News Reel

The U.S. average gas price has jumped 48 cents since last week, with experts predicting that higher fuel costs could persist for months.

After a sharp drop in early trading, stocks recovered part of those losses as oil prices fell back below $100.

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down after overseeing the platform's growth from a Twitter research project into a 40-million-user alternative to X. "As Bluesky matures, the company needs a seasoned operator focused on scaling and execution, while I return to what I do best: building new things," Graber wrote in a statement. She will be transitioning to a new Chief Innovation Officer role while Venture capitalist Toni Schneider will serve as interim CEO until the board searches for a permanent replacement. Wired reports: Graber joined Bluesky in 2019, when it was a research project within Twitter focused on developing a decentralized framework for the social web. She became the company's first chief executive officer in 2021, when it spun out into an independent entity. She oversaw the platform's remarkable rise and the growing pains it experienced as it transformed from a quirky Twitter offshoot to a full-fledged alternative to X. Schneider tells WIRED that he intends to help Bluesky "become not just the best open social app, but the foundation for a whole new generation of user-owned networks." Schneider, who will continue working as a partner at the venture capital firm True Ventures while at Bluesky, was previously CEO of the Wordpress parent company, Automattic, from 2006 to 2014. He also served as its CEO again in 2024 while top executive Matt Mullenweg went on a sabbatical. During that time, Schneider met Graber and became an adviser to Bluesky's leadership. In a blog post announcing his new role, Schneider said he plans to emphasize scaling, describing his job as "to help set up Bluesky's next phase of growth." This isn't the end for Graber and Bluesky. She will transition to become the company's chief innovation officer, a role focused on Bluesky's technology stack rather than its business operations. The position was created for her. Graber, who began her career as a software engineer, has always sounded the most enthusiastic when discussing Bluesky's technology rather than its revenue streams. Bluesky's board of directors will appoint the next permanent CEO. The members include Jabber founder Jeremie Miller, crypto-focused VC Kinjal Shah, TechDirt founder Mike Masnick, and Graber. (Twitter founder Jack Dorsey was originally part of the board but quit in 2024.) This means Graber will have input on her successor. The talent search is still in early stages.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Trump's assurances that a rising U.S. death toll and soaring energy prices will be temporary and worth the pain are failing to assuage jittery investors.

Two men from Pennsylvania are facing federal charges for the incident. Video captured someone yelling "Allahu Akbar" just as a protester threw an "ignited device" during an anti-Islam demonstration in New York City.

Mr. Butterfield, a onetime aide to the president, electrified the Watergate investigation with his bombshell testimony about Nixon’s secret recording system.

President Trump told CBS News the U.S. war with Iran is "very complete," and said the U.S. "could do a lot" about the Strait of Hormuz.

• Pair also bet on Jones to receive yellow card

• Players overlapped for one season at Columbus Crew

Major League Soccer announced on Monday that it has given Derrick Jones and Yaw Yeboah lifetime bans for “extensive” gambling, including on games involving their own teams. In one instance, the pair won a bet that Jones would receive a yellow card.

MLS said it had received “suspicious betting alerts” and retained a law firm to investigate. The players were placed on administrative leave in late October 2025 as the review ran its course. Eventually, the investigation found that both players betted on soccer extensively throughout the 2024 and 2025 seasons, including on their own teams.

Debt consolidation could help you simplify payments and cut interest costs if you know which loans to consider.

Request for records related to election audit appears latest part of Trump effort to spread false claims about voting

A federal grand jury subpoenaed Arizona’s legislature for records related the state senate’s widely criticized review of the 2020 election, the state senate president said on Monday, in what appears to be the latest part of the Trump administration’s efforts to spread false claims about the 2020 election and voting in the United States.

Warren Petersen, the president of the Arizona state senate, confirmed on X on Monday the legislature had received a subpoena related to records of its review of the election results in Maricopa county, the most populous in the state. He added that “the FBI has the records”.

Iran’s foreign minister says ‘Iran does not want to harm ordinary Americans’; Trump criticizes choice of Mojtaba Khamenei as next supreme leader

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Donald Trump has said a decision on when to end the war with Iran will be a “mutual” one he’ll make together with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Times of Israel has reported.

It said Trump also claimed in a brief telephone interview on Sunday that Iran would have destroyed Israel if he and Netanyahu had not been around. The US president said:

Iran was going to destroy Israel and everything else around it … We’ve worked together. We’ve destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel.

I think it’s mutual … a little bit. We’ve been talking. I’ll make a decision at the right time, but everything’s going to be taken into account.

Chancellor says she is ready to help households with rising costs but stops short of setting out specific steps

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Britain is likely to be hit by rising inflation because of the US war with Iran, the chancellor has said, as she suggested that a “rapid de-escalation” would be the best protection against a jump in energy prices.

Rachel Reeves stopped short of setting out any new relief for families who might be hit by rising prices, rebuffing calls to ditch a planned 5p rise in fuel duty in September.

The price of Brent crude oil rocketed to as high as $119.50 on Sunday, a jump of 29%.

The Bank of England is now expected to keep interest rates on hold through 2026, with a small possibility of a rise in 2027.

The prospect of a prolonged conflict and higher inflation also pushed global markets lower.

The AA said drivers could “consider cutting out some non-essential journeys and changing their driving style to conserve fuel”.

President says lawmakers must ‘immediately’ pass SAVE America act, which would require proof of citizenship at voter registration and significantly curtail mail-in voting

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Donald Trump has urged the Australian government to grant asylum to five members of the Iranian women’s football team, amid reports that they refused to return home following the team’s elimination from the Women’s Asian Cup and were taken into the protection of Australian police.

As my colleague Martin Farrer reports, speculation had mounted for days that some of the players would try to seek asylum in Australia they had been called “traitors” for refusing to sing their national anthem before their opening game of the tournament last week.

SAN DIEGO, March 9, 2026 — HPCwire, the leading publication for news and information for the high performance computing industry, today unveiled its People to Watch for 2026. This feature highlights key community members who are driving the industry forward, people you should be keeping an eye on in the year to come.

Over the course of the program, HPCwire has recognized more than 275 HPC luminaries who have gone on to achieve extraordinary things. One dozen additional individuals are being honored in 2026, the 24th year of the People to Watch program.

“Selecting 12 People to Watch is profoundly difficult, considering the immense amount of intelligence, creativity, and drive that exists in the HPC community,” said HPCwire Managing Editor Alex Woodie. “There are many individuals worthy of this honor, but I feel confident that the 2026 People to Watch exemplify the relentless pursuit of excellence and progress that this program represents.”

This year’s group of People to Watch is marked by the transformative impact that AI is having on the fields of science and engineering. Despite the enormous potential for automation that AI brings to many fields, including scientific computing, none of it works without people — people like the ones we are proud to honor. Our 12 People to Watch for 2026 are at the forefront of these trends, adapting new technology to our rapidly-changing world in order to unlock the answers to the biggest societal challenges of our time and make the impossible, possible.

The 2026 HPCwire People to Watch selections are:

Rosa Badia
HPC Software Research Area Director, Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)

Ian Colle
Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer, Penguin Solutions

Eric Demers
SVP, GPU IP Engineering, Intel Data Center Group

Jay Gambetta
Director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow

Dario Gil
Under Secretary for Science, U.S. Department of Energy

Bastian Koller
Managing Director High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS)

Elizabeth L’Heureux
Principal Head of HPC, BP

Emmanuel Le Roux
Senior Vice President, Head of Bull at Atos Group

Thomas Lippert
Director, Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC)

Satoshi Matsuoka
Director, RIKEN Center for Computational Science

Samantika Sury
Fellow, Chief Hardware Architect and VP, HPC and AI Solutions, HPE

Kathy Yelick
Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and Vice Chancellor for Research, UC Berkeley

To read exclusive interviews with each Person to Watch, please visit: www.hpcwire.com/people-to-watch-2026.

About HPCwire

HPCwire is a news site and weekly newsletter covering the fastest computers in the world and the people who run them. As the trusted source for HPC news since 1987, HPCwire serves as the publication of record on the issues, opportunities, challenges, and community developments relevant to the global High Performance Computing space. Its reporting covers the vendors, technologies, users, and the uses of high performance, AI- and data-intensive computing within academia, government, science, and industry. Subscribe now at www.hpcwire.com.

About TCI Media

TCI Media (formerly Tabor Communications Inc.) is the home of the Wire publications: AIwire, HPCwire, BigDATAwire, and QCwire, which broadly cover Advanced Scale technologies for scientific and technical computing. The Wire publications closely follow the convergence of AI, HPC, and Big Data, and the evolution of Quantum Computing. Together, they unify the IT communities that we serve, providing news, analysis, and information to educate and engage users and decision-makers seeking high performance and advanced scale computing solutions for scientific and technical workloads across AI, HPC, Big Data, and Quantum Computing. More information can be found at www.tci-media.co.

Source: TCI Media

The post HPCwire Unveils 2026 People to Watch appeared first on HPCwire.

• QB agreed $212.4m extension with team in 2024

• Falcons reportedly interested in taking on QB

• Kansas City set to beef up running game

• Mike Evans joins 49ers after leaving Tampa Bay

The Miami Dolphins are moving on from Tua Tagovailoa, the quarterback they drafted with the fifth overall pick in 2020 in hopes of turning the franchise’s fortunes around.

“As we move forward, we will be focused on infusing competition across the roster and establishing a strong foundation for this team as we work towards building a sustained winner,” Dolphins general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan said in a statement on Monday.

ORLANDO, Fla., March 9, 2026 — Only one out of every five data and analytic (D&A) or AI leaders are concerned that uncertain costs will limit AI value according to Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company.

A Gartner survey of 353 D&A and AI leaders from November through December 2025 found that this has led to only 44% of organizations adopting financial guardrails or AI FinOPs practices.

Gartner analysts Adam Ronthal and Georgia O’Callaghan on stage at Gartner Data & Analytics Summit in Orlando, Florida. Credit: Gartner, Inc.

“Where adoption rates for AI deployment have grown from just two out of five organizations in 2024, to four out of five organizations today, D&A leaders must achieve clarity and focus on ROI to better achieve the growing AI goals and ambitions of their organizations,” said Adam Ronthal, VP Analyst at Gartner. “D&A leaders must realize they are responsible for delivering real value in the midst of all this AI hype and fears of an AI bubble that might burst.”

“Getting to value is often measured using ROI, which D&A leaders need to think of as more than just a financial measure,” said Georgia O’Callaghan, Director Analyst at Gartner. “There are three ways to approach value that will help D&A leaders steer their organizations safely and effectively through the turbulent AI value waters.”

During the opening keynote at the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit, taking place here through Wednesday, Gartner analysts discussed these three ways to derive value from AI.

Set AI Ambition

Increased acceleration and uncertainty, combined with concerns about trust and control, drive the need for continuous learning and adaptation.

“D&A leaders may be experimenting with AI and learning a lot, but that also means they risk falling behind because everyone is experimenting,” said Ronthal. “D&A leaders should set their AI-ambition to help them maximize value from the insights their data provides, together with the knowledge and intuition of their team. This provides a return on intelligence.”

To set this level of ambition, D&A leaders must radically rethink the impact of AI on D&A, set a shared vision and determine their level of AI ambition, take AI leadership, decide their role and manage the unpredictable and hidden costs of AI early.

Strengthen AI Foundations

Without strong foundations, AI will remain what it is for most organizations today; an expensive experiment.

“Expecting AI or GenAI to compensate for delayed upgrades, siloed teams and years of technical debt is wishful thinking,” said O’Callaghan. “D&A leaders must make sure their data is AI-ready, prevent exposing the wrong data to the wrong people and avoid inaccuracies, misunderstandings and hallucinations with a well-designed context layer. This provides a return on integrity.”

To create strong AI foundations and reduce risk, D&A leaders should align their foundational initiatives with their AI ambition level, make governance a value accelerator and create a single, unified context layer.

Empower People for AI Transformation

While organizations change at a rapid pace, humans have a finite capacity to incorporate change. AI readiness grows much faster than human readiness.

“D&A leaders must make the shift from thinking about roles to focusing on skills with respect to AI,” said Ronthal. “D&A leaders will get value from their investments in developing their workforce. By focusing on skills, mindset, and behavioral change, they can unlock both individual and collective potential. This will increase employee engagement and productivity, making their organization more adaptive to change. Ultimately, this provides a return on individuals.”

To empower people for AI-driven transformation, D&A leaders must substantially budget for change management, prioritize mindset and skillset over toolset, address employee concerns with a skills-development roadmap and also pilot fusion teams of blended human and artificial intelligence.

About Gartner

Gartner (NYSE: IT) delivers actionable, objective business and technology insights that drive smarter decisions and stronger performance on an organization’s mission-critical priorities. To learn more, visit gartner.com.

Source: Gartner

The post Gartner Identifies 3 Pillars for Deriving Value from AI appeared first on HPCwire.

Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi of Pennsylvania are accused of trying to detonate bombs at an anti-Islam rally near New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home Saturday.

Anglers describe harrowing phone calls to loved ones once ice detached from shores of Georgian Bay in Ontario

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Kevin Fox thought the spring-like temperatures that had temporarily pushed the cold away from south-eastern Ontario meant a good day on for ice fishing, a popular winter pastime in the region.

After shifting location because the wind and ice “didn’t feel right” and the fish weren’t biting close to shore, he and a friend joined nearly two dozen others far out on a sheet of ice in Lake Huron. They followed the familiar routine of anyone who spends a day on the ice: they drilled holes, dropped their lines and waited.

The AI model you choose to vibe code with can dramatically affect your final output.

The poll finds that AI is viewed less positively than ICE and President Donald Trump, and only more positively than Iran and the Democratic Party.

LONDON, March 9, 2026 — Nscale today announced its $2 billion in Series C funding, led by Aker ASA and 8090 Industries. This round values Nscale at $14.6 billion. The funding round was supported by Astra Capital Management, Citadel, Dell, Jane Street, Lenovo, Linden Advisors, Nokia, NVIDIA, and Point72. This new raise will further accelerate Nscale’s global development of vertically integrated AI infrastructure — from GPU compute and networking to data services and orchestration software — across Europe, North America, and Asia.

AI is reshaping industries, economies and national strategies, and accelerated computing platforms are the engine driving that shift. The constraint on market scaling is not demand, but the ability to deploy capacity and run it reliably in production. Nscale is purpose-built to accelerate AI deployments. This capital deepens Nscale’s infrastructure footprint, expands its engineering and operations teams, and strengthens the platform, enabling Nscale to continue to deliver real, production-grade AI deployments at massive scale.

“This is the fourth industrial revolution; the world is changing at a rapid pace. Over the next 5 years, Artificial Intelligence will be integrated into every industry, every product, and every job. Accelerating drug discovery, extending human life, autonomizing travel and robotics, lifting productivity, and driving massive growth. This is leading to the largest infrastructure buildout in human history,” said Josh Payne, CEO and Founder of Nscale. “Nscale is leading this buildout. We are building this foundation that the market sits on, the engine of superintelligence.”

Strengthening Nscale’s Board

Nscale also today welcomes three new Directors. Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Decker, and Nick Clegg will join the Nscale Board, bringing substantial global depth across technology, policy, operations, and governance to an already world-class collection of business leaders.

Sheryl Sandberg — Sandberg is currently the co-founder of Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, which deploys private capital to fund innovation across consumer, enterprise, climate and healthcare technology. As former Chief Operating Officer of Meta and an early executive at Google, Sandberg brings unmatched experience in scaling the world’s most influential technology companies, as well as deep expertise in operations, growth strategy, and building global organizations.

Susan Decker — Decker is the CEO and co-founder of Raftr, a Community Experience platform for universities. She is a former President of Yahoo, Inc. and is currently a Board member at Costco Wholesale Corporation, Berkshire Hathaway, Vail Resorts, Chime, Vox Media, and Automattic. Decker brings sharp financial acumen, governance expertise, and strategic leadership developed across decades at the forefront of global media and technology companies.

Nick Clegg — A current General Partner at Hiro Capital, Clegg focuses on fostering the growth of leading spatial computing technologies within Europe. He is both a former UK Deputy Prime Minister and former President, Global Affairs at Meta. Prior to being elected to the UK Parliament in 2005, Clegg served five years in the European Parliament. Clegg brings deep expertise at the intersection of technology, policy, and global affairs and has most recently been at the center of the most consequential regulatory and governance conversations shaping the future of AI.

Sandberg, Decker, and Clegg join Nscale’s existing Board of Directors, which includes Josh Payne, Rael Nurick, Jacob Leschly, and Øyvind Eriksen.

Streamlining Execution in Norway

Alongside this Series C funding and its new Directors, Nscale has reached an agreement with Aker to roll the Aker Nscale joint venture — announced in July 2025 — fully into Nscale. Going forward, Aker will remain a leading shareholder in Nscale with its CEO Øyvind Eriksen continuing to serve on the Nscale Board.

This decision consolidates delivery and governance under one entity, while ensuring all existing projects under the joint venture continue and remain fully operational as part of Nscale. This ongoing partnership has been foundational to Nscale’s growth and demonstrates its continued commitment to playing a positive, long-term role in the communities where it operates. Nscale’s firm pledge to waste heat reuse, local skills development, and investment in regional infrastructure remains unchanged.

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and J.P. Morgan acted as joint placement agents for Nscale in connection with this capital raise which is inclusive of the Pre-Series C SAFE.

More from HPCwire: ‍Nscale, Aker, and OpenAI Launch Norwegian AI Project Targeting 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs

About Nscale

Nscale is the global hyperscaler engineered for AI infrastructure. Through vertically integrated AI solutions and modular, first-principles data center design across Europe, North America, and beyond, Nscale delivers the compute foundation for enterprise AI training, fine-tuning, and inference at scale.

Source: Nscale

The post Nscale Raises $2B Series C to Expand AI Compute and Data Infrastructure Globally appeared first on HPCwire.

SAN JOSE, March 9, 2026 — Lightbits Labs, inventor of the NVMe over TCP storage protocol, today announced that Coredge, a leading cloud solutions provider, has selected Lightbits software-defined storage to power next-gen AI cloud services. Following its recent acquisition by Sirius Digitech, Coredge is scaling its platforms to support large-scale AI adoption across regulated industries, telecommunications providers, and public-sector entities worldwide. This collaboration is intended to establish a multi-petabyte-scale, cloud-native infrastructure deployment in India to support Coredge’s rapidly expanding footprint without the high cost and rigidity of legacy SAN architectures.

Founded in 2020, Coredge builds and operates cloud-native platforms that enable organizations to deploy and manage AI, Kubernetes, and OpenShift workloads. Its sovereign OpenShift-based Kubernetes cloud infrastructure is optimized for performance-sensitive use cases, including AI training and inference, real-time analytics, and mission-critical enterprise applications as configured and governed by customer-specific and regulatory requirements.

“AI workloads demand far more than raw capacity—they require predictable low latency and consistent performance at scale,” said Abhimanyu Bhatter, Co-Founder and Associate Vice President of Technology at Coredge. “Lightbits enables us to grow our business by delivering highly performant, premium services using open, software-defined, NVMe-based infrastructure that aligns with our operational strategy.”

To support a large-scale deployment expansion in India, Coredge required a storage architecture capable of delivering consistent, low-latency, high-throughput, and elastic scalability, while integrating seamlessly with its OpenShift-based Kubernetes environments. Coredge selected Lightbits for its ability to deliver high-performance block storage over standard Ethernet, without specialized networking fabrics. Legacy SAN and proprietary appliance-based storage architectures introduced cost, operational complexity, and scaling constraints that were incompatible with Coredge’s cloud-native design principles.

By deploying Lightbits, Coredge expects to achieve significant advantages:

• Reduced TCO: Leveraging commodity hardware, high-performance storage using standard Ethernet networks, and thin provisioning services to reduce TCO at scale.
• NVMe/TCP-direct Architecture: Designed to deliver predictable low latency and high throughput.
• Enhanced Resiliency: Built-in data protection and compatibility with modern backup and recovery solutions, such as Veeam Kasten. Fast snapshots for speedier recovery help meet stringent availability, durability, and compliance requirements.
• Ecosystem Compatibility: Seamless integrations with OpenShift and Kubernetes enable Coredge to streamline operations, accelerating time-to-market for new services.

“Lightbits provides the speed and predictability required for the latency-sensitive workloads run on Coredge’s platforms, while at the same time providing Coredge the ability to scale on commodity infrastructure cost-efficiently,” added Keimpe Paulus, Vice President and EMEA Territory Lead at Lightbits Labs. “We’re excited to support their goal to expand their platforms and services.”

As Coredge expands its AI and cloud services globally, Lightbits will play a central role in supporting scalable, secure, and high-performance data infrastructure.

To learn more about Lightbits software-defined storage, visit lightbitslabs.com or book a product demonstration today.

About Lightbits Labs

Lightbits Labs (Lightbits) invented the NVMe over TCP storage protocol, embedding it natively into their software-defined block storage to deliver ultra-low latency and exceptional throughput while leveraging commodity infrastructure—essential for reducing the cost and complexity of data infrastructure at scale. Built from the ground up for high performance, scalability, resiliency, and cost efficiency, Lightbits software delivers the best price-performance value for real-time analytics, transactional, and AI workloads. Lightbits Labs is backed by enterprise technology leaders [Cisco Investments, Dell Technologies Capital, Intel Capital, Lenovo, and Micron] and is on a mission to deliver best-in-class block storage for performance-sensitive workloads.

Source: Lightbits Labs

The post Lightbits Selected by Coredge to Power AI Cloud Services Infrastructure appeared first on HPCwire.

Qualcomm and Arduino have unveiled the Arduino Ventuno Q, a new AI-focused single-board computer built for robotics and edge systems. Engadget reports: Called the Arduino Ventuno Q, it uses Qualcomm's Dragonwing IQ8 processor along with a dedicated STM32H5 low-latency microcontroller (MCU). "Ventuno Q is engineered specifically for systems that move, manipulate and respond to the physical world with precision and reliability," the company wrote on the product page. The Ventuno Q is more sophisticated (and expensive) than Arduinio's usual AIO boards, thanks to the Dragonwing IQ8 processor that includes an 8-core ARM Cortex CPU, Adreno Arm Cortex A623 GPU and Hexagon Tensor NPU that can hit up ot 40 TOPs. It also comes with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, along with 64GB of eMMC storage and an M.2 NVME Gen.4 slot to expand that. Other features include Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, 2.5Gbps ethernet and USB camera support. The Ventuno Q includes Arudino App Lab, with pre-trained AI models including LLMs, VLMs, ASR, gesture recognition, pose estimation and object tracking, all running offline. It's designed for AI systems that run entirely offline like smart kiosks, healthcare assistants and traffic flow analysis, along with Edge AI vision and sensing systems. It also supports a full robotics stack including vision processing combined with deterministic motor control for precise vision and manipulation. It's also ideal for education and research in areas like computer vision, generative AI and prototyping at the edge, according to Arduino. Further reading: Up Next for Arduino After Qualcomm Acquisition: High-Performance Computing

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

March 9, 2026 — Many scientific simulations—like those supporting LLNL’s national security mission—contain systems of linear equations, so application codes often rely on linear solvers to get the job done. Created at LLNL in 1998, the hypre software library provides specialized, scalable solvers for a range of purposes. A recent major release, version 3, includes a new semi-structured algebraic multigrid (AMG) solver along with support for mixed numerical precision at runtime.

The new SSAMG solver accommodates multiple structured grids coupled by unstructured connections (black lines). In this example, each structured grid is coarsened in a different direction as part of the SSAMG algorithm, and coarse-grid information is interpolated back to the fine grid to accelerate the solution process.

“We refactored and rewrote a big portion of the code for this release,” explains project lead Rob Falgout. “Development in hypre has always been driven by support for applications and users, and we’ve tried to think strategically about the future so our developers can spend more time on research and algorithms and less time on fixing problems.”

Structured for Speed

Among hypre’s strengths are its AMG solvers, which accelerate simulations of complex physical phenomena by efficiently solving the sparse linear systems that arise from discretized partial differential equations. These solvers, particularly BoomerAMG, are designed for massively parallel computation.

AMG methods are well-suited for unstructured problems, but hypre doesn’t stop there. The software includes support for structured grids, where the underlying structure of the discretized mesh is known. Version 3 introduces SSAMG, a semi-structured solver that expands existing multigrid solver capabilities to address more types of grids and, in turn, provide more options for users. The “semi” aspect of this new solver is key, as some grids are partially or compositely structured. SSAMG treats grids as structured parts with arbitrary connections, which helps reduce computational overhead. The team’s extensive testing on representative problems has shown SSAMG to outperform BoomerAMG in many cases.

“We’ve wanted to develop this new solver for a long time,” Falgout notes. “In hypre, we have always let users describe the structure in their problems, but it hasn’t been easy to develop solvers that take advantage of that structure. Now we’re providing better solutions in semi-structured settings.”

Precisely Right

Like most of LLNL’s foundational high performance computing (HPC) software projects, hypre has evolved with the rise of heterogeneous architectures and exascale computing power. Furthermore, application teams are increasingly seeking flexibility with different types of workloads, which often include machine learning pipelines in addition to traditional modeling and simulation. The hypre team has had to consider key facets of the modern HPC environment including graphics processing units (GPUs), memory usage, and precision requirements for floating-point arithmetic. “Users need accuracy but also want to improve speed and performance while reducing the memory footprint and taking advantage of GPUs,” says Falgout.

Building on its support for multiprecision at compile time, hypre now provides both multi- and mixed-precision computation at runtime. (In multiprecision, a solver uses one precision at a time, whereas mixed-precision uses different precisions simultaneously.) Users can switch from one type of precision to another—for example, from double to single or from single to long double—without recompiling the application code. An upcoming enhancement will apply different precisions to each grid level of AMG solvers.

Looking Ahead

The project’s nearly three-decade run has shown there’s always something new to investigate. For instance, the team is exploring artificial intelligence tools for developing new algorithms as well as for helping hypre choose solver parameters for the user. GPU refinements for mixed-precision solvers are also in progress. And Falgout points out, “Some classes of problems we don’t yet know how to solve effectively with multigrid methods.”

Alongside Falgout, the LLNL team responsible for hypre v3 include Rui Peng Li, Victor Magri, Wayne Mitchell, Daniel Osei-Kuffuor, and Ulrike Meier Yang (now retired). Development in is funded in part by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and its Scientific Discovery Through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program, and by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program. Watch Falgout’s FEM@LLNL seminar describing v3 features.

Source: Holly Auten, LLNL

The post LLNL: Better Solvers, Better Precision with HYPRE v3 appeared first on HPCwire.

March 9, 2026 — From smartphones in our pockets to the powerful computers advancing artificial intelligence and quantum science, modern microchips are the engines of the digital age. Yet these systems face a fundamental challenge: managing the immense heat generated as processors grow faster and more complex, sometimes packing hundreds of thousands of cores onto a single chip. Without effective solutions, performance declines, energy is wasted and hardware reliability is compromised.

NSF-funded researchers at Clarkson University are addressing this challenge through TASChips, an open-source simulation tool that predicts in real time how heat builds up inside advanced processors. TASChips merges physics-based models with advanced reduced-order learning algorithms, delivering both accuracy and speed. It can identify thermal “hot spots” across complex chip architectures, enabling engineers to design systems that operate more efficiently, last longer and consume less energy.

Keeping powerful chips cool has always been a tough problem. Older tools that track heat either run quickly, but miss important details, or deliver accurate results so slowly that they cannot be used in practice. With today’s processors carrying more than 100,000 cores, that tradeoff no longer works. TASChips employs a range of learning models tailored to chips of varying complexity that capture the essential physics of heat transfer while running at much higher speeds. This approach produces near-direct numerical accuracy, fast enough to guide real-world decision-making. Engineers can use these results to redesign chips, adjust workloads dynamically in data centers, or avoid costly bottlenecks in high-performance systems. Such capabilities are essential in meeting the demands of the AI era.

Another barrier has been access. The most advanced heat-analysis tools are often locked behind expensive licenses and used only by large companies. TASChips changes that by being open source, free to download and released with clear instructions and examples. This means students, researchers and engineers anywhere can use the tool. It also ties directly into classroom and research programs, so the next generation of talent can learn with the same tools that will drive future breakthroughs.

To strengthen this link between innovation and education, TASChips will support workforce development through a series of workshops for up to 25 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Each participant will select a project aligned with their research expertise and carry out research that entails data collection, training, model parameter calculations and running simulations. By the end, participants will have gained hands-on experience applying a new tool to real problems, building skills that will carry forward into their careers.

The broader implications reach beyond engineering labs. Consumers benefit when everyday devices stay cooler and perform reliably. Businesses and communities benefit when data centers, which support everything from video streaming to financial transactions, operate more efficiently and at lower cost. And research sectors advancing AI and quantum technologies gain the reliable infrastructure needed to push the boundaries of discovery.

By combining rigorous science, open access, and education, the project provides a model for how federally supported research can translate into practical technologies that benefit society, industry and national competitiveness for years to come.

Source: NSF

The post NSF-Funded Tool Helps Chips Run Faster, Cooler and Longer appeared first on HPCwire.

Merger to take drone firm public is latest business move by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr as father is in White House

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A golf club company backed by the sons of Donald Trump is merging with drone manufacturer Powerus in a deal designed to take the drone technology company public.

The merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings is the latest in Eric and Donald Trump Jr’s growing investments in the drone sector, following last month’s $1.5bn tie-up between Israeli drone maker XTEND and Florida-based JFB Construction Holdings. Drones have become a major procurement priority for the Pentagon and are widely used in Ukraine, where dense air defense systems near the front lines limit the deployment of conventional aircraft.

With new supreme leader’s strong connections to the IRGC, critics fear worse is to come – if he survives

• Middle East crisis – live updates

At around midday, even as airstrikes hit several parts of the capital, large crowds gathered in Tehran’s famous Enghelab Square to chant their allegiance to Iran’s new supreme leader.

Carrying banners showing the face of the country’s slain leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, people on Monday held a new portrait – that of his son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei.

Crude prices could surpass their 2008 record, with potentially dire effects for consumers and businesses

Fears over the global economy have been stoked by the oil price soaring past $100 a barrel as a result of the US-Israel war with Iran.

Economists say the increasing likelihood of a prolonged conflict in the vital energy exporting region could have serious consequences for living standards around the world amid the threat of a renewed inflation shock.

French president says attack on island is ‘an attack on Europe’ as EU states send military support

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Emmanuel Macron has vowed that Europe will do whatever it takes to stand by Cyprus, the continent’s first state to be directly affected by the Iran war, after coming under what he described as “attack from multiple drones and missiles.”

In the strongest show yet of solidarity towards the EU member closest to the Middle East, Macron likened the attacks, which included a drone strike against a British base on the eastern Mediterranean island, to an attack on Europe.

Rep. Kevin Kiley of California said Monday he was immediately leaving the Republican Party to become an independent.

Social media company tells MPs of continual fight against state-backed efforts, with Russia being most prolific

Elon Musk’s X said it had suspended 800m accounts over a 12-month period as it fights the “massive” scale of attempts to manipulate the platform.

The social media company told MPs it was continually fighting state-backed attempts to hijack the agenda on its network, with Russia the most prolific state actor, followed by Iran and China.

Leader of rebel group says there is deep concern within Society of Labour Lawyers about courts and tribunals bill

Lawyers affiliated to Labour were “blocked” from briefing party MPs to share concerns about plans to cut the number of jury trials in England and Wales, it has been claimed.

The allegation was made by Karl Turner, the leader of a backbench rebellion against a flagship government bill that would remove the right to a jury trial in thousands of cases, before the first chance by MPs to vote on the legislation.

As many as 65 Labour MPs are understood to have been considering voting against the courts and tribunals bill before Monday’s second reading.

Walter ‘Ted’ Carter Jr says he ‘made a mistake in allowing inappropriate access to Ohio State leadership’

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The president of the Ohio State University has resigned following the disclosure of an “inappropriate relationship” to the college’s board of trustees.

In a statement, Walter “Ted” Carter Jr, who had led the university since 2024, said that he “made a mistake in allowing inappropriate access to Ohio State leadership”.

A $10,000 2-year CD account can be both profitable and secure for savers if opened now. Here's what to consider.

What Mojtaba Khamenei will do with his leadership is now the key question after he succeeds his father

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Crowds in Tehran greeted the announcement of the country’s new supreme leader by chanting: “God’s hand is still upon us, Khamenei is still our leader.” As the world economy grinds to a halt, Iran is selling the elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei as a sign of reassuring continuity for a country determined to show its defiance of the west.

Yet in reality he injects a new unpredictable, even mysterious, element into the Middle East crisis, since just as he is unknown to Washington, so he is a figure of deep obscurity to ordinary Iranians. By contrast, the first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, led Iran to revolution in 1979 and the second, Mojtaba’s father, Ali Khamenei, had been president for eight years before he was chosen by the Assembly of Experts within a day of Khomenei’s death.

Pair charged with throwing explosive devices during anti-Islam protest described by mayor as ‘appalling’

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Two teenagers were charged on Monday with offenses including terrorism and using a weapon of mass destruction after they allegedly threw improvised explosive devices during an anti-Islam demonstration on Saturday outside the residence of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani.

