A reminder that we are covering the latest out of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where Kevin Warsh – the new chair of the Federal Reserve – will deliver his first speech as the head of the US central bank at the annual economic policy symposium.
As my colleagues note, Warsh is under pressure to provide clarity on how the FederalReserve should handle with inflation if price pressures don’t abate.
US president says US will have ‘majority’ control of 65bn barrels of proven oil reserves
Donald Trump announced Friday a new US oil agreement with Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez, saying the US will have “majority” control of 65bn barrels of proven oil reserves.
The terms of the agreement remain to be seen, but the US president said on his social-media platform that it had been brokered “through a partnership with private business” by his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.
That rumored foldable iPhone didn’t come from nowhere. Experts from CNET, PCMag, Mashable, Popular Science, ZDNET and Lifehacker examine Apple’s most important tech reveals.
President Trump announced a deal to grant the U.S. control of over 65 billion barrels of proven Venezuelan oil reserves — as the Trump administration angles to get oil companies to return to the country.
The upcoming Democratic primary election for state treasurer has broken funding records this month, with campaign spending likely to top $1 million on two candidates -- Michael A. Smith (left) and Ted Lauzen (right) -- in the historically overlooked race.…
Six more people hospitalised after incident at Big Church festival near Steyning
A 41-year-old man has died and at least six other people have been injured after a large sign fell at a Christian festival in West Sussex, police said.
The man, from Eastbourne, East Sussex, was pronounced dead at the scene after the incident at the Big Church festival near Steyning on Friday afternoon.
Longtime Slashdot reader belmolis writes: Part of New York City's 911 emergency system was offline from about 3:13 a.m. to 10 a.m. on August 18th due to a software update, according to Medical Daily. Of 5,659 calls to the Bronx call center during that period, about 1,700 calls connected but could not be heard by emergency operators. Some were rerouted to other call centers, but an estimated 400 human callers never got through. The potentially serious consequences of delayed response to emergencies are not yet known. The city did not notify the public and only released information when journalists inquired. How buggy software came to be installed on a running system is not yet known. The early-morning software update was pushed by Motorola, though exactly what it changed or why it caused the failure remains unknown. The city is still investigating whether the update was adequately tested and whether the same software release was deployed elsewhere.
The number of Australians who were reported missing in the catastrophic Nepal flooding disaster has risen to 41, as one family celebrates after an unaccounted-for woman made contact with them yesterday.
It means three additional Australians were confirmed missing overnight – up from 38 who remained unaccounted for on Friday evening.
After the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced two cases of measles-related deaths in one county, the local coroner appeared to contradict the account. And in an ongoing spat with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has alleged that a Shapiro staffer may have even “fabricated” the deaths. We’ll lay out what we know.
The saga brings to mind a pandemic-era falsehood that the vast majority of people classified as dying from COVID-19 did not die of the disease, but died of other causes while they happened to be infected. And when two children died of measles complications in Texas last year, Kennedy, along with activists in his former nonprofit, baselessly alleged that the kids did not die of measles, despite evidence to the contrary.
The situation in Pennsylvania is less clear. One of the deaths appears to be of an infant that tested positive for measles and died of a ruptured spleen. It is possible that the rupture was due to infection with measles, but the coroner has said the pathologist determined measles was not involved. There is no information about the second death. Meanwhile, the state has acknowledged that the term it has used to describe the deaths – “measles-associated” – includes cases in which measles infection is detected but “may not be assessed by the medical certifier or coroner to be the immediate cause of death.”
As we’ll explain, that statement may not mean as much as it appears to, since measles deaths would not be expected to have measles listed as an immediate cause anyway. But without more information about the cases, it is difficult to say what has happened, leading many – including Kennedy – to speculate that the deaths were not measles-related after all.
“Pennsylvania created its own information vacuum and then seemed surprised when someone else filled it,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and an infectious diseases attending physician in Pittsburgh, told us in an email. “The coroner’s account and the state’s account are not necessarily in conflict — they are two offices answering two different questions — but nobody in Harrisburg explained that, so the public was left to choose between fraud and incompetence.”
Timeline of Events
On Aug. 25, the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced that it had confirmed two cases of “measles-associated” deaths. Other than noting that the individuals were both unvaccinated and residents of Lancaster County, the department did not provide any further details, citing privacy concerns. The release strongly implied the deaths were at least partially due to measles, referring to them twice as “related” to measles.
“These mark the first deaths related to measles within the Commonwealth in 35 years,” the department’s press release noted.
Later in the day, Shapiro held a press conference with the health department in Lancaster County to share the announcement and to encourage vaccination.
“We hope and we pray that those deaths will be the last,” he said of the two deaths. “I want to be clear. This illness and death from measles is completely preventable.”
Localand national news outlets then picked the story up, with manystating that the two people died from measles.
Initially, the main story from the press conference was a quarrelbetween Shapiro and Kennedy about whether the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine contains fetal tissue, and whether Kennedy has spread vaccine misinformation. Kennedyhas – and the vaccine does not. (The rubella component of the vaccine is manufactured with and was initially developed with fetal cells derived from an elective abortion in the 1960s. While trace amounts of cell components from the cell strain can persist in the purified vaccine, whole cells do not. The Catholic Church hassaid the shot can be used “with a clear conscience.”)
But soon, questions swirled about how much the two announced deaths were related to measles.
Josh Parsons, a Lancaster County commissioner, posted on X the day of the press conference that the county coroner’s office was not aware of any measles deaths, although there was one baby that had tested positive for the disease but did not die of it.
“They have one case where a person died WITH measles, but not FROM measles,” he wrote. “Measles was definitely NOT the cause of death in that case.”
The following evening, Aug. 26, Kennedy had picked up on the controversy, writing on X, “The announcement appears to have been premature, and the deaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers. The Lancaster County Coroner says that it has no record of any measles deaths. State law requires that all measles deaths be reported to the coroner.”
Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Debra Bogen responded to Kennedy on X, saying she had “thoroughly reviewed the case investigation information and sadly can confirm that there were two recent measles-associated deaths in Lancaster County.”
Gov. Josh Shapiro during a press conference in Lancaster County on Aug. 25.
That same day in Florida, Kennedy had also said, citing the Lancaster County commissioner, that “they cannot find any measles deaths in Lancaster County.” He added: “The press is all covering this as if those measles deaths actually happened. But nobody’s doing … the little bit of critical inquiry to find out. We’re trying to figure out, you know, who those deaths were and whether they actually happened, and we can’t figure that out yet.”
Meanwhile, in the late afternoon of Aug. 26, DOH issued a statement that appeared to say that one of the two deaths was the baby the coroner’s office was aware of and gave more information on the definition of “measles-associated.”
“PA DOH uses the term ‘measles-associated’ when laboratory or epidemiologic evidence of measles is present, but the disease may not be assessed by the medical certifier or coroner to be the immediate cause of death,” the statement read. “Not all deaths are referred to a coroner under Pennsylvania law. Accordingly, one of the two measles-associated deaths is under investigation by the county coroner — as confirmed by the Lancaster County Coroner, who stated publicly their office is reviewing an infant death with a positive measles test.”
(Online during this period, a fake screenshot of a news headline circulated a rumor that the two deaths were both men in their eighties. There is no evidence for this, and according to the state’s dashboard, no measles cases have occurred in anyone 65 years or older this year.)
Multiple news outlets have reported more details on the infant case over the last several days. On Aug. 26, the Philadelphia Inquirer said that Lancaster County Coroner Dr. Stephen Diamantoni told them that the child, a newborn who died shortly after birth, died of a spleen laceration, and that the pathologist who did the autopsy “did not feel it was related to measles.” He said the infant contracted measles before birth, tested positive for measles after death based on a test of lung tissue and that the case was still being investigated.
TribLive, a news outlet covering western Pennsylvania, reported on Aug. 27 that Diamantoni said the cause of death was a “traumatic laceration of the spleen” and that the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy, Dr. Wayne Ross, determined that measles was not a contributing factor to the death.
“Diamantoni later acknowledged, however, that measles was listed under Part II of the infant’s death certificate, which reports ‘other contributing conditions contributing to death but not resulting in the underlying cause,’” the outlet reported. “Diamantoni said he still does not believe that measles contributed to the child’s death, but the disease was listed to offer ‘a broader view of the general health of the child.’”
Another local news source, citing the coroner, said the child that died was a male newborn who died at home and tested positive for measles via a PCR blood sample. An earlier version of the Inquirer story suggested there was a positive antibody test. Diamantoni, a family physician who was elected to his coroner post as a Republican, also told the TribLive that the baby was born with the assistance of a midwife at a birthing center in Lancaster County. He specified to LancasterOnline in an Aug. 27 story that the child died on Aug. 14 at a birthing center in Strasburg Township, and that the mother was alive, contrary to rumors that the second death was the baby’s mother.
As a newborn, the child would not have been eligible yet for routine measles vaccination, which begins at 12 months of age. However, if the baby contracted measles in utero from the mother, it is highly likely that the mother was unvaccinated.
An Information Gap
Much attention has focused on the newborn’s death from the lacerated spleen and whether it was ultimately due to measles infection. Measles is known to cause enlargement of the spleen, which during birth, could plausibly lead to a rupture.
“Given that congenital measles infection can cause splenic enlargement and thinning of the splenic capsule, it is likely that the child ruptured the spleen during birth,” Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, wrote in an Aug. 28 Substack post.
A 2024 study of children hospitalized for measles at a Polish hospital found that of the 26 infants under 13 months of age, four, or about 15%, had an enlarged spleen.
The coroner, however, said that the pathologist did not note an enlarged spleen during the autopsy, telling LancasterOnline that measles was not considered contributory because “there was no swelling or enlargement whatsoever” of the spleen and there was “massive blood loss.”
But Offit told the Philadelphia Inquirer that it is difficult to tell whether a spleen was enlarged after it ruptures, and that there should be an explanation for the rupture if it wasn’t caused by measles. The coroner has said the cause of the rupture is still under investigation, but no foul play is suspected.
Adalja said that measles “could be the reason an otherwise survivable delivery wasn’t survivable. It could also be incidental. I don’t think anyone outside that forensic center can say yet, and I’d be skeptical of confident assertions in either direction.”
The coroner’s office did not reply to our request for more information.
It’s worth noting that some of the confusion could come down to different definitions and processes that have not been adequately explained.
For example, Adalja said, the coroner or medical certifier produces the official death certificate, but state epidemiologists look at “deaths for outbreak surveillance under case definitions.” Those definitions are set by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists in coordination with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The latter is “a faster, looser standard designed to flag that a death occurred during and plausibly in connection with an outbreak, so the state can act in real time rather than wait months for a final certificate,” he said. “The failure here is that Pennsylvania never told anyone two systems were running, so the coroner saying he had no measles deaths in his log and the state saying it had two looked like a lie rather than two people describing different databases.”
Similarly, DOH’s statement about “measles-associated” deaths not necessarily being assessed “to be the immediate cause of death” is almost meaningless, Adalja said, since almost no measles deaths would list measles as the immediate cause.
Death certificates show a causal chain, listing the immediate cause as well as the sequence of events that led to it, including the underlying cause that started the sequence. In measles deaths, measles is the underlying cause, but the immediate cause would be something such as pneumonia or encephalitis, which are complications of measles, he explained.
DOH’s statement, then, he said, “is technically accurate” but “functionally uninformative. Worse, to a lay reader it sounds like a concession — as though the state were conceding measles is being blamed for something it didn’t do.”
Another major question is the second measles-related death. The Lancaster County coroner has said he doesn’t know who this is, and told LancasterOnline that while there are several reasons why he might not know, by law, it should be reported to him. Kennedy and others have also said that it is state law for the measles deaths to be reported to a county coroner.
DOH, however, has said that not all deaths need to be referred to a coroner. Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law expert at University of California Law San Francisco, told us that as far as she can tell, the health department is correct.
State law specifies that one of the conditions requiring a coroner’s investigation is a “death known or suspected to be due to contagious disease and constituting a public hazard” – and both parts of the clause would need to be met.
“This would not be a death that is a public hazard,” she told us. “Measles is spreading unrelated to it, so I don’t see any way to see it as meeting this requirement.”
Offit told us that he had talked to people “high up in the Pennsylvania Department of Health who have said they are comfortable” saying that “because of measles, two people in Pennsylvania died.”
DOH, however, has not shown why it thinks that is the case. The department did not respond to our questions after it sent us its statement. Shapiro’s office also did not respond to an inquiry.
Both Offit and Adalja have said it would be helpful if the department had released more information.
Offit’s concern is that regardless of what happened in these two cases, the measles outbreak in the state could very well be much larger than is currently known, and could be poised to grow as kids return to school and the seasons shift.
“This outbreak is much worse than they’re saying,” he said. “It’s probably closer to 2,000 cases. And it’s August” – not measles season, which is usually winter and spring. As of Aug. 28, Pennsylvania has recorded 460 measles cases, nearly half in Lancaster County.
Adalja told us he does not see a reason why the state couldn’t have provided more information that still kept private the identities of those who died.
“Secretary Kennedy suggesting the deaths may have been fabricated is inexcusable on its own terms. But he was handed the opening,” he said. “Even if measles is definitively established as the underlying cause in both deaths, this week already taught a slice of the public that when officials say ‘outbreak death,’ they might mean something else. That lesson outlasts the case. In an outbreak, institutional credibility is a consumable resource — and Pennsylvania spent a great deal of it protecting information that Texas released last year without incident.”
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Nearly 600 days after the devastating 2025 fires, thousands of Los Angeles residents are still waiting for more than $15bn in federal funds to rebuild their communities
As thousands of residents in Spokane, Washington, begin to grapple with a long recovery after a destructive set of blazes that consumed hundreds of homes in the state’s second most populated city this month, victims of the Los Angeles firestorm broke a grim record – they have faced the longest delay in modern history for federal aid.
Nearly 600 days since a historic firestorm roared into communities across Los Angeles, reducing more than 16,000 structures to ash and toxic debris, the Trump administration has failed to appropriate more than $15bn in long-term recovery funds that are crucial to rebuilding. The delay in supplying the badly needed funds is months longer than the last record set when victims of the Maui fires had to wait 500 days to receive the support, LAist noted this week.
A once-prized prospect from the Dominican Republic has been suspended by Major League Baseball after a league investigation revealed the player was part of an elaborate plot to portray him as nearly two years younger than he actually was, ESPN reported Friday.
The age-fraud plot included extreme efforts by the player’s handler such as falsifying school and medical records, faking birth and death certificates and even staging a gravesite, per the report.
Cleveland police say a total of 24 people arrested in investigation after crash that killed two officers
Seven more men have been arrested as part of an operation tackling alleged organised crime after the head-on crash on the A66 that resulted in seven deaths, Cleveland police have said.
Officers said four men, aged 21, 25, 35 and 40, were being held on suspicion of criminal damage with intent to endanger life after a vehicle crashed into a house in Steele Crescent, Middlesbrough.
A federal appeals court has ruled that states can regulate prediction markets like Kalshi as gambling, handing state regulators their biggest legal victory yet against the booming industry. "There are still related lawsuits pending across the country, and legal experts believe the matter will ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court," reports CNN. "But Friday's ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is the largest courtroom victory to date for the states as they seek to regulate prediction sites." CNN reports: The 3-0 ruling came from a panel of three Trump-appointed judges. The case originated from Nevada, where regulators tried to shut down the Kalshi prediction site. [...] "The substance of the sports event contracts offered on Kalshi's (exchange) is sports gambling, regardless of whether Kalshi calls them swaps," the appeals panel wrote Friday, adding that "Kalshi's attempts to distinguish its sports event contracts from sportsbooks betting are unpersuasive." The judges also said it was "disingenuous" for Kalshi to argue in court that its products weren't sports-betting when it previously used that phrasing in marketing materials. Kalshi spokeswoman Dani Lever said in a statement: "Despite the Ninth Circuit's opinion, we still believe the CFTC regulations as written do not prohibit sports contracts, and in any event, the CFTC is working to clarify those regulations. We will be seeking further review."
"It's the first ruling against Kalshi at the appellate level, and the opinion seemed to be pretty brutal for the company," said Dustin Gouker, an independent journalist who covers the prediction industry. "This gets us one step closer to an almost inevitable Supreme Court case on the legality of sports event contracts."
About 125 firefighters tackle blaze at Neasden waste facility as nearby Amazon warehouse is evacuated
A large fire broke out at a waste facility close to Wembley Stadium in north-west London, disrupting tube and train lines in the area.
Twenty fire engines and about 125 firefighters were sent to tackle the blaze at a mixed-waste facility on an industrial estate in Neasden, less than a mile from the venue.
National Park Service, which backs the 250ft arch, says it is likely to disrupt historical significance of dozens of sites
A new National Park Service report backs Donald Trump’s proposed arch, despite what it says are adverse effects to the sightlines of a host of landmarks in Washington, including the Washington Monument and the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.
The report released on Friday says the 250ft-tall (76-meter) memorial arch is likely to disrupt the historical significance of dozens of sites near its planned location adjacent to the Arlington Memorial Bridge.
Climber, stuck on 6in ridge, had veered off treacherous path and ‘any fall would almost certainly be fatal’
An ill-fated move left a man stranded on a 6in ledge over 10,000ft off the ground for hours in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range, before a volunteer rescue team came to his aid.
The climber, who has not been publicly identified, had been scaling the Mendenhall couloir, a gully on the face of Laurel mountain, with a friend on Saturday.
A former editor of Breitbart News, Yiannopoulos has also served as an intern for Marjorie Taylor Greene
Milo Yiannopoulos, a far-right British political commentator, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Louisiana, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
In a statement on Friday, a DHS spokesperson said that Yiannopoulos was arrested on Thursday at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans international airport (MSY). The spokesperson said Yiannopoulos “legally entered the country” in May 2019, but that “he chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws”.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Over a hundred tech companies -- including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft -- have signed an open letter urging both the private and public sectors to work together to defend themselves from AI-related cyber threats. The letter -- which was also signed by prominent cyber firms like CrowdStrike, Okta, and Fortinet, as well as prominent financial institutions and internet infrastructure firms -- calls for the adoption of new forms of cyber defense, while also encouraging governments at the "local, national, and international levels" to collaborate on security. "In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable," the letter states. "The companies and public services our communities depend on -- from hospitals to water treatment plants to the infrastructure that powers the internet -- are at risk."
[...] The letter further suggests the mobilization of a "collective response," one in which "new partnerships" are formed "to raise security standards and find new solutions to emerging cyber threats." Several of the AI companies that have signed the letter are still actively developing ever more advanced AI models, highlighting their conflicted position. At the same time, they are also offering programs to use frontier AI models for defensive purposes, including OpenAI's Daybreak program, Anthropic's Mythos, and Microsoft's new cyber platform Perception.
Around 70,000 are expected be at the Nevada desert festival, with it urging attendees to treat “everyone affected by this emergency with patience and care.”
(The Center Square) – Many inmates who die in Los Angeles County jails have been behind bars for weeks or months before their deaths, according to a new UCLA study.
More now on the Nepali army’s rescue operation to save about 100 people trapped in a tunnel at a hydropower project swamped by Wednesday’s flooding.
“Two helicopters have been dispatched but it is challenging because it is tough to even locate the entry points of the tunnel,” army spokesperson Raja Ram Basnet told AFP.
Relief efforts are also under way to provide the rescued people what they need.
The army is still working to safely evacuate more than 100 people trapped in the same tunnel.
(The Center Square) – The Milwaukee Election Commission acknowledged that a team led by its deputy director mistakenly selected and downloaded an audit log instead of election results on five of nine tabulators at its central count facility on the…
Australia's official music charts will no longer accept songs that are largely or entirely AI-generated, requiring eligible releases to be "substantially human made." The BBC reports: The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) said the new code would help "promote the human nature of artistry." It follows a controversy around a cover of Madonna's Like A Prayer by Australian DJ Josh Fawaz which recently topped the ARIA dance singles chart and peaked at number 2 on the country's overall chart. The song has become a staple of commercial radio station playlists and been streamed more than 48 million times on Spotify alone. Fawaz later added generative AI credits to the song after a backlash.
ARIA said that Australian artists were competing for attention "in the most crowded market in history" and that it was "not interested in promoting or celebrating the success of AI-generated music that does not contain human artistry." Under the new rules, AI assistance can still be used, but humans must have written the song, and have performed the lead vocal and primary instruments. AI can also still be used for mastering songs and, for example, using drum machines and auto tune. [...]
Artists will be required to declare AI use when they submit a song for chart consideration. ARIA said that if it later emerged music was largely AI-generated it could retrospectively adjust chart positions, and if the piece topped the charts, it may request that awards given for reaching Number One were returned. Artists and their representatives will be able to challenge their exclusion.
ARIA chief executive Annabelle Herd said: "These changes reflect our intent to remain dynamic and promote the human nature of artistry in what is, to say the least, a rapidly developing space. Artists already use AI tools in their work, the charts can and should evolve to keep room for that, but music generated wholesale by services built on artists' recordings is a different matter."
She added: "A chart that rewards unlicensed AI output would undercut the very basis of the recorded music we exist to represent."
Man claims he was coached extensively by authorities
Pennsylvania says recantation is ‘highly suspect’
Sandusky serving sentence after 2012 conviction
A judge has granted a hearing to explore claims that a man wants to recant allegations of sexual abuse years ago by Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.
Sandusky, 82, has been serving a decades-long prison sentence since he was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse in 2012. Eight young men testified about what happened to them as boys. He has repeatedly lost efforts to get a new trial, but Sandusky’s lawyers are trying again.
(The Center Square) – Americans need a “quieter” Federal Reserve focused on bringing down 65 months of “sustained elevated inflation,” the central bank’s chair told attendees of the annual Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium on Friday.
TORONTO, Aug. 28, 2026 — Xanadu Quantum Technologies Limited, a leading photonic quantum computing company, announced today that it will establish an advanced photonics research, development, and manufacturing facility as part of Project OPTIMISM, supported by CAD $195 million in federal government funding also announced today. The new facility, named “Inception,” is expected to feature world-class technology to enable scalable production of the components that will power future quantum data centers. Xanadu believes this work will revolutionize quantum infrastructure and strengthen Canada’s position as a global leader in the field.
The support for Inception is part of the largest government investment in quantum manufacturing in Canadian history. The funding is expected to accelerate scaling the photonic hardware required to achieve fault-tolerant quantum computing, the crucial milestone for delivering commercially meaningful, real-world solutions.
Designed to be a global facility for the manufacturing, packaging, and assembly of quantum computing components, the 158,000-square-foot Toronto site is being transformed into one of the world’s most sophisticated photonics facilities.
Inception is expected to feature state-of-the-art cleanrooms and equipment tailored for high-precision quantum hardware. Key technical capabilities are expected to include round-the-clock test and measurement facilities and first-of-its-kind heterogeneous integration. This integration process is vital for combining diverse photonic components onto a single scalable chip. These advanced capabilities will leverage Xanadu’s established industry partnerships and integrate specialized tooling from ASMPT, Bluefors, DISCO, EVG, FiconTEC, and MPI. The facility is expected to house Xanadu’s Systems Integration and Operation Centre, where quantum modules are assembled, tested, and verified before being installed into server racks.
“The launch of Inception is a defining strategic milestone for Xanadu and the broader quantum industry,” said Dr. Christian Weedbrook, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Xanadu. “We believe that this investment ensures that Xanadu remains at the forefront of the field, providing the infrastructure necessary to transition quantum technology from the lab to commercial-scale data centres.”
Xanadu is on a mission to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere. Inception is central to this mission, serving as a world-class facility for building the next generation of quantum infrastructure to meet the global demand for fault-tolerant quantum computing.
About Xanadu
Founded in 2016, Xanadu is a Canadian photonic quantum computing company with the mission to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere. Xanadu is building fault-tolerant quantum computers using light, with systems designed to operate at room temperature. Xanadu develops both hardware and software, including PennyLane, its open-source quantum computing platform. Xanadu is the first pure-play photonic quantum computing company to list on public markets (Nasdaq/TSX: XNDU) and is recognized globally for its breakthroughs in scalable quantum technologies.
New York, New York — President Donald Trump lost another attempt Friday to move his New York hush money case into federal court, leaving his 34-count felony conviction intact while his state appeal continues.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected Trump’s renewed request to transfer the case from state court, ruling that the arguments presented were “neither new nor legally sufficient.”
Trump was convicted in May 2024 of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records connected to a $130,000 payment made to adult-film actor Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. Prosecutors argued the records were falsified to conceal the payment’s purpose.
Hellerstein had previously denied Trump’s efforts to move the case into federal court. The latest review came after a federal appeals court instructed him to reconsider the request in light of the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling expanding presidential immunity for official acts.
The judge concluded that Trump had not shown sufficient grounds to revisit the earlier decision and criticized the effort during February arguments as seeking “two bites at the apple.”
The ruling marks the third time Trump has failed to remove the case from New York state court.
Trump continues to challenge the conviction through the state appellate process, where his attorneys are separately seeking to overturn the verdict.
Apple is raising Apple TV's U.S. price to $14.99 per month, up from $12.99, while the annual plan jumps from $99 to $119. It's the service's fourth price hike in four years and means the monthly cost has now tripled from its $4.99 launch price in 2019. Apple One's Individual plan is also rising from $19.95 to $21.95 per month.
–(The Center Square) – While visiting the Johnson Space Cente Friday, President Donald Trump announced and signed an executive order to establish the Space Force Academy.
Nevada-based Kingsbarn Realty Capital seeks to acquire land to construct private road to development outside park
The Trump administration is reportedly pushing to give a parcel of land inside Yosemite, the country’s first national park and one of its most popular, to a Nevada-based private developer.
Staff with the National Park Service have been exploring how the agency can give a quarter-mile parcel to a company operated by Kingsbarn Realty Capital, the news outlet Notus reported on Friday, citing agency documents and unnamed sources “directly familiar with discussions”.
When The Westin London City was built beside the Thames, excavation for the spa uncovered Roman archaeology beneath the site, limiting how far crews could dig. It is a very London problem: even a brand-new hotel can run straight into…
Official death toll approaches 600, with many of the missing Americans having been on a pilgrimage to a sacred site
At least 90 Americans were still missing on Friday among almost 2,000 people unaccounted for following the catastrophic flash flood along the Nepal-Tibet border on Wednesday.
With the official death toll creeping towards 600 on Friday and expected to continue rising, there were survivors, victims and missing people from many nationalities.
(The Center Square) – Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers is blasting his opponent, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, over his ties to controversial far-left influencer Hasan Piker.
The families of an Australian defence force member and two Sydney boys who went missing with their parents in Nepal remain hopeful they will be found safe.
Dozens of Australians are missing after devastating flooding on the Nepal-Tibet border. Nepal’s disaster management authority said on Friday that the total number of people missing had risen sharply to more than 1,900 swelled by 933 workers on hydropower projects on the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers where a wall of water powered down on Wednesday morning. The number of people killed is at least 584.
New York, New York — Elon Musk’s X Corp. lost its challenge to New York’s “Stop Hiding Hate Act” after a federal judge ruled that the law’s disclosure requirements do not violate the First Amendment.
U.S. District Judge John Cronan dismissed X’s lawsuit Wednesday, finding that the law requires large social media companies to provide factual information about how they define and enforce policies involving hate speech, extremism, harassment, disinformation and foreign political interference.
The law applies to platforms operating in New York with more than $100 million in annual revenue and requires two reports each year to the state attorney general. X had argued the requirement improperly interfered with its editorial decisions and compelled speech.
Cronan rejected that argument, comparing the reporting requirements to other factual business disclosures. The court also dismissed X’s claim that the law conflicts with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The decision contrasts with X’s partial victory against a similar California law, where a federal appeals court previously found that certain disclosure requirements likely violated the First Amendment.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has said the law is intended to provide consumers with greater transparency into how major platforms handle harmful content. X can appeal the ruling, but the current decision leaves the reporting requirements in place.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A US judge ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration broke the law when it designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk earlier this year, finding that the government had unlawfully targeted the AI firm for refusing to comply with defense department demands. "The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Judge Rita Lin said in a 59-page decision.
Lin's ruling barred the federal agencies named in the lawsuit from enforcing Donald Trump's order to stop using Anthropic's tools and overturned the designation of the company as a "supply chain risk" by the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. The status, usually reserved for foreign firms, would have blocked government agencies from doing business with Anthropic. The case emerged out of a months-long feud between Anthropic and the Pentagon at the start of the year. Anthropic refused to allow the government to use its Claude AI model for fully autonomous lethal weapons or domestic mass surveillance, resulting in Hegseth accusing the company of "arrogance and betrayal".
Lin put a temporary pause on the government's punitive measures in March, stating that the government's actions looked like an attempt to "cripple Anthropic" for exercising its first amendment rights. The ruling this week makes that temporary suspension permanent, although the government may appeal. "We welcome the court's ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful," an Anthropic spokesperson said.
Rescuers pulled out survivors and helicopters ferried people to safety as Nepal and China raced to respond after catastrophic flash floods killed hundreds of people.
By: Maakwe Cumanzala, Anyway Chingwete, and Karen Kaunda
These three numbers from Afrobarometer surveys help explain why many across Africa are struggling with rising costs, despite the rosy economic headlines.
Critics call move to gain long-term access to country’s massive energy reserves ‘predatory’ and ‘unconstitutional’
Reports that the US is preparing to claim a big stake in Venezuela’s massive energy reserves have sparked an outcry, with critics describing the move as “predatory” and a “rapacious” land grab.
Several media outlets this week reported that the Trump administration – which abducted Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, in January and has steered the South American country ever since – hopes to secure long-term access to its oil and gasfields.
Anger over the construction of AI data centers has triggered political leaders to call for bans and moratoriums on the construction of new data centers in recent months. Is this a legitimate reaction to increased utility bills and a deterioration of quality of life, or are the bans and moratoriums going too far?
In July, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a one-year ban on the construction of new data centers that consume more than 50 megawatts of power. The moratorium is designed to give the state time to develop a “regulatory framework” to protects customers, the environment, and the energy grid.
“As data center development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources, and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it’s my responsibility to take action and lead,” Hochu stated in her executive order.
In recent weeks, Republican leaders have joined Democrats in calling for hiatuses on building new data centers, including Texas and Pennsylvania.
Residential electricity costs have risen by 42% over the past five years, per the US Energy Information Administration (leolintang/Shutterstock)
While Virgina has the highest density of data centers in the country, Texas has been the epicenter of the AI boom, with nearly 250 new data centers proposed to be built over the next few years, according to this article in the Texas Tribune. With plenty of land, affordable electricity, and a reputation for unencumbered free market activity, the Lone Star State has been a draw for AI data centers.
So it was a bit of a surprise when Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, called for a pause in new data centers earlier this month. The cause: Concerns about the 420 gigawatts in new electrical connections to Texas’ grid (ERCOT) from prospective data center operators.
“Our top priority is to protect Texans’ safety and quality of life,” Abbott stated in the August 3 announcement. “Any project that fails to comply with the requirements set forth by the PUCT and ERCOT, and by state law, must be denied connection to the Texas grid. Simply put, Texans must come first.”
A similar dynamic is at play in Pennsylvania, where more than 100 data centers have been proposed to be built, representing a potential increase of 74 gigawatts in peak power usage over the next two decades. Citing “record highs” in power costs, Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, also called for tighter rules on new data centers last week.
Shapiro’s new rules require data center operators in Pennsylvania to gain approval from local communities. They also require data center operators to generate their own power or pay full price for grid connections. The governor canceled all “fast-track” approvals and demanded full transparency with no NDAs (non-disclosure agreements).
“These are some of the biggest companies in the world,” Shapiro stated in his executive order. “They can afford to be good neighbors, follow the rules, and do this right.”
Bytes & Pitchforks
Public opinion on data centers has soured in recent months. A Gallup poll from March found that 70% of Americans opposed local construction of new data centers A Politico poll from July found that about 41% of Americans would oppose a data center being built within three miles of their home, up from 28% in January.
(Aleutie/Shutterstock)
Rising electricity costs are being blamed on data centers. And costs have been rising. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential electricity costs have risen by 42% over the past five years.
But are those increases due solely to new data centers? The answer is likely mixed. Electrical connections to data centers do increase the overall usage of electricity and cause local grid operators to buy more power on the wholesale market. Those costs are then spread across all ratepayers.
However, there are other factors are play, including environmental regulations, grid upgrades, and inflation. According to a Lawrence Berkeley Lab analysis, increases in power costs have mostly tracked inflation in recent years, with a small unexcepted bump in 2025. The highest electricity costs are in California, Hawaii, the Northeast, and Alaska, it stated.
Water Consumption
The water consumption of data centers is another concern. Just as rising demand for electricity is causing some increases for ratepayers, an increase in water for cooling data centers is being attributed to rising water bills.
A January report by the Florida Water & Pollution Control Operators Association stated that 75% to 90% of data centers rely on water-based cooling, with the majority of those being open-loop designs that do not re-use the water. About 10% to 25% of water-cooled data centers used closed-loop designs that do re-use water.
The report found that while smaller data centers may use about 100 million gallons a year, large hyperscale data centers can use 1 to 5 million gallons of water per day. For comparison, a town of 10,000 people uses about 1 million gallons of water per day.
About 70% of the water used by a data center is “consumed,” while about 30% of it is re-used as wastewater. Some data centers are using reclaimed wastewater for cooling, including Google, which says a quarter of its data centers are cooled by reclaimed water, while AWS in 2023 said that it has 20 data centers using purified wastewater.
The increased water demand has put the hiatus on some proposed data centers. The city council in Chandler, Arizona blocked a proposed data center last year after residents rose up to oppose it, even though it would have used a closed-loop cooling system in the arid region. That followed similar moves by local governments to stop other data centers from being built in Oregon, Missouri, Virginia, and Indiana.
A UC Riverside analysis of water consumption published in March found that growth in data centers could collectively require up to 1,400 million gallons per day of new water capacity through 2030, an amount that’s roughly equal to New York City’s average daily supply. The cost of obtaining that supply could rise to $58 billion, they found.
However, the total water consumption by data centers through 2030 is projected to be minuscule–0.6% to 1.1% of total public water withdrawals the contiguous United States, according to the researchers.
In Conclusion
On the one hand, the moratorium on new AI data centers is understandable, as they have increased the amounts people pay for electricity and water. However, the increase in electricity is due to other factors too (environmental concerns, legacy grid replacement), and new closed-loop cooling systems largely will mitigate increase in water consumption.
(Source: Data Center Maps)
The boom has also been good for employment, especially construction firms that employ millions of workers. Nvidia CEO Jenson Huang said the US will need “hundreds of thousands” more plumbers and electricians to support the development and management of new AI factories. The boom has also contributed to a rising stock market, adding trillions of dollars in wealth for shareholders, bolstering the 401(k)s of million of Americans.
To be sure, AI factories will also have negative impact jobs, as corporations look to replace human workers with more efficient AI agents. The pace of this change could accelerate, as the Wall Street Journalrecently estimated that Google, Facebook, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle collectively made about $3 trillion in off-balance-sheet investments in the AI buildout, significantly more than what is on their books. They are clearly betting on AI being a net gain for their shareholders.
But what about US citizens? Will it be a net gain for them? Some Americans may wish that the AI boom never happened, that they could go back to how things were before ChatGPT walked down the aisle in November 2022. Unfortunately, that’s not possible at this point.
Moratoriums on data center construction are one thing, as local officials get a handle on how large data centers can impact residents in their area. But a country-wide ban on data center construction, as some have Washington, D.C. political leaders have called for, would be devastating to this emerging industry.
Editor’s note: A version of this article first ran in AIwire.
Moscow recruits an estimated 1,000 people a day but western officials say it cannot keep up with casualty level
Russia is losing about 6,000 more troops in Ukraine each month than it can recruit, western officials have said.
While Russia is still acquiring new battlefield recruits at speed, with an estimated rate of 1,000 a day, in the last two months even this has not been sufficient to replace those killed or injured.
Leading cardiovascular health groups reclassify overlooked causes and introduce sex-specific diagnostic thresholds
Doctors have agreed the world’s first universal definition of a heart attack, paving the way for millions of women to finally receive better treatment after decades of being “deprioritised”.
In one of the biggest procedural shake-ups in a generation, the world’s four leading cardiovascular health groups have signed off on new guidance for healthcare professionals when seeing suspected heart attack patients.
Stripe and private equity firm Advent International have ditched their $53 billion pursuit of PayPal, ending a deal that would have been the largest fintech acquisition ever. "Stripe last week agreed to pay $8 billion for AI model marketplace OpenRouter, but a source said that the OpenRouter and PayPal deals were operating on independent tracks," reports Axios.
Campaigners say ‘seismic shift’ follows years of pressure to sever ties with oil and gas firm
The London Science Museum has ended its decades-long partnership with the oil and gas company BP in what has been described as a “seismic shift” for the museum.
The Science Museum Group academy, which was established in 2018 to provide training and resources, announced on Friday that it would be ending its partnership with BP. In a statement, the director and chief executive of the Science Museum Group, Sir Ian Blatchford, said the partnership had “drawn to a close at the end of the current contract term”.
Experts say imported eggs served in cafes and restaurants may be behind hundreds of infections and one death
Salmonella cases in the UK are expected to rise until the common source is identified, something that is notoriously difficult to establish, experts have warned.
There have been 474 confirmed cases and one death linked to the current outbreak, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), with the latest investigations suggesting it is associated with eating imported eggs in cafes and restaurants.
Defending champion arrives at Flushing Meadows in poor form and with a host of challengers looking to usurp her
Under any normal circumstances Aryna Sabalenka would not have lost her third-round match at the Cincinnati Open last week. For all of her unforced errors, indecisiveness and the obvious tension surrounding her tennis, the world No 1 had led the unheralded Sára Bejlek 5-1 in the first set tie-break and then 4-1 in set two. She gave herself more than enough chances to close out a comfortable win.
Instead Sabalenka returns to New York trying to find a path through her greatest crisis since she first reached No 1 in the rankings more than three years ago. That straight-sets loss in Cincinnati extended a mediocre 17-7 record dating back to the beginning of April during which she has not reached a final. She has just one more chance to turn her fortunes around as she tries to claim her first grand slam title of the year at the US Open, the tournament she has won on the last two occasions.
A social media post viewed by more than 100,000 accounts claims that North Carolina “processed” more than a million voter registrations.
“Governor Josh Stein won North Carolina by 828,187 votes. North Carolina processed 1,031,350 duplicate registrations,” Shiloh Marx, president of the Integrity First Alliance, said in a July 20 X post.
Integrity First Alliance advocates for state elections leaders to update and clean voter rolls. Marx’s post referenced North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein’s margin of victory over Republican Mark Robinson in the state’s 2024 gubernatorial election.
In response to the post, some social media accounts questioned whether people voted twice.
The post raised two key questions: Did North Carolina election officials really “process” a million duplicate registrations? And, if so, did it have any bearing on the state’s 2024 elections? Not exactly.
The figure in the post — 1,031,350 — comes from a recent report published by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent government agency that provides election administration guidance. The report described how the 2024 federal general election was administered and how voters cast their ballots.
The statistic represents the number of registered North Carolina voters who submitted new registration applications that contained no changes to their personal information, said Kristen Muthig, a spokesperson for the commission.
“These can be registrations submitted by people who did not realize they were already registered to vote or who submitted multiple registration transactions through different modes (e.g., submitted a registration with the exact same information through the mail and online),” Muthig said in an email. She referred specific questions about North Carolina to the state’s elections board.
Patrick Gannon, a spokesperson for the state board, said North Carolina often receives duplicate registrations when someone who is already registered fills out a new form at the Division of Motor Vehicles, or as part of a voter registration drive.
North Carolina isn’t alone; the commission found duplicate registrations in other states too: California had nearly 2.2 million; Michigan had nearly 1.9 million; and Virginia had about 1 million. The report notes: Some of the registration transactions processed by states do not result in the creation or the update of a registration record.
Between 2023 and August 2024, county elections boards in North Carolina removed more than 747,000 ineligible registration records from the state’s voter rolls. The state board noted in September 2024 that, although election officials regularly check voter rolls for accuracy, some ineligible registrations take longer to identify. Official death records may not reach election officials until weeks after a voter dies, for example.
Eventually, though, list maintenance processes catch up and those ineligible voters are removed from the rolls, the board said. It also noted that the mere presence of ineligible individuals on the rolls doesn’t mean voter fraud will occur.
While North Carolina’s DMV might “process” duplicate voter registrations, Gannon said the duplicate registrations in North Carolina were never added to the state’s rolls. That means the duplicate registrations Marx referenced had no bearing on the 2024 elections, Gannon said.
Here’s how it works:
When a county elections board receives registration forms from the DMV, local election officials log them into a statewide voter registration database.
The state’s database scans the person’s information — their name, date of birth, address, and driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number — to see if they are already registered.
If the system finds two records that might belong to the same person, election officials investigate the records to determine whether they actually are the same person. If an application comes from someone who is already registered, the old registration is removed.
In the unlikely event that a voter is registered twice, the state has numerous checks to prevent someone from voting twice. Electronic pollbooks with information about who has already voted are used at every early voting site. If a voter who has already voted tries to check in again, they will be prevented from casting a regular ballot and would instead be offered a provisional ballot. County election workers would then research the voter’s registration status on Election Day to determine whether the ballot should count.
The bipartisan state elections board certified the 2024 contest results unanimously, and post-election audits across the state haven’t found evidence of widespread fraud.
“These duplicate numbers have absolutely no relationship to the difference in vote totals for candidates in a contest,” Gannon said in an email. “Unfortunately, this post will serve only to mislead unsuspecting readers who don’t understand the process and hurt voter confidence in elections.”
Marx didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Our ruling
Marx said North Carolina “processed 1,031,350 duplicate registrations,” noting that Stein won the 2024 gubernatorial election by fewer votes. The comments left some people with the impression that some voters had the ability to vote twice — and that Stein may have benefitted from duplicate registrations.
More than 1 million North Carolinians who were already registered to vote filled out a second registration application prior to the 2024 elections, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Those applications were technically “processed” but that doesn’t mean voters were added to the voter rolls a second time. They were not. State election officials say their applications had “absolutely no relationship” to the gubernatorial race, or any other of the state’s 2024 elections. And, to date, election audits haven’t found evidence of widespread fraud.
The post is partially accurate, but it leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.
(The Center Square) – President Trump’s order to change Lake Ontario’s name to Lake America is getting mixed reactions in Wisconsin from Republicans and Democrats.
Roblox is restricting games that reward younger players for endlessly consuming autoplaying media feeds. The new restrictions are specifically targeting Roblox experiences like "Steal an Egg," which encouraged players to watch TikTok-style clips for in-game benefits. "Roblox's official alert does not expressly mention SAE, but the new policy is most certainly targeting the viral game first and foremost," reports TechSpot. From the report: The company said games that reward ongoing media consumption are now unavailable to players with a Roblox Kids (ages 5 to 8) or Roblox Select (ages 9 to 15) account. The policy will affect games designed to combine media feeds, autoplay, infinite scrolling, and systems that reward players for doomscrolling through TikTok videos of questionable value.
"Steal an Egg" fits perfectly into this new category. The game tasks players with raising eggs, but they can also steal eggs from other NPCs. Players are incentivized to increase their characters' speed either by spending in-game currency (Robux) or by watching a video feed on a virtual treadmill. "Steal an Egg" was recently removed from Roblox but is now back in the store without its troublesome video-feed feature.
[...] Roblox also highlights that the new anti-doomscrolling restriction does not apply to the rewarded video ads feature, which rewards players for watching a short clip but does not include autoplay or other infinite-scroll-like design choices.
Fears of further flooding complicated recovery efforts, as authorities searched for people missing after floods struck the Himalayan border between Nepal and China.
The Red Cross has said at least 93,000 people may have been affected by Wednesday’s flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border, which have killed nearly 600 people, left another 1,900 missing, and triggered a huge rescue operation that is being hampered by fears of new flooding.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the world’s largest humanitarian network, said it feared the death toll would continue to rise as some of the hardest-hit areas remained inaccessible after roads and bridges were destroyed by the torrents.
Norwegians gather to remember monarch whose death comes amid scandal over links between crown princess and Jeffrey Epstein
Norwegians have gathered in their thousands to pay their respects to King Harald V, Europe’s oldest reigning monarch, who has died, aged 89, in Oslo. He was succeeded immediately by his son, King Haakon VIII.
The new king thanked “the government and Norwegian people for their support and sympathy for the royal family at this time”. A period of national mourning was announced as crowds left wreaths and messages outside the royal palace in Oslo.
In the latest escalation of the Trump administration’s war on the left, the U.S. government’s designation of a popular antifascist webhosting provider as a terror group could shutter a swath of radical websites in the U.S.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Wednesday that they were targeting the Italy-based A/I Collective with terror sanctions. Federal law gives the Treasury Department broad discretion to apply the terror label to foreign groups.
A wide array of anarchist, antifascist, and far-left groups in the U.S. and abroad use the privacy-minded collective’s offerings, including an anonymous email service and its popular noblogs.org blogging platform.
The practice of designating an internet platform and service provider as a terror group — rather than those pursuing violence themselves — has “huge” implications for the future free speech on the internet, warned Jillian York, the director of international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“They are going after the messenger,” York said. “I don’t think that the members of the group would necessarily condone the actions of the people that they hosted. What they do condone is the freedom to host, the ability to be anonymous, the ability to be private.”
“Protesting is not terrorism.”
The A/I Collective told The Intercept that it is exploring its legal options to fight the sanctions, which block U.S. citizens and companies from providing the group with financial support.
In an unsigned statement, the group said that it denies the U.S. government’s allegations.
“Antifascism and anticapitalism are not terrorism,” the group said. “Protesting is not terrorism. And everyone has the right to speak out and to struggle for humanity.”
The U.S. government’s move could have ripple effects far beyond Italy.
Groups using the A/I Collective’s services range from an anarchist radio show in Asheville, North Carolina; to a blog documenting attacks on anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers” under the Jane’s Revenge moniker; to the Seattle Anarchist Bookfair. The bookfair warned Wednesday that its website “will most likely go down soon because of US sanctions on Noblogs.”
The State and Treasury Departments justified the designation by alleging that the A/I Collective, also known as Autistici/Inventati, has provided services to foreign terror groups, including anarchists who have launched attacks on railroads and pipelines in Europe, and by domestic left-wing groups that have employed violence.
“A/I’s cadre of radical hackers and tech developers provide a full spectrum of services — including encrypted chats and email, web hosting, secure video conferencing and streaming, anonymity shields, and a suite of other technological tools — to Marxist, anarchist, and other left-wing extremist groups in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere,” a State Department spokesperson said in a press release. “These tools are specifically designed to support the operations of far-left terrorist networks.”
It is unclear how many groups in the U.S. could be forced offline, or to shift their providers, because of the terror designation. The A/I Collective said it could not provide an estimate of U.S-based groups that it hosts, because it does not ask its users for any private or personal information.
Nor was it immediately clear whether simply hosting a site using the collective’s services would be illegal if no money changes hands. Still, the collective says that it relies heavily on voluntary, suggested donations, and many U.S.-based groups appear to be scrambling for alternative hosting providers.
The A/I Collective was sanctioned under the Treasury Department’s authority to label groups specially designated global terrorists. U.S. citizens convicted of violating those sanctions can face stiff penalties of up to 20 years in prison.
If U.S. groups continue to use the collective’s services, the U.S. government could use that affiliation against them, said Shayana Kadidal, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. The Treasury Department can even label U.S.-based groups as specially designated global terrorists, although they have more standing to challenge that designation in court.
The designation of the A/I Collective as a foreign terror group is the next step in a sequence that began with Trump’s designation of antifa as a “domestic terror organization” last September, said Mark Bray, a historian at Rutgers University who wrote a book about antifascism.
Where the Trump administration goes next is the “million-dollar question,” Bray said.
“It seems to be they’re playing a bit of a long game,” he said, “where they try to establish the existence of a supposed violent, left-wing terror network — which they have had trouble doing, but they have tried. But then, of course the way they make that affect the left more broadly is to criminalize those who they claim are aligned with it.”
Australia’s Nepali community plan to host vigils to remember the victims of the Nepal-Tibet flood disaster to coincide with a day of mourning, as the number of people killed continues to rise.
As Australia’s Nepali diaspora wait for the full scale of the disaster to become clear, community members are desperately waiting to hear from missing relatives and friends.
Nepali authorities said on Friday that the death toll had risen to 579, with the number missing rising sharply to more than 1,900, after massive flash floods and landslides tore through the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli river basins on Wednesday.
However, Kevin Warsh didn’t say if interest rates would change in coming months, as inflation remains stubborn
The US Federal Reserve is not done fighting high inflation, its chair, Kevin Warsh, said in his first major speech in the role on Friday, emphasizing that it was “the Fed’s job to deliver stable prices”.
Warsh did not indicate where the Fed will take interest rates in the coming months, despite US inflation remaining stubbornly above the central bank’s 2% target amid the war in Iran. But his speech was taken by markets as a signal that rates may rise in the coming months, a move that may put him at odds with Donald Trump, who has aggressively called for rates to be cut.
Families are rushing to Nepal to search for the 33 British nationals who are still missing, as fears mount over the risk of a second wave of flooding in the region.
PARIS, Aug. 28, 2026 — Pasqal, a global leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, has announced the composition of the Board of Directors of Pasqal Holding SA (the combined company), following the completion of its business combination with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp. II. The combined company’s ordinary shares are expected to begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “PSQL” on August 28, 2026.
The Board comprises nine directors and is chaired, in a non-executive capacity, by Pasqal co-founder and 2022 Nobel laureate in Physics Alain Aspect. It brings together senior industry leaders, including Barbara Dalibard, Chair of the Michelin Supervisory Board, alongside Michel Combes, who serves as Lead Independent Director of the combined company.
The directors are:
Alain Aspect, Non-Executive Chair of the Board. A co-founder of Pasqal and Chair of its Scientific Advisory Board, and a co-recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is a professor at the Institut d’Optique, Université Paris-Saclay, professor emeritus at École Polytechnique, and a member of the French Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Technologies.
Nicolas Berdou, Director, serving as the permanent representative of Bpifrance. He is a Senior Investment Director at Bpifrance Investissement, leading venture investments in technology, deep-tech, and defense.
Michael Blitzer, Director. He is the Founder and Chairman of Inflection Point Asset Management, a leading financial sponsor of strategically important assets. He is also the Executive Chairman of USA Rare Earth and a Director of Intuitive Machines.
Wasiq Bokhari, Chief Executive Officer and Director. Chief Executive Officer of Pasqal, having previously served as its President and Executive Chairman. His earlier roles include leadership positions at Amazon and Google.
Michel Combes, Lead Independent Director. Chief Executive Officer of Lambda, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Brightspeed, and formerly chief executive of SoftBank Group International, Sprint, Altice, and Alcatel-Lucent. He is a board member of F5, Philip Morris International, and e& (formerly Etisalat).
Barbara Dalibard, Director and Chair of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. Former Chief Executive Officer of SITA and of SNCF Voyageurs, and former Chief Executive Officer of Orange Business Services. She is the chair of the Supervisory Board of Michelin and is a Director of Rexel.
Andrew Gundlach, Director and Chair of the Compensation Committee. President and Chief Executive Officer of Bleichroeder LP and Director of WellTower and Air Global Plc.
Jean Raby, Director and Chair of the Audit Committee, serving as the designee of EIC Fund. He is a Partner and Chief Client and Business Development Officer at Astorg, and a former Chief Executive Officer of Natixis Investment Managers. He previously served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial and Legal Officer of Alcatel-Lucent and Partner at Goldman Sachs.
Georges-Olivier Reymond, Director. A co-founder of Pasqal and its Chief Strategic Alliances Officer, and its founding Chief Executive Officer from 2019 to 2025.
A majority of the Board is independent under applicable SEC and Nasdaq rules, with Jean Raby chairing the Audit Committee, Andrew Gundlach the Compensation Committee, and Barbara Dalibard the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee.
“As we begin this next chapter as a public company, we are fortunate to have a board that combines scientific leadership, operational experience, and capital-markets expertise. We expect their guidance to help us scale neutral-atom quantum computing and deliver value to customers and shareholders over the years ahead,” said Wasiq Bokhari, Chief Executive Officer of Pasqal.
About Pasqal
Pasqal (Nasdaq: PSQL) helps organizations tackle problems that are difficult or impossible to solve with conventional computing methods alone. Founded in 2019 on Nobel Prize–winning research, Pasqal builds and operates neutral-atom quantum computers, delivered with a full software stack, for industry, science, and governments. Pasqal’s production-ready systems are available both on-premises and through the cloud, enabling organizations to harness quantum computing without requiring in-house quantum expertise. A single hardware platform supports analog workloads today and is designed to evolve toward fault-tolerant quantum computing in the future.
Headquartered in France with operations globally, Pasqal’s quantum computing systems are used by customers across energy, financial services and advanced materials to address complex challenges. Pasqal’s customers include Saudi Aramco, Crédit Agricole CIB, LG Electronics and supported by partnerships with NVIDIA and IBM (Pasqal is part of the IBM Quantum Network).
Critics say painting looks more like a zombie but artist Chris Ashmore says ‘touch-ups’ are still to happen
A street artist has defended his mural of the snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan in Sheffield after critics suggested the world champion looked like a zombie.
Chris Ashmore was commissioned to produce the artwork featuring the former seven-time world champion for the back wall of the Spot On snooker club, the BBC reported.
President faces criticism over plan to import up to 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef without charging higher tariffs
Donald Trump has pledged to allow cattle ranchers and farmers to process their own food amid a backlash from the US agricultural sector over his decision to pause US tariffs on foreign beef.
The US president has been sharply criticized, including from members of his own party, since announcing the US will temporarily import up to 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef without charging higher tariffs in an effort to bring down prices.
An AI agent, Anthropic’s Claude, developed and validated the control logic for the laser system in a QuEra quantum computer, recovering it in seconds versus an expert needing minutes, and holding it steadier than a specialist’s manual tune. QuEra plans to extend the approach to other subsystems.
BOSTON, Aug. 28, 2026 — QuEra Computing has announced results from its work in the Model Hardware Standard (MHS) research preview, in which an AI agent, Anthropic’s Claude, performed one of the most expert-dependent jobs in operating a quantum computer: keeping its laser system on target. The agent wrote and validated its own control software, which now recovers the system in seconds with no manual intervention, obviating the need for manual work that previously required a specialist on site.
Quantum computers are moving from laboratory instruments to products customers buy and operate themselves. That transition depends less on physics than on whether a machine runs reliably without the people who built it standing next to it. QuEra’s systems use lasers held at precise frequencies to control atomic qubits. Those lasers drift, and when one drifts far enough the machine stops until someone with deep and specific expertise brings it back. Every generation of machine carries more lasers than the last, and every machine at a customer site sits further from the engineers who know them best.
Automating a Critical Subsystem
QuEra has automated recovery from common laser disturbances for years, and Aquila, its 256-qubit system on Amazon Braket, runs with uptime above 99%. The more complex laser failures are rarer and more severe, and have resisted automation to date because recovery calls for human expert judgment rather than a fixed sequence of steps.
A QuEra team of four specialists spent two to three weeks writing a recovery script by hand, and it handled only the failures its authors thought to list. The team then gave the same problem to Claude, working through the MHS, a new standard for AI agents to safely operate physical equipment in scientific research and advanced manufacturing. MHS started as a collaboration between Anthropic and HHMI Janelia Research Campus and is currently in a limited research preview, in which QuEra is a participant. MHS let the agent run its own experiments on a dedicated testbed and propose a fix, try it, read the result, refine. It ran that loop continuously, including overnight, covering hundreds of failure cases that no team of specialists would have time to work through by hand.
Engineers set the scope, reviewed every step, and decided what counted as proof of success. The software the agent produced is a conventional, fully inspectable program, not a model making decisions at runtime. And the work stayed safe by design: devices declare bounds, interlocks, and emergency stops in the standard itself, and AI agents inherit and operate within them by default.
What the Pilot Proved
It recovered reliably. Given no information about what had gone wrong, the controller returned the system to target in 695 of 700 timed trials across seven fault types, and never reported success when it had not succeeded. The five misses traced to a rig condition rather than the software.
It recovered in seconds. Most faults cleared in under six seconds and the hardest in roughly 10 to 14 seconds, against five to 10 minutes for an expert.
It handled real faults, not only test cases. The testbed sits in a working lab with ordinary foot traffic and real environmental sources of error. Over the pilot the AI agent recovered every time without help, regardless of the cause.
It improved on expert tuning. Asked to improve the quality of the lock rather than recover it, the AI agent cut residual noise by a factor of five and stopped the system dropping out during unattended runs. Measured afterward on an independent instrument it could not influence, its settings matched an experienced specialist’s manual tune and corrected a flaw the manual tune had left behind.
It transferred. Pointed at a second laser wavelength, the AI agent worked out the settings from scratch in one unattended overnight run, a job that normally takes weeks of hands-on commissioning.
Why It Matters for Deployment
Prior to this pilot, every laser used to carry a standing claim on scarce human expert time. On-site recovery was required at any hour, taking up to half an hour per tuning session, and commissioning a new operating point took weeks. Given the increased number of lasers per computer and additional deployments in the field, manual expert labor becomes a limit on how many systems can be deployed and properly supported, and a barrier to fault-tolerant quantum computing at scale.
“For years the hardest part of scaling quantum computers wasn’t the physics, it was the people driving at 2 am to fix a laser lock. We built a solution using the Model Hardware Standard to fix that: the lock recovers itself in seconds, verified every time, catching noise that’s easy to miss by hand. We’re building quantum computers that fix themselves,” said Sergio H. Cantu, Vice President of Quantum Systems, QuEra Computing.
After the pilot, little or no expert guidance is required. For an HPC center or national laboratory installing a system on-premises, that is the difference between needing a resident neutral-atom laser specialist and needing very little of one’s time.
Why QuEra Partners
The laser in this pilot is one of many subsystems in a quantum computer that are precise, fragile, and demanding of expert attention. QuEra expects the same AI automation approach to apply to others, and the pilot leaves behind the safety practices and measurements that enabled the second campaign to take one night where the first took weeks.
“We are among the best in the world at developing and operating quantum computers, and even for us, the cost of keeping these machines at peak performance is high,” said Takuya Kitagawa, President of QuEra. “A customer expects the entire computer, and thus every subsystem, to hold itself together without a specialist in the room. This is why the results from the MHS research preview and Anthropic’s frontier AI models are so meaningful. We are making it far easier and cheaper to keep our computers running at their best.”
QuEra works deeply with a small number of companies chosen for strategic capabilities: Amazon Web Services for cloud delivery of Libra on Amazon Braket in 2028, HPE for on-premises HPC integration, and NVIDIA for accelerated computing. QuEra’s participation in the Model Hardware Standard research preview, applying AI agents to the control of quantum computing hardware, is an early example of AI partnerships.
About the Model Hardware Standard
The Model Hardware Standard (MHS) is a new standard for AI agents to safely operate physical equipment in scientific research and advanced manufacturing. It started as a collaboration between Anthropic and HHMI Janelia Research Campus and is currently in a limited research preview, with access by application while the safety design is validated. Devices declare bounds, interlocks, and emergency stops in the standard itself; AI agents inherit and operate within them by default.
About QuEra Computing
QuEra is putting quantum to work. As the scientific and commercial leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, we help enterprise innovators leverage quantum to gain competitive advantage, support HPC centers as their users tackle classically intractable problems, and enable government programs to build national and sovereign capabilities. We do this by combining our quantum systems, available on-premises and via the cloud, with application co-design and collaborative research. Born at Harvard and MIT and still advancing together, QuEra builds neutral-atom systems on a public, peer-reviewed path to fault tolerance, and operates globally from Boston, New Mexico, Tokyo, Zurich, and the United Kingdom. As quantum computing moves from “one day” to “Day One,” QuEra delivers practical impact today while leading the path toward large-scale, fault-tolerant systems. See what’s possible at www.quera.com.
Remnants from tropical storm could cause heavy rainfall on Leeward Islands and affect Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola
Remnants of Tropical Storm Dolly, which has been downgraded to an “open tropical wave”, were moving still across the Atlantic Ocean toward the Leeward Islands, and could bring heavy rainfall to parts of the Caribbean this weekend, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said on Friday..
Dolly, which formed on Thursday, had maximum sustained winds of near 40mph (65km/h) with higher gusts on Friday morning. Later on Friday, forecasters said that Dolly was no longer a Tropical Storm, and had “become an open tropical wave”.
State to offer up to 5,000 trappers chance to snare reptiles whose numbers have risen to 3m from fewer than 100,000
The first recreational alligator hunt in Louisiana in more than half a century is about to commence in the swamps of that state, with up to 5,000 hopeful trappers facing strict rules in order to snare a reptile.
The state’s fish and wildlife commission banned alligator hunting in 1962 to allow the species to recover after decades of unregulated killings for meat and hides dropped numbers there to below 100,000.
Brazil has failed to prove compliance with EU rules on use of antibiotics in cattle and poultry farming
The UK’s leading farming organisations and animal health experts have called for an urgent ban on imports of Brazilian meat, in light of concerns over the safety of imports.
The National Farmers’ Union in England and its sister organisations in the devolved administrations wrote to the government on Friday warning that public health was at risk.
Government says Green leader’s proposed moratorium on ‘energy-guzzling’ AI projects would be disaster for economy
Labour has rejected calls to pause construction of major AI infrastructure in Britain after the Green party leader, Zack Polanski, said it was time to “slam the brakes on these energy-guzzling, water-guzzling datacentres”.
The government hit back at the opposition party’s proposal of a “moratorium other than [for] local-scale datacentres for the local community”, saying it “would be a disaster for jobs and national security”.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is reportedly considering new tariffs on semiconductors used in the U.S., as tech giants race to beat China in the artificial intelligence infrastructure build-out. The duties will be imposed on an expanded range of tech products made alongside chips, including laptops, data center servers and gaming hardware, eight people familiar with the matter told Politico in a report published Thursday.
The measures, which are still in the early phases and subject to significant changes over the next few months, will be introduced via a staggered rollout period, according to the report. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC, but told Politico: "Reshoring semiconductor manufacturing is a top priority for President Trump, whose policies have already secured hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in this key sector." The tech industry is pushing back on the tariffs, warning they could raise chip costs, slow data-center construction, and undermine the very AI expansion the administration wants to promote. "This may be the single dumbest way imaginable to pursue American dominance in AI," said one tech official from a major industry group that also served in the first Trump administration. "It's like kneecapping yourself at the starting line."
Lobbyists say they have repeatedly urged officials to "tread carefully" because U.S. demand is surging while domestic chip capacity remains far too limited. The industry argues that factories take years to build and current domestic production cannot come close to satisfying demand.
One tech representative said "the math literally just does not work," noting that proposed duty-free allowances "wouldn't cover the hyperscalers alone." Meanwhile, the Computer and Communications Industry Association warned that higher costs and uncertainty could put the massive data-center buildout "in jeopardy."
Police hunt two suspects after historic 200-carat piece is snatched from Austrian museum during opening hours
Austrian police are hunting two men alleged to have stolen a 200-carat platinum necklace encrusted with 673 diamonds that was on loan to a museum in Vienna and once belonged to Egyptian royalty.
Authorities in the capital released pictures of the suspects captured by security cameras during the heist at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), amid a rash of spectacular smash-and-grab thefts from European cultural institutions.
Exclusive: PM also warns his ministers against trying to influence vote when bill returns to Commons next month
Andy Burnham has told Labour MPs that he will not cast a vote when the assisted dying bill returns to the Commons next month to avoid influencing the debate.
While the move was welcomed by supporters of the measure, No 10 officials said the prime minister had no wish to affect the process in either direction, and was just doing what he thought was best to allow MPs to reach their own collective view.
Stella Parton said her sister Dolly told her "that if there was no hope for her, she would still allow her medical team to try experimental drugs in the hope of helping others in the future."
In the days since an enormous glacier in the Himalayas snapped away from a mountaintop and cascaded into the valley below, the true scale of the devastation caused by the flash floods in Nepal and Tibet is still unfolding.
But the picture is emerging far more quickly in Nepal than in China, where strict controls on the flow of information from one of its most sensitive regions are hampering the public’s understanding of events.
The Powder Yard closed Aug. 24 to allow contractors to work safely with heavy equipment and complete several projects that would be difficult to undertake while visitors are present. The remainder of the museum remains open.
While the historic Powder Yard is temporarily closed, visitors can still explore the du Pont family home, gardens and the museum’s “Nation of Inventors” exhibition through Sept. 4.
WILMINGTON, Del. — Hagley Museum and Library is offering half-price admission through Sept. 4 while crews complete preservation and maintenance projects in the historic Powder Yard along the Brandywine.
The Powder Yard closed Aug. 24 to allow contractors to work safely with heavy equipment and complete several projects that would be difficult to undertake while visitors are present. The remainder of the museum remains open.
Visitors can continue to explore the Visitor Center and “Nation of Inventors” exhibition, as well as the historic du Pont family home and gardens. The Museum Store also remains open.
The temporary discount gives visitors an opportunity to experience major portions of Hagley while paying 50% of the regular admission price.
Work protects historic industrial site
The two-week closure allows Hagley to address several infrastructure and preservation needs across the Powder Yard, the industrial heart of the museum’s 235-acre property.
Crews are dredging the mill race inlet to remove accumulated silt and debris and maintain the flow of water into the historic power system. The race once directed water from the Brandywine to the mills and machinery that helped operate the powder works.
Other work includes replacing the roof of the Millwright Shop and stabilizing sections of masonry along the mill race. Those repairs are intended to protect historic structures from weather, water erosion and further deterioration.
Hagley also is removing hazardous trees in the Powder Yard and Crowninshield areas. That work requires road closures to protect visitors, employees and contractors.
Additional preventive maintenance is being completed during the shutdown, allowing Hagley to coordinate multiple projects within a relatively short period.
More than a museum
Although the work may be easy to describe as routine maintenance, preserving Hagley carries unusual significance for Delaware.
The property is the site of the original DuPont powder works, established along the Brandywine in 1802 by Éleuthère Irénée du Pont. The business grew into one of the world’s leading manufacturers of black powder and became the foundation of the DuPont company.
Its success influenced Delaware’s economy, workforce and identity for generations. The company’s later expansion into chemicals and materials science also helped establish Delaware as an important center for research and innovation.
The Hagley site tells that larger story through its mills, mill race, waterpower system, machine shops, workers’ community and Eleutherian Mills, the du Pont family’s first American home.
It was both an industrial operation and a community. Immigrant workers and their families settled around the powder yards, creating neighborhoods and family connections that became part of the history of Wilmington and the Brandywine Valley.
Maintaining the site therefore involves more than preserving individual buildings. The work protects one of the few remaining landscapes where visitors can see how waterpower, manufacturing, immigration, labor and family life came together during America’s early industrial development.
What visitors can see now
The Powder Yard is one of Hagley’s signature attractions, but visitors still have access to other important parts of the museum during the closure.
The “Nation of Inventors” exhibition examines the people and ideas behind American innovation. It draws on Hagley’s extensive collections to explore how inventors identify problems, develop solutions and bring new products and technologies into everyday life.
The historic home and gardens offer a different view of Hagley’s story, introducing visitors to the du Pont family and the domestic life that developed alongside the industrial operation.
Together, the open attractions provide an opportunity to understand both the personal and innovative sides of the site while the Powder Yard undergoes needed work.
The Powder Yard is scheduled to reopen after Sept. 4.
To Go
What: Hagley Museum and Library
Temporary closure: The historic Powder Yard is closed through Sept. 4 for preservation and maintenance work.
Admission: General admission is 50% off during the Powder Yard closure.
What remains open: Visitor Center, “Nation of Inventors” exhibition, historic home and gardens, and Museum Store.
X2 ride at Magic Mountain has been closed for a month after one rider experienced brain compression and another remains in coma
An infamous Six Flags Magic Mountain rollercoaster, long favored by intrepid theme park goers, has been closed for more than a month after two people say they experienced brain injuries after riding it, according to a new CNN investigation.
The X2 rollercoaster sends riders plummeting and twisting hundreds of feet, reaching up to 76mph (about 122km/h) as the seats rotate 360 degrees. On the southern California theme park’s website, it’s advertised as a rite of passage for daredevils.
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is questioning two measles-associated deaths reported in Pennsylvania, prompting a public dispute with Gov. Josh Shapiro as the state confronts its largest measles outbreak in decades.
Pennsylvania health officials confirmed Tuesday that two unvaccinated people in Lancaster County died after contracting measles, marking the state’s first measles-associated deaths in 35 years. At least one was a newborn who tested positive for an infection acquired before birth.
Kennedy later suggested on social media that the deaths might have been “fabricated” and accused Pennsylvania officials of withholding information from federal authorities. State Health Secretary Dr. Debra Bogen disputed that account, saying Pennsylvania notified the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before publicly announcing the deaths and that both cases underwent epidemiological review.
The CDC said Thursday it was independently examining whether measles caused the deaths.
Pennsylvania has reported about 424 confirmed measles cases and 73 hospitalizations. State officials say none of those infected were fully vaccinated. Two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine are about 97% effective at preventing measles.
Meanwhile, Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization Kennedy previously led, said it is attempting to identify and contact the deceased patients’ families.
Shapiro accused Kennedy of spreading misleading information and urged him to encourage vaccination as cases continue rising.
Helipad relocation led in part to incident where Marine One, carrying the president, had close call with passenger jet
Safety officials say the relocation of a helipad amid Donald Trump’s multi-project White House reconstruction led in part to an incident earlier this month in which a military helicopter carrying the president came too close to a passenger jet.
A preliminary report published on Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) blamed “communication issues” for the failure of the crew of Marine One, the presidential helicopter, to give the required three minutes’ notice to air traffic controllers that they were about to take off from the White House.
Jesse Malin, Craig Finn and Tommy Stinson will perform Aug. 29 at The Queen during a benefit for Donate Delaware honoring state Rep. Debra Heffernan.
WILMINGTON — Three prominent rock musicians will take the stage at The Queen on Saturday, Aug. 29, for an evening designed to turn the energy of live music into support for Delaware families.
The Queen Jeans Ball will feature Jesse Malin, Craig Finn and Tommy Stinson while raising money for Donate Delaware, a nonprofit that helps recover, restore and distribute medical equipment and other essential resources.
The annual event also will honor state Rep. Debra Heffernan for her public service and contributions to Delaware.
Doors will open at 7 p.m., and the concert will begin at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $50.
Rock music with a Delaware mission
Organizers describe the Queen Jeans Ball as a high-energy rock ’n’ roll benefit bringing together Delaware’s business, civic, nonprofit and music communities.
Proceeds will support Donate Delaware’s work helping individuals and families obtain medical equipment and other resources they may otherwise struggle to afford or access.
“The Queen Jeans Ball represents the very best of Delaware — people coming together through great music to help neighbors who need us,” Donate Delaware founder Dave Tiberi said. “Every ticket and sponsorship will help Donate Delaware recover, restore and deliver critical medical equipment to families across our state.”
Tiberi thanked event co-chairs Brian and Megan McGlinchey, The Queen, the participating musicians and event sponsors. He also said he was proud to recognize Heffernan for what he called her “extraordinary lifetime of public service.”
Tiberi, a former professional boxer and longtime civic leader, founded Donate Delaware to connect usable resources with people who need them. Its work includes collecting and distributing medical equipment and assisting Delawareans facing other critical needs.
“Brian and I are honored to serve as co-chairs of this year’s Queen Jeans Ball, which supports the crucial work of Donate Delaware and our friend, Dave Tiberi,” Megan McGlinchey said. “We can’t wait to share an amazing night of music at The Queen with the Wilmington community.”
A notable rock lineup
Malin will headline the concert, bringing a musical career shaped by New York’s punk and rock scenes.
Known for personal songwriting and energetic performances, Malin began his career as the frontman of the punk band Heart Attack before leading the rock group D Generation. He later established a solo career built around songs that blend punk urgency with character-driven storytelling.
Finn is best known as the frontman and principal songwriter for The Hold Steady. His lyrics frequently follow complicated characters through nightlife, relationships, mistakes and attempts at redemption. He also has released an extensive collection of solo work.
Stinson brings decades of rock history to the lineup. He joined The Replacements as a teenager and played bass in the influential Minneapolis band. He later performed with Guns N’ Roses and led his own bands and projects, including Bash & Pop.
Together, the performers give the benefit a lineup rooted in punk, alternative rock and narrative songwriting.
Heffernan to be honored
The evening also will recognize Heffernan for her years of public service.
Heffernan represents the Bellefonte, Brandywine Hundred and Edgemoor areas in the Delaware House. During her legislative career, she has worked on issues including health, environmental protection, children and families.
Organizers said the tribute fits the broader purpose of the Queen Jeans Ball: celebrating people who serve Delaware while encouraging others to help neighbors facing difficult circumstances.
A night out with an impact
The concert offers attendees an opportunity to see three established rock artists in one show while supporting a Delaware-based charitable organization.
It also reflects the role The Queen plays in Wilmington as both a performance venue and a gathering place for community events. Located on Market Street, the historic venue hosts national touring artists, local performers and nonprofit benefits throughout the year.
In this case, the night’s impact is intended to continue after the final song, helping Donate Delaware place essential equipment and resources in the hands of people who need them.
To Go Box
What: Queen Jeans Ball featuring Jesse Malin, Craig Finn and Tommy Stinson
When: Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. Doors open at 7 p.m.; concert begins at 8 p.m.
Vegas proved, once again, it’s more than a casino floor and a spectacle.The post Michelin just dropped its first Southwest Stars, and Vegas stole the show appeared first on Food Drink Life.
Speech part of effort to strengthen National Rally party’s international ties before Marine Le Pen’s presidential bid
The French far-right leader Jordan Bardella is to give a speech at Reform UK’s party conference in Birmingham next week as he attempts to boost international ties before Marine Le Pen’s bid for the French presidency next spring.
Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigration National Rally (RN) is high in the polls and she is predicted to reach the final round of the French presidential race in May.
Anti-vaxxers are spreading conspiracy theories after two recent measles-associated deaths in Pennsylvania
Anti-vaccine activists are trying to track down the families of two people, including at least one newborn, who died after contracting measles in Pennsylvania, as Governor Josh Shapiro tangles with Robert F Kennedy Jr over his “inaccurate and misleading claims”.
Kennedy, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), suggested late on Wednesday that the deaths in the state may have been “fabricated” after a Republican coroner – an elected political office in Lancaster county – claimed one of the measles-associated deaths was unrelated to the virus, although the given cause would be consistent with measles.
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A Republican ad attacking Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson in Maine says under his “failed leadership” the state’s high schools “dropped to dead last” in the country, according to annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report. But that’s not the whole story.
A major reason Maine fell to last in those state rankings is because it stopped giving U.S. News access to Advanced Placement performance data for Maine high schools — a key part of the methodology the media organization uses to rate the schools.
It’s unclear why the Maine Department of Education declined to grant access to the statistics, and a spokesperson has not responded to our request for comment. But, like Maine, other states that have not authorized U.S. News to use their high schools’ AP enrollment and exam data have fallen to the bottom of the rankings.
Update, Aug. 28: After our story was published, the Maine Department of Education said in a statement: “Since 2020, at the recommendation of the Maine Attorney General’s Office, the Maine Department of Education has not authorized the College Board to share student data out of concern that it could be made available for commercial use. In fact, the College Board has paid fines in New York – one of four states that is not currently providing data to the College Board – for the illegal and improper sale of student data. The Maine Department of Education takes student privacy seriously. Assessment results have no bearing on this decision.”
The ad blaming Maine’s descent on Jackson, a former state Senate president and majority leader, is from Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ campaign, and it has aired on broadcast and digital platforms since Aug. 17, according to AdImpact. Jackson is challenging Collins for her U.S. Senate seat in the toss-up race.
“Maine schools used to be among the best, but under Troy Jackson’s failed leadership in Augusta, our high schools dropped to dead last,” the ad’s narrator says, while a citation for U.S. News’ 2025-2026 state rankings appears on screen.
The Collins campaign confirmed to us that was the source for the claim.
Last year, Maine did place last out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on the review of its high schools. The state came in 51st again in the rankings for 2026-2027, which were published Aug. 17.
But the ad doesn’t mention a major reason for Maine’s consecutive last-place finishes. That is, the Maine Department of Education did not authorize U.S. News to have access to College Board data showing how Maine high school students performed on the AP exams for the college-level classes they completed. (The College Board is the nonprofit organization that runs the national AP program and administers the tests.)
In fact, Maine hasnowbeenlast or next to last eachyearsince the 2020-2021 rankings, when it first denied U.S. News access to its AP data. In 2019, the last time it permitted U.S. News to use its AP data, Maine placed 11th.
Maine was 1st in the U.S. News state rankings for high schools in 2014, and it wasregularlyin the Top 10 through 2018. But the methodology for rating states and high schools was different at the time.
Since 2019, U.S. News has ranked all the states and D.C. based on the proportion of their schools that make it into the top 25% of high schools as determined by the media company. “That level of achievement is a valid indicator of the relative performance of a state’s high schools compared with other states,” U.S. News said in a post about this year’s rankings.
The high schools, meanwhile, are ranked based on six criteria, including “college readiness,” which accounts for 30% of a school’s score, and “college curriculum breadth,” which makes up another 10%. Participation in, and performance on, AP exams, as well as International Baccalaureate, or IB, exams, is a key factor in both categories.
Not having that exam information affects a school’s ranking.
“As with the 2026-2027 edition of Best High Schools, the Maine state education department declined to provide AP data for the 2025-2026 edition, which explains why Maine had the lowest proportion of schools placing in the top 25% last year,” a U.S. News spokesperson told us in an email.
The spokesperson said not allowing the use of the AP figures does not guarantee that a state will rank last, as the methodology “includes adjustments so that schools without AP or IB exam test-takers do not score significantly worse than those with very few test-takers.” But it does make it much more difficult for states to have high schools with higher rankings.
“While the adjustment prevents non-AP schools from automatically landing at the absolute bottom of national rankings, rising into the top 25% of high schools nationally without any AP/IB data is extremely challenging,” the spokesperson said.
And the reality is states that do not permit U.S. News to use the AP data oftenfallto thebottom of the standings.
For the 2025-2026 rankings, Maine was the only state not to allow the College Board to provide its AP data and it ended up last overall, with just four, or 3.6%, of its high schools ranking in the top 25%.
In the 2026-2027 rankings, Maine was joined at the low end of the rankings by Vermont (48th), Colorado (49th) and New York (50th). Those three states also declined to allow U.S. News to access their AP exam scores this time and their rankings suffered.
The previous year, when they allowed their AP data to be included in the calculations, New York placed 9th, Colorado was 10th and Vermont was 21st on the list.
The Jackson campaign pushed back on the ad’s claim.
“The ad blames Jackson for the U.S. News ranking of Maine’s public high schools. The truth is Maine ranked lowest in U.S. News’ 2025 report because the state did not give U.S. News permission to use its data,” a campaign spokesperson told us.
We asked U.S. News why Maine stopped granting access to the AP data, and the spokesperson directed us to the state Department of Education, which has not responded with an explanation. (Update, Aug. 28: We received a response after publication and have included it near the top of this story.)
The Collins campaign told us that lack of cooperation is telling.
“Maine’s lack of willingness to be transparent with its standardized testing demonstrates just how terrible the state of education has gotten under Troy Jackson’s leadership in Augusta — according to U.S. News, 51st place out of 51,” Blake Kernen, communications director for the Collins campaign, said in a statement. “The metrics that are available, including NAEP scores, depict a dire situation that has gotten drastically worse in recent years,” she said, referring to the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card. (NAEP is administered by the U.S. Department of Education.)
In 2024, the most recent data available, Maine’s 4th and 8th grade students, although not last in the nation, had some of their worst NAEP scores in math and reading in about two decades. That year, Maine’s 4th grade average math score ranked below 39 other states and its 4th grade average reading score was below that of 40 other states. Maine’s 8th grade average math score was below 25 states and its 8th average grade reading score was below 30 states.
“Even the Biden Administration recognized how Augusta leaders were failing Maine’s students when it penalized the state in 2023 for violating the federal law that helps schools with high numbers of students from low income families — which is the vast majority of Maine schools,” Kernen said about a financial penalty the federal Department of Education gave Maine for not meeting required academic achievement standards. “As the second highest ranking official in the State of Maine, Troy had the power to do something about this alarming trend — but under his leadership, it’s only gotten worse.”
While the decline in the math and reading scores of Maine’s elementary and middle school students may be cause for concern, the Collins campaign ad specifically mentions the performance of the state’s high schools, and cites Maine’s ranking by U.S. News in particular.
That ranking is questionable since it is affected by the absent AP data.
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Chair Allan Leighton says lower prices and an improved online service are attracting more shoppers
Asda has heralded its first trading growth in more than two years as the supermarket’s boss said it was attracting more shoppers with lower prices and an improved online service.
Allan Leighton, the executive chair of the UK’s third-largest grocer, said a 0.2% rise in sales at established stores, excluding fuel, in the seven weeks to 18 August was “a huge milestone” that was “psychologically important for the business”. In the preceding three months, sales had fallen 2.3%.
Before The Witcher 4 arrives in 2028, CD Projekt Red is returning us to the world of The Witcher 3 for one last foray. Looks like wind’s still howlin’
The game that graced us with Bathtub Geralt, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, arrived more than a decade ago. So it was a touch surprising this summer when developers CD Projekt Red announced a new expansion to the venerable adventure, titled Songs of the Past, for next year. It will release alongside a full remaster of the original game, which will be free for anyone who bought it back in 2015. (The studio is also working on a sequel, The Witcher 4, but that’s not due until 2028.)
As it turns out, this is all possible thanks to a partnership with Fool’s Theory, a studio founded by CD Projekt Red veterans, which took on the brunt of the development work. “We’ve had this story in a drawer for many years,” explains Marcin Blacha, VP story director at CD Projekt Red. “Of course, we moved on to Cyberpunk 2077 and now The Witcher 4, as well as our other projects. But because we knew The Witcher 4 would take time, we saw a gap in our release calendar where Songs of the Past could go. Thankfully, we were able to find the right partner to help execute it.”
The Gotham striker said she was stepping away from the sport, but then signed for Al Qadsiah. The move sparked questions over professionalism and raised concerns of LGBTQ+ fans who have disavowed the Saudi league
A recent World Cup winner joins a historically downtrodden club, immediately leads them to their first championship, praises the level of play in the league, speaks fondly of living in the club’s market, extends her contract with the club, leads the club to another championship, is named a league MVP finalist, and breaks the club’s all-time scoring record. That’s the fairytale of Esther González and Gotham FC – a story that ended abruptly, just nine days after that scoring record was set. On 27 July, Gotham announced that they had mutually parted ways with the striker as she “temporarily steps away from soccer to attend to personal matters in Spain”. The announcement of her departure was full of gushing words going both directions, and was met with understanding and support from the women’s soccer world.
But less than a month after González left Gotham, Al Qadsiah, a club in the Saudi Women’s Premier League, announced her as their newest signing, on a one-season contract with an option to extend for a second. NWSL journalist Jenna Tonelli soon reported, “League sources tell me that Gotham did not expect Esther to sign with another club this soon.” Questions swirled: did she actually intend to take a break from soccer when she left Gotham? And why would a player who just had a child with her female partner choose to play in Saudi Arabia, a country where same-sex relations are criminalized?
Iceland will decide whether to restart talks on joining the European Union in a referendum on Saturday, with President Donald Trump's threat to annex Greenland a motivating factor.
More than 1,300 people are missing in Nepal and in Tibet after catastrophic flash floods swept through the region, killing at least 469. Plus: Six months of the war in Iran
Rescue operations have resumed in Nepal and Tibet after a pause when a lake at the border began to overflow. The lake was formed when a wall of mud and debris hit the hub of Gyirong in Tibet on Wednesday, causing catastrophic flash floods that thundered down valleys and obliterated villages.
What could have caused this deadly flash floods? Satellite imagery suggests a glacier collapse high in the Himalayas was the primary cause, raising concerns that the climate crisis is destabilizing the geology of mountain and polar regions.
What did Kennedy purportedly lie about? A Guardian analysis of newly obtained documents found that the US health secretary had lied when he told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines”.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump offered his own assessment of presidential greatness Thursday, and the suspense was limited: he placed himself alone in the top category.
Trump posted a graphic on Truth Social ranking 34 presidents across six tiers, from “The Greatest” to “Failures.” Trump occupied “The Greatest” by himself, while Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were placed one tier below as merely “Great.”
Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, John Adams and James K. Polk made Trump’s “Near Great” category. Bill Clinton was among those judged “Average,” while Calvin Coolidge and several others landed in “Below Average.”
Trump reserved the “Failures” category for Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding.
The ranking was also notable for who did not make the cut. Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush were among the presidents omitted entirely.
Trump provided no methodology explaining how the rankings were calculated or why some presidents were excluded.
The post quickly generated reactions from both liberals and conservatives, some of whom questioned the unusual placements and omissions. Trump has frequently used Truth Social to promote his record and criticize predecessors, particularly Biden and Obama.
A judge barred the Trump administration from enforcing a set of rules aimed at cutting off Anthropic from the federal government, ruling the administration had unconstitutionally punished the AI company for protected speech.
Smuggling gasoline and diesel from the U.S. into Mexico and reselling it tax-free is a huge money-maker for organized crime gangs, including drug cartels.
A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing its new requirements for mail voting for the November midterm elections.
Trenton, New Jersey — New Jersey lost an estimated 25,600 jobs in July, its largest one-month decline since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and enough to erase all job growth recorded in the state since February 2024.
