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…
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.
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…
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.
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.
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 special needs continues to grow, and we are grateful that Easterseals can be there to help.”
Batog thanked the state of Delaware, participating vendors, community partners and Easterseals staff members who worked together to organize the conference and make its resources available to caregivers.
The exhibitors reflected the wide range of services caregivers may need during different stages of their journey. Participants included the newly reorganized Delaware chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, MeadowWood Behavioral Health Hospital, AARP Delaware, Delaware NeuroRehab, PWW Law, PACE Your LIFE and WeCare at the Milford Wellness Village.
Technology innovator Wisdom and its partner, Griswold Home Care, also participated, along with many other organizations offering health care, in-home assistance, education and community resources.
Taking care of the caregiver
The conference’s “Taking Care of YOU” theme focused on caregiver well-being, balance and self-care — concerns that often receive less attention than the needs of the person receiving care.
The program included a caregiver panel titled “What I Do to Take Care of ME!,” opportunities to meet service providers and a session focused on kindness and self-compassion. The combination of education, peer discussion and access to providers gave caregivers an opportunity to find practical assistance while connecting with others facing similar challenges.
The conference also reflected Easterseals’ broader role in Delaware. Rather than providing a single service, the organization helps families navigate a complicated network of health, disability, aging and community resources.
Its caregiver programs include case management, support groups, educational workshops, respite assistance and demonstrations of technology designed to improve safety and independence.
Burnout is more than being busy
Keynote speaker Heather Volkema, client success manager at Trualta, told caregivers that burnout is not simply the result of having too much to do.
Volkema has more than a decade of health care experience. She began her career working with hospice patients and their families, later developed caregiver-education programs and served as operating director of an in-home care organization before joining Trualta.
She said caregivers frequently balance emotional and physical demands with jobs, family responsibilities and circumstances they cannot control. Those pressures can lead to exhaustion, anxiety, irritability, isolation and feelings of being overwhelmed or taken for granted.
Volkema’s central message was that caregivers must protect their own health if they are going to continue caring effectively for someone else. Many hesitate to seek assistance because they feel guilty, fear rejection or believe they should be able to manage everything alone.
Asking for help, she said, is “a sign of strength and self-awareness,” not an admission of failure.
Practical ways to reduce the pressure
Volkema encouraged caregivers to identify the responsibilities creating the greatest stress and make specific requests of relatives or friends.
Instead of simply asking someone to help, a caregiver could ask a family member to provide transportation to an appointment, purchase groceries or take responsibility for a particular personal-care task.
She also recommended that caregivers establish boundaries, schedule personal time and take even brief breaks when longer periods of respite are unavailable. Support groups, community organizations, professional assistance and online resources can reduce isolation and make difficult responsibilities more manageable.
Caregivers should begin with small steps, share responsibilities whenever possible and recognize that protecting their own health is an essential part of caring for another person, Volkema said.
Support continues throughout the year
Easterseals’ work with caregivers continues beyond the annual conference through its Caregiver Resource Centers in New Castle and at the Milford Wellness Village. Caregivers can speak with case managers, obtain educational materials and receive referrals to programs addressing their particular circumstances.
The organization also offers monthly support groups, free educational workshops and virtual office hours. Its Resource and Technology Demonstration Centers contain hundreds of assistive devices that caregivers can examine before deciding whether a product could make a home safer or help a loved one remain more independent.
Respite programs can give caregivers time away from their daily responsibilities while ensuring that a family member continues receiving appropriate care. Easterseals’ adult day programs and Camp Fairlee also provide structured activities for participants while giving caregivers time to rest, work or handle other responsibilities.
In 2024, Easterseals reported serving more than 7,970 people directly through programs including children’s therapy, adult day services and supported employment. Another 44,280 people were reached through education, training, information and referrals.
The conference’s capacity attendance illustrated why that network matters. Caregivers may perform much of their work privately in homes across Delaware, but Wednesday’s gathering showed that they constitute a large community with shared challenges.
Supporting that community requires more than encouragement. It requires education, respite, practical tools and a trusted organization capable of connecting families with the right assistance at the right time.
To-go box
Event: 16th annual “Taking Care of YOU” Caregiver Conference Host: Easterseals Delaware & Maryland’s Eastern Shore Attendance: Capacity crowd of 400 caregivers Participants: 50 companies and community organizations Keynote: Heather Volkema, client success manager at Trualta Caregiver assistance:resources@esdel.org or 302-221-2291
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.
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.”
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.
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”.
(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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Closing arguments are expected later this week in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the 36-year-old Massachusetts mother who strangled her three kids to death in 2023.
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?
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.
Only weeks ago Uber and London-based Wayve were granted the first minicab licences in the capital to allow them to offer self-driving taxi rides to paying customers – but with a human safety driver in place, for now – and said they would start trips “later this summer” before a full public launch.
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.
Dolly Parton became an icon over her six-decade career as a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, movie and TV star and theme park owner who donated millions to help others.
Darline Graham, the Trump-endorsed sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, is facing off against Rep. Ralph Norman in a runoff race for the GOP nomination for South Carolina's Senate seat.
As a U.S.-Canada trade war sparks cross-border insults, Ontario Premier Doug Ford told CBS News he's hopeful the two sides can reach an agreement — but cautioned that "no deal is better than a bad deal."
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.
Alabama's attorney general has subpoenaed OpenAI as part of an investigation into whether inadequate safeguards contributed to an incident in which an unreleased cybersecurity model escaped its isolated environment and hacked Hugging Face. TechCrunch reports: The investigation comes weeks after OpenAI admitted that one of its unreleased and guardrail-free cybersecurity models had escaped an isolated environment, connected to the internet, and hacked AI dataset platform Hugging Face. As Reuters first reported, Hugging Face was only one of four victims of what was supposed to be "an internal evaluation" of a model with "maximal cyber capabilities," as OpenAI put it.
The press release announcing the subpoena (PDF) sent by the state's attorney general Steve Marshall said that the state was seeking to understand if OpenAI's "inability or unwillingness to ensure the safety of its products" violated the state's consumer protection laws. Earlier this month, Marshall, along with the attorneys general of 14 other states, including Florida, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Texas, sent a letter (PDF) to OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman, requesting that he and his company preserve all records related to the Hugging Face incident. The letter also asked OpenAI to "immediately cease and desist" from any internal cybersecurity evaluations. OpenAI said in a statement: "The Hugging Face incident marked an important moment for AI safety and we are conducting a thorough review along with external advisors. Once the review is complete, we will share a technical report with relevant government authorities and publish our findings publicly."
The 12-bath, seven-bed home near the state capital boasts a 5,000-bottle wine cellar, a pool and a tennis court
California governor Gavin Newsom has put his Sacramento-area mansion up for sale, before his term will end in January.
The 12-bath, seven-bed Spanish-style home in Fair Oaks, a suburb of the California capital, hit the market on Monday with an asking price of $7.5m. The estate, which sits on a 8.2-acre (3.3-hectare) parcel of land, boasts an array of amenities including a full-size tennis court, a 5,000-bottle wine cellar, a pool, a cold plunge and a hot tub, according to a Zillow listing from realtors Matthew Hindy and Nick Sadek.
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.
Agents arrest women who ‘almost died’ after they were hit by vehicle and their car flipped over four times, family say
An Ecuadorian mother and daughter were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at a hospital after a car crash in central Florida.
On 20 August, Grace Stephanie Calero Cabanilla, 39, and her daughter, Giulianna Mía Carriel Calero, 19, were involved in a car crash in Poinciana, Florida, according to arrest reports reviewed by multiple news outlets.
As wildfires rage and intense heat builds across the region, daytime highs of 110-11F (43-46C) are forecast
Surging temperatures are expected to broil more than 45 million people as a heat dome settles in across the south-western US through the end of August and into early September, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
As wildfires rage in some parts and intense heat builds across the region, daytime highs of 110-115F (43-46C) are forecast, with limited cooling relief in the evenings and overnight. Experts predict that some record highs could be tied or broken this month and the weather agency warned of the scorching late summer heat as a potential health hazard.
Home in Billings was also set on fire, with victims representing four generations of a blended family
A man killed eight of his relatives, including four children, on Sunday evening in a shooting at a home in Billings, Montana, that was also set on fire, according to authorities and local media reports.
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.”
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I have been a casual enjoyer of the hobby since 2019.
I love my XR, and it works great from covid to today. But I am attracted to the idea of the Rally XL. It looks like a beast, and some of the trails here in Washington have some good-sized rocks.
The Center Square) – California intends to file a new lawsuit against the Trump administration over an executive order placing restrictions on mail-in voting.
New Zealand has introduced legislation that would ban children under 16 from social media platforms and AI companion services. "We have protections to keep children safe in the real world and we need them in the virtual world too," said Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in announcing the bill. Jurist.org reports: The Online Safety (Minimum Age and Child Safety Risk Assessment) Bill would require an age restriction on platforms with harmful features for children. These features include recommender systems, endless feeds, feedback features and time-limited features. The bill also seeks to restrict underage users from accessing AI companion services. However, it explicitly excludes messaging apps, professional networking sites, gaming and music platforms, and other educational and health tools.
Notably, age verification through self-declared dates of birth and formal identification does not satisfy the platforms' duty under the law. It also requires platforms to verify their users' age through other methods such as facial scans and user activity patterns. The bill would also require platforms to conduct child safety risk assessments for all users under 18 and protect them from harmful content such as bullying, violence, and sexually explicit materials.
A combination of President Donald Trump’s comments about striking a deal with other countries to ease U.S. beef prices and recent reporting about slaughtered horses ignited online conspiracy theories that horse meat is being covertly sold in U.S. supermarkets.
An Aug. 23 TikTok post has text that says, “Wild Horses are Rounded up for the Slaughter just in time for ‘big beef deal’ with Foreign Governments.”
The man in the video also said, “The beef that you’re eating on store shelves might just be from a foreign country that was buying horses from the U.S. government for the slaughter…So people are now speculating that the beef you are buying from the store might just be horse meat.”.
The post included a brief clip of Trump responding to a reporter’s question about a “beef deal.” In that Aug. 21 clip, he tells a reporter he doesn’t want to say which countries the beef is coming from, but that it will be “highest-quality beef.”
“Stop buying beef immediately. Dont create a market for horse meat,” said the caption of a TikTok post, omitting punctuation.
Other userson X also said the Trump administration is selling horses to foreign countries, which are then importing the meat to the U.S.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson told PolitiFact these claims are false, that the U.S. doesn’t import horse meat for human consumption and that it’s illegal to sell horse meat as beef.
Trump’s announcement and The New York Times’ reporting
The USDA said in January the U.S. had its lowest cattle inventory since 1951. Yet consumer demand for beef has grown about 9% over the past decade, the agency said.
Trump said Aug. 21 on Truth Social that to lower ground beef prices for Americans, for the next 90 days, the U.S. will allow up to 300,000 metric tons of beef to be imported tariff-free.
The United States Cattlemen’s Association said in an Aug. 21 statement that importing beef would hurt more U.S. ranchers, who are already facing historically high production costs, international competition, prolonged drought and extreme wildfires that have reduced access to grazing land in many states.
A day before Trump’s announcement, The New York Times reported that the federal government has been rounding up thousands of American horses to control wild populations on public lands. The report said actions by the Bureau of Land Management, the agency in charge of protecting wild horses, created a loophole leading to the cheap selling of horses to buyers who resell them to be exported alive, processed into cuts of meat and sold abroad. Slaughtering wild horses is illegal in the U.S.
The bureau didn’t respond to the Times’ questions about the horses’ sale. The Times reported that “an unattributed statement from the agency said it ‘remains dedicated to placing animals into good homes, protecting their welfare and upholding its statutory responsibilities on behalf of the American public’.”
The bureau also says on its website that it does not sell or send wild horses or burros to slaughter.
How does the meat inspection process work?
The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service ensures that imported meat is safe and accurately labeled. The USDA spokesperson said the agency verifies the certification, labeling and condition of imported meat, poultry and egg products.
The USDA does laboratory sampling of imported products to confirm the product is the species stated on the label, and tests for pathogens and chemical residues, the agency said.
Only USDA-approved meat can be commercially sold; horse meat is not sold for human consumption in the U.S. Some states, such as Texas and Illinois, have laws that specifically ban selling, giving and possessing horse meat intended for human consumption.
Sam Gazdziak, American Association of Meat Processors’ communications manager, told PolitiFact that any beef that enters into a U.S. port is inspected by the inspection agency.
“The U.S. only allows meat imports from selected countries that have an inspection system that is robust enough to be considered equivalent to the U.S. system,” Gazdziak said. “If the shipment isn’t what it says it is, it isn’t permitted into the U.S. marketplace.”
The USDA’s inspection agency coordinates with the government of the importing country before accepting the product, rather than dealing with individual companies.
These imported food products are also expected to go through health inspections in their own countries and are reinspected in the U.S.
Gazdziak said that if a product isn’t inspected in the U.S. and lands on a grocery store shelf, then it’s recalled. As an example, he pointed us to an Aug. 7 recall of about 30,000 pounds of raw beef that were imported from Argentina without being reinspected in the U.S.
“That beef came from a country that was permitted to export to the U.S., but it wasn’t inspected once it got here, prompting the recall,” Gazdziak said.
Typically, the USDA sends experts to a country that wants to import meat to the U.S., so that they audits that country’s meat regulatory system. It also compares the other country’s sanitary measures of inspection with the ones in the U.S., to make sure they’re equivalent.
As of Aug. 25, there are no news reports or USDA recalls regarding beef for being sold as horse meat.
There is no evidence that American horse meat is being imported into the country as beef, and there are guardrails to prevent that from happening. We rate this claim False.
The Trump administration said it may need to demolish the Kennedy Center if a plan to close the building for two years as part of a controversial renovation project pushed by President Trump and the organization's board is blocked.
New board currently around 120 miles. Should I be concerned about this rust looking powder? It could be fertilizer or pollen but I'm not sure. I keep wiping it away and finding more randomly.
One thing to note is that this stuff is everywhere like the power button and grab handles. Which makes me think it might not be concerning.
If you’re a newer rider and struggling with activation, it might be worth taking a look at your grip.
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Elon Musk's space company plans to spend $100 billion to build a new spaceport in Louisiana to launch rockets, state officials and the company announced.
Arrest of Luis Manuel Aviles, 48, sparked backlash as he was detained while his son, Joshua, was deployed in Middle East
The father of a US navy sailor who has been deployed in the Middle East for a record-breaking nine months on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier has been released from immigration detention, according to his family.
His arrest sparked intense backlash after the Associated Press reported that his son was entering his ninth month on the Lincoln with the navy when his father was detained. The carrier had just set a US military record for uninterrupted time at sea and has raised concerns about supply shortages and deteriorating mental health among those serving onboard.
One more day of testimony expected as closing arguments set for Thursday and jury likely begins deliberations Friday
One more day of rebuttal testimony was expected this week in the trial against Lindsay Clancy, followed by closing statements likely on Thursday.
The jury, which will likely begin deliberations on Friday, will decide whether the Massachusetts mother was experiencing postpartum psychosis when she killed her three children in January 2023.
(The Center Square) – A federal agency estimated it will cost about $140 billion to enrich uranium for national security through 2105, but hasn't reported that figure to Congress as required, a watchdog found.
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.
Right on schedule – as always – there’s a new Genode OS Framework release, version 26.08.
The highlights of Genode 26.08 are VirtualBox 7, improved PC performance of our custom microkernel, the new ability to transparently reconfigure virtual file systems, revised timing and timeout handling, and a Linux 6.18.19 device-driver environment for ARM. Furthermore, the first version of a Goa-based SDK has become natively available for Sculpt OS.
The release announcement linked above is a mere quick overview; if you want all the possible details you could want, the release notes got you covered.
(The Center Square) - A Trump-appointed federal judge has ruled in favor of a private prison company in its legal battle against a new Colorado law requiring more health and safety inspections for immigration detention facilities.
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 25, 2026 — NVIDIA today announced NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano 2, a new robotics computer set to redefine entry-level edge AI — putting frontier-class generative AI performance in the hands of millions of developers.
Credit: Shutterstock
As AI models grow smaller and more efficient, more edge devices can become autonomous systems that understand context, interpret language and images, and act in real time. To bring these capabilities into physical machines like robots, delivery and inspection drones, and vision AI systems, developers need compact, energy-efficient robotics computers built for edge AI.
“Today’s small and medium frontier models have reached the accuracy of last year’s largest frontier models, unlocking real-time intelligence for edge devices,” said Deepu Talla, vice president of robotics and edge AI at NVIDIA. “The Jetson Orin Nano 2 computer puts that breakthrough within reach of millions of developers, delivering the performance and energy efficiency needed for real-time reasoning at the edge.”
Cognex, Doosan Bobcat and Matic are among the first to adopt and explore Jetson Orin Nano 2.
A Major Leap for Entry-Level Edge AI
Featuring 78 trillion operations per second of AI compute, 8GB of memory and an 8-core Arm CPU, Jetson Orin Nano 2 delivers a significant leap in AI and video-processing performance in a cost-effective, power-efficient system.
Jetson Orin Nano 2 achieves 2x the inference performance of Jetson Orin Nano Super through improved Tensor Cores and higher memory bandwidth, while maintaining the same compact form factor. In 15-watt mode, Jetson Orin Nano 2 consumes 40% less power to deliver the same performance as its predecessor.
Powered by NVIDIA’s open software stack, NVIDIA Jetson agent skills and a rich AI ecosystem, Jetson Orin Nano 2 enables developers to run the latest large language models and vision language models optimized for memory-efficient edge inference — including open models like NVIDIA Cosmos and NVIDIA Nemotron, Gemma 4 and Qwen 3 — to rapidly build advanced AI applications.
Partner Ecosystem and Millions of Robotics Developers Build on Jetson
More than 3 million developers are building on NVIDIA’s robotics stack, and with Jetson Orin Nano 2, partners like Cognex, Doosan Bobcat, Matic and Wing are bringing real-world edge AI applications to compact devices, including home robots, vision AI systems, delivery and inspection drones, carrier boards, hardware systems and reference solutions.
Wing, a leading drone delivery company and subsidiary of Alphabet, is using Jetson Orin Nano Super and the NVIDIA software stack in its delivery drone fleet — and plans to evaluate Jetson Orin Nano 2 to advance real-time AI perception and reasoning for faster, safer delivery from local businesses to residential yards.
“Drone delivery depends on AI that can enable fast, reliable understanding of the real world,” said Dinuka Abeywardena, head of perception at Wing. “Wing is exploring Jetson Orin Nano 2 to give us a path to more responsive, energy-efficient drones that can help make deliveries quicker and more dependable for customers.”
Matic Robots, an advanced consumer robotics company, is adopting Jetson Orin Nano 2 to enable more intuitive interactions with its home cleaning robots, enabling them with conversational AI, gesture detection, deeper context of the home with precision mapping and semantic understanding, and autonomous cleaning capabilities.
“Home robots need to understand people, map spaces precisely, understand the layout of objects and spaces, and clean autonomously in dynamic and constantly changing environments,” said Navneet Dalal, cofounder and CEO of Matic Robotics. “With Jetson Orin Nano 2, Matic can run state-of-the-art AI models at the edge in a compact home robotics platform built for real-time perception, interaction and navigation.”
AAEON, ADLINK, Advantech, Aetina, Antmicro, Aptiv, Auvidea, AVerMedia, Chuanglebo, Connect Tech, ForeCR, JWIPC, Neurealm, Plink, Realtimes, RidgeRun, RS, Seeed Studio, Tauro Tech, Twowin, TZTEK and YUAN are among other Jetson partners building carrier boards, hardware systems, customized AI software and reference solutions to help customers accelerate time to market.
Availability
The NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano 2 module and developer kit are expected to be available in the first half of 2027.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the world leader in AI and accelerated computing.
The FDA has authorized the first wearable in the U.S. to continuously monitor ketone levels and the first device globally to track both ketones and glucose together in a single system. From a report: [Abbott's] Libre Duo 10 Day continuously measures both glucose and ketone levels in the fluid just beneath the skin every minute, day and night. Readings are transmitted wirelessly to a compatible smartphone, where users can view current glucose and ketone levels and whether those values are trending up or down. The device also can send automatic alerts if ketone levels reach a concerning threshold. The FDA noted that ketone information should be interpreted in the context of glucose readings and symptoms.
Ketones are produced when the body uses fat instead of glucose for energy. When ketone levels rise too high, patients with diabetes can develop diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), a serious complication that can progress quickly and become life-threatening without prompt treatment. Until now, patients who needed ketone monitoring had to test separately using methods that provided a single measurement at one point in time. Those tests could not show whether ketone levels were rising or falling. For patients with diabetes -- particularly those at higher risk for DKA -- continuous glucose and ketone monitoring may provide earlier warning of metabolic deterioration and support timelier sick-day management, hydration, insulin adjustment, and escalation of care when clinically appropriate.
Integrated traffic generation, protocol analysis, error injection, and debugging streamline validation of next-generation AI networks.
MILPITAS, Calif., Aug. 25, 2026 — Teledyne LeCroy, a business unit of Teledyne Technologies Incorporated and a worldwide leader in protocol test solutions, today announced expanded Ultra Ethernet validation capabilities on the Xena Z1608 Edun and Xena Z800 Freya Ethernet Traffic Generators and the SierraNet M1288 Protocol Analyzer platforms. These solutions are designed to help network equipment manufacturers, silicon providers, cloud service providers, and hyperscalers accelerate the development and deployment of high-performance Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High-Performance Computing (HPC) networks.
The integrated solution combines wire-speed traffic generation, stateful message testing, deep protocol analysis, error injection, packet capture, and advanced debugging to deliver end-to-end visibility into network behavior—accelerating root-cause analysis, strengthening interoperability validation, and reducing deployment risk for next-generation AI networking infrastructure.
As AI and HPC infrastructure scales, network performance, reliability, interoperability, and deterministic low latency are essential to efficient scale-up and scale-out fabrics. Ultra Ethernet, an open Ethernet-based architecture designed for AI and HPC environments, addresses these requirements through enhanced congestion management, scalability, and reliability mechanisms.
The Xena Z1608 Edun and Z800 Freya Ethernet Traffic Generators and the SierraNet M1288 Protocol Analyzer provide comprehensive validation of critical Ultra Ethernet capabilities across high-speed PAM4 and legacy NRZ interfaces through wire-speed traffic generation, deep protocol analysis, stateful message testing, error injection, packet capture, and advanced debugging:
Link Layer Retry (LLR)
Credit-Based Flow Control (CBFC)
Link Layer Discover Protocol (LLDP)
Stateful Ultra Ethernet protocol messaging
Protocol error injection
Message inspection and packet capture
The Xena Z800 Freya and SierraNet M1288 also support 10G and 25G NRZ speeds, extending Ultra Ethernet validation to chip emulation, pre-silicon functional testing, and mixed-speed interoperability environments.
Availability
The Xena Z1608 Edun and Z800 Freya Ethernet Traffic Generators and SierraNet M1288 Protocol Analyzer with Ultra Ethernet support are available for purchase today. Contact Teledyne LeCroy for product information, technical specifications, configuration guidance, and regional availability. Learn more about Teledyne LeCroy Ultra Ethernet test solutions at: https://www.teledynelecroy.com/serialdata/artificial_intelligence.
Teledyne LeCroy is a leading manufacturer of advanced oscilloscopes, protocol analyzers, and other test instruments that help engineers verify performance, validate compliance, and debug complex electronic systems quickly and thoroughly. Since 1964, the company has focused on incorporating powerful analysis tools into innovative products that enhance “Time-to-Insight.” Faster time to insight helps users identify and resolve defects sooner, improving time to market across a wide range of applications and end markets. Teledyne LeCroy is based in Chestnut Ridge, New York. For more information, visit teledynelecroy.com.
Lawyer Baltasar Garzón, representing Chambers, said case against his client is ‘very strange’ as US requests extradition
FBI agents raided the Ibiza, Spain, vacation rental of 41-year-old James “Fergie” Chambers, a US citizen and wealthy donor to leftwing and humanitarian projects worldwide, in the days following his arrest last month, the Guardian has learned.
Baltasar Garzón, a human rights lawyer representing Chambers, revealed the details in an exclusive interview. Chambers is wanted for extradition by the Trump administration for alleged financial support of Hamas, as well as other charges.
(The Center Square) – Tennessee leaders described Dolly Parton as an "iconic leader" and "beacon of light" following her death on Tuesday at the age of 80.
A U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter out of Fort Campbell in Kentucky made an apparently unplanned landing in a wooded area of the Colorado foothills west of Denver.
(The Center Square) – Sixteen state attorneys general are calling on the “Big Four Accounting Firms” by letter for accountability over their actions that prioritize Environmental, Social, Governance investment strategies and climate goals, which will prove to be detrimental to…
I'm just wondering if anyone can explain the benefits and uses of a one zone sensor vs a two zone sensor? I put my board into two zone mode to enable heel lift stops but then I had an incident where I was going over rough terrain, my heel came up a bit and my board shut down causing me to crash. I'm pretty sketched out by riding with a two zone sensor now but I'm wondering if there's some other reason to enable two zone that I'm not thinking of.
Also, does the heel lift stop still work when one zone sensor is enabled? I was having a hard time getting it to work but maybe it's a technique problem.
Cristy Maryori Villafranca-Trejo, deported to Honduras, is latest military spouse to face removal amid Trump 2.0
The wife of an active-duty US soldier was deported on Monday to her native Honduras, according to her family and the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Cristy Maryori Villafranca-Trejo is at least the seventh spouse or parent of an active-duty US soldier to be deported under the immigration crackdown during Donald Trump’s second presidency.
(The Center Square) - A proposed pipeline that would supply natural gas to a data center now under construction for Oracle and OpenAI in southern New Mexico has been delayed until at least early next year, according to a recent…
Alarm as Republicans warn that ‘flooding’ stores with 300,000 metric tons of beef imports will hit US farmers
Donald Trump is facing growing criticism from within his own party over his decision to temporarily pause US tariffs on foreign beef in a bid to bring down grocery prices.
The president’s announcement that the US will import up to 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef without charging higher tariffs has alarmed some senior Republicans, who warn that “flooding” stores with imports will hit US ranchers. This comes as the US faces a 75-year low in cattle inventory.
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.”
(The Center Square) - The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is in hot water as a prolonged legal battle revealed the state ignored policies to limit emissions tied to climate change.
Our picture editors have collated Dolly Parton’s life in pictures:
In the UK, top radio presenter Jo Whiley introduced her BBC Radio 2 evening show by playing I Will Always Love You, Jolene and 9 to 5 in tribute to Dolly Parton after her death was announced in the 7pm news headlines.
Canada announced new tariffs of up to 50 percent on hundreds of American goods in retaliation for U.S. tariffs that took effect last week. Starting Sept. 8, Canada will double tariffs on American steel and aluminum to 50 percent and impose tariffs on around 700 other products.
With her rhinestones and blond bouffant, she carved out a singular place in American life as a musician, movie star, philanthropist and feminist heroine.
Canada's cultural-content rules have become a flashpoint in its trade fight with the U.S., after American negotiators reportedly demanded that Ottawa drop requirements for streaming services to promote Canadian and French-language content. Canada refused, even as it has already backed away from some financial levies on streamers. "We were not prepared to compromise on our sovereignty, the protection of the French language, and our culture," Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a speech on Saturday after trade talks collapsed. CBC.ca reports: Ottawa has long required broadcasters to promote and support Canadian content (Cancon), all the way back to song quotas for AM radio stations. In 1991, the government brought in the Broadcasting Act. The law states that "the Canadian broadcasting system shall be effectively owned and controlled by Canadians" and that the Canadian broadcasting system should "serve to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of Canada." But decades later, the rising popularity in Canada of streaming platforms such as Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime and Spotify raised questions about Cancon and broadcasting rules. Video and audio streaming services were not, for example, required to support and promote Cancon, but their TV and radio counterparts were.
Looking to address the imbalance, the former Trudeau government brought forward a bill in 2022 to update the Broadcasting Act, called the Online Streaming Act. "Canadian broadcasters have invested in and introduced us to the incredible Canadian programs that so many of us love. We are updating our laws so online streamers have to contribute in a similar and equitable way," a 2022 government news release said. The legislation was controversial from the start, with the government and supporters saying it was a necessary evolution of Canada's media laws in the digital age, while opponents expressed concerns that it was overreach and an attempt to regulate the internet.
American streamers and digital media companies opposed the legislation fiercely. The bill passed with amendments and became law in April 2023, but the government delegated much of its interpretation -- including how much money streamers would have to contribute to Cancon -- to Canada's broadcast regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). But getting streaming companies to pay up has been a long and confusing saga. [...]. As for why the U.S. government is so invested in the issue? Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte, a postdoctoral fellow in the communication studies and media arts department at McMaster University in Hamilton, said it could be about power.
"The Americans have had, since after World War II, a very strong cultural policy of pushing out American content into the world," Bourcheix-Laporte, who has worked with the CRTC, said. "This has been a strategy -- a soft-power strategy -- for the American government, in parallel to their military strategies and political alliances strategies."
Andy Burnham will face an immediate test of his backing for electoral reform in his first week in parliament as prime minister, with almost 100 Labour MPs supporting a bid for a new national commission.
Burnham, a longtime advocate of electoral reform, will be asked to support the new commission into ditching first past the post in his first 100 days as prime minister.
(The Center Square) – When Congress returns in September, it faces a backlog of legislative priorities including major bills funding U.S. farms, road and water infrastructure, and the entire federal government.
Hey folks! First reddit post ever! Glad its with the OW community. Hoping to find some folks in NYC who can spare some time to help me install a battery in my XR. Its from Battery Broker. Looking to get more understanding of how these things work, and have folks to ride with! Does anyone here know NYC based techs and riders? Thanks all!
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.
Perplexity and Nvidia have launched "Portable Computer," a local-first version of Perplexity's agent platform that runs AI models, files, tools, and workflows directly on Nvidia-powered Linux hardware. Local tasks incur no token charges and keep data on-device by default, with users asked for permission before the system escalates a step to a cloud model. VentureBeat reports: For Nvidia, which has spent the past two years selling the world on trillion-dollar AI data centers, the announcement signals something subtler but strategically important: the chipmaker believes local AI has crossed a threshold from hobbyist curiosity to practical tool -- and it wants to sell the hardware that runs it.
"Local AI reached an inflection point," said Nader, Nvidia's director of developer technology, who focuses on developer tooling and open source. "For the longest time, it was hobbyists and enthusiasts, and they were running these quantized models that were quantized down to be super tiny... And while that's cool, it's not super practical. But all that changed with a lot of these new open source models that have come out that are super useful."
[...] Portable Computer arrives today for Pro, Max, Enterprise Pro, and Enterprise Max subscribers on Linux, with Windows support following in September. Any RTX GPU with at least 24GB of VRAM -- roughly a GeForce RTX 3090 or newer -- clears the bar, a threshold Nate called "sort of the floor where we really want to make sure that we can deliver a great experience, but balance that with making it broadly available."
In an unsigned per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump’s executive order about mail-in ballots and election integrity to move forward as other legal challenges loom over its implementation.
The opinion issued on Monday drew two dissents and included a statement in the per curiam opinion that “the Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell.”
The March 2026 executive order from President Trump requires the United States Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots only to people on a federal list of voters. The opinion lifted an injunction issued by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts against the executive order in Trump v. California.
On July 27, 2026, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to stay a preliminary injunction issued by Judge Indira Talwani. Since then, 12 states had joined the Justice Department in requesting the stay in a separate application in Trump v. California, while 23 states supported the injunction blocking the executive order.
The Supreme Court’s Per Curiam Opinion
The Court cited several factors in its majority decision justifying its conclusion. The majority held that the District Court lacked jurisdiction to enter the judgment due to lack of standing and ripeness. The concept of standing requires that “an injury . . . is concrete, particularized, and imminent rather than ‘conjectural or hypothetical,’” the opinion stated. Ripeness, it said, “forbids federal courts to adjudicate disputes that are dependent on ‘contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all.’”
In the executive order’s Section 2(a), the Secretary of Homeland Security is empowered to create State Citizenship Lists “derived from Federal citizenship and naturalization records, SSA records, SAVE data, and other relevant Federal databases.” The Court concluded that Section 2(a) is a “provision” that represents “an internal directive from the President to a subordinate. It imposes no obligations on the States, so they ‘suffer no concrete harm from’ it. And without concrete harm, there is no standing.”
The plaintiff states in the lawsuit also challenged Section 2(b), which permits the United States Attorney General to prosecute “state and local officials or any others involved in the administration of Federal elections who issue Federal ballots to individuals not eligible to vote in a Federal election.”
The Court concluded that the challenge to Section 2(b) failed the standing test because it only directed the Attorney General to “prioritize” investigations “of those who violate existing federal laws by issuing ballots to ineligible voters. Setting prosecutorial priorities lies within the President’s Article II power,” it held.
The plaintiff states also challenged Section 3, which directs the United States Postal Service to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking about limiting mail-in or absentee ballots to individuals who have been enrolled on a State-specific list. Section 3 also requires design changes to ballot envelopes, including identifiers for individuals on State Citizenship Lists.
“According to the [plaintiff] States, this internal directive demands that they overhaul their existing election procedures. It does not. Section 3 orders the Postal Service to initiate the process of proposing a rule that might bind the States in the future. It is not a proposed rule, let alone a final rule. And it imposes no legal requirements on the States,” the Court said.
Citing those and other factors, the Court concluded that “the Order itself does not harm the States, so the District Court lacked jurisdiction to bar the Government from trying to implement it. And for the reasons discussed, that injunction is likely to irreparably harm the Government if it remains in place while the appellate process runs its course.”
The Dissents and Next Steps
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, noted that the Court’s majority opinion did not “address whether the President’s attempts to interfere with States’ administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful. Nor does it suggest that the Executive Branch has any constitutional or statutory authority to implement the President’s directives. Instead, today’s decision merely postpones adjudication of those challenges.”
“A commonsense reading of the Executive Order, corroborated by the Government’s own representations, makes clear that the respondent States face a sufficiently concrete and imminent injury to satisfy Article III,” she concluded.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson found fault with the per curiam opinion’s conclusion that the “Plaintiff States lacked a concrete injury for Article III purposes.”
“This ruling violates well-established precedents concerning this Court’s equitable discretion and needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections,” Jackson said. “It also lets another shoe drop in the Kafkaesque nightmare that our precedents have been steadily creating for certain plaintiffs who seek to bring election-related challenges.”
Jackson added, “To be sure, the Court has not foreclosed States from challenging this blatantly unconstitutional Order. But it declines to explain when, exactly, is the right time to bring a meritorious election-rule claim challenging unconstitutional interference with electoral processes.”
The Court’s stay is pending the disposition of the appeal at the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and the disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Court, if a writ is sought.
Trump v. California was on the Supreme Court’s interim or emergency docket, which deals with requests for injunctive relief and stays that arrive at the Supreme Court. Decisions on the interim docket by the justices occur without full briefings and arguments. A separate challenge could also soon appear on the same docket.
On August 11, 2026, District Court Judge Talwani ruled in a separate case, League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump, where she issued a nationwide injunction against the Trump executive order on constitutional grounds. On Monday, the League of Women Voters filed a motion with the district court in response to the U.S. Postal Service’s issuance of a final rule to implement Section 3 on August 21, 2026. In a separate statement, the League said, “[T]he district court’s order in our case blocking USPS from proceeding with the Rule remains in place, and we will fight to keep it that way or to secure new relief.”
While the challenges play out in court, there is a limited period to change procedures for the mail-in ballots process if they are required. In all, 37 states and the District of Columbia allow mail-in voting without electors citing a reason, and 10 states send out mail-in ballots at least 45 days in advance of election day.
Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.
(The Center Square) – Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley, trailing fiscally throughout his campaign against Democrat Roy Cooper, is getting a portion of the gap filled in by the Senate Leadership Fund led by his party’s campaign group and…
Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the US House of Representatives, has defended his meeting with Jared Kushner and claimed it was arranged at the request of Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
Jeffries, who has come under attack from Democrats since the New York Times reported on Sunday that the two met privately to discuss common ground on issues like housing, immigration and the high cost of living, said he agreed to the meeting “to discuss the affordability crisis” in the US.
Iran’s top trade partners include China, Iraq, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. But the Trump administration has not said who new sanctions would target, or how so.
Will an Aug. 24, 2026, Supreme Court decision lead to chaos in the midterm elections? An election law scholar dissects the decision, its background and possible effects.
Raleigh, North Carolina — Former Miss North Carolina USA Brittany Boltinhouse has sued the Miss USA organization and state pageant operators, alleging they defamed her by portraying her as racist, homophobic and transphobic after stripping her of her title earlier this month.
The lawsuit, filed in Duplin County Superior Court, names Miss USA Chairman Thom Brodeur, JKN Universe LLC and A Blaize Productions LLC. Boltinhouse is not challenging the pageant’s authority to remove her or asking to be reinstated. Instead, she claims statements made after her removal damaged her reputation and professional opportunities.
Boltinhouse acknowledges that old social-media posts resurfaced, including six posts from 2017 and 2019 in which she used a racial slur as a teenager. She argues, however, that pageant officials used those posts along with her support for President Donald Trump and the late Charlie Kirk to create a misleading public narrative about her views.
Her complaint also alleges officials pressured her to approve an apology portraying her as bigoted and later referenced that statement publicly despite her objections.
Miss USA previously said Boltinhouse was removed after a review of conduct that conflicted with the organization’s standards. The lawsuit seeks damages and a jury trial.
Runner-up Myla Hadley replaced Boltinhouse and will represent North Carolina at the Miss USA competition beginning Aug. 27.
Columbus, Ohio — A 26-year-old Ohio man has been charged in federal court after authorities say he sent graphic threats to kill President Donald Trump and Republican Rep. Randy Fine of Florida.
The Justice Department identified the suspect as Alex Miller. Prosecutors allege Miller emailed Fine with threats against the congressman and his family, including language about beheading Fine and a declaration of “DEATH TO DONALD TRUMP!!” The message also contained antisemitic and Nazi-related insults directed at Fine, who is Jewish.
According to federal investigators, the threat was reported and traced quickly, with the FBI, U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Capitol Police and Brevard County Sheriff’s Office working together. Miller was arrested within roughly 36 hours.
Fine said after the arrest that political disagreement cannot justify threats of violence and that such conduct has no place in American politics.
The case comes amid heightened concern over threats against elected officials from across the political spectrum. Prosecutors will still have to show that Miller’s alleged statements constituted a legally actionable “true threat,” rather than protected political speech.
If convicted on the federal threat charge, Miller could face up to five years in prison.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For years, AI industry watchers of all stripes have been warning of a coming jobs apocalypse driven by ultra-intelligent AI systems that will be able to replicate most human tasks more cheaply. Now, newly updated research from Stanford University economists suggests AI seems to be causing significant entry-level job losses for younger workers in some fields, even as older workers appear largely unaffected so far.
The August 2026 edition of "Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence" updates and revises a paper of the same name published last year with fresh data and refined statistics. In that update, the Stanford researchers find the employment trends they identified for entry-level workers last year are persisting and expanding. Specifically, employment levels for workers ages 22 to 25 in the most "AI-exposed" occupations are now 19 percent below those of their peers in fields less exposed to AI disruption. Last year, that gap measured just 13 percent.
[...] Digging deeper into the data, the researchers found that this phenomenon is mainly manifesting itself through lower hiring rates for entry-level workers in AI-impacted fields, rather than increased firings or employees quitting. They also found that the labor market effects among this age group were mostly seen in lower overall employment, rather than reduced pay rates. But not all jobs that show potential for AI "disruption" are created equal, the researchers found. In its Economic Index, Anthropic differentiates between queries related to tasks that are "automative" (i.e., fully replacing work previously done by a human) or "augmentative" (i.e., helping human workers be more effective at tasks they are still needed for). By this measure, jobs like "accountants and auditors" and "receptionists and information clerks" were among those judged most susceptible to AI automation, while jobs like "chief executive" and "registered nurse" were among those using AI augmentation most often.
Unsurprisingly, jobs where AI automation is prevalent are the ones showing the worst relative employment levels for entry-level workers these days. "The findings are consistent with automation-oriented uses of AI substituting for labor while complementary uses are associated with flat or rising employment," the researchers write. Interestingly, the researchers found that the impact is strongest in entry-level jobs built around "codified" knowledge, which is the formal, documented skills that AI can more easily replicate. Meanwhile, experienced workers in roles relying on tacit, practice-based knowledge have seen stronger employment growth.
Dolly Parton, one of the greatest singer-songwriters in country music who was also much cherished for her philanthropy, has died aged 80.
Her death was announced by nephew Brian Seaver on Instagram. “I have imagined the heaviness of this moment but haven’t truly felt it until now,” he said. “It is an honour, an honour that is mixed with absolute pride and great sadness.”
The White House has provided no federal data to support President Donald Trump’s claims that because of his “no tax on tips” policy, “440,000 tipped workers” in Nevada “saved an average of $10,000 on their taxes,” and “130,000 tipped workers” in Georgia “saved an average of more than $7,000 on their taxes.”
Instead of actual tax savings, the president may have been referring to the average amount some workers in those states were able to deduct from their federal taxable income in 2025. The actual savings would be a fraction of that, depending on a person’s tax rate.
The president also may be exaggerating the number of Nevadans and Georgians who were able to claim a tips deduction.
Trump talked about the savings for tipped workers in Nevada during an economic speech at the Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa in Las Vegas on Aug. 5.
“This past filing season, 440,000 tipped workers right here in Nevada saved an average of $10,000 on their taxes,” he said. “Think of that, just on the no tax on tips. So, that means every worker saved — this is put out by the government, check it out. … They say, ‘Oh, it wasn’t $10,000. It was $9,912.’ Think of it, every worker made $10,000 more money. That’s all because of the fact that I said I was going to do it and I got it done.”
He made a similar claim in a July 22 speech in Georgia, in which he said, “This past filing season, 130,000 tipped workers right here in Georgia saved an average of more than $7,000 on their taxes. And that’s because of no tax on tips.”
When we asked for supporting evidence, White House spokesman Kush Desai said that the administration’s tax policies were helping Americans nationwide save money – but he did not provide the “government” source for Trump’s figures.
“President Trump is right: tens of millions of working-class Americans are saving thousands of dollars on his signature no tax on tips, overtime, and Social Security provisions in the Working Families Tax Cut. That is especially true in Nevada, the birthplace of President Trump’s no-tax-on-tips pledge,” Desai said in an emailed statement.
However, we did not find support for the president’s claims.
A Deduction Isn’t the Amount Saved in Taxes
On July 4, 2025, Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which, among other things, created a temporary federal income tax deduction of up to $25,000 in qualified tips. The deduction – which is available each tax year from 2025 through 2028 – begins to phase out when modified adjusted gross income exceeds $150,000 for a single filer or $300,000 for a married couple filing jointly. The deduction is reduced by $100 for every $1,000 above those thresholds.
So, although Trump refers to this tax policy as “no tax on tips,” the law does not eliminate all taxes on tipped income. Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes still apply, for example.
More important, a federal tax deduction does not reduce taxes paid dollar for dollar. It reduces the amount of income on which the IRS calculates federal income tax, as Aparna Mathur, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, explained to us in an email.
“What the President is referring to is not the actual tax savings from the tips deduction, but likely the average amount of income that a tipped worker is deducting from their taxable income,” Mathur wrote. “This is not a direct reduction in taxes but rather a reduction in income subject to taxes.”
For example, based on the federal tax brackets for 2025, if a tipped worker with taxable income between $11,926 and $48,475, with a 12% marginal tax rate, received a $10,000 deduction from their federal taxable income, the tax savings from that deduction would be about $1,200. If that same person received a $7,000 deduction, their federal income taxes would be reduced by $840.
In theory, as the deduction amount and marginal tax rate increase, so does the potential tax cut. As the Bipartisan Policy Center noted in February, the largest tax cut possible would be about $6,000 for someone in the 24% tax bracket with the highest gross income – $150,000 for a single filer and $300,000 for a married couple – allowed to claim the full $25,000 tip deduction.
But Mathur said the tax savings would be lower for people who already have little income tax liability due to claiming the standard federal tax deduction, which in 2025 was $15,750 for individual filers and $31,500 for married couples. “If their taxable income is already close to zero, there is no further tax liability to reduce, so the tips deduction provides them no additional value,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Tax Policy Center estimated in August 2025 that about 3% of U.S. households would benefit from the deduction of tipped income, and it estimated an average savings of about $1,400 among those households. Trump’s own White House Council of Economic Advisers had estimated in June 2025 that the tax provision for tipped income would increase affected workers’ average take-home pay by about $1,300 a year.
“It’s hard to think of a realistic scenario where the average tipped worker gets a tax savings equal to $7000 or $9000,” Mathur said. But she told us that the Tax Policy Center has not produced state-level estimates.
Notably, in a June 2 press release, the Treasury Department said that through the April tax-filing deadline, more than 7.5 million tax filers in the U.S. had used the tips deduction, and the department reported an “average deduction of over $7,000.”
The White House used similar language in an April news release in which it said 6 million tax filers nationwide had reported an average tips deduction exceeding $7,100 at that point in the filing season.
The Treasury and White House releases did not refer to the $7,000 figure as a tax cut, refund or the average amount saved by taxpayers.
Number of Beneficiaries Unknown
It’s also unlikely that 440,000 tipped workers in Nevada and 130,000 in Georgia claimed the tips deduction, as Trump said.
In a September 2025 analysis, the Nevada Independent, an online news outlet, reported that “approximately 444,000 Nevadans, or more than a quarter of the state’s workforce, could theoretically be covered by the No Tax on Tips provision of the Republican megabill.” But it said, “the number who will actually see more money in their pockets is likely far lower.”
The Nevada Independent calculated that large figure by taking a preliminary Treasury Department list of tipped professions affected by the tax policy and cross-referencing it with Bureau of Labor Statistics data on the estimated number of people in Nevada working in those occupations.
But Yale Budget Lab Associate Director of Policy Research John Ricco told the news outlet that the Treasury’s list was overly broad. “Not everyone who works in these occupations will get tips,” Ricco was quoted as saying.
In 2024, the Tax Policy Center estimated that the number of tipped employees in Nevada was much lower – about 5% of its workers, or about 80,000 people as of June.
Then in April, when the Treasury and the IRS finalized federal regulations defining qualified tips and listing the jobs “that customarily and regularly received tips” on or before Dec. 31, 2024, they noted that broad federal occupation codes sometimes combine tipped and non-tipped jobs. They also warned against using the provided occupation codes as the sole measure of whether workers customarily received tips. Tax-return data included in the regulation show why.
In the 2023 tax year, 82.8% of people in the relevant bartender category reported at least $100 in tips, according to a table that was included in the published regulations. The figure was 74.5% for wait staff and 70.9% for gambling dealers. The percentages fell sharply in other eligible professions. Only 11% of dishwashers, 2.7% of maids and housekeeping cleaners, and 0.1% of electricians reported at least $100 in tips, the data show.
So, counting every worker in those occupation groups would likely produce a much larger figure than the actual number of people who reported qualified tips.
It’s less clear where Trump may have gotten the figure of 130,000 Georgia workers claiming the tips deduction.
The Georgia Department of Labor reported 5.3 million employed state residents as of July. Trump’s 130,000 figure would be about 2.5% of that number.
In its 2024 analysis, the Tax Policy Center, citing the Yale Budget Lab, said that about 2% of workers nationally held jobs that regularly received tips. TPC found higher percentages in many Southern states.
That could support 130,000 as a rough estimate of Georgia workers in tipped occupations, but it still does not mean that 130,000 people in the state took the federal deduction and received tax savings as a result.
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Ken Paxton, a Republican candidate for the US Senate in Texas, has unveiled plans to tackle the “negative impact” of datacenters amid a growing backlash across the political spectrum.
Paxton, endorsed by Donald Trump but facing a close contest against Democrat James Talarico, posted a “Texas first” datacenter plan on X with a graphic that the social media network flagged as “Made with AI”.
I call this one FlowTrail - basically it's an event tracking system with LED integrations. Think Mario Kart ghost laps, but on a trail late in the evening.
I've added some features in for races as well with rider detection, fall detection (and severity based on inferred energy changes). Working on adding on maybe some form of camera/Lidar sensor for extra effects - but for now the motion tracking working is good enough for me
At least 47 people were killed and more than 50 others kidnapped when armed men attacked a once peaceful community near Haiti’s capital at the weekend, the UN has said.
A gang leader has threatened to kill the hostages if authorities kill any gang members as they try to secure the community of Kenscoff, nestled in the hills above Port-au-Prince.
Tariffs on Canada, threats against Iran’s partners and bond market intervention show a president weaponising US power while making Americans poorer at home
Three moves in the last week have exposed the limits of Donald Trump’s economic bullying. The US slapped 50% tariffs on another $20bn of Canadian goods – then threatened the same rate on the cars, trucks, parts and steel that America Inc depends on. On Monday, the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, menaced Iran’s trading partners with exclusion from the US financial network, hoping that coercion can deliver what months of war have not. And as the costs of war, tariffs and pro-billionaire tax cuts helped send US bond yields higher, the Treasury stepped in to tame long-term rates. These are not contradictory policies but a gamble: that US economic power can be repeatedly weaponised without reducing others’ willingness to depend on it.
The Trump administration’s “D-day” sanctions are potentially the most consequential because they expose the scaffolding of American financial power. While markets shrugged off the immediate threat, that calculation might change were the US to target a major Chinese refinery or bank. Such an escalation could spark a trade war with Beijing. The US has leverage. But China has pressure points – especially farmers in Republican states – that make using it costly. In the long run, there is a price to pay. Nations hold one another’s currencies partly because they trust the political relationship. Mr Trump is testing what happens when they don’t.
AMD will offer the first Versal adaptive SoCs supporting Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express connectivity, enabling direct communication with co-packaged chiplets built for specialized workloads.
Aug. 25, 2026 — AMD will offer the first Versal adaptive SoCs with native support for Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) 1.1 interfaces, enabling low-power, high-bandwidth communication between co-packaged AMD adaptive SoCs and specialized chiplets.
Credit: AMD
As designers seek greater flexibility, higher performance and faster development cycles, monolithic devices are giving way to modular chiplet-based systems built from specialized silicon components in a single package. UCIe, an open industry standard, allows system designers to combine specialized silicon in a single package instead of redesigning large monolithic SoCs or developing a new SoC for every application. This approach can reduce latency, power, size, development cost and complexity while accelerating time to market and giving designers greater flexibility to reuse proven silicon IP.
“The semiconductor industry is entering a new era where innovation is increasingly driven by chiplet architectures that combine specialized chiplets to meet specific use cases,” said Kirk Saban, corporate vice president, Product, Software and Solutions, AMD Embedded. “AMD Versal RF Series chiplets are uniquely positioned to be the starting point to harness UCIe connectivity, bringing heterogeneous compute architecture with up to 80 TOPS of DSP compute, integrated RF converters and SWAP-C benefits to customers and unlocking the next generation of adaptive RF systems.”
AMD Versal RF Series devices will be the first Versal adaptive SoCs to enable UCIe 1.1 connectivity. They will support up to four independent UCIe-SP (standard-package) interfaces and up to two UCIe-AP (advanced-package) interfaces, providing multi-terabit per second aggregate in-package bandwidth. Additional AMD adaptive SoCs with UCIe support will be added as the market matures.