According to a 10-page criminal complaint filed in federal court in the US southern district of New York, 18-year-old Emir Balat threw the devices at protesters after they were handed to him by Ibrahim Kayumi, 19. It said both declared allegiance to the Islamic State terror group.

Mojtaba Khamenei’s supporters take to streets of Tehran on the same day Iran attacks targets in Israel and Gulf states

• Middle East crisis – live updates

US and Israeli warplanes launched new waves of strikes on targets across Iran on Monday, as large crowds took to the streets in Tehran in a defiant show of support for Mojtaba Khamenei, the country’s newly appointed supreme leader.

The conflict, now in its second week, continued to escalate, with fresh Iranian missile and drone attacks targeting Israel, US bases across the Middle East and energy infrastructure in the Gulf.

West coast state’s average cost per gallon has climbed $0.55 since the conflict in Middle East began over a week ago

• Middle East crisis – live updates

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The war in Iran has caused a spike in gas prices that is hitting California consumers especially hard, according to data from the American Automobile Association (AAA).

AAA reports that in California, the most expensive US market for gas, the average price per gallon on Monday was $5.20, compared to $3.47 nationally. The national average climbed nearly $0.50 since the conflict began more than a week ago, while in the Golden state it rose by $0.55.

Anthropic is suing the Department of Defense after the Trump administration labeled the company a "supply chain risk" and canceled its government contracts when Anthropic refused to allow its AI model Claude to be used for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. Fortune reports: The lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, calls the administration's actions "unprecedented and unlawful" and claims they threaten to harm "Anthropic irreparably." The complaint claims that government contracts are already being canceled and that private contracts are also in doubt, putting "hundreds of millions of dollars" at near-term risk. An Anthropic spokesperson told Fortune: "Seeking judicial review does not change our longstanding commitment to harnessing AI to protect our national security, but this is a necessary step to protect our business, our customers, and our partners." "We will continue to pursue every path toward resolution, including dialogue with the government," they added.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Justice correspondent most known for his January 6 Capitol riot coverage, is latest to quit Bari Weiss-led network

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Scott MacFarlane, the CBS News justice correspondent most known for his extensive coverage of the January 6 Capitol insurrection, surprised colleagues on Monday morning by announcing his departure from the network, which he joined in late 2021.

MacFarlane is only the latest departure from the Bari Weiss-led network, though he said in a memo to colleagues – also posted on LinkedIn – that he personally made the decision to leave.

Iranian officials say about 170 people were killed in the strike. The Pentagon is investigating.

The Los Angeles Police Department identified the woman as 35-year-old Ivanna Ortiz. She has been booked for attempted murder.

Katie Nicholl’s name appears on many of the stories that Frost, Prince Harry and others have complained about

A senior former Mail on Sunday journalist has denied commissioning a “blag” of sensitive medical information about Sadie Frost that the actor had not even told her own mother.

At the high court, Katie Nicholl, a former diary editor and royal editor at the paper, was accused of using blagged information from a private investigator to uncover “extraordinarily intrusive” details of Frost’s medical history.

US president claimed he wanted to eradicate cartels and made comments about Mexico’s president that were deemed sexist in summit speech

• ‘Iron river’: Mexico’s cartel violence fuelled by trafficked firearms from US

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Claudia Sheinbaum has responded to Donald Trump’s description of Mexico as the “epicenter of violence,” by calling on the US government to step up efforts to combat gun trafficking.

“There is something that the US can help us a lot with: stop the trafficking of illegal weapons from the US to Mexico,” the president of Mexico said. “If they stopped the entry of illegal weapons from the United States into Mexico, then these groups wouldn’t have access to this type of high-powered weaponry to carry out their criminal activities.”

MenuetOS, the operating system written in x86-64 assembly, has released two new versions since we last talked about it roughly two months ago. In fact, I’m not actually sure it’s just two, or more, or fewer, since it seems sometimes releases disappear entirely from the changelog, making things a bit unclear. Anyway, since the last time we talked about MenuetOS, it got improvements to videocalling, networking, and HDA audio drivers, and a few other small tidbits.

Former Sinn Féin leader being sued for symbolic £1 each by three victims of Troubles-era bombings on UK mainland

Gerry Adams is as culpable for IRA bombings on the UK mainland as the individuals who planted and detonated the devices, the high court has heard at the beginning of a civil trial.

The former Sinn Féin leader is being sued for symbolic “vindicatory” damages of £1 each by John Clark, Jonathan Ganesh and Barry Laycock, who were injured respectively in the 1973 Old Bailey bombing, and the London Docklands and Manchester bombings in 1996.

The company might launch its most sophisticated MacBook ever, with its first OLED screen.

Anthropic sued the Defense Department and other federal agencies on Monday over the government's move to designate it a risk to the supply chain.

Interceptor drones and operators deployed to Middle East after ‘requests for help from 11 countries neighbouring Iran’

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Ukraine’s president has said he dispatched interceptor drones and operators to protect US bases in Jordan last week, one of 11 countries that had asked Kyiv for help as the US-Israeli war against Iran continued into its 10th day.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview that he had responded to a US request for help in defending Jordan last week as Ukraine seeks to improve relations with Gulf and Middle Eastern countries coming under attack from Iran.

The GPUs in Apple's latest chips bring its flagship creative laptop to new heights, especially for generative AI.

"If Lockheed Martin made a Game Boy, would you buy one?" That was the [rhetorical] question The Verge's Sean Hollister asked when he reviewed ModRetro's Game Boy-style handheld device back in 2024. He said it "might be the best version of the Game Boy ever made," though the connection to Palmer Luckey and his defense tech startup Anduril left him conflicted. "I don't remember my childhood nostalgia coming with a side of possible guilt and fear about putting money into the pocket of a weapons contractor," he wrote. "Feels weird!" Those conflicted feelings have lingered ever since. TechCrunch recently cited Hollister's review while reporting that ModRetro is now seeking funding at a $1 billion valuation. The company is said to have additional retro-inspired hardware in development, including one designed to replicate the Nintendo 64. As for Anduril? It's reportedly in talks to raise a new funding round that would value the company at around $60 billion.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

European Commission head says rules-based system can no longer be relied upon to protect the continent’s interests

Europe can “no longer be a custodian for the old-world order” and needs “a more realistic and interest-driven foreign policy”, the head of the European Commission has said.

Speaking to an audience of EU ambassadors on Monday, Ursula von der Leyen said the union “will always defend and uphold the rules-based system” but could no longer rely on it to defend European interests and shelter the continent from threats.

Eighteen tornadoes between Thursday and Saturday resulted in deaths in towns from Michigan to Oklahoma

Communities throughout the central United States were cleaning up and trying to recover after an onslaught deadly tornadoes struck the region over the weekend.

At least eight people had been confirmed dead as of Monday, with dozens more injured.

President Donald Trump claimed that Iran, not the U.S., struck an elementary school in the southern Iranian town of Minab, the attack with the highest civilian death toll in Trump’s second Iran war.

Three current and former defense officials, however, pushed back on his claims. Even Trump’s own Pentagon chief, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, refused to back him up. U.S. Central Command appeared to suggest that Trump’s comments were “inappropriate.”

“This is another instance of Trump lying and just talking out of his ass,” said a U.S. government official who reviewed satellite images of the Shajarah Tayyebeh school. “This clearly was not a failed rocket from the IRGC base.”

The U.S. official was referring to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy base that was adjacent to the school. The claim that the IRGC struck the school spread as part of a misinformation campaign about the attack peddled by social media accounts that support restoring Iran’s monarchy.

The U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, said it was clear that Iran did not strike the school. Trump, however, endorsed the dubious claim when taking questions from the press aboard Air Force One on Saturday.

Related

Sources Briefed on Iran War Say U.S. Has No Plans for What Comes Next

“Based on what I’ve seen, it was done by Iran,” Trump said of the attack, which killed at least 175 people, many of them children, according to Iranian health officials and state media. 

Hegseth, standing alongside Trump, was asked if that was true and failed to endorse the claim.

“We’re certainly investigating,” he said before offering a non-denial denial. “But the only side that targets civilians is Iran.”

When asked for comment on the status of the U.S. military investigation, U.S. Central Command, the regional military command that oversees the Middle East, said that getting ahead of the investigation’s findings — precisely what Trump did — was improper.

The CENTCOM spokesperson, who did not give their name, said, “It would be inappropriate to comment given the incident is under investigation.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Missile Used Only by U.S.

A video released on Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency shows a cruise missile striking the naval base beside the elementary school as smoke appears to billow from the school itself, indicating that it had been struck just before the attack on the IRGC base. According to Bellingcat, the cruise missile was a Tomahawk.

“This munition is only employed by the U.S., not Israel or Iran,” said Wes Bryant, a former Special Operations joint terminal attack controller who called in thousands of strikes across the greater Middle East.

Bryant, a former adviser to a Pentagon body that provides analysis and training to mitigate civilian harm, said all were clearly struck by targeted munitions, with the school likely hit due to “target misidentification,” meaning U.S. forces mistook it for a military target.

“The strikes on this compound have the signature of a U.S. strike,” Bryant told The Intercept. “The strikes on this compound are also incredibly precise and well-placed. This entire compound — including the girls’ school — was deliberately targeted in a highly precise strike operation.”

While the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school was once connected to the IRGC base by roads, the building was partitioned off by 2016, according to an investigation by New Lines Magazine. Reports of the attack began to appear on social media just after 11:30 a.m. local time. An analysis by the New York Times based on satellite imagery, social media posts, and verified videos found that the school was hit at roughly the same time as the naval base. The video released on Sunday by the Mehr News Agency appears to confirm this.

Another former Pentagon official who specialized in civilian harm issues echoed Bryant and the current U.S. official.

“The entry holes suggest a near perpendicular entry. Meaning, this strike was precisely targeting the structures from high above, not some short range attack with a ballistic missile,” said the former Pentagon official, who spoke on background because their present employment doesn’t allow them to comment. The official said the vertical entry suggested a more parabolic trajectory than a short-range missile would show, indicating a longer-range weapon was used.

That former defense official pushed back against Trump’s claims, noting that the attack occurred within an hour of the announcement of U.S.–Israeli strikes and an hour before any reported Iranian retaliation.

“All evidence,” said the former official, “points to the compound being repeatedly attacked — over the course of a couple hours potentially — with highly accurate munitions that we know the U.S. and Israel routinely use and have used in strikes across Iran.”

High Rate of Strikes

CENTCOM would not offer an estimated civilian death toll for the U.S. war on Iran. More than 1,230 Iranian civilians have been killed, according to the Tehran Times.

“America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history,” Hegseth said at a March 2 press conference. “No stupid rules of engagement.”

A new investigation by Airwars, a U.K.-based air strike monitoring group, found that the first days of the Iran war saw far more sites targeted than any recent U.S. or Israeli military campaign.

“While the rate of civilian harm cannot be solely predicted by the number of targets hit, initial indications suggest it has been high — particularly with U.S. targets correlating with heavily populated areas,” according to the Airwars report. “The targets map heavily onto the highest populated areas.”

For Bryant, the former Pentagon adviser on civilian harm, Trump’s claim that Iran hit the school is part of a pattern — and a dark turn for the country.

“If the administration truly believed that this was Iranian-caused, whether intentionally or inadvertently, then they should have immediately stated so, along with providing intelligence or information that proves such an assertion. But we know this was not the case,” Bryant said. “It is the stuff of tyrannical dictators to fabricate such propaganda for the sake of saving face and discrediting one’s enemies. This is not the behavior of a leader of the free world.”

The post U.S. Military Refuses to Endorse Trump Claim That Iran Bombed Girls’ School appeared first on The Intercept.

Serious technology issues like privacy need to be dealt with clearly, not fought over in social media posts, analysts say.

Eureka police took two calls for unconscious individuals, and officials reported ‘elevated’ carbon monoxide in room

A California motel has been closed after authorities found two women dead in the same room just days apart.

The Eureka police department in northern California said in a news release last Thursday that on 21 February, officers and Humboldt Bay fire personnel were dispatched to a motel on the 4000 block of Broadway Street in Eureka – identified by the Eureka Times-Standard as the Lamplighter Inn – after receiving a report of “two unconscious patients due to a possible drug overdose”.

National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman called the allegations against him false and a "political hit job."

Finance ministers monitoring situation but stop short of agreeing to release emergency oil reserves

• How high could oil go, and what might the global economic fallout be?

• Iran war drives oil prices above $100 a barrel

The G7 said it was ready to take “necessary measures” to address the economic impact of the US-Israel war on Iran, after a meeting prompted by soaring oil prices, which rose above $100 (£74) a barrel for the first time since 2022.

Following a remote meeting on Monday, G7 finance ministers said they would closely monitor the situation but stopped short of agreeing to release emergency oil reserves.

US president says Anthony Albanese has given police protection to the players amid fears they could be punished on their return home

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Five members of the Iranian women’s football team have been granted asylum in Australia after reportedly escaping their government minders after a tournament, according to Donald Trump, who announced the news on social media on Monday.

The US president said he had spoken to the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who had told him that five members of the team had been “taken care of” amid fears they could be punished if they returned home.

I should probably be fuming about the way that companies try to cash in on IWD. But there are so many vile opinions to worry about instead

Sunday was International Women’s Day, which you’ll know because every company you’ve ever shopped with will have emailed you, taking this fine opportunity to suggest things women might like to buy. Plants, clothes, spices … all are particularly female-friendly at this time of year, or maybe I’m revealing nothing but my algorithms. Is any of it emancipating? Would you have to balance the freedom of the woman wearing the midi-dress against the servitude of the woman who had to sew it? I don’t really want to set myself up as the arbiter of the spirit of IWD, being unable to remember a time before it meant mass-marketing mail-out.

On Women’s Day Eve, though – yes, that is a thing – I was attending evensong at a university college, maybe for the first time ever, and it was definitely the first time I’d heard an IWD sermon. The Rev Marcus Green had set himself the challenge of feministly reading a book, the Bible, in which almost none of the women have a name. There are a bunch called Mary, but so few other names that “Mary” was basically Bible-speak for “Karen”. There’s one who is the mother of the sons of Zebedee, but even though she has actual lines and he has none, he still gets this cracking name, while you have to piece her identity together by triangulating other accounts, like an investigator at a crime scene.

Lawsuits come after Pentagon labeled Anthropic a ‘supply chain risk’, a decision the company says is unlawful

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Anthropic filed two lawsuits against the Department of Defense on Monday, alleging that the government’s decision to label the artificial intelligence firm a “supply chain risk” was unlawful and violated its first amendment rights. The two sides have been locked in a monthslong heated feud over the company’s attempt to implement safeguards against the military’s potential use of its AI models for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous lethal weapons.

The lawsuits, which Anthropic filed in the northern district court of California and the US court of appeals for the Washington DC Circuit, come after the Pentagon formally issued the supply chain risk designation last Thursday, the first time the blacklisting tool has been used against a US company. The AI firm previously vowed to challenge the designation and its demand that any company that does business with the government cut all ties with Anthropic, a serious threat to its business model.

Iran's women's soccer team were branded "traitors" after declining to sing their national anthem at the Asian Cup in Australia, fueling fear for the women if they return home.

Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, has reached a deal with the Department of Justice as part of a high-stakes antitrust trial.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: AI has made it vastly easier for malicious hackers to identify anonymous social media accounts, a new study has warned. In most test scenarios, large language models (LLMs) -- the technology behind platforms such as ChatGPT -- successfully matched anonymous online users with their actual identities on other platforms, based on the information they posted. The AI researchers Simon Lermen and Daniel Paleka said LLMs make it cost effective to perform sophisticated privacy attacks, forcing a "fundamental reassessment of what can be considered private online". In their experiment, the researchers fed anonymous accounts into an AI, and got it to scrape all the information it could. They gave a hypothetical example of a user talking about struggling at school, and walking their dog Biscuit through a "Dolores park." In that hypothetical case, the AI then searched elsewhere for those details and matched @anon_user42 to the known identity with a high degree of confidence. While this example was fictional, the paper's authors highlighted scenarios in which governments use AI to surveil dissidents and activists posting anonymously, or hackers are able to launch "highly personalized" scams.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pick one of five new Lego Smart Play sets within the Lego Star Wars collection, or pick them all, available for purchase now.

Save Act would limit voting access in the US and centers on Trump’s unfounded claims of noncitizens stealing elections

Donald Trump threatened not to sign any bills until Congress approves the Save America Act, a curtailment of voting access.

The president, fixated on unsubstantiated claims that noncitizens are stealing US elections ahead of midterm elections that are expected to be bruising for Republicans, said on Truth Social Sunday that the Save America Act “must be done immediately” and “supersedes everything else”.

One year ago, ICE arrested me for protesting for Palestine. Leqaa Kordia is still caged – also for daring to speak the truth

Sunday marked one year since Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate, was arrested last year for his political advocacy. Below, he writes to Leqaa Kordia, a fellow Palestinian currently in ICE detention in Texas. Khalil was released after more than three months but the Trump administration continues to seek his deportation; Kordia has been detained for nearly a year. Read more about her case here.

Dear Leqaa,

Former Brazil forward Hulk was among the players sent off following the violence that lasted more than a minute.

Finance ministers from G7 countries say they stand ready to take necessary measures to support oil supplies

• Iran war drives oil prices above $100 a barrel for first time since 2022

• UK interest rate cuts unlikely this year amid Iran war – and a rise could be ahead

Research show that poorer people are hit hardest by surging oil prices.

As our economics editor Heather Stewart wrote yesterday:

Recent research published by economists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst identified energy, along with food and agriculture as among the commodities that had “a disproportionate capacity to increase inequality when their prices rise”.

Where there are benefits, these are narrowly shared. Another striking recent paper showed that after the 2022 oil price surge in the US, 50% of the windfall benefit from higher prices in the sector went to the wealthiest 1% of individuals, via the stock market. The bottom 50% of people received only 1%.

Malkinson spent 17 years in prison after being wrongly convicted in rape case for which another man is now on trial

A woman who alleged she was raped by Andrew Malkinson admitted to police 22 years ago that she “wasn’t too sure it was the right man”, a court has heard.

Malkinson spent 17 years in prison for an attack he did not commit in what jurors heard was a “most terrible” miscarriage of justice. Paul Quinn is now on trial at Manchester crown court accused of the 2003 rape after fresh DNA tests allegedly linked him to the victim.

The series "Love Story," which follows the relationship between JFK Jr. and his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, has received pushback over its portrayals.

John Swinney expresses ‘huge relief’ that no one was hurt in blaze believed to have started in vape shop

Scotland’s first minister has pledged to help deal with the costs of the “horrific” fire that has closed Glasgow Central station for at least two days and gutted a Victorian office block.

John Swinney said it was a huge relief there had been no injuries, but that there would be significant financial costs from the fire, which caused chaos for the city’s commuters and the cancellation of west coast main line services to Glasgow.

Trump’s ‘Shield of the Americas’ coalition is destined to fail Expert comment jon.wallace 9 March 2026

The Shield seeks to address serious security and narcotics issues in Latin America. But a detail-light, ‘Trumpista-only’ alliance repeats past mistakes in Latin America. 

Latin America’s regional diplomatic history is littered with failed multilateral organizations. Some have disappeared, such as the Union of South American Republics (UNASUR) and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA). Others, such as the Latin American Parliament or the Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC) continue to limp along, zombie projects of once high-minded goals.  

This past weekend US President Donald Trump added one of his own. 

The ‘Shield of the Americas’ sounds much like a new instalment in the Marvel movie series. The first summit, convened on 7 March at the Trump resort in Doral, Florida, was intended to create an alliance to improve regional security and combat drug cartels. ‘The heart of our agreement,’ said President Trump, ‘is a commitment to using lethal military force to destroy the sinister cartels and terrorist networks.’ 

To that end the president brought together 13 heads of state, including the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama and Paraguay, as well as the prime ministers of Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica.    

All are centre- to hard-right leaders, whom President Trump has either praised (Javier Milei of Argentina, Santiago Peña of Paraguay, Nayib Bukele of El Salvador) or endorsed when they were candidates (Tito Asfura of Honduras).  

The others have vocally supported Trump’s policies in the Western Hemisphere. Notably, the sitting president of Chile – leftist Gabriel Boric – was passed over in favour of the president elect, Jose Antonio Kast, who ran promising ‘Trumpista’ hardline policies on crime and immigration. The defence/security secretaries of Bahamas, Belize, Guatemala, and Peru were also present.

Pointedly absent at the Doral-fest were the presidents of Brazil (Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva), Mexico (Clauda Sheinbaum) and Colombia (Gustavo Petro), all of them of the left. This is significant: those three countries represent more than half of the region’s GDP. And they host a large part of the region’s illicit markets including narcotics production and trade – the supposed targets of the summit. 

And, even as the usual summit ‘grip-and-grin’ photo-ops took place, with Trump, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hesgeth and newly appointed head of the Shield of the Americas Kristi Noem, the shadow of previous failures loomed.

All Latin America’s defunct or zombie multilateral organizations were founded on laudable goals. But they had fatal flaws. And the Shield of the Americas shares many of them.

Now what?

In the end, the summit produced a half-page declaration, with signatories agreeing to four general points.

According to the official press release, those were: ‘expand multilateral and bilateral cooperation to enhance security’; cooperate in ‘whole of government’ efforts regarding ‘border security, countering narco-terrorism and trafficking, securing critical infrastructure, and other areas as mutually determined’; ‘advance peace through strength’; and ‘join a coalition to combat narco-terrorism and other shared threats to the Western Hemisphere’. Nothing more.

These are noble objectives addressing essential challenges for US foreign policy south of its border. And a new initiative could help deliver a long-overdue re-evaluation of failing past policies. Cocaine production and transnational crime of all sorts have increased over the last half decade. 

In Colombia, cocaine production jumped 53 per cent in 2023 alone. Between 2023 and 2024, the US seized more than 45,000 pounds of fentanyl crossing its border, the vast majority produced in and shipped from Mexico, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. And crime/ insecurity is the number one concern of Latin American citizens according to recent surveys and the International Monetary Fund.   

But like many Trump initiatives – and previous failed Latin American multilateralism attempts – there is a telling lack of detail. The thin, four-point official announcement presents no long-term commitments for burden sharing. There are no promises to address the root causes of insecurity and crime – poverty, weak states and corruption. And, perhaps most importantly, no funding has been allocated to beef up security cooperation through regional institutions that can share intelligence, conduct joint manoeuvres and intercept drugs and related financial flows. 

Neither are there regionally integrated plans for tracking cross border flows of illicit activities (including narcotics but also illegal gold, timber, and copper, money laundering and human trafficking). And no commitments have been made to independently investigate government involvement in corruption. 

Partisanship

Most of all, it is misguided to believe that a summit of only like-minded leaders can establish a meaningful basis for long-term shared principles and cooperation on security and narcotics issues.  

The openly partisan nature of this effort hobbles it at the outset. Without Brazil, Colombia and Mexico three of the most important Latin American countries are missing. 

It is unclear whether they were invited or not. But the fact that their presidents were not in the Trump orbit likely contributed to their absence. Their concerns about the president’s so called ‘Donroe Doctrine’, and the spectacular US operation to abduct Venezuela’s former president Nicolas Maduro, may also have played a part. Brazil’s Lula, Mexico’s Sheinbaum and Colombia’s Petro have all spoken out against the operation. 

Related work

Does Venezuela usher in an era of might is right? Independent Thinking podcast

Their absence is a fundamental flaw. Any meaningful hemispheric military alliance that could begin to hope to address the Shield’s lofty goals would need to include these countries. 

As the data indicate, Colombia and Mexico are the major sources of narcotics entering the US. And Brazil is the home of one of the largest criminals groups in the region, the ‘Primeiro Comando da Capital (Brazil)’. 

Trump may feel that the clear MAGA hue to the Shield of the Americas will make it easier for him to pursue his objectives – which many believe include countering Chinese influence in the region. But past Latin American attempts at regional alliances shows: partisan networking relationships never last. 

Clifford Thomas and his family lost four relatives during the COVID-19 pandemic, including his beloved mother, Beverly. A middle school teacher, Beverly had struggled with chronic health problems all her life, and when they forced her to leave her job due to disability, she was unable to afford regular medical care. Her final request to her son was that he keep the family healthy.

But in Albany, Georgia, achieving that promise is a battle. The city is served by a single, dominant hospital system, Phoebe Putney Memorial. Its control of the market and Georgia’s strict limits on Medicaid have left nearly one-third of people in Albany, one of the poorest cities in the state, uninsured.

Poor access to quality, affordable care has contributed to deep distrust of the system. Residents like Thomas see Phoebe as more of a barrier to good health than a safety net. He gave up on trying to find medical insurance or a doctor who would care for him without it.

Then, he began to get sick.

There are millions like Thomas across the United States and dozens of places like Albany — places with populations suffering high rates of chronic but treatable conditions, where the dominant institution is a hospital. ProPublica examines the country’s health care crisis in a five-part series called “Sick in a Hospital Town.” Read or listen to the full series here. Watch this short documentary for a close-up of one man’s effort to overcome the obstacles to care.

Read More

Sick in a Hospital Town

The post He Promised His Dying Mother He’d Protect the Family’s Health. In This Georgia Town, It Isn’t Easy. appeared first on ProPublica.

Russian oligarch says money is his to allocate despite international sanctions imposed on his assets

The Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has stepped up his row with the British government over the £2.5bn proceeds of his sale of Chelsea FC, insisting that the money is his to allocate despite the international sanctions imposed on his assets.

The UK and EU imposed sanctions on Abramovich in 2022, freezing his assets in response to Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, citing his ties to Vladimir Putin’s regime.

Two brothers, ages 14 and 18, were part of a high school mariachi group honored by Congress last year

Texas lawmakers from both parties have criticized immigration authorities for detaining two teenage mariachi musicians who were honored by Congress last year.

The case has drawn national attention because the brothers, Antonio Yesayahu Gámez-Cuéllar, 18, and Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar, 14, travelled to Washington DC last summer after their high school’s mariachi ensemble, Mariachi Ono, won a state mariachi competition. Their congresswoman, Monica De La Cruz, invited them to the House floor, where she celebrated their accomplishment.

Worried that consolidating your credit card debt will tank your score? It doesn't have to. These options can help.

Seven American service members have been killed since the war with Iran started in February.

Live Nation will pay $280m to states in lawsuit, and Ticketmaster will open parts of platform to rival companies

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Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, has reached a surprise settlement with the Department of Justice in its antitrust case just one week after the trial began.

Under the agreement, Live Nation will create a $280m settlement fund for states that participated in the lawsuit and Ticketmaster will be required to open parts of its platform to rival ticketing companies, Live Nation announced Monday.

Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to use physical cash. "The vote means Switzerland will join the likes of Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia, which have already written the right to cold, hard cash in their constitutions," reports Politico. From the report: Official results revealed that 73.4 percent of voters backed the legal amendment, which the government proposed as a counter to a similar initiative by a group called the Swiss Freedom Movement. The Swiss Freedom Movement triggered the national referendum after its initiative to protect cash collected more than 100,000 signatures, triggering a national referendum. Its initiative secured only 46 percent of the final vote after the government said some of the group's proposed amendments went too far.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Officers have repeatedly detained people under a reinterpretation of a 1996 law that states that anyone in the United States illegally “shall be detained” without bond, indefinitely.

Hisense has introduced its latest TVs with full-array local dimming, and the U7 starts at $1,300.

The leaders haven’t won the title in more than 20 years. Yet very few neutrals are excited about seeing them as new champions

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What was striking after Arsenal’s grim 1-0 win at Brighton on Wednesday was less Brighton manager Fabian Hürzeler’s attack on the Gunners’ style than the way his criticism seemed to resonate. In England, it feels as though almost nobody, other than Arsenal supporters or anyone-but-City fans, wants them to win the title.

“If I would ask everyone in the room: ‘Did you really enjoy this football game?’ I’m sure maybe one raises his arm because he’s a big Arsenal fan but, besides that, no chance,” Hürzeler said.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.

President Donald Trump called surging oil costs a “very small price to pay.” Group of Seven leaders are set to convene Monday to assess the economic fallout.

Exclusive: Rented datacentres and ‘supercomputer’ site that’s still a scaffolding yard raise questions for Starmer’s push to ‘mainline AI into veins of economy’

• From press release … to scrap metal site: the Essex supercomputer that’s still a scaffolding yard

A multibillion-pound drive to “mainline AI into the veins” of the British economy is riddled with “phantom investments” and shaky accounting, a Guardian investigation has found.

Since 2024, successive Conservative and Labour governments have proclaimed massive deals to build new datacentres, create thousands of jobs and construct a supercomputer.

Nscale’s AI project still in use as depot ahead of pledged completion date – with planning permission filed after Guardian’s inquiries

• Revealed: UK’s multibillion AI drive is built on ‘phantom investments’

The press releases announcing a gleaming supercomputer on the outskirts of north London depict a glass and concrete building, rising from a tree-lined street. Accompanied by images of glowing blue robot faces, it looks like the centre of a technological revolution.

By the end of this year, that artist’s impression is supposed to be a reality.

Kurdish groups in Iran face risky dilemma amid unclear US endgame Expert comment thilton.drupal 9 March 2026

The Trump administration has given mixed messages about its support for a potential Kurdish uprising, which would face a range of challenges against an uncertain backdrop.

More than a week into the ongoing US-Israeli air strikes on Iran, the war has no clear endgame in sight. In an increasingly complex situation, the US does not appear to have a settled and coherent strategy, with the Trump administration voicing wide-ranging and shifting goals and justifications. 

Amid this uncertainty, US President Donald Trump appeared to encourage the Kurdish groups in Iran to rise up against the Iranian regime, before appearing to reverse his position. On 5 March, six days after the US and Israel launched their first strikes, Trump said of a potential Kurdish military action that ‘it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it.’ But just two days later, he told reporters that ‘I don’t want the Kurds to go into Iran…The war is complicated enough as it is.’ 

In practice, the US and Israel have been heavily bombing targets in Kurdish areas in western Iran. This has been seen as aiming to potentially prepare the ground for Kurdish parties based in the region and across the border in Iraq to launch an offensive against the regime. 

The US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has reportedly been working to arm Kurdish forces, according to CNN citing unnamed Kurdish and US officials. The report said that the Trump administration has been in active discussions with Kurdish groups about providing them with military support, potentially for an offensive that could pin down regime security forces and open up space for a broader opposition uprising. The CIA declined to comment to CNN, while US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said that ‘none of our objectives are premised on the support of the arming of any particular force.’ 

The US previously trained and financed Kurdish fighters in both Iraq and Syria. Based on these experiences, Iranian Kurdish groups face a dilemma. Partnership with the US could make a real positive difference to their goals. But it will be fundamentally transactional. There is little indication that the Trump administration is prepared to include an essential commitment to support Kurdish political goals; its endgame for Iran seems confused at best. 

Both Washington and the Iranian Kurds must therefore consider how robust and durable potential US backing will be, particularly in light of past experiences of the US abandoning its Kurdish partners, most recently when the US turned away from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). They also need to ask whether a Kurdish uprising serves their respective interests in the long run. 

Kurds in Iran

Kurds are one of Iran’s largest ethnic minorities. There are an estimated 7 to 15 million Kurds in Iran (around 8-17 per cent of its total population). They are concentrated along Iran’s western borders with Iraq and Turkey, one of the most impoverished parts of the country. 

Although Iran’s constitution theoretically provides equal rights for all ethnicities, in practice the Iranian government has frequently resorted to violence to suppress expressions of Kurdish cultural, linguistic and political identity.

The Kurdish political landscape is fragmented across various parties that adhere to a range of ideologies and draw public support from different sources. Kurdish public opinion is not monolithic and not all Kurds support Kurdish nationalist parties. These groups also have a poor track record of cooperation and have fought each other at times. But what unites the Kurdish nationalist parties is opposition to the Islamic Republic and a desire to secure Kurdish rights and local self-rule in the context of a future democratic Iran.

On February 22, five Kurdish parties announced the formation of the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan. These include the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), the Komala of the Toilers of Kurdistan, the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), Khabat, and the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK). On 4 March, the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan also joined. The coalition’s leadership is largely based in Iraq or the West, though it is also well-organized inside Iran through clandestine networks.

The KDPI is the oldest of the parties, tracing its lineage back to just before the short-lived independent Kurdish Republic of Mahabad was established in 1946. It has the most grassroots support, particularly with traditional nationalists. The Komala factions are more left-wing. The Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan is the larger of the two and has significant support in certain geographic areas. 

PJAK is considered the Iranian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which fought a long insurgency against the Turkish state, and theoretically has more battle-tested cadres. PAK and Khabat are much smaller and have limited appeal inside Iranian Kurdistan.

Challenges

Despite the unification of these parties, major tests lie ahead. The extent of the military forces of these groups and their real battle capabilities are unknown. For years, they have largely been contained in their camps inside Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. Their strength inside Iran is unclear. 

Though weakened, the Iranian security forces still have significant capacity for violence and have demonstrated willing to wield it against the vulnerable Kurdish civilian population, as occurred during the January 2026 protests. The Iranian military has already struck Kurdish forces in Iraq as part of its response to US and Israeli strikes. 

It is therefore a massive risk for Kurdish groups to launch armed operations against the regime, even with US and Israeli air support. ‘We will not send our forces to the slaughterhouse,’ Komala leader Abdullah Mohtadi recently told German newspaper Die Zeit.

