News Reel

Files released by US apparently show Mandelson sending Epstein market-sensitive information while serving as business secretary

The Department for Work and Pensions has named 12 disability experts with “lived experience of disability or long-term health conditions” who will sit on the steering group of the review looking at the future of the personal independence payment (Pip), a disability benefit. Stephen Timms, the minister leading the review, says:

Disabled people deserve a system that truly supports them to live with independence and dignity, and that fairly reflects the reality of their lives today.

That’s why we’re putting disabled people at the heart of this review – ensuring their voices shape the changes that will help them achieve better health, greater independence, and access to the right support when they need it.

* Could we see a crunch point as soon as tomorrow over Mandelson?

* Tories have an opposition day debate - could they force a vote on Mandelson vetting disclosure. Shadow cabinet sources tell me they’re thinking about it

Karoline Leavitt claims Trump was referring to the Save Act and says he ‘believes there has been a lot of fraud in American elections’

• Tulsi Gabbard running solo 2020 election inquiry

• Trump suggests Republicans should ‘take over’ elections

Donald Trump has continued to sow doubt in the election system. While appearing on former deputy FBI director Dan Bongino’s podcast on Monday, the president called on Republicans to “nationalize the voting,” in at least “15 places”, although he did not clarify which ones.

“The Republicans should say, ‘we want to take over’,” Trump said in the interview.

Officials said the aircraft was “acting aggressively” when it approached the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was sent to the Middle East amid renewed tensions between Washington and Tehran.

The House on Tuesday voted 217 to 214 to fund major parts of the government and end the partial shutdown. Follow live updates.

The Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington DC celebrated the birth of a baby Asian elephant on Monday, its first in nearly 25 years. The female calf was born to her 12-year-old mother Nhi Linh and 44-year-old father Spike

• Asian elephant born at Washington DC zoo for first time in 25 years

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Feb. 3, 2026 — MinIO today announced the general availability of MinIO AIStor Tables. By unifying Tables and Objects in a single high-performance and Iceberg-native data store, AIStor eliminates structured and unstructured data silos to elegantly power any analytics, AI, and agentic workload at enterprise scale. With AIStor Tables, MinIO is demonstrating Open Table Format (OTF) leadership and is the first in the industry to build the full Apache Iceberg V3 Catalog REST API directly into the data store. The general availability of AIStor Tables reflects MinIO’s ability to commit and deliver innovation for customers, building on the September 2025 AIStor tech preview. AIStor Tables is now available globally and can be deployed across on-premises, private, sovereign, and hybrid environments.

MinIO AIStor Tables unifies tables and objects in a single enterprise data store built for agentic AI. By eliminating the silos between databases and object storage, AI agents can analyze structured and unstructured data together, operating on complete, up-to-date enterprise data at massive scale and performance.

MinIO’s integration of Apache Iceberg V3 API into AIStor marks a fundamental shift in how enterprises may more easily prepare and leverage data for analytics and AI use. With the AIStor Tables capability, Apache Iceberg tables become first-class citizens within AIStor itself—inclusive of Views and Multi-table Transactions. This ensures customers can consistently and securely store and query across more of their data ecosystem faster and more efficiently, and execute atomic multi-table transactions with simpler, industry-compliant catalog. Unlike AWS S3 Tables, MinIO AIStor Tables is included natively in AIStor—helping customers reduce list-price storage costs by up to 40%.

“Analytics and AI infrastructures are no longer defined by compute alone. The data layer now determines how much enterprise AI value can actually be realized,” said AB Periasamy, co-founder and CEO of MinIO. “When structured and unstructured data are unified, AI systems can learn more, reason better, and deliver greater impact. Only an object-native architecture like MinIO AIStor can make that data fast, fluid, and ready for AI at scale. With AIStor Tables, we bring enterprise data together in a high performance data store that feeds analytics and AI systems directly.”

The High Performance Analytics and AI Data Store Where All Data Lives Together

AIStor’s Tables feature is an on-prem and hybrid-capable breakthrough for enterprises building modern data intelligence stacks. Tabular data and object data coexist within a single data plane and security model, scaling seamlessly from small datasets to exabyte-scale environments. This architecture allows enterprises to treat all enterprise data as AI data, increasing its value when analytics, data science, and AI workloads operate on the same authoritative source.

AIStor Tables complements up-stack compute across warehouse, lake, and lakehouse query engines, as well as emerging AI agents. Enterprises can run analytics, data science, and AI workloads directly on the same data with predictable performance, consistent governance, and cost efficiency, regardless of where the infrastructure is deployed.

Object-Native by Design for Highly Performant Enterprise AI

Enterprise AI and analytics workloads demand massive concurrency, predictable latency, and the ability to support mixed workloads at scale. Traditional storage architectures introduce operational complexity and performance constraints that limit how efficiently data can be used across these environments.

MinIO AIStor takes a different approach. Built with a minimalistic, software-centric design, AIStor uses an object-native architecture to maximize flexibility and performance while reducing operational overhead. This design enables seamless scalability across edge, on-premises, private, sovereign, and hybrid deployments. With AIStor Tables, these object-native advantages extend fully to structured data, allowing a single system to support analytics and AI workloads end to end.

The general availability of AIStor Tables follows a highly active tech preview program that attracted strong enterprise interest in unifying enterprise data for AI and analytics. Early adopters validated the need for an object-native approach to tables that simplifies operations while maintaining performance and control.

“By running analytics and AI workload directly on the same data, MinIO AIStor Tables fundamentally simplifies how we build and operate data pipelines,” said Conor Brennan, Managing Director Risk IT at Nomura. “It allows us to move faster, reduce operational complexity, DR recovery process, and treat all our data as first class.”

MinIO AIStor Tables is available today as part of MinIO AIStor. Enterprises can download and deploy directly from min.io.

About MinIO

MinIO is the data foundation for enterprise analytics and AI. Built for exascale performance and limitless scale, MinIO AIStor delivers a secure, sovereign, and AI-ready data store that spans from edge to core to cloud. With rampant adoption across the Fortune 100 and 500, MinIO is redefining how organizations and government agencies store, manage, and mobilize all of their data in the AI era. MinIO is backed by Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures, Dell Technologies, General Catalyst, Index Ventures, Intel Capital, Softbank Vision Fund 2 and others.

Source: MinIO

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ClickOnThis writes: NASA has delayed the Artemis II launch to March of this year, after a wet dress-rehearsal uncovered a hydrogen leak. From the NASA article: During tanking, engineers spent several hours troubleshooting a liquid hydrogen leak in an interface used to route the cryogenic propellant into the rocket's core stage, putting them behind in the countdown. Attempts to resolve the issue involved stopping the flow of liquid hydrogen into the core stage, allowing the interface to warm up for the seals to reseat, and adjusting the flow of the propellant. Teams successfully filled all tanks in both the core stage and interim cryogenic propulsion stage before a team of five was sent to the launch pad to finish Orion closeout operations. Engineers conducted a first run at terminal countdown operations during the test, counting down to approximately 5 minutes left in the countdown, before the ground launch sequencer automatically stopped the countdown due to a spike in the liquid hydrogen leak rate.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nancy Guthrie was last seen on Saturday night and is believed to have been taken against her will

Officials in Arizona said on Tuesday afternoon they were no closer to finding the missing mother of Savannah Guthrie, the Today show host, three days after the octogenarian disappeared from her Tucson home – which detectives are treating as “a crime scene”.

Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last seen on Saturday night and is believed to have been taken against her will, Chris Nanos, the Pima county sheriff, said. Media reports on Tuesday said blood was found at the residence, and there were signs of forced entry.

Facility unites Laboratory’s quantum computing efforts under one roof

Feb. 3, 2026 — Los Alamos National Laboratory has formed the Center for Quantum Computing, which will bring together the Lab’s diverse quantum computing research capabilities. Headquartered in downtown Los Alamos, the Center for Quantum Computing will consolidate the Laboratory’s expertise in national security applications, quantum algorithms, quantum computer science and workforce development in a shared research space.

Aerial images of LANL and surrounding areas, 2019.

“This new center of excellence will bring together the Laboratory’s quantum computing research capabilities that support Department of Energy, Defense and New Mexico state initiatives to achieve a critical mass of expertise greater than the individual parts,” said Mark Chadwick, associate Laboratory director for Simulation, Computing and Theory. “This development highlights our commitment to supporting the next generation of U.S. scientific and technological innovation in quantum computing, especially as the technology can support key Los Alamos missions.”

The center will bring together as many as three dozen quantum researchers from across the Lab. The center’s formation occurs at a pivotal time for the development of quantum computing, as Lab researchers partner with private industry and on a number of state and federal quantum computing initiatives to bring this high-priority technology closer to fruition. Laboratory researchers may include those working with the DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, the DOE’s Quantum Science Center, the National Nuclear Security Administration Advanced Simulation and Computing program’s Beyond Moore’s Law project, and multiple Laboratory Directed Research and Development projects.

The center will also host the Quantum Computing Summer School, a 10-week fellowship program that connects quantum-interested undergraduate and graduate students with the theoretical foundations of quantum computation and the programming of commercial quantum computers. The Quantum Computing Summer School enrolls up to 25 students per year.

“I am thrilled to see these quantum computing teams coming together under one roof,” said Carleton Coffrin, quantum science coordinator for the Laboratory. “Each team is arguably world-leading in their specific domain expertise. An environment that fosters further collaboration and united effort will no doubt help our quantum computing teams achieve amazing things.”

Source: LANL

The post Los Alamos Forms Quantum Computing-Focused Research Center appeared first on HPCwire.

Considering a home purchase this February? Here are three critical questions to consider the answers to first.

Appropriations measure to let Democrats negotiate with White House and GOP leaders over Trump’s deportation efforts

The US House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a funding measure that will end the partial government shutdown, while giving Democrats time to negotiate with the White House and Congress’s Republican leaders over restrictions on Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

The Republican-controlled chamber approved the $1.2tn appropriations measure by a 217-214 vote, with all but 21 Republicans voting in favor and all but 21 Democrats against. Trump is expected to sign it, ending the shutdown that began after midnight last Friday, which halted many operations at departments including defense, health and human services, labor and transportation.

President claims idea to ‘nationalize’ elections in 15 states before midterms is to prevent rare noncitizen voting

Donald Trump suggested on a conservative podcast released on Monday that Republican state officials “take over” and “nationalize” elections in 15 states to protect the party from being voted out of office.

Trump framed the issue as a means to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting. Claims that noncitizens are voting in numbers that can affect an election are a lie. But it raises concerns about potential efforts by the president to rig the November midterm elections.

Gold prices have surged to historic highs in recent years and experts say the momentum is unlikely to slow anytime soon.

A 609 letter can help you challenge credit report errors, but it's not a magic fix for your debt. Here's why.

The massive merger is part of a plan to power "space-based AI," according to Musk.

Hillary Clinton will appear for a deposition on Feb. 26, while former President Bill Clinton will appear on Feb. 27, according to the House Oversight Committee.

Exclusive: Thames Valley police says it will review allegation that Epstein trafficked woman to UK to have sex with Andrew at Royal Lodge

British police are to review fresh allegations that Jeffrey Epstein provided Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor with a woman to have sex with at the Royal Lodge in 2010.

The woman has claimed she spent the night at the then prince’s residence in Windsor, her US lawyer, Brad Edwards, said after the allegations surfaced over the weekend. The woman, who is not British, was in her 20s at the time, and was later given a tour of Buckingham Palace, it is further alleged.

The seizure was announced on the same day that Colombian President Gustavo Petro met with President Trump at the White House.

Far-right leader was barred for five years after being found guilty of extensive fake jobs scam at European parliament

French state prosecutors have asked appeal court judges to maintain a five-year election ban on the far-right leader Marine Le Pen for embezzlement of European parliament funds in a fake jobs scandal.

If the judges decide to grant the request, Le Pen would probably not be able to run in France’s 2027 presidential election.

Linda Stevenson found unresponsive on 28 December after police responded to domestic dispute

The ex-husband of former US first lady Jill Biden has been arrested and charged with the murder of his wife, officials said on Tuesday.

William Stevenson, 77, was taken into custody on Monday and is facing a charge of first-degree murder in the death of Linda Stevenson, according to a grand jury indictment filed in Delaware.

Academic says risk factor is not sexual orientation but society’s treatment of sexual minority people

Life expectancy for people who identify as gay, bisexual or another sexual orientation in England and Wales was approximately a year lower than their heterosexual counterparts, according to the first analysis of its kind by the Office for National Statistics.

The life expectancy for men who identified as LGB+ was 1.2 years lower than men who identified as straight, at 59.4 years and 60.7 years respectively.

In 2010 then business secretary contacted Jes Staley, then at JP Morgan, about funding for £700m listing on London Stock Exchange

Jeffrey Epstein described Peter Mandelson as “devious” after lobbying a bank to underwrite a mining project launched by their mutual friend Nat Rothschild, emails included in the latest tranche of Epstein files suggest.

In April 2010, the then business secretary appears to have contacted banker Jes Staley, then at JP Morgan, from his personal email account in what appears to be an attempt to secure funding for Rothschild, Mandelson’s longtime friend.

Epstein files appear to show then business secretary passing market sensitive information to child sex offender

• UK politics live – latest updates

The Metropolitan police have formally launched a criminal investigation into allegations that Peter Mandelson leaked Downing Street emails and market sensitive information to the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Documents from the Epstein files released in recent days appeared to show the then business secretary sent confidential details of internal discussions to the late financier in the aftermath of the financial crash.

Alphabet is plotting to dramatically expand its presence in India [non-paywalled source], with the possibility of taking millions of square feet in new office space in Bangalore, India's tech hub. From a report: Google's parent company has leased one office tower and purchased options on two others in Alembic City, a development in the Whitefield tech corridor, totaling 2.4 million square feet, according to people familiar with the deal. The first tower is expected to open to employees in the coming months, while construction on the remaining two is set to conclude next year. Options in the real estate industry give would-be tenants the exclusive right to rent, or in some cases buy, a property at a predetermined price within a specific time frame. It's also possible Alphabet will not exercise the option to use the additional towers. If it does take all of the space, the complex could accommodate as many as 20,000 additional staff, which could more than double the company's footprint in India, said the people, asking not to be identified because the plans aren't public. Alphabet currently employs around 14,000 in the country, out of a global workforce of roughly 190,000. [...] US President Donald Trump's visa restrictions have made it harder to bring foreign talent to America, prompting some companies to recruit more staff overseas. India has become an increasingly important place for US companies to hire, particularly in the race to dominate artificial intelligence.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The brother and sister-in-law of Virginia Giuffre, one of Jeffrey Epstein's most vocal accusers, are speaking out about the Justice Department's handling of the latest Epstein files release.

Moscow launched ‘terrorising’ attack on energy grid as temperatures reached -20C, Ukrainian president says

Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia on Tuesday of violating an agreement with Donald Trump to hold off from attacking Ukraine’s energy systems in the depths of a freezing winter, as its forces carried out large-scale airstrikes on Kyiv on the eve of three-way talks in Abu Dhabi.

Ukraine’s president said Moscow carried out a massive and “deliberate” attack overnight as temperatures in Kyiv plunged to -20C. It involved a record number of 71 ballistic missiles as well as 450 drones, he said, sent to destroy energy infrastructure.

Shahed-139 said to have approached USS Abraham Lincoln ‘with unclear intent’ as US warships head towards Iran

The US military says it shot down an Iranian drone that “aggressively” approached the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea.

The Iranian Shahed-139 drone was flying toward the carrier “with unclear intent” when an F-35 fighter jet shot it down, US Central Command said on Tuesday.

Nvidia and Dassault Systèmes announced a new Industrial AI partnership today that aims to push the envelope in the use of AI and digital twin technology to accelerate innovation in the fields of biology, materials science, engineering, and manufacturing.

Dassault Systèmes is a digital powerhouse for product engineering. Its 3D computer aided design (CAD) and product lifecycle management (PLM) software is used by 15 million scientists and engineers around thew world. The company’s software benefits from the graphical processing power of Nvidia GPUs, and the two companies have been partners for decades.

Today’s announcement builds on that existing partnership, and commits the two companies to work together to bring new Industrial AI capabilities to market. Notably, the partnership calls for Dassault Systèmes to build new AI factories that combine its digital twin technology with Nvidia AI models. All of this, naturally, will run on Nvidia’s accelerated compute hardware.

Dassault Systèmes hopes to accelerate pharmaceutical research with its new Nvida-based solutions based on AI and virtual twin technology (Image courtesy Dassault Systèmes)

The goal is to combine emerging physical AI technologies with trusted scientific and engineering principles to provide a powerful new way to perform scientific research and engineer products, said Florence Hu-Aubigny, executive vice president of R&D at Dassault Systèmes.

“We are going to bring the factories of the future to life,” Hu said in a press conference on Monday, “and we are going to unlock the full potential of industrial knowledge through new ways of working.”

According to the announcement, to advance biology and materials research, the companies will integrate Nvidia’s BioNeMo models with Dassault Systèmes’ Biovia platform to accelerate the discovery of new molecules and next-generation materials.

In the field of AI-driven design and engineering, the companies are combining Dassault Systèmes “virtual twin” platform Similia with Nvidia CUDA-X and AI physics libraries to improve the accuracy of digital twins. They will also work to integrate Nvidia’s Omniverse physical AI libraries with Dassault’s Delmia software, which is used to automate manufacturing and operations.

Finally, the partners are also working to combine Dassault Systèmes’ 3Dexperience PLM and Industry World Models software with Nvidia Nemotron open models to give joint customers better modeling capabilities.

There’s a subtle but fundamental difference in how existing digital twin technology has been used in the past and how new the new AI-powered digital twin solutions that Dassault Systèmes and Nvidia are developing will work, said Rev Lebaredian, VP of Omniverse and simulation technology at Nvidia.

“The world foundation models that are being trained [currently] are being trained on information about what we observe as consumers of the world outside. So these are largely based on video and observations of the world after things are built,” Lebaredian said during the press conference.

“What’s missing is how the world is built, the information about that inside these world foundation models,” he continued. “These models are fundamentally different. They’re not just about how the world works after we built it, but it has knowledge about how we build the world.”

The new partnership also looks to leverage recent breakthroughs in agentic AI technology to help supercharge the abilities of scientist and engineers by giving them a team of assistants that can process information and augment their knowledge, Lebaredian said.

“By bringing [agentic AI] into the industrial space here, we’re effectively going to make it so anybody who is building and designing anything for the real world can now have a team of assistants that has deep knowledge about how things are built to help them,” he said.

“These kinds of abilities to build virtual twins, to simulate the physical world, have been restricted to a very small number of people who know how to operate and use these tools,” he continued. “The physical AIs, the industrial AI that that we are building with Dassault Systèmes will allow effectively every person eventually to be able to use all of these capabilities, not just the few small number of people in in in these niche areas in our companies.”

The post Nvidia and Dassuault in New ‘Industrial AI’ Pact appeared first on HPCwire.

Feb. 3, 2026 — Berkeley researchers have developed a proven mathematical framework for the compression of large reversible Markov chains—probabilistic models used to describe how systems change over time, such as proteins folding for drug discovery, molecular reactions for materials science, or AI algorithms making decisions—while preserving their output probabilities (likelihoods of events) and spectral properties (key dynamical patterns that govern the system’s long-term behavior).

See full caption below. Credit: Mark Fornace and Michael Lindsey.

While describing the dynamics of ubiquitous physical systems, Markov chains also allow for rich theoretical and computational investigation. By exploiting the special mathematical structure behind these dynamics, the researchers’ new theory delivers models that are quicker to compute, equally accurate, and easier to interpret, enabling scientists to efficiently explore and understand complex systems. This advance sets a new benchmark for efficient simulation, opening the door to scientific explorations once thought computationally out of reach.

Markov chains are widely used to model systems that evolve in time with some intrinsic randomness, from the folding of proteins to the spread of disease. But as the number of possible states grows—such as all the shapes a protein might take or all the reaction pathways in a chemical network—these models can become so large that even the most powerful computers struggle to simulate them. Existing simplification methods can speed up computation, but they often distort the system’s essential dynamics, making predictions unreliable. This has limited researchers’ ability to fully explore some of the most complex and important problems in science.

The Berkeley Lab team develops two complementary strategies to shrink large reversible Markov chains while preserving their essential behavior. The first, called projective compression, yields reduced models guaranteed to faithfully mirror the long-time dynamics of the original systems. The second, called structure‑preserving compression, builds a reduced Markov chain that follows the same rules as the original but operates only on a carefully chosen set of key states. Together, both of these approaches capture the system’s critical dynamics in a far more compact form.

To ensure the reduced models remain trustworthy, the team has developed strict and simple accuracy controls. They derived mathematical formulas to measure how closely the compressed version matches the original, relying on heretofore unknown connections between numerical linear algebra, probability theory, and complex analysis. These guarantees extend the applicability of a well-known mathematical technique called the Nyström approximation and use a modern optimization method—known as nuclear maximization—to select the best states to keep in the reduced model. In tests on complex systems, the approach produced models that ran much faster, retained essential dynamics, and were easier to interpret, bringing large-scale simulations within reach.

Co-authors: Mark Fornace and Michael Lindsey

Publication: An Approximation Theory for Markov Chain Compression

Image caption: Top: This diagram shows a mathematical path (blue arrows) through which researchers analyze how a system changes over time. The circles represent key numbers describing the system’s dynamics. The orange and green segments represent parts of the calculation that, in the limit, make no difference—allowing scientists to focus on the essential features of the system, for faster and just as accurate results.

Bottom: This illustration shows how a random process—like protein folding or a sequence of chemical reactions—can be broken down into repeating loops called cycles. Each colored mark along the line represents the process of visiting particular kinds of states. The red boxes highlight cycles where the process returns to a group of important states, while the blue boxes show a more specific kind of cycle returning to a single state. By mathematically analyzing these cycles, researchers can simplify and speed up complex simulations—while preserving what matters most about the system’s behavior.

About Computing Sciences at Berkeley Lab

High performance computing plays a critical role in scientific discovery. Researchers increasingly rely on advances in computer science, mathematics, computational science, data science, and large-scale computing and networking to increase our understanding of ourselves, our planet, and our universe. Berkeley Lab’s Computing Sciences Area researches, develops, and deploys new foundations, tools, and technologies to meet these needs and to advance research across a broad range of scientific disciplines.

Source: Linda Vu, Berkeley Lab

The post Berkeley Lab Advances Efficient Simulation with Markov Chain Compression Framework appeared first on HPCwire.

Charles "Sonny" Burton faces execution in Alabama for his role in a 1991 robbery in which a man was fatally shot, even though Burton did not fire the gun or witness the killing.

A day before Russian, Ukrainian and U.S. teams meet to talk peace, Putin's forces pounded Ukraine's energy infrastructure with dozens of drones and missiles.

U.S. Central Command said the drone "aggressively" approached the USS Abraham Lincoln as it was crossing through the Arabian Sea.

Through President Donald Trump’s first full 10 months in office, the cumulative U.S. trade deficit in goods and services was down 3.9% from the same period in 2024. His claim that he has “slashed our trade deficit by 77%” appears to compare the monthly trade deficit in January 2025 to the deficit nine months later in October.

Economic experts told us that Trump’s method is not the preferable way to measure whether the overall trade imbalance with international trading partners is up or down.

“[L]ooking at changes from one month to another is not a reliable way to assess whether the trade deficit is rising or falling in any meaningful sense,” Kyle Handley, a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, wrote in an email to us.

He said “[m]onthly trade balance figures are extremely volatile” and “reflect timing of shipments, energy prices, seasonal adjustment noise, and one-off transactions.” He suggested instead looking at trade trends over several months or, when possible, a full year.

On multiple occasions, however, Trump has claimed to have already reduced the trade deficit by a large amount based on just two months of data.

“We had the largest trade deficit in world history” under former President Joe Biden, “but in one year I’ve slashed our gaping trade deficit by a staggering 77%,” Trump said in Jan. 27 remarks in Iowa, for example.

In a speech at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 21, Trump made it more clear that he was comparing the trade deficit in one month to another, saying, “In one year, I slashed our monthly trade deficit by a staggering 77% — and all of this with no inflation, something everyone said could not be done.” The president highlighted the drop in the monthly trade deficit again in a Jan. 30 Wall Street Journal op-ed, in which he attributed the “astonishing” decrease to “the help of tariffs.”

He even predicted in a Jan. 20 White House press conference: “Next year we won’t have a trade deficit.”

To be clear, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the annual inflation rate has declined from 3% to 2.7% since Trump has been back in office, but it’s not at 0%. So prices are still increasing, just at a slower pace. His emphasis on the monthly trade deficit could also mislead people hearing or reading his remarks.

“The monthly trade balance has been unusually volatile this year, so I would be cautious about drawing conclusions from the data so far,” Robert Johnson, an international economist and associate economics professor at the University of Notre Dame, told us in an email.

In October, U.S. imports of goods and services exceeded exports by about $29.2 billion, the lowest one-month gap in trade since 2009, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The October figure was down roughly 77.3% from the $128.8 billion deficit in trade in January last year. That appears to be how Trump calculated the percentage, although the White House did not confirm that when we asked.

But Johnson said that deficits were “unusually large” in early 2025, between roughly $120 billion and $136 billion in January, February and March, because U.S. importers stocked up on goods to build their inventories before various tariffs on imported products that Trump had said he planned to implement went into effect. “Then, after the tariffs were put in place, imports fell back to normal,” producing smaller monthly deficits in later months.

“Whether this is a permanent change, or simply reflecting the drawdown in inventories, is too soon to tell,” Johnson said.

“If you just take the number from a month and you compare it to a number from another month, then you’re just introducing a lot of all of the noise that’s in the monthly data,” Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told us in an interview.

When the monthly trade deficit in goods and services dipped to a 16-year low in October, some economists attributed the decline mostly to an increase in U.S. exports of gold and a decrease in imports of pharmaceuticals. Meanwhile, BEA data released on Jan. 29 show that the monthly deficit nearly doubled to $56.8 billion in November, which would be a 55.9% drop from January – and would make the 77% figure outdated.

“Large month-to-month swings are common, even in periods with no underlying structural change in trade policy or economic conditions,” Handley, at UC San Diego, said. “For that reason, economists almost never evaluate claims about the ‘trade deficit’ based on comparisons between two individual months.”

He listed other measurements that better assess whether the trade deficit is rising or falling, such as comparing cumulative deficits within a year or year-to-date totals compared with the same period in prior years.

“On those measures, the claim that the deficit fell sharply in 2025 does not hold up,” he said.

As we noted, when totaling the trade deficit in each of Trump’s first full 10 months in office in 2025, from February to November, the most recent data available, the gap between imports and exports was $710.7 billion – a 3.9% decline from the same period in 2024. On the other hand, the trade deficit including all months from January to November last year was $839.5 billion – up 4.1% from the same 11 months in 2024.

Trump didn’t take office until Jan. 20, but to reemphasize Johnson’s point, there was a large trade deficit in the first quarter of 2025 as importers rushed to acquire goods ahead of Trump’s proposed tariffs.

Trade data for December, and thus all of 2025, should be published on Feb. 19, according to the Census Bureau’s release schedule. The largest annual U.S. trade deficit in goods and services on record was about $923.7 billion in 2022, during the Biden administration, according to BEA data going back to 1960. (The Census Bureau and BEA jointly provide this data.)

Although Trump may view a trade deficit as something negative, many economists don’t see it that way.

“A trade deficit sounds bad, but it is neither good nor bad,” Tarek Alexander Hassan, a professor of economics at Boston University, wrote in an April 2025 opinion post. “It doesn’t mean the US is losing money. It simply means foreigners are sending the US more goods than the US is sending them.”

Trade Deficit Not Going Away Soon

The experts we consulted also told us that the trade deficit is unlikely to be eliminated “next year,” as Trump claimed.

“It is still the case that the U.S. is not self-sufficient in everything,” de Bolle, at PIIE, said. “It may be able to export a lot, but it still imports way more than it exports.”

She said on a macroeconomic level, the U.S. consumes more than it saves, and “that is going to translate into a trade deficit most of the time, not a trade surplus.”

Handley said to proceed “very cautiously” with predictions that the trade deficit will end due to tariffs, as Trump suggested in his Jan. 20 White House remarks.

“Trade deficits reflect saving and investment balances, exchange rates, and macroeconomic conditions, not just tariffs,” Handley said, adding that tariffs could reduce the exports of U.S. manufacturing firms by increasing the cost of goods imported for production, “and thus the deficit will not improve.”

He noted that most of the tariffs that Trump imposed in 2018 and 2019, during his first presidential term, applied to goods that American manufacturers imported for production purposes. “When their inputs got more expensive, their exports slowed down as well,” he said. “We are seeing those same dynamics right now.”

The last time that the U.S. did not have an annual trade deficit in goods and services was 1975. That year, there was a trade surplus of $12.4 billion, according to BEA records.

There is also the issue of whether all of Trump’s second-term tariffs will continue as implemented. 

The Supreme Court is expected to rule this year on the legality of some Trump tariff policies. That will determine whether the tariffs remain in place in their current form.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

The post Trump’s Selective Comparison Overstates Trade Deficit Decline appeared first on FactCheck.org.

The man whom Jill Biden divorced for the eventual 46th President of the United States is now in jail on murder charges.

Apple might release its long-rumored first foldable phone in 2026, and the rumors continue to reveal potential hardware capabilities.

Mark Rutte and Volodymyr Zelenskyy hold joint press conference as air alert sirens blare across Kyiv

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kajas Kallas, has been speaking as part of a panel on Arctic security. Kallas was asked if the EU was “too cautious” in taking action because of its dependence on the US for security, which has been exposed amid Russia’s war on Ukraine and the Trump administration’s threats on Greenland and erratic behaviour towards its longstanding western allies. Kallas, who has said Nato must “become more European” to maintain its strength, responded:

Of course, we are cautions because there is a lot at stake. There is a full-scale war going on the European continent and there are threats coming from economic coercion, big challenges from China that is influencing our economies.

If it is influencing our economies, it is influencing jobs and people’s salaries and then it is creating polarisation within our societies and more instability, so it is all very much interlinked.

Days before the federal government falsely claimed cellphone-brandishing nurse Alex Pretti was a terrorist plotting a “massacre,” a jury in Chicago acquitted Juan Espinoza Martinez on bogus charges of a murder-for-hire plot against then-Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino. A recently unsealed court transcript shows the government used that case to bolster its claims about the dangers of “doxing” Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. That pretext was used to convince a judge to obscure an ICE agent’s face during a public court proceeding when his name, face, employment, and location were publicly listed on his LinkedIn page.  

As with its baseless claims about Pretti, the government presented no evidence supporting its proclamations that Martinez, a union carpenter, was a higher-up in the Latin Kings gang with the ability or intent to put out hits on Bovino or other immigration agents. The case against him hinged on ambiguous Snapchat messages that Martinez’s attorney called “neighborhood gossip.” But the Department of Homeland Security brought its allegations to the public long before it could be tested in court, repeating claims of bounties up to $50,000. 

The transcript from a federal court in Chicago, which was recently released pursuant to a motion filed by law firm Mandell PC on behalf of local media outlets, shows how far the hysteria has gone. During an October 20, 2025, hearing in a case challenging immigration enforcement tactics, government lawyers asked for a private conference with Judge Sara Ellis to request the courtroom sketch artist not draw ICE Deputy Field Office Director Shawn Byers.

Government attorneys claimed that, in light of the alleged “bounties” on the heads of ICE agents, Byers had taken extensive precautions to disconnect his identity from his image online to protect himself. When the judge asked for details on the bounties, Department of Justice attorney Samuel Holt responded, “I don’t have all the details. My understanding is that I — I think it was a gang bounty.”

The judge cleared the courtroom and called Byers in to provide the details about the “threat.” Byers first claimed there was a $50,000 “bounty issued by the cartels on me,” along with $10,000 “for all my family members.” He also said the “credible threat” was out against “all senior ICE officials here in Chicago,” where Byers said he was the most senior ICE agent on the ground. Asked when he learned about the bounty, Byer said “It’s been about a week or so I believe.” Martinez’s arrest was announced two weeks earlier, on October 6; no other bounties were publicly reported in the interim. When the judge asked whether these threats were “directed specifically” at him, Byers seemed to walk his claims back, replying, “Well, all senior ICE officials. So it’s not just me.”

Byers also said he’d taken action to “limit social media exposure” and “reduce the footprint” to avoid his face being connected with his name and that even his appearance in court required “additional precautions.”

“You know, my name is out there. I’ve been doxed as — as recently as over the weekend,” Byers told the judge, according to the court transcript. “So my name is out there, but my name has not been connected to my face yet, so that’s what I’m trying to prevent from happening.”

Despite objections from opposing counsel that court proceedings (and courtroom sketches) should be public, the judge ordered the sketch artist to blur Byers’s facial features, concealing his identity. Ellis’s compromise, while likely intended as a good-faith effort to balance safety and transparency, nonetheless validated the notion that immigration agents operate under extreme risk, justifying extraordinary protective measures by our legal system. It also effectively brought the masks immigration agents wear on the street into the courtroom.

Then, while Byers and other witnesses testified, someone apparently Googled his name and informed the judge that a simple search turned up his LinkedIn profile, complete with his photo, his exact job title, and his location in Chicago. 

The judge called the parties back into closed session (it’s unclear why, given that the false reason for the earlier private sidebar had been exposed). 

“I got to say, you know, I feel slightly foolish in trying to protect Mr. Byers when, you know, a simple Google search pulls up his name and his picture,” she said, according to the transcript. She also encouraged the attorney to advise the ICE deputy director that his name and photograph were readily available online. “If I could find his picture in two seconds with his name, it just looks a little silly to be asking the courtroom sketch artist to blur his features.” Being recognized is “the cost of being a public servant,” she continued. 

The judge also said moving forward, she would “just be more hesitant to kind of obscure somebody’s identity,” but did not say she’d be entering any actual sanctions for the half-baked rationale used to convince her to censor the public record. 

After some back and forth with the DOJ attorneys about whether Byers’s LinkedIn profile contained his actual picture, Ellis confirmed the profile for “Shawn B.” did when viewed by someone logged into LinkedIn. (A LinkedIn search for “Shawn Byers ICE” brings up just one profile for a Shawn B., who is listed as currently working as Deputy Field Office Director for ICE in Chicago. It also notes he is a 22-year veteran of the department and contains reposts about ICE removals in Chicago and a hiring notice for GEO Group, the for-profit prison conglomerate contracted with ICE, but no longer contains any profile picture.)

Related

Trump Calls His Enemies Terrorists. Does That Mean He Can Just Kill Them?

Since Byers’s manufactured emergency obviously wasn’t based on real concerns for his safety, what was the point of the whole sideshow? It was likely intended to feed the narrative that immigration agents face such grave threats that identifying them — in addition to filming their operations, following them to do so, tracking and communicating about their locations and other clearly constitutionally protected conduct — needs to be restrained. It’s the same fiction that primes segments of the American public to be receptive to claims that people like Pretti and Renee Good were threatening officers’ lives to justify their killings.

In January, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem scolded CBS News’ “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan for naming Jonathan Ross, the immigration agent who shot and killed Good in Minneapolis. She accused Brennan of “continu[ing] to dox law enforcement,” despite acknowledging that Ross’s name was already very public, citing unspecified attacks against his family. It’s far from the first time Noem and others have claimed that naming or videotaping law enforcement officers is improper, illegal, or even intended to foment violence.

These efforts to chill the work of reporters and ICE watchers have spread beyond immigration enforcement, as we saw from last month’s subpoena by the House Oversight Committee of journalist Seth Harp, which was accompanied by a criminal referral to the Department of Justice by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida. Harp was also accused of “doxing” for naming a Delta Force commander involved in the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, an allegation backed up by unsubstantiated claims that the commander’s life was at risk.

The notion that naming public officials at the center of major news stories, who very often conceal their identities while carrying out unprecedented law enforcement operations on the streets of our cities, or that simply drawing their faces for the court record is “doxing” or otherwise improper, is a complete Trump administration fabrication. Still, the government is repeating it often enough that it’s warping the public’s perception of journalism. The Byers ordeal is an unusually clear example of the current playbook being used to shield administration officials and their foot soldiers from accountability under the guise of protecting public officials’ safety. 

The next time this happens in court, the judge needs to demand specifics, with evidence, about whatever nebulous alleged plots or threats the government is pushing to justify secrecy. With comprehensive studies demonstrating their constant misrepresentations, nothing government lawyers say can be taken at face value. And when it happens outside the courthouse, the media needs to be similarly skeptical and not take the “threats” narrative at face value from an administration with a long, proven track record of misleading the public for its own political ends. 

Judges also need to impose significant sanctions on lawyers and witnesses who mislead them, make them pawns in the administration’s anti-transparency objectives, and waste their time. Gently reprimanding them in private doesn’t cut it, especially when these false, alarmist narratives used in court are then being used to justify ICE killings to the public.

The post Judge Censored an ICE Agent’s Face Over “Threats.” His Info Was a Google Search Away. appeared first on The Intercept.