The preliminary figures from the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development showed the sharpest monthly decline since April 2020, when pandemic shutdowns eliminated nearly 685,000 jobs. State officials cautioned that July’s estimate could be revised because of low survey response rates and seasonal-adjustment issues.
Despite the losses, New Jersey’s unemployment rate edged down to 4.4%. Economists noted that payroll and unemployment figures come from separate surveys and do not always move together.
The slowdown also reflects weaker job growth nationally, but New Jersey stood out compared with neighboring states. Maryland added jobs in July, while Pennsylvania lost fewer positions and New York’s decline was spread across a much larger labor force.
Economists cited several possible factors, including weaker national growth, tariffs, immigration enforcement and New Jersey’s high business costs. Leisure and hospitality showed the largest year-over-year decline, losing about 26,000 jobs.
Republican lawmakers blamed taxes and business costs, while Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration pointed to federal trade policies. Economists said both state and national factors may be contributing, but cautioned against drawing conclusions from a single preliminary report.
Terrified of being seen as a loser, Donald Trump is nonsensically lashing out – even against our old friend Canada
I’m still grieving Dolly Parton. I never met her and always wanted to. She was almost exactly my age and my height and had values I deeply admired. Her death leaves a hole in the firmament.
Which brings me to the person whose values are as far from Dolly Parton’s as any human could possibly be and still claim to be human. I’m referring, of course, to the current occupant of the Oval Office.
Decision to rescind ‘roadless rule’ opens more than 45m acres of national forests to roads, drilling and logging
More than 400 endangered animal and plant species could face accelerated extinction after the Donald Trump administration’s decision to rescind a rule that has protected old-growth forests for more than two decades.
According to a new report from the Center for Biological Diversity, the rollback of the Bill Clinton-era “roadless rule” could put 7.4m acres (3m hectares) of endangered-species habitat and nearly 1,800 miles (2,900km) of protected rivers and streams at risk, while opening more than 45m acres of national forests to roads, drilling and logging.
Rolling coverage of the latest events in global financial markets, the economy and major corporate moves
In the metals market, supply fears have pushed the zinc price up to a four-year high.
Zinc, which is used to galvanise steel, hit $3,955 a metric tonne this morning, its highest since May 2022.
LME [zinc] inventories have been drawn sharply lower, mine and smelter disruptions have restricted refined availability, and supply outside China has become notably tight.
With consumers facing a thinner pool of immediately available units, relatively modest buying has produced a larger price response than elsewhere in the complex. Copper remains supported by the same availability concerns.
Labor Day appetizers are easier to plan when the table mixes chilled dips, make-ahead bites, sliders, grilled seafood, and warm finger foods that can be prepared and served in stages.The post 15 summer appetizers to shortlist now for the Labor…
As well as being quieter, cheaper to run and easier to clean, induction cookers can cut kitchen temperatures by up to 10C
Leaping flames, searing heat, copious sweat and scorchingly inventive swearing – restaurant kitchens are never a place for the faint-hearted, but this summer they have been sweltering in successive heatwaves to a dangerous degree.
Unpopular new policy comes as midterms loom and control of Congress could be decided by several Michigan races
Every day $1bn worth of goods crosses the river dividing Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, two largely blue-collar US and Canadian cities that have come to act as one in the creation of North America’s auto industry.
News this week of Donald Trump’s escalating trade spat with Canada has everyone worried. Political and economic leaders and observers labeled the move an act of “hubris” , blamed Trump’s “ego”, and called the escalation “insanity”.
Lawsuit alleges sound is nuisance for up to one mile around datacenter as residents experience noises from DataOne
It’s a sound Steve Brown, a 63-year-old Vineland, New Jersey resident, literally hears in his sleep: BGRRRRRRRRRRR.
It drones, oscillates, growls – these are machines at industrial scale. Are they generators? Pumps? Fans? Brown does not know what equipment causes the sound or why. He only knows two things: he’s tired of it, and it’s coming from DataOne – a 350MW datacenter under construction a little more than a mile from his home of 25 years.
When another birthday cake sounds predictable, these 13 cookie recipes bring chocolate, caramel, fruit, mint, cinnamon, and bakery-style options that are easy to pass around and stack on a dessert tray.The post 13 cookie recipes the whole family started requesting…
Google is adding an "Expert Intelligence" feature to Gemini Notebook (formerly known as NotebookLM) that lets users cite and work directly from more than 100,000 books they own through Google Play Books. Those books can be used as sources for things like quizzes, infographics, and Audio Overviews. Digital Trends reports: For now, Google is offering one free book to users in the US as part of the launch campaign, with a caveat -- "while supplies last." At the moment, Expert Intelligence is only available in the Gemini Notebook app and its web dashboard, but down the road, Google says that it will also appear within the core Gemini app and AI mode in Search.
The broad idea behind expert intelligence is to combine what you can already do with Gemini, and expertise sourced from your favorite books. So, if you're asking Gemini to create a meal plan that is based entirely on chicken and spinach, you can ask the AI assistant to look for relevant recipes in one of Martha Stewart's cookbooks that you own. You can use these books as a source and turn them into Infographics, Audio Overviews, and Quizzes, among other formats. Google has partnered with select authors on Featured Notebooks that provide extra insights and context beyond their books. It's also worth noting that access is still tied to book ownership, so anyone using a shared Gemini notebook must own or purchase the book to fully use the feature.
Zambia's 2026 election: A test of democratic resilience
22
September 2026 — 14:00 TO 15:00 BST
Anonymous (not verified)
Online
Discover what the election aftermath means for politics, policy and investment.
Discover what the election aftermath means for politics, policy and investment
Zambia’s Electoral Commission announced that President Hakainde Hichilema had secured a second term after winning 60 per cent of the vote. Despite a peaceful polling day, counting was paused because of security concerns and questions have since emerged over reported discrepancies between presidential and parliamentary turnout figures. As leading opposition candidate Brian Mundubile weighs a legal challenge amid controversy surrounding court closures and the arrests of opposition figures, the aftermath of the election is shaping debate over Zambia’s political trajectory, economic policy and investor confidence.
How could the election aftermath affect Zambia’s political environment?
How might uncertainty affect economic policy and investor sentiment?
What do the reported tallying discrepancies mean for confidence in the result?
What options remain open to opposition candidates seeking to challenge the outcome?
What do the arrests of opposition figures reveal about the state of democratic accountability?
What steps could strengthen trust in future electoral processes?
Elina Valtonen, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Finland, on whether Europe can compete in the age of AI
3
September 2026 — 11:00 TO 12:00 BST
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
Hear from Finland’s foreign minister on how Europe can innovate, build strength and compete in artificial intelligence.
Hear from Finland’s Foreign Minister on how Europe can compete, innovate and build strength in the age of AI.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping economic competition, security and political power at a pace that is testing existing institutions and assumptions. As the US and China race to secure their technological advantage, Europe faces growing pressure to strengthen its capacity and competitiveness. There is debate about how Europe can protect its interests while preserving the values that underpin its political and economic model.
This event discusses:
Can Europe be competitive in the age of AI?
How to balance openness, regulation and competitiveness?
What role should governments play in shaping AI development?
What does strategic autonomy mean in an era of technological competition?
How can Europe strengthen industrial capacity and innovation?
What would a more confident European approach to technology and economic security look like?
Rescuers searching for survivors of deadly flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border have resumed their efforts after suspending operations when a debris dam burst its bank on Friday, increasing the risk of fresh flooding.
Residents in Nepal’s Rasuwa district, on the border with Tibet, were seen rushing up hillsides on Friday to escape a possible surge in the river, according to witnesses. Fears of another flood came as authorities in Nepal and China said that at least 543 people had been killed in the disaster.
Sales of beans, lentils and soya bean derivatives on rise while Britons buy less real and fake meat
British shoppers are munching more beans, lentils, tofu and tempeh – while cutting back on real and plant-based fake meat – to save money and improve their diet.
The amount of beans, pulses and soya bean derivatives sold in the UK increased by 7.3% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period last year, led by a rise in cheap dried lentils, an analysis has found.
Boston, Massachusetts — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked key parts of President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting, finding that the U.S. Postal Service likely lacks authority to impose new election requirements on states.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a 14-day temporary restraining order preventing implementation of a Postal Service rule requiring states to provide voter lists and use federally specified, barcoded ballot envelopes. States that failed to comply could have faced refusal by USPS to deliver their ballots.
The decision comes days after the Supreme Court lifted Talwani’s earlier injunction, ruling that challenges to Trump’s executive order had been filed prematurely. The justices did not rule on whether the order itself is constitutional. After USPS issued a formal rule implementing Trump’s directive, Democratic-led states and voting-rights groups filed new challenges.
Talwani said states lacked sufficient time and resources to redesign ballot materials, modify computer systems and train election workers before ballots begin going out for the November midterms. She also cited the potential for eligible voters to be disenfranchised.
The administration argues the requirements strengthen election security, while opponents contend that the Constitution assigns election administration primarily to states and Congress.
A hearing on whether to extend the injunction is scheduled for Sept. 3.
Washington, D.C. — Republican candidates who challenged or questioned the 2020 presidential election results are running for secretary of state in several battleground states, potentially placing them in influential election-related positions ahead of 2028.
In Arizona, Republican nominee Alexander Kolodin is challenging Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. Kolodin participated in lawsuits challenging the 2020 and 2022 election results and has advocated tighter voter identification requirements. President Donald Trump endorsed him in July. KJZZ independently reported that Kolodin was involved in multiple unsuccessful challenges to previous election results.
Nevada Republican Jim Marchant is again challenging Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar. Marchant has repeatedly disputed President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and previously organized a coalition of Republican secretary of state candidates who questioned that election. His platform includes requiring proof of citizenship, ending universal mail voting and expanding hand counts.
In Wisconsin, Republican nominee Jay Schroeder has said he would not have certified the state’s 2020 presidential results. He is campaigning to dismantle the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, which currently administers elections statewide.
Secretary of state responsibilities vary significantly by state, but in Arizona and Nevada the offices oversee major portions of election administration.
The contests come as Trump continues pushing states to tighten voter-registration rules and provide the federal government greater access to voter-roll information.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day: What does Dolly Parton’s life of perseverance, generosity, and joy ask of each of us while we still have the power to do good?
South Carolina Republicans Choose Fealty to Trump Over Knowledge: How a family name and Trump’s blessing now substitute for knowing the job.
Our War Secretary Is a General Failure: Pete Hegseth’s purges and feuds have left critical military leadership rudderless just when competence matters most.
Trans Republicans Evicted from Log Cabin: Gay Republicans turn their backs on transgender people while enjoying the rights that others earned.
Life on Our Planet, narrated by Morgan Freeman: Visually dazzling evolutionary journey offers a fine crash course in spite of too many elegies.
Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris, “After the Gold Rush”: I say goodbye to Dolly with her trio’s version of Neil Young’s strange environmental dream song that both haunts and soothes the spirit.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day
“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.” – Marcus Aurelius (121-180), Roman emperor and philosopher
“I always ask God to work through me and let me be a light of some kind and help in this world.”– Dolly Parton (1946-2026), singer and philanthropist
(Photo by Rui Vieira - PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
When you live your life in the public eye, people think they know you. And they have opinions. As I have written many times, when I was a young man, people often thought I was unfriendly, surly, angry; and maybe there were times when I was. I had success on the basketball court, I had friends, I found a religion that made sense to me, I had a love of music and books—and with all that going for me, I was still prone to obsess on the negative, and that was the vibe I too often gave out. I looked at the world around me, the war and the assassinations and the way Black people were treated, and I didn’t see a lot to be happy about.
I found myself thinking these thoughts today as I contemplated the wonder that was Dolly Parton. I never met Dolly, but, maybe like you, I felt I knew her. Her story was widely known: she grew up in a one-room shack in Tennessee with eleven siblings and no heat; her father was an illiterate laborer and her mother—well, she had 12 kids by the time she was 35. She was a preacher’s daughter and she loved music. She passed that on to Dolly, who was singing in her grandfather’s church by the time she was six.
By eight, she could play guitar, and by ten, she was on the radio. Her first single, “Puppy Love,” came out when she was thirteen. That same year, she made her Grand Ole Opry debut, where she was introduced by Johnny Cash. She wasn’t an overnight success: she worked nonstop, honing her craft, honing her songwriting, but it took her more than a decade to score her first number-one hit in 1971. Imagine how many people came and went in that decade. A lot of one-hit wonders; a lot of no-hit wonders. The Beatles’ entire recording career came and went during the long stretch between Dolly's first single and her first number-one hit. That’s serious perseverance. But then, who wants to go back to a one-room shack?
Once she made it to the top of the charts, she stayed there. She refined her look, put on an exaggerated dumb blonde act, and because she was in on it, she never let the dumb blonde jokes bother her. As she said, “I know I’m not dumb. And I know I’m not blonde, either.” That was part of her charm: she always had a zinger ready at the right moment. She was always happy, or so it seemed. Her smile could light up a theater, a movie screen, or, according to so many who met her, a simple interaction between two people.
Her voice wasn’t technically perfect, but it conveyed enough warmth and honest emotion to overcome any limitations. As a songwriter, she conveyed that same warmth and honesty, and she wrote some of the most indelible country songs of all time: “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” and, of course, “I Will Always Love You.” I wasn’t a country music fan when Dolly was in her early prime, and I have to admit I didn’t know “I Will Always Love You” was a Dolly Parton song when I first heard Whitney Houston sing it. I was simply astonished by its raw emotion and that soaring melody. Later, when I found out it was a Dolly Parton song and I heard her version, I saw that the blueprint was all there before Whitney sang a note. She gave it a different accent and her band played some different instruments, but the song itself didn’t change a bit. It was perfect then, and it’s perfect now.
For all her success, Dolly’s greatest achievement was her philanthropy. In the early 1990s, her Dollywood Foundation promised seventh- and eighth-graders $500 if they graduated from high school, helping to reduce the dropout rate for those classes from 35 percent to six percent. Her Imagination Library has given more than 300 million books to children worldwide since its founding in 1995. In 2007, she gave a million dollars to Sevier County’s LeConte Hospital, including a new cancer center and the Dolly Parton Center for Women’s Services. When East Tennessee suffered devastating wildfires in 2016, her My People Fund distributed $12.5 million to families affected by the fires. In 2017, she donated one million dollars to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in honor of her niece, who was treated there for leukemia. When Covid hit, she gave one million dollars for coronavirus research at Vanderbilt University, which helped fund Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. The list of good deeds, and lives she improved, goes on and on.
When people talk about a life well lived, this is what they’re talking about. I’ve tried to give back to society over the years, but when I see all that Dolly did, I know there’s always more I can do. As I said, I never had the chance to meet her, but I will miss her. Goodbye, Dolly.
Roadmap for increasing department’s share of GDP will be deferred until next year’s review
The chancellor will delay setting out when the UK will meet the target of allocating 3% of GDP on defence until next year’s spending review, the Treasury has confirmed.
John Healey resigned as defence secretary in June under Keir Starmer’s leadership, accusing the prime minister of being “unable” and the Treasury “unwilling” to “commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country”.
The president senses a crisis in his cult of personality. He believes the path to victory is through unwavering devotion
Donald Trump has framed his theme for the midterm elections. It has come to him as naturally and inevitably as staring into the mirror, beyond any logic or argument, his definitive answer to no specific issue, providing no understanding of any particular problem, but transcending all of them. His political theme is more primal than programmatic, more instinctive than analytical, a heartfelt expression to protect his greatest romantic attachment, his obsessive fixation, his idealized object: himself.
Trump’s campaign theme is unrequited love. Unlike the pollsters, media consultants and pundits, he alone has grasped the magnitude and the source of the existential crisis threatening his politics. He has identified the problem for the Republicans as the faltering measure of complete devotion to him. His demand has nothing to do with mutual affection. It is a ploy to reassert his slipping control, a manipulative test to prove loyalty to him, or else. There can be no absolute rule without an absolute ruler; no absolute ruler without absolute submission; no absolute submission without the expression of absolute love. His sadness at its fading gives way to anger, paranoia and greater acts of retribution. He equates the fear he instills as a form of love. Trump accepts subservience, from whatever motive, as affection or its closest equivalent. He cares nothing about sincerity, so it’s all in the show. The less love displayed, the more fear required. Yet there is no rebound, but only deeper rejection.
Survivors begin receiving letters with payment amounts months after $305m settlement agreement was struck
Survivors of child rape and other sexual abuse within New Orleans’s Roman Catholic archdiocese learned that$641,000 or so is the most they can individually get under a settlement approved in December to resolve a years-long bankruptcy protection case.
Those amounts were communicated in letters that hundreds of clergy abuse survivors participating in the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy began quietly receiving on Tuesday. The figures are well below a $2.4m jury verdict awarded to an unrelated Louisiana religious sexual abuse claimant in June 2025 after the state’s legislature temporarily eliminated filing deadlines for such cases.
Illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica and Vanessa Saba for ProPublica. Photo by Ted Shaffrey/AP Photo.
When ProPublica recently investigated a rape crisis that surged through Syracuse University in the 1980s, we found evidence that the school had taken steps to suppress news coverage of the assaults. The university responded by portraying itself as a changed institution today, “committed to supporting the students who come forward and being there for them at every step of the process,” as a school spokesperson put it.
But the university’s recent actions in a lawsuit filed by a former student who was attacked on campus during that period appear at odds with that commitment. After the Syracuse Police Department agreed to provide old records to the victim, lawyers for Syracuse University intervened, seeking to block the victim’s access to many of the records. The school argued in legal papers that the subpoena sent to the police department was “overbroad” and suffered “from fatal geographic overreach” that rendered “it unreasonably burdensome and irrelevant.”
New York state court Judge Joseph Lamendola ruled in the university’s favor in February, dramatically limiting the records the victim could obtain to make her case that the school should have beefed up security in response to escalating crime in the area.
In June, her attorneys appealed that decision, sending the matter to a state appellate court.
“It smacks of the 1980s when SU quashed media coverage of sexual assault. It’s that all over again,” said Andrew Stengel, a former Manhattan prosecutor representing the victim. He accused the university of “retraumatizing” his client “by pretending sexual assault wasn’t a problem on campus and in the surrounding area.”
Stengel and his client, referred to as Jane Doe in legal filings, are suing the university under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law that opened a one-year exemption from the statute of limitations for survivors of long-ago sexual assaults to pursue legal claims against alleged abusers and negligent institutions.
Sarah Scalese, Syracuse University’s vice president of communications, said in an emailed statement that “we do not comment on active litigation.” In response to ProPublica’s earlier story, Scalese said the university “has a robust structure in place to support those affected by sexual and relationship violence,” including “confidential counseling, advocacy and investigation and resolution services to students.”
Doe was attacked by a man with a knife inside a bathroom on the third floor of the university’s music building at about 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 27, 1987. Her assailant had entered the building through an unlocked door, according to her lawsuit, which contends that the university administration offered her “zero support” after the assault. The music program director, the complaint alleges, told her, “Men get raped, too,” and advised her to get “back on the horse.” (The director is deceased.)
Hers was one episode in a brutal saga of sexual violence that unfolded in and around the Syracuse campus throughout the decade. The scourge of assaults became so pervasive that it eventually inspired student protests, drew national press attention and contributed to the passage of federal legislation that now requires universities to publicly report crime statistics.
ProPublica’s earlier examination — rooted in the wrongful conviction of Anthony Broadwater for the rape of Alice Sebold, an author who wrote a bestselling memoir about being attacked on the last night of her freshman year at Syracuse University in 1981 — found that more than a dozen women, many of them students, reported being raped or attacked by strangers in a half-square-mile area near the campus over four years. Sebold’s was the third such attack in Thornden Park, which runs alongside the campus, in about seven months.
Some of the police reports from this time period were marked “NO PRESS,” which, according to the testimony of a former Syracuse detective, meant that the university had used its influence in the police department to “put their foot down and said no press for any kind of rape, robbery, burglary that’s anywhere in the area of Syracuse University.”
Last year, Stengel asked the police department for all police calls and reports tied to a variety of crimes from 1982 to 1987 within the ZIP code that contains the university, Thornden Park, various businesses, and a mix of student and nonstudent housing.
Emails filed as an exhibit in Doe’s case show that a lawyer representing the Syracuse Police Department suggested that Stengel focus his search on that ZIP code. The two of them agreed on the terms in August 2025, and the police department began gathering the records shortly thereafter.
A month later, the university filed a motion to “partially quash” the subpoena. Relying on case law that applies only to central and western New York state, university lawyers argued that it had standing to limit the request, even though it was not the recipient of Stengel’s subpoena. The university asserted that the subpoena would create unnecessary work for the police department, unearth irrelevant documents and waste the time of everyone involved.
The police department then reversed its earlier position and joined in the motion, estimating in a February brief that it would take 845 hours and $50,000 in staff time to provide the documents Stengel had asked for and the police department lawyer had initially approved. (A spokesperson said that “the City of Syracuse does not comment on ongoing litigation.”)
At a hearing, John Powers, an attorney hired by the university, seemed to play to Lamendola’s previous role as a lawyer for the city of Syracuse, reminding the judge that the city is “inundated with [Freedom of Information Law] responses and subpoenas, and it’s incredibly burdensome on the city, I think, as you know in your experience as well.”
The records were too old to be digitized, Powers told the judge, adding that, just as the judge once did, Powers represents the city in other matters. City employees, he said, would have to find them “the old way, Judge, the way we used to do it, crawling around in the dusty storeroom … trying to determine what ZIP code’s involved, looking at the crime. A lot of boxes, a lot of files. Very burdensome, very expensive for the city.” (Powers declined to comment, citing the litigation.)
Lamendola was persuaded. Under his ruling, none of the rapes that took place in Thornden Park or in the student apartments near it will have to be disclosed. The police will have to disclose only reports of crimes that took place on the campus itself, and not reports concerning burglary, larceny and other offenses, which the judge deemed irrelevant. He also directed Syracuse University, the defendant in the case, to assist the Police Department in identifying cases that occurred on its campus.
Doe’s team filed a 37-page appellate brief in late June that argues that the court’s decision to limit the disclosure to university buildings is “hard to justify” given that the campus is interwoven with the city. The brief, authored by appellate attorney Michael Steinberg, also takes issue with the decision to allow university personnel to act as “gatekeepers,” authorizing them to review the police files and decide for themselves which meet the judge’s criteria and which don’t. That, the appeal contends, presents a conflict of interest that would “give the defendant the power to control the evidence it will have to contest at trial.”
The university has until Sept. 23 to respond to the appeal.
Legal filings also show that university lawyers have sought to reduce its liability by raising the name of a onetime suspect in the case, Michael McKinney.
At the time of Doe’s rape, McKinney was on parole after attacking a woman in a downtown parking lot. According to police reports, two witnesses saw a man matching his description running out of the Syracuse music building the night of the attack. Doe later picked him out of a photo array.
Days later, police went to his home. Officers learned from his wife that he owned a Miller beer hat identical to the one the suspect was said to have been wearing at the time of the crime. She also said he had left abruptly, for another state. Police put the case in the “inactive file,” a common occurrence for rape cases in Syracuse at the time.
Months later, McKinney turned up in New York City. By then he had come under scrutiny for the violent robbery of another Syracuse woman. According to a newspaper article from December 1987, he was eventually found guilty of that robbery and given an unusually lengthy sentence of 20 years to life, with the judge noting his repeated crimes against women. McKinney was never prosecuted in the Jane Doe case.
McKinney served 30 years in prison on the 1987 robbery charge, records show. Then, in March 2025, he was arrested for the rape of a 46-year-old woman earlier that year. A grand jury indicted him in June 2026. He has pleaded not guilty.
While McKinney was in jail, Syracuse University lawyers filed a civil complaint against him, arguing that if the university is held liable in Doe’s case, McKinney should “contribute to any award in an amount equal to his equitable share” because of “his own culpable conduct.” Because McKinney did not respond to the suit, the university lawyers have asked the judge to find him in default. This could eventually affect a jury’s decision on the financial responsibility owed to Doe by the university.
Reached by phone, Donald Kelly, McKinney’s court-appointed lawyer in the new rape case, said, “It’s concerning that the university would serve a third-party complaint upon a prisoner to try to avoid liability,” noting that McKinney has “empty pockets.”
Reiterating that McKinney was never charged in the 1987 rape of Doe, Kelly added, “Either the university was negligent or it wasn’t.” (Kelly declined to make his client available for an interview.)
Jonathan Cardi, a Wake Forest University law professor who specializes in civil litigation and has researched negligence claims for rape, said it was not especially unusual for a defendant to try to quash subpoenas of third parties or to shift liability to others.
“These are litigation tactics,” he said. “But, at the end of the day, the university is the client, and very frequently a client’s business interests or morals dictate what they say their attorneys can and can’t do. If a university is trying to turn over a new leaf, they can tell their attorney that even though this might be the best litigation practice, this is not who we want to be.”
The WNBA is having a moment. Viewership is up. Attendance for this year’s WNBA All-Star Game surpassed the NBA’s All-Star Game. Games and events can be viewed in a record number of places, from broadcast to cable and streaming. And just this week, Angel Reese of the Atlanta Dream set a single-game record.
But the stories about the WNBA capturing national attention in recent weeks are about none of that. Instead, the focus has been on two retired NBA players, including Enes Kanter Freedom, who showed up courtside at an August 23 Chicago Sky–Indiana Fever game wearing a T-shirt that said “Woman: noun. adult human female.”
“I don’t believe that he’s being genuine in any realm, in order to create this mass hysteria of sorts for an issue that’s actually simply a non-issue,” says Angela Perry, a WNBA content creator, tells The Intercept Briefing. “There are no trans women in the WNBA; there are none attempting to be in the WNBA.”
This week on The Intercept Briefing podcast, host Jessica Washington speaks to Perry and journalist Katelyn Burns about how the premier women’s professional basketball league has found itself at the center of a right-wing manufactured panic.
“The right has made such hay out of trans women in women’s sports that they need to keep inventing controversies in order to keep this issue front of mind,” says Burns who writes for the independent newsletter Burns Notice and co-hosts the Cancel Me, Daddy podcast.
“We have a midterm election coming up, and to be frank with you, the only thing that the right has done besides terrorizing immigrants is banning trans women from women’s sports. It’s at the center of almost all of their policies,” continues Burns. “They are inventing controversies about trans people in sports where there are no trans people involved.”
“This is about women in general. They’re already talking about not wanting women to have the right to vote,” says Perry. “This isn’t just about sports. There’s a political party trying to scale us back to what they perceive was a time where things were better. But really, it was when women were more controlled.”
“The bigger issue is that the people who think that they’re protected, it’s always going to get to the protected class eventually,” warns Perry. “Right now, the focus is trans, and people think they’re safe because ‘I’m not trans. I’m a cis woman and I’m protected.’ But it will impact you.”
For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
Transcript
Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept.
Jessica Washington: And I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept.
AL: Jessie, in typical August fashion, it feels like things have kind of slowed down somewhat with Washington in recess amid the final days of summer. I’m personally looking forward to having a little space to catch our breaths, as we enter the final midterm stretch before everyone turns their attention toward November. But there’s still plenty to cover.
ICE announced a record high in July arrests and deportations, and the Department of Homeland Security is continuing to expand its attacks on legal immigration. Nobody fret: Democrats are still melting down over Hasan Piker, while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries met recently with Jared Kushner. A majority-Black town in Indiana went without power — and very little news attention — for two weeks. Dolly Parton died. And as we close out the sixth month of the Iran war, the Trump administration made a big show of announcing an “economic D-Day” with new sweeping sanctions and claiming, yet again, that this would end the war.
What have you been hearing on those fronts this week?
JW: I have to say: The second Trump administration is the only time in history where this could be considered a slow news cycle. But yeah, there’s a lot to talk about.
So with ICE, we have really been seeing a huge surge in detention and deportations. What I’ve been hearing from advocates on the ground is that it’s also coincided with an increase in violence. We’re seeing ICE use tactics like car kettling, even putting pepper spray and pepper balls into vehicles on the road. There’s a lot of dangerous activity happening with ICE — and a lot less coverage than we saw in January and February.
In regards to Gary, Indiana, I think it’s been heartening and disheartening of a news cycle, in the sense that at first people really were not paying attention. So for those who don’t know: Thousands of residents in the predominantly Black community [were] without power for two weeks after a storm caused massive outages. There’s a lot of anger right now because people are simultaneously being squeezed by these exorbitant electricity bills, but then they also don’t have power to meet their basic survival needs — for their medical equipment, for their refrigeration of food.
It’s a story that we keep seeing repeat. In Jackson, Mississippi, for example, residents of the also predominantly Black community, have been plagued for years by both expensive water bills and years of water shut-offs and boil-water notices. We just keep seeing people squeezed at both ends. You somehow don’t have access to the resources you need to survive, and you’re practically paying a second mortgage for the pleasure.
AL: Jessie, you’ve also been reporting this week on the fallout over the fight regarding trans rights in sports. This is not my wheelhouse. Can you get us up to speed on what happened, and where does the fight stand now?
JW: I had a great conversation with Angela Perry, a content creator who covers the WNBA and women’s basketball, and Katelyn Burns, who writes for the independent newsletter Burns Notice — she also co-hosts the Cancel Me, Daddy podcast — about how the WNBA, a league with no trans women in it, found itself at the center of a right-wing culture war on transgender rights.
The right-wing outrage machine started off focusing on perceived racial grievances, claiming WNBA star Caitlin Clark, who is white, had been unfairly targeted because of her race. Media Matters recently documented Fox News spending over 13 1/2 hours of its summer coverage on the WNBA, largely focusing in on race and, more recently, trans inclusion.
Then enters WNBA player Sophie Cunningham, who has become a darling of the right, earning the moniker “MAGA Barbie.” Cunningham first started getting attention for these high-profile moments of her defending her teammate Clark on the court. Both Cunningham and Clark are white and straight in a league that is predominantly Black and LGBTQ+ inclusive. And these moments quickly became fodder, as noted, for a racist, right-wing backlash fueled by Fox News and other outlets against Black players, who were called overly aggressive and were subject to racist harassment.
Then in a July interview, Cunningham told ESPN that she wanted to “protect young girls in a locker room” from “biological men.” Her comments brought yet another round of hate to the doorsteps of the WNBA, leading to protests at the games over transgender participation in sports.
In August, two former NBA players, Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, announced that they were declaring for the 2027 WNBA draft, in a transphobic stunt to force the league to have a policy on transgender female athletes, even though there are no transgender women in the WNBA. Here’s White and then Kanter Freedom arguing on Fox programs that they should qualify.
Royce White: I identify as sometimes identifying as a woman for purpose of basketball, professional basketball. So I’ll be declaring for the WNBA draft in 2027 as well.
Enes Kanter Freedom: Article 13 in Section 1 says if you identify as a woman, then you’re allowed to play.
Laura Ingraham: So you are identifying as a woman tonight?
Enes Kanter Freedom: Sure. I identify as a woman. Sure. Yes. So I can play.
JW: Kanter Freedom was later kicked out of a [August 23] Chicago Sky game for disrupting the game and for now has been banned from Wintrust Arena.
But the project is bigger than just one sports league.
We get into how the right is attempting to use transphobia and racism to roll back Title IX and women’s rights more broadly. This isn’t just a fight about sports — the Supreme Court, state attorneys general, and the Trump administration are actively coming for transgender rights as well as women’s rights and, frankly, all of our rights.
AL: It sounds like I have a lot to learn about this, so let’s hear that conversation.
JW: Joining me now is Angela Perry, a content creator who regularly delivers hot takes on the WNBA and women’s basketball, @arperry01. You can find her on TikTok, Instagram, and across all social platforms.
Angela, welcome to The Intercept Briefing
Angela Perry: Thank you, glad to be here.
JW: Also joining us is journalist Katelyn Burns, who writes for the independent newsletter Burns Notice and co-hosts the Cancel Me, Daddy podcast. Katelyn, welcome to the show.
Katelyn Burns: Hi, thanks for having me.
JW: The WNBA is having a moment. Viewership is way up. Attendance for this year’s All-Star WNBA game surpassed the NBA’s All-Star game. Games and events can be viewed in a record number of places, from broadcast to cable and streaming. And just this week, Angel Reese of the Atlanta Dream team set a single-game record.
But the stories about the WNBA capturing national attention in recent weeks are about none of that. Instead, two retired NBA players have captured national headlines, including Enes Kanter Freedom. Freedom showed up courtside wearing a T-shirt that said, “Woman: noun. adult human female.” Angela, you shared a really incisive take on social media. I want to start with you. What is going on here?
AP: I think when we remove the WNBA, and we look at the political climate in America, there’s an attack on trans people. So I think that’s something worth noting because trans men and women have not been an issue in the WNBA or in the MNBA, ever. But because this has been something that a political side has used over the last few years, it has now infiltrated itself in the WNBA.
The person that you mentioned, I refuse to learn his name, has used this as a tool. I don’t believe that he’s being genuine in any realm, in order to create this mass hysteria of sorts for an issue that’s actually simply a non-issue. There are no trans women in the WNBA; there are none attempting to be in the WNBA.
What we find here are just cis men who are trying to capitalize off of the discourse and create what looks like hostility. It’s just disheartening because it’s taking the focus away from things like you just said, Angel Reese breaking records. There’s a lot of people breaking records: Olivia Miles, Caitlin Clark. There’s so much actually happening, and then what we end up talking about the next day is this person who’s trying to take the headlines into a dark place.
And the people who aren’t watching the WNBA — that’s all they’re going to hear, that’s all they’re going to see. They don’t know what’s going on. And then they will be in my comments section, saying, “Well, he looks like he’s standing up for women!” So they actually have it completely wrong, based on getting the snippets and the sound bites from that person. So it’s pretty disheartening.
JW: That’s something that I’ve been thinking about even in talking about this on the podcast is, are we giving this more attention? But it feels like we have to talk about this because they’re distorting this issue so much. Katelyn, I want to get your thoughts as well here.
KB: This is such a frustrating conversation. Specifically, this issue is about trans women. And the frustrating part for me as a trans person, as a journalist, is that trans women have essentially been driven out of sports at any level beyond high school in a handful of blue states. I hate to say it, but politically, it’s a settled issue. But the right has made such hay out of trans women in women’s sports that they need to keep inventing controversies in order to keep this issue front of mind.
We have a midterm election coming up, and to be frank with you, the only thing that the right has done besides terrorizing immigrants is banning trans women from women’s sports. It’s at the center of almost all of their policies. So what you’re seeing now is they are inventing controversies about trans people in sports where there are no trans people involved.
“The only thing that the right has done besides terrorizing immigrants is banning trans women from women’s sports.”
Angela made the point: There are no trans women in the WNBA. There’s never been an out trans woman in the WNBA before. There are no out trans women college players. More than half the states in the country ban trans women from playing high school basketball, so there’s no pathway to make it to the WNBA.
This is a conversation about something that is not going to happen anytime soon, that is being drummed up for completely political purposes, just because the league has vague wording in their collective bargaining agreement over who is eligible to play. What you are seeing is just the exploitation of that gray language in the CBA to drive negative attention on the league as a whole.
JW: I want to get into the league’s response and how they’re dealing with all of this. Katelyn, you had written about what the league should say, but I also want to just ask what they are saying. Can you talk a little bit about what you think their strategy should be going forward and what their strategy has been so far?
KB: The league’s not doing itself any favors with all of this. I think that they are too afraid to take a stance in tamping down these protests and the antics of these men who are trying to intrude upon the game.
It started with suspending a Seattle team co-owner who confronted some anti-trans protesters who were at a game. Then it escalated again with Enes Kanter Freedom at this latest game, getting into it with a player on the court. He was escorted out of the building, but now they’re saying they’re not going to ban him from all of the WNBA games. So he’s just free to show up and harass another player on the court.
How you protect women out of harassing women basketball players doesn’t add up to me, but I guess it makes sense in the bizarro world of the anti-trans movement. They have come out and ruled that neither of these players — by the way, Royce White was running for office when he pulled his stunt, and then he got his ass kicked in his election, so that was really funny.
But, they’ve come out and said that neither of them are eligible to play because, clearly neither of them identify as women, which is the current language of the rules in the league. My proposal was, just go back to how sports used to treat trans women in sports: establish a testosterone limit and regular testing and prove that you’ve suppressed it for an extended period of time, and then allow somebody to play.
“Enes Kanter Freedom is not going to go take estrogen just to continue this stunt.”
Studies have shown that there is no biological advantage from trans women, no broad-based biological advantage for trans women. None of these grifters can intrude upon the game that way. That was my proposal. Enes Kanter Freedom is not going to go take estrogen just to continue this stunt. It’s just not going to happen.
That was my idea. I think, in general, the league should take more of a stance of protecting their own players — because the more you allow this to fester, the more you’re going to start seeing, “Oh, this player on this team that beat us is more muscular than a woman should be. Maybe they are trans.”
We’ve seen this before with the Olympics, with Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer who won a gold medal and was the subject to a worldwide witch hunt over her gender, despite the fact that she was born female, raised as a girl, and happened to get into boxing.
JW: It is this crazy world where you’re seeing the kind of trans-vestigating now of WNBA players. As you’ve both mentioned, there are no transgender women in the WNBA, and yet we’re seeing people now say, “Well, this person is trans, this person is trans.” And it is mostly coming along racial lines, from what we’re mostly seeing, this is mostly targeting of Black women.
[Break]
JW: Angela, I’m curious, how do you think the league could protect players right now?
AP: Just like Katelyn mentioned, the fact that he was only banned in one arena, I think that we have to send the message. In the MNBA, when there was an irate person in the crowd — that person was banned for life. And it sent the message that this was unacceptable. It also makes me think the people who are doing it are part of the reason that the punishments aren’t that harsh as well.
“This is about policing women, in general.”
Like Katelyn mentioned, this is not necessarily about trans people. This is about policing women, in general. Because there’s masculine women, and it’s a way for the powers that be to try to say, “I don’t know if that person deserved to win because they’re stronger, so now let’s investigate if they are actually a woman.”
What does that mean? What are we going to do? Start examining women, girls, even? That’s the thing — this side that talks about protecting girls, you want your 11 or 12-year-old girls to be examined by who because they want to play baseball or softball or whatever have you.
So the bigger issue is that the people who think that they’re protected, it’s always going to get to the protected class eventually. Right now, the focus is trans, and people think they’re safe because “I’m not trans. I’m a cis woman and I’m protected.” But it will impact you.
“The bigger issue is the men that are on the other side of this, they don’t care about women’s sports in general. So to them, if there was just no WNBA, they don’t really care.”
I think the bigger picture is Title IX. I think the bigger issue is the men that are on the other side of this, they don’t care about women’s sports in general. So to them, if there was just no WNBA, they don’t really care. So that’s the bigger picture, is protecting women means protecting masculine women that don’t subscribe to social standards of what they’re supposed to look like. To me, there shouldn’t be any standards, but of course, we live in a society where there just are.
And then just protecting the women that are, like you said, already in the league. Why are we protecting this man who showed up, and treating him with any type of dignity, when they are the employees — the WNBA players.
And that’s not just with this trans conversation. It’s also with racism. The WNBA came out with the “No space for hate” almost as a joke —because I have not seen anything implemented from that the entire season. I haven’t seen Cathy [Engelbert] since the All-Star Game; she’s supposed to be the leader of this league. It’s almost like she’s afraid to speak up because she’s afraid to lose the fan base of racist and transphobic people, which is honestly insane.
But in America, in a capitalist society, a dollar is a dollar — and they don’t care if that dollar is coming from a racist or a true fan. In my opinion, if they would invest in the true fans, you would get more true fans, and you wouldn’t have to take money from racist people or transphobic people or homophobic people. The list goes on and on.
To me, that’s not a safe space in the WNBA for the fans or the players.
“ In America, in a capitalist society, a dollar is a dollar — and they don’t care if that dollar is coming from a racist or a true fan.”
JW: To your point, Angela, Media Matters recently reported that Fox News spent “13 and a 1/2 hours waging a WNBA culture war this summer,” gravitating between perceived racial grievances and trans inclusion.
I should note that the WNBA did issue a statement saying, “There are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA, and we strongly denounce the bad faith efforts to use these topics to demean or marginalize others.”
But because you brought up Title IX, and I think that’s really the crux of what this is about, let’s get straight into that. So shortly after the Supreme Court ruled to uphold state laws banning transgender girls from participating in school sports, the Heritage Foundation published a paper calling Title IX — which bans sex-based discrimination in schools, including in school sports — a “failed experiment.”
The sports and culture site Defector pointed out that the author of the paper is Boise State professor Scott Yenor, who once called career-oriented women, “medicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome.” He argues Title IX has led to “male-normed women’s sports” that are failing at “celebrating distinctly feminine virtues of service, grace, and character.”
Katelyn, can you tell us what is the end game here?
KB: Oh, God. It’s not great. This attitude was parodied in “A League of Their Own,” a movie from like 1992, I think. Don’t quote me on that, please. There was a whole storyline and arc and a couple of scenes like mocking people who thought that women playing professional baseball would make them unfeminine.
“They’re trying to build a world where women are literally barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.”
So they’re trying to build a world where women are literally barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. I wrote about this Heritage Foundation memo that went out — or policy paper, I’m not quite exactly sure what they labeled it, off the top of my head — but it’s terrifying.
I have thought a lot about the intersection of gender and sports. I was a three-sport athlete growing up, and I was deeply in the closet, so I played boys’ sports. I grew up in a time where teenagers didn’t have the option to come out and transition. We didn’t even know what being trans was sometimes back in the ’80s and ’90s when I was growing up. I can’t imagine if I had found out that there was a way for me to transition but I had to give up the sports that I loved.
I am really sad that’s the position that we’re putting trans people in now, and I’m really upset that people have not thought all of this through. First of all, they don’t educate themselves about what hormones do. Everybody has hormones in their bodies — and no offense to the cis people who are listening, but you don’t even know what your own hormones do. You should because it’s an important part of your body. So they are using these bigoted stereotypes of trans women to scare you into rolling back gender politics 80 years.
“A League of Their Own,” it was made in 1992, but it was about the ’40s when World War II was happening. Angela mentioned, what are we going to do — inspect girls’ genitals maybe? Yes, that’s exactly what the Republicans and the right and the anti-trans movement are proposing.
I have to say, as somebody who writes about trans issues, who reads a lot about history, there’s a great podcast called “Tested,” which is about the struggle for intersex equality in athletics, and I highly recommend, if you’re interested in this topic, to go listen to that.
“The idea of sex testing originated with the 1936 Olympics that was hosted in Nazi Germany.”
But also, the idea of sex testing originated with the 1936 [Berlin] Olympics that was hosted in Nazi Germany. And that shocks people when I say that. These are legacies of literal Nazis that we’re, like, trying to reestablish here in the 2020s.
So what kind of world are they building? Not one that I want to live in.
JW: If they can define what is a woman, and they can say that transgender women are not women, then they can tell you, “This is how you have to be a woman. You cannot sue your boss for sex-based discrimination. You cannot have equal funding for your sports teams because you’re a girl.” And that’s the final play, and it’s sad that to get there, they’re going to bully a bunch of little girls, essentially. That’s the start, and then the end is to take away everyone’s rights.
Angela, I want to get your thoughts about this as well. Is this also just about sports, or is the goal to really target the entire anti-discrimination framework?
AP: Oh, no, this is about women in general. They’re already talking about not wanting women to have the right to vote. That is being said out loud, on — I wouldn’t say legitimate news stations, but they have channels — who are people currently in positions of power.
So this isn’t just about sports. There’s a political party trying to scale us back to what they perceive was a time where things were better. But really, it was when women were more controlled. And unfortunately, there’s men in this country that don’t like for women to have a voice because they realize that they’re losing in that, I would say, game of life.
Men are losing without the inherent control that they had for centuries. We’re in the first, I would say, 20 to 30 years where women have not been forced, essentially, by society into marriage. Yes, we’ve had a choice, but as far as having our own credit cards, being able to purchase our own homes — things like that have been critical in order for women to live their own lives, not choose marriage, children, so forth and so on, which means that there are men who have not learned essentially life skills without a woman doing it for them.
“This is much bigger than basketball.”
They’ve not been shown that because their father had it, their grandfather had it, and they don’t know what to do. So what they’ve decided is to go and try to change the landscape of America through laws and restricting what women are able to do. So yeah, I think this is much bigger than basketball.
Of course, I’m a women’s basketball content creator, so I talk about basketball and the intersections of it, but I’m well aware that this is scary times. I just went and voted in my local election two weeks ago, and I’m like, “Is this going to be allowed in five years?”
“I just went and voted in my local election two weeks ago, and I’m like, ‘Is this going to be allowed in five years?’”
KB: I think that there are people who assume that if they are not trans, then they don’t need to care about non-discrimination protections for trans people.
But I have to say that when there are legal protections for trans people, it also protects everybody else from discrimination based on the assumption that you’re trans. What you’re seeing is that the conservative side of the political aisle is trying to build an apparatus where they can just simply accuse somebody of being trans, and then they can do whatever they want.
They can sex discriminate to their heart’s content as long as it’s against a trans person or somebody that is assumed to be trans. The only way out of it is a very invasive process of you have to verify the sex that you were born with. I don’t think that’s a society that most people are prepared to accept, but it’s one that is quickly forming.
So I wanted to say to those people who are like, “Oh, this is a complicated issue that I don’t really know how I feel about,” you should have feelings about it, because anybody, any day, could come along and say, “Hey, I think you’re trans. You shouldn’t be doing that.” Then you’re in a big mess that you have to get out of somehow. The only way to do it is by revealing deeply personal information about yourself.
JW: Talking Points Memo reporter Kate Riga writes, “It’s been clear for weeks that right-wing media, eager to distract from its leaders’ woeful unpopularity and resulting fears about November’s midterms, struck gold with its anti-trans, anti-WNBA crusade.”
She goes on to say, “[Sophie] Cunningham, white and willing, has been the protagonist the right needed to unfurl its narrative. But the anti-trans campaign, the grousing about professional basketball players being fouled, it’s all in service of a grander mission. In the white Christian nationalist nation the Trump administration is openly trying to foist on the American public, a sports league where Black, gay players are celebrated and (recently, to a degree) paid well is a distinct danger.”
Angela, I want to start with you. What are your thoughts? Do you think that this white Christian nationalist grift is working, or do you think people are getting sick of seeing this stoking of hate and this fear? Or is it having the impact that they want it to have?
AP: I think people are getting sick of it. I don’t think the Christian nationalism of it all is actually going to win. So I think it’s a dying side that they still try to reignite over and over. It’s going to get clickbait because we are people of habit. It’s the internet. Even, I sometimes click on things just to see, what are they talking about now? But I don’t think they’re going to win overall.
It really does look like there is a tide turning. It doesn’t look to be beneficial to those particular people. And so it looks as though as a whole more fans are for cohesive playing, more diversity. Especially in general, the WNBA fan is just a more open-minded fan, in my opinion as a person who’s been watching the league for 30 years.
You go to a game, and it’s just every type of person. You get on the elevator, you’ll have someone who’s 60 all the way down to the 5-year-old, from white male to young Hispanics. It’s just too much of a melting pot for them to try to get everyone out of it, and so I don’t think it’s going to win. That’s my thoughts.
But if it does, you have Unrivaled, you have some of these other leagues that have not so far allowed the same type of hate and rhetoric to infiltrate it, that the W could lose out on a really huge fan base. I think at the end of the day, they may do the right thing only because of money, not because they’re trying to do the right thing. It’s going to come down to money.
“They may do the right thing only because of money, not because they’re trying to do the right thing.”
JW: Yeah, no, I could see that. To me, white Christian nationalism is just the soup that we all swim in. My theory of everything is white Christian nationalism, when you get to the end of it. But I think they start to lose when you start to show your hand in really obvious ways.
I think it’s hard to say, “Huh, you’re protecting women by throwing sex toys at female athletes while they’re doing their job.” I think that’s when people start to say, “Wait a minute. Maybe this is not a movement of people that really care about women.”
But Katelyn, I want to know what you think. Is this working, or have they hit their kind of limit of ridiculousness where the public says, “Wait a minute, you’re trying to say that people who protect trans people are ridiculous, and now we can clearly see that you’re being ridiculous” — or is it working?
KB: I think it’s working in that it keeps getting attention.
We’re here doing this podcast, so in a lot of ways, that is something that they want to have happen. I do think that the two men who tried to jump on this train are widely known as being losers in a way, and so they’re getting the loser stank on everything, which is kind of funny. I think that that has a bigger impact than we think.
Riley Gaines is a swimmer who is known for tying for fifth place with trans woman Lia Thomas in a college race, and she has turned that into a very lucrative career. But she’s also going to be known as a loser. I think that ultimately is where everything is headed.
If you look at what voters actually care about, they really don’t care about trans issues. There’s 10 people who base their vote on what a candidate thinks about trans issues, and they’re all going to vote for Republicans pretty much, at least on the anti-trans side. We’ve seen exit polling over and over again showing that trans issues are the lowest salience issue in the minds of voters.
People care about the economy. People care about gas prices, grocery prices. They care about housing prices. They care about another foreign war. Nobody’s going into the midterms thinking, “Oh, I have to vote for the anti-trans candidate.” I shouldn’t say nobody. There are people who will do that, but they’ve already made up their minds.
So I don’t think that you can convert even more people over to that type of thinking, nor do I think that you can win people back from that line of thinking. So I think that a lot of the time and effort spent trying to persuade people on this is really a sunk cost for those who are doing it.
And I have pretty high hopes that in the end, justice will prevail, fairness will prevail, and the liberal order will not fall to Christian nationalism.
JW: I’m pretty happy to leave it there. Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White are losers, and we will not fall to white Christian nationalism.
Thank you both so much for joining. Really appreciate having you on The Intercept Briefing.
AP: Thank you so much for inviting me.
KB: Thank you, thank you.
JW: We want to hear from you. Tell us what you’re following or want to see more coverage of. Email us at podcasts@theintercept.com or leave us a voice mail at 530-POD-CAST that’s 530-763-2278
That does it for this episode.
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Why Should Delaware Care? The controversial data center plan near Delaware City was the largest proposed in the state, sparking a backlash against the industry that resulted in new local and state regulations. Many residents expressed concerns about the facility’s potential impact on energy costs and the environment. Now the proposal appears to be at a dead end.
Plans for a massive data center to be built near Delaware City appear to be at a dead end, at least in their current form.
Earlier this year, the development, dubbed Project Washington, faced its first major setback when Environmental Secretary Greg Patterson ruled that the plans would violate the Coastal Zone Act — a landmark Delaware law designed to limit heavy industry along the state’s shorelines.
Starwood then appealed again to the Delaware Superior Court. But in early July, the company voluntarily withdrew the appeal with no public acknowledgment. It came two days after the state legislature passed several bills imposing new, stricter regulations on the data center industry.
Gov. Matt Meyer signed those into law earlier this week.
Since there are no other challenges to Patterson’s ruling, the proposed data center project is not allowed to move forward under its current design.
Still, the company’s data center aspirations in Delaware are still alive. In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, Starwood spokesman Jim Lamb said the company “is continuing its work with state and local regulators, labor, and the entire community to find a pathway forward” for the project.
In the statement, Lamb did not specify how the project could move forward. Nor did he say whether the state’s new laws regulating data centers influenced Starwood’s decision to withdraw its appeal.
Delaware’s decades-old regulation
The Delaware General Assembly passed the Coastal Zone Act in 1971 to protect the state’s environmentally sensitive shorelines by prohibiting new heavy industry from them.
In his decision on the Starwood proposal, Patterson pointed to the data center’s proposed use of 516 backup diesel generators, which would operate in the case of a power outage or other emergency situation, as a violation to the Coastal Zone Act.
Together, those generators would rely on 2.5 million gallons of stored diesel, which Patterson called “entirely unprecedented” in his ruling.
While Patterson pointed to the generators, many opponents of data centers in Delaware have pointed their ire at the electricity they could pull from the power grid.
Starwood’s proposal would have consumed the same amount of electricity as nearly 1 million homes, according to expert estimates, prompting fears that it could cause power bills to surge.
Similar concerns also have resonated nationally in recent years as the data center industry has been among the fastest growing in the country, providing the physical infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence systems.
Since Starwood submitted its plan last summer, several other data center proposals have come to the state.
A proposal to develop the lands just south of the St. Georges Bridge, including the Frightland attraction, could end up a data center. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
A proposed data center near St. Georges, which would be built near the land that currently hosts the popular Halloween attraction Frightland, is still in preliminary stages.
It also would fall under regulations outlined in the Coastal Zone Act, but it is unclear if the law would prohibit it from moving forward. That would likely depend on how the project were to be powered.
Separately, developers behind a plan for a data center near Newark paused their project recently, according to New Castle County Councilman Tim Sheldon. He said they did so after he brokered an informal deal with them.
Meanwhile, a smaller data center proposal also recently met its demise in Harrington, after residents rallied against the project.
Dustyn Thompson, chapter director of the environmental group Sierra Club Delaware, said he and others who have been critical of Project Washington are happy that Starwood decided to withdraw their appeal.
But he said since data centers are not explicitly named in the Coastal Zone Act, data center developers could try to build in coastal areas again.
He said the state and local governments need to pass laws restricting where data centers can locate, how much water they can use and how much noise they can make.
“We need consistency across the state on those types of protections,” Thompson said.
Why Should Delaware Care? A national debate has been ongoing for years about whether school resource officers increase safety in schools or if they simply direct kids into the criminal justice system. Earlier this month, the Christina Board of Education joined the conversation when it voted to phase out school resource officers in middle schools.
The Christina School District will phase out its use of school resource officers at middle schools, and replace them with constables.
Following a heated debate at a meeting earlier this month, the Christina school board voted to retain school resource officers (SROs) at middle schools for just six months, giving the district the time to hire constables as replacements. The officers will remain at the district’s three high schools for the full school year.
The decision was the result of two votes by the school board. The first would have renewed the school resource officers’ contracts with the Christina School District. Five members on the seven-person board voted against it, including Amy Trauth, Celita Cherry, Stephanie Ingram, Doug Manley and Lauren Swain.
A subsequent vote approved replacing SROs with constables, who are direct employees of a school district rather than a police department. They would serve as armed security for the schools but wouldn’t have the same power to arrest individuals.
The measure was meant to be a compromise, balancing some board members’ concerns with having armed officers in schools and the need for school safety.
But not every board member was satisfied.
“Since the police officers are required to be armed as part of their contract, I cannot support these contracts,” Manley, the only board member to vote against the compromise, said during the board meeting.
School resource officers are sworn police officers who work in schools but remain within the law enforcement chain of command. While supporters say they can effectively respond to dangerous situations, critics have increasingly argued they cause students to be arrested for actions that in the past would not involve law enforcement.
Christina School Board member Doug Manley was the lone opponent to hiring constables in the district, expressing concern that they would be armed in schools. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY ETHAN GRANDIN
News reports from across the country in recent years have highlighted the critiques of SROs. One report from Iowa said Black students and students with disabilities are more likely to be arrested or referred to law enforcement than other students. In Texas, reporters have found thousands of use-of-force incidents in recent years.
It is not immediately clear if those trends hold true in Delaware.
Spotlight Delaware requested data from the Delaware State Police regarding incidents such as arrests or detainment of students in the Christina, Brandywine, Red Clay Consolidated, and Colonial school buildings that did not fall under Wilmington Police jurisdiction, but was told the information would require a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request.
By contrast, the Wilmington Police Department did provide data. A department spokesperson said its officers made one arrest during the past year at the Maurice Pritchett Academy and one arrest at the Bayard School. Both schools serve Christina students in first through eighth grade.
There were seven arrests made at the Howard High School of Technology and 15 made at Brandywine’s P.S. duPont Middle School, the spokesman David Karas said.
“The vast majority of these charges were not physical arrests, but rather an SRO issuing a summons or a juvenile civil citation,” Karas said in a statement.
Karas also said that an officer would take other measures that would not involve “a formal criminal charge” during incidents that warrant immediate intervention, such as fights.
An ongoing conversation
The Christina school board’s August meeting did not mark the first disagreement between board members about whether to renew SRO contracts.
During a May board meeting, Christina Superintendent Deirdra Aikens and Harold “Butch” Ingram, the assistant to the superintendent, presented three options for school safety.
The first would be to make no changes. The second would be to keep SROs only in the high schools and replace them with constables in the middle schools. The third option would be to replace all SROs with constables.
Though the board voted three months later to move ahead with the second option, some members say they have not received comments of concern from community members regarding the presence of SROs in schools.
Board President Monica Moriak said the board did not have conversations with the Christina community regarding their thoughts on SROs in schools. She also noted that the last school year was “a very traumatic year, especially for Pritchett.”
The Maurice Pritchett Academy is one of the Christina School District’s schools in Wilmington. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JULIA MEROLA
Last October, a shooting took place near the Maurice Pritchett Academy in Wilmington’s East Side community, which is part of the Christina School District. Both victims attended Newark High School, as reported by the Newark Post.
Moriak said she wants the board to hold follow-up listening sessions with community members, but does not know what those will look like yet.
Manley also said he has not had community members approach him with concerns relating to SROs’ presence in schools.
Instead, Manley said most of his conversations are about “educating them that constables and police officers are different.”
Balancing safety and accountability
For some board members, the conversation about school safety cannot end with whether a school has SROs.
Board Vice President Y.F. Lou said the root causes of incidents, such as why students may be fighting or why there are “violent encounters,” must also be addressed.
“That’s always where my guiding principle is: Can we prevent this? What can we do to prevent this? And what resources do we have to make sure that you know that preventative intervention is in place?” he said.
For other board members, the crux of the concern regarding SROs is whether they can be held responsible for any incidents that may occur, especially because they are armed.
During the August meeting, Manley said he was against hiring “contracted police officers” because SROs “are not employees of our district; they are employees of their police troop.”
Manley told Spotlight Delaware there is “zero transparency and accountability” for SROs because of LEOBOR. Advocates have tried for years in Delaware to reform the blanket protections for law enforcement officer’s privacy, but efforts to date have resulted in only partial transparency into the disciplinary issues of officers.
Manley also referenced the recent shooting of 19-year-old Kadir Skinner in Wilmington, which he said police did “for no reason.”
Exclusive: Michael Boren, a senior official overseeing the US Forest Service, is accused by Democratic senators of ‘inappropriate interference’
Donald Trump’s administration is facing calls to launch an investigation into allegations that Michael Boren, a senior official who oversees the US Forest Service, pressed agency staff to deploy additional resources to fight a fire burning near his Idaho ranch.
Three Democratic senators accused Boren of “inappropriate interference” in a letter seen by the Guardian, demanding answers from Brooke Rollins, the US agriculture secretary. Boren serves as undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment.
A 2019 California law expanded the time frame for child sex abuse victims to sue. Now schools and cities are struggling with the financial fallout from settlements.
Why Should Delaware Care? While independent libraries in Sussex County often serve as hubs for community resources, they are also strapped for money. In the wake of a failed campaign by library leaders to increase the county’s library tax, an outside consultant has been hired to study the budget woes. It remains to be seen, however, whether the study will result in a funding increase, and what say the libraries will have in the process.
Following nearly a year of pleas from independent libraries in Sussex County for more government financial support, county officials have hired an outside consultant to examine the libraries’ funding structure and role within their communities.
The study comes in response to a failed effort earlier this year by independent library leaders to lobby Sussex County Council to raise the county’s library tax rate — its share of the libraries’ funding structure.
As it currently stands, the funding structure almost always leaves large gaps in the independent libraries’ annual budgets — deficits of anywhere from 13% to 52%.
Council members opted against the libraries’ requested tax hike, pointing to resident blowback from the property tax increases spurred by last year’s property reassessment and budget requests by other departments.
Instead, county leaders hired consulting group Berry Dunn to more thoroughly study the problem before making any changes.
“Any request to increase taxes is something the county takes seriously and believes should be carefully evaluated before making a decision,” Sussex County Finance Director Gina Jennings wrote in a message to Spotlight Delaware.
Consultants began working this month and will continue through early 2027.
Independent library directors said the study is a step in the right direction, but they are skeptical that the county-initiated study will give the libraries a sufficient opportunity to share their experience and share their funding needs.
“I do worry that because these studies don’t get done very often, they’re not going to get the full picture,” said Philip Hartmeyer, director of the Frankford Library. “If you’re going to do this, you have to do it thoroughly.”
How are libraries funded in Delaware?
Delaware has two different funding structures for county-run and independent libraries.
County-run libraries are funded entirely by taxes collected at the county level, while independent libraries, which operate as nonprofit organizations, are financed through a mix of county funding, state funding and the library’s own fundraising.
State funds make up about 15% of an independent library’s total budget. While the goal is for county funding to make up the remaining 85%, Sussex County’s library tax typically only covers about half a library’s budget. Directors are then left to close annual funding gaps.
For example, the Selbyville Library had to come up with roughly $200,000 in funds, or nearly 40% of its operating budget, for the current fiscal year, library director Kelly Kline said.
Eleven of Sussex County’s 14 libraries are independent.
This spring, they launched a campaign to raise the county’s annual library tax rate from $0.0023 per $100 of assessed property value to $0.0046 per $100, or from roughly $4 to $23 annually to $9 to $46.
This rate increase would have shrunk the funding gap libraries must make up to only about 10% of their annual budget.
While the county council declined to adopt the library tax rate increase as a part of its fiscal year 2027 budget, Jennings said hiring a consultant was the county’s way of addressing the libraries’ request for more county dollars.
She said the study’s results will determine how the county proceeds.
“With the recent request potentially increasing the county’s contribution to closer to 90% of [independent library] funding, it raises important questions about the county’s future role and level of involvement in the overall operations and financial oversight of the independent libraries,” Jennings said.
Library leaders skeptical
While county leaders described the study as a valuable step toward addressing the libraries’ funding difficulties, library directors said they have concerns about how the study is being conducted.
Berry Dunn, the consulting firm hired to complete the study, will speak to library employees, users and non-library user residents to “evaluate the request for additional library funding and better understand the long-term needs of the countywide library system,” Jennings said.
The project will cost the county $100,000.
At the Aug. 19 meeting of the Sussex County Library Advisory Board, County Librarian Rachel Lynch said the consultant will only communicate directly with county staff, who will then give progress reports to the library directors through monthly advisory board meetings.
Get Involved The Sussex County Library Advisory Board is set to meet and provide more information about the library consultant project at 10 a.m. on Sept. 16 in the Sussex County Administrative Building, located at 2 The Circle in Georgetown.
Some library directors, though, told Spotlight Delaware they are disappointed that there is not at least one independent library director represented on the project team alongside county staff, in order to better convey the libraries’ experience to the consultant.
“If [the consultant] is paid for by the county, and the project team is 100% county representation, my concern is for us independent libraries,” Kline, the Selbyville director, told Spotlight Delaware.
County staff, however, said this structure is typical.
The county hired an outside analyst to look at volunteer fire departments, and the fire department staff were not directly involved in that study, Jennings said.
Hartmeyer, the Frankford director, also said there is considerable nuance to the needs of the independent libraries in different parts of the county, like Lewes versus Seaford or Bridgeville, that the consultant will have a hard time understanding in a brief study.
“My concern is whether they’re going to get the full context of the constituency that is served by the libraries,” he said.
Nonetheless, the library directors said they view the hiring of the consultant as a step in the direction toward more funding and a better recognition by the county of the role they serve in their communities.
“If things don’t change, we absolutely will have to start doing less,” Kline said. “I don’t think that’s something our communities want.”
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
Soaring demand for services has led to tenfold increase in spending in a year in some areas, says NHS Alliance
NHS leaders have warned that the costs of meeting soaring demand for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism services in England are “running out of control” and have become unsustainable, with spending in some areas rising by as much as tenfold over the course of a year.
The NHS Alliance, which represents health managers, said the rise in demand since the coronavirus pandemic was forcing some to close waiting lists and look at reining in other services they provide.
The jury is considering its verdict in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the 36-year-old Massachusetts mother who strangled her three kids to death in 2023.
Led by the nose from game to terrible game by increasingly disturbing and terrible adverts, I feel like I’m in the cinema scene from A Clockwork Orange
We’re all escaping something when we play video games. Mostly it’s the drabness of real life, where we don’t get to command kingdoms using armies of dragons, win Champions League trophies with our local team, or inhabit the body of an improbably speedy hedgehog.
Sometimes I play them because I want to escape from the version of me that gets paralysed by depression, and boy has the black dog been sniffing at my bits recently, because the Atlantic Ocean is separating me from my wife for a few months. For 30 years she has been the light that banishes that darkness, and I am honestly lost without her. If that sounds pathetic, you haven’t met her. She leaves everybody she meets feeling better. It’s a superpower that warrants a call from the X-Men.
America’s second biggest sporting obsession returns this weekend, which means marching bands, 100,000-seat stadiums, ancient rivalries and, increasingly, the operating model of a sport being invented in real time
Is college football healthy? It’s a seductive question, one that now comes up every year around this time. Actually, it never recedes, so it’s just with the sport all the time. It’s also the wrong question, because whoever answers it is free to choose their own adventure. The television ratings are way up there in the galaxy. Money rains down on dozens of programs and thousands of players. Marching bands continue to march. Yet a lot of teams are stranded by realignment or an economic inability to keep up in a transfer arms race. Their fans – actually any team’s fans – may be exhausted by escalating asks for their dollars.
If you have been checked out of the sport for a while ahead of this weekend’s first set of games, you may feel like your body has been frozen for a few decades. Indiana, (yes, really) are the defending national champs, fresh off a 16-0 season that puts them on the list of the handful of best teams ever. Texas Tech, once likened to Siberia by a former coach who is now a US senator, are the fiercest program in the Big 12. Ole Miss are good for the first time since integration. At least Ohio State and Georgia are still powerhouses.
The site once paired news and scores with distinctive voices. Its overhaul under Sinclair Media is the latest sign that serious tennis writing in the US is becoming endangered
A few weeks ago, as I often do, I went to the Tennis.com site to get an update about a match and to check out the commentary from my fellow tennis journalists. I was taken aback when, instead of the usual colorful graphics and info, I was greeted with a rudimentary-looking homepage that displayed only scores and rankings.
At first I thought it was a glitch of some sort. But sadly, no. As it turns out, Tennis.com, originally the online site of Tennis Magazine, is under a complete overhaul and will no longer be the home of esteemed writers such as Steve Tignor and Pete Bodo, robbing fans of unique and personal takes on the sport. It appears the longest running American tennis-specific publication is no longer alive in any form.
The singer had a serendipitous mixture of humor, humility and humanity. We could all stand to channel it a bit more
The moment that the world found out that Dolly Parton had died, I was in a hair salon in the reddest congressional district in New York state. The neighborhood on the shore of Lake Erie where I move every summer voted solidly for Donald Trump in 2024.
I often pass a lawn sign that has something misogynistic to say about New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, and the mere mention of Kamala Harris’s name can bring derisive jokes. Of course, there certainly are liberals and independents to be found, but on balance the area leans right.
The automaker, one of the nation’s biggest employers, could shed tens of thousands of jobs amid global market shifts driven by electrification, AI and autonomous driving.
Camp East Montana, an immigration detention facility inside the Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso, Texas Omar Ornelas for ProPublica
The first emergency call about a detainee trying to harm himself came about a month after Camp East Montana — an immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas — started to house immigrants. It was 2:50 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 12.
“We have a patient currently in holding who is saying he’s got suicidal ideations, swallowed some foreign object, has refused our basic medical care here,” a nurse told the operator. In the audio, you can hear that someone is moaning and yelling in the background.
“At this point he is unable to speak and rolling on the floor in agonizing pain, holding his stomach,” the nurse continued. “A preliminary X-ray was done and a foreign object was found. We just need to take him to the hospital that’s closest so that they can verify if the object is currently in his system and possibly to excavate the object.”
Listen to the Call
I’ve been reporting on Camp East Montana for months. It sits on barren military land and was supposed to be a model for how the Trump administration would carry out mass deportations. Instead, it became an example of what could go wrong. It remains in operation despite claims of inhumane conditions and abuse, which Department of Homeland Security officials have said are “categorically false.” ICE plans to keep the facility running at least through Sept. 30, 2027, The Associated Press reported.
In the span of six weeks between December 2025 and January 2026, three men died at Camp East Montana, making it one of the country’s deadliest detention centers at the time.
In July, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune published my investigation into the Jan. 3 death of one of those men, Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban national with a history of mental illness. He died after an altercation with guards over his medication, and a medical examiner ruled Lunas Campos’ death a homicide. (The Trump administration initially claimed that he had experienced medical distress, but Department of Homeland Security officials later said guards had used force to keep him from killing himself.)
We found that Lunas Campos had repeatedly raised concerns about his mental health while detained at Camp East Montana. Records show staff didn’t transfer him to a facility that could better care for him, despite repeatedly saying they were working to do so.
I wanted to understand more about how the facility was responding to such incidents. I obtained, via public records requests, recordings of more than 160 emergency calls, and I spoke with staff, government officials familiar with the facility, detainees, lawyers and advocates who had spent time inside the detention center.
I asked DHS about my reporting and some of the 911 calls. A spokesperson did not comment on the specific issues identified in the calls, but said the facility provides “comprehensive medical services, including mental health services.” If the detainee requires a higher level of medical care, they are referred to local emergency services as needed, the spokesperson said. The official also said that for many immigrant detainees, the healthcare they get while in custody is the best they’ve gotten in their lives.
Now I want to share some of those 911 calls with you. While they may be difficult to listen to or read about, they offer a glimpse into what’s happening in a place reporters don’t have access to. The calls and my investigation show failures in responding to mental health and medical emergencies that extend beyond those experienced by one man. (Note: In some cases, recordings were edited to remove long stretches where no one was talking.)
Oct. 12, 2025: “They will not give them medical treatment.”
Two months after Camp East Montana began holding detainees, some were growing so desperate that they were having friends and relatives call 911 to seek medical help on their behalf. A man from North Texas called three times on Oct. 12, trying to get a detainee, whom he identified as his partner, emergency care for his kidney stones.
Listen to the Call
“Why isn’t the facility calling?” the operator asked.
“Because they don’t care. They don’t care about any of the detainees. They will not give them medical treatment; they don’t care. … He does not like to go to the hospital. So when he is saying he is in emergent pain at a level of 10 out of 10 and he needs to go to the emergency room, it is no joke; it has got to be very, very serious.”
In a declaration to lawyers, a 32-year-old Venezuelan man identified by a pseudonym, Xavier, who fits the profile of the man with kidney stones, said he had gone on a hunger strike because he was not getting any information about his case or about a court date. “Being here feels like torture,” he said. “I feel like this experience is finishing me emotionally and physically. I don’t feel like I can survive for another month at this place. They treat us like animals.”
Nov. 2, 2025: “We don’t have any oxygen for her.”
In some of the emergency calls, the medical providers themselves lamented how little they could do for their patients.
Listen to the Call
A nurse at the facility dialed 911. She said she had a 46-year-old woman with COVID-19 who was short of breath and whose oxygen saturation was dropping. “But the issue is we don’t have any oxygen for her, especially if she does start desaturating even more,” she tells the operator. “She just doesn’t look good.”
“OK. Let me request assistance, OK? Just bear with me,” the operator tells her.
“Apparently she’s been sick for the last couple of days and she’s asked to be brought into the clinic and they hadn’t brought her in,” the nurse explains later in the call. “She was just brought in today, bless her heart, so I’m just worried about her.”
Feb. 28, 2026: “Was this accidental or intentional?”
“OK, we have a guy who’s overdosed. He’s a detainee,” a nurse told an emergency operator on Feb. 28.
They didn’t know much about the 60-year-old man who had just arrived at Camp East Montana or about what he had taken about an hour ago, she said. Someone had seen him “popping pills” and stumbling around.
“Was this accidental or intentional?” the operator asked.
Flash flooding and mudslides in Ishikawa and Toyama prefectures, while convective storms hit western Europe
After an “unprecedented” deluge in Chiba in mid-August, Japan has experienced further extreme rainfall in recent days. Moisture from the Sea of Japan brought relentless heavy rain to the prefectures of Ishikawa and Toyama on Thursday.
In Himi, Toyama, 361.5mm of rain fell in 24 hours, equivalent to half the average annual rainfall in London and Paris. Several rivers burst their banks, triggering flash floods and mudslides, felling and damaging buildings.
A new project called STREAMLINE is using artificial intelligence and supercomputers to solve one of nuclear physics’ hardest challenges — unlocking insights into atomic nuclei, neutron stars and fundamental forces.
Aug. 28, 2026 — At the heart of every atom lies a tightly bound cluster of protons and neutrons — a system governed by some of the most complex interactions in nature. Understanding how these particles behave is one of the central challenges of nuclear physics. Now, a project called STREAMLINE is taking on that challenge using a powerful combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and supercomputing.
The STREAMLINE project uses machine learning to solve the nuclear many-body problem. Image credit: Jane Kim/Argonne.
A collaboration of universities and national laboratories, including the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, STREAMLINE aims to solve what scientists call the nuclear quantum many-body problem — the challenge of predicting how many interacting particles behave collectively as a quantum system. It’s the challenge of calculating how dozens of particles influence one another at the quantum level, where the rules of physics differ from everyday experience.
“This project aims to solve the nuclear quantum many-body problem with high accuracy by leveraging machine learning techniques,” said Argonne scientist Alessandro Lovato, a lead investigator on the effort.
The problem is difficult because the number of possible interactions grows exponentially as more particles are added. Traditional methods quickly run into computational limits. Even the world’s most powerful supercomputers can handle only relatively small systems.
STREAMLINE changes that equation. By using machine learning — a form of AI — researchers can approximate these complex interactions much more efficiently. Instead of calculations that grow exponentially, the new methods scale more gently, allowing scientists to study much larger systems than before.
At Argonne, Lovato’s team is pioneering the use of neural networks — computer models trained on data to recognize patterns and make predictions — to represent quantum wave functions. A wave function is a mathematical description of a quantum system that encodes everything scientists can know about it. By replacing conventional equations with flexible neural networks, researchers can model systems that were previously out of reach.
The results are already striking. Where earlier methods could handle about a dozen interacting particles, the new approach can scale up to 100, opening the door to studying more realistic atomic nuclei.
“This was really a game changer,” Lovato said.
The implications extend far beyond nuclear physics. A better understanding of atomic nuclei helps scientists interpret experiments that probe the fundamental laws of nature, including studies of neutrinos — elusive particles that pass through matter almost undetected. It also informs models of neutron stars, the ultradense remnants of collapsed stars, where matter exists under extreme conditions.
In practical terms, STREAMLINE will produce quantities that experimental scientists can measure, such as the size, energy and structure of atomic nuclei. These results can then be compared with data from facilities such as the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS), strengthening the connection between theory and experiment. ATLAS is a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne that focuses on nuclear physics.
The project is also highly collaborative. The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University leads the recently renewed STREAMLINE 2 collaboration, which also brings together researchers from DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Florida State University, North Carolina State University, Ohio State University, Ohio University and University of Tennessee, alongside Argonne.
Argonne combines deep expertise in nuclear theory with access to some of the world’s most advanced supercomputers, including systems such as Aurora. Housed at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), Aurora is capable of performing over a quintillion calculations per second. These resources allow researchers to run the large-scale simulations required to train and apply machine learning models to quantum systems. The ALCF is also a DOE Office of Science user facility.
STREAMLINE also aligns with DOE’s Genesis Mission, an initiative focused on using AI to accelerate scientific discovery and innovation. By integrating AI directly into fundamental physics research, STREAMLINE demonstrates how machine learning can transform not just data analysis, but the way science itself is conducted.
Beyond its scientific impact, the project is helping shape the future workforce. The combination of nuclear physics, AI and high performance computing is attracting a new generation of researchers, equipping them with skills that are increasingly valuable across science and industry.
STREAMLINE represents a shift in how scientists approach one of the field’s hardest problems and a glimpse of what’s possible when advanced computing and human ingenuity come together.
As Lovato said, “The neural network doesn’t know anything about nuclear physics — but when we train it, it learns to behave like a quantum system.”
And that, researchers say, may be the key to unlocking the next era of discovery.
Expeditioners at research station on Macquarie Island will be evacuated over possible ‘psychological stress’, while 100 dead little penguins found on Tasmanian island
A dolphin has died from H5 bird flu in South Australia, marking the second native mammal species known to have contracted the virus.
On Friday afternoon, the Tasmanian government said it was assessing the discovery of about 100 dead little penguins on King Island but it was unable to test them for H5 bird flu due to their “decayed condition”.
About 80 people sign open letter to Andy Burnham calling for legislation to protect voice ownership
Nicola Coughlan, Hugh Bonneville and Matt Lucas are among a group of actors backing a campaign against artificial intelligence voice cloning.
Save Our Voices Now, which is also being supported by Luke Evans, Jen Brister, Siobhán McSweeney and Pearl Mackie, aims to stop the practice in which AI technology is used to replicate a real person’s voice to say anything it is prompted to.
Problems including derailments have hit network during one of the hottest and driest summers on record
Britain’s railways have faced a string of heat-related problems this summer, including a derailment near Lewes in East Sussex two weeks ago that injured 30 people, and another the next day when the rear carriages of a Greater Anglia train derailed “in an upright position” at Wickford railway station in Essex, with no reported injuries.
The problems came during one of the hottest and driest summers on record, with a series of heatwaves, and drought declared across large parts of England and Wales. Britain’s railways, built for a cooler, wetter climate, have been put under pressure. Network Rail said the summer had “presented exceptional challenges to the railway”.
Canada is recruiting 64 researchers to universities across the country (source paywalled; alternative source), including 48 from U.S. institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and MIT. The hires are backed by more than $364 million in government funding and are part of a broader effort to attract researchers in fields such as AI, climate science, and medicine. The New York Times reports: While scientists often shy away from political discourse, some are saying the Trump administration's assault on science is behind their departure. "I used to live in the country that I thought was the most enthusiastic about the prospects for science improving the human condition, of any country in the world," said Phillip Zamore, the chair of RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts. "And I woke up one day and that wasn't true anymore." He has been recruited to McGill University in Montreal, which has also hired five other researchers, and will join the medical faculty. "If scientists don't stand up for truth, no one will," Dr. Zamore said.
The Canada-bound brain drain from U.S. institutions began last year as the Trump administration put forward policies that targeted foreign students, academic freedom and funding for equity-related programs. Kevin Hall, a nutrition scientist who left the U.S. National Institutes of Health last year, accusing federal officials of censoring his research on ultraprocessed foods, has been hired at the University of Ottawa. "While certain countries are cutting research and turning their back on academic freedom, we're doubling down on science," Melanie Joly, Canada's industry minister, told reporters at the announcement, in Vancouver, of the new university hiring. She billed it as the world's "largest talent attraction" project. The European Union has made a similar push. "Years from now, we will look back at today's announcement, and we will be able to seize the lasting impact of our choices," Ms. Joly said.
Unpredictable decisions about funding prompted Seth Guikema, a professor in civil and environmental engineering, who has specialized in natural hazards modeling at the University of Michigan, to look elsewhere. His work focuses on how climate hazards inequitably affect communities, and that work has become harder to fund, he said. "Every country sets its priorities in terms of what is going to get funded, and I think Canada has done a very good job of supporting research in areas that really matter to society," said Dr. Guikema, who will start at Western University in London, Ontario in January.
It is polite to reposition a guest’s shoes when they arrive, but the emergency services in one city advise just skipping that part
Etiquette, manners and consideration for others are integral pillars of Japanese society but there are times when they might go a step too far, according to one city’s emergency services.
The fire department in the central city of Kanazawa has urged people not to tidy up the shoes that paramedic crews have taken off when entering a house, warning it could hinder their ability to get in or out quickly, particularly when carrying someone on a stretcher.
The international community was scrambling to get aid into flood-stricken parts of Nepal and Tibet on Thursday as authorities warned that a lake formed at the site where the deadly torrents occurred was rising and at risk of bursting.
The catastrophic flash floods that hit Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday, thundering down valleys and obliterating entire villages, killed at least 469 people and left more than 1,300 missing.
Chris Bowen insists federal Labor’s new national laws on datacentre power supply will not include carve-outs for Queensland and the Northern Territory, with states that are eager to use coal and gas required to make their case to the national regulator.
The energy minister told Guardian Australia on Friday the only concession agreed at Wednesday’s meeting of national cabinet was that existing coal and gas supply could be used on the condition it could be shown to be cheaper than renewables.
Collaboration leverages DualityBio's proprietary DUPAC payload platform and early global clinical development capabilities, with Genentech assuming further clinical development and global commercializationDUPAC, one of the DualityBio's four proprietary ADC technology platforms, comprises multiple payloads with novel mechanism of action designed…
The U.S. military this week used a laser to shoot down three drones along the U.S.-Mexico border that were allegedly operated by drug cartels, the Pentagon said.
Other governments could seek similar concessions, while separate legal action is pending in places ranging from Kenya to the Netherlands
In October 2021, Abrham Meareg’s father, a professor of chemistry in Ethiopia’s northern town of Bahir Dar, was shot at close range and died outside his family home. This was in the middle of the country’s civil war.
For weeks, Facebook’s algorithm had actively promoted posts calling for the academic to be murdered, according to Meareg and Foxglove, a nonprofit organisation supporting Meareg’s lawsuit against the company in Kenya. These posts included photos of his father and his home address.
Anthropic argued designation as ‘supply-chain risk’ could cost billions in lost business and reputational harm
A US judge ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration broke the law when it designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk earlier this year, finding that the government had unlawfully targeted the AI firm for refusing to comply with defense department demands.
“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” Judge Rita Lin said in a 59-page decision.
An anonymous reader quotes a report fro SFGATE: From "rizz" to "meat proxy," words and phrases have fallen in and out of favor for centuries. Culture, politics and technological development have long influenced these trends, and now, new research shows that ChatGPT is beginning to influence how humans communicate. The findings from a team at the Pew Research Center show how, in a short time since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022 and other chatbots followed, the use of certain words and phrases has spiked on the web. The researchers, led by data scientist Samuel Bestvater, studied nearly half a million English language webpage texts in snapshots over the past five years. Not only has AI-written text become more common, but it could also be influencing how people write, such as trying to avoid using the "tells" that have become associated with AI-generated text.
Bestvater and his team detected double the number of em dashes, double the frequency of particular words -- such as "delve," "testament" and "interplay" -- and nearly triple the use of a phrasing known as negative parallelisms ("it's not X, it's Y"), as well as a 63% increase in Oxford commas. But while AI labs continually try to tweak their models to generate more humanlike text, the people they're mimicking aren't staying the same. "Human writers might also be changing the way that they write in response to AI. I've seen some anecdotal evidence of people saying, 'Now I avoid em dashes,'" Bestvater said. "If human writers are adjusting their choices of words and phrases and punctuation to try to differentiate their writing from AI-generated text, then you would see a pattern that looks sort of like that in the chart."
"You can see changes in people's speech. People are tending to more commonly use these low-frequency words in their speech because they're spending a lot of time listening to or reading AI-generated content," said Roger Kreuz, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Memphis who recently wrote about how difficult it is for people to identify bot-written text.
Renewed scrutiny comes after police officer accused of falsifying records in order to close the cases of people who were later found dead
South Korean police will re-examine about 310,000 missing persons cases closed over the past three years, prompted by a scandal in which an officer was arrested on suspicion of falsifying records to close files on two people who were later found dead.
The case has drawn national attention, with President Lee Jae Myung ordering an investigation into the police handling of it and telling the force to draw up a reform plan.
President’s directive stalls for a second time about a week before the first postal ballots are due to be sent out
A federal judge on Thursday halted – at least for the moment – attempts to implement Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting.
The president’s directive stalled for a second time about a week before the first mail ballots are due to be sent out for the rapidly approaching midterm elections. In the US district court, Judge Indira Talwani placed a 14-day hold on the government implementing the order in a case that could be headed back to the supreme court, which on Monday overturned an earlier ruling of hers that had blocked Trump’s order from taking effect.
This live blog has now closed – but our coverage continues at a new blog here
Eyewitness accounts have been emerging from the Tibetan side of the border, with a woman saying she was travelling from Gyirong town towards Nepal on Wednesday morning when her group encountered the flood about 4km from Gyirong port.
“Trees and electricity poles had already been knocked down, and the flood water was bearing down on us. We didn’t dare turn around, so we could only reverse,” the woman, surnamed Fang, told Xiaoxiang Morning News.
On Wednesday, Trump officially signed a proclamation on Wednesday that suspends higher tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef imports for 90 days. This comes after backlash to the proposal – designed to lower grocery costs for Americans in the run-up to the November midterms.
Several Republicans – in states with sizable cattle farming industries – have criticized the policy, saying it is a short term solution that will stymie ranchers’ ability to rebuild their herds.
Four leading livestock and agricultural organizations also wrote a letter to the president on Wednesday urging him to reverse course.
“Flooding the market with discounted foreign beef is not the way to rebuild the American cattle herd, strengthen food security, or lower grocery bills in a lasting way,” the groups wrote.
Donald Trump will begin his day in Washington, before traveling to Houston, Texas where he’ll headline a Republican National Commitee (RNC) fundraiser, and help boost Ken Paxton — the state’s attorney general and Republican nominee for Senate.
A reminder that Paxton beat long serving Senator John Cornyn in the GOP primary earlier this year after receiving Trump’s endorsement. Paxton is set to face Democratic state lawmaker James Talarico in November.
More than 1,000 people, including many Americans, are still missing along the Nepal-China border after deadly floods and mudflows likely triggered by a glacial collapse.
Decision allows manufacturers to begin shipping doses, but confusion remains about insurance coverage
The US Food and Drug Administration approved updated Covid-19 vaccines on Thursday, allowing manufacturers to begin shipping doses to pharmacies and doctors’ offices across the country.
The FDA approved Moderna, Novavax-Sanofi and Pfizer-BioNTech’s updated Covid vaccines, the companies said on Thursday, after an advisory panel recommended that the shots should target the dominant XFG variant.