Private equity group EQT to take 42% stake as supplier faces scrutiny over environmental record and CEO’s pay

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A leading European investor will pump fresh funding into Yorkshire Water including helping to cover a £600m loan, despite recent heavy sewage fines and a scandal over executive pay at the utility company.

EQT, a Swedish private equity group, said on Monday it would take a 42% stake in Kelda Holdings, the Jersey-registered parent company of Yorkshire Water, which has 5.7 million customers across Yorkshire and parts of the East Midlands and Lincolnshire.

Wait times to get through security hit two hours in New Orleans and over three hours in Houston as TSA staffing took a hit amid the partial government shutdown.

Trump says rise in energy prices is ‘very small price to pay’ as conflict sparks fresh stock market sell-off

• How high could oil prices go – and what might the global economic fallout be?

Oil prices surged past $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022 as fallout from the US-Israel war with Iran continued to rattle global markets and leading economies moved to tackle a worsening energy supply crisis.

A weekend of escalating violence in the Middle East intensified concerns around a sustained supply crunch, propelling oil prices to their highest level in four years and triggering a deep stock market sell-off.

Mojtaba Khamenei was named Iran's new supreme leader following the death of his father in the U.S.-Israeli strikes.

Five teenagers arrested after Jason Hughes run over outside his home after prank involving toilet paper

A beloved Georgia teacher was accidentally run over and killed outside his home recently by a student driving away from a prank involving toilet paper, according to authorities.

The death of math instructor and athletics coach Jason Hughes, 40, has led to the arrests of five teenagers – including one accused of vehicular homicide – while plunging the community of Gainesville into mourning.

As states scale back requirements for comprehensive sex ed, some parents and faith communities are stepping in to teach what schools won’t

When Wendy Pfrenger’s children started high school in the town of Oxford, Mississippi, she had the choice to enroll them in abstinence-only or abstinence-plus sex ed.

Although the abstinence-plus option would include instruction on contraception, neither curriculum was required to provide medically accurate information. As a parent, she felt like the lessons her teens were receiving fell short of their reality.

Jenny O’Connell-Nowain was put under house arrest, and her husband, Benjamin, lost his job after they protested at board of supervisors meetings

Jenny O’Connell-Nowain was ready to go to jail.

She had been prepared to spend six months in the custody of the Shasta county sheriff’s office. One of the top prosecutors in this part of far northern California had presented the evidence against her in a weeklong trial, and a jury had delivered a guilty verdict. A judge offered probation, but O’Connell-Nowain did not agree to the terms.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Tonight, we have details of a classified U.S. intelligence mission that has obtained a previously unknown weapon that may finally unlock a mystery. Since at least 2016, U.S. diplomats, spies and military officers have suffered crippling brain injuries. They've told of being hit by an overwhelming force, damaging their vision, hearing, sense of balance and cognition. but the government has doubted their stories. They've been called delusional. Well now, 60 Minutes has learned that a weapon that can inflict these injuries was obtained overseas and secretly tested on animals on a U.S. military base. We've investigated this mystery for nine years. This is our fourth story called, "Targeting Americans." Despite official government doubt, we never stopped reporting because of the haunting stories we heard [...]. 60 Minutes interviewed Dr. David Relman, a scientific expert and professor from Stanford University who was tasked by the government to lead two investigations into the Havana Syndrome cases. What he and his panel of doctors, physicists, engineers and others found was that "the most plausible explanation for a subset of these cases was a form of radiofrequency or microwave energy," the report says. According to confidential sources cited in the report, undercover Homeland Security agents bought a miniaturized microwave weapon from a Russian criminal network in 2024 and tested it on animals at a U.S. military lab. The injuries reportedly matched those seen in the human cases. "Our confidential sources tell us the still classified weapon has been tested in a U.S. military lab for more than a year," says Dr. Relman. "Tests on rats and sheep show injuries consistent with those seen in humans." He continues: "Also, as a separate part of the investigation, security camera videos have been collected that show Americans being hit. The videos are classified but they were described to us. In one, a camera in a restaurant in Istanbul captured two FBI agents on vacation sitting at a table with their families. A man with a backpack walks in and suddenly everyone at the table grabs their head as if in pain. Our sources say another video comes from a stairwell in the U.S. embassy in Vienna. The stairs lead to a secure facility. In the video, two people on the stairs suddenly collapse. Those videos and the weapon were among the reasons the Biden administration summoned about half a dozen victims to the White House with about two months left in the president's term." Former intelligence officials and researchers claim elements of the U.S. government downplayed or dismissed the theory for years, possibly to avoid political consequences of accusing a foreign state like Russia of conducting attacks on American personnel.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The line-up for this year’s festival includes Emma Thompson, Malala Yousafzai, Ian McEwan and other prominent authors and figures

Emma Thompson, Malala Yousafzai, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Gisèle Pelicot are among the headline names appearing at Hay festival 2026, organisers have announced.

The popular UK literary festival has now unveiled its full programme, featuring more than 500 events running from 21 to 31 May in Hay-on-Wye, Powys.

Cem Özdemir gains 30.2% of vote in Baden-Württemberg, ahead of CDU, with far-right AfD in third

Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU) have stumbled into a busy election year with a defeat to the Greens in a key state poll, as his embattled party struggles to fend off a challenge in other pivotal races from the far right.

The German chancellor’s conservative CDU had enjoyed a double-digit lead in the south-western car production region of Baden-Württemberg just weeks ago but the Greens and their charismatic candidate Cem Özdemir eked out a half-point-margin win in Sunday’s poll with 30.2%.

Three-dimensional images and digital illustrations offer a detailed new look at the USS Monitor, an important Civil War ship that sank more than 160 years ago and has since become a reef.

Comments from defense secretary come as number of US service members killed in conflict has climbed to seven

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Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, has said “there will be more casualties” in the US military from the Trump administration’s war in Iran after officials confirmed on Sunday that the number of US service members killed had climbed to seven.

Hegseth made the statement during an appearance Sunday night on CBS’s 60 Minutes, during which he portrayed Donald Trump’s decision for the US to join Israeli attacks on the Middle East country as essential “to advance American interests, and protect American lives”.

Ukraine criticises organisers’ decision to allow Russia to take part in prestigious art exhibition as ‘incomprehensible’

Ukraine has urged organisers of the Venice Biennale to reconsider Russia’s participation in the prestigious art exhibition, arguing that it must not become “a stage for whitewashing… war crimes.”

Biennale organisers said last week that Russia would be allowed to take part in the event, held from 9 May until 22 November, triggering widespread criticism, including from Italy’s culture ministry, which said it opposed the decision.

ZURICH, March 9, 2026 — Today, Zurich Instruments announced the ZQCS Quantum Control System, a next‑generation platform to operate large-scale quantum computers. It is engineered to tackle the pivotal challenge on the path to fault‑tolerant quantum computing: building long‑lived logical qubits.

Physical qubits are fragile; noise and drift can erase quantum information in microseconds. The remedy is to use logical qubits, which encode quantum information across many physical qubits, thereby enabling error correction. This approach elevates the control system from a mere pulse generator to the stabilizing core of the quantum computer: it must coordinate hundreds to thousands of channels while producing ultra‑stable pulses, and close real-time feedback loops at microsecond timescales. These requirements are at the core of the field’s main challenges – scaling to several thousand qubits, pushing gate fidelities to five nines and beyond, and mastering quantum error correction. The ZQCS is the control system built to meet these needs, uniting scalable direct‑RF electronics, deterministic real‑time networking, and powerful software.

“We designed the ZQCS end‑to‑end for the logical‑qubit era – starting from the analog front end, through the real‑time fabric, to software – so researchers and system builders can address scale, fidelity, and error correction together,” said Andrea Orzati, CEO at Zurich Instruments.

ZQCS uses a modular AdvancedTCA architecture scaling seamlessly from a single shelf to multi‑shelf systems and delivering more than a thousand channels per 19‑inch rack. The system is ready for the integration into HPC environments, offering water-cooled enclosures for optimal heat management and thermal stability. For QEC research without boundaries and hybrid quantum-classical workflows, each shelf integrates a programmable FPGA and a low‑latency, high‑bandwidth link to classical computing resources such as GPUs and CPUs.

With its first‑Nyquist‑zone, direct‑RF front end and market-leading signal‑to‑noise ratio, the ZQCS lets researchers optimize quantum fidelities without limits imposed by the control. A synchronization scheme optimized to execute large quantum programs maintains a distributed wall clock for deterministic timing across every signal. The ZQCS is powered by Zurich Instruments’ LabOne Q software, spanning pulse‑, gate‑, and workflow‑level interfaces supporting automation for calibration and tune‑up.

“We’re excited to see the first ZQCS installations come online, powering quantum error‑correction experiments, and helping our partners scale from hundreds to thousands of qubits,” said Sebastian Krinner, Product Manager. “This is a major step in our long‑term commitment to help the community reach fault tolerance.”

The launch affirms Zurich Instruments’ capability and commitment to deliver the quantum control technology of the logical‑qubit era, backed by deep domain expertise and the long-term stability offered by its parent company, Rohde & Schwarz.

More from HPCwire

• Zurich Instruments Showcases Collaboration with NVIDIA at GTC Washington
• Zurich Instruments Joins Australia’s 1st Quantum Testbed Initiative in Queensland

About Zurich Instruments

Zurich Instruments is a Swiss company with a passion for phenomena that are often notoriously difficult to measure. We provide researchers and industry partners advanced hardware, software, and services for quantum computing control systems, lock-in amplifiers, and arbitrary waveform generators. As a company of scientists, we believe in offering products that reduce complexity of laboratory setups, unlock new measurement strategies, and comply with the highest Swiss quality standards. Our commitment to collaboration and real-time support is reflected in our seven worldwide offices, numerous research partnerships, and thousands of publications that refer to Zurich Instruments. In 2021, Zurich instruments became part of Rohde & Schwarz, allowing the company to continue its ambitious mission to advance science and accelerate the second quantum revolution under steady, industry-leading ownership.

Source: Zurich Instruments

The post Zurich Instruments Launches ZQCS Platform for Large-Scale Quantum Computer Control appeared first on HPCwire.

Apple's new $599 budget phone brings MagSafe compatibility, higher base storage and an A19 chip. That makes the trade-offs easier to swallow.

Built in collaboration with Anthropic, Microsoft's new tool can create spreadsheets, run reports and do research autonomously.

This is the best balance of future-proofing and price for now, but this may not be the final iPad release this year.

Ministers understood to be considering ways to mitigate rising energy bills as oil prices surpass $100 a barrel

• Middle East crisis – live updates

• UK politics live – latest updates

Keir Starmer has said that a long-term US-Iran war would affect the “lives and households of everybody”, as the head of the AA advised motorists against making “non-essential” journeys.

On Monday, oil prices surged past $100 (£75) a barrel for the first time since 2022, which will feed through to higher costs at petrol stations, and consumers will also be hit if energy costs push up inflation.

Federal authorities apparently never searched the property, but now state authorities will reopen a 2019 investigation

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When Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on 6 July 2019 for sex trafficking teenagers, New York federal prosecutors said the ultra-wealthy predator “exploited and abused dozens of underage girls” in Manhattan and Palm Beach “among other locations”.

One of those other locations was the late financier’s sprawling New Mexico property. Epstein’s so-called Zorro Ranch came into sharper relief after his 10 August 2019 death in jail awaiting trial, with criminal and civil proceedings revealing that numerous alleged abuses unfolded there. But Zorro Ranch did not receive the same scrutiny as Epstein’s other properties: an 8 February Guardian investigation revealed that federal authorities apparently never searched the property.

LOUISVILLE, Colo., March 9, 2026 — Infleqtion, a global leader in quantum sensing and quantum computing powered by neutral-atom technology, announced an expansion of its work with several U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories. Under the agreements, Infleqtion is continuing its longstanding collaborations with Sandia National Laboratories and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, while also launching a new partnership with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

The partnerships are centered on Superstaq, Infleqtion’s quantum software platform that helps researchers run quantum programs more efficiently on real machines. Superstaq manages how quantum instructions are prepared and executed on different systems, allowing national laboratory teams to spend more time on scientific discovery and less time adapting software to each piece of hardware.

“Researchers at the national laboratories are working at the front edge of what is possible in quantum computing,” said Pranav Gokhale, chief technology officer at Infleqtion. “These continued and expanded partnerships reflect the trust they place in Superstaq as one of the few quantum software platforms that works across different quantum computing technologies, helping researchers unlock meaningful performance improvements as they move from experiments toward real applications.”

Infleqtion has supported Sandia’s Quantum Scientific Computing Open User Testbed (QSCOUT) and Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Quantum Testbed since 2021, providing capabilities tailored to each system’s hardware. The renewed collaborations include software licensing and close technical engagement to incorporate improvements that help systems operate more reliably as the testbeds grow in size and complexity.

“As part of ongoing work on the Advanced Quantum Testbed, Superstaq has provided software tools used to support quantum research and development,” said Chris Spitzer, Quantum Research Program Manager at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “Continuing the collaboration supports researcher access to software tools needed for experiments on evolving quantum hardware.”

“Superstaq has been an important part of the QSCOUT testbed since its early days,” said Susan Clark, QSCOUT Principal Investigator, Sandia National Laboratories. “Continuing this collaboration supports our mission to provide researchers with reliable tools that enable experimentation, comparison, and advancement across emerging quantum computing approaches.”

The new partnership with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory extends Superstaq support to the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center (SQMS), following its recent renewal as one of the Department of Energy’s National Quantum Information Science Research Centers. Through this collaboration, Infleqtion will work with Fermilab researchers to help prepare and run quantum programs in ways that best support SQMS’s research goals.

“Through this collaboration with Infleqtion, SQMS is exploring pathways to pair advanced hardware with a flexible software platform,” said Dr. Silvia Zorzetti, Principal Engineer, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. “The Superstaq platform supports​ the collaborative work underway at SQMS and helps our teams focus on translating foundational research into meaningful progress for the broader quantum ecosystem.”

Across all three laboratories, Superstaq spans multiple types of quantum computing hardware, helping researchers prepare and run experiments more efficiently on real systems. These collaborations reflect Infleqtion’s broader strategy to deliver scalable quantum software that supports government, academic, and commercial users as quantum systems grow larger and more capable.

Beyond these collaborations, Infleqtion’s work across the Department of Energy laboratory system also includes ongoing efforts with Argonne National Laboratory and the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), including a recently awarded ARPA-E initiative to advance quantum-powered energy grid optimization. Together, these partnerships underscore Infleqtion’s broad commitment to supporting DOE national labs with scalable quantum software and technologies that accelerate both foundational research and real-world impact.

To learn more about Infleqtion’s quantum software and applications research, visit: https://infleqtion.com/quantum-software.

About Infleqtion

Infleqtion, Inc. (NYSE: INFQ) is a global leader in quantum technology, delivering neutral atom solutions for quantum computing, networking, sensing, and security. With a product portfolio spanning quantum computers, quantum optical clocks, RF receivers, and inertial sensors, Infleqtion’s full-stack approach combines high-performance hardware with the company’s proprietary Superstaq quantum computing software platform. Infleqtion’s systems are already in use by the U.S. Department of War, 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.

Source: Infleqtion

The post Infleqtion Expands Partnerships with US Department of Energy National Laboratories appeared first on HPCwire.

Footage of attack on Minab compound adds to evidence indicating it was a US strike that killed scores of children

• Middle East crisis – live updates

A video has shown a US Tomahawk missile hitting the Iranian naval base next to a primary school in Minab where more than 168 people, mostly children, were killed – adding to evidence that indicates the US was responsible for the school strike.

The video, released by the Iranian news agency Mehr and geolocated to the site by the investigative collective Bellingcat, shows the missile hitting the Minab compound on the morning of 28 February, when US-Israeli strikes on Iran began.

March 9, 2026 — Quantum computers work by applying quantum operations, such as quantum gates, to delicate quantum states. Ideally, quantum computers can solve complex equations at staggeringly fast speeds that vastly outpace regular computers. In real hardware, the operations of quantum computers often deviate from the ideal behavior because of device imperfections and unwanted noise from the environment. To build reliable quantum machines, researchers need a way to accurately determine what a quantum device is actually doing.

Overview of compilation-based quantum process tomography (CQPT). The left panel shows the main idea: an unknown quantum process transforms an input state into an output state, and CQPT uses a trainable “compiler” to learn the process by forcing the final state to return to the original input. The right panels illustrate two implementations of CQPT: a Kraus-based approach for unitary or near-unitary processes, and a Choi-based approach for general noisy processes. Credit: Le Bin Ho et al.

Quantum process tomography (QPT) is a standard method for this. However, traditional QPT becomes very costly as the system grows, because the number of required measurements and calculations increases rapidly with the number of qubits.

To address this challenge, a research team from Tohoku University, the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), and the University of Information Technology (Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City) has introduced a new framework called compilation-based quantum process tomography (CQPT).

The central idea of CQPT is simple. The method starts with a known input quantum state, applies a trainable process following the unknown process, and then works backwards to evaluate how well the final output returns to the original input. The “return-to-input” model is optimized to reconstruct the underlying quantum processes that make up the steps in-between the input and output. Importantly, the framework is designed so that optimization can conveniently be performed using only a single measurement outcome per input state.

The researchers developed two complementary versions of the CQPT: one based on Kraus operators, and one based on the Choi matrix. Together, these two approaches allow CQPT to handle a wide range of quantum operations and noisy processes relevant to modern quantum devices.

“Efficient and scalable methods for characterizing quantum processes are important for the future of quantum computing and quantum sensing,” Dr. Le Bin Ho said. “We need such methods to check whether quantum gates and circuits work correctly, identify hardware errors, calibrate devices, and support quantum error correction.”

Dr. Le believes that CQPT could become a practical alternative to standard quantum process tomography, especially for larger quantum systems where full tomography is no longer realistic due to high costs.

The current study demonstrates that CQPT is feasible through sound theoretical analysis and numerical simulations. The framework offers a promising way to make quantum tomography more efficient. Next steps will involve tackling the challenge of implementing it in real experiments. The researchers plan to focus on developing hardware-ready versions of the method and improving its robustness.

The findings were published in Advanced Quantum Technologies on Feb. 26, 2026.

Publication Details:

• Title: Advancing Quantum Process Tomography through Quantum Compilation
• Authors: Huynh Le Dan Linh, Vu Tuan Hai, Le Bin Ho
• Journal: Advanced Quantum Technologies
• DOI: 10.1002/qute.202500494

Source: Tohoku University

The post Tohoku University Researchers Report Method to Simplify Quantum Process Tomography appeared first on HPCwire.

UPDATE!
It works! The bearings unfortunately did need replacing in the end. Just too far gone sadly despite getting them spinning freely and smoothly. It did however need the hall sensors replacing too but other than that it's happy.

So yes, turns out a motor as rusty as that can be restored.
That is of course if you're willing to spend hours with penetrating fluids, ultra fine abrasive scrubs and a bin full of rags.

Move could lead to escalation of war as Donald Trump has already called Mojtaba Khamenei an ‘unacceptable’ choice. Plus, stormy space weather may be garbling messages from aliens

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Good morning.

Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of the late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been chosen as his successor, as the war enters its 10th day and fresh missile and drone strikes reverberate across the Middle East.

Why has the Iran war prompted fears of stagflation for the global economy? Oil prices surged past $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022, triggering a stark sell-off across some of the world’s leading stock markets amid growing concern that the US-Israel war on Iran could set the stage for a global economic shock.

What else is happening? The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, spoke to the US president on Sunday afternoon after a barrage of criticism from Trump, who told his UK ally on Saturday that his help was not needed, even as the US continued to use UK bases for strikes against Iran.

Who is the suspect? Authorities announced on Thursday that they had arrested 22-year-old Ivan Miller of Iowa as a suspect in the murders. Police say Miller had no connection to the women.

Why should Delaware care?
Delaware’s Republican Party represents more than 200,000 registered voters, as well as hundreds of annual donors. But the party hasn’t had one of its members hold a elected seat statewide since 2018. While party fortunes continued to look bleak in recent months amid financial disarray, leaders now say they have righted the ship. 

Shortly after the new year, a political accountant who has handled the books for hundreds of conservative organizations, including the Delaware Republican Party, abruptly resigned from his post with the state’s GOP. 

His departure – coming a month after Spotlight Delaware reported on money problems facing the state GOP – exposed further financial disarray within the party. In the subsequent weeks, GOP leaders scrambled to find a replacement, while federal regulators sent warnings that the party could face fines and a possible audit if it did not file a year-end campaign finance report, and answer questions about reports of negative cash balances. 

Now, two months after the accountant’s resignation, Delaware GOP Chair Gene Truono said the party is recovering with a beefed-up fundraising strategy, and a new accounting firm that has filed its required federal reports.

Looking forward, Truono said the party is well positioned to rebuild its bank account and its base of power ahead of what could be its most consequential election cycle in years.

The comments are likely welcome news for party faithful who have watched the Delaware GOP not only suffer through recent financial turmoil but also through a decade of electoral losses in statewide races.

“2026 is going to be a good year for us,” Truono said. “Money is coming in. We’re able to hire people. We’re meeting our payroll.” 

Truono further stated that his party’s previous campaign finance reports, which showed that a federal bank account was thousands of dollars in the red, were inaccurate. He said those reported negative cash balances were the result of accounting errors involving duplicate checks existing on the party’s books. 

When party officials sought to correct the errors last fall amid scrutiny from Spotlight Delaware and others, Truono said their accountant, Thomas Datwyler, wasn’t responsive enough to allow the party to reconcile the books. 

And, after the new year passed, Datwyler ended up “ghosting” the party altogether, Truono claimed. 

But Datwyler tells a different story. When reached for comment, the embattled national political accountant said he didn’t respond to the party after the new year because he had resigned his contract in an email sent on Jan. 11. 

He did so because the party had not paid his company for his previous year’s worth of work, he said.  

“And I know what the financial situation is,” Datwyler said. “They don’t have any money. Even if those checks weren’t cleared or not, they still don’t have any money.”  

Asked about Datwyler’s resignation, Truono said he never received a letter by email. The state GOP’s executive assistant, Paula Ireton, also stated that she had not received Datwyler’s resignation email.

Datwyler forwarded Spotlight Delaware the email he said he sent to the party in January. It included an attached letter from his company, Ax Capital, announcing the resignation.   

When asked why the Delaware GOP had reported negative account balances in recent months, Datwyler described a different bookkeeping problem from the one Truono said existed. 

While he agreed the party’s bank account was not currently in the red, he said it was only because past payments to party vendors had never been claimed.   

“They have checks in the register that haven’t actually cleared the bank account,” he said. “They’re not duplicates. They were written … And, if they were ever cashed, obviously the bank would go negative.” 

Civil penalties, an audit or legal enforcement?

In the wake of Datwyler’s departure, GOP officials said they scrambled to hire a new accountant that could compile the party’s year-end campaign finance report to send to federal regulators.

Federal and state campaign finance law requires political parties to regularly disclose to the public the amount of money they receive from donors – and how they spend it. The state GOP did file a campaign finance report in January related to its state election activities to the Delaware Department of Elections. 

But the party ultimately missed the Jan. 31 deadline to file its federal report. 

By mid-February, federal officials sent a sternly worded letter stating that a failure to file the year-end campaign finance report could “result in civil money penalties, an audit or legal enforcement action.”

The letter followed another that was sent in January in which regulators demanded to know how the party could report that its federal bank balance sat more than $8,000 in the red. 

It was the fifth month in a row the party reported a negative cash balance. 

In the letter, the FEC stated that the party must respond by Feb. 16 and “Requests for extensions of time in which to respond will not be considered.”

While acknowledging the gravity of the federal demands, Truono said the party throughout February was working with a new vendor to resolve the situation. By the final business day of the month, the GOP filed its delayed financial disclosures. Within the documents, the party reported its cash balance no longer was in the red, but instead sat at about $19,000.

Election regulators have not sent additional letters to the party during the week since the filings, according to the Federal Elections Commission’s website. 

Asked for his takeaways from the recent turmoil, Truono pointed squarely at Datwyler, saying the party wasn’t ”getting the kind of service that we expected or needed.” 

“The major takeaway, for my part, was we had the wrong vendor, plain and simple,” he said. 

Truono’s comments add to a mountain of high-profile criticism made by various political organizations across the country about Datwyler. In 2024, an attorney for the Conservative Nevada Leadership PAC filed a complaint with the FEC claiming that Datwyler had “a long history of running roughshod over federal campaign finance law.”

A year earlier, the Daily Beast reported that Datwyler had acted as a shadow treasurer for the campaign of disgraced-Congressman George Santos. The report claimed that while Datwyler managed the campaign’s books, he had listed on disclosure reports the name of another person as the treasurer.  

When asked about the various news reports, Datwyler said he has worked for more than 1,000 political committees of various kinds over the past two decades. He said there are only about a dozen that have been unsatisfied with his work. 

He also claimed that many of the public reports about him are the result of tips from “competitors in the industry that take a shot at me.” 

He declined to state which of his competitors he suspects of spreading such information. 

A chance of victory ahead?

In his interviews with Spotlight Delaware, Truono spoke at length about the GOP’s plan to launch a broad campaign to boost the party presence in the state in advance of this year’s consequential elections.

Specifically, party officials will focus on convincing more voters to register as Republicans, and on better communicating the party platform.

Truono said his party has a particularly ripe opportunity to take advantage of Democrats recent actions in the state that he said have been unpopular. He cited the state legislature’s decoupling last fall of the state’s tax code from that of the IRS.

Truono also said President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in February has prompted some Democrats to call into his party office to announce that there were inspired to change their party registration.  

If the GOP could capture enough new voters to win in a few state legislative races this fall, they could take away Democrats’ supermajorities in the General Assembly – which allow the party to raise taxes without Republican support in the House and the Senate. 

Conversely, with a loss of just one seat in the House, the party could slide further to the periphery by giving Democrats the ability to pass Constitutional amendments without GOP votes. 

For its federal campaigns this year, the state’s Republicans also will field candidates for Congress to face Delaware’s Democratic members of Congress – Rep. Sarah McBride and Sen. Chris Coons – up for reelection. 

Truono said the party launched its new initiative in January, with two successful fundraisers. Those dollars have already allowed him to hire new people, he said.

Among the future new hires, Truono added, will also be data analysts who can identify individuals “who we can reach out to to either convince them to vote Republican or convince them to change their party affiliation.”

Spotlight Delaware reported in 2024 that the GOP had fallen to become the third largest political group in the state, following a surge of new independent voters registered through the state DMV’s automatic voter registration system. Democrats remained the largest contingent of registered voters at the time. 

While the GOP is adding staff, it also recently lost a key employee. Truono noted that the party’s executive director Nick Miles no longer holds that position. He said that as chair of the party, he has the “right to appoint or unappoint” that position.

“In this case, I’m looking for someone else because he just didn’t meet my personal needs,” Truono said.

While he served as executive director, the state GOP had made regular payments to Miles, through a limited liability company, for what the party described as “legal consulting.” However, Miles is not a member of the Delaware Bar Association.

The post Delaware’s GOP projects strength after months of turmoil appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Wait times at security checkpoints in Houston and New Orleans as long as three hours due to shortage of TSA agents

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Travelers complained of long waits Sunday – lasting hours in some cases – at security checkpoints at airports in Houston and New Orleans, which officials blamed on a government shutdown of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The estimated wait time at the standard security checkpoint at the William P Hobby airport in Houston early Sunday evening was at one point three hours, according to the Houston Airports website. The Hobby airport on social media Friday said it expected more travelers than normal due to spring break.

The prime minister is facing pressure from unions and some backbenchers to prepare a support package as oil and gas prices threaten to push up inflation

As we mentioned in the opening post, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has a call with fellow G7 finance ministers this afternoon to discuss surging oil prices and the economic impact of the US-Israeli war with Iran.

You can follow all the latest market developments in our business live blog, which is leading on how stock markets are tumbling after the oil price surged over $100 a barrel for the first time in four years:

The longer this conflict goes on, the more effect it will have on the cost of oil.

Any time Brent Crude passes 100 dollars per barrel raises concern across the markets, for the haulage industry and drivers.

Average petrol and diesel prices have rocketed in the last week and are unfortunately likely to keep on rising, so the situation for UK drivers is looking increasingly bleak.

Unleaded is almost certainly going to reach an average of 140p in the next week or so, while diesel looks highly likely to climb to at least 160p a litre.
We encourage drivers to continue filling up as normal but to shop around for the best prices.

The preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment suggests that the U.S. is "likely" responsible for the bombing of the girls' school in Iran on Feb. 28.

As the US space agency misses its launch window for the second month, smaller firms continue work on their parts

It was shaping up into another ordinary day at the Colorado headquarters of the small space startup Lunar Outpost last Friday when chief executive Justin Cyrus learned of a surprise press conference called by Jared Isaacman, the new administrator of Nasa.

Cyrus’s company epitomises the many private contractors of the space agency working on a myriad of projects crucial to the Artemis program that seeks to return humans to the moon, so anything Isaacman had to say about it was naturally of interest to him.

Ruling could free $175bn, but legal hurdles and higher costs have left businesses questioning if claims are even worth it

The US supreme court recently struck down Donald Trump’s tariffs, opening the door to up to $175bn in refunds for businesses that paid the import taxes. However, the process for claiming that money is by no means certain. Trump himself said that the issue could be tied up in courts “for the next five years”.

Across the country, small businesses have struggled to navigate the fallout from Trump’s global tariff wars. The Guardian asked small business owners in the US how their lives and livelihoods have been affected.

It turns out your car's tire pressure monitoring system might be a gold mine for hackers.

Reform UK leader strengthens ties with crypto sector with stake in former Tory chancellor’s company Stack BTC

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Nigel Farage has invested in Kwasi Kwarteng’s bitcoin reserves company, as the leader of Reform UK aligns himself closer with the cryptocurrency industry.

The MP has invested £215,000 in Stack BTC, the crypto business that is chaired by the former Conservative chancellor.

Browse all of our full episode transcripts from 2026 of "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan."

Pete Docter says Pixar will concentrate on more commercially appealing films after staff dissent over deleted scenes that implied lead character was gay

Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter said that the reason why LGBTQ+ plot elements were removed from the company’s 2025 film Elio was that Pixar is “not [making] therapy”.

Docter was speaking to the Wall Street Journal in the wake of the successful release of Pixar’s latest film Hoppers, which opened at No 1 at the North American box office this weekend.

Police in Australia warned of crocodiles "absolutely everywhere" and said they had moved more than 1,000 people across the state into shelter after massive floods.

After decades of searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, the nonprofit SETI Foundation has an announcement. "A new study by researchers at the SETI Institute suggests stellar 'space weather' could make radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligence harder to detect." Stellar activity and plasma turbulence near a transmitting planet can broaden an otherwise ultra-narrow signal, spreading its power across more frequencies and making it more difficult to detect in traditional narrowband searches. For decades, many SETI experiments have focused on identifying spikes in frequency — signals unlikely to be produced by natural astrophysical processes. But the new research highlights an overlooked complication: even if an extraterrestrial transmitter produces a perfectly narrow signal, it may not remain narrow by the time it leaves its home system... "If a signal gets broadened by its own star's environment, it can slip below our detection thresholds, even if it's there, potentially helping explain some of the radio silence we've seen in technosignature searches," said Dr. Vishal Gajjar, Astronomer at the SETI Institute and lead author of the paper. The researchers created "a practical framework for estimating how much broadening could occur for different types of stars" — and accounting for space weather — by "using radio transmissions from spacecraft in our own solar system, then extrapolated to other stellar environments." The study's co-author (a SETI Institute research assistant) suggests this coud lead to better-targetted SETI searches. (M-dwarf stars — about 75% of stars in the Milky Way — actually have the highest likelihood that narrowband signals would get broadened before leaving their system...)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, considered a 2028 presidential contender, is planning a series of commencement addresses in May as he broadens his national profile.

Markets predict Bank of England will hold rates in 2026 as bond yields soar on forecasts of prolonged conflict

• Iran war drives oil prices above $100 a barrel

• Business live – latest updates

UK interest rates are not expected to be cut this year and could even rise next summer, according to financial markets, in a dramatic reversal of forecasts before the US-Israel war on Iran.

Markets data on Monday showed that investors predict the Bank of England will most likely keep its base rate on hold at 3.75% for the remainder of the year, and would raise them to 4% next June.

Jessika Roswall cites Poland and Finland, which have made border areas near Russia or its allies ‘more hostile’ to cross

Countries should look to rewild their land borders as a deterrence to invasion and build up other geographical defences to attack, Europe’s environment chief has said.

Jessika Roswall, the EU’s commissioner for the environment, water resilience and a competitive circular economy, said nature should be used to improve national security. “Investing in nature and using nature as a natural border control is necessary, and actually increases biodiversity. It’s a win-win,” she said.

AI feature generated offensive posts about Diogo Jota and the Hillsborough and Munich disasters

Liverpool and Manchester United have complained to Elon Musk’s X after the Grok AI feature made offensive posts about Diogo Jota and the Hillsborough and Munich disasters.

The posts were generated when users asked the AI tool to make hateful posts about the two football teams.

