering, etc.,” wrote Mitchell. “That would help both of us, I think.”
Mitchell added, “We should develop a plan and timetable, so there are some scholarships given over the next several months, and particularly, perhaps in Maine, where the bad press was.”
Mitchell, who later played a major role in Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, did not respond to requests for comment.
Kao and his team settled on donating scholarships to women in STEM. They offered between $5,000 and $25,000 apiece to state universities where they were angling to win government contracts — that way, the cover-up would benefit them politically, too.
But Navatek’s and Kao’s problems were just beginning. Undeterred by scrutiny from the FEC, Kao defrauded the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program newly passed by Congress. He inflated Navatek’s payroll to amass loans of $13 million, according to a federal indictment. The Navatek founder, Loui, had long since soured on his chosen successor. This was the final straw. He reported Kao to federal authorities.
“This is not how Navatek behaved or conducted business before I sold the company to Martin Kao,” Loui wrote to ProPublica. He said Navatek was successful before Kao’s ownership and had many sources of government funding. After Kao’s arrest, he added, the company fully cooperated with law enforcement.
Loui has since regained control of the company and renamed it PacMar. He is dedicated to restoring its reputation and ability to execute government contracts, he continued. Loui said he fired employees hired during Kao’s tenure who were “not capable of performing quality, professional engineering and science tasks.”
“The company received no Collins-supported funding after Martin Kao’s arrest, nor should it,” Loui added. “What Martin Kao and his cabal did was wrong.”
On Sept. 30, 2020, law enforcement raided Navatek’s Honolulu offices and arrested Kao for fraud. Federal agents in windbreakers seized his laptop and ordered the company’s IT staff to copy the company’s internal servers.
Navatek’s public flameout attracted the attention of Michelle Ball and Kevin Gounaud, two experienced agents in the FBI’s elite anti-corruption unit. Gounaud was a 20-year FBI veteran who had worked on elaborate undercover operations. Ball had made a name for herself taking on politically sensitive cases. In 2018, she led the investigation into Maria Butina, the Russian agent convicted of infiltrating the National Rifle Association in an attempt to influence the Trump campaign.
The agents began digging through thousands of records for details of Navatek’s lobbying operation, donation strategy and ties to politicians.
They zeroed in on Kao’s relationship with Collins. In a 60-slide presentation agents prepared for prosecutors, they highlighted contributions that Kao and his wife made to the senator in 2018, right before Collins placed the $8 million in research funding into the federal budget. Kao had also given Navatek money to various relatives to donate to Collins in 2019, sending her around $33,000 through these illegal straw donors, the indictment said. Kao’s wife and father did not reply to requests for comment.
Collins christens a Navatek-designed boat at a University of Maine engineering lab in October 2019.U.S. Sen. Susan Collins via Facebook
The government charged Kao in two separate cases: one for defrauding the loan program and another for his campaign finance crimes. His love of talking like a wheeler-dealer — including over email — was a gift to investigators. In one email, he all but admitted the scholarships to young women were a diversion. “Whatever… just a pack of bitches getting free $,” he wrote.
In the face of overwhelming evidence, Kao pleaded guilty in both cases in the fall of 2022. Navatek by then was under court-ordered new management. Awaiting sentencing, Kao worked as a line cook at a Cheesecake Factory.
He began meeting with the same FBI agents and prosecutors who brought him down. For the agents, he was a rare witness: a contractor with deep ties to elected officials saying he would speak candidly about how Washington works.
Kao faced nearly a decade in prison. “My world and life imploded,” he would later recall in a letter to the Hawaii U.S. District Court. “I was fooled and foolish enough to believe that the power elected officials wielded, and [were] actively willing to sell to anyone wealthy enough to pay, was….‘smart business.’”
Over the next two years, Kao sat with agents for at least three dayslong interviews. He told them that politicians, Collins in particular, had been willing participants in his scheme. “It takes two to tangle,” he told them.
Taxpayers funded Navatek’s entire political operation, Kao said. “Most companies of our size do not have the resources to endlessly hire expensive lobbyists and make political donations,” he told the FBI. Navatek solved this by using money from government contracts to hire lobbyists and make campaign contributions, according to interviews, court testimony and internal company records. Diverting money from contracts for lobbying and political donations can be illegal.
For their final meeting, in September 2024, Kao handed the FBI the 50-page document detailing Navatek’s dealings with more than a dozen members of Congress and their staff. It was not only a confession but a road map, with the email addresses and phone numbers of people Kao thought agents ought to subpoena.
Last year, Kao was sentenced to 87 months in prison. The judge in his case offered no leniency based on his cooperation with the FBI. Loui is battling Kao in court to recover the millions he contends Kao stole from the company.
Both Scott Reed and Amy Abbott remain in Collins’ inner circle. Abbott is the finance director for her 2026 reelection effort, and Reed again chairs the main Collins super PAC. Abbott, who is married to Collins’ campaign manager, referred questions to the senator’s communications staff. Clark told ProPublica that Abbott and other campaign staff were interviewed by the FBI and that the campaign was never a target of the investigation.
Earlier this year, Kao agreed to meet a ProPublica reporter at the Federal Prison Camp in Yankton, South Dakota, where he is incarcerated. But on two occasions when guards summoned Kao over the intercom, he refused to enter the visitation room. Over email, he said he was no longer willing to meet, citing the ongoing litigation. He declined through his lawyer to respond to detailed questions.
By late 2024, Ball and Gounaud, the FBI agents, had come to believe there was enough evidence to warrant a broader investigation into bribery of members of Congress, according to a memo seen by ProPublica.
Before they could embark on their new mission, however, they became casualties of Trump’s retribution campaign.
Ball and Gounaud worked for the FBI’s elite anti-corruption unit known as CR-15, which specialized in investigating misconduct by elected officials. When Trump retook power, his new FBI director, Kash Patel, purged the unit agent by agent.
Ball was targeted for her work on the special counsel investigation of Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election. She was fired in October 2025 in a one-page letter stating she had “weaponized” the Justice Department. She is challenging her firing in a lawsuit. Gounaud was pushed out in early 2026. Both agents declined to comment through their attorney.
Trump also targeted the Justice Department attorneys who worked with CR-15. The team, known as the Public Integrity Section, collapsed spectacularly in February 2025 after staff were ordered to drop a case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Trump ally. The unit’s leadership quit en masse. Trump appointees ordered the remaining prosecutors to halt new corruption cases, just months after Kao made his detailed confession.
Before Ball was fired, however, she managed to take a key step forward.
Based on all the evidence, she persuaded her supervisors to approve a new investigation. It centered on South Carolina, one of the states Navatek eyed for a rapid expansion. The FBI had questions about a steak dinner Kao shared with Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Do You Have Information About Political Dealmaking in Washington?
We’re still reporting on pay-for-play arrangements between powerful companies and elected officials.
When the pop singer Pink took to social media to decry rapper Macklemore’s comments on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians — a slaughter that has taken the lives of more than 20,000 kids — she brought up her decadelong role as a UNICEF ambassador to show that she cares about children.
Now, a new petition signed by more than 160,000 people, including the backing of actor Javier Bardem, is calling for Pink’s removal from her UNICEF USA role. The petition organizers, Swifties Against Genocide, named for fans of the pop singer Taylor Swift, said that Pink’s remarks sidelined concern for Palestinian children and “fueled ongoing conflict and struggles for visibility and empathy.”
“As individuals who care deeply about the welfare of children around the world, we must hold UNICEF Ambassadors to the highest standards of neutrality and compassion,” the organizers wrote. “Palestinian children, like all children affected by genocide, deserve ambassadors who unequivocally extend support and empathy towards their plight.”
The petition is the latest example of the type of public pressure supporters of Palestine are seeking to exert amid a tidal shift of sentiment in the U.S. on Palestine and Israel over the past three years. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has dramatically soured U.S. opinion on Israel, with a majority viewing Israel unfavorably and more Americans taking a sympathetic view of Palestinians.
“UNICEF itself has called Gaza a graveyard for children. Its ambassadors are supposed to speak for those children, not attack the people who do.”
The transformations have played out in the current midterm election cycle, with candidates pushing to sever military ties with Israel winning in primaries across the country. In the past several weeks, the subject has upended mainstream popular culture, with battle lines being drawn over a stadium concert tour by pop icon Ed Sheeran.
The pressure on UNICEF to part ways with Pink is tied up with a strategy among Palestine solidarity activists to extract a price from Israel for its continued occupation and genocide of Palestinians.
For Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a policy fellow with Al-Shabaka U.S., the petition is “a clear attempt to draw a new line in the sand and make the point that choosing to take the moderate lane is unacceptable.”
“These past couple days have proven that being shamelessly pro-Israel, or even refusing to take sides in the face of a genocide, is no longer the safe route,” he said, citing a shift of the “cultural hegemony” in the West.
Though Sheeran himself — who said at his latest concert that he was listening to both sides — is not a target of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel, the cultural backlash to his move to take Macklemore off the tour reinforced the logic of the growing movement, Natasha Lennard recently wrote in The Intercept.
Representatives for Pink, UNICEF, and Change.org did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Other advocates for Palestinian rights reaffirmed the petitioners’ aims.
“Pink should step down. UNICEF itself has called Gaza a graveyard for children. Its ambassadors are supposed to speak for those children, not attack the people who do,” said Raed Jarrar, the advocacy director of Democracy for the Arab World Now. “Whether UNICEF removes her or not, it’s time for her to step down.”
Attacking Pro-Palestine Speech
The controversy involving Pink kicked off during Sheeran’s show at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on September 4.
Macklemore, one of the opening acts, spoke out against Israeli apartheid and the genocide of Palestinians, addressing Jewish people in the crowd to say that criticism of genocide and the Israeli government “is in no way a criticism of you.”
After backlash from pro-Israel groups like the Anti-Defamation League — and perhaps more critically, pressure from billionaire Robert Kraft, the deeply pro-Israel owner of the New England Patriots and Massachusetts’s Gillette Stadium — Sheeran dropped Macklemore from his tour. Then came the backlash to the backlash, with other opening acts on the tour and even Sheeran’s backing band dropping out in solidarity with Macklemore.
Pink, the pop star who rose to fame with a string of hits in the early 2000s, waded into the controversy early on. After attending the September 4 show, Pink reshared a social media post from the group Stop Antisemitism that said Macklemore’s claims of a genocide were “false” and that concertgoers were owed apologies and refunds.
“I don’t need anyone fired, and I don’t need a refund,” she later wrote on Instagram, explaining why she reshared the post. “What I need is to be able to say, as a Jewish mom, ‘That scared me, and it scared people I love’ — without being told our fear is just propaganda, and without being told I’m somehow cool with genocide because I noticed?”
She added that the protest slogan “From river to the sea” and the use of the term “Zionist” have become “a slur.”
Pink said that “nobody should ever celebrate the death of a child.” She mentioned her experience as a UNICEF ambassador visiting children born in war zones. She “grieved every one of them, on both sides of that fence,” she wrote.
Yet Pink’s grief, or any celebrity’s, has done little to change conditions on the ground for Palestinian children. Just on Monday, an 11-year-old boy was shot to death by the Israeli military in one of Gaza’s apparent “safe zones.”
UNICEF, which operates in Gaza, itself reported that Israeli attacks have killed at least 300 children in Gaza since the so-called ceasefire agreement last October. Food insecurity and lack of access to clean water also remain issues due to Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid from entering the Strip.
In her social media post, Pink said she does not speak for Israel but reiterated her stance that “Hamas is a terrorist organization. Palestinians deserve a future that honors their humanity and their aspirations.” She said she was not “going to litigate a complex war in an Instagram caption, and I’m not going to recite anybody’s slogan to earn back a follower.”
Over the weekend, the petition calling out Pink also drew the support from Javier Bardem, an outspoken advocate for Palestine and major funder of the Palestinian film “All That’s Left of You,” who shared the petition on his Instagram profile.
“She can not defend children’s rights,” Bardem said, “while not condemning the genocide in Gaza.”
NEW YORK CITY, New York — President Donald Trump’s unexpectedly cordial meeting with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani drew backlash from some of Trump’s most outspoken supporters, including political activist Laura Loomer.
Trump met with Mamdani at Gracie Mansion on Monday ahead of events surrounding the United Nations General Assembly. Despite months of political attacks between the two, Trump publicly praised Mamdani afterward and said the mayor has the “potential” to be “a great mayor.” Associated Press reported that the meeting focused in part on housing affordability and other New York City issues.
Loomer responded angrily on X, writing that she was “pissed off” and complaining that people she described as “anti-American Islamic jihadists” were being “rewarded.” She did not name Mamdani directly in the post, but Mediaite reported the comments were in response to Trump’s meeting with him.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist and New York’s first Muslim mayor, has sharply criticized Israel’s conduct in Gaza. There is no evidence supporting Loomer’s characterization of him as an “Islamic jihadist.”
Loomer was not alone in objecting. New York radio host Sid Rosenberg also criticized Trump for meeting Mamdani and argued the appearance could hurt Republicans politically.
SACRAMENTO, California — Support for California’s proposed billionaire tax has fallen below 50% as voters prepare to decide Proposition 40 in November, according to a new UC Berkeley Citrin Center-POLITICO poll.
The survey found 45% support the measure, 43% oppose it and 12% remain undecided. That represents a decline from a February survey in which 50% supported Proposition 40 and 28% opposed it. The Sept. 8-14 poll included 2,418 respondents and has a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points.
Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of Californians with assets exceeding $1 billion. State election officials have qualified the measure for the Nov. 3 ballot.
Democrats remain substantially more supportive, while Gov. Gavin Newsom opposes the proposal and has instead advocated a national approach to taxing billionaires. Labor unions, including SEIU-UHW, support Proposition 40, arguing the revenue would help finance health care and other programs.
The campaign is attracting substantial spending. Google co-founder Sergey Brin has contributed more than $100 million to groups opposing the measure.
Polling remains mixed. A separate September Public Policy Institute of California survey found 52% of likely voters supporting Proposition 40 and 46% opposing it after respondents were read the official ballot description.
Accra Reset’s report states countries in the region and global south should take greater control of their health development after USAID debacle
The United States’ withdrawal from key aid programs has put healthcare in Africa and the global south “under growing strain” a new report warns.
The report says the Trump administration’s cuts to programs such as US Agency for International Development (USAID), as well as the Covid-19 pandemic and rising costs of living globally have brought “new urgency” for the need to reform healthcare in the region.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump’s job approval rating has fallen to 32%, the lowest level recorded across his first and second presidencies in Reuters/Ipsos polling, as dissatisfaction over living costs and the economy grows.
The Reuters/Ipsos survey, conducted Sept. 17-20 among 1,277 U.S. adults, found Trump’s overall approval down from 47% when he began his second term. Among Republicans, approval fell to 73%, compared with 86% in January. The poll has a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.
Economic concerns were particularly damaging. Only 17% of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the cost of living. Among Republicans, 44% approved of his performance on that issue while 51% disapproved, marking a significant deterioration within his own party.
The poll also found registered voters preferred Democratic congressional candidates over Republicans, 43% to 35%, ahead of November’s midterm elections. That represents the largest Democratic advantage measured by Reuters/Ipsos this year.
Trump performed better among Republicans on immigration, while his handling of the Iran war and rising fuel costs drew broader dissatisfaction.
Four amendments involve voting rules, while others address marriage, the death penalty and vacancies in the lieutenant governor’s office
DOVER, Del. — Delaware’s next General Assembly will inherit eight proposed amendments to the state Constitution, including four that could change voting rights and election procedures.
Vil Ramunno, a public policy researcher and Delaware LIVE contributing journalist, outlined the proposals during an appearance on “A Better Discussion,” hosted by former Delaware Attorney General Jane Brady for A Better Delaware.
The amendments already received the required approval from two-thirds of the members elected to each chamber of the 153rd General Assembly. However, none is part of the Constitution yet.
Under Delaware’s amendment process, the same proposed changes must receive two-thirds support in the House and Senate again after a general election. Unlike most states, Delaware does not routinely place individual constitutional amendments before voters for ratification. The governor also has no power to sign or veto them.
That means the lawmakers elected in November will decide whether the eight proposals become part of Delaware’s foundational legal document.
Four voting amendments
Ramunno said four of the pending amendments involve elections or voting rights:
• Senate Substitute 1 for Senate Bill 2 would authorize 10 days of early, in-person voting before general, primary and certain special elections.
• Senate Substitute 1 for Senate Bill 3 would create a constitutional right to vote by absentee ballot without providing an excuse. Voters generally would still have to request a ballot for each election cycle unless they qualify for permanent absentee status.
• House Bill 180 would generally restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies after they are released from incarceration. It would prohibit making restoration contingent upon restitution or another monetary payment and remove obsolete residency and literacy provisions.
• House Bill 430 would specify that only natural persons may vote in Delaware elections, preventing corporations and other artificial entities from being granted voting rights.
Ramunno said her initial impression was that the four voting measures weren’t a major concern, though she offered a clarification after the interview.
Brady disagreed with that initial assessment, raising concerns about the details lawmakers could later establish through statute. She particularly questioned the no-excuse absentee proposal.
Ramunno said she wanted to clarify her position on the felon voting rights amendment: on reflection, she agreed with Brady’s concern that restitution should be addressed before voting rights are restored, since the amendment as written would prevent the state from ever requiring that.
Their exchange demonstrated why the second round of legislative consideration could produce significant debate, even though each proposal secured the supermajority needed to clear its first constitutional hurdle.
Marriage, death penalty and state offices
The four remaining amendments would address other parts of the Constitution:
• Senate Substitute 2 for Senate Bill 100 would establish marriage as a fundamental right that cannot be denied based on gender or another characteristic protected by the Constitution. It also contains language protecting religious freedom.
• House Substitute 1 for House Bill 35 would constitutionally prohibit the death penalty. Delaware currently has no enforceable death penalty statute, but the amendment would prevent a future General Assembly from restoring capital punishment without another constitutional change.
• Senate Bill 264 would establish a special-election process for filling most vacancies in the lieutenant governor’s office.
• House Substitute 1 for House Bill 320 would make a series of technical corrections to the Constitution, including removing duplicated words, correcting punctuation and clarifying several provisions.
Brady cautioned against treating the Constitution like ordinary legislation, saying it should remain a foundational document that is changed carefully and infrequently.
Making legislation easier to follow: CivicDelaware.com
Ramunno’s analysis is informed by nearly a decade in public policy. She previously served as a senior editor at the Caesar Rodney Institute, where she worked to make policy reports clear and accessible to general readers.
She now covers government and politics for Delaware LIVE and also works as a public policy researcher.
Ramunno also created Civic Delaware, an informational platform designed to help residents follow bills moving through Legislative Hall. Its primary tool, Dover Dash, tracks legislation from introduction through committee hearings, floor consideration and final action.
She said she developed the platform after watching complex bills move from introduction to passage in a matter of days during the final weeks of a legislative session.
Dover Dash uses automated updates from the General Assembly’s website and organizes bills according to the people most likely to be affected. Users can select profiles such as homeowner, parent, young professional, retiree, senior or veteran.