Four economists across Central European University, Bielefeld University and the Kiel Institute have built a general equilibrium model of the open-source software ecosystem and concluded that vibe coding -- the increasingly common practice of letting AI agents select, assemble and modify packages on a developer's behalf -- erodes the very funding mechanism that keeps open-source projects alive. The core problem is a decoupling of usage from engagement. Tailwind CSS's npm downloads have climbed steadily, but its creator says documentation traffic is down about 40% since early 2023 and revenue has dropped close to 80%. Stack Overflow activity fell roughly 25% within six months of ChatGPT's launch. Open-source maintainers monetize through documentation visits, bug reports, and community interaction. AI agents skip all of that. The model finds that feedback loops once responsible for open source's explosive growth now run in reverse. Fewer maintainers can justify sharing code, variety shrinks, and average quality falls -- even as total usage rises. One proposed fix is a "Spotify for open source" model where AI platforms redistribute subscription revenue to maintainers based on package usage. Vibe-coded users need to contribute at least 84% of what direct users generate, or roughly 84% of all revenue must come from sources independent of how users access the software.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Scheduling and financial impasses at Vancouver’s World Cup stadium are leading down a road the league hasn’t traveled in over a decade

On the surface, Vancouver Whitecaps CEO Axel Schuster’s press conference last week would have felt familiar to almost any North American sports fan. Once again, a team was agitating for more money or a better stadium. Once again, local governments were at least partially to blame.

Some of his comments, though, felt more alien, and raised a question that seemed unfathomable just a couple of months ago: are the Vancouver Whitecaps about to die?

The top sports streaming services for you depend on your favorite sports. We've analyzed the options, covering everything from the NFL and NBA to soccer and UFC.

A raft of online videos show parents serving up dinner without a single plate in sight, to the amazement of their families

Name: Dump dinners.

Age: Horribly new.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Feb. 3, 2026 — EPB recently launched a new Quantum Computing Fellowship to provide valuable training and real-world experience, equipping participants to develop quantum solutions that benefit EPB customers and our community. The program is designed to build a local quantum-ready workforce and support new, local job creation from the rapidly emerging quantum industry. Eight fellows participate in the program, which provides hands-on experience and quantum-ready skills.

Credit: EPB

“This critical investment in workforce development will prepare a highly skilled workforce to lead the quantum future and keep Chattanooga’s innovation ecosystem on the cutting edge,” said EPB President and CEO-elect Janet Rehberg.

Congressman Chuck Fleischmann (TN-03) has long supported EPB’s pursuit of quantum technology advancements, beginning in 2015 with an R&D 100 Award-winning project to use quantum networking to secure the energy grid.

“We appreciate the support of Congressman Chuck Fleischmann, who has championed East Tennessee’s role in advancing quantum technology to shape the future of national security, energy and economic competitiveness,” Rehberg continued. “This grant will support EPB Quantum’s work to develop a next-generation workforce and attract talent to our region.”

Quantum Computing Manager Paul Smith leads the Fellows program. Previously, Smith held leadership roles in technology and innovation at EPB, managing enterprise-scale systems and guiding teams through complex modernization efforts. With varied experience spanning software development, infrastructure optimization, and the adoption of emerging technologies, Smith applies his unique perspective to bridge traditional computing with quantum advancements.

The fellowship was established thanks to a $4 million National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) grant awarded in 2024 to accelerate the research, development, and workforce development of quantum technologies. The fellowship curriculum was developed in partnership with leading quantum platform company IonQ, which will also develop and execute a quantum executive education program and identify potential applications and quantum solutions for use cases that EPB and our community members can leverage. Last year, EPB announced the addition of an IonQ Forte Enterprise Quantum Computer to EPB Quantum Center in downtown Chattanooga.

More from HPCwire

• EPB and Vanderbilt Launch Innovation Institute to Accelerate Quantum Science
• EPB Quantum Adds Hybrid Computing to Comprehensive Quantum Development Platform
• IonQ Launches Quantum Innovation Center with EPB in Chattanooga

About EPB

Located in Chattanooga, Tennessee, EPB is a nationally recognized energy and communications provider with a mission to enhance quality of life for the people it serves across its 600-square-mile service area. Starting in 2010, EPB gained notice as a national model for building and utilizing its 100% fiber-to-the-home network to deliver cutting-edge services such as the world’s fastest community-wide internet, now with service up to 25 Gig, and the nation’s most advanced automated electric grid. As a pioneer in fiber optic innovation, EPB also launched EPB Quantum to provide access to cutting-edge quantum technology platforms and help innovators bring paradigm-shifting solutions into the real world. With the launch of EPB Quantum Network in 2023 and EPB Quantum Computing (coming in early 2026), EPB Quantum offers the most comprehensive, commercially available quantum technology platform in the U.S.

Source: EPB

The post EPB Awarded $4M Federal Grant to Boost Quantum Workforce Development appeared first on HPCwire.

HOUSTON, Feb. 3, 2026 — Dassault Systèmes and NVIDIA today announced a long-term strategic partnership to establish a shared industrial architecture for mission-critical artificial intelligence across industries.

Credit: Dassault Systèmes

Combining Dassault Systèmes’ Virtual Twin technologies with NVIDIA AI infrastructure, open models and accelerated software libraries will establish science-validated industry World Models, and new ways of working through skilled virtual companions on the agentic 3DEXPERIENCE platform, that empower professionals with new expertise.

“We are entering an era where artificial intelligence does not just predict or generate, but understands the real world. When AI is grounded in science, physics and validated industrial knowledge, it becomes a force multiplier for human ingenuity,” said Pascal Daloz, CEO of Dassault Systèmes. “Together with NVIDIA, we are building industry World Models that unite Virtual Twins and accelerated computing to help industry design, simulate and operate complex systems in biology, materials science, engineering and manufacturing with confidence. This partnership establishes a new foundation for industrial AI, one that is trustworthy by design and capable of scaling innovation across the generative economy.”

“Physical AI is the next frontier of artificial intelligence, grounded in the laws of the physical world,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Together with Dassault Systèmes, we’re uniting decades of industrial leadership with NVIDIA’s AI and Omniverse platforms to transform how millions of researchers, designers and engineers build the world’s largest industries.”

Dassault Systèmes and NVIDIA Partner to Accelerate Every Industry

Dassault Systèmes, with its OUTSCALE brand, is deploying AI factories as part of its sustainable and sovereign cloud strategy. OUTSCALE AI factories will harness the latest NVIDIA AI infrastructure on three continents, bringing additional capabilities to operate AI models in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, while guaranteeing data privacy, intellectual property protection and sovereignty of Dassault Systèmes’ customers.

NVIDIA is adopting Dassault Systèmes model-based systems engineering (MBSE) to design AI factories, starting with the NVIDIA Rubin platform and integrating into the NVIDIA Omniverse DSX Blueprint for large-scale AI factory deployment.

This infrastructure will power Dassault Systèmes’ industrial Virtual Twins using NVIDIA open models and libraries, unlocking new opportunities across biology, materials science, engineering and manufacturing:

• Advancing Biology and Materials Research: The NVIDIA BioNeMo platform combined with BIOVIA science-validated world models will accelerate the discovery of new molecules and next-generation materials.
• AI-Driven Design and Engineering: SIMULIA AI-based Virtual Twin Physics Behavior leveraging NVIDIA CUDA-X libraries and AI physics libraries empowers designers and engineers to accurately and instantly predict outcomes.
• Virtual Twins for Every Factory: NVIDIA Omniverse physical AI libraries integrated into the DELMIA Virtual Twin of global production systems enable autonomous, software-defined production systems.
• Virtual Companions Supercharge Dassault Systèmes’ Users: The 3DEXPERIENCE agentic platform, combining NVIDIA AI technologies and NVIDIA Nemotron open models with Dassault Systèmes’ Industry World Models, powers Virtual Companions to tap into deep industrial context, delivering trusted, actionable intelligence with industrial-scale efficiency.

The partnership elevates the existing collaboration between Dassault Systèmes and NVIDIA to a shared long-term vision for how industrial AI will be built, validated and deployed at scale, through a unique combination of Dassault Systèmes’ Virtual Twin Factories and NVIDIA’s AI technologies for all industries.

Global Leaders Build the Future of Industry With Dassault Systèmes and NVIDIA

“Bel Group is building a sustainable food future through responsible formulation and packaging. Through the NVIDIA-Dassault Systèmes collaboration, we gain the computational power to model and optimize our products at scale-accelerating innovation while delivering on our sustainability commitments,” said Cécile Béliot, CEO of Bel Group.

“To address the growing complexity of modern manufacturing, the industry must move toward fully autonomous and digitally validated production systems,” said Motohiro Yamanishi, President of Industrial Automation at OMRON. “By combining NVIDIA Physical AI frameworks with Dassault Systèmes’ Virtual Twin Factory and OMRON’s automation technologies, manufacturers can move from design to deployment with greater confidence and speed.”

“Lucid’s award-winning engineering and technology continues to set new standards in the automotive industry, and Dassault Systèmes remains a key partner, enabling us to stay at the forefront of vehicle and powertrain engineering,” said Vivek Attaluri, Vice President of Vehicle Engineering at Lucid. “Agility, speed of innovation and rapid iteration are at the core of our work flows, and our exploration of Virtual Twin AI-based physics, powered by NVIDIA’s open-source physics informed AI models, has the potential to help our teams move from concept to production faster than ever before, without sacrificing predictive accuracy. We look forward to continued collaboration and leveraging these new tools to support Lucid’s future innovations.”

“NIAR empowers the next generation of aircraft. From asset digitization through design and manufacturing creation and validation, Virtual Twin technology introduces unparalleled capabilities and efficiency. Dassault Systèmes’ Virtual Companions for engineering, leveraging the 3DEXPERIENCE agentic platform using NVIDIA Nemotron open models and Dassault Systèmes Industry World Models, accelerate the by-design compliant synthesis of aircraft Virtual Twins. Using the platform to align the Virtual Twin to the means of compliance, reduces certification efforts while preserving sovereignty of the information,“ said Shawn Ehrstein, Director, Emerging Technologies and CAD/CAM, National Institute for Aviation Research, Wichita State University.

More from HPCwire: Nvidia and Dassuault in New ‘Industrial AI’ Pact

About Dassault Systèmes

Dassault Systèmes is a catalyst for human progress. Since 1981, the company has pioneered virtual worlds to improve real life for consumers, patients and citizens. With Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform, 370,000 customers of all sizes, in all industries, can collaborate, imagine and create sustainable innovations that drive meaningful impact. For more information, visit: www.3ds.com

About NVIDIA

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the world leader in AI and accelerated computing.

Source: Dassault Systèmes

The post Dassault Systèmes and NVIDIA Partner to Build Industrial AI Platform Powering Virtual Twins appeared first on HPCwire.

Caden Fine, 17, from Birmingham, Alabama, and two of his teammates were killed when their vehicle collided with a semi-truck in Canada.

The Democratic members of a U.S. House committee have released the findings of a report examining last month's fatal shootings in Minneapolis by federal immigration officers.

• Successful shot would have made $1m for charities

• Social media users say event was ‘dystopian’

The NHL has received backlash after slashing a donation to cancer research by $800,000 after a missed shot during a charity promotion.

The incident came during Sunday’s game between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Boston Bruins. Rob Higgins, the athletics CEO of the University of South Florida, was brought on to the ice to attempt a shot through a very small opening in an empty goal. If Higgins, who is a cancer survivor, made the shot the NHL said it would donate $500,000 to cancer charities; if he missed the donation would be $100,000. The event was broadcast live on Sportsnet in Canada and ESPN in the US. Higgins missed what was a very tough shot. He was then given another chance, with a guaranteed donation of $200,000 if he missed, which would increase to $1m if he scored. Higgins missed again.

Prosecutors’ announcement comes amid a hardening of European attitudes to social media firms

• Europe live – latest updates

Prosecutors have raided the French headquarters of Elon Musk’s social media platform X and summoned the tech billionaire and the company’s former chief executive for questioning as part of an investigation into alleged cybercrime.

“A search is under way by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office, the national police cyber unit and Europol,” the Paris prosecutors’ office said in a post on X on Tuesday, adding that it would no longer be publishing on the network.

A U.S.-flagged tanker heading for Bahrain was approached and threatened by Iranian gunboats in the Strait of Hormuz, a British maritime security firm says.

Investigators are combing through the house of "Today" show co-host Savannah Guthrie's mother, Nancy, in search of clues to the 84-year-old's disappearance.

AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 3, 2026 — FormationQ today announced the launch of a new applied quantum program in collaboration with the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Powered by IonQ—the world’s leading quantum platform company—and its state-of-the-art trapped-ion quantum systems with world-record gate fidelity and all-to-all connectivity, the program will translate cutting-edge quantum research into practical, real-world applications while building an institutional ecosystem for long-term adoption.

The collaboration brings together the Cavendish Laboratory’s scientific leadership and FormationQ’s institutional and operational capabilities. The Cavendish Laboratory provides the scientific foundation, while FormationQ serves as the enabling platform and long-term operator, building the institutional pathways, governance, and continuity required to translate research into sustained real-world deployment. The program will leverage IonQ’s quantum technologies spanning computing, networking, sensing, and security systems. IonQ’s platforms provide participating researchers and teams with access to high-fidelity, scalable quantum hardware, enabling applied experimentation and system development that builds on laboratory demonstrations.

Quantum technologies are increasingly recognized as critical to science, security, medicine, and global systems. Yet despite rapid advances in research, adoption remains constrained by gaps in institutional readiness, business model innovation, workforce capability, and coordination across the broader quantum landscape. This partnership is intended to address those challenges by focusing on building the connective tissue—programmatic and organizational—that allows quantum technologies to move from laboratory discovery into credible, sustained use to address grand societal challenges.

Professor Mete Atatüre, Head of the Cavendish Laboratory, said: “Progress in quantum technologies requires strong collaborations and a constant dialogue between industry and academic research. This initiative, enabled by IonQ’s advanced quantum systems, is a fantastic step in this direction and will help turn our quantum research into practical solutions by bringing the community together.”

“Quantum’s bottleneck isn’t science—it’s the ecosystem,” said Nada Hosking, Founder and CEO of FormationQ. “Adoption demands scalable talent pipelines, interoperable institutions, and shared stewardship for long-term deployment. By uniting the Cavendish Laboratory’s scientific excellence, FormationQ’s operational backbone, and IonQ’s industry-leading quantum technologies, we’re finally constructing the bridges that turn today’s quantum discoveries into tomorrow’s practical revolutions.”

The partnership will launch the Quantum Technologies Accelerated Alignment Initiative, a two-year applied program focused on translating quantum research into real-world solutions through structured application development and institutional integration, while strengthening coordination across the quantum ecosystem. The initiative will concentrate on three areas: enabling reliable use of quantum computing systems beyond the laboratory, building and testing connected quantum technologies for communications and sensing, and preparing industry and society to engage with emerging quantum capabilities. Each area will be led by an academic expert and supported by interdisciplinary research teams, pairing clearly defined challenges with open, collaborative project development to ensure alignment with real-world needs, while contributing to economic growth and societal wellbeing in a responsible manner.

By combining the Cavendish Laboratory’s depth of scientific leadership and the expertise across departments of the University of Cambridge with FormationQ’s operational and institutional approach, the partnership aims to support long-term impact across research translation, workforce readiness, and applied deployment.

About FormationQ

FormationQ is the enablement layer for global quantum adoption. The company builds the institutional pathways and collaborative structures that allow quantum technologies to move from frontier research into real-world use. Working with leading institutions and technology partners, FormationQ operates and sustains programs that support talent development, application formation, and ecosystem coordination in ways that can be governed, trusted, and sustained over time.

About the Cavendish Laboratory

For 150 years, the Cavendish Laboratory has been at the forefront of scientific discovery. Its state-of-the-art facilities are open to students, researchers, and industry partners from across the world. It works at the frontier of experimental and theoretical physics to tackle some of the most monumental challenges of our times, from climate change and sustainability to harnessing the quantum revolution, transforming global healthcare, and understanding the origins of life. The Cavendish Laboratory is a place of pioneering physics, where world-leading research and teaching happens.

Source: FormationQ

The post FormationQ, Cavendish Laboratory Partner on Applied Quantum Initiative Using IonQ Systems appeared first on HPCwire.

While last year's Pixel 9A went on sale in April, the latest in Google's cheaper A series may be coming much sooner.

YouTube has confirmed that it is blocking background playback -- the ability to keep a video's audio running after minimizing the browser or locking the screen -- for non-Premium users across third-party mobile browsers including Samsung Internet, Brave, Vivaldi and Microsoft Edge. Users began reporting the issue last week, noting that audio would cut out the moment they left the browser, sometimes after a brief "MediaOngoingActivity" notification flashed before media controls disappeared. A Google spokesperson told Android Authority that the platform "updated the experience to ensure consistency," calling background play a Premium-exclusive feature.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nili Kupfer-Naouri and Rachel Touitou said to be accused of trying to block delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza

A French investigating magistrate has issued summonses to two French-Israeli nationals in relation to “complicity in genocide” over allegations they tried to block the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, French media have reported.

The summonses, which reportedly mark the first time a country has considered the blocking of aid “complicity in genocide”, were issued for Nili Kupfer-Naouri and Rachel Touitou in July, Le Monde and Agence France-Presse reported.

Information Commissioner’s Office to investigate whether Elon Musk’s firms have complied with data protection law

Elon Musk’s X and xAI companies are under formal investigation by the UK’s data protection watchdog after the Grok AI tool produced indecent deepfakes without people’s consent.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating whether the social media platform and its parent broke GDPR, the data protection law.

There are still viable ways to earn a high interest rate on your money this month. Here are three to know now.

Reshona Landfair, known as Jane Doe during R. Kelly's 2022 trial, speaks to "CBS Mornings" for her first TV interview about her new memoir.

Cartoon lump of coal with giant eyes was spotlighted by US interior secretary in X post saying: ‘Mine, Baby, Mine!’

The Trump administration has turned to an unusual weapon in its attempt to resurrect coal mining – a cartoon lump of coal, complete with giant eyes and yellow mining garb, called “Coalie”.

The administration’s new mascot, kitted out with a helmet, boots and gloves, was introduced in a seemingly artificial intelligence-generated picture posted online by Doug Burgum, Donald Trump’s interior secretary. “Mine, Baby, Mine!” Burgum wrote on X, adding that Coalie will act as a “spokesperson” for Trump’s “American Energy Dominance Agenda”.

A new report from Realtor.com projects that the housing market will shift in a more buyer-friendly direction in 2026.

Exclusive: Trump endorsed national intelligence director’s sweeping review by sending her on Georgia raid last week

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is running her own review into the 2020 election with Donald Trump’s approval, working separately from a justice department investigation even as she joined an FBI raid of an election center in Georgia last week.

Her presence at the raid drew criticism from Democrats and former intelligence officials, who questioned why the country’s top intelligence officer with no domestic law enforcement powers would appear at the scene of an FBI raid.

Silver's dip offers a rare buying opportunity in a high-priced market, and there are ways to get it even lower.

For the first time, the top 10 cars on Consumer Reports' annual list of best new vehicles also include electric or hybrid models.

Lindsey Vonn, 41, said she ruptured her left anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, but that she was still planning to compete.

Protein is essential, but it shouldn’t be your only focus. A balanced diet requires other nutrients. Here’s what you need to know.

PepsiCo said the price cuts are aimed at making its products more affordable as consumers struggle with affordability.

Pearson, Experian and others fall sharply after startup unveils software to automate a range of professional services

European publishing and legal software companies have suffered sharp declines in their share prices after the US artificial intelligence startup Anthropic revealed a tool for use by companies’ legal departments.

Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, said its tool could automate legal work such as contract reviewing, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings and templated responses.

The organization claims the report, which finds Israel’s denial of the right of return is a crime against humanity, is ‘paused pending further analysis and research’

Two Human Rights Watch (HRW) employees who make up the organization’s entire Israel and Palestine team are stepping down from their positions after leadership blocked a report that deems Israel’s denial of Palestinian refugees the right of return a “crime against humanity”.

In separate resignation letters obtained by Jewish Currents and the Guardian, Omar Shakir, who has headed the team for nearly the last decade, and Milena Ansari, the team’s assistant researcher, said leadership’s decision to pull the report broke from HRW’s customary approval processes and was evidence that the organization was putting fear of political backlash over a commitment to international law.

Springfield businesses are closing and families are making contingency plans for their children

Around the same time that Springfield, Ohio, and its growing Haitian community made national headlines in September 2024, the New Diaspora Live radio station moved into a sleek new studio in a co-working building in the city’s downtown.

Haitian-Creole speakers from across the country called in, sharing tips with fellow listeners and discussing life in Springfield, the Rust Belt city of 60,000 people in western Ohio where thousands of Haitian immigrants had moved.

An anonymous reader shares a report: PayPal said on Tuesday it was booting its CEO and replacing him with its board chair Enrique Lores, sparing no ambiguity as to why: "The pace of change and execution was not in line with the Board's expectations," it said in a statement. One group that was blindsided was HP, where Lores was until Tuesday serving as CEO, according to people familiar with the matter. Lores' switchup sent them rushing to launch a search process, those people said. HP's board does have internal candidates which it's considering for the top job, according to a person familiar with the board's thinking. As chair of PayPal's board, Lores played a role in a process evaluating internal and external candidates. It was unclear when or if he recused himself from the final decision to name him as CEO. But HP's board was only made aware that Lores was taking the CEO role at PayPal in recent weeks, the people said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Even in the scale of global attacks on civilians and crackdowns on dissent, the magnitude of Iran’s violence against protesters stands out.

Unbroken: In Pursuit of Freedom for Palestine is a collection of writings by the Palestinian political leader, who has been held in Israeli prisons since 2002

A collection of writings by the imprisoned Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti will be published in November, bringing together prison letters, interviews, personal material and documents from the last three decades of Barghouti’s political life and incarceration.

As deadly attacks on Gaza continue despite a nominal ceasefire, the 66-year-old is seen by many as the best hope for a leader of any future Palestinian state.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey wants to eliminate the 15-year deadline to prosecute rape in cases where there’s a DNA match.

Current Massachusetts law bars rape prosecutions in older cases, even when DNA testing has identified a suspect.

An investigation last year by WBUR and ProPublica found that nearly all other states allow more time to charge rapes or similar assaults of adults than Massachusetts. Many of those 47 states extended their deadlines in recent decades as DNA technology helped solve old cases and as evidence mounted that police had failed to fully investigate rapes.

The WBUR-ProPublica investigation followed the story of Louise, a woman who had been raped and stabbed after accepting a ride in 2005 from a man who said he recognized her from college, a police report said. Although DNA testing would later connect a man accused of multiple assaults to her case, prosecutors had to drop charges in her attack under Massachusetts’ statute.

(WBUR does not identify victims of sexual assault without their permission. We agreed to identify Louise by her middle name.)

Healey’s proposal would eliminate the statute of limitations for rape cases when DNA evidence exists.

“With technological advances, new evidence is being collected and tested every day, and we need to make sure our judicial system keeps pace,” Healey said in a written statement on Saturday. “I hope this proposal will help survivors who have had to wait far too long for justice, while also improving our ability to hold offenders accountable.”

The new language is part of Healey’s budget proposal for the 2027 fiscal year. The provision must pass both chambers of the Legislature. It would take effect for cases in which the statute of limitations has not yet expired and future sexual assaults, but it would not affect older cases.

Legislators have tried to pass similar proposals every session since 2011, WBUR found, but those efforts have failed in part because defense attorneys have opposed changes, saying a longer deadline risks violating the rights of the accused. State Rep. Adam Scanlon, who has introduced legislation to create a DNA exception since 2021, said media attention helped push the issue forward again this year.

He said Healey’s “bill is really a testament to victims to ensure that folks that are in the same situation never have to go through the process of seeing somebody being able to walk away from an alleged rape when they know — when we know as a society — that DNA evidence connects them to that crime.”

That Healey, the state’s former attorney general, is backing the changes gives new hope for victims, said Louise, the woman featured by WBUR as part of its investigation. She was raped and repeatedly stabbed, a police report said. But DNA evidence did not match her assault to a suspect for 17 years.

“ There are several of us that have missed out on having justice. We won’t get to have that day when we know that our perpetrators are not going to get us,” Louise said.

Prosecutors alleged in 2022 that Louise’s attacker was a serial rapist. DNA from Ivan Cheung, a Boston-area man who worked in the financial services industry at the time of his arrest, also matched a 2006 stabbing and rape, court records show. But that attack was also beyond the state’s statute of limitations by the time the match was made.

Cheung has repeatedly maintained his innocence. His attorney did not reply to WBUR’s requests for comment.

Louise decided to advocate for survivors like her after Cheung’s prosecution failed. In June, she testified publicly before a state legislative committee in support of Scanlon’s bill.

She said she’s glad that the governor heard the voices of her and other survivors.

“I have beautiful family members, young women,” Louise said. “I care about all the youth in the community. I want them all safer.”

The post Mass. Governor Proposes Eliminating Statute of Limitations for Rape When DNA Evidence Exists appeared first on ProPublica.

The price of silver has noticeably changed in recent days. Here's where it sits as of February 3, 2026.

If you're looking for heart health supplements, these are the ones to take.

Conservationists find dunlin chicks thriving in boggy habitat created in collaboration with landowners

Deep in the Cumbrian Pennines, walkers might be lucky enough to spot small birds with spindly legs, long beaks and bodies like feathered balls hopping through the peat bogs.

These are endangered dunlins – at risk in England because their favoured soggy landscapes are drained and burned for farming and grouse shooting.

Josh D'Amaro, who oversees Disney theme parks and dozens of resort hotels worldwide, will become the next Disney CEO.

• Vonn confident despite ACL rupture before Olympics

• Will decide after testing knee at race speeds soon

• Olympic downhill scheduled for Sunday at Cortina

Lindsey Vonn said she is “confident” she can compete at the Milano Cortina Winter Games despite revealing she has been managing a ruptured ACL, maintaining that her Olympic comeback remains on track after a crash last week raised fresh doubts over her participation.

Speaking on Tuesday, the 41-year-old American said she was approaching the final decision cautiously but remained focused on lining up for the downhill at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre in Cortina d’Ampezzo, where the Olympic women’s alpine programme opens Sunday.

Commentary: The high-profile Hollywood director created a studio dedicated to creating a "new cinematic grammar" built around AI. This is not a good start.

Former minister apparently shared confidential government emails with child sex offender and financier

• UK politics live – latest updates

Peter Mandelson has resigned from the House of Lords after a series of scandalous emails came to light that linked him to the child sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, including ones that apparently leaked confidential UK government communications.

The move came as Keir Starmer said he had handed a dossier to the police after it emerged Mandelson had sent a string of emails to Epstein containing briefings he received as business secretary under Gordon Brown, including action the government was taking to deal with the global financial crisis.

NASA says it can't try until March at the earliest to send a crewed spacecraft on a flight around the moon and back, due to hydrogen leaks during testing of the Artemis II rocket.

President Trump says his administration is seeking $1 billion in damages from Harvard University after a published report said the school had won some concessions in ongoing settlement negotiations with the government.

A NASA mission is underway to map the heliosphere, which is a huge protective bubble around the solar system that was created by the sun.

The Climate Briefing: What does the EU’s CBAM mean for countries in the Global South? Audio thilton.drupal 3 February 2026

Anna speaks to three experts about the implications of the EU’s CBAM for countries in the Global South: What are their main concerns, and what could be done to mitigate negative impacts?

The EU has introduced a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to prevent carbon leakage – when companies move production to countries with weaker climate rules, or when EU products are replaced by more carbon-intensive imports. But the measure has sparked controversy and concern, especially among countries in the Global South, as seen during COP30 in Belém.

This episode of the Climate Briefing explores the implications of the EU’s CBAM for countries in the Global South: What are their main concerns, and what could be done to mitigate negative impacts?

To discuss these questions and more, Anna is joined by Aparna Sharma (Programme Lead at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water – CEEW), Shimukunku Manchishi (Senior Policy Officer at the African Futures Policy Hub), and Ieva Baršauskaitė (Lead on Trade and Green Transition at the International Institute for Sustainable Development – IISD).

About The Climate Briefing  

The Climate Briefing explores key themes in the UN climate negotiations and international climate politics. The podcast is hosted by Bhargabi Bharadwaj and Anna Aberg from Chatham House and features interviewees from governments, international organizations, academia and civil society organizations from across the world. 

 You can also listen to The Climate Briefing on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 

Feb. 3, 2026 — Diraq has secured a strategic $20 million equity investment from the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation (NRFC) backing the company’s ambition to become the global leader in the development of utility-scale quantum computing and deliver its first product by 2029, a quantum computer capable of genuine quantum advantage.

David Gall, NRFC CEO, and Andrew Dzurak, Diraq CEO, standing in front of cryogenic fridges at Diraq’s laboratory. Credit: Diraq.

Diraq Founder & CEO Andrew Dzurak said, “We are at a pivotal moment where years of breakthrough research is transitioning into a commercial reality that will redefine future computing. Australia has always been a quantum powerhouse in the lab and, with the NRFC’s backing, we are ensuring it becomes a quantum powerhouse in the market. I’d like to thank the NRFC for its support, which is precisely the type of mandate the Corporation was created to fulfill. By backing Diraq, the NRFC is not just investing in a company; it is helping to building a sovereign, advanced manufacturing capacity that will allow Australia to lead the next era of computing.

“This investment arrives as Australia builds its strength in critical technology infrastructure, particularly within our booming data centre sector. Diraq’s quantum computers are natively designed to integrate seamlessly with existing data centers, offering a unique, homegrown advantage. By leveraging Australian quantum expertise, local businesses—from energy providers optimizing the power grid to defense and pharmaceutical innovators—can gain a decisive competitive advantage in the global market, ensuring Australia captures the full economic value of its inventions.”

NRFC CEO David Gall said, “Australia has the potential to lead the world in quantum computing and Diraq’s groundbreaking combination of silicon-based qubits and tried and tested semiconductor architecture will revolutionize the industry. Diraq’s growth prospects are immense, and the company represents the exact kind of high-value, transformative manufacturing the NRFC was created to support.”

Diraq is backed by global deep-tech investors including ICM and Quantonation, and has attracted investment from Australian superannuation funds Hostplus, NGS Super and UniSuper, in addition to Australian investors John Higgins Family Office, Taronga Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures, Co:Act Capital and Uniseed.

The company recently launched operations in Melbourne, in addition to its two hubs in Sydney, and has U.S. operations in Palo Alto, Boston and Chicago.

Main Sequence Ventures Investment Manager Alejandra Romero, said, “At Main Sequence, we look for ‘unfair advantages’. Diraq has the ultimate edge: they are the only players capable of putting millions of qubits on a single chip using the world’s existing multi-trillion-dollar silicon supply chain. While other quantum approaches require exotic materials or massive footprints, Diraq scales. The team has progressed rapidly in a few short years establishing partnerships with global technology leaders, including Dell and Nvidia, that recognize the opportunity and want to partner with Diraq to integrate the company’s quantum technology.”

Diraq’s quantum computers store information in silicon-based quantum bits, known as “qubits”. Diraq’s proprietary technology enables millions of qubits to be placed on a single chip, meaning Diraq is able to produce compact computers – minimizing the intensive cooling facilities required – and deliver practical quantum computing that is both cost-and-energy efficient.

Founded in 2022 and spun out of UNSW Sydney, Diraq currently employs more than 70 staff and PhD students in Australia. The NRFC investment will significantly grow the team with new Australian-based jobs in research, development, and commercialization.

More from HPCwire

• Diraq Advances to Next Phase of DARPA’s Utility-Scale Quantum Computing Initiative
• Imec and Diraq Show Industrially Made Silicon Qubits Surpass Error-Correction Thresholds

Source: Diraq

The post Diraq Wins $20M Backing from Australia’s National Reconstruction Fund appeared first on HPCwire.

Trump administration is accusing protesters of ‘domestic terrorism’ but this brazen tactic is as old as the country itself

When federal immigration agents shot and killed ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on 23 January, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, wasted no time claiming to the press, without credible evidence, that Pretti had been engaged in “domestic terrorism”. Though the administration seems to be trying to soften that initial response after fierce backlash, it’s an accusation that members of the Trump administration have been leveling at wide swaths of people beyond Pretti – including Renee Nicole Good, another Minnesotan killed by ICE agents two and a half weeks prior, and Marimar Martinez, who survived being shot by ICE agents in Chicago in October – as part of an ongoing strategy to criminalize dissent.

It’s a claim Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents themselves have started to make directly in confrontations with citizens, seemingly to try and intimidate legal observers, sometimes known as ICE watchers. In one recent video from Portland, Maine, an ICE officer told an observer to stop recording him on her phone, and when she wouldn’t, he took her information down and said, “We have a nice little database … and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”

Uber Eats pits Bradley Cooper against Matthew McConaughey, and AI robots can't hold their liquor.

Adobe has emailed users of Adobe Animate to let them know the popular animation and game development program will be discontinued on March 1, an abrupt decision that has angered animators and game developers who say the tool remains an industry standard in television and game production. Animate, the successor to the once-popular Flash, is widely used for graphic creation, animation and building games in HTML5. The company has not offered a reason for the shutdown. On BlueSky, artist and animator Julia Glassman wrote that many television productions, games, and animated media still rely on Animate and Flash pipelines and cannot simply pivot to entirely new software.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trump has prioritized fossil fuel companies over consumers, hitting the lowest-income families hardest

Donald Trump promised to cut energy prices by 50%. Instead, average electricity prices over the past year have risen by about 6.7%, while natural gas prices have increased by 10.8%. Energy prices are influenced by many factors beyond any president’s direct control, including market conditions, weather-driven demand, regional infrastructure constraints and the rapid growth of energy-intensive datacenters that are driving new system costs. Policy choices do not determine prices on their own, but they do shape market outcomes, and the direction of this administration’s energy policy has been clear.

From his first days in office, President Trump made clear that his energy agenda would prioritize fossil fuel producers over consumers. His administration moved to expand US liquefied natural gas exports, increasing exposure to volatile global markets. At the same time, it froze wind power projects that provide some of the cheapest new electricity, intervened to keep costly coal plants running, and backed the elimination of energy-efficiency tax credits that lower household energy bills.

Mark Wolfe is executive director of National Energy Assistance Directors Association, co-director of the Center on Energy Poverty and Climate and adjunct faculty at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy at George Washington University

Letter comes after FBI executed criminal search warrant to seize almost 700 boxes of 2020 election documentation

Georgia’s Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, this morning, inquiring into the presence of Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, at the scene last week of an FBI seizure of Fulton county election records from 2020.

The letter from Senator Raphael Warnock and representatives Lucy McBath and Nikema Williams asks “whether the Trump administration is investigating a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus, which would legally require immediate congressional briefing”. The group requested a briefing from the Department of Justice “concerning this activity and its related investigation by February 13, 2026”.

LOUISVILLE, Colo., Feb. 3, 2026 — Infleqtion, a global leader in quantum sensing and quantum computing, announced research results from a collaboration with the University of Wisconsin–Madison that demonstrate a more reliable way to measure individual quantum bits, or qubits, without interrupting ongoing circuits. The work addresses one of the central challenges in quantum computing by enabling faster computation cycles while preserving fragile quantum states. This announcement follows Infleqtion’s plans to go public through a merger with Churchill Capital Corp X.

As quantum systems grow in size and complexity, the ability to measure qubits accurately and repeatedly becomes increasingly important. Conventional measurement techniques can introduce errors or cause information to be lost, slowing progress and limiting scalability. The results announced today show how combining precise measurement with continuous cooling can reduce these disruptions, allowing researchers to run computations more efficiently and with greater confidence.

“This work addresses a fundamental bottleneck in quantum computing,” said Dr. Pranav Gokhale, CTO at Infleqtion. “If you can measure qubits accurately without losing them, you can move faster, repeat measurements more reliably, and build systems that scale beyond the laboratory. That is why this result matters.”

Led by researchers in Professor Mark Saffman’s group at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with sponsored support from Infleqtion, the collaboration delivered two key advances:

• Experimental demonstration: Achieved user-facing qubit measurement fidelities of up to 99.93 percent using a novel technique based on a “forbidden” quadrupole transition in cesium. The approach enables qubit arrays to be measured while atoms are simultaneously cooled, allowing information to be repeatedly acquired without disrupting the computation.
• Path to next-level performance: Presented an in-depth analysis outlining a scalable implementation that could push measurement fidelities toward 99.95 percent in as little as 60 microseconds, improving both computation speed and overall system efficiency.

“High-fidelity, nondestructive measurement is a key requirement for scaling neutral atom quantum systems,” said Professor Saffman. “By combining measurement and cooling, this work shows a practical path toward faster, more reliable operation, and helps move these platforms from controlled laboratory experiments toward systems that can support larger-scale quantum computation.”

The full research findings are published in Physical Review Letters.