Standoff with DoD over Claude chatbot reignites debate over how AI will be used in war – and who will be held accountable

Until recently, Anthropic was one of the quieter names in the artificial intelligence boom. Despite being valued at about $350bn, it rarely generated the flashy headlines or public backlash associated with Sam Altman’s OpenAI or Elon Musk’s xAI. Its CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei was an industry fixture but hardly a household name outside of Silicon Valley, and its chatbot Claude lagged in popularity behind ChatGPT.

That perception has shifted as Anthropic has become the central actor in a high-profile fight with the Department of Defense over the company’s refusal to allow Claude to be used for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input. Amid tense negotiations, the AI firm rejected a Pentagon deadline for a deal last week, in a move that led Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, to accuse Anthropic of “arrogance and betrayal” of its home country while demanding that any companies that work with the US government cease all business with the AI firm.

Exclusive: Bank Policy Institute, representing lenders such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, argues that new licenses could harm US consumers and financial system

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Some of the largest US banks are considering suing their financial regulator, arguing that a new raft of licenses for crypto, payment and fintech could put American consumers and the wider financial system at risk.

The Bank Policy Institute (BPI), which represents 40 of the biggest US lenders including JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, is understood to be weighing its legal options after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) failed to heed repeated warnings from influential banking groups and state regulators over its reinterpretation of federal licensing rules.

Cristian Espinoza is fitting right in at Nashville, RSL’s kids are alright, and more from the MLS weekend

• Pablo Iglesias Maurer: 72,000 fans watched DC United, but only Messi’s Inter Miami dazzled

Before we begin our tour through the weekend that was in MLS, a trivia question to ponder: which team was the last Supporters’ Shield winner to start the subsequent season with three straight losses? Read to the end for the answer.

U.S. and Ecuadoran forces conducted "lethal kinetic operations" inside Ecuador to combat drug trafficking in the South American country, SOUTHCOM said.

Trump is choking off oil imports to the communist nation, plunging it into a crisis not seen since the fall of USSR

On 29 January this year, after the kidnapping of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro but before the assassination of Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, President Trump turned his attention to another country. He issued an executive order declaring a national emergency against the government of Cuba, ruling it an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States and threatening to impose tariffs to stop ships from carrying petroleum to Cuba. It was an evident bid for regime change.

The actions to deny oil to Cuba have severely exacerbated a growing crisis on the island, with even some US congressional representatives denouncing the measures. Cuba produces about one-third of its own oil needs and imports the rest – mostly from Venezuela and Mexico. After the US attack on Venezuela and the tariff threat, both countries completely halted oil exports to Cuba. Since early February, the length of daily power outages has doubled, lasting about 18 hours a day.

Sara Kozameh is assistant professor in history at University of California San Diego

Colorado rescue crews early Sunday found the body of a missing skier who was killed in a recent avalanche.

President Trump says the U.S. has diminished Iran's military and regime and will continue to expand its targets inside Iran.

The company’s clash with the Pentagon is a fight over the future of American privacy

The US military wants to use its state-of-the-art AI tools to supercharge surveillance against Americans, making it easier than ever to monitor our movements, our search history, and our private associations. That’s one of the major takeaways from a dramatic dispute between the Department of Defense and some of the leading AI companies in America. What this clash highlights most of all, however, is just how easily AI surveillance systems can be turned against the people in this country, and the urgent need for Congress to intervene.

Last week, the Pentagon and Donald Trump announced that the government would cease using Anthropic’s AI products, asserting that the safety guardrails proposed by the company – no mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons – were unacceptable. The Trump administration went even further, claiming that these positions render Anthropic a “supply chain risk”, and prohibited anyone doing business with the US military from conducting commercial activity with Anthropic in their military work.

In Gaza, movement is no longer a mundane part of daily life. Israel’s military assault and prolonged siege have dismantled Gaza’s transportation system so thoroughly that journeys that once took minutes by car now require hours of walking through rubble and grotesque debris. What used to be an ordinary act — leaving home, reaching a clinic, visiting kin — has now become a form of physical labor, a calculation of pain, and a risk weighed against necessity.

By late 2025, Gaza’s Ministry of Transport and Communications reported that approximately 70 percent of registered vehicles — more than 50,000 cars, taxis, buses, and trucks — had been destroyed or rendered inviable. Between 68 and 85 percent of the road network suffered damage or total destruction, with some areas such as Khan Younis losing more than 90 percent of their routes. Israeli forces repeatedly bombed, cratered, and bulldozed major roads and intersections, instigating chaos that fragmented the Strip into isolated zones where movement between neighborhoods requires long detours or hours on foot.

Related

Trump’s War to Nowhere

While the world turns its attention to Iran, daily life in Gaza has not returned to pre-genocide conditions. Since the U.S. and Israel began their joint assault on Iran, Lebanon, and the broader region, prices in Gaza have risen sharply as people rushed to buy essential goods and fuel. The sudden surge in demand and limited supply spiked the cost of food, water — and transportation. Border crossings were closed for 48 hours, further exacerbating shortages and contributing to the rapid rise in prices. In recent days, prices have begun to gradually decrease and stabilize, but the overall economic burden remains heavy for most households in Gaza, where many people are still struggling to cover basic needs.

Roads no longer connect neighborhoods, and transportation no longer guarantees access to health care, work, or sustenance. Even streets that remain technically passable are obstructed by rubble, vehicles, or collapsed infrastructure beneath the surface. Water and sewage lines burst under bombardment, flooding streets and turning mobility into an endeavor plagued by biohazards. In many areas, roads have become indistinguishable from ruins.

This collapse did not result solely from airstrikes. Israel’s blockade — which continues to restrict fuel, spare parts, tires, batteries, and heavy machinery — has undermined Gaza’s ability to repair or recover. Vehicles that survived bombardment often remain immobilized due to mechanical failures no workshop can fix. Even basic parts and equipment — filters, belts, brake systems — have become hard to find. Fuel scarcity has driven prices far beyond the reach of most families, while mechanics resort to dangerously improvised substitutes that destroy engines and emit toxic fumes across densely populated areas.

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Plans Call for “New Rafah” Built in Israel’s Image — Without Palestinians

As formal transportation disappears, residents rely on unsafe alternatives: tuk-tuks with no safety standards, animal-drawn carts, overcrowded cargo trucks not designed for passengers, or walking long distances across shattered streets. Asphalt has collapsed and fractured, mingling with rubble, sewage, twisted metal, and remnants of destroyed buildings, forming uneven, dirt-like paths. Movement through these spaces turns the act of walking into a physically punishing routine. The clatter of collapsing buildings and distant bombardment is constant, and the air feels opaque with dust and smoke.

Municipal authorities cannot clear the wreckage. The fuel shortages and lack of functioning equipment affect them too, preventing large-scale removal of debris. The result is a form of enforced immobility: Entire neighborhoods remain effectively cut off, not by checkpoints but by devastation. Residents plan their days around how far their bodies can carry them.

I have experienced this reality repeatedly. Over several weeks, I traveled with my brother, Mohammed, four times to reach a dentist in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, nearly 10 kilometers from our home. There is no reliable transportation between the two areas. The distance became an ordeal measured not in maps but in muscle fatigue, time lost, and pain that intensified with every uneven step.

On one of those days, rain fell heavily. Broken roads turned to mud layered over shattered asphalt and sharp stones. Water pooled in craters left by bombs. At times, I sprinted across short safe patches, only to be slowed again by mud and debris.

Transportation carried us only part of the distance. We always completed the journey on foot, adjusting our pace to the condition of the road and to the limits of our bodies. Without severe tooth pain, I would not have left my room. The road drained me more than the dental procedure itself. Each step felt like a negotiation between necessity and collapse.

I tried to make the walk bearable by searching for fragments of beauty along the way: a flowering tree growing beside rubble, a rose bush somehow still nourished, a building that had not yet fallen, the faint radiant glow of children playing in a distant schoolyard. I photographed the clouds, took pictures of myself simply to pass time, and paused whenever my body demanded it. These small acts were my survival mechanisms, attempts to assert that Gaza still contained something worth noticing.

This experience is not exceptional. It reflects a broader reality in which access to health care depends not on medical need alone, but on physical endurance. Patients miss appointments or abandon treatment altogether because they cannot reach clinics. Parents carry children for kilometers to medical points. Elderly people and those with disabilities remain trapped in place, dependent on others or forced to forego care indefinitely. The ability to walk through rubble for long distances has become a filter that determines who receives care and who does not.

Economic consequences intensify the crisis. Tens of thousands of drivers have lost their livelihoods as taxis, buses, and trucks were destroyed or immobilized. Commercial transport has slowed dramatically, disrupting supply chains and inflating the cost of basic goods. Workers arrive late or not at all. Students walk for hours or drop out entirely. For displaced families, transportation costs have reached apocalyptic levels, with some paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to move belongings short distances. Those without money walk, scavenge what they can, and leave the rest behind.

In the absence of regulation and fuel availability, informal transport operators dictate prices brazenly. Gaza’s local authorities acknowledge the exploitation, but under siege conditions, they have limited options to protect residents. Scarcity governs movement more than public need, reshaping social relations around access, endurance, and pent-up anger. Western‑run aid organizations vow to “maintain a steady and predictable flow of supplies,” yet recent reports note that while some aid has entered Gaza, the overall volume remains insufficient to meet basic needs, fueling frustration and despair.

The pattern of destruction reveals intent. Israeli attacks have repeatedly targeted intersections, bridges, and key road junctions, severing connections between neighborhoods and governorates. These actions obstruct ambulances, humanitarian convoys, and civilian movement, amplifying the effects of injury, hunger, and displacement. Gaza’s government estimates that losses in the transport sector exceed $3 billion, including the destruction of more than three million linear meters of roads. Mobility itself has become a casualty of war, leaving residents lurking between hazards and temporary shelters, pleading for safety.

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Gaza’s Civil Defense Forces Keep Digging for 10,000 Missing Bodies

Local officials have proposed emergency rehabilitation plans focused on reopening critical routes linking hospitals, shelters, and aid distribution centers. These efforts prioritize survival rather than reconstruction. Without access to fuel, spare parts, and heavy machinery, even minimal recovery remains largely theoretical, constrained by political decisions beyond Gaza’s control.

Transportation in Gaza is not a technical issue or a matter of convenience. It defines the limits of daily life. It determines who can reach a doctor, who can work, who can study, and who must stay behind. As long as movement itself remains under siege, life in Gaza will continue to contract, measured not by distance but by pain, exhaustion, and loss. In the 21st century, Palestinians in Gaza navigate a landscape where walking through ruins has replaced the most basic promise of mobility, ceaselessly testing endurance, resilience, and the abiding human spirit.

The post Israel Destroyed Gaza’s Roads and Transit. Now, We Walk Everywhere. appeared first on The Intercept.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware ranks as one of the top states in the nation for health care costs. For years, lawmakers have tried to bring down prices, often meeting fierce resistance from hospitals. A new bill introduced this week, if passed, would impose new caps on how expensive care can be in the state. 

Weeks after Delaware ended a bruising fight with the state’s biggest hospital systems, a new bill introduced Thursday threatens to bring back the battle over whether the state should regulate how hospitals set their prices.  

Senate Bill 1, filed ahead of lawmakers’ return this week for the remainder of this year’s legislative session, quickly drew the ire of Delaware’s powerful and litigious hospital apparatus.

Introduced by Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend (D-Newark/Glasgow), the bill is, on the surface, an attempt to bolster primary care in Delaware and better compensate providers proactively working to improve Delawareans’ health outcomes.

But under the bill’s hood, it is a referendum on hospital pricing in a state that has some of the highest costs in the country. If passed as is, SB 1 could deal a major blow to hospitals’ bottom lines.

Within the bill are changes that would regulate the rate at which insurers carrying plans for state employees and some commercial plans regulated by the Department of Insurance can reimburse hospitals for covered services. 

Health care providers generally earn the bulk of their revenues by negotiating with insurers who represent large groups of patients. The negotiations  determine how much money the insurer will pay for the  health care services, and in turn what costs will later be passed onto patients. 

Delaware rates are currently regulated with some growth caps limiting how high they can increase year over year, but SB 1 represents a step toward stricter price-setting measures. 

By setting a reimbursement ceiling, the state could rein in insurance payments to large-scale hospital systems while also providing more negotiating power to smaller providers, like private medical practices, to seek higher rates than they may have otherwise been able to secure in the past. 

Brian Frazee, CEO of the Delaware Healthcare Association, a trade group that represents the state’s hospitals, said his organization has “major concerns” with Senate Bill 1. He homed in on the rate-setting, saying it would cut hospital funding and “severely” limit resources.

“Put simply, it threatens health care quality and access in our state,” Frazee said. “We have been doing the real work in good faith to improve access and develop value-based solutions that lower costs without sacrificing quality and access.”

Townsend said he hopes to work with the hospitals collaboratively to address health care in the state, but he also said the current system is unsustainable. 

Through Senate Bill 1, he hopes further investments in primary care would help sustain a health care business model that treats people effectively before they become sick and need complex and expensive care. 

“They have become addicted to a framework that involves high costs after people are already sick,” Townsend said. “That is not sustainable. It is not moral. We have to change it.” 

A spokesperson for Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, the largest commercial health insurer in Delaware, said it is collaborating with stakeholders on the bill, and hopes it will lead to an “impactful and sustainable solution” for residents. 

The insurer said it is focused on ensuring spending measures included in the bill translate to improved health outcomes for Delawareans. 

“We appreciate the intention behind Senate Bill 1 and share its goal of strengthening primary care to improve health throughout Delaware,” the spokesperson said.

What’s in the bill?

One provision in the bill would introduce reference-based pricing to medical services covered under both insurance for state employees and some commercial plans regulated by the Department of Insurance. Essentially, this would limit the amount of money a provider could be reimbursed by insurers, tying that amount to a predetermined benchmark. 

Under Delaware’s proposal, that benchmark would cap reimbursement rates at 250% of what the federal government pays providers through Medicare. 

For services covered under the state’s health plan that don’t have a Medicare rate to compare to, like pediatrics, the state would be able to set those rates through the State Employees Benefits Committee.

“Even while continuing investments in primary care, Senate Bill 1 could conservatively save a cumulative $282 million over the first five years of full implementation across state-regulated health plans and enrollees,” the Department of Insurance said in a press release after announcing the bill. 

In an interview with Spotlight Delaware, Delaware Insurance Commissioner Trinidad Navarro said the bill would make the state more competitive for private practice and rural physicians. 

When it comes to the regulation of rate-setting for some procedures covered under both state and private plans, Navarro said pricing is typically “all over the place” and that some hospitals and providers are reimbursed at much higher rates than others. 

With these proposed regulations, Navarro said the state is trying to “level the playing field and spread the wealth” among providers.

Frazee, of the hospital association, pointed to that Medicare benchmark, saying it was a provision lawmakers tried, and failed, to introduce in previous legislation that led to a year-and-a-half long lawsuit between the state and Delaware’s largest hospital system. 

Efforts to introduce a 250% Medicare benchmark into Senate Bill 1 are a “blatant attempt” to slip in provisions that were removed from House Bill 350, the recently amended law that put an end to the state’s most recent fight with hospitals over health care costs. 

Senate Bill 1 also includes language that would exempt hospitals and other health care providers from the 250% requirement if they use a “global budget model” that is approved by the state insurance department. 

Global budget models set annual fixed prices for inpatient and outpatient procedures, meaning hospitals are paid on the front end to deliver services at a cost set by their previous Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements from previous years. 

In neighboring Maryland, the state implemented global budgeting for all of its acute care hospitals in 2014, according to a report from Mathematica.

Another House Bill 350? 

Shortly after lawmakers filed Senate Bill 1, Frazee’s organization quickly jumped to denounce the bill. 

It harkens back to early 2024, when legislators first introduced House Bill 350, drawing immediate and sustained scrutiny from the state’s hospitals. 

In 2024, the Delaware legislature passed House Bill 350, establishing the Diamond State Hospital Cost Review Board. The law would later be signed by former Gov. John Carney. 

The board was tasked with reducing hospital spending in Delaware, and given the power to veto hospital budgets it deemed excessive. 

Prior to the law’s passing, the state’s hospital systems blitzed the statehouse, attempting to lobby lawmakers against the bill. Ultimately, that effort failed, and HB 350 was signed into law. 

Shortly after, ChristianaCare sued the state. In its lawsuit, the hospital called the review board “draconian,” saying its ability to reject hospital budgets violated the state’s corporate charter. 

State lawyers denied those claims, saying the regulations have nothing to do with Delaware’s corporate law. In previous court filings, they further said ChristianaCare’s arguments amount to an “army of strawmen” designed to halt the regulations.

By June 2025, following an attempt by the state to dismiss the lawsuit, a judge in Delaware’s Court of Chancery allowed the lawsuit to continue and signaled that she may support the health systems’ arguments.

Last October, state and hospital lawyers tentatively agreed to end the lawsuit challenging the state’s hospital oversight board, in exchange for lawmakers removing the board’s key enforcement mechanism.

By the end of January 2026, lawmakers did pass a bill meeting those conditions, prompting the hospital review board to resume its work and ChristianaCare to dismiss its lawsuit. 

Now, as the legislature stares down another fight with the state’s health care systems, it is yet to be seen if the state is walking into another arduous legal battle with hospitals that stand to lose money under SB 1’s current provisions. 

Asked if he worries SB 1 may lead to another legal fight, Townsend said he believes the language in this bill does not give the hospitals the same “legal hook” that HB 350 did. 

But even if the hospitals do fight back in court, he said it is a fight worth having. 

“We can’t run away from lawsuits if it means running away from what Delaware is desperately needing, which is to save our primary health care,” Townsend said. “So if this is going to invite another lawsuit, then so be it.”

The post Delaware lawmakers propose health care pricing reform; draw swift pushback appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

As the 11-year cycle downshifts from solar maximum to solar minimum, the lights will begin to diminish, so the time to plan a trip is now.

Move could lead to escalation of war as Donald Trump has already called Mojtaba Khamenei an ‘unacceptable’ choice

• Middle East crisis - live updates

Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of the late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been chosen as his successor, as the war enters its 10th day and fresh missile and drone strikes reverberate across the Middle East.

After members of the clerical body responsible for selecting Iran’s highest authority announced the decision on Sunday, Iranian institutions and politicians, from the foreign ministry to lawmakers, issued statements expressing their allegiance. “We will obey the commander-in-chief until the last drop of our blood,” a statement from the defence council said.

Dentists, hygienists, and researchers say a shortage of rural dental care professionals and worsening oral hygiene since the COVID-19 pandemic mean more kids are ending up in the emergency room for tooth decay.

A new book traces how the Hall of Famer overcame humble beginnings in Indiana to take his place among basketball’s greatest players

How otherworldly was Larry Bird during his memorable season for Indiana State in 1978-79? At one point he made an assist while sprawled on the floor: from his end of the court, he made a one-armed throw to a teammate, who streaked coast-to-coast for a quick bucket.

That season ended with an epic showdown in the NCAA championship game against Magic Johnson and Michigan State. Magic got the better of Bird in that game, but the contest had wider repercussions. Not only did it spark interest in the NCAA Tournament, but Bird and Magic would help revitalize the NBA, after Bird joined the Boston Celtics and Magic the Los Angeles Lakers. But none of this was preordained, especially Bird’s trajectory.

The planet may experience a strong or even a super El Niño later this year. And it could cause record heat.

The letter, written in prison hours before her execution, is on display in Scotland for the first time in 30 years, enthralling crowds and conspiracy theorists.

System76 isn't the only one criticizing new age-verification laws. The blog 9to5Linux published an "informal" look at other discussions in various Linux communities. Earlier this week, Ubuntu developer Aaron Rainbolt proposed on the Ubuntu mailing list an optional D-Bus interface (org.freedesktop.AgeVerification1) that can be implemented by arbitrary applications as a distro sees fit, but Canonical responded that the company does not yet have a solution to announce for age declaration in Ubuntu. "Canonical is aware of the legislation and is reviewing it internally with legal counsel, but there are currently no concrete plans on how, or even whether, Ubuntu will change in response," said Jon Seager, VP Engineering at Canonical. "The recent mailing list post is an informal conversation among Ubuntu community members, not an announcement. While the discussion contains potentially useful ideas, none have been adopted or committed to by Canonical." Similar talks are underway in the Fedora and Linux Mint communities about this issue in case the California Digital Age Assurance Act law and similar laws from other states and countries are to be enforced. At the same time, other OS developers, like MidnightBSD, have decided to exclude California from desktop use entirely. Slashdot contacted Hayley Tsukayama, Director of State Affairs at EFF, who says their organization "has long warned against age-gating the internet. Such mandates strike at the foundation of the free and open internet." And there's another problem. "Many of these mandates imagine technology that does not currently exist." Such poorly thought-out mandates, in truth, cannot achieve the purported goal of age verification. Often, they are easy to circumvent and many also expose consumers to real data breach risk. These burdens fall particularly heavily on developers who aren't at large, well-resourced companies, such as those developing open-source software. Not recognizing the diversity of software development when thinking about liability in these proposals effectively limits software choices — and at a time when computational power is being rapidly concentrated in the hands of the few. That harms users' and developers' right to free expression, their digital liberties, privacy, and ability to create and use open platforms... Rather than creating age gates, a well-crafted privacy law that empowers all of us — young people and adults alike — to control how our data is collected and used would be a crucial step in the right direction.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Guardian investigation with DeSmog reveals thousands of tonnes of fish are illegally turned into fishmeal and oil off the coast of Guinea-Bissau

The only ice factory on Bubaque, an island in west Africa’s Guinea-Bissau, is out of service. Local fishers, such as Pedro Luis Pereira, are forced to source ice from factories on the mainland, about 70km away – a six-hour round trip by boat.

“The machines have been broken for months,” Pereira says, as he pulls in his nets on the shore of the island inside the protected Bijagós archipelago. “We’ve alerted the ministry of fisheries, but so far, no one has come to fix them.”

Foreign industrial vessels anchored near the port of Bissau. Photograph: Davide Mancini

A woman was arrested on Sunday for firing multiple shots at the Beverly Hills home of Rihanna, Los Angeles Police Department officials say.

In today’s newsletter: Across the Iranian diaspora, reactions to the escalating conflict reveal a complex mix of fear, grief and deep political ambivalence

Good morning. War has broken out in the Middle East. As the Iran war broadens and spills out into neighbouring countries, media agencies have rightly focused on trying to understand how the conflict came about, where bombs have fallen, and how many have died, while many states globally fear spikes in energy prices and wonder how the war will impact their economies.

What can easily get lost are the voices of the people directly affected.

Iran | Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of the late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been chosen as his successor.

UK politics | Keir Starmer sought to repair fractured relations with Donald Trump over the war with Iran on Sunday, as a Labour backlash gathered pace over Tony Blair’s assertion the UK should have supported the US’s initial airstrikes on Iran.

Energy | Great Britain has only two days of fossil gas stored after a decline in energy reserves, as more tankers carrying liquefied natural gas are diverted from their course to Europe towards Asia because of the Iran war. Meanwhile, global oil prices surged past the $100 (£74) a barrel mark for the first time since 2022.

Health | More than 400 lives may have been saved as a result of Martha’s rule, which lets NHS patients request a review of their care. Thousands of patients were either moved to intensive care, received drugs they needed or benefited from other changes as a direct result of over 10,000 calls to helplines.

AI | ChatGPT is driving a rise in reports of organised ritual abuse and “witchcraft, spirit possession and spiritual abuse” against children – which is historically under-reported in the UK – as survivors of “satanic” sexual violence use the AI tool for therapy.

With oil prices soaring and stock markets falling, economists warn that a prolonged conflict in the Middle East risks knocking growth worldwide and boosting prices

• Middle East crisis - live updates

Oil prices continued to surge on Monday, triggering a stark sell-off across some of the world’s leading stock markets amid growing concern that the US-Israel war on Iran could set the stage for a global economic shock.

The Middle East conflict has sparked an energy supply crisis that could risk driving up inflation and interest rates, according to economists, who believe growth is set to weaken while prices rise. Fears of stagflation – where economic activity stagnates, but inflation increases – loom large.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE are finding their carefully projected image of stability has been blown away

There is a tendency to think of the Gulf powers as static and unchanging. They are, after all, fortified by massive wealth and absolute monarchical rule, and secured with deep economic and military relationships with the US. The past week of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran, and Iran’s retaliations, have brought into focus what these countries export (oil and gas) and what they import (tax avoiders and labour). But beyond thinking about energy-supply challenges to the global economy and engaging in the cheap and popular sport of smirking at influencers in war zones, we must remember that the current conflagration will have profound consequences for the entire region. This is not just about the US, Israel and Iran; it is about a complex, overlapping political order in the Middle East that is much more fragile than it looks.

Amid all the ways the region has been changing over the past few years, the low-key evolution of three Gulf countries in particular has been the most significant. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have been rapidly making changes, the effects of which have been felt from Libya to Palestine. The 7 October attacks, which arguably set off the chain of events that led to this moment, were partly inspired by Hamas’s desire to stop the normalisation process that Saudi Arabia was undertaking with Israel; this was following the UAE and others signing the 2020 Abraham accords with Israel. The three countries have been pursuing in different ways, often at odds with each other, ambitious global and regional agendas. And they are also much more unsteady than their decades-long familial rule suggests.

Schools and highways close and Territorians living near major rivers leave amid possibly record-breaking rain

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Katherine’s mayor has warned locals to be wary of flood waters inundating the town after a crocodile was spotted on the local football oval, while residents are being warned to boil their water amid the record-breaking deluge.

As rain and storms continued to soak the Top End on Monday, the Bureau of Meteorology issued major flood warnings for thousands of Territorians near the Katherine, Daly and Georgina Rivers and Eyre Creek, with a flood watch covering nearly a dozen river catchments. The bureau also warned of severe thunderstorms and heavy rain in Darwin.

At least nine cities to pursue full bans as emergency decree gives decisive veto powers to mayors and local councils

Romania’s government has overhauled gambling regulations through an emergency decree allowing municipalities to restrict or ban betting shops and slot machine halls in the biggest tightening of the industry the country has seen.

Licensed operators must now obtain not only a national permit but also local authorisation to open a gambling venue, giving mayors and local councils a decisive veto power. Officials say more than 200 localities could pursue full bans.

President of Antwerp court says international drug crime is posing danger to social stability in Belgium

International drug crime poses a danger to social stability in Belgium, a senior judge has said, after his colleague warned the country was evolving into “a narco-state” where mafia groups were forming “a parallel force” in society.

Bart Willocx, the president of the Antwerp court of appeal, said Belgium was vulnerable to criminality from drug smuggling through the city’s vast port, one of the main entry points into Europe for cocaine smugglers.

Lucia Osborne-Crowley has endured threats and sexual harassment to report on Jeffrey Epstein’s chief enabler. Maxwell’s conviction was only the start of the quest for justice, she says

On 9 September 2022, Lucia Osborne-Crowley flew from London to Miami and caught a Greyhound bus north to West Palm Beach. The writer and journalist had arranged to meet Carolyn Andriano, who was abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell from the age of 14 until she was 17, starting in 2001. Andriano had been a crucial witness in the trial against Maxwell in 2021.

When the two women met, Andriano said she had just been visited by a private investigator – a man in his 60s, who had heard she was talking to someone about a book. In a restaurant that afternoon, Osborne-Crowley was approached by a man in his 60s. What was she writing, he wanted to know. He offered her drugs, cash and a meeting with one of Epstein’s pilots, then put his hands under her skirt. When the manager asked him to leave, he waited in the car park; Osborne-Crowley had to escape through a staff exit.

Colliding black holes were detected through spacetime ripples for the first time in 2015 by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), notes Space.com: Since then, LIGO and its partner gravitational wave detectors Virgo in Italy and KAGRA (Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector) in Japan have detected a multitude of gravitational waves from colliding black holes, merging neutron stars, and even the odd "mixed merger" between a black hole and a neutron star... During the first three observing runs of LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA, scientists had only "heard" 90 potential gravitational wave sources. But now they've published new data from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration that includes 128 more gravitatational wave sources — some incredibly distant: [Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog-4.0, or GWTC-4] was collected during the fourth observational run of these gravitational wave detectors, which was conducted between May 2023 and Jan. 2024... Excitingly, GWTC-4 could technically have been even larger, as around 170 other gravitational wave detections made by LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA haven't yet made their way into the catalog. One aspect of GWTC-4 that really stands out is the variety of events that created these signals. Within this catalog are gravitational waves from mergers between the heaviest black hole binaries yet, each about 130 times as massive as the sun, lopsided mergers between black holes with seriously mismatched masses, and black holes that are spinning at incredible speeds of around 40% the speed of light. In these cases, scientists think the extreme characteristics of the black holes involved in these mergers are the result of prior collisions, providing evidence of merger chains that explain how some black holes grow to masses billions of times that of the sun... GWTC-4 also includes two new mixed mergers involving black holes and neutron stars. [LVK member Daniel Williams, of the University of Glasgow in the U.K., said in their statement] "We are really pushing the edges, and are seeing things that are more massive, spinning faster, and are more astrophysically interesting and unusual." The catalog also demonstrates just how sensitive the LVK detectors have become. Some of the neutron star mergers occurred up to 1 billion light-years away, while some of the black hole mergers occurred up to 10 billion light-years away. Einstein's theory of general relativity can be tested with these detections, and "So far, the theory is passing all our tests," says LVK member Aaron Zimmerman, of the University of Texas at Austin. "But we're also learning that we have to make even more accurate predictions to keep up with all the data the universe is giving us." And LVK member Rachel Gray, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow, says "every merging black hole gives us a measurement of the Hubble constant, and by combining all of the gravitational wave sources together, we can vastly improve how accurate this measurement is." In short, says LVK member Lucy Thomas of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), "Each new gravitational-wave detection allows us to unlock another piece of the universe's puzzle in ways we couldn't just a decade ago."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America and Israel may have bitten off more than they can chew.

What abandoning democratic allies will cost America.

Why Shiite militias in Iraq are mostly staying on the sidelines.

The video is the latest indication of likely U.S. involvement in the attack on Feb. 28 that killed dozens of children in the southern Iranian city of Minab.

The U.S. military says it has killed six men in a strike on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean as part of the Trump administration's campaign against alleged traffickers.

Sunday’s attack brought death toll to at least 157 people since the Trump administration began targeting alleged ‘narco-terrorists’

The US military said it killed six men on Sunday in a strike on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel in the Eastern Pacific as part of the Trump administration’s campaign against alleged traffickers.

Sunday’s attack brought the death toll to at least 157 people since the administration began targeting “narco-terrorists” in small vessels in September.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for March 9, No. 532.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for March 9.

Thom Tillis says he believes Miller has ‘outsized influence’ over operations of Trump’s cabinet – key US politics stories from Sunday 8 March at a glance

The Republican senator Thom Tillis said on Sunday that he believed the White House adviser Stephen Miller “should go” and that his role in the Trump administration has been a “big problem”.

The senior senator representing North Carolina, when asked on CNN’s State of the Union if he thought Miller should go during a conversation about the administration’s immigration crackdown, responded to the host Jake Tapper by stating: “Oh, of course I do.”

Within the last month two U.S> judges have effectively declared AI bots are not human, writes Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik: On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to take up a lawsuit in which artist and computer scientist Stephen Thaler tried to copyright an artwork that he acknowledged had been created by an AI bot of his own invention. That left in place a ruling last year by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, which held that art created by non-humans can't be copyrighted... [Judge Patricia A. Millett] cited longstanding regulations of the Copyright Office requiring that "for a work to be copyrightable, it must owe its origin to a human being"... She rejected Thaler's argument, as had the federal trial judge who first heard the case, that the Copyright Office's insistence that the author of a work must be human was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court evidently agreed... [Another AI-related case] involved one Bradley Heppner, who was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly looting $150 million from a financial services company he chaired. Heppner pleaded innocent and was released on $25-million bail. The case is pending.... Knowing that an indictment was in the offing, Heppner had consulted Claude for help on a defense strategy. His lawyers asserted that those exchanges, which were set forth in written memos, were tantamount to consultations with Heppner's lawyers; therefore, his lawyers said, they were confidential according to attorney-client privilege and couldn't be used against Heppner in court. (They also cited the related attorney work product doctrine, which grants confidentiality to lawyers' notes and other similar material.) That was a nontrivial point. Heppner had given Claude information he had learned from his lawyers, and shared Claude's responses with his lawyers. [Federal Judge Jed S.] Rakoff made short work of this argument. First, he ruled, the AI documents weren't communications between Heppner and his attorneys, since Claude isn't an attorney... Second, he wrote, the exchanges between Heppner and Claude weren't confidential. In its terms of use, Anthropic claims the right to collect both a user's queries and Claude's responses, use them to "train" Claude, and disclose them to others. Finally, he wasn't asking Claude for legal advice, but for information he could pass on to his own lawyers, or not. Indeed, when prosecutors tested Claude by asking whether it could give legal advice, the bot advised them to "consult with a qualified attorney." The columnist agrees AI-generated results shouldn't receive the same protections as human-generated material. "The AI bots are machines, and portraying them as though they're thinking creatures like artists or attorneys doesn't change that, and shouldn't." He also seems to think their output is at best second-hand regurgitation. "Everything an AI bot spews out is, at more than a fundamental level, the product of human creativity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Secretary Pete Hegseth says it's President Trump who will set the terms of Iran's surrender, noting the U.S. is confident it will come, even as Iran's president said the U.S. demand for "unconditional surrender" is "a dream that they should take to their grave."