Instead of displaying only bill numbers, the platform gives proposals descriptive names, plain-language summaries, their official legislative synopses and current status. Users can also browse bills by subjects such as taxes, energy, alcohol and cannabis, and the state Constitution.
“You want to only know the ones that affect you, and it helps you to be more engaged,” Ramunno said. “And it makes it a little personal, too.”
She said Civic Delaware will archive legislation from the outgoing General Assembly when the new session begins in January. The eight proposed constitutional amendments will remain active because they must be considered again by the incoming lawmakers.
Ramunno said the goal is to help residents learn about proposals before they become law, ask informed questions and engage directly with their elected representatives.
TO GO: Track legislation with Civic Delaware
• What: Civic Delaware’s Dover Dash tracks legislation moving through the Delaware General Assembly.
• How it works: Choose a profile, homeowner, parent, young professional, retiree, senior or veteran, to surface bills that affect you, or browse by subject instead.
• What you’ll find: Plain-English summaries, official legislative synopses and real-time status for every bill in the pipeline.
• Why it matters: Bills can move from introduction to passage in days, especially late in a session. Dover Dash gives residents time to catch a proposal and ask their legislator about it before the vote.
New research connects two of the Wilmington museum’s most important collections and offers fresh insight into the development of American illustration
WILMINGTON — A new Delaware Art Museum exhibition is challenging the long-held view that two of the institution’s most important collections tell separate stories.
“Pyle and the Pre-Raphaelites,” which opened Sept. 5, brings together works by Wilmington illustrator Howard Pyle and British Pre-Raphaelite artists whose detailed, romantic style helped influence his approach to visual storytelling.
The exhibition’s larger significance lies in new research showing that Pyle and Wilmington textile manufacturer and art collector Samuel Bancroft were more closely connected than historians previously understood.
Bancroft assembled what became one of the museum’s signature collections of British Pre-Raphaelite art. Pyle’s work formed the foundation of another.
Although the two men were related by marriage, questions remained about whether Pyle influenced Bancroft’s collecting, whether Bancroft introduced Pyle to the British artists or whether their interests developed independently.
The museum’s research indicates that Pyle was already studying and drawing inspiration from the Pre-Raphaelites before Bancroft began acquiring their work in 1890.
Two collections become one story
The Pre-Raphaelite movement began in England during the 19th century. Its artists rejected some conventional academic approaches to painting in favor of vivid colors, close attention to detail, symbolism and stories drawn from literature, medieval history and Arthurian legend.
Those qualities are also visible in many of Pyle’s best-known illustrations.
The exhibition places Pyle’s medieval and Early Renaissance scenes beside works by Pre-Raphaelite artists and their followers, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris.
Among the works displayed are Pyle’s illustrations for stories about the Knights of the Round Table and Rossetti’s “Water Willow,” Burne-Jones’ “Cupid’s Hunting Fields” and a Rossetti study depicting Lancelot and the Lady of Shalott.
The side-by-side presentation allows visitors to compare the artists’ compositions, subjects and storytelling techniques instead of simply being told that a connection existed.
A Delaware link to American illustration
The exhibit matters locally because Howard Pyle’s legacy is closely tied to Wilmington and the Brandywine Valley. His illustrations appeared in prominent books and magazines, and his teaching influenced a generation of artists who helped establish American illustration as a distinct art form.
The Delaware Art Museum itself traces its origins to the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, founded in 1912 to preserve Pyle’s work following his death.
By demonstrating that Pyle encountered Pre-Raphaelite ideas early in his career, the exhibition adds a new chapter to the story of how American illustration developed. It suggests that the dramatic, story-driven images associated with Pyle and his students had meaningful roots in an earlier British art movement.
The result is more than a comparison of artistic styles. It is an examination of how artistic ideas crossed the Atlantic, took hold in Wilmington and helped shape images seen by American readers across the country.
The exhibition also gives the museum an opportunity to connect two collections central to its identity: its founding collection of Pyle’s work and the Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft collection of British Pre-Raphaelite art.
“Pyle and the Pre-Raphaelites” was curated by Katherine Feldkamp, the museum’s curatorial associate. It will remain on view in Galleries 11 and 12 through Jan. 24, 2027.
Feldkamp will lead a gallery talk from noon to 1 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25, examining how Pyle incorporated Pre-Raphaelite art into his teaching and how his students also found inspiration in the movement. The program is free for museum members and included with general admission for other visitors.
To Go Box
What: “Pyle and the Pre-Raphaelites”
Where: Delaware Art Museum, Galleries 11 and 12, 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington
When: On view through Jan. 24, 2027
Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. The museum remains open until 8 p.m. Thursdays from April through December.
Admission: $18 for adults, $16 for seniors, $7 for students with identification and $6 for youth ages 7 to 18. Admission is free for members and children 6 and younger. General admission is free from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursdays through December.
Special program: Curator Katherine Feldkamp will lead a gallery talk from noon to 1 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25.
Parking: Free on-site parking is available behind the museum.
Delaware State Police are asking for the public’s help locating a Wilmington man, Jarvis Sturgis wanted in connection with a strong-arm robbery that left one person injured.
Police say Jarvis Sturgis is wanted in connection with an attack and robbery at a bus stop on New Castle Avenue
NEW CASTLE, Del. — Delaware State Police are asking for the public’s help locating a Wilmington man wanted in connection with a strong-arm robbery that left one person injured.
Police identified the suspect as Jarvis Sturgis. Detectives obtained a warrant for his arrest following an investigation into the Sept. 15 robbery.
Troopers responded at approximately 9:20 p.m. to a bus stop in the 3000 block of New Castle Avenue.
According to police, the victim was waiting for a bus when a man approached and demanded the victim’s personal property. The man then allegedly struck the victim and forcibly took the property before fleeing.
The victim was taken to a local hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening.
The Delaware State Police Criminal Investigations Unit identified Sturgis as the suspect through its investigative efforts, police said. He is expected to be charged with second-degree robbery, a felony, if taken into custody.
Sturgis has not been convicted of the charge and is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
The investigation remains active. Police did not provide a description of Sturgis or information about where he might be located.
To Go Box
What: Delaware State Police are seeking information about the location of Jarvis Sturgis, who is wanted in connection with a New Castle robbery.
Contact: Detective D. Patterson at 302-365-8471.
Anonymous tips: Contact Delaware Crime Stoppers at 1-800-847-3333 or submit information through delawarecrimestoppers.org.
Online: Information may also be sent through a private message to the Delaware State Police Facebook page.
Victim assistance: The Delaware State Police Victim Services Unit and Delaware Victim Center provide support 24 hours a day at 1-800-VICTIM-1, or 1-800-842-8461.
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Jolly says he will not debate Republican Byron Donalds before Florida’s Nov. 3 election after the campaigns failed to agree on a shared debate.
Jolly announced the decision Sunday, accusing Donalds of “repeated lies and bad faith” and arguing that debates under those circumstances would increase division rather than provide voters with a constructive discussion. He said his campaign previously accepted invitations from Tampa Bay Tiger Bay and CBS Miami.
Donalds separately accepted three proposed debates involving Telemundo and NBC 6, Spectrum News and News4Jax. Because the candidates accepted different events, none produced an agreement for both candidates to appear. Earlier this month, the campaigns were publicly blaming each other for the scheduling impasse.
Donalds criticized Jolly’s decision Sunday, pointing to the Democrat’s earlier statements that he was willing to debate repeatedly. Jolly responded by noting Donalds declined requests to debate several Republican primary opponents before winning the GOP nomination in August.
Jolly, a former Republican congressman who later became a Democrat, is seeking to succeed term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis. Donalds, currently a Republican congressman representing Southwest Florida, won his party’s August primary. If no agreement is reached, the Tampa Bay Times reports this would be Florida’s first gubernatorial election without a debate since 1974.
First State Educate’s School Board Roundup, published monthly, brings together discussions from Delaware’s 16 traditional public school districts… and it’s free!
First State Educate’s August School Board Roundup brings local meetings together to show the issues taking shape across Delaware.
DOVER, Del. — Decisions about student progress, district budgets, school buildings, and student support appeared across Delaware school board meetings in August. The details differed by district, but the discussions raised a shared question: How will boards know whether their plans are meeting students’ needs?
First State Educate’s August School Board Roundup brings together discussions from Delaware’s 16 traditional public school districts. It gives residents a way to follow their own board while seeing how issues in one district connect to those facing others.
FSE publishes the School Board Roundup monthly. Readers can find the latest edition in the Knowledge Hub.
The August meetings raised questions about measuring student progress, explaining financial choices, addressing building needs, and reporting back to the public. Some boards made decisions; others reviewed plans that will return for further discussion.
Turning priorities into measurable goals
Some boards adopted measurable academic goals, while others outlined how they plan to review progress during the school year. Their discussions covered reading, mathematics, attendance, and school climate.
Setting a long-term target is one step. Boards also need information during the year to see whether students are progressing toward it. The superintendent and district staff develop and carry out strategies; boards establish the outcomes they expect and monitor progress.
The August discussions show why progress and continuing gaps belong in the same conversation. An improvement in one measure may be encouraging while results in another grade or subject still call for attention. Families and community members need both to understand the full picture.
Asking what spending should accomplish
School boards discussed how targeted funding can respond to student needs. Some considered plans or greater flexibility for resources supporting multilingual learners, students from low-income households, mental health services, and other needs.
Approving a spending plan does not yet show what students gained from it. Future reports can help residents understand which students the spending is meant to help, what result the district expects, and how progress will be measured.
Those questions help boards connect proposed investments to district goals while leaving the development and implementation of strategies to district leaders and staff.
Making district finances easier to understand
Financial discussions varied across districts in August. Some reported enough cash to cover near-term obligations. Others discussed projected deficits, use of reserves, delayed revenue, or the possibility of a future referendum.
A district may have enough money to pay immediate bills while budgeting to spend more over the year than it expects to receive. Several boards asked for clearer reports to help them and the public understand the difference between available cash and longer-term financial pressures.
Clear information matters when a district considers reducing spending or asking residents for additional revenue. People need to understand what is driving the need, how current funds are being used, and what choices the board is weighing.
Following building needs and state funding requests
Facilities were a recurring subject at August meetings. Boards discussed overcrowding, aging buildings, renovations, new construction, and how to finance proposed work.
Several districts are resubmitting projects that have not received state funding. Board members also raised questions about how the state prioritizes requests and how long documented building needs may wait.
Submitting a construction request does not mean a project or referendum has been approved. Knowing where a proposal stands helps residents understand what their district is seeking, what need it would address, and what decisions may come next.
Connecting student supports with learning
Attendance, behavior, mental health, special education, and academic support appeared in discussions across multiple districts.
Some districts described efforts to make services more consistent across schools. Others discussed wellness centers, family outreach, or ways to identify why students are missing class. Together, the discussions show how access to support can affect a student’s ability to participate in learning.
The meetings describe services being developed or put into place; they do not yet establish their effects. As districts continue this work, boards can ask whether services reach the intended students, whether they are delivered consistently, and whether attendance, engagement, or other outcomes improve.
Watching safety and technology policies take shape
School safety remained on board agendas in August. Discussions covered equipment and building procedures, staff training, emergency planning, student discipline, and communication with families.
Districts also addressed personal electronic devices, artificial intelligence, and the role of technology in classrooms. Some adopted policies; others began reviewing proposals or changing how existing rules will be carried out.
Boards discussed device distractions, expectations for AI use, and how technology supports instruction. Safety discussions likewise extended beyond equipment to training, procedures, and communication. Future reports can show how these decisions were implemented and whether they served their intended purposes.
Staffing and student pathways
Districts entered the school year with different staffing needs. Some reported relatively few general vacancies but continued to have difficulty filling specialized positions, including roles in special education and student services. Others discussed how vacancies and compensation decisions affect their budgets.
Boards also heard about opportunities intended to connect students with college and careers, including internships and career and technical education. These discussions raise questions about access: which students can participate, what they learn or earn, and how programs connect to opportunities after graduation.
Making board decisions visible to the public
Several boards discussed how residents can better understand decisions before and after they are made. Topics included clearer financial reports, publication of board priorities and calendars, public access to committee meetings, and opportunities for community input.
A proposed policy, a state funding request, and an approved district plan are different steps. Explaining what has happened—and what remains undecided—helps residents know when and how they can participate.
What is happening in your district?
The statewide themes are shared, but the decisions remain local. One board may be reviewing student goals while another is considering a building request, changing a technology policy, or seeking a clearer financial report.
By bringing the meetings together, the August Roundup helps residents see both their district’s decisions and the questions other Delaware boards are facing. Readers can use that context to follow what happens at the next public meeting.
TO GO BOX: Follow Your School Board’s Decisions
The August School Board Roundup covers discussions across Delaware’s 16 traditional public school districts. Create a free Knowledge Hub account to find the report and learn:
What your district’s board discussed as the school year began
Which student goals, policies, and spending plans are moving forward
What financial and building needs could affect your community
Which plans still need measures or follow-up reports
Can Gulf Arab countries help break the deadlock over Trump’s Gaza peace plan?Expert commentLToremark
Gulf Arab states increasingly view Israel as the main obstacle to progress on the peace plan – and may hope for an opening after Israel’s October elections.
Almost a year after US President Donald Trump unveiled his 20-point peace plan for Gaza, which was adopted by both Israel and Hamas and paved the way for the release of all Israeli hostages, the peace process appears to have hit a wall.
The two sides remain fundamentally divided over the sequencing of demilitarization and Israeli withdrawal. So far, Hamas has refused to give up its heavy weapons unless Israel halts all military operations and withdraws its forces from the parts of Gaza it currently controls – approximately 60 per cent of the strip – while Israel says it will not withdraw until Hamas disarms.
Although President Trump continues to argue that the situation in Gaza is under control, his envoy Jared Kushner, who recently visited Israel, and the director-general of his Board of Peace, Nikolay Mladenov, have so far been unable to launch the second phase of the process.
In September, Kushner acknowledged that the task of demilitarizing Gaza was proving far more difficult than initially expected: ‘We are starting to understand the scope of the militarization of Gaza. It is beyond your comprehension’. In August, he had told Fox News that he expected Hamas to begin handing over its weapons in ‘as few as 30 days’.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains critical according to an August report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) – and there is little hope for reconstruction given the current stalemate. According to the OCHA report, 58 per cent of Gaza’s population is facing ‘severe deficiencies in shelter conditions or access to essential services and non-food items’, while a severely strained health system and lack of medical supplies could put lifesaving services at risk.
Arab Gulf countries like UAE (which is also a member of the Board of Peace) are key providers of humanitarian aid to Gaza. In fact, UAE aid accounts for 46 per cent of global assistance. But what is their position on the current stalemate in Gaza and could they help find a way to break the deadlock?
In August, eight Arab and Islamic countries – Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey and Qatar – condemned Israel’s unwillingness to proceed with the implementation of Trump’s plan for Gaza, saying its stance threatens international efforts to end the war.
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of these countries denounced Israel’s stated opposition to a roadmap for completing Trump’s broader Gaza plan, which was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2803. The group also called for Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups to disarm; an Israeli military withdrawal; the deployment of an international stabilization force; the transfer of administrative authority to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza; and the reconstruction of Gaza.
In May, it was reported that the UAE had contributed $100 million for training of new Gaza police force – an important feature that will help provide security in post-war Gaza. However, Israeli officials reportedly barred the already vetted new recruits from leaving the strip for training in Cairo, and for now it is unclear when permission to leave and return to Gaza will be granted – if at all.
Although the UAE and other Arab members of the Board of Peace did not comment on this report, it is clear that their frustration with the Israeli government over Gaza and the West Bank is mounting. In August, the inaugural ‘Emirates loves Palestine’ event was held in Dubai, celebrating the connection between the UAE and the Palestinian people, while a delegation from a UAE future leaders programme were sent to Egypt to learn about – and take part in – UAE efforts to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Indeed, the UAE is particularly important in this context as it is one of the signatories of the Abraham Accords and one of Israel’s closest partners in the Gulf and the Arab world. But other Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia, have also sharpened their condemnation of recent radical statements by Israeli officials on the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, as well as increasing settler violence in the West Bank. Trump, meanwhile, has insisted that a controversial nuclear deal signed with Saudi Arabia this summer hinges on Saudi normalization with Israel. But despite US pressure, it seems the Saudis will not divert significantly from their demand to establish a clear path for Palestinian statehood.
Due to the Iran war and its fallout, Gulf Arab states are more preoccupied with their own domestic security and economic challenges than at any point in recent memory. And with only weeks to go until Israel’s pivotal October elections, they also retain a measure of hope that a change of government could open the way to more constructive engagement.
Leading opposition candidates in Israel have been critical of Netanyahu’s policies on both Gaza and the West Bank. Many of them believe that Israel needs to involve the Arab states, and in particular Saudi Arabia, in future dealings with the Palestinians. A new Israeli government could also prove significantly tougher on settler violence in the West Bank and more flexible on alternative Palestinian governance in Gaza to unseat Hamas.
However, if the current governing coalition remains in power, more drastic and radical steps might follow. This could include construction in the E1 strategic perimeter, which would drive a wedge through the West Bank and undermine prospects of a future Palestinian state, as well as a possible escalation in Gaza.
For now, Gulf states are focusing on two key diplomatic instruments in their response to the ongoing stalemate in Gaza. One is humanitarian assistance, the other is pointed condemnations of Israel, which is increasingly perceived in Arab capitals as the primary obstacle to the implementation of Trump’s peace plan.
At present, it seems unlikely that Gulf states will change tactics. Even less likely that they will withdraw support for Trump’s peace plan and the Board of Peace, or press for urgent, extraordinary measures, such as sanctions on Israel or an intervention by Trump himself. But this calculus may well be revised in the aftermath of the Israeli elections, depending on the outcome. It will also remain contingent on the broader strategic environment in the Gulf, not least the risk of renewed hostilities.
Until something breaks the stalemate, the population of Gaza will continue to be caught between Hamas and the Israeli government – both waiting for the other to make the first move.
CARSON CITY, Nevada — Gov. Joe Lombardo’s office has declined, for now, to meet with certified firearms instructors who say Nevada’s regulatory system for armed security guards has serious public-safety and oversight problems.
The Nevada Association of Certified Firearms Instructors says it has sought a meeting with Lombardo since March. Association President Andrew Cowie has raised concerns about the Private Investigators Licensing Board, whose members are appointed by the governor. Lombardo’s office said it would review the material but would not schedule a personal meeting in the short term.
Former PILB member Rick Brown resigned in June, saying the board was not adequately addressing alleged violations involving firearms instructor Stephanie Costello. The board later fined Costello $5,000 and temporarily suspended her instructor certification after determining she violated training regulations.
Separate concerns emerged this summer when Nevada lawmakers learned that security guards had been carrying rifles and shotguns even though state law contains no provision authorizing the practice. Lawmakers subsequently questioned the board’s oversight and training requirements.
Nevada’s Department of Business and Industry has publicly supported an independent review of PILB operations, saying questions involving public safety and statutory authority should be fully examined.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States has deported more than 25,000 migrants to countries other than their own since President Donald Trump returned to office, according to a multinational investigation examining the administration’s expanding third-country deportation program.