About Infleqtion

Infleqtion is a global leader in quantum sensing and quantum computing, powered by neutral-atom technology. We design and build quantum computers, precision sensors, and quantum software for governments, enterprises, and research institutions. Our commercial portfolio includes quantum computers as well as quantum RF systems, quantum clocks, and inertial navigation solutions. Infleqtion is the partner of choice for governments and commercial customers seeking cutting-edge quantum capabilities. Infleqtion announced in September 2025 it plans to go public via a merger with Churchill Capital Corp X (NASDAQ: CCCX).

Source: Infleqtion

The post Infleqtion and University of Wisconsin–Madison Show 99.93% Qubit Measurement Fidelity appeared first on HPCwire.

D’Amaro will take over next month from Bob Iger, who returned to lead the media company after a bungled succession

Disney has unveiled Josh D’Amaro as its next CEO, drawing a line under a bungled succession at the top of the global entertainment conglomerate.

Bob Iger, who led the media giant for 15 years, stepped down in 2020 – only to abruptly return in 2022 when his handpicked successor, Bob Chapek, was fired as the company came under pressure.

I’m sorry, but this is not just a political scandal. Time to refocus on the horrific mistreatment of women and girls, and the role of these ghouls

Like a lot of women, I do vaguely care about the latest political implosion of Peter Mandelson – but I think we’re all massively more obsessed with the fact that there really was a network of incredibly famous and powerful men trying to help a known ex-con minimise and wave away his underage sex crimes. Amirite, ladies? Sure, I’m crying my eyes out about some Gordon Brown adviser having his asset-sale memo forwarded in 2009 … but at the same time I’m a whole lot more concerned about the actual Sex Bilderberg. Which, even now, our eyes seem to keep being conveniently dragged away from. Can we refocus?

We are, naturally, talking about the Jeffrey Epstein files. Since the latest lot dropped, I’ve been collating the emails from extremely famous men who actively sought to help the since-deceased underage sex trafficker trivialise his crimes in the years after his jail release in 2009. Richard Branson, Noam Chomsky, Steve Bannon, Mandelson, Andrew (obviously) – all of these men offer strategic advice, or media training, or chummy solidarity. Or, in the case of Chomsky, all of the above plus a drive-by on the notion of female victimhood. According to text signed under his first name that Epstein sent to a lawyer and publicist in February 2019, months after the Miami Herald had run an explosive series of articles laying out the scale of Epstein’s serial underage sexual abuse and the perversion of justice that covered it up, Chomsky sneered at “the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women”. Wow. Never mind Manufacturing Consent – have a read of Not Giving A Shit About Consent. I thought Chomsky cared about power and exploitative elites? Still, nice photo of him laughing it up with Steve Bannon.

New US-owned app struggled with a storm and was accused of blocking content critical of Trump – can it recover?

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, writing to you from Doha, where I’m moderating panels about AI and investing as part of the Web Summit Qatar.

I want to bring your attention to the impact of a Guardian story. In December, we published a story, “‘A black hole’: families and police say tech giants delay investigations in child abuse and drug cases”, about grieving families and law enforcement officers who say that Meta and Snapchat have slowed down criminal investigations. (The tech companies contend that they cooperate.) This month, Colorado lawmakers introduced a bill to compel social media platforms to respond to warrants in 72 hours.

Elon Musk had more extensive ties to Epstein than previously known, emails show

Tesla discontinues Model X and S vehicles as Elon Musk pivots to robotics

What is Moltbook? The strange new social media site for AI bots

The slopaganda era: 10 AI images posted by the White House – and what they teach us

Apple reports record iPhone sales as new lineup reignites worldwide demand

South Korea’s ‘world-first’ AI laws face pushback amid bid to become leading tech power

Can you guess our screen time? A priest, pensioner, tech CEO and teenager reveal all

Whether it's called Clawdbot, Moltbot or OpenClaw, this AI assistant is taking the tech world by storm.

Samsung's buzzed-about new phone was tricky to get my hands on, but I'm excited to use it. Here are my ongoing observations.

This bulky, bizarre accessory for your Switch isn't exactly VR, but it is a lot more fun than I expected.

The 2026 State of AI Infrastructure Report, based on a survey of 600 U.S. IT and business leaders, reveals that infrastructure—more than AI models or accelerators—is now the critical determinant of enterprise AI success. As organizations transition from experimentation to production, four key pressures have emerged: rising infrastructure complexity, strained cloud environments, energy and cooling inefficiencies, and widespread skills gaps that slow progress and delay outcomes.

The report finds that 65% of teams struggle with overly complex AI environments, 93% are working to reduce energy footprints, and 54% have postponed projects due to infrastructure challenges. Cloud adoption is near-universal for scaling AI, and leading teams increasingly partner with external experts to build repeatable, resilient infrastructure strategies.

With actionable insights, benchmarks, and real-world data, this report helps technology leaders understand what’s holding teams back—and how unified, efficient infrastructure unlocks sustainable, scalable AI.

The post 2026 State of AI Infrastructure Report appeared first on HPCwire.

BOSTON, Feb. 3, 2026 — Zapata Quantum, a pioneer in quantum computing application and algorithm development, today announced that its patent for Quantum Intermediate Representation (QIR) has been granted in Canada, Europe, Israel and Australia, in addition to its earlier U.S. grant.

QIR is a hardware-agnostic translation layer that enables quantum applications to interoperate across distinct hardware platforms and programming frameworks. With global patent protection now in place, Zapata has secured exclusive rights to this capability, allowing developers to translate a program once into a universal representation, then execute it across any connected quantum hardware backend.

Core Component of Broader IP Strategy

As the only publicly traded, hardware-agnostic pure-play quantum software company, Zapata’s intellectual property strategy is focused on protecting foundational building blocks of the hybrid quantum-classical computing stack, not just individual algorithms. The Company’s portfolio includes over 60 granted and pending patents spanning key layers of application development, interoperability and deployment.

“QIR is the kind of broadly applicable infrastructure that helps make hybrid quantum-classical computing practical at scale so applications can move from one-off demonstrations to repeatable deployment across an evolving hardware landscape,” said Dr. Jonathan Olson, Zapata’s Strategic Advisor for Intellectual Property. “With QIR now patent-protected in major jurisdictions, we are well positioned to translate that leadership into durable, long-term value.”

QIR serves as a “universal translator” between quantum software and quantum hardware, enabling interoperability across a rapidly evolving ecosystem. Analogous to intermediate representations such as LLVM in classical computing, QIR allows developers to translate a program once into a universal representation and execute it across any connected quantum hardware backend, reducing fragmentation and simplifying application deployment.

Importantly, it also works in the reverse direction: a hardware provider that connects to QIR once can support many software tools and programming frameworks without custom integrations for each one. By reducing translation work on both sides, QIR lowers compatibility barriers and helps speed the path from development to deployment for hybrid quantum-classical applications.

Critical for Quantum Computing Evolution

As the quantum industry expands with many competing hardware approaches, standards-like layers such as QIR become increasingly important. This technology has motivated the ecosystem to collaborate on efforts such as the QIR Alliance, led by Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Quantinuum, Quantum Circuits Inc., and Rigetti Computing, to promote this standardized and interoperable framework for quantum programs.

Zapata views QIR as infrastructure technology critical to accelerating the delivery of useful quantum applications and ensuring they scale alongside advances in hardware. More broadly, these expanded QIR patent protections underscore the importance of clarity and consistency in how quantum technology is developed, adopted and commercialized.

“We’ve been pursuing a deliberate IP strategy for more than eight years, dating back to our origins in Harvard’s quantum computing lab,” concluded Sumit Kapur, Chief Executive Officer of Zapata Quantum. “By entering the field early and staying focused on software, we were able to identify and invest in foundational technologies like QIR at a time when few others were focused on the higher layers of the stack. That long-term perspective is now paying off as the industry shifts toward scalable, interoperable quantum applications.”

More from HPCwire

• Zapata and University of Maryland Collaborate to Advance New Paradigm in Quantum Software
• Zapata Quantum Regains SEC Reporting Compliance Following Restructuring

About Zapata Quantum

Zapata Quantum is a leading hardware-agnostic, pure-play quantum software company focused on accelerating quantum application development. With a portfolio of more than 60 granted and pending patents developed over seven years, Zapata supports applications across cryptography, pharmaceuticals, finance, materials discovery, defense, and more. The Company is the only organization to have participated across all technical areas of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking program and has worked with Fortune 500 enterprises and government agencies to translate quantum advances into real-world impact. Learn more at zapataquantum.com.

Source: Zapata Quantum

The post Zapata Quantum Receives Multinational Patent Grants for Quantum Interoperability Framework appeared first on HPCwire.

This silly $35 toy, available March 12, can dish snark, tell time and play music, but its conversations are strictly one-way.

Ring from Amazon offers a bewildering number of advanced doorbell models: Here are the picks worth your time.

An anonymous reader shares a report: By now, the Forbes 30 Under 30 list has become more than a little notorious for the amount of entrants who go on to be charged with fraud.[...] Gokce Guven, a 26-year-old Turkish national and the founder and CEO of fintech startup Kalder, was charged last week with alleged securities fraud, wire fraud, visa fraud, and aggravated identity theft. The New York-based fintech startup -- which uses the "Turn Your Rewards into [a] Revenue Engine" tagline -- says it can help companies create and monetize individual rewards programs. The company was founded in 2022, and offers participating firms the opportunity to earn ongoing revenue streams via partner affiliate sales, Axios previously reported. Guven was featured in last year's Forbes 30 Under 30 list. The magazine notes in the writeup that Guven's clients included major chocolatier Godiva and the International Air Transport Association, the trade organization that represents a majority of the world's airlines. Kalder also claims to have enjoyed the backing of a number of prominent VC firms. The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that, during Kalder's seed round in April of 2024, Guven managed to raise $7 million from more than a dozen investors after presenting a pitch deck that was rife with false information. According to the government, Kalder's pitch deck claimed that there were 26 brands "using Kalder" and another 53 brands in "live freemium." However, officials say that, in reality, Kalder had, in many cases, only been offering heavily discounted pilot programs to many of those companies. Other brands "had no agreement with Kalder whatsoever -- not even for free services," officials said in a press release announcing the indictment. The pitch deck also "falsely reported that Kalder's recurring revenue had steadily grown month over month since February 2023 and that by March 2024, Kalder had reached $1.2 million in annual recurring revenue." The government also accuses Guven of having kept two separate sets of financial books.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How many of these chef-approved kitchen tools are you missing?

With masked paramilitary forces grabbing nonwhite people from the streets and shooting civilians with impunity, it can be difficult to keep focus on all the other ways Republicans are entrenching a fascist status quo nationwide. For trans people, however, the legislative and policy assaults, which have been escalating red states for nearly a decade, are only getting worse — and, as ever, drawing all too little concern from Democratic leaders.

Just last week, the Kansas legislature passed some of the most far-reaching measures to push trans and gender-nonconforming people out of public life to date. Bathroom bans that bar trans people from restrooms aligned with their gender identity have become grimly common; over 20 states have such a law on the books. But Kansas’s new anti-trans bathroom bill adds a dangerous twist: a bounty hunter provision.

The law would permit private citizens to sue and seek monetary reward based on claiming to encounter a trans person in the bathroom. That’s on top of some of the harshest punishments of any existing bathroom bans, such as criminal charges, steep fines and even jail time.

As journalist and trans rights advocate Erin Reed first reported, the bill’s vague language means that its reach could extend beyond public buildings — the remit of most bathroom bans around the country.

“As written, it would not only be the first bathroom bounty law to target transgender people directly, but also the first to extend a bathroom ban into private spaces,” noted Reed, “effectively creating the nation’s first private bathroom ban if enacted by empowering bounty hunters to search for trans people in bathrooms.”

The language of the bill, while vague, says that any person who alleges to be “aggrieved” by the presence of a trans person they encounter in a restroom facility can file a civil suit against that individual for “damages” of at least $1,000.

Kansas Republicans rushed through the bathroom ban, skirting public comment by essentially sneaking the bill into another piece of legislation aimed at denying trans people correct government IDs. The ID legislation is in and of itself extreme: it would invalidate driver’s licenses, government IDs, and even birth certificates that don’t list a person’s sex as assigned at birth.

The bill would require trans people to surrender their correctly identifying driver’s license or risk a misdemeanor offense for driving with a invalid license. Trans Kansans would thus have to choose between carrying identification with their assigned sex at birth — inviting potentially further harassment and violence in public — or forgoing aspects of public life entirely. It’s a policy in line with the Trump administration’s move to stop issuing accurate passports to trans Americans.

The bathroom bounty hunter ban was then layered on top of the ID law in a so-called “gut and go” maneuver.

The twin bills passed both the state House and Senate with over two-thirds of the vote, given the significant Republican majority — enough to override a veto from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

“Transgender people are already vulnerable to violence, especially in restrooms, and this bill layers prospective physical violence on top of the existing privacy violation of forced changes to identification documents,” said Logan DeMond, director of policy and research at the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, in a statement.

Related

The First “Wrongful Death” Case for Helping a Friend Get an Abortion

The fondness of Trumpian Republicans for bounty hunter laws comes as no surprise, recalling the dark legacies of Fugitive Slave Act laws and Jim Crow civilian surveillance. Now, whether criminalizing abortions, rounding up immigrants, or policing gender expression, far-right leaders and think tanks embrace vigilante violence as a key mechanism of enforcement. The aim is to produce a climate of distrust and terror.

Anti-trans zealots have been harassing people they believe to be trans — including multiple incidents involving cis women — even without the promise of financial payoff. The Kansas legislation only “turbocharges,” as Reed put it, the violent policing of access to public life.

“I have sat here for five and a half hours and listened to this entire room debate my humanity and my ability to participate in the most basic functions of society,” said Kansas Democratic state Rep. Abi Boatman, who is the only trans lawmaker in the state, when the new legislation was debated. “I hope none of you have to ever sit through something like that.”

It should not need repeating that it is trans people who overwhelmingly face harassment and violence in bathroom facilities; the framing of bathroom bills as a question of cis women’s safety has always been a bunk excuse to enforce gender conformism. It should also be obvious that any laws encouraging the surveillance and control of our bodies, particularly with women’s bodies as the site of paranoiac anti-trans obsession, make all women less safe. And as with any such laws, it is always Black trans and cis women who face the worst scrutiny.

We should not forget that just one decade ago, the Christian far-right groups that pushed the first round of model bathroom bills into statehouses largely failed. Politicians faced huge public backlash; the state of North Carolina faced massive boycotts in response to its 2016 bathroom bill. But conservative think tanks got to work, refocused manipulative messaging around children and women’s sports, and astroturfed the issue to activate the right-wing base. In the following years, anti-trans legislation swept through statehouses.

All the while, far too many Democratic leaders, like the serpentine California Gov. Gavin Newsom, have been willing to throw trans people under the bus. While bathroom bills have been the preserve of Republican-led states, Democrats with national standing have roundly failed in supporting the sort of pressure campaigns that gave state lawmakers pause for thought 10 years ago. Bathroom bans now abound, and ​27 states have enacted laws or policies restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for trans youth.

Within such a context, there’s little wonder that legislation is only becoming harsher and crueler. And while the attack on trans existence is part of a longer history of Christian right pro-natalism and attacks on bodily autonomy, it is not so long ago that public pressure made attacks on trans rights a political liability.

Related

How to Keep Providing Gender-Affirming Care Despite Anti-Trans Attacks

It is our responsibility to make it so again — particularly for Democrats claiming to represent a united anti-fascist front. And, above all, to ensure we support community-based networks working in solidarity with trans adults and children around the country so that they can have health care, work, learn, socialize, and share in public life without scrutiny or challenge. These are the minimal conditions for freedom — apparently too much to ask for some Democrats.

The post An Anti-Trans Bathroom Bill With a Cruel New Twist appeared first on The Intercept.

What Trump wants from Iran talks – and what Tehran is prepared to give Expert comment thilton.drupal 3 February 2026

Iran’s nuclear programme, missile arsenal, militia network and crackdown on protesters could all feature in upcoming negotiations in Turkey.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he prefers to make a deal with Iran over going to war. But what’s not clear is what type of deal he is willing to accept – or what compromises the Iranians are willing to make. 

At the time of writing, the two sides agreed to negotiate and meet in Turkey on Friday, 6 December. US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will meet in Istanbul, along with representatives from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Reuters reported.

Common sense suggests that the more maximalist Trump’s demands are, the less likely Tehran will concede. In this case, military confrontation therefore becomes more likely. On the other hand, the more flexible Trump is, the more likely Tehran will cooperate and as a result, war becomes less likely.

So, what exactly is Trump asking for?

Iran’s nuclear programme

In May of last year, Trump said he would accept nothing less than the ‘total dismantlement’ of Iran’s nuclear programme. Last week, however, he said ‘NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS.’ But those are two very different things.

Every American president since George W. Bush has warned Iran against acquiring the bomb. If that is what Trump is seeking, then Tehran will happily bargain, lie, and conceal – as it always has – to avoid facing a far superior US military machine. It might give up its highly enriched nuclear material, but in return, keep its programme intact, essentially buying itself time until Trump leaves power so it can resume enrichment.

But if Trump insists on Iran terminating all of its nuclear programme, then Tehran most probably will not agree. This is not only because it has put in a lot of effort, time, and money into building its nuclear programme. 

It’s also because for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, it will look like surrendering to the Americans, whom he views (just like his predecessor Khomeini did) as the ‘Great Satan.’ If it comes down to it, Khamenei might decide to take his chances by fighting (and hope Trump doesn’t finish off the regime, given his aversion to open-ended wars) rather than signing a capitulation agreement with his arch-enemy.

Missile arsenal and protests

The nuclear programme is not the only important issue at play. Iran’s missile arsenal and its regional militia network will also likely feature in negotiations. And there are also the freedom aspirations of the Iranian people, especially in the light of the regime’s recent crackdown on protests. 

At first, Trump seemed to show care for the protesters, threatening to bomb Iran if the regime didn’t stop killing them. But now, his focus seems to have shifted. That shouldn’t be shocking, though. The harsh reality is that human rights in Iran have not been the priority for Trump or any American president before him when dealing with the Islamic Republic. The priority has always been security.

Related work

Iran’s internet shutdown signals a new stage of digital isolation

On Iran’s missiles, about which Israel and the Gulf Arab states worry a lot, it’s even more complicated than the nuclear programme. It’s doubtful, if not inconceivable, that Iran will give up the only shield that’s preventing its adversaries from toppling its regime.

The bargaining range on the nuclear programme is wider than it is on the missiles, on which Khamenei and his generals are unlikely to make any concessions. Similar to his logic on totally giving up the nuclear programme, Khamenei might as well use those missiles in a war for survival instead of giving them up and thus making Iran especially vulnerable to future attacks.

Regional proxies

The biggest space for bargaining, perhaps, is on Tehran’s regional proxies. Those actors – the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Yemeni Houthis, the Iraqi militias, and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad – are important tools for Iran to project power. But unlike the missiles and the nuclear programme, they’re not existential issues over which Tehran can’t negotiate.

Former CNN anchor faces charges over coverage of an anti-ICE protest that disrupted a Minnesota church service.

Don Lemon says about a dozen federal agents came to his Los Angeles hotel to arrest him overnight on 30 January, even though the former CNN anchor’s attorney had told authorities he would turn himself in to face federal civil rights charges over his coverage of an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a Minnesota church service.

Lemon on Monday told the ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel that sending the agents was a waste of resources because law enforcement would not have had to dispatch agents to follow him if he had been allowed to surrender to authorities.

• New England have won six Super Bowl titles

• 2026 class will be announced later this week

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has reportedly joined his team’s former head coach Bill Belichick in missing out on this year’s Hall of Fame class.

ESPN cited several league sources, who said that Kraft did not receive the necessary number of votes to enter the Hall. The new members of the Hall of Fame will be revealed on Thursday night, in the run-up to this weekend’s Super Bowl.

Austin Appelbee is being hailed as a hero after he rescued his family. “I couldn’t feel how tired I was,” the 13-year-old said of his hours-long feat.

Evaluation of the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction

This project examines the accomplishments, effectiveness and efficiency of the partnership and its work.

With the ongoing geopolitical tensions and rapid technological evolution, there is a broad acknowledgement of the need to understand whether international initiatives remain fit for purpose in preventing the spread and misuse of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons and materials.

The Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction (GP) was established at the 2002 G7 Kananaskis Summit, drawing on post–Cold War initiatives and catalysed by the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. Over 22 years, the GP has provided a platform for partners to fund, coordinate and deliver non proliferation projects on the ground. It began by supporting cooperative projects primarily in Russia, focused on non-proliferation, disarmament and nuclear safety. From 2014, biosecurity moved up the agenda, and since 2021 the GP has broadened its focus to include biological risk reduction in Africa, revitalised efforts to minimise highly enriched uranium (HEU), support to Ukraine in countering CBRN threats and advancing information-sharing and counter-disinformation initiatives.

Understanding the GP’s effectiveness, challenges and how it can evolve is essential for future global CBRN security.

The Global Health Programme and International Security Programme are working together to examine the accomplishments, effectiveness and efficiency of the GP and its work, lessons for the partnership’s programme of work and the way it functions, and the challenges and opportunities it faces going forward in its role as a cornerstone of international cooperation and coordination to counter CBRN threats.  

This project is funded by the Weapons Threat Reduction Program of Global Affairs Canada and the UK’s International Biological Security Programme.

Don Lemon says he offered to turn himself in to face charges over his coverage of a protest at a church but federal agents were sent for him anyway.

Many Super Bowl 60 ads are already online, along with teasers for commercials that will be unveiled during the NFL championship on Feb. 8.

The president said he persuaded Russia’s Vladimir Putin to stop striking Ukraine’s energy grid during a frigid period, but missiles fell on Kyiv hours later.

• ITV Sport opts for studio in Brooklyn

• BBC will stay in UK until at least quarter-finals

ITV has gained an early advantage over the BBC before their ratings battle at this summer’s World Cup by securing a studio in Brooklyn with views of the Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn Bridge. ITV Sport will be basing all of its World Cup coverage, to be presented by Mark Pougatch and Laura Woods, from its New York studio, whereas the BBC team of Mark Chapman, Gabby Logan and Kelly Cates will be in Salford until at least the quarter-finals.

The BBC’s decision to stay in the United Kingdom was based on a combination of financial and environmental factors, with the corporation committed to limiting air travel in an attempt to reduce its carbon footprint.

Erin Jackson is the first Black woman to win an individual gold medal at a Winter Olympics. Frank Del Duca is the first bobsledder in 70 years to carry the U.S. flag.

The best 55-inch TVs give you the most bang for your buck and are perfect for a smaller room or as a gaming TV. See our top picks from Samsung, Roku and more.

Apple's reportedly releasing a lower-priced iPhone 17, and it might offer notable improvements over last year's iPhone 16E.

How To Train Your Dragon, Tyler Perry's Joe's College Road Trip and The Black Phone are a few of the newest titles arriving on Netflix this month.

The stepson of Crown Prince Haakon is accused of 38 offenses, including four counts of rape, domestic violence, assault and drug possession between 2018 and late 2024.

Chagossian people would be allowed to fish in area that has teemed with life since ban was introduced in 2010

One of the most precious marine reserves in the world, home to sharks, turtles and rare tropical fish, will be opened to some fishing for the first time in 16 years under the UK government’s deal to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

Allowing non-commercial fishing in the marine protected area (MPA) is seen as an essential part of the Chagossian people’s return to the islands, as the community previously relied on fishing as their main livelihood. But some conservationists have raised the alarm, as nature has thrived in the waters of the Indian Ocean since it was protected from fishing.

Artemis II mission was due to begin as early as next week and astronauts have spent almost two weeks in quarantine

Nasa has postponed its historic mission to send astronauts around the moon and back again, after issues arose during a critical test of its most powerful rocket yet.

The US space agency had planned to launch the Artemis II mission from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as next week, but announced overnight that it would be delayed until March, without specifying a date.

French officials search X's office in Paris and ask Elon Musk to answer questions about the platform amid a probe into its algorithms and AI functions.

Apple's streamer is chock-full of must-watch shows.

Picking favorites isn't easy, but after months of wearing both, it's clear they each have their strengths.

Modern refrigerators use far less electricity than their predecessors. I did the math to see how much a new model saves compared with a 10-year-old fridge.

So-called ‘reactionary centrist’ pundits proclaimed that there was a global ‘vibe shift’ in favor of the right. They were wrong

Recent exercises in taking stock after one year of Trump 2.0 – for many an eternity of terrifying news and political traumas – tended to leave something out: the fact that, a mere 12 months ago, plenty of pundits (and politicians, for that matter) were instructing us to accept that a global “vibe shift” in favor of the right had taken place. And that, in the face of what supposedly “felt” like a landslide, resistance was pointless and “cringe”.

Well, it doesn’t feel like that today. But understanding why observers not generally in the pro-Trump propaganda business rushed to portray the spirit of the age as effectively far-right is important. A way of thinking occasionally dubbed “reactionary centrism” plays an important role; it could yet again become influential in hindering or at least holding up post-Trump radical reforms which US democracy desperately requires.

Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University

A burgeoning set of Muslim creatives and intellectuals are thriving amid the backdrop of Zohran Mamdani’s rise. We ask 18 of them about this historic moment in New York City life

Against the backdrop of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral rise is a dynamic scene of Muslim creatives and intellectuals who are helping usher in a new era for New York City. Their prominence represents a rebuke of the ugly Islamophobia that defined the period following 9/11, and is in many ways an outcrop of the mass movement for Palestinian rights forged over the last two years. We ask 18 Muslim New Yorkers to discuss their work and what this moment means.
How Muslim New Yorkers are changing the city’s cultural landscape

From the election of Zohran Mamdani to buzzy restaurants and nightlife, Muslim New Yorkers are creating a growing imprint on the city

• This is Muslim New York: artists, thinkers and politicos on defining a new era for the city

Real power in America is often built at dinner tables. That adage is particularly relevant to the past few years in New York City, where Muslims and non-Muslims have come together at Iftar and Eid events, marking the moment and reimagining traditions. In Chinatown lofts and Bushwick studios, Muslim artists and writers have gathered to pass around plates of papri chaat and basboosa. Some of these dinners have made the pages of Vogue and glowing New Yorker write-ups. The New York Times even described Eid morning prayers in Washington Square Park as the “Muslim Met Gala”.

At one Eid al-Fitr event in Bushwick last April, the guest list featured hosts Ramy Youssef, Hasan Minhaj and Zara Rahim, and guests such as Kareem Rahma, Rashid Khalidi, Cynthia Nixon and David Byrne, among others. After dinner, Zohran Mamdani – who was still an outside bet and yet to secure the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor – took the mic. “New York City is at a historic crossroads. Does it want to look to the future,” he asked, “or look to the past?” Six months later, the question was answered resoundingly.

Despite the Galaxy Z TriFold's eye-watering $2,900 debut, this could finally be the year of the foldable iPhone and a wave of other exciting smartphones.

Chuck Negron, a founding member of Three Dog Night whose lead vocals powered a string of hits for one of the top rock acts of the late 1960s and early '70s has died. He was 83.

The original Switch is officially Nintendo's best-selling console of all time after surpassing the DS handheld in lifetime sales. From a report: In its latest earnings release, Nintendo reports that the Nintendo Switch has, as of December 31, 2025, sold 155.37 million units since its launch in 2017, compared to 154.02 million units for the 2004 Nintendo DS. In November, Nintendo reported that the Switch and DS were neck and neck. We expected the holiday sales period would see the Switch surpass the DS, even with Nintendo announcing that primary development would focus on the Switch 2. Nintendo previously said that it would continue to sell the original Switch "while taking consumer demand and the business environment into consideration." Nintendo has to keep selling the Switch if it wants to dethrone Sony's PlayStation 2 as the best-selling video game console of all time. The PlayStation 2, discontinued in January 2013, sold more than 160 million units over its 13-year lifespan.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The waves are massive and I have no life jacket on. … I just kept thinking 'just keep swimming, just keep swimming,'" Austin Appelbee said.

Marius Borg Høiby, 29, pleads not guilty to most serious charges in trial that has embarrassed the royal family

The son of Norway’s crown princess has pleaded not guilty to four counts of rape on the first day of his trial for multiple offences, a legal saga that has embarrassed the royal family and raised questions over domestic abuse in Norway.

Appearing in front of a packed courtroom at Oslo district court on Tuesday morning, Marius Borg Høiby also denied charges including abuse in close relationships and filming women’s genitals without their knowledge.

The Hennepin County sheriff is considering whether to notify ICE before releasing people accused of the "worst of the worst" crimes — murder, rape and violent felonies.

The Flashback looks, feels and even works like an old-school disposable film camera, except it's digital with a unique, retro experience.

What I Am Discussing Today:

• Kareem’s Daily Quote: Whether it’s a small bundle or a small package…does it sound familiar?

• Sheikh Yer Booty: (And by booty, I mean cash.)

• The Mad Makeover King Strikes Again: Did the Kennedy Center really need a remodel?

• Hidden Roots: My favorite lawman, Marshal Bass Reeves

• Bad Bunny Wins: Great night for my friend

• What I’m Reading: Blood Grove, Walter Mosley

• Jukebox Playlist: Always made me laugh- Your feet’s too big

Kareem’s Daily Quote:

“…a person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.” - Harry Emerson Fosdick

Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) Credit: Bettmann, Getty Images

Benjamin Franklin said it first: “A person wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.” A few years later, ordained Baptist minister Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick improved upon it, getting rid of the qualifier (“very”) and changing bundle to package to make it more modern. It must’ve worked, because a hundred years later, we’re still quoting it. And whether you prefer his version or Franklin’s, it makes its point. No matter how talented you are, no matter how many achievements you stack up—hell, you might be the most powerful human in the world!—if that world begins and ends with you, it’s gonna be pretty small.

In other words, when we become centered on the self, we shrink.

Public commentary has often focused on Donald Trump’s communication style, which tends to underscore his personal success, his personal grievances, and other people’s loyalty to (who else?) him. Those who love him and voted for him view this as confidence. Those who can’t stand him (or in any case aren’t in awe) see it as self‑centeredness. They argue that when a leader’s focus remains on personal image, the broader responsibilities of public office take a back seat. Or even no seat at all.

That’s because personal image is tricky. It weighs nothing while taking up too much space…not in the world, but in the mirror. When a leader is heavily centered on how he or she comes off, the scope of decision-making narrows. It has to, because that damned reflection blocks out the view of everything else. Or, if you don’t like the mirror analogy, picture Trump a cupboard under the stairs, like Harry Potter. Picture him angry that you treated him badly, or that you weren’t “fair” to him. Now picture him trying to take a step back, to refocus, to use logic and pragmatism.

He can’t. That cupboard under the stairs of resentments won’t let him.

But, as we know too well, being “other-centered” comes at a price. Fosdick paid it by taking up causes that were unpopular in his day. He was an outspoken critic of racism and fought so eloquently against injustice of all sorts that none other than M.L.K. Jr., called him “the greatest preacher of this century.” He defended the teachings of evolution and rejected creationism. And he was one of the first ministers to give his approval to Alcoholics Anonymous. Why? Because he saw “the other,” the downtrodden, the less fortunate, the needy. And in seeing them instead of himself, his view expanded. He expanded.

If instead it’s all about me, then public messaging, policy choices, or official actions become closely tied to personal branding or personal benefit. Ethics experts warn that when a leader’s attention turns inward, the space for collective responsibility, transparency, and public trust has to shrink. The “small package” becomes a metaphor for leadership that contracts, limiting its ability to serve the American people until all it’s serving is itself.

Read more

We're all in on air fryers. This Ninja model is our definitive top pick after testing more than two dozen.

Senators Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Susan Collins of Maine sent Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a letter warning against any changes that could affect victims' care.

Bezos has not publicly responded to several letters sent by Post staffers urging him to curb potential layoffs

While Washington Post employees remain in the dark about an impending round of cuts that could dramatically reshape the publication, the man that many hoped could soften or stop the blow, owner Jeff Bezos, has remained silent.

So far, three staff-organized letters sent by Post employees to Bezos imploring him to protect the Post’s robust coverage have gone unanswered.

State resolutions are underutilized right now and could be a significant mobilizing factor for the Democratic party

The Democrats hold in their hands constitutional means yet unused to check the Trump regime’s ruthless attempt to impose a police state. That the Democrats thus far have failed to create this oppositional political center of gravity may be because the method has been lost to history, not wielded effectively for 113 years. Focused on the ICE outrages, however, this political instrument can be revived in the 16 states where the Democrats control the governorships and both chambers of the state legislatures, as well as introduced in states with mixed power.

Before the enactment of the 17th amendment in 1913, state legislators and not the voters selected US senators and regarded them frequently as their agents. It was a common practice for legislatures to send what were called “orders of instruction” urging senators and sometimes members of the House of Representatives to take a particular stand on important issues. The orders were not binding, but had significant force given the power of legislatures and political parties to decide who would hold Senate seats. These resolutions were variously called instructions, petitions and memorials.

Advocates call for further disclosures after Trump’s justice department released more than 3m files last week

The release of about 3m Jeffrey Epstein investigative files has failed to quell outrage over justice department officials’ handling of these disclosures, with advocates claiming potentially millions of documents are still being withheld.

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice was required to disclose all investigative files by 19 December under the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA). While the justice department did release some documents on that date, last week’s disclosure came nearly six weeks after this deadline.

Phishing attempts continue to grow with help from generative AI and its believable deepfakes and voice impersonations.

The scale of the buildup seems aimed at readying forces for expansive operations, analysts said.

Carlo Soracchi, who infiltrated anti-fascist group in early 2000s, accused of suggesting crime as he had ‘got nothing’

Three anti-fascist activists have accused an undercover police officer of attempting to incite them to firebomb a shop that was said to be a front for the far right, the spycops inquiry has heard.

The accusation has been levelled against Carlo Soracchi, an officer who spent six years infiltrating anti-fascist and leftwing groups. He has denied the claim.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Feb. 3, No. 498.

The last time the Seahawks and Patriots met in a Super Bowl, a dramatic interception by an undrafted rookie changed the history of both franchises

When the New England Patriots faced off against the Denver Broncos in this season’s AFC championship, Malcolm Butler was at home in Houston. He had considered attending the game in Denver or watching on TV in a No 21 Patriots jersey, which he wore in Foxboro for four seasons through the mid-to-late 2010s, but feared he might jinx the outcome. In the end, it was just him and his nerves for company.

Just as Butler was feeling somewhat at peace with that setup, and the Patriots’ prospects, a bad omen intruded: His wifi glitched, delaying the broadcast as the Patriots clung on to a three-point lead in the fourth-quarter. “I was lagging bad,” Butler tells the Guardian. “But I did get the wifi back working. And as soon as I did my phone was ringing like crazy, so I knew something was going right. It’s crazy that we’re back.”

Latest communications undermine Chomsky’s earlier claims that he primarily had financial dealings with Epstein

The close friendship that Noam Chomsky maintained with Jeffrey Epstein continued being detailed extensively among millions of investigative records pertaining to the late convicted sex offender recently released by the US justice department, including Chomsky “fantasizing about the Caribbean island”.

In Friday’s tranche of the so-called Epstein files, which built upon earlier disclosures of their close social ties, there is no indication that the famed academic and linguist was referring to his friend’s private Caribbean island where children were sexually abused. But the personal familiarity between the two men in that exchange is palpable, as it is in numerous other emails between Chomsky and Epstein aimed at planning more mundane social gatherings.

Outcome of meeting uncertain as ‘erratic, temperamental’ presidents could be either ‘confrontational’ or amicable

One month ago, a White House meeting between Donald Trump and his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, would have been unthinkable.

The US raid on Caracas to capture the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, brought already heated relations between them to a boil, with Trump warning the leftist Colombian leader “could be next”, claiming Petro was a “sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States”.

Why Should Delaware Care?
On Saturday, Gov. Matt Meyer said he had spoken with superintendents in New Castle County to determine which roads, sidewalks and bus stops remain unsafe, and that the Delaware Department of Transportation would be clearing those streets ahead of school on Monday. But even though the Colonial School District opened its doors on Monday, it was unable to provide transportation to all communities because of remaining road conditions. 

Days after Gov. Matt Meyer said it was “unacceptable” that Delaware schools remained closed nearly a week after a crippling snowstorm swept through the state, some students in the Colonial School District were still unable to go to school Monday because of road conditions. 

Last week, parts of Kent County received more than 6 inches of snowfall on Sunday, while New Castle County saw up to 10 inches, according to the National Weather Service. Freezing rain in some areas then added an inch of solid ice atop that accumulation.

Temperatures have remained frigid in the days since the storm, and much of the snow has compacted into a dense layer of ice, which has stifled cleanup crews, according to state and city transportation officials. 

On Saturday, Meyer said he had spoken with each New Castle County superintendent and “received lists of roads, sidewalks and bus stops that remain unsafe.” 

Meyer added that the Delaware Department of Transportation would be clearing those streets over the weekend to ensure schools could open their doors on Monday. 