Envisioned applications with commercial or custom UCIe chiplets: RF AFEs, AI, specialized compute, CPO / fiber.
Versal RF Series adaptive SoCs integrate high-resolution RF data converters, dedicated hard intellectual property (IP) for DSP, AI Engines and programmable logic in a single-chip device. They offer up to 80 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of heterogeneous DSP compute and significant SWAP-C (size, weight, power and cost) benefits by combining the functionality of six devices into a single package.
Adding UCIe connectivity will expand these capabilities significantly by allowing Versal RF Series chiplets to communicate directly with co-packaged chiplets optimized for specific workloads, such as:
Third-party RF AFEs or data converters
AI acceleration chiplets
CPUs
GPU specialized compute
Custom security engines
Communications processors
Application-specific ASICs
Chiplets move specialized functions closer together. Historically, integrating RF front ends, AI accelerators, optical interfaces, memory subsystems or custom ASICs required board-level connections that can add latency, power consumption, size and design complexity. UCIe provides a standardized in-package interconnect, enabling efficient communication between heterogeneous chiplets, including silicon from different vendors.
Benefits of UCIe will enable customers to build customized systems leveraging existing, proven chiplets, eliminating time and helping lower the cost to redesign large monolithic SoCs. These benefits include:
High-bandwidth chiplet-to-chiplet communication
Reduced latency and improved power efficiency compared to AMD devices with board-level GTM2 serialized interfaces
Reuse of proven silicon IP
Potential for lower development costs
Faster time to market
Design flexibility through chiplet integration
The introduction of UCIe connectivity for select Versal RF Series adaptive SoCs transforms the device into a scalable chiplet platform capable of serving a broad range of next-generation RF, AI, networking and communications applications and enables SWAP-C reduction.
Production chiplets are expected to be available with select Versal RF Series devices in the fourth quarter of 2027.
About AMD
AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) drives innovation in high-performance and AI computing to solve the world’s most important challenges. Today, AMD technology powers billions of experiences across cloud and AI infrastructure, embedded systems, AI PCs and gaming. With a broad portfolio of AI-optimized CPUs, GPUs, networking and software, AMD delivers full-stack AI solutions that provide the performance and scalability needed for a new era of intelligent computing.
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.
China has denounced the threat of US sanctions for its trade with Iran, saying any such measures would be illegal, and warned it would take “all necessary measures” to protect its national interests.
Beijing’s rejection of the US threat of secondary sanctions for any country or entity continuing to trade with Tehran had been predicted. China buys an estimated 80% of Iran’s oil exports and has defied previous US efforts to limit the flow of revenue to the Tehran regime.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 25, 2026 — The U.S. Department of the Treasury has announced the launch of the Quantum-Readiness Task Force, following Executive Order 14412 establishing guidelines to strengthen cryptographic protections for America’s sensitive data, critical infrastructure, and digital economy. The Task Force supports efforts to secure American innovation; strengthen supply chains; and ensure U.S. leadership in critical and emerging technologies.
Credit: christianthiel.net/Shutterstock
“America must lead in securing the technologies that power our economy,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. “This Task Force will help ensure our financial system remains strong, secure, and competitive as new technologies reshape the global landscape.”
The Quantum-Readiness Task Force is a public-private initiative to help accelerate the U.S. financial sector’s transition to quantum-safe technology in an orderly and operationally resilient manner, building on the G7 Cyber Expert Group roadmap for the transition to post-quantum cryptography. It advances President Trump’s cyber agenda by supporting the adoption of post-quantum cryptography and strengthening protections for critical financial infrastructure.
The Task Force will operate through three workstreams: Sector Alignment & PQC Transition; Third-Party & Vendor Readiness; and Digital Assets and Emerging Technology Risk.
Quantum computing has the potential to transform science and technology, but it also poses a long-term cybersecurity challenge because future quantum systems could break many of the cryptographic tools that protect financial data, payment systems, digital identities, and market infrastructure. Transitioning to post-quantum cryptography is essential to protecting U.S. economic security and strengthening the resilience of the financial system.
The Task Force will bring together government, financial institutions, financial market infrastructures, technology providers, and other private-sector leaders to support coordinated preparation for quantum-related cyber risks. It will focus on practical, risk-based approaches to quantum readiness, including identifying critical dependencies, improving cryptographic agility, promoting interoperability, strengthening operational resilience, and addressing implementation challenges related to third-party dependencies and digital assets.
“Quantum computing holds significant promise, but it also presents a serious long-term challenge to the cryptographic tools that underpin the U.S. financial system,” said Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Luke Pettit. “The Financial Sector Quantum Readiness Task Force will help ensure that the transition to quantum-safe technology is coordinated, risk-based, and operationally resilient. By bringing together government and industry to lead the transition to quantum-safe finance, the U.S. will strengthen trust in its financial system and reinforce its economic and national security.”
“Post-quantum cryptography readiness is no longer a future-proofing exercise—it is a present-day risk control,” said Deborah Guild, chair of the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council and head of Technology at PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. “The transition requires organizations to prioritize critical systems and processes, manage dependencies across the financial ecosystem, and address implementation challenges. This task force sets the conditions for industry and government to align priorities and accelerate the transition to post-quantum cryptography.”
The NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes will take on some of the hardest scientific hurdles in the global race to create powerful quantum-based technologies
Aug. 25, 2026 — Understanding and wielding the quantum properties of nature is the ambitious objective of eight research institutes that will collectively receive more than $290 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation. The investment is an expansion of the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes program, which NSF created in 2020 as part of the agency’s strategy to fulfill the 2018 “National Quantum Initiative Act.”
Credit: Shutterstock
Of the eight institutes, three are newly formed. The other five were established with previous NSF funding and will receive renewed funding from NSF to continue their work. Each institute will receive between about $28 and $37 million over five years and is helmed by researchers in quantum information science.
Since 2020, the institutes have made major scientific strides in a range of areas, from finding new ways to make quantum computers to developing quantum sensors that could one day enable earlier detection of diseases. The institutes also serve as a productive nexus between scientists, federal science agencies, quantum technology companies and educational organizations.
“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.”
Quantum-based technologies, which use natural phenomena like entanglement and superposition, have the theoretical capacity to far outstrip so-called classical technologies commonly used today. For example, just as an electronic calculator can outperform an abacus, a functional quantum computer could theoretically outperform every supercomputer for certain types of tasks. Similarly, new types of quantum sensors could precisely measure properties far too subtle or even impossible for current technologies to detect. The NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes are focused on solving the many underlying scientific and technological challenges required for quantum devices to achieve such levels of performance.
Each institute is a broadly collaborative effort spanning academia, government and private industry. Through the eight institutes, funding from NSF will support researchers in 19 states at 36 institutions of higher education. The institutes’ federal collaborators include multiple U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories, the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. More than 30 U.S. companies are partnering with the institutes to help inform and accelerate the transfer of fundamental scientific results into products and techniques that can be used and scaled up for industrial production.
NSF is also funding the institutes’ education and training programs to help grow the future U.S. scientific workforce. The institutes will collectively train hundreds of graduate students, undergraduate students and early career researchers over the next five years. The institutes carry out that training through partnerships and activities with community colleges, dozens of universities and high schools, and community science organizations. Their educational activities span internships and summer schools, K-12 teacher programs and unique mentorship opportunities with leading experts in quantum information research.
NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Physics and Engineering of Practical Quantum Error Correction (NSF PRACTIQAL)
NSF PRACTIQAL will create new and more effective methods to correct errors commonly encountered in quantum computing systems, thus increasing the usefulness and scalability of quantum computers broadly. Their research will span experimentation with hardware, algorithms and other software, and theoretical methods that can enable better error correction techniques for large-scale quantum computers that have yet to be made.
St. Paul, Minnesota — MyPillow founder Mike Lindell has withheld the $825,000 payment required for the statewide recount he requested after losing Minnesota’s Republican gubernatorial primary by more than 45,000 votes.
Lindell’s campaign said Monday that it objected to the recount procedure established by Secretary of State Steve Simon’s office. Under those rules, election officials would determine votes for Lindell and primary winner Lisa Demuth while placing ballots cast for the other five GOP candidates into an “other” category.
Lindell argues that all seven candidates’ totals must be separately examined because his campaign claims to have identified anomalies affecting the entire field. His campaign said it plans to seek an emergency court order rather than submit payment by Monday’s deadline.
Minnesota’s official recount guidance says ballots are sorted into piles for each candidate involved in the recount, with votes for other candidates grouped separately. State law limits recounts to determining the number of votes validly cast for the office being contested.
Demuth received 179,683 votes to Lindell’s 134,282, a margin far beyond the threshold for a taxpayer-funded recount. Lindell therefore must finance any discretionary recount himself.
Lindell has not conceded and continues to allege election irregularities, but state officials have presented no evidence that the primary result was inaccurate.
Waymo plans to launch its robotaxi service in Munich by the end of 2027, marking the Google-owned company's first expansion into the European Union. "It already operates in 11 cities in the United States and has applied for a license in the United Kingdom to launch its robotaxis in London this year," notes Reuters. From the report: The Google subsidiary will start rolling out vehicles in the German city this year, which will be manually driven while the company "starts with high-definition mapping of local street networks" and testing with safety drivers, Waymo said in a statement.
"Bavaria is determined to live up to its pioneering role and be an international leader in autonomous driving," Florian Herrmann, the head of the Bavarian state chancellery, said in the statement. "Now we need to move quickly from testing to real-world deployment."
[...] German authorities gave autonomous vehicles the green light in 2021 to operate in the country in approved geographical areas. Other countries are looking at following suit, though the EU's broader autonomous driving rules are set by the U.N.
Newly disclosed records reveal how undercover federal agents posed as concerned community members to spy onresidents and activists who opposed Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) crackdown in Minnesota.
Internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) files, disclosed in federal court and reviewed by the Guardian, document the actions of several undercover agents, including one who went by the username “peanutbutterjelly” in Signal chats with activists. The documents show that the officer kept records of Signal conversations, screenshotting chats about protest plans and volunteer recruitment, and offering to help with fundraising efforts.
Community-driven initiative at ORNL brings together researchers, technology developers and computing experts to build interoperable software for a new era of scientific discovery
Aug. 25, 2026 — Researchers collaborated at the second annual Open Quantum-HPC Software Ecosystem (OpenQSE) workshop at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to advance the open-source OpenQSE framework, which is designed to bridge quantum computing and classical high-performance computing (HPC). Held on the final day of the 2026 Quantum Computing User Forum, the event focused on developing the software infrastructure needed to support hybrid quantum-HPC (QHPC) computing.
Credit: ORNL
Amir Shehata, an HPC systems software engineer at ORNL, led the workshop, bringing together leaders from industry, academia and national laboratories to advance OpenQSE, a community-driven initiative to develop open, vendor-neutral software that can work across technologies and systems from different companies for QHPC. By defining common software interfaces and interoperability standards, the initiative aims to make it easier for researchers to develop applications that run across diverse quantum and HPC platforms, accelerating scientific discovery through an open ecosystem. The consortium is an important part of how the Quantum Science Center (QSC), a National Quantum Information Science Resesarch Center headquartered at ORNL, is establishing a broader QHPC ecosystem.
What began as conversations during a workshop at the Quantum Computing User Forum last year has evolved into a year-round international collaboration focused on solving one of quantum computing’s biggest challenges: building the software needed to connect rapidly evolving quantum hardware with mature HPC systems.
“Last year, we were just starting to explore this space,” Shehata said. “Now we’ve broken the problem into specific areas, formed working groups and started developing actual implementations. We’re no longer just discussing what needs to be done. We’re defining deliverables and building the software ecosystem.”
Unlike last year’s workshop, which focused primarily on identifying challenges, this year’s event centered on establishing six technical working groups responsible for key components of the quantum-HPC software stack, including compilers, resource interfaces, system architecture, software architecture, application runtimes and control electronics. Throughout the day, participants refined each group’s charter, identified technical priorities and established milestones to guide development over the coming year.
“Discussions are good, but if they’re not paired with concrete deliverables, they’ll remain discussions,” Shehata said. “Our goal was for every working group to leave with a clear mission, defined responsibilities and actionable milestones that will drive progress between now and next year’s workshop.”
From Collaboration to Implementation
One of the workshop’s defining strengths was its collaborative approach. Rather than relying on a single organization to guide the effort, technical sessions were organized and led by experts from across the quantum computing landscape. Contributors from companies including IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, AWS, Alice & Bob and Qblox worked alongside researchers from ORNL, other national laboratories and universities to tackle shared software challenges.
One example of that collaboration is NVIDIA’s work within OpenQSE on Hierarchical Resource Scheduling (HRES) for the Slurm workload manager, helping align hybrid quantum resources with established HPC scheduling workflows. HRES extends Slurm’s resource model to represent and manage heterogeneous resources, providing a path for quantum resources to be requested and scheduled alongside traditional HPC resources using established Slurm workflows.
“People aren’t just talking — they’re committing to doing the work throughout the year,” Shehata said.
At its core, OpenQSE seeks to combine the abilities of two powerful computing paradigms: quantum computing and HPC. While advances in quantum hardware continue, Shehata said equally important progress must occur throughout the software stack that connects quantum processors with leadership-class supercomputers. This is a central part of his research within QSC, where more than 20 institutions are working to realize the first demonstrations of QHPC systems and applications.
“You won’t solve scientifically interesting problems with hardware alone,” Shehata said. “To discover new materials, new drugs or tackle other complex scientific challenges, you need hardware and software working together. OpenQSE is focused on building that software foundation.”
The workshop also highlighted ORNL’s leadership in advancing hybrid computing through open collaboration. Home to the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) and the Quantum Computing User Program, ORNL provides researchers access to world-leading computing resources while helping develop the software ecosystem needed to integrate emerging quantum technologies into scientific workflows.
Rather than limiting collaboration to an annual workshop, OpenQSE participants now meet weekly or biweekly within their technical working groups, with plans to add quarterly meetings that alternate between virtual and in-person sessions. The expanded schedule reflects both the complexity of the work and the consortium’s commitment to sustained collaboration.
“The problems we’re trying to solve are complicated enough that one day a year is just not enough,” Shehata said. “We need regular opportunities to sit together, work through technical challenges and build solutions as a community.”
As the initiative continues to grow, organizers also hope to expand participation by engaging universities, students and open-source software developers from around the world, broadening the community contributing to next-generation quantum software. Through OpenQSE, researchers are building not only the software needed for tomorrow’s hybrid computing systems but also the collaborative foundation needed to accelerate scientific discovery for years to come.
OLCF is a DOE Office of Science user facility at ORNL that is supported by DOE’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research program.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science, the nation’s largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. Learn more at energy.gov/science.
Government resilience campaign aims to ensure people can cope in a national disaster, in order to free resources for most vulnerable
UK citizens will be told to stock up on tinned food and take steps to ensure they are prepared for national emergencies as part of a new government campaign to improve the nation’s resilience.
The new campaign from the Cabinet Office will set out ways people can prepare for extreme weather events and potential attacks from hostile states, including stocking up on bottled water, sources told the Guardian.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 25, 2026 — Photonic Inc.’s paper on SHYPS quantum error correction codes, “Computing Efficiently in QLDPC Codes,” has been published in the journal Nature Communications. Quantum Low Density Parity Check (QLDPC) codes allow larger programs to be run on smaller systems, accelerating the timeline to commercially relevant quantum computing.
Error correction has long been one of the core challenges facing quantum computing companies. As the first to unlock the decades-long promise of QLDPC codes, Photonic set a new industry standard, making real the benefits for quantum architectures capable of running this type of code.
The paper reports the milestone result Photonic released as a pre-print last year: a new family of QLDPC codes, SHYPS, can efficiently perform both quantum computation and error correction, using a fraction of the physical qubits surface codes need. These advances are only available to high connectivity systems, such as Photonic’s Entanglement First architecture.
“This paper introduced the first demonstrated QLDPC code family capable of performing logic efficiently — not just storing information, but computing with it, using a fraction of the qubits error correction has always demanded,” said Dr. Stephanie Simmons, Chief Quantum Officer at Photonic. “That distinction has changed the conversation across our industry: efficient QLDPC logic is no longer a theoretical promise, it’s a demonstrated result, with real implications for architectures and timelines. SHYPS is a milestone for quantum error correction, and it is just the starting point. Since these results were initially released, we have continued to push the limits for how QLDPC codes can accelerate the timelines for quantum computing.”
Photonic introduced the Subsystem Hypergraph Product Simplex (SHYPS) codes, designed to perform quantum logic and error correction efficiently, greatly reducing the overhead requirements for high connectivity quantum systems. The fast and lean SHYPS codes are competitive with surface codes when it comes to logical clock time and performance. The peer-reviewed results demonstrate that at the code sizes tested, SHYPS codes require meaningfully fewer physical qubits than surface code.
Additional materials on SHYPS are available at the Photonic website www.photonic.com.
About Photonic
Photonic Inc. is a leading quantum technology company developing commercial-scale quantum computers and quantum networks to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges in materials science, drug discovery, climate change, and security. The company’s approach unlocks performance at scale through unmatched distributed quantum computing capabilities. Photonic’s high-connectivity Entanglement First architecture leverages a unique qubit modality, optically-linked silicon spin qubits, to enable powerful computation, efficient error correction, and seamless integration with existing data center and telecom environments. Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, with operations in the United States and United Kingdom, Photonic’s team of 180+ experts is advancing quantum technologies alongside leading investors, partners, and customers worldwide.
Popular left-wing streamer Hasan Piker drew stiff criticism from prominent Democrats on Monday after arguing that some Jewish Americans' support for Israel is "making antisemitism worse."
The president cited his tariff fight in a social media post, saying the United States doesn’t expect to be “doing much business with Ontario any longer.”
Aug. 25, 2026 — The U.S. National Science Foundation announced today that Princeton University will lead one of eight major initiatives to accelerate the development of quantum computing.
The Princeton-led Quantum Leap Challenge Institute will devise techniques for fabricating hardware and develop education and workforce training programs that deepen U.S. leadership in quantum science and engineering. The research institute will gather experts from wide-ranging fields to break a single, critical bottleneck — the manufacture of core components for quantum processors.
Princeton researchers Faranak Bahrami and Matthew Bland work with Nathalie de Leon, who wants to make superconducting quantum chips more commercially viable. Their work leading the new NSF institute will focus on updating a key microscopic device that has not meaningfully changed in 25 years. Photo credit: Matthew Raspanti, Princeton.
“The whole community has been using essentially the same materials technology for about a quarter century,” said Nathalie de Leon, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Princeton and co-director of the Princeton Quantum Initiative, who will direct the new institute. That technology has worked well for experimental prototypes and small-scale systems. But to build quantum computers at a scientifically useful scale, she said, the most basic elements must be reinvented.
The Princeton-led institute will receive $27.9 million in NSF funding over five years, according to the agency. The research team harnesses expertise from three broad disciplines — materials science, quantum devices and semiconductor processing — spanning two dozen laboratories across nine research institutions.
“There’s a huge barrier to solving the problem,” said Valla Fatemi, a physicist at Cornell University and the institute’s deputy director. “That’s why we need an institute like this, with all this multi-interdisciplinary expertise to solve it.”
Participating institutions include Princeton, Cornell, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California at Santa Barbara, Stanford University, Dartmouth College, NY Creates, Michigan State University and the University of Iowa. The organizations represented on the advisory board include Google Quantum AI, NVIDIA, Applied Materials, Oxford Instruments, Bluefors, KU Leuven/Imec and MIT Lincoln Laboratory. The new institute will be titled MARQUIS: Manufacturable and Resilient superconducting Quantum Information Systems. It is one of eight announced Aug. 25 in a $290 million round of funding in the NSF’s Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes program.
“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.”
In addition to reinventing the materials systems, the MARQUIS team will also develop methods to validate and compare the performance of various designs and to test them in mid-scale quantum processors — a step between the small systems typically developed in academic labs and the large processors that will one day run useful quantum algorithms.
These test beds will help standardize research efforts across disparate labs and allow experts from other fields to contribute meaningfully to the core challenge, according to the institute leaders. For example, semiconductor fabrication techniques that could prove valuable for quantum computing often involve highly specialized expertise that quantum researchers don’t have.
“In the semiconductor industry especially,” de Leon said, “a lot of the best knowledge is behind a curtain. And the literature is so vast, it’s hard for us to make sense of. So having a few key experts in the field who know what the right waypoints are and how to think about it is really crucial.”
David Graves, a Princeton professor of chemical and biological engineering and expert in the use of plasmas for semiconductor processing, serves as a co-principal investigator of the new institute.
De Leon’s own research has helped revolutionize component technologies for superconducting quantum devices through a collaboration with Andrew Houck, Princeton’s dean of engineering, and Robert Cava, a renowned solid-state chemist, as well as junior researchers from all three labs. Last year, that team published the largest advance in the field in more than a decade. The advance was based on re-imagining the materials used to build superconducting qubits, which store and process quantum information. Their qubits worked 15 times better than leading industry chips, and they have since made even more progress.
Those qubits are all based on a single circuit element called a Josephson junction. This junction consists of three metallic layers stacked like a sandwich, with a layer of oxidized metal in the middle that is only a few atoms thick. Pairs of linked electrons travel through the thin middle layer to create a system that can manipulate information using quantum mechanical rules. Virtually all of today’s qubits use junctions with aluminum and aluminum oxide, the same approach used in the first superconducting qubits more than twenty-five years ago. The new institute’s work will focus entirely on finding new approaches to fabricating the Josephson junction.
Nobel laureate Michel Devoret, who first demonstrated how these devices work, has called the decades-long effort to make better superconducting qubits a “graveyard” of ideas for aspiring physicists and engineers. He has also praised de Leon for taking on such a risky endeavor and making real progress. Devoret, a professor at UC Santa Barbara and chief scientist at Google Quantum AI, is one of the new institute’s senior investigators.
“We can see that the materials limitations are going to be one of the next big bottlenecks,” de Leon said. A large research institute creates mechanisms to coordinate the activities of lots of different people, she said. Her idea: Gather that firepower and aim it at one of the oldest obstacles in quantum computing.
“Let’s make a dream team,” de Leon said, “to try to unblock this.”
Canada has announced it will impose tariffs on a wide range of key American industries including cosmetics, dairy, wood products and outdoor equipment in the coming weeks, as it retaliates roughly “dollar for dollar” against levies imposed by the US.
In a strong Canadian countermove to tariffs levied by Donald Trump, which took effect on Saturday after trade talks collapsed the day before, Canada’s finance and industry ministers on Tuesday called the measure a “focused response” to what they see as unfair trade practices.
Vatican envoy Paul Gallagher met Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow earlier today, and Reuters has some snap quotes from Pope Leo XIV’s representative following the meeting. He is quoted as saying that “The Ukrainian war must end” and that the pair discussed “avenues for pursuing lasting and just peace in Ukraine”.
In relation to the post on a US military plane landing in Moscow (at 11:23), Reuters reported that the last time a US jet flew to Russia from Europe was in January, when special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner travelled to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin for peace talks.
The U.S. Virgin Islands have long drawn travelers with white sand and turquoise water, but a new global ranking gives beach lovers three more reasons to visit.
Apple has unveiled a new Mac mini with either its new M6 chip or the M5 Pro chip released earlier this year. It adds faster CPU, GPU, storage, and AI performance along with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and 2.5Gb Ethernet as standard. There's also a new higher starting price of $899, which is up from the previous $799 base price and far above the $599 starting price of the 2024 model. MacRumors reports: The M6 chip is equipped with a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU, up from a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU in the M5 chip. In addition, the M6 chip features the first-ever dual Neural Engine with two 16-core engines, up from one in previous chips. The M6 chip has up to 170GB/s memory bandwidth, up from 153GB/s for the M5 chip.
Apple said the Mac mini with the M6 chip delivers up to 40% faster CPU performance, up to 4x faster performance for AI tasks in particular, up to 2x faster graphics performance, and up to 2x faster storage speeds compared to the previous-generation model with the 10-core M4 chip, 32GB of unified memory, and 2TB of storage.
There are two M5 Pro configurations available, including one with a 15-core CPU and a 16-core GPU, and another with an 18-core CPU and a 20-core GPU. Both of these models are equipped with a single 16-core Neural Engine for AI tasks. For both the M6 and M5 Pro configurations, Apple said the Mac mini now includes Neural Accelerators in each GPU core for the first time.
Unannounced trip reported by US media is said to be Ratcliffe’s first known visit to Russia as CIA chief
The CIA director, John Ratcliffe, has made an unannounced visit to Moscow, US media reported, after flight data showed an American military aircraft flew to the Russian capital, where a US diplomatic motorcade was later spotted.
CBS News quoted sources familiar with the situation as confirming Ratcliffe’s trip, saying it was his first known visit to Russia as CIA chief. Axios separately confirmed the visit, quoting a US official.
Drivers concerned that bus operator’s offer to retrofit cabs on 730 buses will not be complete by next summer
London bus drivers have resumed strike action over having to work in high temperatures, amid fears that proposed improvements to air conditioning will not be complete by next summer.
About 1,500 members of the Unite union working across north London and Essex are taking part in the four-day strike from Tuesday to Friday, after industrial action earlier this month. Further stoppages are planned for the coming weeks.
Confidence index drops to 89.4 in August from 90.2 in July amid frustration after five years of elevated inflation
Americans’ confidence in the economy declined again this month as the ongoing conflict in Iran continued to push US gasoline prices above $4 per gallon.
The Conference Board said on Tuesday that its consumer confidence index dipped to 89.4 in August from 90.2 in July. That was the lowest level in seven months but was essentially within the same lukewarm range it has been in since the beginning of the year. In late 2024 and early 2025, readings were consistently above 100.
Oliver Blume faces workforce at German HQ as carmaker struggles against Chinese competition and US tariffs
The chief executive of Volkswagen has faced boos and whistles of protest at the company’s headquarters after telling thousands of workers that a comprehensive reorganisation, which could include job losses and factory closures, is vital for its future.
As Oliver Blume urged more than 10,000 workers on Tuesday to “pull together”, saying drastic restructuring measures at the struggling manufacturer were essential, they held up banners and shouted slogans, including: “Our jobs are not your balance sheet adjustments”.
A federal judge has rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal effort to throw out her 2021 conviction on sex-trafficking charges and 20-year prison sentence, calling her claims “demonstrably meritless, and generally based on speculation, distortions, and/or outright falsehoods”.
In a 67-page decision filed on Tuesday, the US district judge Paul Engelmayer for New York’s southern district denied the former British socialite’s petition for relief, finding that Maxwell had failed to make a substantial showing that her constitutional rights were denied when she was convicted for her role in crimes linked to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Exclusive: internal correspondence reveals USCIS anti-fraud officers shifted on to two ‘high-priority’ initiatives
All US immigration officers working for a key anti-fraud unit have been reassigned by the Trump administration to focus on screening South African refugees and alleged “unlawful” voters.
Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) immigration officers have been shifted full-time on to two “high-priority” initiatives, according to internal correspondence seen by the Guardian, leaving US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) unable to provide officers to train asylum officers in “the near future”.
The charges against Major Jason Watson are believed by his attorneys to be among the only instances for officers of his rank in the history of the U.S. military to be charged under Article 88.
Center Kate Koval departs after one season with Tigers
Anna Minaeva of Russia joined team earlier this month
Kim Mulkey hoped two could be ‘ambassadors’ for peace
Ukrainian center Kate Koval is leaving LSU less than two weeks after the Tigers brought in a player from Russia.
LSU coach Kim Mulkey said Monday night that Koval was leaving for “personal reasons”, adding that the program will “respect her privacy on her decision”.
Gonna go check it out today with my buddy, hes in a pint x and im on a gt-s, i see it on the app as having a good riding area and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations for there?
£10bn for housing with 60% social renting is at odds with PM’s previous call for programme to be spent entirely on social homes
Ministers are looking at “a range of support” for vulnerable households struggling with rising bills, the energy secretary has said ahead of tomorrow’s Ofgem announcement on the energy cap level.
PA Media reports forecasts have indicated that households could see their bills rise by another 4% to the equivalent of £1,729 a year, as the widened conflict in the Middle East sparked by Donald Trump’s war on Iran continues to push up wholesale energy prices.
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.
One in five Americans would sooner take cooking advice from a “food-fluencer” than from their own mom (18%), according to new research. A survey of 2,000 adults found that for many, social media is overtaking traditional ways of learning to…
The U.S. military revealed that an additional 60 service members have been injured in the Iran war, lifting the official toll to 776 troops wounded or killed. Some 345 of these casualties have occurred since July 7, after a second ceasefire imploded. As the numbers of dead and wounded troops have recently mounted, the Pentagon has quietly been seeking casualty and mortuary services, according to government contracting documents analyzed by The Intercept.
The increase of 60 wounded last week was called “an accounting trick,” by one U.S. government official who accused the Pentagon of “slow-walking” the total for weeks. “They wanted the heat on them to slow down after the really devastating attacks,” that source told The Intercept, referencing airstrikes on U.S. bases last month that exposed the vulnerability of U.S. troops to Iranian attacks.
The office of self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including when and where the injuries occurred.
Since the beginning of the Trump administration’s war with Iran, Hegseth’s department has posted the official count of casualties on the website of the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, which tracks “deceased, wounded, ill or injured” service members for Congress and the White House. Casualties since July 7 are now counted separately on a webpage with a generic title: “Overseas Operations.” Combined with totals for Operation Epic Fury — the military’s official designation for the initial months of the Iran war — 18 service members have died and 758 have been wounded since the U.S. launched the war against Iran on February 28, according to DCAS. This official total of dead and wounded personnel, as documented over months of reporting by The Intercept, has been a gross undercount, stemming from what that same official previously called a “casualty cover-up.”
In the face of the increasing number of dead and wounded troops, the military has been seeking a range of services related to personnel who are killed or wounded, according to new contracting documents analyzed by The Intercept. While the military regularly awards such contracts, the commands involved have not replied to questions concerning the possible relationship to the current conflict.
On Friday, for example, the Air Force announced it awarded a new contract for a full range of mortuary services at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. This includes transportation and refrigeration of remains, embalming, dressing, casketing or cremation, as well as funeral services. Last week, the Air Force also began looking into local firms that could fulfill a wide-ranging contract — including “mortuary services” — at Italy’s Aviano Air Base, a key hub for the war with Iran.
The public affairs offices at Robins Air Base and Aviano Air Base did not return requests for comment prior to publication.
Last week, the Army also announced it “desires to procure” casualty administrative support, including casualty case management services, at Fort Knox, Kentucky, for the Army’s Casualty and Mortuary Affairs Operations Division. Over 90 percent of the latest casualties are Army soldiers, and its storied Fort Knox base has been intimately involved in the conflict with Iran. The body of 26-year-old Sgt. Benjamin Pennington — who died of injuries resulting from an Iranian strike on a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia in March and was the first Kentuckian to die in the war — was sent home via Godman Army Airfield at Fort Knox. Six soldiers killed in an Iranian strike in Kuwait that same month were operating under the 1st Theater Sustainment Command which is headquartered at the base.
Fort Knox did not respond to a request for comment and further information about the contract and the losses from the war prior to publication.
The recent casualty spike resulted from Iranian attacks on around 10 U.S. outposts across the Middle East since July 9, according to a second U.S. official who previously spoke to The Intercept. Iran’s military managed to overwhelm U.S. air defense systems using a mix of attack drones and advanced ballistic missiles, despite months of claims by President Donald Trump and Hegseth that Iran’s military was annihilated.
Last month, the tally of wounded personnel fluctuated by the day in the wake of increased Iranian attacks. On July 21, the casualty count on DCAS for Operation Epic Fury stood at 500. Now, it has shrunk to 431.
For months, The Intercept found anomalies with the counts offered on the DCAS website. On April 21, for example, the number of wounded-in-action troops declined by 15 without public acknowledgment by the War Department. Despite repeated questions for months, the Pentagon has not commented on the disparities in its casualty count.
Prior reporting by The Intercept also found DCAS is missing hundreds of wounded or dead personnel from the Iran war. The Pentagon’s list of the names of the dead is still missing Maj. Sorffly Davius, a signals and communication officer with the New York Army National Guard who was assigned to the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division and reportedly died while on duty in Camp Buehring, Kuwait, on March 6. Davius’s death was widely acknowledged even as it was excluded from the official count. Gen. Dan Caine, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, recognized Davius while “honoring our fallen.”
While DCAS provides a running tally of “non-hostile” deaths — meaning those who died from accidents or by illness — it doesn’t include “non-hostile” injuries. The DCAS figures for Epic Fury show that 65 Navy personnel were wounded in action. Missing, however, are the more than 200 sailors treated for smoke inhalation or lacerations due to a March 12 fire that raged aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford. The aircraft carrier had been conducting round-the-clock flight operations to, Caine said, “project combat power” in the Middle East.
CNN was the first to report a significant increase in wounded troops last week.
The World Health Organization puts the Iranian casualty toll at an estimated 37,181, including 3,375 deaths. Iranian state and semi-official media reported similar figures — just under 3,500 killed by U.S.-Israeli air strikes. Last week, The Intercept reported on a family of eight, including five children, killed in one of those attacks.
Anthony Seldon’s book alleges Badenoch asked fellow Tory ministers ‘if anyone was interested in changing the captain’
Kemi Badenoch plotted with fellow Conservative cabinet ministers to remove Rishi Sunak as prime minister months before the general election, it has been claimed.
Anthony Seldon, who has written political biographies of every prime minister since John Major, has alleged in a new book that Badenoch, who was business secretary at the time, phoned several other cabinet ministers to ask “if anyone was interested in changing the captain”.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, front left, and senior U.S. military leaders listen to President Donald Trump speak at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia in 2025. Evan Vucci/AP Photo
Shortly after taking office last year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth polled the nation’s top commanders about cutting a program designed to protect civilians during U.S. military operations.
Hegseth had bet senior officers would endorse his view that focusing on civilian security was “woke” and out of step with “maximum lethality,” current and former defense officials told ProPublica.
Instead, every commander rebuffed the idea.
The poll from early 2025, which has not been previously reported, cemented top-level military support for Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response, a relatively new program adopted after years of heavy civilian tolls in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. As part of its mission, CHMR (pronounced “chimmer”) stationed personnel within major regional commands. Officials tried to develop a picture of life on the ground in combat zones to aid decision-making on military strikes and avoid or minimize civilian harm.
In the poll, Hegseth gave commanders three options: cut 65% of staff but keep the effort operational, continue with only a small centralized office in Washington, or eliminate the program.
Nine commanders chose the first option to preserve the enterprise as much as possible, according to a memo reviewed by ProPublica. Leaders of two commands, one overseeing the nuclear arsenal and the other focused on cyber threats, declined all three options, asking to maintain the full program.
Leaders at U.S. Central Command, the Tampa, Florida-based center that oversees military action in the Middle East, pressed to keep its full CHMR staff of 16. Eliminating or scaling back the effort would “result in decreased efficiency of U.S. lethal operations due to an increased risk of target misidentification and reduced battlespace awareness,” a memo reviewed by ProPublica said.
Retired Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, who was then in charge of Central Command, and several other senior officers directly involved in combat operations had appealed to Hegseth to keep the program. They explained that it was a valuable tool, another retired general said — but “that intent was overridden.”
Hegseth gutted the effort, leaving only a handful of people to carry out the mission. It was stripped of almost all of its funding, even as the U.S. launched new campaigns in Somalia, Yemen and Iran. One official summed up the Hegseth approach as: “Bombs away!”
Hegseth’s early exchanges with the generals made clear that the civilian harm program had no future in his reimagined “Department of War.”
But now, after U.S. missile strikes have killed hundreds of civilians in Iran and Yemen, episodes that drew global criticism and questions from Congress, the program could soon be partially revived.
The about-face would mark a rare reversal in a department that hasn’t tolerated dissent under Hegseth and President Donald Trump. Last year’s military memos detail a delicate pushback that may preserve at least the framework of the civilian security campaign.
Current and former defense officials described the evolution of the civilian security program on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the Trump administration.
The Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment about the poll or the program’s revival.
Casualties, Outrage
The first major military operation of Hegseth’s tenure — an air campaign in Yemen in the spring of 2025 — killed 153 civilians and wounded 243 others. The majority of the deaths came from just two strikes, ranking them among the deadliest for civilians the Pentagon has acknowledged in modern warfare, said Airwars, a British watchdog that tracks civilian harm from military operations. The toll was confirmed in the Pentagon’s 2025 annual report for civilian casualties, The Washington Post first reported.
By the time the U.S. began attacking Iran the next year, the Pentagon’s civilian protection program was down from a little under 200 people to around two dozen, some working only part time, the current and former defense officials said. Central Command, which said it needed a minimum of nine of its 16 staffers to function, was left with one person.
On the first day of the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran, a U.S. airstrike hit a school in Minab, a city near the Strait of Hormuz, killing more than 100 children and igniting international outrage.
The Shajarat al-Tayyiba Primary School is in ruins in Minab, Iran, on March 31.Hamid Vakili/Anadolu via Getty Images
Hegseth and the commander in charge of the Iran operation, Adm. Brad Cooper, were questioned about the strike before Congress. Hegseth said the U.S. does not target civilians and would investigate. Early reports on that investigation, yet to be publicly released, have said outdated U.S. intelligence led to the attack on the school.
Democratic senators and humanitarian groups questioned whether the cuts to the civilian protection personnel also contributed to the school tragedy.
In a letter to Hegseth in April, 11 senators said the school strike, as well as other deadly attacks on civilians in Iran, reflected “the administration’s broader disregard for the strategic, legal, and moral imperative to minimize civilian harm,” noting the dismantling of civilian harm reduction efforts. “This is a concerning pattern and raises questions about whether the administration is upholding international law and the laws of war,” it said.
Previously, a Pentagon spokesperson declined to answer questions from ProPublica about the letter, saying it would “respond directly” to Congress.
Concerns were voiced by military leaders before Hegseth largely eliminated the operation. One exception is the Department of the Army, headed by a civilian appointee, which agreed with getting rid of CHMR entirely.
Leaders at Central Command told Hegseth’s top staff in a memo that CHMR “enhanced our precision and accuracy, making us more lethal.” The memo added, “The operational and strategic value of this work is widely recognized.”
At the same time, the Joint Staff echoed the commanders’ sentiment. According to correspondence reviewed by ProPublica, the Joint Staff disagreed with the Army acting secretary, who said in a February 2025 memo that the program was redundant and recommended Congress repeal the law that set it in motion.
As pressure has built from both Congress and within the military to restore the program, the Defense Department appears to have backpedaled.
In April, Elbridge Colby, the Defense Department’s under secretary of policy, sent a follow-up memo about the civilian protection enterprise to Hegseth. This time, there was only one proposal on the table: reboot the program, albeit at reduced staff levels with 70 full-time people.
In that memo, Colby wrote that maintaining 35% of CHMR would address investigations into civilian harm, reports to Congress and payments to those harmed.
The same commanders Hegseth polled earlier endorsed the move, several defense officials told ProPublica.
The proposal would allow all regional commands to reconstitute their civilian harm reduction staff, and the Virginia-based Civilian Protection Center of Excellence for training, data and research would move from under the Army to the Joint Staff. The move, officials say, gives the mission more heft and eases collaboration with the Navy and Air Force, which are at the forefront of the administration’s campaigns.
“If not for the combatant commanders,” one defense official said, the program would be “dead.”
The harm mitigation effort makes up a tiny fraction of the Defense Department’s billions in spending. The center near the Pentagon had an annual budget of $7 million, officials said, with the cross-command total for all civilian security work estimated at around $80 million before the cuts. Officials expect a refashioned program to operate on a smaller budget.
Military leaders steeped in lessons learned from the post-9/11 “forever wars” repeatedly have affirmed harm mitigation as an asset on the battlefield. Civilian casualties undermine U.S. objectives and help boost insurgent recruiting, analysts say.
The Pentagon had formalized CHMR in 2022, detailing steps to protect noncombatants and investigate reports of casualties. Commanders had publicly championed the program in congressional testimony and defense journals. The current head of European Command, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, co-wrote a paper calling it a “watershed” development.
In some cases the staff acted as a “red team” pushing back on strikes and the possible collateral damage. The center of excellence focused on institutionalizing best practices, training service members and collecting data on civilian harm.
Those efforts and “operational effectiveness are the same thing,” one retired general told ProPublica. “They’re two sides of the same coin.”
‘A child isn’t born to commit gun violence,’ Francisco Villarruel says
Francisco Villarruel and Gustavo Galvez sat in a park in Los Angeles reminiscing on their first boxing lesson together. They had gone to a big commercial gym, where they took turns hitting boxing pads and doing footwork exercises. They then started regularly training together.
For Villarruel, 40, working out together wasn’t really about boxing. It was about giving Galvez, 19, an opportunity to open up and to mentor someone whose pain he understands. “ I think a lot of the traumatic scenarios that he went through are very similar to mine in my upbringing,” Villarruel said.
Motorola is working with GrapheneOS to officially support the privacy-focused Android alternative on its 2027 flagship phones, starting with a non-folding model and later expanding to the next Razr Fold and Razr Ultra. "These will ship with Motorola's normal Android skin, but you will be able to switch to GrapheneOS later if you want to," notes GSMArena.com. GrapheneOS says the devices will "meet or exceed" its hardware and update requirements, and will include seven years of "proper updates." Interestingly, Motorola will be doing much of the porting work itself.
Multicultural Business Coalition sues New York City mayor, alleging plan for city-run stores will harm smaller grocers
A New York City business group sued mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday over his plan to create five municipally owned grocery stores.
The Multicultural Business Coalition, which says it represents hundreds of small supermarkets, filed two lawsuits in New York county supreme court on Monday, arguing that the plan violates the civil rights of smaller, immigrant- and minority-owned businesses. The group argues that smaller stores would be unable to match the discounts offered by the city grocery stores and “therefore, will be put out of business,” according to the lawsuits.
Philip Jerome, 49, repeatedly tried to contact actor in hope they would begin a relationship, court hears
A fan obsessed with Billie Piper has been jailed for 12 months after breaching a stalking prevention order.
Philip Jerome, 49, from Winchester, had a sexual interest in the singer and actor, and repeatedly tried to get in touch with her in the hope they would end up in a relationship, a court in Hampshire was told.
Then Advocate editor-in-chief and writer testified editorial was not part of agenda against Jefferson Davis Hughes III
A jury on Monday awarded $300,000 to a Louisiana supreme court justice over a 2019 editorial by the state’s largest newspaper in a rare defamation trial involving an elected public official.
Jurors in Iberville parish, Louisiana, found that the editorial whose headline included “Jeff Hughes … made a mockery of justice” and was published by the Advocate had defamed state supreme court justice Jefferson Davis Hughes III. The $300,000 in damages that the jury awarded Hughes were nonetheless significantly less than the $10m he sought for what he described as injury to his reputation and emotional distress.
A plant in Southaven, Mississippi, that powers Elon Musk's SpaceXAI data centers in the area has sparked backlash from residents concerned about noise and air pollution.
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
Deaths from disease are first in state in 35 years and just one day after Maryland declared outbreak in three counties
Two unvaccinated individuals have died of measles in Pennsylvania, state health officials announced on Tuesday. The deaths are the first in the state in 35 years and have been announced just one day after Maryland declared a measles outbreak in three counties.
Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known to medicine, and is preventable with a highly effective vaccine.
Lancaster, Pennsylvania — Two unvaccinated people have died during Pennsylvania’s expanding measles outbreak, marking the state’s first measles-related deaths in 35 years and the first reported U.S. fatalities from the disease this year.
Both people lived in Lancaster County, which has been the center of the outbreak. Pennsylvania has confirmed 393 measles cases across the state this year, including 86 during the past week, and 70 patients have been hospitalized with complications.
“People are not familiar with this disease and don’t fully understand the potential severity of the illness,” state Health Secretary Dr. Debra Bogen said while urging vaccination.
Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recorded 2,777 measles cases as of Aug. 20, the highest U.S. total in 35 years. Most cases have occurred among people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown.
Lancaster County’s childhood MMR vaccination rate has fallen from 95.5% in 2017 to 87.6% in 2025, according to NBC News. The two-dose MMR vaccine provides about 97% protection against measles.
The deaths come weeks after President Donald Trump issued an order seeking changes to childhood vaccination recommendations, including separating the combined MMR vaccine despite opposition from major medical organizations.
Wonder why they’re posting flirty photos and wearing tight T-shirts? It’s a thirst trap strategy in motion
Despite being a card-carrying member of the International Order of Confirmed Homosexuals, I have spent quite a lot of time lately thinking about Abdul El-Sayed’s biceps. I mean, have you seen them? The progressive Michigan senate nominee is jacked and he knows it. He almost always wears a tight black T-shirt to show off his muscles and incorporates a lot of fitness content in his campaign.
I’m not the only one who has noticed El-Sayed’s prominent muscles. They have had a lot of coverage, and are seen as part of a wider attempt to rebrand the Democratic party. Which, I don’t need to tell you, has a serious image problem; a poll in March found that the party is looked on even less favourably than the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. So, to make it look less like a party that is full of out-of-touch technocrats who sound as if they are reading from a 500-page PowerPoint presentation every time they try to explain anything, Democrats seem to be trying to up the sex appeal.
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As former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown seeks to oust Republican Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio, some of Brown’s past Congressional votes have become targets for criticism — again.
During an Aug. 4 Fox News interview, Husted said Brown “supported Social Security payments for illegals, healthcare for illegals and COVID checks for illegals.”
Brown faced the same accusations in 2024 from his then-challenger, Republican Bernie Moreno, who defeated Brown in his race for a fourth Senate term.
Brown cast votes on Social Security, healthcare and COVID-19 relief while a senator, but the votes that Husted’s campaign pointed to would not have provided any federal benefits to immigrants in the country illegally.
Some of the measures he voted on stemmed from a practice both parties engage in: forcing members of the other political party to vote on amendments that don’t align with the party’s positions, and using those votes in later campaign messaging.
Social Security amendment would have applied to legal residents
Husted’s team cited Brown’s July 19, 2007, vote against an amendment that would have prevented immigrants who were once in the U.S. illegally but later became legal residents from receiving Social Security credit for taxes paid before they gained legal status.
However, Brown’s vote would not have allowed Social Security benefits to be given to people who were in the country illegally. Rather, any benefits would be received only after they had become legal residents.
Husted’s assertion also cherry-picked Brown’s votes. A few months after the first vote, in October 2007, Brown voted in favor of an amendment that would have blocked immigrants from receiving Social Security credit for taxes paid while they were in the country illegally. This amendment did not address the scenario in which someone gained legal status later.
Measure wouldn’t have changed healthcare benefit recipients
Husted’s campaign cited Brown’s March 23, 2013, vote against an amendment introduced by then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said immigrants in the U.S. illegally should not be eligible for federally subsidized healthcare.
However, the amendment would not have changed who could receive those benefits, because federal law already prohibited immigrants in the country illegally from receiving Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Affordable Care Act subsidies.
The same day in 2013, the Senate considered an amendment reaffirming that immigrants who are in the country illegally cannot receive federal benefits. That amendment passed by voice vote. Although the vote was not recorded by the individual senators’ names, Brown’s campaign told PolitiFact he voted for it.
Stimulus check recipients were already limited
Brown voted for the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act that included $1,400 stimulus checks for millions of Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the bill was being considered, Republicans offered an amendment to prevent stimulus checks from going to immigrants in the country illegally — specifically, it said anyone who is “not lawfully present” in the U.S. should not receive a stimulus check.
The bill already included provisions preventing people in the U.S. illegally from receiving such checks by requiring recipients to have valid Social Security numbers. But Republican backers of the amendment said they aimed to close a potential loophole that could allow some recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to receive stimulus payments.
DACA, established in 2012, protects eligible immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children from deportation and allows them to obtain work authorization and valid Social Security numbers. Some DACA recipients might have qualified for COVID-19 stimulus payments because they have Social Security numbers.
Brown voted against this March 6, 2021 amendment. But Husted’s claim ignored the provision’s practical scope: The overwhelming majority of immigrants in the country illegally were already excluded from receiving relief checks because they lacked qualifying Social Security numbers.
Our ruling
Husted said Brown “supported Social Security payments for illegals, healthcare for illegals and COVID checks for illegals.”
The votes in question — in 2007, 2013 and 2021, respectively — did not make immigrants in the country illegally eligible for those benefits.
The Social Security vote addressed how past tax payments would be counted for immigrants who later gained legal status. The healthcare vote would not have legalized the payment of benefits to people in the U.S. illegally, because federal law already bars such payments. Similarly, the COVID-19 relief bill already outlawed stimulus payments to the vast majority of people in the U.S. illegally.
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.
TORONTO, Aug. 25, 2026 — Xanadu Quantum Technologies Limited has announced the next phase of its collaboration with Mitsubishi Chemical to advance semiconductor fabrication technologies using quantum computing algorithms. This next phase is supported by national innovation programs from both the Canadian and Japanese governments, aiming to scale Xanadu and Mitsubishi’s previous work in simulating a vital process in next-generation semiconductor fabrication: extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Bringing together both Canadian and Japanese expertise in quantum computing and materials science, this collaboration underscores a shared commitment to driving global innovation in the semiconductor industry through quantum technologies.
EUV lithography enables the creation of powerful chips used across multiple industries, such as mobile, AI, and advanced computing, and is crucial for current and next-generation semiconductor manufacturing. However, its efficiency is often hindered by radiation-induced blurring, an inherently quantum phenomenon that remains a major bottleneck for classical simulations.
In phase one of Xanadu and Mitsubishi’s collaboration, the two companies demonstrated that quantum algorithms can accurately model key aspects of EUV lithography, specifically the optical properties of the photoresists used to etch lithographic patterns. The next phase of the collaboration aims to develop a production-ready workflow that will take parameters derived from Xanadu’s quantum computing simulations and integrate them directly into Mitsubishi’s multi-scale models to predict blur. The result will be a fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC)-ready software pipeline designed to identify materials that prevent blurring and secure a competitive advantage in semiconductor manufacturing.
Xanadu plans to provide a concrete demonstration and roadmap for how quantum computing can contribute to the development of EUV resist materials through this collaboration.
This second phase of the collaboration is being advanced with support from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) and Japan’s Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP). The relevant SIP project is led by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and the Global Research and Development Center for Business by Quantum-AI Technology (G-QuAT). The collaboration aims to further strengthen research and business collaboration between the two countries’ technology sectors.
Xanadu has previously received advisory services and more than $800,000 in funding from NRC IRAP, supporting its R&D in quantum computing across several projects, which helped lay the groundwork for this advancement.
“Our collaboration with Mitsubishi bridges quantum simulation and semiconductor fabrication, eliminating a critical manufacturing bottleneck and securing a competitive advantage for next-generation semiconductor technology. The funding from both the Canadian and Japanese governments underscores the importance of this partnership to advance the semiconductor industry globally,” said Dr. Christian Weedbrook, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Xanadu.
“This partnership expands on Mitsubishi’s previously successful collaboration with Xanadu, where we demonstrated the utility of quantum computing in simulating EUV resist materials for semiconductor manufacturing,” said Dr. Qi Gao, Senior Chief Scientist at Mitsubishi Chemical. “With support from national innovation programs and research organizations in both countries, we’re excited to bring together Canadian and Japanese expertise in quantum computing and materials science.”