Forbidden Stories reported that the administration has reached agreements with 35 countries, including nations in Africa, Latin America and the Pacific, to accept migrants who often have no previous connection to those destinations. The State Department’s Office of Remigration, created in 2025, has played a central role in negotiating the arrangements.
Internal records reviewed by investigators show at least $410 million was planned for governments and humanitarian organizations connected to the program. About $81 million was designated for participating governments, while more than $178 million was directed toward the International Organization for Migration and $123 million toward UNHCR.
The findings come days after a federal appeals court rejected a Trump administration policy allowing rapid third-country deportations without giving migrants a meaningful opportunity to raise concerns about persecution or torture. Reuters reported that more than 25,000 migrants have been affected, with removals involving countries including Mexico, Uganda, Liberia and Equatorial Guinea.
The administration argues third-country removals help execute valid deportation orders when migrants cannot be returned to their home countries.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration is preparing sanctions against the International Criminal Court that could sharply restrict the Hague-based tribunal’s access to the U.S. financial system and American companies.
The proposed measures would prohibit most U.S. citizens and businesses from providing funds, goods or services to the ICC without a Treasury Department license, according to officials familiar with the plans. The Wall Street Journal reported that the restrictions would take effect after a six- to seven-month grace period and could be finalized around this week’s United Nations General Assembly.
Washington has already sanctioned more than a dozen ICC judges and prosecutors, including court President Tomoko Akane. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has argued that the court improperly asserts jurisdiction over officials from countries that never joined it, including the United States and Israel.
The dispute intensified after the ICC issued 2024 arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Israel rejects the allegations and the court’s jurisdiction.
Organization-wide sanctions could affect the ICC’s banking, information technology, insurance, investigations and employee payments. European governments have discussed measures intended to shield companies from U.S. restrictions.
Chatham House fellow gives evidence at UK parliament committee on global AI governance and risksNews releasethilton.drupal
Senior Research Fellow Isabella Wilkinson spoke to the House of Lords International Relations and Defence Committee at a time when many are calling for greater regulation of AI in the light of emerging risks.
Isabella Wilkinson, Senior Research Fellow with Chatham House’s Digital Society Programme, gave evidence on the global governance of AI to the UK House of Lords International Relations and Defence Committee on 16 September.
Wilkinson outlined the main types of risk from AI: malicious risks, loss-of-control risks and systemic risks. Addressing the governance challenge posed by these risks, she said:
‘We’re facing a governance challenge because all of these risks are interlinked, so we have to be very strategic about how we design governance at multiple different levels. This is a multilateral challenge.’
Wilkinson said that interlinked governance challenges, including a dearth of trusted information about AI and ‘the lack of a crisis toolbox’ to deploy in the event of a crisis, had led to ‘quite a severe state of gridlock in multilateral AI governance.’
The committee was meeting in a week in which debates over the risks associated with AI featured prominently in public debate, following calls by tech leaders to slow the pace of the technology’s development.
‘We are in a moment of intense crisis and turbulence in multilateral AI governance. But as we’ve learned [from other areas of governance] … these conditions create a window of opportunity for dealing with the gridlock,’ said Wilkinson.
The Supreme Court continues to make consequential rulings in the shadows. I analyzed tens of thousands of case files from the court’s online archives, parsing through filings to separate simple requests for deadline extensions from challenges to long-established constitutional rights. I discovered that in the term that ended in 2025, the justices issued more substantive decisions on their emergency docket than in cases argued in open court. Experts told me this was likely the first time this has happened in the court’s modern history.
Representatives from the Supreme Court did not respond to my questions.
Since I reported that story in July, more major rulings have been made on the emergency docket, often called the “shadow docket,” where justices rarely hear arguments and often issue unsigned orders that don’t explain how they arrived at their decisions or even how they voted.
These decisions are continuing to come down even after the court began its summer recess. For example:
On Aug. 31, the court allowed construction to continue on a ballroom at the White House. Requests like this one from the president are a big reason why the number of cases being handled on the court’s shadow docket has been so high.
On Sept. 10, a decision blocked Missouri from using a redrawn congressional map crafted by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature. The legislature had redrawn the maps at President Donald Trump’s request — part of a string of middecade redistricting efforts that could determine control of Congress. Like most shadow docket decisions, no opinion was issued and there is no record of how the justices voted.
Though experts told me rulings on the shadow docket have generally enabled Trump, he has not won them all. The USPS ruling, for one, has not pleased the president. Last week, in a post on Truth Social, the social media website he owns, Trump criticized the justices he nominated, writing that they “are not the people I interviewed to serve.”
“It is a Court that will go down as having rendered some of the most destructive, hurtful, and damaging decisions in our Country’s history,” Trump wrote.
Every decision the court has made since July has been on its shadow docket. That will remain the case until the court starts its new term on Oct. 5.
Watch our explainer to learn more about what I uncovered and how the shadow docket works.
AUSTIN, Texas — An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and seriously wounded a 28-year-old Venezuelan man Sunday during an immigration enforcement operation, prompting demands from Austin officials for an independent investigation.
Wilber Rafael Garces Perez was shot in the torso following what Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis described as a brief foot pursuit. He was taken to a hospital in serious but stable condition before being transferred to federal custody. ICE says Garces Perez has a final removal order, while an attorney representing his family disputes parts of the government’s account and says he entered the United States legally.
Accounts of the encounter remain disputed. Austin City Council Member Mike Siegel said the ICE agent rammed Garces Perez’s Toyota Corolla before opening fire. Photographs from the scene showed bullet damage to the vehicle, but federal authorities have not publicly released a detailed account establishing exactly what preceded the shooting.
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson and Democratic Rep. Greg Casar called for Austin police and the Texas Rangers to participate in the investigation. Homeland Security Investigations is leading the federal inquiry with FBI assistance.
The shooting comes amid increased ICE activity nationwide, with the agency recording nearly 51,000 arrests in August.
JACKSON, Wisconsin — A Texas man hired by a political consulting firm conducting canvassing work supporting Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany faces multiple felony charges after authorities say he struck a bicyclist while intoxicated and fled from police.
Duane Maiden, 32, was working for Phoenix-based Echo Canyon Consulting, which received $2.5 million from Restoration of America PAC for canvassing operations supporting Tiffany, according to reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The PAC is heavily funded by Wisconsin billionaire Richard Uihlein.
Authorities say the Sept. 3 crash occurred in Washington County after Maiden’s vehicle ran a stop sign and struck a bicyclist, leaving the victim with fractures to his leg, pelvis and spine. A coworker told investigators Maiden had purchased vodka earlier and had been drinking while the two were between canvassing assignments.
The coworker asked to leave the vehicle after the collision and called 911 and his supervisor. Deputies later spotted Maiden’s car and pursued him into neighboring Ozaukee County, where he was arrested. Maiden reportedly told investigators he had been drinking while waiting between assignments but denied realizing he struck the bicyclist.
Maiden faces felony charges including hit-and-run causing great bodily harm, intoxicated use of a vehicle and fleeing an officer. Tiffany’s campaign denied having any connection to Maiden.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana — Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy said Sunday that Donald Trump Jr. should provide proof that he repaid Russian businessman Umar Kremlev after reports that Kremlev covered hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses tied to Trump Jr.’s wedding celebrations in the Bahamas.
Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, Cassidy said repayment would matter but added that accepting the gift in the first place created serious appearance concerns because Trump Jr. is the president’s son. “Anytime someone gives a $250,000 gift and they have strong ties to the Kremlin, that’s wrong,” Cassidy said. He added that it “would be nice to have that kind of verified.”
ProPublica reported that Kremlev, president of the International Boxing Association, paid for major wedding-related expenses, including use of a private island and other festivities. The outlet described Kremlev as having close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and noted the boxing association’s past financial ties to Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled energy company.
President Donald Trump said Friday that his son had told him he would repay Kremlev. Reuters separately reported that a source familiar with the matter confirmed plans for reimbursement. Public documentation proving that the repayment has actually occurred has not been released.
The issue has also drawn congressional scrutiny. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, opened an investigation into Trump Jr.’s relationship with Kremlev and requested financial records related to the wedding arrangements.
Cassidy’s comments are notable because criticism has come from within Trump’s own party as well as from Democrats. His focus Sunday was narrower: whether the reported reimbursement can be independently verified and whether accepting such a large gift from a Kremlin-linked figure was appropriate given Trump Jr.’s proximity to presidential power.
Pierre, South Dakota — South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson, a Republican, has endorsed Democrat Terrence Davis to succeed her, an unusual cross-party move from the state’s top elections official.
Johnson announced Saturday that she was backing Davis over Republican nominee Heather Baxter, saying her experience running the office changed her views about what the job requires. “I understand that this decision will disappoint some people in my party and anger others,” she wrote.
Johnson first won office in 2022 with support from activists who questioned voting machines and pushed for hand-counting ballots after Donald Trump’s false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Once in office, however, Johnson oversaw statewide post-election audits and came to publicly support “secure, tested ballot tabulators.”
That shift contributed to her losing the Republican nomination in June to Baxter, who has advocated expanded hand-counting and other election-integrity measures. Johnson did not name Baxter in her endorsement statement but said South Dakota needs a secretary of state who will “strengthen confidence through performance rather than provocation.”
Davis, a former state trooper, supports policies including automatic voter registration at age 18. Baxter has emphasized voter identification, paper ballots and proof-of-citizenship requirements, although South Dakota already requires several of those safeguards. Libertarian Tamara Lesnar is also running.
Absentee voting began Sept. 18, and South Dakota’s general election is Nov. 3. The voter registration deadline is Oct. 19.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump said Sunday that his planned 250-foot triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery will also serve as a military facility capable of storing drones, sniper ammunition and other equipment.
Trump said on Truth Social that the change came at the “strong request” of the U.S. military and was necessary for national security. He did not identify which military officials or branches made the request, and no formal Pentagon documentation supporting the claim had been released publicly as of Sunday morning.
The arch was originally presented as a monumental gateway and visitor attraction near the Arlington Memorial Bridge, with galleries and an observation area. Trump now says the structure would also include space for drones and sniper teams, significantly expanding its stated purpose.
The project was already controversial before the military proposal. The Federal Aviation Administration determined Friday that the 250-foot structure would not pose a hazard to aircraft near Reagan National Airport if it includes an “eternal flame” and additional lighting to make it visible to pilots.
The National Park Service has also acknowledged that the arch could have “adverse effects” on nearby historic properties, including the visual alignment between the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington Memorial Bridge and Arlington National Cemetery.
The project has not yet received final approval. Trump administration officials have said they expect to submit the final design to the National Capital Planning Commission in November, while a federal judge has required the government to provide advance notice before beginning most work at the site.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump returned to the White House Saturday evening, cutting his weekend stay at Camp David short by one day as the State Department warned Americans about rapidly escalating security risks in the Middle East.
Trump landed near the White House shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday. The administration did not publicly explain why his schedule changed, and there is no confirmed evidence that the early return was directly connected to the deteriorating security situation.
The State Department has advised Americans in the Middle East to remain highly vigilant and prepare for flight cancellations, airspace closures and other travel disruptions. Americans outside the region have also been urged to reconsider travel through the Middle East because of the possibility of further escalation.
The warnings followed another escalation involving Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement. Saudi Arabia said Saturday that it intercepted a ballistic missile aimed at Riyadh, the first such attack on the capital since renewed fighting intensified. No casualties were reported from the missile strike.
The Houthis separately claimed they launched ballistic and cruise missiles and drones at targets including Saudi oil facilities in Yanbu. Saudi officials confirmed the attempted attack on Riyadh, but several of the Houthis’ additional claims had not been independently verified.
Regional tensions have increased in recent days as Houthi attacks threaten Saudi infrastructure and major shipping routes. Saudi Arabia has also sought additional air-defense support from allies as its interceptor supplies have come under strain.
Amarillo, Texas — A federal judge has paused a lawsuit by the Republican Party of Texas seeking to restrict participation in GOP primaries to registered party members, leaving the state’s current primary system unchanged for now.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk said Friday that the case should wait because the Texas Legislature may address the issue during its 2027 session. “Prominent Texas politicians support similar legislative action,” he wrote, adding that lawmakers could amend the law currently being challenged.
The Texas Republican Party sued last year, arguing that the state’s primary system violates its First Amendment right of association by allowing voters who may oppose the party’s candidates or principles to help choose Republican nominees. Under current Texas law, voters do not formally register by party before an election, although participating in a party primary creates a temporary affiliation for that election cycle.
Republican leaders have pushed for closed primaries for years. The issue gained additional attention after former House Speaker Dade Phelan and Rep. Gary VanDeaver narrowly survived 2024 primary challenges, with some Republicans alleging that Democratic-leaning and independent voters helped them win. Those claims remain disputed.
Gov. Greg Abbott has publicly supported changing the law so that “only Republicans vote in Republican primaries.” But Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden has said he intends to defend the state’s existing system in court.
Kacsmaryk did not rule on whether the GOP’s constitutional argument is valid. Instead, he put the case on hold until after the Legislature completes its next regular session. The state’s next primary election is scheduled for 2028.
Los Angeles, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a 13-bill election package Saturday that expands criminal penalties, cybersecurity protections and notification requirements ahead of California’s November elections.
Among the most significant provisions, AB 282 makes it a felony to seize ballots, election records or certified voting technology before results are certified, including when a supervisor directs someone else to do so. SB 259 similarly creates felony penalties for supervisors who order interference with the delivery or return of mail ballots.
Another measure, AB 1664, requires local election officials to notify the California secretary of state and attorney general within one day of learning about a warrant, subpoena or law-enforcement investigation involving election records or voting technology. AB 2281 directs the state to assess whether it needs additional cybersecurity resources to replace federal support.
The package also extends restrictions on deceptive AI-generated election content, requires disclaimers for certain paid online political content and expands language-access requirements for voters. Other bills modify vote-by-mail procedures and polling-place protections.
Newsom framed the legislation as protection against possible federal interference, specifically citing President Donald Trump. That characterization reflects the governor’s stated rationale; the laws themselves apply more broadly to unauthorized interference by federal officials or others.
The measures build on SB 73, signed earlier this year, which restricts unauthorized law-enforcement access to voter rolls, election technology and voting areas without a court order or an investigation tied to state election law.
The legislation comes days after the U.S. Supreme Court left in place an injunction blocking new federal mail-ballot requirements from taking effect before the midterms.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump said Saturday that he will create a new “AI Force” and appoint an artificial intelligence czar, while reiterating his opposition to regulations that he says could slow the industry’s growth.
Trump announced the plan on social media but offered few details about how the new organization would operate, what authority it would have or when it would be established. He said a new AI czar would be named soon and wrote that “only High I.Q. individuals need apply.”
The announcement comes days after Trump dismissed warnings about potentially dangerous artificial intelligence systems as a “hoax” and argued that the industry should not be slowed by new government restrictions. He has said existing criminal and civil laws should generally be sufficient to address harmful uses of AI.
Trump predicted that artificial intelligence could eventually account for as much as 25% of U.S. gross domestic product and compared its potential economic impact to the Industrial Revolution. He also framed AI development as a strategic competition with China, saying the United States currently leads and must maintain that advantage.
The administration has already taken steps to accelerate AI adoption in national security, including a June directive calling for advanced commercial and open-source systems to be deployed across the military and intelligence community while maintaining human accountability.
The announcement comes amid increasingly public warnings from AI researchers and industry leaders about autonomous systems, cybersecurity threats and models behaving in unexpected ways. Major technology companies remain divided over how much government oversight is appropriate and whether development should be slowed while stronger safeguards are created.
Archmere football lines up on offense at the start of its game against the St. Mark’s Spartans, September 18. Photo Credit: Ryan Colasanti
The Archmere Auks (2-0) defeated the St. Mark’s Spartans (0-3), 8-0, on September 18, earning their first Class 2A win of the season and second shutout in as many games.
WILMINGTON, DE — Archmere’s junior quarterback, Shane Harding, stood in the shotgun formation with fellow junior, Wyatt Beekley, standing beside him for the third straight play. Beekly ran the ball out of the same formation the past two plays, helping the Auks earn a first and goal opportunity from the St. Mark’s three-yard line with a little less than 10 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter.
On first and goal, Archmere turned to its trusted running back one more time.
Beekly ran from the right hip of Harding and took the handoff to the left of the center. Beekly looked for a running lane inside, but quickly bounced the run wide of the guard and between the tackle, finding enough room to barrel into the endzone for the first touchdown of the game.
Beekly’s touchdown was the only score in Archmere’s 8-0 win over the St. Mark’s Spartans, Friday night, in the first Class 2A game of the season for either squad.
Beekly finished the game with 58 rushing yards and the one touchdown as part of an Archmere rushing attack that gained over 200 yards throughout the game. Harding led all rushers with 126 yards on the ground and fellow junior, Nathan Blessington, ran for just under 70.
“We just have so many plays that work off each other, like, our plays are all built to like confuse the defense,” Beekly said about what makes Archmere’s running attack so effective. “We have so many weapons outside, inside. Shane’s willing to run anyone over so, I mean, we just have so many weapons that I believe in our offense and we can go as far as we want.”
The Archmere running game played well throughout the night, but it was the two defenses that made big plays to keep the game close throughout.
The Auks started the game by receiving the kick-off and drove the ball into Spartan territory on the game’s opening possession. Archmere got as far as the Spartan 22-yard line before the St. Mark’s defense earned a sack and forced the Auks into a turnover on downs. Archmere’s next offensive possession was thwarted deep in Spartan territory as were a couple others in the first half.
Archmere’s defense held the Spartans to their side of the field through the first half. St. Mark’s crossed midfield for the first time on their opening possession of the third quarter — driving to the Archmere 23-yard-line — before the Auks defense halted the drive. A couple possessions later Archmere scored the game’s only touchdown on a six play drive, all of which were runs.
“The word of the week we had in practice was finish and at halftime coach was not happy with how we had been finishing the drives, but we finished it at the end so that’s all that matters,” Harding said.
The Spartans followed Archmere’s scoring drive with a strong drive of their own working their way to Archmere’s 36-yard line. The Auks defense held firm there, stopping St. Mark’s on fourth down and returning the ball to their offense. The Spartans defense did the same on the Auks’ next offensive possession and the Spartans’ offense took over at their own 35-yard line with a little over two and half minutes to play and a chance to tie the game.
St. Mark’s senior quarterback, Kyle Iudica, connected with fellow senior Ta’Son Wallace for 23 yards on the drive’s first play, but the Archmere defense stopped the Spartan offense on the next set of downs. The Auks defense allowed the offense to gain just two more yards during the drive, successfully keeping the Spartans out of the endzone each time they encroached into Archmere territory.
“I think we got a lot of dogs on the other side of the ball, a lot of guys stepping up, a lot of young guys,” Archmere senior Francis Morda said postgame describing the Auks’ defensive unit. “We have a lot of grit and you can’t teach that, that’s all heart. That’s all it is.”
The Auks defense finished the game with two sacks and their first shutout against the Spartans since the DIAA quarterfinals in 2021.