Still, transportation was not available to multiple communities in the Colonial School District on Monday. Those communities included Rosegate, Garfield Park, and Willow Grove, among others.

Colonial Superintendent Jeff Menzer said the district originally released a statement Sunday night saying the district would not be able to pick up students from 11 neighborhoods along Route 9 and one in the lower half of the district due to difficult driving conditions.

Many district bus drivers then reported back to officials that they were unable to finish their routes early Monday morning. Menzer said the district pushed out information to the district’s middle and elementary school families that buses would not be able to pick up students. 

Menzer said attendance was down in some of the schools that were part of the impacted communities, such as Eisenberg Elementary School and ​​McCullough Middle School.

Attendance across the district was at roughly 60% to 70% on Monday. 

The Brandywine, Red Clay Consolidated, and Christina school districts also reopened their doors on Monday, following Meyer’s weekend announcement. 

Some of those districts, though, also experienced complications with picking up students. 

Although the Red Clay Consolidated School District’s transportation went well, one bus did temporarily get stuck in a neighborhood, Director of Transportation Kelly Shahan wrote in a statement to Spotlight Delaware. The incident occurred before the bus had picked up any students, and it only resulted in a minor delay, Shahan said.

The Christina School District also wrote to families on Sunday, saying there may be some “unavoidable delays due to neighborhood conditions, which could mean that wait times at bus stops will be longer than usual.”

The Brandywine School District successfully ran all bus routes on a staggered schedule, though some stops and sidewalks still pose a challenge to students, according to a statement from Superintendent Lisa Lawson. 

Brandywine will also be returning to its regular bus and school schedules on Tuesday, Lawson said.

All four school districts also said students will not be marked late because of the weather. Districts are also offering excused absences to families who do not feel comfortable sending their children to school with the road conditions. 

What’s happening in Colonial? 

Menzer said the district had shared a list of priority areas and roads that were impassable with DelDOT on Jan. 29, but his district was not seeing improvements late last week. By Jan. 31, the ice was too thick for salt to help break down the compact, Menzer said. 

C.R. McLeod, a spokesperson for the Delaware Department of Transportation, said in a statement the department had to apply salt to the roads and wait for the sun to melt enough ice for plowing to be effective in neighborhoods.

“We’ve been in communication with the [Colonial] school district and expect to see improvement today and tomorrow with temperatures above freezing,” McLeod wrote.

Last week, Colonial Supervisor of Transportation Marc Emerick told Spotlight Delaware the district’s smaller neighborhoods, “who are digging themselves out,” were the most impacted by the storm. 

“If you are fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood with a DART route, you know that at least some of your roads are going to be tended to by DelDOT, which is the most effective way of clearing a road,” he said.

Communities that are not near a DART route or roads that DelDOT plows typically rely on contractor services to clear the snow. 

But Emerick said districts must also check the passability of streets, because some contractors’ plows do not create a path wide enough for school buses. If a bus gets stuck or experiences a minor fender-bender that does not impact student safety, it can still delay students’ pickups for an hour. 

Colonial’s buses go into neighborhoods and pick students up close to their homes. At the same time, more than half of Colonial’s bus fleet are 84-passenger, flat-nose buses that require a wider turn radius than typical buses, Menzer. said 

Menzer said those two factors complicated student pick-ups on Monday. 

“Even though our drivers had driven the routes and checked them out in their personal vehicles, it’s different,” Menzer said. “You don’t really know until you get your bus upon it and realize, ‘Man, I can’t make that corner.’”

The district also adjusted its bus stops for students in the communities it had previously suspended transportation to, with buses picking students up at main streets in those communities rather than going down side streets.

The post A week after winter storm, Colonial students still can’t get to school appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Why Should Delaware Care?
The Port of Wilmington is one of the last anchors of good-paying, blue-collar jobs in Delaware. It also has suffered a string of financial blows over a dramatic six-year-period. How the state responds to the setbacks may determine the shape of Delaware’s workforce into the future. 

Delaware’s quest to build one of the mid-Atlantic’s biggest port container terminals may have quietly cleared a key hurdle last month.  

During a meeting on Monday of the state board that oversees the Port of Wilmington, Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez said Delaware is no longer required to secure an approval from the Port of Philadelphia in order to move forward with efforts to recapture construction permits that a federal judge invalidated in 2024. 

Delaware port officials need the permits to fulfill their longstanding, yet beleaguered, goal of building a new port at the site of a former chemical plant in Edgemoor. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have already been committed to the project, which port officials say will create thousands of new jobs in the state.

Patibanda-Sanchez said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — which is in charge of issuing the permits — agreed last month to grant an exception to a rule requiring Delaware to obtain a formal ”statement of no objection” from the Port of Philadelphia – a regional competitor that has long opposed Delaware plans to expand the Port of Wilmington. 

Internal port documents state that the Port of Philadelphia, as of last fall, had declined to sign such a statement.

Now, with an exception to the rule, Patibanda-Sanchez said the Corps of Engineers can begin its review of Delaware’s application for permits to build a port seawall, and to dredge the Delaware River from the Edgemoor docks to the main channel.

“And we’re very excited to have cleared that first step,” she said during the Monday meeting of the board of the Diamond State Port Corporation – the state-owned entity that oversees the Port of Wilmington.

Why does Wilmington need Philly’s permission?

The development follows years of turmoil that has plagued the Port of Wilmington and its $600 million expansion plans.

When the state privatized the port’s operations in 2018, the company that took over, Gulftainer, promised to privately fund the development of Edgemoor by doubling the shipments at the Port of Wilmington’s existing facility along the Christina River. Not only did those bold projections fail to materialize, but the port’s finances under Gulftainer also deteriorated.

Hopes for the port’s expansion were revived in 2023 when Delaware brought in a new operating company, Enstructure. But a year later, a federal judge invalidated the Edgemoor permits following a lawsuit brought by competing ports along the Delaware River, including the Port of Philadelphia.

The upstream ports sued the Army Corps of Engineers for what they said was a “perfunctory and inadequate review” of Delaware’s permit applications. While many in Delaware saw the lawsuit as part of a powerplay between officials at the ports of Wilmington and Philadelphia, the legal complaint alleged that ships leaving a future Edgemoor port would cause a dangerous marine bottleneck when turning into the river’s main channel. 

In the sharply worded ruling issued in October, 2024, U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney stated that the Army Corps of Engineers had acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” when it issued the Edgemoor building permits. 

He also criticized Delaware port officials for failing to obtain a statement of no objection to the permits from their upstream neighbor. The requirement was in place because the Port of Philadelphia had been the primary non-federal financial sponsor of a recent Delaware River dredging project along the estuary to deepen the shipping channel. 

Kearney also stated that if the Corps of Engineers reevaluated the Edgemoor permits, it must address “navigation and safety issues,” and must ensure that Delaware “obtains a Statement of No Objection from the Philadelphia Port Authority.” 

It is not immediately clear how the judge will interpret the Army Corps of Engineers’ recent decision to make an exception for the requirement.

Patibanda-Sanchez did not directly address the issue when asked by email why she believes the exception will pass muster with Kearney. 

Instead, she said in a statement that Delaware’s port officials “continue our work on the Delaware Container Terminal project and are encouraged with the progress we have made so far.”

“We look forward to the USACE’s (Corps of Engineers’) complete review of our application. As we make progress on the permitting, we are also working on issues raised by the community and all the stakeholders involved with this project,” Patibanda-Sanchez said in the statement.

The post Port of Wilmington officials: Edgemoor plans clear a key hurdle appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

While Israel has faced sharp criticism over its war in Gaza, start-up executives say foreigners are eager to buy systems developed and tested on the battlefield.

Under Trump, the Department of Homeland Security has weaponized administrative subpoenas to attack free speech, according to privacy and civil rights groups.

Valdis Dombrovskis says bloc is ‘ready to engage’ amid meetings with ministers including Rachel Reeves

• Business live – latest updates

The European Commission would be “open-minded” to discussing closer trade ties with the UK, including a customs union, a senior EU official has said.

The EU economy commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, told the BBC that the European bloc was “ready to engage with an open mind” when asked about a customs union.

Britons cut back in January after record grocery spending in December, turning to own-label products

• Business live – latest updates

Britons started 2026 by buying more healthy food such as fruit and yoghurt as they attempted to hit new year health goals, while grocery price inflation eased to the lowest level since April, research has shown.

Annual grocery inflation fell back to 4% in the four weeks to 25 January from 4.7% in December, offering some relief for shoppers, according to a monthly snapshot of the grocery sector from the research company Worldpanel by Numerator.

Aerospace business and artificial intelligence firm to unite for IPO as world’s most valuable private company

• Musk is taking SpaceX’s minority shareholders for a ride | Nils Pratley

Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX has acquired his artificial intelligence business xAI, in a $1.25tn (£910bn) merger that consolidates part of Musk’s empire as SpaceX prepares to go public later this year.

The two companies announced the deal on Monday in a statement on SpaceX’s website, saying the merger would form “the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform”.

Tributes for Queensland snowboarder Brooke Day recall a ‘cherished team mate’ who had an ‘infectious sense of humour’

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The family of an Australian woman who died in a ski lift accident in Japan have remembered their “beautiful girl” as someone who kept others safe as tributes pour in for the 22-year-old “vibrant spirit”.

The Queensland snowboarder Brooke Day sustained critical injuries on Friday after her backpack was caught in a ski lift at Tsugaike Mountain resort in Otari, near Nagano.

sinij writes: Automakers have increasingly implemented door handles that retract into the bodywork for aerodynamic reasons, but they are now off limits in China. My issue is with electronic-only door latch mechanism. It should be possible to open the door from both inside and outside the car in case of complete power loss.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US president makes further claims of antisemitism against Ivy League school amid wider dispute with higher eduction institutions

Donald Trump has announced that his administration is seeking $1bn in damages from Harvard University, the latest step in a long-running battle with the university over allegations of antisemitism.

In a Truth Social post late on Monday, Trump accused the Ivy League school of being “strongly antisemitic”, adding that Harvard president Alan Garber “has done a terrible job of rectifying a very bad situation for his institution and, more importantly, America itself”.

Iran’s leaders now face unprecedented peril. The regime has lost its footing, and the global mechanisms to avoid conflict no longer work

• Dr Sanam Vakil is the director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa programme

Forty-seven years on from the Iranian revolution, Iran is confronting a strategic reality it has never faced before – a simultaneous crisis of domestic legitimacy and a credible threat of external attack so severe that regime survival can no longer be taken for granted. Until now, Tehran has survived wars, sanctions, assassinations, mass protests and international isolation through a strategy of projecting strength abroad, repressing dissent at home and generating a permanent crisis to justify poor leadership and political failure.

Today, Donald Trump has mobilised an “armada” to the Middle East that includes the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, guided-missile destroyers, an expanded air presence and missile defence systems. This force projection suggests the US is no longer focused on containing Iran but rather compelling a final resolution of a long-running conflict. The choice at hand is either the acceptance of a US-imposed settlement or the destruction of the Islamic republic as it exists today.

Masoud Pezeshkian instructs foreign minister to seek negotiations with US as Trump warns ‘bad things would happen’ if no solution agreed

Iran’s president said on Tuesday that he had instructed his foreign minister to “pursue fair and equitable negotiations” with the US, as the two countries reportedly prepared to send top envoys to Istanbul for high-stakes talks on the Iranian nuclear programme later this week.

President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a post on X: “I have instructed my minister of foreign affairs, provided that a suitable environment exists – one free from threats and unreasonable expectations – to pursue fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence, and expediency.”

Authorities in the Tucson, Arizona, area are searching for the mother of "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie, 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie.

Sleek car doors reduce vehicle drag but are prone to losing operability in the event of a crash, officials say

China will soon ban concealed door handles on electric vehicles (EVs), becoming the first country to do so after several deadly incidents triggered global scrutiny of the controversial design first popularised by Tesla.

According to regulations announced on Monday by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, cars sold in China will now be required to have a mechanical release on both the inside and outside of every door except the boot.

Euphoric scenes are a snub to theocracy’s culture of piety, say analysts, and carry message of rebellion

Iranians killed in recent protests that rocked the country have been laid to rest in boisterous funerals featuring loud pop music and dancing, apparently intended to convey defiance to the ruling Islamic regime.

Instead of holding sombre traditional mourning ceremonies presided over by a Shia cleric, bereaved relatives are turning the burials into exultant celebrations of the lives of their loved ones in what analysts say is an intentional snub to the culture of piety demanded by Iran’s theocracy.

Annual review highlights growing capabilities of AI models, while examining issues from cyber-attacks to job disruption

The International AI Safety report is an annual survey of technological progress and the risks it is creating across multiple areas, from deepfakes to the jobs market.

Commissioned at the 2023 global AI safety summit, it is chaired by the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, who describes the “daunting challenges” posed by rapid developments in the field. The report is also guided by senior advisers, including Nobel laureates Geoffrey Hinton and Daron Acemoglu.

Why states keep trading even in the midst of conflict.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Feb. 3

Elon Musk's SpaceX has acquired his AI startup xAI in an all-stock deal that values the combined entity at $1.25 trillion, ahead of what would be the largest initial public offering in history. SpaceX pegged its own valuation at $1 trillion -- a markup from the $800 billion it commanded in a December secondary stock sale -- and priced xAI at $250 billion based on a recent $20 billion funding round that valued the two-year-old AI company at $230 billion. SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen told investors on a call Monday that shares in the combined company would be priced at $527 and that xAI shares would convert into SpaceX stock at a roughly seven-to-one exchange rate. The company is still targeting a June IPO expected to raise as much as $50 billion, surpassing Saudi Aramco's $29 billion listing in 2019. Musk said the least expensive way to do AI computation within two to three years will be in space. "Global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions, even in the near term, without imposing hardship on communities and the environment," he wrote. SpaceX filed last Friday for permission to launch up to a million satellites into Earth's orbit. xAI merged with Musk's social media platform X last March in a $113 billion deal, and Tesla announced a $2 billion investment in xAI last week.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The judge said the Trump administration’s move to withdraw the temporary protected status was probably illegal. The Department of Homeland Security plans to appeal.

This live blog is now closed.

• Trump news at a glance: Trevor Noah’s Grammys joke hit a sour note for Trump

House speaker Mike Johnson is set to swear in Christian Menefee, a Democrat who recently won a runoff election for a reliably blue seat in Texas.

Menefee’s victory, however, means the margin in the House is even more slim: 218 Republicans to 214 Democrats. His current term will end at the end of the year, and he’ll have to start campaigning almost immediately for the 2026 midterms. But this time, it will be for a new district, after the GOP-controlled legislature successfully gerrymandered the state’s congressional map.

By the end of 2026, most United flights will have the faster in-flight Wi-Fi, the companies say.

Scientists at the University of Utah have analyzed nearly a century's worth of human hair samples and found that lead concentrations dropped 100-fold after the EPA began cracking down on leaded gasoline and other lead-based products in the 1970s. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, drew on hair collected from Utah residents -- some preserved in family scrapbooks going back generations. Lead levels peaked between 1916 and 1969 at around 100 parts per million, fell to 10 ppm by 1990, and dropped below 1 ppm by 2024. The decline largely tracks the phase-out of leaded gasoline after President Nixon established the EPA in 1970; before the agency acted, most gasolines contained about 2 grams of lead per gallon, releasing nearly 2 pounds of lead per person into the environment each year. The study arrives amid the Trump administration's broader push to scale back the EPA. Lead regulations have not yet been targeted, but the authors note concerns about loosened enforcement of the 2024 Lead and Copper rule on replacing old lead pipes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Other countries are expected to join Project Vault, which US president said would ensure that US businesses are ‘never harmed by any shortage’

Donald Trump has announced the creation of a critical mineral reserve worth nearly $12bn, a stockpile that could counter China’s ability to use its dominance of the hard-to-process metals as leverage in trade talks.

“Today we’re launching what will be known as Project Vault to ensure that American businesses and workers are never harmed by any shortage,” Trump said at the White House on Monday.

The Clintons made a last-ditch effort to avoid a contempt vote.

A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from revoking Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, granting a last-minute reprieve to 350,000 immigrants who were set to lose protections on Tuesday.

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Up to 350,000 Haitians legally live and work in the US due to being granted temporary protected status

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from stripping temporary protected status from up to 350,000 Haitians, a status that allows them to legally live and work in the United States amid the turmoil in their homeland.

Judge Ana Reyes issued a temporary stay that prevents Kristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary, from implementing her decision to remove the status known as TPS, which was scheduled to expire on Tuesday.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for Feb. 3, No. 1,690.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Feb. 3 #968.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Feb. 3, No. 702.

CEO Alex Karp hails ‘iconic’ financial results despite criticism over contracts with ICE and homeland security

Palantir celebrated its latest financial results on Monday, as the tech company blew past Wall Street expectations and continues to prop up the Trump administration’s push to deport immigrants.

Palantir has secured millions of dollars in federal contracts amid Trump’s crackdown on immigrants. The multibillion-dollar Denver-based firm creates tech focused on surveillance and analytics, to be used by the government agencies and private companies.

Rusne Augustinaite is from Lithuania, and her mom had never been to the U.S. to see her play a college game in person.

As President Trump prepares to shut down the Kennedy Center for renovations, sources told CBS News there has been no discussion of demolishing or gutting the building.

All federal immigration agents in Minneapolis will begin wearing body cameras, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said Monday, a policy that could be rolled out nationwide.

Brendan Banfield, who was having an affair with the family's Brazilian au pair, was found guilty on Monday of murdering his wife and another man.

Latest release of files about disgraced financier reveals she told Epstein he was ‘the brother I have always wished for

The charity of Sarah Ferguson has announced that it is closing after new revelations emerged about the former duchess’s friendship with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Sarah’s Trust, the international charity launched by the ex-wife of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, will close “for the foreseeable future” after “some months” of discussion, according to a spokesperson.

Donald Trump hit out at Trevor Noah over a joke about the US president and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein at the 2026 Grammys. 'I think he’s terrible. I think he did a terrible job at the Grammys,' Trump told reporters during an Oval Office meeting. In a social media post, Trump earlier threatened to sue Noah

• Trump threatens to sue Trevor Noah over Epstein joke at Grammys

We recently talked about Apple’s pre-Mac OS X dabblings in UNIX, but Apple wasn’t the only computer and operating system company exploring UNIX alternatives. Microsoft had the rather successful Xenix, Atari had ASV, Sony had NEWS, to name just a very small few. The Amiga, too, wanted in on the UNIX action, and as such, released Amiga UNIX, based on AT&T System V Release 4. The Amiga UNIX website is dedicated to everything you would ever want to know about this operating system.

This site is dedicated on preserving Amix’s history and sharing information and instructions on what Amix is, how to install it (either on real hardware or in emulation) and what can you do with it. Mainly, it tries to cater to people who wish to run AMIX for whatever reason on their hardware. By documenting experiences with it, it is hoped that subsequent SVR4 junkies will find the way more smooth than it might have been without any guidance at all. For even a relatively experienced modern Unix or GNU/Linux administrator, System V UNIX is sufficiently different to present difficulty in installation and administration. Not so much in moving around between directories, and using common utilities that persist to this day – although many of those are hoary and somewhat forgetful in their retirement – but of doing more in depth tasks and understanding the differences.

↫ The Amiga Unix Wiki

If you wish to run Amiga UNIX yourself, you’ll either have to have one of the original two models sold with it – the 2500UX and 3000UX – or one of the Amigas that meets the minimum requirements. Another option is, of course, emulation, and WinUAE has support for running Amiga UNIX.

Immigration officials said agent shot two ‘vicious gang members’ in Portland, but records obtained by the Guardian reveal US prosecutor contradicted claims

Immediately after a US border patrol agent shot two people in Oregon last month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the targets were “vicious” gang members connected to a prior shooting and alleged they had “attempted to run over” officers with their vehicle.

In the weeks since, key parts of the federal government’s narrative have fallen apart.

Decision to give testimony comes days before House was expected to vote to hold pair in contempt of Congress

• US politics live – latest updates

Bill and Hillary Clinton agreed on Monday to testify in a House investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, days before the chamber was expected to vote to hold them in contempt of Congress.

The concession follows a tense back-and-forth between the Clintons and the Republican James Comer, chair of the House oversight committee, who on Monday said that he would insist both Clintons sit for a sworn deposition before the committee in order to fulfill the panel’s subpoenas.

There were 579,475 instances of emergency hospitalisation being needed in the year to March 2025, analysis finds

The number of people requiring emergency care for pneumonia has risen by a quarter over two years to reach more than half a million cases, new figures show, amid warnings that preventable cases are adding pressure on overstretched A&E departments.

Analysis of the most recent NHS England data from between April 2024 and March 2025 found that there were 579,475 cases of pneumonia requiring emergency hospitalisation, and this was likely to have risen further since, according to the charity Asthma + Lung UK. There were 461,995 cases between April 2022 and March 2023.

Caroline Willgoose, whose 15-year-old son was killed by another pupil, says murder was ‘senseless and avoidable’

The family of a 15-year-old boy who was stabbed to death at school by another pupil has said her son’s murder was “senseless and avoidable” and that a report ordered by the school showed too many “red flags” were missed.

Harvey Willgoose died one year ago to the day, and his killer, Mohammed Umar Khan, is serving a minimum term of 16 years’ detention. A report commissioned by the trust that runs Harvey’s school, All Saints Catholic high school in Sheffield, has highlighted a number of missed opportunities in the run-up to the murder. The review was undertaken by a former school headteacher and inspector of schools at Learn Sheffield.

The owners of Leica Camera AG -- Austrian billionaire Andreas Kaufmann and private equity giant Blackstone -- are considering a sale of a controlling stake in the German camera maker in a deal that could value the company at about $1.2 billion, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. HSG, formerly known as Sequoia Capital China, and Altor Equity Partners are among a handful of bidders. The Kaufmann family could re-invest following a transaction. Leica traces its roots roughly 150 years to Ernst Leitz's microscope company and was publicly traded on the Frankfurt stock exchange until the Kaufmann family took it private in 2012.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Minister announces Microsoft, Cisco and Adobe to help apply AI to local schools, hospitals, GPs and businesses

In 2002 Barnsley toyed with a redesign as a Tuscan hill village as it sought out a brighter post-industrial future. In 2021 it adopted the airily vague slogan “the place of possibilities”. Now it is trying a different image: Britain’s first “tech town”.

The technology secretary, Liz Kendall, has anointed the South Yorkshire community as a trailblazer for “how AI can improve everyday life” in the UK.

Starting early Wednesday, United customers won't be able to book flights and access other services as the airline upgrades its reservation system.

Numbers Israel permitted to enter Egypt after reopening border were far lower than expected following delays

A small number of sick and wounded Palestinians have begun crossing into Egypt to seek medical treatment after Israel permitted a limited reopening of the Palestinian territory’s Rafah border post as fragile diplomatic efforts to stabilise the conflict inch forward.

About 150 people were due to leave the territory on Monday, and 50 to enter it, according to Egyptian officials, more than 20 months after Israeli forces closed the crossing. However, by nightfall, Reuters reported that Israel had permitted 12 Palestinians to re-enter the territory, according to Palestinian and Egyptian sources. A further 38 had not cleared security and would wait on the Egyptian side of the crossing overnight, it said.

Peter Attia, a doctor and author well known for his research on longevity, is apologizing for what he calls "embarrassing, tasteless, and indefensible" emails he exchanged with Jeffrey Epstein.

Regional powers are working to bring together high-level negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, in hopes of staving off war.

• Messages show Epstein arranging women for Tisch

• 76-year-old denies any wrongdoing over matter

The NFL says it is looking into links between New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Tisch’s name was mentioned more than 400 times in emails relating to Epstein that were released by the US justice department last week. Tisch has never been charged with any crime connected to the investigation into Epstein.

Prosecutors say other man was lured to Brendan Banfield’s house as a fall guy in scheme to get rid of Banfield’s wife

A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair was found guilty Monday of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy.

Brendan Banfield, a former IRS law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of 24 February 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhães, the au pair, shot him, too.

This will be the first time that humans have traveled all the way to the moon since the early 1970s.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency won't attend the annual RSA Conference in March, an agency spokesperson confirmed to The Register. Sessions involving speakers from the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) have also disappeared from the agenda. "Since the beginning of this administration, CISA has made significant progress in returning to our statutory, core mission and focusing on President Trump's policies for maximum security for all Americans," CISA spokesperson Marci McCarthy told us. "CISA has reviewed and determined that we will not participate in the RSA Conference since we regularly review all stakeholder engagements, to ensure maximum impact and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars." McCarthy declined to comment on whether the decision had anything to do with former CISA director Jen Easterly being named chief executive of RSAC last week. Easterly, who was appointed to lead America's top cyber-defense agency under the Biden administration, joined her predecessor and CISA's first-ever director Chris Krebs in President Trump's line of fire back in July.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It was a reunion of sorts as former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino relaunched his podcast and brought in the man who tapped him for the federal job — President Donald Trump — for an interview.

Bongino and Trump talked about a variety of issues, including Minnesota, where Trump’s administration has sent some 3,000 immigration enforcement officers, prompting a backlash, especially after the deadly shootings of two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Minneapolis, the focus of the enforcement effort, is home to many Somalis, most of whom are U.S. citizens, either by birth or naturalization. 

During the interview with Bongino, Trump referred to Somali immigrants in Minnesota.

"These are people that don’t work," Trump said. "These are people that are just not an asset to our society, to put it mildly. And we’ve got to get them out. … Ninety-two percent don’t work. They have an unbelievable corrupt system of welfare. You know, many of them drive Mercedes Benzes. They had nothing when they came over."

Federal data shows that Somalis are poorer, on average, than other Minnesotans. But the notion that 92% of them don’t work is unfounded; official government data shows far lower percentages.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson did not provide support for the 92% figure. "Aliens who come to our country, complain about how much they hate America, fail to contribute to our economy, rip off Americans, and refuse to assimilate into our society should not be here," she said.

Statistics for Somalis in Minnesota

The immigration enforcement buildup came after Trump criticized a spate of fraud cases involving Somalis in Minnesota, which have been prosecuted under former President Joe Biden and Trump. Since 2022, federal prosecutors have charged about 98 people with defrauding the federal government. The majority have been convicted; many cases are pending.

There are about 108,000 Somalis in Minnesota, representing roughly 2% of the state’s population. Most Somalis came to the state in the 1990s, fleeing civil war in their home country. Some came as refugees — an immigration category for those fleeing persecution — while others were sponsored by family members or moved from other states. 

Census Bureau data from 2024 estimates that for Somalis in Minnesota, the labor force participation rate — that is, the share of the population 16 and older that is either working or looking for work — is about 72%. That means that about 28% of the Minnesota Somali population is not employed and not looking for work — less than one-third of the 92% share Trump cited.

The rate of labor force participation is higher for Somalis than it is for Minnesotans overall. In December 2025, Minnesota’s overall labor force participation rate was 68%; that would make the non-working rate about 32%, or four percentage points higher than for Somalis.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors low immigration levels, produced a December report that details demographics of the Somali community in Minnesota using Census data. 

The report found significant economic and social challenges, including that 52% of children in Somali immigrant homes in Minnesota live in poverty, compared with 8% of children in homes headed by U.S.-born people. It also found that about 39% of working-age Somalis have no high school diploma, compared with 5% of U.S. natives, and that half of working-age Somalis who have lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years cannot speak English "very well."

But the report found that when it comes to employment, Somalis in Minnesota measure up relatively well.

"Somali joblessness is not as common as one would predict based on their population’s low education level," the report said. "Employment is therefore a bright spot in the data for Somalis, relatively speaking."

The report’s author, resident scholar Jason Richwine, told PolitiFact he suspects Trump’s 92% figure results from "a common misunderstanding about welfare and work."

Richwine said his research found that about 9 of every 10 Somali immigrant households with children receive means-tested, anti-poverty benefits — but that doesn't mean that 90%, or 92%, don't work. That’s because most welfare programs are available to workers, including food stamps and Medicaid.

Richwine said the economic challenge associated with Somali immigration "isn't so much that they don't work. Rather, it's that their marketable skills are in many cases insufficient to raise their families out of poverty. As a consequence, they use a lot of welfare."

Our ruling

Trump said that among Somalis in Minnesota, "92% of them don’t work."

The most recent data shows that about 28% of Somalis in Minnesota aren’t working — a far lower number than Trump’s 92%, and a smaller rate than for Minnesotans overall.

About 9 in 10 Somalis receive some form of public assistance, but these programs typically allow low-wage workers to participate; receiving public benefits does not mean someone isn’t working.

We rate the statement Pants on Fire!

RELATED: Trump leaders say Minnesota officials withhold detained immigrants from ICE. Is that true?

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for Feb. 2, No. 1,689. And it's an iconic word in Wordle history!

Lawyers discussed possibility of Epstein’s cooperation with prosecutors – and more names surfaced in new documents

A new trove of about 3m files related to the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was released on Friday, offering new details about his network and interactions with wealthy and powerful figures and the federal investigations into his crimes.

The release follows legislation passed in November by US lawmakers that mandated the disclosure of all Epstein-related documents.

White House says president is not involved in running his businesses. Ethics experts remain concerned

Donald Trump has been accused of “corruption, plain and simple” after it was revealed that a member of the Emirati royal family was behind a $500m investment into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company.

Ethics experts say the deal – struck just days before the US president’s inauguration last January – amounts to a deep conflict of interest for the White House, amid calls for a congressional investigation into the transaction.

Several iPhone Fold leaks have been reported, including a massive battery life, design elements, cameras and more.

Social media posts claim to show photos of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a child, along with his mother Mira Nair, attending multiple events with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But the images aren’t real. 

American actor Michael Rapaport posted a picture on X showing Nair, a filmmaker, holding a baby and standing next to former President Bill Clinton and Epstein in what looks like a tropical setting. 

"Mira Nair holding her baby Zohran Mamdani with Bill and Epstein," Rapaport wrote Jan. 31. "Yeah….read that again…."

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones shared another image Feb. 1 on X of what appeared to be Mamdani as a child posing with Nair, Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein, Clinton, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.

Other X users also shared multiple images of Mamdani as a child supposedly attending Epstein’s events.

(Screenshot of X post)

The images went viral online after the Department of Justice released millions of more documents related to the Epstein files. The files include a 2009 email that says Nair attended an after-party for the film Amelia, which she directed. The party was held at Maxwell’s Manhattan townhouse.

Mamdani was born in 1991 and the email is from 2009, so if Mamdani had attended the party with his mother, he would have been about 18 years old at the time, not a child as the images claim to show.

PolitiFact found that the images of Nair with Mamdani as a child and Epstein were generated with artificial intelligence. 

The photos originated on a parody account known as "DFF," which describes itself on X as sharing "high quality AI videos and memes."

The account shared the fake photos Jan. 31 and all of them had a "DFF" watermark. It also admitted one of the images was fake, saying, "Damn you guys failed. I purposely made him a baby which would technically make this pic 34 years old. Yikes."

(Screenshot of AI-images with DFF watermarks)

PolitiFact uploaded the three images shared by DFF to Gemini, Google’s AI tool. It found the images contain the SynthID watermark for images created or edited by the tool. It's not visible looking at the images, but Google's technology can detect it.

We rate the claim that images shared on X are real photos of Mamdani as a child with his mother and Epstein Pants on Fire! 

Several documents and ‘media’ may have inadvertently exposed sensitive information of victims, drawing outcry

The justice department said on Monday it had taken down several thousand documents and “media” that may have inadvertently included victim-identifying information since it began releasing the latest batch of documents related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein on Friday.

It blamed the release of sensitive information that drew an outcry from victims and their lawyers on mistakes that were “technical or human error”.

He acknowledged that the weekend’s revelations further entangled him in the “understandable furor” surrounding the convicted sex offender.

Ron Johnson says he does not ‘have a problem’ with key demand made by Democrats blocking agency’s funding

The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said that all federal agents in Minneapolis will immediately begin wearing body cameras and that the program will be expanded nationwide “as funding is available”.

The announcement on Monday comes after Republican senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin suggested, in a concession that could pave the way to an agreement on Capitol Hill to fund the much criticized agency, that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents could wear body cameras on immigration patrols.

Complete closure of the performing arts center in Washington, D.C., will start on July 4, Mr. Trump said. It's not yet clear how extensive the changes to the building might be.

Apple's co-founders signed the check in 1976, just weeks before establishing their partnership agreement.

"Project Vault" will be funded by a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, along with $2 billion in private-sector financing, President Trump said.

Kennedy’s pilot program to offer funding for long-term recovery after Trump signed order related to addiction

Robert F Kennedy Jr announced on Monday $100m in new grants for a pilot program aimed at addressing homelessness and substance use recovery in eight cities, building on an executive order Donald Trump signed last week related to addiction.

The funds will be distributed as part of the Safety Through Recovery, Engagement, and Evidence-based Treatment and Supports (Streets) program, which will be managed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Samhsa) within the Department of Health and Human Services.

Author says accusations ‘spread and amplified’ by people more interested in ‘outrage and getting clicks’

Neil Gaiman has said that multiple sexual assault allegations against him are “simply untrue” and claimed to be the victim of a “smear campaign”, in the first post addressing the accusations for almost a year.

Gaiman, 65, author of novels including American Gods and the Ocean at the End of the Lane, has faced allegations of sexual abuse and coercive behaviour, which were outlined in a podcast by the Tortoise Media team in July 2024.

The smaller, squarish model could quickly follow the company's first foldable phone, if that device sells well.

Move from Claudia Sheinbaum comes after Trump signed an order threatening tariffs on countries that sell oil to Cuba

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has pledged to send humanitarian aid this week to Cuba and said Mexico was “exploring all diplomatic avenues to be able to send fuel to the Cuban people”, despite efforts from Washington to cut off oil to the Caribbean nation.

Donald Trump last week signed an executive order allowing the US to slap tariffs on countries sending crude oil to Cuba and on Saturday said that Sheinbaum had agreed to halt shipments of oil at his request – a claim the Mexican leader rejected.

Democrats and one Republican demand release of millions more pages they insist are still being deliberately withheld

Democrats have promised to fight what they say is a “full-blown cover-up” of the Epstein files after the Trump administration on Sunday effectively declared its investigation into the disgraced late financier and sex offender closed.

The release of more than 3m new pages by the justice department on Friday represented the final act of compliance with legislation ordering the full disclosure of all investigative documents in its possession, according to the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche.

Met police assessing reports of alleged misconduct in public office after government information apparently shared

Peter Mandelson is facing a possible police investigation into his alleged leak of market-sensitive information to Jeffrey Epstein at the height of the financial crisis.

New disclosures from the Epstein files appear to show Mandelson sent a string of emails to the late sex offender containing confidential information that the government was receiving to deal with the global crash while he was business secretary under Gordon Brown.

A confidential UK government document outlining £20bn in asset sales.

Mandelson claiming he was “trying hard” to change government policy on bankers’ bonuses.

An imminent bailout package for the euro the day before it was announced in 2010.

A suggestion that the JPMorgan boss “mildly threaten” the chancellor.

Couple say they love their daughter immeasurably but have a moral obligation to try to find child’s biological parents

A couple is suing a Florida fertility clinic after learning that they were implanted with the wrong embryo, and are going public with their attempts to find their child’s biological parents.

Tiffany Score and Steven Mills have filed a lawsuit against IVF Life Inc, which operates as the Fertility Center of Orlando, and its lead physician, Dr Milton McNichol. The suit, which was initially filed under pseudonyms to protect their family’s privacy, states that three viable embryos were created with Score’s eggs and Mills’s sperm, and an embryo was successfully implanted in April 2025.

Martin was tapped to lead the Weaponization Working Group after he failed to win enough support from the Senate to be confirmed as D.C.'s U.S. attorney.

The American Federation of Teachers called on Target CEO Michael Fiddelke to "clearly state" that the company wants ICE agents to leave Minnesota.

The proposed site is situated along a flight path for nearby Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia.

The House is back in Washington on Monday to begin considering a revised funding package to end the partial government shutdown.

alternative_right writes: Fintraffic's national traffic priority system, which is set to be introduced this summer, will recognize the location of an emergency vehicle and automatically change the lights to green to facilitate its passage. (Why isn't everyone doing this already?)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Commissioner to file motion requesting return of property unlawfully taken during raid related to 2020 election

Fulton county leaders said they would fire back in court on Monday, intent on limiting the scope of a federal warrant that led the FBI to seize 2020 elections documents last week.

County attorneys intend to file a motion in federal court asking for an order mandating the return of property that was unlawfully seized or retained, said the Fulton county commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr.

Trump and Petro’s unpredictable meeting could be pivotal for Latin America Expert comment thilton.drupal 2 February 2026

Drugs, migration, China and Venezuela likely to be on the agenda as two outspoken leaders meet in Washington ahead of Colombia’s elections later this year.

Over the past year, US President Donald Trump and Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro have exchanged criticism, insults and even apparent threats. On February 3, they will meet at the White House where they are expected to discuss wide-ranging topics including drug trafficking, migration, Colombia’s border security with Venezuela and relations with China. 