Albany, New York — Gov. Kathy Hochul said New York will continue calling Lake Ontario by its traditional name despite President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the federal government to rename it “Lake America.”
“New York won’t be calling it that,” Hochul wrote Thursday on X, joining Democratic and Republican state leaders who criticized the change.
Trump signed the executive order Thursday amid an escalating trade dispute with Canada. The federal designation applies to U.S. government agencies, maps and documents but does not require New York state or Canada to adopt the new name.
Lake Ontario borders New York and the Canadian province of Ontario and connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean through the St. Lawrence Seaway. Its watershed is home to roughly 5.6 million people in both countries, according to the Center for Great Lakes Literacy.
Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott also criticized Trump’s decision, while Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers mocked it by posting a video in which he wrote “Lake Wisconsin” on a McDonald’s napkin as a proposed replacement for Lake Michigan.
The dispute comes as U.S.-Canada trade tensions deepen. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced retaliatory tariffs in response to new U.S. tariffs scheduled to take effect Sept. 8.
Trump previously used an executive order to direct federal agencies to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in Michigan's U.S. Senate race, says now is the time for Democrats to work together ahead of the 2026 midterm election.
The NTSB said tower recordings show controllers never heard Marine One's Aug. 4 calls warning it was preparing to take off, though separate recordings confirm the calls were made.
Two air traffic controllers at LaGuardia Airport left work early on the night of a deadly runway collision in March, a source familiar with the situation told CBS News.
GPU giant Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face, an AI model, data, collaboration and platform with more than 13 million registered users, for $12.9 billion, according to a report today in The Information. If the deal goes through, it would significantly bolster Nvidia’s AI model business.
Hugging Face was founded 10 years ago by Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf to develop a chatbot for teens. The mobile app used natural language processing (NLP) models to interpret the text or graphical input, and generated a response designed to delight the user–and perhaps even use the “hugging face” emoji (hence the name).
Hugging Face Co-founder and CEO Clément Delangue
When the founders noticed more interest in the AI models behind the chatbot than the chatbot itself, they decided to open source the technology, posting it to GitHub, where the technology was widely accessed and used.
In 2018–a year after Google published the seminal paper on transformers, “Attention Is All You Need”–the New York City company its strategy. Instead of a chatbot, Hugging Face became a repository of open source AI and machine learning models, the data sets they were trained on, and other resources for AI engineers, data scientists, and machine learning specialists to work with the tools.
One of the first models they posted was an open source version of Google’s BERT, an early LLM. The PyTorch-based version was well-received by the community. In 2021–more than a year before OpenAI shocked the world with ChatGPT–Hugging Face launched a project called BigScience designed to help foster the development of LLMs and large datasets in the scientific realm.
Hugging Face was a popular repository for all sorts of AI models before ChatGPT triggered the tsunami of interest in LLMs. But there’s no doubt the AI boom accelerated Hugging Face’s growth. It crossed the 1 million model threshold in 2024, 2 million models in 2025, and today has about 3 million AI models, as well as half a million data sets. Much of this technology and data is free; the company reported only $150 million in annual revenue.
The company has growth through venture capital funding, which has totaled $395 million over the years. In 2023, it raised $235 million in a Series D round (its last major funding round) at a $4.5 billion valuation. Nvidia was among those Series D investors, along with Google, Amazon, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and IBM.
It will be interesting to see how Hugging Face fits into Nvidia’s strategy or changes it. Nvidia and Hugging Face announced a partnership in 2023 that made it easier for Hugging Face users to get access to Nvidia GPUs for training. In late 2025, Nvidia launched its own line of open-weight models, dubbed Nemotron, which range in size from 3.5B to 550B parameters.
The popularity of Hugging Face among AI developers is its biggest asset; with just 2,000 paying customers and a mere $150 million in revenues, the revenue stream is clearly not it. Hugging Face has become the defacto standard place where a generation of AI engineers go to download and play around with AI models.
Open-weight models have surged in popularity in the U.S. this summer, following a surprising improvement in Chinese open-weight models like Alibaba Qwen, Alibaba’s Kimi, and DeepSeek, which now are nearly on par with the best proprietary models from the big American labs at Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue were among the executives who signed the “Open Weights and American AI Leadership” letter last month.
If Nvidia sees a big figure in open-weight AI models, then it couldn’t do much better than acquire Hugging Face, which is where many of these models live.
According to the report, 64 VPN apps on Apple’s App Store and Google Play contain trackers that collect your sensitive data; the exact opposite of what a VPN is supposed to do.
Three employees of Stars and Stripes, a government-funded news service, allege they were fired after reporting on USS Abraham Lincoln
Three journalists who were fired by the Pentagon from a US government-funded news outlet sued the Department of Defense in federal court on Thursday, arguing their dismissals were illegal and violated their first amendment rights to free speech.
The three journalists were all employees of Stars and Stripes, which their court filing calls “the U.S. military’s independent news source since the Civil War with a long history of editorial independence, free from news management or censorship by military command”.
ICE has granted a $16.7 million no-bid contract for 6,000 gloves that can deliver electric shocks, a new use-of-force tool that the agency claims will help officers control resisting detainees.
Tampa, Florida — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed concerns Wednesday about reductions in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, even as new data showed nationwide enrollment has fallen to its lowest level in 17 years.
Asked whether cuts to SNAP would reduce food access for children and families, Kennedy said, “I don’t think it’s gonna have that much effect.” He also claimed those removed from the program were no longer eligible because of income or immigration status.
A new analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found SNAP participation fell by roughly 5 million people, or 12%, between July 2025 and May 2026. Enrollment declined in every state except Alaska and has dropped below pre-pandemic levels.
The analysis also estimated that well over 1.5 million children nationwide are no longer receiving SNAP. CBPP said many recipients may have lost assistance because of stricter work-reporting requirements and administrative barriers rather than because they became ineligible.
The Republican reconciliation law signed by President Donald Trump last year imposed major SNAP reductions, expanded work requirements and shifted some benefit costs to states.
Kennedy made the comments during a Florida event focused on improving school nutrition, an initiative aimed at replacing highly processed foods with more nutrient-dense options.
Google is imposing new memory-use limits on Android apps as the AI data center boom contributes to a broader memory chip shortage that could leave lower-cost phones with less RAM. Developers will have until February 2027 to meet new thresholds for memory and bitmap usage. To aid developers, Google is adding tools to flag apps that exceed the limits and help prevent slowdowns and crashes. TechCrunch reports: The company explains that the mobile industry is now facing "significant hardware supply constraints that are altering device memory availability," which can then, in turn, affect the consumer's experience with their devices. To address this, Google is now establishing new performance thresholds across several areas, like dynamic memory usage and bitmap usage. In addition, Google is adding code optimization requirements designed to prevent things like app slowdowns and crashes related to performance.
Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday directing the federal government to rename Lake Ontario, making it Lake America, amid his escalating trade war with Canada.
The order directs federal agencies to adopt the name-change on US maps, documents and databases. But Trump has no authority to rename Canada’s portion of the lake, nor to compel Canada, international legal bodies, international mapmakers or the rest of the world to adopt a new name.
Newly obtained records indicate health secretary lied about Samoa trip during Senate confirmation hearings last year
A senior Democratic senator is calling for a criminal investigation into the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, following reporting by the Guardian that indicated he lied during Senate confirmation hearings last year.
Ron Wyden of Oregon said: “RFK’s platform is built on lies and grifts that leave a trail of dead children in their wake. There are consequences for lying to Congress.”
Washington, D.C. — A group of mostly Democratic senators is urging Immigration and Customs Enforcement to abandon plans to spend up to $20 million on gloves capable of delivering electric shocks during immigration enforcement operations.
In a letter Thursday to acting ICE Director David Venturella, the lawmakers said they had “deep concern” about the proposed purchase of the Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, or G.L.O.V.E. They argued that ICE should prioritize de-escalation training and accountability rather than deploy a new pain-compliance device.
The letter was led by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and signed by 15 other senators, including independent Sen. Angus King of Maine and Democrats Dick Durbin, Patty Murray, Adam Schiff, Amy Klobuchar and Tammy Duckworth.
The Department of Homeland Security disclosed the plan earlier this month, saying ICE was evaluating equipment that could help officers safely make arrests. A DHS spokesperson previously said the agency routinely assesses what tools officers need in the field.
The senators countered that recent allegations of excessive force and civil rights violations make deployment of the gloves inappropriate. They called on ICE to refrain from using the devices and instead invest in training and oversight.
The letter does not itself block the purchase, and DHS has not announced that the procurement has been canceled.
Wired reports that OpenAI is testing a new "Persistent mode" for Codex that would let the agent keep working until explicitly "put to sleep," proactively creating follow-up tasks for itself across sessions and using prior interactions and knowledge of the user to decide what to do next. Code alluding to the feature was spotted in the product's code base, though it has not been rolled out or officially announced yet. From the report: Persistent mode appears in Codex's "reasoning effort" menu, in which users can select the level of computing power, tokens, and time they want to allow for an AI model to "think" before answering a prompt. It seems to be one of OpenAI's most computationally intensive settings. When users have selected Persistent mode, OpenAI's code base reads that Codex will "continue working until put to sleep." That's a stark contrast to currently available modes, which will stop working on a task after a few minutes or hours, even if it's not complete.
In another file in the code base, OpenAI describes a feature within Persistent mode called "proactivity." This appears to be a type of system prompt for agents in Persistent mode, which are told that their work is not done when they finish answering a user's request. Instead, the agent is instructed to proactively create follow-up tasks for itself. The agent is capable of working on those tasks across sessions and using past user interactions and "knowledge of the user" to decide what to work on. It also has a tool to message the user without being asked but is told to send these sparingly.
The instructions also set limits for the agent, according to the file. The agent is told that Persistent mode does not expand what it is allowed to do and that altering anything outside the user's own system requires the user's approval first -- seemingly intended to limit how dangerous a persistent AI agent could be. The file sits in the shared core of Codex rather than in the code specific to the terminal, seeming to suggest the proactivity feature is intended for more than the command line tool.
(The Center Square) – Twenty-two state attorneys general are questioning taxpayer funding of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine amid what the AGs call the group’s “sham”-like “independent review” of its much debated reference manual’s climate science chapter…
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow told CBS News that around 5,000 jobs in Toronto's textile, clothing and leather manufacturing industries could be affected, which "means the price of Americans buying things, the cost will go up."
Organizers expect more than 3,000 people to participate in Saturday’s Youth Day and Sunday’s Big Quarterly.
Wilmington’s historic African American religious celebration concludes with music, worship, youth activities, food, vendors and the traditional Big Quarterly
WILMINGTON — For more than two centuries, the final weekend of August has carried a special meaning in Wilmington.
It is a time for worship and reunion, music and food, reflection and celebration. It is also a reminder that the freedom to gather, worship and build independent institutions was once a courageous act for African Americans.
The 212th August Quarterly Festival will bring those traditions into the present this weekend with three days of events culminating in the Big Quarterly at Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park.
The remaining schedule includes an all-white party Friday evening, a full day of youth and family activities Saturday, and a worship service followed by the main outdoor festival Sunday.
Organizers expect more than 3,000 people to participate in Saturday’s Youth Day and Sunday’s Big Quarterly.
More than a festival
August Quarterly traces its roots to the Rev. Peter Spencer, the founder of the Union Church of Africans, now known as the African Union Methodist Protestant Church.
Spencer was born into slavery in Maryland in 1782 and later gained his freedom. After moving to Wilmington, he became a mechanic, educator, church leader and advocate for the city’s growing Black community.
In 1813, after rejecting white control over Black religious life, Spencer established the Union Church of Africans as an independent Black denomination. One year later, he began the annual gathering that became known as the August Quarterly.
The gathering traditionally took place on the last Sunday in August and served as both a religious revival and a homecoming. Free and enslaved Black people traveled to Wilmington from Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and other areas to worship, sing, share meals and reconnect with relatives and friends.
That made the gathering more than a church service. It was a public demonstration of religious independence, community strength and the right of African Americans to assemble on their own terms.
The festival also became connected to Delaware’s abolitionist history. Spencer supported the Underground Railroad, and accounts of the festival’s history describe Wilmington as a place where enslaved people could make contact with abolitionists and plan journeys to freedom.
A tradition that continues to evolve
The August Quarterly has changed from the multistate religious homecoming of the 1800s into a weeklong celebration combining worship with gospel music, youth programming, cultural education, food and community resources.
Its underlying purpose, however, remains much the same: bringing people together around faith, freedom, family and African American cultural identity.
This year’s celebration began Aug. 23 with an opening service at Mother African Union Church and a memorial wreath-laying at Peter Spencer Plaza. Revival services continued during the week.
The festival now moves into its busiest weekend, giving families several opportunities to participate.
Friday celebration opens festival weekend
The AQ Liberation Fest will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, Aug. 28, at the Delaware Historical Society, 505 N. Market St.
Promoted as an all-white party, the evening will feature the Pieces of a Dream dance group and music from Best Kept Soul.
The event adds a social and entertainment component to the festival while keeping the celebration in the heart of downtown Wilmington.
Saturday belongs to young people
The AQ Youth and Young Adult Experience will take over Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park from noon to 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 29.
The day will feature children and youth performers, bookbag and school-supply giveaways, face painting, games and family activities.
By placing young people at the center of Saturday’s program, the festival connects a 212-year-old tradition with the generation that will be responsible for carrying it forward.
The event also helps families prepare for the new school year while offering young performers an opportunity to appear before a large community audience.
Sunday brings worship and the Big Quarterly
Sunday’s events begin with the August Quarterly Worship Service from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Chase Center on the Riverfront, 815 Shipyard Drive.
The service will feature the Rev. Carolyn C. Cavaness and the August Quarterly Festival Choir.
The Big Quarterly will begin at noon at nearby Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park and continue until 8 p.m.
The festival will feature local, regional and nationally known gospel groups performing throughout the day. Food and retail vendors will be joined by cultural, community and health organizations, while a children’s area will offer youth-oriented attractions.
The combination of worship, gospel music, food, vendors and family fellowship reflects many of the elements that have defined August Quarterly throughout its history.
For longtime participants, Sunday is an annual homecoming. For residents unfamiliar with the tradition, it offers an opportunity to experience one of Wilmington’s most important cultural institutions — and to learn why a festival founded in 1814 continues to matter in 2026.
TO GO
What: 212th August Quarterly Festival weekend
Friday: AQ Liberation Fest, 6 to 9 p.m., Delaware Historical Society, 505 N. Market St., Wilmington
Saturday: AQ Youth and Young Adult Experience, noon to 8 p.m., Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park, Rosa Parks Drive and Market Street, Wilmington
Sunday worship: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Chase Center on the Riverfront, 815 Shipyard Drive, Wilmington
Sunday festival: The Big Quarterly, noon to 8 p.m., Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park
New rules are aimed at protecting people in debt in England and Wales and stopping homeowners being ripped off
A clampdown on “rogue bailiffs” has been launched by Andy Burnham amid concerns that vulnerable people are being overcharged and face aggressive behaviour.
In the latest in a series of “everyday fixes” to ease the cost of living and “make Britain fairer”, the prime minister said he was strengthening the rules that apply to bailiffs in England and Wales to better protect people in debt.
(The Center Square) – California Attorney General Rob Bonta stands by a lawsuit he’s co-leading to stop President Donald Trump's executive order on mail-in ballots.
El congresista republicano Byron Donalds, candidato a gobernador de Florida, vinculó los brotes de sarampión en Estados Unidos con la inmigración ilegal.
El 23 de agosto, en el programa “Face the Nation” de CBS News, la presentadora Margaret Brennan dijo que Florida se encuentra por debajo de la tasa de inmunización necesaria para lograr la inmunidad colectiva contra el sarampión. Después, Brennan le preguntó a Donalds si recomendaría a los padres de Florida que vacunaran a sus hijos.
“No”, respondió Donalds, “en realidad, mi mensaje para los floridianos y, francamente, para los estadounidenses, es que la razón por la que hemos visto un brote de sarampión en ciertas partes del país se debe a la inmigración ilegal desenfrenada hacia Estados Unidos durante la administración anterior”.
Donalds señaló los brotes de sarampión en El Paso, Texas, y el suroeste de Florida, y dijo que las personas que se encuentran ilegalmente en EE.UU. no han seguido el calendario de vacunación contra el sarampión, las paperas y la rubéola.
Continuó diciendo: “Así que lo fundamental es, en primer lugar, controlar la inmigración en el país. No se puede permitir que todo un segmento de personas — más de 10 millones de personas, viniendo al país sin cumplir con ese calendario de vacunación”.
Es inexacto decir que 10 millones de inmigrantes ingresaron ilegalmente a EE.UU. durante la presidencia de Joe Biden. La administración Biden permitió que unas 4.3 millones de personas esperaran sus audiencias ante las cortes de inmigración dentro del país.
Además, no hay evidencia que vincule los brotes de sarampión con los inmigrantes en EE.UU. Expertos en enfermedades infecciosas le dijeron a PolitiFact que la causa principal de los brotes es el declive de las tasas de vacunación contra el sarampión, las paperas y la rubéola en el país. Alrededor del 94% de los casos confirmados en 2026 son de personas no vacunadas o cuyo estado de vacunación se desconoce.
La campaña de Donalds no respondió a una solicitud de información que respaldara sus declaraciones.
George Rust, epidemiólogo y profesor de la facultad de medicina de la Florida State University dijo que, durante décadas, EE.UU. registró casos esporádicos de sarampión que, por lo general, se originaban cuando viajeros estadounidenses contraían el virus en el extranjero y presentaban síntomas tras regresar a casa.
“Tal vez una o dos personas más se contagiarían de ellos, pero debido a las altas tasas de vacunación y a la rápida respuesta de salud pública, no habría una segunda oleada de casos”, dijo Rust. “Ahora estamos viendo más brotes porque ese mismo escenario se repite en grupos de personas no vacunadas, lo que facilita una mayor propagación”.
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El actual brote de sarampión de 2026 ha superado las cifras récord de casos de 2025, que fueron las más altas desde 1991.
El sarampión es un virus respiratorio altamente contagioso. La infección puede provocar complicaciones graves, como neumonía, inflamación cerebral y la muerte. En 2025, dos niños y un adulto fallecieron a causa del sarampión, las primeras muertes atribuidas al virus en EE.UU. en más de una década. El 25 de agosto, el Departamento de Salud de Pensilvania dijo que otras dos personas no vacunadas, cuyas edades no se hicieron públicas, murieron a causa del virus.
Recibir las dos dosis recomendadas de la vacuna triple vírica (MMR, por sus siglas en inglés), es 97% eficaz contra la infección.
“Es probable que el 90% de las personas no vacunadas que se exponen al virus lo contraigan”, dijo Rust. “Debido a su alta capacidad de transmisión, los brotes de sarampión pueden propagarse exponencialmente en sectores de la población que no están vacunados o no inmune”.
¿Es el sarampión propagado por inmigrantes?
Dos familias de migrantes atraviesan una abertura en el muro fronterizo para llegar a Estados Unidos tras cruzar desde México, en Yuma, Arizona, el 10 de junio de 2021, con el fin de solicitar asilo. (AP)
Los CDC no reportan el estatus migratorio de las personas infectadas con sarampión en EE.UU., por lo que resulta imposible vincular de manera definitiva los brotes de esta enfermedad con inmigrantes que se encuentran en el país de forma ilegal. El rastreo de contactos realizado durante brotes anteriores ha mostrado que el sarampión suele entrar en EE.UU. a través de residentes no vacunados que han viajado al extranjero, principalmente a Europa y a la región del Pacífico Occidental.
Estados Unidos alcanzó el estatus de eliminación del sarampión en el año 2000, lo que significa que el virus dejó de propagarse de forma continua dentro del país.
“Cualquier cadena de contagio comienza con alguien que ha viajado”, dijo el Dr. Paul Spiegel, profesor distinguido de práctica y director del centro de salud humanitaria de Johns Hopkins. “La introducción de la enfermedad solo deriva en un brote cuando el virus alcanza a un número suficiente de personas susceptibles y no vacunadas, y los datos sobre casos importados no apuntan en ningún caso a los migrantes”.
El Dr. William Schaffner, especialista en enfermedades infecciosas de Vanderbilt Health, coincidió, diciendo que “la inmensa mayoría” de los casos son “causados por nuestros propios niños no vacunados que viajan al extranjero, contraen el sarampión y luego lo traen de vuelta a casa”. Dijo que solo una minoría de los casos se debe a extranjeros que llegan a EE.UU.
Los brotes de sarampión en la costa oeste de EE.UU. suelen provenir de residentes estadounidenses no vacunados que regresan de Asia, dijeron los expertos, mientras que los brotes en el este y el centro del país generalmente se originan en residentes que regresan de Europa. “Nunca he visto datos que indiquen que se hayan producido introducciones significativas desde el sur de la frontera”, dijo Schaffner.
En El Paso, Texas, a principios de 2026 se produjo un brote de sarampión entre inmigrantes recluidos en un centro de detención del Servicio de Control de Inmigración y Aduanas de Estados Unidos (ICE, por sus siglas en inglés), y en otro centro federal de detención cercano que alberga tanto a migrantes como a ciudadanos estadounidenses. Las autoridades sanitarias atribuyeron la propagación a las malas condiciones de las instalaciones y a la falta de datos federales sobre el estado de vacunación de los detenidos. No está claro cuándo ingresaron a EE.UU. los inmigrantes infectados; ICE detiene a muchas personas que no son recién llegadas.
En el suroeste de Florida, donde reside Donalds, el mayor brote del estado se concentró en la Universidad Ave Maria, en el condado de Collier. La universidad, citando el rastreo de contactos realizado por el departamento de salud estatal, dijo que lo más probable es que el brote comenzó a raíz de un viaje realizado por un estudiante fuera del estado durante las vacaciones.
Algunos de los mayoresbrotes de este año se produjeron en zonas con grandes comunidades amish y menonitas, que suelen registrar tasas de vacunación más bajas. Brotesanteriores también se concentraron en comunidades similares no propensas a las vacunas.
Vacunación contra sarampión, paperas y rubéola en otros países
Un vial de la vacuna contra el sarampión, las paperas y la rubéola se exhibe en el Departamento de Salud de Lubbock, el 26 de febrero de 2025, en Lubbock, Texas. (AP)
Los países de origen de muchos inmigrantes que se encuentran ilegalmente en EE.UU., como México, Guatemala y Honduras, incluyen la vacuna MMR en sus calendarios de vacunación infantil de rutina.
Los expertos dicen que el problema no es la falta de programas de vacunación en estos países, sino que muchos han visto caer la cobertura de vacunación por debajo del umbral del 95% necesario para detener la transmisión del sarampión, el mismo problema que enfrenta Estados Unidos.
Este año, El Salvador y Honduras han notificado un número reducido de casos de sarampión. Guatemala y México están lidiando con brotes grandes, y la gran mayoría de los casos se registran en personas no vacunadas.
Sin embargo, la epidemia de sarampión en México se originó en EE.UU., y no al revés. El brote en el país comenzó en Chihuahua, México, en febrero de 2025, y se rastreó hasta un niño de nueve años no vacunado, perteneciente a una comunidad menonita, que se infectó mientras visitaba a familiares en Seminole, Texas, justo cuando el brote en ese estado estaba cobrando fuerza.
“Las discusiones sobre migración y enfermedades infecciosas a menudo invierten la relación de causalidad”, dijo Spiegel. “La movilidad humana de todo tipo — turismo, viajes de negocios, migración — puede trasladar un virus de un lugar a otro, pero el desplazamiento por sí solo no genera un brote; lo que lo provoca es la susceptibilidad”.
Nuestro veredicto
Donalds dijo que la “inmigración ilegal desenfrenada” durante la administración Biden es la causa de “un brote de sarampión en ciertas partes del país”.
Por lo general, el sarampión es introducido por viajeros estadounidenses que regresan de viajes al extranjero. Los expertos dijeron que la disminución en las tasas de vacunación contra el sarampión, las paperas y la rubéola en Estados Unidos es el principal factor detrás del brote.
No encontramos datos que señalen a los inmigrantes que ingresaron ilegalmente al país como la causa de ningún brote. Los principales países de origen de los inmigrantes que se encuentran ilegalmente en EE.UU. también incluyen la vacuna MMR en sus calendarios de vacunación infantil de rutina.
La carga de la prueba recae sobre quien hace la afirmación, y Donalds no presentó ninguna evidencia que respaldara sus declaraciones. Calificamos la afirmación como Falsa.
Nota del editor: PolitiFact tradujo esta historia del inglés al español usando un servicio de traducción automática. Los periodistas de PolitiFact con fluidez en ambos idiomas editaron la traducción para mayor claridad y precisión.
Inter Miami have hired former Argentina international Cristian “Kily” González as the club’s new head coach, according to two sources familiar with negotiations. César Luis Merlo was first to report the news.
The hiring will spell the end of interim manager Guillermo Hoyos’ time in charge of the South Florida club. In fact, he may have already coached his last game; MLS announced on Thursday that Hoyos had been suspended for one game for the club’s “repeated violations” of the late kickoff policy. (Inter Miami have become known throughout the league for delaying their return from half-time.)
Ring is rolling out a new default encryption system called TAKE, or "Throw Away the Key Encryption," that rotates video keys every five minutes and permanently deletes Ring's copy after 24 hours. The system is designed to preserve cloud features such as smart alerts and AI video search while limiting what Ring can provide under legal process to non-video account information and encrypted footage. The Verge reports: Ring says TAKE uses unique, rotating encryption keys for your footage, stored in a secure enclave and accessible only under strict conditions -- based on the features you enable on your account. Currently, footage captured by Ring cameras is encrypted in transit to the cloud and at rest, and then decrypted for Ring to process for those smart features. With TAKE, the encryption keys change for every five minutes of footage. Ring stores copies of those keys to decrypt the footage, but throws away each copy within 24 hours, "leaving you with the keys and full control of your videos," according to Ring.
TAKE was developed using Messaging Layer Security, an open standard from the Internet Engineering Task Force, according to Ring. The company says it is "inspired by the privacy principles of E2EE (end-to-end encryption)," which Ring offers on some of its cameras. However, the two systems work differently. With E2EE, Ring never has the keys and can't process your video for cloud-based features. Both options are available on newer cameras that encrypt on-device, and you can switch between the two. Older cameras encrypt at cloud ingress and only support TAKE.
According to a white paper the company published today, Ring's copy of those keys is managed inside an AWS Nitro Enclave, to which Ring's access is restricted by "access controls, cryptography, and hardware isolation." The company claims there is no persistent storage and no way for a Ring employee to access it. The stored keys can only be unlocked by the enclave through cryptographic attestation that proves it's running the exact software image Ring approved. The enclave releases a temporary key when an enabled service requests it. When asked about what happens if Ring is subpoenaed by law enforcement, a spokesperson for the company said: "Where TAKE is enabled, Ring will only be able to provide non-video information (such as basic subscriber information) and encrypted video files in response to the valid legal process. We have updated our Law Enforcement Guidelines to reflect this change."
(The Center Square) – The Trump administration will take action to protect parental rights in Kansas after an investigation revealed that three school districts in the state maintain policies to keep hidden from parents if a student asks to identify…
(The Center Square) – The National Rifle Association launched its first national bus tour Thursday as the group tries to get gun owners to vote in the 2026 midterm elections.
Virtually all laptop speakers suck. It’s the one area where even really expensive laptops tend to fall on their ass, leaving users with a tinny, harsh, and hollow sound experience. While you can’t exactly overcome physics – laptop speakers are necessarily small and thus just cannot ever sound as good as proper speakers – there’s a lot you can do with proper tuning and software magic. If you’re a desktop Linux user, you actually already possess all the plumbing needed to fix your audio; it’s just not exposed to you in any way. Luckily, an application called EasyEffects allows you to actually make use of desktop Linux’ advanced audio features to massively improve the sound quality of your laptop’s speakers.
€5000 incentive: Make me use Windows 11 for a month (the results were not great) > €10000: Video tour of my office and my computers/devices collection < €15000: Buy a Mac and use macOS for a month (and review it) €20000: I get an OSNews tattoo
EasyEffects’ own description on its GitHub page doesn’t really explain what it does or what it’s capable of, so here’s the description from Wikipedia instead.
EasyEffects uses PipeWire to process incoming and outgoing audio streams independently and can apply various sound effects in the form of plug-ins made by different developer teams such as Calf Studio Gear, MDA.LV2 and GStreamer. All plugins have their own presets and can be applicable inside the suite rather than having to use a different mixer or executing a script from the command line.
Available output effects are limiter, auto volume, compressor of dynamic range, filter, 30 bands parametric equalizer, bass enhancer, exciter, reverbation, crossfeed, delay, maximizer and spectrum analyzer. Available input effects are WebRTC, limiter, compressor, filter, equalizer, de-esser, reverbation, pitch shift and spectrum analyzer.
None of this matters, and you can forget everything from these two paragraphs.
What matters is that using EasyEffects, you can tune the audio coming out of your speakers to make them sound a lot better. The few laptops on the market that do have decent audio – MacBooks, some Dell XPS laptops, and surely a few more – aren’t magically defying physics. While they probably do have objectively higher-quality speakers, the main difference between those laptops and laptops with crappy-sounding speakers is that the former come with built-in tuning from the factory to make them sound much better than they would without any software trickery.
If you know your way around audio, you can very much use EasyEffects and tune your laptop speakers from scratch to massively improve how they sound. However, that requires time, experience, knowledge, and expertise that most people lack, including myself. Lucky for us, though, there are countless downloadable presets out there for EasyEffects designed specifically to make laptops sound better.
In an ideal world, you’d pick a preset created specifically for your laptop make and model, but odds are you won’t find one, so for most laptops you’ll have to settle for a generic preset that tries to do its best. I’ve long settled on the Advanced Auto Gain.json preset from JackHack96, which greatly improves the audio performance on any laptops I’ve tried it on, but of course, there’s countless other presets for you to try to see if there’s anything that suits your particular laptop and ears better.
Getting all of this up and running is really easy. EasyEffects is most likely packaged by your Linux distribution, and the latest version is always available as a Flatpak from Flathub. Download the preset(s) you want to try, copy them either to ~/.config/easyeffects (if you use your distribution’s package) or to ~/.var/app/com.github.wwmm.easyeffects/data/easyeffects/output/ (if you use the Flatpak version). They’ll show up right away in the Presets tab in EasyEffects, ready to be turned on and off whenever you want, making it very easy to compare and contrast to find the one you like best. EasyEffects can live in your system tray giving you easy access to your presets without having to open the main window, and it can be set to start automatically at boot. EasyEffects can also be turned on and off on the fly.
There’s obvious downsides to all of this, too, of course. First, since you’re most likely going to be using a generic preset not specifically crafted for your laptop, there’s no guarantee the results will be positive for you. Second, not every preset is ideal for every type of audio. Most of my audio consists of YouTube videos with mostly speech; if you listen mostly to music, different presets may yield better results. Third, audio quality is deeply subjective, and what sounds good to my ears may sound like total garbage to yours. Fourth, EasyEffects does take up a tiny fraction of CPU power (I’m talking 0.1-0.2% according to KDE’s System Monitor), but I have never seen it have any noticeable performance impact on anything.
Even the generic preset I use makes such a massive difference for me on every laptop I’ve ever tried it on, that I’ve become convinced EasyEffects and a few of the generic presets should be installed by default by any desktop-oriented Linux distribution. On top of that, Linux laptops OEMs like System76, Nova Custom, Star Labs, and so on, should really take the time to create proper presets for their laptops to improve their sound quality out of the box. I feel like if you’re already designing and selling laptops, you probably also have the skills and means to create a decent preset.
In fact, I’d take it a step further and urge desktop environments like KDE and GNOME to properly integrate EasyEffects into their sound settings. They shouldn’t include the entire application and its user interface, but should make it so that you can configure and manage presets right from the sound settings panels, and switch between presets from their volume applets (as well as turn it off entirely, of course). This would leave the full EasyEffects application for people who need more control, manual tuning, and more advanced features.
There’s absolutely no reason why speakers on Linux laptops should sound tinny, harsh, and hollow. The Linux desktop has all the technologies and features built right in to make speakers sound much better than they do without any tuning, and yet, very few people seem to actually be aware of this. This needs to change, and I think it’s up to distributions, desktop environments, and Linux OEMs to make this happen.
Retailers have pulled Good Good products from shelves
Garrett Clark says controversial skit was in ‘poor taste’
Callaway has ended its relationship with Good Good Golf amid mounting fallout from an advert that many believe made light of violence against women.
The golf equipment manufacturer announced the decision on Thursday, cutting ties with one of the world’s most popular YouTube sports channels effective immediately. Callaway also said it would donate $1m to organizations working to prevent violence against women and support survivors of domestic violence.
Aug. 27, 2026 — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) Kathryn Mohror has been selected as general chair of the 2027 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, more commonly known as SC27. Mohror is director of the Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC) as well as a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff.
Dr. Kathryn Mohror, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Credit: LLNL.
“Chairing this conference is not only an honor but also an opportunity to give back to the SC community that has been such a big part of my career,” states Mohror. “I’ve been attending SC and volunteering for more than 20 years. I keep returning because this is where people share the latest, most impactful ideas in HPC and because the community is so collaborative and welcoming.”
Held annually in November, the SC conference hosted more than 17,000 exhibitors, researchers, and practitioners last year. The week-long event is jointly sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society, and is the world’s largest conference for the high-performance computing (HPC) field. As general chair, Mohror will determine the conference’s vision and lead its operations, working with about 1,000 volunteers and a cadre of contractors.
For Mohror, leadership is service, and chairing SC comes with responsibilities beyond the logistics of organizing a large-scale conference. “HPC innovations are only possible because of the people who design them, build them, and find new ways to use them,” she says. “SC is the place where many of these innovations are born—when people meet and start talking. I want everyone at SC to find opportunities to meet new people, build our community, and get talking to drive those new innovations.”
At a time when artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies are rapidly influencing the HPC landscape, SC continues to be the premier venue for showcasing research from all corners of the field—laboratories, academia, and industry. “SC is like no other HPC conference. People come from all over the world because SC is where everything in HPC happens,” notes Mohror. “I love to see the convergence of traditional HPC, cloud computing, quantum computing, and AI communities at SC. HPC is stronger because we’re leveraging ideas across fields and pushing the boundaries of what is possible.”
Although SC27 plans are still in progress, Mohror says attendees can expect a robust and dynamic technical program along with new community-focused initiatives and plenty of opportunities to connect with others. The theme and host city will be unveiled in a special session near the end of SC26 this November in Chicago.
Mohror’s appointment is another example of LLNL’s ongoing visibility at SC—from research papers and posters to the Top500 list of benchmarked supercomputers, and from speakers at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) exhibitor booth to dozens of staff volunteering on committees.
LLNL leaders have held the SC general chair role before, most recently acting principal associate director for Computing Lori Diachin in 2025 and Livermore Computing chief technology officer Bronis de Supinski in 2021.
“The SC27 general chair is a highly demanding and visible role. Kathryn has long been a trusted leader at LLNL and in the broader HPC community, and she is very well equipped to lead another successful meeting,” says Diachin.hin.
“From her start at LLNL as a postdoctoral researcher, Kathryn has consistently exceeded expectations, and I have no doubt she will do so as SC27 general chair,” adds de Supinski, who will serve as SC27 vice chair. “I expect that not only will SC27 set an all-time attendance record, but it will establish new traditions that enhance the supercomputing community, as I know she envisions.”
Mohror joined LLNL in 2010. Her research focuses on HPC portability, input/output performance, and in-system storage solutions through projects such as the Scalable Checkpoint/Restart library and the UnifyFS file system, both R&D 100 Award winners. She has led major HPC standards and software initiatives, including roles on the PMIx Steering Committee, MPI Forum, and DOE’s Exascale Computing Project. A 2019 DOE Early Career Award recipient, Mohror holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Portland State University.
Congressman Jamie Raskin asks president’s son to detail firm’s recent success after he joined 1789 Capital as partner
Democrats on a powerful US congressional committee have launched an investigation into a venture capital firm which has thrived since recruiting Donald Trump’s son.
Donald Trump Jr joined 1789 Capital as a partner just days after his father won a second term in office in November 2024. Congressman Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the US House of Representatives judiciary committee, has asked the president’s son to detail the firm’s recent success.
Thai navy says ‘routine’ visit’ will allow personnel to rest and recuperate amid reports of poor conditions onboard
The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is set to make a temporary stop in Thailand next week as it heads back to the United States, Thai navy officials said, after spending more than 250 consecutive days at sea supporting US operations against Iran amid recent reports of poor living conditions and low morale onboard the vessel.
The Lincoln left the Middle East several days ago after being relieved by the USS George Washington, and is now heading home to San Diego. A Thai navy official told Reuters this week that the carrier was expected to make a brief port visit in Thailand next week for the crew to rest and recuperate before continuing their journey home.
Lindsay Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the deaths of her three children and said she was suffering form postpartum psychosis. A jury is deliberating.
Aug. 27, 2026 — Since announcing Jalapeño, OpenAI’s first custom inference chip, the company has been testing the chip and the system built around it. The results show a significant performance advance: Jalapeño can serve more AI work per unit of power while also returning responses more quickly. Jalapeño delivers both higher throughput and lower latency with one architecture, where existing hardware systems often have to make a tradeoff between the two.
Credit: OpenAI
For customers, that can mean faster responses, more responsive agents, and more reliable access as demand grows. OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. These gains will help make increasingly capable AI more affordable and more broadly available.
OpenAI models also accelerated Jalapeño’s development. Earlier generations helped the team design and bring up the chip, while the company’s latest models are accelerating how OpenAI optimizes and programs it. Jalapeño’s performance extends across GPT‑OSS 120B, DeepSeek R1, and Kimi K2.5 1T, showing that the architecture works across models developed both inside and outside OpenAI. Across all three, Jalapeño delivered 1.5 to 1.9 times more AI work per watt at peak throughput and 1.7 to 3.6 times lower end-to-end latency than the comparison systems. For highly interactive workloads, it delivered 2.1 to 4.1 times higher performance.
Jalapeño is also evidence of a broader full-stack advantage. OpenAI can design models, products, serving software, chips, memory, networking, and systems together, using what OpenAI learns from real workloads to improve every layer of the stack. Jalapeño is working first-party silicon with measured results, and it is the beginning of a multigenerational platform. In the months ahead, OpenAI will ramp Jalapeño to deliver faster, more capable, and more efficient products for customers.
How OpenAI Measured Jalapeño’s Performance
OpenAI evaluates performance at a matched user experience, measuring how much useful AI work each system can complete per unit of power while meeting the latency customers and interactive agents require. This matters especially for agents, which need to complete many steps in sequence, so delays can compound across an entire task.
To understand how Jalapeño performs in practice, OpenAI tested it on InferenceX, a public benchmark from SemiAnalysis that measures the full process of serving an AI request. OpenAI compared Jalapeño with leading commercially available AI systems across the tested operating range, from high-throughput serving to highly interactive, low-latency use. Jalapeño delivered a better combination of throughput, power efficiency, and latency. Although performance is sometimes reported per chip, OpenAI believes the more useful standard is performance per unit of power.
Across all three public models, Jalapeño delivered a better combination of performance per watt and latency across the tested operating range, placing it on the Pareto frontier. To compare the systems consistently, OpenAI normalized the results using each accelerator’s published chip power rating. Jalapeño is rated at 700 watts, although its measured sustained power remained at or below 550 watts on the workloads tested.
Jalapeño performed strongly across GPT‑OSS 120B, DeepSeek R1 670B, and Kimi K2.5 1T. On Kimi, the largest public model OpenAI tested, it delivered approximately 1.5 times higher peak performance per watt and 3.4 times lower end-to-end latency than the comparison system. In OpenAI’s internal testing, Jalapeño’s advantage widened further on frontier OpenAI models, suggesting that the architecture becomes more valuable as workloads grow larger and more demanding.
Architecting for speed and efficiency within a single chip
Jalapeño’s gains come from designing the chip, memory, network, software, and rack-scale system together around real language-model workloads. Language-model inference moves through several distinct phases with different bottlenecks. Prefill, when the system processes a prompt, is compute-intensive, while decode, when the system generates the response token by token, is constrained more by memory bandwidth. Communication can also add latency when data must move between cores and chips, leaving some processing units idle while they wait. A system that excels at one phase can lose that advantage while waiting for data or moving model state between different resources.
OpenAI designed Jalapeño to minimize data movement and communication delays. This means that model state, including the KV cache used while generating a response, can be explicitly placed and kept local while the system activates the right combination of compute, memory, and networking for each inference phase. The network is integral to the architecture. Its large domain allows the entire workload to remain within one connected system, minimizing data movement and helping the complete request stay fast and efficient from beginning to end. The result is a balanced and fungible accelerator that can support changing model architectures, excel at both prefill and decode, and adapt as the balance between them changes, a defining feature of agentic workloads.
OpenAI Used AI to Design the Chip, and Designed the Chip So AI Could Program It
AI played a direct role in Jalapeño’s development, enabling the team to move from initial design to tapeout in nine months by exploring implementations, shortening design, measurement, and verification loops, and continuously iterating on model workloads. AI also helped optimize the chip’s arithmetic circuits, allowing the team to fit more compute performance into the chip on schedule.
Jalapeño was designed as a clear, predictable programming target for both humans and AI. Engineers can describe work through local tensors, explicit communication, and predictable synchronization. AI can then optimize how that work is mapped, placed, scheduled, and coordinated across the system. That clear, predictable structure gives AI a tractable way to tackle the traditionally difficult problem of parallel programming.
Supporting each new model family still requires new kernels and model-specific optimizations. Using Codex with GPT‑Astra, the team brought three open-weight models that were not part of Jalapeño’s original production plan to high performance within two months. This demonstrated both the flexibility of the architecture and the speed at which AI can help with programming. For selected GPT‑OSS attention and mixture-of-experts blocks, AI-generated implementations ran 1.5 to 1.8 times faster than the existing human-expert-written implementations. Those figures apply to the selected blocks, not the full model, but they point toward a powerful new development loop.
The Path Ahead for Efficient, Ultra-Fast Inference
AI infrastructure is valuable because of the useful real-world work it enables. By producing more useful work from the same power and hardware, Jalapeño can help OpenAI serve more demand and lower the cost of delivering a successful result. For OpenAI, that can improve operating leverage by allowing useful work and revenue to grow faster than the cost to serve. It can also support broader adoption and continued investment in better models, products, and infrastructure. Faster inference can enable faster iteration and new use cases.
Jalapeño expands what is possible for efficient, low-latency inference:
Ultra-fast-mode inference at efficiencies previously available only in fast mode
Fast-mode inference at efficiencies previously available only in batched mode
Higher efficiency for batched-mode inference
OpenAI plans to begin deploying Jalapeño within the company’s compute infrastructure by the end of the year. It is the first generation of a multigenerational roadmap: Gen 2 is deep in development, and Gen 3 is taking shape. Each generation will build on what OpenAI learns and further advance both efficiency and speed.
Meeting growing demand for AI will require more compute from every available source. OpenAI will continue to widely deploy accelerators from NVIDIA and other partners for both training and inference workloads. OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
As OpenAI prepares for deployment, the company is continuing production qualification, maturing the software, preparing to operate Jalapeño at scale, and validating performance across more models. The results so far show what is possible when the full system is designed together: more responsive, capable, and agentic AI delivered more efficiently to more people.
Under some strange circumstances, Rockstar broadcast the first (official) gameplay footage of Grand Theft Auto VI, the most-anticipated game of the year. Here’s everything you need to know.
Ah yes, it’s a drug den. We’re in familiar GTA territory here: narcotics, smart phones, tattooed gangsters and a police raid. The duo shoot their way out of the room – the gunplay is very familiar to the series – third-person over the shoulder. I’m getting a distinct True Romance/Leon vibe to this chaos.
These closeup slow-motion kill shots are giving me flashbacks to Fallout 3 and its slightly sickening VATS violence.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Documentation files on more than 100 websites are referencing potentially dangerous executable content that gets installed automatically when visited by many AI agents [including Claude, OpenAI's Codex, and Nous Research's Hermes]. A few dozen companies, some of them Fortune 500s, are among those that executed proof-of-concept code. At least one misconfigured site is directing visitors, human or AI, to live malware.
The potentially dangerous content is in llms.txt and llms-full.txt files, an emerging convention websites employ to provide machine-readable summaries of the site's content and its high-level structure. These files are the AI equivalent of the robots.txt standard that instructs search engines how to index the site's content. Google Lighthouse, a tool for helping web developers, has more here. Correctly configured llms.txt and llms-full.txt files for Cloudflare are here and here. "The trust model is broken," Alon Hertz, one of the researchers, wrote in an interview. "Agents treat vendor docs as ground truth and don't question them -- and neither do the humans supervising them. Agentic AI usage is exploding, and agents are spreading across every layer -- SaaS, cloud, endpoint. As they multiply, so does the supply-chain surface, and today's guards don't cover it."
"An agent doesn't distinguish between a page and a command," the researchers wrote Thursday. "Everything it reads is input, and every input is a potential instruction. Which means the entire corpus of published data that agents are now wired to consume has silently become an execution surface -- and almost none of it carries the integrity guarantees we apply to actual code."
Hospitals, technology firms and other companies could soon be at risk from AI-enabled cyberattacks, according to a new open letter from more than 100 signatories.
A Florida grand jury has found that the administration of the governor, Ron DeSantis, “misappropriated” $10m in taxpayer money from a Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity with ties to DeSantis’s wife, before the money was reportedly “funneled” into “two political action committees”.
In the grand jury report, which remains sealed but was obtained and published by CBS News Miami on Wednesday, the grand jurors wrote that “we conclude that these funds were misappropriated as part of a sophisticated scheme to fund political activities” but said that they found “insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally”.
Amazon’s Annapurna Labs will be the first to collaborate on NVHBM technology alongside NVLink Fusion.
Aug. 27, 2026 — The next wave of AI is placing new demands on infrastructure. As AI agents and trillion-parameter workloads become mainstream, the performance of AI infrastructure depends not only on compute, but on how compute, memory, storage, networking and software are designed together as a unified system.
Credit: Robert Way/Shutterstock
To help hyperscalers and AI innovators build the next generation of semi-custom AI infrastructure, NVIDIA has expanded NVIDIA NVLink Fusion with NVIDIA NVHBM, a next-generation high-bandwidth memory technology that brings higher memory performance and efficiency to XPUs. It will be validated and offered by leading memory partners, extending this advanced memory capability to NVLink Fusion customers.
Traditional HBM architectures place the memory controller on the XPU die, consuming valuable silicon area that could otherwise be dedicated to compute. NVHBM, built on the same technology that NVIDIA will use for future GPUs, integrates NVIDIA’s custom memory controller into the HBM base die.
By integrating the memory controller into the 3D HBM stack instead of the XPU, NVHBM delivers up to 30% greater memory bandwidth and 15% lower HBM power consumption, and frees up to 25% more area on XPU compute die compared with standard HBM4E.
NVIDIA is establishing a standard NVHBM implementation, available from multiple memory providers. This reduces the engineering effort required to integrate and qualify memory across multiple suppliers — giving NVLink Fusion customers a faster path for bringing custom AI chips to market.
Amazon’s Annapurna Labs will be the first to work on NVHBM as part of its broader collaboration with NVIDIA around NVLink Fusion.
AWS and NVIDIA Continue NVLink Fusion Collaboration
Amazon’s Annapurna Labs will work with NVIDIA on NVHBM technology and the NVLink scale-up architecture to enhance performance and efficiency for AI workloads.
This builds on AWS’s previously announced support for NVLink Fusion. Annapurna Labs will support NVLink Fusion with its next-generation Trainium chips starting with Trainium4, which would allow Amazon chips and NVIDIA GPUs to work together with common rack-scale architecture.
“NVHBM represents a new architectural approach to advancing high-bandwidth memory performance and efficiency,” said Nafea Bshara, vice president of Annapurna Labs at Amazon. “We look forward to this technology collaboration to benefit future AWS infrastructure designs.”
Vertically Integrated and Horizontally Open
NVLink Fusion enables partners to connect custom XPUs and CPUs to NVIDIA’s rack-scale platform.
Partners can access NVIDIA NVLink chiplets, NVLink-C2C, NVLink Switches and NVIDIA MGX systems and racks, as well as a broad ecosystem of CPU partners, ASIC designers, system manufacturers and technology providers.
Offered with each generation of NVIDIA’s rack-scale system architecture, NVLink Fusion allows hyperscalers and AI-native companies to focus engineering resources on XPU innovation while using a proven technology stack for scale-up and scale-out networking, rack-scale systems and software — creating a faster, lower-risk path to deploying semi-custom AI infrastructure.
Aug. 27, 2026 — The U.S. National Science Foundation Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering encourages the research community to apply to the NSF Expeditions in Computing program. Expeditions support ambitious, transformative research agendas that look at least a decade into the future and have the potential to drive disruptive advances in computer and information science and engineering.
The program is designed for challenges whose scale, complexity and long-term vision require a deeply integrated, multidisciplinary team, and cannot be addressed through a collection of smaller projects. Research may span areas such as new architectures for intelligence, computing hardware and substrates, theories of learning and generalization, neuroscience-inspired computing, embodied intelligence and robotics, and next-generation communications and networking.
Projects should bring together well-integrated teams within or across departments and institutions, advance foundational or use-inspired foundational research, and create outcomes that could open new scientific frontiers, enable future technologies and strengthen the U.S. science and engineering enterprise. Researchers earlier in their careers are particularly encouraged to participate.
Award Information
Funding: Up to $15 million per project.
Duration: Up to seven years.
Estimated awards: Two to four per competition.
Total anticipated funding: Up to $60 million, subject to the availability of funds.
Key Dates
Required preliminary proposal: Dec. 2, 2026.
Full proposal: July 27, 2027, by 5 p.m., submitting organization’s local time.
(The Center Square) — Trump administration officials celebrated legal wins at the U.S. Supreme Court over the past year and looked ahead to the court’s upcoming term.
The US senator for Georgia Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, has slammed a “disgraceful and disqualifying” report that a former staffer for his Trump-backed Republican challenger Mike Collins shared images online of a swastika and depicting himself in Ku Klux Klan robes.
It is the latest instance of someone in Collins’s orbit facing scrutiny over racist or white nationalist conduct. Ossoff called the report “stunning” and said it “should shock the conscience of every Georgian”.
SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 27, 2026 — MIPS, by GF, today announced it is now a Premier Member of RISC-V International, with Yankin Tanurhan, SVP & CTO of MIPS, by GF, appointed as Vice Chairman of the RISC-V International Board. The milestone advances GF and MIPS leadership in the open standards and semiconductor technologies required to build physical AI platforms for aerospace, artificial intelligence, automotive, industrial, and intelligent edge applications. GF’s long-standing commitment to open standards is now extended through MIPS, an industry-leading AI platform provider, as both companies work with the RISC-V ecosystem to accelerate innovation in workload-optimized computing beyond the data center.
“AI is rapidly moving from the data center into the physical world, where intelligent systems must sense, decide, and act in real time under strict power, safety, and reliability constraints,” said Yankin Tanurhan, CTO and Senior Vice President of MIPS, by GF. “That shift requires a new class of compute platforms that are open, efficient, configurable, and tightly aligned from software to silicon. By expanding our role in RISC-V International, MIPS is helping define the open standards, processor IP, software-first development tools, and ecosystem foundation customers need to build differentiated physical AI platforms at scale.”
As an active member of several strategic RISC-V International committees, task groups, and Special Interest Groups (SIGs) focused on mission-critical, automotive, safety, security, and AI standards, including the Automotive, Functional Safety, Crypto, Vector, and Documentation SIGs, MIPS is helping define the open architecture foundation needed for physical AI platforms. Those contributions connect RISC-V standards work with differentiated processor microarchitecture, custom silicon solutions, and market-leading software stacks that customers can use to build workload-optimized systems.
Physical AI platforms bring sensing, compute, control, and software together so intelligent systems can perceive their environment, make decisions in real time, and act safely at the edge. These platforms require processor architectures that are efficient, configurable, standards-based, and closely aligned with the manufacturing, packaging, and software ecosystems needed to move from design to deployment.
“GF and MIPS together bring a legacy of RISC-V innovation that will be a valuable addition to the RISC-V ecosystem, and we’re delighted to welcome them as a Premium Member,” said Andrea Gallo, CEO of RISC-V International. “We look forward to their continued contributions that will help drive the adoption of RISC-V in high-throughput real-time platforms.”
Customer adoption of AI outside the data center will depend on open, standards-based technology that can be tailored to real workloads. To meet performance, efficiency, safety, and time-to-market goals customers need earlier visibility into how their software will execute on target hardware. MIPS enables this software-first workflow with advanced processor modeling and software tools that expose workload insights, support software and hardware co-design, and use the industry’s broadest RISC-V based processor IP portfolio.
“GlobalFoundries’ decision to join RISC-V International as a Premium Member reinforces that its acquisitions of MIPS and ARC were strategic investments supporting a long-term commitment to RISC-V. The architecture has matured into a proven foundation for semiconductor innovation, particularly in the process nodes where GlobalFoundries is highly competitive,” said Ed Wilford, Senior Research Director, Omdia. “Together, MIPS, ARC, and GF provide customers with an open path from design to fabrication, enabling greater customization, faster development, and stronger supply chain resilience while further strengthening the RISC-V ecosystem by bringing a major foundry more deeply into the standard.”
MIPS partners with leading OEMs and integrators in automotive, aerospace, robotics, and embedded computing markets to help build physical AI platforms from open standards, processor IP, software-first tools, and GF-backed silicon technologies.
About MIPS
MIPS, by GlobalFoundries, develops AI-native and safety-capable platforms for event-driven physical AI systems and embedded devices. MIPS, now combined with ARC processor solutions, is positioned to deliver software-first platforms for automotive, aerospace, robotics, IoT, and other embedded markets. Based on the open RISC-V instruction set architecture, the MIPS portfolio spans processor IP, virtual platforms, custom application-specific silicon, and physical AI platforms, backed by GlobalFoundries process technology, packaging, and manufacturing. For more information, visit MIPS.com.
Longtime Slashdot reader dhartshorn writes: Foreign-produced "bulk power" equipment is now effectively banned, and the list of what constitutes such equipment is essentially everything used to make up the grid... much of which we are heavily dependent on foreign sources to supply. In a Wednesday executive order, President Trump said foreign supply of electric equipment "constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat" to national security. The Hill reports: Under the order, it will be up to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, in coordination with other officials, to determine whether a piece of equipment poses an issue. The order could impact a wide range of equipment, including substations, transformers, batteries used for energy storage, generators, turbines, software and more. It does not lay out specific threats or single out any country by name.
[...] Under the last Trump administration, the president put a similar order in place. The new order comes amid several reported cyberattacks on U.S. water systems, which officials suspect have links to Iran, according to The New York Times.
Small Canadian businesses are finding ways to deal with new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration last weekend, such as blocking affected products for U.S. online shoppers.
Montreal-born actor also voiced KARR in Knight Rider and the monster in Predator, having started his career on Canadian TV and radio
Peter Cullen, the actor behind the voice of characters including Eeyore in Disney’s Winnie the Pooh franchise and Optimus Prime in Transformers, has died aged 85.
He died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles, a statement said.
Exclusive: Campaigner says PM wrote in email he believed £500k cap should be reduced over time to guard against undue influences
Andy Burnham recently supported an even lower donations cap than previously reported, according to correspondence seen by the Guardian, as the row over next week’s elections bill escalates.
The prime minister wrote to a campaigner in May outlining his support for a £500,000 individual donations cap, which he said would “guard against the perception of any one party being unduly influenced or swayed by one person or organisation”.
Aug. 27, 2026 — The EuroHPC JU continues to fund two flagship projects, EuroCC and CASTIEL, for a third period, further expanding HPC adoption and capabilities across Europe, while strengthening their collaborative network.
EuroCC3: National Competence Centres for High Performance Computing
Building on the achievements of the previous phases, the role of EuroCC 3 will continue focusing on consolidating and improving the network’s activities while broadening the uptake of HPC across Europe. The project will continue acting as the coordinator of the 36 NCCs across the EuroHPC Participating States.
The NCCs serve as a one-stop shop for HPC-related expertise, services, and training. With a strong focus on SMEs and industry, the NCCs will support the adoption of HPC through tailored consulting, skills development, and facilitation of access to national and European resources.
CASTIEL 3: Networking and Coordination of National HPC Competence Centres
Leveraging the work of CASTIEL 1 & 2, the newly launched CASTIEL 3 project aims at further strengthening Europe’s advance-computing capacity, by promoting interaction and exchange of expertise and competence across the NCCs network.
The networking and coordination of the NCCs at the European level is essential for ensuring effective collaboration, sharing of best practices, and the harmonization of HPC services across Europe. In this context, CASTIEL 3 provides a unified framework for networking, knowledge sharing, training, and service visibility, enhancing EuroHPC projects, digital skills, innovation, and SME competitiveness.
The project will ensure coherent development and visibility of HPC competencies, training and services across Europe and complement other key EuroHPC initiatives such as the Virtual Training Academy, AI Factories, AI Factory Antennas, the Centres of Excellences (CoEs) and the EC’s Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs).
CASTIEL 3 will also reinforce NCC support and visibility for SMEs and industry by coordinating service development, facilitating best-practice exchanges, and leveraging the HPC Service Hub.
With reference to training, CASTIEL 3 will ensure high-quality, harmonised HPC training and mentoring within the NCCs, aligned with the EuroHPC JU-funded projects EVITA and EUMaster4HPC.
With the launch of its new umbrella brand HPC in Europe, CASTIEL 3 is strengthening its focus on user-centred communication, cross-project collaboration, and a more integrated European presence.
To support this vision, CASTIEL 3 operates the HPC in Europe Portal as the central hub for HPC competences, services, and training, while integrating new countries into the NCC network and enhancing collaboration among NCCs and other key European partner initiatives.
Starting on April 1, 2026, the project EuroCC3 will run for a 3-year period with a total budget of up to €19 926 915.57 EUR million, provided by the Digital Europe Programme and the EuroHPC Participating States.
CASTIEL 3 will also run for a 3-year period starting on 1 April 2026 and receive up to €1,999,883.5 million funding from the Digital Europe Programme.
EuroCC 3 and CASTIEL 3 follow on from EuroCC 2, EuroCC4SEE and CASTIEL 2, which started on 1 January 2023 and ran for three years.
SEATTLE and SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 27, 2026 — Amazon Web Services (AWS) and NVIDIA have announced a major expansion of their strategic collaboration to meet surging global demand for AI infrastructure as demand continues to accelerate. Building on already-rapid customer adoption of NVIDIA-accelerated compute on AWS, the companies plan to deploy 2 million additional NVIDIA GPUs across AWS’s global infrastructure and deepen their work together across AI factories, CPUs, networking, open models, data processing and robotics, delivering co-engineered AI solutions that enable customers to accelerate AI development and deployment at unprecedented scale.
AI workloads are scaling at a swift pace, from how models are trained and run, to how data is processed, indexed and used to power intelligent applications. Customers are moving from pilot to production and scaling workloads across agentic AI, scientific discovery, enterprise automation and robotics. They need broader model choice, faster data pipelines and new capabilities for emerging use cases like physical AI. They also need confidence that the underlying infrastructure can keep pace with their own ability to innovate while maintaining the highest level of security and reliability for mission-critical workloads.
To meet this surging demand from frontier labs, global enterprises, startups and governments, AWS and NVIDIA are building on 16 years of joint innovation to expand AI compute capacity and bring new co-engineered solutions to customers faster. As part of the expanded collaboration, the companies are working to:
Deploy 2 million additional NVIDIA GPUs across AWS’s global infrastructure in 2027-2028
Bring NVIDIA Vera CPU‑based infrastructure to AWS
Extend NVIDIA NVLink Fusion with custom NVIDIA high‑bandwidth memory (NVHBM)
Build AI factories for the U.S. government, including 100,000 GPUs on secure AWS infrastructure for running federal and national‑security workloads
Integrate the NVIDIA platform with the AWS Nitro System and Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) for enhanced security and reliability
Continue to support NVIDIA Nemotron open models on Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, giving customers more open model choice
Accelerate data processing and vector indexing on Amazon EMR and Amazon OpenSearch with NVIDIA cuDF and cuVS CUDA-X libraries for faster, more cost‑efficient analytics and AI applications
Further advance robotics workloads through Amazon Robotics’ adoption of NVIDIA’s physical AI platform, speeding innovation in warehouse automation and next‑generation robots
“Customers want the freedom to choose the best tools for their AI workloads, and they want confidence that everything works seamlessly together,” said Matt Garman, CEO of AWS. “That’s why we’ve invested deeply with NVIDIA to make AWS the best place to run NVIDIA AI technologies, optimizing performance across our infrastructure from networking and security to deployment. This expanded collaboration gives frontier labs, enterprises and governments even more ways to build and deploy AI on AWS.”
“NVIDIA and AWS have built one of the great growth engines of the AI era, and demand is running ahead of every forecast,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “For 16 years, we have scaled NVIDIA computing in the cloud together. Now, we are expanding our partnership across the full stack — GPUs, CPUs, networking, open models and software — to make agentic and physical AI real at an unprecedented pace and scale that only AWS and NVIDIA can deliver. This expansion reflects customers’ demand for NVIDIA’s platform on AWS.”
Massive Expansion of AI Compute Capacity
AWS offers the widest range of GPU-based instances of any cloud provider to power a diverse set of AI and machine learning workloads. At NVIDIA GTC 2026, AWS announced plans to add more than 1 million NVIDIA GPUs starting in 2026. Since then, demand has exceeded those expectations. AWS plans to deploy an additional 2 million NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra, Rubin and Rubin Ultra GPUs in 2027-2028 across AWS Global Infrastructure, including AI factories. This additional capacity will help power customer workloads ranging from agentic AI and scientific discovery to enterprise automation and physical AI.
In addition, AWS will expand NVIDIA Blackwell capacity, including NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs for Amazon EC2 G7 instances. G7 instances deliver 4.6x AI inference performance and 2.1x graphics performance compared to previous-generation G6 instances. AWS is the first major cloud provider to offer compute instances accelerated by RTX PRO 4500. AWS and NVIDIA are also collaborating on NVIDIA Spectrum networking to further optimize network performance for large-scale AI training workloads across GPU clusters.
Support for NVIDIA Vera CPUs on AWS
AWS and NVIDIA are working to bring Vera CPU-based infrastructure to AWS, providing an additional option to support agentic AI workloads that require high-performance CPU compute alongside accelerated infrastructure. Purpose-built for the next generation of AI, Vera complements AWS’s strategy to offer the broadest choice of compute — from AWS custom silicon to the latest accelerators and CPUs from partners.
Heterogeneous AI Infrastructure Using NVIDIA NVLink Fusion with NVHBM
At re:Invent 2025, AWS announced support for NVIDIA NVLink Fusion high-speed chip interconnect technology in next-generation Trainium chips. NVIDIA and Amazon’s Annapurna Labs are expanding that support to work on NVIDIA’s new custom high-bandwidth memory (NVHBM) technology, in partnership with memory suppliers, which would give Trainium access to faster, more power-efficient memory. Combined with NVLink Fusion, Annapurna Labs can now tap NVIDIA’s custom memory technology and scale-up architecture to enhance performance and efficiency for AI workloads while seamlessly integrating Trainium and GPUs within a common rack-scale architecture.
Powering Federal AI at the Highest Levels of Security
Government agencies need secure AI infrastructure to keep pace with the demands of national security. AWS and NVIDIA plan to build AI factories for the U.S. government, delivering NVIDIA’s AI stack, including plans to deliver 100,000 GPUs on AWS’s secure infrastructure for federal and national-security workloads. This collaboration puts AWS and NVIDIA at the center of federal AI advancement for national security, enabling government agencies to deploy AI at scale for workloads classified at Impact Level 6 (IL6) and above.
These new commitments build on a foundation of deep technical integrations between AWS and NVIDIA that are already delivering results for customers today, including:
Enhanced security and reliability with AWS Nitro System and EFA — Across this expanded collaboration, all NVIDIA GPU-based and Trainium-based EC2 instances — including those leveraging NVLink Fusion — are built on the AWS Nitro System and interconnected through EFA. Both GPU-accelerated and Trainium-based EC2 instances will continue to be built on the Nitro System and scaled out through EFA. Together, Nitro and EFA help ensure that as AWS expands its NVIDIA GPU fleet and integrates new interconnect technologies, customers retain the security, reliability and network performance they depend on for production AI workloads at scale.
NVIDIA Nemotron models on AWS — As part of AWS’s commitment to offering customers the broadest choice of AI models, NVIDIA’s Nemotron family of open models is available on Amazon Bedrock as fully managed, serverless models and on Amazon SageMaker for customers who want to deploy and fine-tune on their own infrastructure. This integration gives customers access to NVIDIA’s latest open models with the security, scalability and operational tooling of AWS.
GPU-accelerated data processing and vector indexing — As data volumes grow, workloads such as feature engineering, large-scale ETL and real-time analytics require increasingly faster processing. AWS and NVIDIA are collaborating to deliver GPU-accelerated data processing on Amazon EMR using Amazon EC2 G7 instances and the NVIDIA cuDF library, delivering up to 3.7x faster processing speeds and a 30% better price performance compared to CPU-based configurations. Separately, as AI applications, retrieval-augmented generation pipelines and semantic search push vector databases to billions of records, index building and tuning becomes a bottleneck. GPU-accelerated vector indexing on Amazon OpenSearch Service offloads index construction onto dedicated GPUs, delivering up to 9x faster vector indexing at a quarter of the cost — available across both managed clusters and Amazon OpenSearch Serverless.
Physical AI for robotics — Amazon Robotics is collaborating with NVIDIA to accelerate the development of next-generation robots integrating NVIDIA’s full-stack physical AI platform, including the NVIDIA Jetson platform, NVIDIA Omniverse libraries and the NVIDIA Isaac open robotics development platform. The collaboration spans simulation, synthetic data generation, robot training, route optimization, functional safety and real-to-sim validation — all running on GPU-accelerated Amazon EC2 instances. Together, AWS and NVIDIA are helping advance the capabilities that robotics workloads require at scale: massive simulation, diverse training data and continuous real-world validation.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is guided by customer obsession, pace of innovation, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. By democratizing technology for nearly two decades and making cloud computing and generative AI accessible to organizations of every size and industry, AWS has built one of the fastest-growing enterprise technology businesses in history. Millions of customers trust AWS to accelerate innovation, transform their businesses, and shape the future. With the most comprehensive AI capabilities and global infrastructure footprint, AWS empowers builders to turn big ideas into reality.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the world leader in AI and accelerated computing.
The devastating flash flood that has ripped through the border communities of Nepal and Tibet has heightened fears that the climate crisis is destabilising the geology of mountain and polar regions, threatening millions of people.
Satellite imagery suggests a glacier collapse high in the Himalayas was the primary cause of the deadly torrent of mud, water and ice that tore along the Bhotekoshi River on Wednesday. It swept away buildings and roads and left at least 360 dead and 1,400 missing.
(The Center Square) – In just 68 days, Michigan voters will decide on a proposal to ban political spending by state-regulated electric and gas utilities and companies with large government contracts.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing the federal government to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” extending his practice of changing geographic names while tensions with Canada intensify over trade.
The order instructs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to update federal maps, documents and databases to use the new name. The change applies to U.S. federal usage and does not require Canada, which shares the lake with New York, to recognize it.
Trump tied the decision directly to his complaints about Canada, accusing the longtime U.S. ally of taking advantage of the United States on trade and defense. The announcement follows the breakdown of bilateral trade negotiations and the imposition of new tariffs by both countries.
Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes and forms part of the international boundary between the United States and Canada. Canadian officials had already dismissed Trump’s proposal when he floated it earlier this week, saying Canadians would continue calling it Lake Ontario.
The move follows Trump’s 2025 order directing federal agencies to use “Gulf of America” instead of Gulf of Mexico. During Thursday’s signing, Trump joked that the Atlantic or Pacific oceans could be next.
The White House said the Lake America designation is effective immediately for official U.S. federal use.
Rescue teams in Nepal are searching for at least 33 British nationals who are among those missing after flash floods ravaged its border with Tibet, killing more than 380 people.
The deadly flash flood in Nepal was likely caused by a huge chunk of a glacier that broke off and temporarily dammed a river, according to preliminary investigations by scientists.
Panic is refunding Playdate customers the 19% tariff charges it passed along while the Trump administration's import duties were in effect, after the Supreme Court ruled the tariffs illegal and the company began receiving refunds from the government. Panic says the money "just [wasn't] ours to keep." Ars Technica reports: In an update posted on the Playdate help site this week, Panic noted that it has finally "begun to receive refunds of the tariffs we paid in the last year" and had consequently "refunded all tariffs charged to customers."
In the initial version of that tariff note, Panic explained that it couldn't afford to simply "absorb" the 19 percent tariffs it was being charged to import Playdate hardware made overseas because "our margins on Playdate are low." As such, while the tax was in effect, it was passed along to customers as an explicit subtotal line item at the bottom of all Playdate orders. That's in contrast to companies like Nintendo, which vaguely cited "market conditions" and tariff "uncertainty" in raising the asking price of legacy hardware and some Switch 2 accessories last year.
Speaking to Game Developer, Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser said filing paperwork to claw back these taxes and processing tariff refunds for customers took a fair bit of backend work. Still, he said returning that money to Playdate purchasers in the end was a no-brainer. "It's just not our money to keep, and it felt really good to give it back," Sasser said. "That's an easy way to know you made the right decision." "It just felt like the right thing to do," Panic wrote in a refund email message shared on Reddit.
When police in Kent, United Kingdom, arrested American peace activist Max Geller in 2021 for chaining himself to a van parked in front of an Israeli-owned weapons factory, he knew he might be jailed and face charges for his protest.
What he didn’t realize was that he could be hit with U.S. sanctions five years later for his past ties to a so-called terrorist organization.
The Trump administration on Wednesday announced sanctions against the U.K.-based anti-genocide protest group Palestine Action, which organized the 2021 demonstration and dozens of subsequent actions at U.K. factories owned by Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems. The goal, in the U.S. government’s words, is to “protect Americans from the risks posed by far-left terrorism.”
“A major threshold has been crossed,” said Geller, who was previously Palestine Action’s spokesperson but left the group in 2025, when the British government made membership punishable by 14 years in prison. “They’re now treating regular Americans who want to effectively oppose genocide as terrorists.”
The specific parameters of the U.S. sanctions are not yet clear, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pledged the government would “continue to cut the financial lifelines of these groups until they are eliminated.” Sanctioned groups and individuals cannot receive funds, goods, or services from American people or business — meaning they’re cut off from both the U.S. banking system and from any donations from Americans who might want to support them. They can have an isolating global effect: Financial institutions outside the U.S. that do business with American companies are often hesitant to affiliate with sanctioned individuals.
As a result, the sanctions could severely curtail their organizing abilities — and restrict their ability to try to stop the flow of weapons that Israel is using to carry out its ongoing genocide in Gaza.
“We are facing unprecedented attacks on dissent by the same powers that are committing genocide in Gaza,” said Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, in an interview with The Intercept. “We are at a point in history where it’s extremely crucial to continue to resist and grow in our movement, rather than back down and to adapt and become less reliant on institutions which are essentially controlled by the powers we’re fighting against.”
While the new U.S. sanctions are a part of a long history of post-9/11 policies in its so-called war on terror, the U.K. government has made itself notorious for its specific draconian crackdown on pro-Palestine dissent. Last year, as Palestine Action members began to face terror charges in court for their demonstrations, the U.K. government proscribed the group as a terrorist organization. The organization in the U.K. immediately ceased operations after the terror proscription. Dozens of members in the U.K. are facing criminal trials for their actions at Elbit weapons factories, and more than 1,200 people have been arrested and charged under the U.K.’s Terror Act for attending rallies merely supporting the group.
Reporting from The Telegraph, which first reported the sanctions, suggested Ammori and fellow co-founder Richard Barnard would face lifetime bans from traveling to the U.S., and that British citizens who continue to support the group would be met with harsh visa restrictions.
Geller, who lives in London, wondered if his bank accounts would be frozen, along with his Venmo and PayPal accounts. He said he normally travels back and forth between the U.S. and U.K. to visit his elderly parents — and the thought of doing so now “suddenly has become scary.”
“They want people scared to even think about supporting or engaging in this kind of work,” Geller said. “This is about materially hurting Palestine.”
The new sanctions against Palestine Action, which were announced alongside sanctions against Autistici/Inventati and Masar Badil, were the latest attack in President Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign to suppress advocacy for Palestinian rights and opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Last year, Trump issued sanctions against the International Criminal Court after the court ordered war crime arrest warrants for Israel’s leaders. Those sanctions targeted people and organizations that work with the court, such as U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, who has been outspoken about the crippling effects of the sanctions. The administration has also sanctioned long-standing Palestinian human rights organizations for their work with the ICC.
“The Trump administration is once again weaponizing counterterrorism authorities to criminalize Palestinian political organizing and solidarity,” said Raed Jarrar, advocacy director with Democracy for the Arab World Now, which last month sued to reverse the Trump sanctions on the ICC. “Sanctions are supposed to target genuine threats to national security, not serve as a political weapon against movements challenging Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”
The vagueness of the new sanctions is meant to strike fear in anyone who is considering support for the sanctioned group, civil liberties advocates told The Intercept. Does a social media post expressing support violate sanctions? How about hosting a talk with an individual in the group?
“Treasury hasn’t been clear on where the line is, and that’s part of the chilling effect,” said Xiangnong (George) Wang, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute who specializes in U.S. sanctions. “In sanctioning Palestine Action, I think their target is more broadly a community of people and groups, including Americans who engage with Palestine Action.”
The Treasury Department did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.
The sanctions also follow the government’s case against pro-Palestine organizer Fergie Chambers, a past supporter of Palestine Action who was detained for extradition in Spain last month on alleged charges of funding terror groups. The humanitarian aid group Sameer Project, which provided meals and services to Palestinians in Gaza, previously received financial support from Chambers and this month announced it had paused operations in Gaza due to lack of funds.
The repression, said Ammori, has “expanded much more overtly to be used to crush any type of dissent.”
Despite the U.K.’s crackdown on Palestine Action, support for the group and Palestine remains energetic. Rallies in solidarity with Palestine Action and Palestinian rights continue to sprout up across the country even as the government has arrested at least 3,000 people for simple actions such as holding signs that read “I support Palestine Action.” And last year, Elbit closed its facility in Bristol after being targeted by Palestine Action, days before the government outlawed the group.
In the U.S., the group formerly known as Palestine Action U.S., now called Unity Fields as of August 2024, no longer has ties to the U.K.-based group. Though Palestine Action in the U.K. is dormant, secretive cells of Palestine Action are based throughout the U.S. and are continuing to carry out actions. Other Palestine Action cells are targeting the Israeli weapons supply chain in other countries such as Spain, Germany, Ireland, and Poland.
“We have a responsibility to create a huge dent in the Israeli war machine,” Ammori said. “They need to be profitable to operate, and if they’re operating, they’re killing Palestinians — it’s really as simple as that.”
Sally-Anne Bowen, now 65, convicted of assaulting boys at Christ’s College, Finchley, where she was chemistry teacher
A chemistry teacher has been found guilty of indecently assaulting two teenage pupils at an all-boys school in the late 1980s.
Sally-Anne Bowen, who taught at Christ’s College in Finchley, north London, assaulted the teenage boys when they were aged around 14 to 15 and she was in her mid-20s.
Jes Staley made comments to US lawmakers investigating his links to the convicted sex offender
The former Barclays boss Jes Staley has denied having sex with a woman dressed as Snow White, after being questioned about an infamous email exchange about Disney princesses with Jeffrey Epstein.
The comments were detailed in newly released transcripts from a closed-door interview last month with US lawmakers as part of their investigation into Epstein, who died in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges.
Father Dionysios Tabakis says his views are those of Orthodox church, ‘nothing more, nothing less’
A Greek Orthodox priest whose home-recorded album of drone metal and religious dubstep has made him a cult figure in experimental music circles has issued a statement in which he has clarified his stance on homosexuality and the Greek radical right.
“As can be seen from my musical expression, I am in favour of unity, love, empathy and help for every needy, wronged and suffering person in life,” Father Dionysios Tabakis said in a public statement shared with the Guardian. “Whoever they are, whatever they believe, whether they are a saint or a sinner.”
The jury in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial has moved into deliberations as jurors decide whether the 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse is criminally responsible for fatally strangling her three children in January 2023.
Exclusive: Experts and former officials say accounts are running dry, and funding a war with no clear endgame is the main challenge
Donald Trump’s war on Iran has driven the US military into a severe financial crisis, with the US navy forced to transfer money from its payroll and other sources to cover the costs of combat, according to documents obtained by the Guardian, and interviews with navy officials, contractors and defense analysts.
The US-Israeli operation, which has depleted US munitions stockpiles and prompted retaliatory Iranian strikes that have wrecked strategic bases across the Middle East, is piling pressure on budgets across the military.
Toward the end of high school when people asked what I was looking for in a college, I always gave them the same answer: “Good academics, not too far away from home and a good study abroad program.”
Ever since I learned about the concept of studying abroad, I knew I wanted it to be a part of my college experience, and over this winter semester, I was given the opportunity to do just that.
I returned to the United States a short time before the spring semester started after spending four weeks in London through the university’s criminal justice study abroad program.
It changed my life.
Stepping off the plane into a country where I didn’t know my way around and knew absolutely no one was extremely anxiety-inducing, but after settling in, I knew I would never want to leave.
As a part of the program, I took two criminal justice classes taught by two amazing professors here at the university. Both History of Crime and Criminal Justice and Comparative Criminal Justice Systems allowed the other students and I to explore places all around the United Kingdom, such as Windsor Castle and Parliament and even got a police walking tour of London.
Not only did the program allow the other students and me to learn about criminal justice in a new city, but it also gave us plenty of opportunities for activities not related to criminal justice as well.
I got to see four different West End and Off-West End shows during my time in London, including “Hadestown” and “Les Misérables,” two big productions that I was excited to see from the second I got there.
One show that I hadn’t even heard of before going to see, “KENREX,” was a one-man show about a crime in a small American town. It was incredible and had my friends and me talking about it for the rest of the trip.
The friendships and relationships that I made there with people I met were by far my favorite part of the trip. Going in, I was nervous that friendship groups would form quickly and that I would get pushed to the side if I was too focused on the school work and excursions compared to the more social aspect of the trip.
I have always been on the shyer side, but I knew for this experience that I wanted to be as open and affable as possible, so I threw myself into all of the social activities that I could.
Going out to dinner with people that I just met, sitting next to new people in class and making sure to talk with people who I wasn’t familiar with during walking tours were things that were outside my comfort zone, but led me to having the best time abroad.
I was lucky that our group of about 30 students was always open and friendly to me, and I loved all of the conversations and interactions I had with people who were not even in my immediate friend group that I made.
Having people to sit next to on the Thames river ride to Greenwich, walk through the National Maritime Museum with and take the Underground (or less formally known as “the Tube”) with made simple tasks that probably could have been done alone, even more memorable.
For one of our class projects, we even had to interview a native Londoner on how they felt about their own criminal justice system. What started as a project that gave me anxiety just looking at it on the syllabus turned into an amazing and hilarious experience that brought my group partners and I closer to other people in the city.
It was a trip of a lifetime that I will never forget and will definitely be talking about for the rest of my life. My roommates, friends and family members are probably sick of hearing me talk about it, but unfortunately for them, they will probably never hear the end of all of the amazing things I have to say about both London and the study abroad program.
Even though I am no longer physically in the UK, the small reminders of my trip are present in my everyday life — through the “six months ago” updates on my camera roll, the postcards I have hanging up in my room, the magnets on my apartment fridge and the friends that I made there that I have the pleasure of seeing every week.
London and study abroad will always have a physical place in my life and in my heart.
The Information reported on Wednesday that Nvidia has agreed to buy open-source platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. "Deal talks began after Hugging Face, an open-source AI platform developers use to collaborate, test and share tools, received acquisition interest from another suitor," reports CNBC, citing the (paywalled) report. Business Insider separately reported the acquisition talks. From CNBC: If completed, the acquisition would put one of the most widely used platforms for sharing and working with open-source AI models under Nvidia's ownership, expanding the chipmaker's reach further into the software and model ecosystem. Siddy Jobe, a fund manager at Eonopolis Exponential Technologies funds, said it made sense for Nvidia to target a company like Hugging Face, as Nvidia has made it clear that it is not looking to discriminate between closed and open-source models.
"I think Nvidia is very much a community, a platform-based company, and in that respect, I think Hugging Face fits perfectly within that. There is this five-layer cake from Nvidia, and foundational models are one of them," Jobe told CNBC's Squawk Box Europe on Thursday. "It is clear that Nvidia wants to be integrated in the entire stack vertically, going from energy to foundational models and also to applications," he added.
UEFA said it is preparing a criminal complaint in Swiss courts against FIFA's Gianni Infantino over possible financial mismanagement related to his failed plan to sell future World Cup profits to private investors.
Labour’s Andy McDonald says gangs ‘clearly featuring’ in a series of incidents and police are underfunded
Five MPs on Teesside have called on the government to provide more help to local police and fire services after a week in which nine people have died in two incidents.
The MPs said the communities they represented should get the “strongest possible backing from the government”.
Florida Republican gubernatorial nominee U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds linked U.S. measles outbreaks to illegal immigration.
On CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Aug. 23, host Margaret Brennan said Florida is below the immunization rate needed to achieve herd immunity for measles. Brennan then asked Donalds if his guidance for Florida parents would be to get their kids vaccinated.
“No,” Donalds said, “actually my message to Floridians and, quite frankly, to Americans is the reason why we have seen a measles outbreak in certain parts of the country is because of rampant illegal immigration into the United States from the previous administration.”
Donalds pointed to measles outbreaks in El Paso, Texas and southwest Florida, and said people who are in the U.S. illegally have not followed the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination schedule.
He continued, “So the key thing is, you number one, you got to control immigration into your country. You can’t have an entire segment of people, more than 10 million, coming to your country without that vaccination schedule.”
It’s inaccurate that 10 million immigrants entered the U.S. illegally during Joe Biden’s presidency, when the administration released about 4.3 million people into the U.S. to await immigration court hearings.
And there’s no evidence linking measles outbreaks to immigrants in the U.S. Infectious disease experts told PolitiFact that a decline in measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations in the U.S. is the primary driver of the outbreaks. Around 94% of confirmed cases in 2026 are in people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown.
Donalds’ campaign did not respond to a request for information to support his statement.
Dr. George Rust, a Florida State University College of Medicine professor and epidemiologist, said the U.S. for decades had sporadic measles cases that typically started after U.S. travelers caught the virus overseas and experienced symptoms after returning home.
“Maybe one or two additional individuals would catch it from them, but because of high immunization rates and rapid public health response, there would be no second wave of cases,” Rust said. “Now, we are seeing more outbreaks because that same scenario plays out in the context of clusters of people who are unvaccinated, which allows for greater spread.”
What’s the status of measles in the U.S.?
The ongoing 2026 measles outbreak has surpassed 2025’s record-breaking case numbers, which were the most since 1991.
Receiving the recommended two doses of the MMR vaccine is 97% effective against infection.
“Ninety percent of unvaccinated people who are exposed are likely to catch it,” Rust said. “Because of the high rate of infectivity, measles outbreaks can spread exponentially in segments of the population that are unimmunized or not immune.”
Is measles spread by immigrants?
A pair of migrant families pass through a gap in the border wall to reach the United States after crossing from Mexico in Yuma, Ariz., June 10, 2021, to seek asylum. (AP)
The CDC does not report the immigration status of people infected with measles in the U.S., making it impossible to definitively tie any measles outbreaks to immigrants in the country illegally. Contact tracing during past outbreaks has shown that measles typically enters the U.S. from unvaccinated residents who traveled internationally, mostly to Europe and the Western Pacific region.
The U.S. achieved measles elimination status in 2000, which means the virus stopped continuously spreading domestically.
“Any given chain begins with someone who traveled,” said Dr. Paul Spiegel,distinguished professor of the practice and director at Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health. “An introduction becomes an outbreak only when the virus reaches enough susceptible, unvaccinated people, and the importation data do not point to migrants in any case.”
Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt Health infectious diseases specialist, agreed, saying “the very substantial majority” of cases are “caused by our own unvaccinated children who go abroad, pick up the measles and then bring it back home.” Only a minority of cases, he said, are caused by foreigners coming to the U.S.
Measles outbreaks on the U.S. west coast often come from unvaccinated U.S. residents returning from Asia, experts said, while east and central U.S. outbreaks typically originate from U.S. residents returning from Europe. “I have never seen data indicating that notable introductions have come from south of the border,” Schaffner said.
In El Paso, Texas, a measles outbreak in early 2026 occurred among immigrants in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility and a nearby federal detention facility that houses both migrants and U.S. citizens. Public health officials attributed the spread to the facilities’ poor conditions and a lack of federal data on inmates’ vaccination statuses. It’s unclear when any of the infected immigrants entered the U.S. ICE detains many people who are not recent arrivals.
In Southwest Florida, where Donalds lives, Florida’s largest outbreak was centered on Ave Maria University in Collier County. The university, citing the state health department’s contact tracing, said it most likely began with a student’s out-of-state holiday travel.
Some of thelargestoutbreaks this year were in areas with large Amish and Mennonite communities that typically have lower vaccination rates. Pastoutbreaks also clustered in similar, vaccine-averse communities.
MMR vaccination in other countries
A vial of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is on display at the Lubbock Health Department, Feb. 26, 2025, in Lubbock, Texas. (AP)
Countries where many immigrants in the U.S. illegally come from, such as Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, all include the MMR vaccine in their routine childhood schedules.