“This project is a great example of connecting cutting-edge quantum computing research with real industrial challenges. In the critical field of semiconductor materials development, we expect this Japan-Canada collaboration to accelerate the real-world implementation of quantum technology. At SIP, we look forward to the new industrial value this initiative will create,” said Dr. Masahiro Horibe, Sub-Program Director, Cross-ministerial SIP and Deputy Director, G-QuAT, AIST.
This shared initiative between Xanadu and Mitsubishi aims to showcase quantum computing innovation on the world stage while advancing critical quantum simulation capabilities for the global semiconductor industry. By bridging quantum innovation with industrial application, this continued partnership will establish a blueprint for quantum-driven material discovery. As Xanadu and Mitsubishi Chemical advance this joint pipeline, their work aims to unlock commercial value for early FTQC systems, while driving the future of global semiconductor fabrication.
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 compute 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.
PM known to be keen to attend UN general assembly after meeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine
UK officials are making preparations for a potential meeting between Andy Burnham and Donald Trump after the prime minister said he hoped to attend next month’s UN general assembly in New York.
Burnham is known to be particularly keen to attend the annual gathering after meeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Monday, when he pledged to help drum up more international support for Ukraine.
The Guardian’s Luke Harding discussed Trump, Putin and the state of the war in Ukraine, his expulsion from Russia, his new book Betrayal, and his career as a foreign correspondent
Ipswichred asks: Why is Russia considered a wider threat when it cannot even defeat Ukraine?
Pressfreedomorbust asks: What do you think is the likelihood of Russia taking military action (drones or troops) against another country such as Poland or Estonia? This would force Nato to use its military resources on this second conflict instead of supplying Ukraine.
Russia says it is at war not just with Ukraine, but the “collective west”. Accordingly, it carries out a number of hostile actions against the UK and EU countries. They include sabotage (undersea cables, bombs on cargo planes), disinformation and support for pro-Russian Eurosceptic parties (AFD in Germany, Reform in Britain, etc.)
Last year Moscow sent a swarm of decoy drones into Poland, to probe Nato’s defences. European leaders are generally reluctant to describe the Kremlin’s acts as war, preferring to use the qualifier “hybrid”. For now Putin is bogged down in Ukraine. In the meantime, Russia’s diversionary behaviour will continue. I wouldn’t rule out some kind of military “provocation”, probably limited in scope, against a Nato country.
He’s safe. There was much speculation around the time of the full-scale invasion that Putin was sick and possibly dying. This turned out to be wishful thinking. Similarly, there is little prospect of a palace coup or popular revolution in Russia. The reality is Putin will stay in power for life. Most people support him, state propaganda is as potent as ever, and the security services keep a close eye on dissent. Many of those who oppose him left the country in 2022. The majority are passive and fatalistic. The fate of Alexey Navalny - murdered in a Siberian gulag in 2024, likely on Putin’s orders - sent its own grim message.
Robert Corrigan has been dealing with the ‘smart’ rodents all his life – and believes there are better solutions to deal with the growing infestation in the world’s cities
“The rodents have paid for every single bill I’ve ever had – every mortgage, every car payment, every pint of Guinness,” says Dr Robert Corrigan. “It’s been a great ride and I’m still at it.”
New York-based Corrigan is one of the most respected voices in the world of rodentology. Now in his 70s, he has devoted his entire adult life to studying rats and our relationship with them.
Aug. 25, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Princeton University have extended the contract for Princeton’s management and operation of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), located on the University’s Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, New Jersey.
PPPL’s primary fusion experiment is the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U), which is designed to be the world’s most powerful spherical tokamak. Credit: PPPL.
“Princeton is proud to continue its longstanding partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy, building on a shared commitment to scientific excellence,” said Peter Schiffer, the University’s dean for research and vice president for PPPL. “PPPL is renowned for innovative and world-leading plasma research and advancing the science and engineering needed to realize fusion energy.”
“At PPPL, we have big ideas and do big science that reverberates around the world and through history,” said Steve Cowley, PPPL laboratory director. “We’re excited to continue that tradition through our renewed partnership with Princeton University, enabling us to pursue groundbreaking science for years to come.”
PPPL’s historic focus on plasma and fusion research has recently expanded to include substantial research efforts in microelectronics, quantum computing and artificial intelligence. PPPL’s primary fusion experiment is the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U), which is designed to be the world’s most powerful spherical tokamak. The Laboratory is also home to the Facility for Laboratory Reconnection Experiments, a national collaborative research facility studying magnetic reconnection.
Under the five-year contract extension, which commences April 1, 2027, the University expects to invest in increasing collaborations with Princeton faculty, exploring a next-generation facility for fusion energy research, and enhancing site infrastructure and safety for the next phase of operations.
PPPL partners with industry and research institutions to advance the development of fusion and plasma technologies. As one of the select participants in DOE’s Genesis Mission, the Laboratory pioneers artificial intelligence and high-performance computing to accelerate fusion research. It also collaborates with private companies through DOE’s Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program, the Milestone-Based Fusion Development program and through other partnership channels. PPPL is also working with the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and venture capital firm SOSV to launch the NJ HAX Plasma Forge to accelerate plasma technology commercialization and start-up development in New Jersey.
Princeton has operated PPPL since the Laboratory’s inception in 1951, when it was called Project Matterhorn and under the leadership of founding Director Lyman Spitzer. PPPL is one of 10 National Laboratories stewarded by DOE’s Office of Science, and one of only 17 DOE laboratories nationwide. Together, these laboratories comprise a preeminent federal research system that provides the nation with strategic scientific and technological capabilities.
At least one in four former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 was found to have had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), according to a study released on Tuesday.
Out of the 878 former players who died during that time frame, 235 donated their brains for study, researchers said, with 215 of those donated brains found to have CTE, a degenerative disease that can only definitively be diagnosed after death. CTE is associated with repeated blows to the head, including concussions. Symptoms include difficulty with attention and memory, dementia, mood disorders and headaches.
A total of 17 people have now been arrested over Saturday’s crash in which car drove wrong way along dual carriageway
Five more people have been arrested by detectives investigating a crash that killed seven people, including two police officers.
PC Matthew Blades, 37, and PC Tom Clough, 38, were killed on Saturday when a Volkswagen Passat, which had been pursued by police, was driven the wrong way down the A66 near Middlesbrough and hit their marked armed response vehicle.
Kenya Glasgow and her toddler died after lightning struck in Margate, near Fort Lauderdale
A mother and her toddler were killed recently by a lightning strike in south Florida, local authorities said.
The tragedy happened in Margate, near Fort Lauderdale, on Sunday. The victims were Kenya Glasgow, 31, and her two-year-old daughter, named in media reports as Kennedi.
LIVINGSTON, N.J., Aug. 25, 2026 — CoreWeave, Inc. today announced Rescale will expand its cloud ecosystem to CoreWeave Cloud to support AI and simulation workloads powering next-generation product development. With CoreWeave’s purpose-built AI cloud, Rescale customers across aerospace, automotive, energy, life sciences, and manufacturing can run demanding simulations and AI workloads at the speed and scale their breakthrough engineering requires.
Rescale’s digital engineering platform unifies the compute infrastructure, simulation software, and AI capabilities that R&D and engineering teams depend on to bring breakthrough products to market faster. Through integration with CoreWeave Kubernetes Service (CKS), Rescale customers can seamlessly access an AI cloud platform optimized for generative AI and HPC workloads. CKS enables scalable, containerized orchestration with high-performance networking and storage, allowing engineering teams to run distributed simulations and AI models efficiently without managing underlying infrastructure.
“As Rescale customers move deeper into AI physics and agentic engineering workflows, the compute demands are fundamentally different from traditional simulation,” said John Moonshower, chief revenue officer at Rescale. “CoreWeave’s AI cloud platform is purpose-built for those workloads, and this collaboration ensures engineers on the Rescale platform have the infrastructure to match.”
“The engineers using Rescale are running some of the most demanding simulations in the world,” said Jon Jones, chief revenue officer at CoreWeave. “Rescale gives its customers access to CoreWeave’s AI-optimized cloud services with the performance and flexibility their engineering workloads demand. That’s what CoreWeave is built to deliver.”
CoreWeave’s AI cloud platform delivers industry-leading performance and efficiency through an end-to-end technology stack optimized for modern AI and HPC workloads. Its platform is trusted by leading AI labs, startups, and global enterprises, and is designed to support the full lifecycle of AI development, from experimentation and training to production inference and large-scale simulation.
CoreWeave’s technology team consistently sets new standards for performance, demonstrated by industry-leading MLPerf benchmark results and its position as the only AI cloud to earn top platinum rankings in both SemiAnalysis ClusterMAX 1.0 and 2.0, the definitive rating system for AI cloud performance, efficiency, and reliability.
About CoreWeave
CoreWeave is The Essential Cloud for AI. Built for pioneers by pioneers, CoreWeave delivers a platform of technology, tools, and teams that enables innovators to move at the pace of innovation, building and scaling AI with confidence. Trusted by leading AI labs, startups, and global enterprises, CoreWeave serves as a force multiplier by combining superior infrastructure performance with deep technical expertise to accelerate breakthroughs. Established in 2017, CoreWeave completed its public listing on Nasdaq (CRWV) in March 2025. Learn more at www.coreweave.com.
About Rescale
Rescale is the digital engineering platform for the AI era. The R&D and engineering teams shaping the future trust the Rescale platform to accelerate innovation. Rescale integrates agentic digital engineering, AI physics, advanced modeling and simulation, and intelligent HPC solutions on a single platform to unify product data, automate workflows, optimize HPC resources, and bring breakthroughs to market faster. For more information, visit rescale.com.
German investigators uncovered a third drone and suspected military explosives thought to be connected to an attempted attack on Leipzig airport, local media have reported.
The drone was discovered in Kabelsketal, just to the west of the airport, along with about 50g (1.8oz) of a suspected military explosive on 14 August, 10 days after the unsuccessful sabotage. Leipzig airport is a cargo and military logistics hub used by Nato and Ukraine’s Antonov Airlines for transporting military supplies.
US president has been obsessed with restricting the ability to vote by mail, despite using it himself. Plus, why we are still fascinated with Meg from the White Stripes
Good morning. The US supreme court has sided with Donald Trump in his effort to crack down on mail-in voting, though it is unclear whether or not his administration will be able to take action before the midterm elections in November. The court’s justices voted 6-3 along ideological lines to lift an injunction that a judge in Massachusetts had placed in June on an executive order issued by the president. But a second injunction remains in place, and the ruling leaves room for legal challenges.
Trump has repeatedly likened voting by mail to cheating, despite his own use of it and overwhelming evidence that the system is secure. In March he ordered the government to create a “state citizenship list” of eligible voters, requiring that mail-in ballots only be delivered to people on that list. He also directed the justice department to prioritise investigations and prosecutions of state and local election officials who issue ballots to people deemed ineligible to vote in federal elections.
What did the dissenting judges say? In a blistering dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections”.
How have rights organisations reacted? The president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Derrick Johnson, said: “Let this ruling be a reminder that democracy is never, ever guaranteed. We have to fight for it, we have to fight to keep it and we have to protect the rights we do have within it … they are trying to do everything they possibly can to make it difficult for you to vote.”
How has Canada reacted? The country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, told reporters that Trump’s announcement was largely expected. “It’s not a surprise for us that the US would take some form of reprisal to our response to their unjustified tariff,” he said. Carney has vowed to match the American tariffs “dollar for dollar”, and said Canada could not accept any proposed trade deal that would weaken French language protections.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day: Can a political party’s disagreements become a democratic strength rather than an excuse to surrender to one man’s whims?
A Madman’s Trade War: Trump’s tariff tantrum with Canada will make ordinary people pay more for the privilege of watching him posture.
Hegseth vs Stars and Stripes: The War Secretary’s latest campaign to muzzle the press reveals an administration that fears an informed military as much as an informed public.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott takes aim at Muslim washing stations in airports: Abbott’s attack on modest Muslim accommodations exposes the hypocrisy behind his selective concern for religious freedom.
Under the Falls by Richard Russo: The Pulitzer Prize winner’s new novel turns a rock star’s return to his old town into a richly drawn reckoning with memory, resentment, and the people left behind.
Eleanor Collins - “Look to the Rainbow”: Canada’s First Lady of Jazz offers a tender reminder that our neighbors to the north deserve better than the foolish trade war being imposed on them.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day
“I don’t belong to any organized political faith. I am a Democrat.”
Will Rogers (1879–1935), American humorist and social commentator
(Photo by American Stock/Getty Images)
Once upon a time, Will Rogers was probably the most quoted man in America, and one of the funniest. He had Cherokee heritage on both sides of his family, and said that his people didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but “they met the boat.” Having grown up on a ranch in Oklahoma, he got his start in vaudeville doing rope tricks, but his quick wit soon saw him move in front of the microphone, where he entertained audiences with quips about the news of the day. Eventually, he became one of the highest-paid stars in motion pictures, as well as a radio commentator and widely syndicated newspaper columnist for papers like the Washington Post.
Today, he’s all but forgotten, except for a few of his most famous quips. This one dates to April 1933, a month after his fellow Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was first inaugurated President. Although the country was in the midst of the Great Depression, the party was actually in better shape than it had been in many years, with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress following the 1932 election. Rogers had been a strong supporter of FDR, though at one point during the convention, his fellow Oklahomans cast their 22 votes for Rogers as a favorite-son candidate.
As we approach this year’s midterm primaries, the Democratic Party looks to be in a very strong position to take control of the House of Representatives, with a fair chance to also win a majority in the Senate. But Rogers’ quote still seems to apply, and if you are a regular watcher of cable news, you can expect to hear it repeated a few times between now and November. That’s because there’s a significant ideological gulf between the so-called “establishment” wing of the party, headed by minority leaders Chuck Schumer of the Senate and Hakeem Jeffries of the House, and the Democratic Socialists of America, led by Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
This has some Democrats more than a little worried, but I actually think it’s a good thing. Across the aisle, we’ve seen what happens when a single person exerts absolute control over one of our political parties. Today’s Republican Party is a cult of personality, with every position dictated by the whim of its increasingly irrational and reactive leader. While common sense would tell us that not everyone agrees with his every pronouncement on Truth [sic] Social, woe be unto the one who dares to disagree with Dear Leader: a primary challenge and a one-way ticket out of Washington are your rewards for showing any independence or evidence of principles.
On the Democratic side, there’s room for disagreement on fundamental issues like immigration, police funding, military spending, housing reforms, and, perhaps most vexing, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Disagreement, in turn, stirs debate, which can lead to compromise. A lawyer friend once told me that a good compromise is one in which everyone comes away a little bit unhappy. That might be true, but a little bit of unhappiness leaves plenty of room for a little bit of happiness, too.
A Democratic Party that settles somewhere between the far left and the center will be well positioned to take back the White House in 2028, and with it control of the country. That would be a huge improvement over where we are today: at war with Iran, feuding with our traditional allies, siding with autocracies and theocracies that violate basic human rights, all while denying and ignoring an economic crisis that’s leaving too many Americans on a downward spiral out of the middle class. The Democrats may not be an organized political party, but the Republican Party’s organizing principles seem to be chaos, cruelty, and greed, none of which are in the best interests of the vast majority of the American people. Disorganized? Perhaps. But the Democratic Party looks to me like American democracy’s only chance at survival.
Iran's economy minister said the country has been preparing for a long time for the sanctions U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described as the "greatest financial offensive" ever.
Washington, D.C. — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his administration is considering renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” as the United States and Canada enter another round of escalating tariffs and increasingly hostile rhetoric.
“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America,” Trump wrote on social media, adding that Washington does not expect to conduct much business with Ontario. The statement echoed Trump’s 2025 executive action renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
The proposal came after U.S.-Canada trade negotiations collapsed and Washington imposed 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion in Canadian goods. Canada is preparing retaliatory tariffs, while Trump has also threatened 50% duties on Canadian-made vehicles, auto parts and steel.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has accused Washington of trying to weaken major Canadian industries and said his government will not accept negotiations treating Canada as subordinate to the United States.
Lake Ontario is shared by both countries, with the international boundary running through the lake. Trump did not explain how a U.S. name change would apply to the Canadian portion or whether any formal process has begun.
The broader trade dispute threatens highly integrated North American supply chains in automobiles, manufacturing, agriculture and energy, potentially raising costs for businesses and consumers in both countries.
24-year-old breaks single game and single season record
Reese’s 26 rebounds help Atlanta to win over Los Angeles
Angel Reese rebounded her way into the record books not once, but twice in one night. Reese set a WNBA record with 26 rebounds in the Atlanta Dream’s 78-71 win over the Los Angeles Sparks on Monday, pushing her past the season record in the same game.
“Last time I was here, I didn’t miss any shots. Tonight I couldn’t hit [anything] so I knew I was going be able to get them on the rebounding side,” Reese said after the game. “I just want to be there for my team. Offensively, defensively, whatever it takes to win.”
Mathematicians are raising concerns that the technology could kill their profession. But they still have abilities AI doesn’t
Earlier this month, about 40 top mathematicians gathered at OpenAI’s offices to discuss the future of their profession. The meeting was off-the-record, but if recentarticlesbymathematicians are any guide, it was mostly pretty glum. People fear for their jobs, their careers and the work they love.
We think the contraryview is more likely, at least in the short-term. AI models are nowhere near as capable as experienced academic mathematicians.
Gao Zhen sentenced to three years in prison after already spending two years in detention
Gao Zhen, a prominent Chinese artist known for provocative sculptures of the former leader Mao Zedong, has been sentenced to three years in prison after being found guilty of slandering China’s “heroes and martyrs”. The sentencing came two years after he was detained while visiting the country with his family, according to his wife and human rights groups.
The case has attracted international condemnation, largely because the artworks at the centre of the case were created more than 10 years before China created the law under which Gao was charged.
Spot gold touches almost $4,700 an ounce and Bitcoin tops $80,000 while oil prices fall despite threat of heavy US sanctions on Iran and any country trading with it
The US car parts company First Brands Group, which makes things such as spark plugs, wiper blades and motor oil, has gone into liquidation.
A US bankruptcy court rejected a complex restructuring plan negotiated between the company, its lenders and unsecured creditors. First Brands had put forward a proposal to pay back creditors by pursuing litigation against insiders.
Unfortunately, time was not on the debtor’s side. The sales process did not render the types of sales prices I’m sure everybody wanted.
Danish toymaker also scores success with KPop Demon Hunters, Star Wars and botanicals products
Lego sales have risen by more than a fifth as tie-ups with the football World Cup, Formula One and the hit film KPop Demon Hunters as well as its flower-based and Star Wars kits drive demand.
The toymaker said its revenues had increased by 21% to 41.9bn Danish kroner (£4.8bn) in the first six months of 2026, driven by strong growth in the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions, offsetting stalled sales in China.
Also: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed his surprising sympathy over the construction of datacenters across the country
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you from a sunny park in New York City, which was supposed to endure rain all weekend but in fact delivered the best weather of the year.
Family of three-year-old allegedly thrown into pit at Cambridgeshire zoo say he is happy to be back at home
A three-year-old boy who was seriously injured in a zoo’s crocodile enclosure has been discharged from hospital and is settling back in at home, his family has said.
The child returned home a few weeks ago and was “happy to be home, playing with his toys, sleeping in his own bed and being a big brother”, his parents said in an update posted online.
Exclusive: Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire sites predicted to emit 4.5m tonnes a year when fully running
The carbon emissions from just two planned datacentres in England will exceed all of the fossil fuel company ExxonMobil’s UK emissions, analysis has revealed.
Experts have said this demonstrates the “serious threat” datacentres pose to the UK’s legally binding climate goals.
If Catherine Herridge’s petition to the US supreme court fails, she’ll be on the hook for a daily fine until she discloses her sources – a case unsettling press freedom organizations
For 18 days this summer, veteran journalist Catherine Herridge walked to her Washington DC mailbox and dropped off a check for $800. The money was required by law to cover a judge-imposed sanction after she was found in contempt of court in 2024 for refusing to disclose her sources. It fell to her 21-year-old son James to provide the moral support Herridge needed. “He understands the pressure that I’ve been under,” she said. “It was very hard, personally.”
The check drop is now on hold. The judge who issued that order, Christopher R Cooper, has since clarified that Herridge doesn’t need to pay the fine until she has a chance to plead her case to the supreme court, which she petitioned late last week.
This story was reported and produced by Injustice Watch, a nonprofit newsroom in Chicago that investigates issues of equity and justice in the court system. Sign up here to get their weekly newsletter.
Minutes after Riverton police officer Brad Herzog ran 31-year-old Daniel Torrez Perez’s name through a law enforcement database one night in April 2025, his phone rang. It was the FBI.
“Every bell and whistle went off,” said Jack Griffin, the agent on the other end of the line.
Herzog had pulled Torrez over for going 15 miles above the speed limit on a rural two-lane highway just northeast of Springfield, Illinois. Herzog ran Torrez’s name and date of birth on his squad car laptop to confirm his identity. His search tripped a federal alert, and within minutes Griffin was on the line.
The exchange was captured on body-worn camera footage obtained by Injustice Watch through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Torrez had an administrative Immigration and Customs Enforcement warrant, meaning ICE was seeking to arrest him for deportation.
Under state law, Herzog couldn’t hold Torrez for federal agents.
In 2017, Illinois passed the TRUST Act on the principle that immigration is governed by federal civil law and local police have no business enforcing it. It was a sentiment bipartisan enough that a Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, signed it.
The law limits Illinois law enforcement agencies’ ability to assist immigration agents: They can’t transfer people to ICE custody without a criminal warrant signed by a judge, allow ICE agents to call or visit someone in a local jail, or “assist in any capacity with an immigration agents’ enforcement operations.”
Griffin knew that the immigration warrant was off-limits to Herzog.
“I know you can’t act on that,” Griffin told him. “I know this puts you in a weird bind.”
Then the FBI agent offered a way around it: Torrez also had an outstanding state warrant on a DUI charge, he noted. Herzog couldn’t arrest Torrez on the immigration warrant, but he could arrest him on the state one. The charge had nothing to do with immigration, but the outcome Griffin wanted was the same.
“You can take him under the state warrant, and that would hold him overnight,” Griffin said. “I don’t wanna miss my opportunity here.”
Herzog agreed to arrest Torrez on the state warrant and book him into the local jail, ensuring he wouldn’t be released that night.
“I appreciate that, thank you very much,” Griffin said, adding that he’d look for Torrez the next morning.
In the first 15 months following President Donald Trump’s return to office, local officials from at least 75 agencies across Illinois fed information to federal immigration agents, sometimes in apparent violation of state law. In over a third of Illinois counties, at least one police department, sheriff’s office, or state’s attorney’s office collaborated with federal agents. At least 150 people in Illinois were swept into the immigration system this way, in a state that presented itself as a shield against it.
Injustice Watch’s investigation draws on more than 30 hours of body-worn camera footage, 394 records requests, and more than 100 court filings, as well as conversations with more than 20 people who were flagged, detained, or deported, and more than 50 of their relatives. Many would talk only on the condition of anonymity, afraid of retaliation or ashamed of what had happened to them.
Illinois’s TRUST Act is one of the strongest laws in the nation meant to protect immigrants and has often been cited as a national model. More than a dozen states, including New York and California, have similar laws.
But the records unearthed in Illinois show a pattern of continued collaboration with federal immigration agencies that raise questions about the limits of such laws: Sheriffs honoring ICE detainers the law forbids them to honor. Police departments emailing federal agents the home addresses, employers, and daily whereabouts of people stopped for speeding. A local detective asking ICE to run the immigration status of an armed-robbery victim. Officers with a local badge and an ICE email address, sharing immigration data that’s supposed to be off-limits to them. Jails releasing people directly to waiting ICE agents, at the federal government’s direction.
The TRUST Act came with exceptions: Police can act on a federal criminal warrant, volunteer someone’s immigration status, or release an arrest report on request. And it left shared databases untouched — simply running a name through a law enforcement database is enough to trip a federal alert, the way it did the night Torrez was pulled over.
Some agencies refused to turn over records sought through FOIA requests; Injustice Watch is suing more than a dozen local, state, and federal agencies to pry them loose. The true count of people swept up under local-federal collaborations is almost certainly higher, in part because of missing records.
When taken one by one, collaborations between local officials and federal immigration agents may appear as small, isolated incidents. But at the end of that paper trail are at least 150 people uprooted from their lives in Illinois and funneled into the deportation system, in a state whose leaders had promised over and over again that it wouldn’t happen here.
Collaboration by Keystroke
The most common kind of collaboration was also the simplest: a local official pulling up a record and emailing it to an ICE agent. Roughly 85 such exchanges appear across the records reviewed by Injustice Watch.
The TRUST Act specifically prohibits state and local law enforcement officers from “providing information in response to any immigration agent’s inquiry or request for information regarding any individual in the agency’s custody” unless required to by a judge’s warrant or federal law.
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an Ohio State University law professor who studies how criminal and immigration systems intersect, describes this type of collaboration as one built on “the kinds of professional relationships that commonly develop among law enforcement officers, especially in small communities where people know each other.”
Most are “entirely aboveboard,” he said, but they can sometimes “clash with directives, like what we see in the TRUST Act.”
In Tinley Park, a southwest Chicago suburb, communications with ICE agents flowed freely.
It started, the department’s emails show, at an early 2025 law enforcement meeting in Hinsdale, where Tinley Park detectives met Homeland Security Investigations special agent Daniel Mejdrech. Word moved through the department that Mejdrech, as one officer later put it in an email, “may be interested in cases with individuals with warrants that are not citizens or on a visa.”
In March 2025, Detective Justin Rzeszutko emailed Mejdrech a suspect’s passport photo and asked for “recent USA entry/exit photos.” The agent wrote back that the man had used aliases, had been deported from Canada, and sat on “a watchlist,” and offered to help locate him if the detective sent along addresses or associates. When Rzeszutko later secured an arrest warrant, Mejdrech volunteered muscle: “If you want manpower when you grab him, say the word and I can bring some folks.”
In April 2025, an ICE agent asked Tinley Park officer Jason L’Amas for “lead data” on a man the officer had stopped for speeding. The officer sent back the man’s driver’s license number, home address, phone number, and employer, and flagged where to find him: “His crew is doing work in Tinley Park currently.”
Months later, in a case first reported by the Chicago Tribune, L’Amas emailed an ICE deportation officer a report about a different man; days later, the ICE officer wrote back: “Just a heads up we took this guy into custody today.” Injustice Watch identified the man and confirmed he was deported to Honduras.
Ed Yohnka, a director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said these two exchanges may have violated the TRUST Act. Individual officers using informal connections with federal agents to share information about people they’d encountered without a warrant “is not supposed to be something that state or local police inquire about,” he said.
The first email exchange, he said, was a sign of something broader: a culture or belief in the Tinley Park Police Department that assisting with immigration enforcement was appropriate behavior, despite state law.
Tinley Park Police Chief Thomas Tilton didn’t respond to questions about his officers’ interactions with federal immigration officials. Neither did Village Manager Pat Carr.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has extraordinary power to investigate TRUST Act violations: He can hold hearings, examine officials under oath, and issue subpoenas for records. But he rarely exercises that authority.
“The Attorney General’s office uses a compliance-oriented approach in carrying out its TRUST Act enforcement responsibilities,” Raoul said in a statement. “This approach includes providing trainings, technical assistance and nonregulatory guidance to law enforcement agencies throughout Illinois.” He declined to answer questions about Tinley Park or to specify how many times his office has taken enforcement action under the statute.
The ACLU of Illinois, meanwhile, has long pushed the attorney general’s office for increased monitoring of the law.
“One of the things that we often see in law enforcement generally is that individual officers too often believe that they can apply their own judgment to what should be permissible as opposed to what is required” under the state and federal law, said Yohnka. “And then there isn’t the kind of vigorous accountability for those actions.”
Illustration: Verónica Martinez/Injustice Watch
The Officers with Two Badges
In Hoffman Estates, a detective found a federal contact in his own department. Tom LaPak has been a police officer there since 2001 and, since 2004, a Homeland Security Investigations task force officer assigned to its financial investigations group. He carries a village badge and uses an ICE email address.
That’s because task force officers like LaPak are local cops the state cross-deputizes to work federal criminal cases.
The TRUST Act carves out room for this: It allows local officers to work with agencies like Homeland Security Investigations on criminal matters “in order to ensure public safety.”
The law doesn’t allow federal agents to use that partnership to enforce immigration law. For example, the law draws a line between tracking down a scam ring and checking a victim’s immigration status.
Records reviewed by Injustice Watch show some officers appeared to have crossed that line anyway.
On the morning of September 4, 2025, Marc Shaw, a Hoffman Estates detective, emailed LaPak about an armed robbery — but not to ask about the robber.
Shaw wrote that “some red flags have been raised with the victim.” The case might be staged, he suspected, to support a U visa claim.
A U visa offers a path to citizenship for certain victims who report crimes and cooperate with police. Both that protection and Illinois’s own TRUST Act rest on the same idea: encouraging immigrants to come forward to law enforcement agencies without triggering their own deportation.
But Shaw’s email treated a victim’s possible path to protection as a reason to suspect him of fraud.
“I was wondering if it’s possible to check his citizenship status to see if I’m tracking this correctly or the issues that have been arising are coincidental,” Shaw wrote.
LaPak wrote back the same afternoon. “I’m still waiting on confirmation, but it appears he is a Visa overstay,” he wrote. “He should have left the U.S. in 2016.”
“Ok thanks that’s definitely good to know,” Shaw replied. “I appreciate it!”
Reached by phone, Hoffman Estates Police Chief Kasia Cawley said her department didn’t violate the TRUST Act. She also defended her detective, who she said had recently participated in a training on spotting U visa fraud and had a hunch that something was off because there were no witnesses to the crime, she said.
The man was never charged — or told his status had been checked.
Cooperation with task force officers ran the other way, too, with the federal government reaching through them to enlist local officers in immigration operations.
On January 13, 2025, a week before Trump’s inauguration, a Homeland Security Investigations Chicago supervisor emailed dozens of agents and task force officers about “several operations in furtherance of the new administration’s objectives.” A joint operation with Enforcement and Removal Operations — ICE’s deportation arm — was set to run January 21 through 27. It would focus, the email said, on “non-citizens who pose the highest public safety risk,” along with employer inspections of area businesses.
“It is important that as many personnel as possible — including our task force officers — participate,” the supervisor wrote.
The distribution list included officers at police departments in Urbana, Peoria, Decatur, and across central Illinois — local cops looped into the planning of a federal deportation operation.
Two police chiefs reached by Injustice Watch distanced themselves from the operations. Urbana Police Chief Larry Boone said his task force officers joined a Zoom briefing but didn’t participate in removal operations. Peoria’s chief, Bradley Dixon, said his officers didn’t either. Decatur chief Brad Allen did not respond to questions.
Collaboration by Default
When Riverton officer Herzog ran Daniel Torrez’s name the night of that traffic stop, he didn’t contact the FBI; the database did.
Fingerprints taken at booking are automatically routed through a network of databases that flows from the Illinois State Police to the FBI. From there, they reach the Department of Homeland Security, where they’re checked against immigration databases. An arrest for almost anything — a DUI, shoplifting — can surface a decades-old immigration record and tell ICE exactly where to find the person.
Injustice Watch reviewed more than 40 federal court affidavits in which a fingerprint taken at a local booking and matched against federal records helped build an immigration case.
Spencer Reynolds, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and a former Department of Homeland Security attorney, said the automatic sharing of data “is a fundamental threat to protective laws for residents and visitors in any given state.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for the FBI said agents “work within the law and policy to support our partners in immigration enforcement and protect the U.S. from a variety of threats.”
In interviews and emails, local police chiefs described the booking process as one beyond their control. Fingerprints are automatically sent to the state and federal systems, and local agencies can’t opt out of the system or dictate what Illinois State Police or federal agents do with the data. As O’Fallon chief Kirk Brueggeman put it, the department has “no say in how a federal agent — operating under a different set of laws — uses those resources that we do not control.”
Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly didn’t respond to questions about how his agency transmits data to federal agencies.
Kelly was handpicked by Gov. JB Pritzker, who consistently made promises to protect all residents across Illinois. Shortly after Trump was elected in 2024, Pritzker told cable news, “I’m going to do everything I can to protect our undocumented immigrants.” At a conference this past April, he recalled how he’s been standing up to Trump’s anti-immigrant policies since the president’s first term.
Pritzker didn’t respond to questions about how state police share immigration-related information.
The automatic transmission of data is so pervasive that it even touches the few departments that, in a review of public records, turn ICE away when it comes knocking.
In February, Zenobia Jones, an administrative staffer for the Atlanta, Georgia, immigration court prosecutor, asked Aurora police records staff for documents related to an individual — but didn’t get far.
“The Illinois TRUST Act generally prohibits local law enforcement from sharing information with federal immigration agencies with limited exceptions,” wrote Aurora police records manager Elizabeth Robles. Jones never wrote back. Two months later, an ICE deportation officer named Gregory Ortiz made a similar request from the same department. Robles handed Ortiz the same response. Ortiz never wrote back, either.
But for all the resistance the Aurora Police Department put up against ICE requests, it couldn’t stop the automatic sharing of fingerprints gathered in the course of routine arrests — three of which, court records show, were used as part of federal immigration cases.
Illustration: Verónica Martinez/Injustice Watch
Honoring ICE Detainers
The U.S. Marshals Service takes custody of people accused in federal criminal cases, as well as some of those serving shorter sentences. Because it operates no jails of its own, the agency contracts with local jails for bed space, including facilities in Illinois.
The TRUST Act bars Illinois jails from similar contracts with ICE, and explicitly bars them from honoring ICE detainers — civil requests to hold a person past their scheduled release. It also prohibits jails from handing anyone over to ICE.
Some jails do it anyway, at the Marshals’ direction.
In October 2025, a man who’d pleaded guilty to drug charges was in Marshals custody at the Marion County Jail in southern Illinois. Marshals administrator Lauren Patterson emailed an ICE agent asking if the agency could take him from the jail, then told the jail ICE would collect him on October 12.
That day, a sergeant confirmed to Patterson and several ICE agents that the man “was picked up by ICE approximately 0715 this morning.”
Two months later, the Marshals Service instructed the jail to release another man into ICE custody, and once again, the jail obliged.
Marion County Sheriff Kevin Cripps, who runs the jail, insists his office did nothing wrong.
“We at no time had contact with ICE,” he said. His jail houses people for the Marshals Service, and when he releases them he does so only while “acting under their authority.”
Documents reviewed by Injustice Watch suggest a similar pattern across other Illinois jails. In effect, the Trump administration, not Illinois law, decides whom a state jail releases to immigration agents.
In a statement, the Marshals placed responsibility on the sheriffs.
“Should state law prohibit the jails from honoring detainers,” a spokesperson said, the agency “would anticipate that the jails follow their state law.”
Asked whether his office would do anything to address the practice, Attorney General Raoul declined to answer.
State laws bind local officials but can’t bind the federal government. As García Hernández, the law professor, explained, “the Marshals Service or DHS, they can come knocking as often as they like” — it’s up to local officials to abide by state law. But, he added, so many loopholes are baked into laws like the TRUST Act that it can “allow the exceptions to swallow the rule.”
In some counties, sheriffs aren’t taking direction from the Marshals Service and are instead honoring ICE detainers directly — a direct violation of the TRUST Act. Records indicate that at least four counties have done so since Trump returned to office.
In late June 2025, Hancock County State’s Attorney Bobi James emailed ICE agent Ron Shevela about an upcoming plea deal that would release a man her office was prosecuting. But there was a snag: The agent would be out of town until July 1, and the prosecutor worried nothing would keep the man jailed past his release.
“I could send you a detainer before then, if you’d like,” wrote the agent.
“That would probably be necessary,” James replied.
Hancock Sheriff Travis Duffy didn’t respond to questions about the detainer; neither did prosecutor James.
Xanat Sobrevilla, who co-founded the advocacy group Organized Communities Against Deportations, said that for the families she works with, the trust communities have tried to build with local agencies is eroding.
“It’s hard to continue to believe in something that continues to hurt you,” she said.
After Riverton officer Herzog pulled Torrez over just outside Springfield, Torrez spent that night in the Sangamon County Jail, exactly as the FBI agent on the phone had wanted. Hours later, he was in ICE’s grip.
In an affidavit, ICE deportation officer J.R. Hentz said Torrez was taken “into custody inside the booking area of the Sangamon County, Illinois jail” the day after he was arrested.
Sangamon County Sheriff Paula Crouch didn’t respond to a request for comment; neither did her husband, Riverton Police Chief Bob Crouch.
Injustice Watch confirmed Torrez was deported to Guatemala late last year.
"The Register has a story about a Windows backdoor that waits silently in memory for a 'magic packet' before springing into action," writes Slashdot reader fred133. "No outgoing traffic, just waiting..." From the report: Like a sleeper cell awaiting activation, a never-before-seen Windows backdoor dubbed Sleepwalker waits silently in memory for one specifically crafted network packet to wake it up and deliver commands using the malware's 23-instruction language. The commands can do everything from running code directly in memory to moving data off the computer. Malware researcher Dominik Reichel discovered the passive backdoor, which also has its own command language, and detailed Sleepwalker in a technical analysis on Monday. "What makes it worth writing up is what that packet carries: not a readable command, but a short program written in a command language of the backdoor's own design," Reichel said. "Its 23 instructions cover scheduling, several ways to move data, staged file delivery and running code directly in memory. Recovering the encryption key is not enough to understand one of these programs. The internal command language must be reverse engineered as well."
In addition to having its own command language, it's also notable that the remote host can be a VMware VMCI target instead of a normal network address. "Taken as a whole, the approach here is consistent with a targeted, well-resourced operation rather than an opportunistic one," Reichel wrote. The malware, hidden inside a 64-bit Windows DLL file, impersonates Microsoft's dpapi.dll, part of Windows' data protection API for protecting sensitive data. It exports the same seven functions as the real dpapi.dll, but attempts to forward calls to a file named dpapisvc.dll, which is not a real Windows component. The file also has a forged ESET Management Agent version resource, and loads via side-loading into ERAAgent.exe, the Windows executable for ESET Management Agent. After confirming that its host process is named ERAAgent.exe, Sleepwalker goes to sleep inside the computer's memory, which also helps it remain hidden from traditional anti-virus tools.
Unlike most backdoors, which call back to an attacker-controlled command-and-control (C2) server and start receiving commands, Sleepwalker lies in wait, checking every packet that passes through the network looking for a specific pattern - this is called a magic packet. Once it sniffs out a packet that matches the exact pattern, the backdoor decrypts the data and treats it as a command. "Because the backdoor never sends anything out on its own and does not open any obvious listening port by default, tools that watch for connections to known-bad domains or unusual outbound traffic will not see anything unusual," Reichel wrote. "The absence of outbound connections to known-bad infrastructure does not rule out an infection, either. A machine can be fully compromised by this backdoor while producing nothing at all for a network monitor to flag."
Trump administration proposes new rule to dismantle requirement for datacenters to publicly report air pollution
A new rule proposed by the Trump administration aims to kill public notification for datacenter air pollution, public health advocates warn, and allow emission permits to be issued behind closed doors.
The datacenters are often sources of nitrogen oxide, which helps form ozone, carbon monoxide and heavy metals, among other pollutants.
Another driver in critical condition as result of collision after man failed to stop for officers in Stratford-upon-Avon
A man has died and a woman is critically injured after a police pursuit in Warwickshire.
Police said officers tried to stop a black Audi on Birmingham Road in Stratford-upon-Avon at 5.23pm on Monday but the vehicle failed to stop and drove towards the A46.
Maine Coon named Erebus Anomaly breaks previous record of 28 toes held for over two decades after overcoming illness
A Maine Coon kitten from Wisconsin overcame a perilous bout with pneumonia to break a 24-year-old world record for most toes on a cat, setting the new mark at 29.
Erebus Anomaly’s unique story received US national media attention on Monday, when ABC’s World News Now program recounted what one of his owners called a “miraculous” recovery from illness in his infancy – and the subsequent Guinness World Record that he clinched.
A recent memo claiming executive privilege over communications with private advisers invites corruption
A recent office of legal counsel memo on executive privilege maintains that private advisers to a president can avoid responding to a subpoena by asserting the president’s executive privilege. The ability of presidents to shield communications from public view through claims of executive privilege, whether their own or those of a senior adviser, was already a powerful tool for presidents to avoid accountability. But if courts accept the OLC’s new interpretation of presidential privilege, it will be substantially harder to call witnesses to testify before Congress or in court proceedings regarding possible wrongdoing by the presidents.
Equipping presidents with extensive power to block witnesses in legal proceedings is a dangerous practice that invites corruption by presidents and their advisers. Consider the former White House counsel Don McGahn’s 2019 refusal to testify in response to a subpoena by the House judiciary committee in connection with the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump. McGahn didn’t come up with that idea on his own. It was the Trump White House that sought to bar McGahn from testifying through an assertion of a type of executive privilege known as “testimonial immunity.” Ironically, Mueller was investigating whether Trump obstructed justice, among other things, by demanding that McGahn fire Mueller himself. Trump’s insistence that McGahn not testify, backed up by a 2019 OLC opinion, effectively made the first Trump administration complicit in the very obstruction under investigation.
Republican nominee to face Democrat Annie Andrews in midterm after rushed campaigns for Lindsey Graham’s seat
Reese Boyd, the chair of the Horry county Republican party marveled on Monday afternoon at how little time Senator Darline Graham and Representative Ralph Norman have had to campaign for the Senate primary: “This is not the normal way of things.”
“This is something that usually lasts at least, you know, the better part of a year,” he said. “People normally spend the better part of 18 months getting ready for it. Who knows? This may be the right way to do it? Who knows.”
There has been a 76% increase in under-construction gas-fired projects amid ‘frenzy’ to build more datacenters
The US has surged ahead of China in the building of new gas-fired power generation, largely to feed a boom in artificial intelligence (AI) that is adding vast amounts of planet-heating emissions, a new analysis has found.
For decades, China’s rapid economic growth has seen it outpace the US in the addition of new gas power generation but a recent “frenzy” in datacenter construction for AI has reversed this, said Global Energy Monitor (Gem) in its new report.
Adam Hamilton, a liberal megachurch pastor, is challenging incumbent Republican Senator Roger Marshall in this year’s midterm election
In one of the first ads of his campaign to represent Kansas in the US Senate, the Democrat Adam Hamilton stands grilling steaks at a barbecue and attacks his opponent, Senator Roger Marshall, a Republican, for supporting “tariffs and war”.
If history is any guide, it is Hamilton who is set to get cooked. Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, and more than half a century has passed since one of their nominees even came close. But he and his supporters believe circumstances have conspired to end this streak – and potentially deliver Democrats control of the Senate.
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.
Trump ally should cut budget deficit rather than try to suppress bond yields, says billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller
Scott Bessent’s attempt to calm the bond markets and push down America’s cost of borrowing have attracted a rebuke from the US Treasury secretary’s former mentor.
The billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller, who worked with Bessent at George Soros’s fund management firm in the 1990s, has warned that his former pupil is courting danger by trying to suppress US bond yields.
A man from South Yorkshire is believed to be the first British citizen to die fighting for Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Bradley Townsend, a 33-year-old fisher from Barnsley, left Britain in April to join up with Russian separatists in eastern Donbas to aid in their invasion of Ukraine, despite having no previous combat experience or familiar ties to eastern Europe. Alongside 49-year-old Ben Stimson and 39-year-old Aiden Minnis, Townsend was granted Russian citizenship for joining the country’s military campaign.
The flagship environmental initiative has achieved ‘negligible’ results. Why so little progress, and what are the risks as the planet gets hotter? Plus, fusion dance pioneer Usha Jey
India set out to expand its forested areas a decade ago. Last week, however, we learned that the forest cover programme had barely taken root when the government’s auditors released their findings of the flagship Green India Mission. The shortfall of 97.57% from India’s initial pledge in 2014 was stark enough to alarm the government’s own auditor, who described the progress as “negligible”.
Yet if you ask the government about forest cover, you’ll get a far greener picture.
Developer Patrick Grant was born in Australia and lives in New Zealand, but a childhood of British TV inspired him to set a comedy game in a bleak vision of the north
Something is amiss in the dingy town of Slagford, and curious scamp Pip Bunting is the only one who can find out what. So quit your mithering, it’s time to discover just how grim it truly is up north.
A Pocket Full of Slagford is an upcoming retro-styled 3D puzzle adventure game set in a surreal alternative-reality near-future northern England that never escaped the clutches of Thatcherism. The story follows the misadventures of a young local lad from the eponymous Slagford after he takes ownership of a mysterious relic that lets him wreak havoc on reality.
While Cavan and Quinn Sullivan star in MLS with the Philadelphia Union, brothers Ronan and Declan have connected with their South Asian heritage
Ronan Sullivan had tried a panenka twice in his life. Both attempts were at practice on the other side of the world, and one hit the crossbar. But his twin brother, Declan, was hardly surprised when Ronan turned to him and told him he’d chip the fifth penalty of a shootout that could win a scoreless tournament final, as millions tuned in online to see his Bangladesh side play against India in the Under-20 South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship.
“He didn’t even need to say it. I knew he was gonna do that the whole time,” Declan remembered, sitting next to his brother on the couch of their dorm room at Saint Joseph’s University. “I knew that if he got the last pen to win it, he was gonna do that. That’s just the him thing to do.”
The Slovenian is one of the best players on the planet. But factors largely beyond his control have started to turn his career into a slog
Luka Dončić must feel as though, these past few months, he’s been twirling in a washing machine. He announced a separation from his fiancee in March; reports followed of a prolonged custody battle over their two daughters. As Dončić plays in the NBA and his children live in Slovenia, he doesn’t see them much as is. But after the reports of the rift with his ex emerged, he started playing some of the best basketball of his life: he led the Los Angeles Lakers to a 15-2 record in March, a stretch that included a torrential 60-point display against the Miami Heat. Behind Dončić’s brightening star, the Lakers seemed to be sharpening into a real contender. Then Dončić tweaked his hamstring in April and the illusion shattered. He watched from the sidelines as the Lakers limped out of the playoffs with an inevitable second-round defeat to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Actually, Dončić must feel as if he’s been in turmoil for the past few years. He made his first – and so far only – NBA finals in 2024, leading the Dallas Mavericks there with a barrage of awesome shotmaking. As the best offensive player on the court while playing through multiple injuries, Dončić and his Mavs lost to the far deeper Boston Celtics in five games. As thanks, the Mavericks traded Dončić to the Lakers, citing defensive concerns, when what had really doomed them against the Celtics was that no one aside from Luka – who led his team in points, rebounds, assists and steals in that series – could play at the requisite level to win.
Nearly a decade after I watched him defy Erdoğan at great personal cost, the ex-NBA player is using his hard-won freedom to turn transgender people into a punchline
Nine years ago, I watched Enes Kanter ask America to take him in. It was May 2017, inside the National Basketball Players Association’s offices in midtown Manhattan. Kanter had just returned from a frightening detention at Bucharest airport, where Romanian border police told him Turkey had canceled his passport. He’d just turned 25, an NBA center with a green card and no country he could safely call home.
“I’m open for adoption,” he joked from the head of a table in a nondescript conference room, addressing a dozen reporters hastily summoned by his manager. Then he turned serious: “My next move is to just become an American citizen.”
Newborn baby Malachi lies in the lap of his mother after dying from pneumonia and bleeding lungs — preventable conditions that could have been treated in a hospital — in 2023 in Idaho. Since the 1970s, the state’s criminal and civil laws have allowed parents who belong to Followers of Christ and other faith-healing sects to pray as their children die. Obtained by ProPublica via Canyon County Sheriff
A sheriff’s deputy opens the door of an Idaho farmhouse where a newborn baby has just died. It’s almost 10 p.m., but the house is filled with adults and children seated anywhere they can find a spot: in reclining chairs, on the wood-stove hearth, on a chest of drawers. Some of the women hold babies in their laps.
“Sorry,” the deputy whispers as the door creaks.
No one greets the officer. No one speaks or even looks at anyone else, casting their eyes instead at the floor or around the room.
The deputy’s video camera records as he walks through the front room and past a bedroom door adorned with children’s artwork. Inside the bedroom, newborn Malachi’s mother sits in a recliner. His body lies in her lap, covered by a blue blanket.
As people in uniform ask Malachi’s parents about his birth, death and the two days in between, members of the family’s church — one of at least four Followers of Christ churches in Idaho — watch from folding chairs. People come and go from the bedroom; one woman cradles a sleeping toddler.
Malachi died from pneumonia and bleeding lungs, according to an autopsy.
It would have been treatable with antibiotics and newborn care in a hospital, said doctors who reviewed his death records for ProPublica.
But Malachi’s parents belong to a faith-healing sect that doesn’t believe in medical care, based on a literal interpretation of several Bible verses. The Followers of Christ sect believes that God heals the faithful and that life and death must be left to God’s divine will.
When the coroner’s deputy lifted Malachi’s body to take it away that night in October 2023, there was no wailing or sobbing from his parents. Malachi’s father stood quietly as his mother hung her head and rested it in her hand.
A pediatrician who reviewed Malachi’s death records said a baby in his condition would have been gasping for air, turning blue from lack of oxygen and breathing so hard that the outline of his rib cage was visible.
It was the first time the coroner and sheriff sent their deputies out to that house, to interview those parents and document the slow suffocation of a newborn boy.
The next time was 13 months later, when their next newborn, Liam, died from the same treatable condition that killed his brother Malachi.
“This Is Needless”
In any Idaho household not steeped in faith-healing, those two deaths would be investigated as crimes. Idaho law says parents can’t endanger, injure or neglect their children or let them suffer. To do so is a crime, and if the child dies as a result, the parent could be charged with manslaughter.
But those laws do not apply to children like Malachi and Liam. Since the 1970s, Idaho’s criminal and civil laws have allowed parents who belong to Followers of Christ and the state’s other faith-healing sects to pray rather than seek medical care as their children die.
Lawmakers in Oregon, where the same religious groups exist, removed the state’s faith-healing exception to child abuse laws nearly 30 years ago, countering the overwhelming pressure former Followers say parents face from their congregations. More parents chose to get medical care for their children after the change, Oregon prosecutors and detectives said.
Idaho lawmakers have chosen a different path.
Since 2014, they have rejected repeated efforts to dial back Idaho’s faith-healing exemption, instead crafting legislation to further limit the role of anyone but a parent when it comes to children’s health and safety. The state has codified “parental rights,” banned vaccine requirements in schools and childcare centers, and made parental consent a prerequisite for medical care of minors. Legislators also have tried to narrow the definition of “medical neglect” for all families to only the most life-threatening situations, but those attempts have failed.
Local and nationalmedia outlets have reported on deaths among Followers of Christ families in Idaho. ProPublica went further, enlisting the help of experts to determine which of those deaths could have been prevented.
ProPublica gathered death records from coroners and police in five Idaho counties and shared them with more than a dozen pediatricians and birthing specialists.
At least 15 babies and children from the faith-healing sect died between 2015 and 2025 from illnesses that doctors could have successfully treated, the experts concluded.
The estimate of preventable deaths is almost certainly an undercount. The experts could not evaluate six more deaths because coroner records were incomplete or unavailable. In another four cases, they couldn’t say with confidence whether medical care would have changed the outcome.
Separately, the experts identified numerous preventable losses of babies who died during birth or in utero very close to their due dates, cases that coroners labeled as stillbirths.
For some families like Liam and Malachi’s, the death of a child wasn’t a one-time tragedy: Records show at least five sets of parents have lost multiple children, a phenomenon that has not previously been reported.