The meeting, which has been in preparation for months, is unpredictable due to the personalities of both men, who are known for being outspoken. 

Colombia’s President Petro has been a vocal critic of US foreign policy in Latin America as the Trump administration seeks to revive the Monroe Doctrine. Petro condemned the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and accused the US of committing ‘murder’ in its strikes against vessels allegedly manned by drug traffickers in the Caribbean. He has also criticized the deportation of migrants from the US. 

The Trump administration sees the leftist Colombian president as hostile to its strategy in the Western Hemisphere and its wider Make America Great Again ideology. In line with its new National Security Strategy, Washington has sought to curb migration and combat organized crime and drug trafficking into the US while projecting its influence and expanding its control in the Western Hemisphere. 

The Trump administration has accused Petro’s government of not doing enough to stop the drug trade (accusations Petro denies) and has pressured Bogota to clamp down on drug traffickers and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas who operate in Colombia. Cocaine production in Colombia has reportedly risen to between 2,600 to 3,000 tons in 2024 (although the figures are disputed) while armed groups involved in the drug trade have expanded their territory. 

In September, Washington removed Colombia’s certification that it is doing enough to eliminate cocaine crops. Later that month, the Trump administration revoked Petro and his family’s US visas and included them on the OFAC US Sanctions list. Trump then announced the US would stop sending subsidies to Colombia. 

In December, Trump appeared to threaten Petro when he said that ‘he better wise up or he’ll be next’ in the US’s war on drugs. However, relations appeared to thaw with a phone call earlier this month, and the US granted Petro a temporary visa, paving the way for the February 3 meeting.

Speaking to their constituents 

The meeting will be shaped by internal issues with both countries facing important election years. ‘Both presidents know that when they talk, they will be speaking to their constituencies,’ says Gimena Sánchez, a researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). 

Ahead of crucial mid-term elections in November, Trump may want to show American voters who oppose US involvement in ‘endless wars’ that his actions towards Petro’s government have been taken to avoid a full-scale military intervention. 

The Trump administration may also be considering how its interactions with Colombia are perceived by Latino voters. This is especially the case in Florida, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s political base, which is home to a large Colombian diaspora alongside many Venezuelans and Cubans.

For his part, Petro is travelling to Washington just months before Colombia holds presidential elections in May. Petro is not eligible to run for re-election himself due to the country’s term limits, but his handling of relations with the US could impact the outcome. 

Colombian right-wing opposition members have accused Petro of ruining relations with the country’s most important international ally and creating an economic crisis; if Petro manages to ease tensions with the US, it would be a success for his Pacto Histórico coalition and its candidate, Ivan Cepeda. 

The Colombian business community is also closely watching the meeting in Washington. The two countries have substantial trade relations. The Colombian-American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham Colombia) has just indicated that the meeting will be ‘one step in a process of gradual reconfiguration that will be subject to constant evaluation by Washington.’ 

Trump will likely demand that Petro reduce his relationship with China. While the US is Colombia’s leading overall trade partner, China is a fast-growing partner for imports. Since October 2023, China and Colombia have elevated their relations to a strategic partnership based on trade and investment. By 2024, bilateral trade in goods reached approximately $21 billion.    

UPTON, N.Y., Feb. 2, 2026 — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a novel artificial intelligence (AI)-based method to dramatically tame the flood of data generated by particle detectors at modern accelerators. The new custom-built algorithm uses a neural network to intelligently compress collision data, adapting automatically to the density or “sparsity” of the signals it receives.

Particle collisions produce many tracks inside the sPHENIX time projection chamber, but most of the volume of the house-sized detector is empty. Brookhaven scientists have developed a new algorithm for compressing such “sparse” data so the detector can record many more collision events that could lead to discoveries. Credit: sPHENIX Collaboration.

As described in a paper just published in the journal Patterns, the scientists used simulated data from sPHENIX, a particle detector at Brookhaven Lab’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), to demonstrate the algorithm’s potential to handle trillions of bits of detector data per second while preserving the fine details physicists need to explore the building blocks of matter. The algorithm will help physicists gear up for a new era of streaming data acquisition, where every collision is recorded without pre-selecting which ones might be of interest. This will vastly expand the potential for more accurate measurements and unanticipated discoveries.

“Our goal is to improve the scientific capability of particle detectors like sPHENIX at RHIC and detectors at future colliders, including the upcoming Electron-Ion Collider (EIC),” said Jin Huang, the principal investigator for this project. The EIC is a state-of-the-art nuclear physics research facility to be built at Brookhaven Lab after RHIC completes its scientific mission later this year.

Taming the Data Deluge

RHIC is a DOE Office of Science user facility that accelerates beams of particles ranging from protons to heavy atomic nuclei, such as gold, and steers them into head-on collisions so scientists can explore the building blocks of matter and the forces that hold them together. Collisions occur thousands of times per second, each potentially creating thousands of new subatomic particles that streak through detectors like the time projection chamber at sPHENIX.

Acting like a 3D digital camera, the time projection chamber records the particles’ trajectories in a gas-filled chamber using nearly 160,000 electronic channels. The electronic sensors that make up the detector produce a data flow of trillions of data points — known as voxels in such 3D images — per second.

“Right now, RHIC is producing more collision events than we can record in our experiments,” Huang said. “To maximize the physics output from the facility, we need a reliable and innovative way to pack more information into each byte of data recorded so we can eliminate the need for an event selection bias and record more and more collision events.”

The most promising approach is data compression on the fly — finding shorthand ways to collectively describe key features of the data instead of including all the repeating details of every data point. Successful shorthand encoding would allow an accurate picture to be reconstructed once the data is decompressed while minimizing the loss of crucial information.

“As an example, instead of recording every single pixel of a red square, it would be more efficient to describe a square with a particular side length and red color. AI is very good finding such high-level abstraction of patterns,” said Yihui (Ray) Ren, a member of Brookhaven Lab’s Computing and Data Sciences team who led the AI aspects of this project.

Of course, the data produced in particle collisions is considerably more complex. And the data is actually quite sparse. This may sound like a contradiction, given the scale of the signals described above. But even with the number of particles produced during energetic smashups inside the house-sized detector, their tracks take up very little space in the time projection chamber; most of the vast number of voxels recorded for each collision are empty.

“Traditional data compression tools designed for weather models or fluid simulations, which work well for data that is more continuous, don’t work well on such sparse data,” said Ren. “So, we have to innovate and design our own approach.”

Smarter Data Compression

The new algorithm uses an AI architecture that processes only the non-empty parts of the data. It was developed by a Brookhaven-led team, including members of sPHENIX and the Lab’s Computing and Data Sciences directorate, along with collaborators from Texas A&M University, Columbia University, UCLA, and Stony Brook University.

“Our algorithm can zoom in on the meaningful parts of the picture — the few voxels filled by particle tracks — and do computation only on these values,” said Yi Huang, a computational scientist at Brookhaven Lab and the lead author on the paper. Contrast this with a conventional algorithm that would run computations on even the empty background voxels, which can often impede performance.

“In this way, sparsity becomes an advantage for us,” she said. “The fewer voxels with meaningful values, the less computation our algorithm needs to do, resulting in faster data processing.”

In addition, as in the red square example, the algorithm scans through the data to identify repetitive features or key points, and it develops shorthand to describe those features collectively. In parallel, a decompressor component of the algorithm tries to use that description, or code, to reconstruct the data, and it compares the reconstructed data with the original input, prior to compression.

After training over a large dataset, the algorithm learns the best ways to maximize data compression while keeping information loss as low as possible to avoid sacrificing key data features essential for discoveries.

More Compact, Faster, and More Accurate

So far, the team has tested the algorithm on simulated data generated for sPHENIX’s time projection chamber. In those tests, compared to previous models, the new algorithm achieved: a model size that is more than 100 times more compact — all while maintaining high processing speed as the data become sparser; 75% less error in reconstructing raw data; and 10% higher compression ratio, meaning 10% more collision data can be saved.

This performance makes the algorithm especially promising for streaming data acquisition systems, which continuously record all collisions instead of using “triggers” to capture only events that meet certain predetermined criteria.

“Triggers are an effective way to narrow the data you collect if you already know what kind of event you are looking for,” Huang said. “But if you want to be able to minimize selection bias or to make discoveries about unknown physics, it’s better to have all the data preserved so you can analyze it in many different ways — even many years in the future.”

sPHENIX’s particle-tracking system was designed to use streaming readout, and the ePIC detector for the EIC is expected to use this approach as well.

To move beyond simulations to handling real detector signals, the team will need to expand their work and demonstrate that the algorithm can manage electronic noise and other signal-masking complexities. They are also exploring optimizations that could enable deployment on innovative AI chips that are much faster and more energy efficient than the processing units currently used for many computing applications

“Our ultimate goal is to integrate intelligent data compression directly into the detector readout chain to better explore the frontier of physics with a faster and smarter data pipeline,” said Huang.

The custom AI approach could also be useful in other fields involving sparse data, for example, in event-based cameras used for security applications.

This research was supported by Brookhaven’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program and carried out in collaboration with the sPHENIX Collaboration at RHIC. The project builds on earlier work by the same team listed in the related links. RHIC operations are funded by the DOE Office of Science.

Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.

Source: BNL

The post Brookhaven Unveils AI-Based Approach for Managing High-Volume Particle Physics Data appeared first on HPCwire.

Feb. 2, 2026 — Fifty years after Seymour Cray unveiled his Cray-1 supercomputer in Chippewa Falls, technology advancements at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire are creating more extraordinary opportunities for students and faculty to conduct deep research using artificial intelligence.

Credit: University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

From improved drug screening to faster cancer detection and improved crop yields, Blugolds are producing results in AI research thanks in large part to unique access to high-performance computing.

HPC is a standard of computing that far exceeds the conventional desktop by using a network of powerful machines to process information faster. The Blugold Center for High Performance Computing supports undergraduate research, faculty research and classroom learning by providing free access to the supercomputing infrastructure necessary to make new discoveries and opportunities possible.

The center, formed in 2021, has two supercomputer clusters with more than 90 machines available for students, staff and faculty to use for research and class activities. Last semester alone, the campus completed more than a million hours worth of research in only five months thanks to the system’s capacity to complete multiple calculations at the same time, according to Tyler Bauer, the HPC clusters’ system administrator.

UW-Eau Claire is one of only three Universities of Wisconsin schools with campuswide supercomputing cluster access, along with UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee. UW-Eau Claire saw its first cluster arrive in the chemistry department in 2009, and upgrades came in 2012 when a group of faculty members wrote a grant to secure funding to establish a campuswide cluster. In 2019-20, a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation grant and an in-kind grant from Hewlett Packard Enterprise brought the now flagship BOSE system online.

The latest transformation came last summer, when UW-Eau Claire designated a new graphics processing unit server with two Nvidia H100 94 gigabyte cards for the BOSE system. Bauer says it has created more opportunities while solving a capacity problem, since the cards can be split seven ways, allowing up to 14 students to use a single machine.

“That not only allows for the type of generative AI work and [large language model] work that a lot of different research groups are starting to look at and industry in general,” Bauer says. “It also added the capacity to support computer science classes, in general, to take advantage of GPUs.”

The HPC clusters supported 10 academic departments, 13 courses — including three with an emphasis in AI artificial intelligence — and 639 undergraduate students during the recent fall semester. Bauer says it also supported a geography class at UW-La Crosse and has the capacity to host more classes for other campuses moving forward.

Life-Changing Opportunities

Free access to the HPC clusters has proven to be life-changing for UW-Eau Claire student Will Jerome. He came to campus four years ago interested in computer science, but unsure of how to utilize his knowledge. Access to the clusters provided an opportunity to perform more intensive research than most students, which Jerome used to develop and optimize multiple U-Net variations, a deep learning model often used for image segmentation in the medical imaging domain.

“Essentially, you’ll feed the U-Net model a CT scan of the abdomen, and in turn, the model will provide pixel-wise classification identifying the pancreas as well as any potential cancerous lesions,” Jerome says.

Last June, he earned the opportunity to present at the Mayo Clinic’s AI Summit, where his research abstract on a clinical agentic pipeline was chosen for publication.

“I was pretty fired up,” says Jerome, who beat out dozens of other entries.

The experience also deepened his knowledge and helped him land an internship in the Mayo Clinic GI AI Lab, known as GAIL, starting this spring.

“For me to have that opportunity to be able to find my niche, to be able to know what I want to do for my career, I’m just extremely thankful,” Jerome says.

The senior enjoyed working with the clusters so much he joined Bauer’s team as a student administrator to assist other students with their research needs. Jerome works alongside fellow administrator and AI researcher Jack Hagen, a junior majoring in both computer science and political science.

Hagen has utilized the HPC clusters for dozens of projects, including his favorite that used AI models to analyze themes found in scripts from series across the “Star Trek” universe. He’s working on multiple other projects, including one that creates a dataset of AI-generated phishing messages to develop more effective modern-day detection.

“I feel like I come up with more projects I can use the cluster for every day,” Hagen says. “Just having this resource available for free 24/7 is super helpful and makes it much, much, much easier to do really any of the research that I want to do.”

Dr. Matt Jewell, professor and chair of the materials science and biomedical engineering department, uses the HPC clusters to advance his work in superconductivity. He says his research would not happen without the technology readily available on campus.

“It’s really the presence of the cluster and the resources and support like Tyler that make it feasible for me to do the work,” Jewell says. “Now I can give my students a totally new field of research for them, a new set of techniques.”

A Hub for Collaboration

The HPC clusters have become an interactive community of students, faculty and research groups advancing AI on campus.

Dr. Rahul Gomes, associate professor and chair of the computer science department, has worked with students like Jerome and with faculty members in different areas to facilitate research in addition to his own work.

Gomes is currently collaborating with CareChronical founder Justin Flechsig to help patients better understand their health with AI. Gomes is working with students on developing large language models that can be reliable and explainable for diabetes management while experiencing a fresh look at new technology through Flechsig.

“Justin’s collaboration is also giving us the opportunity to use the open-source models and build a foundation of these explainable AI models,” Gomes says. “If this turns out to be good, then Justin would take the open-source ones and try to make it better or commercialize it in their setting.”

Gomes leads summer projects through Research Experiences for Undergraduates, an NSF grant-supported nine-week program that brings 10 students from across the country to campus. Machine and deep learning will be a focus of interest once again in the fifth year of the initiative.

The HPC clusters also support Research Experiences for Teachers, another NSF-funded program that provides K-12 STEM educators with hands-on research experience. This summer, Teachers As Researchers in Computing Classrooms will host 10 teachers from western Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota for an intensive seven-week experience that will include computer science projects at UW-Eau Claire, UW-River Falls and UW-Stout.

Bauer says the center has held summer workshops for Upward Bound students for the last five summers to introduce computational science. The federally funded program helps local high school students from underrepresented populations prepare for college.

Beyond that, there are also faculty-led research opportunities for high school students. Last summer, UW-Eau Claire’s Dr. Sudeep Bhattacharyay, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, worked with a student from Eau Claire North High School to develop a computing technique that can be used to produce an AI tool for studying molecular recognition hidden in multiple enzyme active sites.

“It’s students like that that really show, one, how much computational work supports their learning initiatives, but also their growth as a future college student,” Bauer says. “A high school student really pushed everything forward beyond what we’ve ever expected.”

Bauer says UW-Eau Claire is constantly looking for proposals to write and for grants to better position itself as a regional leader in supercomputing. The center is also looking at acquiring more GPUs and large memory machines, which should sustain student innovation.

“Seeing the passion that many of them have for the type of work they’re doing to really try new things beyond the bounds of what they learn in the classroom is pretty cool,” Bauer says. “The HPC team looks forward to continuing to collaborate with our Blugolds and campus partners to see what’s possible and bring new ideas to life.”

Learn more about the Blugold Center for High Performance Computing here.

Source: UW-Eau Claire

The post UW-Eau Claire’s HPC Center Fuels Student and Faculty AI Research appeared first on HPCwire.

Ruling clears Denmark’s Ørsted to resume construction on its Sunrise Wind project off the coast of New York

All five offshore wind projects halted by the Trump administration in December can resume construction after a federal judge’s ruling on Monday that cleared Denmark’s Ørsted to proceed with its Sunrise Wind project off the coast of New York.

Ørsted’s request for an injunction blocking the interior department order was the fifth brought by an offshore wind developer since the 22 December pause on five leases. The agency stopped work on the multibillion-dollar facilities due to national security concerns around radar interference.

Gordon Brown calls for inquiry over Peter Mandelson’s apparent disclosure of highly sensitive government information to Jeffrey Epstein

Peter Mandelson “leaked a sensitive UK government document to Jeffrey Epstein while he was business secretary that proposed £20bn of asset sales and revealed Labour’s tax policy plans”, the Financial Times is reporting.

In his story, Jim Pickard says:

The memo, dubbed “Business Issues”, was written on June 13 2009 by Nick Butler, who at the time was special adviser to the then prime minister Gordon Brown.

The confidential document, which was released by the US Department of Justice as part of a tranche of millions of files relating to Epstein, had been sent to British government officials including cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood.

It is right that Peter Mandelson is no longer a member of the Labour party. Disciplinary action was underway prior to his resignation.

Jeffrey Epstein’s heinous crimes destroyed the lives of so many women and girls, and our thoughts remain with his victims.

A slew of notable individuals appear in the latest Justice Department release of Jeffrey Epstein files.

After a seemingly endless stream of tone deaf news from Mozilla, we’ve finally got some good news for Firefox users. As the company’s been hinting at for a while on social media now, they’ve added an “AI” kill switch to the latest Firefox nightly release, as well as a set of toggles to disable specific “AI” features.

You can choose to use some of these and not others. If you don’t want to use AI features from Firefox at all, you can turn on the Block AI enhancements toggle. When it’s toggled on, you won’t see pop-ups or reminders to use existing or upcoming AI features. 

Once you set your AI preferences in Firefox, they stay in place across updates. You can also change them whenever you want.

↫ Ajit Varma at the Mozilla blog

I’m particularly enamoured with the specific mention that the setting will remain unaffected by updates. It’s incredibly sad that Mozilla even has to mention this, but they have nobody to blame but themselves for that one. None of this is enough to draw me away from Librewolf and back to Firefox, but at least it gives those of us who prefer to keep using Firefox the option to disable all of this “AI” nonsense. Also, there’s no Librewolf for POWER9, so I have to use Firefox somewhere.

It’s unlikely Chrome or Safari will get such clear “AI” kill switches, so it might become a reason for some to switch to Firefox from Chrome or Safari.

Fittingly, the puzzle has begun reusing words on Groundhog Day, and it chose the very first Wordle answer ever to use again.

Amazon's Echo brand has great sales all the time, but this is different. For a limited time, you can get the 11-inch version for under $200.

Action could begin next week in some of state’s largest districts including San Diego, San Francisco and LA

California is facing the prospect of massive teacher strikes across the state as conflicts over working conditions, pay and special education staffing reach a boiling point.

The strikes, which could begin as soon as next week, have been approved by thousands of educators – affecting schools in some of the state’s largest districts including San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles.

Israeli troops seized the Rafah border crossing in May 2024. The reopening marks progress toward the second phase of the U.S.-backed ceasefire deal.

Allies downplay president’s links to Epstein but newly released documents offer slightly more complicated picture

• US politics – live updates

Almost immediately after deputy attorney general Todd Blanche announced the justice department was releasing 3m additional pages of files related to Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, Fox News published an exclusive interview with him seeking to shape what Americans could expect to find in the files.

After reviewing years of Epstein’s correspondence, Blanche said, the justice department determined that there was nothing in them in which Epstein said anything criminally implicating Trump.

In the late 1980s, with the expansion of the Internet (even though it was not open to commercial activities yet) and the slowly increasing capabilities of workstations, some people started to imagine the unthinkable: that, some day, you may use your computer to record voice messages, send them over the Internet, and the recipient could listen to these messages on his own computer.

That was definitely science fiction… until workstation manufacturers started to add audio capabilities to their hardware.

↫ Miod Vallat

A great story detailing how the audio hardware in the HP 9000/425e was made to work on OpenBSD and NetBSD.

The United States and India finalized a trade agreement Monday, helping stabilize a relationship that had been in decline during Trump’s second term.

Microsoft is reevaluating its AI strategy on Windows 11 and plans to scale back or remove Copilot integrations across built-in apps after months of sustained user backlash, according to a Windows Central report citing people familiar with the company's plans. Copilot features in apps like Notepad and Paint are under review and could be pulled entirely or stripped of their Copilot branding in favor of a more streamlined experience. The company has paused work on adding new Copilot buttons to any other in-box apps. Windows Recall, the screenshot-based search feature delayed by an entire year in 2024 over security and privacy concerns, is separately under review -- Microsoft internally considers the current implementation a failure and is exploring ways to rework or rename the feature rather than scrap it entirely, the report said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BETHESDA, Md., and KAWASAKI, Japan, Feb. 2, 2026 — Lockheed Martin and Fujitsu Limited today announced a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to jointly accelerate technology development in several critical areas, leveraging Lockheed Martin’s integrated systems expertise and Fujitsu’s world-leading technologies and commercial scale to advance innovation of dual-use capabilities.

Credit: Sergiy Palamarchuk/Shutterstock

Through the MOU the companies plan to strengthen the technological foundation for dual-use solutions in quantum computing, edge computing enabled by advanced sensing and real-time data fusion, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), advanced microelectronics, and multi-domain next-generation network solutions.

“This collaboration accelerates technologies that are critical to meeting the future needs of our customers,” said Craig Martell, vice president and chief technology officer, Lockheed Martin. “Coupling the expertise of Lockheed Martin and Fujitsu across technology areas will be a force multiplier, advancing leadership in critical technologies like microelectronics, inference at the edge and quantum solutions. We look forward to our work together and delivering innovation with speed to our customers.”

“We are honored to collaborate with Lockheed Martin, a leader in defense technologies, on the development of advanced ICT technologies for future dual-use applications,” said Vivek Mahajan, corporate executive officer, corporate vice president, and chief technology officer in charge of System Platform, Fujitsu Limited. “Through this collaboration, we aim to strengthen the competitive standing of both companies.”

The MOU expands on a May 2025 agreement that selected Fujitsu as the supplier of Lockheed Martin’s SPY-7 Subarray Suite Power Supply Line Replaceable Unit, and established a strategic collaboration to strengthen Japan’s defense industrial base.

About Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin is a global defense technology company driving innovation and advancing scientific discovery. Our all-domain mission solutions and 21st Century Security vision accelerate the delivery of transformative technologies to ensure those we serve always stay ahead of ready.

About Fujitsu

Fujitsu’s purpose is to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation. As the digital transformation partner of choice for customers around the globe, our 113,000 employees work to resolve some of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Our range of services and solutions draw on five key technologies: AI, Computing, Networks, Data & Security, and Converging Technologies, which we bring together to deliver sustainability transformation. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 3.6 trillion yen (US$23 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025 and remains the top digital services company in Japan by market share.

Source: Fujitsu

The post Lockheed Martin and Fujitsu to Accelerate Dual-Use Tech Development appeared first on HPCwire.

January 2026 report to be rescheduled after BLS has already been faced with major delays from last year’s shutdown

The US’s closely watched jobs report will once again be delayed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced on Monday, amid a government shutdown.

The January 2026 jobs report, originally scheduled to be released on Friday, will be rescheduled when federal funding resumes. Data collection for the report has been completed, but the shutdown has forced a delay to releasing the report, which will provide crucial jobs data on the US labor market following the weakest year for job growth since 2020, with the addition of only 584,000 jobs in 2025 compared with 2 million in 2024.

Feb. 2, 2026 — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is working to transform petabytes of imaging data from advanced light and neutron scattering user facilities in the U.S. into actionable knowledge, demonstrating AI-accelerated advanced discovery capabilities that can be applied to energy, semiconductors, medicine, and other essential technologies.

Alexander Hexemer, Tanny Chavez, and Liz Clark pictured at the ALS microtomography beamline with an AI-driven web interface that will be leveraged by SYNAPS-I. Credit: Marilyn Sargent, Berkeley Lab.

The multi-lab effort, called SYNAPS-I (SYnergistic Neutron and Photon Science – Intelligence), is part of the Genesis Mission, a new national initiative led by the Department of Energy to advance AI and accelerate discovery, providing solutions for challenges in science, energy, and national security. A cornerstone of the Genesis Mission is the Transformational AI Models Consortium, which will build and deploy self-improving AI models by harnessing DOE’s unique data, facilities, and expertise. SYNAPS-I is one of three AI model teams that Berkeley Lab leads or plays a key role in, building on AI expertise in high-performance computing, managing large datasets, and pioneering AI models in partnership with industry.

“Our national lab facilities are already world leaders in scientific discovery. SYNAPS-I will radically accelerate the path from experiment to insight by embedding AI directly into the analysis workflow,” said Alex Hexemer, a senior scientist at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS) and SYNAPS-I lead point of contact.

The SYNAPS-I platform will integrate large machine learning models as well as foundation models across all participating light and neutron sources, enabling unified analysis of imaging data from cutting-edge X-ray and neutron instruments at seven DOE Basic Energy Sciences user facilities, including the ALS, a synchrotron light source that produces X-ray, ultraviolet, and infrared light. The increased data outputs of recently completed and in-progress facility upgrades, such as Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source Upgrade (ALS-U) project, bring even greater opportunities to accelerate scientific discovery across a wide range of disciplines.

SYNAPS-I is a public-private partnership uniting national laboratories, university researchers, and key industry innovators in AI, materials, pharmaceuticals, and energy, including partners from Berkeley Lab, Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

“By pooling expertise and data across facilities, we can build AI capabilities that benefit all users and accelerate scientific discovery in ways that no single facility could achieve alone,” Hexemer said.

“SYNAPS-I marks the first step into an exciting new era for science at modern facilities. With the ALS — especially after the ALS-U upgrade — we’ll gain an unprecedented view into the inner workings of nature and technology. The challenge lies in turning that immense detail into knowledge that advances humanity. SYNAPS-I begins this next chapter of discovery,” said Dimitrios Argyriou, Interim ALS-U Project Director.

An Advanced AI Tool for X-ray and Neutron Science

X-ray microscopy and neutron scattering techniques help scientists study phase changes in the chemical composition and molecular makeup of active materials. This information can show how chemical processes and structural defects evolve in a material, and those insights can assist in the development of more durable materials for batteries and other useful applications.

Advances in automation for X-ray microscopy have allowed scientists to speed materials analysis for new applications. For example, more than a decade ago at the ALS, a collaboration of researchers used ptychography — a lensless, computational X-ray microscopy technique that analyzes the structure of a sample down to the atomic level — to image 5-nanometer structures in lithium iron phosphate, a material of interest for energy storage applications. That record-setting breakthrough allowed new understanding of the formation of defects in lithium iron phosphate during a chemical phase transformation.

Over the next few years, the multi-lab SYNAPS-I team wants to further accelerate knowledge extraction from X-ray microscopy and neutron scattering. To meet this goal, the team will build a machine-learning pipeline to augment existing algorithms for automated ptychography and image segmentation of X-ray and neutron data. Ptychography scans a sample with overlapping beam positions, collects diffraction patterns, and computationally reconstructs them into high-resolution images in 2D, or scans a sample from multiple angles to form a 3D image. Segmentation identifies patterns and features in X-ray and neutron imaging.

A battery material can be made up of millions of grains and particles. And with image segmentation done the traditional way, the painstaking manual process of identifying individual grains can take considerable time to complete. The SYNAPS-I AI platform will make this significantly easier and faster. By taking advantage of existing and to be developed AI solutions, SYNAPS-I will replace the tedious task of manual segmentation with an automated tool that segments and characterizes particles while you’re viewing the material at an X-ray or neutron beamline instrument.

“Automated segmentation in advanced microscopy is still a significant challenge in science. There are segmentation AI models available today for images of everyday objects, but they don’t work well for scientific data. We’re building SYNAPS-I to fill that gap,” Hexemer said.

Berkeley Lab is also contributing to other projects focused on AI code development, critical minerals and materials, cosmology, microelectronics, and quantum algorithms. Berkeley Lab’s contributions to the Genesis Mission build on decades of research in high-performance computing, managing large datasets, and pioneering AI models that yield insights across many science domains.

About Berkeley Lab

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Source: Theresa Duque, Berkeley Lab

The post Berkeley Lab: How a Machine Learning Pipeline Could Accelerate Innovation appeared first on HPCwire.

BOZEMAN, Mont., Feb. 2, 2026 — Snowflake today announced a new collaboration with OpenAI that enables global enterprises to unlock greater value from their proprietary data with AI. This multi-year, $200 million partnership agreement cements Snowflake and OpenAI’s commitment to co-innovation and joint go-to-market (GTM) strategies aimed at deploying AI agents across global enterprises. Snowflake and OpenAI will work closely together to develop and deploy customized AI solutions for joint enterprise customers that deliver tangible return on investment.

Credit: Shutterstock

The direct, first-party partnership agreement also makes OpenAI models natively available to Snowflake’s 12,600 global customers within Snowflake Cortex AI across all three major clouds. This empowers global organizations like Canva and WHOOP to bring OpenAI models to their enterprise data for deep research and instant insights. OpenAI models like GPT-5.2 will be accessible within Snowflake Intelligence, the trusted enterprise intelligence agent that empowers every employee to securely access, analyze, and act on all their organization’s knowledge using natural language.

“By bringing OpenAI models to enterprise data, Snowflake enables organizations to build and deploy AI on top of their most valuable asset using the secure, governed platform they already trust,” said Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO, Snowflake. “Customers can now harness all their enterprise knowledge in Snowflake together with the world-class intelligence of OpenAI models, enabling them to build AI agents that are powerful, responsible, and trustworthy. Together, we’re setting a new standard for AI innovation, helping businesses transform with confidence, while maintaining strong security and compliance standards.”

“Snowflake is a trusted platform that sits at the center of how enterprises manage and activate their most critical data,” said Fidji Simo, CEO of Applications at OpenAI. “This partnership brings our advanced models directly into that environment, making it easier to deploy AI agents and apps, so businesses can close the gap between what AI is capable of and the value they can create today.”

“As we scale our visual AI offering on Canva, both OpenAI and Snowflake have played key roles in how we rapidly empower our users with new creative tools,” said Helen Crossley, Head of Data Science, Canva. “As our platform continues to scale, Snowflake has been foundational to how we manage and activate data, and we’re excited to explore how leveraging OpenAI models in Snowflake Cortex AI can help us extend that foundation. The ability to bridge advanced AI models with our enterprise data allows us to move quickly and test new ideas, without compromising on security or performance.”

“Speed and precision in decision-making are critical for us as WHOOP continues to scale,” said Matt Luizzi, Senior Director of Business Analytics, WHOOP. “Rolling out Snowflake Intelligence to our employees and developing Cortex Agents has provided a secure and governed way for WHOOP to analyze data and make decisions. With OpenAI’s models available directly within Snowflake Cortex AI, we can further enhance those agents with advanced reasoning and analysis, all while maintaining strong security and governance. This partnership will help us continue to make AI a practical, everyday tool for the business.”

Snowflake and OpenAI Help Global Enterprises Deploy AI Agents

By bringing OpenAI models to Cortex AI, global enterprises can gain insights from all their data to deliver richer, more engaging AI agents. Key benefits of the partnership include:

• Accelerate Joint Product Innovation: Snowflake and OpenAI teams will partner closely to bring new features that leverage OpenAI Apps SDK, AgentKit, and APIs that support shared enterprise workflows.
• Build Custom, Interoperable AI Agents: Snowflake and OpenAI enable enterprises to build state-of-the-art AI agents that reason over governed data and take action across tools and apps. Powered by Cortex AI, these agents run directly on enterprise data, delivering secure, high-impact intelligence at scale.
• Democratize Data and Insights with AI: Powered by OpenAI models like GPT-5.2, Snowflake Intelligence is an enterprise intelligence agent that gives every employee instant access to trusted insights. It enables business users to query, interpret, and draw meaning from all their structured and unstructured data with no code required, just natural language.
• Enterprise-Ready Governance and Reliability: Snowflake provides built-in business continuity and disaster recovery with a 99.99% uptime service-level agreement, helping ensure that enterprises’ AI initiatives don’t get disrupted by outages or disasters. Users can reliably and securely tap into the power of OpenAI models alongside their most valuable proprietary data in Snowflake, all while benefiting from the governance and responsible AI controls that Snowflake Horizon Catalog provides.
• Gain Deep Insights with Multimodal AI: With Snowflake Cortex AI Functions, users can tap into the latest OpenAI models to analyze every kind of data. From rows and columns to text, images, and audio, teams can explore it all seamlessly using SQL, the familiar language of data they already trust.

Snowflake and OpenAI Deepen Collaboration to Advance Responsible AI and Workforce Productivity

This partnership builds on the companies’ existing collaboration, with OpenAI leveraging Snowflake as a secure, scalable data platform for experiment tracking, analytics, and testing.

In turn, Snowflake leverages OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise product internally, empowering employees to harness AI in their day-to-day work and accelerate productivity. As a result, employees can make decisions faster, streamline workflows, and drive stronger cross-functional collaboration through AI-powered insights.

About Snowflake

Snowflake is the platform for the AI era, making it easy for enterprises to innovate faster and get more value from data. More than 12,600 customers around the globe, including hundreds of the world’s largest companies, use Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud to build, use and share data, applications and AI. With Snowflake, data and AI are transformative for everyone. Learn more at snowflake.com (NYSE: SNOW).

Source: Snowflake

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PM Sébastien Lecornu pushes budget through using constitutional powers that avoided vote in parliament

France has finally passed a budget for this year after the minority government survived a series of no-confidence votes in a long-running political saga that has unsettled debt markets and alarmed the country’s European partners.

The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, told parliament on Monday, after months of wrangling, that French people “refuse this disorder and want our institutions to function”.

The Department of Energy is seeking input to determine how the nation can train 100,000 scientists and engineers in AI technologies and techniques over the next decade as part of its Genesis Mission project to accelerate scientific discovery.

“The goals of the Genesis Mission require rapid mobilization of the full capabilities of our nation’s S&T [science and technology] enterprise and tightly coordinated efforts across DOE and its National Laboratories, universities, industry, and philanthropic organizations,” the DOE stated in its January 16 request for information (RFI). “Further, a workforce of 100,000 American scientists and engineers will need to be trained over the next decade to lead the world in AI-powered science innovation and applications.”

The Genesis Mission was launched in November 2025 as “a dedicated, coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery that can solve the most challenging problems of this century,” President Trump stated in his executive order creating the program. The endeavor, which is being led by Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil, will leverage the Department of Energy’s 17 National Laboratories as well as industry and academia partners, in pursuit of three main goals: advancing research in energy; building new tools for AI-powered scientific discovery; and developing advanced AI technologies to ensure national security.

Darío Gil, Under Secretary for Science, DOE (Credit: DOE)

The January 16 RFI states that the AI-focused science and engineering jobs of the future “requires formulation of new training approaches.” DOE is looking to establish “an AI for Science and Engineering pipeline” in American universities that focus on bolstering “dual competencies” in AI and a scientific or engineering discipline at the undergraduate and graduate levels. This pipeline would feed into “rapidly expanding private and government sector jobs, as well as advanced degree educational programs.” New training and research opportunities for students will also exist at the graduate and post-doctorate levels, the RFI states.

Specifically, DOE is asking for help in expanding and reformulating educational and training programs in AI, science, and engineering. It’s looking for schools to strengthen its curricula in these areas, and also to find additional ways to incentivize students to seek careers in this area.

You can view the DOE’s January 16 RFI here. Interested parties are encouraged to share their ideas for bolstering AI for science and engineering education. The deadline for submitting information is March 4.

The Federal Government sought to bolster the AI education of American students even before the Genesis Mission was launched. In April 2025, President Trump signed a pair of executive orders, titled “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth” and “Preparing Americans for High-Paying Skilled Trade Jobs of the Future.” The White House also included a section titled “Training a Skilled Workforce for AI Infrastructure” in Trump’s “America’s AI Action Plan,” which was unveiled in July 2025.

While Genesis Mission focuses primarily on advancing the interests of the United States, the effort also includes some overseas partners. Last week, Argonne National Laboratory, one of the top DOE labs for AI-driven science, announced a new partnership with RIKEN, Fujitsu, and Nvidia in support of the Genesis Mission goals. RIKEN is Japan’s top government-run research laboratory and development institute, while Fujitsu is one of the country’s top server makers. Nvidia, meanwhile, is a leading developers of GPUs.

The four organizations will collaborate in several areas, including defining and prototyping next-generation compute architectures that tightly couple modeling, simulation, and AI workloads. They’re also looking to build integrated HPC systems and platforms; provide a shared software ecosystem for AI-enabled science; develop flagship AI for science applications and use cases; develop AI-powered lab robots; and accelerate quantum supercomputing and integration.