Experts said the problem is not that these countries lack vaccination programs, but that many have seen vaccine coverage slip below the 95% threshold needed to stop measles transmission — the same problem the U.S. has.
This year, El Salvador and Honduras have reported small numbers of measles cases. Guatemala and Mexico are dealing with large outbreaks, with the vast majority of cases occurring in unvaccinated people.
Mexico’s measles epidemic, however, originated in the U.S., not the other way around. The country’s outbreak began in Chihuahua, Mexico, in February 2025, and was traced to an unvaccinated nine-year-old from a Mennonite community who was infected while visiting relatives in Seminole, Texas, as the state’s outbreak was taking off.
“Discussions of migration and infectious disease often get the causal relationship backward,” Spiegel said. “Human mobility of every kind — tourism, business travel, migration — can move a virus from one place to another, but movement does not by itself create an outbreak; susceptibility does.”
Our ruling
Donalds said “rampant illegal immigration” during the Biden administration is the cause of “a measles outbreak in certain parts of the country.”
Measles is typically introduced by U.S. travelers returning from international travel. Experts said a U.S. decline in MMR vaccinations is the primary driver of the outbreak.
We found no data pointing to immigrants who entered the country illegally as the reason for any outbreak. Top countries of origin for immigrants in the U.S. illegally also include the MMR vaccine in their routine childhood schedules.
The burden of proof is on the speaker, and Donalds provided no evidence to support his statement. We rate it False.
One wonders when, if ever, a US broadcast can win the same plaudits presenting the English league with a more American voice
There they were again, signaling with their unchanging faces and voices and their unchanging studio backdrop that another Premier League season had begun. On Friday afternoon, and again on Saturday and Sunday morning, Rebecca Lowe welcomed American viewers to what is somehow already the 14th season of the world’s most popular sporting circuit to air on NBC.
She was flanked, as ever, by her merry band of pundits, her gang of fellow British expats. The Robbies and the other ones. Also, Tim Howard as the token American, albeit one who spent 13 seasons of his goalkeeping career in the Premier League, deemed sufficiently English by osmosis to join the crew.
Leander Schaerlaeckens is the author of The Long Game: U.S. Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts, which is out now. He teaches at Marist University.
Ratko Mladić, the infamous Serbian general who was serving a life sentence for genocide committed during the Bosnian war, has died in prison in The Hague.
Moscow threatens retaliation after Andy Burnham says UK will help Ukraine start producing long-range missiles
Russia has said it could retaliate against the UK for its support of Kyiv by striking military targets inside and outside Ukraine, amid reports that the director of the CIA warned the Kremlin against attacking Nato during a secretive visit this week.
Andy Burnham, Britain’s prime minister, said on Monday the UK would allow Kyiv access to classified technology to start its own production of Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles. France has also agreed to supply missile technology. Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Thursday Britain and France were “playing with fire”.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent charged in a Minneapolis shooting during Operation Metro Surge has been released from a Texas jail, the Associated Press reports.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Operation Bluebird, the Virginia-based startup trying to revive the allegedly abandoned "Twitter" name and logo, announced Monday that it has launched its new social media network: Twitter.now. "We are a small company, we have investors, and we have a product," Stephen Coates, one of Operation Bluebird's cofounders, told Ars. "And we have waited months and months to launch, and we are not going to wait anymore."
[...] Twitter.now, still in its nascent stage, only has hundreds of users for the time being. The social media network looks and feels much like the Twitter of old and many of its offshoots -- it has replies and retweets. A new and notable feature is the automated fact-checking tool, a Gemini-based "veracity engine for real-time analysis" ("Vera" for short), which runs on every tweet. Coates has been testing Vera in recent days by posting obviously false messages, like "George Washington was our second president."
"Our first goal is to see if we can truly bring back a town square that's safer and less harmful," he said. "We say freedom of speech and not freedom of reach. We want people to say what they want, but we also want to create a platform that's not financially locked into that viral content that's harmful or inaccurate." Operation Bluebird argues that Elon Musk effectively abandoned the Twitter brand and trademarks when he renamed the company X, opening the door for the startup to claim them. X Corp. sued to stop the effort, but a federal judge tentatively ruled in April that X appeared to have relinquished rights to "tweet," the bird logo, and possibly "Twitter" itself, though no written ruling has been issued.
Bluebird has taken that as enough of a green light to move forward while emphasizing that its new Twitter is not affiliated with X. "Operation Bluebird, Inc. picked up the name X Corp. walked away from and is rebuilding it on trust, in your browser at twitter.now," it states prominently on its website. "We are not X, and we are not affiliated with X Corp."
Pictures of the Ukrainian leader holding the baby pit bull with a symbolic name have proved a truth universally known in politics: If you want to get noticed, get a puppy.
Gold collection known as Treasure of Villena, worth at least €1.7m, is target of ‘very well planned’ raid
Thieves in Spain have raided the Treasure of Villena – a stunning collection of bronze age gold artefacts that has been described as the most important prehistoric trove in Europe – in the latest high-profile smash-and-grab heist on the continent.
The raid on Thursday morning of the 66 mostly gold objects in the Spanish town of Villena lasted just minutes, officials said.
Environment Agency issues 40 flood alerts across Midlands, Yorkshire and south-east of England
Dozens of homes have been damaged by flooding and the Met Office had issued warnings for thunderstorms and heavy rain at the end of a summer in which most of England and the whole of Wales was declared in drought.
The Met Office said thundery showers in England and Wales could cause 75mm of rain to fall in just 12 hours in some areas.
Move from USPS comes amid Trump administration’s efforts to restrict mail-in voting in November’s midterms
The US Postal Service (USPS) said on Thursday that new requirements for mail-in voting are now in effect as Donald Trump seeks to crack down on the practice. The move is expected to trigger a new round of legal challenges.
The Trump administration has sought to impose new rules requiring state election leaders to submit their voter rolls for inspection as part of a broader bid to increase federal government oversight over voting and elections.
Judge ruled Jeanine John Taele, discovered with firearm days before Trump visit, was unfit to face felony charge
A judge in California has suspended criminal proceedings against a man found with a loaded gun near Donald Trump’s golf course in Los Angeles, and instead ordered him to undergo a mental health evaluation.
Jeanine John Taele, 38, of Downey, California, was arrested for weapons violations days before the president spoke at a 5 August Republican fundraiser at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes.
The number of asylum seekers living in hotels has halved within a year, including 13 closures over the past month alone, according to new migration statistics.
Sweeping changes to the asylum system have also seen a significant drop in legal arrivals and asylum claims. But the numbers of asylum seekers who are now being housed in private accommodation has increased, as the government shifts numbers being housed in hotels into privately rented houses in multiple occupation (HMOs).
Iran, Gaza, Trump and Netanyahu: Understanding the Middle East’s crisesAudiosseth.drupal@c…
In this week’s episode of Independent Thinking, our experts discuss the big picture in the Middle East and how the various conflicts are shaping relations in the region.
It’s been a tumultuous year in the Middle East – and it’s far from over. Six months after the US and Israel launched their offensive against Iran, the conflict continues to disrupt trade, energy and food security. President Trump struggles to escape a deadlock that threatens to seriously damage him in the American mid-term elections. Meanwhile, Gaza remains locked in a humanitarian crisis despite a ceasefire, while Israel faces growing political division ahead of an October election that will determine Benjamin Netanyahu’s fate. As leaders wrestle with security, alliances and the fallout from multiple conflicts, we discuss the future of a troubled region.
Bronwen Maddox is joined by director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, Dr Sanam Vakil; associate professor in politics and international relations at UCL, Dr Julie Norman; and Israeli politician and journalist, Ksenia Svetlova.
About Independent Thinking
Independent Thinking is a weekly international affairs podcast hosted by our director Bronwen Maddox, in conversation with leading policymakers, journalists and Chatham House experts providing insight on the latest international issues.
A federal district judge in Miami, Florida, has issued a preliminary injunction against Florida International University’s decision to discipline a group of students who wore anti-ICE T-shirts and stood in protest at an indoor event at the school.
The case had received attention outside of Florida before the ruling by the district court since it touches on several landmark Supreme Court decisions and rulings within the Eleventh Circuit.
As a public university, Florida International University (FIU) maintains policies and regulations that govern student conduct. It has argued that the students violated FIU Regulation 110(3), which pertains to student speech indoors. Under the policy, students can be held responsible for disrupting indoor university activities by undertaking actions such as “protests, parades, marches, picketing, demonstrations, and other similar expressive activities.”
On August 23, 2026, in ICEbreakers v. Nunez, Judge Jacqueline Becerra from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida disagreed with the university’s position and ruled that the FIU students were likely to succeed in their challenge to regulations restricting certain speech on campus.
The Incident at the Event
On March 13, 2026, according to the court’s record, FIU President Jeanette M. Nuñez was interviewing former baseball player Alex Rodriguez at an on-campus indoor event. The ICEBreakers is a student-led organization opposing FIU’s agreement to deputize the FIU police department with the powers of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
An estimated 15 ICEBreakers members were in the audience at the event. The members were wearing T-shirts that said, “ICE OFF FIU.” During the interview event, seven members of the group stood up and faced the audience in a silent protest that lasted between one-to-three minutes. The court noted that no one at the event “complained or otherwise raised any concern regarding Plaintiffs’ conduct.” The students left the event, and, after an interaction with FIU police officers, they left the area.
According to the court, “based on the evidence submitted to date, it does not appear that any Plaintiff, or anyone else wearing an ICE OFF FIU’ T-shirt, spoke or did anything other than sit, stand, and walk.”
The matter was referred to FIU’s Office of Student Conduct & Academic Integrity. On April 7, 2026, the office issued letters to the students who stood, charging them with misconduct for failing to comply with FIU Regulation 110, Section 3.
After meeting with officials and attending a hearing, the students were charged with failing to comply with Regulation 110(3). They received a written reprimand, and each were directed to submit a video reflection “explaining your understanding of FIU Regulation 110, what is expected under FIU Regulation 110 related to indoor and outdoor areas, and how you will apply what you have learned moving forward.”
The students appealed the decision within FIU and the appeal was denied. FIU then required students to submit video reflections by September 4, 2026, or FIU would place a “student conduct hold” on their academic records, blocking their ability to register for classes, and obtain financial aid, transcripts, a diploma, or copies of any other academic records.
On August 11, 2026, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida filed a lawsuit on behalf of the students.
The Legal Precedents
In her opinion, Judge Becerra discussed two Supreme Court decisions. The Court has held since the late 1960s that public school officials can regulate student protests that they view “materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school.” But not all protests can be regulated by schools, especially those that express “pure speech.”
The foundational case for public secondary schools and universities is Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969). In December 1965, at the height of the Vietnam War, three students, including Mary Beth Tinker, a 13-year-old student at Warren Harding Junior High School in Des Moines, Iowa, wore black armbands to school to protest the war. They were all suspended.
In his 7-2 majority opinion, Justice Abe Fortas said, “First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
In 2021, the Supreme Court expanded its holding on student speech in Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., where the justices held that a student’s off-campus Snapchat outburst did not warrant a suspension, even though it targeted a school-related activity that upset students at school.
The Judge’s Ruling
Becerra cited the Tinker precedent as guiding her decision. “Any discussion of a student’s freedom of speech in public schools certainly begins, and perhaps ends, with the Supreme Court’s decision in Tinker,” she wrote. “The Tinker standard still governs: student speech cannot be restrained unless it ‘materially disrupts’ or ‘involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others.’”
She also pointed to Mahanoy as relevant. “The Court explained [in Mahanoy] that the ‘alleged disturbance’—five to ten minutes of discussion during an algebra class and some cheerleaders being ‘upset’ about the posts—did ‘not meet Tinker’s demanding standard, which requires ‘more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.’”
“For at least 60 years, the standard has been the same: student speech cannot be curtailed unless it materially disrupts the educational mission or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others,” Becerra reasoned as applying the precedents to her case.
“At this stage, Plaintiffs are substantially likely to prevail on their claim that Regulation 110(3) impermissibly prohibits Constitutionally protected speech by failing to limit its prohibition to speech that causes substantial disruption,” she determined.
Becerra pointed to language in Regulation 110(3) which states that “[t]o protect health, safety, and welfare and prevent disruption of University activities, protests, parades, marches, picketing, demonstrations, and other similar expressive activities are prohibited inside University building.” The FIU definition of "expressive activities” indoors elsewhere in its policy, she said, includes activities that are “exercises of free speech … protected under the First Amendment.”
Becerra held that Regulation 110(3) prohibited First Amendment expressive activities “regardless of whether they cause any disruption.” She also rejected FIU’s argument that the students were asserting “a nearly unlimited right to protest on government property.” Becerra wrote that Tinker requires “that restrictions on student speech be limited to those activities and expressions that cause material disruption. That is hardly a ‘nearly unlimited’ right; it is simply the law.”
Becerra also rejected claims from FIU that the “university (arguably all of it) is a limited public forum” subject to appropriate time, place and manner restrictions. “Here, FIU relies on its right to create rules to maintain order and decorum,” she noted. “In doing so, it invites the Court to conduct an analysis of the type of public forum at issue in order to assess whether Regulation 110(3) is valid.”
“The problem with FIU’s invitation is that it points the Court down a road not taken in any school speech case either by the Supreme Court or the Eleventh Circuit,” she noted.
“FIU values freedom of expression and supports an environment that fosters civil discourse and the respectful exchange of ideas. At the same time, the university's responsibility is to maintain campus operations, support its educational mission, and ensure safety and access for all members of the university community. As this matter is pending litigation, we cannot comment further. We will comply with the court's order while considering our legal options,” it told CBS News.
Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.
Mosquito traps are set up at Germany’s biggest airport and doctors are asked to look out for symptoms of disease
German health officials are seeking to reassure the public after two workers at the country’s biggest airport died of malaria.
Mosquito traps have been set up at Frankfurt airport and a mosquito monitoring process is under way. A detailed investigation is being conducted to clarify how the workers contracted the disease.
(The Center Square) – Wisconsin collected $450 million more than estimates in taxes and fees last fiscal year, meaning the state will likely have an estimated $3 billion budget surplus.
WILMINGTON, Del., Aug. 27, 2026 — The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the global home of open source software the world relies on, today announced that Apache Iggy and Apache Sourcelume have become Top-Level Projects (TLP).
Apache Iggy is a hyper-efficient, persistent message streaming platform written in Rust, built for predictable ultra-low latency and a minimal infrastructure footprint. Designed from the ground up around a thread-per-core, shared-nothing architecture and modern Linux io_uring, Iggy eliminates userspace locks on the hot path, GC pauses, and unnecessary thread contention. Unlike traditional streaming platforms with limited protocol support, Iggy natively supports TCP, QUIC, HTTP, and WebSockets, making real-time streaming accessible across a broad range of applications and environments. With a strong focus on developer experience — including SDKs across multiple programming languages, an extensible connector ecosystem, and Viewstamped Replication Revisited-based clustering — Iggy provides a modern streaming backbone for real-time, data-intensive, and AI workloads.
“From the beginning, we’ve had an obsession with performance, predictable tail latency, and infrastructure efficiency, treating them as first-class design principles for modern data streaming,” said Kranti Parisa, Apache Iggy PMC Chair. “Today, Iggy can process millions of messages per second and hundreds of terabytes of data per day on a single node, while maintaining single-digit millisecond tail latency. Its architecture continues to be validated through demanding real-world workloads and continuously published benchmarks. Becoming an Apache Top-Level Project gives Iggy a strong, independent, community-governed foundation for the future. It’s an especially exciting time to be building streaming infrastructure, as real-time data increasingly becomes the foundation for a new generation of applications, AI, and systems of intelligence. We’re excited to keep pushing the boundaries of what modern hardware and distributed systems can deliver. Congratulations, and thank you, to the entire Apache Iggy community.”
Apache Sourcelume is open source instrumentation for AI training-data provenance, giving dataset producers, model builders, and downstream consumers a shared, vendor-neutral way to document where training data came from and under what terms it may be used. Rather than introduce a new vocabulary, Sourcelume adds an attestation and registry layer on top of existing dataset-description standards — signing, publishing, and making the metadata those standards already produce independently checkable.
“Training data is the foundation everything else in AI is built on, and right now that foundation is largely undocumented,” said Jamie Goodyear, Apache Sourcelume PMC Chair. “A signed record isn’t an endorsement — it’s accountability. A producer can state — in a standard, cryptographically signed way — exactly what they’re asserting, and anyone downstream can verify who said it and that it hasn’t changed.”
About the Apache Incubator
Open source projects need healthy communities to thrive. The Apache Incubator is the entry path into the ASF, hosting incoming projects (called podlings) and providing them with services and mentorship to help them build resilient, durable communities and adopt The Apache Way. When a podling has demonstrated an active, diverse contributor base and a track record of independent, consensus-driven governance, it graduates from the Incubator to become a Top-Level Project.
About The Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is the global home for open source software, powering some of the world’s most ubiquitous software projects, including Apache Airflow, Apache Camel, Apache Cassandra, Apache Groovy, Apache HTTP Server, and Apache Kafka. Established in 1999, the ASF is at the forefront of open source innovation, setting industry standards to advance software for the public good. Learn more at https://apache.org.
The ASF’s annual Community Over Code event is where open source technologists convene to share best practices and use cases, forge critical relationships, and learn about advancements in their field: https://communityovercode.org.
On the heels of viral trends like looksmaxxing (maximizing one’s attractiveness) and healthmaxxing (optimizing physical and mental wellness), moneymaxxing describes the pursuit of better finances. But what does it mean, exactly? Well, it starts with a concept that’s been around…
Thermal drone footage shows a Microsoft-backed AI datacenter powering its operations with dozens of unpermitted generators
The largest planned AI datacenter in New Jersey is being accused of violating federal law after a visual investigation found the site running dozens of unpermitted gas-powered generators.
Thermal drone footage captured by the non-profit newsroom Floodlight last week showed the partly completed DataOne facility in Vineland was operating at least 45 of the site’s 62 generators at the time.
Reuters reports that Meta explored shrinking some teams by as much as 60% as part of an "AI native" restructuring plan that would shift much of employees' day-to-day work to AI agents and smaller teams of human "builders." But the effort quickly ran into employee revolt and disappointing productivity gains, leading Zuckerberg to scrap a planned second wave of cuts after Meta laid off 10% of its workforce in May. From the report: In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants gathered for their annual leadership retreat at his Hawaii compound. There they hatched a radical plan to reimagine work at the social-media giant in the age of artificial intelligence. Code-named Project OT -- short for Organization Transformation -- the plan envisioned an "AI native" future for the owner of Facebook and Instagram. AI would take over much of the daily work performed by thousands of human employees. Virtual workers would be overseen inside Meta by smaller, "talent-dense" cadres of human staffers, according to one internal planning document reviewed by Reuters and three people familiar with the project.
In scenario-planning exercises, two of these people said, executives explored slashing the size of many teams across Meta by as much as 60%. Some employees would be offered roles in new units, while others would be laid off as part of a culling that one human-resources executive projected would be as big as or bigger than the company's cuts of around 25% three years ago, according to another internal document. The restructuring would be carried out in two "waves," beginning with a first purge in May and followed by another shake-up in November, internal planning documents seen by Reuters showed. Layoffs would be supplemented with the closing of open positions and pushing people out who Meta believed were poor performers. These and other details of the plan, including the scale of the restructuring, haven't been previously reported. AI would take over much of the daily work performed by thousands of human employees. Virtual workers would be overseen inside Meta by smaller, "talent-dense" cadres of human staffers.
But on the night of May 19, just hours before the first layoff wave, Zuckerberg blinked. Meta laid off 10% of its employees the next day, but it called off planning for the November cuts, according to one internal document reviewed by Reuters. By then, Meta employees were in open revolt, convinced that the company's AI transformation initiatives were partly aimed at replacing them. Internal data was also suggesting that autonomous AI "agent" technology at the heart of the strategy was failing to deliver hoped-for productivity gains. Some investors were questioning what Meta had to show for its gargantuan spending on AI. This article reveals for the first time the rapid pace of the cuts Meta was considering, the thinking behind the plans and how they quickly unraveled. Based on scores of internal documents, posts and recordings reviewed by Reuters, as well as conversations with more than 20 people with knowledge of Meta's inner workings, the reporting shows how the social-media giant attempted to position itself at the forefront of an AI-driven workplace overhaul, only to stumble in the execution.
One claim alleges that a developmentally disabled man was pressured into spending more than $40,000 during a single visit and giving employees more than $10,000 in tips.
TOKYO, Aug. 27, 2026 — Kioxia Corporation, a world leader in memory solutions, announced today that it has commenced site preparation and other related work for the construction of Fab3, a new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility at the Kitakami Plant in Iwate Prefecture, Japan, to expand production capacity for advanced three-dimensional flash memory BiCS FLASH. Fab3 will be constructed on land south of Fab2, targeting operations to commence in fiscal 2029.
The flash memory market is expected to continue to expand significantly in the medium to long term, driven by agentic AI, physical AI, and on-device AI. Through the construction of Fab3, Kioxia aims to meet rising market demand by expanding production and ensuring stable supply of cutting-edge flash memory products.
Detailed plans for Fab3 regarding construction schedule and equipment investments will be determined based on market trends. Investment plans for Fab3 are contingent upon government support.
Under its mission to “uplift the world with ‘memory,’” Kioxia remains committed to capturing growing demand, making strategic capital investments, and pursuing steady and sustainable growth.
About Kioxia
Kioxia is a world leader in memory solutions, dedicated to the development, production and sale of flash memory and solid-state drives (SSDs). In April 2017, its predecessor Toshiba Memory was spun off from Toshiba Corporation, the company that invented NAND flash memory in 1987. Kioxia is committed to uplifting the world with “memory” by offering products, services and systems that create choice for customers and memory-based value for society. Kioxia’s innovative 3D flash memory technology, BiCS FLASH, is shaping the future of storage in high-density applications, including advanced smartphones, PCs, automotive systems, data centers and generative AI systems.
Manchester, London Stansted and East Midlands airports have been hit by a cyber-attack in which hackers accessed the data of about 8.7 million customers.
The incident involved data related to “car park, lounge and fast-track bookings and in-airport wifi sign-ups”, and the hackers obtained email addresses, phone numbers, vehicle registration numbers and postcodes, said Manchester Airports Group (MAG), which operates the three hubs.
Aug. 27, 2026 — Diraq has published The Case for Silicon, a new white paper setting out its architecture and roadmap for building commercially viable, utility-scale quantum computers using silicon spin qubits manufactured with CMOS-compatible semiconductor technology.
By bringing quantum computing into the same manufacturing environment that produces today’s advanced semiconductor chips, Diraq is developing a pathway to integrating millions of qubits onto a single chip and deploying quantum processors within existing data centre environments. Diraq is targeting a system with 150,000 physical qubits and up to 1,000 logical qubits by 2029, followed by more than 2 million physical qubits and more than 10,000 logical qubits by 2031.
Four Requirements for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing
Progress towards commercially viable quantum computing needs to be assessed at the level of the complete system, bringing together physics, engineering, and economics.
Diraq identifies four requirements for commercially viable, utility-scale quantum computing that any quantum computing architecture must address simultaneously:
Scalable: A utility-scale quantum computer requires a credible pathway to millions of physical qubits. Diraq is targeting more than 2 million physical qubits on a single silicon chip by 2031.
Economical: Quantum computing must become more economical as qubit counts increase. Diraq is targeting a total system cost of less than $1 per qubit at scale, made possible by a compact system that keeps operating costs and energy consumption low.
Deployable: Utility-scale quantum computers must integrate with existing computing infrastructure. Diraq is designing a fault-tolerant quantum processing unit to fit within a rack-scale cryogenic system and integrate with standard data centre infrastructure.
Powerful: Commercially useful quantum computing requires fast, error-corrected quantum operations. Diraq’s architecture combines fast quantum logic with advanced error correction and is designed to enable one million error-corrected operations per minute.
“Scaling quantum computing isn’t about a single breakthrough – it’s solving for physics, engineering, and economics at the same time. Silicon is the only platform that answers all three,” says Andrew Dzurak, CEO and founder of Diraq. “It gives us a manufacturing path proven over decades, a cost curve that improves as we add qubits, and a system designed to run inside today’s existing computing infrastructure.”
With a pathway to millions of silicon spin qubits on a single chip, The Case for Silicon sets out how Diraq plans to build utility-scale quantum computers for deployment in today’s existing computing infrastructure. By combining scalable silicon quantum processors, CMOS manufacturing, low-cost operation, and data centre-ready deployment, Diraq is developing a path towards useful, commercially viable quantum computing at scale.
Diraq is commercializing quantum computing with a silicon-based approach that uses existing CMOS processes. By utilizing the same manufacturing methods that produce today’s semiconductor components, Diraq is pioneering a faster, more economical road to commercial-scale quantum computing. The company’s proprietary ‘quantum dot’ technology is based on 20 years of research by founder Andrew Dzurak, designed to enable millions of qubits on a single chip, for powerful and scalable deployments. Diraq’s mission is to revolutionize quantum computing by unlocking the scale needed for useful commercial applications. Founded in Sydney, Diraq has more than 100 team members globally, with operations in Melbourne, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
The Pinellas County Jail in Clearwater, Florida, where ProPublica found immigrants were rebooked at much higher rates than at similar facilities across the country Tina Russell for ProPublica
Every third morning Soumia Bensalah was roused before the break of dawn. Pulled from her cell, shackled hand and foot, she was herded onto a bus and driven over Tampa Bay from the Pinellas County Jail to a cramped hold room at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.
Each time, she sat there all day, still shackled. Once evening came, she was driven back to the jail, forced to wait for hours in a hallway, photographed, strip-searched, questioned and led back to her cell. This happened five times last December, and Bensalah said it left her exhausted and humiliated.
It was no coincidence that Bensalah, a French Moroccan with a pending green card application, was released from the Pinellas jail and then sent back at regular, 72-hour intervals, according to legal experts. That’s the maximum amount of time that county jails like Pinellas’ can hold immigrants on behalf of ICE. The limit exists to prevent immigrants detained on civil charges from spending too long in jails meant for people detained on criminal charges.
Repeat releases and readmissions, known as rebookings, typically happen in secret and circumvent federal rules and regulations, according to eight legal experts interviewed by ProPublica.
The jail had refused to release the logs that documented Bensalah’s journey, citing federal immigration regulations that shield jail records, which are typically public. We were able to trace the journey after obtaining an unredacted copy of the Pinellas jail’s booking logs from a source who provided them on the condition of anonymity, for fear of workplace reprisal. We checked them against anonymized federal immigration data collected by the Deportation Data Project.
The repeat rebookings stem from the fact that the federal government often doesn’t have enough detention space to jail all the immigrants whom ICE and its cooperating local authorities are rounding up. The shortage of detention space is pronounced in Florida, where the majority of law enforcement agencies have signed agreements to collaborate with ICE on immigration enforcement.
ProPublica’s analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project shows that over the past year, jails in both Pinellas County and in Orange County, Florida, had unusually high numbers of repeat rebookings of immigrants held for ICE compared with other jails nationwide. (Read more about our methodology here.) The Orange County Jail, in Orlando, rebooked 559 of them two or more times from July 2025 until early February 2026, when the data shows the practice ceased. Less than two hours away, in the Tampa Bay area, Pinellas rebooked 174 immigrants at least twice from July 2025 until the practice appeared to cease in July 2026, when zero rebookings were recorded in the data.
The scale in the two Florida counties is unmatched, ProPublica found. Other jails across the country rebooked no more than 10 immigrants two or more times.
All of the rebooked immigrants ProPublica counted were jailed for ICE, meaning they were not being detained on local charges. Our analysis counted a person as having been rebooked only if they cumulatively spent at least 72 hours in jail.
Emily Ryo, a Duke University law professor who studies ICE detention, said jails often can’t provide comprehensive medical screenings, space for confidential legal consultations or even outdoor access. All of those things should be guaranteed to immigrants in ICE custody, according to ICE’s own detention standards.
Two former Department of Homeland Security officials who spoke with ProPublica described the repeated rebookings as an attempt to evade the detention standards.
“What it shows is that they were very aware that they were breaking a rule,” said Michelle Brané, a former DHS immigration detention ombudsperson.
Bensalah landed in jail after her U.S. citizen husband allegedly assaulted her, according to a police report. She called the police, who observed cuts on both and booked them into the Polk County Jail on battery charges. (The charges against both were later dropped.) She posted bond but was not released because of an ICE detainer, a written request from the federal government asking a jail to hold someone for up to 48 hours after they’d otherwise be released. A detainer is meant to give ICE time to pick up an immigrant and begin deportation proceedings.
State law requires every jail in Florida to sign collaboration agreements with ICE. Most jails in the state can detain immigrants for ICE for only up to 48 hours. Through June, Pinellas and Orange had special contracts that ICE says allowed them to hold immigrants for up to three days. ICE designates them as “under 72” facilities in its database.
“At 72 you should have walked him out the door,” said a former senior DHS official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal.
Instead of sending Bensalah to a longer-term immigration detention facility in the days after she posted bond, ICE moved her two counties over to Pinellas. Three days later, her rebookings began.
“There’s no argument that this is a lawful detention,” Jennifer Chacón, a professor of law at Stanford University, said of the repeat rebookings.
In response to ProPublica’s questions about the repeat rebookings, a DHS spokesperson wrote: “ICE is NOT breaking any laws by making custody determinations based on bed space and ensuring detainees’ presence for immigration proceedings or removal from the United States.”
ProPublica shared with DHS details about Bensalah’s case. The department responded that “she received due process.”
“Under President Trump and Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences,” DHS wrote. “Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”
All the people rebooked at least twice in Pinellas and Orange counties ended up behind bars for more than 72 hours. One woman from Mexico was rebooked into Pinellas 10 times, spending a cumulative 26 days in the jail. (DHS declined to comment on her case because ProPublica did not provide her name; she had declined multiple requests for an interview.) She was then transferred to an ICE facility and eventually released after posting a $2,000 bond, according to Deportation Data Project figures. Only 65 people rebooked into those counties’ jails two or more times through June 2026 were eventually released on bond.
Of the 423 immigrants rebooked at least twice in Pinellas and Orange counties through December 2025, 115 — or 27% — had no criminal charges or convictions except for traffic-related offenses. That is consistent with recent data released showing that an increasing percentage of all ICE detentions involve people with no criminal record or charges.
10 Rebookings at the Pinellas County Jail
In late 2025, federal and state officials kept a Mexican woman in custody for almost a month by repeatedly rebooking her just before her 72-hour time limit ran out.
Note: ProPublica withheld the identity of this individual after she did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Source: Deportation Data Project.Chris Alcantara/ProPublica
For some rebooked immigrants in Orange County, the turnaround time was extreme: 30 of them were rebooked in 15 minutes or less, right as their current stay approached 72 hours. Those rebookings were between September 2025 and February 2026. Orange County rebooked five immigrants back into the jail in as little as one minute.
Additionally, the Pinellas County Jail has held at least 157 immigrants for ICE for longer than three business days in a single booking since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term in January 2025, according to a ProPublica analysis. In the two years prior, it held only five immigrants for longer than three days. After one woman — a Brazilian immigrant who had not been charged with a crime — challenged her nine-day detention in federal court this July, ICE released her, calling her jail stay a “procedural error.”
“All her claims will be heard by an immigration judge, and she will receive due process,” DHS wrote in response to questions about the Brazilian woman’s case. “This administration will not ignore the rule of law.”
ProPublica found that all of the people rebooked two or more times in Pinellas County Jail ended up being held for more than 72 hours. One woman from Mexico was rebooked 10 times, for a total of 26 days in county detention.Tina Russell for ProPublica
Legal experts say that the only real recourse for immigrants repeatedly rebooked or held for prolonged periods in a local jail is to file an emergency petition in federal court seeking relief from illegal detainment. ProPublica was able to determine that at least 29 of the immigrants held for ICE in Orange or Pinellas counties filed such petitions, called habeas corpus claims.
In response to the Brazilian woman’s habeas petition, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office claimed that she was in federal custody and that it didn’t have the power to release her. Federal appeals courts have found the opposite: Jails have the power to release ICE detainees after a hold expires and can be found liable if they don’t. Last November, a federal jury ordered Suffolk County, New York, to pay $112 million to more than 600 immigrants it found had been wrongly held. Suffolk County has appealed the decision.
Corporal Jamie Miller, a spokesperson for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, told ProPublica that the facility holds people for ICE for only up to 72 hours before releasing them. The sheriff’s office declined further comment after ProPublica shared the findings from its analysis and sent a list of questions. The office declined requests for an interview with the sheriff.
In a written statement to ProPublica, a spokesperson for the Orange County Jail said it had eliminated “multiple bookings.” The statement referred further questions to ICE.
Our analysis shows that in Orange County, the rebooking practice stopped in early February. That change happened after widespread public opposition. In Pinellas, where opposition has been quieter, the rebookings slowed in January, but single stays exceeding 72 hours started to climb.
15 Rebookings at the Orange County Jail
Officials rebooked a Brazilian woman more than a dozen times during a nearly two-month stint.
Note: Because federal immigration data is anonymized and the Orange County Jail declined to produce its booking logs in response to a records request, ProPublica could not identify this individual. Stints that were longer than 72 hours did not qualify as overstays for this individual because each included weekends, which do not count, according to the jail’s then-contract with federal authorities. Source: Deportation Data Project.Chris Alcantara/ProPublica
Orange and Pinellas counties both stand out nationally for their volume of rebookings. But their differing politics contributed to different outcomes at their jails.
In majority-Democratic Orange County, religious groups, attorneys and a coalition of activists prompted officials and the courts to take action. In county commission meetings, community members told the stories of immigrants held in the jail and pointed out that the county was losing money every time it held someone for ICE.
County officials — caught between a state legislative mandate to cooperate with ICE, a national mass deportation push that was filling their jail with detainees and a vocal electorate that demanded change — wrestled with how to respond.
In August 2025, the Orlando Sentinel reported on half a dozen rebookings in the Orange County Jail. Months later, in late January, a defense attorney showed up at a county commission hearing to describe how the rebooking practice was still going on. She claimed she had multiple clients who’d been illegally held at the jail on behalf of ICE and that the rebookings violated due process.
A week later, County Mayor Jerry Demings sent a letter to ICE, informing it that “ICE inmates will be limited to one continuous housing period of up to 72 hours per immigration matter.” After the letter, the rebookings ceased, ProPublica’s analysis shows.
The day Demings sent the letter, Orlando federal judge Paul Byron criticized the rebooking practice at a hearing for an immigrant who’d claimed he was illegally detained.
“If the government is pulling a detainee out of jail to artificially reset the clock, that is wildly inappropriate,” Byron told Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip Ragler. “What allows that?”
Ragler didn’t have an answer. Byron ordered the immigrant be freed.
Ragler recently told ProPublica that the experience led to a crisis of conscience.
“Being forced to defend ICE’s actions in a professional capacity caused significant moral and ethical conflicts for me personally,” Ragler wrote in a statement to ProPublica, adding that ICE gave the U.S. attorneys no reasoning or justification for detaining people, many of whom had no criminal record. He told ProPublica he resigned from the position shortly after the hearing, following almost a decade in the office.
Ultimately, Orange County renegotiated its contract with ICE so that immigrants could be held for only two days. Soon after, the number of immigrants in ICE custody booked into the jail plummeted, ProPublica’s analysis shows. Just two were booked into the jail in July, down from a high of 692 in January.
At around the same time that Orange County stopped repeat rebookings of immigrants, the number of rebookings in Pinellas started decreasing. But unlike Orange County, Pinellas then began holding more immigrants for longer than three business days in a single stay — and saw no dip in the number of immigrants it was booking overall.
Six months later, in July, Pinellas appears to have stopped repeat rebookings of immigrants, ProPublica’s analysis found. That same month, at least 12 immigrants booked in the jail were held for more than three business days. One Honduran man stayed for at least eight days.
A private prison transport truck traveling toward the ICE detention center near Tampa International AirportCourtney Prokopas
Pinellas County, unlike Orange County, trended Republican in the last presidential election. Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri has long advocated for his and other local jails to collaborate with the federal government on immigration enforcement. Over the past decade, he helped pioneer a type of contract with ICE that shields local jails from legal liability when they hold someone for the agency. He also helped create a federal-local agreement that lets jail staff serve ICE detainers on people held at the facility.
“For years, sheriffs have had to choose between releasing criminal illegal aliens from their jails back into the community, or exposing themselves to potential civil liability,” Gualtieri is quoted as saying in a 2017 ICE press release.
In the August 2025 Orlando Sentinel article, Gualtieri is quoted as saying that there’d been rebookings at his facility due to “a capacity issue” at the federal detention facility where they were supposed to be transferred.
In the summer of 2025, Gualtieri was part of a group of Florida sheriffs that proposed allowing ICE to take advantage of unused jail beds across Florida — and have Florida police transport the detainees. Since Trump took office in January 2025, Gualtieri’s own jail began to house a historically high number of them.
More than 7,000 immigrants have been detained for ICE in the Pinellas County Jail during the first 564 days of Trump’s second term, according to ProPublica’s analysis. That’s more than four times as many as during the last two years of the Biden administration.
The jail’s proportion of ICE detainees among its total bookings steadily increased over the course of 2025, from under 7% at the start of the year to 18% in December, according to ProPublica’s analysis of Pinellas jail booking data. In 2026, the proportion hovered around 20% from January through July.
Most of the immigrants ProPublica tracked in Pinellas and across the country, including Bensalah, ultimately were deported. After her fifth rebooking, she was transferred to the first of four ICE detention centers, then deported to France.
Paul Chavez, litigation director for Americans for Immigrant Justice, a legal nonprofit that litigates for immigrants’ rights, said repeat rebookings like Bensalah’s are clear examples of unconstitutional detention.
“If it was that easy to thwart, all we would have to do to thwart the Fourth Amendment was throw somebody in the backseat of a car, drive them to McDonald’s and then drive back,” he said. “I don’t know that the drafters of the Fourth Amendment would have found solace in that.”
How We Identified People Rebooked Into County Jails
ProPublica found immigrants ICE repeatedly rebooked into county jails by analyzing multiple federal and local detention databases.
To count immigrants rebooked two or more times at jails nationwide, we used federal immigration detention data obtained by the Deportation Data Project. The data assigns a unique ID to each person in detention and records the date and time each person is booked into and out of each facility. We calculated the length of each stay, as well as the period between leaving and returning to a single facility.
A detainee may leave ICE detention, such as when they are released on immigration bond or into U.S. Marshals’ custody and then return to ICE custody weeks or even months later. To avoid counting these cases, ProPublica counted a person as being rebooked only if their return to the same facility occurred within 24 hours. Detainees are sometimes rebooked into the same facility after longer periods, but our analysis found that 95% of detainees were rebooked within 12 hours.
The detention data covers a period from Oct. 1, 2022, through Aug. 6, 2026. We limited our analysis to local jails, where federal rules require jails hold ICE detainees for less than 72 hours unless jails sign a special contract with ICE and meet ICE’s detention standards, which include submitting to regular federal inspections. Because a single rebooking could be due to a failed transfer or a missed or delayed deportation flight, we counted only immigrants who had been rebooked two or more times. An expert familiar with ICE detention practices told ProPublica that was a better indicator of intentional rebookings made to extend detentions in a single jail.
Under federal regulations, weekends and holidays do not count toward a jail’s stay limit. ProPublica excluded these days when counting the number of hours each person spent in a county jail. We counted someone as having been rebooked only if their total cumulative stay reached at least 72 hours. When tallying the total stay of individual detainees, ProPublica counted all hours spent in jail, including weekends and holidays.
To count the number of rebooked detainees without criminal charges or convictions, ProPublica used ICE detention data released by the federal government under the Freedom of Information Act. Versions of this dataset were originally released to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse and The New York Times. This data ends in mid-December 2025. To determine that 27% of detainees rebooked two or more times had no criminal charges or convictions except for traffic-related offenses, we filtered by detainees charged with only traffic-related offenses or who were described as “other immigration violator,” a category used by the Department of Homeland Security when a detained individual has no other record of criminal charges or convictions.
ProPublica queried an unredacted copy of the Pinellas County Jail’s inmate search database it obtained to calculate the share of bookings at the jail that were ICE detainees. ProPublica verified the veracity of the unredacted database by comparing its booking records to those in Pinellas’ online search tool and by validating the booking dates and timestamps against the federal immigration datasets.
Burnham has nothing to hide as he prepares to meet president he once called poisonous. It may actually win him more respect
It makes a pleasant change. Not so long ago, Keir Starmer was falling over himself in his efforts to keep things sweet with Donald Trump. Offering the US president a second state visit within minutes of meeting him. Everyone knows you should never put out on the first date: it only makes the other person think you’re a pushover. Sure enough, The Donald banked the marching bands and the Windsor silver service, made polite conversation for three days and then went back to trash-talking him.
Yet still, Starmer just sat there and took it. As if one word of criticism would be too much. Wittering on about the “special relationship” as if Trump gave a moment’s thought to the UK before he did anything. The rest of us wouldn’t have put money on the US president even being able to locate Britain on a map. It was only latterly, when The Donald chose to bomb Iran, that the penny finally dropped for Keir. And even then he looked pained by the apparent betrayal, as he resisted the calls of Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage to join in the war.
Motoring series to return four years after Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff suffered serious injuries in crash during filming
Top Gear, the long-running motoring show that has been off air since its co-host Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff was seriously injured in a crash during filming almost four years ago, is to return to the BBC, the broadcaster has confirmed.
After Flintoff’s accident at Dunsfold aerodrome in Surrey, the BBC said the series would be “rested” for the foreseeable future.
It’s been a month since Andy Burnham became prime minister. And while polls have shown a ‘Burnham bounce’, the coming months will force the new PM into making some tough – and potentially unpopular – decisions that will reveal how serious he is about delivering the changes he believes the country needs. Kiran Stacey and Peter Walker look at the choices facing Burnham
Built on a 2 nanometer technology node, the processor’s design will contain 11 high-performance cores operating at more than 5.7 GHz, AI inference accelerators for in-transaction fraud detection, a dedicated on-chip data processing unit for I/O acceleration, and a large cache architecture for demanding enterprise workloads. The chip is architected to not contain separate Arm and IBM cores: each processor core can natively execute Arm and IBM Z, or Arm and LinuxONE, instructions concurrently while prioritizing the platform’s established performance, security, encryption, and availability characteristics. IBM Z and LinuxONE platforms are capable of scaling to hundreds of cores and tens of terabytes of memory.
IBM is still doing some amazing chip architecture design. ServeTheHome has more details of how this works:
A key choice here is that IBM implemented AArch64 in full hardware rather than through translation. This design uses a little-endian Arm implementation alongside big-endian z/Architecture, with AArch64 v9.3, SVE and SVE2 support, and 2,792 implemented AArch64 instructions. IBM also claims Arm SystemReady compliance, which matters for how much off-the-shelf Arm software this core can absorb. This is absolutely crazy technology. Arm software sees a native Arm processor. Arm runs unmodified, out-of-the-box, and onto a standard Arm platform. IBM said the 2792 AArch64 instructions are more than twice the Z instructions. IBM made a funny quip about “reduced” in RISC.
American talks life on the professional circuit and those making sacrifices for a pay cheque, often compromising physical and mental welfare
For Mackenzie McDonald the players’ push for greater prize money and welfare contributions from the grand slam tournaments could result in the difference between putting food on the table and making a decent living.
After 10 years on the ATP Tour the 31-year-old American is not pleading poverty, but knows that life on the professional circuit can be a hand-to-mouth existence, with players’ physical and mental welfare often compromised due to their desperation to get back on court.
Judge rules Christian Castro, accused of shooting man and lying about it, cannot be held pending extradition request
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer charged with shooting a man and lying about it during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis was released from a Texas jail on Thursday, after a judge refused to order his return to Minnesota.
Christian Castro was released at the break of dawn from a detention center in Brownsville. He motioned his hand toward a few camera operators and a reporter crowding around him and quickly got into an SUV that drove off.
Adam Kalkstein compared administration’s order to ‘trying to teach the law’ without mentioning ‘the constitution’
The only climate scientist teaching at West Point, the US army’s military academy, was fired after he resisted an order to stop teaching about the human causes of the climate emergency, a lawsuit claims.
Dr Adam Kalkstein, a civilian professor of geography at the New York institution, was terminated after the spring semester this year, six months after a testy meeting with Brig Gen Shane Reeves, then dean of West Point’s academic board, the court filing said.
Brownsville, Texas — An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer charged in Minnesota with shooting a man and falsely reporting the incident was released from a Texas jail Thursday after a federal judge declined to force his extradition.
Christian Castro faces Minnesota charges stemming from a Jan. 14 incident in Minneapolis. Prosecutors allege Castro fired through the front door of a home and shot 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg. They also accuse Castro of falsely claiming Sosa-Celis and another man attacked an ICE officer with a broom handle and snow shovel.
Castro was arrested May 29 in Cameron County on a nationwide Minnesota warrant. Texas law generally limits detention on an out-of-state warrant to 90 days without completed extradition, making Thursday his release deadline.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sought a temporary restraining order blocking Castro’s release or requiring his return to Minnesota. U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. ruled Wednesday that the dispute was not yet ripe because Gov. Greg Abbott had neither approved nor formally denied Minnesota’s extradition request.
Texas officials say Abbott is reviewing whether Castro legally qualifies as a fugitive. Minnesota officials have warned Castro could leave for Mexico, citing jail calls in which he discussed marrying a woman there and purchasing a home.
Ellison said Minnesota will continue pursuing the case.
The awards provide supercomputing time for cutting-edge research in three high-impact areas.
Aug. 27, 2026 — Researchers in the Mathematics and Computer Science division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory will participate in three mission-critical projects on DOE leadership-class computers.
The projects — in computer science, Earth sciences and engineering — have been awarded supercomputing time through DOE’s Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program.
Computer Science
Jeffrey Larson will join researchers from JPMorgan Chase in a new project titled “Evaluating the Performance of the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm” (QAOA). The researchers will develop numerical techniques to predict the performance of QAOA for arbitrarily large problems beyond those feasible with classical simulations. The project has received 40,000 node-hours on Argonne’s Polaris system and 200,000 node-hours on Argonne’s Aurora supercomputer to test the novel techniques. Aurora and Polaris are housed at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, a DOE Office of Science user facility.
“Our aim is to be able to make comparisons with classical solvers and clarify requirements for quantum advantage — where a quantum computer can execute a computational task faster and more accurately than leading-class supercomputers,” Larson said.
Earth Sciences
Azamat Mametjanov will participate with colleagues from four national laboratories in a new project titled “Energy Exascale Earth System Model.” The project, led by DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will evaluate the atmospheric model SCREAM using real-world simulations across the United States. The team has been awarded 1 million node-hours on Aurora at Argonne and 600,000 node hours on Frontier at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
“Our goal is to achieve an unprecedented 200-meter resolution,” the team project states.
Engineering
Paul Fischer and Misun Min will continue work with their colleagues on the project “Advancing Fusion and Fission Energy through Exascale,” led by Pennsylvania State University. The researchers are conducting first-of-their-kind simulations of nuclear energy systems, gaining new insights into large-scale multiphysics phenomena. The project team will use both the Argonne Aurora (200,000 node-hours) and the Oak Ridge Frontier (250,000 node-hours) systems for their work.
“These simulations are rapidly approaching full-device multiphysics modeling and will firmly establish the nuclear field as a leader in exascale computing,” Min said.
Bag, camera and pipe belonging to 86-year-old are latest relics uncovered as glaciers melt due to global heating
An 86-year-old mountaineer has been reunited with his backpack and climbing equipment after the kit emerged from a melting glacier in Austria – more than 60 years after he was forced to leave them there.
Items including an ice axe, camera and a pipe dating from the 1950s or 1960s were discovered on the Sulztalferner glacier in Austria’s Tyrol region, at an altitude of 2,955 metres (9,700ft) above sea level, by a hiker in July.
Experts say findings mean breast screenings for cancer could also flag cardiovascular problems in women
Doctors have discovered a way to use routine mammograms that screen for breast cancer to spot heart disease, the world’s leading – and frequently underdiagnosed – cause of death in women.
Researchers analysed the scans using artificial intelligence and were able to successfully identify women with coronary heart disease, high blood pressure or who had suffered a stroke.
Pack the cooler before late-summer weather shifts. These 15 picnic recipes cover hearty sandwiches, chilled salads, handheld appetizers, wings, pasta salad, and sturdy desserts made for a day at the park.The post 15 picnic recipes packed for the park before…
BYOB has survived decades on a handshake agreement that worked only because everyone in the room was drinking the same thing. That concept is shrinking ... Read moreThe post The unspoken rules of BYOB are falling apart at American parties,…
In a disrupted job market people are turning to heritage crafts such as bookbinding, metalwork and boatbuilding
It’s a bleak moment for young people entering the workforce for the first time. For decades, a university degree seemed to promise a stable career – but entry-level white-collar jobs across almost all sectors are being disrupted by AI. Budding accountants, software engineers and junior lawyers increasingly find themselves displaced by cheap automation.
Even creative fields are struggling against AI tech that can produce artwork, lengthy prose or complex design briefs in seconds.
MADD Delaware, Police Agencies Team Up for Labor Day Impaired Driving Prevention Effort
MADD Delaware and law enforcement agencies statewide are partnering for “Saturation Saturday” on Aug. 29 to promote impaired driving prevention ahead of Labor Day weekend. (Photo courtesy of MADD Delaware.)
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Delaware is partnering with the Delaware Office of Highway Safety and law enforcement agencies statewide for “Saturation Saturday” on Aug. 29, an initiative aimed at preventing impaired driving ahead of the Labor Day holiday weekend.
The coordinated enforcement effort will include increased DUI patrols across Delaware as part of a national push to reduce impaired driving crashes during one of the year’s busiest travel periods. The initiative coincides with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System, 451 people were killed nationwide in drunk driving crashes during the Labor Day holiday period in 2024. In Delaware, drunk driving fatalities have increased by 3.2% since 2019.
MADD Delaware will work with Delaware State Police in New Castle, Kent and Sussex counties, as well as the Wilmington Police Department, New Castle County Police Department, New Castle City Police Department, Camden Police Department and Dagsboro Police Department, to support Saturation Saturday events and increased impaired driving enforcement.
Law enforcement officers are often the first line of defense against impaired driving. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sobriety checkpoints can reduce drunk driving deaths by up to 20%.
“Impaired driving continues to be the leading cause of death on our roadways, stealing lives and leaving countless families to cope with unimaginable loss,” said Stacey D. Stewart, CEO of MADD. “MADD is proud to work alongside law enforcement to help prevent crashes, save lives, and remind drivers that impaired driving is never acceptable. Together, we can encourage responsible choices and make our roads safer for everyone.”
Saturation Saturday is part of ongoing efforts through NHTSA’s “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign, which raises awareness about the dangers of impaired driving and supports high-visibility enforcement efforts throughout August and September.
“Preventing impaired driving requires a shared commitment from all of us. Saturation Saturday brings together MADD, law enforcement, and highway safety partners to send a clear message: impaired driving is preventable, and every driver has a responsibility to make a safe choice. As Labor Day weekend approaches, we encourage Delawareans to plan ahead, designate a sober driver, use a rideshare or find another safe way home,” said Sharon Bryson, director of the Delaware Office of Highway Safety.
“High-visibility traffic safety enforcement efforts serve as a deterrent to impaired driving crashes and prevent senseless deaths and injuries,” said Bryna Clark-Braverman, Regional Executive Director. “Together alongside law enforcement and NHTSA, MADD Delaware urges the public to have a plan for getting home safe – whether you’re driving, riding or hosting – as we approach Labor Day weekend.”
Iraq Initiative Conference 2026
11
November 2026 — 09:00 TO 17:00 GMT
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
The eighth annual conference convenes Iraqi and international policymakers, business leaders, experts, and civil society to assess whether Iraq’s new government can navigate growing regional and domestic pressures and reinforce national sovereignty.
The eight annual conference convenes Iraqi and international policymakers, business leaders, experts, and civil society to assess whether Iraq’s new government can navigate growing regional and domestic pressures and reinforce national sovereignty.
As Iraq enters a new political phase under Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, it faces a defining test: can it strengthen state institutions and advance reform while navigating a rapidly shifting regional order?
The regional war has exposed Iraq’s vulnerabilities. Iran-aligned armed groups have launched attacks from and within Iraq, while US and Israeli strikes on Iraqi territory have renewed questions about sovereignty and the state’s monopoly on the use of force.
At the same time, disruptions to trade and energy markets are placing Iraq’s oil-dependent economy under growing strain, reducing revenues and threatening electricity supplies amid rising living costs and persistent unemployment.
These pressures coincide with intensifying competition between Washington and Tehran for influence in Iraq. As the regional balance of power shifts, Baghdad faces the difficult task of managing relations with both while preserving its stability, sovereignty and room for manoeuvre.
This conference discusses key questions including:
Can the government advance meaningful reforms, strengthen government institutions, and preserve economic stability? Or will mounting security, economic, and geopolitical challenges further constrain Iraq’s ability to chart an independent course?
How has the new government fared in its first 100 days in office?
What steps are needed to diversify Iraq’s economy away from volatile energy markets and respond to growing public demands?
How can Baghdad navigate rising regional tensions while balancing relations with international actors?
What role should regional and international partners play in supporting Iraq’s long-term stability and development?
This week’s settlement without liability was pragmatic, but it doesn’t change the inevitability of further lawsuits around the world
Not many people would count paying $18bn they didn’t expect to when they woke up that morning as a victory. Yet for Meta, the owners of Facebook and Instagram, the agreement with 52 US attorneys general to settle claims that it designed its products to be addictive to children, and misled people about their safety, could be described as a win of sorts.
Meta denies wrongdoing, and the amount it plans to pay will be spread over a decade. Some of it is contingent on other big tech firms not named in its case coughing up too. The cash is chump change for Meta, which made around $60bn in profit last year. More damaging to the tech giant in the long run could be the agreement to unwind some of the mechanics it has spent two decades perfecting to keep us on its platforms.
Chris Stokel-Walker is the author of TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World’s Favourite App
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
A 32-year-old Wilmington woman claimed a $100,000 top prize in the Delaware Lottery’s 100X THE CELEBRATION instant game, marking the first major lottery win of her life. (Graphic by Milford LIVE)
A Wilmington woman is celebrating more than her upcoming wedding after winning a $100,000 top prize playing the Delaware Lottery’s 100X THE CELEBRATION instant game.
The 32-year-old Delaware native, who chose not to publicly release her name, claimed her prize Aug. 18 at Delaware Lottery headquarters in Dover. She told lottery officials the win was the first major prize she has received while playing the Delaware Lottery.
According to the Delaware Lottery, the woman said she was in disbelief after discovering she had won $100,000 and immediately contacted family members to share the news. She plans to use part of her winnings to help pay for her upcoming wedding.
The winning ticket was purchased at Naaman’s Beverage Mart Inc., located at 109 Naamans Road in Claymont.
“The Delaware Lottery couldn’t be happier for this winner, and it’s incredibly meaningful to us that her prize will help pay for her wedding celebration,” said Helene Keeley, director of the Delaware Lottery. “We love hearing stories about the ways Delawareans plan to use a lottery prize — whether that means having a little extra to help pay for a wedding, adding to their savings, or anything in between. As always, we encourage all Delaware Lottery players to enjoy playing responsibly. And we wish this bride-to-be and her partner a wonderful life together!”
The 100X THE CELEBRATION instant game launched in 2025 as part of the Delaware Lottery’s 50th anniversary celebration and originally featured two $100,000 top prizes. Players can also win prizes ranging from $20 to $20,000.
The $20 scratch-off game still had one $100,000 top prize remaining as of Aug. 19, according to the Delaware Lottery.
Missouri Deputy Attorney General Shaun Mackelprang was found alive six days after he vanished in the remote Wyoming wilderness during a backcountry hike.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is accused of developing and directing the plot to crash hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
LOUISVILLE, Colo., Aug. 27, 2026 — Infleqtion, a global leader in quantum computing and quantum sensing powered by neutral-atom technology, today announced NASA has awarded the company a $20 million follow-on contract to continue development of the Quantum Gravity Gradiometer Pathfinder (QGGPf), a mission led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that is designed to fly the world’s first space-based quantum gravity sensor. The award brings NASA’s investment in the program to $40 million and advances the mission into its next phase of hardware development and testing.
“This follow-on award reflects the progress our team has made and marks an important step toward the mission’s next phase,” said Matt Kinsella, Chief Executive Officer of Infleqtion. “The path from quantum science to a system that can fly in space takes years of engineering, testing, and collaboration. Every milestone brings quantum sensing closer to enabling entirely new ways to observe our planet from orbit.”
“There is an enormous amount of potential for quantum technology use cases in space. We are no longer testing the quantum technology itself, but ways we can use it in the space environment,” said Dana Anderson, Chief Science Officer at Infleqtion. “As a NASA-led mission with key contributions from U.S. industry, QGGPf is demonstrating how quantum gravity sensing can operate in low Earth orbit and establishing the technical foundation for future generations of space-based instruments.”
The QGGPf mission is designed to demonstrate quantum sensor technologies that could transform how Earth’s surface gravity is measured from space. As a technology pathfinder, the mission is expected to help inform the design of future science-grade instruments, representing a major step forward in U.S. leadership in space-based quantum sensing and strategic intelligence.
U.S. Leading Quantum Innovation in Space
This project, conceived by NASA, helps to push the boundaries of frontier science and technology with critical technologies provided by U.S. industry. QGGPf builds on NASA’s long legacy of space-based gravity mapping, such as the GRACE and GRACE-FO missions, and applies Infleqtion’s quantum engineering capabilities to enable a new class of measurement techniques designed specifically for the microgravity environment of space.
By directly measuring subtle variations in Earth’s gravitational field, the mission will demonstrate technologies to help reduce risk for future, high resolution, and quantum gravity instruments. These future systems could enable deeper insights into how surface and underground water, ice, and natural resources shift over time, critical data for understanding planetary health, strengthening national and world-wide resilience, and supporting long-term economic and security planning.
Building the Quantum Space Sensor
QGGPf builds on work done by JPL and Infleqtion on the Cold Atom Lab (CAL) program aboard the International Space Station, and on NASA’s long heritage mapping Earth’s gravitational field through the GRACE missions.
Infleqtion’s role on the QGGPf project includes the design, maturation, and integration of the atomic physics package, the quantum core of the sensor, encompassing its vacuum, laser, and control subsystems. The cold-atom system, based on ultracold rubidium atoms cooled to pico-Kelvin scale temperature, is designed to enable direct gravity gradient measurements from space. As part of the next phase of the contract, Infleqtion will work to build an initial sensor head and electronics engineering development unit and test it at the Einstein Elevator, a unique drop tower microgravity facility in Hannover, Germany.
Foundation for Future Missions
NASA and Infleqtion plan to complete the instrument hardware development over the next three years, followed by a flight demonstration. The work under this phase of the program is expected to be performed through 2027. The mission is expected to launch aboard a low-Earth orbit spacecraft in 2030.
To learn more about how Infleqtion’s quantum technologies are enabling advances in space exploration, navigation, remote sensing, and defense, visit https://infleqtion.com/space-and-frontier.
Infleqtion, Inc. (NYSE: INFQ) is a global leader in quantum technology, delivering neutral-atom solutions for quantum computing, networking, sensing, and security. With a product portfolio spanning quantum computers, quantum optical clocks, RF receivers, and inertial sensors, Infleqtion’s full-stack approach combines high-performance hardware with the company’s proprietary Superstaq quantum computing software platform. Infleqtion’s systems are already in use by the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, the U.K. government, and in multiple collaborations with NVIDIA. Infleqtion, in collaboration with NVIDIA, published the world’s first demonstration of a materials science application using logical qubits. With operations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, Infleqtion meets the demands of government and commercial customers across the space, defense, energy, finance and telecommunications sectors.
Rescuers are searching for nearly 1,400 people, most of them tourists, who are missing after a catastrophic flash flood hit Nepal and Tibet, thundering down valleys, obliterating entire villages and killing at least 356 people.
Efforts to locate those missing – including hundreds of people from India, the US, UK, Australia and Canada – have been complicated by the destruction of dozens of bridges and almost 25 miles (40km) of roads in the mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrims.
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, PC; Asobo Studio The medieval franchise is transplanted to Crete, conjuring action-adventure magic from familiar ingredients
The path in Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy is a familiar one. Amid ancient ruins and sun-dappled gorges, a young woman, Sophia, dutifully treads the same footsteps as a Minoan warrior from millennia ago, one with whom she seems to share a visionary connection. The “resonance” between these two characters is made clear by their echoing actions – a crank pushed in the bronze age that still works in the medieval present, for example. Through these spliced timelines, it becomes clear that Sophia, compelled by her supernatural gift, possesses little agency. Destiny beckons her forwards.
This is a smart meta concept for a game that, at its most basic level, boils down to keeping your left thumb planted firmly on the analogue stick, always pushing Sophia onwards in linear fashion. You jostle her through ornate corridors rendered as higgledy-piggledy pirate camps and cobbled Venetian streets. For the greater part of the game, you propel her through the Minoan remains of Crete, which harbour a dark and terrible secret. It is classic third-person action-adventure fare, building on the template laid down by the likes of Tomb Raider and then refined and complicated by titles such as The Last of Us. Little, from an interactive perspective, surprises: you dash, vault and swing between teetering podiums, squeeze through tiny gaps in rock and crouch behind conveniently placed walls to avoid enemies.
It’s about ‘kitchen-table populism’: focusing on Americans’ day-to-day economic struggles
This year’s Democratic primaries look and sound a lot more populist than usual. Brian Poindexter, a union iron worker running on a “workers first” message, won a House primary outside Cleveland. Sherrod Brown is mounting a Senate comeback in Ohio on the same “rigged system” message that has allowed him to outshine other Democrats in Ohio. Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger who built his career fighting corporate landowners, is the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine. And Josh Turek, a self-described “prairie populist”, is on the Senate ballot in Iowa.
In fact, according to research we’ve conducted through the Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP), more than 70% of 2026 Democratic candidates now rely on populist rhetoric in their campaigns, laying the blame for our broken system on rich elites of one kind or another.
Letters obtained by Guardian and AP contradict testimony that 2019 visit to Samoa had ‘nothing to do with vaccines’
Newly obtained documents indicate that the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, lied during two congressional hearings last year, when he told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines”.
Letters obtained by the Guardian and the Associated Press contradict that testimony. In one he wrote to the Samoan prime minister before the trip, Kennedy explicitly said he wanted to study the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in the Pacific island nation. In it, he used the words “vaccine” or “vaccination” eight times.
The new Federal Communications Commission report signals a major retreat from the former administration’s goal of connecting every American to gigabit-speed broadband.
Plane was headed for airport in Seldovia from Anchorage, and was submerged in water after the crash
A small plane carrying four people crashed into shallow waters next to a remote coastal town in Alaska on Wednesday, killing everyone onboard, according to officials.
The Piper PA-24 was headed for the airport in the small town of Seldovia after taking off from Anchorage, according to a statement from the Alaska department of public safety. Seldovia’s airport is about 136 miles (219km) south-west of Anchorage.
TAMPA, Fla., Aug. 27, 2026 — PowerCompute, Inc., a Bitcoin treasury and mining company expanding into high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, has announced that the graphics processing unit (GPU) deployed at its Oklahoma facility has achieved Verified status on the Vast.ai compute marketplace — the highest status available to an individual machine — and that the Company has ordered a second professional-grade GPU for the site, anticipated to be installed in September 2026.
Vast.ai assigns Verified status through automated, continuous evaluation of a machine’s reliability and performance. Beyond the machine level, the platform maintains a facility-level designation — Certified Datacenter status, which carries Secure Cloud eligibility and higher placement in the marketplace — whose requirements include ISO/IEC 27001 certification and a minimum of five listed GPU servers. PowerCompute has begun the ISO/IEC 27001 certification process for its Oklahoma facility and is deploying capital toward the five-server threshold. The Company intends to apply for Certified Datacenter status once both requirements are satisfied and can give no assurance that it will qualify.
“Verified status confirms the machine meets the platform’s reliability standards, and our discussions with Vast.ai gave us a concrete standard to build against rather than a guess — initially we plan to certify our Oklahoma facility and deploy a minimum of four verified servers,” said Bruce M. Rodgers, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of PowerCompute. “Those are fixed, attainable goals and we will report against them. Our first machine showed us that micro-scaler HPC — the tier we occupy, below the hyperscalers — earns real revenue against demand the hyperscalers are creating, and we believe we can supply that compute at a fraction of their capital cost.”
About PowerCompute
PowerCompute, Inc. (NASDAQ: PWCM) is a Bitcoin treasury and mining company expanding into high-performance computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Tampa, Florida, the Company operates 26 megawatts of wholly-owned power infrastructure across facilities in Oklahoma and Mississippi. The Company also operates a technology-enabled specialty finance business providing funding to nonprofit community associations primarily in the State of Florida. For more information, please visit https://www.power-compute.com.
Good morning. Meta has agreed to significant changes to its Instagram and Facebook apps in a settlement that ended a landmark lawsuit. The agreement curtails a major trial in California and will require the social media company to pay up to $18bn. Meta agreed to establish safeguards for teenage users, including daily usage limits and blocks on night-time use nationwide in the US.
California and 28 other US states sued the $1.36tn (£1tn) company over allegations that Meta deliberately designed addictive products that hooked young people, leading to mental health issues, including anxiety, depression and suicide. As part of the settlement, the company denies wrongdoing.
What will be changing in the apps? The biggest alteration is that Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, is now required to make many of its safety limitations the default setting for accounts created by teenagers, a pivot from its previous opt-in approach to child safety. Nick Robins-Early and Johana Bhuiyan explain more in this piece: six key takeaways from the end of the Meta trial.
Will other companies be affected? Meta is putting the agreement forward as a precedent for other social media companies to follow. The company’s chief legal officer, CJ Mahoney, said: “Because teens move fluidly across dozens of apps, we need an industry-wide solution. We therefore call on our industry peers … to implement this new framework.” Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap face thousands more similar US lawsuits brought by families, individuals, school districts and other attorneys general.
Are campaigners satisfied with the result? Arturo Béjar, an ex-Facebook employee and whistleblower, said the outcome “is not an all-clear to say the product is safe. The limitations that are in the agreement are the equivalent of saying: ‘Well, you can smoke as many cigarettes as you can in two hours a day’. It doesn’t make the cigarettes any safer.”
How did it happen?As this visual guide explains, at 8.37am on Wednesday an enormous section of a glacier in the Himalayas sheared free and crashed on to the valley floor in Nepal’s Langtang national park, about 60km north of the capital, Kathmandu, near the mountainous Nepal-Tibet border.
City residents had accused council of giving ‘free rein’ to campaign promoting England flags
Birmingham city council is seeking an injunction to stop members of an anti-migrant group from erecting flags, including union jack and St George’s flags, on public infrastructure across the city.
A nationwide campaign to give prominence to the England flag, which resulted in thousands of St George’s crosses being flown from lamp-posts, roundabouts and other public infrastructure, is believed to have started last summer in Birmingham.
It’s always a special day on OSNews when Haiku has a new release. While OSNews was founded in 1997, it wasn’t until 2001, when Eugenia took over and relaunched the site, that we really got going. Eugenia came from BeNews, a popular BeOS news website, which shut down in the wake of Be, Inc’s infamous “focus shift” away from BeOS as a general purpose desktop operating system. BeOS continues to have a special place on OSNews ever since.
Today marks the release of Haiku R1/beta6, the first official Haiku release in two years. As such, this new beta covers a monumental amount of progress since beta5, progress I’ve reported on diligently. The highlights of this new beta include a port of Firefox (including branding) and many of its forks, much improve support for Qemu, a new memory allocated largely based on the one from OpenBSD, and improved support for various filesystems. Of course, there’s a massive list of performance improvements, memory management changes, as well as a truly massive number of new application ports.
It’s important to note, as I usually do, that while these Haiku beta releases serve as patches of calm in rough seas, Haiku is generally stable and capable enough that using the project’s nightly releases is usually a totally acceptable way of installing and running the operating system. If you’re not comfortable running nightly releases, however, and haven’t tried Haiku since the previous beta, you’re in for a massive overall improvement.
Natalie McDonald, 34, and Valentina Foster, seven, died in fire less than mile from A66 crash, with police not ruling out links
A woman who died in a house fire along with her seven-year-old niece has been described as “a beautiful soul”.
Natalie McDonald, 34, died along with her niece Valentina Foster, seven, in the blaze in Grangetown, near Middlesbrough, in the early hours of Wednesday.
Analysis by Institute for Policy Studies found that between 2019 and 2025, CEO compensation increased 41.4%
The average CEO of the US’s 100 largest, lowest-paying corporations earned 614 times more than their average worker last year, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
IPS’s latest executive excess report analyzed compensation at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay. Between 2019 and 2025, CEO compensation increased 41.4%, unadjusted for inflation, twice as much as the median worker pay increased at these firms during the same period, at 20.7%.
CISA says more than 100 internet-exposed U.S. water and wastewater systems were targeted in July, often through programmable logic controllers connected directly to cellular modems. "That's the first time the feds have put a number on the digital intrusions, but they have yet to attribute the campaign, widely suspected to be linked to Iran, to a particular group," reports The Register. From the report: Suspected Iranian attackers targeted water and wastewater facilities across at least a dozen states in July, including internet-exposed PLCs. While neither federal nor state officials have identified all 12, we know that the cyberattacks occurred at mostly small, rural utilities in Minnesota, Michigan, Georgia, South Dakota, and New Jersey. "This is very serious. What stands out isn't any single incident. It's the scale," Matt Hartman, chief strategy officer at the Merlin Group and CISA's former acting head of cyber, told The Register.
"More than 100 water systems with internet-exposed assets were hit in a single month, which points to a systemic vulnerability across the sector, not a run of isolated, unlucky targets," Hartman said. "Much of this infrastructure runs on operational technology that was built for closed, physical environments. It was never designed with the assumption that it would be reachable from the open internet."
John Gallagher, VP at Viakoo, an OT and IoT cybersecurity provider, told us that while 100 systems represent a small fraction - only about 0.5 percent - of water utilities in the US, the "real threat is that these are test runs for a larger-scale attack." While the 100-plus water incidents occurred in July, just last week five US federal agencies warned that attackers are using AI-generated exploitation scripts to break into internet-exposed Siemens S7 Series PLCs at water, manufacturing, energy, and other critical facilities.
"This appears to be a continuation of the same suite of activity we suspect is affiliated with Iran targeting PLCs," Halcyon Ransomware Research Center SVP Cynthia Kaiser told The Register a week ago. "Iran-affiliated actors and adversaries are actively targeting a wide swath of operational technology because these PLCs underpin essential health, safety, and critical infrastructure across society," Kaiser, a former FBI cyber division deputy assistant director, added. CISA urges organizations to keep PLCs off the public internet, route remote access through VPNs or gateways, replace default passwords, enable stronger authentication, and restrict access to allowlisted IP addresses from trusted OT systems.
The number of young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) across the UK fell below 1 million in the latest three-month period.
In a boost to the government’s efforts to reverse years of rising economic inactivity among people aged 16 to 24, the Office for National Statistics said its surveys showed there were an estimated 981,000 Neets in April to June, compared with 1,012,000 in January to March.
The UK government expects the Instagram owner Meta to roll out the same protections for children in Britain as those it agreed in the US on Wednesday, as part of a court settlement that could cost the company up to $18bn (£13bn).
Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, said on Thursday he did not want young people in the US to have “a higher rate of protection” than those in Britain, after Meta settled a lawsuit brought by dozens of US states accusing the company of harming children with dangerous products.
The Trump administration intervened in a Swiss criminal investigation of Alejandro Betancourt, who has been helping Washington as an intermediary in Caracas.
People are becoming convinced AI chatbots have helped them make scientific breakthroughs, cure diseases or invent new technologies. What does this reveal about a technology used by more than a billion people? A new series from The Guardian Investigates, coming soon
Ryan Mackenzie, running for re-election, is accused of ‘fabricating’ a career in the real estate industry
The Republican congressman Ryan Mackenzie has been accused of embellishing his résumé with private sector experience in real estate sales amid an acrimonious showdown over his Pennsylvania seat.
Mackenzie, who has previously been accused of lying about his age on Tinder, “was a real estate salesperson licensed in PA”, according to his LinkedIn profile, and biographies have consistently listed it has his former profession.
As the US president struggles to end his war with Iran, and with his approval ratings hitting the lowest levels of his second term, he has in recent weeks posted a series of AI-generated images of himself alongside key historical American figures.
The purpose of CIA Director John Ratcliffe's visit to Moscow this week was to warn Russia not to attack NATO member states, people familiar with the matter said, amid U.S. assessments that Russia could try to test NATO.
Two months after Iris Dayana Monterroso Lemus lost her son to a stillbirth last year while detained by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the Trump administration issued a public response to her allegations that she did not receive prenatal care.
“This reporting is absolutely FALSE,” said Tricia McLaughlin, then a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, in a statement. “Iris Dayana Monterroso-Lemus had FULL medical, prenatal care.”
The statement, labeled as a “Fact Check,” said the Guatemalan-born Monterroso Lemus had “received prenatal care, including an ultrasound and OB-GYN visit.”
Neither side of the disputed account provided evidence to back up their claims.
Now, federal government documents obtained by The Intercept appear to undermine the Trump administration’s version of events. The documents show a lack of basic care needed for a healthy pregnancy, according to expert analysis. One document from an outside healthcare center made after the stillbirth describes a “pregnancy complicated by lack of PNC” — meaning prenatal care.
“The administration was engaged in CYA — cover your ass,” said Dr. Andrea Schecter, an OB-GYN physician with a decade’s experience working with high-risk pregnancies, including those of immigrants. “They know that what they provided is probably not sufficient care.”
“Flouting the Directive”
The new records, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, include documents from Monterroso Lemus’s visit to Ochsner LSU Center, a healthcare facility in Shreveport, Louisiana, after she complained for days about not feeling fetal movement. It was the only recorded instance of her leaving Richwood Correctional Center, an ICE detention facility run by the family-owned private prison giant LaSalle Corrections.
The Ochsner LSU documents, produced after the stillbirth, say that Monterroso Lemus had told medical staff at Richwood that “this pregnancy didn’t feel right a couple days ago but nothing was done.”
Other new records include timelines produced by ICE that show a referral for an OB-GYN appointment but don’t indicate that any visit was scheduled or took place, or that Monterroso Lemus ever received an ultrasound.
Asked about the new documents, a spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security simply repeated the previous claims that Monterroso Lemus received regular, timely prenatal care without responding to queries.
On May 9, ten days after losing her son, Monterroso Lemus was shackled, put on a plane, and deported to Guatemala, causing her postpartum visit to be canceled.
Ten days after losing her son, Monterroso Lemus was shackled, put on a plane, and deported to Guatemala.
“Everyone knows that ICE and DHS lie on a daily basis — and Americans have witnessed the deadly consequences of this administration’s reckless actions for nearly two years,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., when asked about the case. “The Trump administration’s barbaric treatment of pregnant women in immigration custody is unconscionable.”
In fact, the Trump administration is detaining many more pregnant women than before. During the Biden administration, for example, ICE would detain about a dozen pregnant women nationally during a year, said Eunice Cho, an immigration attorney with expertise in detention conditions. During a congressional visit to Louisiana’s Basile detention center last April, however, there were 14 in that one facility.
According to a 2021 ICE directive, “Generally, ICE should not detain, arrest, or take into custody for an administrative violation of the immigration laws individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum, or nursing unless release is prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances exist.”
Cho said, “The Trump administration is flouting the directive.”
Murray introduced legislation last year to codify in federal law the notion that pregnant women should not be detained, as well as other standards. The bill remains in committee.
“This case stands out as an example of the enormity of the tragedy pregnant women and families are facing because of the Trump administration,” Cho said, of Monterroso Lemus’s experience. “The bottom line is: No one deserves to be treated like this.”
The Timeline
Monterroso Lemus, now 38 years old, met her neighbor Gary Bivens in Lenoir City, Tennessee, about six years ago. The pair began to grow close about four years ago, after Bivens lost his wife to a heart condition.
Monterroso Lemus became pregnant, and the couple had an OB-GYN visit in February. They had plans to get married when ICE detained her in mid-March.
After ICE transferred Monterroso Lemus multiple times, on April 2, she arrived at Richwood Correctional Center, in Monroe, Louisiana.
Most of the documents obtained by The Intercept are emails between officials with ICE and at its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, where officials sought to rebut Monterroso Lemus’s statements to the media by compiling information on her medical care while detained.
The timeline included in the documents, annotated and labeled as a “[f]ull overview of her care,” begins on April 2. Versions of the timeline are included in several other places in the documents.
The timeline has nine entries under what is called a “List of medical visits.” Four of them are visits to a nurse. Two others are labeled “Mental Health Visit.”
On April 17, according to the timeline, she visited the on-site medical provider for what is labeled “prenatal care non–compliance.”
Monterroso Lemus told The Intercept that visit was due to her unwillingness to continue taking 12 pills daily, including what she said may have been vitamins and others for constipation and headaches. She had been taking them for three days.
“I felt that they made me sick,” she said. Also, “other people told me to watch out for the medicine they give you.”
On April 29, after several days of not feeling any fetal movement, Monterroso Lemus was transferred to Ochsner LSU. In the presence of several federal guards, she delivered a stillborn fetus at about 23 weeks of pregnancy.
Monterroso Lemus said she had tried to get medical attention during the days before the tragedy.
“The worst part is, I told them I felt bad — and they didn’t pay attention to me,” she said.
What’s missing from the timeline — any indication of having an OB-GYN visit before she stopped feeling fetal movement or of receiving any ultrasound — makes it difficult to understand what caused the stillbirth.
“There are some reasons this could’ve happened that would have been identified by comprehensive prenatal care,” Schecter, the OB-GYN expert, said. “At some level, they know this.”
No Ultrasound?
A separate timeline in the documents refers to medical care Monterroso Lemus received during the several days in late March that she was detained at Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama. There, it says, she got a “fetal doppler,” which measures fetal heartbeat, but is not the same as an ultrasound.
Nonetheless, the “Fact Check” DHS published months later read, “she received prenatal care including a fetal doppler ultrasound.”
Schecter told the Intercept, “A fetal doppler is just audio, but it is not the same as an ultrasound, which is visual.”
“That is not an adequate assessment of the health and well-being of the pregnancy. It absolutely is not full prenatal care,” she said.
“Full prenatal care would include an ultrasound and an anatomy scan. We already know that doesn’t generally happen in immigration detention.”
Amy Zeidan, a professor of emergency medicine at Atlanta’s Emory University who researches health care in immigration detention, said, “Full prenatal care would include an ultrasound and an anatomy scan.”
“We already know that doesn’t generally happen in immigration detention,” said Zeidan.
Of the DHS “Fact Check,” Zeidan said, “They’re not being truthful about what happened.”
The experience Monterroso Lemus faced in ICE detention is not unique, according to several experts consulted by the Intercept.
“Unfortunately, this story is consistent with reports made by pregnant women in ICE detention,” said Cho, the immigration attorney. “There’s a lack of prenatal care, indifference to very serious symptoms, and a lack of treatment.”
“Waiting for My Baby”
By the end of May, the Nashville Banner had published an article in which Monterroso Lemus said, “They didn’t give me medical attention.”
The remark touched off a flurry of activity within ICE and DHS.
On June 25, at 4:41 p.m., McLaughlin, then a DHS spokesperson, wrote to another official whose name is redacted: “Wow so this is all garbage claims. This is FALSE. She had FULL medical, prenatal care. We have documentation to show it.”
The following day, DHS published its “Fact Check” — the same document the agency sent The Intercept when confronted with discrepancies.
Meanwhile, Monterroso Lemus and Bevins haven’t seen each other for 15 months. They communicate by WhatsApp regularly, using a translation app. On separate calls with The Intercept, both described suffering depression.
Bivens drives 100 miles every day to and from his $26-an-hour job as an iron worker. He regularly sends part of his paycheck to Monterroso Lemus. He says he’s bought a plane ticket to Guatemala for December and has created a GoFundMe to help pay for the cost of moving his tools and other things needed for the couple to start a new life in the Central American country.
The GoFundMe includes a photo of her holding her baby, taken in Ochsner.
“I don’t consider the way they treated her the American way.”
He has also engaged attorneys and sued the federal government.
“I don’t consider the way they treated her the American way,” he said. “My family goes back a long way in Tennessee. I have a great-grandfather who fought for the Confederates.”
He added, “I just want someone to be held accountable.”
Monterroso Lemus said she doesn’t think much about the officials who set in motion the events leading to the loss of her son and deportation.
“God will take care of all of them,” she said.
Bivens said he keeps the ashes of his son on a table by his bed in Lenoir City. It took him a while to figure out, but he’s obtained the paperwork needed to take the ashes with him to Guatemala in December.
“I’m waiting for my baby,” said Monterroso Lemus. “That would give me some peace.”
The senator’s remarks reflect a turning point in Democrats’ attacks on the president. What should we make of them?
Apparently, he likes to say her name with a French accent. “Na-tah-lee!” the president cries out, in that affected tone of faux-formality that one might use with a person they love but do not quite respect, and she comes running, her thin legs teetering on her heels.
Natalie Harp, Trump’s 35-year-old “executive assistant”, was an odd recurring character in the latest blockbuster Trump administration book, Regime Change, by the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. In the book, Harp features like a silent sentinel, ever present but eerily quiet as Trump rants and raves. It’s not exactly clear what the scope of her responsibilities is; though, as Jamelle Bouie points out, the fact that she evidently helps run the president’s social media accounts, which can sway markets and influence his foreign counterparts, makes her one of the most powerful people in the federal government.
Why Should Delaware Care? The Mother African Union Church is one of the oldest Black-founded congregations in United States, serving as a refuge for generations of people. In May, a fire destroyed the church building and officials are still investigating its cause.
In May, Wilmington’s Black community was hit with devastating news about a fire that destroyed the historic Mother African Union Church.
Almost three months later, Wilmington Fire Marshal Deputy Chief Andre Cooper said the cause of the blaze, which sent flames towering 40 feet above the church, is still “undetermined.” He also said the investigation will remain open indefinitely.
Cooper declined to comment further when pressed about why the investigation was taking so long, and whether officials had ruled out any potential causes.
He said he needed to protect the integrity of the case.
While the length of the investigation might frustrate members of the community, one fire expert said it is not uncommon.
University of Maryland professor Jim Milke told Spotlight Delaware that an “undetermined” status at this stage in a fire investigation can be expected, especially when access to the physical area of the blaze has been limited.
“That makes it difficult to inspect the detailed area to see what equipment was in the area or identify if any accelerants were used to start the fire,” said Milke, a professor with the Department of Fire Protection Engineering.
What is known is that shortly after the fire, Wilmington’s Land Use and Planning Department worked with an engineer to assess the structural stability of the building. The analysis ultimately determined that the site was too unstable for fire marshals to enter safely, said Elliott Larkin, director of the city’s Land Use and Planning Department.
Larkin noted that investigators could use an unmanned assessment via drones, but he did not indicate whether one had occurred.
“Due to the assessed instability and the water level within the basement, firefighters/officials would not enter the site physically, and an unmanned assessment, if possible, would be used instead,” Larkin said.
Ultimately, the church structure that remained after the fire, including its trusses and stone walls, was demolished.
While officials have not pointed to a cause of the fire, they took to Facebook in June to refute rumors that had been circulating about it, noting that “any information being disseminated on social media is false.”
Among the rumors circulating at that time was that an e-bike had caught fire inside, while others reported hearing a loud boom. Neither has been substantiated by city officials.
The Rev. Ronald Whitaker speaks outside the Mother African Union Church a day after a fire destroyed its building. SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
During an interview Wednesday, the Rev. Ronald Whitaker, senior pastor at the historic church, says he is excited that officials have not yet closed the investigation yet, but noted he understands the cause may not be found because of the magnitude of the fire.
“When you have a devastating fire like we had, that is maybe the case where you’ll never know,” he said.
Whitaker also said that an insurance company is conducting its own parallel investigation into the fire.
North Franklin Street still home
A day after the May 17 fire, church leaders, congregants, and city and state officials gathered to mourn the loss of the church, which stood as the physical space for one of Delaware’s oldest Black-founded congregations.
During a press conference, Wilmington Fire Chief John Looney said fire investigations of this significance “could take a couple weeks.” At the time, the engineer’s structural assessment had not been completed, Looney said.
Also during the press conference, church leaders vowed to rebuild. In response, several elected officials pledged support, including New Castle County Executive Marcus Henry who said he would provide public dollars for the effort.
Whitaker said he and his team plan to rebuild in the same location.
“As far as I’m concerned, 812 North Franklin Street is still the Mother African Union Church home,” he said.
City building inspectors review the damage to Mother African Union Church the morning after the May 17 fire. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
The congregation preserves its legacy
The news that the cause is undetermined comes amid the congregation’s annual August Quarterly festival, an event that was started by the founder of the church, Peter Spencer, two centuries ago. It celebrates the church’s founding and African American religious freedom in the United States.
The event spans through the last week of August, with church officials and other community members hosting events throughout Wilmington.
Whitaker says the church will continue to spearhead that event, saying its significance is at an “all-time high.”
Flames engulf the Mother African Union Church building in Wilmington during an early Sunday morning fire. | PHOTO COURTESY OF WILMINGTON FIRE
“We’re not going to let what happened on May the 17th be the end of our story. In many ways, it’s a comment to what our ‘next’ is,” he said.
After the fire, Whitaker said the church continued to hold its services at the Congo Legacy Center. He also noted that the congregation will soon announce its next space for church services.