“We look forward to this game every year, we circle it on the calendar, but we got to build off this,” Morda said. “We’re 2-0, but we have a lot of things to fix. We just gotta move forward to DMA and just focus one game at a time.”
Archmere’s next game will be on September 25, against another Class 2A opponent, Delaware Military Academy. The game will start at 7:00 p.m. and take place at Delaware Military Academy.
The Spartans will play the second game of their two-game home stand against William Penn on September 25. That game will start at 7:00 p.m.
Photo collage by ProPublica. Source images: Laura Gordon Photography, Telegram.
My colleagues and I had been digging for days. We’d heard a rumor that a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin named Umar Kremlev had attended Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding this past May in the Bahamas. But to confirm that, we needed visual proof.
First, we scoured everything the Trumps had released from the event, held on a pair of private islands. On social media and in the pages of tabloids such as Page Six and Hello! magazine, official photos from the weekend showed an intimate chapel ceremony alongside lavish beach parties. Several photos depicted guests, including Jared Kushner and Eric Trump, and we scanned them all for signs of Kremlev. Still, nothing had turned up yet.
We then turned to Kremlev’s social media profiles on the off chance that he’d posted about the wedding. Incredibly, on Telegram, Kremlev had posted videos over the same weekend as Trump Jr.’s wedding that appeared to be from someplace tropical. In one, a single detail caught our attention: As Kremlev speaks in Russian to the camera, the frame gives a partial view of an outdoor patio setting. It wasn’t palm trees or crystal water we noticed, but the wicker furniture.
The wicker patio furniture in the background of a video posted by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev the same weekend as Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding provided a clue as to his whereabouts.Via Umar Kremlev’s Telegram account
The chair and its affixed cushion in Kremlev’s post matched what we’d seen in photos of the private islands elsewhere online, such as the promotional image below:
A promotional photo taken at one of the islands that was the site of Trump Jr.’s wedding events depicted the same wicker patio furniture as seen in Kremlev’s video background.
But of course, we couldn’t hang such a big claim — that this Russian oligarch had attended the president’s son’s intimate wedding weekend — on a wicker chair analysis. The Trump family appeared to be curating the wedding’s visual footprint, and not much seemed to exist outside of its control.
So when my colleagues Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan and I finally found a photo that confirmed what we’d been looking for, we were floored. The proof had been hiding in an Instagram gallery posted months earlier by a swimsuit model and friend of the bride, nestled among glamour shots and lifestyle photos.
The sunset group shot on a white sand beach shows wedding guests, barefoot and smiling against a backdrop of palms. One guest throws up a shaka. Front and center is the president’s eldest son and his bride, Bettina Trump, surrounded by close friends and family.
A group photo posted on Instagram by a swimsuit model and friend of the bride shows wedding guests.Instagram
But in the back row, just behind the newlyweds, the top half of a man’s shaved head is visible.
We recognized him instantly: Kremlev.
That photo was at the center of our story this week, in which we revealed that Kremlev secretly bankrolled much of Trump Jr.’s wedding weekend, paying to rent out a private island, among other big-ticket items, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the events. The photo also showed two others associated with Kremlev, part of a larger group of Russians whose presence puzzled some attendees. That made their absence from all other official wedding photos all the more noteworthy — especially for a gathering of only 50 or so guests.
Kremlev is visible in the back of a group photo from the wedding weekend.Laura Gordon Photography via Instagram
The story spread quickly. Within hours of publication, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee opened an investigation into Trump Jr.’s relationship with Kremlev, asking for communications between the two and records of “all purchases made for your wedding by foreign nationals.” (Trump Jr. did not respond to a request for comment on the investigation.) It also prompted Bettina Trump to post a joint statement with Trump Jr. on her Instagram, which included even more photos from the wedding weekend.
In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for Trump Jr. did not dispute the wedding payments from Kremlev. “Umar is a personal friend of Don,” he said. The spokesperson said that Kremlev is “not someone he has a business relationship with.” In a statement, Kremlev’s press office said, “Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr have a friendly relationship,” and they first met “a couple of years ago.”
Other than the photo we’ve shared, the images from that weekend remain tightly curated and don’t seem to tell the full story. So we thought we’d share a few examples with the added context from our findings. Sometimes, what — or, in this case, who — isn’t pictured is just as important as what is.
The Setting
The island where the reception party was held can rent for about $100,000 per night. Kremlev paid for multiple nights.Little Pipe Cay/Lux Hospitality Bahamas
The weekend festivities were spread across two ultra-exclusive private islands in the Exumas, a chain of storybook Caribbean destinations with white sand beaches and brilliant turquoise water. Islands there have been owned by the likes of Johnny Depp, David Copperfield and LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault. People arrived by helicopter and seaplanes to infinity pools and oceanfront villas.
The island where Trump Jr. and his bride exchanged vows on Friday was featured in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Casino Royale.” (Kremlev was not present for the Friday ceremony, which involved an even smaller group.)
On a second nearby island, about 10 minutes by boat from where the ceremony took place, a reception party was held. This island can rent for around $100,000 per night, and Kremlev paid for multiple nights.
The Caribbean-Themed Party
The magazine Hello! shared an image of Trump Jr. wearing a Junkanoo headpiece while dancing with his new bride.Laura Gordon Photography via Hello!
On the second night, more guests arrived for a party on the same island where the ceremony took place. The evening was Caribbean themed, with a beachside DJ and a performance by a Junkanoo band. On Instagram, Bettina Trump described the night as “an unforgettable night of pure joy, music, sunset, and dancing barefoot in the sand, surrounded by nothing but love in paradise…It was everything we dreamed of and more… pure magic.”
“Paper Trail” Podcast
Learn more about this story on ProPublica’s podcast “Paper Trail.”
Among the guests was Kremlev, arriving just days after accompanying Putin in China as part of a Russian delegation, according to Chinese state media. (Kremlev’s press office said that he was not part of Putin’s “official delegation” in China.) Kremlev’s ties to Putin and the Russian security services prompted the Ukrainian government to impose sanctions on him personally.
In their joint statement on Instagram, the couple said that Kremlev paid for the parties on both the second and third night of their wedding weekend, but they drew a distinction between the ceremony itself and the rest of the events.
“Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding. It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful,” the couple wrote.
The First Dance
Kremlev paid for the Sunday night wedding party during which the couple shared their first dance. Kremlev paid for the Saturday night party, too.Laura Gordon Photography via Hello!
On Sunday, the newlyweds shared their first dance to Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”Photos published in Hello! magazine showed the couple on the dance floor underneath disco balls strung up among palm trees. They embraced as guests watched. Bettina Trump wore her wedding dress. The night was nautical themed, complete with a seafood boat buffet, an illusionist and scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor outfits.
The Sunday night party that Kremlev paid for featured a seafood boat buffet.Laura Gordon Photography via Hello!Scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor outfits perform for guests at the Sunday night party, which Kremlev paid for.Laura Gordon Photography via Instagram
The wedding payments came from a Dubai entity affiliated with the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that Kremlev heads. The IBA has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. Kremlev picked up the tab for the festivities on Saturday and Sunday.
Kremlev’s press office described him as a businessman and philanthropist, adding, “Mr. Kremlev has never discussed political matters with any of his American friends and acquaintances,” including Trump Jr. It said the boxing organization itself did not incur expenses for the wedding but did not comment on the payments from the Dubai entity.
The Fireworks
Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Trump, watch fireworks paid for by Kremlev.Laura Gordon Photography via Lewis Miller Design
At the Sunday reception, Trump Jr. and his new wife stood on the beach, gazing out as a barge launched a spectacular fireworks display over the ocean. It was an extravagant cap off the wedding weekend.
Kremlev picked up the tab for the fireworks display. The company that put it on typically charges around $70,000 for such shows.
There are still lingering questions we didn’t get to the bottom of. Among the most pressing: Why did a Russian oligarch who is close to Putin pay for much of the president’s son’s wedding? What is the nature of Trump Jr.’s relationship with Kremlev, and, importantly, how might it change over time? Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles, put it this way:
“If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something.”
Do You Have Information We Should Know About Donald Trump Jr.?
We’re still reporting. If you know anything about Trump Jr., his businesses or his relationship with Umar Kremlev, please get in touch.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump said Friday that CNN, MS NOW and Politico are banned from the White House “effective immediately,” explicitly citing what he described as false and unfavorable coverage. He also suggested additional news organizations could face similar restrictions.
“Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Speaking later in the Oval Office, he said the outlets “purposely write negative news” because they want to hurt Republicans and his administration. He did not identify specific reports he said were false.
Exactly how the ban will operate remains unclear. Reporters from the affected organizations were still working at the White House Friday afternoon, and Trump acknowledged he did not know when their credentials might be revoked.
CNN called the threatened ban an “illegal assault” on constitutionally protected press freedoms, while Politico said it would defend its First Amendment rights. The White House Correspondents’ Association and press-freedom organizations also objected.
The action raises significant constitutional questions because courts have previously limited the government’s ability to revoke White House press access based on unfavorable coverage. During Trump’s first term, a federal judge ordered the administration to restore CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s credential after the White House suspended it.
The announcement follows other disputes between the administration and major news organizations, including the White House’s earlier restrictions on Associated Press access. Trump said Friday that the latest move could eventually extend to additional outlets.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump announced Friday that the United States, Denmark and Greenland have reached an agreement allowing an expanded and permanent U.S. military presence on the strategically important Arctic island while leaving Greenland under Danish sovereignty.
Trump said the deal gives the United States “permanent control over security” in Greenland and allows Washington to expand bases and military operations as needed. U.S. officials said the agreement also bars non-NATO countries from establishing military bases on the island and restricts sensitive investments from potential adversaries.
However, Danish and Greenlandic leaders emphasized Saturday that the agreement does not transfer sovereignty or ownership to the United States. Greenland remains a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, and officials said the agreement explicitly recognizes Greenlanders’ right to self-determination.
That distinction is significant because Trump had spent months publicly discussing acquiring Greenland and had declined earlier this year to rule out military force. The new arrangement instead expands existing U.S. security rights dating to a 1951 defense agreement.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the agreement a major national-security achievement, while Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said it would strengthen security for Greenland, Denmark, the United States and NATO.
The agreement is expected to be formally signed during next week’s United Nations General Assembly and will still require approval through Danish and Greenlandic political processes.
The pact gives Washington wider military access to Greenland without accomplishing Trump’s earlier stated goal of acquiring the territory itself.
Headlining a conference for Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit he previously led that regularly spreads vaccine misinformation, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a litany of familiar false and misleading claims, particularly about vaccines.
For a few months earlier this year, Kennedy had largely stopped talking about vaccines, reportedly at the request of the White House. Facing a surge of measles cases not seen in a generation, Kennedy had also at times offered a lukewarm recommendation to vaccinate, frustrating his hardline anti-vaccine supporters.
But in August, Kennedy appearedwith President Donald Trump during thesigning of an executive order that called for splitting up the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine. Trump inaccurately said the MMR vaccine is “quite lethal,” and Kennedy proceeded to falsely claim on cable television that there was new evidence to support breaking up the combination shot. The secretary also began an ongoing beef with Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania over measles-associated deaths in the state.
Then, on Sept. 17, Kennedy gave the keynote speech for the one-day conference of Children’s Health Defense in Washington, D.C. Children’s Health Defense describes itself as working to “restore and protect the health of children by eliminating exposures to environmental toxins.” But the organization is one of the biggest sources of inaccurate vaccine information.
Just three days prior to the conference, the group’s X account falsely said that for every vaccine, “your child is more likely to die from the vaccine than from the disease.” The same day, the group also wrote, “Anyone who still thinks the COVID vaccine wasn’t intentionally designed to cause infertility is the conspiracy theorist.”
Speaking for more than an hour, Kennedy, a former litigator, repeatedly suggested that vaccines were not safe, had not been tested properly, and that they were driving a dramatic rise in chronic conditions, including autism.
“Many of these adverse events include diseases, chronic illnesses, that are part of the chronic disease epidemic. In other words, illnesses that became suddenly epidemic in our kids after 1989,” he said. Looking at all of the different vaccines given to children, he continued, “there are 454 adverse events listed. In total … they include almost all of the injuries, like diabetes, death, sudden infant death syndrome, anorexia, allergic reactions, allergies, asthma, autoimmune diseases.”
This is misleading. As we’ve explained before, the conditions that appear in package inserts have not necessarily been shown to be caused by vaccines. And in fact, after rigorous study, some of them have specifically been shown not to be due to vaccines.
Kennedy also conveniently left out the package insert’s own caveat, which explains, “Because these reactions are reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not possible to reliably estimate their frequency or establish a causal relationship to a vaccine exposure.”
Screenshot of Kennedy speaking at the CHD conference on Sept. 17
He also pushed a conspiratorial narrative in which he claimed scientists previously “weren’t doing the studies to find out … what the risks were of these products,” referring to vaccines. “And so we don’t know, and we are finding that out now.”
The HHS website itself says, “Every authorized or approved vaccine goes through safety testing,” including testing in clinical trials and continued monitoring after they hit the market.
Later, the secretary said that HHS was supporting new research and clinical trials and for the “first time” researchers were looking into several vaccination topics and “a range of health outcomes,” including autism. It’s unclear what specifically these studies will examine, but researchers have continuously studied vaccination. An extensivebody of research hasn’t found any link between vaccines and autism.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the former British physician who fraudulently proposed a link between autism and vaccines in 1998, and continues to make the false claim, spoke after Kennedy at the conference.
Despite the ongoing measles outbreaks in the U.S., and more deaths from the disease in the last two years than in decades, Kennedy only mentioned measles once.
“You care about every child who dies from measles. They get headlines,” he said. “Shouldn’t we, I’d ask you, care about children who are dying or suffering or being injured by vaccine injuries?”
The secretary also moved to reassure his supporters that he had their backs, while also seemingly asking for patience, because “the government moves slowly.”
“You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House,” he said. “We’ve accomplished in 19 months … things that would have seemed unthinkable two years ago.”
Indeed, Kennedy, along with the White House, has pushed to reduce the number of recommended childhood vaccines in the U.S. and reconstituted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent advisory board, filling it with several individuals who have previously spread vaccine misinformation.
Major medical associations — such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians — have spoken out against the changes to vaccine recommendations, issuing theirownguidance. (Many of the changes have been temporarily blocked by a court.)
Kennedy said HHS would be looking into the safety of electromagnetic fields and “chemtrails,” both topics of interest for Children’s Health Defense. The “chemtrails” conspiracy theory alleges that the commonly seen contrails, or the normal condensation trails left behind from airplanes, are actually chemicals that can harm or be used to control a population. There’s no evidence that “chemtrails” exist.
Many of the claims Kennedy made in his address are the very same claims has been making for years — and were ones we first wrote about in 2023 when he was running for president. Others are relatively new.
Here’s a round-up of the ones we’ve covered before.
Autism
Wisconsin study. Kennedy misleadingly juxtaposed data from a 1970 study in Wisconsin showing an autism rate of less than 1 in 10,000 with the national data showing a prevalence of 1 in 31 today. The data are not comparable. Much of the increase in autism is related to changes in diagnostic criteria, screening, available services and awareness of the condition, researchers have said.
UC Davis research. Kennedy also claimed that research from the UC Davis MIND Institute led by Irva Hertz-Picciotto showed that the autism “epidemic is real,” contrary to assertions that “we’re just noticing it more.” A 2009 study co-authored by the environmental health researcher found that one-third of the increase in autism diagnoses in California could be attributed to changes in diagnostic criteria, but the study did not examine all the factors that could lead to changes in recognition of the condition. The MIND Institute said in a September 2025 statement that the study “did not indicate that autism was an epidemic.”
‘Full-blown’ autism. The HHS secretary went on to claim that “I’ve never in my life seen somebody my age, a 70-year-old man, with full-blown, profound autism.” But researchers have said that while older people are less likely to have an autism diagnosis, many nevertheless meet the criteria for autism. “Many of them would not have been recognized as such but they absolutely do exist,” Catherine Lord, a clinical psychologist and autism researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, previously told us.
Reporting of vaccine side effects. Kennedy claimed that a CDC study found that “fewer than 1% of vaccine injuries are reported.” He’s referring to a 2010 report from health insurer Harvard Pilgrim funded by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which briefly mentioned this figure for adverse events. Reported adverse events are not necessarily vaccine-caused. One of the authors told us that the 1% “takes into account that many adverse effects of vaccines are mild and expected so not worth reporting.”
Otherresearchhas found that the monitoring system Kennedy was referencing — the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which accepts voluntary, unverified reports — more completely identifies serious adverse events after vaccination. It’s also not the only way health authorities monitor vaccine safety.
Placebo-controlled studies. Kennedy misleadingly claimed that just one childhood vaccine — against COVID-19 — “was subject to a placebo-controlled trial,” adding that “we have no idea what the risk profile is for these products.” Various childhood vaccines were originally tested against placebos, including the polio, chickenpox and rotavirus vaccines. These claims rely on moving the goal posts on what constitutes a placebo-controlled trial, such as by asserting that placebos can only be saline. It’s also not always ethical or feasible to test a vaccine against a placebo. There are other valid ways of assessing vaccine safety.
Thimerosal in vaccines. Kennedy misrepresented the science on thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that has been phased out of most vaccines, blaming it for “devastating our children’s brains and causing a whole litany, a grim inventory, of physical and brain injuries.”
As we’ve written before, multiple studies have evaluated the safety of thimerosal, and there isn’t evidence it’s harmful to human health in low doses. (It contains a different, less toxic type of mercury than the methylmercury that accumulates in fish.) Nonetheless, it was removed from most vaccines in the U.S. as a precaution more than 20 years ago. Since then, no vaccines for children have used thimerosal, other than flu vaccines that come in multi-dose vials.
Obesity rates. Kennedy pointed to falling obesity as evidence of the administration’s success. “Obesity rates have dropped 7.3% since 2022, most of it in this year — these two years,” he said, citing Gallup polling. Gallup surveys did find that obesity among American adults fell about 3.1 percentage points, or 7.8%, between 2022 and 2026. But three-quarters of the decline came between 2022 and 2024, before Trump took office.
Sales of real food. Kennedy also said, “Real food sales went up by 8% this year.” As we’ve explained before, this likely comes from a financial-industry analysis that reportedly looked at a handful of specific categories, including yogurt, nut butters and frozen foods, and concluded that sales of unprocessed or minimally processed products grew about 7% faster than highly processed products in those same categories. Experts previously told us those findings are too limited to say much about whether Americans are eating healthier overall.
Clarification, Sept. 21: We made clear that Wakefield is a former physician. As we’ve explained before, he lost his medical license.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — The NAACP and other civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit Friday seeking to prevent the Trump administration from deploying federal law enforcement officers in ways they say could intimidate voters during November’s midterm elections.
The lawsuit names Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel and other administration officials. Plaintiffs argue that public statements about possible federal activity around polling places, combined with expanded voter-roll scrutiny and immigration enforcement, violate Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voter intimidation.
Federal law generally bars armed federal officers and members of the armed forces from being stationed where elections are held. So far, the administration has not deployed armed officers to polling locations, and DHS has said ICE is not planning operations targeting polling places.
Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels rejected the lawsuit’s premise, saying DOJ has never said it would send federal law enforcement to polling locations and calling suggestions otherwise “fearmongering.” Mullin has said ICE could respond to a public-safety threat or serve a warrant at a polling site.
The case is the second lawsuit this month seeking to restrict federal law enforcement activity around polling locations.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge has ordered the Kennedy Center to provide at least 30 days’ notice before taking any steps toward demolition after President Donald Trump again suggested the landmark could be torn down if his renovation plans are blocked.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper issued the order Thursday after attorneys for Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty cited Trump’s public comments and a photograph showing him aboard Air Force One examining a placard labeled “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.” Trump had told reporters a day earlier that the building could “end up being ripped down” if his administration does not receive recognition for restoring it.
The dispute follows Cooper’s earlier ruling that Congress, not the Kennedy Center board, controls the center’s official name. Cooper also blocked plans to rename the campus “President Donald J. Trump Plaza” or add language crediting Trump with its restoration.
The Kennedy Center board has approved a renovation project backed by roughly $257 million in federal funding. Trump has said the project may not proceed unless appellate courts overturn Cooper’s restrictions.
The center is temporarily closed while officials assess safety concerns and prepare for possible renovations.
Robert Warshaw, left, a court-appointed monitor, and Maricopa Sheriff Jerry Sheridan speak before a legally required community outreach meeting in the Sunnyslope neighborhood of Phoenix in 2025. Ash Ponders for ProPublica
A federal judge has denied efforts to remove oversight of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, saying the agency continues to show racial disparities in traffic arrests of Latinos — and that there is not enough evidence that efforts to improve would stick without legal monitoring.
In his 72-page ruling issued Sept. 10, U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow stressed Sheriff Jerry Sheridan’s role in the department’s racial profiling since the start of the case more than a decade ago, including fighting court-ordered reforms and stymieing investigations. Sheridan was the No. 2 under former Sheriff Joe Arpaio when the county was found out of compliance with federal law.
“Then Chief Deputy, now Sheriff, Sheridan in particular was found to have abused his authority over MCSO’s internal affairs process by obstructing and manipulating misconduct investigations and disciplinary proceedings — including those involving himself — to shield deputies and Command Staff from accountability and undermine the enforcement of remedies designed to address the constitutional violations against the Plaintiff class,” the judge wrote in an opinion that mentions Sheridan 30 times.
The department declined to comment on Snow’s statements about Sheridan. But the sheriff previously told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica that he disagreed with Snow. “I was very truthful. To this day, I think he got that wrong about me,” Sheridan said.
In his ruling, Snow said it may no longer be necessary for the court to track some areas originally identified for oversight in the 2013 decision, recognizing the “burdens” that go into monitoring certain elements.
County leaders have repeatedly cited costs as they’ve called for an end of court oversight. Maricopa County filed the motion in December, with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office later joining, arguing the violations were no longer occurring.
The yearslong federal monitorship of Arizona’s largest sheriff’s office dates back to a 2007 class action racial profiling lawsuit that found the department under Arpaio had violated the constitutional rights of Latinos in the state’s most populous county. Today, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, there are an estimated 1.5 million Latino or Hispanic people living in Maricopa County — all of whose rights are protected under the lawsuit.
In 2013, Snow ordered the department to document all traffic stops to detect any patterns of racial bias and to employ additional investigators to probe reports of deputy misconduct. Snow also appointed a monitor to oversee compliance with the settlement.
In the 13 years since, the department has yet to convince the judge that its deputies don’t racially profile Latino drivers and that it adequately investigates deputies’ alleged misconduct. In denying the recent motion, Snow cited data showing that sheriff’s deputies in Maricopa County continue to search and arrest Latino drivers at a higher rate than white drivers, echoing the racial disparities that first led to court oversight of the department.
“Those disparities remain,” Snow added.
A key part of the judge’s analysis results from traffic reports collected by the sheriff’s office. An analysis of those reports on behalf of the plaintiffs by a professor of computer science from the University of California, Berkeley approximates that Hispanic motorists are 40% more likely to be arrested than white motorists, are stopped 30% longer than white motorists and are 2.5 times more likely to be searched than white motorists.
The responsibility is on the defendants to explain the stark disparities for Latino drivers, Snow said. “They have failed to do so.” To end court oversight, the sheriff’s office must be in full compliance with the reforms continuously for three years.
An investigation by Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica found that despite the monitor’s annual reviews showing ongoing racial disparities in traffic stops, Sheridan and county leaders continued to press for an end to court oversight.
Arpaio’s wide-ranging, illegal traffic sweeps prompted the lawsuit, known originally as Melendres v. Arpaio, named for Manuel de Jesus Melendres Ortega, a legal resident who was arrested in such a sweep.
The arrests of hundreds of American citizens by immigration authorities since President Donald Trump returned to the White House have prompted widespread accusations of racial profiling. In response, the Department of Homeland Security told ProPublica that agents do not racially profile or target Americans. “We don’t arrest US citizens for immigration enforcement,” wrote spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.
The decade-plus of legal oversight of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, criminal justice experts have said, offers insight into the difficulties of reforming law enforcement agencies charged with endemic racial bias.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office holds a town hall at a community center in Gila Bend, Arizona, in 2025.Jesse Rieser for ProPublica
Sheridan, a Republican, was found in civil contempt in 2016 for denying knowledge of Snow’s court order to stop making illegal immigration arrests. Sheridan has said he was always truthful. He inherited the settlement when he took office in January 2025.
A 2025 evaluation by the monitor found the department complied with more than 90% of the requirements but fell short in the two areas that most directly impact Latino drivers: eliminating racial bias in traffic stops and quickly investigating allegations of deputy misconduct.
In trying to end federal oversight, Sheridan and county supervisors argued that racially biased Arpaio-era policies were no longer written department policy and there were few complaints of misconduct by deputies against Hispanic drivers.
“MCSO has reformed its policies, improved its workforce, and implemented mechanisms to assure that racial profiling never occurs. This litigation has been a success, and the time has come to allow MCSO to stand on its own two feet, freed of oversight,” the county’s original motion said.
Since joining the Melendres case and settlement in 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice had supported Snow’s federal oversight and the reforms. But with Trump back in the White House, an attorney with the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division informed the court in January that the department supported ending oversight.
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chair Kate Brophy McGee and Vice Chair Debbie Lesko, both Republicans, as well as a spokesperson with Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, said they were disappointed by the judge’s ruling. Steve Gallardo, the county’s lone Democrat on the five-member board, has opposed ending oversight, advocating for continued progress toward eliminating racial bias in policing.
“The court has maintained an unelected and unaccountable federal monitor over MCSO – creating bureaucracy and regulatory burdens that have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. That ‘oversight’ comes at the cost of public safety, as the county must pay the monitor and his staff by foregoing other critical services,” said a joint statement from McGee and Lesko.
Following complaints by Sheridan and Republican county supervisors that oversight costs topped $200 million, the court ordered an audit of the sheriff’s office spending. Court findings, shared in 2025, showed that nearly 72% of the sheriff’s office spending was misattributed or misappropriated. Only $63 million was appropriately charged to the settlement, they said.
Officials with the sheriff’s office, however, welcomed parts of the judge’s latest ruling.
“We believe MCSO has implemented durable remedies for violations that occurred 19 years and three administrations ago,” Sgt. Joaquin Enriquez said. “We are encouraged that the Court has provided a framework on eliminating portions of the Order that are no longer necessary and focusing compliance efforts on the remaining issues to be addressed.”
Speaking to a Phoenix-area radio station, Sheridan said he saw positive elements of the judge’s order but wondered whether his office could ever satisfy all parties to the lawsuit.
“We at the sheriff’s office feel we’re in compliance with all the” court’s orders, Sheridan told KTAR News. “But the court-appointed monitor does not believe so. It’s a matter of us making a pitch to the court directly, not through the monitor.”
Raul Piña in Phoenix’s Encanto Park in 2025Jesse Rieser for ProPublica
Notably, the judge’s ruling said, there was no evidence that the department would continue to remedy the violations should oversight to ensure Latinos’ constitutional rights end.
“The record does not support a finding that, absent federal monitoring, Defendants are unlikely to resume the conduct that necessitated the Court’s injunctive Orders,” the ruling stated.
Raul Piña, a member of a court-mandated community advisory board tasked with helping the sheriff’s office rebuild trust with Latinos, said the problems at the department went beyond one specific leader, to multiple systems that have allowed biased policing long-term. To change that, Piña said, you need a broader overhaul. “You can paint the house, but if the foundation is broken you will have the same problem,” he told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which originally filed the lawsuit on behalf of citizens and legal residents caught in Arpaio’s sweeps, celebrated the current ruling.
“Any other decision would have had a devastating impact on Maricopa County’s Latino residents,” Christine Wee, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Arizona, said in a statement. “The Court’s decision recognizes that any current and future misconduct committed by MCSO will not be tolerated. Simply put, MCSO is not ready for the court-ordered reforms to end.”
Marcia Levering nearly died at work on February 6, 2021. She was working as a prison guard at the former medium-security federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, a facility operated by the private prison company CoreCivic. One of Levering’s overwhelmed colleagues buzzed open the wrong door, releasing a high-risk prisoner directly into Levering’s path. “He kind of gave me this eerie green grin,” she said. Then boiling water hit her face.
The facility, which had long been plagued by overcrowding, chronic understaffing, and deadly violence, closed later that year after a Biden executive order against all private prison profiteering put its century-long run to an end.
Then came the second Trump administration and its plans to supercharge the business of incarceration in the United States.
As of March, the notorious prison is back up and running, and this time it’s being filled with immigrants, the majority of whom have no criminal conviction, as part of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s brutal deportation regime targeting noncitizens.
Last month, CoreCivic sold the facility to the Department of Homeland Security for $238.4 million, although it expects to keep operating the site under its existing ICE arrangement. But local officials tell the story of a massive for-profit prison company steamrolling community opposition as well as the city’s own established processes, and ultimately forcing their hand to participate in a project of mass detention — a system that advocates and former employees say has led to unsafe, violent conditions for both detainees and employees.
Current conditions for detainees held at the Midwest Regional Reception Center are hard to verify from outside. In its reporting on the sale, the Kansas City Star put the facility’s population at 365 men and 112 women, a count shared at a July 28 community advisory board meeting. The paper described two local groups in contact with detainees and their families, among them Northland Neighbors United, which said in a July statement that detainees have reported medical neglect, inadequate food, and prolonged lockdowns. CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin told the Star the allegations do not reflect how the facility operates.
This isn’t “manufacturing notebooks and pens. This is profiting off of people being put in cages.”
For Esmie Tseng, the communications director for the ACLU of Kansas, coverage of these city meetings sanitizes the reality for detainees.
“We’re making a contract out of putting people in cages,” Tseng said. “This isn’t just moving widgets from one place to another, or manufacturing notebooks and pens. This is profiting off of people being put in cages.”
The Pitch
By early 2025, the city of Leavenworth had already said “no” multiple times to deepening its involvement in immigration detention. After Trump’s reelection, CoreCivic tried again, working with city officials for three months before announcing on a Zoom call it would reopen the facility as an immigration jail without waiting for a special use permit, or SUP, to be approved. The city sued to force CoreCivic to go through its permitting process, and the company countersued, arguing its federal contract allows it to bypass local law. In June 2025, a Leavenworth State District Court judge granted a temporary injunction barring CoreCivic from operating without a special use permit.
During that first push on March 25, 2025 — the day the city commission was scheduled to meet in closed session about the ICE contract — John Malloy, CoreCivic’s vice president of federal partnership relations, emailed Leavenworth’s commissioners with what seemed like an attractive financial offer: “300 well-paying jobs at starting salaries of $28.58/hour,” more than $1,000,000 annually in property taxes, a $1 million one-time impact fee, and annual payments to the city and police department. The final permit set CoreCivic’s impact fee at $1.5 million, which City Manager Scott Peterson said covered the city’s legal bills.
Malloy also emphasized the city’s approval process must move quickly to meet growing demand to ramp up the number of available immigration prison beds.
“While ICE’s pressing need for capacity dictates the speed at which we must move to hire and ready the facility … we do not wish this speed to harm what we hope will be a long-term beneficial relationship with the City,” Malloy wrote in the email. He added this expedited timeline would not allow for “a protracted permitting process.”
He also touted that the community response to job postings had already been strong, with more than 500 applicants “in the hiring process” and more coming in every day.
Levering, an Army veteran and Native American, heard a version of that pitch five years earlier in a cold call from a recruiting agency. Back in 2020, when CoreCivic was contracted to run the facility as a federal prison by the U.S. Marshals Service, the recruiting agency offered her 12-hour shifts and only three days a week, she told The Intercept. The schedule sold her. With four kids in school, the promise of four days at home made the job feel like an ideal fit for her busy life. She saw the work as service, an extension of her years in the Army. In hindsight, she said, “Obviously, [that’s] not the case, because it’s a private prison.”
Mike Trapp, co-founder of the Carceral Accountability Council, said CoreCivic hires people the state prison system and Federal Bureau of Prisons might otherwise have turned away over physical and age limitations, because the company has “lower standards of entry.”
But Bill Rogers, a former guard at the facility under the Marshals contract, said there were effectively no hiring standards.
“Think about the people you’re going to get to work at a facility if you really just don’t care.”
“You gotta pass their background check … and you gotta be breathing,” he said. “Think about the people you’re going to get to work at a facility if you really just don’t care.”
One year after Malloy’s email to persuade city officials, the facility already had 150 employees on its payroll, halfway to the 300 jobs Malloy had promised. At a February 2 hearing, the city’s planning commission voted 5-1 to recommend approval of CoreCivic’s special use permit. The City Commission granted final approval on March 10 by a vote of 4 to 1.
The Arithmetic of Danger
Levering’s schedule amounted to a minimum six-day, often seven-day, workweek, with shifts of 12 hours or longer plus mandatory overtime, she said. Levering rarely saw her four children, who were then in middle and high school. The evenings she’d pictured spending time with them at home never came to pass.
After onboarding, officers were promised 40 hours of continuing training annually, Rogers said. He received that training for about his first two years, he said, until staffing ran too thin to pull officers off the floor. Left to teach herself, Levering said she learned more from prisoners than her peers or her supervisors. They told her who to keep an eye on, how to read danger on the floor, and where to set boundaries.
In response to questions from The Intercept, Gustin, the CoreCivic spokesperson, said the company’s training “meets or exceeds” the standards of the American Correctional Association.
Levering said that during her time at the facility, shifts that called for 24 to 25 officers often had just five or six. Within months, CoreCivic began eliminating bubble officers, who monitor units from a secure, elevated central control booth known as the “bubble.” These officers are critical for safety, as they control access to different zones of the prison by electronically opening and closing doors. Their elevated position also allows them an eye-in-the-sky perspective, where they can be the first to spot emergencies before they escalate.
In an interview, Shari Rich, who worked at the facility for nearly 13 years and counts Levering as a close friend, traced Levering’s assault to CoreCivic’s decision to eliminate bubble officers.
“It should never have happened,” she said of Levering’s assault. Rich placed the blame squarely on CoreCivic eliminating bubble officers. She said she previously watched a case manager get brutally attacked by an inmate while the bubble ran with one person, a post she understood was supposed to be staffed by two or three.
Rich is still speaking out against the company, she said, because of what happened to Levering.
Officers were increasingly posted alone, sometimes responsible for two 64-person units, Levering said.
“They were hiring kids right out of high school,” Levering said, calling them “sitting ducks.” Without enough officers, downstream everyday functions also collapsed. Recreation stopped when there was no one to run it, Rich and Rogers said. Officers were pulled off their units for weeks at a time, according to Rogers, which left inmates in day rooms with no one to turn to. The locks to the cells were breaking, Levering said, even as CoreCivic refused to put enough people on the units to keep them secure. The ACLU and federal public defenders confirmed that detainees, unable to lock their own cells, built makeshift barricades and armed themselves.
The day an inmate split Rogers’s head open with a food tray, he said he was covering three units alone with no bubble officer watching. He had already emailed the warden about the lack of coverage. He lost his radio in the assault, stranding him and unable to call for backup. The wound took 14 staples to close, he said. Rogers also said he was required to finish his shift before driving himself to the hospital. All the warden had to say to him about the incident was that “the takedown you did was a little rough,” he recounted.
“How do we expect them to act?” Rogers asked. “We have to bear some of that responsibility. … We lost control of that place.”
“We have to bear some of that responsibility. … We lost control of that place.”
Gustin said CoreCivic does not supply specific figures about staffing in any of its prisons for “safety reasons,” but added, “We are appropriately staffed based on the number of individuals in our care.” CoreCivic attributed staffing shortages to Covid, despite the 2017 audit, which found chronic understaffing years before the pandemic. In 2021, ACLU affiliates and federal public defender offices in four states jointly documented an average of nearly 37 violent incidents per month at CoreCivic Leavenworth between May and July of that year, just months after Levering was attacked.
Asked about the 2021 conditions, Gustin said “staffing was the main contributor to the challenges.” He also said incidents from “more than five years ago” do not reflect conditions in the facility today.
What the Machine Produced
On the day of the incident that would leave her permanently disabled, Levering said that she and her co-worker Diana Polanco were the only two officers on the floor. It was Polanco’s second day on the job, and she wasn’t yet OC certified, a prerequisite for carrying pepper spray.
Levering remembers the inmate being released directly into her path but little else about the assault.
“Where the hell is everybody?”
“My eyes were closed, and I was in the fetal position on the ground. I didn’t know he was stabbing me, because your adrenaline’s going,” Levering said. According to the Leavenworth Police Department report, she was stabbed four times in the ear, once in the arm, and twice in the abdomen. Before anyone reached her to help, she remembered wondering, “Where the hell is everybody?”
Polanco tried to step in to help Levering. She suffered a broken jaw, stab wounds to her back and face, fractured ribs, and lasting nerve damage.
The Leavenworth Police Department’s incident report on Levering’s attack, which lists the location as the Midwest Regional Reception Center and a knife or cutting instrument as the weapon used.Document: Leavenworth Police Department
Levering’s injuries were catastrophic. She lost 24 inches of her colon and spleen, according to the incident report. A punctured lung was not disclosed to her for a year, until she says a doctor seemingly mentioned it by accident. She has received 16 facial reconstruction surgeries, and five years later, she is still undergoing medical procedures related to her injuries. She lives with permanent facial paralysis, chronic vertigo, chronic gastrointestinal issues, and walks with a cane. Her PTSD, aggravated by serving in Iraq, is debilitating. After 10 months as a prison guard, she now lives on $825 a month in disability payments.
Warren Richardson, the federal prisoner who attacked Levering and Polanco, pleaded guilty to attempted murder and assault with a dangerous weapon, and was sentenced to 300 months. The federal record describes the attack as “nearly killing” both women.
Over roughly five years at the facility, Rogers said he was assaulted seven times, and no one from CoreCivic asked if he was OK or offered counseling. Since the injuries were on the job, Rogers said the company was responsible for his medical expenses. But the invoices remained unpaid and were forwarded to a collections agency instead, he said. Trapp, of the Carceral Accountability Council, has watched the job take its toll on Rogers.