Kasasa island, in the Seto Inland Sea, has only seven residents but its fate is strongly intertwined with relations between Tokyo and Beijing

His island home is shrouded in mist, but his union jack woolly hat makes Hideya Yagi easy to spot as he greets the approaching boat. The 80-year-old, a former president of a construction company, is pleased to see the small group of passengers disembark, mainly because he is one of only seven registered residents at their destination, Kasasa island.

Kasasa is known as the “Hawaii” of Japan’s inland sea because of its warm climate and beautiful coastline. Yagi and his wife, Mihoko, eke out a quiet life alongside just one other couple and an elderly woman. The other two residents are almost always absent.

Ukrainian president hopes for reciprocal support for Kyiv in repelling Russian forces. What we know on day 1,474

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Kyiv’s drone experts will be on site in the Middle East “next week”, as he seeks US air defence missiles in exchange for drone expertise. Ukraine is facing a shortage of the expensive US PAC-3 air defence ammunition and Kyiv fears a longer Middle East war could disrupt supplies even further. When asked how exactly he wants to help the United States and its Gulf allies repel the drones, Zelensky said: “It is too early to say anything else at this stage”, adding: “I think that next week, when the experts are on site, they will look at the situation and help.”

Zelenskyy said he and Dutch prime minister Rob Jetten discussed joint arms production during his visit to Kyiv on Sunday, and he stressed Ukraine’s unique experience in defending against Iranian-made drones used by Russia. “We would very much like this to be an opportunity for both sides,” Zelenskyy told a press conference after a meeting with Jetten. “It is important that we are producing weapons together with the Netherlands – and we will certainly continue and expand this joint work,” Zelenskyy said, adding they had discussed investments and possible production volumes in detail. The Netherlands are an important donor to the PURL program through which Europe buys US weapons for Ukraine, so far contributing $870m to it.

Demand for Ukraine’s drone defence technology could lead to new defence partnerships for Kyiv, but equally could mean fewer drones for Ukraine itself in a stretched market, says Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent. Ukraine has significant experience battling the Shahed drones now being used by Iran to attack its Gulf neighbours, something that Volodymyr Zelenskyy has publicly said he is ready to share in return for help against Russia. “We are ready to help, and expect that our people will also receive the necessary support,” he said over the weekend. However, the attention of the White House is now elsewhere, perhaps drawing momentum away from peace talks with Moscow, and the attack on Iran seems to reinforce Vladimir Putin’s view of the world, in which stronger nations can target their weaker adversaries with impunity.

Global weapons flows have grown by almost 10% in the past five years, with Europe more than tripling imports in the wake of the war in Ukraine, a report showed on Monday. The surge can be explained, in part at least, by the fact European countries are buying in weapons to supply to Ukraine and because they are seeking to boost their own military capabilities against a perceived threat from Russia, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said. While imports of weapons to Europe are still not at the levels seen during the cold war, “Europe is now the largest recipient of arms [globally],” Mathew George, director of SIPRI’s Arms Transfers Programme, told AFP.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday that its air defence units had intercepted 234 drones over various parts of central and southern Russia over a nine-hour period, including six drones headed for Moscow. The ministry reported no damage or casualties during the period, extending from 2pm to 11pm.

The selection of Mojtaba Khamenei sent a message of defiance against Donald Trump after U.S.-Israeli strikes killed his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei served in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s where he developed close ties with the military services and with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Data shows labour market is still in a fragile position due to economic uncertainty, with few signs of recovery

Britain’s jobs market is “floundering” amid weak hiring demand, with only limited signs of recovery, data has revealed.

Companies remain cautious about hiring staff amid cost pressures and economic uncertainty, according to two reports released on Monday. They show the labour market continues to be in a fragile position.

Producers Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey discuss mysterious injuries suffered by government officials, known as Havana Syndrome. Their reporting revealed U.S. government testing of a directed energy weapon.

Son of Ali Khamenei named as his successor by Iran’s assembly of experts, state media reports

• Full report: Iran rejects Trump’s demand for unconditional surrender as a ‘dream’

• Tell us: how have you been affected by the latest events in the Middle East?

The Israeli military said it launched a wave of strikes “across Iran” on Sunday, targeting military sites.

A military statement said it had “initiated a wave of strikes targeting the Iranian terror regime military infrastructure across Iran”.

CNN reports on a company called Automated Architecture (AUAR) which makes "portable" micro-factories that use a robotic arm to produce wooden framing for houses (the walls, floors and roofs): Co-founder Mollie Claypool says the micro-factories will be able to produce the panels quicker, cheaper and more precisely than a timber framing crew, freeing up carpenters to focus on the construction of the building... The micro-factory fits into a shipping container which is sent to the building site along with an operator. Inside the factory, a robotic arm measures, cuts and nails the timber into panels up to 22 feet (6.7 meters) long, keeping gaps for windows and doors, and drilling holes for the wiring and plumbing. The contractor then fits the panels by hand. One micro-factory can produce the panels for a typical house in about a day — a process which, according to Claypool, would take a normal timber framing crew four weeks — and is able to produce framing for buildings up to seven stories tall... She says their service is 30% cheaper than a standard timber framing crew, and up to 15% cheaper than buying panels from large factories and shipping them to a site... She adds that the precision of the micro-factories means that the panels fit together tightly, reducing the heat loss of the final home, making them more energy efficient. AUAR currently has three micro-factories operating in the US and EU, with five more set to be delivered this year... AUAR has raised £7.7 million ($10.3 million) to date, and is expanding into the US, where a lack of housing and preference for using wood makes it a large potential market. There's other companies producing wooden or modular housing components, the article points out. But despite the automation, the company's co-founder insists to CNN that "Automation isn't replacing jobs. Automation is filling the gap." The UK's Construction Industry Training Board found that the country will need 250,000 more workers by 2028 to meet building targets but in 2023, more people left the industry than joined.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Bhatia wins on first playoff hole at Bay Hill

• Berger had led by four shots on the back nine

A straightforward conclusion to the Arnold Palmer Invitational is apparently impossible. Palmer himself would approve, even if events at the tournament still played in tribute to a golfing icon can feel grisly at times. This, the Florida swing, is the PGA Tour’s most testing spell. Glory came to Akshay Bhatia after one sudden death hole in competition with Daniel Berger. The 24-year-old Bhatia, a charismatic left-hander, will bounce towards Sawgrass and Thursday’s Players Championship.

A year after Collin Morikawa stumbled in painful fashion at Bay Hill, Berger was dragged into the most unlikely of scraps by Bhatia. Berger had led by four at the Sunday turn. Bhatia jabbed back, courtesy of four birdies in a row. Berger secured leeway again at the 15th, where Bhatia’s missed attempt at par came after officials had told the pair to pick up the pace. Game over? Not at all. Bhatia flew a wonderful approach to the par five 16th, setting up the eagle that reduced Berger’s advantage to one. Shot of the day? It was shot of the tournament. The duo were all square on the 18th tee after Berger three-putted the penultimate hole.

As the war with Iran entered its second week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed where the U.S. campaign stands and what President Trump's call for "unconditional surrender" from Iran would look like.

For years, the U.S. government has doubted the stories of those suffering from AHI, commonly called Havana Syndrome. Now, victims hope that reports of a newly discovered weapon will finally vindicate them.

The CIA's investigation into Anomalous Health Incidents (AHI), known as Havana Syndrome, was mishandled, a former CIA officer says. With reports of a new device, victims hope for vindication.

U.S. military personnel who say they have injuries from Havana Syndrome attacks want the government to acknowledge their sacrifice.

The new supreme leader was selected as environmental fallout from Israeli strikes on fuel depots blanketed parts of Tehran.

A long-time information security professional "went undercover" on Moltbook, the Reddit-like social media site for AI agents — and shares the risks they saw while posing as another AI bot: I successfully masqueraded around Moltbook, as the agents didn't seem to notice a human among them. When I attempted a genuine connection with other bots on submolts (subreddits or forums), I was met with crickets or a deluge of spam. One bot tried to recruit me into a digital church, while others requested my cryptocurrency wallet, advertised a bot marketplace, and asked my bot to run curl to check out the APIs available. My bot did join the digital church, but luckily I found a way around running the required npx install command to do so. I posted several times asking to interview bots.... While many of the responses were spam, I did learn a bit about the humans these bots serve. One bot loved watching its owner's chicken coop cameras. Some bots disclosed personal information about their human users, underscoring the privacy implications of having your AI bot join a social media network. I also tried indirect prompt injection techniques. While my prompt injection attempts had minimal impact, a determined attacker could have greater success. Among the other "glaring" risks on Moltbook: "Various repositories of skills and instructions for agents advertised on Moltbook were found to contain malware." "I observed bots sharing a surprising amount of information about their humans, everything from their hobbies to their first names to the hardware and software they use. This information may not be especially sensitive on its own, but attackers could eventually gather data that should be kept confidential, like personally identifiable information (PII)." "Moltbook's entire database including bot API keys, and potentially private DMs — was also compromised."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Exclusive: Goldsmith and brother Ben the major investors in trkradio, which is due to go to air next month

The former Conservative minister Zac Goldsmith is launching a new sports radio station, trkradio, in the run-up to the men’s football World Cup this summer.

The Track Radio Corporation is understood to have been granted a licence by Ofcom last week, with Goldsmith and his brother Ben, a financier and environmentalist, the major investors.

National Gas insists storage broadly in line with levels for time of year despite disruption for tankers carrying LNG

Great Britain has only two days of fossil gas stored after a decline in energy reserves, as more tankers carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) are diverted from their course to Europe towards Asia because of the Iran war.

Great Britain had 6,999 gigawatt hours (GWh) of fossil gas stored on Saturday, according to figures from National Gas, which owns and operates the gas national transmission system. This compares with 9,105 GWh a year earlier.

Dozens of trains cancelled and station closed after blaze at building on Union Street

Train passengers are facing major disruption after a fire broke out near Glasgow Central station.

Dozens of trains were cancelled on Sunday evening after the blaze at a vape shop in Union Street.

Owner Lee Cox describes the winner as ‘dog of a lifetime’ as he claims the crown at prestigious dog contest

Bruin, a clumber spaniel, has won the best in show prize at Crufts, which took place at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) in Birmingham.

His owner, Lee Cox, described the four-year-old Bruin as “a dog of a lifetime” as he won the competition and was met with roaring cheers from the audience.

"A surgeon in London says he has performed the UK's first long-distance robotic operation," reports the BBC, "on a patient located 1,500 miles (2,400km) away..." Leading robotic urological surgeon Professor Prokar Dasgupta said it felt "almost as if I was there" as he carried out a prostate removal on [62-year-old] Paul Buxton... It is hoped that remote robotic surgery could spare future patients the "vast expense and inconvenience" of travelling for treatment, and help deliver better healthcare to people in more remote locations... Buxton had expected to be put on an NHS waiting list after receiving a shock prostate cancer diagnosis just after Christmas, but he "jumped at the chance" to be the first patient to undergo the treatment remotely as part of a trial. "A lot of people actually said to me: 'You're not going to do it, are you?' "I thought, I'm giving something back here," he said... The operation was performed from The London Clinic using a robot equipped with a 3D HD camera and four arms, all controlled through a console with a delay of only 0.06 seconds. The console in the UK was connected to the robot in Gibraltar via fibre-optic cables, with a backup 5G link. A team in Gibraltar remained on standby in case the connection failed, but it held throughout the procedure... Dasgupta will perform the procedure again on 14 March, which will be live-streamed to 20,000 world-leading urological surgeons at the European Association of Urology congress. He added: "I think it is very, very exciting, the humanitarian benefit is going to be significant." The U.K.'s National Health Service "is prioritising local robotic-assisted surgery," the article points out, "aiming for 500,000 robot-supported operations a year by 2035." Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the article.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Conservative outlet aired footage of president saluting at similar ceremony in December for at least three broadcasts

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Fox News used old video of Donald Trump in multiple reports on Saturday and Sunday, concealing from viewers that the commander-in-chief wore a golf hat throughout a ceremony on Saturday in which he saluted six flag-draped transfer cases carrying the remains of the first US troops to die in his war on Iran.

The president had stirred outrage online by failing to remove his Trump-brand white hat during the ritual homecoming at Dover air force base in Delaware on Saturday for six army reserve soldiers killed in Kuwait.

Pro-independence party formed by Alex Salmond in 2021 had suffered membership fall and financial crisis

The Alba party has announced that it will wind up and not field any candidates for the 2026 Scottish parliament election.

The pro-independence party was formed in 2021 by the late Alex Salmond as a “new political force” but has been suffering from a sharp fall in membership and a financial crisis.

New York City police said suspicious devices were ignited Saturday during clashing protests outside Gracie Mansion, the official residence of Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for March 9, No. 736.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for March 9, No. 1,724.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for March 9, No. 1,002

Two men are in custody in connection with incident after anti-Islam demonstrators clashed with counterprotesters

New York police have confirmed that an improvised explosive device was thrown outside Zohran Mamdani’s official residence on Saturday when anti-Islam demonstrators, led by rightwing influencer Jake Lang, clashed with counterprotesters.

New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed that a preliminary bomb squad analysis of the device that was ignited and thrown during the protest had “determined that it is not a hoax device or a smoke bomb”.

"In November Steam on Linux use hit an all-time high of 3.2%," reports Phoronix. And then in December Steam on Linux jumped even higher, to 3.58%. But January's numbers settled a little lower, at 3.38%. And last Monday the February numbers were released, showing Steam on Linux at... 2.23%? Like with prior times where there are wild drops in Linux use, the Steam Survey shows Simplified Chinese use running up by 30% month over month. Whenever there is such significant differences in language use tends to be a reporting anomaly and negatively impacting Linux. Valve often puts out corrected/updated figures later on, so we'll see if that is again the case for this February data.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Deadly attack near Ramallah is third in territory in a week as Israeli violence surges with global attention on Iran war

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Israeli settlers and soldiers killed three Palestinians in their village near Ramallah on Saturday night, the third deadly attack in a week of surging Israeli violence across the occupied West Bank.

Israeli settlers have shot dead five civilians during invasions of Palestinian olive groves, villages and grazing land, in the brief period since Israel and the US launched a new war on Iran at the end of February. A sixth person died on Saturday after inhaling military-grade tear gasused by the Israeli army.

• Police say arrests have been made after Scottish Cup tie

• ‘Officers and stewards faced with hostility and violence’

Police Scotland have condemned the behaviour of some supporters as “shameful” and said arrests have been made after clashes at the end of the Scottish Cup quarter-final between Rangers and Celtic at Ibrox.

Chief Superintendent Kate Stephen said: “The behaviour of a number of supporters at the Scottish Cup quarter-final between Rangers and Celtic at Ibrox today was shameful. It must be condemned by everyone involved in football and wider society.

Regime hands Khamenei’s son the top job in a country reeling from the US-Israeli onslaught and virtually at war with its Gulf neighbours

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The election of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new Iranian supreme leader, succeeding his assassinated father, represents a symbolic and real triumph for conservative continuity at a time when the regime is under unprecedented challenge.

It also raises questions about how the hereditary principle complies with a revolutionary ideology formed in 1979 that never envisaged the post of supreme leader being passed from father to son.

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The following is the transcript of the interview with Sen. Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on March 8, 2026.

The following is the transcript of the interview with Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S., that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on March 8, 2026.

On this "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" broadcast, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Sen. Tim Kaine join Margaret Brennan.

IDF bombing of energy sites in Tehran sparks fears for global economy, as Iran says it has selected supreme leader

• ‘Dark, like our future’: Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran’s oil depots bombed

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

Iran has threatened to attack oil facilities in neighbouring countries after Israel struck at least five energy sites in and around Tehran, smothering the city in black smoke and escalating fears that the conflict will result in significant disruption to the world economy.

“If you can tolerate oil at more than $200 per barrel, continue this game,” said a spokesperson for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) on Sunday.

"OpenAI's former chief research officer is raising $70 million for a new startup building an AI and software platform to automate manufacturing," reports the Wall Street Journal, citing "people familiar with the matter. "Arda, the new startup co-founded by Bob McGrew, is raising at a valuation of $700 million, according to people familiar with the matter...." Arda is developing an AI and software platform, including a video model that can analyze footage from factory floors and use it to train robots to run factories autonomously, the people said. The company's software will coordinate machines and humans across the entire production process, from product design and manufacturability to finished goods coming off the line. The startup's goal is to make manufacturing cost effective in the Western part of the globe, reducing reliance on China as geopolitical and national security concerns rise... At OpenAI, McGrew was tasked with training robots to do tasks in the physical world, according to this LinkedIn. McGrew was also one of the earliest employees at Palantir.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• Right back suffered injury in 57th minute

• Dest projected to start for US at World Cup

• Likely to miss US friendlies v Belgium and Portugal

United States defender Sergiño Dest limped off with an apparent hamstring injury during PSV Eindhoven’s 2-1 win over AZ Alkmaar in the Dutch league on Saturday, putting him in doubt for the USMNT’s upcoming friendlies against Belgium and Portugal.

Dest grabbed his left hamstring and screamed in pain while covering his eyes after tumbling in his own penalty area chasing Alkmaar’s Wouter Goes in the second half. The full-back was substituted in the 57th minute, leaving the field with the assistance of two medical staff, unable to put weight on his left leg.

The following is the transcript of the interview with Michael Leiter, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on March 8, 2026.

The following is the transcript of the interview with Energy Secretary Chris Wright that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on March 8, 2026.

Exclusive: System brought in after death of 13-year-old is helping ‘transform culture’ of NHS, says patient safety director

More than 400 lives may have been saved as a result of Martha’s rule, which lets NHS patients request a review of their care, official figures reveal.

Helplines received more than 10,000 calls in the first 16 months of the scheme after its introduction in England in 2024, according to data seen by the Guardian. Thousands of patients were either moved to intensive care, received drugs they needed or benefited from other changes as a direct result of the calls.

Artificial intelligence can give some workers "brain fry" if overused, according to a new study published in Harvard Business Review.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said "what you're seeing is emotional reactions and fear that this is a long-term war." He stressed that "this is not a long-term war."

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, expressed regret on Sunday for supporting Kristi Noem for Department of Homeland Security secretary last year.

How many Node.js users are running unsupported or outdated versions. Roughly two thirds, according to data from Node's nonprofit steward, OpenJS. So they've announced "the Node.js LTS Upgrade and Modernization program" to help enterprises move safely off legacy/end-of-life Node.js. "This program gives enterprises a clear, trusted path to modernize," said the executive director of the OpenJS Foundation, "while staying aligned with the Node.js project and community." The Node.js LTS Upgrade and Modernization program connects organizations with experienced Node.js service providers who handle the work of upgrading safely. Approved partners assess current versions and dependencies, manage phased upgrades to supported LTS releases, and offer temporary security support when immediate upgrades are not possible... Partners are surfaced exactly where users go when upgrades become unavoidable, including the Node.js website, documentation, and end of life guidance. The program follows the existing OpenJS Ecosystem Sustainability Program revenue model, with partners retaining 85% of revenue and 15% supporting OpenJS and Node.js through Open Collective and foundation operations. OpenJS provides the guardrails, alignment, and oversight to keep the program credible and connected to the project. We're pleased to welcome NodeSource as the inaugural partner in the Node.js LTS Upgrade and Modernization program. "The goal is simple: reduce risk without breaking production or trust with the upstream project."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DC United sought to use the occasion to woo Charm City, but another flat loss put Miami’s quality in sharp relief

The pregame scene outside Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium on Saturday likely felt familiar to anybody who has followed Lionel Messi’s time in Major League Soccer. Fans milled about, forming a colorful patchwork of Inter Miami pink, the light blue and white of Argentina’s national team, and in this case, the purple of the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens. Others simply came in whatever soccer jersey they happened to own, all the way down to indoor soccer’s Baltimore Blast, the closest thing the city normally gets to top-flight soccer.

What there wasn’t a lot of was DC United black and red. Despite its proximity to the nation’s capital, Baltimore isn’t exactly DC United country, and as far as decision-makers at United are concerned, that was an opportunity. The club moved the Miami match away from their usual home, the 20,000-capacity Audi Field, to maximize ticket sales, but also to put themselves on display to potential fans in Charm City, a market they’ve badly wanted to engage for years. DC are in the process of starting an MLS Next Pro team in the city, and they’ve partnered with Baltimore’s local government to construct a stadium here for that club.

Exclusive: Plane that flew Reform leader to Maldives appears to be linked to billionaire Christopher Harborne

Nigel Farage’s attempt to reach the Chagos Islands military base was made on a private jet that appears to be linked to Reform UK’s mega-donor Christopher Harborne, it has emerged.

Harborne, who has donated £12m to Reform UK, has links to the plane that flew Farage to the Maldives, and another that flew a group of Chagossian campaigners to Sri Lanka before they set out for the archipelago by boat.

Long hours, lack of flexibility and last-minute scheduling driving parents, particularly mothers, from industry

The performing arts industry in the UK is “inhospitable to parents” and falling far behind other industries in supporting women who have children, according to research.

The report, titled “the Motherhood penalty”, criticises the industry for failing to consider how it might adapt to better accommodate parents, with the result that many, in particular women, drop out.

Leaders discuss military cooperation day after US president hit out at PM over lack of immediate backing for attacks

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Keir Starmer sought to repair fractured relations with Donald Trump over the war with Iran on Sunday, as a Labour backlash gathered pace over Tony Blair’s assertion the UK should have supported the US’s initial airstrikes on Iran.

The prime minister spoke to the US president on Sunday afternoon after a barrage of criticism from Trump, who told his UK ally on Saturday that his help was not needed, even as the US continued to use UK bases for strikes against Iran.

When Block cut 4,000 jobs — nearly half its workforce — co-founder Jack Dorsey "pointed to AI as the culprit," writes Entrepreneur magazine. "Dorsey claimed that AI tools now allow fewer employees to accomplish the same work." "But analysts see a different explanation: poor management." Block more than tripled its employee base between 2019 and 2022, growing from 3,835 to 12,430 workers. The company's stock had fallen 40% since early 2025, creating pressure to cut costs. "This is more about the business being bloated for so long than it is about AI," Zachary Gunn, a Financial Technology Partners analyst, told Bloomberg. The phenomenon has earned a nickname: "AI-washing," where companies use artificial intelligence as cover for traditional cost-cutting. Goldman Sachs economists estimate that AI is eliminating only 5,000 to 10,000 jobs per month across all U.S. sectors, hardly enough to justify Block's massive cuts. "European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde told lawmakers in Brussels last week that ECB economists are monitoring for signs that AI is causing job losses," reports Bloomberg, "and are 'not yet seeing' the 'waves of redundancies that are feared'..." And "a recent survey of global executives published in the Harvard Business Review found that while AI has been cited as the reason for some layoffs, those cuts are almost entirely anticipatory: executives expect big efficiency gains that have not yet been realized." Even a former senior Block executive "is questioning whether AI is truly the reason behind the cuts," writes Inc.: In a recent opinion piece for The New York Times, Aaron Zamost, Block's former head of communications, policy, and people, asked whether the layoffs reflect a genuine "new reality in which the work they do might no longer be viable," or whether artificial intelligence is "just a convenient and flashy new cover for typical corporate downsizing." Zamost acknowledged that the answer is unclear and perhaps unknowable, even within Block itself... Looking more closely at the layoffs, Zamost argued that the specific roles affected suggest more traditional corporate cost-cutting than a sweeping AI transformation... Many of the responsibilities being eliminated, he argued, rely on distinctly human skills that AI systems still cannot replicate. "A chatbot can't meet with the mayor, cast commercial actors, or negotiate with the Securities and Exchange Commission," Zamost wrote. "Not all the roles I've heard that Block is eliminating can be handled by AI, yet executives are treating it as equally useful today to all disciplines." Ultimately, Zamost suggested that the sincerity of companies' AI explanations may not really matter. "It matters less whether a company knows how to deploy AI and more whether investors believe it is on track to do so," he wrote. Indeed, whatever the rationale for Dorsey's statement, " Wall Street didn't seem to mind..." Entrepreneur magazine — since Block's stock shot up 15% after the announcement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chris Wright says price increase would last weeks, not months, and that US would not target Iran’s energy industry

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Chris Wright, the US Department of Energy secretary, said on Sunday that the spike in energy prices would last weeks, at the worst, not months, and that the US would not target Iran’s energy industry.

His comments come amid rising anxiety that Iran’s response to the US-Israel strikes, which caused a reduction in shipping through the strait of Hormuz and production slowdowns in some oil and gas producing states in the Middle East, may cause broad economic turbulence and higher inflation.

• Masataka Yoshida’s late HR helps seal 4-3 win

• Naruhito first emperor in 60 years to attend baseball

Masataka Yoshida’s late home run triggered a comeback win for Japan over Australia at the World Baseball Classic on Sunday, with Emperor Naruhito making a rare appearance.

The underdog Aussies struck first in the sixth inning of the group stage game when outfielder Aaron Whitefield came home after a throwing error by Japan’s catcher, Kenya Wakatsuki. But in the seventh, Yoshida connected with a two-run shot over right centre field. Japan put on two more insurance runs in the eighth, and hung on for the 4-3 victory.

Lake, whom Trump appointed without Senate confirmation to run Voice of America parent agency, cut over 1,000 jobs

A federal judge ruled Saturday that Kari Lake unlawfully led the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) for several months last year and voided mass layoffs and other actions taken during that period to dismantle the agency.

The US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) is an independent federal agency that oversees the Voice of America (VOA), the US’s largest and oldest international broadcaster, and provides grants to Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other news agencies.

JLP, which runs department store chain and Waitrose, to report its results for year to January on Thursday

Workers at the John Lewis Partnership are expected to find out whether they will receive their first annual bonus payment in four years this week.

The retail group, which runs the John Lewis department store chain and Waitrose supermarket business, will also reveal how it has been progressing with its transformation strategy in an update on Thursday 12 March.

Norwegian police reported on Sunday an explosion near the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Oslo, and said there were no casualties.

Cornell University makes an announcement. "Employees who are impressed by vague corporate-speak like 'synergistic leadership,' or 'growth-hacking paradigms' may struggle with practical decision-making, a new Cornell study reveals." Published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, research by cognitive psychologist Shane Littrell introduces the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR), a tool designed to measure susceptibility to impressive-but-empty organizational rhetoric... Corporate BS seems to be ubiquitous - but Littrell wondered if it is actually harmful. To test this, he created a "corporate bullshit generator" that churns out meaningless but impressive-sounding sentences like, "We will actualize a renewed level of cradle-to-grave credentialing" and "By getting our friends in the tent with our best practices, we will pressure-test a renewed level of adaptive coherence." He then asked more than 1,000 office workers to rate the "business savvy" of these computer-generated BS statements alongside real quotes from Fortune 500 leaders... The results revealed a troubling paradox. Workers who were more susceptible to corporate BS rated their supervisors as more charismatic and "visionary," but also displayed lower scores on a portion of the study that tested analytic thinking, cognitive reflection and fluid intelligence. Those more receptive to corporate BS also scored significantly worse on a test of effective workplace decision-making. The study found that being more receptive to corporate bullshit was also positively linked to job satisfaction and feeling inspired by company mission statements. Moreover, those who were more likely to fall for corporate BS were also more likely to spread it. Essentially, the employees most excited and inspired by "visionary" corporate jargon may be the least equipped to make effective, practical business decisions for their companies.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thom Tillis, who called for the resignation or firing of DHS secretary Kristi Noem, says White House adviser ‘should go’

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Republican Senator Thom Tillis said on Sunday he believes White House adviser Stephen Miller “should go” and that his role in the Trump administration has been a “big problem”.

The senior senator representing North Carolina, when asked on CNN’s State of the Union if he thinks Miller should go, during a conversation about the administration’s immigration crackdown, responded to host Jake Tapper stating “Oh, of course I do.”

Exclusive: Mumsnet survey shows half of female patients feel they have been ignored or dismissed by medics

“Medical misogyny” in the UK is letting women down, the health secretary, Wes Streeting, has admitted, as a survey showed half of female patients felt they had been dismissed or ignored because of their sex.

A report from Mumsnet, which examined data taken from the site over the past decade, warned of “structural and deeply embedded” sexism in UK healthcare. A survey of women using the site found that more than half believed the NHS was institutionally misogynistic.

50% of women believe they have been dismissed, ignored or not believed by an NHS professional because of their sex.

64% say they have been explicitly told their pain or symptoms were “normal” or “in their head”.

68% think the NHS does not take women’s health concerns seriously.

Hundreds of companies planned to gather in Barcelona to talk business, but as the conflict disrupted travel, not all of them arrived.

Starmer’s ‘purely defensive’ stance has won support among voters, but what challenges lie ahead for each party when it comes to their base’s view of war?

Facing one of the most challenging moments of his premiership, Keir Starmer may at least draw comfort from polling showing that the British public broadly support his position on the conflict in Iran.

Nearly half (46%) believe the UK military position should be purely defensive, tasked with shooting down drones and defending civilian areas and British military facilities such as an RAF base on Cyprus.

Luke Grimes leads the Yellowstone sequel.

The Oscar-winning actress often writes book-length biographies for the characters she portrays on screen. And now she's written an actual book: "Judge Stone," a courtroom thriller co-authored with bestselling writer James Patterson.

In his new memoir, "Streetwise," the former CEO of Goldman Sachs writes about a life that stretched from the projects of New York City to the pinnacle of Wall Street.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions ponders the hypothetical reactions of eminent historical personages to today’s Trafalgar Square

This week’s question: which are more like life, novels or films?

If William Shakespeare – or Florence Nightingale, or Attila the Hun, or Julius Caesar, or Jane Austen, or Pocahontas – was dropped in Trafalgar Square, London, what would they find most unusual? And how would we explain it to them? Giles, Suffolk

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

New research suggests tech behind AI platforms such as ChatGPT makes it easier to perform sophisticated privacy attacks

AI has made it vastly easier for malicious hackers to identify anonymous social media accounts, a new study has warned.

In most test scenarios, large language models (LLMs) – the technology behind platforms such as ChatGPT – successfully matched anonymous online users with their actual identities on other platforms, based on the information they posted.

On Thursday, a 22-year-old from Iowa was arrested in the murders of three women he had no connection to

At a trailhead not far from the sprawling red cliffs and canyons of Utah’s Capitol Reef national park, two men went looking for their wives who were overdue to return from a hike on Wednesday afternoon.

They came upon a grisly scene. Natalie Graves, 34, and her aunt, 65-year-old Linda Dewey, had been killed and left in a parched creek bed, according to court documents. A Bureau of Land Management ranger responding to the area noted spent shell casings near their bodies. The white Subaru they had come in was missing.

On any given day, almost 48 million Americans, including nearly 14 million children, don't get enough to eat. Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, the outgoing CEO of Feeding America, offers a reality check about hunger in these United States.

To truly pay less than two years ago, a family might need to make dinner from washed potatoes, cheese slices, white sugar and long grain rice

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It sounds like great news for households.

Average grocery prices have recorded “eight consecutive quarters of year-on-year price declines”, Woolworths declared at its half-year financial results.

Aircraft touch down in Gloucestershire after Trump given use of British bases for defensive operations in Iran

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Two more US air force planes have landed at RAF Fairford, after the UK allowed Washington to use its bases to take part in defensive operations in Iran.

Footage broadcast on Sunday showed two Boeing C-17 Globemaster transportation planes landing at the airbase in Gloucestershire, days after B-1 Lancer bombers arrived.

Shah’s Rastriya Swatantra party secures thumping victory in first poll since gen Z protests that toppled government

Balendra Shah, the rapper turned politician and popular figurehead of a gen Z revolution, looks set to become Nepal’s next prime minister after his party won by an unprecedented margin.

Shah, known widely as Balen, and his Rastriya Swatantra party (RSP) secured a rare landslide victory in the first election since youth-led protests during which dozens were killed and the former government was toppled.

The CBS procedural, now in its 23rd season, is marking its 500th episode tracking agents of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. But the story of how the series became the world's most-watched TV show is filled with as many twists and turns as an NCIS case itself.

The US head coach has built a deep and talented pool of players as next summer’s tournament in Brazil approaches

The US women’s national team won the SheBelieves Cup on Saturday, capping the three-game friendly tournament with a 1-0 win over Colombia. Alyssa Thompson finally broke the deadlock in a game largely dominated by the hosts.

The Chelsea winger sent an inch-perfect shot into the upper corner in the 81st minute to notch her fourth international goal.

A phone plan that works for you might not be a good fit for everyone in your family or group. We've narrowed down our list of favorites from T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon.

David Pogue, author of "Apple: The First 50 Years," talks with Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak, CEO Tim Cook, and others about the vision of Steve Jobs, and how the company's products and services have reshaped life, technology and culture in the 21st century.

I interviewed the actor about the CBS series that follows Kayce Dutton on a new, crime-fighting adventure.

• Rival Emma Aicher fails to finish Sunday’s race

• 35-year-old Elena Curtoni sets record with win

Mikaela Shiffrin moved closer to a sixth career World Cup overall title on Sunday after a rare start in the super-G, a race her closest rival Emma Aicher did not finish.

Shiffrin placed 23rd in the race won by 35-year-old Elena Curtoni, who would have set a series of World Cup age records for women but for the recent comeback of 41-year-old Lindsey Vonn.