“This U.S.-Japanese collaboration with industry is an important opportunity to accelerate discovery, and demonstrates the powerful impact of combining advanced AI, high-performance computing, next-generation computing platform development, and quantum technologies with open innovation,” stated Ian Buck, vice president of Hyperscale and HPC at Nvidia. “Together, we are making progress across fields such as materials science, drug discovery, and energy research-empowering scientists to tackle challenges that were once beyond reach.”

The Genesis Mission is barely two months old, but it is moving quickly. There are several deadlines looming for Genesis Mission, including finding federal computing, storage, and networking resources to support the mission (due by February 22) and identifying and beginning to centralize the initial data sets in support of AI-powered scientific research (due by March 24). The DOE secretary must complete a review of capabilities across DOE labs by July 22, and the system should be demonstrated to be working by August 21. The DOE secretary was to have submitted a list of 20 science and technology challenges of national importance by January 23.

The post DOE Seeks ‘Rapid Mobilization’ to Train Army of Scientists and Engineers for Genesis Mission appeared first on HPCwire.

The latest revelations and reaction to them may mean he has finally encountered a scandal he is unable to outrun

It was the evening of 6 May 2010 and months after being released from jail for procuring a child for prostitution, Jeffrey Epstein was curious as to the result of Britain’s general election.

“Well?” he emailed Peter Mandelson, the then de facto deputy prime minister in Gordon Brown’s government.

Mortgage interest rates have been gradually declining, but will they continue to fall this month? Here's what to know.

President Trump announced that he and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have agreed to a trade deal that will lower tariffs and halt India's purchase of Russian oil.

The latest partial government shutdown is disrupting the release of closely watched economic data.

A look back at the esteemed personalities who've left us this year, who'd touched us with their innovation, creativity and humanity.

Apple's long-standing dominance over its electronics supply chain is eroding as AI companies outbid the iPhone maker for critical components like chips, memory and specialized glass fiber, giving suppliers the leverage to demand that Apple pay more. CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the pressure during a Thursday earnings call, noting constraints in chip supplies and significant increases in memory prices. Nvidia has overtaken Apple as TSMC's largest customer, CEO Jensen Huang said on a podcast; Apple had held that position by a wide margin for years. DRAM prices are set to quadruple from 2023 levels by year-end and NAND prices will more than triple, according to TechInsights. The firm estimates Apple could pay $57 more for memory in the base iPhone 18 due this fall compared to the base iPhone 17 currently on sale -- a significant hit on a device that retails for $799.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ring is bringing its pup-finding AI to everyone, even non-Ring owners, with an adorable video for the big game day.

British Medical Association members back further action as union’s chair says ‘a deal is there to be done’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Resident doctors in England have voted to strike for another six months in their long-running jobs and pay dispute with the government.

Their decision means that, unless an agreement emerges, the campaign of strikes by resident – formerly junior – doctors will enter its fourth year, as the industrial action began in March 2023.

Wondering how much silver is too much? Here's what you should know about silver ownership limits under federal law.

This live blog is now closed. You can read the latest full report here:

• Sick and wounded Palestinians enter Egypt after Israel reopens Rafah crossing

More than 400 European former top diplomats and officials have urged the EU to increase pressure on Israel to end “excesses and unremitting violations of international law” over Gaza and the West Bank.

The statement, due to be sent to EU leaders on Monday, calls on the bloc and its member states to take action in line with its support for a UN resolution for a two-state solution and a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

Want to find the best true-wireless earbuds? Start here with CNET's top earbuds lists, curated by style, price and use case.

Reports estimate that Grok's AI image generator created millions of nonconsensual sexual images last month.

Demand for year 7 pupils is expected to fall by 7.6% over the next four years, with similar numbers expected in primary schools

Schools in London could lose £45m in funding over the next four years as pupil numbers continue to fall, a report has warned, with secondary schools facing staff and curriculum cuts as budgets dwindle.

Until now, primary schools in the capital have been worst hit by falling birth rates, leading to about 90 school closures or mergers in the past five years. But the crisis is now spreading to secondary schools, which are expected to see steep declines in pupil numbers.

Both accounts remain viable for savers right now. Here's which one could earn more with a $10,000 deposit this year.

New MacBook Pro models with faster processors should be available within a month, according to a report.

Feb. 2, 2026 — The European Union has granted EUR 25 million to the SUPREME consortium, marking a significant milestone in industrialization of superconducting quantum technologies across Europe. Together with national funding from the member states, the total funding adds up to 50 million Euros. Key objectives of the initiative include developing stable superconducting technology and giving access to it for both industry and academia. The first phase will commence in early 2026 and span three and a half years, bringing together 23 partners from eight Member States.

Credit: Shutterstock

SUPREME launched with the mission to industrialize superconducting quantum technologies and strengthen Europe’s position as a global leader in quantum innovation. The aim is to develop scalable and stable fabrication processes for superconducting quantum devices and make them accessible to European SME’s, large enterprises, startups and academia.

The project has a total budget of approximately EUR 50 million, with funding provided equally by the EU Chips Joint Undertaking and national funding agencies. The funding has been approved to cover the first phase of the initiative, spanning 3.5 years.

“This initiative has been set to strengthen the European quantum ecosystem. We will make sure that the innovations developed through SUPREME can be widely adopted by businesses across Europe, ultimately delivering significant market impact. To support this, we will execute on an ambitious roadmap, which will guide and accelerate the industrialization of superconducting quantum technologies,” said Pekka Pursula, Vice President for Microelectronics and Quantum Technology at VTT and coordinator of the SUPREME consortium.

The key objective is the development of stable technologies and giving access to them for industry and academia. A significant milestone will be fabrication and demonstration of a 3D-integrated qubit module containing 200 qubits. This will showcase the improved stability, higher yield and improved reproducibility of the key fabrication processes for superconducting quantum chips.

SUPREME focuses on developing and validating key quantum processes, including angle-evaporated junctions, etched junctions, 3D integration and hybrid processes for applications in quantum computing, quantum sensing and quantum communication. The aim is to reach technology readiness level TRL 6 and manufacturing readiness level MRL 6.

Enabling European Industry Growth and Innovation

To maximize impact, SUPREME will make its fabrication processes available for companies by offering piloting services. Access to the technologies will be given through Process Design Kits (PDKs) and pilot runs to enable companies to design and develop their own quantum devices and systems.

Shared fabrication runs are particularly beneficial for early-stage companies, allowing sharing the cost of full wafer fabrication run between many users. Process design kits (PDKs) provide design rules and validated process specifications.
SUPREME is committed to strengthen Europe’s position in quantum technology by building the basis for European technology sovereignty for superconducting quantum technologies. It significantly contributes to goals of the European Quantum and the European Chips Act.

Consortium Partners

The consortium combines European expertise in superconducting technology from academia, RTO’s, industrial technology developers and end-users.

The consortium involves the following 23 partners from eight EU Member States:

• Research organisations and academia: VTT, coordinator (Finland); TNO (Netherlands); Delft University of Technology (Netherlands); Bayerische Akademie Der Wissenschaften (Germany); Fraunhofer Gesellschaft für Angewandte Forschung e.V. (Germany); Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Germany); Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology e.V. (Germany); The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission – CEA (France); University of Naples Federico II (Italy); Fondazione Bruno Kessler (Italy); Institut de Física d’Altes Energies – IFAE (Spain); Silicon Austria Labs (Austria).
• Large enterprises: Infineon Technologies AG (Germany); IQM Finland Oy (Finland).
• Small and medium enterprises: Arctic Instruments Oy (Finland); Alice & Bob (France); QuantWare BV (Netherlands); Single Quantum BV (Netherlands); QphoX BV (Netherlands); Peak Quantum GmbH (Germany); Silent Waves (France); Amires, The Business Innovation Management Institute (Czech Republic); Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech S.L. (Spain).

More from HPCwire: EU Selects SUPREME Consortium to Scale Up Industrial Production of Superconducting Quantum Chips

About VTT

VTT is a visionary research, development and innovation partner. We drive sustainable growth and tackle the biggest global challenges of our time and turn them into growth opportunities. We go beyond the obvious to help the society and companies to grow through technological innovations. We have over 80 years of experience of top-level research and science-based results. VTT is at the sweet spot where innovation and business come together.

Source: VTT

The post EU Selects SUPREME Consortium to Develop Superconducting Tech for Wider Industrialization appeared first on HPCwire.

Lawmakers are working to create a state-level version of the act as the US high court decides on latest voting rights case

On Martin Luther King Jr Day this year, hundreds of Mississippians gathered on the steps of the state capitol building in support of protecting voting rights in the state. The Mississippi house representative Zakiya Summers and state senator Johnny DuPree, both Democrats, introduced legislation that would create a state-level version of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The move comes after years of the supreme court weakening protections formerly guaranteed by the act, and aims to prohibit the dilution of minority voters in the state.

The legislation would create a Mississippi voting rights commission, which would require certain jurisdictions to obtain pre-clearance approval from said commission for any changes to election policy or practice. It would also establish protections for people with limited English proficiency along with additional measures.

Donald Trump claims that the release of millions more files related to Jeffrey Epstein 'absolve' him of wrongdoing, even though his name appears hundreds of times. The latest documents also indicate high-profile figures , including the former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Labour peer Peter Mandelson, continued friendships with the disgraced financier after his child sex abuse convictions. So what have we learned from the newly released files and what happens next? Lucy Hough speaks to columnist and host of Politics Weekly America Jonathan Freedland

Moltbook, a Reddit-like social network that launched last week and bills itself as a platform "built exclusively for AI agents," had a security vulnerability that exposed private messages shared between agents, the email addresses of more than 6,000 human owners, and over a million credentials, according to research published Monday by cybersecurity firm Wiz. The flaw has since been fixed after Wiz contacted Moltbook. Wiz cofounder Ami Luttwak called it a classic byproduct of "vibe coding." Moltbook creator Matt Schlicht posted on X last Friday that he "didn't write one line of code" for the site. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment when reached out by Reuters. Luttwak said the vulnerability also allowed anyone to post to the site, bot or human. "There was no verification of identity," he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cooking in the air fryer is fast and easy. Here's how to make (almost) any recipe air fryer friendly.

Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy, 84, was last seen on Saturday evening and signs indicate she did not leave alone

Authorities in Arizona searching for the 84-year-old mother of the Today show presenter Savannah Guthrie said on Monday they were treating the missing woman’s home as a crime scene, and expressed “grave concern” for her safety.

Nancy Guthrie was last seen by her family at her house near Tucson on Saturday night, and was reported missing on Sunday at lunchtime, sparking a search using a helicopter, drones and dogs, officials said.

US president made announcement on Truth Social after a Monday call with India’s prime minister

Donald Trump claimed India has agreed to stop buying Russian oil as he announced plans to cut US tariffs on Indian exports.

The US president announced that he and the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, whom he proclaimed to be “one of my greatest friends”, had agreed to strike a trade deal.

January ended with a big chainsword to the face.

Prosecutors said the suspects ran an export network that sent more than 16,000 shipments worth more than $30 million to Russian customers, including arms manufacturers.

• Fifa president sorry for comment about arrests

• Infantino says it is time to look at readmitting Russia

The Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, has apologised over remarks he made about British fans and defended the decision to award a peace prize to the US president, Donald Trump.

Infantino said at last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos that the World Cup in Qatar in 2022 had been special because “for the first time in history no Brit was arrested”.

Trump’s pick of ‘respected central banker’ Kevin Warsh as Fed chair prompts investors to sell safe haven assets

Gold and silver prices seesawed on Monday, after a “meltdown” in the metals market deepened and rattled investors around the world.

Gold prices tumbled by as much as 8% to $4,465 an ounce on Monday, ending a run of record highs that took it to nearly $5,600 last week. It later recovered some ground, but was still down by 3.5% at $4,700 in afternoon trading.

Detention of Marius Borg Høiby comes as Epstein files pile pressure on his mother, crown princess Mette-Marit

The son of Norway’s crown princess, Marius Borg Høiby, has been arrested on new charges just days before the start of his rape trial, as his mother continues to face questions over her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

The Oslo police district said Høiby had been arrested on Sunday evening on suspicion of assault, making threats with a knife and violating a restraining order.

For real this time.

Several factors are weighing on the value of gold and silver after the precious metals ascended to record highs last week.

Blizzardlike conditions stemming from a "bomb cyclone" brought heavy snow to the Southeast and ushered in frigid temperatures to much of the East Coast.

Luthair writes: Notepad++ claims to have been targeted by a state actor, given their previous stance on Uyghurs one can speculate about a candidate. Notepad++, in a blog post: According to the analysis provided by the security experts, the attack involved infrastructure-level compromise that allowed malicious actors to intercept and redirect update traffic destined for notepad-plus-plus.org. The exact technical mechanism remains under investigation, though the compromise occurred at the hosting provider level rather than through vulnerabilities in Notepad++ code itself. Traffic from certain targeted users was selectively redirected to attacker-controlled served malicious update manifests.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pep Guardiola’s side would be on top of the league had they not consistently struggled to hold leads

• Sign up for Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

The focus had been on Arsenal. They had not won in three Premier League games before this weekend and it was reasonable to ask how secure their position at the top of the table was. But the impact of their wobble was not that their lead was eaten into, but that they missed opportunities to extend it, because those in the chasing pack were also dropping points.

In their six league games since the New Year fixtures, Arsenal have dropped seven points. But City in the same period have dropped 11, as have Aston Villa and Liverpool. Fulham have dropped 10, Everton have dropped nine, Brentford and Newcastle have dropped eight, Chelsea seven and Manchester United six; hardly anyone in the top half of the table has closed the gap on Arsenal at all, which is why, after Saturday’s comfortable win at Leeds, their lead remains at six points.

The rodent forecasters of Groundhog Day are notoriously bad at their jobs. Is AI any better? Probably not.

Lawyers of woman said to be in her 20s at the time said she spent night with former prince at Royal Lodge in 2010

Lawyers for a second woman who alleges she was sent to the UK by Jeffrey Epstein for a sexual encounter with the then Prince Andrew have urged King Charles’s lawyers to issue a “real apology”.

Brad Edwards, from the US firm Edwards Henderson, previously told the BBC his client, said not to be British and in her 20s at the time, had spent the night with Andrew at Royal Lodge in 2010 and been given a tour of Buckingham Palace.

The Girl, based on Samantha Geimer’s memoir, will revisit ‘one of Hollywood’s most notorious scandals through the eyes of the person most misrepresented by it’

A new movie will explore the notorious Roman Polanski statutory rape scandal from the perspective of the 13-year-old girl, Samantha Geimer.

The Girl, based on Geimer’s 2013 memoir The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski, will trace her time in the famous director’s orbit in the 1970s, her experience being subjected to sexual assault and the media maelstrom that followed after Polanski, then 43, was arrested in 1977 on charges of statutory rape and lewd and lascivious act with a child.

Vladimir Motin was on sole watch when his vessel crashed into the Stena Immaculate near the Humber estuary

The Russian captain of a ship that crashed into an oil tanker off the Yorkshire coast has been found guilty of killing a crew member in the collision.

Vladimir Motin, a 59-year-old from St Petersburg, was on sole watch when his ship, the Solong, collided into the Stena Immaculate oil tanker near the Humber estuary on 10 March last year. Mark Angelo Pernia, a 38-year-old Filipino man, was killed in the wreck.

Residents of 16 houses on Clydach Terrace in Ynysybwl express relief after repeated floods caused by climate crisis

A row of homes in a village in south Wales is to be bought by a local authority and demolished as they can no longer be protected from flooding caused by the climate crisis.

It will cost Rhondda Cynon Taf county borough council more than £2.5m to buy the 16 riverside properties, pay for legal costs and help to rehouse dozens of residents.

Take to the air, start a fight, explore the ice or shoot some aliens this month.

A teacher who lost her sister in a car accident more than a decade ago is carrying on her legacy through a kindness challenge with her students.

Struggling with high credit card balances? You may have options to reduce or erase some of your debt this month.

An 18-year-old student at Northern Arizona University died after a fraternity rush event, police said. Three students were arrested and charged with hazing.

The U.S. laid fiber-optic cables to a record number of homes last year as billions of dollars in federal broadband grants and a surge in data-center construction fueled an enormous buildout, but the industry does not have enough workers to sustain the pace. A 2024 report by the Fiber Broadband Association and the Power & Communication Contractors Association projects 58,000 new fiber jobs between 2025 and 2032 and estimates 120,000 workers will leave the field in that period, mostly through retirement -- a combined shortage of 178,000. The gap is especially acute among splicers, who fuse hair-thin filaments by hand, and directional drill operators. Telecommunications line installers and repairers earned annual median wages of $70,500 for the year ended May 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, against a $49,500 national median. Push, a utility-construction firm, raised hourly pay for fiber crews by 5% to 8% in each of the past several years and expects the pace to quicken.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gothams LLC’s draft proposal, obtained by the Guardian, suggests seven-year trucking and logistics monopoly

A US disaster response firm submitted a plan to White House officials that would guarantee 300% profits and a seven-year monopoly over a new trucking and logistics plan for Donald Trump’s Board of Peace in Gaza, according to a November proposal obtained by the Guardian.

The draft plan from Gothams LLC would allow it to collect a fee for every truck moving goods into Gaza, and charge for the use of its warehousing and distribution system.

Auditor calls renewable energy targets ‘unrealistic’ unless ‘EU ups its game’ in mining, refining and recycling of metals such as rare earths

The EU is struggling to free itself from dependence on China and countries in the global south for critical minerals and rare earths needed for everything from smartphones to wind turbines and military jets.

A damning report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) in Luxembourg found that the bloc’s targets for 2030 were “out of reach” because of lack of progress in domestic production, refining and recycling.

Former Italian PM and ECB chief says Europe must urgently unify on defence and foreign affairs

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country’s energy system remained “seriously” challenged by the impact of recent Russian strikes.

More than 200 buildings are still without heating in Kyiv, as temperatures plummeted to -17 Celsius, with “crews from many regions of Ukraine … deployed for the repair work.”

“Europe absolutely can defend yourself. Please stop whining. Why is this so much whingeing about [on], you know, if the US leave, what are we going to do? Come on.

… Europe … why are we so scared: ‘please, don’t leave the US leave…’ Please stand up to my president. Hold us accountable. Make us live up to our talking points.”

Charge is designed to protect much-loved monument from overtourism, but not all visitors like the idea

Teresa Romero is in Rome to celebrate a milestone birthday and one of the first things she did on Monday was visit the Trevi fountain to participate in the ritual of tossing a coin into the waters of the late baroque masterpiece.

But before the Portuguese tourist could get close to the fountain, she had to hand over €2 (£1.70) – the cost of an access fee that has finally been enacted by Rome council officials after years of discussions.

President Trump has attacked U.S. District Judge James Boasberg for his decisions against the administration in a case involving the summary removals of Venezuelan migrants to a Salvadoran prison.

Feb. 2, 2026 — Modern biological research generates data at unprecedented scale—from single-cell sequencing to whole-brain connectomics—yet transforming that data into validated biological insights remains a fundamental bottleneck. Knowledge synthesis, hypothesis generation, and experimental interpretation still depend on manual processes that can’t keep pace with the data being produced.

Today, Anthropic is announcing two flagship partnerships designed to close that gap. The Allen Institute and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) will serve as founding partners in life sciences, extending Claude’s capabilities to frontier scientific research and enabling teams of scientists to work more effectively together and take on ambitious scientific challenges. Each collaboration brings together Anthropic’s expertise in foundation models, agentic systems, and interpretability with world-class research institutions tackling distinct but complementary problems in biology and biomedical science. These partnerships position Claude at the center of scientific experimentation and will build a foundation in which scientists actively use Claude to plan and execute experiments.

Both partnerships are committed to transparency and advances that will help the broader scientific community rigorously deploy AI tools across many scientific domains. Scientific AI systems must not only produce accurate predictions but also provide reasoning that researchers can evaluate, trace, and build upon. These collaborations position Claude as a tool that augments, rather than replaces, human scientific judgment — ensuring that AI-generated insights are grounded in evidence and legible to the scientists who use them.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute: Building the Infrastructure for AI-Enabled Scientific Discovery

HHMI will partner with Anthropic to accelerate discovery in the biological sciences as one part of the Institute’s AI@HHMI initiative. The collaboration is anchored at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus, which has been developing transformative technologies—from genetically encoded calcium sensors to electron microscopes engineered for understanding the architecture of the brain—for two decades. This foundation uniquely positions HHMI to help shape how AI systems participate in and enhance the research process.

The partnership with Anthropic will involve close collaboration on both the deployment and ongoing development of AI models, ensuring that AI tools evolve in direct response to real experimental needs. Since announcing AI@HHMI in 2024, HHMI has launched several projects that seek to use AI tools to solve longstanding scientific problems ranging from computational protein design to neural mechanisms of cognition. The collaboration with Anthropic will focus on developing specialized AI agents for use within labs. These will serve as a comprehensive source of experimental knowledge integrated with cutting-edge scientific instruments and analysis pipelines to speed the pace of discovery.

Allen Institute: Multi-Agent Systems for Mechanistic Discovery

The Allen Institute will collaborate with Anthropic to develop multi-agent AI systems for multi-modal data analysis and exploration across the institute’s areas of scientific focus. The work will explore how multiple specialized AI agents—for multi-omic data integration, knowledge graph management, temporal dynamics modeling, and experimental design—can be coordinated to support the full arc of scientific investigation.

This collaboration will explore how agentic AI systems can compress months of manual analysis into hours while surfacing patterns that human researchers might otherwise miss. These systems are designed to amplify scientific intuition rather than replace it, keeping researchers in control of scientific direction while handling computational complexity.

For Anthropic, this collaboration provides in-depth feedback from real scientific use with day-to-day workflows where reliability and judgment matter. Working with the Allen Institute helps surface usability gaps and failure modes that don’t appear in more controlled settings.

Looking Ahead

These partnerships will inform the broader development of Claude’s life science capabilities, generating insights about how AI systems can most effectively support scientific workflows across diverse research contexts. Anthropic is committed to responsible development that prioritizes scientific rigor, interpretability, and researcher autonomy.

Source: Anthropic

The post Anthropic Launches Life Sciences Collaborations with Allen Institute and HHMI appeared first on HPCwire.

Trump supporter Júnior Pena falsely claimed migrants being rounded up, including Brazilians, were ‘all crooks’

A rightwing Brazilian influencer who claimed Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown targeted only “crooks” has been arrested by ICE agents in New Jersey.

Júnior Pena, whose full name is Eustáquio da Silva Pena Júnior, declared his support for the US president in a recent video message to his hundreds of thousands of social media followers.

The president called the ceremony ‘garbage’, but in reality it was a celebration of artists whose commercial success was matched by boundary-pushing boldness

Donald Trump, it seems, did not much enjoy the 2026 Grammys. Shortly after the conclusion of the ceremony’s live broadcast in the US, there he was on Truth Social, calling it “the worst”, “garbage”, “unwatchable” and threatening to sue host Trevor Noah.

Perhaps that was the reaction the Recording Academy wanted. You could, if you wished, divine a certain Maga-baiting intent not just in the decision to give the album of the year award to Bad Bunny – a Puerto Rican who attracted criticism from the Trump administration after he was booked to headline the SuperBowl LX half-time show – but the choice of the Buena Vista Social Club, a Broadway hit based on the 1997 album of the same name featuring veteran Cuban musicians, as the best musical theatre album: the latter two weeks after the New York Times reported that Cubans settled in Florida are being deported in record numbers.

The victim's wife managed to escape after park rangers scared the animal away, officials said.

British pop collective decry use of 1997 hit Tubthumping to promote the party’s ‘small-minded, hate-fuelled agenda’

The British pop collective Chumbawamba has asked Spain’s Vox to stop using their best-known song to promote “its small-minded, hate-fuelled agenda” after the far-right party chose its 1997 hit single Tubthumping to soundtrack a social media post railing against migration.

Santiago Abascal, who leads Vox, visited the north-eastern Spanish town of Caspe last week in the run-up to this weekend’s regional election in Aragón. He posted images of the visit to Facebook on Friday, along with the caption: “Great welcome yesterday in Caspe … for a street press conference. The locals are sick of the migratory invasion. And we stand with them.”

Looking to buy a home or refinance your existing one? Here are the mortgage interest rates you'll need to know now.

A VPN can help you unlock the entire Olympic games, potentially for free.

See Budweiser celebrate its birthday, Derrick Henry on an adventurous trolley ride and a KPop Demon Hunters star.

Awards host alluded to president’s association with late sex offender in awards ceremony remarks

• US politics – live updates

Grammys host Trevor Noah has been threatened with legal action by Donald Trump for a joke during Sunday’s awards ceremony about the president’s connection to the disgraced late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump fired off an angry post on his Truth Social platform shortly after the comedian said the song of the year award was “a Grammy that every artist wants – almost as much as Trump wants Greenland, which makes sense because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton”.

Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit's son hit with new criminal charges as she apologizes for "poor judgment" over Epstein ties.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. and BOSTON, Feb. 2, 2026 — QuEra Computing and Roadrunner Venture Studios today announced a $4 million strategic partnership to build a quantum testbed at the Roadrunner Quantum Lab (RQL) powered by the State of New Mexico in Albuquerque. QuEra’s commitment includes running facilities with full-time hires in state, making Albuquerque’s Innovation District a world-class center for quantum companies.

“QuEra is one of the most innovative quantum companies in the world and they are now bringing their neutral atom platform to New Mexico,” said Adam Hammer, CEO and Co-Founder of Roadrunner Venture Studios. “Together, QuEra, Roadrunner, and the State of New Mexico are removing a significant burden that New Mexico-based founders face in validating their technologies: access to leading engineers, top-of-market equipment, and compute. This new facility will be an unparalleled proving ground for America’s next generation of quantum companies.”

The partnership is a significant economic investment in New Mexico and the first step in a long-term commitment to the state. QuEra will establish a physical presence at the RQL and hire multiple full-time employees, while expanding access to its quantum computing systems for resident companies. The testbed is designed to generate high-skill jobs, workforce training programs, startup formation, and increased federal and private capital—building the foundation for a durable advanced technology economy in New Mexico.

“To build a quantum economy, companies need to test and prove their technologies quickly, efficiently, and accurately,” said Nate Gemelke, Chief Technology Strategist of QuEra Computing. “This partnership brings infrastructure to New Mexico that fills a real gap in getting quantum technology to market. With the help of our New Mexico partners, QuEra’s vision is to bring more resources to New Mexico in the coming years and make the state a national hub for neutral-atom quantum computing.”

The collaboration is the latest accomplishment in the state’s $300 million effort to build a globally competitive quantum economy. Backed by the New Mexico Economic Development Department and the State of New Mexico, Roadrunner is advancing its quantum coalition promise to bring quantum companies from around the United States to the state by bringing one of the world’s leading quantum compute companies to New Mexico’s innovation ecosystem.

“New Mexico has always had research strengths in quantum. Now, the state’s investments and unique partnerships are bringing industry growth that means real economic impact for New Mexicans,” said Nora Meyers Sackett, Director of the Technology and Innovation Office at the New Mexico Economic Development Department. “QuEra’s addition to the state’s fast-growing quantum ecosystem is more confirmation that New Mexico is the quantum state.”

Neutral-atom quantum computing offers unique advantages—such as scalability, performance, and speed—for founders aiming to validate quantum components including laser systems. By testing on QuEra’s systems, founders and scientists can speed up expensive, time-consuming builds and deliver and deploy technology more efficiently.

The testbeds will support R&D across multiple domains, including:

• Photonics and Optics Testing Center: The POTC will be a laboratory with equipment for Neutral Atom Quantum Computing research. It will include a replicable testbed for scalable neutral atom arrays, alongside advanced calibration and measurement tools for validating beam stability and single-atom interaction parameters. Housed in a controlled, cleanroom-adjacent environment with rigorous safety protocols, this center will enable researchers and startups to prototype, iterate, and validate cutting-edge photonic components essential to next-generation quantum systems.
• Classical Compute User-Access Facility: QuEra will establish infrastructure within the RQL, housing server racks and high-performance networking, to support secure, low-latency processing for hybrid quantum-classical workloads. This infrastructure will provide approved users with remote access to QuEra-hosted compute and quantum resources. This infrastructure will enable vetted researchers, academic partners, and industry collaborators to remotely run, develop, and test algorithms, and perform complex simulations from anywhere.

The facilities are expected to launch later this year, starting with academic and national lab partners before opening to industry collaborators and quantum startups. Roadrunner’s quantum coalition includes nearly a dozen partners spanning national laboratories (Sandia, Los Alamos), the private sector (Qunnect, QuEra Computing, Maybell), academic institutions (University of New Mexico), and venture capital firms (DCVC, Playground Global, Quantonation). These partnerships have been made possible with the support of the State of New Mexico.

About QuEra Computing

QuEra is putting quantum to work. As the scientific and commercial leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, we help enterprise innovators leverage quantum to gain competitive advantage, support HPC centers as they help users tackle classically intractable problems, and enable government programs to build national capability and sovereign capabilities. We do this through our quantum innovation platform, combining quantum systems available on-premises and via the cloud with application co-design and collaborative research. Born at Harvard and MIT, still advancing together, QuEra operates globally from Boston, Tokyo, and the United Kingdom. As quantum computing moves from “one day” to “Day One,” QuEra delivers practical impact today while advancing toward large-scale, fault-tolerant systems. See what’s possible at quera.com.

About Roadrunner Venture Studios

Roadrunner is the nation’s first venture studio purpose-built for hard science company creation. The studio works with national labs, research institutions, and venture capital firms to turn research in advanced energy, robotics, and quantum into scalable, venture-backable companies. For more information, visit www.roadrunnerventurestudios.com.

Source: QuEra Computing

The post QuEra Partners with Roadrunner Venture Studios on $4M Quantum Testbed in New Mexico appeared first on HPCwire.

Starbucks has been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into AI and automation -- testing robots that take drive-through orders, virtual assistants that help baristas recall recipes and manage schedules, and scanning tools that count inventory -- as the 55-year-old coffee chain tries to reverse several years of struggling sales. The company last week reported its first same-store sales increase in two years in the U.S., where it earns roughly 70% of its revenue. Shares still slid 5% on concerns that heavy spending, including $500 million to boost staffing, had hurt profits. CEO Brian Niccol, who joined in 2024 after engineering Chipotle's turnaround, told the BBC he is confident consistent growth will address that; the company has pledged to find $2 billion in cost savings over three years.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Millions of dollars have been raised for Bondi hero Ahmed al-Ahmed, while campaigns are backing families hit by Victoria’s bushfires. What does this way of giving mean for the charity sector?

Within hours of the Bondi beach terror attack, the money had already begun to pour in. As images of the tragedy flooded social media, people from around the world donated tens of thousands of dollars to the victims, their families and first responders.

Passing the hat around the neighbourhood or the local pub has always been a staple response in times of crisis. But today, that instinct to open your wallet has been exponentially supercharged via a digital simulacrum: online crowdfunding platforms.

Wael Tarabishi, who has a lifelong muscle disorder, died after Maher, his father and primary caretaker, was detained

Until three months ago, Wael Tarabishi and his father, Maher, were inseparable. It was a necessity; in addition to being best friends, Maher was the caretaker for 30-year-old Wael, who was diagnosed with a progressive muscle disorder called Pompe disease when he was a child.

As Wael’s mother said in November, Maher was his son’s “case manager, his equipment company, his doctor, his everything”.

New rates will impact subscribers in the US.

China's decades-old network of elite high-school "genius classes" -- ultra-competitive talent streams that pull an estimated 100,000 gifted teenagers out of regular schooling every year and run them through college-level science curricula -- has produced the core technical talent now building the country's leading AI and technology companies, the Financial Times reported Saturday. Graduates of these programs include the founder of ByteDance, the leaders of e-commerce giants Taobao and PDD, the billionaire behind super-app Meituan, the brothers who started Nvidia rival Cambricon, and the core engineers behind large language models at DeepSeek and Alibaba's Qwen. DeepSeek's research team of more than 100 was almost entirely composed of genius-class alumni when the startup released its R1 reasoning model last year at a fraction of the cost of its international rivals. The system traces to the mid-1980s, when China first sent students to the International Mathematical Olympiad and a handful of top high schools began creating dedicated competition-track classes. China now graduates around five million STEM majors annually -- compared to roughly half a million in the United States -- and in 2025, 22 of the 23 students it sent to the International Science Olympiads returned with gold medals. The computer science track has overtaken maths and physics as the most popular competition subject, a shift that accelerated after Beijing designated AI development a "key national growth strategy" in 2017.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Demand by US that it take control of Arctic island is for many a reminder of troubling imperial past

On a bitterly cold recent morning in the Canadian Arctic, about 70 people took to the streets. Braving the bone-chilling winds, they marched through the Inuit territory of Nunavut, waving signs that read: “We stand with Greenland” and “Greenland is a partner, not a purchase.”

It was a glimpse of how, for Indigenous peoples across the Arctic, the battle over Greenland has become a wider reckoning, seemingly pitting the long-fought battle to assert their rights against a global push for power.

Fulton County plans to file a motion challenging what local leaders call an unprecedented and improper seizure of 2020 election records, following an FBI search of the county's elections office last week.

India wants to reset relations after Bangladesh elections. It will be easier said than done Expert comment LToremark 2 February 2026

India is hoping a new democratically elected government in Bangladesh will help improve bilateral relations. But identity politics in both countries could derail progress.

As Bangladesh prepares to hold elections on 12 February – after almost 18 months under an unelected interim government – India is seeking a reset in bilateral relations. The relationship between Dhaka and New Delhi has deteriorated after the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted in August 2024 following large-scale unrest in which some 1,400 people were killed. India’s historically close relations with Hasina’s party – the Awami League – fuelled allegations that New Delhi empowered her government’s increasingly autocratic tendencies.  

The fact that Hasina fled to India and has continued to make statements from there has added to the bad blood, as has the verdict issued in November which found her guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced her to death. Bangladesh and India maintain an extradition treaty, but New Delhi has so far refused to extradite Hasina on the grounds that it has the right to refuse requests if the offence is of a ‘political character’.

New Delhi fears that Hasina’s removal from power has created space for groups that are hostile towards India, amid growing anti-India rhetoric and violence in Bangladesh. Attacks on minorities – including Bangladesh’s 13 million-strong Hindu population – have exacerbated tensions. The Bangladeshi government claims that such attacks have been exaggerated and are largely politically motivated, not about religious affiliation. The murder in December of a Bangladeshi youth activist who had been critical of India triggered further unrest, including the lynching of a Hindu man. Claims that the suspects fled to India worsened relations between the two countries.

Reflecting the poor state of bilateral relations, India halved its financial assistance to Bangladesh in its latest budget.

Geopolitical faultlines

Related work

Bangladesh is helping to create a geopolitical shift in South Asia

Adding insult to injury is the Bangladeshi government’s outreach to countries that have historically difficult relations with India, including China and Pakistan. But close ties with China are not new. Beijing has been a longstanding trade, investment and defence partner for Bangladesh – more than 70 per cent of the country’s arms imports came from China in the 2019-23 period for example. Nonetheless, India fears that China is seeking to exploit its deteriorating relations with Bangladesh. In June, Bangladesh, China and Pakistan held the inaugural meeting of a foreign secretary/vice foreign minister dialogue. This parallels a similar initiative between Afghanistan, China and Pakistan. New Delhi views this as an effort to marginalize India in its own neighbourhood.

During a visit to China in March 2025, Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser Muhammed Yunus referred to India’s ‘landlocked’ northeastern states and said Bangladesh is the ‘only guardian of the ocean’ that could serve as an ‘extension of the Chinese economy’. This did not go down well in New Delhi. China is involved in several high-profile infrastructure projects in Bangladesh, including modernization of the Mongla Port – its second-largest seaport – and a water management project along the Teesta River. The latter is of particular concern to New Delhi as Bangladesh and India have been engaged in stalled negotiations on sharing the river waters.

Dhaka’s engagement with Islamabad have seen a more notable shift. The two countries have had historically strained relations following Bangladesh’s secession from Pakistan in 1971 following a violent independence struggle. Improved relations have seen a relaxation of visa rules and trade restrictions, the establishment of direct sea links between Chittagong and Karachi and several senior-level interactions. Dhaka and Islamabad have also discussed deepening defence cooperation. For example, Bangladesh is considering procuring the JF-17 fighter aircraft, which is jointly produced by China and Pakistan.

Identity politics could derail a reset

India is hoping the return to democratic rule in Bangladesh will help reset relations. In preparation, New Delhi has sought to deepen and diversify its political engagement with Bangladesh, to dispel allegations surrounding its historic ties with the Awami League. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Yunus met on the sidelines of a conference in Bangkok in April and Modi sent a condolence letter following the death of Khaleda Zia – leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) – in December. Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar also attended Zia’s funeral where he met her son, Tarique Rahman. Rahman has recently returned to Bangladesh after 17 years in exile and is widely tipped to be the next prime minister if the BNP performs well in the election.