“When he gets talking about some of the deaths that he witnessed, he’s re-experiencing it. I can see it in his eyes,” Trapp said. “I’ve worked with a lot of trauma survivors, and I’m not qualified to make a diagnosis in the state of Kansas, but I see it, the hauntedness.”
Rich couldn’t understand why other injured officers were paid settlements while Levering only had her initial medical bills covered, despite suffering from permanent disabilities. With no further support from CoreCivic, the Carceral Accountability Council launched a GoFundMe to help with her continued recovery.
CoreCivic did not respond to detailed questions about the February 6, 2021, attack, the uncertified officer on the floor, or its treatment of Levering afterward, including whether it provided any support for her injuries.
The ICE Escalation in a Town of Prisons
Widely known as one of the nation’s quintessential prison towns, Leavenworth, Kansas, has been in the corrections business for more than 150 years. The Army raised Fort Leavenworth above the Missouri River in 1827, and later established what remains the U.S. military’s only maximum-security prison. Kansas opened its state penitentiary in neighboring Lansing in 1868. By 1903, the federal penitentiary had taken its first prisoners. Convicts built much of it, marching over from the old military prison at Fort Leavenworth each day. For generations, guarding prisoners has been one of Leavenworth’s steadiest livelihoods, work that has employed hundreds across the fort, the state pen, and the federal walls.
In the U.S., the private prison industry is worth somewhere around $6 billion, much of which comes from government contracts. Corrections Corporation of America, which later rebranded as CoreCivic, opened the Leavenworth Detention Center in 1992 as the country’s first for-profit maximum-security prison under direct federal contract. Gustin, the company’s spokesperson, acknowledged “there were challenges as that contract neared expiration” but said the company was otherwise “proud of the operational track record we’ve built.”
CoreCivic, which owns more prisons and jails than any private company in the country, has a documented history of neglect, safety failures, and worker exploitation. In 2021, while still under the U.S. Marshals Service contract, Kansas federal Judge Julie Robinson called the facility “an absolute hell hole.”
“They don’t see us as humans, or the inmates as humans.”
But with the advent of the Trump administration’s mass detention and deportation system, the company is looking forward to a bright — and very profitable — future. On a February earnings call, CEO Patrick Swindle called Immigration and Customs Enforcement “our first customer 43 years ago” and “our largest customer for over a decade.” The company’s profits reached $116.5 million in 2025, a nearly 70 percent increase over the previous year, and ICE revenue more than doubled in the final quarter. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law in July 2025, directed roughly $45 billion to expanding ICE detention, nearly quadrupling the agency’s annual spending. On the call, the company said it could supply ICE with nearly https://url13,000 more beds for the Trump administration’s expansion, a figure Swindle said “does not include additional capacity we may be able to provide through other means.”
Of those beds, 1,033 are in Leavenworth. Nine days after the city commission vote on March 10, CoreCivic reopened its doors and began housing ICE detainees. As a condition of approval, the special use permit required the city to establish a community oversight committee.
Behind every understaffed shift and unanswered emergency code at Leavenworth is a facility expected to generate $60 million a year. To Levering, CoreCivic’s profit incentive means “they don’t see us as humans, or the inmates as humans. … We’re all numbers to produce for them.”
Promises Made, Promises Broken
The warning bells about Leavenworth started ringing years ago. The 2017 inspector general report concluded the facility had concealed triple-bunking, where a third bed was installed in several cells meant to house two inmates, from auditors staging full staffing and cleanup on inspection days. Those concerns went unaddressed, Rich said, save for a scramble to paint and clean before each audit. CoreCivic’s own internal investigation concluded the bunks had been removed “intentionally to conceal” the practice, and the company responded to its own finding by instituting ethics training and a non-retaliation policy for employees reporting misconduct.
Among the promises that haven’t come to fruition are good-paying jobs for the community.
Among the promises that haven’t come to fruition are good-paying jobs for the community. Malloy, the CoreCivic vice president, had promised “starting salaries of $28.58/hour.” But CoreCivic’s current Leavenworth listings show multiple positions below his pledge: certified medical assistant at $21.19, medical records Supervisor at $23.92, facility locksmith at $26.08, and treatment counselor at $26.96. The detention officer rate, the most dangerous and high-turnover role, sits at $28.25.
Gustin called any notion of a wage discrepancy “false” and said the figures Malloy offered were “an approximate starting wage for a detention officer position.”
Malloy also pledged to use “area construction contractors and labor.” But a building permit dated March 19, dated six days before Malloy’s email, shows CoreCivic had already hired Texas-based Bass Roofing for $1,145,600. CoreCivic hired the contractor; the contractor employed the workers. Gustin confirmed the company chose an out-of-state contractor that “handled similar work at another one of our federal facilities, which required special clearances for workers,” and said it favors providers who meet “stringent labor requirements.”
Rogers, the former prison guard, had spoken at city commission meetings about the roofing project, alleging that instead of bringing jobs to the community, the project relied on undocumented laborers. On April 17, 2025, CoreCivic’s deputy general counsel sent him a cease-and-desist letter, copied to the Leavenworth Police chief, which sharply disputed those claims.
“To ensure that its contractors’ employees are legally authorized to work in the United States, CoreCivic requires all contractors, including Bass Roofing and Extra Squares Roofing (whose employees are working on MRRC’s roofing restoration) to strictly comply with Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, requirements and participate in E-Verify,” the letter read. “Our review of this confirms that any representation that undocumented or unauthorized workers have worked on the MRRC project is false.”
Document: Courtesy of Bill Rogers
Six days later, outside counsel sent a defamation threat demanding he retract his statements. The letter cited his 2020 termination for “excessive force,” setting an April 25, 2025, deadline for Rogers to publicly detract his allegations.
That date passed; no lawsuit has materialized. To Rogers, the letter was a clear attempt to intimidate him into silence. CoreCivic did not say whether the threatened lawsuit was ever filed, and Gustin dismissed former employees-turned-critics, saying there “have only been a few former employees who have spoken out” about the facility.
The Gap
Rogers said that at first, the schedule was easy: eight-hour training shifts, Monday through Friday. In Tennessee, a 2023 audit by the comptroller found turnover among correctional officers at the four prisons CoreCivic runs for the state averaged 146 percent, a staggering figure compared with 37 percent turnover at the state-run facilities. As of mid-August, Leavenworth reportedly holds more than 500 detainees, still well below the 1,033-bed capacity CoreCivic projected.
There has also been a worrying continuity in top leadership: The warden running the ICE operation, Misty Mackey, was the assistant warden at the same Leavenworth facility in February 2021.
The city commissioners faced an impossible task that stood to devastate Leavenworth no matter which way they voted.
“It’s a lot to ask five part-time citizen-legislators to put their city on the line to be singularly responsible for stopping the mass deportation agenda,” Trapp said.
“It’s a lot to ask five part-time citizen-legislators to put their city on the line to be singularly responsible for stopping the mass deportation agenda.”
Levering, who watched officers treat American inmates “like they’re subhuman,” expects immigrant detainees to fare even worse. “They’re still human beings first, just like you and I,” she said.
The chasm between what CoreCivic promises a community to set up its ICE operations and what it actually delivers may be measured in emergency rooms and disability checks. The same company that has now supercharged the mass detention of immigrants left Marcia Levering living on $825 a month with lasting disabilities and buried Bill Rogers in medical bills as he copes with PTSD.
“If they did to Marcia Levering what they did,” Rogers said. “If that’s how they treated her — then why would they care about a detainee?”
This time, the people on both sides of the door have less protection than before.
This story is part 1 in a two-part series. Read the second part here.
“It’s clear from last night’s results that it’s a new day in Delaware,” Karl Stomberg, Delaware political director for the WFP, said in a statement. “The Working Families Party and our allies have sent an earthquake through state politics, making clear that kowtowing to corporate interests and maintaining the status quo is no longer good enough.” Candidate images from WFP website and image created with AI.
Republican candidates warn new mandates could increase costs for working families and jeopardize revenue supporting state services
WILMINGTON — The Working Families Party’s sweeping success in Delaware’s Democratic primaries has given the progressive organization unprecedented influence over the party’s legislative agenda, setting up a broader debate about what its policies could mean for working families, taxpayers and the state’s business climate.
WFP-backed candidates won six of eight state House races, a state Senate contest and a New Castle County Council race. The organization said the victories could nearly double its legislative caucus and help advance universal free school meals, mandatory earned sick time, rent stabilization and community workforce agreements.
“It’s clear from last night’s results that it’s a new day in Delaware,” Karl Stomberg, Delaware political director for the WFP, said in a statement. “The Working Families Party and our allies have sent an earthquake through state politics, making clear that kowtowing to corporate interests and maintaining the status quo is no longer good enough.”
Although the WFP has not formally assumed control of the Democratic Party or its legislative leadership, its candidates have captured the party’s political momentum. In several races, they defeated longtime incumbents supported by Delaware’s Democratic and corporate-law establishments.
The victories could give WFP-aligned lawmakers significant leverage when Democrats select their leaders and negotiate legislation, committee assignments and the state budget.
“We defended our incumbents, won open seats and defeated longtime establishment representatives,” Stomberg said. “We look forward to nearly doubling our caucus and fighting for policies that will benefit working people, like universal free school meals, earned sick time and rent stabilization.”
Republican candidates say the WFP agenda deserves closer scrutiny from Delawareans who work, pay taxes and depend on state government for schools, public safety, health care and other essential services.
Brent Burdge, the Republican candidate for the 5th Senate District, said the agenda should be judged according to its complete economic effect—not simply by the benefits its supporters promise.
“Working families need dependable jobs, affordable housing, reasonable taxes and a state government that delivers essential services effectively,” Burdge said. “Mandates such as rent stabilization and expanded employer requirements may sound compassionate, but the costs do not disappear. They can return to families through higher prices, fewer jobs, reduced housing investment and increased taxes.”
Burdge is running against WFP-backed Democratic nominee Shay Frisby, who defeated incumbent Sen. Ray Seigfried in the Democratic primary.
Policies carry costs and trade-offs
The WFP argues that its platform would give working Delawareans greater economic security. Its election-night statement promised to support policies that benefit working people rather than large corporations.
Universal school meals could ensure that children are fed without requiring families to complete income-verification paperwork. A universal program, however, would also subsidize meals for families capable of paying and require lawmakers to identify a continuing source of state or federal funding.
Mandatory earned sick time would give additional protection to workers who cannot afford to lose income when they or a family member becomes ill. Employers, particularly small businesses with limited staffs and narrow profit margins, could face higher labor costs and more complicated scheduling requirements.
Rent stabilization could protect existing tenants from sudden increases, but it could also discourage the construction or preservation of rental housing. A widely cited study of rent control in San Francisco found that affected landlords reduced rental supply by 15%, contributing to higher rents elsewhere in the market. Delaware’s results would depend on the provisions of any legislation lawmakers introduced.
Community workforce agreements can establish wages, benefits, training requirements and working conditions before construction begins. Critics contend that government-mandated agreements can favor unionized contractors and make it more difficult for smaller or nonunion companies to compete for taxpayer-funded work.
Burdge said state government must preserve assistance for vulnerable residents without imposing costs that make it harder for families and businesses to remain in Delaware.
“Government has an obligation to help vulnerable Delawareans, but it also has an obligation to the families working every day, paying their bills and financing state government,” Burdge said. “We should strengthen the safety net without turning every economic decision into another government mandate.”
Corporate franchise targeted
The WFP also used its victory statement to attack Delaware’s corporate-law establishment, accusing Democratic incumbents of “kowtowing to corporate interests.”
The organization identified Senate Bill 21, the 2025 corporate-law overhaul, as a central issue in the primary. Critics argued that the law weakened the rights of minority shareholders. Supporters said it restored predictability to Delaware corporate law and responded to concerns that companies were considering reincorporating in competing states.
Steve Pickering, the Republican candidate for the 12th Representative District, said the WFP’s criticism overlooks the relationship between Delaware’s Court of Chancery, the state’s corporate franchise and the services residents receive.
“Delaware’s Court of Chancery and corporate-law system have helped make our state the nation’s leading home for businesses,” Pickering said. “The taxes and fees generated by that system help pay for essential services that everyday Delawareans rely on, like our schools, public safety, health programs, and other critical services. We need to continue to demand ethical conduct and accountability, but we also must recognize the consequences of undermining this economic foundation that benefits every Delaware resident”.
Corporate franchise taxes and fees provide more than 20% of state revenue. Although the Court of Chancery does not directly generate most of that money, its expertise, efficiency and national reputation are important reasons businesses choose Delaware as their legal home.
A significant loss of corporate registrations or franchise revenue could force lawmakers to reduce spending, raise other taxes or find a new source of revenue.
“Attacking Delaware businesses and law firms may generate campaign applause, but driving companies and revenue out of the state would leave ordinary families with the bill,” Pickering said. “If that revenue disappears, Delaware will eventually have to reduce services, raise taxes, or do both. That means Delawareans could end up paying more while receiving less in return.”
Pickering is challenging Democratic Rep. Krista Griffith in the 12th District. His campaign priorities include lowering energy costs, controlling property taxes, increasing the senior property tax credit and reducing the cost of homeownership.
Musk claim leaves out legal context
The WFP statement claimed that SB 21 “led directly” to the reinstatement of Elon Musk’s Tesla compensation package, which was originally valued at $56 billion.
“This election was driven by backlash to SB 21, a controversial bill passed last year that rolled back shareholder protections and led directly to a $56 billion payout to Elon Musk,” the WFP said.
The Musk case contributed to the political debate that produced SB 21, but the Delaware Supreme Court restored the compensation package after concluding that complete rescission was an improper and inequitable remedy. The court’s ruling—not an automatic provision of SB 21—returned the stock options to Musk. The package was worth approximately $139 billion by the time of the December 2025 decision.
That distinction illustrates the broader divide over SB 21. WFP officials view the law as evidence that corporate interests hold too much power in Dover. Supporters view it as an effort to preserve Delaware’s position in an increasingly competitive market for corporate registrations.
Political spending cuts both ways
The WFP criticized corporate-financed political committees for spending heavily to defend incumbent Democrats who supported SB 21. Corporate law firms provided substantial financing to First State Future PAC, which mounted an advertising campaign supporting incumbents.
The WFP operated its own coordinated and independent campaign efforts. Its political committee reported spending approximately $125,000 on mail and $85,000 on digital advertising. Its coordinated operation also supplied candidates with phone banks, door-to-door canvassing, communications and political assistance.
The sources, amounts and objectives of the spending differed, but both sides relied on organized political money and professional campaign operations to influence Democratic primary voters.
Influence will be tested in Dover
The primary victories demonstrate that the WFP can recruit candidates, organize voters and overcome substantial spending by its opponents. But the election involved only a small portion of Delaware’s electorate and did not constitute a statewide vote on the organization’s entire platform.
The larger test will come after the general election, when WFP-backed lawmakers must translate campaign promises into legislation and explain how their programs will be financed.
For working families, the central question will be whether the emerging agenda produces greater economic security—or whether its mandates increase the cost of housing, employment and government while placing Delaware’s corporate revenue at risk.
To Go Box
What happened: WFP-backed candidates won eight Delaware Democratic primaries.
What the WFP says: Voters rejected the political status quo and excessive corporate influence.
What the WFP wants: Universal school meals, earned sick time, rent stabilization and community workforce agreements.
Republican concern: New mandates could increase costs for employers, taxpayers, renters and homeowners.
Why it matters: WFP-aligned lawmakers could gain greater influence over Democratic leadership, legislation and state spending.
What comes next: The parties will take their competing economic messages to voters in the Nov. 3 general election.
Who is the physician assistant, the nurse, the nurse practitioner, and the doctor? Image created by Delaware LIVE using AI on 9/18/26
Policy group seeks support for legislation requiring medical professionals to clearly disclose their licenses and qualifications
DOVER, Del. — The Caesar Rodney Institute is asking Delaware residents to sign an online petition supporting legislation that would require health care professionals to clearly identify their credentials before diagnosing or treating patients.
The petition calls on the General Assembly to revive and strengthen the Healthcare Professional Transparency Act, a 2024 proposal that did not advance to a vote.
CRI hopes signatures from patients, families and other community members will demonstrate public support for introducing the legislation again in 2027.
Michelle Parsons, M.D., director of CRI’s Center for Health Policy, said patients may not always understand whether the person providing their care is a physician, nurse practitioner, physician assistant or another licensed professional.
“Patients shouldn’t have to ask whether their doctor is actually a physician,” Parsons said. “They should already know.”
Petition calls for clearer identification
House Bill 447 would have required practitioners using the title “Doctor” to identify their educational degree and professional license. Most health care practitioners also would have been required to wear visible identification showing their license type.
The legislation also sought to require health care advertisements to accurately identify the professional licenses of the practitioners being promoted.
The bill was pulled before a committee vote in 2024 and was not brought back before the end of the legislative session.
Through its petition, CRI is asking Delaware lawmakers to bring the proposal back and strengthen its disclosure requirements. The institute wants patients to be told before receiving nonemergency care whether the person diagnosing or treating them is a physician, nurse practitioner, physician assistant or another licensed professional.
If a nonphysician uses the title “Doctor,” CRI wants that person’s profession disclosed at the same time.
“This isn’t about prohibiting earned academic titles or telling patients whom to choose,” Parsons said. “It’s about giving patients the information to make that choice for themselves.”
Expanded authority prompts questions
The petition follows Delaware’s expansion of the authority granted to several types of nonphysician health care professionals.
House Bill 141, enacted in 2021, eliminated the state’s previous collaborative-practice requirement for advanced practice registered nurses, including nurse practitioners. Nurse practitioners may independently evaluate patients, diagnose illnesses, order and interpret tests, prescribe medications and manage treatment.
Delaware has also expanded the role of pharmacists. Legislation approved in 2022 allowed pharmacists working under statewide protocols to test, screen and treat certain conditions. Additional legislation approved in 2026 broadened pharmacists’ authority to evaluate patients, identify certain health conditions, order laboratory tests and prescribe specified drugs and medical devices.
CRI said those changes make it more important for patients to understand the education, license and professional role of the person providing their care.
Some nurse practitioners earn a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree and may use the title “Doctor.” Parsons said that academic title is legitimate but does not mean the practitioner received the same education and clinical training as a physician.
An American Medical Association survey cited by CRI found that 39% of respondents identified someone with a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree as a physician. The survey also found that 19% believed a nurse practitioner was a physician and 17% believed a physician assistant was a physician.
CRI connects effort to AI protections
CRI is connecting its petition drive to House Bill 191, signed into law April 23. That law prohibits artificial intelligence and other nonhuman entities from being licensed as physicians, nurses, advanced practice registered nurses or physician assistants.
It also prohibits AI systems from using protected professional titles such as “Doctor” or “Dr.”
Parsons said the same principle — ensuring patients understand who or what is delivering their care — should apply to human health care professionals.
“If Delaware believes patients have a right to know when their ‘doctor’ is AI, surely they have a right to know when their ‘doctor’ isn’t a physician,” Parsons said.