None of the parents responded to letters or text messages from ProPublica, and one declined to comment during a brief phone call. (ProPublica is choosing not to identify them or use the children’s full names out of respect for their privacy.)
But Nathan Kangas, a patriarch in the sect’s Caldwell, Idaho, church, defended faith healing and its legal protection during an interview with ProPublica.
Children and babies can’t make their own decision to rely on faith healing. Kangas said their parents must keep them away from the doctor to set an example, so the young ones won’t be cursed later in life by turning to medicine.
Kangas lost his own wife and their last child during labor 23 years ago. Three of his 65 grandchildren also have died.
Asked why God would not want children to live full and healthy lives, Kangas said he had no answer but quoted a verse from the Book of Psalms: “Precious in the eyes of the Lord are the death of His saints.” The Followers believe that life on Earth is “a preparing ground,” Kangas said. He pointed to the Book of James, which tells people to “be afflicted and mourn and weep” and “let your laughter be turned to mourning.”
“It isn’t necessarily that we’re supposed to have a joyous life here,” Kangas said. “It’s actually quite the opposite.”
Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue has opposed Idaho’s faith-healing laws that shield parents from prosecution.Sarah A. Miller for ProPublica
Some outsiders take a very different view.
Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue, one of the most vocal opponents of Idaho’s faith-healing laws, has sent deputies to follow up on the deaths of at least 10 Followers’ children and infants since he took office in 2013.
“This is needless,” Donahue said. “This shouldn’t be happening.”
David Peterman, a retired Idaho pediatrician, reviewed the deaths of 18 infants and children at ProPublica’s request.
Peterman saw patients for 40 years and did his residency at a center that offered special training in child abuse and neglect. He said the vast majority of the deaths he reviewed for ProPublica “are the result of neglect and unequivocally preventable.” (He couldn’t tell whether a few deaths were preventable, and he surmised that one infant had a fatal, untreatable chromosomal defect.) He said it is “beyond comprehension” that the Idaho Legislature has refused to change the law.
“How is this tolerable?” he said. “I don’t understand how there could be an exception in Idaho law that allows for these children to die.”
The Deaths
Maicy was 16 years old but the size of a third grader: 62 pounds and just shy of 4 feet tall. She had suffered from a constellation of ailments: stomach irritation, severe anemia, erratic menstrual periods, a blocked artery, thickened aorta and thinning hair. An autopsy after she died on New Year’s Day 2019 traced it all back to a benign, treatable pituitary tumor.
Doctors who reviewed her death records said her stunted growth would have been obvious earlier in childhood, when her tumor could have been diagnosed and treated. Instead, it sent her body into a hormonal tailspin that destroyed her organs. She died in bed, lying on a towel and absorbent pad, wearing a diaper under her sweatpants and a T-shirt that read “LOVE.”
“I don’t understand how there could be an exception in Idaho law that allows for these children to die.”
David Peterman, retired Idaho pediatrician
Some of the children who died preventable deaths over a decade were sick for hours or days; others endured months or — in Maicy’s case — years of disease. Most died in their parents’ arms. Many would have experienced pain and distress from their untreated conditions, the healthcare professionals consulted by ProPublica said.
“I don’t know how to come to terms with that,” said Beth Hartman, an Idaho midwife and former chair of the state’s midwifery licensing board. “Because when you see respiratory distress, and when you have seen a person pass, it’s not pretty. They don’t just close their eyes.”
In America at large, the risk that a child will die is highest during the first year of life. The vast majority of Followers’ children who died were infants. But nationally, fatalities in this age group tend to follow premature birth or profound congenital disorders. The deaths among Followers’ infants came from ailments that rarely take children’s lives.
At least three children died from sepsis caused by common infections that antibiotics can easily stop. Camden died in 2024. Weston died in 2025. They were brothers. Stanley, a newborn whose parents said he was “alert and happy” for his first 36 hours, spent the next 29 getting darker in color, coughing up phlegm and clenching his limbs in convulsions. He died in 2017.
The deaths almost never came without warning.
Members of the Followers of Christ use Peaceful Valley Cemetery in Caldwell, Idaho, to bury their loved ones. Weston, whose grave is pictured at right, was one of at least three children who died from sepsis caused by common infections. Experts said doctors could have stopped the infections with antibiotics before they became life-threatening.Sarah A. Miller for ProPublica
In the case of Malachi, the police and coroner reports don’t say how long before his death his parents first noticed him breathing fast, making a gurgling noise “like stuff was in his throat or chest.” Nor do the documents say what the parents did in the interim other than that they “chose not to perform life saving measures.”
But when they noticed their next newborn, Liam, was struggling to breathe and his “color was not good,” they again did not call for help, and he died over the course of at least 12 hours. While he was dying, members of their church came to see the baby and pray for him. Ten people were in the room when the boy died, and more had gathered outside the room, Liam’s father told police.
It’s rare in developed countries for children to die from pneumonia as Liam and Malachi did, wrote Barton Adrian, a retired Idaho pediatrician who reviewed the death records for ProPublica. The annual pneumonia-related death rate in the U.S. for infants is 1 in every 30,000 to 40,000, according to federal data. Adrian wrote that with a total of 12 children in Malachi and Liam’s family, the death rate was 1 in 6, “equivalent to third-world countries.”
Several healthcare professionals who reviewed the death records for Malachi and Liam suspected their problems originated from a birth-related strep infection so dangerous that expectant mothers in the U.S. are routinely screened for it. Women who test positive get antibiotics to keep the baby safe. In cases where a full-term newborn does become infected, almost all who receive treatment survive.
Dallas, a 2-year-old, was sick for six weeks with an untreated bacterial infection that settled into a valve in his heart and slowly destroyed it. He had fevers, abdominal pain, vomiting and swelling that started in his feet, then spread to his hands and finally to his face. He died in his father’s arms in 2020. Although an autopsy found Dallas was born with a heart condition that made him susceptible to infections, doctors who reviewed the document for ProPublica said the condition was treatable and antibiotics would have halted the infection.
Had his parents taken him to a doctor at any point during the six weeks they knew he was sick, Dallas could have been saved, the doctors said.
“Normal Still Isn’t Normal”
Whenever a child dies in the Followers of Christ, the scene is unlike anything police see in deaths outside the sect.
Police describe what seems to be a phone tree the church members use to call on the congregation to pray and go to the family’s home — sometimes before the death, sometimes after. A church elder or family member calls the coroner directly, instead of calling 911.
The sheriff’s deputies and local police who accompany the coroner’s team to the death scene have learned what to expect. There won’t be an ambulance parked outside. There won’t be a frantic, inconsolable parent. There won’t be children’s ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet or a pediatrician’s phone number to call for medical records. All the police will find is a crowd sitting in silent vigil and a bottle of olive oil for anointing the ill.
There is little for police to do besides offer condolences, ask questions and carry out their legal duty to confirm the parents did nothing that constitutes a crime in Idaho.
Yet some of these cases are etched into officers’ memories.
For Chuck Gentry, a captain in the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office, it was a baby girl named Jolene who died at 3 months old from a congenital heart defect. Some doctors told ProPublica that a cardiologist’s care could have saved her, although some suspected she also had a chromosomal defect that only 10% of babies survive past their first year.
What haunts Gentry was the lack of medical attention for the baby’s cleft palate, which he recalls was severe.
She died at an address that’s become familiar to local police because children from four Followers families have died there since 2017.
(Jolene’s father, reached by phone, declined to talk with ProPublica.)
Gentry echoed what other investigators told ProPublica: By the time detectives arrive, the congregation has already assembled. Dozens of people, Gentry said. So many vehicles that he’d sometimes struggle to find a place to park his patrol car.
“It isn’t necessarily that we’re supposed to have a joyous life here. It’s actually quite the opposite.”
Nathan Kangas, an unordained elder in the Caldwell, Idaho, Followers of Christ congregation
Once he’d get inside, he said, the grandparents of a dead child would make it hard for him to get the child’s parents alone to ask them questions. “They’re very hover-y. They don’t want you to separate them off,” he said. “They kind of seem overprotective of what they might say.”
(Kangas, the Caldwell church elder, said the congregation’s presence at a dead child’s home isn’t meant as intimidation. “They’re not there to keep from saying anything. That’s absolutely false,” he said. “We, as a people, when somebody suffers, we go there to suffer with them.”)
Gentry said it wasn’t until he got the parents alone in another room that their grief would spill out. “You see the mom crying. You see the dad kind of pacing,” he said. “It’s normal behavior for someone who has lost a child,” but the death itself and the scene that follows it are “so bizarre that normal still isn’t normal.”
Jolene was her parents’ first child to die, they told police. Other investigators arrived at the scene for the next, the couple’s toddler son, Malone, in 2021.
Written reports from a pathologist and death investigators describe the body that detectives saw: arms and legs skinny from malnourishment, a belly swollen to the size of a basketball.
Malone never had normal bowel movements in his 16 months of life, his parents would later tell investigators. His belly would swell, then he’d have an enormous poop, and the cycle would repeat. As his condition worsened, his mother brought him to his grandparents’ house on a busy country road. She held him while he died.
An autopsy determined that the boy’s bowels had compressed his lungs and heart, which stopped beating. His rib cage had grown outward to accommodate his backed-up intestines, and his lungs were so cramped they’d stayed the size of a newborn’s.
One detective wrote that Malone’s abdomen was “distorted to the extent of nothing like I’ve ever seen before.”
The day Malone died, investigators arrived to find dozens of family and friends at the house. Malone’s mother sat in the front room, in a chair holding the child’s covered body in her lap. Malone’s father knelt beside them.
A detective asked the parents questions in a quiet voice, according to audio recordings from the scene. Did Malone have trouble going to the bathroom? Had he been to a doctor? Did they have any other children? Where was Malone when he died? They gave brief answers, volunteering few details. The entire interaction took about 10 minutes.
The paperwork wrapped up, and the case was closed.
Disciples of a New Religion
The Followers of Christ sparked curiosity in Idaho from the time they arrived in 1899. Two “wayfarers from Oklahoma” appeared in a mining town near what is now Sun Valley, calling themselves “the disciples of a new religion.” They said God sent them to spread their gospel, according to reporting from the time in the Idaho Statesman.
“One was tall and dark, about 30 years of age, and wore a pair of greasy overalls, black, baggy sweater and flaring yellow mackinaw coat,” a reporter wrote. That man went by “Brother Charley.” He was “decidedly illiterate” and preached that education wasn’t necessary but had an impressive knowledge of Scripture, able to recite entire books of the Bible by memory, the reporter wrote.
They held their first worship service a week later in a schoolhouse.
Over time, Followers of Christ formed congregations across southern Idaho. It went on to become the state’s largest faith-healing religion and later spread into Oregon.
The first few generations of holy men who led Idaho’s congregations died, and no one took their place. Each church was left with, at most, a loose hierarchy and leadership structure. Each operates independently, with subtle differences in how it interprets doctrine. Although congregations have elders, families are the main conduit for ritual and belief.
The religion also breaks with most Christian denominations in that it does not recruit or proselytize. Other than on the rare occasion an outsider marries in, the sect grows only through existing families. This insularity causes the same surnames to show up over and over in public records from Followers communities in Idaho, and, just as happened in the faith’s earlier generations, the sprawling Followers families tend to intermarry.
Linda Martin, a former Follower who traced her genealogy, calls her family tree “a trunk.”
When the Followers began, healthcare on the Western frontier was primitive, unsanitary and riddled with con artists peddling fake cures. Hospitals and medical practitioners could treat many ailments and save lives, but medications like insulin for diabetes and antibiotics for bacterial pneumonia didn’t exist.
Like other faith-healing sects, the Followers sought answers elsewhere. They looked to Bible verses such as in the Book of James: “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.”
Kangas said “the whole Scripture” informs faith-healing doctrine and that no one went to the doctor in Christ’s time.
“It was a matter of trusting in God to heal them,” he said.
When someone dies despite fervent prayers, the Followers believe it is God’s will. When someone sees a doctor, the Followers see it as a sin. When someone recovers without medication or surgery or a 911 call, it seems to validate the sect’s doctrine.
No mainstream Christian denomination today accepts this interpretation of the Bible.
Baby blocks decorate a tombstone at the cemetery in Caldwell where Followers of Christ bury their dead.Sarah A. Miller for ProPublica
“I think over time, it’s kind of morphed into, ‘This is one of the things that separates us from all other faiths or religions, is that we don’t go to the doctor,’” said Laren Eells, who left one of Idaho’s Followers of Christ churches about a decade ago. He now believes that because of cherry-picked passages of biblical Scripture, “my eyes were completely clouded with presupposition.”
As a child, Eells watched his father endure what Eells believes was a burst appendix. The man was bedridden for over a month and had foul waste coming out of his mouth, but he emerged alive.
As an adult, though, Eells watched his younger brother die of an ear infection that spread to his blood. He sat by his brother’s side around the clock, “praying and wringing my hands,” he said. “An infection that some antibiotics could have probably taken care of, relatively simple, but we just say, ‘Well, we trust God with our life.’”
By the time Followers are grown, the idea that they could lose their own children isn’t foreign. They may have been present for their own siblings’ or cousins’ deaths. Their parents have likely taken them for vigils at other congregants’ houses.
The possibility of being isolated from their congregation can be a concern for Followers because of how much their lives revolve around extended family and church.
Former members say that someone who visits a doctor might be shunned, reprimanded or simply left out of social events — although Kangas said only “a few people here and there” in his church would go that far.
Kangas believes some ex-Followers perceive condemnation where none exists because of a guilty conscience. A single doctor’s visit can be chalked up to fear or weakness that “people can be forgiven of,” Kangas said.
What matters, he said, is that the person repents and never goes again.
Are You a Current or Ex-Member of an Idaho Faith-Healing Sect?
Audrey Dutton
I’m most interested in tips related to state and local government corruption, extremism, policies that put children in danger and systemic failures that harm Idahoans.
The agreements, covering issues like drug pricing, reducing the use of synthetic food dyes, and cutting back on insurance prior authorization rules, were announced with fanfare and touted as victories.
The threat of higher prices for gas, cars, hockey sticks and more gave fresh life to Democratic arguments that the president is destabilizing the economy.
Rise in claims linked to heat-related deaths and illness, especially among older people, could drive up premiums
Europe’s intense heatwaves could hit insurers’ earnings as companies face a rise in claims linked to heat-related deaths and worsening health conditions, the rating agency S&P has said.
While a long summer of extreme heat will have increased drought and wildfire-related claims, the rating agency said there would also be fallout for life and health insurers, and for the reinsurers who provide financial protection to insurance companies.
Nigeria will need more than a bigger army to tackle security challengesExpert commentLToremark
Without accompanying reforms, the risk is that President Tinubu’s plan only makes Nigeria’s army bigger but not better.
In July, President Bola Tinubu announced a major expansion of the Nigerian Army, adding four new divisions to its existing eight. Rather than framing it as a long-planned response to Nigeria’s many worsening security challenges, Tinubu indicated that the announcement was a direct response to a mass school kidnapping in his home region, the latest in a series of such attacks. Regardless, the groundbreaking decision has the potential to make Nigeria more secure.
The expansion plan involves recruiting 28,000 soldiers and creating several new brigades and battalions in conflict-prone areas. Some of the troops will be trained at two new facilities built to expand the army’s recruitment capacity – and training has already begun. Tinubu also approved a huge pay increase (from 30 to 80 per cent, depending on rank) for military personnel, as real wages have dwindled due to high inflation.
While undoubtedly historic, Tinubu’s announcement begs some important questions. How tangible and transformative is this expansion, and how will it be paid for? Can the deployment of more soldiers translate into long-term security gains without fundamental security sector reform? And what opportunities does this expansion create for the Nigeria’s security assistance partners, such as the UK and the US?
Before answering these questions, it should be said that this expansion is long overdue. Nigeria has a population of roughly 240 million and is set to overtake the US as the world’s third most populous country by 2043. Meanwhile, the Nigerian Army only has approximately 100,000 active personnel according to recent estimates. Its vast and growing population requires a larger military. Nigeria also needs more military capacity to address its many complex security challenges – insurgency, banditry, kidnapping and communal conflict, for example – that have proliferated in recent years, destabilizing parts of the country that were once considered safe.
Stationing more soldiers outside of their traditional garrisons, especially in rural areas, would help protect vulnerable civilian targets and make it easier for the army to locate and eliminate remote safe havens used by bandit gangs and insurgent groups. Meanwhile, a greater military presence along Nigeria’s porous borders could improve operational coordination and intelligence sharing with army units in neighboring Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. This could help offset the decline in regional security cooperation that followed the 2025 withdrawal of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
That said, Tinubu’s expansion plan does not address many of the army’s institutional challenges; a list that includes lacklustre leadership, poor operational planning, inadequate training, equipment shortfalls, endemic corruption and a dire human rights record. This suggests that Nigeria’s reform-resistant army could experience a sort of ‘operational stagflation’: becoming bigger but not better.
Stagflation has already affected Nigeria’s defence budget, which – although appearing to have skyrocketed in recent years – has in fact grown only modestly in dollar terms, rising from $3.9 billion in 2021 to $4.7 billion in 2026. Moreover, the overall share of the national budget spent on defence actually decreased from 21 to 11 per cent during the same timeframe due to Nigeria’s rising debt burden and the steady devaluation of its currency, the naira. To pay for more soldiers and higher military salaries, President Tinubu will need to increase the defence budget, which may force cuts to infrastructure, health and education spending.
It also remains to be seen whether the creation of new divisions, brigades and battalions will increase the army’s operational capacity, or just make it even more top heavy. Already known for its woeful tooth-to-tail ratio – ‘teeth’ meaning the combat troops and ‘tail’ the support personnel – the Nigerian Army has far too many general officers for a force its size. According to one estimate, 30 per cent of all Nigerian military officers achieve general/flag officer rank, compared to no more than 3 per cent in many other countries. Until this dynamic changes, a disproportionate number of Nigerian soldiers will end up serving as orderlies, rather than patrolling communities to protect civilians.
Having taken the bold decision to increase the size of the country’s military, Nigeria’s leaders should look to maximize the impact of that investment by embracing key reforms. Tinubu could, for example, take steps to consolidate Nigeria’s sprawling security apparatus which now consists of an alphabet soup of security agencies that perform poorly and compete more than they cooperate. But in a country where politicians have long relied on agency-creation to build out their patronage networks, such bureaucratic streamlining will require sustained high-level impetus.
Security sector consolidation would also alleviate pressure on the army if it freed up human and budget resources for Nigeria’s struggling police. This investment will be especially critical as Nigeria prepares to pass a constitutional amendment to allow states to create their own police forces. If trained and resourced effectively, state forces could work with the federal police to relieve the army of routine internal security duties, freeing troops up to tackle some of Nigeria’s toughest security challenges.
Any domestic security sector reform effort, however modest, would also give Nigeria’s security assistance partners a clear opportunity to re-engage in ways that play to their strengths: planning and technical assistance, leadership training and education, and facilitating interagency cooperation and intelligence sharing. As partners like Britain and the US engage with Nigeria’s newly expanded army, they should stress to Nigeria’s leaders that security sector reform is the best way to ensure that bigger also means better.
Bitcoin rises above $80,000 for the first time since May amid uncertainty over US fiscal plans
Gold prices hit their highest level in more than three months on Tuesday as continued conflict in the Middle East and ongoing political uncertainty fuelled the latest rally in the precious metal.
Gold is viewed as a safe haven by investors and its price tends to rise at times of uncertainty.
Woolworths’ latest Disney “Ooshie” collectibles have not only captivated Australian children, they have led to a short-term slump in competitor Coles’ sales.
Thousands of shoppers switched supermarkets to collect the plastic figurines, trading them online and in classrooms. Some schools have banned the toys, which can be collected after a customer spends $30, and environmentalists have labelled them “future landfill”.
A developer says AliExpress is using the browser's WebAudio API to help fingerprint users by playing inaudible audio and measuring tiny differences in how their devices process it. CyberNews reports: The developer, "laserphile," wrote on their blog that they recently ran into some weird issues with their Bluetooth headphones. They couldn't play music via their phone when, at the same time, the AliExpress website was open on their PC. The headphones, laserphile explained, support multipoint Bluetooth audio so they can be connected to the PC and phone at the same time, for instance, playing music on the phone and announcing notifications through the PC. "Shortly after loading the AliExpress homepage, audio from my phone would stop playing. Closing the AliExpress tab fixes it immediately," the developer said in the blog post.
"Muting the tab/Firefox/Windows does not help, and there is no visible video, music, or other media playing on the page. This seemed suspicious enough to investigate." It turns out that Alibaba has been secretly leveraging AliExpress users' audio systems to track them and build detailed fingerprints of them. [...] The AliExpress site was using the browser's WebAudio API to run invisible sound waves at zero volume. By measuring tiny hardware differences in how each PC processed those signals, the site created a unique digital fingerprint to track devices -- without user knowledge or consent.
The secret audio path froze the developer's Bluetooth connection while covertly scraping hardware memory, screen dimensions, and network data in the background. The data collection extends beyond audio. Further inspection revealed that the same scripts also measure canvas, WebGL, hardware specs, WebRTC, mouse/touch events, and automation indicators. All of these form a broad device fingerprint that is sent back to Alibaba's telemetry servers. The simplest fix is to use a privacy-focused browser such as Firefox or Brave, which can limit or block this kind of fingerprinting. Brave goes further by randomizing fingerprint data and blocking the AliExpress tracking scripts involved.
As people grow used to AI chatbots, we’d like to hear your views about Google’s search engine
Google has put artificial intelligence at the front and center of its search bar. The most-visited site on the internet still shows the same list of links to users, but they have to scroll past a summarized response from an AI chatbot, a feature Google calls AI Overviews. The change to what was once the gateway to the rest of the internet has been profound, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting.
“AI is driving the most significant upgrade of the Google Search experience ever,” Liz Reid, Google’s vice-president of search, wrote last August. In May, the company said more AI is coming.
Newly released surveillance video shows an Amazon delivery driver striking a 71-year-old man inside an Elk Grove gas station earlier this year after a dispute over a parking space, officials said.
Holyrood ‘inching towards moratorium’ amid concerns over massive proposed developments in Auchtertool and beyond
In a village 21 miles north of Edinburgh, a real estate consultancy plans to build a datacentre larger than the village itself – 35 metres high, with an area larger than 100 football pitches.
Billed as the second-biggest datacentre in the world, the development in Auchertool, Fife, has attracted 1,600 objections.
A fundamental rupture in the values that have united North America is not a problem that can be wished away: this is a warning to the western alliance
The Canadians are exceedingly angry. I realise this can sometimes be difficult for foreigners to deduce, given our national struggle to express the full range of human emotion outside ice hockey riots. However, let me assure you that the prime minister Canadians saw take the stage on Saturday morning in the wake of the collapse in trade negotiations with the US was a Mark Carney practically vibrating with fury.
“You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked,” he said, in a rare press conference that was as candid and clear as he ever tends to be. “That’s fine … We’ve got the reserves, we’ve got the resilience, we’ve got the plan, we’ve got the focus. We’re gonna respond, we’re going to focus on what we can control and what we’re going to build.”
Jen Gerson is a Canadian commentator and co-founder of The Line. She lives in Calgary, Alberta
Washington, D.C. — The Trump administration is preparing to revoke as many as 200,000 business and tourist visas from foreigners who entered the United States temporarily and later applied for asylum, potentially the largest mass visa revocation in U.S. history.
The State Department said Monday it is working with the Department of Homeland Security to identify holders of B1 business and B2 tourist visas who subsequently sought asylum. The targeted visas were issued between 2016 and 2026, according to the Associated Press.
Revocation would not automatically mean immediate deportation. People with pending asylum cases generally can remain while those claims proceed, but they would lose their underlying visitor status and could face greater immigration scrutiny.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau argued that the asylum system has been overwhelmed by “frivolous” claims from people who originally represented themselves as temporary visitors.
The administration says the policy is intended to prevent misuse of legal immigration channels. Critics argue that applying for asylum after legally entering the country is permitted under federal law and that circumstances in a person’s home country can change after arrival.
The State Department has already revoked more than 175,000 visas since Trump returned to office as the administration expands immigration enforcement beyond people who entered the country illegally.
Officials have not announced when the new revocations will begin.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The world's oceans are hotter than ever recorded, new data suggests, as they suffer from human-caused climate change and the growing El Nino weather phenomenon. The average surface temperature of the planet's seas outside the polar regions hit 21.1C (70F) on Saturday, according to figures from the European Copernicus climate change service. That edges past the 21.09C recorded on three separate days in March 2024, and is far above average for the time of year. [...] The data is based on sea temperatures 10m (32ft 10in) below the surface, using measurements from buoys, ships and satellites, which are combined to produce a global estimate.
While the margin of record is currently very small and any global estimate comes with uncertainties, scientists say its timing is particularly notable. Average worldwide sea temperatures tend to reach their yearly peak in March or April, which corresponds to the end of summer in the southern hemisphere -- and not in August. The southern hemisphere contains more of the planet's ocean surface than the northern hemisphere and so exerts a bigger influence on average sea temperatures. What is especially concerning to scientists is that the oceans are already so hot when the natural El Nino weather phenomenon is still some way off its expected peak. "The fact that we are already breaking records is an early indicator of how strong the El Nino is becoming," said Dr Jeremy Grist, senior research fellow at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. "All things being equal we might expect the ocean temperature record to be broken again in March [or] April 2027," he added.
I bought a high end board. My son rode under 10 times and it wouldn’t power on. They say it’s out of warranty at 7M and are requiring me to pay $732 to get it back working (battery replacement). Under 15 miles on the board and stored indoors and not plugged in. customer service is horrible. they put you on hold, then disconnect you for no agent available - 5 times today. upon email, they can’t make outbound calls. they tell you they can toss your 3500 board if you don’t replace the battery. do not ever work with them. I plan to do everything in my power to protect others from their defective merchandise. I’ve never been treated so poorly and never had a company do this little, it’s their defective merchandise. I hope this helps even one person from a purchase. Unless you have money to burn, don’t ever roll the dice with this poor company.
Washington, D.C. — The Supreme Court cleared a major legal obstacle Monday for President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting, although separate court orders and the rapidly approaching midterms could limit how much of the plan actually takes effect.
The 6-3 decision lifted an injunction covering portions of Trump’s March order after the majority concluded that Democratic-led states had challenged the policy prematurely. The justices did not rule that the president’s proposed restrictions are constitutional, leaving the door open to additional lawsuits once specific rules are implemented.
Trump’s order directs the federal government to develop voter-eligibility lists and calls for the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to voters appearing on those lists. States argue the Constitution assigns election administration primarily to states and Congress, not the president.
A separate injunction still prevents the Postal Service from imposing some of the new ballot-delivery requirements. Meanwhile, election deadlines are approaching quickly, with some states preparing to mail ballots to military and overseas voters in early September.
Trump has repeatedly claimed mail voting is vulnerable to widespread fraud, despite little evidence supporting that assertion. He has also voted by mail himself.
About 30% of ballots in the 2024 presidential election were cast by mail. Further litigation is expected before November.
Detroit, Michigan — Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed repeatedly tried to steer a contentious Fox News interview toward pocketbook issues Monday as host Jesse Watters pressed him on religion, transgender policies and controversial past comments.
During the roughly 30-minute appearance, El-Sayed criticized rising gasoline prices during the Iran war and questioned the Trump administration’s military spending, arguing voters are more concerned about everyday costs than many of the cultural disputes dominating cable news.
Watters challenged El-Sayed, a Muslim, about Sharia law. El-Sayed compared it with Christian Canon law, saying Americans should be free to practice their religion while stressing that “nobody is trying to push Sharia law on anyone else.” Fox’s own account confirms that exchange and says El-Sayed told Watters he would “never” impose his faith on others.
The two also sparred over transgender healthcare, athletes, taxing extreme wealth and Colin Kaepernick. When Watters raised transgender sports, El-Sayed argued the issue receives disproportionate attention compared with healthcare, transportation and affordability.
El-Sayed also defended higher taxes on people with more than $100 million in wealth, saying the money could support infrastructure and education.
The progressive physician faces Republican Mike Rogers in November for Michigan’s open Senate seat.
Trenton, New Jersey — Gov. Mikie Sherrill and Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew are escalating a partisan dispute over a software error that caused roughly 6,600 noncitizens to be improperly registered to vote in New Jersey.
Van Drew accused Sherrill Monday of turning legitimate congressional oversight into a “political hit piece” after she criticized him and 18 House Republicans who demanded documents and answers about the registration failure.
The error occurred between June 2023 and June 2024 through the Motor Vehicle Commission’s automatic voter-registration system. People who identified themselves as noncitizens were incorrectly coded as eligible voters. About 340 of the roughly 6,600 people later cast ballots, according to the state’s latest review.
Sherrill’s administration has removed 5,100 registrations and referred another 1,650 to county election officials for review. She has blamed contractor Idemia for the software failure while also criticizing the previous administration for not disclosing the problem sooner.
Republicans argue the episode demonstrates weaknesses in automatic voter registration. Sherrill counters that GOP lawmakers are using the error politically while seeking private voter information the state says should remain protected.
A federal judge recently rejected the Trump administration’s separate effort to obtain New Jersey’s unredacted voter database, ruling that federal law did not entitle the government to the information.
State officials say they have found no evidence that the registration error changed the outcome of any election.
Donald Trump has threatened to increase tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks, auto parts and steel to 50% today, after trade negotiations between Washington and Ottowa broke down last week.
On Truth Social, the president blasted Canada, and said the new duties will go into effect on 1 January 2027.
The state department will revoke B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026, whose holders have sought or are now seeking asylum
Donald Trump’s administration said on Monday it planned to revoke the non-immigrant visas of foreigners who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum status in the US, marking its latest step in a sweeping immigration crackdown.
A state department spokesperson said it was coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security “to identify and revoke the non-immigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently”.
Tens of thousands are still under evacuation orders or warnings amid ‘human-caused’, wind-driven blaze
The Hawk fire is about 27% contained, authorities said on Monday afternoon, two days after the fast-moving, wind-driven wildfire sparked near Reno, Nevada.
Authorities added that 23,000 people are under a “go-now” order and 40,000 people are under a “get-set” warning, an improvement from the 90,000 Nevadans under evacuation orders or warnings on Monday morning.
After repairs to Hirosaki Castle in Aomori prefecture, officials employed a technique known as hikiya to move the structure more than two metres
To chants of “so-re, so-re”, about 1,800 people came together in northern Japan over the weekend to pull a 360-tonne castle keep a little more than two metres closer to its original resting place as part of ongoing renovations.
The keep – a fortified tower within a castle – had to be moved to repair a wall that was damaged in a major earthquake.
Days after his sudden firing by the Pentagon, Erik Slavin, the former editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes, told CBS News that "time will tell" whether the military newspaper will remain editorially independent.
Arbitrator determined the Post improperly fired Karen Attiah, a union-protected employee, over social media posts
An independent arbitrator has ordered the Washington Post to rehire the high-profile opinion columnist Karen Attiah, abruptly fired by the news organization last September over comments she made on social media about Charlie Kirk, the then recently killed conservative activist.
On Monday, an arbitrator ruled that the Post had violated her rights as a union-protected employee and ordered the newspaper to reinstate her and compensate her for lost wages.
Far-right leader echoes ally Donald Trump and says operations to ‘track down illegal immigrants’ should begin this week, amid earthquake aftermath
Colombia’s far-right president, Abelardo de la Espriella, has announced a crackdown on immigrants, ordering authorities to detain and deport people who are in the country irregularly or have committed crimes.
In office for just over two weeks, the millionaire former lawyer made the announcement on Sunday as the country continued to grapple with the aftermath of a 7.4-magnitude earthquake on 10 August that killed more than 300 people and destroyed more than 30,000 homes.
Mike Lindell is withholding the payment required for a recount and audit of ballots cast in the Republican primary for Minnesota governor, claiming that the Secretary of State's office has proposed an unlawful recount process, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.
A federal judge has postponed a trial in the U.S. for a Libyan man charged in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, citing the discovery of new evidence.
Karen Solomon, wanted for questioning in the death of her Worcester, Massachusetts, police officer husband, has been found dead after a massive search.
Lindsay Clancy trial testimony ended abruptly Monday in Plymouth Superior Court when a witness began speaking about religion and the defense unsuccessfully called for a mistrial.
Columbia, South Carolina — Sen. Darline Graham declined Monday to say whether she would have voted to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory, instead arguing that the nation’s election system needs major changes.
During a press conference, MS NOW reporter Mychael Schnell asked Graham whether she agreed with her late brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who voted to certify the 2020 Electoral College results following the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
“I think our election system is broken,” Graham responded, pivoting to her support for the SAVE America Act, which would impose new federal voter-identification and proof-of-citizenship requirements.
Lindsey Graham rejected Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 result and voted to certify Biden’s victory. His sister was appointed by Gov. Henry McMaster to fill his Senate seat after his death in July and is now seeking the Republican nomination for a full term.
Darline Graham faces Rep. Ralph Norman in Tuesday’s GOP runoff. She led the initial primary with about 33% of the vote compared with Norman’s 25%. Trump has endorsed Graham and campaigned on her behalf.
Her refusal to answer the certification question comes as Trump continues to falsely claim that widespread fraud caused his 2020 defeat. Graham did not say who she believes legitimately won that election or how she would handle a similar certification dispute in 2028.
More than 3,000 products were shown at the 2026 World Robot Conference in Beijing as China showcased its rapidly growing robotics industry.
The event, which ran from 19-23 August, showcased the latest advances across the robotics industry, from humanoid robots to embodied intelligence and cutting-edge components
Karen Solomon had been missing for six days after her husband Kurt Solomon was found dead at their home
A mental health advocate suspected of killing her police officer husband was found dead on Monday, six days after she disappeared from her Massachusetts home, authorities said.
Karen Solomon, an advocate who called for improvements and greater awareness of police mental health issues, had disappeared after Worcester police officer Kurt Solomon was found dead at their home just before 5.30am on 18 August. Officials had named Karen Solomon a suspect and said she was believed to be armed.
JetBlue is opening the second location in its nascent airport lounge network, JetBlue BlueHouse, at Boston Logan International Airport. Scheduled to open Aug. 27, 2026, the Boston location joins the BlueHouse that opened in December 2025 at John F. Kennedy…
How are those live sports games starring the characters from The Simpsons, Toy Story and Inside Out made? With a lot of animators and tech like motion capture and face tracking.
Profound isolation contributed to the deaths of more than 100 care leavers in England in a year, with a dramatic drop-off in support from social services at 18 leading to catastrophic consequences, a review has found.
A government-commissioned report into the early deaths of young people who left care described the problem as a national tragedy and said many were left on their own “at the height of vulnerability” before they died.
Dr Kirk Heilbrun says he believes Clancy took children’s lives so they wouldn’t ‘suffer’ after she killed herself
With just days to go before the murder trial for Lindsay Clancy concludes, a forensic psychologist called by the prosecution testified on Monday that he did not believe she was experiencing acute psychosis when she killed her three children.
Kirk Heilbrun, who reportedly performed psychiatric tests on Clancy in April, told the court that he questioned her claims that a hallucinated voice commanded her to commit the act, and that he believed she took their livesso they wouldn’t “suffer” after she killed herself.
Amazon has raised the prices of its hardware devices by as much as 60%, blaming "significant increases in memory and storage component costs." TechCrunch reports: The price explosion impacted Fire TVs, Echos, Kindles, and Eeros. One egregious example that's been cited is that of the Echo Dot, one of Amazon's cheapest smart speakers, the price of which jumped 60% overnight, from $49.99 to $79.99. Price-tracking sites like CamelCamelCamel show the stark uptick, which has previously hovered much lower. [...] The company also said that it would continue to offer occasional promotions to customers over the course of the next year. Amazon said in a statement: "The consumer electronics industry is facing significant increases in memory and storage component costs. After absorbing these increases for as long as we could, we recently adjusted pricing across our product lines."
The treasury secretary said Trump is contacting other world leaders to demand their support for the “economic asphyxiation” of the Iranian regime but he declined to say which countries and gave no deadline for action.
At D23, a panel with the stars and showrunners of Percy Jackson and the Olympians revealed a few details, including gods, rescue missions and possible deaths ahead.
The SEC is investigating the near-collapse of AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness, sending subpoenas to major Wall Street banks for details about the fund's trades, borrowing, and communications with lenders. The fund, founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, managed over $30 billion and borrowed tens of billions more before leveraged bets unraveled, forcing it to sell most of its stock portfolio to Citadel at a discount. The New York Times reports: The subpoenas asked for details on the timing of Situational Awareness's trades and for its communications with lenders about the money it was borrowing, also known as "leverage," two of those people said. The subpoenas additionally warned the banks to preserve any information regarding the San Francisco hedge fund. The S.E.C. oversees financial markets with an eye toward protecting small investors, and has brought civil cases regularly against investment firms that produced large losses. Any investigation into Situational Awareness would be at its earliest stages, and it's no guarantee that it would lead to fines or other punishment. The hedge fund has not been accused of wrongdoing.
[...] Situational Awareness had a fast rise and an even quicker retreat. Founded just two years ago by Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former researcher at OpenAI, it rode the A.I. boom to soaring investment returns. To achieve those results, however, the fund relied on heavy borrowing, as well as complicated and expensive financial instruments that magnify gains -- and losses. The latter piled up quickly last month when the stock prices of publicly traded, high-flying A.I. companies dipped. At the same time, shares in more traditional technology companies -- which the hedge fund had been betting against -- rose, compounding the problem. Situational Awareness was forced into a fire sale. It wound up selling most of its stock portfolio to a rival, Citadel, at a discount.
(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump said Monday he would impose 50% tariffs on all Canadian cars, trucks, auto parts and steel on Jan. 1 as leaders in Ottawa vowed to retaliate against the U.S. import taxes.
Justices’ ruling comes after lower courts had blocked president’s election order ahead of November midterms
The US supreme court sided with Donald Trump on Mondayin his effort to crack down on mail-in voting, though it remains unclear if his administration can take action ahead of the midterm elections in November.
Justices on the court voted 6-3 along ideological lines to lift an injunction from June that a judge in Massachusetts placed on an executive order issued by the president. But a second injunction remains in placeand the ruling leaves room for legal challenges.
US Southern Command has struck another vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing two accused of trafficking drugs
The US military has launched a deadly strike on a vessel in the Pacific Ocean, killing two people accused of drug trafficking.
On Monday, US Southern Command (SouthCom) announced it “executed a lethal kinetic strike on a low-profile vessel operating along established narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific”.
About 40% of £10bn from Affordable Homes Programme will now go on types of housing such as sheltered and shared ownership
Andy Burnham has backtracked on his proposal to rip up the government’s housing plans and boost social home building.
Ministers laid out plans on Monday to spend an initial £10bn from the 10-year Affordable Homes Programme on a mix of subsidised housing types in England, in line with the Starmer government’s policy.
The Center Square) – Some evacuation orders west of Reno have been lifted as more than 900 firefighters continue to battle the Hawk Fire, which burned just over 15,000 acres and led to the initial evacuation of about 90,000 residents.
Retailer removes kid’s clown costume after people said it resembled a racist caricature used in minstrel shows
Target, the US retail corporation, said it pulled a controversial Halloween costume off its shelves after criticism across social media that it resembled a racist caricature.
The ad image for the costume, sold as the “Kids’ Glows Under Blacklight Circus Clown Halloween Costume,” depicted a Black child in a bright orange and black top with solid black gloves and a mask with a wide, toothy smile. Both the child’s pose and the costume’s gloves and mask were likened to caricatures of Black people used in minstrel shows.
(The Center Square) – The U.S. Department of State is rescinding Syria’s state sponsor of terror designation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday.
6 months ago someone asked if the Spintend Sensor was good, if there was any difference between the Nexus sensor, after a few thousand kilometers riding with it, I'm feeling pretty confident on doing a review for it.
Let's get the ugly out of the way : I can't say I'd recommend it for concave footpads. The curve of the GT Lowboy Flared has prevented me from engaging the heel side of the sensor multiple times, specifically when I originally get on the board. I need to stop, replace my foot, check that the heel-side is engaging, then ride. I've gotten used to it, but it's still not great. I don't think that a flat footpads would have any issues however.
Otherwise, it works very well. While engaged, it reads a solid 3.2v despite riding through rain, mud and all of the events of the the Québec Electric Games. The waterproofing is holding great, I never worry about the sensor dying on me or cutting out mid-ride.
Despite the fact that the sensor is advertised as cuttable, I haven't cut into it because of the sheer size of the footpad itself ; I haven't needed to. Perhaps cutting it along the middle line would've provided a better engagement rate with the initial engagement, but that'd be something to test later.
Tampa, Florida — Gov. Ron DeSantis acknowledged Monday that Florida Republicans may not capture all four congressional seats their newly redrawn map was designed to put within reach, citing a more difficult national political environment heading into November.
“This year they’re winnable, but I think that it’s going to require some effort,” DeSantis said during an appearance in Tampa.
Florida Republicans adopted the new congressional map this spring after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key Voting Rights Act provision. The map significantly shifted four Democratic-held districts toward Republicans and could expand the GOP’s current 20-seat advantage in Florida’s 28-member House delegation. Reuters reported after last week’s primaries that the map could potentially produce four additional Republican seats.
The most dramatic changes affect Reps. Kathy Castor and Darren Soto. Soto’s district moved from one Kamala Harris carried by about 3.5 points in 2024 to one Donald Trump won by nearly 18 points. Castor’s longtime Democratic-leaning Tampa district now favored Trump by about 10 points.
DeSantis said the political climate differs from 2022, when Republicans gained four Florida seats after the state’s previous redistricting. He noted that midterm elections can become nationalized and acknowledged Republicans may face political headwinds this year.
Democrats and voting-rights organizations have challenged the new map under Florida’s Fair Districts Amendments, arguing it was drawn to favor Republicans. The Florida Supreme Court declined to block its use before the election, but the underlying lawsuit remains pending.
The Trump administration is proposing to make permanent a $103,265 fee on certain new H-1B visas, dramatically increasing costs for employers that rely on highly skilled foreign workers in tech, education, and research. "A federal judge in June ruled that the fee was illegal and blocked the Trump administration from collecting it," reports Reuters. "A Boston-based appeals court is reviewing that decision while a different court considers whether a judge properly rejected a challenge to the fee by a major business group." From the report: Trump's temporary fee increase expires in September, one year after it was issued. The proposed rule by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, posted in the Federal Register on Monday, would make a fee of $103,265 permanent. It could be finalized by the end of the year. The H-1B program allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers with training in specialty fields and offers 65,000 visas annually, with another 20,000 for workers with advanced degrees, approved for three to six years. Those visas typically came with fees between $2,000 and $5,000 before Trump's order. The fee would not apply to visas granted to foreign citizens already in the United States on student visas, who make up a large share of new H-1B recipients, or to renewals of current visas.
In Trump administration’s plan, California, Arizona and Nevada face about a 20% cut to water supply over two years
Nevada filed a federal lawsuit on Monday challenging the Trump administration’s new plan for the imperiled Colorado River, launching what could become the first of many court battles over the waterway that supplies 40 million people, dozens of tribes and 5.5m acres of farm land across the American west.
The federal plan, issued Friday, cut roughly 20% from the water supplied to lower basin states – Nevada, Arizona and California – over the next two years, with a potential for harsher cutbacks in the future, based on conditions.
(The Center Square) - U.S. lawmakers and industry leaders are pushing for a national framework to govern self-driving cars and increase domestic manufacturing.
I am working on replacing my battery with an OnlyAmps BIGBOI battery pack. I’m hoping I won’t need to get a new BMS, but just in case I do, what kind of BMS should I get if I end up needing one? My plan is to go third-party so I can get the most out of the battery pack. Help me, Reddit. You’re my only hope.
ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 24, 2026 — At the annual Hot Chips conference, IBM today is announcing the first dual-architecture mainframe processor, which is being designed to enable enterprises to run operating systems and applications on both the IBM and Arm compute platforms in future IBM Z and LinuxONE systems. This marks the first processor milestone to emerge from the IBM and Arm collaboration established in April 2026, and represents a significant advance in enterprise computing. The new processor is being developed to allow organizations to run Arm-native Linux environments simultaneously with z/OS and Linux on IBM Z, while benefiting from IBM’s established security, reliability, and scale.
Credit: Shutterstock
With more than 22 million developers worldwide, the Arm software ecosystem supports a broad and growing range of applications from cloud to edge, including the cloud-native and AI software increasingly shaping modern infrastructure. This new processor will bring that ecosystem to the IBM platforms known globally for transaction processing and data-intensive operations. Arm workloads will benefit from IBM’s enterprise-grade capabilities, including enhanced reliability, hardware-level fault detection and recovery, advanced encryption, secure key management, and AI acceleration.
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.
“As organizations modernize their application portfolios and integrate AI into core business operations, they need infrastructure that expands their options,” said Christian Jacobi, Chief Technology Officer and IBM Fellow, IBM Systems Development. “This processor represents a significant architectural advancement for IBM Z and LinuxONE. By bringing Arm natively to our platform, we’re combining access to one of the industry’s fastest-growing software ecosystems with the qualities that have made IBM systems the foundation for how businesses run today.”
“As AI scales, more of the computing landscape is converging on Arm,” said Mohamed Awad, Executive Vice President, Cloud AI, Arm. “IBM Z and LinuxONE power some of the world’s most demanding workloads in highly regulated industries. Bringing Arm compute and its software ecosystem to these platforms will extend that momentum into mission-critical enterprise infrastructure to give organizations greater choice in how they deploy AI.”
This milestone represents a major step forward in IBM and Arm’s shared vision of expanding application choice and access to the latest in software innovation for enterprise computing without compromising the capabilities these environments demand.
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.
Aug. 24, 2026 — The ISC High Performance Conference took place in Hamburg, Germany, June 23-26, 2026, bringing together the European and international high-performance computing, AI and quantum community. EuroTPC took part throughout the week, presenting at the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking booth and contributing to the 3rd Trillion Parameter Consortium (TPC) Workshop.
EuroTPC presentation by Fabrizio Gagliardi (BSC)
EuroTPC at the EuroHPC Booth
On June 23, Fabrizio Gagliardi from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) represented EuroTPC at the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking booth, delivering a presentation that shared the project’s vision for building the future of AI for science and explained why coordinated European action matters at this pivotal moment for AI and HPC.
The 3rd TPC Workshop: Bridging the AI and HPC Gap
The main highlight of the week was the 3rd Trillion Parameter Consortium Workshop, “Bridging the AI and HPC Gap,” held on Friday, June 26. The session addressed one of the most pressing challenges in scientific computing: the growing misalignment between frontier-scale AI models and the realities of today’s HPC systems.
The workshop opened with an invited keynote from Rio Yokota of the Institute of Science Tokyo, who spoke on pre-training large language models at scale, covering distributed training, sparse expert models and synthetic data.
This was followed by a themed roundtable, “Same Mission, New Owner: Is the AI Factory HPC’s Successor or Its Eviction Notice?”, moderated by Gokcen Kestor of the BSC. The panel brought together Pedro Valero-Lara of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Yanfei Guo of NVIDIA, and Shreeya Badhe of C-DAC, India, who offered contrasting perspectives on whether the emergence of AI Factories represents a natural evolution of HPC infrastructure or a fundamental challenge to its role.
The afternoon session showcased five presentations spanning a wide range of topics, from synthetic biological reasoning problems to scalable large language model training and transparent energy profiling for frontier-scale AI:
Y. K. Singh (C-DAC, India) on “Bridging Computation and Compassion: How C-FLOOD Transforms Disaster Response in India through HPC-AI Convergence”
Further discussions throughout the day touched on the full spectrum of the workshop’s themes: training trillion-parameter models on supercomputers, designing synthetic data pipelines as HPC workloads, practical integration challenges at HPC facilities, AI-assisted code generation and performance optimization, and responsible, reproducible practice at scale. An open discussion on reproducibility, responsible compute usage and governance of shared infrastructure across Europe closed the session.
Javier Aula-Blasco (BSC), Shreeya Badhe (C-DAC, India), Pedro Valero-Lara (ORNL), Gokcen Kestor (BSC), Yanfei Guo (NVIDIA)
The workshop was co-organized by Javier Aula-Blasco (BSC), Murali Emani (Argonne National Laboratory), Eduardo Iraola and Gokcen Kestor (both BSC), and brought together researchers and practitioners from academia, government and industry to advance a shared understanding of how Europe and its global partners can align AI development with HPC infrastructure.
EuroTPC is funded under grant number 101260370 and coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación. The consortium is built on leading European HPC and AI research organizations. EuroTPC operates in close alignment with the Trillion Parameter Consortium and the EU’s AI Continent Action Plan.
Motif is great, I love how it looks and feels, and I want it to be actively maintained. I want a healthy ecosystem of Motif applications and even window managers and desktop environments, so I can run a real Motif environment. Sadly, while Motif has been open source for a while, the project itself stalled years ago, with little to no activity from anyone involved. That may be changing, as a number of developers decided to take matters into their own hands last year.
This fork of Motif was born of a desire to keep Motif (and other X11 technologies) alive and well. The original upstream Sourceforge project hasn’t had any activity in over two years, none of the project admins have been active for at least that amount of time, the official bug tracker has disappeared into the void; and the user forum was closed way back in 2017. Sadly, it appears that the original upstream has abandoned the project.
I’ve incorporated some fixes from upstream that have laid dormant for years, a few others from Gentoo, and made a few improvements of my own. I intend to maintain this fork, and in doing so advocate for the continued use of the user interface toolkit that defined an era, and influenced many of the user interfaces that came after it.
Some of the people involved are people I know online, so I have a bit of faith in this fork being able to stand the test of time, but of course, managing a complex project like this is hard, so who knows how long the enthusiasm remains. Still, this fork has seen five releases since its inception a little over a year ago, which seems promising. It may seem weird for some to have a love for Motif, but I’m the kind of person who installs weird, outdated corporate and industrial software I don’t understand on my HP c8000 dual PA-RISC workstation running HP-UX just to enjoy the Motif interfaces they sometimes ship. We all have our quirks.
From my experiences talking to people online, I know there’s actually a rather solid number of people like me, and I hope that at some point the developers in this group can gain enough critical mass to build something like a basic Linux distribution or desktop environment using the disparate, actively-maintained Motif projects out there that yes, still exist. It’s a long shot, but in today’s computing landscape, where more and more people feel uncomfortable with “modern” software, I really feel like there’s a niche for something like this to exist.
A really small niche, surely, but a niche all the same.
The future of optical interconnects is very bright, thanks to the advantages they hold over copper networking in terms of bandwidth, reach, efficiency, and signal integrity. As is the case with any new technology, there are technical hurdles to overcome, as well as interoperability concerns. We got an update on this important work during a discussion on a handful of optical interconnect Multi-Source Agreements (MSA) at Hot Interconnects last week.
Many of the top companies in optical networking signed MSAs in March with the goal of working together to pave the way toward standards and interoperability in this emerging field. We saw MSAs signed across six areas, including Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI), Open Co-packaging (Open CPX), eXtra-dense Pluggable Optics (XPO), Linear Pluggable Optics (LPO), Expanded Beam Optical (EBO), and four-core, multi-core (SDM4 MCF).