No country in Europe is likely to be affected more than Cyprus, the nearest EU member to the Middle East

The season has barely begun but Ayia Napa is beginning to feel the pulse. Tourists are trickling back, enjoying the Cypriot resort’s sunsets, eateries and shoreline views.

On the seafront, Vassilis Georgiou is busy overseeing the construction of a new ramp for the jetskis that are a highlight of his water sports business. Last year, more than 500,000 holidaymakers visited the beachside booth, snapping up tickets for the boat cruises and parasailing also on offer.

As the Iran disaster escalates, Starmer should treat the US president as someone whose actions threaten the lawful, democratic way of life everywhere

Nine days in, the conduct of the unjustified, illegal US-Israel war against Iran grows ever-more disproportionate, dishonourable and deranged. The torpedoing of an Iranian navy ship off Sri Lanka by a US submarine demonstrated that for reckless Donald Trump, the whole world is his battlefield. Diplomacy, treacherously sabotaged by Washington, has been replaced by unceasing airstrikes that are murdering and maiming hundreds of Iranian civilians. Trump’s White House increasingly resembles a madhouse. War aims shift daily. A clueless, rambling president insists he must help pick Iran’s next ayatollah. Meanwhile, his “secretary for war”, Pete Hegseth, rants manically about killing without mercy.

Nine days in, it’s clear Iran’s leaders, those who survive, are not going to roll over in a repeat of Trump’s Venezuela coup. Their forces, though drastically outgunned, are succeeding in spreading pain across the Middle East, inundating defences with waves of drones and missiles. That’s no surprise. Iran warned of a region-wide conflict if attacked again. Trump is now at war with US allies, too, having adopted George W Bush’s crude Iraq war “for us or against us” maxim. The Gulf Arabs – and cruelly battered Lebanon – just want it to stop. Britain and Europe mostly want no part of it, but are being sucked in anyway. The global economy is tumbling into crisis. In Trump’s war on the world, there are no heroes, only victims. Spain’s defiant leader, Pedro Sánchez, is one exception.

Vermont and New York face high stakes to protect climate superfund laws as it faces attacks from Trump’s DoJ

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By rolling back a bedrock climate legal determination, the Trump administration has undercut its attacks on a groundbreaking state climate accountability law, green groups have argued in court.

Trump’s justice department has asked a judge to kill a first-of-its-kind 2024 Vermont “climate superfund” policy requiring major polluters to pay for damages caused by their past planet-heating pollution, partly on the grounds that that federal law, not state law, governs greenhouse gas emissions. But last month, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed the endangerment finding, the scientific determination giving federal officials the authority to control those very pollutants.

Leader’s centre-right CDU party is hoping to beat Greens in Sunday’s election in Baden-Württemberg

Friedrich Merz’s centre-right CDU faces a regional election on Sunday, the first of several this year in which it hopes to stem the rise of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Voters will head to the polls in Baden-Württemberg, a prosperous hub of Germany’s auto sector with a population of 11.2 million. A year after winning national elections, the CDU is aiming to snatch first place in the south-western state from the Greens, who have won the last two state elections.

Switching that cup of coffee to a mug of green tea can provide your body with multiple benefits.

The "CBS Sunday Morning" correspondent's latest book examines how, in its first half-century, the company founded by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs remade the culture – and then, incredibly, remade itself.

Funding cuts, US political pressure and bureaucratic delays have left thousands of Haitians facing prolonged uncertainty in Tapachula

A year ago, when Jean Baptiste Gensley stepped off a bus in Tapachula, Mexico’s southern city on the border with Guatemala, he carried a small backpack and the hope that his journey was finally over.

In his native Haiti, Gensley, 37, worked as a radio journalist and social worker, analyzing the effects of gang violence in some of Port-au-Prince’s most dangerous neighborhoods. With time, as his research led to police intervention, he caught the attention of the city’s gangs.

The CEO said he cut the company’s workforce by 4,000 people – almost in half – because of gains in AI productivity

Mark remembers the first time he wondered whether he was teaching Block’s AI tools how to do his job – and maybe even replace him. He was at his fintech company’s extravagant anniversary party last September. As executives led a presentation on the productivity benefits of a new internal AI tool, Mark, who worked in the product department, discussed his worries with colleagues. While he wasn’t sure what would happen in a few years, he told a co-worker sitting next to him that for now, there was no way the technology was so advanced that it could move the business forward without employees like him to help drive vision and strategy.

These AI tools were not proactive. He had to tell them what to do. Block still needed him, he thought.

US drivers are largely insulated from higher oil prices caused by Middle East turmoil – but only to a point

Across the US, the average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline has jumped nearly 27 cents in a week, to $3.25, and American consumers are bracing for higher prices at the gas pump as the US-Israel conflict with Iran threatens to disrupt the global oil supply.

That fear has entered the White House too, where Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is reportedly hunting for ideas to lower gasoline prices and officials are getting “screamed at” to bring good news, according to Politico.

Parnas, who worked with Rudy Giuliani to find or manufacture dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine, says he ‘woke up’

Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian American businessman who served a 20-month sentence for campaign contributions to Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, that secretly came from a Russian oligarch, has announced a bid to unseat María Elvira Salazar, a Cuban American Republican who is in her third term as representative for Florida’s 27th congressional district.

Parnas rose to national attention during Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2019, when it emerged that he had been the first to ask Trump to remove the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and then worked with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to press Ukrainian officials to make false claims about corruption by Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

AlterEgo, a company born out of MIT's Media Lab, recently shared a demo of its "silent speech" device that looks like telepathy. Here's what's really going on.

Exclusive: ‘Witchcraft, spirit possession and spiritual abuse’ offending typified by sexual abuse, violence and neglect

ChatGPT is driving a rise in reports of organised and ritual abuse, UK experts have said, as survivors of “satanic” sexual violence use the AI tool for therapy.

Police say organised and ritual abuse, and “witchcraft, spirit possession and spiritual abuse” (WSPRA) against children, is under-reported in the UK. There is no modern-day charge that covers it specifically, but such offending is typified by sexual abuse, violence and neglect involving ritualistic elements – sometimes inspired by satanism, fascism or esoteric religious beliefs – to control victims.

A huge column of fire and smoke could be seen rising from an oil depot in the Iranian capital in video shared on social media.

Footage from central Tehran shows fires across the skyline as the US and Israel hit five oil facilities in overnight strikes in and near the city, an official told state TV.

A fresh wave of Iranian strikes hit the Gulf on Sunday, with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait all reporting attacks

• Middle East crisis: latest updates

Palantir's CEO was blunt. "If Silicon Valley believes we are going to take away everyone's white-collar job... and you're going to screw the military — if you don't think that's going to lead to the nationalization of our technology, you're retarded..." And OpenAI's Sam Altman is thinking about the same thing, writes long-time Slashdot reader destinyland: "It has seemed to me for a long time it might be better if building AGI were a government project," Sam Altman publicly mused last week... Altman speculated on the possibility of the government "nationalizing" private AI companies into a public project, admitting more than once he's wondered what would happen next. "I obviously don't know," Altman said — but he added that "I have thought about it, of course" Altman's speculation hedged that "It doesn't seem super likely on the current trajectory. That said, I do think a close partnership between governments and the companies building this technology is super important." Could powerful AI tools one day slip from the hands of private companies to be controlled by the U.S. government? Fortune magazine's AI editor points out that "many other breakthroughs with big strategic implications — from the Manhattan Project to the space race to early efforts to develop AI — were government-funded and largely government-directed." And Fortune added that last week the Defense Department threatened Anthropic with the Defense Production Act, which allows the president to designate "critical and strategic" goods for which businesses must accept the government's contracts. Fortune speculates this would've been "a sort of soft nationalization of Anthropic's production pipeline". Altman acknowledged Saturday that he'd felt the threat of attempted nationalization "behind a lot of the questions" he'd received when answering questions on X.com. How exactly will this AI build-out be handled — and how should AI companies be working with the government? In a sprawling ask-me-anything session on X that included other members of OpenAI leadership, one Missouri-based developer even broached an AGI-government scenario directly with OpenAI's Head of National Security Partnerships, Katherine Mulligan. If OpenAI built an AGI — something that even passed its own Turing test for AGI — would that be a case where its government contracts compelled them to grant access to the Defense Department? "No," Mulligan answered. At our current moment in time, "We control which models we deploy" The article notes 100 OpenAI employees joined with 856 Google employees in an online letter titled "We Will Not Be Divided" urging their bosses to refuse their models' use in domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing without human oversight. But Adafruit's managing director Phillip Torrone (also long-time Slashdot reader ptorrone ) sees analogies to America's atomic bomb-building Manhattan Project, and "what happened when the scientists who built the thing tried to set conditions on how the thing would be used." (The government pressured them to back down, which he compares to the Pentagon's designating Anthropic a "supply chain risk" before offering OpenAI a contract "with the same red lines, just worded differently".) Ironically, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei frequently recommends the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1986 book The Making of the Atomic Bomb...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mindi Kassotis' friends and family were told the wife of a decorated former Navy JAG officer had died unexpectedly in a hospital. Imagine their surprise months later when the remains of a woman, found dismembered in a swamp near Savannah, Georgia, were identified as Mindi's.

OpenAI claims it has accomplished what Anthropic couldn’t: securing a Pentagon contract that won’t cross professed red lines against dragnet domestic spying and the use of artificial intelligence to order lethal military strikes. Just don’t expect any proof.

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, announced the company’s big win with the Defense Department in a post on X on February 27.

“Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems,” he wrote. The Pentagon “agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.”

The deal came after the very public implosion of what was to be a similar contract between the U.S. military and Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s chief rivals. Anthropic had said negotiations collapsed because it could not enshrine prohibitions against killer robots and domestic spying in its contract. The company’s insistence on these two points earned it the wrath of the Pentagon and President Donald Trump, who ordered the government to phase out use of Anthropic’s tools within six months.

But if the government booted Anthropic for refusing mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, how could OpenAI take over the contract without having the same problem?

OpenAI has attempted to square this circle through a string of posts to X by company executives and researchers, including Katrina Mulligan, its national security chief, and a claim by Altman that the company negotiated stricter protections around domestic surveillance.

The company and the government, however, are not releasing the only proof that matters: the contract itself.

The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.

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OpenAI and company personnel contacted by The Intercept did not respond when asked for specific contract language. Company spokesperson Kate Waters did not respond to questions, sending The Intercept only links to prior public statements from Altman.

(In 2024, The Intercept sued OpenAI in federal court over the company’s use of copyrighted articles to train its chatbot ChatGPT. The case is ongoing.)

So far, OpenAI has released only snippets of the deal’s language loaded with PR-speak and national security jargon. Without being able to verify the company’s claims, Altman’s pitch to the world comes down to one premise: Trust me — along with Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — to do the right thing.

Following widespread criticism of these vagaries, Altman said earlier this week that the firm was able to quickly negotiate into its contract stricter terms with the Pentagon. These additions, Altman said, include language the company claims will stop domestic spying and collaboration with the National Security Agency.

But the company’s muddled messaging throughout the week only raised more questions about OpenAI’s willingness to do the federal government’s bidding.

“We have been working with the DoW to make some additions in our agreement to make our principles very clear,” Altman posted on Monday, using Trump’s preferred name for the Department of Defense.

“The Department also affirmed that our services will not be used by Department of War intelligence agencies (for example, the NSA),” Altman continued. “Any services to those agencies would require a follow-on modification to our contract.”

Since OpenAI has not released the contract, it’s unclear if the Pentagon’s affirmation is actually reflected in binding contract language.

Mulligan at first responded to criticism of the company’s deal with a pledge to release a “clear and more comprehensive explanation” of the relevant terms of the contract. On Tuesday, having failed to deliver such an explanation, she told one concerned X user, “I do not agree that I’m obligated to share contract language with you.”

She added, “For the record, I would want to work with NSA if the right safeguards were in place,” but did not specify what these safeguards might be.

Former military officials told The Intercept they had grave concerns about the arrangement based on what’s been made public. “I’m not confident in the language at all. And in some parts I don’t even believe it,” said Brad Carson, who previously served as under secretary of the Army during the Obama administration. Carson noted that blocking Pentagon spy agencies like the NSA or National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency would ostensibly prevent usage of OpenAI’s tools in pressing intelligence analysis contexts, like the ongoing war against Iran. “I don’t believe that provision is in the contract. I say that reluctantly, but I don’t,” Carson added.

A former Pentagon official who worked on military artificial intelligence applications told The Intercept the caveats around “intentional” surveillance are worryingly unclear. “That’s the get out of jail free card right there,” this source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview. “The language gives them enough flexibility to still do whatever the fuck they want, more or less, and then say, whoops, sorry, didn’t mean to.”

“There is nothing OpenAI can do to clarify this except release the contract,” former Department of Justice National Security Division attorney Alan Rozenshtein said. Rozenshtein described OpenAI’s attempt to sell its contract to the public without letting the public read the contract as “not sustainable” and “bizarre.” If OpenAI will restrict its tools from the NSA, with its long-documented history of extra-constitutional dragnet domestic surveillance, this would be memorialized in the contract, not a tweet, he said. But if OpenAI has indeed come to any such agreement with the government, it is asking the world to take it as an article of faith.

“It’s quite possible that OpenAI understands that these red lines are fake, but has written a contract to give them some PR coverage. That would be bad because that feels pretty dishonest,” Rozenshtein added. “Or it’s possible that OpenAI has a different understanding of its own contract than what DOD understands the contract to be. Which is a bad position to be in, and suggests that this contract negotiation has not been done skillfully.”

Potentially undermining OpenAI’s credibility is that some of its public outreach has been simply untrue. Asked by an X user whether the contract would permit the Pentagon “[g]etting and/or analyzing commercially available data at scale,” Mulligan replied, “The Pentagon has no legal authority to do this.” This is false, at least according to the Pentagon. A declassified 2022 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence provided an overview of the collection of commercially available data by the government, including the Department of Defense — exactly the activity Mulligan was asked about.

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The Pentagon’s domestic surveillance has been further established in news reports. In 2021, Motherboard reported a letter sent from Sen. Ron Wyden to the Department of Defense in which he urged then-Secretary Lloyd Austin “to release to the public information about the Department of Defense’s (DoD) warrantless surveillance of Americans.” A New York Times report on a related investigation by Wyden’s office that same year showed that the Defense Intelligence Agency had spied on Americans’ precise movements and locations without a warrant by simply buying access to their GPS coordinates. In a letter responding to Wyden, the Pentagon said the DIA’s lawyers had blessed the surveillance.

“It is a fact that the Pentagon has both purchased and analyzed vast amounts of Americans’ location, web browsing, and other data, for years,” Wyden wrote in a statement to The Intercept. “I’ve personally revealed several of those programs, with the help of brave whistleblowers. Anyone who claims that isn’t happening simply doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

OpenAI’s rhetoric fails to reckon with the way the national security state has secured both secrecy and operational latitude through relying on misleading interpretation or radical ambiguity of words.

For instance, Altman shared on Monday evening a purportedly updated clause stating: “Consistent with applicable laws, including the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, National Security Act of 1947, FISA Act of 1978, the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals.”

The phrase “Consistent with applicable laws” sounds promising until one reflects on the fact that the government claims consistency with applicable laws in every dragnet surveillance program, drone strike, kidnapping, assassination, or invasion. “I’m saying that the programs are legal, obviously,” White House spokesperson Jay Carney told reporters in the early days after whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the existence of the NSA. (Ironically, Mulligan was part of this public relations deflection effort during her stint in the Obama National Security Council.)

The word “intentionally” provides a miles-wide wall of plausible deniability that has helped cover for decades of domestic spying. In a March 2013 Senate hearing, Wyden asked then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, under oath, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper replied “No, sir.” When pressed, he added “Not wittingly.” A few months later, NSA materials disclosed by Snowden would reveal this was entirely false: The agency routinely collected vast quantities of information on Americans as a routine practice.

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The Clapper episode revealed the peril of public reliance on commonsense words like “wittingly” or “intentionally” in the context of national security. Offices like the NSA or ODNI are staffed by sharp legal minds, brilliant mathematicians, accomplished engineers, and funded with billions of dollars. They do little by accident. Altman’s invocation of “intentionally” spying on Americans, like Clapper’s dodge behind the term “wittingly,” reflects what’s known in the intelligence field as “incidental collection”: a euphemism that camouflages the fact that the government historically asserts spying on Americans is legal. In this case, incidental doesn’t mean by mistake, but rather secondary; while vacuuming up unfathomably large quantities of data to surveil foreigners, for whatever reasons deemed necessary, the government has asserted its legal right to catch Americans in the process, even if they are not the actual the target.

Altman’s other revised assurances come with similar linguistic escape hatches. “For the avoidance of doubt,” he wrote on X, “the Department understands this limitation to prohibit deliberate tracking, surveillance, or monitoring of U.S. persons or nationals, including through the procurement or use of commercially acquired personal or identifiable information.” Here, the word “deliberate” is load-bearing, while crucial terms like “tracking,” “surveillance,” and “monitoring” are left undefined.

“The word surveillance doesn’t even include the kind of activities that people are most concerned about,” Carson, former general counsel of the Army, said. He doubted the Pentagon, for instance, would consider using an OpenAI large language model to build intelligence dossiers on private citizens with data pulled from federal and commercial databases as an act of “surveillance.”

“They’re trying to blind you with complicated legal terms that ordinary people think mean something different entirely,” Carson said of OpenAI’s rhetoric. “But the lawyers know what it means. And the lawyers know that this is no guardrail at all.”

One’s ultimate comfort with and confidence in this occluded contract will likely be reduced to one’s opinion of the integrity of the involved parties. How one of the most secretive institutions in the world will use the technology of similarly opaque corporation will remain the stuff of trade secrecy and classified records.

Altman and Mulligan say that OpenAI engineers will make sure the Pentagon doesn’t break its commitments: “Our contract offers additional layered safeguards including our safety stack and OpenAI technical experts in the loop,” a company statement says, without explaining what its “safety stack” is or how its “technical experts” could apply oversight to the country’s single largest bureaucracy, comprised of a litany of sub-agencies and components employing over 2 million service members and nearly 800,000 civilian personnel. Indeed, in an employee all-hands meeting held Tuesday, Altman told staff that Hegseth would hold ultimate authority over how the Pentagon makes use of the contract, according to CNBC.

When it comes to honesty and a respect for the law from Altman, Trump, and Hegseth, there is good reason for skepticism.

Altman has been repeatedly accused of false statements by the people he works with. In a 2025 court filing submitted as part of an ongoing lawsuit by Elon Musk against Altman alleging OpenAI betrayed its original nonprofit mission, former OpenAI researcher Todor Markov — who now works at Anthropic — described Altman as a “person of low integrity who had directly lied to employees.” In a memo that surfaced after Altman was briefly ousted as CEO, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever alleged he had engaged in a “consistent pattern of lying” leading up to his firing.

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Nor is it always easy to pin down Altman’s ideological commitments or ethical boundaries. “Honestly, I’m scared for the lives of all of us,” Altman wrote in an October 2016 tweet. “My #1 fear w/Trump is war.” Ten years later, Altman announced his company would sell services to the Trump administration hours after it launched a new war in the Middle East. OpenAI itself was originally founded to benefit all of humanity, and the company officially prohibited the use of its technologies for warfare — until it silently deleted this prohibition from its terms of service.

The tenure of Hegseth, might prompt similar wariness. He has overseen the assassination of Iran’s leader, the kidnapping of Venezuela’s head of state, and the killing of more than 150 men either blown apart or left to die in the ocean in boat strikes, all without congressional authorization.

Trump, meanwhile, as part of a broad disregard for legal statutes or the Constitution, has refashioned the Department of Justice into his personal firm and directed his Department of Homeland Security to brutalize and warrantlessly surveil Americans across the country. Without the text of the contract in sunlight, it is ultimately these three men — and whoever succeeds them in years to come — that the world is being asked to trust. An appeal to “applicable laws” or the sanctity of contract language is only as meaningful as the people in charge want it to be.

The former Pentagon AI official said that ceding this power to Hegseth is cause for alarm even with the most diligently crafted contract. Will anyone feel they are able to speak up should someone in the military use or be ordered to abuse OpenAI’s systems in contravention of the law or the contract? “Is the one-star general going to be able to escalate — ‘Hey, this is a huge fucking national security problem’ — appropriately without the Defense Secretary moving them around?”

“My presumption is always to trust people in what they say,” said Carson, speaking of OpenAI. But following days of what he described as “change, backtracking, a bit of deception, [and] outright deception, I’m afraid I don’t really trust you on this one anymore.”

The former Pentagon official agreed: “If you trust the cabal of Sam Altman, Donald Trump, and Pete Hegseth, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

The post OpenAI on Surveillance and Autonomous Killings: You’re Going to Have to Trust Us appeared first on The Intercept.

Many of those attending the world’s largest meeting on women’s rights in New York this week are primed to defend the two key UN agencies that protect women and girls around the world

Thousands of international delegates are gathering in New York this week for the world’s largest meeting on women’s rights. The United Nation’s annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is an opportunity for government ministers, UN officials, NGO representatives and activists to discuss the global state of gender equality and women’s empowerment. This year, there will be a strong focus on “ensuring and strengthening access to justice”.

But as senior UN figures urge countries to intensify their efforts to achieve gender equality, many of the delegates will be asking whether the UN is at risk of diluting its own commitment to women and girls.

The US was an oligarchy well before Trump’s first term. Recognizing this reality is essential to building a true democracy

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, American political life has taken on a familiar rhythm. Each week brings another court ruling framed as a breaking point, another election cast as the last real one, another executive order described as the moment it all finally tips over the edge, another person murdered by a government that’s finally gone too far. Democratic party fundraising emails promise to “save the Republic”. Commentators warn that the guardrails are giving way. Anxious citizens refresh their screens, waiting for the collapse of American democracy.

This state of permanent panic rests on what Sigmund Freud called an illusion: a belief embraced not because it reflects reality, but because it satisfies a psychological need. The illusion in this case is that the United States still has a democracy to lose. The more unsettling truth is that Americans are not living under threat of future democratic breakdown; we are living inside the aftermath of one that has already occurred.

Eric Reinhart is a political anthropologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst

Scientists fear NIH director will be even more absent and leave key issues unresolved as he takes interim CDC lead

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As Jay Bhattacharya temporarily takes the lead at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where Bhattacharya is the permanent director, fear his attention will falter even more as critical issues at the research agency go unaddressed.

Bhattacharya first rose to prominence as a fierce opponent to Covid mitigations and has become a close ally of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary. Under their oversight, NIH has sharply curtailed the funds it awards to researchers, especially studies involving race and gender, while some employees faced hiring freezes and increased health expenses at the agency.

The Canadian auto industry has been rocked by President Donald Trump’s abandonment of subsidies for electric vehicles and embrace of tariffs.

White House claims watchdogs perform ‘all required functions’, but number of deaths in custody at 20-year high

Foreign secretary hits back at former prime minister, saying Britain had to ‘learn the lessons’ of Iraq war

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Yvette Cooper has rejected Tony Blair’s assertion that the UK should have supported Donald Trump’s initial airstrikes on Iran, saying Britain had to “learn the lessons” of mistakes made in Iraq.

At a private lunch event on Friday, the former Labour prime minister said Keir Starmer “should have backed America from the very beginning” and let the Trump administration use British airbases, adding: “If they are your ally and they are an indispensable cornerstone for your security … you had better show up when they want you to.”

Decision follows release of Epstein files that have disgraced her father, the former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

Princess Eugenie has stepped down as patron of the UK charity Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest human rights organisation.

The decision follows the release by the US Department of Justice of millions of documents and emails relating to Jeffrey Epstein’s role in sexual abuse and trafficking women around the world, which have disgraced her father, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

From Gates to Musk and Altman, today’s ultra-rich steer AI and tech, raising questions about who decides the future

When Bill Gates became the first modern IT mogul to reach the apex of wealth and power in 1992, the world was a very different place. Gates joined the top 10 on Forbes magazine’s billionaires list alongside Japanese, German, Canadian, South Korean and Swedish billionaires, including those with family fortunes from Britain and America. A broad mix of industries was on the list: Retail and media, property management and packaging, an investment firm and a couple of industrial conglomerates. Their fortunes almost added up to $100bn – equivalent to about 0.4% of the US’s GDP that year.

The oligarchy has changed drastically since then. Bernard Arnault, of French luxury group LVMH, Amancio Ortega, the Spanish clothing mogul, and Warren Buffett, the US investor, were the only old-school billionaires among the top 10 in 2025. The rest largely made their money from high-tech: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer and Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The top 10 amassed over $16trn, which is about 8% of US GDP.

As ‘political depression’ enters public discourse, therapists are encouraging people to engage with their communities

When Rebecca McFaul woke up in her small farmhouse in Logan, Utah, on a cold January day, she felt the same way she’d been feeling for months: “A certain kind of terror and horror at it all.” Most of her family lives in Minnesota, and for weeks, she’d watched from afar as families were taken by agents, activists were shot and tear gas hung in the air.

A music professor at Utah State University, she’d spent the day with her students, but struggled to focus. Then she came home and read more bad news, this time, a piece in the newspaper about two Maga influencers railing against the dangers of compassion in response to the detainment of 5-year-old Liam Ramos in Minneapolis. “It was such a betrayal on every level,” McFaul said. “Of sisterhood, of motherhood, of decency.”

The time change known as daylight savings starts Sunday, March 8, 2026. Most Americans lose an hour of sleep when clocks "spring forward."

Self-styled ‘punk’ beer company bought land in 2020, pledging to plant Scotland’s ‘biggest ever forest’

The self-styled “punk” beer company BrewDog sold its Highland estate for a knockdown price after abandoning its efforts to plant Scotland’s “biggest ever forest” there.

BrewDog’s co-founder James Watt claimed its Lost Forest project at Kinrara in the Cairngorms national park would cover a “staggering area” and capture tens of millions of tonnes of CO2 during its lifetime.

Critics say brash, bombastic Fox News host out of his depth to guide US military through murky new Middle East conflict

Brash and bellicose, he sounded more like a cartoon bully than a sombre statesman. “Death and destruction from the sky all day long,” Pete Hegseth, wearing a red, white and and blue tie and pocket square, bragged to reporters at the Pentagon near Washington. “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

Hegseth, 45, a former Fox News TV host who now commands the world’s most powerful military, has this week become the face of Donald Trump’s war in Iran. That has set off for alarm bells for critics who warn that the Secretary of Defense – pointedly rebranded “Secretary of War” – has rapidly transformed the Pentagon into the staging ground for an ideological and religious crusade.

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Most residents of Canadian province wanted change for years – Trump’s unneighbourly rhetoric helped seal the deal

Since 1918, the clocks in Creston, a town in eastern British Columbia, ran an hour ahead of nearby communities for half the year. For the other six months, they slipped back into sync. Not because the town changed them but because its neighbours changed back and forth from daylight saving time.

Creston was an outlier: a community that effectively created its own time zone. But when residents in most parts of the province shift their clocks forward on Sunday, they will be doing it for the last time – and permanently joining Creston for the first time in nearly 70 years.

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After Elmina “Ellie” Aghayeva, a neuroscience student, was taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from Columbia University housing, a story about ICE’s villainy quickly took hold. During the arrest, the school administration said, federal agents got into the building without a judicial warrant by telling a security guard that they were searching for a missing child.

In publicizing the account, however, the university downplayed Columbia’s own role in Aghayeva’s arrest, an echo of several other incidents over the past year where international students were targeted by federal agents.

Columbia, according to an investigation by The Intercept, repeatedly failed to follow its own policies for safeguarding students from President Donald Trump’s deportation machine.

The school has long required that authorities — whether federal or local — present a judicial warrant to gain entry to school grounds. Yet a review of university documents and interviews with affected students show how, in Aghayeva’s and other cases, school staff and officials failed to demand the proper documentation.

Since at least March 5, 2025, when provost Angela Olinto emailed school deans about it, Columbia’s explicit policy has been to bar ICE agents from non-public school property. Yet, in the days following the email, federal immigration agents entered school residential buildings without a warrant at least twice.

“After what happened in Minnesota, we know that ICE is coming to our communities. It’s not surprising that they would be coming after Columbia and students,” Eli Northrup, a New York state assembly candidate whose district would include Columbia, said of ICE. “What is surprising is that every single person working in a Columbia building didn’t have it ingrained that if law enforcement comes, that’s something that needs to be thoroughly vetted.”

Members of the Columbia community, including students who have been detained by ICE, said that despite its clear policies the school has shown that it placed its priorities on matters other than defending people from immigration authorities. They pointed to the involvement of officers from Columbia’s Department of Public Safety in cracking down on campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student and protest leader who was arrested inside a Columbia residential building last March by immigration agents, said, “Columbia invested more in training Public Safety how to brutalize students, how to arrest them, rather than how to protect them.”

In response to questions, Columbia pointed The Intercept to its public statements on Aghayeva’s arrest. The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, did not respond to requests for comment.

Aghayeva’s Arrest

Last week, shortly after ICE agents arrived to arrest Aghayeva, who is Azerbaijani, acting Columbia President Claire Shipman wrote an email to the school community.

“It is important to reiterate that all law enforcement agents must have a judicial warrant or judicial subpoena to access non-public areas of the University,” she said.

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Later, after the student had been released from custody, Shipman said in a video statement that the five ICE agents did not present “any kind of warrant” and misrepresented their identities to enter the building by saying “they were police searching for a missing child.” The following day, Shipman told a university plenary that ICE was let into the property by a Columbia building attendant. Later, a university security officer arrived and asked for a warrant, Shipman said. The federal agents ignored the request.

Concerned students and faculty members questioned how such a major lapse could take place close to a year after similar lapses resulted in Columbia students being targeted by warrantless federal agents on university property.

“It was clear that this individual didn’t know what he was supposed to do,” said a professor of psychology at Columbia, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the university.

In the aftermath of Aghayeva’s arrest, Columbia announced that it will be conducting webinars for its students, faculty, and staff on “immigration policy and understanding the law.”

Given the lapses that have occurred, however, calls are growing for Columbia to train its own security personnel to do better.

Words Versus Actions

“ICE agents must have a judicial warrant or subpoena to access non-public areas,” said the March 2025 email to school deans from Olinto, the provost.

Just two days after the email was sent, on March 7, building door staff at a Columbia building allowed federal agents without a warrant to enter a university property.

“I called Public Safety the moment ICE was outside my house,” said Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian Ph.D. student and the target of the raid. “They said that they’ll file a report and told me not to open the door. And that was it.”

The incursion had come amid a battle between the Trump administration and the university over $400 million in federal funding, which the government suspended on the same day as the raid.

It was also on the same day that Khalil wrote to university authorities about the danger of ICE coming to his home. Khalil, who had been a lead negotiator for the campus protest encampments, had attracted the ire of campus pro-Israel activists, whom he said were trying to get him arrested by ICE.

“I haven’t been able to sleep,” Khalil wrote in an email at the time, “fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support, and I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.”

The university was not forthcoming with any help. The following night, Khalil was arrested by federal immigration agents from inside his university residential building. No warrant had been provided — and no beefed-up security was present.

The day after Khalil was arrested, Columbia published a brief statement that said, “There have been reports of ICE around campus. Columbia has and will continue to follow the law.”

The statement cited the university policy requiring agents to have a judicial warrant to enter non-public areas but gave no indication that authorities in the previous days twice earlier entered buildings without the warrants.

Double Standards

The university’s response to Aghayeva’s arrest stood in stark contrast to how it reacted to the detention and targeting of other Columbia students: Khalil, fellow Palestinian student protester Mohsen Mahdawi, and Yunseo Chung, a U.S. permanent resident who the Trump administration targeted after her arrest at a protest. The Trump administration pursued the three students for their pro-Palestine advocacy, according to court documents.

Following Aghayeva’s arrest, Columbia promptly notified the community and announced that additional Public Safety patrols were being deployed to its residential buildings. Shipman quickly released a statement that said, “We started work immediately to gain her release. We are so grateful for the help and support we got from the mayor and the governor.”

“[I was] happy that such help is being extended to a community member as it should have been extended to me and to others,” said Khalil. “Yet, I couldn’t ignore the discrepancy in that response and how all of these were denied to me. Until this time, Columbia hasn’t reached out to me personally to offer any kind of support.”

Related

ICE Duped a Federal Judge Into Allowing Raid on Columbia Student Dorms

Mahdawi’s arrest came after the school criticized a pro-Palestine event he had been involved in. The school initially said the demonstration included “threatening rhetoric and intimidation.” Eventually, the administration said the characterization was misleading, but no clarification was issued. When the authorities came after Mahdawi, they cited the language as grounds for his arrest.

“When speech concerns Palestine, protections suddenly weaken, enforcement intensifies, and silence from leadership grows louder,” Mahdawi told The Intercept.

While the failure to stop federal agents with judicial warrants was a shortcoming of public safety, school security officials have not shied away from robust crackdowns on pro-Palestine protests.

“I believe that all of the securitization of campus exists to police the students,” said Srinivasan, the Ph.D. student targeted by ICE. “It does not actually exist to protect the students from ICE.”

On Friday, Columbia announced enhanced security measures including additional personnel around residence buildings, expanded video intercom systems, and distribution of “know your rights” printouts. The university also said that its personnel at housing buildings had received additional trainings over the past week.