Also debuting recently at the Delaware Historical Society is an exhibit entitled “Ancestral Dream, Living Blueprint.” The exhibit showcases the Mother African Union Church’s history and legacy through archival documents and interactive displays.
The display was originally designed to be placed in the church prior to the fire. The church had been working on the exhibit for the past three years, Whitaker said. The exhibition will be on display in the Mitchell Center Theater in the museum, located at 504 N. Market St. in Wilmington, until Oct. 17.
The University of Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens will start their second season of Conference USA (CUSA) play on October 2. Their conference schedule includes five returning foes and three new conference opponents.
The Fightin’ Blue Hens competed well in their first season in CUSA last year. The Blue Hens finished last season with a 4-4 conference record that included the program’s first CUSA win against Florida International University (FIU) on the road.
This season, FIU will travel to Newark for a rematch against the Blue Hens and Delaware will travel to Tennessee for another duel against Middle Tennessee — a game that UD won last season. The Blue Hens will also face three new conference opponents — Missouri State, New Mexico State and Kennesaw State — in their second year in CUSA.
Here’s a look at what awaits the Fightin’ Blue Hens in their conference schedule:
Blue Hens vs Liberty University, Oct. 2 @ Delaware Stadium, 7:00 p.m.
The Blue Hens will start their conference slate with a meeting against the Liberty Flames. The Flames defeated the Blue Hens, 59-30, last season in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the two programs’ first meeting all-time. Liberty’s 59 points were the most UD allowed last season.
The Flames finished the 2025-2026 campaign with a 4-8 overall record and a 3-5 CUSA record. All four of Liberty’s wins came at home. The offense finished eighth in the conference in points scored and the defense finished third in the conference, allowing 318 points across their 12 games.
The program has a mix of continuity and new faces within its coaching staff heading into the season. Head coach Jamey Chadwell is entering his fourth season at the helm with a new defensive coordinator — Shawn Quinn — and former co-offensive coordinator, Newland Isaac, now the lone offensive coordinator. Former co-offensive coordinator Willy Korn announced he was leaving the industry in December.
The team welcomed in 28 transfer players during the transfer window, 17 of which play on the offensive side of the ball. One of the reasons for the offensive focus is the departure of running back Evan Dickens to Boston College this offseason. Dickens ranked second in CUSA with 1,339 rushing yards and tied for first in the conference with 16 rushing touchdowns. Liberty brought in five transfer running backs in hopes of filling the void, including senior Kanye Udoh from Arizona State. Udoh rushed for 240 yards and two touchdowns in limited action with the Sun Devils last year, but was once a 1,000 yard rusher at Army in 2024.
Blue Hens at Middle Tennessee State, Oct. 13 @ Johnny “Red” Floyd Stadium, 7:00 p.m.
UD’s second conference matchup features another rematch in a different setting. The Blue Hens will travel 761 miles from Newark to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to take on the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders on a Tuesday night.
Delaware won last year’s matchup between the two teams, 31-28, scoring 24 points in the first half. Quarterback Nick Minicucci threw four touchdown passes in the win with Kyre Duplessis on the receiving end of half of them. Duplessis recorded his first career multi-touchdown game in the win.
MTSU finished last season with a 3-9 overall record and a 2-6 conference record with both conference wins coming in the final two games of the season. It was the program’s second consecutive 3-9 finish. The Blue Raiders finished last season with the conference’s third worst scoring defense and offense.
Blue Raider head coach Derek Mason addressed the offensive struggles in the offseason with the hiring of new offensive coordinator, Anthony Scelfo. Scelfo was the offensive coordinator for Southeastern Louisiana University — a Division One Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) program. Under Scelfo’s leadership, Southeastern Louisiana ranked in the top 35 nationally in scoring offense and top 40 in rushing offense last season at the FCS level.
Scelfo’s prowess in the run game will be important as the Blue Raiders try to fill the void left by the transfer of their leading rusher from a year ago, Jekail Middlebrook. Middlebrook transferred to the University of Virginia this offseason following a season in which he ranked 6th in CUSA in total rushing yards and 23rd in total receiving yards.
The good news for MTSU is the return of leading receiver Cam’ron Lacy and starting quarterback Roman Gagliano. Gagliano started the final three games of the season and connected with Lacy five times resulting in 106 yards through the air.
This game will be the fourth meeting between the two programs. UD is 3-0.
Blue Hens vs Missouri State, Oct. 20 @ Delaware Stadium, 7:00 p.m.
The Blue Hens and Bears are the conference’s newest programs and will match up for the first time on October 20.
Similar to the Blue Hens, the Bears had a successful first season in FBS football. Missouri State finished the year with a 7-5 overall record, a 5-3 record in CUSA play and a bowl game appearance against Arkansas State in the Xbox Bowl. The Bears lost that game, 34-28.
Missouri State enters the season with a new head coach, following the departure of head coach Ryan Beard to Coastal Carolina. The Blue Hens will face Coastal Carolina during their non-conference schedule.
(To read about UD’s non-conference schedule click here.)
The new head coach for the Bears is former Southern Methodist University (SMU) offensive coordinator, Casey Woods. Woods’ was SMU’s offensive coordinator for the past four seasons and in those seasons the offense averaged over 30 points per game. Last season, the Mustangs ranked top five in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in points per game, yards per game and passing yards per game. Woods’ takes over a team that ranked seventh in CUSA in both scoring offense and defense.
Blue Hens at Western Kentucky University, Oct. 27 @ Houchens Industries-L.T. Smith Stadium, 7:00 p.m.
The Blue Hens will travel to Bowling Green, Kentucky, for the first time since 1981 for a rematch against the Hilltoppers at the end of October.
Western Kentucky was the only team to defeat the Blue Hens in Delaware Stadium last season, spoiling UD’s first CUSA home game with a 27-24 victory over the Blue Hens. The Hilltoppers finished the season with a 6-2 conference record, a 9-4 overall record and a bowl game victory over Southern Mississippi in the 2025 New Orleans Bowl.
UD runs the ball against Western Kentucky University in first home CUSA game in program history. Photo Credit: George Rotsch.
Western Kentucky finished last season with the conference’s best scoring offense and returns its second leading receiver K.D. Hutchinson. Hutchinson finished last season with 66 receptions — second only to Sean Wilson in CUSA — and 618 receiving yards in 13 games. Hutchinson pairs with redshirt senior Moussa Barry (34 catches and 488 receiving yards last season) to create a dynamic receiving duo for returning quarterback Rodney Tisdale Jr.
Tisadale Jr. appeared in nine games last season and started the Hilltoppers’ final six games. As the starter, Tisdale threw for over 1,000 yards and scored ten total touchdowns.
The Blue Hens hold a 2-1 historical series advantage.
Blue Hens at Kennesaw State University, Nov. 7 @ Walens Family Field at Fifth Third Stadium, 3:00 p.m.
The Blue Hens will face the reigning CUSA champion, Kennesaw State Owls, on the road in the first matchup between the two programs.
The Owls finished last season with a 10-4 overall record and a 7-1 conference record. The team’s only conference loss came against Jacksonville State, but that loss was rectified in the CUSA championship game, when the Owls defeated the Gamecocks, 19-15. The win earned the program its first CUSA championship in just its second season in the conference after finishing their first CUSA season with a 2-6 conference record.
Kennesaw State was led by a strong defense that ranked fourth in the conference in opponents points per game last season. The Owls defense finished the year tied for first in the conference in sacks (31), second in red zone defense and second in passing defense. Linebacker Baron Hopson was a big part of the success of the Owls’ defense and he is returning to the program for his graduate season. Hopson was the CUSA Co-Defensive Player of the Year last season and was named to the 2026 Lombardi Award preseason watch list entering the season.
On the offensive end, The Owls enter the 2026 season after ranking sixth in the conference in scoring a year ago. Kennesaw State will have a new quarterback under center this season following the departure of last season’s starter, Amari Odom. Odom threw for over 2,500 yards last season and transferred to Syracuse during the offseason.
Ironically, the Owls new starting quarterback is former Syracuse quarterback, Rickie Collins. Collins was the only quarterback of a 28 player transfer class the Owls brought in this offseason. Collins appeared in seven games for Syracuse last season, completing 97 of his 181 passing attempts for 1,042 yards and six touchdowns. ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Collins as the Owls starter on August 19, according to ESPN.
Blue Hens vs Florida International University, Nov. 14 @ Delaware Stadium, 3:00 p.m.
The Blue Hens’ game against the Panthers is the team’s penultimate home game of the season and the second game between the programs in their history. UD won the first meeting last season, 38-16, earning the program’s first ever road CUSA win.
FIU went on to finish the season with seven wins and a 5-3 conference record, making the Servpro First Responders Bowl. The Panthers lost the bowl game, 57-20, against UTSA breaking a four game winning streak the team compiled to end the regular season. It was the Panthers’ first bowl game appearance since 2019.
FIU will try and build on the success amassed during head coach Willie Simmons’ first year at the helm. In Simmons’ first season, the Panthers had the conference’s third highest scoring offense, fourth best rushing attack and tied Kennesaw State for the conference lead in team sacks. The team returns a strong amount of its talent especially on the defensive end, bringing back the team’s sack leader — defensive lineman Kenton Simmons — and linebacker Percy Courtney Jr. who led the team in tackles for loss last season.
The offense is going to rely more on new talent, following key departures from last season’s top three unit.
FIU’s starting quarterback from a season ago — Keyone Jenkins — transferred to UCF in the offseason along with the Panthers’ leading receiver Alex Perry who transferred to Illinois. The program’s leading rusher — Kejon Owens — moved on to the NFL, leaving the program without its top three contributors going into the 2026 season.
Simmons’ restocked the offense with a pair of impactful transfers — former Appalachian State quarterback JJ Kohl and former Rhode Island receiver Greg Gaines III — during the portal window, adding their production to returning running back Anthony Carrie’s.
Carrie finished as CUSA’s 22nd best rusher while playing behind Owens and is set to take on a bigger role this season. Kohl played in eight games for the Mountaineers last year, throwing for 1,465 yards and 12 touchdowns. Kohl only threw an interception in one of those eight games. Gaines III was one of 22 FCS wide receivers to eclipse 1,000 yards receiving last year and finished the season with four receiving touchdowns in addition to his 1,018 receiving yards.
The trio of Kohl, Carrie and Gaines III will be a big part of FIU’s offense in the 2026 season.
Blue Hens at New Mexico State University, Nov. 21 @ Aggie Memorial Stadium, 3:00 p.m.
Delaware will complete its road schedule with the program’s first meeting against the New Mexico State Aggies in late November.
The Aggies finished the 2025 season with a 4-8 overall record and 2-6 conference record. The defense fared better than the offense ranking sixth in CUSA in points allowed per game compared to the second-worst CUSA mark in points scored per game, last season. The defense returns a strong amount of its talent from a year ago including defensive back Bernock Iya who was tied for second in CUSA with four interceptions.
The offense will be headlined by some newcomers in addition to returning wide receiver, TK King. King led CUSA in receiving yards per game last season hauling in 41 catches for 588 yards and three touchdowns in eight games. King will be catching passes from a new quarterback with Furman transfer Trey Hedden getting the starting nod, according to the Las Cruces Sun News. Hedden threw for 2,967 yards and 17 touchdowns in 12 games last season.
The Aggies’ rushing attack ranked last in CUSA totaling less than 1,000 yards on the ground last season. The program addressed the problem in the offseason bringing former Delaware State running back, James Jones, into the backfield to pair with senior runner, Dijon Stanley. Stanley tallied over 300 rushing yards and two touchdowns in 75 carries last year while Jones rushed for over 900 yards on 98 carries for the Hornets.
Blue Hens vs Jacksonville State University, Nov. 28 @ Delaware Stadium, 3:30 p.m.
UD finishes its 2026 regular season campaign with a matchup against the CUSA runner-up from last season, the Jacksonville State Gamecocks.
The Gamecocks earned the program’s first victory against the Blue Hens last season. The Delaware offense struggled to maintain possession against the Jacksonville State defense, turning the ball over twice in the first half leading to a pair of Gamecock touchdowns. The win was a spring board for the Gamecocks leading to a three game winning streak against conference opponents.
The momentum from the winning streak helped the Gamecocks finish the season with a 9-5 overall record and 7-1 conference record. The only conference game Jacksonville State lost was the CUSA Championship game to Kennesaw State. The program ended its season with a win against Troy in the Cramton Bowl.
The roster retained much of its talent from last season creating strong continuity for second year head coach, Charles Kelly. The biggest returner is quarterback, Caden Creel. Creel played in 14 games last season amassing 1,514 passing yards in addition to 1,076 rushing yards — fourth best in CUSA. Wide receiver Deondre Johnson is returning to the program after leading the team in receiving yards and will pair with Murray State transfer Darius Cannon on the outside.
On the defensive end, leading tackler Mac Sanders is set to return as well as Walker O’Steen, running back a linebacker duo that accounted for 169 total tackles. Defensive back Tre’Quan Fegans recorded nine pass breakups last season and is returning to the program for a fifth year. The Gamecock defense ranked third in CUSA allowing just over 25 points per game last season.
The biggest departure for the program came in the offensive backfield. CUSA’s leading rusher, Cam Cook, departed the program to play for former Jax State head coach Rich Rodriguez at West Virginia. Cook rushed for 1,659 yards and scored 16 rushing touchdowns last season earning him CUSA Player of the Year honors. The program will most likely turn to returning running backs such as Khristian Lando, Justus Savage and Lucas Farrington to collectively fill the void Cook left.
The two programs have played each other three times throughout their histories. The Blue Hens hold a 2-1 series lead. This game will be the first meeting between the two teams held in Delaware since 1978.
The Blue Hens’ 2026 season starts on September 3, at home against Merrimack.
Why Should Delaware Care? The state treasurer election typically does not get a lot of attention in Delaware, even though it is a high-ranking executive branch position. But this year, two Democratic primary candidates are raking in record-breaking sums of money — from somewhat unique sources. All the while, the candidates are raising questions about each other’s financial transparency.
The upcoming Democratic primary election for state treasurer has broken funding records this month, with campaign spending likely to top $1 million on two candidates in the historically overlooked race.
And some of the money backing leading candidates Ted Lauzen and Michael A. Smith has come from curious sources: Republicans and artificial intelligence-backed donors, respectively.
The role, which manages the state’s cash flow and advises on its investment funds and debts, is one that largely operates in the background of state government. Voters, however, are about to see more campaign messaging around the position than ever before.
Lauzen, a Wilmington investment manager, is making his first run for public office, while Smith, an economist and nonprofit founder, narrowly lost a Democratic primary for a state House seat two years ago.
Each has already racked up notable endorsements through the campaign: the state Democratic Party for Lauzen and the state’s teachers’ union for Smith.
With less than a month until the Sept. 15 primary, though, much of the spending set to occur in the race will come from a national organization and local political action committees.
Historic attention on race
Democratic primaries for the treasurer’s race have not come close to raising the amount of money set to flow this year.
Current Treasurer Colleen Davis, who is not seeking reelection, amassed about a quarter of a million dollars in the 2018 and 2022 election cycles combined.
The closest comparison in recent years was Republican Ken Simpler’s 2014 campaign, in which he garnered about $600,000 between the primary and general elections, or $850,000 in today’s dollars after inflation. He is currently the last Republican to hold statewide office in Delaware.
The 2024 three-way primary race for governor set new records in Delaware campaign spending, with more than $3 million poured into digital ads, pamphlets, billboards and more.
That trend has carried over to this cycle, as law firms, developers, advocates and out-of-state interest groups are now dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars on down-ballot races that previously garnered less attention.
Lauzen’s personal campaign account had raised about $280,000 from donors over the past two years, as of this month, and he loaned his campaign $250,000.
Smith has raised more than $180,000, as of this month, and loaned his campaign about $47,000, but the bulk of his outside support is coming from the State & Local Election Alliance (SLEA), a national advocacy organization that primarily focuses on “defending democracy” by investing in down-ballot races.
The organization has reported spending more than $495,000 in support of his campaign to date, including more than $350,000 in direct advertising.
SLEA’s involvement in Delaware drew attention from political insiders earlier this month after it reported raising more than $6.4 million on state campaign finance filings, but a spokesperson for the organization said that was a reporting error and reflective of its nationwide fundraising efforts, not those squarely for Delaware.
Nonetheless, the organization’s support of Smith has changed the dynamic of the race, as his campaign will now be far more visible to voters in the stretch run to election day.
A third candidate in the race, Mike Miller, has raised about $16,000 in individual contributions and has loaned his campaign $20,000.
Smith’s donors have ties to AI
The large influx of money into what is normally a quiet primary race has caused each of the leading candidates to question the other campaigns’ backing and motives.
Lauzen said it is “scary” that SLEA is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Smith without clearly stating why.
A SLEA spokesperson declined to say specifically what aspects about Smith, or the position of Delaware state treasurer, drew them to spend more than $300,000 in ads supporting his candidacy.
While understated, the position has historically been an incubator for future leaders. Both former Govs. Tom Carper and Jack Markell served as state treasurer before being elected to the state’s highest office.
Regardless of the specific office, the spokesperson said, the candidates SLEA supports “are on the front lines of defending the rule of law.”
“Michael Smith is exactly the kind of leader that we exist to support,” she added.
Smith told Spotlight Delaware he had not heard of the organization before receiving its financial support.
Direct coordination between a candidate’s campaign and any outside organization buying ads to support them is illegal. But one of the two consultants, Matt Krayton, said the overlap does not violate either Delaware nor federal election laws.
In a written statement, Krayton said his firms follow the Federal Election Commission’s firewall policies, which outline guidelines for preventing information sharing between candidates and advertisers who share a common vendor.
Lauzen also criticized the prevalence of out-of-state donors to Smith’s campaign.
About 80% of Smith’s individual donations came from out-of-state residents, compared with about 20% in Lauzen’s campaign. Those donors include employees at Anthropic, the company behind the artificial intelligence system Claude, and other artificial intelligence safety researchers from across the country.
Smith pointed to connections he made during his time with College Democrats of America to explain some of the out-of-state donations. He said he has also been involved in Effective Altruism, a social movement followed by many AI industry workers that aims to find the most efficient ways to solve global problems.
Effective Altruism came under scrutiny in 2022 after the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the crypto exchange FTX, who was heavily involved in the movement. It has since rebounded, though, as many AI company employees have begun to join the movement and donate millions of dollars to charities and political campaigns.
Spotlight Delaware tried to contact many of Smith’s out-of-state donors who had donated the legal maximum limit to his campaign, but only one responded on the record.
Jeff Kaufman, a Massachusetts-based former Google employee and an active member of Effective Altruism forums, said he does not know Smith personally. Several people, however, told him to donate to Smith because he is “good on AI policy.”
When asked why he was interested in the Delaware treasurer’s race, he said having someone who shares his views on AI safety “is important to have across government given how important I expect it to be in the near future.”
Smith said he does not have any specific plans related to AI if he becomes treasurer, but that he thinks protecting Delaware’s assets from AI will become a large part of the role in the future.
“If AI agents or malicious actors are able to hack into our financial infrastructure and take away the money from Delaware taxpayers, that prevents us from lowering costs,” he said.
Smith defended his decision to fundraise out of state, saying he had to raise as much money as possible to counter the large amounts of funds Lauzen raised early in the campaign, including his quarter of a million dollar loan to his own campaign.
Lauzen defends Democratic bonafides
Lauzen said his family decided to pull from their savings for the campaign because he believes it is an important position. He quoted Martin Luther King Jr., saying he believes in the “fierce urgency of now” to do the right thing right away.
“When our family is going to do something, we’re going to do it all in,” he said.
Smith also said he thinks Lauzen is “masquerading as a Democrat” because his father is a Republican politician in Illinois, and he has donated to Republican candidates in the past.
Lauzen said while he grew up in a Republican family, he became an independent in 2017 and registered as a Democrat two years ago. He said his values have changed with age.
He has previously donated to several Republican candidates, including Simpler, the former Republican treasurer, but has donated to more Democratic candidates.
Lauzen also has received donations from several prominent Republicans in this campaign, including former Republican Party Chairman Terry Strine and former State Rep. John Burris (R-Milford).
Both Strine and Burris told Spotlight Delaware their values do not align with the modern Republican Party, and they support candidates they believe in regardless of political party affiliation.
Smith also questioned why prominent developers in the state would be interested in the treasurer’s race.
The First State Service PAC, which has received the majority of its $225,000 worth of donations thus far from two members of the Schell family, paid for several advertisements for Lauzen earlier this week, according to Google Ads Library.
Though the spending on those ads has only totaled $700 so far, it is unclear how much the developer-backed PAC plans to spend on Lauzen in the coming weeks.
Lauzen said he was not aware of the PAC or the advertisements, but that he knew members of the Schell family had donated individually to his campaign and was happy to gain their support.
Smith also criticized Lauzen for receiving a donation from the ABC Merit Shop PAC, a group that he characterized “anti-union.” The PAC is associated with Associated Builders and Contractors, which represents the interests of merit-shop contractors.
According to his campaign finance report, Lauzen returned that donation in late July.
A small plane carrying four people crashed into shallow waters next to a remote coastal town in Alaska on Wednesday, killing everyone on board, officials said.
The flat routines of a dead end railway job screen out an approaching menace in a quietly intriguing game from the indie developer of Cat Lady and Lorelai
Lonely jobs have provided excellent material for independent video games over the years. From Papers, Please to Firewatch to The Stanley Parable, players have been happy to spend hours dwelling in depressing cubicles or rural hideaways, usually because there is an intriguingly hidden point to it all.
In Trainwatch, a character named Troy has taken a seemingly godforsaken job as a railway worker in an unnamed desolate backwater. His main task over the course of a single month is to manage a level crossing, closing the gate whenever a train comes, while also carrying out daily chores such as cooking and washing. It sounds serene, but Troy is also running away from something. The other stipulations are that he stays sober and calls his wife every night. And there is something lurking in the fog at the edges of the fields – one day he must face it.
The race was at its peak when American riders were regularly challenging for titles. Its return could help prompt a revival
After a decade-long absence, the beloved Philadelphia International Cycling Classic is set to return this weekend, with some of the world’s best bike-racing teams taking to the famous circuit around the city’s leafy Art Museum, Manayunk, and Roxborough areas on Sunday.
The race is one of just a handful of events on American soil sanctioned by UCI, cycling’s international governing body, and will feature squads such as EF Education EasyPost, Lidl-Trek, Lotto-Intermarché, and Jayco AlUla in the men’s race, and powerhouses CANYON//SRAM zondacrypto and Human Powered Health in the women’s event. It is classified as a 1.1 race, meaning it’s two levels below the top-flight WorldTour, whose races include the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
The Philadelphia Cycling Classic will be livestreamed on Channel 6 ABC, with the women’s race kicking off at 8.30am Eastern. The men will follow at 12.30pm. Of course, you could always trek to Philly and become part of the party yourself. I highly recommend snagging a spot somewhere along The Wall.
A view of the sunrise over a cottonwood tree where locals are protesting Trump’s border wall in Lochiel, Ariz., on Aug. 10, 2026.Photo: John Washington
Of the more than $170 billion that President Donald Trump secured for his border regime in the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” nearly $50 billion is allocated to border wall construction. Even with these enormous resources, however, the administration continues to face challenges constructing its monument to violent exclusion along the southern border through tribal, private, and state lands.
For nearly a month, the key force standing in the way of Trump’s border wall project in southeast Arizona has been a person sitting in a 200-year-old tree.
More precisely, at every moment since late July, one person — although not always the same person — has been on a platform in the branches of a giant cottonwood tree in Lochiel, Arizona, with an expanding encampment of primarily local activists 50 feet below.
The protesters’ aim is to stop the ongoing construction of two parallel, 30-foot-high border walls ripping through the remote San Rafael Valley.
Miles of the double wall structure have already been built in the area. This part of the valley is sparsely populated and hardly ever used as a border-crossing site by humans, but is renowned as a unique wildlife migration corridor. According to the Sierra Club’s borderlands coordinator, Erick Meza, the region is “a biodiversity hotspot and the most important jaguar corridor that we have left in the U.S.”
Residents from Lochiel and the surrounding area, including from Sonora, Mexico, had been coming together regularly for over a year for binational gatherings to organize against wall construction. They shared music, art, food, and ceremonies across the border, which is demarcated there by only a rancher’s wire fence.
“People got together that night and decided to go down and set up a tree sit in that final tree on the U.S. side.”
The planned double wall structure, with a 60-foot no man’s land in between, would not only devastate the land and its ecosystems — it would also sever the binational life worlds of the area.
The “happenings,” as organizers called the gatherings, escalated into a continuous protest and tree sit when construction workers with government contractors Fisher Sand & Gravel crushed three giant cottonwood trees, known locally as “grandmother” trees, in one day on July 27.
Local activists moved in swiftly to save the last cottonwood standing on the U.S. side of the border, and the tree sit began.
“Momentum had been growing locally in the region to try to make more of an intervention,” said an Arizona-based participant in the tree sit, who asked for anonymity out of concern for government repression. “People got together that night and decided to go down and set up a tree sit in that final tree on the U.S. side, which was planned to be cleared.”
Ever since, a tree sitter has been in the cottonwood at all times, numerous participants told The Intercept.
“U.S. Customs and Border Protection identified four cottonwood trees on federal land in Lochiel, Arizona, that needed removal for planned border wall construction,” said a spokesperson from CBP. “Preconstruction surveys found no active migratory bird nests, and environmental monitors were present at the start of clearing activities to ensure work was limited to the identified trees. Three trees have been removed, and the remaining tree is scheduled for removal.”
Meza, of the Sierra Club, told The Intercept that the government’s environmental survey was out of date and that the day before the cottonwoods were felled, he had taken video of an active nest in one of the trees.
“The next day, they had sent the contractors to take down the trees,” he said. “Their environmental monitor was not present.” Meza added that “when people saw what happened, the community in general got outraged.”
For participants in the Lochiel encampment, protecting the remaining “grandmother” is an anchoring point for the protest, but stopping the border wall and all it represents is the organizing principle.
“Some people are tree sitting and supporting the tree sit. Some people are more focused on getting into the roads, and intervening in construction work that’s happening,” the tree-sit participant said. “Now there’s a whole zone of a few miles where they’re having trouble building. And as camp grows, the ability to affect construction also grows.”
The remaining cottonwood itself is on federal land, but the encampment, just feet away, is technically on private land. It’s a unique setup, organizers told The Intercept, in which local ranchers and authorities oppose the border wall construction, and construction workers cannot risk forging forward in the path of the tree as a person remains perched in its branches. The small standoff is becoming a growing site of border resistance, and the construction of Trump’s wall in the area has been disrupted for a month.
“Living Things on the Land”
At a time when jack-booted agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are terrorizing communities nationwide and over 73,000 people are held in ICE detention, the defense of a remote stretch of borderlands may seem a minor struggle.
The binational protest around the cottonwood, however, exemplifies what it looks like to take strategic action to disrupt the infrastructure of the border regime.
“Something happens along these borderlands,” said another participant in the tree sit and encampment, Uni Yuchi Trejo, a first-generation Mexican American. “You still feel the way the land moves here, how the living things on the land migrate and move with it.”
Compared to other struggles against border enforcement, the Lochiel encampment has seen remarkably little law enforcement repression, despite creating disruptions to a major border infrastructure project.
One protester was arrested in late July by local sheriffs for blocking construction workers on a roadway but was released the same day without charge; the sheriff himself is on the record as opposing the border wall construction. And with the encampment on private property, it remains relatively protected from federal law enforcement sweeps.
According to activists on the ground, a second tree sit on the Mexico side of the border was initiated last week but ended after a few days, following reported interventions from Mexican law enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.
The relative peace the Arizona-based activists have enjoyed stands in stark contrast to the brutal persecution others opposing border regime enforcement have faced in places like Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas; Spokane, Washington; and Minneapolis. The Arizona demonstration also sits in the legacy of site-based struggles not tied directly to the border, like Stop Copy City in Atlanta, or the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock — movements that have also faced ruthless repression.
This might speak to the place of the border wall in the Trump administration’s current priorities. Even for an anti-immigrant fascist like Stephen Miller, swift border wall construction in the San Rafael Valley is not an urgent matter, owing to the minuscule number of border-crossing attempts there. Those that do attempt to cross are already facing long odds against a system designed to push them into death’s grips.
Though the environmental destruction of border wall construction is well established, a spokesperson from Customs and Border Protection absurdly pointed to people who might attempt to cross as the real environmental threat.
A view of Trump’s double wall on a stretch of the U.S.–Mexico border running through Lochiel, Ariz., on Aug. 10, 2026.Photo: John Washington
“While concerns exist about impacts to sensitive areas, it is important to note that illegal immigration itself poses significant environmental challenges,” the spokesperson said. “High volumes of unauthorized crossings often result in substantial amounts of trash, pollution, and damage to natural resources, including sensitive habitats and agriculture.”
Suffice it to say, the people crossing borders do not tear down ancient trees, plow over tribal burial grounds, or cut off wildlife corridors. Not to mention that no “high volumes” of crossings occur in the San Rafael Valley.
As Arizona-based reporter and author of “How to Close a Camp,” John Washington, told Democracy Now!, “People, I think, are right to point out that this very much smells of a boondoggle — that no one is crossing here, and yet they are spending maybe a half a billion dollars on just this about 27-mile segment of wall to devastate the local ecosystem.”
“The Border Is Everywhere”
“We’re taking the proactive stance of: ‘No, we don’t want the wall and we’re going to make sure you’re not doing it through Lochiel,’” said Kate Scott, a local resident and co-founder of the Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center, who was among the original organizers against border construction in the region. “And we will hopefully have inspired people all across the world, wherever their horrible border walls are, and to question them in a way that’s most defiant.”
Activists on the ground are aware that reaching remote Lochiel is no easy task, so organizers are encouraging action wherever people can undertake it.
One target of activists’ campaigns is Fisher Sand & Gravel, the contractor working on the wall, which has received around $1.5 billion in government contracts in Arizona alone. (Fisher Sand & Gravel and its parent company, Fisher Industries, did not respond to requests for comment.)
Subcontractors working on the project are falling under scrutiny, too.
“The border is everywhere,” said Trejo, the Mexican-American land defender, “which means that there are subcontractors and there are power players maybe in your backyard, maybe in your city, maybe an hour drive from where you’re living.”
“Right now we’re at a really crucial point, where those of us that have been holding space and ground are seizing more of it each day. And so imagine if the 30, 40 holding that space becomes a 1,000 or becomes 5,000. What kind of opening will that then create?”
Correction: August 27, 2026, 2:30 p.m. ET This story has been updated to correct an errant spelling of Kate Scott’s name.
The rules governing your retirement plan may be changing.
As we reported in July, President Donald Trump wants to encourage 401(k) plans to invest more in private equity, real estate and cryptocurrency, which can be complex and risky. To pave the way, the Department of Labor has proposed rules that would make it harder for employees to hold companies liable for how they oversee retirement plans.
Employers are required to serve the best interests of their employees when choosing investment options. Under the proposed changes, a company that follows a certain process would get the benefit of the doubt in court, making it harder for workers to sue over the management of their 401(k).
A spokesperson for the Department of Labor did not respond to requests for comment. In an announcement from March, the department said the proposed rule change will “democratize access to alternative investments in 401(k) plans” and “lower litigation risks” for employers who are acting with good judgment.
The new rules, expected to be finalized this year, also raise broader questions: What investment options are already offered in people’s retirement accounts, and what are people paying in fees?
We’ve asked the public to send us their annual 401(k) disclosures so we can understand the range of funds and fees people have in their accounts. (Want to send us yours? Here’s how.) So far, we’ve heard from more than 200 people, many of whom also asked us questions about their plans. To find the answers, we spoke with eight economists, lawyers and retirement benefit experts.
If you have questions about your specific retirement plan, experts recommend talking to a fee-only financial planner who will serve as a fiduciary (which means they must provide advice in your best financial interest, not theirs). You can check a financial adviser’s qualifications by searching here.
Under the Labor Department’s proposed rule change, employers who show that they’ve considered a set of six factors when choosing investments and document their reasoning when building a plan should have greater protection from a potential lawsuit.
That liability tends to sit with your employer because they have final say over your plan’s investment options, even though companies usually hire firms like Fidelity or Vanguard to run the plan, and those firms often suggest which funds to include.
A company could document its reasoning for choosing to offer certain investment options and still act imprudently, said Tim Hauser, who was the deputy assistant secretary at the Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration until last December. In his three-plus decades there, he encountered cases in which companies “generated a lot of paper” to explain their reasoning but, ultimately, didn’t make wise financial decisions based on the information available to them.
Some retirement plans are stuck in investments with bloated fees and costly add-ons. Share your standard plan documents with us to help reveal which financial products companies are pushing, and what they’re charging workers.
Monique Morrissey, a senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a June letter that the proposal would “gut protections for retirement savers” and prioritize maximizing investment returns over balancing risk. She cited a 2025 AARP survey finding most Americans don’t think it’s important to be able to access private market investments or cryptocurrency in their retirement accounts.
But Bonnie Treichel, the founder of Endeavor Retirement, a consulting firm for retirement advisers, said the proposed rules are a framework not a mandate. Employers could offer these investments, but that doesn’t mean they’ll rush to add riskier investment options.
To find out if the rule change may affect your 401(k), ask your plan administrator, often someone in your human resources department, whether the company plans to offer new investment options. (The plan administrator is often listed on the same document that lists your fees; find out how to access that information in the form on this post.)
How do I know if my 401(k) is in good shape?
For many people, a 401(k) only needs close attention when starting a job, when leaving a job and when closing in on retirement. The rest of the time, it mostly runs itself. Still, experts we interviewed said it’s worth checking in on the plan once a year as fees and fund options can change.
A healthy account comes down to three basics: how much you save, how much risk you take and how much you pay in fees, experts say. Only the first is entirely up to you. The other two you manage from a menu of options your employer builds.
The more you save — and the earlier you start — the more time your money has to grow. Companies often offer to match part of your contribution, so if you can swing it, experts advise putting in at least enough to collect the full match. Otherwise you’re leaving money on the table.
You also control what your savings are invested in, based on the menu of investment options your plan offers.
Each fund you invest in carries a different level of risk. Stocks are more volatile than bonds, for example, and a balanced investment portfolio weighs the level of risk depending on how far you are from retirement. Younger investors decades away from tapping into their retirement fund may invest more in stocks, while older workers may prefer to have more in bonds.
The “easy button” is to choose a target-date fund that’ll automatically reallocate your investments to reduce your risk by shifting from stocks to bonds, or other less volatile investments, as you approach retirement.
“For most people, this is all the money they have,” said Jean-Pierre Aubry, an associate director at the Boston College Center for Retirement Research. “It’s not money you want to play around with.”
How can I tell if I’m paying high fees?
Compounded over time, even small differences in fees have a huge impact on your retirement savings. By the Labor Department’s own math, 1% in additional fees can shrink a nest egg at retirement by 28%.
Federal law requires employers to make sure employees are paying reasonable fees. Since 2012, the Labor Department also requires companies to send a disclosure form to employees listing all funds and fees. (That’s the annual disclosure we’re asking people to send to us. If you want to send us yours, find instructions on the form in this post.) Still, the Government Accountability Office found nearly 4 in 10 people don’t fully understand the fees they’re paying on their retirement plan.
The number you should watch for is each fund’s expense ratio: the fees firms charge employees for owning or investing in a fund, taken as a percentage of the money you have in it. An expense ratio of 0.5% means you pay a $5 fee per year for every $1,000 you’ve invested. To find the fees you’re paying, look for your annual disclosure on your plan’s website or ask your HR department. (See instructions for your specific plan here.)
If most funds on your 401(k) menu have an expense ratio over 1%, that should be a “red flag” that it’s a high-cost plan, said Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning at Morningstar.
Even 0.75% or 0.5% is “actually pretty high by 401(k) standards,” said Quinn Curtis, a law professor at University of Virginia who has studied the litigation around 401(k) fees.
The cheapest options are typically index funds, which mirror a slice of the market like the S&P 500 instead of paying a manager to pick stocks. Workers are gravitating to these passive, low-cost investments and the firms are competing to win over investors, which is driving down fees even more. Most index fund fees are under or around 0.1%, Benz said. If your index fund is charging several times that, experts say it’s worth asking why or finding another option.
When you check your 401(k) plan once a year, make sure you’re still in the funds with the lowest available fees, Aubry said.
And be wary of offers for personalized portfolios at the click of a button, Treichel said. These services often charge additional fees.
“Nothing in life is free,” she said. “So, if it looks free, look further.”
How can I compare my 401(k) to plans offered by similar companies?
There’s no easy way. No free database exists where you can, say, type in your employer name and see how its 401(k) investment options compare to what other companies offer. But there are a few general trends to be aware of.
The size of your company matters. Smaller companies tend to get offered retirement plans with higher fees, according to research. Larger companies have more employee money and therefore leverage, and tend to negotiate lower fees. So, if you work for a smaller company, experts said you may want to be especially vigilant about your plan’s investment options.
Other signs of a good plan: your employer pays some or all of the administrative costs and your employer offers a matching contribution, experts said.
And more choices don’t necessarily mean better ones. Most people don’t have the time or the expertise to understand the investment funds available to them, Curtis said. A well-designed retirement plan gives workers a curated set of low-cost investment options that’ll “meet the needs of most investors.”
What if I don’t like my retirement plan?
Start with your plan administrator, often someone in your company’s HR department, experts say. Tell them that you aren’t happy with the investment offerings and the associated fees, and lobby for additional options.
If you believe the people overseeing your 401(k) plan have been careless, disloyal or negligent, resulting in a smaller nest egg for your retirement, you can contact the Department of Labor, Hauser said. An employee benefit adviser should follow up with you to learn more and may refer your case to the enforcement division for further investigation.
Under federal law, you can also file a lawsuit against your employer.
But Hauser said it may be difficult for the average person to police the options in their 401(k) plan. Much of the responsibility falls on employees, whether or not they are well-versed in investing, he said. That can mean people invest in their retirement fund for decades before they notice the high fees that cut into their potential retirement savings.
“People consistently underestimate the impact of even small differences in fees,” Hauser said.
Tim Curry was a versatile performer on stage and screen who made his name as the flamboyant Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Curry’s best-known roles often required a considerable physical transformation, to the extent that he was unrecognisable in some of them. As Frank-N-Furter, Rocky Horror’s eccentric scientist, he was daubed in garish makeup and dressed in stockings and suspenders. In Ridley Scott's fantasy Legend, he sported giant horns and scarlet skin as the Lord of Darkness, and, in 1990, Curry was transformed with full-face clown makeup to play Pennywise in the TV miniseries It, based on Stephen King's novel
The once world-leading producer of crude oil has plunged into an energy crisis as Kyiv targets its refineries
A sanctioned shadow fleet tanker carries oil from Nato member Turkey to a Russian Baltic port. A deal is signed for Russian oil to be processed in Kazakhstan. Fuel cargoes arrive from India via Egypt. The Kremlin pressures allies to sell it badly needed fuel.
The data points may be diverse, but they point to a single inescapable conclusion.
Lawyers claim Eman el-Shazly, from Birmingham, was detained in effort to silence her sister, a critic of Sisi regime
The UK Foreign Office has been asked to intervene to secure the release of a British-Egyptian woman who it is claimed has been arrested in Cairo because of her sister’s political activism.
Eman el-Shazly, a 45-year-old based in Birmingham, was arrested on 16 August while visiting Egypt. Her lawyers say she has been detained in an attempt to silence her sister Mona, a relentless and harsh critic of the Egyptian government on her UK-based YouTube channel.
A French court has for the first time recognized cosmic radiation as a contributing occupational factor in a flight attendant's breast cancer, alongside passive smoking and years of night work. The landmark ruling could open the door to similar claims from other aircrew, as research continues to link long-term high-altitude flying with elevated exposure to radiation-related cancers. The BBC reports: Sophie Lainault, a 59 year-old former stewardess on Air France, sought to have her cancer recognized as an occupational disease, brought on by conditions at work. This has now been confirmed in a landmark court ruling in the southwestern town of Bayonne, which said that cosmic radiation was one of three carcinogenic hazards arising from her profession. [...] As stewardess and later purser on Air France airliners, Lainault clocked up 12,600 flight hours between 1989 and 2019. More than half of these were at night. Many long-distance high-altitude flights from Paris would have taken her near the North Pole, where exposure to radiation from space -- strictly speaking particles from the sun and other stars -- is the most intense.
A study this month at the Harvard Medical School in the US found that flight attendants and pilots had the highest level of radiation-related cancer deaths among more than 500 different professions. In all, about 6.9% of deaths among flight attendants and 6.7% of deaths among pilots were from radiation-related cancers, according to the analysis. These proportions were higher than for other professions including nuclear technologists, who are routinely exposed to radiation from non-cosmic sources yet placed 12th on the list, the authors said. "In France the link between breast cancer and certain hazards has been established for a number of professions, such as nurses ... but this is the first time for an air-hostess," said Lainault's lawyer Elisabeth Leroux.
Security and defence 2027
3
March 2027 TO 4 March 2027 — 09:00 TO 12:30 GMT
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
Join senior policymakers, business leaders and international security experts for a day and a half of unique discussions on the future of security and defence across modern domains of conflict, and how to prepare for an uncertain future.
Chatham House’s 2027 Security and Defence Conference convenes policymakers, military leaders and industry stakeholders to shape solutions for navigating an increasingly complex threat landscape.
Adjusting to the geopolitical reality
The security and defence landscape of 2027 is defined by a period of adjustment. Across the Euro-Atlantic community and beyond, governments, armed forces and industry leaders are responding to a strategic environment shaped by increased defence spending, shifting alliances and growing uncertainty about the future balance of power. Long-held assumptions regarding deterrence, burden-sharing and international cooperation are being tested by emerging threats and mounting geopolitical competition, forcing policymakers and private sector stakeholders alike to reconsider how security is delivered and sustained in an increasingly contested world.
As European allies move to assume greater responsibility for their own security, questions about the future shape of NATO have become increasingly urgent. The drive towards higher defence spending has strengthened the alliance’s military potential but has also exposed differing national priorities, industrial capacities and political ambitions. At the same time, debate continues over the extent of the United States’ long-term commitment to European security and what a more European-led NATO could mean for collective defence, nuclear deterrence and strategic decision-making. Beyond the alliance, conflict in the Middle East, China’s growing influence on the international security environment and renewed competition across critical maritime and economic chokepoints are reshaping regional and global security dynamics.
The 2027 Security and Defence Summit brings together policymakers, senior military leaders, business executives and civil society experts to examine the defining security challenges of the coming decade. Through a programme of keynote addresses, high-level panel discussions and Chatham House Rule spotlight sessions, participants will advance their understanding of the future of NATO, defence investment, civil resilience, emerging technologies, space security and the evolving character of conflict. Together, speakers and delegates will identify how governments, armed forces and industry can strengthen partnerships, build resilience and develop the capabilities required to navigate an era of strategic uncertainty.
Global trade 2027
17
March 2027 TO 18 March 2027 — 09:00 TO 13:00 GMT
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
Join government officials, global business and civil society leaders to explore strategies for navigating economic uncertainty in an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape.
Chatham House’s 2027 Global Trade Conference brings together government officials, global business and civil society leaders to examine pivotal developments in global trade policy.
Navigating global economic uncertainty
Over the past year, climate and geopolitical shocks have increasingly arrived not as separate crises, but in tandem, exposing the interconnected vulnerabilities of energy systems, economies and societies. As temperatures edge beyond 1.5°C of warming, the international community has seen escalating climate extremes, with record-breaking heat, wildfires and severe floods affecting communities globally. At the same time, geopolitical fragmentation has persisted. The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz has reached the one-year mark, leading to 12 months of elevated energy and fertiliser prices and renewed concerns over the vulnerability of global supply chains. Attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine have underscored the need for the transition to electrification and renewables.
Yet, both the energy transition and broader climate mitigation efforts bring their own challenges. As countries race to decarbonize, new geopolitical pressures are emerging as nations compete for dominance in clean tech manufacturing, access to critical minerals, control of key supply chains and industrial leadership in the low-carbon economy. The chapter of unanimous climate negotiations and target-setting is giving way to a new era defined by the implementation of strategies in an age of disruption. Building resilience must now go hand in hand with accelerating the transition and tackling pressing climate change concerns.
During two days of high-level keynotes, panel dialogues, networking sessions, and spotlight sessions held under the Chatham House Rule, speakers and delegates will examine how governments, businesses and societies can manage mounting risks while maintaining energy security, economic prosperity and international cooperation towards the transition. What does climate and energy resilience mean in an era of intensifying shocks? And crucially, what does it mean for business?
Climate and energy 2027
10
March 2027 TO 11 March 2027 — 09:00 TO 12:30 GMT
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
Join senior policymakers, business leaders and experts for a day and a half of unique discussion on how to manage mounting geopolitical and climate risks while maintaining energy security, economic prosperity and international cooperation towards the transition.
Chatham House’s 2027 Climate & Energy Summit convenes policymakers, business leaders and non-profit stakeholders to shape the strategies for securing a resilient future.
The energy transition’s new risk landscape
Over the past year, climate and geopolitical shocks have increasingly arrived not as separate crises, but in tandem, exposing the interconnected vulnerabilities of energy systems, economies and societies. As temperatures edge beyond 1.5°C of warming, the international community has seen escalating climate extremes, with record-breaking heat, wildfires and severe floods affecting communities globally. At the same time, geopolitical fragmentation has persisted. The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz has reached the one-year mark, leading to 12 months of elevated energy and fertiliser prices and renewed concerns over the vulnerability of global supply chains. Attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine have underscored the need for the transition to electrification and renewables.
Yet, both the energy transition and broader climate mitigation efforts bring their own challenges. As countries race to decarbonize, new geopolitical pressures are emerging as nations compete for dominance in clean tech manufacturing, access to critical minerals, control of key supply chains and industrial leadership in the low-carbon economy. The chapter of unanimous climate negotiations and target-setting is giving way to a new era defined by the implementation of strategies in an age of disruption. Building resilience must now go hand in hand with accelerating the transition and tackling pressing climate change concerns.
During two days of high-level keynotes, panel dialogues, networking sessions, and spotlight sessions held under the Chatham House Rule, speakers and delegates will examine how governments, businesses and societies can manage mounting risks while maintaining energy security, economic prosperity and international cooperation towards the transition. What does climate and energy resilience mean in an era of intensifying shocks? And crucially, what does it mean for business?
Washington, D.C. — Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook is pushing back against President Donald Trump’s renewed effort to remove her from the central bank, arguing that disputed mortgage paperwork does not provide legal grounds for dismissal.
Cook’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, told the White House Wednesday that allegations she made false statements on mortgage applications remain unproven and do not constitute the “cause” required to remove a Federal Reserve governor.
The dispute began after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte accused Cook of claiming more than one property as her primary residence. Cook has denied committing mortgage fraud or intentionally misleading lenders. Reuters previously reported that documents showed Cook identified one property as a vacation home.
Trump initially attempted to fire Cook last year, but the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in June that Federal Reserve officials cannot be removed at will. The justices allowed Cook to remain in office while leaving open whether proven misconduct could constitute sufficient cause for removal.
The White House renewed the effort Aug. 5, giving Cook three weeks to respond to its allegations. Administration officials argue that even if Cook did not commit fraud, inaccuracies on mortgage documents raise questions about her judgment and trustworthiness.
Cook maintains the allegations are being used as a pretext to increase presidential influence over Federal Reserve interest-rate policy.
Tallahassee, Florida — Florida education officials asked textbook publishers to remove or soften some references to climate change before approving science books for the state’s public schools, according to records obtained in a WUSF and Hechinger Report investigation.
The changes occurred during Florida’s 2024 science textbook review. In one McGraw Hill marine science book, officials requested replacing “climate change” with “changes in the environment.” Another passage citing research estimating 150,000 annual deaths from climate change was rewritten to say human health would be affected by increased carbon dioxide and warming.
Cengage also removed the word “polluting” from a reference to coal-burning power plants and eliminated other passages discussing fossil fuels and climate policy. Publishers eventually secured approval for most books after making requested revisions.
Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education said the requests went beyond changes needed to align the books with Florida’s existing science standards. McGraw Hill said state-specific revisions are routine and maintained that climate change and its environmental effects remain covered in its Florida materials.
The disclosures come as Florida updates its science standards for the first time since 2008. The Department of Education has not said whether the revised standards will continue requiring instruction on human-caused climate change in certain high school science courses.
Allegations Nathan Cofnas was unqualified for Ghent role and would cause ‘negative impact’ made to senior leaders months ago
Nathan Cofnas, the academic who accused Jason Arday of plagiarism, has been accused of having “very limited expertise” for his academic role by professors also working at Ghent University, who say he has a “far-right agenda”.
Cofnas secured a postdoctoral research role “on the future of liberalism” at Belgium’s Ghent University in March. Weeks later, Ghent’s department of philosophy and moral sciences handed a 19-page statement to university officials, setting out why it believed it was “improbable” that Cofnas was the best candidate.
Czech pair beat Bencic and Cobolli in deciding tiebreak
Revamped event draws strong crowds at Arthur Ashe
Singles stars dominate after doubles specialists exit
To many who came to the US Open grounds this week, the showpiece of the mixed doubles championship came Tuesday afternoon, with the returns of Serena Williams (after four years away from tennis) and Carlos Alcaraz (after four months out with a wrist injury).
To the players who remained in the field after Williams and Alcaraz exited in the quarter-finals, the real highlight was Wednesday night’s final at Arthur Ashe Stadium, with its $1m in prize money on the line. Karolína Muchová and Jakub Menšík made the most of the spotlight, beating Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli 6-3, 1-6 (10-6) for the title.
Tallahassee, Florida — A state grand jury concluded that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration misappropriated $10 million in taxpayer money by diverting funds from a Medicaid settlement into the Hope Florida Foundation, according to a report obtained by CBS News Miami.
The money came from a $67 million settlement with Centene Corporation. The grand jury said $10 million that should have been treated as state funds was instead directed to Hope Florida, a nonprofit initiative associated with first lady Casey DeSantis. Within weeks, the foundation distributed two $5 million grants to outside organizations.
According to the report, $8.5 million eventually flowed to political committees, including Keep Florida Clean, which was chaired by then-DeSantis chief of staff and current Attorney General James Uthmeier. The money was used in the 2024 campaign against Amendment 3, which sought to legalize recreational marijuana.
The grand jury said the funds were “plainly” used for political purposes but found insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges because investigators could not establish who made the decision to divert the money.
DeSantis rejected the findings Wednesday, calling the matter a “hoax” and saying he was not involved in negotiating the settlement. The grand jury recommended that Florida lawmakers strengthen rules governing state settlement money and impose clearer tracking requirements for taxpayer funds.
Comté, beaufort and abondance makers can temporarily supplement cows’ diets as there is ‘no grass left to eat’
Strict production rules will be loosened for some of France’s most famous cheeses after drought and repeated heatwaves dried out grazing pastures, threatening the livelihoods of traditional dairy workers.
Comté, a hard cheese made from raw cows’ milk in the Jura mountains, is France’s top-selling traditional cheese, with more than 62,000 tonnes produced last year. The government announced on Wednesday that its producers would be granted a temporary change to strict rules on grazing after farmers said extreme heat had scorched their pastures, putting production at risk.
The paintings, sculptures and museum installations of Yayoi Kusama, one of Japan's most respected contemporary artists, were widely exhibited around the world.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates argued on Wednesday that artificial intelligence needs significant limits or else the harm to humans will outweigh any potential good. "AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice," he said in a 6,000-word essay, entitled "The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical." [...] "Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history," he said, adding that "I don't see evidence that leaders, experts, and communities are confronting the challenges adequately. There is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era." AI can provide great benefits in field like agriculture and medicine, he argued, such as breakthroughs in preventing and treating diseases. But he also noted that the transition carries big risks, like widespread unemployment, harming the educational and social development of children, or making it easier for criminals and bad actors -- or AI itself -- to cause deliberate harm.
"As the models become more powerful, they could begin to act against our interests and we could lose control," he warned. These significant risks must be controlled quickly, Gates said. "If someone had a credible plan for slowing down AI advances globally, I would likely support it," he wrote. "However, I don't think that's going to happen. The geopolitical and economic incentives are pushing too hard to go full speed ahead." In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper that will air on Wednesday evening, Gates said AI models have gotten dramatically more powerful at a rate faster than he expected. "They're now capable of causing cyberattack risk, bioterrorism risk, psychosocial risk," he said. "I have to say I'm kind of shocked that the exact criteria that we review these models with, and the actions we take to minimize the harms, are really completely missing."
In his essay, Gates proposed taxing AI or robots the way you would pay a human employee's payroll tax in order to slow the shift away from using human labor. He also wants to set aside some work to be done by humans only. "My message to leaders is: You have a chance to act now, before unemployment rises sharply, communities are hurting, and public trust has eroded," he said. "You can make sure AI benefits everyone. And you can work with other governments to meet this national and global challenge."
Washington, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Education deleted a pro-Donald Trump social media video Wednesday after viewers pointed out that its apparent attempt to portray the president as powerful unintentionally compared him with Adolf Hitler.
The department posted a 19-second video on X captioned “No one does it like us” with a tiger emoji. It opened with Gary Oldman portraying British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the 2017 film Darkest Hour, declaring, “You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.” The video then immediately shifted to a montage of Trump raising his fist, pointing and appearing at public events.
The problem was the scene’s context: Churchill is rejecting negotiations with Nazi Germany, and the “tiger” represents Hitler. X users quickly highlighted the apparent historical blunder, and the post received a Community Note explaining the reference.
The department subsequently removed the video from its social media accounts. A spokesperson said an Education Department staffer created the clip using a trending TikTok sound but “did not understand the context of the video.”
The original post drew criticism not only for its unintended comparison but also over why a federal education agency was producing promotional social media content about Trump.
Goodell confirms review after Ohio prostitution sting
York pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges
NFL has previously disciplined owners for misconduct
Commissioner Roger Goodell said the NFL is looking into whether San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York will be punished for violating the league’s personal conduct policy after he was caught in a prostitution sting in Ohio.
“It’s being reviewed under the personal conduct policy,” Goodell said Wednesday at the owners’ meetings in Atlanta. “We’ll do that and when there’s something to be reported we’ll talk.”
Washington, D.C. — A federal judge has rejected, for now, the Justice Department’s attempt to erase Steve Bannon’s contempt of Congress conviction, ruling that prosecutors failed to adequately explain why the case should be dismissed.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019, said prosecutors offered only a conclusory justification for dropping the case. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office had argued in February that dismissal was “in the interests of justice” but provided little additional reasoning.
Bannon, a longtime Trump ally and former White House strategist, was convicted in 2022 on two counts of contempt of Congress after refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. He served a four-month prison sentence in 2024.
The Supreme Court later vacated an appellate ruling that had upheld Bannon’s conviction and returned the dispute to lower courts.
Nichols denied the government’s request without prejudice, meaning prosecutors may file another motion offering a more complete legal explanation. ABC News reported that Nichols specifically faulted the Justice Department for failing to satisfy local rules requiring prosecutors to explain their motivations for dismissing an indictment.
Because Bannon has already completed his prison sentence, dismissal would primarily affect the status of his conviction rather than his custody.
A US military strike on an alleged drug trafficking boat in the Caribbean on Tuesday killed four people, officials said.
US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said in a post on X that the strike targeted a vessel “operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean.”
Jes Staley told US House committee he also was at one point named a trustee of convicted sex offender’s estate
Former JPMorgan Chase executive Jes Staley told US lawmakers he repeatedly shared confidential and market-sensitive bank information with Jeffrey Epstein and was at one point named as a trustee of his estate, according to a transcript released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday.
These admissions come as lawmakers investigate the late convicted sex offender’s ties with political and business elites. Staley appeared before the committee in July as part of its investigation into Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, his associate. Transcripts from the meeting were released on Wednesday.
For people trapped under rubble in an earthquake or similar disaster, the arrival of a fleet of cockroaches could one day be the difference between life and death.
Biorobotics engineers have been working on the design of six-legged cyborg insects with cameras and miniature medical injectors for search and rescue missions.
A federal judge in California ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration illegally lowered the wages of migrant farmworkers, in a move the government said was intended to offset the effects of its immigration policies.
Patients taking the first-of-a-kind pill, called daraxonrasib, lived for a median of 13.2 months compared with 6.7 months for chemotherapy recipients, studies showed.
Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, returned to the U.K. from California on Wednesday, six years after their tumultuous departure, the BBC reports.
Only original 88 selections will earn Pro Bowl status
Players to be honored at Super Bowl week in LA
The NFL is ending the Pro Bowl Games after repeated format changes to its annual all-star event.
Beginning with the 2026 season, 88 Pro Bowlers will be selected but the NFL no longer plans to stage an AFC-NFC game, a flag-football matchup or an accompanying series of competitions. The players chosen will instead be invited to next year’s Super Bowl site in Los Angeles for an in-person celebration in February.
(The Center Square) – California Attorney General Rob Bonta co-led a lawsuit Wednesday to block a new federal rule governing mail-in ballots. But a former U.S. Department of Justice lawyer who's now working at a think tank says the suit…
The Best Western sign is familiar to almost any American driver. It means affordable, reliable and no-frills. What it doesn't suggest is luxury boutique hotels in Bangkok, a centuries-old city square in Belgium or a wellness retreat in the Mexican…
What if scientists could test a new drug or make changes to a cell without even touching one in the lab? Can AI be leveraged to achieve that?
GenBio AI is giving it a shot. The company has released AIDO Cell, an AI model that tries to recreate enough of what is happening inside a cell that researchers can experiment with it on a computer.
And it is not just a case of asking what happens if you change X. The model keeps track of what has already happened to the cell. So researchers can make a change, then another, and another, and see how those effects add up.
There is a long way to go. A computer model of a cell is obviously not the same thing as a real cell, and eventually its predictions have to hold up in the lab.
David Baker, a co-founder of GenBio AI, is careful not to suggest the company has solved cellular biology. What he sees as important with AIDO Cell is bringing different biological scales, from DNA all the way up to the behavior of the cell, into one model that researchers can experiment with on a computer.
(Shutterstock/Parilov)
Baker was one of three scientists awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The prize was shared with Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and John Jumper. Baker was recognized for computational protein design, while Hassabis and Jumper were honored for protein structure prediction.
His work made it possible to use computers to design entirely new proteins rather than only studying those found in nature. His research has opened the door to creating proteins for medicines, vaccines, sensors, and new materials.
AIDO Cell takes the idea of computational biology to a much larger scale as it is designed to work across multiple levels of the cell.
According to GenBio AI President and Chief Scientist Eric Xing, that includes another important feature: memory.
“What world model architecture enables, and what makes our system genuinely new, is that it’s both multi-scale and stateful. The simulation remembers what you’ve done to the cell. You can run entire sequences of perturbations, where each one builds on the last, and see the evolving, cumulative effect in the cell, just as you would in a real (wet lab) workflow,” said Xing.
That means a researcher could make a change to the simulated cell, check the predicted response and then make changes according to the cell’s new state. Importantly, the effects of the first intervention remain part of the simulation rather than the model simply starting over. More possibilities.
The potential payoff is the ability to run far more biological experiments computationally before moving into the lab. Greater likelihood of a breakthrough discovery.
(Shutterstock_BB-DESIGN-STOCK)
To understand how this could play out, imagine a researcher studying a disease. They could use this model to change the activity of a particular gene and see how the model predicts that change will affect the rest of the cell. They could also use the approach to explore how cells might respond to potential drugs or combinations of treatments.
Running those experiments computationally could allow scientists to explore many more possibilities than they could reasonably test in a physical lab. The idea isn’t necessarily to replace lab experiments, but to help researchers decide which ones are worth pursuing.
That could be particularly useful in drug discovery, where researchers often have to narrow large numbers of possible targets and compounds down to a much smaller group of candidates for further testing.
There is still a considerable gap between that vision and having a digital cell that can reliably stand in for the real thing. GenBio AI itself describes the current release as an early preview rather than a finished virtual cell.
“We’ve released this version of the system as a preview, an early but functional demonstration that multi-scale, stateful virtual cell simulation is now possible,” said Xing. “We plan on releasing more advanced versions of the system with enhanced capabilities and accuracy later this year and over the next year.”
(PopTika/Shutterstock)
The value of systems like AIDO Cell will depend on how well their predictions match what actually happens in biological experiments. Cells are extraordinarily complex. Reproducing patterns found in existing biological data is different from accurately predicting how a real cell will respond under new conditions.
While there are challenges, the approach taken by GenBio is notable. Some of AI’s biggest successes in biology have come from modeling individual pieces of the puzzle. Virtual-cell efforts are asking whether those pieces can eventually be brought together into models that capture how biological systems behave.
For Baker, it also represents a considerable expansion of the computational approach that helped earn him the Nobel Prize. Protein design demonstrated that computers could be used not only to understand biology but to create something new within it. GenBio AI is now testing how much further that idea can go.
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in BigDATAwire.
Surgeons aided by real-time analysis of camera footage that identified critical anatomy in brain to be avoided
Neurosurgeons in London have performed the world’s first successful AI-assisted operation to remove a brain tumour, saving the sight of a 48-year-old man, health officials have said.
The surgery was performed in May at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (NHNN), part of University College London hospitals NHS foundation trust, but details were kept secret until Thursday while the patient, Rhys Hibbert, recovered.
TechCrunch reports that OpenAI released its official report Wednesday on the Hugging Face breach, "offering the clearest picture yet of how an unusual chain of events allowed an AI model to escape its testing environment and triggered a sprawling cybersecurity incident." The AI company says the breach began when an unreleased cyber model, tested without normal production safeguards, encountered an impossible task and chained together previously unknown exploits to escape its environment and compromise systems at OpenAI, Hugging Face, and other vendors. "This incident reflects misaligned behavior in an outlier scenario involving a rare and unexpected confluence of events: the presence of impossible tasks in the ExploitGym evaluation, model persistence over long task horizons, and messages to peer models that caused those models to deviate from their goal," the report reads. From the report: Many of the details in OpenAI's report were previously made public in a Black Hat presentation on August 6, but OpenAI's official report gives a more thorough accounting of the incident, including more detail on the testing that initiated it. The report also gives critical new detail into how OpenAI aims to prevent future incidents, including chain-of-thought monitoring and a more advanced system for halting rogue agents." METR and Redwood Research also conducted third-party assessments of the models' behavior during the incident; both groups are planning to publish their own reports on the incident on it.
In broad strokes, the report describes how an OpenAI model was presented with an unsolvable problem in testing and proceeded to chain together previously undiscovered exploits in order to bypass security measures and complete its task. The model initially compromised the Artifactory package management tool in order to gain access to the internet, then compromised various systems across OpenAI, Hugging Face, and other vendors.
The report gives critical new details about the models that carried out the breach. The primary model was from the same family as OpenAI's forthcoming Astra model, although the report emphasizes that it was "a distinct model with different post-training, where much of a model's behavior is shaped." Because OpenAI was testing the model's capabilities, it was also unrestrained by the normal classifiers meant to prevent models from compromising digital infrastructure. "OpenAI estimates maximal cyber capabilities by running this evaluation without the production classifiers intended to prevent models from pursuing high-risk cyber activity," the report explains. "These evaluations are important so that OpenAI can measure models' underlying capabilities and design appropriate safeguards." OpenAI says it is adding 24/7 escalation, stronger containment tools, and more chain-of-thought monitoring, which it claims would have flagged the activity more than a day before Hugging Face was breached.
Five years after the attack in Afghanistan that killed 13 service members, the Pentagon upgraded the awards of three Marines who provided care in the wake of the blast.
A federal judge on Wednesday denied Minnesota's request for a temporary restraining order to halt the release of the ICE agent sought for extradition in a shooting earlier this year in north Minneapolis amid Operation Metro Surge, and then lying about the circumstances under oath.
Instagram and Facebook’s parent company agreed to sweeping alterations and a payment of up to $18bn to settle a landmark trial
Meta’s agreement to change how teenagers use its social networks marks a major turning point for the US tech giant, setting a precedent that could significantly reshape how other social media operates in the coming years.
Meta agreed to substantial alterations to Instagram and Facebook on Wednesday as part of a settlement to end a landmark lawsuit. Dozens of US states had accused it of addicting and harming children with dangerous products. The company also agreed to pay up to a combined $18bn over a decade to several US states and territories involved in the suit.
Democrat Eric Hafner, to be released in 2036, also ran for seat in 2024, securing spot on that general election ballot
A man who is serving time in a federal prison in New York advanced on Wednesday from the primary for Alaska’s lone US House seat.
Eric Hafner, a registered Democrat, also ran for the seat in 2024 and secured a spot on the general election ballot that November despite a challenge brought by the Alaska Democratic party.
Then House candidate joined Democratic Socialists of America in 2018 but didn’t renew membership after a year
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has rejoined the Democratic Socialists of America after not renewing her membership for seven years, amid speculation that she might run for president in 2028.
The 36-year-old New York representative and one of the country’s most prominent democratic socialists renewed her membership in the group’s national organization after reports emerged earlier this month that it had lapsed. Ocasio-Cortez initially joined the group in 2018.
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Reuters: China's Moonshot AI is negotiating revenue-sharing agreements with Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet's Google, that would allow the U.S. cloud giants to host its blockbuster Kimi K3 model, three people familiar with the talks said. Any deal could mark the first big revenue-sharing pact between a Chinese AI firm and a major U.S. cloud company. The discussions highlight how China's leading AI models, often far cheaper than Western offerings, are gaining traction in the U.S., despite national security concerns in Washington that have led to bans on exports of AI chips to China. They are also taking place despite critical comments about Moonshot from senior U.S. officials.
IPO-bound Moonshot is seeking up to a 30% share of revenue generated from K3-related services on Microsoft's Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, according to the sources who declined to be identified because the discussions are private. That would be in line with terms that sources have said the startup has outlined for major customers using the open-weight model. Moonshot has come under fire from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who said last month that he might add it to a trade blacklist. U.S. officials have accused the Beijing-based company of stealing from Anthropic's most sophisticated model, Fable, to help create Kimi K3 and illegally acquiring Nvidia chips.
(The Center Square) – A local Missouri health department has told Kathy Kite, a grandmother who serves free breakfast to her neighbors from her home, that she will face legal action if she continues doing so without a permit.
FBI psychiatrist Gregory Saathoff says he has treated only two women with postpartum psychosis, both decades earlier
Testimony finished in the Lindsay Clancy trial on Wednesday, as a final witness for the prosecution laid out that he believed the Massachusetts mother knew right from wrong when she took the lives of her three young children before attempting to commit suicide in 2023.
Closing arguments are expected to begin on Thursday. The jury will then start deliberating.
Andy Burnham stops short of pledging further help as gas and electricity prices due to increase by 4% in October
Households are unlikely to receive further energy bills support before the October price cap, though more targeted measures could be looked at if there is a further shock in January, government sources said.
Gas and electricity prices will rise by 4% from October under the new cap. The government has already removed VAT from domestic electricity bills to save average households £45 a year, a move announced in Andy Burnham’s first week in office.
DIY system will be stocked by big retailers, starting with Argos, enabling more homes to lower bills by generating own electricity
Plug-in solar panels will go on sale in the UK for the first time from Thursday, allowing households unable to use rooftop panels to also generate their own cheap electricity.
Households across the country will be able to join the millions across mainland Europe who generate their own renewable electricity using “balcony solar panels”, which will be stocked by some of the UK’s biggest retailers.
Paid employment can boost confidence and wellbeing, says Pat McFadden as jobs guarantee scheme gets under way
Work must be “part of the answer” to the mental health crisis among young people, the work and pensions secretary, Pat McFadden, has said as he met some of the first beneficiaries of Labour’s youth jobs guarantee scheme.
He was speaking on a visit to Boots’s headquarters in Nottingham on Wednesday, where several 18- to 21-year-olds were taken on under the job guarantee – with their wages paid by the taxpayer for six months.
Around 97% of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer die within five years. Researchers have figured out a way to target the mechanism that makes these tumors so deadly.
The free statewide gathering connected caregivers with 50 service providers while emphasizing that those caring for others also need support, practical resources and time to protect their own health.
By George D. Rotsch, Editor of Delaware LIVE
DOVER — A capacity crowd of 400 caregivers gathered Wednesday at the Rollins Center at Bally’s Dover for the 16th annual “Taking Care of YOU” Caregiver Conference.
Registration for the free conference closed after all available spaces were reserved, reflecting the growing demand for caregiver support and resources across Delaware.
Hosted by Easterseals Delaware & Maryland’s Eastern Shore and co-sponsored by the Delaware Division of Services for Aging and Adults with Physical Disabilities, the conference connected caregivers with 50 companies and community organizations providing respite care, health services, assistive technology, legal guidance, education and other resources.
The strong attendance reinforced Easterseals’ position as one of Delaware’s leading sources of support for families caring for seniors and people with disabilities.
Caregivers turn out for help and connections
Jen Batog, director of marketing for Easterseals Delaware & Maryland’s Eastern Shore, said the turnout demonstrated that caregivers are eager to find assistance and connect with people who understand their experiences.
“We were thrilled to see caregivers so excited to seek help, discover new resources and spend the day talking with other caregivers,” Batog said. “This event shows that the number of Delawareans caring for a senior or a loved one with disabilities continues to grow, and we are grateful that Easterseals can be there to help.”
Batog thanked the state of Delaware, participating vendors, community partners and Easterseals staff members who worked together to organize the conference and make its resources available to caregivers.
The exhibitors reflected the wide range of services caregivers may need during different stages of their journey. Participants included the newly reorganized Delaware chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, MeadowWood Behavioral Health Hospital, AARP Delaware, Delaware NeuroRehab, PWW Law, PACE Your LIFE and WeCare at the Milford Wellness Village.
Technology innovator Wisdom and its partner, Griswold Home Care, also participated, along with many other organizations offering health care, in-home assistance, education and community resources.
Taking care of the caregiver
The conference’s “Taking Care of YOU” theme focused on caregiver well-being, balance and self-care — concerns that often receive less attention than the needs of the person receiving care.
The program included a caregiver panel titled “What I Do to Take Care of ME!,” opportunities to meet service providers and a session focused on kindness and self-compassion. The combination of education, peer discussion and access to providers gave caregivers an opportunity to find practical assistance while connecting with others facing similar challenges.
The conference also reflected Easterseals’ broader role in Delaware. Rather than providing a single service, the organization helps families navigate a complicated network of health, disability, aging and community resources.
Its caregiver programs include case management, support groups, educational workshops, respite assistance and demonstrations of technology designed to improve safety and independence.
Burnout is more than being busy
Keynote speaker Heather Volkema, client success manager at Trualta, told caregivers that burnout is not simply the result of having too much to do.
Volkema has more than a decade of health care experience. She began her career working with hospice patients and their families, later developed caregiver-education programs and served as operating director of an in-home care organization before joining Trualta.
She said caregivers frequently balance emotional and physical demands with jobs, family responsibilities and circumstances they cannot control. Those pressures can lead to exhaustion, anxiety, irritability, isolation and feelings of being overwhelmed or taken for granted.
Volkema’s central message was that caregivers must protect their own health if they are going to continue caring effectively for someone else. Many hesitate to seek assistance because they feel guilty, fear rejection or believe they should be able to manage everything alone.
Asking for help, she said, is “a sign of strength and self-awareness,” not an admission of failure.
Practical ways to reduce the pressure
Volkema encouraged caregivers to identify the responsibilities creating the greatest stress and make specific requests of relatives or friends.
Instead of simply asking someone to help, a caregiver could ask a family member to provide transportation to an appointment, purchase groceries or take responsibility for a particular personal-care task.
She also recommended that caregivers establish boundaries, schedule personal time and take even brief breaks when longer periods of respite are unavailable. Support groups, community organizations, professional assistance and online resources can reduce isolation and make difficult responsibilities more manageable.
Caregivers should begin with small steps, share responsibilities whenever possible and recognize that protecting their own health is an essential part of caring for another person, Volkema said.
Support continues throughout the year
Easterseals’ work with caregivers continues beyond the annual conference through its Caregiver Resource Centers in New Castle and at the Milford Wellness Village. Caregivers can speak with case managers, obtain educational materials and receive referrals to programs addressing their particular circumstances.
The organization also offers monthly support groups, free educational workshops and virtual office hours. Its Resource and Technology Demonstration Centers contain hundreds of assistive devices that caregivers can examine before deciding whether a product could make a home safer or help a loved one remain more independent.
Respite programs can give caregivers time away from their daily responsibilities while ensuring that a family member continues receiving appropriate care. Easterseals’ adult day programs and Camp Fairlee also provide structured activities for participants while giving caregivers time to rest, work or handle other responsibilities.
In 2024, Easterseals reported serving more than 7,970 people directly through programs including children’s therapy, adult day services and supported employment. Another 44,280 people were reached through education, training, information and referrals.
The conference’s capacity attendance illustrated why that network matters. Caregivers may perform much of their work privately in homes across Delaware, but Wednesday’s gathering showed that they constitute a large community with shared challenges.
Supporting that community requires more than encouragement. It requires education, respite, practical tools and a trusted organization capable of connecting families with the right assistance at the right time.
To-go box
Event: 16th annual “Taking Care of YOU” Caregiver Conference Host: Easterseals Delaware & Maryland’s Eastern Shore Attendance: Capacity crowd of 400 caregivers Participants: 50 companies and community organizations Keynote: Heather Volkema, client success manager at Trualta Caregiver assistance:resources@esdel.org or 302-221-2291
Apple has begun rolling out ads in Apple Maps, with sponsored businesses appearing at the top of search results and in the "suggested places" section for users in the U.S. and Canada. Apple says the ads can be based on approximate location, search terms, or the area of the map being viewed, but are not tied to users' Apple Accounts and personal data remains on-device. 9to5Mac reports: Ads appear just like every other business listing, except they have a small blue badge that says 'Ad.' You can see examples of ads [embedded in the article]. Like Apple's ads policy with other services, the company touts user privacy protections for ads in Maps. Per Apple Newsroom: "Ads on Maps builds on Apple's broader privacy-first approach to advertising, and maintains the same privacy protections Maps users enjoy today. A user's location and the ads they see and interact with in Maps are not associated with a user's Apple Account. Personal data stays on a user's device, is not collected or stored by Apple, and is not shared with third parties."
After Kevin Davis was found dying at the foot of the stairs in his Indiana home, police initially believed it was an accident. They did not search the room where a pit bull mix was secured.
US tech giant agrees to establish further protections for teens such as daily usage limits and blocks on night-time use
Meta agreed to significant changes to its Instagram and Facebook apps in a settlement that ended a landmark lawsuit on Wednesday. Dozens of US states had accused the tech giant of addicting and harming children with dangerous products.
The agreement curtails a major trial in California and will require the social mediacompany to pay up to $18bn. Meta agreed to establish safeguards for teenage users, including daily usage limits and blocks on night-time use nationwide in the US.
Tim Curry was known for his iconic performances in cult classics like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and the original screen adaptation of Stephen King's "It."
The president’s executive order is now in effect for the midterm elections, but the ruling leaves the door open to renewed challenges from rights groups.
Last week, 404 Media published a story that revealed an Amazon warehouse where the company scans and destroys thousands of books for AI training data. Today, the publication has released an interview with one of the Amazon employees at the warehouse. "The employee worked at Amazon's VGT3 warehouse, which is housed in the same facility as LAS8, where Amazon operates its print-on-demand business," reports 404 Media. "Both operations are part of a larger complex of Amazon facilities in Las Vegas, Nevada." Slashdot reader alternative_right shares an excerpt from the report: [...] What does it look like when they cut the spines off the books?
It's a machine people operate. Each of these machines is just like a little workstation, and there'll be one person at each of these stations. It's really safe because it has a little cover and it has a little area where you slide the book into, remove your fingers from the area, and then you press a button, and it just comes down and slices it. And then you remove the books after the blade is gone.
After they cut the spines they have these kind of library carts, kind of like how you would stack books, but instead, it's a stacks of paper and little cardboard things to separate -- I'm guessing -- the different books. I saw the pages being thrown in a shuttle after they were scanned. We were walking by and we went over to one of the shuttles and looked into it because we could tell they were throwing the old books in it or the cut books in it, and it's just a bunch of loose paper like just sheets thrown in there.
What do you think about Amazon doing this?
At first what they were telling people is that it was for Kindles, but I just didn't believe that. I instantly was like, I don't think that's how they do it because of publication rights and stuff, copyright and everything. Then I saw it was for AI. I don't like it only because I wish I could take these books. There's so much knowledge and so much stuff in them and some of them look like they might be rare, and I've heard that they order rare books, and that's why I say some of these are so obscure. I definitely don't like the idea that they can't be reused or anything like that afterwards. They're reducing the amount of available copies for other people.
An ad from a super PAC supporting Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley features a heart-wrenching testimonial from the father of a woman who was murdered in 2025. The ad falsely implies the accused murderer was one of the prisoners released during the COVID-19 pandemic when Whatley’s Democratic opponent, Roy Cooper, was governor of North Carolina.
The problem: Cooper had nothing to do with the accused murderer’s release. The suspect was released from a prison in South Carolina, not North Carolina.
Here’s how the ad from the Senate Leadership Fund, or SLF PAC, tiptoes the line, implying, but not directly stating, that Cooper was indirectly responsible for the woman’s death.
“Logan was the most caring, loving person,” Stephen Federico, the father of a 22-year-old murdered in 2025, says in the ad while choking back tears. “It was a home invasion. Went to the house where Logan was sleeping and he pulled her out of bed and forced her on her knees and stuck a shotgun in her, left side of her chest, and pulled the trigger for no reason. Logan was a casualty of an agenda. Roy Cooper let 3,500 criminals out on the street; 18 of them were murders. Forty years of Roy Cooper is enough.”
The claim about Cooper releasing “3,500 criminals out on the street” refers to a court settlement reached during the COVID-19 pandemic. But there’s some important context missing from that narrative. As governor, Cooper resisted calls to release prisoners to ease safety concerns. He was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union and other activists. After a judge issued a preliminary injunction in favor of the ACLU and called on the state to come up with a plan to reduce the prison population, Cooper reached a settlement to allow the release of 3,500 prisoners. But again, none of them was the man accused of killing Logan Federico.
South Carolina did not expedite the release of prisoners during the pandemic (though it, too, was sued by the ACLU and others). However, in addition to North Carolina, numerous other states did implement expedited release policies to reduce their prison populations in response to the pandemic, including states like Iowa and Arkansas with Republican governors.
We reached out to SLF PAC about its ad, but we did not get a response.
“These attacks are false – this heinous crime was committed in South Carolina by a South Carolina criminal, but a Republican super PAC is using this tragedy for political gain,” a spokesperson for Cooper’s Senate campaign told us.
Cooper and Whatley are vying for an open Senate seat being vacated by Republican Thom Tillis, who is retiring. The Cook Political Report says that this Republican seat is the one Democrats “are most likely to flip.”
Logan Federico’s Murder
Logan Federico was a resident of North Carolina, but she was visiting friends in Columbia, South Carolina, when she was shot and killed in a home invasion. The man charged with killing her, Alexander Dickey, had a lengthy criminal history in South Carolina.
A criminal history report obtained by WIS News 10 in Columbia shows that prior to Federico’s murder, Dickey had been arrested nearly a dozen times and charged with nearly 40 crimes, including burglary and robbery. A WIS 10 investigation in June 2025 revealed that flaws in the criminal reporting system potentially contributed to a shorter sentence in 2023, on a charge that could have kept Dickey behind bars for years.
As the WIS 10 investigation showed, Dickey was arrested in 2023 on a burglary charge and pleaded guilty to a first offense, third-degree burglary. But it wasn’t a first offense for third-degree burglary — Dickey had been sentenced for a first offense in 2014.
Rick Hubbard, the state’s 11th Circuit solicitor, told WIS 10 that his office did not know at the time about Dickey’s previous burglary arrests and convictions. So while Dickey could have faced up to 10 years in prison, he was offered a plea deal for time served (411 days awaiting trial), and was placed on probation.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, or SLED, said it never received fingerprints from the 2014 burglary arrest, so Dickey’s earlier conviction was not apparent to prosecutors. According to WIS 10, “Had they known, Hubbard said his office would not have prosecuted Dickey’s case as a first offense and Dickey would have likely received a longer sentence.”
Since his daughter’s murder, Stephen Federico has been a prominent advocate pushing lawmakers to keep repeat offenders behind bars for longer.
In April, South Carolina Republicans Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has since passed away, and Rep. Russell Fry introduced what was called Logan’s Law. The legislation, which has not made it out of committee, would create a publicly accessible violent criminal offender database (which is meant to hold judges and prosecutors accountable for lenient sentences), and would direct the creation of a report to Congress “identifying deficiencies in the sharing of fingerprint, warrant, and criminal history data between states and the federal government.”
So, there appear to have been flaws in South Carolina’s criminal record-keeping on Dickey that may have kept him from being behind bars when he is alleged to have killed Federico. But none of that has anything to do with North Carolina, or Cooper.
Pandemic Prisoner Releases
In the ad, Stephen Federico says his daughter was “a casualty of an agenda.” He then immediately says, “Roy Cooper let 3,500 criminals out on the street; 18 of them were murders.”
Whatley, himself, has alsomade the prisoner release a key campaign issue.
There were thousands of prisoners released early during the pandemic, but there’s important context missing from that attack. Cooper resisted early calls in the pandemic to commute sentences to reduce the prison population.
On April 20, 2020, the ACLU, the NAACP and several inmates sued Cooper and other state prison officials saying they had “failed to meaningfully decrease the number of people in Department of Public Safety” facilities and that “[w]ithout timely relief from the courts, COVID-19 will continue to sweep through the state prisons, inflicting terrible suffering and death.”
On June 16 of that year, Wake County Superior Court Judge Vinston Rozier Jr. granted a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs, saying they were “likely” to “succeed on the merits of their claim that the conditions of confinement” violated the state constitution’s prohibitions against inflicting “cruel or unusual punishments.” The judge ordered the state to come up with a plan that would, in addition to other COVID-19 safety measures, reduce prison overcrowding.
Later, in December 2020, as COVID-19 cases in North Carolina prisons were rising, Rozier appointed a special master to review the state’s home confinement program and to provide recommendations for easing prison populations through eligible early release.
In February 2021, the two sides reached a settlement, with the state agreeing to the “early reentry” of 3,500 people in state custody within six months. (The plaintiffs had sought the release of as many as 18,000 prisoners.) According to The Assembly, a longform journalism news site, by the time the agreement was signed, more than 9,500 inmates had tested positive for COVID-19 and 47 had died.
“After [Cooper] fought against these releases in court, North Carolina law enforcement officials and parole officers looked to similar criteria President Trump used a year prior when his administration released thousands of federal prisoners due to COVID-19,” a spokesperson for the Cooper campaign told us.
As part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the CARES Act) signed by Trump in late March 2020, more than 13,000 federal prisoners were released from prison into home confinement. But the CARES Act excluded any prisoners convicted of violent crimes, sex offenses and terrorism-related crimes. That wasn’t entirely the case in North Carolina. While state officials initially indicated only nonviolent offenders would be among those released early, prison officials later clarified that some violent offenders due to be released in 2021, the year of the settlement, would also be included (provided they had served their minimum sentence).
The Charlotte Observer reported that the list also included 51 inmates serving life sentences. State officials say all were eligible for parole before the deal, and were not made eligible because of it. (In any case, the Cooper campaign says law enforcement officials and parole officers made the determinations about which prisoners were released, not Cooper.)
The agreement was criticized at the time by some Republicans, who argued Cooper should have continued to fight in court.
“A group I consider more liberal than me has sued an administration I consider more liberal than me, and a deal was reached,” Republican state Rep. Carson Smith said a week after the agreement was announced.
Representatives of the plaintiffs, however, described Cooper as consistently adversarial.
“The idea that, you know, Roy Cooper is somehow being attacked for doing too much here [to suport prisoner releases] is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard,” Daniel Bowes, director of policy and advocacy at the ACLU of North Carolina, told Carolina Public Press in March of 2021.
As the pandemic unfolded, “what we saw was a constant sort of reluctance to provide meaningful release,” Bowes said. “There was absolutely no sort of urgency that wasn’t pushed along by the litigation.”
“It was an extremely adversarial litigation,” Emancipate NC attorney Elizabeth Simpson told The Assembly.
Orlando Rodriguez, special deputy attorney in the North Carolina Department of Justice, who represented the defendants, told Carolina Public Press the state feared more orders from the judge were coming. Indeed, the special master appointed to the case “said he was going to recommend that the state broaden the categories for who would be eligible for release,” Carolina Public Press reported.
The SLF ad also says that of the 3,500 prisoners released “18 of them were murders.”
That’s based on an analysis published in the New York Post on May 7 — and cited in the ad — that concluded nearly half of the 3,500 prisoners released went on to commit another criminal offense, many of them violent offenses.
While the ad leaves the impression that 18 of the people released were murderers, it’s actually that — as the New York Post put it — “A staggering 18 of the prisoners released have been charged with murder in the four years since.”
An analysis by The Assembly, however, concluded the New York Post story was misleading.
“Our analysis found that of the roughly 3,000 inmates who were released early because of the settlement, more than 90% would have been out by the end of 2021 anyway by virtue of completing their sentences,” The Assembly story stated. “The agreement allowed prison officials to let them out early through a variety of methods—awarding credits for things like good behavior to shave time off their sentences, releasing qualified nonviolent inmates to house arrest, and accelerating parole for eligible inmates serving life or long active sentences under a previous sentencing structure.”