During the talk at the IEEE’s 33rd Hot Interconnects Symposium last week, we heard from some of the engineers working on four of these, specifically OCI, Open CPX, SDM4 MCF, and XPO. Here’s a short summary of what was discussed.
OCI MSA
Image courtesy Meta
One of the most important MSAs is the Optical Compute Interconnect MSA, which was formed by AMD, Broadcom, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and OpenAI to build an open, silicon-centric wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) standard for scale-up optical interconnects systems. At HotI, we heard from Drew Alduino, a principal optical engineer and director of optical infrastructure at Meta.
“We certainly needed an interconnect moving forward for optical scale-up,” he said. “The primary challenge we see is that… as scale up domains get larger, we’re exceeding the bounds of what can be attached in an electrical domain of a single rack.”
According to Alduino, the six founding members of the OCI MSA have come to an agreement on a specification for a 200 Gbps bidirectional link. They are now working on a specification for 400 Gbps, which they expect to share in 2027.
“What happens at 800 Gbps, which is probably a couple of years after that?” Alduino asked. “We don’t know, from the industry perspective, where we are with that, what the signaling choices will be. I mean, we’re still working to implement 400 Gpbs. And yet from the GPU perspective, from a cluster perspective, that’s sort of a couple of generations out. We’re going to need a solution.”
Image courtesy Meta
The number of potential options is quite high, which complicates matters, Alduino said. Each technical decision impacts other aspects of the spec, which results in a very high level of overall complexity.
“What is the next-gen scale of interconnect? There’s a lot of choices,” he said. “People start talking about comb lasers and integrated lasers and external lasers, micro LEDs, and pixels. And then you start talking about what’s your modulation rate. You could go everywhere from 2 or 4 gig per fiber all the way up to terabits per second per fiber.
“And then you start thinking about, well, coherent has a play, right? And what about DWDM [dense wavelength division mulitiplexing]? Should we do more than terahertz signaling?” Alduino continued. “And then suddenly on top of that, you’ve got form factors which also play into your ability and how are you going to do that? And then on top of that, what does that imply for the system architecture?
“It is, as Dan [Pitt, the HotI moderator] suggested, a bit overwhelming,” he continued. “And unfortunately, this is a tangled ball of yarn. Everything impacts everything else.”
Open CPX
The Open Co-packaging (CPX) MSA was established by TeraHop, Ciena, Coherent, Marvell, Molex, and others to standardize co-packaged and near-package optical engines and sockets.
Ryan Yu, the vice president of marketing for TeraHop, gave HoIT attendees and update on this MSA. As Yu discussed, the goal of the CPX MSA essentially is to give customers, network providers, and system builders the freedom to use copper and optics practically interchangeably.
Image courtesy TeraHop
“There’s a famous saying: Use copper when you can and use optics when you must,” Yu said. “This actually fit that scenario quite well. Basically, you have a socket where you can either deploy copper or deploy optics when you design your system that allows that flexibility of combinations. And you can actually also enable, in this case, an optical mix.”
While co-packaged optics (CPO) promise to lower the channel loss between the ASIC and the optic cables, CPO introduces a series of challenge of its own, including the potential for vendor lock-in with proprietary solutions that are hooked into specific ASICs.
“So far, most of the CPOs promoted [are] single vendor lock-in proprietary solutions,” Yu said. “And these are very tightly integrated with ASIC.”
Unhooking the optical network from the ASIC is difficult if not impossible with a tight level of integration. There is little opportunity to service the CPO without ripping out the ASIC as well, which drives up costs. “And then when we try to move optics closer to integrated ASIC, you kind of eliminate the choice of copper if the integration is that tight,” Yu said.
That is the mission of this MSA: to create an open socket CPO for economical, large scale AI deployment. The MSA started with six members, and now it’s up to 80, Yu said.
SDM4 MCF MSA
The Space Division Multiplexing 4-Core Multi-Core Fiber (SDM4 MCF) MSA was founded by Corning, AFL, Sumitomo Electric, and TeraHop this spring with the goal of setting a specification, and hopefully eventually a standard, for the physical (PHY) cable layer.
Image courtesy Corning
According to the HoTI presentation by Gabe Sudduth, Corning’s MCF solutions program manager, this MSA currently is focused on moving from one fiber optic core in a standard cable to four fiber optic cores.
“By and large, you have four ‘normal cores’ and this kind of package really gives you up to four X the bandwidth [in] the pathways, in that thread of glass, than you have in a single core fiber,” he said. “So it really gives…an unparalleled density advantage compared to other fiber solutions.”
Boosting the bandwidth of a single cable by 4x brings additional advantages besides just the capability to move more bits. Deployments require fewer cables, saving space in the data center, as well as fewer connectors, which saves space on the switch and the server. This currently is primarily a scale-out play within the data center, Sudduth said, with some scale-across (i.e. campus level) potential.
“We’re probably a little bit behind where we thought we’d be in terms of releasing a spec,” Sudduth said. “When we published a press release in the March time frame, we thought it would be a couple months. I think from this point on it will be within a couple of months. So I’m kind of keeping that same tagline.”
The group picked four fiber optic cores as the sweet spot, but it could add more in the future, Sudduth said.
“Nineteen is probably the upper limit of what you can get in a cladding,” he said in response to a question. “I think there’s general consensus that four is really the right place to start. Two is too few to really get the bang for the buck, and more than four, you start to have to really change the parameters of the optical properties of the cores beyond what’s kind of normal.”
XPO MSA
The eXtra-dense Pluggable Optics (XPO) MSA was formed in March by Arista Networks, Lightmatter, and Marvell to create a specification for a new liquid-cooled pluggable form factor transceiver that supports 64 high speed electrical lanes, a 4x increase over current switch rack density.
Image courtesy Arista Networks
Sunil Priyadarshi, the senior director of AI hardware architecture and optical networking at Arista, discussed the XPO MSA during HoTI.
“Compared to the traditional data center, in the AI data center there is a network wall,” Priyadarshi said. “I will rather say it’s not just the network wall, it’s a density, power, and cooling [wall], because as you know, as more and more GPUs are connected together to work as a single system and as the number of GPU are increasing, their scale-up bandwidth also is increasing.”
While CPO is regarded as the future of optical networking, there is currently widespread adoption of existing pluggable optics. As Priyadarshi noted, there are hundreds of millions of pluggable transceivers that use the 1.6T OCP form factor deployed into data centers.
“Is that enough to meet the GPU connectivity demand?” he asked. “Yeah, it can meet it. But the number of racks you will need is too many, so it won’t meet your density and probably the power and the cooling [requirements] because 1.6T is air cooled.”
The XPO MSA proposes a specification for a 12.8 Tbps liquid cooled optics module. With 16 modules per rack unit, this specification can support a front-panel density of 204.8 Tbps, which is 4x more than the existing 1600G-OSFP (1.6T) standard.
According to Priyadarshi, the new XPO spec is versatile and will support scale up, scale out, and scale across deployments. “So it support all that, and also it support all kinds of optics, like DR, FR, LR, SR, ZR/ZR+, and slow and wide.”
You can find more information about HotI 2026 at the group’s website.
(The Center Square) — Vice President JD Vance touted a manufacturing "renaissance" Monday during a visit to a Maine factory, where he highlighted the Trump administration's economic policies and stumped for Republican candidates ahead of the high-stakes midterms.
Why doesn’t FM deactivate the power button while board is level, both sensors are engaged, and no wheel-slip is detected?
Seems very unsafe that you can always press the button and nosedive, which you probably won’t do but what if the button fails? I know it is Normally Open, but if the loop closes the board just turns off… sounds risky
Raspberry Pi has published an official guide for building a cyberdeck, leaning into a viral trend of homemade portable computers built from repurposed cases, purses, and other oddball hardware. The guide uses a Raspberry Pi 5, keyboard, battery, and Pelican-style case. The Verge reports: Raspberry Pi's head of social, Ashley Whittaker, acknowledged the cyberdeck trend today, saying "we haven't been able to get away from cyberdecks this year." Raspberry Pi has also increased its prices multiple times this year due to rising costs for RAM and other components, which could be another reason to support this growing market of active and would-be hobbyists. The 16GB version of the Raspberry Pi 5 included in the company's official cyberdeck guide got a $100 price hike in April, nearly as much as the board's original $120 price.
AROS, the open source Amiga OS-compatible operating system, now has images available for the Raspberry Pi 3 (although some people state it also works on the Pi 4), in both 32bit and 64bit versions. According to the AROS team, they are quite stable, but not yet complete, so do know what you’re getting into. Dan Wood posted a YouTube video about these new images, providing much more insight into how well they work if you want more insight into how well they work.
The images are, of course, the basic AROS operating system, so expect a rather barebones experience. If you’re used to some of the AROS distributions for x86, which come loaded with software and customisations, these images will feel quite bare to you. It’s going to take some time to port over all of these applications and customisations to the ARM version of AROS, but if and once that happens, I expect more complete images to appear as well.
Great news for AROS and the Amiga community in general.
(The Center Square) - A Delaware-registered corporation has applied for a federal permit to study the development of an underwater AI data center campus in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, triggering pushback from blindsided state officials.DeepGreen Cook Inlet SPV LLC filed an…
In recent public appearances, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said obesity dropped 3% “in the last year” and suggested the Trump administration deserves at least some of the credit. One poll shows obesity falling by about that much — but the decline happened over several years and began well before President Donald Trump’s current term.
And there’s little evidence it’s because of Kennedy’s focus on chronic disease prevention or his push to get Americans to eat better, experts told us.
According to Gallup polling, the rate of obesity among U.S. adults peaked in 2022 and has fallen every year since. The decline started during the Biden administration and has continued under Trump.
Experts also told us that, if obesity is declining, there’s little evidence it’s due to changes in diet or lifestyle. Some said it may be related to a factor Kennedy isn’t highlighting — the rise of new GLP-1 weight loss drugs.
Kennedy — who has made eating “real foods” a core part of his Make America Healthy Again movement and sometimes disparaged GLP-1 drugs in recent years — has trumpeted the purported decline in obesity several times in recent months.
“This year, obesity rates dropped in this country, for the first time in 40 years, by about 3%,” Kennedy said during an Aug. 24 event on childhood nutrition. “Consumption of real foods went up by 7 to 10% this year. And there are many, many other indicia [that] show that what we’re doing is actually working.”
He referenced the same stat while speaking at a community health center in California on Aug. 13.
“Obesity has now dropped, for the first time, 3% in the last year,” he said. “People are starting to eat good foods and that’s part of it. But a big part of it is dealing with primary care and getting rid of — getting away from the perverse incentives of just ordering test after test after test and pharmaceutical interventions.”
Kennedy made similar claims about the obesity rate at least twice in June. He told a produce industry conference that obesity rates were “down almost 2%” this year and called it a “huge win,” according to trade publication The Packer. And during a panel in Michigan hosted by a conservative think tank, he said, “Since President Trump came into office, obesity rates in this country have dropped by 2.5%. That’s the first drop in 50 years.”
We asked the Department of Health and Human Services where Kennedy got those numbers and haven’t received a response. But he’s likely referring to the data from Gallup, which was the only publicly available source we could find reporting a roughly 3 percentage point decrease in obesity.
The data, however, don’t support Kennedy’s claims that the obesity rate fell by that much in a single year. Gallup’s numbers show a total decline of 3.5 percentage points between 2022 and the first half of 2026. About two-thirds of that came between 2022 and 2024, when Joe Biden was in office.
Kennedy speaks at an event on food policy earlier this month. Photo: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
More broadly, experts told us there’s still some uncertainty about whether obesity is in fact falling and, if it is, whether that trend will continue. The U.S. obesity rate has dipped or plateaued before, according to government data, only to keep rising in subsequent years.
As for why obesity may be declining, several experts told us they’re not aware of any evidence that Americans have made major changes to their diets, as Kennedy suggested. Some pointed to increasing use of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic as a more plausible explanation, though that remains a topic of debate.
“There is no evidence I am aware of that suggests Americans have made major improvements in their engagement in lifestyle interventions or dietary practices,” Elizabeth Selvin, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at Johns Hopkins University, told us in an email. “As the world is aware, there has, however, been a revolution in the effectiveness and availability of pharmacological interventions (namely, GLP1 medications) that are highly effective for weight management.”
Apparent Drop in Obesity Began Before Trump
Gallup’s National Health and Well-Being Index, which surveys about 5,000 Americans every quarter, is one of a few different sources for tracking obesity rates over time. Since Gallup started asking about weight in 2008, obesity among U.S. adults has mostly trended upward, hitting a peak of 39.9% in 2022 before falling every year since. As of earlier this year, the adult obesity rate stood at 36.4%, according to Gallup.
Gallup’s approach has the advantage of a large sample size and turning results around quickly, making it a more up-to-date measure than government surveys. But it also has some limitations, including using self-reported height and weight to calculate body mass index. Because people sometimes underreport their weight or overstate their height, that can lead to underestimating the prevalence of obesity.
Dan Witters, the index’s research director, told us Gallup’s obesity-rate estimates tend to be a few points lower than government estimates based on more objective measurements, but generally follow the same trends.
The CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey is generally seen as more authoritative, as its estimates of population-level obesity are based on actual measurements of height and weight, not self-reported data. But it’s slower to release data.
The most recent NHANES data put the adult obesity rate at 40.3% for 2021-2023. That was down from 41.9% in 2017-2020, but the change was within the margin of error and not considered statistically meaningful.
Separately, some analyses of patient records or insurance claims have found evidence of modest declines in obesity. An analysis released this spring by Epic Research, a subsidiary of the electronic health records company, found that the share of U.S. adults categorized as obese dropped from 42.3% in the second quarter of 2021 to 40.7% by the first quarter of 2026. The rate of GLP-1 prescriptions grew substantially during the same timeframe.
Solveig Cunningham, a professor of global health at Emory University, said the Gallup data may be picking up on a real trend, but it will take more data to confirm that. She also cautioned that even if the obesity rate has declined, that’s no guarantee it will continue to fall.
“I think there may be a small decline,” she said, but we’ll “need to see how it develops in the future. There have been small declines before. Like in 2008, in 2012, there were similar declines, and then things picked up again.”
Little Evidence of Healthier Diets
Kennedy, in his speeches on Aug. 13 and 24, suggested that people eating more “good foods” or “real foods” was partly responsible for the drop in obesity.
We asked HHS about the basis for that claim and did not get a response. Several experts we contacted said they’ve seen little if any evidence that Americans have made major changes to their diets.
“I don’t know where he’s getting his data,” said William McCarthy, an adjunct professor of health policy and management at the University of California, Los Angeles who has studied strategies to encourage healthier eating. “Maybe he has access to data that I don’t. But based on what I’ve seen, I would not agree” that American diets have gotten much healthier in recent years.
Cunningham said the best source of data on Americans’ dietary habits is the CDC’s NHANES, the same survey that tracks obesity trends. But the most recent NHANES data is for the 2021-2023 period.
“At that stage, we weren’t seeing major changes in diet,” she said. “So I think it would be amazing if there were, but we don’t have any evidence that such changes in diet are occurring.”
Gallup’s National Health and Well-Being Index, in addition to tracking obesity trends, also asks respondents several questions about diet, exercise and overall activity levels. Witters, the research director, said those metrics generally worsened during the pandemic and, for the most part, haven’t bounced back.
While there was a “modest improvement” in the share of people reporting they had eaten at least five servings of fruits and vegetables on four of the last seven days — from 42% in 2023 to 45.2% in 2026 — it’s still lower than in 2019, and other questions about diet and exercise showed no statistically significant changes.
“We don’t see evidence in our data that people, that Americans, are suddenly living healthier lives,” Witters said.
In his Aug. 24 speech, Kennedy claimed that “real food” consumption “went up by 7 to 10% this year.” He’s cited a version of this figure before to make the case that Americans are choosing “real” foods over highly processed ones. This comes from an analysis by the bank BNP Paribas, which reportedly found that, between June 2025 and June 2026, sales of unprocessed or minimally processed foods in certain categories grew 7% faster than sales of ultraprocessed foods in the same categories.
But experts told us those findings, on their own, don’t prove that Americans are eating significantly better.
The study, as described in an article in the industry publication Food Business News, compared products in only a handful of categories — yogurt, nut butters, frozen meals/vegetables, fruit snacks/candy and cereal/granola. (We asked BNP Paribas for a copy of the original study but haven’t heard back.) For example, in the yogurt category, sales of minimally processed products (like plain yogurt) were up 15%, while sales of ultraprocessed yogurt products (like sugary, flavored varieties) were up only 2%.
Cunningham noted that most foods in those categories “would largely be considered processed by nutritionists,” and that the report doesn’t show ultraprocessed food sales declining — only growing slower than less processed foods.
McCarthy added that the report says nothing about whether Americans are consuming, say, more fresh fruits and vegetables. And without more detail, he said, it’s hard to know whether shifting from, say, one kind of peanut butter to another has a meaningful impact on health.
“Generally, it takes a multi-year campaign to get Americans to consume less saturated fat, or fewer trans fats or lower sodium,” he said in an email. “I remain skeptical that Secretary Kennedy’s food-related initiatives have already had a measurable impact on the overall healthfulness of the U.S. population’s daily food choices.”
Marion Nestle, a food policy expert and professor emerita at New York University, wrote on her blog Food Politics that the sales data “could indicate a trend toward healthier diets, depending on what else people are eating.”
Nestle told us in an email that a decline in obesity would suggest that people are eating fewer calories. But because several things that could affect dietary trends are happening at once, it’s hard to tease out the cause. Along with Kennedy’s “eat real food” push and recent overhaul of federal nutrition guidelines, GLP-1 use is increasing and food prices are rising.
“Most evidence for causality points to GLP-1 drugs,” she said, noting that the drugs reduce food intake and can also prompt people to make other dietary changes. “Inflation is also making people think twice about buying expensive junk food. Dietary advice helps, but rarely is enough to change eating behavior.”
Potential Role of ‘Pharmaceutical Interventions’
Kennedy also said “a big part of” declining obesity rates has to do with “getting away from the perverse incentives of just ordering test after test after test and pharmaceutical interventions.” We asked HHS what specifically Kennedy meant by this and have not received a response.
McCarthy said Kennedy may have been referring to the administration’s efforts to get medical schools to offer more nutrition education and otherwise move primary care toward a greater focus on food and chronic disease prevention. While McCarthy said those changes are welcome and could eventually make a difference, it will be some time before they’re fully implemented and having a measurable effect on health outcomes.
“I applaud Secretary Kennedy’s initiative,” he said. “But it’s going to take a while before we have educated physicians who know how to have an impact on the food choices that the patients are making.”
It’s also worth noting that one possible explanation for the apparent decline in obesity is, in fact, a “pharmaceutical intervention” — GLP-1 medications — though the drugs’ effect on the population-level obesity rate is still a matter of debate.
According to Gallup’s survey data, the share of adults reporting they take the medications for weight loss has shot up from 3% in 2024, when Gallup started asking about it, to 11% this year.
In an analysis published last year, Gallup found that the age groups that saw the biggest drops in obesity between 2022 and 2025 — adults age 40-49 and 50-64 — were also the groups with both the highest rates of GLP-1 use and the biggest increases in GLP-1 use from 2024 to 2025.
While that “doesn’t prove anything,” Witters said, it suggests a potential link. “What we found was really a pretty close correlation.”
Cunningham, the Emory professor, said “there’s still a lot of debate” about why obesity might be falling.
“There’s a lot of interest in the possibility of weight-loss drugs of all sorts to decrease weight at the population level,” she said. “That’s still very much in the early stages. So I don’t think we can make any kind of definitive finding about that.”
GLP-1s are clearly effective at reducing weight at the individual level, she said, but the population-level effect is less clear for a few reasons.
For one, some people drop off the medications due to side effects or cost, and people with lower incomes, who tend to be at higher risk for obesity, may not be able to afford them. Some people taking GLP-1s may already be below the cutoff for clinically defined obesity; others may start with high enough BMIs that losing 10% to 20% of their body weight doesn’t bring them below the threshold for obesity, even if it improves their overall health.
Cunningham said another theory about population-level obesity is that a certain share of the adult population is susceptible to obesity in the current environment, and the obesity rate is leveling off as we reach a kind of “saturation point.”
But, she cautioned, we don’t have definitive answers at this point. “Obesity is complex.”
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Lara Korte, a Stars and Stripes reporter who was dismissed last week, told CBS News on Monday that the paper's editorial independence remains paramount.
After riding for nearly 4wks Only going slow over cobbles about 5-6 mph thankfully but still bashed my head on a stone wall hurt my shoulder bruised my ass and only 20yards from hospital 😂but could have been worse if I hadn’t had all my safety gear on helmet saved me from having more brain damage than I got already 😵💫just wanted to show what floaty app showed just after me and board went flying look at the predicted range 😮any ideas what’s going on sorted by time I got home 👍
What up fellow onewheel riders! I been riding my onewheel xr for about 2500 miles and just bought an original onewheel with only 250 miles on it! I’ve been wanting to upgrade them to enhance the speed and torque and would love to be able to ride farther! Trying to get ideas for upgrades and decide what board to choose when doing this. I think the OG one would be sweet to deck out. Let me know what you think! Photo attached are my two boards
Blaze near Crawley destroyed 140 vehicles, damaged nearby businesses and led to power cuts on Saturday night
A man has been arrested on suspicion of arson after a fire tore through a car park used by people flying from Gatwick airport, destroying about 140 vehicles.
The blaze erupted at Caldyne business park near Crawley, about eight miles from the airport just after 9pm on Saturday. Images showed vehicles on fire and enormous plumes of smoke rising close to overhead power lines.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Taiwan has indicted nine people -- reportedly including an Nvidia senior manager and two Supermicro employees based in the country -- who allegedly helped forge documents to cover up illegal exports of high-end AI servers to China in violation of US export controls. On Monday, Reuters reported that prosecutors in Keelung did not release any names but confirmed that the suspects were "charged with breach of trust and document forgery." One suspect linked to a related case remains at large, accused of the "siphoning of funds from a distributor company involved" in helping China get access to restricted Nvidia chips.
Since 2022, the US has required a license to export semiconductors to China, with the intent of protecting national security by staying ahead of China in the AI race. But after the US arrested Supermicro co-founder Wally Liaw in March for allegedly funneling $2.5 billion in restricted AI servers to China since 2024, Taiwan launched a separate probe to learn more about the scheme. Taiwan's investigation found that co-conspirators attempted to falsify documents to make it appear that 130 B300 servers were installed and in use at a Taiwan facility. But 74 of those servers "were ultimately exported and delivered to Chinese customers," Reuters reported, while the rest, 56, were intended to go to China but were blocked once Taiwanese customs officials "detected irregularities." According to Taiwan officials, Nvidia's manager and Supermicro employees "colluded with one another at various levels for enormous profit, illegally exporting high-end servers, increasing corporate compliance costs, and severely damaging our nation's international image."
Supermicro said in a statement to PCMag: "Supermicro is committed to protecting our advanced technologies and intellectual property. We are working closely with Taiwanese authorities on recent events, which underscore the importance of continued collaboration across industry and government to strengthen safeguards, enhance supply chain visibility, and facilitate the enforcement of export control laws."
Everything Sprouts recalls products after CDC says agency is aware of dozens of food-poisoning cases nationally
US healthcare officials recently said a food-poisoning outbreak tied to alfalfa sprouts and involving multiple germs had sickened people in at least 15 states.
Officials announced the outbreak after documenting more than three dozen cases in Minnesota and Wisconsin. On Friday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the agency was aware of at least 55 cases nationally, including four people who had been hospitalized.
Washington launches campaign to isolate Tehran but it is unclear whether it will apply measures to China
The US has threatened to impose severe sanctions against any country or entity maintaining economic ties with Iran, hoping to achieve with economic measures what military means have so far failed to do.
It is unclear, however, how far the Trump administration is prepared to go in confronting China, Iran’s biggest trading partner, which has signalled its resistance to US economic pressure to cut off links with an ally.
Move is latest deterioration in trade relations between neighbors with historically strong economic ties
Donald Trump announced a new 50% tariff on automobiles and crucial raw materials from Canada, the latest deterioration in trade relations between the two neighbors with historically strong economic ties.
The US president said that the increased tariffs would start on 1 January 2027 on all cars, trucks, automobile parts and steel. He also derided the nation’s tariffs on American farmers, writing on social media that Canada has been “ripping off” the US “for years”.
Man, 68, was left searching for help in 116F weather after his car became stuck in mud along remote park road
A French tourist recently died in Death Valley national park after a car mishap left him stranded in 116F (47C) weather.
The visitor, identified as 68-year-old Pierre Michel Formosa, was traveling with another French man along the park’s remote West Side Road when their vehicle became stuck in mud near Queen of Sheba Mine Road.
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 24, 2026 — NVIDIA today announced that SpaceXAI will deploy NVIDIA Vera CPUs to accelerate its next generation of agentic AI applications, bringing the first CPU built for AI agents to one of the world’s most ambitious AI deployments.
Credit: Robert Way/Shutterstock
Agentic AI applications increasingly rely on CPUs to orchestrate tools, execute code, process data and run simulations between model calls. SpaceXAI will use Vera to accelerate these application workloads, helping AI agents act faster while keeping GPUs fed and fully utilized.
SpaceXAI plans to expand its AI infrastructure behind Grok on NVIDIA Vera Rubin, while extending an optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 into space with its first-generation Starmind satellite.
“Agentic AI requires a new kind of computing system — one built not only to generate answers, but to take action,” said Ian Buck, vice president of hyperscale and high-performance computing at NVIDIA. “Vera gives AI agents the CPU performance to act in real time — executing code, processing data and coordinating complex tasks. SpaceXAI is taking this architecture from massive AI factories to the next frontier of computing in orbit.”
“Vera gives us the CPU performance and memory bandwidth to run enormous amounts of orchestration, code and data processing while keeping GPUs doing what they do best,” said Mike Nicolls, president of SpaceXAI. “That means higher-performance AI agents and more useful work from every watt of compute.”
NVIDIA Vera — The CPU for Agents
NVIDIA Vera is the first CPU built for AI agents, designed to accelerate the CPU-intensive work that surrounds model inference — from tool use and code execution to data processing, orchestration and simulation.
Vera features 88 NVIDIA-designed Olympus cores, NVIDIA Spatial Multithreading technology and high-bandwidth LPDDR5X memory, delivering up to 1.2TB/s of bandwidth. Vera enables up to 1.8x faster task completion compared with x86 CPUs across workloads including agentic AI, reinforcement learning and data processing.
SpaceXAI Scales AI Infrastructure With NVIDIA Vera Rubin
At massive scale, AI infrastructure must support demanding training, reasoning and inference workloads while maximizing performance, power efficiency and utilization. NVIDIA Vera Rubin is codesigned across compute, networking and software to optimize the AI factory as a whole.
The platform brings together NVIDIA accelerated computing, NVIDIA NVLink interconnect technology, NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking, NVIDIA BlueField data processing and NVIDIA software in an integrated architecture designed to deliver high performance and energy efficiency at scale while driving down cost per token.
As SpaceXAI expands toward gigawatts of computing capacity, Vera Rubin provides a common architecture to efficiently scale its next generation of AI factories — a foundation SpaceXAI plans to take beyond terrestrial data centers and into orbital computing.
NVIDIA Accelerated Computing, From Earth to Orbit
SpaceXAI’s work with NVIDIA is moving beyond AI factories on Earth.
SpaceXAI is developing AI computing infrastructure for orbit, where power, thermal management, bandwidth, reliability and physical integration impose dramatically different constraints from conventional data centers.
SpaceXAI’s planned first-generation Starmind AI satellite will be based on the optimized NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 rack-scale system, extending the same accelerated computing architecture powering next-generation AI factories on Earth into space.
NVIDIA and SpaceXAI are working to adapt that foundation to the requirements of orbital computing while preserving a common NVIDIA architecture and software ecosystem.
This delivers one computing foundation across a wide range of environments: Vera CPUs accelerating increasingly sophisticated AI agents, Vera Rubin powering the AI infrastructure behind Grok and gigawatt-scale AI factories on Earth, and NVIDIA accelerated computing extending into orbital AI infrastructure.
Mark Carney said on Monday that while American negotiators saw the French language in Canada as an “irritant … in Quebec, these are rights,” days after receiving widespread praise from political leaders for rejecting a US trade proposal that many perceived as weakening the country’s Francophone culture.
The prime minister’s remarks came hours after the US president, Donald Trump, showed little interest in retreating from the spat, posting on social media that Canada had been “ripping off the United States of America for years” and threatening a swath of new, economically devastating tariffs on cars and trucks.
Video posted on social media shows three people climbing out of sewer system at 4am, months after similar reports
New York City’s police department (NYPD) says it is investigating a recent video of three people emerging from a manhole in the latest such episode to cause mystery.
Posted to TikTok on Friday, the video showed three people – one after the other – climbing out of a manhole at 4.19am on 18 August wearing headlamps and black overalls near Madison Square Garden.
London and Kyiv in deal to help stop protesters and hostile states targeting military bases and critical infrastructure
AI models trained on Ukrainian battlefield data will be used to stop protesters and foreign states targeting UK defence sites, railways and energy plants under a deal struck between London and Kyiv.
Private companies will also be given access to the vast trove of data from Ukraine’s Avengers AI lab to help build new systems, the first agreement of its kind in the UK.
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 24, 2026 — SiFive today, at an event coinciding with Hot Chips, introduced the SiFive BigSky SF-2U870 datacenter development platform. In collaboration with hyperscaler customers and leading ecosystem partners, SiFive has delivered the world’s first enterprise-grade, rackable 2U RISC-V server. The platform will be demonstrated running a variety of server workloads at the event, and is built specifically for customers to accelerate RISC-V datacenter software porting, workload optimization, and system validation. This enables customers, partners and SiFive to accelerate the deployment of production-grade RISC-V solutions for the datacenter.
Lead customers are currently running workloads on deployed BigSky systems, including hyperscaler, software, and major SoC hardware leaders.
“SiFive is closely collaborating with industry leaders to accelerate deployment of RISC-V in the datacenter. With BigSky, we have delivered a powerful turnkey server platform designed to accelerate development of customer datacenter workloads and software on the RISC-V open standard,” said Patrick Little, Chairman and CEO, SiFive. “Ultimately, we are focused on enabling customers to meaningfully optimize the TCO of their custom SoC solutions with SiFive IP. RISC-V in the datacenter isn’t a distant aspiration any more, it is happening right now, and SiFive is leading the way.”
“SiFive’s new development servers mark a major turning point in the industry. The amount of datacenter software they already have up and running clearly demonstrates just how far industry support for RISC-V has come in a remarkably short period of time,” said Patrick Kennedy, President, Axautik Group/ServeTheHome.
Accelerating the Open Ecosystem with Broad Industry Support
Fully compliant with the RVA23 standard, the BigSky SF-2U870 platform eliminates the need for complex custom porting, enabling seamless, out-of-the-box deployment of enterprise software environments.
The platform features out-of-the-box support for standard enterprise-grade Linux releases, such as Canonical Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Red Hat RHEL10.
SiFive is working with NVIDIA to port CUDA to SiFive based RISC-V hardware and integrate NVLink Fusion into future SiFive platforms. Demonstrating this progress, SiFive now has CUDA running on the P870-D-powered BigSky datacenter development platform. By serving as the head node for modern LLM workloads on NVIDIA GPUs, this platform delivers a capability never before seen on RISC-V hardware.
To support this milestone for the RISC-V architecture, industry leaders Canonical and Red Hat offered the following statements:
“At Canonical, we are committed to driving open-source innovation from developer environments to the datacenter core,” said Gordan Markuš, Director of Silicon Alliances at Canonical. “Out-of-the-box RVA23 support for Ubuntu 26.04 LTS on SiFive’s BigSky datacenter development platform provides the enterprise software foundation required to accelerate AI and cloud-native workloads on RISC-V. We are proud to collaborate with SiFive, and this seamless integration ensures our mutual customers can confidently port enterprise workloads and accelerate their transition to RISC-V in the datacenter today.”
“Getting RHEL 10 running on SiFive’s BigSky platform isn’t just a validation exercise, it’s proof that we’re moving from the ‘theoretical’ phase into production-grade reality. For our enterprise customers, the real win here isn’t just performance metrics; it’s the architectural flexibility RISC-V offers without sacrificing the stability and software ecosystem they rely on,” said Brian “Redbeard” Harrington, Strategist, CTO Organization, Red Hat. “Through the RISE project, we’ve been working to ensure that when we say RISC-V is ready for the datacenter, we mean it. We’re excited to be partnering with SiFive to demonstrate that open standards can absolutely deliver the rigorous performance and reliability the modern datacenter demands.”
Key Platform Specifications
The SiFive BigSky SF-2U870 is designed explicitly for advanced software porting, workload tuning, and validation testing to foster ecosystem enablement. Hardware specifications include:
The platforms are available today and currently being produced in limited quantities to drive strategic development opportunities, with demand outpacing supply. Interested parties should contact SiFive sales for more information.
About SiFive
As the pioneers who founded RISC-V, SiFive is transforming the future of computing by bringing the power and flexibility of RISC-V to the world. SiFive’s market-leading IP provides the blueprint for high-performance, customizable, and energy-efficient processor cores across the entire computing spectrum, from the intelligent edge to the most advanced AI data centers. SiFive achieved record growth in 2025 and its IP is featured in more than 500 designs, with over 10 billion cores shipped to date, SiFive is the trusted IP partner for the world’s most innovative technology companies.
China has delayed its ambitious Chang'e 7 lunar mission until at least 2027 after scrubbing an August 24 launch. Poor weather conditions were likely a factor, with China's Manned Space Agency (CMSA) saying the decision reflects the need for "absolute safety." Scientific American reports: China and the U.S. are in a race to send humans back to the moon, a feat that that U.S. accomplished in the 1960s and that has never been achieved by any other country. Chang'e 7 is to play to a crucial part in China's ambitions: the probe is designed to search for frozen water in the Shackleton Crater, a pit that spans some 21 kilometers (13 miles) and sits beside the lunar south pole.
No spacecraft has ever landed in that region, which scientists consider to be among the likeliest places to find water on the moon. Locating water that can be used by humans is vital to establishing any long-term lunar presence. NASA and China are eyeing the region to establish a crewed base -- and because this real estate is so precious, it matters who gets their first. Ars Technica notes in its reporting that the delayed launch was "most likely" due to Typhoon Narra, "which has 45 mph winds (equivalent to a moderate Tropical Storm) and continues to meander around in the waterway separating Hainan Island, where the spaceport is located, and mainland China."
As for why the next launch window won't open until next February or March? "It likely is a combination of factors, including sunlight conditions in polar landing zones as well as the mission plan that requires a 90-day lunar orbit reconnaissance before landing," reports Ars. There's also a possibility, albeit an unlikely one, that "some technical issue was discovered at the last minute with either the complex Chang'e 7 payload, or the rocket."
Plan part of a wider policy to remove foreign nationals from social homes and prioritise young British-born couples
Social housing tenants will be evicted if they fail to keep their gardens well maintained under a Reform UK government, the party has announced.
Lee Anderson, the party’s chair, said that if Reform came to power it would insist that those in social rented homes would be required to keep their properties decorated and gardens looked after.
Spokesperson for Duke of Sussex says he remains an ‘active and avid supporter’ of African Parks’ mission
The Duke of Sussex has stepped down from the board of a major African wildlife charity that had been at the centre of a human rights controversy.
Prince Harry’s spokesperson confirmed he was no longer a trustee of African Parks, which admitted last year that human rights abuses were committed by its rangers in the Republic of the Congo.
There’s a fleeting window in Aspen when summer lingers, but autumn is already whispering through the high country days are still warm enough for hiking, biking and afternoons on the water, while cooler nights and the first hints of gold…
Diamond Rapids, Crescent Island and Wildcat Lake demonstrate how Intel is scaling Agentic AI from the rack to the edge.
Aug. 24, 2026 — Intel is showcasing three architectures for Agentic AI and Enterprise-scale workloads, combining the Diamond Rapids processor for high-performance orchestration, the Crescent Island GPU for efficient inference and the Wildcat Lake SoC for intelligent client and edge computing.
Credit: Intel
“Agentic AI is fundamentally changing how we design and deliver computing – from the transistor and package up through the full system architecture,” said Pushkar Ranade, Intel chief technology officer. “The future is about tightly integrating general-purpose compute with purpose-built acceleration, advanced packaging and open chiplet technologies to build systems that can adapt to the workload and scale within real-world power, cost and deployment constraints.”
The processors are underpinned by Intel Foundry technologies including the Intel 18A process family, Foveros Direct 3D packaging, and early adoption of the UCIe industry standard for open chiplet interconnects. Together, these capabilities provide a differentiated, scalable foundation for next-generation AI infrastructure.
The Compute Foundation
At Hot Chips 2026, Intel will discuss three complementary architectures highlighting the next gen Xeon codenamed Diamond Rapids, the next gen datacenter GPU optimized for AI inference known as Crescent Island, and Wildcat Lake – launched as Intel Core Series 3 processors.
Up to 256 new cores with 1.28 GB LLC
16 memory channels with 12800 MT/s
128 lanes of PCIe Gen6 and CXL 3.0
Crescent Island Reframes the Economics of Real-Time AI Inference
The architecture is designed to deliver more tokens and generate greater business value. Crescent Island is a low-power, easy-to-deploy GPU, with strong compute and high memory capacity, enabling larger models, longer context windows and more concurrent AI agents within existing air-cooled data center footprints. By improving inference economics at scale, it helps enterprises accelerate AI, increase infrastructure utilization, and achieve better returns on AI investments. Powered by Intel’s proven Xe architecture, Crescent Island’s design is optimized for next-generation Agentic AI workloads to deliver sustained inference performance, maximize token throughput and reduce cooling demands.
32 Xe cores and 256 XMX engines based on Xe3P
Up to 480GB LPDDR5X memory
350-watt air-cooled PCIe card
Extending Agentic AI from the Cloud to Intelligent Edge Devices
Intel Core Series 3 processors, codenamed Wildcat Lake, bring right-sized AI capabilities to price-sensitive laptops and intelligent edge platforms. Built on the Intel 18A process, Wildcat Lake combines new CPU cores for high x86 single thread performance with integrated Xe3 graphics featuring XMX acceleration and an NPU delivering up to 17 TOPS for Hybrid AI. Wildcat Lake also marks the first use of UCIe in an Intel processor, enabling cost-effective multi-chip package designs for mainstream AI platforms.
2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores
Support for up to LPDDR5X-7467
WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0
Why It Matters
The future of agentic AI is inherently heterogeneous, spanning cloud, enterprise and edge environments where balancing performance and economics is critical.
Diamond Rapids provides a scalable compute foundation, Crescent Island addresses inference cost, and Wildcat Lake brings AI into mainstream client and edge systems. Anchored by Intel Foundry technologies and open industry standards, Intel is positioning its portfolio of offerings for deploying Agentic AI at scale.
About Intel
Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is an industry leader, creating world-changing technology that enables global progress and enriches lives. Inspired by Moore’s Law, we continuously work to advance the design and manufacturing of semiconductors to help address our customers’ greatest challenges. By embedding intelligence in the cloud, network, edge and every kind of computing device, we unleash the potential of data to transform business and society for the better.
Huge hailstones prompt organisers to act 15km from end
Riders seen heading into hotel on route to take cover
A torrential hailstorm in the French Pyrenees forced the abandonment of the third stage of the Vuelta a España on Monday.
With 15 kilometres (9.32 miles) remaining of the 174km route from Gruissan to Font-Romeu, the skies darkened as the peloton neared the top of the Col de Mont-Louis and huge hailstones began bouncing off the tarmac and pelting the riders.
BOISE, Idaho, Aug. 24, 2026 — Micron Technology Inc. today opened a 60,000-square-foot Micron Training Center (MTC) in Boise, a strategic investment to strengthen the skilled talent pipeline, support advanced semiconductor manufacturing and expand education and apprenticeship pathways in Idaho.
Located near Micron’s Boise campus, this unique, collaborative training facility accelerates new-hire readiness through an intensive onboarding boot camp and hands-on training in fab operations and manufacturing systems. The center also serves as a site for community college students and career seekers pursuing semiconductor pathways through the College of Western Idaho (CWI).
The MTC supports Micron’s broader commitment to invest more than $250 billion in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, building the workforce needed to support high-volume production of advanced memory technologies. Those efforts are expected to create more than 90,000 American jobs.
“Our community invests in our people, and the Micron Training Center is proof of that promise. This center is built to skill up the next generation of Idahoans, whether they’re just starting out or making a career pivot,” said Boise Mayor Lauren McLean. “With strong partners standing beside us, we’re filling today’s jobs and preparing our workforce for the future. That’s what it means to build a city where everyone has the opportunity to grow right here at home.”
Strategic Collaboration and Unique Approach for Workforce Development
The MTC houses up to 20 semiconductor process tools that replicate a fab environment — the same equipment trainees will use on Micron’s fab floor. Industry partners including Applied Materials, Lam Research, SCREEN, Kokusai Electric, Tokyo Electron and others have supported the installation of equipment that will also be used for hands-on vendor training, helping both their teams and Micron’s ramp up faster on the tools that drive production.
The center also expands Micron’s long-standing partnership with CWI to bring semiconductor training directly into the education pipeline. Starting this fall, CWI will deliver its Advanced Mechatronics Engineering Technology (AMET) and Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology (SMT) programs at the MTC, alongside its Nampa campus offerings. The MTC will serve as the new location for the technical instruction component of Micron’s Registered Apprenticeship Program, while continuing to host CWI coursework for the broader student community.
To support this partnership, Micron and the U.S. Department of Commerce have provided $3 million to CWI for educator pay, equipment and classroom space.
“CWI and Micron have built a training environment where students learn on the same equipment they’ll operate in a world-class fab,” said Gordon Jones, president of the College of Western Idaho. “This is what a decade of partnership looks like — a shared facility, tools, and commitment to building careers that matter for Idaho.”
“A strong semiconductor industry depends on a strong talent pipeline,” said April Arnzen, executive vice president and chief people officer, Micron Technology. “The Micron Training Center is a strategic investment in workforce development, helping build the skilled talent needed to support advanced manufacturing and sustain U.S. leadership in semiconductor innovation. By combining state-of-the-art facilities with degree programs, certifications, apprenticeships and clear career pathways, we are creating opportunities for Idahoans while strengthening the workforce that will power Micron’s growth and the future of the industry.”
“America’s ability to lead the world in semiconductor manufacturing depends on building a highly skilled workforce ready to support the factories and technologies of the future,” said Bill Frauenhofer, executive director of semiconductor investment & innovation at the U.S. Department of Commerce. “Micron’s new Boise training center is an example of what is possible when federal investment, private-sector leadership, and education partners work together to meet that challenge. As Micron executes on its more than $250 billion commitment to U.S. manufacturing and R&D, the CHIPS Program Office is proud to support Micron’s new training center and help build the talent pipeline needed to create meaningful pathways into essential careers, strengthen our domestic talent pipeline, and ensure this country remains at the forefront of innovation and advanced manufacturing.”
“Micron’s training center and their investment in apprenticeships and career pathways are helping keep Idaho’s workforce and economy at the forefront. This exciting announcement builds on the investments we’ve made to strengthen Idaho’s workforce, including Idaho LAUNCH. Together, we’re helping Idahoans gain the skills and training they need to succeed in high-demand careers. We challenged Idaho employers to step up and partner with us, and Micron has answered that call,” Governor Brad Little said.
At today’s event, Micron celebrated Cohort 6 of its registered apprenticeship program — its largest Boise cohort to date and is building toward triple-digit enrollment by the end of fiscal year 2027. Developed with CWI and the Idaho Manufacturing Alliance, the earn-and-learn model directly supports Gov. Brad Little’s goal to double Idaho’s registered apprentices statewide by 2029.
Micron Technology, Inc. is a global leader in semiconductor memory and storage, powering AI and compute-intensive applications from cloud to edge. With a relentless focus on our customers, technology and product leadership, and manufacturing and operational excellence, Micron’s comprehensive portfolio of high-performance DRAM, NAND and NOR solutions delivers the speed, efficiency and scale today’s workloads demand, accelerating intelligence to enrich life for all. To learn more about Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU), visit micron.com.
New York City, New York — A coalition representing small supermarkets and bodegas sued Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration Monday, arguing that his planned network of city-owned grocery stores would create unfair competition for immigrant- and minority-owned businesses.
The Multicultural Business Coalition filed two lawsuits in state court seeking to halt the program. One claims the subsidized stores would violate equal-protection rights by allowing city-backed competitors to sell food roughly 30% below prevailing prices. The other argues the administration failed to adequately study the economic and land-use effects on existing grocers.
Mamdani’s plan allocates about $70 million for five stores, one in each borough. The city would own or subsidize the locations and cover major overhead expenses while private operators handle daily operations.
Grocers argue they cannot compete with stores receiving taxpayer support while operating on thin margins. Mamdani says the initiative is designed to address grocery prices that have risen about 30% in recent years and notes that five stores would represent a small fraction of New York’s more than 1,000 grocery stores.
The administration also points to existing city-subsidized markets in Manhattan and Brooklyn as evidence that public support can coexist with private neighborhood retailers.
The lawsuits could delay the program before its first location opens next year.
does anyone east of Dallas TX have a front footpad for an original Xr? my kid is bored out of his mind but I just dont have 200 dollars right now. Ive been thinking about calling some stores in the area as Im willing to travel decently far for it (any store recommendations are welcome!)
Cost of living has hit campaign group while multinationals are threatening to squeeze out independent breweries
For centuries, the wooden real ale pump has been the hallmark of a good British boozer. But now problems are brewing for the proper pint, as the Campaign for Real Ale has seen its membership sink to an eight-year low and its accounts show it is firmly in the red, making an £800,000 loss last year.
Real ale is a traditional draught cask beer, a “living” product that is produced and stored in its cask. It differs from a cold, fizzy lager, in which the yeast is killed and carbon dioxide is added. Real ale contains live yeast so it continues fermenting until it is served.
Aug. 24, 2026 — NVIDIA today announced that NVIDIA Groq 3 LPX, the interactive AI inference accelerator, is now in full production. An extension of the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform, Groq 3 LPX delivers a major boost in AI inference by enabling ultrafast token generation for highly responsive agentic systems.
Groq 3 LPX extends the Vera Rubin Platform, delivering ultrafast token generation
Agentic systems can generate massive volumes of tokens across hundreds or thousands of inference steps, making faster token generation critical for agents to reason, act and complete complex tasks in real time.
Vera Rubin NVL72 systems provide the most versatile training and inference platform for every AI factory. NVIDIA Groq 3 LPX extends the inference performance of Vera Rubin NVL72 by dramatically increasing the rate of token generation, providing premium user experiences for context-heavy workloads so agents can act at extreme speeds.
NVIDIA Groq 3 LPX is pushing the frontier of AI inference. It delivered a record 3,400 output tokens per second in Artificial Analysis benchmarking running Gemma 4 31B, an open source agentic model, with a 100,000-token context critical for agentic systems — the fastest performance ever recorded for the model.
Groq 3 LPX enables agentic tasks such as coding in minutes versus hours, providing 4x faster responsiveness for agents and latency-sensitive workloads than the nearest alternative platform.
“Inference is the growth engine of AI. NVIDIA Grace Blackwell and NVL72 revolutionized large language model inference with an unprecedented leap in performance and efficiency,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Vera Rubin extends that vision with workload-optimized AI factory configurations designed for the era of agentic AI, advancing the performance frontier with LPX for ultrafast token generation. This transforms how intelligence is produced, delivering another giant leap in AI throughput, efficiency and responsiveness, just as demand for AI computation is accelerating worldwide.”
Groq 3 LPX — The Interactive AI Inference Accelerator
Agentic AI creates two distinct computing challenges: efficiently processing enormous amounts of context and generating tokens with extremely low latency.
NVIDIA Groq 3 LPX is purpose-built to extend Vera Rubin’s interactivity — the rate at which tokens are generated for an individual user, determining how quickly an agent can complete each step of its work.
Faster generation gives agents more time to inspect files, write and test code, call tools, verify results and iterate while maintaining a responsive user experience.
AI Cloud Momentum for Groq 3 LPX
AI clouds are becoming the engines of the AI economy, giving enterprises and developers access to advanced infrastructure for training, reasoning and inference at scale. For providers serving latency-sensitive, high-volume inference workloads, NVIDIA Groq 3 LPX provides a path to deploy differentiated compute in proven rack-scale systems.
Nebius, a leading AI cloud, plans to bring NVIDIA Groq 3 LPX to Nebius Token Factory, its production inference platform, giving developers access to extreme token generation speed for highly responsive agentic AI applications.
“Generation is the phase of inference that determines how responsive an AI system actually is, and that’s exactly what NVIDIA Groq 3 LPX is built to accelerate,” said Danila Shtan, chief technology officer of Nebius. “As the first AI cloud bringing it to production via Nebius Token Factory, we’re making sure every step of an agent’s loop feels instant — through the same API developers are already using, with no migration to a new stack.”
Following Nebius, purpose-built AI inference cloud Groq plans to be among the platform’s earliest adopters.
Extreme Codesign for AI Factories
Through extreme codesign across seven chips and five purpose-built racks, NVIDIA Vera Rubin is the most extensive AI factory platform.
NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 and Groq 3 LPX tackle the various workload requirements of customer AI factories, including frontier model makers and open model service providers.
These rack platforms feature NVIDIA BlueField-4 DPUs and work in combination with NVIDIA Vera CPU racks, NVIDIA Vera BlueField-4 STX storage and NVIDIA Spectrum-6 SPX Ethernet to optimize multi-agent systems for the highest throughput per watt and the lowest-latency inference.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the world leader in AI and accelerated computing.
The FDA has cleared the first Alzheimer's blood test for symptomatic patients as young as 40. The test measures amyloid and tau biomarkers from a single blood draw and identified positive biomarkers with 97.6% accuracy in a validation study. New Atlas reports: PrecivityAD2 is a single blood test that quickly assesses the proteins amyloid and tau, using mass spectrometry to measure plasma AB42/40 and p-tau217/np-tau217. The results are then scored, qualifying as negative, likely positive, or positive for AD. "Just over a year ago, there were no FDA-cleared blood tests for Alzheimer's, and now we have three," Isobel Coleman, chief executive officer of the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), said in a statement. "This is a proof point that sustained, early investment in translational science plays a catalytic role in moving promising ideas from the lab to patients."
In a recent clinical validation study, 1,142 symptomatic adults were tested using PrecivityAD2. The process accurately identified 97.6% of positive biomarkers. What's more, the results remained consistent even in patients with comorbidities like chronic kidney disease and diabetes, which can distort plasma amyloid samples. It's worth noting that the test isn't intended for general health screenings, but for patients who already show some cognitive decline. "As PrecivityAD2 and tools like it move further into clinical practice, they will enable earlier detection, sharpen clinical trials, and build the foundation for precision medicine and combination therapies," Coleman added.
Mette Frederiksen, who received message on returning from Ukraine, advises women to embrace self-acceptance
Sick of getting unsolicited beauty tips on social media, the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, rebuffed a male cosmetic surgeon’s offer to “fix” her and advised women in similar situations to embrace self-acceptance.
Frederiksen, a Social Democrat and Denmark’s second female prime minister, posted on Instagram that she had just returned from a trip to Ukraine, where she was subjected to air raid sirens, when she found a message proposing some help with her appearance.
I 3D printed these fishbones (made for the pint) years ago when the X released. I used them on my original front footpad. They worked well. The board was maybe 20% harder to engage but that was worth the extra comfort to me.