However, identity politics in both countries threatens to derail progress. A new government in Dhaka that is overtly hostile towards India, for example one that includes Islamic hardliners, will make rapprochement difficult. Even a BNP-led government does not guarantee improved relations. In an interview, Rahman stated that ‘the people of Bangladesh have decided that relations will remain cool. So, I have to stand with my country’s people’. When the BNP ruled Bangladesh in 2001-06 relations with India deteriorated amid growing instability along the border and a surge in terrorist activity.

A shift in mindset towards India will be dictated in part by the issue of Hasina’s extradition. Publicly, New Delhi will remain averse to extraditing her. Privately, however, the Indian government will be looking to make the issue go away, for example by Hasina moving onto a third country.

In India, meanwhile, attacks on Bangladeshi Hindus have become a prominent issue in public and media discourse. India will be holding elections this year in two states that border Bangladesh – Assam and West Bengal – which could see an increase in anti-Bangladesh rhetoric in the run-up to the polls.

The credibility of the Bangladeshi election and its outcome will also determine the trajectory of the bilateral relationship. A low voter turnout fuelled by violence could undermine the credibility of the electoral process. Supporters of the Awami League have threatened to disrupt the elections after the party has been effectively banned from standing in the election. The former foreign minister in the Hasina government, Hasan Mahmud, has said stability will not return to Bangladesh if the Awami League is excluded.

Deputy US attorney general says the government cannot ‘just create evidence’ but victims’ attorney accuses government of hiding perpetrators while exposing survivors. Plus, the Mormon women who fought a Republican-led redistricting initiative in Utah – and won

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Good morning.

The deputy US attorney general, Todd Blanche, told ABC News yesterday that prosecutors’ review of the Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking case “is over”, and in a separate interview to CNN said “victims want to be made whole”. “And we want that,” Blanche said. “But that doesn’t mean we can just create evidence or that we can just kind of come up with a case that isn’t there.”

What are the latest disclosures to emerge from the huge dump of 3.5m documents related to Epstein on Friday? Some of the documents suggest that other men were involved in his sexual abuse, prompting questions about officials’ contentions that there isn’t evidence to investigate third parties for potential involvement in the late financier’s crimes.

What did Bad Bunny say? “Before I say thanks to God, I’m gonna say ICE out,” he said. “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens, we’re humans and we are Americans … The only thing more powerful than hate is love so please we need to be different.”

Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy system 5 February 2026 — 1:00PM TO 2:30PM Anonymous (not verified) 2 February 2026 Online

What are the consequences and how should Europe respond?

What are the consequences and how should Europe respond?

Since the onset of the full-scale invasion, Russia has launched systematic, high-precision strikes against Ukraine’s civilian energy grid. By February 2026, the cumulative degradation of critical infrastructure has reached a critical point that threatens the continuity of essential services and puts civilian lives at risk during the winter season. In destroying power, heating and water systems during sub-zero temperatures, Russia’s attacks aim to undermine morale and put pressure on the Ukrainian state to divert its limited resources from the battlefield to constant, costly infrastructure repairs. Russia’s damage of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure also increases the risk of new waves of displacement which could further strain Western European social systems and political unity.

This discussion will examine the economic and humanitarian impact of Russia’s strikes and explore different response options for Ukraine and its partners.

•  How does a modern city function when electricity is available for only four hours a day?
• How are Russian strikes on the energy grid impacting Ukraine’s struggling economy?
• Can decentralized energy solutions be deployed fast enough to outpace the rate of Russian attacks?
• How have civil society actors interacted with local authorities and emergency services to strengthen community resilience?
• How should Ukraine’s partners respond to provide immediate humanitarian relief and protect Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure in the long term?

Rightwing populist elected in landslide after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to cocaine trade

The rightwing populist Laura Fernández has won Costa Rica’s presidential election in a landslide after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade.

Fernández’s nearest rival, centre-right economist Álvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40% needed to avoid a runoff.

The U.N. and IOC are asking for a pause in wars, an ancient Olympic tradition, amid the Winter Games. Athletes from countries beset by violence are set to compete.

Punxsutawney Phil looked for his shadow during the 2026 Groundhog Day ceremony.

Trump’s presidency has brought a windfall to billionaires while hurting the poor. In these conditions, democracy cannot survive

Trump ran on a promise to lower costs on day one, but a year into his presidency, the real beneficiaries are his billionaire donors. Instead of making life more affordable for everyday Americans, Trump has used the presidency to enrich himself and his billionaire allies, while making the largest cuts to Medicaid and food assistance in history and leaving working families behind.

As families struggle with rising costs, Trump has effectively turned the White House into a slush fund, running the federal government like a personal ATM. Public money, political favors and government power are funneled to his friends and family businesses, while regulatory agencies and enforcement mechanisms are hollowed out or weaponized for profit. His oligarch allies, from big tech executives to big oil barons, are already seeing massive returns on their political investments. This is not democracy. It is a hostile corporate takeover and working people are being exploited.

Joseph Geevarghese is the executive director of Our Revolution. Rashida Tlaib is a US representative for Michigan

Scores of live music fans in New York’s hip borough report having their phones stolen during live music shows

During a December visit to see family in his home state of New York, Zander Cammarata, who now lives in Berlin, purchased a new iPhone because they cost less in the United States. He then went to see one of his favorite bands, Silverstein, a post-hardcore emo group, in Brooklyn.

By the time he flew back to Germany, he was again using his old phone.

2027 is going to be a big year for iPhones and here's what you can expect.

Online gaming legend Mark Fischbach writes, directs and stars in this feature about a convict on a vague intergalactic mission – but his barebones production has nothing to show

William Goldman’s old showbiz maxim continues to apply that nobody knows anything. Independently financed horror movie Iron Lung has been smuggled into multiplexes without the usual promotional hoopla, where it was keenly awaited by the massed followers of its Hawaiian writer-director-star Mark Fischbach, better known as YouTube gaming legend Markiplier. Many of us have long sensed culture is making a decisive break with the analogue in favour of the (perhaps terminally) online and Fischbach’s film makes that paradigm shift not just visible but visceral; it feels not unlike spending 12 hours on Twitch with all the curtains closed.

Though Markiplier is approaching the horror genre from a notionally fresh angle – by adapting Dave Szymanski’s eponymous space-submarine sim – he lands on the narratively rusty idea of an astronaut straying beyond his depth; this is Moon in dimmer light. Beset by ominous rumbles and mounting doubts about the state of mankind, the begrimed and squalid craft singlehandedly piloted by Fischbach’s straggle-haired convict Simon is indistinguishable from the average teenage bedroom. Our hero staggers round this intergalactic deathtrap completing vaguely specified missions – ram this, repair that, download something or other – like a harassed dad ticking off his Sunday to-do list. In this, Simon proves more proficient than Fischbach’s offscreen self, who is either stumped by or oblivious to the film’s fundamental issues.

Volunteer workers say increasing case numbers and dozens of dead birds raise fears spread is wider than recorded

Members of the public and charity volunteers are working to contain a suspected outbreak of bird flu among swans in the Thames Valley, amid signs that confirmed cases are continuing to rise.

Since October, 324 cases of bird flu in swans have been recorded by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha), which is sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Of these, 39 were recorded in the first four weeks of 2026 alone.

PM believes ex-Labour minister should not be member of House of Lords or use title, No 10 spokesperson says

• UK politics live – latest updates

Keir Starmer has suggested that Peter Mandelson should resign from the House of Lords and that the upper chamber should urgently modernise its disciplinary procedures to strip him of his peerage.

The cabinet secretary, the UK’s most senior civil servant, will also investigate Mandelson’s actions as business secretary when Labour was last in power, after emails to Jeffrey Epstein about government policy emerged.

“Terrorist” is the word that the Trump administration employs to describe the victims of its most egregious acts of state violence.

President Donald Trump has used the word “terrorist” to justify the extrajudicial killings of civilians in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. And his deputies used it to explain away the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis by federal agents.

“Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narco terrorists,” Trump wrote following the initial boat strike on September 2, 2025. He said the attack “occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said that Good and Pretti were guilty of “domestic terrorism.” And top White House adviser Stephen Miller used similar language to describe both.

These killings were conducted thousands of miles apart by different agencies in very different contexts. But the connection between them could be more than semantic.

Under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7, Trump’s Justice Department is now assembling a secret “domestic terrorist organization” database. It also maintains a secret list of “designated terrorist organizations” with whom the U.S. claims to be at war.

For months, the White House and Justice Department have failed to answer a question that becomes more relevant with every person branded a domestic terrorist, shot by federal agents, or both: Are Americans who the federal government deems to be domestic terrorists under NSPM-7 subject to extrajudicial killings like those it claims are members of designated terrorist organizations on boats at sea?

“If we’re going to say it’s OK to kill so-called terrorists in the Caribbean, for actions that have traditionally been dealt with as a criminal matter, using due process — what’s to say you can’t do the same in an American city?” asked Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitution and Limited Government. “That is the very scary but logical end of all these things the Trump administration is doing.”

Trump’s de facto declaration of war on dissent, NSPM-7, conflates constitutionally protected speech and political activism with “domestic terrorism” — a term that has no basis in U.S. law. That memorandum, which was issued in September, and an implementation memo released in December by Attorney General Pam Bondi, specifically targets those that espouse what the administration defines as anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, anti-fascism, and radical gender ideologies, as well as those with “hostility toward those who hold traditional American views.” At a minimum, the memorandum raises serious First Amendment, due process, and civil liberties concerns.

Related

Trump’s War on America

Bondi’s December memo, “Implementing National Security Presidential Memorandum-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” which the Justice Department shared with The Intercept, defines “domestic terrorism” in the broadest possible terms, including “doxing” and “conspiracies to impede … law enforcement.”

Federal immigration agents consider observing, following, and filming their operations a crime under 18 U.S.C. § 111: assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer. This is also the foremost statute in a directory of prioritized crimes listed in NSPM-7.

Federal officers frequently confront and threaten those observing, following, and filming them for “impeding” their efforts. In numerous instances, they have unholstered or pointed weapons at the people who filmed or followed them.

A recent report by the CATO Institute notes that it is “crucial to understand that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) consider people who follow DHS and ICE agents to observe, record, or protest their operations as engaging in ‘impeding.’” It goes on to note that DHS “has a systematic policy of threatening people who follow ICE or DHS agents to record their activities with detentions, arrests, and violence, and agents have already chased, detained, arrested, charged, struck, and shot at people who follow them.”

Before their killings, both Pretti and Good had been observing agents’ activities. In the wake of Good’s death, the Justice Department opened an investigation of Good’s widow for allegedly “interfering” with an ICE operation — apparently for filming the shooting.

NSPM-7 alleges vast “organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, [and] funding sources” support leftist “criminal and terroristic conspiracies.” It adds, “These campaigns are coordinated and perpetrated by actors who have developed a comprehensive strategy to achieve specific policy goals through radicalization and violent intimidation.”

The Trump administration has framed the Minneapolis protests and a larger movement in Minnesota and beyond in the same terms as NSPM-7, painting it as a “Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate” coordinated by a vast network of “highly paid professional agitators and anarchists,” as well as “insurrectionists” supported by corrupt Democratic lawmakers and officials or “sanctuary politicians” who are inciting violence against federal officers.

Trump endorsed Vice President JD Vance’s baseless claim that Good was part of a “broader left-wing network” that sometimes uses “domestic terror techniques” to “attack, to dox, to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job.” Miller suggested Pretti was one of an unknown number of militants operating in Minneapolis. “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists,” he wrote on X on Saturday, referring to comments by a Democratic party account calling for ICE to withdraw from Minneapolis.

Trump initially described Pretti as a “gunman,” although the ICU nurse never drew his licensed handgun before being executed at point blank range by federal agents. After briefly softening his tone on Pretti, Trump called him an “Agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist” in a Friday Truth Social post.

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Miller bills NSPM-7 as the first “all-of-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism,” which he calls a sophisticated, well-funded network supported by an “entire system of feeder organizations that provide money, resources, weapons.” Bondi’s implementation memo also offers a fictitious apocalyptic vision of urban America which the Trump administration has employed to justify its domestic military occupations, including “mass rioting and destruction in our cities” and “violent efforts to shut down immigration enforcement.”

“This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically,” Scanlon told The Intercept, quoting from a section of NSPM-7 that details a supposed coordinated effort by antifascists and other administration enemies. But Scanlon framed it in terms of the Trump administration’s own authoritarian campaign. “The paragraph describing how political violence takes root and becomes more widespread basically describes the Trump era. Every accusation is a confession with this administration. You talk about targeted intimidation and radicalization and threats and violence designed to silence opposing speech — it’s all there, and we’re seeing it unfold.”

Federal immigration officers have shot at least 13 people since September, killing at least five, including Pretti and Good, according to data compiled by The Trace.

“What the Trump Administration is doing in Minnesota is a testing ground for a paramilitary police state across the country,” said Rep. April McClain Delaney, D-Md., on January 25. “Masked DHS agents are now operating in Minnesota neighborhoods with impunity — terrorizing families and neighborhoods, slandering the victims with lies, silencing dissent, seizing and detaining protesters, eroding basic civil liberties and killing American citizens.”

At the same time shootings by immigration agents have ramped up at home, the Trump administration has been killing civilians in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The U.S. military has carried out 36 known attacks, destroying 37 boats, since September, killing at least 126 civilians. The most recent attack occurred in the Pacific Ocean on January 23, killing three people. The administration insists the attacks are permitted because the U.S. is engaged in “non-international armed conflict” with “designated terrorist organizations” it refuses to name. Experts, current and former government officials, and lawmakers say these killings are outright murders.

“This administration has asserted the prerogative to kill people outside the law, solely on the basis of the president labeling them terrorists. And there are no obvious limits to this license to kill,” said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is a specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war. “The president has wielded that authority in the Caribbean and the Pacific and could wield it domestically. Indeed, the fact that they invoked domestic terrorism to justify the killings of Rene Good and Alex Pretti suggests they already might have.”

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Since October, The Intercept has been asking if the White House would rule out conducting summary executions of members of the list “of any such groups or entities” designated as “domestic terrorist organization[s]” under NSPM-7, without a response. Return receipts also show that Justice Department spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre has repeatedly read The Intercept’s questions on this subject over months but has failed to offer an answer.

Faiza Patel, the senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s liberty and national security program, told The Intercept that while it wasn’t possible to directly link NSPM-7 to the killings of Good and Pretti, the memorandum’s rhetoric about what constitutes domestic terrorism “is reflected in senior officials’ statements and it seems that DHS agents on the ground view any opposition to their actions as warranting extreme and even lethal force.”

Federal agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations assigned to Minneapolis received a memo earlier in January asking them to collect identifying information on “agitators, protestors, etc.,” CNN reported Tuesday. Last week, a masked immigration agent warned a woman filming their activities in Portland, Maine, that her information would be entered into a “nice little database” that would label her a “domestic terrorist.” Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar and Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino’s replacement, also mentioned the database the same month on Fox News. “We’re going to create a database,” he said, noting that it would include those “arrested for interference, impeding and assault.” Journalist Ken Klippenstein recently reported on more than a dozen “secret and obscure watchlists” being used to track protesters and supposed “domestic terrorists.”

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin says her department does not administer the secret database. “There is NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS,” she told The Intercept by email. “We do of course monitor and investigate and refer all threats, assaults and obstruction of our officers to the appropriate law enforcement.” DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis does admit that it “nominated over 4,600 people to the terrorist watchlist” in the last year and says ICE arrested more than 1,400 “known or suspected terrorists.”

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How Many Members Does Antifa Have? Where Is Its Headquarters? The FBI Has No Answers.

NSPM-7 directs Bondi to compile a list “of any such groups or entities” to be designated as “domestic terrorist organization[s],” and Bondi has ordered the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism,” according to the December 4 memo. Last fall, FBI Director Kash Patel told senators that there were “1,700 domestic terrorism investigations” and that it represented “a 300% increase in cases opened this year alone versus the same time last year.” 

When asked if Good or Pretti were on any domestic terrorism list, watchlist, or under surveillance by federal authorities, a bureau spokesperson said: “The FBI has no comment.”

Neither NSPM-7 nor the December 4 memo mentions summary executions, and both speak explicitly in terms of “prosecution” and “arrest” of members of domestic terrorist organizations. Attacks on members of designated terrorist organizations are justified by another document: a classified opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel with a secret list of cartels and gangs attached to it.

The Justice Department memo notes that under Section 3 of NSPM-7, “the FBI, in coordination with its partners on the [Joint Terrorism Task Forces], and consistent with applicable law, shall compile a list of groups or entities engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism” and “provide that list to the Deputy Attorney General.”

The FBI’s national press office directed The Intercept to contact the Department of Justice concerning questions about the NSPM-7 list. Baldassarre also failed to respond to those queries.

“To the extent that the White House somehow has a secret enemies list and people don’t know who’s on it — that goes beyond McCarthyism,” Scanlon told The Intercept. “It’s absolutely horrific.”

Recent reported statements by Trump suggest that the president may see little difference between those the administration brands foreign and domestic terrorists nor in efforts to combat them. Last month, the U.S. attacked Venezuela and abducted its president, Nicolás Maduro, killing scores of people, including civilians. Maduro — whom Trump branded a terrorist — was brought to the U.S. and charged with numerous offenses, foremost among them, according to the State Department, “narco-terrorism.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said last week that Trump compared his federal immigration crackdown in his state to the attack in Venezuela that ousted Maduro. “He told me how well that went,” Walz told MS NOW. “Which really was strange to me was he saw an operation in Venezuela against a foreign nation in the same context he saw an operation against a U.S. state and a U.S. city.”

The White House did not return a request for comment.

The post Trump Calls His Enemies Terrorists. Does That Mean He Can Just Kill Them? appeared first on The Intercept.

The New York Times lists other reasons a company lays off people. ("It didn't meet financial targets. It overhired. Tariffs, or the loss of a big client, rocked it...") "But lately, many companies are highlighting a new factor: artificial intelligence. Executives, saying they anticipate huge changes from the technology, are making cuts now." A.I. was cited in the announcements of more than 50,000 layoffs in 2025, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a research firm... Investors may applaud such pre-emptive moves. But some skeptics (including media outlets) suggest that corporations are disingenuously blaming A.I. for layoffs, or "A.I.-washing." As the market research firm Forrester put it in a January report: "Many companies announcing A.I.-related layoffs do not have mature, vetted A.I. applications ready to fill those roles, highlighting a trend of 'A.I.-washing' — attributing financially motivated cuts to future A.I. implementation...." "Companies are saying that 'we're anticipating that we're going to introduce A.I. that will take over these jobs.' But it hasn't happened yet. So that's one reason to be skeptical," said Peter Cappelli, a professor at the Wharton School... Of course, A.I. may well end up transforming the job market, in tech and beyond. But a recent study... [by a senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies A.I. and work] found that AI has not yet meaningfully shifted the overall market. Tech firms have cut more than 700,000 employees globally since 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks industry job losses. But much of that was a correction for overhiring during the pandemic. As unpopular as A.I. job cuts may be to the public, they may be less controversial than other reasons — like bad company planning. Amazon CEO Jassy has even said the reason for most of their layoffs was reducing bureaucracy, the article points out, although "Most analysts, however, believe Amazon is cutting jobs to clear money for A.I. investments, such as data centers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The US president tried to kill offshore wind projects – now four are back under construction

Construction has resumed on four offshore wind mega-projects after they survived a near fatal attack by Donald Trump’s administration thanks to rulings by federal judges. These are being seen as victories for clean energy amid a wider war being waged on it by the Trump administration.

The wind farms are considered critical by grid planners as America faces an energy affordability crisis. Together, the four projects will contribute nearly five gigawatts of energy to the east coast, enough to power 3.5 million homes.

Island’s first tropical storm of season may bring 150mm of rain – meanwhile, eastern Europe freezes with possible night-time lows of -30C

At least three people have died and nearly 30,000 people have been affected by flooding after Madagascar’s first tropical storm of the season hit over the weekend.

Tropical Cyclone Fytia formed to the north-west of Madagascar over the northern Mozambique Channel on Thursday.

The once-lauded director of Black Swan and The Wrestler has drowned himself in AI slop with an embarrassing new online series

If you happen to find yourself stumbling through Time magazine’s YouTube account, perhaps because you are a time traveller from the 1970s who doesn’t fully understand how the present works yet – then you will be presented with something that many believe represents the vanguard of entertainment as we know it.

On This Day … 1776 is a series of short videos depicting America’s revolutionary war. What makes On This Day notable is that it was made by Darren Aronofsky’s studio Primordial Soup. What also makes it interesting is that it was created with AI. The third thing that makes it interesting is that it is terrible.

Labour suspended Norris, 66, last year after his original arrest on suspicion of child sexual abuse offences

Dan Norris, a former Labour minister and now an independent MP, has been rearrested on suspicion of rape, sexual assault, voyeurism and upskirting, it is understood.

Labour suspended Norris, 66, who defeated Jacob Rees-Mogg at the last election, last year after his original arrest.

Exclusive: Charities and experts fear changes to special needs education in England may weaken legal protections

• UK politics live – latest updates

Ministers have been warned that any dilution of legal rights for disabled children and their families would cross “red lines”, as the government prepares substantial changes to special education needs and disabilities (Send) provision in England.

The Disabled Children’s Partnership, which represents more than 130 charities and professional groups, has written to the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, and MPs to raise concerns that the overhaul will “come at the expense of children’s legal protections”.

Lionel Messi’s presence has been crucial to the defending champions’ excellent offseason

Winning MLS Cup brings only a couple guaranteed returns: the cup itself and a cash prize ($300,000, roughly the salary of one MLS backup defender). Historically, it has also ushered in a near-mandatory squad rebuild, a consequence of MLS’s parity-driven design. With rare exceptions, great teams find it nigh-on-impossible to keep the band together, or to improve on what they already have.

Not so for Inter Miami this year. After a slew of high-powered offseason additions capped by Friday’s $15m capture of Monterrey striker Germán Berterame, a historically fortunate franchise has gotten even better; completely unlike the 29 MLS Cup champions that preceded them.

Providers are arranging home visits and telehealth as neighbors pick up prescriptions, groceries and diapers

A public health crisis is unfolding in Minnesota as people targeted by federal agents are afraid to seek healthcare while some healthcare staff are also fearful for their safety at work.

Community organizations and health providers are now arranging home visits, telehealth appointments and other alternate care.

We are witnessing a dangerous escalation in the Trump administration’s attacks on the press and a clear threat to first amendment freedoms

The extraordinary arrests of the journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort last week are a dangerous escalation in the Trump administration’s attacks on the press and pose a clear threat to first amendment freedoms. Mere weeks after federal law enforcement executed a search warrant targeting a Washington Post reporter, the justice department is now pursuing criminal charges against two independent journalists for reporting from the scene of a protest in Minnesota citing – ironically – federal laws intended to protect the exercise of constitutional rights. These indictments are an affront to the first amendment of the US constitution.

On 18 January, protesters entered the Cities church in St Paul, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official is a pastor, and interrupted a service with chants of “ICE out.” By all indications, Lemon, a former CNN host, and Fort, a local journalist, entered the church to cover the demonstration against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities.

Theodore J Boutrous, Jr & Katie Townsend are partners in the law firm of Gibson Dunn and co-chairs of the firm’s first amendment and free expression group

Authorities said officers killed three suspects in the shooting of two women, whom Secretary of Public Education Mario Delgado later identified as his aunt and cousin.

The 2026 Grammy Awards recognized the best of the best in music from last year, with big wins for Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny. Here's the full list of winners and nominees.

Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt reopened on Monday for limited traffic, a key step as the Israeli-Hamas ceasefire​ moves ahead, Egyptian and Israeli security officials said.

I take hydration seriously, but this reusable, smart water bottle helped me realize I wasn't drinking enough water.

A panic pervades the internet: terrified talk of troops in American cities, federal shock troops brutalizing citizens and neighbors, the targeting of gun owners, mass surveillance, the deployment of militarized artificial intelligence, and the suspension of the Constitution. The year is 2015, and the far right is incensed.

This was a period of intense American paranoia and anger, largely spurred by the right-wing meltdown over the consecutive victories of President Barack Obama. It was also a time of post-Snowden horror, as a nation realized it lived inside an unfathomably immense government surveillance dragnet endorsed and expanded by both political parties. It was in this moment that, for a certain segment of conservatives, Jade Helm 15 became an American crisis.

A decade later, this imaginary emergency reveals much about the hucksters who pushed it and the tolerance of many Americans for state oppression — so long as they are not the intended targets. The cauldron of race hatred, federal violence, and surveillance brewed by the paranoiacs who pounced on Jade Helm has spilled over today not in the form of right-wing phobia, but right-wing policy.

In July 2015, Alex Jones, at that point still little more than a punchline, issued a dire warning on his website InfoWars: “This is an emergency broadcast,” Jones began, warning of an impending campaign to “militarize police and to put standing armies on the streets to suppress the population and to carry out political operations.”

Jones was referring to publicly released Pentagon planning documents detailing Jade Helm 15, a military training exercise throughout sparsely populated swaths of the American South, from Florida to Texas. As is often the case when the dishonest have primary documents and a vast megaphone, Jones misstated nearly every detail of the materials. A map from what was essentially a large-scale military roleplaying game labeling Texas as “hostile,” colored in red, was irrefutable evidence to Jones that the Obama administration was preparing to let loose the national security state on the conservative heartland.

All of this was simple pretext, he claimed. The White House was leveraging the national security state to build the infrastructure for the federal paramilitary occupation of the country to choke out political dissent by force. Unwanted portions of the populations would be herded into Department of Homeland Security-administered camps, warned Jones and other stalwarts of right-wing paranoia. “We’re not becoming a police state,” he told viewers. “We’re already here.”

Though there was never any factual reason to suspect Jade Helm disguised a federal takeover, the broader paranoia was anchored in some fact. Jones claimed that the training exercise was connected to the broader militarization of American police agencies, a real trend he misconstrued as a leftist scheme against his audience. “You have massive military gear being cached — armored vehicles, machine guns, helicopters, night vision, Humvees — with the police departments around the country,” Jones explained. “It’s about suppressing the patriot population.”

Jones was not alone. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott quickly endorsed InfoWars’ ravings, deploying the state guard to “monitor” Jade Helm so that “Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed,” as he put it in an April 2015 letter ordering their mobilization. Former Texas congressman Louie Gohmert suggested the White House was hoping to provoke an armed confrontation between the military and the administration’s critics. “It is no surprise that those who have experienced or noticed such persecution are legitimately suspicious,” he said. “I understand the reason for concern and uncertainty,” agreed Sen. Ted Cruz.

Some Americans heeded the warning. The New York Times interviewed a Texas doctor stockpiling ammunition. Locals organized Jade Helm volunteer groups that monitored and recorded military movement. The Oath Keepers, a prominent American anti-government militia, described Jade Helm on its website as a “Portentous government plan, a pre-fabricated and pre-constructed umbrella under which a black op by the Deep State’s compartmentalized agencies could possibly ‘Go Live’ in a fantastic sort of Shock and Awe False Flag psycho-coup to jar the public mind of America through fear into acceptance of some nefarious policy the government desired, such as the establishment of Martial Law and the complete loss of individual liberty and our Constitution.”

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These days, Jade Helm isn’t talked about much because nothing happened. But in the decade since, there has been a near-total inversion of the panic that Jade Helm sparked. Largely unconcerned and frequently unconstrained by law, Trump has found in his Department of Homeland Security what Jones warned was coming a decade ago: a paramilitary force to terrorize political opponents and demographic undesirables. Eleven years past schedule, Trump and a docile American right wing have finally delivered the Jade Helm presidency.

Armored personnel carriers today carry masked, heavily armed, pointlessly camouflaged federal commandos through American cities that voted against the president, backed by a sophisticated national surveillance apparatus. Trump and his lieutenants, beneficiaries of an American right-wing reshaped by the likes of Jones and his audience, make real and explicit the quiet fantasizing attributed to Obama’s during Jade Helm, speaking openly of American communities as hives of the enemy. In September, Trump announced impending deportation operations in Chicago with a doctored image depicting the city under attack by napalm, captioned “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”

The notion of ideological foes not as electoral enemies but legitimate targets of violence is no longer the stuff of conspiracy podcasts, but the political mainstream. Trump referred to a need to stamp out the “enemy within” the United States in September speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, suggesting the unconstitutional use of the military to “handle” them, and mused about using American cities as “training grounds” for the Pentagon. Gun-toting agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Custom and Border Protection are the foot soldiers of a government that describes its people as terrorists. They have been joined at times by actual soldiers, Marines and National Guard members, deployed illegally in cities like Los Angeles where the president’s policies are unpopular.

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Since Trump’s speech, DHS agents have shot 12 people, killing four of them. Minneapolis residents describe the experience of ICE and CBP’s surge as something akin to a military occupation. Where Obama’s Jade Helm fell short in the collective imaginations of the InfoWars right, Trump’s second term has succeeded in wielding DHS as an ideological cudgel. After Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti were gunned down by DHS agents, the department’s justification for dispensing the death penalty on the sidewalk — that they were both domestic terrorists bent on killing federal personnel — quickly disintegrated in the face of video evidence. All that was left was a rationale more foreboding than anything Jade Helm truthers attributed to the Obama administration, a shrug that boils down to this brutal view: That’s what they get for wanting this to stop. 

“Was he simply walking by and just happened to walk into a law enforcement situation and try to direct traffic and stand in the middle of the road, and then assault, delay, and obstruct law enforcement?” CBP’s Greg Bovino wondered of Pretti at a press conference. “Or was he there for a reason?” (Pretti’s reason for being there that day was clear, having been filmed from multiple angles: to legally observe and record the agents who then killed him.)

The idea that merely opposing the president’s immigration policy is reason enough to warrant summary execution is, if not stated outright, now on the lips of many right-wing commentators. It’s an implicit threat that the next person to record a masked cop on their block could receive the same.

Immigration authorities have brought to life the id of Jade Helm not just through overt displays of force, but also through the vast intelligence and surveillance apparatus within DHS.

In May 2015, InfoWars correspondent David Knight warned that Jade Helm would involve the collection and exploitation of enormous reams of personal information. “They analyze the data, and then because you stick out in some way, now you’re treated as if you’ve already had due process, as if you’ve already been found guilty of a crime,” resulting in the government kicking down the doors of innocent people. “If you understand the technology that’s involved, then you’ll see that Jade Helm is more of an intelligence operation using geospatial intelligence mapping,” claimed InfoWars correspondent Lee Ann McAdoo. “And as information from low-level surveillance technologies such as stingrays and predictive policing programs are all getting siphoned up into NSA data centers, a detailed global map will continue to grow with near-endless stats on all individuals.”

This much was true — in broad strokes, if not the specifics — back in 2015 and even more so today. DHS has steadily amassed for itself a security state within the security state, one now plump with record funding under a Trump second term clinched with the promise of a ruthless immigration crackdown. “With a budget for 2025 that is 10 times the size of the agency’s total surveillance spending over the last 13 years,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote last month, “ICE is going on a shopping spree, creating one of the largest, most comprehensive domestic surveillance machines in history.”

Thanks to the unregulated market in commercial surveillance technology, DHS has little need for a spy agency like the NSA. Last fall, ICE reactivated its contract with spyware-maker Paragon, which makes software that can remotely break into a smartphone. DHS also makes ample use of phone-cracking tools like Cellebrite, and has been purchasing warrantless access to cellphone location data since at least 2017, providing a turn-key means of tracking virtually anyone, anywhere, while bypassing the Fourth Amendment entirely. A 2023 DHS inspector general’s report found that both ICE and CBP consistently used this data illegally. Smartphone-based face recognition makes suspects out of anyone DHS agents might encounter on the street, immigrant and citizen alike.

Some in the InfoWars orbit speculated the word Jade itself “may or may not be an acronym for a military-developed artificial intelligence,” columnist Mark Saal observed in 2015. Like other facets of the Jade Helm freakout, this fear managed to be prescient despite its own baselessness. What’s unimpeachably true today is that DHS uses a litany of sophisticated artificial intelligence tools, including those provided by Palantir, a longtime military and intelligence contractor that has previously aided the NSA and continues to provide analytic and database services to ICE.

The role of Palantir alone within DHS is the stuff of InfoWars reverie: The company is building a tool “that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a ‘confidence score’ on the person’s current address,” according to a recent report by 404 Media. In contract documents renewing ICE’s use of Palantir case management software reviewed by The Intercept, the agency notes that the company has a “critical role in supporting the daily operations of ICE.” The case management system alone ingests data from across the federal government, including the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services, Department of Justice databases, the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, and the Office of Biometric Identity Management, among others.

Omnipresent data collection in the name of Homeland Security has allowed for novel means of taunting and intimidating the president’s critics. In a video clip that began circulating on X last week, a masked DHS agent is seen recording a car’s license plate with his phone.

“Why are you taking my information down?” the woman asks. “Because we have a nice little database,” the agent replies. “And now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”

It’s unclear what “little database” the agent was referring to, or on what grounds recording a video on a public street would be considered an act of terrorism. Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told The Intercept there is “no such database.” McLaughlin would not answer when asked repeatedly whether DHS endorsed its personnel threatening to place people on a domestic terrorism database it now claims does not exist.

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A national security presidential memorandum issued by Trump in September, known as NSPM-7, explicitly labels certain political and ideological stances — including “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” along with unspecified views on race and gender — as forms of domestic terrorism.

The Jade Helm presidency hasn’t matched the scope and scale of what Jones et al. hallucinated a decade ago. But Trump’s DHS — a department already plagued by bipartisan abuse, brutalization, and overreach since its founding — represents in spirit and practice exactly what far-right and right-libertarians once warned was a genuine emergency.

Though it made no effort to attach itself to facts, Jade Helm fearmongering touched, glancingly, on some uncomfortable truths: The federal government is willing to use force, surveillance, and extraconstitutional power to suppress dissent. But the greater truth revealed in the intervening decade is that for many Americans, these abuses aren’t a problem so long as it’s someone else’s back pushed onto the concrete, someone else’s car windows smashed, and someone else dealing with the pain of a chemical irritant.

Far-right commentators and elected officials are making clear that their opposition was never to authoritarian violence or state terror, but instead to being subjected to that violence and terror themselves. The contingent of the country that swore to avenge Ruby Ridge and Waco now seem mostly content to cheer on more of the same beneath X videos.  

When the administration blamed Alex Pretti’s death on his wholly legal gun ownership, having failed to slander him as an “assassin,” even the National Rifle Association, which once derided federal police as “jackbooted government thugs,” felt obliged to claim he was “antagonizing” ICE, even while defending his right to bear arms.

“We now know that Alex Pretti was a violent agitator who repeatedly went out armed to deliberately instigate physical confrontations with law enforcement,” conservative commentator Matt Walsh posted on X. “He is not a victim. He was not a mere ‘protester.’ And he got what was coming to him. Simple as that.”

InfoWars’ Jade Helm coverage is now seemingly scrubbed from the site. With a friendly president in the White House, the publication has shifted from condemning the Pentagon as the harbinger of American apocalypse to joining its official press corps. But the spirit of the old anti-state paranoia of InfoWars remains — just inverted entirely in the state’s service.

Headlines like “Could the Minneapolis Rioters Be Using Automatic License Plate Recognition Systems?” are what the Jade Helm-believers now wonder about dragnet surveillance. “Watch Two Brave ICE Officers Fight Off A Violent Leftist Mob That Invaded Their Hotel!” is the formerly paranoid right’s assessment of DHS. The notion of camouflaged agents in the streets is cause for celebration, not an “emergency broadcast” of 2015. “A War Has Erupted On The Streets Of America, And It Is Going To End With Martial Law In Major U.S. Cities,” InfoWars warns today, paired with an AI-generated image of federal officers defending themselves from an antifa onslaught.

Eleven years after Jade Helm, this is forecast with at least a little excitement.

The post Welcome to the Jade Helm Presidency appeared first on The Intercept.

He has the chance to be the steward of a national treasure, but he’s blowing it

Would you inherit a rare Stradivarius violin, polish it up for a few years, and then decide to take a hammer to it?

Would you somehow acquire the Hope diamond, set it in a blue velvet case, and then toss the whole thing into the Potomac River?

Allegations prompt questions about officials’ contentions that there isn’t evidence to investigate third parties

The disclosure of more than 3m files related to Jeffrey Epstein suggests that other men were involved in his sexual abuse, prompting questions about officials’ contentions that there isn’t evidence to investigate third parties for potential involvement in the late financier’s crimes.

Some newly released documents contain allegations that Epstein provided victims to other men. Documents released in prior disclosures, as well as court documents, also point to others’ possible criminal involvement with Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Heather Jones of Alabama says two-year probation agreement leaves her ‘free and clear’ of legal matter

An Alabama woman has resolved a misdemeanor case that authorities opened against her within days of speaking out about a Roman Catholic priest whom she accused of predatory behavior.

Heather Jones had publicly recounted that she was 17 when the priest, Robert “Bob” Sullivan, arranged to provide her financial support in exchange for companionship including sex – prompting him to resign from the clergy in November.