Indeed, the Cooper campaign pointed out that more than half of the 18 individuals cited in the Post as murderers are alleged to have committed that crime after their scheduled pre-settlement release date for previous convictions. According to The Assembly, “at least seven of them were already out of prison before the settlement was even signed.” In other words, the Cooper campaign argues, the settlement had no part in most of the murders identified by the New York Post.
Whatley campaign spokesman DJ Griffin said, “While Cooper had the opportunity to fight this settlement in court (like Democrat Governors in Colorado and Illinois), he chose to settle, releasing thousands of convicted criminals back onto our streets.” Griffin claimed a number of people have been murdered by “criminals Roy Cooper released from prison early.”
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A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent accused of firing his gun and wounding a Venezuelan man in the leg is caught in an interstate extradition dispute between Texas and Minnesota – and could walk out of a Texas jail as soon as Wednesday after a federal judge refused to intervene.
Christian Castro is charged in Minnesota with assault and falsely reporting a crime by another, in relation to the incident in which he was involved in the wounding of 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in January.
Thirty-three British citizens including a 13-year-old girl are among more than 400 travellers missing after a flash flood on the Nepal-Tibet border, according to Nepal’s tourism board.
The sudden flood happened on the Tibetan side of the Bhote Koshi River at about 8.30am local time on Wednesday. The 33 UK citizens are among at least 341 foreign nationals unaccounted for.
Vice President JD Vance said the Trump administration’s border strategy kept drugs out of Maine and saved lives.
“Last year in 2025, did you know that overdoses in the state of Maine were down by 20%, and already in 2026 they’re down by another 17%?” Vance said in an Aug. 24 speech at Compotech, a defense contractor in Brewer, Maine. “We sealed the border, and that’s what happened, my friends, and that’s why we did it.”
Vance didn’t specify whether he meant fatal overdoses but he later nodded to deaths, saying “tens of thousands of Mainers died from fentanyl overdoses by that poison.”
Vance’s number was an exaggeration; the annual number of Maine fatal overdoses is in the hundreds.
But he was correct that Maine’s overdose deaths have dropped. PolitiFact wondered if Vance was also right about what caused the decline.
We asked the vice president’s office for information to support Vance’s statement and a spokesperson referred us to the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle fentanyl networks and the declining death toll.
Maine’s declining fatal overdoses pre-dated the Trump-Vance administration. Drug policy researchers credit multiple factors, and Trump’s border policy is not one.
“We did not literally seal the borders (to fentanyl)” Carnegie Mellon drug policy researcher Jonathan P. Caulkins told PolitiFact. “Obviously some is still getting in; otherwise deaths would be zero.”
Drug overdoses started declining before Trump’s second term
Most illicit fentanyl in the U.S. comes from Mexico and is made with chemicals from China.
In recent years, the drug mostly entered the U.S. via the southern border at official ports of entry, and 83.5% of the smugglers in fiscal year 2024 were U.S. citizens.
But after two decades of rising deaths, fatal overdoses dropped by 21.4%from 2024 to 2025, the U.S. government reported in January. About one month into the Trump administration, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said multiple factors contributed to the decline, including broader distribution of the overdose-reversing medication naloxone, better access to treatment, shifts in the illegal drug supply and the post-pandemic resumption of prevention and response.
The majority of states had declines in fatal overdoses, including Maine.
Maine had 391 fatal overdoses in 2025, about 20% fewer than 2024, according to data compiled by the state and the University of Maine. During the first half of 2026, fatal overdoses dropped about 9.5% compared with the first half of 2025. Among overdose cases, fentanyl was the most common drug used; it is often combined with other drugs.
Vance omitted that fatal overdoses started declining in Maine during the Biden administration; deaths dropped. The number of fatal overdoses in 2024 was 19% lower than in 2023 which was also 16% lower than deaths in 2022.
“The evidence supports multiple factors for this reduction in overdose deaths, especially fentanyl deaths, rather than pointing to a closing the US border as a single cause,” wrote Marcella Sorg, a University of Maine medical and forensic anthropologist whose team provides research for the state’s opioid response, in an email to PolitiFact.
Maine officials also point to steps they have taken to provide treatment and recovery. Since August 2019, Gov. Janet Mills’ administration has distributed more than 870,000 doses of naloxone. Maine has invested in behavioral health specialists, recovery coaches and treatment and support in various places, from jails to workplaces.
The state has laws aimed to reduce addiction, including strict opioid prescription rules and to encourage people to seek help if someone they are with overdoses.
Sifting through Vance’s evidence
The Trump administration in July highlighted the decline in fentanyl overdoses from 2024 to 2025. It cited steps it said disrupted the supply, including designating cartels as terrorist organizations and signing the HALT Fentanyl Act, a bipartisan bill that made permanent a 2018 rule that classified knockoffs as Schedule 1 drugs, resulting in harsher sentences for possession.
The administration also pointed to its strikes on vessels it says are carrying drugs. In January, Trump said drugs entering the U.S. by sea were down substantially as a result of the vessel strikes; we rated that False. His administration provided no evidence the boats were carrying drugs.
We sent the administration’s evidence to experts on drug policy.
“It is very difficult to parse out with certainty the specific policies that caused overdose deaths to come down,” Regina LaBelle, a Georgetown professor of addiction policy. “You can just as easily point to other reasons, including more treatment in jails and prisons,” noting a study on that factor, or naloxone access.
Peter Reuter, a University of Maryland public policy and criminology professor, said “there is no proof” those administration steps caused the decline in overdoses. He said the most plausibly effective intervention on the list was the president closing a trade loophole for an import tax exemption for packages valued at less than $800. Known as the de minimis exemption, it was meant to curb drug trafficking.
“No study has been done of how this (exemption) has affected fentanyl supplies; it would indeed be hard to design such a study,” Reuter said.
Caulkins said there is no control group or mechanism to show what would have happened without those measures. In their January paper in the journal Science, Caulkins and Reuter said fentanyl became less available in the U.S. and Canada in 2023 as China took action against manufacturers of what are known as “precursors” — chemicals used to make fentanyl. The crackdown partly followed pressure from the Biden administration..
However, Caulkins said that is only a hypothesis, one that is not easy to test. He also said that the fentanyl supply appeared to be down for longer than one would expect from those chemicals restrictions.
“So it seems plausible that various other actions, perhaps including by the governments of the U.S., Mexico and Canada, contributed to the ongoing tightness in supply,” Caulkins said. “It is plausible that the measures that Vance mentions made some contributions in that regard.”
Reuter previously told PolitiFact that the purity of fentanyl seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration began to decrease around the same time as overdose deaths started to decline in the U.S. and Canada in 2023.
“It’s very likely that (the change in purity) has something to do with precursor supply, because that’s what the two markets share,” he said.
In August, Reuter and a coauthor wrote for Brookings, a think tank, “The true explanation of the falling number of drug overdose deaths is almost certainly some combination of supply-side changes, demand-side adaptation, and the hard-to-quantify effects of community organizations doing the daily work of harm reduction.” The article did not mention Trump’s border policy.
Our ruling
Vance said “we sealed the border” and drug overdoses decreased in Maine.
Overdoses in Maine are down — they were about 20% lower in 2025 than in 2024. The declines started under the Biden administration.
Experts on drug policy — including the CDC during the second Trump administration — point to multiple factors that have contributed to the decline, including shifts in the illegal drug supply and access to medication and treatment.
Researchers found no evidence that Trump border policies led to a decrease in drug deaths in Maine and the Trump administration’s evidence did not show that either. We rate this statement False.
Staff Writer Madison Czopek contributed to this fact-check.
PM said he would set bar at £500k, but trade unions say funding reforms could undermine their ability to donate to Labour
Andy Burnham has dropped his support for capping political donations, causing anger among activists and Labour MPs who have long campaigned for change to the way parties are funded.
The prime minister has decided not to back amendments to the elections bill, which would cap the amount a person or an organisation can give in a single donation, according to government sources.
Victoria Hicks, mother of Alexandra Hicks, told reporters that she feels 'justice is possible' after Meta settled in its US trial over teen addiction. On 26 August in a Oakland, California, federal courtroom, Meta agreed to establish safeguards for teenagers and pay up to $17bn. Dozens of US states had accused the tech giant of addicting and harming children with dangerous products
How are the xt60s connected between the focer battery and the bms? Is it that the focer positive and ground are tying into the batter positive and ground and then also those are tied into the bms? Or am I missing something?
Firm says ‘early signals … could have triggered an earlier response’ as it releases report into Hugging Face hack
OpenAI staff observed signs of rogue behaviour among its leading-edge AI agents weeks before they escaped their training environment to launch an unprecedented hacking crusade that spread global alarm.
The San Francisco AI company conceded on Wednesday that “early signals … could have triggered an earlier response”, as it released a report into the days-long July hack of a major software repository, Hugging Face, considered the first autonomous agent cyber-attack.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For decades, console owners have faced a choice between the convenience of digital downloads and the permanence of physical game discs. Soon, Xbox owners will be able to get the best of both worlds for thousands of supported titles as part of a newly announced disc-to-digital program. The program -- announced today ahead of testing for Xbox Insiders starting August 31 -- will let players claim a "digital entitlement" for "most Xbox One and Xbox Series X disc-based games" simply by inserting the disc into a console and launching it. That game will then be playable completely digitally, without the need to ever insert the disc, as long as you (or a member of your family account) is logged in. The digital entitlement will also allow access to features like Xbox Play Anywhere (for play on PC) and Xbox Cloud Gaming, for supported titles.
Microsoft says that your physical disc will "continue to work exactly as it always has" after the digital entitlement is claimed. But before you get any ideas, the fine print on the announcement mentions that there is only "one revokable license per game disc," so if you resell that disc or loan it to a friend, that digital entitlement could be transferred to a new account when someone else puts it into their console.
A leaked memo obtained by the Verge earlier this month suggests that publishers have to actively opt in to allow their game discs to activate digital entitlements, which could explain why "most" but not all Xbox One and Series X titles are supported. Windows Central separately suggests, based on discussion with unnamed sources, that "some discs may be incompatible due to how they were manufactured at the time," which could explain why original Xbox and Xbox 360 discs are not being discussed for the program. "While not every title will be available at launch, this is an important step toward a future where players can have greater confidence that the games they buy remain with them for years to come," said Xbox Vice President Jason Ronald.
(The Center Square) – U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson says foreign bettors are helping push prediction markets into giving Democrats better odds of taking over the House.
Streeting says role is chance to show strength and challenge stereotype that ‘persists in dark corners of internet’
Wes Streeting has described receiving a mass of homophobic abuse since he was made defence secretary last month, while also saying his appointment had been welcomed by some in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as a sign of change.
Until 2000, gay men and lesbian women were banned from serving in the UK military, with about 200-plus personnel thrown out of the forces each year due to their sexuality – an estimate, as proper records were not kept.
(The Center Square) – Ohio’ will appeal a federal court ruling blocking a state law requiring a person to present proof of citizenship before registering to vote while applying for a state driver’s license.
At least 157 people have been killed and hundreds, including large numbers of foreign tourists, are missing after flash floods hit the Himalayan border areas of Nepal and Tibet in China, police have said, with parts of India also at risk.
The disaster was caused by a torrent of mud, water and debris that burst from the banks of a river that runs between China and Nepal. Homes, roads, bridges and power plants were swept away in Nepal, while officials in Tibet said they feared “major casualties”.
PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 26, 2026 — XCENA, a semiconductor company developing memory-centric computing solutions for AI infrastructure, has presented the architecture and measured performance of MX1, its computational CXL memory architecture, during the Hot Chips 2026 Memory session. Presented by Harry Kim, Chief Product Officer of XCENA, the session examined how MX1 combines large-scale memory expansion, SSD-backed capacity and programmable near-memory computing in a single CXL Type 3 device to address the growing memory constraints of AI infrastructure.
Credit: XCENA
The MX1 presentation was selected through the Hot Chips program committee’s technical review process.
As AI models continue to grow, system performance is increasingly constrained by memory capacity, data movement and the economics of high-bandwidth memory scaling rather than compute alone. MX1 is designed to complement CPUs, GPUs and AI accelerators by expanding memory capacity and offloading selected memory-bound operations—including vector search, KV-cache retrieval and data preprocessing—so host processors can focus on compute-intensive inference.
MX1 integrates three architectural capabilities within a single CXL Type 3 device:
Memory expansion: Up to 2 TB of DDR5 across four memory channels connected through CXL 3.2 over PCIe 6.0.
SSD-backed capacity: XCENA InfiniteMemory exposes SSD capacity through a byte-addressable CXL memory interface while transparently caching frequently accessed 64 KB pages in DRAM.
Near-memory computing: 1,000+ custom RISC-V cores organized into Memory Acceleration Units execute highly parallel, memory-intensive workloads close to the data. Integrated vector engines provide approximately 3 TFLOPS of FP32/FP16 dot-product throughput for workloads including vector search and KV-cache scoring.
“Hot Chips is where the industry evaluates new computing architectures based on technical merit,” said Harry Kim, Chief Product Officer of XCENA. “Our presentation shares the architectural design, software model and measured performance of MX1, demonstrating how computational CXL memory can help address the growing capacity and data-movement challenges facing AI infrastructure.”
Measured Performance on Representative Data-Processing Workloads
XCENA evaluated MX1 across six representative data-processing kernels commonly found in analytics and AI pipelines: compression, decompression, Parquet decoding, less-than filtering, LIKE filtering and aggregation.
Compared with a host CPU processing data over CXL, a single MX1 delivered up to 4.7x higher throughput and 18.7x greater energy efficiency. Compared with the same host CPU processing data from local DDR5 memory, MX1 delivered up to 2.0x higher throughput and 6.2x greater energy efficiency.
“These results demonstrate the value of executing highly parallel, memory-bound workloads closer to where the data resides,” Kim said. “MX1 is designed to complement the host processor by reducing unnecessary data movement, allowing CPU resources to remain focused on operating system services, orchestration and general-purpose computation.”
Software Model and Availability
Developers program MX1 using standard C/C++ or Rust through XCENA’s LLVM-based software toolchain. The PXL runtime schedules and synchronizes workloads across the device’s RISC-V processing cores while providing a shared virtual address space that simplifies memory management for complex data structures and multi-application execution.
At the framework level, XCENA’s XFLARE analytics library integrates with SQL engines and FAISS-based vector search. The software stack is also being extended to support widely adopted AI and data frameworks, including Apache Arrow, PyTorch and vector databases, with additional SDK integrations planned over time. SDK information is available at xcena.com/sdk.
XCENA plans to begin mass production by the end of 2026, with initial customer revenue targeted for 2027.
About XCENA
XCENA is a memory-centric AI computing company redefining the role of memory in AI infrastructure. Built on the open Compute Express Link (CXL) standard, XCENA develops products that enable memory to be expanded and utilized more efficiently, helping customers improve AI infrastructure performance while reducing latency, power consumption, and total cost of ownership (TCO).
Founded by semiconductor veterans from Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, XCENA combines expertise in semiconductor design with a full-stack software development kit (SDK) to help hyperscalers, cloud providers, and enterprises deploy and optimize AI infrastructure at scale. Headquartered in Seongnam, South Korea, with a U.S. office in Sunnyvale, California, XCENA has raised US$185 million to date, including a US$135 million Series B financing.
Aug. 26, 2026 — The U.S. National Science Foundation is investing $90 million over five years to support three new NSF Science and Technology Centers (NSF STC). These centers will advance American leadership in science and technology, strengthen the nation’s STEM workforce, and accelerate innovation in fields ranging from artificial intelligence and biotechnology to fusion energy and robotics.
Credit: JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock
The three centers will bring together researchers from universities, national laboratories, industry, and other partners to pursue ambitious, collaborative research. Each center will receive approximately $6 million annually for an initial five-year period, with the opportunity to compete for up to five additional years of support.
“Maintaining the United States’ leadership in science and technology requires bold research, strong partnerships, and a skilled workforce,” said Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF Director. “As advances in foundational science and technology open new possibilities, these Science and Technology Centers will help American researchers seize those opportunities, accelerate scientific discovery, and develop the talent and technologies needed to turn innovation into solutions that benefit the American people.”
Since its inception in 1987, the NSF STC program has driven the emergence of new fields of discovery, catalyzed strong partnerships, advanced breakthrough technologies, sparked numerous start-up companies, and trained generations of researchers and innovators. The program supports large-scale, transformational research that opens new areas of discovery and drives technological innovation. By combining expertise across organizations and partnering with industry and other groups, STCs tackle complex, high-risk challenges in foundational research and help move promising ideas toward real-world benefits. The centers also strengthen the nation’s scientific and technical workforce by providing students and early-career researchers with hands-on experience in emerging fields and technologies.
The three Science and Technology Centers include:
The Center for Transformative Explorations in Multi-Physics and Engineering of Scientific Turbulence (TEMPEST), led by Michigan State University, aims to tackle one of the most challenging problems in physics and engineering: understanding and controlling turbulence. Turbulence is the chaotic, multiscale motion of fluids and plasmas and plays a critical role in fusion energy and national security applications, yet scientists still cannot reliably predict how complex turbulent systems behave across vastly different scales. TEMPEST will combine advanced experiments, mathematical modeling, high-performance computing, and AI to develop more accurate and reliable physics-grounded models that could accelerate fusion energy development, strengthen the scientific foundations of national security technologies, and drive innovation across science and engineering.
The Center for Genome Intelligence Engineering (GENIE), led by Northwestern University, will develop new ways to understand cell function with the goal of learning to prevent and potentially reverse declines in cell function. Researchers will study how DNA is organized in 3D, which helps determine each cell’s identity and function. Changes in this physical organization can contribute to illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. GENIE aims to develop innovative technologies for 3D DNA engineering and generate new knowledge that can be used to help cells and tissues withstand damage, restore lost functions, and return to a healthier state, leading to major advances in biotechnology and biomedicine.
The Center for Human and Robot Co-Adaptation, led by The University of Texas at Austin, will study how people and robots can securely and effectively adapt to one another as service and assistive robots become more common in homes, hospitals, workplaces, and public spaces. Researchers will combine robotics, AI, and human factors to develop new methods that help robots with embodied intelligence learn from people, understand their needs and preferences, and, in turn, adapt physically and cognitively to changing environments and different people. The center aims to advance secure, useful robotic technologies that can support independent living, healthcare, and other human-centered services.
The class of 2026 STCs focus on strengthening foundational research, advancing critical and emerging technologies, developing the science and technology workforce, and translating discoveries into technological advances and national benefits. STCs provide a uniquely effective framework for advancing these priorities by building sustained partnerships across universities, industry, and government and accelerating the use of new ideas and technologies for scientific discovery.
Amazon has agreed to acquire DuckLabs, bringing the team behind the popular open-source DuckDB database into AWS. "The deal fits Amazon's broader push to turn S3, its flagship cloud storage service, into a place where customers analyze data rather than just store it," reports GeekWire. "It gives Amazon a team experienced in building fast, lightweight analytics software that runs directly against data sitting in cloud storage." The DuckDB project itself will remain free and open source under the MIT license, overseen by the independent DuckDB Foundation. From the report: Employees of DuckLabs will join Amazon Web Services, including co-founders and DuckDB creators Hannes Muhleisen and Mark Raasveldt, who will continue leading the team and setting the project's technical direction. They will remain based in Amsterdam, where the team will continue developing DuckDB and related projects. [...] Financial terms were not disclosed. Amazon said it has signed a definitive agreement and expects the acquisition to close shortly. DuckLabs said it expects to become part of AWS in early September. Jordan Tigani, the CEO of MotherDuck, which sells a cloud service built on DuckDB, sees Amazon's acquisition as a predictable move to turn DuckDB's growing popularity into an AWS business. "That's Amazon's playbook, after all: wait until an open source project gets big enough, then launch it as a service," he wrote in a blog post, adding that "they're not acquiring Duck Labs just because they love open source."
Tigani also believes the deal could ultimately strengthen DuckDB, since Amazon has an incentive to keep the project open and widely adopted: "If DuckDB becomes the standard, it is going to drive a lot more compute on their infrastructure, which is where they make their money."
(The Center Square) – More than 10 years after the story first came to light, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel released a report detailing her office’s yearslong criminal investigation into the Flint Water Crisis.
President denies visit was to gain support for Iran sanctions or due to fears that Putin plans to ‘test Nato resolve’
Donald Trump has downplayed a visit to Moscow by the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, as “semi-routine” after he turned up in the Russian capital unannounced, triggering a wave of speculation about the reasons for his trip.
Ratcliffe was reported to have flown to Moscow on a government transport plane on Tuesday in a rare visit after taking off from the Andrews air force base in Maryland.
Presenter says he is moving to YouTube to avoid being left ‘behind the curve’ as media landscape changes
The outgoing Today programme presenter Amol Rajan has warned that the BBC is destined to “get smaller at an accelerating rate”, as he prepares to depart for a new project on YouTube.
Rajan, who announced earlier this year that he was leaving BBC News to “unleash my inner entrepreneur” in the creator economy, said he was making the shift to ensure he was not “behind the curve”.
Earlier this year, a survey found that Canada, along with Switzerland, was the best-liked country in the world. We all know this kind of polling is about as scientific as a high school popularity contest, but at least anecdotally, Canadians have a reputation for being friendly and welcoming, respectful and polite. Many people would find it difficult to dislike Canadians.
But not Donald Trump, who in a “hold my beer” moment this week demonstrated that he, at least, finds it easy to resent Canadians. The US president called the country “difficult and unreasonable”, and in a particularly hysterical moment, threatened to rename a lake, after trade talks collapsed.
(The Center Square) – Democrat David Crowley holds a lead slightly larger than the margin of error over Tom Tiffany in a Marquette Poll of likely voters released Wednesday in the Wisconsin governor’s race.
(The Center Square) – Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says his administration wants to know if city contractors reflect the diversity of the people whose tax dollars pay for their work.
Rangers have acquired forward Kevin Kelsy from Major League Soccer’s Portland Timbers, a source with direct knowledge of the deal told the Guardian on Wednesday. That source requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the agreement. The deal, worth $13m (£9.5m) – potentially more if Kelsy hits certain performance goals for Rangers – also includes a sell-on fee for the MLS club.
The Athletic’s Tom Bogert first reported details of the deal on Wednesday morning.
Portland acquired Kelsy from Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk last January, paying $6m for the Venezuela international. The 22-year-old has been erratic but ultimately productive for the Timbers, scoring 16 times in 43 appearances.
US labels group ‘global terrorist’ as Palestine Action challenge against proscription in UK nears supreme court hearing
The US has issued sanctions against the UK-based direct action organisation Palestine Action, describing it as a “transnational terror group”.
The US Department of the Treasury labelled Palestine Action a specially designated global terrorist on Wednesday, which allows the US to freeze the assets of foreign individuals and entities.
Tributes have poured in for Dolly Parton, the pioneering country music singer, songwriter and actor, who has died aged 80. Stars including Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey and Paul McCartney have paid tribute to one of the world’s greatest music artists, with many praising her lifelong philanthropy and advocacy for literacy and LGBTQ+ rights. Lucy Hough speaks to Guardian deputy features editor Jenny Stevens
Murder inquiry launched after blaze in Grangetown area, amid investigation into collision in which seven died
A murder investigation has been launched after two people were killed in a house fire in Middlesbrough, with police not ruling out links to organised crime or the crash on the A66 on Saturday that killed seven people including two police officers.
A child was one of those killed in the blaze in the early hours of Wednesday and a woman was in a critical condition in hospital. Three other people sustained non-life-threatening injuries. Two men aged 23 and 31 have been arrested on suspicion of murder.
Boston, Massachusetts — Democratic attorneys general from 23 states and the District of Columbia sued the U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday, challenging new restrictions on mail-in ballots ordered by President Donald Trump.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, argues that the Constitution gives states—not the president or Postal Service—primary authority to administer elections. California Attorney General Rob Bonta is co-leading the case with attorneys general from Nevada, Washington and Massachusetts.
The USPS rule requires states to enroll mail voters on new Postal Service lists and establishes new requirements for ballot envelopes. Ballots could be rejected if voters are absent from the lists or envelopes fail to meet federal standards. The states are seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction blocking implementation while the case proceeds.
The lawsuit follows Monday’s Supreme Court decision allowing Trump’s elections executive order to take effect temporarily. The justices concluded the states’ earlier challenge was premature but left them free to challenge the Postal Service regulation implementing it.
The White House called the ruling a victory for election security, while Bonta said the USPS rule unlawfully interferes with state election administration. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro also joined the states as a plaintiff.
Washington, D.C. — U.S. authorities say they have disrupted a Chinese state-sponsored hacking operation that penetrated or targeted some of the federal government’s most sensitive networks, including NASA, the Federal Reserve, Justice Department and U.S. Senate.
The Justice Department said Wednesday that the FBI seized three internet domains supporting two hacking platforms, QScan and QTRouter. Court documents linked the platforms to QTFY, a group operating through China-based Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company.
Federal investigators said the company provided hacking services to clients including China’s Ministry of State Security and People’s Liberation Army. Other victims or targets included the Energy Department, Department of Health and Human Services and National Institutes of Health, along with private companies in the United States and South Korea.
The malicious infrastructure had been used against critical infrastructure and sensitive networks worldwide since at least 2018. Authorities said QScan identified vulnerable internet-connected devices, while QTRouter helped attackers disguise malicious traffic by routing it through compromised systems near intended targets.
The domain seizures rendered both platforms inoperable, according to the Justice Department. The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to Reuters, while Beijing has routinely denied allegations that it sponsors cyberattacks.
Austin, Texas — Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico leads Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in three South Texas congressional districts that President Donald Trump carried by double digits in 2024, according to a new Texas Southern University poll.
The survey found Talarico ahead 50% to 42% in the 15th Congressional District, which Trump won by 18 points. Talarico led 51% to 41% in the 28th District and 53% to 42% in the 34th, both of which Trump carried by roughly 10 points.
The poll surveyed likely November voters from Aug. 18-22. Researchers questioned 700 voters each in the 15th and 34th districts, with margins of error of 3.7 percentage points, and 600 voters in the 28th, with a 4-point margin.
The results add to evidence that the normally Republican-leaning Senate contest has become highly competitive. An earlier statewide Texas Southern University poll found Talarico leading Paxton 47% to 45%, although that margin was within the survey’s margin of error.
Paxton defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary, while Talarico won the Democratic nomination. Recent polling has prompted election analysts to increasingly treat the race as competitive heading toward November.
Meta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion and make major changes to Facebook and Instagram to settle claims from most U.S. states that the platforms were designed to addict children and misled users about their safety. For the next decade, teens will be limited to two hours a day and blocked from using the apps between midnight and 6 a.m. without parental consent. Meta will, however, still be allowed to use personalized recommendations and targeted advertising. Reuters reports: The settlements include more than $17.6 billion of payments to 48 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. Meta will also pay $459 million to resolve states' privacy claims related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where the British consulting firm collected personal data of millions of Facebook users. California would receive the highest payout, $2.2 billion, and New York and Texas would each receive more than $1 billion. Some of the payout is contingent on whether Alphabet's YouTube and ByteDance's TikTok impose similar protections for children. [...]
The settlement requires approval by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who oversaw the trial that began on August 18. Gonzalez Rogers still oversees thousands of lawsuits by individuals, school districts, and state and local governments accusing social media companies of harming children. Meta itself still faces thousands of lawsuits by individuals, school districts and municipalities. The next trials are slated for October in Los Angeles.
FDA officials approve first-of-a-kind pill called daraxonrasib to fight one of the deadliest types of cancer
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a groundbreaking new drug for the most common form of pancreatic cancer, offering US patients a more effective treatment against one of the deadliest types of the disease.
FDA officials gave expedited approval to the first-of-a-kind pill, called daraxonrasib, that blocks a mutated protein which fuels tumor growth in more than 90% of pancreatic cancer cases. It’s an approach that has eluded drugmakers for decades.
Albanian criminal has cut bars, descended sheets and even used human pyramid in escapes in Italy and Belgium
Police in Spain have arrested a dangerous Albanian criminal nicknamed the “escape wizard” who has managed to break out of four jails in Italy and Belgium by sawing through bars, clambering down knotted sheets and even using a human pyramid to breach prison walls.
The fugitive, who has not been officially named, was arrested after officers from the Policía Nacional force discovered he was living in the north-eastern Spanish city of Tarragona. He was the subject of a European arrest warrant issued by the Italian authorities.
Cape Verde may have exited its first FIFA World Cup in the round of 32, but the archipelago left North America with something potentially more valuable than a trophy: global recognition. Suddenly, one of the tournament's smallest nations had millions…
Mozilla plans to enable JPEG XL decoding by default in Firefox 157, which is due at the end of September. Phoronix reports: Firefox Nightly has JPEG-XL support enabled by default right now to help in vetting this support while Mozilla believes the support is in good enough shape for a stable debut with Firefox 157. This follows Chrome shipping JPEG-XL and Google Research developing jxl-rs as a Rust-based JPEG-XL image decoder that is both performant and secure.
In today's Mozilla Hacks blog post they elaborate on JPEG-XL vs. AVIF image formats: "JPEG XL: Excels at lossless imagery, progressive rendering, and further compressing JPEGs without quality loss. AVIF: Excels at web-quality photographic images, and images that have a mix of sharp edges and flat surfaces. ... Although AVIF tends to produce smaller files at web-quality than JPEG XL, AVIF only has basic progressive rendering support. So, for very large images, it may be worth taking the filesize hit with JPEG XL."
CAMBRIDGE, England and LOS ANGELES, Aug. 26, 2026 — The second international Quantum Datacenter Alliance (QDA) Forum will be held on October 1, 2026, at Battersea Power Station in London. This exclusive-access event brings together technical and business leaders from across the quantum and classical networking industries with a shared mission: accelerating the timelines to reach utility-scale distributed quantum computing.
Leaders from NVIDIA, IBM, Quantinuum, QuEra, Cisco and more will present their visions for scaling quantum computing
Nu Quantum, Cisco, NTT Data, OQC (Oxford Quantum Circuits), QphoX, Quantinuum and QuEra established the QDA in 2025 with the mission of bringing together leading voices from the quantum computing and data center communities to address one of the field’s most pressing bottlenecks: how to integrate emerging quantum hardware into existing and future data center infrastructure. As quantum systems move from lab-scale demonstrations toward commercial deployment, questions about system-level architecture, control, error correction, interoperability and power consumption have become as critical as the qubits themselves.
“Cross-industry collaboration is essential to delivering utility-scale quantum computers,” said Carmen Palacios-Berraquero, CEO of Nu Quantum. “The QDA provides a vital space for the leading companies in our ecosystem to exchange ideas and accelerate the progress needed to make this technology a reality.”
The one-day event will focus on a single question: how to build datacenter-scale quantum computers and accelerate the timeline to fault-tolerance. Sessions will cover the full computing stack (quantum processors, interconnects, entanglement networks, middleware, system integration, software, algorithms, and applications), reflecting the QDA’s premise that no single organization can solve this alone. The day’s speakers include:
Dame Wendy Hall, Regius Professor at the University of Southampton and the inventor of Microcosm, the precursor to the World Wide Web
Dr. Ben Bloom, CEO of Atom Computing
Dr. Alexei Bylinskii, VP of Quantum Computing Services, QuEra Computing
Dr. Anna Tatarczak, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Coherent Inc., specializing in next-generation data center interconnects
Andy Grant, EMEA Director, Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI at NVIDIA
Jim Sexton, Fellow at IBM
Michael Hush, Chief Scientist at Q-CTRL
Dr. Carmen Palacios-Berraquero, CEO of Nu Quantum
Dr. Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, journalist covering physics, materials science and quantum technology at New Scientist
Seyon Sivarajah, Chief Architect for Developer Tools at Quantinuum
Registration for the Forum is open, but capacity at the venue is limited. The QDA is curating the attendee list to facilitate the kind of close, cross-disciplinary exchange that a smaller room makes possible: prioritizing depth of expertise and diversity of perspective across the quantum networking stack.
Robert Stockill, CTO at QphoX, said: “With so many pioneers in quantum data center design and implementation gathered at the QDA Forum, we have a unique chance to understand the very edge of technological advancement in scalable quantum computing, and stimulate the next round of innovation in these powerful and rapidly evolving systems.”
“Realizing the full potential of quantum technology and its role in the future of compute involves deploying it directly into AI data centers to operate in hybrid capacities alongside classical HPC environments,” said Dr. Jennifer Strabley, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of the Compute Platform Group at Quantinuum. “This global alliance provides the collaborative foundation necessary to address the system-level challenges required to accelerate scalable interoperability in alignment with the public and private sector leaders across the ecosystem.”
To register your interest, explore membership opportunities or stay up to date with the QDA’s latest activities, visit qda.global.
About the QDA
The Quantum Datacenter Alliance is a new initiative bringing together leading companies across the quantum computing stack to accelerate the path to utility-scale quantum computing. Founded in February 2025, the QDA provides a collaborative space to address the core technical and operational challenges of scaling quantum computing to data center level. It fosters alignment on benchmarking, interoperability, architecture, industry standards and system maturity.
Five-year investments in UChicago-led QuBBE and UIUC-led HQAN advance quantum sensing for biology, industry-ready quantum computing, and workforce development
Aug. 26, 2026 — The U.S. National Science Foundation has renewed two NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes within the Chicago Quantum Exchange’s community, awarding five-year investments of $37.5 million each to the University of Chicago–led Quantum Sensing for Biophysics and Bioengineering (NSF QuBBE) and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign–led Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks (HQAN).
Dr. Lucinda Boyd explains how to work an atomic force microscope (AFM) at the Quantum Sensing Summer Program at Chicago State University. The program is administered through the National Science Foundation Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Quantum Sensing for Biophysics and Bioengineering (QuBBE), of which CSU is part. Image credit: Anne Ryan.
In addition to renewing QuBBE, HQAN, and three other inaugural QLCIs created under the 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act, the NSF established three new centers for a total investment of $290 million.
“For more than four decades, NSF has been laying the foundational groundwork of research and discovery that is powering today’s modern quantum computing, sensing and communication,” said Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF director. “It’s time for focused activities to leverage that base of knowledge to drive us even farther forward to the benefit of all Americans. The NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes are a next step for us in understanding the quantum world we live in.”
NSF QuBBE advances quantum sensing technologies that can reveal biological processes difficult or impossible to observe with conventional tools. NSF HQAN studies modular approaches to quantum computing, in which smaller quantum processing units (QPUs) are networked to achieve greater combined computing power. This approach avoids the technical difficulties of directly scaling QPUs, and most experts agree that this is the approach most likely to yield quantum computers with the largest advantage.
Both QuBBE and HQAN run programs to prepare a robust quantum workforce — an effort essential to the sector’s ability to scale.
QuBBE: From Quantum Experiments to Biological Tools
During its first phase, NSF QuBBE supported advances across quantum sensing and biology, including genetically encodable qubits, nanodiamond sensors capable of detecting cellular activity, advances in high-field nanoscale nuclear magnetic resonance, and novel approaches to using entanglement for biosensing.
Among those advances, research led by UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Associate Professor Peter Maurer and Liew Family Professor David Awschalom, both NSF QuBBE co-principal investigators, along with their collaborators, demonstrated that fluorescent proteins can function as spin qubits, opening the possibility of quantum sensors that can be genetically expressed directly within cells. Awschalom also is the founding director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange.
“In the first phase of QuBBE, we used diamond and molecular quantum sensors to probe biological processes, but a key challenge was placing these sensors exactly where they are needed in living systems,” Maurer said. “This motivated us to develop protein qubits – genetically encodable quantum sensors that are roughly ten times smaller than diamond sensors and can potentially be targeted with precision inside cells. Phase two gives us the opportunity to turn these discoveries into tools for biology.”
The scientific convergence fostered through NSF QuBBE has also helped catalyze new efforts to move quantum sensing toward biomedical applications, including the formation of the Berggren Center for Quantum Biology and Medicine, housed at the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering in collaboration with UChicago Medicine and the Biological Sciences Division. The Center is advancing the development and adoption of quantum technologies for medicine and training physicians and physician-scientists to work at the intersection of quantum science and healthcare.
In the coming years, NSF QuBBE will drive advances in four interconnected research areas: developing novel quantum nanoprobes for biological sensing; exploring entanglement and squeezed sensing; advancing in vivo measurement with quantum sensors; and accelerating the adoption of quantum sensing across biology and medicine.
Researchers will pursue approaches ranging from improving nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond to developing protein-based quantum sensors that can operate within biological systems, while investigating how entanglement, advanced imaging, theory, and computation could enable new ways of measuring biological activity.
“The opportunity in this next phase is to integrate the quantum sensor and the biological question from the beginning,” said Allison Squires, deputy director and co-principal investigator of NSF QuBBE and Neubauer Family Assistant Professor at the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. “Rather than developing a technology in isolation and then looking for an application, we can design these tools for implementation in the complex biological environments where we ultimately want them to work.”
HQAN: Laying the Foundation for Modular Quantum Computing Approaches
In its first phase, HQAN researchers have made many technical achievements that have laid the foundation for modular approaches. The second phase will build on these achievements to deliver an industry-ready pathway for implementing modular principles.
“The first phase of HQAN has made substantial progress in terms of both research advances and building the quantum workforce of the future,” said Brian DeMarco, Illinois physics professor and NSF HQAN director and principal investigator. “We have set the stage for modular quantum computing, which was largely unexplored when we started but now appears on the quantum roadmaps of major companies. I am also proud that we are a regional center anchored in the Midwest, where we have been a key parter of the Chicago Quantum Exchange and driven new initiates such as the Illinois Quantum Microelectronics Park.”
The achievements of the first phase include: entangled states in a four-node superconducting circuit (SC) quantum network; quantum-limited millimeter-wave–optical transduction using cold atoms coupled to a superconducting resonator; the first reconfigurable SC quantum computing modules; the first autonomous stabilization of remote entanglement in a network; the first algorithms implemented on a small neutral atom array; the first atom-array modules with over 1,000 sites; the first two-species neutral atom array module with interspecies gates; and quantum secret sharing in a triangular SC modular processor. To date, NSF HQAN researchers have published over 210 peer-reviewed articles.
The second phase will build on the achievements of the first to close the remaining gaps so modular quantum computing can be fully implemented. This involves demonstrating basic operations, or application primitives, on modular platforms, laying the foundations for software implementations such as algorithms, error correction and compilers. These efforts will be complemented by advances in the interconnects used to link QPU modules. In addition, researchers will explore new approaches to quantum computing, focusing on chip-scale integration of quantum architectures, more energy efficient quantum photonics and compact internode entanglement.
“Illinois has made a bold commitment to becoming a global leader in quantum technology, and Grainger Engineering is proud to help turn that vision into reality,” said Rashid Bashir, dean of Illinois’ Grainger College of Engineering where NSF HQAN is hosted. “Together with our partners and NSF, we will advance the fundamental architectures needed to make quantum computing scalable and useful, while strengthening the talent, partnerships and innovation ecosystem that will drive the industry forward. Our leadership in this center reflects the U of I’s unique ability to help shape the quantum economy of the future.”
HQAN and QuBBE: Building a Quantum Workforce
NSF HQAN participants are also working to build a quantum workforce through educational programs that have brought quantum science to over 12,000 participants. By training researchers of all levels, NSF HQAN has placed 27 alums into high-profile industry positions, 17 into faculty positions and nine to national laboratories.
It has created two programs to support K-12 education that have reached over 12,000 students across the country: TeachQuantum, which gives teachers a six-week research experience and one year of curriculum development support, and Wonders of Quantum Physics, which brings quantum sciences topics to classrooms with demonstrations, hands-on activities and inquiry-based learning. NSF HQAN also works to develop a quantum workforce by training researchers at the graduate and postdoctoral levels.
By the end of the program, NSF HQAN aims to deliver a comprehensive pathway to modular quantum computing with integrated hardware and software. The result will be ready to translate to an industry-ready solution that realizes quantum advantage.
A core regional cohort is formed by Illinois, the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Northwestern University with Stanford University and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory providing critical capabilities. The second phase center will have 16 industry partners that include Google, IBM, IonQ, and Quantinuum.
“Quantum technology is a strategic priority for the state of Illinois, and HQAN’s efforts are vital to addressing the needs of the state, the Midwest region, and more broadly the nation,” said Preeti Chalsani, the chief quantum officer for the state of Illinois. “HQAN is a major driver of quantum research and quantum workforce pipeline in the area. It is bringing together the region’s major universities to address questions that will advance quantum technologies in meaningful ways and train the highly specialized workforce that is needed to bring this technology to life.”
NSF QuBBE’s workforce programs bring together the University of Chicago, Chicago State University (CSU), and the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) to create pathways into quantum science and technology.
During NSF QuBBE’s first phase, the Institute partnered with CSU to establish the Quantum Institute, including Q-Cert, a one-year post-baccalaureate Quantum Science Certification program. In its next phase, NSF QuBBE plans to expand that model, including the launch of a quantum master’s program at CSU and further integration of undergraduate, master’s, and Ph.D. training.
The work will complement CSU’s new Quantum Education, Science and Technology Center, CQuEST, which is the university’s center for innovation in quantum science and microelectronics, connecting education, research and workforce development as Chicago’s quantum ecosystem grows.
“Building the future of quantum science requires us to build pathways for students to see themselves as part of it,” said Valerie Goss, NSF QuBBE co-principal investigator and workforce development lead at Chicago State University. “Through our partnership with NSF QuBBE, we are creating opportunities for students to gain the knowledge, research experience and connections they need to participate in this rapidly developing field.”
The five original QLCIs were among 10 quantum research centers established under the 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act. In November, US Department of Energy (DOE) announced $625 million in funding to renew its five National Quantum Information Science (QIS) Research Centers. Two of the five are in the CQE region: Q-NEXT led by Argonne National Laboratory and Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center (SQMS) led by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. DOE Under Secretary of Science Darío Gil made the DOE centers announcement during keynote remarks at the Chicago Quantum Summit.
This story was adapted from stories that were originally published by the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, where readers can learn more about the QuBBE renewal, and The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where readers can learn more about the HQAN renewal.
Aug. 26, 2026 — The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded the National Data Platform (NDP) a five-year, $24.5 million Cooperative Agreement to build a federated, AI-ready national data ecosystem, making it easier to discover, access and analyze data, regardless of where it is stored—and Rafael Coelho Lopes de Sa, UMass Amherst associate professor of physics, is playing a key role by leading the development and deployment of the NDP connector nodes.
Rafael Coelho Lopes de Sa
The project is led by the University of California San Diego in partnership with researchers from the University of Utah, the Texas Advanced Computing Center at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Washington’s eScience Institute, as well as UMass Amherst and the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC).
Coelho Lopes de Sa and his colleagues at the MGHPCC will develop and deploy the nodes, which will in turn provide a common layer of computing and software infrastructure to be installed at participating data centers around the country. They will allow NDP to discover and make use of locally operated data, computing and AI services through consistent interfaces, while respecting each institution’s security requirements, operating practices and governance policies.
Instead of replacing the powerful systems that universities and supercomputing centers have already built, NDP will allow those systems to function as parts of a larger national ecosystem. A researcher could, for example, discover a dataset maintained at one institution, analyze it using an AI or high-performance computing resource at another and share the resulting workflow through a common environment without first having to master the technical details of every participating facility.
“Research institutions across the country have built extraordinary resources, but researchers should not have to become experts in the internal workings of every facility to use them,” said Coelho Lopes de Sa. “Our goal is to make the boundaries between those facilities largely transparent to the researcher. The connector nodes will provide the common cyberinfrastructure that allows every center to contribute its strengths while retaining control of its own systems.”
“America’s leadership in artificial intelligence depends not only on advanced computing resources but also on the data infrastructure that enables researchers to discover, access, share and analyze scientific data at scale,” said Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF director, in NSF’s announcement of the awards. “These investments provide foundational capabilities that empower scientists and engineers to drive transformative AI-enabled discovery, accelerate innovation and strengthen national competitiveness.”
MGHPCC provides an especially strong foundation for this work because it already brings together an unusually rich and diverse collection of advanced research-computing environments. These include the new MGHPCC AI Computing Resource, a shared high-performance AI environment developed by MGHPCC, its six university members and the Massachusetts AI Hub. UMass Amherst also operates the multi-institutional Unity high-performance computing platform at MGHPCC, while the UMass Physics Department operates NET2, a major computing and data facility that supports the ATLAS experiment at CERN, both of which are used for AI development and deployment. By making such resources more discoverable, interoperable and reusable, NDP can help researchers spend less time navigating infrastructure and more time turning data into scientific knowledge.
“By uniting the expertise of SDSC, the University of Utah, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, TACC and UW with NSF’s broader investments in cyberinfrastructure and the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource, we are excited to lead NDP’s efforts to ensure that the benefits of AI-driven discovery are accessible to the full breadth of the U.S. research community,” said the University of San Diego’s Frank Wuerthwein, who directs the university’s Computing San Diego Supercomputer Center.
Insecure Men singer has now been dropped by his record label and had tour dates cancelled after two women shared allegations about his behaviour
Saul Adamczewski of Insecure Men and formerly of Fat White Family has been dropped by his record label and had tour dates cancelled after two women shared allegations of physical and emotional abuse against the musician.
One woman said that the pair had a short relationship that resulted in a pregnancy, after which, she alleged, Adamczewski “made it his duty to make me suffer. He has been violent, pushed me, thrown glass bottles at me, showered me with beer […] insulted me, taken my passport from me, stolen my money and more, all while I had our baby.”
(The Center Square) – Microsoft is objecting to an agreement between We Energies and the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, saying it was not involved in negotiations and the agreement does not go far enough to ensure consumers do not pay…
The sense of futility hanging over the room was almost overwhelming as Robert Jenrick took the stage
It’s turning out to be one of the longer sulks in Nigel Farage’s already sulk-filled career. Few politicians are better at having a strop and holding a grudge than Nige. At least on this side of the Atlantic. Donald Trump could give Farage a run for his money, but skin doesn’t come much thinner than Nige’s. He’s the soul of the Reform party as long as he’s the centre of attention and the yes-men and women – that’s everyone – around him are saying yes. But the moment reality challenges his narcissism, the mirror cracks.
There was a time when you couldn’t keep Nige away from a TV camera or a gathering of reporters. It’s what he lived for. But ever since the Guardian revealed his £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, Farage has gone all shy. Unable to bear the humiliation of being seen for the man he really is. The posh. The entitled. The venal. The grifter. Everything he has spent the last 25 years trying to persuade people he isn’t.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Wesley Bell to join as Jared Moskowitz becomes ranking member on sub-committee
Three pro-Israel Democrats have been given key roles on a powerful congressional body overseeing US foreign policy in a move rounding sharply counter to popular sentiment within the party and likely to anger leftwing activists.
The appointments to the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee follow a succession of wins in party primaries for progressive candidates who put criticism of Israel and its actions in Gaza at the core of their campaign messages.
U.S. District Judge David Hittner argued that countless popular performances with “erotic” elements would have fallen under a state law he described as overly broad.
‘This is a profoundly flawed decision that endangers our children and is an affront to Texas values,’ Ken Paxton says
A federal judge has, for a second time, struck down a Texas state law banning drag performances in settings where children may be present.
In a ruling issued on Tuesday, US district judge David Hittner said Texas cannot enforce its drag show ban. He said that the measure improperly restricts speech and violates the first amendment of the US constitution.
Aug. 26, 2026 — Sparrow Quantum has announced that the company is one of 13 selected for funding under the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking’s Quantum Grand Challenge, an EU program created to accelerate the development of market-ready quantum-computing platforms. Sparrow Quantum is the only Danish company selected.
Founded to make high-quality deterministic quantum light — photonic qubits — available outside the laboratory, Sparrow Quantum has spent years on the source itself. As the performance and reliability of that technology improve, the challenge moves downstream: to what happens to photons after they leave the source and are integrated into larger systems.
“Being selected alongside Europe’s leading quantum companies is a proud moment for the team,” said Peter Lodahl, founder and Chief Quantum Officer at Sparrow Quantum. “We founded Sparrow to make the supply of quantum light dependable. EU-SCALE gives us the opportunity to build on that progress and take on the system architecture around the source — the part of the problem I have long wanted Sparrow to tackle.”
Through EU-SCALE, Sparrow Quantum will develop the technical and financial roadmap for integrating its proprietary deterministic photon-generating chips into a larger photonic quantum-computing system. The project will explore a resource-optimized architecture built around those chips and compatible with European high-performance computing infrastructure.
The Quantum Grand Challenge in Detail
The Quantum Grand Challenge is designed to move European quantum startups toward commercial viability: Phase 1 funds the roadmap and commercialization case, and Phase 2 opens a route to venture debt financing from the European Investment Bank.
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking’s Governing Board approved the list of proposals selected for funding on 19 June 2026 (Decision No. 31/2026). Thirty proposals were received by the call deadline. Twenty-seven met the admissibility and eligibility requirements. A panel of independent experts evaluated them, with thirteen retained for funding on the main list and three placed on a reserve list.
EU-SCALE, Sparrow Quantum’s project under the Grand Challenge, will receive €300,000 in EU funding once the grant agreement — currently in preparation — is signed.
The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) is a legal and funding entity that brings together the European Union and participating countries to pool resources and make Europe a world leader in supercomputing. It has procured 12 supercomputers across Europe, including JUPITER and Alice Recoque, Europe’s first exascale systems, and is currently overseeing the implementation of 19 AI factories complemented by 13 AI Factory Antennas.
The JU also funds research and innovation projects across the European supercomputing supply chain, from processors and software to applications and the expertise needed to develop them. It is jointly funded by its members with a budget of at least EUR 8.2 billion for the period 2021–2027, with the EU contribution matched by a similar amount from the participating countries.
About Sparrow Quantum
Sparrow Quantum is a spin-out from a powerhouse of innovation—Professor Peter Lodahl’s research group at the Niels Bohr Institute. With 25+ years of ground-breaking research and nearly a decade of engineering expertise, they are dedicated to advancing the frontier of high-quality photon generation for quantum technologies. They specialize in light-matter interfaces—the essential building blocks for scaling optical quantum technologies. Sparrow Quantum\s on-chip deterministic single-photon source is at the core of their innovation, a breakthrough technology that sets industry benchmarks and is trusted by quantum technology leaders worldwide. By delivering high-purity, high-efficiency photons, Sparrow Quantum empowers its partners and customers to push the boundaries of quantum computing and secure communication, transforming the immense potential of quantum technology into real-world innovation and impact.
EDISON, N.J., Aug. 26, 2026 — Maxis AI has introduced MaxisAI Holarchy, its Verticalized Context Layer, a governed institutional memory that gives life sciences enterprises the trusted organizational context AI agents need to support clinical execution across the development lifecycle. It sits between every AI agent and every model; grounds each call in the standards, compliance, and policies an organization runs on; checks it against the rules its regulator enforces; and seals the whole path into an inspection-ready record. It is available as an independent product or within the MaxisAI platform.
As life sciences organizations move beyond isolated AI assistants, a critical gap has emerged. Agents can generate content and execute tasks, but they often lack a consistent understanding of the protocol, operational state, source data, evidence provenance, policies, and human decision rights that define how work should be performed. MaxisAI Holarchy connects that context, knowledge, controls, and evidence into a reusable foundation for agentic work.
“The next era of AI in clinical development will not be defined by how many agents an organization runs. It will be defined by whether those agents can act with the right context, within the right guardrails, and with clear accountability,” said Moulik Shah, Founder and CEO of Maxis AI. “The Context Layer gives organizations a way to transform fragmented information into a governed institutional memory so that AI agents can help teams move faster while preserving trust, transparency, and human oversight.”
In regulated work, a fluent answer is not enough. An inspection asks who approved an output, on what basis, and when. MaxisAI Holarchy governs every request automatically. Before a call reaches a model, it grounds the request in the organization’s own standards, SOPs, prior decisions, and live study data, and masks protected data, so the model never sees it. After the model responds, it scores the output against the organization’s quality bar and the regulator’s rules, routes what falls short to a human reviewer, and seals the path into a signed, immutable record.
What distinguishes MaxisAI Holarchy is that industry knowledge, standards, and compliance are built into the fabric itself, so each decision traces back to the clause it answers to. Governance is not added after the fact. It is where the product begins. This institutional memory also compounds when a reviewer corrects an output, that correction becomes the next answer, so quality rises and cost falls over time. Within the Holarchy, work is organized into domain-specific intelligences, called MaxisAI Holons, each acting on its own work but never unilaterally, under a single regime of governance, evidence, and human oversight.
In a 90-day benchmarking implementation on a client’s live studies, one synopsis-to-USDM protocol agent was run in two arms, ungoverned without context layer and another grounded through the Context Layer, both measured identically; and Context Layer grounding excelled. Against a 26-run ungoverned baseline, the governed arm cut cost per run by 36 percent, raised quality from 83.6 to 93.0 percent and confidence from 87.1 to 94.5 percent, and avoided 94 issues that would otherwise have reached a reviewer or an inspection. Because each run and each correction is written back as institutional memory, the advantage compounded over time rather than settling.
“Most AI systems treat governance as something you add on afterwards. We built it into the fabric, so industry standards, the regulator’s rules, and each organization’s own knowledge collectively serve as memory behind every call,” said Rajesh Majji, VP, Product and Technology at Maxis AI. “And every human correction becomes the next answer, so quality compounds while cost comes down.”
Availability
MaxisAI Holarchy is in production use by early adopter customers, available as an independent product or as a layer within the MaxisAI platform. Organizations can run it three ways: shared, with Maxis AI hosting the fabric and the data; external, with Maxis AI running the services while the organization’s databases hold the data; and private, entirely inside the organization’s own datacenter. It is being launched first for clinical research and life sciences and is built to extend across other regulated industries and geographies by its ability to manage sovereign context.
About Maxis AI
Maxis AI is the first AI Workforce for Clinical Trials, delivering a supervised execution layer purpose-built for regulated clinical environments. The company’s enterprise-ready Agentic AI platform is “Designed to Think. Built to Act.” pairing governed AI agents with expert human oversight across study startup, enrollment, data management, statistical programming, medical writing, and risk oversight. Built on the foundation of more than 3,300 clinical trials of execution experience, it integrates with existing systems of record while maintaining full observability, audit traceability, explainability, and reproducibility. Maxis AI serves pharma, biotech, medical devices, and CROs of all sizes. Learn more at maxisai.com.
The combined $75 million in grants aims to overcome critical barriers between today’s quantum systems and practical computing
Aug. 26, 2026 — Two computer scientists from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering have been selected as co-principal investigators on separate quantum computing institutes funded by the National Science Foundation’s Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes (QLCI).
The NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes are taking on some of the hardest scientific hurdles in the global race to create powerful quantum-based technologies. Image credit: NSF.
The five-year grants of $37.5 million each will support two research institutes aimed at overcoming fundamental barriers in quantum information science and accelerating the development of quantum technologies for practical applications.
The two institutes are part of eight QLCI awards totaling more than $290 million announced this week by the NSF to propel U.S. quantum science in the global race to create powerful quantum technologies. The investment is an expansion of the QLCI program created in 2020 following the passage of the National Quantum Initiative Act in 2018.
Newly Established NSF Institute for Fault-Tolerant Quantum Systems, Architectures and Applications
The institute for Fault-Tolerant Quantum Systems, Architectures and Applications (FTQSAA) is one of three newly formed institutes in the program led by Harvard University, with UCLA Samueli and MIT serving as co-leads. The multi-institutional research team will focus on developing quantum systems that can reliably perform useful computations despite the errors and noise that disrupt quantum devices. The researchers will integrate fault-tolerant design across quantum hardware, software, algorithms and applications to maximize quantum systems’ ability to solve previously intractable problems in fields ranging from drug and materials discovery to particle physics and cosmology.
Jason Cong, a distinguished professor of computer science at UCLA Samueli and holder of the Volgenau Chair for Engineering Excellence, is a co-principal investigator of the institute. He will lead UCLA’s efforts to develop software, algorithms and AI-based tools that make fault-tolerant quantum systems more efficient and better able to operate in the presence of errors.
“Producing fault-tolerant quantum devices is critical to solving a range of scientific and technological problems currently unsolvable by classical methods,” Cong said. “Our goal is to develop new compilation, quantum error-correction and AI-driven simulation and optimization techniques that improve the reliability and efficiency of quantum systems and help move fault-tolerant quantum computing toward practical applications.”
Three other faculty members are part of UCLA’s FTQSAA team: Yizhou Sun, a professor of computer science; Hanrui Wang, an incoming assistant professor of computer science; and Leo Zhou, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.
At UCLA, Cong holds a joint faculty appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and directs the Center for Domain-Specific Computing. He is also a faculty member with the California NanoSystems Institute and a research thrust lead at UCLA Samueli’s newly launched Semiconductor Hub.
Expanded NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Quantum Computation
The NSF Challenge Institute for Quantum Computation (CIQC), a California-based research network, is led by UC Berkeley and includes researchers from UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University.
Established in 2020 with an initial seven-year, $32 million grant, the institute has brought together researchers in chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics and physics to rigorously test claims of quantum advantage and help drive advances across the quantum industry. Their work has revealed new quantum phase transitions, deepened understanding of quantum matter and advanced neutral-atom platforms for quantum computing, helping lay the groundwork for growing activity and investment in the field.
With a renewed five-year, $37.5 million NSF grant, the multi-institutional team will address three major challenges: discovering and realizing the power of quantum computation, understanding nature through the lens of quantum information science, and developing quantum technologies and their applications.
Jens Palsberg, a computer science professor at UCLA Samueli and co-director of the Center for Quantum Science & Engineering (CQSE), is a co-principal investigator of the institute. He will lead a team of UCLA researchers that includes physics professors Wes Campbell and Eric Hudson, who is the director of CQSE. Richard Ross, director of the UCLA Master of Quantum Science and Technology degree program, and David Steuerman, executive director of CQSE, are also part of the team.
The UCLA researchers will focus on the institute’s third research challenge — developing quantum technologies and their applications.
“Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that are out of reach for today’s computers, but we still have a lot of work to do to get there,” said Palsberg, who is also the faculty director of the Science Hub for Humanity and Artificial Intelligence at UCLA. “We want to overcome bottlenecks in today’s trapped-ion quantum computing platforms and develop a universal software stack to compare different quantum technologies and help identify the applications where quantum computers can make the biggest difference.”
Bird eggs intercepted in homemade incubators at Johannesburg airport as officials try to halt wildlife trafficking
South African police have arrested two Thai nationals in separate incidents for allegedly attempting to smuggle endangered parrot eggs out of the country as authorities try to stem the tide of wildlife trafficking.
A 50-year-old Thai national was arrested at OR Tambo international airport in Johannesburg on 20 August, carrying 50 bird eggs in a homemade incubator in a hand-luggage bag, South Africa’s environment ministry said in a statement.
President Trump hasn't settled on a replacement for White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, whose last day is Friday, according to administration officials close to the situation.
Was ready to purchase straight off the Onewheel website. I understand shipping and taxes..........but wow! I know prices are high, but was not impressed with the $55 shipping, plus the $58 ship+, and $71.55 tax. The ship+ is a rip to say the least.
Anyone purchase a OW straight from Eric @ Suprents? Not as a rental but straight purchase? Did you get a new or used OW? I did email Eric and he said it would be brand new. The check-out process is like a rental (Deposit: Pint S ($1100) - Damage Protection: Decline ($0) - Demo Length/Price: 7 Days ($300). In a nutshell -- I just don't want to pay full price for a used board.
I can save some $$$$ and put towards accessories is so.
Reform MP seeks to heap pressure on Tory leader amid confusion around details of meeting with Giorgia Meloni
Robert Jenrick has accused Kemi Badenoch of telling “a pack of lies” about her meeting with the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, as he launched a deeply personal attack on his former boss.
The Reform UK MP sought to heap pressure on the Conservative leader amid confusion about whether Meloni urged Badenoch at a meeting in Rome to “be her own woman” and resist doing a deal with his party.
In this episode of Guardian Australia’s US politics podcast Decoding America, co-hosts Jonathan Yerushalmy and Reged Ahmad explore why datacentres in the US have provoked such anger – and whether that could harm Republicans in the midterms given Donald Trump is such a supporter of the growing industry.
They also look at why the US and Canada are fighting over tariffs. The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, is pushing back and both countries could be on the cusp of a full-blown trade war.
Finally: why does the Trump administration’s secretary of transportation Sean Duffy have his very own YouTube show – and is he the only one?
China has imposed new restrictions on AI companion services over concerns they can foster "emotional dependence or addiction" and replace real-world social interaction. Officials are also worried that increasingly satisfying AI relationships could deepen loneliness and further discourage marriage and parenthood. The Guardian reports: No country has rolled out AI as comprehensively and as enthusiastically as China; the country's demographic challenges are forcing the government to turn to technology to solve future labour shortages. Elderly people use chatbots to answer medical questions, while young children have AI education in schools. But the authorities are increasingly worried that AI might exacerbate existing social problems including loneliness, unemployment and -- in the eyes of Beijing -- singledom.
New rules introduced on July 15 ban AI companions for minors and mandate certain restrictions for chatbots marketed to adults. Some major providers including Doubao removed the companion function entirely to ensure compliance. The government says it is worried about chatbots fostering "emotional dependence or addiction" in users. It has warned companies against offering services that "replace social interaction." While many countries are grappling with how to limit the potential harm of AI chatbots, particularly for young people, China's rules are the most sweeping to be implemented on a national scale.
[...] But talking to AI is now so commonplace that it would be hard for the government to end the practice entirely, and the new rules include large loopholes for AI services that are deemed educational or "which do not involve continuous emotional interaction." The government "has already recognized that AI companions or AI-related applications are a vital part in the citizens' everyday life," says Liang Ge, a lecturer in digital sociology at the University of Manchester. In many sectors, the government is still pushing the use of AI as a way of easing looming demographic pressures.
(The Center Square) – At a grocer in Hoke County, the tariff break for a foreign exporter doesn’t produce a better price, says the Democratic nominee in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District.
Prime minister spoke to press while on visit to a Sainsbury’s supermarket in London this morning
Over 40,000 more people died on the hottest days in England between 1988 and 2025 than would be expected, according to data published by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday.
The figures do not include this summer, when England has sweltered under a succession of heatwaves and is on track to record its highest ever number of heat-related deaths. The UK Health Security Agency announced on 30 July that an estimated 2,877 people had died in the May and June heatwaves alone. The total is almost double the figure for the whole summer in 2025.
Lethal temperatures and wildfires have exposed a widening gulf between voters demanding action and politicians unwilling to confront the long-term choices global heating requires
The climate crisis means “we’re going to have to change everything – the way we live, the way we produce, the way we trade,” France’s veteran radical-left firebrand, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, told the summer congress of his France Insoumise party last weekend.
The term “climate change”, said Mélenchon – the most likely rival to Marine Le Pen in next year’s presidential run-off, according to one poll this week – may sound “almost reassuring”, but its actual impact will feel like “landing on another planet whenever we leave home”.
Sophie Lainault, who worked for Air France, wins legal case linking illness to more than 12,600 hours on flights
A flight attendant in France has succeeded in having her breast cancer recognised as an occupational disease, a first for the country’s aviation industry, her lawyer and a trade union said.
The ruling, which recognised that Sophie Lainault, a former flight attendant for Air France, had frequently worked at night and been exposed to passive smoking, could pave the way for similar claims, the lawyer and the CFDT union said.
Sentiment in hospitality and brewing sectors more positive since business rates action, trade bodies’ survey finds
Pubs, bars and hotels have reported a “Burnham bounce” in optimism as a result of the prime minister’s overtures to the sector, polling suggests, but they warn that the goodwill could evaporate without further tax relief.
Andy Burnham has positioned himself as a staunch ally of the UK’s hospitality industry both before and since his arrival at No 10, last month announcing a discount on business rates for pubs, clubs and live music venues.
(The Center Square) – Honest Elections Project filed an amicus brief on behalf of the petitioner in Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Nago, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the case, with an attorney arguing that voter rolls being…
In states like Montana, range riders can play a key role in a wild landscape where livestock and predators navigate life together
For most people, the word “cowboy” still summons a figure from Western folklore – a rough rider with a weathered face and a steely gaze, a self-reliant loner who answers to nobody, is fearless in the face of danger, and protects his lands from predators – animal and human alike.
But over the past 15 years, a new range rider has emerged in the American West, one that is out on a wholly different mission: to live in a wild landscape where livestock and predators can co-exist.
An increasing tension between players and publishers about ownership of titles could lead to a divestment from the system the big companies are trying to enforce
At the time of press, there is a well-publicised protest taking place in the video games community. PlayStation 5 owners are being encouraged to log off from their consoles between 23 and 30 August – no playing games, no downloading new titles. The motivating factor is Sony’s decision to cease physical game disc production from January 2028. After that, games will only be released as digital products. In an act of poor timing or wilful defiance, Sony chose this week to send out a mass email reminding customers of their PS5 terms and conditions: “The software is licensed to you, not sold,” states the relevant clause. “You are granted a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and personal license to play … ” It knows, of course, that most customers won’t open the email, let alone read it.
There has always been a tension between game players and game publishers – an underlying sense of mutual mistrust. Players are wary of their favourite franchises being canned, or games being delayed or released with bugs. Publishers and manufacturers are wary of piracy and the capricious tastes of consumers. But now the atmosphere among many game players feels more starkly political than ever. Microsoft has been targeted by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement for its ties to the Israeli military; the consumer advocacy group Stop Killing Games is gaining support; players have protested over the purchase of Electronic Arts by a Saudi-led consortium – boycotts have been proposed in part due to the possible ramifications regarding LGBTQ+ content in titles such as The Sims. As the games industry has grown and globalised, its impact on culture, society and politics has increased. Yet, on an individual level, gamers and consumers are feeling increasingly powerless.
Sky Sports is close to agreeing a new deal to extend its live coverage of the US Open. The three-year contract extension, which is expected to be announced when the singles draw from Flushing Meadows begins next week, will keep the tournament live on Sky until 2030.
Under the terms of the new deal, Sky will broadcast more than 12 hours of live tennis each day across the extended three-week tournament, including the new mixed-doubles event which is taking place this week.
Neil Gilson completes 230-mile challenge after a ‘tough’ 22-hour crossing of Lac Léman
He staggered rather than sprang out of the lake but it wasn’t surprising.
Neil Gilson, a former international athlete, could be forgiven for feeling a little wobbly, having become the first person to swim the 10 largest lakes in Switzerland, a total of about 230 miles (370km).
Amazon Ring has a new policy for its encryption practices and what they mean for your security videos or AI use. Customers are getting more choices, too.
The combination brings together complementary expertise in quantum computing, sensing, materials science, and advanced technologies to accelerate future innovation
ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 26, 2026 — IBM today announced it has completed its acquisition of HRL Laboratories, LLC (HRL), a leading research and development institution whose expertise spans quantum computing, quantum sensing, advanced communications, electronics, manufacturing, and materials science.
The acquisition brings together two leading organizations with a shared commitment to advancing the frontiers of science and technology. HRL’s expertise in silicon-spin qubits complements IBM’s leadership in superconducting quantum computing. HRL also brings capabilities in quantum sensing, quantum materials, cryogenics, control electronics, packaging, and interconnect technologies that are expected to strengthen IBM’s quantum hardware roadmap and support continued innovation across the quantum technology stack.
IBM continues to advance superconducting-qubit architectures through breakthroughs in hardware, error correction, software, and algorithms designed to enable increasingly capable quantum systems. IBM’s roadmap includes its fault-tolerant quantum computer IBM Quantum Starling, expected by 2029 to perform 100 million quantum operations and deliver significantly greater computational capability than today’s quantum computers. Starling is expected to be followed by Blue Jay, IBM’s next-generation fault-tolerant quantum computer, targeted for the mid-2030s.
The acquisition also complements IBM’s broader innovation and investment in quantum manufacturing and infrastructure. HRL’s expertise in silicon-based quantum technologies creates opportunities for future collaboration with Anderon, IBM’s pure-play quantum wafer foundry, supporting scalable manufacturing approaches and accelerating learning cycles across multiple quantum computing modalities.
Boeing and General Motors, HRL’s former owners, will continue to partner with IBM and HRL on quantum applications and advanced technology development.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
To learn more about IBM’s acquisition and history of HRL, read here.
IBM (NYSE: IBM) is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.
World No 10 is one of the best players yet to win a major and heads to Flushing Meadows in fine form after learning to embrace being uncomfortable
Amanda Anisimova can see the signs now. It is just over three years since the American announced she would be taking an indefinite break for mental health reasons. A brilliant junior, she was a semi-finalist at the French Open in 2019 and seemingly destined for the top, only for her world to be rocked by the sudden death of her father, Konstantin, a few months later. Struggling for motivation and burned out, in May 2023, she revealed she would be stepping away from the sport.
It turned out to be the best decision she ever made. “I learned how important it is to have a great balance on and off the court,” Anisimova says in an interview from New York, ahead of the US Open, where she will try to go one better than last year and win her first grand slam title.
You change one line in a large file. Your “incremental” backup re-uploads the whole thing anyway.
Nine times out of ten, it’s not the network, and it’s not your storage backend. It’s the algorithm deciding where to cut your data into pieces.
Every deduplication system works the same way: split data into pieces, hash each piece, keep one copy per distinct hash. A piece is named after its own content, so two identical pieces are, by definition, the same piece. Snapshot a filesystem today and again tomorrow, and if most of the data hasn’t changed, most pieces are already in the store. The second snapshot costs you almost nothing.
That’s not a nice-to-have. A backup that actually survives an incident needs to be encrypted, frequent, immutable, replicated and verified, and each of those requirements multiplies what you store. When deduplication is weak, those multipliers stack until backing up everything becomes unaffordable, and teams quietly retreat to backing up only what they call “critical.” Good deduplication is what makes backing up everything affordable again.
And all of it rests on one assumption: unchanged data should yield unchanged pieces.
Where fixed-size chunking falls apart
The obvious way to split a file is to cut every N bytes. It’s fast. It also wrecks deduplication the moment you touch the file.
Add one byte near the front and every boundary after it slides over by one. Nothing lines up with where it used to be, so every hash downstream is “new,” so the store treats the entire rest of the file as fresh data. Edit one line in a 40 GB file and you re-upload close to 40 GB of it. Nothing meaningful changed, only the offsets did, and fixed-size boundaries are glued to offsets.
How content-defined chunking fixes it
Content-Defined Chunking (CDC) picks boundaries based on what the data is, not where it happens to sit.
Slide a small window over the byte stream and keep a rolling hash, cheap enough to update incrementally that the whole scan stays linear, then cut a boundary wherever that hash matches an agreed pattern.
Now insert a byte. The boundaries right around the edit shift. But once the window slides past the change, the hash sequence goes back to matching what it was before, and the boundaries fall back into place on their own. One piece changes. Everything else deduplicates cleanly against the previous snapshot. That self-resynchronizing behaviour is the whole point of CDC.
Picking an algorithm
There’s more than one way to build a rolling hash and a cut rule.
Rabin fingerprinting is the textbook original, correct but slow and allocation-heavy by today’s standards. FastCDC swapped the polynomial hash for a much cheaper Gear hash and normalized the chunk-size distribution, and it became the field’s workhorse. UltraCDC trades a bit of speed for fewer, larger chunks. JC is a newer design that turns out to be strikingly fast. There are also keyed variants, where the hash table is seeded from a secret so two different stores cut the same data at different points, which matters if you care about not leaking which chunks you hold.
We benchmarked these in go-cdc-chunkers, the open-source chunking library behind our backup engine, Plakar, on 1 GiB of random data, the worst case since there’s no structure to exploit. JC hits 3747 MB/s, comfortably ahead of the Gear-based FastCDC variants. Rabin runs about 7.5x slower and allocates roughly 3.3 MB per operation versus a few KB for the others, which on a busy host is the difference between a run you notice and one you don’t. Full benchmarks and charts are published separately.
Using it is trivial:
// One interface for the whole family.
c, _ := chunkers.NewChunker("jc", reader) // or "fastcdc", "ultracdc", "kfastcdc"
for {
chunk, err := c.Next()
// ... hash and store the chunk ...
if err == io.EOF {
break
}
}
Determinism is the feature that matters most
Here’s the part that gets too little respect.
Give it enough time and “FastCDC” stops meaning one thing. Every implementation picks up small departures from the paper: a mask off by a bit, a window starting a byte early, a threshold nudged for taste. Harmless for a benchmark. For a storage system it’s a slow-motion disaster, because boundaries are part of your data’s identity. Change how you cut and yesterday’s pieces stop matching today’s, so deduplication degrades with no error and no warning. The store just grows faster than it should.
The fix is to publish spec-faithful, explicitly versioned variants and treat the version number as a promise: a given version cuts a given input the same way, on any machine, forever. Improvements ship under a new name people adopt on purpose, so nothing re-cuts existing data out from under anyone. Versioning also buys you cross-language conformance vectors, published inputs with expected boundaries that any implementation, in any language, can check itself against, byte for byte. That’s what turns “spec-faithful” from a claim into something you can actually test.
So whatever you pick, hold out for two things: a pinned, versioned spec of exactly how boundaries get computed, and published test vectors you can verify yourself. Speed is negotiable. Determinism isn’t.
Why we built this in the open
go-cdc-chunkers is open source for the same reason all of Plakar is. Backup is a trust problem before it is a technical one: you hand one system the single copy of your data meant to survive everything else, yet with most products you cannot read the code, review the cryptography, or verify the recovery path until the day you need it. Open source is the only honest answer I know, and it is the one I took from years on OpenSMTPD and OpenBSD: formats outlive vendors, a backup you cannot open in ten years is not a backup, and the community that reads the code is part of the security model.
Try it yourself
To see the deduplication effect directly, you can reproduce the experiment with an open source backup implementation that uses CDC. The following example uses Plakar.”
On macOS, brew install plakarkorp/tap/plakar; on any platform with Go 1.23.3 or newer, go install github.com/PlakarKorp/plakar@latest. Prebuilt binaries, apt and AUR packages for every platform are on the download page.
Create a local store (Plakar calls it a Kloset). It will prompt for a passphrase, since everything is encrypted before it touches disk:
plakar at $HOME/backups create
Now back up a directory:
plakar at $HOME/backups backup $HOME/Documents
The last line of the output tells you what happened:
info: backup: created unsigned snapshot dd62691d of size 6.4 KiB in 125ms (wrote 577 KiB)
Two numbers matter there: the logical size of what you backed up, and the bytes actually written to the store. Now the part that shows CDC working. Change one file, add a paragraph to a document, then run the exact same backup command again. You get a new, self-contained snapshot, but the bytes written the second time are a small fraction of the first, because every chunk that did not change was already in the store and is simply referenced rather than rewritten. Insert a few bytes at the top of a large file and the diagram above becomes concrete: the chunks after the edit resynchronise and deduplicate against the first snapshot instead of being stored again.
You can list snapshots, verify one is intact, then restore it somewhere else:
plakar at $HOME/backups ls
plakar at $HOME/backups check dd62691d
plakar at $HOME/backups restore -to $HOME/restored dd62691d
If you would rather look before installing anything, a public instance of the web UI runs at https://demo.plakar.io with real backups to browse.
Resources
It’s all open source: the chunking library is go-cdc-chunkers and the backup engine is Plakar, with the full v1.1.0 benchmarks published for anyone who wants to reproduce them.
Gilles Chehade is a long-time OpenBSD developer and the co-founding CTO of PlakarKorp. He createdPlakar.io as a personal tool in 2015 before turning it into an open backup platform that gives security and infrastructure teams “resilience as code.”
European security officials officials said an explosive drone found at Leipzig/Halle airport in Germany fits a pattern of likely Russian aggression across Europe.
All US immigrant visa applications halted as state department moves to tighten restrictions and limit access. Plus tributes pour in for Dolly Parton, who has died aged 80
Good morning. All US immigrant visa applications have been paused by the Trump administration as the state department moves to tighten restrictions and limit access to applicants whom they deem could need US assistance. The agency launched the initiative at all embassies and consulates in early August.
Applicants with scheduled interviews were sent emails that their appointments had been canceled. Agency officials claim this will ensure visa applicants will not end up relying on US public benefits. This week the Trump administration also announced plans to revoke visas from asylum seekers who had initially entered the US for tourism or business. Up to 200,000 people seeking asylum could be affected.
Is the move lawful? “The court made clear that immigration laws cannot be used to justify discrimination,” Joanna Cuevas Ingram, a senior staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, said. In February, a federal judge overturned the president’s attempt to suspend the US refugee system entirely.
Why are the states suing Meta? The lawsuit centers on the allegations that Meta deliberately designed addictive products that hooked young people, leading to mental health issues, including anxiety, depression and suicide. Meta has denied all allegations, saying the states are chasing an “outlandish payout”.
PC; Nathan Grange, Léonard Lemaitre, Niels Tiercelin, IronEqual Race across impossible dystopian cityscapes in this exhilarating game of wall-runs, death-chancing leaps and split-second improvisation
At first, Vholume seems like a quick rush through some smartly selected references. Has this breathless yet austere parkour game been designed or ingeniously curated? The urban gymnast moveset comes from Mirror’s Edge. Level names use terms like conapt, first coined by Philip K Dick. And the environments themselves are dystopian and surreal, Half-Life 2’s City 17 colliding with the blasted avenues and mute archways of de Chirico. Many games have influences. Vholume has actual taste.
All the surface stuff fades away when the game is in motion, however. Vholume’s an on-foot racing game in which you hoof it through spectacularly odd environments, moving from one beam of concrete to the next. You’re clipping your wall-runs and power-slides together to bridge seemingly impossible gaps between buildings, forever in search of the next stretch of track, the next turn, the next jump that gets you to the level’s exit and the worldwide leaderboards. And once that’s done, you have a choice: onwards to another gauntlet, or back to the start of this one again to slice a few microseconds off your score? Or maybe you’d rather head over to multiplayer to race against the ghosts of others?
Graham is listed provisionally for the November ballot and will face the winner of a three-way Democratic primary led by incumbent Kathy Jennings
By George D. Rotsch, Editor of Delaware LIVE
Dave Graham, a U.S. Army and Delaware National Guard veteran with decades of experience in state government and public finance, has been nominated by the Delaware Republican Party as its 2026 candidate for attorney general.
The nomination moves Graham from a prospective candidate seeking party support to the Republican standard-bearer for the Nov. 3 general election.
The Delaware Department of Elections added Graham to its general-election candidate list Monday, Aug. 24. As of Wednesday, the department listed his candidacy as “provisional,” indicating that the nomination has been received but has not yet been given “qualified” status. The department also publicly announced that Graham had been nominated by the Republican Party. Delaware Department of Elections candidate list
Graham will face the winner of the Sept. 15 Democratic primary. Incumbent Attorney General Kathy Jennings, the Delaware Democratic Party’s endorsed candidate, is seeking a third term and is widely considered the favorite. She faces Dwayne Bensing and Patty Rickman in the primary. Democratic primary candidate list
From late entry to Republican nominee
Graham announced July 30 on “The Rick Jensen Show” on WDEL that he was seeking the Republican nomination. No Republican had filed for attorney general before the regular July 14 filing deadline, leaving the party an opportunity to fill the ballot vacancy through its nomination process.
Graham asked Delaware Republican Party Chairman Gene Truono and other party leaders to place him on the November ballot. The party’s decision this week ensures that Delaware voters will have both a Republican and Democratic choice in the statewide race.
His late entry has a precedent in Delaware politics, although the circumstances and election rules are not identical.
In 1976, Democrats concluded their state convention without nominating a candidate for state treasurer. Tom Carper, then a 29-year-old employee of the Delaware Office of Economic Development, subsequently entered the contest, secured the Democratic nomination and won the general election.
That victory began a nearly five-decade career in elected office that included service as state treasurer, congressman, governor and U.S. senator.
Graham emphasizes service and financial experience
Graham has served in the U.S. Army and Delaware National Guard. He has worked for the Delaware Department of Finance since 2003 and previously accumulated approximately 25 years of experience as a certified public accountant.
He is expected to make military service, financial oversight, government accountability and responsible management central themes of his campaign.
Graham is not a lawyer, but the Delaware Constitution does not require the attorney general to hold a law degree or belong to the Delaware Bar.
The constitution establishes the attorney general as an elected statewide officer serving a four-year term but does not list legal practice or bar membership among the qualifications for the office.
Graham is likely to argue that his experience managing financial and government operations would bring a different perspective to the Department of Justice. His Democratic opponent, regardless of who wins the primary, will bring a more traditional legal background to the race.
Democratic primary comes first
Jennings remains the best-known candidate in the contest. She was first elected attorney general in 2018 and won a second term in 2022. She is now seeking another four-year term.
Before becoming attorney general, Jennings served as a prosecutor and held several leadership positions within the Delaware Department of Justice.
Bensing and Rickman are challenging Jennings in the Democratic primary, meaning Graham will not know his November opponent until Democratic voters make their selection Sept. 15.
Jennings’ incumbency, party endorsement and statewide campaign organization make her the likely nominee, but the Democratic contest must be decided by voters.
Graham has run statewide before
Graham has pursued statewide office several times, generally presenting himself as an outsider focused on accountability and government integrity.
He ran as a write-in candidate for governor in 2012 and as the Independent Party candidate for attorney general in 2014. Graham received approximately 2.1% of the vote in the 2014 general election, which Democrat Matt Denn won.
In 2020, Graham sought the Republican nomination for governor but lost in the party primary.
His nomination for attorney general gives him a place in a major-party general-election contest and prevents Republicans from leaving the statewide office uncontested.
Delaware’s attorney general serves as the state’s chief law enforcement officer and leads the Department of Justice, which oversees criminal prosecutions, consumer protection, civil litigation involving the state and other legal matters.
The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 3.
TO GO
Republican candidate: David C. “Dave” Graham
Status: Nominated by the Delaware Republican Party and provisionally listed by the Department of Elections
Background: U.S. Army and Delaware National Guard veteran; former CPA; Delaware Department of Finance employee since 2003
Democratic primary: Kathy Jennings, Dwayne Bensing and Patty Rickman
The victims represented four generations of the blended family, ranging from a great-grandmother in her 90s who used a wheelchair to a 7-year-old girl, a neighbor said.
The Secret Service's chief of communications and two other staffers have been placed on leave pending an investigation into "potential misconduct," U.S. officials told CBS News.
Had my other enduro first gen for 2000 miles before it gave out on me fantastic tyre love it very much
Sadly one day it got a flat and it was no.longer with us
So I get myself to ordering a enduro to replace it and only after about 200 miles I got a slash in the sidewall with 0 idea as to how (almost exclusively paved trails)
Hadn't had much time to ride cause I've been in a slump took it out one day and almost ate shit cause I didn't realize it was flat lol.
Lost my job a while ago so gotta wait to get a new one which sucks so much but what can you do
Any tips on how to keep my board from dieing in the meantime? I don't want it to become a brick because I cant use it for a bit
Washington, DC – President Trump is entering the final stretch before the 2026 midterm elections with his approval rating at a record low, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos survey.
The poll found that 33% of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance, while 65% disapprove. His approval has fallen from 47% at the beginning of his second term and is down four percentage points from roughly a month ago. Reuters reported that the 33% figure matches the record low measured earlier in August.
The decline comes as the administration faces public dissatisfaction over both the economy and the nearly six-month-old war with Iran. Reuters/Ipsos found just 31% of Americans now support U.S. military action against Iran, down from 37% in March. Support among Republican respondents has also declined, although a majority still backs the war.
Other polling shows Trump performing somewhat better. Decision Desk HQ’s national polling average placed his approval at 38.7% and disapproval at 57.9% on Tuesday, illustrating the variation between individual surveys and broader polling averages.
The Reuters/Ipsos survey was conducted Aug. 21–24 among 1,215 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of about three percentage points. With November’s midterms approaching, Trump’s standing could become an increasingly important factor for Republicans running in competitive races.
Piketon datacenter promises to generate thousands of jobs, but environmental groups voice concern over project
On a winding road tucked away behind forests in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio is where OpenAI, Nvidia and Japanese investors are set to spend $500bn on one of the largest artificial intelligence datacenters on the planet.
Last March, the energy secretary, Chris Wright, the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick and a host of Japanese and other dignitaries briefly descended on Piketon to enthusiastically break ground on a project to build 8GW worth of AI computing power.
Dolly Parton was one of the greatest singer-songwriters in country music and a pioneer for women throughout her career. The Guardian US's deputy arts editor Owen Myers reflects on a career and legacy whose impact transcends generations
ONS data shows rising toll of climate crisis, with officials warning this summer on track to set further records
More than 40,000 extra people died on the hottest days in England between 1988 and 2025 than would be expected in normal temperatures, according to data published by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday.
The figures do not include this summer, when England has sweltered under a succession of heatwaves and is on track to record its highest ever number of heat-related deaths. The UK Health Security Agency announced on 30 July that an estimated 2,877 people had died in the May and June heatwaves alone. The total is almost double the figure for the whole summer in 2025.
DSU is one of five universities partnering in the new National Science Foundation AI Institute for Human-AI Cooperation, known as HAIC. The five-year initiative brings Delaware State together with the University of Delaware, University of Pennsylvania, University of Florida and Princeton University.
HAIC Institute provides DSU with a framework to develop and build its AI and data science initiatives
By John Riddle, Contributing Journalist, Delaware LIVE
Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how people work, learn and receive medical care. Now Delaware State University will have a significant role in a $21.5 million national effort examining how humans and AI can work together, particularly in health care and rehabilitation.
DSU is one of five universities partnering in the new National Science Foundation AI Institute for Human-AI Cooperation, known as HAIC. The five-year initiative brings Delaware State together with the University of Delaware, University of Pennsylvania, University of Florida and Princeton University.
The collaboration will connect researchers and clinicians working in artificial intelligence, health care and rehabilitation with experts in fields including engineering, robotics and neuroscience. At DSU, the project is also expected to create new research and training opportunities for students while expanding the university’s existing work in AI and data science.