Delaware law already requires a person using “Doctor” in connection with medicine or health care to specify the type of doctorate held. CRI contends, however, that existing law primarily regulates professional titles and does not require patients to be affirmatively told the license or professional classification of the person treating them.
CRI is asking Delawareans who agree with the proposal to add their names to the online petition and share it with friends, relatives and neighbors. The organization says broader community participation will strengthen its message to lawmakers ahead of the 2027 legislative session.
To Go Box
What: Caesar Rodney Institute Healthcare Professional Transparency Petition
What CRI is asking: Delawareans are encouraged to sign the petition urging lawmakers to revive and strengthen the Healthcare Professional Transparency Act.
Who may participate: Delaware patients, families, health care consumers and other supporters
A Republican TV ad cherry-picks parts of last year’s budget reconciliation law, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, to overstate the impact of the law or distort Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff’s record.
The ad from One Nation never mentions the OBBBA – a partisan bill that received no Democratic votes in the House and Senate. The law is only referenced in small print in the ad as “roll call vote #372” – the source of Ossoff’s vote on July 1, 2025, against the bill.
The One Nation ad says the Democratic senator “doesn’t care about people like us” and makes these claims:
Ossoff “supported” a $2,100 “tax increase.” The OBBBA extended the 2017 individual tax cuts that were due to expire. But the amount used in the ad refers to an average that’s skewed by large tax savings for wealthy taxpayers. It also doesn’t account for other changes in the law, such as cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, that will reduce income for low-income Americans.
Ossoff voted “to gut your child tax credit.” The law increased the maximum tax credit from $2,000 to $2,200 per child. But millions of low-income children aren’t eligible for the full amount. Also, Ossoff has a history of supporting the CTC, including voting in 2021 to raise the maximum to $3,600, even for families who don’t earn enough to pay federal taxes.
Ossoff “voted for higher taxes on Social Security recipients earning under $75,000.” The law provided an additional $6,000 tax deduction for taxpayers 65 and older, but not all seniors earning less than $75,000 were eligible for it.
Lawmakers’ votes are ripe for campaign attack ads from both parties, which can highlight only certain aspects of legislation, leaving out other provisions that may be the basis for lawmakers supporting or opposing the bills.
Ossoff has said he opposed the OBBBA largely because of Medicaid cuts and other changes in the law that will result in millions of Americans losing insurance, while providing $4.5 trillion in net tax cuts that largely benefit wealthy taxpayers. (More on that later.)
In a report to constituents, Ossoff boasted that he “fought the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’s’ (OBBB’s) trillion-dollar cut to Medicaid” because “70% of Georgia seniors in nursing homes are on Medicaid, half of all births in Georgia are covered by Medicaid, and 40% of all children in Georgia are covered by Medicaid.”
One Nation is a 501(c)(4) “dark money” nonprofit – so named because it doesn’t have to publicly disclose its funding sources. It is affiliated with the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC founded by allies of Sen. Mitch McConnell to support Republican candidates.
So far, One Nation has spent about $145 million this campaign cycle – including more than $9 million on the anti-Ossoff ad, which has been airing on broadcast and cable TV, as well as streaming platforms, since July 30, according to the ad-tracking service AdImpact. Ossoff is running against Republican Rep. Mike Collins.
The 2017 Tax Cuts
Before addressing the claims in the TV ad in more detail, it’s worth taking a look back at how we got here.
In his first term, Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 that made sweeping changes to the U.S. tax code – such as cutting business and individual tax rates and providing more generous tax credits, including doubling the maximum child tax credit to $2,000 per child. At the end of 2025, the individual income tax cuts and child tax credit in the TCJA were due to expire – setting off a partisan debate during the 2024 campaign over the expiring taxes and tax credits.
While Trump called for extending all of the expiring tax cuts and promised new ones, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris proposed an economic plan that focused on cutting costs and “cutting taxes for more than 100 million working and middle-class Americans.”
Specifically, Harris promised that “no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay more in taxes,” which would require her to extend the Trump tax cuts to at least that level. Her plan also called for increasing the maximum child tax credit to $3,600 per child.
Of course, Trump won and his economic plan was enacted. But it’s worth noting that both candidates were promising to address the expiration of the 2017 child tax credit and individual income tax cuts — two of the issues raised in One Nation’s ad.
Individual Income Taxes
The One Nation ad opens with a woman carrying groceries into her home and another woman shaking her head and disapprovingly looking at her grocery bill. “$2,100. That’s three months of groceries,” the ad’s narrator says. “$2,100. That’s the tax increase Jon Ossoff supported.”
The ad cites a May 7, 2024, analysis by the Tax Foundation as its source for the $2,100 figure. But we could not find that figure in the 2024 report, which wasn’t an analysis of the OBBBA but rather possible options for ways to extend the expiring 2017 tax cuts.
However, the Tax Foundation did write an analysis of the OBBBA that was published Feb. 10. It also published a separate article two weeks later based on that analysis that said “relative to prior law,” which would have expired at the end of 2025, “[i]ndividual tax changes in OBBBA reduce tax liability by $2,272 on average in 2026.”
In an email, Erica York, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation and a co-author of the report, confirmed that $2,272 is “[o]ur most current estimate.”
But there are two important caveats with that estimate. The $2,272 figure only reflects the bill’s impact on individual income taxes, not other changes in the law, and the amount is a national average. Actual tax savings vary greatly depending on income.
Estimates from the Tax Policy Center last year showed that the average tax cuts by income group in 2026 would be $150 for households earning less than about $35,000, about $1,800 for those earning between $67,000 and $119,000, and $21,000 for households earning nearly $500,000 to a little more than $1 million. The TPC post, by nonresident fellow Howard Gleckman, noted that the estimates only factor in the OBBBA’s tax revenue provisions. “Low-income households end up worse off after taking into account the bill’s spending cuts,” he wrote.
In a July 8, 2025, report, the Penn Wharton Budget Model calculated the distributional effects of the “total value of the legislation,” including those spending cuts, on a conventional basis and on a dynamic lifetime basis. (The dynamic distributional analysis considers the law’s impact over a lifetime and accounts for the economic impact on the overall economy.)
Either way, the model found that the new law largely benefits wealthy taxpayers.
“On a conventional basis, households in the first income quintile lose about $885 in 2030, reflecting net reductions in taxes and transfers, including cuts to Medicaid and SNAP,” the report said, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which was formerly known as food stamps. That same income group would lose an average of $165 in 2027, the report said.
“As spending cuts deepen over time, lower income households come out worse off,” the Penn Wharton Budget Model report said. Table 5 shows an average loss in 2030 of $1,090 for the second income quintile. That means that 40% of taxpayers – those with annual incomes of up to $52,999 – would see a reduction in average income in 2030.
“The top 10% of the income distribution receives about 80 percent of the total value of the legislation,” the Penn Wharton Budget Model report said of its conventional analysis, noting that under current tax law the top 10% “pay about 70% of all federal taxes.”
“On a dynamic lifetime basis, lower-income households and some in the middle class are worse off, as are all future generations,” the report went on to say. “The losses for lower-income groups are primarily driven by a reduced social safety net and lower wages associated with a lower capital stock, while losses for top-income groups are entirely the result of lower wages,” the report said of future generations.
We reached out to One Nation about the Penn Wharton Budget Model report and the 2024 Tax Foundation analysis cited in the ad, but we did not receive a response.
(We should also note, since the ad shows the grocery shoppers unhappy with the price of groceries, that those people mostly didn’t receive a new income tax cut, but rather avoided a tax increase that would have occurred if the 2017 tax provisions expired.)
Child Tax Credit
The ad next describes Ossoff as “ambitious and liberal,” saying he “voted with national Democrats to gut your child tax credit.”
Like the ad’s claim of a tax increase, this is also a reference to Ossoff’s vote against the OBBBA. There was no separate vote on a child tax credit.
As we referenced earlier, the 2017 TCJA doubled the CTC to a maximum of $2,000, and it was due to expire at the end of 2025. If it expired, the amount of the CTC would have reverted to the pre-2018 maximum of $1,000 per child. The OBBBA made the CTC permanent and increased the nonrefundable portion of the tax credit from $2,000 to $2,200. (The phrase “nonrefundable” means that families who don’t owe at least $2,200 in taxes do not get the full credit. The law capped the “refundable” portion of the tax credit for such families at $1,700.)
A Tax Policy Center analysis of the child tax credit in the new law found that “the lowest-income families are the least likely to benefit from the CTC,” adding that “families with low incomes also receive, on average, the smallest CTC benefit.” For example, those with “expanded cash income” of less than $10,000 would receive an average of only $250 from the child tax credit. (See figure 1.)
(A technical note: The TPC model’s “expanded cash income” is defined as a “broad measure of pre-tax income,” including government benefits such as food assistance.)
The TPC also noted that “roughly 17 million children live in families that do not receive the full $2,200 per child CTC because their families’ earnings are too low.”
While it is true that Ossoff did not vote for the OBBBA, the senator did vote for the COVID-era American Rescue Plan in March 2021 that increased the maximum child tax credit for one year from $2,000 to $3,600 per child. That law also made the CTC fully refundable.
The fully refundable CTC has been credited with significantly reducing child poverty.
“The 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion was one of the largest one-year increases in aid to low- and middle-income families in US history,” Jacob Bastian, an assistant professor at Rutgers University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, recently wrote for the Tax Policy Center. “Importantly, the expanded credit was fully refundable, so the lowest-income families who owed little or no federal income tax could receive it in full. The CTC expansion helped reduce child poverty to a record-low 5.2 percent.”
Collins, Ossoff’s Republican challenger, did not take office until January 2023, so he was not in the House of Representatives for the vote on the American Rescue Plan – which received no Republican support in the House. Like the OBBBA, the ARP was a large piece of legislation that lawmakers may have opposed for various reasons.
In a March 2021 letter to then-President Joe Biden, a group of senators – including Ossoff – urged Biden to make the one-year expansion of the fully refundable child tax credit permanent in his next recovery plan.
Social Security Taxes
During the 2024 president campaign, Trump promised that he would eliminate taxes on Social Security retirement benefits. That didn’t happen, but the Trump-backed OBBBA did include a provision that provided an additional $6,000 tax deduction for individual taxpayers 65 and older. (The bonus senior deduction is $12,000 for couples).
The new deduction will gradually phase out, beginning at $75,000 in income for individuals and $150,000 for married couples filing jointly. It expires in 2028.
Ossoff’s vote against the OBBBA is referenced when the One Nation ad says, “He even voted for higher taxes on Social Security recipients earning under $75,000.”
The ad doesn’t make this clear, but many Social Security recipients aren’t eligible for the new law’s additional tax deduction. That’s largely because many seniors already do not pay federal income taxes, as the Bipartisan Policy Center noted in an article last year on the new deduction.
Bipartisan Policy Center, June 12, 2025: The additional $6,000 tax deduction for seniors will not benefit households with taxable income below the enhanced standard deduction. Because Social Security benefits—a major source of income for older Americans—are not counted in taxable income … for approximately half of beneficiaries (and only partially counted in taxable income for the other half), the increased standard deduction in OBBB means that many older Americans with low income will not receive any benefit from the additional deduction.
According to the IRS, the standard deduction for seniors 65 and older in the 2025 tax year was $17,750 for single filers and $34,700 for married couples filing jointly.
A Tax Policy Center analysis last year estimated that the new senior deduction will benefit about 46% of all seniors. In addition to seniors who already pay no federal income tax, the Tax Policy Center said “Social Security recipients younger than 65 don’t qualify.”
“Higher-income seniors also are excluded because the extra deduction phases out starting at $75,000 for singles and $150,000 for joint filers, and it is gone entirely at $175,000 for singles and $250,000 for couples,” the Tax Policy Center report said.
The Treasury Department reported that more than 35 million seniors claimed the new bonus deduction this year. We don’t know how many of them were also Social Security recipients, but about 57 million Americans receive Social Security retirement benefits.
Ossoff and the One Big Beautiful Bill
During the debate on the OBBBA, Ossoff focused mostly on the bill’s changes to Medicaid and its failure to address the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credit that was due to expire at the end of 2025.
In an October 2025 report, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that OBBBA’s Medicaid provisions “will increase the number of people without health insurance by 7.5 million in 2034.” More than two-thirds of them — about 5.3 million able-bodied adults between age 19 and 64 who have no dependents under the age of 14 — will not be able to satisfy or verify a requirement that they perform at least 80 hours each month of “community engagement” to remain eligible for Medicaid, beginning Jan. 1, 2027. Community engagement activities include work, job training, education and community service, the CBO report explained.
KFF, an independent health policy research organization, published an analysis a few weeks after the OBBBA became law that said changes to Medicaid will “reduce federal Medicaid spending over a decade by an estimated $911 billion.” As we’ve written, the Medicaid savings will largely come from the tightened work and reporting requirements.
Additional savings will come from “restricting state-directed payments to hospitals, nursing facilities, and other providers,” the KFF analysis said.
What are state-directed payments? The Commonwealth Fund explains that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services since 2016 has allowed states in certain circumstances to use state-directed payments to require Medicaid managed care plans to increase provider rates for nursing homes, hospitals and other providers.
“State-directed payments play a key role for hospitals and other providers that serve Medicaid patients, bridging the gap between base Medicaid rates and the actual cost of care,” the Commonwealth Fund report said.
Ossoff co-sponsored an amendment to the OBBBA that would have stripped the provision on state-directed payments from the bill, calling it a threat to patient care and the financial viability of nursing homes and hospitals that rely on Medicaid funding. The attempt failed.
After Vice President JD Vance in his role as Senate president cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the OBBBA in the Senate, Ossoff called the bill “a disaster” for Georgia and the U.S.
“It guts the Medicaid program and puts nursing homes and hospitals at risk. It will drive up health insurance premiums for working and middle-class families in Georgia, and it takes a hatchet to the fast-growing [green energy] industry that is driving Georgia’s economic development,” Ossoff said.
As for the ACA, the CBO said in an August 2025 letter to three House committee chairmen that 2.1 million would lose coverage because of the new law’s changes to the Affordable Care Act marketplace — including a tougher verification process that “requires people to actively affirm their eligibility to enroll in marketplace coverage and to claim the premium tax credit.”
The OBBBA also did not address the looming expiration of the enhanced ACA premium tax credits, which reduce health care costs for people who buy insurance on the ACA marketplace. As we’ve explained, the enhanced tax credits were due to expire under Democratic-passed legislation; the issue was a separate matter from the expiring 2017 tax cuts, though Democrats wanted an extension to be part of the OBBBA.
Ossoff offered an amendment that would have extended the enhanced ACA premium tax credits. To pay for extending them, the amendment would have raised the income tax rate on households with taxable income of more than $10 million. The amendment failed in a party-line vote and the enhanced tax credits ended on Dec. 31, 2025. As a result, ACA out-of-pocket premiums have increased by an average of 58% in 2026, according to KFF.
We take no position on the OBBBA, but there is more to the new law and Ossoff’s record than Georgia voters get in the One Nation ad.
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The halls of Mountain View Academy in Dandridge, Tennessee. ProPublica and WPLN reporting found that Wayne Halfway House, which operates Mountain View, failed to report multiple abuse incidents to the state as required. Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica
Four Democratic Tennessee state lawmakers sent a letter to the Department of Children’s Services demanding answers about safety and oversight in the state’s juvenile justice facilities.
The letter cites a recent WPLN and ProPublica investigation that found that juvenile justice facilities run by Tennessee businessman Jason Crews repeatedly failed to report abuse of children and other serious incidents to the state as required. The reporting involved interviews with dozens of former staff and youth, along with a review of emergency call logs, company records and state documents. Crews and his company Wayne Halfway House run all three of the state’s highest-security youth prisons.
“The allegations that serious physical and sexual abuse, dangerous restraints, injuries, and other critical incidents have gone unreported by WHH demand an urgent, transparent, and independently verifiable response from the Department of Children’s Services,” lawmakers wrote.
After WPLN and ProPublica sent a copy of the letter to the company, a spokesperson said that Wayne Halfway House “continues to meet or exceed performance standards set by Tennessee,” citing state audits. The spokesperson also said that Wayne Halfway House has helped more than 200 youth earn a high school diploma or equivalent in the last three years.
In emailed statements to WPLN and ProPublica about the previous reporting, the company said it follows state policy and law and “vehemently denies” that Crews or his company ever discouraged staff from reporting serious or life-threatening incidents to the state. It described former employees who spoke with us as “untrustworthy sources” with a “clear bias” against the company and called their allegations “substantially flawed.”
Lawmakers are asking for answers to several questions raised by this investigation, including what steps the department is taking to address the allegations, how much money the state spends to place youth in Wayne Halfway House facilities, and who is being considered to operate new juvenile facilities the department is building.
“We also request an opportunity to meet with Department leadership to discuss these issues, review the Department’s response, and identify the legislative and administrative actions necessary to ensure that no child’s safety depends on abuse first becoming a news story,” lawmakers wrote.
In response to the news organizations’ initial investigation, DCS said it is looking into incidents that were uncovered by the reporting. DCS did not respond to a request for comment on the letter.
Lawmakers noted that the latest investigation joins a “long and deeply troubling record of reports” on juvenile justice facilities across the state. They referenced previous reporting from WPLN and ProPublica that found a county-run East Tennessee juvenile detention center was locking kids in solitary confinement in violation of state law. The department said it would take steps to address the findings from the 2023 investigation, and the superintendent of the facility, Richard Bean, later stepped down.
State Sen. Heidi Campbell, who signed onto the letter, also pushed for independent oversight of juvenile justice facilities in 2024, after WPLN and ProPublica’s reporting from East Tennessee. Campbell and others working on that bill said a lobbyist for Wayne Halfway House asked them to exempt privately run facilities from oversight. The oversight bill eventually failed. A lobbyist for Wayne Halfway House told the news organizations at the time that the company was concerned about giving regulatory power to an outside agency “without more extensive consideration.”
Lawmakers are also worried about the state’s increased spending on juvenile justice, especially as Tennessee plans to spend more than $400 million to build more facilities. The cost to hold 31 youth at a Wayne Halfway House facility for a year is roughly the same amount it would take the state to expand grocery benefits for 700,000 school-aged children during the summer, lawmakers wrote.
“Given the amount of money Tennessee is currently spending, and plans to invest, in juvenile justice and residential facilities, we have serious concerns about repeated findings and allegations of lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability in these facilities,” lawmakers wrote.
Photo: Classroom at the Sussex Academy, a charter school in Georgetown.
Five-year federal grant will support new and expanding programs while adding oversight and accountability measures
DOVER, Del. — Delaware has secured a five-year, $16 million federal grant to expand access to public charter schools while strengthening the oversight, financial monitoring and support intended to ensure those schools deliver results for students.
Grant could add about 1,900 seats
The Charter Schools Program grant begins Oct. 1. At least 90% of the money — approximately $14.4 million — will be distributed through competitive subgrants supporting the planning, opening, replication and expansion of charter schools.