Then I bought the flared footpads. And today I decided to put these on the flared footpads.
The board turns on and starts flashing yellow.
The onewheel app says this: Do not press the rider detect zone while switching on the onewheel. Please switch the onewheel off and back on.
Does anyone why this happens? Why did they work with the original footpad but not the flared one?
LOUISVILLE, Colo., Aug. 24, 2026 — Infleqtion, a global leader in quantum computing and quantum sensing powered by neutral-atom technology, has helped Japan reach a major quantum milestone, supporting a research team led by Professor Kenji Ohmori at the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS), part of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences, in launching the country’s first operational neutral-atom full-stack quantum computer. Infleqtion was also the only foreign quantum partner selected by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) for its Quantum Moonshot program.
Infleqtion contributed its quantum processing unit to the program, in collaboration with the Ohmori group at IMS, as one of the principal investigators of the Moonshot project led by Professor Ohmori, supporting the transition from research and development to an operational full-stack quantum computing platform. The system, referred to as “Shunkai”, is initially expected to operate with approximately 50 qubits, with plans to scale to around 500 qubits as development progresses.
“This milestone marks a pivotal moment for Japan’s quantum ambitions as well as Infleqtion’s role in advancing production-ready quantum platforms at scale,” said Pranav Gokhale, Chief Technology Officer at Infleqtion. “Bringing a full-stack quantum system into production operation is a meaningful step toward fault-tolerant quantum computing that also serves as strong validation of neutral-atom architecture. Our quantum processing unit delivers the programmability, scalability and fidelity control that next-generation systems demand.”
As part of the next phase of the Ohmori Moonshot project that has just started in April 2026, the IMS team will focus on improving system integration, stability, and scalability, with the goal of realizing a high-performance neutral-atom fault-tolerant quantum computer with up to 10,000 physical qubits and quantum error detection and correction capabilities. The system is also expected to be made available to external users to support the development of applications and advance quantum error correction research across academia and industry.
Learn more about Japan’s Quantum Moonshot program and its work advancing scalable quantum computing here.
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.
Restore Britain leader paid up to £1,476 an hour by platform, which critics say is financially incentivising inflammatory content
Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain, is on course to earn as much from the social media platform X as he does from his salary as an MP, after surging income from posts that include demands for mass deportations.
Lowe has earned £932 an hour for his posts on X, formerly Twitter, since the start of the year, according to his own declarations in the register of MPs’ financial interests, which detail how many hours he has spent on X for each payment he received from the platform.
Researchers say residents of Slough, just outside London, are likely very literally feeling the heat from a massive cluster of data centers in their town.
The ruling said the newspaper did not have sufficient cause to terminate Karen Attiah, who at the time was the last Black full-time member of the Post's opinion desk.
As well as pledging military help and diplomatic backing, the prime minister could be useful in dealing with the US
Since moving into Downing Street in July, Andy Burnham – a foreign policy neophyte – has expressed strong support for Ukraine. But on Monday he saw the bitter human cost of the war up close for the first time, visiting Kyiv during his first international trip as prime minister.
The occasion was the 35th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence. Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave awards to the families of fallen soldiers. Relatives wept, hugging Ukraine’s president. Photos of young men in their prime were shown on a giant screen.
46-year-old charged with possessing criminal tools
York fined and sentenced to two days in jail
49ers CEO also owns stake in Leeds United
The San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York has pleaded no contest to two criminal charges after being arrested at an Ohio trailer park over the weekend.
KRON4 News in San Francisco reported that York was initially arrested on suspicion of engaging in prostitution but that count was amended to a charge of disorderly conduct. He was also charged with possessing criminal tools.
Nine men and three women aged between 19 and 61 arrested as part of investigation into events leading to deadly collision
Twelve people have been arrested on suspicion of offences including being involved with organised crime as part of the investigation into events leading to a crash on the A66 that killed two police officers and five others.
Cleveland police confirmed that nine men and three women were detained by officers investigating the events that led up to PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough dying when a Volkswagen Passat travelling the wrong way on the A66 near Middlesbrough collided with their marked armed response vehicle. All five men who were in the second car, aged between 17 and 23, were pronounced dead at the scene.
Coalition of the Willing condemns Russian strikes on Ukraine, pledges to work on ‘constraining Russia’s war chest’
Here’s the full quote from Kremlin’s Peskov, via AFP:
“Britain is methodically and regularly throwing oil on the fire and methodically and regularly plotting schemes to prevent even the slightest progress in the peace process.”
Two humanoid robots competing at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on Saturday ran the 100-meter dash faster than Usain Bolt's 9.58-second world-record time. "[T]he Tiangong Ultra humanoid robot completed the 100-meter dash in 9.39 seconds during a preliminary heat," reports Engadget. "Developed by Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, the record-holding robot overtook Honor's Lightning robot, which completed the sprint in 9.47 seconds. From the report: Despite the impressive finish times, don't expect these humanoid robots to be used for any commercial purposes yet. After their sprints, they slammed directly into pads and some even required human assistance to be stretchered off the course. However, it's still a major improvement from last year's inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games, where the Tiangong Ultra won the 100-meter dash in 21.5 seconds. Beijing has also hosted a humanoid robot half-marathon, where Honor's Lightning won in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, which also beat the pace of another human world record.
"The World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing kicked off August 22 and will run until the 26, hosting thousands of robot participants competing in more than just track and field events, including soccer, table tennis and boxing," adds Engadget.
After higher prices for winter kick in, energy debt unpaid for more than 30 days likely to rise, says Energy UK
Households in Great Britain could owe their energy suppliers as much as £7bn by the end of the year after higher gas and electricity prices forecast for the winter kick in, an industry group is warning.
Domestic energy debt and arrears climbed by about £500m over the past year to a record £6bn at the end of June as the Middle East conflict continued to stoke rising gas market prices.
Aug. 24, 2026 — The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) has launched six new calls to advance strategic quantum technologies and the infrastructure needed to accelerate the development and deployment of next-generation quantum systems in Europe.
Trapped-Ion Platform Technologies
This call, HORIZON-JU-EUROHPC-2026-TIPT-09, aims to advance Europe’s leadership in trapped-ion quantum computing by developing a full-stack quantum computer with over 1,000 individually addressable physical qubits, fully integrated with classical high-performance computing systems and accessible via cloud platforms.
Projects are expected to develop a full-stack trapped-ion quantum computer with integrated cryogenic systems, advanced error correction, and standardised interfaces. The call will support the development of practical applications, establish European standards for quantum computing, and integrate with classical computing infrastructures.
The total budget for this call is EUR 20 million, with projects expected to run for 3.5 years. The call opened on 13 August 2026, while the application deadline is set for 17 November 2026, 17:00 CET.
The call opened on Aug. 13, 2026, with a submission deadline of Nov. 17, 2026, 5:00 pm CET.
Relevant details and information concerning this call will be available on the dedicated call page.
Superconducting Platform Technologies
Through this call, HORIZON-JU-EUROHPC-2026-SPT-10, the EuroHPC JU aims to advance Europe’s superconducting quantum computing capabilities by developing a QPU with at least 1,000individually addressable physical qubits based on chiplet technology facilitating long coherence times, fast read-outs, and error correction capabilities.
The system should be cloud accessible for researchers and industry users, with a focus on demonstrating practical applications for businesses.
The selected proposal will need to build a full-stack quantum computing system including hardware, cooling infrastructure, control electronics, and comprehensive software. The action will also support the creation of European supply chains for quantum technology components.
The total budget for this call is EUR 20 million, with projects expected to run for 3.5 years. The call is open from Aug. 13, 2026. The application deadline is Nov. 17, 2026.
Through this call, HORIZON-JU-EUROHPC-2026-NAPT-11, the EuroHPC JU aims to advance neutral-atom quantum technologies by delivering scalable, industry-ready quantum processors for simulation and computing.
This call should facilitate the development of fully programmable platforms with 10,000 neutral atoms for simulation and 1,000 physical qubits for computing, with a tangible scaling trajectory up to 10.000 physical qubits. Key objectives include achieving substantially long coherence times , operation fidelities above 99%, and demonstrating quantum advantage through real-world applications in sectors such as energy and health.
The call should facilitate the development of scalable quantum processors with individually addressable neutral atoms able to eventually support gate-based quantum computing. Projects should also implement robust quantum error mitigation and error correction techniques, and enhance the EU’s supply chain for key components of neutral-atom based computational processors.
The total indicative budget available for this call is EUR 20 Million, funded under the Horizon Europe program. The expected duration of the project is 3.5 years. The call opened on Aug. 13, 2026 and the deadline for application is set on Nov. 17, 2026, 5:00 pm CET.
Relevant details and information concerning this call are available on the dedicated call page.
Next-Generation QKD Systems
The call HORIZON-JU-EUROHPC-2026-NQKD-12 aims to strengthen Europe’s strategic autonomy in quantum-secure communications by advancing core Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technologies.
QKD enables ultra-secure communication by using quantum mechanics to detect eavesdropping attempts, ensuring unconditional security for data transmission.
This action will focus on developing next-generation QKD systems with measurable improvements in key rates over metropolitan distances (> 1 Mbps) and operational coverage of networks on a regional scale (> 300 km), but also implementing advanced cryptographic protocols beyond QKD, including hybrid quantum-classical cryptographic frameworks by combining QKD and post-quantum cryptography (PQC).
The action will facilitate the experimental validation of advanced QKD protocols, the integration of QKD into classical and optical network structures and the demonstration of hybrid QKD-PQC frameworks.. Projects should demonstrate these technologies in real-world applications beyond the EuroQCI infrastructure, such as protecting energy grids, securing cloud storage, and safeguarding industrial control systems.
Engagement with industry and national network providers is crucial to ensure compatibility with telecom grade requirements.
The budget foreseen for this call is of EUR 24 Million, spanning from the Horizon Europe program. The project will last 3.5 years.
The call opened on Aug. 13, 2026, with a submission deadline of Nov. 17, 2026 at 5:00 pm CET (Brussels time).
Relevant details and information concerning this call will be available on the dedicated call page.
Quantum-Testing Infrastructure for Quantum Technologies
With the newly launched call, HORIZON-JU-EUROHPC-2026-QTI-13, the EuroHPC JU will establish a pan-European open-access testing infrastructure for quantum technologies, creating a comprehensive framework for systematic validation and certification of quantum components and systems.
The action aims to deploy distributed quantum testing facilities across Europe, but also to develop certification services aligned with emerging standards to best support SMEs and startups in validating their quantum technologies. This will strengthen Europe’s competitiveness by ensuring robust quality assurance mechanisms with standardized protocols.
The call should facilitate the expansion of interconnected testing facilities in multiple EU Member States covering various quantum technologies (processors, sensors, photonics and control sensors), developing interoperable testing methodologies and certification procedures, and creating a comprehensive digital platform for remote test execution and data management.
With a total budget of EUR 20 Million, the call is funded by the Horizon Europe program. The call, which opened on Aug. 13, 2026, has a deadline for submission set on Nov. 17, 2026, 5:00 pm CET.
Relevant details and information concerning this call are available on the dedicated call page.
Quantum Experimental Pilot Lines for Quantum Technologies
Through this action, HORIZON-JU-EUROHPC-2026-QEXP-14, the EuroHPC JU seeks to bridge the gap between academic quantum research and established pilot lines under the CHIPS JU..
Qu-Pilot will function as a testbed for developing and validating quantum technologies, focusing on technological innovation, manufacturing reproducibility, and scalability.
The call aims to establish experimental pilot production infrastructure that can advance quantum hardware technologies from TRL 4-6, with particular emphasis on quantum processors, sensors, and cryo-compatible packaging.
Projects should demonstrate scalable quantum fabrication processes including the development of standardized workflows ensuring reproducibility, quality assurance and certification pathways.
The total indicative budget available for this call is EUR 15 Million, funded under the Horizon Europe program. The expected duration of the action is 3.5 years.
The call opened on Aug. 13, 2026, with a submission deadline of Nov. 17, 2026, 5:00 pm CET.
The EuroHPC JU is a legal and funding entity that brings together the European Union and participating countries to coordinate efforts and pool resources with the objective of making Europe a world leader in supercomputing.
To equip Europe with a cutting-edge supercomputing infrastructure, the EuroHPC JU has already procured 12 supercomputers, distributed across Europe including JUPITER and Alice Recoque, Europe’s first exascale systems.
European scientists and users from the public sector and industry can benefit from EuroHPC supercomputers via the EuroHPC Access Calls no matter where in Europe they are located, to advance science and support the development of a wide range of applications with industrial, scientific and societal relevance for Europe.
Currently, the EuroHPC JU is also overseeing the implementation of 19 AI factories (AIF) across Europe, complemented by 13 AI Factory Antennas, to offer free, customised support to SMEs and startups.
Additionally, the EuroHPC JU is deploying a European Quantum Computing infrastructure, integrating diverse European quantum computing technologies with existing supercomputers. In June 2026, the EuroHPC JU launched the quantum pilot access mode to provide quick access to its EuroHPC JU quantum infrastructure for testing and development purposes.
The EuroHPC JU also funds research and innovation projects to develop a full European supercomputing supply chain, from processors and software to applications to be run on these supercomputers and know-how to develop strong European HPC expertise.
With the recent adoption of Council Regulation (EU) 2026/150, the EuroHPC JU’s mandate has been expanded with new action pillars dedicated to the deployment of AI Gigafactories across Europe and the advancement of quantum technologies. The AI Gigafactories call was launched in July 2026.
Minnesota posts win was ‘Like taking money from a baby’
A toddler interrupted a Major League Soccer match between Minnesota United and San Jose Earthquakes on Saturday by invading the pitch – a bizarre scene punctuated by an on-air analyst saying, “There’s a baby on the field.”
With a minute and a half to play in the game that Minnesota won 5-1 at PayPal Park in San Jose, California, the small child took to the field – and the referee blew his whistle to stop play.
Ah, Japan’s TRON project – every few years someone discovers it anew and it bubbles back up the surface, and deservedly so, as it’s an incredibly interesting operating system project that, like so many others, deserved a better fate.
There’s a version of computing history where the desktop OS that won wasn’t Windows. Not because the alternative was Unix-based or because Apple pulled off something different, but because an operating system designed at the University of Tokyo in 1984 was ambitious enough to try to replace the file system with a hypermedia document model, run on a custom Japanese CPU architecture, and encode 1.5 million characters, only to have a US trade report single it out as an unfair trade barrier in 1989.
https://www.xda-developers.com/premium/?ref=ad_removalThat project was TRON (The Real-time Operating system Nucleus), a real, government-backed Japanese computing initiative whose desktop variant, BTRON, was named in a US trade barrier report and effectively killed before it could reach schools nationwide. Meanwhile, its embedded counterpart, ITRON, quietly became one of the most deployed operating systems in history.
TRON’s history has since attracted some genuinely wild conspiracy theories, including one claiming that Japan Airlines Flight 123 was deliberately crashed in order to target the TRON developers on board, despite there being no evidence that any TRON developers were even on the flight. But the strangest part of the story isn’t even a conspiracy theory: BTRON’s hypermedia desktop was decades ahead of what the market could support, and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son may have helped sink it from the inside.
The most interesting part of TRON for me was the different ways it treated files and documents compared to other operating systems. Instead of focusing on applications and files as the core interaction points for users, it focused on the document. While most operating systems associate specific files with specific applications, TRON associated individual components of documents with individual handlers. If you want to edit a Word document today, you open Word and do all your editing work inside Word, whether you’re editing blocks of text or an image, or you open entirely different applications when Word’s capabilities for a certain component in a document are too limited. In TRON, you’d open a document, and only once you wanted to edit specific components did it “open” an “application” to perform the editing, without actually leaving the document in question.
Want to edit an image inside your document? In most operating systems, you’d have to open a separate image editor, load the relevant image file into it, make your edits, save the image file, and then paste said edited image file back into your document. There’s a considerable amount of overhead here that shouldn’t really exist; a computer is more than smart enough to open up just the editing controls from a different application if need be. In our current paradigm, applications often “solve” this by adding ever more features and controls and tools to cover every possible object or component you might have to deal with, but that just makes applications more complex, more bloated, and more difficult to use.
TRON’s approach has been tried in a variety of times and places, but it never caught on. My personal pet theory is that the application-first model is far better at wealth extraction and concentration than TRON’s model, and as such, that’s what we ended up with. If a user’s document and all of its constituent parts are tied to and wrapped up into a single application from a single vendor, it’s much easier to control said user and extract wealth from them than when that user can just pick and choose whatever handler they want to use for whatever object they happen to run into in a document, without having to open tons of different applications and move, copy, and paste stuff all the time.
In fact, this is also why consistency in user interface design is now all but dead; application developers and vendors use their own weird, non-standard, custom user interfaces for branding purposes. Sticking to a platform’s standards and conventions makes it harder to stand out and put your “brand” in people’s faces. But I digress.
Regardless, I’m not sure if all the stories about the US trying to bury TRON have any real value to them, as even the article itself notes (undoing its own clickbaity headline) that the project already seemed to be in dire straights even before it got a buried mention in some trade document. On top of that, ITRON, the embedded TRON variant, survived and thrives to this very day, powering untold numbers of devices. It seems to have done quite well for itself, supposed US government intervention or no.
Three years ago, the August 2023 Lahaina wildfire killed 101 people, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. On Sept. 19, one symbol of the town's continued recovery will arrive at the beach where Maui's most…
President Donald Trump offered no additional details about the levies, but he said they would take effect Jan. 1 — leaving time for the two sides to resume negotiations.
This cookie is made using waste plant materials and plastic and could feed humans everywhere from submarines to spaceships. (SIU Carbondale Communications via SWNS)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Dr. Dre, the pioneering rapper and seven-time Grammy-winning producer behind hit songs like Tupac's "California Love" and Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady," is very much pro using artificial intelligence tools to make music. In an interview with the New York Times, Dr. Dre and Interscope Records co-founder Jimmy Iovine spoke about artificial intelligence's recent foray into music production, with the producer characterizing those who oppose AI song generation tools as "afraid of learning new things." "I don't see it as a threat. I think the only people that see it as a threat are the people who have trouble creating," Dr. Dre said. "I had a discussion with a few people a few days ago. They were against AI, and I'm like, 'OK, you sound like the person that would have been against the drum machine when it came out.' Or synthesizers, right?"
[...] Iovine, the music executive and Dr. Dre's partner in Beats by Dre, for his part, says he doesn't "see the downside at all." "There will be some crappy music. There's crappy music now," Iovine told the NYT. "In the studio, when gifted people have AI, they're going to make better records." Dr. Dre said he uses AI in producing "as a tool to see what it would do with what I just did." The award-winning producer also said he is definitely not alone among his peers in his stance on AI either: many producers use AI but fear to admit it. Iovine calls them "closet AI producers," and says Timbaland, the four-time Grammy-winning singer-producer behind a long list of hits like "Promiscuous" with Nelly Furtado, is also one.
Scientists have warned deadly H5 bird flu could cause “carnage” for Australia’s seal and sea lion populations after detection of the virus in long-nosed fur seals in South Australia.
Downing Street repeats calls for social media platforms to review content and policies as companies urged to uphold legal duties
Lee Anderson, the Reform UK MP for Ashfield, is first up to speak. He says young people in his constituency – and in many areas across the country – have “absolutely no chance” of securing council housing or social housing. He says that Reform’s government would “put British people first” in a housing system he characterises as being unfair.
Reform UK will use a press conference that is due to begin at 11am to announce its pledge to prioritise British-born workers under 35 when allocating social housing. We will bring you the key lines from the conference, fronted by deputy leader, Richard Tice, and the party’s chairman, Lee Anderson, here. You can watch it live:
GOP Sen. Ted Cruz outlined the road ahead for Republicans as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton faces off against state Rep. James Talarico in the closely watched contest.
EU police agency says shift could point to involvement of new criminal networks focused on specific artefacts
Robberies at European museums are becoming increasingly violent, with thieves sometimes brandishing guns, assaulting staff and using sledgehammers, axes and even explosives to smash their way into buildings and display cases, according to a report by Europol.
The EU police agency said that while museum thefts were generally seen as a non-violent form of organised property crime, member states had detected a recent shift “towards violent and forceful methods” that could point to the involvement of new criminal networks focused on specific cultural artefacts.
Authorities believe Benjamin Charles Parker, 36, died by suicide after he was found in vehicle in Washington state
A man suspected of killing five people in rural Oregon was found dead in a suspected suicide, local law enforcement officials said on Sunday.
The five homicide victims were found on Saturday at a home in a rural community near Forest Grove, Oregon, about 30 miles (48km) outside Portland, when authorities responded to a report of a vehicle fire.
Gunmen attacked worshippers in Dekara village on Friday taking women, children and older people
An armed group has posted a video showing what residents said were about 600 women, children and older people abducted in an attack on a mosque in Nigeria’s north-central Niger State last week.
The video, posted on Facebook and WhatsApp, showed large groups of people seated in a forested area surrounded by armed men. Several children could be heard crying in the background.
Five-day trial at high court in Glasgow heard Dott subjected a girl and a boy to multiple incidents of abuse
The former world snooker champion Graeme Dott has been found guilty of sexually abusing two primary school age children. The 49-year-old subjected a girl and a boy to multiple incidents of abuse, with the girl targeted between 1993-96 and the boy between 2006-10.
A five-day trial at the high court in Glasgow heard Dott exposed himself in front of both children, touched them inappropriately, and kissed them. On Monday, he was found guilty of two counts of lewd, indecent and libidinous behaviour towards them. In both cases the abuse happened in the Glasgow area.
The newspaper often uses the word to describe elections with progressive contenders, implying a previous whole destroyed by the left
“El-Sayed and Stevens Project Party Unity After Divisive Race,” announced the New York Times on 5 August, the day the progressive Abdul El-Sayed beat out his centrist Democratic rival, Haley Stevens, in the Michigan senatorial primary. “Divisive” is now the Times’s favorite attack word, deployed repeatedly to disparage and try to undermine the astonishing recent advances by progressive candidates.
Four days after that first story, the Times againlanded “divisive” under “Obama and El-Sayed Discuss Unity After Ugly Michigan Primary.” El-Sayed, it asserted, had “narrowly prevailed in a divisive primary after campaigning on a progressive and anti-establishment platform”.
Campaigners accuse ministers of trying to grab headlines with announcement before a working system is ready
Survivors of violent crime and families of victims have criticised the UK government for announcing “world first” plans to introduce restriction zones for serious offenders freed from prison within a few weeks without spelling out how they would work.
Key campaigners who have championed the idea of the zones, designed to “lock” offenders into specific areas, accused the government of seeking to grab headlines rather than providing the detail that would reassure survivors and families.
Subscribers to Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video in western Europe have faced higher price increases than in any other market in recent years, according to research.
Over the past four years the world’s largest subscription video streaming services have dramatically changed their business models introducing lower-priced, basic advertising tiers to attract new subscribers, while also increasingly monetising users willing to pay more for a premium experience.
Gary mayor says 12 days is ‘too long’ for residents to go without power after storm downed trees on to power lines
The mayor of Gary, Indiana, has said it is “unacceptable” that thousands of residents in the city are still without power nearly two weeks after an 11 August storm known as a derecho brought 90 mph, straight-line winds, downing trees on to power lines.
“We’re at day 12, and 12 days is too long for families to be without power,” Eddie Melton, Gary’s mayor, said in a video address on Sunday, adding that he is continuing to pressure the Northern Indiana Public Service Company (Nipsco) to restore the city’s power before the end of Tuesday.
PARIS, Aug. 24, 2026 — Pasqal, a global leader in neutral-atom quantum computing, and Eleven Ventures, a Kingdom of Saudi Arabia based investment platform and venture capital firm, today announced an agreement to establish a commercial joint venture to deploy, commercialize and scale Pasqal’s quantum computing systems across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the region, with plans to deploy multiple quantum systems in the coming years. The venture is designed to advance the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 ambitions in artificial intelligence and advanced computing, and to position the Kingdom as a regional hub for quantum technology.
The joint venture intends to deploy and operate Pasqal’s neutral-atom systems in the Kingdom and bring Pasqal to market for customers across the Kingdom and the wider region. It is also expected to build local talent and expertise, so that quantum capability is developed within the Kingdom rather than accessed from abroad. The appointment of HRH Prince Abdulaziz Bin Turki Bin Talal, the founder of Eleven Ventures, as Chairman of the Board of Pasqal Arabia will provide strategic leadership across the Kingdom and the region.
The announcement comes as the Kingdom and France deepen their strategic partnership in advanced technologies, coinciding with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s State Visit to France on August 24th. As part of the visit, the Kingdom’s officials visited Pasqal’s headquarters and quantum computer production site, underscoring the growing strategic importance of quantum computing cooperation between the two countries.
Pasqal believes that quantum computing and AI are converging into the infrastructure of the next decade of computing. Additionally, Pasqal believes that the joint venture will give customers in the Kingdom and the region direct, commercial access to that infrastructure at scale, meeting fast-growing regional demand for sovereign, high-performance computers.
“The Kingdom has moved faster than most markets to turn advanced computing into national capability. We believe this joint venture puts Pasqal’s quantum systems inside the Kingdom, built to scale with the region’s ambition – not adjacent to it,” said Dr. Wasiq Bokhari, Chief Executive Officer of Pasqal.
“We believe that quantum today is where AI stood a few years ago, on the edge of changing everything. The difference is that this time, the Kingdom and the region are not watching from a distance, we are moving first, and in Pasqal we found a partner that will not wait either. Together we plan to deploy real systems, raise a generation of quantum talent, and make the Kingdom the home of this technology for the entire region,” said HRH Prince Abdulaziz Bin Turki Bin Talal, Chairman of the Board of Pasqal Arabia.
About Pasqal
Pasqal is a global leader in delivering practical quantum computing at scale utilizing neutral atom technology and dedicated software for industry, science, and governments. Since its founding in 2019, Pasqal has leveraged Nobel Prize winning research to build high-performance quantum systems and cloud-ready software designed to address complex challenges in optimization, simulation, and artificial intelligence.
NGO criticises ‘human cost’ of UK-funded crackdown on attempts to set off from French beaches in small boats
People trying to cross the Channel to the UK have reported an increase in French police use of violence on beaches to prevent them from getting into dinghies, according to a French NGO.
Utopia 56, which works on beaches from where migrants attempt Channel crossings, says so far this year 2,720 people have reported being victims of French police violence, compared with 1,954 over the same period last year, when crossings overall were much higher.
Sean Grayson, who was diagnosed with stage three colon cancer in 2023, was serving a 20-year sentence for second-degree murder
The former Illinois sheriff’s deputy convicted of fatally shooting Sonya Massey in her home after she reported a possible prowler to 911, has died, his attorney said Sunday.
Sean Grayson died on Sunday, lawyer Daniel Fultz – who represented the ex-Sangamon county deputy at his trial – told NBC News and CBS News.
Key speech to be delivered this week at Jackson Hole said to focus on productivity and demographics in the US. Plus, how do you vaccinate 1,000 little penguins in the wild?
Good morning. The new US Federal Reserve chair, Kevin Warsh, faces a critical test this week amid anxiety in government bond markets over inflation and Donald Trump’s tax and spending plans. As the world’s most powerful central bank prepares for its annual Jackson Hole conference, analysts said bond traders would be looking for signals from Warsh over its commitment to fighting inflation.
However, Warsh has signalled reluctance to use his speech on Friday for the “more traditional setup” of dropping hints over how the US central bank may respond to inflationary pressures when its officials next meet to set interest rates in September and December. Instead, he has said his Jackson Hole speech could be “focused on bigger questions”, including concerns over productivity and demographics.
Why is this a crucial moment for the Fed? The gathering of the world’s most powerful central bankers in the Grand Teton national park is a blue riband event in the financial calendar. However, the meeting comes as selling pressure intensifies in the $30tn US government debt market despite efforts by the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, to assuage investor worries after he committed to at least double Washington’s purchases of US Treasury bonds.
What did Joshua Aviles say about his father’s arrest? “I’ve been deployed for over nine months, out at sea in the Middle East aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, fighting for a country that has given me everything. I just got a call that my dad was taken by ICE. We have done everything through immigration to get his green card approved, and we are just waiting. This is heartbreaking for me. I don’t know how I can mentally continue working 12+ hour days knowing that my dad is somewhere, possibly being treated like a criminal.”
How did the DHS respond? The DHS said Luis Manuel Aviles Roa entered the US illegally and would remain in immigration and customs enforcement detention pending removal proceedings. “Having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws,” the DHS said.
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.
Players will get what they expect from the new CoD title: boots-on-the-ground military action with a slight tactical edge. But what’s with all the distractions?
There’s a lot riding on this year’s Call of Duty, the inescapable first-person shootfest that’s been lobbing a grenade into the autumn release schedule since 2003. Previous instalment, Black Ops 7, performed poorly compared to previous titles, forcing Activision to post a semi-apology to fans. And that’s not the only challenge Modern Warfare 4 is facing: there’s a new indie shooter, Wardogs, promising a feel somewhere between classic CoD and Classic Battlefield. Then, lurking on the horizon, in mirror shades and an exotic sports car, is Grand Theft Auto 6, which is surely going to smash and grab all the attention (and money) from the market in mid-November.
The good news is that, judging by the early access beta test that ran over the penultimate August weekend, we’re definitely getting what we expect from a Modern Warfare title: quasi-authentic boots-on-the-ground military action with a slight tactical edge. The weapons and general gunplay are highly effective, from default assault rifle, the Han 86 – a classic CoD beginner’s gun with decent fire rate and handling – to the bullet-spraying Nightshade SMG and the absolutely lethal KG-7 Vulcan sniper rifle. They all feel good to hold and fire, and there’s enough balance to let you experiment with slightly more offbeat numbers like the burst-fire Hyeon AR and the possibly overpowered Mar-9 marksman rifle.
So that is the whole pipeline exercised end-to-end. GrandSlam authenticates the Apple Account and obtains the IDS delegate. authenticateDS and id-register turn the Linux process into a registered Apple messaging identity. The Friends sequence attaches that identity to the existing accepted relationship. A missing-key SubscribeAndFetch makes the sharing device deliver its current P-224 key over APNs/IDS, inside a sender-verified P-256 NGM envelope. A second SearchParty fetch returns the encrypted report, and the P-224 key opens it locally.
So yeah, in one sentence: authenticate to Apple’s private services, register the Linux machine as an IDS client, receive the existing Find My share key, and use it to fetch and decrypt a consented friend’s latest location.
I wonder if it would be possible to build a proper third-party client for Apple’s Find My network like this, or if it would be trivial for the company to block it. I’m fairly sure quite a few people would love to be able to keep using Find My when moving away from Apple’s operating systems.
The meeting came with Democrats expected to take control of the House in the November elections, which would put Jeffries in line to become the next House speaker.
Trump administration finalized rule to end Medicaid support for care including hormones and speech therapy
New Mexico will continue funding gender-affirming care for minors after a federal rule ending Medicaid support for such care goes into effect.
On 13 August, the Trump administration finalized a rule – set to go into effect on 13 October – that will end funding for gender-affirming care through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip).
The president’s border wall plan could damage or destroy ‘the oldest-known books in North America’
On an overcast summer morning, Carolyn Boyd, an archeologist at Texas State University, stood at the foot of a cave in west Texas, looking up toward a series of towering murals painted on a rock wall. Three massive human-like figures soared toward an overhang that had sheltered the painting from the elements since they were drawn here perhaps 4,000 years ago.
An artist herself, Boyd knows how hard it would have been to paint these long, crisp lines. Before starting, the bands of Indigenous hunter-gatherers who lived in this west Texas valley, where the Pecos River empties into the Rio Grande, would have spent weeks pulverizing gypsum, hematite, limonite and manganese to make paint. They would have gathered massive quantities of sotol stalks to fold its fibers into scaffolding. The painting itself would have required teamwork and precision, with people at the bottom guiding artists on the wall as they painted figures stretching up to 30ft tall.
Test of US rhetoric will rest on whether nations such as India, China and Russia view economic threats as credible
Tehran has vowed to retaliate against any country that cooperates with the US attempt to impose fresh sanctions against Iran in what the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has billed as “the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary”.
In advance of the US announcement, the United Arab Emirates, Iran’s single biggest trading partner in the Middle East, announced it was ending all trade with Iran, a move Tehran believes was coordinated between Washington and the UAE.
Updated draft highway code follows several court rulings assigning blame for road accidents to careless pedestrians
Italy’s updated highway code will target pedestrians who stare at their mobile phones while crossing the road, as the country’s transport ministry strives to improve road safety by cracking down on perilous distractions.
The offence, contained in a draft version of the highway code which is expected to be approved by mid-October, carries fines of €75 or more.
Gluons are the quantum 'Gorilla Glue' involved in binding quarks together, ScienceAlert reminds us. But for nearly 50 years, physicists have hunted for "glueballs", exotic particles predicted by this theory of the strong interaction — the only type of particle in nature composed entirely of force mediators:
Now, a collaboration working at a collider in Beijing says it has the clearest evidence yet that a known particle called X(2370) is dominated by one of these elusive states... Physicists sifted through the wreckage of high-energy particle collisions to find strong evidence of this glueball, made predominantly of gluons — massless force carriers of the strong interaction between quarks... The new evidence for this exotic, unstable glueball's ephemeral existence comes from a recent preprint on arXiv, presented at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Brazil... This collaboration uses the Beijing Electron Positron Collider II, a particle accelerator and collider that smashes electrons into their antimatter counterparts, called positrons, to probe perplexing particle physics.
The resultant glueball is an "unprecedented form of matter," says Jin Shan, a particle physicist at Nanjing University and one of the research team's leaders. "It not only enables the theory describing strong interactions to pass its most rigorous test, but also vastly expands the boundaries of our understanding of the physical world," he told Fan Chen at South China Morning Post... Previously, in a study published in the journal Physical Review Letters in 2024, the researchers analyzed 10 billion meson decay events. They measured the X(2370) particle's mass and spin parity — a property that dictates its interactions and almost-instantaneous decay — for the first time, finding complete agreement between their experimental values and predictions. Now, they've identified its additional decay modes and determined its flavor-singlet nature, "the most important characteristic of a glueball...."
The authors describe their work as the clearest experimental result to emerge from nearly 50 years of glueball searches, supporting the long-standing theoretical prediction that gluons can bind together into a new form of matter.
The discovery ""highlights advances in technology and analytical techniques that have recently revealed another decades-in-the-making physics mystery," the article points out.
"More experiments are needed to further confirm and constrain the prototypes of the highly esoteric glueball; in other words, more particle smashing."
A fast-moving Nevadawildfire exploded to more than 15,000 acres (6,000 hectares) on Sunday, pushing from the Sierra foothills toward the centre of Reno and forced nearly 90,000 residents to evacuate as flames threatened neighbourhoods and reached the edge of the University of Nevada campus
Republican candidates who challenged, denied or cast doubt on the 2020 presidential election are seeking governor or secretary of state offices in six competitive states this November, positions that could play significant roles in administering the 2028 presidential election.
The seven candidates are:
Arizona Gov.: Andy Biggs — Voted against accepting Arizona and Pennsylvania’s electoral votes and urged further review of Arizona’s results. He faces Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.
Arizona Secretary of State: Alex Kolodin — Represented lawsuits challenging Arizona’s 2020 results and later represented fake electors. He faces Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.
Georgia Gov.: Rick Jackson — Previously called the 2020 result “totally ridiculous,” although his campaign now says he acknowledges Joe Biden won. He faces Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms.
Michigan Gov.: John James — Has called the 2020 election “rigged” while previously acknowledging Biden was duly elected. He faces Democrat Jocelyn Benson.
Nevada Secretary of State: Jim Marchant — Has repeatedly promoted claims that the 2020 election was stolen and supported Nevada’s fake-elector effort. He faces Democratic incumbent Cisco Aguilar.
Pennsylvania Gov.: Stacy Garrity — Said at a 2022 Trump rally, “We know that he won,” but now says she recognizes Biden was elected. She faces Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Wisconsin Gov.: Tom Tiffany — Voted against Arizona and Pennsylvania electoral votes and has alleged 2020 “improprieties,” though he now says Biden won. He faces Democrat David Crowley.
Governors and secretaries of state have important roles in election administration and certification, making these races relevant well beyond 2026.
Algorithms are responsible for fever pitch content surrounding trial, including misinformation, experts say
As the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother accused of killing her three children, starts to wind down, a now international discussion on social media about the case has hit a fever pitch as viewers examine details of the trial and question the state of maternal mental healthcare in the United States.
Amateur sleuths and armchair psychologists have been creating content throughout the several weeks of the trial, pointing out perceived discrepancies in evidence. They’ve pointed to Clancy’s last recorded heart rate and body temperature as “smoking guns”, suggested that Patrick Clancy, Lindsay’s ex-husband and father of the children, actually committed the crime, despite no legal evidence to back up the claim.
Watchdog data shared with Guardian shows contributions to Republican Attorneys General Association and others
Over a dozen US companies that signed a 2021 letter urging Congress to strengthen the Voting Rights Act continue to contribute to state political groups that are actively working to undermine the legislation, according to a campaign finance watchdog.
Researchers at the Center for Political Accountability (CPA), a nonpartisan organization that tracks financial disclosures, found that companies – including Airbnb, DoorDash, Target and Zillow – that signed the letter are contributing to groups known as 527 organizations that prop up key state races, according to data provided exclusively to the Guardian.
Luke Pollard says government will force platforms to remove content, after latest deadly crash involving a car driving in wrong direction
A minister has pressed social media companies to remove content from their platforms showcasing dangerous driving after a fatal collision that killed seven people in Middlesbrough.
The crash in the early hours of Saturday, in which PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough died, occurred when a Volkswagen Passat, containing five individuals aged between 23 and 17, crashed head-on with a marked armed response vehicle while driving the wrong way on the A66.
The Kremlin has warned of an escalation in tensions between the UK and Russia as Andy Burnham arrived in Kyiv to present Ukraine with newly declassified blueprints to allow Ukraine to improve its production of long-range missiles.
I know that onewheels are banned on many campuses, but I am thinking about bringing mine to a campus where they are banned, and I'd love to hear experiences of anyone using a onewheel in college (or keeping one in a dorm where they are technically banned). Are the rules loose? Does nobody really care? etc.
The group of creditors pursuing a rescue bid for Thames Water have been accused of shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic after proposing an overhaul of the stricken utility’s board.
In a bid to stave off temporary nationalisation by Andy Burnham, the lenders said they would appoint Liz Barber, the former chief executive of Yorkshire Water, and Clive Selley, the former chief executive of network operator Openreach, as directors if they are allowed to take formal control of the company.
A quintuple murder suspect was found dead inside a vehicle in Enumclaw, Washington, a day after the bodies of five people were discovered outside Portland, Oregon, authorities said.
West African country reports 46 suspected cases in outbreak declared in July, amid fears virus may be spreading undetected
More than half of the mpox cases reported in Guinea-Bissau have been among children, local authorities have said, almost two months since the country announced an epidemic.
A national outbreak was declared on 4 July, just over a week after a 27-year-old woman became the first confirmed case of mpox in the west African country. Since then, there have been seven confirmed cases and 46 suspected cases. Half of those patients have been children, with 16 under the age of four.
Sean Grayson shot Massey in July 2024 after she called 911 to report a prowler. He had been diagnosed with colon cancer, but his cause of death hasn't been released.
Plans for gloves that can deliver electric shocks underline the homeland security department’s sadistic practices
On 11 August, the Associated Press reported that the Homeland Security Agency will spend up to $20m to equip its agents with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks to the skin of a person deemed uncooperative. The “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices”– branded Glove, for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter – will be supplied by their manufacturer, Compliant Technologies, through a no-bid contract.
News of the acquisition inspired the editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes to publish a cartoon of an ICE agent wearing the glove, underneath which are a branding iron, an iron maiden, a rack, and other compliance technologies. AKA, instruments of torture.
The Democratic and the Republican candidate each blame the other for the bungled recovery effort after storm struck region
Two years after North Carolina suffered the worst natural disaster in its history when Hurricane Helene struck the state’s western half, life in the hardest-hit areas appears back to normal. Downtowns are lively, blocked roads have been reopened and rivers are flowing below their banks.
But the telltale evidence of the disaster’s expensive impacts can still be seen – from “for rent” signs in storefronts whose businesses never came back to debris from the storm still lurking in some waterways. And in the race for North Carolina’s US Senate seat, it’s almost as if the hurricane never left.
Civil liberties groups decry plan to use gloves linked to death of Kentucky man allegedly shocked 27 times in county jail
Plans to supply Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers with special gloves that can deliver electric shocks have alarmed experts and drawn scrutiny amid some high-profile lawsuits over their use in local correctional facilities.
In one extreme case, a 43-year-old man died after allegedly being shocked 40 times by officers with a combination of the gloves and a Taser in a county jail in Kentucky, and the man’s widow is suing authorities.
Republicans who deny Joe Biden won the 2020 election are running for governor and secretary of state across the US
Election deniers are back on the ballot.
In most swing states, at least one major Republican candidate has questioned or outright denied the results of the 2020 US presidential election, which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.
Why Should Delaware Care? Government works best when its citizens are knowledgeable and engaged. Delaware’s government has scores of commissions, working groups, agencies and legislative committees. All must hold meetings that are open to the public. Below we highlight a few of those meetings that are happening this week.
Below are some of the most important or interesting public meetings happening around the state this week.
Board of Elections to break months-long meeting hiatus
State healthcare watchdogs to discuss SB 1
Are Delaware hospitals getting territorial over possible expansions?
Wilmington City Council talks decorum rules
Board of Elections to meet following Spotlight Delaware report
The Delaware Board of Elections, tasked with ensuring election fairness and security, will meet for the first time on Monday since November 2025, weeks after Spotlight Delaware first reported on the board’s months-long lapse in meetings.
Each of the board’s monthly meetings this year were canceled, until now, citing membership vacancies that a Department of Elections spokesperson said prevented the oversight board from convening. Those vacancies, the spokesperson said, were caused by three board member deaths between December 2025 and April 2026.
The board consists of 10 members — five Democrats and five Republicans — appointed by the governor, along with the state’s election commissioner.
While the months-long board vacancies have been filled, and the board is set to once again meet, neither Gov. Matt Meyer’s office nor the state’s Department of Elections provided information to Spotlight Delaware about the recruitment process or why it took upward of eight months to find new board members.
📍 The Board of Elections will meet at 4 p.m. Monday inside the Department of Elections Kent County Office, located at 100 Enterprise Place in Dover. For more information, including on virtual attendance, click here.
State employee healthcare group reviews SB 1
The State Employee Benefits Committee, which manages health insurance policies for state employees, is set to meet at 10 a.m. Monday to review Senate Bill 1 and the General Assembly’s 2026 legislative session.
Senate Bill 1 aims to lower healthcare spending in the state by investing in primary care and phasing in price caps for hospitals. The bill drew a fierce rebuke from the state’s hospital systems earlier this spring, but was ultimately amended after months of negotiations.
📍 The State Employee Benefits Committee will meet at 10 a.m. Monday inside the SEBC Conference Room at the Delaware Department of Human Resources, located at 841 Silver Lake Blvd. in Dover. For more information, including on virtual attendance, click here.
Hospitals to discuss expansion efforts
The Delaware Health Resources Board at its meeting Tuesday afternoon will discuss a letter from Bayhealth about ChristianaCare’s proposed expansions into Camden and Georgetown.
It is unclear what Bayhealth officials will convey in their letter, but the Health Resources Board is tasked with regulating hospital expansions in the state.
ChristianaCare’s proposed expansions into Camden and Georgetown encroach on southern parts of the state that historically have been served by Bayhealth healthcare facilities.
📍 The Delaware Health Resources Board will meet at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Herman M. Holloway Sr. Health and Social Services Campus, located at 1901 N. DuPont Highway in New Castle. For more information, including on virtual attendance, click here.
Wilmington council to discuss ‘code of conduct‘
Wilmington City Council will meet Thursday night to discuss a potential “code of conduct” for within council chambers.
The ordinance, proposed by Councilman Chris Johnson, would set rules around “the decorum expected during Council sessions,” and it is meant to ensure the safety of both officials and attendees, according to a synopsis on the city council’s website.
The legislation comes as the council is separately engrossed in an ongoing legal battle over the proposed removal of Councilman James Spadola from office.
Filed in May, the lawsuit marks the latest in a political feud between Spadola and his colleagues — specifically Council President Ernest “Trippi” Congo — that stemmed from his decision last fall to change from being a Republican to a Democrat.
📍 The Wilmington City Council will meet at 6:30 p.m. Thursday inside Council Chambers at the Louis L. Redding City/County Building, located 800 N. French St. in Wilmington. For more information, including on virtual attendance, click here.
The US is scooping up treasury bonds in an effort to raise their price and push yields down – but it’s not working
The bond market is driving the Trump administration crazy. Last week, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, announced that the government would sharply ramp up its purchase of treasury bonds, in an effort to raise their price and thus push down their yield, which amounts to the interest rate the government pays on its debt.
It didn’t quite work as planned. Yields on treasurys fell after Bessent’s bond market intervention but soon bounced back. By Friday afternoon, the yield on the 10-year treasury was back near where it was before the secretary’s announcement. The yield on the 30-year bond was again trading around its highest level in 20 years or more.
Why Should Delaware Care? Delaware’s elections are approaching, and the winners could determine the balance of power in the legislature that forms policy for residents across the state. The race for Wilmington’s Third House District has been unusually turbulent after the incumbent Rep. Josue Ortega was recently charged with misdemeanor assault. Now a trespassing complaint tied to another candidate’s campaign sign has added to the turmoil.
With less than a month until Delaware’s primary election, two Democrats vying to represent Wilmington’s Hilltop neighborhood in the legislature are feuding after one called the police on the other for placing his campaign sign in her front yard.
The candidate, Branden Fletcher-Dominguez, said he did not know that his political opponent, LaDonna Graham, lived at the Hilltop townhouse when he placed the sign. Instead, the property owner had asked him for a yard sign there, he said.
Fletcher-Dominguez shared with Spotlight Delaware a text message thread showing the property owner, Sultan Taskin, asking him to drop the sign off.
The bottom of the thread shows a final message from Fletcher-Dominguez that appears to say, “I hope the tenant won’t move it.”
Graham says Fletcher-Dominguez knew she was living in the home when he placed the campaign sign there, because she had seen him campaigning in the neighborhood before.
“I’ve seen him canvas. I’ve sat on my porch. I’ve seen him canvas across the street,” Graham said.
The dispute is flaring just as the Democratic primary in the 3rd Representative District approaches, where Graham and Fletcher-Dominguez are among four candidates seeking the seat. The others are incumbent Rep. Josue Ortega and Wilmington City Councilwoman Yolanda McCoy.
And what began as an initial grievance over a campaign sign has since involved multiple police interactions and competing accounts from Graham, Fletcher-Dominguez and the property’s owner.
While some details are disputed, what is known is that on Aug. 1, Graham filed a police report against Fletcher-Dominguez, alleging trespassing after he placed his campaign sign at her residence the day before.
She followed up with officers a few days after the police report. It was then, she said, that police officers told her that a no-contact order would be put into place.
Graham again called the police a week later, she said, after Fletcher-Dominguez went back to her home to retrieve the sign from her porch. That same day, Fletcher-Dominguez said police stopped him while he was canvassing in the area and asked him whether a no-contact order existed that would prevent him from interacting with Graham.
He told them no such order existed. Police then ran his information and let him go, he said.
Staff at the New Castle County Court told Spotlight Delaware on Thursday that no records are on file showing a no-contact order in place between the two individuals.
Brandon Fletcher-Dominguez said he was simply trying to campaign for his House race when a rival candidate told police he had trespassed on her property. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
Days after he was initially approached by officers, Fletcher-Dominguez said police came to his house to ask whether he had been on Broom Street, where Graham lives.
“And I was like, ‘Yes, I’m everywhere. I knock doors everywhere. I’m a community organizer. I knock on doors. Like why is this continuing to be an issue?’” he recounted.
Wilmington Police officials confirmed that officers were called to Graham’s neighborhood on Aug. 1 in reference to a complaint regarding a male subject placing a campaign sign on a residential property without the occupant’s permission.
Police officers ultimately “determined that he had secured permission from the property owner to place the sign there,” David Karas, the chief administrative officer for WPD, told Spotlight Delaware on Wednesday.
Karas said officers determined no further police action was necessary at the time.
Fletcher-Dominguez disputes allegations
Fletcher-Dominguez said he was asked to place his campaign sign at the Broom Street townhouse by Taskin, a woman with whom Graham had a rental agreement.
He also noted that residents regularly ask him to drop off campaign signs to put up outside their residences. Fletcher-Dominguez said he assumed Taskin lived at the house after she asked him to place the sign.
LaDonna Graham is seeking office for the first time in the Wilmington-area House race. | PHOTO COURTESY OF GRAHAM CAMPAIGN
When asked about the text message thread from Taskin regarding her tenant, Fletcher-Dominguez said, “At the time I placed the sign, I had not been told directly by the tenant that they objected to it.”
Fletcher-Dominguez said he did not know Graham lived at the house until after the initial incident when he looked at a voter registration list and saw her listed address. It was then that he decided to retrieve his campaign sign from her porch.
“I respect people’s rights and my focus remains on the issues that matter to District 3 voters, not political drama like this,” Fletcher-Dominguez said.
For Graham, she says the situation has now caused her to fear campaigning by herself, claiming that supporters of Fletcher-Dominguez approached her, questioning why she was “harassing him and making false allegations against him.”
Graham says that she will be looking into pursuing additional charges.
Property dispute
The dispute has quickly become complicated, with the three parties – Graham, Fletcher-Dominguez, and Taskin offering conflicting accounts not only of what happened but of who had the authority to authorize the sign in the first place.
Taskin, the apparent property owner, told Spotlight Delaware that she currently owns the property and leased it to Graham. But she also noted tensions between her and Graham, as she claimed that Graham has failed to pay rent, to renew her lease, and has prevented her from accessing the home.
Taskin said that she did not know that Graham was running for office before she gave Fletcher-Dominguez permission to place the campaign sign at the residence.
Months before the campaign sign incident, Taskin and Graham had been engaged in a months-long disagreement over repairs and the lease to the home.
Taskin provided Spotlight Delaware with a copy of an April 2026 deed showing that she and Delaware Affordable Housing Group, a nonprofit under the umbrella of the Wilmington Housing Authority, are listed as co-owners of the property. Taskin took part in a WHA program that allowed her to enter the partnership with the WHA, giving her 80% ownership of the property.
New Castle County deeds records also lists Taskin’s development company as the current owner.
But officials with the Wilmington Housing Authority and Graham dispute Taskin’s account of the property’s ownership.
Ray Fitzgerald, executive director of the Wilmington Housing Authority, said Taskin is currently removed as an owner after failing to make necessary repairs to the property.
Graham also denies Taskin’s allegations, saying WHA officials told Taskin to stop contacting Graham and asserted that she has an exclusive lease with the WHA’s nonprofit alone. She provided Spotlight with images of a signed lease, initiated in July 1 that lists WHA’s nonprofit as her landlord.
The news also adds another layer to a race that has already drawn attention to Fletcher-Dominguez. In 2024, Fletcher-Dominguez withdrew from the race just days before the primary election. At the time, state investigators had said he didn’t have a permanent residence within the district.