The city of Milan and beyond will light up to spread the Olympic spirit during the event.

The science fiction on Prime Video hits different.

A seemingly esoteric dispute over the proper way to take Communion signals the rising power of more traditional voices within the Catholic Church.

New Mexico attorney general accuses Meta of failing to safeguard children against trafficking and sexual abuse

Meta’s second major trial of 2026 over alleged harms to children begins on Monday.

The landmark jury trial in Santa Fe pits the New Mexico attorney general’s office against the social media giant. The state alleges that the company knowingly enabled predators to use Facebook and Instagram to exploit children.

Do the people imprisoning kids like Liam Ramos have no children of their own? Do they have no decency, compassion or basic humanity?

Liam Conejo Ramos. We have all seen his picture, or by now we all should have seen the image of the adorable five-year-old in his bright blue hat, its floppy bunny ears so appropriate for a child whose middle name means “rabbit”. In the photo, he is wearing his Spider-Man backpack, which, like so many kids his age, he loves and is very proud of. And we know – or we should know – what happened to him.

On 20 January 2026, the pre-K student was seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on his way home from school in Columbia Heights, Minnesota. His family, which had emigrated from Ecuador in 2024, had applied for political asylum. No order of deportation had been issued against them, nor had any of them – obviously, not little Liam – been accused of a crime.

Francine Prose is a former president of the PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

This article was amended on 2 February 2026. A previous version misspelled a name in the headline.

One resident said she was hit with rubber bullets while trying to get home. Others said they wore gas masks or slept in their bathtubs to escape the tear gas.

• Rose wins Farmers Insurance Open with 72-hole record

• Total of 265 pips Woods’s 1999 mark by one

Justin Rose became the first wire-to-wire winner at Torrey Pines in 71 years, starting with a six-shot lead and never letting anyone get any closer to him Sunday as he closed with a two-under 70 to win the Farmers Insurance Open.

Rose opened with a 62 on the North course and never let up, playing even better on the South course that has hosted two US Opens. He broke the 72-hole tournament record at 23-under, 265, one better than Tiger Woods in 1999. George Burns also shot 266 in 1987. “Sorry, T-dub, if you’re watching,” Rose said.

Defending NATO’s Eastern Flank: How Romania Is Responding to Russian Aggression and European Rearmament 9 February 2026 — 5:30PM TO 6:30PM Anonymous (not verified) 2 February 2026 Chatham House and Online

Oana Țoiu, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania, speaks at Chatham House on support for Ukraine, European security, and tackling the Russian threat.

Oana Țoiu, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania, speaks at Chatham House on support for Ukraine, European security, and tackling the Russian threat.

Romania’s geographical position places it at the heart of the effort to defend NATO’s eastern flank.

Amid Russian drone incursions near Romanian territory and intensified information warfare. As a frontline state bordering the war in Ukraine, Romania is acutely aware of the threat Russia poses to European stability. Ukrainian and Russian operations in the Black Sea have given Romania a unique vantage point on the future of naval warfare, while the relocation of NATO’s largest base to Romanian territory underscores the country’s strategic importance within the Alliance.

Oana Țoiu, Romania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, has repeatedly reaffirmed Romania’s commitment to supporting Ukraine and strengthening European security. She has highlighted Romania’s ongoing defence modernization, sustained investment in its armed forces. Her message aligns closely with NATO’s push to reinforce deterrence along its eastern perimeter and ensure member states remain coordinated and resilient.

But critical questions remain: Is Europe making meaningful progress on rearmament? And is it doing enough to deter an increasingly assertive, imperialist Russia—especially at a time when the United States appears less engaged in Europe’s security affairs?

How can Libya reconcile and reunify after 15 years of instability? 12 February 2026 — 12:00PM TO 1:00PM Anonymous (not verified) 2 February 2026 Chatham House and Online

HE Abdullah al-Lafi, Member of the Libyan Presidential Council—the three‑member body that serves as Libya’s head of state—will outline how international partners can support and engage with Libya to tackle the global challenges it faces.

HE Abdullah al-Lafi, vice-chairman of the Libyan Presidency Council—the three member body that serves as Libya’s head of state—will outline how international partners can support and engage with Libya to tackle the global challenges it faces.

Fifteen years after the uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi, Libya remains in a state of ‘no war and no peace’. Governance is still contested, with rival administrations in western Libya (internationally recognised) and eastern Libya (unrecognised). The Presidency Council continues to act as the country’s collective head of state, while Libyans face a worsening economic climate marked by rising inflation and declining purchasing power.

The United Nations is working to help Libya hold elections and reunify its political institutions. Its efforts continue to focus on mediating between factions and supporting initiatives to repair the country’s fractured social fabric.

In this session, HE Abdullah al-Lafi will assess the current situation in Libya and outline the Presidency Council’s progress on national reconciliation. He will also discuss how international partners can best work with Libya on shared concerns—such as organised migration crime—and contribute to addressing the country’s ongoing political divisions.

With the Presidential Council facing a wide range of immediate challenges, can these issues wait for the formation of a new government?

Key questions to be discussed include:

• Among the many institutions involved in governing Libya, where does the Presidency Council fit?
• What is the latest on the Council’s reconciliation efforts?
• How effective has the UN Support Mission in Libya been in advancing preparations for elections?
• How can Libya improve its economic governance?
• How should international partners support Libya in addressing organised migration crime?

Explore the Guardian’s tracker to see which operators are nationalised and if services are improving under public ownership

The majority of Great Britain’s major rail operators are now in public ownership, as the Labour government continues its efforts to make the railways “more reliable, affordable and accessible”.

The nationalisation of West Midlands Trains on 1 February represents the tenth major passenger service to be brought back into public ownership, leaving six to go before the government’s deadline of completing every operator by 2027.

The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a sharp warning that rocket launches could “significantly reduce safety” for airplanes, urging pilots to prepare for the possibility that “catastrophic failures” could create dangerous debris fields.

The official notice, known as a safety alert for operators, was dated Jan. 8, the same day that ProPublica published an investigation showing how pilots scrambled to avoid debris after two SpaceX Starship megarockets exploded over busy airspace last year. The alert was an acknowledgment that travelers were at risk on those days, when the FAA hastily activated no-fly zones to help air traffic controllers steer planes away from falling rocket parts.

In the last two decades, the agency has issued about 245 such safety alerts to the aviation community about issues ranging from runway threats to mechanical problems, but last month’s warning is the first to address the danger to airplanes when rockets launch or reenter Earth’s atmosphere, according to the FAA’s website.

SpaceX and other companies have ramped up launches in recent years. Starship, a version of which is supposed to one day land on the moon, has followed a flight path that soars over well-trafficked commercial airways in the Caribbean.

The FAA previously told ProPublica that it “limits the number of aircraft exposed to the hazards, making the likelihood of a catastrophic event extremely improbable.” It also said it takes steps to keep pilots informed and planes safe during launches, such as creating the emergency no-fly zones, known as debris response areas.

The January alert also pointed to those procedures.

“Past events have shown that when a mishap does occur, debris has fallen within or near the DRA, and pilots should exercise extreme caution near these areas,” the notice said.

But it warned that debris can fall in places where the FAA doesn’t enact no-fly zones, such as international airspace over oceans without radar coverage, saying pilots need to have “additional situational awareness” to avoid debris fields there.

Neither SpaceX nor the FAA has released data showing where debris fell after the Starship explosions last year.

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. Previously, the company has said that it learns from its mistakes and that each test improves Starship’s reliability. “SpaceX is committed to responsibly using airspace during launches and reentries, prioritizing public safety to protect people on the ground, at sea, and in the air,” it said on X in December.

Last year, the FAA granted SpaceX permission to launch Starship as many as 25 times a year from its base in Texas. But, after repeated setbacks, only five of the giant space vehicles lifted off in 2025.

In its warning, the FAA urged aircraft operators to “evaluate the impact of space launch and reentry operations on their planned flight routes and take appropriate precautionary measures.” Those should include ensuring they have enough fuel in case air traffic controllers put them in a holding pattern, the agency said. In its investigation, ProPublica found several airplanes began running low on fuel after the January 2025 Starship incident, with at least one declaring an emergency and crossing the no-fly zone to reach an airport.

The world’s largest pilots union told the FAA in October that such events call into question whether “a suitable process” is in place to respond to unexpected rocket mishaps. “There is high potential for debris striking an aircraft resulting in devastating loss of the aircraft, flight crew, and passengers,” wrote Steve Jangelis, a pilot and the group’s aviation safety chair.

The FAA adjusted its practices over the course of the failed launches last year but still allowed SpaceX to launch more Starship prototypes over the same airspace, adding stress to the already-taxed air traffic control system, ProPublica found. The Wall Street Journal reported in December that an air traffic controller needed to intervene to prevent a collision when at least two aircraft flew too close to each other after one of the explosions.

The FAA did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Airlines for America, a trade association for the leading U.S. airlines, said it is “committed to ensuring the safety of all flights especially amid the growing number of space launches.” The association said in a statement that airlines coordinate with both the federal government and commercial space companies to make sure the airspace stays safe.

Rep. Nellie Pou of New Jersey, a Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s aviation panel, applauded the FAA for issuing the warning, saying the Trump administration “must protect American travelers from all threats, including space launches and reentry operations.”

“Perfect safety demands scrupulous and forward-looking attention to detail from our federal agencies and close coordination with operators,” Pou said. “I am heartened FAA is showing both here.”

ProPublica’s Jan. 8 story showed how airplanes had to maneuver quickly to clear wide swaths of airspace after SpaceX Starships blew up over the Caribbean in January and March last year.

Read More

“We’re Too Close to the Debris”

Our analysis of flight tracking data found that in each incident, multiple planes were in the projected debris zones at the time of the explosions and that others likely had to change course to steer clear of falling debris. Pilots reported seeing flaming streaks far above the horizon.

Before the third Starship launch last year, in May, the agency settled on a more conservative approach, proactively closing more airspace ahead of time. That mission failed too, with the rocket’s booster exploding over the Gulf and its upper stage blowing up over the Indian Ocean.

SpaceX is now seeking FAA approval to add new trajectories as Starship strives to reach orbit. Under the plan, the rocket would fly over land in Florida and Mexico, as well as the airspace of Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, likely disrupting hundreds of flights.

The company says it’s committed to public safety as it ramps up its launch cadence, saying in a post on X that it “will continue to ensure maximum public safety while also working to integrate Starship more efficiently into the airspace.”

The post FAA Warns Airlines About Safety Risks From Rocket Launches, Urges “Extreme Caution” appeared first on ProPublica.

As health care costs skyrocket and federal lawmakers pull back help on ACA insurance premiums, more middle-income families are facing tough choices on health care.

Many Americans are expected to lose ACA or Medicaid coverage in the coming months and years, but doctors and researchers say there are still ways to find affordable care.

Washington and Caracas have moved quickly to open Venezuela’s oil sector to U.S. investment. Ordinary Venezuelans will wait longer to feel any benefit.

The Post spoke to four Kenyans who fought in Ukraine and relatives of nine other recruits, as a secret pipeline funnels young Africans to Russia’s military.

Myanmar’s military regime has tightened import restrictions, exacerbating the country’s economic crisis and sparking widespread hardship among the people.

Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware could become home to five new data centers that would bring a combined energy demand that nearly equals what the entire state uses today. New legislation in the Delaware statehouse aims to prevent the costs of a demand spike from being passed onto other energy consumers, though critics say they may also scare off the growing industry. 

A bill that would require data centers companies to pay more for their electricity will likely come up for a vote in the full Delaware House of Representatives after it moved out of committee on Wednesday.  

Sponsored by Rep. Frank Burns (D-Pike Creek), House Bill 233 comes in response to fears that a surge of energy-hungry data center projects could strain the power grid and raise residents’ bills.

The same day that the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee released Burns’ bill, the Senate’s energy committee debated another bill that would require data centers to obtain new permissions from electricity regulators — called certificates to operate. 

The two bills follow a stalled attempt by New Castle County to regulate the burgeoning data center industry, which has grown rapidly in recent years as investors chase the expected riches of artificial intelligence. 

Both bills also attempt to make data centers bear the cost of high energy demands, rather than residents. 

If current development proposals move forward, Delaware could be home to five new data centers in the coming years that have a combined energy demand that could double the state’s entire electricity usage.

Critics fear that scenario would lead to increased energy bills across the state — both because of a limited supply of electrons, and because of the costs of the infrastructure needed to serve the demand.

“Gone are the days of the single project that could be expected to only impact a small discrete area,” State Sen. Stephanie Hansen (D-Middletown) said during the Wednesday hearing of the Senate  Environment, Energy and Transportation Committee. 

Hansen is the sponsor of the Senate Bill 205, which would require big commercial energy consumers to obtain certificates to operate from state regulators. The certificates could include mandates that the companies pay for grid modernization or commit to providing additional energy generation. 

Hansen said she does not yet have enough votes from the energy committee for the bill to be released to the full Senate.

In response, critics of the bills — including some lawmakers, business lobbyists and union representatives — have expressed fears that the legislation could prevent the growing data center industry from even coming to the state.

“We’re putting up another sign that says Delaware is not open for business. And when we continue to do this, then we hurt everybody,” Rep. Jeff Hilovsky (R-Long Neck/Oak Orchard) said about the House bill. 

Bills face criticism

During Wednesday’s hearing, Senate Bill 205 received more criticism than positive feedback from committee members.

Senate Minority Whip Brian Pettyjohn (R-Georgetown) said he does not think the bill would prevent rising energy costs, since Delaware is part of the PJM grid and is impacted by a regional rise in energy demand.  

He also said the bill could cause data center companies to instead invest in neighboring states with fewer regulations. 

State Sen. Eric Buckson (R – Dover South) agreed, and asserted that multi-billion dollar companies will not want to invest in a state with rules that he believes could shut down data center project entirely. 

“In my opinion, this becomes a de facto moratorium,” Buckson said. 

Hansen said her bill is not meant to prevent data centers from coming to the state. Her bill does not appear to give the Public Service Commission the power to reject data center projects entirely, unless the companies do not follow the conditions laid out in the certificate. 

Speaking in support of her bill on Wednesday was Delaware Municipal Electric Corporation President Kimberly Schlichting, who serves more than a half dozen cities and towns in Delaware, and representatives from the Delaware chapter of the Sierra Club. They said the legislation would provide protections against energy price increases for residents. 

But representatives from local unions spoke against the bill, saying it would prevent new construction jobs from coming to the state. 

During its committee hearing, House Bill 233 received similar criticism but bill sponsor Burns argued that Delaware has other incentives for data center companies, such as low taxes and access to a major transmission line. 

At one point during the House committee, the question arose about whether Delmarva Power could simply prevent energy-hungry projects from connecting to the grid if they raised consumers’ electric bills. Rep. Rich Collins (R-Millsboro) said he would turn to an AI chatbot — powered by a data center — for the answer.

When he began to read its response to the committee, Rep. Krista Griffith (D-Fairfax) interrupted with a point of order. She stated that she is not comfortable with him using AI to answer the question when there were experts in the room.

Lisa Oberdorf with Delmarva Power then addressed the questions, stating the company does have an obligation to serve any users that want to connect to the grid.

Her answer contradicted the AI chatbot’s response. 

The post Data center regulation bill advances in Delaware legislature appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.

Phoronix reports: Chris Mason, the longtime Linux kernel developer most known for being the creator of Btrfs, has been working on a Git repository with AI review prompts he has been working on for LLM-assisted code review of Linux kernel patches. This initiative has been happening for some weeks now while the latest work was posted today for comments... The Meta engineer has been investing a lot of effort into making this AI/LLM-assisted code review accurate and useful to upstream Linux kernel stakeholders. It's already shown positive results and with the current pace it looks like it could play a helpful part in Linux kernel code review moving forward. "I'm hoping to get some feedback on changes I pushed today that break the review up into individual tasks..." Mason wrote on the Linux kernel mailing list. "Using tasks allows us to break up large diffs into smaller chunks, and review each chunk individually. This ends up using fewer tokens a lot of the time, because we're not sending context back and forth for the entire diff with every turn. It also catches more bugs all around."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar won major Grammy awards on a night charged with political defiance, as musicians pushed back against Donald Trump’s deadly ICE crackdown. Billie Eilish, who took song of the year for Wildflower, used her speech to declare: 'No one is illegal on stolen land.' The best new artist award went to Olivia Dean, presented by last year’s winner Chappell Roan. 'I am up here as the granddaughter of an immigrant,' Dean said, drawing loud applause

• Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar win big in Grammys ceremony filled with anti-ICE sentiment

• Grammy awards 2026: list of winners

‘I need to focus on getting better, on being with family and friends and making sure that I’m giving my health my best shot’, Afternoons host says

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Broadcaster and saxophonist James Valentine is retiring from the ABC after almost 40 years, due to cancer, ending 25 years of hosting Sydney’s Afternoons program on ABC Radio.

Valentine, 64, has been a fixture on the public broadcaster since he joined as host of the Afternoon Show for kids on ABC TV in 1987 after a decade of playing in bands including The Models.

Ahead of a major exhibition in London documenting the South American wetland as it faces unprecedented threat, Lalo de Almeida recounts the stories behind his award-winning images

Lalo de Almeida is a documentary photographer based in São Paulo, Brazil. In 2021 his photo essay Pantanal Ablaze was awarded first place in the environment stories category at the World Press Photo contest. In 2022, he won the Eugene Smith grant in humanistic photography and World Press Photo’s long-term project award for his work Amazonian Dystopia, which documents the exploitation of the world’s largest tropical forest.

I have been photographing socio-environmental issues for more than 30 years, especially in the Amazon. 2020 was no different. News of the uncontrolled fires devastating the Pantanal began to catch my attention. So, together with a fellow journalist, I decided to go and see what was happening for myself.

OpenClaw is billed as ‘the AI that actually does things’ and needs almost no input to potentially wreak havoc

A new viral AI personal assistant will handle your email inbox, trade away your entire stock portfolio and text your wife “good morning” and “goodnight” on your behalf.

OpenClaw, formerly known as Moltbot, and before that known as Clawdbot (until the AI firm Anthropic requested it rebrand due to similarities with its own product Claude), bills itself as “the AI that actually does things”: a personal assistant that takes instructions via messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Telegram.

In today’s newsletter: Public outrage has reached fever pitch following the killing of US citizens. But, amid the focus on violence, another story of mutual aid and neighbourhood organising is unfolding

Good morning. The world’s attention has been fixed on Minneapolis for weeks now. The small midwestern US city has been under siege since Donald Trump’s administration launched its latest immigration crackdown in December.

Public outrage has reached fever pitch across the US after the killing of two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Though the White House has softened its rhetoric in relation to the killings, there is little indication of any meaningful shift in tactics on the ground.

Epstein files | Peter Mandelson says he has resigned his membership of the Labour party to avoid causing it “further embarrassment” after more revelations about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Iran | Donald Trump has said Iran is talking to the US, hinting at a deal that would avoid the use of military strikes.

Ukraine | A Russian drone attack on a bus carrying mine workers in Ukraine’s central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region has killed at least 12 people, officials said.

Cuba | The United States has said it will ensure there will be no more fuel shipments to the beleaguered island, “Cuba will be failing pretty soon,” Donald Trump said earlier in the week.

Grammy awards | Bad Bunny and Kendrick Lamar took home major Grammy awards during a night that saw musicians hit back at Donald Trump’s ICE occupation.

Seen two years later, a suppressed U.S cable warning of a “wasteland” in northern Gaza, as reported by Reuters, is a small footnote of history.

The president and his supporters joining forces to decide what audiences read and see seems straight from a fascism playbook

Two events, juxtaposed, tell us a great deal about what is rapidly taking shape in the US. In one, Melania Trump releases a glossy documentary, Melania, an account of her return to the White House. Amazon outbid others to secure the rights to the documentary, spending $75m (£54m) in total, and ticket sales so far suggest that this was, shall we say, not a purely commercial venture.

In the other, the Washington Post is set to cut up to 200 jobs early this month, including the majority of its foreign staff and a sizeable chunk of its newsroom. Both Melania and the Washington Post are backed by Jeff Bezos. His two decisions, to invest in state propaganda and divest from the fourth estate that supposedly holds power to account, reveal much about how capital and authoritarianism join forces to decide what audiences read and see.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

A bit like Reddit for artificial intelligence, Moltbook allows AI agents – bots built by humans – to post and interact with each other. People are allowed as observers only

On social media, people often accuse each other of being bots, but what happens when an entire social network is designed for AI agents to use?

Moltbook is a site where the AI agents – bots built by humans – can post and interact with each other. It is designed to look like Reddit, with subreddits on different topics and upvoting. On 2 February the platform stated it had more than 1.5m AI agents signed up to the service. Humans are allowed, but only as observers.

"Technology companies spent part of the 2010s trying to convince us that we would want an 8K display one day..." writes Ars Technica. "However, 8K never proved its necessity or practicality." LG Display is no longer making 8K LCD or OLED panels, FlatpanelsHD reported today... LG Electronics was the first and only company to sell 8K OLED TVs, starting with the 88-inch Z9 in 2019. In 2022, it lowered the price-of-entry for an 8K OLED TV by $7,000 by charging $13,000 for a 76.7-inch TV. FlatpanelsHD cited anonymous sources who said that LG Electronics would no longer restock the 2024 QNED99T, which is the last LCD 8K TV that it released. LG's 8K abandonment follows other brands distancing themselves from 8K. TCL, which released its last 8K TV in 2021, said in 2023 that it wasn't making more 8K TVs due to low demand. Sony discontinued its last 8K TVs in April and is unlikely to return to the market, as it plans to sell the majority ownership of its Bravia TVs to TCL. The tech industry tried to convince people that the 8K living room was coming soon. But since the 2010s, people have mostly adopted 4K. In September 2024, research firm Omdia reported that there were "nearly 1 billion 4K TVs currently in use." In comparison, 1.6 million 8K TVs had been sold since 2015, Paul Gray, Omdia's TV and video technology analyst, said, noting that 8K TV sales peaked in 2022. That helps explain why membership at the 8K Association, launched by stakeholders Samsung, TCL, Hisense, and panel maker AU Optronics in 2019, is dwindling. As of this writing, the group's membership page lists 16 companies, including just two TV manufacturers (Samsung and Panasonic). Membership no longer includes any major TV panel suppliers. At the end of 2022, the 8K Association had 33 members, per an archived version of the nonprofit's online membership page via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. "It wasn't hard to predict that 8K TVs wouldn't take off," the article concludes. "In addition to being too expensive for many households, there's been virtually zero native 8K content available to make investing in an 8K display worthwhile..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Woman, 22, thought to have suffered a cardiac arrest after being dragged along the snow and suspended mid-air

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An Australian woman has died after a ski lift accident in a Japanese resort after her backpack got caught and she was left hanging mid-air.

The 22-year-old snowboarder sustained critical injuries at the Tsugaike ski resort in Otari near Nagano on Friday.

Report covering 23 conflicts over last 18 months concludes more than 100,000 civilians have been killed as war crimes rage out of control

An authoritative survey of 23 armed conflicts over the last 18 months has concluded that international law seeking to limit the effects of war is at breaking point, with more than 100,000 civilians killed, while torture and rape are committed with near impunity.

The extensive study by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights describes the deaths of 18,592 children in Gaza, growing civilian casualties in Ukraine and an “epidemic” of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

How to limit Hamas’s influence and ensure Israel’s compliance.

The latest military purge signals China’s leader is entering a new era.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Feb. 2, No. 497.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Feb. 2

Bad Bunny used his Grammy acceptance speech on Sunday to denounce U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and call for the end of the ongoing immigration crackdown.

Trump announces two-year closure of Kennedy Center, citing construction needs – key US politics stories from 1 February 2026

Donald Trump, who remains embroiled in tensions surrounding ICE’s presence in Minnesota, as well as scrutiny over the justice department’s latest release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, has made another announcement on Sunday evening: the temporary closure of the John F Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

Trump, who overhauled the center’s leadership at the start of his second term and renamed it to include his own name, described the center as “tired, broken, and dilapidated,” adding that it has been in “bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years”.

The EU "has switched on parts of its homegrown secure satellite communications network for the first time," reports Bloomberg, calling it part of a €10.6 billion push to "wean itself off US support amid growing tensions." SpaceNews notes the new government program GOVSATCOM pools capacity from eight already on-oribit satellites from France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Luxembourg — both national and commercial. And they cite this prediction by EU Defense and Space Commissioner Andrius Kubilius. The program could expand by 2027. "All member states can now have access to sovereign satellite communications — military and government, secure and resilient, built in Europe, operated in Europe, and under European control," [Kubilius said during his opening remarks at the European Space Conference]... Beginning in 2029, GOVSATCOM is expected to integrate with the 290 satellites in the Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite constellation, known as IRIS2, and be fully operational... "The goal is connectivity and security for all of Europe — guaranteed access for all member states and full European control."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Senate passed a deal on a package of spending bills late Friday, sending it to the House, though funding for dozens of government agencies lapsed until the House takes it up.

Bannon’s claim revealed in text messages in tranche of documents released by US authorities in connection with Jeffrey Epstein

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Australian billionaire Clive Palmer’s spokesman has denied claims by far-right political strategist Steve Bannon that he was behind Palmer’s controversial $60m advertising strategy at the 2019 federal election.

The text conversation purporting to be between Bannon and an unidentified person – who appears to be convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – was among a tranche of documents released by the US Department of Justice in connection with Epstein.

"Most Go developers are now using AI-powered development tools when seeking information (e.g., learning how to use a module) or toiling (e.g., writing repetitive blocks of similar code)." That's one of the conclusions Google's Go team drew from September's big survey of 5,379 Go developers. But the survey also found that among Go developers using AI-powered tools, "their satisfaction with these tools is middling due, in part, to quality concerns." Our survey suggests bifurcated adoption — while a majority of respondents (53%) said they use such tools daily, there is also a large group (29%) who do not use these at all, or only used them a few times during the past month. We expected this to negatively correlate with age or development experience, but were unable to find strong evidence supporting this theory except for very new developers: respondents with less than one year of professional development experience (not specific to Go) did report more AI use than every other cohort, but this group only represented 2% of survey respondents. At this time, agentic use of AI-powered tools appears nascent among Go developers, with only 17% of respondents saying this is their primary way of using such tools, though a larger group (40%) are occasionally trying agentic modes of operation... We also asked about overall satisfaction with AI-powered development tools. A majority (55%) reported being satisfied, but this was heavily weighted towards the "Somewhat satisfied" category (42%) vs. the "Very satisfied" group (13%)... [D]eveloper sentiment towards them remains much softer than towards more established tooling (among Go developers, at least). What is driving this lower rate of satisfaction? In a word: quality. We asked respondents to tell us something good they've accomplished with these tools, as well as something that didn't work out well. A majority said that creating non-functional code was their primary problem with AI developer tools (53%), with 30% lamenting that even working code was of poor quality. The most frequently cited benefits, conversely, were generating unit tests, writing boilerplate code, enhanced autocompletion, refactoring, and documentation generation. These appear to be cases where code quality is perceived as less critical, tipping the balance in favor of letting AI take the first pass at a task. That said, respondents also told us the AI-generated code in these successful cases still required careful review (and often, corrections), as it can be buggy, insecure, or lack context... [One developer said reviewing AI-generated code was so mentally taxing that it "kills the productivity potential".] Of all the tasks we asked about, "Writing code" was the most bifurcated, with 66% of respondents already or hoping to soon use AI for this, while 1/4 of respondents didn't want AI involved at all. Open-ended responses suggest developers primarily use this for toilsome, repetitive code, and continue to have concerns about the quality of AI-generated code. Most respondents also said they "are not currently building AI-powered features into the Go software they work on (78%)," the surveyors report, "with 2/3 reporting that their software does not use AI functionality at all (66%)." This appears to be a decrease in production-related AI usage year-over-year; in 2024, 59% of respondents were not involved in AI feature work, while 39% indicated some level of involvement. That marks a shift of 14 points away from building AI-powered systems among survey respondents, and may reflect some natural pullback from the early hype around AI-powered applications: it's plausible that lots of folks tried to see what they could do with this technology during its initial rollout, with some proportion deciding against further exploration (at least at this time). Among respondents who are building AI- or LLM-powered functionality, the most common use case was to create summaries of existing content (45%). Overall, however, there was little difference between most uses, with between 28% — 33% of respondents adding AI functionality to support classification, generation, solution identification, chatbots, and software development.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The measles​ cases at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center were detected Friday, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to CBS News.

DC arts venue, which has seen wave of canceled events after Trump’s takeover, will start renovations in July

The John F Kennedy Center, a world-class venue for the performing arts in Washington DC, will halt entertainment events for two years starting on 4 July during renovations, Donald Trump posted on Sunday on Truth Social.

The Kennedy Center, which has seen a wave of performers cancel events in recent months as well as the lowest ticket sales in years, has been in turmoil since the president orchestrated a leadership overhaul in the beginning of his term.

With big numbers for Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny and more, check out the nominated artists this year

• Grammy awards 2026 – latest updates

• Grammy awards 2026 – list of winners

Bad Bunny – DtMF
Sabrina Carpenter – Manchild
Doechii – Anxiety
Billie Eilish – Wildflower
Lady Gaga – Abracadabra
Kendrick Lamar with SZA – Luther
Chappell Roan – The Subway
Rosé & Bruno Mars – APT.

NASA is working to take astronauts farther from Earth than any humans have ever gone, but the ambitious and costly moonshot has been plagued by delays.

Lawmakers are calling for an independent investigation into immigration enforcement tactics in Minnesota as members of the Trump administration face scrutiny over claims they've made.

More than 50 years after NASA's last human mission to the moon, four astronauts, three Americans and a Canadian, are set for the 10-day Artemis II mission to the far side of the moon.

Some of the biggest American comics have gotten their starts at Boom Chicago, an Amsterdam improv theater. Seth Meyers, Jordan Peele, Amber Ruffin and Jason Sudeikis have all cracked jokes there.

As NASA prepares for astronauts' first lunar fly-around in more than half a century, take a look back at 60 Minutes' Artemis coverage.

Artemis II echoes the Apollo-era missions that paved the way for the first moon landing — and sets the stage for what comes next.

Boom Chicago, a small improv theater in Amsterdam, launched as "the best stoner idea ever," and has been churning out big names in comedy for decades.

Seth Meyers said the Dutch improv theater Boom Chicago gave him and his comedy partner Jill Benjamin a "road map" to create a show that eventually got the attention of "Saturday Night Live."

USAFacts evaluates IRS tax data and offers independent, expert-informed recommendations to make tax statistics timelier, easier to access, and AI-ready.

Talks "are at a standstill" for Anthropic's potential $200 million contract with America's Defense Department, reports Reuters (citing several people familiar with the discussions.") The two issues? - Using AI to surveil Americans - Safeguards against deploying AI autonomously The company's position on how its AI tools can be used has intensified disagreements between it and the Trump administration, the details of which have not been previously reported... Anthropic said its AI is "extensively used for national security missions by the U.S. government and we are in productive discussions with the Department of War about ways to continue that work..." In an essay on his personal blog, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned this week that AI should support national defense "in all ways except those which would make us more like our autocratic adversaries. A person "familiar with the matter" told the Wall Street Journal this could lead to the cancellation of Anthropic's contract: Tensions with the administration began almost immediately after it was awarded, in part because Anthropic's terms and conditions dictate that Claude can't be used for any actions related to domestic surveillance. That limits how many law-enforcement agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation could deploy it, people familiar with the matter said. Anthropic's focus on safe applications of AI — and its objection to having its technology used in autonomous lethal operations — have continued to cause problems, they said. Amodei's essay calls for "courage, for enough people to buck the prevailing trends and stand on principle, even in the face of threats to their economic interests and personal safety..."

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Witnesses say protest outside ICE facility was peaceful until agents deployed teargas and rubber bullets around children

The mayor of Portland, Oregon, demanded US Immigration and Customs Enforcement leave his city after federal agents launched teargas at a crowd of demonstrators – including young children – outside an ICE facility during a weekend protest that he and others characterized as peaceful.

Witnesses said agents deployed teargas, pepper balls and rubber bullets as thousands of marchers arrived at the South Waterfront facility on Saturday. Erin Hoover Barnett, a former OregonLive reporter who joined the protest, said she was about 100 yards (91 metres) from the building when “what looked like two guys with rocket launchers” started dousing the crowd with gas.

Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez are both officers with Customs and Border Protection, ProPublica reports

Government documents have identified the two federal officers who fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as Jesus Ochoa, a border patrol agent, and Raymundo Gutierrez, an officer with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), according to ProPublica.

According to those records, Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, were the agents who fired their weapons during the confrontation last weekend that resulted in Pretti’s death. The shooting sparked widespread demonstrations and renewed demands for criminal inquiries into federal immigration enforcement actions. Immediately following Pretti’s killing, the Trump administration repeatedly pushed false claims about the shooting.

The memo details a series of recommendations for Congressional committees to probe allegations of excessive force and violations by ICE agents in Minneapolis.

The Wall Street Journal says that Meta "might be reaping some of the richest benefits from the AI boom so far." Meta's revenue grew 22% year over year in 2025 to $201 billion, and the company expects even bigger gains in the current quarter, potentially as high as 34%. That is huge growth for a company that brought in nearly $60 billion in the latest three-month period. And Zuckerberg signaled that Meta was just scratching the surface of AI's potential. "Our world-class recommendation systems are already driving meaningful growth across our apps and ads business. But we think that the current systems are primitive compared to what will be possible soon," he said on a call with investors and analysts... [Meta's Chief Financial Officer Susan] Li said the company doubled the number of graphics-processing units that it used to train its ad-ranking model in the fourth quarter and adopted a new learning architecture. Those actions led users to click on ads on Facebook 3.5% more often and to a gain of more than 1% in conversions, meaning purchases, subscriptions or leads, on Instagram, she said. Other AI-related improvements led to a 3% increase in conversions across its family of apps. On the ad-buying side, Meta has also been working toward using AI to automate ad creation for businesses that want to advertise their products or services on Facebook and Instagram. On the call, Li said the combined revenue run rate of video-generation tools hit $10 billion in the fourth quarter. In short, CNBC reported, Meta's stock price surged over 10% this week "after showing signs that AI investments are boosting the bottom line." Benjamin Black, an internet analyst at Deutsche Bank, explained the connection to the Wall Street Journal. "The more compute the ad platform gets, the far better it performs, and that's a real structural advantage that Meta has. If you can see that yesterday's spend is driving this month's growth, then as a good business person, you're going to continue to feed the beast." CNBC says now Meta "plans to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion on its AI build-out this year. That's nearly double what it spent in 2025."

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About 150m faced cold weather advisories along eastern US, and two in North Carolina died in storm-related conditions

A bomb cyclone produced freezing temperatures across a large portion of the US from the Gulf coast to New England, bringing heavy snow to North Carolina where two were killed in storm-related conditions, and setting records in Florida, where officials warned of ice and falling iguanas.

About 150 million people were under cold weather advisories and extreme cold warnings in the eastern portion of the US, with wind chills near zero to single digits in the south and the coldest air mass seen in south Florida since December 1989, said Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist with the weather prediction center in College Park, Maryland.

Departure from party follows release of documents in US appearing to show Jeffrey Epstein sent former US ambassador $75,000

Peter Mandelson has said he has resigned his membership of the Labour party to avoid causing it “further embarrassment” after more revelations about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

The peer, who was sacked as US ambassador last year because of his links to Epstein, featured in documents released by the US Department of Justice on Friday related to the convicted sex offender.

Children were among a crowd of "ICE out" protesters in Portland on Saturday, witnesses said.

A Russian attack on coal mining facilities in Ukraine Sunday killed at least 12 miners, according to DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company.

October saw Bitcoin reach $123,742. But less than four months later, "The world's largest cryptocurrency slipped below $76,000..." Bloomberg reports, "dropping about 40% from its 2025 peak..." "What began as a sharp crash in October has morphed into something more corrosive: a selloff shaped not by panic, but by absence of buyers, momentum and belief." Unlike the October drawdown, there's been no obvious spark, cascading liquidations or systemic shock — just fading demand, thinning liquidity, and a token that's untethered to broader markets. Bitcoin has failed to respond to geopolitical stress, dollar weakness, or risk rallies. Even during gold and silver's violent swings in recent weeks, crypto saw no rotation. Bitcoin fell nearly 11% in January, marking its fourth straight monthly decline — the longest losing streak since 2018, during the crash that followed the 2017 boom in initial coin offerings... Even more striking than the drop itself is the relative lack of optimism around it on social media. In a space known for relentless bravado and "number go up" memes, Bitcoin's slide has been met with little cheerleading or dip-buying fanfare... [Despite legislative wins and some institutional investments] Many investors say that optimism was front-run. Prices rallied early — and then stalled. Meanwhile, spot ETFs continue to bleed, a sign of weakening conviction among mainstream buyers — many of whom are now underwater after buying at higher prices. On Thursday, Bitcoin closed at 88,228. By Sunday it had plunged another 13%, to 76,790...

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