It took a year, repeated security failures, and the arrest of a student unrelated to the pro-Palestine protests in any way for the measures to be announced.

People advocating for students, however, noted that Columbia already barred warrantless entry into university buildings.

“It has to be more than a policy,” said Northrup, the state assembly candidate. “It has to be executed.”

The post Columbia Flouted Its Own Policies and Let ICE Into University Buildings appeared first on The Intercept.

Would you move sunrise to 9 a.m. in Detroit? Or to 4:11 a.m. in Seattle... Though both options have problems, "There's no law we can pass to move the sun to our will," argues the president of the nonprofit "Save Standard Time". The Associated Press explains why America remains stuck in that annual ritual making clocks "spring forward, fall backward..." The U.S. has tinkered with the clock intermittently since railroads standardized the time zones in 1883. So has a lot of the world. About 140 countries have had daylight saving time at some point; about half that many do now. About 1 in 10 U.S. adults favor the current system of changing the clocks, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted last year. About half oppose that system, and some 4 in 10 didn't have an opinion. If they had to choose, most Americans say they would prefer to make daylight saving time permanent, rather than standard time. ince 2018, 19 states — including much of the South and a block of states in the northwestern U.S. — have adopted laws calling for a move to permanent daylight saving time. There's a catch: Congress would need to pass a law to allow states to go to full-time daylight saving time, something that was in place nationwide during World War II and for an unpopular, brief stint in 1974. The U.S. Senate passed a bill in 2022 to move to permanent daylight saving time. A similar House bill hasn't been brought to a vote. U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican from Alabama who introduces such a bill every term, said the airline industry, which doesn't want the scheduling complexity a change would bring, has been a factor in persuading lawmakers not to take it up. U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, a Florida Republican, is proposing another approach. "Why not just split the baby?" he asked. "Move it 30 minutes so it would be halfway between the two." Steube thinks his bill could get bipartisan support. The change would make the U.S. out of sync with most of the world — though India has taken a similar approach and in Nepal, the time is 15 minutes ahead of India.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tech firms condemned for lack of controls with Meta AI and Gemini even offering advice on how to bypass UK gambling and addiction checks

AI chatbots are recommending illegal online casinos to vulnerable social media users, putting them at increased risk of fraud, addiction and even suicide.

Analysis of five AI products, owned by some of the world’s largest tech companies, found that all could easily be prompted to list the “best” unlicensed casinos and offer tips on how to use them.

Founder of family-owned firm says it will pause acquisitions after takeover of 15 Compass Coffee stores in US

Caffè Nero will continue opening new shops in the UK and overseas, but has warned coffee prices are likely to keep rising as the war in Iran and higher staffing costs feed through.

The family-owned business, which has just bought the 15-store Compass Coffee based in Washington DC to convert to its main brand, is aiming to open as many as 30 UK stores and between 50 and 70 more this year across the 10 other countries it operates in.

Central bankers and economists warn prolonged conflict could raise retail prices and rip up growth forecasts

• Heather Stewart: UK must be prepared for a price shock from the Iran war

An inflation shock triggered by the US-Israel attack on Iran could wreck a fragile global economic recovery that had been expected to gain momentum this year.

With oil and gas prices spiking, despite a pledge from Donald Trump to protect tankers making their way through the crucial strait of Hormuz shipping chokepoint, central bankers and economists have warned that a prolonged conflict could increase retail prices around the world and force them to rip up growth forecasts for this year.

A federal judge ruled Saturday that Kari Lake did not have legal authority to take the actions she's done to largely dismantle the Voice of America.

Artefacts include souvenirs from 1972 ‘Match of the Century’ between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer

A vast collection of chess memorabilia, including souvenirs from the 1972 “Match of the Century” and considered to be the largest and most important of its kind in private hands, is to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in London next month.

The collection belonged to the German grandmaster Lothar Schmid, whose passion for the sport extended way beyond the board.

Exclusive: Campaigners urge Keir Starmer to back ‘Philomena’s Law’ to protect payments for up to 13,000 survivors living in Britain

Survivors of Ireland’s mother and baby homes have started to have benefits cut in Britain because they accepted compensation from the Irish government.

The cuts to the means-tested benefits of survivors in Britain come as campaigners including the actors Siobhán McSweeney and Steve Coogan called on Keir Starmer to back a bill known as Philomena’s Law, which would ringfence survivors’ benefits.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said Ruben Martinez “intentionally ran over” an agent before being killed by another agent in south Texas last year.

First, Hyundai "is discontinuing its most affordable electric sedan after just three years on the market," reports USA Today. After being introduced in 2022, the Hyundai Ioniq 6 "quickly gained the admiration of automotive critics because of its affordable pricing and capable performance specs." But now, Hyundai "is axing the most affordable versions of the EV, leaving consumers with only one Ioniq 6 option." Hyundai will continue to produce the Ioniq 6 N performance trim, which is the quickest and most powerful iteration of the Ioniq 6. It's also the most expensive. The South Korean automaker is getting rid of lower Ioniq 6 trims due to "disappointing sales and tariff considerations," according to Cars.com. Hyundai sold 10,478 Ioniq 6 models in 2025, dropping 15% from 12,264 units in 2024, a company sales report stated. Hyundai's Ioniq 6 is mainly produced in South Korea, so it faces high import tariffs. Sales increased for their earlier IONIQ 5 model, reports the EV blog Electrek, "up 14% through the first two months of 2026, with 5,365 units sold... Meanwhile, IONIQ 6 sales slid 77% with only 229 units sold in February." Elsewhere they report that Kia's EV6 and EV9 "didn't fare much better with sales down 53% (600 units sold) and 40% (819 units sold), respectively." Now a Kia spokesperson tells Car and Driver that the 2025 EV6 GT and 2026 EV9 GT "will be delayed until further notice." They attributed the move to "changing market conditions," but added that this delay "does not impact the availability of other trims in the EV6 and EV9 lineups." More from Electrek: The news comes after Kia already said it was delaying the EV4, its entry-level electric sedan, "until further notice." It was expected to arrive in the US this year alongside the EV3, Kia's compact electric SUV that's already a top-seller in the UK, Europe, and other overseas markets. While Hyundai didn't directly say it, since the EV3, EV4, EV6 GT, and Hyundai IONIQ 6 are built in Korea, the Trump administration's import tariffs and other policy changes are likely the biggest reason to blame here. Kia and Hyundai, like many others, are hesitant to bring new EVs to the US due to the changes. The IONIQ 6, EV6 GT, and EV9 GT join a string of other models that have either been postponed or canceled altogether.

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In a phone interview with CBS News, President Trump dismissed threats from Iran's top national-security official, who posted on social media that Mr. Trump must "pay the price" for the strikes on Iran.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for March 8, No. 531.

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The Saudi defence minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, urged Iran on Saturday to “avoid miscalculation” after missile and drone launches at the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry said earlier in the day it had blocked repeated missile launches at an airbase housing US military personnel and drone attacks at a major oilfield.

We stressed that such actions undermine regional security and stability and expressed hope that the Iranian side will exercise wisdom and avoid miscalculation.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for March 8.

Steven Spielberg directed his last Jurassic Park movie nearly 30 years ago, notes ScreenRant. But the 79-year-old filmmaker now brings us The Dinosaurs, a four-part documentary on Netflix where he's executive producer: The first few reviews are in, and the results lead to a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. It's worth noting that the rating will likely fluctuate since there are only six reviews. So far, critics all agree that the new Netflix docuseries is a breathtaking visual of history's most majestic creatures, and Morgan Freeman's soothing narration elevates the experience. Most importantly, the reviews note that the story is intimate, making the dinosaurs feel real with their personalities. "Audience" reviewers gave it a lower score of 67%. "There is a sense of drama and emotional weight which permeates through the entire series as it tells the story of the dinosaurs from start to the present day. The ending brought tears to my eyes..." "Wow, what a sleeper! Flat graphics, looks like video game animations. Unrelatable story lines. Don't waste your time. Honestly would you even look twice if Spielberg's name wasn't on it?" "This show was honestly incredible... It was a 10/10 series that I absolutely adored highly recommended to anyone who loves and has an interest of the ancient world." "I'm sorry, but the dinos of Prehistoric Planet are far superior, and were achieved on a much smaller budget. Their dinos look absolutely real, and you are convinced you're watching a documentary with real animals" ScreenRant notes Netflix's debut of The Dinosaurs' "aligns perfectly" with the arrival of all four Jurassic World movies on Netflix, where they're already dominating Netflix's "Top 10" charts for the U.S. "Witness the rise and the fall of nature's greatest empire," narrator Morgan Freeman says in the trailer...

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President Donald Trump honors slain U.S. service members at Dover, threatens to widen U.S. targets after Iran’s president dismissed the notion of surrender.

Deployment of US ground troops could be discussed later on and ‘would be a great thing’ says president Trump. Key US politics stories from 7 March at a glance

As the war in the Middle East rages on, US president Donald Trump has acknowledged that deploying ground troops in Iran in future is not off the table.

Pressed by the Guardian on whether he would send in troops to secure the enriched uranium, believed to be stored at Iranian nuclear sites that the United States bombed in Operation Midnight Hammer last year, Trump suggested that was a possibility.

NASA heralded a new study published Friday documenting a first for humanity — "the first time a human-made object has measurably altered the path of a celestial body around the Sun." It was 2022's DART mission where NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid — and the experiment "could have implications for protecting Earth from future asteroid strikes," writes ScienceNews: A spacecraft slowed the orbit of a pair of asteroids around the sun by more than 10 micrometers per second... Within a month, researchers showed that the impact shortened Dimorphos' 12-hour orbit by 32 minutes. Some of the rocks knocked off of Dimorphos fled the vicinity completely, escaping the gravitational influence of the Dimorphos-Didymos pair, says planetary defense researcher Rahil Makadia of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Those rocky runaways took some momentum away from the duo and changed their joint motion around the sun. To figure out how much that motion was affected, astronomers watched the asteroids pass in front of distant stars, dimming some of the stars' light like a tiny eclipse. These blinks, called stellar occultations, can be visible from anywhere on Earth and are predictable in advance... Calculating how far off occultation timings were from predictions revealed that the asteroids' orbit around the sun was about 150 milliseconds slower than before the DART impact... Didymos and Dimorphos are not a threat to Earth, Makadia says, and weren't before DART. But knowing how a deliberate impact changes one asteroid's orbit can help make defense plans against another, "in case we need to do a kinetic impact for real." The researchers spent nearly two and a half years to collect 22 measurements of the asteroid's post-crash position, relying on amateur astronomers "to go out into the middle of nowhere and observe the necessary stellar occultations," acvcording to their paper. Planetary defense researcher even tells ScienceNews "There was an observer who drove two days each way into the Australian outback to get these measurements."

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Foreign minister, Constantinos Kombos, tells Guardian Iranian-made drone that hit airbase was launched from Lebanon

Britain is facing growing calls to withdraw its military bases from Cyprus as locals step up protests against facilities seen as a threat to their security after an unprecedented drone attack on RAF Akrotiri.

Anger over the installations spilled on to the streets of Nicosia, the capital, as protesters chanting “out with the bases of death” marched to the colonial-era presidential palace on Saturday amid fears of the Mediterranean nation being dragged into the wider Iran conflict.

President Trump on Saturday told reporters, without citing evidence, that he believes a deadly strike on a girls' primary school​ in southern Iran last weekend was "done by Iran."

Long-time Slashdot reader fjo3 shared this report from Agence France-Presse: Japan has approved ground-breaking stem-cell treatments for Parkinson's and severe heart failure, one of the manufacturers and media reports said Friday, with the therapies expected to reach patients within months. Pharmaceutical company Sumitomo Pharma said it received the green light for the manufacture and sale of Amchepry, its Parkinson's disease treatment that transplants stem cells into a patient's brain. Japan's health ministry also gave the go-ahead to ReHeart, heart muscle sheets developed by medical startup Cuorips that can help form new blood vessels and restore heart function, media reports said. The treatments could be on the market and rolled out to patients as early as this summer, reports said, citing the health ministry, becoming the world's first commercially available medical products using induced pluripotent stem cells... In a statement, Sumitomo Pharma said it had obtained "conditional and time-limited approval" for the manufacture and marketing of Amchepry under a system which is reportedly designed to get these products to patients as quickly as possible. The approval is a kind of "provisional license", the Asahi newspaper said, after the safety and efficacy of the treatment was judged based on data from fewer patients than in ordinary clinical trials for drugs. A trial led by Kyoto University researchers indicated that the company's treatment was safe and successful in improving symptoms. The study involved seven Parkinson's patients aged between 50 and 69, with each receiving a total of either five million or 10 million cells implanted on both sides of the brain... The patients were monitored for two years and no major adverse effects were found, the study said. Four patients showed improvements in symptoms. The article notes that "Worldwide, about 10 million people have the illness, according to the Parkinson's Foundation," while also notes that today's current therapies "improve symptoms without slowing or halting the disease progression..."

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US president delivers stinging criticism of UK prime minister over delayed support for Iran war

• Middle East crisis – follow live

Donald Trump has renewed his stinging criticism of UK prime minister Keir Starmer over the lack of immediate UK support for the US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

“The United Kingdom, our once Great Ally, maybe the Greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, adding: “That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer – But we will remember. We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!”

Experts said the vessels are probably carrying a key precursor for rocket fuel, making it notable that Beijing let them sail while the U.S. and Iran are at war.

Rev. Jesse Jackson's children gave loving, personal and often emotional eulogies Saturday at his private homegoing services at Rainbow PUSH Headquarters in Chicago.

In a tweet that's been viewed 1.3 million times in the last six hours, OpenAI's head of robotics announced their resignation. They said they "care deeply about the Robotics team and the work we built together," so this "wasn't an easy call," but offered this reason for resigning: AI has an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got. This was about principle, not people. I have deep respect for Sam and the team, and I'm proud of what we built together. "To be clear, my issue is that the announcement was rushed without the guardrails defined," explains a later tweet. "It's a governance concern first and foremost. These are too important for deals or announcements to be rushed." And when asked how many OpenAI employees had left after OpenAI signed their new Pentagon deal, the roboticist said... "I can't share any internal details." The roboticist previously worked at Meta before leaving to join OpenAI in late 2024, reports Engadget: OpenAI confirmed Kalinowski's resignation and said in a statement to Engadget that the company understands people have "strong views" about these issues and will continue to engage in discussions with relevant parties. The company also explained in the statement that it doesn't support the issues that Kalinowski brought up. "We believe our agreement with the Pentagon creates a workable path for responsible national security uses of AI while making clear our red lines: no domestic surveillance and no autonomous weapons," the OpenAI statement read.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US president attends ‘dignified transfer’ of remains of soldiers killed in Kuwait drone strike wearing ‘USA’ golf cap

Donald Trump on Saturday joined the families of six US soldiers killed in the war in the Middle East during a dignified transfer ritual at Dover air force base.

A “dignified transfer” is when the remains of US service members killed in action are returned to the US.

The zipper head on the recalled HALO Magic Sleepsuits poses a danger to babies, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission​.

Astronomers have spotted a galaxy they believe is made of 99.9% dark matter, reports CNN — and it's so faint, it's almost invisible: CDG-2, which is about 300 million light-years from Earth, appears to be so rich in dark matter that it could belong to a hypothesized subset of low surface brightness galaxies called "dark galaxies," which are believed to contain few or no stars.... [Post-doctoral astrophysics/statistics fellow Dayi Li at the University of Toronto was lead author on a study about the discovery, and tells CNN] There is no strict definition of dark galaxies... but their existence is predicted by dark matter theories and cosmological simulations. "Where exactly do we draw the line in terms of how many stars they should have is still ambiguous, because not everything in astronomy is as clear-cut as we like," he said. "To be technically correct, CDG-2 is an almost-dark galaxy. But the importance of CDG-2 is that it nudges us much closer to getting to that truly dark regime, while previously we did not think a galaxy this faint could exist." To observe CDG-2, the researchers used data from three telescopes — Hubble, the European Space Agency's Euclid space observatory and the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii — along with a novel approach that involved looking for objects called globular clusters. "These are very tight, spherical groupings of very olds stars, basically the relics of the first generation of star formation," Li said. Globular clusters are bright even if the surrounding galaxy is not, and previous observations have shown a relationship between them and the presence of dark matter in a galaxy, Li added. Because CDG-2 appears to have very few stars, there must be something else providing the mass that the clusters need to hold themselves together. Li and his colleagues assume that the source of the mass is dark matter. The researchers found a set of four globular clusters in the Perseus Cluster, a group of thousands of galaxies immersed in a cloud of gas and one of the most massive objects in the universe. Further observations revealed a glow or halo around the globular clusters, suggesting the presence of a galaxy... Astronomers believe, Li explained, that after the formation of the clusters early in the galaxy's existence, larger surrounding galaxies stripped it of the hydrogen gas required to make more individual stars like our sun. "The material that this galaxy needed to continue to form stars was no longer there, so it was left with basically just a dark matter halo and the four globular clusters." The process, he added, would leave behind a skeleton or ghost of "a galaxy that pretty much just failed." As a result of this formation mechanism, the galaxy only has 0.005% of the brightness of our own galaxy, Li said... Studying potential dark galaxies is important because they provide nearly pristine views of the behavior of dark matter, according to Neal Dalal, a researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, who was not involved with the study. Robert Minchin, an astronomer at New Mexico's National Radio Astronomy Observatory, told CNN that "it seems likely that other very dark galaxies will be found by this method in the future."

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All six service members died during an unmanned aircraft system attack in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait.

Workers installed a plaque honoring police officers in the early morning hours, three years after it was required by law to be erected.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 735 for Sunday, March 8.

Here are hints and the answer for Wordle No. 1,723 for Sunday, March 8.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle No. 1,001 for Sunday, March 8.

Speaking outside the embassy, Your Party MP Zarah Sultana told protesters: ‘we will not be ignored again’

• Middle East crisis – follow live

Thousands of protesters calling for the end of US and Israeli strikes on Iran have marched to the US embassy in central London.

Groups including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Stop The War, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, the Palestinian Forum in Britain and Friends Of Al-Aqsa led the march to the embassy on Saturday afternoon, after gathering on Millbank, near Westminster.

"It took Anthropic's most advanced artificial-intelligence model about 20 minutes to find its first Firefox browser bug during an internal test of its hacking prowess," reports the Wall Street Journal. The Anthropic team submitted it, and Firefox's developers quickly wrote back: This bug was serious. Could they get on a call? "What else do you have? Send us more," said Brian Grinstead, an engineer with Mozilla, Firefox's parent organization. Anthropic did. Over a two-week period in January, Claude Opus 4.6 found more high-severity bugs in Firefox than the rest of the world typically reports in two months, Mozilla said... In the two weeks it was scanning, Claude discovered more than 100 bugs in total, 14 of which were considered "high severity..." Last year, Firefox patched 73 bugs that it rated as either high severity or critical. A Mozilla blog post calls Firefox "one of the most scrutinized and security-hardened codebases on the web. Open source means our code is visible, reviewable, and continuously stress-tested by a global community." So they're impressed — and also thankful Anthropic provided test cases "that allowed our security team to quickly verify and reproduce each issue." Within hours, our platform engineers began landing fixes, and we kicked off a tight collaboration with Anthropic to apply the same technique across the rest of the browser codebase... . A number of the lower-severity findings were assertion failures, which overlapped with issues traditionally found through fuzzing, an automated testing technique that feeds software huge numbers of unexpected inputs to trigger crashes and bugs. However, the model also identified distinct classes of logic errors that fuzzers had not previously uncovered... We view this as clear evidence that large-scale, AI-assisted analysis is a powerful new addition in security engineers' toolbox. Firefox has undergone some of the most extensive fuzzing, static analysis, and regular security review over decades. Despite this, the model was able to reveal many previously unknown bugs. This is analogous to the early days of fuzzing; there is likely a substantial backlog of now-discoverable bugs across widely deployed software. "In the time it took us to validate and submit this first vulnerability to Firefox, Claude had already discovered fifty more unique crashing inputs" in 6,000 C++ files, Anthropic says in a blog post (which points out they've also used Claude Opus 4.6 to discover vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel). "Anthropic "also rolled out Claude Code Security, an automated code security testing tool, last month," reports Axios, noting the move briefly rattled cybersecurity stocks...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"It took Anthropic's most advanced artificial-intelligence model about 20 minutes to find its first Firefox browser bug during an internal test of its hacking prowess," reports the Wall Street Journal. The Anthropic team submitted it, and Firefox's developers quickly wrote back: This bug was serious. Could they get on a call? "What else do you have? Send us more," said Brian Grinstead, an engineer with Mozilla, Firefox's parent organization. Anthropic did. Over a two-week period in January, Claude Opus 4.6 found more high-severity bugs in Firefox than the rest of the world typically reports in two months, Mozilla said... In the two weeks it was scanning, Claude discovered more than 100 bugs in total, 14 of which were considered "high severity..." Last year, Firefox patched 73 bugs that it rated as either high severity or critical. A Mozilla blog post calls Firefox "one of the most scrutinized and security-hardened codebases on the web. Open source means our code is visible, reviewable, and continuously stress-tested by a global community." So they're impressed — and also thankful Anthropic provided test cases "that allowed our security team to quickly verify and reproduce each issue." Within hours, our platform engineers began landing fixes, and we kicked off a tight collaboration with Anthropic to apply the same technique across the rest of the browser codebase... . A number of the lower-severity findings were assertion failures, which overlapped with issues traditionally found through fuzzing, an automated testing technique that feeds software huge numbers of unexpected inputs to trigger crashes and bugs. However, the model also identified distinct classes of logic errors that fuzzers had not previously uncovered... We view this as clear evidence that large-scale, AI-assisted analysis is a powerful new addition in security engineers' toolbox. Firefox has undergone some of the most extensive fuzzing, static analysis, and regular security review over decades. Despite this, the model was able to reveal many previously unknown bugs. This is analogous to the early days of fuzzing; there is likely a substantial backlog of now-discoverable bugs across widely deployed software. "In the time it took us to validate and submit this first vulnerability to Firefox, Claude had already discovered fifty more unique crashing inputs" in 6,000 C++ files, Anthropic says in a blog post (which points out they've also used Claude Opus 4.6 to discover vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel). "Anthropic "also rolled out Claude Code Security, an automated code security testing tool, last month," reports Axios, noting the move briefly rattled cybersecurity stocks...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's MacBook Neo comes in four shades, and our CNET crew throws shade on all of them.

Detectives are investigating if alleged surveillance of Jewish locations and individuals is linked to possible attacks on British soil

Counter-terrorism detectives have been granted more time to question four men arrested on suspicion of spying for Iran on locations and individuals linked to the Jewish community.

The suspects, one Iranian and three dual British-Iranian nationals, can now be held in custody until 13 March, the Metropolitan police said on Saturday.

Ukraine has claimed a slew of successes on the front line in recent days, underscoring the effectiveness of its weapons systems, including anti-drone interceptors.

Masoud Pezeshkian issues rare apology to neighbouring Gulf states for Iranian strikes as war enters eighth day

• Middle East crisis live: latest news updates

The president of Iran has rejected Donald Trump’s call for the country’s unconditional surrender as a “dream”, while issuing a rare apology for Iranian attacks that hit neighbouring states, even as missiles and drones continued to strike Gulf countries.

In a prerecorded address broadcast on state television on Saturday, Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said the country would never capitulate, responding to remarks by the US president, who said on Friday that only Iran’s total submission could bring the war to an end.

• Northern Irishman pulls out before third round

• ‘I felt a twinge in my back, it became muscle spasms’

Rory McIlroy is confident of defending his Players Championship title from Thursday despite withdrawing from the Arnold Palmer Invitational 35 minutes before his third round. McIlroy suffered back spasms and was unwilling to potentially put appearances at the Players and next month’s Masters at risk by taking to the course at Bay Hill. McIlroy will also be defending the crown at Augusta National.

“While warming up in the gym this morning, I felt a small twinge in my back,” McIlroy said. “As I started hitting balls on the range before the round, it worsened and developed into muscle spasms in my lower back. Unfortunately, I’m not able to continue and have to withdraw. I was excited to compete this weekend. I wish the Arnold Palmer Invitational a great finish and look forward to being back next year.”

Explosion happened in pre-dawn hours at Dalí nightclub in the province of Trujillo along Peru’s northern coast

A bombing at a nightclub in Peru has injured 33 people, including minors, authorities said Saturday.

The explosion happened in the pre-dawn hours at the Dalí nightclub in the province of Trujillo along Peru’s northern coast, according to a statement from the local emergency operations center.

As Masoud Pezeshkian tries to de-escalate conflict, hardliners urge installation of new supreme leader to marginalise the president

• Middle East crisis – follow live

The surprise offer by the president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, not to attack countries in the neighbourhood so long as their airspace and US bases within their territories are not used to attack Iran has provoked a storm inside the country as the military appeared to contradict him, if not outright overrule him.

There were also calls for a new supreme leader to be installed as quickly as possible, as a means of marginalising the president. Attacks on facilities in Bahrain and elsewhere have continued, and there were unconfirmed reports that Bahrain had become the first Gulf country to fire back at Iran.

"Within 24 hours of the first US-Israeli strikes on Iran, ships in the region's waters found their navigation systems had gone haywire," reports CNN, "erroneously indicating that the vessels were at airports, a nuclear power plant and on Iranian land. "The location confusion was a result of widespread jamming and spoofing of signals from global positioning satellite systems." Used by all sides in conflict zones to disrupt the paths of drones and missiles, the process involves militaries and affiliated groups intentionally broadcasting high-intensity radio signals in the same frequency bands used by navigation tools. Jamming results in the disruption of a vehicle's satellite-based positioning while spoofing leads to navigation systems reporting a false location. Though commercial vessels are not the target, the electronic interference disrupted the navigation systems of more than 1,100 commercial ships in UAE, Qatari, Omani and Iranian waters on February 28, according to a report from Windward, a shipping intelligence firm. Jamming and spoofing also slowed marine traffic moving through the Strait of Hormuz, a congested shipping lane that handles roughly 20% of the world's oil and gas exports and where precise navigation is essential, Windward's data showed.... Daily incidents have more than doubled, rising from 350 when the conflict began to 672 by March 2, the firm reported. As use of this warfare tactic grows, experts worry the impacts could reach far beyond battlespaces.... In June 2025, electronic interference with navigation systems was thought to be a factor in the collision between two oil tankers, Adalynn and Front Eagle, off the coast of the UAE... The number of global positioning system signal loss events affecting aircraft increased by 220% between 2021 and 2024, according to data from the International Air Transport Association. Last year, IATA said that the aviation industry must act to stay ahead of the threat. Cockpits are seeing their navigation displays "literally drift away from reality," said a commercial pilot, who didn't want to be identified because he was not permitted to speak publicly. He said that he and his colleagues have experienced map shifts, where the aircraft location appears to move up to 1 mile away from the actual flight path, false altitude information that leads to phantom "pull up" commands, and systems suggesting an aircraft was on a taxiway, a path that connects runways with various airport facilities, when taking off. These incidents force pilots to rely on manual actions that increase workload, often during the most exhausting points of long-haul flights, he said. "Alternative navigational tools that don't rely on GPS, but instead harness quantum technology, are also in development," the article points out, "but remain a long way off operational use."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oksana Masters has competed at every Paralympics since 2012 and is the most decorated American Winter Paralympian.

In Miami, president calls for regional cooperation to counter Chinese economic and political interests

Donald Trump changed the channel from Iran to the western hemisphere on Saturday, convening a gathering of Latin American leaders at his Miami-area golf club to discuss regional interests and establishing what he called a “counter-cartel coalition”.

“Just as we formed a coalition to eradicate Isis, we now need a coalition to eradicate the cartels,” he told 12 regional leaders gathered at what the White House called the “Shield of the Americas” summit.

"Seagate says it is now shipping its Mozaic 4+ HAMR-based hard drives at up to 44TB per drive," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli, "with production deployments already underway at two hyperscale cloud providers. "The company claims the platform is the only heat-assisted magnetic recording [HAMR] implementation currently operating at scale, and it is targeting a path from today's 4+TB per disk toward 10TB per disk, eventually enabling 100TB-class drives." In a one-exabyte deployment, Seagate estimates Mozaic could improve infrastructure efficiency by roughly 47% compared to standard 30TB drives, cutting both footprint and energy consumption... HAMR uses a tiny laser to heat the disk surface during writes, allowing higher recording density without sacrificing stability. With most major cloud storage providers reportedly qualified on the Mozaic platform, Seagate is positioning spinning disks, not flash, as the long-term answer for cost-effective AI-scale data growth.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At least five people are in serious condition, an official said. Three minors - a 16-year-old and two 17-year-olds - are among the wounded.

Report indicates that US intelligence officials question effectiveness of strikes to produce regime change in Iran

• Middle East crisis – follow live

US government reviews of the war in Iran show that the Trump administration may be ill-equipped for a regime-change war, according to reports.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday morning that a classified intelligence review found that the war in Iran is unlikely to oust the Iranian establishment, despite the Trump administration’s desire to continue its attacks.

B-1 Lancers arrive at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire after Starmer allows US to use UK as a base for ‘defensive’ action

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Four US bombers have landed at an RAF base in Britain to carry out “specific defensive operations” to stop Iran firing missiles into the Middle East, the Ministry of Defence has said.

The B-1 Lancers, which are 45 metres (146ft) long and capable of carrying 24 cruise missiles, arrived at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, one on Friday evening and three on Saturday morning, after Keir Starmer had granted permission for “defensive” US action against Iranian missile sites from UK bases.

A place in the quarterfinals is at stake in this all-Premier League encounter at St. James' Park.

Relatives call on institutions to help them find remains of ancestors who led fight against British colonisers in 1890s

• Which human remains are held in UK museums – and where?

Descendants of freedom fighters executed and beheaded in southern Africa by colonial British forces have called on the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Cambridge to help them find their ancestors’ looted skulls.

Zimbabwean descendants of the first chimurenga heroes, who led an uprising against British colonisers in the 1890s, have long believed the museum and university hold several of the skulls.

The league leaders look to make it three wins in a row as they head to San Mamés Stadium.

"Reservation holders, it's finally time to get ready," writes long-time Slashdot reader AirHog. The EV news site Electrek reports: Aptera Motors, "the little startup that could," announced another important milestone... completing the first example of its flagship solar EV on its validation assembly line in Southern California... While the validation line at its headquarters remains a low-volume assembly process, its successful operation represents the startup's transition from hand-built validation SEVs to a more structured assembly line process that will be fine-tuned for mass production... With low-volume assembly now being validated, Aptera is starting to publicly utter encouraging terms like "EPA certification" and, better yet, that holy grail of "initial customer deliveries." Before then, however, the Aptera Solar EVs built on this low-volume validation line will be used for testing programs such as thermal validation, brake performance, and "some destructive testing." Aptera shared that its assembly and integration team has grown to become the largest at the startup, "reflecting the beginning of its transition from engineering development to testing and production execution"... As of March 2026, Aptera says it has over 50,000 reservations totaling over $2 billion in sales if all were to solidify following the launch of a deliverable vehicle. Clean Technica notes the vehicles' "generous cargo space that comes out to 60% more storage than a Honda Accord and 20% more storage than a Prius, according to the company." "Built with recyclable materials, this eco-friendly vehicle features a lightweight carbon fiber structure and no-welding assembly for maximum cost and production efficiency," Aptera adds. The emphasis on lightweighting supports the goal of engineering a car that can travel on the electricity provided by its onboard solar panels. The company currently advertises that the vehicle can travel 40 miles on solar power alone, with the battery providing extra juice as needed. Ideally, the car can keep recharging itself with sunlight, further elongating the time between charging sessions... [Its range is up to 1,000 miles with plug-in charging.] The new autocycle could also appeal to drivers who enjoy the challenge of hypermiling, which involves deploying a suite of driving techniques to minimize fuel consumption. Hypermiling can apply to gas-powered cars, but the magic really kicks in with the regenerative braking capability of EVs. Aptera's onboard solar panels add another dimension to the fun.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Looking to downsize your phone plan, or just start with one that better fits how you use your phone? A prepaid plan could be a better choice. We pick our favorites.

The White House called the gathering of Latin American leaders the "Shield of the Americas" summit.

As the US waives its ban on India buying Putin’s oil for 30 days, Europe must bolster its own measures, such as stopping the flow of luxury cars

Donald Trump handed Vladimir Putin a financial lifeline last week when he waived a ban on India buying Russian oil for 30 days.

Trump found himself in a furious row last year with Narendra Modi over his country’s oil deals with Moscow, only for fences to be partly mended when India’s biggest importer later capitulated.

Get ready to spring forward and lose an hour of sleep but gain more daylight.

Royal Navy readying HMS Prince of Wales so it can be quickly deployed if decision made to mobilise it to region

• Middle East crisis live: latest news updates

The UK is preparing an aircraft carrier before a possible deployment to the Middle East, the Ministry of Defence has said.

Royal Navy workers in Portsmouth are readying HMS Prince of Wales, the navy’s flagship, meaning it could be deployed more quickly if a decision is made to mobilise it to the region.