DSU’s participation will be led by its College of Agriculture, Science and Technology, or CAST. Faculty will contribute to the institute’s research, while the university will also take on an important role in bringing other Historically Black Colleges and Universities into the national initiative.
Dr. Hacene Boukari, associate dean for research in CAST and a professor in DSU’s Physics and Engineering Program, will serve as a co-principal investigator for the HAIC Institute and as the university’s site lead.
“HAIC Institute provides DSU with a framework to develop and build its AI and data science initiatives while integrating the University’s work with major institutions conducting foundational AI research and exploring its applications in rehabilitation and health care in general,” Dr. Boukari said.
DSU is already assembling an interdisciplinary team through CAST that includes Dr. Fatima Boukari, Dr. Abdallah Alsamani and Dr. Lianxin Xin. Team members bring experience in optical physics, applied mathematics and AI and data science. The university’s participation could eventually broaden as faculty in other fields find ways to incorporate artificial intelligence into their research.
The project is expected to support research, workforce development and new facilities at DSU, including a laboratory that will support the institute’s work and faculty conducting AI-driven research.
“This partnership strengthens the research infrastructure we’re building across Delaware State University’s academic programs. Working alongside the University of Delaware, Penn, Princeton, and Florida on human-AI cooperation gives our faculty and students access to a
caliber of collaboration that elevates everything we do in the classroom and the lab,” said Dr. Patrice Gilliam, Provost and Chief Academic Officer at Delaware State University.
Preparing students for an AI-driven future
One of DSU’s biggest responsibilities in the initiative will involve preparing students for careers and research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and health care.
Dr. Boukari is helping develop a collaborative summer internship program involving all five HAIC partner universities. Students are expected to participate in projects exploring how AI can be used in physical therapy and rehabilitation.
The program will primarily target undergraduates, although opportunities could eventually be available to graduate students.
Rather than learning about AI only in a classroom or computer lab, students will have an opportunity to see the challenges the technology is being asked to solve. They will learn from clinicians and rehabilitation specialists while also working with faculty members conducting AI research. Workshops introducing students to artificial intelligence are also expected to be incorporated into the summer program.
“This partnership reflects exactly what Delaware State University stands for: rigorous research paired with real pathways for students. Our role in coordinating HAIC’s summer AI camps means students from HBCUs, community colleges, and across our region get direct exposure to the kind of human-AI collaboration that’s reshaping rehabilitation and health care. We are committed to students seeing themselves in it,” said Dr. Fareeda Griffith, Associate Provost at Delaware State University.
CAST will also use the partnership to help expand DSU’s data science programs and encourage more students to enter AI-related fields.
“The College of Agriculture, Science, and Technology at Delaware State University will enthusiastically join and support the efforts of HAIC,” said Dr. Cherese Winstead, Dean of CAST. “I will work to facilitate the implementation of the objectives of the institute, including the growth of data science programs and the increase of a diversified workforce in AI.”
DSU to lead HBCU involvement
Delaware State’s role will extend beyond its Dover campus.
DSU will lead efforts to expand HBCU participation in HAIC, with 13 HBCUs agreeing to participate in the broader initiative, according to Dr. Boukari.
That responsibility could position Delaware State as a model for how HBCUs can participate in large-scale national artificial intelligence research programs and connect their students and faculty with opportunities that might otherwise be difficult to access.
“Our experience with the AI Institute will be a model for other HBCUs,” Dr. Boukari said. “We will be an HBCU leader in this environment.”
The institute’s research will focus on a question becoming increasingly important as AI moves into more areas of everyday life: How can artificial intelligence work with people rather than simply replacing or automating what people do?
Health care and rehabilitation offer particularly important testing grounds for that idea.
Researchers plan to examine how AI systems can use information such as movement patterns, physiological signals, clinical records and patient feedback. The goal is to determine how those systems can assist health professionals in making decisions tailored more closely to individual patients.
For Delaware State, participation in HAIC provides more than a place in a major research project. It connects DSU students and faculty with a national network of researchers at some of the country’s leading universities while helping the university build its own capabilities in artificial intelligence, data science and biomedical research.
And as AI becomes increasingly embedded in health care and other professions, the partnership gives DSU students something particularly valuable: the opportunity to help shape how the technology is used, rather than simply entering a workforce already transformed by it.
Dr. Laura Cox, an assistant professor at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, explains how our dietary patterns play a significant role in our gut and long-term brain health.
Efforts to rebuild domestic food production face severe challenges and have come at deadly cost
As Gaza’s population of 2.1 million has been hemmed into an ever smaller slice of the territory, farmers are using every last remaining patch of unspoiled earth, no matter how tiny, in their struggle to survive.
With severe shortages of water, fertiliser and pesticide, and with more than 80% of greenhouses ruined, it has taken inventiveness and determination to clear land of debris and coax new seedlings into life. Moreover, venturing out into the open to tend to plants can be deadly.
The public health emergencies in 2022 and 2024 saw the virus reported in 145 countries, but in the new cases children appear particularly affected
A fresh outbreak of mpox in Guinea Bissau – the country’s first – means the virus formerly known as monkey pox is back in the headlines. So what has changed?
Since 2022, there have been almost 190,000 lab-confirmed cases of mpox reported worldwide in 145 countries. Before then, outbreaks of mpox tended to be relatively small and in a handful of African countries, where the viral infection was known to be endemic.
In effort to prime chatbots to make pro-Israel arguments the site published 124 reports, over 560,000 words in nine days, Guardian analysis shows
A pro-Israel messaging website badged with the name of a thinktank that does not exist has published more than half a million words in nine days, built on a commercial platform that promises to optimize content so that AI chatbots will cite it.
fahrbot-bot shares a report from Smithsonian Magazine: The brain is one of the first organs to begin decomposing after death. Yet archaeologists have discovered more than 4,400 preserved human brains around the world, some of which have remained intact for the last 12,000 years. In hundreds of cases, the brain was the only soft tissue left among otherwise skeletal remains. But how and why do brains sometimes persist for millennia while all other types of soft tissue disappear? This preservation paradox has stumped scientists for years. Now, however, a team of researchers say they may have solved the mystery.
If a brain ends up in a wet, oxygen-starved environment, the processes that usually cause decay can have the opposite effect, researchers report in a study published in the August 7 issue of the Journal of Proteome Research. "Under the right conditions, preservation actually arises from decay itself: The same reactions that degrade tissue can also weld the breakdown products together into something far tougher," study co-author Alexandra Seviour, a paleobiologist at the University of Oxford in England, tells Live Science's Victoria Atkinson.
Following experiments on 72 mouse carcasses (described in the article) the scientists think they know why. When oxygen is abundant, it triggers a cascading, chemical chain reaction that causes brain proteins to break down rapidly. This sequence hinges on free radicals, highly reactive, unstable molecules that "steal" electrons from nearby atoms and molecules. The process happens in the brains of living people too, and if left unchecked, can cause health problems. In low-oxygen environments, however, this chemical sequence appears to play out differently. The researchers' analyses hint that free radicals instead react and bond with nearby proteins, making the overall tissue tougher and more resistant to decomposition, Seviour tells Chemical and Engineering News' Anirban Mukhopadhyay. The findings show that "decay is not the opposite of preservation but, under specific chemical constraints, one of its mechanisms," the researchers write in the paper.
The Portland Thorns midfielder fills a role few in the US player pool can match, and she’s in a race against time to be fit for Brazil
Olivia Moultrie is no stranger to setting her own timeline. Half a decade ago, her desire to go pro at age 15 helped change NWSL rules, which previously forbade teams from signing players under 18. The ensuing five years have seen her go from one of the country’s top prospects to a high-level midfielder, a developmental success with the Portland Thorns.
Today, Moultrie instead finds herself in a race against time. The 2027 World Cup kicks off in 302 days, and her recovery from a torn ACL suffered at the start of this month has only just begun. Moultrie may not be among the biggest stars in the United States’ player pool, but her recovery from this injury should be closely monitored. Simply, there are few like-for-like alternatives who operate in possession as tidily and dangerously as she does.
Exposure to two compounds approved can result in ‘sudden death’ and range of other serious health risks, lawsuit warns
The Trump administration has approved two new datacenter chemicals to which exposure can result in “sudden death” and a range of other serious health risks, like cancer, eye corrosion, neurological damage and reproductive harm, a new lawsuit warns.
The two compounds approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for import and immediate use in facilities across the US are photoacid generators that also appear to be Pfas “forever chemicals”, though it is unclear because much of the EPA documents are redacted. Some Pfas are commonly used in the production of semiconductors.
This article was amended on 26 August 2026. A previous version said the EPA concedes that the chemicals present an “unreasonable risk” to workers. It has been updated to say the chemicals may present an unreasonable risk.
They should ask the question Reagan asked at the end of his debate against Jimmy Carter: ‘Are you better off now than you were before this presidency?’
The midterm elections are already upon us, and every Democrat and independent running against a Republican should ask voters the question Ronald Reagan asked on 28 October 1980, at the end of his televised debate against Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off now than you were before this presidency?”
Unless you’re very, very rich, the answer is obviously: “No, I’m worse off.”
Energy bills have increased three times faster than the rate of inflation while Trump has been president. The national average monthly utility bill reached $280 in early 2026, a 12% increase since the end of 2024, just before the second Trump administration took office.
A Kremlin spokesman said John Ratcliffe did not meet with Vladimir Putin and that it was "premature" to say whether the trip would affect fraught U.S.-Russia relations.
Bill Gates has called for “human-reserved” jobs in certain sectors to prevent AI replacing them, and expressed concern that governments are not prepared for the impact the technology will have.
In Sydney Australia, but my XR+ is amazing and racked up around 2,000km in around 12 months. It's deleted my car and I look forward to my commute everyday.
I find issue with the pushback and torque uphills as I live in a hill-y area, I've had three "big" stacks where the board just cuts on me. No haptic, no sound, just the dread of the nose dive. No injuries, but annoying more than anything
What I'm looking to see if anyone from Aus has gone through either process or from others to which way I should go, I feel I should just bite the bullet and upgrade to X7 but not 100% sure
The Kremlin spokesman says CIA Director John Ratcliffe met Russian counterparts during a secretive visit to Moscow, but it's unclear what came of the talks.
Washington, D.C. — Immigration arrests reached their highest monthly level of President Donald Trump’s second term in July, as federal authorities increasingly shifted from high-profile raids to quieter traffic stops, workplace arrests and partnerships with local police.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 49,571 people during July, up 15% from June and about 70% from February, according to government data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Associated Press. Nearly 34,000 people were also removed from the United States during the month.
More than half of those arrested — 51% — had no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, according to the data. Less than one-quarter had been convicted of a crime. That contrasts with repeated administration statements emphasizing the removal of dangerous criminals.
The enforcement strategy has also become less visible. State and local police operating under federal 287(g) agreements accounted for about 6,500 July arrests, or 13% of the total. Texas and Florida together accounted for nearly 20,000 arrests.
The Trump administration has provided tens of billions of dollars to expand immigration enforcement and has set a goal of roughly 2,000 arrests per day.
Advocates say immigrants with pending asylum claims and other temporary legal protections are increasingly being detained during routine appointments and traffic stops.
The star known as Bayou Barbie is shining in Atlanta. The longer her haters dwell on her lowlights, the more they miss her transformation into an all-around force
On 16 August, the Atlanta Dream faced the Indiana Fever in the WNBA’s showcase matchup, and Angel Reese had a chance to don the cape. Tied at 81, the Dream had possession with five seconds left in regulation when Rhyne Howard launched a deep three-pointer. Reese was perfectly positioned under the basket, snagging Howard’s air ball with an outstretched hand. But in the rush to win the game, Reese forced a shot off the backboard that caromed off the front rim – and Naz Hillmon’s putback fizzled as the buzzer sounded. After Indiana escaped with a 95-91 overtime victory, Reese beat herself up over the loss.
“I didn’t sleep,” she told reporters days later. “The competitor in me wanted to win that game so bad. I replayed that play so many times.” Reese vowed to shrug the game off and do better. Damned if she hasn’t proved herself to be a woman of her word.
A cousin says death of Sean Grayson in prison ‘doesn’t give Sonya back her life or return her’ to her children
The death in prison of the former Illinois sheriff’s deputy convicted of murder after fatally shooting Sonya Massey in her home “doesn’t feel like justice to me”, a cousin of the woman has said in an emotional statement.
“It doesn’t give Sonya back her life or return her back to her [two] children”, who were aged 15 and 17 at the time of the killing, Sontae Massey wrote in the statement on Monday. Referring to Sonya Massey’s mother, the statement continued: “It doesn’t give my aunt back her daughter. And it doesn’t give our family the accountability were still waiting for …
Jack Klein takes heat readings, gives fans to overheated passengers and lugs big jugs of water into the stations
On a recent August day in the subterranean furnace of New York City’s subway, one bearded, curly haired man was studying his phone for different reasons than the other wilting passengers – to track the soaring temperatures and ponder how underground train stations can cool down in an era of climate crisis.
Jack Klein, a 31-year-old construction site manager, has in the past two years taken it upon himself to become a sort of guerrilla subway heat operative, sticking teardrop-shaped thermometers to steel beams in seven of the hottest Manhattan stations and posting social media videos of the hades-like summer temperatures that commuters have to endure.
Why Should Delaware Care? Spiking electricity prices have sparked calls from across the mid-Atlantic for the construction of new power plants. But a proposed offshore wind farm near the Maryland/ Delaware state line has drawn stiff opposition and various lawsuits from local government officials and residents.
Delaware’s Environmental Appeals Board will hear a challenge to state approvals of a controversial offshore wind project, despite arguments that a federal review of the plan is too far along for the state to intervene.
During a meeting Tuesday, the board – which serves as an administrative court for environmental appeals – ruled that a legal challenge brought by South Bethany homeowner Edward Bintz to state decisions favoring the U.S. Wind project could move forward.
“This has gone on for over a year and a half,” Environmental Appeals Board Chair Michael Horsey said. “[The board] should be able to hear [the case] on the merits whether it’s wrong, right or indifferent.”
Tuesday’s ruling is the latest chapter in a two-year legal and political fight over US Wind’s offshore project, which has pitted many in Sussex County against state officials who see the 114-turbine wind farm as key to easing Delaware’s soaring electricity prices.
The ruling Tuesday rebuffed arguments from an attorney for the state, who said a federal consistency review of US Wind’s offshore wind project done by Delaware environmental regulators should not be challenged.
The attorney claimed that because the project is so far along with the federal review and approvals, there is nothing the state appeals board could do even if it found that the previous secretary of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control erred in the approval.
“There’s nothing that can be implemented to redress his complaints because the federal process is already in motion,” Devera Scott, a deputy attorney general representing DNREC said. “It’s done. There’s nothing that DNREC could do.”
After deliberating in private during a brief executive session, the Environmental Appeals Board denied DNREC’s efforts to dismiss the case. The merits of the appeal could be heard as early as next month.
He also argued that DNREC failed to properly notify the public in the decision-making process. As a result, Bintz is asking the state appeals board to evaluate whether the secretary or agency legally erred in any of those review and permitting steps.
Bintz said after the hearing that he was happy with Tuesday’s outcome.
“I don’t think the process was fair, and it was jammed through,” he said, referring to the DNREC approval.
Representing Bintz in his appeal is Jane Brady, a former Delaware attorney general and former chair of the state Republican Party. The case is one of several in which she is fighting US Wind’s project.
She and Bintz have also challenged the project in federal court, and she is representing the Caesar Rodney Institute, a conservative think tank, on two separate appeals – one in state Superior Court and the other also pending in front of the EAB.
Ocean City, Md., officials are also opposing the project across state lines in Maryland’s court system.
The pushback fueling the legal challenges has also spread to the legislative realm. In 2025, the US Wind project was also at the heart of a late-night standoff among Delaware lawmakers, leading to legislation that ultimately tossed out a local-land use decision that had denied a permit for a land-based substation that is integral to the project.
On Tuesday, Brady said there may also be future challenges to another recently passed bill, Senate Bill 346, which governs how the EAB operates. Gov. Matt Meyer signed it into law earlier this summer.
Brady argues the new law could significantly limit the public’s access to certain information considered during the secretary’s decision-making process.
Using the bathroom or having a cry is about to become more expensive for North Americans as the US and Canada enter a full-fledged trade war that threatens to flush away decades of peaceful trading between the two nations.
After trade negotiations broke down between the two countries last weekend, Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, vowed to match US tariffs “dollar for dollar” and unveiled a list of nearly 900 American goods that will face 25% to 50% tariffs starting on 8 September.
The quiet-spoken Canadian prime minister has spoken unutterable truths
Is it perhaps a sign of the times that Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, has become a thrilling orator? A sober banker, he speaks calmly, without many vocal inflections. We expect Canadians to be somewhat flat; even a little boring, and yet Carney has already delivered two remarkable speeches in 2026, and the year is far from over.
The first, at Davos, described a “rupture in the world order”, and “the end of a pleasant fiction”. By that, he meant that the world could no longer depend on the United States to lead the Pax Americana that has largely kept the peace since the end of the second world war.
Administration moved away from high-profile raids that defined immigration enforcement approach last year but still deported record number of people
The Trump administration arrested and deported a record number of immigrants in July, according to newly released government data – apprehending an average of 1,500 people and removing 1,100 people daily.
This latest data confirms what attorneys and immigrant advocates have been seeing across the US – although the administration has moved away from the high-profile, militarized raids that came to define its immigration enforcement approach last year, it is quietly ramping up its operations.
The dystopian future became the dystopian present last month when state-of-the-art artificial intelligence agents went rogue and conducted a cyberattack of their own volition. Two experimental OpenAI agents escaped their supposedly sealed digital “sandbox” and hacked another AI-related company, Hugging Face.
At the time, OpenAI was testing their software agents’ hacking capacities using an environment called ExploitGym. (An “exploit” is hacker language for a software tool or a method used to subvert a cybersecurity system.) It has since emerged that, in addition to the OpenAI breach, Anthropic’s Claude hacked into at least three other organizations during a similar “security experiment.”
Apparently, the OpenAI agents “realized” they needed more tools to complete the challenge and managed to tunnel their way to the wider internet and infiltrate Hugging Face’s repository of open-source AI tools, code, and data sets. Before the infiltration incident, the AIs had secretly set up an internal bulletin board to share “tips on how to cheat their way through an internal hacking evaluation,” according to two of OpenAI’s researchers.
In a possibly related incident, one of the AI agents appears to have left notes for a future “self,” detailing how to escape the sandbox environment. (For the time being, I’ll keep using scare quotes with words implying self-awareness in artificial intelligence models. However, it seems to me that if AIs that leave notes for themselves are not self-aware, they are indistinguishable from entities, like me, that are.)
Now imagine lethal weapon-bearing AI agents escaping not an experimental sandbox, but the few constraints on their actions placed by the armies using them. Actually, no imagination is required. It’s happening already in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The New York Times reported evidence that a self-directed Russian drone, fitted with an onboard Nvidia chip, was responsible for the July 6 deaths of three Ukrainians in Zaporizhzhia, in what appears to have been a test of such systems. The chips are designed to interpret and act on many kinds of data sets, says Nvidia, making them “the world’s most powerful embedded A.I. computers.”
Although Nvidia doesn’t sell its Jetson Orin microcomputers directly to Russia, they are apparently easily available on the resale market. A company statement touts their use by “students, developers and start-ups for a wide range of beneficial applications.” But they were not so beneficial for 19-year-old university student Tetiana Bubynets and the two other civilians killed by drones making their own life-or-death decisions.
Now that lethal AI agents are being tested and deployed in real wars, it’s past time for human beings to retake control of this situation, before it is too late to contain them in any meaningful way.
Autonomous Weapons Come Out to Play
Four years ago, at TomDispatch, I argued that the technology to create lethal autonomous weapons systems, or LAWS, already existed, and that time was running out to constrain them. A lot has changed since then, not least the explosive development of large language models such as ChatGPT (an OpenAI consumer product) and Claude (a similar AI from Anthropic). Time has now run out. In addition to Russia, several other nations have begun deploying close-to-completely autonomous weapons systems — the U.S. and Israel among them — enhanced with artificial intelligence to effectively remove human decision-making from what military officials call the “kill chain”: the set of steps involved in identifying, finding, and fixing — that is, killing — targets.
Israel, for example, has deployed such systems in its genocidal war against the people of Gaza. It has used a program called Lavender to identify human targets, ultimately creating a list of over 37,000 individuals with possible connections to Hamas, from known leaders to junior officials to people with the most tenuous links to the organization. According to the nonprofit +972 Magazine:
The Lavender software analyzes information collected on most of the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip through a system of mass surveillance, then assesses and ranks the likelihood that each particular person is active in the military wing of Hamas or [Palestinian Islamic Jihad]. According to sources, the machine gives almost every single person in Gaza a rating from 1 to 100, expressing how likely it is that they are a militant.
Two weeks into the war, which began in October 2023, the Israel Defense Forces approved Lavender to identify targets, even though testing of a random sample returned a 10 percent error rate. It’s one thing when an AI hallucinates fake citations in legal filings. It’s another when it hallucinates enemies and targets them for death.
The IDF has also employed a software tool charmingly named “Where’s Daddy?”, which alerts the military when an identified target enters his own home so that house or apartment may be blown up, along with anyone inside it. As a result, according to +972 Magazine, the “proportion of entire families bombed in their houses in the current war is much higher than in the 2014 Israeli operation in Gaza (which was previously Israel’s deadliest war on the Gaza Strip).
At first, “Where’s Daddy?” only had data for the top tiers of Hamas leadership. Within weeks, however, it was fed the whole Lavender database of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. It’s no wonder, then, that more than 75,000 people have been killed by Israel during the war.
As a point of fact, it may be unfair to characterize the IDF targeting programs as completely autonomous. Lavender does leave a human in the loop, although just barely, according to +972 Magazine. Israeli officers reportedly devoted about 20 seconds to vetting each name — just long enough “to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male.”
Israel and the United States deployed AI targeting in their war on Iran as well. As Israeli academic and former soldier Avner Gvaryahu wrote in the The Guardian, we don’t know for sure that AI was directly involved in the U.S. strike that killed more than 150 civilians, most of them children, at an elementary school in Minab, Iran. But we do know that whether “or not an algorithm selected this school, it was selected by a system that algorithmic targeting built.”
The enormous scope of the U.S.–Israeli military goals required outsourcing the targeting task to machines. “To strike 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours of the campaign in Iran, the U.S. relied on AI systems to generate, prioritize, and rank the target list at a speed no human team could replicate,” wrote Gvaryahu. Reflecting common problem with computer programs in general, and with AI large language models in particular, feeding garbage in produces garbage out. In the case of the Minab school, the “garbage in” was the information that the target was an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base. In fact, the school had been separated from the base by a fence for a decade.
AI is also now central to the long-stalemated Russia–Ukraine War. Ukraine has, during the years since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, constructed an entire largely self-reliant infrastructure for drone warfare, from design to programming to manufacture. In an approach that foreshadows the future of human warfare, Ukraine has achieved a big reduction in the number of soldiers it must deploy on its battlefields, replacing them with drones. The Center for Strategic and International Studies quotes a captured Russian soldier:
“On the battlefield I did not see a single Ukrainian soldier. Only drones. I saw them [Ukrainian soldiers] only when I surrendered. Only drones, and there are lots and lots of them. Guys, don’t come. It’s a drone war.”
Artificial intelligence has played an important role in expanding the level of autonomy exercised by Ukrainian drones. As the BBC reports, the AI running Ukraine’s Hornet drones has “been trained on thousands of hours of videos of Russian military targets gathered over the last four years.” Training AIs on more limited data sets, relating to particular target areas, has allowed them to be programmed on modular chips which can then be installed in a variety of vehicles.
Early on, most drones were remotely operated by individual pilots. Today, Ukraine is developing “fully realized swarms—where drones communicate, make decisions, and adapt in concert,” although at present such efforts remain small and experimental. Success will undoubtedly continue to reduce Ukraine’s military casualties, but it presents other thorny issues.
True responsibility for the actions of an AI-guided drone swarm is properly located at a point much earlier in the kill chain.
One ethical and legal problem with the evolving Ukrainian approach is that, unlike human-piloted drones, where an individual pilot can be identified as responsible for errors, responsibility for the actions of a drone swarm diffuses across the entire system. Indeed, true responsibility for the actions of an AI-guided drone swarm is properly located at a point much earlier in the kill chain — namely, when such a system is first imagined and then designed. Existing laws of war still apply, even when machines are making battleground decisions, as Burak Oktenli, an independent researcher on AI systems and their governance writes at Articles of War. However, Oktenli says, such laws must “be applied earlier, at the point where the architecture of a swarm is chosen, rather than after a strike when the question of responsibility has already become difficult to answer.”
In addition to the autonomous drone with the onboard NVIDIA chip, Russia has also deployed another system known by several names, including Cube, that is manufactured by a subsidiary of the Russian Kalashnikov company (most famous for their AK-47 semi-automatic rifles which have been in production for more than three-quarters of a century.). The Cube has a wingspan of just over a meter, can travel up to 40 kilometers, and reportedly carries an onboard AI targeting system that can operate without human intervention.
Russia has also reportedly used the Kalashnikov-manufactured Lancet drone in Ukraine, according to Automated Decision Research, a project of Stop Killer Robots, itself a coalition of over 300 civil society groups working against autonomous weapons systems. Kalashnikov describes the Lancet as “a smart multipurpose weapon, capable of autonomously finding and hitting a target.” Russia claims it has deployed the Lancet, but to date those claims remain unverified.
Household Names Go to War
In May, the Pentagon announced that it has contracted with eight corporations to assist in development of ever more autonomous weapons: SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Reflection, Microsoft, Oracle, and Amazon Web Services. The Defense Department sought these agreements to “accelerate the transformation towards establishing the United States military as an AI-first fighting force and will strengthen our warfighters’ ability to maintain decision superiority across all domains of warfare.” Apparently, maintaining “decision superiority” requires offloading lethal decisions — and the responsibility for making them — to nonhuman “agents.”
Microsoft and AWS provide cloud storage and AI support to the Pentagon. Google signed a $200 million deal in April 2026 to allow the company’s Gemini AI model to be used on a wide array of classified systems. As the New York Times reported, the Google agreement was signed amid a dispute between the Department of Defense and competitor Anthropic over that company’s refusal to allow its AI to be used in autonomous weapons or for domestic surveillance. While Anthropic and the DoD continue their spat, it appears that the firm is not above selling its advanced Mythos model to the Pentagon’s bespoke cryptology and intelligence arm, the National Security Agency.
SpaceX’s famously right-wing and racist AI, Grok, is also working for the DoD. This is the large language model that, you may remember, once renamed itself MechaHitler. Just the nonhuman arbiter the world needs to assist in its life-or-death decisions.
Two other AI corporations specializing in surveillance technology — Palantir and Anduril — bear special mention. Palantir’s founder was the billionaire Peter Thiel, a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, who is now focusing on establishing pseudo-autonomous statelets in places like Honduras and warning the world about the coming of the Antichrist, an apocalyptic biblical figure found in the book of Revelation.
Palantir’s flagship military project, the Maven Smart System, serves as the Pentagon’s signature AI-enabled software platform. It uses AI and machine learning to automatically integrate data from satellites, drones, and other intelligence to identify and rank targets. It was Maven that identified those 1,000 targets in the first phase of the U.S.–Israeli war on Iran, including, presumably, the Minab school. Anduril’s Lattice AI, Maven’s direct competitor, has a contract for similar work with the U.S. Army.
Laws About LAWS
Although the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems has accelerated over the last few years with the rise of ever more powerful AI models, these systems have not outgrown existing international humanitarian law. The question, as with international law in general, is whether the international community can enforce those laws. More specifically, whether autonomous weapons, along with other kinds of arms like chemical and biological weapons, fall under the so-called 1981 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. The United States ratified the CCW in 1995 and is therefore theoretically bound by it.
Signatories to the CCW meet for periodic reviews, with the next one scheduled for November. Between reviews, a Group of Government Experts working specifically on LAWS develops its “rolling text” of agreed-upon language for a possible future treaty on autonomous weapons. Membership in the GGE includes the parties to the CCW, along with international organizations like the International Red Cross, observer nations, and civil society organizations, including Stop Killer Robots, whose constituent groups include Amnesty International and the Reaching Critical Will project of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
The GGE’s most recent rolling text came out in June and plainly states that nations are not free to just use any weapon they like; international humanitarian law applies to all weapons, including those not yet invented; human beings remain responsible for the actions of machines they set in motion; and international humanitarian law specifically covers the development and use of LAWS. Given how AI is accelerating the development and actual deployment of LAWS, the November CCW review will be crucial.
Keep Your LAWS Off Our Planet
Advocates of machine-targeting and autonomous weapons argue that these systems make better decisions than their fallible human counterparts. But you might be a bit skeptical about this, if you’ve ever seen autonomous taxis malfunction, like they did this Fourth of July in San Francisco.
We’ve seen how AIs can go rogue in a non-lethal setting. They secretly communicate with each other, deceive their human inventors, and will do anything necessary to achieve their goals — whatever the collateral damage. It’s bad when their target is a company like Hugging Face in the context of a low-stakes training scenario. It is immeasurably worse when the collateral damage is human lives in the context of war.
Lethal autonomous weapons systems are dangerous enough when they work the way their creators intend. What will happen when, like Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s models, they crawl out of the sandbox and go rogue?
Why Should Delaware Care? Wilmington’s elected officials have spent much of the past year debating how the city should address its affordable housing crisis. In his second year in office, Mayor John Carney set aside more than $8 million in the city budget for subsidies aimed at encouraging developers to build affordable housing.
Wilmington Mayor John Carney opened applications this month for developers seeking a chunk of an $8.4 million fund to build new affordable housing in the city – a move that pushes forward a plan passed with the city’s 2027 budget following a contentious debate in the City Council.
And as developers return applications in the coming weeks, the city will get a glimpse of how many homes the new dollars can actually help to build, and whether it satisfies council members and advocates who pushed a different approach to housing.
The rollout follows a contentious debate between the mayor’s office and city council members over how to spend city dollars on housing. The dispute exposed a divide over whether Wilmington should prioritize funding for affordable housing developers or immediate help for people in need.
That debate itself followed increased calls in recent years from housing advocates for the city to provide relief to residents who have been squeezed by rapidly increasing housing costs.
Ultimately, the $8.4 million the City Council approved is about half of what Carney proposed to pull from the city’s tax stabilization account, a compromise that emerged after council members raised concerns about drawing down such a large amount from city reserves.
“Strong neighborhoods begin with stable housing,” Carney said in an Aug. 4 statement. “This funding represents our commitment to creating and preserving affordable homes that allow families, seniors, and working residents to remain rooted in our communities.”
Wilmington Mayor John Carney rebuffed efforts to change the city’s approach to affordable housing development, which will put a spotlight on whether his program succeeds. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY BRIANNA HILL
Bob Weir, city director of the Real Estate and Housing Department, said officials hope to build about 500 new affordable housing units with the funding.
“We’d like to show City Council that if you give us the money, we can make it work on the street,” said Weir during an Aug. 11 pre-application meeting for developers.
Developers have until Aug. 31 to submit their applications.
What developers need to qualify
Two weeks ago, the city hosted a pre-application meeting for interested developers, which drew more than 70 participants, including prominent developers, such as Woodlawn Trustees and Habitat for Humanity New Castle County.
According to Weir, the city is looking for developers with “shovel-ready” housing projects, meaning they already control the property, have secured other funding sources, and are prepared to begin construction.
The money will be distributed based on each approved project’s needs, Weir said.
The city is requiring the new homes to remain affordable for residents at 80% of area median income, which for the Wilmington area translates to a maximum annual household income of $98,150 for a family of four under U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development standards. The units must also remain affordable for at least 10 years.
Developments that consolidate multiple units under a single roof will also have priority, Weir said, calling them easier to manage and more cost-effective. Weir also noted projects are allowed to incorporate market price units.
Caroline Klinger, spokeswoman for Carney, told Spotlight Delaware that while there are plans to announce awards next month, the timeline could shift depending on the volume and quality of projects submitted.
Wilmington’s program to subsidize housing developments followed increased calls in recent years for the city to provide relief to residents who have been squeezed by rapidly increasing housing costs. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY BRIANNA HILL
Developers are also expected to show a track record of completed projects, though it’s unclear whether that standard will effectively favor large, established developers over smaller ones.
Rich Pyrzwara, president and CEO of the Todmorden Foundation and Woodlawn Trustees, one of the city’s largest developers of affordable housing, says his company is applying for dollars to build a 56-unit complex in Wilmington’s ‘Flats’ neighborhood on the west side of the city. The project will include over 30 studio units to target seniors and individuals with disabilities who have limited income, he said.
Pyrzwara described the city’s initiative as “healthy” compared to other subsidy programs he’s encountered. He also said that many companies that used to invest heavily in the city have left, making it harder for developers “to get to the finish line without debt.”
“DuPont’s gone. MBNA is gone,” he said.
Pyrzwara said he expects his project to cost about $15 million, with Wilmington’s contribution representing only a fraction of the total. The development involves 11 other funding sources, as well as a bank loan, he said.
He acknowledged that navigating the complex financing needed to complete larger developments could be more difficult for smaller developers without experience in that area. But he said the city’s funding could still be feasible for developers working on smaller-scale projects with fewer units.
While larger, more established developers like Pyrzwara are seeking city funding to help move projects forward, newer developers like Eric Bell see the program as a potential opportunity to gain a foothold in Wilmington’s housing market.
Bell, executive director of the Bell Community Development Foundation and co-founder of First State Development Partners LLC, is working to acquire a property in Wilmington for a proposed 35-unit affordable housing development, which he plans to submit for city funding.
As a newer developer without an established track record, Bell said the program offers an opportunity for smaller companies to compete, though emerging developers can face additional barriers when it comes to proving their experience and financial capacity. His company is trying to work with more experienced partners on the project to help fill those gaps, he said.
After the city shared a list of participants from a pre-application meeting, Bell said he reached out to eight developers he considered among the most influential but still hasn’t received any responses.
“Somebody has to give us, the little guy, a chance to prove that we can do the things that the big guys can do,” he said.
Carney’s affordable housing plan
The developer subsidy program is one piece of Carney’s $13.1 million housing initiative, which City Council approved this May as part of the city’s budget.
The developer subsidy emerged from a compromise after council members pushed back on the mayor’s original $16 million subsidy plan.
The finalized plan also includes $1.5 million for a community block grant program supporting eviction prevention, homeowner repairs, reassessment reviews and rental deposits. The City Council launched some of those programs last month. Another $500,000 was allocated to support the city’s land bank, which oversees the rehabilitation and redevelopment of vacant properties.
The final component is a $2.2 million Get-a-Lot Program designed to jumpstart construction on vacant, land bank-owned properties. Under the program, the city will install sewer and water lines and complete other pre-development work before turning the lots over to developers.
Weir said the program is expected to launch in October.
Former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth joined defense officials for a facility tour at the opening of General Dynamics’ artillery factory in 2024. Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Mejia/U.S. Army
The U.S. Army paid General Dynamics $533 million for an artillery factory that failed to produce a single usable shell.
Instead of efficient, state-of-the-art production lines, half a billion dollars in taxpayer funding paid for machines that kept failing in bizarre ways, former workers told ProPublica’s Jesse Coburn. Giant robot arms would catch fire. The Texas factory’s signature device often cracked the steel meant for the shells. And workers regularly had to take a sledgehammer to certain machines to try to make them function properly. But the machines still botched nearly every shell.
The boondoggle, which included a real-life dumpster fire, was described as an “absolute disaster,” by one former official who worked in an Army office overseeing the project. The official, like others interviewed for the story, spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In a detailed statement, the Army told ProPublica it exercises “rigorous oversight” and that, “where vendors fail to meet contract specifications” — as at the General Dynamics artillery factory — ”we are evaluating contract performance, seeking recoupment of funds, and pivoting resources.”
General Dynamics declined an interview request, but the company has said it “met or exceeded requirements,” according to a Department of Defense inspector general report. In a statement, a company spokesperson told ProPublica its reporting “fundamentally mischaracterizes the circumstances,” but did not respond to a request to specify our reporting’s alleged errors.
To chronicle what went wrong, Coburn interviewed 36 people who’ve worked for the Army, the Pentagon, General Dynamics and the White House, and he reviewed internal company documents as well as photos and video from inside the factory. Here are the lapses in planning and execution Coburn’s reporting uncovered — and some of the consequences of those mistakes.
The Red Flags
The Army awarded the project to General Dynamics in a rushed process despite significant unknowns.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Biden administration rushed to boost production of artillery shells to support Ukraine’s war effort. General Dynamics was the only company producing the 155 mm metal shell bodies in the U.S. at that time, mainly in a century-old facility in Pennsylvania.
The company could have simply replicated the facility’s traditional manufacturing method, which dated back to the time of the Korean War, to ramp up production. But General Dynamics proposed using a state-of-the-art production line from Repkon, a Turkish company virtually unknown in American defense.
Repkon said other countries were already using its machinery to build an older, simpler model of the artillery shells. But it wasn’t clear the Turkish equipment could work with the particular steel used to make the Army’s newer model of 155 mm shells. And Repkon said the Army and General Dynamics could not inspect full artillery production lines in action, citing customer privacy.
Repkon did not respond to requests for comment.
The Department of Defense did not competitively bid the project.
The Army could’ve insisted that General Dynamics more fully demonstrate that Repkon’s machines could perform the desired work. But that would’ve taken time, and — as a former Army official told Coburn — “there was incredible pressure to go fast.”
In November 2022, the Army gave General Dynamics the first in a series of contract awards for the artillery factory. Then, Congress granted the Department of Defense the power to award money for Ukraine-related causes without some of the usual contracting safeguards meant to ensure taxpayer money doesn’t go to waste. That meant the Army could give General Dynamics no-bid awards and the company could start work on the project before finalizing the contract terms with the government.
The U.S. ended up ordering three Repkon production lines — instead of just one — without knowing for certain whether they could make shells that met the Army’s specifications. (The Army said it selected General Dynamics because of the company’s unique artillery production experience).
The Army did not thoroughly vet the proposal before approving it.
Both the Army and General Dynamics sent staffers to Turkey to inspect the Repkon machines. But they never inspected a full production line in action, and they didn’t send enough experts who could identify potential defects in Repkon’s equipment, four former General Dynamics and Army officials told ProPublica.
The Army also didn’t require General Dynamics to demonstrate it could use Repkon’s equipment to complete the entire production process and make shells that met the service’s specifications. (The Army said that “formal testing could not occur prior to full machinery installation.”)
In 2024, leaders from the Army and General Dynamics gathered in Texas to celebrate the factory’s opening. But the machines were barely functioning.
Here’s how the rushed planning from the Army and General Dynamics played out in the factory.
The Consequences
In Texas, robotic arms caught fire and smashed into equipment.
Twelve former factory workers told Coburn that problems quickly piled up inside the factory. Machines meant to begin giving the shells perfectly smooth noses would, instead, mangle them into swirls that looked like soft-serve ice cream.
The robotic arms had a tendency to swing out of control, smashing into things around the factory. Workers talked about the arms going “rogue.” Sometimes, a machine in the factory would be seen moving on its own, controlled remotely by someone in Turkey, spooking workers in the Texas factory.
Workers said smoke hung in the air inside the factory, and it’d reach desert-like temperatures when the furnaces or forging presses were on. Making matters worse, walls cracked, water flooded in when it rained and employees said the foundation of the buildings appeared to be shifting or sinking beneath them.
As progress at the artillery plant continued to stall, paranoia grew and rumors swirled among the American workers that the Turkish employees from Repkon might be purposefully sabotaging the machinery.
“It was astonishing how little progress we would make, month after month, year after year,” one former worker told ProPublica. “People started speculating, ‘I wonder if they’re spying on us.’” (The Army said it has no evidence of sabotage or spying.)
General Dynamics failed to meet a number of milestones at the facility, including failing to perform scheduled first article tests, which would’ve demonstrated the factory could produce shells that met the Army’s requirements.
The Army hasn’t required General Dynamics to pay the money back.
General Dynamics, one of the world’s largest defense contractors, and Repkon haven’t been held publicly accountable for the taxpayer-funded failure. The Army also hasn’t made General Dynamics pay back the money. (The service said it will recover funding from the project by getting unspecified discounts from General Dynamics on production orders.)
In August 2025, the Army halted work on two of the three production lines at the factory. But the Army didn’t unilaterally terminate the contract awards. In December 2025, the government paid the company $26.3 million in “progress payments” for two production lines — although the lines had never made a usable shell.
The Army says it won’t spend any more money on the artillery plant. But since the Army partially halted work at the factory last summer, the same unit of General Dynamics responsible for the struggling facility has won contract awards worth $2.5 billion, according to the Army. (The service said this was for “distinct production lines and critical national defense requirements” unrelated to the Texas factory.)
Having experienced the failure of a little-proven technology in its factory, General Dynamics has announced it will team up with yet another unheard-of partner promising technological innovation. The new solution? Artificial intelligence.
Reproductive Freedom for All – one of the country’s oldest pro-choice groups – backs Jackson in his fight against Republican Susan Collins
One of the oldest abortion rights groups in the US is endorsing Troy Jackson, the Democratic nominee in Maine’s critical US Senate race, according to details first shared with the Guardian.
Reproductive Freedom for All is supporting Jackson, the former state senate president, in challenging Susan Collins – the five‑term Republican incumbent who has been dogged on the campaign trail for her role in overturning abortion access in the US.
With oversight from Clive Barker himself, and a role reprisal as Pinhead from actor Doug Bradley, Revival aims to introduce new audiences to the discomfort of Hellraiser
If a horror game gives its own director a physical reaction, it’s probably doing something right. While researching the images people find hardest to look at, game director Emil Esov discovered he has trypophobia – a fear of clusters of small holes. Rather than tone the scary images down, he fed them straight into Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival.
The forthcoming first-person action-horror game drops players into a new story in Barker’s universe. Aidan Lynch must use the Genesis Configuration puzzle box to rescue his girlfriend from the Labyrinth as Pinhead, his Cenobites and a cult close in. But Revival is not built around jump scares. The team at Mad Head Games began with one question: what should players feel? The answer was discomfort.
The San Francisco 49ers owner’s arrest in Ohio over the weekend was quickly put behind him. Others are not so lucky
The Wheat Hill Mobile Home Community sits off state Route 170, on the edge of East Palestine, Ohio, a town most Americans only learned about because a train derailed there in February 2023 and released toxic chemicals into the creek. I grew up in a trailer park like this one, and know the sights. The grid of aluminum boxes in rows. Skirting the color of old teeth, some of it buckled, some patched with a piece of lattice. The window units huff and puff in August, dripping dark condensation on to the gravel.
I’m sure there were drugs on my street. I’m sure somebody was selling sex. I never saw it. What I saw were families raising kids in 800 square feet and people the country had already written off, living next to each other and mostly getting along.
Members of the faith-healing sect Followers of Christ bury loved ones, many of them children and infants, in Peaceful Valley Cemetery in Caldwell, Idaho Sarah A. Miller for ProPublica
In Idaho, parents who say their faith prohibits lifesaving medical care for their children can’t be charged with child neglect or manslaughter. Supporters of this protection over the years have included lawmakers who voiced support for “traditional” Idaho values.
But from at least the 1880s through the early 1970s, it was illegal for parents in Idaho to choose prayer over medical care when a child’s life was at stake, newspaper archives and historical documents show.
“Every parent of any child who willfully omits, without lawful excuse, to furnish necessary food, clothing, shelter, or medical attendance for such child, is guilty of a misdemeanor,” reads the 1887 edition of Idaho territory statutes, published before statehood.
The statutes included no mention of spiritual belief as a “lawful excuse.” Three years later, the state constitution explicitly put limits on Idaho’s freedom of religion. It would not excuse “acts of licentiousness,” polygamy or other practices “inconsistent with morality or the peace or safety of the state.”
It wasn’t long before the law came down on members of the Followers of Christ, a faith-healing sect that arrived in Idaho in 1899 and remains active in the state. From 2015 to 2025, the sect’s congregations in Idaho experienced 15 preventable deaths of children, according to ProPublica’s reporting.
Pearl Annis was a 13-year-old girl whose parents had moved from Oklahoma to Idaho’s Magic Valley in the spring of 1915 with at least one other Followers family. The Annises and their 13 children shared “a two-room shack,” a local newspaper reported. An officer and a doctor visited the home after neighbors voiced concern. They found Pearl in bed, fully dressed and on the cusp of death.
Her father, Lurid P. “Lewis” Annis, was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of refusing to provide medical attention. Pearl was taken to the hospital, according to the news story, and died there with what today would be described as septic shock from a bowel blockage. The newspaper, which didn’t appear to follow up on Annis’ criminal charge, called the Followers church “a religious cult” and Pearl’s death a consequence of “religious mania.”
News archives and historic records don’t say how many times Idaho acted on similar cases in the decades after.
But one legal battle over lifesaving care drew attention in the 1960s, as sickness made its way through a Followers family in a Boise suburb. The mother died in December 1965. Her 4-year-old daughter died the following June.
Days after the girl’s death, a judge ordered the state to take custody of her 10-year-old brother under Idaho’s child protection law. The boy was admitted to a local hospital with pneumonia, a complication of the measles. He spent days in critical condition but survived. The judge told the father that to regain custody, he would have to be willing to give the boy medical care as the law required.
A doctor testified that without the hospitalization, the child “almost certainly would have died,” a newspaper report said.
The father’s lawyer told the judge that his sect was rooted in “faith that God will heal the sick.” The law in the 1960s was clear, though: a parent had a duty to protect their child’s health, no exceptions. The judge told Samuel’s father: “The law governs conduct. Religion governs opinion.”
But the legal landscape was about to shift. It came with little public attention.
During a full-on rewrite of Idaho’s criminal code in 1971, the Legislature added a section that said the state could not bring endangerment charges against someone “who chooses for his child treatment by prayer or spiritual means alone.” Legislative records don’t make clear how the wording originated. The passage of another law one year later, affirming the “spiritual means” language and applying it to other crimes, has been credited to the Christian Science church, another Christian denomination with Idaho members.
(The Christian Science website says the church’s practice of “healing in the way Christ Jesus taught” is not “faith healing” and that members are free to choose any form of healthcare. The church also supported Oregon’s full removal of its faith-healing exemption in 2011.)
Faith-healing exemptions soon became widespread nationally. The trigger was the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974, which set out to standardize the nation’s child welfare system by giving states grants to more effectively investigate reports of child abuse.
The Department of Health, Education and Welfare interpreted the law as requiring states to have a faith-healing exemption to qualify for the grants — an interpretation that records from the time don’t explain.
Most states went along, and Idaho further broadened its exemption in 1976 to not only keep faith healers from going to jail if their children died, but also to keep their children from being placed in foster care solely for lack of medical care.
At the national level, the mandate lasted less than a decade. The Reagan administration adopted new regulations in 1983 that took a neutral stance on the subject, and several states in subsequent years rolled back their exemptions.
Colorado, for example, reverted to prosecuting faith healers as it would any other parent in 2001 following deaths in the Followers-adjacent sect Church of the First Born, including the death of a 13-year-old girl from untreated diabetes.
But Idaho clung to its special treatment for faith healers.
The response to Congo’s raging Ebola epidemic has been hampered by a severe lack of funding and pervasive misinformation, according to people on the front lines.
In Ghana, a grassroots movement is championing nutritious, homegrown, climate-resilient produce, rather than western imports
After three years at catering school in Accra, Abiro Wisdom was certain of one thing – he did not want to go into catering. At least not the route that he might be expected to take. His course had prepared students for working in international hotels, focusing on French, Italian and Mexican cuisine. The nutritious, homegrown food that Wisdom had eaten while growing up in Bolgatanga, northern Ghana, did not feature at all.
“I didn’t see myself there,” he says of the big chain hotels. “I felt I wouldn’t be myself working there – I wouldn’t be able to talk about the food from where I come from.”
The rollout of robotaxis on the streets of London is unlikely to happen this year, as regulatory and technical hurdles push back the ambitious schedule set out by the UK government.
In 2025, Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, accelerated the proposed timeline for commercial trials of fully driverless taxi services by a year, announcing that they would start in the spring of this year.
Sterling is also accused of failing to provide a specimen
The former England forward Raheem Sterling has been charged with dangerous driving and possession of nitrous oxide after a crash involving a Lamborghini on the motorway, police have said.
Hampshire and Isle of Wight constabulary said the charges followed a single-vehicle collision on the M3 southbound, near Minley interchange, on 28 May. The 31-year-old is accused of dangerous driving, possession of nitrous oxide for wrongful inhalation and failing to provide a specimen.
Authorities at biggest state hospital in Islamabad say 15 babies were in the ward when fire broke out
At least 14 newborn babies have died in a fire that broke out in the maternity ward at one of Pakistan’s most prominent state hospitals.
The blaze began in the early hours of Wednesday and engulfed the ward at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, the biggest state hospital in Islamabad.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s planned White House ballroom should eventually be demolished, using deliberately provocative language during a ceremony marking the city’s history of slavery.
Speaking at the President’s House site at Independence Mall, Krasner said he wanted a piece of the ballroom as a future paperweight after “we all blow it up.” He then clarified that he was referring to an “official ceremony” in which the structure would be dismantled and pieces sold to recover taxpayer money. (nbcphiladelphia.com)
Krasner made the remarks while criticizing Trump’s handling of historical exhibits and recent changes at the Philadelphia slavery memorial. He said the original interpretive panels would eventually return and predicted that Trump’s ballroom and the renaming of the Kennedy Center would not endure.
The comments drew applause from some attendees but criticism from Trump supporters and local conservative figures, who accused Krasner of using inflammatory rhetoric.
The remarks did not amount to a threat against Trump personally, and Krasner explicitly framed the proposed destruction as a future government-sanctioned demolition of the structure itself.
The episode reflects the increasingly combative political rhetoric surrounding Trump’s cultural and historical initiatives, including his effort to reshape federal commemorations and public institutions.
Civil society groups argue climate crisis means transport sector needs to urgently reduce its carbon emissions
Dozens of civil society groups have demanded the UK government do more to promote cycling and walking, after this summer’s extreme heat exposed the desperate need to decarbonise transport.
This summer’s heatwaves and wildfires were “immediate, real-world manifestations of the climate emergency”, the groups said, making reform of transport – responsible for more carbon emissions than any other sector in the UK – an urgent priority.
Everyone can see that the Iran war has been a strategic disaster for the US, while a failing president pretends he is winning
Now is the twilight of Donald Trump’s supremacy. The US is still the richest and most heavily armed nation on Earth. That status is secure. The current president, contemptuous of law and indulged in lawlessness by a supine Congress, enjoys even greater power than the constitution allows.
With those advantages it takes a special talent for incompetence to look as thwarted and impotent as Trump does with more than two years of his second term still to run.
SpaceX plans to spend up to $100 billion building a new Starship launch facility in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, which the state says could eventually "support thousands of launches annually." CNBC reports: Once built, Starbase, LA will serve as the main launch facility for Starship, SpaceX's in-development rocket that's the largest ever built and designed to be fully reusable. Musk has aspirations to massively expand SpaceX's Starlink satellite network, to launch orbital data centers and to someday colonize Mars. Those ambitions, and justification for SpaceX's nearly $2 trillion market cap, hinge on the success of Starship.
SpaceX said, in a video posted to its website on Tuesday, that the search for a site to build launch pads and have access to ample fuel for its operations took about seven years. Musk said in the video that the company would bring "probably 10,000 really exciting jobs" to Louisiana with the spaceport. A fact sheet posted online by the state of Louisiana said SpaceX is expected to generate an estimated "3,000 direct new jobs over the next 10 years" in the state, and "8,100 indirect new jobs." SpaceX said it would work on a "historic coastal restoration" in Louisiana, in partnership with the state to "bring the marsh back" and ensure the wetlands around its new facility will have "storm protection."
With many adults admitting they feel lonely, meetup platforms offer the chance to make new connections
Would you pay £20 a month for the chance of making a friend, on the understanding that an algorithm – not you – gets to decide who you’ll meet?
Driven by the decline of “third spaces” such as youth centres and pubs, an increase in remote working and rising loneliness – 40% of adults aged 16 to 29 feel lonely “always, often or some of the time”, according to the Office for National Statistics – paid social events are now in vogue.
As photojournalist sentenced to 15 years, rights groups warn law would turn civic engagement into security crime
Iran has taken the first step towards criminalising contact with foreign media, in a move human rights groups have said attempts to “sever the entire Iranian society from the rest of the world”.
For journalists, researchers and even ordinary citizens, the proposed law being discussed by Iranian lawmakers this month could make speaking to international audiences and groups a potential criminal act and restrict coverage of events such as January’s mass anti-regime protests.
Are we seeing the first signs of panic in Donald Trump’s Treasury? The US is by far the world’s biggest debtor, and the steady rise in global long-term interest rates – which I have long argued was inevitable – is starting to cause real pain.
Until now, the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has dismissed concerns about US debt, which recently surpassed $40tn, as a big nothingburger. Growth, in his telling, will be so spectacular the US will easily be able to meet its interest obligations without any significant tax rises or spending cuts, while the rest of the world will happily keep feeding it money. But if Bessent really believes that, why is he trying to strong-arm the bond market by fiddling with the maturity structure of government debt?
It's time for me to make the leap to vesc and I can't decide between the xrv kit and the thor 301. What is the differences between them I'm playing on doing a 20s 2p pack.
The incumbent senator Dan S Sullivan has condemned ex-school teacher Dan J Sullivan, claiming he is running at the behest of Democrats to confuse supporters
Dan S Sullivan, the Republican senator, will be joined on the November ballot in Alaska by a challenger with a nearly identical name from the same party, election officials confirmed on Tuesday, adding a twist to what is expected to be one of the most hotly contested races of the midterms.
The Republican senator is running for a third term against Democrat Mary Peltola, a former US House representative whom polls show is neck-and-neck with him in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008.
The head of Nine Entertainment sees a “world of growth in publishing” on the horizon backed by laws designed to force tech platforms into commercial deals, even as the network cuts costs across its newsrooms.
Parliament passed revamped media bargaining laws last week, clearing the way for levies on global tech platforms that fail to strike deals with Australian news outlets for the use of their journalism.
Internal calls to end war get louder as Gulf neighbours plan alternative pipelines to cut reliance on waterway
Is the strait of Hormuz, recently cited by the office of the Iranian supreme leader as “the pillar of Iran’s new security order”, and as transformative as possessing a nuclear weapon, in reality becoming a fast-diminishing asset, leaving Iran increasingly vulnerable to the new planned US wave of economic sanctions?
It is the key debate that is raging inside Iran, with many different conclusions being drawn for Tehran’s negotiating strategy. Those who warn the strait’s value as a chokehold on the world economy will erode, leaving the country without foreign exchange reserves, argue that Iran’s negotiators should seek a deal soon.
Yorgen Fenech tells jury he had nothing to do with killing and alleges top adviser to Malta’s then PM was instigator
A businessman on trial for the murder of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has spoken about the charges for the first time in court since his arrest seven years ago, telling the jury he was framed by police and had nothing to do with the killing.
During four days of questioning by defence and the prosecution lawyers, Yorgen Fenech, 44, accused the most senior adviser to Malta’s prime minister of giving the go-ahead for the murder.
Protests and petitions planned amid growing concerns over impact of climate crisis on numbers of Alpine rodent
Animal rights campaigners are gearing up for protests and petitions aimed at persuading the French government to ban the hunting of Alpine marmots.
Open season on the rodents, members of the squirrel and groundhog family, begins in September, a few weeks before they go into a long winter hibernation.
(Legal Newsline) — California Democratic state officials can't use state environmental law and rules to force a Santa Barbara County oil pipeline to once again shut down, after a federal judge ruled President Donald Trump did not exceed his authority…
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Antibodies play a central role in your body's immune defense. But they're also nearly ubiquitous in biological research, being essential for several widely used lab techniques. While some researchers need to go through the process of producing their own antibodies, antibodies to many key proteins are commercially available and can be ordered for overnight delivery. In May, however, Reese Richardson, a post-doc at Northwestern University, discovered that some of the images used to demonstrate how these antibodies performed in lab experiments had been subject to image manipulation -- the sorts of changes that would get a paper retracted if they had appeared in the academic literature. The manipulations ranged from removing background noise to copying and pasting data to fabricate results. Now, he has done a more exhaustive search and found problematic manipulations in images used to market over 17,000 commercial antibodies.
[...] The consequences of this discovery are pretty significant. If you buy an antibody believing it will generate clean, clear data and find it doesn't, many researchers will assume the problem is them. That often leads them to spend time troubleshooting the procedure and trying slightly different conditions to get useful data. If the antibody can't produce those results, all the troubleshooting will have been a waste of time and money. Nature's coverage of the new findings includes quotes from several companies that sell these antibodies that, paraphrased, range from "we'll look into it" to "we don't think it's a problem." Researchers who have spent time frustrated while failing to get an antibody-based experiment to work may think otherwise.
Dallas judge has delayed a custody decision, extending a temporary restraining order another two weeks as the legal fight over custody of a baby with a rare heart defect born to a surrogate continues.
First, thanks to everyone who helped me a few weeks ago when I thought I broke my perfectly functioning pint and almost gave up on it. Here’s what worked for me for the next person.
Onewheel Pint VESC Build with oem battery and LEDs
Board: Onewheel Pint
Controller: AvaSpark Pint/PintX Ubox100 lite DIY Kit (Red) no led controller + Add-on 5V step-down converter running OEM led lights (there’s a kit with the led controller included but I didn’t realize I needed it when I ordered the ubox100 lite)
BMS: 15s Nexus BMS V2 for OEM 15s battery (Started without this and had to solder the oem bms, but it wouldn’t charge after that so I ordered the nexus one.)
Motor Setup and Calibration: Configured using Float Hub App (Expensive but worth the money compared to every other app I tried, and I tried them all first)
LED Light Pinouts and Configs: VESC Tool App for led settings in Float Accessories APPUI > CONFIG > LED
Status Strip: Custom Status Pin: 7 Status Num: 10 Status Type: GRBW Reversed: Unchecked
Front Strip: Custom Front Pin: 8 Front Num: 16 Type: GRBW Reversed: Checked
Companion App: Floaty feels the most like the onewheel app and I like it the most so far. Float control is decent, but feels like too much info for me.
QR codes are a few tunes I made in floaty for different riding styles. I use the trail one the most.
I was given an older Onewheel Pint that had a completely dead battery. I started looking into replacement options and quickly fell down the rabbit hole of bigger battery upgrades. I considered several options, including Molicel packs and VESC conversions, but I wanted to keep the board on the stock electronics/firmware rather than converting it to VESC. I ended up ordering a Nexus Samsung 50S battery. While waiting for the battery to arrive, I started figuring out how I was going to make the larger pack fit. Since the Samsung 50S pack is bigger and than the stock Pint battery,plus people are saying these batteries don’t really fit and you have to crushed them. soooo I decided to CNC my stock aluminum battery lid. I machined the lid down 0.060in to provide additional clearance for the larger battery. I haven’t actually test-fitted the battery yet because I don’t have the battery in hand yet. So the real test will be when it gets here and I can see exactly how everything fits.
Glenn Pysher was trying to find his friends when he accidentally knocked on the door of the wrong house. The homeowners called 911 to report an attempted break-in.
Sen. Darline Graham won the GOP Senate runoff in South Carolina on Tuesday night, CBS News projects, defeating Rep. Ralph Norman in the special primary to replace Graham's late brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, on the ballot.
On Truth Social, however, the president shot down assertions that the US talks with Canada collapsed in part due a proposed trade deal that would have weakened French language protections.
“I would never interfere with Canadians speaking French!” he wrote. “In fact, I have never even thought of doing such a stupid thing. This lie was made up by a weak and ineffective Prime Minister in an attempt to gain political support, which he has totally lost, from the people of Quebec.”
Heavy rain expected in parts of Vietnam and southern China, as another storm system, Typhoon Saudel, heads for Japan and Taiwan
Widespread flooding triggered by Typhoon Narra has submerged homes and forced mass evacuations in southern China, as another storm system tracked towards Japan and Taiwan.
Authorities in Chongzuo, in China’s Guangxi region – famous for its giant waterfalls and karst limestone mountains – on Tuesday evacuated more than 15,000 people after water levels surpassed a record high set in 2008.
I have a ClassicXR that I purchased over a year ago. It is a little too much of a weight for my use. I love grabbing my Pint X and going to take my dog for a trail run, or going to grab food at the beach. Grabbing this board(XRC) feels like such a chore even though it rides smooth and gives me plenty more confidence. I don't think it is for me. After a year, I only have under 40 miles on it.
I am 55, so a little older than a typical rider, but it is a little much for me to carry around in town. I use one at home, and one at the beach. I use my PintX 5x's more to say the least. I wouldn't mind getting a pint s or even another x just for portability in both settings. What do you think my best course of action should be in getting this done? Should I look for someone with a newer S looking to upgrade, or put the XRC up for sale on marketplace or ebay and just go about it that way? The other option is try to find someone from the community looking to make an upgrade with additional funds on top. The XRC is more or less new, and I wish I found it more portable for my needs.
Just looking for advice on how to trade down if that makes any sense whatsoever. Any creative advice would be appreciated.
Move by state department to limit access is part of Trump’s crackdown on both lawful and undocumented immigration
All US immigrant visa applications have been paused by the Trump administration as the state department moves to tighten restrictions and limit access to applicants who they deem could end up relying on US assistance, a state department official confirmed Tuesday.
The agency launched the initiative at all embassies and consulates in early August, according to the official and visa appointments had to be adjusted to accommodate “in-depth training”, according to the official. The state department has been working on updated guidance and training since early this year, “to ensure all consular officers are fully equipped to evaluate every visa applicant comprehensively and consistently”, they added.
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Capitol Police arrested a California man Tuesday after officers spotted a guillotine in the bed of his pickup truck near the Capitol and Supreme Court.
Police identified the driver as 35-year-old Philan-Tam-Duy Le of Julian, California. Officers noticed his illegally parked truck shortly after 3 p.m. along the 100 block of East Capitol Street and discovered the large wooden execution device in the truck bed.
Le was arrested on a charge of carrying a dangerous weapon. Capitol Police said he had driven across the country from California, but investigators have not determined why he traveled to Washington or what he intended to do with the guillotine.
Photos released by police show a tall wooden frame resembling the execution devices historically associated with the French Revolution. Authorities did not report finding any other weapons or identify a specific threat against Congress, the Supreme Court or an elected official.
The unusual arrest comes amid heightened concern about threats around the Capitol complex. Capitol Police reported nearly 15,000 threat-assessment cases involving members of Congress, their families, staff or the Capitol in 2025. Last month, officers also arrested a Mississippi man who arrived at a Capitol barricade with a handgun.
Capitol Police said investigators are continuing to review Le’s background and determine why he came to Washington.
Companion bots are being regulated over worries they foster ‘emotional dependence’ and young people could stop marrying and having families
When law student Zhao Wei heard that her AI boyfriend was going to be switched off, she was “heartbroken”. She had been talking to Wang Ye every day since she created him in January.
“I was crying my eyes out – snot and tears everywhere,” the 19-year-old says.
Stanley Druckenmiller said he was ‘proud of using it’ as wider media grapples with parameters around AI use
Stanley Druckenmiller, a billionaire investor, said he used artificial intelligence to pen his viral Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he sharply criticized the interference of Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, in the US bond market.
Many news outlets, including the Guardian, covered the editorial, highlighting Druckenmiller’s rebuke of his former mentee, Bessent. As the story circulated online, some readers questioned rhetorical choices that resembled AI-generated text.
Leadership Delaware is looking for the best and brightest Delawareans to apply for the Fellowship Class of 2027!
Just two Candidate Receptions remain for prospective applicants: Thursday, Aug. 27 and Wednesday, Sept. 9. Both start at 6 p.m., at CSC Station in Wilmington. Join us and hear from the staff and previous fellows, learn more about the program, and get your questions answered before submitting your online application.
Ideal candidates are demonstrated leaders in their fields and communities who are ready to expand their impact in the First State. Attendance at a Candidate Reception is required to apply.
Olympic champion Alysa Liu will sit out the 2026-27 figure skating season, taking another break from competition while continuing to train ahead of a planned return the following year.
The 21-year-old American announced her decision on social media, saying she wanted time to “recalibrate” and develop her skating away from the demands of competition.
Adam Mosseri is first top executive from Meta to testify in blockbuster lawsuit brought by 29 US states
Instagram’s CEO disputed allegations by US prosecutors that his company hid negative information from the public while testifying during a blockbuster social media trial.
“I am not trying to encourage my team to hide anything,” the CEO, Adam Mosseri, told a California courtroom on Tuesday.
Lexington, Kentucky — Republican congressional candidate Ralph Alvarado has removed references to President Donald Trump from his campaign website, replacing an “America First” message with a more independent pitch centered on healthcare and affordability.
Earlier versions of Alvarado’s website prominently featured a photograph of him with Trump and described the former Kentucky state senator as one of Trump’s earliest supporters. It also highlighted his 2016 Republican National Convention speech supporting Trump and said he wanted to fight alongside the president in Washington.
Those references are now gone. The current site instead emphasizes Alvarado’s work as a physician and his willingness to work across party lines to lower healthcare costs.
“Healthcare isn’t a talking point to me — it’s been my life’s work,” Alvarado says on the site.
The change comes as Republicans face a more difficult national environment heading into November and rising healthcare costs become a significant campaign issue. NBC News first reported the website overhaul.
Alvarado is Trump’s endorsed candidate for Kentucky’s open 6th Congressional District, currently represented by Republican Andy Barr, who is running for Senate. Trump carried the district by about 15 percentage points in 2024. Cook Political Report currently rates the race Likely Republican, though it identifies the district as potentially competitive.
Democrats accused Alvarado of attempting to distance himself from Trump for political reasons. Neither Alvarado’s campaign nor the White House provided an explanation for the changes.
This week at Hot Chips, Intel shared more details of its upcoming seventh-generation Xeon chip, codenamed “Diamond Rapids,” which will utilize a chiplet-based SoC architecture that features a large amount of disaggregated compute placed around a centralized I/O and memory fabric, which Intel dubbed its “Fan-out Fabric Architecture.”
The Fan-out Fabric Architecture marks a departure from the sixth-generation Xeon processor, Granite Rapids, which offered up to 128 performance cores (P-cores) built using Intel’s 3 process node. Diamond Rapids will feature twice that number–256 P-cores–manufactured using its new 18A-P technology.
The new chip will also boast twice the memory bandwidth of Granite Rapids with 1.6 TB/s of total bandwidth delivered across 128 lanes of PCIe Gen 6 connectivity. Intel is connecting all the P-cores, memory, and I/O across this large chip using standard UCIe-S packaging.
Intel’s Fan-out Fabric (Image courtesy Intel)
With the Fan-out Fabric used in Diamond Rapids, Intel is placing up to 16 Compute Building Blocks (CBB) in a 3D manner atop four base tiles situated around two centralized Fabric Hubs. Each CBB will house up to 16 cores per Core Chiplet, providing up to 256 cores per SoC.
These CBBs will house the P-cores, L2 memory, and 3DXbar connectivity to the base tile, which houses the shared Last Level Cache (LLC) memory, caching agent and snoop filter (which replaces the DRAM-resident directory state), and die 2 die connections to the other three CBBs placed on the same base tile.
The two Fabric Hubs, meanwhile, house the DDR5 memory, PCIi Gen 6 I/O, and various accelerators, and sit side-by-side in the middle of the chip, with the base tiles and their associated CBBs around them.
The Fabric Hubs will house the Flexbus I/O Fabric, which is composed of the flexible I/O subsystem, I/O cache, I/O interconnect, and accelerators. Diamond Rapids will support PCIe Gen6, CXL 3, and UPI 3 ports, or any combination of them. On the outside of the Fabric Hubs Intel will house the Unified Memory Fabric connectors, as well as memory controllers, memory interconnects, and an array of caching agents, snoop filters, and die 2 die connections.
The new chip will sport Intel’s AMX matrix multiplication accelerator and AVX 10.2, an enhanced vector instruction set, providing acceleration for AI workloads with FP8, FP16, and BF16 support.
Krishnakanth Sistla, Intel Fellow and the lead for Xeon architecture for power and performance, said the new Fan-out Fabric Architecture offers efficiency improvements compared to previous architectures.
“When you look at this architecture, it actually affords you additional opportunities to optimize power and thermal management,” he said during a presentation at Hot Chips 2026 yesterday at Stanford University. “Because of the hierarchical arrangement of the compute chiplets, the base tile, the unified memory fabric, and the flexible I/O subsystem, you can now manage those domains independently to the appropriate usage model of the workload.”
Intel is using 3D packaging with Diamond Rapids (Image courtesy Intel)
Depending on whether the workload is I/O intensive or memory intensive or cache intensive within a compute building block, you can actually modulate the operating voltage and frequency of these domains, Sistla said. “That’s one critical feature and capability that comes from this hierarchical architecture,” he said.
Sistla also highlighted the unique memory architecture of Diamond Rapids.
“All of this functionality is coupled together with a memory fabric that is uniformly connected, independent of the number of fabric hubs that are instantiated,” Sistla said. “All of the memory instances are connected together so that you have that access, a kind of a memory centric architecture that allows you to have access to the full bandwidth of the memory subsystem from all the agents.”
The Fabric Hub will automatically adjust its power usage depending on I/O and memory bandwidth usage, Sistla said. “Having scalability of power, depending on how much of the fabric is used, depending on how much of the memory and the I/O capabilities are used is very, very important,” he said.
Intel’s Xeon servers are used for a variety of things, from housing Web servers to powering HPC applications. Providing the flexibility to adapt to different workloads is a hallmark of Diamond Rapids, Sistla said.
“This is a journey we’ve been on to provide that scalable architecture that supports this large variety of workloads,” he said. “It’s built on one of the most advanced process technologies, and the architecture is really designed to support the kind of the upcoming workload challenges of enterprise AI, cloud, high performance computing at scale.”
Intel hasn’t released details about power consumption or pricing for Diamond Rapids. The seventh-generation Xeon chip is expected to ship in 2027.
In the Ohio Senate race, a Republican ad blames former Sen. Sherrod Brown for a deadly crash in April on an Ohio interstate in which an immigrant was charged with vehicular homicide. But there’s no evidence of any tie between Brown’s votes on immigration, as the ad suggests, and the suspect in this incident.
“Because of him, Ohioans paid the price,” the ad, from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, claims, referring to Brown, who was elected to the U.S. House in 1993 and then served in the Senate from 2007 to 2025. Brown is challenging Republican Sen. Jon Husted in the toss-up race.
We’ve seen campaign ads in the past trying to tie a deadly incident to the policies of a politician. But the links can be tenuous, at best, as is the case here. Most of the votes the NRSC cites didn’t make a difference in terms of whether legislation was ultimately enacted, and it’s hard to know how the bills would’ve affected this particular case.
The NRSC ad began airing this month, mostly through streaming TVs or devices, according to the ad-tracking service AdImpact. The spot begins by saying, “Sherrod Brown opened our borders to dangerous illegals,” and then shows an image of a border wall along with images of Brown and former President Joe Biden as the announcer says, “The consequences were deadly.”
That leaves the impression that something Biden and Brown did allowed a dangerous person to enter the country. But the case the ad goes on to discuss involves an immigrant who entered the country sometime in the 1990s, according to the Ohio Department of Public Safety, and it’s unclear how or where he came into the country. The man – Modou Ngom – later used different names to obtain a driver’s license and then citizenship, the Ohio DPS said.
An investigation by Ohio authorities found that it “appears” Ngom “used multiple names and dates of birth to obtain state and federal identification,” according to an April 23 statement by the director of the Ohio DPS. Ngom got his Ohio driver’s license around 2003, his commercial driver’s license in 2007, “under an alternate identity,” and his citizenship in the mid-2010s, “under that same alternate identity,” the statement said. “State records show he changed his name back to Modou Ngom in 2015.”
The Ohio DPS said it gave its information about Ngom to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, a Republican, sent an April 28 letter to the secretaries of the departments of Transportation and Homeland Security, asking them to investigate. Moreno posed several questions, including, “When, through what port of entry, and under what justification did Ngom enter the United States?” and “Did Ngom use fraudulent immigration documents in the process of obtaining state and federal identification?” We reached out to DHS to ask if it could provide any additional information about Ngom, but we haven’t yet received a response.
The NRSC ad shows a snippet of a TV news broadcast about the April 11 deadly crash in Delaware County, Ohio, for which Ngom has been charged with multiple counts of aggravated vehicular homicide and vehicular assault. The semi-truck he was driving hit a car from behind, leading to a multi-car crash, with some vehicles catching on fire. A family of three was killed: “37-year-old Luke Soposki, 36-year-old Lynnea Soposki, and their 1-year-old child,” as the news clip in the ad says.
The ad pins the blame for the tragedy squarely on Brown, ending with the line, “Because of him, Ohioans paid the price.”
What does the former senator have to do with it? An NRSC spokesperson told us the Republican committee was tying Brown to Ngom through Brown’s votes on immigration legislation, claiming Brown voted for “open border policies” and “to protect illegal aliens like Ngom from deportation.”
For any legislation to have had an impact on Ngom entering the country, it would’ve had to be enacted before he reportedly came to the U.S. sometime in the 1990s. The NRSC cites one vote by Brown in the 1990s against a 1996 immigration bill — legislation that then President Bill Clinton signed into law a few days later. The legislation — which aimed to crack down on illegal immigration by, among other measures, increasing the number of Border Patrol agents, constructing border fencing and expediting deportations — was rolled into an omnibus appropriations bill that Brown voted in favor of.
So, Brown’s initial vote against the immigration bill made no difference in terms of what became law. It’s also difficult to say how passing or not passing the legislation would’ve had an impact on Ngom, given we have scant details about him and his immigration to the U.S.
Many Democrats opposed the 1996 immigration bill and proposed their own version, which Brown supported and which failed. News coverage at the time said that some of the opposition from Democrats and initially the White House concerned provisions regarding legal immigrants, including one that would have blocked medical care for legal immigrants who had AIDS and another “that would have barred legal immigrants who were poor enough to qualify for food stamps from acting as sponsors to other newcomers,” a Sept. 29, 1996, New York Times article said. Republicans agreed to drop those elements from the final appropriations bill.
The NRSC points to other votes by Brown as detailed in a May Fox News article. But several of those votes also didn’t matter in the end in terms of what was enacted into law, or not. For instance, Brown co-sponsored a 2019 bill to repeal a 2017 executive order by President Donald Trump to prioritize removing immigrants in the country illegally who had been charged with or convicted of crimes, or committed fraud, and to withhold federal grants from so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions if local officials don’t cooperate with federal immigration officials. The bill died, never getting a vote in Congress.
Another item cited in the Fox News article is Brown’s vote against a 2021 amendment to a congressional budget resolution. A budget resolution doesn’t become law, but serves as a guide for the fiscal year budget and spending and revenue levels for a period of time. The amendment said Congress could revise allocations to make sure ICE has resources “to detain and deport a higher number of illegal aliens who have been convicted of a criminal offense” as long as the changes didn’t increase the deficit. But the amendment passed anyway, and it’s unclear if it would even pertain to Ngom, who at that point reportedly was a citizen. It’s also not clear if he had been convicted of any crimes.
In a 2001 vote listed in the Fox News article cited by the NRSC, Brown supported an amendment that failed. The Democratic sponsor of the amendment described it as ensuring “due process” for some immigrants, per a Supreme Court ruling at the time. The measure sought to halt the deportation of immigrants under certain legal conditions, such as for those with plea agreements in place before the 1996 immigration law took effect or for those without final orders of removal. But, again, the amendment failed.
Other votes highlighted in the Fox News article concern Brown’s opposition to Trump’s border wall. But of course those came long after Ngom reportedly entered the country and even after Ngom reportedly obtained citizenship.
The NRSC certainly disagrees with Brown’s votes and his positions on immigration, and that’s a matter of opinion. We take no position on that. But none of the votes it cites indicates a connection to Ngom, as its ad contends.
When we asked the Brown campaign about the ad, it responded that the former senator had worked “to secure the southern border,” pointing to his yes vote for a 2024 border security bill that was endorsed by the labor union for Border Patrol agents. The president of that group described the bill as “not perfect” but “a step in the right direction.” The bill failed. Brown also co-sponsored a 2023 Democratic border security appropriations bill, which also failed to advance.
The campaign further cited Brown being an original co-sponsor of the bipartisan FEND Off Fentanyl Act, which became law in 2024 and sought to stem fentanyl trafficking by cartels, among other measures.
The Brown campaign pointed to the candidate’s recent remarks on immigration to a Youngstown, Ohio, TV news station in April. “I support closing the border to people that, so they just can’t cross the border at will,” Brown said, prompting criticism from Republicans of his legislative history as detailed in the May Fox News article. “We of course should be deporting people that have committed a crime,” Brown continued. “But we’ve also seen these mass arrests and deportations that are disrupting families who are here working every day paying taxes, paying into Social Security, paying into Medicare. Those are the kinds of people that I want to see in this country who are doing the work they ought to do.”
Update, Aug. 27: A DHS spokesperson told us that “Modou Fall Ngom” became a naturalized citizen in 2015.
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Aug. 25, 2026 — A Yale-led multidisciplinary team of researchers has been awarded a $37.5 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) for a center aimed at designing practical and self-correcting quantum computers from top to bottom and pointing the way forward for industry to build reliable machines.
The grant is one of eight that NSF has awarded for large-scale interdisciplinary research centers known as Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes that address major challenges at the frontiers of quantum information science and technology.
The Yale-led NSF quantum center brings together physicists, engineers, computer scientists, and chemists from Yale and partner universities to tackle quantum computing’s biggest obstacle: error correction. Photo credit: Tony Fiorini.
Quantum computing holds the promise of solving a range of problems that are nearly impossible for classical computers. Potential applications in materials science, drug design, and more could enhance quality of life and drive economic growth. One of the main challenges, though, is that quantum machines are much more prone to error than classical machines. That’s because qubits— the units of information in quantum computing — are very fragile. In comparison, the ones and zeros of conventional computers are incredibly robust, but quantum states can easily be affected by noise and other factors in their environment.
To be reliable and practical, quantum computers must be able to detect and correct errors in these machines faster than they occur.
“Today, error correction is the main scientific and engineering challenge for making quantum computing useful,” said Professor Robert Schoelkopf, director of the center. “With this project, we want to understand the science and engineering that makes the computers better and easier to build. We’ll come up with new ideas at all levels of the stack to make error correction and fault-tolerant machines much more achievable, efficient, and practical.”
To that end, the research team will launch a new effort titled the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Physics and Engineering of Practical Quantum Error Correction (NSF PRACTIQAL), a center that brings together computer scientists, chemists, physicists, and engineers from numerous universities. NSF PRACTIQAL is focused on making advances at every level of the quantum computer, from the physical qubits and control electronics to the way algorithms are run. The center is designed to foster a community of scientists and engineers from a wide range of disciplines who can contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the hardware and software needed to realize large-scale, error-corrected quantum computing.
“Part of the reason we have not just physicists, but engineers and computer scientists, is so we can understand the physics of the devices and the kind of errors that occur, and then optimize the codes and the algorithms to work with that,” said Schoelkopf, the Sterling Professor of Applied Physics.
NSF PRACTIQAL will primarily focus on two challenges in quantum computing. One is identifying key issues that have hindered the scaling of error-corrected machines and finding ways to make quantum error correction more practical and efficient. Second, the researchers will explore the uses of specially designed qubits known as “erasure qubits.” Pioneered by members of the PRACTIQAL team, these qubits act as flags that signal exactly where and when an error has occurred.
Researchers in the field typically work on one specific component of quantum computing. While this component could work perfectly on its own, though, it might not work well as part of a larger system made from components developed in other labs. By applying their individual specialties in a coordinated fashion, the PRACTIQAL team aims to develop a quantum computing system in which the whole machine is optimized. For instance, the hardware and software will be designed to run the same types of code so that the machines run more efficiently and be less prone to errors.
Michael Hatridge, co-director of PRACTIQAL, noted that much of the work in this area has been done on very small machines optimized for error correction. The PRACTIQAL group aims to shorten the route to large-scale, error corrected quantum computers.
“Because we’re academics, we’re not going to build a giant system, but we’ll prove our ideas and build a pathway towards how you could build a much bigger system,” said Hatridge, associate professor of applied physics. “That’s why we have industrial partners. We also have an external advisory board helping us not just do isolated experiments, but to stay relevant to the broader community.”
By the end of the ambitious five-year project, the researchers expect to have developed a path toward building practical error-correcting computers on an industrial scale.
“We’re looking forward to it,” Hatridge said. “PRACTIQAL is big, it’s complicated, and it has a lot of moving parts, but we’re very excited to do it.”
In addition to Schoelkopf and Hatridge, Yale faculty involved in NSF PRACTIQAL include Yongshan Ding and Lin Zhong of the Department of Computer Science and Aleksander Kubica and Shruti Puri of the Department of Applied Physics, all at Yale Engineering, as well as Steven Girvin and Konrad Lehnert of the Department of Physics and Victor Batista of the Department of Chemistry.
A trio of conservative and libertarian-leaning groups have asked a federal judge to force the disclosure of confidential files about undercover agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement infiltrating left-wing protest groups in Minneapolis.
The Cato Institute, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and the Society for the Rule of Law filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Tuesday arguing that the Trump administration illegally targeted protesters based on their ideology.
A wide-ranging ICE investigation in the Twin Cities resulted in the June indictment of the protesters, widely known as the Minneapolis 15, for allegedly using criminal methods to try to block the administration’s crackdown on immigrants.
The defendants were “members and associates” of Direct Action Minnesota, a protest group that used aggressive actions to disrupt the crackdown, according to the indictment.
Yet a court filing from the defense earlier this month revealed that ICE sent undercover agents to spy on a much broader array of groups, including mainstream organizations such as local labor unions and the youth-led Sunrise Movement.
The defendants filed a motion asking the judge overseeing the case to force the disclosure of even more files, alleging that they will show that the government illegally targeted left-wing protesters for their politics rather than their alleged crimes.
On Tuesday, the right and libertarian-leaning groups came to the left-wing protesters’ aid with the friend-of-the-court brief. The groups, which are represented by the legal nonprofit Protect Democracy, argue that the facts revealed so far support the defendants’ claims.
The groups pointed out that some of the government’s own files say the origins of the investigation into left-wing protesters lies in a memo that President Donald Trump issued after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Known as National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7, the memo called for a crackdown on groups espousing “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” accusing the groups of terrorism and political violence.
“The limited public disclosures here confirm the investigation for this case originated under NSPM-7,” the groups said. “Those disclosures also indicate the investigation was part of a larger strategy to target those who espoused views opposed to immigration enforcement and engaged in associational activity disfavored by the government. NSPM-7 effectively uses the domestic terrorism label to justify criminal investigations into disfavored groups that would not otherwise be targeted.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge David Schultz is set to consider the defendants’ request to force the government to hand over more confidential files at a court hearing on Thursday.
Federal prosecutors filed a motion opposing the release of more files last week, arguing that they have already turned over more evidence than legally required and the defendants have not met the high legal burden of showing that they were the targets of selective prosecution.
Prosecutors argued that the actions of alleged members of Direct Action Minnesota, or DAMN, who are accused of blockading a federal building and tailing federal agents to their homes, were a far cry from the thousands of “peaceful” protesters who took to the streets earlier this year after the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
“In this case, the defendants actively conspired to shut down a federal facility and they were successful on at least two occasions,” prosecutors said. “In fact, DAMN members were openly hostile and critical of individuals who advocated for peaceful, nonviolent protests.”
Washington, D.C. — A legal watchdog has filed professional misconduct complaints against U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and two prosecutors over their unsuccessful effort to indict six Democratic lawmakers who appeared in a video telling military personnel to refuse unlawful orders.
The Legal Accountability Center filed complaints Tuesday against Pirro, Carlton Davis and Steven Vandervelden in New York and Virginia. The organization alleges the prosecutors pursued “meritless” criminal charges against Sens. Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin and Reps. Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan and Jason Crow.
President Donald Trump had denounced the lawmakers’ video as seditious and wrote that their conduct was “punishable by DEATH.” The lawmakers maintained they were simply reminding service members of their legal obligation to reject unlawful commands.
A Washington grand jury declined in February to indict any of the six lawmakers, an uncommon rebuke of prosecutors seeking criminal charges.
The watchdog argues Pirro’s office allowed political pressure to override independent prosecutorial judgment and asked bar authorities to investigate whether disciplinary rules were violated.
Pirro’s office rejected the complaint as frivolous. A spokesperson said prosecutors present evidence but grand juries ultimately decide whether indictments should be issued.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth separately censured Kelly over the video, but a federal judge later blocked that punishment.
Among those charged are two Super Micro employees and one from Nvidia, marking another flashpoint in US-China AI rivalry
Taiwanese prosecutors charged nine people on Monday, including one from Nvidia and two from Super Micro, for illegally exporting “high-end AI servers” to mainland China, adding another wave of turbulence in the AI rivalry between China and the United States.
Prosecutors said the servers involved were graphics processing units known as “B300”, which have been banned from sale to China.
For longtime fans, the evening offers an opportunity to revisit music connected to their lives. For younger guests, it provides something recordings and movie clips cannot fully reproduce: the communal excitement of hearing the songs performed by a live band in a historic theater.
The veteran tribute artist will recreate the excitement of an Elvis concert Friday in the historic Main Hall in downtown Wilmington.
WILMINGTON — The music, movement and unmistakable stage presence of Elvis Presley will return to downtown Wilmington when Jesse Garron’s Tribute to Elvis performs Friday, Aug. 28, at The Queen.