Proposals will be evaluated based on educational quality, demonstrated community need, organizational readiness, financial sustainability and evidence of demand. If enough proposals meet those standards, the initiative has a five-year goal of increasing Delaware’s charter school enrollment capacity by approximately 10%.
About 19,000 students currently attend Delaware’s 23 charter schools. A 10% capacity increase could create room for approximately 1,900 additional students, although actual growth will depend on the proposals received and approved.
“Expanding opportunities for students cannot be about adding seats for the sake of adding seats,” Delaware Secretary of Education Cindy Marten said. “We have to start with what students and communities need and be equally focused on quality, strong implementation and accountability.”
Grant targets unmet educational needs
The Delaware Department of Education said the grant will target educational needs that are not being fully met by existing programs. Potential areas include alternative and therapeutic education, career and workforce pathways, rural education, dual-language instruction, literacy programs and flexible options for students who are older than their classmates or have not earned enough credits to graduate on schedule.
The initiative also seeks to improve charter school access for economically and educationally disadvantaged students, multilingual learners, students with disabilities and other groups that have faced barriers to educational opportunities.
“Charter schools are one part of Delaware’s public education system,” Marten said. “This investment gives us an opportunity to support strong educational models where there is documented need, learn from what is working, and use those lessons to expand opportunity across public education.”
Priority for underserved students and communities
Existing charter schools applying for replication or expansion funding will be judged partly on their academic performance and operational track records.
Proposals serving underserved communities, addressing transportation barriers or expanding opportunities for multilingual learners and students with disabilities may receive priority consideration. Programs offering workforce-connected education or replicating successful school models also may receive additional consideration.
State officials emphasized, however, that priority status will not allow an applicant to bypass the program’s quality, readiness or financial requirements.
Investment extends beyond individual schools
A portion of the federal award will be used to provide charter schools with technical assistance in governance, board development, fiscal management, regulatory compliance, leadership development and program implementation. The state also plans to establish peer-learning programs and professional communities where educators and school leaders can share successful practices.
The grant also calls for stronger charter-authorizing practices, including annual reviews of each participating school’s academic, financial and organizational performance.
“We are grateful for the partnership between the Delaware Department of Education and the Delaware Charter Schools Network,” said Kendall Massett, the network’s executive director. “We are equally grateful for this investment in our education system, and for what it makes possible for students across our state.”
Massett said the grant reflects “a shared vision for collaboration, flexibility, and support for the people and strategies best positioned to make a difference for students statewide.”
Schools will face continuing monitoring
Schools receiving subgrants will undergo continuing fiscal, program and performance monitoring. That process will include progress reports, budget reviews, site visits, performance evaluations and reviews of implementation milestones.
The Department of Education said it will use those findings to identify risks, direct additional assistance to struggling programs and take corrective action when necessary. An independent outside evaluator also will assess the initiative throughout the five-year grant period.
Lessons and successful practices identified through the program will be shared with both charter and traditional public schools through professional development, peer networks and other cross-sector programs.
First competition planned during opening year
The Community Funding Accelerator assisted Delaware with identifying the federal funding opportunity, determining the state’s eligibility and preparing the application.
During the grant’s first year, the Department of Education plans to establish its management and accountability systems, consult with education stakeholders and provide technical assistance to prospective applicants. It also will release the first competitive funding opportunity, train application reviewers and select the first group of grant recipients.
Details about eligibility, application requirements, available award amounts and deadlines will be announced as the first competition is developed.
To Go Box
What: Federal Charter Schools Program grant
Award: $16 million over five years
Start date: Oct. 1, 2026
School funding: At least 90%, or approximately $14.4 million, will support competitive charter school subgrants
Potential uses: Planning and opening new charter schools and replicating or expanding successful schools
Statewide goal: Increase charter enrollment capacity by approximately 10%, subject to qualified proposals
Current charter enrollment: About 19,000 students attending 23 schools
How to apply: The Delaware Department of Education will release eligibility requirements, application instructions and deadlines as the first funding competition is developed
Learn more: Visit the Delaware Department of Education website at education.delaware.gov
RICHMOND, Virginia — Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones is demanding answers from the Department of Homeland Security after a whistleblower alleged federal employees improperly accessed state voter lookup systems while searching for noncitizen voters.
Jones said Thursday that the activity could violate several Virginia election laws, including rules limiting access to voter information. In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Jones said Virginia’s voter lookup tools require users to attest under penalty of law that they are accessing their own records. He also directed DHS to preserve access logs, training materials and related communications.
The whistleblower report, released by Democratic Senate leaders, alleges U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees were given less than two hours of training and instructed to review lists supplied by DHS for possible “unlawful voters.” Employees were reportedly expected to examine about 40 people per day.
DHS has defended its broader effort to identify noncitizen voting, while the Trump administration has argued that citizenship checks are necessary to protect election integrity. Federal officials have also sought detailed voter information from numerous states, though several related efforts have faced court setbacks.
Jones asked DHS to stop any unauthorized access while Virginia reviews whether state law was violated.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republican campaign groups are directing significant money and high-profile surrogates into states that President Donald Trump comfortably carried, as several 2026 races remain competitive less than seven weeks before the midterm elections.
Vice President JD Vance campaigned in Kansas this week for Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, who faces Democrat Adam Hamilton. A recent Co/efficient poll showed Marshall leading 49% to 44%, despite Trump carrying Kansas by more than 16 percentage points in 2024. The Washington Examiner reported that MAGA Inc. helped organize the event.
Vance is also campaigning in Iowa, where Republican gubernatorial nominee Zach Lahn faces Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand and Republican Ashley Hinson is running against Democrat Josh Turek for Senate. The Associated Press described both contests as closely contested.
Outside spending is substantial elsewhere. Senate Leadership Fund has committed tens of millions across Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas, while Republican groups are also spending offensively in Michigan, Georgia and New Hampshire.
Trump-aligned groups have committed more than $130 million nationwide, while Axios reported roughly $390 million in Senate advertising has been allocated for the post-Labor Day period.
Landmark legislation designed to alert consumers to where their drugs were made is headed for a full Senate vote, but safety experts say the transparency bill has been stripped of two of its most critical provisions.
Medications made at these facilities were linked to thousands of reported adverse reactions in patients.
The bill aims to allow doctors and patients to see on the label exactly where a medication was made — details that had largely been withheld until now, even from Congress. Current generic drug labels often include only the location of the packager or distributor, which can be thousands of miles away from the actual manufacturer.
One provision made the law particularly strong, experts said: The label was supposed to include a unique code that the Food and Drug Administration uses to identify factories. That code would have made it easier for researchers and the public to track the regulatory histories of specific facilities.
The requirements also were supposed to take effect as early as a year after the bill’s passage.
Senators have now struck both of those provisions. People familiar with the deliberations said lawmakers worried the requirements would raise drug prices and weaken national security by revealing the precise locations where lifesaving medications are made.
The unique identifier requirement has been removed from the bill, and the timeline for companies to come into compliance was extended to five years.
“It’s just a clear watering down of the original bill,” said retired Army Col. Vic Suarez, a former medical supply-chain commander who has been leading a push for more domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing.
He and others also questioned why drug companies need multiple years to comply.
“Five years after it passes might as well be a lifetime,” said Dr. Kevin Schulman, a professor of medicine and health policy at Stanford University who has researched the economic pressures that lead to poor-quality generic drugs. “Why is it that the supply chain, the medical distributors and the retailers don’t want to make sure that they supply the highest-quality product?”
In a joint press release, Scott and Gillibrand praised the bill’s progress in the Senate, calling it a “massive win for consumer safety and transparency,” but did not address the changes.
A representative from Gillibrand’s office said the five-year delay is meant to give the FDA time for rulemaking, which is a complicated, often yearslong process used to introduce new regulations. The delay would also give manufacturers time to come into compliance and redesign their labels, the representative said.
But Peter Baker, a former FDA inspector whose work involved the very companies impacted by the bill, said that amount of time is unnecessary.
“If they wanted to do it in one year, they could,” Baker said. “I would love to hear their justification on why they need five years to develop some rules and guidance on transparency. … I mean, it’s a simple label change.”
The new version of the legislation also removes the key requirement to include a unique facility identification number on labels, called a DUNS number, which would have allowed the public to more easily trace a generic drug and its active ingredients to the factories where they were made. In some cases, that identifier could also be used to find FDA inspection reports that describe contamination and other safety breakdowns on factory floors.
ProPublica used that ID number to collect data for Rx Inspector, a first-of-its-kind tool that allows consumers and doctors to look up where more than 40,000 generic drugs are made. Pharmacists and patients are already using the tool to learn more about the drugs they take and prescribe.
Under the bill’s updated language, drug labels will only be required to include factory addresses, which can be inconsistent and hard to trace to a manufacturing facility. A single address in India, for example, can house multiple factories, each producing its own drugs, or each with a slight variation on the same address.
ProPublica reporters ran into this issue when collecting data for the Rx Inspector tool. In 69% of prescription drug labels, reporters found a generic drug manufacturer’s DUNS number and were able to directly connect it to a specific facility. However, when only a manufacturer’s address was available, linking a drug to a particular facility became much harder, requiring a complicated process of automated address verification, geolocation and extensive manual review.
Experts also worried about certain language in the legislation that could allow manufacturers to avoid identifying where their factories are at all. Representatives for the bill’s sponsors have said that manufacturers are required to identify the factory where drugs were made, but the legislation only mentions a “place of business.” Drugmakers could potentially list the address for their headquarters or a subsidiary location in the United States rather than a factory overseas.
“If, in fact, ‘place of business’ can be interpreted as the location of the importer or the headquarters or something like that, it would be no different than what we have today,” said Ohio State University professor John Gray, who testified before the Senate Special Committee on Aging, led by Scott and Gillibrand.
“Then we’ll be right back to where we are,” Gray said. “It’ll say ‘Manufactured for So-and-So in New York City,’ but it’s actually made somewhere else around the world.”
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Learn more about this story on ProPublica’s podcast “Paper Trail.”
People familiar with negotiations over the bill’s language said they are confident that manufacturers won’t have a loophole. The changes to the bill were primarily made as a compromise between committee offices and stakeholders, they said, and the FDA will have final say in what counts as an acceptable address.
The Association for Accessible Medicines, the generic drug lobbying group, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A spokesperson for the association previously spoke out against the bill to ProPublica, saying the additional requirements would cause “significant costs in exchange for limited return.”
The lobbying group spent over $1 million between January and July on healthcare and generics-related bills, including the Clear Labels Act, according to its public filings.
The trade group for brand-name manufacturers did not respond to a request for comment. Previously, a spokesperson for the brand-name trade group said the industry would “welcome conversations about how to strengthen the biopharmaceutical supply chain.”
The bill faced pushback from some lawmakers on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H, raised the national security concerns, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-K.Y., said he worried about creating an additional hurdle to drug production.
Ultimately, the revised bill passed the committee in July, with only Paul dissenting. The full Senate is set to take up the measure; a date has not yet been scheduled.
Congress will work with the FDA to make sure the law is properly interpreted and enforced, according to those familiar with the negotiations.
Baker said the burden of ensuring compliance will fall to already-overworked inspectors, who will be forced to determine whether manufacturers are skirting the address requirement. It would be easier to require the unique identifier, he said, because inspectors could more easily verify the information.
“The more flexibility they allow, the more complex it is to enforce it,” Baker said.
Baker also pushed back against concerns about a potential national security threat. He said data about where U.S. drugs come from is already well known, so including factory information on labels wouldn’t pose a significant risk.
“It’s a public health concern over a national security concern,” he said. “I would say that those risks outweigh the national security concerns.”
The Rafael Baez Baseball Academy practices in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Christopher Gregory-Rivera for ProPublica
If you have seen the headlines of the major investigation we recently published, “The Dominican Baseball Factory,” you may have wondered: Why is ProPublica, with its serious-sounding mission of accountability and its focus on abuses of power, reporting on baseball?
The answer would be: Exactly.
Baseball fans have long marveled at how the Dominican Republic, a tiny island nation with a population akin to Ohio, has produced so many brilliant players — roughly 10% of the major league. Major League Baseball and the owners of its 30 teams have regularly harvested bumper crops of sluggers to build their rosters and their fanbase, including most recently the Toronto Blue Jays’ Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the New York Mets’ Juan Soto and the San Diego Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr., whose playing contracts total more than $1.6 billion.
“Paper Trail” Podcast
Learn more about this story on ProPublica’s podcast “Paper Trail.”
But as with many such tales of extraordinary success, the origin story is much darker.
When we hired reporter Gus Garcia-Roberts from The Washington Post as our first reporter dedicated to sports, he arrived with an idea: He’d long heard that the Dominican Republic system that had churned out so many stars was deeply problematic. Garcia-Roberts wanted to dig into that world, not just to explain how it operated but to identify the individuals who were taking advantage of the young players and those who were allowing it to happen. What if he was afforded the time to track a promising young player — a potential superstar — as he was plucked from obscurity by a major league team?
Even prepped, Garcia-Roberts was surprised by what he found: For generations, poor parents in the Dominican Republic have shunted their children into an unforgiving juggernaut of baseball academies praying for a chance at a life-altering signing bonus from an MLB team. Since the bonus could not be delivered until age 16, teams had begun locking up talent younger and younger with verbal IOUs. As for the kids who don’t make the cut, well, they paid with their childhoods, and sometimes with their health.
Garcia-Roberts also detailed the rapacious industry that had sprung up around these young players and their parents: Trainers and moneylenders, he found, were siphoning away those signing bonuses with predatory, high-interest loans and other, often questionable, claims before they even arrived.
Significantly, Garcia-Roberts found, MLB itself has long known about the often brutal world surrounding its youngest prospects. The players union has as well; Dominican players, led by former Boston Red Sox star David “Big Papi” Ortiz, have argued against efforts to establish an international draft — a move that would end early bonuses, cutting off a revenue stream for moneylenders. Ortiz told players, according to an audio message, that an international draft would be “trouble” for people in the Dominican Republic. In a statement sent through his lawyer, Ortiz told Garcia-Roberts that his opposition to the proposal “was never motivated by personal interests.”
There’s big money in sports, and with it lots of reasons to explore how it is being wielded and who is paying the cost. And that is why ProPublica is diving in.
These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find a slice of society untouched by the Big Money tentacles of the sports industry — and the lack of accountability that often goes along with them. Got a gleaming new stadium in town? Your tax dollars likely paid for much or all of it, despite its billionaire owners (while you may not be able to afford a ticket — unless it’s to a Mets game). Got a kid in youth sports? You may have experienced the boggling cost of travel teams or noted that private equity is buying up leagues and tournaments. Watch sports on TV? The ads for online gambling can seem as ubiquitous as the score, luring legions into a new scourge of addiction. And the Los Angeles Lakers just sold for $12.5 billion! With a B, amid, of course, a scandal about how the previous owner financed his purchase.
All of that big money is ramping up just as the landscape of sports journalism has contracted along with the larger media industry.
What ProPublica brings to sports is the time, the skill set and the resources to go beyond the games and the individual stories. Our approach to investigative reporting required Garcia-Roberts to get inside the system, to find out how it works and who is being harmed, and then reveal who is responsible and who is preventing the problems from being fixed.
Without the expectation to cover games or daily sports news, reporters like Garcia-Roberts won’t be hamstrung by what one of my colleagues called “the conundrum of access.” You dig out the unsightly bits and suddenly your sources dry up and with them your scoops. And we haven’t covered a topic so long that we have become blind to its flaws.
This isn’t ProPublica’s first dive into sports investigations. In 2021, reporters Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott and Ellis Simani were scrutinizing a trove of federal tax data and noticed that the billionaire owners of the nation’s sports teams were taking fat write-offs on team assets, from media deals to player contracts.
You can expect to see more of ProPublica’s reporting on sports in coming months, and like the box scores, they will be spelling out who is winning and who is losing. That’ll just likely mean something different to us. If you’d like to read those stories, we’d love to send our Big Story newsletter right to your inbox. In the meantime, if you have a story tip for a terrific sports investigation, or just something sports-related you think we should know, we’d love to hear it. Please get in touch with reporter Gus Garcia-Roberts or contact ProPublica via any of these secure methods.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “needs to go,” backing either impeachment or removal by President Donald Trump as criticism of the Pentagon chief expands within the GOP.
Tillis made the comments Thursday after Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky introduced eight articles of impeachment accusing Hegseth of constitutional and legal violations involving U.S. military operations in Iran, Venezuela and Yemen. Massie also accused Hegseth of defying congressional war-powers restrictions and retaliating against critics.
“I’ll let the House do what the House is gonna do,” Tillis told reporters. “We’ve got a management problem here. He needs to go.” Tillis added that having Trump replace Hegseth would be the “most expedient route.”
The North Carolina senator voted to confirm Hegseth but has become an increasingly vocal critic. Earlier this month, Tillis said he had “never witnessed more inept management” at the Pentagon and urged Trump to install new leadership.
House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers into an early recess Wednesday rather than hold the anticipated impeachment vote. Massie said Republican leaders were concerned that additional GOP members could support his effort.
The House would have to approve impeachment before any Senate trial could occur.
BOISE, Idaho — A Boise minister convicted of misdemeanor trespassing after refusing to leave Gov. Brad Little’s office during a protest over transgender-related legislation will not serve additional jail time.
Idaho 4th District Judge Adam Kimball sentenced the Rev. Sara LaWall on Thursday to fines and court costs, while crediting her for the day she already spent in jail following her April arrest. LaWall, minister of the Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, was among nine protesters arrested after remaining inside the governor’s office after it closed.
A jury convicted LaWall earlier this month after viewing body-camera footage showing an Idaho State Police trooper repeatedly instructing protesters to leave. LaWall acknowledged remaining after those warnings but described her actions as civil disobedience intended to draw attention to legislation affecting transgender Idahoans.
The April protest followed Little’s signing of legislation restricting transgender people’s bathroom use. Protesters were also opposing another measure requiring teachers and health professionals in certain circumstances to notify parents about a minor’s transgender identity. Little later signed that measure as well.
Kimball described LaWall’s conduct as “peaceful” and “considerate” but said protesters should not violate the law when their concerns go unheard. Three other trespassing cases stemming from the demonstration are also headed to trial.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told members of Children’s Health Defense that they have a “strong and steadfast friend at the White House,” appearing Thursday at the organization he led before entering government.
Kennedy delivered the remarks as the United States experiences its worst measles outbreak in decades. Pennsylvania has reported more than 690 cases and four measles-associated deaths this year, all involving unvaccinated people, according to state officials. Kennedy has disputed how some deaths are being classified, while Pennsylvania has requested emergency CDC assistance.
During his roughly 90-minute speech, Kennedy said changes to federal vaccine policy must proceed within legal limits but assured attendees that his administration allies were continuing their efforts. “We are doing this one day at a time,” he said. The conference also featured longtime vaccine opponents, including Andrew Wakefield, whose research claiming a vaccine-autism connection was discredited.
Kennedy briefly addressed measles deaths while emphasizing what he described as vaccine injuries. Extensive scientific research has found no causal connection between vaccines and autism.
The appearance comes as confidence in childhood vaccines has declined. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found 76% of Americans considered measles vaccines safe, down from 84% in 2020.
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