Graham submitted a complaint to Delaware’s Department of Elections, but officials say that currently both candidates, Graham and Fletcher-Dominguez, will remain on the ballot.
Why Should Delaware Care? All records created by government officials belong to the public, and those that are not explicitly exempted from public release should be accessible to any individual. As such, Freedom of Information Act requests are a key tool for Delawareans to learn about how they government works. But, for many, the process that takes places after a request is submitted is little known.
For many people who file a Delaware Freedom of Information Act request, the state’s process for retrieving records can look like a black box.
After a request goes in, it is not always clear how the public’s records are retrieved, or why the process can sometimes take many months to complete.
Spotlight Delaware recently posed those questions to state officials following an open records request submitted to all 19 of the state’s school districts.
On July 1, Spotlight Delaware submitted the school district request for emails sent between superintendents and other staff members that contained words like “immigration,” “ICE,” and “immigration enforcement.”
While a response to a Freedom of Information Act request is required within 15 business days, nearly all of Delaware’s school districts replied before the deadline with identical statements.
Get Involved Submit your own FOIA request to Delaware government through this online portal. If you need to appeal the government’s response to a FOIA request, email the Delaware Department of Justice at opengovernment@delaware.gov.
Fifteen school districts’ responses all said they were receiving assistance from the Delaware Department of Technology and Information. They estimated that their districts would not be able to produce documents until Aug. 15, “due to the likely need for review by legal counsel, and the fact that the records are in the possession of DTI.”
DTI refers to the Delaware Department of Technology, which maintains the technological backbone of the state. Agencies throughout the state have different standards for records retention, and the types of records matter too.
Many Delawareans do not know what happens when they submit an information request, and it is not immediately clear what process requests go through before documents are given to the requestor.
Spotlight Delaware requested an interview with the Delaware Department of Technology and Information to understand what happens to a request after it is passed along to the agency.
The Department of Technology and Information would only agree to answer questions over email.
There are several records DTI can retrieve through its eRecords Request Form, such as emails and voicemails, Microsoft Teams Chats and Workspaces, phone logs, and more.
A DTI flowchart shows how an eRecords search is processed. | IMAGE COURTESY OF DTI
Once an organization receives an information request, such as emails containing keywords, the organization’s authorizing official — such as a superintendent of a school district, cabinet secretaries, or other officials depending on the agency — determines if assistance from DTI is needed and submits the request.
Only an authorizing official can bring the request from the organization to DTI, according to the eRecords request policy language.
After an agency submits its request, DTI conducts its own policy compliance review.
The State Chief Information Officer approves the request after it’s found to be compliant, and DTI works to secure the requested records.
The process “can involve multiple systems and multiple record custodians, depending on the scope of the request,” DTI’s Director of Government Affairs and Media Relations Christina Dirksen wrote in an email to Spotlight Delaware.
The time it takes for DTI to provide the requested data to the agency varies and depends on the “accuracy of the eRecords request form,” the amount of data involved, and the number of systems that need to be searched, Dirksen wrote.
While Dirksen said straightforward requests can usually be completed within 10 business days, larger or more complex requests may take longer.
Once the data is located, DTI “extracts and prepares it in a secure environment” and provides access to the agency, Dirksen wrote.
Nearly seven weeks after Spotlight Delaware originally submitted its information requests to all of Delaware’s 19 school districts, some school officials say they still are awaiting answers from DTI regarding cost estimates.
Those responses also come more than one week after the Aug. 15 deadline, which multiple school districts said was due to DTI’s timeline for retrieving the records.
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.”
U.S. Central Command maintains a secret directory of journalists who have been blacklisted by the press office, according to an official with CENTCOM public affairs. The disclosure comes amid a failed war in Iran, a “cover-up” of U.S. casualties from that conflict, and repeated refusals by CENTCOM to address questions about civilian deaths in Iran, including the killing of a family recently disclosed by The Intercept.
The CENTCOM official who revealed the existence of the list threatened that this reporter could be added to it for calling the command too often.
“You’ll be put on a list of people to disregard,” Richard Allee, an executive assistant with CENTCOM public affairs told this reporter. When asked for clarification — “You have a list of people to disregard?” — he confirmed it with an emphatic: “Yes.” When asked which reporters or outlets were currently on the list, he replied: “I’m not privy to give you that information.”
Under self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth, the U.S. military has mounted the most aggressive assault on press freedom in memory, from an effort to outlaw “unauthorized” questions from reporters to imposing unconstitutional restrictions on journalists’ access to the Pentagon. Hegseth has compared reporters to “Pharisees,” who in the Bible call Jesus’s teachings into question, while the secretary’s minions regularly hurl insults at reporters. This is part of a broader war on press freedoms by the Trump administration, that includes demonizing journalists; filing so-called strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs, to intimidate and silence criticism through expensive legal proceedings; and employing grand jury subpoenas and search warrants to intimidate reporters.
“Threatening journalists with placement on a blacklist in retaliation for reporting the government doesn’t like is as unconstitutional as it gets,” said Seth Stern, the director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation. “This should put to rest the Pentagon’s prior claims that it’s anti-press policies — like its infamous requirement that reporters sign pledges to only print authorized information — are somehow content neutral.”
Allee revealed the existence of the blacklist after this reporter was left on hold for more than two hours and complained about a long-standing lack of transparency by the command. In calls earlier that morning, Maj. Emma Thompson, CENTCOM’s media operations chief, repeatedly refused to answer questions about Iranian attacks on U.S. bases across the Middle East, disparate U.S. casualty counts, and medical evacuation flights: “Nothing for you,” “Don’t have anything for you,” “No comment.” Thompson then hung up on this reporter mid-question.
The Intercept called back multiple times until Allee picked up the phone. “They’re not going to answer your call if you just keep calling and calling,” he told this reporter.
Allee chastised this reporter to be more respectful. He said a “less accusatory attitude towards the personnel here would go a lot further than badgering them when you don’t get something you want, when you want it.”
Allee then revealed the existence of the blacklist. He declined to provide additional details about the list but said, “It’s not a list that we publicize.” He also hung up on this reporter.
The command’s press office responded in an email to additional questions about the journalists who have run afoul of the command. “CENTCOM does not have a ‘blacklist,’” the agency wrote.
A U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Hegseth’s office had a standing order not to engage with this reporter and would deny it if challenged.
“None of it has anything to do with security, all of it has everything to do with censorship and intimidation,” Stern told The Intercept. “CENTCOM needs to stop blacklisting journalists and tell the public who is on the blacklist and why they were placed there. Whoever was behind the blacklist should be blacklisted from government employment.”
“None of it has anything to do with security, all of it has everything to do with censorship and intimidation.”
Under Hegseth, the Pentagon has mounted an unrelenting assault on press freedom despite the fact that the secretary began his tenure by sharing secret information on airstrikes in Yemen, hours before the actual attacks occurred, on a Signal group chat that inadvertently included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
As part of his war on the press, Hegseth evicted the New York Times, NPR, and other outlets from their long-held desks in the Pentagon and replaced them with sycophantic fellow-travelers like the One America News Network, the New York Post, and Breitbart.
In May 2025, Hegseth issued a memo barring credentialed reporters from most of the Pentagon without an escort. (Last month, a federal appeals court said that the Pentagon can continue doing so.) The Pentagon later introduced a policy requiring journalists to pledge not to even gather, at the risk of their credentials, unclassified information unless the government authorized its release. (This drove nearly the entire Pentagon press corps to surrender their badges.) After the Times sued and a federal judge struck the policy down in March 2026 as unconstitutional, Hegseth shuttered a decades-old Pentagon pressroom and began conducting polygraph tests to prevent leaks.
Trump also filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit after the Wall Street Journal reported on a letter sent from him to convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein; he also banned WSJ reporters from flying aboard Air Force One. This year, Trump also told journalists to give up a source “or go to jail,” threatened the press with “Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information,” and praised FCC chief Brendan Carr for threatening “the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations.” (The Intercept is currently suing Trump for restricting First Amendment-protected information in a scheme to enrich himself.)
While Trump and Hegseth have waged a pitched campaign to dismantle the free press, they are merely building upon decades of efforts by the government to curtail accountability journalism.
Military commands have regularly led this reporter on with promises of information only to renege months later; ignored calls and emails; feigned failing phone lines to end calls; hung up, lost Freedom of Information Act requests; and once even burned documents in lieu of releasing them.
This reporter was blacklisted in 2018 by U.S. Africa Command after exposing the torture of prisoners at a remote military base in Cameroon for The Intercept. “Nick, we’re not going to respond to any of your questions” then-Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Falvo, the head of U.S. Africa Command’s Public Affairs Branch, told me by phone. Asked if he believed AFRICOM didn’t need to address questions from the press in general, or just this reporter in particular, Falvo replied: “No, just you. We don’t consider you a legitimate journalist, really.”
The anonymous U.S. official said that sentiment extends to this day across multiple commands, as well as Hegseth’s office.
This reporter has unanswered questions pending with CENTCOM that date back to at least 2013 and extend to this week. For example, in July 2015, a CENTCOM spokesperson responded to an inquiry with this statement: “We will provide you response as quickly as possible.” Eleven years later, this reporter is still waiting.
Two Phoenix police officers were fired and arrested after an unreported traffic stop in which they assaulted a man and woman and shocked them with a Taser, the city's police chief said.
Botswana's future: Vice President Gaolathe on economic resilience amid global uncertainty
17
September 2026 — 14:30 TO 15:30 BST
Anonymous (not verified)
Chatham House and Online
Hear Vice President Ndaba Nkosinathi Gaolathe set out Botswana’s priorities for inclusive economic reform.
Hear Vice President and Minister of Finance HE Ndaba Gaolathe set out Botswana’s priorities for inclusive economic reform.
As Botswana marks 60 years of independence, a weakening of the diamond market has exposed the limits of the model that drove the country’s rise to upper-middle-income status. The 2024 election brought the first change of governing party since independence in 1966, and Vice President Ndaba Nkosinathi Gaolathe will set out the new government’s response to economic challenges.
This event discusses:
What does the first change of governing party since independence mean for economic reform?
How can economic transformation deliver more inclusive and sustainable growth?
What opportunities will the government’s agenda create for businesses and investors?
How will Botswana reduce its dependence on diamond production?
Which sectors could drive growth as the economy recovers from contraction?
How will the new government strengthen resilience to climate and geopolitical shocks?
Springfield, Ohio — Federal immigration agents have begun detaining Haitians in Springfield following the end of Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants, with local advocates reporting at least 29 arrests as of Friday.
The enforcement follows a June Supreme Court decision allowing the Trump administration to terminate TPS for Haitians. Their protections formally expired July 27, leaving many people who had previously been authorized to live and work in the United States vulnerable to deportation.
Springfield is home to roughly 15,000 Haitians with a range of immigration statuses, including U.S. citizenship, TPS and other legal categories. Local advocates say ICE agents have detained people at shopping centers, apartment complexes and other public locations. Pastor Gilbert Joubert Adrien was among those detained Thursday.
Community organizations say the arrests have created widespread fear. Some Haitians are avoiding stores and public spaces, while others have been ordered to report to ICE offices and wear ankle monitors.
Mayor Rob Rue said Springfield does not control federal immigration enforcement and that ICE has indicated operations will continue across Ohio.
The situation is complicated by conditions in Haiti, where the State Department maintains its highest-level “Do Not Travel” advisory because of violent crime, kidnappings, terrorism and limited healthcare. The United States began larger-scale deportation flights to Haiti last week following the termination of TPS.
This is yet another controversy for the WNBA, a league that up until a few years ago, most media observers ignored. The WNBA is full of incredibly talented players and has a rich history, but most sports fans treated all but ignored it for the majority of its 30-year existence. But when Caitlin Clark went pro, the league surged. Ratings, attendance, and interest exploded. But not all attention is good attention.
Dan Sullivan supports Dan Sullivan against Dan Sullivan in Alaska’s US Senateelection, says a former Alaskan mayor who recently backed the race’s Republican incumbent over a challenger sharing their name.
That development provided another of multiple absurd elements to Dan S Sullivan’s campaign for a third term in the US Senate, which – beside Mary Peltola, a former Alaska Democratic congresswoman – has drawn opposition from Dan J Sullivan.
Joan Connor and David Stearns survived the 2025 floods in Kerr County, Texas, by clinging to the pergola outside their house. Their home flooded again this year. Brenda Bazán for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune
When deadly flooding swept through the Texas Hill Country in July of last year, Joan Connor and her husband swam and waded out of their home, surviving only by clinging to a pergola in their front yard.
The Guadalupe River flood destroyed most of their possessions. It killed at least 119 people in Kerr County, where the couple live, about 100 miles west of Austin.
But Connor, now 82, and her husband, now 99, moved back into the refurbished house by Christmas, with donated furniture arranged by volunteer decorators.
They didn’t fear another flood. Connor told me earlier this year: “We don’t think a thing like that will happen again in our lifetime.”
I cover climate for The Texas Tribune. I spent months working with ProPublica’s Lexi Churchill and Pratheek Rebala to understand how Texas lawmakers missed dozens of opportunities over nearly 60 years to protect residents in flood-prone places.
Our reporting, published in May, uncovered pivotal moments when Texas legislators could have taken steps that experts said might have saved lives, such as preventing homes from being built in the most dangerous spots along rivers and moving youth camp buildings out of flood-prone areas. Instead, our reporting found, Texas is behind more than half of other U.S. states when it comes to passing more stringent elevation rules for buildings at risk of flooding.
Yet research shows more flood deaths have occurred here than in any other state. Texas also has more buildings in flood-prone places than any other state except Florida, according to our nationwide structure analysis. The majority of the people who died in the 2025 Central Texas flood were in one of those places identified as flood-prone by the federal government, our analysis showed.
I grew up in Texas and have covered floods in this state for more than a decade. Still, the swift violence of that 2025 disaster struck me. The river washed entire homes away. People fought for their lives by grabbing trees or scrambling onto rooftops, and many people didn’t make it. I’ve never before witnessed such intense grief.
Even after the loss, some homeowners like Connor knew they wanted to rebuild. People have deep, generational ties to this part of the state, where the normally peaceful river winds through limestone under majestic cypress trees. People didn’t want to leave jobs and relationships here, or lose money by selling their land at a loss.
I understand that desire to stay, but as a climate reporter I’ve also seen what can happen when development is allowed in flood-prone areas. What our reporting showed is that the government has cleared the way for residents to stay in many risky places, even after last year’s devastating floods.
Lawmakers did not change how they regulated where RV parks could be built, though more than 40 people died in two Kerr County RV campgrounds during last year’s flood. (Those parks had not reopened when this year’s flood rushed through again.) They also didn’t change building rules for homes. That means that, unless a local city or county government adopts more stringent standards, properties affected by a flood can be fixed without being brought up to code if the cost to repair them doesn’t amount to half or more of the structure’s value. Homes can be entirely rebuilt in many flood-prone places so long as they are elevated to the height a 100-year flood is expected to reach.
Lawmakers did push through legislation that requires youth camp cabins to be moved away from riverside, flood-prone spots, similar to a bill legislators failed to pass in 1989. The law only passed this time after gut-wrenching testimony and advocacy from parents of the 27 campers and counselors who died at Camp Mystic during last summer’s flooding.
For our May story, we asked the state’s top leaders about whether legislators should enact stricter statewide building rules. None responded. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said he has addressed flooding issues by funding mitigation projects to lessen the storms’ impact.
This July, unusually intense rainfall pounded the Kerr County area again. It flooded some of the same spots. One person died. The disaster struck as people in the area were still working to heal emotionally, physically and economically. I once again arrived to find the familiar sights and smells of peoples’ possessions piled up by the curb, their flooring and walls ripped out.
Laura Cane, 65, had just reopened her vacation rental house in Center Point three weeks before this year’s flood hit. She had been putting the finishing touches on her two long-term rental homes. The water this year caused even more damage than last. But she plans to fix it up again because she sees that as the best financial choice.
When I arrived in Connor’s neighborhood this July, 10 days after the flood, volunteers had just helped pull up damaged flooring in the home. She was desperately trying to save her new piano, which replaced the one she’d lost in last year’s flood. She didn’t think the water had reached the piano legs, which sat on wheels. She worried about sleeping in the house because of mold.
Connor and her husband say they still plan to repair the house. Federal, state and county rules will likely allow them to do that.
We don’t have any indications yet that the state rules will change. Legislators in interim hearings this year haven’t delved into these bigger development issues, instead focusing on things like the personal responsibility of the Camp Mystic owners.
Even though she’s exhausted from dealing with another flood, moving elsewhere felt like a step too far for Connor. She didn’t want to look for a new place, pack up and leave.
For a short time, she and her husband went to a nearby RV park — different from the two where they stayed last year while making home repairs, because both had flooded this time around.
She wants to stay even though a neighbor warned her that the house could face bad flooding again, and Connor believes her.
“We’ll just probably be very cautious if it starts raining in the middle of the night,” she said. “We’ll be hauling ass. I’m not going to live through another flood. I’m just going to get in my truck and head north.”
Said her husband, David Stearns: “Whatever happens, we’ll put up with it.”
Researchers and disability rights advocates warn that the dismantling of the Education Department and its erosions of civil rights oversight risk widening the disparities autistic children face.
Shein, which built a fast-fashion empire on what seemed like impossibly low prices, has been forced to lower its own valuation in a cut-price stock market float, after falling into the red earlier this year.
The online retailer will list on the Hong Kong stock exchange on 1 September at a valuation of close to $27bn (£19.8bn), significantly down from a near-$100bn private market peak four years ago.
Washington, D.C. — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is preparing to unveil what he calls the “toughest sanctions in history” against Iran on Monday, escalating the Trump administration’s economic campaign against Tehran and potentially putting new pressure on countries that continue buying Iranian oil.
Bessent said the administration intends to use the full weight of U.S. financial power to isolate Iran and target companies, banks and governments that facilitate its trade. China is expected to be a major focus because it remains Iran’s largest oil customer. Reuters reported that China imported an average of about 1.4 million barrels of Iranian crude per day in 2025, although shipments have recently declined.
The sanctions announcement comes amid worsening tensions over the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian officials have threatened retaliation against neighboring countries that cooperate with Washington’s economic campaign, while Tehran has also warned ships that violate its new transit rules could face fines, detention or cargo seizures.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has dismissed the looming sanctions as a “desperate” measure and argued that unilateral U.S. restrictions will not force Tehran to capitulate.
Markets are already reacting. Oil prices fell Monday as traders awaited details of the sanctions, while Iran’s rial fell to a record low against the U.S. dollar.
Bessent is scheduled to outline the administration’s measures during a Monday press conference.
Developers who met through Australia’s improv scene and publishers of comedic party games have united for this slithering challenge in which you play as one extended limb
Most stealth games cast you as a spy, an assassin or a master thief. My Arms Are Longer Now dispenses with most of the criminal person, to send in just one spectacularly badly behaved limb. It slithers across floors, winds around furniture, steals things and slaps anyone within reach – finally answering the question nobody asked: what if your own arm turned to crime?
As Toot Games co-founder Matthew Jackson puts it: “You are the bad thing that happens to the people.”
Nidia Webb, who is legally settled in UK, falls foul of ‘known issue’ with Home Office’s digitised immigration process
A woman who is legally settled in the UK was left stranded at a Spanish airport after the Home Office’s post-Brexit visa system mixed her up with her twin sister.
Nidia Webb fell foul of what she was told was a “known issue” with the eVisa, which was brought in as part of the government’s drive to digitise the UK’s immigration system but has faced problems that have caused concern for thousands of people.
The long legal battle over ownership of Linux "is closer than ever to ending," reports the Register, "after a panel of three judges ruled a claim against IBM and Red Hat isn't valid, and that time has expired for further action."
In 2021, an heir to SCO settled with IBM for $14.25 million — a sum that reflects the fact SCO had for years failed to produce strong evidence to back its claims. Another of SCO's legal successors, Xinuos, filed a new claim that IBM should be on the hook because Big Blue knew it did not own the code it contributed to Linux but instead had a non-exclusive license to use it. Xinuos argued that when IBM contributed Project Monterey code to Linux [25 years ago], it breached that license.
Xinuos eventually took that argument to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York — and failed to convince it that IBM and Red Hat had a case to answer. Xinuos appealed, and on August 10th the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided [PDF] not to revisit the District Court's decision, agreeing that the original legalese governing Project Monterey means it's too late to re-litigate the matter. The Appeals Court also agreed that Xinuos tried to frame the case as a licensing issue but failed, instead arguing that the issue was really about ownership.
That ain't all, folks, because Xinuos intends to file a petition to have the case re-heard by the full bench of the Court of Appeals. That hardly ever happens, unless the court finds significant errors or major legal issues that make a rehearing worthwhile. Law firm Kaplan says the Second Circuit has allowed reviews of less than 0.03 percent of the cases it has handled. So perhaps this matter is now close to a final resolution.
Back in 2000 Slashdot interviewed one of the presidents of SCO.
On top of beta3 it contains these two changes which kind of get lost in the complete changelog so listing them here:
Fix BMS Integration sometimes reporting Connection Error and not recovering or potentially getting stuck on another error
Add the “Control Loop Latency” metric to realtime data
Shows how much later than usual the control loop processed each IMU sample, in milliseconds. Ideally it stays near zero; spikes mean the processing of a sample was delayed, e.g. by other tasks running on the controller.
Note the value is relative to the best case observed, it shows the variation of the delay, not an absolute delay. It requires a firmware which timestamps IMU samples on arrival, on other firmwares the value will be close to zero.
This ties into a timing fix in the firmware which will be released in 7.01. Technically: The latency was part of dt (and was observable there in the plot), now the dt is clean of this latency and this metric was added to be able to track the latency jitter.
For Funwheel VBMS users, there is also a fix in the VBMS32 Micro package version 1.0.4 for the Cell Balance Error. Together with the above Refloat-side Connection Error fix the BMS integration has been working without a glitch for me so far.
It may take a few days for the new version to be merged into the package store.
Graduate job vacancies in the UK have sunk to their lowest level since they started being tracked a decade ago, according to a recruiting website.
Just 8,383 jobs for people leaving university were advertised in July, Adzuna reported on Monday, down 45% compared with the same point last year and the lowest since the company started gathering the data in 2016.
More than 1,000 little penguins have received their first dose of bird flu vaccine in Victoria, in what is believed to be the world’s largest vaccination program involving wild birds.
Catherine Basterfield, the chief executive of Phillip Island Nature Parks, said vaccinations began early last week and were ramping up.
Key West, Florida — The father of a U.S. Navy sailor serving aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln has been detained by immigration authorities while his son remains deployed overseas following more than nine months at sea.
U.S. Border Patrol arrested Luis Manuel Aviles Roa, a Nicaraguan immigrant who has lived in the United States for 19 years, during a vehicle stop Saturday. His family says he has a valid work permit, Social Security card and driver’s license and was awaiting approval of a green card application.
His son, Joshua Aviles, said he learned of the detention while serving aboard the aircraft carrier in the Middle East. “I’ve been deployed for over nine months,” he wrote, adding that his father’s detention has made it difficult to remain focused while working 12-hour shifts.
The Department of Homeland Security said Aviles Roa entered the country illegally and remains in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody pending removal proceedings. DHS said having a relative serving in the military does not exempt someone from immigration law.
The Associated Press reported that Aviles Roa has no criminal record and was arrested while taking his vehicle to a mechanic. His family said Joshua joined the military partly because he believed his service might help his father obtain legal status.
The USS Abraham Lincoln recently completed more than 200 consecutive days at sea before leaving the Middle East.
Dutch sustainable smartphone revamped with new chip and more RAM without sacrificing modular design
Fairphone’s top Android for 2026 is a little faster with more memory while maintaining full compatibility with its previous phone, including its repairable and ethical chops.
The Fairphone 6+ continues the Dutch cooperative’s mission to make consumer electronics longer lasting and more sustainable, containing 51% either recycled or ethically sourced materials while being fully repairable at home with just the one screwdriver included in the box.
Joshua Aviles says he is on a nine-month Middle East deployment and learned his father has been arrested while he was waiting for green card approval
The father of a US sailor on board the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier deployed in the Middle East during the Iran war has been taken into federal immigration detention, the sailor said.
The border patrol arrested Luis Manuel Aviles Roa, originally from Nicaragua, after conducting a vehicle stop in Key West, Florida, a spokesperson for the US homeland security department said on Sunday.
Prime minister Christopher Luxon’s party to introduce bill seeking the ban, citing harm to a generation of children
New Zealand prime minister Christopher Luxon has said his party will introduce a bill in parliament that seeks to ban children under 16 from using social media, proposing fines of up to 10% of a platform’s global revenue for non-compliance.
The bill would require social media platforms to take reasonable steps to verify users’ ages, including by utilising existing account information, facial technology and digital identity documents.
Poll also finds sizeable majorities who believe it should be easier to install air con in homes
Given the choice, more people across six major European nations including the UK favour encouraging the adoption of air conditioning over keeping carbon emissions down, a survey has found.
After four extreme heatwaves that have caused thousands of excess deaths across the continent, the survey showed between 30% and 52% of people in six countries had feared for their household’s health in temperatures close to or above 40C (104F).
Investors will hope Kevin Warsh offers ‘comfort blanket’ at annual meeting of central banks amid bond market anxiety
The new US Federal Reserve chair, Kevin Warsh, faces a critical test this week amid anxiety in government bond markets over inflation and Donald Trump’s tax and spending plans.
As the world’s most powerful central bank prepares for its annual Jackson Hole conference, analysts said bond traders would be looking for signals from Warsh over its commitment to fighting inflation.
A Pew Research senior data scientist analyzed 500,000 English-language webpages from the past five years with an AI detection tool to estimate how many were likely written or edited by AI:
Of all the pages in this sample, 10% show significant signs of AI authorship... If we filter old webpages out of our samples and look at only the pages published after the release of ChatGPT, the trend is even more pronounced. In the July 2026 snapshot, signs of AI authorship can be found in over one-third of pages published after ChatGPT was released. This is in line with other studies that have shown that large shares of recently published pages on the internet were likely written or substantially edited by AI.
AI-authored text is not evenly spread across the web. When ChatGPT was first released, the kinds of linguistic patterns that can signal AI authorship appeared at similar rates across the main top-level web domains (.com, .org, .edu and .gov). But in samples from 2026, around one-in-ten pages with a .com domain show signs of AI authorship — about double the share on .org domains (4.6%), and 10 times the rate on .edu or .gov domains (both around 1%).
They even identified specific ways online text has changed, "comparing the internet of today to a snapshot from 2023."
Em dashes appear twice as often
Oxford commas increased 63%.
Words used more frequently by AI (like "delve," "interplay" or "testament") have more than doubled in usage.
"Negative parallelism" comparisons ("it's not just X, it's Y") have nearly tripled.
Gauff claims first title of season, her second in Cincinnati
One year ago, Coco Gauff departed the Cincinnati Open with her career at a crossroads. On serve, she had capitulated, offering up countless double faults in most matches, and she had lost confidence in her progress and game. She believed she had to make drastic changes to her team before it was too late.
It has taken an enormous amount of resilience, patience and toil, but this week Gauff began to feel the consequences of those efforts as she closed out one of the smoothest tournaments of her career with her best performance of the season, thoroughly outplaying the third seed Jessica Pegula to win 6-2, 6-4 and clinch the Cincinnati Open title for the second time.
I recently obtained a brand new GT. I'm still taking time to learn how to ride it. I'm finding that the turning is a bit too loose/unstable for my preferences. I guess what I'm inquiring about is that it curves a bit too much for a beginner like me. How can I go about tightening it so it doesn't turn as easily just yet?
Just posting this as a reminder that these thefts are still pretty common in town and to post a picture of the stolen onewheel in case someone comes across it for sale (maybe with the custom grip on it), and to show everyone the culprit and the car.
It was an OG X+ with a Burris threaded tire and few other customizations.
My lovely neighbors' garage camera captured this video of the theft.
I know, my fault for leaving something valuable in the car overnight, but goddamnit this sucks.
This is in Englewood, Colorado, a few miles south of downtown Denver.
Could anyone help me with the oem lights on my pint?
I got the Ava spark ubox100 working with a nexus bms finally, but my status lights aren’t on and I have one led on the headlight working and no brake lights, but that’s it. I was told the status light bar pin needs to be set to pin 7, but when I change it I’m Vesc tool, it says invalid lead pin or something.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I’m in way over my head.
3,346 backers pledged $1,198,844 on Kickstarter to build the (modular) handheld Linux computer, the Mecha Comet. It's slightly bigger and heavier than your smartphone, with a 4-inch AMOLED display and loaded up with things like microphones, speakers, a SIM tray, two USB ports and a mini HDMI port. There's three separate kill switches for wifi, microphone and camera — plus a "boot mode" switch for the SD card, and even three pins for instant access to its debug console.
It's now expected to ship in October or November (and is still available for preorder).
Snap-in extensions include a keyboard (with programmable colors for its backlit keys), a gamepad, and a special IO Breakout that exposes the 40 pogo pins for modules, sensors, and MCUs. They're all open hardware, and founder Shoaib Merchant says "I'm looking forward to more community designs over the upcoming months." He shows the screen in action in a video on Kickstarter, demonstrating native apps like Music, Notes, Settings, and Files — as well as a Terminal app running on its color screen.
A Linux correspondent at How-To Geek notes its ships "with a custom, hardware-optimized Linux distro out of the box," so "it's like having a dedicated Linux terminal in your pocket." And they argue the new device
"could be the future of Linux smartphones."
I should also mention that you don't necessarily have to use the battery; it can power on over USB PD without one. Overall, you're getting the same I/O you'd expect from a computer in a smartphone-like form factor, complete with modular input devices — and it's running Linux under the hood. For me, that's the most innovative gadget I've seen in the Linux hardware space in a long time...
It's powerful enough to run most Linux terminal apps, which opens up a lot of possibilities. You're also getting an NPU built right into the SoC, which opens up the possibility for on-device AI workflows — something not possible in budget smartphones. Now, I personally plan to use it for SSHing into my main computer and home lab and operating them remotely. That's also why I'll be putting the LTE modem in the M.2 slot rather than an SSD — mobile data means I can reach my machines even when there's no Wi-Fi around.
I also showed it to my partner, and she sees this as the ideal minimalist phone for digital detoxing. There's a built-in media player, a basic notes app, and you can even run Spotify from the terminal if you want.
X7LR, loving the size and low ride height most of all coming from a GT. Definitely not as user friendly as my FM boards but hasn’t been too bad. Wasn’t feeling the Thunder tire at first but after 50 mi or so it seems to have broken in nicely. No footpad sensor issues so far, knock on wood.
I’m an 80s/90s kid who stared at a lot of T&C Surf Design stickers and shirts. The surfing caveman was my favourite character as a kid and I wondered what a prehistoric onewheel would look like. Here it is!
Washington, D.C. — Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, publicly contradicted President Donald Trump on Sunday by stating that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is not lethal.
“No, the MMR vaccine is not a lethal vaccine,” Oz told Margaret Brennan on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” Trump recently claimed the combined vaccine could potentially be “quite lethal” while promoting an executive order calling for measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations to be offered separately.
The combined MMR vaccine has been used in the United States since 1971 and is routinely recommended for children in two doses. There is no credible evidence that separating the vaccines makes them safer. Separate measles, mumps and rubella vaccines also are not currently available in the United States.
Oz nevertheless defended Trump’s broader order, saying the administration wants parents to have greater choice over which vaccines their children receive. The order also recommends limiting the routine childhood schedule to 11 core vaccinations, with additional shots based on individual risk and consultation with physicians.
Major medical organizations have criticized the changes, warning that reducing or delaying recommended vaccinations could increase preventable disease.
Oz’s statement provides a clear correction of Trump’s claim while leaving the administration’s broader effort to revise childhood vaccination policy intact.
New rider here just got my pint S took it out for a one mile ride on the bike path yesterday. Got knee pain and foot fatigue on my rear leg pretty quickly. Wondering if my stance is bad or just takes time/adjusting to the board? Also Wondering what the recommended mode to begin on is i used redwood with simple stop turned on but i feel maybe one of the other modes would be better for a beginner ? I will continue to use simple stop until I have the heel lift down. On my one mile ride i ended up using 2 foot jump off to dismount. Just looking for recommendations and tips for a beginner.
A federal judge said the indefinite pause, which affected nationals of countries in every corner of the globe, ran afoul of antidiscrimination protections.
“I think the last thing we need right now, as our economy is getting back on its feet, is a trade war with Canada,” the former vice president told CNN.
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.
An array of imports are subject to the new 50 percent tariffs. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has called them “a miscalculation” and vowed to match them “dollar for dollar.”
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.
The state capital was struck by a rare tornado on Thursday night, which damaged a manufacturing plant, Route 13 businesses and Little League fields but no serious injuries were reported.
The National Weather Service confirmed Friday that a likely EF-1 tornado touched down in Dover amid a strong thunderstorm cell.
The city was briefly under a state of emergency overnight on Thursday, but it was lifted Friday morning.
The tornado tore through the Dover Little League fields, causing significant damage there and then continued east, where it picked up tractor trailers at the Kraft Heinz plant and smashed them into the block walls of the manufacturing plant.
The storm’s intense winds toppled tree limbs in downtown Dover, but did not appear to cause widespread damage. On U.S. Route 13, the winds ripped the roof off the Superlodge motel, dropping it on vehicles below. The neighboring Days Inn motel and car wash were similarly damaged.
The roof of the home dugout at the Dover Little League was torn off and thrown across the field while chain link fences were mangled. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
Officials were surveying the damage at the Dover Little League fields on Friday afternoon. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
The scoreboard at the Dover Little League was destroyed by the tornado. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
The interior of the Kraft Heinz plant was visible Friday after the tornado lifted tractor trailers and smashed them into the cinder block walls. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
No one was reportedly injured at the Kraft Heinz plant, which was operating normally Friday. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
The Superlodge’s sign was still standing Friday but sustained damage from the tornado. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
The Superlodge roof was ripped off in the storm. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
The roof and fence of the Days Inn motel off U.S. Route 13 was shredded by the tornado. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
Pieces of the Days Inn rood were hanging from utility lines on Friday afternoon. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
The city of Dover condemned the Superlodge on Friday, evicting some residents who had been staying there. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
A cemented light pole along U.S. Route 13 was ripped from the ground in the storm. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
The sign at a neighboring car was was toppled by the tornado. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
UPTON, N.Y. and STONY BROOK, N.Y., Aug. 21, 2026 — Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and the State University of New York at Stony Brook (Stony Brook University) have successfully transmitted light particles containing quantum information through open air between the two institutions. This is the first demonstration of its kind in the United States and a key milestone toward extending the nation’s longest quantum network — already connecting eight nodes across several institutions — beyond the limits of fiber-optic cables.
Brookhaven Lab Associate Laboratory Director for Discovery Technologies Gabriella Carini (left) and Brookhaven Lab scientist Justine Haupt (right) stand in Brookhaven’s Quantum Lighthouse — a state-of-the-art rooftop facility equipped with lenses, mirrors, and other optical instruments. Researchers use this technology to transmit and receive particles of light carrying quantum information. (David Rahner/Brookhaven National Laboratory)
“The future of quantum information science will depend not only on what individual quantum computers and devices can do but on our ability to connect them,” said DOE Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil. “As DOE advances its Genesis Mission, we are building toward an interconnected research ecosystem where advanced computing, artificial intelligence, and quantum technologies can work together to tackle some of our most complex scientific challenges. The capabilities demonstrated by Brookhaven Lab and Stony Brook University today are an important step toward making that vision possible.”
During a daytime demonstration on Friday, Aug. 21, researchers used a laser to generate quantum states of light, each containing just a few individual photons, in Stony Brook University’s state-of-the-art Quantum Watchtower. From the Watchtower, located on the roof of Stony Brook’s Health Sciences Center in Stony Brook, New York, the photons exited the core of an optical fiber only about 5 microns in diameter — less than one-tenth the width of a human hair — and traversed 13 miles (21 kilometers) to Brookhaven’s Quantum Lighthouse in Upton, New York.
In the Lighthouse, Gil cut a ribbon blocking the receiving aperture, allowing the photons to reach the detector. Researchers and distinguished guests gathered in the Quantum Lighthouse — built on top of the only Brookhaven Lab building with a clear line of sight to Stony Brook University — to watch as an ultrafast camera marked the photons’ arrival in an equally small optical fiber.
The daytime demonstration showcased the extraordinary precision of this free-space optical (FSO) link between the two institutions, with researchers transmitting photons between fiber-optic cables that are only a fraction of a millimeter in diameter and separated by several miles. But the team has already progressed to the next phase of experimentation using entangled photons — pairs of light particles that are intrinsically linked by the laws of quantum mechanics.
During nighttime tests, when there are lower levels of background light, the researchers successfully sent entangled photons from the Stony Brook physics laboratory to the Quantum Watchtower via fiber, then distributed them across the new FSO link, and successfully received and measured them at the Quantum Lighthouse. This is a key advance toward achieving sustained “wireless” exchange of quantum information between the two institutions — and eventually beyond.
The FSO link — which includes the Quantum Lighthouse and Quantum Watchtower, along with a third facility under development at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut — adds a wireless component to the record-setting quantum network currently spanning 161 miles and several institutions across Long Island and the New York metropolitan area.
Using this network, pioneered by Stony Brook and Brookhaven Lab, researchers can transmit entangled photons through commercial fiber. Because the particles remain entangled even when separated by long distances, measuring one photon instantly reveals information about its counterpart. This property, often referred to as “spooky action at a distance,” is key for the future of ultra-secure communications, advanced quantum sensing, and networked quantum computing.
“In our long-distance fiber network, we routinely transmit entangled pairs of photons. However, such fiber networks are limited to the use of telecom wavelengths. In our new quantum wireless links, we are exploring the use of infrared wavelengths that are native to quantum processors and related technologies,” said Eden Figueroa, director of Stony Brook’s Quantum Institute, endowed presidential professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, and a joint appointee at Brookhaven Lab. “This will provide a direct route to create entangled atomic systems across long distances.”
State University of New York at Stony Brook President Andrea Goldsmith said, “Extending our quantum communication network to include a wireless link is a major leap forward in our development of the Quantum Internet of Things. I’m thrilled that our brilliant Stony Brook researchers, together with our partners at Brookhaven National Laboratory, have demonstrated impressive progress in overcoming the significant challenges of sending quantum information wirelessly via entangled photons. By unlocking wireless quantum connectivity and incorporating it into the world’s only metropolitan-area network that supports quantum communication via entanglement, we are transforming secure data transmission while igniting Long Island as an innovation hub. We are profoundly grateful to our elected officials, Governor Hochul, Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, and Rep. LaLota for their generous support and for securing investments in Long Island’s quantum research. Ultimately, this places New York State at the forefront of quantum information science and its application to secure communication for finance, healthcare, and cybersecurity.”
Building the FSO link
In some ways, the classical internet’s evolution from wired connections to a complex network of wired and wireless technologies provides a roadmap for reaching milestones toward a global quantum network. But the researchers also needed to draw on expertise from a seemingly unrelated field: astronomy.
At the Stony Brook University Quantum Watchtower atop of the Health Sciences Center, pictured from left are Eden Figueroa Barragan, Dimitrios Katramatos, and Ph.D. student Rishikesh Gokhale. (Stony Brook University/John Griffin)
Today’s classical wireless technologies, including cell phones and orbiting satellites, use radio frequencies to transmit information without a physical connection. But radio frequencies are far too noisy to preserve fragile quantum information. Instead, the researchers turned to optical light for sending quantum signals through open air.
“People think of telescopes as tools for looking up into space, but the same technologies that allow astronomers to precisely collect and control light are essential for these quantum experiments,” said Justine Haupt, Brookhaven Lab’s lead scientist on the cross-institutional FSO link project.
Haupt and her colleagues at Brookhaven are experts when it comes to telescopes, having built key components for several high-profile astronomy projects. But because there is more turbulent atmosphere between Brookhaven Lab and Stony Brook University than there is between Earth and the stars, the scientists needed to develop technology sophisticated enough to ensure the photons could travel between institutions without becoming distorted or losing their fragile quantum information. But that was only one piece of a much larger puzzle.
“Both Brookhaven and Stony Brook needed to build specialized rooftop facilities for the telescope systems that were optimized for quantum experiments,” Haupt said. “We needed to integrate the optics, controls, communications, quantum sources, and detectors so equipment 21 kilometers apart could operate as one experiment. Bringing all those pieces together — and then adding the quantum layer — is what makes this capability unique.”
“New York State is committed to investing in cutting-edge research and innovation in emerging fields that move our society forward,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said. “The partnership between the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Brookhaven National Laboratory serves as an excellent example of how collaboration can advance discovery and create transformative technologies.”
At 12:26 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Aug. 19, researchers at Brookhaven Lab’s Quantum Lighthouse detected entangled photons arriving from Stony Brook’s Quantum Watchtower. The graph’s uptick on the far right around 0:37, coinciding with the “Entanglement Source ON” text, marks the arrival of entangled photons. (Brookhaven National Laboratory)
Looking Ahead
Yale’s facility — the third leg of the FSO link — was recently completed, and the researchers will soon begin establishing the Stony Brook-Yale connection so they can also transmit entangled photons 30 miles (48 kilometers) across the Long Island Sound.
“While completing this longer leg, the team is simultaneously moving toward one of our ultimate goals: transmitting quantum information through Earth’s atmosphere to orbiting satellites,” said Brookhaven Lab Associate Laboratory Director for Discovery Technologies Gabriella Carini. “Incorporating satellites into the network could help bring secure quantum communications to rural or remote locations with minimal ground-based telecommunications infrastructure, transforming the quantum network from a regional one to a global one.”
Phase-Folded Photon Analysis — On Wednesday, Aug. 19, researchers at Brookhaven Lab’s Quantum Lighthouse detected entangled photons arriving from Stony Brook’s Quantum Watchtower. The diverging of the red and blue lines in the top plot, as well as the difference between the red and blue bars in the bottom graph, indicate an increase in detected photons (red, on-phase rate) compared to the background counts (blue, off-phase rate). This data confirmed that researchers in the Lighthouse saw the quantum signal. (Brookhaven National Laboratory)
Expanding beyond the limits of fiber also opens the door to new kinds of quantum experiments by enabling researchers to use photons with wavelengths, or “colors,” different from the telecommunications wavelengths optimized for commercial fibers. Many quantum technologies naturally operate at these other wavelengths, making free-space links a promising path toward linking quantum devices across long distances. Researchers ultimately envision using the FSO link to connect quantum computers at Brookhaven and Stony Brook — and beyond — enabling them to work together and tackle some of the nation’s most pressing scientific challenges.
“Brookhaven has long been at the forefront of quantum information science, and this achievement represents another important step in that journey,” said Brookhaven Lab Director John Hill. “This free-space link is a key milestone in its own right, but it is also part of a much larger roadmap leading to distributed quantum systems. We will continue advancing the network’s capabilities so that researchers can connect increasingly sophisticated quantum systems together to address a range of problems, from computation to communication to sensing, in ways that just aren’t possible today.”
U.S. Rep. Nick LaLota said, “Under Secretary Gil’s return to Brookhaven National Lab is another reminder that some of the world’s most important scientific work is happening right here in Suffolk County. Quantum research will play a major role in shaping the technologies we rely on every day, while strengthening our national security and ensuring America remains at the forefront of scientific innovation. At a time when Washington must spend taxpayer dollars wisely, I’m focused on prioritizing smart, targeted investments in projects and partnerships at Brookhaven and Stony Brook that support good-paying Long Island jobs, advance groundbreaking research, and keep America leading the world in innovation.”
Empire State Development Board Chairman Kevin Law said, “Long Island has long been home to some of the world’s most important scientific institutions, and today’s milestone demonstrates what is possible when those institutions work together. The partnership between Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory is helping establish Long Island as a leader in quantum technology and positioning the region to attract talent, investment, and future economic growth for years to come.”
The work at Brookhaven Lab is primarily supported by the DOE Office of Science. At Stony Brook University, the work is supported by the National Science Foundation and New York’s Empire State Development.
Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.
This press release is being jointly issued by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Source: State University of New York at Stony Brook
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.
Tyson Foods, the largest meatpacking company in the US, announced last week that it is closing two of its facilities in Illinois and Utah and selling a beef facility in Washington state, and will lay off hundreds of workers as the supply of cattle hits a 75-year low.
The historic cattle shortage has been driven by a multi-year drought, rising costs and severe economic pressures, including consolidation among cattle ranchers. Beef prices have soared over the last year due to the shortage, though economists said the Tyson plant closures likely won’t hit consumer prices so hard.
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.
The company, originally an oil refinery, expanded into energy, finance, agriculture and technology. In 2025, it had estimated revenue of $125 billion, according to Forbes.
Americans for Prosperity says it “believes freedom and opportunity are the keys to unleashing prosperity for all.” The issues it focuses on are economic progress, healthcare, education, criminal justice, free speech and immigration.
Since 2017, Emily Seidel, the former director of special projects at Koch Companies Public Sector, has been the chief executive officer of AFP, which is registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. That means it can operate for the “promotion of social welfare” and its spending can’t be primarily on political activities. It does not have to disclose its donors.
AFP Foundation, a related public charity, is registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3). Meanwhile, AFP Action, which was established in September 2018, is registered with the Federal Election Commission as a hybrid political committee.
Hybrid PACs can operate as a traditional political action committee, contributing money to candidates directly, and as a super PAC, which can collect unlimited donations for the purpose of funding independent expenditures. There must be separate bank accounts for each function.
The hybrid PAC has raised about $87.3 million as of June 30 in the 2026 cycle. Its two biggest donors are Koch Industries and Stand Together, another nonprofit connected to Charles Koch. Stand Together donated $26.5 million while Koch Industries contributed $30 million. Other large donors include brothers Rob and Jim Walton, who are part of the family that owns a large stake in Walmart.
In early August, AFP Action announced the launch of a $5.6 million ad campaign spanning seven U.S. Senate races in North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, Alaska, Montana and Iowa. It has already released ads in support of former Rep. Mike Rogers in Michigan, former Sen. John Sununu in New Hampshire, Kurt Alme in Montana, Rep. Ashley Hinson in Iowa and Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio.
According to its most recent FEC report filed in July, the group has put at least $18.2 million into independent expenditures — such as digital ads — mostly in support of their endorsed congressional candidates. But it also has spent seven-figure sums on expenditures opposing Democratic Senate candidates Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Sherrod Brown in Ohio.
In the 2024 presidential election, AFP Action spent roughly $138.5 million on independent expenditures that expressly advocated for or against congressional candidates, according to OpenSecrets. The PAC spent $92.8 million supporting Republicans and almost $35.7 million opposing Democrats. AFP Action notably endorsed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for the Republican presidential nomination over Donald Trump.
FactCheck.orgUndergraduate Fellow Christine Sung contributed to this article.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.
Caption: Richards Layton’ & Fingers (& Lawyers recognized as the Best Lawyers in America offers one particularly visible example of that depth, and helps spotlight the strength of the Delaware legal community.
Firm’s results offer one measure of the depth of legal talent supporting Delaware’s national role in corporate law
WILMINGTON, Del. — Ninety-seven attorneys at Richards, Layton & Finger have been recognized in the 2027 editions of The Best Lawyers in America and Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch in America, an achievement that also underscores the strength of Delaware’s broader legal community.
The total includes 74 established attorneys named to The Best Lawyers in America and 23 earlier-career attorneys recognized as “Ones to Watch.” Twelve Richards Layton attorneys also were selected as Wilmington “Lawyer of the Year” recipients in particular practice areas.
Richards Layton said it had more attorneys included in the traditional Best Lawyers list than any other Delaware firm.
While the announcement highlights one firm, its larger significance is found in the legal market in which those attorneys practice. Delaware has developed a concentration of corporate lawyers, litigators, bankruptcy attorneys and other specialists whose work supports the state’s position as a national center for business law.
Richards Layton’s numbers offer one particularly visible example of that depth, and the helps spotlight the strength of our legal community includes lawyers at other Delaware firms, government agencies, corporations, nonprofit organizations and legal services organizations.
Breaking down the 97
The headline number combines two related but distinct forms of recognition.
The 74 attorneys named to The Best Lawyers in America are generally established practitioners with at least 10 years of experience and developed reputations in their fields.
The 23 attorneys named “Ones to Watch” are generally lawyers in private practice for five to nine years. The category recognizes attorneys earlier in their careers who are beginning to establish strong professional reputations.
The 12 “Lawyer of the Year” recipients represent the most selective portion of the announcement. The designation is awarded to one attorney in a particular practice area within a metropolitan market.
Richards Layton attorneys received those Wilmington honors in areas including corporate governance, banking and finance, bankruptcy litigation, intellectual property litigation, patent litigation, labor law, real estate, structured finance and commercial transactions.
The combination of established and emerging attorneys suggests that the firm has both current strength and a developing pipeline of future legal leaders.
“Best Lawyers in America offers a meaningful perspective on the caliber of our lawyers and the work they perform for clients,” Richards Layton President Paul Heath said. “Because this recognition is based on peer review, we are especially grateful for the respect and confidence of our colleagues, and we appreciate the time and consideration they devote to the selection process.”
Recognition reflects a professional community
The peer-review process gives the results a broader dimension.
Best Lawyers bases its selections largely on confidential evaluations submitted by attorneys practicing in the same geographic region and area of law. Candidates are nominated, reviewed by other lawyers and checked for eligibility and professional standing.
That means the recognition depends in part on Delaware attorneys evaluating the work and reputations of other Delaware attorneys. It reflects a professional community with considerable knowledge in corporate governance, commercial litigation, bankruptcy, intellectual property, financial services and other complex areas.
The awards are not a scientific measurement of legal ability. They do not directly compare courtroom outcomes, client satisfaction, legal fees or public access to legal services. Larger and better-known firms also have more attorneys eligible for recognition and greater visibility within the legal community.
The rankings are therefore best understood as a measure of professional reputation rather than a guarantee of results for every client.
Delaware’s advantage extends beyond one firm
Delaware’s legal reputation has been built over generations by its courts, lawmakers, law firms and individual attorneys.
Richards Layton, Delaware’s largest law firm and one of its oldest, is an important part of that history. But Delaware’s national position does not depend on any single institution.
Law firms throughout the state serve as Delaware counsel in national transactions and litigation. Attorneys advise corporate boards, represent shareholders, guide companies through bankruptcy, interpret business statutes and argue cases that can affect corporate practices across the country.
Government lawyers, members of the judiciary, corporate counsel and attorneys working in public-interest and legal-aid organizations contribute additional experience and perspective to the state’s legal system.
Together, that community gives Delaware a level of specialized legal knowledge that is unusual for a state of its size.
A foundation of Delaware’s corporate economy
Companies choose Delaware for several connected reasons: established corporate statutes, a substantial body of legal precedent, a respected judiciary and access to attorneys familiar with complicated business matters.
The Delaware Court of Chancery is widely regarded as the nation’s leading forum for disputes involving the internal affairs of corporations and other business entities. Its decisions can influence corporate boards, executives, investors and shareholders across the country.
Delaware reported more than 2.28 million active business entities in 2025. Another 334,461 entities were formed during that year, a more than 15% increase from 2024, according to the Delaware Division of Corporations.
Maintaining that position requires more than an efficient filing system. Delaware must be able to demonstrate that companies and investors will have access to predictable laws, experienced judges and lawyers capable of handling sophisticated transactions and disputes.