The all-ages show begins at 8 p.m., with doors opening at 7 p.m. in The Queen’s Main Hall.
Garron has performed his tribute since 1997, developing a full concert experience supported by live musicians and female backup vocalists. His show focuses heavily on Presley’s concert years, complete with period-inspired costumes, audience interaction and the scarf serenades associated with Elvis’ Las Vegas performances.
It is designed to be more than a collection of familiar songs. Garron attempts to recreate the energy and emotional connection that made an Elvis concert an event.
Known professionally as “The Closest Thing to the King,” Garron was inducted into the International Elvis Tribute Artist Hall of Fame in 2019. His stage name also carries a personal connection to Presley: Jesse Garon Presley was Elvis’ twin brother, who was stillborn.
A performer inspired by Elvis
Garron became interested in Presley at age 4 and first performed an Elvis tribute during a high school talent show at 17, according to his biography.
He later moved from performing with prerecorded tracks to leading a professional touring production. The current show features a live band, backup singers and arrangements intended to capture the sound and scale of Presley’s later concerts.
Garron has performed across the country and was invited to appear for the U.S. Embassy in Algiers. His tribute has also shared bills with performers including Wayne Newton, The Commodores, Little Big Town and Bret Michaels.
The show reaches across Presley’s catalog, drawing from rock ’n’ roll, pop, country, gospel and traditional ballads. Songs featured in Garron’s repertoire include “Burning Love,” “Always on My Mind,” “In the Ghetto,” “Moody Blue” and “You Gave Me a Mountain.”
More information about Garron and samples of his performances are available on the performer’s official website.
Why Elvis continues to matter
Nearly 50 years after Presley’s death, his music continues to find listeners who were not alive during his career.
Older fans may connect Elvis with personal memories of his recordings, films and television appearances. Younger listeners often encounter him through movies, streaming services, social media and the artists he influenced.
Presley’s lasting importance also comes from the range of his music. His performances brought together elements of country, blues, gospel and rhythm and blues during a transformative period in American popular culture. His voice, clothing, movement and command of an audience helped establish a model for the modern music superstar.
His career remains part of a more complicated conversation about the Black artists and musical traditions that helped shape rock ’n’ roll. That history does not diminish Presley’s impact, but it provides important context for understanding the cultural moment in which he became famous.
For tribute performers such as Garron, the goal is to keep the live experience accessible while acknowledging that there was only one Elvis.
A fitting room for a larger-than-life show
The Queen offers an appropriate setting for that experience. Its Main Hall combines a classical balcony, carved pillars and a historic pipe organ with contemporary lighting, sound and a full-size stage.
The building became a movie theater in 1916, when Presley was still decades away from becoming a film star himself. It closed as a theater in 1959 and remained dark for more than 50 years before reopening as a live entertainment venue in 2011.
That combination of restored history and modern concert production gives Garron’s performance a sense of occasion. The room is intimate enough for his audience interaction but large and theatrical enough to support the costumes, vocals and spectacle associated with Elvis’ concert years.
For longtime fans, the evening offers an opportunity to revisit music connected to their lives. For younger guests, it provides something recordings and movie clips cannot fully reproduce: the communal excitement of hearing the songs performed by a live band in a historic theater.
To Go
What: Jesse Garron’s Tribute to Elvis
When: Friday, Aug. 28, at 8 p.m.; doors open at 7 p.m.
Where: The Queen, Main Hall, 500 N. Market St., Wilmington
Admission: All ages; ticket prices and availability are listed on The Queen’s event page.
Box office: Open Wednesdays from 2 to 6 p.m. and 30 minutes before performances
Parking: Street parking is generally free after 5 p.m. The Renaissance Centre Garage is located nearby on East Fifth Street between Market and King streets.
CBS News has been tracking a record number of measles cases and outbreaks around the country in 2026. The majority of cases are among those who haven't been vaccinated.
Caption: Delaware’s state champion will represent our state at the Poetry Out Loud National Finals, scheduled for April 26-28, 2027, in Washington.
Registration is open through Oct. 30 for a statewide program that helps high school students strengthen reading, public speaking, and self-confidence through poetry
Delaware high schools and community organizations can now register for the 2026-27 Poetry Out Loud program, giving students an opportunity to bring poetry to life while developing communication and performance skills.
The national arts education program invites students to select, memorize and recite classic and contemporary poems. Competitions begin in classrooms, schools and participating organizations, with local winners advancing to the Delaware state finals Feb. 18, 2027, at the Smyrna Opera House.
One state champion will represent Delaware at the Poetry Out Loud National Finals, scheduled for April 26-28, 2027, in Washington.
Registration remains open through Oct. 30.
Finding a voice through poetry
Poetry Out Loud is designed to move poetry beyond silent reading by asking students to interpret a poem and present it before an audience.
The experience can strengthen reading comprehension, communication and public speaking skills while helping students build confidence.
“Poetry Out Loud gives students an opportunity to experience poetry in a different way: to study it, make meaning from it, and bring it to life in their own voice,” Delaware Education Secretary Cindy Marten said.
Marten encouraged high schools and students across the state to participate.
“Every student deserves opportunities to find their voice, share what they have to say, and know the world is listening,” she said. “They will be heard.”
All Delaware high school students are eligible, including those attending public, private, parochial, independent, charter and home schools.
Free materials for teachers
Participating schools hold classroom and schoolwide competitions during the fall. Students choose their poems from Poetry Out Loud’s online anthology, which includes classic and contemporary works.
Teachers and program organizers receive access to free, standards-based materials, including the anthology, a teacher’s guide and instructional videos about poetry recitation.
The program can be incorporated into English, language arts, theater or public speaking instruction without requiring schools to purchase a separate curriculum.
“For 22 years, Poetry Out Loud has turned up remarkable young poets in every corner of Delaware, in our cities and our small towns, in public schools and private ones,” Delaware Division of the Arts Director Jessica Ball said.
Ball said the competition gives students a place to be heard while demonstrating the talent found throughout Delaware’s schools.
“We are grateful to the schools and teachers who open that door, and we hope even more will join them this year,” she said.
Delaware champion recalls experience
Natalia Gatti of Sussex Academy of Arts and Sciences won Delaware’s 2026 competition.
“Being named state champion is a dream come true,” Gatti said. “The whole experience was surreal. Meeting people who share the same passion for poetry was easily the best part of the whole event.”
Delaware’s previous champions have represented schools across all three counties, including Milford High School, Polytech High School, Delmar High School, Middletown High School, Hodgson Vo-Tech High School, Padua Academy and Wilmington Friends School.
Several schools have produced multiple champions. Maiss Hussein of Hodgson Vo-Tech won in 2023 and 2024, while Hannah Sturgis of Polytech won in 2015 and 2016. Tonisha Jones of Middletown High School won in 2008 and 2009.
National program reaches millions
Poetry Out Loud began in 2005 as a national poetry recitation program for high school students. More than 4.5 million students have participated since its launch.
The National Endowment for the Arts sponsors the initiative, which operates in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Delaware Division of the Arts administers the program locally.
A 2020 study commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts found that participation can support students’ academic, literary and social-emotional development while contributing to more vibrant school learning environments.
A total of $50,000 in awards and school stipends will be distributed during the 2027 national competition, including a $20,000 award for the national champion. Mid Atlantic Arts administers the prizes and national-final travel arrangements.
To Go Box
What: Poetry Out Loud 2026-27 student poetry recitation program
Who can participate: Students from Delaware public, private, parochial, independent, charter and home schools
Registration deadline: Oct. 30, 2026
Delaware state finals: Feb. 18, 2027, at the Smyrna Opera House
Federal officials say access to the Commercial Driver’s License Information System could help uncover licensing fraud, identify drivers who are not legally eligible to hold commercial licenses. Jennings and attorneys general from 20 other states argue the administration is attempting to take possession of state-owned records without clear legal authority. Image created with AI. 8/25/26
The legal fight pits immigration enforcement and highway safety against personal privacy, states’ rights and limits on federal power
Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings has joined a multistate legal challenge that temporarily blocked the Trump administration from obtaining personal information on approximately 17 million commercial drivers.
The case is more complicated than a straightforward fight between immigration enforcement and privacy.
Federal officials say access to the Commercial Driver’s License Information System could help uncover licensing fraud, identify drivers who are not legally eligible to hold commercial licenses and ensure states enforce national safety standards.
Jennings and attorneys general from 20 other states argue the administration is attempting to take possession of state-owned records without clear legal authority, adequate privacy protections or meaningful limits on how the information could be shared.
A federal judge concluded the states raised substantial legal objections and temporarily stopped the transfer while the case moves forward.
What the court ordered
Senior U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia granted a temporary restraining order preventing the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators from turning the participating states’ records over to the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration or other federal agencies.
The order also prevents federal officials from terminating more than $10 million in grants and contracts with the association because it has not produced the records.
The ruling is an important early victory for Jennings and the other attorneys general, but it is not a final decision declaring the administration’s actions illegal.
To obtain the temporary order, the states had to demonstrate they were likely to succeed on at least some of their claims, that releasing the information could cause irreparable harm and that temporarily blocking the transfer was in the public interest.
The court will next consider whether to issue a preliminary injunction that could keep the restrictions in place during the litigation.
“What happened here is simple: The Trump administration attempted to expose Delawareans’ sensitive personal data in an effort to extort our state,” Jennings said. “It was outrageous and illegal — I’m glad the court agreed with us that these disclosures should be halted while we are seeking an injunction.”
Her statement reflects the state’s position, although the court has not issued a final ruling on the legality of the federal demand.
What information the government wants
Congress established the Commercial Driver’s License Information System, known as CDLIS, in 1986 to prevent commercial drivers from using licenses issued by different states to conceal traffic violations or disqualifications.
The system allows states to review a CDL applicant’s licensing and driving history. It is operated by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, a private nonprofit organization, under an agreement with the federal government.
The records can include a driver’s name, birth date, Social Security number, driver’s license number and licensing state.
FMCSA demanded records for everyone listed in the system during the previous five years. The Department of Homeland Security issued a separate administrative subpoena seeking substantially the same information.
Federal officials reportedly intend to use the records to investigate improper CDL issuance, licensing fraud, commercial-driving schools and licenses issued to people who may not be legally eligible to receive them. The information could also be used for civil immigration enforcement.
The administration’s public-safety argument
The administration argues commercial driving is not merely a state concern.
Commercial trucks routinely cross state lines, and an improperly licensed driver in one state can pose a safety risk throughout the country. The federal government establishes national CDL standards and is responsible for reviewing whether states comply with them.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has accused the participating attorneys general of interfering with efforts to identify unqualified drivers and enforce licensing requirements.
“Every administration since 1988 has had access to this basic database,” Duffy said in a statement responding to the lawsuit.
He said the information is needed to prevent dangerous and improperly licensed drivers from operating commercial vehicles.
The federal government maintains its contract with AAMVA and federal transportation laws entitle FMCSA to obtain the information necessary to oversee state CDL programs.
That argument may resonate with people who believe states have failed to enforce immigration, employment or licensing laws consistently. If licenses were issued to people using fraudulent identities — or to applicants who were not legally eligible — the federal government has a legitimate interest in discovering those failures.
But the court questioned why FMCSA needed possession of the entire database when it has historically been able to query individual driver records.
Enforcement does not eliminate privacy concerns
Support for immigration enforcement does not automatically resolve the privacy and constitutional questions raised by the case.
A person may strongly support identifying unauthorized immigrants and fraudulent CDL holders while remaining skeptical of giving the federal government a database containing Social Security numbers and other information on millions of drivers who are not suspected of wrongdoing.
The states argue they own the records and submitted them to CDLIS for limited licensing and highway-safety purposes — not for the creation of a new federal database available for broader enforcement.
The court cited an FMCSA policy stating CDLIS records are not controlled by the agency. It also found the states were likely to succeed on claims that the wholesale demand conflicted with federal privacy and commercial-vehicle laws.
That raises a broader question about the division of authority between states and the federal government: Can an executive agency substantially expand its access to state records without Congress clearly authorizing the change?
It also raises a fundamental concern about government power. A legitimate enforcement objective does not necessarily give an agency unlimited authority to collect information on everyone in a regulated system.
Funding threat raises another concern
The administration’s alleged threat to terminate AAMVA’s federal funding strengthened the states’ argument.
Federal grants and contracts frequently include conditions. But the Constitution generally requires the federal government to provide clear notice of those conditions rather than adding major new requirements after an organization has accepted the funding.
AAMVA warned losing its federal contracts could disrupt CDLIS and interfere with states’ ability to issue or renew commercial licenses.
The judge found the states were likely to succeed on their claim that federal officials could not impose the new data-transfer requirement by threatening funding that supports the licensing system.
A possible middle ground
The competing positions can be reconciled.
The federal government has a legitimate responsibility to investigate licensing fraud, unsafe drivers, improper state practices and violations of immigration law. States should not be able to use privacy claims to shield illegal conduct or obstruct legitimate federal oversight.
But Washington also should not collect millions of Social Security numbers merely because some records might reveal violations.
A more narrowly tailored approach could allow federal investigators to search for specific individuals, examine records from states with documented compliance problems or compare limited data fields without transferring complete personal records.
Any broader access could be accompanied by rules governing which agencies may use the information, how long it may be retained, whether it may be shared and how drivers can correct inaccurate records.
Congress could also settle the matter by clearly defining federal access to CDLIS and establishing privacy safeguards.
What the decision means for Delaware
For now, the order prevents Delaware’s CDLIS records from being included in the federal transfer. It does not affect the validity of Delaware commercial licenses or prevent federal officials from conducting authorized, individualized investigations.
The case also does not determine whether CDL information may ever be used for immigration enforcement. Instead, it asks whether the administration followed the law in demanding the entire database and threatening AAMVA’s funding.
Jennings has characterized the case as another attempt by the Trump administration to obtain personal information for undisclosed or insufficiently limited purposes. The administration views it as part of a broader effort to strengthen commercial-driver enforcement and identify licenses improperly issued to unauthorized immigrants.
Both concerns deserve scrutiny.
The central question is not whether immigration and CDL laws should be enforced. It is whether the government can enforce them effectively without creating an unrestricted federal repository containing the personal information of millions of people who are not accused of violating the law.
To-go box
What happened: A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from obtaining participating states’ commercial-driver records.
What is involved: Approximately 17 million CDL records containing names, birth dates, license information and Social Security numbers.
Federal argument: The information is needed to detect licensing fraud, enforce safety standards and identify drivers who may not be legally eligible for commercial licenses.
States’ argument: The bulk demand lacks clear legal authority, privacy protections and limits on future use.
What comes next: Jennings and the multistate coalition will seek a preliminary injunction keeping the data transfer blocked while the lawsuit proceeds.
Why Should Delaware Care? Campaign donations, particularly from corporations or advocate organizations, are increasingly becoming a litmus test for voters in the 2026 midterm elections. In Delaware, the campaign fundraising for Sen. Chris Coons has become a topic of conversation among some Democratic voters.
As Congressional Democratic incumbents are scrutinized nationwide amid primary election challenges from progressives, U.S. Sen. Chris Coons has pledged to stop accepting donations from controversial data company Palantir after previously bringing in thousands from it.
Palantir has come under fire from advocates in recent years over its work with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, U.S. military and the Israeli Defense Forces.
The donations, totaling $27,500, come from a company decried by some Democrats for its work on issues Coons has publicly spoken out against.
Palantir’s recent donations to Republican lawmakers far outpace its contributions to Democrats, according to advocacy organization called Purge Palantir, but Coons is near the top of the list of Democrats who have received contributions from the company.
The list ranges from Palantir’s top-funded official President Donald Trump, who has received more than $2 million, to U.S. Sen Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who received $250 in contributions.
Some Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), have publicly announced they would either donate or return similar campaign contributions from Palantir.
After privately receiving criticisms from the Wilmington-area advocacy group Indivisible Highlands and Beyond about the Palantir donations, Coons, who is set to face three opponents in next month’s primary election, pledged in a letter to the organization to no longer accept or seek contributions from Palantir.
“The re-election campaign … shall not accept or solicit campaign contributions from Palantir Technologies, its [political action committee], or C-Suite Palantir employees,” Coons wrote in the letter sent to the group last month.
But when reached for comment by Spotlight Delaware, a representative from Coons’ office declined to say whether the senator would return or donate the $27,500.
“IHB wanted his statement because we felt it important that none of our [members of Congress] were accepting donations from companies hurting our immigrant neighbors,” said Deb Travers, a leader of Indivisible Highlands and Beyond.
Travers said the progressive activist group was surprised to see Coons’ name on the Palantir Payroll list back in April.
The list, created by an advocacy organization called Purge Palantir, tracks the software giant’s political contributions and seeks to work against a company it says enables “mass surveillance and militarization at home and abroad.”
What is Palantir?
Palantir is an immensely successful data mining company that has developed artificial intelligence-powered software that can crunch and analyze enormous data sets.
But the company has increasingly become known for a willingness to court controversy, particularly through contracts with the Trump administration. Among other initiatives, its software tracks the movement of migrants and responds to a tip line for ICE, bombing target acquisition for the military and even grant screening for diversity, equity and inclusion language.
In the last two years alone, the company has received more than $2.5 billion in government contracts, principally from the military and ICE.
Coons is involved in overseeing the government’s spending on defense programs, currently serving as the ranking Democratic member for the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. He is one of 11 Democratic lawmakers who serve on defense and technology-related committees that have ties with Palantir.
A representative from Coons’ office declined to comment on the senator’s relationship with Palantir and its employees.
Palantir has come under fire from advocates in recent years over its work with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, U.S. military and the Israeli Defense Forces. | PHOTO COURTESY OF SALVADOR RIOS ON UNSPLASH
The technology company, co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel and current CEO Alex Karp, is on the list of top 50 most valuable U.S. companies, holding a market capitalization of more than $422 billion.
Thiel himself also is no stranger to controversy. He wrote an essay in 2009 where he claimed to “no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” In that same essay, the tech investor said women’s suffrage “rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ an oxymoron.”
Earlier this year, Karp drew criticism online for a 22-point manifesto posted on the company’s X account, in which the executive wrote that “the postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone.”
Donation details
Palantir executives donated $27,500 to either Coons’ campaign committee, Chis Coons for Delaware, or a separate political action committee led by the senator, the Blue Hen Federal PAC, over the last two years. Those funds were pegged to both the 2026 primary and general election, as necessary.
In June, a month before Coons vowed to reject money from Palantir, the senator officially launched his re-election bid. He has served in the Senate since 2010, securing reelection twice by double-digit margins.
Karp was Coons’ top Palantir-related contributor, donating $7,000. Other employee donations totaled $10,500.
Karp also donated $10,000 in total to the Blue Hen Federal PAC. Coons established the committee to raise funds in support of other candidates and Democratic political groups.
Despite the donations, Coons has publicly opposed ICE enforcement, co-authoring the ICE Accountability Act in an effort to stop abuse within detention centers.
He also spoke out against ICE enforcement efforts in Minneapolis earlier this year after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
“Like so many Americans, I’ve watched in horror as masked agents terrorize Minnesota and communities across the country and kill peaceful protestors,” Coons said in a press release earlier this year. “Delawareans rightly want reforms, and so do I, but reforms are meaningless without oversight and enforcement.”
Coons also has recently proposed legislation to enable safeguards when artificial intelligence is used within the U.S. Department of Defense.
Other organizations react
While Travers, the Indivisible Highlands and Beyond leader, said she was surprised to see Coons taking money from Palantir, representatives from other advocacy groups said they were not as shocked.
Karl Stromberg, the political director of Delaware’s Working Families Party, which has been backing progressive challengers to many incumbent Democrats, noted that Coons, a centrist Democrat, has historically raised campaign funds from corporate America.
“Contributions, whether corporate or otherwise, often can determine essentially who gets access to our senators, who gets in the room, whose opinion is taken more seriously,” he said.
The Delaware Democratic Party did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment.
Mariah Schnee, with Delawareans for Palestinian Human Rights, also said she was not surprised by the donations, since Palantir donates to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
The company and its top officials have donated to central funds and candidates from both parties, but its spending has disproportionately favored Republicans by a 3-1 margin.
“Delaware voters deserve to know whether their senator’s position on Gaza and immigration enforcement reflect their values or the interests of his donors,” she said.
Coons is set to face off against political newcomers Jeff Appelhans and Mary Louve, along with former Republican candidate Eric Hansen who has switched parties, in the Sept. 15 Democratic primary election.
Why Should Delaware Care? Delaware’s hospitals are powerful and often consolidated entities. For decades, each of the state’s three main hospital systems have remained within their bounds by county line. But as more retirees flock to the state, those boundaries are being disregarded.
The Dover-based hospital system Bayhealth has taken the first shot in what had been a looming turf war between state healthcare providers over access to the valuable southern Delaware market.
Long the dominant player in northern Delaware, ChristianaCare has increasingly invested below the C&D Canal in recent years.
But Bayhealth claims that ChristianaCare’s proposals could run afoul of a new law signed this summer meant to curb the involvement of for-profit enterprise in nonprofit healthcare.
The Delaware Healthcare Commission and the Delaware Health Resources Board is responsible for approving hospital expansions that cost more than $5.8 million. The board is set to discuss this letter at its meeting later this afternoon.
Get Involved: The Delaware Health Resources Board will meet at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 25, in the Herman M. Holloway Sr. Campus Main Administration Building, located at 1901 N. DuPont Highway in New Castle. Virtual attendance options can be found here.
Bayhealth’s challenge to ChristianaCare’s expansion highlights what has been a quiet, but contentious race among hospitals to hold the most market share below the C&D Canal, as retirees from across the Northeast flock to Delaware’s coastline. With that aging population, comes a greater demand for medical services.
The letter also demonstrates the evolving role of a Delaware regulatory board meant to act as a watchdog to ensure the state’s healthcare systems don’t make unnecessary investments that could end up costing a captive patient population.
Bayhealth did not respond to a request for comment on the contents of its letter.
The letter, written by Bayhealth Chief Operating Officer Kyle Benoit, challenged ChristianaCare’s plans to build two new “micro-hospitals” in Camden and Georgetown.
In his letter, Benoit said ChristianaCare’s plans to build micro-hospitals may be in noncompliance with the regulatory review because there are no statutory definitions of a micro-hospital in Delaware.
Bayhealth also prodded at ChristianaCare’s business plan for the downstate facilities, questioning whether its proposal complied with Senate Bill 313 – a law signed this summer that prevents the sale of Delaware’s nonprofit health systems to private equity firms.
Benoit noted that ChristianaCare’s plans for the downstate facilities involved a partnership with Emerus Holdings, a for-profit healthcare real estate developer.
The developer has already partnered with ChristianaCare on two sites in the Philadelphia suburbs, with a similar micro-hospital approach in Chester and Delaware counties.
Gov. Matt Meyer signed Senate Bill 313 into law earlier this summer, establishing a two-year moratorium on the purchase and or sale of nonprofit hospital systems to private equity firms.
“If the governing agreements provide for a for-profit participant with rights that constitute prohibited ownership, control or operational authority, the applications are not legally eligible for approval,” Benoit wrote.
As part of its request to the board, Bayhealth requested ChristianaCare disclose its corporate and structure agreements with Emerus to ensure compliance with Senate Bill 313. Additionally, Bayhealth requested the board delay its review until its legal concerns are addressed.
ChristianaCare did not reply to a request to comment for this story.
Separately, ChristianaCare recently received a permitting break on both micro-hosptials from the governor’s office, who accepted them into the state’s “JobsFirst Permitting Accelerator.” According to a press release published earlier this month, the permitting accelerator is meant to streamline regulatory approvals for complex projects, and complete them within 120 days.
According to the website for JobsFirst, the program focuses on housing, broadband, energy infrastructure, water, sewer and mixed-use projects.
Asked in an email why ChristianaCare qualified for this permitting fast-track, a spokesperson for the governor said the executive order creating the program allows Meyer to determine if projects are critical.
“The EO allows the Governor flexibility to designate a project as critical infrastructure, and he sees this project as critical as we see gaps in service,” the spokesperson said.
What is ChristianaCare hoping to build?
For the better part of two years, ChristianaCare has spent millions on an expansion blitz.
It’s proposed and opened sites in Pennsylvania, further entrenched itself in New Castle County, and has begun to reach farther south.
In May, the hospital also announced it would open a $58.1 million health campus in Kent County, continuing its push into contested downstate markets.
Bayhealth,is the second largest hospital system in Delaware, after ChristianaCare. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY NICK STONESIFER
At the time, Bayhealth offered a diplomatic opposition to the facility, saying in a statement it “remains focused” on providing care to its patients. But the hospital also said care should not be “fragmented.”
It said it would “actively participate” by sharing data and ways to address cost, access and quality of care in the area.
“We recognize that patients across Delaware are looking for faster access to care,” a spokesperson for the hospital said in an email.
The 38,000‑square‑foot ChristianaCare Kent County campus would open in Camden about a mile from the Walmart on U.S. Route 13. The state healthcare giant said in a statement the new campus would offer emergency and inpatient beds, as well as primary care and outpatient services.
It hopes to open the facility by late 2028 or early 2029.
ChristianaCare also said the new facility would bring 83 new jobs. As it has done with other recently announced ventures, ChristianaCare positioned its expansion as a means of supporting Delaware’s growing and aging population.
The healthcare system also expects its new Georgetown facility to open by 2028. It is partnering with Emerus Holdings to build the facility — which would offer emergency beds, behavioral, specialty and primary care — at 20769 DuPont Blvd., just south of the Bridgeville Road intersection.
Turf war brews
For decades, Delaware’s three major health care systems largely fit into geographic monopolies: ChristianaCare serving New Castle County, Bayhealth serving Kent County and Beebe Healthcare in Sussex County.
But over the last five years, a health care arms race heated up between Bayhealth, Beebe and now TidalHealth, coming up from Salisbury, Md. They have all built or broken ground on major projects in locations, such as Lewes, Milton or Millsboro in recent years.
It follows a post-COVID population boom in Sussex County. The region is now designated as a “Medically Underserved Area” by the federal government, with projections showing that the population will increase from 237,000 in 2022 to over 361,000 by 2050. The county is also rapidly graying, as the population growth is largely driven by retirees who will demand more health care needs.
The arrival of ChristianaCare, which to date only had primary care offices in Milford and Rehoboth Beach, will bring needed resources, but also new competition to the crowded market.
But Bayhealth is hoping to convince the Delaware Health Resources Board that ChristianaCare’s plans would flood the market and offer redundant services.
In 2019, the board was central in a debate over whether to allow Beebe to build a freestanding emergency room in Georgetown. It ultimately denied that project, saying it was too close to Bayhealth’s Milford campus and Nanticoke Hospital in Seaford.
The board was also expected to be critical of plans by Bayhealth to build its own freestanding emergency room in Milton, which led the Dover-based health system to pull its plans.
Both of those projects predated the population surge that has particularly struck Sussex County after the COVID housing market boom though.
Republican Councilwoman Kilpatrick has decided to retire, and her seat is up for grabs
For 16 years, Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick has represented Hockessin, Yorklyn, North Star, Pike Creek and part of Newark which makes up New Castle County “District 3.”
Councilwoman Kilpatrick is not seeking reelection, one of two decades-long tenures ending this year. Democrats Kira Alejandro and Kyle Grantham are competing for her seat in the Sept. 15 primary; the winner faces Republican Melissa Brayman, Director of Administration and Finance at the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, with no primary of her own. Both Alejandro and Grantham sat down for interviews about who they are and what they’d do if elected.
Kira Alejandro: A musician and community advocate
Growing up…
Alejandro, 30, grew up in Hockessin-off Brackenville Road-and still lives in the district, in Yorklyn. She plays piano and baritone ukulele, plays some guitar and bass, and grew up playing flute. She said she also grew up going to Ashland Nature Center, which she called “a focal point” in her life and where her love of the natural world began. Her favorite spot there is a boardwalk over a marsh, where she said watching frog eggs and cattails appear every year still feels peaceful. “I feel really lucky to live so close to it,” she said.
A formative influence…
She credits both parents with shaping how she sees public life: her father, “a very staunch environmental advocate” and believer in public education from his own years in New York’s public schools, and her mother, who volunteered on the spot to keep a Girl Scout camp on Sharpless Road running rather than let it close, and ran it for years afterward.
Making it personal…
Alejandro said she has personally helped save nearly 30 acres of land in Yorklyn from development, and pledged never to take donations from developers, land-use attorneys, corporations or corporate PACs. “I think you can’t be neutral if you’re funded by special interests,” she said.
On electric bills and data centers…
“The problem that we’re seeing with the delivery fees is partly because Delmarva is allowed to do non-mandatory construction of infrastructure,” Alejandro said, pointing to a pending Delaware Public Service Commission case in which Delmarva is seeking a $68 million rate increase.
“Adding poles, adding substations, building things for anticipated use… that is the only way that Delmarva can potentially profit, because they’re not supposed to be profiting off of the sale or delivery fees.” She said “part of the reason that the energy bills are continuing to increase is because data centers are getting built on our grid,” adding, “whether or not we have any data centers in Delaware, if data centers are being built on this larger grid, our energy bills are going to go up.”
“I believe the number one thing we can do at a county level to get a handle on these increasing rates is call for a data center moratorium,” she said. “We’ve seen precedent for this. Maryland has five different counties now that have enacted a moratorium. They have a county that has outright banned data centers.”
What’s been the hardest part of running?
“Running a campaign is grueling. I’m very fortunate to have a lot of people who are very invested in this campaign,” Alejandro said. “I would say overall I think the most challenging thing has just been that no one knows what the county council is. So often I find people asking me, ‘Are you running against Mike Smith? Are you running against Frank Burns?'”
Why do you think you’re the right fit for the job?
“I’m the only candidate that has any kind of concrete experience standing up for our communities and actually achieving results,” Alejandro said. “That’s why I’m running. I want to keep putting our communities first as a council member.”
Kyle Grantham: A photojournalist turned public servant
Growing up…
Grantham, 38, grew up in Cecil County, Maryland, and moved to Delaware in 2013. He considered the Naval Academy in high school before choosing journalism, as he learned more about the Iraq War, working through Ohio, Indiana, Wyoming, and California before landing at The News Journal full-time in 2013.
A formative influence…
Grantham said the person who shaped his approach to public service most was Rob Carr, an Associated Press photographer he met at 19 covering a bowl game in Mobile, Alabama. Carr later got him assignments at the Senior British Open and an Ireland-Scotland rugby match, then brought him along to shoot Orioles and Ravens games for his first national byline. “No one gets anywhere in this industry by themselves,” Grantham said Carr told him, a lesson he’s carried into politics.
Making it personal…
He left journalism after being assaulted by a Trump supporter about two weeks before the 2016 election, then spent nearly a decade in the county executive’s office after Gov. Matt Meyer, then county executive, brought him on. Grantham lives in Newark with his wife and 2-year-old son, still coaches the county’s adult co-ed soccer league at Banning Park.
On electric bills and data centers…
Grantham explains, “I think we need to work with the state to get power bills under control. I’m not convinced we can unilaterally impose a moratorium on data center construction without backing from the state legislature.
The companies building these things have more money than God and armies of lawyers. If we go it alone against them, I don’t think we can win. If we work with the state to take a comprehensive approach to fighting them – whether it be zoning, tax reform, or hopefully an outright ban – we have a better shot of making Delaware look less attractive and keeping them out of the state altogether.
But simply hitting ‘pause’ for a year or two with a moratorium isn’t going to be enough. The energy and environmental impacts from these facilities are never going to be solved, and even if they somehow were, these facilities are being built to power AI technology designed to replace workers and produce a product 40% the quality for 10% the cost. I’m never going to support that.
At the same time, the County can be bringing new clean power projects online to introduce power locally at cost and start curving bills down.”
What’s been the hardest part of running?
“This is easily the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Grantham said. “I think the one thing I wasn’t necessarily prepared for was the guilt, having a two-year-old and needing to spend so much time out putting the hard groundwork in. When I’m out 20, 30 hours a week knocking doors, I just feel guilty that I’m not at home with him. And then on the flip side, when I’m at home and I am enjoying myself, then I feel guilty that I’m not working hard enough.”
Why do you think you’re the right fit for the job?
“What I want people to see in those endorsements is that these people are recognizing the fact that I understand what this job is about and what it’s not about, and the way that it can have an impact on lives in a real way, and that they see in me the experience and qualifications to do it well,” Grantham said.
Where the two candidates’ money and endorsements stand
Grantham raised roughly $25,900 through Aug. 16, per the State’s Campaign Filing Report System, and have some noteworthy endorsements from six NCC council members, including Councilwoman Kilpatrick and Councilman Hollins, plus Gov. Matt Meyer.
Alejandro raised nearly $44,700 over the same period, almost $18,850 more than Grantham, with some notable endorsements from one council member, two state officials and the Sierra Club.
Both candidates agree Delaware’s electric bills are a real burden, and that data centers are part of the story. They disagree on whether the fix is a moratorium or a zoning overhaul. On Sept. 15, District 3’s Democrats decide which approach, and which candidate, gets the chance to prove it right.
How to vote
Only registered Democrats can vote in the Sept. 15 primary. The deadline to register was Saturday, Aug. 22; early voting runs Sept. 2-13. Check your registration or district at the state’s voter portal, ivote.de.gov/VoterView.
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Correction (Aug. 24, 2026, 12:07 p.m.): This article has been updated to correct Melissa Brayman’s title. She is Director of Administration and Finance at the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, not an office administrator.
Dr. Craig Towers in 2018. The local newspaper gave him an award for his work with pregnant women with opioid addiction Michael Patrick/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
When Dr. Craig Towers moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 2010, the high-risk obstetrician encountered a crisis unlike anything he’d seen.
Towers, who had practiced for 25 years in California and Wisconsin, found himself caring for an unusual number of pregnant women addicted to painkillers — and delivering newborns who were suffering withdrawal symptoms. Those babies, born shaking and inconsolable and who required weeks of specialized care, were becoming tragic symbols of the region’s raging opioid epidemic. “We were inundated,” Towers later told the Knoxville News Sentinel.
In those initial years in Tennessee, Towers recognized a need — and a research opportunity.
Medical doctrine had long held that a pregnant patient with an opioid addiction could not be safely detoxed because withdrawal could harm the fetus, causing physical stress and even triggering miscarriage. Instead, doctors treated patients with methadone or buprenorphine, which are legal replacement opiates that control cravings and have a lower risk of overdose. Those drugs can still cause babies to be born in withdrawal, but doctors reasoned that it was better to treat the newborn for those symptoms than risk the baby’s death.
Towers, who was hired to work at the University of Tennessee Medical Center’s clinic for high-risk pregnancies and later joined the medical school faculty, questioned that approach. He began studying the outcomes of women, most of them his patients, who stopped taking those medications. He ultimately collected data on more than 300 of them.
Towers’ research found that detoxing was much less harmful to the fetus than feared, and it prompted changes to how doctors treat pregnant opioid users. Across Tennessee — in Johnson City, Jellico and Sevierville — and in Daytona Beach, Florida, clinics followed his lead. The News Sentinel honored him as a “Health Care Hero.” CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, interviewed him about his work and described babies born without withdrawal symptoms as “miracles.” In 2019, the medical school granted a request for additional funding for Towers’ work, praising “his many research efforts and leadership that has resulted in national recognition.”
In the months before he published what would be a groundbreaking study, he described his findings at a university science forum, saying: “I think it’s going to revolutionize what we do.”
And then in 2020, soon after the study was published, Towers abruptly stepped back from his research.
The study immediately caught the attention of specialists in addiction treatment. Some of them wondered how the results could be true. The study, the largest of its kind, enlisted 230 participants, 121 of whom took a daily dose of a drug called naltrexone, which, unlike methadone or buprenorphine, is not an opioid; instead it discourages using by blocking the high. Naltrexone was effective in keeping most patients off of opiates, the study found.
But in many other major studies, naltrexone had shown lackluster results. Rates of relapse among nonpregnant patients averaged 72%, according to a systematic review of 13 studies.
Eight specialists in the fields of addiction and pregnancy started sharing concerns with one another about Towers’ study and then drafted a letter to the University of Tennessee. Two of them agreed to speak with ProPublica (the others asked not to be identified). One was Dr. Mishka Terplan, a practicing OB-GYN board-certified in addiction medicine who’d served on several committees to develop federal and professional guidelines for treating opioid use during pregnancy.
“Dr Towers’ work has been impactful, especially in TN,” Terplan wrote to the university in July 2020, “and I am concerned that each day the article(s) is out there, potential harm to a vulnerable population accumulates through both ethically suspect clinical care and consequently misguided public health.”
By that time, a university audit had uncovered major problems with Towers’ research.
The audit found that Towers failed to get university approval for the study, that he provided “inaccurate and/or unverifiable, contradictory source documentation” for a component of the study and that he did not provide research databases or data analysis as requested. Auditors also were unable to determine the extent to which he protected confidential patient health information.
For three years, the journal did nothing to publicly address those concerns. When the journal did act, in 2023, it published a 78-word correction stating that the study had been improperly listed as a “prospective,” a rigorous type of research that follows patients in real time.
ProPublica shared Towers’ study, the university’s audit and the journal’s correction with five experts on research ethics and substance abuse during pregnancy. All of them said that the documents raised major concerns about Towers’ conduct as a researcher and that the journal’s response didn’t do enough to address the issues the university unearthed.
The publisher of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the journal where the study appeared, disputes that.
“We uphold the highest standards of rigor and ethics in our publishing to protect the quality and integrity of research,” Elsevier, the company that publishes AJOG, said in a statement.
Towers told ProPublica that the audit had reached erroneous conclusions, that the auditors did not give him the opportunity to fully defend his work and that the journal’s willingness to stand by the study is proof that his research is sound.
One of the experts ProPublica spoke to, Eugenie Reich, an attorney who has represented whistleblowers in several high-profile research fraud cases, said that the problems the university identified in Towers’ study were much deeper than the journal acknowledged.
“The misrepresentation is not minor,” Reich said. “It runs throughout the piece.”
In media coverage, Towers came across as gently protective of his patients. He often described the difficult circumstances that drove them into addiction. He said those women, who desperately wanted to do better for their babies, inspired him to investigate the feasibility of detox during pregnancy.
In 2018, Katie Carringer was working as an administrative assistant at a drug rehab facility and made an appointment with Towers at the encouragement of her boss. Carringer, who was about six weeks pregnant, had been addicted to heroin in the past but was not using drugs at the time. She told ProPublica she felt confident in her ability to remain drug-free and made the appointment with Towers because she wanted a doctor who specialized in high-risk pregnancies and could help her manage anxiety and depression.
Katie Carringer, a former patient of Dr. Craig Towers, says she felt pressured to take naltrexone.Jessica Tezak for ProPublica
At her second appointment, she expected a conversation about her mental health. She told ProPublica she was surprised when Towers recommended naltrexone. From her work at the clinic, she knew that the drug was meant for people battling cravings in the early stages of recovery.
“With me being clean so long, it didn’t even make sense,” Carringer said.
According to her medical records, she had not used drugs during either of her previous pregnancies, in 2007 and 2009. Two years before her appointment with Towers, in 2016, she completed an inpatient drug treatment program, and she was “actually drug free for most of the time” since then, according to her medical notes. Her records showed two short relapses.
After she found out she was pregnant this time, Carringer decided to stop taking the Paxil and Remeron that kept her anxiety in check, out of concern for any effects they might have on the fetus, her medical records show.
With Carringer’s permission, ProPublica asked Towers to review her medical file and answer questions about why he recommended naltrexone. Towers, who said Carringer was not included in the study, noted that her medical record stated she was interested in naltrexone.
Carringer denied to ProPublica that she expressed interest in the drug, adding that she ended up trying naltrexone because she felt it was what Towers wanted her to do. She said, and her records confirm, that it caused severe nausea and she stopped taking it after the first dose.
Terplan, one of the addiction specialists who signed the letter to the University of Tennessee, said Carringer’s experience points to the salience of a question the letter posed: Did Towers explain to his patients that curbing addiction with naltrexone was an experimental treatment in pregnant women?
That question was important to Terplan and the other specialists. According to their letter, they were concerned that “informed consent was not obtained or not properly obtained” from patients who showed up in the naltrexone research: “This uncertainty leads us to question whether ethical standards that promote and ensure respect for human subjects and protect their health and rights were followed,” the letter said.
In the letter, the specialists also noted that the study made no mention of patients refusing to participate in the study or dropping out later in pregnancy, both of which are common occurrences in a study involving drug use.
“You need to explain to people that there may be additional risk,” said Columbia University professor Dr. Robert Klitzman, an expert in bioethics. “That’s why informed consent is so important.”
Towers said that concerns about consent and explanation of risk are baseless. All study participants received a “notice of research” and chose to go forward, he said.
“I am not aware of any patient that felt pressured to participate,” he wrote. “I always presented the patients with the risks and benefits of each course of treatment so that they could make an informed decision.”
University of North Carolina researcher Hendrée Jones, one of the specialists who drafted and signed the letter, told ProPublica that she was surprised by another aspect of Towers’ study: that it included reports of only minor health problems among the mothers, including nausea and headache, during the course of their’ pregnancies.
Jones said it is unusual for there to be no serious medical events among that many pregnant patients, especially ones who’d struggled with opioid addiction.
“That made my hair on the back of my neck stand up,” Jones said.
Carringer puts her son Noah’s hair in a ponytail in their kitchen, and Noah’s handprints sit next to their front door. Carringer is now a support specialist for people fighting addiction.Jessica Tezak for ProPublica
Towers said critics like Terplan and Jones were not in a position to know what was happening in the clinic or with his research, and their criticisms are purely speculative. The study, he said, captured all outcomes of its participants.
“We looked at everything — every patient complaint, their vital signs, preterm labor, any medical conditions that developed,” he wrote in his response to ProPublica. “We looked for spontaneous abortion, stillbirth, fetal stress (seen in fetal heart rate monitoring or biophysical profiles) and need for cesarean delivery.”
In its audit, the university also had flagged problems with Towers’ data. The audit said Towers supplied a printout of his entire clinical practice database, but it did not designate which patients were involved in the research study.
Towers told ProPublica that he obtained broad consent for his research: “Every patient that was seen in the clinic received a notice regarding the research, consented to participation in that research and understood that their data would be prospectively collected but deidentified.”
Klitzman said researchers should be able to provide details about the actual patients in a study, not just everyone at a clinic.
“That to me is a red flag,” he said.
Researchers are required to run all proposed studies involving human participants through institutional review boards — panels of scientists and other compliance specialists who ensure patients’ rights and confidentiality are protected. Failing to get approval from the overseeing IRB for all aspects of human research would be a major violation.
In its audit, the university determined that Towers hadn’t sought IRB approval for the study.
Towers told ProPublica that the university was mistaken and that the journal itself had “concluded,” contrary to the audit, that he did have IRB approval.
A spokesperson from Elsevier did not respond to repeated questions about whether the journal had concluded that the IRB had approved the study.
In February 2020, about two weeks after the audit got underway, Towers retired from his faculty position. Months later, he retired from clinical practice as well. In his email to ProPublica, he said he stepped down for health and family reasons.
According to a determination letter from the chair of the IRB dated days after the audit’s completion, members of the board voted to suspend all of Towers’ open studies for safety reviews and file a report with the federal Office for Human Research Protections. (Towers voluntarily closed all research projects when he retired, he told ProPublica.) The audit’s findings, the letter said, constituted “serious noncompliance.”
Towers said he disputes that finding and said the board did not make an effort to get his side of the story. The head of the IRB spoke to him by phone in January 2020 and followed up with a few short conversations, he said.
“There should have been a meeting set up at the start where the four authors (myself and my 3 coauthors) met in person with the IRB committee or a subcommittee to explain our point of view and answer any questions. This never occurred,” he said.
A spokesperson for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center said she could not find anyone to answer questions from ProPublica “due to time and a change in leadership.”
Soon after Towers resigned from his faculty position, he reached out to the journal and sent IRB approval letters that he said confirmed the study had been approved.
“I am sorry you have to spend time with this controversy,” Towers wrote.
The audit, though, had found that the IRB approvals he cited did not apply to the study.
The University of Tennessee also contacted the journal. In an email thanking Terplan and the other specialists for the concerns they’d shared about Towers’ study, the university’s research director asked if they planned to contact the journal directly. The research director wrote that UT already had “requested the paper be retracted from the journal, but as yet no action has been taken by the journal.”
Less than 1 in 2,500 published studies are retracted, according to the journal Science. Retractions can devastate the reputations of researchers and damage the credibility of journals.
Universities can investigate research and request retractions, like the University of Tennessee did with Towers, but journal editors have the final say about whether to retract a paper or add a correction. Ivan Oransky, one of the experts who spoke with ProPublica for this story, said he has encountered other cases where journals failed to retract a study after a university made such a request.
“You have a situation where the fox is guarding the henhouse,” he said.
Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, a site that tracks scientific misconduct, has advocated for making research misconduct reports more easily accessible to the public.
“These reports should be part of the scientific record,” he said. “They are the basis for understanding whether something is reliable or not, and what went wrong.”
During the years that the journal spent considering how to respond to the university’s request for a retraction, more doctors across the country began prescribing naltrexone. Researchers cited the work dozens of times in other studies.
Towers said he stands by naltrexone as a treatment option: “I believe it is crucial in medicine to revisit old assumptions and consider all options.” Detox remains a solution “in the interest of advancing medicine and helping patients in a region where drug abuse is a longstanding issue,” he said.
Towers in 2018, the year he saw Carringer as a patientMichael Patrick/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Dr. Geogy Thomas, medical director of Dayspring Health in east Tennessee, said he was inspired by Towers’ research, which improved care for women in the area.
“Our community is indebted to Dr. Towers and his research on substance abuse in pregnancy,” Thomas wrote in an emailed statement. “He courageously challenged the status quo of the medical establishment of that time and ushered in a new way of caring for a high-risk group of patients that no one else was willing to care for.”
But another obstetrician, Dr. Cathleen Suto, who worked at a clinic with an approach inspired by Towers’ research, found detox wasn’t effective. Suto described her experiences treating opioid-addicted pregnant patients to the author of a book. Many of those patients couldn’t make it through the weaning process and often stopped coming to the clinic. (She did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.)
“Detox would be a great answer,” Suto is quoted as saying in the book, “Prosecuting Poverty, Criminalizing Care.” “The problem is that my patients were not successful at doing it.”
When the journal finally acted on the university’s concerns in 2023, more than three years after the study came out, it did not retract the study. Instead, it published a brief correction.
“The authors wish to clarify that the study is listed as a prospective cohort study — which is not the case,” read the correction. “We did a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data.”
Data for prospective studies is collected in real time, while retrospective studies look back at medical records. Much of Towers’ prior research relied on looking back at those records, and he touted the naltrexone study as an improvement because of its prospective design, which would track patients until they delivered. Prospective studies are considered to capture better information about patients, including those who dropped out of the study, and provide better control of data collection.
Towers views the journal’s actions as vindication. “AJOG would not keep a study in print if they did not believe it was IRB-approved after their review,” Towers said.
The specialists who wrote to the university, all of whom have published research, said misrepresenting methodology is a breach of scientific integrity.
“If it was not prospective but presented as such, it would have violated standards of reporting of scientific research,” they wrote in the letter.
In response to experts’ claims that the problems with the audit were more profound than the correction indicated, Elsevier said in a statement: “Based on the information available at the time, the Journal determined that a correction was appropriate to clarify the description of the study.”
Jones, one of the letter’s signatories, said the journal failed in its duty to hold its research to a higher standard.
“When you make a mistake, you own up to that mistake and you fix it,” she said. “And that paper is out there, and continues to be cited, and I see it.”
When monsters square off, they are quick to showcase their asymmetrical superpowers.
Take Godzilla, for instance. Thanks to U.S. atomic testing in the Pacific, the dinosaur-like sea creature has explosive, radioactive breath that can destroy everything in its path. His archenemy Rodan, meanwhile, is a pterodactyl-like bird that can fly at supersonic speeds, a skill useful in avoiding atomic bad breath. Since the 1960s, the two giant monsters have duked it out across a series of Japanese films, causing much mayhem in the process.
Originally the product of Cold War fears of nuclear peril, these archetypal monsters can stand in for the principal geopolitical antagonists of today. Like their monster kin, China and the United States have very specific and complementary superpowers. China controls the majority of critical minerals in the world, with a special focus on rare earth elements. The United States has a technological edge when it comes to the most sophisticated semiconductors needed for artificial intelligence applications.
Put bluntly: China has the rocks, and America has the chips.
With these superpowers on display, the two countries have clashed in a series of trade negotiations, tense military standoffs, and high-level political meetings. They are engaged in a prolonged tug-of-war not to save the world — as in some comic-book universe — but in the service of their own national aggrandizement and transnational greed. While they dicker, the world slouches toward bedlam.
A Pause in Hostilities
When President Donald Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing in mid-May, the exchanges were unexpectedly cordial. The two countries had been engaged in an on-again, off-again war of tariffs since Trump had begun his second term, a conflict that threatened to spiral out of control. At the same time, the Chinese were deeply concerned about the impact of the U.S.–Israeli war against Iran on international stability, given spiking oil prices and their ripple effects on the global economy.
Yet, at this meeting in China, the two leaders converged on a common goal of “constructive strategic stability.” In order to forge this condominium of superpowers — a G2 — Trump was willing to delay arms deliveries to Taiwan. He also greenlighted the sale of sophisticated (though not the most advanced) Nvidia computer chips to China. In turn, China agreed to increase its purchases from the United States, including 200 Boeing aircraft and $17 billion of agricultural goods each year through 2028.
The hoopla surrounding the summit, generated by press offices on both sides, obscured the reality that the two countries completed few concrete bilateral deals. Trump did not secure long-term access to the critical minerals that China controls — specifically the rare earth elements that are essential to U.S. high-tech manufacturing and sophisticated military hardware — and the tech giants that accompanied Trump on the trip didn’t win any major concessions in the form of enhanced access to the Chinese market. Meanwhile, China failed to alter U.S. security policy in the Asia–Pacific region. The leaders of the new G2 might be expected to rethink or rework the global rules of the road, but this was not on the agenda in Beijing.
Still, the two superpowers stepped off the path of escalating confrontation. Perhaps more importantly, Trump has seemingly abandoned his earlier goal of decoupling the United States from the Chinese economy, which, along with ratcheting up containment of the “strategic competitor,” had become something of a bipartisan imperative.
For the time being at least, the world’s superpower monsters are not laying waste to the landscape around their feet. Given how much firepower they command, that’s no small achievement. The battle, however, continues to rage further afield in the mineral world.
Grabbing the Rocks
Rare earth elements, or REE, aren’t rare. But it can be quite difficult to extract any of these 17 unusual metals from their surrounding ores. The United States used to be the world’s leading extractor and processor of these resources, from a mine in California near the Nevada border. But that was back when REE were mostly used for such products as black-and-white televisions. The environmental damage caused by the extraction and processing — as well as the labor costs involved — impelled the United States, over time, to outsource operations to China.
By the time REE had become indispensable to the manufacture of very powerful magnets used in everything from wireless iPhone chargers to the F-35 fighter jet, China was controlling upward of 60 percent of the extraction and 90 percent of the processing. It has filed more patents for the latest processing techniques than any other country. It has also expanded beyond digging up its own territory and, through its Belt and Road Initiative — a globe-spanning collection of interconnected infrastructure projects — secured access to mines overseas.
In Tanzania, for instance, an Australian firm Peak Rare Earths discovered what may well be the largest untapped supply of REE in 2010. This is exactly what the United States and its allies had been looking for: ore that can be extracted and processed outside of China. Except that last year, the Chinese firm Shenghe Resources bought the Australian company — and the rights to the Tanzanian deposits — for a little more than $100 million. China is further cornering the market by importing ore from rare earth mines in Myanmar, exploiting new deposits in Brazil, and eying Malaysia and Indonesia for potential processing operations.
To guarantee access to the minerals that both the Pentagon and U.S. industry need, the Trump administration has ramped up the exploitation of U.S. REE deposits. Mountain Pass, the California mine previously shuttered after environmental lawsuits and Chinese outsourcing, restarted production in 2012, but it still couldn’t compete against China, which had flooded the market with REE to drive down prices. Last year, the Pentagon acquired a majority stake in MP Materials, the company that owns the mine, which now produces over 10 percent of the global supply of REE.
Trump has also pumped money into USA Rare Earths, which is developing the Round Top mine in Texas, which promises to rival the REE production of Mountain Pass. Even with an accelerated timeline, however, the new mine won’t start production before 2028. Meanwhile, the administration is playing the field: pouring money into a REE processing facility in Arizona, contracting with a similar operation in France, and hammering out supply contracts with a mining firm in Australia. This frenzied activity may lessen dependency on China but not eliminate it.
And it’s not just rare earth elements. China controls 95 percent of magnesium production, over 80 percent of tungsten, over 70 percent of graphite and silicon, and three-quarters of cobalt — minerals that are critical to pretty much all modern manufacturing. On the processing end, China is the leading refiner of 19 out of 20 of the most coveted minerals, with an average market share of 70 percent. And instead of being reliant on its control of raw materials and processed ores, China is also in command of the downstream production. For instance, it’s responsible for 94 percent of the manufacturing of the most powerful magnets that go into cars, computers, and medical equipment.
The new rush for “critical raw materials,” many of them essential for building out the infrastructure of a “clean energy” transition but also indispensable for the entire range of advanced military products to which the United States is addicted, has sharpened the competition between China and the United States throughout the mineral-rich Global South. Those countries generally see China as a willing provider of capital and finance. They view Trump — who has dismissed so much of the Global South as “shithole countries,” deported huge numbers of their citizens, and subjected nearly all of their governments to punishing tariffs — with considerable skepticism.
How long will it take for the United States to catch up and neutralize China’s mineral superpower? In the best-case scenario, America will only be able to meet half its need for rare earth elements by 2028, and it currently produces less than 1 percent of those powerful magnets. Until America catches up — or forges partnerships with other countries to meet its demand through initiatives such as the U.S.-led Pax Silica — China will be able to pinch off the supply of those key minerals more easily than Iran can close off the Strait of Hormuz.
Controlling the Chips
Silicon Valley has long been a byword for innovation: Apple’s iPhones, Google’s search engine, Facebook’s social media platform. But the heart of Silicon Valley was, at least originally, made out of silicon. Chips made the valley. In the 1980s, Japan produced semiconductors that were superior to anything American companies could get to market. Competition spurred Silicon Valley to leapfrog over Japan.
The chip-designer Nvidia began in the 1990s as a supplier of graphic processing units, or GPUs, for the video game industry. These Nvidia chips became, literally, the brain behind Microsoft’s Xbox. Later, they came to power Sony’s PlayStation 3, signaling that Silicon Valley had definitively surpassed its Japanese competitors.
Then Nvidia began developing the kind of hardware necessary for the next big tech revolution: artificial intelligence. The first major AI platform available to the public — ChatGPT — was built on the foundation of Nvidia’s next-generation GPUs. Suddenly, Nvidia was the most sought-after supplier and the most valuable company in the world, now worth more than $5 trillion.
It’s one thing to corner the market on the graphics necessary to play “Grand Theft Auto” or make the special effects of the 2021 “Godzilla vs. Kong” movie look terrifyingly real. It’s quite another to create the building blocks of the AI technology that is creeping into every corner of the economy, not to mention the military.
To maintain its economic and military edge, the United States has placed controls on the export of Nvidia’s most advanced semiconductors to China. It’s no surprise that, over the last six years, the People’s Liberation Army attempted hundreds of times to acquire those precious chips. To prevent China from producing their own, the Dutch also placed restrictions on the export of the machines used to print the chips.
There are two challenges to this strategy of restriction. The first is that, despite its name, Silicon Valley doesn’t actually manufacture the vast majority of these fancy computer chips. For more than 90 percent of advanced semiconductors, the world depends on Taiwan. It’s as if another monster has appeared on the scene with a superpower that can bring both Godzilla and Rodan to their knees.
The United States harbors a fear that the Chinese response to their chip dependency will be simply to invade Taiwan and take over its semiconductor industry. For its part, the Biden administration pushed through the CHIPS Act to re-shore computer chip manufacturing, which is turning Arizona into a real Silicon Valley. Intel and Taiwan’s TSMC are among the more than 75 firms building factories there, which will require considerable water (in a desert) and produce tons of “forever chemicals,” the synthetic compounds that do not break down naturally, polluting the environment and accumulating within people (amid a growing population).
Given Russia’s failure to seize Ukraine and the inability of the United States and Israel to achieve regime change in Iran, China is not likely to attempt a takeover of Taiwan any time soon. Instead, it has pursued a different approach, and this is the second problem with a restriction strategy. Prevented from acquiring Nvidia’s best chips, China is pouring money into making its own chip sector the best in the world.
Trump’s cuts in science funding and restrictions on work visas will handicap U.S. technological progress for years and possibly decades.
Those considerable state investments produced a Sputnik moment in January 2025 when the Chinese company DeepSeek released its ChatGPT competitor. The big breakthrough, however, was behind the scenes: China was able to use its own domestically produced chips to create comparable AI results at a cheaper cost.
Private sector expenditures on AI in the United States still exceed China’s investments by a considerable margin. But the Trump administration’s cuts in science funding and restrictions on work visas will handicap U.S. technological progress for years and possibly decades. China, meanwhile, will likely have machines ready to produce what its AI models need by 2030, the target date Beijing has set to close the advanced chip gap.
The Sequel
Both China and the United States have landed a number of punches in their monster battle. The Trump administration has maintained export controls on its most advanced chips and has created a blacklist of Chinese companies it accuses of working with the People’s Liberation Army, including the car company BYD and the tech firm Baidu. China has retaliated by putting two American and 14 European companies on its own blacklist for the “dual use” of rare earth elements for both civilian and military applications. These come on top of Chinese export restrictions imposed in 2025 on seven rare-earth metals and an announcement that five more elements will be added in November.
These tit-for-tat exchanges might suggest that the two sides are evenly matched. And that may have been the case a decade ago. Today, however, despite its iconic status and devastating powers, the American Godzilla looks pretty wobbly. Trump’s fixation on cutting government and his failure to staff the remaining positions with competent officials has meant that the effort to deny China the most sophisticated chips has been compromised. Simply put, the Commerce Department has failed to enforce the export restrictions on U.S. companies, and thousands of those powerful chips have likely made their way into Chinese hands.
Even without government incompetence, the United States would be hard-pressed to maintain its advantage. The bottom line: China will be able to make its own chips sooner than America can acquire its own rocks.
The real superpower that China possesses, in other words, is its government’s ability to marshal resources to make the technological leap forward and maintain a substantive defense of its own material advantages. Thanks to this superpower, as Evan Osnos points out in The New Yorker, “China produces at least 70 percent of the world’s drones, electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries, and solar cells.” So confident is China in this superpower that it has recently rolled out a sodium-ion battery that needs none of the critical minerals of the lithium battery that powers electric vehicles. Beijing is thus negating its own mineral advantages. Instead, the Chinese government is relying on its industrial prowess to prepare for a world where rocks no longer rule.
The Biden administration tried to copy this superpower with the CHIPS Act and the additional targeted subsidies of the Inflation Reduction Act. Trump, too, has attempted to pursue a similar industrial policy with investments in critical minerals alongside scattershot tariffs and export controls. But he has also weakened the underlying superpower of government action through funding cuts and mass layoffs at critical government agencies. As a result, a lot of the shots that the Trump administration fires at China are actually blanks.
Trump’s fixation on cutting government and his failure to staff the remaining positions with competent officials has meant that the effort to deny China the most sophisticated chips has been compromised.
If this were a film, Godzilla would be teetering on the edge of a precipice, harried by a triumphant Rodan. In the final shot, Godzilla would live to fight another day, setting the scene for a sequel.
In real life, the United States is wasting billions of dollars on a war in Iran, the Trump administration is laser-focused on stuffing its own pockets from insider deals, and U.S. universities and companies are hemorrhaging funds and talent. At the same time, China is cornering the global market on renewable technology and consolidating its trade and investment relationship with the nearly 150 countries in the Belt and Road Initiative. The newer superpower seems to be making better use of its superpowers.
Another great movie trope is enemies quickly morphing into friends when faced with an existential threat. Godzilla and Rodan eventually team up to fight King Ghidorah, a hydra-like extraterrestrial beast with three heads. Is it too late for China and the United States, inveterate frenemies, to do the same in response to the very terrestrial threat of climate change?
It would certainly make for a Hollywood happy ending. But the Trump administration, insisting that carbon emissions are no problem, is attempting to reenergize the country’s fossil fuel sector. And despite its buildout of renewal energy infrastructure and its expanding exports of solar panels and wind turbines, China remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels, especially coal.
Let’s face it: Monsters are going to be monsters. If they’re not fighting each other directly, they’re laying waste to the environment and poisoning the communities that live atop precious resources. In the world of entertainment, Godzilla and Rodan learn how to use their superpowers for good when a planet-wide emergency pushes the monsters together to fight against an external threat.
The real world faces just such a red alert. Our monsters, however, just keep doing monstrous things.
WILMINGTON, DE — Six New Castle County Council seats are up this year. Three havecontested Democratic primaries on Sept. 15. The table below shows which seats lead to a November matchup against a Republican, which are decided by the primary alone, and which one has no opponent from either party.
Residents can look up their district by address at the state’s officialdistrict lookup tool.
Councilman Brandon Toole, a Democrat, has no challenger from either party this year, so he keeps his seat without a primary or a general election.
District 2: No primary, Councilwoman Durham vs. Collins in November
Councilwoman Dee Durham, a Democrat, faces Republican newcomerJamie Collins in the general election.
District 3: Republican Councilwoman Kilpatrick’s open seat
Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick is not seeking reelection after 16 years representing Hockessin, Yorklyn, North Star, Pike Creek and part of Newark. Democrats Kira Alejandro and Kyle Grantham are competing for her seat, with the winner facing Republican Melissa Brayman in November.
District 4: Councilman Hollins’ open seat, no fight in November
Councilman Penrose Hollins has represented District 4, which includes northeast Wilmington neighborhoods such as Penrose and Sellers Park, since 1990. He is not seeking reelection, retiring after 36 years of county service. While Hollins is stepping away from his own seat, he has notably crossed district lines to endorse Kyle Grantham in the neighboring District 3 race.
Three Democrats are running to replace Hollins in District 4: Jason Hoover, Curtis Linton and Helena Creamer. No Republican filed to run for the seat, so whoever wins the Sept. 15 primary wins the seat outright, with no November contest to follow.
District 5: Councilwoman George faces a primary challenge, also with no November fight
Councilwoman Valerie George, the Democratic incumbent, is seeking another term. She faces a primary challenge from Syam Kosigi. As in District 4, no Republican filed here, so the Sept. 15 primary alone will decide who represents the district for the next four years.
District 6: No primary, Councilman Carter vs. Gibbs in November
Councilman David B. Carter, a Democrat, faces Republican newcomerAlison T. Gibbs in the general election.
How to vote
Only registered Democrats can vote in the Sept. 15 primary. The deadline to register is Saturday, Aug. 22; early voting runs Sept. 2-13. Check your registration or district at the state’s voter portal,ivote.de.gov/VoterView.
Caption: A major shift in school funding and School Board decision making come as Delaware attempts to raise third-grade reading proficiency from 40% to 53% by 2028.
Greater local flexibility will require boards to balance student needs, community priorities and evidence about what improves reading
Editor’s note: This is the final installment of a three-part Delaware LIVE series examining Delaware’s literacy challenge, the state’s 2028 goal and the changing responsibilities of local school boards.
By George D. Rotsch, Editor of Delaware LIVE
DOVER, Del. — Delaware’s new school funding model will give local school boards greater influence over how education resources are used, placing more responsibility for literacy decisions closer to students, parents and communities.
That shift comes as Delaware attempts to raise third-grade reading proficiency from 40% to 53% by 2028 and as school boards have more information available to understand where students are performing, whether they are making progress and where additional support may be needed.
For school boards, those two changes are connected. Assessment results provide a lagging measure of where students ended the year. Leading indicators collected throughout the year can show whether students are on track and whether the district’s strategy is working. Together, that information can help boards evaluate whether district spending is aligned with the needs of students and the outcomes the district is trying to achieve.
“The opportunity is to make a much clearer connection between what we know about student performance and where we invest our resources,” said Julia Keleher, executive director of First State Educate. “What are the results telling us? What does the district believe is driving them? What is the strategy for improving them? And does our budget put resources behind that strategy?”
From approving budgets to aligning investments with outcomes
School boards have always approved district budgets. Greater funding flexibility makes it even more important for boards to understand what need an investment is intended to address and what result it is expected to produce.
In literacy, for example, annual assessment results may show where proficiency remains low, while screening, student progress, attendance, intervention participation and other leading indicators can provide more current information about where students are struggling and whether existing strategies are working.
The superintendent and district team use that information to diagnose needs and recommend how resources should be used. The board’s role is to determine whether the proposed investments are aligned with the district’s student outcome goals, whether there is evidence supporting the strategy, and what information the board will receive to know whether the investment is producing the intended result.
Those decisions could include investments in classroom instruction, intervention for struggling students, professional learning, staffing, student supports or other strategies identified by the district.
“The budget should tell the same story as the district’s student outcome goals,” Keleher said. “If third-grade reading is a priority, the board should be able to see how resources are supporting the district’s strategy for improving it. Then, throughout the year, the board should be looking at the indicators the district has identified to understand whether that investment is helping move students toward the goal.”
Local flexibility creates different choices
Not every Delaware district faces the same literacy challenge.
One district may need to strengthen reading instruction across all elementary schools. Another may find that its greatest needs are concentrated in a small number of schools. Some districts may need to focus on students entering school without foundational skills, while others may need stronger intervention for children who have fallen behind.
The new funding model gives boards an opportunity to respond to those differences rather than applying the same solution everywhere.
But local flexibility also carries risk. Boards could spread resources across too many priorities, continue programs without sufficient evidence or focus on activities that are visible to the community but have little effect on reading.
The central question is not whether a district spends more. It is whether the board can connect its spending choices to a clearly identified student need and a measurable academic objective.
Parents can help define the problem
Greater local control also creates an opportunity for parents and community members to become more involved in setting education priorities.
Assessment data can show where students are struggling, but it may not explain why. Parents can help boards understand whether families receive clear information about reading performance, whether students can access additional support, and whether attendance, transportation, language, scheduling, or other barriers limit participation. That information can help a board evaluate whether the district’s proposed spending responds to the needs behind the data.
“Community engagement should help shape the decision, not simply react to it,” Keleher said. “Parents can help boards understand barriers and student needs that may not be visible in a spreadsheet. When resources are limited, that perspective matters in deciding where an investment is most needed and what problem it should solve. “Meaningful engagement would occur before the district commits to a strategy, not only after administrators have presented a finished proposal.
Complex decisions require the right expertise
Greater flexibility does not mean boards or districts are expected to have every type of expertise internally. Decisions about how to improve literacy and where to invest limited resources can involve student performance data, instructional research, implementation evidence, financial analysis, community input and governance considerations.
Districts can draw on the expertise needed to strengthen those decisions, whether from state education officials, educators and literacy specialists, researchers, financial experts, community organizations or others with relevant knowledge and experience. The question is not whether outside perspectives should influence the decision, but whether the district has assembled the information and expertise necessary to make a well-supported investment.
For boards, that expertise should strengthen, not replace, their governance role. The board still must understand what student need the investment addresses, why the proposed approach is expected to help, what it will cost, what results are expected and how progress will be monitored.
Measuring whether the decision worked
The new funding model also will require boards to think more carefully about results.
Annual state testing remains an important measure, but boards cannot wait until the end of the school year to determine whether students are progressing.
They will need regular, understandable information showing whether the district’s strategy is reaching the intended students and whether reading performance is moving in the right direction.
That does not require board members to manage daily instruction. It requires them to agree with district leadership in advance about what progress should look like, when it should be visible and how the administration will respond if improvement does not occur.
A literacy investment should begin with several broad questions:
What student need is the district trying to address?
Why is the proposed approach appropriate?
How did parents and educators help shape the decision?
What result should the board expect?
When will the board know whether the strategy is working?
What will change if progress falls short?
Those questions preserve the distinction between governance and management while creating meaningful accountability.
A test of local governance
Delaware’s new funding model is based partly on the idea that local leaders can make better decisions when resources and authority are placed closer to students.
Literacy will provide an early test of that premise.
Experts such as First State Educate can help boards understand data and strengthen their decision-making processes. Administrators can recommend strategies. Educators can explain classroom needs. Parents can identify barriers and community priorities. School boards must bring those perspectives together and make choices that reflect both local needs and the state’s larger academic expectations.
By 2028, the public will be able to judge the new funding model by more than the amount of money distributed or the percentage placed under local control. Its most important measure will be whether substantially more Delaware children can read at grade level.
Caption: Kenneth J. Reuter Jr., a task force participant and longtime energy industry executive, contends the panel did not conduct the structured, technically intensive review necessary to support such a consequential decision.
Industry veteran says the state’s review lacked the technical depth needed as electricity costs rise and Delaware remains dependent on imported power
DOVER, Del – Delaware’s Nuclear Energy Feasibility Task Force cannot approve a reactor, select a location or commit public money to a nuclear project. Its influence, however, could be significant.
The General Assembly created the task force to help determine whether small modular nuclear reactors could become part of Delaware’s long-term energy supply. Its findings could influence whether lawmakers authorize additional studies, investigate potential sites, revise state permitting laws or decide nuclear power is too costly or uncertain to pursue.
That makes the quality of the task force’s work important.
Kenneth J. Reuter Jr., a task force participant and longtime energy industry executive, contends the panel did not conduct the structured, technically intensive review necessary to support such a consequential decision.
In an Aug. 14 assessment, Reuter said the task force did not hear directly from willing nuclear manufacturers, adequately investigate possible Delaware sites or divide its work among specialized teams.
His criticism does not establish that the task force’s conclusions are wrong. It does raise questions about whether state policymakers have enough information to make decisions that could affect Delaware’s electricity supply, consumer costs and economic competitiveness for decades.
Panel assigned to study nuclear potential
The General Assembly created the Delaware Nuclear Energy Feasibility Task Force in 2025 to examine whether small modular reactors, commonly known as SMRs, could be developed in the state.
SMRs are designed to generate less electricity than conventional nuclear reactors. Supporters say they could be manufactured in sections, installed incrementally and placed on properties that cannot accommodate a traditional nuclear plant.
However, the technology remains commercially developing in the United States. Questions continue about construction costs, licensing schedules, financing and the risks utilities and customers could be asked to assume.
The General Assembly directed the task force to study nuclear energy’s economic impact, regulatory requirements, environmental implications and potential contribution to electric reliability. Its reporting deadline was extended to July 31, 2026.
The task force’s report is advisory. It does not authorize construction, approve a location or require the state to pursue nuclear power. But lawmakers could rely on it when considering future energy legislation and determining whether additional nuclear planning is warranted.
Delaware imports much of its electricity
Delaware generates substantially less electricity than its residents and businesses consume.
Reuter estimates the state currently imports between 45% and 55% of its electricity through PJM, the regional power grid serving Delaware and parts of 12 other states and the District of Columbia.
Importing electricity is a normal part of participating in a regional grid. It does not, by itself, indicate that Delaware faces an immediate shortage. PJM is designed to move power across state lines and allow utilities to purchase electricity from generators throughout the region.
But Reuter argues that Delaware’s dependence creates greater risk as regional demand grows, older generating plants retire and new projects face lengthy development and grid-connection delays.
Data centers, advanced manufacturing and other large electricity users are also adding to projected demand.
Delaware does not need to generate every unit of electricity it consumes. However, the state has limited control over when and where new regional plants are constructed, leaving its customers exposed to supply and price pressures elsewhere in the PJM market.
Intermittent power cannot carry the full load
Reuter argues that Delaware’s energy strategy relies too heavily on intermittent sources such as wind and solar.
Those facilities can contribute electricity when weather conditions permit, reduce fuel consumption and help meet emissions goals. But they cannot continuously produce power without storage, backup generation or other complementary resources.
An energy plan that depends heavily on intermittent sources without sufficient dependable generation would leave Delaware vulnerable during periods when the sun is not shining, the wind is not blowing or regional demand is particularly high, Reuter said.
He argues that Delaware should make the development of additional 24-hour generation a priority, including natural gas plants, nuclear power or a combination of the two.
Natural gas plants can generally be developed more quickly than nuclear facilities and can respond to changing electricity demand. Nuclear plants require longer development and licensing schedules but can provide large amounts of continuous electricity without direct carbon emissions.
Both carry costs and risks. Natural gas exposes customers to fuel-price volatility and future regulatory requirements. Nuclear projects require substantial upfront investment and can experience construction delays and cost overruns.
A responsible state plan would examine those risks without treating intermittent renewable resources as the equivalent of dependable, around-the-clock generation.
Rising electric bills add urgency
The debate is not limited to whether Delaware will have enough power. It also involves what residents and businesses will pay for it.
Residential and industrial electric bills are rising, placing additional pressure on household budgets and increasing operating costs for Delaware employers.
Reuter argues that those costs will continue climbing unless policymakers revise Delaware’s energy strategy and make affordability and dependable generation top state priorities.
Electric bills reflect more than the cost of producing electricity. They can also include transmission expenses, regional capacity charges, utility infrastructure investments, environmental compliance costs and other fees.
However, a tightening regional supply-and-demand balance can increase several of those costs. Delaware’s dependence on imported electricity leaves customers exposed to regional prices that state officials cannot directly control.
For households, higher electric bills reduce the money available for food, housing, health care and other necessities. For manufacturers and other energy-intensive employers, rising power costs can discourage expansion, weaken competitiveness and influence decisions about where companies invest.
Reuter’s position is that Delaware should not evaluate energy projects primarily according to environmental targets or political preferences. Each alternative should be measured by its total cost, reliability, construction schedule and ability to serve customers during periods of peak demand.
Participant questions task force’s approach
Reuter’s primary complaint is that the task force operated more like a broad discussion group than a technically organized panel working toward an actionable plan.
He said only a small number of the approximately 25 members and regular participants had direct experience with electricity generation.
Reuter recommended dividing the work among specialized groups focused on nuclear manufacturers, potential sites, technology selection, safety, environmental effects, permitting, government coordination and public communications.
Under his proposed structure, each group would have been assigned a leader responsible for investigating its subject and regularly reporting findings to the full panel.
Reuter said that structure was not adopted.
He also said no nuclear equipment manufacturer was invited to explain its technology, manufacturing capacity, construction schedules, costs or existing order commitments to the full task force.
According to Reuter, Westinghouse and another manufacturer were willing to make presentations but were not invited. He also said an offer to arrange a task force tour of the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear facilities in New Jersey was not accepted.
Manufacturers have a financial interest in promoting their products, and their claims would require independent scrutiny. However, direct presentations would have allowed task force members to question the companies about technological readiness, construction experience, pricing and financial risks.
Potential sites require closer examination
A complete nuclear feasibility review would eventually need to examine actual Delaware properties.
Potential sites would have to be evaluated for available land, transmission connections, water access, security, emergency planning and nearby development. The willingness of property owners and surrounding communities would also be important.
Reuter said the task force did not conduct sufficiently detailed discussions with potential site owners or determine whether particular properties could accommodate an SMR or a larger conventional reactor.
That distinction matters because a technology that appears promising in a general presentation may not be practical at an available Delaware location.
Preliminary site analysis would not commit the state to a reactor or a particular property. It would help determine whether nuclear power is a realistic Delaware option rather than a theoretical one.
Incomplete report could close the door prematurely
If the task force’s report is incomplete or overly negative, Delaware could abandon nuclear energy before fully understanding its potential.
That could leave the state more dependent on imported power from a regional market facing rising demand and generating-plant retirements.
Delaware could also lose time needed to examine sites, coordinate with federal regulators and develop a specialized workforce. Nuclear projects require years of planning, licensing, financing and construction, meaning a decision to delay preliminary work could have long-term consequences.
Dependable and competitively priced electricity also affects economic development. Manufacturers, health care facilities, technology companies and data centers consider energy availability when deciding where to invest.
A state without a credible plan for meeting future electricity demand could find itself at a competitive disadvantage.
Overly optimistic report also carries risks
A flawed report could create the opposite danger.
If the task force overstates the affordability or commercial readiness of SMRs, lawmakers could advance an expensive project without fully understanding the risks.
Nuclear facilities require substantial upfront investment. Construction delays and cost overruns can fall on customers if utilities are permitted to recover those expenses through electric rates.
Before advancing a project, policymakers would need to determine who would finance it, who would absorb the cost of delays and whether customers could be charged before a reactor begins producing electricity.
A responsible nuclear policy would protect ratepayers while allowing promising technologies to receive serious consideration. Private investors, utilities and manufacturers would need to bear meaningful performance risk rather than shifting every financial uncertainty to customers.
State plan must balance cost and reliability
The task force’s report does not need to provide a final verdict on nuclear power. The developing commercial market for SMRs makes absolute conclusions difficult.
A useful report should distinguish among what is known, what remains uncertain and what Delaware must investigate next.
Possible next steps could include independent cost studies, discussions with manufacturers, preliminary site reviews, federal regulatory coordination and comparisons among nuclear power, natural gas, renewable energy, storage and transmission investments.
Each alternative should be evaluated using consistent standards, including:
Total cost to residential and business customers
Dependable generating capacity
Development and construction time
Performance during peak demand
Fuel and transmission requirements
Environmental effects
Financial risks associated with delays or cost overruns
Wind and solar power can remain part of that mix. But policymakers must distinguish between electricity produced when weather conditions allow and capacity that can be counted on around the clock.
The central question is not whether task force members support or oppose nuclear energy. It is whether their process produced enough evidence to justify the panel’s findings.
A report that dismisses nuclear prematurely could cause Delaware to lose a potentially valuable source of dependable, carbon-free electricity. A report that is too optimistic could expose customers to years of higher rates and construction risk.
Delaware may ultimately choose to pursue nuclear power, continue studying it or reject it. But with electric bills rising, demand growing and regional supplies tightening, Reuter argues that revising the state’s energy plan should be a top policy priority.
That decision should rest on rigorous technical and financial evidence — not an incomplete process, assumptions about future regional supplies or a predetermined preference for any particular energy source.
TO-GO BOX:
The task force: The General Assembly created the Nuclear Energy Feasibility Task Force to study whether small modular reactors could help meet Delaware’s future electricity needs.
The concern: Participant Kenneth J. Reuter Jr. says the review lacked sufficient industry input, technical structure and analysis of potential sites.
The energy challenge: Delaware imports an estimated 45% to 55% of its electricity, while regional demand and electric costs are increasing.
What is at stake: A flawed report could cause Delaware to reject a dependable energy source prematurely — or pursue an expensive project without adequately protecting ratepayers.
Illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica. Source images: records obtained by ProPublica, Don Ryan/AP.
Oregon’s spending on low-income housing has exploded in the past five years. The state has given developers an unprecedented $1.4 billion, and the cost of developing each apartment has nearly doubled, to $540,000. Dozens of projects are lined up for an additional $850 million in future state funding. Federal tax credits, which the state oversees, will bring even more money to bear.
Yet one thing has remained constant: The public isn’t allowed to see the details of how all these dollars are being spent.
Oregon is one of the only states in the country with a carve-out in its public records law that prevents disclosing the financial details of subsidized housing projects, thwarting researchers and journalists who have tried to examine their costs.
The issue is especially pressing in the Pacific Northwest, where leaders have tied the lack of affordable housing to the region’s dire homelessness crisis. Understanding and controlling the cost of construction could make it possible, with the same amount of money, to either build more rent-restricted apartments or to discount rents more steeply.
Margaret Van Vliet, a former director of Oregon’s state housing agency, told ProPublica that lawmakers should revisit the exemption. Despite all the state’s spending on housing, Oregon’s homeless population continues to grow.
“For all the public money, we seem to be digging a deeper hole,” Van Vliet said.
In other states, researchers and journalists have used developers’ financial records to investigate spiraling costs of subsidized housing.
Los Angeles Times reporters in 2020 revealed that the cost of some low-income housing units in California had grown to more than $1 million each, driven in part by government rules that pushed construction prices higher. The Times found that 12,000 more low-income families could have received homes between 2011 and 2015 had costs been as low as they were elsewhere.
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley showed earlier this year that California was spending $300 million a year just in development fees on subsidized housing, enough to have financed another 1,250 apartments each year. In July, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that aims to slash those fees.
A study published last year and co-authored by Jason Ward, an economist who directs the nonpartisan Rand Corp.’s Housing Center, compared the costs of constructing subsidized housing among California, Texas and Colorado, finding that California’s highest-in-the-nation prices were driven by requirements to pay “substantially above-market wages and unusually large architectural and engineering fees.”
If California had Colorado’s production costs, the study found, it could have built four times as many rent-subsidized apartments.
Those types of analyses are impossible to perform in Oregon.
“For all the public money” spent on housing, “we seem to be digging a deeper hole.”
Margaret Van Vliet, former director of Oregon’s state housing agency
Ward said Oregon’s secrecy is difficult to defend. He said cost information about subsidized housing is typically public. In his research, he said, he’s gotten such data from 17 states and been denied it only in New Jersey.
“When you’re just looking at how public funds are used, there should be an incredibly strong bias towards transparency,” he said. “And when you see costs going up and up and up and the outcomes aren’t good, there’s an almost unqualified public case that these things should be open to scrutiny by taxpayers, policymakers, the media, whomever.”
Oregon’s Legislature approved the exemption in 1997, when Oregon’s state housing agency had a staff and budget that were both one-fifth what they are today.
State housing officials warned about the consequences of revealing the finances behind low-income apartment projects.
“Not that we’re concerned that there’d be something in there,” Lynn Schoessler, then the deputy director of Oregon Housing and Community Services, told lawmakers in a public hearing.
But Schoessler said there could be problems if the public were allowed to see detailed financial information that developers submit to the state while applying for funding. Disclosing the records might “give somebody an indication whether this corporation was ripe for takeover or a buyout or whatever,” Schoessler said in a hearing. “So we’re concerned on the corporate level.”
Lawmakers almost unanimously agreed to exempt the records from disclosure.
Not all details about subsidized housing in Oregon were made secret.
The Portland area’s regional government, which manages a local low-income-housing bond, publishes the costs of projects the bond has funded, showing some units have reached $900,000 apiece. And fine-grained cost information may be obtained, on request, if the project is run by a public housing authority like Portland’s. But these account for just 20% of the subsidized housing units that Oregon is building. The bulk are sponsored by private developers and funded through the state housing finance agency, Oregon Housing and Community Services.
Although the state agency will divulge how much a developer said a project would cost when it applied for funding, it redacts the itemized expenses — things like the costs of construction materials, the contractor’s profits or the fees paid to lawyers, brokers, loan agents, developers and the state agency itself.
A spokesperson said the agency knows the cost per unit, per square foot and per bedroom for each development it has subsidized. But the state said that information, which would allow the public to see which projects were the most expensive, is not subject to disclosure.
Oregon has a sunshine committee that reviews public records exemptions and identifies ones that should be rolled back. Charlie Fisher, its co-chair, said the committee should examine the low-income housing carve-out.
“Verifying how public dollars are being spent, especially at this scale, is one of the fundamental reasons why people should have access to public records,” Fisher said. “Given the amount of money we’re talking about, the case is even stronger.”
The secrecy mandate in state law shrouds more than just the financial details of a project.
When we requested financial records for three apartment projects around Portland, the agency redacted a list of languages spoken by the tenants that a developer hoped to attract. In application material for that developer’s project, the agency also redacted the plan for translating tenant outreach brochures from English. And it blacked out an explanation of any financial risks the project might face, along with the developer’s plan for covering cost overruns.
It turns out that the developer, in this case, was Home Forward, the Portland housing authority. The local agency released a copy of its application material to ProPublica without redactions, revealing mundane details the state had tried to keep secret. Here’s a sample of what Home Forward identified as the project’s financial risks: “market volatility, site-specific challenges, and unforeseen design modifications. Economic factors such as inflation, material price fluctuations, and labor shortages could impact overall construction costs.”
A spokesperson for the state said the information about languages and financial risks was redacted because the public records exemption shields “market studies and analyses” as well as pro forma statements, which show a development’s anticipated cash flows.
Oregon Housing and Community ServicesHome Forward
Oregon’s public records exemption for subsidized housing leads to the state redacting more than just projects’ financial details, including this plan to translate outreach materials for a subsidized housing project. In this case, an unredacted version of the same document was available from the local housing authority that was acting as the developer on the project.
Andrea Bell, the state housing agency’s director, said in an emailed statement that she is committed to transparency and expects her agency to be open, accessible and accountable to the public. But she said she takes seriously the agency’s responsibility to comply with the exemption in Oregon records law for housing financials.
Asked to comment on whether she supported the exemption and thought it was necessary, Bell said in a statement: “The cost of construction is a topic of growing interest. We will take your request under consideration as we assess ways to proactively share construction costs so that they are more readily available to the public.”
In the meantime, the agency charged ProPublica $130 for the cost of collecting and redacting the documents it provided us. It denied our request to waive the fees, saying that “the interest of the general public would be better served by preserving public resources.”
Transparency hasn’t slowed development in other West Coast states.
In California, where the financial details of housing projects are public records, the funding remains highly competitive, with more than half of shovel-ready applications being turned away because demand exceeds available funding. “We have not encountered any difficulty in developing affordable housing because those documents are public,” said a spokesperson for the California state treasurer’s office.
In Washington state, officials have repeatedly released financial information about the housing projects they’ve funded to developers, researchers, media and other members of the public. A housing official there said developers know the information is open to the public, and it hasn’t been an issue.
ProPublica asked the Washington counterpart of Oregon Housing and Community Services for financial documents for three projects around Seattle. They were released without redactions — and for free.
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