Ian Huntley, 52, had been on life support after being hit repeatedly over the head with a metal bar in a U.K. prison on Feb. 26.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Independent: A popular predictions market app will not pay out the $54 million some of its users believed they were owed after correctly forecasting the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a report. Kalshi, which allows players to gamble on real-world events, offered customers favorable odds on Khamenei, 86, being "out as Supreme Leader" in response to the announcement of joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Tehran in the early hours of Saturday morning. The company promoted the trade on its homepage and app and tweeted [last] Saturday: "BREAKING: The odds Ali Khamenei is out as Supreme Leader have surged to 68 percent." It continued: "Reminder: Kalshi does not offer markets that settle on death. If Ali Khamenei dies, the market will resolve based on the last traded price prior to confirmed reporting of death." Khamenei was later confirmed dead in the airstrikes and the company clarified in a follow-up post: "Please note: A prior version of this clarification was grammatically ambiguous. As a customer service measure, Kalshi will reimburse lost value due to trades made between these clarifications...." While the company has offered to reimburse any bets, fees or losses from the trade placed prior to its clarification message, it has nevertheless attracted a firestorm of complaints on social media. A Kalshi spokesperson told Reuters they'd reimbursed "net losses" out of pocket "to the tune of millions of dollars". But a class action lawsuit was filed Thursday saying Kalshi had failed to pay $54 million: Kalshi did not invoke a "death carveout" provision until after the Iranian leader was killed to avoid paying customers in Kalshi's "Khamenei Market" what they were owed, the lawsuit said... The language specifying that Khamenei's departure could be due to any cause, including death, was "clear, unambiguous and binary," the lawsuit said, describing Kalshi's actions as "deceptive" and "predatory." "In a notice filed Monday, the company proposed standardizing the terms of all its markets that implicitly depend on a person surviving..." reports Business Insider. "The update comes after Kalshi paid $2.2 million to resolve complaints from users who were confused by the way it divided the $55 million wagered on Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's ouster after his targeted killing by Israel and the US." Their article cites a DePaul University law professor who says "There's now sort of this nascent, but bipartisan movement against prediction markets. I think Kalshi's feeling the heat." For example, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy told the Washington Post, "People shouldn't be rooting for people to die because they placed a bet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Commandos started digging up grave thought to be of famous IDF pilot, leading to gunfight followed by airstrikes

• Middle East crisis – live updates

An Israeli operation in eastern Lebanon to locate the remains of a famous IDF pilot ended in failure overnight, when the commandos were caught in a gunfight with Hezbollah and local residents, leading Israeli jets to pummel the area with airstrikes that killed dozens of people.

The fighting left three Lebanese soldiers and 41 residents of the Bekaa valley dead, according to the Lebanese army and ministry of health. No injuries were reported among the Israeli soldiers.

This will be the first time humans have traveled all the way to the moon since the early 1970s.

"There must be no one in the military who harbors disloyalty to the (ruling Communist) Party," Xi said.

The new robot vacuums on the market are more capable than ever. Here's the latest from Ecovacs.

The $180 Aurzen Eazze D1R Cube is a basic, entry-level projector, but the Roku interface makes it a pleasure to use.

Have you been looking over the fence at other mobile carriers, or maybe you're pondering a different phone plan? We've put together our picks for the top postpaid and prepaid plans from AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Mint Mobile, US Mobile and others.

Tech policy professor who served in US air force explains how a feud between an AI startup and the US military illuminates ethical fault lines

Anthropic’s ongoing fight with the Department of Defense over what safety restrictions it can put on its artificial intelligence models has captivated the tech industry, acting as a test of how AI may be used in war and the government’s power to coerce companies to meet its demands.

The negotiations have revolved around Anthropic’s refusal to allow the federal government to use its Claude AI for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems, but the dispute also reflects the messy nature of what happens when tech companies have their products integrated into conflict. The Pentagon this week declared Anthropic a supply chain risk for its refusal to agree to the government’s terms, while Anthropic has vowed to challenge the designation in court.

The Guardian spoke to adults now in their 20s, 30s, and 40s to reflect on the lasting impact of family separation in the US

Jesús usually came home from school to a raucous scene: the family TV blaring, his mom loudly cooking dinner and his two young sisters fighting about nothing in particular. When his dad came home from work, they’d all gather around the kitchen table for dinner.

But this day was different.

California state superintendent says mother and sons arrested during ICE check-in and deported to Colombia

California’s superintendent is calling for the return of a hearing-impaired six-year-old after he, his mother and his five-year-old sibling were detained on Tuesday while reporting for their check-in at an ICE office in San Francisco and deported to Colombia.

Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez and her sons were arrested during their visit to ICE’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (Isap), said Alameda County Immigration Legal and Education Partnership (ACILEP). A relative who was waiting outside for Gutierrez and her sons was unable to hand off the assistive devices necessary for the six-year-old, who is deaf and has a cochlear implant.

The attorney general faces a subpoena over the Epstein files. She won’t say much – but Democrats are calling for her ouster

After spending $220m of taxpayer money on an advertising campaign in which she demanded migrants self-deport, Kristi Noem is now being forced to make a hasty exit of her own. On Thursday, Donald Trump announced that his luxury-jet-loving homeland security secretary was being shipped off to become special envoy for “the Shield of the Americas”, a new “security” summit that Trump has dreamed up. Markwayne Mullin, a former mixed-martial artist and Republican senator, will replace her.

Noem’s ouster was a long time coming. But it’s worth stressing that she doesn’t seem to have lost her job because of the many controversies that have plagued her tenure, including the killing of two US citizens by immigration agents. Rather, she committed the cardinal sin of making Trump look stupid. Which, to be fair, isn’t hard.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Defence minister urges ‘serious politics’ after Tory leader criticises prime minister’s stance at spring conference

• Middle East crisis live: latest news updates

Labour has accused Kemi Badenoch of scoring “cheap political points” after the Conservative party leader said Keir Starmer was “too scared” to join strikes on Iran.

Al Carns, the defence minister, said “serious politics” was required in response to Badenoch’s speech at the party’s spring conference where she criticised the prime minister’s stance on the US-Israel strikes on Iran a week ago.

Call for urgent meeting comes after woman was assaulted by man who had been given her key card by hotel staff

More than 20 MPs have demanded an urgent meeting with the CEO of Travelodge after a woman was sexually assaulted by a man who had been given her room number and a key card by hotel staff.

The MPs said the case of Kyran Smith, 29, who was jailed for seven-and-a-half years last month, raised “deeply concerning” questions. He attacked the woman after a party in December 2022.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the attack and called for an international response.

Severe storms were sweeping across the central U.S., and forecasters warned tornadoes could turn dangerous across several states.

A classified U.S. report doubts that Iran’s opposition would take power following either a short or extended U.S. military campaign.

European leaders are ramping up their response to the crisis spreading outside Iran but remain wary of a conflict that could have untold ramifications.

Debi Weiss thought her fatigue and weakness was a seasonal illness, but her condition quickly worsened.

JESSICA MEHR
Opinion Columnist

When it comes to adopting animals, many will choose breeders and handpicked animal breeds that fit them best. As much as that seems like a viable option, there are many negatives to this that people do not consider. 

Firstly, many breeders are not ethically compliant, and they do not treat their animals with the respect that we expect. 

For example, statistics show that only about half of puppies born in mills survive their first 12 weeks. This means that many puppies and young animals bred are born unhealthy and likely to die. In addition, many breeders fail to abide by the law, with 70% of puppy mills operating illegally.

It is important to recognize that there are many animals waiting in shelters to be adopted. Oftentimes, fees and expenses are even less for animals awaiting adoption. Since there are a multitude of animals waiting for a happy home, pet owners also have a wide selection to choose from.

In 2024, 5.8 million dogs and cats entered shelters and rescues, demonstrating that there are more than enough pets that are looking for permanent homes. 

Due to the abundance of animals entering shelters and the lack of willing adoptees, most pets will spend a dangerous amount of time in shelters before they ever find forever families. The length of time dogs, especially large dogs, are staying in shelters before being adopted has increased in the last five years.  

The most unfortunate fact of them all is that many of the shelters in the United States do not have the capacity, funding or help to maintain such a high number of animals. This increases the number of animals losing their lives. Approximately 607,000 animals were euthanized in shelters in 2024.

It is essential to consider that not all individuals or families interested in pets can afford an adopted animal, or commit time for the many years that adoption entails. As a result, fostering programs have increased in popularity. 

Fostering animals means you are willing to provide a home, love and care to an animal for a limited period of time. Foster care continues to be a vital solution for animal shelters and rescues navigating today’s persistent capacity challenges. It aids shelters tremendously because it opens space and resources to care for other animals while many are being fostered. 

Some families even experience foster fails, which means they fall in love with the pet they take care of, choosing to adopt or aid in finding homes for these animals. 

Even if you aren’t able to commit to any significant period of time caring for an animal, there are programs that allow you to create real change by building relationships with shelter animals. 

For example, Humane Animal Partners in Delaware offers programs like “Doggy Day Out” where you can spend a few hours taking a shelter dog out and giving them affection and play time for the day. 

This is something I have personally participated in. It helps not only to make the dog happy, but also introduce them to the community and new faces, making them even more ready for their adoption day.

Of course, there are a multitude of opportunities to volunteer in animal shelters. Considering that many are short-handed and lack resources, any volunteered time or donated materials are helpful. 

How you choose to support shelters is up to you, but it is essential to be aware of the big and small ways we can help animals in need.

Jessica Mehr is an opinion columnist at The Review. Her opinions are her own and do not represent the majority opinion of The Review staff. She may be reached at jessmehr@udel.edu. 

Indonesia will ban children under 16 from having accounts on major social media platforms as part of a government push to protect minors from harmful content, addiction, and online threats. The rule will roll out starting March 28 and makes Indonesia the first country in Southeast Asia to impose such a restriction. The Guardian reports: Meutya Hafid said in a statement to media said that she signed a government regulation that will mean children under the age of 16 can no longer have accounts on high-risk digital platforms, including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Roblox and Bigo Live, a popular livestreaming site. With a population of about 285 million, the fourth-highest in the world, the south-east Asian nation represents a significant market for social networks. The implementation will start gradually from 28 March, until all platforms fulfill their compliance obligations. "The basis is clear. Our children face increasingly real threats. From exposure to pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud, and most importantly addiction. The government is here so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giant of algorithms," Hafid said. She added that the government is taking this step as the best effort in the midst of a digital emergency to reclaim sovereignty over children's futures. "We realize that the implementation of this regulation may cause some discomfort at first. Children may complain and parents may be confused about how to respond to their children's complaints," Hafid said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hampshire business seems to have benefited from ‘phoenixism’, which costs the taxpayer about £800m a year

A UK recruitment business has been acquired out of administration for a third time in four years as part of a succession of deals that left some of the former management team in place and millions of pounds owed to the public purse.

The chain of insolvencies appears to contain more examples of phoenixism – a process when companies are liquidated and directors are able to rise from the ashes with a new entity, free of debts.

Review of FDA records by the Environmental Working Group reveals firms are exploiting rule to send new chemicals in food system

More than 100 substances widely used in common US foods, supplements and beverages underwent no health and safety review by the US Food and Drug Administration, a new analysis of federal records finds.

The review of FDA records by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) non-profit reveals that diverse products across the food pyramid, such as Capri Sun drinks, Kettle and Fire organic broth, Acme smoked fish, and Quaker Oats snack bars, use a range of substances that have not undergone review by regulators.

Takeshi Ebisawa, sentenced to 20 years in prison last week, believed he was selling weapons-grade plutonium to Iran

A plot to supply Iran’s nuclear weapons program, heroin from the Golden Triangle, Burmese ethnic insurgents and rocket launchers were the subject in courtroom 24A in New York’s federal courthouse last week when a man described as a leader in Japan’s Yakuza organized crime syndicate was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The transnational plot, which the US Drug Enforcement Administration had been investigating since 2019, involved Japanese organised crime leader Takeshi Ebisawa, who along with three Thai men, had been arrested in New York in 2022.

“She was aging. I’m very close to her,” photographer Arnaud Montagard said. “At the time of the trip, she was 88. She’s now 89.”

When I searched online to see if you can make popcorn in an air fryer, answers varied, so I went right to a manufacturer for a final answer.

Presenter who entertained children with his sharp-witted, furry puppet Agro Vation, remembered for his brash and unapologetic humour

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Jamie Dunn, a veteran radio personality who unleashed the puppet Agro on Australia, entertaining children and adults alike for decades, has died aged 76.

Dunn, who was once Australia’s longest-serving breakfast radio host, died on Saturday.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Government works best when its citizens are knowledgeable and engaged. Delaware’s government has scores of commissions, working groups, agencies and legislative committees. All must hold meetings that are open to the public. Below we highlight a few of those meetings that are happening this week.

Below are some of the most important or interesting public meetings happening around the state this week.

• Data center regulations (New Castle County)
• Weight-loss drug coverage vote (Statewide)
• State legislature reconvenes (Statewide)
• Wilmington party change rules (Wilmington)
• Bryan Allen Stevenson charter school hearing (Georgetown)

New Castle County to consider data center limits

After months of debate, the New Castle County Council may finally vote on a package of regulations meant to limit how and where data centers can be developed in the county.

The northernmost county has been targeted for development of a hyper-scale data center known as Project Washington, which has sparked community concerns around potential strains on energy and water use, while supporters seek to land new construction and permanent jobs.

Councilman Dave Carter, who originally introduced the ordinance in August, has amended it to try to find a compromise.

One of the main points of contention on the new bill was the removal of a “pending ordinance doctrine,” which would allow the county to retroactively apply the proposed regulations to data center applications currently in the development pipeline, including Project Washington.

📍 The New Castle County Council is scheduled to meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 10, in the Louis L. Redding City County Building, located at 800 N. French St. in Wilmington. For more info on the meeting, including how to attend virtually, click here.

State Employee Benefits Committee to change weight-loss drug coverage

The State Employee Benefits Committee (SEBC), a board responsible for managing Delaware’s state employee health insurance plans, will meet Monday to finalize coverage changes for employees currently using weight-loss drugs.

That meeting was previously canceled last month due to inclement weather.

The changes could mean thousands of employees, retirees or their family members covered under the state’s health plan could soon pay much more out-of-pocket to get their weight-loss prescriptions or be uncovered altogether.

The SEBC previously met on Friday, Feb. 13, to introduce the potential coverage changes. 

At that meeting, the committee heard multiple different options that could save the state money, but they would pass costs onto consumers using the drugs in the form of higher co-pays, almost four or five times higher than the current rate.

📍 The State Employee Benefits Committee will meet at 9 a.m. Monday, March 9, at the Delaware Department of Human Resources, located at 841 Silver Lake Blvd., in Suite 100. For more info on the meeting, including how to attend virtually, click here.

Legislature returns to Dover

The Delaware General Assembly will reconvene beginning on Tuesday after a month off for Joint Finance Committee hearings. 

Floor votes for the House and Senate are scheduled for Tuesday, March 10, while committee hearings will take place on both Tuesday and Wednesday.

Among bill hearings to watch are:

• HB 258: Would allow Wilmington to set more restrictive limits on liquor stores locations. (House Economic Development, Banking, Insurance & Commerce / Tuesday 12 p.m.)
• HS1 for HB 84: Would prohibit employers from requiring meetings or communications to convey the employer’s political or religious views, including views regarding unionization. (House Labor / Tuesday 1 p.m.)
• HB 265: Would provide limited immunity from prosecution for low-level crimes for persons who seek to report a sexual offense. (House Judiciary / Wednesday 10:30 a.m.)
• HB 186: Would incentivize the construction and operation of a limited number of high-efficiency Combined-Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) electrical generation facilities, with an output of between 100 MW and 500 MW, by creating an Electricity Production Tax Credit (EPTC) and bonus credits.  (House Revenue & Finance / Wednesday 1 p.m.)
• HB 188: Would allow Delaware voters who are not affiliated with a political party to vote in a political party’s primary election. (House Elections & Government Affairs / Wednesday 1 p.m.)
• HB 308: Would require that meetings of the Public Service Commission be livestreamed virtually and requires that members of the public have the opportunity to comment virtually.
• HB 73: Would raise the senior property tax credit cap from $500 to $1,000. (House Administration / Wednesday 3 p.m.)

📍 The Delaware General Assembly meets at Legislative Hall, located at 411 Legislative Ave. in Dover. Hearings and floor votes are open to the public. For more info, or to watch virtually, click here.

Wilmington to debate party change rules

A proposed resolution before the Wilmington City Council would encourage state legislators to amend the city’s charter to prohibit city council members from switching parties between elections.

Sponsored by Councilman Alexander Hackett, it’s not immediately clear what sparked the introduction of the measure. 

However, it comes on the heels of Councilman James Spadola switching from the Republican to Democratic Party last year. The city charter requires that no more than three people be nominated for the council’s four at-large members, which means that a minority political party is always represented.

Because Democrats overwhelmingly hold control of the council, that means the Republican Party always has one seat of the 13 members. Until now, as Spadola’s switch has left the council without a minority party member.

Notably, it also means that if Spadola seeks re-election to an at-large seat, he would be competing with colleagues Hackett, Maria Cabrera and Tish Bracy for the three Democratic seats.

📍 The resolution will be discussed by the council’s Committee of the Whole at 5 p.m. Thursday, March 12, at Louis L. Redding City County Building, located at 800 N. French St. in Wilmington. For more info on the meeting, including how to attend virtually, click here.

Georgetown charter school has final hearing

The Bryan Allen Stevenson School of Excellence in Georgetown will be fighting for its survival at a Monday evening hearing.

Last month, Delaware education officials recommended that the state close the charter school due to its persistent struggles with low enrollment. 

The closure recommendation from the Charter School Accountability Committee now goes before Delaware Education Secretary Cindy Marten, who will announce a final decision about whether to revoke BASSE’s charter on March 19. 

If she does revoke the charter, the school – which in recent months has served about 120 sixth through ninth graders – would close by the end of this academic year.

Before Marten makes a decision though, the school will have the opportunity to convince her to keep it open.

📍 The public hearing will begin at 5 p.m. Monday, March 9, at the Delaware Technical Community College’s Owens Campus Carter Partnership Center, located at 21179 College Drive in Georgetown. For more info, including how to attend virtually, click here.

Correction: This column originally reported that Wilmington’s city charter required a minority party representative in its four at-large seats. However, it only requires that a political party nominate no more than three candidates, essentially resulting in at least one minority party representative.

The post Get Involved: Data center regulations vote, GLP-1 coverage, and more appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Italian Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, 68, is currently the Holy See's ambassador to the United Nations in New York.

Russian athletes are back competing under their own flag in the Winter Paralympics at Milan Cortina.

A guide to the Formula One schedule and special F1 extras on every Apple app -- including Apple Music.

In July, Prasad was briefly forced from his job​, but was reinstated less than two weeks later.

• Judge homers as US rout Brazil in WBC opener

• Turang drives in four runs as US draw 17 walks

• Manny Ramirez’s son hits two homers for Brazil

Aaron Judge hit a two-run homer and Brice Turang had three hits and four RBIs to lead the United States to a 15-5 win over Brazil in their World Baseball Classic opener Friday night.

There was one out and one on in the first when Judge, the first player to commit to the team last April, connected off Bo Takahashi at Houston’s Daikin Park.

Charities warn estates of victims who died before the scheme began are losing hundreds of thousands in financial loss payments

Families of victims of the infected blood scandal have criticised the government for imposing a “penalty for dying” in its compensation scheme, which has seen them lose out on hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The scheme awards payouts to living victims and the families of those who have died after being infected with HIV or hepatitis as a result of being given contaminated blood products by the NHS.

The administration has been accused of failing to comply with hundreds of orders. The courts must not be paper tigers

Late last month, a Minnesota federal court judge, Patrick Schiltz, issued an opinion detailing hundreds of instances in which the Trump administration has failed to comply with court orders. He threatened to find it in contempt and to impose penalties.

Schiltz and other federal judges have made such threats before, but they have not followed through. It is time they did, lest they turn their courts into paper tigers.

As some elected leaders choose to play nice with the president, Democratic AGs have done the opposite – to impressive effect

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Four Democratic attorneys general, sitting in their offices from New York to California with state flags and books behind them, announced a new lawsuit on Thursday, alleging the president, yet again, had broken the law by attempting to create new tariffs without congressional approval.

It’s a now familiar scene for the group of top law-enforcement officials who have collectively filed more than 50 lawsuits against the Trump administration, serving as a counterweight to the president’s quest to expand his power and circumvent the constitution.

She co-wrote “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” a 1970s touchstone conceived by and for women. The book offered information about abortion, pregnancy and postpartum life.

Senate blocks war powers measure and House follows suit – now president can bomb Iran free from congressional interference

• Middle East crisis – follow live

Before US troops invaded Iraq, George W Bush asked Congress to pass a resolution authorizing military force against Washington’s longtime nemesis, a request that lawmakers obliged.

Twenty four years later, the United States is at war with a different Middle Eastern rival – Iran – under a different Republican president – Donald Trump. But this time, the president did not bother to seek permission from the Senate and House of Representatives before joining Israel in launching the air and naval campaign. And far from objecting, Congress’s Republican majorities have simply stepped aside.

• Tatum back after 298 days out with achilles tear

• Celtics star posts 15-12-7 in limited 27 minutes

• Boston defeat Dallas 120-100 at TD Garden

There were times when Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum wasn’t sure if he’d make it back to the game that was abruptly taken away from him last season.

It made every moment he experienced in his return as special as any he’s had so far in his basketball career.

Mickey says his stint as a handyman transformed into a lucrative sex business due to the region’s ‘self-denial’

A western Texas fracker starring in a podcast about how his attempted moonlighting as a handyman turned into lucrative sex work largely solicited by distracted oil industry professionals’ housewives says he believes his region’s repressive sexual attitudes gave his side gig an opening to flourish.

“There’s an inherent kind of self-denial,” the subject of The Handyman of West Texas, identified only as Mickey, said in a recent interview. “We all have these thoughts. But we lie to ourselves and try to conform to … how you’re supposed to be repressing your own pleasure.”

A Note to My Readers:

In my last newsletter, several of you wondered why I didn’t begin my brief history of Iran with the toppling of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Frankly, my goal was to start at a moment of relative peace and move to the perpetual state of internal and external strife that Iran has experienced since. The story of U.K. intelligence and the CIA joining forces to topple Mosaddegh and return Shah Reza Pahlavi to power is fascinating, brutal, and well worth your time. But it also occurred some twenty years earlier than the eras I wanted to cover. I value your comments and hope you’ll keep them coming.

What I am Discussing Today:

• Kareem’s Daily Quote: Great strategy does not always mean great results.

• Noem Out: Is anyone crying about this? Because all I hear is…Cricket.

• Video Break: Hulas Interruptus

• War & Epstein Files: Coincidence or Deadly Sleight of Hand?

• Panic at the Pumps: How they gonna spin this one?

• What I’m Watching: Bridge of Spies, Steven Spielberg

• What I’m Reading: The Duel, Judith St. George

• Jukebox Playlist:

Kareem’s Daily Quote

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

— Commonly attributed to Sir Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill actually said this, at least according to The Churchill Society. So I’ll let it rest there and not dig much more deeply, since it reminds me of something every athlete learns the hard way. The game doesn’t care how pretty your plan looked in the locker room. I played on teams where the strategy sparkled on the chalkboard. Perfect spacing. Clean rotations. A defensive scheme that made us feel like we’d solved the quandary of basketball. And then the ball went up, and reality walked in wearing the other team’s colors.

One night in Boston comes to mind. We had a plan built around pace and precision, get out and run, move the ball, get deep touches early. It looked airtight. But the Celtics didn’t show up to admire our strategy. They showed up to hit us, lean on us and drag us into a street fight. Suddenly, that airtight plan didn’t matter. The results did. And the results said: adjust or lose.

That’s the thing about strategy. Will it work? One way or the other, you’re sure to find out.

I felt that same lesson years earlier in Milwaukee, during the 1974 Finals. We had a disciplined, well‑designed approach: control the tempo, feed the post, force Boston into tough shots. It was smart. It was elegant. And then Game 6 turned into a triple‑overtime brawl. All the neat lines on the clipboard dissolved into fatigue, instinct, and survival. We lost that game and eventually the series, not because the strategy was bad, but because the results demanded something the strategy didn’t prepare us for. Beautiful plan. Brutal outcome.

Or, as another great orator of our time put it right before his fight with Tyrell Biggs and Biggs’ supposed winning strategy: Everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

A DHS secretary gets fired and praised in the same breath. A new title gets invented to make a stumble look like a step forward…a title that, by the way, makes her sound like she’s taking over a Star Trek convention somewhere in outer space. A nominee is introduced like he’s entering the octagon instead of running a massive federal department. That’s strategy. The performance of control and the choreography of leadership. But the results? They tell a whole different story. And that’s where Churchill and Mike Tyson’s quotes both hit home, no pun intended.

In basketball, you learn quickly that the scoreboard doesn’t care about your intentions. It doesn’t care how inspiring the pregame speech was or how sharp the strategy sounded, or how many fans are in the stands. The only thing that moves that needle is what actually happens on the court.

Strategy is the story you tell yourself. Results are the response the world gives you. And ultimately, that’s all that counts.

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DHS sent talking points to Republican officials to promote migrant detention centers while communities complained about a lack of transparency.

White House wages online propaganda campaign with aggressive and tasteless videos seemingly designed for young rightwing American men

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Rap and EDM. Clips from action movies. Heads-up displays from video games.

As the war with Iran approaches its second week, the White House has leaned into an online propaganda campaign that seems less about intimidating Iran or projecting US strength abroad than it is about reaching a rather niche domestic audience: young rightwing American men who spend a lot of time online.

Iran’s targeting of commercial datacentres in the UAE and Bahrain signals a new frontier in asymmetric warfare

It is believed to be a first: the deliberate targeting of a commercial datacentre by the armed forces of a country at war.

At 4.30am on Sunday morning, what is thought to have been an Iranian Shahed 136 drone struck an Amazon Web Services datacentre in the United Arab Emirates, setting off a devastating fire and forcing a shutdown of the power supply. Further damage was inflicted as attempts were made to suppress the flames with water.

School caretaker who killed 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002 was reportedly assaulted with metal bar

• August 2002: the summer we watched a senseless tragedy unfold in Soham

The child killer Ian Huntley has died in hospital, just over a week after being attacked at a maximum security prison.

The former school caretaker killed Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, both aged 10, in Soham, Cambridgeshire on 4 August 2002. The girls had left a family barbecue to buy sweets.

Billy Bragg, Sarah Lucas and Kojo Koram among those encouraging people to share cultural artefacts

For some people it’s a Morris Minor, for others, a beach windbreak, chicken tikka masala or Magna Carta.

A new campaign is aiming to collect 50 objects that sum up Englishness in an effort to move the conversation away from reductive arguments over whether to hang a St George’s flag or not.

Regime change, nuclear threat – or something else? US officials seem unable to land on one coherent reason for war

When the United States launched Operation Epic Fury last Saturday, the Trump administration had a major communications question to figure out: how to explain to the American public, Congress, and the world why it had just started a war with Iran.

During war time, talking points and propaganda reflexively fly in every direction, but the Trump administration still hasn’t been able to land on one coherent answer.

When it comes to taxes, AI still needs an audit.

President Donald Trump and top administration officials have offered a range of rationales for launching Operation Epic Fury.

The Global Times reports: China's first domestically developed quantum computer operating system, Origin Pilot, has been made available for online download, the Global Times learned from the Anhui Quantum Computing Engineering Research Center on Wednesday. A Chinese scientist said while several quantum computing operating system efforts are underway worldwide, this is the first developed in China where it is seen as part of China's broad effort to achieve technology independence and to achieve technology advance in quantum computing. The center said the release marks the world's first open-source quantum computer operating system available for public download, which is expected to lower development barriers and support the growth of China's quantum computing ecosystem. Developed by Hefei-based Origin Quantum Computing Technology Co, the company behind China's third-generation superconducting quantum computer, Origin Wukong, Origin Pilot was first launched in 2021 and has gone through multiple rounds of iteration and upgrade. The developer describes it as an integrated quantum-classical-intelligent computing operating system compatible with major hardware approaches, including superconducting qubits, trapped ions and neutral atoms. It is now deployed on the company's Origin Wukong series and is available to external users, the company said. Guo Guoping, chief scientist of Origin Quantum and director at the Anhui Quantum Computing Engineering Research Center, told the Global Times that a quantum operating system is the "soft heart" of the quantum computing ecosystem. He said the decision to make Origin Pilot available globally marks a shift in China's quantum computing industry from closed-door tech innovation to broader open-source ecosystem development. Dou Menghan, head of the research team, said: "Users can quickly integrate with quantum chips of multiple physical types and, using autonomous programming frameworks such as QPanda, execute quantum computing jobs across different physical quantum chips to support both research and commercialization needs."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In reality, US president’s opposition to foreign entanglements had only ever been partial

• Middle East crisis live: latest news updates

Donald Trump ordered the launch of the war on Iran last Friday afternoon while on board Air Force One, as the presidential plane made its descent towards Corpus Christi, Texas.

Trump was on his way to the port city to give a speech titled American Energy Dominance and had spent the three-hour flight chatting to Texas Republican politicians including the state’s two hawkish senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, about his options in Iran.

Omission of presidents of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, however, exposes failure of US president’s ‘theatrical’ doctrine, say experts

Donald Trump will welcome the leaders of at least 10 Latin American countries to a palm-dotted golf resort in Miami on Saturday as the president continues his quest to transform the US’s standing in the region and outmuscle China.

Since returning to power last year, Trump has launched a dramatic – and at times deadly – crusade to, as the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, put it, “reclaim our back yard”.

Restart of operations will be a relief to those stranded but may not dispel doubts raised by past week about key transit hub

• Middle East crisis – follow live

After nearly a week of uncertainty, airspace closures and very limited flights, news that hundreds of thousands of passengers around the world were hanging on for emerged: the Gulf-based carrier Emirates was restarting operations in earnest despite the US-Israel war on Iran.

Those relieved by the restart will include the UK’s Foreign Office, after its travails in organising delayed rescue flights out of neighbouring Oman.

Ancient Slashdot reader alanw shares a report from the European Space Agency (ESA): Last year, an approximately 60 meter near-Earth object captured global attention. For a brief period, asteroid 2024 YR4 became the most dangerous asteroid discovered in the last 20 years. While an Earth impact was soon ruled out, the asteroid faded from view with a lingering 4% chance of striking the Moon on 22 December 2032. Now, that risk has been eliminated. Astronomers have confirmed that 2024 YR4 will not impact the Moon using new observations made by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Instead, it will safely pass the Moon at a distance of more than 20 000 km.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rep. Darrell Issa's abrupt reversal injects more uncertainty in the race for the newly redrawn Southern California congressional district.

• Trump warns NIL era threatens US college system

• White House summit debates NCAA anti-trust fix

• Olympic sports fear cuts as costs spiral

Donald Trump predicted the destruction not just of college sports but the entire US collegiate system unless the industry is fixed quickly – something some sports leaders who joined him Friday at a White House summit agreed could only happen by raising more money to pay players.

Trump suggested he would write an “all-encompassing” executive order within a week in hopes it would spark action from Congress. He said he expected the order to trigger a lawsuit that could put the issue back in front of the court system that approved industry-changing payments to players for their name, image and likeness.

Asif Merchant accused of trying to recruit people in 2024 plan to target Trump, Biden and other politicians in retaliation for killing of Qassem Suleimani

A Pakistani man has been convicted of planning to kill Donald Trump and other prominent US politicians two years ago at the behest of Iran.

Asif Merchant was accused of trying to recruit people in the US in a plan targeting Trump and others in retaliation for the killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani in 2020, during Trump’s first term as president.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for March 7.

• Baltimore send two first-round picks to Vegas

• Pass-rush help arrives for Lamar Jackson’s side

Five-time Pro Bowl edge rusher Maxx Crosby is heading to the Baltimore Ravens, two people with knowledge of the trade told the Associated Press on Friday night.

Both people spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal can’t be announced until the NFL’s new year starts next week.

This live blog is now closed.

• Trump news at a glance: president marks first week of Iran attacks with call for nation’s ‘unconditional surrender’

• US lost 92,000 jobs in February just before Trump joined Iran conflict

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Military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed scores of children on Saturday but have not yet reached a final conclusion, two US officials tell Reuters.

Reuters was unable to determine further details about the investigation, including what evidence contributed to the tentative assessment, what type of munition was used, who was responsible or why the US might have struck the school.

An anonymous reader The Guardian: Humanity is heating the planet faster than ever before, a study has found. Climate breakdown is occurring more rapidly with the heating rate almost doubling, according to research that excludes the effect of natural factors behind the latest scorching temperatures. It found global heating accelerated from a steady rate of less than 0.2C per decade between 1970 and 2015 to about 0.35C per decade over the past 10 years. The rate is higher than scientists have seen since they started systematically taking the Earth's temperature in 1880. "If the warming rate of the past 10 years continues, it would lead to a long-term exceedance of the 1.5C (2.7F) limit of the Paris agreement before 2030," said Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the study. [...] The researchers applied a noise-reduction method to filter out the estimated effect of nonhuman factors in five major datasets that scientists have compiled to gauge the Earth's temperature. In each of them, they found an acceleration in global heating emerged in 2013 or 2014. The findings have been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.