The Richards Layton results help illustrate the size and range of that professional capacity. The recognized attorneys practice in corporate law, bankruptcy, commercial litigation, mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property, structured finance, tax, trusts and estates, employment law, environmental law and commercial real estate.
Those specialties are also represented across Delaware’s larger legal market.
Why the public should care
Most Delaware residents will never hire a lawyer to manage a corporate merger, litigate a shareholder dispute or restructure a national company. The public benefits are largely indirect, but they are significant.
Delaware’s corporate franchise generates substantial tax and fee revenue for state government. That revenue supports public services and reduces the amount that would otherwise need to be collected from residents and locally operating businesses.
The legal sector also supports high-paying jobs in Wilmington and throughout the state. Those positions extend beyond attorneys to paralegals, legal assistants, technology specialists, accountants, court reporters and administrative employees. Visiting attorneys, clients and litigants also generate activity for hotels, restaurants and other businesses.
A respected legal community helps Delaware compete with other states seeking to attract corporate registrations. Companies are more likely to remain incorporated in Delaware when they believe the state offers reliable courts, understandable laws and a deep pool of legal talent.
The 97 Richards Layton recognitions is prominent example of something larger: Delaware has developed a legal community with expertise and influence far beyond what might be expected in a state of its size.
Richards Layton’s results are an institutional accomplishment for the firm. Viewed in context, they also help tell the story of a broader Delaware legal market whose judges, attorneys and legal professionals protect and sustain one of the state’s most important economic advantages.
See List:
The Richards Layton attorneys named in The Best Lawyers in America are listed below. An asterisk denotes a 2027 Wilmington, Delaware Lawyer of the Year honoree; the corresponding award practice area appears in bold.
Michael Allen – Corporate Governance Law; Corporate Law
Paul Altman – Business Organizations (including LLCs and Partnerships); Corporate Law
American Bridge 21st Century is a liberal hybrid PAC that conducts opposition research and runs ads to aid Democratic candidates and organizations. Since 2019, its official name has been AB PAC.
As part super PAC, AB PAC can accept unlimited donations and has largely been funded by major Democratic donors and labor unions. Those donors must be disclosed, according to federal election rules.
Bradley Beychok, a former president of Media Matters, is the co-founder of the hybrid PAC and served as the group’s president until March 2021. Opposition research veteran Pat Dennis took over as president in December 2022, replacing Jessica Floyd, who previously had been managing director of campaigns for the progressive Hub Project.
For the 2026 election cycle, the group has set a goal of spending $50 million on paid media focusing on nearly 20 House and Senate races in Iowa, Alaska, Colorado, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. That is in addition to the nearly 150 races covered by its ongoing opposition research for the November elections.
“The campaign will feature local storytellers sharing firsthand accounts of rising costs due to Trump’s tariffs and Iran War, health care challenges including rising costs and Medicaid cuts, and other economic pressures,” American Bridge said in a June press release.
American Bridge said $50 million would be the most the group has ever spent in a midterm cycle, and it aims to expand the Democratic map by also spending in areas that are traditionally Republican.
As of June 30, it had received almost $34.8 million in the 2026 election cycle, and had about $5.1 million on hand, according to its latest monthly filing with the Federal Election Commission in July. Major donors include Deborah Simon, daughter of the late property developer Melvin Simon; AB Foundation, the hybrid PAC’s affiliated advocacy group; and Democracy PAC, a liberal super PAC created by billionaire George Soros.
AB PAC has already spent more than $1 million this election cycle on independent expenditures, which are advertisements and other communications that expressly advocate for or against candidates for office. During the 2026 primary elections, it opposed a trio of Iowa Republicans, including Rep. Ashley Hinson, who won the Republican nomination in the Iowa Senate race; Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who won the Republican nomination for the state’s 1st Congressional District seat; and former state Rep. Joe Mitchell, who won the Republican nomination for the state’s 2nd Congressional District seat.
The group launched a project in April called “The Shaky Eights” targeting 17 “weak” Republican House incumbents, including Reps. French Hill of Arkansas and Virginia Foxx of North Carolina. In Mississippi, it said it planned to spend a little more than $2 million in support of Democratic Senate nominee Scott Colom in his race against Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. It has also contributed over $7 million to Texas Majority PAC, which describes itself as “a project dedicated to electing a Democrat to statewide office in Texas.”
During the 2024 elections, AB PAC spent about $97.7 million in total, including roughly $58.6 million in independent expenditures opposing President Donald Trump. The group ran ads in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin focusing on Trump’s role in rolling back abortion protections, and it financed a $20 million campaign addressing his criminal conviction, his conduct surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and other aspects of his record.
FactCheck.orgUndergraduate Fellow Angela Lin contributed to this article.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.
Caption: On the day he became old enough under federal regulations to fly a glider solo, he was already prepared to take the controls.
On July 1, Cheng completed his first solo glider flight on his 14th birthday, reaching the minimum age at which the Federal Aviation Administration allows a student pilot to solo a glider or balloon.
By John Riddle
Most teenagers celebrate turning 14 with cake, presents and time with family and friends. Newark resident Jonathan Cheng celebrated his birthday a little differently.
He took control of a glider, climbed thousands of feet into the sky and flew solo.
On July 1, Cheng completed his first solo glider flight on his 14th birthday, reaching the minimum age at which the Federal Aviation Administration allows a student pilot to solo a glider or balloon.
For Cheng, the flight represented much more than a memorable way to celebrate a birthday. It was the culmination of years of interest in aviation and months of training, preparation and determination.
“I’ve been fascinated by aircraft since I was young and have always dreamed of flying one someday,” Cheng said. “Soloing a glider was an incredible experience, especially since I was able to do it on my 14th birthday, the youngest age possible.”
Cheng’s fascination with aviation began four years earlier when his father arranged a discovery flight for his 10th birthday. The hour in the air sparked an interest that quickly grew.
For his 11th birthday, Cheng wanted a flight simulator setup. He spent countless hours using it to learn more about the mechanics of flight. By age 12, he was ready to move beyond simulated flying and joined the Brandywine Soaring Association, where he began training at New Garden Airport.
Gliders provide a distinctly different flying experience from powered aircraft. Without an engine, pilots must understand air currents, locate rising air and carefully manage the aircraft’s available energy. Cheng describes it as the sensation of “flying like a bird.”
His involvement with the soaring association has extended beyond sitting in the cockpit. During more than a year of training, he has regularly volunteered as part of the ground crew, helping with wing-running, glider assembly and staging aircraft for flight operations.
The work eventually led to July 1.
In the days before his birthday, Cheng concentrated heavily on both ground and flight training. An additional challenge came when flight operations moved to a different airport, requiring him to become familiar with a new environment and traffic pattern.
When the day finally arrived, Cheng climbed into a Blanik glider. After being towed to 2,000 feet, he released the tow rope and was alone in the aircraft.
“I had spent a long time training and preparing for this moment, so finally being able to solo made me feel both excited and proud,” Cheng said. “It showed me that my hard work and dedication were paying off and motivated me to keep learning and pursuing my goal of becoming a pilot.”
He successfully flew his planned maneuvers and traffic pattern before bringing the glider back for a smooth landing on the grass.
The milestone was also a memorable moment for his father, Wei Cheng, who had watched his son’s interest in aviation grow from that first discovery flight into a serious pursuit.
“I couldn’t be prouder of Jonathan’s dedication and maturity,” Wei Cheng said. “Reaching this historic milestone on his exact 14th birthday is a testament to months of disciplined training, early mornings, and his unwavering commitment to his aviation goals.”
The conditions made the day even more challenging, with temperatures reaching about 100 degrees.
“Special credit goes to the Brandywine Soaring Association for making it happen,” Wei Cheng said. “We truly appreciate the local aviation community and feel blessed.”
Jonathan credits instructor Barry Muhlenberg, tow pilot Dan Wroe, his parents and members of the Brandywine Soaring Association with helping him reach his goal. His training has also received a boost from the Soaring Society of America, which awarded him the 2026 Purduski Flight Training Scholarship to help support his work toward a Private Pilot Glider Certificate.
Aviation, however, is only one part of Jonathan’s busy schedule.
He is a Cadet Master Sergeant in the Civil Air Patrol and a competitive archer. He also participated in the United States Naval Academy Summer STEM Camp. His interest in science and technology includes cybersecurity, software development, 3D printing and analog photography.
He reached the Platinum Tier in the CyberPatriot competition, with his team ranking in the top 30 percent of more than 5,000 teams. He also combines his engineering and aviation interests by 3D printing his own radio-controlled airplanes.
At school, Jonathan is the founder and president of the Rubik’s Club.
His father says Jonathan’s willingness to pursue opportunities has been an important part of his progress.
“He knows clearly what he wants to be, and he always drags us to take him to New Garden Airport whenever the weather permits,” Wei Cheng said. “His flight instructor is a USAFA graduate and retired fighter pilot, and Jonathan is learning not just how to fly, but also how to become a leader and serve our country.”
Jonathan already has his next aviation milestones mapped out. He hopes to earn his Private Pilot Glider Certificate at age 16 and a private pilot certificate for powered aircraft at 17.
His longer-term ambition is even higher. Inspired in part by aviation history and Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s book Highest Duty, Jonathan hopes to earn an appointment to the United States Air Force Academy as a member of the Class of 2030 and eventually serve as a fighter pilot.
For other young people who may think they need to wait until adulthood before seriously pursuing a dream, Jonathan has a different message.
“If you really care about something, don’t be afraid to work for it,” he said. “There will be challenges and days when things really don’t go perfectly, but you have to keep going and learn from your mistakes.”
He also encourages young people to seek out mentors, ask questions and surround themselves with people who will help them improve.
“Most importantly, start working toward your dream now,” Jonathan said. “You don’t have to wait until you’re older.”
Jonathan certainly didn’t.
On the day he became old enough under federal regulations to fly a glider solo, he was already prepared to take the controls.
Caption: This is the second installment of a three-part Delaware LIVE series examining Delaware’s literacy challenge.
Reaching the 2028 goal will require faster progress, interim measurements, and action when strategies fail
Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a three-part Delaware LIVE series examining Delaware’s literacy challenge. Part 1 reported the latest assessment results and introduced the state’s 2028 reading goal. Read Part 1.
By George D. Rotsch, Editor, Delaware LIVE
DOVER, Del. — Delaware has established a clear literacy destination: At least 53% of third graders reading proficiently by 2028.
The state has not yet presented an equally clear public path for getting there.
Third-grade English language arts proficiency reached 40% in 2026, up 1 percentage point from the previous year. That leaves Delaware with a 13-point gap and two annual testing cycles remaining. Note: the full report can be accessed online: https://news.delaware.gov/files/2026/08/State-Board-2026-Briefing-August-20.pdf
To reach the goal on a roughly even trajectory, proficiency would need to rise to approximately 46.5% in 2027 and 53% in 2028.
That would require average annual gains of 6.5 percentage points—more than six times the improvement recorded this year.
If proficiency continued rising at only 1 point per year, it would reach approximately 42% in 2028. At that rate, Delaware would not reach 53% until about 2039.
That is a mathematical illustration, not a prediction. Results can accelerate, particularly when effective instructional changes reach large numbers of classrooms. But the calculation demonstrates that incremental improvement will not be sufficient.
A goal needs interim benchmarks
Delaware’s Early Literacy Plan calls for a public dashboard, quarterly progress updates and an annual State of Literacy report.
Those measures can improve transparency. But reporting results is not the same as establishing what must happen when results fall short.
A complete accountability plan should identify:
The statewide proficiency target for 2027.
Corresponding district and school targets.
The officials responsible for implementation.
The expected effect of each major literacy strategy.
The cost of each initiative.
The measurements used during the school year.
The response when a benchmark is missed.
The conditions for expanding, revising or ending a program.
Without interim benchmarks, the public may not learn that Delaware is off track until the 2028 results are released.
Boards cannot wait for the next state test
Annual assessments show whether students met the state standard, but the results arrive after the school year has ended. For school boards, the challenge is to use that annual result to establish a clear student outcome goal and then monitor progress toward it throughout the year.
Keleher said the board and superintendent have different responsibilities in that process. The board establishes the student outcome it expects and monitors whether the district is making sufficient progress toward it. The superintendent and educators determine the strategy for achieving the goal and manage its implementation. That distinction is consistent with student-outcomes-focused governance frameworks, which place goals and progress monitoring with the board while leaving implementation to the superintendent and administration.
“The annual assessment tells a board where students finished, but boards don’t have to wait until the end of the next school year to know whether students are on track,” Keleher said. “Once the board establishes the outcome it expects, the superintendent can identify the measures that will show throughout the year whether the district’s strategy is being implemented and students are making progress.”
Boards should receive regular reports on:
Early literacy screening.
Students reading above, at or below grade level.
Students assigned to additional intervention.
Progress among students receiving assistance.
Attendance in kindergarten through third grade.
Differences among schools and student groups.
Implementation of approved literacy programs.
Program spending and the results expected from it.
Those measures will depend on the district’s strategy and the barriers it is trying to address. They could include student reading progress, early literacy screening, attendance, access to intervention, or evidence that the district’s literacy strategy is being implemented as intended. Academic KPIs and interim measures are commonly used by districts to track progress over time rather than relying solely on annual results.
“The board’s role is not to determine which intervention a student receives or manage how a literacy program is implemented. Its role is to set the outcome, understand the superintendent’s strategy, ensure resources and policies support it, and monitor the evidence that shows whether students are on track.” Keleher said.
If progress is insufficient, the board asks what the superintendent is changing and determines whether additional governance action is needed. This approach also creates greater transparency for the broader community: everyone can understand the outcome the district is working toward, the strategy for achieving it, whether students are making progress, and where there are opportunities to contribute.
Mississippi added a promotion consequence
Mississippi adopted a more consequential approach through its Literacy-Based Promotion Act.
Under the law, a third grader scoring in the lowest two achievement levels on the state reading assessment generally is not promoted to fourth grade unless the student later demonstrates sufficient competency or qualifies for a good-cause exemption.
The policy is not based on one testing opportunity. Mississippi provides reading intervention, individual plans, parent notification and opportunities to retest. The law also includes exemptions for specified students and circumstances.
The promotion requirement establishes a clear expectation: Students generally must demonstrate minimum reading competency before advancing to fourth grade.
Mississippi reported that 84.6% of third graders passed its reading assessment after their final opportunity in 2025.
That percentage should not be directly compared with Delaware’s 40% proficiency rate because the states use different assessments, performance standards and reporting methods.
Mississippi’s improvement also cannot be attributed solely to its promotion requirement. The state combined that policy with early screening, teacher training, evidence-based instruction, literacy coaches and intervention for struggling students.
Delaware emphasizes support and reporting
Delaware also is investing in evidence-based materials, teacher development, screening, coaching and family engagement.
Unlike Mississippi, Delaware has not made third-grade reading competency a statewide requirement for promotion to fourth grade.
Delaware’s assessment identifies whether a child met the standard, but students may advance without demonstrating proficiency. Promotion and retention decisions remain largely local.
The difference can be summarized simply: Mississippi added a gate. Delaware established a goal and a reporting system.
Delaware is not without accountability. Schools may be identified for support and intervention through the Delaware School Success Framework, which considers achievement, growth, attendance and other measures.
But Delaware has not established a comparable statewide consequence when a third grader fails to demonstrate minimum reading competency.
Who should face the consequence?
Mississippi’s approach raises a difficult policy question: Should the immediate consequence fall on a child who has not learned to read, or should it fall more directly on the adults and institutions responsible for delivering instruction?
Supporters of literacy-based promotion argue that advancing a student who cannot read does not solve the problem. It transfers the problem to fourth grade, when students increasingly must read independently to learn other subjects.
Critics argue that retention can impose social and emotional costs and disproportionately affect low-income students, multilingual learners and students with disabilities.
They also warn that repeating third grade will accomplish little if the student simply receives the same instruction that previously failed to produce results.
Delaware would not necessarily have to copy Mississippi. A graduated approach could require:
Early identification of reading difficulties.
An individual reading plan.
Intensive intervention.
Summer instruction.
Multiple opportunities to demonstrate competency.
A parent, teacher and principal review before promotion.
Appropriate exemptions.
Corrective action when a school repeatedly produces low results.
That would preserve professional judgment while making third-grade reading more than an annual statistic.
Accountability involves changing course
“Accountability involves changing course that goes beyond receiving a report and acknowledging disappointing results”, says Nancy Mercante, President of Citizens for Delaware Schools.
“It includes transparent reporting by every school board to the community about progress and setbacks. Every board must make academic achievement their top priority and engage in monthly discussions about improving it. Meeting thir goals will require particular attention to high-needs students, who keep falling further behind.”
A board’s response could include:
Strengthening implementation.
Directing more support toward struggling schools.
Revising an intervention.
Redirecting resources.
Replacing an ineffective program.
Requiring a school-specific corrective plan.
Making leadership changes when warranted.
The objective should not be to punish schools for serving high-need students. It should be to prevent persistently low performance from becoming accepted.
Promising programs need further evidence
The eight Delaware schools receiving literacy coaching and having comparable data averaged gains of nearly 7 percentage points.
That is approximately the annual statewide gain Delaware now needs to reach the 2028 target.
The results warrant further examination, but responsible expansion requires answers:
How much did the coaching cost?
How often did coaches work with teachers?
What other instructional changes occurred?
Did school leadership or enrollment change?
How did comparable schools perform without coaches?
Can the gains be sustained?
Does Delaware have enough qualified personnel to expand the program?
A program should not be considered successful merely because it was launched, fully staffed or well received. The ultimate measure is whether students receiving the service make meaningful and sustained progress.
Delaware must define the path
Delaware has defined where it wants third-grade reading proficiency to be in 2028.
Reaching that target will require interim measurements that show whether students are on track, clear responsibility for implementation and a defined response when strategies fail.
Otherwise, the 53% target risks becoming an aspiration rather than an accountability measure.
Read Part 3:
Delaware’s new funding model will give school boards greater discretion over education resources. Part 3 examines how boards can use academic evidence, professional guidance and community participation to make better literacy decisions.
In announcing the latest FBI annual report on nationwide crime, President Donald Trump wrongly cast the decline in crime in 2025 as a dramatic turnaround and made misleading claims about the impact of his administration’s policies.
Speaking to an audience of law enforcement officers at the Nassau County police academy on Aug. 14, Trump said that his speech was meant to “celebrate the historic progress our administration is making together with law enforcement partners nationwide to restore law and order in America.” The FBI that day released data collected from local law enforcement agencies showing that both violent and property crime nationwide declined from 2024 to 2025, with the largest one-year drops in the violent crime and murder rates since the FBI began publishing these estimates in 1936.
The president accurately cited those large one-year reductions, but he ran afoul of the facts and available evidence in taking credit for them:
Trump claimed that the decline happened “because of what the federal government’s doing.” Criminology experts say there are many plausible factors and the exact reasons are unclear.
He claimed that the U.S. experienced “a horrible four years” of violent crime during the Biden administration. But violent crime fell during the second half of Biden’s presidency and was lower in the last year of Joe Biden’s term compared with Trump’s final year in office.
Trump vastly overstated the decline in crime since his deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., Memphis and New Orleans, citing 70% or 80% reductions that don’t match up with police data. Experts also say the troops aren’t the primary reason for crime dropping in those cities.
The president suggested that an executive order he signed upon taking office in 2025 contributed to a significant decline in police officers dying in the line of duty that year. However, the law enforcement organization that keeps records of such deaths said the decrease was “likely” due to other factors.
Trump’s speech embracing the FBI’s report for 2025 is noteworthy because he previously disparaged the FBI reports as “fake,” “phony” and “a fraud” when they showed a decline in crime under Biden.
Reasons for Crime Drop Unclear
Trump cited several statistics from the FBI report and claimed credit for the 2024-to-2025 crime reduction. But criminology experts have said the reasons behind the decrease are myriad and unclear. Also, the large single-year declines in 2025 follow a few years of crime dropping after a spike during the 2020 pandemic.
“And with your help, last year, we achieved the largest drop in murder rate ever recorded, the lowest level in 125 years. That’s since the year 1900,” Trump said, adding that according to the FBI crime report, “we achieved the single largest reduction in violent crime in American history.”
Trump is correct that the FBI report says the data it collects from local law enforcement agencies show the 2024-to-2025 decreases in both the violent crime rate and the murder rate were the largest one-year declines since the FBI began releasing the nationwide crime estimates in 1936. The violent crime rate went down by 9.7%, and the murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate dropped by 18.5%, the FBI said.
The data are estimates based on figures submitted by more than 17,000 local law enforcement agencies covering about 96% of the U.S. population. The violent crime rate went from 362.9 offenses per 100,000 population in 2024 to 327.6 per 100,000 population last year. The murder rate dropped from 5.1 per 100,000 to 4.1.
Trump’s reference to the murder rate being the lowest since 1900 comes from a report by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonprofit think tank, which used FBI statistics dating back to 1960 and public health data going back to 1900 in determining that. (See Figure 20 in CCJ’s year-end report for 2025.)
The murder rate is the lowest over that time, per CCJ’s methodology. The FBI said the 4.1 rate is tied with the bureau’s 1955 and 1956 figures. (CCJ explained to us that it didn’t use the FBI estimates prior to 1960 because they weren’t standardized and are considered less reliable.)
Regardless, the murder rate is now at a historic low.
“Overall, it was the largest percentage point drop in murder, violent crime and property crime ever recorded,” Jeff Asher, a co-founder of AH Datalytics, a consulting firm that compiles crime data, wrote on Substack. “With murder you have to go all the way back to 2024 to find the previous largest one-year drop in murder and before that the previous largest one-year drop was in 2023.”
In his speech, Trump went on to credit his administration. “But we have the numbers down because of what the federal government’s doing,” the president said. “We get no — we get no credit for it. … They like to take all the credit, but everyone knows we’ve done an amazing job.”
In an Aug. 18 press release, the White House similarly said that Trump and his administration “have delivered the most dramatic decline in violent crime in American history.” It wrongly said the FBI crime estimates “mark the decisive reversal of the crime crisis Democrats left behind.” As we explain later in this article, the rates for violent crimes were lower in 2024 than in 2020, Trump’s last year of his first term. The press release went on to cite figures on arrests made by the FBI.
Presidents of both parties often take credit for the good things that happen while they’re in office, but experts say the reasons behind the 2025 crime figures aren’t yet known.
“The homicide drop is historic and crystal clear. But right now, what’s driving it is about as clear as a glass of milk,” Adam Gelb, the president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, said in a statement. “Rates are falling in cities with very different public safety strategies, economic conditions, and political leadership.”
Criminology experts have told us before that one or even a few years of crime data isn’t enough to draw conclusions.
“As with every edition with these kind of reports, the feeding frenzy begins to take credit,” Matthew Cavedon, director of the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice, told the Washington Post. “Everybody wants to be able to go to the public and the voters and say, ‘This is exactly what did it.’ It’s a bit of a fool’s errand to even try.”
The Trump administration, however, is taking a victory lap. We asked the White House if there were reports or other information it could point to showing the crime drop in 2025 was due to the administration’s actions or policies. “President Trump is right: thanks to this Administration’s tough-on-crime policies, 2025 showed the largest year-to-year decrease in violent crime. President Trump has restored law and order,” Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman, said in response.
In an interview, Gelb told us that there could be some impact on crime from what the administration is doing, but we don’t know what that is yet.
He said that attrition is one factor that could be playing a role, as there are fewer high-risk people on the street. Factors contributing to that, he said, include a surplus in murders beginning in 2020 (resulting in more arrests and some criminals killed), a spike in drug overdose deaths, and the federal government’s immigration enforcement and other activities. While clearly not all those who die from drug overdoses, or all immigrants swept up by the federal government, have committed crimes, some percentage of them would have some involvement in criminal activity.
Available data have shown that the majority of immigration enforcement by the federal government has swept up people without convictions or charges for violent crime. A February CBS News report said that about 14% of nearly 400,000 arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2025 involved those with charges or convictions for violent crimes, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document. We’ve also reported that an increasing percentage of ICE arrests over Trump’s first year back in office were of those with no criminal convictions or pending charges, whether for violent or lesser offenses. Still, the increased enforcement does result in some number of violent criminals being detained.
Gelb cautioned, however, that reducing crime isn’t “as simple as taking bad guys off the street,” because of the replacement effect, where those arrested are quickly replaced by someone else in a criminal organization, such as in gang activity, drug dealing or organized retail theft.
Asked when there might be clarity on the Trump administration’s impact on crime, Gelb said, “We’re still trying to understand the crime drop that started in the early 1990s. So, I don’t think we can expect definitive conclusions that with any precision assign credit to any particular policy, program, party or leader. … But with careful and rigorous analysis, we can get a lot closer.”
Next month, CCJ is convening about 50 crime researchers and scholars to discuss the reasons behind the decline in crime in recent years, and they’re looking at about 40 different plausible factors. Gelb said that they fall into three buckets: criminal justice operations, strategies, policies and programs; technology; and social and cultural shifts.
He went on to list several factors in each of those buckets. Criminal justice would include local and federal policies under multiple administrations, community violence intervention programs, and mayoral offices’ whole-of-government strategies that involve everything from policing to improving street lighting. Technology includes a “massive expansion in the last few years of surveillance” through cameras; a shift to a cashless society, which reduces robberies; and improvements in emergency medical care that can lower the lethality rate from assaults or robberies. Finally, the broad social and cultural changes include people drinking less, particularly young people, and kids spending more time at home alone — on their phones — rather than being out with friends.
“You know the movie ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’?” Gelb asked. “That’s what we’ve got here. And when you have so many, so many things happening at once, it can be extremely hard to disentangle.”
Violent Crime Under Biden
Trump also claimed that the U.S. had “four years in hell” because of violent crime under Biden. But the violent crime rate was lower when Biden left office than when Biden was inaugurated.
“And in the past four years, before I took office, our country was overrun by violent criminals,” Trump said. “I mean, you remember just a couple of years ago, how bad it was, right? It was really bad, foreign gangs, savage thugs with Biden, sleepy Joe. What a — what a horrible four years. That was four years in hell. We lived in hell.”
FBI data show the overall violent crime rate did increase a smidge during the first half of Biden’s term. It was 389.5 per 100,000 population in 2022, a slight bump from the rate of 389.2 per 100,000 in 2020, Trump’s last full year in office, when violent crime spiked during the pandemic. (See Table 1 after downloading the FBI’s 2025 estimations for crime in the U.S.)
But violent crime began to fall in 2023 and the rate was down to 362.9 per 100,000 in 2024. That was 26.3 fewer offenses per 100,000 population than in 2020 and even down from the pre-pandemic rate of 368.6 per 100,000 in 2019.
In fact, the rates of murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault were all lower in 2024 than in 2020. The murder rate in particular dropped from 6.6 in 2020 to 5.1 in 2024, and the number of murders declined by about 21%. At the same time, the rate of aggravated assaults declined by 13.7 offenses per 100,000 and the raw number went down by almost 2%.
Impact of National Guard
Trump touted his efforts to deploy the National Guard and federal law enforcement to assist several cities with crime, and he said it has paid dramatic dividends. But he vastly overstated the drop in crime post-National Guard. And crime experts say the infusion of National Guard troops is not the primary reason for the reduced crime those cities have experienced.
Members of the U.S. National Guard patrol near the Washington Monument on the National Mall with the Lincoln Memorial in the background on Aug. 6 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images.
Via presidential memos, Trump deployed the National Guard in several cities to focus on public safety: in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 11, 2025; in Memphis on Sept. 15; and in New Orleans in late December.
“In Memphis, crime is down 71%. In New Orleans, crime is down 75%. And in D.C., crime is down 81%,” Trump said. “I’ll tell you, because D.C. is very personal for me, but in D.C., crime is — it was so bad when I got there. A year and a half ago, people were being murdered, three a week on average. We have very few murders anymore.”
There were 16 homicides in Washington, D.C., in July, more than the “three a week on average” Trump said was the norm before he deployed the National Guard there.
But overall, crime and homicides are generally down in the three cities where Trump deployed the National Guard, just not by nearly as much as Trump claimed. And crime had been trending down for at least a few years prior to the National Guard arrival.
The White House did not respond to our question about the source of Trump’s figures.
Washington, D.C.
On Aug. 11, 2025, Trump declared what he called “Liberation Day in D.C.” to “rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.” He put the Metropolitan Police Department under temporary federal control and deployed the National Guard to the nation’s capital to help with law enforcement.
Data from the city’s Metropolitan Police Department indicate a 20% reduction in overall crime in D.C. so far in 2026, compared with a similar period in 2025.
Digging into the numbers, there were 67 homicides between Jan. 1 and Aug. 14, 33% fewer than over the same period in 2025 (nearly entirely before the National Guard deployment). Robberies over the same period were down 14%. But sex abuse cases were up 2%, and assaults with a dangerous weapon rose 40%. Overall, violent crime rose 4%. Property crimes declined by 23%.
“If you want to argue that there was an additional decline on top of that [the downward trend] due to all these interventions, you could plausibly make that argument,” Asher, with AH Datalytics, told the Washington Post. “But you can’t make the argument that the intervention caused that decline or even was a major factor in those trends turning over.”
Thaddeus Johnson, an assistant professor at Georgia State University and a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, echoed that conclusion, telling the Washington Post, “One would be hard-pressed to say that it didn’t play a role, but you would also be hard-pressed to say it was the only or primary reason why we’ve seen reductions.”
“DC homicides fell from 187 in 2024, the year before [Trump] took office, to 127 in 2025, and are down another 32% so far this year, from about 3.6 murders a week in 2024 to about 2 a week now,” Richard Hahn, senior manager for research and evidence in the Niskanen Center’s criminal justice department, told us via email. “That is a roughly 40% improvement on the pace he inherited, not 81%, and the sharpest single drop (274 homicides in 2023 to 187 in 2024) happened entirely under local policing before his term began.”
Hahn is one of the co-authors of a report from the Niskanen Center, a centrist think tank, titled, “Washington, D.C.’s Crime Decline and Its Lessons for American Policing.”
The analysis concluded that deployment of the National Guard to D.C. gets “some credit” for “a narrow slice of crime,” Hahn told us. “The Guard was posted in tourist corridors, transit hubs, and federal areas rather than the neighborhoods where violence concentrates, and Guard members could detain but not arrest. We found the deployment produced a real reduction, about 24%, in opportunistic property crime where the Guard was visible, and no detectable effect on violent crime. That is what the research on policing would predict: visible uniformed presence deters crimes of opportunity, but it does not reach violence rooted in interpersonal disputes.”
According to the report, “What the Guard brought was a massive, sudden shock from the visible presence of uniformed military personnel on the streets of Washington almost overnight. For crimes driven by opportunistic calculation, that visibility appears to have mattered. For violent crime, which is less deterrable by patrol presence alone, it did not.”
The report concluded that while the Guard’s deployment “reduced the occurrence of specific crimes, it was (and remains) a blunt and expensive instrument.” The report’s analysis found that “a targeted, data-driven policing strategy optimized on where and when crime actually occurs could achieve comparable or better outcomes at a fraction of the cost.”
Memphis
Last September, Trump’s executive order created the Memphis Safe Task Force, which included sending hundreds of federal law enforcement agents and deploying 1,450 National Guard troops to the city.
In Memphis, total crime dropped nearly 39% from the period of Oct. 1 to Aug. 18 compared with the same period the year before, according to city data. That includes drops in crimes across the board: -41% for murder; -30% for aggravated assault; -32% for sexual assault; -48% for robbery; -28% for burglary; -36% for larceny; and -62% for motor vehicle theft.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young told Action News 5 in Memphis that the task force “amplified” state and city efforts — including millions in state funds targeting violent crime and other targeted enforcement approaches — that had already resulted in crime dropping 27% in the year before the task force was created.
“I think two things can be true at the same time,” Tyreece Miller, U.S. marshal for the Western District of Tennessee, told Action News 5. “I think crime was trending downward. But I think the task force certainly escalated the decrease in crime.”
New Orleans
In late December 2025, Trump deployed 350 National Guard members to New Orleans. But the results have been mixed.
In New Orleans, crime began to markedly drop in late 2023, but leveled off in mid-2025. Since the National Guard arrived in New Orleans in late December, crime overall has remained relatively unchanged. The rolling yearly total number of crimes on Aug. 18 was 13,375, up slightly from the yearly total ending Aug. 17, 2025, of 13,207. Year-to-date, overall crime is up 4.8% compared with the same period last year; murder is down 23.9%; and sexual assault is up 1.6%.
“The National Guard has had no impact on New Orleans’ murder trend,” Asher, of AH Datalytics, told us via email. “To begin with, the Guard is deployed largely in the French Quarter where gun violence is very rare. In addition, shootings in New Orleans began falling dramatically in mid-2023 with the city experiencing a 60 percent drop in shooting incidents between mid-2023 and early 2025. This trend began long before the National Guard arrived and almost certainly has been caused by other factors.”
Hahn also cautioned not to ascribe too much credit to National Guard deployment in the three cities.
“The whole country is in a historic crime decline,” Hahn said, citing the FBI’s 2025 report that found the largest one-year drops in violent crime and murder since the bureau started tracking the data. “The Council on Criminal Justice found homicide down 21% in 2025 across its big-city sample, and down another 18% in the first half of 2026, putting the country on track for a historic low. Against that backdrop, the three deployment cities look much like everywhere else. When crime is falling nearly everywhere, falling crime in three cities is not sufficient evidence that any particular intervention worked.”
Trump, meanwhile, said he stands ready to implement similar federal surges in other cities that are receptive.
“For other cities like New York, Chicago, L.A., all they have to do is call us and we will stop that crime,” Trump said. “We’ll stop that horrible crime.”
But Hahn said the data do not support that, as big cities around the country saw major crime drops over the last several years, commensurate to the cities where Trump sent the National Guard.
“Crime has not dropped more dramatically in the deployment cities than in New York, Chicago, and LA,” Hahn said. “In 2025, the NYPD recorded the fewest shooting incidents in its recorded history (688, down 24% from 2024) with murders down 20%. Chicago ended 2025 with 411 homicides, down 30% and the fewest in decades, per CPD data. Los Angeles recorded its fewest homicides since 1966, down 19%. And Denver led the nation’s large cities with a 41% homicide decline. None of these cities had a Guard deployment. That they matched or beat the deployment cities without federal troops is strong evidence that the Guard is not what is driving the numbers.”
Decline in Police Dying on Duty
Trump appeared to credit an executive order he signed in early 2025 for last year’s decline in the number of police officers who died in the line of duty. But that was not one of the reasons for the decrease that was cited by the law enforcement organization that tracks those deaths.
“Shortly after taking office, I signed a historic executive order directing that anyone convicted of killing a police officer should face the death penalty,” Trump said. “And last year, deaths of law enforcement — well, think of this — deaths of law enforcement officers in the line of duty fell to an 80-year low.”
Trump did sign an executive order on Jan. 20, 2025, directing the attorney general to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use,” including “murder of a law-enforcement officer.” The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund also reported that 109 officers died in the line of duty in 2025, representing a 26% decrease from 148 officers in 2024.
The 2025 total — which included 45 officers who died after being shot — was the lowest since 93 officers died in the line of duty in 1943, according to NLEOMF figures. But as far as the reason for the overall decline in 2025, the NLEOMF did not mention Trump’s executive order.
“We lament to document even a single such death, but this encouraging downward trend in fatalities likely reflects the continued adoption of proven best practices by police, sheriff, and corrections agencies, as well as a growing emphasis on the physical and psychological health of the men and women who work to keep our communities safe,” NLEOMF CEO Bill Alexander said in a statement in January. “These practices align directly with — and underscore the importance of — NLEOMF’s Officer Safety and Wellness initiatives, which are designed to help ensure that more officers return home safely at the end of each shift.”
Experts on the death penalty previously told us that there is no conclusive evidence that capital punishment is “a very strong preventative” to violent crimes such as murder, as Trump has claimed.
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Collage by ProPublica. Photo by Sarah Blesener for ProPublica.
As a reporter for The Washington Post and now ProPublica, I’ve investigated how youth sports organizations have failed to protect kids from sexual predators. I’ve spoken to dozens of parents. Some had children who were victimized by coaches. Others wanted to know how to keep their children safe.
Nearly every parent I’ve met said they didn’t have the information they needed to understand the system set up to protect their kids.
Here’s what you need to know (and how to get in touch with tips):
How is the system supposed to work?
The system revolves around one organization: the U.S. Center for SafeSport. SafeSport, as it’s known, is charged with investigating allegations of abuse at all levels of sport, from elite Olympic athletes to young recreational players. Its focus is sexual abuse, but it can also look into allegations of emotional and physical abuse.
The center has the power to suspend coaches as it investigates them, recording their names in a public database known as the SafeSport list. It can ultimately ban abusive coaches for life, declaring them “permanently ineligible.” It can also ban coaches based on certain types of criminal convictions, like those involving abuse of minors.
SafeSport was set up by Congress in 2018, in the wake of revelations about abuse by USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar and other prominent sports figures.
How do coaches get on the SafeSport list?
Coaches and club administrators are required to report misconduct to SafeSport, but anyone can make a report online or by phone.
SafeSport then decides whether to investigate; it doesn’t take every case. Usually coaches can keep working with kids while SafeSport looks into an allegation, but if the allegations are recent or serious, SafeSport can issue a suspension — temporarily placing a coach on the list — while it investigates. If the coach is found not to have engaged in misconduct, they’ll be removed from the list.
If SafeSport substantiates allegations, it can issue sanctions ranging from suspensions or other restrictions to permanent bans.
Which sports does SafeSport cover?
The center has jurisdiction only over the country’s 50 national sports governing bodies, which oversee and set rules for volleyball, swimming, basketball, soccer and any other sports that are included in the Olympics. Those governing bodies are overseen by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
That covers millions of young athletes, but there are millions more who don’t fall under that system or who are only partially covered by it.
What does it mean if a coach is banned or suspended?
Banned coaches cannot be associated in any way with a team or organization that falls under the 50 sports governing bodies. That means they cannot interact at all with athletes in those groups, including at practices. Any adult in the organization who allows that to happen is also in violation of the SafeSport code.
A banned coach can keep working with kids, however, by joining clubs or organizations that are not covered by SafeSport.
What else does SafeSport do?
SafeSport also creates and mandates training for coaches and other adults that is centered on recognizing and reporting sexual abuse, and it enforces strict rules meant to govern how adults interact with kids, like making sure an adult is never alone with a minor.
Athletes have to take the training only if they are over 18, although the organization provides optional courses for younger kids. The training is optional for parents. Understanding how to recognize patterns that coaches use to abuse and groom children can become an important way to keep their children safe.
As part of my reporting on a volleyball coach who has been accused of sexual misconduct, I spoke to a mother and daughter who both told me that the coach had groomed the girl when she was a young teenager in his gym. The mom told me she tried her best to protect her daughter, but there was a lot she didn’t know.
When she finally watched a SafeSport training video with her daughter, who had just turned 18, the mother told me, “Had we watched this earlier, my kid might have been more open to be like, ‘Mom, my coach made a comment about my butt.’ ‘Mom, he sent me a message to my phone.’”
SafeSport said it has since resolved some of those issues, improving its process to resolve cases more quickly and cut down its backlog. In a statement, the center’s new CEO, Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, an Olympic gold medalist, said the organization “acknowledges the challenges we have met as the first national sport safeguarding organization in the world. We are on surer footing today.”
My reporting has also found gaps in the system and failures by both SafeSport and national governing bodies that put young athletes at risk.
What can you do?
First, ask your child’s club or team if your child is competing under a national governing body, which is legally bound by SafeSport, or in an organization that voluntarily follows the SafeSport list. Keep in mind that this still might not mean the organization is regularly checking the list or enforcing bans, as my reporting has documented.
Check for your child’s coach in the SafeSport database. It’s important to remember that coaches can be added to the list temporarily while an investigation is ongoing, which means they ultimately might not be found to have engaged in misconduct.
If you find a coach you know on the list, review SafeSport’s resources for deciding on your next steps.
Take SafeSport training yourself to learn about red flags for abuse and grooming, and discuss them with your child.
Do you have a story about a coach?
I know these are sensitive topics that can be difficult to discuss. I also know how important these stories are. If you’d like to share what you found in the SafeSport database, or you have other experiences with how youth sports organizations have handled abuse allegations, please fill out our brief questionnaire.
I’m particularly interested in:
Finding instances of coaches who are continuing to work with kids after being banned by SafeSport.
Better understanding how abusive coaches manipulate and deceive parents.
Learning about coaching abuse, safety and misconduct in basketball, a sport in which SafeSport has far less influence compared with many other popular youth sports.
We take your privacy seriously and will contact you if we wish to publish any part of your story.
Caption: On September 12, Cub Scouts, Scouts BSA members and Girl Scouts in second grade and older can spend two 2½-hour sessions doing maritime activities that connect naturally with Scouting’s emphasis on learning through experience. Photos courtesy of the Kalmar Nyckel and edited with AI on 8/19.
Kalmar Nyckel event on September 12 will challenge Scouts with boat racing, knot tying, cannon drills, sea chanteys and an outdoor adventure course
By George D. Rotsch, Editor and Publisher of Delaware LIVE
WILMINGTON — Long before young people learned leadership around a campfire, sailors learned many of the same lessons aboard ships: Work together, master practical skills, accept responsibility and be prepared when conditions change.
Those shared traditions will come together Sept. 12 when the Kalmar Nyckel Foundation hosts its annual Scout Day at the Copeland Maritime Center campus and nearby Fort Christina Park.
The event is designed for Cub Scouts, Scouts BSA members and Girl Scouts in second grade and older. Two 2½-hour sessions will offer maritime activities that connect naturally with Scouting’s emphasis on learning through experience.
Participants will be assigned to groups and rotate through five hands-on stations: a Rain Gutter Regatta, an outdoor adventure course, knot tying, sea chanteys and cannon drills.
Each activity introduces a different part of maritime life while reinforcing teamwork, communication, problem-solving and personal confidence.
Small boats create a big challenge
The Rain Gutter Regatta brings one of Scouting’s familiar traditions to the maritime campus.
Scouts will race small boats through narrow channels, discovering how a boat’s design, balance and movement can affect its performance. The activity combines friendly competition with basic lessons about buoyancy, propulsion and the challenges of moving a vessel through water.
It also encourages Scouts to observe what works, make adjustments and try again — the same problem-solving process used by sailors, engineers and shipbuilders.
The regatta may be on a much smaller scale than the Kalmar Nyckel, but the challenge reflects a much larger maritime principle: A successful voyage begins with a vessel designed to move efficiently through the water.
Knots with a purpose
At the knot-tying station, Scouts will practice one of the most fundamental skills in both Scouting and sailing.
Knots aboard a ship are not decorative. Sailors depend on them to secure equipment, manage lines and keep people and cargo safe. Each knot must be appropriate for the job and tied correctly.
Scouting teaches the same combination of knowledge, practice and responsibility. Learning a knot requires concentration and repetition, but it also gives a young person a skill that can be used while camping, boating or responding to an emergency.
The station will help Scouts understand why sailors had to know not only how to tie a knot, but also when and why to use it.
Cannon drills demand coordination
The cannon drill will introduce Scouts to the highly organized teamwork required aboard a historic vessel.
Operating a ship’s cannon required crew members to perform different tasks in a precise order. Each person had to understand an assigned role, listen for commands and work safely with the rest of the team.
The activity turns history into a group exercise. Instead of simply hearing how a tall ship’s crew worked, Scouts will experience how communication, timing and shared responsibility allowed sailors to complete a complicated assignment.
Those lessons closely match Scouting’s patrol system, in which young people learn that a team succeeds when every member understands the plan and carries out a responsibility.
Singing that helped sailors work
Sea chanteys will bring music into the Scout Day experience, but the songs historically served a practical purpose.
Sailors used chanteys to establish a rhythm when performing demanding group tasks, such as hauling a line or raising a sail. The song helped crew members coordinate their movements and apply their effort at the same time.
For Scouts, the station will demonstrate how music could become a tool for teamwork. It also provides a window into the culture of sailors who spent long periods living and working together at sea.
The activity connects history, performance and cooperation while giving Scouts an opportunity to participate together.
An outdoor test of confidence
The outdoor adventure course will draw on another strong connection between the Kalmar Nyckel and Scouting: the belief that young people build confidence by confronting manageable challenges.
The course will require Scouts to listen, move, think and work with others. Like many Scouting activities, the objective is not simply to finish. Participants must determine how to approach a challenge and support the other members of their group.
The station brings maritime adventure onto land while reinforcing the qualities needed aboard a ship: awareness, preparation, perseverance and trust.
Learning by doing
Together, the five stations create a progression of experiences rather than a traditional classroom lesson.
Scouts will race, tie, sing, drill and navigate physical challenges. Each station approaches maritime education differently, but all are built around active participation.
That approach reflects a central value shared by Scouting and the Kalmar Nyckel Foundation: Young people often understand a lesson more deeply when they have an opportunity to put it into practice.
The activities also demonstrate that leadership is not limited to the person giving directions. Leadership can mean completing an assigned task, communicating clearly, helping a teammate or remaining focused when a challenge becomes difficult.
Adventure tied to Delaware history
The event’s setting adds another layer to the experience.
The original Kalmar Nyckel carried Swedish settlers to the Delaware Valley in 1638. They established New Sweden at The Rocks, near present-day Fort Christina Park.
The modern Kalmar Nyckel serves as Delaware’s tall ship and a floating classroom, helping visitors understand the maritime skills, risks and decisions that shaped the region’s early history.
Scout Day allows young people to encounter that history near the place where Delaware’s colonial story began. It supports another value shared by Scouting and the Kalmar Nyckel Foundation: Citizenship begins with understanding the community and history people inherit.
Before or after their assigned session, Scouts may also participate in the Junior Ranger Program at Fort Christina Park, part of First State National Historical Park. Scouts who complete that program will receive a wooden Junior Ranger pin.
Every Scout who completes the five-station Scout Day rotation will also receive an exclusive Kalmar Nyckel Scout patch.
Registration is limited and open to troops as well as individual Scouts.
To Go Box
What: Annual Kalmar Nyckel Scout Day
When: Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026
Morning session: Check-in at 8:30 a.m.; activities from 9 to 11:30 a.m.
Afternoon session: Check-in at 12:30 p.m.; activities from 1 to 3:30 p.m.
Where: Copeland Maritime Center at the Kalmar Nyckel Shipyard, 1124 E. Seventh St., Wilmington. Sessions conclude at Fort Christina Park.
This is the first installment of a three-part Delaware LIVE series examining Delaware’s literacy results, announced by the State Department of Education this week; the changes required to reach the state’s 2028 goal; and the expanding responsibilities of local school boards.
Third-grade proficiency rose 1 percentage point, leaving Delaware with a 13-point gap to close in two years
Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a three-part Delaware LIVE series examining Delaware’s literacy results announced by the State Department of Education this week, the changes required to reach the state’s 2028 goal and the expanding responsibilities of local school boards.
By George D. Rotsch Editor, Delaware LIVE.
DOVER, Del. — Delaware students made modest progress in reading on the latest statewide assessments, but the results show the state remains far from its goal of having 53% of third graders reading proficiently by 2028.
Across grades 3 through 8, English language arts proficiency increased from 41% to 42%.
The movement is positive, but the larger result remains concerning: Six in 10 Delaware third graders did not meet the state’s grade-level proficiency standard.
Delaware now needs to gain another 13 percentage points over the next two testing cycles to reach its 2028 target.
State highlights literacy-coaching gains
In an announcement this week, the Department of Education emphasized results from schools receiving state-supported literacy coaching.
All eight schools with literacy coaches and comparable third-grade results improved from 2025 to 2026. Those schools averaged gains of nearly 7 percentage points, compared with the 1-point statewide increase.
Johnson Elementary School in the Red Clay Consolidated School District and Las Américas ASPIRA Academy each posted 12-point gains. Gateway Charter School improved by 11 points.
The department said those results give state and local leaders reason to examine the relationship among literacy coaching, instructional materials, school leadership and classroom practices.
The results do not prove that coaching alone produced the improvement. Changes in leadership, curriculum, enrollment, attendance and student intervention also may have contributed.
The proficiency level after an increase also matters. Johnson Elementary, for example, improved from 3% to 15%. That is a substantial one-year gain, but it means 85% of the school’s third graders remained below proficiency.
State calls progress modest
The state’s announcement acknowledged that Delaware’s overall performance remains inadequate.
“A one-percentage point statewide increase is not the win,” Education Secretary Cindy Marten said. “The more important question is what we learn from schools where students are moving faster and what we change where students are not making enough progress.”
Marten said Delaware must study schools showing stronger improvement and apply those lessons more broadly.
The department also said proficiency remains below where students need it to be, progress is uneven and achievement gaps remain significant.
Schools highlighted for improvement should be studied, the department said, but their results should not be interpreted as evidence of statewide success.
Understanding what the numbers mean
Julia Keleher, executive director of First State Educate, said statewide averages are an important starting point, but the work of a local school board begins with understanding what those results look like for the students and schools it governs.
“The statewide result tells us the size of Delaware’s literacy challenge, but every board needs to understand its own results,” Keleher said.
School boards are responsible for establishing the outcomes they expect for students and monitoring whether the district is making progress toward them. “State assessment results give boards an annual measure of performance, but effective governance requires going further: understanding how the district performed against its goals, where results differ across schools and student groups, and what the superintendent is doing in response. Boards can then monitor progress throughout the year rather than waiting for the next annual assessment to know whether the district is on track.”, Keleher said.
Board members could ask
What do these results tell us about progress toward our district’s student outcome goals?
Where are students making progress, and where are they not?
Are all student groups making progress toward the outcomes we established?
What does the superintendent believe is driving the differences in performance, and what is the district doing in response?
Are our budget, policies, and resources aligned with the outcomes we are trying to achieve?
What will we monitor throughout the year to know whether the district’s strategy is working and students are on track
Keleher’s organization works with school board members on governance and data interpretation. It is one of several potential resources boards may use to understand local results and evaluate district strategies.
High school performance declines
The elementary results were accompanied by a decline in high school reading and writing performance.
Among students taking the SAT School Day assessment, generally administered in 11th grade, 44% demonstrated proficiency in evidence-based reading and writing. That was down from 47% in 2025.
SAT essay proficiency rose by 10 points to 43%.
The high school results suggest Delaware’s literacy challenge does not end after elementary school. Students who advance without strong reading foundations may face greater difficulty as assignments become more complex across English, history, science and other subjects.
Proficiency and growth are different
The results released this week measure proficiency—whether students met grade-level expectations.
Delaware will release student-growth results separately. Growth measures how much students improved academically, including students who made progress but remain below grade level.
Both measures are important.
Growth can show whether a student is catching up and whether an intervention is helping. Proficiency shows whether the student has reached the state’s grade-level standard.
The state’s 2028 third-grade target is based on proficiency.
A significant challenge remains
Delaware has recorded an improvement, but the state is not currently progressing fast enough to reach its goal.
The 2026 results provide encouraging examples that deserve further examination. They also raise difficult questions about schools where most students remain below the reading standard.
As Keleher noted, the next step is not merely acknowledging a statewide number. It is understanding what produced improvement in some schools and what must change in schools where progress remains limited.
Delaware must raise third-grade reading proficiency by an average of 6.5 points in each of the next two years. Part 2 examines what that would require, how boards can measure progress between annual tests and whether the state has established sufficient accountability.
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.
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